Cheney Is a Crook, and Libby Is Covering For Him

By DHinMI

That's what partisans should take from the Libby indictment, and make it clear to everyone they know. 

Other members of the TNH posse will be along shortly with their impressions of what's going on, what it all means, what we should look for, and what we might expect next.  But in terms of shaping the immediate talking points, I think one particularly fertile approach can come from using the same interepretation of events as is in this article by the Washington Post:

Libby essentially was charged with lying to protect his boss, the vice president. He testified that he learned of the identity of the CIA agent in question, Valerie Plame, from reporters. But evidence emerged indicating that he actually learned Plame's name and her role in the CIA from Cheney. The evidence reportedly includes notes Libby took in a June 12, 2003, meeting with Cheney.

Sure, there's much more to all of this.  But in terms of an immediate summary of what just happened, I think saying that Scooter Libby lied to protect his boss from appearing to have been involved in a conspiracy to expose the indentity of an undercover CIA officer has two significant virtues:  It's true, and it points out the criminality at the centers of power in the Bush-Cheney administration. 

Comments

[emptywheel]

I think you're right with how to read this.

As I point out in my post above, the indictment leaves open the possibility that Libby has flipped (there are two pieces of evidence that Libby knew Plame was covert, and Fitz said clearly Libby was the first person to leak this to a journalist, but he is not charged with that leaking, which means he could have been charged with something much worse and was not). So he may have lied to protect his boss. But it's utterly unclear whether he is still lying to protect his boss.

That's what they say about Fitz. He starts with one indictment and then builds from there.

[Kagro X]

Absolutely. There's no other way to read this. The reporter at the press conference who asked why there were no indictments for leaking, if this was a leak investigation, should have been answered simply thus: We would have had one, except Libby preferred to lie about his role and be indicted for that instead.

Of course, here we are, two years later, after the preznit promised to do everything he could to get to the bottom of this and find out what happened. We now know that we can't find out, because the president's advisors would rather lie than get to the bottom of it.

A national security problem exists, and they'd rather lie than fix it.

[meade]

Someone needs to remind these people that the oath of office they take is to defend the constitution, not to uphold Dick and Dubya.

[viget]

Meade--
Exactly. In fact they are derelict in their duty for not doing so. There should be some repercussion for failing to live up to that Oath (I guess that's impeachment, no?).

Others, I have heard that Fitz had Libby's notes, but does anyone know how he obtained them? I can't imagine Libby gave them up voluntarily.

[Mimikatz]

I read somewhere that some notes were on Libby's hard drive and he tried to erease them, but Fitz reconstructed them. I don't know if this is reliable, since some of the notes were handwritten.

It is clear that Libby lied to protect the VP. It would be interesting to know what the VP said to Fitzgerald. Did he say he knew in June? Did he say who told him?

The indictment certainly seems to contain the requisite facts for a prosecution under the IIPA. Wilson's status was classified and not widely known; Libby seems to have been aware that disclosing her identity publicly would have created problems.

But the indictment doesn't say Libby told Novak. It only says he told Judy Miller on June 23, 2003. And Judy didn't write a story based on the leak. So unless Judy passed it on to someone else, perhaps Fitz concluded the damage was de mimimis.

This, plus the fact that Libby's story is so dumb, suggests to me that he may have been designated the fall guy from the outset, and perhaps his lying was a misdirection play from the outset to throw suspicion away from the real leaker (Rove and maybe someone else, perhaps the "other government official" paragraph 19).

But it is clear that what set them off was the suggestion that the Administration knew from before the war that the Niger claims were bogus. It has also been suggested they wanted to distance the VP from Wilosn, from any suggestion that Cheney sent him.

But Wilson never said Cheney sent him. He always characterized it as part of a CIA response to a request for more information from the VP. Andrea Mitchell tried to set that part of the record straight today, just before the indictments were handed up, and Wilson has always tried to clear it up as well. But it somehow survives as a talking point, even though it ties the VP even more closely to this.

I an still most interested in the Niger forgeries, whether they were done for money by Rocco Martino or as part of Chalabi's plot. Whether the VP knew they were false or was just incompetently credulous, looking for anything to bolster his case.

Will we hear from George Tenet now? Bob Novak?

And as I said before, it reinforces the image that the Prez is not in charge when it comes to foreign policy, and is so weak he can't even bring himself to fire Libby before the indictments are delivered to the WH door. At that point they take Libby's prepared resignation, but Bush can't fire him?

[Pug]

Scooter Libby will roll over on Dick Cheney. This isn't the mob. Tough street guys might go to prison for long jolts, but not Columbia Law School lawyers.

He knows if he loses he could be down for 10 to 20 years, especially given Federal sentencing guidelines. A guilty plea and a short jail term will start to look better and better to Scooter.