Scooter Convicted for “No Crime?”

I was shocked when this juror came out and said the following:

This is a great place to post an article on NRO about the same exact thing I thought when I watched the above juror discuss his thinking behind the conviction:

Byron York Article

On virtually every day of the perjury and obstruction of justice trial of Lewis Libby, it was hard not to imagine that the jurors were asking themselves, “Why is this guy on trial?” Why wasn’t Richard Armitage, the former State Department official who first leaked the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, in the courtroom? Or Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary who told reporters about Mrs. Wilson? Or Karl Rove, the top White House aide who ever-so-briefly discussed her with journalists? …. As it turns out, that is exactly what jurors were thinking. “There was a tremendous amount of sympathy for Mr. Libby on the jury,” said juror Denis Collins, the only one of the 11 jurors who chose to speak to the press after the verdict. “It was said a number of times, ‘What are we doing with this guy here? Where’s Rove? Where are these other guys?’ I’m not saying we didn’t think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of. It seemed like he was, as [Libby attorney Ted] Wells put it, he was the fall guy.” …. Well, now he has fallen. The jury convicted Libby, who until October 2005 was Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, on four of the five counts against him: one count of obstruction of justice, two of perjury, and one of making false statements. The only count on which Libby was acquitted was Count 3, a charge that he lied to the FBI about a 2003 conversation he had with Matthew Cooper, then of Time magazine.

Clearly there was no partisanship coming from this juror about what the other jurors thought about the leak! Yeah right. We know who the original leaker was, and we know Scooter had no connection with it. Then, what was Scooter trying to lie about? Was he “COVERING UP” a non-crime? That doesn’t make sense. I will post a few editorial responses to this verdict:

Real Clear Politics

.…After the verdict, juror and former Washington Post reporter Denis Collins referred to Libby as "a very sympathetic guy." Still, jurors apparently believed that Libby concocted a story about learning that Wilson worked for the CIA from "Meet the Press" moderator Tim Russert, so the jury found him guilty of four out of five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice…. …For the Bush administration, this verdict is bad news. It feeds into the Bush-lied mantra of antiwar critics and leading Democrats, who are unbothered by proof that Joseph Wilson has been no model in truth-telling….. When Joseph Wilson returned from Niger, officials who debriefed him thought that Wilson's information supported the belief that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa. As The Washington Post editorialized, "Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth" in saying he debunked the Niger story. The United Kingdom's Butler Commission also found the Niger story to be "well-founded."

Washington Post

…The partisan furor over this allegation led to the appointment of special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald. Yet after two years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald charged no one with a crime for leaking Ms. Plame's name. In fact, he learned early on that Mr. Novak's primary source was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage, an unlikely tool of the White House. The trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame's identity -- and no evidence that she was, in fact, covert….

Ann “Faggot” Coulter

Lewis Libby has now been found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice for lies that had absolutely no legal consequence…. It was not a crime to reveal Valerie Plame's name because she was not a covert agent. If it had been a crime, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could have wrapped up his investigation with an indictment of the State Department's Richard Armitage on the first day of his investigation since it was Armitage who revealed her name and Fitzgerald knew it.

It’s funny, if there had been any evidence of the Whitehouse leaking the name the special prosecutor would have charged someone with a crime for doing so. Valerie wasn’t classified as an undercover agent for many many years, which of course made it impossible for the prosecutor to even charge anyone with blowing her cover because she had no cover to blow. No crime was or could be committed.

I wanted to post this excerpt as well from the left leaning magazine the Nation. Please take note how the writer goes through what the trial wasn’t about, but then in the same paragraph reverts right to what it wasn’t about… like the juror said all of them were saying. Remember, as you read this, the special prosecutor could find nothing to support these claims that both the nation and the juror mentioned:

the Nation Article

Eleven Washingtonians had convicted a former senior Bush White House aide of lying. The case was narrow. It was not about who had leaked classified information outing Valerie Wilson as an undercover CIA officer; it was not about whether the Bush administration had manipulated the prewar intelligence to whip up public support for the invasion of Iraq; it was not about the war. Still, Libby had been on trial for having deliberately misled government investigators to protect himself--and perhaps the vice president--from a criminal inquiry that had come about because the White House had not been straight with the public about the war. In the face of criticism that the administration had hyped the prewar intelligence, the White House in June and July 2003 went on the offensive and mounted a campaign that included passing information to the media about a high-profile critic, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Cheney's office conducted a push-back operation of its own. In this swirl of damage-control and finger-pointing, administration officials leaked Valerie Wilson's CIA identity. And that leak beget the criminal investigation that caused Libby to lie.

For the reason stated above in the Nation article, I will now post the entire article by Jed Babbin

Human Events Article

Clarence Thomas famously said the verbal mugging he received at his Senate confirmation hearing for his appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court was a "high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves." It was the product of Senate Democrats and their media allies. But the abuse Justice Thomas suffered, though it caused him and his family enormous pain, never really endangered him. Yesterday a Washington, D.C. jury returned verdicts of conviction on four out of five counts lodged against Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. If he loses his appeals, Libby will lose his freedom absent a presidential pardon. The Libby trial was a media lynching, worse by far than what Justice Thomas suffered at the hands of the Senate.

The Libby trial is the apparent end of a multi-act press circus that started inside the CIA, apparently intended to generate news coverage adverse to the President. Former Ambassador Joe Wilson -- with no qualifications or training as an intelligence agent -- went to Niger for the CIA to “investigate” the claims that Saddam Hussein’s regime had bought or tried to buy uranium yellowcake there. But in sending him there the CIA exempted Wilson from one of the most fundamental rules: he wasn’t required to sign a “secrecy” agreement that was -- up to then -- invariably required of intelligence analysts and agents as well as people who have access to top secret information. The fact that Wilson didn’t sign one means that whoever sent him on his Niger mission intended that he be able to blab whatever he liked to whichever newspapers and television networks he liked upon his return.

And blab he did. Almost immediately upon his return, Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times describing his “investigation” as, “eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people," in which he often revealed he was on a mission for the U.S. government.

George Smiley he ain’t. Wilson wrote, "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction [sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq] had ever taken place." Wilson then went on his own crusade to discredit the Administration’s case against Saddam’s nuclear program. The media circus was launched with all the fanfare that ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times and the Washington Post could produce. Then came the revelation that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA employee.

Originally reported by columnist Robert Novak, the Plame-CIA connection renewed ol’ Joe Wilson’s star credentials for another round on the TV talk shows. He took full advantage, demanding that Karl Rove be “frog marched” out of the White House in handcuffs. This drove the White House and Justice Department into a panic and resulted in then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft recusing himself, and his deputy, James Comey, appointing Patrick Fitzgerald as special prosecutor with -- literally -- all the powers of the attorney general and none of the constraints.

Very soon after his appointment, Fitzgerald found out that though Plame’s CIA employ was “classified” (as was every other person at CIA who had access to the lunch room), she wasn’t a covert agent, so revealing her identity wasn’t a crime. And then (or perhaps even before that) Fitzgerald learned that the original leaker was Richard Armitage, then deputy secretary of state. The whole matter should have ended there. There was no crime, and -- at that point -- there was no perjury, obstruction of justice or anything else punishable under law. There were acts of politics, nothing more.

But the media horde was crashing sword upon shield, demanding that Fitzgerald look into the darkest corners of the White House to see if there was a dark Cheney-Vader conspiracy to revenge the Empire upon Wilson. It’s always the cover-up, ya know. And Fitzgerald, who should have known better, glowed in the spotlight.

So Fitzgerald cast the media circus into a wider ring, at the U.S. District Court, with some of the biggest press celebrities paraded in and out to testify before the grand jury. One media mentionable was even tossed in jail for a bit. For those of us who remember the happier times when the same concrete terrace in front of the same court was known to its denizens as “Monica Beach,” there was the foreboding knowledge that something would have to be done to someone to satisfy the appetite a-building on every tidbit that dropped from the grand jury’s maw. The press crowd demanded action. They wouldn’t be camped out so long and come away empty-handed. And they didn’t. The indictment of Scooter Libby being pronounced by a Fitzgerald who had apparently achieved what he sought: a Lawrence Walsh-like prominence in the media. His performance at the Libby indictment press conference made clear that he was enjoying himself, and feeding on the media as much as they were feeding on him.

And so it went, from month to month, with the last 10 days spent in jury deliberations. And at noon on Tuesday the jury came back with what the media wanted. Convictions on perjury and obstruction of justice. There will be appeals, but the press will grant no clemency.

Though Fitzgerald said he isn’t planning to bring more charges and that the investigation is essentially over, the media aren’t done with this. What’s coming? In a BBC interview last night, I got one hint. The news presenter asked me if the conviction of Libby wasn’t proof of the Bush Administration’s ruthlessness, that it would endanger peoples’ lives to cover its own wrongdoing. I explained, perhaps in less gentlemanly terms than I should have, that Valerie Plame was never covert, never endangered in any way. But my riposte fell on deaf ears.

The media wants Dick Cheney’s scalp. Or George Bush’s. Never mind the facts. Never mind the law. The press has lynched Scooter Libby. Now they’ve set their sights higher.