David Corn
March 07, 2007
David Corn is the Washington editor of The Nation and the co-author, along with Michael Isikoff, of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War. He is covering the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby trial for The Nation.
Over three years ago, on the morning of July 14, 2003, I picked up The Washington Post and did something I don't always do: I read Robert Novak's column.
It was about the controversy concerning George W. Bush's prewar claim that Iraq had been uranium-shopping in Africa and former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's charge that the White House had twisted this intelligence to hype the case for war. A few sentences in the middle of the column caught my eye: Novak was reporting that Wilson's wife—Valerie Plame—was a CIA “operative on weapons of mass destruction.” I knew Joseph Wilson. In the months before the invasion of Iraq, we had become Green Room acquaintances, seeing each other at the Fox News Washington bureau. As two of the few commentators questioning the wisdom of launching a war against Iraq, we had bonded. I had even persuaded Wilson—who joked he was an establishment type of guy—to write an article slamming the neoconservatives for my home base, The Nation .
When I saw the reference to his wife as a CIA spy, I called Wilson and asked about that. He was livid about the column. He would neither confirm nor deny anything. But, he said, if the information in the Novak column was accurate—if she were a CIA operative—then her cover had been blown and that would have serious consequences. If the information was wrong, then she had been falsely branded a spy. That also would have serious consequences. Two days later I wrote a column for The Nation's website that was the first article to suggest that the two anonymous administration officials who had told Novak about Valerie Wilson might have violated a little-known law called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a felony for a government official to disclose knowingly identifying information about an undercover intelligence officer.
Some credit or blame me for all that followed. Some Bush-backing commentators and bloggers have whipped up conspiracy theories involving me—most fancifully that Wilson and I somehow plotted to make the leak even worse in order to damage the Bush-Cheney White House. Recently, Victoria Toensing suggested that I had enabled Wilson to mislead the public about his wife's covert status perhaps so he could obtain book and movie contracts. This has all been part of a right-wing effort to distract and distort—and to diminish the significance of the leak and the criminal case.
Ideological Loyalties
This ongoing campaign kicked into high gear on Tuesday, when the jury rendered a four-count guilty verdict in the obstruction of justice trial of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Two hours after the verdict was announced, the National Review posted an editorial demanding that George W. Bush pardon Libby. The trial, NR 's editors proclaimed, “proved only one thing: A White House aide became the target of a politicized prosecution.” The magazine denounced the “partisans” who had “pounced on” the Novak column, and it argued, “A good man has paid a very heavy price for the Left's fevers, the media's scandal-mongering and President Bush's failure to unify his own administration.”
Across the National Review site there was much chest-beating. Toensing declared, “The Scooter Libby verdict makes no logical sense, but that won't bother the legal notions of an appellate court.” (Apparently, she knows better than all those appellate judges.) William Bennett decried the verdict as “the criminalization of politics.” David Frum, former Bush speechwriter, called the conviction a “travesty” (and took a poke at me). Former Senator Fred Thompson said he was “sad” and “angry.” National Review blogger Mark Levin called for prosecution witnesses to be indicted (he didn't specify for what) and complained, “this case ... was political from beginning to end.” (I'm sure other conservatives have gone haywire over the verdict, but I'm not surfing further.)
Here's what I don't get: Are these conservatives so blinded by ideological loyalties that they do not see that in the leak case the system worked?
A leak of classified information occurred that blew the cover of a CIA officer. (An aside: I'm not going to debate those right-wingers—such as Jonah Goldberg and Clifford May—who pooh-poohed Valerie Wilson's clandestine status at the CIA. She was, as Michael Isikoff and I disclosed in Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War , the operations chief of the Joint Task Force on Iraq, a unit within the clandestine operations directorate's Counterproliferation Division. Her employment at the CIA was classified, and at the time of the leak, she was still undercover. Numerous CIA people have said her exposure had the potential for trouble.) This leak, as I had noted in my column, might have been a violation of the law. But one could not know unless an investigation was to be conducted.
It did seem at the time that the leak was the product of a get-Wilson campaign mounted by the White House. As it turned out—and as Isikoff and I revealed—then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was Novak's primary source, and he was not part of a White House operation targeting Wilson. But chief White House strategist Karl Rove, seeking to undermine Wilson's credibility, did confirm the leak to Novak and also shared the same information with Matt Cooper, then of Time. Libby leaked information on Wilson's wife to Judith Miller, then of The New York Times , as he and his boss, the vice president, were trying to counter Wilson's criticisms. And Ari Fleischer, as the trial revealed, also leaked information on Valerie Wilson to at least one reporter. Whatever Armitage did, senior White House aides were purposefully spreading classified information about Valerie Wilson—whether or not they realized the possible legal consequences.
So there was a leak. It occurred as the White House assailed Wilson. It was perfectly reasonable to call, as several congressional Democrats did, for an inquiry. The CIA, after an initial review, forwarded a request to the Justice Department. The Justice Department then decided in late September 2003 to open an investigation, and FBI agents began knocking on doors. About two months later, Attorney General John Ashcroft—no leftie—recused himself from the case, which involved White House officials. And Ashcroft's deputy appointed Patrick Fitzgerald, the tough-minded and independent U.S. attorney in Chicago, to be a special prosecutor in the case.
What's wrong with this picture? Nothing. There was a possible crime. The CIA said so itself. The feds started investigating, and Ashcroft's Justice Department made certain the investigation would be professional, not political.
Fitzgerald Gathers The Facts
By the time Fitzgerald took over the case in early 2004, the FBI agents working it had already sussed out a basic fact: Armitage had been Novak's first leaker. But there was more to the case than that. What other leaking had gone on? Days after the Novak column appeared, Time had reported that administration officials had told the magazine that Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer. For Fitzgerald, this meant he had to learn who had leaked besides Armitage (who had confessed to FBI agents once the investigation began). Fitzgerald also had to determine which Bush officials had known about Valerie Wilson and whether any who might have leaked knew she was undercover. None of this was improper or unusual. Fitzgerald's job was to gather all the facts he could to determine if any law had been broken, including perjury and obstruction of justice.
Fitzgerald suspected Rove was not telling the full truth. Rove had admitted confirming the leak for Novak but had not acknowledged leaking to Cooper. And Fitzgerald knew that the account Libby had given to the FBI was contradicted by Meet the Press host Tim Russert. Libby had told the agents that though Cheney had informed him in early June 2003 that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, he completely forgot about that and learned about her anew when Russert, in a July 11 phone conversation, told him that all the reporters knew Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. Russert told an FBI agent that he had said no such thing and, at the time of the call, had known nothing about Valerie Wilson. Other witnesses also contradicted Libby's account, each claiming that he or she had spoken with Libby about Wilson's wife prior to the leak.
Fitzgerald had a choice. He could investigate Rove and Libby for possibly lying to protect themselves (and maybe others) from a criminal inquiry. Or he could walk away from the suspected obstruction of justice. He chose to investigate. He eventually concluded there was no prosecutable case to bring regarding the leak committed by Armitage, Rove and Libby, but he pressed ahead on the other front. He subpoenaed journalists and even imprisoned Judith Miller for 85 days before she cooperated. (Was that going too far? In the coming years, we'll see whether a troubling precedent has been set.)
Fitzgerald was sticking to the rules. As he has explained, there's no excuse for lying under oath. By lying to the FBI and then the grand jury, Libby blocked the government from obtaining facts that may have been useful in assessing if any crime had occurred. Fitzgerald could not let Libby get away with this. After extensive investigation—and after obtaining testimony from Russert, Miller and Cooper—he indicted Libby in a rather narrow case. (Fitzgerald did not do the same with Rove because he did not believe he had sufficient evidence to prove that Rove had lied when claiming he had forgotten he had leaked to Cooper.)
Do the conservatives who belittle the case believe Libby should have gotten a pass once Fitzgerald decided not to prosecute anyone for leaking? That obstruction of justice and perjury charges should not be filed in criminal cases that don't result in other indictments? To do so would countenance lying under oath. It would also say to possible targets of criminal investigations: Go ahead and lie and see if you can stymie the investigation. If your lies prevent a prosecutor from gathering evidence needed for an indictment, you win.
Why Cry For A Felon?
What was political about Fitzgerald's by-the-numbers pursuit of Libby? Fitzgerald, who says he is a registered independent, was nominated to be U.S. attorney by a Republican senator. He didn't seem to care whether Libby was responsible for the war or not. Had Fitzgerald been politically motivated, he probably could have cooked up a charge against Rove. As for the merits of the case, the jurors, after listening to testimony for weeks and then deliberating for ten days, decided the evidence supported Fitzgerald—even though, as juror Denis Collins said, they felt sympathy for Libby and wondered why he was the only Bush administration official to end up in court in the leak case.
Where's the problem? A leak was investigated. No crime was charged—as often happens in leak cases—but a prosecutor suspected a witness (or target) had lied to the FBI and the grand jury. He investigated thoroughly. He indicted. The defendant was able to mount a multi-million-dollar defense. The jury concluded that the prosecutor was correct and that the defendant had deliberately misled the investigators in a national security case
In similar circumstances, law-and-order conservatives would cry no tears for the convicted felon. But in this instance, right-wing allies of the White House have decried the prosecution and verdict as extreme miscarriages of justice, claiming Libby was the innocent victim of a political witch hunt. Some may be doing so merely to help a friend. But I suspect that conservatives view Libby, a chief architect of the Iraq war, as a stand-in for the administration they favor and a vice president they fancy.
Though both Fitzgerald and Ted Wells, Libby's lead lawyer, declared during the trial that this case was not about the war and not about whether the White House had misled the country into the mess in Iraq, Libby's defenders don't seem to buy that. And perhaps no one should. Libby lied to cover up his (and perhaps Cheney's) role in a White House effort to beat back the charge Bush had lied the nation to war. Libby, in a way, had tried to protect all those who had cheered on the war and who now stand discredited. Credit the members of the Libby Lobby with gratitude, though it comes at a high price: exposing themselves as partisans for whom the war and politics mean more than the truth and law.
March 07, 2007
David Corn is the Washington editor of The Nation and the co-author, along with Michael Isikoff, of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War. He is covering the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby trial for The Nation.
Over three years ago, on the morning of July 14, 2003, I picked up The Washington Post and did something I don't always do: I read Robert Novak's column.
It was about the controversy concerning George W. Bush's prewar claim that Iraq had been uranium-shopping in Africa and former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's charge that the White House had twisted this intelligence to hype the case for war. A few sentences in the middle of the column caught my eye: Novak was reporting that Wilson's wife—Valerie Plame—was a CIA “operative on weapons of mass destruction.” I knew Joseph Wilson. In the months before the invasion of Iraq, we had become Green Room acquaintances, seeing each other at the Fox News Washington bureau. As two of the few commentators questioning the wisdom of launching a war against Iraq, we had bonded. I had even persuaded Wilson—who joked he was an establishment type of guy—to write an article slamming the neoconservatives for my home base, The Nation .
When I saw the reference to his wife as a CIA spy, I called Wilson and asked about that. He was livid about the column. He would neither confirm nor deny anything. But, he said, if the information in the Novak column was accurate—if she were a CIA operative—then her cover had been blown and that would have serious consequences. If the information was wrong, then she had been falsely branded a spy. That also would have serious consequences. Two days later I wrote a column for The Nation's website that was the first article to suggest that the two anonymous administration officials who had told Novak about Valerie Wilson might have violated a little-known law called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a felony for a government official to disclose knowingly identifying information about an undercover intelligence officer.
Some credit or blame me for all that followed. Some Bush-backing commentators and bloggers have whipped up conspiracy theories involving me—most fancifully that Wilson and I somehow plotted to make the leak even worse in order to damage the Bush-Cheney White House. Recently, Victoria Toensing suggested that I had enabled Wilson to mislead the public about his wife's covert status perhaps so he could obtain book and movie contracts. This has all been part of a right-wing effort to distract and distort—and to diminish the significance of the leak and the criminal case.
Ideological Loyalties
This ongoing campaign kicked into high gear on Tuesday, when the jury rendered a four-count guilty verdict in the obstruction of justice trial of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Two hours after the verdict was announced, the National Review posted an editorial demanding that George W. Bush pardon Libby. The trial, NR 's editors proclaimed, “proved only one thing: A White House aide became the target of a politicized prosecution.” The magazine denounced the “partisans” who had “pounced on” the Novak column, and it argued, “A good man has paid a very heavy price for the Left's fevers, the media's scandal-mongering and President Bush's failure to unify his own administration.”
Across the National Review site there was much chest-beating. Toensing declared, “The Scooter Libby verdict makes no logical sense, but that won't bother the legal notions of an appellate court.” (Apparently, she knows better than all those appellate judges.) William Bennett decried the verdict as “the criminalization of politics.” David Frum, former Bush speechwriter, called the conviction a “travesty” (and took a poke at me). Former Senator Fred Thompson said he was “sad” and “angry.” National Review blogger Mark Levin called for prosecution witnesses to be indicted (he didn't specify for what) and complained, “this case ... was political from beginning to end.” (I'm sure other conservatives have gone haywire over the verdict, but I'm not surfing further.)
Here's what I don't get: Are these conservatives so blinded by ideological loyalties that they do not see that in the leak case the system worked?
A leak of classified information occurred that blew the cover of a CIA officer. (An aside: I'm not going to debate those right-wingers—such as Jonah Goldberg and Clifford May—who pooh-poohed Valerie Wilson's clandestine status at the CIA. She was, as Michael Isikoff and I disclosed in Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War , the operations chief of the Joint Task Force on Iraq, a unit within the clandestine operations directorate's Counterproliferation Division. Her employment at the CIA was classified, and at the time of the leak, she was still undercover. Numerous CIA people have said her exposure had the potential for trouble.) This leak, as I had noted in my column, might have been a violation of the law. But one could not know unless an investigation was to be conducted.
It did seem at the time that the leak was the product of a get-Wilson campaign mounted by the White House. As it turned out—and as Isikoff and I revealed—then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was Novak's primary source, and he was not part of a White House operation targeting Wilson. But chief White House strategist Karl Rove, seeking to undermine Wilson's credibility, did confirm the leak to Novak and also shared the same information with Matt Cooper, then of Time. Libby leaked information on Wilson's wife to Judith Miller, then of The New York Times , as he and his boss, the vice president, were trying to counter Wilson's criticisms. And Ari Fleischer, as the trial revealed, also leaked information on Valerie Wilson to at least one reporter. Whatever Armitage did, senior White House aides were purposefully spreading classified information about Valerie Wilson—whether or not they realized the possible legal consequences.
So there was a leak. It occurred as the White House assailed Wilson. It was perfectly reasonable to call, as several congressional Democrats did, for an inquiry. The CIA, after an initial review, forwarded a request to the Justice Department. The Justice Department then decided in late September 2003 to open an investigation, and FBI agents began knocking on doors. About two months later, Attorney General John Ashcroft—no leftie—recused himself from the case, which involved White House officials. And Ashcroft's deputy appointed Patrick Fitzgerald, the tough-minded and independent U.S. attorney in Chicago, to be a special prosecutor in the case.
What's wrong with this picture? Nothing. There was a possible crime. The CIA said so itself. The feds started investigating, and Ashcroft's Justice Department made certain the investigation would be professional, not political.
Fitzgerald Gathers The Facts
By the time Fitzgerald took over the case in early 2004, the FBI agents working it had already sussed out a basic fact: Armitage had been Novak's first leaker. But there was more to the case than that. What other leaking had gone on? Days after the Novak column appeared, Time had reported that administration officials had told the magazine that Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer. For Fitzgerald, this meant he had to learn who had leaked besides Armitage (who had confessed to FBI agents once the investigation began). Fitzgerald also had to determine which Bush officials had known about Valerie Wilson and whether any who might have leaked knew she was undercover. None of this was improper or unusual. Fitzgerald's job was to gather all the facts he could to determine if any law had been broken, including perjury and obstruction of justice.
Fitzgerald suspected Rove was not telling the full truth. Rove had admitted confirming the leak for Novak but had not acknowledged leaking to Cooper. And Fitzgerald knew that the account Libby had given to the FBI was contradicted by Meet the Press host Tim Russert. Libby had told the agents that though Cheney had informed him in early June 2003 that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, he completely forgot about that and learned about her anew when Russert, in a July 11 phone conversation, told him that all the reporters knew Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. Russert told an FBI agent that he had said no such thing and, at the time of the call, had known nothing about Valerie Wilson. Other witnesses also contradicted Libby's account, each claiming that he or she had spoken with Libby about Wilson's wife prior to the leak.
Fitzgerald had a choice. He could investigate Rove and Libby for possibly lying to protect themselves (and maybe others) from a criminal inquiry. Or he could walk away from the suspected obstruction of justice. He chose to investigate. He eventually concluded there was no prosecutable case to bring regarding the leak committed by Armitage, Rove and Libby, but he pressed ahead on the other front. He subpoenaed journalists and even imprisoned Judith Miller for 85 days before she cooperated. (Was that going too far? In the coming years, we'll see whether a troubling precedent has been set.)
Fitzgerald was sticking to the rules. As he has explained, there's no excuse for lying under oath. By lying to the FBI and then the grand jury, Libby blocked the government from obtaining facts that may have been useful in assessing if any crime had occurred. Fitzgerald could not let Libby get away with this. After extensive investigation—and after obtaining testimony from Russert, Miller and Cooper—he indicted Libby in a rather narrow case. (Fitzgerald did not do the same with Rove because he did not believe he had sufficient evidence to prove that Rove had lied when claiming he had forgotten he had leaked to Cooper.)
Do the conservatives who belittle the case believe Libby should have gotten a pass once Fitzgerald decided not to prosecute anyone for leaking? That obstruction of justice and perjury charges should not be filed in criminal cases that don't result in other indictments? To do so would countenance lying under oath. It would also say to possible targets of criminal investigations: Go ahead and lie and see if you can stymie the investigation. If your lies prevent a prosecutor from gathering evidence needed for an indictment, you win.
Why Cry For A Felon?
What was political about Fitzgerald's by-the-numbers pursuit of Libby? Fitzgerald, who says he is a registered independent, was nominated to be U.S. attorney by a Republican senator. He didn't seem to care whether Libby was responsible for the war or not. Had Fitzgerald been politically motivated, he probably could have cooked up a charge against Rove. As for the merits of the case, the jurors, after listening to testimony for weeks and then deliberating for ten days, decided the evidence supported Fitzgerald—even though, as juror Denis Collins said, they felt sympathy for Libby and wondered why he was the only Bush administration official to end up in court in the leak case.
Where's the problem? A leak was investigated. No crime was charged—as often happens in leak cases—but a prosecutor suspected a witness (or target) had lied to the FBI and the grand jury. He investigated thoroughly. He indicted. The defendant was able to mount a multi-million-dollar defense. The jury concluded that the prosecutor was correct and that the defendant had deliberately misled the investigators in a national security case
In similar circumstances, law-and-order conservatives would cry no tears for the convicted felon. But in this instance, right-wing allies of the White House have decried the prosecution and verdict as extreme miscarriages of justice, claiming Libby was the innocent victim of a political witch hunt. Some may be doing so merely to help a friend. But I suspect that conservatives view Libby, a chief architect of the Iraq war, as a stand-in for the administration they favor and a vice president they fancy.
Though both Fitzgerald and Ted Wells, Libby's lead lawyer, declared during the trial that this case was not about the war and not about whether the White House had misled the country into the mess in Iraq, Libby's defenders don't seem to buy that. And perhaps no one should. Libby lied to cover up his (and perhaps Cheney's) role in a White House effort to beat back the charge Bush had lied the nation to war. Libby, in a way, had tried to protect all those who had cheered on the war and who now stand discredited. Credit the members of the Libby Lobby with gratitude, though it comes at a high price: exposing themselves as partisans for whom the war and politics mean more than the truth and law.
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