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Libby's Indictment: A Window Into the White House Cesspool
By Bernard Weiner - The Crisis Papers
10/29/05 "ICH
" -- --
With Scooter Libby’s indictment, the first shoe has been dropped in
the Plamegate criminal case. Whether there will be other shoes is
problematic.
Fitzgerald says the case is almost wrapped up, but that Rove is
still not out of the woods yet. The fact that Rove and Cheney
weren’t also indicted Friday is disappointing, to be sure -- they
are the real movers and shakers in the Bush Administration -- but we
don't know what's going on behind the scenes.
Is Rove working out a plea bargain that will be announced in a few
days? Could Fitzgerald simply not have all the ammo he needed by
October 28 to bring charges against Rove and Cheney, but is rounding
up that last-minute evidence? Did Fitzgerald present charge(s) to
the Grand Jury against suspects other than Libby but the panel
wouldn't indict? We simply don't know at this point (I'm writing
this the same day as the indictment); maybe the inevitable leaks
will help us understand more as the story unfolds.
What is clear is that Libby seems to have been caught redhanded
concocting a false story and, under oath, sticking to those coverup
lies in both his FBI interrogations and Grand Jury testimony. A
definite no-no.
WILL THIS CASE GO TO TRIAL?
If Libby goes to trial, you can bet that the potential witness list
will include Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Hadley, Rice, maybe Bush, and a
whole host of high-ranking neo-con underlings (Wurmser, Hanna, Feith,
et al.). Libby -- and Cheney and Rove -- definitely would not want
that to happen. Testifying under oath in a criminal trial is a lot
different than leaking your spin to the media, and you could wind up
in the slammer easily on perjury charges.
Since Libby is Cheney's alter-ego (Rove = Bush), you know that Libby
wasn't a solo cowboy in revealing Plame's identity; after all, as
the indictment makes clear, Libby heard about Plame from Cheney. The
ball of lies Libby concocted seemed designed to deflect attention
away from his closest associates, so there is no way Libby would go
to trial and put them in perjury-jeopardy by having them testify.
In short, this case is not going to court. As I see it, Libby has
two options:
1. Libby cops a plea to one of the charges, and no trial takes
place.
2. Bush pardons Libby "pre-emptively" before a trial begins.
(Remember that Bush's father pre-emptively pardoned Defense
Secretary Casper Weinberger before he even was charged, thus
protecting Bush Sr.’s own liability in the Iran-Contra scandal. Like
father like son?)
I suppose Libby could decide to go to trial; he falls on the sword
and takes the sole blame, and every other endangered Administration
witness called takes the Fifth. Bush then pardons Libby. But in all
three instances, we find out little or nothing.
THE LARGER ISSUE OF THE WAR
Is Fitzgerald essentially closing up shop by charging only Libby, or
could there be more indictments to come?
Fitzgerald, without giving anything away, said that if he needed to
employ a grand jury for future indictments, he would do so. But he
gave no indication in his press conference that he had anything
major working. (But, earlier, he apparently told Rove that though he
would not be indicted on Friday, the investigation is still open.
Who knows, maybe he just wants to keep Rove in legal, and emotional,
limbo while he finishes off the case.)
Any hope that Fitzgerald's probe would somehow touch openly on
Administration manipulation of lies to take the country to war in
Iraq was quashed by the Special Counsel at his news conference. He
made it plain that his investigation would not go there, even though
the “context,” as Fitzgerald put it, certainly involved the
Administration’s selling of that war. But there was no mention by
the Special Counsel of the role of the White House Iraq Group in the
outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson; Libby and Rove were key
members of that group.
As is clear, Libby’s actions are inextricably linked to the struggle
to promote the attack on Iraq; after all, Ambassador Joseph Wilson's
opposition to the war, which set off the Administrations' anger,
involved the Bush cabal's lies about alleged Iraqi nuclear activity.
THE FOCUS IS VERY NARROW
Instead of looking wide and deep, Fitzgerald chose to focus very
narrowly on provable facts relating only to this minute aspect of
the coverup. The fact that Libby, a key principal to the events,
chose to lie meant that the federal probers could not get a good
handle on the motivations behind the outing of Valerie Plame.
Fitzgerald made plain that he wasn’t about to touch the third-rail
issue of the war-lies; it will be up to those who feel strongly
about the war issue to tie all the threads together and make that
case.
(Even though we know that Fitzgerald was interested in the original
forged Niger documents alleging an active Iraqi nuclear-program --
which is why Joe Wilson was sent to Africa in the first place, to
check out that story -- the Special Counsel gave no indication that
his investigators would continue to delve into that explosive issue,
even though the forged-documents scandal is breaking open right now
in Italy.)
But in a way, though the Special Counsel’s narrow focus was
disappointing, the full indictment, with all the detailed facts
about Libby’s bullshit cover story, opens up a window through which
we can glimpse the moral cesspool that was (and is) the Bush
Administration in its dealings then and now with regard to the Iraq
War.
Even if Rove and Cheney and Bush escape indictment, their
credibility is in tatters, their power diminished, their focus
scattered. But, and this is a very big but, Bush&Co. still hold the
reins of power and can do, and are prepared to do, a great deal of
damage in their weakened, cornered state.
In short, the Administration has been bloodied badly, but not
fatally wounded. An indictment of Rove probably would have been
extremely helpful in delivering that coup de grace, but, for
whatever reason, Fitzgerald didn’t, or couldn’t, go there, and Libby
looks like the designated scapegoat.
If the Congress were to establish serious and high-level
investigations of the entire Plame affair, or if the House were to
pass an impeachment resolution -- thus putting Administration
officials under oath during depositions -- that would be the
beginning of the end of Bush&Co. power. But that's not about to
happen right now in a GOP-ruled Congress, and Bush/Rove/Cheney, no
matter how suspect and politically-damaged, still rule from the
White House. That’s important to keep in mind in the next weeks and
months.
GOP SPIN-POINTS AGAINST INDICTMENT
The GOP spin against Fitzgerald started even before the Libby
indictment was revealed. In the main, it’s designed to make light of
the charges -- none for the leak itself in espionage terms, rather
only about “minor” matters like lying and perjury -- and to question
Fitzgerald’s “partisan” motives. (Of course, when Clinton was in the
dock, lying and perjury were extremely grave matters to GOP leaders,
anything but "minor.")
I thought Fitzgerald handled those charges rather deftly in his news
conference, saying he has no party affiliation, he was given his
authority by Bush’s Justice Department, and that lies and perjury
concerning national-security matters are not “minor” but go to the
heart of protecting the lives and cover of our spies and those with
whom they come into contact.
By sticking only to the facts of this one indictment and refusing to
engage in surmise outside that narrow purview -- and by having no
leaks emerging from his prosecutorial team, unlike Kenneth Starr’s
politically-charged probe of Clinton -- Fitzgerald gave rightwing
critics little on which to hang their denunciations of his
investigation.
THE REAL SCANDAL IS THE WAR
I'm as consumed as the rest of you with the Libby indictment, and
whether other shoes will drop. But the broader scandal right now is
not which official lied to government investigators, but the war
itself. Hundreds and thousands are continuing to die because of Bush
neo-con lies and deceptions that took us to war in Iraq, and yet and
still, with the Republicans in charge of the Congress, there are no
official investigations there of how Americans were bamboozled into
attacking Iraq.
Remember that Republican Sen. Pat Roberts promised before the
election that his Intelligence Committee would investigate how the
White House used and perhaps abused the intelligence to take the
country to war, but, after Bush was declared the winner, Roberts
said there was now no reason to hold such a probe, even after the
bombshell revelations of the Downing Street Memos and other proofs
of Bush Administration duplicity and war-crimes.
That's the real scandal and the real danger when one party controls
the three branches of government. Congressional oversight is
effectively abandoned, and the timid Democrats, seemingly unfamiliar
with the concept of “opposition party,” barely make any significant
noise. The Democrats, most of whom voted for the war and continue to
fund it, are essentially silent.
In addition, there is the other major scandal that basically has
been swept under the rug: the shoddy election and electronic
vote-counting system we have in this country that appears to have
resulted in manipulated election results in 2004. Again, the
Democrats are basically silent, therefore the Republicans need do
nothing to find out what happened and how to prevent such electoral
corruption in the future. (And why should they want to find out?
They benefit from the easily-manipulated system, which is run by
Republican-supporting e-voting companies.)
If the Libby indictment can serve as a wedge to get to these larger
issues, then the two-year-long Plamegate investigation may have
borne good fruit. But, since Fitzgerald isn't going to speak openly
about what he found -- the political and ideological slime and dirt
he had to wade through over the past two years -- it's up to us to
get those facts out to the American people.
In short, the Libby indictment is a small victory for justice, and
does some damage to the power-mad Bush Administration, but if we
truly want to get this crew's reckless, dangerous policies out of
the White House, the ball is back in our court. No other way to say
this: We’ve simply got to ratchet up our efforts. Organize,
organize, organize.#
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D, in government & international relations, has
taught at various universities, worked as a writer/editor with the
San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers
( www.crisispapers.org )
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