October 28, 2005 -- Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald, widely admired by Chicago prosecutors for his creative genius in locating new ways to charge people with crimes, said words to this effect: "These are not charges that Mr. Libby outed a covert CIA agent."  He is not, apparently, a stupid man, for that charge would have required eventual proof of a violation of the 1982 Identities Act, which obviously has not taken place. (More about that, below.)  Then to justify this indictment he referred to a statute in the U.S. Code which upon investigation proves his reputation for creativity since it relates to (can you believe it?) the release of information about ship movements!  

In wartime, loose lips sink ships.  That was on wall posters at the Portland, Oregon shipyards during WWII.  Perhaps this statute was passed back then.

As I listened to this press conference, I thought of Clinton's top security man, Sandy Burglar, tip-toeing out of a building full of national security documents with some of them stuffed into his sox.  Stealing classified documents sounds like a bad thing.  He got a fine in the neighborhood of $50,000, probably paid by friends of Bill Clinton.  He will serve no jail time. 

But "outing" a CIA employee who openly works in Virginia?

He violated which law?

The reason Mr. Libby isn't being charged with outing Joe Wilson's CIA wife under the terms of the famous 1982 Identities Act is that a violation of that law requires the outing to take place while the agent is covert (under cover), or within five years of said work.  And it requires intent to harm the agent.  One of the authors of the Identities Act said that it would have taken a prosecutor fifteen seconds to see that this statute had not been violated by Mr. Libby.  So, this indictment has nothing to do with outing any spies.  

That is why the famously creative Mr. Fitzgerald, if he wished to achieve his goals, had  to find a violation of some other statute.

Enter the ship movements statute.  Mr. Fitzgerald reached in like liberal Supreme Court justices finding the right to kill unborn babies inside the U.S. Constitution.  Using his creativity, he said that if you identify somebody as working for the CIA at their headquarters, and it happens that the individual does classified work, you have committed a crime!.  The exception, it seems, is if the employee's employment is common knowledge.  I don't know how you determine that.  (How many people have to know a thing before it meets some legal definition of "common knowledge.") 

So, where does this leave things?

Well, I can't give you a list of ten people in the Bush Administration who were ever convicted of malfeasance, misfeasance or any felony you could name. Frankly, offhand I can't think of a single one. Dozens of people from the last administration, including Clinton, himself, were found guilty of various felonies, including perjury, but I can't recall the name of a single similar example during the Bush era.  Assuming I haven't missed any such examples, Scooter Libby would, if convicted, be the first.  That falls a bit short of a culture of a corruption.  

There is, indeed, danger here for America, but it isn't whatever Scooter Libby, (VP Cheney's  friend and associate) did or didn't do.  He is being charged with with providing misleading or conflicting testimony (which could be due to note taking or simple memory errors) about conversations he had relating to what Fitzgerald thinks is a violation of a shipping information securities act by somebody other than Libby.  Yes, Virginia, there is a cancer on this presidency, and it is the American Left -- their infection of the justice system, and the rotting remains of the traditional media.  Unable to win elections, and unable to shut up the new American media, of which this magazine is a part, they have dropped to their standard fallback position -- the courts.

On every front, they are trying to use the law to win victories they could not achieve in the polling booths or in the public mind.   Fitzgerald called this "an indictment involving national security," then did not indict on an item of national security.  That is, in Fitzgerald's own words, today, Libby wasn't indicted for outing a covert CIA agent. 

You may, if you wish, look out the window and wonder what in the world has happened to America.  

I think this is all a pile of rubbish.  Part of a political jihad generated by the Left and their eager appliances in the old media.  I cannot predict where this will go, but do suggest that conservatives get ready for more of the same.

This isn't for a minute about national security. Few Democrats give a damn about that.  What this is about is 2006.  

(LL)

© 2005 Oregon Magazine