Sunday, February 05, 2006

Fitz's Follies

Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald's affidavit in the Miller case is drawing some attention. The PDF file that is available is cumbersome at 1.2MB so I scanned it into copiable text which can be found here. It's tucked in the archives to save space here on the front page.

PLEASE NOTE: A scan will have transcription errors which are hard to catch - I've been through it but I'm sure there are still errors.

For those of you who enjoy cutting and pasting - a link back to Flares would be appreciated.

12 comments:

gumshoe said...

"Ya know I wouldn't be compelled to be such a dick when I do if I wasn't met with such unremitting hostlity."
-markg8


mark -

you musta missed to old Italian saying when you were
growing up:

"respect to be respected."

_________________________________

in addtion,your self-estimate
is more than a little overblown.

whyn't ya start up
your own website,for example?

to hear you tell it,
your hit numbers would out-pace Wrecthard's in under a week
...'specially now that
"the majority"
see's things your way.

Syl said...

The elephant in the room in the Libby case (well, besides whether Plame was really covert) is that Fitz bought into the 'Wilson as noble whistleblower' meme. Hook, line, and sinker.

Therefore he had determined there was wrongdoing of at least a political nature before even beginning his investigation. Thus even the mere possibility the govt committed a crime should be punished and reporters sent to jail for protecting sources unworthy of protection.

Thus, to fitz, it doesn't matter if he can actually prove that Plame was covert. It's enough for him to indict someone on purjury as that will constitute at least some punishment for the crime of sassing back to a whistleblower.

What's more Fitz has take the position that even if the whistleblower is 'incorrect' his motives were pure. That is not fitz' judgement to make.

What a waste.

ex-democrat said...

Syl and I overlap, but i'll post anyway:

One thing this subpoena reveals, is a sleight of hand regarding its true purpose. Early on, Fitzgerald claims his purpose is as follows: “reporter Miller has been subpoenaed because her testimony is essential to determining whether or not Lewis Libby, the Vice President’s Chief of Staff has committed crimes involving the improper disclosure of national defense information and perjury.”.
However, if that were so, the first step in such an investigation be to determine whether or not there had been “improper disclosure of national defense information.” Fitzgerald has since stated that he did not investigate this. Indeed, for the purposes of his investigation, he simply assumed it: “This investigation concerns the disclosure by government officials to the press in July 2003 of then classified information concerning the employment of Valerie Wilson Plame by the Central Intelligence Agency ("CIA").”
Later in the subpoena, we discover its true purpose: to discover the name of a ‘source’ who “… appears to have leaked to discredit the earlier source(Wilson) …(and thus) .. may have committed a crime in order to attack a person such as Wilson who, correctly or incorrectly, sought to expose what he perceived as misconduct by the White House.”

That is the subpoena’s purpose – to obtain proof that Libby was the individual who “appeared” to have done something that “may have been illegal.” And, of course, to compel him to perjure himself in attempting to thwart that absurd charge.

Syl said...

Anyway, Wilson wasn't a whistleblower in the classic sense of the word. He didn't commit a crime in order to reveal government wrongdoing. He simply created a false impression about what was going on inside the Bush adminsitration.

Wilson was actually playing politics yet Fitz thinks he's a whistleblower.

And, in Fitz' mind, the government has no right to set the record straight.

Syl said...

ex-democrat

exactly!

Rick Ballard said...

You mean the US justice system isn't based upon a presumption of guilt? Judge Tatel's opinion in the Miller case used Fitz's spin (with a caveat about the honor of Brutus) in weaving a gossamer rational web to come to a decision that was correct (there is no federal journalist shield) but laid groundwork for the idea that if one can be plucked from the tree of the living Constitution judge's are the only people capable of drawing up a list of conditions to be met prior to its application.

Ex-dem - I think you'll enjoy Tatel's decision after reading Fitz's affidavit - or maybe it will bring on an attack of nausea. The Senate sure didn't cover itself with glory in the "advice and consent" department on these two.

Anonymous said...

Fitzball is like Calvinball - except there are fewer confining rules.

So can the score ever be 17 to Q?

Rick Ballard said...

Sure, but it depends upon who was on third and where the goalposts were when the putt dropped.

I dropped the Calvinball allusion due to it being Monday rather than Sunday. That's part of Fitzball too.

ex-democrat said...

note that Russert does not recall being advised by Libby that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. He just denies that he told Libby. But then, why wouldn't he, if he thought when asked that to admit doing so might be illegal?

ex-democrat said...

Again, according to the subpoena, Libby testified that Russert told him Wilson's wife worked at the CIA.
How is that assertion contradicted by proof that Libby knew about that before the conversation? Answer: it's not. It only means that Libby was dissembling IF you interpret Libby's testimony as being that this is how he FIRST found out.
But why should you?

Rick Ballard said...

Especially if you go farther and find that even Inspector Clouvert mentions notes in which Libby says he first heard that Val worked at the CIA from Cheney on June 21?.

You also have to look at some dates. The SCCI report debunking Wilson's fantasy is dated June 14th?, while the Butler Report which supports the SCCI report and goes farther in stating that the forged documents played no part in the Hussein/Africa 16 words intelligence. Yet if you look at para (9) and para (94) you see that Wilson confers whistleblower status on Lyin' Joe Wilson on Aug. 27 via sworn affidavit.

This stinks like a four day dead mackerel.

ex-democrat said...

it still bothers me (a) that Tenet's press release on the 16 words said that it was a mistake to include them in the SOTU, and (b) that this was interpreted by the geniuses in our MSM to mean that they were wrong. They were not. Tenet just meant that, in retrospect, he could see how the the genuises in the MSM might misinterpret them.