Media Guilty In Libby Trial
By Roger Aronoff
February 19, 2007
Having attended several sessions of the Scooter Libby trial, I was not surprised to hear that Libby and Vice President Cheney would not be testifying. The case against Libby is surprisingly thin, and from the point of view of the defense, the goal is to get Libby off, not put on a show for Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, and the left-wing blogs. The defense has apparently concluded that the government has not made a compelling enough case to convict Libby. When Matthews found out that they weren't going to testify, he said he was "flabbergasted." "We thought we were going to have a grand show," said Matthews.
Matthews' disappointment was palpable. "It seems to me if we had Cheney on the stand we would find out how we went to war with Iraq. We're not going to find that out again, right?"
As Accuracy in Media editor Cliff Kincaid and I wrote in a previous piece, the media have been on trial in this case, and they haven't liked it. In that column, we described what the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame/CIA leak case was really about, and why it was important to rebut the charges made by Wilson in his July 6, 2003 op-ed in the New York Times that led to the appointment of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and the indictment of Vice-Presidential aide Libby.
It has revealed much about the practices and procedures journalists use in dealing with their sources. We also have seen how unscientific and imprecise is the process of doing an interview, taking notes, and relying on those notes for stories or future reference. And we have seen how the mind plays tricks, affecting the memories of reporters and government officials alike.
After nearly three years of investigating, Fitzgerald indicted no one for leaking classified information, or for any conspiracy to discredit Joe Wilson or anyone else. The charges against Libby are perjury and obstruction of justice related to Fitzgerald's investigation into who leaked the fact that Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, worked for the CIA, and why they leaked it. Her name and position were first made public in a column by Robert Novak that was delivered to newsrooms by the Associated Press on July 11, but ran in newspapers and on the Internet on July 14.
Libby was accused of telling the FBI investigators and the grand jury that he had first learned of Plame's identity and employment from talking to reporters, though there was evidence that he had in fact learned it earlier from his boss, Vice President Cheney, and had discussed it with people in the State Department and CIA before his discussions with reporters.
During opening arguments, Ted Wells, Libby's lead attorney, stated that Libby's memory of events may have been somewhat confused because of all of the important matters of national security that he was tasked to deal with. Even so, Libby had told the grand jury and the FBI agents who interviewed him that yes, in fact he did first learn about Wilson's wife from Cheney around June 12, well before any of the meetings or conversations with the three reporters the prosecution relied on for its case: Judith Miller of the New York Times, Tim Russert of NBC News, and Matt Cooper of Time magazine.
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