Libby Reax Roundup

David Frum:

Can you our readers find any example of denunciations of Richard Armitage's leak of Valerie Plame's name by a) Democratic officeholders or b) MSM columnists or c) left-wing bloggers?

I did some Google searching this evening and came up pretty much blank.

So here's the paradox:

We hear on the one hand that this leak represents a cloud over the vice presidency - a scandal - a threat to national security - possible grounds for impeachment.

And then on the other hand: not one word of condemnation of the person who actually did the leaking!

David should know better---the Democrats don't care about national security; they care about getting a GOP scalp.

Clarice Feldman:

Charge a Clintonite with wrongdoing and the entire Department of Justice sits on the news until his friends have worked out an appropriate spin and a time to leak it when it will do him the least harm. Consider the merest possibility that someone in the Administration might have done something wrong and Andrea Mitchell has the news of the investigation on the air in an hour and his allies flee in fright that they might get their garments dirty by speaking in his defense.


Shall I blame the judge who let the prosecution get away with introducing into evidence prejudicial news accounts of limited relevance or probative value while denying the defense an opportunity to fully make its case? Who permitted the prosecutor to make scandalous charges on his rebuttal -- for which he had not offered a shred of evidence and which went beyond the defendant's closing statement -- the last thing the jury would be allowed to hear.


Shall I blame the jury which seems to have been unable to find the pony so it reconstructed it out of flip charts and post it notes?


This entire process has been an outrage from beginning to end.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board:

Rather, he has been convicted of telling the truth about Mr. Wilson and Ms. Plame to some reporters but then not owning up to it. One tragic irony is that if Mr. Libby had only taken the Harold Ickes grand-jury strategy and said "I don't recall," he probably never would have been indicted. But our guess is that he tried to cooperate with the grand jury because he never really believed he had anything to hide. This may also explain why Mr. Libby never retained an experienced Beltway attorney until he was indicted.

None of this has stopped critics of the war from trying to blow this entire case into something far larger. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hailed the conviction as proof that the White House tried to "manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics." But the charges against Mr. Libby had nothing to do with intelligence, and Mr. Wilson was himself so discredited by summer 2004 that the John Kerry campaign dropped him as a spokesman once the Senate exposed his deceit.
What Mr. Reid and others are doing is showing how much all this really has been about a policy dispute over Iraq. The fact that they are now demanding Mr. Cheney's head is further evidence of the political nature of this entire episode. But it should also be a warning to Mr. Bush and his advisers that they too bear much responsibility for Mr. Libby's conviction.

Rather than confront Mr. Wilson's lies head on, they became defensive and allowed a trivial matter to become a threat to the Administration itself. They allowed Attorney General John Ashcroft to recuse himself and Mr. Fitzgerald to be appointed even though Justice officials knew that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had been the first official to leak Ms. Plame's name to reporters. Mr. Libby got caught in the eddy not because he was dishonest but because he was a rare official who actually had the temerity to defend the President's Iraq policy against Mr. Wilson's lies.

As for the media, most of our brethren were celebrating the conviction yesterday because it damaged the Bush Administration they loathe. But they too will pay a price for holding Mr. Fitzgerald's coat. The Bush Administration will soon be history, but the damage Mr. Fitzgerald has done to the ability to protect media sources and to the willingness of government officials to speak openly to reporters will last far longer.

Mr. Bush will no doubt be advised to wait for the outcome of an appeal and the end of his Administration to pardon Mr. Libby. We believe he bears some personal responsibility for this conviction, especially for not policing the disputes and insubordination in his Administration that made this travesty possible. The time for a pardon is now.

Senator Fred Thompson:

Two crucial decisions were made in order for this sorry state of affairs to have played out this way. The first was when the Justice Department folded under political and media pressure because of the Plame leak and appointed a special counsel. When DOJ made the appointment they knew that the leak did not constitute a violation of the law. Yet, instead of standing on that solid legal ground they abdicated their official responsibility.

The Plame/Wilson defenders wanted administration blood because the administration had had the audacity to question the credibility of Joe Wilson and defend themselves against his charges. Therefore, the Department of Justice, in order to completely inoculate themselves, gave power and independence to Fitzgerald that was not available to Ken Starr, Lawrence Walsh, or any prior independent counsel under the old independent-counsel law. Fitzgerald became unique in our judicial history in that he was accountable to no one. And here even if justice had retained some authority they could hardly have asked Fitzgerald why he continued to pursue a non-crime because they knew from the beginning there was no crime.

From there the players’ moves were predictable. Fitzgerald began his Sherman’s march through the law and the press until he thought he had finally come up with something to justify his lofty mandate — a case that would not have been brought in any other part of the country.

The media by then was suffering from Stockholm syndrome — They feared and loved Fitzgerald at the same time. He was establishing terrible precedent by his willingness to throw reporters in jail over much less than serious national-security matters — the Ashcroft standard! Yet Fitzgerald was doing the Lord’s work in their eyes. This was a “bad leak” not a “good leak” like the kind they like to use. And it was much better to get the Tim Russert and Ari Fleischer treatment than it is to get the Judith Miller treatment. Fitzgerald paid no price for his prosecutorial inconsistencies, his erroneous public statements, or his possible conflicts of interest. And now they get to point out how this case revealed the “deep truths” about the White House.

The second decision was made by Libby himself. It was the decision to spend eight hours without counsel in a grand-jury room with Fitzgerald with this controversy swirling around him while trying to remember and recount conversations with various news reporters — reporters who he knew would be interviewed about these conversations themselves. These, of course, were reporters Libby had no right to expect to do him any favors. This sounds like a man with nothing to hide. This sounds like a man who doesn’t appreciate the position he is in or what or whom he is dealing with.

It is ironic that what Libby is facing today is not due to the evil machinations so often attributed to the White House but rather due to an apparent naivety.

Until some fundamental truths are understood, no GOP president will be successful:

1. The press is nothing more than the communications department of the Democrat Party.

2. The press does not speak, nor represent the interests of, the American people.

3. Just because the press calls for someone's head doesn't mean you must deliver it.

4. The American people do not care for the press.

5. A Republican president does not need the press.

6. A Republican president should communicate directly with the American people at every possible opportunity.

7. The American people trust the president far more than they do the press.

8. Throwing your people to the press will not make them like you if you're a Republican.

9. Leaking to the press will not make them like you if you're a Republican, unless your leak undermines Republicans.

10. Walking into the press briefing room is like walking into DNC headquarters, only the press is even more left-wing than DNC staffers are.

11. The press needs to fill space and airtime.

12. Republicans need to get things done.

13. Giving the press filler for space and airtime will not help Republicans get anything done.

14. Ignore the press.

15. When you can't ignore the press, starve them. Send out your blandest, most milquetoast toady with instructions to answer every question with "I don't know. Next question?"

16. When you can't starve the press, spin them. Send out your most telegenic, savviest salespeople with instructions to turn every question into a referendum on Old Glory, Mom, and baseball. When they get irate, ask them why they're so emotional and angry. Then feign sympathy and tell them about that time your mom brought an American flag to your Little League game.

17. Do not read the newspapers.

18. Do not watch the news.

19. Get your information the way everyone with half a brain and an interest in the truth does---through the Internet and the blogosphere, from reliable sources whose biases are manifest and honestly held.

20. If these bastards do wind up bagging a loyal supporter or two, pardon them the moment the gavel comes down. It sends a message: we protect our own. When the press howls about the pardons, give them a copy of the Constitution and the name of someone who can help them read it.

Somehow, I don't think we'll live to see another Republican with the cajones to do any of the above.