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Fitz
October 29, 2005 ( politics )
Oh, it's a great week to be a liberal.
The Washington Post captures this gem of what they describe as a textbook case of what can go wrong in the second term:
House Government Reform Committee Chairman Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) was stinging, saying he was "very disappointed in Libby, and the White House, and the vice president and the president.""They should have taken care of this a long time ago," Davis said in an interview. "They should have done their own investigation. They're going to get very little sympathy on Capitol Hill, at least from me. . . . They brought this on themselves."
They also exerpted the best part of his press conference:
his appearance was as much about answering the charge that will inevitably be lodged against Fitzgerald himself: that he exceeded his charter and brought charges on "technicalities" rather than major crimes.The prosecutor had prepared his defense well. "That talking point won't fly," he said when a questioner raised the anticipated criticism. "If it is proven that the chief of staff to the vice president went before a federal grand jury and lied under oath repeatedly and fabricated a story . . . that is a very, very serious matter," said Fitzgerald, 44, licking his lips frequently and moving his eyes back and forth across the line of eight cameras. "The truth is the engine of our judicial system, and if you compromise the truth, the whole process is lost."
And the Village Voice breaks down the timeline of the events, and the Seattle Times reminds us that this could still capture Cheney in it as well:
The indictment says that Cheney was the third person, after an unidentified undersecretary of state and a CIA officer, to discuss with Libby the fact that Plame was a CIA officer. It is not illegal for senior officials with security clearances to talk about classified matters. What was illegal, Friday's indictment charged, was the alleged false statements Libby subsequently made about the Wilson affair in interviews with the FBI and testimony before the grand jury investigating the CIA leak case.Libby's conversation with Cheney took place around June 12, 2003, about the time Libby and unidentified other "officials in the office of the vice president" discussed how to respond to Wilson's allegations that the administration was lying about Iraq's alleged purchase of uranium from Niger, a claim that formed part of President Bush's rationale for invading Iraq.
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The indictment hints that Cheney and Libby may have discussed how to handle the Wilson problem and the media coverage of Wilson's charges. It says that on or about July 12, on the return leg of a trip to Norfolk, Va., with Cheney, Libby talked over "with other officials aboard the plane" how Libby should respond to media inquiries, including some from Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper.The indictment did not indicate whether Cheney participated in that discussion.
Posted by griffjon at October 29, 2005 09:20 AM
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