Poor Scooter, Part II

One of the things that T.S. raised in my original Scooter post was that Fitzgerald said that it was wrong to disclose Plame’s identity. Now, as a lawyer, I can tell you that the fact that Fitzgerald said something doesn’t make it so. In fact, nothing a lawyer says is evidence, unless a lawyer’s actually testifying under oath. Until then, special prosecutor or not, it’s still his opinion. As to Plame and the Libby trial, my understanding has been and remains as a described by J. Peter Mulhern:

Diverging recollections about who said what when to whom about Joe Wilson’s wife are particularly useless as evidence of perjury because nobody had any motive to lie on the subject, least of all Scooter Libby. There was nothing criminal or dishonorable about discussing Valerie Plame’s identity or her job at the CIA with reporters or anyone else. There is no statute imposing criminal liability for such conversations. Patrick Fitzgerald’s unsupported assertions notwithstanding, there is no information in the public domain which even establishes that Valerie Plame’s employment at the CIA was classified.

It is a federal crime to transmit “information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation” to any unauthorized person. 18 U.S.C. Section 793 (d). Valerie Plame’s identity might have been remotely related to our national defense but nobody has ever had any reason to believe that the information that she was a desk jockey at the CIA “could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”

It is a federal crime intentionally to reveal the identity of a covert intelligence agent when the government is taking affirmative steps to protect her identity. 50 U.S.C. Section 421. But Valerie Plame wasn’t a covert agent and the government wasn’t trying to protect her identity. There was never any prospect of a prosecution under Section 421.

Patrick Fitzgerald fulminated in court about a cloud over the Vice President in an effort to suggest that there was something dark and sinister about administration officials discussing Valerie Plame with reporters after her husband injected her into a national controversy. That suggestion is pure left-wing fantasy.

In sum, the evidence against Libby was that his memory of the sequence and details of perfectly innocent events of no great importance differed from that of other witnesses. The judge who let this case go to the jury is one or more of the following: a nitwit, a coward, and/or a partisan hack. The jury that convicted was prejudiced, stupid or both.

del.icio.us | digg it