Free Scooter Libby!

From IBD:
Posted 7/13/2006

Politics: Columnist Robert Novak has revealed how he learned about Valerie Plame's identity, which begs the question: Should a man go to prison for "obstructing" an investigation into a crime that was not committed?
Exactly one year ago today, July 14, 2005, we wrote about the Plame kerfuffle, speculating on the origins of the "revelation" in Novak's July 14, 2003, column that Bush critic Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA employee. We wrote:

"Her name was certainly no secret, appearing in Wilson's 'Who's Who In America' entry."

In a column published Wednesday, Novak confirmed our observation, saying:
"I learned Valerie Plame's name from Joe Wilson's entry in 'Who's Who In America'."

Bingo. As we noted a year ago, so could everyone else, from foreign intelligence services to
your nosy neighbor.

Novak also revealed the primary source for his Plame column:
"Joe Wilson's wife's role in instituting her husband's mission (to Niger) was revealed to me in the midst of an interview with an official who I have previously said was not a political gunslinger."

Novak said the unnamed official told him later through a third party that the revelation about "Wilson's wife" was "inadvertent."

Appearing on Fox News' "Hannity & Colmes" Wednesday evening, Novak said he contacted Karl Rove, in a conversation that lasted a mere 20 seconds, and then-CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, to confirm that "Wilson's wife" was a CIA employee. But none of Novak's sources mentioned her by name, nor did Harlow express any concern about Plame being put in harm's way by being "outed."

Novak wrote in his column that when he first spoke to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, he "knew the names of my sources." Speaking with Hannity, Novak made the further points that Fitzgerald knew Novak's sources for the length of his probe and that because no one had been indicted for revealing Plame's identity, Fitzgerald felt no crime had been committed.

So no one leaked her actual name, which anyone could look up in the public library, nor did anyone do it with malicious intent. And Fitzgerald knew no crime had been committed.

But he had to come up with something. So he indicted Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff for obstructing an investigation that never should have occurred into a crime for which no one has been charged, indeed, a crime that never happened.

In the Libby case we now have a new Kafkaesque standard of justice. Merely ask someone who gets hundreds of phone calls every day to remember conversations with reporters years prior and if they disagree with the reporter's notes — voila! — perjury and obstruction of justice. Prosecutorial misconduct, anyone?

Novak's 2003 column came just eight days after Wilson wrote an op-ed in The New York Times, citing the results of his trip to Niger under CIA auspices as proving Bush lied in his State of the Union speech when he said the British government had learned Saddam Hussein was looking for yellowcake uranium in Africa.

To the mainstream media, particularly papers such as The Washington Post, which omitted the "Who's Who" admission in its coverage, this looked like political retribution, an attempt to do Wilson harm. But discrediting a liar is not a crime either.

A bipartisan report of the Senate Committee on Intelligence and a British investigation of prewar intelligence have confirmed that when Bush uttered those famous 16 words in a 5,400-word State of the Union address, his statement was "well-founded," based on intelligence that was then, and is now, credible.

Furthermore, it is Wilson, whose statements have been cited as "proof" that Bush lied us into war, who was found to have contradicted himself and possibly given false testimony to Congress. In an addendum to the report, Sen. Pat Roberts and two other Republicans said Wilson had provided "inaccurate, unsubstantiated and misleading" information.

Plame was not a secret agent. Her life was not maliciously placed in jeopardy. No one leaked her identity, which was about as much a secret as who's buried in Grant's Tomb.

There is no reason to continue with the persecution of Libby other than Fitzgerald attempting to justify his existence by offering Libby up as a human sacrifice to the Bush-bashing anti-war left.