It turns out that as early as 2003, Fitzgerald knew who had leaked
the name but asked the leaker not to tell anyone he was the leaker
so he could indict someone in the leak case who was not the
leaker?
What, one wonders, did Fitz-whatever threaten Armitage with if
Armitage hadn't "honored his request?"
Judith Miller of the New York Times went to jail for refusing to
divulge her source (it was Libby). Matt Cooper of Time Magazine
was about to go to jail for refusing to divulge his source (it was
Rove).
But neither Libby nor Rove was the original source. It was
Armitage.
When the story first broke it was reported that Cooper said to
Rove that Plame worked at the CIA and that Rove had responded with
something like, "Yeah, I heard that, too."
In Washington, you never admit you don't know something. You say,
"Yeah, I heard that too."
Fitzgerald chose not to indict Armitage because there was no
crime. He tried like the devil to indict Rove but Rove convinced
the grand jury that he made or took hundreds of phone calls a day
and failing to remember one call with one reporter several years
earlier was not a crime  it was astonishingly normal.
People who know Scooter Libby (and I am not one of them) say that
he is a decent guy. A smart guy. And a patriot.
In the kind of painful ironies which abound in Washington the
lawyer who represented Marc Rich in his pardon plea to President
Clinton was Scooter Libby.
President Bush should return the favor. Pardon Libby. |