This from
here:
If this is a conspiracy to silence Administration critics, it was more daft than deft. The indictment itself contains no evidence of a conspiracy, and Mr. Libby has not been accused of trying to cover up some high crime or misdemeanor by the Bush Administration. The indictment amounts to an allegation that one official lied about what he knew about an underlying "crime" that wasn't committed. And we still don't know who did tell Mr. Novak--presumably, it was the soon-to-be-infamous "Official A" from paragraph 21 of the indictment, although we don't know whether Official A was Mr. Novak's primary source or merely a corroborating one.
To the extent that the facts alleged in the indictment can be relied upon, the story goes something like this. Sometime in May 2003, or slightly before, Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for the New York Times, was informed of Joe Wilson's 2002 trip to Niger to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein had attempted to buy yellowcake there. Mr. Kristof wrote a column, and Mr. Libby began to ask around, to determine why a Democratic partisan had been sent on such a sensitive mission in the run-up to the Iraq war. He allegedly learned in the course of his inquiries that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.
Mr. Fitzgerald alleges that Mr. Libby informed Judith Miller of the New York Times about Mr. Wilson's wife in June, but she never wrote it up. In the meantime, Mr. Wilson went public with his own account of his mission and its outcome, without reference to his wife's employment or possible involvement in his trip.
Mr. Libby also spoke to Mr. Cooper of Time about it, who did write it up, but only after Mr. Novak's column had run. In this same time period, he had a conversation with Mr. Russert, which may or may not have covered Mr. Wilson and his wife, depending on whom you believe.
So, we are left with this. Did Mr. Libby offer the truth about Mr. Wilson to Mr. Cooper "without qualifications," as Mr. Fitzgerald alleges, or did he merely confirm what Mr. Cooper had heard elsewhere? Did he, or did he not, discuss Mr. Wilson with Tim Russert at all?
and
On the answers to these questions hang a possible 30-year jail term and $1.25 million in fines for a Bush Administration official who was merely attempting to expose the truth about Mr. Wilson, a critic of the Administration who was lying to the press about the nature of his involvement in the Niger mission and about the nature of the intelligence that it produced. In other words, Mr. Libby was defending Administration policy against political attack, not committing a crime.
The more I read about this, the more the nature of the "indictment" stinks like so many putrid fish after a long hot day on the beach. The politcal circumstances and motivation behind this whole escapade are vividly transparent, and it is my opinion that this will be no more of a "smoking gun" than were the
TANG memos.
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