Jury finds Libby guilty in CIA leak case
Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a former senior aide to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, was found guilty on Tuesday of four of five counts of obstructing justice, lying and perjury during an investigation tied to the Iraq war.Libby was found innocent of one count of lying to the FBI in the probe surrounding who leaked the identity of a CIA analyst in 2003.
He faces a maximum of 25 years in prison. His defence attorney, Theodore Wells, said Libby would seek a new trial and if denied that would appeal the conviction.
Critics of President George W. Bush had seized on the Libby trial as highlighting the way the administration built and defended its case for a four-year war that has become unpopular with most of the U.S. public.
Libby was found guilty of the most serious of the charges, obstructing an investigation into who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame after her husband accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence to build its case for war.
The jury of seven women and four men also determined he lied to the FBI and committed perjury in testimony before a grand jury.
“It’s about time some one in the Bush administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics,” Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said after the verdict was announced.
I haven’t followed the Libby case really closely, but I think it is fair to say that Senator Reid is distorting the facts enough to be considered dishonest when he makes the claim that the Libby Case is related to manipulating intelligence and discrediting war critics.
Libby was accussed, and convicted, of neither of those things. Indeed, we now know that Plame was out by Richard Armitage, almost certainly by accident and clearly not with an intent to discredit Joe Wilson or ‘manipulate intelligence.’
Libby did apparently tell the FBI things that were not true. Whether this was a mistake or deliberate distortion is harder to say, and he has been convicted by the jury. It is quite possible that even though it turned out there was little to cover up, Libby thought that their might be and thus engaged in illegal behavior. If he did, and the jury seems to think so, then he should be punished. Purjury and obstruction of justice, contrary to what some Clinton defenders say, are not small things. There is however no evidence of the charges Reid made against the Bush administration as a whole.
This sort of rank partisan distortion, and to be fair it occurs on both sides from time to time, is a whole lot of what is wrong with Washington. In a better world, his ideological allies as well as his opponents would call him on such behavior and this sort of dishonesty would make him a pariah. Unfortunately, while he will probably be derided by conservatives such as myself, Democrats are more apt to applaud this behavior rather than insist on a higher standard for their own, just as many (far too many in my opinion) defended Ann Coulter’s use of ‘faggot’ at the CPAC convention.
Dave, the debate in the media down this way seems to be concentrating on the idea that Libby was in fact the fall guy for a lot of far more important people.
Is this getting much discussion in the US?
Is this the same Libby who was part of the Watergate conspiracy?