Lame: Rhymes With Plame Game

Here's a summary of some of the more pithy and condemning comments on the Fitzgerald indictment:

Opinion Journal:

Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation took nearly two years, sent a reporter to jail, cost millions of dollars, and preoccupied some of the White House's senior officials. The fruit it has now borne is the five-count indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the Vice President's Chief of Staff--not for leaking the name of Valerie Plame to Robert Novak, which started this entire "scandal," but for contradictions between his testimony and the testimony of two or three reporters about what he told them, when he told them, and what words he used. ...

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.

Ace of Spades:

This is a question of law, not fact. You don't need to empanel a grand jury to decide if Valerie Plame was a covert agent, or if any of the various national security laws were broken.

This question could have been, and should have been, answered in the first month of legal investigation, using no greater investigative resources than a law library.

And yet, two years later, Fitzgerald apparently finds there was no violation of the IIPA, the Espionage Act, or any act involving the dissemination of classified information.

And during those two years he's had people in jail for contempt and questioned many witnesses before the grand jury.

Parableman

There's one thing that's bothering me, though. The indictment goes on and on about how serious it is to leak the identity of an undercover CIA agent (leaving aside the issue of whether someone listed in Who's Who as a CIA agent is really undercover). If Fitzgerald had been able to get the grand jury convinced that they had enough to indict either Libby or Karl Rove on that sort of charge, they would have included indictments on those matters. They didn't pursue that course. So isn't it illegal for Fitzgerald to include all that language in the indictment?

Moonbat Central

Whatever one makes of the indictment against Libby, and whatever comes of the charges levied against him, it seems apparent that the Plame affair will end with him. The New York Times, in a nostalgic bid to reclaim its Vietnam-era status, may splash its front page with three stories pantingly detailing the indictment—incidentally, is this really the best use of the paper’s not inconsiderable resources?—but it’s clear that the media does not have nearly enough rope to hang all its enemies in the White House.

Captains Quarters

In my inexpert opinion, having gone down to this level of detail to get an indictment against Libby but not producing any other indictments, I doubt Fitzgerald has anything left in the holster. It also shows that Fitzgerald didn't feel particularly pressured to come up with indictments or to avoid them -- in other words, it looks like he did his job. While the prosecution of Libby proceeds, more indictments may result as more evidence gets uncovered, but it looks like absent of some unforeseen epiphany, this is as much as Fitzgerald will produce.

Austin Bay

The White House will make another political mistake if it decides to try to defend Lewis Libby. Fortunately –for the country, for the health of America’s governmental institutions– the Bush White House hasn’t pulled a Clinton and trashed the prosecutor. By and large the Bush Administration has respected the judicial process. A Clintonesque trash-the-prosecutor tactic probably wouldn’t work, anyway, given the national press corps’ pro-Democrat bias. Clinton could rely on the national press to amplify his tawdry demonization of Ken Starr. The national press hates the Bush Administration.

If Libby committed perjury he did so out of arrogance. The most likely scenario is this both simple and sad: Libby thought he could get away with it. But then so did Clinton. Clinton lied to a federal judge and lost his bar license for five years. It’s time to give the Beltway Culture a kick.