By Steve Rhodes
“So the Cook County state’s attorney’s office appropriately increased from misdemeanor to felony the charges against two men who barged out onto the playing ground at Wrigley Field in the last month,” the Sun-Times editorial page inveighs today.
“One of the men, Kevin Kleine, allegedly ran onto the field as part of a $400 bet, a stupid idea – just how stupid Kleine will soon learn. The other, Brent Kowalkoski, was barreling toward a pitcher when he was tackled by a security guard.
“Whereas a misdemeanor count would mean a fine, the charge of felony criminal trespass to a place of amusement carries the possibility of up to three years in prison.”
Which is 1,095 days more than Scooter Libby will do.
Pardon?
The “playing ground”? Who wrote this, Steinberg?
Story Commuted
The Sun-Times did not produce an editorial on the Libby commutation, unlike the Tribune and most other adult newspapers around the country (The New York Times’s called theirs “Soft on Crime.”)
But then, the Sun-Times didn’t take much interest in one of the landmark news stories of the Bush Administration elsewhere in its pages either.
Its front page merely referred to a column inside by Robert Novak – you know, one of the major players in the Libby affair.
And in that column, Novak continues to spin readers from the truth.
“The unique aspect of the Libby conviction was that there was no underlying crime whose prosecution he is accused of obstructing,” Novak writes.
“[Special prosecutor Patrick] Fitzgerald determined that no federal statute was broken when then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage revealed that Valerie Plame Wilson, the wife of Bush critic Joseph Wilson, worked for the CIA.”
A nice bit of flim-flam, but wholly disingenuous.
“‘It was clear from very early in the investigation that Ms. Wilson qualified under the relevant statute’ – the Intelligence Identities Act – ‘as a covert agent whose identity had been disclosed by public officials, including Mr. Libby, to the press,’ Fitzgerald wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed late last Friday night,” according to Newsweek.
“Libby’s trial earlier this year established that at least three other Bush administration officials – former deputy secretary of State Richard Armitage, White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove and former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (who testified under a grant of immunity) – also disclosed information about Valerie Wilson’s identity to journalists. But Fitzgerald contends that Libby’s disclosures – primarily to New York Times reporter Judith Miller – were made ‘deliberately and for the purpose for influencing media coverage of the public debate concerning intelligence leading to the war in Iraq’ and, according to Libby’s own testimony, ‘may have been sanctioned by the Vice President.’
“Moreover, while Libby denied ever knowing that Valerie Wilson was a covert agent (and prosecutors never introduced any evidence that he had) ‘other evidence obtained by the grand jury indicated that defendant learned that Ms. Wilson worked at the CIA from multiple government officials under circumstances that, at a bare minimum, warranted inquiry before the information was publicly disseminated . . . Fitzgerald elsewhere asserts that Libby ‘lied repeatedly and blatantly about matters at the heart of a criminal investigation.'”
And why did Libby lie? To cover up the facts of the underlying crime – successfully it turns out. Hence, no charges beyond Fitzgerald’s aspersion that there is a “dark cloud” over the vice president’s office.
The facts are clear.
“But within the C.I.A., the exposure of Ms. Plame is now considered an even greater instance of treachery. Ms. Plame, a specialist in nonconventional weapons who worked overseas, had ‘nonofficial cover,’ and was what in C.I.A. parlance is called a Noc, the most difficult kind of false identity for the agency to create” The New York Times reported in 2003.
“We’re talking about a criminal action, but also hopefully will help set a clear signal we expect other leaks to stop, as well. And so I look forward to finding the truth,” President Bush said a day later.
But the Sun-Times does not want you to know this. It placed Novak’s column on page 21, next to a shorter AP report about the commutation – a report calling the president’s decision “a political thunderbolt.” But not one worth paying attention to.
Tribby Libby
The Tribune, by contrast, produced its own Libby story for page one, devoted nearly two full pages inside to covering the story, and turned out an editorial (“Do the Crime, Do the Time“)criticizing the commutation.
The Trib edit notes that “Jurors convicted [Libby] of two counts of perjury, one count of obstructing justice, and one count of making false statements about when and how he learned of Plame’s identity, as well as what he told Washington journalists about her.”
In other words, Libby did a heroic job stonewalling for the Administration – and now has gotten away with it. Bravo!
The Trib edit makes its own errors, though. “Most of us are blessedly in the process of forgetting the saga that erupted around one-time CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose name surfaced in the public prints in 2003,” the paper says.
Yes, let’s just forget the whole thing! Too complicated!
“That case meandered far from its origins; no one was ever charged with the leak.”
The case didn’t meander anywhere; no one was charged with originating the leak because Libby wouldn’t give up the goods. That’s how we got to where we are today. Why is that so hard to understand?
Rudy 9/11
Among the Republican presidential contenders failing to grasp the facts is former federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliani.
“I mean, the sentence was grossly excessive in a situation in which, at the beginning, the prosecutor knew who the leaker was, and he knew a crime wasn’t committed,” Giuliani has said.
Violation of the statute in question requires the leaker to have knowingly revealed an agent’s covert status. For all we know, Dick Cheney told Libby et. al. That Plame wasn’t undercover and the boys ran with it. If Fitzgerald could have made a charge, he would have. Libby stood in his way.
Cowardly President
“Bush said in a statement late Monday afternoon after he had left his family’s summer home [in Kennebunkport] and a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin,” the Trib reports. “That ensured that Bush would face no immediate questions from reporters.”
Inspired, Putin returned home to issue commutations of his own. “This thing you call democracy – it works better than I thought. Now, tell me more about capitalism . . . ”
Quote Machines
“Even Paris Hilton had to go to jail.”
– Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin
“I call for all Americans to flood the White House with phone calls . . . expressing their outrage over this blatant disregard for the rule of law.”
– Delaware Sen. Joe Biden
Contact the White House
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TTY/TDD
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Vice President Richard Cheney: vice_president@whitehouse.gov
Counter Quote
“By acting here, [Bush] is showing to conservatives the kind of leadership that made conservatives loyal to Bush once and could make them loyal once more.”
– Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol
More commutations!
From Fitzgerald
“We fully recognize that the Constitution provides that commutation decisions are a matter of presidential prerogative and we do not comment on the exercise of that prerogative.
“We comment only on the statement in which the President termed the sentence imposed by the judge as ‘excessive.’ The sentence in this case was imposed pursuant to the laws governing sentencings which occur every day throughout this country.
“In this case, an experienced federal judge considered extensive argument from the parties and then imposed a sentence consistent with the applicable laws. It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals. That principle guided the judge during both the trial and the sentencing.
“Although the President’s decision eliminates Mr. Libby’s sentence of imprisonment, Mr. Libby remains convicted by a jury of serious felonies, and we will continue to seek to preserve those convictions through the appeals process.”
Posted on July 3, 2007