More on the Libby/Plame case

Brian M. Carney writes in commentary magazine.

Libby’s troubles began that October when he was questioned by the FBI about his conversations with reporters during the weeks and days just prior to Novak’s July 14, 2003 column. Libby was not a target of the Justice Department investigation; it was not he who had spoken to Novak about Valerie Plame Wilson. But he had spoken with others. To Matthew Cooper of Time, for example, he had confirmed knowing or having heard that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA. And he had had another conversation with Tim Russert, the Washington bureau chief of NBC News—who, by Libby’s account, surprised him by taking the lead and confiding the fact of Valerie Wilson’s employment at the CIA.

When Libby was finally indicted in October 2005, four of the five counts against him concerned these two conversations. He was in effect charged with telling the same lie about them twice: once to the FBI, and again to the grand jury that handed down the indictment. In brief, the case against him rested on differing recollections of two conversations during the week between the publication of Wilson’s op-ed and Novak’s column.

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Another indication was that, for the next eighteen months, Fitzgerald would doggedly pursue a number of reporters to compel or cajole them into testifying about their sources. He sent Judith Miller of the New York Times to jail for refusing to testify about Mrs. Wilson, even though Miller had never published a word about the Wilson story. He nearly sent Matthew Cooper to jail as well. In all these months, the question of what Novak had done when confronted about his sources remained a mystery. But in retrospect it was no mystery at all. Fitzgerald, who knew the identity of Novak’s source before he ever questioned him, had simply presented the columnist with a single waiver of confidentiality signed by Armitage. This was enough, apparently, to convince Novak to cooperate.

In short, the main source having come forward voluntarily, Fitzgerald had learned everything he needed to know without Novak’s help. And as for Novak’s second “senior government official,” that was Karl Rove, who confirmed Armitage’s information; questioned repeatedly by prosecutors, he, like Armitage, was never charged with a crime. Had these facts been appreciated early on, Fitzgerald’s single-minded pursuit of a third person, Scooter Libby, might well have been cast in a very different light. But they were not, and so, since journalists abhor a mystery, a story grew up that Libby to this day has been unable to shake.

Ultimately, the case came down to differing recollections. Libby remembered a conversation one way, and a reporter remembered it another.

For example: Libby told the FBI and the grand jury that when Matthew Cooper asked him on July 12 whether Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA, he responded: “I’ve heard that from other reporters, too.” But Cooper recalled the conversation differently. According to him, Libby said simply, “I heard that, too.” On this discrepancy, for which neither side possessed any supporting notes or evidence, rested two counts of Libby’s indictment.

Next, Russert. A day or two before speaking with Cooper, Libby had spoken to him, too, about an unrelated matter. In the course of that conversation, according to Libby, Russert asked whether Libby knew that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA; Libby answered that he did not, and Russert then offered that “all the reporters knew it.” But, once again, Russert had a different recollection. According to him, he never asked Libby about Valerie Wilson on that occasion. And thus two more counts were born—one for lying to the FBI and another for repeating the alleged lie to the grand jury.

Libby was ultimately acquitted of making false statements about his conversation with Cooper, though convicted of having perjured himself about it. The Cooper items were, indeed, the flimsiest of the counts in the indictment against him. As for the Russert items, they were virtually inexplicable. If Libby was trying to cover his tracks by making his conversations with reporters seem innocuous, what possible reason would he have for inventing an additional conversation about Valerie Wilson that, according to Russert and the prosecution, never took place at all?

The modern American government is a vast and largely self-sustaining bureaucracy. That bureaucracy acts, first and foremost, in its own interest, and not necessarily in the interests of its putative but temporary political bosses. The CIA, its intelligence having been challenged, sold out the White House on the sixteen words—even though that intelligence would later be upheld. The State Department, faced with the knowledge that one of its own was responsible for the Valerie Wilson leak, preferred keeping the White House in the dark to revealing what it knew. The Justice Department did what prosecutors do when ordered to investigate, which is to charge people with crimes.