Free Scooter Libby
By Chuck Hyde, Editor of StandBesideHer.com
I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was sentenced this week. The case should not have gone this far. President Bush needs to pardon him. This case should have never gone to trial. An overzealous prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, used this as nothing more than an ability to make a name for himself. Mr. Fitzgerald knew at the beginning of the investigation who outed Valerie Plame and he knew it was not Scooter Libby. Mr. Fitzgerald questioned Mr. Libby again and again until he had forgotten his earlier testimony and then was able to obtain a conviction for perjury.
No one has ever been charged for outing Ms. Plame, because it was not a crime. The law is very clear in that for a crime to be committed, someone has to knowingly out a covert CIA agent. At the beginning of the investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald knew that Richard Armitage of the US State Department is the one who initially outed Ms Plame. Mr. Armitage was not charged, making it clear that outing her was not a crime. If outing Ms Plame was not a crime, and if the prosecutor knew this at the beginning of the investigation, the investigation should have stopped then. The reality is, he was not investigating anything. This prosecutor though was hell-bent on snagging someone, so he “investigated” something that wasn’t a crime until he could trip somebody up.
The people that need to be investigated are Valerie Plame and her husband Joe Wilson. This whole case started when Mr. Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA. The trip was not officially sanctioned by the CIA, he did not submit a report to the CIA about the trip, he just got an all expense paid trip. Upon his return Mr. Wilson, a critic of the Bush administration, wrote an op-ed article for the New York Times. This op-ed criticized Bush’s assertion that Iraq was trying to obtain nuclear weapons. At this time, Mr. Wilson claimed he was sent by Vice President Dick Chaney. This claim, along with several of the other claims made by Mr. Wilson turned out to be false. Several of the assertions made by Mr. Wilson were later dispelled as false by a bipartisan congressional commission. The entire trip and the extraordinary coincidence that his wife worked for the CIA at the time needs to be looked at.
At present Senator Kit Bond (R, MO) wants the US Senate to investigate Valerie Plame’s differing versions of how her husband Joe Wilson was been sent to Niger. By Senator Bond’s count Ms Plame has had at least three different versions to date, not counting Mr. Wilson’s previous false claim that Chaney sent him. In one of the least shocking surprises in congress of the year, the office of the Chairman of the committee, Jay Rockefeller (D, W. Va.), has said that the committee is not likely to investigate the discrepancies of Ms. Plame. Evidently this congress is not interested in holding investigations that will not be critical of George Bush.
So lets recap. Mr. Wilson was sent to Niger at the taxpayers expense, not on an official trip but to come home and write an op-ed criticizing the Bush administration. An op-ed that was later to be found to be full of inaccuracies. Also, Mr. Wilson lied as to who sent him. Ms. Plame has had at least three different versions as to who sent her husband on this unofficial trip paid for by the taxpayers. Her latest version is that an unnamed CIA employee submitted Mr. Wilson’s name for the trip. In probably the most ironic twist of all, one of Ms. Plame’s earlier statements on who sent her husband is that she could not remember. With all of these lies and ‘I can’t remembers’ by the husband and wife team of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, Scooter Libby is the one investigated and convicted of perjury. The real investigation should be about exactly who sent Mr. Wilson to Niger and what role if any, his wife had in the trip. During this investigation we can see if this couple is capable of telling the truth and if they are not, we can charge them with perjury. The reality is, with the misappropriation of taxpayer funds, this story needed to be disclosed to the public. If Ms. Plame did not want to be ‘outed’, she should not have been raiding the public till for her husband. I see the disclosure of this story as nothing more than a whistleblower action and therefore we need to free Libby immediately and restore some justice to this case. That’s what’s on my mind.
About The Author: Chuck Hyde is editor of StandBesideHer.com. He is also a husband and father of two teenage boys and a younger daughter. His family lives in the northern Midwestern rural United States, where they enjoy camping, fishing, and other outdoor activities together. Chuck is a Registered Nurse in an inner city emergency room and has had a lifelong addiction to politics.
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