[Grovenet] Bush commutes Libby prison sentence - Yahoo! News

[Steven]

Does anyone here realize that Libby did NOT leak the name. It was 
Richard Armitage </wiki/Richard_Armitage>. Libby was convicted on four 
counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements.

Armitage told Bob Woodward </wiki/Bob_Woodward> Plame's identity three 
weeks before talking to Novak, and Armitage himself was aggressively 
investigated by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, but was never 
charged because Fitzgerald found no evidence that Armitage knew of 
Plame's covert CIA status when he talked to Novak and Woodward.^

Novak disputes Armitage's claim that the disclosure was "inadvertent." 
In a column titled /The real story behind the Armitage story/, Novak 
states: "First, Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on 
something he had heard and that he 'thought' might be so. Rather, he 
identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked, and said 
flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former 
Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Second, Armitage did not slip me this 
information as idle chitchat, as he now suggests. He made clear he 
considered it especially suited for my column . . . he noted that the 
story of Mrs. Wilson's role fit the style of the old Evans-Novak column 
— implying to me it continued reporting Washington inside information."

Novak continues:

“For nearly the entire time of his investigation, Fitzgerald knew — 
independent of me — the identity of the sources I used in my column of 
July 14, 2003. That Fitzgerald did not indict any of these sources may 
indicate his conclusion that none of them violated the Intelligence 
Identities Protection Act. . . . In my sworn testimony, I said what I 
have contended in my columns and on television: Joe Wilson's wife's role 
in instituting her husband's mission was revealed to me in the middle of 
a long interview with an official who I have previously said was not a 
political gunslinger. After the federal investigation was announced, he 
told me through a third party that the disclosure was inadvertent on his 
part. Following my interview with the primary source, I sought out the 
second administration official and the CIA spokesman for confirmation. I 
learned Valerie Plame's name from Joe Wilson's entry in "Who's Who in 
America."

A member of the jury, Ann Redington 
</w/index.php?title=Ann_Redington&action=edit>, who broke down and cried 
as the verdict was being read, also told Chris Matthews 
</wiki/Hardball_with_Chris_Matthews>, in a March 7 </wiki/March_7>, 2007 
</wiki/2007>, appearance on /Hardball/, that she hoped Libby would 
eventually be pardoned </wiki/Pardon> by President Bush; she told 
Matthews that she believed Libby "got caught in a difficult situation 
where he got caught in the initial lie, and it just snowballed" and 
added: "It kind of bothers me that there was this whole big crime being 
investigated and he got caught up in the investigation as opposed to in 
the actual crime that was supposedly committed."^

End of history lesson.




allnutt wrote:
> Let's see if we can make sense of this:
> Knowingly leaking her name was a crime because she was covered as an
> undercover CIA operative who had traveled on official CIA business
> within the time frame that the law was written to cover. We just don't
> know exactly the thoughts of the people leaking her name and whether it
> was knowingly done because they all conveniently got amnesia about how
> they learned her name. The prosecutor didn't want to waste his time and
> our money on stuff he likely wouldn't be able to prove beyond a
> reasonable doubt. (Good for him for going after what he could prove.)
> There was a very coordinated effort to smear Plame's husband through her
> work and it was only the luck of the draw that Libby wasn't the first
> leaker.
>
>