Fitzgerald
By on Oct 26th, 2005 at 11:11 pm
Fitzgerald
just rented some extra office space, Steve Clemons reports. Clemons has retracted his report.
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looks like he isn’t going anywhere…
October 26th, 2005 at 11:16 pmOf course Fitzgerald needs more space for the Plamegate Scandal.
He has a lot of work to do…
October 26th, 2005 at 11:25 pmAnd I clipped my toenails.
That means as much as Fitzgerald renting office space.
October 27th, 2005 at 12:40 amlooks like the facist traitors are getting scared
October 27th, 2005 at 1:16 amNow this is interesting. It definitely means that Fitz has more work to do in DC, and someone in the Justice Department has given him budget to do it. This is a long post, but bear with me.
My prediction – the indictments this week will be a relative fly-swatting exercise of those involved in outing Plame, and those who lied about it. However, Fitz will also say that in doing his work he uncovered a bigger and more serious conspiracy, involving many of the same people. This would of course be the Niger-uranium forgeries and the use thereof.
The WH are surely not really fighting the Plame outing any more – neocon lackies like Wurmser, Hannah and Fleitz are easily expendable and the security breach will doubtless be pinned on someone at that level. What the WH is fighting is an indictment of Rove, who is indispensable to Bush, and especially the broadening of the investigation into the WMD space.
How can you tell this is what the WH is doing? Well, follow the talking points. That hypocrite b*tch Hutchinson with her “perjury is just a technicality” trial ballon this weekend was the talking point to downplay Rove’s potential indictment for lying about the outing of Plame. It was such a sh*t talking point for once I feel the WH doesn’t have a Plan B. Or not a credible one anyway.
The other talking point doing the rounds is about Fitz staying within his remit. From tomorrow, I can all but guarantee this will be the GOP’s official line. And why? Because they don’t want Fitz going anywhere near the stinking WMD audit trail. (Unfortunately, he’s already been there. Which is why the current WH legal strategy – which you won’t perhaps hear about – is to have the evidence sealed and this is almost certainly the crux of the serious plea-bargaining at the moment. The WH will also be scheming on how to discredit and remove Fitz from his role – however, they are seriously f*cked on this count because for obvious reasons senior DoJ guys like Gonzales will have to recuse themselves from this decision. That’s the karma of cronyism.)
Now we already have dork journalists who repeat this “stay within your remit” line as if it sounds like a good idea, that we don’t want another Starr-like runaway prosecutor. And you will have plenty more talking-head butt-monkeys and wingnut bloggers parroting this in coming days. This is all horesh*t hypocrisy of course, but it needs to be met head on.
So how to respond:
(1) Fitz is no Ken Starr. It’s a disgrace to even make the comparison, and the general attempts to discredit him so far are laughably pathetic (Hannity: he’s a “left wing radical”) and wholly predictable (cf. Luntz).
(2) For the investigation, Fitz had to look into the WMD document trail. If what he discovered was evidence of a criminal conspiracy, and he conspires to hide the evidence, he himself is committing a crime. So, apart from any civic or moral duty to expose the crime, he has a legal duty to do it as well.
(3) Uncovering of major frauds and conspiracies usually occurs this way. Someone sees something a bit odd, scratches the surface, asks more questions, discovers more. And then you dig some more. And soon you realize that it’s a world of sh*t you’ve been smelling. Just ask the beancounters at Enron about a mismarked derivative, or Woodward and Bernstein about that second-rate burglary.
(4) What he’s looking into is a conspiracy to foist lies upon America, in an attempt to circumvent the constitution and the obligations it confers on Congress.
(5) America deserves full disclosure of what Fitz found – after all this was nearly two years of investigating, at a seven-figure cost to the taxpayer.
(6) Iraqi WMD questions are no longer sensitive national security matters, so there is no reason to hide the evidence from the American people.
Folks, we’re going to have to up-armor big-time. No jerry-rigging of your progressive Hummers, because from the moment the indictments are handed down, the wingnut insurgency is only going to get more intense. Fitz is clearly not done, and the fighting to defend the Bushies from the big daddy – the WMD propaganda – will be uber-ugly.
October 27th, 2005 at 7:29 amCan someone tell me what actual crime was committed? Plame was not a covert agent, at least not for six years prior to the supposed outing. Her husband actually mentions her name a month prior to the Novak article. It looks like the investigation should have been over a long time ago. I think Fitzgerald is struggling to try and actually find a law they may have broken and that should not happen in a criminal case such as this.
October 27th, 2005 at 8:30 amRandy if you don’t know by now, I’m afraid we can’t help you.
October 27th, 2005 at 8:32 amRandy just doesn’t get it. Why wouldn’t Wilson mention his wife’s name — he’s married to her!! Her neighbors, who have known them for years, have expressed shock that their friend and neighbor is a CIA agent — something they learned when Novak’s column appeared.
October 27th, 2005 at 9:33 amThe Republican talking points are being repeated everywhere,and the trivialization of a serious matter is is pronounced by their spokesmen, and evidenced by the trolls who post here.
Randy, Google “Larry Johnson” if you can figure out how to use that tool.
(Is Karl really hiring retards as trolls now?……he’s off his game bigtime.)
October 27th, 2005 at 10:22 amRandy, don’t you know that citing the text of the actual LAW, The Intelligence Identity Protection Act of 1982, makes the giddy leftist Bush haters scurry from the light like cockroaches?
See Randy, OF COURSE any reasonable person who reads the definition of what a covert agent is in the IIPA statute would conclude that no law was broken. But were dealing with liberals, not reasonable people. To liberals, it is always the seriousness of the charge that matters, not the quality of the evidence. It is their mantra. It is what creates their world view. It is why so many of them are so willing to suspend disbelief and latch on to any hoax, no matter how outrageous, just so long as it is accusatory towards a republican (forged Killian memos hoax, the Bush was AWOL hoax, multiple Katrina hoaxes…etc,etc). They pucker and cave like punctured, pus-filled boils when you actually inject facts and evidence into the debate.
Based on the evidence in the public record, to include Wilson’s own book which describes when Valerie returned from her last overseas assignment, she doesn’t meet the definition of “covert” as defined by law. If there are any indictments, they will be for something other than outing a covert agent.
Then watch the liberals scramble en masse and in lock-step to defend the “seriousness” of whatever Martha Stewart-type indictments are handed down.
October 27th, 2005 at 10:48 am“Randy, Google ‘Larry Johnson’ if you can figure out how to use that tool.”
Randy, don’t bother – Larry Johnson is a Bush-hating hack with an axe to grind about the war in Iraq, and he himself says in his own words that he doesn’t know for sure if a “man-made law” (his words) was broken. He thinks the law defining “covert” doesn’t matter, and that Rove, Bush, Cheney, et al should all go to jail anyway, facts, evidence and laws be damned. It’s typical juvenile, liberal moonbattery.
October 27th, 2005 at 11:02 amWow – Septimus Smith, I hope you don’t follow your namesake when all of this comes down to indictments… keep on gassing… but the Plame case is only the tip of the iceberg.
October 27th, 2005 at 11:16 amI just received a large order, placed from Washington DC, for several gross of personalized monogrammed crying towels.
October 27th, 2005 at 12:42 pmRandy, I suggest you march yourself down to CIA headquarters and explain to them what you know about covert operatives. I bet you could clear this whole thing up in 10 minutes!
October 27th, 2005 at 12:48 pmThe documents that Fitzgerald posted on his new website the other day were the letters/memorandum from Deputy Attorney General James Comey that clearly state that he has been granted the full authority of the DoJ to investigate the Plame leak, and so on….
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/
Look specifically at the Feb 6th, 04′ letter regarding: “the authority to investigate and prosecute violations of any federal criminal laws related to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure, as well as federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, your investigation….”
Couple that with his office space expansion in D.C. and draw your own conclusions.
Also, an article just written by Sidney Blumenthal (I think it was titled “Shipwrecked”), which I can’t find a link to, is an eye-opener and I strongly recommend it if you can find it. He explains that Bush 41’s close ally and friend Brent Scowcroft has a relationship with Joe Wilson and it gets to the heart of the matter by detailing how Wilson had Scowcroft’s ear regarding “what he found in Niger” and how he confided in Scowcroft (who agreed with him on the shoddiness of the uranium evidence) about going public. Scowcroft approached the administration with this info and they more of less told him to screw. That drew some ominous lines in the sand and it highlights how 41 may actually believe that his son is dangerously out of control.
This is going to get extremely interesting. Shrubya is really fu&*ed.
October 27th, 2005 at 12:55 pm“Wow – Septimus Smith, I hope you don’t follow your namesake when all of this comes down to indictments… keep on gassing… but the Plame case is only the tip of the iceberg.”
Let not your heart be worried – I’d never give you the satisfaction. Besides, what fun would this place be if it were just a bunch of lame liberals agreeing with each other all the time?
October 27th, 2005 at 1:42 pm“Besides, what fun would this place be if it were just a bunch of lame liberals agreeing with each other all the time?”
That, Sceptimus, I agree with :)
October 27th, 2005 at 1:52 pmExactly – let the (word) games continue!
October 27th, 2005 at 3:55 pm