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Originally published in the October 30, 2005 issue of the Alamance Independent
Obstruction of Justice
Posted November 1, 2005
On October 28, 2005, acting on charges brought up by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Grand Jury of the U.S. District Court for D.C. indicted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of false statements, and two counts of perjury. If convicted, Mr. Libby may face up to 30 years in prison and $ 1.25 mln. in fines.
During a press conference broadcasted by national TV networks on that day, Mr. Fitzgerald argued, and with great eloquence, how dangerous for the safety of this nation Mr. Libby's alleged crimes were. He compared Mr. Libby's acts to someone's throwing sand into the eyes of baseball arbiter in order to incapacitate arbiter's ability to decide if the rules of the game were violated. He stressed, several times how Mr. Libby's "leaking" a name of undercover CIA agent to press, although not a subject of the indictment, posed a life threat to that agent, and indicated a chilling effect of such a threat on Agency's recruitment efforts.
Everything in Special Counsel Fitzgerald's exposition of the facts surrounding the indictment was clear and logical, except that, apparently, no crime was committed other than the alleged obstruction of justice and lying to the authorities. It has been determined that the fact that the CIA agent, Ms. Valerie Plame, was working for CIA was publicly known before Mr. Libby passed that information to the reporters. For instance, her husband, Joseph Wilson, often introduced his wife to friends as "my CIA wife", and some neighbors were well aware of her affiliation with the Agency. So, based on currently known facts, Ms. Libby "leaked" classified information to the press about as much as when he told them his nickname (Scooter) and his function in Vice President's cabinet.
That's right. If it weren't for the charges that were brought against Mr. Libby and the interrogation that followed, no crime would have been committed! In other words, the only thing that Mr. Libby's alleged obstruction and false testimonies of justice would obstruct was finding by the Grand Jury that he was obstructing justice and lied to authorities. How similar this flawed argument is to the "money laundering" charges brought against the House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay; he was, allegedly, "laundering" political contributions, which would be perfectly legal unless these contributions were used illegally, but according to District Attorney Ronnie Earle who filed the charges, the use of these contributions was illegal because they were a subject of "money laundering".
If this is not circular reasoning then nothing else is. But this simple fact, apparently, slipped the attention of grand jurors who issued the indictment. And I blame for that the contents-free Liberal curricula developed by our educational elites that focused on building self-esteem of the students even if their self-esteem was the only reason for their self-esteem.
Our federal authorities would make much better use of the money they collect from us in taxes if they secured our Southern border, violated daily by thousands invaders, enforced duly the immigration laws that are on the books, and prosecuted all those who conspired to give our country away to the invading hordes. That would make us all much safer than all the experimentations with circular reasoning in search for a handy tool of political vendettas.
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