After the Libby Indictment

The indictment special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald unveiled the day his grand jury expired focused on four instances when Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, allegedly lied to FBI agents or grand jurors about his role in the CIA leak affair. Fitzgerald outlined serious charges but did not address the central issues of the scandal, such as which Administration official initially outed Valerie Wilson, née Plame, to columnist Bob Novak; how the leaker learned of her CIA position; why that person disseminated this classified information to one or more reporters; what Bush, Cheney and other officials knew about the leak (before and after it occurred); and why Bush and others at the White House at first denied Karl Rove and Libby were "involved," though both were (Rove reportedly confirmed the leak for Novak). The indictment did expose, without elaboration, Cheney's part in an effort to undermine Valerie Wilson's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had challenged the Administration's misleading claim that Saddam Hussein had been shopping for weapons-grade uranium in Niger. So now there are more questions than before the indictment. No one, though, has been given the job of filling in all the blanks. And this is a miscarriage of justice.

As Fitzgerald explained at his dramatic press conference, he is a prosecutor, not a public investigator. Under the law he can only release information he has gathered through a grand jury proceeding if it appears in an indictment or is used in a trial. He is not permitted to disclose other details he has unearthed. And he is not obligated--as were independent counsels of the past--to issue a final report. In fact Fitzgerald, citing Justice Department rules, said he did not have the authority to write such a report.

If the Libby case goes to trial, significant information may emerge. After all, the two most tantalizing portions of the indictment involve Cheney. On June 12, 2003--weeks after Joseph Wilson confidentially told a New York Times columnist about his trip to Niger and weeks before he revealed this CIA mission in a Times op-ed--Cheney informed Libby, as the indictment puts it, "that Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Division." The indictment says Libby "understood that" Cheney "had learned this" from the CIA. The Counterproliferation Division is a unit in the agency's clandestine service. This passage suggests that Cheney and Libby had reason to believe--or suspect--that Valerie Wilson was an undercover employee. It also reveals that while Libby was gathering information on the Wilsons, the first indication he received that Valerie Wilson might be a covert officer came from Cheney. Why was he rooting out material on Valerie Wilson on his own? Who at the CIA told Cheney about her, and what did he or she say about her position? Did Cheney know that Libby would be talking to reporters about her? The indictment does not address any of this.

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