Here is the latest from the front page of the Scooter Libby Legal
Defense Trust, the group that has been shaking down Republican donors
for the money needed to maintain the convicted felon's silence until
an appropriate moment arrives for him to be pardoned by President
Bush:
"Former Senator Fred Thompson, a member of the Advisory Committee for
the Libby Legal Defense Trust has graciously offered to host another
fund raiser for the Libby Legal Defense Trust. We will be providing
additional details in the coming days."
Thompson's schedule is getting busier and busier these days, as the
man who reversed Ronald Reagan's career trajectory by going from the
Senate into acting prepared to bid for the Republican presidential
nomination.
But, hopefully, Thompson will find time to further identify himself
with Libby, who the TV attorney identifies as "a man with nothing to
hide."
The Thompson-Libby relationship, particularly Thompson's recent
statements regarding it, tells Americans everything they need to know
about the man who seeks to replace George W. Bush in the Oval Office.
Thompson is either a longtime acquaintance of Libby or someone who
rushed to the side of Vice President ***** Cheney's former chief of
staff when he determined that an injustice was being done.
According to a February 23 report by Associated Press, "Trust
spokeswoman Barbara Comstock says Thompson knew Libby from serving on
the Senate Intelligence Committee and dealing with top White House
staff."
According to Thompson, in a speech delivered May 12 to the Council for
National Policy, "I didn't know Scooter Libby, but I did know
something about this intersection of law, politics, special counsels
and intelligence. And it was obvious to me that what was happening was
not right. So I called him to see what I could do to help, and along
the way we became friends. You know the rest of the story: a D.C. jury
convicted him."
Whatever the facts of their relationship, however, there is no
debating Thompson's loyalty to Libby. He is the leading proponent of a
presidential pardon for the convicted felon. And he regularly uses his
prominence as a TV lawyer to accuse the man who brought Libby to
justice, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, of "perverting the
rule of law."
In the faux-conservative circles that define the modern Republican
Party, Thompson is more closely associated with the defense of the
disgraced White House aide than with any particular stand on the
issues facing the nation. That's one of the reasons why so many of the
true believers in the Bush presidency are so very enthusiastic about
Thompson's now likely candidacy to replace Bush
Since Libby was convicted in March on four counts of obstruction of
justice, perjury and making false statements about how he learned the
identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame -- the wife of former Ambassador
Joe Wilson, who was targeted for attack by Cheney's office after he
exposed the administration's manipulation of intelligence when it was
lobbying for war with Iraq -- Thompson has maintained that special
counsel Fitzgerald, the federal judges associated with the case and
the federal grand jury that decided it were all part of "the Beltway
machinery" that railroaded an innocent man because "he worked for *****
Cheney."
"The Justice Department, bowing to political and media pressure,
appointed a Special Counsel to investigate the leak and promised that
the Justice Department would exercise no supervision over him
whatsoever -- a status even the Attorney General does not have,"
Thompson explained in his May 12 speech. "The only problem with this
little scenario was that there was no violation of the law, by anyone,
and everybody -- the CIA, the Justice Department and the Special
Counsel knew it. Ms. Plame was not a 'covered person' under the
statute and it was obvious from the outset."
Thompson was, of course, speaking as an experienced player in
courtroom dramas on ABC.
Here is what an actual prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, said in the 18-
page Libby sentencing memorandum released two weeks after Thompson
asserted that "everybody knew" Plame-Wilson was "not a covered person"
under the rules that protect covert agents: "[It] was clear from very
early in the investigation that Ms. Wilson qualified under the
relevant statute (Title 50, United States Code, Section 421) as a
covert agent."
Fitzgerald also detailed how Libby had blown Plame-Wilson's cover in
conversations with reporters and White House aides, and explained
that, "Mr. Libby kept the Vice President apprised of his shifting
accounts of how he claimed to have learned about Ms. Wilson's CIA
employment."
To all of this, Thompson says, "In no other prosecutor's office in the
country would a case like this one have been brought."
Fitzgerald says: "To accept the argument that Mr. Libby's prosecution
is the inappropriate product of an investigation that should have been
closed at an early stage, one must accept the proposition that the
investigation should have been closed after at least three high-
ranking government officials were identified as having disclosed to
reporters classified information about covert agent Valerie Wilson,
where the account of one of them was directly contradicted by other
witnesses, where there was reason to believe that some of the relevant
activity may have been coordinated, and where there was an indication
from Mr. Libby himself that his disclosures to the press may have been
personally sanctioned by the Vice President. To state this claim is to
refute it. Peremptorily closing this investigation in the face of the
information available at its early stages would have been a
dereliction of duty, and would have afforded Mr. Libby and others
preferential treatment not accorded to ordinary persons implicated in
criminal investigations."
This is, frankly, a better debate than any that will broadcast during
the course of the presidential race.
Thompson, a career politician who plays a prosecutor on TV, says that
it is wrong to prosecute someone who knowingly used a position in the
White House to punish critics of the Bush administration and then lied
about his abuses of authority and the public trust.
Fitzgerald, a career prosecutor who tends to avoid the cameras,
disagrees.
Thompson is preparing to seek the presidency as the standard bearer of
the wing of the Republican Party that turns a blind eye to official
misconduct.
Fitzgerald is preparing to return to his work as one of the nation's
most trusted enforcers of the rule of law.
Here is a real contest for Americans to decide. They can choose
between two tickets: Thompson/Libby versus Fitzgerald/Rule of Law.
___________________
Article by John Nichols
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