October 31, 2005

Martha Stewart, Bill Clinton, and Libby

[Note -- this is an updated version of this post. The original version is available here.]

Martha Stewart wasn't tried for breaking any insider trading laws. She was tried for allegedly lying under oath about the circumstances surrounding a stock trade which some felt should violate insider trading laws -- even though in fact Stewart's stock trade violated no such laws.

The same thing happened to Bill Clinton. He wasn't accused of having had sex with Lewinsky -- he was accused of saying under oath that he didn't have sex with her, even though he did.

It's as if the accused is told: "You didn't break any laws, but you lied about something you did that was legal, so we're going to try to use the legal system to attack you."

At first I thought the same thing was happening in Libby's case -- that Libby was indicted for allegedly lying under oath about actions that broke no laws. However, it's not quite as bad as that. Libby is indicted for allegedly violating Title 18, a regulation requiring persons with security clearances "not to disclose classified information to persons not authorized to receive such information".

Yet oddly, the official charges, or counts, don't appear to be for revealing a state secret. Here's the list, from page 1 of the indictment:

GRAND JURY ORIGINAL

Count 1: Obstruction of Justice (18 U.S.C. 1503)

Counts 2-3: False Statements (18 U.S.C. 1001(a)(2))

Counts 4-5: Perjury (18 U.S.C. 1623)

Obstruction of Justice -- False Statements -- and Perjury -- but no specific counts saying something along the lines of, "Revealing State Secrets." I'm not a lawyer; perhaps one of my readers can provide additional info here. I'm interested, because this looks a lot like the Martha Stewart/Bill Clinton strategy. No crime is charged other than lying about something that might be considered a crime, but which, oddly, appears not to have been specifically charged.

A charge of revealing state secrets would have been laughable. The reporters to whom he allegedly revealed that Plame worked for the CIA, did not publicize it until after reporter Robert Novak had independently obtained and published the identical info. From Frontpage:

Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation took nearly two years, sent a reporter to jail, cost millions of dollars, and preoccupied some of the White House's senior officials. The fruit it has now borne is the five-count indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the Vice President's Chief of Staff--not for leaking the name of Valerie Plame to Robert Novak, which started this entire "scandal," but for contradictions between his testimony and the testimony of two or three reporters about what he told them, when he told them, and what words he used. 

Libby is not indicted for leaking the name of Valerie Plame to Robert Novak. It was Novak who revealed to the public that Plame worked for the CIA:

Mr. Libby is not alleged to have been the source for Robert Novak's July 14, 2003 column, in which Valerie Plame's employment with the CIA was revealed. 

Libby may have stated to other reporters that Plame worked for the CIA:

...according to the indictment, Mr. Libby did a little digging, found out who Joe Wilson's wife was, and apparently told Judith Miller of the New York Times, who never wrote it up, and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, who put it into print after Mr. Novak's column had run. What's more, he allegedly did not talk to Tim Russert of NBC about it, although he claimed that he had. Mr. Libby then didn't tell a grand jury and the FBI the truth about what he told those reporters, the indictment claims.

As in the case of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, this appears to be an example of using trivialities to attack an administration for political purposes.

...Unless Mr. Fitzgerald can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Libby was lying, and doing so for some nefarious purpose, this indictment looks like a case of criminalizing politics.

The events happened two years ago. With the Martha Stewart/Bill Clinton strategy, you can go to jail for having a bad memory, even if you never broke any laws:

In a statement yesterday, Mr. Libby's counsel zeroed in on this point when he said:

We are quite distressed the Special Counsel has now sought to pursue alleged inconsistencies in Mr. Libby's recollection and those of others' and to charge such inconsistencies as false statements.

As in the case of Bill Clinton, as in the case of Martha Stewart, the Libby indictment is a travesty. 

As I've posted previously:

We’ve got to stop wasting the time of our Presidents, and that of the nation, over trivialities.

Photo: Hillary Shakes Hand of Soldier Who Flashes “Sign of Coercion”

This comes to me through a friend to whom it was emailed by a friend of hers. In his email to her, her friend stated, "...my brother who served front line in the 1st gulf war sent it [the photo] to me." 

Click for a larger image. 

Here's a caption that accompanied the photo:

Hillary Clinton (D-NY) has already started her 2008 presidential campaign by aligning herself with the military and pretending to be tough on terror. Fortunately, the ultra-liberal Hillary has yet to brainwash all of the voting public into believing that her symbolism is really substance. Many have never forgotten that when she was co-president for eight years she was quoted as saying: "I loathe the military."

The picture shows that this soldier has been thru Survival School and learned his lessons well. He's giving the sign of "coercion" with his left hand. These hand signs are taught in survival school to be used by POW's as a method of posing messages back to our intelligence services who may view the photo or video. This guy was obviously being coerced into shaking hands with Hillary Clinton. It's ironic how little she knew that he would so inform us about the photo--perhaps because she's never understood our military to begin with.

I found a discussion of this on Snopes. Snopes states that the photo is for real.