Judy Tells All

With so many qualifiers she might as well be von [ ;-) ], Judith Miller recounts her interviews with Scotter Libby as told to Pat Fitzgerald in the NYT. It's a longish read, but essentially Judy has enough criticism to go around that few escape some degree of scorn (even her employer, which reportedly isn't something she'll have to worry about for long).

My nutshell summary of her report goes like this (feel free to disagree that's what she meant...most of it is rather cryptic):

1. The White House was duped by the CIA, but the White House was pressing the CIA for more information about Saddam's interest in Niger uranium specifically.
2. Cheney never asked Wilson to go to Niger and didn't know he existed [deja vu Senator Edwards, eh?] until the sh*t hit the fan.
3. The White House knew about Wilson's feelings before his NYT's op-ed, but not before the SOTU address.
4. Libby mentioned to Judith that WIlson's wife worked for WINPAC (Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control) but didn't seem to mention whether she was covert.
5. Judy can't recall if he mentioned her by name (despite "Valerie Flame" [sic] being written in the same notebook she used to capture her interview with Libby).
6. Libby asked Judith to downgrade his anonymous status (from  "senior administration official" to "former Hill staffer) so that it wouldn't look like the White House was attacking Wilson.
7. And, what I consider the most damning part of her testimony is best conveyed in her own words:

Mr. Fitzgerald asked me to read the final three paragraphs [of the letter Libby sent her in jail] aloud to the grand jury. "The public report of every other reporter's testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame's name or identity with me," Mr. Libby wrote.

The prosecutor asked my reaction to those words. I replied that this portion of the letter had surprised me because it might be perceived as an effort by Mr. Libby to suggest that I, too, would say we had not discussed Ms. Plame's identity. Yet my notes suggested that we had discussed her job.

It seems to me that this could go either way for Libby, depending on the other testimony. One overriding theme Judy seems hellbent on conveying though is that at no time was she herself playing politics (a notion that garnered hearty gaffaws when I presented it as a possibility to a room full of her journalistic colleagues in DC recently). Had she gone a bit lighter on that (and had a better memory), I'd be more inclined to take the rest of what she wrote at face value.

Comments

[Tim]

Libby mentioned to Judith that WIlson's wife worked for WINPAC (Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control) but didn't seem to mention whether she was covert.

That might be enough to get Libby boned.

[Frank]

Tim- It had better be, since it is certainly enough to blow Val's cover.

Shouldn't we be forming a betting pool as to when Bush starts pardoning key players?

[rilkefan]

How could she not know who told her about Plame? The controversy arose shortly after her conversations with Libby, as best I recall.

[liberal japonicus]

Shouldn't we be forming a betting pool as to when Bush starts pardoning key players?

Nah, cause that reduces the number of wild-ass possibilities that we speculate on. Like the suggestion that Cheney and Bush are one the outs, or that Cheney is in this up to his eyeballs, based on Miller's own description of Libby's representations

My interview notes show that Mr. Libby sought from the beginning, before Mr. Wilson's name became public, to insulate his boss from Mr. Wilson's charges. According to my notes, he told me at our June meeting that Mr. Cheney did not know of Mr. Wilson, much less know that Mr. Wilson had traveled to Niger, in West Africa, to verify reports that Iraq was seeking to acquire uranium for a weapons program.

Can the president pardon a vice president?

Also, we can't meditate on the pleasurable notion that the CIA, will put paid to this notion.

And Mr. Cheney, he said, had asked about the potential ramifications of such a purchase. But he added that the C.I.A. "took it upon itself to try and figure out more" by sending a "clandestine guy" to Niger to investigate.

In short, let's keep ourselves open to all the possibilities. I know that I deserve it after the past 6 years.

[John Thullen]

Well, I don't know anything about this, but things look really bad from my point of view, which is to say that things look really good.

But I wanna say, regarding Von's qualifiers, that I find Von's qualified writing here to be truly hilarious and cool. He is also the best writer at the Redstate and Tacitus threads, especially the footnotes and P.s's, which are longer than the posts, but what do you want from the qualifying attorney?

I expect he objects to his own motions in Court.

He once commented at Paul Cella's site, too, and could out-Cella Cella. Which is to say that after reading Cella's posts and the other commenters, Von would show up and give me a reason not to slit my throat.

[freelunch]

Short version:

Judy and the Times got used. They felt embarrassed. They tried to hide how badly they got suckered. Now it's time for mutual recriminations.

[Matt Weiner]

So I've been asking this of every blog thread that lawyers read but: Is Kleiman right that Libby and/or Tate are on the hook for obstruction of justice, by encouraging Miller to lie to the grand jury? It seems to me that saying to a witness, "I said this" when it's a lie is encouraging them to tell that lie, but I don't know any of the legalities.

[freelunch]

close link?

[freelunch]

Kleiman may be right. It probably is chargeable, but if that is the only charge brought, it will look like a chicken[guano] charge. I couldn't imagine this being brought if it is the strongest charge against Libby.

If it is one of a number of charges that show a strong disregard for the law and for the processes of the law, it will look very good and will probably ensnare Tate as well. Suborning perjury isn't looked on too well by the courts, but I cannot imagine trying such a charge unless there is a clear pattern of such indifference to the law.

[Matt Weiner]

Thanks for the close tag and the explanation, freelunch. (I don't know what's been wrong with me lately, open tags all over the place.) Suborning perjury was taken quite seriously when it was thought that Clinton might have done it, but that doesn't mean it's not a chickenpoop charge.

[Matt Weiner]

At LGM a commenter points out to me that it's not suborning perjury if the perjury did not take place, but soliciting perjury is still obstruction. Hard to prove, the commenter "mark" says.

[CaseyL]

Except that, SFAICT, perjury did take place.

Miller did lie about when she first met with Libby and what they talked about. It was only after Fitzgerald "gently reminded" her about the meeting in June that she went, "Whoops! I've got notes I completely forgot about; lemme get them for you."

If Fitzgerald flipped her (as Plamegate watchers believe) then he did so by threatening to bring perjury and obstruction charges against her. She hung Libby out to dry.

I wonder what else was discussed during that 8-hour meeting she had with Fitzgerald, the one after her second day of retestifying, that had her looking so grim when she left.

[freelunch]

The question here isn't whether perjury took place, but whether someone (Scooter and his lawyer) was gently trying ("Lovely newspaper you've got there. It'd be a shame if something happened to it.") to direct you how to lie in front of the jury. The letter from Tate looks like an attempt to get Miller to get a new memory, but by itself it's a tough call.

[freelunch]

Following up on my last comment. I was being careless and conflating a few possible crimes. The federal criminal resource manual says (section 1752):

"To secure a conviction for subornation of perjury, the perjury sought must actually have been committed. United States v. Hairston, 46 F.3d 361, 376 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 116 S.Ct. 124 (1995). The underlying perjury must be proved under the standards required by the applicable perjury statute. Thus, if section 1621 applies to the underlying perjury, the two witness rule must be met, but not if section 1623 applies to the underlying perjury. United States v. Gross, 511 F.2d 910, 915 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 924 (1975). Physical coercion need not be proven in prosecutions for subornation of perjury. United States v. Heater, 63 F.3d 311, 320 (4th Cir. 1995), cert. denied, 116 S.Ct. 796 (1996). Conspiracy to suborn perjury may be prosecuted irrespective of whether perjury has been committed. The two witness rule does not apply in conspiracy prosecutions. Solicitation of perjured testimony also may be prosecuted as obstruction of justice irrespective of whether the perjured testimony took place. United States v. Silverman, 745 F.2d 1386, 1395 (11th Cir. 1984)." [emphasis added]

This gives Fitzgerald a lot of room to work.

[Terry Ott]

Betting pool about the timing of pardons? I'm in. Just put me down for 8 years from the date of WJClinton's blizzard of pardons. Maybe there are some of those "pardon forms" still in the desk in the oval office. All W would have to do is change the last "0" in 2000 to an "8" (easy enough to do if you have the same kind of pen) and he'll be good to go.

[Matt Weiner]

I say ten years from HW's pardons, which unlike Clinton's forgave abuse of power by government players, and had the effect of foiling an investigation that might have implicated HW himself.

[Simp]

Cheney never asked Wilson to go to Niger and didn't know he existed [deja vu Senator Edwards, eh?] until the sh*t hit the fan.

Funny how this view is still pervasive. Its close but not entirely accurate. Wilson said that he went at the behest of Cheney's office. This DOES NOT mean that Cheney asked Wilson to go.

Cheney's office requested that the CIA look into the Niger forgeries. That is it.

My understanding is that the CIA official in charge of organizing the trip had a passing conversation with Ms. Plame asking her opinion on who to send. She said that her husband, with much experience in the area, may be a possibility. That's it. Plame suggesting her husband as someone to go is not the same as her sending her husband. It wasn't her decision. Nor was it Cheney's.