[nathanbedford]

What an extraordinary world that is inhabited by the likes of Novak, Armitage and Fitzgerald.

Novak conducts an interview in which no ground rules were established, he nevertheless assumes unspoken, unrequested ground rules and determines from his assumptions that he may not reveal his source. The unspoken ground rules do, however, not only permit him to publish the leak, but to do so would be in accordance with the desires of the leaker. None of this was ever revealed. Why not?

Novak watches the whole of the nation turn inside out as the result of his publishing disclosures made during that interview but he says nothing. He watches reporters go to jail to protect their sources who, Novak well knows, had nothing to do with the original leak, and, evidently, says nothing in private to the prosecutor or in public to the nation. He does not tell the world that the prosecutor already knows who the leaker was. He does not tell the world that the reporter in jail had nothing to do with the original leak. Why not?

As reporters go to jail and public servants are repeatedly brought before grand juries, still Novak says nothing in public to the effect that the prosecutor is running rabbits at a cost of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds and gross disruption of the national administration. Surely he is not proscribed from this public service even by his own assumptions about the ground rules of his interview with Armitage. Why not?

Novak does not tell the public that his leaker was not part of a neocon conspiracy, that his leaker was opposed in principle to the war, that there was no dastardly administration plot to punish Joe Wilson through his wife, Valerie Plane. Why not?

Novak continued to act on his assumptions about the ground rules of this interview, or more accurately put, he continued not to act because of his assumptions about the ground rules of the interview. By his own admission he did not return to Mr. Armitage to clarify the ground rules of the interview. We know this because he declares that he never spoke to Mr. Armitage on this subject again. Why not?

For his part why did Armitage not speak out? True, at some point he went to the special prosecutor and revealed that he was the leaker, but why did he not go to the president? Why did he not release his involvement to the public and save his president from the loss of public support and the consequent inability to conduct the war? Was He Bound by the Prosecutor ? Was be bound by a general admonition from the president? The prosecutor certainly cannot compel silence from witnesses. Why in the face of this national turmoil would Armitage feel bound to respect any such admonition from the prosecutor? If the president had issued such a directive, Armitage must have known that it was based on imperfect knowledge which he alone could rectify simply by informing the president. He did not. Why not?

Why did Fitzgerald continue with his inquisition? What was his brief from the Attorney General? Once he knew that Armitage was the leaker, he knew the there was no neocon plot to punish Wilson and Plame because Armitage was against the war. More importantly, he knew there was no underlying crime because Plame was not covert. Why did Fitzgerald persist?

Did Fitzgerald consider it to be his responsibility to criminalize the making of politics? Did Fitzgerald consider it a crime to be a neocon? To be for the war? To attempt to discredit your political enemies? The minute Fitzgerald knew there was no covert status, he knew there was no crime. At this point what was he conducting but an inquisition? Was this not a classic case of a special prosecutor conducting an investigation in search of a crime?

The only explanation for all of these questions that occurs to me is to recall at the time there was a classic media frenzy underway lead by the New York Times. Bush succumbed and the rest is history. All the rest of the players were caught in the maelstrom of a media storm which immobilized them from doing their patriotic duty.

[Darkwolf377]

Novak does not tell the public that his leaker was not part of a neocon conspiracy, that his leaker was opposed in principle to the war, that there was no dastardly administration plot to punish Joe Wilson through his wife, Valerie Plane. Why not?

because the moment Novak revealed that there was no story, that's the moment no one is interested in Robert Novak, again.

Great post, NB. Sums it all up succinctly. Too bad the national media couldn't get such a handle on this story, and instead we get the endless "Did the Bush administration blow the cover of a covert CIA operative?" BS for years.

[The Old Hoosier]

Novak does not tell the public that his leaker was not part of a neocon conspiracy, that his leaker was opposed in principle to the war, that there was no dastardly administration plot to punish Joe Wilson through his wife, Valerie Plane. Why not?

He did write that, actually. It was in the originial Niger column, and it was repeated in his second column on the subject. You would know if you ever read stuff instead of just commenting blindly, just like all the other morons on this thread.

I've rarely seen so much BS in one place. If it's not the black helicopter people, it's the people who blame the reporter of the story instead of the principals involved -- the CIA losers who would send Wilson, the prosecutor, the lying Wilsons themselves, and then the former Attorney General and the President that let the special prosecutor run amok over a non-crime.

[PhilipFreneau]

>>>The only explanation for all of these questions that occurs to me is to recall at the time there was a classic media frenzy underway lead by the New York Times. Bush succumbed and the rest is history.<<<

Don’t believe it. Bush did not “succumb”. He was part of the conspiracy against the conservatives. How do you think Ted Kennedy wrote Bush’s so-called “Education Bill”. Why did Bush sign McCain-Feingold? Why did Bush support the Ted Kennedy Amnesty bill? Why did Bush expand LBJ’s “Destroy Society” agenda by implementing Medicare Prescripion Drugs? And why did Bush so adamantly support worldly agendas rather than supporting and defending our nation and our Constitution?

Because Bush is a Marxist. If you disagree, then compare Bush’s conservative positions against his leftist positions, and get back to me. But don’t even think about coming back to me with slurs and innuendos. Give me facts, or be silent.

[Roccus]

“For his part why did Armitage not speak out? True, at some point he went to the special prosecutor and revealed that he was the leaker, but why did he not go to the president?”
__________________________________________________________

IIRC, and I’m only working from memory on this, didn’t the Special Prosecutor’s Office try to notify the WH about Armitage but was rebuffed because they (the WH) did not want to appear to be exerting any influence whatever on the investigation?

[Major_Risktaker]

Why did Fitzgerald continue with his inquisition?

Political Revenge

The Pending Marc Rich Attack

There's a talking point that the more complicit or credulous among the press corps are propagating: It suggests Libby is a really nice (or really clever) man because of the work he did getting Marc Rich pardoned. In placing the Rich pardon at the center of pre-trial coverage, though, I suspect Libby's team wants to suggest that Libby's indictment was direct retaliation for the work Libby did to get Rich a pardon.

This point is made explicitly in the WSJ's recent opinion piece.

As it happens, Messrs. Fitzgerald and Libby had crossed legal paths before. Before he joined the Bush Administration, Mr. Libby had, for a number of years in the 1980s and 1990s, been a lawyer for Marc Rich. Mr. Rich is the oil trader and financier who fled to Switzerland in 1983, just ahead of his indictment for tax-evasion by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Bill Clinton pardoned Mr. Rich in 2001, and so the feds never did get their man. The pardon so infuriated Justice lawyers who had worked on the case that the Southern District promptly launched an investigation into whether the pardon had been "proper." One former prosecutor we spoke to described the Rich case as "the single most rancorous case in the history of the Southern District."

Two of the prosecutors who worked on the Rich case over the years were none other than Mr. Fitzgerald and James Comey, who while Deputy Attorney General appointed Mr. Fitzgerald to investigate the Plame leak. Mr. Fitzgerald worked in the Southern District for five years starting in 1988, at the same time that Mr. Libby was developing a legal theory of Mr. Rich's innocence in a bid to get the charges dropped. The prosecutors never did accept the argument, but Leonard Garment, who brought Mr. Libby onto the case in 1985, says that he believes Mr. Libby's legal work helped set the stage for Mr. Rich's eventual pardon.

[shrinkermd]

great post

[reefdiver]

The political class will destroy this country

[reefdiver]

The political class will destroy this country

[syriacus]

You’ve posed great questions.

[prognostigaator]

bump