Libby and the White House book club-- By Sidney Blumenthal

[Demeter]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/03/08/scooter_libby/index.html

Libby and the White House book club

While Cheney's former aide prays for a presidential pardon, Bush and Rove hold forth in their neocon salon, and the coverup continues.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Mar. 08, 2007 ...Even as Scooter Libby sat at the defendant's table silently wearing his fixed, forced smile, and Vice President Dick Cheney was revealed by witnesses as the conductor of the smear campaign against former ambassador Joseph Wilson, Bush and Rove felt free to hold forth in their salon, removed from anxiety. Rove had narrowly escaped the fate of Libby by changing his grand jury testimony just before he might have been indicted for perjury. Bush, who proclaimed that he would fire any leaker found in his administration, is apparently closer to Rove than ever. The night before the Libby verdict, the president had dinner at Rove's house, and Rove sent to the reporters shivering outside a doggie bag filled with sausage and quail wings...But why was Libby virtually passive? If Libby knew he was going to offer the barest defense, why didn't he do as Rove did, amending his grand jury testimony to reflect the truth? Why didn't Libby do as former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer did, turning state's evidence and being granted immunity in exchange for his testimony? What stopped Libby from risking indictment? What prevented him from making more than a minimal defense that invited conviction?

Libby could not plead the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. Had he done so he would not have been able to continue in his position as Cheney's chief of staff; he would have been compelled to resign. But why didn't he testify? Why didn't he make the case of Rove's perfidy that his lawyer suggested? ...Libby and Rove's falsehoods in front of the grand jury, in which they blamed reporters for telling them about Plame, were a cleverly contrived coverup. They did not believe that the prosecutor would be able to break through the curtain of the First Amendment or untangle the tale as told by journalists. Both Libby and Rove relied on the same alibi, hiding behind the press corps that they had manipulated for years and whose erratic habits they knew well. But prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was not about to be confounded by this device. He knew the law was on his side, and he received a judicial decision forcing the reporters to testify.

Just as Fitzgerald was about to indict Rove for perjury and obstruction of justice, Rove got a lucky break. A reporter for Time magazine, Viveca Novak, a colleague of Cooper's and privy to his conversation with Rove, became consumed with an overwhelming desire to be an important inside dopester, and she rushed to inform Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, about Cooper's information. Suddenly, Rove produced an e-mail from Cooper that he had not produced to the prosecutor for a year, refreshed his memory, altered his testimony, and was off the hook. (Novak did not tell her editors or Cooper of her freelancing, and she was forced to resign, in effect sacrificing her career to save Rove by the skin of his teeth.) Libby was left to take the fall alone.


The missing piece in the extensive evidence and testimony that detailed the administration's concerted attack on Wilson, orchestrated by Cheney, is the conversations among Libby, Cheney -- and Rove. Rove had made a deal with Fitzgerald. Rove changed his testimony, escaped prosecution and went back for a fifth time before the grand jury. Fitzgerald owned Rove.

Only if Libby and Cheney appeared could Fitzgerald cross-examine them about their discussions with Rove, which presumably Rove had already testified about before the grand jury. Rove was the hostile witness against Cheney whom the prosecution had waiting in the wings, the witness who was never called. If Libby had come to the stand in his own defense, and summoned Cheney as well, Fitzgerald might have been prompted to call Rove from the deep to impeach Libby's and Cheney's credibility and reveal new incriminating information about them. Instead, Libby remained silent, Cheney flew off to Afghanistan and Rove never appeared. Rove was the missing witness for the prosecution.

Now Libby's only hope is a presidential pardon. He has already offended Rove and perhaps by extension Bush. Libby cannot afford to offend Cheney. His pardon depends on Cheney's importuning of Bush. Thus Libby's final plea is to Cheney -- and his coverup continues. Back at the White House, Rove makes the next selection for the book club.


-- By Sidney Blumenthal

[tanyev]

1. Oh, this completely explains why we see Bush carrying big boy books from time to time.

President Bush held one of his private book club sessions that Karl Rove organizes for him at the White House. Rove picks the book, invites the author and a few neoconservative intellectual luminaries, and conducts the discussions. For this Bush book club meeting, the guest was Andrew Roberts, an English conservative historian and columnist and the author of "The Churchillians" and, most recently, "A History of the English-Speaking People Since 1900."

Very clever. Dubbie doesn't have to read the book, all he has to do is sit there and listen to people tell him about it. Just like his PDBs. It's a classic coping strategy of people who don't read well or at all.