Patrick Fitzgerald's Legacy: Letting Rove And Cheney Go

[MinM]

Patrick Fitzgerald's Legacy: Letting Rove And Cheney Go

Posted: 07/03/2012 11:55 pm Updated: 07/05/2012 10:49 am

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s prosecution of former CIA officer John Kiriakou for talking to journalists about the Bush/Cheney torture program has at least one thing in common with his conviction of I. Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby in 2007.

In both cases, Fitzgerald went for the little fish. But the big fish got away. (See related story on the Kiriakou case.)

In the Plame case, Fitzgerald prosecuted Libby, then-vice president Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, for perjury and obstruction of justice related to the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity as a covert CIA operative. But he stopped short of charging Cheney or top presidential adviser Karl Rove -- both of whom had been targets of his investigation.

Fitzgerald was appointed as a special prosecutor in late 2003 to investigate the July 2003 leak of Plame’s identity, which came during a White House effort to discredit her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson.

Wilson was trying to expose how the administration had twisted intelligence to make its case for the war in Iraq, launched a few months earlier, and the White House was desperate to prevent that narrative from establishing itself before the 2004 elections.

The evidence that came out at trial clearly established that Cheney was the first person to tell Libby about Plame’s identity and that Cheney wrote talking points that likely prompted Libby and others to raise Plame’s role with reporters.

Libby, before falsely claiming he had heard about Plame from NBC News host Tim Russert, told FBI agents he might have discussed Plame’s employment with reporters at Cheney’s direction.

In his closing arguments in the Libby case, Fitzgerald famously declared: “There is a cloud over what the vice president did that week. … That cloud remains because the defendant has obstructed justice and lied about what happened.”

In a subsequent court filing, Fitzgerald wrote that “there was reason to believe” the leak had been coordinated by Cheney and that the vice president may have had a role in the cover-up. “When the investigation began, Mr. Libby kept the vice president apprised of his shifting accounts of how he claimed to have learned about Ms. Wilson’s CIA employment,” Fitzgerald wrote.

But Cheney was never charged...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/03/patrick-fitzgerald-legacy_n_1575631.html

Also read: Squelching Secrets: Why Are Obama's Prosecutors Pursuing John Kiriakou?

Patrick Fitzgerald Resigns as U. S. Attorney - DU

Fair Game (2010) - RI

Fair Game - DU

[No Elephants]

1. Didn't Pelosi and Obama choose to let them go as well, and on all counts?

Maybe America just loves it some looking only forward.