Fred Thompson: If Smug, Self Righteous, Sneering, Blimp-Sized Ego Can Win A Presidency, Say Hello to Fred-In-Chief

Did you know that former Tennessee senator and now a former Law & Order cast member (he played Branch, the latest lead D.A. whose character seemed to parallel Thompson's inflated sense of self-worth), not only wants Scooter Libby pardoned for his key role in PlameGate**?

No, Fred's such a pal he helped lead fundraising for the Libby defense fund so that Libby, formerly Cheney's #2 man, already a millionaire many times over, would not have to spend a cent of his own money (considerable fortune) defending the charges.

Apparently Thompson sees nothing improper about loudly defending a man convicted of a quite-near-treasonous act. You can read more about Thompson and Libby here.

[PlameGate refers to the deliberate outing of CIA covert operative Valerie Plame as "payback" because Joe Wilson, her husband, not only found that the documents proclaiming Iraq bought nuclear equipment like tubes were faked, he told the press what he had already told Bush and Cheney. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted of and sentenced for his role in the matter while Bush and Cheney walked.]

Missing Rove Emails Show How The Bushies Hijacked American Democracy And Accountability to Citizens

Here's the piece at Truthout, but I'd call it more like treason that a mere violation of the records act.

Three years ago, Robert Luskin, the attorney who defended White House Political Adviser Karl Rove in the CIA leak case, made a startling discovery: a July 2003 email Rove sent to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley that proved Rove was far more involved in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, and the campaign to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, than he had let on during interviews with federal investigators and in testimony before a federal grand jury.

Curiously, the email Rove sent to Hadley that Luskin had found never turned up during an exhaustive document search ordered a year earlier, in September 2003, by Alberto Gonzales. At the time, Gonzales, who was White House counsel, enjoined all White House staff members to turn over any communications pertaining to Plame Wilson and her husband, a vocal critic of the Iraq war, who had accused the Bush administration of twisting pre-war Iraq intelligence. Gonzales's order to turn over documents and emails came 12 hours after former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card had informed him that the Justice Department was launching an investigation into the leak.

The order Gonzales sent to Karl Rove and other administration officials demanded "documents that relate in any way to a contact with any member or representative of the news media about Joseph C. Wilson, his trip to Niger in February 2002, or his wife's purported relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency."

The Rove/Hadley email was not included in the thousands of pages of documents turned over to the FBI. The reason? Apparently the "right search words weren't used," Luskin told Newsweek in October 2005. The email Rove sent to Hadley in July 2003 has never been released publicly. It's unclear whether the email was sent via the White House computer system or from Rove's email account maintained by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which, according to the National Journal, is what Rove uses to conduct 90 percent of his White House business, in what would appear to be a violation of the Presidential Records Act.

Replace AG Alberto Gonzalez with Federal PlameGate Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald

Steve at The Carpetbagger Report brings us this, by way of WaPo:

a crazy thought: replacing Alberto Gonzales with Patrick Fitzgerald. The WaPo’s Andrew Cohen writes, “Can you think of a better candidate to restore honor and integrity to the Justice Department than the man who just took on the White House, and won, with the perjury and obstruction trial of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby? Can you think of a person more likely to erase the standing charge of cronyism that seeps through the current administration like a stink bomb?” (thanks to B.P. for the tip)

It's a thought, sure.

Only two major points bother me about the idea. First and foremost, I felt like Fitzgerald kept the investigation and the resulting indictments and later prosecution pretty limited when it's clear that the corruption related to the leak of the name of CIA covert operative Valerie Plame as political payback to her husband, Joe Wilson. Why was Karl Rove not called to account when his name appeared all over the damned place, for example.

Second, he was a major prosecutor in a region that seemed to be caring and feeding - and not prosecuting - one of the assassins of Sadat who also factored into 9-11 and more. Granted, it was the CIA who let this guy in, but Fitzgerald and his then-colleague Rudy Giuliani (ah, there's a name) may have been really cozy with this fellow.

Still, I wouldn't exactly jump in front of a train racing to shed Gone-Gone-Gonzalez and substitute Patrick Fitzgerald in his place.

Valerie Plame: "I Was Outed For Purely Political Reasons"

If you didn't happen to catch former CIA covert operative Valerie Plame - the woman Scooter Libby and perhaps also Vice President Dick Cheney and Bush's Brain, Karl Rove exposed by leaking her identity to the press - testify on Capitol Hill today, you can read the transcript at Think Progress which also has the video of Plame's testimony (I'm sure Crooks and Liars also has the video available - yup, click here).

Here's a sniplet:

I’ve served the United States loyally and to the best of my ability as a covert operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency.

I worked on behalf of the national security of our country, on behalf of the people of the United States, until my name and true affiliation were exposed in the national media on July 14th, 2003, after a leak by an administration official.

Today I can tell this committee even more.

In the run-up to the war with Iraq, I worked in the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA, still as a covert officer whose affiliation with the CIA was classified. I raced to discover solid intelligence for senior policymakers on Iraq’s presumed weapons of mass destruction program.
While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence.

Meanwhile, far right wing and rabid anti-Clintonite Victoria Toensing (the voice of authority pretty much exclusively for Geraldo) is pissing all over herself insisting that even the head of the CIA, General Michael Hayden, is wrong to admit Plame was a covert spy. Toensing has the ethics of a Bushie and is truthful just about as often (meaning, less than 0%). However, Henry Waxman was ready to grill her most ably.

Valerie Plame: "I Was Outed For Purely Political Reasons"

If you didn't happen to catch former CIA covert operative Valerie Plame - the woman Scooter Libby and perhaps also Vice President Dick Cheney and Bush's Brain, Karl Rove exposed by leaking her identity to the press - testify on Capitol Hill today, you can read the transcript at Think Progress which also has the video of Plame's testimony (I'm sure Crooks and Liars also has the video available - yup, click here).

Here's a sniplet:

I’ve served the United States loyally and to the best of my ability as a covert operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency.

I worked on behalf of the national security of our country, on behalf of the people of the United States, until my name and true affiliation were exposed in the national media on July 14th, 2003, after a leak by an administration official.

Today I can tell this committee even more.

In the run-up to the war with Iraq, I worked in the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA, still as a covert officer whose affiliation with the CIA was classified. I raced to discover solid intelligence for senior policymakers on Iraq’s presumed weapons of mass destruction program.
While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence.

Meanwhile, far right wing and rabid anti-Clintonite Victoria Toensing (the voice of authority pretty much exclusively for Geraldo) is pissing all over herself insisting that even the head of the CIA, General Michael Hayden, is wrong to admit Plame was a covert spy. Toensing has the ethics of a Bushie and is truthful just about as often (meaning, less than 0%). However, Henry Waxman was ready to grill her most ably.

Yet More Damned Lies The White House Told Us: Bushies Never Investigated PlameGate

Remember how many times they told us that the White House was aggressively investigating the CIA covert operative leak case and would FIRE anyone they found culpable? Well, as always, this was another lie the White House told us, just like the leak of Plame's name was NOT political playback for the exposing of earlier lies by Plame's husband, former Iraq ambassador Joseph Wilson. From Think Progress:

Dr. James Knodell, director of the Office of Security at the White House, revealed today that to his knowledge the White House has never ordered a probe, report, or sanctions as a result of the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. “I have no knowledge of any investigation in my office,” he said.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said he was “shocked” by Knodell’s testimony, adding that the White House’s lack of action was a “breach on top of a breach.”

Knodell claimed the White House did not investigate because there was an outside investigation taking place. But Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) noted that the investigation “didn’t start until months and months later, and [only] had the purpose of narrowly looking to see whether there was a criminal law violated.” Waxman asked, “But there was an obligation for the White House to investigate whether classified information was being leaked inappropriately, wasn’t there?” Knodell answered, “If that was the case, yes.”

So nobody got investigated there and sure as hell, no one was ever fired for it.

Also, the White House SAID it was investigating BEFORE the Patrick Fitzgerald investigation and THEN, when the Fitzgerald probe came about, tried to STOP it.

More On PlameGate: Why Dick Cheney Cracked Up, Plame To Testify Before Congress

With a nod to Buzzflash for the links, I point you to this piece by former CIA biggie Ray McGovern's explanation for why Vice President Dick Cheney cracked up when former Iraq Ambassador Joe Wilson spoke out against the Bush Administration's lies and cooked evidence in the leadup to war in Iraq as well as the announcement that Wilson's wife, former CIA covert operative Valerie Plame (the one "outed" by Cheney and his second-in-command, Scooter Libby, the latter just convicted of lies and obstruction of justice related to the CIA leak from the White House), will testify before Congress related to this issue.

Libby: Guilty On 4 of 5 Counts in CIA Leak/PlameGate Case

Yesterday, as I sat pondering how long the jurors in the CIA Leak/Valerie Plame case against Vice President Dick Cheney's former top assistant, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, I very nearly posted here saying I was concerned that, if the jury did not deadlock, it was likely they would find him Not Guilty on most if not all charges.

So color me somewhat pleasantly surprised when the jury returned with a guilty verdict on four of the five charges from against Scooter by federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. I was neither surprised NOR pleased to hear the cable news networks reporting the verdict as if they felt sorry for the man who - not alone - endangered the life of a covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame as political payback for her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, going public with how the Bush Administration "cooked" a story of aluminum tubes and yellow cake in Niger as part of the case to go to war in Iraq. More than Plame was endangered; she was part of a large team working on WMDs that were endangered.

Libby deserves no sympathy. He simply doesn't. The far rightwing, in fact, have given him so much money for "defense" that he has not had to spend a cent of his personal fortune (and all the Bushies appear very wealthy).

But the one member of the jury who spoke out also seemed to hint at "poor Scooter", saying the jury felt like he was the fall guy for a whole network of wrongdoers. I, too, believe this. But it in no way lessons Libby's culpability.

Now, while he could face years in prison because of these convictions, I doubt the White House will waste any time whatsoever in pardoning Libby. It would be wrong for them to do so, but since when do the Bushies care about justice? And besides, they want to give Libby a reason to "shut up" because, now convicted, he might be more spilling to tell on Cheney and Rove and company for their role in a crime for which only Libby was charged.

You may want to check out the Citizens for Ethics & Responsibility in Washington's (CREW) blog statement on the Libby guilty verdict today ("No man is above the law") while Rolling Stone magazine's National daily blog refers to Libby as "the fall guy" and breaks down the verdicts:

Obstruction of justice: Guilty

False statements to FBI (about conversation with Tim Russert): Guilty

False statements (conversation with Matt Cooper): Not Guilty

Perjury before grand jury (about Russert conversation): Guilty

Purjury before grand jury (about Cooper conversation): Guilty

Libby has been found decisively guilty of a coverup — although he was found not guilty of one count of lying to the FBI, he was found guilty of perjuring himself about that same conversation before the grand jury.

What happens to Scooter, is of course, less interesting. The storm “cloud” over the Vice President, to quote prosecutor, is now darkening. The vital thing going forward is whether the prospect of a few years in club fed is enough to make a loyal footsoldier like Libby rat out his old boss.

Naturally, since the Bushies' abhor justice, Libby is already demanding a new trial.