This week's
TIMEmagazine is reporting:
a source close to the investigation told TIME that Fitzgerald and Libby's attorney Joseph Tate discussed possible plea options before the indictment was issued last week. But the deal was scotched because the prosecutor insisted that Libby do some "serious" jail time.
The Libby indictment is truly a Fitzmas gift that will keep on giving! More on the flip...
Perusing the
indictment, one gets indications that Fitzgerald plans to go deeper.
Paragraph 5: On or about June 9, 2003, a number of classified documents from the CIA were faxed to the Office of the Vice President to the personal attention of LIBBY and another person in the Office of the Vice President...
Who is the "other person in the Office of the Vice President?" Fitzgerald has the document, so HE knows.
Libby was interviewed early in the criminal investigation:
As part of the criminal investigation, LIBBY was interviewed by Special Agents of the FBI on or about October 14 and November 26, 2003, each time in the presence of his counsel.
No problem with "lawyering up" unless one changes their story...then one's lawyer can become a witness against their client. :)
An added bonus - Cheney will likely be required to testify in open court, under oath.
There is also the chance that in Mr Libby's trial prosecutors could seek to call Mr Cheney as a witness, especially since it is known he spoke to him about Ms Plame. He could be asked how he learned of Ms Plame's identity and whether he knew or even suggested that his chief of staff speak to reporters about her.
A criminal defendant is guaranteed the right to "confront and cross-examine witnesses against them." There won't be any "depositions" or informal questioning of Cheney about this. :)
Cheney has also gotten on Bush's shit list because of this.
Cheney's relationship with Bush has suffered "a strain, not a rupture," says a presidential adviser. That much was clear when the White House let it be known that Card had called Cheney to inform him of the choice of Miers. In earlier times, he would have been intimately involved in such a decision.
Bush is worrying about his legacy. Does anyone doubt that he cares more about himself than anything else? How long will it be before his starry-eyed counsel, Harriett Miers, suggests to him that he must jettison others to save himself? Bernard Weiner posits:
Maybe Bush is hoping that by dumping Rove and Libby -- and even Cheney if it
comes to that (resigning for "health reasons," of course ) -- he'll be able to stanch the bleeding just below him: a kind of political tourniquet. Throwing
Haldeman and Ehrlichman over the side didn't work for Nixon, but it did buy him a bit of time until the inevitable reckoning. Probably wouldn't work for
Bush either -- without Rove, he's flailing -- but what other options does he have for ultimate distraction other than bombing or invading another country? Rice has offerred the scenario and the likely country: Syria. Don't want to "weaken" a President during "wartime" -- that would be the operative spin.
Scott Ritter wrote an Op-Ed about the indictment:
The crime that was committed goes far beyond the outing of a rogue diplomat's CIA-affiliated spouse, as serious as that charge may be. The deliberate and systematic manner in which the Bush administration, from the president on down, peddled misleading, distorted and fabricated information to Congress and the American people represents a frontal assault on the very system of government the United States of America proclaims to champion.
Fitzgerald was quoted in today's WaPo:
"I will not end the investigation," he said, "until I can look anyone in the eye and tell them that we have carried out our responsibility."
Godspeed, Mr. Fitzgerald.