Of all the mendacious arguments Libby defenders make, the one I loathe the most is the glib assertion that notwithstanding the clear fact that Libby lied to the FBI and grand jury (obstruction of justice almost never makes it into this argument), there was no 'underlying crime.'
Now that Libby's sentence has been commuted, I'm sure we'll hear the old reliable Douchebags of Liberty trot it out again.
Just for kicks, why is this argument such patent nonsense?
Ultimately the underlying crime behind the obstruction of justice and perjury trial was about who said what to whom. That is itself the issue under investigation.
Say you have classified information you want to sneak to someone else - possibly in contravention of the law. How do you do this? You can show someone a piece of paper. Maybe even give them their own copy.
Or you can just open your mouth and tell someone.
In the world of keeping secrets, that in itself can be a crime.
So: underlying crime = talking.
If this case were a TV show, it would be called CSI: Gossip.
While these asinine pundits natter on about 'no underlying crime,' they mean to suggest that there should be a chalk outline here somewhere. (Well, there may in fact be people who died as a result of the disclosure of Valerie Plame's non-official cover. We'll wait for the CIA assessment of the costs of this exposure.)
But if the possible crime involves conversations, you don't investigate DNA evidence, cell phone records, or ballistic reports.
You have to piece together records of these conversations: through e-mails, phone logs, visitor logs, and people's recollections. And what the jury found in the Scooter Libby case what that Libby had undeniably lied to investigators at every turn about these conversations. The evidence of what every other person recalled and what every shred of documentary evidence stated led to the jury (which many of Scooter's defenders don't dispute)convicting Libby on most counts of perjury and obstruction of justice.
And why did Scooter lie?
Scooter obstructed justice in order to stop the investigation into the ongoing effort by the Bush Administration to both lie this country into war and then do anything within their means to cover up for that fact.
Scooter then he had to swear that his faulty memory had produced these inadvertent lies - because if he'd admitted that spilling secrets was intentional, he would have thus admitted to a federal crime.
But hey - Valerie Plame was only working on tracking attempts of foreign governments (such as Iran!) to obtain and proliferate WMD. Not like we need that expertise or anything.
(And here's an irony:
Isn't it funny that the only one to do jail time was Judy Miller?)