Plamegate -- Not with a bang, but with a whimper

I thought I would never see the day that I agreed with GWB on anything.  But I think that day is here.  He has said the Plamegate investigation is over, and sadly, I am coming to the conclusion he is right.

I bet the CIA is just sick at the present state of affairs.  Certainly, when the CIA made its complaints about the outing of Plame, it was not its desire to have an adminstration scapegoat indicted for perjury, of all things.  One would think the CIA wanted prosecutions under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or under the Espionage Act.  The CIA probably could have cared less about prosecutions for perjury.

Now that Rove appears not to face charges for perjury and Fitz's modus operandi is not to charge anyone with the outing of an agent (heaven forbid!), there really is nowhere to go.

More after the flip.

Cheney never testified under oath, nor did GWB.  So they cannot be prosecuted for perjury.  

All last weekend, I wondered if Rove had made a deal with Fitz, under the pressure of a sealed indictment.  I confirmed with my local US District Clerk that sealed indictments were not common but they happened enough not to raise eyebrows when they were.

But the only reason for Fitzgerald to want Rove's testimony and cooperation would be to prosecute someone up the ladder; but the ladder only has two more rungs: Cheney and Bush.

But now I realize that there is no crime that Bush or Cheney would be prosecuted for so what is the point of Rove's coerced cooperation?

If you can't prosecute Bush or Cheney for perjury or obstruction of justice, then what can you prosecute them for?  Outing an agent?  How would you do that?  

Bush and Cheney's defense would always be that presidents and vice-presidents are elected to make tough choices about the lives of our citizens and if they believed it was in the interest of national security to disclose the identity of an agent, as president and vice president, they have the discretion to make disclosure.  If Fitzgerald wouldn't prosecute Libby or Rove for outing an agent, he certainly is not going to prosecute Bush or Cheney for outing an agent, both of whom would have much better defenses.

The CIA wanted prosecutions for outing an agent.  It was right to do so.  It needed to know if the statutes that were designed to protect it's agents had any teeth.  Legal jurisprudence also needed to know.  Plame was a textbook case on the matter and Fitzgerald took a pass.  So now the CIA does not know whether there really is law to protect it's agents (it would certainly be justified in suspecting not) and legal scholars don't know either.

Instead what we get is a prosecutuion for perjury and a lone scapegoat.  De Genova and others are already calling for a Libby pardon.  Under the circumstances, as much as I hate pardons for political crimes, I can see the point.

I didn't like it when Martha Stewart was indicted for perjury when the underlying charge was stock manipulation.  I didn't like it any better when Libby got charged for perjury when the underlying charge was outing an agent.  But that seems to be federal prosecution these days.

So, my conclusion is that Plamegate is whimpering to an end.  A Libby conviction (if it happens) will not suffice for me.  I would have much rather seen Libby and Rove prosecutions under the IIPA or the Espionage Act with verdicts of not guilty.  At least the CIA and legal jursiprudence would have derived some benefit, even with not-guilty verdicts.

Call me very disappointed.

And if someone could prove me wrong, I would truly be delighted.