Why Was Libby Tried and Not Armitage?

Posted on by

People who have read my opinions about the FBI raid of Rocky Flats and the actions by the Justice Department in the months and years to follow probably won’t be surprised that I am interested in how our government applies what they call justice. The manner in which the “Plame affair” evolved is an interesting example. The story began with the January 28, 2003 State of the Union Address by President George W. Bush in which he said, “The British government had learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Nigeria.” State Department official Joseph C. Wilson travelled to Nigeria to investigate the claim for the CIA, and wrote a series of articles disputing what the President had said. One article published in the New York Times was titled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.” There was an extensive investigation after a Robert Novak column about the dispute identified Valerie Plame to be Wilson’s wife and a CIA operative. The investigation was to determine the source of Novak’s information, and whether that person had violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who had been Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff, was the only person tried, and he was tried for perjury and not for being the Novak’s source. Patrick Fitzgerald, the Special Counsel who led the investigation is said to have known from early in the investigation that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the source of Novak’s information, but Armitage was never indicted.

The Novak column created a maelstrom that consumed media reporting and partisan politics. President Bush promised that anyone in his administration responsible for revealing Plame’s identity would be held accountable, and the investigation focused on Vice President Cheney, Libby, Karl Rove, Press Secretary Air Fleisher, and many other assorted Bush Administration staff members and assistants. Cheney’s many enemies were rooting for his name to come out on top. However, the facts didn’t play out to be as sinister as the original stories implied. Novak was quoted as saying, “I learned Valarie Plame’s name from Joe Wilson’s entry in ‘Who’s Who in America’.” He confirmed the Wilson/Plame connection in a conversation with Richard Armitage. Karl Rove was eventually identified as Novak’s second source about Plame. Rove testified to the grand jury that he had learned of Plame’s CIA affiliation from journalists. Novak had told Rove what he knew about Plame, and Rove responded, “Oh, you’ve heard about that.”

Armitage was aggressively investigated, and was directed to divulge his role to no one, including President Bush. He is said to have been very distressed about the matter, prepared a resignation letter, but stayed in the State Department for some time to prevent speculation if he departed suddenly. He fully cooperated with investigators without legal counsel, and was not indicted because investigators believed he had been honest with them and hadn’t considered Plame to be an undercover agent when he talked to Novak. Armitage was advised in February 2006 that he would not be charged.

Fitzgerald intended to indict Rove until he learned that Rove had instructed his aides to “find any records of that contact” in reference to his off-hand comment to Novak. Libby wasn’t as fortunate. Libby had learned of Plame’s identity from Vice President Cheney in early June 2003. He discussed her with several other government officials and at least two reporters in early July 2003. He originally told the grand jury he had first heard about Plame from reporter Tim Russert, and Russert testified that his discussion with Libby about Plame came after the Novak column.

The jury was torn about what to decide about Libby. One said that they had commented they wished they weren’t judging him. “We don’t like being here…What we came up with …was that Libby was told about Mrs. Wilson nine times…We believed he did have a bad memory, but it seemed unlikely he would not remember…after being told so many times.” One woman on the jury cried when the verdict was announced, and said she hoped Libby would eventually be pardoned by President Bush. She also said, “It kind of bothers me that there was this whole big crime being investigated and he got caught up in the investigation as opposed to the actual crime that was supposedly committed.” I don’t think there is a need to add anything to that comment.

Witness

Posted on by

by Whittaker Chambers
Originally published in 1952; reprinted in 2001 by Regnery Publishing, Inc.
ISBN 0-89526-789

This 800 page small print book is regarded as reference material about the dangers of liberalism by conservatives. I assure you I can’t sort out all the key points in a short review, but I’ll give it a try.  The book chronicles the life of Jay Vivian Chambers (who, after a lifetime of embarrassment about what his parents had named him, changed his name to the one listed as the author above).    Chambers grew up in a destructively dysfunctional family and turned to Communism out of despair over world events.  He was the courier for an active espionage network in the government for several years, and began to doubt the validity of communism after word began to spread about the extent of the Soviet purges.  He decided he had to leave the party after Stalin signed a mutual defense pact with Hitler.  He initially went into hiding, remembering the Communist saying, “Any fool can commit a murder, but it takes and artist to commit a good natural death.”  He went to Adolph Berle of the FBI in 1939 and told him about his association with the Communists and named several of his associates.  He omitted discussion of espionage.  (Berle’s notes on the meeting begin on page 466.)  Berle briefed FDR on the information, who laughed at him.  When Berle became insistent about the information,   FDR told him to “go fly a kite,” only in less polite language.

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which included a young Richard M. Nixon, called Chambers to testify nine years later.  Chambers had been accepted into the Communist party by Ben Mandel, who was the research director for HUAC when he was called to testify.  His testimony accurately repeated the allegations he had filed previously with the FBI, and mentioned (once again) that Alger Hiss, a senior State Department official in the then Truman administration, was part of his spy ring.  That allegation ignited a storm of publicity and controversy.  Hiss denied the charges (and maintained his innocence until his death in 1996).  There followed years of investigations, including two Grand Jury trials, and the eventual perjury conviction of Alger Hiss. Continue reading →

The Sugar King of Havana

Posted on by

Subtitled, The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba’s Last Tycoon
by John Paul Rathbone

This is a great book!  It elegantly intertwines the fascinating biography of Julio Lobo and his rise to be the most powerful sugar broker in the world with Cuban history. Much of the history is of revolutionary events, including Castro’s revolution and the close association of Cuba with the United States.  The author’s mother was a friend of Lobo’s daughters, and I think that allows richness to the book that is possible because of the personal connections.

I intend to begin with an overview, which is mostly quoted from the flap of the book, followed by  selected snippets with page numbers for reference.

Overview—The legendary wealth of sugar magnate Julio Lobo and his reign as the most powerful force in world sugar markets ended 18 months after Castro marched into Havana.  Lobo was born in 1898, the year of Cuba’s independence, and he had “…an extraordinary life that mirrored, in almost lurid Technicolor, the many rises and final fall of the Cuban Republic.”  Lobo not only often had the world sugar market cornered, he also had the largest collection of Napoleonica outside of France, faced a firing squad only to be pardoned at the last moment, survived a gangland shooting, and cavorted with numerous movie stars and several mistresses.  He described himself as being a good son, good brother, and good father, but correctly did not mention that he was a good husband. Continue reading →

All the Shah’s Men

Posted on by

All The Shah’s Men, An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror
By Stephen Kinzer
Published by John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

The United States took the lead in organizing, funding, and carrying out the 1953 coup that removed the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, and restored Mohammad Reza Shah to the Peacock Throne. Iranians generally had admiration and respect for Americans, but the coup created hatred and distrust. The oppressive regime of the Shah led to his overthrow in 1979 by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.   Predicting alternative history is at best imprecise, but perhaps without this coup Khomeini would not have come to power. Perhaps the United States would not have decided to give the Shah asylum, which precipitated the Iranian hostage crises. Perhaps Jimmy Carter would have been elected to a second term. Perhaps the Iranians would not have supported insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places, and perhaps they wouldn’t be pursuing development of nuclear weapons. Of course that is all meaningless speculation, since the CIA did engineer the overthrow of the legitimate leader of Iran and installed a replacement who used brutality to remain in power until the Carter administration decided Khomeini and his plane full of supporters should not be killed when they landed in Tehran.

Iran was poor but strategically located at a time when the Russians and the West were vying for advantage. The country became even more important when massive deposits of oil were discovered. The British moved in, negotiated a deal to control the oil with most of the profits going to the English, and acted like selfish imperialists. Their refinery managers lived in luxury next to the Iranian workers who lived in squalor. Iranians were pleased when Mohammed Mossadegh became their leader. He inspired memories of the Persian Zoroastrian religious belief that people have the right to enlightened leadership, the duty to obey wise rulers, and a further duty to rise up against the wicked. Mossadegh saw the British as wicked, nationalized the oil resources and refinery of the British-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and pushed the British out of the country. Time Magazine named him “Man of the Year” in 1951. 

 Continue reading →

What tax rates are fair, and who decides?

Posted on by

News reports are filled with politicians debating whether cuts in tax rates passed in the Bush era should be extended, or whether rates for people making the most money should have their rates increased.  Would you be surprised to hear that the share of the tax burden paid by the highest income earners increased after the Bush tax cuts were fully in effect, according to the data in the Tax Foundation report?  The top 0.1% of earners paid 15.68% of all taxes in 2003 and 18.47% of the total in 2008. The top 1% of earners paid 34.27 % of total taxes in 2003 and 38.02% in 2008.   On the other end of the spectrum, the bottom 50% of earners paid 3.46% of the total tax burden in 2003, and that percentage has dropped every year since to 2.70% in 2008.

What tax rate is fair? The Freeman Online has a quote that, “Under Roosevelt, the top rate was…raised—first to 79 percent and later to 90 percent. In 1941, in fact, Roosevelt proposed a 99.5 percent marginal rate on all incomes over $100,000. ‘Why not?’ he said when an adviser questioned him.”   I would hope most people wouldn’t think that to be either good policy or fair.  I believe we have a powerful economy and country in large part because there are incentives to succeed through energetic efforts and willingness to take risks.  Those who have their risks rewarded gain wealth for themselves and employ others.  Some politicians encourage us to resent those who have succeeded financially, and promise they will take more from the wealthy and dole out services to those deemed worthy by massive, inefficient bureaucracies.  Margaret Thatcher said, “The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money” (The quote is included in Mike Rosen’s column on page 11B of the Denver Post, December 10, 2010.)

Shellacked

Posted on by

President Obama recently characterized what happened in the November elections as a “shellacking” of the Democratic Party. Word Detective explains that shellac was introduced in the 17th century for use as furniture polish. The slang became a description of very drunk, badly beaten, or vanquished. The word detective proposes that those meanings “comes from the fact that shellacking is often the last step in furniture manufacture, so when someone is ‘shellacked’, he or she is absolutely, positively finished and done.”