SPECIAL PROSECUTOR PATRICK FITZGERALD: OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE

Excerpt from an article by lawyer Raymond S. Kraft

On July 14, 2003, Robert Novak published a column in the Washington Post in which he identified retired Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife as Valerie Plame, who worked for the CIA. Her husband immediately charged that somebody in the White House, whether Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, George Bush, or one of their aides acting on orders, had "outed" his wife in conspiratorial retaliation for Wilson's charges in the New York Times that Bush lied when he cited intelligence that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Niger. Wilson, with brazen disingenuity, took monumental umbrage at the idea that Bush, Cheney, Rove, or all of them, were trying to "discredit" him in response to his overtly partisan, political attempt to discredit President Bush. Wilson's claim that President Bush lied proved, in the end, to be a lie, and it is Wilson's own reputation that now lies on the ignominious dunghill of history.

These events led to the now infamous investigation of the alleged "outing" of the allegedly "undercover" Valerie Plame by Somebody in the Bush White House by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. I will not detail the subsequent convolution of events. They are too well known to need repeating. The Wickepedia article on Valerie Plame runs to eleven pages, with many footnotes, references, and citations.

Three years later, on September 7, 2006, Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage publicly, finally, acknowledged that he was Novak's source for the disclosure that Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA. The Associated Press report by Matt Apuzzo (September 8) states that "Armitage's admission suggests that the leak did not originate at the White House . . . " ...

Armitage reports, too, most notably, that (as the AP story reads): "Fitzgerald, he said, had requested that he not talk about his role in the case, a restriction that was lifted only Tuesday." In his interview on ABC News Armitage said that his disclosure was inadvertent, merely careless or negligent, an unfortunate bit of gossip, and it apparently did not violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which requires specific intent. But it did hobble the Presidency for three years.

On July 11, 2006, Bob Novak reported that "For nearly the entire time of his investigation, Fitzgerald knew - independent of me - the identity of the sources I used in my column of July 14, 2003 . . That Fitzgerald did not indict any of these sources may indicate his conclusion that none of them violated the Intelligence Identities Act." In other words, from very early in this long investigation, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald knew that Richard Armitage was the source of Novak's information, and that the White House was not, and that the Intelligence Identities Protection Act had not by violated. Not by anyone. And Fitzgerald concealed this knowledge, his knowledge that the prime suspects were innocent, and told Armitage not to talk about it....

If, promptly upon learning, a year or two ago, that Richard Armitage was the source of the leak, Patrick Fitzgerald had disclosed that the "case had been solved, the leak has been found, and no crime has been committed," he would no longer have had any reason to continue his investigation, interviewing the President, parading Cheney, Rove, Libby, and other witnesses before the Grand Jury, or himself before the phalanx of cameras on Capitol Hill. He would have had to find other work... In my opinion, it is time to prosecute the Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald for obstruction of justice.

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ELSEWHERE

There is an unsigned feature article in Britain's Sunday Times that revives the breastbeating about "racism" in the much misrepresented "Tuskegee" study of syphilis in American blacks that began in the 1930s. The author is aware of the debunking given to the misrepresentations by Shweder but ignores most of the points Shweder made. The article seems to be a promo for a forthcoming book called Medical Apartheid by historian Harriet Washington, to be published in the US early next year. So what is new in the new book? Apparently, all that has been discovered is that the medical researchers of the 1930s had "racist" beliefs. Since just about everyone in the 1930s had racist beliefs by the standards of today, that is not much of a discovery. For details about the horrific "treatments" available for syphilis in the 1930s, see here.

A Leftist here has a big list of historical events that show how hostile to the Left the Islamists are. He concludes: "It does not need slogans to understand that the Islamist programme, ideology and record are diametrically opposed to the left - that is, the left that has existed on the principles founded on and descended from classical socialism, the Enlightenment, the values of the revolutions of 1798 and 1848, and generations of experience."

A REALLY bent poll: "The owner of DataUSA Inc., a company that conducted political polls for the campaigns of President Bush, Sen. Joe Lieberman and other candidates, pleaded guilty to fraud for making up survey and poll results. Tracy Costin pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Costin, 46, faces a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 when she is sentenced Nov. 30.... According to a federal indictment, Costin told employees to alter poll data, and managers at the company told employees to "talk to cats and dogs" when instructing them to fabricate the surveys. FBI Special Agent Jeff Rovelli said 50 percent of information compiled by DataUSA and transmitted to Bush's campaign was falsified, the Connecticut Post reported Thursday."

Professor Stiglitz and the minimum wage: "Nothing gets me more upset than when someone brings up an argument supporting minimum wage legislation. It's not that I can't counter the argument; it's just that it takes some time to do. So, once and for all, I'm going to target the main motivation for minimum wage advocates in academia: politics. Minimum wage is one of the only subjects nearly all economists agree upon. Quite simply, to believe in the merit of minimum wage laws is to misconstrue the fundamental claims of economics."

MO: Democrats squelch democracy: "The backers of two ballot proposals limiting government spending and eminent domain gave up their legal fight Tuesday to get the constitutional amendments on the Nov. 7 ballot. Both initiative petitions had been rejected in May by Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, who concluded they were not properly organized under state law. Cole County Circuit Judge Richard Callahan upheld that decision in July. Courts also struck down the financial estimates attached to both initiative petitions."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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