The Mis-state of the Libby Trial
From Clarice Feldman, one of the most able commentators on the Libby Trial, at Just One Minute, summing up the current cross examination:
"So--Libby said at [his initial FBI] interview says that he "didn't recall" and [FBI agent] Eckenrode writes Libby "adamantly denied it", [FBI agent] Bond [currently being cross examined by Libby's team] knows[her boss] Eckenrode's characterization is wrong, but keeps her mouth shut, and at the [Grand Jury] Libby is confronted with "adamantly denied" and has no evidence to contest that that is what he said. And it is before the [Grand Jury] where he has no counsel to object to this.
Do you like this, possums?"*****
Still more from Clarice on this point:
pretend you're in the gj..You told the FBI agents that you didn't recall something, you are (as Libby was) confronted with a summary of the interview which says instead that you "adamantly denied" the very thing you told them you couldn't recall..how would you respond?
Then imagine hours of this.
Kafkaesque.No?
Clarifications in square parentheses are mine.
As Clarice has now pointed out numerous times, if you go before the FBI to testify, do not say a word unless video tape is being used.
UPDATE II: From James Lewis at American Thinker, from an article entitled Fitz the Gullible?:
The prosecutor's faith in the media therefore passeth mere mortal understanding. No one who knows the bottom-feeding habits of our journos could possibly be so virginal. Any professional historian knows better --- because careful research always shows the big headlines of the day to be a slapdash made-up job. Smart news folk like H.L. Mencken and A.J. Liebling notoriously think of their profession as an endless clown parade. And any blogger who remembers Dan Rather, Reuters fauxtography, and a slew of New York Times fabrications, has to be utterly skeptical about the media narrative.
(That's why they call it a narrative, Counselor. It's a story. They make it up. It's not really that complicated.)
...Unfortunately for Patrick Fitzgerald, our conscientious reporters didn't even bother to take readable notes of the crucial conversations that have now placed Mr. Libby in the dock. Their memory for fleeting words heard many months ago is as just bad as anybody else's --- which is utterly dismal. The newsies never even bothered to use tape recorders, trained stenographers, personal organizers, or any of the other tools at the disposal of the merest junior attorney at the local ambulance chaser's office. It looks like they just followed each other's buzz, and if they all agreed on some conspiratorial version of events over that evening's booze, that had to be grist for the next day's headlines. This trial has therefore turned into an ordeal by baying newshounds. If Libby can sprint fast enough to survive their yipping and biting, he will be a free man. If not, he will be in jail.
Trial by ordeal is not exactly in the best tradition of Western jurisprudence, but that is exactly what we are left with. All thanks to our "prosecutor's prosecutor" and the tabloid press, working hand in hand.
ordeal by baying newshounds Heh! That pretty much sums it up.
Labels: Domestic Politics, Plame, Scooter Libby, Wilson
posted by Alcibiades @ 1:19 PM
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