Scooter Libby Should Never Have Been Prosecuted

by George Jonas - July 21st, 2007 - National Post

-- when sophisticated people lie, as Ed Koch pointed out in a recent column, they tend to say "I don't remember" -- but maybe Libby tried to shield an actual source. In either case, he didn't leak the information. The leak came from Armitage, as Fitzgerald knew. If anyone was misleading the grand jury, it was the prosecutor.

What's more, the leak may not have been a crime. In law, a "covert operative" is someone who has served outside the United States within the last five years, and whose identity is classified information, which the government is taking active measures to conceal. This definition, apparently, never fit Ms. Plame. Also, for such disclosure to be a crime it needs to be intentionally made by someone with authorized access to classified information, which lets off Novak, and possibly Armitage as well.

In any case, Libby had nothing to do with it. At worst, he lied to officials who had no business questioning him in the first place about a non-crime they knew he didn't commit. It's grandstanding prosecutors who are politicizing justice, not Bush. I wouldn't jail Libby for 30 hours, but assuming he deserved 30 months for what he did, Fitzgerald should be looking at 30 years.

This miscarriage of justice has been well documented already, including here on this blog. However I keep hearing people, especially democrats, insisting Libby was engaged in a cover up and got caught. This is a new lie being perpetrated on the American people. If our courts allow this conviction to stand, it is just one more step towards elimination of justice in our nation. The rule of judges is leading to a system so corrupt and evil that it seems more and more likely to be ended with the blood of a civil war. A loss of confidence in the courts is the most serious loss of credibility a government can withstand. It leads inexorably to tyranny and dictatorship.