Libby Indicted. More to Come?

It's late and I'll post more tomorrow, but as you all know "Scooter" Libby was indicted by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. So it seems that Libby went around telling reports (Novak, Miller, etc) about Valerie Plame being a CIA covert agent, and he learned it from an unnamed source (Karl Rove? Cheney?) Libby's been indicted on two counts of perjury, two counts of making false statements, and one count of obstruction of justice. This is a big deal.

Fitzgerald says the investigation will remain open in order to gather more info (perhaps with a new grand jury), but as it stands now, Libby's the only one on the block (he's resigned). Fitzgerald has made it clear that he's not trying to go after the case for the war, and he's only dealing with the matters in this serious case. Consider this: hat tip: Daniel Drezner:


the whole notion that the Fitzgerald investigation was going to reveal how the Bush administration led us into Iraq now seems to have been completely wrong. Democrats wanted their own Ken Starr--a prosecutor who let his investigation metastasize and whose operation leaked like a sieve. Instead, they got Elliot Ness. As Fitzgerald himself put it at his press conference:

This indictment is not about the war. This indictment's not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel.

This is simply an indictment that says, in a national security investigation about the compromise of a CIA officer's identity that may have taken place in the context of a very heated debate over the war, whether some person -- a person, Mr. Libby -- lied or not.
The indictment will not seek to prove that the war was justified or unjustified. This is stripped of that debate, and this is focused on a narrow transaction.

And I think anyone's who's concerned about the war and has feelings for or against shouldn't look to this criminal process for any answers or resolution of that.

Of course many on the Left won't be happy until Bush and the whole administration are dragged out in chains, but as it stands now, they won't get their wish from this indictment. For those who support the war, and/or Bush, be advised that this indictment is no small small matter. Those responsible for this leak, if it really was a deliberate act to smear Joe Wilson, which it looks like it was, committed serious crimes. That ought not be lost in the fog of politics, by either side.

Read the text of the indictment here.