March 8, 2007
The Libby Verdict II Posted by John Steele Gordon at 10:45 AM EST I largely agree with Fredric Smoler here, but I have a few comments. 1) I think the contrast between the New York Times editorial on the subject yesterday and that of the Washington Post is a perfect example of how pathetic the New York Times editorial page has become in recent years under Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. Its editorials, especially on political subjects, have become ever more badly written, poorly argued, and intellectually dishonest. They are also boring, because to know the subject of a New York Times editorial is to know its contents, so why bother reading it? I have noticed of late that the letters to the editor column seems to have almost no letters that disagree with the paper’s positions. I wonder if that is because of deliberate policy or because no one but the choir bothers to read the editorials and write letters to the Times anymore. 2) I am in no position to argue with the jury’s verdict, as I only followed the trial in the papers and on TV; I didn’t sit there day after day. But let me note one thing. I was speaking with a very distinguished litigator the other day and I asked him what he thought the outcome of the trial would be. He agreed with me that it seemed to be a case of he said/he said, which isn’t much to base a perjury conviction on, but was quite certain Libby would be convicted. I asked why, and he said, “It’s a D.C. jury.” His point was that Washington is a city steeped in politics (it has no other reason to even exist), and the jury pool is overwhelmingly Democratic (John Kerry took 48.75 percent of the vote nationally but 90.5 percent of the vote in the District of Columbia). How about in the future granting an automatic change of venue for these sorts of trials to a swing state at least 500 miles from Washington? 3) While Lewis Libby may have committed perjury and obstructed justice, he should never have had the chance to. Patrick Fitzgerald’s brief was to answer two questions: Was a crime committed in the “outing” of Valerie Plame and, if so, by whom? But Fitzgerald knew from the very beginning that the answers to those questions were (1) no, and (2) Richard Armitage. He should have shut down the investigation within a month. According to Robert Novak, whose column in July 2003 started this whole sad mess, David Boies, a nationally-famous lawyer (he headed Al Gore’s post-election team in 2000), said that “Fitzgerald never should have prosecuted Libby because there was no underlying criminal violation. Boies scoffed at Fitzgerald’s contention that Libby had obstructed him from exposing criminal activity.” 4) One thing that is unequivocally clear is that appointing special prosecutors to handle politically sensitive cases is the worst idea to arise out of American democracy since Prohibition. Every single time this has happened in the last 20 years, from Iran-Contra to Whitewater to Valerie Plame, it has been a disaster, for democracy, for justice, and for American politics. Let this be the last of this misbegotten idea that serves only journalists (and in this case not even them).
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