Too clever by half

[struggle4progress]

<snip> Fitzgerald’s running the thing like a classic organized crime investigation. Republican-oriented pundits, however, are playing dumb. On “Meet the Press,” former New York Times savant William Safire, who spent the Clinton years making futile predictions of Whitewater indictments, claimed that Fitzgerald had exonerated the White House.

“Everybody is walking around thinking, ‘Well, you see? There was a conspiracy to undermine or uncover an agent.’ Well, there wasn’t,” Safire said. “And he said it very clearly. And so I think we ought to keep that in mind. This was a cover-up of a non-crime.”

Safire’s anything but dumb. He and other pundits mouthing the same line are merely hoping you are. In reality, the Libby indictment alleges anything but a technical offense. Comparing himself to a baseball umpire who had sand thrown in his eyes, Fitzgerald pointedly refused to say there was no underlying crime.

“I’ll be blunt,” he said. “That talking point won’t fly. If you’re doing a national security investigation, if you’re trying to find out who compromised the identity of a CIA officer and. . . it is proven that the chief of staff to the vice president went before a federal grand jury and lied under oath repeatedly and fabricated a story about how he learned this information, how he passed it on, and we prove obstruction of justice, perjury and false statements to the FBI, that is a very, very serious matter.” <snip>

http://www.ardemgaz.com/ShowStoryTemplate.asp?Path=ArDemocrat/2005/11/02&ID=Ar01902&Section=Editorial

[MichiganVote]

1. Safire still believes his old GOP exists. Nothing farther from the truth

[justgamma]

2. He admits there was a cover-up?

Will somebody ask him why they would cover-up if there was no crime?

[billr]

3. safire

must be channeling Nixon again.