Some help with sources would be appreciated.
Published: Wednesday, July 11, 2007
The editorial, Libby pardon suggests Bush finished agenda , is wrong on every essential point. Bush deserves criticism for many things, but not for commuting the sentence of someone who committed no crime.
Valerie Plame, referred to as a "senior agent," was only an employee of the CIA. She was not covered by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act because she was not a covert agent; this explains why "there have been no convictions on the leak."
It is also inaccurate to describe Patrick Fitzgerald as a "public prosecutor" in this case, for it gives the incorrect impression that he acted impartially. Fitzgerald knew at the beginning of his investigation that State Department official Richard Armitage was the source for Robert Novak's column that identified Plame.
The jurors weren't much better, with one juror telling the media that they were wondering why they had to listen to underlings such as Libby and asking where are those who were "really responsible?" Never mind, apparently, that even if Vice-president Dick Cheney or Karl Rove or Scooter Libby had been Novak's source, it still would not have been a crime to "out" someone who wasn't "in."
Fitzgerald set up a perjury trap for Libby, specifically that Libby's recollection of dates about when he talked to which reporter about when he first learned of Plame's identity as a CIA employee was at odds with the recollection of NBC's Tim Russert. The absurdity of the charge and conviction are brought into sharper focus when one realizes that perjury is a crime only if the lie is germane to the underlying criminal charge, which is not the case here.
http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/letters/story.html?id=75f3d637-9bff-41ae-b817-1860bd6e2b45