Rushing To Judgment

Mrs. Laz and I saw a good rendition of the 1950s play “Twelve Angry Men” the other day. It’s great drama that cleverly demonstrates that truth is not always easy to find, and that early judgment and prejudice is the bastion of the ignorant and lazy. And one other thing about the play: it starred George Wendt and the hicks from Sacramento actually held back the urge to yell out “Norrrrrmmmmm!” when he first came on stage. Maybe we’re growing up here, after all.

We saw the play on the heels of the guilty verdict of Scooter Libby and the reflexive and immediate hearings from democrats who promised not to waste your time and, if memory served, had some kind of a 100-day plan that involved something important. Damn if I can remember what it was.

As we now know, Libby was found guilty of what is normally called a process crime – in other words a crime that occurred during the investigation of an underlying crime. Quick judgment has been made by lazy journalists and opportunists from across the aisle that Libby did all sorts of heinous crimes and protected bigger fish up the food chain. Boiled down, however, Libby was found guilty of having a faulty memory, at least compared to that of reporter Tim Russert.

The actual trial was a parade of journalists who had trouble remembering any details of their conversations with Libby and came down to whether or not he talked to Russert on a certain day and what was said. Libby remembers it one way and Russert the other. Memory and juries can be a funny thing and so can judges. The defense brought up several instances when Russert could not remember details of important statements and events but the judge ruled Russert’s fuzzy memory could not be considered by the DC jury that was picked from a pool of republican-hating people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury service. The jury was forced to decide who was telling the truth between the two and settled on Libby as the liar. If only Libby took the Hilary Clinton method of testifying and said “I can’t recall” 250 times he would not be a convicted felon today.

Of course we know now that the original investigation by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was a two-week journey to the truth and ended up being a two-year search to find a criminal without a crime being committed. Most will tell you the investigation was about the leaking of a covert CIA agent’s name, Valerie Plame, to reporter Robert Novak. Fitgerald knew early in his investigation that the State Department’s Richard Armitage was Novak’s source and revealed what he knew without political motivation and without knowing she had been undercover many years before. Armitage was never charged with a crime precisely because under the way the law protecting covert agents is written, there never was a law broken. This is because Plame had become a desk jockey and was known by half the social scene in DC as a CIA analyst at the time she was the subject of Armitage’s obscenity-laced conversation with Novak.

The democrats put on a great stage show this past week, bringing out the injured party herself, Ms. Plame. She complained that her $65,000 per year career was ruined and she could no longer work covertly again – leaving out the part that nobody was considering her for such service ever again. Just to make sure the nutcases watching C-Span were fully bamboozled, hearing chairman Henry Waxman referred to Plame as “covert” as if it were her first name. Obviously if Plame had been covert at the time of Novak’s story, Armitage would be looking for a presidential pardon instead of Libby.

I stopped feeling sorry for Plame and her supposed outing about the time she posed with her husband for the cover of Vanity Fair with gleeful looks abounding. Of course the loss of her secret identity will be eased by her book earnings and from the movie that will be filmed about her travails.

An appeal will settle the matter with Libby and history will allow future generations to have a chuckle at this perverse bit of bad theater, but this investigation could have focused on a different hideous crime: the revealing of numerous state secrets to the press by real intelligence personnel, the publishing of these facts by certain newspapers and the curious underwear stuffing by former National Security Council chief Sandy Berger.

Most of those who really work at the Pickle Farm would rather see these bad actors pay the price for these very real and damaging breeches of national security. And this would not come from a rush to judgment, but from a real and methodical understanding of the truth.