The Boston Herald Joins The “Pardon Libby” Chorus
[N]ow that the top deputy to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell has admitted he was the source of the revelation that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA, the case against Lewis “Scooter” Libby has become too trivial to pursue.
President Bush should pardon Libby, who was chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney until he was indicted on charges that he misled investigators and a grand jury about his conversations with reporters on the Plame story. (Libby asserts that he was so busy he simply misremembered who said what to whom about who sent Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, on an intelligence mission about Saddam Hussein’s hunt for uranium – a mission whose findings Wilson lied about.)
Chances of a conviction in Libby’s January trial, never good, are now nil. The special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, already has said no crime was committed in the disclosure of Plame’s identity. Why force Libby to keep the lawyer’s billing meter ticking?
I increasingly think Libby will have to go to trial, as expensive as that may be; a pardon will only fuel the ‘conspiracy’ fires at a time when they are at their lowest ebb, and he’s not going to be convicted, in all likelihood. Of course, that’s all easy for me to say, since I’m not the one faces criminal charges in this trumped-up affair…
Perhaps a pardon on November 8th is in order.
Interesting, since Mr. Fitzgerald has known this all along, and yet he “thought” (I’ve yet to see the capability for actual thought from Mr. Fitzgerald) the case was not to trivial to pursue.