Senators want Fitzgerald to testify

[Lanya]

Leahy said he saw no point in summoning Libby himself because "his silence has been bought and paid for."

Senators want Libby prosecutor to testify

Sun Jul 8, 2:19 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate Judiciary Committee may seek testimony from controversial prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about the obstruction of justice case against vice presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby, two senators said on Sunday.


Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican member of the committee, said he wanted to hear from Fitzgerald because, "I still haven't figured out what that case is all about."

Libby, the one-time top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, was found guilty in March of obstructing an investigation into who blew the cover of a CIA analyst whose husband had criticized the Iraq war.

Libby was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison, but President George W. Bush commuted the sentence, angering many Democrats and some Republicans.

Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, has called for the Judiciary Committee to seek Fitzgerald's testimony on the matter.

"Reluctant as I am to agree with Senator Schumer, I think he's right," Specter said on CNN's "Late Edition."

"Why were they pursuing the matter long after there was no underlying crime on the outing of the CIA agent? Why were they pursuing it after we knew who the leaker was?" Specter said.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said that with Specter's blessing, Fitzgerald would likely be called.

"If he has no objection to Mr. Fitzgerald coming forward, I think you may very well see Mr. Fitzgerald before the Senate Judiciary Committee," Leahy said on the same CNN program.

Fitzgerald's critics point out no one was ever charged with leaking the CIA agent's name and the prosecutor pursued Libby long after he knew who had provided her name to the press. But others said obstruction of justice was a serious crime and Fitzgerald was right to continue the case.

Leahy said he saw no point in summoning Libby himself because "his silence has been bought and paid for."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070708/us_nm/usa_crime_libby_senate_dc

[gipper]

I don't know how strongly to state this because I don't know the facts as they exist in the final repository of reality, what we can call the "mind off God," which I take as the imaginary index of each excruciating detail in all their inculpatory or exonerative degeneracy or glory, as the case may be. That said, I have no qualms venturing the opinion based on common knowledge of character and modus operandi that Vice President Cheney either "planted the idea" of attacking Plame's (former) covertness as a way of slapping her husband with a sample of the retaliiation the administration was capable of, thus cowing him, or else Cheney directly and corruptly chose that route as commensurate with the type of "hard ball" needed in the War on Terror and its duped fellow-travelers here in the states. Indeed, you can almost hear him bark, "Don't fuck with us."

Yet, as these things go, the damn nag is now only a bloody pulp, long since departed. Rather than resurrect what appears more and more to be a gotcha game -- unless, of course, one can realistically expect to unearth evidence of a conspiracy-to-gag concerning the most important issue off recent times -- I suggest that it would behoove us to attend to the plate full of "main courses" that now await our attention, whose seriousness cannot be gainsaid.

[BT]

Gip

As you so gladly illustrate, this is a political issue. And it must remain on the front page. The goal is not to challenge the pardon powers of the presidency it is to further politicize the issue and give opportunity for pithy soundbites like those uttered by Leahy in order to pander to their base.

Perhaps they saw that Gallop Poll.

[Plane]

That said, I have no qualms venturing the opinion based on common knowledge of character and modus operandi that Vice President Cheney either "planted the idea" of attacking Plame's (former) covertness as a way of slapping her husband with a sample of the retaliiation the administration was capable of, thus cowing him, or else Cheney directly and corruptly chose that route as commensurate with the type of "hard ball" needed in the War on Terror and its duped fellow-travelers here in the states.

Isn't this a rather strange way to attack anyone?

Left handed and unlikely seems to me , Why did Wilsons version of this decision get so widely beleived?

Surely Wilson was not in on it himself?