Time Online Addition: Fall of a Vulcan

[norml]

From the Magazine | Nation
Fall of a Vulcan
How a very smart and very loyal aide to Dick Cheney got indicted for allegedly lying about his role in defending the war
By MICHAEL DUFFY
SUBSCRIBE TO TIMEPRINTE-MAILMORE BY AUTHOR
Posted Sunday, Oct. 30, 2005


Scooter Libby always had a knack for fiction. He once penned a thriller set in Japan that a critic praised for its "storytelling skill" and "conspiratorial murmurs." Then, in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he earned the scorn of officials at the CIA and State Department for inserting unchecked, raw intelligence into speeches to vilify Saddam Hussein and boost the case for war. One hard-to-kill Libby favorite: the irresistible tale about how 9/11 mastermind Mohammed Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague five months before the hijackings. That red herring kept creeping back into Vice President Dick Cheney's speeches long after it had been debunked.

Libby was such a good storyteller that some in Cheney's circle believed he had even managed to fool Cheney about his qualifications to be the Veep's chief of staff. Cheney raised a lot of eyebrows in 2001 when he named Libby to be both his national security adviser--a spot for which Libby was certainly qualified--and his top domestic political adviser--a job for which he possibly was not. It was an astonishing, and some people said, unprecedented amount of power for a single staff member. Libby also managed to grab the high-ranking title of assistant to the President and a seat on the National Security Council, not to mention his own CIA intelligence briefing every morning, just like his two bosses. From that powerful position, Libby helped the Vice President in his first term cement his reputation as a bold interventionist abroad and a friend of the corporate world and its oil companies at home. When Cheney quietly tried to bring a more experienced political hand on board to steady his creaky operation in late 2004, Libby maneuvered even more quietly behind the scenes to keep her out.

But the part-time novelist and full-time infighter has met an unforgiving critic. If special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is right, Libby spun an intricate--and criminal--web of lies when he spoke to FBI agents and a grand jury last year investigating the disclosure of CIA officer Valerie Plame to reporters in 2003. Although Libby maintained under oath that he first heard about Plame's identity from reporters and passed it on to others as mere gossip, Fitzgerald's indictment offers considerable evidence that it was the other way around--that Libby told two reporters, including TIME's Matthew Cooper, about Plame's work for the CIA, and that he lied to investigators about one of those conversations and confected a third out of whole cloth.

Although Fitzgerald has so far drawn a tight circle around Libby that may leave President George W. Bush's longtime alter ego, Karl Rove, bloodied but secure, the United States v. I. Lewis Libby has already reopened old wounds about why the U.S. went to war in the first place. In an unprecedented and awkward fashion, the case pits government officials against the reporters who cover them. And Fitzgerald's indictment sets the stage for either a trial next spring or a plea bargain that almost certainly would mean jail time for Libby. That possibility has already been discussed: a source close to the investigation told TIME that Fitzgerald and Libby's attorney Joseph Tate discussed possible plea options before the indictment was issued last week. But the deal was scotched because the prosecutor insisted that Libby do some "serious" jail time.


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http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1124343,00.html

[Demeter]

1. As A LIfelong Star Trek Fan, NOTHING Burns Me Up Like

this bunch of murderous thieves calling themselves Vulcans. Even the Romulans would be insulted, or the Klingons. They should call themselves the Borg: hive-like mentality, grotesque twistings of nature, and mindless urge to assimilate and turn everything into shit.