Lying about sex, lying about gossip
Wednesday March 7, 2007
I've been reading some of the conservative defenses of Scooter Libby, saying he shouldn't have been convicted for lying to federal investigators, and that this case should never have been brought because there was no underlying crime. What I can't...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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I agree, it is not different. If he is guilty, he IS guilty. I don't know enough to really know, so I will trust our justice system to come to the right conclusions.
I can't stand it when Republicans pull this kind of garbage.
I don't know that there is much difference. In my opinion, both cases showed ridiculous prosecutorial overkill. Starr spent, what, $40 million? Fitzgerald put journalists in jail, for this?
I think it's fair for Rod to point out the double standard. But, looking at the Libby case and looking back at the Clinton fiasco, it's my opinion that it's much wiser to let the small stuff go. With no underlying crime in either case, perjury is a pretty weak charge.
I agree with Chris. What's the point of spending millions of our dollars for this. Both the Libby case and the Clinton case were all about politics by criminal prosecution.
Rod, I'm not particularly a fan of Mr. Clinton's - gay citizens lost much more under his reign than they gained. However, to Willy's 'defense', he said he never had sex with that woman, Ms lewinsky, and America, for the most part, this is not a lie, because (get this) SHE had sex with HIM. She gave HIM the BJ; he just sat there. Also, a majority of America's youth don't believe oral sex IS sex, anyway. Having said that, NO ONE DIED when Clinton lied (except maybe the, um, six million potential 'babies' Monica swallowed). The same cannot be said for Mr. Libby's (nor Mr. Cheney's, nor Mr. Bush's) lies. Tell us when THEIR impeachments start, 'cuz I wnat a front row seat!
If Libby knowingly lied, sure. But if he honestly just didn't remember correctly? I haven't followed the story enough to know, but hopefully the jury got that right.
I haven't really been following the case because, frankly, I couldn't care less, but it doesn't matter if the guy lied about what he had for breakfast that morning - if he knowlingly lied in a sworn statement he needs to go spend some time in jail.
No ifs. No ands. No buts.
Rod - You're right. That argument doesn't fly. But I think you can make a defense of Libby without minimizing the seriousness of perjury.
There is a difference, at least in my opinion. With Clinton, he either had sex with her or he didn't. There was no way the passage of time could cause him to forget something like that.
With Libby, I personally think it is entirely plausible that in an attempt to try and be open and forthcoming with FBI investigators and the Grand Jury (hence why he didn't just say "I don't recall" and why he didn't have an experienced lawyer with him) he messed up the chronology of events from 5 months earlier. We saw in both the prosecution case and the defense how forgetful people can be - Fleischer, Miller, etc. The juror who spoke with the press even admitted that the jury did not find many of the prosecution's witnesses to be very credible - mainly because they had huge gaps in their memory. They based much of their decision on Russert, assuming that since they found him credible and he was saying something similar, the other witnesses must be remembering correctly too. But we've seen that even Russert forgets things (about having a lawyer at a grand jury). But since that evidence wasn't allowed, Russert appeared to be the man with the world's best memory.
If Libby could have been proven to have knowingly lied, he absolutely should have been found guilty. I am not trivializing perjury. In my mind, the "forgot" case should have been enough. The jury thought otherwise, and thats how our system works.
Even with this verdict, I would hope someone will still take a look at Fitzgerald's conduct on this case - knowing from the beginning who Novak's source was and that no crime was committed. But that might require another Special prosecutor, and that we could probably do without.
I think that investigations into exactly how and why the decision was made to go to war on the false premise that Saddam Hussein was on the move to make a substantial attack on the United States, this is absolutely necessary to get all the facts straight and made public asap. This is along the lines of the Iran-Contra scandal- this secretive foreign policy stuff just keeps blowing back in our collective American faces. Isn't it way past time to demand transparency in our policymaking? With all of these secret agencies working in my name all over the world, I feel compelled and responsible for what they are up to. I think we get all caught up in these spook operations and forget that winning hearts and minds through actual good works is the best policy for all of us. I imagine it is a lot cheaper as well- what are we spending for the military this year- something like 700 bil. according to National Catholic Reporter. We spend more on military pursuits than the next 192 countries combined. If we put half of that money into Marshall Plans and progressive energy research, we would have a shot at overcoming most of the world's chronic ills.
I agree that there is a double standard here, and I join everyone of like mind in rejecting the notion that criminal prosecution should ever be tolerated as a political tool. I do ask that the following be made part of any Plame-Lewinsky comparisons: if Valerie Plame had been on assignment when the disclosure was published, what are the chances that she'd be alive today? Last I heard, oral sex in the White House didn't kill any covert operatives. Sorry, couldn't resist the sarcasm, but the seriousness of the question is still there.
I think that the difference would be that Clinton should never have been asked the question; meanwhile (liberals would say) that to investigate Libby was totally appropriate.
Keep in mind that Libby was not on trial for leaking Valerie Plame's name (or not). He was on trial for lying under oath to federal investigators.
I deleted a comment above for a personal attack.
Rod, I accept your reminder, quite so; if someone had been under indictment for the leak, Libby would be charged with obstruction of justice as well. A lie is a lie. I fully support the public disclosure of Clinton's lies, that being something all citizens should know about their leaders. I do not support prosecuting him for the simple reason that there was no underlying crime involved (other than from his family's POV). Libby was involved with a felony (disclosure of covert operations, I believe). If you can explain to me why he should not have been prosecuted for perjury, I'm willing to read/listen respectfully for as long as it takes. I just don't think you can, and while the Clinton impeachment may not be a palatable example to present to you for comparison, I do consider it appropriate.
Clinton wasn't impeached for having sex with Monica, Franklin; he was impeached for lying under oath. The justification from his defenders at the time was that this was an insignificant lie, because it was only about sex. His antagonists, though, said it doesn't matter what the lie was about, you can't have the President of the United States telling a baldfaced lie under oath.
In the Libby case, some on the right are saying that Libby's lie, if it was a lie and not just a failure of memory, was not significant because it was about something that hasn't even been determined to have been a crime. And the answer to that was given by the former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy -- someone who believes the case shouldn't have been brought -- who nevertheless said that you cannot accept that it is okay to lie under oath, even if you think the investigation itself was foolish or politicized.
Lying under oath is lying under oath. If Libby had just told the truth to begin with, like other administration officials did in the investigation, all this would have gone away.
shouldn't have been convicted for lying to federal investigators, vs. ought not have been impeached for lying under oath Rod, somehow you changed the verb here, as if a criminal trial is the equal of an impeachment that tied the whole country up for years. Perhaps Clinton should have been indicted. I still feel the impeachment was over the top, especially since several Republicans have admitted it was "getback" for Nixon (who richly deservd his impeachment).
There is a distinction to be made between saying that Clinton's lies re Lewinsky were "no big deal," and saying that they were not a sufficiently big deal to warrant removal from office (the only sanction available under the impeachment process)if he had been convicted by the Senate. With respect to Libby, once he is convicted, there is at least some discretion in the sentencing process (althought the federal sentencing guidelines probably limit this to a great extent). Thus, one can obtain the conviction, and send the message that lying under oath is wrong, but craft the penalty to fit the circumstances of the case. As P.O.'d as I was at Clinton, I am, in retrospect, no longer sure that removal from office was necessarily the appropriate sanction. (But man, the whole thing just shows that, as clever as he is, the man is an idiot.)
Rod, I do agree with you, and more than just in principle, but there has to be a distinction made at some point. What was the purpose of questioning Clinton under oath about his sex life? While I'm not suggesting it needs to be, there is an analogy to be drawn to the concept of self-defense, I should think. I think we can and should draw a distinction between marital infidelity and threatening the life of a woman in national service. Just FYI, there are almost no politicians in Washington, and certainly none from my state at this point in time, that I care to trust, and that includes the Democrats. My own rep Chaka Fattah is running for mayor this year, and I am not happy about it; not because he is a bad man, or corrupt, but because he comes from a culture in which "spin" is winked at, but "lying" is worthy of prosecution. I'm just tired of all the hair-splitting, and I want all of them to stop it. :(
I am a former military intelligence officer. The law preventing disclosure of covert operative's identities has very specific requirements that clearly did not apply to Valerie Plame. If memory serves, the operative has to have served overseas in a covert fashion within the last four years. Plame had not. Therefore there was no underlying crime in this case any more than there was with Clinton. Fitzgerald is well aware of this, which is why no one was charged with such an offense. Libby could have called up the NY Times himself and told them about Plame and it would have been perfectly legal. Maybe the law needs to be stricter, but that is for Congress to decide. It is what it is. Having said that, I think perjury is very serious under any circumstances. Both Clinton and Libby should be punished if they lied under oath. Clinton got a pass. Libby did not.
"Having said that, NO ONE DIED when Clinton lied (except maybe the, um, six million potential 'babies' Monica swallowed). The same cannot be said for Mr. Libby's (nor Mr. Cheney's, nor Mr. Bush's) lies." Remember a little thing called Kosovo. Here is a link to see all the freedom Mr. Clinton brought upon them. http://www.kosovo.net/
From today's Washington Post:
The fall of this skilled and long-respected public servant is particularly sobering because it arose from a Washington scandal remarkable for its lack of substance. It was propelled not by actual wrongdoing but by inflated and frequently false claims, and by the aggressive and occasionally reckless response of senior Bush administration officials -- culminating in Mr. Libby's perjury. Mr. Wilson was embraced by many because he was early in publicly charging that the Bush administration had "twisted," if not invented, facts in making the case for war against Iraq. In conversations with journalists or in a July 6, 2003, op-ed, he claimed to have debunked evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger; suggested that he had been dispatched by Mr. Cheney to look into the matter; and alleged that his report had circulated at the highest levels of the administration. A bipartisan investigation by the Senate intelligence committee subsequently established that all of these claims were false -- and that Mr. Wilson was recommended for the Niger trip by Ms. Plame, his wife. When this fact, along with Ms. Plame's name, was disclosed in a column by Robert D. Novak, Mr. Wilson advanced yet another sensational charge: that his wife was a covert CIA operative and that senior White House officials had orchestrated the leak of her name to destroy her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson. The partisan furor over this allegation led to the appointment of special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald. Yet after two years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald charged no one with a crime for leaking Ms. Plame's name. In fact, he learned early on that Mr. Novak's primary source was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage, an unlikely tool of the White House. The trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame's identity -- and no evidence that she was, in fact, covert. It would have been sensible for Mr. Fitzgerald to end his investigation after learning about Mr. Armitage. Instead, like many Washington special prosecutors before him, he pressed on, pursuing every tangent in the case.
They are different because you have to know the way grand jury procedures, and prosecutorial depositions work in practice.
The witness *always* gets a chance to look over his testimony, and submit corrections for the record. Otherwise anyone who said anything more than "I don't remember" could probably be charged with perjury, given the length and breadth of the usual deposition/grand jury appearance, given human fallibility, no matter how honest and forthright they are. Clinton was given a chance to answer the question a second time during his deposition. He lied again. He was given a chance to review his testimony and correct the obvious mistake. He chose to keep the lie going. Libby got no such opportunity. This whole trial has been a travesty of criminal procedure, because Fitzgerald had to indict someone to justify the time and expense.
Dan, With President Clinton, the reason the relationship between him and Ms. Lewinsky came up was an effort to prove a pattern of inappropriate relationships with subordinates in Paula Jones' sexual harassment case. There was a reason it came up. I remember once hearing that President Clinton actually signed the legislation that made past relationships fair game for sexual harassment suits--a case of being hoisted by his own petard.
I do know that between this trial and a co-worker's brother-in-law's experience, I will not tell an FBI agent what time it is without benefit of counsel.
Well, except that 'inappropriate' and 'illegal' are two different issues. Unless he was claiming he never, ever cheated on his wife.
Difference is- Clinton is basking in wife's political succeses and travelling the world as Mr. Popular; meanwhile, Libby gets to sit in jail.
you can't have the President of the United States telling a baldfaced lie under oath We obviously prefer the lies in grand eloquent speeches.
Clinton lied in the course of a case legitimate enough that he paid nearly a million dollars to settle it. But Libby lied, if he did, in the course of a totally pointless investigation. There was no crime, as Fitzgerald knew very early -- Plame was not covert, as he knew, and in any case Armitage was the leaker, as he also knew. Fitzgerald should have folded his hand, as the Post says in the editorial Chris cites; instead, he pushed on, apparently in the hope that, with enough subpoenas, he could bully someone into commmitting perjury. Libby's crime, if he committed it, was the product of a gross abuse of power -- unlike Clinton's. In short, the verdict against Libby may have been just, but the investigation that led to it was not. It's a little like entrapment: Libby may have done a bad thing, but it was an abuse of power that induced him to do it. Not so with Clinton. That said, (1) perjury is wrong and should be punished, and (2) maybe I don't read the people Rod reads, but I haven't heard anyone say otherwise.
This is the beginning of the end of Cheney. Note the discovery of the blood clot in his leg this weekend. Give it a few weeks, months tops, and he will have resigned? Who will lead the country then? Hopefully Rice is as smart as some make her out to be.
"What was the purpose of questioning Clinton under oath about his sex life? " Because he, Clinton, had signed into law overreaching legislation regarding sexual harrassment, giving those bringing such suits the right to ask virtually any question regarding sex and sexual advances between the accused and any employee, colleague, etc. In short, the only reason Clinton was even asked was because he signed into law a bill passed by a democratic congress saying that just such questions were fair game. When you say they aren't fair game, you admit that the current state of sexual harassment law is grievously onerous. Except I bet you have all kinds of reasons why the law is good, but it never should have applied to powerful people whose politics you endorse. And I make that bet because every other person who has ever followed the line of thinking you've been pursuing was a flaming hypocrite on this issue. I'd like to believe in unicorns, but after seeing 800 horses with waffle cones glued to their heads, I've grown doubtful.
And Dovid, you've been lied to. No matter how much he deserved it, Nixon was never impeached. Maybe you are thinking of Johnson?
Well, namesake, at least you have a middle name I don't have: leaps to conclusions. I don't suppose you've ever seen legal prosecutions pursued solely for political purposes. Right up there with unicorns, I guess. Mr. Watson, thanks for setting me straight on the covert operative issue. In all the journalism surrounding this case, yours was the first to clarify Valerie Plame's status.
Good post
I have one question. If there was no crime, which is in essence what the special prosecutor in the case proved, then why pursue this trial? Second, if everyone is so concerned about the leak which we should be, why is Richard Armitage not being tried since it is well established that he leaked the deal first to the press? Third, why is no one asking why Plame was allowed to chose her own husband for this deal to Africa and why he was not sworn to secrecy as would anyone else have been if hired for this type of delicate undercover work? Fourth, many do not know that Plame was already a well known CIA employee by many in the press for a long time before all of this largely because of the vocal nature of her husband, Joe Wilson. If Libby goes to jail for lying under oath, then this should happen to Clinton as well. Last I heard, Clinton is doing quite well with over 40,000,000 in income since leaving the White House and never served a day in jail. As some above have said, it was not about sex, but lying under oath. And if I remember right in those times, sexual harrassment was very important to many in the USA highlighted by the Clarence Thomas hearings. And the harrassment did not necessary have to be a forced move by an employer over an employee, but the simple balance of power difference such as say between the most powerful person in the country and an intern would surely qualify. Has anyone heard anything about sexual harrassment since the Clinton fiasco? I guess this does not happen anymore.
I never did understand, just what was Clinton's lie? That he "never had sex with that woman"? If that was indeed the case, didn't he answer based upon the definition of sex given to him when he asked? Was it therefore a lie?
It was *spin*. Welcome to Washington! God help us all.
"Clinton wasn't impeached for having sex with Monica, Franklin; he was impeached for lying under oath." ABOUT having sex with Monica! Sheesh, Rod. And like I (and others) have said, NO ONE DIED WHEN CLINTON LIED, and the same cannot be said about Libby's lies, Cheney's lies, or Bush's lies. "His antagonists, though, said it doesn't matter what the lie was about, you can't have the President of the United States telling a baldfaced lie under oath." Would that Bush's "antagonists" had the power to force Bush to testify under oath.
"if it was a lie and not just a failure of memory, was not significant because it was about something that hasn't even been determined to have been a crime." You said that about Libby, Rod. Tell me why the exact same thing shouldn't be said about Clinton. His "failure of memory" about sex was likewise not "a crime" nor was the sex itself. "Lying under oath is lying under oath." True enough. But, as selectively applied in Amerikkka, some lies KILL, others do not. I thought you valued the sanctity of life, Rod. "If Libby had just told the truth to begin with, like other administration officials did in the investigation" Like, um, CHENEY> Pardon me while I BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!! "all this would have gone away" In your dreams, Rod. This isn't over by a long shot. 3,187 dead solddiers don't get "gone away".
Robert Mahoney, "Remember a little thing called Kosovo." Yes, I'm sure we all do. But Clinton's impeachment proceedings did not result from Kosovo, but rather a semen-stained dress.
~tv, "It was *spin*." From "Never Say 'NO COMMENT' - How Spin Doctors Answer Questions" 1. Tell the truth. 2. Tell it well. 3. Tell it again.
Oh, *this* is rich... "Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair..." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070309/ap_on_go_co/gingrich_affair
I have always said that if Libby lied under oath, he should be convicted. I wasn't on the jury, but I have followed the story, and I just don't see where the prosecutor made his case. It was a he said/he said argument and the jury chose to believe Tim Russert. But even if you think the jury got it right, that is no reason to let Fitzgerald off the hook. He knew from the day he got the case wo the leaker was and that no crime was committed. For him to therefore spend the time and money required continuing the investigation was eggregious.
Only one person above has mentioned the fact that what Pres. Clinton did was in fact a crime--sexual harassment. Even though he & Monica were apparently completely consensual in their relationship, the obvious message that was sent to all the interns in the White House (who surely knew what was going on) was that having an affair with your boss meant you would get a good job (as she did) even though you were incompetent (as she apparently was). That is why powerful men are not supposed to have affairs with their subordinates, and why in any business Clinton would have been fired. But we don't actually take sexual harassment seriously at all in this country, except for a couple of months during the Clarence Thomas hearings. I'm sure most people will scoff and repeat the claim that sex is only the concern of the people involved and perhaps their spouses, but tell that to my wife who got fired and replaced with a woman who had been sleeping with her supervisor's assistant. And if Libby perjured himself he should be punished to the full extent of the law.
Brian, "But we don't actually take sexual harassment seriously at all in this country" Seems the RRRers take it a whole lot MORE 'seriously' than going to war based on a lie, and in which people DIE. "if Libby perjured himself"??? "IF"???
How can "no" mean no, if "sex" doesn't even mean sex?
I agree that lying under oath, about anything, is a big deal. But I also believe that no citizen of a free country should ever be placed under oath to testify about sex between consenting adults. What ever happened to the great American value of minding one's own business? What Clinton should have said at the infamous deposition was, "None of your business." Unfortunately, if he had, he would certainly have ended up in jail, because that is the one answer our legal system does not permit.
Actually, Starr spent $71 million of your and my dollars. Not $40 million.
Interesting facts.I have bookmarked this site. stephanazs
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