Friday, February 24

Brit Hume ♥ Lewis Libby

A summary of Today's Grapevine:

Brit Hume opens, today, by noting that Iran's leadership is being very disingenuous in suggesting to its people that the U.S. government and Israel were responsible for the bombing that destroyed a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra. Hume then goes on to compare Iran's false claims of U.S. involvement in the Samarran mosque explosion with the Bush administration's false claims of Iraqi involvement in 9/11... Psyyyyyych! Ha, ha! Gotcha there for a second, didn't I? Yeah, I made that second part up.

Next on The Grapevine, Hume goes into obfuscatory mode shilling for indicted perjurer Lewis "Scooter" Libby":

Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is balking at producing evidence to support his claim that former CIA operative Valerie Plame's job status was classified when administration official staffers mentioned her name to reporters in 2003.

The claim that Plame's job was classified was made in the indictment of former Cheney chief of staff Scooter Libby. But Fitzgerald says that information doesn't relate to the perjury charges against Libby and therefore defense lawyers have no right to documents that would support it.

What's more, Fitzgerald won't say whether Plame's outing damaged national security and denies ever claiming any damage was done at all.

But as Byron York of National Review points out, Fitzgerald told reporters in presenting his charges against Libby, "Damage ... was done to all of us."

Valerie (Plame) Wilson's covert status has been well established, and there is no real doubt on this matter outside conservative spin circles. Not only has Robert Novak himself aknowledged that CIA sources asked that he not publish Wilson's name, but facts reported in the media have made it amply clear that Wilson was Covert (indeed, we know that she had participated in covert operations overseas with the CIA front company Brewster-Jennings as recently as 2001, 2002 and 2003).

Also significant is the fact that Libby is not even under indictment for exposing Plame. He is under indictment for lying to prosecutors about his contacts with the press. Libby is being charged with Perjury, not with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. So Libby's request for materials relating to Wilson's status at the CIA is, indeed, immaterial to the defense, as Fitzgerald has pointed out. So why are Libby's lawyers asking for the materials, and why is Fitzgerald refusing to release them, and why is Brit Hume pressing the issue on Fox News? The answer is simple: Libby's lawyers are trying to pursue a strategy of forcing the government to release secret documents that might prove damaging to national securty (and counter proliferation operations overseas) or drop the case against Libby altogether. I don't want to exaggerate things, but basically the defense strategy boils down to nuclear blackmail against the U.S.: either you's drop the case against our boy, or release documents that will scuttle counter-proliferation efforts around the globe. It's your choice, buddy! And the best part is that our own favorite Fox anchor is a willing participant in the scheme. Atta boy, Brit!

The last two segments are less interesting. In the first, Hume fantasizes about Conservatives out-birthing Liberals in America and leading to a demographic takeover of the country (because, you know, kids never have political leanings different from mommy and daddy). In the second Hume looks briefly at a pair of hate speech prosecutions in Europe.