Despite letters of support from the likes of Henry Kissinger, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz and James Carville, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby gets 30 months and a fine of $250,000. (Judge Walton apparently also got letters from regular folks). Arguments about whether Libby stays out on bail pending appeal will be heard next week.
posted by unSane on Jun 5, 2007 - 120 comments

The Illustrated Guide to GOP Scandals
posted by trinarian on May 14, 2007 - 44 comments

Scooter Libby guilty on four out of five counts. Not guilty on one charge of making false statements. Libby faces up to 30 years in prison and over $1 million in fines. TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt liveblogs.
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Mar 6, 2007 - 143 comments

Resolved, that Richard B. Cheney, vice president of the United States, should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors and that these articles of impeachment be submitted to the American people. If the evidence presented at the Scooter Libby trial was not already enough of an indictment of Real Journalism in the U.S. mainstream media (when it falls to New Yorker magazine to break the really big stories) it takes a magazine with the political prowess of GQ (and bloggers) to make a cohesive case for action against most unconstitutionally powerful Vice President in U.S. history. Those following the Libby case closely are beginning to realize that the Plame leak prosecution is anything but over. With a guilty verdict for Perjury and Obstruction of Justice, Libby would effectively be removed from being a defense witness in any forthcoming charges against Cheney. Fitzgerald still has Sealed v Sealed in his back pocket and it is now beginning to dawn on some that it indicts not Rove, but Cheney. Hat's off to Emptywheel for seeing this as far back as Oct. 30th, 2005: Tricky Fitzgerald!! He's been hiding Dick right in the middle of his Libby indictment. Now with a job approval rating in the teens the Curse of Dick Cheney continues. (Interesting to note that both New Yorker and GQ are owned by Conté Nast)
posted by spock on Feb 23, 2007 - 112 comments

Liveblogging the Scooter Libby (Plame-outing) Trial. Get your popcorn. This is compelling (and potentially historic) stuff. Firedoglake.com is highly recommended. There is also a lot of knowledge to be found in the comments. Feel somewhat behind and want to catch-up quickly? Some are wondering why this isn't getting more play in the evening news. Perhaps the public isn't clamoring for it? ABCnews, CBS News, NBC/MSNBC News (does this page even work?), FoxNews, and CNN.
posted by spock on Feb 1, 2007 - 39 comments

Politics/PlameFilter: In opening arguments today in the Plame investigation perjury case against Vice President Cheney's former Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby, the prosecutor portrayed Libby as an agent of a Cheney-driven media offensive. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the day came from Libby's attorney, who portrayed his client as a White House-chosen scapegoat for Karl Rove's misdeeds. A conservative reporter saw in Libby's emerging defense a "dramatic split inside the Bush White House." An MSNBC host asked whether this hullabaloo could lead to Cheney's resignation. Background on the case. Liveblogging of today's arguments from an anti-administration perspective.
posted by ibmcginty on Jan 23, 2007 - 16 comments

Newsfilter: Former CIA officer Valerie Plame sues Cheney, Rove, Libby, close on the heels of columnist Robert Novak kinda-sorta coming clean about his role.
posted by bardic on Jul 13, 2006 - 78 comments

Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald says emails relevant to the Valerie Plame leak investigation have gone missing from the White House. "In an adundance of caution," Fitzgerald wrote [PDF] to "Scooter" Libby's lawyers on January 23, "we advise you that we have learned that not all email of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system." Might this help explain why Alberto Gonzales -- now the Attorney General, and lately so busy mustering arguments to assert that Bush's NSA domestic-spying program is "legal" -- waited 12 hours before instructing White House staff to preserve documents relevant to the leak investigation after telling Andrew Card about it? Shades of the late, great yoga instructor, Rose Mary Woods. [More on Plame here.]
posted by digaman on Feb 1, 2006 - 54 comments

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is (a) Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, (b) facing a five-count indictment from the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, (c) the author of The Apprentice, a book that is, in the words of The New Yorker's Lauren Collins, "Libby's 1996 entry in the long and distinguished annals of the right-wing dirty novel," or (d) all of the above. Via Making Light.
posted by mcwetboy on Nov 1, 2005 - 37 comments

Why outing Plame mattered. If you wonder what's really at stake behind all the media buzz around the Fitzgerald indictments, read this lengthy and cogent analysis by Stratfor's no-nonsense George Friedman. "Rove and Libby had top security clearances and were senior White House officials. It was their sworn duty, undertaken when they accepted their security clearance, to build a 'bodyguard of lies' -- in Churchill's phrase -- around the truth concerning U.S. intelligence capabilities... The minimal story -- that they talked about Plame with a reporter -- is the end of the matter."
posted by digaman on Oct 18, 2005 - 89 comments

Did Dick make him do it? The Huffington Report claims that both the Wall Street Journal and Bloomsburg News are working on stories indicating that Vice President Dick Cheney is the target of the special prosecutor's investigation into Plamegate. George Stephanopoulos also recently claimed that a source close to the investigation told him that Cheney and Bush were involved in discussions on how to handle the Wilson affair that may have led to the leak. Meanwhile, Cheney's chief spokesman has left the country until October 26th, two days before the conclusion of the grand jury investigation.
posted by insomnia_lj on Oct 11, 2005 - 91 comments

With admiration, Scooter Libby.
posted by digaman on Oct 7, 2005 - 40 comments

Judith Miller Released from Jail and will testify before the grand jury tomorrow after getting a waiver from her source, Scooter Libby. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has assured Ms. Miller's attorney that "he intended to limit his grand jury interrogation so that it would not implicate other sources of hers." (More from Editor & Publisher and New York Times; statements by Miller and the Times publisher and executive editor.)
posted by kirkaracha on Sep 29, 2005 - 42 comments

Payback? How did Bush officials get back at Ambassador Joseph Wilson for talking publicly two weeks ago about his trip to Niger to investigate claims of an Iraqi uranium deal? By outing his wife as an undercover CIA operative. As David Corn of The Nation says, "...the Bush administration has screwed one of its own top-secret operatives in order to punish Wilson or to send a message to others who might challenge it..... a pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what's known as 'nonofficial cover' and who has had the dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material. If Wilson's wife is such a person--and the CIA is unlikely to have many employees like her--her career has been destroyed by the Bush administration." The exposure of an undercover CIA agent is in fact a federal crime.
posted by Artifice_Eternity on Jul 17, 2003 - 159 comments