AN OPEN BOOK

SCOOTER LIBBY WROTE it all down.  His life and his job each read like an open book  . . . because they are.  Try not to think of the Libby novel and the bear, but Libby faces a bear of a problem. His whole schedule, everything he did, who he met was down in writing before he met with prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the PlameOut investigation.[WaPo]

In the aftermath of Libby's recent five-count indictment, this curious sequence raises a question of motives that hangs over the investigation: Why would an experienced lawyer and government official such as Libby leave himself so exposed to prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald?

SOME SUSPECT LIBBY is trying to hide the real author of the assault on Valerie Plame: Dick Cheney. In the time of melodrama and the dictator who was a madman, do all the chapter and verse come back to Dick?

Even some White House aides privately wonder whether Libby was seeking to protect Cheney from political embarrassment. One of them noted with resignation, "Obviously, the indictment speaks for itself."

WHEN WE WILL FIND out is several chapters or months away.  Libby is dragging out the reading of charges and all things legal as long as possible.  This has been a rear guard back battle since the investigation moved forward.  The truth may take time to trickle out if it doesn’t get bottled up in a plea agreement first.

AND WHAT ABOUT BUSH? Faiz at Think Progress goes back in time to make some intriquing connections.  In the end Bush is going to have to answer questions about how much he could have done earlier in this investigation, before the White House stopped answering questions in an um ongoing investigation, back when the White House probably thought it could contain the mess, as it has contained so many messes before. [story]

While the article is explicit about the idea that Cheney may have played a larger role in the leak, the tie to Bush is not as apparent. There are at least two damaging pieces of information as they relate to the president.
First, President Bush was stating in early October 2003 that he didn’t “know if we’re going to find out the senior administration official” who leaked Plame’s identity. That statement now deserves greater scrutiny in light of evidence that the White House was presumably in possession of, or at least had knowledge of, a “guidebook” (i.e. Libby’s notes) that gave strong clues as to who leaked.
Second, on October 7, 2003, Bush answered a journalist’s question about the leak by stating, “how many sources have you had that’s leaked information that you’ve exposed or have been exposed? Probably none.”

THE HERETIK NOTES Faiz at Think Progress sees things through a very dark glass indeed.  What he suggests is active or perhaps passive collusion between power and media.

A week later, on October 14, 2003, Libby met with FBI investigators and told them a false story about how he first learned of Plame’s identity from reporters. In a case which would later hinge upon the accounts of reporters — who as Fitzgerald described were “eyewitness[es] to the crime” — it is interesting that Bush would highlight journalists’ historical disinclination for revealing sources. To drive home his point, Bush said to the journalists, “you do a very good job of protecting the leakers.” Was he not-so-subtly suggesting that they continue doing a “very good job”?

THE HERETIK WONDERS if that is overstating the case.  Or have we not paid attention?  If there is one um quality which distinguishes this White House, it is its boldness of action combined with the dare for observers neither to notice nor to comment. Now that the near narcolepsy of the media nears an end, will the Libby story continue to its last chapter, or end short of the mark?