Remembering What Fitzgerald's Job Is

Before I post more on Patrick Fitzgerald's October 2005 press conference, let me say a word about the announcement made by Karl Rove's lawyer that his client has not been indicted. I'm seeing a variety of opinions ranging from 'let's move on, this is old news,' to 'it's the end of the known universe.' Most of the bloggers I take seriously are more circumspect, but even so there's still a variety of opinion. Here's a post from Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake:

When I first heard that Rove got a letter saying that Fitzgerald did not intend to bring charges against him, I immediately thought — as emptywheel did — of a conversation we had between the Plame panelists last Thursday. Emptywheel took a poll of those who thought Rove had flipped and both Joe Wilson and Larry Johnson raised their hands. Christy acknowledged that it was awfully weird for someone to testify before a grand jury five times and NOT be cooperating in some fashion with the prosecution.

(snip)

1 We have no idea what Fitzgerald has, and anyone who pretends to know anything conclusive one way or the other about what he got from Rove and where he’s going with this is talking out their ass...

Then there's this from emptywheel of The Last Hurrah who seems to offer a speculative hypothesis about why Rove has flipped if indeed he has:

Dick Cheney is dragging down the White House. He is largely responsible for the mess in Iraq. He is trying to sabotage any attempts to negotiate honestly with Iran. And he is exposing everyone in the Administration to some serious legal jeopardy, in the event they ever lose control of courts. At some point, Dick Cheney's authoritarianism will doom Bush's legacy.

But you can't make him quit. His is a Constitutional office, he was elected along with Bush, so you can't make him resign like you can with your Treasury Secretary or your Environmental Secretary. What better way to get rid of him, then, than to expose him to legal proceedings? It gives you the ability (farcical, but no matter) to say that you have severed all ties with his policies and legacies.

It's an interesting notion but I think a more direct legal threat would end in Cheney's resignation if Bush desired that; Bush also has the option of literally cutting Cheney down to size by limiting his staff and making him a useless goodwill ambassador to goat farms.

Here's another perspective from Talk Left:

Fitzgerald's refusal to comment on Luskin's statements today that Rove will not be charged leads me to believe Luskin is telling the truth. I believe Fitzgerald would correct the record if it were not true.

As to secret deals or "gentlemen's agreements" between Karl Rove and Fitzgerald, I don't see it. If there was any kind of deal to dismiss an Indictment, and Rove was going to be a cooperating witness against him, Libby's lawyers would have to be told and Luskin would be a fool for publicly asserting otherwise.

I have the advantage of not being a lawyer which means I don't have to make myself dizzy thinking of all the possibilities and the odds of those possibilities. In the absence of an indictment over the last three years, Karl Rove is still loose and still playing his games. The president still has not admitted to manipulating the case for war in Iraq. A Republican-controlled Senate and a Republican-controlled House have refused the kind of meaningful investigations that would shine a bright shining light on what happened in 2002 and 2003, why so much of the 'evidence' justifying war was wrong, why so much of it was manipulated, why so little of it was challenged, and what can be done so we are not deliberately misled into another war, such as one with Iran. These are not abstract or partisan exercises as some might think.

I have no doubt that Fitzgerald has been doing his job. But his job is circumscribed by law and he is even further limited by the fact that some parts of the investigation involve real issues of national security. Fitzgerald is not creative about his job description as Kenneth Starr was and that may be just as well. I would have relished seeing Karl Rove indicted; his divisive style of politics have never done American democracy much good. Americans like myself respect facts and its disturbing to watch someone kill facts by smearing the messenger. For once in his life, Karl Rove may have told the truth, but, if so, he did it in secret while the White House was allowed to lie about Rove's involvement in the CIA leak case (see Pete Yost's article I quoted from Forbes in a post yesterday).

Here's a continuation of the Fitzgerald press conference that explains partly why the public knows so little and partly why we can't know much about the details of the investigation at least from the point of view of the investigators (though the rationale does not apply to the media in some respects or Congress in other respects):

FITZGERALD: I recognize that there's been very little information about this criminal investigation, but for a very good reason.

It may be frustrating when investigations are conducted in secret. When investigations use grand juries, it's important that the information be closely held.

So let me tell you a little bit about how an investigation works.

Investigators do not set out to investigate the statute, they set out to gather the facts.

It's critical that when an investigation is conducted by prosecutors, agents and a grand jury they learn who, what, when, where and why. And then they decide, based upon accurate facts, whether a crime has been committed, who has committed the crime, whether you can prove the crime and whether the crime should be charged.

Agent Eckenrode doesn't send people out when $1 million is missing from a bank and tell them, "Just come back if you find wire fraud." If the agent finds embezzlement, they follow through on that.

FITZGERALD: That's the way this investigation was conducted. It was known that a CIA officer's identity was blown, it was known that there was a leak. We needed to figure out how that happened, who did it, why, whether a crime was committed, whether we could prove it, whether we should prove it.

And given that national security was at stake, it was especially important that we find out accurate facts.

There's another thing about a grand jury investigation. One of the obligations of the prosecutors and the grand juries is to keep the information obtained in the investigation secret, not to share it with the public.

And as frustrating as that may be for the public, that is important because, the way our system of justice works, if information is gathered about people and they're not charged with a crime, we don't hold up that information for the public to look at. We either charge them with a crime or we don't.

FITZGERALD: And that's why we've safeguarded information here to date.

But as important as it is for the grand jury to follow the rules and follow the safeguards to make sure information doesn't get out, it's equally important that the witnesses who come before a grand jury, especially the witnesses who come before a grand jury who may be under investigation, tell the complete truth.

It's especially important in the national security area. The laws involving disclosure of classified information in some places are very clear, in some places they're not so clear.

And grand jurors and prosecutors making decisions about who should be charged, whether anyone should be charged, what should be charged, need to make fine distinctions about what people knew, why they knew it, what they exactly said, why they said it, what they were trying to do, what appreciation they had for the information and whether it was classified at the time.

FITZGERALD: Those fine distinctions are important in determining what to do. That's why it's essential when a witness comes forward and gives their account of how they came across classified information and what they did with it that it be accurate.

Legal procedures are one thing and I respect them. But the American people still need to understand the behavior of the officials they elect, particularly when things go terribly wrong; the public has a right to that information and the media has not done its job. And Congress still needs to ascertain that the officials of the executive branch are honest and competent, and investigate thoroughly when it is clear as day that things are not what they're supposed to be. We are far from hearing the end of this story.