Outing McClellan

Scott McClellan's book "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception." has been all the rage in liberal circles for the last week or so. They are eating up the fact that McClellan spent lots of words on the Valerie Plame case, and wishing Karl Rove had been fired over it.

They guy who printed Plame's name, Robert Novak, has his take on the book in today's column, and calls out McClellan for his lack of facts about the Plame affair.

Novak points out the inconsistencies between the former White House Press Secretary's book, and the reality of the leak, and the Grand Jury investigation into it.

While at the White House podium, McClellan never knew the facts about the CIA leak, and his memoir reads as though he has tried to maintain his ignorance. He omits the fact that Armitage identified Mrs. Wilson to The Post's Bob Woodward weeks before he talked to me. He does not mention that Armitage turned himself in to the Justice Department even before Patrick Fitzgerald was named as special prosecutor.

In case the liberals out there have forgotten, Rove, and Scooter Libby, weren't the leakers of Plame's name. It was Richard Armitage, a guy who didn't like the Iraq war or Dick Cheney. Novak also points out another fact McClellan omits, no one was convicted of outing Plame, even though the Justice Department had a confession from Armitage that he'd been the guy to mention her name.

When you start reading the facts; instead of McClellan, and his publisher's wishful thinking; you realize more and more that the book wasn't a "tell all" about the White House, but instead a smear job without much basis in reality, written by a disgruntled guy who was fired.

It becomes more clear when you follow the trail of the publisher, who McClellan told Ari Fleischer (his predecessor) had "tweaked" the book. The publishing house, Public Affairs Books, is largely owned by Democratic activist George Soros!

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Picking Nits on a Jury

I'm going to make a prediction today, Scooter Libby will walk in his perjury trial. I say this because generally, after 8 days of deliberation, a jury ends up hung, or acquitting.

In the case of Libby, they are starting to pick nits, asking the judge for the definition of "reasonable doubt" as it relates to his memory of events leading to the Grand Jury inquest.

In the case of Libby, and that requested clarification, my guess is you'll see a hung jury by Wednesday, and a humbled Prosecutor deciding not to refile charges. Patrick Fitzgerald knows that he'll probably get the same results next time if he retries the case.

The request probably points to a few members of the panel who are voting for acquittal being pressured by those voting guilty. By asking for the clarification, the one's who want to vote guilty are (probably) trying to show the others that "reasonable doubt" doesn't mean "any doubt". The problem is, most folks in jury rooms, once they make up their minds, have a hard time changing them based on new definitions being forced on them.

In a perjury trial like this, the prosecution has to prove, beyond that subjective reasonable doubt, that Libby didn't just misspeak at a Grand Jury, but that he intentionally misspoke to them. That's pretty tough when you are talking about people who generally work 15 hour days, and meet dozens of different people and groups per week, and spend hours a day on the phone with various people.

As an example, Monday I'm visiting a company I've been to 3 times since last July. Yet I'm positive I don't know every piece of equipment they have, or all of their special configurations.

Libby is being tried for supposedly hiding exact details of 10 minute conversations 18 months prior to the Grand Jury. Go ahead, think of a 10 minute meeting at work in August 2005, and see if you can remember exactly what it was about, or exactly what you said. I know without looking at past paperwork I can't tell you what equipment I calibrated last October in that lab I mentioned, much less what I talked to their technicians about.

I think that with the reasonable doubt question coming up it shows the jury is worrying about exactly what the Fitzgerald didn't want them to, how hard do you hammer people strictly on memory. As I said at the start of this post, I think that Scooter is going to walk.

Technorati Tags: Scooter Libby, Valerie Plame, Plamegate, Patrick Fitzgerald, Perjury, CIA

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