Inflammatory Opinion:
A Brief Reminder about the Color of Whitewash
As of the date of publication of this article, January 7, 2006, it has been 908 days since Robert Novak in an op-ed column revealed that Valerie Plame was a non-official cover spy involved in tracking international trafficking in weapons of mass destruction.
It has now been 739 days since then-Attorney General John Ashcroft announced at a news conference that he was recusing himself from the investigation of who leaked Ms. Plame's identity to Mr. Novak and possibly other journalists. At that news conference, held on December 30, 2003, Mr. Ashcroft announced that political appointee and Assistant Attorney General James Comey would be put in charge of oversight for the investigation. Mr. Comey announced at that news conference that he was putting career federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in charge of the investigation.
Six hundred sixty-eight days after the announcement of the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald, he announced that a grand jury in the nation's capitol had returned a five-count indictment against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who was at the time a top adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.
Mr. Fitzpatrick hinted that his investigation would continue, even though he said explicitly that, for the most part, "...the work of this investigation is concluded." For a time after that news conference, hopes were high that Mr. Fitzgerald would take evidence before a new grand jury, and there were even reports that he was preparing to do so. Nothing more than that has occurred, however: no official announcements, no further indictments, no more surrenders of top administration officials.
As an additional, perhaps revealing, piece of information, the General Accounting Office finally took the opportunity to release a cost figure for Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation as of September 2005. Contrary to the speculation in Part III of "The Valerie Plame Scandal" here at The Dark Wraith Forums that "possibly millions and millions of dollars" had been spent by Mr. Fitzgerald, it turns out, according to the Government Accounting Office in a September 2005 report, that Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation had cost only $723,000, for a daily average of less than $1,100. This can be considered in comparison to, say, the investigations of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, who racked up a whopping $70 million in costs to investigate President William Jefferson Clinton: for example, in the six-month period surrounding the impeachment of the former President, Mr. Starr spent $7.2 million, for an average daily expenditure of $40,000.
As of today, then, with statutes of limitations beginning to loom for prosecuting crimes committed in the outing of a non-official cover American spy, Mr. Fitzgerald has secured the indictment of a man whose nickname is "Scooter."
That's what Mr. Fitzgerald has accomplished.
Period.
The Dark Wraith has offered readers reason to feel good about the rule of law in this land.
Published 1/07/2006 09:01:00 PM
<< 19 Comments Total
Evenin DW,
You had to go and remind me didn't you..but I can't fault Fitzgerald on this one yet anyway.
Guess I will always be looking for that knight in shining armor !
Good evening, elf.
Sort of a downer, wasn't it? My purpose is to keep at least one small point of pressure on this situation, which seems to have these little fits of excitement when someone starts a rumor, then these long, long periods of total silence in the media.
It's enough to drive a man to drink. Fortunately for me, I drink coffee, and I have enough to stay awake until this entire nightmare of an Administration and all of its backroom supporters are gone from this good Earth.
The Dark Wraith keeps the bean a-brewin' 24/7.
Hiya, Dark Wraith.
It's good to be kept updated on what's going on (and not). Interesting on the cost! I guess it costs more to go after a president. Since this was several years past the Clinton fiasco, I surprised at the lessened cost. Have prices gone down? - I know they haven't ;)
Maybe the other shoe will drop and we'll find out the NSA did Wilson, et al.
Good morning, Mr. Goat.
Oh. You meant that in jest. Right?
There for a minute, I thought you weren't kidding.
It's a good thing you were kidding, isn't it?
The Dark Wraith is beginning to worry that smart folks are putting pieces of a puzzle together.
[Thank God people don't think our current government would really do something like that.]
Good morning, Old White Lady.
Yes, prices really have fallen dramatically during the Bush Administration. Hadn't you heard? Why, it's just like the good ol' days: you can investigate a crime against the national security for a fraction of the cost of what it used to cost to hunt down a President whose intern waxed his skin canoe.
And considering that all of the investigations of Clinton ended up with a single civil contempt finding against him for all that money, you've gotta admire a frugal man like Fitzgerald, who can unravel the entire CIA/NSA/White House/mainstream media/State Department matrix for about one percent (one percent) of what it cost to hunt down ol' Willy.
The Dark Wraith is so glad for our everyday low prices anymore.
And then Rice, and a few more pieces of Able Danger fall into place....
Give that goat a cigar.
DW,
..."waxed his skin canoe"
OMG what a knee slapper that one was !!!!
Clearly, my dear elf, you assigned meaning to that statement that was wholly and entirely unintended.
The Dark Wraith wouldn't dream of making an allusion to something like that.
Give that goat a cigar.
Is that another Clinton reference?
Good morning, Progressive Traditionalist.
Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.
And a good cigar is still easy to get, but finding a place to smoke it is another matter entirely.
The Dark Wraith lights the stogie.
(Isn't a good cigar a smoke?)
- oddjob (who loathes cigars)
Good morning, OddJob.
I recall you saying once before that you were somewhat less than fond of cigars. As I recall, you used some variation on the word "loathe" then, too.
In my younger days, I would on occasion smoke a cigar as an exercise in what I might call 'variant machismo'; and it was only later that I came to actually appreciate the best of them as something of an exquisite evil in and of themselves.
I have here at my desk in a drawer a pack I haven't even opened of four, fat, Honduran beauties. In another drawer I have a flat little tin of small, thin, dry-cured demons. My opportunities to smoke them are rare, and the occasions upon which I would do so are even more so anymore. I had one of the dry-cured little beasts as I was walking alone through a quiet, snowy woods this past Christmas. The walk and the cigar did a lot for me: I was able to be back in another time, absent the modernity, its technologies, its moors, and its changes in how memories are supposed to work. The smell of smoke, pine, and cold reminded me.
It's an old model to which some of us getting-to-be-old-timers still revert on occasion before we get back to reality and business... and put the cigars back in the drawer for another year or so.
The Dark Wraith hopes that makes some sense.
Yes, it does. I don't share it, but I'm not a smoker and never have been, so for me tobacco is only something I experience as second hand smoke (or as a plant in the garden; more than one tobacco species has a powerfully sweet aroma when in bloom, although the aromas are only detectable at night, something also true of the less powerfully sweet aroma of petunias in bloom).
There are pipe tobaccoes I enjoy the smoke odor from (to a point). Cigarettes I don't care for, but can tolerate if I must. Cigars are beyond the pale, although I realize there are high quality cigars and I doubt I've smelled them.
- oddjob
Ahhh the smell of an excellent cigar! Brings back memories of my dad, and he's been gone for lo, these several years....
Dad was always mourning for the Cubans, which he swore were the finest of the fine.
Good afternoon, SB Gypsy.
During my years as a consultant, I had occasion to work with a group of Cubans living in the beautiful places outside of Miami. They had access to genuine Cuban cigars, of which I partook on more than one occasion. I can assure you from those experiences that they are, indeed, among the finest. The Hondurans I have in my desk drawer aren't at all bad, mind you, and I can get those without the attendant consulting work for the wildest cabal of young men I have ever encountered in my life... which nearly came to an abrupt end before I realized that I was in a league I preferred to observe only in movies.
The Dark Wraith takes consolation in his second-tier cigars.
A Mediterranean friend of mine once observed that "The Cubans are tough."
Sounds like you found the same to be true....
- oddjob
The Nicaraguans have a method of infusing the tobacco with herbs during the curing process. Very nice. I recommend them.