With thanks to David Knowles for pointing out that this was a political prosecution as opposed to a legal one, a few thoughts on Libby. I'll expound on this in a later post (with links), once I can read some analysis other than the immediate news flashes that are coming out.

This started, and is still being reported by the mainstream media as, the intentional outing of a covert operative in retaliation for a "whistle-blowing" article published in the New York Times. That op-ed was written by Joe Wilson, a one time ambassador and current husband of that operative, Valerie Plame. Wilson claimed he had definitively disproven the administration's reasons for going to war with Iraq before the administration used those same arguments to convince the United Nations, Congress, and the American people of the need to go to war. And that he did so at the specific request of the vice president, subsequently reporting his findings back to the vice president. This "outing" was supposedly in violation of a very specific law written to protect current covert intelligent operatives from danger. According to the story, the "outing" was part of an administration conspiracy to destroy the Wilsons for their insurrection.

It ended up being a case of a vice presidential adviser lying to a grand jury and the FBI about where he learned that Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA from. Lying about a conversation with two reporters, Tim Russert and Matt Cooper, Libby was convicted on four of five of those counts, all concerning Russert. He was found innocent of the main charge involving Cooper.
This started with an article published by Robert Novak that reported that Wilson's wife, and not the vice president, had suggested Wilson for the trip. That, we now know contrary to Wilson's original claim, is true. Also as of today, we know that Richard Armitage was Novak's only source, and that Libby, when asked by Novak to confirm if Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and sent him to Africa, refused to do so. Armitage, although a member of the administration, was an active behind-the-scenes opponent of the Iraq war and I feel worked constantly with his boss Colin Powell to undermine the foreign policy of the administration. Or, at the very least, those parts that they did not agree with. So much for the administration conspiracy.

We also know today that Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was not covert and there was no crime, because the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, didn't charge Armitage. And Fitzgerald knew that there was no underlying crime shortly after the beginning of his investigation. Fitzgerald said today that Plame was classified. Who knows what that means, but it's also clear that even with her being 'classified' that didn't mean a crime was committed when talking about her, because no one was charged with that, not even Libby.

We also know today that the entirety of Joe Wilson's op-ed that started all of this was a lie. He was not sent at the urging of the White House. His wife did suggest him for the mission. The vice president, at the beginning, didn't even know who Joe Wilson was until Wilson's editorial claimed that Cheney himself had sent Wilson to Nigeria. Wilson did not disprove that Iraq was attempting to procure yellow cake. His report back to the CIA, while clearly stating that Iraq had not recently been successful in buying uranium, proved otherwise -- that Iraq was in fact seeking it. So his report actually bolstered the case to go to war -- the exact opposite from what Wilson claimed in his op-ed.

The jury has spoken, and it has said that Libby lied to the FBI and the Grand Jury about conversations that he had with reporters, nothing else. In fact, the juror that just spoke to the media, himself a reporter, just claimed that the entirety of their convictions rested on them believing Tim Russert over Scooter Libby -- specifically, Russert claiming that he never discussed Wilson's wife with Libby. That's interesting, because the presiding judge, Judge Walton, repeatedly prevented the defense from introducing evidence and calling witnesses to impeach Russert's credibility as a witness. Also, in the first interview that Russert had with the FBI, he claimed that it was "possible" that he had discussed Plame with Libby. It was only in later interviews that Russert emphatically claimed that he had "never" discussed Plame with Libby. Hence the charges, and the convictions. Did the jury ignore Russert's first interview? Does a person's memory get better with age and the passage of Time? And why wasn't Fitzgerald satisfied with Russert's first interview, and then let everything drop?

The defense will ask for a new trial. That would mean that the judge would have to rule against himself, so that will be denied. An appeal is a different story. One popular misconception is that an appeal means that you get to retry the facts presented in the case. That's not so. But an appeal must be granted if you can show that the defense was prevented from presenting evidence exculpatory to their client. For evidence of that we have the Judge's many rulings against the defense. One interesting fact - Judge Walton released a 42 page explanation of his rulings over this past weekend - unprecedented for a trial that hadn't concluded yet. And it was to the public, not to the jurors. That tells me that the judge himself is very worried about the reversibility of some of his rulings, which would be grounds for a successful appeal. He should be.