The Attempted Impeachment of the President Implodes

The whole Wilson-Plame-Libby case is much more of interest to political insiders and groupies than to most of us except for one thing – it was and is part of the essential hard-left Democrat strategy for the attempted impeachment of President Bush. Now, thankfully, with both the President and the Vice President fighting back on the other front, the ridiculous charge that Bush lied, the whole strategy seems to be going up in flames.

I wrote a week ago that the Libby case was an abomination and only served to warn us never to give any information to an FBI agent about anything. Now facts are coming to light that have completely undercut the Libby indictment, which was a classic example of the left’s attempts to criminalize political differences.

In a more than two-hour deposition, Bob Woodward, of Watergate fame, told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that an official casually told him in mid-June, 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and that he did not believe the information to be classified or sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released on Wednesday.

Woodward's testimony appears to change key elements in the chronology Fitzgerald laid out in his investigation and announced when indicting Libby three weeks ago. It would make the unnamed official -- not Libby -- the first government employee to disclose Plame's CIA employment to a reporter. It would also make Woodward, who has been publicly critical of the investigation, the first reporter known to have learned about Plame from a government source.

Since Bob Woodward also said that he may later have discussed Valerie Plame with Libby, Libby’s recollections of events appear to be correct or nearly correct, and certainly not perjurious. Libby has said he thought he learned of Plame's identity from NBC's Tim Russert. This game of who told who what and when has gotten ludicrous, especially since no crime was committed.

Karl Rove also appears to have been exonerated. Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Rove, said that Rove is not the unnamed official who told Woodward about Plame and that he did not discuss Plame with Woodward. Remember, outing Plame is not only not a crime, but two people have come forward to say that Plame’s husband, Wilson, outed her years before including Major General Paul Vallely, US Army (Ret.) who said that prior to the alleged leak, Ambassador Joe Wilson bragged to the general that his wife, Valerie, worked for the CIA.

William Jeffress Jr., one of Libby's lawyers, said yesterday that Woodward's testimony undermines Fitzgerald's public claims about his client and raises questions about what else the prosecutor may not know.
"If what Woodward says is so, will Mr. Fitzgerald now say he was wrong to say on TV that Scooter Libby was the first official to give this information to a reporter?" Jeffress said last night. "The second question I would have is: Why did Mr. Fitzgerald indict Mr. Libby before fully investigating what other reporters knew about Wilson's wife?"