The one final Revelation

For those of you, like me, living in a box and away from Media this weekend...it's un-officially official. We know who the Plame leaker was: the hyper non-partisan Richard Armitage as has been widely speculated.

The Corner at NRO has been full of thoughts on the subject since Saturday. I found this one from Andy McCarthy on Sunday pretty much a direct hit:

September 26, 2003, is the day when DOJ opened a preliminary investigation into the Plame matter. Pat was not appointed independent counsel until December 30. That is, DOJ had two months before Fitzgerald was part of the equation to investigate this case and realize that it did not rise to the level of an espionage act or covert agent identity protection act violation.
Patently, though, DOJ was concerned that it would be accused by Democrats of whitewashing a felonious leak of classified information. Regardless, what happened here was not a felonious leak of classified information — and that was something that could easily have been known before December 30. If it was clear that a felony leak had not occurred, the Ashcroft Justice Department could have closed the case at the preliminary stage and ignored calls for an independent counsel. Such a decision, however, would have sparked a week or two of intense criticism from Democrats and their media allies that a classified leak was being whitewashed. It would also have been (minor) grist in the 2004 election.

Not wishing to take that heat, DOJ obviously decided at the end of 2003 to appoint an independent counsel and vest him with authority to investigate no only the underlying "crime" but whether anyone had lied to investigators in the two previous months during which the investigation had ensued. (Note that all criticisms of Fitzgerald conveniently avoid any discussion of the possibility that the investigation might already have been obstructed BEFORE he was appointed, requiring — by normal prosecutorial standards — that charges be filed whether or not what was being obstructed was itself a crime.)

So for all the disgruntled Libby sympathizers out there, your problem is not with the guy who was dispatched to look for crimes (including lies and obstruction) and thinks he found them; your problem is with the Justice Department that didn't have the guts to say the Plame leak did not rise to the level of a federal crime.

You can nitpik all you want at Fitzgerald's investigation. It's very easy to do — especially when he hasn't gotten to put his case on yet. But where is the scrutiny of the Bush Justice Department's decision to appoint an independent counsel rather than dismiss the case without charges after two months of investigation?

As even The Nation's chief conspiracist David Corn now concedes (well, not entirely), there was no cabal, there was no conspiracy and there never should have been a three year, multi-million dollar investigation of this non-crime. And that is the Justice Department's fault.