When the Story isn't the Story

The disturbing trend of a monolithic news media acting more like the Soviet's Pravda than a free press was fully evident with the conviction of Scooter Libby this week.

How many people actually know the true story behind unfortunate Scooter's indictment and conviction?

How about you? Do you think that Scooter was:

1. Found guilty of knowingly leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent in an attempt to discredit her husband, who proved that George Bush lied in a speech where he said that Saddam's Iraq tried to purchase mass quantities of yellow-cake uranium from Niger?
2. Was a pawn in the whole affair, taking the fall for Carl Rove and Vice President Cheney, who were really behind the "leak" but pushed Libby under the bus to save themselves?
3. Was the victim of an overzealous special prosecutor determined to make a name for himself, who caught Scooter making an inaccurate statement about when he first learned of the CIA agent's involvement, and prosecuted him simply for lying to investigators and the grand jury?

If you get your news from the three networks or CNN, you are probably somewhere between number 1 and 2.

Just in case you want some basic facts on the case that you never heard from news reporting, let me try to be concise.

1. In the buildup to the Iraq war, the White House asked the CIA for an analysis of whether British intelligence reports that Iraq was working on a trade relationship with Niger for the purpose of acquiring Yellow-Cake Uranium were accurate.
2. A woman named Valerie Plame worked as some sort of analyst in the CIA, and recommended her husband, a guy named Joseph Wilson, to go to Niger and talk with government officials there to see if he could substantiate the story.
3. Joe Wilson was a former low-level State Department employee that served as an assistant to an Ambassador to a country I don't recall. He is a Democratic political operative who hates Bush and his administration, and worked for the Kerry campaign for President.
4. Wilson went to Niger, where he actually found out that Iraqi government representatives had met with Niger officials to discuss establishing a trade relationship. Niger's only unique export of value is Uranium.
5. Wilson came back and gave a verbal report to someone at the CIA, which never went to the White House. Then he wrote an Op-Ed for the NY Times, claiming that he was sent by Vice President Cheney to investigate the uranium intelligence, and found no evidence, therefore Bush lied.
6. That became a big story, amplified by an incurious media, who for the most part didn't try to find out who Wilson really was, who sent him to Niger, or where the uranium story came from. Instead, they focused heavily on supporting Wilson's claim that Bush lied.
7. Robert Novak wrote a column about the event, where he exposed the fact that Wilson made the trip to Niger on his wife's recommendation. He and other journalists more interested in the true story than the hyped one began to find out little things, such as the fact that most of Wilson's op-ed was inaccurate and untrue.
8. The media erupted in a firestorm when Wilson himself, disgruntled about his integrity being challenged by Novak, came up with the idea that releasing his wife's name to refute his story was a crime because she was a covert CIA operative.
9. Bush finally gave into extreme media and Democrat pressure, and appointed a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, to investigate whether or not a crime may have been committed by someone in his administration.
10. The investigation dragged on for years. Eventually, there was only one person indicted in the affair, Scooter Libby, who was an aide to Vice President Cheney. Libby wasn't indicted for leaking the name of a covert CIA operative. He was indicted because he told investigators that he thought Tim Russert of NBC News was the person that first told him about Valerie Plame, the CIA agent in question.
11. Libby was tried and convicted of lying, because Tim Russert testified that he never even discussed the case with Libby.

So here's why the story isn't the story. It turns out that the original source who identified Valerie Plame was a guy named Richard Armitage, a State Department guy who has no love for the Bush administration. Fitzgerald knew about that almost from the beginning, but didn't allow it to become public until after Libby was indicted. Libby had no role in releasing Plame's name to the press.

As for the idea that the white house orchestrated some sort of illegal "leak" about Plame in an attempt to discredit Wilson, it actually was never illegal. Because Plame had not been a covert operative in many years, during which she has been working behind a desk at the CIA as an analyst. Fitzgerald claims her role was "classified", but whether or not that's true, it's irrelevant.

Even if people in the white house knowingly leaked her identity to discredit her husband, there's no crime. Even posed as an ethical question, why shouldn't any administration be able to tell reporters the truth about the story to offset the lies and deceptions put out publicly by Wilson? Are they not allowed to at least try to get the truth to the public, even if the majority of the press don't want that truth to get out?

Did Libby lie on purpose or have a faulty memory? I don't really think it matters. Is it obstruction of justice if someone lies, but the lies have no bearing on the facts of the case?

No, Libby isn't a white house scapegoat. He's simply a trophy for Fitzgerald's wall, celebrated by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

I feel sorry for Libby, and hope he gets a light sentence or even a pardon. Because what he did, even if he consciously lied, doesn't deserve a bunch of prison time. What I think is the bigger problem is the news media, who have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt in this case that they are incapable of unbiased, fair, and factual reporting.