Adam's Apple
Senior Member
- Apr 25, 2004
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Great article by Wesley Pruden, editor-in-chief of The Washington Times.
Time to Bring in Two Slices of Ham
By Wesley Pruden, The Washington Times
October 25, 2005
This is the week when Patrick Fitzgerald has to come up with someone to indict for blowing Valerie Plame's CIA cover, if indeed she ever had one. He's desperately searching for the ham sandwich that courthouse lore insists that any district attorney can be the master of.
Some sandwich. Valerie and her husband, the diplomat Joseph Wilson IV, styled themselves as the beautiful couple famous (in the words of Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen) to "hairdressers, mistresses and dogwalkers all over town." When she was "outed" she didn't have far to go.
Mr. Fitzgerald, the Chicago D.A. who got the Plame assignment two years ago and has spent upwards of $2 million in pursuit of the ham sandwich, wants to indict Karl Rove, the president's campaign guru, or I. (for Irving) Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff. But to get an indictment you have to have a crime.
Ay, as we Robert Burns fans are wont to say, there's the rub. There may not be one. So Mr. Fitzgerald has to invent one. Perhaps a violation of an obscure clause in the Espionage Act of 1917, enacted in the frenzy of the war to end all wars. It's not like Messrs. Rove and Libby have given information to the Krauts about the disposition of troops at Chateau Thierry, or along a salient of the allied line in the Argonne Forest, or have been conducting secret talks with the kaiser (though you never know), but a savvy D.A. knows how to fit a defendant to a 1917 crime when he can't fit a 1917 crime to the defendant.D.A. can't find the mustard.
for full article:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/pruden.htm
Time to Bring in Two Slices of Ham
By Wesley Pruden, The Washington Times
October 25, 2005
This is the week when Patrick Fitzgerald has to come up with someone to indict for blowing Valerie Plame's CIA cover, if indeed she ever had one. He's desperately searching for the ham sandwich that courthouse lore insists that any district attorney can be the master of.
Some sandwich. Valerie and her husband, the diplomat Joseph Wilson IV, styled themselves as the beautiful couple famous (in the words of Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen) to "hairdressers, mistresses and dogwalkers all over town." When she was "outed" she didn't have far to go.
Mr. Fitzgerald, the Chicago D.A. who got the Plame assignment two years ago and has spent upwards of $2 million in pursuit of the ham sandwich, wants to indict Karl Rove, the president's campaign guru, or I. (for Irving) Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff. But to get an indictment you have to have a crime.
Ay, as we Robert Burns fans are wont to say, there's the rub. There may not be one. So Mr. Fitzgerald has to invent one. Perhaps a violation of an obscure clause in the Espionage Act of 1917, enacted in the frenzy of the war to end all wars. It's not like Messrs. Rove and Libby have given information to the Krauts about the disposition of troops at Chateau Thierry, or along a salient of the allied line in the Argonne Forest, or have been conducting secret talks with the kaiser (though you never know), but a savvy D.A. knows how to fit a defendant to a 1917 crime when he can't fit a 1917 crime to the defendant.D.A. can't find the mustard.
for full article:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/pruden.htm
