Pig recommends trough
Now that "crack" prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has concluded his "big" investigation, folks he missed who knew that bloviating Joe Wilson's airbrained spouse was feeding at the CIA trough are coming out of the woodwork. Last week we had Patrick Fitzgerald Ignored Witnesses who Contradicted Wilson:
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's Leakgate investigation is coming unraveled, as witness after witness steps forward to challenge a key premise of his controversial probe.More following the link, but that was before Bob Woodward added his name to the list, which really has bloviating Joe in a tizzy. Cut to the always dyspeptic Wesley Pruden at the Washington Times:
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The number of witnesses now saying "No" has climbed to four - and none of them have apparently been interviewed by Fitzgerald's investigators.
On Wednesday, Wayne Simmons, a 27-year veteran at the CIA, told Fox News Radio: "As most people now know, [Plame] was traipsed all over Washington many years ago by Joe Wilson and introduced at embassies and other parties as 'my CIA wife.'"
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In fact, rumors now swirl around Washington that Plame used to take her friends to lunch at the CIA's cafeteria.
Mortuary Bob became a Washington legend for cultivating sources among both the quick and the dead, and he's guilty so far of no known crime. Well, except the crime of not taking seriously the game of who outed Valerie Plame, Washington's most famous airhead, as a covert operative of the CIA. That "crime" may yet get him "terminated" with extreme prejudice.More japery by following the link.
The husband of the airhead yesterday demanded the pursuit of Mortuary Bob by the famous special prosecutor from Chicago who has spent $20 million in vain pursuit of a crime, and could only manage to indict Scooter Libby for not remembering who told him about something that didn't happen.
Somebody even now is writing a play about the Plame game, and it's a musical comedy. It's easy to see why. We can only hope the music will be better than the words. Mortuary Bob wrote the best review of what's happened so far, when he told an interviewer for NPR that "when all the facts come out in this case it's going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great."
The consequences, great or not, are likely to fall hardest on the head of Patrick Fitzgerald. The big wind from Chicago has seen his case against Scooter fall apart over the last 48 hours. Scooter stands charged with perjury, a serious crime that rarely yields a conviction, because he said he learned of Valerie Plame's supposed status as a covert CIA agent from Tim Russert of NBC News, and not from a government official, which would have made it a violation of the law. Mr. Russert says that's not how he remembers it.
Even if Scooter was telling a lie, and not merely misremembering something from a long time ago, this is pretty thin soup on which to go to a grand jury. But if you're a special prosecutor who has just blown $20 million, even if merely taxpayer money, you're likely to be in a mild panic to come up with any old bone to throw into the pot.
But now comes Mortuary Bob with his story that he talked to Scooter before Tim did, and his notes reflect that he wanted to talk about "yellowcake" and "Joe Wilson's wife." This suggests that a lot of people in town knew about Val and Joe, who covert or not devote a lot of their time trying to get their overt pictures in the papers. If Scooter, who talks to a lot of reporters, all of whom look alike in the dark, got Tim and Mortuary Bob confused who could blame him? Probably not a jury, unless it's a jury packed with diehard Democrats eager to nail a Republican hide to the barn door. Where but the District of Columbia could you find a jury like that?
