In My Time - Dick Cheney [215]
Despite knowing Armitage’s role, Fitzgerald spent more than two years conducting what the Washington Post called “a lengthy and wasteful investigation.” For the latter part of 2003, all of 2004, and a good part of 2005, members of the White House staff produced box after box of documents, were interviewed by the FBI, hauled before a grand jury, and repeatedly questioned about these events.
Meanwhile, over at the State Department, Armitage sat silent. And, it pains me to note, so did his boss, Colin Powell, whom Armitage told he was Novak’s source on October 1, 2003. Less than a week later, on October 7, 2003, there was a cabinet meeting. At the end of it, the press came in for a photo opportunity, and there were questions about who had leaked the information that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA. The president said he didn’t know, but wanted the truth. Thinking back, I realize that one of the few people in the world who could have told him the truth, Colin Powell, was sitting right next to him.
I participated in two lengthy sessions with the special counsel. The first was in my West Wing office in May 2004. The second was in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in August 2004. The second session was conducted under oath so that my testimony could be submitted to the grand jury. The president himself was questioned by Fitzgerald in a session in the Oval Office.
At the end of it all, the special counsel did not charge anyone with leaking information about Wilson’s wife. The only charges brought were against my chief of staff, Scooter Libby, one of the most competent, intelligent, and honorable people I have ever met. Libby had worked for me at the Defense Department, where I had been very impressed by his performance. I had been delighted when he agreed to leave his successful law practice and come into the White House as vice presidential chief of staff and national security advisor. He did important work for me and for the nation.
On October 28, 2005, Scooter was indicted on one count of obstructing justice, two counts of perjury, and two of making false statements. In 2007, during a time of intense public debate and anger about the war in Iraq, Libby’s trial took place at the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C. He was convicted on four counts, none of which were based on leaking Valerie Plame’s name or CIA employment to the press. Instead the counts turned essentially on what Scooter recalled about a telephone conversation he’d had with Tim Russert of NBC News in 2003. The issue wasn’t whether a public official had leaked Plame’s CIA employment to a reporter. The special counsel had left that subject far behind and was now focused on whether a reporter, Russert, had mentioned Wilson’s wife to a public official, Libby. Russert said he had not brought her up. Scooter said Russert had.
I believed that Scooter was innocent and should never have been indicted, much less convicted. It was hardly surprising that two busy men would disagree about what happened in a telephone conversation that occurred months before. Even if you decided that one version was more accurate than the other, it wasn’t right to insist that the second version was a lie rather than the result of a faulty memory. During the trial there were many examples of witnesses forgetting important events, but their fates didn’t hang on the accuracy of their recall.
I’d watched before as independent or special counsels assigned to investigate public figures went on and on, and even when they failed to find an underlying crime, they caused plenty of human wreckage.