Deconstructing the Indictment

For the last two years, Federal Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has investigated a potential crime, namely the revealing to the general public that Valerie Wilson nee Plame worked for the CIA in counter-proliferation, and was an undercover agent. To charge someone with a crime at the Federal level requires an indictment - a summary of allegations and facts which show that there is probable reason to believe that a crime was committed, and that a particular individual should be charged with that crime and prosecuted. It is part of the safeguards of our judicial system that prosecutors are not able to charge by themselves, but have three forms of oversight. First, they work for the public, directly or indirectly. Second, the process is overseen by a judge, and approval is needed along the way for warrants and subpoenas power. Most importantly, they must convince a body of citizens, the grand jury, that there is probable cause a crime has been committed, and that a particular individual or group of individuals should face criminal charges.

At 2:00 PM Eastern Standard Time today Fitzgerald all but declared his investigatory phase over, and that his office was entering into a new phase, where Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has been charged with a crime, and must be tried. It is tempting to speculate on what this means, what the fallout will be, and where the direction goes from here. But first, it is important to capture the staggering statements made in the indictment, and what they reveal. While partisans will attempt to spin this in one direction or another, the fact is that a five-count indictment on felony charges rests on a theory of what took place that goes far beyond what Scooter Libby did or said. That the indictment is so carefully prepared, and carefully does not draw implications, nor does it include extraneous information, makes what it does include all the more interesting, and potentially damning.

But let us look with "the four corners of the indictment" first. The timeline set forth by the indictment is this. In the 2003 State of the Union address, George Bush uttered the by now famous "Sixteen Words," claiming that Saddam had attempted to get uranium illegally from Niger. In May of 2003, that story began to unravel, as press accounts came to the fore which questioned the Niger Yellowcake story.