HUFFINGTON
07.01-08.12
AP PHOTO/CHARLES REX ARBOGAST
SQUELCHING SECRETS
vice president apprised of his shifting accounts of how he claimed to
have learned about Ms. Wilson’s
CIA employment,” Fitzgerald wrote.
But Cheney was never charged.
“I think the chances of it being a show trial and losing really
weighed heavily on him, in terms
of the political fallout,” said Michael Genovese, director of Loyola
Marymount University’s Institute
for Leadership Studies.
Rove, who confirmed Plame’s
identity to then-Time magazine
reporter Matt Cooper, had repeatedly told the president, the White
House press secretary, the press and
Fitzgerald’s grand jury, that he had
no role in the leak. But in his fourth
and fifth grand jury appearances, after Rove and his lawyer realized that
an email message they had already
turned over to Fitzgerald proved he
had spoken to Cooper, Rove changed
his story. He insisted that he had
honestly forgotten, until his memory was jogged by the email.
According to James B. Stewart’s
2011 book about celebrated liars, Tangled Webs, the FBI agents
on the investigative team were
“unanimous that Rove should be
charged with false statements,
and Fitzgerald seemed to agree.”
But, for reasons he has never
publicly explained, Fitzgerald ul-
“There is a cloud
over what the vice
president did...”
timately chose not to indict Rove
either for the leak or for obstruction of justice.
While much could have been
gleaned from key investigative
documents requested by a congressional committee, the Bush
White House wouldn’t let Fitzgerald release them.
The conservative critique of
Fitzgerald’s investigation is that he
went too far. Once he found out that
the first mention of Plame to reporters came not from the White House,
but from then-State Department
official Richard Armitage — without
apparent ill intent — he should have
shut things down.
But Marcy Wheeler, who was one
of the foremost chroniclers of the
Libby trial, said Fitzgerald’s investigation didn’t go far enough.
“The FBI agents believed that
they had the case against Rove
nailed down,” Wheeler said. And
Fitzgerald “actually had
Dick Cheney in his teeth.”