Hurricane Fitzgerald

[Fitz]

This is a long and very good article about the relentless Fitzgerald that is the attorney prosecuting the Libby case. Many of us in Chicago are familiar with the work he does since he has worked on the case against our former governor and he is looking into our current mayor. Fitzgerald has a stellar reputation.

chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0510300289oct30,1,4935847.story?coll=chi-news-hed

CHENEY AIDE INDICTED

TRIBUNE PROFILE: PATRICK FITZGERALD

`Hurricane Fitzgerald’
Official Washington learns what Patrick Fitzgerald’s colleagues and former targets already knew: His reputation as relentless is no myth

By Kirsten Scharnberg
Tribune national correspondent
Published October 30, 2005

In the nearly two years since prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald began a relentless probe into whether someone in the Bush administration leaked the name of an undercover CIA operative, his was the phone call to be feared in Washington.

Jangling nerves among the political and media elite, the career litigator dissected every aspect of the case, forced reporters to reveal sources and dragged political heavyweights before the grand jury. Then, he made them, and the rest of the country, wait until the last minutes of his grand jury’s term before announcing his indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby on five criminal counts.

“What we see here today, when a vice president’s chief of staff is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice–it does show the world that this is a country that takes its law seriously,” Fitzgerald said during an hourlong news conference Friday afternoon.

 

[bapcathluth]

I listened to his entire presentation and the subsequent press conference and was very impressed.

 

[Fitz]

bapcathluth:

I listened to his entire presentation and the subsequent press conference and was very impressed.

Yes, Fitzgerald is very articulate. He gets high marks from most people. He is a registered independent, so he is going after Democrats as well as Republicans.

 

[walstan]

It’s good to see someone like Fitzgerald prepared to take a stand against this form of criminalisation but, I wonder if we are seeing the betrayal of a sprat to protect the whale?

The general concensus is that Mrs. Plame was “exposed” because of her husbands opposition to the Iraq invasion. If this is true it shows a pettiness of unbelievable proportions and a lack of political nounce that bodes poorly on the choices of staff made by those in charge.

A more subtle (and possibly more believable alternative) revolves around the company, a CIA front, that Mrs. Plame worked for and which specialised in “tracking” nuclear fissionable material around the world. As such it would be in an almost unique position to know the truth behind the administrations claims regarding the aquisition of “Yellow Cake” by the Iraqi government, even more likely would be its ability to ascertain the source of the forged documents circulated to bolster the administrations assertions. The questions that need to be asked, and answered are:

Did Joseph Wilson, when he explicitly critised the Bush administration for using “Doctored” evidence for the Iraq war KNOW the source of these documents?

How close to the White House was the source of these forgeries?

And how thorough was the White House in ensuring that its source of the documents was sound? (or was it interested?)

On another slightly different note I heard today a justification for the poor performance of the current administration, the argument went as such:

1. At the start of an administration all the departments are filled with the first choice personel.
2. As time passes people resign and positions are filled by second in commands and deputies.
3. By the time of a second term in office, departments a being run by third, fourth and sometimes fifth choice candidates.

Makes sense to me.

 

[Joe_Kelley]

I am surprised that we haven’t heard the word NEPOTISM. It seems a conflict of interest for a Federal employee to be involved in the hiring of a spouse.

 

[JJ.Micelli]

Fitzgerald is awesome, I hope he shakes the foundations to its very core in order to get at the truth.

 

[aimee]

Fitz:

Yes, Fitzgerald is very articulate. He gets high marks from most people. He is a registered independent, so he is going after Democrats as well as Republicans.

I must say… I could have done without the ‘baseball’ descriptions…but he does seem sincere.