Saturday, October 29, 2005

Snippets from Fitzgerald

Following are some of the comments made by special prosecuter Patrick Fitzgerald at a press conference Friday afternoon, Oct. 28, 2005, regarding the indictment of vice presidential aide Scooter Libby.

It is an interesting but very incomplete sample of the statements at Friday's press conference. Audio and video should be available across the Internet. I do know a low resolution video of the first 17 minutes of the press conference is available at Crooksandliars.com. Almost every major news outlet aired the proceedings, so they shouldn't be hard to find.

The indictment itself can be read at a U.S. Dept. of Justice website. There is a link in the previous post.


From Fitzgerald:

“It was known a CIA officer’s identity was blown. It was known that there was a leak.

We needed to figure out how that happened, who did it, why, whether a crime was committed, whether we could prove it, whether we should prove it. And given that national security was included, it was important we find out accurate facts.



At least four people within the government told Mr. Libby about Valerie Wilson, often referred to as Wilson’s wife, working at the CIA and believed to be repsonsible for organizing a trip Mr. Wilson took overseas.



I think what we see here today, when a vice president’s chief of staff is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, that does show the world this is a country that takes its law seriously. That all citizens are bound by the law.



Reporter question:
This began as a leak investigation but no one is charged with any leaking. Is your investigation finished? Is this another leak investigation that doesn’t lead to a charge of leaking?

Fitzgerald answer:
Let me answer the two questions you asked in one. Okay, is the investigation finished? It’s not over, but I’ll tell you this. Very rarely do you bring a charge in a case that’s gonna be tried and would you ever end a grand jury investigation. I can tell you the substantial bulk of the work in this investigation is concluded. This grand jury’s term has expired by statute. It could not be extended. But it’s an ordinary course to keep a grand jury open to consider other matters, and that’s what we’ll be doing.”

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