RUSH: Lewis Libby indicted on five counts: one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of lying to investigators, and two counts of perjury before the grand jury. He’s soon to resign. I think he’s already sent his letter. He resigns not just to the vice president but to the president since he’s on the National Security Council staff, so he will resign, having been indicted. I’m thinking back to how this all started, and I cannot get past this Novak column and how this really is the focal point of the investigation, but there were things that happened before that. In the run-up to the war, Vice President Cheney and some others were trying to determine the nuclear capability or status of Saddam, and they asked the CIA, and the CIA apparently at that point, however it happened, it appears it happened through the recommendation of Joe Wilson’s wife. It appears that the CIA sent Wilson over to Niger to check out this British intelligence report that there had been attempts by Iraq to buy yellow cake uranium from Niger. Cheney didn’t know who the CIA had sent. Cheney didn’t even know what the CIA was going to do. He had just made the request. ‘What’s going on? We need to find some data here on the potential nuclear side of the weapons of mass destruction.’ So Wilson comes back and first appears without his name being mentioned in a column by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, and they read this in the White House, and Wilson comes back, says, ‘There’s nothing there. There’s nothing to this. This administration is making all this stuff up,’ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and they say, ‘Well, who the hell is this? This is an unnamed ambassador. Who the hell is this?’
So Scooter Libby and the boys start trying to find out, ‘Who the hell is this?’ and that’s what got this whole process going, and they eventually find out that it’s Joe Wilson, and as a side aspect of this, they find out that Wilson’s wife works at the CIA. Not in a covert job; she’s a weapons of mass destruction analyst at a desk job at the CIA, and it appears that their real interest was Wilson here. Finally they ask, ‘Who the hell was he? How did he get sent?’ Wilson in that Kristof column alluded to the fact the vice president’s office had sent him, and Cheney said, ‘I didn’t. I didn’t know who the guy was.’ All Cheney did was ask the CIA to find out something. The CIA then took the ball, apparently ran with it, and Wilson got the trip, after two urgings of the CIA by his wife — the courageous and brave Valerie Plame. So Wilson, then, after appearing in the Kristof column anonymously, then writes this New York Times op-ed which expands further on what he thinks was no evidence of Iraq trying to buy yellow cake uranium from Niger and further lies by the administration on weapons of mass destruction. Now they’re really ticked off in the White House and trying to figure out who this guy is, because when he gave his report to the CIA when he got back, as Bob Woodward points out last night on Larry King Live — we have the audiotape for you — his report to the CIA basically confirmed what everybody thought, that there had been contact between Iraq and Niger over yellow cake uranium.
So this guy Wilson is out there lying to Kristof — and Walter Pincus of the Washington Post is involved in this, in carrying anonymously Joe Wilson’s story forward, and I think Pincus quoted Wilson. I think Wilson was known in that story in the Post, but then Wilson writes his op-ed in the New York Times, and the White House asks, “Who the hell is this guy?” sort of like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. “Who are those guys who keep chasing us?” and so forth. So they set out, obviously, to try to discredit what the guy was doing. He was undercutting the whole effort here single-handedly and the press had glommed onto him and he was irrefutable! He was a godsend. He was a saint. He was infallible. Joe Wilson became everybody on the left’s hero because he was talking about how the administration was lying and we had no business going to war and the weapons of mass destruction stuff was being made up, and all of this, and in the process of trying to find out who he is, the fact that his wife worked at the CIA was learned. There was no effort to out her, and if there were, there would have been an indictment on that today. I can safely say after two years of an investigation, if there was an effort to out — if the whole vice president’s effort, the White House effort, whoever was involved, if there was an effort to out her, to stumble Joe Wilson, and to cause him pain and suffering because of what he had done, there would be an indictment on that today. But apparently there isn’t. Now, we’ve got the press conference from Fitzgerald coming up at two o’clock.
What we’ve got today is an indictment that Libby lied: perjury, obstruction of justice and so forth in the investigation of all this, but no charge as to the central purpose or theme of this investigation. So it sounds to me if you put the pieces together — and then I still want to know who told Novak. You know, I still want to know who told Robert Novak this woman’s identity. That’s what got this whole thing started. A lot of people think that this CIA mission that Wilson was given at the urging of his wife actually ended up being an attempt by the CIA to undercut the entire war effort and this administration. That’s what a lot of people think. I happen to be one of them. I happen to think you’ve got a child of the sixties here, Joe Wilson. You’ve got his wife working on the weapons of mass destruction desk. You’ve got contributors to the Democratic Party, Al Gore and Americans Coming Together, his wife, Joe Wilson’s, has given money to the Democrats. He somehow gets sent on this trip. The CIA, as we know, is at war with Cheney anyway over his service previously as secretary of defense in the first Bush administration, going back in some cases even 20 years back to the eighties when he was chief of staff in various roles. This whole thing just smells. The whole thing just smells. It doesn’t look to me like anybody at the White House said, “Okay, let’s find out who this guy is,” and they found out, “Oh, okay, let’s find out what his wife does. Oh, that’s what she does? Let’s ruin him!” I don’t think that’s what’s went on here because there aren’t any indictments to that effect.
Now, the investigation is ongoing because they’re trying to nail Karl Rove and they’re trying to nail Karl Rove for the same stuff they’ve got Libby on because it’s apparent that Rove didn’t leak anybody’s name, Valerie Plame or otherwise. So the press conference is at two o’clock this afternoon. We’ll carry it live. It will probably start a little bit late as these things tend to, but we will carry this whole thing live. But that’s basically how I sum this all up. My
questions still remain: “Who told Robert Novak?” and I hope we find this out someday. I want to know if Wilson and Plame were called to testify before the grand jury. I want to know what
Bill Clinton prepared a false affidavit for Monica Lewinsky. He had his lawyer introduce that into evidence. He testified to its truthfulness. Clinton lied himself under oath before the grand jury. All these are multiple acts of perjury. They are multiple acts of conspiracy and contempt of court. They were premeditated. The Clinton administration sought from the very highest levels of government to obstruct justice. These were central to the sexual harassment case that was going on with Paula Jones and Clinton never disputed any of these findings even though he was given the opportunity to attend a hearing in court to dispute them and refute them and he refused to take advantage of that. At the same time this was going on, the White House had mounted a search-and-destroy mission against the independent counsel, Ken Starr. They called him a sex-starved pervert; they called him a political animal. They tried to destroy him and his wife. They did everything they could to destroy Ken Starr. None of this happened with Fitzgerald. Nobody has been out attacking this prosecutor. The president hasn’t been. There has been no coordinated White House effort to destroy the investigation or to cast doubt on it. Quite the contrary. The president’s called this a “dignified investigation.” If you libs want to try to say there’s some sort of similarity here, you’re the ones that have some explaining to do, because you’re the ones who now want Libby sent up the road on conspiracy and perjury, and you wanted your guy, Bill Clinton, left alone.
You don’t hear any people on my side saying leave Libby alone. You don’t hear anybody on my side saying he didn’t do anything wrong. You guys all defended Clinton, and you joined this effort to commit perjury and obstruction of justice along with Clinton, and then you go out and try to destroy Ken Starr in the process. In this case, the underlying issue was whether Valerie Plame was covert and whether she was outed thereby endangering her and national security. The one indictment that we know about today doesn’t even deal with any of this. As I say, “It doesn’t appear that any crime was committed there,” at least as we know now. Back to Hillary Clinton: Robert Ray concluded that Hillary Clinton had lied repeatedly about her role in the travel office firings, decided not to charge, decided not to charge Bill Clinton because he was the highest official in government, would be disruptive, thought it best to leave it alone. Now, the aftermath, Bill Clinton is the standard bearer, the favorite son of their party, one of his #1 contributors — well, the wife of one of his #1 contributors — gave $450,000 to his library fund, Marc Rich, who now we learn through the oil-for-food program report last night was getting kickbacks from Saddam Hussein and the oil-for-food program as he was pardoned and after he was pardoned by Bill Clinton.
Hillary is said to be a terrific senator, and Bill Clinton travels the world as the greatest president, the first black president, and all this other rotgut. Hillary Clinton concealed her Rose Law Firm billing records for two years in the private residence of the White House. She didn’t know how they got there Lewis Libby didn’t do any of what I have just described to you that went on in the Clinton White House. You liberals, I love you, but don’t try calling here and saying there’s hypocrisy. If there’s hypocrisy anywhere, and if you want to avoid it, you ought to be marching on Washington demanding no indictment of Lewis Libby because what Libby has done pales in comparison to what Bill Clinton did as president of the United States, not to mention the sexual harassment, not to mention what he did with Monica Lewinsky, not to mention what he did with Juanita Broaddrick, not to mention what he did with Kathleen Willey — and you wanted to defend all of it. It was “just sex.” He ran from the top of this government an obstruction-of-justice campaign that include perjury, suborning of perjury, having a lawyer knowingly submit a false affidavit — well, the lawyer didn’t, but Clinton knew it was false. Lewis Libby didn’t do any of this, and you didn’t think that Bill Clinton should be charged. The demand for consistency actually is aimed at you people on the left. Don’t call here and tell me I’m being inconsistent. You are the ones that continue no matter what the issue to have an indefensible position.
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