NYT,pg1: Fitz morphs into "Untouchables" Costner, brands Libby a liar

[DeepModem Mom]

News Analysis
A Prosecutor's Focus Shifted to a Cover-Up
By TODD S. PURDUM
Published: October 29, 2005


Doug Mills/The New York Times
Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor from Chicago, arriving Friday, to much attention, at the United States Courthouse in Washington.


WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 - The capital stopped in its tracks on Friday to watch a trim, plain, soft-spoken prosecutor whose voice it had barely heard in two years call the most important aide to the most powerful vice president in American history a liar. Politely, calmly, but firmly - and over and over again.

The prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, brought no charges on the issue that prompted his investigation: whether someone in the government committed a crime by leaking the classified C.I.A. identity of the wife of one of the sharpest critics of the administration's rationale for war with Iraq. But he offered renewed evidence of that oldest of Washington axioms: the cover-up is always worse than the crime.

In an hourlong, live television news conference, Mr. Fitzgerald said that Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., had repeatedly told F.B.I. agents, and later a federal grand jury, that he was "just passing gossip from one reporter to another at the end of a long chain of phone calls" about the identity of the agent, Valerie Wilson. "It would be a compelling story that would lead the F.B.I. to go away," Mr. Fitzgerald said. "If only it were true."

It was as if Mr. Fitzgerald had suddenly morphed from the ominous star of a long-running silent movie into a sympathetic echo of Kevin Costner in "The Untouchables." And Mr. Libby's sworn testimony that he had learned of Ms. Wilson's identity from reporters suddenly seemed to spring from the same confidence that they would never contradict him that led Bill Clinton to assume that Monica S. Lewinsky had not saved evidence of their affair.

"We didn't get the straight story," Mr. Fitzgerald said, explaining his hitherto secret investigation and sometimes inscrutable moves. "And we had to - had to - take action."...


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/29/politics/29ASSESS.html

[C_U_L8R]

1. The country has just seen a REAL man of honor

Fitz is a true American hero. A man of honor and ethics.
A man who speaks softly yet sharply and stands up for justice.

Contast Fitz with Dubya and his band of crooks and cronies
who disingenuously promise to "restore honor to the White House".
The country is slowly awakening to this truth that the republican
party and the fundamentalist reich is rife with corruption.

Like all tyranical regimes... their demise is coming soon

[shenmue]

2. I love that movie

Mr. Fitzgerald certainly reminds me of the G-man out to do justice as all turns to chaos around him.

[pacalo]

3. The question about Libby's credibility vs. "three reporters"

which included Tim Russert, was asked by an NBC reporter who is under Russert! That explains why last night on Countdown Keith was making a point of letting the audience know that Russert's word can be trusted. He said it himself & sought comments from two other guests about Russert's believability.

At one point, Mr. Cheney's onetime press secretary, Pete Williams of NBC News, asked Mr. Fitzgerald how the prosecutor could take the word of "three reporters" (including his current bureau chief and boss, Tim Russert) "versus the vice president's chief of staff," with whom Mr. Williams served in the Pentagon when Mr. Cheney was secretary of defense in the first Bush administration.

"What I'll say is, we're comfortable proceeding," Mr. Fitzgerald replied.

This had to have made Russert very agitated.