I Cogitate
| Recent Posts | My Best Blogs | Archives | Favorite Quotes | Links | Contact |
Ken Starr and Patrick Fitzgerald
Ken Starr and Patrick Fitzgerald
Folks, there's no comparison of these two despite the sordid GOP talking points that are being pushed by the partisan, the desperate and the immoral.
Starr was a 'relief pitcher' for the Republicans when independent prosecutor Robert Fiske was just about to exonerate Bill and Hillary Clinton because he could find no evidence of financial wrongdoing. Taking the job over because the 'right' information wasn't being located and 'correct' judgment was not being issued indicates the character of Ken Starr--politics over country, politics over ethics.
Patrick Fitzgerald attempted to determine if any wrongdoing had taken place and by who, but was stymied by a self-and-his-cohorts-serving liar and perjurer and a presidential administration that had zero interest in determining if one or more of its members were indeed guilty of outing an undercover CIA agent and therefore undermining our national security.
That is also another important point. Plame-gate was about the national security of the United States, the safety of Americans, an element politicized by the Bush Administration as a sacred priority. That is, until their selfish needs trumphed all. Whitewater was about a bunch of 'I wanted a job in D.C.' yahoos who turned their disappointment and bitterness into vindictive retribution and at least one (but apparently more) pathological liar in David Hale.
Ken Starr and his staff were also habitual leakers, a scummy form of malpractice for any independent prosecutor. Did any in the press express concern over Starr and his staff's odious ethics? Good luck in that search.
Okay, here's your challenge--name one Patrick Fitzgerald/or his staff press leak? Again, good luck in that search.
Starr was appointed to determine financial misconduct. He couldn't locate any and, in his desperation, chose to rely on a mentally ill individual, Jim McDougal, someone wishing to limit the length of the prison term he was facing, and the aforementioned David Hale, well-known in Arkansas for his unreliability. Still, Starr couldn't nail the Clintons. Thus, Starr turned towards sexual misconduct--not a subject or basis for the original appointment of an independent prosecutor.
Fitzgerald was appointed to detrermine if any laws were broken in the outing of a national security agent of the United States. He was stymied by a liar, an obstructionist, a perjurer, as the recent jury verdict indicated. Was it inappropriate for Fitzgerald to 'stray' from his original purpose as some Rethuglicans have bleated? Let's have him answer that question via his October 28, 2005 press conference:
"...Investigators do not set out to investigate the statute, they set out to gather the facts.and
It's critical that when an investigation is conducted by prosecutors, agents and a grand jury they learn who, what, when, where and why. And then they decide, based upon accurate facts, whether a crime has been committed, who has committed the crime, whether you can prove the crime and whether the crime should be charged...
...That's the way this investigation was conducted. It was known that 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 at stake, it was especially important that we find out accurate facts.
There's another thing about a grand jury investigation. One of the obligations of the prosecutors and the grand juries is to keep the information obtained in the investigation secret, not to share it with the public.
And as frustrating as that may be for the public, that is important because, the way our system of justice works, if information is gathered about people and they're not charged with a crime, we don't hold up that information for the public to look at. We either charge them with a crime or we don't.
And that's why we've safeguarded information here to date.
But as important as it is for the grand jury to follow the rules and follow the safeguards to make sure information doesn't get out, it's equally important that the witnesses who come before a grand jury, especially the witnesses who come before a grand jury who may be under investigation, tell the complete truth.
It's especially important in the national security area. The laws involving disclosure of classified information in some places are very clear, in some places they're not so clear.
And grand jurors and prosecutors making decisions about who should be charged, whether anyone should be charged, what should be charged, need to make fine distinctions about what people knew, why they knew it, what they exactly said, why they said it, what they were trying to do, what appreciation they had for the information and whether it was classified at the time.
Those fine distinctions are important in determining what to do. That's why it's essential when a witness comes forward and gives their account of how they came across classified information and what they did with it that it be accurate."
"...It was false. He was at the beginning of the chain of phone calls, the first official to disclose this information outside the government to a reporter. And then he lied about it afterwards, under oath and repeatedly..."An unethical, partisan and hired gunslinger versus a government employee will to face down the most powerful. There is simply no comparison, despite the garbage proffered by the talking heads who place personal political gain above all else.
Let Patrick Fitzgerald put it in his own words:
"But I think 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; that all citizens are bound by the law.Patrick Fitzgerald expresses the priorities and values that make this country a great one. The Bush Administration continues to lie, obstruct, and harm, leading us down the slippery slope of selfish depravity.
But what we need to also show the world is that we can also apply the same safeguards to all our citizens, including high officials. Much as they must be bound by the law, they must follow the same rules."
top
RSS feed
| Recent Posts | My Best Blogs | Archives | Favorite Quotes | Links | Contact |