Scooter Libby Indictment

Note: This is not an accusation of witch hunts.

When I was in early high school, I was fascinated by the Salem Witch Trials. I wrote more than one report on it, whenever the homework assignment allowed it as a topic. Since I first started the research, I've been upset by the misinformation out there about the whole episode. But even more upsetting was the way the case itself was prosecuted.

Several girls, in a fit of hysteria encouraged by a slave from the Caribbean, accused some of the less reputable women in Salem of witchcraft. Once the accusations were leveled, then hearings were held. At the hearings, the girls again went into fits and accused these same women again of using witchcraft then and there to hurt the girls. The people who were accused during the hearings were tried for charges of witchcraft committed during the hearings. No charges were filed for the alleged incidents of witchcraft that happened before the hearings.

The trials began, the hysterics continued, and the accusations of witchcraft spread until they were leveled against some of the most reputable women and men in town. In the end, one man was pressed to death in an effort to get him to agree to be tried by that court, nineteen people were tried, convicted, and hung, and two dogs were hung (I never found transcripts of the dogs' trial).

My point is that it always seemed unfair to me that the hearings were the basis of the charges filed against the first of these people. If the legal system found the original accusations believable enough, then those people should have been tried on those charges. But the accusations weren't believable and the people weren't tried for those "crimes." The hearings, and then the trials, became simply a vehicle for stirring up new "crimes" for prosecution. If the legal system had decided there were no crimes to begin with and hadn't held these hearings, then nobody would have died.

And that's my gut feeling about the Scooter Libby indictment.

Over and over I've heard that releasing Valerie Plame's name was not a crime. It's a crime to release the name of a covert CIA agent within five years of that agent's cover operations. Valerie Plame had been back for more than five years, so releasing her name would not have fallen under this statute.

So there was no prosecutable offense, but we held Grand Jury hearings anyway. And during the course of the hearings, Scooter Libby said something that turned into a criminal indictment.

Call me naive, but it doesn't seem fair. It almost seems like double jeopardy. Why couldn't Fitzgerald have simply said, "There isn't a crime," and stopped the investigation at that point? Judith Miller would have been spared her time in jail, and Scooter Libby would still be helping the Vice President.