In Libby Case, National Security Was Never Breached

While Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald found no evidence that a federal law meant to protect covert operatives was ever broken by Scooter Libby or other administration officials, some would have you believe otherwise.

Take, for example, historian Michael Beschloss who appeared on Sunday's "Meet the Press."

Beschloss complained that Bush has yet to apologize for his subordinates actions and that this matter is "a really serious thing."

Beschloss continued: "The act that was to protect the identities of secret agents actually was lobbied for by his father, after the death of a CIA agent whose identity was revealed. This is an administration, especially at a time of the war on terrorism, that would take very seriously a breach like that of national security. So until he gives us some idea of what he thinks about the offense, whether it's now or at the end of the investigation or trial, this is going to be a cloud that sort of lingers."

But the fact is no one has ever been charged with breaching national security, as Beschloss claims.

William Safire of the New York Times, appeared later on "Meet the Press" with Tim Russert and hammered home the point: "[T]he most important single fact that emerged from the indictment [of Scooter Libby, the Vice-President's chief of staff � now resigned] is what was not in it.

"This whole thing started as an investigation of the violation of a law," Safire emphasized. "And the law that was violated was you must not deliberately out an agent who is undercover. And what the special counsel found is that law was not broken."

Indeed, at his October 28, 2005 press conference unveiling the five-count indictment against Libby, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald took special pains to note, "We have not made any allegation that Mr. Libby knowingly, intentionally, outed a covert agent."

Furthermore, there was no allegation of any conspiracy to violate the federal law to knowingly divulge the identity of anyone working undercover for the Central Intelligence Agency � the law that was at the heart of the more than two-year inquiry that began not long after July 14, 2003, when Bob Novak wrote a syndicated column saying that former ambassador Joe Wilson was married to Valerie Plame, who was a CIA official.

Administration officials apparently sought to explain or discredit Wilson's finding by pointing out that his wife Valerie was a CIA official. The CIA bureaucracy was well known to have opposed President Bush's decision to hold Iraq accountable for failing to disclose its WMD program to UN officials.

At the time, Plame was outed by "leaks" from administration sources, Wilson claimed that Bush administration officials had violated a federal statute making it a criminal to out an agent.

Apparently, Fitzegerald found that claim to be nonsense.

"But the most important thing is the whole basis of the political charge that came out of the CIA, which was desperate to try to cover up its own mistakes and its own huge failure in this case, this was an attempt by the CIA to get a Justice Department investigation of a law that had not been prosecuted in -- once, perhaps in 25 years.

"And everybody is walking around thinking, �Well, you see? There was a conspiracy to undermine or uncover an agent.' Well, there wasn't. It was not. And he [Fitzgerald] said it very clearly. And so I think we ought to keep that in mind. This was a cover-up of a non-crime."