I write about Joe Klein a lot. He is a terrible spokesperson for the left and he gets to represent an ostensibly left-wing position in the pages of Time and on numerous political and cable news programs. But, even as I criticize Klein, I rarely get truly angry at him. I usually think of him as more of a wanker than a genuinely bad person. His latest offering has me rethinking that assessment. I find it truly offensive. Let’s consider this part about Paris Hilton:
In Hilton’s case, if she were another, less famous rich girl, say the daughter of a prominent Beverly Hills orthodontist, the court might have given her a stiff fine for get [sic] caught DUI while on probation, maybe some community service and sentenced her to rehab. But jail time for Hilton, however “unfair,” strikes me as a public service–it is exemplary: It sends the message, as [Fmr. Gov. Jim] Gilmore suggests, that even rich twits can’t avoid the law.
I just want Joe Klein to consider something. Paris Hilton was arrested last September for drunk
driving. She received probation and her driver’s license was suspended. This is how she dealt with it.
On January 15, California Highway Patrol pulled over Hilton, who was driving on a suspended license. At that time, she signed a court document acknowledging that she was not permitted to drive. Hilton was again pulled over on February 27 when authorities saw her car speeding with its headlights turned off, and she was charged with violating her probation.
Specifically, she was speeding along Sunset Boulevard in her Bentley, at night, with her headlights off. Now, Joe Klein has a reputation for being very concerned about the issue of racism in America. I want to know how many black or Hispanic people he thinks would avoid jail time under this same set of circumstances. It’s possible that your average daughter of a Beverly Hills orthodontist would skate away with some community service or a house arrest, but that hardly makes it right or just. And, even an orthodontist’s child would probably have to show up to court on time to get any leniency.
Klein is okay with Hilton doing some jailtime because it sets an example that ‘rich twits can’t avoid the law’ but that same logic doesn’t apply to Scooter Libby.
I have a different feeling about Libby. His “perjury”–not telling the truth about which reporters he talked to–would never be considered significant enough to reach trial, much less sentencing, much less time in stir if he weren’t Dick Cheney’s hatchet man.
Glenn Greenwald does a good job of tackling the factual error here. He provides numerous examples of less luminous politicians and judges going to jail for obstruction of justice and perjury. I want to tackle this next part:
Do we really want to spend our tax dollars keeping Scooter Libby behind bars? I don’t think so. This “perjury” case only exists because of his celebrity–just as the ridiculous “perjury” case against Bill Clinton, which ballooned into the fantastically stupid and destructive impeachment proceedings.
Sentence Libby to community service–at Walter Reed Hospital, where he can spend his days [sic] comtemplating the broken victims of his ideological arrogance.
It’s hard to know where to begin with this comment from Klein. Should we spend tax dollars to keep Scooter Libby in jail? Let’s, for a moment, move beyond the four corners of the indictment the government brought against Libby for making false statements, obstructing justice, and committing serial perjury. What kind of man is Scooter Libby? Is he a steadfast friend of children and all around stand up guy? Or is he someone that should be spending some serious time ‘considering his ideological arrogance’ (and not at Walter Reed)?
I think Mr. Klein will remember Colin Powell’s presentation to the U.N. where he made a series of charges about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs that turned out to be completely false. There’s a back story to that that many people in the Beltway conveniently forget. Here’s a little refresher from Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson.
LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, let’s face it, it was. It was not a hoax that the Secretary in any way was complicit in. In fact he did his best– I watched him work. Two AM in the morning on the DCI and the Deputy DCI, John McLaughlin. And to try and hone the presentation down to what was, in the DCI’s own words, a slam dunk. Firm. Iron clad. We threw many things out. We threw the script that Scooter Libby had given the– Secretary of State. Forty-eight page script on WMD. We threw that out the first day.
And we turned to the National Intelligence estimate as part of the recommendation of George Tenet and my agreement with. But even that turned out to be, in its substantive parts– that is stockpiles of chemicals, biologicals and production capability that was hot and so forth, and an active nuclear program. The three most essential parts of that presentation turned out to be absolutely false.
Now, imagine if Colin Powell had not thrown out Scooter Libby’s 48-page script of total bullshit? Imagine how much worse Powell’s presentation to the UN would have been? Would we even be discussing whether Scooter Libby deserved jailtime? I don’t think so. Let’s explore this in detail. Here’s an an excerpt of interview Wilkerson did with Amy Goodman where they discuss the alleged link between 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence.
AMY GOODMAN: In fact, that claim had been found to be untrue. The F.B.I. investigated, found nothing to substantiate the report of the meeting. In fact, the F.B.I. concluded Atta was most likely in Florida at the time. Even the Czech president, Vaclav Havel, told The New York Times in October 2002, that there was no evidence to confirm reports of the meeting. In an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, David Wise wrote that only moments before Powell addressed the U.N. in February 2003, Scooter Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff at the time, was frantically trying to reach you, Colonel Wilkerson, by cell phone to persuade Powell to include the supposed link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 in the speech.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Yes, I know David. He’s an excellent writer, and he’s a very incisive voice in terms of criticizing the intelligence community, in particular. As far as the call on the floor of the U.N. Security Council goes, I was not taking any calls that morning. I had told all of the people who were supporting me that I was getting ready for the presentation, that I wasn’t going to take any calls. I broke my own rule and took one call from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, feeling that it was in my interest to take my boss’s call. But I didn’t take the call from Vice President’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby. I referred it to someone else. So I’m not here to say that Scooter Libby called on the floor of the U.N. Security Council to the point that you’re addressing or that David addressed; the person to whom I did refer the call could probably assure you of that, because that’s the information I obtained later.
But more important than that is, I think, is the story you referred to did keep coming up. It came up a number of times in rehearsals where Dr. Rice, Mr. Hadley, Scooter Libby, Mr. Armitage, the Secretary and I, and the D.C.I. and D.D.C.I., were all present. And I remember one time vividly, because Mr. Tenet and the Secretary of State had agreed that that story did not have enough firmness, did not have enough foundation to be included in his remarks, everyone agreed on that, but I remember one story in particular or one scene in particular where we were rehearsing it, it was one of the later rehearsals in the D.C.I.’s conference room out at Langley, and Stephen Hadley leaned forward and said, “What happened to the Mohammed Atta story?” And the Secretary looked at him and fixed him with his eyes and said, “We took that out.” And to Mr. Hadley’s credit, he sheepishly grinned and leaned back in his chair and said, “Oh, yes, I remember now.” So we had completely discounted that story by the time we made the presentation in New York.
AMY GOODMAN: And yet Cheney continued to assert it.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I can’t explain it. I can’t explain it.
That is the kind of guy Scooter Libby is. He’s not some innocent person that got swept up in a hyped leak investigation and was punished for his celebrity. He was covering up the fact that the Office of the Vice-President had the lead role in hyping and cherrypicking and stovepiping bad intelligence to make a flawed case that Iraq presented an imminent threat to our national security. The real story is not that Libby is getting too tough of a sentence. The real story is that people like Steven Hadley and Douglas Feith and, yes, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld, are still free.
But, to return to the four corners of the indictment…Libby received the low end within the sentencing guidelines. He deserves no more leniency than he has already received. The judge could have given him as much as 37 months in prison.
Why does Joe Klein think Libby should be immune from prison? I don’t know. But it is one more indication that he exists in a Beltway Bubble where high officials are held to a different standard of accountability.
