It’s not about Libby, It’s whether the Bush administration lied to the American people

The major question in the matter of Valerie Plame is not whether the vice president’s chief of staff lied to a grand jury.

It’s whether the Bush administration lied to the American people in justifying the invasion of Iraq and then tried to intimidate its critics.

Friday, a grand jury indicted I. Lewis Scooter'' Libby Jr. on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements. The indictments followed a two-year investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. All the charges relate to the exposure of Plame as a CIA agent, via leaks to reporters, but Libby is not charged with revealing her classified status. Instead, he is charged with lying about how Plame came to his attention and about what he told reporters. Defenders of the administration pre-emptively floated the argument last week that perjury is a cheap fallback charge prosecutors resort to when they can't prove a real crime. As Fitzgerald said,That talking point won’t fly.’’ For a top administration official to lie to a federal grand jury to cover up a breach of national security is no trivial matter.

What is more critical for the nation, however, is whether Libby was advancing a campaign by the administration to silence critics of the invasion of Iraq.

Leaks to the press about Plame were aimed at discrediting her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador. Wilson was debunking one of the administration’s rationales for war, that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Niger.

According to the indictment, Libby told the grand jury he was merely passing on some rumors about Plame that he had heard from other reporters. In fact, says the indictment, he learned about Plame in discussions with Vice President Dick Cheney and others.

It certainly looks as though the administration was looking for a way to get at Wilson before Plame’s name appeared in print.

The indictment names only Libby, but Fitzgerald’s investigation is continuing. One person presumed to be central to it is presidential adviser Karl Rove.

Fitzgerald correctly said, ``The indictment will not seek to prove that the war was justified or unjustified.’’ It is his job to investigate violations of the law.

But his investigation has pushed open a door, and it shouldn’t be closed until the country knows a lot more about why its soldiers are dying in Iraq.

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