The Nation (David Corn): "Judy Miller's Memory Mess"

[Bucky]

I read stuff like this and, again, I can't help but think how convenient it is that all the conservative witnesses are leading the case toward perjury for ol' Scooter and away from criminal behavior on the part of virtually everybody else. Libby is looking more and more like the Anthony Edwards character from "Hot Shots."

Libby Trial: Judy Miller's Memory Mess (linky)

Posted 01/30/2007 @ 11:01pm

When special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was prepping for the trial of Scooter Libby, he probably looked toward the moment when he would call former New York Times reporter Judith Miller to the stand and thought, We're just going to have to get through that day.

Miller, the controversial journalist whose prewar reporting hyped the WMD threat posed by Iraq, was called as a prosecution witness on Tuesday, and she was pummeled by Bill Jeffress, an attorney for Libby, who has been charged with making false statements to the FBI and grand jury investigating the CIA leak...

<snippy>

During this meeting, Miller testified, her pen didn't work. But she still managed to take some notes. She didn't explain how. Perhaps she scratched away with the tip of the pen...


<snippy>

Then came Jeffress. He immediately went for the underbelly: Miller's memory. While being questioned by Fitzgerald, Miller acknowledged that in the fall of 2005 when she first appeared before Fitzgerald's grand jury--after getting out of jail--she had completely forgotten about her first meeting with Libby. She told the grand jury only about the July 8 meeting and the July 12 phone call. On the witness stand, she testified that during her initial grand jury appearance, Fitzgerald had asked her to review her notebooks. That night she did so and discovered notes referring to the June 23 meeting at the Old Executive Office Building. She immediately called her lawyer, and soon she was back before the grand jury to talk about that first conversation with Libby.

Jeffress feasted on this. For years, he noted while questioning Miller, she had not remembered the June 23 meeting at all. Then suddenly she could recall details from it. What Libby had said about Wilson's wife. How Libby was behaving. What his mood was. From the time the leak story broke in the summer of 2003 until her second grand jury appearance in fall of 2005, nothing had caused her to recall that meeting, Jeffress noted.

[blitzen]

1. The defense is trying to show that everyone's memory is bad....

Then they'll say Libby is just like everyone else--a guy with a bad memory. I don't think it will work, but it's clearly their strategy.

[grasswire]

2. I believe their strategy is to get EVERYONE off

Sand in the umpire's face. Create diversions, smoke and mirrors.

[Bucky]

6. Not even close. Don't presume that Neocons are cult-like

Republicans won't just stick together with an "us vs. them" mentality. They don't think like that. It's all about competition, about who's on top and who's screwing whom. They'll slap your back with a smile at the cocktail party, but they'll have that same smile on their lips when they stiff arm you into the swimming pool later in the evening. It's pure cut throat with these pirates; that's why they like figure heads in the White House: it gives everyone more room to maneuver in the constant game of "Who am I gonna stick it to next?"

Libby is dead meat; the other monkeys have already knocked him out of the tree. The only question is how much will they cooperate with each other to make sure he's the only one that the tiger feeds on. My guess is that Judy Miller will probably end up as a fall guy here too. If they can personally gain, Republicans will always turn on each other.

[Hieronymus]

3. I hope Judith feels like the fool she is for serving time to defend Scooter.

[Crabby Appleton]

4. I'm getting the feeling that all you get for Fitzmas is libby

[enough]

5. Corn does a good job of summarizing at a level where you don't have to be

obsessed with the case to follow it.