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Patrick Fitzgerald, Cheney's scribbles, Wilson-Plame affair

Midnight in the garden of Moe and Curley

By John Burtis
Tuesday, May 16, 2006

It is growing very dark in the increasingly shoddy and ethereal Scooter Libby investigation, where Patrick Fitzgerald, bumping into the furniture, stubbing his toes, muttering something about it making no sense, but regardless of the mounting absurdity, canters forward, like Lord Cardigan and the Light Brigade

Oh, boy, Patrick Fitzgerald has now decided that there is some great weight to be attached to what appears to be Dick Cheney's penciled notes affixed in the margin of what purports to be a newspaper article about Joe Wilson.

In fact, it appears to Mr. Fitzgerald, if I can calculate his tortured reasoning correctly, as he continues to beaver his way through the mountain of evidence he's scooping up as he goes about his Byzantine process of discovery following a crime which apparently never took place, only his claims of lies afterwards, that these comments cement the notion that Mr. Cheney had Mr. Wilson on his mind pretty early in this whole clownish affair, and that Mr. Cheney's musings set the whole Plame thing in motion.

Of course, lost in the pertinacious shuffling of reams of papers, filings, counter filings, responses, affidavits, depositions and the obviously slanted press accounts repackaged for broadcast back to the same sycophants from CNN, is the fact that Mr. Cheney had every reason to be concerned about the absurd antics evinced by Mr. Wilson in his Nigerian rumpus about the folk tales of unsweetened yellow cake.

and Mr. Cheney's notes, "Have we done this sort of thing before? Send an amb(assador) to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?" seem quite innocuous on their face and hardly the starting point for the entire Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame leak brouhaha dust up bring down the Bush government by hook or by crook hubbub that it is today.

after all, managers, in any number of cases, may indeed make notes questioning the growing objective madness displayed by members of their staffs. They do it all the time. They also question, on a daily basis, the need for long and involved trips to nowhere for little or no good reason as well as routinely question the associated costs piled up by these same people.

Whether these same small comments can buttress the continuation of the massive governmental investigation into the unwritten rules suspected in the game of governmental gossip may only be fully understood when the state of mind of the writer is fully plumbed--a tall task for Mr. Fitzgerald, especially with Mr. Cheney as the quarry.

So, what are the facts?

Did Mr. Cheney write the comments? Maybe.

Were they written on a newspaper clipping relating to the Fitzgerald folderol? apparently so.

are the comments relevant to the case at hand? Perhaps, but only if Mr. Cheney says they are. Their intent cannot be inferred from their reading.

Will they substantively change the Wilson/Plame vast leak of the latter's "secret" status? It's hard to say as there is still some dispute about whether Ms. Plame was ever a classified or "secret" agent. She has, however, become an agent provocateur, without a doubt, as has her lamebrain husband Joe, and an exalted left wing hero to the New York Times, John Kerry and the anti-war crowd.

Will Mr. Cheney's small comments continue to be bandied around as if they possess some great meaning in the grand Democratic schemata requiring the heaping further opprobrium on President Bush and his minions for all that is wrong with america, the world in general and with every single identifiable nuance in the Iraq war? Of course.

Meanwhile, Mr. Patrick Fitzgerald will be hurriedly searching for the next little piece of detritus, the next feculent note of great import to be trotted out to the newsies for further fawning praise, the ensuing yellow stickie note with a scrawl indicating another consummate breakthrough in the life of his ongoing rump tribunal to find that immaculate moment when someone, anyone, a person he can find and identify, no matter what damage he causes and how long the inquisition takes, actually told another one that Valerie Plame worked at the, shhh, CIa.

Told, that is, before Joe Wilson shot his own mouth off to all and sundry, and appeared in every newspaper and magazine that would pass him a valid cashable check drawn on an account filled with US specie.

Outside, in the garden of Moe and Curley, it's midnight, and all we can hear is the famous, "woo, woo, woo," echoing off the broken statues and the ivy covered pillars which mark the ruins of Mr. Fitzgerald's slow roast of an inquiry of a pitiful digging around of trying to make a solid case out of a Virginia ham sandwich, 2 gherkin pickles, one slice of imported Stilton cheese, slightly off mayonnaise, a malleable grand jury and a sweeping array of stooges.

It is rumored that Mr. Fitzgerald's next subpoena in this weighty matter of state is going out to one Mr. Larry Fine, for a number of suspicious notes written to a Mr. Vernon Dent.


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