Second Course: Roast Journalist (not)

My extensive knowledge of TV police and courtroom dramas leads me to conclude that Digby's commenter Sara is correct:

Judy is not the main course at all. What I suspect Fitzgerald had to do was eliminate the defense, namely that Miller and Cooper and other reporters were the source of the identity of "Wilson's Wife" as CIA NOC.

And thank goodness. I have a feeling her flesh would be undigestibly gamey and briny.

The defense she mentions is ridiculous: who is more likely to know (and disseminate) the identity of an undercover agent, someone who works at the White House or a Journalist?

I've watched enough Law and Order (and The Shield) on the teevee to know what's going on: the lower-level bad guys (and gals) are being flipped to get to the kingpins.

There is no way someone like Judy Miller would spend 83 days in jail if all she had to do was call Scooter and get him to do something he says he was willing to do all along: release her from the confidentiality agreement. Her story makes no sense either.

But here's something I think has been missed:

I can only tell you that as soon as I received a personal assurance from the source that I was able to talk to him and talk to the source about my testimony, it was only then and as a result of the special prosecutor's agreement to narrow the focus of the inquiry to focus on the way - on that source, that I was able to testify

Miller has agreed to testify not because of sudden change of heart on the part of her paramour, it's because Fitzgerald has recently provided some kind of incentive to her and to Scooter.

Like the good prosecutors on the teevee, Fitzgerald is not content (like the bad prosecutors in reality) with convicting some low-level perps, he's going as high as he can go. To the roots of the problem. That is what all real prosecutors should be doing, to really help society, instead of convicting nickel and dime drug dealers by the hundreds of thousands.

In the big scheme of things, Judy and Scooter are small potatoes. Indicting the President and Vice President on cospiracy charges, that's much better. Granting limited immunity (or an investigation whose "limited focus" is not on them) to the Thornbirds is an acceptable means to an end.

Besides his work taking down The Mob, Fitzgerald's ongoing investigation into Hollinger International (featuring big-shot scumbags like Conrad Black and Richard Perle) demonstrates this modus operandi.

I think of lawyers as the warrior class in civil society. The man with the best hired thugs wins. Fitzgerald looks like a Jedi. Posessing unbeatable skill, he fights for the good of the people.

I only hope that a pincer attack, with the bloggers and activists on one side and Fitzgerald with his truth saber on the other, might bring down these evil bastards. But these guys are crafty enough to have taken control of the US government and the US media. Failure in the form of jail or the ruin of their reputations are not an option for them. Who knows what they will do. Start the champagne chilling but be very afraid.