At least so says Richard Cohen
in today's Washington Post:
The best thing Patrick Fitzgerald could do for his country is get out of Washington, return to Chicago and prosecute some real criminals. As it is, all he has done so far is send Judith Miller of the New York Times to jail and repeatedly haul this or that administration high official before a grand jury, investigating a crime that probably wasn't one in the first place but that now, as is often the case, might have metastasized into some sort of coverup -- but, again, of nothing much. Go home, Pat.
What!?!?
More on the flip...
This is about nothing? This wasn't a crime? Trying to cover it up should be excused because you don't think it's a crime, Dick?
He seems to be indicating that Patrick Fitzgerald hasn't accomplished anything because no one will leak to him.
I have no idea what Fitzgerald will do. My own diligent efforts to find out anything have come to naught. Fitzgerald's non-speaking spokesman would not even tell me if his boss is authorized to issue a report, as several members of Congress are now demanding -- although Joseph E. diGenova, a former U.S. attorney in Washington, tells me that only a possibly unprecedented court order would permit it.
I guess he's pining for the days of Ken Starr and the sieve of the Independent Council's Office...
Listen Dick, just because the cool kids won't tell you what card's they're holding doesn't mean the shop should be disbanded.
And why is it that no one in the media anywhere seems to have a clue that these guys could be in big trouble under the Espionage Act rather than the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982?
That's been spun as the only possible applicable law because it has such an impossible standard of what constitutes a crime.
It doesn't matter though. Patrick Fitzgerald seems like a stand-up guy, and he'll bring what he brings. Let Richard Cohen cry about it then.
-The Oklahoma Hippy