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JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior advisor; & Cumulus Media radio
Hour One
Tuesday  7 April 2015  / Hour 1, Block A:  Bill Whalen, Hoover Institution, in re: . . .  Rand Paul has flip-flopped on foreign police & will be clobbered buy his competitors in the primaries. I'm O Kwith his domestic policies; but he's fighting Ted Cruz every step of the way. there's no such thing as a "practical libertarian."  . . .  Young people just don't vote for Republicans. Can Rand Paul increases his fathers base? GOP must have a clear economic growth message: millennials, women and minorities are all worried about this.  Middle-income take-home pay! . . .
Tuesday  7 April 2015  / Hour 1, Block B: Bill Whalen, Hoover Institution, in re:    . . . How to be a fresh candidate of change?  What will Mrs Clinton do with Trey Gowdy, who's called her to testify, and her story is broken up by her iPad and she'll be under subpoena?  BW: "She'll just outlast the opposition. Chuck Schumer is seen as a son-of-a-b, but the Dems see him as powerful."  LK: He's not much of an improvement over Harry Reid.  . . .
Tuesday  7 April 2015  / Hour 1, Block C: Ed Lazear, Hoover, in re: LK: The financial commentariat is on a bear run that I see as not justified.  The economy can grow at 2.5% and generate some profits.  . . . EL:  It's not just one month or one number. I think a case can be made that there's some slowing going on. Indicators from independent surveys: mostly down. Last month, the workforce lost 350,000 jobs. We're growing at a rate barely keeping up with population growth.  LK: Atlanta shows 0.0 – but I think that's totally winter.  EL:  I worry there's not too much left in the oil-price change in upcoming quarters; and 2.5% growth is too slow – prerecession it was 3.1%. It’s not profits today that's the problem - it's the future forecasts. What do today's profit say about policies and what do they say about future profitability? Need capital investment for [job-creation]. LK:  I think the Fed will wait to raise even one-quarter per cent. I think, the Fed should wait.  Maybe not even hike it till September.   EL: I disagree with Larry about interest rates.
Tuesday  7 April 2015  / Hour 1, Block D: Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior advisor; and Cumulus Media radio, in re: Rick Perry and foreign and domestic policy.  He trained at the Texas Military Academy, served in the Air force, a Captain running C130 cargo planes, and thus is the only current candidate who'd worn a uniform as he takes the Republican stage.  It’s n longer 1964, so how does he get a ticket out of Iowa?  With Pres Obama's policies in tatters; Perry comes in, says he'll stop any deal with Iran.  Whom do you want to have facing Vladimir Putin or the ayatollahs? Low taxes, frivolous-tort reform; he's a committed Christian and has a lot of support from Evangelicals.    Coming out of Iowa?  Dunno how to handicap; but he's a good retail politician. He might get a third . . . Jennifer Rubin of WaPo, once opposed to Perry, now is looking at him favorably. 
Hour Two
Tuesday  7 April 2015  / Hour 2, Block A: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin; in re: Minsk II – nothing signed by the heads of state, but everyone's disengaging from the Donbass front and looking at [federal?]  independence for eastern Ukraine.  the Atlantic Council website: "What’s at stake isn’t Ukraine; it’s a war for the future of Russia and of European and Eurasian security; . . . we’re only storing up for ourselves and progeny [more] problems]."   Tusk, the Pole at the head of the Euro Council, is in a bit of a spot.  "The call for federalization . . . "  Note that the Donbass was not invited to the constitutional referendum discussion.  Doubts about Minsk II extend to Moscow: Sergei Lavrov says it’s blocked by Ukraine, and that all the Euros say that they're under much pressure from Washington.  SFC: I've been thinking about Moynihan's "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts."  The fact is, the Minsk agreement may be our last chance to avoid war with Russia.  The [rhetoric] out of Washington is based not on facts.   JB: It’s widely thought that the cease-fire is holding . . .  SFC:  Six thousands have dies, many have fled, and many are right now lying dying in rubble.  Most of those who die are women, children, old people,
Tuesday  7 April 2015  / Hour 2, Block B: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; in re: Today's NY Times published three pieces on this story – warning the Greeks not to accept money from Russia, and tow other tacks. Omits two factors: How does Putin have cash since the US put heavy sanctions on him?  Inconsistent Washington tales.  Note that Greece and Russia share confessions.  Is there a US policy toward  Russia and Ukraine that's splitting Europe?  Not clear what'll come of this; but  . . . eurozone crisis was financial, now includes political with the Ukraine [mess].  Cyprus & Greece – Niko Anastasiotis is offended by Obama Adm deed; the US ambassador to Cyprus suggested that Mr Anastasiotis was visiting Moscow in connection with the murder of Boris Nemtsov; and the US had to apologize – the State Dept has again commingled policy with [propaganda].  The US ambassador disgraced himself. 
Tuesday  7 April 2015  / Hour 2, Block C: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; in re:   The US amb and the Czech president are at odds: "If the Czech president went to Moscow's enormous VE day celebration, 70th anniversary of liberation, then the US will make it unpleasant for the Czech Republic."  The president of Ukraine is not Poroshenko but the US proconsuls.   Last night, an eminent academic in Canada, head of University of Alberta Ukrainian studies, said that I, Stephen Cohen, was of lower moral stature than a certain Ukrainian who was a known Nazi collaborator and Jew-killer.  John Kerry could put a stop to most of this with one classified memo. Poroshenko is a weak, inexperienced and not-clever pol; but US [minions] are sabotaging agreements. He unilaterally announced that there cd be no element of federalism [e.g., states' rights, can pick their own police chiefs, educational leaders, and the like], and Poro demanded that there be only one official language, Ukrainian, not Russian. This is nutty.  . . .  gerrymandered: the SE speaks Russian; president and parliament voted in by the East and North of Ukraine.  Poroshenko does this with powerful backers in Washington. Result: permanently partitioned Ukraine, or else war.  I think Americans need to make a decision about this.  The facts here are clear, reported by intl media daily that the Ukr army is in tatters, wd need a lot of weapons; that the intact fighting forces are militias, mostly neofascists and some who are clearly fascists – formed into the Ukrainian National Guard. It's this crew that the US will start training this month! The House has voted to send weapons; 48 voted against. Some Americans have connected the dots, that these militias do not represent American views at all. Some wear swastikas on their helmets and speak with admiration of Hitler. 
Tuesday  7 April 2015  / Hour 2, Block D: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; in re: "Much pressure from Washington to abrogate Minsk II."  Lavrov says Minsk II would solve Russian-European relations – the US seems to think that would isolate the US. Lavrov also said that Kerry said he supports Minsk II - but all his minions are sabotaging; Lavrov said: "Kerry is detached from reality."  Lavrov is the most informed and moderate of Russia's leaders. Russians are baffled – are ht Americans uninformed, or do thy have  a plan? Increasingly, Moscow thinks that [collective] Washington has an all-out plan for war against Putin's Russia. 
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OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatovic today welcomed new legislation to foster the development of public broadcasting in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko today signed a bill amending the public broadcasting law, which includes the legal status of and the basis for the creation of public broadcasting, establishes supervisory and editorial councils and introduces changes to the system of funding.
The bill was adopted by Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, on 19 March.
“This is one more assertive and important step made by the authorities to transform state media into a public broadcaster in Ukraine,” Mijatovic said. “Public broadcasting should reflect the diversity of the entire population, offer quality content, and practice editorial independence free of the direct and indirect political and commercial pressures.
“I also strongly believe that true and independent public broadcasting has great potential to deter hostile propaganda by setting the standards of truth, pluralism and openness,” Mijatovic said. “I urge the authorities to do their utmost in order to support implementation of the law.”
The Representative commissioned a legal review on a public broadcasting law in 2013 and provided Ukrainian authorities with recommendations. The review is available in Russian at: http://www.osce.org/ru/fom/104653
The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media observes media developments in all 57 OSCE participating States. She provides early warning on violations of freedom of expression and media freedom and promotes full compliance with OSCE media freedom commitments. Learn more at www.osce.org/fom, Twitter: @OSCE_RFoM and on www.facebook.com/osce.rfom. 
1.  NATO/US Allegations, accusations, conspiracies against Minsk II:  Putin's Ukraine War Is about Founding a New Russian Empire  According to Vladimir Putin, Crimea and Ukraine are where the spiritual sources of Russia's nationhood lie. And he “always saw the Russians ...
Putin’s objective, then, can only lead only to a perpetual state of war within the former Soviet space and a state of siege with Europe and the world. That means another Cold War, if not a series of hot wars along Russia’s periphery. Russia has already been a state in a permanent war condition since 1994 when the Chechen war broke out as what used to be called a war of national liberation. Now the entire North Caucasus is aflame with a militant Islamist uprising that Moscow cannot quell and that has become ever more brutal.
The Kremlin’s 2008 war with Georgia, which Putin admitted to planning from 2006, its coercive incorporation of the Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia into Russia, and the war with Ukraine all represent a working out of this logic of imperialism and war. Even if the Ukraine war devolves into a so-called frozen conflict, that logic will still be operative. We already have seen how quickly frozen conflicts can become unfrozen and how they corrode civility and democracy throughout their regions. Beyond that, a renewed Russian empire essentially reincarnates the idea that Russia is not safe unless everyone connected to it, and not only its immediate neighbors, is unsafe or insecure. This state can only be preserved then by what the late Russian defense analyst, Vitaly Shlykov, called structural militarization. And we see that happening now with the growth of the defense sector as the rest of the economy shrivels due to sanctions and falling energy prices.
This is what is at stake in Ukraine. It is not just a quarrel over the fate of Ukraine. It is a war for the future of Russia and beyond that for the long-term future of European and Eurasian security. And to the extent that we hide behind rhetoric that masks a deeper inaction or complacency about Russia and Ukraine, we are only storing up for ourselves and future generations a larger continental crisis.
That crisis, even if we ignore it now, will inevitably occur when the unsustainability of this imperial adventure becomes fully clear not to analysts in the West but to the Russian people and their government. For this regime, unlike Gorbachev’s, will not go peacefully. In a country that is arming itself to the hilt, and that possesses nuclear weapons, that is a terrifying future. Thus inactivity today only ensures and accelerates the onset of the much larger conflict that Putin’s action will inevitably bring upon Russia.
Stephen Blank is a senior fellow for Russia at the American Foreign Policy Council. This article first appeared on the Atlantic Council website.
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Waving Cash, Putin Sows EU Divisions in an Effort to Break Sanctions  Mr. Putin has methodically targeted, through charm, cash, and the fanning of historical and ideological embers, the European Union’s weakest links in a campaign to assert influence in some of Europe’s most troubled corners. One clear goal is to break fragile Western unity over the conflict in Ukraine.
On Wednesday, Greece’s new left-wing prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, will be the next to visit Moscow. Ahead of the trip, Mr. Tsipras declared himself opposed to sanctions on Russia, describing them as a “dead-end policy.”  On Sunday, Mr. Putin’s efforts to peel away supporters from the European Union opened a new rift, after the United States ambassador in Prague criticized a decision by the president of the Czech Republic, Milos Zeman, to attend a military parade in Moscow on May 9. And in February, Mr. Putin visited Hungary, the European Union’s autocratic backslider, peddling economic deals. Russia has so far been unable to turn such hand-holding into something more concrete against sanctions that require the approval of all 28 European Union members. But pressure for a rupture is building.
Speaking in an interview last week here in Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, Mr. Anastasiades said Cyprus had grave doubts about Europe’s policy toward Russia and was part of a “group of member states who have the same reservations.”  The cracks opening up in Europe’s policy toward Russia have presented a difficult problem for Donald Tusk, the former prime minister of Poland who is now president of the European Council, a body in Brussels that represents the European Union’s 28 leaders.  The Russian Embassy in Nicosia reacted with fury last year when Makarios Drousiotis, a part-time historian and presidential adviser, published a diplomatic history that detailed Russian duplicity in its relations with Cyprus. The embassy denounced the book as “politically unacceptable” and criticized Mr. Drousiotis, who lost his job as an adviser to Mr. Anatasiades.
The United States, in contrast, has struggled to get a hearing. When Russia won gushing praise on social media for restructuring its loan to Cyprus, the United States ambassador, John M. Koenig, tried to dampen the enthusiasm with messages posted on Twitter that were widely interpreted as implying a link between Mr. Anastasiades’s visit to Moscow and the killing a few days later of the Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov.  The Twitter posts set off an uproar, prompting the United States ambassador to issue a contrite statement that his comments had been “misunderstood.”
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2.  Kiev resistance to Minsk II  Ukrainian Leader Is Open to a Vote on Regional Power President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine on Monday denounced calls for “federalization” of the country, which Russia has . . . In his speech, Mr. Poroshenko spoke of the historical importance of Pylyp Orlyk, a Cossack nobleman and Ukrainian hetman, or leader, in exile who in 1710 wrote the Bendery Constitution. Many scholars believe it was the first to codify the separation of powers among the executive, the legislature and the judiciary as a democratic standard.
Mr. Poroshenko urged the head of the constitutional commission, Volodymyr Groysman, who is the speaker of Ukraine’s Parliament, to seek input from the Opposition Bloc, the one minority faction in the legislature. It includes former allies of President Viktor F. Yanukovych, who was ousted last year after huge street protests.  “I would like very much, and believe it is possible, for the commission to become a unifying platform of all political forces, society, domestic and international experts in working out such important constitutional initiatives required by our society,” Mr. Poroshenko said.
In eastern Ukraine, however, it was clear that Mr. Poroshenko was falling short of that goal. Separatist leaders noted that they had not been invited to join the commission on constitutional changes, and they took issue with Mr. Poroshenko’s remarks, including his insistence that Ukraine would remain a “unitary state” and his declaration that Ukrainian would remain the country’s only official language.  “These things are absolutely unacceptable,” Andrei Purgin, head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, told the Interfax news agency. “Everything they now say and do contradicts the Minsk agreements that took so much work to achieve.”  As for the commission and the constitutional amendment process, Mr. Purgin told Interfax: “We did not receive any invitations. We don’t have any representatives there.”
Ukraine and Separatists Report 'Intensifying' Skirmishes Near ... But, he said, the Russian-backed separatist group calling itself the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) has “started to intensify their activities” in Shyrokyne and in other areas surrounding Mariupol after a period of “relative calm”.
Meanwhile Edward Basurin, a spokesman for DNR, confirmed details of skirmishes between rebels and pro-Ukraine forces near Shyrokyne but insisted it was the pro-Kiev soldiers who had opened fire on DNR forces, not the other way around. "At five in the morning today they fired a machine gun at a GAZelle vehicle which was transporting [our] soldiers. Two people were wounded as a result,” Basurin, who goes by the title of minister of defence in the unofficial republic, told a Donetsk local news site. Mariupol is a major seaport in the Donetsk region and continues to be under Kiev’s control, however DNR leader Alexander Zaharchenko has expressed he would like to “take” the city.
3.  European and German hopes for Minsk II   UPDATE 2-IMF official sees 'leeway' in judging Ukraine's debt ...  Ukraine's officials have set themselves a June deadline to complete debt ... As part of its IMF bailout, Ukraine must comply with a slew of ...
IMF defends huge support for war-torn Ukraine   Ukraine's officials have set themselves a June deadline to complete debt restructuring needed to plug a $15 billion funding gap in the IMF program. Many analysts are skeptical that deadline can be met. "We have a fair amount of leeway in how we judge the progress at that point," David Lipton, the IMF's first deputy managing director, said at an event at the Washington-based Peterson Institute. "It would be best if Ukraine and its creditors could reach agreement by that point," he said. "But if we can't make (a decision) in June, we will figure out how to go forward." As part of its IMF bailout, Ukraine must comply with a slew of conditions to get its economy in better shape, including strengthening public finances, repairing bank balance sheets and shaking up its energy sector.
It must do so amid continued uncertainty over its territorial integrity. The government in Kiev struck a ceasefire with pro-Russia separatist rebels eastern Ukraine two months ago, but fighting has continued almost daily. The IMF itself has admitted that efforts to restore Ukraine's financial stability face "exceptionally high" risks, including from creditors balking at the terms of the debt restructuring.Russia holds a $3 billion Eurobond of Ukrainian debt coming due in December, and has said it would not be part of the private sector restructuring. And Kiev may have difficulties persuading all bondholders to agree to write off some debt and accept reduced interest rates or a longer repayment period.
IMF first deputy managing director David Lipton said that a real window for progress has opened "for the first time" after decades of government mismanagement and corruption.  As recently as 2013, he said, there was no will among Kiev's leaders to undertake the reforms needed to right its economy, especially to address massive corruption.  "Now, Ukraine has the political will, but it has to contend with full-blown economic and financial crisis," Lipton told the Peterson Institu . . . http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/46840469.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
 4.  Kremlin hope for Minsk II  Ukraine has key to better Russia-EU relations - Lavrov   "The Minsk agreements are being blocked by Ukraine. Thus, Ukraine now holds the key to normalization of relations between Russia and the ...   Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s attempts to have foreign troops deployed in eastern Ukraine as a peacekeeping mission might be a "tactical loophole," Russia's top diplomat said.  Ukraine Today: Slovaks protest Russia's 'imperial and aggressive ...  http://rt.com/news/241441-strategic-bombers-crimea-redeployment/
CRIMEA   Several Tu-22M3 (NATO designation ‘Backfire’) variable-sweep wing, long-range strategic and maritime strike rocket aircraft are due to arrive to Crimea as part of global training exercises for the Russian military in the European part of the country.
KALININGRAD  Russia’s Central Command is also beefing up its presence in Kaliningrad. The task force in Kaliningrad Region is set to be bolstered with Iskander-M tactical ballistic missile complexes and additional fighter jets and bombers. “The task force in the Baltic region will be enhanced with Iskander missile complexes of the Western military district, the delivery of complexes is going to be carried out by large landing ships of the Baltic Fleet,” said the source.
---Rising talk of and prospect of renewed and larger war, continuing discussion of Minsk II.
--- In that connection, alarming reports of rising power of ultra-neonazi battalions in the UKR
military, with Yarosh/Right Sector appointed to high post. Would another Maidan be neo-fascist?
--- Impact of new cold war on politics inside Russia, both official and opposition, including
culture, etc. A new Moscow Winter?
The Chechen War, Part 4:  http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/143546/nicholas-waller/a-chechen-... ;  Thus far, these two groups have not faced each other directly on the battlefield. Kadyrov’s fighters were instrumental in the final assault on Donetsk Airport in January, having fought for months to capture the wrecked hulk of buildings that once made up the passenger terminals. For its part, the Dudayev Battalion has acted as a special operations unit charged with disrupting separatist communications and supply lines, using the small-fire group tactics perfected during intense urban battles in Chechnya. Even if their role remains modest in terms of numbers, however, the presence of these two opposing camps has turned the Ukraine conflict into a proxy war of sorts, further tangling the knot of competing interests and creating repercussions that might reach far beyond the region.
Yanukovych's Choice Alexander J. Motyl  Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has a decision to make. On November 28–29, Ukraine could sign an Association Agreement with the EU that will expand their political and trade ties, security cooperation, and cultural connections. Success or failure to sign the agreement . . .
Rust Belt Rising   Yuri M. Zhukov    In recent days, the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine has reached a new phase. With a political mandate to use force, and with Russian troops partially pulled back from the border, Petro Poroshenko, the newly elected president, has stepped up his government’s counterinsurgency operations in the . . .
Broken Ukraine Paul Stronski   Continued violence between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine is dashing hopes about last month’s Minsk II cease-fire agreement. February’s terrorist attacks in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and the continued threat of a separatist assault on the strategic port city of . . .
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Hour Three
Tuesday  7 April 2015  / Hour 3, Block A:   Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review & Pirates fan, in re:  When Rand Paul announces Tuesday in Louisville, Ky., that he is seeking the Republican nomination for president, he will be a stone's throw from the office where Henry Clay first practiced law and an hour from the Richmond, Ky., home of Clay's cousin, Cassius Marcellus Clay.  The Clay cousins may not be on the tongue-tips of most political pundits, academics or pollsters. But how Paul reflects their impact on our history is worth considering.  “I sit at Henry Clay's desk. It was fascinating for me to find that out when I came up here,” the junior senator from Kentucky told the Trib during a brisk walk from the Russell Senate Office Building to the U.S. Capitol. click here for link
Tuesday  7 April 2015  / Hour 3, Block B:  Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re:
Tuesday  7 April 2015  / Hour 3, Block C: Eli Lake, Bloomberg Politics, in re: Obama Undermines His Own Case for the Iran Deal  In the aftermath of the Iran nuclear agreement reached last week, President Barack Obama has had a lot to say about sanctions. On one hand, the president doesn't think they really work. Obama now concedes -- as does Iran's foreign minister, Javad Zarif -- that while Iran was facing crippling sanctions it continued to install thousands of centrifuges at its illicit facilities. In his weekly address on Saturday, Obama said there were three options for Iran's nuclear program: aerial bombardment, his deal, and sanctions. Not surprisingly, Obama warned that sanctions "always led to Iran making more progress in its nuclear program."
Here's the catch: Two days earlier, at the announcement of the framework agreement, Obama praised the efficacy of renewing sanctions in case Iran cheats. "If Iran violates the deal," he said. "Sanctions can be snapped back into place."  All of this presents a major problem for Obama and his team as they try to sell their deal to a skeptical Congress. If Obama doesn't think the sanctions that have cut off Iran's banks from the international finance system and blocked the Tehran government from legally selling its oil will halt the regime's nuclear program, why does he think snapping them back would deter Iran from cheating?  I put that question to Darryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association and a supporter of the deal. He acknowledged that Iran built up nearly 20,000 centrifuges at the facility at Natanz since 2006, when the first United Nations Security Council sanctions were passed against the regime. And he acknowledged that the snap-back provision was designed to increase the cost of cheating. But he said the influx of trade and foreign investment may change the . . . [more]
Tuesday  7 April 2015  / Hour 3, Block D: Margot Kiser, The Daily Beast, in re:  Christians Warned, Then Killed in Kenyan University Massacre   According to Reuters' most recent report, Kenyan Interior Minister Joseph ... Is a wall between Kenya and Somalia next?  . . .   [more] / Kenya attack victims: Vigil mourns 147 slain by terrorists in Garissa  Nairobi, Kenya (CNN) They were sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, friends and fellow citizens. They were students and dreamers, ...  Gunman in Attack Was Kenyan Official's SonWall Street Journal-Apr 5, 2015
Hour Four
Tuesday  7 April 2015  / Hour 4, Block A:  Peter Berkowitz, Wall Street Journal, in re: The False Evidence Against Scooter Libby   A key witness says she was led by Patrick Fitzgerald to testify falsely. This puts the case in a whole new light.   A revelation in journalist Judith Miller’s new memoir, “The Story: A Reporter’s Journey,” exposes unscrupulous conduct by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald in the 2007 trial of I. Lewis “Scooter”Libby.  Ms. Miller, a former New York Times reporter, writes that Mr. Fitzgerald induced her to give what she now realizes was false testimony. By withholding critical information and manipulating her memory as he prepared her to testify, Ms. Miller relates, Mr. Fitzgerald “steered” her “in the wrong direction.”
Ms. Miller’s inaccurate testimony helped Mr. Fitzgerald persuade a Washington, D.C., jury in 2007 to find Mr. Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, guilty of obstruction of justice, making a false statement and perjury.  Mr. Fitzgerald’s conduct warrants revisiting not only to set the record straight about Mr. Libby, but also to illustrate the damage that can be done to national security by a special counsel who, discovering no crime, generates through his investigations the alleged offenses he seeks to prosecute.
According to the conventional view, in the summer of 2003 Mr. Libby compromised national security by unlawfully outing a covert CIA agent. Mr. Libby’s supposed purpose was to punish the agent’s husband, who challenged President George W. Bush’s assertion in his 2003 State of the Union address that the British government learned that Iraq had sought to purchase African uranium. According to the standard anti-Bush account, when Mr. Libby became enmeshed in a federal investigation, he lied to conceal his crime and protect Mr. Cheney.
RELATED ARTICLE:  A more extensive account of the new evidence in the Libby case and its consequences can be found here.
This account is false in all essential respects, as Mr. Fitzgerald—since 2012 a partner in the Chicago office of the Skadden Arps law firm—had reason, as well as an ethical obligation as an officer of the court, to know.
Scooter Libby did not “out” CIA employee Valerie Plame. That was done by then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, a critic of the conduct of the Iraq war. Mr. Armitage disclosed to columnistRobert Novak that Ms. Plame, who at the time held a desk job in the CIA’s Counterproliferation Division, urged the agency to send her husband, retired Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, to Africa in early 2002 to investigate whether Iraq had sought uranium. Presidential aide Karl Rove and then-CIA Director of Public Affairs Bill Harlow confirmed Mr. Armitage’s disclosure for Novak’s July 14, 2003, column. (Novak died in 2009.)
Mr. Fitzgerald didn’t charge anyone with leaking Ms. Plame’s identity or disclosing classified information to reporters. From the moment he took over the FBI leak investigation in December 2003, he knew Mr. Armitage was the leaker but declined to prosecute him, Mr. Rove or Mr. Harlow because the disclosure of Ms. Plame’s identity wasn’t a crime and didn’t compromise national security.
Mr. Fitzgerald nonetheless pressed on for someone to prosecute, eventually focusing on Mr. Libby, whose trial became a contest of recollections. The excruciatingly inconsequential question on which his conviction turned was whether, as Mr. Libby recalled, he was surprised to hear NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert ask him about Ms. Plame in a phone call on July 10 or 11, 2003. In November 2003, Russert (who died in 2008) told the FBI that he didn’t recall mentioning Mr. Wilson’s wife to Mr. Libby, but couldn’t rule it out. By August 2004 Russert had changed his story. Under questioning by Mr. Fitzgerald, he insisted he could not have mentioned Ms. Plame.
Despite the many reasonable doubts that Mr. Libby’s lawyers raised about Russert’s recollection, Mr. Libby was convicted for what he said about a phone conversation during which the prosecutor himself insisted Ms. Plame was not mentioned.  Although the case centered on conflicting recollections of a four-year-old phone call, Judge Reggie B. Walton denied the defense request to present scientific testimony on the unreliability of memory. Jurors might have welcomed it: During deliberations, according to juror Denis Collins, they lamented their lack of expert knowledge. In any event, Mr. Libby’s and Tim Russert’s differing memories shouldn’t have mattered since Mr. Armitage disclosed Ms. Plame’s CIA employment.
Still, Mr. Fitzgerald—who declined to respond to written questions for this article—sought a conviction, and he went so far as to jail Judith Miller for 85 days to obtain evidence against her sources, one of whom was Mr. Libby.  Ms. Miller’s new memoir recounts that . . .  [more] (1 of 4)
Tuesday  7 April 2015  / Hour 4, Block B: Peter Berkowitz, Wall Street Journal, in re: The False Evidence Against Scooter Libby (2 of 4)
Tuesday  7 April 2015  / Hour 4, Block C: Peter Berkowitz, Wall Street Journal, in re: The False Evidence Against Scooter Libby (3 of 4)
Tuesday  7 April 2015  / Hour 4, Block D: Peter Berkowitz, Wall Street Journal, in re: The False Evidence Against Scooter Libby (4 of 4)
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