Justice Miscarried: Libby is Guilty

Scooter Libby has been found guilty after ten days of jury deliberations on four of five counts, including the count of obstuction of justice. How can a man obstruct justice in a case where no crime was committed? Why does it matter who told Scooter Libby about Valerie Plame's non-secret, non-covert, and non-protected identity? Even if he really did lie when he recalled how he found out about her status, he could only obstruct justice if the trail led somewhere, which it did not.
Take his place for a moment: As a prosecutor, I ask "Who was the first person that told you about the death of Anna Nichole Smith?" I am interrogating you because she might have been murdered. Let us suppose you tell me that you saw Shepard Smith on Foxnews covering the case, but he was not on any Foxnews shows that day or the next. In reality, it was a different reporter who you saw, but you mistakenly stand by your story of Shepard Smith. Later it turns out that she was not murdered, so I press no charges for the crime. Have you committed perjury and obstruction of justice? If you are a Republican, you have.
There are two lessons here. This verdict vindicates forever the Clinton strategy: when questioned under oath, claim to have a completely uncertain recollection about everything. Tell prosecutors that you remember nothing at all and laugh at them because they cannot prove you wrong. Claim that everything is privileged: attorney-client privileged, executive-privileged, etc. and take the 5th Amendment even when you are not under investigation. When given immunity, admit to everything and exonerate everyone else. That strategy enabled them to evade justice almost completely. Jim Guy Tucker and both McDougals faced convictions, but dozens of others got away scot free.
The second lesson here is that a judge can get whatever verdict he wants. The judge made no secret of his partisanship, denying the defense a key witness and expressing outrage that the defense did not call Vice President Cheney to testify. So much for a blind bearer of the equal scales of justice. Libby faces up to twenty-five years in prison for a conflicted memory about a non-crime, which the judge refused to say was a non-crime. The judge instructed the jury repeatedly not to take into account whether or not it was a crime for Valerie Plame's identity to be publicized, allowed the prosecution to portray her falsely as a covert agent to the jury, and claimed not to even know whether a crime had been committed in the case. Washington DC juries are notoriously partisan, so this conviction may be overturned on appeal, as was Oliver North's conviction, but this day's mischief is awfully upsetting.