David Petraeus saw his career come to an end for mishandling classified information.
Sandy Berger was punished for mishandling classified information.
Scooter Libby got it worst of all. And he did virtually nothing.
Remember Scooter Libby?
Libby was the Bush aide who went to prison for having a bad memory. He was hunted down and persecuted by Peter Fitzgerald who was looking for the scalp of the person who allegedly leaked the name of Valerie Plame.
Libby went to prison and he wasn't even the leaker. Richard Armitrage was. Jennifer Rubin:
Right Turn readers know my view that former vice president Dick Cheney’s chief of staff Scooter Libby was dealt a severe injustice by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald who knew early on that another official, Richard Armitage, had leaked Valerie Plame’s name. Fitzgerald asserted that Libby had lied to prosecutors rather than mistakenly recalled a phone call with now-deceased reporter Tim Russert. The case should never have gone forward (or, if it had, a memory expert should have been permitted to testify), and President George W. Bush should have granted Libby a full pardon before leaving office. (As an aside, Libby’s memory was notoriously bad as now-Fact Checker and then-State Department reporter Glenn Kessler’s testimony in the case confirmed. As Glenn has summarized it, Libby told the FBI that he told Kessler about Plame; Kessler testified he did not. So Libby was convicted for telling the FBI he didn’t tell Russert about Plame and falsely admitted to telling Kessler about Plame—when he did not. If this was a “cover up,” it was the oddest in history, but it does seem in retrospect that Libby’s memory was awful.) Getting back to the conviction, it cannot be forgotten that Armitage and his boss Colin Powell deserve our scorn for not coming forward early on to exonerate Libby.It is argued that Fitzgerald engaged in prosecutorial abuse:
Mr. Fitzgerald, who had the classified file of Ms. Plame’s service, withheld her State Department cover from Ms. Miller—and from Mr. Libby’s lawyers, who had requested Ms. Plame’s employment history. Despite his constitutional and ethical obligation to provide exculpatory evidence, Mr. Fitzgerald encouraged Ms. Miller to misinterpret her ambiguous notes as showing that Mr. Libby brought up Ms. Plame.He already knew Libby was not the source of the leak. Libby ends up in prison for having a bad memory. Criticism of Fitzgerald came from several quarters:
On August 28, 2006, Christopher Hitchens asserted that Richard Armitage was the primary source of the Valerie Plame leak and that Fitzgerald knew this at the beginning of his investigation.[132] This was supported a month later by Armitage himself, who stated that Fitzgerald had instructed him not to go public with this information.[133]Investor's Business Daily questioned Fitzgerald's truthfulness in an editorial, stating "From top to bottom, this has been one of the most disgraceful abuses of prosecutorial power in this country's history...The Plame case proves [Fitzgerald] can bend the truth with the proficiency of the slickest of pols."[134]In a September 2008 Wall Street Journal editorial, attorney Alan Dershowitz cited the "questionable investigation[s]" of Scooter Libby as evidence of the problems brought to the criminal justice process by "politically appointed and partisan attorney[s] general".[135] In April 2015, also writing in The Wall Street Journal, Hoover Institution fellow Peter Berkowitz argued that statements by Judith Miller, in her recently published memoir, raised anew contentions that her testimony was inaccurate and that Fitzgerald's conduct as prosecutor was inappropriate.[136]Libby did essentially nothing and went to prison. Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information. The Inspector General for the intelligence community sampled 40 Clinton emails and concluded that 10% of them contained classified information. Moreover, it was determined that the emails "were classified when they were sent and are classified now."
That's unfortunate for Hillary, who continues to assert something different:
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
