MSNBC The Ed Show - 2 Nov. 2009: David Shuster cuts through the Cheney-Libby 'memory issue' muck.
SCHULTZ: "How could prosecutor Fitzgerald miss on this?"
SHUSTER: "Well, that's what's so shocking, Ed. I mean, it wasn't just that Cheney contradicted the sworn testimony of Scooter Libby, which was played at Scooter's trial, he also contradicted documents that Libby created. Cheney also contradicted people who were supposedly friendly witnesses to Cheney, like Cathy Martin, who was his press secretary, who testified that she went into Cheney's office to talk about Joe Wilson with Cheney and Scooter Libby. Cheney didn't remember any of that.
And here's the most interesting sugar plum of all in this. Remember how Vice President Cheney would get these CIA briefings every morning. He would have somebody from the CIA who would give him updates on events around the world. Well, one of those briefers
testified at trial. His name was Craig Schmall, and he testified about a time when Cheney asked for information about the Wilsons. So Schmall writes down notations on the documents. When Cheney was asked about this request of a CIA briefer, not only did Cheney say 'I don't recognize these notations, I don't know why this guy wrote this down,' but Cheney then trashes the guy by saying that 'this document, the notations represent the CIA's attempt...' and then it's redacted. In other words, it was going into Cheney making claims about the CIA somehow perhaps getting even and prosecutors didn't feel like that was, it was third party, so they didn't feel it needed to be in this report. But after all of this, after being briefed for so many years by a CIA briefer, the idea that Cheney would try to throw HIM under the bus, and say all this is part of the CIA's effort to get even with him. It's nuts!"
SCHULTZ: "David, I've spoken to a number of people today who have written books on Dick Cheney - one of them, John Nichols of The Nation. He says if there's one thing about Dick Cheney, he does have a phenomenal memory. And It's an absolute joke that 72 times, in an interview, he said he couldn't recall. I'm just amazed that the federal prosecutor allowed this to slip the way it did, which, I think, average Americans out there are thinking: 'This thing was cooked from the beginning - that Cheney was hands off."
SHUSTER: "That's right, and there's a standard sort of protocol within the Justice Department. It's followed by some prosecutors and not others, and that is that if you're going to indict a high-profile politician, say a governor or a mayor or somebody, say, like the Vice President, you have to have a very strong case. You just can't have the same standard for indicting that you have with other people. So clearly prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was following this, but again, the irony is, if you look at the Cheney interview, and remember the Cheney interview, you know, came several months into the investigation, essentially,
Cheney had more holes in his testimony, Ed, than Scooter Libby, and remember Scooter Libby was the one who got indicted and convicted. And so, you can only presume when talking to people who Patrick Fitzgerald, he was extremely cautious, he was somehow hoping or maybe betting that Scooter Libby would eventually become a states witness to avoid jail time.
And there was one instance when they might have been close, and that is, before Scooter Libby went to trial, we reported and others reported that Libby's friends had urged him: 'Cut a deal with Fitzgerald, cut a deal, avoid the trial, say the truth about Vice President Cheney.' Libby refused. Libby went to trial. He was convicted. But then his sentence was commuted, and the prosecutors lost whatever leverage they thought they might have had."
SCHULTZ: "Well, it sounds like a cooked-up deal at this point. I guess you could say Scooter Libby took one for the team. And this is all done now, right, David? I mean, this story is just going to go off into outer space and there's no recourse?"
SHUSTER: "Yeah, other than the history books, which will look at this chapter and say Vice President Cheney couldn't recognize what his own handwriting implied in some of this, but he could remember some of the most excruciating little details about trips that he made the same day. I mean, that's what will go into history's judgment. But there's one other aspect, Ed, and that is that there is a civil suit that an ethics watchdog group has filed, so I suppose there's some potential there in terms of civil liablity, but as far as a criminal investigation, it's long gone."
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