Piling On Scooter

Just a brief tidbit on the Scooter Libby trial.

So far there have been four Bush administration officials who have testified that Scooter played a big role in the administration's pushback effort to Joe Wilson's New York Times editorial and who discussed Valerie Wilson with him. The fifth - Ari Fleischer - will testify today.

Critically, all these conversations were prior to his conversation with Tim Russert; the conversation about which Libby says he mistakenly believed he first heard of Valerie Plame.

It appears that all the witnesses have some baggage with inconsistent statements. Indeed, if it were just one or two of these witnesses, it would be difficult to establish Scooter's guilt. But the fact that there are so many of them that have pinned Scooter with knowledge of Plame and the importance of the issue to Scooter seems like overwhelming proof that Scooter lied to the FBI and Grand Jury about his Plame knowledge.

A couple of other observations - it is really striking how all these Bush administration people were so cavalier with being fully honest with the FBI during the investigation. I'm also surprised as to how cavalier they were with handling Valerie Plame's identity.