Fitzgerald at Press Conference Explains Libby Charges, Miller's Role in Probe

By: Greg Mitchell At a press conference Friday afternoon after the five-count indictment of I. Lewis Libby was announced, federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald offered a lengthy background statement, then answered questions from reporters.

Fitzgerald repeatedly emphasized that neither Libby nor anyone else was charged with the actual "outing" of a covert CIA agent, but the allegations of perjury and obstruction of justice were "very serious charges." He said that "talking points" that downgrade the charges "won't fly."

When asked why he did not bring charges related to the original leak, he apologized for offering "a baseball analogy." He sketched a scenario where a baseball pitcher deliberately hits a batter "in the head," apparently in revenge for something. You'd want to look closely at this, he said, what the pitcher might have said in the dugout, for example -- why he was "mad," why he hit the batter in the head instead of somewhere else, to see if he should be "banned from baseball."

But the outing of a CIA agent is much more serious, he stressed, hurting not just the agent but "all of us."

Asked about the Republican "talking points" that Libby was only indicted for "technicalities," Fitzgerald replied: "I'll be blunt. That talking point won't fly. If you're doing a national security investigation, if you're trying to find out who compromised the identity of a CIA officer and you go before a grand jury and if the charges are proven -- because remember there's a presumption of innocence -- but if it is proven that the chief of staff to the vice president went before a federal grand jury and lied under oath repeatedly and fabricated a story about how he learned this information, how he passed it on, and we prove obstruction of justice, perjury and false statements to the FBI--that is a very, very serious matter."

Asked about the role played by New York Times reporter Judith Miller in the probe, Fitzgerald said he wished "Ms. Miller did not spend one second in jail. ... No one wanted to have a dispute with the New York Times or anyone else. I would have wished nothing better if no one would have gone to jail. I was not looking for a First Amendment showdown."

But he added: "The only way you can do an investigation like this is to talk to reporters. ... I had to make judgments and do my job and not walk away if I think a crime of obstruction was committed." He said, "We thought long and hard before we subpoenaed any reporters." In fact, there was a long list of reporters they might have talked to, and did not.

Before proceeding against Miller and the ones he did target, he made sure that one judge after another concurred: "I think what we did was borne out by how judges ruled.

"We could not have resolved this case if we forgot about reporters ... that would have been reckless.

"I do not think that reporters should be subpoenaed anything close to routinely, it must be an extraordinary case. But if a reporter is an eyewitness to a crime and you walk away -- you are being reckless." He said that in some cases you can learn from reporters that a crime was NOT committed.

Fitzgerald would not discuss any other official or suspect besides Libby, such as Karl Rove, and was vague about his future plans for the probe using another grand jury.

"I can tell you," he said, "that no one wants this thing to be over quicker than I do. I would like to wake up in my bed in Chicago. But I will not end the investigation until feel we have done everything we can. Everyone should take a deep breath and allow us to do what we need to do."