Damaged Rule of Law
What seems like a long time ago now, in 2003, the mainstream media went after Carl Rove and Scooter Libby (Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff) for leaking the identity of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. Attorney General John Ashcroft (Republican) referred the matter to the Department of Justice Office of Special Counsel directed by Patrick Fitzgerald who convened a grand jury. The CIA leak grand jury investigation did not find anyone guilty of the leak itself. However, Scooter Libby was indicted on one count of obstruction of justice, one count of perjury, and three counts making false statements to the grand jury and federal investigators on October 28, 2005. Libby resigned hours after the indictment. On March 6, 2007, Libby was convicted on four counts, and was acquitted of one count of making false statements. Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison, a fine of $250,000, and two years of supervised release after his prison term. The actual leak of Valerie Plame’s CIA status came from Colin Powell’s deputy, Richard Armitage, at the State Department. Bottom line: Scooter Libby lied to the FBI, obstructed justice and was rightly convicted and sentenced…the rule of law prevailed and justice was served.
Compare this case of republicans investigating and convicting republicans of wrong doing to the current administration’s lack of investigation of Secretary Clinton’s compromising Top Secret SCI materials on her personal home email server (and 13 mobile devices destroyed by her aides with a hammer) and the lack of any indictments? Secretary Clinton’s aides were all granted immunity, their laptops were even destroyed by the FBI to preclude further investigation. No testimony was taken from Secretary Clinton under oath; there was no grand jury convened and the US Attorney General Loretta Lynch even met privately with President Bill Clinton while the FBI was investigating his wife? The rule of law may have been replaced by “the ends justify the means?”
Secretary Clinton used an illegal personal email server for official State Department business and thereby exposed classified Top Secret, SCI materials to compromise by foreign governments. While General (Ret) Cartwright, USMC) was convicted of a felony for making false statements to the FBI over a release of classified information on the STUXNET computer virus. Rule of law for some but not others?
Just prior to the 2012 Presidential election the media was sold a false story and happily went along as fellow travelers. Mrs. Clinton failed to provide adequate security for AMB Stevens who she had sent on a special mission to Benghazi Libya. Ambassador Stevens was murdered along with, Foreign Services Officer Sean Smith, CIA contract officers Tyronne Woods and Glen Dougherty (ten others were wounded). According to Ambassador Steven’s deputy in Libya, Mr. Greg Hicks,
“When I arrived in Tripoli on July 31, we had over 30 security personnel, from the State Department and the U.S. military, assigned to protect the diplomatic mission to Libya. All were under the ambassador's authority. On Sept. 11, we had only nine diplomatic security agents under Chris's [AMB Stevens] authority to protect our diplomatic personnel in Tripoli and Benghazi.
“Gregory Hicks, a senior diplomat at the State Department, claimed he was intimidated and then demoted for questioning the administration’s response to the September 2012 attacks.” [Yet another political cover-up & corruption]
One might think that Sept 11 of any year would require additional security for U.S. facilities? It is a mystery why none of the survivors have been allowed to talk with Congress or the media? Secretary Clinton told the families of Sean Smith, Tyronne Woods and Glen Dougherty that their sons died because of an anti-Islam YouTube video that inflamed a riot at Benghazi, but emails from Secretary Clinton’s personal server show she knew that was not true…it was a lie that Susan Rice, National Security Advisor, continued to tell the American people on five Sunday morning talk shows.
If we cannot believe what our government officials tell us and our news media do not hold the government accountable to "We the people," we are on the road to "Serfdom" described by Hayek. In North Korea, the government lies to their people all the time and the people do not object...because they cannot object. In Russia, the government lies to their people and most of the people know their government is lying...but they do nothing because they do not think they can change anything...life in Russia under the Tsar or Lenin, or the USSR or modern day Russia has always been essentially the same. Are we in America now also becoming numb to corruption and losing our rule of law for all our citizens? I hope and pray we are not.