By Robert D. Novak
Thursday, March 8, 2007; A23
Denis Collins, a Washington journalist on the Scooter Libby jury, described sentiments in the jury room reflecting those in the Senate Democratic cloakroom: "It was said a number of times. . . . Where's Rove? Where are these other guys?" Besides presidential adviser Karl Rove, he surely meant Vice President Cheney and maybe President Bush. Oddly, the jurors appeared uninterested in hearing from Richard Armitage, the source of the CIA leak.
"It's about time," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, rejoicing in the guilty verdicts against Libby, that "someone in the Bush administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics." But Libby was found guilty only of lying about how he learned of Valerie Plame's identity. Reid and Democratic colleagues were after much bigger game than Cheney's chief of staff.
Democrats had been slow to react to my column of July 14, 2003, which reported that former diplomat Joseph Wilson's mission to Niger was suggested by his CIA employee wife, Valerie Plame Wilson. By September, when the Justice Department began investigating the CIA leak, Democrats smelled another Iran-contra affair or Watergate. They were wrong.