“If Katherine Harris is the nominee, we lose.”
Brian Nick, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee

Now, something needs to be borne in mind about a criminal investigation.

I recognize that there’s been very little information about this criminal investigation, but for a very good reason.

It may be frustrating when investigations are conducted in secret. When investigations use grand juries, it’s important that the information be closely held.

So let me tell you a little bit about how an investigation works.

Investigators do not set out to investigate the statute, they set out to gather the facts.

It’s critical that when an investigation is conducted by prosecutors, agents and a grand jury they learn who, what, when, where and why. And then they decide, based upon accurate facts, whether a crime has been committed, who has committed the crime, whether you can prove the crime and whether the crime should be charged.

Agent Eckenrode doesn’t send people out when $1 million is missing from a bank and tell them, Just come back if you find wire fraud. If the agent finds embezzlement, they follow through on that.

That’s the way this investigation was conducted. It was known that a CIA officer’s identity was blown, it was known that there was a leak. We needed to figure out how that happened, who did it, why, whether a crime was committed, whether we could prove it, whether we should prove it.

And given that national security was at stake, it was especially important that we find out accurate facts.

This is how you are taught to investigate an incident at the academy: gather the facts and then act in accordance with the facts.

The O.J. Simpson case is a prime example of how not to conduct an investigation. Before the facts had been gathered the investigators decided what the crime was and who committed it. They then gathered evidence that supported those assumptions. Things were missed and mistakes were made that compromised the case.

The story that Libby was spinning for the investigators and grand jury had multiple elements, but it was essentially an attempt to distort how and when he learned of Plame’s identity. Fitzgerald was answering the classic Watergate questions: “What did he know and when did he know it?”

Judy Miller was crucial because she was the first journalist that Libby talked to about Plame and the conversation took place in June, well before the Novak column. Miller’s testimony showed that Libby lied about when.

Tim Russert was important because Libby had identified him as the source of Plame’s name, and Russert denied that the discussion took place. Russert’s testimony directly contradicts Libby’s.

Matthew Cooper’s testimony is related to Libby’s motive for lying: he was smearing an opponent by leaking to journalists.

Fitzgerald systematically pulled Libby’s story apart. The interviews with Plame’s neighbors were just a final clean up and cover for any defenses that Libby’s team might attempt. It was a small peripheral detail, but Fitzgerald’s team covered it.

Fitzgerald’s decision not to go with an espionage charge was a reality-based decision. Everyone knows what lying is, but you have to do a lot of explaining to a jury when you try an espionage case. It isn’t certain that a jury would understand that Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA operative, because she lived in Virginia, not some foreign country. Trying an espionage case would involve getting some of the information needed for trial declassified by the current administration, not a sure thing. There are a lot of openings for “reasonable doubt” in an espionage case and not much return for a prosecutor.

In the “criminal justice system” it isn’t what you know, it isn’t what would be just, it’s what you can make a jury believe beyond a reasonable doubt that counts.

If more information comes out at another time, Libby can still be indicted on espionage charges.

The first problem was that Wilma gathered strength before it hit the west coast and, because of the terrain, didn’t weaken a great deal before hitting the east coast from the rear.

I have an old friend, a former Navy Air Boss, who lives in Palm Beach Gardens. He watched the storm pass over his house. He said that the storm was much more powerful than anticipated and the backside of the storm, with gusty winds, caused more damage than the front side.

Interstate 95, the main North-South artery was undercut by the storm, which created problems for deliveries coming in from the North.

Another major problem was the number of retired people who live in the area and have medical needs and limited mobility. The loss of power is trapping them in high-rise apartment buildings.

The quick recovery from previous storms in the area caused people to assume that things would be back to normal in a couple of days, so there was no need to sweat it. There were an amazing number of people who had generators, but hadn’t bothered to buy more gas for them, assuming that what was in the tank from the last storm would be sufficient.

Given the number of people who are living from day to day in the area, it’s not surprising that people panicked. When your day is structured around showing up at the labor pool in the morning to get enough to make it until the next day, you are in trouble when there’s a hurricane.

The reality is that given the current level of poverty concentrated in urban areas, any time a major city is hit there are going to be these problems. Poor people do not have the resources to prepare or evacuate, all they can do is endure.

Interesting times, indeed.