January 16, 2007: Law Professor: Libby Trial Participants Exemplify the Seven Deadly Sins

Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley writes a sardonic take on the just-starting Lewis Libby trial (see January 16-23, 2007), and notes that the trial has no heroes, only villains and victims. Indeed, he writes, the trial can best be summed up in terms of the classical Seven Deadly Sins. There is, Turley writes, no “person of unalloyed virtue to serve as a standard for judging the rest. In fact, the case now reads like a political parable of the seven deadly sins, with each of the main characters being undone by a fundamental personality flaw.” Pride, he writes, is summed up in the person of President Bush, whose pride, or hubris, led him to use falsified intelligence to order the invasion of Iraq. Sloth is summed up in Congress’s failure to adequately investigate the hollow claims advanced by the administration in support of the war. Turley accuses the victims, Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame Wilson, of a certain level of gluttony, writing that they “seemed to succumb to the allure of their newfound celebrity” after the long-running story turned them into media stars. Wrath, he writes, is framed in the person of Vice President Dick Cheney: angry at Wilson for revealing the falsehoods behind the Iraq war claims (see July 6, 2003), Cheney ordered him besmirched and discredited, an order that resulted in the outing of Wilson’s wife as a CIA official. Envy, Turley says, is personified by former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, whom he claims used her rising celebrity status to inject herself into the administration’s case for war with Iraq. He pins the sin of lust on prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, accusing the government attorney of being far too eager to bring journalists in front of his grand jury and, presumably, into the Libby courtroom. And while many in the scenario can be justifiably accused of displaying the sin of greed, Turley writes, he saves this last deadly sin for Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, whom he writes was “blinded by self-advancement,” failing to acknowledge his own involvement in outing Plame Wilson even as he mocked and derided the investigation into her exposure. Turley calls the trial “the perfect Washington morality play.” [Salon, 1/16/2007]