John, your criticism of Pat’s remarks at the press conference is well taken. I also think it’s fair to say — as I take you to be saying, at least in part – that for all the indictment’s sweep, the charges are very narrow, coming down to whether Scooter was truthful to investigators regarding conversations with three journalists.

Your comparison of the case to the way your mind works, though, is very unpersuasive. A criminal investigation is not an ordinary exercise in randomly recalling the zillion factoids that clutter our brains, as to which I agree all of us are subject to innocent error. In a criminal investigation, you hire a lawyer; you go over documents and throroughly talk through the matter at issue to refresh your recollection; your lawyer can conduct some independent investigation to assist you in that regard; you understand that you have a special obligation to speak truthfully; you get to say (and it is your obligation to say), “I don’t remember,” if that is the case; if you realize at some point in the process that you’ve said something that wasn’t accurate, you go back and clear it up; and, best of all in this country, you get to assert your Fifth Amendment privilege: you can refuse even to be interviewed if you believe truthful answers might conceivably incriminate you.

All that said, in this case, we now know of at least two people who made inaccurate statements but were not indicted — evidently because the prosecutor decided the evidence was not strong enough that they did so with criminal intent. With Libby, the opposite conclusion was drawn. You’re quite right that our relative opinions of the players are not very relevant. (I should note here that, while I don’t know Scooter Libby as well as you do, I think very highly of him, and the fact that you and many other people I admire think very highly of him goes a long way in my book.) But, until the case gets tried and we see the proof, we are operating in an information void and all we have to go on is reputation and instinct.

I am trying to separate out what I know of the players (very hard to do) and fill that void with a deduction. Based on what happened with Rove and Armitage, I think it’s fair to conclude that (a) the prosecutor was not looking to indict everyone under the sun, (b) a person had to do more than simply say things that were inaccurate to get charged in this case, (c) there had to have been something qualitatively different about Libby’s interaction with the investigators (and the grand jury), and (d) there had to be something qualitatively different about the evidence of Libby’s state of mind (e.g., Miller’s testimony that Libby was sufficiently concerned about having deniability about being her source that he insisted on being referred to has a “former Hill staffer” (or somesuch — I’m going by memory) rather than an “administration official”).

Those who know Libby very reasonably find it hard to believe he would lie — although there are rational reasons for him to have done so. Those who know Fitzgerald very reasonably find it very hard to believe he would indict absent strong evidence — although the argument is made that he did not want to close the case after two years with no charges. (I don’t buy that argument, but it’s a plausible one).

As I’ve said, I wish there were no indictment. Being as objective as I can be, I think (a) there’s grave reason here to be concerned that politics is being criminalized; (b) the White House absolutely should have gotten the truth out about Wilson given the important public policy stakes involved (and I wish they had bragged about doing it rather than allowing the media to cow them into being defensive about it); (c) DOJ should have had the courage to end the investigation at a very preliminary stage – without appointing a special prosecutor and conducting massive interviews – if it was legally clear that the standards for an espionage act or cover agent identity protection act violation could not be met; and (d) there may have been a strong case for exercising prosecutorial discretion in Libby’s favor given that Wilson’s execrable conduct was apparently unchargeable.

But on the other hand, where I come from, public officials who intentionally mislead investigators and grand juries get charged. Scooter must be presumed innocent on that score. For present purposes, the point is that when the case finally gets tried, it will be about the indictment, not the press conference.