House of Eratosthenes

I can see there is one forensic skill that has risen to involve paramount importance in reading about the Libby trial: The ability to distinguish objective statements from subjective ones. I’ve come to that conclusion because over time, I’ve observed a skill that has snowballed into a crushing level of weight and importance in writing about the trial, involves mixing objective and subjective statements together so that they all look alike.

Yeah, that’s right. On this subject, writers and readers assume opposite roles in an inimical relationship. Writers seek to bewilder and confuse readers, and the few readers who are interested and genuinely curious, seek to drag said truth kicking-and-screaming out of the writers.

What else am I supposed to think. After all, what happened here — within the story. What’s the most that could have happened, and what’s the least that could have happened.

Cheney’s shadow hangs over Libby trial
Testimony points out his role in trying to dampen Joseph Wilson’s criticism
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Updated: 9:37 p.m. PT Feb 3, 2007

Vice President Cheney’s press officer, Cathie Martin, approached his chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, on Air Force Two on July 12, 2003, to ask how she should respond to journalists’ questions about Joseph C. Wilson IV. Libby looked over one of the reporters’ questions and told Martin: “Well, let me go talk to the boss and I’ll be back.”

On Libby’s return, Martin testified in federal court last week, he brought a card with detailed replies dictated by Cheney, including a highly partisan, incomplete summary of Wilson’s investigation into Iraq’s suspected weapons of mass destruction program.

Libby subsequently called a reporter, read him the statement, and said — according to the reporter — he had “heard” that Wilson’s investigation was instigated by his wife, an employee at the CIA, later identified as Valerie Plame. The reporter, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, was one of five people with whom Libby discussed Plame’s CIA status during those critical weeks that summer.

Highly partisan, incomplete summary. Those descriptors are subjective, not objective — you don’t find them to be “true,” instead, you either agree with them or you don’t. So what happened? Scooter Libby, apparently after having consulted with the Vice President, produced a summary of Wilson’s fishing expedition that left out something someone else would have wanted left in. Oh, NOES!!! The Vice President is doing things different than the way things would have been done by someone else who is not the Vice President!

I mean, am I misreading that? In what way?

Read the rest of the story. It seems to imply that Libby just found out from Vice President Cheney that Joseph Wilson’s wife had a hand in sending the ambassador to Nigeria, and lied by omission when he said “he had heard” this was the case. If indeed that is what the story is implying, do we have that information? And come to think of it, what would that be, objective or subjective? You could say it’s objective…you could…if it could be objectively measured that Scooter should’ve spilled what someone else thinks Scooter should’ve spilled. Well, the phrase “someone else thinks” removes this matter from the realm of objectivity.

That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be mentioned. What it means is, by itself, this is not news.

There are two defenses I can see that are suitable for both Libby and the Vice President’s office. They both deal with the “perjury trap.” The first comes under the category of “Things That Make You Go Hmmmm” and it is from, of all people, Ann Coulter.

The way Libby remembered it, NBC’s Tim Russert was the first one to tell him. But the way Russert remembers it, he didn’t tell Libby about Wilson’s wife. (And the way Wilson remembers it, he was sent to Niger by Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise.)

Try this: Who told you Wilson was sent to Niger by his wife? Who told you a bipartisan Senate panel concluded that Joe Wilson was lying when he denied that his wife had sent him to Niger? While we’re at it, who was the first person to correct you on your pronunciation of “Niger”? I don’t remember, either — and I’m not running a war.

The second is the product of a Clinton-lovin’ liberal by the name of Marc Perkel and, as such, it relies on confusing the objective with the subjective. Like they say in hokey pokey…that’s what it’s all about. The specific subjective notion is that the perjury trap is “abhorrent.” It must be abhorrent, because a court found it to be abhorrent.

Oh no, Perkel’s comments are not written with regard to Scooter Libby’s trial. The subject is Clinton’s impeachment trial in the Senate. I’m gonna rag on this guy for a few paragraphs. His introduction promises, by implication, a logically durable argument and he doesn’t deliver.

Perjury Trap / Legal Perspective / Definitions

In the case of United States vs. Chen, 933 F.2d 793, 796-97, A perjury trap is created when the government calls a witness before the grand jury for the primary purpose of obtaining testimony from him in order to prosecute him later for perjury. United States v. Simone, 627 F. Supp. 1264, 1268 (D. N.J. 1986) (perjury trap involves “the deliberate use of a judicial proceeding to secure perjured testimony, a concept in itself abhorrent”). It involves the government’s use of its investigatory powers to secure a perjury indictment on matters which are neither material nor germane to a legitimate ongoing investigation of the grand jury. See United States v. Crisconi, 520 F. Supp. 915, 920 (D. Del. 1981). Such governmental conduct might violate a defendant’s fifth amendment right to due process, Simone, 627 F. Supp. at 1267-72, or be an abuse of grand jury proceedings, Crisconi, 520 F. Supp. at 920. See generally Gershman, The “Perjury Trap”, 129 U. Pa. L. Rev. 624, 683 (1981).

The Chen case goes on to say, “If a court divines that the purpose of repetitious questioning is to coax a witness into the commission of perjury . . . such conduct would be an abuse of the grand jury process.”

Perjury Trap as applied to President Clinton

The facts of the matter are rather obvious. This whole process, ever since Starr was appointed was an Impeachment in search of a Crime. Having investigated Whitewater, TravelGate, FileGate, the Foster Suicide, and a number of other artificial scandals, and having failed to find a crime, Starr was running out of things to investigate. Then one day Linda Tripp comes forward with a tape of Monica Lewinsky talking about having sexual contact (not sexual relations) with the President. Starr interviewed her without a lawyer and attempted to put a wire on her to get the President.

In spite of the fact that Starr had actual knowledge of the Lewinsky affair, he failed to reveal his knowledge to the President’s counsel. The idea was to catch the President by surprise in the Jones deposition. As we all know, having sex is neither a criminal act nor an impeachable offense. However, it is extremely embarrassing and it is something that most of us would tend to lie about. In fact, we as a society have a lot of sexual phobias and because we Americans can not face our own sexuality, we as a society deal with it by lying about sex. In other words, lying about sex is an established American custom. I would point out that although most people consider the President’s behavior to be sinful, sexual behavior is a human instinct that is more powerful than reason and is necessary for reproduction; and, if not for such instincts as depicted by the President’s behavior, the human race would have been extinct millions of years ago. But that’s another argum ent that I will save for another day. My point here is that because our American culture will not face sexual behavior from a realistic perspective, it is normal and expected in our society to lie about sex. This is especially true if you are an elected official.

Perkel leverages this reasoning with “the combination my of legal skills, my political skills, and the logical disciplines my of being [sic] a computer programmer.” It is the last of those, grammatically scrambled as it may be, for which I have the most respect. It is the only one of his credentials I can match, and I apply reasoning skills to what I’m reading in the news each and every day — skills I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t programmed computers.

But there are some key differences between Mr. Perkel’s background and mine.

For one thing, I would never use my achievements as a computer programmer, just by themselves, to convince someone to listen to the wisdom of my argument. It’s pretentious, and I think it would be ineffective. People don’t understand it. Anyone who does understand where such an argument is going, probably understands it because they’ve programmed computers themselves, and I can pretty much promise they will look at it differently. You’ve got better-than-even odds they’ll figure out that programming is an activity you might as well just pass up if you lack the reasoning and deductive skills to look at things, and figure out what they mean. And to strategize. And to organize. But — people being the way they are, if a hostile mindset does indeed have this background, he’ll use it to fortify his own argument.

“That guy’s programmed computers. He must have strong reasoning skills. I’d better listen to him.” Never heard anyone express those ideas in sequence…about me or about anyone else. It’s just not the way people work.

And that brings me to the second difference.

If an observer does indeed have adequate reasoning skills, from the experiences of computer programming or from something else, the application of those skills to Mr. Perkel’s argument is going to take place as his argument is pursued. One statement at a time. As a thesis. What’s Mr. Perkel’s thesis? Perjury traps may violate the fifth amendment. He found a court that says they do, and that they are abhorrent…although he concedes the Supreme Court has yet to comment on the issue. But it’s all a red herring in Clinton’s case anyway, because “lying about sex is an established American custom.”

I wonder what this guy has programmed. Here he is writing about the “logical disciplines” he has from his computer programming, carefully defining where the legal jurisprudence has been created and where it has not been created, and then rather than following this logically he just dismisses it all by saying truth doesn’t matter.

So whatever a logical discipline means to him, at least within the scope of Clinton’s impeachment, it’s got something to do with a concept antithetical to what’s true…not something that rests upon what’s true or can establish what’s true.

Perhaps because of this, he’s lost track of — again — what’s objective and what’s subjective. Perjury traps are “abhorrent.” All right, I agree. But who says so? Just because Perkel and I agree on this, doesn’t make it universally so. It’s an opinionated statement. Someone else might say otherwise. And…lying is expected in matters of sex. Really? Even in grand jury testimony? Expected by who?

Clippy Hey, ever use software built by a computer programmer wholly unaccustomed to dealing with the viewpoints of others? It’s pretty frustrating, and most computer users have been through the experience at least once. Maybe Mr. Perkel has unintentionally identified what’s wrong with how some computer applications are built. Computer programmer thinks when you’re writing a letter, you must want Mr. Clip-It to jump up and say “It looks like you are writing a letter!” and offer some helpful tips. Eh, very few people want that. But somewhere, a computer programmer figured out, heck, if he was the guy writing the letter he’d want to see Clippy. Ipso facto, that’s what everybody else wants too.

Does it work? Well speaking for myself, I’ve never met anyone who’s seen Clippy, who doesn’t want to kill him. He’s like Microsoft’s answer to Jar Jar Binks.

But some of our programmers live in tiny worlds, where Clippy is a sight for sore eyes. And lying about sex is expected. They’re simply unaccustomed to dealing with the viewpoints of others, unless said others already think in the same way. They may be experienced at figuring out what to type in to make the computer do this-or-that, but there’s other stuff to be done too. Like, when the computer does something else, you’ve got to figure out why it’s doing that. And even more importantly than that, and more germane to “logical disciplines” you pick up from programming and apply elsewhere — nobody’s actually going to tell you to make the computer do that. You’ve got to figure out what the user is going to want.

Mmmkay, anyway back to the subject at hand. Objective…subjective. As far as the modern culture and the prevailing viewpoint therein, and the history of that prevailing viewpoint — we’re at an interesting crossroads. People are acting mighty peculiar. Conservative, liberal, other…it seems everyone wants to be applauded for their ability to think things through. Nobody wants to be accused of thinking things, just because someone else gave them instructions to think those things.

But look at what’s up here. Scooter Libby hands Cathie Martin a note. Cathie Martin thinks something should have been on the note that isn’t there. She testifies to this effect and someone else figures this is news.

What useful information has been passed around here? Looks to me like we got some testimony out of Martin, that she thinks things should’ve been worded differently. No shit. I’m sure a lot of folks are going to think this post should have been worded differently. Did anything else newsworthy happen that day? Anything? Hello? Buuueeeellleerrr?

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On Libby’s TrialSunday, February 4th, 2007

On Libby’s Trial
Sunday, February 4th, 2007