STAGGERING ALONG WITH FADING MEMORY

I guess a few people are appalled that Vernon Jordan suffered from near total memory failure during his testimony to the grand jury investigating Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. The Washington Examiner's Byron York appears to think that Mr. Jordan did something wrong by declaring that he could not remember the details of something in the past.

That is strange considering what happened to poor Scooter Libby who went to jail and was fined because his memories did not coincide perfectly with meetings and statements in the past about who was responsible for "outing" the odious CIA analyst Valerie Plame Wilson which then resulted in his  destruction by the utterly vile and contemptible Patrick Fitzgerald. Libby had nothing to do with the case and Fitzgerald knew that at the time but Fitzgerald tied him up based on faulty memories during testimony.

This was how the Independent Prosecutor appointed to investigate who leaked information about Plame was handled using the politics of personal destruction:

In January 2004, the Justice Department chose prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald to investigate the leak of Valerie Plame's identity. From the outset, he was made fully aware that the leaker was Armitage, who resigned from the State Department in November 2004 but remained a subject of the inquiry until February 2006 when Fitzgerald told him in a letter that he would not be charged. The New York Times reported on Sept. 2, 2006:

Only a complete idiot would ever testify to anything based on memory alone. That whole Perry Mason schtick where the witness is asked to testify as to where he was on the night in question several months in the past would get an, "I don't know," from me.

Such an honest answer should not have worked for somebody like the Secretary of State since she had an appointment book kept for every minute of the day which details who she met with and a precis of the purpose of each meeting.. The topics actually discussed may be different from the schedule, but where she was, and who she was with is, a matter of official record.

The problem this country now faces is that vile attack on Libby rendered moot the idea that any official would ever attempt to answer an investigator's questions honestly, ever again. The penalty for an imperfect memory is much worse than any penalty for actually committing the crime in question. One no longer takes refuge in the 5th Amendment, one merely doesn't recall.

Way to go Patrick Fitzgerald! You screwed government accountability forever! Scumbag.