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Movers and Shakers
Patrick Fitzgerald arriving at the courthouse, where he broke the long, suspenseful wait by moving chairs.
(By Larry Morris -- The Washington Post)
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On the third floor, one group staked out the grand jury room.
On the second floor, another group of scribes and television producers and sketch artists camped in Courtroom 4.
On the first floor, another group waited outside the clerk's office.
For more than an hour, rumors fueled by competitive paranoia and bad cell phone connections periodically drove the groups to stampede from one location another. The courthouse resembled the stage of a British farce, with herds of reporters dashing off stage left, then reappearing stage right, and rushing off again, with pointless industry.
Finally at 12:21 in Courtroom 4, Fitzgerald did his moving man routine. Then the grand jury filed in. They were a group of 19 -- more women than men, more blacks than whites. They were silent and watchful, dressed well, except for one man in a sweat shirt. They were citizens -- a grand jury of peers -- and they were also, after two years of close study, leading experts in this twisting case.
And these ladies and gentlemen of the grand jury felt lied to.
It was Libby's alleged misstatements to the grand jury that formed the basis for the two perjury charges.
This first, fleeting glimpse of the panel was but a formality, over in minutes.
Besides the reporters, lawyers, judge and grand jury, sitting in the front row was a sole representative of that species known as the General Public. John Cooper, 32, an out-of-work lawyer from Alexandria, said he was just passing by the courthouse after researching a job at the Library of Congress, and he saw all the television trucks. He was interested enough to come in but -- remarkably! -- he had not been obsessing over this case and was not pulling for or against the officials under investigation.
"I didn't want or not want someone to be indicted," Cooper said. "I've been obsessively looking for a job."
The scene shifted to a ground floor corridor near the clerk's office where Fitzgerald's representatives pulled copies of the indictments and a news release out of cardboard boxes. They handed them to the reporters' clutching hands like bread to the starving. The television people sprinted to the plaza outside to begin reading, live, to the world.
"I. Lewis Libby today was indicted. . ."
