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Free-Fall for the Fall Guy
All cameras are pointed at Scooter Libby and his wife, Harriet Grant, as they try to make their way back to the federal courthouse after the guilty verdict. Libby didn't talk to the media but did help up a cameraman who was knocked over.
(By Mark Gail -- The Washington Post)
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"Do you expect a pardon?" another reporter called out.
"Come on, now!" Wells shouted at the photographers. "Come on. Watch that camera!" One cameraman fell on the courthouse steps directly in front of Libby. The fallen cameraman got a hand up -- from the fall guy himself.
The crews' exuberance was understandable; after a month-long trial and two weeks of jury deliberations, the journalists became giddy when e-mails summoned them to the courthouse for a verdict. Slate.com's John Dickerson abandoned his car on 19th Street. Others fled a Senate hearing on Capitol Hill. At the courthouse, Neil Lewis of the New York Times accepted congratulations for winning $40 in a betting pool on when the verdict would be reached.
Collins, the only juror willing to face the cameras after the verdict was read, was similarly energetic as he recounted the deliberations. "I was thinking, 'Wow, maybe we'll get to see President Bush here," he recalled, his hand in a pocket of his green ski jacket. He went on to regale the reporters with jurors' "lust" for the "hot-dog, half-smoke guy across the street in front of the DMV." Collins continued, unbidden: "My father, when he came from Ireland, he worked right across the street. . . . He made sandwiches across from the courthouse."
But Fitzgerald, even in victory, declined to join in the carnival. "The results are actually sad," he posited. "It's sad that we had a situation where a high-level official . . . obstructed justice and lied under oath."
Did he feel vindicated? "It's not the verdict that justifies the investigation, it's the facts," he demurred.
Any further charges? "I would not expect to see any," he said. "We're all going back to our day jobs."
All, except for the fall guy.
