NewsMax Falsely Attacks Fitzgerald -- Again
Topic: Newsmax
An April 12 NewsMax article falsely portrays a minor change made by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in a legal document in the case against ex-vice presidential chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby as evidence that the entire filing is false.

The NewsMax article starts by claiming that Fitzgerald "now admits he was wrong to publicly allege last week that Vice President Dick Cheney deliberately tried to mislead reporters about prewar Iraq intelligence," calling it "a move that raises serious questions about his conduct of the Leakgate probe." NewsMax uses the term "bogus claim" twice in the article, adding that "Fitzgerald advised Leakgate Judge Reggie Walton that his April 5 filing was flat out wrong."

So what was wrong with this purportedly "flat out wrong" filing? Buried within the article, beneath all the false claims and hyperbole, is the truth of the matter: Fitzgerald is revising the statement that "Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium" to no longer claim that it was a "key judgment" of the National Intelligence Estimate Libby leaked to a New York Times reporter with the authorization of President Bush (though it was still stated in the NIE and leaked to the reporter).

That's it. NewsMax offers no explanation of what, if any, relevance this minor change has on the case against Libby, let alone how it extrapolates from there that the entire filing is "flat out wrong."

NewsMax has regularly attacked Fitzgerald in a various misleading ways since before his indictment against Libby was handed down last October.