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Patrick Fitzgerald Planned 2004 October Surprise
Democrats are lamenting the fact that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald wasn't able to indict Lewis "Scooter" Libby on Leakgate charges a month before last year's presidential election - a move that Fitzgerald acknowleged was his original plan last Friday. "I wish the truth had come out one year ago," said Bob Shrum - campaign manager to presidential loser John Kerry - on MSNBC's "Hardball" Thursday night. "Because as Patrick Fitzgerald said, he would have indicted in October of 2004, and you wouldn`t have a [second] Bush administration." Announcing the Libby indictment on Friday, Fitzgerald made it clear that he wanted to spring his Leakgate October Surprise a year earlier - at the eleventh hour of the 2004 presidential campaign: "I would have wished nothing better that, when the subpoenas were issued in August 2004, [that] witnesses testified then, and we would have been here in October 2004 instead of October 2005," he told reporters.
Story Continues Below Instead, the top Leakgate prober blamed the New York Times and other media outlets for not cooperating in an expeditious manner, which delayed his investigation beyond the presidential election. Four days before the 1992 presidential election, a similar scenario played out - when Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh indicted Reagan Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger in the Iran-Contra case. Before news of Weinberger's indictment, polls showed that President Bush 41's reelection campaign had narrowed the gap with challenger Bill Clinton to one point. But the indictment stopped Bush's momentum dead in its tracks, and he lost election, 43 to 37 percent.
Editor's note:
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