Happy Fitzster

People that fight for truth justice and the American way (Superman, etc) all seemed reasonably impressed with prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s demeanor and his ability to rise above the politics of the Plame leak case “leakgate” (I’m sure there will be a few as this is the year of the leaks) and focus on the legal issues. I wasn’t overly impressed with Fitzgerald but I did notice in his press conference months ago that he seemed like a reasonable fellow that was doing his job objectively in a politically difficult situation.

Fitzgerald recently had to make a correction to a document he released. It hasn’t gotten much coverage in the usual outlets, I found it mentioned in the New York Sun:

The prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, claimed in a court filing last week that a former White House aide facing criminal charges for obstructing the probe, I. Lewis Libby, said he was told by Mr. Cheney to inform a New York Times reporter that one of the key judgments of a 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq was that the country was “vigorously trying to procure” uranium.
While the intelligence report indeed alleged that Iraq was aggressively seeking nuclear materials, that finding was not among the key judgments contained in the document’s early pages. The allegation that Mr. Cheney told Mr. Libby to misstate that fact to the Times journalist, Judith Miller, was noted prominently in some news accounts and contributed to an uproar that threw the White House into a tailspin last week.
However, in a letter yesterday, Mr. Fitzgerald advised the judge overseeing the case, Reggie Walton, that the government’s April 5 filing was inaccurate. “We are writing to correct a sentence,” Mr. Fitzgerald’s letter begins. He told the judge an error occurred in the following statement: “Defendant understood that he was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was ‘vigorously trying to procure’ uranium.”

I see this correction of his original statement as reflecting Fitzgerald’s commitment to proper language and accuracy in how he prosecutes. When speaking of legal issues, semantics are very important and Fitzgerald has demonstrated, as he did in the press conference months ago with his careful choice of words in dealing with the press, that he is committed to proper “spin free” prosecution (truth?). That he is not only being methodical but willing to admit a mistake (guess that makes him human) reflects well on his character and the eventual results of this case.