Richard Schmitt (LA Times): Standing on the Shoulders of Perjury Law

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Los Angeles Times
Dated Monday August 15

Standing on the Shoulders of Perjury Law
By Richard B. Schmitt, Times Staff Writer

Washington — When Al Qaeda operative Wadih El-Hage blamed false testimony he had given to a federal grand jury on confusion and jet lag, then-assistant U.S. Atty. Patrick J. Fitzgerald was not impressed. "I submit to you," Fitzgerald told jurors at El-Hage's 2001 trial in New York, "you heard 10 of the most pathetic excuses of perjury ever known."

El-Hage, once Osama bin Laden's personal secretary, is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole — convicted of perjury, among other things.

Things tend to work out that way when Patrick J. Fitzgerald is prosecuting a case.

Fitzgerald, 44, has a history of invoking perjury laws and related statutes to buttress his investigations.

So it may not be surprising that he is considering perjury charges in his current assignment — as a special prosecutor investigating whether anyone in the Bush administration illegally leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to journalists.

Read more.