The Late Peter Cook Exonerates Scooter Libby!

(Peter Cook as the judge who exonerates defendants who dodge testifying at their trials)

In a previous incarnation - a few million years ago - I had the privilege and good fortune of being friends with the inestimable Peter Cook (of "Beyond The Fringe" fame and sometime comedic partner of Dudley Moore.) Peter was quite simply the funniest man of his generation. Ask the Pythons - they all concur.

In 1979 I was lucky enough to be producing a benefit show for Amnesty International called "The Secret Policeman's Ball" for which Cook wrote and performed the most supremely funny piece of his brilliant career. It lampooned a recent criminal trial of the day in a way that reminds me of the Libby trial.

In a political scandal that was a cross between Watergate, the O.J. Simpson case and a Three Stooges film - Jeremy Thorpe (the leader of Britain's Liberal Party) was put on trial for conspiracy to commit murder. He and three cronies were accused of plotting to bump off his gay teenage lover - the one he had before he got married to the ex-wife of The Queen's first cousin! (Can't make this stuff up!)

The court trial was as juicy to the UK's political junkies in 1979 as the Libby trial is to us today.

The judge in the Jeremy Thorpe trial was hopelessly biased in favor of the defendant - as a fellow member of the British Establishment. So when it came to the end of the trial and he had to give the mandatory summary of the case to the jury (the English legal equivalent of instructions to the jury) - he delivered a peroration that was so startlingly negative to the prosecution and so fulsome in praise of the defense that it was universally condemned.

Peter Cook seized on the judge's summary and with a few deft exaggerations created a comedic masterpiece that he performed at the Amnesty benefit show.

And the connection to the Libby case?

Well Jeremy Thorpe and two of his three cronies - just like "Scooter" Libby today - decided NOT to testify in their own defense.

And what if anything should the jury construe from this decision?

Read what Peter Cook (portraying the Thorpe trial judge) said about THORPE's decision - and it pretty much sums up the position of the Libby defense team.

"You will probably have noticed that three of the defendants have very wisely chosen to exercise their inalienable right not to go into the witness box to answer a lot of impertinent questions.

I will merely say that you are not to infer from this anything other than that they consider the evidence against them so flimsy that it was scarcely worth their while to rise from their seats and waste their breath denying these ludicrous charges..."

THAT is the gist of the Libby defense.

Let's just hope that the Libby judge doesn't end his instructions to the jury as Peter Cook's Thorpe trial judge ended his.

"You are now to retire, carefully to consider your verdict of 'Not Guilty'.

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