http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/26/cia.leak/index.html

CIA leak probe has Washington waiting
No announcements expected today

Wednesday, October 26, 2005; Posted: 12:44 p.m. EDT (16:44 GMT)


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA operative's identity could hand up charges as early as today, but Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is not expected to make any public announcements Wednesday, one source with knowledge of the probe told CNN.

The grand jury is meeting Wednesday in U.S. District Court and is believed to be taking up the CIA leaks case in some manner.

Many legal experts and lawyers not involved in the case had expected the grand jury to vote on an indictment Wednesday -- if the investigation is going to result in indictments -- and that the outcome would be announced publicly.

The grand jury's term is set to expire Friday unless Fitzgerald requests an extension.

Several experts told CNN it is possible the grand jury on Wednesday still could consider the question of indictments and if it votes to return one or more, the indictments could remain under seal and made public later.

These experts also said it is possible the grand jury could consider indictments later this week, or that no charges will be brought.

It is also possible Fitzgerald will let this grand jury term end and take his case to a new panel.

On Tuesday, FBI agents interviewed a Washington neighbor of Valerie Plame for a second time. (Watch Washington wait for possible indictments -- 2:59)

The agents asked Marc Lefkowitz on Monday night whether he knew about Plame's CIA work before her identity was leaked in the media, and Lefkowitz told agents he did not, according to his wife, Elise Lefkowitz.

Lefkowitz said agents first questioned whether the couple was aware of Plame's CIA work in an interview several months ago.

Plame and her husband, retired State Department diplomat Joseph Wilson, have accused Bush administration officials of deliberately leaking her identity to the media to retaliate against Wilson after he published an opinion piece in The New York Times.

Federal law makes it a crime to deliberately reveal the identity of a covert CIA operative.(Fitzgerald profile)

The July 2003 article cast doubt on a key assertion in the Bush administration's arguments for war with Iraq -- that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium for a suspected nuclear weapons program in Africa.

Wilson, who was acting ambassador to Iraq before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, said the CIA sent him to Niger, in central Africa, to investigate the uranium claim in February 2002 and that he found no evidence such a transaction occurred and it was unlikely it could have. (Full story)

Days after Wilson's article was published, Plame's identity was exposed in a piece by syndicated columnist and longtime CNN contributor Robert Novak.

Rove has testified before the Fitzgerald grand jury that he believes it was I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, who first told him that Plame worked for the CIA and had a role in sending her husband to Africa, according to a source familiar with Rove's testimony.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller spent 85 days in jail for contempt before finally agreeing last month to tell grand jurors that Libby told her Wilson's wife may have worked at the CIA, although she said Libby did not identify Plame by name or describe her as a covert agent or operative.

Libby has also testified before the grand jury.

Poll: Most suspect wrongdoings
Only one in 10 Americans said they believe Bush administration officials did nothing illegal or unethical in connection with the leak, according to a national poll released Tuesday.

Thirty-nine percent said some administration officials acted illegally in the matter.

The same percentage of respondents in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll said administration officials acted unethically, but did nothing illegal.

The poll was split nearly evenly on what respondents thought of Bush officials' ethical standards -- 51 percent saying they were excellent or good and 48 percent saying they were not good or poor.

The figures represent a marked shift from a 2002 survey in which nearly three-quarters said the standards were excellent or good and only 23 percent said they were fair or poor.

The latest poll questioned 1,008 adults October 21-23 and has a sampling error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Report links Cheney to case
The New York Times reported Tuesday that notes in Fitzgerald's possession suggest that Libby first heard of the CIA officer from Cheney himself. (Full story)

But the newspaper reported that the notes do not indicate that Cheney or Libby knew Plame was an undercover operative.

The Times said its sources in the story were lawyers involved in the case.

The notes show that George Tenet, then the CIA director, gave the information to Cheney in response to questions the vice president posed about Wilson, the Times reported.

Cheney said in September 2003 he had seen no report from Wilson after his assignment in Africa.

"I don't know Joe Wilson. I've never met Joe Wilson. I don't know who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back," he told NBC.

Cheney's office had no comment, and the White House would neither confirm or deny the Times report.

"The policy of this White House has been to carry out the direction of the president, which is to cooperate fully with the special prosecutor," said White House press secretary Scott McClellan, who was peppered with questions about the report at his daily briefing.

"There's a lot of speculation that is going on right now. There are many facts that are not known. The work of the special prosecutor continues, and we look forward to him successfully concluding his investigation," he said.

McClellan said he had not sought any clarification about Cheney's involvement from the vice president or his office and bristled when a reporter asked if Cheney always tells the truth to the American people, dismissing the query as "ridiculous."

In 2003, McClellan used the same word to deny that either Rove or Libby had been involved in the leak.

The Justice Department opened a criminal probe in September 2003 at the request of the CIA.

Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, Illinois, was named special prosecutor at the end of 2003 after then-Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the probe.

CNN's Kelli Arena, Dana Bash and Suzanne Malveaux contributed to this report.

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_..._to_be_ind.html

Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005
A daily journal of thoughts and messages from the "muffled zone" that media management has made of our country.« Out of Town | Main

Aides To Be Indicted, Probe to Continue

By Richard Sale, long-time Intelligence Correspondent

Two top White House aides are expected to be indicted today on various charges related to the probe of CIA operative Valerie Plame whose classified identity was publicly breached in retaliation after her husband, Joe Wilson, challenged the administration's claim that Saddam Hussein had sought to buy enriched unranium from Niger, acording to federal law enforcement and senior U.S. intelligence officials.

If no action is taken today, it will take place on Friday, these sources said.

I.Scooter Libby, the chief of staff of Vice President Richard Cheney, and chief presidential advisor, Karl Rove are expected to be named in indcitments this morning by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

Others are to be named as well, these source said. According to U.S. officials close to the case an bill of indiictment has been in existence before October 17 which named five people. Various names have surfaced such a National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, yet only one source would confirm that Hadley was on the list. Hadley could not be reached for comment.

But letters from Fitzgerald, notifying various White House officiials that they are targets of the invstigation, went out late last week, a former senior U.S. intelligence official said.

Although most press accounts emphasized that Fitzgerald was likely to concentrate on attempts by Libby Rove and others to cover-up wrongdoing by means of perjury before the grand jury, lying to federal officials, conspiring to obstruct justice, etc. But federal law enforcement officials told this reporter that Fitzgerald was likely to charge the people indicted with violating Joe Wilson's civil rights, smearing his name in an attempt to destroy his ability to earn a living in Washington as a consultant.

The civil rights charge is said to include "the conspiracy was committed using U.S. government offices, buildings, personnel and funds," one federal law enforcement official said.

Other charges could include possible violations of U.S. espionage laws, including the mishandling of U.S. classified information, these sources said.

That Vice President Cheney is at the center of the controversy comes is no surprise. Last Friday, Fitzgerald investigators were talking to Cheney's attorneys, and detailied questionaires, designed to pin down in meticulous sequence what Cheney knew, when he knew it, and what he told his aides,, were delivered to the White House on Monday, these sources said.

The probe is far from being at an end. According to this reporter's sources, Fitzgerald approached the judge in charge of the case and asked that a new grand jury be empaneled. The old grand jury, which has been sitting for two years, will expire on October 28.

Thanks to a letter of February, 2004 which Fitzgerald asked for and obtained expaneed authority, the Special Prosecutor is now in possession of an Italian parliament nvestigationi into the forged Niger documents alleging Iraq's interest in purchasing Niger uranium, sources said.

They said that Fitzgerald is looking into such individuals as former CIA agent, Duane Claridge, military consultant to the Iraqi National Congress, Gen. Wayne Downing, another military consultant for INC, and Francis Brooke, head of INC's Washingfton office in an effort to determine if they played any role in the forgeriese or their dissiemination. Also iIncluded in this group is long-time neoconservative Michael Ledeen, these federal sources said.

On the Hill, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), democratic whip, are asking for public hearings to lay bare the forgeries and how their false allegations ended up in President George Bush's State of the Union speech.

(Part Two -- More on the Forgeries and Wilson's mission.)



26 October 2005 | Permalink

PENTAGON CLEARANCE FOR JUDITH MILLER QUESTIONED

Senator Byron Dorgan, speaking on the Senate floor yesterday,
pondered the rules governing authorized access by reporters to
classified information.

His reflections were prompted by an assertion from New York Times'
Judith Miller that she had held a security clearance for access
to classified information while embedded with a military unit in
Iraq. That assertion was later modified to indicate that Ms.
Miller had signed some kind of non-disclosure agreement.

"How can you give a nondisclosure form to a reporter and then show
them secret or top secret material? Take a look at the law, which
I will read tomorrow in the Senate. That is not what is
allowed," Senator Dorgan said. See his remarks here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2005_cr/dorgan102505.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...5102601379.html

Rove's Last Campaign

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, October 26, 2005; 2:12 PM

Will Karl Rove, architect of President Bush's improbable political career, snatch one last victory from the jaws of defeat? (Or at least avoid getting indicted?) Something appears to have provoked special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald into a last-minute flurry of activity centered around Rove.

Tom Hamburger, Richard B. Schmitt and Peter Wallsten write in the Los Angeles Times: "Prosecutors investigating the leak of a CIA agent's identity returned their attention to powerful White House advisor Karl Rove on Tuesday, questioning a former West Wing colleague about contacts Rove had with reporters in the days leading to the outing of a covert CIA officer. . . .
Whether this is good or bad news for Rove is unclear. But here's what you need to keep in mind: There is every reason to think that Rove is throwing every move he's got at Fitzgerald in an attempt to escape criminal charges.

In the Atlantic magazine's seminal profile of Rove last year, Joshua Green wrote that throughout his storied career, Rove has been at his most ferocious and wily when cornered.

"By any standard he is an extremely talented political strategist whose skill at understanding how to run campaigns and motivate voters would be impressive even if he used no extreme tactics. But he does use them.

"Anyone who takes an honest look at his history will come away awed by Rove's power, when challenged, to draw on an animal ferocity that far exceeds the chest-thumping bravado common to professional political operatives."

And Rove partisans, who sounded almost hopeless just a few days ago, now appear to be sending out mixed signals.

Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig write in The Washington Post that "two Republican officials said Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove, the president's top strategist, is not sure whether he will face indictment as the case winds down. Rove was said to be awaiting word from Fitzgerald, even as prosecutors questioned at least one former Rove associate about Rove's contacts with reporters before Plame's name was disclosed."

As a result, journalists are now scratching their heads.

John D. McKinnon and Anne Marie Squeo write in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required): "It isn't clear if anyone outside the vice president's office would be charged with a crime. President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, testified four times before the grand jury, but as of late yesterday, it wasn't clear if he would be caught in the prosecutor's net. If Mr. Rove isn't charged, it would be a relief for the White House and Republicans -- though one significantly tempered if several White House officials are indicted."

There's evidence of last-minute negotiations.
Mary Ann Akers writes in her gossip column in Roll Call (subscription required): "Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was spotted Tuesday at the law offices of Patton Boggs paying a visit to Robert Luskin, the eccentric (for Washington, D.C.) lawyer who represents Karl Rove."

And TalkLeft blogger Jeralyn Merritt writes this morning: "I'm beginning to think it possible that Karl Rove either is not going to be charged in the Valerie Plame Leak investigation, or if he is charged, it will be with a false statement rather than perjury offense."

heart out."

Live Online

Fitzgerald and his grand jurors entered the courthouse around 9 a.m. today.

Broadcast journalists are reporting that there will be no public announcement today. But one popular rumor is that Fitzgerald will indeed present indictments to his grand jury today, the jury will vote on them -- and then he will put everything under seal, pending a public announcement tomorrow.

I can't think of any reason for Fitzgerald to put anything under seal -- unless he's offering his targets the opportunity to turn themselves in before it turns into a real circus over there.

So, two suggestions for the folks staking out the courthouse:

* Even if he seals everything, Fitzgerald would have to take any indictments returned by the grand jury to a judge today. And he would be accompanied by his grand jury foreperson. So keep an eye out for that.

* Also keep an eye out for senior administration officials showing up at the courthouse very, very late at night.

Where Things Stand

Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig write in The Washington Post:

"The prosecutor in the CIA leak case was preparing to outline possible charges before the federal grand jury as early as today, even as the FBI conducted last-minute interviews in the high-profile investigation, according to people familiar with the case. . . .

VandeHei and Leonnig write that "officials are bracing for the kind of political tsunami that swamped Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan in their second terms and could change this presidency's course."

Richard W. Stevenson and Anne E. Kornblut write in the New York Times: "The flurry of last minute activity had White House officials anticipating an announcement as soon as Wednesday about whether the prosecutor would seek indictments. Indictments of Mr. Libby or Mr. Rove or both would leave Mr. Bush a political crisis with the potential to reshape the remainder of his second term. . . .


About White House Briefing
Check here weekdays at midday for my read on the most interesting items about the president and his staff from major newspaper, magazine and broadcast Web sites and Web logs.

More About White House Briefing
E-mail Dan Froomkin Suggestions? Comments? Please include your name and home town. I may publish all or parts of your e-mail unless you specify "not for publication."
Live Online: White House Talk
WH Briefing Reader Forum


White House Briefing

Rove's Last Campaign


The Cheney Factor


"White House officials did not respond to questions about a report on Tuesday in The New York Times that Mr. Libby had first learned of the C.I.A. officer from Mr. Cheney several weeks before Mr. Novak's column. On a day when the mood at the White House was described by one friend of the president as grim, Mr. Bush used his public appearances on Tuesday to show himself as focused on the nation's business, most notably Iraq, and undeterred by what he has characterized as 'background noise.' "

John D. McKinnon and Anne Marie Squeo write in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required): "Administration officials were bracing for the likelihood that Mr. Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, who is known to have talked at least three times with New York Times reporter Judith Miller about the Central Intelligence Agency operative whose identity was leaked, would be indicted, according to people close to the administration."

And here's a tantalizing sentence: "Others in the vice president's office also could face charges, these people said."

Tom Hamburger, Richard B. Schmitt and Peter Wallsten write in the Los Angeles Times: "Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald also dispatched FBI agents to comb the CIA officer's residential neighborhood in Washington, asking neighbors again whether they were aware -- before her name appeared in a syndicated column -- that the agent, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA. . . .

"On Monday, two FBI agents, dressed in black, combed the northwest Washington neighborhood where Wilson and Plame live, flashing their badges and questioning neighbors about whether they knew about her affiliation with the CIA before she was exposed in an article by Novak in July 2003.

"Critics of the leak investigation have argued that it was an open secret that Plame worked for the CIA; if many people knew that she worked for the agency, it would make prosecution under the 1982 law protecting covert agents impossible.

"But neighbors contacted by The Times said they told the FBI agents that they had no idea of her agency life, and that they knew her only as a mother of twins who worked as an energy consultant."

Adam Entous writes for Reuters: "White House officials were anxiously awaiting the outcome of the leak case since any indicted officials were expected to resign immediately. If indictments are brought, Bush was likely to make a public statement to try to reassure Americans that he is committed to honesty and integrity in government."

Suzanne Malveaux told Lou Dobbs on CNN last night: "One insider says Mr. Bush is ready for the outcome. His feeling being, whatever it is, let's get on with it . . . .

"Should the president's top political adviser, Karl Rove, or the vice president's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, be indicted, insiders say it is widely assumed they will resign immediately, and trusted aides will move in to fill the void. The president will make a brief statement citing the legal process that is ongoing, and the White House and its friends will make a dramatic pivot to change the subject and move forward. . . .


"While one White House insider says losing Karl Rove would be a devastating blow to the president, Mr. Bush thinks that his own ability and authority derives from his policies; that Rove is an extension of the president, not a puppet master, that the administration can move forward on its long-term agenda, including tax reform and immigration."

NBC's Norah O'Donnell told Chris Matthews last night: "A senior Republican tells MSNBC that the president's damage control handlers are preparing for, quote, 'multiple scenarios to defend against potential indictments.' And this adviser says, quote, 'it would be foolish not to.' "

The Big Picture

"The decisions to be made this week by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could touch off a national debate over the lengths to which members of the Bush administration were willing to go to advance their war plans, the credibility of Washington press corps and the ability of the White House to persevere in the midst of a scandal."

Ron Fournier writes for the Associated Press: "It should surprise nobody that Vice President Dick Cheney is at the center of another firestorm. He's got his hands in just about everything at the White House. . . .

"There is nothing in the public record to suggest that Cheney, like perhaps Libby and deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove, pointed reporters toward the CIA official in conversations about her husband, diplomat Joe Wilson.

"But the investigation has lifted the veil on the White House's brass-knuckle political culture and Cheney's role in it.

"The latest disclosure also raises fresh questions about the vice president's credibility, long-ago frayed by inaccurate or questionable statements on Iraq."

Jonathan S. Landay writes for Knight Ridder Newspapers: "The grand jury probe into the leak of a covert CIA officer's name has opened a new window into how the Bush administration used intelligence from dubious sources to make a case for a pre-emptive war and discarded information that undercut its rationale for attacking Iraq . . . .

"A Knight Ridder review of the administration's arguments, its own reporting at the time and the Senate Intelligence Committee's 2004 report shows that the White House followed a pattern of using questionable intelligence, even documents that turned out to be forgeries, to support its case -- often leaking classified information to receptive journalists -- and dismissing information that undermined the case for war."

Craig Gordon writes in Newsday: "It was the last week of August 2002, and the Bush administration's case for war against Iraq was running into serious headwinds - internal dissent, go-slow warnings from Republican elders, grumbling in Congress.

"And one man, Vice President Dick Cheney, was doing his best to shock the nation into action.

"Cheney ratcheted up the war rhetoric in speeches that week that highlighted a particularly frightening notion, one Cheney had tracked intently in his Pentagon days a decade earlier: charges that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons.


'Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon,' Cheney said Aug. 26, warning of a 'mortal threat' that would enable Hussein to blackmail the United States and seek domination of the Middle East.

"So when former ambassador Joseph Wilson publicly charged in an op-ed article a year later that the White House had 'twisted' intelligence to exaggerate Hussein's nuclear threat, Wilson was taking direct aim at the case for war championed by the vice president himself."

Cheney and the New York Times



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



About White House Briefing
Check here weekdays at midday for my read on the most interesting items about the president and his staff from major newspaper, magazine and broadcast Web sites and Web logs.

More About White House Briefing
E-mail Dan Froomkin Suggestions? Comments? Please include your name and home town. I may publish all or parts of your e-mail unless you specify "not for publication."
Live Online: White House Talk
WH Briefing Reader Forum


White House Briefing

Rove's Last Campaign


The Cheney Factor


Rearranging the Chairs


Fitzgerald Launches Web Site


Former Insider Lashes Out


More News

Inside the White House
Who's Who in the White House
West Wing Floor Plan
White House Staff List and Salaries
White House Correspondents


White House Coverage
Bush Aides Brace for Charges
New Push for Miers Is in the Works
President Bush Delivers Remarks to the Joint Armed Forces Officers' Wives' Luncheon, Bolling Air Force Base
Bush Picks Adviser as Greenspan's Successor
Presidents Past Inspire Bush's Damage Control
More News

More White House Links
Select a Source____________Associated PressReutersAgence France-PresseNew York TimesLos Angeles TimesUSA TodayGoogle NewsYahoo News Full CoverageLatest Job Approval PollsWhite House Web SiteWhite House Press ReleasesWhite House Press BriefingsLive White House Video FeedGlobal Message of the DayCompilation of DocumentsAppointee DirectoryThe Complete Bushisms
On MSNBC's Hardball last night, there was much talk about the New York Times story placing Cheney himself at the heart of the leak investigation.

While no other news organization has been able to confirm the Times story, Washington Post reporter Jim VandeHei told Chris Matthews: "I have no reason to think it's not true. Nobody is waving us off that story today. . . . I haven't heard anybody deny it all, in the vice president's office, the White House, anywhere, that this not true."

CNN legal analyst Jonathan Turley opined: "For the vice president to be the source of this name, it puts him at risk of being an unindicted co- conspirator or even an indictment."

He added: "Libby is so close to the vice president that to indict Libby, it would be hard not to nick the vice president. You can't get a clean shot at Libby without coming a hair's breath from the vice president.

"They are that close."

Meeting the Press



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


When Cheney appeared on NBC's Meet the Press with Tim Russert on Sept. 7, 2003 -- three months after his reported conversation with Libby about Wilson and his wife -- the vice president sure made it sound like he didn't know anything at all about the topic.

This clip was replayed a lot yesterday on TV:

Cheney: "I don't know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn't judge him. I have no idea who hired him and it never came. . . . "

Russert: "The CIA did."

Cheney: "Who in the CIA, I don't know."

So, was that a lie?

VandeHei and Leonnig write in The Post: "Republicans close to the White House said Cheney was careful to distance himself from Wilson in the interview without lying about what he knew about the diplomat and his wife."

John Roberts reported on the CBS Evening News: "If the vice president made an untruthful statement in public, it may certainly look bad, but it doesn't amount to a crime."

Not Under Oath After All



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The New York Times runs a correction: "A front-page article yesterday about the C.I.A. leak investigation misstated the terms under which Vice President Dick Cheney was interviewed last year by the special counsel in the case. He was not under oath."

My understanding is that if Cheney's interview was not under oath, that precludes a perjury charge -- but not necessarily obstruction of justice, making false statements or conspiracy.

The Forged Niger Documents



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Wilson was initially dispatched by the CIA to investigate claims that Iraq sought uranium from the African nation of Niger Hamburger, Schmitt and Wallsten write in the Los Angeles Times: "As anticipation swirled in Washington of potential indictments -- and what it would mean for a Bush administration already beset by low approval ratings, the Iraq war and an embattled Supreme Court nomination -- a related controversy was brewing in Italy over how the Niger allegations made their way into the intelligence stream."

Laura Rozen has more in the American Prospect about forged documents and the previously secret meeting in September 2002 between the chief of Italy's military intelligence and then -- Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. At that meeting, the Italian official brought the unfounded claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium "yellowcake" from Niger directly to the White House's attention.

Poll Watch



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


This from the just-out Gallup Poll:

Question: "As you may know, several members of the Bush administration have been accused of leaking to reporters the identity of a woman working for the CIA. Which of the following statements best describes your view of top Bush administration officials in these matters - some Bush administration officials did something illegal, no Bush administration officials did anything illegal, but some officials did something unethical, or no Bush administration official did anything seriously wrong?"

Answer: 39 percent believe some Bush administration officials did something illegal; 39 percent believe they did something unethical though not illegal; 10 percent believe they did nothing seriously wrong at all; 12 percent have no opinion.

Yes, that means just shy of 80 percent of Americans think something stinks.

Here are the complete results .

Among the other findings: Only 40 percent of those polled would vote for Bush today if he were running for re-election; an all-time high of 50 percent don't think Bush has the personality and leadership qualities a president should have; and 57 percent don't think that Bush agrees with them on the issues that matter the most. The good news for the White House: Bush's job approval rating is up to 42 percent, from an all-time low of 39 percent a week ago.

Briefing Follies



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Here's the transcript of yesterday's briefing with press secretary Scott McClellan. There were lots of emotional questions about whether the press corps should trust McClellan -- or Cheney.

Thomas M. DeFrank and Kenneth R. Bazinet write in the New York Daily News:

"Bush spokesman Scott McClellan used carefully parsed language to hint that Karl Rove and Lewis (Scooter) Libby could have misled him when they said they were not involved in outing CIA spy Valerie Plame."

Ken Herman writes for the Cox News Service: "McClellan did, however, defend Cheney in response to a published report that Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, first learned about the CIA officer from Cheney himself.

"When asked whether Cheney is always truthful with the public, McClellan said yes. But when pressed about Cheney's credibility, McClellan called the questions 'ridiculous,' adding, 'The vice president, like the president, is a straightforward, plain-spoken person.' "

Cheney and Torture



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Charlie Savage writes in the Boston Globe: "Senator John McCain yesterday warned that a push by the White House to exempt overseas CIA agents from a proposed ban on mistreating prisoners in US custody would exacerbate the problem of detainee abuse by giving interrogators legal authority to torture suspected terrorists. . . . .

"McCain went public with his concerns after published reports yesterday that Vice President Dick Cheney met with him to urge changes to his widely supported proposal to outlaw cruel and degrading treatment of detainees by any US official. Cheney suggested exempting CIA counter-terrorism agents working overseas, but McCain balked."

The Washington Post editorial boardtoday minces no words: "Vice President Cheney is aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans . . . .

"The Senate's earlier vote suggests that it will not allow such a betrayal of American values. As for Mr. Cheney: He will be remembered as the vice president who campaigned for torture."

2,000



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Deb Riechmann writes for the Associated Press: "President Bush tried Tuesday to begin reviving U.S. support for the war in Iraq and reinvigorating his troubled presidency as the U.S. military death toll topped 2,000."

Here is the text of his speech at Bolling Air Force Base.

Michael A. Fletcher writes for The Washington Post about "a solemn vow from President Bush not to 'rest or tire until the war on terror is won.'

"Bush's voice cracked as he acknowledged those who have died in the war.

" 'Each loss of life is heartbreaking' he said. 'And the best way to honor the sacrifice of our fallen troops is to complete the mission and lay the foundation of peace by spreading freedom.' "

Bush's speech started off very lightheartedly. "Speaking about decisions, I've got another decision to make, and maybe after the lunch you can help me, and that is what do I get her on the 28th anniversary?

(Laughter.)"

At this point, someone in the audience shouts out, "Diamonds!"

The transcript picks up: "Never mind. (Laughter.) "Never mind.

"(Laughter.) Sorry I asked. (Laughter.)"

In fact, the transcript records 14 bouts of laughter during the speech.

And then, as Dana Milbank writes in The Washington Post, Bush ended the day with a party.

"It was, perhaps, not the best possible time for the Republican Party to hold a soiree. . . . .

"And yet, there they were at the gilded Mellon Auditorium last night: the Republican Party's biggest donors, men in tuxedos and women in cocktail dresses, dining on Asian spoon canapes, orange carpaccio and seared mignon of beef, and listening to the soothing tones of a jazz band and a keynote address by President Bush."

Here is the text of Bush's speech.

"The donors greeted Bush warmly, but they struggled to rouse themselves to honor the applause lines. Bush earned only a smattering of applause for his usually reliable call to end 'frivolous lawsuits.' His boast that his economic plan 'is working' garnered no applause. And his mention that 'I've been talking about Social Security' was greeted with dead silence."

Meanwhile, Agence France Presse reports: "Cindy Sheehan, mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq, said she planned to be arrested outside the White House Wednesday to protest US troops presence in Iraq as US military deaths hit 2,000.

"'We've identified the problem and it's not going away. What I think it's going to take now is non-violent, peaceful civil disobedience all over the country,' Sheehan told reporters across the street from the White House."

Economic Talk



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Bush speaks to the Economic Club of Washington this afternoon, just two days after nominating Ben S. Bernanke to take over the Federal Reserve Board.

Edmund L. Andrews, David Leonhardt, Eduardo Porter and Louis Uchitelle write in the New York Times: "In settling on Mr. Bernanke, President Bush avoided embroiling himself in another confirmation fight at a time when Republicans and Democrats alike are questioning his nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court. But in doing so, he essentially chose a candidate who would satisfy others - investors on Wall Street, lawmakers in Congress - more than himself or his Republican base."

Caroline Daniel and Christopher Swann write in the Financial Times, citing a former administration economist, that Bernanke's departure for the Federal Reserve also raises questions about a lack of strong and influential economists across the administration.

"Of the new people who have now been finally confirmed at the Treasury, none are trained as economists. There is no one in the White House now, with the exception of the two young CEA nominees who are not yet confirmed, who has a good understanding of economics," their source said.

Avoiding the President?



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Michael D. Shear and Robert Barnes write in The Washington Post: "Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Jerry W. Kilgore has decided not to attend President Bush's appearance in Norfolk on Friday, saying it is not a campaign-related event and that he has other plans 11 days before the election . . . .

"The decision highlights some concerns among Virginia Republicans, who have watched nervously in recent weeks as Bush's popularity has waned and as scandals involving presidential aides and congressional leaders have dominated news coverage. Although it is unclear how the national political environment affects voters choosing who should lead their state, even small shifts are important in races that are as close as the Virginia contest."

About Those Foiled Plots



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


John Diamond and Toni Locy write in USA Today: "President Bush's claim on Oct. 6 that U.S. and allied intelligence operatives had foiled 10 al-Qaeda terrorist plots included plans on the group's wish list rather than fully formed attack plots, according to U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials."

Here's the fact sheet the White House was pressured to put out after Bush's speech .

Diamond and Locy write: "In at least six of the cases, U.S. or allied forces arrested alleged conspirators who divulged details of operations they had been planning. Those plots involved preliminary ideas about potential attacks, not terrorist operations that were about to be carried out, said a U.S. counterterrorism official and an official familiar with the counterterrorism efforts. They spoke on condition of anonymity because information about the list issued by the White House is classified."

Latest from the Stakeouts



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


This AP photo from this morning gives Rove a "Prince of Darkness" look. This AP photo of Libby makes him look more like a prime minister.

Here's an AP photo showing Rove, ever the jokester, saluting outside the White House this morning. Here's an AP photo of Libby hobbling to a meeting.

Here's an AFP photo of Fitzgerald arriving at court this morning.

Fashion Statement



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Bush appeared briefly yesterday in the Oval Office with Massoud Barzani, the president of the autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq.

Barzani (see this AP photo ) was wearing a traditional Kurdish outfit, including a khaki jacket, a knotted sash at his waist and a red-and-white headdress.

Here's the transcript of the photo op.

"He wore this outfit because it wasn't all that long ago if he had worn this outfit and was captured by Saddam Hussein's thugs, he would have been killed for wearing it," Bush said. "He feels comfortable wearing it here because we're a free land, and he feels comfortable wearing it in his home country because Iraq is free."

Reporters were not allowed to ask questions. CBS News's Bill Plante shouted one out anyway: "What did the vice president know, and when did he know it?" He got no reply.

'Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon,' Cheney said Aug. 26, warning of a 'mortal threat' that would enable Hussein to blackmail the United States and seek domination of the Middle East.

"So when former ambassador Joseph Wilson publicly charged in an op-ed article a year later that the White House had 'twisted' intelligence to exaggerate Hussein's nuclear threat, Wilson was taking direct aim at the case for war championed by the vice president himself."

Cheney and the New York Times



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



About White House Briefing
Check here weekdays at midday for my read on the most interesting items about the president and his staff from major newspaper, magazine and broadcast Web sites and Web logs.

More About White House Briefing
E-mail Dan Froomkin Suggestions? Comments? Please include your name and home town. I may publish all or parts of your e-mail unless you specify "not for publication."
Live Online: White House Talk
WH Briefing Reader Forum


White House Briefing

Rove's Last Campaign


The Cheney Factor


Rearranging the Chairs


Fitzgerald Launches Web Site


Former Insider Lashes Out


More News

Inside the White House
Who's Who in the White House
West Wing Floor Plan
White House Staff List and Salaries
White House Correspondents


White House Coverage
Bush Aides Brace for Charges
New Push for Miers Is in the Works
President Bush Delivers Remarks to the Joint Armed Forces Officers' Wives' Luncheon, Bolling Air Force Base
Bush Picks Adviser as Greenspan's Successor
Presidents Past Inspire Bush's Damage Control
More News

More White House Links
Select a Source____________Associated PressReutersAgence France-PresseNew York TimesLos Angeles TimesUSA TodayGoogle NewsYahoo News Full CoverageLatest Job Approval PollsWhite House Web SiteWhite House Press ReleasesWhite House Press BriefingsLive White House Video FeedGlobal Message of the DayCompilation of DocumentsAppointee DirectoryThe Complete Bushisms
On MSNBC's Hardball last night, there was much talk about the New York Times story placing Cheney himself at the heart of the leak investigation.

While no other news organization has been able to confirm the Times story, Washington Post reporter Jim VandeHei told Chris Matthews: "I have no reason to think it's not true. Nobody is waving us off that story today. . . . I haven't heard anybody deny it all, in the vice president's office, the White House, anywhere, that this not true."

CNN legal analyst Jonathan Turley opined: "For the vice president to be the source of this name, it puts him at risk of being an unindicted co- conspirator or even an indictment."

He added: "Libby is so close to the vice president that to indict Libby, it would be hard not to nick the vice president. You can't get a clean shot at Libby without coming a hair's breath from the vice president.

"They are that close."

Meeting the Press



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


When Cheney appeared on NBC's Meet the Press with Tim Russert on Sept. 7, 2003 -- three months after his reported conversation with Libby about Wilson and his wife -- the vice president sure made it sound like he didn't know anything at all about the topic.

This clip was replayed a lot yesterday on TV:

Cheney: "I don't know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn't judge him. I have no idea who hired him and it never came. . . . "

Russert: "The CIA did."

Cheney: "Who in the CIA, I don't know."

So, was that a lie?

VandeHei and Leonnig write in The Post: "Republicans close to the White House said Cheney was careful to distance himself from Wilson in the interview without lying about what he knew about the diplomat and his wife."

John Roberts reported on the CBS Evening News: "If the vice president made an untruthful statement in public, it may certainly look bad, but it doesn't amount to a crime."

Not Under Oath After All



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The New York Times runs a correction: "A front-page article yesterday about the C.I.A. leak investigation misstated the terms under which Vice President Dick Cheney was interviewed last year by the special counsel in the case. He was not under oath."

My understanding is that if Cheney's interview was not under oath, that precludes a perjury charge -- but not necessarily obstruction of justice, making false statements or conspiracy.

The Forged Niger Documents



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Wilson was initially dispatched by the CIA to investigate claims that Iraq sought uranium from the African nation of Niger Hamburger, Schmitt and Wallsten write in the Los Angeles Times: "As anticipation swirled in Washington of potential indictments -- and what it would mean for a Bush administration already beset by low approval ratings, the Iraq war and an embattled Supreme Court nomination -- a related controversy was brewing in Italy over how the Niger allegations made their way into the intelligence stream."

Laura Rozen has more in the American Prospect about forged documents and the previously secret meeting in September 2002 between the chief of Italy's military intelligence and then -- Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. At that meeting, the Italian official brought the unfounded claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium "yellowcake" from Niger directly to the White House's attention.

Poll Watch



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


This from the just-out Gallup Poll:

Question: "As you may know, several members of the Bush administration have been accused of leaking to reporters the identity of a woman working for the CIA. Which of the following statements best describes your view of top Bush administration officials in these matters - some Bush administration officials did something illegal, no Bush administration officials did anything illegal, but some officials did something unethical, or no Bush administration official did anything seriously wrong?"

Answer: 39 percent believe some Bush administration officials did something illegal; 39 percent believe they did something unethical though not illegal; 10 percent believe they did nothing seriously wrong at all; 12 percent have no opinion.

Yes, that means just shy of 80 percent of Americans think something stinks.

Here are the complete results .

Among the other findings: Only 40 percent of those polled would vote for Bush today if he were running for re-election; an all-time high of 50 percent don't think Bush has the personality and leadership qualities a president should have; and 57 percent don't think that Bush agrees with them on the issues that matter the most. The good news for the White House: Bush's job approval rating is up to 42 percent, from an all-time low of 39 percent a week ago.

Briefing Follies

Here's the transcript of yesterday's briefing with press secretary Scott McClellan. There were lots of emotional questions about whether the press corps should trust McClellan -- or Cheney.

Thomas M. DeFrank and Kenneth R. Bazinet write in the New York Daily News:

"Bush spokesman Scott McClellan used carefully parsed language to hint that Karl Rove and Lewis (Scooter) Libby could have misled him when they said they were not involved in outing CIA spy Valerie Plame."

Ken Herman writes for the Cox News Service: "McClellan did, however, defend Cheney in response to a published report that Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, first learned about the CIA officer from Cheney himself.

"When asked whether Cheney is always truthful with the public, McClellan said yes. But when pressed about Cheney's credibility, McClellan called the questions 'ridiculous,' adding, 'The vice president, like the president, is a straightforward, plain-spoken person.' "

Cheney and Torture

Charlie Savage writes in the Boston Globe: "Senator John McCain yesterday warned that a push by the White House to exempt overseas CIA agents from a proposed ban on mistreating prisoners in US custody would exacerbate the problem of detainee abuse by giving interrogators legal authority to torture suspected terrorists. . . . .

"McCain went public with his concerns after published reports yesterday that Vice President Dick Cheney met with him to urge changes to his widely supported proposal to outlaw cruel and degrading treatment of detainees by any US official. Cheney suggested exempting CIA counter-terrorism agents working overseas, but McCain balked."

The Washington Post editorial boardtoday minces no words: "Vice President Cheney is aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans . . . .

"The Senate's earlier vote suggests that it will not allow such a betrayal of American values. As for Mr. Cheney: He will be remembered as the vice president who campaigned for torture."

2,000

Deb Riechmann writes for the Associated Press: "President Bush tried Tuesday to begin reviving U.S. support for the war in Iraq and reinvigorating his troubled presidency as the U.S. military death toll topped 2,000."

Here is the text of his speech at Bolling Air Force Base.

Michael A. Fletcher writes for The Washington Post about "a solemn vow from President Bush not to 'rest or tire until the war on terror is won.'

"Bush's voice cracked as he acknowledged those who have died in the war.

" 'Each loss of life is heartbreaking' he said. 'And the best way to honor the sacrifice of our fallen troops is to complete the mission and lay the foundation of peace by spreading freedom.' "

Bush's speech started off very lightheartedly. "Speaking about decisions, I've got another decision to make, and maybe after the lunch you can help me, and that is what do I get her on the 28th anniversary?

(Laughter.)"

At this point, someone in the audience shouts out, "Diamonds!"

The transcript picks up: "Never mind. (Laughter.) "Never mind.

"(Laughter.) Sorry I asked. (Laughter.)"

In fact, the transcript records 14 bouts of laughter during the speech.

And then, as Dana Milbank writes in The Washington Post, Bush ended the day with a party.

"It was, perhaps, not the best possible time for the Republican Party to hold a soiree. . . . .

"And yet, there they were at the gilded Mellon Auditorium last night: the Republican Party's biggest donors, men in tuxedos and women in cocktail dresses, dining on Asian spoon canapes, orange carpaccio and seared mignon of beef, and listening to the soothing tones of a jazz band and a keynote address by President Bush."

Here is the text of Bush's speech.

"The donors greeted Bush warmly, but they struggled to rouse themselves to honor the applause lines. Bush earned only a smattering of applause for his usually reliable call to end 'frivolous lawsuits.' His boast that his economic plan 'is working' garnered no applause. And his mention that 'I've been talking about Social Security' was greeted with dead silence."

Meanwhile, Agence France Presse reports: "Cindy Sheehan, mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq, said she planned to be arrested outside the White House Wednesday to protest US troops presence in Iraq as US military deaths hit 2,000.

"'We've identified the problem and it's not going away. What I think it's going to take now is non-violent, peaceful civil disobedience all over the country,' Sheehan told reporters across the street from the White House."

Economic Talk

Bush speaks to the Economic Club of Washington this afternoon, just two days after nominating Ben S. Bernanke to take over the Federal Reserve Board.

Edmund L. Andrews, David Leonhardt, Eduardo Porter and Louis Uchitelle write in the New York Times: "In settling on Mr. Bernanke, President Bush avoided embroiling himself in another confirmation fight at a time when Republicans and Democrats alike are questioning his nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court. But in doing so, he essentially chose a candidate who would satisfy others - investors on Wall Street, lawmakers in Congress - more than himself or his Republican base."

Caroline Daniel and Christopher Swann write in the Financial Times, citing a former administration economist, that Bernanke's departure for the Federal Reserve also raises questions about a lack of strong and influential economists across the administration.

"Of the new people who have now been finally confirmed at the Treasury, none are trained as economists. There is no one in the White House now, with the exception of the two young CEA nominees who are not yet confirmed, who has a good understanding of economics," their source said.

Avoiding the President?

Michael D. Shear and Robert Barnes write in The Washington Post: "Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Jerry W. Kilgore has decided not to attend President Bush's appearance in Norfolk on Friday, saying it is not a campaign-related event and that he has other plans 11 days before the election . . . .

"The decision highlights some concerns among Virginia Republicans, who have watched nervously in recent weeks as Bush's popularity has waned and as scandals involving presidential aides and congressional leaders have dominated news coverage. Although it is unclear how the national political environment affects voters choosing who should lead their state, even small shifts are important in races that are as close as the Virginia contest."

About Those Foiled Plots


John Diamond and Toni Locy write in USA Today: "President Bush's claim on Oct. 6 that U.S. and allied intelligence operatives had foiled 10 al-Qaeda terrorist plots included plans on the group's wish list rather than fully formed attack plots, according to U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials."

Here's the fact sheet the White House was pressured to put out after Bush's speech .

Diamond and Locy write: "In at least six of the cases, U.S. or allied forces arrested alleged conspirators who divulged details of operations they had been planning. Those plots involved preliminary ideas about potential attacks, not terrorist operations that were about to be carried out, said a U.S. counterterrorism official and an official familiar with the counterterrorism efforts. They spoke on condition of anonymity because information about the list issued by the White House is classified."

Latest from the Stakeouts

This AP photo from this morning gives Rove a "Prince of Darkness" look. This AP photo of Libby makes him look more like a prime minister.

Here's an AP photo showing Rove, ever the jokester, saluting outside the White House this morning. Here's an AP photo of Libby hobbling to a meeting.

Here's an AFP photo of Fitzgerald arriving at court this morning.

Fashion Statement

Bush appeared briefly yesterday in the Oval Office with Massoud Barzani, the president of the autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq.

Barzani (see this AP photo ) was wearing a traditional Kurdish outfit, including a khaki jacket, a knotted sash at his waist and a red-and-white headdress.

Here's the transcript of the photo op.

"He wore this outfit because it wasn't all that long ago if he had worn this outfit and was captured by Saddam Hussein's thugs, he would have been killed for wearing it," Bush said. "He feels comfortable wearing it here because we're a free land, and he feels comfortable wearing it in his home country because Iraq is free."

Reporters were not allowed to ask questions. CBS News's Bill Plante shouted one out anyway: "What did the vice president know, and when did he know it?" He got no reply.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Prosecutor_i...ments_1026.html


Prosecutor in leak case seeks indictments against Rove, Libby, lawyers close to case say
Jason Leopold and John Byrne


Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has asked the grand jury investigating the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson to indict Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and Bush’s Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, lawyers close to the investigation tell RAW STORY.

Fitzgerald has also asked the jury to indict Libby on a second charge: knowingly outing a covert operative, the lawyers said. They said the prosecutor believes that Libby violated a 1982 law that made it illegal to unmask an undercover CIA agent.

Libby’s attorney, Joseph A. Tate, did not return a call seeking comment.

Advertisement


Two other officials, who are not employees in the White House, are also expected to face indictments, the lawyers said.

The grand jury had not yet decided on whether to make indictments at the time this article was published. It appears more likely that the jury would hand down indictments of perjury and obstruction than a charge that Plame was outed illegally.

Those close to the investigation said Rove was offered a deal Tuesday to plead guilty to perjury for a reduced charge. Rove’s lawyer was told that Fitzgerald would drop an obstruction of justice charge if his client agreed not to contest allegations of perjury, they said.

Rove declined to plead guilty to the reduced charge, the sources said, indicating through his attorney Robert Luskin that he intended to fight the charges. A call placed to Luskin was not returned.

Those familiar with the case said that Libby did not inform Rove that Plame was covert. As a result, Rove may not be charged with a crime in leaking Plame’s identity, even though he spoke with reporters.

A Wall Street Journal report Wednesday suggests Fitzgerald's primary focus is Cheney's office. An L.A. Times story last week indicated that Libby mounted an "aggressive campaign" against Joseph Wilson, the husband of the outed CIA agent, who questioned the Administration's claims that Iraq sought to obtain uranium from Niger.

Richard Sale, a former UPI intelligence reporter, wrote on a blog Wednesday that two White House officials were likely to be indicted, citing federal law enforcement and senior intelligence officials. Sale was the first to finger Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin in the Israel-AIPAC espionage case.

Rove’s charges appear to stem from allegations that he lied to FBI investigators in 2003, the sources said. Perjury and obstruction charges leveled against Libby center around conflicting testimony to the grand jury, they added.

The lawyers said Fitzgerald needed more evidence to convince the grand jury that Plame was in fact an undercover agent. On Monday, he sent FBI agents to her residential neighborhood to obtain testimony from neighbors that they were unaware of Plame’s employment prior to her outing.

Evidence collected in these inquiries was aimed at convincing the jury that she was covert, the lawyers said. A Reuters story indicated that Plame’s neighbors were not aware that she was working at the agency.

Any indictments are expected to be handed down today or Thursday. It is unclear how much information Fitzgerald will make public when they are announced.

Added in revision: "The grand jury had not yet decided on whether to make indictments at the time this article was published. It appears more likely that the jury would hand down indictments of perjury and obstruction than a charge that Plame was outed illegally. "

Fitzgerald investigation news
I'm not sure exactly what the provenance of this Richard Sale (intelligence correspondent for UPI) article is, but it's posted by Pat Lang on his blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis and referred to here by Larry Johnson and here by Patrick Doherty of Tom Paine.com. Some highlights:



Two top White House aides are expected to be indicted today on various charges related to the probe of CIA operative Valerie Plame whose classified identity was publicly breached in retaliation after her husband, Joe Wilson, challenged the administration's claim that Saddam Hussein had sought to buy enriched unranium from Niger, acording to federal law enforcement and senior U.S. intelligence officials.

If no action is taken today, it will take place on Friday, these sources said.

Although most press accounts emphasized that Fitzgerald was likely to concentrate on attempts by Libby Rove and others to cover-up wrongdoing by means of perjury before the grand jury, lying to federal officials, conspiring to obstruct justice, etc. But federal law enforcement officials told this reporter that Fitzgerald was likely to charge the people indicted with violating Joe Wilson's civil rights, smearing his name in an attempt to destroy his ability to earn a living in Washington as a consultant.

The civil rights charge is said to include "the conspiracy was committed using U.S. government offices, buildings, personnel and funds," one federal law enforcement official said.

The probe is far from being at an end. According to this reporter's sources, Fitzgerald approached the judge in charge of the case and asked that a new grand jury be empaneled. The old grand jury, which has been sitting for two years, will expire on October 28.

Thanks to a letter of February, 2004 which Fitzgerald asked for and obtained expanded authority, the Special Prosecutor is now in possession of an Italian parliament nvestigationi into the forged Niger documents alleging Iraq's interest in purchasing Niger uranium, sources said.

They said that Fitzgerald is looking into such individuals as former CIA agent, Duane Claridge, military consultant to the Iraqi National Congress, Gen. Wayne Downing, another military consultant for INC, and Francis Brooke, head of INC's Washingfton office in an effort to determine if they played any role in the forgeriese or their dissiemination. Also included in this group is long-time neoconservative Michael Ledeen, these federal sources said.



UPDATE: From Pat Lang:
An hour ago I was contacted by a U.S. government official close to the Fitzgerald case. This person told me that there WILL be indictments announced later this afternoon, and the Special Prosecutor will hold a press conference tomorrow.

Richard Sale

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/26/...ain981236.shtml

Anxious D.C. Awaits Leak Charges

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Left to right: Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove. (CBS)

"It's not that the abuse of power here is anything like Watergate or Iran-Contra even. Rather it is, if indictments come, they may be of the people closest to the president and vice president of the United States."
former presidential adviser David Gergen


(CBS/AP) The federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA officer's identity met for three hours Wednesday with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and his deputies, adjourning for the day without announcing any action.

But CBS News chief White House correspondent John Roberts reports the prosecutor has informed targets of the investigation of his intentions – and that can only mean indictments are coming.

Fitzgerald is known to be putting the finishing touches on a two-year criminal probe that has ensnared President Bush's top political adviser Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis Libby.

Away from the federal courthouse, FBI agents conducted a handful of last-minute interviews to check facts key to the case.

After the jurors left for the day, federal prosecutors conferred for about an hour in the grand jury area of the federal courthouse.

There was no word on whether Fitzgerald planned to make any announcement or when the grand jury planned to meet again.

Fitzgerald and the grand jurors entered the courthouse around 9 a.m. EDT, with just three days left before the jury's term is set to expire. The timing on any decision is uncertain, however. It is possible for Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan to extend the life of the grand jury at Fitzgerald's request. Such a step would be taken in secret.

Lawyers representing key White House officials expected Fitzgerald to decide this week whether to charge Libby and Rove.

Both Rove and Libby, who is hobbling around on crutches because of a broken bone in his foot, joined other officials at the daily White House senior staff meeting, as usual.

Fitzgerald could charge one or more administration aides with violating a law prohibiting the intentional unmasking of an undercover CIA officer.

In recent weeks the prosecutor has also examined other charges such as mishandling classified information, false statements and obstruction of justice.

The White House insisted Wednesday it was going about its business despite the threat of indictments hanging over senior officials.

"Everybody's focused on the priorities of the American people," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. "We're focused on the work at hand. We're certainly following developments in the news but everybody's got a lot of work to do."

Former presidential adviser David Gergen told CBS News that "Washington is on a knife-edge today over the possibility of indictments." He said the possible charges raise major issues for the administration.

"It's not that the abuse of power here is anything like Watergate or Iran-Contra even," said Gergen, now the director of Harvard's Center For Public Leadership. "Rather it is, if indictments come, they may be of the people closest to the president and vice president of the United States. And they will re-open the wounds of Iraq, and people will ask the question, if indictments come, were we led into Iraq by criminal means?"

Fitzgerald has been in Washington since Monday and over the last two days dispatched FBI agents to conduct some 11th-hour interviews, according to lawyers close to the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of grand jury proceedings.

(CBS/AP) One set of interviews occurred in the neighborhood of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, whose wife Valerie Plame was outed as an undercover CIA officer. Agents asked neighbors whether they had any inkling that Plame works for the CIA.

"They wanted to know how well we knew her, which is very well," said neighbor David Tillotson. "Did we know anything about her position before the story broke? Absolutely not."

Agents also interviewed a former unidentified associate of Rove's about his activities around the time the leaks occurred.

Two lawyers familiar with the activities said the interviews involved basic fact-checking and did not appear to plow new ground.

Fitzgerald may want to establish Plame had carefully protected her CIA identity as part of the process of determining whether the disclosure of her name to the news media hurt national interests.

Adding to the administration's discomfort, Vice President Dick Cheney is now alleged to be a player in this case, reports CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante.

According to some who have testified, Libby told the grand jury that he first learned Plame's name from reporters. But it was the vice president, according to a New York Times report, who mentioned Plame's CIA connection to Libby on June 12, 2003, a month before her name became public.

The name of Rove, the president's most powerful adviser, is also in the mix of top officials who may be slapped by the grand jury. The Los Angeles Times reports that prosecutors questioned a former West Wing colleague of Rove's about contacts he had with reporters leading up to the leak.

If such officials as Rove or Libby are named by the grand jury, President Bush will need to get replacements quickly, GOP strategist Ed Rollins (video) said on The Early Show.

"Historically there have been a lot of turnovers in the White House. This one hasn't had many," Rollins said.

Columnist Robert Novak disclosed Plame's name on July 14, 2003, eight days after Wilson said publicly that the Bush administration had twisted intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

The timing of Wilson's criticism was devastating for the Bush White House, which was struggling to come to grips with the fact that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq.

President Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was the administration's main argument for going to war.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2600532_pf.html

washingtonpost.com
Grand Jury Hears Summary of Case On CIA Leak Probe
Decision on Charges May Come Friday

By Carol D. Leonnig and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 27, 2005; A01



The prosecutor in the CIA leak investigation presented a summary of his case to a federal grand jury yesterday and is expected to announce a final decision on charges in the two-year-long probe tomorrow, according to people familiar with the case.

Even as Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald wrapped up his case, the legal team of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has been engaged in a furious effort to convince the prosecutor that Rove did not commit perjury during the course of the investigation, according to people close to the aide. The sources, who indicated that the effort intensified in recent weeks, said Rove still did not know last night whether he would be indicted.

Fitzgerald is completing his probe of whether senior administration officials broke the law by disclosing the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the media in the summer of 2003 to discredit her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, an administration critic. The grand jury's term will expire Friday.

But after grand jurors left the federal courthouse before noon yesterday, it was unclear whether Fitzgerald had spelled out the criminal charges he might ask them to consider, or whether he had asked them to vote on any proposed indictments. Fitzgerald's legal team did not present the results of a grand jury vote to the court yesterday, which he is required to do within days of such a vote.

Yesterday's three-hour grand jury session came after agents and prosecutors this week conducted last-minute interviews with Adam Levine, a member of the White House communications team at the time of the leak, about his conversations with Rove, and with Plame's neighbors in the District.

Should he need more time to finish the investigation, Fitzgerald could seek to empanel a new group of grand jurors to consider the case. But sources familiar with the prosecutor's work said he has indicated he is eager to avoid that route. The term of the current grand jury has been extended once and cannot be lengthened again, according to federal rules.

The down-to-the-wire moves in Fitzgerald's investigation have made for a harrowing week at the White House, where officials are girding for at least one senior administration official to be indicted, according to aides.

Most concern is focused on Rove and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Both had testified that they talked with reporters about Plame in the summer of 2003, according to lawyers familiar with their accounts, but both said they did not discuss her by name or disclose her covert status.

Yesterday was another surreal day at the White House, according to aides, with staff members wondering about who might be indicted. Rove and Libby continued to sit in on high-level meetings.

"We certainly are following developments in the news, but everybody's got a lot of work to do," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.

A new USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup poll reminded the White House of the damage the CIA leak case has already inflicted: Eight in ten people surveyed said that aides had either broken the law or acted unethically.

As the rest of Washington waited, President Bush tried to shift national attention back to the economy. In a speech to the Economic Club of Washington, he touted the "resilient and strong" economy and asserted it showed that his "pro-growth policies have worked."

Fitzgerald's investigation has centered on whether administration officials knowingly revealed Plame's identity in July 2003 because of Wilson's public criticism.

On July 6, 2003, Wilson accused the administration in The Washington Post and the New York Times of using flawed intelligence to justify the war with Iraq, and said his CIA-sponsored mission to Niger concluded months earlier that there was little support for an intelligence report that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear material there.

Eight days later, columnist Robert D. Novak revealed Plame's name and her status as a CIA operative, attributing the information to two anonymous senior administration officials.

People close to Rove said he fears a perjury charge because he did not initially tell the grand jury that he had spoken with Time reporter Matthew Cooper about Plame before her name was publicly disclosed. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, declined to comment yesterday.

A lawyer other than Luskin who is familiar with Rove's legal strategy said the aide testified that he believed he was trading on publicly available information in discussing Plame with reporters.

In his fourth and final grand jury appearance, this lawyer said, Rove was asked why he did not mention his discussion of Plame with Cooper. Rove has told people he simply had forgotten the conversation.

Rove also testified that he may have learned about Plame from Libby, according to a person familiar with Rove's testimony. Some saw this as an effort to show Rove had no reason to believe the information about Plame was classified.

There were signs that Fitzgerald was still trying to piece together the Rove case as recently as Tuesday. Peter Zeidenberg, a Justice Department prosecutor working with Fitzgerald, called Levine that day to discuss a conversation Levine had with Rove on July 11, 2003, the day Rove spoke with Cooper, according to Daniel J. French, Levine's lawyer.

Levine, part of the White House communications team at the time of the leak, "was contacted as a witness," French said. Levine told Zeidenberg that he and Rove did not discuss Cooper in that conversation, according to a person familiar with the discussion.

As jurors left the courthouse yesterday, Fitzgerald exited the sealed grand jury room of the courthouse through a back elevator to avoid reporters waiting outside. He then met with Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan in Hogan's private chambers for about 45 minutes. Hogan confirmed the two had met yesterday, but declined to discuss the substance of their conversation.

One legal source said the two have met regularly to discuss practical matters about the case, which now include intense media interest and how to avoid improper leaks about secret grand jury matters.

The grand jury, a group of onetime strangers from across the District, has spent two days a week for nearly 24 months in the cloistered, guarded room on the third floor of the U.S. District Courthouse. They have sifted through the day planners of White House aides and listened intently as the prosecutor grilled West Wing officials and reporters who relied on them as confidential sources. They are paid $40 a day, plus $4 for transportation.

Now they might be called upon to make decisions that could deal a crippling blow to the Bush White House and put top administration officials on trial.

There were 23 members at the start, committed for 18 months. Their term was extended in May for six months. At least six original jurors have been excused because of hardships their service created. Some were replaced with alternates.

Like the jury's forewoman, the majority are African American women who appear to be middle-age or older. The jury includes at least two black men, two older white women and three white men. One trim, agile retiree with white hair often entered the grand jury room with his bicycle helmet in hand.

Lori Shaw, a criminal law professor at the University of Dayton and an expert on federal grand juries, said the amount of time this jury has put in likely means it is well-versed and invested in the case.

"You have to consider: They are not rookies at this anymore," Shaw said. "I have a feeling that by now this grand jury has a good idea of what crime, if any, occurred."

Staff writers Christopher Lee, Peter Baker and Howard Kurtz contributed to this report.


© 2005 The Washington Post Company

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/051026/1/3vyle.html

Thursday October 27, 6:57 AM
Tortuous wait in leak probe strains edgy Washington
A special prosecutor probing a CIA leak scandal spun out the suspense as the White House waited to see if top aides would be indicted in a crisis threatening to taint President George W. Bush's legacy.

Ignoring frenzied speculation over his intentions, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald met the grand jury he is using to decide whether White House heavy hitters broke the law by blowing the cover of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

The grand jury's mandate expires on Friday, and there were growing signs Fitzgerald was putting final touches on his near two-year probe, apparently zeroing in on Bush allies Karl Rove and I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby.

But even before Fitzgerald left court, word came from sources familiar with the case that there would be no announcement before Thursday.

The intricate case arose from the Bush administration's drive to war with Iraq and claims top officials "twisted" intelligence to justify a conflict which has now claimed the lives of 2,000 US soldiers.

Rove, Bush's political guru and Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, swept past flashbulb popping press packs as they left home for work before dawn.

The White House, enduring a tortuous wait for news of the probe, insisted it was business as usual, even as Bush's vanquished 2004 election rival Senator John Kerry unleashed a savage assault on the White House over the affair.

"We certainly are following developments in the news, but everybody has got a lot of work to do," said Bush spokesman Scott McClellan.

Anyone indicted would almost certainly resign immediately, and Bush is expected to follow up with a short televised statement to the American people in a bid to shake whiff of scandal.

Fitzgerald, who arrived in court carrying two large legal attache cases, may seek indictments under a law which makes it a crime to knowingly out an undercover CIA agent, and consider perjury or obstruction of justice charges.

Plame's husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson, has accused top Bush aides of blowing her cover to discredit his fierce criticisms of the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq.

Fitzgerald was spotted at the offices of Rove's lawyer on Wednesday, according to Roll Call, a newspaper which covers Congress, and FBI agents were reported by The Washington Post to be questioning Wilson and Plame's neighbors.

The FBI refused to comment on the reports, which could be a sign Fitzgerald is trying to prove Plame's CIA work was secret, until her name was splashed across newspapers in 2003.

"Did we know anything about her position before the story broke? Absolutely not," Plame's neighbor David Tillotson told the Post.

Various reports said the White House was braced for at least one indictment, which would require a formal vote by the grand jury.

In theory, Fitzgerald could ask for an extension of the grand jury, or he could end his inquiry without making any indictments.

The political heat was already rising for Bush, as Kerry, perhaps sensing a chance for revenge, fired off the most venomous Democratic Party attack so far over the case.

"We don't know yet whether this will prove to be an indictable offense in a court of law, but for it, and for misleading a nation into war, they will be indicted in the high court of history," Kerry said in prepared remarks for a speech at Georgetown University.

On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that it was Cheney himself who told Libby about Plame, in apparent contradiction of Libby's reported grand jury testimony that he had learned about her from journalists.

That put Cheney closer to the center of the case than ever before.

It was also intriguing because Cheney said in a television interview in September 2003 weeks after his conversation with Libby that he did not know Wilson, a former US ambassador to Gabon, sent to Niger in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium for nuclear bombs.

Despite Wilson's conclusion that the uranium claims were doubtful, the White House used them to partly justify the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2602551_pf.html

washingtonpost.com
Bated Breath and a Shortage of Loose Lips
CIA Leak Case Has Capital In Animated Suspense

By Mark Leibovich
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 27, 2005; C01



Remember folks, these are only exit polls, we don't know anything yet, relax, it's all speculation. . . . Oh wait, that was last year's teleprompter script.

Forget the part about the exit polls. Otherwise the script is still good. No story with so few facts has so thoroughly distracted Washington like the CIA leak story has this week. Yesterday was especially excruciating as we waited to hear if there would be indictments of people in the White House.

You know it's a screwy week in Washington when presidential spokesman Scott McClellan so perfectly sums up the gestalt of the town -- albeit in that banal, totally unrevealing way of his:

"There's a lot of speculation going around," McClellan said in his White House briefing yesterday. "And I think there are a lot of facts that are not known at this point."

Our little power corridor is, it's safe to say, entranced by this story -- even as we acknowledge that there are large swaths of the country that couldn't care less.

"It's like the evil that dare not speak its name," says Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), referring to the only thing "it" can possibly refer to this week. In other words, it has come to suffice for a broad and complicated story with all manner of weird dimensions -- yellowcake, covert agents, and a cast of characters with great comic strip names like Scooter, Judy and Valerie Flame.

" It's obviously very big and very distracting," King says. " It's just everywhere."

Amid all the cable blather, BlackBerry chatter and "what'dya hears," the one truly reliable piece of information yesterday was that the federal grand jury met for three hours and adjourned without announcing any action.

In other words, happy waiting, come back tomorrow.

"There's a certain element of 'Groundhog Day' to all this," says Kevin Madden, the spokesman for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), referring to the Bill Murray movie in which one day keeps repeating itself. He dismisses most of the speculation as "a Washington parlor game." He posits that "Joe Taxpayer" is more interested in issues like energy, the economy and the budget. (He conveniently leaves out that little thing about his boss getting indicted.)

If nothing else, the first three days of this week offer an object lesson in how information is power. And how Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald can suddenly acquire a cachet by hoarding details about his intentions. Potent entities hang on his next move -- the media, Wall Street, even Karl Rove.

"It's like one big 'West Wing' episode," says Ron Bonjean, spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). "You have a lot of drama, high stakes, media's in a frenzy, staffers glued to the TV and hitting the refresh key on the Drudge Report." He mentions secret plans and secret talking points that may or may not exist.

Give us something, Fitz, anything!

Believe it or not, King says, there was actually some real, substantive business being conducted yesterday. He attended a meeting at the White House with several House colleagues and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card to discuss reinstating the Davis-Bacon Act (a federal law that requires paying "prevailing wages" on public works projects) for Hurricane Katrina reconstruction. And not one person mentioned the investigation in the meeting, King says.

"Then we walked out and all these reporters and photographers rushed up to us," he says. "And then, as soon as they realized none of us was Rove or Libby, they sat back down."

There were no shouted questions about Davis-Bacon.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Grand Jury Hears Summary of Case On CIA Leak Probe

By Carol D. Leonnig and Jim VandeHei

The prosecutor in the CIA leak investigation presented a summary of his case to a federal grand jury yesterday and is expected to announce a final decision on charges in the two-year-long probe tomorrow, according to people familiar with the case.

Even as Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald wrapped up his case, the legal team of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has been engaged in a furious effort to convince the prosecutor that Rove did not commit perjury during the course of the investigation, according to people close to the aide. The sources, who indicated that the effort intensified in recent weeks, said Rove still did not know last night whether he would be indicted.

Fitzgerald is completing his probe of whether senior administration officials broke the law by disclosing the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the media in the summer of 2003 to discredit her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, an administration critic. The grand jury's term will expire Friday.

But after grand jurors left the federal courthouse before noon yesterday, it was unclear whether Fitzgerald had spelled out the criminal charges he might ask them to consider, or whether he had asked them to vote on any proposed indictments. Fitzgerald's legal team did not present the results of a grand jury vote to the court yesterday, which he is required to do within days of such a vote.

Yesterday's three-hour grand jury session came after agents and prosecutors this week conducted last-minute interviews with Adam Levine, a member of the White House communications team at the time of the leak, about his conversations with Rove, and with Plame's neighbors in the District.

Should he need more time to finish the investigation, Fitzgerald could seek to empanel a new group of grand jurors to consider the case. But sources familiar with the prosecutor's work said he has indicated he is eager to avoid that route. The term of the current grand jury has been extended once and cannot be lengthened again, according to federal rules.

The down-to-the-wire moves in Fitzgerald's investigation have made for a harrowing week at the White House, where officials are girding for at least one senior administration official to be indicted, according to aides.

Most concern is focused on Rove and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Both had testified that they talked with reporters about Plame in the summer of 2003, according to lawyers familiar with their accounts, but both said they did not discuss her by name or disclose her covert status.

Yesterday was another surreal day at the White House, according to aides, with staff members wondering about who might be indicted. Rove and Libby continued to sit in on high-level meetings.

"We certainly are following developments in the news, but everybody's got a lot of work to do," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.

A new USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup poll reminded the White House of the damage the CIA leak case has already inflicted: Eight in ten people surveyed said that aides had either broken the law or acted unethically.

As the rest of Washington waited, President Bush tried to shift national attention back to the economy. In a speech to the Economic Club of Washington, he touted the "resilient and strong" economy and asserted it showed that his "pro-growth policies have worked."

Fitzgerald's investigation has centered on whether administration officials knowingly revealed Plame's identity in July 2003 because of Wilson's public criticism.

On July 6, 2003, Wilson accused the administration in The Washington Post and the New York Times of using flawed intelligence to justify the war with Iraq, and said his CIA-sponsored mission to Niger concluded months earlier that there was little support for an intelligence report that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear material there.

Eight days later, columnist Robert D. Novak revealed Plame's name and her status as a CIA operative, attributing the information to two anonymous senior administration officials.

People close to Rove said he fears a perjury charge because he did not initially tell the grand jury that he had spoken with Time reporter Matthew Cooper about Plame before her name was publicly disclosed. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, declined to comment yesterday.

A lawyer other than Luskin who is familiar with Rove's legal strategy said the aide testified that he believed he was trading on publicly available information in discussing Plame with reporters.

In his fourth and final grand jury appearance, this lawyer said, Rove was asked why he did not mention his discussion of Plame with Cooper. Rove has told people he simply had forgotten the conversation.

Rove also testified that he may have learned about Plame from Libby, according to a person familiar with Rove's testimony. Some saw this as an effort to show Rove had no reason to believe the information about Plame was classified.

There were signs that Fitzgerald was still trying to piece together the Rove case as recently as Tuesday. Peter Zeidenberg, a Justice Department prosecutor working with Fitzgerald, called Levine that day to discuss a conversation Levine had with Rove on July 11, 2003, the day Rove spoke with Cooper, according to Daniel J. French, Levine's lawyer.

Levine, part of the White House communications team at the time of the leak, "was contacted as a witness," French said. Levine told Zeidenberg that he and Rove did not discuss Cooper in that conversation, according to a person familiar with the discussion.

As jurors left the courthouse yesterday, Fitzgerald exited the sealed grand jury room of the courthouse through a back elevator to avoid reporters waiting outside. He then met with Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan in Hogan's private chambers for about 45 minutes. Hogan confirmed the two had met yesterday, but declined to discuss the substance of their conversation.

One legal source said the two have met regularly to discuss practical matters about the case, which now include intense media interest and how to avoid improper leaks about secret grand jury matters.

The grand jury, a group of onetime strangers from across the District, has spent two days a week for nearly 24 months in the cloistered, guarded room on the third floor of the U.S. District Courthouse. They have sifted through the day planners of White House aides and listened intently as the prosecutor grilled West Wing officials and reporters who relied on them as confidential sources. They are paid $40 a day, plus $4 for transportation.

Now they might be called upon to make decisions that could deal a crippling blow to the Bush White House and put top administration officials on trial.

There were 23 members at the start, committed for 18 months. Their term was extended in May for six months. At least six original jurors have been excused because of hardships their service created. Some were replaced with alternates.

Like the jury's forewoman, the majority are African American women who appear to be middle-age or older. The jury includes at least two black men, two older white women and three white men. One trim, agile retiree with white hair often entered the grand jury room with his bicycle helmet in hand.

Lori Shaw, a criminal law professor at the University of Dayton and an expert on federal grand juries, said the amount of time this jury has put in likely means it is well-versed and invested in the case.

"You have to consider: They are not rookies at this anymore," Shaw said. "I have a feeling that by now this grand jury has a good idea of what crime, if any, occurred."

Staff writers Christopher Lee, Peter Baker and Howard Kurtz contributed to this report.




Would you like to send this article to a friend? Go to
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/e...er=emailarticle

Buzz on CIA Leak Is Part of a D.C. Ritual

By Howard Kurtz

Washington is abuzz with talk about what Karl Rove and "Scooter" Libby told a grand jury, who they told about Valerie Plame, who told them, whether they told the truth, and whether a prosecutor can prove that they did not tell the truth.

And virtually every bit of information, confirmed and alleged,comes from unnamed sources -- ironically, in an investigation of who anonymously outed a CIA operative -- who are trying to shape public understanding of a complicated narrative to someone's advantage.

The result is that after two years of near-total secrecy about the CIA leak investigation, a steady stream of sometimes-conflicting information is now flowing, invariably attributed to "lawyers close to the case" or similarly opaque sources.

As Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald nears a decision on whether to seek indictments of top White House officials, lawyers involved in the inquiry are using the news media to float bits of evidence or interpretations that are favorable to their high-level clients. The maneuvering makes clear that these lawyers are fighting a two-front war, trying simultaneously to avert criminal charges while seeking acquittal in the court of public opinion.

The rush of disclosures in the closing days of an investigation is a time-tested ritual of Washington scandals, and each time the questions are the same: Who leaked and for what reason?

The most dramatic example came Tuesday, when unnamed lawyers told the New York Times that Vice President Cheney had told Libby, his chief of staff, that Plame was a CIA operative weeks before her identity became public in 2003. The account, which referred to notes of a conversation between Cheney and Libby, was the first time the vice president has been tied to a White House effort to learn about Plame, the wife of an administration critic -- and it may have been leaked to cushion the blow of that disclosure.

"At the end of an investigation where prosecutors are about to make decisions, it's a bit unseemly," said Joseph E. diGenova, a former U.S. attorney. "It has a macabre, manipulative quality about it that seems mindless. It seems like last-minute gasping. It's kind of embarrassing to watch as a lawyer. Whatever benefit there is will be very short-lived because it's too late to affect the outcome."

Lanny J. Davis, a former Clinton White House lawyer, said such leaks are "a dangerous damage-control practice" authorized by officials "to distance themselves from whoever they think is in trouble by putting out information that is partially true."

The drumbeat of incremental disclosures also reflects a media culture in which news organizations feel compelled to publish something every day on an investigation that could shake the White House, even though little hard information is available and Fitzgerald appears to be running a leak-free operation. Newspaper reporters have worked late night after night, trying to piece together scraps or match rivals' scoops.

Defense lawyers sometimes provide reporters information on a not-for-attribution basis to counter leaks from law enforcement officials, as often happened during independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's 1998 investigation of President Bill Clinton. Sometimes they are trying to get the bad news out themselves before someone else does it for them. And sometimes it is a way of communicating indirectly with other possible witnesses in the case.

On the morning that Clinton was to testify before a grand jury, the Times reported that "senior advisers" had "secured his agreement" to acknowledge "an inappropriate physical relationship" with Monica S. Lewinsky. The pace of leaks in the Plame case has been quickening. In early July, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff disclosed the contents of e-mails that Time's Matthew Cooper had written about his conversations about Plame with senior presidential adviser Rove, his previously confidential source.

On July 22, Bloomberg News cited "people familiar with the case" in reporting that Libby had testified that he learned about Plame from NBC Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert, which conflicts with Russert's statement that he told a grand jury he did not know Plame's name and did not tell Libby about her. The story also said Rove had testified that he first learned Plame's name from columnist Robert D. Novak. On Oct. 6, the Times, The Washington Post and other news organizations quoted unnamed lawyers as saying that Rove had been summoned to the grand jury for a fourth time.

On Oct. 19, the Associated Press reported that Rove had testified that Libby may have told him that Plame worked for the CIA, before her identity was revealed by Novak. The Post quoted "a source familiar with Rove's account" about the same information the next day.

On Oct. 21, the Los Angeles Times quoted "former White House aides" as saying that Libby was angry about criticism from Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, began monitoring his television appearances and urged a public campaign against him.

The problem for journalists is that these accounts sometimes conflict. Tuesday's New York Times story seemed to undercut Libby's earlier account by naming Cheney as his original source of information about Plame.

Stanley M. Brand, a former House counsel, said the leaking lawyers "get caught up in the flattery of being solicited by the press and forget what their job is. It's a very seductive atmosphere." Asked about the public relations battle, Brand said: "Who cares? The only guy who matters is Fitzgerald." As a potential defendant, "all I care about is whether he charges me or not."


Would you like to send this article to a friend? Go to
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/e...er=emailarticle

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/...2p-306469c.html
Buzz about a Karl plea
as probers close in



BY THOMAS M. DeFRANK, KENNETH R. BAZINET and JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - Jittery Bush aides gnawed their nails yesterday as a special prosecutor zeroed in on White House political guru Karl Rove's role in blowing a CIA agent's cover.
In the closing hours of the grand jury probe, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald paid a visit yesterday to Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, prompting speculation that a plea bargain could be in the works for the deputy White House chief of staff.

It was the latest of several one-on-one meetings between Fitzgerald and Luskin, the Daily News has learned.

Investigators also turned up at the White House for yet another round of questions for Rove's subordinates.

A secret meeting Fitzgerald held yesterday with Judge Thomas Hogan, who presides over the case, suggests a grand jury extension also could be under consideration, according to legal sources.

As the investigation moved toward its high-stakes finale, Rove has exhibited several mood swings.

Two weeks ago, at a political event in Texas, Rove brushed aside concerns from anxious pals. "He said he was fine and he said it with gusto," one of the well-wishers recalled.

A week later, however, Rove seemed down and distracted to some of his White House colleagues. More recently, however, he was in better spirits, dashing off business-as-usual handwritten notes to acquaintances that made no mention of his travails.

"He remains upbeat and optimistic," according to an associate. "He's convinced in his own mind that he's done his best to assist the investigation at every stage."

The News learned that Rove's lawyers hope to persuade Fitzgerald that inconsistencies in his grand jury testimony were because of poor recollections, not attempts at obstruction.

Meanwhile, FBI agents quizzed outed CIA agent Valerie Plame's neighbors, who told them they did not know she was a CIA employee before her cover was blown.

At the U.S. courthouse, the grand jury heard evidence for three hours, but Fitzgerald did not make any announcements about indictments related to his two-year probe. Fitzgerald emerged an hour after adjourning the panel and offered no comment.

While White House staffers were tense, Fitzgerald's team relaxed from their stoic, all-business demeanor. The cheery prosecutors shared an elevator ride with a News reporter and cracked up over a private joke.

Originally published on October 27, 2005

--------------------
White House Plans to Deflect
--------------------

If top aides are indicted in the CIA leak case, the administration strategy is to keep its distance.

By Doyle McManus, Warren Vieth and Mary Curtius
Times Staff Writers

October 27 2005

WASHINGTON; The prosecutor hasn't announced any indictments, but President Bush's aides and their allies in Congress are working on strategies to counter the blow if White House officials are accused of crimes.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...-home-headlines

Visit latimes.com at http://www.latimes.com

If top aides are indicted in the CIA leak case, the administration strategy is to keep its distance.


You can run, but you can't hide.

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/nyt034.html

New York Times

October 28, 2005
Aide to Cheney Appears Likely to Be Indicted; Rove Under Scrutiny

By DAVID JOHNSTON
and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 - Associates of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, expected an indictment on Friday charging him with making false statements to the grand jury in the C.I.A. leak inquiry, lawyers in the case said Thursday.

Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, will not be charged on Friday, but will remain under investigation, people briefed officially about the case said. As a result, they said, the special counsel in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, was likely to extend the term of the federal grand jury beyond its scheduled expiration on Friday.

As rumors coursed through the capital, Mr. Fitzgerald gave no public signal of how he intends to proceed, further intensifying the anxiety that has gripped the White House and left partisans on both sides of the political aisle holding their breath.

Mr. Fitzgerald's preparations for a Friday announcement were shrouded in secrecy, but advanced amid a flurry of behind-the-scenes discussions that left open the possibility of last-minute surprises. As the clock ticked down on the grand jury, people involved in the case did not rule out the disclosure of previously unknown aspects of the case.

White House officials said their presumption was that Mr. Libby would resign if indicted, and he and Mr. Rove took steps to expand their legal teams in preparation for a possible court battle.

Among the many unresolved mysteries is whether anyone in addition to Mr. Libby and Mr. Rove might be charged and in particular whether Mr. Fitzgerald would name the source who first provided the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer to Robert D. Novak, the syndicated columnist. Mr. Novak identified the officer in a column published July 14, 2003.

The investigation seemed to be taking an unexpected path after nearly two years in which Mr. Fitzgerald brought more than a dozen current and former administration officials before the grand jury and interviewed Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney to determine how the identity of the officer, Valerie Plame Wilson, became public.

Mr. Fitzgerald's spokesman, Randall Samborn, declined to comment.

Mr. Fitzgerald has examined whether the leak of Ms. Wilson's identity was part of an effort by the administration to respond to criticism of the White House by her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat. After traveling to Africa in 2002 on a C.I.A.-sponsored mission to look into claims that Iraq had sought to acquire material there for its nuclear weapons program, Mr. Wilson wrote in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, that the White House had "twisted" the intelligence it used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

At the White House, the withdrawal of Harriet E. Miers as the president's nominee to the Supreme Court dominated the day. Still, officials waited anxiously for word about developments in the investigation, which has the potential to shape the remainder of Mr. Bush's second term.

Officials said that Mr. Bush, who traveled to Florida on Thursday to view the damage from Hurricane Wilma, would keep to his planned schedule on Friday, including a speech on terrorism in Norfolk, Va., if indictments were announced.

Administration officials said that the White House would seek to keep as low a profile as possible if indictments were issued; Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, did not schedule a briefing for Friday, and Mr. Bush plans to leave in the afternoon for a weekend at Camp David.

With so much about the outcome of the case still in doubt, political strategists in Washington spent the day gaming out the implications of different endings.

People in each political party said indictments of both Mr. Libby and Mr. Rove would be a major blow to the administration at a time when it is struggling across many fronts.

Should Mr. Rove eventually avoid indictment, the political implications would be less severe, they said. Mr. Rove is Mr. Bush's closest and most trusted adviser, and any charges would not only bring the case that much closer to the Oval Office, but also deprive the administration of its primary strategist and big-picture thinker at a time when it is struggling to get back on track.

Yet any indictment would leave the White House facing the prospect of a drawn-out legal proceeding that is likely to touch on what Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney knew about the effort to deal with Mr. Wilson's criticism, as well as keeping a spotlight on the shortcomings in administration prewar intelligence about Iraq's weapons.

Mr. Fitzgerald has been closely examining the truthfulness of accounts given by Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby about their conversations with reporters about Ms. Wilson. As early as February 2004, two months after he was appointed, Mr. Fitzgerald obtained a specific written authorization from James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general who appointed him, permitting him to investigate efforts to mislead the inquiry.

The prosecutor has inquired how Mr. Libby and Mr. Rove first learned that Ms. Wilson was employed at the C.I.A. and whether the discussions were part of a deliberate effort to undermine the credibility of her husband, according to lawyers in the case. The lawyers declined to be named, citing Mr. Fitzgerald's request not to discuss the case.

Allies of Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have hoped that Mr. Fitzgerald could be persuaded that any misstatements were inadvertent and not intended to conceal their actions from prosecutors.

In addition, they have hoped that the prosecutor would conclude it would be difficult to convince a jury that Mr. Rove or Mr. Libby had a clear-cut motive to misinform the grand jury. Lawyers for the two men declined to comment on their legal status.

In Mr. Rove's case, the prosecutor appears to have focused on two conversations that Mr. Rove had with reporters. The first, on July 9, 2003, was with Mr. Novak. Mr. Rove told the grand jury that Mr. Novak mentioned Ms. Wilson and that was the first time he had heard Ms. Wilson's name.

Mr. Rove's second conversation took place on July 11, 2003, with Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine. Earlier this year, Mr. Cooper wrote that Mr. Rove did not name Ms. Wilson but told him that she worked at the C.I.A. and had been responsible for sending her husband to Africa.

In his first sessions with prosecutors, Mr. Rove did not disclose his phone conversation with Mr. Cooper, the lawyers said, though he disclosed from the start his conversation with Mr. Novak. The lawyers added that Mr. Rove did not recall the conversation with Mr. Cooper until the discovery of an e-mail note about the conversation that he had sent to Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser. But Mr. Fitzgerald has been skeptical about the omission, the lawyers said.

In Mr. Libby's case, Mr. Fitzgerald has focused on his statements about how he first learned of Ms. Wilson's identity. Early in the investigation, Mr. Libby turned over notes of a meeting with Mr. Cheney in June 2003 that indicated the vice president had told him about Ms. Wilson, the lawyers said.

But Mr. Libby told the grand jury that he learned of Ms. Wilson from reporters, lawyers involved in the case. Reporters who are known to have talked to Mr. Libby have said that they did not provide him the name, could not recall what had been said or had discussed unrelated subjects.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0...5377430,00.html

From the Associated Press

'Official A' Stands Out in Indictment

Saturday October 29, 2005 12:01 AM


By PETE YOST

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - In a sign of the trouble lingering for the Bush administration, the indictment handed up Friday in the CIA leak probe refers to someone at the White House known as ``Official A.''

The unidentified official could become a courtroom witness against I. Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, who left his job as vice presidential aide shortly after his indictment on charges of obstruction of justice, making false statements and perjury.

Although other officials are mentioned but not named in the indictment, all were identified Friday afternoon during briefings at the Justice Department.

Except for ``Official A.''

The mysterious official is identified in the indictment only as ``a senior official in the White House.''

No mention is made of Karl Rove, the president's political adviser who remains under investigation by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.

It has been known that columnist Robert Novak spoke to Rove on July 9, 2003, saying he planned to report over the weekend that Valerie Plame, the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, had worked for the CIA. Rove told the columnist he had heard similar information.

Friday's indictment says ``Official A'' is a ``senior official in the White House who advised Libby on July 10 or 11 of 2003'' about a chat with Novak about his upcoming column in which Plame would be identified as a CIA employee.

Late Friday, three people close to the investigation, each asking to remain unidentified because of grand jury secrecy, identified Rove as Official A.

The legal case against I. Lewis Libby: how strong?
What the judge allows the jury to hear will be critical to the outcome
of the case, legal analysts say. By Warren Richey
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1031/p04s01-usju.html?s=hns

http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/s/latimests/...DltBHNlYwM3MTY-


Who Talked? It Wasn't the Special Prosecutor By Richard B. Schmitt Times Staff Writer
Sun Oct 30, 7:55 AM ET



WASHINGTON — With U.S. troops unable to find expected weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a group of officials met aboard Air Force Two in mid-2003 to discuss how to respond to the growing prominence of one particular critic of President Bush's war policy. Vice President Dick Cheney was on the flight. So was his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

It was a scene that suggested intrigue. And if it had occurred as part of a past Washington scandal, the investigator who revealed it probably would have included a wealth of details, naming everyone present and laying out what they said.

But when Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald announced Friday that he was wrapping up his two-year investigation of the CIA leak case, he offered the barest sketch of the meeting on Air Force Two — and left many central questions in the case unanswered. Did Cheney help map out strategy with Libby during the flight? Did officials talk about Valerie Plame, the wife of the Bush critic, and that she worked for the CIA — a detail that was soon leaked to the media?

Did Cheney attend the meeting, or did he sit elsewhere on the plane?

Answering none of these questions, Fitzgerald's 22-page indictment, with its bare-bones outlines of the case, provided a bracing lesson on what major political investigations have become now that they are no longer conducted by independent counsels, and how the culture of rooting out scandal in Washington has fundamentally changed.

Ever since Watergate, special federal investigations of political scandals have often ended with detailed accounts of the inner workings of government. The probes might take years; they might cost millions; but at the end, they often provided a rich, detailed story of episodes in question.

The reason was the independent counsel law, created by Congress in 1978 because it felt the executive branch could not be trusted to investigate itself in cases of alleged abuse and corruption. Independent counsels gave the nation book-length — even multi-volume examinations of the Iran-Contra affair and of President Clinton's relations with a former intern. But Congress in 1999 chose not to renew the law authorizing them, out of concern that they had been used to pursue partisan witch hunts.

Fitzgerald, by contrast, is a special prosecutor, charged with bringing violations of the law to court, rather than information to the court of public opinion.

His spare account suggests that with the independent counsel statute gone, the public is apt to know far less about the actions of elected officials and government bureaucrats when they are engaged in conduct that may be questionable but that does not violate the law.

"My job is to investigate whether or not a crime was committed, can be proved and should be charged," Fitzgerald said Friday as he announced an indictment of Libby for allegedly lying to the FBI and a grand jury investigating the leak case. "I'm not going to comment on what to make beyond that. It's not my jurisdiction, not my job, not my judgment."

Because only Libby was charged, he said, he would not be answering questions about the actions of other officials. Some legal experts see the new practice as a good development, restoring proper restraint as investigators ferret out information about wrongdoing. Prosecutors should focus strictly on bringing and proving charges in court; watchdogs such as Congress and the media can use their own powers to sort out lapses in judgment by policymakers, this thinking goes.

"There is a trade-off," said John Q. Barrett, a professor at St. John's University law school in New York and a former associate independent counsel. "The public does not automatically get the fruits of the good information that a criminal investigation does gather."

At the same time, he said, it can be unfair to people who are investigated but never charged to have their names publicly exposed. And public disclosure of information could violate "institutional promises" built into the justice system. Grand juries can compel people to testify, for instance, but witnesses are assured that their testimony is strictly confidential.

Some people said that by releasing a tightly focused indictment of Libby, Fitzgerald showed that the nation is better off than when independent counsels such as Kenneth W. Starr investigated politicians.

Starr's original mandate was to investigate the failed Arkansas real estate deal known as Whitewater, but his investigation of President Clinton yielded a 445-page account that included substantial information about the president's sexual relations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Recounting episodes of oral sex, phone sex and, in one case, the use of a cigar as a sex prop, the report even said which parts of Lewinsky's body the president touched during their encounters.

Where Fitzgerald released only information that supported the charges in the indictment, Starr's voluminous account led to accusations that he had gratuitously invaded the private life of the president and the first family, and that he had veered far away from his original mandate. Starr said that the details were needed to establish that Clinton had lied under oath.

"Mr. Fitzgerald has proven that we are all better off without an independent counsel law," said Lanny J. Davis, a lawyer and Clinton advisor during the Lewinsky affair. "The contrasts between him and Ken Starr could not be more stark. We should not use the criminal justice system to make findings of fact that are not in a courtroom. That is why we have due process."

But others said that system could also deprive the public of crucial information, and that prosecutors could view their role too narrowly. Public officials should be held to a higher standard of conduct than ordinary citizens and should not complain when the public demands a full and open accounting of their actions, this thinking goes.

The GOP-controlled Congress has shown no interest in wanting to learn more about the Plame case, which has focused on Republicans in the White House. Fitzgerald himself has indicated he isn't interested in cooperating with a congressional probe, saying in a letter to House Democrats on Friday that he was barred from releasing information to them for oversight of the case because of rules governing the secrecy of grand jury testimony.

The indictment against Libby alleges that he talked to reporters about Plame and her CIA affiliation. Bush's critics have said that this was meant to undercut Plame's husband, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was gaining attention in mid-2003 for saying that the administration bolstered its case for invading Iraq by exaggerating Saddam Hussein's interest in acquiring nuclear materials.

But left unclear in the indictment, several people noted, is whether Libby talked to reporters on his own impetus, or whether he was responding to pressures from more senior officials. By releasing information only on the perjury, lying and obstruction charges he intends to take to trial, Fitzgerald left a key question unanswered, several people said.

"The question is, is this a White House that is creating an environment of vengeance and punishment against people who disagree with them, or is this just an example of one guy who went too far?" asked Kenneth Parsigian, a Boston lawyer who was an associate to Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh during the probe of the Iran-Contra affair. "Without a report, that may never be known."

It is a question that resonates with the Iran-Contra case, Parsigian said. President Reagan and other administration figures were pressed on what they knew about the arrangement that Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North had made to fund Nicaraguan rebels with proceeds from the sale of arms to Iran. The aid to the rebels came in direct violation of a congressional ban.

Walsh's 1993 report on the Iran-contra matter — a 566-page volume, plus appendices — found no credible evidence that Reagan had broken the law but concluded that he had "knowingly participated or at least acquiesced" in covering up the scandal. It also discussed the roles of numerous administration figures and outside persons who were never charged, and it included a compendious supplement in which they voiced their objections to the findings.

The possible involvement of Cheney or others in the White House in the leak case is just one of the mysteries remaining in the wake of the indictment of Libby.

Fitzgerald was appointed to find out who leaked Plame's name to the media, and whether laws were violated in the process. Her name first appeared in a July 14, 2003, article by syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

But the indictment does not fully reveal — and Fitzgerald refuses to say — who leaked the information to Novak. Novak wrote that two sources told him about Plame, but the Libby indictment only mentions one, who is identified only as "Official A." Sources familiar with the case have said that Official A is Karl Rove, deputy chief of staff to the president.

Fitzgerald also won't discuss the actions of Rove. One of Bush's closest advisors, Rove testified before the grand jury four times. Rove has said through his lawyer that he has been told by Fitzgerald that he could still be charged. But if he is not prosecuted, the story of his actions are likely to remain secret.

Fitzgerald acknowledged the frustration that some people feel in wanting to learn more about the actions of public officials. "I know that people want to know whatever it is that we know, and they're probably sitting at home with TVs thinking, 'I want to jump through the TV, grab him by his collar and tell him to tell us everything they've figured out over the last two years,' " the prosecutor said Friday.

"We just can't do that," he said, "not because we enjoy holding back information from you. That's the law."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...INGJPFG2J11.DTL

Seeds of leak scandal sown in Italian intelligence agency
Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Behind the CIA leak scandal lies a bizarre trail of forged documents, an embassy break-in and international deception that helped propel the United States to war in Iraq.

While American public attention focuses on special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak, U.S. and Italian lawmakers are probing a series of bogus claims of Iraqi uranium purchases in Africa that were the opening chapters in a saga that resulted in the disclosure of the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.

In the past week, the respected, left-of-center Italian daily La Repubblica published a three-part series of investigative articles claiming that documents purporting to prove that Saddam Hussein was seeking yellowcake uranium in Niger had been forged by an Italian freelance spy and then were fed by the Italian intelligence agency to eager officials in Washington and London.

On Capitol Hill, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate Democratic leader, and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., are asking for public hearings into the forgeries and their role in Bush administration claims that Hussein was developing nuclear weapons.

The Italian Parliament is scheduled to hold hearings about the La Repubblica allegations on Thursday, with intelligence chief Nicolo Pollari expected to come under heavy grilling.

The articles relied heavily on sources in the Italian spy agency, the Military Information and Security Service, known as SISMI. They provide a tantalizing account -- credible to some observers, baseless speculation to others -- of how President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair were snookered by fabricated intelligence about Hussein's alleged nuclear program.

The allegations in La Repubblica's articles lead far into the murky depths of Italy's intelligence agencies, a realm of conspiracy claims and counterclaims. In Italy this netherworld is called dietrologia -- a word that loosely translates as the widespread belief that political, security and criminal forces are constantly engaged in secret plots and maneuvers, noted Henry Farrell, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University in Washington and a blogger on the Crooked Timber Web log, which has dissected the Italian angle to Plamegate.

"It's hard to say if (the La Repubblica information) is the truth, truth with some distortion, or misinformation from the officials who are leaking this," Farrell said. "But it certainly raises some very troubling questions."

Farrell noted that during the Cold War, the U.S. and Italian spy agencies cooperated closely on undercover work. Bush and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi are close allies, and Berlusconi has strongly supported Bush's Iraq policy, stationing 3,000 Italian troops south of Baghdad.

SISMI has long been accused of involvement in rightist conspiracies, including work in collaboration with Propaganda Due, or P-2, a Masonic secret society, and the Armed Falange, a neo-fascist terrorist group.

SISMI "does not have an immaculate history at all," said Gianfranco Pasquino, a political science professor at the Bologna, Italy, campus of the School of Advanced and International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. "It has been purged and reorganized very often."

Pasquino called SISMI "friendly to the right wing and willing to offer its services for right-wing purposes."

According to La Repubblica, the forged documents were originally produced in 2000 by Rocco Martino, a former member of the Carabinieri paramilitary police who then became a freelance agent for both SISMI and French intelligence. SISMI combined these fakes with real documents from the 1980s showing Hussein's yellowcake purchases from Niger during that period -- in the process, conducting a break-in at the Niger Embassy in Rome to steal letterhead and seals.

Soon afterward, La Repubblica reported, Italian operatives passed news of their scoop to the CIA and the British intelligence agency, MI6. When the CIA expressed doubt about the veracity of the claims, SISMI began seeking to peddle it directly to the most pro-war faction of the Bush administration.

SISMI chief Pollari met in Rome with Michael Ledeen, an influential Washington neoconservative who has long been reputed to play a back-channel role between U.S. and Italian spy agencies. Pollari also met in Washington with Stephen Hadley, deputy national security adviser, to discuss the new information, La Repubblica reported. On Thursday, a National Security Council spokesman confirmed that the Hadley-Pollari meeting had taken place but was only "a courtesy call" with no documents exchanged.

In early 2002, CIA officials sent Wilson, who had served as a diplomat in Africa, to Niger to investigate the matter. Wilson reported back to CIA headquarters that the claims were unfounded.

Meanwhile, however, MI6 recycled the information and, without disclosing the source, reported it to the White House -- which interpreted this British echo chamber as independent confirmation of the Italian claims.

The elaborate hoax finally succeeded. In late September 2002, Secretary of State Colin Powell cited Iraq's alleged Niger dealings as proof of Hussein's nuclear ambitions. In his February 2003 State of the Union address, Bush declared that British intelligence had "learned" Saddam Hussein had been seeking to buy nuclear material in Africa. Throughout the period, Blair made similar claims.

British officials have insisted that they had other evidence in addition to the forged documents that confirmed Iraqi uranium purchases in Niger. The British have declined to show this evidence, however.

La Repubblica quoted a SISMI official as saying of this alleged corroborating evidence, "If it ever were brought forward it would be discovered, with red faces, that it was Italian intelligence collected by SISMI at the end of the 1980s and shared with our friend Hamilton McMillan" -- the top MI6 counter-terrorism official during that period.

After war was initiated in 2003 and invading U.S. troops found no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program, Wilson began to tell reporters about his fact-finding trip and his report to Washington that the Niger uranium claims were bogus. Wilson's maneuvering came at a politically sensitive moment, as the administration's war rationale appeared to be crumbling. According to the indictment released Friday, it was during this period when Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, began to organize a counterattack against Wilson and Valerie Plame, leaking her identity as a CIA agent and suggesting that he may have been sent to Niger merely because of nepotism.

On Friday, the New York Times reported that the FBI has been investigating the forged uranium documents for two years but has not reached any conclusions about who fabricated them or how they were funneled to U.S. and British officials.

On Wednesday, Berlusconi's office "categorically" rejected La Repubblica's claims. "The facts that are narrated ... do not correspond to the truth," the prime minister's office said in a statement in which it reiterated denials that the government had any "direct or indirect involvement in the packaging and delivery of the 'false dossier on Niger's uranium.' "

But Farrell said that many Italians view the matter as yet another dark conspiracy.

"Italian politics is incredibly byzantine and incredibly nontransparent, especially on security issues," Farrell said. "There is a pervasive (public) belief of dietrologia carried out behind the scenes by powerful, shadowy figures, all more or less incomprehensible except to a few insiders in Rome.

"This case will be interpreted as more of the same."

E-mail Robert Collier at rcollier@sfchronicle.com.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...y?track=tothtml

WASHINGTON OUTLOOK
Leak Case Prosecutor Raises Questions That Demand Answers
Ronald Brownstein
Washington Outlook

October 31, 2005

Who knew what when in the Bush administration's effort to disclose the identity of a CIA official whose husband had become a principal critic of the Iraq war?

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the case, knows a great deal of the answer, judging by the indictment he unveiled Friday against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff. But he isn't telling much.

Fitzgerald presented the information he felt he needed to reach a legal judgment in the case. But he withheld much of the information the country needs to reach a political judgment about the administration's actions.

Indeed, in his indictment, Fitzgerald repeatedly raises critical questions that he flatly refuses to answer. His cautious approach may be the appropriate strategy for a criminal prosecutor, but it leaves open important issues that are likely to be resolved only through congressional hearings, with the central figures testifying under oath.

The question most people wanted answered was who told syndicated columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA. She is the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who became a critic of the Iraq war after undertaking a mission for the CIA to determine whether Saddam Hussein had sought to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger.

Fitzgerald knows the identity of one of Novak's sources, but he's not telling. In the indictment he describes Novak's source only as "a senior official in the White House," whom he designates, spy-novel style, as Official A.

Some news organizations reported over the weekend that the proverbial "sources close to the investigation" have identified Official A as Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff.

But the indictment, the sole official word in the case, states only that "on or about July 10 or July 11, 2003," Libby spoke with Official A, who informed him of "a conversation Official A had earlier that week with columnist Robert Novak in which Wilson's wife was discussed as a CIA employee involved in Wilson's trip."

Then the paragraph, deadpan, adds a blockbuster revelation: "Libby was advised by Official A that Novak would be writing a story about Wilson's wife."

In other words, the same White House official who provided Novak with information about Plame told Libby not only about the conversation but also about the impending article.

That disclosure raises a series of questions. Did Official A tell anyone else in the White House that he had leaked the information? Did Libby? Did anyone else know that Novak planned to publish a story disclosing Plame's name? Did anyone object?

Fitzgerald isn't saying.

The indictment's next paragraph raises even more troubling questions. The indictment reports that "on or about July 12, 2003," Libby flew with "the vice president and others" to and from Norfolk, Va., on Air Force Two. "On his return trip, Libby discussed with other officials aboard the plane what Libby should say in response to certain pending media inquiries, including questions from Time reporter Matthew Cooper," the indictment states.

On that very afternoon, the indictment continues, Libby spoke about Wilson by telephone with Cooper and Judith Miller of the New York Times.

When Cooper asked Libby whether he had heard that Wilson's wife was involved in sending him on the trip, "Libby confirmed to Cooper, without elaboration or qualification, that he had heard this information too."

With Miller, Libby discussed "Wilson's wife, and that she worked at the CIA."

By recounting the events in that sequence, Fitzgerald implies that Libby's conversations with the reporters followed a decision in that discussion on Air Force Two to disseminate the information about Plame. But Fitzgerald never says what happened in that discussion or even who the participants were.

Presumably Libby would not need approval from his subordinates to discuss Plame with reporters. Perhaps he was seeking their counsel during the discussion on the plane. But it's also conceivable that Libby was seeking authorization from the one person in the office who was his superior: the vice president.

Again, Fitzgerald may know. But he's not telling.

On both these issues — the conversation on Air Force Two and the discussion between Libby and Official A — the indictment strongly hints at a broader effort within the administration to disclose Plame's identity, but does not level charges (such as conspiracy) to that effect. "You could not put [the information] in and not charge, or put it in and charge, but the puzzling thing is to put it in and not charge," David Boies, one of the nation's leading trial lawyers, said after reading the indictment.

Why would Fitzgerald disclose such suggestive information without fully explaining it? Boies, a Democratic partisan, defends the decision. Fitzgerald "is someone who wants to be very conservative and super-sure before he indicts anybody … that he has an airtight case," Boies said.

Fitzgerald might still be investigating. Others speculate that he included the information about the discussion on Air Force Two and the conversation with Official A as a warning to the White House and other Republicans that he could punch back with much more explosive charges if they attack him too harshly.

Fitzgerald may be correct that criminal prosecution isn't the right venue to explain exactly what happened. And he has indicated that, so far, he does not believe further criminal charges are justified; more disclosure wouldn't by itself change that. But even so, the information in his indictment demands further answers.

Those answers might come if Joseph Wilson files a civil suit against administration officials, as he has suggested he might, but private action isn't the most appropriate way to satisfy the public interest in a full accounting.

That responsibility belongs to Congress. It may need to wait until after criminal proceedings are concluded. But with its power to subpoena documents and compel testimony, Congress owes America answers to the questions Fitzgerald has left hanging so suggestively.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ronald Brownstein's column appears every Monday. See current and past Brownstein columns on The Times' website at latimes.com/brownstein.

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service
Home Delivery | Advertise | Archives | Contact | Site Map | Help


partners:

http://www.alternet.org/story/27569/

Fitzgerald Needs to Dig Deeper

By Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith, AlterNet. Posted October 31, 2005.


The prosecutor needs to examine the underlying reasons for the leak -- specifically, what crimes were committed in leading us into war on Iraq. Tools

Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's name has reaffirmed the basic American principle that even the highest government officials are subject to the rule of law. His charges represent the start of a revitalization of the institutions designed to maintain government under law. But that revitalization still has a long way to go.

As a prosecutor, Mr. Fitzgerald rightly brought charges where the law was clearest and the evidence most compelling. But the alleged crimes he is investigating are in essence the apparent cover-up operation for another possible set of crimes against national and international law. Why would I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby commit perjury and lie to FBI agents, as he is accused of doing?

The letters from Acting Attorney General James B. Comey appointing Mr. Fitzgerald delegated to him "all the authority of the attorney general" to investigate and prosecute "violations of any federal criminal laws related to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure."

We would argue that Mr. Comey's charge, based on the evidence Mr. Fitzgerald has uncovered, authorizes the special prosecutor to investigate the following:

Did top Bush administration officials deceive Congress? Several federal statutes make it a crime to lie to Congress. As Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York recently put it, "If, as mounting evidence is tending to show, administration officials deliberately deceived Congress and the American people, this would constitute a criminal conspiracy against the entire country."

Did top administration officials violate the U.S. Anti-Torture Act? The law makes torture and conspiracy to commit torture a crime. The former commander at Abu Ghraib prison, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, has stated that abusive techniques were "delivered with full authority and knowledge of the secretary of defense and probably [Vice President Dick] Cheney."

Did top administration officials violate the War Crimes Act? Passed by a Republican Congress in 1996, the law makes it a federal crime for any U.S. national to commit a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions.

In a 2002 memo, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, who was then White House counsel, urged that the United States "opt out" of the Geneva Conventions for the Afghan war on the grounds that opting out "substantially reduces the likelihood of prosecution under the War Crimes Act."

What was he worrying about? Did the special prosecutor find evidence that top Bush administration officials ordered or condoned the string of Geneva Conventions violations that run from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay and from the leveling of Fallujah to attacks on medical facilities?

Did top administration officials violate the War Powers Act? The law requires the president to present to Congress the basis for proposed U.S. military action. If the administration provided false information, is it guilty of violating the War Powers Act and, in effect, usurping the war powers given to Congress under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution?

Did top administration officials violate the U.N. Charter? U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said the U.S. attack on Iraq was "illegal." The conduct of the war has involved many breaches of internationally guaranteed protections of civilians. Did the special prosecutor find evidence of deliberate violation of U.S. treaty obligations, which under Article VI of the Constitution are the law of the land?

If the special prosecutor found evidence of violation of "any criminal laws," he is obliged to investigate and prosecute. Where the abuses he finds are not covered by existing federal law, they must be addressed by Congress, either by new laws or through the impeachment process.

The Bush administration's alleged abuses of national and international law are closely linked. The Valerie Plame affair was not just a random incident, but rather an effort to silence critics attempting to halt an aggressive war whose initiation and conduct appear to have violated both national and international law. Indeed, aggressive war, illegal conduct of war and torture are nothing less than war crimes.

Investigation and, if warranted, prosecution of such crimes is crucial for the revitalization of democratic government in our country. To let such flagrant flouting of the rule of law go unpunished would be to invite government officials to subvert our Constitution again.

Repudiating war crimes committed by high U.S. officials is also an essential starting point for repairing the damage done to our country's international relationships and reputation. There is no way to take the taint off our country for the abuses symbolized by Abu Ghraib without holding those responsible for them accountable.

This editorial originally appeared in the Baltimore Sun.

Brendan Smith, a legal scholar, and Jeremy Brecher, a historian, are editors of In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond.

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0510j.asp


Libby Lied, and Cheney Needs to Come Clean
by Jacob G. Hornberger, October 31, 2005

Scooter Libby, the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, is apparently planning to rely on a “I was a very busy man to remember details” defense to the perjury and obstruction of justice indictment against him. According to a statement issued by his attorney, Libby’s testimony simply contained “inconsistencies” that were the result of “the hectic rush of issues and events at a busy time for our government.”

Give me a break!

Was Libby’s memory really too poor to recall the details regarding something as important as the outing of a CIA agent?

Yeah, right!

Well, maybe Libby can explain this one: Soon after the Justice Department authorized the FBI to investigate the Plame matter, which occurred on September 26, 2003, President Bush’s press secretary Scott McClellan announced on October 10 that he had asked both Libby and Karl Rove whether they were involved in the Plame matter and that both of them had assured him that they were not involved.

Not involved? Not involved at all? Is that just the poor memory of a hard, over-worked vice presidential chief of staff? How is it possible that Libby would forget any involvement in the Plame matter, since, according to the indictment, in March 2004 he told the grand jury that at the very least he had discussed Plame with New York Times reporter Judy Miller, Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, and NBC columnist Tim Russert.

Ask yourself: How could Libby “forget” any involvement in the Plame matter when he responded to McClellan’s inquiry in October 2003 and then “remember” the details of his conversations with those reporters several months later in March 2004?

An interesting mystery, of course, is why Vice President Cheney let McClellan’s statement to the nation remain standing. At the time that McClellan made the announcement on behalf of President Bush, Cheney had to know that the statement was false. Did Cheney approach Libby after McClellan’s announcement and say, “Hey, what gives, Scooter? You know you played a role. Why did you lie to McClellan?” Or did Cheney go to President Bush and say, “George, that announcement that McClellan just made to the nation on your behalf is false and you need to correct it because Libby did play a role in this”?

We don’t know what Cheney said or did in response to McClellan’s statement because unfortunately, the vice president is choosing to remain silent. The reason for his self-imposed silence? Cheney says he can’t talk due to “pending litigation.”

But that excuse for Cheney’s keeping his lips sealed is ludicrous. There is no rule, regulation, or law that precludes Cheney from fully disclosing everything he knows about the Plame outing and when he knew it. The American people have a right to the complete truth from Vice President Cheney, not only with respect to what he knows about the Plame outing but also on the related much important subject of the war on Iraq. Cheney needs to come forward and explain to the nation why the White House marketed the war on Iraq on the claim that Saddam Hussein intended to attack the United States with nuclear weapons and also disclose everything he knows about efforts to punish former ambassador Joseph Wilson for disclosing that that claim was false.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/103005X.shtml


One Step Closer to the Big Enchilada
By Frank Rich
The New York Times

Sunday 30 October 2005

To believe that the Bush-Cheney scandals will be behind us anytime soon you'd have to believe that the Nixon-Agnew scandals peaked when G. Gordon Liddy and his bumbling band were nailed for the Watergate break-in. But Watergate played out for nearly two years after the gang that burglarized Democratic headquarters was indicted by a federal grand jury; it even dragged on for more than a year after Nixon took "responsibility" for the scandal, sacrificed his two top aides and weathered the indictments of two first-term cabinet members. In those ensuing months, America would come to see that the original petty crime was merely the leading edge of thematically related but wildly disparate abuses of power that Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, would name "the White House horrors."

In our current imperial presidency, as in its antecedent, what may look like a narrow case involving a second banana with a child's name contains the DNA of the White House, and that DNA offers a road map to the duplicitous culture of the whole. The coming prosecution of Lewis (Scooter) Libby in the Wilson affair is hardly the end of the story. That "Cheney's Cheney," as Mr. Libby is known, would allegedly go to such lengths to obscure his role in punishing a man who challenged the administration's W.M.D. propaganda is just one very big window into the genesis of the smoke screen (or, more accurately, mushroom cloud) that the White House used to sell the war in Iraq.

After the heat of last week's drama, we can forget just how effective the administration's cover-up of that con job had been until very recently. Before Patrick Fitzgerald's leak investigation, there were two separate official investigations into the failure of prewar intelligence. With great fanfare and to great acclaim, both found that our information about Saddam's W.M.D.'s was dead wrong. But wittingly or unwittingly, both of these supposedly thorough inquiries actually protected the White House by avoiding, in Watergate lingo, "the big enchilada."

The 601-page report from the special presidential commission led by Laurence Silberman and Charles Robb, hailed at its March release as a "sharp critique" by Mr. Bush, contains only a passing mention of Dick Cheney. It has no mention whatsoever of Mr. Libby or Karl Rove or their semicovert propaganda operation (the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG) created to push all that dead-wrong intel. Nor does it mention Douglas Feith, the first-term under secretary of defense for policy, whose rogue intelligence operation in the Pentagon supplied the vice president with the disinformation that bamboozled the nation.

The other investigation into prewar intelligence, by the Senate Intelligence Committee, is a scandal in its own right. After the release of its initial findings in July 2004, the committee's Republican chairman, Pat Roberts, promised that a Phase 2 to determine whether the White House had misled the public would arrive after the presidential election. It still hasn't, and no wonder: Murray Waas reported Thursday in The National Journal that Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby had refused to provide the committee with "crucial documents," including the Libby-written passages in early drafts of Colin Powell's notorious presentation of W.M.D. "evidence" to the U.N. on the eve of war.

Along the way, Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation has prompted the revelation of much of what these previous investigations left out. But even so, the trigger for the Wilson affair - the administration's fierce effort to protect its hype of Saddam's uranium - is only one piece of the larger puzzle of post- and pre-9/11 White House subterfuge. We're a long way from putting together the full history of a self-described "war presidency" that bungled the war in Iraq and, in doing so, may be losing the war against radical Islamic terrorism as well.

There are many other mysteries to be cracked, from the catastrophic, almost willful failure of the Pentagon to plan for the occupation of Iraq to the utter ineptitude of the huge and costly Department of Homeland Security that was revealed in all its bankruptcy by Katrina. There are countless riddles, large and small. Why have the official reports on detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo spared all but a single officer in the chain of command? Why does Halliburton continue to receive lucrative government contracts even after it's been the focus of multiple federal inquiries into accusations of bid-rigging, overcharging and fraud? Why did it take five weeks for Pat Tillman's parents to be told that their son had been killed by friendly fire, and who ordered up the fake story of his death that was sold relentlessly on TV before then?

These questions are just a representative sampling. It won't be easy to get honest answers because this administration, like Nixon's, practices obsessive secrecy even as it erects an alternative reality built on spin and outright lies.

Mr. Cheney is a particularly shameless master of these black arts. Long before he played semantics on "Meet the Press" with his knowledge of Joseph Wilson in the leak case, he repeatedly fictionalized crucial matters of national security. As far back as May 8, 2001, he appeared on CNN to promote his new assignment, announced that day by Mr. Bush, to direct a governmentwide review of U.S. "consequence management" in the event of a terrorist attack. As we would learn only in the recriminatory aftermath of 9/11 (from Barton Gellman of The Washington Post), Mr. Cheney never did so.

That stunt was a preview of Mr. Cheney's unreliable pronouncements about the war, from his early prediction that American troops would be "greeted as liberators" in Iraq to this summer's declaration that the insurgency was in its "last throes." Even before he began inflating Saddam's nuclear capabilities, he went on "Meet the Press" in December 2001 to peddle the notion that "it's been pretty well confirmed" that there was a direct pre-9/11 link between Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence. When the Atta-Saddam link was disproved later, Gloria Borger, interviewing the vice president on CNBC, confronted him about his earlier claim, and Mr. Cheney told her three times that he had never said it had been "pretty well confirmed." When a man thinks he can get away with denying his own words even though there are millions of witnesses and a video record, he clearly believes he can get away with murder.

Mr. Bush is only slightly less brazen. His own false claims about Iraq's W.M.D.'s ("We found the weapons of mass destruction," he said in May 2003) are, if anything, exceeded by his repeated boasts of capturing various bin Laden and Zarqawi deputies and beating back Al Qaeda. His speech this month announcing the foiling of 10 Qaeda plots is typical; as USA Today reported last week, at least 6 of the 10 on the president's list "involved preliminary ideas about potential attacks, not terrorist operations that were about to be carried out." In June, Mr. Bush stood beside his attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, and similarly claimed that "federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects" and that "more than half" of those had been convicted. A Washington Post investigation found that only 39 of those convictions had involved terrorism or national security (as opposed to, say, immigration violations). That sum could yet be exceeded by the combined number of convictions in the Jack Abramoff-Tom DeLay scandals.

The hyping of post-9/11 threats indeed reflects the same DNA as the hyping of Saddam's uranium: in both cases, national security scares are trumpeted to advance the White House's political goals. Keith Olbermann of MSNBC recently compiled 13 "coincidences" in which "a political downturn for the administration," from revelations of ignored pre-9/11 terror warnings to fresh news of detainee abuses, is "followed by a 'terror event' - a change in alert status, an arrest, a warning." To switch the national subject from the fallout of the televised testimony of the F.B.I. whistle-blower Coleen Rowley in 2002, John Ashcroft went so far as to broadcast a frantic announcement, via satellite from Russia, that the government had "disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot" to explode a dirty bomb. What he was actually referring to was the arrest of a single suspect, Jose Padilla, for allegedly exploring such a plan - an arrest that had taken place a month earlier.

For now, it's conventional wisdom in Washington that the Bush White House's infractions are nowhere near those of the Nixon administration, as David Gergen put it on MSNBC on Friday morning. But Watergate's dirty tricks were mainly prompted by the ruthless desire to crush the political competition at any cost. That's a powerful element in the Bush scandals, too, but this administration has upped the ante by playing dirty tricks with war. Back on July 6, 2003, when the American casualty toll in Iraq stood at 169 and Mr. Wilson had just published his fateful Op-Ed, Robert Novak, yet to write his column outing Mr. Wilson's wife, declared that "weapons of mass destruction or uranium from Niger" were "little elitist issues that don't bother most of the people." That's what Nixon administration defenders first said about the "third-rate burglary" at Watergate, too.

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=19812

What we don't know
Geov Parrish - WorkingForChange.com

10.31.05 - In my column of June 9, 2003, I led with the assertion that:

"The Bush Administration's case for invading Iraq was a combination of willfully gross exaggerations and flat-out lies."

Even at the time, this was nothing new; it was a claim critics of the war had been making for nearly a year. The lack of discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was simply confirming what war opponents knew all along.

Now, with Friday's five-count felony indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the investigation of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has parted the curtains on some of the mechanisms of that campaign of lies -- specifically, the lengths to which the Vice President's chief of staff was willing to go to in an attempt to smear an ex-ambassador, Joseph Wilson, who had meticulously disproven a key administration claim. Those lengths allegedly included lying twice to a grand jury, and twice more to FBI investigators, about whether he had leaked to the press that Valerie Wilson, the wife of the ex-ambassador, was a CIA operative.

There seems little room for doubt in Fitzgerald's indictment that Libby was, indeed, caught telling a whopper -- and a particularly clumsy one at that. It's a far more serious matter than the lie that got President Bill Clinton hauled up before an impeachment tribunal -- involving not just marital infidelity, but a key justification for putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers -- and millions of Iraqis -- at risk.

But in prosecuting the cover-up of the crime, rather than the original crime itself, Fitzgerald's indictment raises or leaves unanswered more questions than it settles. Here are a few of the biggest:


Who actually leaked the CIA identity of Valerie Wilson to conservative columnist Robert Novak, whose July 2003 column first unmasked Wilson? The figure is referred to in Fitzgerald's indictment as "Official A" -- probably Karl Rove. Prosecution of Rove would seem to hinge on the ability to prove that Rove knew of Wilson's covert status, a difficult proposition. But there seems little doubt that Rove, as one of the leakers alongside Libby, acted in a highly unethical (if not treasonous) manner. President Bush once averred that there was no room for unethical behavior in his administration. He also said he'd fire anyone who leaked Wilson's name. He has been conspicuously silent on such topics of late, but if he's serious about upholding ethical standards Bush should fire Rove.

Why did Scooter Libby lie to the grand jury? Did he do so on his own initiative? Was he acting as part of an intentional White House strategy, and if so, who was in on the formulation of that strategy? Was he trying to protect Cheney? Bush?

What was Dick Cheney's role in the Wilson smear campaign? We now know that both Libby and Cheney were independently gathering dirt on Joe Wilson; both discovered independently that his wife worked at the CIA, and it was from Cheney that Libby learned that Valerie Wilson worked in the counter-proliferation division. From the beginning of the war campaign, Cheney has been spewing disinformation and outrageous claims about Iraq, particularly its alleged weapons programs and (nonexistent) links to Al-Qaeda. We now know that Cheney simply lied when he told a 2003 television interviewer that he had no idea Joseph Wilson even had a wife. What other intentional lies did he tell?

Who forged the documents alleging Niger sold yellowcake uranium to Saddam Hussein's Iraq? Joseph Wilson's 2002 trip to Niger disproved that claim, but only later was it concluded by the International Atomic Energy Agency that the documents the claim was based on were crude forgeries. An investigative series last week in the Italian daily La Republica traces the origins of that document back through the Italian intelligence agency SISMI -- and points also to the possible involvement of CIA and FBI officials. Did the Bush Administration or its allies plant the forgery in the intelligence stream in the first place, for use in justifying claims of an imminent threat to American security?

How much of all this did George Bush know, and when? We now know that an alternative intelligence cabal, operating primarily out of the Vice President's office, was bypassing the usual channels of the CIA and State Department to cherry-pick (if not generate) intelligence that could justify an invasion. Did Bush know that much of this information was fictitious? How long has he known that Libby and Rove leaked Valerie Wilson's CIA identity? It seems likely he's known since the beginning of Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation, which begs the question of why either of them have continued to work at the White House for the past two years.
It was no secret in 2002 and 2003 that the claims of the Bush Administration in making the case of war against Iraq ranged from highly improbable to ludicrous. They achieved something resembling received Beltway wisdom through a combination of endless repetition, a credulous media, and the lack of any spine whatsoever in the opposition party. The indictment of I. Lewis Libby is a saga of a campaign of lies, orchestrated by the inner sanctum of the White House, and used to justify a flagrantly illegal war. Libby should go down hard for his misdeeds.

But he did not act alone. This entire administration sold the invasion of Iraq, and, as the Downing Street Memo suggested, fixed the intelligence around the predetermined policy. They lied about whether they were going to war, and they lied about the reasons for going to war.

The decision to engage in war is the most serious a president can make. The more we learn, the more we confirm that George Bush, Dick Cheney, and every single one of their senior advisors participated in a campaign of lies. They lied to Congress, they lied to the U.N., they lied to international allies, and they lied to the American public. And if only one of them lied to a grand jury, that's hardly where the criminality of the matter stops.

Libby lied to investigators in order to protect somebody, and there are really only two possibilities as to who: the Vice President of the United States, and the President of the United States. There's a lot more we still need to find out -- if not from Fitzgerald's ongoing probe, then from a Congressional inquiry. If a president can be impeached for lying about sex, what is the proper fate for a president who lies about war?

© Working Assets Online. All rights reserved.


URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=19812

Joseph C. Wilson: Our 27 months of hell:

AFTER THE two-year smear campaign orchestrated by senior officials in the Bush White House against my wife and me, it is tempting to feel vindicated by Friday's indictment of the vice president's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10823.htm

Hard to believe that Cheney did not know:

If Libby lied about how he discovered Plame's identity - he claims he heard it from journalists and had forgotten Cheney had told him - why would he tell such clumsy fibs? The only rational explanation is he was protecting his boss.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10834.htm

Focus: 'If I were Cheney I'd be sweating a little':

The vice-president should watch out: this prosecutor doesn’t stop with one scalp, writes Andrew Sullivan
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1849201,00.html

Rove fired from Bush Sr's '92 campaign over leak to Novak.

Karl Rove was fired from the 1992 re-election campaign of Bush Sr. for allegedly leaking a negative story about Bush loyalist/fundraiser Robert Mosbacher to Novak.
http://bustbob.com/view.asp?ID=5

http://www.antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=7856


The War Party Is Down, but for How Long?

by Christopher Deliso
balkanalysis.com

In a political landscape that had until recently seemed unremittingly bleak, in which a small and all-powerful group of politicians could rule at will with no regard for either the truth or the nation's best interests, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's five-count indictment of top Cheney aid I. Lewis Libby fell like a sledgehammer on a once-unbreakable edifice dedicated to overweening arrogance and the acquisition of power at all costs.

As the Seattle Times said of Fitzgerald, "his five-count indictment Friday of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff proves the system is working." And about time. In July 2004, commenting on her own stymied attempts to bring the truth to light, former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds decried "a broken system, a system abused and corrupted by the current executive, a system badly in need of repair."

Through his tenacity and single-minded determination to get to the bottom of the Plame leak and forged-documents affair, Patrick Fitzgerald seems to be doing the necessary repairs. We can only hope that the judge set for the next stage of the trial – Reggie Walton, the same judge who dismissed Sibel Edmonds' case on the grounds of allegedly protecting "certain diplomatic relations for national security" – doesn't reprise his performance there. Ms. Edmonds lamented that Walton obstructed her petition by "sitting on this case with no activity for almost two years."

The judge is a double-Bush appointee; he served as associate director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the President's Executive Office and senior White House adviser for crime under Bush 41, while he was appointed by 43 as a D.C. district judge in 2001. While Walton's track record shows that he "has no qualms ruling against government agencies," what will be his answer if the government resurrects the "state secrets" smokescreen used so effectively to silence Edmonds?

If they do, it's not likely that "Bulldog" Fitzgerald will have much patience for hindrances. While Judge Walton heeded the express wishes of the Bush administration and then-Attorney General Ashcroft, obstructing any progress in Sibel Edmonds' case for two years, Fitzgerald has now spent the same amount of time in tirelessly getting closer and closer to the heart of the conspiracy to lie us into war with Iraq. At bottom, both the Edmonds case and the Fitzgerald investigation, not to mention the AIPAC affair, are all interrelated; yanking the string on any one of them will unravel the same old ball of yarn.

We can thus note a common theme when it comes to the administration's love of secrecy and damage control: obstructionism. Whatever it takes to keep them in power, the war party is ready to do it, whether it be smearing critics like Joe Wilson or silencing them and blocking investigations, as with Ms. Edmonds. Now the Libby legal team is betting that they can claim the fog of war (preparations) reduced all of the conversations over Valerie Plame between officials and journalists to mere gossip, conjecture, and whispered hearsay.

But that's just not the case, as Fitzgerald repeatedly told us. Which is why this uneasy N.Y. Post editorial urging Fitzgerald to close his investigation sounds so utterly pathetic; in facetiously saying that "you'd think that [two years] is long enough to get the job done," and "it's not at all clear why Libby would lie in the first place," the article disingenuously tries to hide what is obvious now to everyone: that the war party's foot soldiers have deliberately dragged things out to obstruct justice, because there is something quite significant that needs to be obstructed. Yet from the halfhearted tone of the piece, it's clear that even these ardent supporters of the war party know the jig is up.

Nevertheless, Fitzgerald's championing of the system over politics might lead to some profound letdowns. Should he keep all charges and disclosures within a narrow mandate, Libby's trial (should it even be held) may fizzle out, leaving millions of Americans disappointed and in the dark about the Machiavellian machinations of their leaders. Not only might we never know who was responsible for the anti-Wilson attack, or why (though it's pretty clear to everyone already), we may also never get the satisfaction of watching (as Joe Wilson put it) Karl Rove get frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.

After all, as Fitzgerald conceded, "I know that people want to know whatever it is that we know, and they're probably sitting at home with TVs thinking, 'I want to jump through the TV, grab him by his collar and tell him to tell us everything they've figured out over the last two years.' … We just can't do that … not because we enjoy holding back information from you. That's the law."

The next stage of the game will thus be both as exasperating as it is crucial. It will decide the ultimate fate of the Bush administration. It is possible that Fitzgerald will let the White House walk, should be determine that his mandate doesn't allow him to go further.

But even in this worst-case scenario, the considerable media interest in the story will vex an administration that understands time in terms of 24-hour spin cycles. Bush reportedly gave his aides a pep talk after the Libby indictment, telling them to "get back on offense," but it is hard to imagine he will ever regain the momentum or respect he once enjoyed.

Yet what if the special prosecutor sets his sights not only on presidential strategist Karl Rove, but decides to go all the way to the top? As the San Francisco Chronicle reminds us, "The indictment states that Libby first heard from Cheney that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. It is hard to imagine that Cheney was unaware that his closest deputy was informing reporters around town about Plame's CIA connections." Indeed, could anyone really believe that Libby, Rove, and all other high-ranking government assistants do anything without explicit instructions from above?

Whether or not this will happen, we'll have to wait and see. For now, we already have an idea of the evasion tactics the war party will use. Libby's lawyer plans to fall back on the good old "I don't remember" ruse. And Russ Baker recently outlined some of the propaganda tactics to be employed against Fitzgerald. However, like Ms. Edmonds, he is morally unassailable: nonpartisan, incorruptible, and interested only in the truth. (Note that the former is the son of an Irish immigrant, while the latter is a naturalized citizen from Turkey. Apparently the call to uphold the Constitution resonates more strongly with newer generations of Americans than it does with old blue-bloods like the Bushes). The impossibility of smearing these two has been very frustrating for the war party.

If the Libby trial does go ahead, threatening to expose awkward and sensitive administration secrets, what could Bush and Cheney do to reduce the pressure? There's always the option of launching a new war against Syria and Iran on the basis of phony evidence. And hey, could we really put it past them? After all, these are the very people who delight in creating their own reality for the rest of us to follow, and who are perfectly willing to concoct elaborate fictions in order to expedite the needless deaths of thousands, as in the war on Iraq.

In reiterating the same tired rhetoric about terrorism, the president said, "The United States makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor them, because they are equally guilty of murder."

We can only hope that when all's said and done, this statement can be fleshed out in a different way: "The grand jury makes no distinction between those who commit acts of leaking and those who support and harbor them, because they are equally guilty of treason."

http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=7854

November 1, 2005
Clumsy Forgeries, Italian-Style

by Gordon Prather
The March 2005 report of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction contained a scathing chapter on the "intelligence" President Bush used to justify Operation Iraqi Freedom:

"As war loomed, the U.S. intelligence community was charged with telling policymakers what it knew about Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs. The community's best assessments were set out in an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, a summation of the community's views."

"These assessments were all wrong."

The Senate Intelligence Committee had already come to similar conclusions about the quality of the intelligence. Now, the committee is supposed to be investigating how the administration used – or misused – that intelligence to build public support for the war

The invasion and occupation of Iraq was a top priority for the Bush-Cheney administration, and every weenie in the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the neo-crazies in and out of government and their media sycophants knew it.

Moreover, Bush-Cheney made sure many weenies – in and out of government – in London, Paris, and Rome knew it, too.

You see, Bush-Cheney needed an excuse and a rationale to invade Iraq.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, gave them the excuse.

How about a rationale?

Well, the only justification for a preemptive invasion of Iraq acceptable to you soccer moms would be proof positive that Saddam Hussein had – or soon would have – nukes.

But there was a problem. The International Atomic Energy Agency had already certified in 1998 – before being forced to exit Iraq to avoid being killed accidentally by Clinton's bombing of Baghdad – that there no longer existed in Iraq any indication of a capability to produce nukes or the makings thereof.

So Cheney-Wolfowitz had to come up with "intelligence" proving Saddam had engaged in nuke-related activities in 1999 or 2000.

In December, 2001, Cheney and his cabal began promoting within our intelligence community and with neo-crazy media sycophants two bits of 'intelligence' provided by "the intelligence service of a foreign government."

One was that Saddam had recently attempted to buy specialized high-strength aluminum tubes, which Cheney and his cabal insisted – despite the opinions of experts to the contrary – could only be used as rotors in uranium-enrichment gas centrifuges.

The other was that Iraq had recently arranged to buy up to 500 tons of uranium oxide – "yellowcake" – from Niger.

After nine months of concerted effort, Cheney and his cabal managed to get both these bits of "intelligence" incorporated into the October 2002 NIE cited by the Commission.

Now – on the eve of possible indictments in the CIA-Plame affair – come investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo to post this blockbuster exposé (part 1 and part 2) at La Repubblica magazine's Web site.

"The military intervention in Iraq was justified by two revelations: Saddam Hussein attempted to acquire unprocessed uranium (yellowcake) in Niger for enrichment with centrifuges built with aluminum tubes imported from Europe. The fabricators of the twin hoaxes (there was never any trace in Iraq of unprocessed uranium or centrifuges) were the Italian government and Italian military intelligence.

"They are the same two hoaxes that Judith Miller, the reporter who betrayed her newspaper, published (together with Michael Gordon) on September 8, 2002."

According to Bonini and D'Avonzo, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi – who wanted to curry favor with President Bush, who had already asked him to provide any "intelligence" the Italians had that might indicate Saddam Hussein was reconstructing his nuke programs – sent Nicolo Pollari, the Italian equivalent of our director of Central Intelligence, to meet with Stephen Hadley (then-deputy national security adviser to Bush) in the White House on Sept. 9, 2002.

Pollari later told the Italian Parliament's intelligence oversight committee that he told Hadley:

"We had documentary proof of the acquisition by Iraq of uranium ore from a central African nation. We also know of an Iraqi attempt to purchase centrifuges for uranium enrichment from German and possibly Italian manufacturers."

That same week that Pollari met with Hadley, Berlusconi caused an article to be published in Panorama – a magazine Berlusconi owns – entitled "War With Iraq? It Has Already Begun," wherein the "intelligence" provided Hadley is "confirmed."

The actual "documentation" for the arranged purchase of yellowcake by Iraq from Niger was delivered to the U.S. embassy in Rome on Oct. 9, 2002.

Someone leaked that documentation to the IAEA just days before Bush invaded Iraq, with Berlusconi in tow. Within a matter of hours, the IAEA pronounced the documents "clumsy" forgeries.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GK01Aa03.html
The unraveling of the Cheney cabal
By Ehsan Ahrari

The "Cheney cabal" that Lawrence Wilkerson, aide to (former secretary of state) Colin Powell, has recently accused of "highjacking" US foreign policy, might eventually be brought to light, now that one of its chief architects, I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, is facing a public trial and the prospect of a stiff sentence. He has been indicted on three counts of perjury and lying under oath about the disclosure of the name of an undercover Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent to the media.

Those who read James Mann's highly underpublicized, but excellent book, The Rise and Fall of the Vulcans, have known about the power that the neo-conservatives (aka Vulcans) wielded in President George W Bush's White House. The indictment of Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, only confirms



the essence of that cabal. What is still to come out are its details.

The real plan to invade Iraq was originally hatched in 1991, when then-president, George H W Bush, was at the helm. Libby was only one of its planners. The "big enchiladas" were Cheney, who then served as secretary of defense, and Paul Wolfowitz, who served as under secretary of defense. Current Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld became an active participant as someone who was then outside the government. Their plan to oust Saddam Hussein's forces from Kuwait was reportedly far riskier than the one promoted by then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell. Bush Senior apparently vetoed the Cheney et al's plan and gave a nod to Powell's.

The neo-conservative architects of the invasion of Iraq were "deeply disappointed" when Bush Senior decided against the hot pursuit of the retreating Iraqi forces from Kuwait. They knew they had lost only one battle. They shelved their original plan, but only to use it in the future.

With the election of George W Bush and Cheney, the neo-cons were provided a golden opportunity to resurrect the plan to oust Saddam. The terrorist attack of September 11 turned out to be the icing on the cake, from their viewpoint. Bush had no experience in foreign policy and as such he heavily relied on his vice president, who aggressively staked out a major role in US national security policy. He was to become the most influential vice president in American history.

Cheney had an elaborate strategy in the realm of foreign policy. According to Mann's book and other reports, instead of hiring foreign-policy specialists, the vice president "turned to noted neo-conservatives and hawks, including Libby, who had been at the heart of the conservative movement during their eight years in the political wilderness [during the two terms of Bill Clinton]".

As Mann points out, even though the initial military target of the US in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks was Afghanistan, Wolfowitz (then deputy defense secretary) and Libby "laid out the case for the invasion of Iraq just one week after the Twin Towers fell".

Libby was also reportedly responsible for the first draft of Powell's now infamous presentation to the United Nations a month before the US invasion of Iraq. Powell discarded that draft and developed his own, carefully checking and reworking the questionable intelligence data. As it turned out, even that intelligence data was way off the mark. Only recently, Powell admitted during a TV interview that he would be long remembered for that erroneous speech.

The chief reason underlying the current unmaking of the "Iraqi cabal" is the overriding nature of secrecy under which it operated. Only a small group of "true believers" participated in it. More to the point, they were driven by the notion that Bush so unequivocally stated to the world, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." The domestic application of that assertion meant that anyone who opposed the then-impending US invasion of Iraq was envisaged as an "enemy". That frame of reference also applied assiduously as a litmus test of anyone's patriotism, especially those who worked for the US government at any level. Allies were derided as "Old Europe" versus "New Europe", based on the fact that they opposed or supported the invasion.

The neo-cons, at least temporarily, got away with the invasion of Iraq for a number of reasons. First, it was carried out by spuriously linking it with transnational terrorism. Even though there was no connection between Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and Saddam, the US citizenry believed its president when he made claims to that effect.

Second, the American media, internationally known for its hard-nosed commitment to truth and investigative reporting, rolled over and played patsy to the Bush administration's persistent exaggerations and unproved claims about Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction-related activities.

Third, Saddam was such a nefarious character that not many anywhere in the world felt comfortable arguing that his regime should not be overthrown. And finally, there existed - as it does even to this day - an absence of Muslim or Arab leadership that had the moral standing or courage to stand up to the US's blatant move to violate international law by using the then highly questionable "evidence" that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction.

Even within the domestic environment of the US, those who opposed the impending invasion of Iraq could only use constitution-based arguments to make a case against the ouster of a sovereign leader in the presence of flimsy or non-existent evidence. In that duration, top national-security aides were crisscrossing the country and parroting Bush's highly contentious statement, "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof - the smoking gun - that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

Aside from their inordinate commitment to secrecy, the undoing of the neo-con cabal is caused by their resolve to destroy the reputation of those who questioned the very basis of going to war with Iraq. Libby's downfall came as a result of his alleged persistent involvement in disclosing the name of an undercover CIA agent (Valerie Plame) because her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, publicly questioned the underlying reason of going to war against Iraq. For a supposed smart lawyer, Libby is accused of consistently lying about it under oath.

What are the larger implications of the Cheney cabal? To start with, the US has gotten itself in a huge mess by invading Iraq, by brandishing highly questionable "evidence" and by telling the world to take a hike if it did not like its actions. Now, as US casualties surpass 2,000 in Iraq, the international community seems to be sending the exact same message to the Bush administration.

A war that was carried out with no regard for world opinion or international law has created such a quagmire for the US that it simply has to extricate itself by eradicating the Iraqi insurgency. However, that eradication will come with a human cost that no US administration will be able to pay. How long can the Bush administration prolong its staying power in Iraq at the same rate of American casualties? The answer, simply, is not very long. That very fact may be good news to those who wish America ill, but certainly not to those who worry about its long-term implications for Iraq, the Middle East and the US.

By rhetorically tying the fate of democracy in Iraq to its emergence in the entire Muslim Middle East, the Bush administration has painted itself in a corner. Just looking at the US involvement in Iraq, it must win. It has no other choices. However, the current ground realities in Iraq appear quite the contrary.

One has to consider the dangers of implementing a highly ideologically charged foreign policy that has been the forte of this administration. September 11 was, indeed, a tragedy of epic proportions. However, an angry response for a short period of time was both understandable and imaginable. What the Bush administration created was an ostensibly ceaseless highly charged response that painted the picture of America as a frenzied actor bent on taking revenge. Anyone who got in the way was to become the victim of its rage. Such a frame of mind also created the prison abuses of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

The continuing tragedy is that the very same ideologically driven frame of reference is still being used. That frame of reference drove the policy of not engaging North Korea until some cooler heads in the Department of State prevailed. Then after much delay began the six-nation dialogue with Pyongyang. More than five years have been wasted because of the intransigence of the neo-cons to engage North Korea.

By refusing to engage Iran in a dialogue regarding its nuclear program, the Bush administration is using the very same approach. Elliott Abrams, one of the remaining neo-cons in the administration - and the man who was convicted in the Iran-Contra affair of two charges of misdemeanor, but was pardoned by Bush Senior - is heading the policy of "non-engagement" toward Iran in the National Security Council. As the current administration enters the sixth year of the Bush presidency, the turbulence related to Iraq dominates its agenda. What the US needs is some international endeavor to disentangle it from Iraq. While no such breakthroughs appear to be emerging any time soon, the unraveling of the Cheney cabal is likely to cause more embarrassment for Bush.

There are already calls from a number of senior legislators for an inquiry into the role of the vice president in the Cheney cabal. What is even more interesting to see is what Cheney will have to say when he is subpoenaed as a witness in the Libby trial. Further public disclosures on this controversy are likely to be very interesting, to say the least.

Ehsan Ahrari is an independent strategic analyst based in Alexandria, VA, US. His columns appear regularly in Asia Times Online. He is also a regular contributor to the Global Beat Syndicate. His website: www.ehsanahrari.com.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing .)

washingtonpost.com
Trial Could Pit Libby's Interests Against Bush's

By Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, November 1, 2005; A02


Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, is expected to plead not guilty to charges that he lied and obstructed justice in the CIA leak probe when he is arraigned Thursday, setting the stage for a possible courtroom fight in which Libby's interests could collide with those of the Bush White House, according to several Republican officials.

Libby, who was charged with five felonies, is putting the finishing touches on a new legal and public relations team. It will argue in court and in public that he is guilty of nothing more than having a foggy memory and a hectic schedule, according to people close to him. He is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court before Judge Reggie B. Walton.

As Libby prepared for a court battle, Cheney made plans for life without his closest adviser. Cheney yesterday named longtime counsel David Addington as his new chief of staff and John Hannah as national security adviser. Both were questioned in the Libby indictment.

If Libby's case goes to trial, Addington and Hannah are only two of the many White House officials -- including Cheney himself -- who could be forced to testify about how they handled intelligence, dealt with the media and built the argument for the Iraq war, according to people close to the case. Republicans worry that Libby's court fight will force President Bush to deal with the prospect of top officials testifying and embarrassing disclosures of how the White House operates and treats critics.

It is also possible, they note, that Libby will strike a plea agreement and avert a public trial.

"Obviously, the best thing for the Republican Party is to have this all end as quickly as possible," said former representative Vin Weber (R-Minn.), a close White House adviser. "But at the end of the day, you cannot ask a guy who all of us think is an upstanding and honorable guy to give up his legal rights."

Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald initially set out to determine whether any administration official had illegally disclosed the identity of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame as part of an effort to discredit her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Wilson had harshly criticized the administration's use of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war. After a 22-month investigation, a federal grand jury charged Libby with lying and obstructing justice during the probe.

Criminal defense lawyers say Cheney would probably be called as a witness in any trial, to verify and recount the conversation he had with Libby on June 12, 2003. At that time, Cheney allegedly told Libby that Plame worked in the CIA's Counterproliferation Division.

A senior White House adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic, said the Bush team believes it dodged a bullet when Fitzgerald charged only Libby on Friday and then pointedly said in his news conference that the indictment should not be read as a condemnation of the war or its run-up.

The aide said a trial would be "mostly contained" to Cheney's office, adding that most senior Cheney aides "will have to testify." Still, a number of White House aides will probably be summoned to testify, which could be a political and practical distraction for Bush well into 2006, another person close to the White House said.

The senior adviser said the situation will become a much bigger problem if Rove is indicted.

Fitzgerald appeared prepared to indict Rove heading into last week for making false statements, according to three people close to the probe. But that changed during a private meeting last Tuesday between Fitzgerald and Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin. It's not clear precisely what happened in that meeting, but two sources briefed on it said Luskin discussed new information that gave Fitzgerald "pause."

That evening, Fitzgerald's investigative team called Adam Levine, a member of the White House communications team at the time of the leak. An investigator questioned Levine about an e-mail Rove had sent Levine on July 11, 2003 -- the same day Rove discussed Plame with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, according to Dan French, Levine's attorney.

The e-mail, which did not mention Plame, ended with Rove telling Levine to come see him. The investigator wanted details of that conversation, which took place within an hour or so of the Cooper-Rove chat, according to a person familiar with the situation. Levine told investigators they did not discuss Plame.

Part of Rove's defense has been that he was very busy man who simply forgot to tell investigators about his conversation with Cooper. If the e-mail "was exculpatory at all, it was most likely a small piece of a much larger mosaic of information," French said.

A source familiar with the discussion between Rove and Fitzgerald said the Tuesday meeting was about a lot more than "just an e-mail from Levine." He would not elaborate.

Rove remains a focus of the CIA leak probe. He has told friends it is possible he still will be indicted for providing false statements to the grand jury.

"Everyone thinks it is over for Karl and they are wrong," a source close to Rove said. The strategist's legal and political advisers "by no means think the part of the investigation concerning Karl is closed."

Cooper's attorney, Dick Sauber, said Fitzgerald certainly meant it when he told Luskin last week that Rove remains in legal jeopardy and under investigation. "It wouldn't surprise me knowing how careful he is and how much he doesn't want to be seen as trigger-happy, that he is going through each of those things [that Rove presented] and seeing if they can be verified or not," Sauber said.

"But no prosecutor wants to be embarrassed in court by something he didn't know. And no prosecutor, especially Pat Fitzgerald, wants to be seen as unfair -- especially in this kind of matter with so much at stake."

Yesterday, Wilson delivered a speech in which he said Rove should lose his job regardless of whether he knowingly used Plame's name or revealed her CIA connection. "This is a firing offense," he said.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan rejected that idea and said Rove was at work, engaged in meetings and enjoying Bush's full confidence. McClellan said the White House will not comment on the leak because the investigation is ongoing and it does not want to prejudice the Libby case.

McClellan, who famously told reporters and the public in 2003 that Libby and Rove had assured him they had no roles in the leak, also defended his own credibility. McClellan said he wishes he could say more, but that he is confident he has been honest and forthcoming. People close to the investigation said Libby and Rove misled the White House spokesman.

Fitzgerald's original grand jury was released from service Friday, after its term expired. Courthouse officials said he is likely to "borrow" a grand jury already convened to investigate additional crimes if needed, and could wrap up his investigation in less than two weeks. It is not uncommon for a prosecutor to quickly present his case to a new grand jury and ask for an indictment, they said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...494.html?sub=AR

November 21, 2005 Issue
Copyright © 2005 The American Conservative



Forging the Case for War


Who was behind the Niger uranium documents?


by Philip Giraldi


From the beginning, there has been little doubt in the intelligence community that the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame was part of a bigger story. That she was exposed in an attempt to discredit her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, is clear, but the drive to demonize Wilson cannot reasonably be attributed only to revenge. Rather, her identification likely grew out of an attempt to cover up the forging of documents alleging that Iraq attempted to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger.

What took place and why will not be known with any certainty until the details of the Fitzgerald investigation are revealed. (As we go to press, Fitzgerald has made no public statement.) But recent revelations in the Italian press, most notably in the pages of La Repubblica, along with information already on the public record, suggest a plausible scenario for the evolution of Plamegate.

Information developed by Italian investigators indicates that the documents were produced in Italy with the connivance of the Italian intelligence service. It also reveals that the introduction of the documents into the American intelligence stream was facilitated by Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans (OSP), a parallel intelligence center set up in the Pentagon to develop alternative sources of information in support of war against Iraq.

The first suggestion that Iraq was seeking yellowcake uranium to construct a nuclear weapon came on Oct. 15, 2001, shortly after 9/11, when Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his newly appointed chief of the Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare (SISMI), Nicolo Pollari, made an official visit to Washington. Berlusconi was eager to make a good impression and signaled his willingness to support the American effort to implicate Saddam Hussein in 9/11. Pollari, in his position for less than three weeks, was likewise keen to establish himself with his American counterparts and was under pressure from Berlusconi to present the U.S. with information that would be vital to the rapidly accelerating War on Terror. Well aware of the Bush administration’s obsession with Iraq, Pollari used his meeting with top CIA officials to provide a SISMI dossier indicating that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Niger. The same intelligence was passed simultaneously to Britain’s MI-6.

But the Italian information was inconclusive and old, some of it dating from the 1980s. The British, the CIA, and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research analyzed the intelligence and declared that it was “lacking in detail” and “very limited” in scope.

In February 2002, Pollari and Berlusconi resubmitted their report to Washington with some embellishments, resulting in Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger. Wilson visited Niamey in February 2002 and subsequently reported to the CIA that the information could not be confirmed.

Enter Michael Ledeen, the Office of Special Plans’ man in Rome. Ledeen was paid $30,000 by the Italian Ministry of the Interior in 1978 for a report on terrorism and was well known to senior SISMI officials. Italian sources indicate that Pollari was eager to engage with the Pentagon hardliners, knowing they were at odds with the CIA and the State Department officials who had slighted him. He turned to Ledeen, who quickly established himself as the liaison between SISMI and Feith’s OSP, where he was a consultant. Ledeen, who had personal access to the National Security Council’s Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley and was also a confidant of Vice President Cheney, was well placed to circumvent the obstruction coming from the CIA and State.

The timing, August 2002, was also propitious as the administration was intensifying its efforts to make the case for war. In the same month, the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) was set up to market the war by providing information to friends in the media. It has subsequently been alleged that false information generated by Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress was given to Judith Miller and other journalists through WHIG.

On Sept. 9, 2002, Ledeen set up a secret meeting between Pollari and Deputy National Security Adviser Hadley. Two weeks before the meeting, a group of documents had been offered to journalist Elisabetta Burba of the Italian magazine Panorama for $10,000, but the demand for money was soon dropped and the papers were handed over. The man offering the documents was Rocco Martino, a former SISMI officer who delivered the first WMD dossier to London in October 2002. That Martino quickly dropped his request for money suggests that the approach was a set-up primarily intended to surface the documents.

Panorama, perhaps not coincidentally, is owned by Prime Minister Berlusconi. On Oct. 9, the documents were taken from the magazine to the U.S. Embassy, where they were apparently expected. Instead of going to the CIA Station, which would have been the normal procedure, they were sent straight to Washington where they bypassed the agency’s analysts and went directly to the NSC and the Vice President’s Office.

On Jan. 28, 2003, over the objections of the CIA and State, the famous 16 words about Niger’s uranium were used in President Bush’s State of the Union address justifying an attack on Iraq: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” Both the British and American governments had actually obtained the report from the Italians, who had asked that they not be identified as the source. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency also looked at the documents shortly after Bush spoke and pronounced them crude forgeries.

President Bush soon stopped referring to the Niger uranium, but Vice President Cheney continued to insist that Iraq was seeking nuclear weapons.

The question remains: who forged the documents? The available evidence suggests that two candidates had access and motive: SISMI and the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans.

In January 2001, there was a break-in at the Niger Embassy in Rome. Documents were stolen but no valuables. The break-in was subsequently connected to, among others, Rocco Martino, who later provided the dossier to Panorama. Italian investigators now believe that Martino, with SISMI acquiescence, originally created a Niger dossier in an attempt to sell it to the French, who were managing the uranium concession in Niger and were concerned about unauthorized mining. Martino has since admitted to the Financial Times that both the Italian and American governments were behind the eventual forgery of the full Niger dossier as part of a disinformation operation. The authentic documents that were stolen were bunched with the Niger uranium forgeries, using authentic letterhead and Niger Embassy stamps. By mixing the papers, the stolen documents were intended to establish the authenticity of the forgeries.

At this point, any American connection to the actual forgeries remains unsubstantiated, though the OSP at a minimum connived to circumvent established procedures to present the information directly to receptive policy makers in the White House. But if the OSP is more deeply involved, Michael Ledeen, who denies any connection with the Niger documents, would have been a logical intermediary in co-ordinating the falsification of the documents and their surfacing, as he was both a Pentagon contractor and was frequently in Italy. He could have easily been assisted by ex-CIA friends from Iran-Contra days, including a former Chief of Station from Rome, who, like Ledeen, was also a consultant for the Pentagon and the Iraqi National Congress.

It would have been extremely convenient for the administration, struggling to explain why Iraq was a threat, to be able to produce information from an unimpeachable “foreign intelligence source” to confirm the Iraqi worst-case.

The possible forgery of the information by Defense Department employees would explain the viciousness of the attack on Valerie Plame and her husband. Wilson, when he denounced the forgeries in the New York Times in July 2003, turned an issue in which there was little public interest into something much bigger. The investigation continues, but the campaign against this lone detractor suggests that the administration was concerned about something far weightier than his critical op-ed.
_____________________________________________________

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, is a partner in Cannistraro Associates, an international security consultancy.


http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_11_07/feature.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...3101386_pf.html

washingtonpost.com
What the 'Shield' Covered Up

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, November 1, 2005; A25



Has anyone noticed that the coverup worked?

In his impressive presentation of the indictment of Lewis "Scooter" Libby last week, Patrick Fitzgerald expressed the wish that witnesses had testified when subpoenas were issued in August 2004, and "we would have been here in October 2004 instead of October 2005."

Note the significance of the two dates: October 2004, before President Bush was reelected, and October 2005, after the president was reelected. Those dates make clear why Libby threw sand in the eyes of prosecutors, in the special counsel's apt metaphor, and helped drag out the investigation.

As long as Bush still faced the voters, the White House wanted Americans to think that officials such as Libby, Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney had nothing to do with the leak campaign to discredit its arch-critic on Iraq, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.

And Libby, the good soldier, pursued a brilliant strategy to slow the inquiry down. As long as he was claiming that journalists were responsible for spreading around the name and past CIA employment of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, Libby knew that at least some news organizations would resist having reporters testify. The journalistic "shield" was converted into a shield for the Bush administration's coverup.

Bush and his disciples would like everyone to assume that Libby was some kind of lone operator who, for this one time in his life, abandoned his usual caution. They pray that Libby will be the only official facing legal charges and that political interest in the case will dissipate.

You can tell the president worries that this won't work, because yesterday he did what he usually does when he's in trouble: He sought to divide the country and set up a bruising ideological fight. He did so by nominating a staunchly conservative judge to the Supreme Court.

Judge Samuel Alito is a red flag for liberals and red meat for Bush's socially conservative base. Alito has a long paper trail as a 15-year veteran of a court of appeals and a strong right-wing reputation. This guarantees a huge battle that will serve the president even if Alito's nomination fails: Anything that "unites the base" and distracts attention from the Fitzgerald investigation is good news for Bush.

That is why Senate Democrats -- and one hopes they might be joined by some brave Republicans -- should insist that before Alito's nomination is voted on, Bush and Cheney have some work to do.

The Fitzgerald indictment makes perfectly clear that the White House misled the public as to its involvement in sliming Wilson and talking about Plame.

Bush needs to tell the public -- yes, the old phrase still applies -- what he knew about the operation to discredit Wilson and when he knew it. And he shouldn't hide behind those "legalisms" that Republicans were so eager to condemn in the Clinton years.

The obligation to come clean applies, big-time, to Cheney, who appears at several critical points in the saga detailed in the Fitzgerald indictment. What exactly transpired in the meetings between Libby and Cheney on the Wilson case? It is inconceivable that an aide as careful and loyal as Libby was a rogue official. Did Cheney set these events in motion? This is a question about good government at least as much as it is a legal matter.

Fitzgerald has made clear that he wants to keep this case going if doing so will bring us closer to the truth. Lawyers not involved in the case suggest that the indictment was written in a way that could encourage Libby, facing up to 30 years in prison, to cooperate in that effort.

But there is a catch. If Libby, through nods and winks, knows that at the end of Bush's term, the president will issue an unconditional pardon, he will have no interest in helping Fitzgerald, and every interest in shutting up. If Bush truly wants the public to know all the facts in the leak case, as he has claimed in the past, he will announce now that he will not pardon Libby. That would let Fitzgerald finish his work unimpeded, and we would all have a chance, at last, to learn how and why this sad affair came to pass.

postchat@aol.com

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9886959/

Heated day in D.C. leads to more prewar probes
Following unusual closed Senate session, Democrats claim victory
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., talks to the press on Capitol Hill Tuesday after Democrats forced the Republican-controlled Senate into an unusual closed session to discuss prewar intelligence.
Dennis Cook / AP

• Senate 'hijacked,' say Republicans
Nov. 1: NBC's Chip Reid reports on the unusual closed session in the Senate forced by the Democrats who are questioning the intelligence that led to the war in Iraq.
MSNBC

• Democrats claim victory
Nov. 1: Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid talks about the Senate Intelligence Committee agreement to continue an investigation into prewar intelligence.
MSNBC

WASHINGTON - Democrats claimed “victory for the American people” Tuesday after the Senate Intelligence Committee agreed to continue an investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the Republicans, the Senate minority leader said.

Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., forced the Republican-controlled Senate into an unusual closed session for more than two hours Tuesday, accusing Republicans of ignoring intelligence that President Bush used before invading Iraq.

A phase-by-phase investigation will resume, Reid announced after the secret session. It will be the second stage of a probe that Democrats have been pressing for for a year.

An appointed six-member task force — three members from each party — will review the committee’s progress and report back to their respective caucuses by Nov. 14.

Despite prewar claims, no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, and some Democrats have accused the administration of manipulating information.

“They have repeatedly chosen to protect the Republican administration rather than get to the bottom of what happened and why,” Reid said.

Taken by surprise, furious Republicans derided the unexpected closed Senate session as a political stunt.

“The United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership,” said Majority Leader Bill Frist during the tense hours on Capitol Hill. “They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas.”

In a speech on the Senate floor, Reid said the American people and U.S. troops deserved to know the details of how the United States became engaged in the war, particularly in light of the indictment of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.

“Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) has been trying for a year to get the intelligence committee to keep its promise and investigate the misuse of intelligence information,” Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said shortly before the session ended. “We just thought we couldn't wait any longer for them to keep giving excuses. This is very serious.”

When the closed session started, the public was ordered out of the chamber, the lights were dimmed, senators filed to their seats on the floor and the doors were closed. No vote is required in such circumstances.

Provoked by Libby indictment
Libby was indicted last Friday in an investigation that touched on the war, the leak of the identity of a CIA official married to a critic of the administration’s Iraq policy.

Libby resigned Friday after being indicted on charges of obstruction of justice, making false statements and perjury in an investigation by a special prosecutor into the unauthorized leak of a CIA agent’s identity.

Reid accused Republicans of playing upon post-9/11 fears as grounds for going to war.

“Obviously we know now their nuclear claims were wholly inaccurate,” he said. “But more troubling is the fact that a lot of intelligence experts were telling the Administration then that its claims about Saddam's nuclear capabilities were false.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., produced a 511-page report last summer on flaws of an Iraq intelligence estimate assembled by the country’s top analysts in October 2002, and he promised a second phase would look at issues that couldn’t be finalized in the first year of work.

The committee had started the second phase of the review, Roberts said, but it has not been completed. He said he had intended all along to work on the second phase beginning next week.

Democrats challenging war justification
Democrats contend that the unmasking of Valerie Plame was retribution for her husband, Joseph Wilson, publicly challenging the Bush administration’s contention that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium from Africa. That claim was part of the White House’s justification for going to war.

Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said Reid was making “some sort of stink about Scooter Libby and the CIA leak.”

A former majority leader, Lott said a closed session is appropriate for such overarching matters as impeachment and chemical weapons — the two topics that last sent the senators into such sessions.

In addition, Lott said, Reid’s move violated the Senate’s tradition of courtesy and consent. But there was nothing in Senate rules enabling Republicans to thwart Reid’s effort.

As Reid spoke, Frist met in the back of the chamber with a half-dozen senior GOP senators, including Roberts, who bore the brunt of Reid’s criticism. Reid said Roberts reneged on a promise to fully investigate whether the administration exaggerated and manipulated intelligence leading up to the war.

The Senate had been considering a budget bill when it went into closed session.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.columbiatribune.com/2005/Oct/20051031News013.asp

Reactions to leak vary among ex-CIA insiders


San Francisco Chronicle
Published Monday, October 31, 2005
When Larry Johnson heard from a friend that Valerie Plame, an old classmate from his CIA training class, had been identified in a newspaper column as a CIA operative, his first reaction was shock.

"I was furious," said Johnson, who left the CIA in 1989 for the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Counterterrorism and now runs a business consulting firm. His growing sense that Plame was outed for the political benefit of the White House has only heightened his sense of outrage. "People ought to be fired, lose their jobs and face prosecution," he said.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former case officer in the CIA’s clandestine service who is now a resident fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, had a different reaction. "I don’t think the relay of just that name, given the circumstances, is such a serious thing," he said. "That kind of thing has happened innumerable times with journalists. This has really been blown egregiously out of proportion."

Those extremes define the range of reaction to the Plame revelation within the shadow world of CIA spooks, as described by those who have left that realm for a life in which people can talk about such things.

Reactions largely hinged on how seriously the former operatives took Plame’s position within the clandestine community when Robert Novak identified her.

The CIA had sent Plame’s husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson, to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from the West African nation. Wilson later publicly criticized the White House’s use of those claims, since discredited, in the months leading to the war in Iraq. Shortly thereafter, Novak identified Plame as Wilson’s wife, leading to a two-year investigation into whether a top White House aide leaked the agent’s identity to the journalist and whether doing so was a crime.

As special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald pursues his investigation into those questions, the same debate echoes through the intelligence community.

For some, the question boils down to whether a law had been broken specifically, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, which bars those with access to classified information from knowingly revealing the identity of a covert agent.

"If" the leaker "knew for a fact that this person was undercover and was operating undercover, he should have his legs broken," said Andre LeGallo, a former senior intelligence officer with the CIA directorate of operations and president of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

"If he said it like, ‘I think’ " Wilson’s " ‘wife works in the agency,’ without knowing if she’s in science or technology or a logistics expert, that’s a pretty tough call," LeGallo said.

For other former operatives, the idea that the law was open to question was an indication of a bigger problem. "If they’re going to say this law is not sufficient in such a blatant example of exposing somebody’s cover, then the law needs to be rewritten," said Melissa Boyle Mahle, who wrote about her experience as a clandestine CIA operative in her memoir, "Denial and Deception."

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hadar.php?articleid=7874

November 2, 2005
All the President's Men, the Sequel

by Leon Hadar
Under the leadership of a conservative Republican president, the U.S. was drawn into a costly military quagmire in a strategic region of Asia. The president was facing growing domestic political opposition to his management of the controversial war, and some of his aides decided to launch an aggressive campaign aimed at antiwar critics.

Some elements of this effort, including the illegal targeting of those on the president's "enemy list," came to light. The president's aides were worried about the disastrous political ramifications for the administration and engaged in a cover-up.

Eventually, the media, Congress, and the legal system responded and took action against the perpetrators of this illegal cover-up. The result was that the president and his entire administration were overwhelmed by a major national scandal that threatened not only the president's political standing at home, but also his ability to deal with the country's foreign challenges. It's the Watergate scandal we are discussing now. It ended up forcing President Richard Nixon out of office and led to the conviction of several of his top political aides, some of whom had to serve time in jail.

What we sometimes forget is that the crisis that engulfed Nixon and his aides had less to do with the attempt by secret White House operatives (the "plumbers") to break into the offices of the Democratic Party in the Watergate building in Washington, D.C., than with the effort by the White House to cover up its involvement in the break-in and other illegal activities.

Moreover, we should also not forget that although the Watergate scandal revolved around legal issues – including important constitutional dilemmas (for example, whether the president should be forced to turn over the tapes of conversations he had recorded) – and judges, prosecutors, and lawyers played central roles in the drama, Plamegate (pardon me, I mean Watergate) was first and foremost a political scandal.

Indeed, it's impossible to understand how that "cancer on the presidency" had spread in the early 1970s without recalling its political context, in particular, the division in the United States over the Vietnam War. That American military quagmire in Southeast Asia ignited powerful opposition against Nixon's policies, so his aides took action to intimidate and silence the war's critics.

In fact, the same crew of Watergate "plumbers" also broke into the offices of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department official who had leaked the Pentagon Papers (the secret official history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam) to the New York Times.

They wanted to find information that would help them discredit Joseph Wilson – oops, sorry – Daniel Ellsberg.

Following the political drama that engulfed Washington this week against the backdrop of another military quagmire in another strategic part of Asia – the uncovering of a political and media campaign to discredit war opponents and an effort to cover it up; the indictment of a White House aide who had participated in that conspiracy; a U.S. president who is fighting for his political life; a U.S. capital that is holding its collective breath and waiting for more heads to fall – I was reminded of the famous maxim that "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."

Tragedy

Unfortunately, while the Plamegate scandal – which centers on the "outing" by White House officials of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative Valerie Plame Wilson – is beginning to look more and more like a rerun of Watergate, it certainly doesn't have the making of a farce, but of another tragedy.

Plamegate is probably not going to bring down the Bush presidency, but it could bring to a sad end the careers of several top government officials and send some of them to jail. And it could certainly affect public and congressional attitudes toward the Iraq war. Last Friday, the first victim in the drama was indicted by a federal jury in Washington. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Richard Cheney's chief of staff, was charged with lying to investigators and misleading the grand jury that is investigating the leaking to the press of the CIA's officer's name.

Libby was one of the White House's "Vulcans," who have been the driving force behind President Bush's post-9/11 foreign policy, including the invasion of Iraq. He has been described as "Cheney's Cheney," the most powerful aide to the most powerful vice president in American history. Libby, a neoconservative ideologue and a protégé of former Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz, was also an adviser to President Bush and one of the members of the White House Iraq Group.

This secretive entity helped manage the political and public relations campaign to win congressional and public support for an attack on Iraq, including by suggesting that Saddam Hussein was buying significant quantities of uranium from Africa to help develop nuclear weapons (President Bush made that argument in a State of the Union address on the eve of the war). When former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, following a trip he made to Africa, told reporters that he could not verify that Niger sold uranium to Iraq, and accused the White House of misleading the American public and Congress, Libby apparently led a behind-the-scenes campaign to discredit Wilson, telling reporters that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and was responsible for sending him to Niger.

Libby denied his involvement in the conspiracy against Wilson during an FBI investigation, but the special prosecutor insisted that "Scooter" lied about that. Legal analysts are debating whether Libby will be sentenced to jail, but political analysts agree that his indictment is just the first chapter in a scandal whose main focus will be political: the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq and the political and public relations battle it launched to win support for ousting Saddam Hussein.

That the indictment of Libby took place in the same week that the death toll of Americans in Iraq passed 2,000 dramatizes the challenges that President Bush and the war party in his administration will have to confront in the coming weeks and months.

The trial of Libby will take place against the backdrop of the growing mess and rising American casualties in Iraq, with top White House officials, including Vice President Cheney, being called to testify as witnesses. The trial, coupled with reports by a more aggressive press and Congress, will help uncover some of the methods of deception that were used by the administration before the Iraq war to persuade a skeptical American and international public that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and links to al-Qaeda.

Poser

And one of the main questions that will be posed by journalists and lawmakers: "Who were the president's men who conducted the disinformation campaign on Iraq, and what did President Bush and Vice President Cheney know about that campaign?"

All of this will take place at a time when President Bush is continuing to sink in the opinion polls, which suggest that his approval ratings are now in the low 40s. The White House remains under enormous strain after the botched Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers and the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina.

Although Bush's political strategist Karl Rove was not indicted last Friday, Bush's most influential adviser ("Bush's Brain") remains under investigation for his role in a conspiracy to "out" Valerie Wilson, and it is quite possible that he will also be indicted and forced to resign. Moreover, with the 2006 mid-term election getting closer, Bush has even been attacked by members of his own party and some of his conservative allies, while some leading Republican figures have been involved in various corruption scandals.

In a way, President Bush has lost the aura of invincibility that he seemed to have acquired as the winning post-9/11 "War President" whom lawmakers and journalists refrained from attacking for fear they would be punished by a mighty White House and a supportive public.

Like Nixon at the height of Watergate, Bush is now perceived as a weak and ineffective president. This explains why so many critics of President Bush and his Iraq policy, such as former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, are coming out from the holes where they have been hiding for so long. The "fear factor" has gone, and the long (political) knives are being sharpened.

Copyright © 2005 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.

http://www.antiwar.com/sperry/?articleid=7880


November 2, 2005
The Other Liars

by Paul Sperry
The White House is spinning Scooter Libby's indictment for systematic lying under oath as an isolated affair.

But the special prosecutor's probe has made a liar of more than just Libby. Indeed, it's exposed a far broader pattern of deceit involving almost all the president's men, starting with the vice president.

"I don't know Joe Wilson," Dick Cheney told NBC's Tim Russert after the CIA leak scandal broke in 2003, a denial that echoes Libby's own before the grand jury. "I have no idea who hired him and it never came [up]."

But notes Libby took of a chat with Cheney just three months earlier put the lie to that story. In their June 12 conversation, Cheney told Libby that Wilson's wife was employed by the CIA, which had hired former ambassador Wilson in 2002 to check out what turned out to be false rumors that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger.

Wilson soon found himself on the White House enemies list for exposing its prewar distortions. And he says blowing his wife's cover was a way to get even, while making it look as if his African trip had more to do with nepotism than substance.

It's not the first time Cheney has peered into the camera and dissembled about Iraq war issues on Russert's top-rated Sunday show.

In a Dec. 9, 2001, interview, Cheney asserted that a fictional meeting between lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer had been "pretty well confirmed." In fact, the Prague meeting had never been confirmed.

Then on Sept. 8, 2002, a skeptical Russert followed up by asking the vice president if the CIA found the Prague rumor credible. "It's credible," Cheney replied. But in fact, as early as late spring of 2002, well before that statement, the CIA was skeptical that the meeting had taken place. In June 2002, the CIA issued a then-classified report that found the information about the meeting contradictory.

It now turns out that in January 2003 – still a couple of months before the White House launched its invasion of Iraq – the CIA published a then-classified report that said the following: "Some information asserts that Atta met with [Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir] al-Ani [the Iraqi intelligence officer]. But the most reliable reporting to date casts doubt on that possibility."

So as the CIA was warning in classified briefings circulated to the White House that the most reliable reporting to date casts doubt on the Prague rumor, Cheney was spouting it as fact on the talk shows.

He's still dissembling over the Prague hoax, only now he's denying he ever insisted there was much truth to it.

Pat Fitzgerald plans to call Tricky Dick to testify – under oath – in his aide Libby's trial. Hopefully, he'll have better luck pulling the truth out of him than Russert did.

Karl Rove: "No." That's how President Bush's deputy chief of staff answered an ABC News correspondent when, on Sept. 29, 2003, she asked if he had "any knowledge" of Wilson's wife or if he'd leaked her name to the press. Of course, he was not truthful in denying it, because we now know he discussed his wife with at least syndicated columnist Bob Novak and Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper months earlier.

And Rove failed to disclose his contact with Cooper to the grand jury in his first appearance. He swore only to a conversation he had with Novak a few days before the pro-Bush columnist unmasked Wilson's wife. When asked generally if he had conversations with other reporters, he answered, once again, no.

But as it happens, Rove had memorialized his conversation with Cooper in an e-mail he sent to top national security aide Stephen Hadley. Rove swore his phone chat with Cooper had simply slipped his mind. But faced with the e-mail, he quickly regained his memory.

Scott McClellan: Asked in 2003 if Rove was involved in the Wilson scandal – specifically if he'd talked to any reporters about his CIA wife – Bush's press secretary snapped: "I've made it very clear, he was not involved, that there's no truth to the suggestion that he was."

Pressed, McClellan said he was certain because he had asked Rove himself. "I've had conversations with him previously," he said at the same Sept. 29, 2003, White House briefing. "I'm going to leave it at that."

And good thing. He'd done enough lying for one day.

Condi Rice: Another forked-tongued member of the war cabinet, she told reporters quite a fib during a July 11, 2003, press briefing. Asked about Wilson's famed trip to Niger, in which the ambassador debunked reports of Iraq uranium purchases, Rice stated: "That mission was not known to anybody in the White House."

Really? As early as March 9, 2002, the CIA circulated a memo summarizing Wilson's inconvenient findings to the White House.

Fabricating stories seems to come naturally to this gang. And the biggest whopper of all was the one Bush himself told on the eve of war: "Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country [and] to our people."

Looking back, who's the real threat?

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/aa489386-497d-11d...00779e2340.html

Democrats launch offensive after CIA probe
By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
Published: October 30 2005 19:51 | Last updated: October 30 2005 19:51

Democrats have jumped on the indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby for obstructing the CIA leak investigation as evidence that President George W. Bush has not lived up to his 2000 campaign promise to restore integrity to the White House.

Mr Libby on Friday resigned as chief of staff to vice-president Dick Cheney.

“[The] indictment of the vice-president’s top aide and the continuing investigation of Karl Rove are evidence of White House corruption at the very highest levels, far from the ‘honour and dignity’ the president pledged to restore to Washington just five years ago,” said John Kerry, the Democrat senator who lost the 2004 election to Mr Bush.

A handful of Republicans on Sunday condemned the actions of Mr Libby, who has been indicted by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald on charges of lying to FBI agents and the grand jury investigating the unmasking of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative, in 2003. But most Republicans employed a variety of strategies to limit fallout from his indictment, including stressing that Mr Fitzgerald did not indict any other White House officials, in particular Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and top political aide to Mr Bush.

Some echoed Mr Bush, who on Friday said, “each individual is presumed innocent and entitled to due process and a fair trial.”

“The burden lies on Mr Fitzgerald to prove his case, not on Mr Libby to prove his innocence,” said Orrin Hatch, a Republican senator from Utah.

While Mr Fitzgerald appears to have been successful in limiting leaks on his investigation, he said on Friday he was unable to prevent grand jury witnesses from relaying what they had told the investigation. Nevertheless, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, a Texas Republican senator, criticised what she called “constant leaks” surrounding the investigation.

While Mr Fitzgerald took pains to emphasise that his two-year investigation was not examining whether the Bush administration misled the American people over the rationale for invading Iraq, Democrats have sought to increase attacks on Mr Bush over the war.

“These very serious charges go to the heart of whether administration officials misused intelligence by disclosing an undercover CIA agent,” said Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat West Virginia senator. “They also heighten concerns that the administration engaged in a pattern of misusing intelligence to make the case for going to war with Iraq.”

Additional reporting by Ben Bain

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=100...7jwnpI&refer=us

.S. Senate Closed Session Yields Intelligence Accord (Update1)
Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Senators reached an agreement to monitor a congressional investigation into the Bush administration's use of intelligence about Iraq after Democrats forced an unusual closed session on the Senate floor to draw attention to the issue.

The closed session began about 2:15 p.m. today Washington time when Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid invoked a rule forcing the session, which required the chamber to be cleared of visitors and cameras to be turned off. It ended about 4:35 p.m. with Majority Leader Bill Frist announcing the creation of a six- member task force to monitor progress of the probe.

Reid said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts promised more than a year ago to conduct an investigation into whether the Bush administration misused intelligence before the Iraq war. Frist said the Democrats' tactics today were a ``stunt.''

Bush administration officials before the war said that Saddam Hussein's regime was developing weapons of mass destruction that threatened the U.S. No such weapons were found after the U.S.-led invasion toppled Hussein from power.

Frist said the six-member task force would report by Nov. 14 on how much progress the Intelligence Committee had made on the probe.

`Not Necessary'

Roberts said the Democratic call for the closed session was ``not necessary'' because his committee planned to soon share some of its findings with senators. ``We will do exactly as we planned to do it next week.''

Roberts also insisted that he had informed Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the top-ranked Democrat on the Intelligence panel, of his intentions to proceed yesterday, and said Democrats took a ``cheap shot'' today designed to grab headlines.

Rockefeller said only ``token work at best'' has been done on the probe into the possible misuse of intelligence by the White House.

Reid said the indictment Friday of I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Richard Cheney's chief of staff, underscores the need for a full investigation.

Secret Sessions

The use of secret sessions in Congress is rare. Since 1929, the Senate has held 53 secret sessions, typically for reasons of national security, according to the Congressional Research Service. Six of the most recent sessions were held during the impeachment trial of former President Bill Clinton.

The standoff today over intelligence produced sharp rhetoric by Reid and Frist. Frist said he would have trouble trusting Reid for breaking with protocol and calling for the secret session without a bipartisan agreement.

``The U.S. Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leaders,'' Frist told reporters.

Reid said the real insult was to the American people, who haven't had answers about the intelligence leading to a war that has resulted in deaths of more than 2,000 Americans. He said Republicans in Congress have shirked their oversight responsibilities.

``I have absolutely no regret, zero regret,'' Reid said. ``The American people had a victory today.''

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GK01Ak01.html


COMMENTARY
Hoodwinked in Washington and Damascus
By Maggie Mitchell Salem

The wail-and-moan communications strategy of Syrian President Bashar Assad exploits the gray area in the Detlev Mehlis report into the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri - the absence of a "smoking gun" and the presence of an unedited version (which fingered Assad's brother and brother-in-law) - to prove that an insidious political (aka American) campaign is under way to undermine the Syrian regime.

If after scrutinizing all 87 pages of the report you still believe Syria played no role in Hariri's assassination, well then, perhaps you shouldn't read any further.

Clearly, you've been conned. Or is it that you dislike and distrust President George W Bush's cabal more than you do Bashar's?



Now that, I must confess, is a tough call.

But one thing I do know: Bush did not orchestrate the murder of Hariri.

Mehlis is asking questions in Damascus instead of Washington not because he is a puppet of the Bush administration, but because a trail of evidence points in that direction. It's really that simple.

Even in a reasonably imperfect world, though justice takes a long time in coming, it often does arrive. Yes, even in Washington.

On Friday, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald charged I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, with five felony counts of perjury, obstructing justice and making false statements. The investigation into Bush's own right-hand-man, Karl Rove, is ongoing, though no indictments were handed down last week.

In the end, neither man is likely to be charged with the crime that Fitzgerald set out to uncover: did someone knowingly leak the name of a Central Intelligence Agency operative? The agent in question, Valerie Plame, is the wife of the Bush administration's pre-Iraq war nemesis, former US ambassador and outspoken critic, Joe Wilson.

In the US, undermining critics isn't a felony; deliberately outing a covert operative certainly is.

Just days before the indictments were handed down, Libby admitted that Cheney – not reporters, as he had indicated under oath – had told him about Plame. The Sunday morning Washington talk shows included a good deal of speculation about whether Cheney knew of Libby's vendetta to undermine Wilson.

The same sort of speculation exists vis-a-vis Assad. Was he fully aware of his brother and brother-in-law's operations? As he told CNN's Christiane Amanpour shortly before Mehlis delivered his report, "You cannot be a dictator and not be in control."

As for the White House shenanigans, Libby's scheme was quite straightforward. Gossip with reporters and hint that Wilson only got to go (unpaid) to Niger and uncover a fraud because of his wife's influence.

Not one of the vice president's men bothered to stop and consider that if Plame could gin up a mission for her husband, she might have a bit of "wasta" herself. Or did the CIA boss, George Tenet, neglect to mention her covert status when he briefed Cheney?

Ah, but why delay over niggling details. There's a war to be justified. Critics to be muted. Weapons of mass destruction to be found. Democracy to be instilled. Terrorism to be fomented.

I mean fought.

Now, much like the Damascus cabal, the one in Washington spins a serious crime into an annoying technicality. According to loyal Bush supporter and veteran Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, "An indictment of any kind is not a guilty verdict, and I do think we have in this country the right to go to court and have due process and be innocent until proven guilty."

Certainly, Bashar will use just that strategy when he appeals to UN Security Council members, particularly China and Russia, to forgo sanctions until Mehlis concludes his final report. The beauty of such a maneuver is that it's likely to work.

Narrowly averting the abyss, Damascus offers minimal (if any) additional information, evidence and witnesses. Then, on December 15, when Mehlis' term expires, Syria's figleaf of innocence is preserved. The US, France and Britain may fume, but that alone will not win international sanctions.

For Bashar, such an outcome guarantees that his kin rule another day.

Crime, what crime?
On Sunday's Meet the Press, William Safire, darling of the neo-conservatives, offered a magic lesson for those looking to banish a legal quagmire. "This whole thing started as an investigation of the violation of a law. And the law that was violated was you must not deliberately out an agent who is undercover. And what the special counsel found is that law was not broken."

Both Bush's supporters and Bashar's posse seem intent on kicking up enough dust to distract their critics.

Strategists note that Bush is likely to engage in more photo ops on issues ranging from relief efforts relating to hurricanes Katrina and Wilma to the mortally wounded Middle East peace process. On substance, he'll have a new Supreme Court nominee to steal a few headlines and rally his conservative political base.

In Bashar's case, he has set about naming an "independent prosecutor" (it's hard to type the words without laughing aloud) in the off chance enough evidence sticks and he then demands to try the posse - I mean perpetrators - at home for what he has conveniently described as an act of treason. Never mind the fact that Hariri wasn't Syrian.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, there's word that Syria's Kurds may be granted citizenship - after 43 years. Finally, in a move a la Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Ba'ath leaders hint at possible multiple-party elections in the future.

Of course, both leaders could have averted this chapter in their political careers. As Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Barbara Tuchman said in the opening of The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam: "A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests."

Or, as the close confidante of Bush Sr, Brent Scowcroft, put it, "We continually step on our best aspirations. We're humans. Given a chance to screw up, we will."

Bush is no more immune to outright, unexpected failure than Assad.

Despite all the technological advances, the satellites and computer gadgetry, the wiretaps and intercepts, no American leader is omniscient. Mistakes are made. Case in point: the war in Iraq.

Do you really believe that with more than 2,000 American fatalities, tens of thousands of injured soldiers and well over 30,000 Iraqi civilian casualties with no end in sight, that this debacle was the anticipated outcome?

Has Bush tipped the scales toward Israel? Absolutely. But Bush's misdeeds should never mitigate Assad's. There is room for two bad actors, three if you count Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon; four, if you include the unrehabilitated Muammar Gaddafi. The list could go on and on.

Let each one suffer the consequences of his actions. Let no one escape judgment.

In the end, no one will.

Maggie Mitchell Salem is a former special assistant to US secretary of state Madeleine K Albright; a former career foreign service officer; former director of communications and outreach at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC; she now provides Middle East analysis to private and public sector clients in the US and the region, including a number of dailies in Arabic and English.

(Copyright 2005 Maggie Mitchell Salem)

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/print?id=1265736

Time Reporter Says He Learned Agent's Identity From Rove
Matthew Cooper Says I. Lewis Libby Confirmed Information

Oct. 31 2005 — - One of the reporters at the center of the investigation into the leak of the identity of an undercover CIA officer, says he first learned the agent's name from President Bush's top political advisor, Karl Rove.

Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper also said today in an interview with "Good Morning America," that the vice president's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, confirmed to him that Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative.

A grand jury charged Libby on Friday with five felonies alleging obstruction of justice, perjury to a grand jury and making false statements to FBI agents. If convicted, he could face a maximum of 30 years in prison and $1.25 million in fines. Libby was not charged with the crime that the grand jury was created to investigate -- specifically, who leaked the name of Plame to reporters in 2003. Rove has not been charged.

Wilson, who went to Niger in 2002 to investigate whether or not the country was supplying Iraq with uranium to make weapons of mass destruction, opposed the war. He said he found no evidence of such an exchange in an op-ed in The New York Times. Wilson has argued that the Bush administration revealed his wife's identity in order to silence his opposition to the war.

"There is no question. I first learned about Valerie Plame working at the CIA from Karl Rove," Cooper said.

Libby has since claimed that he heard the Plame rumors from other reporters. Cooper disputed that version of events. "I don't remember it happening that way," he said. "I was taking notes at the time and I feel confident."

If a trial goes ahead, Cooper said he would name Rove as his source of the information.

"Before I spoke to Karl Rove I didn't know Mr. Wilson had a wife and that she had been involved in sending him to Africa."

This update corrects two errors in an earlier version of the story, which referred to Nigeria instead of Niger, and stated that Libby in his conversations with a Time reporter referred to Valerie Plame as a covert CIA operative. ABC News regrets the error.

Copyright © 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012979.html

Wednesday :: November 02, 2005
Raw Story: Fleitz Is Unnamed CIA Senior Officer in Libby Indictment
Raw Story reports that it has confirmed that Fred Fleitz, then the Chief of Staff for John Bolton and also a senior CIA WINPAC official, is the "Senior CIA Offical" who first disclosed Valerie Plame Wilson'identity after Bolton requested information about Wilson's trip. Raw Story reports that Libby requested information about Wilson's trip from John Bolton; Fleitz gave Bolton the name. Bolton then passed it on to David Wurmser who passed it on to John Hannah.

As has been reported previously, David Wurser and John Hannah have been cooperating with Fitzgerald in the probe.

Upon receiving this information, Libby asked Bolton for a report on Wilson's trip to Niger, which Wilson presented orally to the CIA upon his return. Fleitz was one of a handful of officials who was in a position to know Plame's maiden name, the sources said.

Libby's indictment alleges that on May 29, 2003,

"[Libby] asked an Under Secretary of State ('Under Secretary') for information concerning the unnamed ambassador's travel to Niger to investigate claims about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium yellowcake. The Under Secretary thereafter directed the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research to prepare a report concerning the ambassador and his trip. The Under Secretary provided Libby with interim oral reports in late May and early June 2003, and advised Libby that Wilson was the former ambassador who took the trip."

Libby, Raw Story reports, contacted John Bolton, then Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs for information about the Ambassador's trip to Niger. After receiving it, he asked for a report, and that led to the June 9 State Department Memo. While Marc Grossman's name is on the classified memo identifying Valerie Wilson, Raw Story reports:

... sources say that the memo was written on Libby's behest as part of a work-up order orchestrated out of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), which operated out of the Cheney's office and was chaired by Special Advisor to President Bush, Karl Rove.

More from Raw Story:

According to MSNBC, Bolton testified before the grand jury investigating the Plame leak. Questions were raised about whether Bolton knowingly left that fact out of the questionnaire related to his UN confirmation hearing.

Wurmser likely cooperated because he faced criminal charges for his role in leaking Wilson's name on the orders of higher-ups, the lawyers said. Hannah, a key aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and one of the architects of the Iraq war, was cooperating with Fitzgerald after being told that he was identified by witnesses as a co-conspirator in the leak, they added.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Laywers_invo...e_say_1102.html

Bolton's chief of staff gave information on outed agent to Libby, lawyers involved in leak case say
Larisa Alexandrovna and Jason Leopold

John Bolton, the former Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs who is now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was contacted by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in late May 2003 to find out who sent Ambassador Joseph Wilson on a fact-finding mission to Niger, lawyers involved in the CIA outing investigation told RAW STORY over the weekend. Wilson was sent to Niger to ascertain whether Iraq had sought to purchase uranium from the African country.

The attorneys, along with intelligence officials, have provided RAW STORY additional insight into the unnamed identities of key players referred to in the five-count indictment against Libby, who resigned last Friday as Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.

Specifically, they relayed what two key prosecution witnesses now cooperating with the probe told Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about the events that led to Libby learning about Wilson's mission and Valerie Plame Wilson's identity. Plame Wilson, the wife of the former ambassador, was outed as a CIA agent working on weapons of mass destruction issues after Wilson begin criticizing the Bush Administration's Iraq intelligence.

Advertisement


Randall Samborn, Fitzgerald's spokesman, told RAW STORY he could not comment or offer "guidance" on the specifics of this story.

The 22-page indictment posted on Fitzgerald's website Friday says that on May 29, 2003 Libby "asked an Under Secretary of State ('Under Secretary') for information concerning the unnamed ambassador's travel to Niger to investigate claims about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium yellowcake. The Under Secretary thereafter directed the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research to prepare a report concerning the ambassador and his trip. The Under Secretary provided Libby with interim oral reports in late May and early June 2003, and advised Libby that Wilson was the former ambassador who took the trip."

News reports have identified the Undersecretary as Marc Grossman. This is technically correct, in that he is the one who had received the June 10, 2003 classified Intelligence and Research memo for Libby about Wilson's Niger trip, in addition to information about Plame's covert CIA status and her relationship to Wilson.

But the attorneys said that two former Libby aides, John Hannah and David Wurmser, told the special prosecutor that Libby had actually first contacted Bolton to dig up the information. Wurmser, who worked as a Middle Eastern affairs aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, was on loan from Bolton's office.

Both Wurmser and Hannah have been cooperating with Fitzgerald's probe for some time, the lawyers said.

In addition, sources say that the memo was written on Libby's behest as part of a work-up order orchestrated out of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), which operated out of the Cheney's office and was chaired by Special Advisor to President Bush, Karl Rove.

How Plame's name got to Libby

Grossman asked Carl Ford, the Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research, to write the memo. Ford is the State Department official who testified before a the Senate Foreign Relations Committee against Bolton during his unsuccessful UN confirmation hearings and described Bolton as a "bully."

Bolton was later appointed to the UN during a Congressional recess. His name came up several times during the course of the two-year investigation into Plame's outing, most notably when he paid a visit to the federal prison where New York Times reporter Judith Miller was housed for refusing to testify in the case.

The attorneys also said that Frederick Fleitz, Bolton's chief of staff and concurrently a senior CIA Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control official, supplied Bolton with Plame's identity. Bolton, they added, passed this to his aide, Wurmser, who in turn supplied the information to Hannah.

Upon receiving this information, Libby asked Bolton for a report on Wilson's trip to Niger, which Wilson presented orally to the CIA upon his return. Fleitz was one of a handful of officials who was in a position to know Plame's maiden name, the sources said.

Fleitz is named in the indictment as an unnamed CIA senior officer, they added.

Fleitz had long history with Bolton

The indictment cites Fleitz's CIA role, but not his on-loan status to Bolton's office. It reads, "On or about June 11, 2003, LIBBY spoke with a senior officer of the CIA to ask about the origin and circumstances of WilsonпїЅs trip, and was advised by the CIA officer that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and was believed to be responsible for sending Wilson on the trip."

Fleitz has been a trusted source of information to Bolton for some time and vice versa. In his book, "Peacekeeping Fiascoes of the 1990s: Causes, Solutions, and U.S. Interests," Fleitz thanked Bolton for advising him on research and providing him with guidance in writing the book.

It has long been rumored that Bolton had his own connections to agents at the CIA who shared his political philosophy on Iraq. Greg Thielman, a former director at the State Department who was assigned to Bolton and entrusted with providing the former under secretary of state with intelligence information, told New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh that Bolton had become frustrated that Thielman was not providing him the smoking gun intelligence information on Iraq that he wanted to hear.

"He surrounded himself with a hand-chosen group of loyalists, and found a way to get CIA information directly," Thielman said in Hersh's book, "Chain of Command." (Page 223)

"In essence, the undersecretary (Bolton) would be running his own intelligence operation, without any guidance or support," Hersh wrote. "Eventually, Thielman said, Bolton demanded that he and his staff have direct electronic access to sensitive intelligence, such as foreign agent reports and electronic intercepts. In previous administrations, such data had been made available to undersecretaries only after it was analyzed, usually in the specific secured offices of the INR." (Page 222)

Bolton testified to grand jury, MSNBC said

According to MSNBC, Bolton testified before the grand jury investigating the Plame leak. Questions were raised about whether Bolton knowingly left that fact out of the questionnaire related to his UN confirmation hearing.

Wurmser likely cooperated because he faced criminal charges for his role in leaking Wilson's name on the orders of higher-ups, the lawyers said. Hannah, a key aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and one of the architects of the Iraq war, was cooperating with Fitzgerald after being told that he was identified by witnesses as a co-conspirator in the leak, they added.

It is unclear whether Bolton played any other role in the Plame outing, but his connection to the Iraq uranium claims certainly gave him a motive to discredit Wilson, who had called into question the veracity of the Niger documents. A probe by the State Department Inspector General revealed that Bolton's office was responsible for the placement of the Niger uranium claims in the State Department's December 2002 "fact sheet" on Iraq's WMD program.

The attorneys said it is unlikely that the information Hannah and Wurmser had provided Fitzgerald and included in the indictment will ever become public, but their testimony in the case was crucial in that it allowed Fitzgerald to put together a timeline that showed how various governmental agencies knew about Plame's covert CIA status.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9906781/

Ex-Cheney aide pleads innocent
Libby adds two high-powered lawyers ahead of CIA leak arraignment

MSNBC News Services
Updated: 10:56 a.m. ET Nov. 3, 2005
WASHINGTON - Armed with fresh legal firepower, Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former top aide, pleaded not guilty on Thursday to charges stemming from the CIA leak probe — raising the specter of a trial in which Cheney and other top Bush administration officials could be summoned to testify.

Libby entered the plea in front of U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, a former prosecutor who has spent two decades as a judge in the nation’s capital.

“With respect, your honor, I plead not guilty,” Libby said after being asked to enter a plea to the charges during a 10-minute arraignment.

Walton set Feb. 3 as the next courtroom date, and prosecutors signaled they expected a trial to last two weeks.

Libby resigned last Friday as Cheney’s longtime chief of staff shortly after he was indicted for obstructing justice, perjury and lying in the two-year probe into the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.

Maximum sentence: 30 years
Cheney and other top White House officials could be called to testify in any trial. Libby faces a maximum sentence of up to 30 years in prison.

Plame’s identity was leaked to the media in July 2003 after her diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson, accused the administration of twisting intelligence to justify the war in Iraq.

Before any trial, Libby could still try to cut a deal with special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald on lesser charges, lawyers involved in the case said.

Libby has hired well-known criminal trial lawyers Ted Wells and William Jeffress to bolster his legal team.

Wells won acquittals for former Agriculture Secretary Michael Espy and former Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan. He is a partner at the New York-based firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

Jeffress is from the firm Baker Botts, where Bush family friend and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III is a senior partner. Jeffress has won acquittals for public officials accused of extortion, perjury, money laundering, and vote-buying, his firm’s Web site says.

Judge’s background
Walton, the judge in the case, was a highly respected trial lawyer for the U.S. attorney’s office in the District of Columbia early in his career.

When President Reagan appointed him to D.C. Superior Court, Walton became known as a no-nonsense judge who was tough on sentencing street criminals.

He later served as the senior White House adviser for crime in the administration of President Bush’s father before returning to Superior Court.

In 2001, President Bush nominated Walton to the U.S. District Court.

Rove status unclear
President Bush’s top political adviser, Karl Rove, was not indicted last Friday. Lawyers involved in the case said Rove remained under investigation and may still be charged.

Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, would neither confirm nor deny any contacts with Fitzgerald since Libby’s indictment. Fitzgerald is expected to inform Rove of his decision in coming weeks, lawyers said.

Libby’s indictment was a damaging blow to the White House, which was already reeling from the mounting U.S. death toll from the Iraq war, the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina and the withdrawal of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, under fire from Bush’s conservative power base.

On the eve of the arraignment, White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley praised Libby as “a fine person” and said he would be missed.


Calls for Rove to go
Fitzgerald’s investigation showed both Rove and Libby spoke to reporters about Wilson’s wife despite initial denials by the White House.

Democrats have called on Bush to fire Rove, and Republican Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi has questioned whether Rove should retain his policymaking role at the White House. The White House has rebuffed calls for a staff overhaul.

The indictment showed Libby began seeking information about Wilson and his wife in late May 2003, some six weeks before Plame was identified publicly in a July 14, 2003, newspaper column by Robert Novak.

The indictment says Libby got information about Plame’s identity in June 2003 from Cheney, the State Department and the CIA, then spread it to New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper. Libby told FBI agents and a federal grand jury that his information had come from NBC reporter Tim Russert.

Russert says he and Libby never discussed Wilson or his wife.

Miller, who never wrote a story, said Libby told her about the CIA connection of Wilson’s wife. Cooper said Libby was one of his sources for a story identifying the CIA connection of Wilson’s wife.

Libby attorney Joseph Tate said inconsistencies in recollections among people regarding long-ago events should not be charged as crimes. Libby, who says he is confident he will be exonerated, is accused of one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of lying to FBI agents and two counts of perjury before a federal grand jury.

In addition to dragging top White House officials into a time-consuming legal battle, a public trial could shed light on Cheney’s role in the leak case. According to the indictment, Libby learned from Cheney himself on June 12, 2003, that Wilson’s wife worked in the CIA’s counterproliferation division.

Democrats seek opportunity
Senate Democrats have seized on the Libby indictment to put the Bush administration on the defensive, focusing attention on the possible manipulation of prewar intelligence on Iraq and the failure by Senate Republicans on the intelligence committee to promptly finish an investigation of the issue.

Democrats are pressing for the intelligence committee to examine:

The administration’s strongly worded prewar statements on the Iraqi threat and whether they match up with the actual intelligence.
The role of the pro-war Iraq National Congress, an exile group run by Ahmad Chalabi, in feeding information from defectors to the Pentagon and to Cheney’s office.
The intelligence activities of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, which fed policy-makers uncorroborated prewar intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, particularly involving purported ties with the al-Qaida terror network.
The prewar intelligence assessment and its failure to predict the postwar insurgency.
“Any line of questioning that has brought us too close to the White House has been thwarted,” said Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee. “We have been undermined, avoided, put off and vilified by the other side.”

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday that the Clinton administration and fellow Democrats used intelligence to come to the same conclusion as the Bush administration, that Saddam Hussein and his regime were a threat.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Bolton's chief of staff gave information on outed agent to Libby, lawyers involved in leak case say:

John Bolton, the former Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs who is now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was contacted by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in late May 2003 to find out who sent Ambassador Joseph Wilson on a fact-finding mission to Niger.
http://tinyurl.com/duc3n

Why Would Libby Lie?:

If Libby lied, why would he? The prosecutor unknowingly answered that question at his press conference. He said, if the reporters testified when they were issued subpoenas in August 2004, “we would have been here [holding a press conference] in October 2004 instead of October 2005.”
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20051103/...d_libby_lie.php

Lewis Libby, Former Cheney Aide, Pleads Not Guilty:

``With respect, your honor, not guilty,'' Libby told U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton when the judge asked how he pleaded. The judge freed Libby without bail and tentatively set the next court date for Feb. 3.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=100...id=aTWU4S960Cno

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/jta00.html

AIPAC trial could expose ways information is gathered in D.C.
By Ron Kampeas WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 (JTA) — It’s a classified leak case that could rattle U.S. foreign policy and fundamentally alter how Washington does business. But while the world watches the implosion in the vice president’s office, this case is proceeding quietly across the Potomac.
Motions filed in recent weeks in the case against two former senior staffers of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have gone virtually unnoticed in the mainstream media, but their implications could be as explosive as the perjury indictment last week against Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff and a principal architect of the Iraq war.

Defense motions suggest that the trial, now scheduled to start April 25, could expose the extent of covert U.S. surveillance of an ally, Israel, and how Israeli diplomats gather information about the United States.

It also could shed light on how journalists use intermediaries like AIPAC to gather information, on how U.S. officials selectively leak information to manipulate public perception of U.S. policy and on the inner workings of AIPAC, an organization famed for its media-shy profile.

At a hearing Wednesday on pre-trial motions in the case charging Steve Rosen, AIPAC’s former foreign policy chief, and Keith Weissman, its former Iran analyst with illegally transmitting classified information, U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis determined that prosecutors may withhold evidence from the defense. Ellis said prosecutors persuaded him that it was in the national interest to do so.

Ellis said he would determine what material the defense can use and what material it cannot access. Because that process is likely to be long and involved, Ellis pushed back the trial date from Jan. 2 to April 25.

Rosen’s lawyer said that despite the ruling, Ellis showed sensitivity to the defense’s concerns.

“We’re pleased that the court understands the complexities involved in providing our clients with the right to a fair trial in the midst of all these classified procedures,” Abbe Lowell said.

Lawrence Franklin, a Pentagon analyst, pleaded guilty last month to leaking classified information relating to Iran.

Two defense motions filed Oct. 21 seek to subpoena as witnesses Israeli and U.S. diplomats, raising the possibility that the case will expose how the countries share information and how U.S. diplomats try to manipulate public perception through strategic leaks.

The diplomats are not named in the documents, but JTA has established that one of the three Israelis sought in the case is Naor Gilon, who was chief political officer at the Israeli Embassy in Washington until this summer. Two of the four U.S. officials sought are David Satterfield, currently the deputy ambassador in Iraq and formerly an assistant deputy secretary of state, and Kenneth Pollack, a member of President Clinton’s national security council, JTA has established.

David Siegel, the Israeli Embassy spokesman, acknowledged receipt of the defense request for Israeli diplomats’ cooperation. He would not comment further, but Israel already has offered limited cooperation to the prosecution.

Lowell previously described the Israelis as uncooperative with the defense.

Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, likened the case to that of Zacarias Moussaoui, allegedly involved in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. A judge in the same Alexandria, Va. courthouse where Rosen and Weissman will be tried expressed sympathy for Moussaoui’s claim that the government’s refusal to allow him to see testimony of other Al-Qaida suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unfairly prejudiced his case.

“The more the defendants show it’s not their fault that the Israeli witnesses are not available, the likelier it is they will get relief from the court,” Levenson said.

The State Department refused to make Satterfield available for comment. A spokesman said that the decision about whether or not to testify was Satterfield’s alone, and the department would not compel him to do so. Pollack did not return calls.

One motion also seeks to subpoena the FBI agents in the case. Sources close to the defense have suggested that the strategy is to show how little the FBI came up with during a broad, six-year investigation.

The strategy also is reflected in the separate exchange of motions on how much of the transcripts and tapes of tapped phone conversations the prosecution must share with the defense that preceded Ellis’ ruling on Wednesday. The prosecution is offering only nine hours of what could amount to hundreds of hours of recordings. Ellis may add to that in coming months.

Should Ellis eventually allow the publication of a substantial portion of the transcripts, it could expose the breadth of covert attention that U.S. agencies pay to Israel and to AIPAC, a respected domestic lobbying organization. The prosecution hopes to stymie that exposure with its own motion that seeks not only to suppress most of the tapped conversations, but even their quantity. Ellis did not indicate whether he would suppress information about the quantity.

A close analysis of the indictment shows that FBI tracking of Rosen and Weissman did not begin in earnest until 2002. Yet there is much in the indictment preceding that date, suggesting that the FBI might have had other targets, including Israeli diplomats, journalists and even U.S. officials.

Another government practice with the potential for embarrassment, as the Libby case has shown, is the tendency for administration officials to selectively leak information to manipulate public opinion.

Satterfield and Pollack, neither of whom has been charged in the case, allegedly leaked information related to Iran and al-Qaida. If required to testify, they likely would be asked why it was important to get this information to the pro-Israel lobby.

In previous hearings, Ellis has expressed sympathy for defense arguments that much of the evidence the prosecution hopes to withhold would meet a relevance standard that would require sharing it with the defense. But it’s not just the U.S. government that stands to be embarrassed should Ellis lean toward defense arguments, and release more material.

“Any and all statements made by the defendants to the following people are relevant,” says a defense motion filed Oct. 21. “Their employees, supervisors or co-workers at AIPAC; their alleged co-conspirators; anyone referred to in the superseding indictment; any government official of Foreign Nation A,” a reference to Israel; “any employee or official of the United States; and/or any journalists.”

That list threatens to blow open a number of Washington practices. Diplomats of all countries in Washington avidly mine government officials and lobbyists for unclassified tidbits.

Journalists, increasingly denied access to the Bush administration, have taken in recent years to soliciting information from groups and lobbies close to the White House. AIPAC is known among journalists as a premier conduit for hard-to-get information, and two such incidents are cited in the indictment. JTA has learned that the incidents involve The Washington Post and The Nation.

Additionally, defense sources say they have reason to believe that the defendants’ relationship with a New York Times reporter might have been monitored.

Finally, the defense will argue that the practices alleged were routine for AIPAC.

AIPAC has insisted that Rosen and Weissman overstepped bounds. The group fired the two in April because of what its spokesman said was information arising out of the FBI investigation. It is obligated to pay their legal fees under AIPAC’s bylaws, however.

AIPAC also says that none of its current staff has been involved in any wrongdoing, and the lead prosecutor in the case, U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty, has said as much as well.

Still, the prospect of AIPAC officials taking the witness stand to prove or disprove whether Rosen and Weissman hewed to routine cannot be a happy one for a group known in Washington for closely guarding its lobbying practices.

Defense sources have suggested that they will show that Rosen and Weissman relayed information that the government says was classified to Howard Kohr, AIPAC’s executive director, as soon as they allegedly got it from Franklin in July 2004.

That information supposedly will establish that such practice was part of AIPAC’s routine, though no one is suggesting that Kohr knew the information was classified or that he shared it with anyone else.

The argument that Rosen and Weissman’s practices were routine got unexpected support last week from none other than Patrick Fitzgerald. He’s the U.S. attorney who won the perjury indictment against Libby for allegedly leaking the name of a CIA operative who is married to Joseph Wilson, a prominent critic of the Iraq war.

In an extended news conference, Fitzgerald sought to explain why he was prosecuting a cover-up — the alleged perjury — and not the underlying alleged crime, the leaking of Valerie Wilson’s name.

“That would violate the statute known as Section 793, which is the Espionage Act,” Fitzgerald said. “That is a difficult statute to interpret. It’s a statute you ought to carefully apply. I think there are people out there who would argue that you would never use that to prosecute the transmission of classified information, because they think that would convert that statute into what is in England the Official Secrets Act.”

Indeed, Section 793 rarely is used to prosecute the transmission of classified information. Experts can’t think of a single case since the mid 1980s — until this year, when it was used to charge Rosen and Weissman.