Breaking! Plame Indictments Imminent

[knightroar]

Breaking! Plame Indictments Imminent
The D.C. Rumor mill is thrumming with whispers that 22 indictments are about to be handed down on the outed-CIA agent Valerie Plame case. The last time the wires buzzed this loud — that Tom DeLay would be indicted and would step down from his leadership post in the House — the scuttlebutters got it right.

Can it be a coincidence that the White House appears to be distancing President Bush from embattled aide Karl Rove? “He’s been missing in action at more than one major presidential event,” a member of the White House press corps tells us.

If the word on the street is right a second time, we have a bit of advice for Rove: Go with vertical stripes, they’re way more slimming.

http://www.radarmagazine.com/the-wire/2005/10/05/index.php#wire_003399

[Motley]

Hmm.. the fact they specified the number of indictments (22), coupled with the info on this thread http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16928 , it is starting to sound like we may know a whole lot more about this case pretty damn soon.

Thanks for the info KR

[Motley]

They got him!!!!


http://www.edwardsdavid.com/media/misc/images/arrestedRove220a.jpg


:add09:

[Motley]

Where's Rove?

by kos (http://kos.dailykos.com/)

Wed Oct 5th, 2005 at 13:40:00 PDT

The DC rumor mill is out of control. It's indictment mania! A dozen indictments? Two dozen? Who knows. And it's just rumors, and none from sources that would have reason to know. So as those rumors start seeping into the blogs, be forewarned. None of it is remotely confirmable.

But Aravosis (http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/white-house-is-hiding-karl-rove-they.html) has a bit of news that is intriguing, and a bit more on the "concrete" side:






I just talked to a source who told me that Karl Rove has been missing from a number of recent White House presidential events - events that he has ALWAYS attended in the past. For example, Rove was absent from yesterday's presidential press conference to promote Harriet Miers. These are the kind of events Rove ALWAYS attends, I'm told, yet of late he's been MIA each and every time.

My source tells me that the scuttlebutt around town is that the White House knows something bad is coming, in terms of Karl getting indicted, and they're already trying to distance him from the president.





Rove's sudden fondness for "undisclosed locations" might have something to do with the rash of rumors. Or it may be indicative of something bigger. Regardless, the drama level has just been upgraded a few notches higher.

http://www.dailykos.com/

[knightroar]

the next few weeks should be interesting. maybe Bag Sniffer should be put on suicide watch

[thejesus]

the next few weeks should be interesting. maybe Bag Sniffer should be put on suicide watch

I say let natural selection take its course :add01:

[knightroar]

I say let natural selection take its course :add01:


good idea

[Bag Sniper]

Rove ... the fat little doughboy reporter whats-his-name already testified it wasn't Rove ... little Joey Wilson has already been proven to be a liar 10 times over .. including from his own mouth ....

Miller has already been proven to be some whacko because her source gave her permission a year ago to go public ...

Maybe you should focus on ... oh .. I dunno ... Harvey the Milk Man or something ....

But yeah ... let's get it going .... rumor mills ... always impressive when coming from the leftists ... they typically just dig their holes deeper with this shit and then when they reallize they can't climb out it deteriorates into a "fuck the littlest guy competition" .....

Stay tuned girlie boys ... I'm sure this will be just as exciting as the Delay matter ...

[Motley]

US officials brace for decisions in CIA leak case
Wed Oct 5, 2005 9:07 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The federal prosecutor investigating who leaked the identity of a CIA operative is expected to signal within days whether he intends to bring indictments in the case, legal sources close to the investigation said on Wednesday.

As a first step, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was expected to notify officials by letter if they have become targets, said the lawyers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Fitzgerald could announce plea agreements, bring indictments, or conclude that no crime was committed. By the end of this month he is expected to wrap up his nearly two-year-old investigation into who leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

The inquiry has ensnared President George W. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby. The White House had long maintained that Rove and Libby had nothing to do with the leak but reporters have since named them as sources.

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, declined to say whether his client had been contacted by Fitzgerald. In the past, Luskin has said that Rove was assured that he was not a target. Hmm.... interesting.

Libby's lawyer was not immediately available to comment.

"It's an ongoing investigation and we're fully cooperating," said Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride.

The outcome of the investigation could shake up an administration already reeling from criticism over its response to Hurricane Katrina and the indictment of House Republican leader Tom DeLay on a conspiracy charge related to campaign financing.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller testified to the grand jury on Friday about the conversations she had with Libby.

Plame's diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson, has accused the administration of leaking her name, damaging her ability to work undercover, to get back at him for criticizing Bush's Iraq policy.

Fitzgerald's agreement to limit the scope of Miller's testimony to her conversations with Libby -- a proposal he rejected a year earlier -- suggested that Libby had become "the focus of interest," said one of the lawyers involved in the case.

After initially promising to fire anyone found to have leaked information in the case, Bush in July offered a more qualified pledge: "If someone committed a crime they will no longer work in my administration."

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2005-10-06T010649Z_01_KWA603946_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-LEAK.xml

[Rightwingnut]

Nail the fuckers to the wall.

And when they are done I think they should open the Books on all Campaign finance issues both Dem and Rep, look deeper into intel issues and arrest the entire fucking Government for corruption, idiocy and theft.

[Firecat]

They need to send some of these well-fed warpigs to Abu Ghraib for a fact-finding mission.

:add09:

[Motley]

Nail the fuckers to the wall.

And when they are done I think they should open the Books on all Campaign finance issues both Dem and Rep, look deeper into intel issues and arrest the entire fucking Government for corruption, idiocy and theft.

I'm game

[Bag Sniper]

Rove ... the fat little doughboy reporter whats-his-name already testified it wasn't Rove ... little Joey Wilson has already been proven to be a liar 10 times over .. including from his own mouth ....

Miller has already been proven to be some whacko because her source gave her permission a year ago to go public ...

Maybe you should focus on ... oh .. I dunno ... Harvey the Milk Man or something ....

But yeah ... let's get it going .... rumor mills ... always impressive when coming from the leftists ... they typically just dig their holes deeper with this shit and then when they reallize they can't climb out it deteriorates into a "fuck the littlest guy competition" .....

Stay tuned girlie boys ... I'm sure this will be just as exciting as the Delay matter ...

Uhem ... read it again ...

[Bag Sniper]

I'm game


You're gay ... wtf Moldy ....

[Aziraphael]

You're gay ... wtf Moldy ....
Way to read, Bag.






(BTW, just in case you think you are setting another AMAZING ambush, I know you are joking)

[knightroar]

to give baggy a good night seizure to go with the 40 he already had today. bump

[Motley]

Indictments in Plame Case Could Come Any Time http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/photos/icons/Bomb_L.jpg

By E&P Staff

Published: October 05, 2005 11:15 PM ET



NEW YORK Is it the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? Whatever way you look at it, it seems clear to many in Washington right now that indictments in the Valerie Plame affair will likely be announced soon, possibly on Thursday.

Note to editors and reporters: As the aspens turn, don't stray too far from your desks, cells or Blackberries.

Rumors surged all day Wednesday, though reports of 22 indictments did seem a bit farfetched. But late Wednesday, Reuters suggested that indeed the end--or beginning--was near, "within days," and added one major clue: Karl Rove's lawyer, who has always stated that his client was not a target in the probe, now refused to comment on that one way or the other.

Reuters said it got all this from "legal sources close to the investigation."

Here is how it described the Rove angle:

"As a first step, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was expected to notify officials by letter if they have become targets, said the lawyers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

"Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, declined to say whether his client had been contacted by Fitzgerald. In the past, Luskin has said that Rove was assured that he was not a target.

"[I. Lewis] Libby's lawyer was not immediately available to comment."

Fitzgerald's agreement to limit the scope of reporter Judith Miller's testimony to her conversations with Libby suggested that he had become "the focus of interest," said one of the lawyers involved in the case.

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001261522

[Bman]

Indictments in Plame Case Could Come Any Time http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/photos/icons/Bomb_L.jpg

By E&P Staff

Published: October 05, 2005 11:15 PM ET



NEW YORK Is it the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? Whatever way you look at it, it seems clear to many in Washington right now that indictments in the Valerie Plame affair will likely be announced soon, possibly on Thursday.

Note to editors and reporters: As the aspens turn, don't stray too far from your desks, cells or Blackberries.

Rumors surged all day Wednesday, though reports of 22 indictments did seem a bit farfetched. But late Wednesday, Reuters suggested that indeed the end--or beginning--was near, "within days," and added one major clue: Karl Rove's lawyer, who has always stated that his client was not a target in the probe, now refused to comment on that one way or the other.

Reuters said it got all this from "legal sources close to the investigation."

Here is how it described the Rove angle:

"As a first step, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was expected to notify officials by letter if they have become targets, said the lawyers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

"Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, declined to say whether his client had been contacted by Fitzgerald. In the past, Luskin has said that Rove was assured that he was not a target.

"[I. Lewis] Libby's lawyer was not immediately available to comment."

Fitzgerald's agreement to limit the scope of reporter Judith Miller's testimony to her conversations with Libby suggested that he had become "the focus of interest," said one of the lawyers involved in the case.

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001261522


What a refreshing suprise this would be if it actually happens!

One might actually start believing that the justice system has NOT been totally corrupted as of yet....

The wheels of justice perhaps ARE still turning after all.. just extremely slowly

Here's hoping they nail the bastards that outed Plame!

[knightroar]

What a refreshing suprise this would be if it actually happens!

One might actually start believing that the justice system has NOT been totally corrupted as of yet....

The wheels of justice perhaps ARE still turning after all.. just extremely slowly

Here's hoping they nail the bastards that outed Plame!


it'll be nice if it does come as soon as tomorrow. I have some business in the morning, but I'll be keeping track of the news when I am done.

[Motley]

it'll be nice if it does come as soon as tomorrow. I have some business in the morning, but I'll be keeping track of the news when I am done.

If indictments are that close away, and any member inside the WH is included in the indictments, I wouldn't be surprised to see the WH work something out with the prosecutor to wait until Friday to announce it.

Bad news is always best dumped on Fridays.

[Bman]

If indictments are that close away, and any member inside the WH is included in the indictments, I wouldn't be surprised to see the WH work something out with the prosecutor to wait until Friday to announce it.

Bad news is always best dumped on Fridays.


I always suspect that the stock market knows these things ahead of time....


Markets all over the world tanked today..


http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showpost.php?p=371508&postcount=72

Not sure why, as oil prices have fallen for 5 days in a row....

things that make you go HMMMMmmmmm


Wonder what happens if W HIMSELF or CHENEY is indicted?

[involved]

Absolutely ! :)
Nail the fuckers to the wall.

And when they are done I think they should open the Books on all Campaign finance issues both Dem and Rep, look deeper into intel issues and arrest the entire fucking Government for corruption, idiocy and theft.

[Aziraphael]

I always suspect that the stock market knows these things ahead of time....


Markets all over the world tanked today..


http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showpost.php?p=371508&postcount=72

Not sure why, as oil prices have fallen for 5 days in a row....

things that make you go HMMMMmmmmm


Wonder what happens if W HIMSELF or CHENEY is indicted?
Yeah, the aussie markets plummeted. Almost as bad as the post 911 fall.

[involved]

I noticed this today as well,didn't expect it either,whispers in the wind maybe.
I always suspect that the stock market knows these things ahead of time....


Markets all over the world tanked today..


http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showpost.php?p=371508&postcount=72

Not sure why, as oil prices have fallen for 5 days in a row....

things that make you go HMMMMmmmmm


Wonder what happens if W HIMSELF or CHENEY is indicted?

[involved]

I thought it was Cheney..but nobody is going to give him up.

[Bman]

Yeah, the aussie markets plummeted. Almost as bad as the post 911 fall.


Aussie, Canadian, US, Latin America, and the Nikkei in Japan is taking an ass whipping even as I speak

[Motley]

Just last Friday, Rove's lawyer said Karl wasn't a target - now 5 days later, "no comment"

by Joe in DC - 10/05/2005 11:38:00 PM




Last Friday (http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/12786643.htm):



"Not quite a year ago, I received oral and written assurances from the counsel that Karl is not a target of the investigation," Rove attorney Robert Luskin said Friday. "There is nothing I am aware of in the matters that have come to light since then that would change that."Tonight (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2005-10-06T010649Z_01_KWA603946_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-LEAK.xml):




Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, declined to say whether his client had been contacted by Fitzgerald. In the past, Luskin has said that Rove was assured that he was not a target.What's changed since Friday, Mr. Luskin?


http://americablog.blogspot.com/

[Bman]

Just last Friday, Rove's lawyer said Karl wasn't a target - now 5 days later, "no comment"

by Joe in DC - 10/05/2005 11:38:00 PM




Last Friday (http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/12786643.htm):



"Not quite a year ago, I received oral and written assurances from the counsel that Karl is not a target of the investigation," Rove attorney Robert Luskin said Friday. "There is nothing I am aware of in the matters that have come to light since then that would change that."Tonight (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2005-10-06T010649Z_01_KWA603946_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-LEAK.xml):




Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, declined to say whether his client had been contacted by Fitzgerald. In the past, Luskin has said that Rove was assured that he was not a target.What's changed since Friday, Mr. Luskin?


http://americablog.blogspot.com/




Did they ring em up yet???????


I hope it comes before the weekend. It'll give me an excuse to buy a bottle of wine and toast the return of accountability.

:food_02:

[thejesus]

I think it's funny how this thread has 186 views as of this posting but the righties have been avoiding posting here like the plague....

Anyway, don't blow your loads yet...it could still turn out that nothing ends up happening to Rove & Co.

[Alli]

Should break today, if they want to avoid the Friday-headline- burial. Also keep in mind Monday is a holiday.

[thejesus]

Should break today, if they want to avoid the Friday-headline- burial. Also keep in mind Monday is a holiday.

What holiday is Monday?

[Alli]

What holiday is Monday?
Columbus Day

[thejesus]

Columbus Day

Is that a federal holiday that gov't workers get off?

[Alli]

Is that a federal holiday that gov't workers get off?
Si.

[thejesus]

Si.

Sheesh...we certainly don't get than one off at my office...

Though, starting last year, we now get Martin Luther the King Day off... :add01:

[Boom!]

Sheesh...we certainly don't get than one off at my office...

Though, starting last year, we now get Martin Luther the King Day off... :add01:

I get both of those as deferred holidays.....Christmas week :)

[thejesus]

I get both of those as deferred holidays.....Christmas week :)

lucky...we don't get Christmas week off...just one or two days around the 25th I think...at least I get 3 weeks of vacation though...I know a lot of people only get 2 :add01:

[Rightwingnut]

I think it's funny how this thread has 186 views as of this posting but the righties have been avoiding posting here like the plague....

Anyway, don't blow your loads yet...it could still turn out that nothing ends up happening to Rove & Co.

Hey now, I posted here :D

[thejesus]

Hey now, I posted here :D

welcome!

You're not really a rightie though... :mad_01:

[thejesus]

Should break today, if they want to avoid the Friday-headline- burial. Also keep in mind Monday is a holiday.

I don't think there is a chance of this one getting buried if indictments are issued...

Plus, I doubt Patrick Fitzgerald is concerned with generating headlines

[thejesus]

Huff Po's Lawrence O'Donnell: “Prediction: At Least Three High Level Bush Administration Personnel Indicted And Possibly One Or More Very High Level Unindicted Co-Conspirators” In Plamegate...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-odonnell/plamegate-the-next-step_b_8447.html

[thejesus]

Wow....this is similar to what O'Donnel said might happen...

Rove to Give 11th Hour Testimony in CIA Leak Case

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051006/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cia_leak_rove

[Bman]

Huff Po's Lawrence O'Donnell: “Prediction: At Least Three High Level Bush Administration Personnel Indicted And Possibly One Or More Very High Level Unindicted Co-Conspirators” In Plamegate...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-odonnell/plamegate-the-next-step_b_8447.html


excellent news



O'Donnell was the first one to break the story that it was Rove that leaked it to Novak!

[V For Vendetta]

Wonder what happens if W HIMSELF or CHENEY is indicted?Freedom reigns once more?

[Bman]

Huff Po's Lawrence O'Donnell: “Prediction: At Least Three High Level Bush Administration Personnel Indicted And Possibly One Or More Very High Level Unindicted Co-Conspirators” In Plamegate...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-odonnell/plamegate-the-next-step_b_8447.html


I wonder if he means Cheney as a "Very High Level" unindicted co-conspirator?

[wanderer1]

I wonder why righwinglunatics are avoiding this thread.:D

[thejesus]

I wonder if he means Cheney as a "Very High Level" unindicted co-conspirator?

I think that is what he is refering to....

I don't know what he's basing that prediction on though...

My guess as to co-conspirator would be something that happened after the fact, after her identity was leaked....either something involving damage control or someone lying to the grand jury

[thejesus]

I wonder why righwinglunatics are avoiding this thread.:D

Yeah, I mentioned that earlier...

316 views but no righties posting....

Of course, if no one ends up being indicted, they will add about 50 posts to this thread in the first 5 minutes :add01:

[Bman]

I think that is what he is refering to....

I don't know what he's basing that prediction on though...

My guess as to co-conspirator would be something that happened after the fact, after her identity was leaked....either something involving damage control or someone lying to the grand jury




I think he's basing his prediction on leaks he's getting from people working with Fitzgerald.

He certainly knew right away that Cooper was going to finger Rove as his source. He (O'Donnell) was the first one to report it..

How else could he know that?

[thejesus]

I think he's basing his prediction on leaks he's getting from people working with Fitzgerald.

He certainly knew right away that Cooper was going to finger Rove as his source. He (O'Donnell) was the first one to report it..

How else could he know that?

Oh he definitley has sources...there's no doubt about that...

As far as the Rove thing, all he said was that he knew for some time that Rove was one of Cooper's sources....which is info he could have gotten from someone at Time magazine...and he said that before Cooper even testified, so I don't know if his source was necessarily someone working for Fitzgerald

[NYC]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, plans to testify again before the grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA operative's identity, his lawyer said on Thursday.

"Karl's consistent position is that he will cooperate any time, any place," said Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin. He said the prosecutor in the case has not informed Rove by letter that he is a target and has "affirmed that he has made no charging decision."

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-10-06T200019Z_01_KWA603946_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-LEAK.xml&archived=False

[Bman]

I'm still wondering who the THIRD SOURCE was



Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

July 28, 2005 Thursday
Late Edition - Final

Case of C.I.A. Officer's Leaked Identity Takes New Turn

By DOUGLAS JEHL; David Johnston and Richard W. Stevenson contributed reporting for this article.

WASHINGTON, July 26



In the same week in July 2003 in which Bush administration officials told a syndicated columnist and a Time magazine reporter that a C.I.A. officer had initiated her husband's mission to Niger, an administration official provided a Washington Post reporter with a similar account.

The first two episodes, involving the columnist Robert D. Novak and the reporter Matthew Cooper, have become the subjects of intense scrutiny in recent weeks. But little attention has been paid to what The Post reporter, Walter Pincus, has recently described as a separate exchange on July 12, 2003.

In that exchange, Mr. Pincus says, ''an administration official, who was talking to me confidentially about a matter involving alleged Iraqi nuclear activities, veered off the precise matter we were discussing and told me that the White House had not paid attention'' to the trip to Niger by Joseph C. Wilson IV ''because it was a boondoggle arranged by his wife, an analyst with the agency who was working on weapons of mass destruction.''

Mr. Wilson traveled to Niger in 2002 at the request of the C.I.A. to look into reports about Iraqi efforts to buy nuclear materials. He later accused the administration of twisting intelligence about the nuclear ambitions of Iraq, prompting an angry response from the White House.

Mr. Pincus did not write about the exchange with the administration official until October 2003, and The Washington Post itself has since reported little about it. The newspaper's most recent story was a 737-word account last Sept. 16, in which the newspaper reported that Mr. Pincus had testified the previous day about the matter, but only after his confidential source had first ''revealed his or her identity'' to Mr. Fitzgerald, the special counsel conducting the C.I.A. leak inquiry.

Mr. Pincus has not identified his source to the public. But a review of Mr. Pincus's own accounts and those of other people with detailed knowledge of the case strongly suggest that his source was neither Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's top political adviser, nor I. Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, and was in fact a third administration official whose identity has not yet been publicly disclosed.

Mr. Pincus's most recent account, in the current issue of Nieman Reports, a journal of the Nieman Foundation, makes clear that his source had volunteered the information to him, something that people close to both Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have said they did not do in their conversations with reporters.

Mr. Pincus has said he will not identify his source until the source does so. But his account and those provided by other reporters sought out by Mr. Fitzgerald in connection with the case provide a fresh window into the cast of individuals other than Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby who discussed Ms. Wilson with reporters.

In addition to Mr. Pincus, the reporters known to have been pursued by the special prosecutor include Mr. Novak, whose column of July 14, 2003, was the first to identify Ms. Wilson, by her maiden name, Valerie Plame; Mr. Cooper, who testified before a grand jury on the matter earlier this month; Tim Russert, the Washington bureau chief of NBC News, and who was interviewed by the prosecutor last year; Glenn Kessler, a diplomatic reporter for The Post, who was also interviewed last year, and Judith Miller of The New York Times, who is now in jail for refusing to testify about the matter. It is not known whether Mr. Novak has testified or been interviewed on the matter.

Both Mr. Pincus, who covers intelligence matters for The Post, and Mr. Russert have continued to report on the investigation after being interviewed by Mr. Fitzgerald about their conversations with government officials.

Mr. Pincus wrote in the Nieman Reports article that he had agreed to answer questions from Mr. Fitzgerald last fall about his July 12, 2003, conversation only after ''it turned out that my source, whom I still cannot identify publicly, had in fact disclosed to the prosecutor that he was my source, and he talked to the prosecutor about our conversation.''

In identifying Ms. Wilson and her role, Mr. Novak attributed that account to two senior Bush administration officials. One of those officials was Mr. Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff, according to people close to Mr. Rove, who have said he merely confirmed information that Mr. Novak already had.

But the identity of Mr. Novak's original source, whom he has described as ''no partisan gunslinger,'' remains unknown.

Mr. Cooper of Time magazine, who wrote about the matter several days after Mr. Novak's column appeared, has written and said publicly that he told a grand jury that Mr. Libby and Mr. Rove were among his sources. But Mr. Cooper has also said that there may have been others.

Ms. Miller never wrote a story about the matter. She has refused to testify in response to a court order directing her to testify in response to a subpoena from Mr. Fitzgerald seeking her testimony about a conversation with a specified government official between June 6, 2003, and June 13, 2003.

During that period, Ms. Miller was working primarily from the Washington bureau of The Times, reporting to Jill Abramson, who was the Washington bureau chief at the time, and was assigned to report for an article published July 20, 2003, about Iraq and the hunt for unconventional weapons, according to Ms. Abramson, who is now managing editor of The Times.

In e-mail messages this week, Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, and George Freeman, an assistant general counsel of the newspaper, declined to address written questions about whether Ms. Miller was assigned to report about Mr. Wilson's trip, whether she tried to write a story about it, or whether she ever told editors or colleagues at the newspaper that she had obtained information about the role played by Ms. Wilson.

The four reporters known to have been interviewed by Mr. Fitzgerald or to have appeared before the grand jury have said that they did so after receiving explicit permission from their sources, most notably Mr. Libby, who was the subject of the interviews involving Mr. Russert, Mr. Kessler, Mr. Pincus and Mr. Cooper. They have declined to elaborate on their statements, citing Mr. Fitzgerald's request that they and others not speak publicly about the matter.

Mr. Russert, Mr. Kessler and Mr. Pincus have indicated in statements released by their news organizations that their conversations with Mr. Libby were not about Ms. Wilson.

In his article in the Summer 2005 issue of Nieman Reports, Mr. Pincus wrote that he did not write about Ms. Wilson when he first heard the account ''because I did not believe it true that she had arranged'' Mr. Wilson's trip.

Mr. Pincus first disclosed the July 12, 2003, conversation with an administration official in an Oct. 12, 2003, article in The Washington Post, but did not mention in that article that he himself had been the recipient of the information. He wrote in Nieman Reports that he did not believe the person who spoke to him was committing a criminal act, but only practicing damage control by trying to get him to write about Mr. Wilson.

[NYC]

I'm still wondering who the THIRD SOURCE was


Ari Fleischer?

[Bman]

I still want to know who "SHALLOW THROAT" was, as well



In the Plame/Rove/Novak outing affair, there's been a key role played by an UNNAMED SENIOR ADMINISTRATION official, in exposing what was going on "behind the scenes"..

While Rove and Libby have received attention as being the "leakers" regarding Plame's identity, there is a THIRD senior administration official that has apparently turned on the Administration and is exposing the scheme to smear Joe Wilson

We first heard of "shallow throat" in a September 28, 2003 Washington Post article, entitled, "Bush Administration Is Focus of Inquiry;CIA Agent's Identity Was Leaked to Media"

From the article:


"Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. Wilson had just revealed that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson's account touched off a political fracas over Bush's use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq.

"Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak.

later in the same article, it says:



It is rare for one Bush administration official to turn on another. Asked about the motive for describing the leaks, the senior official said the leaks were "wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility."

So who is this "Senior Administration Official"???


I speculate that it is none other than Colin Powell or his chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson


Powell's name hasn't been mentioned as having had to testify in front of the Grand Jury, despite the fact that a State Department memo is getting alot of attention ...

Cheney had to testify. Bush had to testify... Did Powell?

If not, why?

Perhaps Powell is "Shallow Throat


P.S. Powell did testify, I believe... perhaps he HIMSELF will turn out to be SHALLOW THROAT

[Motley]

Rove Said to Testify in CIA Leak Case

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer



Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th-hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer's leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee he won't be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.

The persons, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy, said Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has not made any decision yet on whether to file criminal charges against the longtime confidant of President Bush or others.

The U.S. attorney's manual requires prosecutors not to bring witnesses before a grand jury if there is a possibility of future criminal charges unless they are notified in advance that their grand jury testimony can be used against them in a later indictment.

Rove has already made at least three grand jury appearances and his return at this late stage in the investigation is unusual.

The prosecutor did not give Rove similar warnings before his earlier grand jury appearances.

Rove offered in July to return to the grand jury for additional testimony and Fitzgerald accepted that offer Friday after taking grand jury testimony from the formerly jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

Before accepting the offer, Fitzgerald sent correspondence to Rove's legal team making clear that there was no guarantee he wouldn't be indicted at a later point as required by the rules.

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said Thursday he would not comment on any ongoing discussion he has had with Fitzgerald's office but that he has been assured no decisions on charges have been made. Rove would first have to receive what is known as a target letter if he is about to be indicted.

"I can say categorically that Karl has not received a target letter from the special counsel. The special counsel has confirmed that he has not made any charging decisions in respect to Karl," Luskin said.

He said that Rove "continues to be cooperative voluntarily" with the special counsel investigation and "beyond that, any communication I have or may have in the future are going to be treated as completely confidential."

For almost two years, Fitzgerald has been investigating whether someone in the Bush administration leaked the identity of Valerie Plame as a CIA officer for political reasons. Dozens of government officials were interviewed and boxloads of documents collected.

Reporters have been called before a grand jury to testify about their conversations with Rove and I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.

Leaking the identity of a covert agent can be a crime, but it must be done knowingly and the legal threshold for proving such a crime is high. Fitzgerald could also seek charges against anyone he thinks lied to investigators in the case.

The leak investigation stems from a July 2003 syndicated column by Robert Novak identifying Plame as a CIA operative. Plame is married to former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who says his wife's identity was disclosed to discredit his assertions that the Bush administration exaggerated Iraq's nuclear capabilities to build the case for war.

Miller spent 85 days in jail before agreeing to testify before the grand jury. The newspaper identified Libby as her source.

Rove, Bush's top adviser on political strategy and policy, has known the president for three decades. He worked for Bush as far back as 1978, when he unsuccessfully ran for Congress. Rove orchestrated Bush's campaigns for Texas governor and president, then brought his political skills into the White House.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051006/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cia_leak_rove_3&printer=1;_ylt=Aplp0jOGlBXXOTYQLxFA22EGw_IE;_ylu=X 3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-

[Motley]

I'm still wondering who the THIRD SOURCE was


Good question!

[JustAVoice]

Keep it up....and Bush/Rove will generate another Hurricane.

[knightroar]

from Murray Waas

White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove will testify tomorrow morning for a fourth time before the federal grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame matter, according to sources close to the investigation.

Rove will appear voluntarily, but during tomorrow's session, Rove will be pressed about issues as to why his accounts to the FBI and grand jury have changed, or evolved, over time. He will also be questioned regarding contacts with other senior administration officials, such as then-deputy National Security advisor Stephen J. Hadley and I. Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney in the critical week before the publication of columnist Robert Novak's column on July 14, 2003, which outed Plame as a covert CIA operative [...]


http://whateveralready.blogspot.com/2005/10/rove-before-grand-jury-in-morning.html

[Motley]

Since "turdblossom" is now testifying again tomorrow, it's probably a safe bet to say we won't hear of any indictments (if any) until next week.

[knightroar]

a new update from:

Lawrence O'Donnell



10.06.2005
UPDATE: Plamegate: the Next Step (2 comments )
This just in from the AP:

Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th-hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer's leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee he won't be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.
What this means is Rove's lawyer, Bob Luskin, believes his client is defintely going to be indicted.

So, Luskin is sending Rove back into the grand jury to try to get around the prosecutor and sell his innocence directly to the grand jurors. Legal defense work doesn't get more desperate than this. The prosecutor is happy to let Rove go under oath again--without his lawyer in the room--and try to wiggle out of the case. The prosecutor has every right to expect that Rove's final under-oath grilling will either add a count or two to the indictment or force Rove to flip and testify against someone else.

Also from the AP story, this Luskin quote:



"I can say categorically that Karl has not received a target letter from the special counsel. The special counsel has confirmed that he has not made any charging decisions in respect to Karl."

I love Luskin. I really do. He is the best legal curve ball pitcher in Washington. How is the AP reporter supposed to know that prosecutors do not have to send target letters to targets? Mafia lawyers are not sitting around waiting for target letters.

Fitzgerald could have told Luskin verbally that Rove is a target. And because Fitzgerald is not subpoening Rove to testify, he has no obligation to send him a target letter.

If Fitzgerald told Luskin that the grand jury was very likely to indict Rove, Luskin can very honestly say, "The special counsel has confirmed that he has not made any charging decisions in respect to Karl."

As usual, Luskin has said nothing that is inconsitent with Rove being indicted. But it usually takes the MSM a news cycle or two to figure that out.

Read my initial Palmegate: the Next Step post here

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-odonnell/plamegate-the-next-step_b_8447.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-odonnell/update-plamegate-the-ne_b_8457.html

[NYC]

Keep it up....and Bush/Rove will generate another Hurricane.

OR a terrorist threat to NYC subways? :add09:

[thejesus]

I've been thoroughly impressed with this guy O'Donnell since he broke the Rove story in July...

You'd think he's a lawyer by how well-informed he is of the legal process, but he isn't....he's just a writer for The West Wing

[Motley]

I've been thoroughly impressed with this guy O'Donnell since he broke the Rove story in July...

You'd think he's a lawyer by how well-informed he is of the legal process, but he isn't....he's just a writer for The West Wing

I'm pretty sure he has political experience as well. He may even be an attorney. I'll try to find out more.

But you are correct, he has been way ahead of the major news services in accuratly describing the process so far.

[thejesus]

I'm pretty sure he has political experience as well. He may even be an attorney. I'll try to find out more.

But you are correct, he has been way ahead of the major news services in accuratly describing the process so far.

He does have political experience, but he's not an attorney...

[Motley]

I'm very curious as to what charges are being contemplated.

Treason obviously would be worst case scenario for the WH, but it is a possibility. Then again it just may be giving false info to the GJ,

[involved]

Yes,and they will link it to an " Iraqi insurgent ".
OR a terrorist threat to NYC subways? :add09:

[thejesus]

I'm very curious as to what charges are being contemplated.

Treason obviously would be worst case scenario for the WH, but it is a possibility. Then again it just may be giving false info to the GJ,

My hunch tells me that the most proveable offfense is going to involve something that happened after the fact, after her identity was revealed....

Something involving damage control, like "Uh oh, the CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate us...lets all get our story straight."

And knowing the bullshit this Administration spews to the American people, you can feel confident that SOMEONE probably lied to the GJ at some point...

[involved]

Rove is being questioned again,I bet he's charged with perjury.What about Libby ? very quiet,I wonder if he received a letter of notice ?

[Motley]

Rove is being questioned again,I bet he's charged with perjury.

And all acounts indicate this was a last ditch effort to try to talk grand jurors out of an indictment(s) he knew has a real chance of coming down asap.

If he knew he was going to be indicted, this was a last attempt to talk the GJ uot of it. It's a very risky move since his new testimony can be used against him.

[involved]

Top Bush aide to testify again in CIA leak probe
Thu Oct 6, 2005 8:00 PM ET162
http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=uri:2005-10-06T235950Z_01_KWA603946_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-LEAK.xml&pageNumber=1&summit=
By Adam Entous

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a surprise move, President George W. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, plans to give last-minute testimony to a grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA operative's identity, lawyers said on Thursday.

Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has yet to indicate whether or not he intends to bring indictments, but legal sources close to the investigation said he could signal his intentions within days. Fitzgerald has given no guarantees to Rove he will not be indicted.

Officials declined to disclose when Rove would appear, but the grand jury is expected to meet on Friday and again next week. Rove has appeared before the grand jury at least three previous times.

Legal sources said Fitzgerald may also call New York Times reporter Judith Miller to appear again before the grand jury to answer additional questions about her conversations with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Fitzgerald is expected this month to wrap up his nearly 2-year-old investigation into who leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity and whether any laws were violated in the process.

The outcome could shake up an administration reeling from criticism over its response to Hurricane Katrina and the indictment of House of Representatives Republican leader Tom DeLay of Texas on charges related to campaign financing.

The White House had long maintained Rove and Libby had nothing to do with the leak, but reporters have since named them as sources.

NO 'TARGET LETTER'

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said his client had not received a "target letter" indicating he was likely to face indictment.

In discussions last week, Luskin said, "Fitzgerald did not indicate that Rove was a target; he did state that he has not made a decision about whether or not to charge."

"Since Karl began cooperating with the investigation, he has never sought any promises or assurances as a precondition for his testimony," Luskin added. First Amendment attorney Chip Babcock said he was surprised by the decision to bring Rove back before the grand jury so late in the process. The grand jury hearing the case is scheduled to expire on October 28.

"There has been a lot of testimony developed since he last testified, including Judith Miller. It may mean they want to ask him questions in light of what they've uncovered and see whether they can lock him in," said Babcock, a partner at Jackson Walker LLP. "You never know whose inconsistencies they're focused on."

Luskin said Rove offered in July to provide additional testimony after the grand jury heard from Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper. Cooper said Rove was the first person to tell him about Plame.

"We offered to make Mr. Rove available at a time and place of Mr. Fitzgerald's choosing should he wish Rove's further cooperation. He indicated to me last week that he wished to take me up on that offer," Luskin said.

But Luskin added: "I am not commenting in any fashion on when or what form that cooperation might take."

Fitzgerald's office declined to comment.

Plame's diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson, has accused the administration of leaking her name, which damaged her ability to work undercover, to get back at him for criticizing Bush's Iraq policy.

Miller testified to the grand jury last Friday about the conversations she had with Libby regarding Wilson's wife. Legal sources said Libby did not identify Plame by name.

A legal source close to the matter said Miller had yet to be asked to reappear for further questioning.

"He (Fitzgerald) is evaluating her testimony," the legal source said. "It could happen at some point."

In exchange for Miller's testimony, Fitzgerald agreed to limit the scope of questioning to her conversations with Libby. If Miller is called back, the legal source said, "It would not be about Rove."

After initially promising to fire anyone found to have leaked information in the case, Bush in July offered a more qualified pledge: "If someone committed a crime they will no longer work in my administration."

[involved]

I think public opinion would call for Rove to be indicted if the evidence is there.
And all acounts indicate this was a last ditch effort to try to talk grand jurors out of an indictment(s) he knew has a real chance of coming down asap.

If he knew he was going to be indicted, this was a last attempt to talk the GJ uot of it. It's a very risky move since his new testimony can be used against him.

[JustAVoice]

I've been thoroughly impressed with this guy O'Donnell since he broke the Rove story in July...

You'd think he's a lawyer by how well-informed he is of the legal process, but he isn't....he's just a writer for The West Wing

Lawrence O'Donnell has been a political commentator (a Liberal one) for YEARS....

Long before West Wing, he was a regular on the Mclaughlin Group...and I think he still shows up from time to time....and he was/is a regular commentator on MSNBC.

[Motley]

I wonder.. if an indictment has already been signed on Rove (or anyone else).. is it actually possible in getting the indictment revoked due to testimony he may offer to the GJ after indictments are signed?

[thejesus]

And all acounts indicate this was a last ditch effort to try to talk grand jurors out of an indictment(s) he knew has a real chance of coming down asap.

If he knew he was going to be indicted, this was a last attempt to talk the GJ uot of it. It's a very risky move since his new testimony can be used against him.

The only problem with that theory is that Rove offered to speak to the GJ back in July....Fitzgerald just now accepted it...

Maybe Rove though eh would be indicted back in July...I don't know...

either way, he's either going to be or he isn't...we should know soon

[Alli]

It occurred to me last night when the subway bomb threat was announced in New York, that many here say Pres, Bush invents a terror threat when something (bad) is going on in in his admin.

I now wonder if there will be and indictment today as well?

Coincidence?

[JustAVoice]

It occurred to me last night when the subway bomb threat was announced in New York, that many here say Pres, Bush invents a terror threat when something (bad) is going on in in his admin.

I now wonder if there will be and indictment today as well?

Coincidence?

No coincidence...after all he, Rove, the Joos, and the Aliens created the 2 recent hurricanes...just when his poll numbers were really starting to drop.

It backfired though, cause now his numbers are even lower.

The Alien/Jooish conspiracy will never get us, right, Alli??

[thejesus]

It occurred to me last night when the subway bomb threat was announced in New York, that many here say Pres, Bush invents a terror threat when something (bad) is going on in in his admin.

I now wonder if there will be and indictment today as well?

Coincidence?

Don't expect anything until next week at the earliest...that's my guess anyway

As far as manufacturing terror alerts to create distractors, maybe he does and maybe he doesn't, but I don't really care since no one pays attention to those anymore anyway....which is bad, since Bush could be putting the American people in jeopardy by becoming the Boy Who Cried Wolf....

[Motley]

Here is a possible twist

Salon: Could Gannon be charged under Espionage Act?

10/08/2005 @ 12:49 pm

Filed by RAW STORY


Salon.com's Joe Conason speculates that Jeff Gannon, the prostitute-cum-Talon News "reporter" who lobbed softball questions at President Bush last year before he was uncovered by bloggers, could be charged in connection with the CIA outing case. Conason writes (http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2005/10/07/rove_inquiry/):

[/url]
#

Another intriguing possibility in the leaks case brings back the baroque personality of right-wing pressroom denizen Jeff Gannon, born James Guckert.

The New York Times reported Friday that in addition to possible charges directly involving the revelation of Valerie Wilson's identity and related perjury or conspiracy charges, Fitzgerald is exploring other possible crimes. Specifically, according to the Times, the special counsel is seeking to determine whether anyone transmitted classified material or information to persons who were not cleared to receive it -- which could be a felony under the 1917 Espionage Act.

One such classified item might be the still-classified State Department document, written by an official of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, concerning the CIA's decision to send former ambassador Joseph Wilson to look into allegations that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger. Someone leaked that INR document -- which inaccurately indicated that Wilson's assignment was the result of lobbying within CIA by his wife, Valerie -- to right-wing media outlets, notably including Gannon's former employers at Talon News. On Oct. 28, 2003, Gannon posted an interview with Joseph Wilson on the Talon Web site, in which he posed the following question: "An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that?"

More at [url="http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2005/10/07/rove_inquiry/"]Salon (http://www.burstnet.com/ads/sk10674c-map.cgi/ns/v=2.0S/sz=120x600A|160x600A/).

http://rawstory.com/admin/dbscripts/printstory.php?story=1296

[JustAVoice]

Here is a possible twist

Salon: Could Gannon be charged under Espionage Act?

10/08/2005 @ 12:49 pm

Filed by RAW STORY


Salon.com's Joe Conason speculates that Jeff Gannon, the prostitute-cum-Talon News "reporter" who lobbed softball questions at President Bush last year before he was uncovered by bloggers, could be charged in connection with the CIA outing case. Conason writes (http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2005/10/07/rove_inquiry/):

[/url]
#

Another intriguing possibility in the leaks case brings back the baroque personality of right-wing pressroom denizen Jeff Gannon, born James Guckert.

The New York Times reported Friday that in addition to possible charges directly involving the revelation of Valerie Wilson's identity and related perjury or conspiracy charges, Fitzgerald is exploring other possible crimes. Specifically, according to the Times, the special counsel is seeking to determine whether anyone transmitted classified material or information to persons who were not cleared to receive it -- which could be a felony under the 1917 Espionage Act.

One such classified item might be the still-classified State Department document, written by an official of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, concerning the CIA's decision to send former ambassador Joseph Wilson to look into allegations that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger. Someone leaked that INR document -- which inaccurately indicated that Wilson's assignment was the result of lobbying within CIA by his wife, Valerie -- to right-wing media outlets, notably including Gannon's former employers at Talon News. On Oct. 28, 2003, Gannon posted an interview with Joseph Wilson on the Talon Web site, in which he posed the following question: "An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that?"

More at [url="http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2005/10/07/rove_inquiry/"]Salon (http://www.burstnet.com/ads/sk10674c-map.cgi/ns/v=2.0S/sz=120x600A|160x600A/).

http://rawstory.com/admin/dbscripts/printstory.php?story=1296


Wow...it seems there are so many things wrong with that story, it's amazing.

If you believed their premise, then the following scenario would also be true:

An intelligence officer at the CIA takes classified documents labeled top-secret. He then makes photocopies of the documents. He then mails those copies to every resident of Washington DC.

Using that articles logic, EVERY resident of Washington DC who views that document can now be charged with Espionage.

[Motley]

Wow...it seems there are so many things wrong with that story, it's amazing.

If you believed their premise, then the following scenario would also be true:

An intelligence officer at the CIA takes classified documents labeled top-secret. He then makes photocopies of the documents. He then mails those copies to every resident of Washington DC.

Using that articles logic, EVERY resident of Washington DC who views that document can now be charged with Espionage.

Umm.. wrong.

And I'm not even sure how you could possibly even come close to the conclusion, assuming you actually read the article.

Try again.

[thejesus]

Here's the latest...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051008/pl_nm/bush_leak_dc_13

This article sounds to me like Libby was sitting on his hands hoping that Judy Miller would just remain in Jail and never testify...

While Libby supposedly gave her permission to testify a year ago, it was well-known that Miller went to jail because she wanted the waiver to come from him in person.....but Libby made no effort once she went to jail to give her a personal waiver until he was pressured to do so by the prosecutor...

It's starting to look more and more like Libby was the ultimate source of Plame's identity...my understanding was that he had security clearance but Rove did not, so if he's the one that told Rove or if he told any reporters, then he broke the law and will be indicted

I'm starting to think that the only thing Rove could have done that would be criminal would involve some sort of conspiracy in disseminating the information to reporters and/or his involvement in the damage control campaign after the CIA asked the Justice Dept. to investigate the matter...

I wouldn't be surprised if it was Joe Wilson himself that had mentioned at some point to Libby or other Cheney staff members that his wife worked for the CIA, and then when he wrote that article, they used this information against him....

Which would make the administration's defense that Joe Wilson was in fact the one who 'outed' his wife to them....the only problem with this defense is that if anyone he told had top secret clearence, like Libby, then it would be legal for Wilson to tell Libby about his wife but it would be illegal for Libby to repeat this information to ANYONE who didn't have top secret clearence...

Anyway, that's what I think

[knightroar]

Friday, October 07, 2005
New National Journal Story on Plame investigation: What Karl Rove told the President
The National Journal just posted this story of mine online about presidential advisor Karl Rove's private conversations with President Bush regarding Valerie Plame. Since not many bloggers have yet noticed the story, or worse– found it worthy– I am going to exercise my blogger's perogative to blog myself. I am going to blog more about this over this weekend. And below is an excerpt:


White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove personally assured President Bush in the early fall of 2003 that he had not disclosed to anyone in the press that Valerie Plame, the wife of an administration critic, was a CIA employee, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the accounts that both Rove and Bush independently provided to federal prosecutors.

During the same conversation in the White House two years ago-occurring just days after the Justice Department launched a criminal probe into the unmasking of Plame as a covert agency operative-Rove also assured the president that he had not leaked any information to the media in an effort to discredit Plame's husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson. Rove also did not tell the president about his July 2003 a phone call with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, a conversation that touched on the issue of Wilson and Plame.

But some 22 months later, Cooper's testimony to the federal grand jury investigating the Plame leak has directly contradicted Rove's assertions to the president. Cooper has testified that Rove was the person who first told him that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, although Rove did not name her. Cooper has also testified that Rove told him that Plame helped arrange for Wilson to make a fact-finding trip for the CIA to the African nation of Niger to investigate allegations that then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium with which to build a nuclear bomb.

In his first interview with FBI agents working on the leak probe, Rove similarly did not disclose that he had spoken to Cooper, according to sources close to the investigation.

But in subsequent interviews with federal investigators and in his testimony to the grand jury, Rove changed his account, asserting that when the FBI first questioned him, he had simply forgotten about his phone conversation with Cooper. Rove also told prosecutors that he had forgotten about the Cooper conversation when he talked to the president about the matter in the fall of 2003...
Sources close to the leak investigation being run by Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald say it was the discovery of one of Rove's White House e-mails-in which the senior Bush adviser referred to his July 2003 conversation with Cooper- that prompted Rove to contact prosecutors and to revise his account to include the Cooper conversation.
http://whateveralready.blogspot.com/2005/10/new-national-journal-story-on-plame.html

[knightroar]

Rove Denied to Bush He Engaged in Leak By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer
Sat Oct 8, 9:16 AM ET



Senior aide Karl Rove denied to President Bush that he engaged in an effort to disclose the identity of a covert CIA operative to discredit her husband's criticism of Iraq policy, say people familiar with Rove's statements in a criminal investigation.

Rove's brief discussion with Bush has been a mystery for two years because the White House publicly referred to it but refuses to say anything about it.

Beginning two years ago, the White House flatly denied that Rove had been involved in unlawfully leaking the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, the wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

The White House denials collapsed in July amid the disclosure of Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper's conversations in July 2003 about Wilson's wife with Rove and I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.

Bush asked Rove in the fall of 2003 to assure him he was not involved in an effort to divulge Plame's identity and punish Wilson, and the longtime confidant assured the president so, people familiar with Rove's account say.

Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff, answered similarly when press secretary Scott McClellan asked him a similar question.

Those with direct knowledge of evidence gathered in the criminal investigation spoke to The Associated Press only on condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy.

Bush's discussion with Rove did not get into specifics concerning Rove's conversations in July 2003 with syndicated columnist Robert Novak and Cooper, who wrote stories identifying Plame, the people familiar with Rove's account said.

Rove's meeting with Bush occurred amid a public uproar over the Justice Department launching a criminal investigation of who in the administration leaked Plame's identity.

At the time, spokesman McClellan was so adamant in his denials that he told reporters the president himself knew that Rove wasn't involved in the leak.

"How does (Bush) know that?" a reporter asked.

"I'm not going to get into conversations that the president has with advisers or staff," McClellan replied.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is wrapping up an investigation into whether Rove, Libby or other White House aides divulged Plame's identity in violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

The probe also is examining whether aides mishandled classified information, made false statements or obstructed justice.

Rove is slated to testify soon to the grand jury for the fourth time. Prosecutors told him they no longer can assure that he'll escape indictment.

Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, declined to comment Friday on the specifics of the discussion with Bush. But he confirmed that his client maintains — then and now — he did not engage in an effort to disclose Plame's identity.

"He always truthfully denied that he was ever part of any campaign to punish Joe Wilson by disclosing the identity of his wife," Luskin said.

The New York Times and The Washington Post reported Saturday that Fitzgerald will meet Tuesday with Times reporter Judith Miller, who has compiled notes on a conversation she had with Libby. That conversation, on June 25, 2003, is in addition to two others previously disclosed. Miller spent 85 days in jail before testifying before the grand jury about her conversations with Libby.

In addition to Rove's discussions with reporters, investigators are looking into a delay in learning about Rove's contact with Cooper and an e-mail between Rove and now-national security adviser Steve Hadley that referred to the conversation.

Cooper's contact with Rove did not come up in Rove's first interview or grand jury appearance, but he volunteered the information and provided the e-mail during a second grand jury appearance.

Wilson went public on July 6, 2003, with criticism of administration officials, suggesting they manipulated intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq.

Eight days later, Novak revealed the identity of Wilson's wife, giving her maiden name, Valerie Plame, which she used as a CIA officer. Novak said his information about Wilson's wife had come from two senior administration officials.

Novak wrote that Plame suggested the CIA send her husband on a trip to Niger to investigate intelligence that Iraq had a deal to acquire uranium from the African country.

Wilson said he found it highly doubtful that any such transaction had occurred. The trip was the underpinning for Wilson's subsequent public criticism that the administration had twisted intelligence on Iraq's nuclear weapons program to exaggerate the threat.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051008/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cia_leak_rove;_ylt=AtPm_ZSGUwmfOw33DQa5hdGs0NUE;_y lu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--

[knightroar]

Rove’s 4th Grand Jury Appearance to Focus on “Discrepancies in Testimony”
A new report from Newsweek:

[L]awyers close to the case, who asked not to be identified because it’s ongoing, say [special prosecutor Patrick] Fitzgerald appears to be focusing in part on discrepancies in testimony between Rove and Time reporter Matt Cooper about their conversation of July 11, 2003. In Cooper’s account, Rove told him the wife of White House critic Joseph Wilson worked at the “agency” on WMD issues and was responsible for sending Wilson on a trip to Niger to check out claims that Iraq was trying to buy uranium. But Rove did not disclose this conversation to the FBI when he was first interviewed by agents in the fall of 2003—nor did he mention it during his first grand jury appearance…

After Fitzgerald discovered an email from Rove to Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley discussing Rove’s conversation with Cooper, Rove returned to the grand jury. But his account of the conversation differed substantially from Cooper:

[Rove] testified that the talk was initially about “welfare reform”—a topic mentioned in the e-mail—and that Cooper then changed the subject. Cooper has written that he doesn’t recall a discussion of welfare reform.

Yesterday, lawyers in the case told the New York Times that special Fitzgerald “might consider false statement, perjury or obstruction of justice charges…if he could show that anyone intentionally misled investigators or prosecutors.
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/09/rove-discrepancies/

[Bman]

Reprinted from NewsMax.com

Sunday, Oct. 9, 2005 9:28 p.m. EDT
Bill Kristol: While House Indictments Coming


Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol predicted on Sunday that there will be at least one and perhaps several indictments of "senior [Bush] administration officials" by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating the outing of CIA employee Valerie Plame.

"Criminal defense lawyers I've spoken to who are friendly to the administration are very worried that there will be one or more indictments in the next three weeks of senior administration officials," the influential editor told "Fox News Sunday."

"Just looking at what Fitzgerald is doing and taking him at his word as a serious prosecutor here," Kristol said, "and I think it's going to be bad for the Bush administration."

FNS co-panelist Brit Hume noted, however, that at least some of the speculation that top Bush adviser Karl Rove may be indicted has been based on false reports in the press.

Noting ominous-sounding press reports on Thursday claiming that Fitzgerald had withdrawn a previous assurances that Rove's testimony would not be used against him during an upcoming fourth grand jury appearance, Hume said: "My information is that there was never any such promise attached to his earlier testimony either."

http://www.newsmax.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/10/9/213202.shtml

[knightroar]

Reprinted from NewsMax.com

Sunday, Oct. 9, 2005 9:28 p.m. EDT
Bill Kristol: While House Indictments Coming


Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol predicted on Sunday that there will be at least one and perhaps several indictments of "senior [Bush] administration officials" by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating the outing of CIA employee Valerie Plame.

"Criminal defense lawyers I've spoken to who are friendly to the administration are very worried that there will be one or more indictments in the next three weeks of senior administration officials," the influential editor told "Fox News Sunday."

"Just looking at what Fitzgerald is doing and taking him at his word as a serious prosecutor here," Kristol said, "and I think it's going to be bad for the Bush administration."

FNS co-panelist Brit Hume noted, however, that at least some of the speculation that top Bush adviser Karl Rove may be indicted has been based on false reports in the press.

Noting ominous-sounding press reports on Thursday claiming that Fitzgerald had withdrawn a previous assurances that Rove's testimony would not be used against him during an upcoming fourth grand jury appearance, Hume said: "My information is that there was never any such promise attached to his earlier testimony either."

http://www.newsmax.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/10/9/213202.shtml


well if the king neo-con is worried, I would imagine that we will have good news soon

[thejesus]

Don't blow your respective loads just yet....

There will either be indictments or there won't be....

Wait till they're issued before celebrating

[Bman]

When does the Fat Man (Rove) sing, anyway?

Is that today, or tomorrow?

[knightroar]

CIA Leak: Karl Rove and the Case of the Missing E-mail

Newsweek
Oct. 17, 2005 issue - The White House's handling of a potentially crucial e-mail sent by senior aide Karl Rove two years ago set off a chain of events that has led special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to summon Rove for a fourth grand jury appearance this week. His return has created heightened concern among White House officials and their allies that Fitzgerald may be preparing to bring indictments when a federal grand jury that has been investigating the leak of a CIA agent's identity expires at the end of October. Robert Luskin, Rove's lawyer, tells NEWSWEEK that, in his last conversations with Fitzgerald, the prosecutor assured Luskin "he has not made any decisions."

But lawyers close to the case, who asked not to be identified because it's ongoing, say Fitzgerald appears to be focusing in part on discrepancies in testimony between Rove and Time reporter Matt Cooper about their conversation of July 11, 2003. In Cooper's account, Rove told him the wife of White House critic Joseph Wilson worked at the "agency" on WMD issues and was responsible for sending Wilson on a trip to Niger to check out claims that Iraq was trying to buy uranium. But Rove did not disclose this conversation to the FBI when he was first interviewed by agents in the fall of 2003—nor did he mention it during his first grand jury appearance, says one of the lawyers familiar with Rove's account. (He did not tell President George W. Bush about it either, assuring him that fall only that he was not part of any "scheme" to discredit Wilson by outing his wife, the lawyer says.) But after he testified, Luskin discovered an e-mail Rove had sent that same day—July 11—alerting deputy national-security adviser Stephen Hadley that he had just talked to Cooper, the lawyer says. In the e-mail, Rove said Cooper pushed him on whether the president was being hurt by the Niger controversy. "I didn't take the bait," Rove wrote Hadley, adding that he warned Cooper not to get "far out in front on this." After reviewing the e-mail, Rove then returned to the grand jury last year and reported the Cooper conversation. He testified that the talk was initially about "welfare reform"—a topic mentioned in the e-mail—and that Cooper then changed the subject. Cooper has written that he doesn't recall a discussion of welfare reform.

Why didn't the Rove e-mail surface earlier? The lawyer says it's because an electronic search conducted by the White House missed it because the right "search words" weren't used. (The White House and Fitzgerald both declined to comment.) But the e-mail isn't the only belatedly discovered document in the case. Fitzgerald has also summoned New York Times reporter Judith Miller back for questioning this week: a notebook was discovered in the paper's Washington bureau, reflecting a late June 2003 conversation with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, about Wilson and his trip to Africa, says one of the lawyers. The notebook may also be significant because Wilson's identity was not yet public. A lawyer for the Times declined to comment.

—Michael Isikoff

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9630676/site/newsweek/

[thejesus]

When does the Fat Man (Rove) sing, anyway?

Is that today, or tomorrow?

I've been wondering this...

They said he was supposed to testify last Friday, but as far as I know, that didn't happen...

Either way, I think it's going to be early November before any possible indictments are issued

[Motley]

When does the Fat Man (Rove) sing, anyway?

Is that today, or tomorrow?

Judith Miller is going back in front of the GJ tomorrow (I think). Today was a Federal Holiday.. and I don't think Rove testified Friday, so we will need to wait for at least these two to testify again.

[thejesus]

Whoa...this is heavy...

News Orgs Working On Stories Tying Cheney Into Plamegate… Developing…

The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg are working on stories that point to Vice President Dick Cheney as the target of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2005/10/11/news-orgs-working-on-stor_n_8705.html

[thejesus]

If that is true, what I posted above, that would certainly explain the length of the investigation...

If you're going to indict the Vice President of the United States on criminal charges, you sure as shit better have conducted a thorough investigation and make damn sure such an indictment is justified....

It would also make Lawrence O'Donnell right yet again....he predicted at least three senior Bush admin. officials woudl be indicted and at least one VERY HIGH level official would either be indicted or be named as a co-conspirator

[knightroar]

Whoa...this is heavy...

News Orgs Working On Stories Tying Cheney Into Plamegate… Developing…

The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg are working on stories that point to Vice President Dick Cheney as the target of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2005/10/11/news-orgs-working-on-stor_n_8705.html


damn!!!

[Boom!]

Whoa...this is heavy...

News Orgs Working On Stories Tying Cheney Into Plamegate… Developing…

The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg are working on stories that point to Vice President Dick Cheney as the target of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2005/10/11/news-orgs-working-on-stor_n_8705.html

You JUST beat me to posting this....boy is this getting good :) Wait wait.....where's old Baggy Pants to discredit the source???

[knightroar]

You JUST beat me to posting this....boy is this getting good :) Wait wait.....where's old Baggy Pants to discredit the source???


:add09: :add09:

[thejesus]

If Cheney is about to be indicted like this seems to indicate, that might explain why he has been absent from events he was scheduled to be at as of late

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/As_Vice_President_ducks_dinner_buzz_1010.html

[Motley]

From the Washington Post:


Numerous lawyers involved in the 22-month-old investigation said they are bracing for Fitzgerald to bring criminal charges against administration officials. They speculated, based on his questions, that he may be focused on charges of false statements, obstruction of justice or violations of the Espionage Act involving the release of classified government information to unauthorized persons. The grand jury's term is to expire Oct. 28.

Full article here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/11/AR2005101101606_pf.html

[Motley]

Whoa...this is heavy...

News Orgs Working On Stories Tying Cheney Into Plamegate… Developing…

The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg are working on stories that point to Vice President Dick Cheney as the target of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2005/10/11/news-orgs-working-on-stor_n_8705.html

Holy macaroni!

[thejesus]

Holy macaroni!

yeah

[Motley]

Check this out


Report: Lawyers say investigation into CIA leak widens to encompass White House Iraq group

10/11/2005 @ 10:39 pm

Filed by RAW STORY

There are signs that prosecutors now are looking into contacts between administration officials and journalists that took place much earlier than previously thought, the Wall Street Journal will report Wednesday. Excerpts from the coming story:


#

Earlier conversations are potentially significant, because that suggests the special prosecutor leading the investigation is exploring whether there was an effort within the administration at an early stage to develop and disseminate confidential information to the press that could undercut former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Central Intelligence Agency official Valerie Plame.

Mr. Wilson had become a thorn in the Bush administration's side, as he sought to undermine the administration's claims that Iraq had sought to buy materials for building nuclear weapons from other countries, such as uranium "yellowcake" from Niger. Ultimately, his wife's name and identity were disclosed in a newspaper column, prompting the investigation into whether someone in the administration broke the law by revealing the identity of an undercover agent.

Mr. Fitzgerald's pursuit now suggests he might be investigating not a narrow case on the leaking of the agent's name, but perhaps a broader conspiracy.

Mr. Wilson's initial complaints were made privately to reporters. He went public in a July 6 op-ed in the New York Times and in an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press." After that, White House officials, who were attempting to discredit Mr. Wilson's claims, confirmed to some reporters that Mr. Wilson was married to a CIA official. Columnist Robert Novak published Mr. Wilson's wife's name and association with the agency in a column that suggested she had played a role in having him sent on a mission to Niger to investigate the administration's claims.

Until now, Mr. Fitzgerald appeared to be focusing on conversations between White House officials such as Mr. Libby and Karl Rove, President Bush's senior political adviser, after Mr. Wilson wrote his op-ed. The defense by Republican operatives has been that White House officials didn't name Ms. Plame, and that any discussion of her was in response to reporters' questions about Mr. Wilson, the kind of casual banter that occurs between sources and reporters.

Mr. Rove, who has already testified three times before the grand jury and was identified by a Time magazine reporter as a source for his story on Mr. Wilson, is expected to go back to the grand jury, potentially as early as today, to clarify earlier answers.

Lawyers familiar with the investigation believe that at least part of the outcome likely hangs on the inner workings of what has been dubbed the White House Iraq Group. Formed in August 2002, the group, which included Messrs. Rove and Libby, worked on setting strategy for selling the war in Iraq to the public in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion. The group likely would have played a significant role in responding to Mr. Wilson's claims.

http://rawstory.com/admin/dbscripts/printstory.php?story=1301

[Motley]

N/M.. answered my own question.

If anyone else is curious of the line of succession, you can find it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_line_of_succession

[Bman]

N/M.. answered my own question.

If anyone else is curious of the line of succession, you can find it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_line_of_succession


If Dick Cheney "Agnew" is forced to resign due to an indictment (for example) the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution will be used to fill the vacancy. That Admentment reads:


Section 1
In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

Section 2
Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

Section 3
Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.

Section 4
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.



Can VICE PRESIDENT Michael Brown be far away?? :add09:

[Motley]

Can VICE PRESIDENT Michael Brown be far away?? :add09:

Or Paul Bremmer or George Tenet. Hell they already have recieved the Presidential Medal Of Freedom for all the wonderfull work they did in Iraq. :mad_08:

[wanderer1]

If Cheney is about to be indicted like this seems to indicate, that might explain why he has been absent from events he was scheduled to be at as of late

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/As_Vice_President_ducks_dinner_buzz_1010.html

Sorry to be a cynic, but I believe cheney will machinate a heart attack until the whole thing blows over.

[Motley]

So Miller is going in front of the GJ again tomorrow.

Do we know if Rove has testified again yet?

[JustAVoice]

Sorry to be a cynic, but I believe cheney will machinate a heart attack until the whole thing blows over.

wanderer1, I agree wholeheartedly with your insightful analysis

The Bush/Rove/Alien/Jew/Elvis/Hitler/Bigfoot conspiracy goes deeper than any of of could imagine.

They've created 2 hurricanes and an earthquake in two months time....this group has no shame.

[involved]

No,not yet..likely on friday.
So Miller is going in front of the GJ again tomorrow.

Do we know if Rove has testified again yet?

[wanderer1]

this group has no shame.

It's about time you got something right.

[knightroar]

WHITE HOUSE
Libby Did Not Tell Grand Jury About Key Conversation
By Murray Waas, special to National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2005

In two appearances before the federal grand jury investigating the leak of a covert CIA operative's name, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, did not disclose a crucial conversation that he had with New York Times reporter Judith Miller in June 2003 about the operative, Valerie Plame, according to sources with firsthand knowledge of his sworn testimony
Libby also did not disclose the June 23 conversation when he was twice interviewed by FBI agents working on the Plame leak investigation, the sources said.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald apparently learned about the June 23 conversation for the first time just days ago, after attorneys for Miller and The New York Times informed prosecutors that Miller had discovered a set of notes on the conversation.

Miller had spent 85 days in jail for contempt of court for refusing to testify before the grand jury about her conversations with Libby and other Bush administration officials regarding Plame. She was released from jail after she agreed to cooperate with Fitzgerald's investigation. Miller testified before the grand jury on September 30, and attorneys familiar with the matter said that she agreed to be questioned further by Fitzgerald today.

Meanwhile, in recent days Fitzgerald has also expressed significant interest in whether Libby may have sought to discourage Miller-either directly or indirectly through her attorney-from testifying before the grand jury, or cooperating in other ways with the criminal probe, according to attorneys familiar with Miller's discussions with prosecutors.

During two interviews with FBI agents and in two subsequent grand jury appearances, Libby discussed at length a July 8, 2003, conversation about Plame that he and Miller had at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, D.C., as well as a July 12 telephone conversation with Miller on the same subject four days later.

Although Miller would never herself write about Plame, it was two days after her last conversation with Libby that conservative columnist Robert Novak would reveal Plame as a CIA "operative" in his now-famous column of July 14, 2003.

The previously undisclosed June 23 meeting between Libby and Miller, their telephone conversations of July 8 and 12, and Novak's July 14 column occurred during an intensive period in which senior White House officials were scrambling to discredit Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was then publicly asserting that the Bush administration had relied on faulty intelligence to bolster its case for war with Iraq.

Wilson had returned only recently from a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein was covertly attempting to buy enriched uranium from the African nation to build a nuclear weapon. Wilson reported back that the allegations were most likely the result of a hoax. But President Bush still cited the Niger allegations during his 2003 State of the Union address as evidence that Hussein had an aggressive program to develop weapons of mass destruction. In a July 6, 2003, op-ed piece in the New York Times, Wilson charged that the administration misrepresented the intelligence information he had collected on the Niger mission.

FBI agents interviewed Libby in October and November 2003, and the following year he voluntarily appeared twice before the grand jury, according to government records and interviews. But he never disclosed anything to the FBI, prosecutors, or the grand jury about his June 23 conversation with Miller, sources say.

Joseph A. Tate, an attorney for Libby, did not return telephone calls seeking comment for this story. In an earlier interview, he said that neither he nor Libby would comment on anything that Libby might have told the FBI or the grand jury until the investigation was complete.

The new revelations regarding Libby come as Fitzgerald has indicated that he is wrapping up his investigation and making final decisions as to whether criminal charges will be brought in the case. The term of the grand jury that is hearing evidence expires on October 28.

Attorneys familiar with Miller's discussions with prosecutors said that Fitzgerald and his staff have expressed interest to Miller and others about the role that Libby and his attorney may have played in discouraging Miller from testifying in the Plame investigation.

During the earliest stages of the probe, Libby signed a general waiver granting permission to any reporter to whom he talked to testify to Fitzgerald and the grand jury. Subsequently several journalists, including Time magazine's Matthew Cooper, NBC Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert, and a reporter for The Washington Post, provided testimony regarding their conversations with Libby. Cooper told National Journal that he testified only after receiving a personal assurance from Libby during a telephone conversation that he could discuss their July 12, 2003, conversation.

Note: Since this article was first published, the above paragraph has been revised to reflect information from Cooper regarding the circumstances surrounding his testimony.
A federal judge, however, sent Miller to jail when she refused to testify. Miller said she considered the general waiver to be coerced and would testify only if Libby provided her with a specific, personalized waiver. Libby and Tate took the position that the general waiver precluded the need for a personal waiver.

It was only after Fitzgerald personally intervened with Tate and Libby that Libby granted a personal waiver to Miller, according to correspondence between Fitzgerald and Tate. Libby subsequently telephoned Miller, encouraging her to testify.

On September 12, 2005 Fitzgerald wrote a letter to Tate that was marked "confidential." In his letter, Fitzgerald said that Libby's and Tate's refusals to provide a more specific waiver for Miller led the prosecutor to have "assumed that Mr. Libby had simply decided that encouraging Ms. Miller to testify was not in his best interest." Three days later on September 15, Libby wrote Miller a personal letter urging her to testify, and then telephoned her again urging that she testify.

Meanwhile, also on September 15 Tate wrote to Fitzgerald adamantly denying that his client's refusal to provide a personalized waiver to Miller was meant to discourage her from testifying.

"Mr. Libby did voluntarily provide your team with the written waiver immediately when it was presented to us, well over a year ago", Tate wrote to Fitzgerald. Tate also asserted that he repeatedly "assured" Miller's attorney Floyd Abrams that "Mr. Libby's waiver was voluntary and not coerced and [Miller] should accept it for what it was."

However, on September 29 Abrams wrote to Tate challenging that assertion. Abrams charged that Tate had indicated to him that Libby had considered the general waiver by its very nature to have indeed been coercive. "In our conversations," Abrams wrote to Tate, "you did not say that Mr. Libby's written waiver was uncoerced. In fact, you said quite the opposite. You told me that the signed waiver was by its nature coerced and had been required as a condition for Mr. Libby's continued employment at the White House. You compared the coercion to that inherent in the effective bar imposed upon White House employees asserting the Fifth Amendment. A failure by your client to sign the written waiver, you explained, like any assertion by your client of the Fifth Amendment, would result in his dismissal. You persuasively mocked the notion that any waiver signed under such circumstances could be deemed voluntary."

In interviews, both Tate and Abrams said that the other was misrepresenting their conversations. Tate did not return recent phone calls for this story. But in an interview in August-before Libby gave Miller the personalized waiver-Tate said the failure of his client to provide a personal waiver was "because we didn't think that we had to do anything different for Judy than everyone else." Tate added that, "She was and is free to interpret our behavior any way she wants."

Abrams, however, insisted that in several conversations Tate had "left no doubt whatsoever that a general waiver was inherently coercive. There just was very little room for any misunderstanding."

What exactly transpired between the two attorneys may prove to be extremely important to prosecutors, according to legal experts and outside legal observers not directly involved in the case.

A senior Justice Department official said in an interview that "any affirmative statement or action" that "would discourage Miller might be construed to be an obstruction of justice." The official, who has no direct involvement with the Plame probe, requested to speak on the condition of anonymity due to the political sensitivity of the investigation. "Any thorough prosecutor is going to look long and hard at that," the official said.

Dan Richman, a professor at Fordham Law School and a former federal prosecutor for the southern district of New York, said in an interview that while he could not speak specifically as to what occurred between Tate and Abrams, "[A]n attorney encouraging a witness to withhold information from a grand jury when the witness had no right to withhold is engaging in obstructive behavior."

Richman suggested that because Fitzgerald has already been investigating allegations of perjury and obstruction of justice by officials of the Bush administration, the prosecutor might be motivated to examine additional evidence of such conduct because it might demonstrate a pattern of behavior.

Rory Little, a professor of law at the University of California and a former federal prosecutor and associate attorney general in the Clinton administration said that when a special prosecutor is conducting in a high-profile investigation, as opposed to a more routine case probed by an ordinary prosecutor, most private attorneys would act with even greater caution in not sending signs to a potential witness not to co-operate. "A special prosecutor has a very narrow focus," said Little. "The prosecutorial lens is going to be even more focused on both the actions of an attorney and their client."

Although Libby and his attorney declined to comment for this article, Tate had said in a letter to Fitzgerald that he was "dismayed that you had the impression that I had not spoken to counsel for Ms. Miller or that we did not want her to testify." Tate also said he was confident that Miller's "testimony, when added to those of the other reporters... will assure you and the grand jury that Mr. Libby acted properly and lawfully in all respects."

But the senior Justice official added that even in the absence of hard evidence of an obstruction, "a prosecutor is going to want to know why a subject of (the) investigation did not want a witness to co-operate, and why they would allow someone to linger in jail for more than eighty days, unless they had something to hide. That is going to lead many prosecutors to redouble his efforts."

-- Murray Waas is a Washington-based journalist. His previous article, focusing on White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove's role in the Valerie Plame case, was published on Oct. 7

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2005/1011nj1.htm

[undertaker]

Will we see a grand jury seated to investigate the leaks from this grand jury?

Orson

[involved]

no...the administration is guilty until further notice..all leaks can and shall be used against them in the public court of opinion and a functioning media.

[Ono]

In many authoritarian regimes, the prosecution's case is, in practice, believed by default unless the accused can prove he is innocent — presumption of guilt. :D

[pilobolus]

In many authoritarian regimes, the prosecution's case is, in practice, believed by default unless the accused can prove he is innocent — presumption of guilt. :D

I don't think forming an opinion before the investigated are accused or the accussed are convicted is indication of us moving toward authoritarianism. On the contrary, the public forms opinions on matters all the time; what we don't have (unless you are part of the public that sits before the court as jurist) is the power to convict these people despite how we have ASSUMED their guilt.

For instance, did you form an opinion on the guilt or innocence of Michael Jackson before the trial ran its course?

[Bman]

Will we see a grand jury seated to investigate the leaks from this grand jury?

Orson


That would be the duty of the Justice Department. Good luck to get them to do ANYTHING AT ALL, under Gonzalez.

[Phuct]

Napoleaonic Law.




In many authoritarian regimes, the prosecution's case is, in practice, believed by default unless the accused can prove he is innocent — presumption of guilt. :D

[thejesus]

I don't think forming an opinion before the investigated are accused or the accussed are convicted is indication of us moving toward authoritarianism. On the contrary, the public forms opinions on matters all the time; what we don't have (unless you are part of the public that sits before the court as jurist) is the power to convict these people despite how we have ASSUMED their guilt.

For instance, did you form an opinion on the guilt or innocence of Michael Jackson before the trial ran its course?

What you say is true....

Except in this case, the potential criminals are Republicans, so Ono thinks that forming an opinion of them before hand is wrong, but just in this case

[thejesus]

Someone just asked on another board if the Bush administration's lying to the American people in order to gain support for the Iraq war would or would not, in and of itself, constitute a crime...

At first, no one thought it would...only that lying to congress would constitute a crime....

But in light of all these recent reports that Fitzgerald might be looking into the possibility of a 'broader conspiracy', someone posted this....


"Just a guess...

Title 50, Chapter 15, Section 413b (f) of the US CODE, prohibits covert actions intended to influence United States political processes."

I looked it up and it's true. The actual law reads:

"No covert action may be conducted which is intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies, or media."

http://straylight.law.cornell.edu/uscode/uscode50/usc_sec_50_00000413---b000-.html

[Alli]

You'd have to prove they were, in fact 'lying' in lieu of reciting crappy intel, that had preceded this administration for many years.

such an action is necessary to support identifiable foreign policy objectives of the United States and is important to the national security of the United States

[thejesus]

You'd have to prove they were, in fact 'lying' in lieu of reciting crappy intel, that had preceded this administration for many years.

such an action is necessary to support identifiable foreign policy objectives of the United States and is important to the national security of the United States

The element of 'lying' is sufficient but not necessary for this statute to apply....

If there was an intentional campagn to try and discredit critics of the administration and of the war, such as a campaign that might out an undercover CIA agent in order to discredit her husband, among other things, that would constitute a covert action to try and influence the American political process

This seems very plausable. The adminstration had to have known that committing troops to invade a country that hadn't attacked us would not be easy. They almost certainly would have had to have created a playbook to deal with critics...and when the facts themselves can't be chaleneged, the only thing left would be to go after the critics themselves, which has been a successful strategy for guys like Rove for a long time

[Bag Sniper]

If there was an intentional campagn to try and discredit critics of the administration and of the war, such as a campaign that might out an undercover CIA agent in order to discredit her husband, among other things, that would constitute a covert action to try and influence the American political process

This seems very plausable. The adminstration had to have known that committing troops to invade a country that hadn't attacked us would not be easy. They almost certainly would have had to have created a playbook to deal with critics...and when the facts themselves can't be chaleneged, the only thing left would be to go after the critics themselves, which has been a successful strategy for guys like Rove for a long time

Say what .... so when there's an intentional campaign etc against your guys it's all not fair .... but when your guy does it to someone else .... it's not plausible .. it's a lie ... the charges won't go anywhere .. like you said in the Vietnam Vets sueing Kerry thread ....

You're simply fucked in the head heyzoos ... you've got so many faces I don't even think *you* know which is your real one ....

[thejesus]

Say what .... so when there's an intentional campaign etc against your guys it's all not fair .... but when your guy does it to someone else .... it's not plausible .. it's a lie ... the charges won't go anywhere .. like you said in the Vietnam Vets sueing Kerry thread ....

You're simply fucked in the head heyzoos ... you've got so many faces I don't even think *you* know which is your real one ....

Bag, we're talking about a matter of law here...not about what's 'fair'

I referenced the law that would apply to this situation...

Why don't you tell us which law Senator John Kerry violated that resulted in nobody giving a shit about a sorry ass low-budget movie a bunch of attention whores made

[thejesus]

Democrats ask prosecutor Fitzgerald for leak report

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Senior_Democrats_seek_assurances_final_leak_1012.h tml

[Bag Sniper]

Bag, we're talking about a matter of law here...not about what's 'fair'

I referenced the law that would apply to this situation...

Why don't you tell us which law Senator John Kerry violated that resulted in nobody giving a shit about a sorry ass low-budget movie a bunch of attention whores made

Having not seen the brief myself but I would guess blackmailing the theatre ... you know .. if you guys show that movie then ... well .. let's just say I hope your fire insurance is paid up ...

Then there's Interfereing with Interstate Commerce ... felony ...

I'm not a business law attorney but it is heading to court isn't it ...

[thejesus]

Having not seen the brief myself but I would guess blackmailing the theatre ... you know .. if you guys show that movie then ... well .. let's just say I hope your fire insurance is paid up ...

Then there's Interfereing with Interstate Commerce ... felony ...

I'm not a business law attorney but it is heading to court isn't it ...

lol, pretty strong case you got there....

Yeah, it's heading to court. Big deal. I could take you to court for being a dumb redneck and try to recover damages....doesn't mean I'd win

In fact, in such a case, the court would probably rule on your behalf citing that you are the result of poor upbringing and it's not your fault that you're a dumb redneck..

[Motley]

Interesting speculation here about Colin Powell

Andrea Mitchell IDs Colin Powell's role in Plamegate (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2151265)
Posted by Lucille
Added to homepage Tue Oct 11th 2005, 08:47 PM ET

Plame obsessives will remember a Washington Post article in which a "Senior administration source" is quoted as having seen several administration officials, including Ari Fleischer, peruse a classified memo that identified Valerie Plame. This occurred on July 7, aboard AF1, as Bush and his entourage were en route to Africa. The memo was prepared for Colin Powell, who was aboard the flight. Many have assumed that it was Powell himself who not only observed these administration officials read the memo, but also saw them call reporters while still on board. Many have guessed that Powell testified to this before Fitzgerald and also leaked this information to the WP. According to the WP, the "senior official" said of the leak: "Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge."

Tonight on Hardball, Mrs. Greenspan was discussing the possibility of indictments that went beyond the usual suspects, Libby and Rove. Mitchell said (I'm paraphrasing), yes, there definitely could be other indictments--Colin Powell said he saw Ari Fleischer read the memo identifying Valerie Plame aboard AF1.

So, Mrs. G. blew the WP's confidentiality. She didn't speculate Powell was the source, she simply stated it as fact. If you have a chance to see the rebroadcast watch for the reaction shots. Tweety and Isikoff and the ChiTrib reporter look frozen, and then their eyes water. Mrs. G might have realized what she said, but, after so much plastic surgery it's hard to tell if she had a reaction to her little slip.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11208-2003Sep... (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11208-2003Sep...)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/

[thejesus]

who is Mrs. Greenspan?

I don't see anyone by that name as being a guest on Harball on Oct 11...

[Motley]

who is Mrs. Greenspan?

I don't see anyone by that name as being a guest on Harball on Oct 11...

Andrea Mitchel (NBC Reporter). She is married to Greenspan.

[thejesus]

Andrea Mitchel (NBC Reporter). She is married to Greenspan.

Yeah, I just figured that out...

Problem is, she isn't mentioned anywhere in the Hardball transcript from last night or from the night before

[thejesus]

Ah, I found it....

ISIKOFF: How they learned about Wilson‘s wives identity, we do know there was this classified state department report that was circulated in that time period and that the paragraph that had the information about Wilson‘s wife at the agency was marked not just secret but N.F., no foreign.

So, that it was so sensitive that it could not be disclosed, it would be harmful to national security, if it was...

WARREN: That could be the case...

ISIKOFF: ...and I think if they can prove it, and we don‘t know this, if they can prove that was the source of knowledge, then that can make a serious matter.

MITCHELL: And we do know...

MATTHEWS: I know one person won‘t like this kind of business, that‘s President Bush senior, the first President Bush would be stunned to hear that anybody in the White House today was involved in outing an agent. He was once head of the CIA.

Go ahead, Andrea, last thought.

MITCHELL: We also know that, that paragraph, that document was circulated on Air Force One as the president was flying to Africa, that Ari Fletcher saw it, Colin Powell testified to that. And that could be one of the key facts in this.

MATTHEWS: And we‘re still waiting to see who was the other person who talked to Bob Novak.

MITCHELL: Exactly.

[thejesus]

From the Rumor Mill....

A source close to the Plame case is saying that Fitzgerald met alone with Judge Hogan yesterday, presumably to ask for an extension of the Grand Jury.

BushCo. sphincters to be set on "pucker" for a little while longer.

http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/2005_10_09_firedoglake_archive.html#11290786978773 0572

posted by Jane Hamsher @ 1:27 PM

[Motley]

hmmm.......


SOURCES CLOSE TO FITZGERALD
SAY CHENEY EXAMINED IN LEAK INVESTIGATION... DEVELOPING...

http://www.rawstory.com/

[thejesus]

hmmm.......


SOURCES CLOSE TO FITZGERALD
SAY CHENEY EXAMINED IN LEAK INVESTIGATION... DEVELOPING...

http://www.rawstory.com/

lol, why does reading that headline conjure up an image in my mind of Cheney getting a urinary exam???

I know the man has health problems, but gee whiz (no pun in-...nah, fuck it...pun intended!) :add01:

[Motley]

lol, why does reading that headline conjure up an image in my mind of Cheney getting a urinary exam???

I know the man has health problems, but gee whiz (no pun...nah, fuck it...pun intended) :add01:

LMFAO! Took me a second to get the joke :add09:

[Firecat]

BushCo. sphincters to be set on "pucker" for a little while longer.

LOL!

[Motley]

Cheney's role in outing of CIA agent under examination, sources close to prosecutor say

10/12/2005 @ 10:10 pm

Filed by Jason Leopold



http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/19/scotus.cheney.scalia/vstory.cheney.jpgCheney's role in CIA outing not known


Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is trying to determine whether Vice President Dick Cheney had a role in the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame-Wilson, individuals close to Fitzgerald have confirmed. Plame’s husband was a vocal critic of prewar intelligence used by President George W. Bush to build support for the Iraq war.

The investigation into who leaked the officer's name to reporters has now turned toward a little known cabal of administration hawks known as the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), which came together in August 2002 to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. WHIG operated out of the Vice President’s office and was chaired by Karl Rove, Bush's senior advisor.

Fitzgerald’s examination centers on a group of players charged with not only selling the war, but according to sources familiar with the case, to discredit anyone who openly “disagreed with the official Iraq war” story.

The group’s members included Deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove, Bush advisor Karen Hughes, Senior Advisor to the Vice President Mary Matalin, Deputy Director of Communications James Wilkinson, Assistant to the President and Legislative Liaison Nicholas Calio, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby - Chief of Staff to the Vice President and co-author of the Administration's pre-emptive strike policy.

Rice was later appointed Secretary of State; her deputy Hadley was made National Security Advisor. Wilkinson departed to become a spokesman for the military's central command, and later for the Republican National Convention. Hughes was recently appointed Undersecretary of State.

Several members of the group have testified before Fitzgerald’s grand jury.

Cheney’s role under scrutiny

Two officials close to Fitzgerald told RAW STORY they have seen documents obtained from the White House Iraq Group which state that Cheney was present at several of the group's meetings. They say Cheney personally discussed with individuals in attendance at least two interviews in May and June of 2003 Wilson gave to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus, in which he claimed the administration “twisted” prewar intelligence and what the response from the administration should be.

Cheney was interviewed by the FBI surrounding the leak in 2004. According to the New York Times, Cheney was asked whether he knew of any concerted effort by White House aides to name Ms. Wilson.

Sources close to the investigation have also confirmed that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is trying to determine Vice President Cheney's role in the outing of Mrs. Wilson, more specifically, if Cheney ordered the leak.

Those close to Fitzgerald say they have yet to uncover any evidence that suggests Cheney ordered the leak or played a role in the outing of Mrs. Wilson. Still, the sources said they are investigating claims that Cheney may have been involved based on his attendance at meetings of the Iraq group. Previous reports indicate Cheney was intimately involved with the framing of the Iraq war.

On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal confirmed that the Iraq group was under scrutiny.

“Formed in August 2002, the group, which included Messrs. [Karl] Rove and [Lewis] Libby, worked on setting strategy for selling the war in Iraq to the public in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion,” the Journal reported. “The group likely would have played a significant role in responding to [former Ambassador Joseph] Wilson's claims” that the Bush administration twisted intelligence when it said Iraq tried to acquire yellow-cake uranium from Africa.

Rove's "strategic communications" task force operating inside the group was instrumental in writing and coordinating speeches by senior Bush administration officials, highlighting in September 2002 that Iraq was a nuclear threat.

Background

The White House Iraq Group operated virtually unknown until January 2004, when Fitzgerald subpoenaed for notes, email and attendance records. Bush Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. created the group in August of 2002.

“A senior official who participated in its work called it "an internal working group, like many formed for priority issues, to make sure each part of the White House was fulfilling its responsibilities," according to an Aug. 10, 2003, Washington Post investigative report (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39500-2003Aug9?language=printer) on the group’s inner workings.

Senior Bush adviser Karl Rove chaired meetings of the group.

The group relied heavily on New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who, after meeting with several of the organization’s members in August 2002, wrote an explosive story that many critics of the war believe laid the groundwork for military action against Iraq.

On Sunday, Sept. 8, 2002, Miller wrote a story for the Times quoting anonymous officials who said aluminum tubes found in Iraq were to be used as centrifuges. Her report said the "diameter, thickness and other technical specifications" of the tubes -- precisely the grounds for skepticism among nuclear enrichment experts -- showed that they were "intended as components of centrifuges."

She closed her piece by quoting then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice who said the United States would not sit by and wait to find a smoking gun to prove its case, possibly in the form of a “a mushroom cloud." After Miller’s piece was published, administration officials pursued their case on Sunday talk shows using Miller’s piece as evidence that Iraq was pursuing a nuclear bomb, even though those officials were the ones who supplied Miller with the story and were quoted anonymously.

Rice's comments on CNN’s “Late Edition” reaffirmed Miller’s story. Rice said that Saddam Hussein was "actively pursuing a nuclear weapon" and that the tubes -- described repeatedly in U.S. intelligence reports as "dual-use" items -- were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs."

Cheney, on NBC's "Meet the Press," also mentioned the aluminum tubes story in the Times and said "increasingly, we believe the United States will become the target" of an Iraqi atomic bomb. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, on CBS's "Face the Nation," asked viewers to "imagine a September 11th with weapons of mass destruction.”

President Bush reiterated the image of Rice’s mushroom cloud comment in his Oct. 7, 2002 speech.

The International Atomic Energy Agency later revealed that Iraq’s aluminum tubes were never designed to enrich uranium.

In February of 2003, WHIG allegedly scripted the speech Powell made to the United Nations presenting the United States’ case for war.

Powell’s speech to the UN, United Press International reported, “was handled by the White House Iraq Group, which… provided Powell with a script for his speech, using information developed by Feith's group. Much of it was unsourced material fed to newspapers by the OSP. Realizing this, Powell's team turned to the now-discredited National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. But some of Feith's handiwork ended up in Powell's mouth anyway.”

Miller appears in Jury room again

Miller’s second appearance before the grand jury investigating the CIA leak seems to be tied to her meeting and discussions in June of 2003 with I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, sources close to the investigation said. The meeting came one year before the New York Times printed a lengthy mea culpa discrediting a half-dozen of Miller’s prewar stories on the Iraqi threat.

Fitzgerald’s investigation resulted when allegations surfaced that Bush Administration officials had called reporters to circulate the name of the CIA officer, Valerie Plame-Wilson, in an attempt to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a critic of the administration's Iraq policy.

Wilson went to Niger in 2002 at the request of the CIA to investigate reports that Iraq was trying to buy uranium "yellow cake" to develop nuclear weapons. He found that the reports were not credible.

Until now, Fitzgerald’s two-year investigation has focused on conversations Karl Rove and Lewis “Scooter” Libby have had with individual journalists, including Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

That has now changed. Fitzgerald has retraced his steps to an earlier period when he first began to examine the White House Iraq Group.

During its very first meetings, Card's Iraq group ordered a series of white papers showing Iraq’s arms violations. The first paper, "A Grave and Gathering Danger: Saddam Hussein's Quest for Nuclear Weapons," was never published. However, the paper was drafted with the assistance of experts from the National Security Council and Cheney's office.

“In its later stages, the draft white paper coincided with production of a National Intelligence Estimate and its unclassified summary. “But the WHIG, according to three officials who followed the white paper's progress, wanted gripping images and stories not available in the hedged and austere language of intelligence,” according to the Post.

Eight months later, Joseph Wilson began to question the veracity of the Bush administration’s prewar intelligence in private conversations with reporters. His talk threatened to undercut the administration’s successful marketing campaign: that Iraq was an imminent threat to the United States and its neighbors in the Middle East.

Wilson’s allegations threatened to chip away at the credibility of individuals such as Cheney, who, in dozens of speeches just a few months prior had said that Iraq was dangerously close to acquiring a nuclear weapon. It also threatened to ruin Miller’s credibility. It was then that Administration officials started to discredit Wilson.

Now Fitzgerald is trying to find out whether Cheney was involved.

Larisa Alexandrovna contributed research for this report.

http://rawstory.com/admin/dbscripts/printstory.php?story=1305

[Motley]

We should be learning quite a bit more now that Judy & the NYT seem to be released from any court order which silenced them

Judge Lifts Contempt of Court Citation for Miller

By E&P Staff

Published: October 12, 2005 8:45 PM ET



NEW YORK Judith Miller's second appearance before the grand jury probing the Plame/CIA leak case on Wednesday lasted only a little more than an hour but it was enough to earn a judge's order releasing The New York Times reporter from the contempt-of-court citation that landed her in jail.

The order was still in place until her testimony was complete.

Besides liberating Miller, it also means The New York Times can no longer cite that order as a roadblock to keep it from presenting a full accounting of related matters.

"I am delighted that the contempt order has been lifted, and Judy is now completely free to go about her great reporting as a very principled and honorable reporter," said Robert Bennett, one of Miller's attorneys.

Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, had said in a letter to newsroom staffers on Tuesday that once Ms. Miller's "obligations to the grand jury are fulfilled, we intend to write the most thorough story we can...." He also criticized "armchair critics" and those who had spread rumors and "myths" about the case.

A New York Times spokeswoman told E&P the paper had no comment about Wednesday's proceedings and would not say when any major article would appear.

A report by Reuters' Adam Entous on Wednesday raised the issue of the waiver received by Miller from her source, I. Lewis Libby. Entous wonders if that waiver had only applied to the two July 2003 conversations that he had with Miller; perhaps he did not mean for it to apply to the June 23, 2003, talk that she discussed today with the grand jury.

That leaves Karl Rove, the White House, to testify this week, for the fourth time. Thursday appears to be the likely date and Fitzgerald may move quickly after that to produce indictments.

Meanwhile, appearing on MSNBC's "Hardball," Mike Allen of The Washington Post said officials inside the White House are readying this legal defense: the Valerie Plame information came from the press to them, not the other way around. One problem: Some people at the State Department (including Colin Powell) may have testified that the White House specifically requested information about Plame.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001305282

[Bman]

Pudge Rove is going in front of the Grand Jury today. I heard on the radio that he was filmed hoping in his car and heading to the courthouse this morning.



Presidential aide Karl Rove set for fourth grand jury appearance
WHITE HOUSE (AP) - Karl Rove could be back before a federal grand jury today.

The panel is investigating the leak of a C-I-A operative's identity during an alleged scheme to discredit an administration critic.

Rove is a long-time top aide to President Bush and the man Bush has credited as the architect of his reelection.

Rove's grand jury appearance, which could come today, will be his fourth and likely final chance to convince the panel he didn't commit a crime.

When the story first surfaced two years ago, the White House categorically denied any involvement by Rove. Since then he's acknowledged talking to reporters and the White House has switched to a "no comment."

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is believed to be close to a decision on indictments in a case that's already been an embarrassment to the administration.

Photo Copyright Getty Images

©2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


http://www.13wham.com/news/national/story.aspx?content_id=BCEB3B16-3DC4-4681-A2C8-8237056D2C1A

[Bman]

Fourth time's a charm!


The Associated Press

These materials may not be republished without the express written consent of The Associated Press

October 14, 2005, Friday, BC cycle



Rove makes fourth grand jury appearance in CIA leak case

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON


Karl Rove testified for the fourth time Friday before the grand jury in the CIA leak probe, following public disclosure of his conversations with two reporters about the identity of a covert officer at the spy agency.

The White House aide spent about four and a half hours inside the federal courthouse, and left without commenting to reporters. It was likely Rove's final chance to convince grand jurors he did nothing criminal in the leak case.

Prosecutors have warned Rove, architect of President Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, that there is no guarantee he will not be indicted. The grand jury's term is due to expire Oct. 28.

After Rove's testimony, White House spokesman Scott McClellan was asked whether Rove still had the president's confidence. He would say only, "Karl continues to do his duties."

McClellan said he was declining to comment on all questions that touched on the grand jury matter. "The president made it very clear, we're not going to comment on an ongoing investigation," he told reporters.

The White House has shifted from categorical denials two years ago that Rove or Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were involved in the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity to "no comment" today.

McClellan on Friday rejected suggestions that the investigation of two key players was distracting the White House.

"We're aware of all those things," he said. "But we've got a lot of work to do and that's where we're focused."

Rove walked into the grand jury area with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald before 9 a.m. Friday and walked out a couple of minutes after the prosecutor in the afternoon.

The spotlight in Fitzgerald's investigation recently has fallen on Libby, who was the focus of prosecutors' questions in two grand jury appearances by New York Times reporter Judith Miller. She detailed her conversations with the vice president's top aide about the covert CIA officer, Valerie Plame, and her husband, Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson.

Fitzgerald has a variety of options as he weighs whether anyone broke a law that bars the intentional unmasking of a covert CIA officer. Defense lawyers increasingly are concerned Fitzgerald might pursue other charges such as false statements, obstruction of justice or mishandling of classified information.

For the White House in 2004, the good news about Fitzgerald's probe was that it didn't become an issue during the presidential election year. Witnesses underwent questioning, including Bush and Cheney, White House records were turned over to the grand jury and the administration pledged full cooperation. The president promised to fire any leakers.

Rove, a Texas political consultant who rose through the ranks of Republican politics with the late GOP adviser Lee Atwater, was the architect of Bush's successful drive to re-election. Libby was at Cheney's side during the campaign.

"They are good individuals," McClellan said of Rove and Libby on Oct. 7, 2003. "They are important members of our White House team. And that's why I spoke with them, so that I could come back to you and say that they were not involved. I had no doubt with that in the beginning, but I like to check my information to make sure it's accurate before I report back to you, and that's exactly what I did."

The power to create even more trouble for the administration or wrap up the investigation and return to Chicago, where he is U.S. attorney, lies with Fitzgerald. An experienced prosecutor with a Republican pedigree, Fitzgerald has a reputation for being willing to take on politicians of either political party in corruption probes. Currently, Fitzgerald's office is prosecuting a former Republican governor of Illinois.

The revelations flowing out of Fitzgerald's CIA leak investigation so far offer a public snapshot of Washington at work: A White House with its credibility on the line tries to deal with a political problem by talking confidentially to reporters.

In this instance, the political problem was Wilson and his statements that the administration had twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq. The criticism came as the U.S. military engaged in a fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The existence of such weapons was the primary reason the administration gave to justify going to war.

Eight days after Wilson made his allegations, columnist Robert Novak identified Wilson's wife as a CIA operative, saying she had suggested her husband for a mission to Africa for the agency.

The trip led subsequently to Wilson's conclusion that the administration had manipulated intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

Novak said his sources were two senior administration officials. Rove spoke to Novak about Wilson's wife and is apparently one of Novak's sources. The other is still a public mystery. Novak is believed to have cooperated with Fitzgerald's investigation, though he has declined to comment.

The White House denials of Rove's and Libby's involvement collapsed three months ago, when Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper testified that Rove had been one of his sources for a story that identified Wilson's wife. Libby was another of Cooper's sources for the story.

[Alli]

So has this "imminent indictment" occurred after 4 appearances?

[Bman]

So has this "imminent indictment" occurred after 4 appearances?


Not yet!!!

Shouldn't be long now, though!!

isn't this exciting?? :)

[Alli]

Not yet!!!
Shouldn't be long now, though!!
isn't this exciting?? :)
Last week's MNF game was exciting!! :)

This is more suspenseful.

[thejesus]

Last week's MNF game was exciting!! :)

This is more suspenseful.

Yep...suspense can disappoint...

It will certainly be a lot more interesting if people are indicted though...

But I don't want to keep my hopes up...nothing may come of this in the end...

[Alli]

Yep...suspense can disappoint...

It will certainly be a lot more interesting if people are indicted though...

But I don't want to keep my hopes up...nothing may come of this in the end...
Speculate: Is it common or uncommon for someone to be summoned 4 times to appear in front of a Grand Jury?

[pilobolus]

Speculate: Is it common or uncommon for someone to be summoned 4 times to appear in front of a Grand Jury?

Don't really know.

I was wondering if it was common or uncommon for someone to be summoned 4 times to appear in front of a Grand Jury when Scott McClellan said again and again Rove had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PLAME LEAK.

[Bman]

Don't really know.

I was wondering if it was common or uncommon for someone to be summoned 4 times to appear in front of a Grand Jury when Scott McClellan said again and again Rove had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PLAME LEAK.


He's telling what he "doesn't" know.. LOL

[thejesus]

Speculate: Is it common or uncommon for someone to be summoned 4 times to appear in front of a Grand Jury?

It's uncommon, but I don't know that you can read anything into that....

On the one hand, it may indicate that Rove became a target of the investigation at some point after the first time he testified,

It also might indicate that there were potential discrepancies in his earlier testimony and other witness testimonies and that he was called back by the prosecutor to see if he might have been lying

Or, it could mean that the prosecutor is finding it difficult to prove his case and just keeps punding away at Rove because he believes that Rove has information that he isn't sharing

[Motley]

Arianna Huffington

Advance Word on the Times' Judy-Culpa (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/advance-word-on-the-t_b_8888.html)
I'm hearing that the Times' big Judy-culpa is definitely coming on Sunday -- and also that Judy's camp is worried that it's going to be very hard on her.

"The team of reporters working on the story is absolutely top notch," a Times source told me. "Don Van Atta is one of the best investigative reporters in the country.

If there is something gettable, they'll get it. And I'd be stunned if Sulzberger and Keller tried to suppress anything these reporters come up with." The team has been interviewing what a source calls "some of Judy's most ardent critics, people inside the paper who have worked with her in the past."

The question remains: how cooperative will Miller be? Jay Rosen (here (http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/10/12/spec_mlr.html) and here (http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/10/14/nc_mlr.html)) and Raw Story (http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Unease_pervades_New_York_Times_newsroom_1014.html) have their doubts.

In any case, I've been told that Miller has been "ordered" to write a first-person, what-I-told-the-grand-jury account.

In the meantime, Judy will be heading west (http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlLA/on/judith_miller_visits_southern_california_27084.asp ) this weekend to attend a conference at Cal State Fullerton called, I kid you not, "Power to the People: Unlocking Government for the Public and Press and the Blogs!" Provide your own punchline. As part of the conference, Miller will present a special award on Saturday honoring Mark "Deep Throat" Felt. I wonder if he ever sent Woodward and Bernstein letters about aspen trees (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/libbys-letter-to-miller_b_8185.html)?

You'd think Miller would be in New York, working on her first-person story and helping the Times team close its piece (I mean, it's not like there's not a lot riding on it (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/catch22-at-the-new-y_b_8826.html)).

But maybe the thinking is that she'd better enjoy the moment while she can. After Sunday's Times hits the stand -- assuming the Miller team has done its job -- such invitations might be much harder to come by.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/advance-word-on-the-t_b_8888.html

[Phuct]

I would now like to point out that this has been "breaking" for over a week- how "imminent" is that?

:love_02:

[zapcomix]

I would now like to point out that this has been "breaking" for over a week- how "imminent" is that?

:love_02:

"... breaking for over a week???" This is the 4th grandjury! Many ham sandwiches have been indicted during this time, maybe the courts are overwhelmed with ham sandwiches and Rove, not being a ham sandwich has to wait in line.

Arianna Huffington is a ham sandwich.

[knightroar]

"... breaking for over a week???" This is the 4th grandjury! Many ham sandwiches have been indicted during this time, maybe the courts are overwhelmed with ham sandwiches and Rove, not being a ham sandwich has to wait in line.

Arianna Huffington is a ham sandwich.


you have your Republican crooks mixed up. This is the one and only grand jury investigating the Plame leak. I realize that there are so many Republican sleezeballs to keep it straight, but I'm happy to help you keep the sleezeballs sorted out. :add09:

[Ono]

Any indictments yet?

[zapcomix]

you have your Republican crooks mixed up. This is the one and only grand jury investigating the Plame leak. I realize that there are so many Republican sleezeballs to keep it straight, but I'm happy to help you keep the sleezeballs sorted out. :add09:
Today was the fourth grand jury Rove testified in. So far none the "sleezeballs" as you call them as been charged, after years of trying. Why is that?

[Phuct]

Nope, but they are imminent!

It's breaking! :add37:


Any indictments yet?

[knightroar]

Today was the fourth grand jury Rove testified in. So far none the "sleezeballs" as you call them as been charged, after years of trying. Why is that?


wrong again. this is the fourth time Rove testified before the same Grand Jury

[zapcomix]

wrong again. this is the fourth time Rove testified before the same Grand Jury
Jeez, that's even worse. Is the D.A. a glutton for punishment or what? Since he has nothing else, it sounds like the D.A. keeps calling Rove back to see if he can get him to change his story. Course that wouldn't prove anything, but it would keep the fire lit. The fire is going out KR. You gonna jump ship of go down with it?

[Motley]

Jeez, that's even worse. Is the D.A. a glutton for punishment or what? Since he has nothing else, it sounds like the D.A. keeps calling Rove back to see if he can get him to change his story. Course that wouldn't prove anything, but it would keep the fire lit. The fire is going out KR. You gonna jump ship of go down with it?

Zap. You haven't been paying attention to what has been going on like we have.

Rove had to change his story because in the previous 3 appearances before the Grand Jury he did not mention emails he had sent to Judy Miller regarding plame.

When Rove founf out indisctments were to be handed down, he himself offered to appear for the 4th time to try to explain his poor memory the previous 3 times he appeared.

Fitzgerald trold him that he could come in the 4th time, but he also told Rove that he isn't going to guarantee that he won't be indicted.

[NYC]

Today was the fourth grand jury Rove testified in. So far none the "sleezeballs" as you call them as been charged, after years of trying. Why is that?

Because nothing has been announed yet :mad_08:

[Bag Sniper]

Zap. You haven't been paying attention to what has been going on like we have.

If the past is any indication of your "paying attention" then you might as well just quit posting on the subject now and spare yourself further humiliation .... you haven't been right about fuck yet ... not one damned thing ...

[thejesus]

you haven't been right about fuck yet ... not one damned thing ...

lol

[Bag Sniper]

If the past is any indication of your "paying attention" then you might as well just quit posting on the subject now and spare yourself further humiliation .... you haven't been right about fuck yet ... not one damned thing ...

What part of this historic fact do you find funny heyzoos ....

[thejesus]

What part of this historic fact do you find funny heyzoos ....

A good guess for ya would be the part I quoted...

dumbass

[Bag Sniper]

A good guess for ya would be the part I quoted...

dumbass

Let's see ... you said "lol" .... fucktard ...

[thejesus]

Let's see ... you said "lol" .... fucktard ...

I'll betcha a nickel that you're the only one who didn't get it, which means it's business as usual

Isn't there a stock car race on you should be watching?

Dumb redneck

[Bag Sniper]

I'll betcha a nickel that you're the only one who didn't get it, which means it's business as usual

Isn't there a stock car race on you should be watching?

Dumb redneck

Sorry I didn't respond right away ... your Mom was digging her nails into my back ... don't know anything about "stock car racing" ... would you enlighten me please .... now if you want to talk about bird hunting ... it's the full season now until Feb. 06 ....

What would a treasonous Osama cheerleader know about redneck's ... other than that's who's picking off your bedouin family ....

[Motley]

Reporter (Miller) in leak case to take leave of absence effective immediately (http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Reporter_in_leak_case_to_take_1015.html)

[Motley]

5,800 WORDS: NEW YORK TIMES

COMES CLEAN ON LEAK STORY (http://nytimes.com/2005/10/16/national/16leak.html?ei=5094&en=ae9961705f60a5d9&hp=&ex=1129435200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all)

[thejesus]

It looks like Scooter Libby might be going to jail....

From Motley's article....

On July 8, two days after Mr. Wilson's article appeared in The Times, the reporter and her source met again, for breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel, near the White House.

The notebook Ms. Miller used that day includes the reference to "Valerie Flame." But she said the name did not appear in the same portion of her notebook as the interview notes from Mr. Libby.

During the breakfast, Mr. Libby provided a detail about Ms. Wilson, saying that she worked in a C.I.A. unit known as Winpac; the name stands for weapons intelligence, nonproliferation and arms control. Ms. Miller said she understood this to mean that Ms. Wilson was an analyst rather than an undercover operative.

[Ono]

Valerie Flame?

[wanderer1]

Reporter (Miller) in leak case to take leave of absence effective immediately (http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Reporter_in_leak_case_to_take_1015.html)


Good riddance! It's about time that broad got fired!:happy_01:

[zapcomix]

5,800 WORDS: NEW YORK TIMES




COMES CLEAN ON LEAK STORY (http://nytimes.com/2005/10/16/national/16leak.html?ei=5094&en=ae9961705f60a5d9&hp=&ex=1129435200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all)

I'm confused, are you saying the "Times" is admitting they were wrong? How does this article implicate Rove, he's not even mentioned?

[wanderer1]

So the broad said:
"I owed it to myself" after two months of jail, she had her lawyer reach out to Mr. Libby. This time, hearing directly from her source, she accepted his permission and was set free.

Translation: She would still be rotting in jail were it up to the alcoholic's cabal.:add09:



Zap, not only is the NYTimes admitting they had a mendacious bimbo working for them, they are firing her ass. I'd like to see faux or the alcoholic do the same. HA!

[thejesus]

[/center]

I'm confused, are you saying the "Times" is admitting they were wrong? How does this article implicate Rove, he's not even mentioned?

What did the Times admit they were wrong about?

And who said it implicated Karl Rove?

Where are you getting this from?

[thejesus]

Valerie Flame?

Yes, Valerie Flame...

and Victoria Wilson...lol...

This Miller broad sounds like an idiot...no wonder she got the WMD story wrong...her notes are all messed up

lol

[zapcomix]

What did the Times admit they were wrong about?
And who said it implicated Karl Rove?
Where are you getting this from?
Go away boy... you bother me...

[thejesus]

Go away boy... you bother me...

Hey fuck you, you little tow truck driving piece of trash...that was totally unecessary...

It's not my fault you commented without reading the goddamn article first

It says nothing about Rove and nothing about the Times admitting they were wrong about anything...

dipshit

[wanderer1]

This Miller broad sounds like an idiot...no wonder she got the WMD story wrong...her notes are all messed up

lol

She got fucked by junior's cabal and now she has no job. She's lucky Fitzgerald didn't lock her up for good... On the other hand, she can always wash toilets for faux! :add09:

[zapcomix]

Hey fuck you, you little tow truck driving piece of trash...that was totally unecessary...

It's not my fault you commented without reading the goddamn article first

It says nothing about Rove and nothing about the Times admitting they were wrong about anything...

dipshit
No shit for brains, you're the one engaging your mouth before putting your brain in gear. That's why I asked the question, for some clarity. Was I even talking to you...? Being the troll that you are, crawl back under that rock you came from. dipstick...

[knightroar]

my, my the Bushies sure are getting testy. Must be the way the wind is blowing. :add09:

[zapcomix]

my, my the Bushies sure are getting testy. Must be the way the wind is blowing. :add09:
You ain't seen nothing yet... and Bush has nothing to do with it.

[thejesus]

No shit for brains, you're the one engaging your mouth before putting your brain in gear. That's why I asked the question, for some clarity. Was I even talking to you...? Being the troll that you are, crawl back under that rock you came from. dipstick...

You weren't asking for clarity...you were implying that someone had said that the article implicated Rove...which they didn't

and then you said that time was admiting they were wrong about something, which you still have't specified what

[zapcomix]

You weren't asking for clarity...you were implying that someone had said that the article implicated Rove...which they didn't

and then you said that time was admiting they were wrong about something, which you still have't specified what
my quote @ motley:
"I'm confused, are you saying the "Times" is admitting they were wrong? How does this article implicate Rove, he's not even mentioned?"

This whole thing is about Carl Rove being the villain. Again you speak without thinking...

[set-it-straight]

the next few weeks should be interesting. maybe Bag Sniffer should be put on suicide watch


No. Let him do it.

[exitwound]

No. Let him do it.

:add09:

[thejesus]

my quote @ motley:
"I'm confused, are you saying the "Times" is admitting they were wrong? How does this article implicate Rove, he's not even mentioned?"

This whole thing is about Carl Rove being the villain. Again you speak without thinking...

No, this isn't about Karl Rove the villain...

It's about Bush administration officials (plural) outing a CIA operative...

And neither Judy Miller nor the Times ever had anything to do with Rove...Libby was Miller's source...

Karl Rove was the source for Matt Cooper of Time magazine...

Get your facts straight before posting

[set-it-straight]

--Bag Sniper (who apparently got an "F" in his high school American History class, lol

The only class Butt Sniffer went to was special class. Ohhh the humanity.

[involved]

I think Judith Miller should be retired,along with Cooper,they are of no great value to your Country or to journalisim. They,like the administration,won't be missed.

Reporter (Miller) in leak case to take leave of absence effective immediately (http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Reporter_in_leak_case_to_take_1015.html)

[knightroar]

Rove And Libby Squirming...

October 14, 2005
Jitters at the White House Over the Leak Inquiry
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 - Karl Rove nosed his Jaguar out of the garage at his home in Northwest Washington in the predawn gloom, starting another day in which he would be dealing with a troubled Supreme Court nomination, posthurricane reconstruction and all the other issues that come across the desk of President Bush's most influential aide.

But Mr. Rove's first challenge on Wednesday morning came before he cleared his driveway: how to get past the five television crews and the three photographers waiting for him. He flashed his blinding high beams into the camera lenses and sped by.

That is the way things are for the Bush White House these days. The routines are the same. But everything, in the glare of the final stages of a criminal investigation that has reached to the highest levels of power in Washington, is different.

Mr. Rove is scheduled to testify before a federal grand jury on Friday, the fourth time he will have done so in the case, which centers on the disclosure of an undercover C.I.A. officer's identity.

Mr. Rove, deputy White House chief of staff for policy and senior adviser, and I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, are the most prominent administration officials to find themselves squirming under the attention of the hard-nosed special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, and the attendant news media scrutiny.

But the inquiry has swept up a dozen or more other officials who have been questioned by investigators or have testified before the grand jury, and, should it lead to the indictment of anyone at a senior level, it has the potential to upend the professional lives of everyone at the White House for the remainder of Mr. Bush's second term.

The result, say administration officials and friends and allies on the outside who speak regularly with them, is a mood of intense uncertainty in the White House that veers in some cases into fear of the personal and political consequences and anger at having been caught in the snare of a special prosecutor. And given how badly things have been going for Mr. Bush and his team on other fronts - a poll released Thursday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center put his approval rating at 38 percent, a new low - they hardly have deep reserves of internal enthusiasm or external good will to draw on.

"Everyone is going about the work at hand while bracing for the worst case," said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to get around the official White House position that it will not comment on the investigation.

Most administrations come to a point like this, at risk of being paralyzed internally and frozen externally in the klieg lights of scandal. To those who worked in the White House under Bill Clinton, it was almost a way of life and such a searing experience that many former Clinton officials have more than a dollop of sympathy for what their successors in power are going through.

"In this presumption of guilt culture, which is what has come about in Washington in the last 10 or 15 years, there must be a sense of anger there and an inability to manage the facts," said Lanny J. Davis, a lawyer in Washington who was brought into the Clinton White House to help deal with the multiple investigations of that administration. "It's hard to imagine how bad it is. You sit at your desk and you know what the facts are, but you can't get them out to the public because the lawyers tell you you can't - or if you can, the noise from the presumption of guilt culture overwhelms the facts."

Mr. Bush joked late last year with Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine, about why Mr. Cooper was not yet in jail for fighting a subpoena demanding that he testify about a conversation with a source who later turned out to be Mr. Rove. These days, though, the leak investigation is almost never spoken of openly within the West Wing, and certainly not made light of, administration officials say.

Lawyers for most of the officials who have testified before the grand jury have by and large chosen not to share information with one another, leaving colleagues largely in the dark about what others are telling Mr. Fitzgerald.

There is a presumption inside the White House that anyone who was indicted would resign or go on leave to fight the charges, though it is unclear what planning has taken place for that possibility.

The prospect of a White House without Mr. Rove, Mr. Bush's longtime strategist, has some allies of the president in a near panic, fearful that without him the administration would lose the one person capable of enforcing discipline across a party that has become increasingly fractious and that is almost at war with itself over the president's nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court.

With the White House stumbling and preoccupied, some allies of the president already see a policy void that is being filled by other prominent Republicans, like Senator John McCain of Arizona, who recently outmaneuvered the administration to win passage of an amendment that would set new standards to guard against the use of torture in the interrogation of detainees in the fight against terrorism.

Asked about the case in his daily on-camera news briefing on Thursday, Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, portrayed Mr. Bush as eagerly awaiting the results of the investigation. The case centers on whether administration officials illegally disclosed the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, as part of an effort to distance the White House from criticism by her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV. In mid-2003, Mr. Wilson, a former diplomat, became an outspoken critic of how the administration had used prewar intelligence about Iraq's weapons programs to justify the invasion.

The investigation led to the imprisonment of a reporter for The New York Times, Judith Miller, for 85 days for refusing to testify before the grand jury about a conversation with a confidential source, later identified as Mr. Libby.

"The president has said that no one wants to get to the bottom of it more than he does," said Mr. McClellan, whose own credibility has taken a pounding because of statements he made two years ago that Mr. Rove had no involvement in leaking the C.I.A. officer's identity. "I want to get to the bottom of it. We don't know all the facts."

Despite the fear inspired by Mr. Fitzgerald, the White House has treated the special prosecutor extremely gingerly, making no public criticism and pledging at every turn to be completely cooperative. When Mr. Bush was asked about the investigation during an appearance on the NBC News "Today" program on Tuesday, he said Mr. Fitzgerald had conducted the case in "a very dignified way," a statement that could make it difficult for Republicans to attack the prosecutor if he should bring charges against administration officials.

If the Bush White House is marked by anything, it is relentlessness and resilience. While the West Wing seems more on edge than usual - Mr. McClellan got into an uncharacteristically heated exchange with reporters on Thursday about the Miers nomination - the official line is business as usual, and the principals appear to be trying hard to play their roles.

Mr. Libby still arises in the wee hours each morning and puts in 14- to 16-hour days in Mr. Cheney's office. Mr. Rove, who left his house at 5:50 on Wednesday morning, has kept up his usual duties, Mr. McClellan said. After appearing before the grand jury on Friday, Mr. Rove will get right back into political mode. He is scheduled to appear at a fund-raiser over the weekend for Jerry Kilgore, the Republican candidate for governor of Virginia.

Doug Mills contributed reporting for this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/14/national/14mood.html?hp&ex=1129262400&en=cb29ff4124169c4e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Phuct]

Is it still imminent?

That's a lot of immineniticy. :add09:

[thejesus]

Is it still imminent?

That's a lot of immineniticy. :add09:
:add01:

[Bman]

I'm going to speculate on what I think will happen, for fun


I think there will be indictments. I have to think Rove will be one of them, based on his four appearances in front of the Grand Jury. That smells alot like a perjury situation (again, this is speculation). The more you go before the jury, the more likely something isn't going to add up.

The reason I think there will be indictments is because I believe this special prosecutor, who has had such a brilliant career up to this point prosecuting terrorists, etc, would not have let it go this far, if he doesn't think a crime was committed. I mean he let a woman sit in a jail for 85 days! And he also took up the time of the Vice President and President for about an hour each, as I understand it. If no one committed a crime, than that seems pretty ridiculous. I think it would certainly tarnish his reputation.

In the end, I believe whoever is indicted will try to plead guilty to some lesser type charge.. ...perhaps "obstruction" or something like that, to avoid an embarrassing trial that probably would be hitting full steam in 2006, just before the Congressional elections.

In the end, I believe Bush will pardon all of those involved as his father did with the Iran/Contra central figures in the final days of his Presidency.

[zapcomix]

No, this isn't about Karl Rove the villain...

It's about Bush administration officials (plural) outing a CIA operative...

And neither Judy Miller nor the Times ever had anything to do with Rove...Libby was Miller's source...

Karl Rove was the source for Matt Cooper of Time magazine...

Get your facts straight before posting
blah, blah, blah.... blah, blah... blah. Do the investigators on this case have the same info you have? You may have just broke this case wide open...:mad_08:

So, you're saying Rove had nothing to do with it...?! But the Bush administration still outed an alleged "covert" CIA agent? Is Rove just a scape-goat? Why is he being investigated then?

I love the photo of Wilson and Valarie in the sportscar convertable, after this shit broke... Joseph is holding his shades down to the side of the car and Valarie is looking very "spyish" with the scarf and the large sunglasses. What a bunch of publicity bullshit.

[Strike4ce]

Little Miss Judy's Story
Posted by bulldogpundit (http://<font%20color=) on Saturday, 15 October 2005 (23:30:12) EDT

Well, what did we learn from the New York Times story (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/national/16leak.html?ei=5094&en=ae9961705f60a5d9&hp=&ex=1129435200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all) on the whole Judy Miller/Scooter Libby/Valerie Plame affair. Well, first that Judy is a prima donna who likes steaks, manicures, martinis and massages. Next is that she's either got bad hearing or she's a terrible reporter having written "Valerie Flame" (sounds like a superhero) and "Victoria Wilson". But other than that it's almost a story about a dog that didn't bark.

After reading the article it is utterly mystifying why Miller thought she had to protect Libby, who had given her a waiver a year previously. If I were her I'd be a little angry at Floyd Abrams, as it seems all his conversations with Libby's attorney seem to be a comedy of errors about the voluntariness of Libby's waiver. And while Judy thought of herself as a martyr for reporters everywhere, she reached out to Libby (after not wanting to do that for fear of hounding him) when she was faced with a possible extension of the grand jury and staying in jail.

I think that Scooter Libby might be breathing easier tonight, as Miller doesn't seem to say she got Plame's identity from him originally, but the real question here is who is that other source if it wasn't Libby? Say what you will about him, but Robert Bennett, Miller's second lawyer earned his money by getting the Special Prosecutor to limit Miller's testimony limited to Libby, especially since Bennett saw the other notes and Fitzgerald didn't. (It would be interesting to know who gave the "Flame" name that ended up in her notes.) One thing strikes me as odd - in this interview Miller wouldn't speak about her contacts with editors over the story, elaborate on her grand jury testimony, or let anyone view her notes.


http://www.anklebitingpundits.com/

[NYC]

I'm hearing that the Times' big Judy-culpa is definitely coming on Sunday -- and also that Judy's camp is worried that it's going to be very hard on her.


In any case, I've been told that Miller has been "ordered" to write a first-person, what-I-told-the-grand-jury account.




I just read these two articles in the NY Times. The, "what-I-told-the-grand-jury" story does read a lot like a forced article. She had another source which I bet was Karl, but she did have to talk about it. To cover their own asses they may have said things like Flame instead of Plame but without a doubt Libby and her discussed Plame. I also think her and Libby were doing the nasty.



From the story about the story, the NY Times has lost a lot of credibility with the public as well as with it's own staff. They definitely fucked up in backing Miller. The ended up cutting off their nose to spite their face as they say.



Why would John Bolton visit her in jail?



One thing that was touched upon was the whole bit about the WMD stories before the Iraq war. These were so dead wrong and seemed to be not much more than regurgitating the Administration’s positions. So who did she get that information from?



Judith Miller is history

[NYC]

Say what you will about him, but Robert Bennett, Miller's second lawyer earned his money by getting the Special Prosecutor to limit Miller's testimony limited to Libby




Absolutely

[thejesus]

blah, blah, blah.... blah, blah... blah. Do the investigators on this case have the same info you have? You may have just broke this case wide open...:mad_08:

So, you're saying Rove had nothing to do with it...?! But the Bush administration still outed an alleged "covert" CIA agent? Is Rove just a scape-goat? Why is he being investigated then?


Didn't your Mother ever teach you to at least try to not sound like a moron?

You know, I was going to correct the multiple errors in this last post of yours for you (there are 4, by the way), but what's the point?

You've demonstrated that you haven't the slightest clue as to what is going on in this case...

Rove talking to Miller??? Miller going to jail to protect Rove???

The Times admitting the were wrong about something (which I'm still waiting for you to specify what exactly)???

This being the 4th grand jury in the Plame case???

lol, do you just make this shit up or what??

[Bag Sniper]

Thanks Phuct ... reposting here .... Judith Miller can't recall .... anything ...


Looks like once again ... the leftists track record goes unbroken ... you guys haven't been right about fuck yet ... not one damned thing .... but that's OK ... keep opening your blow hole before the facts are in .... mouth breathers ....

http://articles.news.aol.com/news/a...S00010000000001

Miller Tells Her Story in CIA Leak Probe
By PETE YOST, AP

WASHINGTON (Oct. 16) - The prosecutor in the CIA leak probe repeatedly asked New York Times reporter Judith Miller how Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff handled classified information in their discussions, and asked whether Cheney knew of their conversations.

In a first-person account released Saturday on The Times' Web site, Miller recounted her recent grand jury testimony, which focused on her conversations in 2003 with Cheney's closest aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Miller said she "didn't think" she heard covert CIA officer Valerie Plame's name from Libby. "I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall."

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is investigating whether crimes were committed when Bush administration officials leaked the identity of Plame to reporters. Plame's covert status was exposed at a time when her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was criticizing the Bush administration, accusing it of manipulating prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

"My interview notes show that Mr. Libby sought from the beginning, before Mr. Wilson's name became public, to insulate his boss from Mr. Wilson's charges," Miller wrote.

Miller spent 85 days in a federal jail in Virginia for refusing to cooperate with Fitzgerald's investigation. She relented when she received a personal waiver of confidentiality in September from her source. Miller then testified before the grand jury in late September and this month.

She said that in her recent testimony, Fitzgerald "asked me questions about Mr. Cheney. He asked, for example, if Mr. Libby ever indicated whether Mr. Cheney had approved of his interviews with me or was aware of them. The answer was no."

Miller also wrote: "Mr. Fitzgerald asked if I had discussed classified information with Mr. Libby. I said I believe so, but could not be sure."

The reporter said Fitzgerald asked "how Mr. Libby treated classified information. I said, 'Very carefully.'"

Fitzgerald is wrapping up his investigation and is expected to decide soon whether to seek indictments. The grand jury that has been hunting down the leakers inside the Bush administration over the past two years expires Oct. 28. President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, testified to the panel Friday, his fourth appearance. Prosecutors warned Rove before he appeared that there was no guarantee he won't be indicted.

Rove spoke to columnist Robert Novak and Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper about Plame's identity, while Libby spoke to Miller and Cooper about Plame.

The Times reported that the same notebook Miller used to record her conversations with Libby in 2003 contains the name "Valerie Flame" -- a misspelled reference to the covert CIA officer.

Fitzgerald asked Miller to explain how Valerie Plame appeared in the same notebook the reporter used in interviewing her confidential source, Libby. Miller replied that she "didn't think" she heard Plame's name from Libby.

Miller and Libby met for breakfast at a hotel near the White House on July 8, 2003, two days after The Times published an opinion piece by Wilson criticizing the Bush administration.

The notebook Miller used for that interview includes the reference to "Valerie Flame." But Miller said that name did not appear in the same portion of her notebook as the interview notes from Libby.

At the breakfast, Libby provided a detail about Wilson's wife, saying she worked in a CIA unit known as Winpac. The name stands for weapons intelligence, nonproliferation and arms control. Miller said she understood this to mean that Wilson's wife was an analyst rather than an undercover operative.

Another variant on Plame's name -- "Victoria Wilson" -- appears in Miller's notes of a July 12, 2003, phone call with Libby. The newspaper's account Saturday says that by the time of that phone call, Miller had called other sources about Wilson's wife.

Fitzgerald questioned Miller about a letter that Libby sent her while she was in jail. Libby assured her that he wanted her to testify, but the letter also said "the public report of every other reporter's testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame's name or identity with me."

Miller said she told Fitzgerald in her sworn testimony that the letter could be perceived as an effort by Libby "to suggest that I, too, would say that we had not discussed Ms. Plame's identity." But she added, "My notes suggested that we had discussed her job."

Miller's first-person account is a window into the bad relations between the White House and the CIA in 2003 stemming from the fact that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq after the U.S. invasion. Miller at the time was speaking to Libby after being assigned to write a story about the failure to find them. A number of Miller's prewar stories bolstered the Bush administration's argument for going to war by citing intelligence that Saddam Hussein had such weapons.

Miller said that in her grand jury appearances on Sept. 30 and Oct. 12, she recalled Libby's frustrations and anger in 2003 over what Libby called "selective leaking" by the CIA and other agencies in a "perverted war" with the White House over the conflict in Iraq. Libby, she said, accused the intelligence agencies of trying to distance themselves from what he recalled as unequivocal prewar assessments that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.


10/16/2005 07:27:33

[thejesus]

Thanks Phuct ... reposting here .... Judith Miller can't recall .... anything ...

Looks like once again ... the leftists track record goes unbroken ... you guys haven't been right about fuck yet ... not one damned thing .... but that's OK ... keep opening your blow hole before the facts are in .... mouth breathers ....

[

lol, idiot

And what is it that you think the leftists were wrong about this time?

[zapcomix]

Didn't your Mother ever teach you to at least try to not sound like a moron?

You know, I was going to correct the multiple errors in this last post of yours for you (there are 4, by the way), but what's the point?

You've demonstrated that you haven't the slightest clue as to what is going on in this case...

Rove talking to Miller??? Miller going to jail to protect Rove???

The Times admitting the were wrong about something (which I'm still waiting for you to specify what exactly)???

This being the 4th grand jury in the Plame case???

lol, do you just make this shit up or what??
Sir, you are reading way too much into the simple QUESTIONS I was asking Motley. How can questions be "errors"? This investigation/grand jury has been on this for 2 years. I believe the gj is about to disband in a couple of weeks, then what?

You are right, I'm not a political fanatic like some here, but it seems to me if there was proof, at least enough to indict a "ham sandwich," that "someone" outed a true undercover agent, we would be at trial by now.

[set-it-straight]

but it seems to me if there was proof, at least enough to indict a "ham sandwich," that "someone" outed a true undercover agent, we would be at trial by now.

The sad thing is that you really believe Bushy and his boys are honest enough to pursue a course of judicial action. Another Kool Aid victim.

[Strike4ce]

The sad thing is that you really believe Bushy and his boys are honest enough to pursue a course of judicial action. Another Kool Aid victim.

Hello friend.:)

[zapcomix]

The sad thing is that you really believe Bushy and his boys are honest enough to pursue a course of judicial action. Another Kool Aid victim.
Now you're saying the grand jury is controlled by "Bushy" and there was never going to be an indictment anyway??:add09:

[set-it-straight]

Hello friend.:)


Yo dude. What up? It is quite roast-y/toast-y down here in sunny Kuwait.

[Strike4ce]

Yo dude. What up? It is quite roast-y/toast-y down here in sunny Kuwait.

70 and sunny here in Illinois in the middle of October.

[Phuct]

Has it broke yet?

:add27:

[Screw Hollywood]

LMAO! :add09:
I finally checked this thread out. My God, read the first three or four posts, you can almost here them coming in their jeans. Pass the tissue please!

[thejesus]

LMAO! :add09:
I finally checked this thread out. My God, read the first three or four posts, you can almost here them coming in their jeans. Pass the tissue please!

lol,

Yep, everyone got blue-balled by the rumors...

You should be excited too if there are inditments....that means that criminals in the US government are one step closer to getting caught..

[Screw Hollywood]

You should be excited too if there are inditments....that means that criminals in the US government are one step closer to getting caught..
No problem with that, but in light of other developments,(the crumbling DeLay case) these witch hunts are getting pretty hysterical.

[Alli]

Interesting article I read today:

On Sunday, Miller revealed that she spoke with Scooter Libby about undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame weeks before her name appeared in the press, but Miller claims she can't remember who leaked the name.
more (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/17/1422250)

[thejesus]

Interesting article I read today:

On Sunday, Miller revealed that she spoke with Scooter Libby about undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame weeks before her name appeared in the press, but Miller claims she can't remember who leaked the name.
more (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/17/1422250)

Yeah, I would buy that one about as much as I would buy Bob Woodward saying that he doesn't remember who Deep Throat was...

[thejesus]

No problem with that, but in light of other developments,(the crumbling DeLay case) these witch hunts are getting pretty hysterical.

I don't know why you think the Delay case is crumbling, but yeah, I agree with the witch hunt comment, to an extent...

The difference is, even though there is certainly a witch hunt going on in the press, it looks like the victims in this case are in fact real witches, and all indications are that the only person with the power to punish the witches, the prosecutor, is not bias

[pilobolus]

Interesting article I read today:

On Sunday, Miller revealed that she spoke with Scooter Libby about undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame weeks before her name appeared in the press, but Miller claims she can't remember who leaked the name.
more (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/17/1422250)


Yep, the summation of NYT articles this weekend was that she had a SECOND source on the Plame name and that she does not remember who it was :rolleyes:

Imagine that, Miller was head cheerleader of the existence of WMD at the NYT (y'know, the main stream media..Leftists!) and now she can't remember who told her the name...

I can't wait to hear if she also took money from the admin to be a cheerleader as did these folks:

The issue was brought to the forefront in early January when it was reported that the Bush administration paid some journalists to promote various programs. Conservative pundit Armstrong Williams, the first journalist to be publicly exposed, received $240,000 to promote the No Child Left Behind education law and to interview Department of Education Secretary Rod Paige during his broadcasts in 2004.

The Department of Health and Human Services paid columnist Michael McManus $4,000 to train marriage counselors as a part of an initiative to promote stronger families, and his group Marriage Savers received $49,000. The department also paid syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher $21,500 to promote the marriage initiative.

http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/021605/keller.html

[Bman]

Yeah, I would buy that one about as much as I would buy Bob Woodward saying that he doesn't remember who Deep Throat was...


Totally ridiculous..

[Motley]

If there are any indictments, they will probably come down on a Wednesday or Friday as those are the only two days that this GJ meets.

[thejesus]

Good article/profile on I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in USA Today...

By Judy Keen, USA TODAY Mon Oct 17, 6:42 AM ET

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20051017/pl_usatoday/scooterpackslotofpowerbutrunsquietly

[Bag Sniper]

If there are any indictments, they will probably come down on a Wednesday or Friday as those are the only two days that this GJ meets.

Of this week or next. This GJ expires 10/28 ...

Place your bets folks ... Place your bets .... put your money where your mouth is .. place your bets folks ... don't be shy ...

[Spectre]

Of this week or next. This GJ expires 10/28 ...

Place your bets folks ... Place your bets .... put your money where your mouth is .. place your bets folks ... don't be shy ...

Total conjecture on my part as I haven't been following the details of this case all that closely but my money is on a list of indictments that will surprise everyone. From Rove to Libby to possibly Cheney. Again, total conjecture there.

[thejesus]

Of this week or next. This GJ expires 10/28 ...

Place your bets folks ... Place your bets .... put your money where your mouth is .. place your bets folks ... don't be shy ...

Right now, the surest bet seems to be that Libby will be indicted on charges of disclosing classified information...

Everything else...the possibility of obstruction of justice or whether Rove lied to the grand jury and whatnot or who else was involved....there's just no way for us to know that right now....we'll have to wait a little longer to find all this out...

Your turn Bag...where are you putting your money?

[Phuct]

They will sac libbey or some other politically insignificant pissant and he will be indited or possibly convicted of an unrelated charge, such as obstruction.

Rove, practically being made of Teflon, will get nothing.



Of this week or next. This GJ expires 10/28 ...

Place your bets folks ... Place your bets .... put your money where your mouth is .. place your bets folks ... don't be shy ...

[Motley]

They will sac libbey or some other politically insignificant pissant and he will be indited or possibly convicted of an unrelated charge, such as obstruction.

Rove, practically being made of Teflon, will get nothing.

Libbey is Chief of Staff to the VP. Hardly insignificant.

[Phuct]

Libbey is Chief of Staff to the VP. Hardly insignificant.

LOL- that's insignificant in the scheme of things. He's second in command to the second in command which places him down the ladder a few hundred wrungs.

They'll sac him quicker than shit, and won't care a bit.

[thejesus]

this is from rawstory.com....

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS TO REPORT THAT SOURCES BELIEVE SOMEONE HAS FLIPPED IN WHITE HOUSE, AIDING LEAK INVESTIGATION.... DEVELOPING...

[Motley]

this is from rawstory.com....

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS TO REPORT THAT SOURCES BELIEVE SOMEONE HAS FLIPPED IN WHITE HOUSE, AIDING LEAK INVESTIGATION.... DEVELOPING...

Yummy! :)

[knightroar]

WHITE HOUSE
CIA Leak Prosecutor Focuses On Libby

By Murray Waas, special to National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2005

As federal prosecutors in the CIA leak investigation reach the critical stage of deciding whether to bring criminal charges, they are zeroing in on contradictions between the testimony of I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, and that of New York Times reporter Judith Miller, according to sources close to the investigation and attorneys for individuals enmeshed in the probe.



Evidence that Libby might have tried to discourage Miller's testimony has put Libby's testimony in a worse light, according to government officials briefed on the matter.






The prosecutors and the federal grand jury are also scrutinizing whether Libby, or his attorney, tried to discourage Miller from giving testimony to the grand jury, or tried to improperly influence what Miller would say if she testified, according to the same sources.

The grand jury has heard testimony from Miller and other witnesses that is at odds with Libby's testimony, according to the same sources. One crucial contradiction between Miller and Libby, the sources say, involves a July 8, 2003, breakfast meeting during which the two discussed Valerie Plame, the covert CIA operative whose identity was revealed a week later in a newspaper column and whose husband, Joe Wilson, was a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy.

According to attorneys familiar with his testimony, Libby told the grand jury that at the meeting, he told Miller that Plame had something to do with Wilson's being sent on a controversial CIA-sponsored mission to Africa, but that he did not know that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA or anything else about her.

However, Miller testified and turned over notes from the July 8 conversation to the grand jury that showed that Libby had told her that Plame worked for the CIA's Weapons, Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control office.

Evidence indicating that Libby or his attorney may have tried to discourage or influence Miller's testimony is significant for two reasons, outside legal experts say. First, attempting to influence a witness's testimony might in and of itself constitute obstruction of justice or witness-tampering, said the experts.

More important, evidence that Libby might have tried to discourage Miller's testimony has put Libby's testimony in a worse light, according to government officials briefed on the matter. Potentially misleading and incomplete answers by Libby to federal investigators are less likely to be explained away as the result of his faulty memory or inadvertent mistakes, the sources said.

According to a Justice Department official not directly involved with the Plame case, "Both intent and frame of mind are often essential to bringing the type of charges Fitzgerald is apparently considering. And not wanting a key witness to testify goes straight to showing that there were indeed bad intentions."

Miller's testimony -- and her recent first-person account in The Times -- as well as other evidence have become public just as Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald appears to be nearing final decisions on whether to bring charges against Libby, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove, or others.

The grand jury has also heard new evidence suggesting that long-standing tensions between Vice President Cheney's office and the CIA over pre-war intelligence that the Bush administration cited as reason to go to war with Iraq led to the unmasking of Plame.

Federal investigators apparently learned for the first time from press accounts in late August that Libby and his attorney, Joseph Tate, might have tried to discourage Miller from giving testimony, according to documents and sources. At the time, Miller was serving a jail sentence for refusing to testify in the Plame investigation. But shortly after learning that Miller might have felt pressure not to testify, Fitzgerald personally intervened, strongly encouraging attorneys for Miller and Libby to negotiate an agreement by which Miller would give grand jury testimony.

Because Fitzgerald did not want to nix any possible deal for Miller's testimony, and because he was almost completely in the dark as to what she might say, the prosecutor did not aggressively pursue the possibility that Libby or Tate had been trying to influence or discourage Miller's testimony, according to sources.

On September 29 -- after Miller had agreed to testify, was released from jail, and was about to appear before the grand jury -- one of her attorneys, Floyd Abrams, wrote to Tate alleging that Tate had repeatedly made comments to him that had discouraged Miller from testifying. At issue was whether a general waiver, required of White House employees, that Libby had signed early in the investigation in late 2003 was coerced.

Miller has since said that she spent 85 days in jail -- for civil contempt of court for refusing to testify about her conversations with Libby -- because Tate had indeed indicated to her, through Abrams, that Libby's general waiver was not given freely. Miller has said she finally agreed to testify only after she got a personal waiver from Libby in September.

In his letter to Tate, Abrams said Tate had repeatedly told him that the general waiver was "by its nature coerced and had been required as a condition for Mr. Libby's continued employment at the White House."

Tate in turn has said that Abrams's claims are "outrageous" and "factually incorrect," and that neither he nor Libby had said or done anything to discourage Miller from testifying or to influence any testimony she might give.

According to sources close to the investigation, attorneys whose clients have co-operated with prosecutors, and Miller's personal account in the Times, the new issues the grand jury is likely to scrutinize:

A June 23, 2003, Miller-Libby meeting in the Old Executive Office Building during which they first discussed Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger for the purpose of looking into an allegation that Saddam Hussein sought to buy uranium from the African nation in order to build a bomb.
As National Journal reported on October 11, Libby did not disclose the June 23 meeting in two appearances before the grand jury, or, earlier, in interviews with FBI agents working on the investigation, according to sources.

Miller testified to the grand jury that it was during this June 23 meeting that she and Libby first discussed Plame's CIA employment. Miller's notes of that meeting contained the notation, regarding Wilson, "Wife works in bureau?"

In her account in The Times on her grand jury testimony, Miller wrote: "I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I believed this was the first time I had been told that Mr. Wilson's wife might work for the C.I.A. The prosecutor asked me whether the word 'bureau' might not mean the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yes, I told him, normally. But Mr. Libby had been discussing the C.I.A., and therefore my impression was that he had been speaking about a particular bureau within the agency that dealt with the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. As to the question mark, I said I wasn't sure what it meant … Maybe Mr. Libby was not certain whether Mr. Wilson's wife actually worked there."


Libby and Miller's two-hour breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, D.C., on July 8. Libby has told federal investigators, according to legal sources familiar with his testimony, that he told Miller at the meeting that he had heard that Wilson's wife had played a role in Wilson's being selected for the Niger assignment. But Libby also testified that he never named Plame nor told Miller that she worked for the CIA, because either he did not know that at the time, or, if he had heard that Plame was a CIA employee, he did not know whether it was true.
Miller's grand jury testimony as well her notes on the July 8 meeting contradict Libby's version. Miller's notes indicate that Libby did indeed tell her that Plame worked for the CIA. Her notes said, according to Miller: "Wife works at Winpac." Asked for an explanation by the grand jury, Miller has said she testified she knew that Winpac meant Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control. That was a CIA unit tracking chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons proliferation.

In her Times story on her testimony, Miller asserted: "I said I couldn't be certain whether I had known Ms. Plame's identity before this meeting, and I had no clear memory of the context of our conversation that resulted in this notation. But I told the grand jury that I believed that this was the first time I had heard that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for Winpac. In fact, I told the grand jury that when Mr. Libby indicated that Ms. Plame worked for Winpac, I assumed that she worked as an analyst, not as an undercover operative."


A third area of interest to Fitzgerald is conversations between Miller's attorney Abrams and Libby's attorney Tate, in which, according to Abrams, Tate strongly discouraged Miller's co-operation with Fitzgerald's office in giving grand jury testimony.
Miller was first subpoenaed in the CIA leak probe in August 2004. In response, The Times hired Abrams, a prominent First Amendment attorney. Abrams began a series of discussions with Tate in September 2004 to see if there was some manner by which Miller could testify.

Abrams said in an interview with National Journal that Tate passed along extensive details of Libby's grand jury testimony. Abrams also said that during those conversations, Tate inquired as to what Miller would testify to the grand jury, and whether her testimony might be potentially damaging to his client. Abrams said he responded by telling Tate he was new to the case and did not know. When pressed during a second conversation, Abrams said that he simply did not answer Tate and changed the subject.

Abrams said that Tate told him that Libby testified to the grand jury that he had never disclosed Plame's name to Miller and that he never told Miller that Plame had worked undercover at the CIA.

But Miller has told the grand jury that she had several references in her notes to Plame, although she misspelled the CIA officer's name as "Valerie Flame." Miller also told the grand jury that there was a possibility that another person, whom she could not remember, was the source of the disclosure, not Libby.

Miller wrote in her Times account that Abrams also told her: "[Tate] was pressing about what you would say. When I wouldn't give him an assurance that you would exonerate Libby, if you were to cooperate, he then immediately gave this, 'Don't go there, or we don't want you there.' "

However, two individuals who are familiar with accounts that Abrams provided to as many as 10 others at The New York Times -- including the newspaper's in-house attorneys, executives, and senior editorial staffers -- about his discussions with Tate, say that Miller might have misconstrued or misinterpreted what took place between Tate and Abrams.

These sources confirmed that Abrams told them that Tate said Libby's waiver was coerced, that Tate provided Abrams with details of Libby's grand jury testimony, and that Tate appeared concerned that Miller's testimony might damage his client. But the sources said that Abrams explained that Tate was simply nonresponsive when Abrams declined to say whether Miller's testimony would exonerate Libby.

"Floyd never said that Tate said anything like 'Don't go there,' or 'We don't want you there,' " said one person who attended legal strategy meetings involving Abrams, The Times' in-house legal counsel, and senior editorial staff as to how Miller might avoid jail. "Perhaps Judy extrapolated that, or misunderstood what happened."

In an October 16 staff-written piece in The Times -- separate from Miller's personal account published the same day -- the newspaper reported that based on what Miller was hearing from Abrams about Tate, Miller believed that "Mr. Tate was sending her a message that Mr. Libby did not want her to testify."

Tate has adamantly denied Abrams's account that Tate ever said or did anything to discourage Miller's cooperation with Fitzgerald's office or the grand jury. Tate has also denied Abrams's other contentions that Tate attempted to pass along to Miller what Libby told the grand jury, or that he attempted to learn from Abrams what Miller's testimony might be.


A fourth area of interest to Fitzgerald is Abrams's September 29, 2005, letter to Tate in which Abrams wrote: "In our [various] conversations … you did not say that Mr. Libby's waiver was uncoerced. In fact, you said quite the opposite. You told me that the signed waiver was by its nature coerced and had been required as a condition for Mr. Libby's continued employment at the White House.
"You compared the coercion to that inherent in the effective bar imposed upon the White House employees asserting the Fifth Amendment. A failure by your client to sign the written waiver, you explained, like any assertion of your client of the Fifth Amendment, would result in his dismissal. You persuasively mocked the notion that any waiver signed under such circumstances could be deemed voluntary."

Again, Tate has adamantly denied Abrams's allegations. In a letter to Fitzgerald, Tate told the prosecutor: "I am dismayed that you had the impression that I had not spoken to counsel for Ms. Miller or that we did not want her to testify."


Fitzgerald is also interested in the September 15 letter Libby sent to Miller in jail that encouraged her to finally testify in the case. Fitzgerald questioned Miller at length about the letter when she testified to the grand jury on September 30.
In his letter, Libby wrote to Miller: "Your reporting, and you, are missed. Like many Americans, I admire your principled stand. But like many friends and readers, I would welcome you back among the rest of us, doing what you do best -- reporting." He added: "I admire your principled fight with the Government.… But for my part, this is the rare case where this 'source' would be better off if you testified."

But it is a later passage in the letter that is especially important to Fitzgerald, sources say. "Because, as I am sure will not be news to you," Libby wrote to Miller, "the public report of every other reporter's testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame's name or identity with me, or knew about her before our call."

In her Times account, Miller wrote: "The prosecutor asked my reaction to those words. I replied that this portion of the letter had surprised me because it might be perceived as an effort by Mr. Libby to suggest that I, too, would say we had not discussed Ms. Plame's identity. Yet my notes suggested that we had discussed her job."

Bob Bennett, an attorney for Miller, said in an interview that when he first read Libby's personal letter, he knew that it was going to "be trouble" for his client. "I know that the letter bothered [Judy] and it bothered me," Bennett said. "She might be soon testifying, and a prosecutor might construe that as an attempt to influence her testimony. It was more probably just sort of a dumb thing to put in a letter."

Bennett adds: "I think it is important that Judy was protecting a source in terms of source confidentiality and the journalistic privilege. She was not protecting a source to prevent someone from going to jail. The letter just didn't help matters."


Finally, on September 29, the night before Miller was scheduled to testify before the grand jury, a source sympathetic to Libby spoke to journalists for at least three news organizations to leak word as to what Libby himself had said during his own testimony.
Journalists at two news organizations declined to publish stories. Among their concerns was that they had only a single source for the story and that that source had such a strong bias on behalf of Libby that the account of his grand jury testimony might possibly be incomplete or misleading in some way.

But more important were concerns that a leak of an account of Libby's grand jury testimony, on the eve of Miller's own testimony, might be an effort -- using the media -- to let Miller know what Libby had said, if she wanted to give testimony beneficial to him, or similar to his. (There is no evidence that Miller did not testify truthfully to the grand jury.)

On the night before Miller's testimony, The Washington Post did post an account on its Web site of Libby's testimony. The story said: "According to a source familiar with Libby's account of his conversations with Miller in July 2003, the subject of Wilson's wife came up on two occasions. In the first, on July 8, Miller met with Libby to interview him about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the source said.

"At that time, she asked him why Wilson had been chosen to investigate questions Cheney had posed about whether Iraq tried to buy uranium in the African nation of Niger. Libby, the source familiar with his account said, told her that the White House was working with the CIA to find out more about Wilson's trip and how he was selected.

"Libby told Miller he heard that Wilson's wife had something to do with sending him but he did not know who she was or where she worked, the source said."

Miller has since contradicted that account, testifying to the grand jury and turning over contemporaneous notes of her July 8 meeting with Libby indicating that Libby told her that Plame worked for the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control office.

Four former federal prosecutors said in interviews that if Libby did anything to discourage Miller from testifying in the case, it might be construed as possible obstruction of justice or witness-tampering, and that a thorough prosecutor, such as Fitzgerald, would logically make an extensive inquiry as to what occurred.
Dan Richman, a professor at Fordham Law School and a former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, said in an interview that while he could not speak specifically about what occurred between Tate and Abrams, an "attorney encouraging a witness to withhold information from a grand jury when the witness had no right to withhold is engaging in obstructive behavior."

Richman further noted that since current case law does not recognize the reporter-source privilege, "even if someone under investigation or their attorney were to contact a reporter simply to say that they expect that reporter's promise of confidentiality to the source to be kept, anyone who made such a request could possibly have engaged in an obstruction of justice or witness-tampering."

-- Murray Waas is a Washington-based journalist. His previous articles, focusing on Rove's role in the case and Libby's grand jury testimony, also appeared on NationalJournal.com

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2005/1018nj1.htm#

[involved]

I think Judith Miller is covering for Cheney.

[set-it-straight]

I think Judith Miller is covering for Cheney.

Considering the fact that she now developed selective amnesia.

[involved]

Exactly,and everybody is outraged,seems she doesn't have a good reputation for her journalistic approach,she's covering,and clearing not for Libby,and since Cheney was involved heavily with C.I.A Iraqi intelligence,this is the big boom and Miller isn't going to call him out.
Considering the fact that she now developed selective amnesia.

[set-it-straight]

Exactly,and everybody is outraged,seems she doesn't have a good reputation for her journalistic approach,she's covering,and clearing not for Libby,and since Cheney was involved heavily with C.I.A Iraqi intelligence,this is the big boom and Miller isn't going to call him out.


If she was such a great investigative reporter, why didn't she stop to bother and interview Joe Wilson? Interesing no?

[involved]

Because she had a direct pipe at the white house,that's why she got into so much trouble, she reported Dick Cheney's Iraqi intelligence,from his lips to her page,she didn't research any of it,her colleges are shocked an outraged.
If she was such a great investigative reporter, why didn't she stop to bother and interview Joe Wilson? Interesing no?

[set-it-straight]

Because she had a direct pipe at the white house,that's why she got into so much trouble, she reported Dick Cheney's Iraqi intelligence,from his lips to her page,she didn't research any of it,her colleges are shocked an outraged.


True, true, true. She is done anyway. She took one for the team and if Bush and Co remain true to form, one of two things will happen. She will either get dumped and forgotten, or she will get a job in the administration. She has no creibility anymore at all.

[thejesus]

No Final Report Seen in Inquiry on C.I.A. Leak

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/politics/19leak.html

[VERITAS]

The truth can be told - but first you have to find it (http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/12940348.htm)


Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service


The following editorial appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Wednesday, October 19:

---

When our government marches the nation's youth off to die for a cause, it should feel a keen moral obligation to tell the truth about why that cause is critical to our nation. Yet history is full of official lies that have not provoked the slightest twinge of official guilt.

Reporters who cover such weighty matters have a special responsibility to probe, challenge, validate and double-check the facts they are fed, so that policy-makers and the public can decide whether those facts justify war. History is full of lies in the press, too - some witting, some not.

The events leading up to the current grand jury investigation in Washington, D.C., and the information that has emerged from the investigation, make it clear that our most influential elected officials and reporters fell far short of the truth. Maintaining a fair, neutral and balanced perspective is no simple task in the dizzying White House vortex.

Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald is reported to be poised to announce the findings of his grand jury investigation into the leak of the name of CIA operative Valerie Wilson. The investigation appears to be focused on President George W. Bush's top political aide, Karl Rove, and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Despite initial denials, both men apparently told reporters that Wilson, aka Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative. At the time of the leak, in June of 2003, Plame's husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was publicly challenging the president's claim that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons. The prosecutor is trying to determine whether any crimes were committed in connection with the leak, which may have been intended to punish Joseph Wilson for his dissent.

One of the reporters was Judith Miller of The New York Times, who recently spent 85 days in prison to protect the identity of Libby, who claims he long ago released her from a pledge of confidentiality. Miller was an imperfect heroine for press freedom. She had been the main author of stories in the Times that helped the White House fan the flames of war with stories about Saddam's nuclear bomb program.

The press' ability to protect confidential sources lets whistleblowers tell the truth - or their version of it - while protecting themselves from official retribution. Unfortunately, Miller appears to have been the duped messenger of government misinformation; Libby was leaking information that may have been designed to punish a whistleblower.

Times editors began to doubt her stories and took her off the WMD beat. Still, the Times publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., recklessly staked the paper's reputation and important press freedoms on Miller's flawed methodology. The result, after a series of court losses, is that a reporter's ability to protect a confidential source has been damaged.

In the end, though, the issue is not the Times' latest journalistic lapses but a graver question: Did members of the Bush administration violate the law by trying to punish someone who questioned their rationale for war?

Bush has backed away from his earlier pledge to fire anyone who leaked information about Valerie Wilson. And the president and vice president have refused to support an independent inquiry into how they got the intelligence on Iraq so wrong.

Nearly 2,000 young Americans have died in Iraq, a war launched on false premises. We owe it to them and any who follow to get to the bottom of how our government led us into a morass.


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/ea/2004gopconventionbushcheney.jpg/238px-2004gopconventionbushcheney.jpg.

”Yer doin’ a heckuvajob, Brownout!”.

(WHILST APPLYING VULCAN NERVE PINCH)

[thejesus]

Here's the latest....

AP: Rove, Libby Discussed Reporter Info

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051020/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/cia_leak_investigation_2;_ylt=Apfx1sMv2y8AQ1LmZNN3 w4dZJ_wA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

[Bag Sniper]

Here's the latest....

AP: Rove, Libby Discussed Reporter Info

Here's the article that heyzoos won't comment on other than a link ....


AP: Rove, Libby Discussed Reporter Info By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 13 minutes ago



WASHINGTON - Top White House aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby discussed their contacts with reporters about an undercover CIA officer in the days before her identity was published, the first known intersection between two central figures in the criminal leak investigation.

ADVERTISEMENT

Rove told grand jurors it was possible he first heard in the White House that Valerie Plame, wife of Bush administration Joseph Wilson, worked for the CIA from Libby's recounting of a conversation with a journalist, according to people familiar with his testimony.

<No big deal - but what journalist ... Cooper ? Miller ?>

They said Rove testified that his discussions with Libby before Plame's CIA cover was blown were limited to information reporters had passed to them. Some evidence prosecutors have gathered conflicts with Libby's account.

<Like ... what .. perhaps>

Rove is deputy White House chief of staff and President Bush's closest political adviser. Libby is Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald must determine whether the contacts between the two men concerning Plame's CIA work were part of an effort to undercut her husband's criticism of the Iraq war or simply the trading of information and rumors that typically occurs inside the White House.

<read that again ... what is the purpose of Fitzgeralds role ... read it again ... what is the purpose of Fitzgeralds role ... read it again ... what is the purpose of Fitzgeralds role ... read it again ....>

The prosecutor also is examining whether any witnesses gave false testimony or withheld information from the investigation. His spokesman, Randall Samborn, declined to comment Wednesday.

<Hmmmm .. and who were the leakers of the SECRET testimony eeeehhhhh>

The Rove-Libby contacts were confirmed to The Associated Press by people directly familiar with testimony the two witnesses gave before the grand jury. All spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the proceedings.

Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate, did not return repeated phone calls this week seeking comment.

Rove and Libby have emerged as central figures in Fitzgerald's investigation because both had contacts with reporters who ultimately disclosed Plame's work for the CIA. Federal law prohibits government officials from knowingly disclosing the identity if intelligence operatives.

<Noooooo ... they both ... gasp ... had contact with ... aarrhhhgggg .. reporters ... who leaked the ID ... gosh .. there was Cooper - he said he's confused .... Miller - she has amnesia .... Novak - he doesn't know shit about anything ... Joey Wilson .... hhhhmmmmm ... he talked his head off to anyone who would listen .... hhhmmmmmm ...>

Those familiar with the testimony and evidence said that:

During one of his grand jury appearances, Rove was shown testimony from Libby suggesting the two had discussed with each other information they had gotten about Wilson's wife from reporters in early July 2003.

<suggesting ? they got info on Plame from reporters ... HHhmmmmmmmm ... what reporters ... Cooper ... Miller .... Novak ? ... how convenient ... the unnamed sources .. don't say ... hhmmmmmm>

Rove responded that Libby's testimony was consistent with his general recollection that he had first learned Wilson's wife worked for the CIA from reporters or government officials who had talked with reporters.

<Hey .. we keep coming back to the reporters giving THEM information ... not THEM giving info to reporters ..... hhhmmmm....>

Rove testified that he never intended any of his comments to reporters about Wilson's wife to serve as confirmation of Plame's identity. Rove "has always clearly left open that he first heard this information from Libby," said one person directly familiar with Rove's grand jury testimony.

<go back and read the part I told you to read over and over and over again ... because if you're a leftist ... you probably forgot already ... if you even read it at all>

That person said Rove testified he believes he heard general information about Wilson's wife on two occasions before he talked with reporters in July 2003 and then learned her name from syndicated columnist [u]Robert Novak.

<damn ... just keeps circling back to the "reporters" ... imagine that ...>

Rove testified he probably first heard of Wilson's wife in a casual social setting outside the White House in the spring of 2003 but could not remember who provided the information.

<wanna bet it was a reporter ....>

On July 9, 2003, Novak told him he was writing a column that would report that Plame worked for the CIA, and Rove told the columnist he had heard similar information, according to his testimony.

<so it's still pointing at Novak at this point ....a reporter ... who outed a CIA agent ... a reporter ... ALWAYS circling back to the reporters ... hhmmmmmm .. isn't Coooper he shit his pants thinking of going to jail ... isn't Miller .. got tired of Lesbo LALA Land and can't remember fuck about anything .. even her notes are a total mess .. hell she can't even tell people why she even went to jail since Scooter gave her leave over a year before she got her tongue exercises .....hmmmmmmm ... a reporter .. who could it be .... hhhmmmmm...>

Novak published a column the next week that said Plame worked for the CIA and suggested her agency send Wilson, a former ambassador, on a mission that raised questions about prewar intelligence the Bush administration used to justify invading Iraq.

Rove testified he told Libby about his contact with Novak about two days after it happened.

In testimony shown to Rove, Libby stated that numerous journalists appeared to have learned about Plame's identity in the period before her name was published and that [when ? perhaps] he and Rove talked to each other about their contacts with reporters.

<reporters ... my, my, my ... that word does seem to creep up alot around here doesn't it ... Cooper ...no .. Miller .. hhhhmmmmmm ... Novak ... sure >

Libby's testimony stated that Rove had told him about his contact with Novak and that Libby had told Rove about information he had gotten about Wilson's wife from NBC's Tim Russert, according to a person familiar with the information shown to Rove.

<WHaaaaaa ... ANOTHER reporter ... hhmmmmmmmmm .. Cooper/Miller/Novak/Russert ... what the fuck ... reporter ... hhhmmmm...>

Prosecutors, however, have a different account from Russert.[i] The network has said Russert told authorities did not know about Wilson's wife's identity until it was published and therefore could not have told Libby about it.[i]

<The NETWORK said .... not Russert ... the NETWORK ... where the fuck is Russert's testimony .... reporter .. always back to the reporter ...hmmmm.... the network .... reporter ... network reporter ...>

Prosecutors also have evidence that Libby initiated the call with Russert and had initiated similar contact with another reporter, Judith Miller of The New York Times, several weeks earlier. Miller was jailed for 85 days before agreeing to testify before the grand jury.

<So .. initiated *the* call ... not *a* call ... interesting .. semantics for a wordsmythe .... but Scooter gave Miller a pass on testifying and she chose jail instead ... hhhmmmmmm .... that's NEVER been adequately explained ... maybe the Lochness Reporter ....>

Even if Rove, Libby or other White House aides did not knowingly reveal Plame's covert identity, the prosecutor could consider other charges such as the mishandling of classified information, false statements and obstruction of justice, lawyers have said.

Rove was pressed by prosecutors on several matters, including why he failed to mention during the first of his four grand jury appearances that he also had discussed the Plame matter with a second reporter, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine.

Rove testified during the first appearance about his contacts with Novak in the days before Novak wrote a column outing Plame's identity. When asked generally if he had conversations with other reporters in that session, he answered "no."

<Again big deal .. can any one of you recall any particular post you made with any particular small time anarchist on the board ... no ....>

Rove and his lawyer subsequently discovered an e-mail Rove had sent top national security aide Steve Hadley referring to a brief phone interview he had with Cooper.

<OK .. I find shit all the time I wrote but forgot about ... sooooooo>

The e-mail jogged Rove's memory and during a subsequent grand jury appearance, he volunteered his recollections about his conversation with Cooper, and his lawyer provided the e-mail to prosecutors. Cooper also wrote a story about Plame.

<Reporters .. always back to the reporters ... Cooper .. Miller ... Russert .. Novak ... reporters ... one chickens out .. the other goes to jail .. a network speaks for Russert and no one is asking Novak shit ... reporters ... hhmmm....>

[Motley]

This message is hidden because Bag Sniper is on your ignore list (http://www.wincoast.com/forum/profile.php?do=editlist).</SPAN>

Best move I ever made here :)

[Voice of Reason]

This message is hidden because Bag Sniper is on your ignore list (http://www.wincoast.com/forum/profile.php?do=editlist).</SPAN>

Best move I ever made here :)
:rolleyes:

Maybe you should go back to your sewer-diving at the Daily Chaos Echo Chamber if you can't handle the other side of the story.

[Bag Sniper]

Here's the latest....

AP: Rove, Libby Discussed Reporter Info


Again this proves you are incapable of any analytical thought to what's being reported ... you simply choose to be spoon fed by the media ... hhhmmmmm ... reporters ... and really not dare comment on what you *think* it is you read or what the sentence constructs are actually saying much less what the words mean ...

Such is the life of a leftist ....

<Sqwauk ... polly wants a cracker .. pass it on>

<Sqwauk .. polly wants a cracker .. pass it on>

<Sqwauk .. polly wants a cracker ... pass it on>

<Sqwauk .. polly .. ROVE DID IT ... pass it on>

<Sqwauk ... ROVE DID IT ... pass it on>

<Sqwauk ... ROVE AND CHENEY DID IT .. pass it on>

<Sqwauk ... ROVE, CHENEY AND THE WHITE HOUSE CHEF DID IT ... pass it on>

< Sqwauk .... DOWNEY STREET MEMO ... pass it on>

<Sqwauk, sqwauk sqwauk ....>

[Motley]

:rolleyes:

Maybe you should go back to your sewer-diving at the Daily Chaos Echo Chamber if you can't handle the other side of the story.

I'm more then happy to hear the other side of the story. Thats why I've been around for nearly 3 years.

It is the lunatics that I can do without.

[zapcomix]

I'm more then happy to hear the other side of the story. Thats why I've been around for nearly 3 years.

It is the lunatics that I can do without.
Sounds like the first cheenck(?) in the armor...

[Phuct]

Chink.


Sounds like the first cheenck(?) in the armor...

[Bag Sniper]

I'm more then happy to hear the other side of the story. Thats why I've been around for nearly 3 years.

It is the lunatics that I can do without.

"Lunatics" being anyone other jackbooted neonazi's who stand in Pelosi's shadow ...

Go ahead ... address my most recent 2 posts below and stop trying to bury them like the coward that you are ... go ahead ... show your superiority over the material .. stun us with your masterful comprehension of the issue ... bedazzle us with your unfathomable command of the facts ....
place us in utter awe with your analytical ability ....

Go for it Moldy ... give us all that adrenaline pumping think tank member cross section of the events you're famous for ... oh .. sorry ... you've done all that already ....

[zapcomix]

Chink.
thanx :mad_08:

[Phuct]

thanx :mad_08:

No problem. :)

Oh, and have these imminent indictments broke yet?

Two weeks of imminency!

[IBinFarteen]

All this interest in a "non" story.

[Bag Sniper]

This message is hidden because Bag Sniper is on your ignore list (http://www.wincoast.com/forum/profile.php?do=editlist).</SPAN>

Best move I ever made here :)

Sounds like the kindergardner out here recently .. little fuck hated his teacher presenting facts .... they were talking about rattlers ... the kid hated the teacher talking ... so he ran around with hands over his ears yelling "Yaaaaaaaa Yaaaaaa Yaaaaa" ...

Little shit was about to stick his hands under a sage brush one day ... teacher yell "DON'T DO THAT ... THINK ABOUT WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT" .... little bastard went "YAaaaaaa Yaaaaaaaa" ... then BAANG .... 3 footer nailed his dumb ass ....

Darwinism ....same with Moldy ... prime fossil material ....

[orrery]

Did the CIA “Out” Valerie Plame?
What the mainstream media tells the court ... but won’t tell you.



With each passing day, the manufactured "scandal" over the publication of Valerie Plame's relationship with the CIA establishes new depths of mainstream-media hypocrisy. A highly capable special prosecutor is probing the underlying facts, and it is appropriate to withhold legal judgments until he completes the investigation over which speculation runs so rampant. But it is not too early to assess the performance of the press. It's been appalling.

Is that hyperbole? You be the judge. Have you heard that the CIA is actually the source responsible for exposing Plame's covert status? Not Karl Rove, not Bob Novak, not the sinister administration cabal du jour of Fourth Estate fantasy, but the CIA itself? Had you heard that Plame's cover has actually been blown for a decade — i.e., since about seven years before Novak ever wrote a syllable about her? Had you heard not only that no crime was committed in the communication of information between Bush administration officials and Novak, but that no crime could have been committed because the governing law gives a person a complete defense if an agent's status has already been compromised by the government?
No, you say, you hadn't heard any of that. You heard that this was the crime of the century. A sort of Robert-Hanssen-meets-Watergate in which Rove is already cooked and we're all just waiting for the other shoe — or shoes — to drop on the den of corruption we know as the Bush administration. That, after all, is the inescapable impression from all the media coverage. So who is saying different?

The organized media, that's who. How come you haven't heard? Because they've decided not to tell you. Because they say one thing — one dark, transparently partisan thing — when they're talking to you in their news coverage, but they say something completely different when they think you're not listening.

You see, if you really want to know what the media think of the Plame case — if you want to discover what a comparative trifle they actually believe it to be — you need to close the paper and turn off the TV. You need, instead, to have a peek at what they write when they're talking to a court. It's a mind-bendingly different tale.



SPUN FROM THE START

My colleague Cliff May has already demonstrated (http://www.nationalreview.com/may/may200507150827.asp) the bankruptcy of the narrative the media relentlessly spouts for Bush-bashing public consumption: to wit, that Valerie Wilson, nee Plame, was identified as a covert CIA agent by the columnist Robert Novak, to whom she was compromised by an administration official. In fact, it appears Plame was first outed to the general public as a result of a consciously loaded and slyly hypothetical piece by the journalist David Corn. Corn's source appears to have been none other than Plame's own husband, former ambassador and current Democratic-party operative Joseph Wilson — that same pillar of national security rectitude whose notion of discretion, upon being dispatched by the CIA for a sensitive mission to Niger, was to write a highly public op-ed about his trip in the New York Times. This isn't news to the media; they have simply chosen not to report it.


The hypocrisy, though, only starts there. It turns out that the media believe Plame was outed long before either Novak or Corn took pen to paper. And not by an ambiguous confirmation from Rove or a nod-and-a-wink from Ambassador Hubby. No, the media think Plame was previously compromised by a disclosure from the intelligence community itself — although it may be questionable whether there was anything of her covert status left to salvage at that point, for reasons that will become clear momentarily.

This CIA disclosure, moreover, is said to have been made not to Americans at large but to Fidel Castro's anti-American regime in Cuba, whose palpable incentive would have been to "compromise[] every operation, every relationship, every network with which [Plame] had been associated in her entire career" — to borrow from the diatribe in which Wilson risibly compared his wife's straits to the national security catastrophes wrought by Aldrich Ames and Kim Philby.



THE MEDIA GOES TO COURT ... AND SINGS A DIFFERENT TUNE

Just four months ago, 36 news organizations confederated to file a friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington. At the time, Bush-bashing was (no doubt reluctantly) confined to an unusual backseat. The press had no choice — it was time to close ranks around two of its own, namely, the Times's Judith Miller and Time's Matthew Cooper, who were threatened with jail for defying grand jury subpoenas from the special prosecutor.


The media's brief, fairly short and extremely illuminating, is available here (http://www.bakerlaw.com/files/tbl_s10News/FileUpload44/10159/Amici%20Brief%20032305%20(Final).PDF). The Times, which is currently spearheading the campaign against Rove and the Bush administration, encouraged its submission. It was joined by a "who's who" of the current Plame stokers, including ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, AP, Newsweek, Reuters America, the Washington Post, the Tribune Company (which publishes the Los Angeles Times and the Baltimore Sun, among other papers), and the White House Correspondents (the organization which represents the White House press corps in its dealings with the executive branch).

The thrust of the brief was that reporters should not be held in contempt or forced to reveal their sources in the Plame investigation. Why? Because, the media organizations confidently asserted, no crime had been committed. Now, that is stunning enough given the baleful shroud the press has consciously cast over this story. Even more remarkable, though, were the key details these self-styled guardians of the public's right to know stressed as being of the utmost importance for the court to grasp — details those same guardians have assiduously suppressed from the coverage actually presented to the public.

Though you would not know it from watching the news, you learn from reading the news agencies' brief that the 1982 law prohibiting disclosure of undercover agents' identities explicitly sets forth a complete defense to this crime. It is contained in Section 422 (of Title 50, U.S. Code), and it provides that an accused leaker is in the clear if, sometime before the leak, "the United States ha[s] publicly acknowledged or revealed" the covert agent's "intelligence relationship to the United States[.]"

As it happens, the media organizations informed the court that long before the Novak revelation (which, as noted above, did not disclose Plame's classified relationship with the CIA), Plame's cover was blown not once but twice. The media based this contention on reporting by the indefatigable Bill Gertz — an old-school, "let's find out what really happened" kind of journalist. Gertz's relevant article, published a year ago in the Washington Times, can be found here (http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040722-115439-4033r.htm).



THE MEDIA TELLS THE COURT: PLAME'S COVER WAS BLOWN IN THE MID-1990s

As the media alleged to the judges (in Footnote 7, page 8, of their brief), Plame's identity as an undercover CIA officer was first disclosed to Russia in the mid-1990s by a spy in Moscow. Of course, the press and its attorneys were smart enough not to argue that such a disclosure would trigger the defense prescribed in Section 422 because it was evidently made by a foreign-intelligence operative, not by a U.S. agency as the statute literally requires.


But neither did they mention the incident idly. For if, as he has famously suggested, President Bush has peered into the soul of Vladimir Putin, what he has no doubt seen is the thriving spirit of the KGB, of which the Russian president was a hardcore agent. The Kremlin still spies on the United States. It remains in the business of compromising U.S. intelligence operations.

Thus, the media's purpose in highlighting this incident is blatant: If Plame was outed to the former Soviet Union a decade ago, there can have been little, if anything, left of actual intelligence value in her "every operation, every relationship, every network" by the time anyone spoke with Novak (or, of course, Corn).



THE CIA OUTS PLAME TO FIDEL CASTRO

Of greater moment to the criminal investigation is the second disclosure urged by the media organizations on the court. They don't place a precise date on this one, but inform the judges that it was "more recent" than the Russian outing but "prior to Novak's publication."


And it is priceless. The press informs the judges that the CIA itself "inadvertently" compromised Plame by not taking appropriate measures to safeguard classified documents that the Agency routed to the Swiss embassy in Havana. In the Washington Times article — you remember, the one the press hypes when it reports to the federal court but not when it reports to consumers of its news coverage — Gertz elaborates that "[t]he documents were supposed to be sealed from the Cuban government, but [unidentified U.S.] intelligence officials said the Cubans read the classified material and learned the secrets contained in them."

Thus, the same media now stampeding on Rove has told a federal court that, to the contrary, they believe the CIA itself blew Plame's cover before Rove or anyone else in the Bush administration ever spoke to Novak about her. Of course, they don't contend the CIA did it on purpose or with malice. But neither did Rove — who, unlike the CIA, appears neither to have known about nor disclosed Plame's classified status. Yet, although the Times and its cohort have a bull's eye on Rove's back, they are breathtakingly silent about an apparent CIA embarrassment — one that seems to be just the type of juicy story they routinely covet.



A COMPLETE DEFENSE?

The defense in Section 422 requires that the revelation by the United States have been done "publicly." At least one U.S. official who spoke to Gertz speculated that because the Havana snafu was not "publicized" — i.e., because the classified information about Plame was mistakenly communicated to Cuba rather than broadcast to the general public — it would not available as a defense to whomever spoke with Novak. But that seems clearly wrong.


First, the theory under which the media have gleefully pursued Rove, among other Bush officials, holds that if a disclosure offense was committed here it was complete at the moment the leak was made to Novak. Whether Novak then proceeded to report the leak to the general public is beside the point — the violation supposedly lies in identifying Plame to Novak. (Indeed, it has frequently been observed that Judy Miller of the Times is in contempt for protecting one or more sources even though she never wrote an article about Plame.)

Perhaps more significantly, the whole point of discouraging public disclosure of covert agents is to prevent America's enemies from degrading our national security. It is not, after all, the public we are worried about. Rather, it is the likes of Fidel Castro and his regime who pose a threat to Valerie Plame and her network of U.S. intelligence relationships. The government must still be said to have "publicized" the classified relationship — i.e., to have blown the cover of an intelligence agent — if it leaves out the middleman by communicating directly with an enemy government rather than indirectly through a media outlet.



LINGERING QUESTIONS

All this raises several readily apparent questions. We know that at the time of the Novak and Corn articles, Plame was not serving as an intelligence agent outside the United States. Instead, she had for years been working, for all to see, at CIA headquarters in Langley. Did her assignment to headquarters have anything to do with her effectiveness as a covert agent having already been nullified by disclosure to the Russians and the Cubans — and to whomever else the Russians and Cubans could be expected to tell if they thought it harmful to American interests or advantageous to their own?


If Plame's cover was blown, as Gertz reports, how much did Plame know about that? It's likely that she would have been fully apprised — after all, as we have been told repeatedly in recent weeks, the personal security of a covert agent and her family can be a major concern when secrecy is pierced. Assuming she knew, did her husband, Wilson, also know? At the time he was ludicrously comparing the Novak article to the Ames and Philby debacles, did he actually have reason to believe his wife had been compromised years earlier?

And could the possibility that Plame's cover has long been blown explain why the CIA was unconcerned about assigning a one-time covert agent to a job that had her walking in and out of CIA headquarters every day? Could it explain why the Wilsons were sufficiently indiscrete to pose in Vanity Fair, and, indeed, to permit Joseph Wilson to pen a highly public op-ed regarding a sensitive mission to which his wife — the covert agent — energetically advocated his assignment? Did they fail to take commonsense precautions because they knew there really was nothing left to protect?

We'd probably know the answers to these and other questions by now if the media had given a tenth of the effort spent manufacturing a scandal to reporting professionally on the underlying facts. And if they deigned to share with their readers and viewers all the news that's fit to print ... in a brief to a federal court.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (http://www.defenddemocracy.org/).

http://www.nationalreview.com/mccar...00507180801.asp (http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200507180801.asp)

[orrery]

Who Exposed Secret Agent Plame?
How about the least likely suspect?



This just in: Bob Novak did not reveal that Valerie Plame was an undercover agent for the CIA.

Read — or reread — his column (http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn20030714.shtml) from July 14, 2003. All Novak reports is that the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson is “an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction.”

Novak has said repeatedly that he was not told, and that he did not know, that Plame was — or had ever been — a NOC, an agent with Non-Official Cover. He has emphatically said that had he understood that she was any sort of secret agent, he would never have named her.

As for Novak’s use of the word “operative,” he might as easily have called her an “official,” an “analyst, or an “employee.” But, as a longtime newsman, he instinctively chose the sexiest term (one he routinely applies to political figures, too, i.e. “a party operative”).

Reread Novak’s article, and you’ll also see that Novak in no way denigrates Wilson. On the contrary, he talks of Wilson’s “heroism” in Iraq in 1991. And nowhere in his column does he say — or even imply — that Wilson was unqualified to conduct the Niger investigation or that Plame was responsible for getting him the assignment — merely that she “suggested sending him.”

Even so, it is unclear whether Novak’s sources may have committed a crime by talking to Novak about Plame. That would depend on a number of variables involving what they knew about Plame and how they came to know it. A prosecutor would have the power to compel Novak to testify regarding what was said to him and by whom.

Is this splitting hairs? Not at all. In Washington, plenty of people are acquainted with CIA operatives who are not working undercover. For example, when a CIA analyst wrote a book under the pseudonym “Anonymous,” it was widely known that Anonymous was the Agency’s Michael Scheuer. Before long, someone revealed that in print. No crime was committed or alleged — no classified information had been disclosed, no NOC had been exposed.

So if Novak did not reveal that Valerie Plame was a secret agent, who did? The evidence strongly suggests it was none other than Joe Wilson himself. Let me walk you through the steps that lead to this conclusion.

The first reference to Plame being a secret agent appears in The Nation, in an article by David Corn (http://www.thenation.com/blogs/capitalgames?bid=3&pid=823) published July 16, 2003, just two days after Novak’s column appeared. It carried this lead: “Did Bush officials blow the cover of a U.S. intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security — and break the law — in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?”

Since Novak did not report that Plame was “working covertly” how did Corn know that’s what she had been doing?

Corn does not tell his readers and he has responded to a query from me only by pointing out that he was asking a question, not making a “statement of fact.” But in the article, he asserts that Novak “outed” Plame “as an undercover CIA officer.” Again, Novak did not do that. Rather, it is Corn who is, apparently for the first time, “outing” Plame’s “undercover” status.

Corn follows that assertion with a quote from Wilson saying, “I will not answer questions about my wife.” Any reporter worth his salt would immediately wonder: Did Wilson indeed answer Corn’s questions about his wife — after Corn agreed not to quote his answers but to use them only on background? Read the rest of Corn’s piece and it’s difficult to believe anything else. Corn names no other sources for the information he provides — and he provides much more information than Novak revealed.

Corn also claims that Wilson “will not confirm nor deny that his wife …works for the CIA.” Corn adds: “But let’s assume she does. That would seem to mean that the Bush administration has screwed one of its own top-secret operatives in order to punish Wilson …”

On what basis could Corn “assume” that Plame was not only working covertly but was actually a “top-secret” operative? And where did Corn get the idea that Plame had been “outed” in order to punish Wilson? That is not suggested by anything in the Novak column which, as I noted, is sympathetic to Wilson and Plame.

The likely answer: The allegation that someone in the administration leaked to Novak as a way to punish Wilson was made by Wilson — to Corn. But Corn, rather than quote Wilson, puts the idea forward as his own.

Keep in mind that from early on there were two possible but contradictory scenarios:
1) Members of the Bush administration intentionally exposed a covert CIA agent as a way to take revenge against her husband who had written a critical op-ed.

2) Members of the Bush administration were attempting to set the record straight by telling reporters that it was not Vice President Cheney who sent Wilson on the Africa assignment as Wilson claimed; rather Wilson’s wife, a CIA employee, helped get him the assignment. (And that is indeed the conclusion of the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee.)

Corn’s article then goes on to provide specific details about Plame’s undercover work, her “dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material.” But how does Corn know about that? From what source could he have learned it?

Corn concludes that Plame’s career “has been destroyed by the Bush administration.” And here he does, finally, quote Wilson directly. Wilson says: “Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames.”

Corn has assured us several times that Wilson refused to answer questions about his wife, refused to confirm or deny that she worked for the CIA, refused to “acknowledge whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee.” But he is willing to say on the record that “naming her this way” was an act of treachery? That’s not talking about his wife? That’s not providing confirmation? There is only one way to interpret this: Wilson did indeed talk about his wife, her work as a secret agent, and other matters to Corn (and perhaps others?) on a confidential basis.

If Wilson did tell Corn that his wife was an undercover agent, did he commit a crime? I don’t claim to know. But the charge that someone committed a crime by naming Plame as a covert agent was also made by Corn, apparently for the first time, in this same article. No doubt, the independent prosecutor and the grand jury will sort it out.

Criminality aside, if Wilson revealed to Corn that Plame worked as a CIA “deep-cover” operative “tracking parties trying to buy or sell” WMDs, surely that’s news.

And it is consequential: On the basis of Novak’s story alone, it is highly unlikely that anyone would have had a clue that Plame — presumably under a different name and while living in a foreign country — had been a NOC. At most, her friends in Washington would have been surprised to learn that she didn’t work where she said she worked.

But once Corn published the fact that Plame had been a “top-secret operative,” and once he quoted Wilson saying what exposing his wife would mean — and once Plame posed for Vanity Fair photographers — anyone who had ever known her in a different context and with a different identity would have been tipped off.

But they would not have been tipped by Novak — nor, based on what we know so far, by Karl Rove. Rather, it appears they would have been tipped off by Joe Wilson who, the publicly available evidence strongly suggests, leaked like a sieve to The Nation’s David Corn.

— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (http://www.defenddemocracy.org/), a policy institute focusing on terrorism
http://www.nationalreview.com/may/may200507150827.asp

[Motley]

Sounds like the first cheenck(?) in the armor...

Armor? :add09:

You don't need armor for Baggy, you need a stuck on stupid to english translator.

[Motley]

No problem. :)

Oh, and have these imminent indictments broke yet?

Two weeks of imminency!

You do know what the delay is don't you?

Here are tghree things that have happened in the last 2 weeks which obviously would cause a delay:

1: Rove suddenly offered to testify before the Grand Jury for a fourth time.
2: An aid to Dick Cheney has rolled over, and is now cooperating with the prosecution. This means more info then he had 2 weeks ago.
3: An aid to Libby rolled over (just today) and is also now cooperating with the prosecution. Once again, this means more info then he had 2 weeks ago.

Do you guys honestly think that some of your boys are not on the verge of being indicted?

[Bag Sniper]

Corn's source appears to have been none other than Plame's own husband, former ambassador and current Democratic-party operative Joseph Wilson —

Ahem .. most excellent article Aleph ... MOST excellent ... I *have* traced this back to little Joey recently though it's a pretty smoky trail .... and admittedly a stretch by my own strict standards of fact ....

And there's Moldy, heyzoos and Bboy ... hands over ears ... screaming "Yaaaaa Yaaaaa Yaaaa" laying on a mound of RED ant's biting at thier pathetic little sexual ... well .. little .. well ... reconstructive surgery .. could .. well .. make the little guy ... I mean ... improve the ... well ... maybe they have a chance at .... uhhhmmmm...... perhaps with extensive therapy they might be able to once again ... hhhmmmm ...