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Thread: Rove on the Hotseat?

  1. #136
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    Originally Posted by dalem
    He can't.
    -dale
    Quote Originally Posted by Confed999
    Personally, I'm going with "won't".
    Can't...won't...keep the change. Human will is a figment of the imagination, anyway.

    But then again, I'm a right-wing dupe of the tippy-top-secret underground government that runs...well...EVER'thang, purty much. So, don't take my word for it.
    "The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
    - George Orwell

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    BUMP, because I'm feeling like a son-of-a-*****, and I wanted to get Broken to post something foolish about this non-issue so that I can throw in his face later.

    Oh, and here's another one, because I'm REALLY feelin' like a son-of-a-*****:

    Heh.
    "The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
    - George Orwell

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bluesman
    BUMP, because I'm feeling like a son-of-a-*****, and I wanted to get Broken to post something foolish about this non-issue so that I can throw in his face later.

    Oh, and here's another one, because I'm REALLY feelin' like a son-of-a-*****:

    Heh.
    Awww, you guys miss me.....

    OK, here's an article today buy Pincus of the Wash Post which talks about the CIA head of CPD sending Wilson to Niger and that Plame was only marginally involved. That ought to get your teeth a-gnashing.

    What is interesting is that Pincus makes the case, without actually saying it, that the only way Rove and Libby could have learned Plame's name is from the classified State Dept report circulating the White House right after Wilson wrote his article on the Niger uranium. This is the only report which makes the claim that Plame selected Wilson. Unless Rove and Libby just made that up, they would have had to have gotten that little tid-bit from this classified report. So far, they have denied this.

    Here's the article:

    Side Issue in the Plame Case: Who Sent Her Spouse to Africa?

    By Walter Pincus
    Washington Post Staff Writer
    Thursday, August 11, 2005; Page A08

    The origin of Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV's trip to Niger in 2002 to check out intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase uranium has become a contentious side issue to the inquiry by special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who is looking into whether a crime was committed with the exposure of Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife, as a covert CIA employee.

    After he went public in 2003 about the trip, senior Bush administration officials, trying to discredit Wilson's findings, told reporters that Wilson's wife, who worked at the CIA, was the one who suggested the Niger mission for her husband. Days later, Plame was named as an "agency operative" by syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak, who has said he did not realize he was, in effect, exposing a covert officer. A Senate committee report would later say evidence indicated Plame suggested Wilson for the trip.

    Over the past months, however, the CIA has maintained that Wilson was chosen for the trip by senior officials in the Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division (CPD) -- not by his wife -- largely because he had handled a similar agency inquiry in Niger in 1999. On that trip, Plame, who worked in that division, had suggested him because he was planning to go there, according to Wilson and the Senate committee report.

    The 2002 mission grew out of a request by Vice President Cheney on Feb. 12 for more information about a Defense Intelligence Agency report he had received that day, according to a 2004 report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. An aide to Cheney would later say he did not realize at the time that this request would generate such a trip.

    Wilson maintains that his wife was asked that day by one of her bosses to write a memo about his credentials for the mission--after they had selected him. That memo apparently was included in a cable to officials in Africa seeking concurrence with the choice of Wilson, the Senate report said.

    Valerie Wilson's other role, according to intelligence officials, was to tell Wilson he had been selected, and then to introduce him at a meeting at the CIA on Feb. 19, 2002, in which analysts from different agencies discussed the Niger trip. She told the Senate committee she left the session after her introduction.

    Senior Bush administration officials told a different story about the trip's origin in the days between July 8 and July 12, 2003. They said that Wilson's wife was working at the CIA dealing with weapons of mass destruction and that she suggested him for the Niger trip, according to three reporters.

    The Bush officials passing on this version were apparently attempting to undercut the credibility of Wilson, who on Sunday, July 6, 2003, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" and in The Washington Post and the New York Times that he had checked out the allegation in Niger and found it to be wrong. He criticized President Bush for misrepresenting the facts in his January 2003 State of the Union address when he said Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Africa.

    Time magazine's Matthew Cooper has written that he was told by Karl Rove on July 11 "don't get too far out on Wilson" because information was going to be declassified soon that would cast doubt on Wilson's mission and findings. Cooper also wrote that Rove told him that Wilson's wife worked for the agency on weapons of mass destruction and that "she was responsible for sending Wilson."

    This Washington Post reporter spoke the next day to an administration official, who talked on the condition of anonymity, and was told in substance "that the White House had not paid attention to the former ambassador's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction," as reported in an Oct. 14 article.

    Novak had been told earlier in the week about Wilson's wife. He has written that he asked a senior administration official why Wilson, who had held a National Security Council staff position in the Clinton administration, had been given that assignment. The response, Novak wrote, was that "Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife." Novak then called another Bush official for confirmation and got the response "Oh, you know about it." Novak said he called the CIA on July 10, 2003, to get the agency's version. The then-CIA spokesman, Bill Harlow, told the columnist that the story he had gotten about Wilson's wife's role was not correct. Novak has written that Harlow said the CPD officials selected Wilson but that she "was delegated to request his help."

    Harlow has said that he told Novak that if he wrote about the trip, he should not mention Wilson's wife's name. Novak, who published her maiden name -- Valerie Plame -- has written that Harlow's request was "meaningless" because "once it was determined that Wilson's wife suggested the mission, she could be identified as 'Valerie Plame' by reading her husband's entry in 'Who's Who in America.' "

    In the July 14, 2003, column, Novak wrote that Plame was an "agency operative" and that "two senior administration officials" told him that she "suggested sending him to Niger." He also wrote that "CIA officials did not regard Wilson's intelligence as definitive" because they would expect the Niger officials to deny the allegation. Although Novak cited the two officials' version of events, he also included the CIA's opposing view: that "its counterproliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him."

    Two other sources appear to support the view that Wilson's wife suggested her husband's trip. One is a June 2003 memo by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). The other, which depends in good part on the INR document, is a statement of the views of Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and two other Republican members. That statement was attached to the full committee report on its 2004 inquiry into the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

    The INR document's reference to the Wilson trip is contained in two sentences in a three-page memo on why the State Department disagreed with the idea that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa -- a view that would ultimately be endorsed after the Iraq invasion by the U.S. weapons hunter David Kay. The notes supporting those two sentences in the INR document say that the Feb. 19, 2002, meeting at the CIA was "apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue," according to the Senate intelligence committee report. But one Senate Democratic staff member said, "That was speculation, that was not true."

    The full Senate committee report says that CPD officials "could not recall how the office decided to contact" Wilson but that "interviews and documents indicate his wife suggested his name for the trip." The three Republican senators wrote that they were more certain: "The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee."

  4. #139
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    Just in case you haven't gotten enough Plame-gate, here is an article with some possible big implications. Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald's boss is quitting the Justice department, and the new guy is an old buddy of Bush's. Will he let Fitzgerald continue if things get too hot for Rove and Libby?

    Justice Department Losing Top Officials at Busy Time

    By Dan Eggen
    Washington Post Staff Writer
    Friday, August 12, 2005; Page A17

    The Justice Department's second-in-command, James B. Comey, is clearing out his desk today to take a job as Lockheed Martin Corp.'s general counsel. The department's sprawling criminal division has been without a permanent chief for three months. And two other divisions covering antitrust and civil rights investigations are operating under temporary leadership.

    Amid a major department reorganization, a Senate battle over the Supreme Court and an ongoing probe into the leak of a CIA operative's name, the Justice Department is stuck with vacancies in some of its most high-profile and politically sensitive jobs.

    Justice officials say they are particularly concerned about the appointments for deputy attorney general and criminal division chief, which have been held up by disputes in the Senate and are unlikely to be approved until mid-September at the earliest.

    The delays have resulted in a rare bout of friction between Congress and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, who has vowed to mend frayed relations between Justice and Capitol Hill since his contentious confirmation battle early this year.

    "There's a huge concern that we're sitting without confirmed leadership for this many weeks," said one senior Justice official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of ongoing negotiations over the appointments.

    The candidate to replace Comey, former deputy White House counsel Timothy E. Flanigan, came under sharp questioning from some senators last month about his role in setting U.S. policy on torture and his ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was indicted yesterday. A confirmation vote has yet to be scheduled.

    The Judiciary Committee's chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), indicated during a July 26 confirmation hearing that he was dissatisfied with some of Flanigan's responses and hinted that he might not support his appointment.

    Perhaps the most intractable disagreement centers on Alice Fisher, a Justice official under Attorney General John D. Ashcroft. She is nominated to head the criminal division. A vote on Fisher's appointment has been blocked by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), who is seeking information from the administration related to detainee-abuse allegations. Levin has placed a hold on Fisher's nomination, taking advantage of long-standing rules allowing one senator to block a nominee, according to Senate aides and Justice officials.

    The standoff stems from an FBI e-mail revealed during recent litigation over detainee-abuse allegations in which the author writes: "In my weekly meetings with DOJ we often discussed [Defense Department] techniques and how they were not effective or producing intel that was reliable," adding in a second sentence that Fisher and other Justice officials "all attended meetings with FBI."

    To Levin and other Democrats, including Sens. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.) and Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.), the e-mails indicated that Fisher may have participated in discussions of FBI objections to the tactics used by Defense Department interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other detention facilities.

    Fisher said in written responses to the Judiciary Committee that she did not recall participating in discussions of specific interrogation techniques. According to a follow-up letter from Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella, the unidentified author of the FBI e-mail said that Fisher had not participated in such discussions and that he did not mean to imply that she had.

    But Levin and other Democrats want to interview the FBI agent themselves, a request that the Justice Department has refused.

    The Justice vacancies come at a busy time for the department. Under a reorganization ordered by President Bush, Justice officials are working on plans to create a national security division within the department to oversee counterintelligence and counterterrorism investigations -- much of which is now handled by the criminal division that Fisher has been nominated to lead.

    Comey, the departing deputy attorney general, has also had the task of overseeing special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's probe into the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

    Justice officials expect to announce today that Comey will be replaced temporarily by Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum. Officials have declined to say whether McCallum -- a Yale classmate of the president's as well as a longtime friend -- would be tapped to oversee the Plame investigation.

  5. #140
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    Miller released to testify

    Journalist Freed to Testify in Plame Case
    By Richard B. Schmitt, Times Staff Writer


    WASHINGTON — New York Times reporter Judith Miller, jailed since July 6 for refusing to reveal a confidential source, was freed Thursday after agreeing to testify about her conversations with the source.

    Miller is expected to appear today before a federal grand jury investigating whether anyone in the Bush administration leaked the name of a covert CIA officer to reporters.

    Her surprise release, negotiated between Times lawyers and a Justice Department special prosecutor, came after Miller received what the newspaper described as "a direct and un-coerced waiver" from her source that released her from any pledge of confidentiality and enabled her to testify.

    Although the New York Times did not identify the source, people close to the case said that it was I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Miller is expected to testify about conversations she had had with Libby, sources said. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the grand jury proceedings.

    Miller's testimony had been sought as part of a nearly two-year probe into whether the White House played a role in leaking the name of a CIA officer, Valerie Plame, to journalists, and violated a federal law that makes it a crime to identify covert agents.

    Plame is married to former envoy Joseph C. Wilson IV, who wrote an op-ed article for the New York Times criticizing the administration's use of intelligence in justifying the war with Iraq. On July 14, 2003, eight days after that article was published, Robert Novak identified Plame by name and occupation in a syndicated column that attacked Wilson.

    Among other avenues, the special prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has been investigating whether White House officials, including Libby and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, were fully forthcoming with investigators about their knowledge of Plame and how her name became public.

    Miller's agreement to cooperate suggests that Fitzgerald may be in a position to wrap up his investigation into the politically charged case. Depending on his findings, it could bring further damaging news to the administration, already rocked over its handling of hurricane relief along the Gulf Coast and the indictment this week of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).

    Neither Libby nor his lawyer, Joseph Tate of Philadelphia, could be reached for comment Thursday night.

    Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, who has said that his client was told more than a year ago that he was not a target of the investigation, said in an interview late Thursday that he had no reason to believe Rove's status had changed.

    In a statement, Miller said: "I am leaving jail today because my source has now voluntarily and personally released me from my promise of confidentiality regarding our conversations relating to the Wilson-Plame matter.

    "My attorneys have also reached agreement with the Office of Special Counsel regarding the nature and scope of my testimony, which satisfied my obligation as a reporter to keep faith with my sources."

    It was unclear whether Miller would be testifying about conversations with other individuals, although one source close to the case indicated that her testimony would be limited to her discussions with Libby.

    Libby has denied leaking Plame's name and has said that he first heard about her from journalists. Some people close to the case have said that Miller herself may have helped identify Plame to administration officials and is protecting another source who gave her that information.

    Miller, 57, a veteran investigative reporter, spent 85 days in jail, housed in a federal detention center in Alexandria, Va., whose inmates include Zacarias Moussaoui, the French national who pleaded guilty this spring to conspiring with Al Qaeda operatives involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist plot.

    Her incarceration, among the longest any journalist has undergone for protecting a confidential source, sparked an outcry from media groups and has triggered renewed interest in Congress concerning federal legislation to prevent journalists from going to jail for protecting sources who provide information about official misconduct.

    What made Miller's case particularly unusual was that, unlike other journalists called to testify, she never wrote an article about Plame and Wilson.

    Miller was found in civil contempt of court and sent to jail by a federal judge in Washington in July after refusing a demand from Fitzgerald to testify about conversations she had with an administration figure — widely presumed to be Libby — in the eight days between the time Wilson's article was published and Plame was identified in Novak's column.

    At the behest of Fitzgerald, Libby and others in the administration had earlier provided a general written waiver releasing journalists from their pledge of confidentiality and allowing them to discuss their conversations. Many journalists in the case, including Miller, regarded those blanket waivers as overly impersonal and meaningless.

    Libby has shown a willingness in the past to offer more personal assurances when asked, freeing journalists to talk. Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, who barely avoided jail at the same time Miller was sentenced last summer, testified about Libby after approaching the White House aide for a waiver.

    Sources close to the case said that Libby talked directly with Miller about 10 days ago, releasing her from any pledge of confidentiality.

    The New York Times reported in today's editions that the agreement that led to Miller's release followed negotiations involving Miller; her lawyer, Robert Bennett; Tate; and Fitzgerald, and that the talks began with a telephone call from Bennett to Tate in late August.

    According to the Times account, Libby and Tate strenuously argued that a waiver Libby had provided more than a year earlier was adequate to cover Miller, and that additional assurances were unnecessary.

    People close to the case speculated that the possibility of a grueling and seemingly endless jail term may also have been a factor in the resolution.

    Miller was sent to jail for the length of the grand jury investigating the Plame case, which is due to expire Oct. 28. The grand jury's term could be extended by six months.

    At the same time, Fitzgerald had raised the possibility in court that he might seek to have the reporter held in criminal contempt if she continued to refuse to cooperate. Under federal law, the penalty for criminal contempt is a maximum of five years in prison. A spokesman for Fitzgerald declined to comment late Thursday on any aspect of Miller's release.
    Source

  6. #141
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    This is very interesting....kinda reminds me of the "who shot J.R.?" episode.

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    http://powerlineblog.com/archives/011833.php

    New York Times reporter Judith Miller has finally been released from jail, after agreeing to testify to what everyone already knew, i.e., that she discussed Valerie Plame with Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff. I wrote about this last night; like many others, I expressed puzzlement over why Miller has finally agreed to name Libby, when he gave her and other journalists permission to do so a year ago.

    Several readers have written to point out that I had missed a key fact that was not disclosed in the article I linked to last night, but was in today's article in the Washington Post:

    After she received this "personal, voluntary waiver," Miller said, her lawyer approached the special prosecutor in the leak investigation and received an assurance that her testimony would be narrowly limited to her communications with the source. She did not mention the source's name in her brief appearance on the courthouse steps, but he has been identified previously as I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby...

    Bingo. No one is crazy enough to sit in jail over a silly misunderstanding--she wanted a "personal" waiver, and Libby was happy to give it to her, in fact thought he had given it to her last year, but somehow they failed to communicate. No, Judith Miller sat in jail until the prosecutor agreed that she would not have to testify about any source of the information about Valerie Plame other than Libby. Miller had multiple sources, and everyone already knew that she talked to Libby. The real question is, who was her other source? Some have speculated that it may have been Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, or maybe another journalist. Now, we may never know.

    It's hard not to find the prosecutor's action here disturbing. Who is the second source that Miller went to jail to protect? Why is the prosecutor willing to forgo information about the second source? If Plame's own husband was telling journalists that his wife was a CIA employee, isn't that highly relevant to whether someone in the administration should be criminally prosecuted for saying the same thing? Or, if Plame's employment was so widely known that journalists were telling one another that she worked for the Agency, isn't that likewise relevant to any prospective criminal prosecution?

    Is Scooter Libby being set up? Let's hope not.
    Last edited by mtnbiker; 30 Sep 05, at 23:07.

  8. #143
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    Here's a good article by Pincus and VandeHei. According to them, Fitzgerald may be pursuing criminal conspiracy charges. By the way, Pincus has been questioned by investigators concerning what he was told by the White House concerning Plame.

    Role of Rove, Libby in CIA Leak Case Clearer

    Bush and Cheney Aides' Testimony Contradicts Earlier White House Statement

    By Jim VandeHei and Walter Pincus
    Washington Post Staff Writers
    Sunday, October 2, 2005; Page A05

    As the CIA leak investigation heads toward its expected conclusion this month, it has become increasingly clear that two of the most powerful men in the Bush administration were more involved in the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame than the White House originally indicated.

    With New York Times reporter Judith Miller's release from jail Thursday and testimony Friday before a federal grand jury, the role of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, came into clearer focus. Libby, a central figure in the probe since its earliest days and the vice president's main counselor, discussed Plame with at least two reporters but testified that he never mentioned her name or her covert status at the CIA, according to lawyers in the case.

    His story is similar to that of Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser. Rove, who was not an initial focus of the investigation, testified that he, too, talked with two reporters about Plame but never supplied her name or CIA role.

    Their testimony seems to contradict what the White House was saying a few months after Plame's CIA job became public.

    In October 2003, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters that he personally asked Libby and Rove whether they were involved, "so I could come back to you and say they were not involved." Asked if that was a categorical denial of their involvement, he said, "That is correct."

    What remains a central mystery in the case is whether special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has accumulated evidence during his two-year investigation that any crime was committed. His investigation has White House aides and congressional Republicans on edge as they await Fitzgerald's announcement of an indictment or the conclusion of the probe with no charges. The grand jury is scheduled to expire Oct. 28, and lawyers in the case expect Fitzgerald to signal his intentions as early as this week.

    Fitzgerald is investigating whether anyone illegally disclosed Plame's name or undercover CIA job in retaliation against her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV. In the summer of 2003, Wilson, a former diplomat, accused the White House of using "twisted" intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

    He claimed firsthand evidence: At the behest of the CIA, he had flown to Niger in February 2002 to investigate the administration's assertion that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium in the African nation for use in its nuclear weapons program. Wilson returned unconvinced the assertion was true. However, Bush himself made the charge in his 2003 State of the Union address, prompting Wilson to spread word throughout the government and eventually make public his rebuttal.

    Many lawyers in the case have been skeptical that Fitzgerald has the evidence to prove a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which is the complicated crime he first set out to investigate, and which requires showing that government officials knew an operative had covert status and intentionally leaked the operative's identity.

    But a new theory about Fitzgerald's aim has emerged in recent weeks from two lawyers who have had extensive conversations with the prosecutor while representing witnesses in the case. They surmise that Fitzgerald is considering whether he can bring charges of a criminal conspiracy perpetrated by a group of senior Bush administration officials. Under this legal tactic, Fitzgerald would attempt to establish that at least two or more officials agreed to take affirmative steps to discredit and retaliate against Wilson and leak sensitive government information about his wife. To prove a criminal conspiracy, the actions need not have been criminal, but conspirators must have had a criminal purpose.

    Lawyers involved in the case interviewed for this report agreed to talk only if their names were not used, citing Fitzgerald's request for secrecy.

    One source briefed on Miller's account of conversations with Libby said it is doubtful her testimony would on its own lead to charges against any government officials. But, the source said, her account could establish a piece of a web of actions taken by officials that had an underlying criminal purpose.

    Conspiracy cases are viewed by criminal prosecutors as simpler to bring than more straightforward criminal charges, but also trickier to sell to juries. "That would arguably be a close call for a prosecutor, but it could be tried," a veteran Washington criminal attorney with longtime experience in national security cases said yesterday.

    Other lawyers in the case surmise Fitzgerald does not have evidence of any crime at all and put Miller in jail simply to get her testimony and finalize the investigation. "Even assuming . . . that somebody decided to answer back a critic, that is politics, not criminal behavior," said one lawyer in the case. This lawyer said the most benign outcome would be Fitzgerald announcing that he completed a thorough investigation, concluded no crime was committed and would not issue a report.

    The campaign to discredit Wilson's accusations came at a critical moment in the Bush presidency. It occurred a few months after the United States invaded Iraq and at a time when Bush, Cheney and the entire administration were under extraordinary pressure to back up their prewar allegations that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons and was working on a nuclear weapons program.

    The Niger claim was central to the White House's rationale for war, and Wilson was on a one-man crusade to disprove it. Early on, his actions caught the eye of the vice president's office, which was often the emotional and intellectual force pushing the United States to war based on fears of potential weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Cheney and Libby were intimately involved in building the case for the war, which included warnings that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was actively pursuing nuclear weapons.

    Cheney's staff was looking into Wilson as early as May 2003, nearly two months before columnist Robert D. Novak identified Wilson's wife as a CIA operative, according to administration sources familiar with the effort. What stirred the interest of the vice president's office was a May 6 New York Times column by Nicholas D. Kristof in which the mission to Niger was described without using Wilson's name. Kristof's column said Cheney had authorized the trip.

    According to former senior CIA officials, the vice president's office pressed the CIA to find out how the trip was arranged, because Cheney did not know that a query he made much earlier to a CIA briefer about a report alleging Iraq was seeking Niger uranium had triggered Wilson's trip. "They were very uptight about the vice president being tagged that way," a former senior CIA official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. "They asked questions that set [off] a chain of inquiries."

    By early June, several weeks before Libby is said to have known Plame's name, the State Department had prepared a memo on the Niger case that contained information on Plame in a section marked "(S)" for secret. Around that time, Libby knew about the trip's origins, though in an interview with The Washington Post at the time, he did not mention any role played by Wilson's wife.

    By July 12, however, both Rove and Libby and perhaps other senior White House officials knew about Wilson's wife's position at the CIA and, according to lawyers familiar with testimony in the probe, used that information with reporters to undermine the significance of Wilson's trip.


    LINK
    Last edited by Broken; 04 Oct 05, at 04:01.

  9. #144
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    Quote Originally Posted by mtnbiker
    Bingo. No one is crazy enough to sit in jail over a silly misunderstanding--she wanted a "personal" waiver, and Libby was happy to give it to her, in fact thought he had given it to her last year, but somehow they failed to communicate. No, Judith Miller sat in jail until the prosecutor agreed that she would not have to testify about any source of the information about Valerie Plame other than Libby. Miller had multiple sources, and everyone already knew that she talked to Libby. The real question is, who was her other source? Some have speculated that it may have been Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, or maybe another journalist. Now, we may never know.
    There are conflicting stories about Libby's original waiver. From the Post :

    Joseph Tate, an attorney for Libby, said
    yesterday that he told Miller's attorney, Floyd
    Abrams, a year ago that Libby's waiver was
    voluntary and that Miller was free to testify.
    He said last night that he was contacted by
    Bennett several weeks ago, and was surprised
    to learn that Miller had not accepted that
    representation as authorization to speak with
    prosecutors. "We told her lawyers it was not
    coerced," Tate said. "We are surprised to learn
    we had anything to do with her incarceration."


    From the NYT :

    On Thursday, Mr. Abrams wrote to Mr. Tate
    disputing parts of Mr. Tate's account. His letter
    said although Mr. Tate had said the waiver was
    voluntary, Mr. Tate had also said any waiver
    sought as a condition of employment was
    inherently coercive.



    If Abrams is telling the truth, (Hinderaker calls him a "very reputable guy"), then Libby apparently did not give Miller the kind of waiver that she required. If Tate told Abrams that the waiver Libby signed was "inherently coercive," then Abrams and Miller were correct to interpret that conversation as not amounting to a free and voluntary waiver. Thus, Libby's lawyer is not speaking accurately.

    By the way, Abrams account is backed up by this article back in August LINK :

    Sources close to the investigation, and private attorneys representing clients embroiled in the federal probe, said that Libby's failure to produce a personal waiver may have played a significant role in Miller’s decision not to testify about her conversations with Libby, including the one on July 8, 2003.

    Libby signed a more generalized waiver during the early course of the investigation granting journalists the right to testify about their conversations with him if they wished to do so. At least two reporters -- Walter Pincus of The Washington Post and Tim Russert of NBC -- have testified about their conversations with Libby.

    But Miller has said she would not consider providing any information to investigators about conversations with Libby or anyone else without a more specific, or personal, waiver. She said she considers general waivers to be inherently coercive. Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, has previously said Miller had not been granted "any kind of a waiver … that she finds persuasive or believes was freely given."



    Libby's testimony appears to have some problems. His account apparently contradicts Tim Russert's. From Bloomberg :

    "Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's
    chief of staff, told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald
    that he first learned from NBC News reporter Tim
    Russert of the identity of Central Intelligence Agency
    operative Valerie Plame, the wife of former
    ambassador and Bush administration critic Joseph
    Wilson, one person said. Russert has testified before
    Fitzgerald that he didn't tell Libby of Plame's identity,
    the person said."


    It's hard not to find the prosecutor's action here disturbing. Who is the second source that Miller went to jail to protect?
    If what Abrams says is true, Miller went to jail because Libby did not give her a free and voluntary waiver. She also asked that testimony be limited to Libby, a point which Fitzgerald would not agree to until this year. Remember, Miller is also under investigation for a leak on an FBI case.
    Why is the prosecutor willing to forgo information about the second source?
    The prosecutor agreed to "narrowly limit testimony to communications with the source". Miller's concern about Fitzgerald's questioning may be about the FBI leak she was involved in. The prosecutor had said in his filing in federal court last March that his investigation had been "for all practical purposes complete" as long as six months earlier (Fall 2004), except for the potential testimony of Miller and Matthew Cooper. He now has their testimony, so I would expect we will have his conclusions very soon.
    If Plame's own husband was telling journalists that his wife was a CIA employee, isn't that highly relevant to whether someone in the administration should be criminally prosecuted for saying the same thing?
    No, since Wilson did not discuss his wife's role until after Novak's article.
    Or, if Plame's employment was so widely known that journalists were telling one another that she worked for the Agency, isn't that likewise relevant to any prospective criminal prosecution?
    If the journalists (Miller, Cooper, Novak, Russert, Pincus) only knew of Plame's role from their conversations with Rove and Libby prior to Novak's article, there is a big problem. Especially if Rove and Libby tried to hide that fact from Fitzgerald.
    Is Scooter Libby being set up? Let's hope not.
    Is that the spin from Hinderaker? He must be very worried that Libby and Rove will be indicted. If Rove and Libby were hiding evidence or lied during testimony, everything else is a moot point.

    Remember also, Fitzgerald was appointed by the Bush administration. Accusing him of partisanship will be difficult. We will soon know what Fitzgerald has to say.

    Speculation ranges from Fitzgerald aquitting everyone to indictments all the way up to Cheney. Get out your popcorn and pull up a chair.
    Last edited by Broken; 04 Oct 05, at 05:21.

  10. #145
    Lord High Hullabalooster Senior Contributor dalem's Avatar
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    Still banging this old bongo drum, Broken?

    -dale

  11. #146
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    Quote Originally Posted by dalem
    Still banging this old bongo drum, Broken?

    -dale
    Hey, Dale. You are up late.

    Yep. Just responding to the other bongo drummers. But this topic gives birth soon.

  12. #147
    Lord High Hullabalooster Senior Contributor dalem's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Broken
    Hey, Dale. You are up late.

    Yep. Just responding to the other bongo drummers. But this topic gives birth soon.
    I still think it'll be a stillborn.

    -dale

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    Quote Originally Posted by dalem
    I still think it'll be a stillborn.

    -dale
    Speaking to the dead, dalem?

    So, what do you hear from beyond the grave, anyhoo? Are they all still irritating over on The Other Side?

    What does the former Human Itching Powder have to say these days? Anything intelligent, or the same ole stuff?
    "The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
    - George Orwell

  14. #149
    Lord High Hullabalooster Senior Contributor dalem's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bluesman
    Speaking to the dead, dalem?

    So, what do you hear from beyond the grave, anyhoo? Are they all still irritating over on The Other Side?

    What does the former Human Itching Powder have to say these days? Anything intelligent, or the same ole stuff?
    We're being nice.

    -dale

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    Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post and Miller's former lawyer, Floyd Abrams, on CNN's Reliable Sources program.


    KURTZ: I talked to people at the "New York Times" who are angry and confused about this. They say, understanding -- look, many journalists have used confidential sources. Most of us have not gone to jail. They say you could have had something approaching the same deal before she went to jail. You and Judy Miller took an absolutist position -- we cannot possibly betray the source -- by going to jail and what happens at the end? She takes the waiver and testifies before the grand jury.

    ABRAMS: We couldn't have had the same deal. Indeed, in one respect I tried to get a deal a year ago. I spoke to Mr. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor, and he did not agree at that time to something that he later did agree to, which was to limit the scope of the questions he would ask, so as to assure that the only source he would effectively be asking about was Mr. Libby. She has other sources and was very concerned about the possibility of having to reveal those sources, or going back to jail because of them.

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