I. Lewis: Plamegate & the Scooter Libby Saga

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It looks like we might have to re-open the polls on this one ...

Another Grand Jury for Leak Case

Move Follows Woodward Talks

By Carol D. Leonnig and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, November 19, 2005

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/18/AR2005111800958.html


The prosecutor in the CIA leak case said yesterday that he plans to present evidence to another federal grand jury, signaling a new and potentially significant turn in the investigation into the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Three weeks after indicting I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and declaring the investigation nearly complete, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald announced a new phase in the investigation after the disclosure this week that a senior administration official revealed Plame's CIA connection to Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward in mid-June 2003.

Legal experts said Fitzgerald's decision to call upon a new grand jury is all but certainly because he is considering additional criminal charges in the case.

Two sources close to Karl Rove, the top Bush aide still under investigation in the case, said they have reason to believe Fitzgerald does not anticipate presenting additional evidence against the White House deputy chief of staff.

Instead, lawyers involved in the case expect the prosecutor to focus on Woodward's admission that an official other than Libby told him about Plame one month before her identity was publicly disclosed in a July 14, 2003, column by Robert D. Novak.

Woodward, who was questioned by Fitzgerald on Monday, has refused to reveal the source's name publicly, but a person familiar with the investigation said the source had testified earlier in the case. The source came forward to the prosecutor again after Woodward started asking questions for an article on the CIA leak late last month and reminded the person of their 2003 conversation, Woodward said yesterday. That raises the possibility that the source faces legal problems if he or she provided false or incomplete information during previous testimony, according to legal experts.

Fitzgerald's decision to present information to a new grand jury, contained in a court filing and announced publicly at a court hearing on the Libby case yesterday, is the latest twist in an investigation that has rattled the White House and threatens top administration officials. "The investigation will involve proceedings before a different grand jury" from the one that indicted Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, on perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges, Fitzgerald said. "The investigation is continuing."

The most innocuous explanation for the new grand jury is that Fitzgerald simply wants to complete his probe and to put information on the record, perhaps about Woodward's source or Rove, according to several legal experts, including some involved in the case.

But most lawyers interviewed for this article said Fitzgerald would not go through the trouble of calling upon a new grand jury -- after gathering so much testimony from and about Rove -- unless he is exploring new territory uncovered since the Oct. 28 Libby indictment.

"Whoever's Woodward's source probably feels terribly uncomfortable right now," said E. Lawrence Barcella Jr., a Washington defense lawyer and former prosecutor.

Randall D. Eliason, a law professor who formerly ran the public corruption section of the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, said Fitzgerald is clearly "looking at new defendants or new charges." That is not good news for anybody concerned about their role in Plame's identity being leaked, Eliason added.

For nearly two years, Fitzgerald has been investigating whether senior Bush administration officials illegally leaked classified information -- Plame's identity as a CIA operative -- to the news media to discredit allegations made by her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Plame's name was revealed in Novak's column eight days after Wilson publicly accused the administration of twisting intelligence to justify the Iraq war.

Libby, who was forced to resign from Cheney's office, was charged with committing perjury, providing false statements and obstructing justice and has denied wrongdoing. Libby's attorneys have called Woodward's disclosure a "bombshell" that could bolster Libby's defense.

In anticipation of a lengthy and expensive court fight, a number of Republican former senators, former ambassadors and fundraisers are planning to raise $250,000 each and a total of $5 million for Libby's legal fund, according to people familiar with the plan. In a private conversation earlier this week, Republicans such as former ambassadors Melvin Sembler and Howard Leach promised to raise at least $250,000. Former senators Fred D. Thompson (Tenn.) and Alan K. Simpson (Wyo.) and former congressman Bill Paxon (R-N.Y.) are also part of the fundraising campaign, the sources said.

"Good lawyers are expensive," said Barbara Comstock, a spokeswoman for the Libby legal team. A few Democrats, including R. James Woolsey, a former CIA director, are also involved.

At the very least, Woodward's disclosure has put the spotlight on someone other than Libby for the moment. In his deposition, Woodward testified that he spoke with Libby twice in late June 2003 and does not recall Libby raising the subject of Plame. Woodward said it is possible he mentioned Plame to Libby because he had included her name on a list of questions he planned to ask, but he testified that he does not recall doing so, according to a statement he released on Tuesday.

Experts said that Fitzgerald is not trying to shore up his case on Libby. Under court rules, Fitzgerald cannot use a new grand jury to gather additional evidence for an indictment he has already brought, or to wrap up unanswered questions in preparation for Libby's trial. He can only call on a grand jury to hear evidence if he is considering new charges against another person or additional charges against Libby.

One mystery for the public -- but not for Fitzgerald -- is the identity of Woodward's source. Woodward said he contacted the source late last month for an article on the CIA leak case and discussed notes showing that the source had mentioned Plame in mid-June 2003. The source then went to Fitzgerald.

The source's situation appears not unlike Rove's. In his initial testimony, Rove did not reveal his conversation about Plame with Time magazine's Matthew Cooper. Only after an e-mail surfaced showing that Rove had discussed the issue with Cooper did the top Bush aide tell the grand jury about it. Sources close to Rove said he is under investigation for possibly providing misleading statements about the Cooper conversation.

Lawyers in the case say Woodward's source must not have initially mentioned the 2003 contact with him and told Fitzgerald about it only after talking to Woodward last month.

"None of this would be a news flash if this person had previously been interviewed or testified and had previously disclosed this information to investigators," Barcella said. "You have to assume they didn't disclose this interview with Woodward. Now the prosecutor has to investigate why they didn't."

Barcella said it may be difficult for the source to claim he did not recall talking to Woodward. "But, really, could anybody forget a conversation with the icon?" he asked.

At yesterday's hearing, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton told Libby's attorneys that he had read their recent comments about the Woodward matter in media accounts and urged them to hold their tongues until the trial, to avoid prejudicing future jurors. He said he has never issued a gag order in a case and hopes not to have to do so.

"I do have a very strong proclivity on cases being decided based on evidence presented in trial . . . not in the press," he said. "I assume . . . a word to the wise to be sufficient."

At the hearing, Fitzgerald reached a compromise with Dow Jones and Co. and the Associated Press to ensure that some evidence gathered in the Libby prosecution could be revealed publicly. The two sides agreed that classified material, private personal information and secret grand jury testimony will be kept secret from the public and the news media, but that other information can be revealed in court filings.


© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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This could backfire. If Libby's brain is cram-filled with "classified information" to the extent that "his thinking might have been obscured by the many sensitive issues he was dealing with" and therefore unable to control what came out of his mouth then what the heck was he doing talking with reporters?

Libby hires expert in criminal law on national secrets

By JAMES STERNGOLD
San Francisco Chronicle
22-NOV-05

http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=LIBBY-11-22-05


Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who is charged with obstructing justice and lying in the CIA leak case, has hired a leading expert in using classified information in criminal trials, giving an early hint of his possible defense strategy.

Libby, who was Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff until his indictment last month, has retained John Cline, an unusually experienced attorney in cases involving classified information. Cline is a San Francisco-based partner with Jones Day, a major national law firm.

Cline has been involved in several high-profile criminal cases whose outcomes turned in part on demands for the introduction of such government secrets at trial. These have included the criminal defense of Oliver North and the case of Wen Ho Lee, a former nuclear scientist who had been accused of mishandling nuclear secrets. Cline confirmed that he had been retained by Libby, but he said he could not comment on the case.

Theodore Wells Jr., Libby's principal attorney, did not return a call or an e-mail seeking comment.

"This is about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the government," said Robert Weisberg, a criminal law expert at the Stanford Law School. "This suggests they are going to use a very concerted and aggressive strategy."

Although Libby was investigated on suspicions that he or others in the Bush administration might have illegally leaked to journalists the identity of a covert CIA operative, Valerie Wilson, the actual crimes Libby was charged with have nothing to do with the misuse of government secrets.

But Cline's involvement suggests that a defense strategy may be to try to bring large volumes of classified information into the trial to demonstrate the many things Libby was dealing with as a senior national security adviser when he spoke with journalists and later testified to the grand jury.

If Libby's defense can show his thinking might have been obscured by the many sensitive issues he was dealing with, it could potentially weaken the case against him.

Libby was indicted in Washington on Oct. 28 by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald on five felony charges _ one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of making false statements to the FBI and two counts of perjury for lying to the grand jury.

All the charges relate to the prosecutor's allegations that Libby was deceptive or misleading in his comments about what he had told journalists, including Judith Miller of the New York Times, about Wilson, also known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, whose identity was leaked to several reporters and was first reported by columnist Robert Novak in July 2003.

John Vandevelde, a Los Angeles lawyer who was involved in a criminal case several years ago with Cline that involved classified information, called the San Francisco attorney "a very, very highly regarded lawyer" who is extremely knowledgeable about the law on government secrets and extremely effective in using the law.

In the case, Vandevelde represented a woman who was charged with being a spy for China, and Cline represented a former FBI agent who was charged with helping her pass secrets to China. All the charges were ultimately dropped.

The law governing the use of the classified data is called the Classified Information Procedures Act, or CIPA. It sets up strict procedures for attorneys to review classified data with their clients in special rooms and for how the defense can request the disclosure of such secrets during a trial.

The arguments can be critical. If a judge agrees to permit the use of the information in open court, then the prosecutors are faced with having either to allow the disclosure of sensitive government information or to consider dismissing the charges.

"In this case the defense doesn't have to win on every element of their claims, they just may want to scare the daylights out of the government at this stage," said Weisberg.


(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com.)

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More Allegations of Libby Lies Revealed

Judge's Report Shows Cheney Aide Is Accused Of Broad Deception

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 4, 2006

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/03/AR2006020302095_pf.html

The special prosecutor in the CIA leak case alleged that Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff was engaged in a broader web of deception than was previously known and repeatedly lied to conceal that he had been a key source for reporters about undercover operative Valerie Plame, according to court records released yesterday.

The records also show that by August 2004, early in his investigation of the disclosure of Plame's identity, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald had concluded that he did not have much of a case against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby for illegally leaking classified information. Instead, Fitzgerald was focused on charging Cheney's top aide with perjury and making false statements, and knew he needed to question reporters to prove it.

The court records show that Libby denied to a grand jury that he ever mentioned Plame or her CIA job to then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer or then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller in separate conversations he had with each of them in early July 2003. The records also suggest that Libby did not disclose to investigators that he first spoke to Miller about Plame in June 2003, and that prosecutors learned of the nature of the conversation only when Miller finally testified late in the fall of 2005.

All three specific allegations are contained in previously redacted sections of a U.S. Court of Appeals opinion that were released yesterday. The opinion analyzed Fitzgerald's secret evidence to determine whether his case warranted ordering reporters to testify about their confidential conversations with sources.

Fitzgerald revealed none of these specifics when he publicly announced Libby's indictment in October on charges of making false statements, perjury and obstruction of justice.

The once-sealed portions of the federal court opinion were written in February 2005 by U.S. Circuit Judge David S. Tatel, who was a member of a three-judge panel that agreed with Fitzgerald that the testimony of two reporters, Miller and Time magazine's Matthew Cooper, was crucial to his investigation.

Yesterday, the same panel concluded that because Libby was indicted and now faced public charges, the court no longer had to keep secret many of the details of the grand jury investigation that Tatel analyzed. Dow Jones Inc., parent company of the Wall Street Journal, had petitioned the court to release the eight-page Tatel opinion. Three of the pages were redacted.
Attorneys for Libby and Fleischer and a spokesman for Fitzgerald declined to comment yesterday.

Since January 2004, Fitzgerald has been investigating whether senior Bush administration officials knowingly leaked Plame's identity to discredit allegations made by her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.
Plame's name and her CIA role were first mentioned publicly in a column by syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003, eight days after Wilson publicly accused the administration of twisting intelligence to justify a war with Iraq.

According to Tatel's summary of the evidence that Fitzgerald presented in the court's chambers in August 2004, the prosecutor had at least a good circumstantial case on perjury but charging Libby with intentionally leaking classified information was "currently off the table," though it could be "viable" if he gained new evidence.

Tatel wrote that interviewing Miller would be crucial to making that decision, because Libby might have mentioned to her that he knew Plame's status was covert. He concluded that simply lying about a national security matter was serious enough to warrant ordering the reporters to testify about their conversations with Libby.

"While it is true that on the current record the special counsel's strongest charges are for perjury and false statements rather than security-related crimes ... perjury in this context is itself a crime with national security implications," he wrote.

The information gives a fuller picture of the case that Fitzgerald will likely put on against Libby. Yesterday, a federal judge scheduled his trial to start on Jan. 8, 2007.

In public remarks about the indictment, Fitzgerald has accused Libby of lying when he said that he believed he first learned of Plame from NBC reporter Tim Russert and passed along that information strictly as unverified gossip to Miller and Cooper.

Tatel's opinion also includes previously unknown details about testimony by Libby and other officials. For example, Libby acknowledged to investigators that Cheney told him in mid-June 2003 about Plame's CIA role and said she helped send her husband on a mission to Niger to determine whether Iraq was seeking nuclear material from the African nation.

That was soon after a Washington Post article on Wilson's Niger trip appeared. Libby emphasized in his testimony that Cheney only said it "in an off sort of curiosity sort of fashion."

Fitzgerald also contended that Libby lied to the grand jury when he said he never mentioned Plame or her CIA job to Fleischer when they had lunch on July 7. Fleischer recalled before the grand jury that Libby did mention Plame and said she worked in the "counterproliferation area of the CIA." Fleischer said Libby stressed that "the vice president did not send Ambassador Wilson to Niger . . . the CIA sent Ambassador Wilson to Niger . . . he was sent by his wife."

Fleischer added that he thought the lunch was "kind of weird" because the normally "closed-lip" Libby was sharing confidences and remarking that the information was "hush-hush" and "on the q.t."

Libby was also asked about two July conversations he had with Miller. He said he never mentioned Wilson's wife to Miller in the first conversation but passed along some information another reporter told him about Plame in the second, according to the documents.

Miller testified last year, however, that she thought Libby was the first government official to mention Wilson's wife to her and that he did so in three conversations: on June 23, when she visited his office in the Executive Office Building, and on July 8 and 12.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

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Cheney 'Authorized' Libby to Leak Classified Information

By Murray Waas (murraywaas@comcast.net), National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Feb. 9, 2006

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/0209nj1.htm#

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.

Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein's purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

Beyond what was stated in the court paper, say people with firsthand knowledge of the matter, Libby also indicated what he will offer as a broad defense during his upcoming criminal trial: that Vice President Cheney and other senior Bush administration officials had earlier encouraged and authorized him to share classified information with journalists to build public support for going to war. Later, after the war began in 2003, Cheney authorized Libby to release additional classified information, including details of the NIE, to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case for war.

Libby testified to the grand jury that he had been authorized to share parts of the NIE with journalists in the summer of 2003 as part of an effort to rebut charges then being made by former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson that the Bush administration had misrepresented intelligence information to make a public case for war.

Wilson had been sent on a CIA-sponsored mission to investigate allegations that the African nation of Niger had sold uranium to Iraq to develop a nuclear weapon. Despite the fact that Wilson reported back that the information was most likely baseless, it was still used in the President's 2003 State of the Union speech to make the case for war.

But besides sharing details of the NIE with reporters during the effort to rebut Wilson, Libby is also accused of telling journalists that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, had worked for the CIA. Libby and other Bush administration officials believed that if Plame played a role in the selection of her husband for the Niger mission, that fact might discredit him.

A federal grand jury indicted Libby on October 28, 2005, on five counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice, alleging that he concealed his role in leaking information about Plame to the media. He resigned his positions as chief of staff and national security adviser to Cheney the same day. Libby has never claimed that Cheney encouraged him to disclose information about Plame to the media.

In a January 23 letter, related to discovery issues for Libby's upcoming trial, Fitzgerald wrote to Libby's attorneys: "Mr. Libby testified in the grand jury that he had contact with reporters in which he disclosed the content of the National Intelligence Estimate ("NIE") … in the course of his interaction with reporters in June and July 2003.… We also note that it is our understanding that Mr. Libby testified that he was authorized to disclose information about the NIE to the press by his superiors."

Although it is not known if Cheney had told the special prosecutor that he had authorized Libby to leak classified information to reporters, Dan Richman, a professor of law at Fordham University and a former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, said, "One certainly would not expect Libby, as part of his defense, to claim some sort of clear authorization from Cheney where none existed, because that would clearly risk the government's calling Cheney to rebut that claim."

The public correspondence does not mention the identities of the "superiors" who authorized the leaking of the classified information, but people with firsthand knowledge of the matter identified one of them as Cheney. Libby also testified that he worked closely with then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove in deciding what information to leak to the press to build public support for the war, and later, postwar, to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence.

In the correspondence, Fitzgerald also asserted that Libby testified that he had met with then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003, with the "purpose" of intending "to transmit information" to her "concerning the NIE."

That particular meeting has been key to Fitzgerald's investigation because the special prosecutor alleges that Libby lied both to the FBI and to his federal grand jury by saying that he had not discussed Plame with Miller on that date, when in fact he did tell her of Plame's work for the CIA.

In an account of her grand jury testimony, Miller has written that Libby discussed the NIE with her: "Mr. Libby also cited a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, produced by American intelligence agencies in October 2002 … which he said had firmly concluded that Iraq was seeking uranium." Portions of the NIE were later declassified, but the material in it related to Niger was still classified at the time.

Libby, through a spokesperson, declined to comment, and the vice president, through a spokesperson, also declined to comment for this story.

The new disclosure that Libby has claimed that the vice president and others in the White House had authorized him to release information to make the case to go to war, and later to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence, is significant for several reasons. First, it significantly adds to a mounting body of information that Cheney played a central and personal role in directing efforts to counter claims by Wilson and other administration critics that the Bush administration had misused intelligence information to go to war with Iraq.

Second, it raises additional questions about Libby's motives in concealing his role in leaking Plame's name to the press, if he was in fact more broadly authorized by Cheney and others to rebut former Ambassador Wilson's charges. The federal grand jury indictment of Libby alleges that he had lied to the FBI and the federal grand jury by claiming that when he provided information to reporters about Plame's CIA employment, he was only passing along what he understood to be unverified gossip that he had heard from other journalists.

Instead, the indictment charges that Libby had in fact learned of Plame's CIA status from at least four government officials, Cheney among them, and from classified documents. Indeed, much of Libby's earliest and most detailed information regarding Plame's CIA employment came directly from the vice president, according to information in Libby's grand jury indictment. "On or about June 12, 2003," the indictment stated, "Libby was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Division."

Libby testified that Cheney told him about Plame "in an off sort of, curiosity sort of, fashion," according to other information recently unsealed in federal court. Not long after that date, Libby, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and a third administration official began to tell reporters that Plame had worked at the CIA, and that she had been responsible for sending her husband to Niger.

Finally, the new information indicates that Libby is likely to pursue a defense during his trial that he was broadly "authorized" by Cheney and other "superiors" to defend the Bush administration in making the case to go to war. Libby does not, however, appear to be claiming that he was acting specifically on Cheney's behalf in disclosing information about Plame to the press.

Libby's legal strategy in asserting that Cheney and other Bush administration officials authorized activities related to the underlying allegations of criminal conduct leveled against him, without approving of or encouraging him to engage in the specific misconduct, is reminiscent of the defense strategy used by Oliver North, who was a National Security Council official in the Reagan administration.

North, a Marine lieutenant colonel assigned to the National Security Council, implemented the Reagan administration's efforts to covertly send arms to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages held in the Middle East, and to covertly fund and provide military assistance to the Nicaraguan Contras at a time when federal law prohibited such activities. Later, it was discovered that North and other Reagan administration officials had diverted funds they had received from the Iranian arms sales to covertly fund the Contras.

If Libby's defense adopts strategies used by North, it might be in part because the strategies largely worked for North and in part because Libby's defense team has quietly retained John D. Cline, who was a defense attorney for North. Cline, a San-Francisco partner at the Jones Day law firm, has specialized in the use of classified information in defending clients charged with wrongdoing in national security cases.

Among his detractors, Cline is what is known as a "graymail" specialist-an attorney who, critics say, purposely makes onerous demands on the federal government to disclose classified information in the course of defending his clients, in an effort to force the government to dismiss the charges. Although Cline declined to be interviewed for this story, he has said that the use of classified information is necessary in assuring that defendants are accorded due process and receive fair trials.

In the Libby case, Cline has frustrated prosecutors by demanding, as part of pretrial discovery, more than 10 months of the President's Daily Brief, or PDBs, the president's morning intelligence briefing. The reports are among the most highly classified documents in government, not only because they often contain sensitive intelligence and methods, but also because they indicate what the president and policy makers consider to be the most pressing national security threats. In the past, the Bush administration has defied bipartisan requests from the Intelligence committees in Congress to turn over PDBs for review.

After Cline demanded the PDBs, Fitzgerald wrote to him on January 9 that the prosecutor's office has only "received a very discrete amount of material relating to PDBs" and "never requested copies of PDBs" themselves, in part because "they are extraordinarily sensitive documents which are usually highly classified." Moreover, Fitzgerald wrote, only a relatively small number of PDB pages included reference to Wilson's trip to Niger.

But Cline has insisted that it is imperative for his client's defense to be able to review the PDBs because part of Libby's defense is that he may have had a faulty memory regarding conversations he had with government officials and reporters regarding Plame, in that he had so many other pressing issues to consider every day as chief of staff and national security adviser to the vice president.

In a January 31 court filing, attorneys for Libby argued: "Mr. Libby will show that, in the constant rush of more pressing matters, any errors he made in FBI interviews or grand jury testimony, months after the conversations, were the result of confusion, mistake, faulty memory, rather than a willful intent to deceive."

In the North case, the Iran-Contra independent counsel, Lawrence Walsh, was forced to dismiss many of the central charges against North, including the most serious ones-that North defrauded taxpayers by diverting proceeds from arms sales to Iran to finance the Nicaraguan Contras-because intelligence agencies and the Reagan administration refused to declassify documents necessary for a trial on those charges.

Walsh and many of his deputies believed that the Reagan Justice Department refused to declassify documents necessary to try North because officials were personally sympathetic to him. A North trial would also have politically embarrassed the Reagan administration, and a North conviction might have led to charges against higher officials.

In court filings, Walsh said that much of what intelligence agencies and the Reagan administration had refused to declassify had long before been published in the media or made public in some other way.

"It was a backdoor way of shutting us down," said one former Iran-Contra prosecutor, who spoke only on the condition that his name not be used, because his current position as a private attorney requires frequent dealings with attorneys who were on the other side of the North case at the time. "It was a cover-up by means of an administrative action, and it was an effective cover-up at that."

The former prosecutor added: "The intelligence agencies do not declassify things on the pretext that they are protecting state secrets, but the truth is that we were investigating and prosecuting their own. The same was true for the Reagan administration. Cline was particularly adept at working the system."

Is it possible that a prosecution of Libby might be impeded or even derailed entirely by the refusal of the Bush White House or its Justice Department to declassify information that might be necessary to try Libby? "Under the current statute, it may well be the attorney general's call-or whomever he designates-to ultimately decide what should be declassified, and what might not be, in the Libby case," said Michael Bromwich, a former associate Iran-Contra independent counsel and a former Justice Department inspector general.

William Treanor, the dean of Fordham University's Law School, and also a former associate Iran-contra special counsel, said that it is less likely that the Bush administration would challenge Fitzgerald as former administrations did with special prosecutors. Walsh, dealing with the Reagan and elder Bush administrations, and Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr, dealing with the Clinton administration, often alleged that political appointees in the Justice Department worked purposely to undermine their investigations.

"Walsh and Starr were not appointed by an attorney general," Treanor said, noting that Walsh, Starr, and earlier special prosecutors had been appointed by a three-judge federal panel instead of by the Justice Department.
Currently, he pointed out, special prosecutors are appointed by the attorney general or their designate.

"With Walsh or Starr, the president and his supporters could more easily argue that a prosecutor was overzealous or irresponsible, because there had been a three-judge panel that appointed him," Treanor said. "With Fitzgerald, you have a prosecutor who was appointed by the deputy attorney general [at the direction of the attorney general]. The administration almost has to stand behind him because this is someone they selected themselves. It is harder to criticize someone you yourself put into play."

There are other reasons why it might prove difficult to undercut Fitzgerald, including outstanding questions about the role that Cheney and others in the Bush administration played in the effort to discredit Wilson, and the fact that Cheney is still the point man in defending the White House's use of prewar intelligence on Iraq.

And the new disclosure, that Libby is alleging that Cheney and other Bush administration officials "authorized" him to disclose classified information as a means to counter charges that the administration misused prewar intelligence, might also make it difficult for this administration to refuse to declassify information for Libby's trial.

But a Libby defense strategy asserting that he released classified information or took other actions as broadly authorized by Cheney might have other advantages, if the North case is any guide. At North's trial, the counts on which the jury acquitted him tended to be those involving actions that appeared to be authorized by superiors. He was found guilty of three felonies on which the evidence indicated that he was acting on his own initiative or for his own financial benefit.

"It was a memorable and powerful moment when North told the jury that he was 'a pawn in a chess game played by giants,'" Treanor said.

The claims by North that his activities had been broadly authorized by higher-ups, including even the president, also worked to his advantage when he was sentenced. Despite the fact that North had been convicted of three felonies and that Iran-Contra prosecutors argued before sentencing that letting North off with "only a slap on the wrist … would send exactly the wrong message … [only] 15 years after Watergate," he was sentenced to only probation, a fine, and community service.

North's trial judge, U.S. District Court Judge Gerhard Gesell, took note that the jury had acquitted North of criminal charges mainly where it appeared that his conduct might have been authorized by higher authorities:
"Observing that many others involved in the events were escaping without censure or with prosecutorial promises of leniency or immunities, [the jury] used their common sense. And they gave you the benefit of a reasonable doubt."

Explaining his own leniency in sentencing the former NSC aide, Gesell told North: "I do not believe you were a leader at all, but really a low-ranking subordinate to carry out initiatives of a few cynical superiors. You came to be a point man in a very complex power play developed by higher-ups."

Later, North's convictions were overturned on appeal because of concerns that some of the evidence used against him during his trial might have been derived from his testimony before the House-Senate Iran-Contra investigating committee. North had been given immunity for that testimony.

But most outside legal observers say that Libby, because he was himself such a high-ranking official, will most likely face a much more difficult time than North did in arguing that, in some of his activities, he was just carrying out orders from Cheney or other senior White House officials.

"A defendant can make a claim that he is just a victim of Washington politics or doing the bidding for someone else," said Richman, the former prosecutor, "But there may be limits to a jury's sympathy when that defendant himself was so high-ranking. Given Libby's position in the White House, the jury is less likely to view him as a sacrificial lamb than as a sacrificial ram."

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Did the White House "Authorize" Leaks to Woodward? (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/murray-waas/did-the-white-house-auth_b_16263.html)

Murray Waas
Feb. 24, 2006

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/murray-waas/did-the-white-house-auth_b_16263.html

Did the Bush administration "authorize" the leak of classified information to Bob Woodward? And did those leaks damage national security?

The vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) made exactly that charge tonight in a letter to John Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence. What prompted Rockefeller to write Negroponte was a recent op-ed in the New York Times by CIA director Porter Goss complaining that leaks of classified information were the fault of "misguided whistleblowers."

Rockefeller charged in his letter that the most "damaging revelations of intelligence sources and methods are generated primarily by Executive Branch officials pushing a particular policy, and not by the rank-and-file employees of intelligence agencies."

Later in the same letter, Rockefeller said: "Given the Administration's continuing abuse of intelligence information for political purposes, its criticism of leaks is extraordinarily hypocritical. Preventing damage to intelligence sources and methods from media leaks will not be possible until the highest level of the Administration cease to disclose classified information on a classified basis for political purposes."

Exhibit A for Rockefeller: Woodward's book, Bush at War.

Here is what Rockefeller had to say:
In his 2002 book Bush at War, Bob Woodward described almost unfettered access to classified material of the most sensitive nature. According to his account, he was provided information related to sources and methods, extremely sensitive covert actions, and foreign intelligence liaison relationships. It is no wonder, as Director Goss wrote, "because of the number of recent news reports discussing our relationships with other intelligence services, some of these partners have even informed the C.I.A. that they are reconsidering their participation of some of our most important antiterrorism ventures."

I wrote both former Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) George Tenet and Acting DCI John McLaughlin seeking to determine what steps were being taken to address the appalling disclosures contained in Bush at War. The only response I received was to indicate that the leaks had been authorized by the Administration. The CIA has still not responded to a follow-up letter I sent a year and half ago on September 1, 2004, trying to pin down which officials were authorized to meet with Mr. Woodward and by whom, and what intelligence information was conveyed during these authorized exchanges.

Were leaks of classified information "authorized" to Woodward? Rockefeller's letter says exactly that. And among other things, it is well known and has been reported long ago that one of Woodward's sources for both of his books about the Bush presidency was then-VicePresidential chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, who is portrayed in quite a flattering manner in both.


Rockefeller said in his letter that the President's directing of administration officials to co-operate with the administration-friendly Woodward was only one example of such "authorized leaks".

Rockefeller said elsewhere in his letter:
On February 9th, the National Journal reported (http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/30/22044/596) that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told a grand jury that he was 'authorized' by Vice President Cheney and other White House superiors to disclose classified information from a National Intelligence Estimate to the press to defend the Administration's use of pre-war intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq...

This blatant abuse of intelligence information for political purposes is inexcusable, but all to common. Throughout this period leading up to the Iraq war the Administration selectively declassified or leaked information related to Iraq's acquisition of aluminum tubes, the alleged purchase of uranium, the non-existent operational connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and numerous other issues.


The White House is declining tonight to comment on Rockefeller's letter, as is Woodward. (If either of them does at some point have something to say, either to me, or elsewhere, I will update this post accordingly.)


Did the leaks to Woodward damage national security? Michael Scheuer, the CIA's former head of the CIA's Bin Laden Unit, wrote in his book Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror:After reading Mr. Woodward's Bush at War, it seems to me that the U.S. officials who either approved or participated in passing the information--in documents and via interviews--that is the heart of Mr. Woodward's book gave an untold measure of aid and comfort to the enemy.What was not known by Scheuer at the time was that officials on the "Seventh Floor" of the CIA were literally ordered by then-CIA director George Tenet to co-operate with Woodward's project because President Bush personally asked that it be done. More than one CIA official co-operated with Woodward against their best judgment, and only because they thought it was something the President had wanted done or ordered.

One former senior administration official explained to me: "This was something that the White House wanted done because they considered it good public relations. If there was real damage to national security--if there were leaks that possibly exposed sources and methods, it was not done in this instance for the public good or to expose Watergate type wrongdoing. This was done for presidential image-making and a commercial enterprise--Woodward's book."

Woodward himself perhaps lends credence to that possibility.

On page 243 of his book Plan of Attack, Woodward wrote:

[O]n December 18, my wife, Elsa Walsh, and I attended a huge White House Christmas party for the media hosted by the president and his wife. The Bushes stood for hours in a receiving line as a photographer snapped pictures with the first couple.

When we reached the front of the line, the president remarked that my book Bush at War was selling well. "Top of the charts," he said, and asked, "Are you planning to do another book?" He then stretched out his arms and indicated with his body language that there might be a story there, that it should be done.

Without any irony, Woodward didn't seem to understand how far he had come from meeting Mark Felt in the middle of the night in a parking garage.

Did Woodward disappoint Bush with his next war? I like to speak no opinions.
My saying is: I blog, you decide.

One can skip a read of the book, and go simply to the index, in making their own judgments:

Here are some entries:
Bush, George W.: absence of doubt in, 139-40, 420
Bipartisan solidarity of, 189, 200.
Importance of showing resolve and, 81, 116, 152, 320-21, 406, 418-19, 437
legacy of, 90, 165
morality of, 86-132, 272, 313-14
on freedom, 88-89, 93, 152, 258, 276, 405, 424, 428
optimism of, 91, 93, 313-14
patience of, 162-63, 165, 271
as a strong leader, 91, 430

Copyright 2006 © HuffingtonPost.com, LLC

[lofter1]

White House 'Discovers’ 250 Emails Related to Plame Leak

By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report
Friday 24 February 2006

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022406Y.shtml

The White House turned over last week 250 pages of emails from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. Senior aides had sent the emails in the spring of 2003 related to the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed during a federal court hearing Friday.

The emails are said to be explosive, and may prove that Cheney played an active role in the effort to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush administration’s prewar Iraq intelligence, sources close to the investigation said.

Sources close to the probe said the White House “discovered” the emails two weeks ago and turned them over to Fitzgerald last week. The sources added that the emails could prove that Cheney lied to FBI investigators when he was interviewed about the leak in early 2004. Cheney said that he was unaware of any effort to discredit Wilson or unmask his wife’s undercover status to reporters.

Cheney was not under oath when he was interviewed. He told investigators how the White House came to rely on Niger documents that purportedly showed that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country.
Cheney said he had received an intelligence briefing on the allegations in late December 2003, or early January 2004, and had asked the CIA for more information about the issue.

Cheney said he was unaware that Ambassador Wilson was chosen to travel to Niger to look into the uranium claims, and that he never saw a report Wilson had given a CIA analyst upon his return which stated that the Niger claims were untrue. He said the CIA never told him about Wilson's trip.

However, the emails say otherwise, and will show that the vice president spearheaded an effort in March 2003 to attack Wilson’s credibility and used the CIA to dig up information on the former ambassador that could be used against him, sources said.

Some of the emails that were turned over to Fitzgerald contained references to Plame Wilson's identity and CIA status, and developments related to the inability of ground forces to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the start of the war in March 2003.

According to sources, the emails also contained suggestions by senior officials in Cheney’s office, and at the National Security Council, on how the White House should respond to what it believed were increasingly destructive comments Wilson had been making about the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence.

Last month, Fitzgerald disclosed in court documents that he discovered from witnesses in the case that some emails related to Wilson and his wife, written by senior aides in Cheney’s office and sent to other officials at the National Security Council, had not been turned over to investigators by the White House.

“In an abundance of caution,” Fitzgerald's January 23 letter to Libby's defense team states, “we advise you that we have learned that not all email of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system.”

Sources close to the case said that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales withheld numerous emails from Fitzgerald’s probe citing “executive privilege” and “national security” concerns. These sources said that as of Friday there are still some emails that have not been turned over to Fitzgerald because they contain classified information in addition to references about the Wilsons.

Attorneys representing Cheney’s former Chief of Staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators related to his role in the leak, were in court Friday arguing that Fitzgerald should be required to turn over classified material, including highly sensitive Presidential Daily Briefs, to Libby’s defense team.

The defense hopes that the classified materials will establish that Libby was dealing with more pressing matters facing the White House and that he simply did not intend to mislead the grand jury when he testified that he did not disclose Plame Wilson’s name to reporters.

In another development in the leak case Friday, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said another administration official, who does not work at the White House, also spoke to reporters about Plame Wilson. This individual, according to sources close to the case, works at the National Security Council.

Walton said that Libby’s defense team was not entitled to be told of the individual’s identity because the person is not charged with a crime in the leak. However, the person is said to be one of several people in the administration who is cooperating with the probe.

Jason Leopold (http://truthout.org/contactjl.php) spent two years covering California's electricity crisis as Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires. Jason has spent the last year cultivating sources close to the CIA leak investigation, and is a regular contributer to t r u t h o u t.

[lofter1]

Libby Loses a Round in Court

Ex-Cheney Aide Is Denied in Bid to Learn Leaker's Identity


By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 25, 2006

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/24/AR2006022401796_pf.html

Vice President Cheney's former top aide is not entitled to know the identity of an anonymous administration official who revealed information about CIA operative Valerie Plame to two journalists, a federal judge ruled in a hearing yesterday.

To defend himself against criminal charges, however, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby does have the right to copies of all the classified notes he took as Cheney's chief of staff from spring 2003 to spring 2004, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said. Libby sought the notes to refresh his memory about matters he was handling while discussing Plame with reporters and when questioned by investigators about those conversations.

Libby, 55, was indicted in October on charges of committing perjury, making false statements and obstructing justice during the investigation into whether administration officials knowingly disclosed Plame's identity to reporters. Libby is accused of lying when he said he first learned about Plame's CIA role from NBC reporter Tim Russert in July 2003, and lying to conceal that he told at least two reporters about Plame's job at the agency.

Walton set a schedule under which Libby's lawyers would lay out in late April which reporters they want to question about knowledge they had of Plame in the spring and summer of 2003. The judge also prepared for news organizations to fight subpoenas that would press their reporters to discuss confidential sources, a battle that could delay Libby's trial, set for January 2007.

Walton's ruling on releasing Libby's notes will probably mean months of additional work for a team headed by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald. It has been working for the past three months with at least five federal agencies to review and, in some cases, declassify more than 11,000 pages of records so they can be turned over to Libby's defense team.

But Walton's decision to continue to protect the anonymity of one administration official, whom Libby's attorneys described as a confidential source about Plame for two reporters, one of them apparently Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward, is a blow to Libby's case. Defense attorneys had said they needed to know the official's identity and the details of his conversations with the two journalists to show that Libby was not lying when he testified that many reporters knew about Plame's identity.

But Walton said the source's identity is not relevant, and there is no reason to sully the source's reputation because the person faces no charges.

The official's identity has been the subject of intense speculation since syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak published Plame's name in July 2003 -- eight days after her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, accused the administration of twisting intelligence to justify going to war with Iraq.

Defense attorneys in yesterday's hearing described the official as someone who did not work at the White House and was the source for two reporters. They said that one of those reporters had revealed in November that he learned about Plame from the official in mid-June 2003.

Woodward came forward in November to reveal that he had learned about Plame's CIA status from an administration official in mid-June 2003. Novak said in a speech in December that President Bush knew the identity of his source, and suggested that the official also was Woodward's source. Sources close to the leak investigation have said that Woodward and Novak received similar information from the same official.

The defense also argued yesterday that it needs copies of the highly classified President's Daily Brief for 275 days in 2003 and 2004 so it can show that Libby was focused on pressing national security matters when questioned about Plame and could have made mistakes. Fitzgerald said it was beyond the pale to expect that the White House would release nearly a year's worth of one of its most sensitive intelligence documents.

"It would be a terrible mistake and derail the case," Fitzgerald said.
Walton said he needed more information before deciding, but tended to agree.

"Isn't it certain, if I order this, it will sabotage the [government's] ability to prosecute this case?" he asked defense lawyers. "I would expect the White House is never going to agree to release these documents. I've heard the vice president -- his boss -- call these the family jewels."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

[lofter1]

Scooter notes ID'd CIA spy

BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Feb. 28, 2006

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/story/395381p-335210c.html

WASHINGTON - Handwritten notes taken by the CIA show Vice President Cheney's top aide knew the name of CIA spy Valerie Plame a month before her cover was blown.

It appears to be the first known document in the hands of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that directly contradicts Lewis (Scooter) Libby's claim he learned from reporters in July 2003 that Valerie Plame was a CIA employee.

Libby, who was Cheney's chief of staff, has been indicted for perjury in the CIA leak investigation.

Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, was a Bush critic dispatched to Niger by the CIA in 2002 to see if Iraq had shopped for uranium. "A CIA employee assigned to provide daily intelligence briefs to the Vice President and Libby has handwritten notes indicating that Libby referred to 'Joe Wilson' and 'Valerie Wilson' by those names in conversation with the briefer on June 14, 2003," Fitzgerald wrote in a recently unsealed brief.

The filing suggests Cheney may have been present when Libby griped to his CIA briefer about agency officials slamming the veep in the press.

Seven officials have testified that Libby raised the CIA spy with them before columnist Robert Novak outed her. In the filing, Fitzgerald also revealed that his investigators also confiscated computers. Meanwhile, a judge overseeing Libby's perjury trial ruled yesterday that Libby won't get any copies of the secret daily intelligence briefings for Cheney and President Bush.

All contents © 2006 Daily News, L.P.

[lofter1]

Report: (http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030106J.shtml)
Emails in leak case came from Cheney computers...

Details Emerge in Latest Plame Emails

By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Investigative Report
Wednesday 01 March 2006

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030106J.shtml

The White House confirmed Tuesday that it recently turned over to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald 250 pages of emails from the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney related to covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence. The emails were not submitted three years ago when then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales ordered White House staffers to turn over all documents that contained any reference to Valerie and Joseph Wilson.

Gonzales's directive in October 2003 came 12 hours after he was told by the Justice Department that it was launching an investigation to find out who leaked Plame Wilson's undercover CIA status to reporters in what appeared to be an attempt to discredit and silence her husband from speaking out against the administration's rationale for war. Gonzales spent two weeks with other White House attorneys screening emails and other documents his office received before turning them over to Justice Department investigators.

News of the 250 pages of emails was revealed to Libby's attorneys during a court hearing Friday.

In addition to witness testimony, investigators working with Fitzgerald are said to have discovered the existence of the emails from computers that investigators had confiscated from the Office of the Vice President, people familiar with developments in the investigation said.

Attorneys for Libby and the US District Court reporter in the Libby case, William McAllister, reading from Friday's transcript of the hearing, confirmed that Libby's defense attorneys were told during Friday's hearing that the emails were recently turned over by the White House to Fitzgerald.


According to a copy of the transcript from Friday's hearing, Libby's attorney, Ted Wells, said he was "told that there are an additional approximately 250 pages of documents that are emails from the office of the vice president," the transcript states.Your Honor, may recall that in earlier filings it was represented or alluded to that certain e-mails had not been preserved in the White House. That turns out not to be true. There were some e-mails that weren't archived in the normal process but the office of the vice president or the office of administration I guess it is has been able to recover those e-mails. Gave those to special counsel I think only on February 6 and those again are going to be produced to us. We don't know what's in there. We've been led to believe it's probably not anything startling in those e-mails.A spokesman for Cheney would only confirm the accuracy of what was said in court: that the White House recently turned over the emails. The spokesman would not comment further.

Remarkably, other than a brief citation buried inside an Associated Press story, Friday's development about the White House's "discovery" of the 250 pages of emails was not covered by any major news media.

But that particular bit of courtroom dialogue between Libby's attorneys and Specials Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was an explosive development in the three year-old criminal probe.

For one thing, it raises numerous questions: why weren't the emails located in late 2003, when Gonzales enjoined roughly 2,000 White House staffers to turn over any communication about Plame Wilson and her husband, as so ordered by a Justice Department subpoena? Do the emails provide greater insight into the campaign to discredit Wilson and identify the officials who unmasked his wife's undercover CIA status to reporters?

A spokesperson for Gonzales did not return numerous calls for comment.

But sources close to the investigation said that unnamed senior officials in Cheney's office had deleted some of the emails before Fitzgerald learned of their existence earlier this year, and others never turned them over to Gonzales as requested. Separately, according to people close to Fitzgerald's probe, there are some emails that Gonzales has refused to turn over to Fitzgerald, citing "executive privilege" and "national security."

It's unclear whether a formal subpoena was issued to the White House for the emails or whether the request came in the form of a letter from Fitzgerald. Sources said the White House did not voluntarily turn them over to Fitzgerald's staff.

The emails from Cheney's office that were turned over to Fitzgerald earlier this month were written by senior aides and sent to various officials at the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Office of the President. The emails were written as early as March 2003 - four months before Plame Wilson's cover was blown in a report written by conservative columnist Robert Novak. The contents of the emails are said to be damning, according to sources close to the investigation who are familiar with their substance. The emails are said to implicate Cheney in a months-long effort to discredit Wilson - a fact that Cheney did not disclose when he was interviewed by federal investigators in early 2004, these sources said.

The emails also show I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff who was indicted in October on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators related to his role in the leak, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, as well as former Under Secretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton and other top officials in the vice president's office also took part in discussions about ways in which the administration could respond to Wilson's public criticism about the Bush administration's use of intelligence that claimed Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Niger.

Wilson had traveled to Niger in February 2002 on behalf of the CIA to investigate those claims and reported back that there was no substance to the allegations. But the Niger uranium claims made it into President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address and Wilson had accused the administration of "twisting" intelligence on the Iraqi threat to win public support for the war.

Cheney and his senior aides did not disclose to federal investigators the fact that they either received or sent emails about either Joseph Wilson or Valerie Plame Wilson when they were first questioned about their knowledge and/or role in the leak in early 2004, people close to the investigation said.

Witnesses who work or worked at the CIA, the National Security Council, and the State Department who have been interviewed in the case, and some of who are cooperating with the probe, said they told Fitzgerald that they had received or sent emails to senior aides in Vice President Cheney's office, the State Department and the National Security Council as early as March 2003 about Joseph Wilson.

Other emails show that in mid-June 2003 these officials had sent emails that mentioned "Valerie Wilson" - not Valerie Plame - and her employment with the CIA, sources close to the leak investigation said.

One email about Wilson and his wife is said to have been sent by Libby to an unknown senior individual at the National Security Council in early June 2003, after Libby was told by Marc Grossman, then Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and that Grossman's colleagues told him that Plame Wilson was involved in organizing Wilson's trip to Niger in February 2002 to investigate whether Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country.

However, copies of the emails were never found in the more than 10,000 documents that Fitzgerald's staff has collected during the course of their investigation, the sources said.

Rove and Libby both testified that they learned about Plame Wilson from reporters - a fact disputed by the emails and witness testimony - and that they were not involved in a campaign to discredit Wilson. Rove remains under scrutiny. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, did not return calls for comment.

Hadley's role in the leak is also being closely looked at by Fitzgerald and his staff, sources said, adding that new evidence has surfaced showing that the National Security Adviser played an intimate role in the effort to discredit Wilson and that he may be one of the still unnamed administration officials who spoke to reporters about Plame Wilson's work for the CIA.

© : t r u t h o u t 2006

[BrooklynRider]

Cheney needs to be tried, convicted and executed for treason. Not necesarily in that order.

[lofter1]

Libby: Bush Authorized Plamegate Leak

Indicted ex-Cheney aide told grand jury of White House approval

The Smoking Gun (http://www.thesmokinggun.com//archive/0406061libby1.html)

APRIL 6--A former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney told a federal grand jury that President George W. Bush authorized him to leak information from a classified intelligence report to a New York Times reporter.

Details of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's testimony were included in a court filing made yesterday by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who is prosecuting Libby for perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements in connection with the probe into the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity. According to Fitzgerald's filing, an excerpt of which you'll find below, Libby, 55, testified in 2003 that he provided reporter Judith Miller with information from a classified National Intelligence Estimate after being told by Cheney that Bush "specifically had authorized (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0406061libby2.html)" him to "disclose certain information in the NIE." Libby also testified that Cheney specifically directed him to speak to other reporters about information in the classified NIE (which addressed Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction programs) as well as a cable authored by Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson. The leaking of the classified material was apparently done in an effort to counter claims made by Wilson regarding the White House's justification for invading Iraq.

The Fitzgerald filing also notes that Libby told grand jurors that he conferred with David Addington (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0406061libby6.html), Cheney's counsel, about the leak directive and that Addington told him "that Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to a declassification of the document." While both Bush and Cheney have been interviewed by Fitzgerald, it is unknown whether they confirmed or disputed Libby's assertion that he was authorized to disclose findings in classified reports. Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, resigned his White House post last October following his indictment (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1028051plame1.html) on five felony counts. (7 pages)

Plamegate aficionados: Click here (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/graphics/pdf/libbyplame.pdf) for PDF of entire 39-page Fitzgerald filing

[Ninjahedge]

So Libby said that Cheney said that Bush said it was ok to say about Plame.


Is it just me or does something seem a little wrong with the last statement there?

[lofter1]

Legal Eagles on the tube are saying that legally the POTUS can declassify ANY document.

The "leaking" of Plame's name, however, would NOT be legal.

[kz1000ps]

Is anyone else at least a bit giddy with hope that the Day of Reckoning might be upon us?

[lofter1]

Good Leak

President Bush declassified some of the intelligence he used to decide on war in Iraq.

Is that a scandal?

Washington Post
Editorial
Sunday, April 9, 2006

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/08/AR2006040800895.html

PRESIDENT BUSH was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. Presidents are authorized to declassify sensitive material, and the public benefits when they do. But the administration handled the release clumsily, exposing Mr. Bush to the hyperbolic charges of misconduct and hypocrisy that Democrats are leveling.

Rather than follow the usual declassification procedures and then invite reporters to a briefing -- as the White House eventually did -- Vice President Cheney initially chose to be secretive, ordering his chief of staff at the time, I. Lewis Libby, to leak the information to a favorite New York Times reporter. The full public disclosure followed 10 days later. There was nothing illegal or even particularly unusual about that; nor is this presidentially authorized leak necessarily comparable to other, unauthorized disclosures that the president believes, rightly or wrongly, compromise national security. Nevertheless, Mr. Cheney's tactics make Mr. Bush look foolish for having subsequently denounced a different leak in the same controversy and vowing to "get to the bottom" of it.

The affair concerns, once again, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and his absurdly over-examined visit to the African country of Niger in 2002. Each time the case surfaces, opponents of the war in Iraq use it to raise a different set of charges, so it's worth recalling the previous iterations. Mr. Wilson originally claimed in a 2003 New York Times op-ed and in conversations with numerous reporters that he had debunked a report that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium from Niger and that Mr. Bush's subsequent inclusion of that allegation in his State of the Union address showed that he had deliberately "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraq threat." The material that Mr. Bush ordered declassified established, as have several subsequent investigations, that Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth. In fact, his report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium.

Mr. Wilson subsequently claimed that the White House set out to punish him for his supposed whistle-blowing by deliberately blowing the cover of his wife, Valerie Plame, who he said was an undercover CIA operative. This prompted the investigation by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald. After more than 2 1/2 years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald has reported no evidence to support Mr. Wilson's charge. In last week's court filings, he stated that Mr. Bush did not authorize the leak of Ms. Plame's identity. Mr. Libby's motive in allegedly disclosing her name to reporters, Mr. Fitzgerald said, was to disprove yet another false assertion, that Mr. Wilson had been dispatched to Niger by Mr. Cheney. In fact Mr. Wilson was recommended for the trip by his wife. Mr. Libby is charged with perjury, for having lied about his discussions with two reporters. Yet neither the columnist who published Ms. Plame's name, Robert D. Novak, nor Mr. Novak's two sources have been charged with any wrongdoing.

As Mr. Fitzgerald pointed out at the time of Mr. Libby's indictment last fall, none of this is particularly relevant to the question of whether the grounds for war in Iraq were sound or bogus. It's unfortunate that those who seek to prove the latter would now claim that Mr. Bush did something wrong by releasing for public review some of the intelligence he used in making his most momentous decision.


© 2006 The Washington Post Company

[lofter1]

A Bad Leak

NY TIMES
Editorial
April 16, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/opinion/16sun1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

President Bush says he declassified portions of the prewar intelligence assessment on Iraq because he "wanted people to see the truth" about Iraq's weapons programs and to understand why he kept accusing Saddam Hussein of stockpiling weapons that turned out not to exist. This would be a noble sentiment if it actually bore any relationship to Mr. Bush's actions in this case, or his overall record.

Mr. Bush did not declassify the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq — in any accepted sense of that word — when he authorized I. Lewis Libby Jr., through Vice President Dick Cheney, to talk about it with reporters. He permitted a leak of cherry-picked portions of the report. The declassification came later.

And this president has never shown the slightest interest in disclosure, except when it suits his political purposes. He has run one of the most secretive administrations in American history, consistently withholding information and vital documents not just from the public, but also from Congress. Just the other day, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told the House Judiciary Committee that the names of the lawyers who reviewed Mr. Bush's warrantless wiretapping program were a state secret.

Obviously, we do not object to government officials talking to reporters about important matters that their bosses do not want discussed. It would be impossible to cover any administration, especially one so secretive as this, unless that happened. (Judith Miller, who then worked for The Times, was one of the reporters Mr. Libby chose for this leak, although she never wrote about it.) But the version of the facts that Mr. Libby was authorized to divulge was so distorted that it seems more like disinformation than any sincere attempt to inform the public.

This fits the pattern of Mr. Bush's original sales pitch on the Iraq war — hyping the intelligence that bolstered his case and suppressing the intelligence that undercut it. In this case, Mr. Libby was authorized to talk about claims that Iraq had tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons in Africa and not more reliable evidence to the contrary.

About a month before, Mr. Bush rushed to announce that American forces had found evidence of a biological weapons program in Iraq — trailers that could have been used to make doomsday devices. We now know, from a report in The Washington Post, that a Pentagon team actually on the ground in Iraq inspecting the trailers had concluded two days earlier that they were nothing of the kind.

The White House says Mr. Bush was not aware of that report, and was relying on an assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency. This is hardly the first time we've been told that intelligence reports contradicting administration doctrine somehow did not make it to Mr. Bush's desk. But it does not explain why he and Mr. Cheney went on talking about the trailers for weeks, during which the State Department's intelligence division — about the only agency that got it right about Iraq — debunked the mobile-labs theory.

Of course, the inaccurate report saying that the trailers were bioweapons labs was made public, immediately, while the accurate one was kept secret until a reporter found out about it.

Since Mr. Bush regularly denounces leakers, the White House has made much of the notion that he did not leak classified information, he declassified it. This explanation strains credulity. Even a president cannot wave a wand and announce that an intelligence report is declassified.

To declassify an intelligence document, officials have to decide whether disclosing the information would jeopardize the sources that provided it or the methods used to gather it. To answer that question, they closely study the origins of the intelligence to be disclosed. Had Mr. Bush done that, he should have seen that the most credible information made it clear that the Niger story was wrong. (In any case, Iraq's supposed attempt to buy uranium from Niger happened four years before the invasion, and failed. The idea that this amounted to a current, aggressive and continuing campaign to build nuclear weapons in 2002 — as Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney called it — is laughable.)

This messy episode leaves more questions than answers, so it is imperative that two things happen soon. First, the federal prosecutor in the Libby case should release the transcripts of what Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney said when he questioned them. And the Senate Intelligence Committee must report publicly on how Mr. Bush and his team used the flawed intelligence on Iraq. Senator Pat Roberts, the committee chairman, says the panel will meet this month to discuss three of the report's five sections. That's a step. And it has taken only two years to get this far.

Copyright 2006 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html)The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[Punzie]

Libby Defense Portrays Client as a Scapegoat


By NEIL A. LEWIS (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/neil_a_lewis/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
The New York Times
January 24, 2007

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 — I. Lewis Libby Jr. (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/i_lewis_libby_jr/index.html?inline=nyt-per), the vice president’s former chief of staff, was made a scapegoat by White House officials to protect the president’s longtime political adviser, Karl Rove (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/karl_rove/index.html?inline=nyt-per), Mr. Libby’s lawyer asserted in his opening statement on Tuesday.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/01/23/us/24libby.jpg
Yuri Gripas/Reuters
I. Lewis Libby Jr. on Tuesday.


The unexpected assertion may foreshadow an effort to put distance between Mr. Libby and the administration.

The statement by the lawyer, Theodore V. Wells Jr., was the first indication that Mr. Libby, who is facing five felony counts of lying to investigators, would seek to deflect some of the blame onto his former White House colleagues.

Mr. Wells did not, however, fully explain the connection between an effort to protect Mr. Rove and the actions that led to Mr. Libby’s indictment. It was also the first sign that there had been fighting within the Bush administration over the C.I.A. (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org) leak investigation.

Until Tuesday, Mr. Libby’s defense on perjury and obstruction of justice charges was that he might simply have remembered incorrectly events he had described to a grand jury and to F.B.I. (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/federal_bureau_of_investigation/index.html?inline=nyt-org) agents. But Mr. Wells told the jury that White House officials, whom he did not name, wanted to protect Mr. Rove because they believed his survival as President Bush’s chief political adviser was crucial to the health of the Republican Party (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/republican_party/index.html?inline=nyt-org).

Mr. Wells said that his client was innocent and that a decision was made that “Scooter Libby was to be sacrificed,” referring to Mr. Libby by his nickname. It was important to keep Mr. Rove out of trouble, Mr. Wells said, because he was Mr. Bush’s right-hand man and “was most responsible for seeing the Republican Party stayed in office.”

“He had to be protected,” Mr. Wells said.

Mr. Rove, who has not been charged, has acknowledged having been a source for a July 14, 2003, column by Robert D. Novak (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/n/robert_novak/index.html?inline=nyt-per) that first disclosed the identity of Valerie Wilson (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/valerie_plame/index.html?inline=nyt-per), who was known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, as a Central Intelligence Agency officer. The disclosure led to the investigation resulting in Mr. Libby’s indictment.

Mr. Wells’s remarks followed the opening statement of the chief prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/patrick_j_fitzgerald/index.html?inline=nyt-per), who told the jury that the evidence was clear that Mr. Libby had knowingly lied under oath about his conversations with three reporters about Ms. Wilson. Mr. Fitzgerald provided his own dramatic moment of the day when he played audiotapes of Mr. Libby’s grand jury testimony in March 2004.

Before doing so, Mr. Fitzgerald meticulously laid the groundwork for his case that Mr. Libby had lied during those appearances. He first presented charts showing that Mr. Libby learned about Ms. Wilson in conversations with several fellow administration officials in June and early July 2003, and that he talked to reporters and other administration officials about her identity in that period.

Jurors then listened as Mr. Libby’s voice wafted through the courtroom while he sat silently at the defense table. Mr. Libby was heard to say that he believed he first learned about Ms. Wilson in a conversation with Tim Russert of NBC on Thursday, July 10. Mr. Libby also told the grand jury that he had been taken aback by Mr. Russert’s information.

“You can’t be startled about something on Thursday that you told other people about on Monday and Tuesday,” Mr. Fitzgerald said, referring to conversations Mr. Libby had only days before.

Further, he said, Mr. Russert will testify that his July 10 telephone conversation with Mr. Libby did not include any mention of Ms. Wilson. Mr. Libby, he said, had telephoned instead to complain about a talk show on the network.

“The evidence will show the conversation he claims took place about Wilson’s wife never happened,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “And even if it did happen, he couldn’t have been surprised.”

Mr. Libby is charged with five felony accounts of lying to the grand jury and to officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who were investigating the leak of Ms. Wilson’s name to Mr. Novak.

Ms. Wilson’s identity was disclosed just days after her husband, Joseph C. Wilson (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/joseph_c_th_wilson/index.html?inline=nyt-per) IV, a former ambassador, wrote an Op-Ed article in The New York Times asserting that the Bush administration, to build its case for war, had distorted intelligence about Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium in Africa.

Mr. Libby had testified that he did not discuss Ms. Wilson’s identity with Judith Miller, a former reporter for The Times, or with Matthew Cooper of Time magazine. Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper testified that Mr. Libby did, in fact, discuss Ms. Wilson with them.

In the trial’s opening day, Mr. Fitzgerald’s task was to keep the issue before the jury simple: were Mr. Libby’s statements about his conversations with reporters true? To that end, he spoke for only about an hour in outlining his case.

The mission of Mr. Wells, in contrast, was to present the case as hopelessly complicated, thus leaving the jurors in doubt about the validity of the charges. Mr. Wells spoke for nearly two and a half hours, ranging over issues of the reliability of memory; Mr. Libby’s duties, which during the relevant period included crises in Liberia and Turkey; and threats from Al Qaeda (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/al_qaeda/index.html?inline=nyt-org) on the days that Mr. Libby spoke to reporters.

But his most startling comment was his assertion that Mr. Libby had become enmeshed in legal difficulty because of White House efforts to protect Mr. Rove.

If Mr. Libby and his lawyers press their strategy of blaming the White House, it could prove risky, possibly even jeopardizing chances of a presidential pardon for Mr. Libby if he is convicted.

Mr. Libby, Mr. Wells said, complained to Vice President Dick Cheney (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/dick_cheney/index.html?inline=nyt-per) that he was being set up as a fall guy. Mr. Cheney supported that view, Mr. Wells said, and handwrote a note saying, “Not going to protect one staffer + sacrifice the guy who was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others.”

This incident appears to have occurred in fall 2003, when Mr. Libby was troubled that Scott McClellan (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/scott_mcclellan/index.html?inline=nyt-per), then the White House press secretary, had publicly said that Mr. Rove had not been involved in the leak but had initially declined to do the same for Mr. Libby and others in the administration. At that time, Mr. Rove had a major role in guiding Mr. Bush’s re-election campaign.

Interpreting the vice president’s note, Mr. Wells said that “incompetence” was a reference to the fact that the C.I.A. had mistakenly allowed the White House to use inaccurate information in Mr. Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech about Iraq’s efforts to obtain uranium in Africa. The staff official whom the vice president believed should not be protected, he said, was Mr. Rove. Mr. Libby had been assigned to speak to reporters to straighten out the confusion from Mr. Bush’s speech, a chore Mr. Cheney likened to sticking his head in the meat grinder.

Mr. Wells did not, however, make it clear how the efforts to shield Mr. Rove had caused Mr. Libby to become embroiled in the issue, though he suggested that the attention paid to the disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s name had obliged Mr. Libby to engage in the perilous task of talking to reporters.

Mr. Wells noted that, in his grand jury appearances and in interviews with the F.B.I., Mr. Libby had also said that he first learned of Ms. Wilson’s identity from Mr. Cheney.

The charges against Mr. Libby, Mr. Wells said, amounted to “a weak, paper-thin circumstantial case about ‘he said-she said.’ ”

Sarah Abruzzese contributed reporting.

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/index.html

[lofter1]

This could get really UGLY :D

[Punzie]

With a name like "Scooter Libby," you don't want to be in prison.

[MidtownGuy]

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/147/368523349_2537e4c064.jpg

Ugly indeed. With a grill like this who'd want the scooter:eek:

[Punzie]

Ugly indeed. With a grill like this who'd want the scooter:eek:

All of stir! It would be a status/revenge thing: "I nailed Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney."

[lofter1]

Document of the Day (http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2007/01/document_of_the.html)

Andrew Sullivan (http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2007/01/document_of_the.html)
31 Jan 2007 10:39 pm

Cheney's notes, subpoenaed by Fitzgerald, reproduced here (http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/013107Z.shtml). There's some debate about what the crossed out words 'the Pres" means. No idea myself.

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/images/cheneynotesgraph.jpg (http://time.blogs.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/cheneynotesgraph.jpg)



A reader writes:Isn't it pretty obvious what this could mean?"Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy the president ... asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder..." Just complete the thought. Cheney realized what he was about to write, he's no dummy, and decided to go for the vaguer, "that was asked." That was asked "by whom?" is the question. By Cheney or the President? Seems like the latter was the one on the Veep's lips or tip of the pen.Hmmm. So Cheney was reflecting a presidential decision as to who was expendable and who wasn't? Bush wanted to save Rove by designating Libby the fall-guy. He asked Libby to be the fall guy for Rove. (Cheney may not have been thrilled that he had to lose his right-hand man to save the president's.) Pure speculation, of course. But it makes sense. And if true, it's a fascinating glimpse into the mafia-like code of loyalty that exists in Bush world.

[lofter1]

Trial exposes White House crisis machine

yahoo.com (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070210/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cia_leak_white_house)
By PETE YOST
Associated Press Writer
Fri Feb 9, 9:22 PM ET

David Addington, chief legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, says he was taken aback when the White House started making public pronouncements about the CIA leak investigation.

In the fall of 2003, President Bush's press secretary was categorically denying that either Karl Rove or I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was involved in exposing the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA employee married to a critic of the war in Iraq.

"Why are you making these statements?" Addington asked White House communications director Dan Bartlett.

"Your boss is the one who wanted" them, Bartlett replied, referring to Cheney.

With that, "I shut up," Addington recalled recently for jurors in Libby's CIA leak trial, which begins its fourth week on Monday with Libby's lawyers calling their first witnesses.

So far, the testimony of Addington and other administration aides, along with documents and Libby's audiotaped grand jury testimony, have provided a rare glimpse of how the Bush White House scrambled to respond to a political crisis as it intersected a criminal investigation.

At the intersection was Cheney, along with Rove and Libby, who were working in the summer of 2003 to rebut claims by Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, that Bush had misled the nation about prewar intelligence on Iraq.

The White House denials on behalf of Rove and Libby came just before Rove secretly began acknowledging to the FBI that he had confirmed Plame's identity for conservative columnist Bob Novak, who first published her name and relationship to Wilson.

About the same time, Libby came under suspicion because NBC News Washington bureau chief Tim Russert had talked to the FBI, contradicting Libby's version of a conversation between the two men that would become the heart of the perjury and obstruction charges against Libby.

Bush and Cheney made a common mistake in their public handling of the Plame affair, says presidential scholar and University of Texas government professor Bruce Buchanan, who has watched Bush's career since his days as Texas governor.

"They're in a high-stakes game of poker, the immediate pressure is political and the people in charge are political people," Buchanan said. "If there is a legal issue it will dawn, but by then someone is out on a limb."

Testimony and documents in the trial show Rove joining Cheney in trying to undercut Wilson's claim that the administration had twisted prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

"We're a day late in getting responses to the story," Rove told a staff meeting, according to Libby's notes.

"Get the full story out," Cheney told aides, according to Libby's grand jury testimony.

There were glitches in the leak campaign against Wilson.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller never wrote a story about it, even after Cheney persuaded Bush to declassify prewar intelligence so it could be shared with Miller. The intelligence report said Iraq was vigorously trying to acquire uranium from the African nation of Niger.

"It was a totally failed effort," Libby told the grand jury of his meetings with Miller.

But there were successes too.

Libby recalled asking Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to reach out to The Wall Street Journal.

"I don't have as good a relationship with The Wall Street Journal as Secretary Wolfowitz did," Libby told the grand jury. "I talked to Secretary Wolfowitz about trying to get that point across, and he undertook to do so."

The Journal ran an editorial focusing on the theme Libby wanted. The editorial stated that the prewar intelligence the newspaper was describing had not come from the White House, "which to our mind has handled this story in a hamhanded fashion."

In the Libby trial, Bush comes across mostly as an interested observer.

According to Libby's notes, some of which surfaced at the trial, Bush expressed interest in a May 6, 2003 New York Times column critical of the administration and referencing an unnamed former ambassador, who turned out to be Wilson.

In questioning Libby before the grand jury, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald juxtaposed Bush's public statements condemning leakers and Libby's contacts with reporters, some of whom have testified against him.

"Were you at all concerned that while the president was stating that there's no White House involvement in any leaks whatsoever, that you were one of the people who may have been referred to" in press reports about possible White House leakers? asked Fitzgerald.

In the grand jury recordings, the prosecutor also asked Libby about his interaction with Rove a few days before Novak exposed Plame's CIA identity. Libby said Rove "was animated that Novak was animated about this." Libby added that Rove "thought it was a good thing that somebody was writing about" Wilson and his wife.

Cheney told Libby early in the effort to deal with Wilson that his wife worked at the CIA. And while the Cheney-Libby team worked in lockstep attacking Wilson in July 2003, Libby said he faced a somewhat distant vice president when the affair came under investigation, first by the Justice Department, then by Fitzgerald. Regarding his discussions with reporters about Wilson's wife, "I would have been happy to unburden myself" to Cheney, Libby told the grand jury, but "he didn't want to hear it."

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press

[MidtownGuy]

Libby recalled asking Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to reach out to The Wall Street Journal.

"I don't have as good a relationship with The Wall Street Journal as Secretary Wolfowitz did," Libby told the grand jury. "I talked to Secretary Wolfowitz about trying to get that point across, and he undertook to do so."

The Journal ran an editorial focusing on the theme Libby wanted. The editorial stated that the prewar intelligence the newspaper was describing had not come from the White House, "which to our mind has handled this story in a hamhanded fashion."

The American corporate news media(what almost everyone here reads or watches) is a JOKE. The Times, the WSJ, they're all information prostitutes and it's disgusting. I don't even read those papers anymore for political information, you just end up more misinformed. Yeah, let's go sell another evil war. American journalism is the pits. I've said it before, our current news media makes the old PRAVDA look honest and open. :rolleyes:

[ZippyTheChimp]

February 12, 2007

Cheney Testimony in Libby Trial Would Carry High Risk

By SCOTT SHANE and JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 — One figure has dominated the trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr. without even showing up in the courtroom. Day after day, the jury has heard accounts of the actions of Vice President Dick Cheney, watched as his handwritten notes were displayed on a giant screen, heard how he directed leaks to the news media and ordered the White House to publicly defend Mr. Libby, his top aide and close confidante.

Now, as the defense phase of the perjury trial begins, Mr. Cheney is expected to make a historic appearance on the witness stand. It is an act of loyalty that carries considerable risk for Mr. Cheney, a powerful figure in the administration who has in recent months suffered a series of major political and policy setbacks.

If he testifies, Mr. Cheney will bring to the jurors the awesome authority of his office and could attest to Mr. Libby’s character as policy adviser and family man, and to his crushing workload and dedication to keeping the country safe. That could give extra heft to Mr. Libby’s defense against the charge that he lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the grand jury: that he was so occupied with important matters of state, he did not accurately remember conversations from July 2003.

But the first 10 days of testimony have already exposed some of the long-hidden workings of Mr. Cheney’s extraordinary vice presidency, revealing how deeply Mr. Cheney himself was engaged during 2003 in managing public relations as the administration’s case for war came under attack.

Under cross-examination by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, a veteran prosecutor who is likely to be deferential but dogged with questions, the vice president may be forced to describe in uncomfortable detail how he directed the counteroffensive on Joseph C. Wilson IV, the former ambassador who accused the administration of twisting prewar intelligence.

“This could be great theater,” said Peter M. Shane, a law professor at Ohio State University. Anything Mr. Cheney says for the defense, Mr. Shane said, becomes “fair game” to be picked apart by the prosecution.

If Mr. Cheney makes a statement that conflicts with the public record — and nearly every witness so far has done so at least once — it could prove embarrassing for him and for the administration.

“If Cheney said anything that’s contradicted in the record, though I think that’s unlikely, Pat will slam him,” said a former federal prosecutor who knows Mr. Fitzgerald. “He’ll do it respectfully, but I have no doubt he’ll do it,” said the lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

No testimony so far has supported the idea, proposed by some critics, that Mr. Cheney deliberately sought to punish Mr. Wilson by ordering the exposure of the covert employment of his wife, Valerie Wilson, by the Central Intelligence Agency. It was the disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s C.I.A. job that prompted the criminal investigation that ultimately led to perjury and obstruction of justice charges against Mr. Libby.

But the trial has chipped away at the public image of Mr. Cheney as a sober-minded policy architect and tough political combatant, never rattled by the sniping of critics or the fickle commentary of the press.

When Mr. Wilson published an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, lambasting the administration, Mr. Cheney was “upset,” Mr. Libby said in 2004 grand jury testimony, replayed at the trial. Contrary to Mr. Wilson’s claims, the vice president had known nothing about the former ambassador’s trip to Niger on behalf of the C.I.A. or his conclusion that Iraq was not seeking uranium there, Mr. Libby said.

“He often cuts out an article and keeps it on his desk somewhere and thinks about it,” Mr. Libby told the grand jury of the vice president. The jury has seen Mr. Cheney’s clipping of Mr. Wilson’s article, on which he wrote notes and questions.

The jury has also heard how the vice president responded by dictating talking points for the news media to subordinates and hastily summoning conservative columnists to a lunch. Most strikingly, Mr. Cheney cleared with President Bush the secret declassification of an intelligence document on Iraqi weapons so that it could be leaked to a reporter he and Mr. Libby saw as friendly, Judith Miller, then of The Times.

“The vice president instructed me to go and talk to Judith Miller and lay this out for her,” Mr. Libby said in the grand jury tapes.

The leak to Ms. Miller, on July 8, 2003, failed — she wrote nothing. But four days later Mr. Cheney was trying again, listing for Mr. Libby the main points he wanted made to Matthew Cooper, then of Time magazine, and other reporters.

Mr. Cheney, Mr. Libby said, “dictated to me what he wanted me to say to the press,” including a “word-for-word” quote to give Time magazine and “background material that he wanted me to use.”

A few months later, when Mr. Libby was being publicly discussed as a possible target of the criminal investigation, Mr. Cheney weighed in again. He directed Scott McClellan, then the White House spokesman, to publicly clear Mr. Libby just as he had cleared Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s political adviser.

“Not going to protect one staffer + sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others,” Mr. Cheney wrote in a note after Mr. Libby complained to him. The “meat grinder” apparently referred to Mr. Libby’s assignment in leaking to the news media; the “incompetence” is thought by many to be the vice president’s characterization of the C.I.A.’s decision to send Mr. Wilson to Niger.

The trial is just the latest challenge for the vice president, who would enter the witness stand as one of the least popular leaders in recent history. Only 16 percent of respondents in the latest CBS News poll, released last month, said they had a favorable opinion of Mr. Cheney, his lowest level ever in any CBS or CBS/New York Times poll. Some 48 percent had an unfavorable opinion.

For six years, Mr. Cheney has worked to protect the Bush White House from what he views as Congressional meddling, media snooping and legal nitpicking. But his assertion of broad executive authority, based on a legal theory he has pursued since the 1970s, has met with a string of defeats.

The administration has backed away from tough policies on terrorist detention and domestic surveillance that Mr. Cheney championed. He has watched control of Congress shift to Democrats who are now working to penetrate his trademark secrecy. Last fall, he endured the dismissal by Mr. Bush of his friend and ally of three decades, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Since then, as the most bullish and optimistic proponent of the president’s war strategy, Mr. Cheney has come under increasing fire for comments proclaiming success in Iraq when even Mr. Bush is expressing dissatisfaction.

Senator John McCain, a leading Republican presidential contender for 2008, went on record in an interview last month with The Politico, a new Washington political publication, saying Mr. Bush had been “very badly served” by Mr. Cheney, as well as Mr. Rumsfeld.

In a recent interview on CNN, the host, Wolf Blitzer, told Mr. Cheney, “Some of your good Republican friends in the Senate and the House are now seriously questioning your credibility because of the blunders, of the failures.”

Mr. Cheney, in a striking display of pique, responded: “Wolf, Wolf, I simply don’t accept the premise of your question. I just think it’s hogwash.”

Veteran trial lawyers following the case say there is a significant chance Mr. Libby will not take the stand in his own defense, choosing to rely instead upon the seven hours of his taped testimony the jury has already heard. In that event, veteran trial lawyers say, Mr. Cheney could serve as his surrogate, presenting a positive, personal account of Mr. Libby’s work without exposing the defendant to the hazards of cross-examination.

But such a strategy would, of course, open Mr. Cheney to unpredictable questioning. Theodore B. Olson, the former solicitor general for Mr. Bush, called Mr. Fitzgerald “a remarkably thorough, meticulous and careful guy with a tremendous memory of the facts” who was likely to mount a formidable cross-examination.

By taking the stand before a rapt national audience, Mr. Cheney would essentially be leaping without a net, because neither the defense nor the prosecution would be duty-bound to protect his interests, said Mr. Olson, who represented Ronald Reagan during the Iran-contra affair.

“You never know what’s going to happen on a witness stand with cross-examinations,” Mr. Olson said. “Surprises happen all the time.”


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[ZippyTheChimp]

Libby, Cheney Avoid Stand in Trial

By AP/MATT APUZZO

(WASHINGTON) — Neither Vice President Dick Cheney nor his former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby will testify at Libby's perjury and obstruction trial in the CIA leak case, Libby's lawyer said Tuesday.

Defense attorney Theodore Wells said he advised Cheney's lawyer over lunch that the vice president's testimony would not be needed. Wells also said he planned to rest his case this week without calling Libby.

In December, Wells had announced he would call Cheney as a defense witness. Historians said it would have been the first time a sitting vice president would have sat as a witness in a criminal case.

Libby is accused of lying and obstructing the investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. Plame is married to former ambassador and prominent war critic Joseph Wilson.

Attorneys said Cheney was willing to testify and, as recently as two weeks ago, Cheney said in an interview that he planned to be a witness. Libby, too, once seemed a likely witness. Pretrial documents said he would testify about his busy schedule and the national security issues that weighed on his mind.

But when U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton asked Libby in court Tuesday whether he was sure he did not want to testify. Libby responded: "Yes, your honor."

Defense attorneys say they plan to rest their case after they question three CIA briefers about Libby's daily intelligence briefings. Prosecutors say those briefers shouldn't be allowed to testify now that Libby isn't going to take the stand.

Libby is accused of lying to investigators about his conversations with reporters regarding Plame. Prosecutors say Libby learned Plame's identity from Cheney and other officials, relayed that information to reporters, then concocted a story to cover it up.

Libby says he was preoccupied with national security intelligence and honestly forgot details about Plame. He says he learned her identity from Cheney, forgot it, and learned it again a month later from NBC's Tim Russert and believed it was new information.

With Cheney and Libby off the witness list, attorneys said they planned to rest Wednesday. That schedule could be derailed if snow and freezing rain continued in Washington. Court closed early Tuesday because of the weather. Closing arguments will be held next week, Walton said.

Libby's defense team had planned to call Cheney to testify about his former aide's memory and his intense workload. Putting Cheney on the stand would have opened him up to cross-examination about how closely he was monitoring Wilson's criticism of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq.

Wilson, who conducted a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger, said he debunked prewar intelligence that Iraq sought to buy uranium from the African nation. That intelligence was still used as a basis for the invasion.

Fitzgerald argues that Libby was eager to discredit Wilson because he viewed Wilson as a threat to the credibility of Cheney and Bush.

By not taking the stand, Libby is giving up part of his defense. Walton said he would not allow defense attorneys to tell jurors that Libby considered his national security responsibilities more important than Wilson. Only Libby could tell jurors what he considered important, Walton said.

Associated Press writer Michael J. Sniffen contributed to this report.

[ZippyTheChimp]

February 20, 2007

Prosecutor and Defense Sum Up Libby Case

By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 – The two sides in the perjury trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr. laid out starkly different theories for the jury today, as a prosecutor ridiculed Mr. Libby’s claims of a faulty memory and a defense lawyer belittled the prosecution’s case.

The prosecutor, Peter Zeidenberg, said that a parade of witnesses had demolished the defense’s contention that Mr. Libby had a bad memory rather than criminal intent, and that Mr. Libby’s assertions fly in the face of common sense.

The case against Mr. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has nothing to do with memory, Mr. Zeidenberg said in Federal Court as the government began summing up its case.

“It’s lying,” Mr. Zeidenberg said.

Mr. Libby is charged with lying to a federal grand jury and F.B.I. investigators investigating the leak of a covert C.I.A. operative’s name.

Mr. Libby has denied under oath that he had passed information to reporters about the operative’s name, and his lawyers have put forward as a part of his defense the assertion that he was too preoccupied with the crush of vital national security issues to have remembered any conversation about the operative.

“All of us forget things, we misconstrue things,” the chief defense lawyer, Theodore V. Wells Jr., told the jury. “It happens to everybody. Everybody.”

But Mr. Zeidenberg argued today that Mr. Libby’s attempts to blame memory loss for any inconsistencies in his accounts to F.B.I. investigators and a grand jury have been deflated by “witness after witness after witness” in the trial before Judge Reggie B. Walton.

At the trial’s beginning, Mr. Zeidenberg recalled, Mr. Wells “painted a very different picture,” declaring that high administration officials wanted to make Mr. Libby “a sacrificial lamb” to deflect blame from others amid the furor over the unmasking of the C.I.A. operative’s name.

“Did you hear any evidence about a campaign, a White House campaign, to scapegoat Mr. Libby?” Mr. Zeidenberg said. “There was no such evidence,” he said, only “unfulfilled promises” from Mr. Wells that there would be.

When it was his turn, Mr. Wells scoffed at the prosecution’s case, saying it was based on “he said, she said,” and that there was more than enough reasonable doubt for an acquittal.

And despite the prosecutor’s assertions, Mr. Wells insisted that there was plenty of evidence that Mr. Libby was being abandoned by the White House, which hoped to limit the damage over the operative’s exposure by letting Mr. Libby “be the public scapegoat.”

Mr. Libby is accused of perjury and obstruction of justice for trying to thwart an investigation into who leaked the name of the C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson, after her husband, the former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, criticized the administration in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times and on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on the same day, July 6, 2003.

The prosecution contends that Mr. Libby was busily telling reporters in June and early July 2003 about Mrs. Wilson’s C.I.A. status, after he learned about her from various administration officials.

But Mr. Libby, who did not testify at the trial, has told F.B.I. agents and grand jurors that he learned of Mrs. Wilson’s identity no earlier than July 10, 2003, and that reporters told him who she was, rather than the other way around.

“He invents out of whole cloth,” Mr. Zeidenberg said of Mr. Libby.

No, Mr. Wells said, “Mr. Libby is innocent, and he had no motive to lie.”

As for the prosecutor’s argument that Mr. Wells had failed to provide any evidence of a White House effort to sacrifice Mr. Libby, the defense lawyer reminded jurors that Mr. Libby had gone to Vice President Cheney to complain after the White House press office expressed confidence in other high White House aides but not in Mr. Libby.

Mr. Cheney supported Mr. Libby’s view, Mr. Wells said, and handwrote a note saying, “Not going to protect one staffer + sacrifice the guy who was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others.”

“Now, Ted Wells didn’t make those words up,” Mr. Wells said. When Mr. Libby went to the vice president to complain, he did “what only an innocent person would do,” Mr. Wells said. After Mr. Wells’s summation, the chief prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, will have one more chance to make the points Mr. Zeidenberg laid out.

“People don’t lie for the heck of it,” Mr. Zeidenberg said. He said Mr. Libby realized he was in trouble after the F.B.I. began investigating who had disclosed Mrs. Wilson’s identity to the columnist Robert D. Novak, whose column on July 14, 2003, unmasked her.

Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Karl Rove, the president’s chief political adviser, are known to have been sources for Mr. Novak, although neither have been charged — a fact that Mr. Wells pointed out.

“Mr. Libby didn’t leak to anybody,” the defense lawyer said.

Mr. Zeidenberg noted that Ari Fleischer, the former White House spokesman, testified that Mr. Libby told him on July 7, 2003, about Mrs. Wilson. And, indeed, the prosecutor said, Mr. Libby accomplished his purpose: he got Mr. Fleischer to talk to reporters about Mrs. Wilson.

“The only thing he can be prosecuted for is lying,” Mr. Zeidenberg said of Mr. Fleischer, noting that the former White House aide had testified under a grant of immunity. “Why in the world would he lie? There’s no reason.”

The prosecutor noted that Craig Schmall, a C.I.A. employee whose job was to brief the vice president and Mr. Libby, recalled talking with Mr. Libby about Mr. and Mrs. Wilson on June 14, 2003, nearly a month before Mr. Libby has said he learned of her identity.

Mr. Schmall had good reason to remember the meeting with Mr. Libby, the prosecutor said: June 14 was a Saturday, the meeting was one-on-one at Mr. Libby’s home, and Mr. Schmall took notes. “They are irrefutable,” Mr. Zeidenberg said.

But Mr. Wells reminded the jurors that some of the prosecution’s most important witnesses had displayed memory gaps. He zeroed in on Tim Russert, the NBC News Washington bureau chief, who testified that he never discussed Mr. and Mrs. Wilson with Mr. Libby – contrary to what Mr. Libby has said.

Mr. Wells recalled an episode a few years back in which Mr. Russert, by his own admission, forgot an exchange he had had with a reporter for The Buffalo News. (Mr. Russert is from Buffalo.)


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[lofter1]

LIBBY GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY (http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070306/D8NMQ1G80.html)

[lofter1]

Hmmm, I wonder if VP Dick's thrombosis episode yesterday is a prelude to an exit ...

[BrooklynRider]

Hopefully, that exit will be in a hearse.

Gosh, I guess I'm feeling better.:D

[OmegaNYC]

So.... Is Libby going to jail?

[BrooklynRider]

What are the odds on a Cheney Resignation & a full pardon of Libby by Bush? His approval rating can't get lower. He still has the support of Ann Coulter / Fred Phelps Republicans and Evangelical Republicans watching their clocks for Armageddon. I think he'll go for it.

[Punzie]

Libby found guilty in CIA leak trial

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/nm/20070307/2007_03_06t144407_450x308_us_usa_crime_libby_annou ncement.jpg
Former Bush White House aide Lewis 'Scooter' Libby walks with wife Harriet Grant (R) outside the courthouse
after he was convicted of four federal crimes at the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Washington, March 6, 2007.
(Jason Reed/Reuters)

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN and MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writers
March 6, 2007

Once the closest adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted Tuesday of lying and obstructing a leak investigation that shook the top levels of the Bush administration.

Four guilty verdicts ended a seven-week CIA leak trial that focused new attention on the Bush administration's much-criticized handling of intelligence reports about weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Iraq war.

In the end, jurors said they did not believe Libby's main defense: that he hadn't lied but merely had a bad memory.

Their decisions made Libby the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a government scandal since National Security Adviser John Poindexter in the Iran-Contra affair two decades ago.

The case cost Cheney his most trusted adviser, and the trial revealed Cheney's personal obsession with criticism of the war's justification.

Trial testimony made clear that President Bush secretly declassified a portion of the prewar intelligence estimate that Cheney quietly sent Libby to leak to Judith Miller of The New York Times in 2003 to rebut criticism by ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson. Bush, Cheney and Libby were the only three people in the government aware of the effort.

More top reporters w