What's New with the Joe Wilson scandal

[drlogic]

What's New with the Joe Wilson scandalâ„¢

By: Mark Kilmer · Section: News

http://redstate.org/

Don't let the press lull you to sleep with their gawdawful grasping at evanescent straws, re: the Joe Wilson scandalâ„¢. There could be big stuff afoot.

To wit, read on…

The WashPost tells us that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald "has assembled evidence that suggests Cheney's long-standing tensions with the CIA contributed to the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame."

This contradicts Joe Wilson's assertion that it was all about him, but it shows the Veep having his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, leak the name of a CIA desk-jockey to enact revenge against an agency for which he didn't care.

There's more!...

Reuters, however, lets us know that Libby didn't leak the correct information:

According to Miller's account of a meeting with Libby on July 8, she wrote in her notes that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control, or Winpac, unit, which tracks unconventional arms.

A former intelligence official said Plame did not work at Winpac but for the CIA's clandestine service. The former official, who is familiar with Plame's CIA activities, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity.

If this is true, then Libby did not know that Plame was classified as James Bond in drag, super-secret, licensed-to-kill with an AK-47 when he let the cat out of the bag.

So we have Cheney directed Libby to leak Valerie Flame's [sic] name of a covert op in order to harm the CIA, but it was really about getting revenge on Joe Wilson for a trip he had not yet taken, and Libby didn't tell anyone that she was a covert op.

I almost feel bad for these folks. Someone give them a decent scandal.

====================================

Cheney's Office Is A Focus in Leak Case

Sources Cite Role Of Feud With CIA

By Jim VandeHei and Walter Pincus

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, October 18, 2005; A01

As the investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's name hurtles to an apparent conclusion, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has zeroed in on the role of Vice President Cheney's office, according to lawyers familiar with the case and government officials. The prosecutor has assembled evidence that suggests Cheney's long-standing tensions with the CIA contributed to the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame.

In grand jury sessions, including with New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Fitzgerald has pressed witnesses on what Cheney may have known about the effort to push back against ex-diplomat and Iraq war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV, including the leak of his wife's position at the CIA, Miller and others said. But Fitzgerald has focused more on the role of Cheney's top aides, including Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, lawyers involved in the case said.

One former CIA official told prosecutors early in the probe about efforts by Cheney's office and his allies at the National Security Council to obtain information about Wilson's trip as long as two months before Plame was unmasked in July 2003, according to a person familiar with the account.

It is not clear whether Fitzgerald plans to charge anyone inside the Bush administration with a crime. But with the case reaching a climax -- administration officials are braced for possible indictments as early as this week-- it is increasingly clear that Cheney and his aides have been deeply enmeshed in events surrounding the Plame affair from the outset.

It was a request by Cheney for more CIA information that, unknown to him, started a chain of events that led to Wilson's mission three years ago. His staff pressed the CIA for information about it one year later. And it was Libby who talked about Wilson's wife with at least two reporters before her identity became public, according to evidence Fitzgerald has amassed and which parties close to the case have acknowledged.

Lawyers in the case said Fitzgerald has focused extensively on whether behind-the-scenes efforts by the vice president's aides and other senior Bush aides were part of a criminal campaign to punish Wilson in part by unmasking his wife.

In a move people involved in the case read as a sign that the end is near, Fitzgerald's spokesman yesterday told the Associated Press that the prosecutor planned to announce his conclusions in Washington, where the grand jury has been meeting, instead of Chicago, where the prosecutor is based. Some lawyers close to the case cited courthouse talk that Fitzgerald might announce his findings as early as tomorrow, though hard evidence about his intentions and timing remained elusive.

In the course of the investigation, Fitzgerald has been exposed to the intense, behind-the-scenes fight between Cheney's office and the CIA over prewar intelligence and the vice president's central role in compiling and then defending the intelligence used to justify the war. Miller, in a first-person account Sunday in the Times, recalled that Libby complained in a June 23, 2003, meeting in his office that the CIA was engaged in "selective leaking" and a "hedging strategy" that would make the agency look equally prescient whether or not weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.

The special prosecutor has personally interviewed numerous officials from the CIA, White House and State Department. In the process, he and his investigative team have talked to a number of Cheney aides, including Mary Matalin, his former strategist; Catherine Martin, his former communications adviser; and Jennifer Millerwise, his former spokeswoman. In the case of Millerwise, she talked with the prosecutor more than two years ago but never appeared before the grand jury, according to a person familiar with her situation.

Starting in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the vice president was at the forefront of a White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that invading Iraq was central to defeating terrorists worldwide. Cheney, a longtime proponent of toppling Saddam Hussein, led the White House effort to build the case that Iraq was an imminent threat because it possessed a dangerous arsenal of weapons.

Before the war, he traveled to CIA headquarters for briefings, an unusual move that some critics interpreted as an effort to pressure intelligence officials into supporting his view of the evidence. After the war, when critics started questioning whether the White House relied on faulty information to justify war, Cheney and Libby were central to the effort to defend the intelligence and discredit the naysayers in Congress and elsewhere.

Administration officials acknowledge that Cheney was immersed in Iraq intelligence, and pressed aides repeatedly for information on weapons programs. He regularly requested follow-up information from the CIA and others when a piece of intelligence caught his eye. Wilson's trip, for example, was triggered by a question Cheney asked during a regular morning intelligence briefing. He had received a Defense Intelligence Agency report alleging Iraq had sought uranium from Niger and wanted to know what else the CIA may have known. Cheney's office was not told ahead of time about the Wilson mission to investigate the claim.

In the Bush White House, Cheney typically has operated secretly, relying on advice from a tight circle of longtime advisers, including Libby; David Addington, his counsel; and his wife, Lynne, and two children, including Liz, a top State Department official. But a former Cheney aide, who requested anonymity, said it is "implausible" that Cheney himself was involved in the leaking of Plame's name because he rarely, if ever, involved himself in press strategy.

One fact apparently critical to Fitzgerald's inquiry is when Libby learned about Plame and her CIA employment. Information that has emerged so far leaves this issue murky. A former CIA official told investigators that Cheney's office was seeking information about Wilson in May 2003, but it's not certain that officials with the vice president learned of the Plame connection then.

Miller, in her account, said Libby raised the issue of Plame in the June 23, 2003, meeting, describing her as a CIA employee and asserting that she had arranged the trip to Niger. Earlier that month, Libby discussed Wilson's trip with The Washington Post but never mentioned his wife.

Senior administration officials said there was a document circulated at the State Department -- before Libby talked to Miller -- that mentioned Plame. It was drafted in June as an administrative letter and addressed to then-Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, who was acting secretary at the time since Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Deputy Secretary Richard L. Armitage were out of the country.

As a former State Department official involved in the process recalled it, Grossman wanted the letter as background for a meeting at the White House, where the discussion was focused on then growing criticism of Bush's inclusion in his January State of the Union speech of the allegation that Hussein had been seeking uranium from Niger.

The letter to Grossman discussed the reasons the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) did not believe the intelligence, which originated from foreign sources, was accurate. It had a paragraph near the beginning, marked "(S)," meaning it was classified secret, describing a meeting at the CIA in February 2002, attended by another INR analyst, where Plame introduced her husband as the person who was to go to Niger.

Attached to the letter were the notes from the INR analyst who had attended the session, but they were written well after the event occurred and contained mistakes about who was there and what was said, according to a former intelligence official who reviewed the document in the summer of 2003.

Grossman has refused to answer questions about the letter, and it is not clear whether he talked about it at the White House meeting he was said to have attended, according to the former State official.

Fitzgerald has questioned several witnesses from the CIA and State Department before the grand jury about the INR memo, according to lawyers familiar with the case.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

[drlogic]

Leaks Abound in Leakgate Probe

Reporters insist that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald runs such a tight ship that it's impossible to discover what's going on with his Valerie Plame Leakgate investigation - before reporting in the next breath their latest "scoop" based, apparently, on leaked information.

Our favorite recipient of insider info is MSNBC commentator Lawrence O'Donnell, who confidently predicted last week that Fitzgerald was about to hit the Bush White House with 22 indictments of senior officials.

On Tuesday, one left-leaning web site breathlessly reported that a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney was secretly cooperating with Fitzgerald's probe in exchange for not being indicted himself. The next day, the same web site claimed that a second Cheney aide was talking to prosecutors.

The Cheney aides were identified by name in both reports - but since we can't vouch for the veracity of the leaks in question, we'll leave the Fitzgerald moles anonymous here.

In fact, based on a tsunami of leaks, rumors and tidbits emanating from "lawyers close to the investigation," pundits have been assuring for weeks now that indictments are on the way.

Meanwhile, New York Times reporter Judy Miller - whose testimony Fitzgerald deemed so critical that he put her in jail for 85 days to obtain it - turned out to be a dud.

When she finally lifted the curtain on what she knew in last Sunday's paper, her account seemed more likely to exonerate Karl Rove and Lewis Libby - who the press tells us are Fitzgerald's most likely targets.

Still, the fact that Fitzgerald's star witness went belly up did nothing to dampen the indictment predictions.

How can the media be so certain? There are only two possibilities. Either Fitzgerald's probe is so leaky they that these reporters know things they can't discuss. Or they're simply making it up.

Far be it for us to accuse these fine journalists of fabricating news, so we can only presume that the leaks they base their predictions on are as genuine as they are ominous.

But that raises a different issue. In 1998, when all sorts of insider information from Independent Counsel Ken Starr's impeachment probe turned up in the press - Democrats cried foul and then-Attorney General Janet Reno launched a very public investigation.

Given the proliferation of Leakgate leaks seven years later, it would seem the same type Justice Department investigation would be entirely appropriate.