[Ninong]

Just like members of Congress, the AP must have reserved the right to revise and extend their remarks because that article is getting rewritten every 30 minutes or so to add more details:

According to interviews with the National Journal, two senior government officials in recent days said Libby has also asserted that Cheney authorized him to leak classified information to a number of journalists during the run-up to war with Iraq. In some instances, the information leaked was directly discussed with the Vice President, while in other instances Libby believed he had broad authority to release information that would make the case to go to war.

In yet another instance, the Journal reported that Libby had claimed President Bush authorized Libby to speak to and provide classified information to Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward for "Plan of Attack," a book written by Woodward about the run-up to the Iraqi war.


_______________________________________________

"Those individuals [Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and Elliot Abrams] assured me that they were not involved in this." -- White House Press Secretary, 10/4/03

[Ninong]

OK, it's sad and pathetic but hilarious nonetheless. The biased liberal media continues to protect the leakers.

"A senior administration official, speaking on background because White House policy prohibits comment on an active investigation, said Bush sees a distinction between leaks and what he is alleged to have done. The official said Bush authorized the release of the classified information to assure the public of his rationale for war as it was coming under increasing scrutiny." -- April 7, 2006

We all know that no senior administration official in the Bush administration ever says anything to the press unless it was authorized at the highest level, so why don't they just make all of their statements openly and with attribution?

Why not just come out and say that the President's position is that anything he does is ipso facto legal? Sure, it's not the way it's usually done but that doesn't make it illegal. Creepy maybe, but not illegal. OK, so there are procedures in place for declassifying documents to make sure we don't release information damaging to our security but those procedures should not get in the way of the President doing what he thinks best in the performance of his duties as Leaker-in-Chief.

Most other presidents would have submitted the document in question for a review by the appropriate agency heads first and had it officially declassified before selectively leaking it to a few favored reporters. And let's not overlook the fact that this document, the NIE on Iraq, was submitted for declassification and was actually declassified ten days later. It's true that George Tenet wasn't told that it had already been leaked but that's because he didn't have a "need to know." And besides, we gave him the Medal of Freedom for doing a heckuva job on the same day the 9/11 Commission released a report highly critical of his management of the C.I.A. prior to 9/11.


__________________________________________________ _

"I want to know the truth. ... I have no idea whether we'll find out who the leaker is, partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers." -- George W. Bush, 10/28/03

[Ninong]

"A senior administration official, speaking on background because White House policy prohibits comment on an active investigation, said Bush sees a distinction between leaks and what he is alleged to have done. The official said Bush authorized the release of the classified information to assure the public of his rationale for war as it was coming under increasing scrutiny." -- April 7, 2006

The biased liberal media, in this case the no-longer liberal Washington Post, can drop the "alleged" crap. Scooter Libby testified under oath before the grand jury that Cheney authorized him to leak classified information from the Iraq NIE to reporters and that Cheney assured him that Bush had personally approved this. So there is no need to pussyfoot around the issue of whether the claim is true or not.

Of course it's true!

If it were not true, it would mean that the two highest ranking law enforcement agents in the country, the President and the Vice President, were condoning perjury by the former Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the Vice President, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, by failing to speak up.

"No comment" won't cover this little debacle. "No comment" is the same as "it's true." Otherwise Cheney will have to testify, under oath, at Libby's trial that Libby committed perjury before the grand jury. But he can't wait until then, can he? No, he can't. If either the President or the Vice President knows that Libby's statement is untrue, they must say so now. And they haven't, have they? Of course not.

BTW, I noticed in Fitzgerald's filing that he has no plans to call Dick Cheney, Karl Rove or Stephen Hadley; however, that doesn't stop the defense from calling them.


__________________________________________________ __

"Let me answer what the President has said. I speak for the President and I'll talk to you about what he wants . . .If someone leaked classified information, the President wants to know. If someone in this administration leaked classified information, they will no longer be a part of this administration, because that's not the way this White House operates, that's not the way this President expects people in his administration to conduct their business." -- White House Press Secretary, 10/7/03

[Ninong]

Here's another example of the people at the top not telling Scotty what's going on. In a press conference on July 18, 2003, a reporter questioned Scotty about the declassification of the Iraq NIE. Here's the exchange:


Q When was it actually declassified?
MR. McCLELLAN: It was officially declassified today.

Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...030718-10.html

Shouldn't they go back and correct the White House's official website to reflect the fact that it was declassified previously (at least 10 days previously) by the President himself? Scooter Libby and Judy Miller have both testified that they met on July 8, 2003 and Scooter has testified that he was authorized to disclose "certain information" to her from the previously classified NIE on Iraq. He stated under oath that this was very unusual and he doesn't remember anything like that ever happening before, which is why he questioned the Vice President to make certain that Bush said it was OK and Scooter wouldn't get in trouble for it. (Yeah, right!)

We now know that the information was declassified by the President himself prior to July 8, 2003 but he chose to keep this fact secret from his Director of Central Intelligence. In fact, he chose to keep it secret from Stephen Hadley, who was then the Assistant National Security Advisor. It was Hadley who was charged with getting Tenet to declassify the document. This is really neat. It's like when Pope John Paul II named a Cardinal in pectore and kept his name secret. Well, not quite the same because Bush did tell Cheney and he told Cheney it was OK to tell Libby but no one else.

So, anyway, maybe they should go back and put a little asterisk footnote at the bottom of that July 18, 2003 press release to reflect the fact that the Iraq NIE was really declassified secretly by President Bush at least ten days before it was declassified "officially" by the DCIA. Rather confusing.

Just keep in mind that anything the king does is legal because he's the king. Another example of L'Etat, c'est moi.


__________________________________________________

"Those individuals [Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and Elliot Abrams] assured me that they were not involved in this." -- White House Press Secretary, 10/4/03

[Ninong]

We all know that Fox News spouts the official RNC line as gospel truth but it's discouraging to see other media outlets continue to repeat false claims put out by the White House without bothering to verify them and correct the spin.

Case in point: The Office of the Vice President has been claiming since this Plame story broke that Amb. Joseph Wilson falsely claimed that he was sent to Niger by Vice President Cheney and that all they were doing was alerting the media (Novak, Miller, Cooper, et alia) that this wasn't true and therefore they shouldn't get too far out on this story.

Here is how NBC's Chief White House Correspondent David Gregory explained it on MSNBC's Hardball yesterday:

The point here is that Wilson alleges that the trip was set up essentially by the vice-president, that Cheney knew that he was going and knew of his findings. So the vice-president did have a personal interest in saying, Whoa, that was not the case. And in fact, that was not the case, that the vice-president ordered him to go or arranged the trip. And there`s a big controversy about whether he was ultimately briefed on the results.

Here is exactly what Wilson wrote in his New York Times op ed of July 6, 2003 (the same op ed that caused the people in the White House to go into panic mode and set up the meeting between Libby and Miller two days later):


In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.

After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government.

Notice that Wilson does NOT say that "the Vice President ordered him to go or arranged the trip." The White House has claimed that he said that just so they could shoot it down but he didn't say that. The stupid MSM continues to repeat the White House's false spin on this detail.

And, just to keep the facts straight, the Vice President did ask the C.I.A. to investigate the possibility that Saddam was attempting to acquire uranium yellowcake from Niger. Upon Wilson's return, he prepared a report for the C.I.A. He assumed that a written report would be forwarded to the Office of the Vice President since that would be the normal procedure. The Vice President claims that he never "read" a report on "Wilson's findings." Think about this for a minute. George Tenet, the DCIA, knows that Cheney is looking for information "helpful" to his plans to invade Iraq regardless of the findings. Is it possible that Tenet briefed the Vice President privately on Wilson's findings and the Vice President then told him that he really didn't want a formal report with those conclusions??? Sure it's possible! That way Cheney can say that he never "read" a report on Wilson's trip. He could also say that he never "saw" a report on Wilson's trip.

George Tenet, as we all know, resigned under a storm of criticism. Shortly thereafter, he received the Medal of Freedom from a grateful President for "doing a heckuva job."


_________________________________________________

"Those individuals [Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and Elliot Abrams] assured me that they were not involved in this." -- White House Press Secretary, 10/4/03

[Ninong]

"And there`s a big controversy about whether he was ultimately briefed on the results." -- David Gregory, NBC White House correspondent, referring to the Vice President and the results of Wilson's trip to Niger.

Think about this for a minute. The Vice President, accompanied by his Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, made several trips to the C.I.A. to interview agents personally and let them know of the importance the administration attached to the discovery of intelligence that would support their plans for the invasion of Iraq. Or, at the very least, to let them know of the urgency of discovering "the truth" about Saddam's WMD program. It would be extremely naive to believe that the agents at the C.I.A. were unaware of the Vice President's views on Saddam Hussein.

We also know for a fact (because this has been admitted) that the Office of the Vice President did ask the C.I.A. to investigate the possibility that Saddam had tried to acquire uranium yellowcake from Niger and that this was prompted by the forged documents provided by that Italian former agent to a magazine owned by Berlusconi. What are the odds that the C.I.A. would NOT inform the Office of the Vice President of the results of an investigation that they had been asked to undertake by that office?

And, just as an aside, we now know that the President and Vice President were informed several months prior to the January 2003 State of the Union address that the document in question was not credible and probably a forgery, which is why the 16 words in the address were so carefully parsed to shift responsibility to the British.

Here are the 16 words: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

If you will remember, the White House immediately retracted those 16 words the very next day and admitted that they shouldn't have been included in the speech. George Tenet personally took the fall for that (one of the reasons he later received the Medal of Freedom) by claiming that he should have caught it first. It was Tenet who caused the President to remove that same claim from an October 2002 speech in Ohio.

And the aluminum tubes were NOT suitable for use in a uranium enrichment centrifuge according to our own State Department and our own Energy Department. It was Rumsfeld's Department of Defense and the C.I.A. that said they might be suitable for uranium enrichment. The fact that our own nuclear engineers at the Department of Energy, experts in this field, did not agree with the assessment of the Defense Department was ignored. We later learned that they were for legal conventional weapons.

Here is another misleading claim from that same address:

"From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents, and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors."

Two of the defectors were supplied by Ahmed Chalabi and the third was Mr. "Curveball," who was debriefed by German intelligence. He was the primary source for the mobile biological weapons labs claim and German intelligence later said that they couldn't believe we would take him seriously since they reported that his claims were not credible. The mobile "biological weapons labs designed to produce germ warfare agents" turned out to be mobile weather stations.

Chalabi later admitted that he purchased defectors for us and that he was proud of the fact that he achieved his goals and not at all embarrassed by the fact that his defectors manufacturered "intelligence" that he knew we wanted to hear. He admits this openly now, even bragging about it. It's sort of like, "I fooled the stupid Americans and took their money but I got rid of Saddam and I don't care how I did it, I got what I wanted and that's all that matters." Interesting to note that Chalabi has zero seats in the new Iraqi parliament, while the evil Moqtada Al-Sadr has 32 seats in the new parliament and personally selected Al-Jaafari as the Prime Minister! And he still has his militia, the Mahdi Army. And we still haven't arrested him like we said we were going to do.

That address was filled with false claims, some of which (like the idea that Saddam still had hundreds of tons of biological agents) were based on faulty intelligence and others that were based on cherry-picked intelligence even though we had contradictory conclusions from our own intelligence agencies. A lot of it was based on lies fed to us by people supplied by Chalabi, who was receiving $300,000/month from Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department, much to the chagrin of Colin Powell at the State Department who considered him a con artist and a crook. Rumsfeld was wrong, Powell was right.

P.S. -- One of my favorite chapters from this sorry tale is when Kofi Annan asked us to please give him detailed directions on where the U.N. inspectors might find Saddam's WMDs since the inspectors were coming up empty handed. We were unable to do so because our information came from Mr. "Curveball" who visualized the map of Saddam's WMD storage facilities "in a dream!" And, by the way, we never debriefed "Curveball." Not once. We based everything on the hallucinatory report he gave to the Germans. The Germans told us he was a drunk and an idiot and that his claims had virtually no credibility whatsoever but they were just passing them on for what it's worth, if anything. They said they were shocked that we took him seriously.


__________________________________________________

"I want to know the truth. ... I have no idea whether we'll find out who the leaker is, partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers." -- George W. Bush, 10/28/03

[Ninong]

This isn't really a new story except for the fact that the Sunday Times will name the two individuals who forged the documents: The Niger consul general in Rome and the personal assistant to the Niger ambassador in Rome.

Before we get into the details, let me just throw in the moral of this story at the beginning: If you offer enough money for a certain piece of intelligence, someone will "find" it for you.

According to NATO sources who spoke to the SUNDAY TIMES, the investigation has evidence that Niger's consul and its ambassador's personal assistant faked a contract to show Saddam Hussein had bought uranium ore from the impoverished west African country.

The documents, which emerged in 2002, were used in a State Department fact sheet on Iraq's weapons program to build the case for war. They were denounced as forgeries by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) shortly before the 2003 invasion.

According to the SUNDAY TIMES' sources, an official investigation believes Niger's Adam Maiga Zakariaou, the consul, and Laura Montini, the ambassador's personal assistant, known as La Signora, forged the papers for money.

(...)

The story of the fake deal had begun with a meeting in a Rome bar in February 2000 set up by Antonio Nucera, an officer in the Sismi, the Italian intelligence agency, between two of his former agents, Rocco Martino and Montini. However, unknown to the Sismi, Martino, a former policeman turned spy, had been working for the French intelligence service, the DGSE, since 1996. He was controlled by the DGSE head of station in Brussels, who paid him a retainer of 1,500 - 2,000 euros a month.

(...)

The French, who were watching for any attempt by Saddam to obtain uranium from Niger, showed great interest and told Martino they wanted more information. Martino asked Montini if she could get a copy of a contract for Niger to supply Iraq with uranium.

"Martino told me that if he was able to obtain a copy of a contract then he would have earned a lot of money from an unspecified 'intelligence' organization," she told the magistrate.

The lure of the money was apparently too much, the SUNDAY TIMES reveals.

"She was [the ambassador's] trusted personal assistant. The consul Zakariaou . . . needed money. He would help her forge the documents," the Nato sources said.

(...)

Last October, the Italian daily La Repubblica reported that then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley discussed the documents in a secret meeting with the chief of Italy's military intelligence service after the CIA had already repeatedly rejected them.

P.S. -- The "unspecified intelligence organization" willing to pay big bucks for any proof that Saddam was trying to acquire uranium yellowcake from Niger would be France's Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE) / General Directorate for External Security. It was their offer of money that "inspired" the two Nigerois officials to forge the documents. And they were really amateurish forgeries with gross misspellings in the French, on the wrong letterhead and with the forged signature of an official who had left office nearly 12 years earlier.

It is interesting to note that the ball was put in play by Antonio Nucera, a colonel in SISMI, in a meeting with two of his former SISMI agents, Rocco Martino and Laura Montini. Now, if Montini (the assistant to the Nigerois ambassador to Italy) is guilty of forging the documents, why is she still running around free? No one that I know of has been arrested. And, isn't it curious that we got the documents from the Italians? And Berlusconi is Bush's good buddy, although he will probably lose re-election and then they'll have a center-left government for a while. Italy like to change governments quite often. I guess we'll know by Sunday evening that Berlusconi lost.

I wonder what the Times means by "NATO sources?" That's weird. Why don't they identify which NATO country the NATO sources are from? Could they be Italians? If so, are they trying to cover up something they may have been involved in up to their eyeballs?

It was these documents that our own C.I.A. and our own State Department Intelligence people said were probably forgeries but which Cheney and Rumsfeld chose to accept as proof of Saddam's attempt to acquire uranium ore from Niger. We held onto them for months before finally turning them over to the I.A.E.A. for inspection. The I.A.E.A. promptly declared that they were forgeries but by this time we were about ready to invade Iraq.

And don't overlook the fact that the "certain information" from the Iraq NIE that Cheney asked Scooter Libby to leak to reporters was about the claims that Saddam was trying to acquire uranium ore from Niger, something that had already been revealed to the administration as false. So Bush and Cheney were asking Libby to spread a bunch of lies.

The whole mess stinks to high heaven but we can stop worrying about that now and concentrate on getting out of the Civil War in Iraq before we begin the War in Iran. I understand that Rumsfeld has assured everyone that the people of Iran will rise up and overthrow their government once we begin dropping nuclear bunker-busters on their hardened nuclear enrichment facilities. I kid you not! Planning for the Iran War includes Rumsfeld's prediction that the Iranian people will welcome us as liberators and overthrow their repressive government. Sound familiar?


__________________________________________________

"The President has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration." -- White House Press Secretary, 9/29/03

[schrocat]

Denny Hastert needs to be asked if he will replace Rumsfeld after the Nov elections.

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by schrocat

Denny Hastert needs to be asked if he will replace Rumsfeld after the Nov elections.

Denny Hastert? Don't you mean Nancy Pelosi? Double impeachment proceedings would take several months.




P.S. -- Impeachment is out of the question as long as the House and the Senate are in Republican hands. And even if the Democrats pull off a miracle and gain control of both in November, I don't see much hope for a successful impeachment. Maybe I should say I don't see much hope for a successful conviction in the Senate. It is far more likely that we could see a Reaganesque apology on national T.V. telling us how he was only doing what he thought was best for the country. That would give cover to the Republicans in the Senate in the event that the Democrats insisted on going forward with an impeachment.

For an impeachment to have any chance at all, the President must continue to assert unlimited unitary executive powers and refuse to back down even after he loses the support of many members of his own party in the Senate. Then it would have a chance.

P.P.S. -- The chances that the Democrats could gain control of the Senate are not all that good. They would need a net gain of 7 seats. That's because the one Independent (Jim Jeffords) is retiring. There are only 44 Democrats right now. Only one-third of the Senate seats are up at any one time and, of those, very few are realistically in play. I think it's much more likely that the Democrats will pick up two or three seats in the Senate in November and then enough additional seats in November 2008 to gain control assuming a strong Democratic ticket at the top.

If the polls continue the current trends, the Democrats will likely pick up 20 seats in the House this November. U.S. military intervention in Iran between now and then could change the dynamics in unpredictable ways.

[Ninong]

I don't know if I mentioned this previously, but let's not overlook the fact that the only information Scooter Libby passed on to reporters -- on orders from Cheney -- concerned something that had been disproven months earlier. And, according to Judy Miller's testimony, Libby told her that was one of the "key judgments" of the report. That's lie! It was never a "key judgement" of the report. It was buried in the report sort of for-what-it's-worth. The "key judgments" were identified as key judgments and listed under that heading with bullets. Not only that, but the information Libby leaked to Miller was called "highly dubious" in the Iraq NIE report itself. Libby passed it on as if it was gospel truth that was agreed to by all of the government's various intelligence agencies. That was a lie in itself!

By the time Bush, Cheney and Libby decided to release the "intelligence" that supposedly proved that Saddam was trying to acquire uranium ore from Niger, it had already been debunked completely by the IAEA and our own CIA and State Department's intelligence units. The information was not only stale, it was known to be false at the time it was leaked and it was considered highly dubious before that.

P.S. -- Bush kept insisting that he didn't know of anyone in his administration who had leaked this information to the press. I guess that's because Scooter Libby asked Judy Miller to attribute it to "a former Hill staffer" and, like a good little pre$$titute, she complied. The fact that the President himself had ordered the Vice President to "get the information out" doesn't count. L'Etat, c'est moi. If the king does it, it's ipso facto legal.


__________________________________________________

"I want to know the truth. ... I have no idea whether we'll find out who the leaker is, partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers." -- George W. Bush, 10/28/03

[Ninong]

In all fairness, let's listen to President Bush admit that he "did it" and explain why he did it:

Video-WMP Video-QT

There. Feel better now?


________________________________________________

"The President has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration." -- White House Press Secretary, 9/29/03

[Ninong]

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has filed a correction with the court to his previous filing in response to a filing by Libby's attorneys questioning Fitzgerald's use of the term "key judgment" as it applied to Libby's discussion of the Iraq NIE's section on uranium. Libby's attorneys insist that he drew careful distinctions between the key judgments of the NIE about WMD and its section on uranium.

Fitzgerald agrees and amended his previous filing.

[Ninong]

This is getting hilarious. Libby's latest filing states that he intends to call Karl Rove and Ari Fleisher in his defense because, according to Libby, they are the ones who outed Valerie Plame Wilson, not him.

This is cute. Both Judy Miller and Tim Russert have already testified before the grand jury that they are positive that Libby told them about Valerie Plame Wilson working for the CIA. So Libby is now throwing Rove and Fleisher under the bus in an attempt to save himself.

Fleisher has already testified that Libby took him out to lunch and told him that it was not widely known but Joe Wilson's wife works at the CIA and she had a hand in sending him to Niger. Fleisher said that it was the first time Libby had ever taken him to lunch and he understood the conversation to mean that he should somehow get that information out. So he did. So Fleisher is saying that it was Libby who outed Valerie Plame Wilson to him and then he outed her to certain reporters.

Libby is pointing out that Miller and other reporters have testified that Karl Rove told them about Valerie Plame Wilson. So Libby will try to prove that the reporters were mistaken in thinking that he, too, mentioned Valerie to them. He only mentioned it to Ari Fleisher and he has no idea what possessed Ari to leak that sensitive information to the press.

So, let's see where we are right now...

Libby will claim that he was too busy with the affairs of state to be bothered with outing Valerie Plame Wilson.

He will also claim that if he gave incorrect or incomplete information to the FBI or to the grand jury, it was due to faulty memory and not because he was withholding information or trying to mislead the investigation.

He will call both Ari Fleisher and Karl Rove and force them to admit publicly that they outed Valerie Plame Wilson to the press. This will also subject both of them to public cross examination by Fitzgerald. What a gift to Fitzgerald!

What a shame that this trial is scheduled to start in January instead of September.

[Ninong]

I finally found a story on Libby's latest court filing, the one his attorneys filed late Wednesday night. Looks like they're saying that Fitzgerald does have plans to call Ari Fleisher to the stand but not Karl Rove. (Which might indicate that Fitzgerald has cleared Fleisher but has not yet cleared Rove. That's because it would be highly unusual for the prosecutor to call as a witness someone who might possibly be indicted himself.)

Anyway, Libby's attorneys will be calling both Fleisher and Rove as witnesses. That should be very interesting.

According to a story in today's Boston Globe:

In papers filed late Wednesday night in connection with Libby's perjury indictment, his lawyers accuse Fitzgerald of trying to "have it both ways" by revealing information about the inner workings of the administration while dismissing their own requests for similar information as irrelevant to the charges, which concern only whether Libby lied under oath about his contacts with reporters.

"Far from focusing on what Mr. Libby said and did, the government's disclosure focused on the role of two other players in the matter, President Bush and Vice President [Dick] Cheney, setting off an avalanche of media interest," Libby's lawyer wrote. "In other words, the government has effectively conceded that the case extends far beyond Mr. Libby, but refuses to provide defendant with discovery that reflects that fact."

(...)

The filing also sheds further light on Libby's defense strategy in the perjury case. The filing says Libby wants to show that Plame Wilson's identity was viewed as "peripheral" and that exposing her role was not part of the White House's planned response to Joseph C. Wilson IV. Thus, "any misstatements he made" to the grand jury about whether he told reporters about Plame while discussing Niger were "innocent mistakes."

To build that defense, Libby's lawyers say they need access to any documents about the circumstances and results of Wilson's trip to Niger, as well as documents sent, received, or reviewed in the spring and summer of 2003 by potential witnesses in the perjury case.

In particular, they say they want to scrutinize former undersecretary of state Marc Grossman, who testified that he told Libby that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. Libby testified that he remembered no such conversation. The filing also mentions White House political adviser Karl Rove and former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.

(...)

THE FOLLOWING IS FROM LIBBY'S FILING (PDF TO BE POSTED BY NOON FRIDAY ET)

Below, we provide further examples of why the documents we seek are necessary to prepare to examine three particular witnesses – Mr. Grossman, Mr. Fleischer, and Mr. Rove.

Marc Grossman. As discussed in the introduction, the government plans to call Under Secretary Grossman to testify that he discussed Ms. Wilson’s CIA employment with Mr. Libby – a conversation that Mr. Libby testified in the grand jury he did not recall and which may not have occurred as alleged in the indictment. For example, the indictment asserts that this conversation occurred “[o]n or about June 11 or 12, 2003.” (Indictment, Count One, at ¶ 6.)

Accordingly, Mr. Grossman’s activities in that time period, including any other communications about Ms. Wilson that he may have had, are highly relevant. If, for example, documents indicate that Mr. Grossman confused details of the conversation alleged in the indictment with a conversation with another government official, the defense will use such documents to suggest that his recollection is faulty. In a case where it is already manifest that the memories of many witnesses conflict regarding many different conversations, it is not fair to foreclose the possibility that witnesses other than Mr. Libby may be confused or mistaken about relevant events.

It is unreasonable for the government to contend that because Mr. Grossman’s “testimony will not be offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted,” it is irrelevant whether his statements are substantively true. (Gov’t Br. at 11.) Regardless of the government’s limited offer, the defense has a constitutional right to attempt to demonstrate, if it so chooses, that the substance of Mr. Grossman’s testimony is incorrect, and that all of his testimony should be rejected, including his allegation that he spoke to Mr. Libby about Ms. Wilson on a particular day. The best way to do that would be to show that some part or all of Mr. Grossman’s statements were substantively untrue.

The government responds to the defense contention that bias on the part of Mr. Grossman deserves to be explored by stating that “loyalty to Mr. Armitage or to the State Department” would not cause Mr. Grossman to “invent conversations . . . and testify to them under oath.” (Id. at 14.) Whether the government’s statement on this point is true is for the jury to decide....

Finally, by arguing that Mr. Grossman’s credibility is beyond challenge, the government has once again staked out two hopelessly inconsistent positions. The government asserts that Mr. Libby was motivated to lie under oath to avoid causing “great embarrassment to the administration.” (Id. at 26.) Yet, at the same time, the government also argues that the defense should not have the opportunity to determine whether Mr. Grossman might be motivated to testify in a manner that would prevent embarrassment to the State Department.

Ari Fleischer. The government states that it intends to call former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer to testify about a conversation with Mr. Libby, during which Ms. Wilson’s identity was allegedly discussed.

Again, as with Mr. Grossman, the defense has the right to challenge this allegation and investigate when and how Mr. Fleischer learned of Ms. Wilson’s employment. The government has admitted that “multiple officials in the White House discussed her employment with reporters prior to (and after) July 14,” and the defense has the right to explore whether any of these other officials may also have discussed Ms. Wilson with Mr. Fleischer. (Id. at 30, n.10.) In addition, Mr. Fleischer may have learned about Ms. Wilson’s identity from someone at the State Department or the CIA. The defense therefore needs access to any documents discussing Mr. Wilson, his wife, or his trip to Niger that may be found in the White House or at other agencies. Such documents are needed to investigate properly when and how Mr. Fleischer learned that Ms. Wilson worked for the CIA and when and with whom (other than Mr. Libby) he discussed that fact.

In our moving brief, the defense pointed to an even more specific reason to scrutinize the government’s proffered version of Mr. Fleischer’s testimony. Press accounts suggest that Mr. Fleischer may have learned about Ms. Wilson during his trip to Africa after seeing it in a classified report sent to Mr. Powell on Air Force One and then disclosed this information to reporters. Yet, the government claims that nothing further is required for Mr. Fleischer’s cross-examination than “a copy of the report in question.” (Id. at 12.) In so arguing, the government is once again attempting to dictate which defenses may be raised and which allegations in the indictment may be challenged. Nothing in Rule 16 or the case law of this Circuit suggests that the defense should be limited to cross-examining Mr. Fleischer with only the one report that the government deigns to disclose.

(...)

The government’s contention that the report is all the defense needs to cross- examine Mr. Fleischer is unpersuasive. Other documents, totally unrelated to the report, may show that Mr. Fleischer learned about Ms. Wilson from someone other than Mr. Libby. Also, the substance of the report is not as important as what Mr. Fleischer did with or said about the report. That information is likely reflected in correspondence, notes, or e-mails in Mr. Fleischer’s files, not in the report itself. After reviewing such documents, the defense will be better equipped to examine Mr. Fleischer about whether he saw the report on Air Force One, whether he recognized that it contained classified information, and whether he communicated its contents to anyone else.

Karl Rove. Senior White House advisor Karl Rove figures prominently in the government’s indictment. He allegedly spoke both to Mr. Novak and Mr. Libby about Ms. Wilson’s affiliation with the CIA. Accordingly, the government’s statement that it does not presently intend to call Mr. Rove does not diminish his importance in this case. The defense is likely to call Mr. Rove to provide testimony regarding Mr. Libby’s conversations with Mr. Rove concerning reporters’ inquiries about Ms. Wilson, as expressly discussed in the indictment. (Indictment, Count One, at ¶ 21.) Documents from Mr. Rove’s files about the subjects outlined in the indictment are discoverable pursuant to Rule 16 because without them the defense cannot effectively prepare for Mr. Rove’s examination. As discussed above, Rule 16 compels disclosure of such documents even if Mr. Rove remains a subject of a continuing grand jury investigation.

[Ninong]

Now that Berlusconi is out and Prodi is in, I wonder if we will find out what really happened with those mysterious forged Niger documents? Conspiracy theories abound. Was Berlusconi just trying to be "helpful?" Boy, would that open a can of worms! Cheney would have to retreat to his secure, undisclosed location for the remainder of his term.

[Ninong]

Unlike Pravda on the Potomac, the Times still has a relatively sane editorial board.

Here is the editorial in Sunday's Times:

Editorial

A Bad Leak

Published: April 16, 2006

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.

[Ninong]

Now that Fitzgerald has finally nailed the former Republican governor of Illinois on corruption charges, after previously convicting 75 of his compatriots, he'll have more time to devote to Karl Rove et al.

According to sources, Fitzgerald presented new evidence to the grand jury yesterday against Rove. We may not have too much longer to wait. This could also explain the White House's move to get Rove out of his domestic policy advisor role.

[Ninong]

Patrick Fitzgerald went before the grand jury again this morning and now Karl Rove will be making his fifth appearance before the grand jury this afternoon to answer questions about evidence that emerged since his last grand jury appearance last fall.

Let's see if he can continue to talk his way out of an indictment.




P.S. -- Let's not forget just how much damage revealing Valerie Plame's CIA status did to our intelligence capabilities. That's the reason the CIA asked the Justice Department to conduct an investigation. If she had been just a paper pusher, as the wingnuts would have us believe, they wouldn't have been so concerned. She was a