April 18, 2006
Evelyn Pringle
Now that we've spent millions of tax dollars on the CIA leak investigation, here’s a new bit of information that adds a whole new twist to the saga.
According to a recent article by ace investigative reporter, Jason Leopold, Dick Cheney met with Bush in early June 2003, and told him that CIA agent Valerie Plame was the wife of Iraq war critic Joe Wilson and that she was responsible for sending Joe on a fact-finding mission to check out reports about Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium from Africa.
And the chat wasn't limited to Bush and Cheney. “Other White House officials who also attended the meeting with Cheney and President Bush,” Jason reports, “included former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, her former deputy Stephen Hadley, and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove.”
Furthermore, Jason says, during the second half of June 2003, Rove, Card, and other officials from Cheney's office kept Bush apprised on the progress of the campaign to discredit Wilson, in emails and internal White House memos, no less, some of which were only recently turned over to the special prosecutor's office, Jason says.
No wonder Libby is so ticked off. Cheney and Bush got the ball rolling and the whole gang was involved in the planning and execution of the plot, yet Scooters the one on the outside looking in and facing a possible 30-year prison term.
So, the big question is, how many members of the Wilson-Plame-assassination-squad have been interviewed by the FBI, how many have testified under oath before the grand jury, and most importantly for Bush and Cheney, how many have been able to stick to the same story.
Jason says that 36 administration officials have been interviewed which means 36 people would have to stay on message and repeat the same talking points. This would take a miracle.
Also, according to Jason’s sources, during Bush's interview with the special prosecutor, he did not fess up to the fact that he was aware of the campaign to discredit Wilson and said he did not know who had leaked Valerie’s name to the media.
On June 24, 2004, Bush was interviewed for about 70 minutes. The only other member of the Bush team in the room during the meeting was Jim Sharp, the private lawyer that Bush hired, according to White House press secretary, Scott McClellan.
"The leaking of classified information is a very serious matter," McClellan told reporters at the time. "No one wants to get to the bottom of this matter more than the president of the United States," he said.
I like that line, "no one wants to get to the bottom of this matter" more than Bush.
Yea sure. In a book released around the same time as Bush's interview, Joe Wilson, pointed the finger at Scooter Libby as the leaker, and the White House not only adamantly denied the claim, it accused Wilson of trying to bolster John Kerry's campaign.
If its any consolation to Fitzgerald, the President's memory was no better on September 30, 2003, a year before his interview, when talking to reporters at the University of Chicago. Bush never once mentioned the little group-think sessions in the White House to them either.
Instead, he just kept repeating the same talking points until he sounded like a drunk three sheets to the wind. But then who knows, maybe he was.
In reading Bush's statements, its important to understand that the sole issue raised by reporters was the question of who leaked Valerie's identify to the media, nothing about classified documents or anything else. So every comment refers to that issue only.
When a reporter asked, “Do you think that the Justice Department can conduct an impartial investigation, considering the political ramifications of the CIA leak, and why wouldn't a special counsel be better?”
Bush completely skirted the question, and swung into his well-rehearsed talking points.
"Let me just say something about leaks in Washington," he said. "There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington," he told reporters.
"There's leaks at the executive branch," he said, "there's leaks in the legislative branch."
"There's just too many leaks," Bush stated. "And if there is a leak out of my administration," he said, "I want to know who it is."
But apparently here lies the catch-all legal loop-hole phrase. "And if the person has violated law,” Bush said, “the person will be taken care of.”
"I have told our administration, people in my administration to be fully cooperative," he assured reporters.
In light of Jason‘s findings above, this particular comment has me concerned that maybe Dick Cheney, Andy Card, Condi Rice, Stephen Hadley, and Karl Rove are all deaf.
"I want to know the truth," the President proclaimed.
I found this statement extremely comical, coming from a pathological liar who cheated his way into the White House to begin with and then rigged the next election to get a second term.
That said, Bush put on an Oscar-winning performance for the reporters in Chicago when he was practically begging for anyone with information about the CIA leak to come forward.
"If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration," he said, "it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business."
When a reporter started to ask whether he had talked to Karl Rove and whether he had confidence in Karl....
The President cut him off and went right back to the talking points. "Listen," he stuttered, "I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information."
"If somebody did leak classified information," he continued, "I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action."
"And this investigation is a good thing," he lied through his teeth and said.
"And again I repeat," he said, like a broken record, "you know, Washington is a town where there's all kinds of allegations."
"You've heard much of the allegations," the President said. "And if people have got solid information," Bush pleaded again, "please come forward with it."
"And that would be people inside the information who are the so-called anonymous sources," he stuttered on, "or people outside the information -- outside the administration."
The guy almost sounds sincere when he says he wants to wrap the situation up quickly.
"And we can clarify this thing very quickly," Bush said, "if people who have got solid evidence would come forward and speak out."
"And I would hope they would," he added. "And then we'll get to the bottom of this and move on."
He obviously was up all night rehearsing because he went right back to the mantra a third time about how, "leaks of classified information are a bad thing."
How there's "too much leaking in Washington," and on and on like a drunken slob.
"I've spoken out consistently against them," he said, "and I want to know who the leakers are."
I think Jason Leopold should go talk to Bush. The poor guy's been begging for somebody to come forward with this information for 3 years.
Showing posts with label Rove. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rove. Show all posts
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Friday, July 30, 2010
Bush & Cheney Get Over On Fitzgerald
Evelyn Pringle April 10, 2006
With the latest revelations in the CIA leak case, the question on the minds of most Americans, is whether Bush and Cheney were the masterminds in an organized plot to destroy Joe Wilson by revealing his wife's name and status as a undercover agent of the CIA.
Hands down, yes they were. And a brilliant scheme it was; especially when one considers that the combined IQ of Bush and Cheney is probably not equal to that of a goat.
A concerted effort to destroy a critic is not a jailable offense. But it would seem that because they knew Valerie Plame was an under-cover operative, and knew the information was classified, that such a disclosure would be in legal terms "willful." In other words, a disclosure of information on purpose, even though they knew it was classified.
Although that may be true, being Bush and Cheney knew they were the culprits at the center of the investigation, they came up with a plan to hog-tie Prosecutor Fitzgerald and sabotage his investigation right from the start.
While it may appear that Bush stepped in to take the fall for Libby, don't believe it for one minute. Bush would never, never take a fall for anyone, probably not even his own mother. Or I should say for sure not his own mother, because he obviously has a lot of unresolved issues with her.
Bush stepped in because he was forced to by Libby's court filings. He knew this day would come but he also knew he was untouchable.
When Libby leaked the name of a CIA operative he released classified information, which would be a crime, if he acted on his own authority, as most of us believed. But now we find out that he was not acting on his own authority, he was acting under instructions from Cheney and Bush and thus, as it turns out, he did nothing illegal.
That is, until he lied, presumably to save the butts of Cheney and Bush. If Libby would have simply went before the grand jury and told the truth, the saga would have ended then and there and the public would have known the truth before the last Presidential election.
In covering for Bush, Libby's lies can be credited for giving Bush a second term. But a lot of good it did him. So long as Bush sticks to the story that unbeknownst to anyone, besides himself, Cheney and Libby, he had "declassified" certain information and told Cheney to instruct Libby to release it, Bush and Cheney walk, but Libby does not.
Fitzgerald knew this was going to happen and this is why it always seemed as if he was talking in circles when discussing Libby's indictment and why he continued to say over and over that Libby was not being charged with leaking the name of a CIA agent, and that furthermore, he did he plan to charge Libby with that crime.
Fitzgerald knows full well that the White House pulled a fast one on him.
He knew it shortly after his investigation got underway. But Libby is still going down, in part, probably because Fitzgerald is ticked off over being had. And in turn, this is why Libby is so ticked off, and why he is now trying to bring Bush and Cheney into the mix.
The "fast one" that got Bush and Cheney off the hook does not apply to him and its disclosure in court filings won't help one bit in defending against the charges he's facing.
Libby needs to accept the fact that he has officially been "hung out to dry."
Apparently, Bush can declassify any information he has a mind to at a minutes notice. Talk about not-so-subtle blackmail. This probably explains why other CIA employees have stayed in lockstep with the line that they did not feel pressured by the administration to hype or distort intelligence in the run up to war.
In fact, it probably explains a lot more about why this White House keeps getting away with murder.
With the latest revelations in the CIA leak case, the question on the minds of most Americans, is whether Bush and Cheney were the masterminds in an organized plot to destroy Joe Wilson by revealing his wife's name and status as a undercover agent of the CIA.
Hands down, yes they were. And a brilliant scheme it was; especially when one considers that the combined IQ of Bush and Cheney is probably not equal to that of a goat.
A concerted effort to destroy a critic is not a jailable offense. But it would seem that because they knew Valerie Plame was an under-cover operative, and knew the information was classified, that such a disclosure would be in legal terms "willful." In other words, a disclosure of information on purpose, even though they knew it was classified.
Although that may be true, being Bush and Cheney knew they were the culprits at the center of the investigation, they came up with a plan to hog-tie Prosecutor Fitzgerald and sabotage his investigation right from the start.
While it may appear that Bush stepped in to take the fall for Libby, don't believe it for one minute. Bush would never, never take a fall for anyone, probably not even his own mother. Or I should say for sure not his own mother, because he obviously has a lot of unresolved issues with her.
Bush stepped in because he was forced to by Libby's court filings. He knew this day would come but he also knew he was untouchable.
When Libby leaked the name of a CIA operative he released classified information, which would be a crime, if he acted on his own authority, as most of us believed. But now we find out that he was not acting on his own authority, he was acting under instructions from Cheney and Bush and thus, as it turns out, he did nothing illegal.
That is, until he lied, presumably to save the butts of Cheney and Bush. If Libby would have simply went before the grand jury and told the truth, the saga would have ended then and there and the public would have known the truth before the last Presidential election.
In covering for Bush, Libby's lies can be credited for giving Bush a second term. But a lot of good it did him. So long as Bush sticks to the story that unbeknownst to anyone, besides himself, Cheney and Libby, he had "declassified" certain information and told Cheney to instruct Libby to release it, Bush and Cheney walk, but Libby does not.
Fitzgerald knew this was going to happen and this is why it always seemed as if he was talking in circles when discussing Libby's indictment and why he continued to say over and over that Libby was not being charged with leaking the name of a CIA agent, and that furthermore, he did he plan to charge Libby with that crime.
Fitzgerald knows full well that the White House pulled a fast one on him.
He knew it shortly after his investigation got underway. But Libby is still going down, in part, probably because Fitzgerald is ticked off over being had. And in turn, this is why Libby is so ticked off, and why he is now trying to bring Bush and Cheney into the mix.
The "fast one" that got Bush and Cheney off the hook does not apply to him and its disclosure in court filings won't help one bit in defending against the charges he's facing.
Libby needs to accept the fact that he has officially been "hung out to dry."
Apparently, Bush can declassify any information he has a mind to at a minutes notice. Talk about not-so-subtle blackmail. This probably explains why other CIA employees have stayed in lockstep with the line that they did not feel pressured by the administration to hype or distort intelligence in the run up to war.
In fact, it probably explains a lot more about why this White House keeps getting away with murder.
Outing CIA Agent - Keep It Simple
Evelyn Pringle April 21, 2006
For all intent and purposes, the special prosecutor's duty in the CIA leak case is straightforward. How the investigation ever got so complicated is beyond me. Mr Fitzgerald needs to keep it simple.
Valerie Plame was a CIA agent in July 2003, and the fact that she was a CIA officer was classified. The responsibilities of some CIA employees require that their association with the agency be kept secret, because disclosure has the potential to damage national security in ways that range from preventing the future use of the agents, to compromising intelligence-gathering methods, to endangering the safety of CIA employees, and people who they may be associated with.
Valerie's status was not widely known. The special prosecutor verified that her friends, neighbors, and college classmates had no idea she had another life. Her cover was blown in July 2003. The first public outing was when Robert Novak published a story about Valerie and her husband Joe Wilson on July 14, 2003, noting her status as a CIA agent, and quoting senior administration officials as his sources.
The investigation really only required the answers to 3 basic questions: (1) which senior officials knew about Valerie's employment with the CIA? (2) did the officials know the CIA was protecting her identity? And (3) who leaked her name and status to the press?
We now know that just as many people suspected, Karl Rove was one of the sources for Novak. However, he may have published the first outing, but Novak was not the first reporter to learn that Joe's wife worked at the CIA. Several other reporters were told earlier.
Because, also just as was suspected, Scooter Libby was the other leaker, and he was the first official to leak Valerie's name and status to the media when he told Judy Miller in June of 2003, after Dick Cheney leaked the information to him, with Bush's full approval and knowledge.
As a condition for working with classified information, on January 23, 2001, Libby signed a "Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement," which states in part: "I understand and accept that by being granted access to classified information, special confidence and trust shall be placed in me by the United States Government."
In signing the Agreement Libby goes on to state: "I have been advised that the unauthorized disclosure, unauthorized retention, or negligent handling of classified information by me could cause damage or irreparable injury to the United States or could be used to advantage by a foreign nation."
Scooter clearly violated this oath.
To begin with, it obvious that the White House did not follow the proper procedures for safeguarding Valerie's identity. Under EO 12958, the White House should have ensured that only those with a "need to know" had access to her covert identity.
It's a no-brainer, that as Bush's political advisor, Rove, should not have had access to the information. What compelling "need to know" would justify revealing her identity to him?
This little problem is probably what led to Rove's "promotion" a while back, just as his up-coming arrest is probably what led to his "demotion" yesterday.
As far as responding to the leak itself, under EO 12958, the White House should have taken prompt action to determine (1) whether nondisclosure agreements were violated; (2) whether individuals without security clearance obtained classified information; and (3) whether national security information was compromised.
But then no investigation was necessary because the Bush White House knew the answers to those questions before the first leak occurred.
By intentionally publicizing the fact that Valerie worked at the CIA, the administration not only destroyed her career, they compromised whatever operations she may have worked on, and whatever networks she may have established over her lengthily career with the agency and the tax dollars spent on the above went right down the sewer.
Early on in the investigation, the FBI interviewed Scooter. In addition to being Cheney's Chief of Staff at the time, he was also an Assistant to the President and Assistant to the Vice President for national security affairs.
According to filings in the criminal case, the focus of the FBI interview was on what Libby knew about Valerie, what he said to people about her, why he said it, and how he learned of the information.
He told the FBI that he was at the end of a long chain of phone calls. He spoke to reporter, Tim Russert, on July 10, 2003, and during the call, Russert said, hey, do you know that all the reporters know that Wilson's wife works at the CIA.
Scooter said that he learned this information as if it was new, and that is why it 'struck him." Then, according to Scooter, he took the information from Russert and passed it on to Matt Cooper of Time Magazine, and New York Times reporter Judy Miller.
He told the FBI that on July 12, 2003, two days before Novak's column appeared in the press, that he passed the information on with the understanding that this was information he had received from a reporter, and that he didn't even know if it was true.
However, six months later in March 2004, when he testified before the grand jury on two occasions, Scooter added a new twist to his original tale. To the grand jury, Libby said that he had learned about Valerie from Cheney earlier in June 2003, but he had forgotten all about it; and so when he had learned the information from Russert, he'd learned it as if it were new.
Then Scooter said, he passed the information on to Cooper and Miller, later in the week.
However, we now know that Scooter discussed the fact that Valerie worked for the CIA, at least 6 times before the call with Russert ever took place, not to mention the fact that according to Tim, they never discussed Valerie at all during that call.
The bottom line is that Scooter did not learn about Valerie from Tim Russert.
In the Libby indictment, Fitzgerald says that on June 12, 2003, Cheney informed Libby that Valerie worked at the CIA's Counter-proliferation Division. The CPD is part of the operations directorate, the CIA's clandestine services.
In fact, the indictment says that Scooter learned of the information about Valeria from other administration officials as well in June of 2003. On
June 11, he learned about her from an Under Secretary of State and sometime prior to July 8, Scooter learned the information from someone else in Cheney's office. On June 14, 2003, he discussed the matter with a CIA briefer and was complaining that the CIA was leaking information or making critical comments about the administration and brought up Joe and Valerie to the briefer.
He also discussed the her at lunch with White House Press Secretary, Ari Fleischer, on Monday, July 7, 2003, which means that we have Scooter telling Ari something on Monday that he claims to not have learned from Russert until Thursday.
There was also a discussion the next day on July 8, in which Scooter asked the Counsel for the Vice President what paperwork the CIA would have if an employee had a spouse going on a trip.
In the end, Scooter had 7 discussions with government officials prior to the day when he claims he learned the information as if it were new from Russert.
In addition, the story he gave to the FBI and grand jury was that he told reporters Cooper and Miller on July 12. However, according to filings in the case, Scooter discussed Valerie at least 4 times with these reporters prior to July 14, 2003; three times with Miller, and once with Cooper.
The first discussion with Miller was on June 23; within days after an article was published online by The New Republic, quoting some critical comments from Wilson.
He spoke about Valerie with Miller again on July 8, in a discussion that was in background as a 'senior administration official," after which he instructed Miller to change the attribution to a "former Hill staffer."
During that conversation, Scooter said that Valerie was working for the CIA, and he discussed her employment status again with Miller on July 12.
In his conversations with Miller, Scooter never said this is what other reporters told me. He never said I don't know if it's true, or I don't even know if Wilson has a wife, according to Miller.
So, Rove and Scooter were the 2 administration officials who leaked the information to the press and the top officials in the Bush administration knew it from day one and allowed a charade of an investigation to stretch on for years on the tax payer's dime.
However, another cat is said to be ready to leap out of the bag and Rove's "demotion" yesterday is probably the least of his worries.
According to an article published today by investigative reporter, Jason Leopold, for Truthout.org, Fitzgerald is said to have presented more evidence alleging Rove lied to FBI investigators and the grand jury when he was asked about how he found out that Valerie worked for the CIA and whether he gave that information to the media.
"Fitzgerald told the grand jury," Leopold said, "that Rove lied to investigators and the prosecutor eight out of the nine times he was questioned about the leak and also tried to cover-up his role in disseminating Plame Wilson's CIA status to at least two reporters."
Mr Fitzgerald needs to keep it simple, wrap up the investigation, and reserve a row of prison cells in Cuba.
For all intent and purposes, the special prosecutor's duty in the CIA leak case is straightforward. How the investigation ever got so complicated is beyond me. Mr Fitzgerald needs to keep it simple.
Valerie Plame was a CIA agent in July 2003, and the fact that she was a CIA officer was classified. The responsibilities of some CIA employees require that their association with the agency be kept secret, because disclosure has the potential to damage national security in ways that range from preventing the future use of the agents, to compromising intelligence-gathering methods, to endangering the safety of CIA employees, and people who they may be associated with.
Valerie's status was not widely known. The special prosecutor verified that her friends, neighbors, and college classmates had no idea she had another life. Her cover was blown in July 2003. The first public outing was when Robert Novak published a story about Valerie and her husband Joe Wilson on July 14, 2003, noting her status as a CIA agent, and quoting senior administration officials as his sources.
The investigation really only required the answers to 3 basic questions: (1) which senior officials knew about Valerie's employment with the CIA? (2) did the officials know the CIA was protecting her identity? And (3) who leaked her name and status to the press?
We now know that just as many people suspected, Karl Rove was one of the sources for Novak. However, he may have published the first outing, but Novak was not the first reporter to learn that Joe's wife worked at the CIA. Several other reporters were told earlier.
Because, also just as was suspected, Scooter Libby was the other leaker, and he was the first official to leak Valerie's name and status to the media when he told Judy Miller in June of 2003, after Dick Cheney leaked the information to him, with Bush's full approval and knowledge.
As a condition for working with classified information, on January 23, 2001, Libby signed a "Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement," which states in part: "I understand and accept that by being granted access to classified information, special confidence and trust shall be placed in me by the United States Government."
In signing the Agreement Libby goes on to state: "I have been advised that the unauthorized disclosure, unauthorized retention, or negligent handling of classified information by me could cause damage or irreparable injury to the United States or could be used to advantage by a foreign nation."
Scooter clearly violated this oath.
To begin with, it obvious that the White House did not follow the proper procedures for safeguarding Valerie's identity. Under EO 12958, the White House should have ensured that only those with a "need to know" had access to her covert identity.
It's a no-brainer, that as Bush's political advisor, Rove, should not have had access to the information. What compelling "need to know" would justify revealing her identity to him?
This little problem is probably what led to Rove's "promotion" a while back, just as his up-coming arrest is probably what led to his "demotion" yesterday.
As far as responding to the leak itself, under EO 12958, the White House should have taken prompt action to determine (1) whether nondisclosure agreements were violated; (2) whether individuals without security clearance obtained classified information; and (3) whether national security information was compromised.
But then no investigation was necessary because the Bush White House knew the answers to those questions before the first leak occurred.
By intentionally publicizing the fact that Valerie worked at the CIA, the administration not only destroyed her career, they compromised whatever operations she may have worked on, and whatever networks she may have established over her lengthily career with the agency and the tax dollars spent on the above went right down the sewer.
Early on in the investigation, the FBI interviewed Scooter. In addition to being Cheney's Chief of Staff at the time, he was also an Assistant to the President and Assistant to the Vice President for national security affairs.
According to filings in the criminal case, the focus of the FBI interview was on what Libby knew about Valerie, what he said to people about her, why he said it, and how he learned of the information.
He told the FBI that he was at the end of a long chain of phone calls. He spoke to reporter, Tim Russert, on July 10, 2003, and during the call, Russert said, hey, do you know that all the reporters know that Wilson's wife works at the CIA.
Scooter said that he learned this information as if it was new, and that is why it 'struck him." Then, according to Scooter, he took the information from Russert and passed it on to Matt Cooper of Time Magazine, and New York Times reporter Judy Miller.
He told the FBI that on July 12, 2003, two days before Novak's column appeared in the press, that he passed the information on with the understanding that this was information he had received from a reporter, and that he didn't even know if it was true.
However, six months later in March 2004, when he testified before the grand jury on two occasions, Scooter added a new twist to his original tale. To the grand jury, Libby said that he had learned about Valerie from Cheney earlier in June 2003, but he had forgotten all about it; and so when he had learned the information from Russert, he'd learned it as if it were new.
Then Scooter said, he passed the information on to Cooper and Miller, later in the week.
However, we now know that Scooter discussed the fact that Valerie worked for the CIA, at least 6 times before the call with Russert ever took place, not to mention the fact that according to Tim, they never discussed Valerie at all during that call.
The bottom line is that Scooter did not learn about Valerie from Tim Russert.
In the Libby indictment, Fitzgerald says that on June 12, 2003, Cheney informed Libby that Valerie worked at the CIA's Counter-proliferation Division. The CPD is part of the operations directorate, the CIA's clandestine services.
In fact, the indictment says that Scooter learned of the information about Valeria from other administration officials as well in June of 2003. On
June 11, he learned about her from an Under Secretary of State and sometime prior to July 8, Scooter learned the information from someone else in Cheney's office. On June 14, 2003, he discussed the matter with a CIA briefer and was complaining that the CIA was leaking information or making critical comments about the administration and brought up Joe and Valerie to the briefer.
He also discussed the her at lunch with White House Press Secretary, Ari Fleischer, on Monday, July 7, 2003, which means that we have Scooter telling Ari something on Monday that he claims to not have learned from Russert until Thursday.
There was also a discussion the next day on July 8, in which Scooter asked the Counsel for the Vice President what paperwork the CIA would have if an employee had a spouse going on a trip.
In the end, Scooter had 7 discussions with government officials prior to the day when he claims he learned the information as if it were new from Russert.
In addition, the story he gave to the FBI and grand jury was that he told reporters Cooper and Miller on July 12. However, according to filings in the case, Scooter discussed Valerie at least 4 times with these reporters prior to July 14, 2003; three times with Miller, and once with Cooper.
The first discussion with Miller was on June 23; within days after an article was published online by The New Republic, quoting some critical comments from Wilson.
He spoke about Valerie with Miller again on July 8, in a discussion that was in background as a 'senior administration official," after which he instructed Miller to change the attribution to a "former Hill staffer."
During that conversation, Scooter said that Valerie was working for the CIA, and he discussed her employment status again with Miller on July 12.
In his conversations with Miller, Scooter never said this is what other reporters told me. He never said I don't know if it's true, or I don't even know if Wilson has a wife, according to Miller.
So, Rove and Scooter were the 2 administration officials who leaked the information to the press and the top officials in the Bush administration knew it from day one and allowed a charade of an investigation to stretch on for years on the tax payer's dime.
However, another cat is said to be ready to leap out of the bag and Rove's "demotion" yesterday is probably the least of his worries.
According to an article published today by investigative reporter, Jason Leopold, for Truthout.org, Fitzgerald is said to have presented more evidence alleging Rove lied to FBI investigators and the grand jury when he was asked about how he found out that Valerie worked for the CIA and whether he gave that information to the media.
"Fitzgerald told the grand jury," Leopold said, "that Rove lied to investigators and the prosecutor eight out of the nine times he was questioned about the leak and also tried to cover-up his role in disseminating Plame Wilson's CIA status to at least two reporters."
Mr Fitzgerald needs to keep it simple, wrap up the investigation, and reserve a row of prison cells in Cuba.
Karl Rove Indictment Long Overdue
Evelyn Pringle May 3, 2006
On April 28, 2006, Jason Leopold, an investigative journalist who has consistently forecast up-coming events in the CIA leak case far in advance of the mainstream media, is citing "sources knowledgeable about the probe" in reporting that:
"Despite vehement denials by his attorney who said this week that Karl Rove is neither a "target" nor in danger of being indicted in the CIA leak case, the special counsel leading the investigation has already written up charges against Rove, and a grand jury is expected to vote on whether to indict the Deputy White House Chief of Staff sometime next week."
For most Americans, this bit of news will be viewed as long overdue.
The criminal indictment filed by the grand jury against Scooter Libby leaves no doubt about who leaked what and when. It states that on or about July 10 or July 11, 2003, Libby spoke to “Official A," who we now know is Rove, who advised Libby of "a conversation Official A had earlier that week with columnist Robert Novak in which Wilson’s wife was discussed as a CIA employee involved in Wilson’s trip."
Libby was also advised, "by Official A that Novak would be writing a story about Wilson’s wife," the indictment notes.
Rove succeeded in convincing Novak to print the story about Wilson and his wife even though Novak was informed that the story was false. Former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow has testified before the grand jury about conversations that he had with Novak 3 days before the column was published and said that he told Novak that Wilson's wife had not authorized the trip and that if he did write an article, Novak should not reveal her name.
After the first conversation with Novak, Harlow said he checked Valerie's status to confirm that she was an undercover agent and called Novak back to say again that the story relayed to Novak was not true and that her name should not be revealed.
Administration officials like to send out talking heads to minimize the damage caused by the leak by trying to debate the issue of whether Valerie's CIA status was classified. During his October 28, 2005, press conference, when announcing the Libby indictment, Fitzgerald left no doubt about whether her status was classified, when he told reporters:
"Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer. In July 2003, the fact that Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer was classified. Not only was it classified, but it was not widely known outside the intelligence community. Valerie Wilson's friends, neighbors, college classmates had no idea she had another life.
"The fact that she was a CIA officer was not well-known, for her protection or for the benefit of all us. It's important that a CIA officer's identity be protected, that it be protected not just for the officer, but for the nation's security. Valerie Wilson's cover was blown in July 2003. The first sign of that cover being blown was when Mr. Novak published a column on July 14th, 2003."
For 18 years Valerie had kept her occupation a secret. She worked under the cover of a CIA front company created and maintained at the taxpayer's expense, and all of that was destroyed by Bush administration officials at the highest levels when they leaked her identity.
In hindsight, its obvious that the leaks by Rove and Libby were the beginning of a White House scheme to pin the blame on the CIA for providing faulty intelligence and to take the focus off the forged documents used to insert the Iraq-uranium claim into the mix in the first place
But the overall plot goes much deeper than that. In peddling the story to reporters, a fact not known to most Americans is that Rove and Libby leaked the identity of a CIA agent who happened to be an expert on WMDs at a time when the US had supposedly went to war to eliminate the threat of such weapons being used against our country.
Melissa Mahle spent 14 years as a covert CIA agent maintaining a series of fictitious cover stories, invented by her superiors. On the October 30, 2005, segment of 60 Minutes, Mahle reported that Valerie was working on important national security issues, like keeping tabs on nuclear material and the world’s top nuclear scientists.
“She is an expert on weapons of mass destruction," Mahle said. "These are the kind of people that don't grow on trees.”
What do agents do in that division, she was asked.
“They're trying to figure out, really, the hard questions of who has the capability obtaining and deploying a biological weapon. Or a chemical weapon. Who's doing it? What are those networks? What are the financial trails?” Mahle said during the broadcast."
It is now known that Valerie was monitoring Iran's nuclear activities. According to Raw Story investigative reporter, Larisa Alexandrovna, former intelligence officials, have said that Valerie "worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran."
"The revelation that Iran was the focal point of Plame's work," Alexandrovna wrote, "raises new questions as to possible other motivating factors in the White House's decision to reveal the identity of a CIA officer working on tracking a WMD supply network to Iran, particularly when the very topic of Iran's possible WMD capability is of such concern to the Administration."
On May 1, 2006, the Chris Matthews' show, Hardball, on MSNBC confirmed what Alexandrovna reported in February in 2006, that Valerie was working on Iran's WMD network at the time she was outed.
On July 27, 2005, the Boston Globe described what happens when a CIA agent's cover is blown and said in part:
"Whenever a spy's cover is revealed, a chain of setbacks ensues. Foreign intelligence services then review everything they know about the undercover officer who was operating in their country. Such a review can lead not only to the discovery of informants who may have been recruited by the outed CIA officer but also to an understanding of the practices and techniques used by an undercover figure such as Plame, who posed as a businesswoman abroad.
"After one undercover CIA officer is exposed, others inevitably have a harder time persuading potential sources to pass secrets about their government's -- or their terrorist network's -- plans and capabilities."
In recent years, Valerie told people she worked for an energy consulting firm by the name of Brewster-Jennings & Associates and Novak disclosed that fact to the world on CNN when he said, "she listed herself as an employee of Brewster-Jennings & Associates."
"There is no such firm, I'm convinced,” Novak added.
Upon the public exposure of this information, former CIA agents report that intelligence agencies all over the world would have started searching the data bases for any mention of Valerie or the firm and that over the years, hundreds of agents have worked under the cover of Brewster-Jennings.
On October 5, 2003, Valerie was described as a "NOC" in the New York Times by Elisabeth Bumiller, who explained what a NOC position entails and how the leaking of her identity was viewed by members of the CIA in general:
"But within the C.I.A., the exposure of Ms. Plame is now considered an even greater instance of treachery. Ms. Plame, a specialist in non-conventional weapons who worked overseas, had "nonofficial cover," and was what in C.I.A. parlance is called a NOC, the most difficult kind of false identity for the agency to create.
"While most undercover agency officers disguise their real profession by pretending to be American embassy diplomats or other United States government employees, Ms. Plame passed herself off as a private energy expert."
Writing for Salon magazine in October 2003, Nixon White House Counsel, John Dean, of Watergate fame, discusses how the Bush administration's conduct trumps that of former President Nixon:
"I thought I had seen political dirty tricks as foul as they could get, but I was wrong. In blowing the cover of CIA agent Valerie Plame to take political revenge on her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for telling the truth, Bush's people have out-Nixoned Nixon's people. And my former colleagues were not amateurs by any means."
At the time of Valerie outing, Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie basically agreed with Dean in saying that the disclosure of Plame's name could be worse than Watergate "in terms of the real-world implications of it."
In taking the drastic step of a court compelling reporters to testify, US Appellate Judge David Tatel, in his February 15, 2005 opinion also noted the seriousness of the crime in stating that the vast majority of the states, as well as the Justice Department, "would require us to protect reporters' sources as a matter of federal common law were the leak at issue either less harmful or more newsworthy."
However, Judge Tatel added, "just as attorney-client communications made for the purpose of getting advice for the commission of a fraud or crime serve no public interest and receive no privilege, neither should courts protect sources whose leaks harm national security while providing minimal benefit to public debate."
A question seldom asked is how did Valerie take the news when she learned of Novak's column.
“She felt like she had been hit in the stomach," her husband Joe Wilson said on the October 30, 2005, 60 Minutes program. "It took her breath away," he said.
"She recovered quickly because," Wilson explained, "you don't do what she did for a living without understanding stress."
"And she became very matter of fact right afterwards," he said, "started making lists of what she had to do to ensure that her assets, her projects, her programs and her operations were protected."
“Did she realize then that her career as an undercover agent for the CIA was over?” interviewer Ed Bradley asked Wilson.
“Absolutely. Sure," he replied. "There was no doubt about it in her mind."
"And she wondered for what,” he added.
Fitzgerald and Libby's lawyers are currently fighting over Libby's discovery requests for a wide variety of documents. In a January 9, 2006 letter to Libby's legal team, Fitzgerald responded to a request for documents that assess the damage caused by the outing, and wrote: "A formal assessment has not been done of the damage caused by the disclosure of Valerie Wilson’s status as a CIA employee, and thus we possess no such document."
"Moreover," Fitzgerald said in a brief filed in the case, "the publication of any informal assessment of actual damage caused by the leak could compound the damage by disclosing intelligence sources and methods."
However, 3 intelligence officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to Larisa Alexandrovna, of Raw Story, said that while undercover, Valerie was involved in identifying and tracking WMD technology to and from Iran and that her outing compromised the identities of other covert operatives as well.
As a result, the officials said that CIA work on WMDs had been set back "ten years."
When the Libby indictment was handed down and it became known that Rove had definitely participated in blowing Valerie's cover, 16 former CIA and military intelligence officials petitioned Bush to suspend Rove's security clearance and Bush refused to grant their request.
After it became public that Rove was involved in the leak, on July 15, 2005, ninety-one Democrats in Congress signed a letter to Bush calling for Rove to explain his role in the leak or to resign, and 13 Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee called for hearings on the matter.
To this day, Karl Rove remains unpunished and still has security clearance.
In his column, Novak included another highly significant statement that seemingly escaped much publicity probably due to the outrage over the outing of a CIA agent, when he said:
"Wilson's mission was created after an early 2002 report by the Italian intelligence service about attempted uranium purchases from Niger, derived from forged documents prepared by what the CIA calls a "con man." This misinformation, peddled by Italian journalists, spread through the U.S. government. The White House, State Department and Pentagon, and not just Vice President Dick Cheney, asked the CIA to look into it."
The forged documents did not make their way to the White House by way of a few journalists peddling misinformation. The forgeries ended up in the hands of the same people who were responsible for their origin, officials at the highest level of Bush administration.
On August 1 and 2, 2004, both the Sunday Times and Financial Times in the UK reported that a con-man by the name of Rocco Martino admitted that he was involved in disseminating the false stories and documents but said the US and Italian governments were behind the disinformation operation.
"It's true, I had a hand in the dissemination of those documents," Martino said, "but I was duped."
"Both Americans and Italians were involved behind the scenes," he said. "It was a disinformation operation."
In July 2005, an Italian parliamentary report was issued on the forged documents and listed the 4 men likely involved as: Michael Ledeen, Dewey Clarridge (CIA operative in Iran-Contra Affair), Ahmed Chalabi, and Francis Brookes (member of a "public relations" body formed by the Pentagon to promote Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress).
The report said the forgeries may have been planned at a meeting in Rome in December 2001, attended by Ledeen and Larry Franklin.
Franklin is the Pentagon Iran analyst who earned a lengthily prison sentence last year for passing classified information to former officials with the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC. Franklin worked closely with Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith in the Office of Special Plans whose main purpose was to manufacture bogus intelligence to bolster the case for war.
On April 12, 2005, the Al Jazeera news organization reported that when the former CIA head of counter-terrorism, Vincent Cannistaro, was asked whether Michael Ledeen had been the one who produced the forged documents, he replied, "You'd be very close."
In holding off on charging Rove, it may just be that Fitzgerald is looking at much bigger fish to fry. On October 23, 2005, UPI editor Martin Walker cited "NATO intelligence sources" as saying, "Fitzgerald's team of investigators has sought and obtained documentation on the forgeries from the Italian government.”
The special prosecutor's team is said to have been provided with the full report on the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the forgeries.
“This opens the door to what has always been the most serious implication of the CIA leak case,” UPI explains, “that the Bush administration could face a brutally damaging and public inquiry into the case for war against Iraq being false or artificially exaggerated."
With any luck, Fitzgerald will do the right thing and file criminal charges against all of the high-level officials involved in the fabrication and dissemination of bogus intelligence that convinced Americans to allow Bush to wage the ill-fated war against Iraq. Hopefully, starting with the guy sitting in the oval office.
On April 28, 2006, Jason Leopold, an investigative journalist who has consistently forecast up-coming events in the CIA leak case far in advance of the mainstream media, is citing "sources knowledgeable about the probe" in reporting that:
"Despite vehement denials by his attorney who said this week that Karl Rove is neither a "target" nor in danger of being indicted in the CIA leak case, the special counsel leading the investigation has already written up charges against Rove, and a grand jury is expected to vote on whether to indict the Deputy White House Chief of Staff sometime next week."
For most Americans, this bit of news will be viewed as long overdue.
The criminal indictment filed by the grand jury against Scooter Libby leaves no doubt about who leaked what and when. It states that on or about July 10 or July 11, 2003, Libby spoke to “Official A," who we now know is Rove, who advised Libby of "a conversation Official A had earlier that week with columnist Robert Novak in which Wilson’s wife was discussed as a CIA employee involved in Wilson’s trip."
Libby was also advised, "by Official A that Novak would be writing a story about Wilson’s wife," the indictment notes.
Rove succeeded in convincing Novak to print the story about Wilson and his wife even though Novak was informed that the story was false. Former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow has testified before the grand jury about conversations that he had with Novak 3 days before the column was published and said that he told Novak that Wilson's wife had not authorized the trip and that if he did write an article, Novak should not reveal her name.
After the first conversation with Novak, Harlow said he checked Valerie's status to confirm that she was an undercover agent and called Novak back to say again that the story relayed to Novak was not true and that her name should not be revealed.
Administration officials like to send out talking heads to minimize the damage caused by the leak by trying to debate the issue of whether Valerie's CIA status was classified. During his October 28, 2005, press conference, when announcing the Libby indictment, Fitzgerald left no doubt about whether her status was classified, when he told reporters:
"Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer. In July 2003, the fact that Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer was classified. Not only was it classified, but it was not widely known outside the intelligence community. Valerie Wilson's friends, neighbors, college classmates had no idea she had another life.
"The fact that she was a CIA officer was not well-known, for her protection or for the benefit of all us. It's important that a CIA officer's identity be protected, that it be protected not just for the officer, but for the nation's security. Valerie Wilson's cover was blown in July 2003. The first sign of that cover being blown was when Mr. Novak published a column on July 14th, 2003."
For 18 years Valerie had kept her occupation a secret. She worked under the cover of a CIA front company created and maintained at the taxpayer's expense, and all of that was destroyed by Bush administration officials at the highest levels when they leaked her identity.
In hindsight, its obvious that the leaks by Rove and Libby were the beginning of a White House scheme to pin the blame on the CIA for providing faulty intelligence and to take the focus off the forged documents used to insert the Iraq-uranium claim into the mix in the first place
But the overall plot goes much deeper than that. In peddling the story to reporters, a fact not known to most Americans is that Rove and Libby leaked the identity of a CIA agent who happened to be an expert on WMDs at a time when the US had supposedly went to war to eliminate the threat of such weapons being used against our country.
Melissa Mahle spent 14 years as a covert CIA agent maintaining a series of fictitious cover stories, invented by her superiors. On the October 30, 2005, segment of 60 Minutes, Mahle reported that Valerie was working on important national security issues, like keeping tabs on nuclear material and the world’s top nuclear scientists.
“She is an expert on weapons of mass destruction," Mahle said. "These are the kind of people that don't grow on trees.”
What do agents do in that division, she was asked.
“They're trying to figure out, really, the hard questions of who has the capability obtaining and deploying a biological weapon. Or a chemical weapon. Who's doing it? What are those networks? What are the financial trails?” Mahle said during the broadcast."
It is now known that Valerie was monitoring Iran's nuclear activities. According to Raw Story investigative reporter, Larisa Alexandrovna, former intelligence officials, have said that Valerie "worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran."
"The revelation that Iran was the focal point of Plame's work," Alexandrovna wrote, "raises new questions as to possible other motivating factors in the White House's decision to reveal the identity of a CIA officer working on tracking a WMD supply network to Iran, particularly when the very topic of Iran's possible WMD capability is of such concern to the Administration."
On May 1, 2006, the Chris Matthews' show, Hardball, on MSNBC confirmed what Alexandrovna reported in February in 2006, that Valerie was working on Iran's WMD network at the time she was outed.
On July 27, 2005, the Boston Globe described what happens when a CIA agent's cover is blown and said in part:
"Whenever a spy's cover is revealed, a chain of setbacks ensues. Foreign intelligence services then review everything they know about the undercover officer who was operating in their country. Such a review can lead not only to the discovery of informants who may have been recruited by the outed CIA officer but also to an understanding of the practices and techniques used by an undercover figure such as Plame, who posed as a businesswoman abroad.
"After one undercover CIA officer is exposed, others inevitably have a harder time persuading potential sources to pass secrets about their government's -- or their terrorist network's -- plans and capabilities."
In recent years, Valerie told people she worked for an energy consulting firm by the name of Brewster-Jennings & Associates and Novak disclosed that fact to the world on CNN when he said, "she listed herself as an employee of Brewster-Jennings & Associates."
"There is no such firm, I'm convinced,” Novak added.
Upon the public exposure of this information, former CIA agents report that intelligence agencies all over the world would have started searching the data bases for any mention of Valerie or the firm and that over the years, hundreds of agents have worked under the cover of Brewster-Jennings.
On October 5, 2003, Valerie was described as a "NOC" in the New York Times by Elisabeth Bumiller, who explained what a NOC position entails and how the leaking of her identity was viewed by members of the CIA in general:
"But within the C.I.A., the exposure of Ms. Plame is now considered an even greater instance of treachery. Ms. Plame, a specialist in non-conventional weapons who worked overseas, had "nonofficial cover," and was what in C.I.A. parlance is called a NOC, the most difficult kind of false identity for the agency to create.
"While most undercover agency officers disguise their real profession by pretending to be American embassy diplomats or other United States government employees, Ms. Plame passed herself off as a private energy expert."
Writing for Salon magazine in October 2003, Nixon White House Counsel, John Dean, of Watergate fame, discusses how the Bush administration's conduct trumps that of former President Nixon:
"I thought I had seen political dirty tricks as foul as they could get, but I was wrong. In blowing the cover of CIA agent Valerie Plame to take political revenge on her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for telling the truth, Bush's people have out-Nixoned Nixon's people. And my former colleagues were not amateurs by any means."
At the time of Valerie outing, Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie basically agreed with Dean in saying that the disclosure of Plame's name could be worse than Watergate "in terms of the real-world implications of it."
In taking the drastic step of a court compelling reporters to testify, US Appellate Judge David Tatel, in his February 15, 2005 opinion also noted the seriousness of the crime in stating that the vast majority of the states, as well as the Justice Department, "would require us to protect reporters' sources as a matter of federal common law were the leak at issue either less harmful or more newsworthy."
However, Judge Tatel added, "just as attorney-client communications made for the purpose of getting advice for the commission of a fraud or crime serve no public interest and receive no privilege, neither should courts protect sources whose leaks harm national security while providing minimal benefit to public debate."
A question seldom asked is how did Valerie take the news when she learned of Novak's column.
“She felt like she had been hit in the stomach," her husband Joe Wilson said on the October 30, 2005, 60 Minutes program. "It took her breath away," he said.
"She recovered quickly because," Wilson explained, "you don't do what she did for a living without understanding stress."
"And she became very matter of fact right afterwards," he said, "started making lists of what she had to do to ensure that her assets, her projects, her programs and her operations were protected."
“Did she realize then that her career as an undercover agent for the CIA was over?” interviewer Ed Bradley asked Wilson.
“Absolutely. Sure," he replied. "There was no doubt about it in her mind."
"And she wondered for what,” he added.
Fitzgerald and Libby's lawyers are currently fighting over Libby's discovery requests for a wide variety of documents. In a January 9, 2006 letter to Libby's legal team, Fitzgerald responded to a request for documents that assess the damage caused by the outing, and wrote: "A formal assessment has not been done of the damage caused by the disclosure of Valerie Wilson’s status as a CIA employee, and thus we possess no such document."
"Moreover," Fitzgerald said in a brief filed in the case, "the publication of any informal assessment of actual damage caused by the leak could compound the damage by disclosing intelligence sources and methods."
However, 3 intelligence officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to Larisa Alexandrovna, of Raw Story, said that while undercover, Valerie was involved in identifying and tracking WMD technology to and from Iran and that her outing compromised the identities of other covert operatives as well.
As a result, the officials said that CIA work on WMDs had been set back "ten years."
When the Libby indictment was handed down and it became known that Rove had definitely participated in blowing Valerie's cover, 16 former CIA and military intelligence officials petitioned Bush to suspend Rove's security clearance and Bush refused to grant their request.
After it became public that Rove was involved in the leak, on July 15, 2005, ninety-one Democrats in Congress signed a letter to Bush calling for Rove to explain his role in the leak or to resign, and 13 Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee called for hearings on the matter.
To this day, Karl Rove remains unpunished and still has security clearance.
In his column, Novak included another highly significant statement that seemingly escaped much publicity probably due to the outrage over the outing of a CIA agent, when he said:
"Wilson's mission was created after an early 2002 report by the Italian intelligence service about attempted uranium purchases from Niger, derived from forged documents prepared by what the CIA calls a "con man." This misinformation, peddled by Italian journalists, spread through the U.S. government. The White House, State Department and Pentagon, and not just Vice President Dick Cheney, asked the CIA to look into it."
The forged documents did not make their way to the White House by way of a few journalists peddling misinformation. The forgeries ended up in the hands of the same people who were responsible for their origin, officials at the highest level of Bush administration.
On August 1 and 2, 2004, both the Sunday Times and Financial Times in the UK reported that a con-man by the name of Rocco Martino admitted that he was involved in disseminating the false stories and documents but said the US and Italian governments were behind the disinformation operation.
"It's true, I had a hand in the dissemination of those documents," Martino said, "but I was duped."
"Both Americans and Italians were involved behind the scenes," he said. "It was a disinformation operation."
In July 2005, an Italian parliamentary report was issued on the forged documents and listed the 4 men likely involved as: Michael Ledeen, Dewey Clarridge (CIA operative in Iran-Contra Affair), Ahmed Chalabi, and Francis Brookes (member of a "public relations" body formed by the Pentagon to promote Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress).
The report said the forgeries may have been planned at a meeting in Rome in December 2001, attended by Ledeen and Larry Franklin.
Franklin is the Pentagon Iran analyst who earned a lengthily prison sentence last year for passing classified information to former officials with the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC. Franklin worked closely with Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith in the Office of Special Plans whose main purpose was to manufacture bogus intelligence to bolster the case for war.
On April 12, 2005, the Al Jazeera news organization reported that when the former CIA head of counter-terrorism, Vincent Cannistaro, was asked whether Michael Ledeen had been the one who produced the forged documents, he replied, "You'd be very close."
In holding off on charging Rove, it may just be that Fitzgerald is looking at much bigger fish to fry. On October 23, 2005, UPI editor Martin Walker cited "NATO intelligence sources" as saying, "Fitzgerald's team of investigators has sought and obtained documentation on the forgeries from the Italian government.”
The special prosecutor's team is said to have been provided with the full report on the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the forgeries.
“This opens the door to what has always been the most serious implication of the CIA leak case,” UPI explains, “that the Bush administration could face a brutally damaging and public inquiry into the case for war against Iraq being false or artificially exaggerated."
With any luck, Fitzgerald will do the right thing and file criminal charges against all of the high-level officials involved in the fabrication and dissemination of bogus intelligence that convinced Americans to allow Bush to wage the ill-fated war against Iraq. Hopefully, starting with the guy sitting in the oval office.
Rove and Fitzgerald Play Monopoly
Evelyn Pringle May 15, 2006
How many more get-out-of-jail free cards does Karl Rove get? Eat your heart out Martha Stewart. You should have tried playing Monopoly with the G-Men.
On October 28 2005, the office of the Special Prosecutor released a press statement which stated in part:
"A major focus of the grand jury investigation was to determine which government officials had disclosed to the media prior to July 14, 2003, information concerning Valerie Wilson's CIA affiliation, and the nature, timing, extent, and purpose of such disclosures, as well as whether any official made such a disclosure knowing that Valerie Wilson's employment by the CIA was classified information."
Somebody needs to inform Fitzgerald that "we got em." Kind of like Bush in Poland when he announced finding two trailers in Iraq and said that they had found the WMDs that Colin Powell had referred to in his speech at the UN.
Hey Mr Fitzgerald, as for those government officials you've been looking for, we found em. Surprise, surprise, its Scooter Libby and Karl Rove.
When reading the criminal indictment against Libby, its clear that Karl Rove and Libby each told reporters about Valerie Plame's status as a CIA agent before Novak's column was published, albeit Libby did it first on June 23, 2003, when he told Judy Miller from the New York Times.
That is, first as far as we know anyways, because after close to a 3-year tax dollar funded investigation, it has since been revealed that Bob Woodward, of the Washington Post, was told of Valerie's CIA status reportedly before Libby and Rove made the revelations to Miller, Cooper or Novak.
But as the law applies to Libby and Rove, it doesn't matter who leaked first, because they still violated the "Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement," Form SF-312, that they signed as a condition of employment which prohibits even confirming or repeating classified information already leaked. The briefing book that comes with the form states in relevant part:
Before confirming the accuracy of what appears in the public source, the signer of the SF 312 must confirm through an authorized official that the information has, in fact, been declassified. If it has not, confirmation of its accuracy is also an unauthorized disclosure.
By now, a lot of people are wondering why it is that Libby is arrested and Rove is not. It's probably due to a variety of reasons.
On August 13, 2005, journalist, Murray Waas, reported that back in 2003, officials from the Justice Department and the FBI recommended the appointment of a special prosecutor because they felt that Rove had not been truthful about his conversation with Cooper, nor in claiming that he had first heard of Valerie's identity from a reporter whose name he could not remember.
At the time, Rove maintained that he had only spoken about Valerie to reporters after her identity had already become public. But we now know that Rove and Libby were the sources for Cooper's article in Time Magazine, published 3 days after Novak's column which cited unnamed government officials, when describing Valerie as a "CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."
So again why is Libby the only one arrested? His only variation from the agreed upon talking points was when he added the name Tim Russert to "the reporter-told-me" story, while Rove stuck to the line that he could not remember the reporter’s name.
For one thing, when the investigation began, I suspect that it's highly unlikely that Libby had any of the top dogs at the Justice Department in his back pocket. Whereas Rove reportedly raked in over $750,000 in consulting fees for working on prior campaigns for John Ashcroft, the reigning Attorney General at the time, and with a political hatchet man like Rove involved, who knows how many skeletons could be buried along those campaign trails.
Ashcroft is said to have been briefed on at least one of Rove's interviews with the FBI. That briefing probably led to the first get-out-of-jail-free card for Rove.
But even with the FBI breathing down his neck, in February 2004, Rove twice went before the grand jury and lied through his teeth. He refused to admit that he had spoken to Novak about Valerie before she was outed, and he denied talking with Cooper period.
However, on December 2, 2005, the New York Times, reported that a conversation between Rove's lawyer and "a journalist for Time magazine led Mr. Rove to change his testimony last year to the grand jury in the C.I.A. leak case."
Which means Rove received another get-out-of-jail-free card in this instance.
According to Time Magazine journalist, Viveca Novak's article titled, "What Viveca Novak Told Fitzgerald," on December 10, 2003, her visits and conversations Attorney Robert Luskin began innocently enough.
"In October 2003, as we each made our way through a glass of wine, he asked me what I was working on," she wrote. "I told him I was trying to get a handle on the Valerie Plame leak investigation," Viveca said.
"Well," Luskin reportedly told her, "you're sitting next to Karl Rove's lawyer."
"I began spending a little more time than usual with Luskin as I tried to keep track of the investigation," Viveca explained.
Sometime during the week of October 18, 2005, which Viveca refers to as "indictment week," she says, Luskin "phoned me and said he had disclosed to Fitzgerald the content of a conversation he and I had had at Cafe Deluxe more than a year earlier and that Fitzgerald might want to talk to me."
According to Viveca, she did meet with Fitzgerald on November 10, 2005, for about two hours after her attorney advised Fitzgerald that she would discuss only her interactions with Luskin that were relevant to the conversation in question, with no "fishing expeditions, no questions about my other reporting or sources in the case," she wrote.
Fitzgerald agreed to the conditions, she said, and advised her lawyer that he wanted to "remove the chicken bone without disturbing the body."
During the meeting, Fitzgerald asked if Luskin had ever talked to Viveca about whether Rove was Cooper's source on the topic of Wilson's wife.
"That was the "chicken bone" Fitzgerald had referred to," Viveca wrote.
Here is what happened according to her first-person account of her visits with Luskin as to what was discussed about Rove and Cooper:
"Toward the end of one of our meetings," she said, "I remember Luskin looking at me and saying something to the effect of "Karl doesn't have a Cooper problem. He was not a source for Matt."
"I responded instinctively," Viveca wrote, "thinking he was trying to spin me, and said something like, "Are you sure about that? That's not what I hear around TIME."
"He looked surprised and very serious," she said. "There's nothing in the phone logs," Luskin told Viveca.
"In the course of the investigation, the logs of all Rove's calls around the July 2003 time period," Viveca wrote, "had been combed, and Luskin was telling me there were no references to Matt."
Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, its apparent that Rove realized the importance of covering his tracks while he was leaking to reporters in the summer of 2003. Here lies the missing link to this puzzle.
In a November 28, 2005, article in Raw Story, Jason Leopold and Larisa Alexandrovna, who have doggedly investigated this matter, reported that Rove’s former personal assistant, Susan Ralston, whose job it was to screen Rove’s phone calls at the White House, had previously testified that Cooper’s call to Rove was not logged in because Cooper had called through the White House switchboard and was transferred to Rove’s office, as opposed to calling Rove’s office directly.
But citing “those close to the probe,” the Raw Story article noted, “that Fitzgerald obtained documentary evidence showing that other unrelated calls transferred to Rove’s office by the switchboard were logged.”
In addition, in a July 25, 2005, Time Magazine article titled, "What I Told The Grand Jury," Cooper recounts his recollection of what happened when he called the White House.
"I recall calling Rove from my office at TIME magazine," Cooper wrote, "through the White House switchboard and being transferred to his office."
"I believe a woman answered the phone and said words to the effect that Rove wasn't there or was busy before going on vacation," he said.
"But then, I recall," Cooper said, "she said something like, "Hang on," and I was transferred to him."
"I recall," Cooper wrote, "saying something like, "I'm writing about Wilson," before he interjected, "Don't get too far out on Wilson."
No doubt in light of these discoveries, Fitzgerald invited Ms Ralston for a return engagement with the grand jury.
According to Raw Story, while testifying the second time, Ralston said that Rove instructed her not to log in the call from Cooper and she also provided information about other calls between Rove and reporters, including Robert Novak.
It should be noted here that Ms Ralston was hired by Rove after she came highly recommended from his good friend: Jack Abramoff, for whom Ms Ralston performed similar duties "-- that is until Abramoff realized she'd be far more useful embedded in the West Wing," according to Rolling Stone Magazine.
After his chat with Viveca, Attorney Luskin reportedly orchestrated a search for any record of a conversation between Rove and Cooper and low and behold, an e-mail from Rove to senior White House official, Stephen Hadley surfaced, that provided detail of a conversation between Rove and Cooper that took place before Valerie was outed by Robert Novak.
There has been much speculation about when the Rove-Hadley email was found and when it was turned over to Fitzgerald. In her December 19, article, Viveca claims that she did not find out until the fall of 2005, that her remark to Luskin had led to a search for evidence that Rove and Cooper had talked.
"According to Luskin," Viveca wrote in the article, "he turned the e-mail over to Fitzgerald when he found it, leading Rove to acknowledge before the grand jury in October 2004 that he had indeed spoken with Cooper."
The fact that Rove was not charged on the spot for this slick trick, shows that he got another get-out-of-jail-free card because he had been ordered to turn over all emails to the special prosecutor just like everyone else in the White House.
"On October 3, 2003," according to a memo authored by Andy Card, then White House Chief of Staff, "every employee in the Executive Office of the President received instructions from Counsel's office about obligations to search for and provide documents that may be related to the Justice Department's investigation."
In addition, the subpoenas issued by Fitzgerald to the White House called for, among other things:
1) All documents from February 1, 2002 through 2003 related to Plame, Wilson's trip to Niger, or to contacts with journalists.
2) All documents from July 6 to July 21, 2003 from the White House Iraq Group (of which Libby, Hadley, and Rove were members).
3) All documents relating to conversations with Matt Cooper of Time Magazine.
According to reporter, Jason Leopold, neither Hadley nor Rove disclosed the communication about Valerie when they were questioned by the FBI, or testified to the grand jury.
Rove said that he found out about Valerie from reporters, and, "Hadley testified that he recalled learning about Plame Wilson when her name was published in a newspaper column," Leopold said.
As it turns out, the email to Hadley was sent within minutes after Rove spoke to Cooper on July 11, 2003, and included the comments: “Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he’s got a welfare reform story coming. When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn’t this damaging? Hasn’t the president been hurt? I didn’t take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn’t get Time far out in front on this.”
In February 2006, Fitzgerald informed Libby's attorneys that the White House had turned over about 250 pages of previously undisclosed e-mails from the Cheney's office, which have no doubt provided hours of interesting reading for the prosecutor's team.
With his feet to the fire, on October 15, 2004, Rove marched back into the grand jury to change his story and say that he must have discussed Valerie with Cooper after all, because the e-mail established that he had in fact had a conversation with Cooper.
That day, Viveca Novak wrote a web exclusive for Time and quoted her drinking buddy, Luskin as saying: "My client appeared voluntarily before the grand jury and has cooperated with the investigation since it began."
In the article, Viveca mentions a question to which she knows the answer but doesn't share it with her readers. "Fitzgerald is trying to find out who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative married to former ambassador Joe Wilson, to several journalists in July 2003," she wrote.
In December 2005, Luskin testified that his meeting with Viveca where he learned about the Rove-Cooper connection, took place in late January or early February 2004, the same month in which Rove had reportedly testified twice and Fitzgerald had sought the authority to prosecute officials if they were found to have obstructed his investigation.
However the problem is that Viveca, says she thinks the conversation took place in either March or May 2004.
But a more pressing dilemma for Viveca personally, has turned out to be that she continued to write articles on the leak case without informing her boss at Time Magazine about her insider knowledge of the facts.
According to the April 27, 2006, New York Times, Viveca no longer works for Time. "She left the magazine after a dispute over her role in the case," the NYT's said, "taking a buyout package last month."
So it looks like another journalist bites the dust in the wake of the illegal conduct by the White House. After a 20-some year tenure, Judy Miller got the boot from the New York Times for not revealing her involvement with the Libby to her boss. Bob Novak got hot under the collar when asked a question about his part in the case and walked of a live broadcast on CNN and got canned, and even Bob Woodward is said to have fallen off his pedestal at the Washington Post.
Yet as the body-count rises, Karl Rove is always seen smiling like a cat that just ate a canary and knows he got away with it.
Why Rove waited some five or six months to correct his testimony with the grand jury is said to be a mystery but it may simply be that when Luskin gave him the news that he was busted, Cooper was still refusing to identify Rove as his source and so he decided to run out the clock and bet the farm.
What could he lose? The odds were good. The Supreme Court had certainly demonstrated its allegiance to the Bush team in the past.
When the lower court ordered Cooper to testify, just as expected, Time appealed the decision all the way to the High Court but was unsuccessful.
But in this case, Rove had the most to lose.
On July 13, 2005, Cooper appeared before the grand jury and informed the panel that Rove was the official who told him that Valerie was employed at the CIA, and the panel already knew that Libby was the other source.
According to Cooper, his conversation with Rove was the first time he had heard anything about Wilson’s wife. In addition, Rove had told Cooper that more information that would discredit Wilson and his findings in Niger would soon be declassified.
In a July 25, 2005, article discussing his testimony, in Time Magazine, Cooper wrote: "Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the C.I.A. and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes."
"Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'W.M.D.'? Yes," he said.
"When he said things would be declassified soon, was that itself impermissible? I don't know," Cooper wrote.
Cooper also told the grand jury that he had a distinct memory of Rove ending the phone call by saying, “I’ve already said too much.”
Over this time period, Rove got dealt a whole deck of get-out-of-jail-free cards.
After it became known that Rove was indeed Cooper's secret source, on July 15, 2005, ninety-one Democrats in Congress signed a letter to Bush calling for Rove to explain his role in the leak, or to resign and 13 Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee called for hearings on the matter.
When the Libby indictment was issued, and it became known that Rove had definitely participated in blowing Valerie's cover, 16 former CIA and military intelligence officials petitioned Bush to suspend Rove's security clearance and Bush refused to grant their request.
Karl Rove still has security clearance to this very day.
The granting of this free pass becomes all the more obvious when compared to what happened to former Clinton advisor, Sandy Berger, in 2003, when he took classified documents from the National Archives, to prepare to testify before the 9/11 Commission. In order to settle the case, Berger had to plead guilty to mishandling of documents in violation of the Espionage Act, and his security clearance was suspended for 3 years.
In the grand jury sessions, press aides were reportedly confronted with internal White House documents, mainly e-mails and telephone logs, between White House aides and reporters and were questioned about conversations with reporters.
According to the New York Times, the set of documents that prosecutors repeatedly referred to in their meetings with White House aides are extensive notes compiled by none other than Scooter Libby.
The logs indicate that several White House officials talked to Novak shortly before the appearance of his July 14 column, the Washington Post reported.
That said, it should be interesting to see how many more get-out-of-jail-free cards Fitzgerald has up his sleeve and how they get distributed.
How many more get-out-of-jail free cards does Karl Rove get? Eat your heart out Martha Stewart. You should have tried playing Monopoly with the G-Men.
On October 28 2005, the office of the Special Prosecutor released a press statement which stated in part:
"A major focus of the grand jury investigation was to determine which government officials had disclosed to the media prior to July 14, 2003, information concerning Valerie Wilson's CIA affiliation, and the nature, timing, extent, and purpose of such disclosures, as well as whether any official made such a disclosure knowing that Valerie Wilson's employment by the CIA was classified information."
Somebody needs to inform Fitzgerald that "we got em." Kind of like Bush in Poland when he announced finding two trailers in Iraq and said that they had found the WMDs that Colin Powell had referred to in his speech at the UN.
Hey Mr Fitzgerald, as for those government officials you've been looking for, we found em. Surprise, surprise, its Scooter Libby and Karl Rove.
When reading the criminal indictment against Libby, its clear that Karl Rove and Libby each told reporters about Valerie Plame's status as a CIA agent before Novak's column was published, albeit Libby did it first on June 23, 2003, when he told Judy Miller from the New York Times.
That is, first as far as we know anyways, because after close to a 3-year tax dollar funded investigation, it has since been revealed that Bob Woodward, of the Washington Post, was told of Valerie's CIA status reportedly before Libby and Rove made the revelations to Miller, Cooper or Novak.
But as the law applies to Libby and Rove, it doesn't matter who leaked first, because they still violated the "Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement," Form SF-312, that they signed as a condition of employment which prohibits even confirming or repeating classified information already leaked. The briefing book that comes with the form states in relevant part:
Before confirming the accuracy of what appears in the public source, the signer of the SF 312 must confirm through an authorized official that the information has, in fact, been declassified. If it has not, confirmation of its accuracy is also an unauthorized disclosure.
By now, a lot of people are wondering why it is that Libby is arrested and Rove is not. It's probably due to a variety of reasons.
On August 13, 2005, journalist, Murray Waas, reported that back in 2003, officials from the Justice Department and the FBI recommended the appointment of a special prosecutor because they felt that Rove had not been truthful about his conversation with Cooper, nor in claiming that he had first heard of Valerie's identity from a reporter whose name he could not remember.
At the time, Rove maintained that he had only spoken about Valerie to reporters after her identity had already become public. But we now know that Rove and Libby were the sources for Cooper's article in Time Magazine, published 3 days after Novak's column which cited unnamed government officials, when describing Valerie as a "CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."
So again why is Libby the only one arrested? His only variation from the agreed upon talking points was when he added the name Tim Russert to "the reporter-told-me" story, while Rove stuck to the line that he could not remember the reporter’s name.
For one thing, when the investigation began, I suspect that it's highly unlikely that Libby had any of the top dogs at the Justice Department in his back pocket. Whereas Rove reportedly raked in over $750,000 in consulting fees for working on prior campaigns for John Ashcroft, the reigning Attorney General at the time, and with a political hatchet man like Rove involved, who knows how many skeletons could be buried along those campaign trails.
Ashcroft is said to have been briefed on at least one of Rove's interviews with the FBI. That briefing probably led to the first get-out-of-jail-free card for Rove.
But even with the FBI breathing down his neck, in February 2004, Rove twice went before the grand jury and lied through his teeth. He refused to admit that he had spoken to Novak about Valerie before she was outed, and he denied talking with Cooper period.
However, on December 2, 2005, the New York Times, reported that a conversation between Rove's lawyer and "a journalist for Time magazine led Mr. Rove to change his testimony last year to the grand jury in the C.I.A. leak case."
Which means Rove received another get-out-of-jail-free card in this instance.
According to Time Magazine journalist, Viveca Novak's article titled, "What Viveca Novak Told Fitzgerald," on December 10, 2003, her visits and conversations Attorney Robert Luskin began innocently enough.
"In October 2003, as we each made our way through a glass of wine, he asked me what I was working on," she wrote. "I told him I was trying to get a handle on the Valerie Plame leak investigation," Viveca said.
"Well," Luskin reportedly told her, "you're sitting next to Karl Rove's lawyer."
"I began spending a little more time than usual with Luskin as I tried to keep track of the investigation," Viveca explained.
Sometime during the week of October 18, 2005, which Viveca refers to as "indictment week," she says, Luskin "phoned me and said he had disclosed to Fitzgerald the content of a conversation he and I had had at Cafe Deluxe more than a year earlier and that Fitzgerald might want to talk to me."
According to Viveca, she did meet with Fitzgerald on November 10, 2005, for about two hours after her attorney advised Fitzgerald that she would discuss only her interactions with Luskin that were relevant to the conversation in question, with no "fishing expeditions, no questions about my other reporting or sources in the case," she wrote.
Fitzgerald agreed to the conditions, she said, and advised her lawyer that he wanted to "remove the chicken bone without disturbing the body."
During the meeting, Fitzgerald asked if Luskin had ever talked to Viveca about whether Rove was Cooper's source on the topic of Wilson's wife.
"That was the "chicken bone" Fitzgerald had referred to," Viveca wrote.
Here is what happened according to her first-person account of her visits with Luskin as to what was discussed about Rove and Cooper:
"Toward the end of one of our meetings," she said, "I remember Luskin looking at me and saying something to the effect of "Karl doesn't have a Cooper problem. He was not a source for Matt."
"I responded instinctively," Viveca wrote, "thinking he was trying to spin me, and said something like, "Are you sure about that? That's not what I hear around TIME."
"He looked surprised and very serious," she said. "There's nothing in the phone logs," Luskin told Viveca.
"In the course of the investigation, the logs of all Rove's calls around the July 2003 time period," Viveca wrote, "had been combed, and Luskin was telling me there were no references to Matt."
Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, its apparent that Rove realized the importance of covering his tracks while he was leaking to reporters in the summer of 2003. Here lies the missing link to this puzzle.
In a November 28, 2005, article in Raw Story, Jason Leopold and Larisa Alexandrovna, who have doggedly investigated this matter, reported that Rove’s former personal assistant, Susan Ralston, whose job it was to screen Rove’s phone calls at the White House, had previously testified that Cooper’s call to Rove was not logged in because Cooper had called through the White House switchboard and was transferred to Rove’s office, as opposed to calling Rove’s office directly.
But citing “those close to the probe,” the Raw Story article noted, “that Fitzgerald obtained documentary evidence showing that other unrelated calls transferred to Rove’s office by the switchboard were logged.”
In addition, in a July 25, 2005, Time Magazine article titled, "What I Told The Grand Jury," Cooper recounts his recollection of what happened when he called the White House.
"I recall calling Rove from my office at TIME magazine," Cooper wrote, "through the White House switchboard and being transferred to his office."
"I believe a woman answered the phone and said words to the effect that Rove wasn't there or was busy before going on vacation," he said.
"But then, I recall," Cooper said, "she said something like, "Hang on," and I was transferred to him."
"I recall," Cooper wrote, "saying something like, "I'm writing about Wilson," before he interjected, "Don't get too far out on Wilson."
No doubt in light of these discoveries, Fitzgerald invited Ms Ralston for a return engagement with the grand jury.
According to Raw Story, while testifying the second time, Ralston said that Rove instructed her not to log in the call from Cooper and she also provided information about other calls between Rove and reporters, including Robert Novak.
It should be noted here that Ms Ralston was hired by Rove after she came highly recommended from his good friend: Jack Abramoff, for whom Ms Ralston performed similar duties "-- that is until Abramoff realized she'd be far more useful embedded in the West Wing," according to Rolling Stone Magazine.
After his chat with Viveca, Attorney Luskin reportedly orchestrated a search for any record of a conversation between Rove and Cooper and low and behold, an e-mail from Rove to senior White House official, Stephen Hadley surfaced, that provided detail of a conversation between Rove and Cooper that took place before Valerie was outed by Robert Novak.
There has been much speculation about when the Rove-Hadley email was found and when it was turned over to Fitzgerald. In her December 19, article, Viveca claims that she did not find out until the fall of 2005, that her remark to Luskin had led to a search for evidence that Rove and Cooper had talked.
"According to Luskin," Viveca wrote in the article, "he turned the e-mail over to Fitzgerald when he found it, leading Rove to acknowledge before the grand jury in October 2004 that he had indeed spoken with Cooper."
The fact that Rove was not charged on the spot for this slick trick, shows that he got another get-out-of-jail-free card because he had been ordered to turn over all emails to the special prosecutor just like everyone else in the White House.
"On October 3, 2003," according to a memo authored by Andy Card, then White House Chief of Staff, "every employee in the Executive Office of the President received instructions from Counsel's office about obligations to search for and provide documents that may be related to the Justice Department's investigation."
In addition, the subpoenas issued by Fitzgerald to the White House called for, among other things:
1) All documents from February 1, 2002 through 2003 related to Plame, Wilson's trip to Niger, or to contacts with journalists.
2) All documents from July 6 to July 21, 2003 from the White House Iraq Group (of which Libby, Hadley, and Rove were members).
3) All documents relating to conversations with Matt Cooper of Time Magazine.
According to reporter, Jason Leopold, neither Hadley nor Rove disclosed the communication about Valerie when they were questioned by the FBI, or testified to the grand jury.
Rove said that he found out about Valerie from reporters, and, "Hadley testified that he recalled learning about Plame Wilson when her name was published in a newspaper column," Leopold said.
As it turns out, the email to Hadley was sent within minutes after Rove spoke to Cooper on July 11, 2003, and included the comments: “Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he’s got a welfare reform story coming. When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn’t this damaging? Hasn’t the president been hurt? I didn’t take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn’t get Time far out in front on this.”
In February 2006, Fitzgerald informed Libby's attorneys that the White House had turned over about 250 pages of previously undisclosed e-mails from the Cheney's office, which have no doubt provided hours of interesting reading for the prosecutor's team.
With his feet to the fire, on October 15, 2004, Rove marched back into the grand jury to change his story and say that he must have discussed Valerie with Cooper after all, because the e-mail established that he had in fact had a conversation with Cooper.
That day, Viveca Novak wrote a web exclusive for Time and quoted her drinking buddy, Luskin as saying: "My client appeared voluntarily before the grand jury and has cooperated with the investigation since it began."
In the article, Viveca mentions a question to which she knows the answer but doesn't share it with her readers. "Fitzgerald is trying to find out who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative married to former ambassador Joe Wilson, to several journalists in July 2003," she wrote.
In December 2005, Luskin testified that his meeting with Viveca where he learned about the Rove-Cooper connection, took place in late January or early February 2004, the same month in which Rove had reportedly testified twice and Fitzgerald had sought the authority to prosecute officials if they were found to have obstructed his investigation.
However the problem is that Viveca, says she thinks the conversation took place in either March or May 2004.
But a more pressing dilemma for Viveca personally, has turned out to be that she continued to write articles on the leak case without informing her boss at Time Magazine about her insider knowledge of the facts.
According to the April 27, 2006, New York Times, Viveca no longer works for Time. "She left the magazine after a dispute over her role in the case," the NYT's said, "taking a buyout package last month."
So it looks like another journalist bites the dust in the wake of the illegal conduct by the White House. After a 20-some year tenure, Judy Miller got the boot from the New York Times for not revealing her involvement with the Libby to her boss. Bob Novak got hot under the collar when asked a question about his part in the case and walked of a live broadcast on CNN and got canned, and even Bob Woodward is said to have fallen off his pedestal at the Washington Post.
Yet as the body-count rises, Karl Rove is always seen smiling like a cat that just ate a canary and knows he got away with it.
Why Rove waited some five or six months to correct his testimony with the grand jury is said to be a mystery but it may simply be that when Luskin gave him the news that he was busted, Cooper was still refusing to identify Rove as his source and so he decided to run out the clock and bet the farm.
What could he lose? The odds were good. The Supreme Court had certainly demonstrated its allegiance to the Bush team in the past.
When the lower court ordered Cooper to testify, just as expected, Time appealed the decision all the way to the High Court but was unsuccessful.
But in this case, Rove had the most to lose.
On July 13, 2005, Cooper appeared before the grand jury and informed the panel that Rove was the official who told him that Valerie was employed at the CIA, and the panel already knew that Libby was the other source.
According to Cooper, his conversation with Rove was the first time he had heard anything about Wilson’s wife. In addition, Rove had told Cooper that more information that would discredit Wilson and his findings in Niger would soon be declassified.
In a July 25, 2005, article discussing his testimony, in Time Magazine, Cooper wrote: "Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the C.I.A. and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes."
"Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'W.M.D.'? Yes," he said.
"When he said things would be declassified soon, was that itself impermissible? I don't know," Cooper wrote.
Cooper also told the grand jury that he had a distinct memory of Rove ending the phone call by saying, “I’ve already said too much.”
Over this time period, Rove got dealt a whole deck of get-out-of-jail-free cards.
After it became known that Rove was indeed Cooper's secret source, on July 15, 2005, ninety-one Democrats in Congress signed a letter to Bush calling for Rove to explain his role in the leak, or to resign and 13 Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee called for hearings on the matter.
When the Libby indictment was issued, and it became known that Rove had definitely participated in blowing Valerie's cover, 16 former CIA and military intelligence officials petitioned Bush to suspend Rove's security clearance and Bush refused to grant their request.
Karl Rove still has security clearance to this very day.
The granting of this free pass becomes all the more obvious when compared to what happened to former Clinton advisor, Sandy Berger, in 2003, when he took classified documents from the National Archives, to prepare to testify before the 9/11 Commission. In order to settle the case, Berger had to plead guilty to mishandling of documents in violation of the Espionage Act, and his security clearance was suspended for 3 years.
In the grand jury sessions, press aides were reportedly confronted with internal White House documents, mainly e-mails and telephone logs, between White House aides and reporters and were questioned about conversations with reporters.
According to the New York Times, the set of documents that prosecutors repeatedly referred to in their meetings with White House aides are extensive notes compiled by none other than Scooter Libby.
The logs indicate that several White House officials talked to Novak shortly before the appearance of his July 14 column, the Washington Post reported.
That said, it should be interesting to see how many more get-out-of-jail-free cards Fitzgerald has up his sleeve and how they get distributed.
Rove Gets Off - I Want My Money Back
Evelyn Pringle June 14, 2006
The American people were told three years ago that an investigation was being set up to do one thing, find out the names of the 2 Bush administration officials who were the sources for a newspaper article by Bob Novak that revealed the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative.
We now know that Rove was one of the sources - end of story. He should have been charged.
Does the Bush administration really think that the public will not remember what they were told when this investigation was set up?
How Rove got Fitzgerald to fold and let him off is anybody's guess. Maybe Rove used his usual dirty tricks and dug deep enough to find some intimidating tale in the special prosecutor's lily-white past.
Few among us are without any skeletons and what better thug to find them than Karl Rove. That's his well-documented specialty.
I heard some talking head on TV say Democrats should apologize to Rove. For what? He was the guy we knew did it when the investigation began and he was the guy fingered in the investigation as a Novak source.
Bush should be apologizing to the CIA, to Ms Plame, and to the American taxpayers.
John Dean said this White House is worse than Nixon and Watergate and he is right. This White House is worse than Nixon not only because they play dirtier than Nixon, but because no matter what it does no one will hold it accountable. This administration makes Nixon look like a saint.
As a taxpayer, I want my money back. Not only for this charade of an investigation but also I want my share of the money spent on supporting Valerie Plame's cover for 18 years in the CIA that was flushed down the toilet by top administration officials including the 2 worst thugs at the top.
The special prosecutor has not named the second source for Novak's column. I predict that in the end, we will find out that it was Bush or Cheney.
Since Bush took office, just because he has never had to balance a check book in his life, he throws around our tax dollars like a drunken sailor, without drawing a peep about his spending habits from the mainstream press.
Bush knew it was Rove all the long while he allowed this costly cat and mouse game to continue. Bush knew he and Cheney were involved from the get-go.
To think that tens of millions of dollars have gone up in smoke is not acceptable and the media needs to start reporting on how the hard earned money of working Americans is being wasted.
The Karl Rove case is just the latest example of six years of investigations that do nothing more than prove what we knew to begin with, while the crooks walk away unscathed in plain sight.
How much money has been wasted investigating Halliburton since the war began, only to find that the company got the contracts illegally through Cheney, ripped us off left right and center in Iraq, and was guilty as charged every single time and then let off the hook?
How much money was spent investigating the lies by Bush administration officials to Congress about the cost of the prescription drug bill only to determine the parties were guilty as sin, at a cost to tax payers of $130 billion more than expected, and then let off the hook because the lead crook had already went out the revolving door of the White House to work for the drug companies?
How much money have we spent to verify that the Bush administration used over a billion tax dollars to illegally advertise its policies, with phony ads to boot, to buffalo the public only to see nothing done about it?
How much money has been wasted investigating the WMD lies that got us into the disaster in Iraq only to verify that we were lied to, and the war was totally unnecessary, while half of liars are back in the private sector making big bucks off war profiteering schemes set up at the same time the lies were being told?
How much money was spent chasing after those WMDs that never existed due to those lies?
I could go on and on and on but I don’t have all day. This is my money and I want to know who is going put a stop to the on-going robbery by this administration.
The Rove spectacle is merely the icing on the cake and another kick in the teeth to American tax payers.
The American people were told three years ago that an investigation was being set up to do one thing, find out the names of the 2 Bush administration officials who were the sources for a newspaper article by Bob Novak that revealed the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative.
We now know that Rove was one of the sources - end of story. He should have been charged.
Does the Bush administration really think that the public will not remember what they were told when this investigation was set up?
How Rove got Fitzgerald to fold and let him off is anybody's guess. Maybe Rove used his usual dirty tricks and dug deep enough to find some intimidating tale in the special prosecutor's lily-white past.
Few among us are without any skeletons and what better thug to find them than Karl Rove. That's his well-documented specialty.
I heard some talking head on TV say Democrats should apologize to Rove. For what? He was the guy we knew did it when the investigation began and he was the guy fingered in the investigation as a Novak source.
Bush should be apologizing to the CIA, to Ms Plame, and to the American taxpayers.
John Dean said this White House is worse than Nixon and Watergate and he is right. This White House is worse than Nixon not only because they play dirtier than Nixon, but because no matter what it does no one will hold it accountable. This administration makes Nixon look like a saint.
As a taxpayer, I want my money back. Not only for this charade of an investigation but also I want my share of the money spent on supporting Valerie Plame's cover for 18 years in the CIA that was flushed down the toilet by top administration officials including the 2 worst thugs at the top.
The special prosecutor has not named the second source for Novak's column. I predict that in the end, we will find out that it was Bush or Cheney.
Since Bush took office, just because he has never had to balance a check book in his life, he throws around our tax dollars like a drunken sailor, without drawing a peep about his spending habits from the mainstream press.
Bush knew it was Rove all the long while he allowed this costly cat and mouse game to continue. Bush knew he and Cheney were involved from the get-go.
To think that tens of millions of dollars have gone up in smoke is not acceptable and the media needs to start reporting on how the hard earned money of working Americans is being wasted.
The Karl Rove case is just the latest example of six years of investigations that do nothing more than prove what we knew to begin with, while the crooks walk away unscathed in plain sight.
How much money has been wasted investigating Halliburton since the war began, only to find that the company got the contracts illegally through Cheney, ripped us off left right and center in Iraq, and was guilty as charged every single time and then let off the hook?
How much money was spent investigating the lies by Bush administration officials to Congress about the cost of the prescription drug bill only to determine the parties were guilty as sin, at a cost to tax payers of $130 billion more than expected, and then let off the hook because the lead crook had already went out the revolving door of the White House to work for the drug companies?
How much money have we spent to verify that the Bush administration used over a billion tax dollars to illegally advertise its policies, with phony ads to boot, to buffalo the public only to see nothing done about it?
How much money has been wasted investigating the WMD lies that got us into the disaster in Iraq only to verify that we were lied to, and the war was totally unnecessary, while half of liars are back in the private sector making big bucks off war profiteering schemes set up at the same time the lies were being told?
How much money was spent chasing after those WMDs that never existed due to those lies?
I could go on and on and on but I don’t have all day. This is my money and I want to know who is going put a stop to the on-going robbery by this administration.
The Rove spectacle is merely the icing on the cake and another kick in the teeth to American tax payers.
Rove and Bush - Most Insidious Traitors
Evelyn Pringle June 15, 2006
Shortly after Valerie Plame was outed, Joe Wilson received a long handwritten letter from the first President Bush expressing his "outrage at what had happened and his understanding of the seriousness of it," according to Wilson.
The elder Bush, a former CIA Director himself, is known to have said in 1999, that “those who betray the trust by exposing the names of our sources" are "the most insidious of traitors.”
How must the father feel now that he knows his son is the leader of a gang of the “most insidious of traitors?”
The American taxpayers who paid for the investigation to determine the identities of the insidious traitors deserve to know what happened to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald between October 28, 2005 and June 13, 2006. Back when he announced the Scooter Libby indictment, he said Valerie Plame's CIA status was classified and not common knowledge. At his October press conference, Fitzgerald specifically told reporters:
Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer. In July 2003, the fact that Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer was classified. Not only was it classified, but also it was not widely known outside the intelligence community. Valerie Wilson's friends, neighbors, college classmates had no idea she had another life. The fact that she was a CIA officer was not well known, for her protection or for the benefit of all us. It's important that a CIA officer's identity be protected, that it be protected not just for the officer, but for the nation's security. Valerie Wilson's cover was blown in July 2003. The first sign of that cover being blown was when Mr. Novak published a column on July 14th, 2003.
In an August 27, 2005 affidavit, filed in the Libby case, Fitzgerald described Valerie Plame as “a person whose identity the CIA was making specific efforts to conceal and who had carried out covert work overseas within the last 5 years.”
Fitzgerald has identified Karl Rove as one of Novak's sources. In fact, according to court filings, Rove was the person who told Scooter Libby that Novak was planning to write a story about Wilson before it was published. And as it turns out, Rove was Time Magazine's Matt Cooper's source as well.
So what happened to the special prosecutor since October 28, 2005?
One thing is clear. The "Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement," Forms SF-312, signed by members of the Bush administration are not worth the paper they are written on. Rove signed that form as a condition of employment and it prohibits even confirming or repeating classified information already leaked. The briefing book that comes with the form states in relevant part:
Before confirming the accuracy of what appears in the public source, the signer of the SF 312 must confirm through an authorized official that the information has, in fact, been declassified. If it has not, confirmation of its accuracy is also an unauthorized disclosure.
Since day one, when Plame’s identity showed up in the press, there have been lies, upon lies, upon more lies from members of the Bush administration
On September 29, 2003, during a public press conference, press secretary, Scott McClellan told the world in regard to any White House involvement in the leak:
"There's been nothing, absolutely nothing, brought to our attention to suggest any White House involvement, and that includes the vice president's office, as well."
McClellan assured Americans that "if anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration."
In regard to Rove being involved, McClellan said the "President knows" it is not true and then told world:
"And I said it is simply not true. So, I mean, it's public knowledge. I've said that it's not true. And I have spoken with Karl Rove ... He [President Bush]'s aware of what I've said, that there is simply no truth to that suggestion. And I have spoken with Karl about it."
On June 24, 2004, Fitzgerald and his assistants interviewed Bush himself in the Oval Office. At a press conference that day, McClellan told Americans that Bush was "pleased to do his part" and stated:
"No one wants to get to the bottom of this matter more than the president of the United States, and he has said on more than one occasion that if anyone -- inside or outside the government has information that can help the investigators get to the bottom of this, they should provide that information to the officials in charge."
A month or so later, Karl Rove said, "I didn't know her name and didn't leak her name," to a CNN reporter at the Republican convention in July 2004.
"This is at the Justice Department," Rove said, "I'm confident that the U.S. Attorney, the prosecutor who's involved in looking at this is going to do a very thorough job of doing a very substantial and conclusive investigation."
On July 2, 2005, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, said that Rove "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA."
The thorough investigation Rove referred to is done and it revealed what many of us knew when it began. Rove was the source of the leak of Valerie's identity, and not to only one reporter but to two.
On July 13, 2005, Matt Cooper testified before the grand jury and informed the panel that Rove was the first source that told him that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.
In an article discussing his testimony, in the July 17, 2005 Time Magazine, Cooper wrote: "Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the C.I.A. and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes."
"Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'W.M.D.'? Yes," Cooper asked and answered in the article.
"When he said things would be declassified soon, was that itself impermissible? I don't know," Cooper wrote.
On April 6, 2006, it was widely reported that Libby told the grand jury that Bush and Cheney authorized the disclosure of classified information on Iraq's weapons program to debunk Wilson's claims, according to documents filed in the Libby case.
Libby testified that the circumstances of his conversation with reporter Miller, getting approval from the President through the Vice President to discuss material that would be classified but for that approval were unique in his recollection, according to Fitzgerald‘s filings in the case.
He further testified that on July 12, 2003, he was specifically directed by Cheney to speak to the press in place of Cathie Martin, the communications person for Cheney at the time.
Press secretary McClellan confirmed that Bush authorized the leak, but refused to answer questions about why Bush would bother appointing a special prosecutor to investigate the Plame matter if he knew from the beginning who disclosed the information.
After being made a fool of in front of his fellow reporters, poor old Scott McClellan bit the dust apparently because he did not possess the ability to lie at the drop of a hat without looking guilty, THE top requirement for anyone who hopes to hold onto a job in the Bush White House.
On October 7, 2003, three months after Plame’s identity was leaked, Bush said in a press conference that it was unlikely that the person who leaked the name would be found.
"I mean this is a town full of people who like to leak information," he said. "And I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official.”
“Now,” he rambled on, “this is a large administration, and there's lots of senior officials. I don't have any idea."
For 3 long years, Bush engaged in this type of a cat-and-mouse game at the expense of the American taxpayers, and most taxpayers emphatically say they are not amused.
John Dean, former White House counsel to President Nixon during Watergate, wrote an open letter to Fitzgerald and warned that the Bush gang was using the same tactics the Nixon team used during Watergate and said in part:
Indeed, this is exactly the plan that was employed during Watergate by those who sought to conceal the Nixon Administration's crimes, and keep criminals in office.
The plan was to keep the investigation focused on the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters - and away from the atmosphere in which such an action was undertaken.
Toward this end, I was directed by superiors to get the Department of Justice to keep its focus on the break-in, and nothing else.
That was done. And had Congress not undertaken its own investigation (since it was a Democratically-controlled Congress with a Republican President) it is very likely that Watergate would have ended with the conviction of those caught in the bungled burglary and wiretapping attempt at the Democratic headquarters.
We will no doubt have a Democratically controlled Congress in about 8 months and they had better do their job in exposing this corrupt regime because this gang of thugs is ten times worse than the Nixon administration.
The damning truth is that the US government exposed the identity of an undercover office and the fact that this unprecedented act will go unpunished will have far reaching consequences on covert operations all over the world.
If a CIA officer is exposed, his or her informants are exposed. In all cases, the cover of an officer ensures not only his or her own safety but that of the agent’s assets as well. A CIA agent in some foreign country will lose an opportunity to recruit an asset that may be invaluable because promises of protection will no longer carry the trust they once did.
When the outing occurred, critics say, Bush should have demanded the resignation of all persons involved. At a bare minimum, he should have suspended their security clearances and placed them on administrative leave. But then how could he do that when him and Cheney were directing the plot.
Instead, even knowing what they knew, the Bush gang flooded the airwaves with political rhetoric demeaning Plame‘s importance at the CIA. Each time the talking heads displayed their ignorance by portraying Plame as a mere paper-pusher, or belittled the degree of cover used to protect CIA operatives, they did a disservice to all intelligence agents.
On July 22, 2005, former CIA agent, Larry Johnson testified at a Senate hearing and said the matter was not just about Plame. "We're talking about an intelligence resource, a United States national security resource that was destroyed by these White House officials," Johnson said, "that went out and started talking to the press about this."
"And they have," he testified, "harmed the security of this country."
On October 30, 2005, former CIA agent Jim Marcinkowski told 60 Minutes that one of the worst things about the leak is that it gives America’s enemies clues about how the CIA operates. “She is the wife of an ambassador," he explained, "now, since this happened, every wife of an ambassador is going to be suspected."
"Or they'll know there's a possibility," he said, "that the wife of a U.S. ambassador is a CIA agent.”
"This was done to silence others," according to Joe Wilson. "The message was if you do to us what Wilson did to us, we'll do to you what we just did to Wilson's family,” he said.
Well then mission accomplished. After watching this dog and pony show for 3 years, who among us is going to expose the truth when we know this gang of thugs has done something detrimental to the country when it means our entire family is fair game for destruction and there is nothing we can do about it.
Shortly after Valerie Plame was outed, Joe Wilson received a long handwritten letter from the first President Bush expressing his "outrage at what had happened and his understanding of the seriousness of it," according to Wilson.
The elder Bush, a former CIA Director himself, is known to have said in 1999, that “those who betray the trust by exposing the names of our sources" are "the most insidious of traitors.”
How must the father feel now that he knows his son is the leader of a gang of the “most insidious of traitors?”
The American taxpayers who paid for the investigation to determine the identities of the insidious traitors deserve to know what happened to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald between October 28, 2005 and June 13, 2006. Back when he announced the Scooter Libby indictment, he said Valerie Plame's CIA status was classified and not common knowledge. At his October press conference, Fitzgerald specifically told reporters:
Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer. In July 2003, the fact that Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer was classified. Not only was it classified, but also it was not widely known outside the intelligence community. Valerie Wilson's friends, neighbors, college classmates had no idea she had another life. The fact that she was a CIA officer was not well known, for her protection or for the benefit of all us. It's important that a CIA officer's identity be protected, that it be protected not just for the officer, but for the nation's security. Valerie Wilson's cover was blown in July 2003. The first sign of that cover being blown was when Mr. Novak published a column on July 14th, 2003.
In an August 27, 2005 affidavit, filed in the Libby case, Fitzgerald described Valerie Plame as “a person whose identity the CIA was making specific efforts to conceal and who had carried out covert work overseas within the last 5 years.”
Fitzgerald has identified Karl Rove as one of Novak's sources. In fact, according to court filings, Rove was the person who told Scooter Libby that Novak was planning to write a story about Wilson before it was published. And as it turns out, Rove was Time Magazine's Matt Cooper's source as well.
So what happened to the special prosecutor since October 28, 2005?
One thing is clear. The "Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement," Forms SF-312, signed by members of the Bush administration are not worth the paper they are written on. Rove signed that form as a condition of employment and it prohibits even confirming or repeating classified information already leaked. The briefing book that comes with the form states in relevant part:
Before confirming the accuracy of what appears in the public source, the signer of the SF 312 must confirm through an authorized official that the information has, in fact, been declassified. If it has not, confirmation of its accuracy is also an unauthorized disclosure.
Since day one, when Plame’s identity showed up in the press, there have been lies, upon lies, upon more lies from members of the Bush administration
On September 29, 2003, during a public press conference, press secretary, Scott McClellan told the world in regard to any White House involvement in the leak:
"There's been nothing, absolutely nothing, brought to our attention to suggest any White House involvement, and that includes the vice president's office, as well."
McClellan assured Americans that "if anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration."
In regard to Rove being involved, McClellan said the "President knows" it is not true and then told world:
"And I said it is simply not true. So, I mean, it's public knowledge. I've said that it's not true. And I have spoken with Karl Rove ... He [President Bush]'s aware of what I've said, that there is simply no truth to that suggestion. And I have spoken with Karl about it."
On June 24, 2004, Fitzgerald and his assistants interviewed Bush himself in the Oval Office. At a press conference that day, McClellan told Americans that Bush was "pleased to do his part" and stated:
"No one wants to get to the bottom of this matter more than the president of the United States, and he has said on more than one occasion that if anyone -- inside or outside the government has information that can help the investigators get to the bottom of this, they should provide that information to the officials in charge."
A month or so later, Karl Rove said, "I didn't know her name and didn't leak her name," to a CNN reporter at the Republican convention in July 2004.
"This is at the Justice Department," Rove said, "I'm confident that the U.S. Attorney, the prosecutor who's involved in looking at this is going to do a very thorough job of doing a very substantial and conclusive investigation."
On July 2, 2005, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, said that Rove "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA."
The thorough investigation Rove referred to is done and it revealed what many of us knew when it began. Rove was the source of the leak of Valerie's identity, and not to only one reporter but to two.
On July 13, 2005, Matt Cooper testified before the grand jury and informed the panel that Rove was the first source that told him that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.
In an article discussing his testimony, in the July 17, 2005 Time Magazine, Cooper wrote: "Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the C.I.A. and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes."
"Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'W.M.D.'? Yes," Cooper asked and answered in the article.
"When he said things would be declassified soon, was that itself impermissible? I don't know," Cooper wrote.
On April 6, 2006, it was widely reported that Libby told the grand jury that Bush and Cheney authorized the disclosure of classified information on Iraq's weapons program to debunk Wilson's claims, according to documents filed in the Libby case.
Libby testified that the circumstances of his conversation with reporter Miller, getting approval from the President through the Vice President to discuss material that would be classified but for that approval were unique in his recollection, according to Fitzgerald‘s filings in the case.
He further testified that on July 12, 2003, he was specifically directed by Cheney to speak to the press in place of Cathie Martin, the communications person for Cheney at the time.
Press secretary McClellan confirmed that Bush authorized the leak, but refused to answer questions about why Bush would bother appointing a special prosecutor to investigate the Plame matter if he knew from the beginning who disclosed the information.
After being made a fool of in front of his fellow reporters, poor old Scott McClellan bit the dust apparently because he did not possess the ability to lie at the drop of a hat without looking guilty, THE top requirement for anyone who hopes to hold onto a job in the Bush White House.
On October 7, 2003, three months after Plame’s identity was leaked, Bush said in a press conference that it was unlikely that the person who leaked the name would be found.
"I mean this is a town full of people who like to leak information," he said. "And I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official.”
“Now,” he rambled on, “this is a large administration, and there's lots of senior officials. I don't have any idea."
For 3 long years, Bush engaged in this type of a cat-and-mouse game at the expense of the American taxpayers, and most taxpayers emphatically say they are not amused.
John Dean, former White House counsel to President Nixon during Watergate, wrote an open letter to Fitzgerald and warned that the Bush gang was using the same tactics the Nixon team used during Watergate and said in part:
Indeed, this is exactly the plan that was employed during Watergate by those who sought to conceal the Nixon Administration's crimes, and keep criminals in office.
The plan was to keep the investigation focused on the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters - and away from the atmosphere in which such an action was undertaken.
Toward this end, I was directed by superiors to get the Department of Justice to keep its focus on the break-in, and nothing else.
That was done. And had Congress not undertaken its own investigation (since it was a Democratically-controlled Congress with a Republican President) it is very likely that Watergate would have ended with the conviction of those caught in the bungled burglary and wiretapping attempt at the Democratic headquarters.
We will no doubt have a Democratically controlled Congress in about 8 months and they had better do their job in exposing this corrupt regime because this gang of thugs is ten times worse than the Nixon administration.
The damning truth is that the US government exposed the identity of an undercover office and the fact that this unprecedented act will go unpunished will have far reaching consequences on covert operations all over the world.
If a CIA officer is exposed, his or her informants are exposed. In all cases, the cover of an officer ensures not only his or her own safety but that of the agent’s assets as well. A CIA agent in some foreign country will lose an opportunity to recruit an asset that may be invaluable because promises of protection will no longer carry the trust they once did.
When the outing occurred, critics say, Bush should have demanded the resignation of all persons involved. At a bare minimum, he should have suspended their security clearances and placed them on administrative leave. But then how could he do that when him and Cheney were directing the plot.
Instead, even knowing what they knew, the Bush gang flooded the airwaves with political rhetoric demeaning Plame‘s importance at the CIA. Each time the talking heads displayed their ignorance by portraying Plame as a mere paper-pusher, or belittled the degree of cover used to protect CIA operatives, they did a disservice to all intelligence agents.
On July 22, 2005, former CIA agent, Larry Johnson testified at a Senate hearing and said the matter was not just about Plame. "We're talking about an intelligence resource, a United States national security resource that was destroyed by these White House officials," Johnson said, "that went out and started talking to the press about this."
"And they have," he testified, "harmed the security of this country."
On October 30, 2005, former CIA agent Jim Marcinkowski told 60 Minutes that one of the worst things about the leak is that it gives America’s enemies clues about how the CIA operates. “She is the wife of an ambassador," he explained, "now, since this happened, every wife of an ambassador is going to be suspected."
"Or they'll know there's a possibility," he said, "that the wife of a U.S. ambassador is a CIA agent.”
"This was done to silence others," according to Joe Wilson. "The message was if you do to us what Wilson did to us, we'll do to you what we just did to Wilson's family,” he said.
Well then mission accomplished. After watching this dog and pony show for 3 years, who among us is going to expose the truth when we know this gang of thugs has done something detrimental to the country when it means our entire family is fair game for destruction and there is nothing we can do about it.
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