Fitzgerald Investigation of Leak of Identity of CIA Agent

The Cabal Group definitely needs to pay big time for their part in the illegal war against Iraq.

Re: BBB


Hey, one trial at a time...Fitz is just getting started....but Soros and Mike Moore might get jealous that he's stealing the spotlight and put a stop to it. :wink:

Grand Jurors Hear Counsel on Leak Case

By DAVID JOHNSTON
and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
Published: October 27, 2005
WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 - The special counsel in the C.I.A. leak inquiry met for more than three hours with the federal grand jury on Wednesday and later talked privately with the district judge in the case as the White House waited out another day in the expectation of possible indictments.

Skip to next paragraph

Doug Mills/The New York Times
Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the C.I.A. leak inquiry, met with the federal grand jury Wednesday and met privately with Judge Thomas F. Hogan of Federal District Court for about 45 minutes. Mr. Fitzgerald is expected to announce this week whether he will press charges.


Rove Aide's Name Appears in Two Washington Inquiries (October 27, 2005)

Ron Edmonds/Associated Press
Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, has been told that he could be charged with wrongdoing, possibly about false statements.


Win McNamee/Getty Images
Mr. Rove and I. Lewis Libby, above, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, are the two biggest names in the investigation.
After the grand jury session, the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, discussed the case for about 45 minutes in the chambers of Judge Thomas F. Hogan, the chief judge of the district court who has presided over the leak case, said the judge's administrative assistant, Sheldon L. Snook.

The grand jury deliberations and the special prosecutor's meeting with the judge ratcheted up fears among officials that Mr. Fitzgerald might have obtained an indictment from the grand jury, and was requesting that it be sealed. He could also seek an extension of the grand jury's term, which expires on Friday. Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald, would not comment on the case.

Mr. Fitzgerald, his deputies and the grand jurors arrived at the federal courthouse shortly after 9 a.m. The grand jurors were seen leaving around noon when Mr. Fitzgerald went to Judge Hogan's chambers.

Although lawyers in the case said that they expected that Mr. Fitzgerald would announce a decision on charges by Friday, his continuing deliberations chafed the already raw nerves at the White House and raised the possibility that he might need more time to complete his inquiry.

Mr. Fitzgerald has focused on Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby Jr., who is Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Both have been advised that they could be charged with wrongdoing, possibly for false statements to the grand jury about their conversations with reporters.

Other possibilities are obstruction of justice or perjury charges, and possible violations of the statute that makes it a crime to disclose the identity of a covert intelligence agent.

Some lawyers have suggested that Mr. Fitzgerald may also have investigated possible conspiracy charges or violations of an espionage law that makes it illegal to communicate classified information to people not authorized to receive it.

Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby came to work at the White House as usual on Wednesday morning. .Whether anyone else is at risk of criminal prosecution remains unknown. The C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, was identified in a July 14, 2003, column by Robert D. Novak, the syndicated columnist, and if a government official was Mr. Novak's main source, that official could be charged with violating a law making it illegal to divulge the identity of a covert officer like Ms. Wilson.

A series of interviews by F.B.I. agents on Monday revived the possibility that Mr. Fitzgerald might be considering such a charge. Several neighbors of Ms. Wilson and her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador, were asked whether they knew that Ms. Wilson, also known by her unmarried name, Valerie Plame, had covert status.

Several neighbors, some who have known her for years, said they did not know before Mr. Novak's column that she worked for the C.I.A.

"They said they were basically tying up loose ends," David Tillotson, a next-door neighbor for seven years, said of his interview by two agents. "They wanted to ask neighbors how well they knew the Wilsons and whether they knew what Valerie did."

Mr. Tillotson said he and his wife, Victoria, thought Ms. Wilson was a business consultant and had no idea she worked for the C.I.A.

In an apparent effort to draw attention away from the investigation - or at least to occupy himself as he and everyone else in the White House endured the torture of another day's wait - Mr. Bush kept to a busy schedule of meetings and appearances. He met with his ambassador to Iraq, gave a speech on the economy, sat down with the prime minister of Macedonia and invited Ghana's president in for a quick chat.

"We've got a lot of work to do, and so we don't have a lot of time to sit back and think about those things," Scott McClellan, Mr. Bush's press secretary, said when asked about the distraction of the investigation.

Republicans outside the administration said the White House had taken on a bunker mentality, ignoring or dismissing advice on how to deal with fallout from the case and get the administration back on track.

The uncertainty over Mr. Rove's fate in particular left many Republicans guessing at how the White House might proceed once Mr. Fitzgerald's decision became public.

Democrats for their part pressed ahead with their strategy of asserting that the leak case was part of a broader pattern of dishonesty by the administration that had led the nation into war on false pretenses.

In a speech at Georgetown University, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee last year, said attacks by the administration on the Wilsons were part of the White House's effort to justify the war even after the intelligence used to portray Saddam Hussein's weapons programs as a threat was proved wrong.

"We don't know yet whether this will prove to be an indictable offense in a court of law, but for it, and for misleading the nation into war, they will be indicted in the high court of history," Mr. Kerry said.

It was not publicly known what Mr. Fitzgerald discussed with the grand jurors. But at this point in the investigation, lawyers in the case said, he was almost certainly addressing them on the subject of indictments.

Federal grand juries, made up of 23 people, meet in secret. Former prosecutors said that the process of presenting possible charges to a grand jury followed a pattern in which grand jurors, without the prosecution team present, voted on whether to return an indictment. A simple majority is required for an indictment.

In some instances, a prosecutor may present the panel with a list of charges and ask for a vote. Or, a prosecutor may engage in sometimes lengthy and detailed discussions with grand jurors about evidence and witnesses and even take straw polls on charges in the case.

In cases like this one, in which central charges are believed to focus on whether false statements were made by witnesses in their grand jury testimony, a prosecutor may sound out the grand jurors on whether they feel they were deceived. If grand jurors seem to resist the assertion that they were misled, a prosecutor may take it as a sign that a jury might be similarly hard to convince.

Former colleagues said Mr. Fitzgerald in the past has displayed a patient and cordial manner that grand jurors appreciated. "He was professional and straightforward," said Joshua G. Berman, a former assistant United States attorney in New York who worked closely with him. "He was meticulous and methodical, and that made it very easy for grand jurors to follow what he was saying."


Scott Shane contributed reporting for this article.

October 27, 2005
Name of Rove's Aide Appears in Two Washington Inquiries
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT
WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 - At the nexus of two high-profile investigations roiling the nation's capital is an unlikely - and largely anonymous - figure known for fiercely safeguarding her bosses.

Susan B. Ralston, 38, has worked as an assistant and side-by-side adviser to Karl Rove since 2001, helping manage his e-mail, meetings and phone calls from her perch near his office in the West Wing. That has made her an important witness in the C.I.A. leak investigation, as the special prosecutor has sought to determine whether Mr. Rove misled investigators about his contacts with reporters about Valerie Wilson, the undercover operative whose identity was made public in 2003.

Ms. Ralston is also entangled in another political scandal: the case of Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist, who employed her in the same frontline capacity during a stretch of time that is now under criminal investigation.

Ms. Ralston is not considered a suspect in either case, and several close colleagues say it is by sheer accident that she has been swept up in both investigations. Lawyers involved with the two cases say no other person besides Ms. Ralston has played a pivotal role in each one. She has appeared at critical junctures in both: it was Ms. Ralston who patched through a phone call from Matt Cooper, the reporter for Time magazine, to Mr. Rove on the day in July 2003 that they discussed Mrs. Wilson, then known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame. And Ms. Ralston, while in Mr. Abramoff's employ, drafted a memorandum about his suites at local arenas, which he used to entertain clients and public officials who have since gotten in trouble for accepting his favors.

Ms. Ralston has been interviewed by investigators in the Abramoff case, which is examining Mr. Abramoff's work on behalf of Indian tribes and other lobbying interests, as well as his complicated financial arrangements. She worked for him, first at the firm Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds and then at the firm Greenberg Traurig, before she moved to the White House early in President Bush's first term.

Ms. Ralston has also testified at least twice before the grand jury in the leak case.

She did not return a call to her White House office on Wednesday. Her lawyer, however, made available a friend who was able to verify details about her life and who, like her other colleagues, portrayed her as an up-close and innocent witness to both sets of events.

"Susan is sharp as a tack and straight as an arrow, and so that's all hopefully going to pay off now," said her friend, a Republican lobbyist who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case as well as Ms. Ralston's position.

Although published reports suggest that Mr. Abramoff sought to place Ms. Ralston with Mr. Rove after the 2000 election to gain easy access to him, her colleagues said that was not the case.

"Karl was looking for the most competent person around and stole her," said Grover Norquist, the Republican activist who heads the group Americans for Tax Reform and is an ally of both Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Rove.

Though colleagues described her as ambitious within the Republican Party, Ms. Ralston maintains a low external profile that has made her invaluable to Mr. Rove, who was quoted in The National Journal describing her as "a remarkably gifted leader" who was "playing a vital role."

"She's very careful about Karl and pretty guarded," said a Bush associate who is friends with Ms. Ralston, speaking on condition of anonymity because the White House is sensitive to even benign comments related to both the C.I.A. leak and Abramoff investigations.

In fact, she rebuffed Mr. Abramoff at least once in writing, after he sought her help in getting Mr. Rove to call the Interior Department on behalf of one of his clients.

"I don't want to bother you guys with a meeting request, so I was hoping you could pass on to Karl that Interior is about to approve a gaming compact and land in trust for a tribe which is an anathema to all our supporters down there," Mr. Abramoff wrote to Ms. Ralston in a February 2003 e-mail message first published by Time magazine.

Ms. Ralston replied, "Karl and others are aware, but the WH is not going to get involved."

Ms. Ralston's portfolio expanded at the White House this year, accompanied by an elevated job title and a significant raise. In 2003, she held the position of executive assistant to the senior adviser and earned $64,700, which was bumped to $67,600 in 2004. This year, as Mr. Rove took on new duties as the deputy chief of staff, Ms. Ralston was promoted to special assistant to the president and assistant to the senior adviser, earning $92,100.

Now, people familiar with Ms. Ralston's work said, she functions as Mr. Rove's own chief of staff, coordinating the five groups within the West Wing that he oversees.

All Bush had to do when this leak case came to light was for him to ask each of his staff whether they leaked Valerie Plame. It was that simple.

Instead, this country was put through all this unnecessary investigation.

We must not forget that Bush said initially that he would fire the person responsible. He changed that to, he would fire anyone found to have committed a crime.

The next statement from Bush will be, he will fire anyone put into prison for the crime.

We must not forget that Bush said initially that he would fire the person responsible. He changed that to, he would fire anyone found to have committed a crime.

The next statement from Bush will be, he will fire anyone put into prison for the crime.

I hope it's Cheney, and he's tortured to tell the truth.

We must not forget that Bush said initially that he would fire the person responsible. He changed that to, he would fire anyone found to have committed a crime.

The next statement from Bush will be, he will fire anyone put into prison for the crime.

I hope it's Cheney, and he's tortured to tell the truth. After all, this is a national security issue.

Even though you liked saying it so much you said it three times, it doesn't alter the fact that you are wrong each time you say it.

If we are going to remember what Bush said initially, we should examine what he in fact DID say initially. When he was first asked about the Plame case on September 30, 2003, Bush said, "If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of."

LINK

Taken care of?

As in, Tony Soprano "taken care of?"

Nawwww!

More like Bush Sr. taken care of... you know, like pardons and such.

Badaboom, Badabing, they're outta jail.

Okay, so my memory is a bit faulty. tico is correct about Bush's first statement.

Interesting take on this subject:

Being Wrong on Iraq's WMD is not a crime
by John Tierney, The New York Times

If you, like me, have been trying to figure out the point of Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation, Howard Dean has a couple of answers.

Neither involves the original reason for the special prosecutor's investigation - the accusation that White House aids deliberately outed a covert CIA agent. Much of Washington now figures that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby didn't violate that law. But Dean, the Democratic Party's chairman, says we need to look at the larger lessons from this scandal.

"The problem, what got Rove and Libby in trouble was because they were attacking, which the Republicans always do, attacking somebody who criticized them and disagreed with them." Dean said on "This Week" on ABC. "A fundamental flaw in the Bush administration is the personal attacks on people for meritorious arguments."

Personal attacks! Can you imagine President Bush's critics ever sinking to that level? Dean himself may have occasionally faulted Republicans - using words like "liar," "brain-dead," "corrupt" and "evil" - but he must have meant them, like Dame Edna, in a caring and nurturing way.

The other supposed reason to care about the investigation of the CIA leak is that it's really not about the CIA leak, anyway. As Dean explained, "This is not so much about Scooter Libby and Karl Rove. This is about the fact that the president didn't tell us the truth when we went to Iraq, and all these guys are involved in it."

I have a hard time with this argument, and not because I'm a fan of the Iraq war. If I'd been in the Senate, I would have voted against it. The Bush administration's plan to quickly transform a Middle Eastern country struck me as terribly naive. When I consulted experts in democratization, they predicted that American troops would be stuck in Iraq for at least five years, if not forever.

But I can't undersand Democrats now gleefully suggesting that Libby and Rove are getting their just desserts for the "crime" of claiming that there were WMD in Iraq. Yes, they were eager to embrace any bit of evidence for weapons there, but they had plenty of company in their suspicions, including Democrats like Bill and Hillary Clinton.

The problem was that intelligence agencies weren't sure what was going on in Iraq, just as they've rarely known for sure what's going on anywhere. They've often failed to detect new weapons programs, like the Iraq nuclear program that was unexpectedly discovered after the 1991 war. And because they have to he embarrassed that way, the agencies routinely overcompensate by widly overestimating an enemy's capabilities, like the Soviet Union's military and economic strength during the Cold War.

After the 1991 surprise in Iraq, the CIA had a special incentive to hawkishly point to every warning sign it could find of WMD there. But like any bureaucracy with an instinct for self-preservation, it also hedged its bets by publishing dovish caveats about the uncertainity of the data.

The result, as Stephen Hayes has chronciled in The Weekly Standard, was an array of contradictory assessments by the CIA before the war, and then a number of face-saving leaks after the war to blame the White House for overestimating the threat. One of the leakers was Joseph Wilson, who accused the White House of making claims about Iraw's intentions that he had already disproved.

The White House struck back by leaking its side of the story and disparaging Wilson - some of whose claims were indeed found to be false by a subsequent Senate investigation. It now looks as if the White House leakers were accurate in their warnings to reporters to be leery of Wilson's story.

You can argue that the leakers should be fired for carelessness in revealing that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, but there's been no evidence yet that they realized it was illegal because of her status as a covert agent. You can argue that Libby should be fired for stupidity because of the letter he wrote to Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter, that sounded like a vaguely clunky - and unsuccessful - attempt to coach her testimony.

But no one deserves to go to jail for leaking to reporters accurate information without criminal intent. The special prosecutor was assigned to look for serious crimes, not to uncover evidence that bureaucrats blame other bureaucrats when things go wrong.

No one deserves to be indicted on a conspiracy charges for belonging to a group that believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Foreign policy mistakes are not against the law.

What a crock, Tierney!

The WHIG isn't under suspicion because they believed Iraq had WMD; it's because they believed Iraq needed taking out, and WMD was the PR justification they chose. The question is how much of the evidence they presented was real, how much was false, and how much did they know about what was real and what was false...

Certainly Bush's statements that 'we were not sure about going to war' were lies. He never intended the WMD inspectors from the UN to complete their job, ever...

Cycloptichorn

Foreign policy mistakes may not be against the law, but to ignore evidence from our intelligence and Smith to push the war by ignoring good info is not a simple "not against the law" issue.

It's definitely an incompetence issue, but it goes beyond that when over 2,000 of our men and women in uniform have been lost, and over 15,000 injured. Additionally, there is the simple fact that between 35,000 and 100,000 innocent Iraqis have been killed by our coalition forces.

If there is no penalty for such gross incompetence and ignorance, crime against humanity is an oxymoron.

Would it really be like Bush Sr., who issued all of 77 pardons, or Bill Clinton, who issued 456 pardons? (Most notably: former fugitive -- but wealthy nonetheless -- Clinton supporter, Marc Rich.)

In fact, you have to go back to Zachary Taylor to find a President who issued fewer pardons than Bush Sr. (With exception of Garfield, who was killed 4 months into his Presidency.)

You must have been thinking about Nixon. :wink: (Except that doesn't do much to further the left's fantasy that the "Bush Family" are all crooks, liars, gangsters, and Nazi associates, does it?)


Also noteworthy that during his term as Governor of Texas, Bush issued fewer pardons than any Texas Governor since the 1940's.

From the NYT:

October 27, 2005
Leak Counsel Holds Back for Another Day
By DAVID JOHNSTON and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 - The special counsel in the C.I.A. leak inquiry is not planning to make any public announcement on the case before Friday, when the term of the federal grand jury considering indictments expires, a spokesman for the prosecutor said today.

The lack of news leaves the White House waiting for another day to find out whether two of the Bush administration's top aides might be indicted.

The prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, met for more than three hours with the grand jury on Wednesday and later talked privately with the district judge in the case.

After the grand jury session, Mr. Fitzgerald discussed the case for about 45 minutes in the chambers of Judge Thomas F. Hogan, the chief judge of the district court who has presided over the leak case, said the judge's administrative assistant, Sheldon L. Snook.

The grand jury deliberations and the special prosecutor's meeting with the judge ratcheted up fears among officials that Mr. Fitzgerald might have obtained an indictment from the grand jury, and was requesting that it be sealed. He could also seek an extension of the grand jury's term. Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald, would not comment on the case.

Mr. Fitzgerald has focused on Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby Jr., who is Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Both have been advised that they could be charged with wrongdoing, possibly for false statements to the grand jury about their conversations with reporters.

Other possibilities are obstruction of justice or perjury charges, and possible violations of the statute that makes it a crime to disclose the identity of a covert intelligence agent.

Some lawyers have suggested that Mr. Fitzgerald may also have investigated possible conspiracy charges or violations of an espionage law that makes it illegal to communicate classified information to people not authorized to receive it.

Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby went to work at the White House as usual today.

Mr. Fitzgerald, his deputies and the grand jurors arrived at the federal courthouse shortly after 9 a.m. on Wednesday. The grand jurors were seen leaving around noon when Mr. Fitzgerald went to Judge Hogan's chambers.

Although lawyers in the case said that they expected that Mr. Fitzgerald would announce a decision on charges by Friday, his continuing deliberations chafed the already raw nerves at the White House and raised the possibility that he might need more time to complete his inquiry.

Whether anyone else is at risk of criminal prosecution remains unknown. The C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, was identified in a July 14, 2003, column by Robert D. Novak, the syndicated columnist, and if a government official was Mr. Novak's main source, that official could be charged with violating a law making it illegal to divulge the identity of a covert officer like Ms. Wilson.

A series of interviews by F.B.I. agents on Monday revived the possibility that Mr. Fitzgerald might be considering such a charge. Several neighbors of Ms. Wilson and her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador, were asked whether they knew that Ms. Wilson, also known by her unmarried name, Valerie Plame, had covert status.

Several neighbors, some who have known her for years, said they did not know before Mr. Novak's column that she worked for the C.I.A.

"They said they were basically tying up loose ends," David Tillotson, a next-door neighbor, said of his interview by two agents. "They wanted to ask neighbors how well they knew the Wilsons and whether they knew what Valerie did."

Mr. Tillotson said he and his wife, Victoria, thought Ms. Wilson was a business consultant and had no idea she worked for the C.I.A.

In an apparent effort to draw attention away from the investigation - or at least to occupy himself as he and everyone else in the White House continued to wait - Mr. Bush kept to a busy schedule of meetings and appearances.

"We've got a lot of work to do, and so we don't have a lot of time to sit back and think about those things," Scott McClellan, Mr. Bush's press secretary, said when asked about the distraction of the investigation.

Republicans outside the administration said the White House had taken on a bunker mentality, ignoring or dismissing advice on how to deal with fallout from the case and get the administration back on track.

The uncertainty over Mr. Rove's fate in particular left many Republicans guessing at how the White House might proceed once Mr. Fitzgerald's decision became public.

Democrats for their part pressed ahead with their strategy of asserting that the leak case was part of a broader pattern of dishonesty by the administration that had led the nation into war on false pretenses.

In a speech at Georgetown University on Wednesday, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee last year, said attacks by the administration on the Wilsons were part of the White House's effort to justify the war even after the intelligence used to portray Saddam Hussein's weapons programs as a threat was proved wrong.

"We don't know yet whether this will prove to be an indictable offense in a court of law, but for it, and for misleading the nation into war, they will be indicted in the high court of history," Mr. Kerry said.

It was not publicly known what Mr. Fitzgerald discussed with the grand jurors. But at this point in the investigation, lawyers in the case said, he was almost certainly addressing them on the subject of indictments.

Federal grand juries, made up of 23 people, meet in secret. Former prosecutors said the process of presenting possible charges to a grand jury followed a pattern in which grand jurors, without prosecutors present, voted on whether to return an indictment. A simple majority is required for an indictment.

In some instances, a prosecutor may present the panel with a list of charges and ask for a vote. Or, a prosecutor may engage in sometimes lengthy and detailed discussions with grand jurors about evidence and witnesses and even take straw polls on charges in the case. The jurors may want evidence read back or ask for more information and in some cases, more testimony.

In cases like this one, in which central charges are believed to focus on whether false statements were made by witnesses in their grand jury testimony, a prosecutor may sound out the grand jurors on whether they feel they were deceived. If grand jurors seem to resist the assertion that they were misled, a prosecutor may take it as a sign that a jury might be similarly hard to convince.

Former colleagues said Mr. Fitzgerald had in the past displayed a patient and cordial manner that grand jurors appreciated. "He was professional and straightforward," said Joshua G. Berman, a former assistant United States attorney in New York who worked closely with him. "He was meticulous and methodical, and that made it very easy for grand jurors to follow what he was saying."

Mr. Berman said grand jurors often asked questions about the law or the evidence, and Mr. Fitzgerald was notable for being able to answer them instantly and in detail.

If there were phone records, bank records or credit card records, Mr. Fitzgerald would know about them, he said.

"He would know it all," he said.

Scott Shane contributed reporting for this article.

It appears that only George Washington, John Adams, and Zach Taylor issued fewer pardons than Bush Sr. (With exceptions of William H. Harrison and James Garfield, who died days into their Presidencies.)

LINK

But hey, 6 of GHWBush's pardons were for people in Iran/Contra. (8% of his pardons. Cronyism at its finest.)

The younger Bush should be able to beat his daddy in the number of people he pardons for crimes committed while they worked in the WH. (Both in number and maybe in the % of overall pardons.)

Don't worry though, Bush has brought integrity back to the WH.

Whadda-ya-know .... Marc Rich is mentioned in the Volcker report regarding the Oil For Food scandal:



LINK

How interesting.

I don't know why Clinton issued all those pardons before leaving office, obviously the Marc Rich one was a mistake.



Probably because he was too busy executing people during his six years as Gov. of Texas.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/02/1519226