I would enjoy seeing this administration crumble under its own deceits and lies.
Special Counsel Fitzgerald's new web site
Special Counsel Fitzgerald's new web site:
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/index.html
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washingtonpost.com
Fitzgerald Launches Web Site
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, October 21, 2005; 1:00 PM
Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has just launched his own brand-new Web site.
Could it be that he's getting ready to release some new legal documents? Like, maybe, some indictments? It's certainly not the action of an office about to fold up its tents and go home.
Fitzgerald spokesman Randall Samborn minimized the significance of the Web launch in an interview this morning.
"I would strongly caution, Dan, against reading anything into it substantive, one way or the other," he said. "It's really a long overdue effort to get something on the Internet to answer a lot of questions that we get . . . and to put up some of the documents that we have had ongoing and continued interest in having the public be able to access."
OK, OK. But will the Web site be used for future documents as well?
"The possibility exists," Samborn said.
Among the documents currently available on the site:
* The December 30, 2003, memo from then-acting attorney general James B. Comey establishing Fitzgerald as an independent special counsel with "all the authority of the Attorney General with respect to the Department's investigation into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee's identity."
* A Feb. 6, 2004, follow-up confirming that his mandate "includes the authority to investigate and prosecute violations of any federal laws related to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure, as well as federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, your investigation."
The Web site is "bare bones" and is "still a work in progress," Samborn said. "We have some document formatting issues that we're still resolving." As a result, the site has not yet been officially announced -- although there is a link from Fitzgerald's home page as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.
Up until now, the only official repository for documents related to the special counsel's investigation had been a page on the U.S. District Court's Web site. But it only included court motions and rulings.
Incidentally, if you call the number the new Web site lists for Fitzgerald's D.C. office, the phone is somewhat mysteriously answered "counterespionage section."
But as Samborn explained to me, that's because the special prosecutor is borrowing space in the Justice Department's Bond Building from the counterespionage section. "The office of special counsel doesn't really have its own dedicated space," he said.
The CIA Leak Case: Almost Famous
The CIA Leak Case: Almost Famous
David Wallechinsky
10.21.2005
As we wait to see if special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will indict members of the Bush Administration, it is possible that two people are on the verge of fame. Administration insiders John Hannah and David Wurmser are rumored to have "turned." If this is true, and if it is also true that Fitzgerald has expanded his investigation to include issues beyond the Valerie Plame leak, we may witness the gradual unraveling of the Bush presidency.
Only weeks after President George W. Bush's inauguration, Vice-President Dick Cheney chose John Hannah to be his point man dealing with Saddam Hussein. The following year, Hannah became an active member of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) that operated out of Cheney's office and that was in charge of marketing the invasion of Iraq and of providing information that could be used to support administration arguments. The WHIG was chaired by Karl Rove (naturally) and included Cheney aide Scooter Libby, Karen Hughes, Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, and others. Hannah is already in trouble because he was the conduit for the fake intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that came from Ahmed Chalabi and that was fed to the U.S. public by Judith Miller of The New York Times. It was also Hannah, along with Scooter Libby, who introduced Colin Powell to all of the phony information that he used in his disastrous speech to the United Nations justifying the invasion of Iraq.
In 1997, David Wurmser wrote an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal that advocated overthrowing Saddam Hussein by supporting Ahmed Chalabi, whom he would later describe as one of his mentors. When the administration of George W. Bush clashed with the CIA about Iraq's role in international terrorism, they created their own intelligence analysis unit at the Pentagon that would bypass the CIA and search for a justification to invade Iraq. Wurmser was at the heart of this unit. He then moved on to become a senior advisor to John Bolton while Bolton was at the State Department. In 2003, Cheney "borrowed" Wurmser to be his "Middle East advisor."
If it is true that Hannah and Wurmser, both of whom were deeply involved in creating the justifications for the invasion of Iraq, have cooperated honestly and fully with Fitzgerald, they could become the case's equivalent of Watergate's John Dean, while the Valerie Plame leak will be to this scandal what the actual Watergate break-in was to the Watergate affair, the crack in the door that leads to revelations of a greater scandal. The question would then be whether the CIA Leak Case becomes President Bush's Iran-Contra or his Watergate. If the administration successfully prevented the development of a paper trail connecting the work of the WHIG to President Bush, then, like Ronald Reagan, he will look bad, but will survive. If the legal isolation of the president was done in a sloppy manner, or if internal rivalries have turned administration members against one another, it could lead to the end of Bush's presidency. As his poll ratings are already doing, Bush's career would follow the path of Richard Nixon's.
P.S. Why was it that John Bolton visited Judith Miller while she was in prison?
Up to the Grand Jury
Up to the Grand Jury
By Lawrence O'Donnell
10.21.2005
Will Fitzgerald issue indictments? Washington and cable news care about nothing else these days. The answer is: No, he won't. The most Fitzgerald will do is ask his grand jury to issue indictments. It's really all up to them. Which raises the question: who are they? A federal grand jury has 23 members.
A typical Washington, D.C. grand jury is about 75% African American. Fitzgerald's is slightly more than that. This is not the kind of group Karl Rove feels at home with. He has no professional experience trying to appeal to a group like this. He has been so unsuccessful at it that his boss's job approval rating with African Americans is now 2%, which, factoring in the margin of error, could actually be zero. To make matters statistically and demographically much worse for Rove and Scooter Libby, only 12 of the 23 grand jurors have to agree to indict them.
There is already a good deal of pundit anguish being spent over how unfair it would be if indictments only cover little things like lying to FBI agents or perjury, violations that today's New York Times calls "peripheral to the issue" Fitzgerald was appointed to investigate. Federal grand juries are constantly issuing indictments that are peripheral to the issue they were impaneled to consider. The question Rove and Libby are asking themselves today is: Does this seem like the kind of grand jury that is going to think lying to an FBI agent or perjury is a serious crime--unless you work in the White House? I think they know the answer.
It is interesting that the first documents posted on Fitzgerald's site are the ones showing he as the full authority of the Attorney General. It would appear to be setting up to dispute any attacks on him when he issues indictments. There can be no question that he has the power to do just that.
Fitsgerald is preparing the ground work to prepare for the forthcoming onslaught from this administration. Unfortunately for this administration, money can't improve on dummy.
Quote:If the legal isolation of the president was done in a sloppy manner, or if internal rivalries have turned administration members against one another, it could lead to the end of Bush’s presidency. As his poll ratings are already doing, Bush’s career would follow the path of Richard Nixon’s.
That is just the legacy that he deserves and how history should record him.
From the NYT:
October 22, 2005
Leak Prosecutor Is Called Exacting and Apolitical
By SCOTT SHANE and DAVID JOHNSTON
WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 - In 13 years prosecuting mobsters and terrorists in New York, Patrick J. Fitzgerald earned a public reputation for meticulous preparation, a flawless memory and an easy eloquence. Only his colleagues knew that these orderly achievements emerged from the near-total anarchy of his office, where the relentless Mr. Fitzgerald often slept during big cases.
"You'd open a drawer, looking for a pen or Post-it notes, and it would be full of dirty socks," recalled Karen Patton Seymour, a former assistant United States attorney who tried a major case with him. "He was a mess. Food here, clothes there, papers everywhere. But behind all that was a totally organized mind."
That mind, which has taken on Al Qaeda and the Gambino crime family, is now focused on the most politically volatile case of Mr. Fitzgerald's career. As the special prosecutor who has directed the C.I.A. leak investigation, he is expected to decide within days who, if anyone, will be charged with a crime.
To seek indictments against the White House officials caught up in the inquiry would deliver a devastating blow to the Bush administration. To simply walk away after two years of investigation, which included the jailing of a reporter for 85 days for refusing to testify, would invite cries of cover-up and waste.
Yet Mr. Fitzgerald's past courtroom allies and adversaries say that consideration of political consequences will play no role in his decision.
"I don't think the prospect of a firestorm would deter him," said J. Gilmore Childers, who worked with Mr. Fitzgerald on high-profile terrorism prosecutions in New York during the 1990s. "His only calculus is to do the right thing as he sees it."
Stanley L. Cohen, a New York lawyer who has defended those accused of terrorism in a half-dozen cases prosecuted by Mr. Fitzgerald, said he never detected the slightest political leanings, only a single-minded dedication to the law.
"There's no doubt in my mind that if he's found something, he won't be swayed one way or the other by the politics of it," Mr. Cohen said. "For Pat, there's no such thing as a little crime you can ignore."
Mr. Fitzgerald, 44, whose regular job is as the United States attorney in Chicago, is a hard man to pigeonhole. The son of Irish immigrants - his father, Patrick Sr., was a Manhattan doorman - he graduated from Amherst College and Harvard Law School. Though he is a workaholic who sends e-mail messages to subordinates at 2 a.m. and has never married, friends say the man they call Fitzie is a hilarious raconteur and great company for beer and baseball. Ruthless in his pursuit of criminals, he once went to considerable trouble to adopt a cat.
"He's a prankster and a practical joker," said Ms. Seymour, who now practices law in New York, recalling when Mr. Fitzgerald drafted a fake judge's opinion denying a key motion and had it delivered to a colleague. "But he's also brilliant. When he's trying a complicated case, there's no detail he can't recall."
Mr. Fitzgerald was appointed in December 2003 by James B. Comey, then the deputy attorney general and an old friend, to investigate the disclosure in a column by Robert Novak of the identity of an undercover operative for the Central Intelligence Agency, Valerie Wilson, also referred to by her maiden name, Valerie Plame. Her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat who had traveled to Niger on behalf of the C.I.A. to check on reports that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium there, had publicly accused the White House of twisting the evidence to justify war against Iraq.
Lawyers involved in the case say Mr. Fitzgerald appears to be examining whether high-level officials who spoke to reporters about the Wilsons sought to mislead prosecutors about their discussions. Those under scrutiny include Karl Rove, the top political adviser to President Bush, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.
In grand jury sessions, Mr. Fitzgerald has struck witnesses as polite and exacting. Matthew Cooper, a Time magazine reporter who wrote about his two and half hours of testimony, said that the prosecutor's questions were asked "in microscopic, excruciating detail."
Before he testified, Mr. Cooper recalled that Mr. Fitzgerald counseled him to say what he remembered and no more. "If I show you a picture of your kindergarten teacher and it really refreshes your memory say so," Mr. Cooper wrote, quoting Mr. Fitzgerald. "If it doesn't, don't say yes just because I show you a photo of you and her sitting together."
Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who wrote about her two grand jury appearances, said that Mr. Fitzgerald asked questions that reflected a deep knowledge of the leak case as he led her through her dealings with Mr. Libby.
Mr. Fitzgerald has drawn criticism from press advocates for his aggressive pursuit of journalists he believes may have been told about the secret C.I.A. employment of Ms. Wilson. Ms. Miller served nearly three months in jail this summer before agreeing to testify. In pursuing leads that have made him a threat to the White House, Mr. Fitzgerald is following a pattern set by previous special prosecutors. Some allies of the White House complain privately that he has taken on some of the worst traits of his predecessors. Republicans criticized Lawrence E. Walsh for his handling of the Iran-Contra scandal in the Reagan administration, while Democrats attacked Kenneth W. Starr's performance in the Whitewater probe and Monica Lewinsky sex scandal under President Clinton. The two prosecutors operated under the independent counsel law, which both parties let die in 1999.
Katy J. Harriger, a political scientist at Wake Forest University who has studied special prosecutors, said that Mr. Fitzgerald had some advantages over his predecessors. He has essentially all the powers of the attorney general to chase evidence, question witnesses and seek charges. Unlike Mr. Walsh and Mr. Starr, both former judges, Mr. Fitzgerald is a career prosecutor. And as a Bush administration appointee, he is less vulnerable to attack from the White House.
"It will be much harder than it was with Starr to say this is a partisan prosecution," Ms. Harriger said.
Some attorneys who admire Mr. Fitzgerald detect a hint of zealotry or inflexibility in his approach and wonder whether what works with terrorism translates to an inside-the-Beltway case involving White House officials and their multilayered relationships with journalists.
In Mr. Fitzgerald's world, a former colleague recalled, it was pretty clear who had black hats and who had white hats, there was not a lot of gray.
But Mr. Cohen, whose defense work on behalf of Hamas and other groups has provoked controversy, says he has always found Mr. Fitzgerald willing to listen, and to distinguish between militant rhetoric and genuine terrorist plotting. "If I need a straight answer from a federal prosecutor, I call Pat," Mr. Cohen said.
Mr. Fitzgerald's moral grounding began at Our Lady Help of Christians school in his native Brooklyn. He attended Regis High School, a Jesuit institution in Manhattan for gifted students, all of whom attend on scholarship. At Amherst, where he majored in math and economics, he was an unassuming kid with a New York accent who was a stellar student, one others frequently turned to for help, recalled Walter Nicholson, an economics professor.
At Amherst, he worked part time as a custodian; in the summers during college and law school, his father helped him find work as a doorman.
After three years in private practice, he joined the United States attorney's office for the southern district of New York and quickly distinguished himself.
"I've tried a lot of cases, and he's probably the toughest adversary I've ever seen," said Roger L. Stavis, a New York defense lawyer who faced Mr. Fitzgerald during the 1995 terrorism trial of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. Mr. Stavis prided himself on knowing the web of Muslim extremists but was surprised when Mr. Fitzgerald asked a witness about Osama bin Laden, then an obscure figure.
"I thought, 'I don't know who Osama bin Laden is, but he's in Pat Fitzgerald's crosshairs,' " Mr. Stavis said. In 2001, Mr. Fitzgerald led the team that convicted four men in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa.
During his time in New York, Mr. Fitzgerald's hapless bachelor ways became legendary. For months he did not bother to have the gas connected to the stove in his Brooklyn apartment. Once, in a fit of domesticity, he baked two pans of lasagna, recalled Amy E. Millard, a New York colleague. Distracted by work, he left them uneaten in the oven for three months before he discovered them, Ms. Millard said. When he tried to adopt a cat, she remembered, he was turned down because of his work habits and only later acquired a pet when a friend in Florida had to give up her cat and had it flown to him to New York.
Some of the cases Mr. Fitzgerald handled after moving to Chicago in 2001 have expanded his experience into the sensitive and murky arena of political corruption. He indicted a former governor of Illinois, George Ryan, in a scandal involving the Illinois secretary of state's office, as well as two aides to Mayor Richard Daley on mail-fraud charges.
But those cases bear little resemblance to the C.I.A. leak investigation, with its potential implications for national politics. Samuel W. Seymour, another former New York prosecutor and Karen's husband, said it is easy to politically "triangulate" most government lawyers, noting which were mentored by Democrats or promoted by Republicans. But not Mr. Fitzgerald.
"Some people may feel he's independent to a fault, because his independence makes him unpredictable," Mr. Seymour said. "I think it makes him the perfect person for this job."
23 Administration Officials Involved In Plame Leak
The cast of administration characters with known connections to the outing of an undercover CIA agent:
Karl Rove
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby
Condoleezza Rice
Stephen Hadley
Andrew Card
Alberto Gonzales
Mary Matalin
Ari Fleischer
Susan Ralston
Israel Hernandez
John Hannah
Scott McClellan Dan Bartlett
Claire Buchan
Catherine Martin
Jennifer Millerwise
David Wurmser
Colin Powell
Karen Hughes
Adam Levine
Bob Joseph
Vice President Dick Cheney
President George W. Bush
http://www.thinkprogress.org/leak-scandal
Sure will be a huge let down if in the end nothing comes of the whole thing. Failing any indictments, can he at least write a report on his findings?
(I know I always the one telling everyone else in first grade there was no santa clause too)
revel, well Fitzgerald says he wont write a report. I think there's no chance he wont indict some. Maybe the whole WHIG group.
If anything, though, I believe whatever Fitzgerald concludes will be the correct one - even if it disappoints some of us.
Ok. We have nothing like grand juries here, so the whole concept is el weirdo to me...
But, from reading whose accuracy I have no way to assess, I sort of gather that grand juries tend to do whatever the prosecution tells them to do....is this true, untrue, or does it vary wildly from state to state....or is this a federal grand jury?
If so, how do they tend to behave?
dlowan, Grand juries originated in England. I served on the county Civil Grand Jury here in California. The responsibilities of the civil grand jury in California is to ensure that the local governments at the county and city level operate under the laws of California, and to investigate complaints filed by government workers and citizens. Our group, the 2003-2004 civil grand jury, wrote 27 reports - the highest number of reports ever written in our county. Local governments are required by law to respond to our reports within a period of time. Many of the complaints filed against department heads have been very effective. Over 80 percent no longer have their jobs as a result of our reports. The current mayor of San Jose is being investigated as a result of last year's civil grand jury report. At first, the mayor denied the allegations made against him, but he has since then been very low key about his response to the allegations made in the report. I believe he will eventually be charged with breaking the law.
Grand juries can be very effective.
Yeppers, I know HOW they work technically.
What I am wondering is how they tend to decide....I have heard, as I said, that they tend to be just rubber stamps for those wishing to indite someone, and I am asking if that is a silly view, especially in this case.
Not that I don't think it likely that inditement is a good thing, and that there is material to justify it, but I am wondering how difficult it is to get one...eg is this like a committal hearing in our system, which is damn tough for the prosecution?
DLowan:
cicerone Imposter's case, I believe, is another kind of grand jury. Every now and then, in some cases, a grand jury of experts is empowered to look into a case as a sort of fact finding commission, and judges usually go along with their recommendations.
That is why you might hear of a one man grand jury. The one man is usually an expert in the criminal justice system.
However, for your garden variety criminal case, the grand jury does indeed usually act as a rubber stamp for the prosecution. Theoretically, they are there to decide if there is enough evidence to even bother proceeding to trial-that is, is there even a chance that the individual MIGHT have done it.
Bt in fact, all the grand jury usually hears is the prosecutor's side, so usually they go with him and send the case to trial. I remember reading one article long ago where the writer served on a grand jury, and in one of the many cases they heard, they decided to give a "no bill", (won't send the case to trial). Te evidence seemed vague and not very coherent.
What happened? The prosecutor came back, and in angry tones talked to the grand jury in a way that made it seem like they were legally obligated to send the case through. Intimidated, the grand jury did as the prosecutor said. No defense lawyers are part of the process.
Every now and then, in a high profile case, a grand jury will refuse to send the case through. Those are rare, though. That is why there is the expression, "Any good prosecutor can get an indictment against a ham sandwich".
Fitzgerald is supposedly not going to write a report but he puts up a website. It certainly points to him planning to put out some information. Indictments would seem likely since they won't be posting a report.
"P.S. Why was it that John Bolton visited Judith Miller while she was in prison?" Damn good question.
