Fitzgerald Investigation of Leak of Identity of CIA Agent

cicerone imposter wrote:

okie, Is that your best response to these "cut and paste" facts? Get a life!

cicerone, I am rather tired of debating this same old stuff. You apparently think none of us lived through those years and have absolutely no recollection of what was happening in the news at the time, and that all of this can be re-written with only Democratic Party talking points. Sorry, some of us don't buy it. You need to bring in a little balance and context to what happened.

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A good read.

Quote:

CIA Leak Probe: Inside The Grand Jury

By Murray Waas, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, Jan. 12, 2007

Late in the morning of July 12, 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney stood atop a pier at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia awaiting the commissioning of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, a ship 20 stories high that took eight years to construct. More than 15,000 people stood under clear skies to watch the pomp and ceremony. As she christened the carrier by breaking a bottle of champagne over its bow, Nancy Reagan told the crowd: "I only have one line. Man the ship and bring her alive."

...

On the flight back to Washington, Cheney huddled with two of his top aides -- I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, his then-chief of staff, and Catherine Martin, then assistant to the vice president for pubic affairs. According to federal court records, the three discussed how to counter and discredit the allegations made by a former U.S. ambassador, Joseph C. Wilson IV, that the Bush administration had manipulated and distorted intelligence information to make the case to go to war with Iraq.

http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0112nj1.htm

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The Wilsons are doing enough to discredit themselves. Using the word, "discredit" to describe what the administration was doing with Wilson is liberal spin in my opinion. They simply needed to get the information out there as to how and why Wilson did what he did so that people would understand that Wilson himself was engaged in a campaign to discredit the administration. Wilson started that kind of game instead of doing his job in an honest manner. We already know he misrepresented why he did what he did and what he found out.

Valerie Plame now is attempting to publish a book projected to have classified information in the book, which is the reason the CIA is objecting to it. This clearly shows she doesn't care about classified information or she wouldn't be writing a book about her work at the CIA. If her work was so classified, how can she be so hypocritical as to write a book at the same time she is suing people for "outing" her? These people are jokes, and the Vanity Fair article should have been all we needed to know to figure that out.

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JTT wrote:

A good read.

Quote:

CIA Leak Probe: Inside The Grand Jury

By Murray Waas, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, Jan. 12, 2007 ...

Well, I guess that just about clinches it then; after all, Waas was out in front just about everybody - except mebbe Jason Leoplold - with news of Rove's impending indictment.

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A cogent letter!

ie:" (1) Wilson was an institutional partisan, taking the side of the CIA and the State Department in an intramural turf war with the White House; (2) Wilson had indeed been "helped" into his role in the yellowcake story by his wife, and (3) Wilson's conclusions were largely wrong.

Subsequent bipartisan investigation has mostly supported each of those three factors as true, and so any bad "motivation" is a complete non-story"

(1) Since when has the CIA,formerly headed by Bush's father,or the State Department,run by the president's own appointees,a partisan enemy of this administration? This is a red herring,reflexively reached for,by the right, every time somebody inside the govenment questions a preconceived notion of the current white house,even though this is,of course,the job of of CIA and State. They are not there to rubber stamp the executive branch.

(2)Wilson was reccomended by his wife because he was familiar with the Niger players, as former ambassador to that country, and no one at CIA, or in Cheney's office disputed those qualifications prior to the trip,and his subsequent findings.

(3)This is the biggest single lie, that the MSM continually allows to be repeated. Wilson was not wrong. The yellowcake purchase documents were a forgery, there was no yellowcake purchase,(allied intelligence told us this even prior to Wilsons's trip). In fact,of course there was no WMD at all.

Subsequent bipartisan investigations verified the documents in question were forgeries.

Tenet himself pulled the yellowcake claim out of one presidential speech, only to find it re-inserted in the SOTU. Then,even the Bush's own people publicly refuted "the 16 words" of the SOTU, when it became obvious it was untrue. To say that

"Wilson's conclusions were largely wong" is to ignore the truth in favor of delusion.

Bob Freukes, Cedar Hill,MO

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Fitzmas?

http://corner.nationalreview.com/

Quote:

Wuh oh.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/23/114356/173

Quote:

On MSNBC right now: SOTU false claim re: uranium in Niger: VP Cheney asked Tenet to take complete responsibility for the mistake, and make clear that Cheney & Bush didn't know that it was a false claim.

Cheney wrote note suggesting how Libby should handle FBI interview on leak; note destroyed right before Libby testified to FBI for the first time. This destruction is new and damning as far as the Obstruction of Justice charge is concerned.

David Addington (VP aide) also provided info to Libby.

Notes on how to talk to the FBI? Which were destroyed?

Can you say, Obstruction of Justice?

I forsee a whole lot of 'no underlying crime!' whining followed by further indictments and Republican angst.

Cycloptichorn

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It's obvious they should have hired Sandy Burgler.

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This trial looks to be a feast. Yummy.

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Cheney's spokeswoman says VP's office was aware of Plame prior to Libby's talks with reporters

RAW STORY
Published: Thursday January 25, 2007

In a major development today in the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby perjury and obstruction of justice trial, a former vice presidential spokeswoman raised questions about the defense employed by Dick Cheney's former chief of staff. Cheney's former Press Secretary Cathie Martin took the stand and told the prosectuion she had briefed Libby and the Vice President on the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame as the wife of Iraq war critic Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Martin revealed that she had a conversation with a CIA counterpart who in the course of the discussion said that Plame was Wilson's wife. She immediately informed Cheney and Libby of this fact, on a date she said was prior to July 6th, according to the Associated Press. Libby claims he learned of Plame's identity days later.

The defense will cross-examine Martin on Libby's behalf this afternoon. MSNBC has provided details on Libby's lawyers questioning of memory as a tactic to call witnesses' accounts into doubt during the trial.

DEVELOPING HARD ...

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It seems this case will end up being a "war" between the CIA and the Bush administration. It'll be interesting to see who "wins." Keep th enews coming in!

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cicerone, it looks like Rove V. Cheney.

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Declassification unnerved White House aide
Thu Jan 25, 2007 3:10pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's 2003 decision to declassify an intelligence report to rebut an Iraq war critic stirred unease even in the White House, an administration official said on Thursday in the perjury trial of a vice presidential aide.

White House official Cathie Martin said she was "not comfortable" in July of that year when her boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, told her to use the information to counter charges that the administration had manipulated intelligence to build a case for invading Iraq.

"I wasn't sure if I could use that point because it was related to the NIE," Martin said, referring to a classified National Intelligence Estimate report that said Saddam Hussein had sought to buy uranium from Niger.

Bush drew criticism last spring when he admitted he declassified the report and authorized White House officials to leak it to reporters in order to counter criticism from former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who said the administration ignored his findings that no uranium sale had taken place.

With her husband FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin watching from the front row of the courtroom, Martin said she was "still not comfortable about the NIE" even as Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, began sharing the information with reporters.
link

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The early trial isn't going well for Libby. Today Judge Walton said that if Libby didn't take the stand, then he wouldn't allow a 'faulty memory' defense to go forward. This wasn't what the Libby defense team wanted to hear.

Firedoglake is liveblogging the trial - it is truly fascinating to read what goes on in the courtroom every day. I highly recommend it.

www.firedoglake.com

Here's a wrapup of today's action -
http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/01/25/libby-trial-oncoming-train/

Quote:

Cycloptichorn

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Shall we start calling Fitzgerald, "Fitzfong?"

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okie wrote:

Shall we start calling Fitzgerald, "Fitzfong?"

You must have missed this okie

Quote:

And the entire episode led to Judge Walton saying this on the record in open court about Patrick Fitzgerald: you are "one of the most scrupulous prosecutors I have ever had appear before me,"

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Quote:

With her husband FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin watching from the front row of the courtroom,

Cute connection, no? And the other Republican heading up the FCC was an industry lobbyist before this appointment.

Martin spoke yesterday (and now we'll have to listen to okie say potty about her) about the "crisis" the WH was suffering. She meant a PR crisis arising from Wilson's op ed and the media attention which followed, and said the WH had never experienced a crisis like this one. And as we know from as early as DiIulio's revelations about working with these people, PR was the senior consideration and first issue in all things the WH got up to.

All of which makes this spectacle now the most fun I've had in a long time.

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I heard on tv today that Cheney may be called by the Libby defense team. I'm looking forward to that event. Cheney is a hot-head who will lose his cool once he's put on the spot.

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Ex-Bush Aide Contradicts Libby on C.I.A. Agent
Damaging news in the NYT today. Is anybody surprised?

Quote:

The former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer today contradicted the account of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, that Mr. Libby first learned of a C.I.A. agent's identity on July 10, 2003.

Mr. Fleischer, testifying in Mr. Libby's trial under a grant of immunity, said Mr. Libby told him over lunch on July 7, 2003, that the wife of a critic of President Bush's Iraq policy worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.

"This is hush-hush," Mr. Fleischer recalled Mr. Libby as saying in effect. "This is on the Q.T. Not many people know about this."

Just to refresh your memory...

Quote:

Libby, who told a grand jury that he believed he first learned about Ms. Wilson in a conversation with Tim Russert of NBC on Thursday, July 10, 2003, and that he had been taken aback by Mr. Russert's information.

Mr. Libby is on trial in Federal District Court on charges that he lied to investigators and to the grand jury and tried to obstruct an investigation into who leaked the name of Ms. Wilson.

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Nice catch, Piffka.

Cycloptichorn

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Fitzgerald Investigation of Leak of Identity of CIA Agent

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