Libby indicted

Okay, but assume Libby from the outset did not tell the GJ why he got the info or why he discussed it with reporters, or who told him to do it, because he refused to testify on the basis that he was under no compulsion to incriminate himself (i.e., he plead the 5th). Under that scenario, how would Fitzgerald have proven Libby's intent ... and how did Libby's alleged lies change things?

I can understand the alleged lies impeded/obstructed the investigation (hence the charges), but since Fitzgerald claims to now know the truth, I don't see how the alleged lies are the barrier to his knowing Libby's intent -- since Libby cannot be required to testify against himself.

That's a plausible scenario, if Libby took the fifth. Also, let's be careful to state that Fitz thinks or suspects that he knows the truth, but needs confirmation to move forward.

The OTHER scenario is that Libby did not plead the fifth, but rather lied about these questions in an effort to either protect himself or others. Given the multiple Perjury charges, this is not an inconcievble scenario.

Let's say that Fitz knows that Libby is lying about his motives in order to protect Cheney, but also knows that he'd better have Libby telling the truth in order to get a conviction against Cheney; this would be the logical move to flip Libby against his boss.

Cycloptichorn

I understand Fitzgerald only thinks or suspects he knows the truth (about how/when Libby learned about Plame), but the only "confirmation" he needed to move forward was the vote of the GJ. That's exactly what happened. Fitzgerald thinks he knows the truth concerning what Libby allegedly lied about, and therefore he has been able to cause Libby to be charged with perjury and obstruction for allegedly lying to the GJ and the FBI. But since he believes he can prove what the truth is (and apparently so does the GJ), what stopped them from moving forward with charges against Libby relating to the disclosure of Plame's identity? It can't be Libby's alleged lies, because Fitzgerald thinks he can prove the truth concerning them. So the lies are not the barrier to his knowing Libby's intent.

The fact that Libby did not plead the 5th does not change things. Fitzgerald is in a scenario virtually identical to the one he would have found himself had Libby indeed chosen not to testify.

True, except that now Fitz has much greater leverage to do the one thing that Fitz wants: flip Libbyon his boss.

Just as in investigations of Criminal organizations, the real goal is the guys at the top.... at the top of the conspiracy, in this case.

Just my guess, Libby isn't even the major target in the case; just the first one to get fingered. I bet they cut a deal...

Cycloptichorn

We shall have to wait and see.

Democrats Force Closed Session of Senate Over Intelligence Use
Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Senate Democrats forced a closed session of the Senate to address the Bush administration's use of intelligence, a maneuver Republicans dismissed as a political ``stunt.''

Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid invoked a rule that requires a closed session on the Senate floor in which the galleries are cleared of visitors, to discuss whether the Bush administration's use of intelligence before the Iraq War should be the subject of congressional investigations.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist called the move ``an affront to the leadership of this grand institution.''

Interesting...when was that? Got a source?

dlowan, my article was from Bloomberg, but it's all over the tv. About time the Dems took action. Here's an example of hoe far back it goes. The nonsense the Dems bought in the days before they voted Bushie authorization. Many have said since that Bushie abused that authority and they expected him to work more with the UN. But of course Blix and El Baradei were proving Bushie's evidence to be fake and fabricated and forged. Still the Derms mostly sat on their butts. Here's an example of Dem wjimpering from Dec. of 2003, many lost lives ago. "Senators Were Told Iraqi Weapons Could Hit U.S."
By John McCarthy
Florida Today
Monday 15 December 2003

Nelson said claim made during classified briefing
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Monday the Bush administration last year told him and other senators that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities.

Nelson, D-Tallahassee, said about 75 senators got that news during a classified briefing before last October's congressional vote authorizing the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Nelson voted in favor of using military force.

Nelson said he couldn't reveal who in the administration gave the briefing.

The White House directed questions about the matter to the Department of Defense. Defense officials had no comment on Nelson's claim.

Nelson said the senators were told Iraq had both biological and chemical weapons, notably anthrax, and it could deliver them to cities along the Eastern seaboard via unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones.

"They have not found anything that resembles an UAV that has that capability," Nelson said.

Nelson delivered the news during a half-hour conference call with reporters Monday afternoon. The senator, who is on a seven-nation trade mission to South America, was calling from an airport in Santiago, Chile.

"That's news," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington, D.C.-area military and intelligence think tank. "I had not heard that that was the assessment of the intelligence community. I had not heard that the Congress had been briefed on this."

Since the late 1990s, there have been several reports that Iraq was converting a fleet of Czechoslovakian jet fighters into UAVs, as well as testing smaller drones. And in a speech in Cincinnati last October, Bush mentioned the vehicles. "We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States," the president said.

Nelson, though, said the administration told senators Iraq had gone beyond exploring and developed the means of hitting the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction.

Nelson wouldn't say what the original source of the intelligence was, but said it contradicted other intelligence reports senators had received. He said he wants to find out why there was so much disagreement about the weapons. "If that is an intelligence failure . . . we better find that out so we don't have an intelligence failure in the future."

Pike said any UAVs Iraq might have had would have had a range of only several hundred kilometers, enough to hit targets in the Middle East but not the United States. To hit targets on the East Coast, such drones would have to be launched from a ship in Atlantic. He said it wasn't out of the question for Iraq to have secretly acquired a tramp steamer from which such vehicles could have been launched.

"The notion that someone could launch a missile from a ship off our shores has been on Rummy's mind for years," Pike said, referring to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Sen. Bob Graham, who voted against using military force in Iraq, didn't return phone calls concerning the briefing. Spokespersons for Reps. Dave Weldon and Tom Feeney said neither congressman could say if they had received similar briefings since they don't comment on classified information.

This is apparently breaking news and there is not much on the net as yet. Here is a link

Link Here

google.ca has 259 hits on that

Democrats force Senate into unusual closed session

Majority leader decries move as a publicity stunt



WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrats forced the Republican-controlled Senate into an unusual closed session Tuesday, questioning intelligence that led to the Iraq war and deriding a lack of congressional inquiry.


http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/11/01/senate.iraq.ap/index.html

Funny but all of a sudden we're addressing the lies that led to the Vietnam War also. If there's a comparison to the two wars it's that they were built on lies. "Spy agency faked key Vietnam War data"

London Telegraph/Francis Harris | November 1 2005

Comment: The spin here is that it was all one big mistake. The LBJ Presidential tapes prove that LBJ knew the incident never happened and he was discussing how to politically spin it for war propaganda.

FLASHBACK: LBJ Tapes on the Gulf of Tonkin Incident

FLASHBACK: LBJ admitted in secret tape that Gulf of Tonkin Incident never happened

FLASHBACK: 30-year Anniversary: Tonkin Gulf Lie Launched Vietnam War

One of America's spy agencies faked key intelligence used to justify its intervention in the Vietnam War, it was disclosed yesterday.

But the revelation was kept secret by the National Security Agency, partly because of fears that it would boost criticism of the intelligence services over the war in Iraq.

According to material uncovered by the NSA's own historian, Robert Hanyok, middle-ranking officers altered material relating to the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Two US destroyers, Maddox and Turner Joy, were attacked by North Vietnamese craft in the gulf on Aug 2 1964.

Two days later, amid bad weather and considerable confusion in the US chain of command, Maddox reported that she had been fired on a second time.

Although its commander soon cast doubt on the reports, signals intelligence reported that the North Vietnamese admitted "we sacrificed two ships".

In revenge President Lyndon Johnson ordered air raids against North Vietnamese naval facilities and Congress authorised "all necessary steps including the use of armed force" to defend South Vietnam.

But Mr Hanyok found that timings on key intelligence intercepts had been changed and the "two ships" probably referred to the loss of two sailors in the first attack.

He blamed middle-ranking staff who realised the NSA's mistakes almost immediately but covered them up, not for political reasons, but to hide the original mistakes.

At the time, senior administration officials cited the faked paperwork in testimony before Congress.

It has even been suggested that President Johnson was so keen to deploy troops that he fabricated the whole episode. More than 58,000 Americans and a million Vietnamese died in the ensuing conflict.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2005/011105agencyfaked.htm

Ahmad Chalabi's Comeback Tour (21 comments )
READ MORE: Paris Hilton, Judith Miller, Scooter Libby, Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush, Iraq, Indictments, CIA
It looks like Judy Miller isn't the only discredited war instigator who might be making a comeback.

Ahmad Chalabi, the neocon-darling-turned-persona-non-grata-turned-Iraqi-Deputy-Prime-Minister, is coming to Washington this month -- his first visit to DC since the White House soured on him back in May 2004 and those Pentagon checks stopped coming.

For his comeback tour, Chalabi has lined up meetings with Condi Rice, John Snow, and national security advisor Stephen Hadley (no word on whether he and Hadley will have a friendly showdown to see who helped pass along the most bogus pre-war intel. I can see Chalabi offering up Curveball only to have Hadley top him with the phony yellowcake info he passed along).

And no word on whether Chalabi will be calling on his old pal Scooter Libby, to whom he turned when the CIA stopped buying his bull, and who gave him a direct line to the White House. Just as he once convinced Libby that American troops would be greeted as liberators, Chalabi could now convince him there is light at the end of the indictment tunnel: "Trust me, Scooter, I've been through much worse. You just gotta put your head down and keep scheming!"

Chalabi's visit is the political version of getting the band back together.

And, having orchestrated the greatest career makeover since Paris Hilton went from Internet porn curiosity to Vanity Fair cover girl, Chalabi has now set his sights on becoming Iraq's new prime minister following the next round of voting on Dec. 15.

Not bad for a guy who, less than two years ago, was being accused by the Bush administration of passing intelligence to Iran that could 'get people killed.'

But, apparently, now that Chalabi is a power player in Iraq, all appears forgiven. At least around the White House. The rest of us, on the other hand, would do well to remember that this is still the guy who:

was a prime source of trumped up claims about Saddam's WMD
bamboozled the Bushies while pocketing $340,000 a month from the US government
tried to sabotage the UN's efforts to put in place an interim government in Iraq
helped the White House Iraq Group sell the war by regularly passing faulty intel to Judy Miller
introduced Curveball, another bogus source on WMD, to the intelligence community
was accused of spying for the Iranians
controlled a nsYSFcQRtYJ:timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp%3FstoryID%3D356107%26category%3DMDOWD%26BCCode%3D%26newsdate%3D7/7/2005">group of thugs accused of fraud, torture, kidnapping, and misuse of U.S. funds
was convicted in abstentia of embezzling millions of dollars in Jordan in the 1980s
No word on whether Chalabi and Miller are going to get together to discuss old times while he's here. Although it probably won't be as exciting as the time Judy stopped by Ahmad's compound in Iraq while she was embedded with the MET Alpha unit, which, in a show of hospitality, was given custody of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Sultan. Miller was even allowed to sit in on the initial questioning of Sultan. Misty water-colored memories...

I'm not sure what this all proves. You can't keep a good double-agent down? Nasty guys finish first? There is no God?

So what's next for these would-be Comeback Kids? Who knows, maybe six months down the road, we'll see Chalabi as the new top dog in Iraq and Judy as the chief of the Times' new Tikrit bureau.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/ahmad-chalabis-comeback-_b_9992.html

Did Cheney Know Plame Was Undercover?
David Corn: The Nation


The Scooter Libby indictment is rather straightforward. He first told FBI agents and later the grand jury that he had no independent information regarding Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie (and her employment at the CIA). He said that he only had picked up rumors about Wilson's wife from reporters and that this was the information he passed to other reporters. He said he wasn't even certain the scuttlebutt he had shared with the journalists was correct. Yet special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald uncovered evidence, which seems rather strong, that Libby actively gathered information on the Wilsons from the CIA and the State Department before talking to reporters about Valerie Wilson.

And the most intriguing piece of evidence Fitzgerald mentioned in the indictment (with, alas, no elaboration) was that on June 12, 2003--nearly a month before Joseph Wilson published his now-infamous op-ed piece on his trip to Niger but several weeks after he had shared information about this trip with the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof as an anonymous source--Vice President Dick Cheney told Libby, in the words of the indictment, that "Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Division."

By sharing this information with Libby, Cheney was telling his chief of staff that Wilson's wife was employed by the Operations Directorate of the CIA--the clandestine service of the intelligence agency where undercover officers work. The Counterproliferation Division is part of the DO--as it been called within the CIA--and anyone familiar with the CIA, especially a senior administration official obsessed with weapons of mass destruction ought to know that. This short sentence suggests that Libby had reason to assume that (or wonder if) Valerie Wilson was working undercover at the CIA. As Barton Gellman noted in an important front-pager in Sunday's Washington Post, this statement from Cheney was ...an unambiguous declaration that [Valerie Wilson's] position was among the case officers of the operations directorate...

So, 2 years, millions of dollars, thousands of man hours and all they got was that Libby lied to the grand jury? Huh. Good use of my money there... I hope the Dem's in government are happy with the results.

The results aren't in yet, McG; Fitzgerald, as you well know, is still investigating.

It ain't over yet...

Cycloptichorn

Wanna bet?

Sure; I'd love to take your money/time/dignity.

Cycloptichorn

I'm sure they could have taken longer and spent more if they had a special prosecutor. BTW, I think it was Bush that ordered the investigation.

In September, 2003, the CIA asked the Justice Department to investigate the matter. Ashcroft subsequently recused himself, and Dep. Atty. Gen. James Comey appointed Fitzgerald special counsel.

But don't let that stop you from blaming Bush for everything.