The Press Gangbang the Press Secretary

[DudeAsInCool]

CIA Leak Investigation Turns to Possible Perjury, Obstruction

By Douglas Frantz, Sonni Efron and Richard B. Schmitt, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — The special prosecutor in the CIA leak investigation has shifted his focus from determining whether White House officials violated a law against exposing undercover agents to determining whether evidence exists to bring perjury or obstruction of justice charges, according to people briefed in recent days on the inquiry's status.

Differences have arisen in witnesses' statements to federal agents and a grand jury about how the name of Valerie Plame, a CIA agent, was leaked to the press two years ago.

According to lawyers familiar with the case, investigators are comparing statements by two top White House aides, Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, with testimony from reporters who have acknowledged talking to the officials.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...-home-headlines

[DudeAsInCool]

Ex-CIA Officer Rips Bush Over Plame Leak

July 23,2005 | WASHINGTON -- President Bush is jeopardizing national security by not disciplining Karl Rove for his role in leaking the name of a CIA officer, and has hampered efforts to recruit informants in the war on terror, former U.S. intelligence officers say.

Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson used the Democratic Party's weekly radio address Saturday to reiterate comments he made Friday to a panel of House and Senate Democrats.

Johnson, who said he was a registered Republican, said Bush has gone back on his promise to fire anyone at the White House implicated in a leak.

http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?...=D8BHD3R00.html

[DudeAsInCool]

The White House - A Pervasive Culture of Revenge

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/opinion/...serland&emc=rss

[slum_goddess]

President Bush is jeopardizing national security by not disciplining Karl Rove for his role in leaking the name of a CIA officer, and has hampered efforts to recruit informants in the war on terror, former U.S. intelligence officers say.

i've already added this onto my mental list of outrage cause it seems this is final proof positive that nothing will happen to anyone concerned--they'll just keep on flauting laws and nobody will do shit about it (well, people will try/have tried but it hasn't accrued the traction it would have if this was a democratic administration).

[DudeAsInCool]

this is final proof positive that nothing will happen to anyone concerned--

Not this time around - the Rove thing is exploding slowly and eventually the press and the public are waking up and seeing that the Bush administration lied to the public to go to war in Iraq...

[slum_goddess]

i so hope you're right. it's amazing to me how they so blatantly bullshit.

[DudeAsInCool]

washingtonpost.com

Bush Aide Learned Early of Leaks Probe

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said yesterday that he spoke with White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. immediately after learning that the Justice Department had launched a criminal investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity. But Gonzales, who was White House counsel at the time, waited 12 hours before officially notifying the rest of the staff of the inquiry.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2401058_pf.html

[DudeAsInCool]

Helen strikes again!

McClellan's Answers On Rove: "You Asked That Question Last Week"...

The White House   |  READ STORY   |  permalink

From the White House Press Briefing, July 25, 2005:

Q Do Karl Rove and Scooter Libby still have top secret clearance here, access to classified documents?

MR. McCLELLAN: You asked this question last week, and --

Q I did. And I'm asking again.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- the President has said what our answer is to these questions. We'll be glad to talk about all these issues once the investigation is complete.

Q Do they have a clearance?

MR. McCLELLAN: We'll be glad to talk about all the issues relating to the investigation once it's complete.

Q Why can't you talk about it now?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, that question I addressed a couple weeks ago.

posted July 26, 2005 12:11 AM | comments

[slum_goddess]

great going, Helen :) (too bad hardly anyone else puked up the kool aid).

[DudeAsInCool]

washingtonpost.com

Prosecutor In CIA Leak Case Casting A Wide Net

White House Effort To Discredit Critic Examined in Detail

By Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei

Washington Post Staff Writers

Wednesday, July 27, 2005; A01

The special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe has interviewed a wider range of administration officials than was previously known, part of an effort to determine whether anyone broke laws during a White House effort two years ago to discredit allegations that President Bush used faulty intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to several officials familiar with the case.

Prosecutors have questioned former CIA director George J. Tenet and deputy director John E. McLaughlin, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, State Department officials, and even a stranger who approached columnist Robert D. Novak on the street.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2602069_pf.html

****

:read this: In doing so, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has asked not only about how CIA operative Valerie Plame's name was leaked but also how the administration went about shifting responsibility from the White House to the CIA for having included 16 words in the 2003 State of the Union address about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Africa, an assertion that was later disputed.

BINGO!!!!!!!!!!! :good job:

Behind the scenes, the White House responded with twin attacks: one on Wilson and the other on the CIA, which it wanted to take the blame for allowing the 16 words to remain in Bush's speech. As part of this effort, then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley spoke with Tenet during the week about clearing up CIA responsibility for the 16 words, even though both knew the agency did not think Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Tenet was interviewed by prosecutors, but it is not clear whether he appeared before the grand jury, a former CIA official said.

TROUBLE IN RIVER CITY

[slum_goddess]

right, Dude, BINGO! now let's hope they can hold that thought.

[Kooperman]

There's not enough available jail space for all the white-collar criminals in this administration. They make the Nixon administration look like rank amateurs in the field of corruption, but unlike Nixon and his cronies, this gang is going to get away with their crimes. Everybody of importance will pass GO and collect their $200 when all the smoke clears.

[slum_goddess]

everything Koop said especially the end. (and the only reason i'd be back, if i knew there were many others who felt just as i did).

[DudeAsInCool]

Poll: Most Americans believe Rove should be fired or should resign:

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/..._poll26.art.htm

[DudeAsInCool]

Helen - you go, girl!

Q Has Karl Rove offered to resign, in view of his problems?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, you keep asking these questions that are related to an ongoing investigation--

Q Does he still have his security clearance?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- and those are questions that have already been addressed.

Q No, they -- I've never heard this before. Have you?

MR. McCLELLAN: The question has been asked before.

Q We haven't heard an answer.

Q What was your answer?

Q There hasn't been an answer.

MR. McCLELLAN: Go ahead.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...20050727-1.html

[DudeAsInCool]

Case of C.I.A. Officer's Leaked Identity Takes New Turn

WASHINGTON, July 26 - In the same week in July 2003 in which Bush administration officials told a syndicated columnist and a Time magazine reporter that a C.I.A. officer had initiated her husband's mission to Niger, an administration official provided a Washington Post reporter with a similar account.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/28/politics...G7p3Oca58zyn9FA

[DudeAsInCool]

Rice Asked if Bolton Testified in Leak Case

WASHINGTON - A Democratic opponent of John Bolton asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday whether the nominee for U.N. ambassador had testified to a grand jury about the leak of CIA operative's identity.

Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committeesay they want to determine whether Bolton was truthful when he wrote on a questionnaire for his confirmation hearing that he has not been interviewed in any recent investigations.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050728/ap_on_...DMzBHNlYwM3MDM-

[DudeAsInCool]

State Dept admits Bolton gave inaccurate answers

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department reversed itself on Thursday night and acknowledged that President Bush's U.N. ambassador nominee gave Congress inaccurate information about an investigation he was involved in.

...Earlier, Sen. Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record) of Delaware said he had information Bolton was interviewed as part of a State Department- CIA joint investigation on intelligence lapses that led to the Bush administration's pre- Iraq war claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/bush_bolton_dc;...HNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

[DudeAsInCool]

07.28.2005Arianna Huffington

Judy Miller: How Deep Do Her Connections Run?

The more I’m reading about Judy Miller and her actions leading up to and during the early days of the war, and then through the unfolding Plame-Rove-Libby-Gonzalez-Card scandal, the more I’m struck by the special access and relationships she enjoyed with many of the key players in the Iraq debacle (which, at the end of the day, is really what Plamegate is all about). For starters, of course, we have her still unfolding involvement in the Plame leak. Then there is her highly unusual involvement as an embedded reporter during the war with the Pentagon’s Mobile Exploitation Team (MET) Alpha -- the unit charged with hunting down Saddam’s WMD. An assignment so sensitive that Don Rumsfeld himself signed off on it. Once embedded, Miller acted as much more than a reporter. Howard Kurtz quotes one military officer as complaining of Miller “almost hijacking the mission.” And if she didn’t get her way, according to another Army officer, “Judith was always issuing threats of either going to the New York Times or to the secretary of defense.” Once she went as far as using her friendship with a high-ranking officer to force a lower ranking one to reverse an order she was unhappy about. (Can we stop for a moment and take the full measure of how unbelievable this whole thing is?)

[DudeAsInCool]

July 17, 2005

Follow the Uranium

By FRANK RICH

...

This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit - the big enchilada, to borrow a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes - is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. That's why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative who posed for Vanity Fair.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/opinion/...agewanted=print

[DudeAsInCool]

A Q qand A on where the investigation stands:

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisob.../printstory.jsp

TAPPED (Matthew Yglesias)

"Time has a short piece that seems to shed some light on the chronology of the Plame leak.... This via John Podhoretz, who seems to believe that this vindicates Karl Rove. I don't quite get that. The key contention here seems to be the former intelligence official who says that "there was general discussion with the National Security Council and the White House and State Department and others," which would indicate that Rove (i.e., "the White House") got this info through official channels rather than from a reporter. Legally, however, near as I can tell it doesn't matter who Rove got the information from. What matters is whether Rove was aware that Plame's identity was classified."

[DudeAsInCool]

Robert Novak Chirps Up

http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak01.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/politics...agewanted=print

[DudeAsInCool]

Bush suddenly declares confidence in Rove -- wonder what he knows that no one else does?

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/n.../bush_leak_dc_6

[DudeAsInCool]

Is Fitzgerald's focus still on Rove?

So George W. Bush still has "complete confidence" in Karl Rove. That's all just hunky-dory, Mr. President -- but it also seems that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald still has a lot of interest in your deputy chief of staff, too.

ABC News has been watching the comings and goings from Fitzgerald's grand jury room, and the Note today notes that the grand jurors seem to have heard from two interesting witnesses Friday: Susan Ralston and Israel "Izzy" Hernandez. The Note calls Ralston Rove's "long-time right hand" and Hernandez his "former left hand."

We don't know what Ralston and Hernandez may have been asked before the grand jury, and we don't know whether they had long-standing "invitations" to testify or if they were summoned after Fitzgerald obtained the notes and testimony of Time's Matthew Cooper. Really, we don't know what any of it means, except -- as the Note says -- that it seems as if "at least part of" Fitzgerald's focus remains on the man who still has the president's "complete confidence."

-- Tim Grieve

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html

[DudeAsInCool]

Permalink [12:35 EDT, August 03, 2005]

Why were Karl Rove's aides called before the grand jury?

We're learning a little more -- but only a little -- this morning about why two of Karl Rove's top aides were called before Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury last week.

According to a report in today's New York Times, Susan Ralston, who works for Rove at the White House, and Israel "Izzy" Hernandez, a former Rove aide who's now at the Commerce Department, were questioned Friday about testimony that Time's Matthew Cooper gave the grand jury earlier in July.

A source tells the Times that the aides were asked why Cooper's July 11, 2003, telephone call to Rove -- the one in which Rove apparently told Cooper that Joseph Wilson's wife worked at the CIA -- wasn't listed on the phone log for Rove's office. The source says there was no record of the call because Cooper did not call Rove's office directly but was transferred there instead by a White House operator.

If that's the most important piece of the Rove aides' testimony, it isn't exactly a bombshell -- indeed, reading deeply into the tea leaves, one could imagine that the testimony undercut a prosecution theory that the lack of a record suggested that Rove's office was trying to hide the fact that he had spoken with Cooper at all. It wouldn't be a crazy theory, exactly: As we noted a couple of weeks ago, Rove apparently forgot to mention his conversation with Cooper when he first talked with investigators about the outing of Valerie Plame.

But what may be more significant about the aides' grand jury appearances is that they happened at all. Back in April, Fitzgerald said in a court filing that, by October 2004, he had "for all practical purposes" completed his factual investigation of the Plame case but for "the testimony of [Judith] Miller and Cooper and any further investigation that might result from such testimony." Fitzgerald got Cooper's testimony last month, and it should be pretty clear to him by now that he's never going to have Miller's. By calling in the two Rove aides, Fitzgerald has made it pretty clear to anyone staking out the grand jury room that he's not done yet.

-- Tim Grieve

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html