The Press Gangbang the Press Secretary

[slum_goddess]

it's a laugh a minute w/these fucks...how much are they wasting again?

[DudeAsInCool]

The Boston Globe takes on Karl Rove

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2005/08/28/b...e-a_n_6340.html

[slum_goddess]

dunno where to put this, lol, but texas lawyer fired for talking about rove:

'An attorney at the Texas Secretary of State`s office has been fired for talking to a reporter about President Bush`s adviser Karl Rove. The Washington Post reports that Elizabeth Reyes confirmed Friday she has been fired for answering questions in a Post story that ran Sept. 3.

'Reyes was fired Tuesday but Scott Haywood, a spokesman for Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams, wouldn`t comment besides saying that Reyes 'was not authorized to speak on behalf of the agency...'

what country are we in again?

[DudeAsInCool]

FITZGERALD'S END GAME?

Several lawyers involved in the case say Fitzgerald was likely to wrap up his inquiry this fall, if not sooner, though they say they have not heard from his office in weeks.

The outcome could have political implications for Bush, whose approval ratings are already the lowest of his presidency.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050908/ts_nm/bush_leak_dc

[DudeAsInCool]

washingtonpost.com

Jailed Reporter Is Distanced From News, Not Elite Visitors

Locked in the Alexandria Detention Center for the past 11 weeks, New York Times reporter Judith Miller is cut off from the world. She has no Internet access and precious little opportunity to view CNN. Her phone calls are limited, friends say. Her daily newspaper arrives a day late.

But for 30 minutes nearly every day, the world comes to her: A parade of prominent government and media officials, 99 in all, visited Miller between early July, when she was jailed for refusing to be questioned by a federal prosecutor, and Labor Day, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post.

The who's who of friends, supporters and Washington and New York luminaries includes John R. Bolton, President Bush's new ambassador to the United Nations, former "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Brokaw and former senator Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.). Gonzalo Marroquin, president of the Inter-American Press Society and director of the Guatemalan daily Prensa Libre has been by.

...Miller was jailed July 6 after a federal judge found her in contempt of court for repeatedly refusing to cooperate with special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald in the Valerie Plame leak case. Fitzgerald has been investigating whether Bush administration officials broke the law by leaking the name of Plame, then an undercover CIA operative, to the media in retaliation for criticism of the administration leveled by Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Miller did some reporting on Wilson's claims that the government had twisted intelligence on Iraq's attempt to obtain weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the war, but never wrote a story. Fitzgerald has questioned other reporters, including two from The Post who provided limited depositions with the consent of their sources, and maintains that it is crucial to his investigation to talk to Miller.

...Bolton's visit raised some eyebrows in Washington. A vocal defender of administration claims in 2003 that Iraq was seeking weapons of mass destruction, he could have had access to a State Department memo, parts of which were classified, that detailed Wilson's trip to Niger to determine whether Iraq was seeking uranium there and identified his wife as a covert CIA operative. Who saw or discussed the memo has been a central question for Fitzgerald.

Bolton declined through a spokesman to discuss his visit to Miller or his reasons for going. "This has nothing to do with his job here," the spokesman said. "He doesn't want to talk about it."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1601646_pf.html

Jail would be a good place for people like Bolton...

[DudeAsInCool]

Plamegate: The John Bolton Connection

I'm now hearing that the investigation may be inching closer to never-confirmed UN Ambassador John Bolton.

According to two sources, Bolton's former chief of staff, Fred Fleitz, was at least one of the sources of the classified information about Valerie Plame that flowed through the Bush administration and eventually made its way into Bob Novak's now infamous column.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huff...lto_b_7648.html

[DudeAsInCool]

Jailed Times Reporter Freed After Source Waives Confidentiality

WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 - Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who has been jailed since July 6 for refusing to testify in the C.I.A. leak case, was released from a Virginia detention center this afternoon after she and her lawyers reached an agreement with a federal prosecutor to testify before a grand jury investigating the matter, the paper's publisher and executive editor said.

Ms. Miller was freed after spending more than 12 weeks in jail, during which she refused to cooperate with the criminal inquiry. Her decision to testify came after she obtained what she described as a waiver offered "voluntarily and personally" by a source who said she was no longer bound by any pledge of confidentiality she had made to him. She said the source had made clear that he genuinely wanted her to testify.

That source was I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, according to people who have been officially briefed on the case.

http://nytimes.com/2005/09/29/politics/29c...artner=homepage

[DudeAsInCool]

Bush and Cheney Aides' Testimony Contradicts Earlier White House Statement

As the CIA leak investigation heads toward its expected conclusion this month, it has become increasingly clear that two of the most powerful men in the Bush administration were more involved in the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame than the White House originally indicated.

With New York Times reporter Judith Miller's release from jail Thursday and testimony Friday before a federal grand jury, the role of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, came into clearer focus. Libby, a central figure in the probe since its earliest days and the vice president's main counselor, discussed Plame with at least two reporters but testified that he never mentioned her name or her covert status at the CIA, according to lawyers in the case.

His story is similar to that of Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser. Rove, who was not an initial focus of the investigation, testified that he, too, talked with two reporters about Plame but never supplied her name or CIA role.

...But a new theory about Fitzgerald's aim has emerged in recent weeks from two lawyers who have had extensive conversations with the prosecutor while representing witnesses in the case. They surmise that Fitzgerald is considering whether he can bring charges of a criminal conspiracy perpetrated by a group of senior Bush administration officials. Under this legal tactic, Fitzgerald would attempt to establish that at least two or more officials agreed to take affirmative steps to discredit and retaliate against Wilson and leak sensitive government information about his wife. To prove a criminal conspiracy, the actions need not have been criminal, but conspirators must have had a criminal purpose.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...0101317_pf.html

[DudeAsInCool]

Source to Stephanopoulos: President Bush Directly Involved In Leak Scandal

Near the end of a round table discussion on ABC’s This Week, George Stephanopoulos dropped this bomb:

Definitely a political problem but I wonder, George Will, do you think it’s a manageable one for the White House especially if we don’t know whether Fitzgerald is going to write a report or have indictments but if he is able to show as a source close to this told me this week, that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were actually involved in some of these discussions.

This would explain why Bush spent more than an hour answering questions from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. It would also fundamentally change the dynamics of the scandal. President Bush could no longer claim he was merely a bystander who wants to “get to the bottom of it.” As Stephanopoulos notes, if Bush played a direct role it could make this scandal completely unmanageable.

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/02/bush-directly-involved/

Wouldn's surprise me at all... whatever, heads will roll in Washington, DC next week...

[DudeAsInCool]

On NY Times Reporter Judy Miller being released from prison for purportedly protecting her journalisti cources (e.g. Dick Cheney's boy Libby):

So what was Miller doing in jail? Was it all just a misunderstanding? The most charitable explanation for Miller is that she somehow concluded that Libby wanted her to keep quiet, even while he was publicly -- and privately -- saying otherwise. The least charitable explanation is that going to jail was Miller's way of transforming herself from a journalistic outcast (based on her gullible pre-war reporting) into a much-celebrated hero of press freedom.

Note to reporters: There is nothing intrinsically noble about keeping your sources' secrets. Your job, in fact, is to expose them. And if a very senior government official, after telling you something in confidence, then tells you that you don't have to keep it secret anymore, the proper response is "Hooray, now I can tell the world" -- not "Sorry, that's not good enough for me, I need that in triplicate." And if you're going to go to jail invoking important, time-honored journalistic principles, make sure those principles really apply.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...5093000669.html

[DudeAsInCool]

Did Miller try to cut a deal with the prosecutor a year ago?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...0200934_pf.html

If so, what the hell was her imprisonment all about, if Libby offered

to release her from confidentiality? According to the AP:

"Miller held out, Abrams said Sunday, in part because "she has other sources and was very concerned about the possibility of having to reveal those sources, or going back to jail because of them." Before she finally testified, Fitzgerald promised to limit his questioning to the Libby contacts regarding Plame."

[DudeAsInCool]

Q & A's On What This Case Is All about:

http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?...=D8CVCES00.html

[slum_goddess]

she should be tarred, feathered and then killed for cheerleading the run-up to the bullshit war. another reason i'm glad my dad's not around to see this shit--he swore by the NY Times. :(

[DudeAsInCool]

Lawrence O'Donnell: If Karl Rove's lawyer, Bob Luskin, is still as easy to read as he has been since I broke the story that his client was Matt Cooper's source, then we now know that Rove has received a target letter from Patrick Fitzgerald. How do we know it? Luskin refuses to deny it.

...Prediction: at least three high level Bush Administration personnel indicted and possibly one or more very high level unindicted co-conspirator.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-odo...tep_b_8447.html

[DudeAsInCool]

Rove Said to Testify in CIA Leak Case

WASHINGTON

Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer's leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee he won't be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.

The persons, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy, said Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has not made any decision yet on whether to file criminal charges against the longtime confidant of President Bush or others.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/10/06/D8D2NIE07.html

Gee - I wonder what made him decide to go back in again

[DudeAsInCool]

Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor, said it was unusual for a witness to be called back to the grand jury four times and that the prosecutor's legally required warning to Rove before this next appearance is ''an ominous sign'' for the presidential adviser.

''It suggest Fitzgerald has learned new information that is tightening the noose,'' Gillers said. ''It shows Fitzgerald now, perhaps after Miller's testimony, suspects Rove may be in some way implicated in the revelation of Plame's identity or that Fitzgerald is investigating various people for obstruction of justice, false statements or perjury. That is the menu of risk for Rove.''

http://nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-CI...artner=homepage

Rove's return to the grand jury: A "stunning" and "ominous" sign

So Karl Rove is returning to testify before the grand jury investigating the outing of Valerie Plame, and he's doing so without any guarantee that Patrick Fitzgerald won't prosecute him. How big of a development is this? "Stunning," a former federal prosecutor tells us. "There is no reason for Rove to make this appearance unless he and his counsel believe he is at serious risk of indictment. None."

It's always risky to go before a grand jury. You can't take your lawyer into the room with you, and you don't know what the grand jury knows or doesn't know. It's especially risky if you've already testified once -- or, in the case of Rove, three times -- before: The odds of introducing inconsistencies into your testimony increase each time you give it. That's why, the former prosecutor tells us, a defense lawyer would advise his client to make a return appearance before the grand jury "only in extremis."

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

Rove better bring some butter with him, 'cause he's toast

[DudeAsInCool]

Another legal problem for Karl Rove?

It's not quite an indictment in the Valerie Plame case, but Karl Rove may soon have some legal trouble back home in Texas, too. A resident of Comfort, Texas, is urging her local district attorney to follow up on a newspaper report that Rove has been voting in Texas even though he doesn't live there anymore.

As we noted last month, a recent story in the Washington Post discussed the tax status of Rove's home in Washington. The story said that Rove is registered to vote in Texas -- apparently based on his ownership of a couple of rental cottages there -- despite the fact that he lives in Washington and is building a home for himself in Florida. In the course of the story, Elizabeth Reyes, a lawyer in the Texas secretary of state's office, was quoted saying that a person could be criminally prosecuted for voting in a place he doesn't live. When the story came out, Rove put in a phone call to the Texas secretary of state, a man described as a longtime supporter of George W. Bush and a major GOP fundraiser. Shortly thereafter, Reyes was fired.

That might have been the end of things if it weren't for Comfort resident Frances Lovett, who has written a letter to the Kerr County district attorney asking for an investigation into whether Rove has been voting in Texas illegally. There's no word yet on what the district attorney will do, and the White House is insisting that Rove has acted within the dictates of the law -- at least this time.

Salon-War Room-- Tim Grieve

[15:37 EDT, Oct. 7, 2005]

[DudeAsInCool]

Prosecutor 'Not Finished' With Judith Miller--And Reuters Reports She Has Turned Over More Notes

NEW YORK After news emerged that Karl Rove would be appearing again before the grand jury probing Plamegate, The New York Times confirmed late Thursday that a Reuters account that the prosecutor wasn't done with its reporter Judith Miller either.

...on Friday afternoon, Reuters carried news that Miller had "discovered notes from an earlier conversation she had with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and turned them over the prosecutor investigating the leak of a covert CIA operative's identity, legal sources said on Friday.

"Miller's notes about a June 2003 conversation with Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, could be important to prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's case by establishing exactly when Libby and other administration officials first started talking to reporters about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson."

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/ne...t_id=1001262430

[DudeAsInCool]

CIA Leak: Karl Rove and the Case of the Missing E-mail

Newsweek

Oct. 17, 2005 issue - The White House's handling of a potentially crucial e-mail sent by senior aide Karl Rove two years ago set off a chain of events that has led special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to summon Rove for a fourth grand jury appearance this week. His return has created heightened concern among White House officials and their allies that Fitzgerald may be preparing to bring indictments when a federal grand jury that has been investigating the leak of a CIA agent's identity expires at the end of October. Robert Luskin, Rove's lawyer, tells NEWSWEEK that, in his last conversations with Fitzgerald, the prosecutor assured Luskin "he has not made any decisions."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9630676/site/newsweek/

[DudeAsInCool]

More trouble for Rove:

Specter to Ask Whether Rove Gave Assurances on Miers (Update1)

Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said he wants to know whether presidential adviser Karl Rove privately assured a conservative activist about how Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers would rule from the bench.

Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said he will would look into a statement by James Dobson, president of the Colorado Springs, Colorado-based advocacy group Focus on the Family, that Dobson has had ``conversations'' with Rove about the woman nominated to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and knows things about Miers ``that I probably shouldn't know.''

``The Senate Judiciary Committee is entitled to know whatever the White House knew,'' Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said on ABC's ``This Week'' program...."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=100...id=avIE5l2P51sI

[DudeAsInCool]

The Case of the Missing Notebook

The latest twist in the Plame Affair only deepens the mystery: What's in the suddenly uncovered notebook that documents the previously unknown Judith Miller/Scooter Libby chat of June 25, 2003? Who told the prosecutor about it? And why, exactly, does he want to talk to Miller again?

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/co...t_id=1001263179

[DudeAsInCool]

Patrick Fitzgerald's Mousetrap (1 comments )

Just back from the LA Blogger Bash, where Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake patiently explained to me her theory, and that of emptywheel of The Next Hurrah, of how it came to pass that Judith Miller suddenly discovered some notes about her meetings with "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff, after her grand jury testimony.

If it's not -- as I suspect it is -- a brilliant and plausible inference that accurately ties together disparate facts, it's one of the best pieces of legal fiction ever penned. You should read both of the linked items in full, but here's the idea as I understand it:

1. The revelation of Plame's identity to Cooper and Novak (among others) was part of an attack on Joseph Wilson's credibility that started before, and not after, his NYT op-ed of July 6, 2003. Wilson had already been the unnamed source of press reports casting doubt on the uranium-from-Niger story, and the White House Iraq Group was out to get him, for self-protection and retaliation.

2. Miller planned to write a story about Wilson, prompted by Libby and members of the W.H.I.G.; those plans were pre-empted by his op-ed. (Or perhaps when he learned that his role as a source for Kristof was going to be revealed anyway, he decided to tell the story himself.)

3. Libby had told the grand jury about his conversations with Miller in July, but not about conversations in June relating to the story that Miller planned to write but never wrote. Those conversations would have been hard to reconcile with the story Libby and his friends were trying to peddle: that their attacks on Wilson were purely defensive responses to his op-ed.

4. Unbeknownst to Libby and Miller, Fitzgerald had learned of those June conversations, either from Wilson or from someone at the Times.

5. As Fitzgerald expected, Miller in her testimony did not mention the June conversations with Libby. (Libby's letter to Miller contains language that might be read as signaling to her that she should confine her testimony to the July conversations.) Fitzgerald asked her leading questions which, without tipping her off about how much Fitzgerald knew, put her in the position of having to testify falsely in order to avoid mentioning those conversations.

6. Once Miller's testimony was over, Fitzgerald called her lawyer and said, "Why didn't your client mention the June conversations when she was asked about them?" It was that phone call that triggered Miller's sudden discovery of the June notes.

7. Having caught Miller committing perjury, Fitzgerald is now in a position to, in effect, renege on his agreement to ask her only about her conversations with Libby. Under the terms of that agreement, Fitzgerald can't compel her to testify about conversations with other people, but she can of course do so voluntarily. And Fitzgerald can tell her lawyer that if she fails to volunteer, she may be looking at substantially more than 85 days behind bars on charges of perjury, conspiracy to obstruct justice, being an accessory to Libby's violations of the Espionage Act, or being a co-conspirator with him and others in those violations. (This is perfectly acceptable prosecutorial conduct, not even close to any ethical line.)

Instead of a mere percipient witness, Miller is now a potential defendant, and Fitzgerald can try to "flip" her against all of her sources, not just Libby.

Jane concludes:

Note to self: do not EVER play poker with Patrick Fitzgerald.

Well, right. And I would add: do not enter a spy-novel-writing contest against Jane Hamsher or emptywheel. I don't often encounter anyone with a mind more devious than my own, but in this case I bow to either superior penetration or superior invention. Whether this is Fitzgerald's plot or Jane's, its author has a wickedly brilliant intellect.

Update Tom Maguire notes that Fitzgerald's subpoena to Miller covered only documents after July 6. So why, Tom asks, is Ms. Miller suddenly so talkative? Count that as another puzzling phenomenon that the Hamsher theory explains nicely.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-kleiman...ous_b_8569.html

[DudeAsInCool]

For a list of documents on this case, go here:

http://www.perrspectives.com/resources/documents.htm#plame

[DudeAsInCool]

Kristol: “One or More Indictments in the Next Three Weeks”

Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol on Fox News Sunday:

Criminal defense lawyers I’ve spoken to who are friendly to the administration are very worried that there will be one or more indictments in the next three weeks of senior administration officials, just looking at what Fitzgerald is doing and taking him at his word, you know, being a serious prosecutor here. And I think it’s going to be bad for the Bush administration.

Someone like Bill Kristol doesn’t get information like this by accident. It’s being fed to him so, if there is an indictment, he can prepare the base. Towards the end of the segment, Kristol got started, saying, “I hate the criminalization of politics.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/09/kristol-indictments/

[DudeAsInCool]

Jane Hamshler of the blog FireDogLake writes the best blogs on the Plame-Libby-Miller-Rove affair. Even if you dont give a damn about it, she is entertaining to read:

http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/2005_10_02...875435125842723