The Press Gangbang the Press Secretary

[DudeAsInCool]

Libby Did Not Tell Grand Jury About Key Conversation

In two appearances before the federal grand jury investigating the leak of a covert CIA operative's name, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff toVice President Cheney, did not disclose a crucial conversation that he had with New York Times reporter Judith Miller in June 2003 about the operative, Valerie Plame, according to sources with firsthand knowledge of his sworn testimony.

The new revelations regarding Libby come as Fitzgerald has indicated that he is wrapping up his investigation and making final decisions as to whether criminal charges will be brought in the case.

Libby also did not disclose the June 23 conversation when he was twice interviewed by FBI agents working on the Plame leak investigation, the sources said.

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/...005/1011nj1.htm

One down, two to go

[DudeAsInCool]

News Orgs Working On Stories Tying Cheney Into Plamegate… Developing…

The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg are working on stories that point to Vice President Dick Cheney as the target of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name.

www.huffingtonpost.net

the net gets bigger Note, the washington post did the same story 2 yr's ago

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?p...1&notFound=true

[DudeAsInCool]

http://billmon.org/archives/002246.html

[DudeAsInCool]

Special Prosecutor Again Queries Reporter

New York Times reporter Judith Miller answered questions yesterday about a previously undisclosed conversation she had with Vice President Cheney's chief of staff in June 2003 and is scheduled to testify before a grand jury today to answer more questions in the investigation of how a covert CIA operative's identity was leaked to reporters.

Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who has indicated he is nearing a decision about whether to charge anyone in the case, questioned Miller about notes she said she discovered last week involving a June 23, 2003, conversation with Cheney's top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, according to a source familiar with Miller's account.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...5101101606.html

...Numerous lawyers involved in the 22-month investigation said they are bracing for Fitzgerald to bring criminal charges against administration officials. They speculated, based on his questions, that he may be focused on charges of false statements, obstruction of justice or violations of the Espionage Act involving the release of classified government information to unauthorized persons. The grand jury's term is to expire Oct. 28.

"This is not a guy who would walk away with nothing," said one lawyer involved... 

[DudeAsInCool]

Chris Matthews roundtable examines the Plame Affair and discovers there is a civil war in the White House over who is going to take over when Rove, et tal, are gone

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9662325/

[DudeAsInCool]

It's only 6:17 a.m. Central time, and President Bush is already facing his second question of the day about Karl Rove's legal troubles.

"Does it worry you," NBC's Matt Lauer is asking him at a construction-site interview in Louisiana, that prosecutors "seem to have such an interest in Mr. Rove?"

Bush blinks twice. He touches his tongue to his lips. He blinks twice more. He starts to answer, but he stops himself.

"I'm not going to talk about the case," Bush finally says after a three-second pause that, in television time, feels like a commercial break.

Only the president's closest friends and family know (if anybody does) what he's really thinking these days, during Katrina woes, Iraq violence, conservative anger over Harriet Miers, and legal trouble for Bush's top political aide and two congressional GOP leaders. Bush has not been viewed up close; as he took his eighth post-Katrina trip to the Gulf Coast yesterday, the press corps has accompanied him only once, because the White House says logistics won't permit it. Even the interview on the "Today" show was labeled "closed press."

But this much could be seen watching the tape of NBC's broadcast during Bush's 14-minute pre-sunrise interview, in which he stood unprotected by the usual lectern. The president was a blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts. Bush has always been an active man, but standing with Lauer and the serene, steady first lady, he had the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere.

The fidgeting clearly corresponded to the questioning. When Lauer asked if Bush, after a slow response to Katrina, was "trying to get a second chance to make a good first impression," Bush blinked 24 times in his answer. When asked why Gulf Coast residents would have to pay back funds but Iraqis would not, Bush blinked 23 times and hitched his trousers up by the belt.

When the questioning turned to Miers, Bush blinked 37 times in a single answer -- along with a lick of the lips, three weight shifts and some serious foot jiggling.

Laura Bush, by contrast, delivered only three blinks and stood still through her entire answer about encouraging volunteerism.

Perhaps the set itself made Bush uncomfortable.

\

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thenewswire/#a008751

Give the poor guy a stiff drink

[DudeAsInCool]

Has the Fitzgerald investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame leaped to the White House Iraq Group? "The White House Iraq Group (aka, White House Information Group or WHIG) was the marketing arm of the White House whose purpose was to sell the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the public." The members of the White House Iraq Group are:

Karl Rove

Karen Hughes

Mary Matalin

James R. Wilkinson

Nicholas E. Calio

Condoleezza Rice

Stephen Hadley

I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby

Was the outing of Valerie Plame simply another notch in the WHIG's attempt to sell the lie behind going to War in Iraq? That's been my and many other's opinion all along and it looks like its gaining momentum...

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title...ouse_Iraq_Group

[DudeAsInCool]

Inside the West Wing the lowering atmosphere of dread is like that of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and Pendulum:" "Down -- steadily down it crept."

Sidney Blumenthal

[DudeAsInCool]

Frank Rich: It's Bush-Cheney, Not Rove-Libby!!!

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/3660

[DudeAsInCool]

Update: Not Since Geraldo Cracked Open that Vault...

Now that I have spent a few hours absorbing this latest installment in the ongoing soap opera "Desperate Editors," I can safely say that not since Geraldo cracked open Al Capone’s vault has there been a bigger anticlimax or a bigger sham. After all, the question everybody has been asking is: who was the source who leaked Valerie Plame’s identity to Judy Miller?

And the answer? She can't remember.

Given the "gee-whiz, it all just sort of, like, happened, and I don't know when or why or where or who..." tone of her mea no culpa , maybe Judy is vying for a role on MTV’s "Laguna Beach.Who told Judy about Valerie Plame (or “Flame” as the name appears in Judy’s notes)? According to these two pieces, the name was immaculately conceived. "As I told Mr. Fitzgerald, I simply could not recall where that came from," Miller writes.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huff...ulp_b_8938.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/national...agewanted=print

[DudeAsInCool]

Lots of interesting posts on the Plumgate :) affair over at the Dau Report and the Huffington Post. Anyone want to take a guess at who and how many people at the White House will get indicted this week? All the king's horses and all the king's men's couldnt put the Bush administration back together again

[Malicious Intent]

If I havent taken the bits I have read out of contet, I would have thought this would be huge news, but Ive seen nothing about it.

I'll have to take the time to read through this thread and work out what is is all about.

[slum_goddess]

If I havent taken the bits I have read out of contet, I would have thought this would be huge news, but Ive seen nothing about it.

WELCOME TO AMERIKA!

[DudeAsInCool]

Cheney's Office Is A Focus in Leak Case/Sources Cite Role Of Feud With CIA

As the investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's name hurtles to an apparent conclusion, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has zeroed in on the role of Vice President Cheney's office, according to lawyers familiar with the case and government officials. The prosecutor has assembled evidence that suggests Cheney's long-standing tensions with the CIA contributed to the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1701888_pf.html

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Cheneys_role...f_CIA_1012.html

Inside the West Wing the lowering atmosphere of dread is like that of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and Pendulum:" "Down -- steadily down it crept."

[DudeAsInCool]

White House Watch: Cheney resignation rumors fly

Sparked by today's Washington Post story that suggests Vice President Cheney's office is involved in the Plame-CIA spy link investigation, government officials and advisers passed around rumors that the vice president might step aside and that President Bush would elevate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles...h.htm?track=rss

[Wolfie]

I don't know which one is worse. The devil we know or one that's under the idiot's thumb. The dilemma between having brain (granted an evil one) in white house or no brain whatsoever. They might as well make Karl Rove President! <_>

[DudeAsInCool]

No Final Report Seen in Inquiry on C.I.A. Leak

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 - The special counsel in the C.I.A. leak case has told associates he has no plans to issue a final report about the results of the investigation, heightening the expectation that he intends to bring indictments, lawyers in the case and law enforcement officials say.

http://nytimes.com/2005/10/19/politics/19l...artner=homepage

Given the political ramifications attached to Mr. Fitzgerald's decisions, officials at the White House have begun discussing what would happen if Mr. Rove was indicted.

Among the names being discussed to take some of Mr. Rove's responsibilities should he have to step aside, an outside adviser to the White House said, are Dan Bartlett, currently Mr. Bush's counselor; Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee; and Robert M. Kimmitt, the deputy Treasury secretary.

[Wolfie]

Its not like they can run for another term so they don't really need Rove anymore.

[DudeAsInCool]

Its not like they can run for another term so they don't really need Rove anymore. 

If Rove goes, who is gonna plan Bush's retirement

[DudeAsInCool]

Bush whacked Rove on CIA leak

WASHINGTON - An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News.

"He made his displeasure known to Karl," a presidential counselor told The News. "He made his life miserable about this."

http://nydailynews.com/front/story/357107p-304312c.html

If the Daily News Story is true, then Bush knew about the Plame thing along time ago--that could be troublesome for him personally...

[DudeAsInCool]

AP: Rove, Libby Discussed Reporter Info

Top White House aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby discussed their contacts with reporters about an undercover CIA officer in the days before her identity was published, the first known intersection between two central figures in the criminal leak investigation.

Rove told grand jurors it was possible he first heard in the White House that Valerie Plame, wife of Bush administration Joseph Wilson, worked for the CIA from Libby's recounting of a conversation with a journalist, according to people familiar with his testimony.

They said Rove testified that his discussions with Libby before Plame's CIA cover was blown were limited to information reporters had passed to them. Some evidence prosecutors have gathered conflicts with Libby's account.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/10/19/D8DBDEOO4.html

Imagine that - they actually talked about this stuff together <_>

Inside the West Wing the lowering atmosphere of dread is like that of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and Pendulum:" "Down -- steadily down it crept."

[DudeAsInCool]

Cheney 'cabal' hijacked foreign policy

Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.

In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

“Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/afdb7b0c-40f3-11d

Full speech here:

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/c925a686-40f4-11d...000e2511c8.html

Im glad people are FINALLY writing about this - but Jesus, it was so obvious.

Why did it take so long for the press to begin working????

[DudeAsInCool]

White House Defense Crumbling in Leak Case

The evidence prosecutors have assembled in the CIA leak case suggests Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff sought out reporters in the weeks before an undercover operative's identity was compromised in the news media, casting doubt on one of the White House's main lines of defense.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/10/20/D8DBVNSO8.html

[Wolfie]

Can he say, "I am not a crook!"

[slum_goddess]

Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world

out of everyone who's been paying attention over the last few years, WHO DINT SEE THIS COMING?