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Libby: Bush Approved Leak of Classified Info

QueEx

QueEx

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<font size="5"><center>In Court Filings, Cheney Aide Says </font size><font size="6">
Bush Approved Leak </font size></center>

The New York Times
By DAVID JOHNSTON and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: April 6, 2006

WASHINGTON, April 6 — President Bush authorized Vice President Dick Cheney in July 2003 to permit Mr. Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., to leak to a reporter key portions of a classified prewar intelligence estimate on Iraq, according to Mr. Libby's grand jury testimony disclosed in court papers filed late Wednesday.

The court filing provided the first indication that Mr. Bush, who has long assailed leaks of classified information as a national security threat, played a direct role in the disclosure of the intelligence report on Iraq and was also involved in the swirl of events leading up to the disclosure of the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer.

The grand jury testimony by Mr. Libby, who has been charged with perjury and obstruction in the C.I.A. leak case, is said by prosecutors to indicate that Mr. Cheney obtained explicit approval from Mr. Bush to permit Mr. Libby to divulge portions of a National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

The disclosure prompted Democrats to demand that the White House be forthcoming about Mr. Bush's role. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, released a statement saying: "In light of today's shocking revelation, President Bush must fully disclose his participation in the selective leaking of classified information. The American people must know the truth."

The court filing said that Mr. Libby testified that the "Vice President advised defendant that the President had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the N.I.E." The prosecutors said that Mr. Libby testified that he recalled the circumstances "getting approval from the President through the Vice President to discuss material that would be classified but for that approval — were unique in his recollection."

The leak was intended, the court papers suggested, as a rebuttal to the Op-Ed article published in The New York Times on July 6, by Joseph C. Wilson, IV, a former ambassador, who wrote that he had traveled to Africa in 2002 after Mr. Cheney had raised questions about possible nuclear purchases. Mr. Wilson wrote that he concluded it was "highly doubtful" that Iraq had sought to purchase nuclear fuel from Niger.

At Mr. Cheney's office, the Op-Ed article was viewed "as a direct attack on credibility of the Vice President (and the President) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq," according to the court papers.

The presidential authorization was provided, the court papers said, in advance of a meeting on July 8, 2003 between Mr. Libby and Judith Miller, then a reporter for the New York Times. Mr. Libby brought a brief abstract of the N.I.E.'s key judgments to the meeting with Ms. Miller in the lobby of the St. Regis Hotel about two blocks from the White House.

Mr. Libby testified, the prosecutors said, that he was "specifically authorized in advance of the meeting to disclose the key judgments of the classified N.I.E. to Miller on that occasion because it was thought that the N.I.E. was 'pretty definitive' against what Ambassador Wilson had said and that the Vice President thought that it was 'very important' for the key judgments of the N.I.E. to come out."

The court filing said that Mr. Libby said "he understood that that was to tell Ms. Miller, among other things, that "a key judgment of the N.I.E. held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium." Mr. Libby, the prosecutors, said, testified that the meeting with Ms. Miller was the "only time he recalled in his government experience when he disclosed a document to a reporter that was effectively declassified by virtue of the President's authorization that it be disclosed."

Mr. Libby testified that he first told Mr. Cheney that he could not have such a conversation with Ms. Miller because the intelligence estimate on Iraq was classified. Mr. Libby testified that Mr. Cheney later told him that Mr. Bush had authorized the release of "relevant portions."

In addition, Mr. Libby told the grand jury that he also spoke with David Addington, then a lawyer for Mr. Cheney whom Mr. Libby regarded as an expert on national security law. "Mr. Addington opined that Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to declassification of the document."

Mr. Libby testified that at the meeting he did not discuss Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, the C.I.A. officer at the center of the leak inquiry, because "he had forgotten by that time that he learned about Ms. Wilson's C.I.A. employment a month earlier from the Vice President."

Ms. Miller in her Oct. 16, 2005, account of the meeting said that her notes showed that the two had discussed Mr. Wilson's wife, who, according to her notes, worked in a unit of the C.I.A. that is engaged in the intelligence assessments of unconventional weapons.

Ms. Miller said that Mr. Libby discussed a chronology of what she said he described as "credible evidence" of Iraq's efforts to acquire uranium. She made no reference to whether Mr. Libby referred to any material as derived from the intelligence estimate, but said that he alluded to two reports, one in 1999 and another in 2002, that seemed to support the contention that Iraq was interested in obtain uranium.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/06/w...&en=cc5a0128b83c317e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
 
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You probably won't get too many replies on this thread. Most people will probably just throw their hands up and say fuck it. There's just so much scandal, two faced lies and doublespeak that we are all just too dam apathetic to give a dam. My guess is you'll hear the usual on the TV this evening, democrats saying the republicans are war mongering knuckle dragging thieves and charlatans, republicans saying the democrats are pussies who are blowing smoke up America’s collective immigrant butts trying to take the attention from the Iran affair and their lack of a national security policy, but that's just my guess.

Meanwhile, in the real world American men and women are dashing through the streets of Baghdad in lightly armored trucks from GM who is on the verge of bankruptcy to avoid road side bombs from insurgence and pissed off Iraqis, who were supposed to be welcoming us as liberators.
 
You summed up about 3 threads all in one paragraph, who is to say "noone" is paying attention though? Real Gangstas don't talk, they boogie. :lol:
 
<img src="http://images.nationaljournal.com/NJ/img/homemast1.gif">

<font color="#d90000" face="Trebuchet MS, Arial, Verdana, Helvetica" size="6"><b>Libby Says Bush Authorized Leaks </b></font><p>
By <a href="mailto:mwaas@nationaljournal.com">
<font size="4">Murray Waas</a>,
<!-- /nj-byline -->

<!-- nj-date -->
Thursday, April 6, 2006</font>
 
<font size="5"><center>Testimony Adds New Element to Probe of CIA Leak</font size></center>

By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 7, 2006; Page A09

The allegation that President Bush authorized the dissemination of secret intelligence as part of an effort to buttress his case for war with Iraq introduces a new dimension to the long-running CIA leak investigation, while posing troubling new political problems for the administration.

Until now, the investigation had been about aides to Bush and their alleged efforts to attack the credibility of a vocal administration critic, including by possibly leaking classified information. Bush cast himself as a disinterested observer, eager to resolve the case and hold those responsible accountable.

But court papers filed late Wednesday night by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, in the perjury case of former White House official I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, implicate Bush as knowing about efforts to disseminate sensitive information -- and also as orchestrating them.

Although Fitzgerald specifically said Bush was not aware of the leaking of a CIA agent's affiliation, the allegation that the president was involved at all in a leak campaign unleashed a torrent of criticism from Democrats.

"The buck doesn't stop anywhere with this White House. Now we know why the president hasn't been straight with Americans," said Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). "Two and a half years ago, President Bush said. 'If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is.' He said he'd fire whoever leaked classified information, and now we know the president himself authorized it. Now we know that the president's search for the leaker needs to go no further than a mirror."

The White House refused to comment directly on the court filing, except to point out that Bush's very decision to disclose classified information means he declassified it -- an assessment shared by independent legal experts.

A senior administration official, speaking on background because White House policy prohibits comment on an active investigation, said Bush sees a distinction between leaks and what he is alleged to have done. The official said Bush authorized the release of the classified information to assure the public of his rationale for war as it was coming under increasing scrutiny.

Also, the official said, the president has not been accused of authorizing the release of the name of Valerie Plame, the undercover CIA operative whose unmasking in a July 2003 newspaper column prompted the federal investigation.

"There is a clear difference between the two," the official said. "I understand that in politics these two can be conflated. And we're going to have to try to deal with that. But there is an active investigation and that limits our ability to do so."

Still, Bush's action stands in stark contrast to his condemnations of the kind of disclosure that the court filing said he authorized. "Let me just say something about leaks in Washington," Bush told reporters in September 2003. "There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. There's leaks at the executive branch, there's leaks in the legislative branch, there's just too many leaks. I want -- and if there's a leak out of the administration, I want to know who it is. And if a person has violated law, the person will be taken care of."

That statement was one of many Bush has made over the past three years condemning leaks of sensitive information. His strong words may make the distinction between leaks of classified data and what he is alleged to have done difficult for the White House to explain.

"It causes a political problem to the extent the White House lets it," said a former administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case.

The former official said Bush erred at the beginning of the scandal by saying he wanted to get to the bottom of the case and fire any leakers because he implicitly accepted that an illegal leak had occurred. That set the impression that anyone involved must have done something wrong. Now the documents suggest he was involved, and it is hard to argue that nothing wrong was done, the former official said.

Congressional Democrats certainly seized upon that vulnerability.

"I served for 13 years on the House intelligence committee, and I know intelligence must never be classified or declassified for political purposes," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "One of the constants in the Bush administration's miserable record on Iraq has been the manipulation of intelligence precisely for political purposes. That has caused our intelligence -- which used to be accepted without question around the world -- to be viewed with skepticism by the international community."

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the disclosure punctures the president's credibility.

"The president has always stood so strong against leaks. If he leaked himself, he should explain why this is different than every other leak," he said. ". . . The more we hear, the more it is clear this goes beyond Scooter Libby. At the very least, President Bush and Vice President Cheney should fully inform the American people of any role in allowing classified information to be leaked. Did they believe they had the right to do this and if so, in what circumstance?"

Staff writer Peter Baker, washingtonpost.com staff writer Chris Cillizza and research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/06/AR2006040602062.html
 
It will be interesting to see what effect this has on the mid term elections this fall. With the Abramhoff scandal, the resignation of Tom Delay and his legal troubles, the situation in Iraq, and the president's sagging approval ratings, the republicans may manage to sink themselves and all the democrats need to do is standby and let it happen. I am not at all surpised that a leak of this type happened, nor am I surprised that the scenario seems to be one that would call for someone to "fall on his sword" while the president decries the leak. I am only startled that the trail can be so directly traced to the oval office (at this point anyway). Having said this, the republicans may well be able to demagog enough issues (immigration, gay marriage, family values, etc.) to maintain control of the both the house and the senate with minimal losses. They may also begin to really abandon Bush since he is a lame duck. There is also fundamental disagreement with Bush over his domestic spying initiatives and immigration stance, so "throwing him under the bus" is not that far fetched IMHO.
 
The republicans will win the mid terms all they have to do is get america scared again......
 
Black_Immortal said:
. I am not at all surpised that a leak of this type happened, nor am I surprised that the scenario seems to be one that would call for someone to "fall on his sword" while the president decries the leak. I am only startled that the trail can be so directly traced to the oval office (at this point anyway). .
Click to expand...

Basically Libby issued his only defense. The only defense in releasing classified information is permission by someone who can declassify the information thus declassifying it. Libby is saying this information was not classified because the president (through cheyney) declassified it by giving him permission to release it. The president can declassify information and it is in no way criminal, it is probably unethical and immoral to declassify information for political gain but you know bush is not worried about that.

I thought Libby was going to say Cheyney told him he could do it. Leaving the declassification on Cheyney. The law on whether a vice president can declassify information is a little murkier. But I guess libby said he's not going to jail for them.
 
mclellan was a ramblin bitch in today's press conference talkin about the president doesnt approve of leaks of classified information and he wont comment on the libby shit because its an ongoing investigation :hmm:
 
dyhawk said:
The republicans will win the mid terms all they have to do is get america scared again......
Click to expand...

The fear card is the Republican's trump card. I heard a hypothetical situation explained by a person that possibly another "9/11 type of event" will occur and make Americans scared again. Then more bills and acts will be passed that further remove American civil liberties and the tragedy that the Americans suffer will be the justification for attacking Iran. While that "what if" situation is make-believe, it seems like it actually could happen if all the cards fall in the right place. We've heard talks about a "dirty bomb" in the news lately. So what if a dirty bomb happens to go off in America? It would almost be like what happened went perfectly according to script. And regardless of whether the US have evidence that Iran was behind the attacks or not, the US will embark on yet another war that will strain and rape the economy to even new levels.
 
Take nothing away from nothing and you get noting...The "President" can declassify anything he chooses at will. In the wording...the so called leak, is perfectly norm and legal.
 
White House Faces Barrage of Leak Queries
By PETE YOST (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
April 07, 2006 11:33 PM EDT

WASHINGTON - The White House faced a barrage of questions Friday over the timing of President Bush's decision to declassify intelligence that was then leaked to the press by Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.

In a tense briefing, White House spokesman Scott McClellan was asked repeatedly to explain his statement from three years ago that portions of a prewar intelligence document on Iraq were declassified on July 18, 2003.

Ten days earlier, Cheney's top aide, I. Lewis Libby, had leaked snippets of intelligence from the document to New York Times reporter Judith Miller to rebut allegations by Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, Libby told prosecutors, according to documents revealed this week.

Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, said he had passed the information to Miller after being told to do so by Cheney, who advised Libby that Bush had authorized it, said a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.

McClellan told reporters July 18, 2003, that the material being released on Iraq "was officially declassified today." On Friday, McClellan interpreted his own words to mean that's when the material was "officially released."

Asked when it was declassified, McClellan refused to answer, saying the matter was part of Fitzgerald's ongoing CIA leak probe that has resulted in Libby's indictment.

Libby faces charges of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI regarding the disclosure that Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife, worked for the CIA. He is accused of making false statements about how he learned of her CIA employment and what he told reporters about her.

Plame's CIA employment was disclosed by conservative columnist Robert Novak eight days after her husband, Wilson, accused the Bush administration of manipulating prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat from weapons of mass destruction.

Libby's attorney, William Jeffress, said the allegation Bush authorized Libby to disclose classified information does not undermine his client's contention that he innocently forgot about conversations he had with reporters about Plame. "It's got nothing to do with Wilson's wife," Jeffress told The Washington Post.

The declassification issue marks the second time in the CIA leak probe that the White House's previous public statements have been called into question.

After checking with Libby and presidential adviser Karl Rove, McClellan said in 2003 that neither aide was involved in the leak of the CIA identity of Wilson's wife. Rove remains under investigation in the leak probe.

John Podesta, a former chief of staff in the Clinton White House, said, "Scott McClellan's credibility isn't just in tatters. It is more like confetti."

Administration critics said Bush's actions were a misuse of the declassification process.

Bush's "selective declassification of highly sensitive intelligence for political purposes is wrong," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Pelosi said a presidential executive order requires a uniform system for classifying, declassifying and safeguarding national security information and asked, "Why didn't President Bush follow this protocol before authorizing the selective leak of highly sensitive intelligence?"

Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., called for a House Intelligence Committee investigation and for the president to explain his actions in person to Congress.

Last year, a commission appointed by Bush to look into the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq cautioned against leaks for political purposes.

"Policymakers who leak intelligence to the press in order to gain political advantage ... may do so without fully appreciating the potential harm that can result to sources and methods," the commission said.

It said the intelligence community should consider implementing "a widespread, modern-day equivalent of the `Loose Lips Sink Ships' campaign to educate individuals about their legal obligations and possible penalties to safeguard intelligence information."

On Friday, McClellan said there's a difference between providing declassified information when it's in the public interest, and leaking classified information that could jeopardize national security.

"Now, there are Democrats out there that fail to recognize that distinction or refuse to recognize that distinction," said McClellan. "They are simply engaging in crass politics."

The intelligence Libby was authorized to leak to Miller stated that Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure" uranium. Administration officials said in the run-up to the war they were concerned about Iraq building a nuclear weapon.

---

Associated Press Writer Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.
Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
 
<font size="5"><center>White House Does Not Deny Leak Claims</font size>
<font size="4">Bush spokesman draws a distinction between
releases in `public interest' and those that threaten
security. Critics see a political motive</font size></center>

Los Angeles Times
By Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, Times Staff Writers
April 8, 2006


WASHINGTON — The White House on Friday appeared to confirm that President Bush had authorized a leak of classified information about pre-Iraq war intelligence, describing the release of such information as beneficial for the "public interest."

The statement came the day after disclosures in court documents that the White House, despite Bush's frequent criticisms of leaks, secretly provided material to a reporter in early July 2003. The government did not announce declassification and publicly release the material for another 10 days.

"There were irresponsible and unfounded accusations being made against the administration, suggesting that we had manipulated or misused that intelligence [in order to justify going to war]," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said. "Because of the public debate that was going on and some of the wild accusations that were flying around … we felt it was very much in the public interest that what information could be declassified, be declassified. And that's exactly what we did."

McClellan on Friday repeatedly said the release of the material was intended to inform public debate about the war. But the controversy has reignited long-standing complaints that the Bush White House uses intelligence data for political advantage — particularly in making the case for invading Iraq and then defending the war in the midst of the 2004 reelection campaign.

Some Democrats said the leak was part of an administration pattern of "selective disclosure" — releasing information to support its arguments and rebut its critics while guarding data that could prove embarrassing or politically damaging.

On Friday, Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, called on the Republican leadership to demand that Bush explain in person to Congress "the leak of extremely sensitive intelligence for purely political purposes."

The document that Bush personally declassified, a summary of the so-called National Intelligence Estimate, was provided to counter the claims of an administration critic.

Former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV had been sent to Africa by the CIA in 2002 to investigate administration claims that Iraq was seeking to purchase nuclear materials — claims he said were unfounded.

Wilson later charged that the administration had "twisted" intelligence when it said Saddam Hussein's attempts to get uranium from Niger were proof that he was trying to rebuild his nuclear weapons program.

To counter Wilson's claims, the administration disclosed classified information to attack his arguments and undermine his personal credibility, recent court filings show.

Bush's role came to light this week in documents filed by a special prosecutor seeking a perjury conviction against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff. According to the documents, Libby testified that he leaked the classified information to New York Times reporter Judith Miller after Bush gave Cheney his personal authorization.

That criminal investigation was launched after another leak: the identity of Wilson's wife, undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame. Her name was disclosed to journalists in what was widely viewed as an effort to taint Wilson by suggesting that his mission to Africa had been arranged as a personal junket by his wife. It is illegal to knowingly leak the name of a covert operative.

This week's revelation does not link Bush to the Plame leak, but rather to the intelligence document backing administration claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction — claims that proved to be untrue.

McClellan walked a rhetorical tightrope Friday, refusing to explicitly confirm the testimony revealed in Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's court filing but defending the president's actions nonetheless.

He drew a distinction between the kinds of disclosures that do not threaten national security and disclosures such as the report last year that Bush had authorized warrantless wiretapping of people with suspected links to terrorist organizations.

"Declassifying information and providing it to the public, when it is in the public interest, is one thing," McClellan said. "But leaking classified information that could compromise our national security is something that is very serious."

He accused Democrats of failing to grasp the distinction and of "engaging in crass politics."

Democrats have been fuming over what they say are repeated refusals by the White House to release information that would not compromise national security.

In 2004, for example, the White House rejected a request by eight Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee for a one-page "president's summary" of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

The lawmakers noted in their request that the document contained no sensitive material beyond information that had been released publicly a year earlier.

But the document did include a caveat first reported last month by National Journal: that one of the leading justifications for the war — Iraq's acquisition of aluminum tubes that U.S. officials said could be used to build weapons — might have been overblown. The summary, according to a March 2005 report by a presidential commission, said some intelligence agencies believed the tubes were "more likely" intended for conventional weapons.

More examples were cataloged in February by Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Writing to John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, Rockefeller pointed to a pattern of "abuse of intelligence information for political purposes."

Prominent on Rockefeller's list was a Feb. 9 speech in which the president described a 2002 terrorist plot to blow up the former Library Tower skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles.

Bush and Frances Townsend, a senior homeland security aide, pointed to the plot as the White House sought to defend the president's wiretapping program against a rising tide of criticism from the public and on Capitol Hill. Critics noted at the time that it was not clear the program had anything to do with preventing the potential attack.

Rockefeller noted an earlier comment by CIA Director Porter J. Goss that revealing information even about failed plots can aid Al Qaeda and its affiliates "in many ways."

"Why then did the president and the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism describe in great detail the information about this plot contained in a highly classified October 2004 CIA document?" Rockefeller asked.

The letter also referred to the administration's decision to provide "almost unfettered access to classified material of the most sensitive nature" to author and Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward for his largely favorable 2002 book, "Bush at War." Rockefeller said that he wrote at the time to then-CIA director George J. Tenet demanding to know what steps were being taken to address the "appalling disclosures" contained in the book.

"The only response I received was to indicate that the leaks had been authorized by the administration," Rockefeller said, adding that the CIA never replied to a follow-up letter asking who in the administration had given the authorization.

The senator called the administration's approach to leaks "extraordinarily hypocritical."

"Preventing damage to intelligence sources and methods from media leaks will not be possible until the highest levels of the administration cease to disclose classified information on a selective basis for political purposes," Rockefeller said. "The president and other senior members of the administration must set the example for others to follow."

A Rockefeller spokeswoman said Friday that the senator had yet to receive a reply to his February letter.

Also Friday, McClellan waved off repeated questions about the apparent 10-day gap between the days in 2003 that Bush authorized the Libby leak to Miller and the day the White House released the document publicly. Legal scholars contend that by authorizing the leak on July 8, 2003, Bush's action was tantamount to an official declassification. But McClellan told reporters July 18 that "this information was just, as of today, officially declassified."

The discrepancy suggests that Bush authorized the leak before his senior intelligence aides and advisors fully concluded that its release would not violate national security.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...0,1668626.story?page=1&coll=la-home-headlines
 
<font size="5"><center>Lawyer: Bush Left Leak Details to Cheney</font size></center>

Apr 8, 6:55 PM (ET)
Associated Press
By JENNIFER LOVEN

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush declassified sensitive intelligence in 2003 and authorized its public disclosure to rebut Iraq war critics, but he did not specifically direct that Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, be the one to disseminate the information, an attorney knowledgeable about the case said Saturday.

Bush merely instructed Cheney to "get it out" and left the details to him, said the lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case for the White House. The vice president chose Libby and communicated the president's wishes to his then-top aide, the lawyer said.

It is not known when the conversation between Bush and Cheney took place. The White House has declined to provide the date when the president used his authority to declassify the portions of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, a classified document that detailed the intelligence community's conclusions about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The new information about Bush and Cheney's roles came as the president's aides have scrambled to defuse the political fallout from a court filing Wednesday by the prosecutors in the complex, ongoing investigation into whether the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame was disclosed to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, an Iraq war critic.

Wilson had accused the administration of twisting prewar intelligence to exaggerate the weapons threat in Iraq.

Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald said in the filing that Libby testified before a grand jury that he was authorized by Bush, through Cheney, to leak information from the intelligence estimate.

Libby faces trial, likely in January, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice for allegedly lying to the grand jury and investigators about what he told reporters about Plame.

Fitzgerald did not say in the filing that Cheney authorized Libby to leak Plame's identity, and Bush is not accused of doing anything illegal.

Fitzgerald's aim with the filing was to counter Libby's defense that he innocently forgot about conversations he may have had with reporters about Plame by showing that the White House's concern about the war criticism was so consuming it would be difficult to forget.

But by suggesting that the leak of Plame's name may have been set in motion by the president, however indirectly, the documents reverberated much more broadly. Democrats unleashed a storm of criticism against Bush, saying he appeared to have misused the declassification process for political gain.

On Friday, the White House argued there is an important different between disclosing sensitive information to further a public debate and leaking classified information that compromises national security. But the attorney said Saturday the president's instructions were not as specific as it might seem from both Fitzgerald's description of Libby's testimony and news accounts of it.

Because Bush declassified the intelligence document, the White House does not view Libby's conversations about it as a leak. But that determination is difficult to make without knowing precisely when Bush decided to declassify the information.

Libby passed the information about the document to New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003. It was 10 days later, on July 18, when the same portions of the document that Libby discussed with Miller were released publicly.



http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20060408/D8GS3V5G0.html?PG=home&SEC=news
 
If we choose to take the position of the timing of how the information was leaked, its a different story...it took the White House 10days to come out and say yeah this information is valid, blah blah blah. And then went and contridicted the method of release, full knowing that it had been to feed into peoples fear, mourning, and need for revenge. Constantly renewing the terror alerts littered with faulty planted hysteria and video tapes of Bin Laden, rehashing a call to arms, the dispursing of evidence and rubble from the World Trade Center... and so on. With all that in mind, & 5 years later, a judge should be handing down the orders to charge the entire Bush "Inner Circle" with abuse of legal process, fraud, racketeering and obstruction of justice amongst other other charges.
 
indictmentwatch04.jpg


Have a field day...

http://www.truthout.org/fitzgeraldcalling.shtml
 
Propaganda Generated to Make a Case for War Against Iraq

[RM]http://207.234.145.91:8080/ramgen/mef/hijack.org/video/Web2_Prop.rm[/RM]

and another

[RM]http://207.234.145.91:8080/ramgen/mef/hijack.org/video/Web1_OSP.rm[/RM]
 
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muckraker10021 said:
<img src="http://www.rawstory.com/images/new/cheneybetween.jpg">

<font face="arial black" size="4" color="#D90000">Cheney Authorized Leak Of CIA Report, Libby Says</font>

Cheney Authorized Leaking Plame's Name To The Media



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<font size="5"><center>
Cheney the Focus of CIA Leak Court Filing</font size></center>


May 13, 11:04 PM (ET)
Associated Press
By PETE YOST

WASHINGTON (AP) - In a new court filing, the prosecutor in the CIA leak case revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney made handwritten references to CIA officer Valerie Plame - albeit not by name - before her identity was publicly exposed.

The new court filing is the second in little more than a month by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald mentioning Cheney as being closely focused with his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, on Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, who is married to Plame.

With the two court filings, Fitzgerald has pointed to an important role for the vice president in the weeks leading up to the leaking of Plame's identity.

In the latest court filing late Friday, Fitzgerald said he intends to introduce at Libby's trial in January a copy of Wilson's op-ed article in The New York Times "bearing handwritten notations by the vice president." The article was published on July 6, 2003, eight days before Plame's identity was exposed by conservative columnist Bob Novak.

The notations "support the proposition that publication of the Wilson Op Ed acutely focused the attention of the vice president and the defendant - his chief of staff - on Mr. Wilson, on the assertions made in the article and on responding to those assertions."

The article containing Cheney's notes "reflects the contemporaneous reaction of the vice president to Mr. Wilson's Op Ed article," the prosecutor said. "This is relevant to establishing some of the facts that were viewed as important by the defendant's immediate superior, including whether Mr. Wilson's wife had 'sent him on a junket,' the filing states.

The reference is to the fact that the CIA sent Wilson on a trip to Africa in 2002 to check out a report that Iraq had made attempts to acquire uranium yellowcake from Niger.

Wilson concluded that it was highly doubtful an agreement to purchase uranium had been made.

The Bush administration used the intelligence on supposed efforts by Iraq to acquire uranium from Africa to bolster its case for going to war.

After the invasion, with the Bush White House under pressure because no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, Wilson wrote the op ed piece for The Times. In it, he accused the Bush administration of exaggerating prewar intelligence to exaggerate an Iraqi threat from weapons of mass destruction.

Defending the administration against Wilson's accusations, Libby and presidential adviser Karl Rove promoted the idea that Wilson's wife, Plame, had sent him on the trip to Africa. Administration critics have said such a move was an attempt to undercut Wilson's credibility.

The prosecution's court papers also stated that Cheney told Libby around June 12, 2003, that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, a month before her identity was outed.

http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20060514/D8HJ9SJ80.html?PG=home&SEC=news
 
Judge: Reporters must give Libby documents

Judge: Reporters must give Libby documents
By TONI LOCY, Associated Press Writer
30 minutes ago

Time magazine must give I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby drafts of articles so the former White House aide can use them to defend himself against perjury and other charges in the CIA leak case, a federal judge ruled Friday.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton limited the scope of subpoenas that Libby's lawyers had aimed at Time, NBC News and The New York Times for e-mails, notes, drafts of articles and other information.

But in a 40-page ruling, Walton rejected the news organizations' argument that they have a broad right to refuse to provide such information in criminal cases.

Libby, 55, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice. He is accused of lying to the FBI and a federal grand jury about how he learned about CIA officer Valerie Plame and what he subsequently told reporters about her.

Walton said The New York Times might have to turn over drafts of articles and other information during Libby's trial if former Times reporter Judith Miller contradicts her previous statements about the case when she testifies as a government witness.

The judge ruled that Miller doesn't have to surrender two notebooks, her phone records or appointment calendars because the materials aren't relevant to Libby's defense.

NBC News also does not have to give Libby's defense team one page of undated notes taken by correspondent Andrea Mitchell because Walton said she is unlikely to testify at Libby's trial, which is set for January.

In granting in part and denying in part the media's challenges to Libby's subpoenas, Walton wrote, "The First Amendment does not protect a news reporter or that reporter's news organization from producing documents ... in a criminal case."

The news organizations indicated they are not likely to appeal the ruling.

Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for The Times, said the newspaper is "gratified" that Walton did not order it to give Libby editorial materials.

Walton said Time magazine must turn over drafts of first-person stories that reporter Matthew Cooper wrote about his conversations with Libby because the judge found inconsistencies between them.

All of the news organizations had asked Walton to review the materials sought by Libby's lawyers in hopes of convincing him that the information was not relevant and that the defense was on a "fishing expedition."

During that review, Walton said, he found "a slight alteration between the several drafts of the articles" Cooper wrote about his conversations with Libby and the reporter's first-person account of his testimony before a federal grand jury.

"This slight alteration between the drafts will permit the defendant to impeach Cooper, regardless of the substance of his trial testimony, because his trial testimony cannot be consistent with both versions," Walton wrote.

A person familiar with Cooper's drafts described the inconsistencies as "trivial." The person spoke on condition of anonymity because Walton has warned the case's participants against talking to reporters.

Several news organizations wrote about Plame after syndicated columnist Robert Novak named her in a column on July 14, 2003. Novak's column appeared eight days after Plame's husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, alleged in an opinion piece in The New York Times that the administration had twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq to justify going to war.

The CIA had sent Wilson to Niger in early 2002 to determine whether there was any truth to reports that Saddam Hussein's government had tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger to make a nuclear weapon. Wilson discounted the reports. But the allegation nevertheless wound up in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.

Libby's indictment grew out of conversations he had with Cooper, Miller and NBC's Tim Russert in June and July 2003, a two-month period in which the White House, according to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, was mounting a campaign to undermine Wilson's allegations about the Iraq war.

The key to Libby's defense is whose memory of those conversations is correct — Libby's or those of the three reporters.

Walton said Cooper, Miller and Russert are central to the government's case and challenging their recollections will be "critical to the defense."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060527...DBI2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--
 
<font size="5"><center>Filings in CIA Leak Case Paint Cheney
as Determined to Counter Critic</font size></center>

Washington Post
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 27, 2006; Page A06

A string of recent court filings in the CIA leak case provide new details of Vice President Cheney's role at the center of an administration effort to rebut an outspoken critic of the White House's rationale for the Iraq war in the summer of 2003. They include his repeated discussions of the issue with his top aide and his part in a counteroffensive that resulted in the unmasking of a CIA officer.

The court filings -- by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who charged Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, with lying in the CIA leak case -- provide a vivid portrait of the vice president's activity. Cheney repeatedly questioned Libby about the war critic, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV; wrote detailed notes about an op-ed article penned by Wilson; and raised questions about the CIA connections of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame.

Cheney -- who helped devise the White House argument that Iraq had an extensive program to build weapons of mass destruction before the war -- is described in the filings as upset by Wilson's criticism, which the vice president saw as a direct assault on his credibility.

Fitzgerald does not describe Cheney's actions as illegal or even improper. But the filings make it clear that Cheney had a larger role in the effort to rebut Wilson than was previously known and that his actions could put him in an uncomfortable place: on the witness stand as a sitting vice president.

Legal experts said Cheney would have a difficult time refusing to testify in court as part of a trial to determine whether Libby lied or obstructed justice in the leak probe.

There are, experts said, many precedents for his appearance. In 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant voluntarily gave a deposition on behalf of an aide accused of corruption. President Ronald Reagan gave videotaped testimony in the Iran-contra prosecution of John M. Poindexter and testified himself. Most recently, President Bill Clinton agreed to testify before a grand jury investigating the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal.

One lawyer involved in the Libby case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton has warned lawyers about speaking to the media, said Fitzgerald "is doing everything he can to avoid the sideshow of a constitutional fight over calling a sitting a vice president to testify."

But Carl W. Tobias, a professor of law at the University of Richmond, said Fitzgerald will call Cheney "if he believes it will be probative or helpful to the case." If he does, Tobias said, Cheney is likely to resist, arguing that he should not be forced to testify in a criminal case as a sitting vice president. The trial is expected to begin early next year.

Neither Libby nor Fitzgerald has asserted that Cheney directed Libby to leak Plame's name to the news media, and the details of what Cheney told the prosecutor's office in a June 2004 interview have not been disclosed.

But Fitzgerald went out of his way to say in an April filing that Bush played no role in the leak of Plame's name. He did not similarly exonerate Cheney.

So far, Fitzgerald's latest disclosures are not meant to implicate the vice president so much as they are intended to undermine a key aspect of Libby's defense -- that Libby was so preoccupied by other matters that he forgot, rather than lied about, what he told two journalists, Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, regarding Plame.

Instead, Fitzgerald said in his filing on Wednesday night that Cheney's focus on an array of issues surrounding Wilson's July 2003 column, including the fact that Plame worked for the CIA, riveted Libby's attention on the same matters "and what should be done to respond to the accusations it contained." This was said to have been the context -- "the state of mind of the Vice President," as Fitzgerald put it -- in which Libby made statements to reporters at the time and later allegedly lied to investigators about what he had said in those statements.

"Fitzgerald has to rebut Libby's claim that this was not a big deal," said Randall D. Eliason, a former chief of the section on public corruption and government fraud at the U.S. attorney's office in Washington. "The best way for Fitzgerald to counter this is to show that the vice president himself was involved in responding to the Wilson article and directing Libby to respond. It highlights how implausible it is for Libby to say he just forgot about this incident when he testified."

Fitzgerald's filings also disclosed that part of the anti-Wilson campaign involved leaking previously classified information from an intelligence report about Iraq's alleged nuclear ambitions.

The spectacle of Cheney testifying in the leak case would be a major distraction for the White House, at the very least. The potential witness list is a who's who of the Bush White House, including Karl Rove and former spokesman Ari Fleischer, along with CIA officials and lesser-known State Department aides.

But Cheney would certainly attract the most attention. One of the most powerful vice presidents in history, Cheney has become, over the years, a symbol of the White House's argument on weapons of mass destruction.

A recent Fitzgerald filing shows that Cheney does not let go of things lightly, and the column by Wilson -- who was sent to Niger by the CIA to determine whether Iraq was seeking nuclear weapons materials there -- was no exception. Cheney clipped it from the newspaper, placed it on his desk, wrote some sharply critical notes on it, and discussed it over and over with Libby for days.

Cheney was upset, according to Libby's account in newly disclosed grand jury testimony, by language in the column that Cheney saw as a direct attack on his personal credibility.

It was not an imagined slight: Wilson contrasted what Cheney had said about Iraqi nuclear weapons ambitions earlier that year with what Wilson had said in a 2002 classified report that he suggested had reached Cheney's office. Wilson also bluntly accused the administration of twisting intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

Eight days later, columnist Robert D. Novak wrote that two senior administration officials told him that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA officer, had put him up to an investigation of Iraq's nuclear-related activities.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...6052601757.html?referrer=email&referrer=email
 

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