Quote :

" I. Lewis LibbyThird Time reporter, named in filings, says he has not testified in case A series of striking revelations have emerged after the release of dozens of pages of court files in the CIA leak investigation that have gone unnoticed by the mainstream media, RAW STORY has found. Some of them have been uncovered by astute bloggers – including the fact that the outed agent’s husband will not testify at a trial, and that a third Time reporter has been fingered as having information potentially relevant to some aspects of the case. Moreover, the documents reveal that no formal damage assessment has been done with regard to how the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame affected the agency’s operations worldwide. They also hint that Vice President Cheney’s former Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby may have outed Plame on the orders of his “superiors.”"

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Court_filings_shed_more_light_on_0202.html

i know i know, it's raw story. I'll try and find something better.

2/3/2006 3:21:34 PM

striking.

2/3/2006 3:46:50 PM

at least it isn't prisonplanet.

2/3/2006 4:37:11 PM

It might be Raw Story, but they're just reporting what Fitzgerald said in his letter.

Quote :

"Moreover, the documents reveal that no formal damage assessment has been done with regard to how the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame affected the agency’s operations worldwide. They also hint that Vice President Cheney’s former Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby may have outed Plame on the orders of his “superiors.”""

Both of these are pretty damning in the COPO, and hilariously come on the heels of Bush's declaration of the need for a more elevated debate.

Anyway, the letter is here:

http://rawstory.com/other/pdfs/RawStoryFitzLibby2.pdf

Feel free to try and go Rathergate on them if you wish. I doubt you'll get anywhere, though.

[Edited on February 3, 2006 at 4:51 PM. Reason : but then...what do i know about authentic documents, really? ]

2/3/2006 4:50:35 PM

more importantly......who the heck cares

2/3/2006 4:52:05 PM

You mean you don't care that Libby's argument may be that he was ordered to break the law from above?

[Edited on February 3, 2006 at 4:54 PM. Reason : Fuck yo nation of laws, nigga.]

2/3/2006 4:54:15 PM

not really...no

2/3/2006 4:55:01 PM

Fair enough.

2/3/2006 4:56:41 PM

http://www.slate.com/id/2135554/

Quote :

"Back when I was at Time, I co-wrote the July, 2003 story that has made the last two years of Matthew Cooper's life so difficult. After the special counsel went after Matt so enthusiastically, the arrival of men in trench coats asking what I knew seemed imminent. But I never got to try out any of my Dashiell Hammett lines on them. When my other former Time colleague Viveca Novak got tangled in Fitzgerald's hunt last year, I thought, OK, they're coming now for sure. Nope. No Fitzgerald; no FBI; no nothing. But it turns out the special counsel was on to me all along. Last week, Scooter Libby filed a motion requesting materials from Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation. The filing included a Jan. 23, 2006, letter from Fitzgerald to Libby's legal team (marked Exhibit C) that contained this paragraph: Continue Article We also advise you that we understand that reporter John Dickerson of Time magazine discussed the trip by Mr. Wilson with government officials at some time on July 11 or after, subsequent to Mr. Cooper learning about Mr. Wilson's wife. Any conversations involving Mr. Dickerson likely took place in Africa and occurred after July 11. The Fitzgerald letter (first discovered by a very sharp blogger) was written in response to the Libby team's questions about other government officials who talked to reporters about Joe Wilson's wife. This line of inquiry from Libby doesn't have any obvious connection to his main defense that he was a very busy man. The Jan. 31 filling reads: "Mr. Libby will show that, in the constant rush of more pressing matters, any errors he made in his FBI interviews or grand jury testimony, months after the conversations, were the result of confusion, mistake, or faulty memory, rather than a willful intent to deceive." But there is a connection. Team Libby may be trying to show that Plame's name and identity were in wider circulation than Fitzgerald has suggested. That's not in itself a defense against the perjury and obstruction charges. But if journalists were chattering about Plame a lot, perhaps his lawyers will back up the "he was a busy man" line with "this wasn't that big a deal to him." In other words, they may try to argue that the Plame-Wilson connection was already a well-known bit of gossip and wouldn't be important enough for someone as busy and important as Libby to specifically remember it. Other conversations between government officials and reporters might also help Libby make a case that Fitzgerald didn't do a broad investigation, but zeroed in on Libby early and bent the facts to fit a predetermined conclusion. "

2/8/2006 4:04:37 PM

here's my story, for whatever it's worth:

In July 2003, I was a White House correspondent for Time magazine, traveling with the president in Africa. Bush was trying to promote his $15 billion AIDS assistance package but he kept getting interrupted. He would visit a clinic and give a speech, but all reporters wanted to ask about was faulty prewar intelligence. Joe Wilson had published his infamous op-ed in the New York Times just before the trip. That, along with other disclosures, led White House spokesman Ari Fleischer to make a rare public admission: The 16 words mentioning Saddam's efforts to buy uranium from Africa were "incorrect" and should not have been in the 2003 State of the Union address.

That didn't stop the questions. It multiplied them. At every stop, we reporters clamored for an explanation of how that bad information about "yellowcake" had gotten into the speech. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell, who were traveling with Bush, held press conferences, but they raised more questions than they answered. The papers seemed to have a damaging new disclosure about weak prewar intelligence every day. Administration officials assumed the leaks were coming from the CIA, where analysts didn't want to be blamed for the failure to uncover weapons stockpiles in Iraq.

The White House-CIA spat had been growing over the previous months. It was the second billing on the fight card below the Powell-Cheney cage match. When an administration official would say something that hinted the intelligence services might have made mistakes about Saddam's weapons, leaks would soon follow suggesting that White House officials had spun carefully nuanced information from the CIA into a case for war. "Remind me to take something more than a knife to a gun fight," one senior administration official on the trip said to me, referring to the spat.

Four days into the trip, on an early morning flight to Uganda, Condi Rice visited the small press cabin in the back of Air Force One, where I was in the pool of reporters that flies on the president's plane. We expected more of the same fancy footwork from earlier in the week about who was to blame for the 16 words. We didn't get it. Condi blamed the CIA. This was new. The Bush administration didn't usually point fingers that openly. (We later learned that Dr. Rice had called Tenet that morning to let him know she was going to ruin his day.)

Moments later, we landed in Entebbe, Uganda. We drove past the abandoned Air France jet still marooned at the airport more than 30 years after the famous 1976 Israeli raid. We thought that would be the biggest drama of our short four-hour visit. Though the travel pool was going to be allowed in to see the start of President Bush's meeting with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, we were told Bush wouldn't take a question, as he sometimes does in such situations. But moments before the meeting, we were told that Bush had changed his mind and would take a question. He knew that he would be asked about the faulty info and had a line prepared. "I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services," Bush said.

This was news. The president was known for his loyalty to subordinates, but here he was throwing his CIA director, George Tenet, under a bus. This wasn't just a personal departure by the president. It was the ultimate blow in the bureaucratic battle between the CIA and his White House.

We pool reporters were hustled away from the dignitaries into a cramped holding room where they kept us until the larger press contingent arrived for the president's public remarks. They'd set up phone lines and I tried to dial out the news. Given the local technology, it took a while. When I finally made it through, I realized it was 8 a.m. in the States*. I left a rambling message on my bureau chief's voicemail, which he would pick up several hours later and relay in an e-mail to my colleagues working on the story: "John reports that they've dimed out Tenet."

2/8/2006 4:08:21 PM

part 2
http://www.slate.com/id/2135565/

2/8/2006 4:20:06 PM

So, that's how you make sausage. Interesting.

2/8/2006 4:41:58 PM

COOTER!

2/8/2006 4:42:47 PM

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/0209nj1.htm

2/9/2006 3:43:20 PM

^ That story states that Libby tesified that not only did Cheney leak Plame's name, but encouraged Libby to release other classified information that would support the case for war.

2/9/2006 10:37:43 PM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060210/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cia_leak

2/10/2006 1:27:14 AM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060212/ap_on_go_co/cia_leak

Quote :

"Senators: Cheney Should Be Probed in Leak WASHINGTON - Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald should investigate Vice President Dick Cheney and others in the CIA leak probe if they authorized an aide to give secret information to reporters, Democratic and Republican senators said Sunday. Sen. Jack Reed (news, bio, voting record), D-R.I., called the leak of intelligence information "inappropriate" if it is true that unnamed "superiors" instructed Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, to divulge the material on Iraq. Sen. George Allen (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., said a full investigation is necessary. "I don't think anybody should be releasing classified information, period, whether in the Congress, executive branch or some underling in some bureaucracy," said Allen, who appeared with Reed on "Fox News Sunday." According to court documents disclosed last week, Libby told a federal grand jury that he disclosed in July 2003 the contents of a classified National Intelligence Estimate as part of the Bush administration's defense of intelligence used to justify invading Iraq. Fitzgerald said in the documents it was his understanding that "Mr. Libby testified that he was authorized to disclose information about the NIE to the press by his superiors." The White House has refused to comment on the case. "I think this calls into question in terms of Fitzgerald's investigation of the conduct of the vice president and others," Reed said. "I think he has to look closely at their behavior." Allen expressed confidence in Fitzgerald, whom he called "a very articulate, professional prosecutor." "And I think the facts will lead wherever they lead, and I think he will prosecute as appropriate," Allen said. Libby, 55, was indicted on charges that he lied to FBI agents and the grand jury about how he learned CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity and when he told reporters. He is not charged with leaking classified information."

Hahahaha...never thought I'd find George Allen on this side of this issue.

2/13/2006 1:52:01 PM

Ahttp://www...I was expecting TGD to explain how this was all part of George Allen's victory in '08 strategy by now.

2/13/2006 9:59:05 PM

I'd actually have to take the time to read the thread first, the TSB hyperventilation from teh L3ft has kind of degenerated into background static

although personally I'm much more fascinated with this Cheney assassination attempt on the billionaire. it's like the Clintons and Vince Foster, just more straightforward

2/14/2006 12:17:37 AM

Quote :

"I'd actually have to take the time to read the threadnews first..."

You're gettin' slow in your old age...

2/14/2006 12:34:26 AM

^
oh no, I read the story and George Allen's position. reading news is pretty much what I do for half the day.

it's this particular thread that I never clicked on until yesterday

2/14/2006 11:05:53 AM

So...how is this supposed to win George Allen votes in '08? Or against Webb?

2/14/2006 11:30:23 AM

>.<

4/6/2006 12:12:39 PM

COOTER!

4/6/2006 12:20:26 PM

Quote :

"Senators: Cheney Should Be Probed "

Now there's a visual.

4/6/2006 12:31:13 PM