posted April 10, 2006 03:11 PM            

I can't answer that question Proxieme. It would have been simple to stop Joe Wilson in his tracks before all this bs got started by simply declassifying the portions of the NIE necessary to refute what Wilson was saying.

He could have and should have called a press conference or shown up at the daily press briefing and ripped Joe Wilson's face off in a very public way.

As for Valerie Plame, I don't know for sure but it's entirely possible no one even considered her identity would become an issue...since she was not undercover or covert in any way...and she was the one who recommended her husband for his little junket to Africa.

posted April 10, 2006 05:36 PM              

quote:

---

Fitzgerald found that Plame had indeed done "covert work overseas" on counterproliferation matters in the past five years

---

here are the judges, citing fitzgerald...

*****

United States Court of Appeals

Argued December 8, 2004
Decided February 15, 2005
Reissued February 3, 2006
No.04-3138

In Re:Grand Jury Subpoena, Judith Miller

Before: Sentelle,Henderson and Tatel, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the court filed by Cicuit Judge Sentelle.
Concurring opinion filed by Circuit Judge Henderson.
Opinion concurring in the judgement filed by Circuit Judge Tatel.

As to the leaks' harmfulness, although the record omits specifics about Plame's work, it appears to confirm, as alleged in the public record and reported in the press, that she worked for the CIA in some unusual capacity relating to counterproliferation.

Addressing deficiencies of proof regarding the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the special counsel refers to Plame as "a person whose identity the CIA was making specific efforts to conceal and who had carried out covert work overseas within the last 5 years" --
http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200502/04-3138a.pdf

posted April 10, 2006 05:43 PM              

MR. FLEISCHER: I'm sorry?

Q If you're hanging on the British report, you believe that that British report was true, you have no reason to believe --

MR. FLEISCHER: I'm sorry, I see what David is asking. Let me back up on that and explain the President's statement again, or the answer to it.

The President's statement was based on the predicate of the yellow cake from Niger. The President made a broad statement. So given the fact that the report on the yellow cake did not turn out to be accurate, that is reflective of the President's broader statement, David. So, yes, the President' broader statement was based and predicated on the yellow cake from Niger.

Q So it was wrong?

MR. FLEISCHER: That's what we've acknowledged with the information on --

Q The President's statement at the State of the Union was incorrect?

MR. FLEISCHER: Because it was based on the yellow cake from Niger.

Q Well, wait a minute, but the explanation we've gotten before was it was based on Niger and the other African nations that have been named in the national intelligence --

posted April 10, 2006 06:23 PM              

According to former CIA spokesman, Bill Harlow, ". . . after Novak's call, he checked Plame's status and confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called Novak back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong and that Plame's name should not be used. But he did not tell Novak directly that she was undercover because that was classified." (Washington Post, 27 July 2005)

Two former CIA officers, who were members of Valerie's Career Trainee class (which started training in September 1985), have testified before Congress that Valerie was undercover from the day she walked in the door at CIA and served as an overseas operations officer. (Jim Marcinkowski and Larry Johnson, testimony before joint hearing of Senate and House Democrats on 22 July 2005)

FACT 2--Valerie (Plame) Wilson's relationship with the CIA was not known until revealed by Robert Novak's column. Not a single neighbor has been identified by name to support the false claim that she was undercover.

"One neighbor of the Wilsons, who live in the affluent Palisades community in Northwest, said that he "absolutely didn't know" that Mrs. Plame was in the CIA. "We understood her to work as an economist," said David Tillotson, a 62-year old lawyer. He said he didn't know that Mrs. Plame commuted to CIA headquarters, but added that "they wouldn't be conducting an investigation if she hadn't been covert." (Washington Times, July 15, 2005)

Another neighbor, Christopher Wolf, wrote an op-ed in the USA Today on 25 July 2005 and said:

When I first met Joe and Valerie, I quickly got to the classic Washington question: What do you do? Joe explained that he was a former ambassador to a number of African countries, who had worked in both the Bush I and Clinton administrations. Valerie's answer was more than a little vague. She quickly said she was a consultant. . . . On that sunny Monday morning, [on July 14th] I was sitting outside at the table on my deck, having breakfast and reading The Washington Post. When I turned to the op-ed pages, I noticed a column by Novak entitled "Mission to Niger," addressing Joe's op-ed the previous week. I was stunned to read that "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction," citing two administration officials as sources.

FACT 3--Valerie Plame Wilson did not send her husband on the trip to Niger.

According to an article by Walter Pincus in the Washington Post on 27 July 2005, "They [the White House] said that his 2002 trip to Niger was a boondoggle arranged by his wife, but CIA officials say that is incorrect. One reason for the confusion about Plame's role is that she had arranged a trip for him to Niger three years earlier on an unrelated matter, CIA officials told The Washington Post." (Washington Post, 27 July 2005)

Harlow, the former CIA spokesman, said in an interview yesterday that he testified last year before a grand jury about conversations he had with Novak at least three days before the column was published. He said he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed. (Washington Post, 27 July 2005)

What you are doing is what Bush and all of his followers do when he is caught in wrong doing, Jwhop. You offer a bunch of lame excuses for him and distort the facts. You would have us believe that Valerie Plame was nothing more than a clerk at the CIA headquarters in Langley. The truth is she works in the CIA's Weapon Nonproliferation division and she was indeed a covert operative. Take note of the above article:

"The CIA filed a criminal referral with the Department of Justice on the leak of Valerie Plame's name for violating the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act in September 2003. The CIA would not have filed such an action if Valerie Plame were not undercover."

Now you tell me, why did the CIA file a criminal referral with the Dept. of Justice if Valerie Plame was not a covert operative?

posted April 10, 2006 06:28 PM            

"As to the leaks' harmfulness, although the record omits specifics about Plame's work,"

Without specifics, the court was in no position to know what the hell Plame was doing at the CIA, when she was in or out of the country or what her assignment actually was.

The best proof that Plame was not undercover/covert, was not out of the country in a covert activity within 5 years and that there was no law broken by disclosing her employer, is that Fitzgerald DID NOT charge Libby or anyone else with violation of the 1982 law.

That would have been a major prosecution..instead of the indirect prosecution of perjury/obstruction of justice charge he did make.

posted April 10, 2006 06:42 PM            

The CIA didn't exist in 1914.

The memo Plame wrote to her superiors wound up in the 9/11 Commission file of documents. It can't be taken back and it's the memo which put Wilson forward for the Niger trip..the last Niger trip.

The CIA is a large bureaucracy Mirandee. A bureaucracy at war with the Bush White House. That's the reason Porter Goss was sent there to clean out the nest of vipers who thought they were in charge of US foreign policy. I can report that many of those vipers no longer work at the CIA..including one named Ron Pillar.

No one ever claimed that Valerie Plame "approved", "ordered", or "sent" Joe Wilson to Niger. Valerie Plame sent a memo to superiors recommending him for the trip. And a most unusual trip it was Mirandee. Wilson was not required to sign a confidentiality letter...meaning he could freely discuss his findings with anyone. Wilson was not required to file a written report of his findings...that way no one could ever pin either Wilson or the CIA down on what he reported. This is most certainly not the usual operating procedure for the CIA, in fact, I would say it's most unusual and it appears it was done to give cover for the war on the Bush administration with Joe Wilson the weapon of choice for the CIA.

posted April 10, 2006 07:02 PM              

There are law scholars saying that Bush may have also been in violation of the 1917 Espionage Act.

"There is, however, another law that could be operative here, the 1917 Espionage Act. It states in part that "whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blue print, plan, map, model, note, or information, relating to the national defence, through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust" is guilty of a crime."

posted April 10, 2006 07:18 PM            

Including the latest desperation heave by the left that Bush violated the 4th Amendment by ordering foreign wiretaps on those suspected of terrorist connections..either here or abroad.

It really is desperation time when far left democrats bring charge after charge and have them blow up in their faces.

Some of them will get their reward in November...a nice trip back home. I wouldn't have them stop for anything.

All the Executive power of the Executive Branch of government is vested in the office of the President Mirandee. That means Bush can declassify any document he chooses..including top secret documents and no law is broken when he decides to do so. No one has suggested Bush gave orders to disclose Valerie Plame's employment at the CIA...which was no secret to begin with.

The leftist press who are floating these phony charges and keeping the pot stirred are already getting their rewards. Their readers and viewers are turning them off and tuning them out.

posted April 10, 2006 07:20 PM              

Side Issue in the Plame Case: Who Sent Her Spouse to Africa?

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 11, 2005; Page A08

The origin of Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV's trip to Niger in 2002 to check out intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase uranium has become a contentious side issue to the inquiry by special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who is looking into whether a crime was committed with the exposure of Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife, as a covert CIA employee.

After he went public in 2003 about the trip, senior Bush administration officials, trying to discredit Wilson's findings, told reporters that Wilson's wife, who worked at the CIA, was the one who suggested the Niger mission for her husband. Days later, Plame was named as an "agency operative" by syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak, who has said he did not realize he was, in effect, exposing a covert officer. A Senate committee report would later say evidence indicated Plame suggested Wilson for the trip.

Over the past months, however, the CIA has maintained that Wilson was chosen for the trip by senior officials in the Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division (CPD) -- not by his wife -- largely because he had handled a similar agency inquiry in Niger in 1999. On that trip, Plame, who worked in that division, had suggested him because he was planning to go there, according to Wilson and the Senate committee report.

The 2002 mission grew out of a request by Vice President Cheney on Feb. 12 for more information about a Defense Intelligence Agency report he had received that day, according to a 2004 report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. An aide to Cheney would later say he did not realize at the time that this request would generate such a trip.

Wilson maintains that his wife was asked that day by one of her bosses to write a memo about his credentials for the mission--after they had selected him. That memo apparently was included in a cable to officials in Africa seeking concurrence with the choice of Wilson, the Senate report said.

Valerie Wilson's other role, according to intelligence officials, was to tell Wilson he had been selected, and then to introduce him at a meeting at the CIA on Feb. 19, 2002, in which analysts from different agencies discussed the Niger trip. She told the Senate committee she left the session after her introduction.

Senior Bush administration officials told a different story about the trip's origin in the days between July 8 and July 12, 2003. They said that Wilson's wife was working at the CIA dealing with weapons of mass destruction and that she suggested him for the Niger trip, according to three reporters.

The Bush officials passing on this version were apparently attempting to undercut the credibility of Wilson, who on Sunday, July 6, 2003, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" and in The Washington Post and the New York Times that he had checked out the allegation in Niger and found it to be wrong. He criticized President Bush for misrepresenting the facts in his January 2003 State of the Union address when he said Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Africa.

Time magazine's Matthew Cooper has written that he was told by Karl Rove on July 11 "don't get too far out on Wilson" because information was going to be declassified soon that would cast doubt on Wilson's mission and findings. Cooper also wrote that Rove told him that Wilson's wife worked for the agency on weapons of mass destruction and that "she was responsible for sending Wilson."

This Washington Post reporter spoke the next day to an administration official, who talked on the condition of anonymity, and was told in substance "that the White House had not paid attention to the former ambassador's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction," as reported in an Oct. 14 article.

Novak had been told earlier in the week about Wilson's wife. He has written that he asked a senior administration official why Wilson, who had held a National Security Council staff position in the Clinton administration, had been given that assignment. The response, Novak wrote, was that "Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife." Novak then called another Bush official for confirmation and got the response "Oh, you know about it." Novak said he called the CIA on July 10, 2003, to get the agency's version. The then-CIA spokesman, Bill Harlow, told the columnist that the story he had gotten about Wilson's wife's role was not correct. Novak has written that Harlow said the CPD officials selected Wilson but that she "was delegated to request his help."

Harlow has said that he told Novak that if he wrote about the trip, he should not mention Wilson's wife's name. Novak, who published her maiden name -- Valerie Plame -- has written that Harlow's request was "meaningless" because "once it was determined that Wilson's wife suggested the mission, she could be identified as 'Valerie Plame' by reading her husband's entry in 'Who's Who in America.' "

In the July 14, 2003, column, Novak wrote that Plame was an "agency operative" and that "two senior administration officials" told him that she "suggested sending him to Niger." He also wrote that "CIA officials did not regard Wilson's intelligence as definitive" because they would expect the Niger officials to deny the allegation. Although Novak cited the two officials' version of events, he also included the CIA's opposing view: that "its counterproliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him."

Two other sources appear to support the view that Wilson's wife suggested her husband's trip. One is a June 2003 memo by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). The other, which depends in good part on the INR document, is a statement of the views of Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and two other Republican members. That statement was attached to the full committee report on its 2004 inquiry into the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The INR document's reference to the Wilson trip is contained in two sentences in a three-page memo on why the State Department disagreed with the idea that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa -- a view that would ultimately be endorsed after the Iraq invasion by the U.S. weapons hunter David Kay. The notes supporting those two sentences in the INR document say that the Feb. 19, 2002, meeting at the CIA was "apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue," according to the Senate intelligence committee report. But one Senate Democratic staff member said, "That was speculation, that was not true."

The full Senate committee report says that CPD officials "could not recall how the office decided to contact" Wilson but that "interviews and documents indicate his wife suggested his name for the trip." The three Republican senators wrote that they were more certain: "The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee."

What this amounts to regarding who asked Wilson to go to Niger is his word against the Republicans. Notice in the article it was all Republicans who said Wilson's wife asked her to go to Niger. Myself, I choose not to believe people who have been proven to be dishonest and who are running their own Mafia in the White House.

None of this really matters though if a cover up is proven and in Nixon's Watergate scandal that brought about his impeachment the dominoes just fell until they landed right in Nixon's lap. I think the same thing is going to happen with Bush and Cheney.

posted April 10, 2006 07:31 PM            

I don't give a rat's @ss what Pincus has to say...having seen far too much BS coming off his word processor.

It will all blow up in leftist faces Mirandee...and damage the leftist democrat party and the leftist press.

posted April 11, 2006 09:31 AM              

Okay, so let's get this straight.

Bush admits he selectively leaked classified information that wasn't declassified until days after he and Cheney had Scooter Libby leak it to Judith Miller, the pro-war megaphone for the New York Times publication of Bush lies. Bush "authorizes" this leak at a time that he is claiming that if he ever finds the leaker, he will basically fire him, meaning himself. Then he continues a public and Department of Justice vendetta against leakers, but not himself: the leaker-in-chief.

Okay, now Libby is sent out with the leak in order to debunk Joe Wilson's accounting of the truth about the non-existent Iraq-Nigher uranium deal. Libby actually makes language up that doesn't exist in the document to further the lie that Wilson exposed. In short, Libby selectively used classified information to try to smear the truth with more lies.

Okay, it gets better (or actually, worse). When Bush is exposed through Libby's revealing to Patrick Fitzgerald that Bush gave the green light to leak a lie to cover up a lie and prevent more lies from being exposed, Bush admits to leaking, but tells the American people that it was to get the "truth out."

Are you following this? (And we haven't even gotten into the actual Valerie Plame outing to Novak yet. We are still in the sideshow.)

If this sounds like some farce, remember that thousands upon thousands of Americans and Iraqis have died in this farce -- and the nation is nearly bankrupt.

No nation can long endure when such bird brains, criminals, liars, cheats, and incompetents are running the nation.

What is this man still doing in the White House? Please someone tell us. This is beyond comprehension.

Okay, you know what the worst thing is; Bush doesn't even know what a fatally flawed and dangerous fool he is. He thinks that denouncing leaks while leaking, obstructing justice, lying in order to prevent the truth from coming out, and starting a war based on lies is fine by him.

Because he, de facto, admitted to all of the above on Monday in a rambling explanation of why he had to leak, then lie about his leaking, and then leak a lie to hide the truth. Meanwhile -- while all this was transpiring over the past couple of years -- others were being pursued by the federal prosecutor for leaking, when it all started with Bush.

This is whacko, psychotic stuff.

The mainstream press keeps saying that Bush didn't technically break the law. Oh come on, as Greg Palast has pointed out, at a minimum we have a prima facie case of obstruction of justice. We also have the RICO Act as a distinct possiblity here. Not to mention that he didn't actually declassify the information he authorized leaking until days later. There is a process for this sort of thing, you know.

The bottom line: He's a lunatic in the guise of an "everyman," and it would be hard to think of a person who could have done this nation more harm.

It was in the news here today that dishonesty has become the code of conduct in all facets of American life. Gee, I wonder why that is. Possibly it is because our government...our President...is setting the precedent.

This article asks what's this man still doing in the White House? Good question. Maybe it's because not enough American citizens are speaking out but instead letting the country be destroyed by lunatics. My question is why is this man still alive? Why is it always the good men and visionaries who get assassinated? Not that I am calling for Bush to be shot. OD-ing on cocaine maybe because he would have to be on drugs to think like he does. And have you noticed when you see him on T.V. that he has all the mannerisms of a coke head? Watch him closely next time. It's in the body language.

You know the joke about cocaine, A guy asks someone at a party, "why do you take that stuff?" The other guy responds, " it inhances your personality." The first guy then asks, " Oh yeah, well what if you are an ******* ?" I think that applies to Bush.

posted April 11, 2006 10:00 AM              

Right now the Republican Mafia in Washington is in hot pursuit of Rep. John Conyers in an attempt to discredit him because he is one of he few Democrats to have enough guts to be working diligently to get Bush impeached. He also has a large following of American citizens and that has the Republicans scared and worried. Also the Republicans are scared to death of the poll results showing Dems in the lead in all the polls of the congressional race. They are scared to death of what is going to happen to them when the Dems gain control of Congress again after the Nov. election.

You just go on supporting Bush right through his impeachment and disgrace, Jwhop but as for me it will be a great day for democracy in American and a great day for the Constitution when he is ousted in disgrace.

The only reason that Bush hasn't been impeached already is that he is running a dictatorship in the White House and he has gained through his power hungry grabs more power than any president has ever had in this country. Bush is owned by the corporations. The corporations own the national media. Everyone knows that the first thing any good dictator does is to take control of the media. That was the first thing that Bush did. Now the Republicans want to take control of the internet because so far they haven't been able to do that and the truth is coming out over the internet news sources. Mediachannel.org, an organization attempting to clean up the media corruption and make the news media accountable is where I get most of my news.

Jwhop, please don't be a hypocrite and come back and tell me it is leftist organization which only prints leftist versions of the truth when your number one source is Newmax, a rightist group that only prints the rightist version of the truth.

posted April 11, 2006 11:06 AM            

The 9/11 Commission dealt with all your BS some time ago Mirandee and they found Wilson did not tell the truth..he admitted he "took literary license" with the facts.

His report to the CIA lead them to believe it was MORE likely Saddam had tried to buy uranium from Niger...not less. So says the 9/11 commission.

Now Mirandee, how do you want to deal with that? Was the 9/11 Commission involved in a gigantic cover-up and protecting Bush? What leftist spin do you want to put on those facts?

You start right out with the lie Mirandee, the same lie the leftist press used about the disclosure of the NIE to reporters..."a leak". That's a lie, there was no "leak", not by dictionary definition and not in reality. The President has the full authority granted by the constitution..constitutionalist Mirandee, the constitution which vests ALL Executive Branch authority in the President to, among other things, classify or declassify secret or confidential information in possession of the US government. Get it? NO LEAK, rather a dissemination of useful information in the public interest which is no longer sensitive because time and events have passed the information by.

Slice it any way you want to Mirandee, Joe Wilson was and continues to be a liar..about most everything he wrote about in the NY Times. The only thing he told the truth about was his name and the fact he went to Niger.

God, leftists are such liars. Never tell the truth when a lie will suffice and no lie is too big if it furthers leftist interests...interests which are NOT in the best interests of the United States or the people of the United States.

Leftists are still clinging to and telling the lie...Bush lied, people died. Even after 3 Commissions which examined the relevant information and found Bush acted on information supplied by US intelligence. Not only that, Bush did not even disclose the most hair raising parts of the reports to the public. So, Bush was not hyping the war.

Don't you have anything better to do with your time Mirandee than search for lies to tell about the President? It's just this kind of blind hatred which is turning America off to the leftist democrats and almost guaranteeing another democrat loss in November...which you so richly deserve.

Have you heard Mirandee? Your little Stalinist buddy Saddam Hussein, the one you and the Stalinist group International A.N.S.W.E.R. and the communist Workers World Party tried to protect is on trial for his life in Iraq...by the Iraqi people.

posted April 11, 2006 07:28 PM            

In the late 1980s, the Iraqi representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency—Iraq's senior public envoy for nuclear matters, in effect—was a man named Wissam al-Zahawie. After the Kuwait war in 1991, when Rolf Ekeus arrived in Baghdad to begin the inspection and disarmament work of UNSCOM, he was greeted by Zahawie, who told him in a bitter manner that "now that you have come to take away our assets," the two men could no longer be friends. (They had known each other in earlier incarnations at the United Nations in New York.)

At a later 1995 UN special session on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Zahawie was the Iraqi delegate and spoke heatedly about the urgent need to counterbalance Israel's nuclear capacity. At the time, most democratic countries did not have full diplomatic relations with Saddam's regime, and there were few fully accredited Iraqi ambassadors overseas, Iraq's interests often being represented by the genocidal Islamist government of Sudan (incidentally, yet another example of collusion between "secular" Baathists and the fundamentalists who were sheltering Osama Bin Laden). There was one exception—an Iraqi "window" into the world of open diplomacy—namely the mutual recognition between the Baathist regime and the Vatican. To this very important and sensitive post in Rome, Zahawie was appointed in 1997, holding the job of Saddam's ambassador to the Holy See until 2000. Those who knew him at that time remember a man much given to anti-Jewish tirades, with a standing ticket for Wagner performances at Bayreuth. (Actually, as a fan of Das Rheingold and Götterdämmerung in particular, I find I can live with this. Hitler secretly preferred sickly kitsch like Franz Lehar.)

In February 1999, Zahawie left his Vatican office for a few days and paid an official visit to Niger, a country known for absolutely nothing except its vast deposits of uranium ore. It was from Niger that Iraq had originally acquired uranium in 1981, as confirmed in the Duelfer Report. In order to take the Joseph Wilson view of this Baathist ambassadorial initiative, you have to be able to believe that Saddam Hussein's long-term main man on nuclear issues was in Niger to talk about something other than the obvious. Italian intelligence (which first noticed the Zahawie trip from Rome) found it difficult to take this view and alerted French intelligence (which has better contacts in West Africa and a stronger interest in nuclear questions). In due time, the French tipped off the British, who in their cousinly way conveyed the suggestive information to Washington. As everyone now knows, the disclosure appeared in watered-down and secondhand form in the president's State of the Union address in January 2003.

If the above was all that was known, it would surely be universally agreed that no responsible American administration could have overlooked such an amazingly sinister pattern. Given the past Iraqi record of surreptitious dealing, cheating of inspectors, concealment of sites and caches, and declared ambition to equip the technicians referred to openly in the Baathist press as "nuclear mujahideen," one could scarcely operate on the presumption of innocence.

However, the waters have since become muddied, to say the least. For a start, someone produced a fake document, dated July 6, 2000, which purports to show Zahawie's signature and diplomatic seal on an actual agreement for an Iraqi uranium transaction with Niger. Almost everything was wrong with this crude forgery—it had important dates scrambled, and it misstated the offices of Niger politicians. In consequence, IAEA Chairman Mohammed ElBaradei later reported to the U.N. Security Council that the papers alleging an Iraq-Niger uranium connection had been demonstrated to be fraudulent.

But this doesn't alter the plain set of established facts in my first three paragraphs above. The European intelligence services, and the Bush administration, only ever asserted that the Iraqi regime had apparently tried to open (or rather, reopen) a yellowcake trade "in Africa." It has never been claimed that an agreement was actually reached. What motive could there be for a forgery that could be instantly detected upon cursory examination?

There seem to be only three possibilities here. Either a) American intelligence concocted the note; b) someone in Italy did so in the hope of gain; or c) it was the product of disinformation, intended to protect Niger and discredit any attention paid to the actual, real-time Zahawie visit. The CIA is certainly incompetent enough to have fouled up this badly. (I like Edward Luttwak's formulation in the March 22 Times Literary Supplement, where he writes that "there have been only two kinds of CIA secret operations: the ones that are widely known to have failed—usually because of almost unbelievably crude errors—and the ones that are not yet widely known to have failed.") Still, it almost passes belief that any American agency would fake a document that purportedly proved far more than the administration had asked and then get every important name and date wrapped round the axle. Forgery for gain is easy to understand, especially when it is borne in mind that nobody wastes time counterfeiting a bankrupt currency. Forgery for disinformation, if that is what it was, appears at least to have worked. Almost everybody in the world now affects to believe that Saddam Hussein was framed on the Niger rap.

According to the London Sunday Times of April 9, the truth appears to be some combination of b) and c). A NATO investigation has identified two named employees of the Niger Embassy in Rome who, having sold a genuine document about Zahawie to Italian and French intelligence agents, then added a forged paper in the hope of turning a further profit. The real stuff went by one route to Washington, and the fakery, via an Italian journalist and the U.S. Embassy in Rome, by another. The upshot was—follow me closely here—that a phony paper alleging a deal was used to shoot down a genuine document suggesting a connection.

Zahawie's name and IAEA connection were never mentioned by ElBaradei in his report to the United Nations, and his past career has never surfaced in print. Looking up the press of the time causes one's jaw to slump in sheer astonishment. Here, typically, is a Time magazine "exclusive" about Zahawie, written by Hassan Fattah on Oct. 1, 2003:

The veteran diplomat has spent the eight months since President Bush's speech trying to set the record straight and clear his name. In a rare interview with Time, al-Zahawie outlined how forgery and circumstantial evidence was used to talk up Iraq's nuclear weapons threat, and leave him holding the smoking gun.

A few paragraphs later appear, the wonderful and unchallenged words from Zahawie: "Frankly, I didn't know that Niger produced uranium at all." Well, sorry for the inconvenience of the questions, then, my old IAEA and NPT "veteran" (whose nuclear qualifications go unmentioned in the Time article). Instead, we are told that Zahawie visited Niger and other West African countries to encourage them to break the embargo on flights to Baghdad, as they had broken the sanctions on Qaddafi's Libya. A bit of a lowly mission, one might think, for one of the Iraqi regime's most senior and specialized envoys.

The Duelfer Report also cites "a second contact between Iraq and Niger," which occurred in 2001, when a Niger minister visited Baghdad "to request assistance in obtaining petroleum products to alleviate Niger's economic problems." According to the deposition of Ja'far Diya' Ja'far (the head of Iraq's pre-1991 nuclear weapons program), these negotiations involved no offer of uranium ore but only "cash in exchange for petroleum." West Africa is awash in petroleum, and Niger is poor in cash. Iraq in 2001 was cash-rich through the oil-for-food racket, but you may if you wish choose to believe that a near-bankrupt African delegation from a uranium-based country traveled across a continent and a half with nothing on its mind but shopping for oil.

posted April 12, 2006 01:08 AM            

In "The Marketing of Evil" I expose many powerful manipulation techniques used to alter Americans' attitudes on the vital issues of the day. But there's one technique that reigns supreme as the king of all propaganda weapons – lying. To make bad stuff look good – and good appear bad – you have to lie about it.

However, there's much more power inherent in lying – especially in a "big lie" – than we may realize, so let's take a closer look.

For the current "big lie," check out Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's blustering accusation that President Bush "leaked" classified information. The administration, Reid insisted Friday, must "tell the American people whether President Bush's Oval Office is a place where the buck stops or the leaks start."

The Nevada Democrat was referring, of course, to documents released last week by prosecutors in a CIA leak case which included a statement by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's former chief of staff, that Bush had approved the release of previously classified information in 2003 to bolster the case for the Iraq War.

But now, a whole chorus of Democrats and media personalities are accusing the president – who in the past has come down hard on "leakers" in his administration – of himself "leaking" secret stuff to the press and the public!

In reality, as everyone knows, Bush did nothing whatsoever wrong. More than any other human being, the president of the United States has the power and the right to declassify U.S. government information, which he did – and then authorized its release, first to the New York Times, and then a few days later to the general public. There is simply no rational case to be made that he did anything wrong – presidents do this all the time.

But the tone and innuendo of the accusations against the president make it feel and sound as though Bush "leaked classified information" to the press.

As a result, many people will believe the allegations and the president's approval ratings will drop a couple more notches.

This latest lie, of course, is an extension of the much larger, ongoing campaign of Democrats claiming the president hyped pre-war intelligence and "lied us into war." Democrats crave, more than anything in this world or the next, a return to power in the White House and Congress (they already own the courts). And with congressional elections just a few months away, public support for the Iraq War waning and casualties mounting, the Democrats take every opportunity to bash Bush over the war. However, many Democrats – and virtually all of their leaders – enthusiastically supported going to war. So, what to do?

Solution: Claim Bush lied about pre-war intelligence and thus misled them into supporting the invasion.

But there's a slight problem: The Democrats who are now claiming Bush lied had access to essentially the same intelligence the president did, and they voted to depose Saddam Hussein militarily. So what we're witnessing is a flagrant attempt at rewriting history. That involves lying.

As U.S. News & World Report's Michael Barone wrote recently:

Bush, Cheney, and the administration have the truth on their side. Exhaustive and authoritative examinations of the prewar intelligence, by the bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004, by the Silberman-Robb commission in 2005, and by the British commission headed by Lord Butler, have established that U.S. intelligence agencies, and the intelligence organizations of leading countries like Britain, France, and Germany, believed that Saddam Hussein's regime was in possession of or developing weapons of mass destruction – chemical and biological weapons, which the regime had used before, and nuclear weapons, which it was working on in the 1980s.
To the charges that Bush "cherry-picked" intelligence, the commission co-chaired by former Democratic Sen. Charles Robb found that the intelligence available to Bush but not to Congress was even more alarming than the intelligence Congress had. The Silberman-Robb panel also concluded, after a detailed investigation, that in no instance did Bush administration authorities pressure intelligence officials to alter their findings. Much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. But Bush didn't lie about it.

If Bush didn't lie, why do his opponents keep saying – over and over and over – that he did?

There's a tremendous power in lying – much more than most of us comprehend. But the power is not in the little "white lies" that are part of the fabric of most of our lives. It's in the big lies. It's a stunningly paradoxical truth, but we're more likely to believe big lies than small ones.

How can this be? Wouldn't the big, outrageous lie be more easily discerned and resisted than the small, less consequential lie? You'd think so, but you'd be wrong.

There's a dark magic in boldly lying, in telling a big lie – repeatedly, with a straight face and with confidence and authority.

One of the greatest liars of the last century – Adolph Hitler – taught that the bigger the lie, the more believable it was.

During WWII, the U.S. government's Office of Strategic Services – a precursor to today's CIA – assessed Hitler's methods this way:

"His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."(emphasis added)

In his 1925 autobiography "Mein Kampf," Hitler – who actually did lie his country into war, and a whole lot more – explained with remarkable insight the fantastic power of lying:

… [I]n the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes. ...
Let's bring this explanation down to earth with another example: Suppose, right before an election, one candidate accuses his opponent of immoral or illegal behavior. Even if the charges are totally false, and even if the accused answers the charges credibly and effectively, "the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it." Which means, no matter how effectively the accused candidate answers the charges, some people will still believe he's guilty, and many others will still retain varying degrees of doubt and uncertainty regarding the accused, who may well lose the election due to the cloud hanging over his head. This, as Hitler said, is the magic of lying that "is known to all expert liars in this world …"

posted April 12, 2006 05:47 PM              

No, Jwhop. That's what Bush and his administration, the neo- cons in crooks in Congress, Fox News, Newsmax and you do in pursuit of a rightist political agenda.

Sounds like the kettle calling the pot black to me, Jwhop.

posted April 12, 2006 06:04 PM              

You see, Jwhop, you van always tell when someone is lying because they contradict themselves often. The reason for that is that a liar forgets what he said when he told the original lie. Whereas the truth always remains consistent. Which I had a dime for every time Bush and his administration contradicted themselves.

Media baselessly assert that Bush's authorization of leak of classified information was legal

This week's explosive news that President Bush personally authorized the leak of classified intelligence to New York Times reporter Judith Miller raises serious questions to which media should demand answers.

A court filing by special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, disclosed just this week, refers to testimony by former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby that he disclosed portions of a classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to Miller only after being authorized to do so by Bush.

There is no indication, however, of exactly how the president declassified the NIE -- no indication of what, if any, procedures the president is required to follow when he declassifies a document, and no indication of whether Bush followed those procedures.

Without explicitly addressing the declassification process, the filing does hint that Bush may have done nothing more than simply say to Vice President Dick Cheney that Libby could tell Miller about the NIE. According to the filing, after Vice President Cheney told Libby that the president had authorized the disclosure, Libby sought guidance from then-Cheney counsel (and now Cheney chief of staff) David Addington, who advised him that "that Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to a declassification of the document."

Libby's testimony that he sought Addington's advice strongly suggests that there was no formal declassification of the document; that it wasn't marked "declassified" or entered into the database of declassified material the government is required to keep. Addington's advice seems to suggest that he believes the president can simply cross his arms and blink and information is instantly declassified -- no need for any documentation of the decision, no need for a signature, no forms to fill out, nothing.

Addington's theory of absolute presidential power to secretly declassify information without telling anyone, so that even the most senior administration officials believe it to remain classified, may well be true. But we've seen no indication that it is, other than Addington's reported say-so.

But that hasn't stopped several reporters from flatly asserting it to be true, often while referring to the opinion of "legal experts" who are either unnamed and unquoted, or named, but not quoted saying anything of the kind.

CNN's David Ensor, for example, asserted during one April 6 report that "Now, the president does have the right to decide when and how to declassify documents, so experts are saying this was entirely legal." But he didn't name any of those "experts." And while few, if any, argue that the president lacks the "right" to decide when to declassify documents, it's an open question whether he can decide how to declassify, or whether there is a procedure that must be followed. Ensor offered no support for his contention that the president "does have" this right.

Later, Ensor went further, telling viewers: "It is the executive branch, headed by the president, that decides what is classified and what is not. Most recently, the rules governing declassifying material were updated in a 2003 executive order signed by President Bush. There are complex rules for lesser mortals, but the order makes clear that the president and the vice president can order aides, such as Mr. Cheney's chief of staff, 'Scooter' Libby, to give any classified material they want to a reporter."

But the 2003 executive order does not make clear anything of the kind. Indeed, one assumes that if the order really did clearly state, as Ensor asserts, that the "complex rules for lesser mortals" don't apply to the president, Ensor would have quoted the order. He did not. Nor has anyone yet quoted any portion of the order that says that the president can declassify information simply by deciding the disclose it, without any record or documentation of the declassification.

Immediately following Ensor's assertion, he played a clip of former CIA general counsel Jeff Smith, apparently intending the clip to support his contention. But it did not. Ensor showed Smith saying, "Frankly, the president and the vice president have that right if they so choose to declassify something and put it out in public." It isn't clear whether Smith meant that the president can declassify anything he wants, or that the president can declassify whatever he wants however he wants, without following normal procedures.

Ensor concluded:

Now, intelligence officials say most commonly when administration officials want to declassify something, they will check with the relevant intelligence officials to make sure nothing they want to make public would compromise sensitive intelligence sources or methods. But that is not legally required, and it is not always done. So no laws were broken here, but the revelation by 'Scooter' Libby that the president authorized a leak puts Mr. Bush in an awkward position. After all, in public, he has always denounced leaks.

And that's how the segment ended: with Ensor's assertion, unsupported by any facts, that it "is not legally required" for administration officials to check with "the relevant intelligence officials" before declassifying, and that "no laws were broken here."

Ensor wasn't alone in such assertions, or in curious presentation of expert opinions. The Chicago Tribune reported:

The president's authority to keep and reveal secrets also is inherent in his constitutional powers, says J. William Leonard, director of the National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office, and the president does not have to follow any particular procedure in declassifying information.

"It's his authority in the first place," Leonard said.

The Tribune does not quote Leonard saying the president does not have to follow any procedure in declassifying information; it paraphrases him, then presents a quote from him that is so vague as to be nearly meaningless. The Tribune continued:

While Bush's use of classified information may create a political problem, it's not a legal issue, said Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer who often represents CIA employees and others involved in national security issues. As the author of the executive order governing how information is classified, Bush can declassify something simply by declaring so, Zaid said.

"Since the president is the one who issues the order, ergo he obviously has the authority to classify and declassify information," Zaid said Thursday.

Again, the Tribune asserts that a legal expert says the president can declassify "simply by declaring so" -- but, again, the Tribune doesn't actually quote the expert saying anything of the kind, and the quote that is presented doesn't necessarily back up the Tribune's paraphrase. Continuing directly, the Tribune added:

Bush had exercised his authority in cooperating with journalist and author Bob Woodward in the writing of "Bush at War," Woodward's account of the response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "That book is replete with classified information" that Bush declassified by discussing it with Woodward, Zaid maintains.

Once again -- for the third time in one article -- the Tribune does not actually quote the expert saying what it asserts he said. In every case, the important part of the argument is not made by the legal expert, but by the Tribune paraphrasing what the expert says. Do Zaid and Leonard actually think the president doesn't have to follow any procedure at all in declassifying information? Who knows? A Tribune reader can't be sure -- and can't help but be suspicious at the way the paper presents the quotes.

Similarly, ABC's Jake Tapper seems to have found a legal expert who thinks the president can declassify without following any procedures. But did he really? On the April 6 edition of Nightline, Tapper reported:

TAPPER: A senior administration official tells ABC News that by definition, the president cannot leak. He has the inherent authority to declassify something. It's like accusing a shopkeeper of shoplifting from himself. Other experts agree. Partly.

WALTER DELLINGER (former solicitor general): The president has the legal authority because classification is done by his executive order. But the fact that the president has raw constitutional authority to do this does not mean that it's free from criticism or censure because it is an abuse of the classification process.

Tapper's setup suggests that Dellinger agrees that "the president cannot leak" -- that as soon as the president decides to disclose something, it is declassified. But Dellinger doesn't actually say that -- not in the clip Tapper played, anyway. Dellinger could well have been saying the president has the legal authority to declassify -- if he follows the relevant procedures.

So what's the story? Do these legal experts think the president has to follow a declassification procedure or not? We don't know, but it certainly is strange that in every news report we've seen that purports to offer expert opinion that the president needn't follow a procedure, that opinion is not actually quoted. Some, like the Tribune, Ensor, and Tapper, quote experts not quite saying what they claim the experts said.

Others, like The Washington Post, don't bother to do even that. One April 7 Post article claimed, "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." That article contained no further reference to any "independent legal experts."

Another Post article reported, "Legal scholars and analysts said yesterday that the president has the authority to selectively declassify intelligence reports" -- but that article didn't further refer to those "legal scholars and analysts."

A third Post article, headlined "Experts: Tactic Would Be Legal but Unusual," offers some hope. Surely here, at last, the Post will actually present an "expert" who says that "Bush's very decision to disclose classified information means he declassified it"? Well, not quite. The article refers to exactly two legal experts, and doesn't quote either of them saying anything of the kind. Indeed, it quotes former National Security Agency (NSA) general counsel Ronald D. Lee seeming to say the opposite: "There is an institutional interest and ultimately a public interest in having these decisions documented. ... You can't have a government where everything is sort of done in people's heads."

We've seen exactly one legal expert who has directly and explicitly spoken to whether or not the president must follow a declassification procedure: Fox News senior judicial analyst and former judge Andrew P. Napolitano:

JOHN GIBSON: All right. So then what does this story mean, that President Bush revealed classified information? He is the president. Can he unilaterally declassify something and release it?

NAPOLITANO: Yes. He can unilaterally declassify what he has ordered to be classified. He has to go through certain steps in order to do that. He can't say "Hey, Dick, tell Lou he can tell this to Judy." He has got to sign certain documents. He's got to go through a procedure, a procedure set up by President Clinton and reinforced by President Bush. The president does not commit a crime if he says, "Hey, Dick, tell Lou he can talk to Judy." He would be violating his own order.

Finally, it's worth noting that, during his April 7 press briefing, White House press secretary Scott McClellan was directly asked if the president can ignore the normal declassification process. He refused to give a direct answer:

QUESTION: I want to see if I can sort out with you what you described earlier, sort of talking past each other earlier. There's a process for declassification, and the president has declassification authority.

McCLELLAN: That's correct.

QUESTION: When the president determines that classified information can be made public without jeopardizing sources and methods, that it's an appropriate thing to do, is that -- can that supplant the declassification process? Is that, in effect, an immediate act? Is it de facto declassified by that determination?

McCLELLAN: The president can declassify information if he chooses.

QUESTION: So, if a declassification --

McCLELLAN: It's inherent in our Constitution. He is the head of the executive branch.

QUESTION: Is it possible, then, for a declassification process to be under way, or perhaps not yet even started, but perhaps in the middle of it, the president can say this is declassified and -- or this is something that is worthy of the American people seeing, and it can happen on separate tracks?

McCLELLAN: I want to be careful here, because that is touching on something that is brought up in the legal proceedings. And I've got to stay out of that.

QUESTION: Well, it's a question more about administrative policy and how the White House would handle it.

McCLELLAN: But the president is authorized to declassify information as he chooses.

All that said, there are some questions the media should get to the bottom of:

Is there a process the president must follow in order to declassify a document?
If so, was that process followed in that case?
If not, what authority, law, or executive order gives him the ability to ignore the normal declassification process? What is the specific language that gives him that ability?
If the president does not have to follow any process and can simply declassify a document or information without telling anyone, that means that the rest of the government -- including, for example, the national security adviser, the secretary of defense, and the director of central intelligence -- will continue to think the material is classified. Is that conducive to effective government? Is it a tenable situation for the highest-ranking officials in our government to have different understanding of what is and what is not classified?
More questions about Bush's leak authorization, or: It depends on the meaning of the word "today"

During his July 18, 2003, "gaggle," Scott McClellan told reporters that the NIE "was just, as of today, officially declassified." Later, a reporter asked, "When was it actually declassified?" McClellan replied: "It was officially declassified today."

But according to Libby's testimony, he told Miller about the NIE -- at President Bush's direction -- on July 8, 2003. Ten days before it was "officially declassified," according to McClellan.

Uh-oh.

How does McClellan explain the discrepancy?

Asked about it during his April 7 press briefing, McClellan replied: "[M]y recollection is that I was referring to the fact that, yes, it's officially declassified today. ... But that doesn't get into the issue of when everything was declassified."

The word "today," according to McClellan, doesn't answer the question of "when." Apparently he wants us to believe that "today" answers the question of "who." Or maybe "where."

Questions reporters should pursue:

If Bush declassified the document before Libby met with Miller on July 8, 2003, why did it need to be declassified again on July 18?
McClellan says the material was declassified because "[i]t was in the public interest that this information be provided, because there was a debate going on in the public about the use of intelligence leading up to the decision to go into Iraq. This is regarding prewar intelligence. And there was a lot of misinformation being put out. There were accusations being leveled against the president and against this White House and this administration that intelligence was misused or manipulated."
Given that the administration thinks it is in the public interest to provide information relevant to the debate about the use of intelligence leading up to the decision to go into Iraq, will it now publicly release the one-page NIE summaries prepared for Bush that one "senior official" reportedly described as the "one document which illustrates what the president knew and when he knew it"? Or does the administration think only information that seems to support its contentions is "in the public interest"? The summaries reportedly told Bush that the Energy Department and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research believed that Saddam Hussein's "procurement of high-strength aluminum tubes" was "intended for conventional weapons" -- not, as Bush told the country, for the development of nuclear weapons.

posted April 12, 2006 06:14 PM              

Can a President or Vice President Unilaterally and Selectively Declassify?

Assuming that Libby's testimony is accurate, did the President do anything wrong by so declassifying the NIE? Given the fact that the national security classification system is created by executive order of the president, it would appear logical that the president has authority to unilaterally and selective declassify anything he might wish. However, that is not the way any president has ever written the executive orders governing these activities. To the contrary, the orders set forth rather detailed declassification procedures.
In addition, there is law that says that when a president issues an executive order he must either amend that executive order, or follow it just as others within the executive branch are required to do. At present, we have so few facts it is difficult to know what precisely Bush did and how he did it, and thus whether or not this law is applicable. There is also the problem that no one has standing in court to challenge a president's refusal to follow his own rules. But voters may take note of the disposition of this administration to play by the rules, and put a Democratic Congress in place to keep an eye on the last two years of the Bush/Cheney presidency.

What is apparent, however, based on Fitzgerald's filing, is that no one other than Bush, Cheney, Libby and apparently Addington was aware of this unilateral and selective declassification - if, indeed, the NIE was declassified. The secrecy surely suggests cover-up. For example, Fitzgerald notes that Libby "consciously decided not to make [then Deputy National Security Adviser] Hadley aware of the fact that defendant [Libby] himself had already been disseminating the NIE by leaking it to reporters while Mr. Hadley sought to get it formally declassified." (Also, CIA Director George Tenet apparently was not aware of the partial declassification by Bush.)

Whatever authority Bush may or may not have had, however, it is crystal clear that Vice President Cheney did not have any authority to unilaterally and selectively declassify the NIE.
Recently, Cheney made the public claim (to Brit Hume of Fox News) that he had authority to declassify national security information. Learning of this, Congressman Henry Waxman asked the Congressional Reference Service of the Library of Congress, which issues non-partisan reports, whether Cheney was right. CRS found that the Vice President has limited declassification authority, generally speaking. And their report shows Cheney had no authority in this instance - only in situations where the Vice President had been the authority to classify the material in the first place, could the Vice President have the authority to unilaterally declassify it.

posted April 12, 2006 06:38 PM              

Jwhop, I am sure that many, wouldn't say ALL, politicians lie or at least distort the truth in their favor. Most of those "lies" are of only speaking half truths. Sins of omission.

But Bush and his administration must hold a record of some kind on lies. They lie to cover the lies they already told.

Joke:

A guy dies and goes to heaven. He is greeted at the gate by St. Peter.

First thing he notices is millions of clocks. "What are those clocks for?" he asks St. Peter.

"Oh, there is a clock for everyone that ever lived. The hands move every time a lie is told by the person," Peter replies.

St. Peter goes on to explain, "See that clock over there. That belongs to Mother Theresa. The hands never moved indicating she never told a lie. Over there is Abe Lincoln's clock. The hands only moved twice."

" Oh, I see," says the guy. "Where is Bush's clock?"

"It's in Jesus' office, he's using it as a ceiling fan," says St. Peter

posted April 13, 2006 12:19 AM            

Show me the PROOF. And if you can't show me the proof then shame on you for making allegations which you can't prove. Speculation, rumor and innuendo are not proof of anything.

Yeah right, the issue of declassification rests on reporters speculating on the procedure...not the fact the President is fully authorized to classify or declassify secret documents.

So much for your arguments...form over substance...as it always is for leftists.

This issue is going nowhere...as all leftist issues go...nowhere.

I seem to recall you have religious training Mirandee.

"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor"

posted April 13, 2006 10:20 AM            

A new court filing by CIA leak defendant Lewis Libby suggests that Libby has testified that Vice President Dick Cheney never told him to reveal the identity of CIA employee Valerie Wilson. The filing also suggests that Libby, the vice president's former chief of staff, testified that neither President Bush nor anyone else told him to discuss Valerie Wilson, either.

The filing, released shortly before midnight Wednesday night, contains a footnote which says, "Consistent with his grand jury testimony, Mr. Libby does not contend that he was instructed to make any disclosures concerning Ms. Wilson by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, or anyone else."

In his most recent court motion, CIA leak prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wrote that "the President was unaware of the role that [Libby] had in fact played in disclosing Ms. Wilson's CIA employment." But Fitzgerald made no such statement about Cheney, and the prosecutor's indictment of Libby hints that the vice president might have been behind the disclosure of Wilson's identity, saying that the process that led to the disclosure was set in motion in early June 2003, when "Libby learned from the Vice President that [Joseph] Wilson's wife worked for the CIA in the Counterproliferation Division."

In addition, Fitzgerald's filing from last week — the one that contained the erroneous and later-corrected suggestion that Libby lied about the contents of the National Intelligence Estimate — hinted that Cheney was behind the disclosure. In that filing, Fitzgerald wrote that Libby "testified that on July 12, 2003, he was specifically directed by the Vice President to speak to the press in place of Cathie Martin (then the communications person for the Vice President) regarding the NIE and [Joseph] Wilson. Defendant was instructed to provide what was for him an extremely rare 'on the record' statement, and to provide 'background' and 'deep background' statements, and to provide information contained in a document defendant understood to be the cable authored by Mr. Wilson. During the conversations that followed on July 12, defendant discussed Ms. Wilson's employment with both Matthew Cooper (for the first time) and Judith Miller (for the third time)."

The new Libby filing also says there is evidence to support Libby's claim that he was never instructed to discuss Valerie Wilson with reporters. The Libby legal team says that "contemporaneous documents" contain a point-by-point summary of the case Libby was to make for journalists, and those points do not contain any reference to Valerie Wilson:

The government pretends that Mr. Wilson's wife was a part of the response Mr. Libby was instructed to make to Mr. Wilson's false claims, and even argues that 'disclosing the belief that Mr. Wilson's wife sent him on the Niger trip was one way for defendant to contradict the assertion that the Vice President had done so...' In fact, as the government is well aware, contemporaneous documents reflect the points that Mr. Libby was to make to reporters, and these documents do not include any information about Wilson's wife" [emphasis in the original].

In sum, Libby argues that Fitzgerald has conflated the White House's desire to answer the accusations made by Joseph Wilson with a plot to expose Wilson's wife. "The government's argument that Mr. Libby attached importance to 'the controversy about Mr. Wilson and/or his wife'," the Libby brief says,

cleverly masks the fact that the evidence on which this argument relies — e.g., the involvement of the President and Vice-President, the declassification of the NIE, the Vice President's direction that Mr. Libby speak to the press, the rarity of 'on the record' statements by Mr. Libby — has nothing whatsoever to do with Mr. Wilson's wife. Mr. Libby must be in a position at trial to show the jury that, consistent with his grand jury testimony, he responded in good faith on the merits to Mr. Wilson's allegations, instead of seeking to question his allegiances or motives. For that reason it is vital that Mr. Libby obtain discovery of the truth regarding Mr. Wilson's allegations, including all communications by him with the CIA, the State Department, or anyone else concerning those allegations [emphasis in the original].

Finally, the new Libby brief makes another appeal for Judge Reggie Walton to require Fitzgerald to release evidence showing that Valerie Wilson's job status at the CIA was classified. Fitzgerald has so far refused to offer any such evidence, or any evidence that the disclosure of Wilson's identity in any way harmed national security. "According to the government, Mr. Libby made false statements and committed perjury because he knew 'there would be great embarrassment to the administration if it became publicly known that [he] had participated in disseminating information about Ms. Wilson's CIA employment,' and because he 'would have had every reason to assume he would be fired if his true actions became known,'" the Libby brief argues. To make that accusation, Libby continues, Fitzgerald should be required to show that Wilson's employment status was indeed classified:

The government's arguments about motive further underscore that the defense is entitled to discovery about whether Ms. Wilson's employment status was classified, as the defense has requested in previous motions. The government resists disclosing information regarding the allegedly classified status of Ms. Wilson's employment, and the knowledge and understanding of others as to whether that employment was classified, on the ground that the information is not relevant to the defense. Yet, almost in the same breath, the government presents an argument on Mr. Libby's motive to lie that makes this information highly relevant and material to preparation of the defense.

Libby's new filing, and the Fitzgerald filing that preceded it, suggest that the CIA leak case, if Libby case goes to trial, will move far beyond the issue of Valerie Wilson. Fitzgerald's discussion of the National Intelligence Estimate and of the administration's general response to Joseph Wilson, Libby argues, "indicates that at trial all aspects of the government's response to Mr. Wilson will be relevant — including any actions taken by the President." If that is the case, then the trial, which Fitzgerald has said will be a limited criminal inquiry into whether Lewis Libby lied, will more resemble a broad inquiry into the politics of pre-war intelligence.