I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Indicted

[KipWellsFan]

"Those close to the investigation say inquiry expanding... State Dep't and National Security Council figures probed... Rove may be in hotter water: Sources say he was offered a perjury deal but turned it down.... At least three officials in the case have agreed to provide additional information, setting the stage for an explosive, continuing probe... Lawyer for Joseph Wilson plans 3 p.m ET press conference; Civil suit expected..."

 

www.rawstory.com

 

his post will be filled by Cheney's chief counsel David Addington.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Vice_Preside...ef_of_1028.html

[KipWellsFan]

INDICTED ON 5 COUNTS!!!

 

was indicted today by a grand jury on one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of making false statements and two counts of perjury in the CIA leak probe. The charges allege Libby lied to FBI agents and committed perjury while testifying before a grand jury.

www.cnn.com

[Gene Honda Civic]

I always hated that effeminate baseball.

[Balta1701]

You know the amazing thing...I dislike this administration's work as much as anyone, and all I care about right now is a parade.

[KipWellsFan]

Cheney accepts resignation of his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, "with deep regret"; says Libby is "presumed innocent" unless proven guilty.

http://www.cnn.com/

[KipWellsFan]

 

-thesmokinggun.com

[kapkomet]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO f***ING HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

PARTY LIKE YOUR A DEMOCRAT!!!!

 

Hypocritical bulls***.

[KipWellsFan]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO f***ING HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

PARTY LIKE YOUR A DEMOCRAT!!!!

 

Hypocritical bulls***.

 

Today, however, is not the time to analyze or to debate.  And it is

certainly not a day to celebrate.  Today is a sad day for America.  When an

indictment is delivered at the front door of the White House, the Office of

the President is defiled.  No citizen can take pleasure from that.

 

--Statement of Ambassador Joseph Wilson with Respect to the Indictment

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories....04199397&EDATE=

[Balta1701]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO f***ING HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

PARTY LIKE YOUR A DEMOCRAT!!!!

 

Hypocritical bulls***.

Seriously Kip, Kap is right here. Way too many people have been celebrating this. This is literally a disaster for our country. An intelligence operative was brought down. An entire CIA front company was exposed, thereby potentially blowing the cover of dozens of other operatives and maybe even endangering their lives. And 2000+ American servicemen, tens of thousands of Iraqis, several hundred media personnel, 3500 Iraqi "defense forces", and several hundred other coalition soldiers are dead. All because of this.

 

No matter what happens, it's not a time to celebrate. It's a time to mourn. When someone kills your spouse, and they finally are brought to justice...you don't have a party.

[kapkomet]

Here's the thing - first of all, the leftists have been creaming their pants for this. They have wanted something to stain the Bush White House since about, oh, January, 2001.

 

That's what I was alluding to in my post above. Hell, how many posts did we have to have every day telling us every f***ing leak that took place that was going to GET THEM?!?!

 

Then, futhermore, isn't it really interesting that 1- Britian STILL stands by this "yellowcake" claim, and 2- that Valerie Plame pushed like hell to get her husband into this Niger position, not once but TWICE - and he was over there for a very small period to find... "nothing".

 

At that point, no one knew who the hell was even over there, and WALLAH, this op ed piece ends up in the NY Slimes about the yellow cake issue being phoney. I think at that point is when Scooter Libby started trying to figure out what happened, and when the names started being tossed. THEY fired the first salvo. It's even more interesting that Valarie Plame was a damn DESK analyst at the CIA. She was REALLY undercover, and her *GASP* life was at risk. :rolly

 

Look. s*** went too far, that's becoming abundantly obvious. I also don't think that they should have blown this wide open. Had Joe Wilson kept his dang mouth shut and not ran to the NY Slimes, it probably would have never gotten this far. But to the left, the man did his "patriotic duty" by proving that George W. Bush was a liar for the war on Iraq, and that's all most of the left needs to know.

[Balta1701]

Then, futhermore, isn't it really interesting that 1- Britian STILL stands by this "yellowcake" claim, and

TPM. Long one...worth checking out the whole post.

 

As I hinted at in this post from earlier this evening, in his 2003 State of the Union address President did not say "Iraq purchased uranium from Niger" or even that "the British say that Iraq purchased uranium from Niger." He said something much more specific and couched, using language the significance of which would only become clear months later.

 

"The British government," said the president in the famous sixteen words, "has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

 

As we learned later that summer and fall, those carefully chosen words had a very precise rationale behind them. The White House tried and failed to get the uranium claim into the October 7th, 2002 Cincinnati speech. The same battle was refought in late January of 2003 as the same parties struggled back and forth over whether the claim would be inserted in the State of the Union address. The CIA refused to countenance the use of the claim. So a compromise of sorts was struck. The president wouldn't be a fact witness to the allegation. He'd hang it on the Brits.

 

So the president wasn't saying Saddam had bought uranium. He wasn't even saying he'd tried. He said the Brits had "learned" that he tried.

 

Some White House defenders still hang their hat on this point, arguing that nothing the president said was in fact false. Anybody who got the wrong impression just didn't read the fine print.

 

That argument (let's call it 'the con-man defense') speaks for itself, I think.

 

But all of this brings us back to the question: What did the British know? They said they had good intel. The CIA didn't buy it. So what did they know?

 

Did they have separate non-discredited intelligence? Or, were they just holding out, refusing to admit they'd either been scammed or in on the scamming?

 

To date the British have refused to concede that they too may have been relying on flawed or phony evidence. They stand by their claim, but refuse to disclose the source or the nature of their evidence.

 

Last year's Butler Report (a rough analogue to last year's Senate intelligence committee report) went to great lengths to insulate the British finding from the taint of the forgeries. In one passage it says that ...

 

    The forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it.

 

Later in the Report, in a pretty telling illustration of how tied the Butler Report was to the needs of US politics, the authors went so far as to provide the president with a specific exoneration ...

 

    We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government’s dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded. By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that:

 

    The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

 

    was well-founded.

 

I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about how such a passage could have found its way into a British government inquiry. But let's review the story. The Brits say that they had multiple pieces of evidence upon which they based their claim. And the forged documents -- which they only found out about much later -- were not one of them. So the discreditation of the forgeries is irrelevant to their finding. The taint, shall we say, does not attach.

 

My assumption, and that of many others, is that the Brits are, to put it bluntly, full of it on this one. My best guess is that they are holding on to some de minimis 'other' evidence as a placeholder to get out of taking their own lumps in the Niger skullduggery.

 

With the claims of an intelligence agency especially, proving a negative is near impossible. So I can't prove to you that the Brits have nothing else. But I think I can make a pretty strong argument that the Butler Report was intentionally misleading on this key question.

 

The Butler Report wasn't the only British government inquiry into the faulty intelligence question. There was also a parliamentary committee report published in September 2003, before the question of the forgeries and Wilson and the rest of it became so intensely politicized. And a close look at this earlier report, chaired by Labour MP Ann Taylor, shows pretty clearly, I think, that the Butler Report was willfully misleading about the Brits' reliance on the forgeries.

 

I discussed this point at length in a post from July 17th, 2004. So if you're interested in finding out more, seeing the evidence and the argument, read that post and draw your own conclusions.

 

2- that Valerie Plame pushed like hell to get her husband into this Niger position, not once but TWICE - and he was over there for a very small period to find... "nothing".

Possibly incorrect on the "Plame pushed like hell" part.MMFA.

But what these reporters stated as fact is actually in dispute. Unnamed intelligence officials have been quoted in the media claiming that the CIA -- not Plame -- selected Wilson for the mission. Also, CIA officials have disputed the accuracy of a State Department intelligence memo that reportedly indicates that Plame "suggested" Wilson's name for the trip.

[KipWellsFan]

1- Britian STILL stands by this "yellowcake" claim

 

Thanks for this info Kap, haven't heard this from the liberal blogs. But...

 

The Butler Report issued after a review by the British government concluded that the report Saddam's government was seeking uranium in Africa was credible.

 

The Liberal Democrats opted not to take part, because the role of politicians had been excluded from the Inquiry's remit. (Senior Lib Dem MP Alan Beith was to have been the sixth member of the panel). Explaining their position Foreign Affairs spokesman Sir Menzies Campbell asked the prime minister:

 

    "Don't you understand ... that following the public response to the Hutton report that an inquiry that excludes politicians from scrutiny is unlikely to command public confidence..."

 

A few British intelligence officers publicly dismissed these documents, although others in the British intelligence community to this day still stand behind the claim.

 

Wilson also noted that U.S. Ambassador to Niger Barbara Owens-Kirkpatrick "knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq — and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington."

 

2- that Valerie Plame pushed like hell to get her husband into this Niger position, not once but TWICE - and he was over there for a very small period to find... "nothing"

 

Not sure about her having pushed like 'hell' but she seems to have recommended him for this position, and it seems she certainly never was the one who sent him there. Besides, his background seemed to make him a perfectly logical choice for this mission.

 

It's even more interesting that Valarie Plame was a damn DESK analyst at the CIA.  She was REALLY undercover, and her *GASP* life was at risk.  :rolly

 

I've also thought this point about her life being endangered has been pretty overblown but the CIA has been extremely angry about it, and I have a hard time believing they're angry for nothing. But calling her a mere desk analyst also seems incorrect.

 

Look.  s*** went too far, that's becoming abundantly obvious.  I also don't think that they should have blown this wide open.  Had Joe Wilson kept his dang mouth shut and not ran to the NY Slimes, it probably would have never gotten this far.  But to the left, the man did his "patriotic duty" by proving that George W. Bush was a liar for the war on Iraq, and that's all most of the left needs to know.

 

If you went over to Niger for 8 days got back and realized it was done for nothing and you thought it was completely ignored you'd probably write something about it too. Remember he's an elitist politician, probably pretty snooty.

 

The question is if the Bush admin really is innocent of wrong-doing besides a few legal technicalities why did Libby get indicted with 5 counts? What is he trying to cover up and why does Fitzgerald want to continue investigating? This is more than a witch hunt and it's bigger than Plame, Wilson and Libby, it reflects on the whole government's habits.

[Balta1701]

2 quick update posts. 1...and this comes from the fingertips of Dick Morris, a man who just a few days ago said he "Weeps" at the prospect of a Rove indictment because Rove elected Bush.

 

If The New York Times is correct (a big "if"), Cheney told his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, about Joe Wilson's wife and her possible role in his selection to go to Niger to verify the story about the sale of yellow cake to Iraq. While Cheney clammed up, Libby told the world, and possibly the grand jury, that he learned this from a journalist.

 

If Libby lied in public, it is unfortunate. If he did so before the grand jury, it could be criminal. Either way, the vice president knew that he was not telling the truth — yet did nothing in public, or presumably in private, to correct him...

 

Why did the vice president choose to remain silent and keep his role from public view? Did Cheney tell the prosecutor he was the one who told Libby about Plame? Did he tell the president?

 

Assuming the Times has its facts right, the burden of proof shifts to Cheney. It is incumbent on him to explain why he let his chief of staff mislead the public — for two years, including the entire 2004 presidential campaign.

 

There may be an innocent explanation for the veep's silence, or the Times may be wrong. But Dick Cheney owes us all an explanation.

[Balta1701]

And second, several people seem to be leaking this to The AP.

 

In a sign of the trouble lingering for the Bush administration, the indictment handed up Friday in the CIA leak probe refers to someone at the White House known as "Official A."

 

The unidentified official could become a courtroom witness against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who left his job as vice presidential aide shortly after his indictment on charges of obstruction of justice, making false statements and perjury.

 

 

Although other officials are mentioned but not named in the indictment, all were identified Friday afternoon during briefings at the Justice Department.

 

Except for "Official A."

 

The mysterious official is identified in the indictment only as "a senior official in the White House."

 

No mention is made of Karl Rove, the president's political adviser who remains under investigation by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.

 

It has been known that columnist Robert Novak spoke to Rove on July 9, 2003, saying he planned to report over the weekend that Valerie Plame, the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, had worked for the CIA. Rove told the columnist he had heard similar information.

 

Friday's indictment says "Official A" is a "senior official in the White House who advised Libby on July 10 or 11 of 2003" about a chat with Novak about his upcoming column in which Plame would be identified as a CIA employee.

 

Late Friday, three people close to the investigation, each asking to remain unidentified because of grand jury secrecy, identified Rove as Official A.

[KipWellsFan]

I had pretty much assumed Official A was Rove anyways, also a blog I read thought Rove was ratting all along, can't remember which right now.

[kapkomet]

So it sounds like they're setting up Scooter to be the fall guy.

 

The thing that I still can't get past - "the CIA appointed Joe Wilson to this job"... NO s***. THAT WAS VALERIE PLAME? Or am I missing that?

 

And, looking a step beyond that, Joe Wilson had an axe to grind. He goes and tells "all" to the NY Slimes, but the CIA didn't know any different? WTF is up with that? I personally think he lied to one or the other, so why is HE not indicted? Oh, because maybe he lied to a newspaper instead of government officials and that is not "against the law".

 

I'm telling you, this STILL doesn't add up to me.

 

And furthermore, how can Scooter lie about something he didn't know? Stay with me here for a minute. And yes, Balta, you'll find something to either corroborate or blow me out of the water here, but that's ok.

 

Anyway... JOE WILSON said the VP assigned him to Niger in the NY Slimes article. That's an outright lie, by your own evidence above - he was assigned by the CIA, and remember who works for the CIA, his own wife. So let's start with that premise alone, and that to me says that they were out to "lay blame" out there for the media on Bush's administration.

 

Let me be perfectly clear. I think the whole damn thing stinks. Scooter it sounds like perjired himself, but my thing is, did he perjure himself knowingly, or "on accident"? And by that I mean, initially, it sounds like they didn't know what the hell was going on, until AFTER the article came out. And at that point. they went to find out who the REAL source was and Valerie Plame's name fell in their lap. Someone else let the cat out of the bag before Scooter got ahold of the information is my point. And that someone IMO was a plant by Joe Wilson himself.

 

But GEE that question has not been asked. I wonder why?

[kapkomet]

BTW Balta. You and I are about polar opposites. But I appreciate the debate without getting all personal and stupid.

 

You too Kip.

 

And maybe Rex Kickass.

 

But that damn Texsox, he can go spank himself.

 

[Rex Kickass]

I disagree with you there. That Rex Kickass far too disagreeable. However, that winodj - what a stud he was.

[KipWellsFan]

Interesting Timeline

 

-Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI, and people close to it, repeatedly tried to shop the bogus Niger uranium story to governments in France, Britain and the United States. That created the illusion that multiple sources were confirming the story.

 

...

 

Oct. 15, 2001 - The CIA received the first of three top-secret reports from a foreign intelligence service - which intelligence officials said was Italy's SISMI - that Niger planned to ship tons of uranium ore, or yellowcake, to Iraq.

 

SISMI was behind similar reports in Britain and France. Paris never put any stock in the reports, according to two European officials. London has stood behind its statement that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa.

 

February 2002 - Cheney and other officials asked the CIA to find out more.

 

Some CIA and Pentagon analysts were impressed with the reporting. But the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) was skeptical. Its analysts noted that France controls Niger's uranium mines and argued that Iraq wouldn't risk being caught breaking U.N. sanctions.

 

The CIA station in Rome was skeptical of the reports from the start.

 

Feb. 21 - Wilson traveled to Niger at the CIA's request to investigate the purported uranium deal. He said he found nothing to substantiate the allegation. Neither did two other U.S. officials who investigated.

 

March 8 - The CIA circulated a report on Wilson's trip - without identifying him - to the White House and other agencies.

 

Sept. 9 - With the White House's public campaign against Iraq in full swing, Nicolo Pollari, head of SISMI, met with then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley at the White House. Hadley later took the blame for including the false Niger allegation in Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech.

 

National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones said Thursday that the meeting was a 15-minute courtesy call and that no one could recollect talk about yellowcake.

 

Oct. 1 - U.S. intelligence agencies sent the White House and Congress their key prewar assessment of Iraq's illicit weapon programs, which said Iraq was "vigorously" trying to buy uranium ore and had sought deals with Niger, Somalia and possibly the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The State Department's INR dissented in the report.

 

Oct. 5 - Then-CIA Director George Tenet advised Hadley to drop a reference to Niger from the draft of a nationally televised speech that Bush was to give on Oct. 7 because the "president should not be a fact witness on this issue" as "the reporting was weak." The sentence was removed.

 

The CIA then wrote the White House that "the evidence (of a uranium ore deal) is weak. One of the two mines cited by the source of the uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine cited by the source is under the control of the French."

 

Oct. 9 - An Italian journalist for the Rome magazine Panorama, owned by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a supporter of the Iraq war, gave the U.S. Embassy a copy of the purported agreement by Niger to sell yellowcake to Iraq.

 

The journalist, Elisabetta Burba, reportedly received the documents from Italian businessman Rocco Martino, who has connections to SISMI.

 

The Italian government has denied any connection to the forged documents.

 

The embassy forwarded a copy to the State Department. It raised the suspicion of an INR nuclear analyst, who noted in an e-mail that the documents bear a "funky Emb. Of Niger stamp (to make it look official, I guess.)"

 

Jan. 13, 2003 - The INR nuclear analyst told other analysts that he believed the Niger documents were forgeries.

 

Jan. 16 - The CIA finally received copies of the forged French-language documents. It sent them back to the State Department to be translated.

 

Jan. 17 - A CIA analytical unit known as WINPAC (Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control) said in a secret assessment that there was "fragmentary reporting" on Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium from "various countries in Africa."

 

Sometime in late January, Robert Joseph, a senior White House staffer, and Alan Foley, the head of WINPAC, agreed that Bush could refer to the uranium claim in his State of the Union speech, but he should cite a public British report.

 

Jan. 28 - Bush delivered the State of the Union.

 

Feb. 5 - Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the U.N. Security Council on the threat from Iraq but didn't repeat the yellowcake allegation.

 

March 3 - The International Atomic Energy Agency told the United States that the documents were forgeries after an expert used the Google search engine to identify false information.

 

July 6 - In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Wilson wrote that his failure to confirm the alleged uranium deal led him to conclude that the Bush administration "twisted" some of the intelligence it used to justify the war.

 

July 14 - Syndicated columnist Robert Novak identified Plame in a column.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington.../printstory.jsp

 

more at link

[Balta1701]

Anyway... JOE WILSON said the VP assigned him to Niger in the NY Slimes article.  That's an outright lie, by your own evidence above - he was assigned by the CIA, and remember who works for the CIA, his own wife.  So let's start with that premise alone, and that to me says that they were out to "lay blame" out there for the media on Bush's administration.

This is actually untrue, and is based on an RNC Talking point which deliberately misinterprets/edits Wilson's own words to make Wilson sound like a distortion. For some reason the link to the original MMFA post debunking that talking point is not working on my computer this evening despite the fact that MMFA cites it all the time, but here is a page which links to all of the hard evidence.

[KipWellsFan]

Anyway... JOE WILSON said the VP assigned him to Niger in the NY Slimes article. That's an outright lie, by your own evidence above - he was assigned by the CIA, and remember who works for the CIA, his own wife. So let's start with that premise alone, and that to me says that they were out to "lay blame" out there for the media on Bush's administration.

 

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/opinion/...artner=USERLAND

 

No lie here, thanks Balta for the heads up.

[EvilMonkey]

I wonder who will end up with the tougher sentence: Scooter Libby or Sandy Berger? Lie to cover your ass or those of your boss vs steal top secret documents and lie to cover your ass or those of your boss. Hmmmm.

[KipWellsFan]

Patrick Fitzgerald Indicted 60 Republicans

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/10/30/101014.shtml

 

Not sure if this article has anything of any actual importance, see for yourself.

[Rex Kickass]

I wonder who will end up with the tougher sentence: Scooter Libby or Sandy Berger?  Lie to cover your ass or those of your boss vs steal top secret documents and lie to cover your ass or those of your boss.  Hmmmm.

 

When all else fails, rationalize. Compare your guy's crime to the crimes of other folks.

 

And get it right. Lie to cover your ass over the issue of exposing a CIA front company dealing with weapons of mass destruction tracking DURING wartime vs steal top secret documents and lie to cover your ass.

[EvilMonkey]

When all else fails, rationalize. Compare your guy's crime to the crimes of other folks.

 

And get it right. Lie to cover your ass over the issue of exposing a CIA front company dealing with weapons of mass destruction tracking DURING wartime vs steal top secret documents and lie to cover your ass.

Well now, since he destroyed the documents, we don't really know what was in them to hide, do we? Kinda hard to judge the seriousness of the crime when we don't know what he took.