Federal Grand Jury Could Subpoena Talon News Correspondent (and RighTalk host)

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- A federal grand jury has subpoenaed White House records on administration contacts with more than two dozen journalists and news media outlets in a special investigation into the alleged improper leak of a covert CIA official's identity to columnist Robert Novak last July.

Talon News has learned that one of the journalists being targeted is Jeff Gannon, Washington Bureau Chief and White House correspondent for Talon News.

In July of 2003, syndicated columnist, Robert Novak wrote a piece entitled "Mission to Niger" in which he discussed retired diplomat Joseph C. Wilson's investigation into possible Iraqi purchases of uranium from Niger. In the article, Novak disclosed that he was told by two administration officials that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, suggested sending him to Niger to investigate claims outlined in an Italian report regarding the attempted uranium purchases by Iraq.

Novak also identified Plame as a "[CIA] operative on weapons of mass destruction," although in a follow-up column, Novak said that according to unofficial sources, Plame was an analyst and not involved in covert operations. Novak also stressed that her name and occupation were already well known.

"Republican activist Clifford May wrote Monday, in National Review Online, that he had been told of her identity by a non-government source before my column appeared and that it was common knowledge," said Novak in his follow-up column. "Her name, Valerie Plame, was no secret either, appearing in Wilson's 'Who's Who in America' entry."

Two days after Novak's second article, Jeff Gannon wrote a news story for Talon News that outlined White House claims of partisanship in the ensuing furor over the alleged leak.

At one point Gannon quotes a White House spokesman who said, "There are some people that are making unsubstantiated allegations and unsubstantiated rumors about the White House leaking classified information. And some of those people have been forced to back away from that, and then all of a sudden they move the goalpost and focus on another issue that's not the subject of the investigation."

In December of last year, Gannon reported on continuing pressure by Senate Democrats on the Justice Department to "pursue the investigation into the alleged leak of a CIA officer's identity earlier in the year." Gannon also identified Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) and Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee as the two prominent figures leading the push.

At the same time, the Washington Post claimed that "according to their sources, the Central Intelligence Agency believes people in the Bush administration are continuing to release classified information to damage figures at the center of the Niger 'yellowcake' controversy."

According to a subsequent Talon News story by Bobby Eberle regarding the Washington Post piece, "The Washington Post cites an unnamed source who says, 'The CIA is angry about the circulation of a still-classified document to conservative news outlets.' They point to a memo referenced in a Talon News interview of Wilson that suggests his wife was instrumental in his selection for the fact-finding trip to Africa."

Talon News was the only service identified by the Washington Post as having knowledge of the memo's existence.

"I will tell you that the information did not come from inside the administration," Gannon told Talon News. "For something that is supposed to be classified, it seems that this document is easily accessible."

Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported the subpoena of White House records on administration contacts with journalists and news media outlets that are targets in the special investigation.

Gannon declined to comment on whether federal investigators have contacted or interviewed him and said that he has yet to receive a subpoena. Gannon also noted that he has not been contacted by any other news agencies.

"I don't know why I'm on the list of journalists being called before the Grand Jury," Gannon told Talon News. "I have been an outspoken critic of the leak probe and an aggressive questioner of the motives behind it. That seems to have drawn the attention of someone with the authority to issue subpoenas."

Babelfish translation, touched up by me, difficult to translate (for me) French newspaperese, though.

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http://www.izaronews.org/noticias/%2828_09_03%29/extranjera2.htm

"Liberation," October 1, 2003, Paris (released)

"Bush in the Throes of the Wilson Affair (l’affaire Wilson)"

The White House would have balanced (swung? exposed?) a CIA spy

To see him like that, Joe Wilson, consultant and former ambassador, does not have the appearance of nothing. He is a direct and straightforward guy, democratic (maybe “Democrat”), (a) francophile, (and a) specialist in Africa and Iraq, consulting with the Rock Creek Corporation
firm. When it rains, he bears a beret. By him alone, this man became Bush’s nightmare. In July, he burst open the scandal about the alleged Nigerien uranium deliveries to Iraq, exposing to daylight a presidential lie. The affair, which marked the beginning of Bush’s slip in the polls,
rebounds (gets going again) today. At the time of the controversy in July, two sources in the Bush administration revealed that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, analyst for a private firm, was actually a CIA agent. This leak constitutes a Federal crime, liable for prison in which the Department of Justice is investigating. The affair, has done for two days the one of the newspapers. Democratic
senators want the appointment of an independent investigator.

Bush’s spokesman, Scott McClellan, described as "ridiculous" the suspicion Wilson expressed publicly in August, according to whom the political adviser of Bush, Karl Rove, was the origin of the leak. The President, he indicated, asked his team to cooperate fully with the investigation...

Good profile. In February 2002 the CIA decided to send Wilson to Niger, to check information that Iraq acquired uranium from this country. Wilson had a good profile for such a mission (non-secret -or non secret police-). In the Seventies, he was a diplomat in Niger. In 1990, he was the last American diplomat stationed at Baghdad, as the chargé d'affaires. After having gone to Niamey, Wilson explained to
the CIA that this alleged Niger prodcedure did not hold the road (pass muster).

Despite everything, at the end of January, president Bush affirmed that "British intelligence learned that
Saddam Hussein had recently sought to obtain significant quantities of African uranium". July 6, Joe Wilson takes the pen in the New York Times to criticize the administration, evoking his mission. The article starts a beautiful controversy. One week later, in his chronicle published in several newspapers, the conservative editorialist Robert Novak reports that it is Wilson’s wife
who suggested sending her husband to Niger: Valery Plame, he lets slip out, is a CIA agent specializing in weapons of mass destruction, by quoting "two sources". Joseph Wilson always refused to comment on his wife’s work. "I would not say to you if she is, or not, an agent. But this leak is harmful in both cases ", he declared recently in Libération," If she is indeed an agent, the administration exposes her, as her network. If she is not, she must spend her time contradicting... " According to him, "the goal of the leak was dissuasive: to frighten others who wanted to talk, them also, (about) what they know ".

New revelations. Can the affair turn in the "Wilsongate"? For lack of independent investigator, it is not very probable. But new revelations are not excluded. According to Washington Post in July, "two high persons in charge for the White House had called six journalists in Washington to
reveal the identity and the occupation of Wilson’s wife". What does many people to know the source of the leak.

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