Posted on 08/18/2010 12:03:23 AM PDT by STARWISE
The Valerie Plame affair can shed some light on Rod Blagojevich's trial. It was Plame's husband Joe Wilson who put the lie into the "Bush lied us into war" slogan. Bush rightly told the nation that Hussein had sought yellow cake uranium from Niger.
Joe Wilson claimed he was sent by Dick Cheney to go to Niger to find out. Wilson was found to be lying in parts large and small.
But the damage was done. The entire focus of the war shifted to the lack of yellow cake uranium and other WMD.
Turns out that Dick Cheney did not send Valerie Plame's husband to Niger to prove or disprove anything, it was Valerie Plame herself. Hoping to keep a "scandal" alive, the party apparatchiks in the media howled and complained that the Bush Administration "outed" Valerie Plame in order to punish her and silence others who might come forward to make fools of themselves as Joe Wilson did.
Patrick Fitzgerald was placed in charge of an investigation to find out who "leaked" Valerie Plame's name.
Lewis Libby was convicted for having a different memory of the affair than the late Tim Russert. Valerie Plame was not a covert operative and Lewis Libby did not "leak" her name.
It was Richard Armitage who told Robert Novak that it was Valerie Plame who had her husband sent to Niger to look for yellow cake uranium and not Dick Cheney.
No actual crime was committed.
The only thing that really happened in the whole affair was that the truth got out and it was damaging to the left's effort to criminalize the Bush Administration.
Patrick Fitzgerald knew all the relevant facts before he started his "investigation." He knew that no crime was committed because Valerie Plame was not a covert operative.
Fitzgerald knew at the outset that Richard Armitage told Bob Novak that Valarie Plame sent her husband to Niger. But Fitzgerald had an "investigation" to lead and an unlimited budget to spend.
Fitzgerald, whose only charge was to find out who "outed" Valerie Plame, wasted untold millions of taxpayer dollars on what amounted to "perjury traps." The media wanted to see Libby or Rove "frog marched" and Fitzgerald was willing to oblige them despite all the evidence to the contrary.
During Lewis Libby's trial all the relevant facts of the case were purposely withheld from Libby's jury. The jury was not told that no crime was committed.
The jury was not told that it was Richard Armitage who committed the non-crime of pointing out the fact that Plame sent her husband to Niger.
But these were inconvenient truths to Fitzgerald and the judge. Libby's defense lawyers were not permitted to tell the truth to the jury: There was no crime committed and therefore no motive for Libby to lie to anyone about anything.
While the defense was denied these crucial truths, it did not stop Fitzgerald parading around the court room intoning that some heinous crime was committed and that Lewis Libby was caught lying about it to save his skin.
The jurors never heard the name Richard Armitage.
The only obstruction of truth and obstruction of justice in the court room came from Fitzgerald himself. The foreman of the jury, Tim Russert's BBQ buddy and neighbor believed Tim Russert's memory and not Lewis Libby's memory.
What did we learn from the Valarie Plame affair? Joe Wilson was a liar and Patrick Fitzgerald is a dangerous political hack capable of ruining the lives of otherwise innocent people.
After wasting millions of taxpayer dollars, ruining an innocent man's life, and obstructing justice in the courtroom Fitzgerald moved on to Chicago to set up shop.
Federal investigators had Governor Rod Blagojevich's phones tapped. Blagojevich was in the process of naming Obama's replacement in the Senate. For the first time, the public might learn of the common and ordinary backroom deals practiced by Chicago politicians, the unions, and political hacks like Obama and Blagojevich.
Yesterday we learned that Blagojevich's defense lawyers are complaining that they, like Libby's lawyers, were not allowed to introduce relevant witnesses, names, and facts into the case.
As in the case against Libby, could this information be inconvenient to Fitzpatrick's case against Blagojevich? Blagojevich's defense lawyers are under threat of contempt of court should they tell jurors what they feel is pertinent information to Blagojevich's defense.
Once the federal investigators learned that Obama chieftains were pressuring Blagojevich to name their choice, Valerie Jarrett, Senator, political hack Patrick Fitzgerald stepped in to end the investigation. Just when things were getting interesting!
Fitzgerald claimed that so many crimes were being committed by Blagojevich that he had to stop things immediately!
Why not let some money and jobs change hands Mr. Fitzgerald? Even Elliot Spitzer got that amount of due process. What is it that Blagojevich is charged with anyway?
On July 7th, 2008 we learned that 500 tons of yellow cake uranium was secretly shipped from Iraq to Canada.
I wonder what bombshells remain to be unearthed from the Fitzgerald Vs Blagojevich scandal.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Saturday, November 18, 2006 How Patrick Fitzgerald failed to stop 9/11 Many more posts on Triple Cross to follow, including my review of the book.
Excerpt:
Harper Collins issued the following press release announcing Peter Lance's new book about Ali Mohamed, Able Danger, and the failure of the FBI to stop the 9/11 attacks:
Click here to download the PDF.
TRIPLE CROSS
How Bin Laden’s Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets and the FBI -- And Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him
By Peter Lance
In TRIPLE CROSS, five-time Emmy-award winning investigative reporter Peter Lance reveals how U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and the FBI’s elite bin Laden squad failed to stop Ali Mohamed, a1 Qaeda’s master spy, in the years leading up to the 9/11 attacks.
Recruited as an FBI informant as early as 1992, Mohamed -- an intimate of Osama bin Laden -- was allowed to remain free for years, planning and executing multiple acts of terror, including the 1998 African embassy bombings that killed 224 and injured 4000 -- while Fitzgerald and key FBI agents did little to stop him.
Mohamed had been on the FBI’s radar since 1989, when the FBI’s Special Operations Group photographed a cell of his trainees firing AK-47s at a Long Island shooting range. Yet despite their prior knowledge of this New York cell, the Bureau ended its investigation, paving the way for multiple acts of terror in the years that followed.
Of the Islamic radicals trained by Ali Mohamed and photographed by the FBI: one went on to kill Rabbi Meier Kahane in 1990, three were convicted in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and another American Muslim was convicted by Patrick Fitzgerald in 1995 in a plot to blow up the bridge and tunnels into Manhattan.
Mohamed himself was opened as a Bureau informant on the West Coast in 1992-a year before the WTC bombing. Worse, he continued to snooker Fitzgerald and other FBI and Justice Department officials for years as he learned the FBI’s playbook on a1 Qaeda.
After a five-year investigation into FBI negligence on the road to 9/11, Lance reveals:
How Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who was directing the FBI’s elite bin Laden squad (I-49), allowed Ali Mohamed to remain an active a1 Qaeda agent despite the fact that the FBI knew he had sworn allegiance to bin Laden as early as 1993.
Mohamed moved the Saudi billionaire from Afghanistan to Sudan, trained his personal bodyguard, set up a1 Qaeda terror camps in Khartoum, and trained the terrorists responsible for the 1993 WTC bombing and Day of Terror plots.
How Fitzgerald and other top officials buried a treasure trove of a1 Qaeda-related evidence in 1996 -- including proof of a liquid-based airliner bomb plot that was a precursor to the August 2006 plot revealed by U.K. authorities. The evidence included proof of an active a1 Qaeda cell operating in NYC five years before 9/11.
Rest @ above link
** Ping!
Sam Adams, Sr., one of Blagojevich’s attorneys,
said it plain and simple: Fitzgerald is a nut!
Previously in the Blagojevich case:
~~~~~~~~
Judge Zagel threatens to hold Blagojevich lawyer in contempt; attorney vows to go to jail
Steve Bartin 26 July 2010
*snip*
The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
###
A fiery clash between Rod Blagojevich’s lawyer and judge broke out at the end of court, with the judge threatening to hold Sam Adam Jr. in contempt of court if he didn’t abide by his ruling and Adam later vowing to go to jail over the dispute.
The jury was out of the room when the clash happened. It ultimately sidetracked the trial for the day and it’s back on tomorrow morning.
Zagel told Adam he could not tell jurors in his closing argument that the government had refused to call 35 witnesses named in the indictment, including Tony Rezko, Bill Quinlan and Stuart Levine.
“I don’t want to get into the classic mode that if the facts are against you and the law is against you, then attack the opposing lawyer. That’s all you’re doing,” Zagel said.
“The fact is, you cannot draw an evidentiary inference from the fact a witness was not called by the other side when you had an equal right to call them.”
Good recount of history. Fitz needs to be in jail.
Fitzgerald sends Scooter Libby to jail for a non crime and fails to present a good enough case to send Blago to jail with a whole bunch of other Chicago thugs. This stinks to high heaven. And my son wears a uniform to defend this? What the hell have we become??
** Ping!
Fitzgerald is a proven scumbag, and should be serving time in jail, not drawing a salary, walking around free! JMHO
Not quite so simple ....the Blago jury split 11 to 1 ....(guilty)
Had me until this. This is the yellowcake that was found with UN seals intact when we invaded Iraq. It has nothing to do with Wilson, Scooter, or Blago.
bump
A “Thank you STARWISE!!” bookmark!.
Mon July 7, 2008
From Brianna Keilar and Larry Shaughnessy
CNN
###
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The United States secretly shipped out of Iraq more than 500 tons of low-grade uranium dating back to the Saddam Hussein era, the Pentagon said Monday.
The U.S. military spent $70 million ensuring the safe transportation of 550 metric tons of the uranium from Iraq to Canada, said Pentagon spokesman Brian Whitman.
The shipment, which until recently was kept secret, involved a U.S. truck convoy, 37 cargo flights out of Baghdad to a transitional location, and then a transoceanic voyage on board a U.S.-government-owned ship designed to carry troops to a war zone, he said.
The “yellowcake” uranium transfer was requested by the Iraqi government at the encouragement of the U.S. government, Whitman said.
*snip*
He said yellowcake uranium is a commonly traded commodity used for nuclear power generation. It is not enriched and cannot be used without first going through a complicated enrichment process, he said, but because of the unstable nature of Iraq, the United States and the Iraqi government decided it should be moved out of that country. Iraq has no nuclear power generating plants.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/07/iraq.uranium/index.html
~~~~~~~~~
Separately US President George W Bush said looting could be one of the reasons why the former Iraqi regime’s suspected arsenal of weapons of mass destruction has not yet been found.
“For more than a decade, Saddam Hussein went to great lengths to hide his weapons from the world,” Mr Bush said in his weekly radio address.
“And in the regime’s final days, documents and suspected weapons sites were looted and burned.”
Inventory checks
IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told BBC News Online that a team of IAEA inspectors which began visiting the Tuwaitha facility earlier this month was continuing its work.
The seven-member team is checking nuclear material against the agency’s inventories.
They are expected to report by the end of next week.
Tuwaitha was heavily looted for a period during the war, and there has been particular concern about barrels which once stored low-enriched uranium, known as “yellow cake”.
The barrels were emptied and sold to local people for $2 each by looters. Many used the barrels to hold drinking water or food, or to wash clothes.
Limited mission
About 1.8 metric tons of “yellow cake” and 500 tons of unrefined uranium went missing as the Iraqis left Tuwaitha unattended during the war.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3009082.stm
____________________________________________________________
In Saddam’s and his sons’ demonic hands, his brutal regime and cohorts, it would’ve been impossible to predict what he may have attempted to do with it in the future.
We probably won’t know for years all that was discovered in Saddam’s regimes hidden caches, bunkers and hiding places.
Bookmark.
All this made possible by an accomplice known as the mainstream media.
You might say Fitzgerald is guilty of active treason.
Amazing ... Fitz will likely get a promotion. FBI Director?
“We probably won’t know for years all that was discovered in Saddam’s regimes hidden caches, bunkers and hiding places.”
People will be finding buried weapons caches in Iraq for the next thousand years!
Had me until this. This is the yellowcake that was found with UN seals intact when we invaded Iraq. It has nothing to do with Wilson, Scooter, or Blago.On July 7th, 2008 we learned that 500 tons of yellow cake uranium was secretly shipped from Iraq to Canada.
Even if so, the existence of all that yellowcake in a country with no nuclear powerplants does nothing to discredit the idea that Saddam wanted to buy more uranium - which is all that Bush said in those "infamous" 16 words.
>>>Fitzgerald sends Scooter Libby to jail for a non crime and fails to present a good enough case to send Blago to jail with a whole bunch of other Chicago thugs. <<<
Never forget that the consummate a..hole, George W. Bush, refused to pardon Libby, effectively destroying his career.
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