Free Republic

Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald famously declared in the Valerie Plame affair that "there is a cloud over the vice president." Last week's release of an FBI interview summary of Dick Cheney's answers in the criminal investigation underscores why Fitzgerald felt that way. On 72 occasions, according to the 28-page FBI summary, Cheney equivocated to the FBI during his lengthy May 2004 interview, saying he could not be certain in his answers to questions about matters large and small in the Plame controversy. The Cheney interview reflects a team of prosecutors and FBI agents trying to find out whether the leaks...

A federal judge has ordered the Justice Department to release notes and summaries of former Vice President Dick Cheney's 2004 interview with Special Prosecutor Pat Fitzgerald in the CIA leak case, but is allowing the deletion of what may be some of the most interesting details in the documents. In a ruling issued Thursday morning, Judge Emmet Sullivan flatly rejected claims by both Bush and Obama appointees at DOJ that the entirety of the records should be withheld because their disclosure could discourage White House officials from cooperating in future investigations. The judge said the prospect of such inquiries was...

  Two sources, including Larry Johnson of No Quarter (who just returned from a business trip in Hawaii), have independently told me that Republicans have in their possession Barack Obama’s Hawaiian Birth Certificate.The sources confirm that the theory I presented here — see Obama Hides Indonesian Identity, Fake Birth Certificate Explained — nearly 10 days ago, IS TRUE:The name on the Birth Certificate is Barry Soetoro.Larry Johnson reports: Did I also mention how small Hawaii is? Republican operatives, with help from their own island backers, have unearthed critical information on Obama and are just biding their time until after the...

A document filed in federal court this week by the Justice Department offers new evidence that former vice president Richard B. Cheney helped steer the Bush administration's public response to the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson's employment by the CIA and that he was at the center of many related administration deliberations. The administration's discussion of Wilson's link to the CIA was meant to undermine criticism by her husband of administration allegations that Iraq attempted to acquire uranium, a matter that her husband had probed for the CIA, according to testimony presented in a 2007 trial. *snip* He mentioned in...

MOSSAD'S KILLING MACHINE COMES TO BRITAIN A killing war between Israel's Mossad and Islamic fanatics came closer this weekend in Britain. The Israeli intelligence agency has sent four members of its kidon assassination squad to this country, to join fifteen other handpicked katsas, its relentless field agents. Their brief is to "disable" any of the "close to 50" British Muslims that the extremist Islamic group, Al-Muhajiroun, last week boasted were ready to carry out suicide missions similar to the one in Tel Aviv. Al-Muhajiroun spokesman, Asif Butt, said the 50 were "primed and ready to go". The threat was sufficient...

The media’s in a tizzy over Colin Powell’s Meet the Press endorsement of Barack Obama this morning. It’s not a surprise to anyone who’s paid attention to his pro-Obama murmurings over the last four months. How will people outside the Beltway bubble respond? Yawn.

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney chose someone in his own likeness to be his new chief of staff. Like Cheney, David Addington shuns the limelight. And like Cheney, Addington already has made a large imprint on the Bush White House. At Cheney's side since the 1980s, Addington has been a behind-the-scenes player in one after another of the hot-button controversies the Bush administration has faced: _The CIA leak probe. _The fight to disclose which corporations advised the White House on energy policy. _The dispute over the treatment of suspected terrorists. _The White House disagreements with the Sept. 11 commission...

When I went to my office Monday, July 7, 2003, Joe Wilson was not in the forefront of my mind. Frances Fragos Townsend was. She had just been named deputy national security adviser at the White House though her background was in liberal Democratic politics, including Attorney General Janet Reno's inner circle during the Clinton administration. Her appointment was a political mystery of the kind I had been exploring for forty years in my column. I wrote the Townsend column Tuesday morning because I had a busy schedule the rest of the day, including a 3 p.m. appointment with Richard...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal appeals court said Friday it would release some of the documents it reviewed when deciding to force journalists to testify in the CIA leak investigation. The ruling followed a request by The Associated Press and Dow Jones, which asked for the release of the sworn statements Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald gave to justify subpoenas for New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper in 2005. Fitzgerald wanted the reporters' help in his investigation of the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to syndicated columnist Robert Novak. The news organizations argued...

A London accountant has described how Pakistan's disgraced nuclear hero Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan visited the West African state of Mali on three occasions between 1998 and 2000. Abdul Ma'bood Siddiqui accompanied A.Q. Khan on three mystery trips  between 1998 and 2000. Their final destination was Timbuktu, a remote outpost in the desert that has always been a magnet for explorers and adventurers from around the world. The mystery behind the visits has deepened following recent revelations that Khan is also the owner of a small hotel in the town that he has named after Hendrina, his Dutch-born wife and...

Fitzgerald's Cover-Up It's time to hold the special prosecutor accountable. Wednesday, April 4, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT For a prosecutor who claims to be a truth-seeker, Patrick Fitzgerald sure can be secretive. Even now that the Scooter Libby trial is over and his "leak" investigation is all but closed, the unaccountable special counsel wants to keep his arguments for creating a Constitutional showdown over reporters and their sources under lock and key. Mr. Fitzgerald is fighting release of the affidavits he filed with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to justify compelling two reporters to testify about their conversations with...

March 26, 2007, 0:00 a.m. A GOP Congressman Asks Questions About Valerie Plame Wilson’s Testimony Georgia’s Lynn Westmoreland wants more details about the decision to send Joseph Wilson to Niger. By Byron York When Valerie Plame Wilson testified recently before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, just two Republicans — out of 17 on the committee — bothered to show up. Ranking Republican Rep. Tom Davis asked few questions and seemed largely uninterested in the matter. The only other Republican to appear, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia, showed more interest but appeared not to have mastered the details...

It's really too bad that Karl Rove/Dick Cheney/Scooter Libby/Dick Armitage/whoever ruined Valerie Plame's life by destroying her priceless anonymity. Still, there's an upside: Now you can have lunch with Plame and her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson for the low, low current asking price of $950.00.The bill of fare: Includes lunch for two(2) with Valerie Plame Wilson and Joe Wilson and a signed book. We don't remember who told us, but you'll have lunch with Ambassador Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame at a "safehouse". Lost in the din of the leak scandal that has consumed Washington is the very personal impact...

Wilsongate: Motive, Means, and Opportunity The Buried Story Behind PlamegateBy Fedora Introduction Since Robert Novak mentioned Valerie Plame’s CIA background in July 2003, the media has focused on trying to trace the leak of Plame’s name to the White House, but has devoted less follow-up to another newsworthy angle in Novak’s original story. Novak wrote: The CIA's decision to send retired diplomat Joseph C. Wilson to Africa in February 2002 to investigate possible Iraqi purchases of uranium was made routinely at a low level without Director George Tenet's knowledge. . . Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife,...

Before we put Plame "leak" story to bed once and for all, I want to reiterate out what I first posited almost two years ago, which now seems to be more true than ever. It was almost certainly Mr. Joseph C. Wilson IV who "outed" his wife as a CIA officer. And he probably did this in early May 2003 at after meeting with top level Democrats and around the time he began to work for the John Kerry for President campaign.Let's run through the chronology.January 28, 2003: President George W. Bush gave his State of the Union speech.February 6,...

Some fascinating details on the CIA leak affair are coming out in the courtroom of the Lewis Libby trial. This morning, for example, we got a better picture of why former ambassador Joseph Wilson decided to go public with his story, publishing an op-ed in the New York Times in July 2003. Prior to that time, Wilson had been talking to reporters on background — his name had not been linked to the whole Niger/yellowcake/16 words affair. But Wilson has said in a number of interviews that after watching the appearance of then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on "Meet the...

Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage originally leaked Plame's identity. Armitage says the leak was inadvertent, and he is not being prosecuted.......Federal prosecutors are trying to show that Libby lied to investigators about conversations he had with reporters regarding Plame. Libby has denied lying and says he has a faulty memory........ Former Cheney Chief of Staff on Trial for Allegedly Lying to a Grand Jury, Not Outing CIA Agent: .Jan. 16, 2007 — Jury selection begins today in the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby is charged with...

WASHINGTON -- A jury that includes four critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policies was seated Monday to try former White House aide "Scooter" Libby on charges of lying about what he told reporters concerning the wife of a prominent war opponent. The jury of nine women and three men was seated after a nearly hourlong court session that was as silent as a professional chess match. Prosecutors and defense attorneys consulted in whispers, then handed papers to the clerk to exercise their 20 unexplained strikes of potential jurors. The only sound was the clerk reading the number of each...

Inside the Beltway "Very odd," says our source. "They sat at a table in the back." Referring to the intriguing trio of Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, and his wife, Valerie Plame, of CIA-leak fame,

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is raising the possibility that records sought in the CIA leak investigation could be missing because of an e-mail archiving problem at the White House. The prosecutor in the criminal case against Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff said in a Jan. 23 letter that not all e-mail was archived in 2003, (((GET THIS: ***the year the Bush administration exposed the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame.***)))) (They aren't even faking journalistic integrity in leaving out the word "allegedly.") Lawyers for defendant I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby this week accused prosecutors of withholding evidence...

A former top CIA official said Thursday that despite the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iraq is likely to be looking for weapons of mass destruction within the next five to 10 years. Paul Pillar, who until last year was in charge of intelligence assessments for the Middle East, said the CIA warned the Bush administration before the Iraq invasion in 2003 that a change of regimes would not necessarily solve any WMD problem. In a speech at the Middle East Institute here, Pillar said Iraqis live in "a dangerous neighborhood," with rival countries pursuing weapons of mass destruction. So the...

For months Washington’s liberal chattering class filled the airwaves and spilled barrels of ink on the always implausible conspiracy theory holding that Bush White House Pooh-Bahs intentionally leaked the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame in retaliation for her husband’s very public and largely untruthful campaign against the Bush administration’s war policy. But a new book by two decidedly not Bush-friendly reporters — David Corn of the left-wing Nation and Michael Isikoff of the Washington Post — shows the whole controversy to be a sham. No White House people were involved at all. Instead, the leaker was Deputy Secretary of...

Tim Russert, N.Y. Times Subpoenaed In CIA Leak Case POSTED: 12:47 pm EST March 16, 2006 UPDATED: 12:54 pm EST March 16, 2006 Email This Story | Print This Story WASHINGTON -- Lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby have subpoenaed The New York Times, former Times reporter Judith Miller and NBC correspondent Tim Russert for documents concerning the disclosure of an undercover CIA agent's identity, as the former White House aide's legal team prepares for his trial. Libby, who was Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, is charged with five counts of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI....

A federal judge ordered the CIA on Friday to turn over highly classified intelligence briefings to Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide to use in the aide's defense against perjury charges. U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton rejected CIA warnings that the nation's security would be imperiled if the presidential-level documents were disclosed to lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff. The judge said the CIA can either delete highly classified information from the briefing material and provide copies of what Libby received six days a week, often with Cheney. Or, Walton said, the CIA...

Let’s say you’re a federal prosecutor.        You’re investigating officials in the Bush White House, trying to find out whether they violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or the Espionage Act when they told reporters that Valerie Wilson, wife of the ardent Bush critic Joseph Wilson, worked for the CIA. Violations of those laws would be a very serious matter indeed. And just to make your investigation a high-pressure affair, you’re dealing with some very prominent figures, including Lewis Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff, and Karl Rove, the president’s top political adviser.Then you run into a problem. You look...

White House to 'hit back' at Democrats Aides plan aggressive response to claims intelligence misused From Dana Bash CNN Washington Bureau Tuesday, November 8, 2005; Posted: 11:55 p.m. EST (04:55 GMT) WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Top White House officials say they're developing a "campaign-style" strategy in response to increasing Democratic allegations that the Bush administration twisted intelligence to make its case for war. White House aides, who agreed to speak to CNN only on the condition of anonymity, said they hoped to increase what they called their "hit back" in coming days. The officials say they plan to repeatedly make the...

Reporters May Get Hottest Seats At Cheney Aide's Trial By ANNE MARIE SQUEO Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL November 7, 2005 After initial protests over protecting their sources, three prominent journalists ended up telling a federal prosecutor about their conversations with I. Lewis Libby, leading to the White House official's indictment for perjury, false statements and obstruction of justice. Although no date has been set, Mr. Libby's case is expected to go to trial some time next year. When it does, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney won't be the only one in the...

White House urged to 'come clean' in CIA leak case Maryland Democrat tells Bush to honor pledge to fire officials Saturday, November 5, 2005; Posted: 3:32 p.m. EST (20:32 GMT) WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush should "come clean" about any White House officials involved in the leak of the name of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame and "honor his pledge to fire all those involved," Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland said Saturday in the Democrats' weekly radio address. "It's been one week since the vice president's chief of staff was indicted, and there are still very serious questions about how...

EU to Seek Comment From Governments On Alleged CIA Jails Associated Press November 4, 2005 10:18 a.m. BRUSSELS -- The European Commission said Friday it would encourage governments in Eastern Europe, and those seeking membership, to comment publicly on allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency set up secret prisons in the region to interrogate al Qaeda suspects. The allegations have already triggered a flurry of denials from governments in the former Soviet bloc and prompted European Union officials, the continent's top human-rights organization and the international Red Cross to say they would look into the issue. Such prisons, European officials...

Your e-mails: Advice for the president CNN.com readers offer ideas for what Bush should do Wednesday, November 2, 2005; Posted: 7:22 p.m. EST (00:22 GMT) (CNN) -- Just a year after President Bush won a second term in a tight election, his administration faces plummeting approval ratings and troubles including rising energy prices, an indictment at the White House and waning support for the war in Iraq. CNN.com asked readers to pose as advisers to the president and offer suggestions for ways the administration could get back on track. Here is a sampling of those responses, sent in by e-mail....

Joseph Wilson: 'Karl Rove should be fired' Wilson says 'justice' was served by Libby's indictment Monday, October 31, 2005; Posted: 7:42 p.m. EST (00:42 GMT) Editor's Note: CNN Access is a regular feature on CNN.com providing interviews with newsmakers from around the world. (CNN) -- Retired career diplomat and former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson has been a prominent figure throughout special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into who leaked the secret identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife. Three days after a federal grand jury indicted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, in the...

Newsview: Cheney Again at Center of Drama By RON FOURNIER, AP Political Writer Tue Oct 25, 7:26 PM ET WASHINGTON - It should surprise nobody that Vice President Dick Cheney is at the center of another firestorm. He's got his hands in just about everything at the White House. Now the administration's Mr. Fix-It faces a sticky political, if not legal, situation with the latest leak in the CIA leak investigation. "His name is thrown into the mix," said Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar and political analyst at the Brookings Institution. "Big time." Cheney once called a New York Times...

All About Iraq October 24, 2005 Rampant leaks notwithstanding, no one but Patrick Fitzgerald knows all of the criminal evidence the special prosecutor is considering against senior White House officials. Our hope is that he also understands that the job of a prosecutor is not to settle what at bottom is a political and policy fight over the war in Iraq. Let's stipulate that the law is the law, and if Bush administration officials lied to a grand jury in the clear and obvious way that Bill Clinton did, they should be prosecuted. If Mr. Fitzgerald has evidence of a...

Oct. 24, 2005 issue - When Karl Rove emerged after four grueling hours before a federal grand jury in Washington last Friday, his lawyer Robert Luskin made one more attempt to figure out just where his client stood. He approached special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald outside the hearing room and asked if Rove's fortunes had changed in the two-year-old inquiry of who leaked the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame. But Fitzgerald, ever tight-lipped, wasn't giving anything up. He curtly told the lawyer that "no decisions" had been made, Luskin says. That left Luskin, the brainy battle-tested Washington litigator hired to...