Posted on 12/02/2005 8:05:56 PM PST by Daralundy
There are eight blank pages in the public version of a decision the federal appeals court in Washington issued in February. The decision ordered two reporters to be jailed unless they agreed to testify before a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the identity of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson. What is in those pages is one of the enduring mysteries in the investigation.
In a filing yesterday, the special prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, told the court that he had no objection to the unsealing of parts of those pages, and he gave hints about what they say.
The pages, in a concurring opinion by Judge David S. Tatel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, analyze secret submissions by Mr. Fitzgerald. Judge Tatel suggested, in a terse and cryptic public summary of what he wrote in the withheld pages, that testimony from the reporters, Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, was needed to determine whether a government official committed a crime in identifying Ms. Wilson.
Mr. Cooper avoided jail after his source, Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, gave him permission to testify. Ms. Miller spent 85 days in jail before agreeing to testify after receiving permission from I. Lewis Libby Jr., who was Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Mr. Libby resigned after he was indicted in October on charges of obstructing the investigation and related crimes.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Score: Prosecutor 1, Court 0.
A little revision of history? Scooter gave her permission well prior to being released. IIRC, she negotiated a very limited disclosure deal and Fitz pretty much caved on what he SHOULD have asked. She wasn't waiting for permission, she was waiting for the deal to be engineered.
Garsh, I really hate to read the NY Slimes, even tho this is intriguing. Can you spare me? Is there anything newsworthy beyond what is already showing?
It's not that I'm lazy, I just don't like to go to sleep with an upset stomach.
The only possibly newsworthy item (if I'm interpreting it correctly) is something that has previously been speculated on, but may now be closer to being confirmed, namely that Fitzgerald may have wrongly claimed to a Federal judge that he needed the testimony of Cooper and Miller in order to determine whether Libby or others had committed a crime by revealing Plame's name, when in reality Fitzgerald was merely trying to prove perjury or obstruction on Libby's part.
If only we could pursuade the NYT to leave 8 pages blank.
Over here, over here...more on Fitzy.
This whole mess is a disaster and a charade, from start to finish.
It suggests that all that flap about p. 29 of Tatel's opinion is nonsense.That is, Plame was never an undercover agent whose "outing" posed a threat to national security.
It could also mean that Goss who was confirmed on September 24, 2004 either determined that the material was classified in error or he declassified the information.
History Revision.....I just went back to read Wilson's early statements. According to Joe: "It was not a CIA mission and it was not a secret". The CIA, the Ambassador to Niger AND staff, and the State Department were all briefed BY WILSON. Mind boggling!!
Nice find .. any chance you can put up the link? That sounds like it should go to the top of the list of Joe's lies.
In Joe's own words: "Talked to the State Department. My trip out there, by the way, was not a CIA trip".
You can probably find it by googling....Frontline, Joseph C. Wilson. (Sorry, don't know linking etc.)
Actually, the noteworthy part of this is that the TY Times would be forced to write an article that admits that there was no crime in outing the ditz.
After reading, check out the comments also:
http://www.indcjournal.com/archives/002104.php
Be advised... from
http://scyllacharybdis.blogspot.com/
Here is the timeline of events from Fitzgerald's indictment of Scooter Libby, with Bummer's inserts in RED to mark the timeline relevance of the recent Bob Woodward disclosure:
2. On or about January 28, 2003, President George W. Bush delivered his State of the Union address which included sixteen words asserting that "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
3. On May 6, 2003, the New York Times published a column by Nicholas Kristof which disputed the accuracy of the "sixteen words" in the State of the Union address. The column reported that, following a request from the Vice President’s office for an investigation of allegations that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger, an unnamed former ambassador was sent on a trip to Niger in 2002 to investigate the allegations. According to the column, the ambassador reported back to the CIA and State Department in early 2002 that the allegations were unequivocally wrong and based on forged documents.
4. On or about May 29, 2003, in the White House, LIBBY asked an Under Secretary of State ("Under Secretary") for information concerning the unnamed ambassador’s travel to Niger to investigate claims about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium yellowcake. The Under Secretary thereafter directed the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research to prepare a report concerning the ambassador and his trip. The Under Secretary provided LIBBY with interim oral reports in late May and earlyJune 2003, and advised LIBBY that Wilson was the former ambassador who took the trip.
[Maybe Woodward's "mid June" conversation goes here? - ed]
5. On or about June 9, 2003, a number of classified documents from the CIA were faxed to the Office of the Vice President to the personal attention of LIBBY and another person in the Office of the Vice President. The faxed documents, which were marked as classified, discussed, among other things, Wilson and his trip to Niger, but did not mention Wilson by name. After receiving these documents, LIBBY and one or more other persons in the Office of the Vice President handwrote the names "Wilson" and "Joe Wilson" on the documents.
6. On or about June 11 or 12, 2003, the Under Secretary of State orally advised LIBBY in the White House that, in sum and substance, Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and that State Department personnel were saying that Wilson’s wife was involved in the planning of his trip.
7. On or about June 11, 2003, LIBBY spoke with a senior officer of the CIA to ask about the origin and circumstances of Wilson’s trip, and was advised by the CIA officer that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and was believed to be responsible for sending Wilson on the trip.
8. Prior to June 12, 2003, Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus contacted the Office of the Vice President in connection with a story he was writing about Wilson’s trip. LIBBY participated in discussions in the Office of the Vice President concerning how to respond to Pincus. [Note: If Woodward has disclosed Plame to Pincus, PRIOR TO this June 12th call...then the Woodward disclosure to Pincus is material and relevant. - ed.]
9. On or about June 12, 2003, LIBBY was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson’s wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Division. LIBBY understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA.
10. On June 12, 2003, the Washington Post published an article by reporter Walter Pincus about Wilson’s trip to Niger, which described Wilson as a retired ambassador but not by name, and reported that the CIA had sent him to Niger afteran aide to the Vice President raised questions about purported Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium. Pincus’s article questioned the accuracy of the "sixteen words," and stated that the retired ambassador had reported to the CIA that the uranium purchase story was false.
11. On or about June 14, 2003, LIBBY met with a CIA briefer. During their conversation he expressed displeasure that CIA officials were making comments to reporters critical of the Vice President’s office, and discussed with the briefer, among other things, "Joe Wilson" and his wife "Valerie Wilson," in the context of Wilson’s trip to Niger.
[Using June 15th as the arbitrary date of Woodward's "mid-June" conversation: Woodward has an interview with a current or former Bush administration official in mid-June 2003 during which the person told me Wilson's wife worked for the CIA on weapons of mass destruction as a WMD analyst. Woodward recalls that the reference seemed "casual and offhand", and did not appear to him to be either classified or sensitive." - ed., from Woodward's press release.]
[After Woodward's mid-June 2003 interview with the source, Woodward told Walter Pincus, a reporter at The Washington Post, without naming Woodward's source, that Woodward understood taht Wilson's wife worked at the CIA as a WMD analyst. Walter Pincus does not recall that Woodward passed this information to Pincus. - ed., from Woodward's press release.]
12. On or about June 19, 2003, an article appeared in The New Republic magazine online entitled "The First Casualty: The Selling of the Iraq War." Among other things, the article questioned the "sixteen words" and stated that following a request for information from the Vice President, the CIA had asked an unnamed ambassador to travel to Niger to investigate allegations that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger. The article included a quotation attributed to the unnamed ambassador alleging that administration officials "knew the Niger story was a flat-out lie." The article also was critical of how the administration, including the Office of the Vice President, portrayed intelligence concerning Iraqi capabilities with regard to weapons of mass destruction, and accused the administration of suppressing dissent from the intelligence agencies on this topic.
13. Shortly after publication of the article in The New Republic, LIBBY spoke by telephone with his then Principal Deputy and discussed the article. That official asked LIBBY whether information about Wilson’s trip could be shared with the press to rebut the allegations that the Vice President had sent Wilson. LIBBY responded that therewouldbe complications at the CIA in disclosing that information publicly, and that he could not discuss the matter on a non-secure telephone line.
14. On or about June 23, 2003, LIBBY met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller. During this meeting LIBBY was critical of the CIA, and disparaged what he termed "selective leaking" by the CIA concerning intelligence matters. In discussing the CIA’s handling of Wilson’s trip to Niger, LIBBY informed her that Wilson’s wife might work at a bureau of the CIA.
Updated after Woodward statement:
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/11/16/D8DTLRKG5.html
And as to the circumstances in which Woodward learned about "Wilson's wife," Woodward says:
"The person told me Wilson's wife worked for the CIA on weapons of mass destruction as a WMD analyst. ...The reference seemed to me to be casual and offhand, and that it did not appear to me to be either classified or sensitive. I testified that according to my understanding an analyst in the CIA is not normally an undercover position. "
"Casual and offhand? So much for all that nefarious evil intent that the Left has come to accept as dogma.
And that's why the Left is so anguished over Woodward, although they haven't worked through it all, yet.
Woodward found out that "Wilson's wife" worked at the CIA. Woodward told his fellow WAPO reporter, Pincus.
Pincus kept up his sleuthing into this intriguing matter. If you believe that the identity of Valerie Plame was no secret among the dining set it Washington, then Pincus likely nailed down who this "wife" was with a couple of phone calls.
So Pincus puts 2+2+2 together, and figures out that Valerie Plame is Wilson's husband. And Pincus wants the White House to confirm or deny what involvement Plame had in sending Wilson to Niger. So Pincus calls the White House.
Guess what, folks. No only is there no crime, there. But indeed, the Left's fictional religious tenet that Karl Rove engineered this, to punish Wilson, becomes roadkill.
Woodward and Pincus (and others) figured this out. It's the Investigative Reporters, Stupid.
I never claimed to debunk Bush’s claim, Wilson says.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh072004.shtml
Well, they meant to print Arby's coupons in there, but forgot.
I want my $0.50 off the Big MontanoTM sandwich, dammit!
Actually, Woodward refers to RAP-porter and RAP-porting. Why can't he pronounce "reporter" correctly? He and I both grew up in Wheaton, so I know it's not a regional accent.
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