| Author | Message | | Alpha | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 8:18 am Post subject: Cindy Sheehan Confronts Judith Miller's War |
| Cindy Sheehan Confronts Judith Miller's War
Cindy Sheehan Confronts Judith Miller's War
by Ahmed Amr
(Sunday August 14 2005)
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"Cindy has drawn a line in the sand for George Bush. In doing so, she has energized tens of thousands of peace activists and tens of millions of Americans. By now, it should be clear that Sheehan is speaking for the silent majority of Americans who want some straight answers from Bush instead of bumper sticker slogans."
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This war can best be told by narrating the stories of two women. One woman played an instrumental role in launching the invasion of Iraq and the other is determined to end the occupation and bring the troops home. One woman wants to shed light on the lies that led to war and the other is willing to hide in jail to avoid telling the truth about her role in this catastrophe.
One lady is the mother of a fallen soldier who only demands a few rational answers as to why her son died. The second is a war mongering tramp and WMD huckster who refuses to divulge her role in outing Valerie Plame. One woman is an outsider demanding a single hour of the President’s attention. The other is a power broker from Sulzberger’s New York Times with ready access to Bush administration insiders like Karl Rove and Lewis Libby. One woman is invigorating the entire peace movement and the other is a bona fide neo-con operative of a War Party in retreat.
Cindy Sheehan wants to tell the very same tale that Judith Miller refuses to narrate. Miller was a one-woman propaganda squad on a mission to blast American minds with weapons of mass deception. She marketed the war that Cindy refused to buy. Even so, it was Cindy’s son who ended up paying the ultimate price at the age of 24.
Cindy has been compared favorably to Rosa Parks who ignited the civil rights struggle by refusing to move to the back of the bus. I think a more apt historical comparison is to a union electrician and a Polish patriot – Lech Walesa. Cindy and her band of supporters in Crawford are electrifying the nation with a crusade for the truth as to the reasons we went to war.
If the war wasn’t for the WMDs that Miller promised. If it wasn’t justified by the neo-con canard that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda and was involved in the 9/11 atrocities. Then why did Bush send Casey Sheehan and nearly two thousand of his comrades to kill and die in the deserts of the Gulf? For the record, Casey Sheehan died after volunteering for a dangerous mission to save wounded soldiers in Sadr City. Why can’t Bush demonstrate a fraction of Casey’s courage by sparing an hour to meet Cindy?
The Mess on Potamia started when the president decided to illegally attack Iraq under the cover of the ‘war on terror.’ We now have ample evidence that his decision resulted in establishing a production line for insurgents fueled by anger and rage at the humiliating conquest of their country. Recent reports reveal that by the summer of 2002, Bush and Blair had already initiated hostilities by intensifying air strikes to soften up Iraqi targets. The Downing Street Memos are yet another confirmation that WMD intelligence was fixed and that the decision to go to war was made long before it was announced to the public. And the Plame games prove that Joseph Wilson was punished for refusing to go along with the Yellow cake uranium scam and for exposing the ‘intelligence failure’ cover-up.
Bush’s neo-cons brigades - including Judith Miller - continue to dodge any further probing of the WMD hoax. They lied in the firm belief that - once their delusional expectations materialized - they would be forgiven for the minor sin of telling WMD fibs.
Cindy Sheehan’s only sin is that she wants to force a frank and constructive national debate about the hidden agenda behind this war. She is demanding a clear definition of the ‘noble mission’ the President keeps talking about. And she wants an exit plan. So far, the response from the White House is that no such discussion is warranted.
Bush continues to hide behind the 9/11 atrocities – a blow back catastrophe that happened on his watch and as a result of foreign policies engineered by his dad. He responded to the 9/11 assaults by immediately putting Iraq on the short list of countries that were in dire need of an American invasion. He lied about the WMDs and was wrong about the cost and wrong about the outcome. It took him a year to cope with the fact that he had an insurgency on his hand. He now insists on ‘staying the course’ while navigating a maze that brings a new unexpected twist every day. By now, even Bush must realize that the net result of his misadventure in Mesopotamia will be a theocratic republic or a civil war or both.
Judith Miller and Cindy Sheehan’s tales are intertwined. Both narratives are directly connected to this war of choice. One of them is a hero and one of them is a villain. One of them seeks answers for the nation and the other keeps secrets to protect her neo-con friends in high place. The hero of this epic is taking on the combined forces of the administration and mass media moguls – both intent of drowning her voice in the shark infested waters off the coast of Aruba.
The mass media pundits have taken to writing odes to Miller as a ‘free speech martyr’ while simultaneously unleashing Karl Rove’s neo-con attack squads to muzzle Cindy. They send their investigative reporters in search of the flimsiest excuse to smear the lady from Vacaville. They attack Sheehan’s character and motives while refusing to probe Miller’s neo-con ideological baggage and her intimate connections with the Office of Special Plans.
Even as she emerges as a unifying leader of the anti-war movement, Sheehan is being portrayed as a vulnerable woman manipulated by leftist ‘peace extremists’ who are exploiting her grief. Of course, the reality is that conservative and libertarian pundits were among the first to man the barricades in opposition to this war. This is not Vietnam. This time around, the anti-war movement includes Americans from across the political spectrum – from Patrick Buchanan on the right to Ralph Nader on the left.
The War Party fixers are now claiming that Cindy has already been granted enough face time with Bush. Apparently, the president is already sacrificing enough of his five-week siesta for Republican fund raising. It doesn’t seem to matter that most of the questions Cindy wants answered relate to matters that became public knowledge long after her one and only ten minute encounter with the president – a meeting where Cindy generously accepted the President’s condolences for her son’s death.
By now, Bush must realize that Sheehan is not going to pack up and return to Vacaville. Thanks to journalists from the alternative and international press, her compelling message is getting through to millions of Americans. After denying her coverage for the first week, even the mainstream media is now on the story – if only to defuse her message and smear her reputation.
The administration is now trying to reduce their conflict with Sheehan to a dispute between Americans who want to ‘cut and run’ and those who want to ‘stay the course and complete some yet to be defined noble mission.’ But Cindy Sheehan is not only demanding an immediate withdrawal of American troops – she also wants to know why they were sent to Iraq in the first place and she wants Bush to explain their current mission and elaborate on why he considers it noble. She is also demanding that the President desist from using Casey’s sacrifice to justify sending more young soldiers to an early grave.
The only thing Bush has going for him now is the neo-con mass media brigades. We’ve all had excellent exposure to their talent for burying a story. To avoid embarrassing themselves, the media moguls have gone to great lengths to bury the Plame/Miller scandal. Karl Rove and Lewis Libby have drifted already back into the background without sustaining a scratch in the Plame games. The Israel/AIPAC spy ring at the Pentagon is another story that vanished without a trace. CNN and FOX have permanently relocated their staff to Aruba and can hardly be expected to chew gum and cover a tourist homicide at the same time. Instead of confronting the president with the same questions that Cindy is asking – they insist on joining a smear campaign led by the usual low life suspects.
Cindy has drawn a line in the sand for George Bush. In doing so, she has energized tens of thousands of peace activists and tens of millions of Americans. By now, it should be clear that Sheehan is speaking for the silent majority of Americans who want some straight answers from Bush instead of bumper sticker slogans. One out of three Americans already backs her demand for an immediate withdrawal and two out of three think that the war was a rotten idea from the start. Given the cost in blood and treasure, shouldn’t every American support a spirited debate between citizen Sheehan and her President? Doesn’t the disastrous outcome of this venture entitle Cindy Sheehan to ask a few uncomplicated questions about Judith Miller’s war?
Source:
by courtesy & © 2005 Ahmed Amr
Ahmed Amr is an American and the former editor of NileMedia.com. His writings have focused on the mass media’s iron grip on the state.
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http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/17749
http://www.livejournal.com/~mparent7777/1943176.html | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 6:03 pm Post subject: Latest on AIPAC Espionage and leak of Valerie Plame - |
| Latest on AIPAC Espionage and leak of Valerie Plame - demand that the Israel first US press/media cover this
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics/browse_frm/thread/43fa219004078fd0/451667d5dc45264e#451667d5dc45264e
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20050815_klarevas.html
Will the Precedent Set by the Indictment in a Pentagon Leak Case Spell Trouble for Those Who Leaked Valerie Plame's Identity to the Press?
By LOUIS KLAREVAS
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Monday, Aug. 15, 2005
Tomorrow, August 16, a former Pentagon official and two former employees of a pro-Israel lobby organization, the American-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC), are scheduled to be arraigned in a federal district courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia. All three are being charged by U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty with violating a little known provision of the Espionage Act.This provision makes it a crime to conspire to communicate classified information without proper authorization.
Meanwhile, across the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will be continuing his grand jury investigation. Fitzgerald has been making headlines with his probe into whether senior Bush administration officials who leaked classified information regarding the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame (a.k.a. Valerie Wilson) to columnist Robert Novak and others in the press committed a crime.
So far, defenders of the White House have been quick to point out that Karl Rove and others who appear, from information so far made public, to have played a role in disclosing Plame's identity have not violated the stringent thresholds of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. That Act makes it a crime to publicly disclose the identity of a secret agent in certain circumstances.
But those circumstances may not apply in the Plame case - as FindLaw columnist John Dean has explained. The IIPA sets a high threshold for prosecution, including proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused knew the person being outed had "covert" status. This, in turn, requires a variety of conditions relating to "covertness" to first be established. (For example, the prosecution must prove that the agent had served outside the U.S. within the past five years).
In contrast, the Espionage Act requires no such proof of "covert" status. For this and other reasons, it can be construed more broadly than the IIPA.
I will argue below that, if McNulty's interpretation of the Espionage Act serves as a guide, then the Plame leak, too, could easily be construed as a violation of the Act.
And that, of course, could spell legal trouble for those in the Bush administration who outed Plame, for even if Intelligence Identities Protection Act charges based on the Plame leak won't stick, other charges well may.
The Allegations of the Indictment in United States v. Franklin
Here are the alleged facts of the Virginia Espionage Act case, as set forth in McNulty's indictment:
On the morning of February 12, 2003, Lawrence Franklin, the Iranian desk officer working in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, met with Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman. Both Rosen and Weissman worked at AIPAC - Rosen as the director of foreign policy issues and Weissman as a senior Middle East analyst.
Over breakfast, Franklin allegedly provided to Rosen and Weissman classified details from a draft Pentagon policy document that he was helping prepare. According to the indictment, the disclosure was to be one in a series of leaks of national security-related information pertaining to topics such as attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and plotting by Iranian operatives against Israeli agents.
Allegedly, what Franklin leaked to Rosen and Weissman was promptly relayed to Israeli Embassy officials, Washington think tank analysts, and journalists. In one conversation, Rosen even allegedly boasted to a journalist, "I'm not supposed to know this."
The indictment is able to provide details like this because, unbeknownst to the troika, the U.S. Attorney's office had surveillance in place throughout the course of the alleged conspiracy. Accordingly, it appears to have amassed mounds of evidence against the defendants.
The Charges in United States v. Franklin: Conspiracy to Violate the Espionage Act
The indictment charges against all three men with conspiracy to communicate national defense information to persons not entitled to receive it in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 793(g) - a provision of the Espionage Act that requires that at least one of the co-conspirators acts in a manner to "effect the object of the conspiracy." (The "overt act" requirement is a common feature of conspiracy law, designed to prevent mere conversations from becoming the basis for criminal charges.)
To this end, the grand jury has also indicted Franklin on three counts of violating 18 U.S.C. § 793(d), which makes it a crime for a person, "lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with . . . information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation," to communicate it "to any person not entitled to receive it." The indictment asserts that Franklin's disclosures to Rosen, an American lobbyist, violated the Espionage Act. (Each violation carries a prison term of up to ten years.)
In addition, Rosen has also been indicted on one count of violating 18 U.S.C. § 793(e), which makes it illegal for someone who is not authorized to have access to classified national defense information to "willfully retain," let alone "willfully communicate," such information.
The implication of the charge against Rosen is, strikingly, that any private citizen who receives classified information, and then turns around and discloses it to any other private citizen, is violating the Espionage Act.
United States v. Morison: A Federal Appeals Court Construes the Espionage Act Broadly
The Espionage Act was primarily enacted to punish those who passed classified information to agents of foreign governments. The most famous prosecution under the Act was the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were executed based on claims they acted treasonously.
In the mid-1980s, however, the Espionage Act was applied to a case in which the relevant link was not to a spy, but to a journalist. More specifically, the Act served as the basis for the prosecution of a former U.S. Navy analyst, Samuel Morison, who mailed secret satellite photos to Jane's Defence Weekly, a popular British military affairs magazine. Morison was convicted of violating 18 U.S.C. § 793(d) and (e). (Morison was also convicted of violating 18 U.S.C. § 641, which makes it a crime to purloin and sell any U.S. government record or document without authorization).
On appeal, Morison asserted that his conviction could not stand because the Espionage was intended to be applied only to cases of "classic spying and espionage activity," in which the accused transmitted "national security secrets to agents of foreign governments with intent to injure the United States." In the words of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, Morison's defense was that he was not guilty because "he leaked to the press; he did not transmit to a foreign government." The Fourth Circuit roundly rejected his argument, pointing out that both statutes under which Morison was convicted, by their plain language, apply to "whoever" has access to national defense information: "The language of the two statutes includes no limitation to spies or to 'an agentof a foreign government. . . .' It covers 'anyone.' It is difficult to conceive of any language more definite and clear."
The Court similarly rejected Morison's attempt at a First Amendment defense. It rejected any contention that the Amendment "offers asylum under those circumstances, if proven, merely because the transmittal was to a representative of the press. The First Amendment, in the interest of securing news or otherwise, does not "confer a license on either the reporter or his news source to violate valid criminal laws. . . ."
The court refused to allow the defendant to "invoke the First Amendment as a shield to immunize his act of thievery."
Morison also contested his conviction on grounds that two terms contained in the Espionage Act - "related to national defense" and "willfully" - are unconstitutionally vague.
During the trial, the district court judge had instructed the jury that in order to prove that the purloined material "related to national defense," all that what necessary was to prove that material "would be potentially damaging to the United States or might be useful to an enemy of the United States" and the material was "not available to the general public." In the appellate court's view, this was specific enough to avoid a vagueness challenge.
To support it decision, the Fourth Circuit panel drew on the D.C. Circuit's ruling in its 1983 opinion in Ellsberg v. Mitchell. There, the D.C. Circuit opined, similarly, that national defense information could be broadly defined to encompass any information whereby "there is a 'reasonable danger' that revelation of the information in question would either enable a sophisticated analyst to gain insights into the nation's intelligence-gathering methods and capabilities or would disrupt diplomatic relations with foreign governments."
By this standard, the Fourth Circuit concluded, the reconnaissance photos Morison purloined and transmitted to the press were undeniably materials "related to the national defense."
The Fourth Circuit also rejected the vagueness challenge to the word "willfully" - a fairly common term used to describe the requisite criminal intent in federal and state criminal laws. According to the Fourth Circuit, it was sufficient, as the trial court instructed, to define an act as done "willfully" if it is "done voluntarily and intentionally and with thespecific intent to do something that the law forbids."
The court added that government employees - especially those with security clearances - would know they were attempting to do something illegal; after all, they were required to first familiarize themselves with the laws pertaining to the disclosure of classified information before receiving security clearances. For them, then, only proof of volition and intentional conduct with respect to the leak would be needed.
Though Morison's conviction was upheld by the Fourth Circuit, President Clinton later pardoned Morison.
Could This Precedent Lead to United States v. Rove?
Could the leak of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent lead to similar Espionage Act charges?
First, what about charges under 18 U.S.C. § 793(d)?
Robert Novak identified his sources as "two senior Administration officials." Depending on their positions, they - or their own sources - might have authorized access to Valerie Plame's identity, as the law requires.
In addition, Plame's identity as a CIA agent would match another of the law's requirements - that the leak disclose "information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation." In the Morison case, such information was defined as that which raised "a 'reasonable danger' that revelation of the information in question would either enable a sophisticated analyst to gain insights into the nation's intelligence-gathering methods and capabilities or would disrupt diplomatic relations with foreign governments."
Certainly, the identity of a CIA agent - particularly one who had worked abroad, as Plame had - would fit the bill. And crucially, it would seem to fit the bill whether or not that agent could fill the technical requirements by which the IIPA narrowly defines "covert" status. As noted above, proof of "covert" status simply is not required in an Espionage Act prosecution; the Act's requirements are different.
There's little question Plame's identity was, at a minimum, sensitive, national-security related information. No wonder, then, that a classified State Department memo discussing Plame, which was in the possession of White House staff during the week of the leak, stamped "Secret" around the paragraph identifying Plame.
Finally if the leaker (or leakers) were calling up (or answering the calls of) journalists to proffer this information, it should be easy to prove, as the statute requires, that they "willfully communicate[d] . . . the same [information] to any person not entitled to receive it."
Indeed, the rule from the Morison case, as readers will recall, is that it will be especially easy to prove "willfulness" on the part of someone who, by virtue of receiving a security clearance, had been educated in the law. And as readers will also recall from the Morison case, journalists like Novak and Matthew Cooper of Time, who lack security clearances and learned the leaked information, were obviously "persons not entitled to receive" that information.
But wait. There's more. According to Novak and Cooper, there was more than one source in the Plame leak. That could translate into separate conspiracy charges under 18 U.S.C. § 793(g), which could add to an already considerable prison term.
For all these reasons, it would be wise for onlookers to remember, with respect to the Valerie Plame investigation, that just as many roads may lead to Rome, more than one may lead to jail for one who leaks national security-related information, as the Plame leaker, or leakers, did. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 9:31 pm Post subject: |
| http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/aipacledeen.html
SCANDAL OF THE LOBBY ZIONIST AIPAC: A PERFUME OF WATERGATE
Italian Parliament finger four forgers - Ahmad Chalabi , Francis Brookes, Dewey Clarridge, and Michael Ledeen.
Original french at http://news.stcom.net/modules.php?name=AvantGo&file=print&sid=1603
July 22, the democratic group of the American Senate held a capital hearing to evaluate the extent of the political implications and of safety caused by the disclosure with the press of the identity of the secret agent Valerie Plame. They also examined the behavior of the White House and president Bush which, while refusing to seek and sanction the persons in charge, worsened the damage.
Hearing was chaired by the deputy Henry Waxman and the senator Byron Dorgan, director of Senate Democratic Policy Committee. For Waxman, the revelation of the identity of Limes constitutes not only "one treason and an affront indefensible in its opposition and towards those which work on the lines of face to protect America", but also "an indefensible violation of our national safety". Deputy, which had voted in favour of the invasion of Iraq on the basis of what proved to be lies and half-truths as for the weapons of destruction massive (ADM) Iraqi, clearly implied that the Plame scandal is also a history of lie "Today, says it, we know the truth. I was misled, as the American people were misled, and it is the husband of Valerie Plame, the ambassador Joe Wilson, who contributed to restore the truth.
"Until now, the White House did not provide any credible proof of an agreement of uranium sale between Iraq and Niger", which however constituted one of the key parts of is saying Iraqi threat nuclear "It seems rather than the advisers of the President launched a smear campaign (...) We have only one partial information on what occurred in the hours and the days which followed [ the publication of the article of Wilson bringing back the conclusions of its mission to Niger ] (...) but we know that a secret memorandum of the State Department exposing the identity of Valerie [ Limes that Karl Rove, to advise nearest of the President, spoke about the identity of Mrs. Wilson with the chronicler Robert Novak and the journalist of the magazine Time Matthew Cooper; and that Lewis Libby, head of cabinet of the office of the vice-president, also spoke about Mrs. Wilson with at least a journalist "According to Waxman, the White House gave a report on eleven escapes on the subject.
Various former analysts of the services of information deposited in front of the senators and all underlined at which point it is serious to reveal the identity of a secret agent. That endangers not only the agent, but all the network of people with whom it is in contact, clandestinely, in foreign countries where the information is collected.
"the consequences are much more serious than I imagined it at the beginning", declared the deputy John Conyers. Appointed the Louise Slaughter asked the witnesses if they had already intended to say, during their professional life, that the White House had revealed the identity of a secret agent. Larry Johnson, former analyst with the CIA, was categorical: "With large never! It is without precedent. "
The former officer of the military information (DIA) Patrick LANG insisted on the importance of the factor confidence in the recruitment of foreign citizens to become advisors of the CIA In the event of escape, it is all their confidence towards the United States which is blamed "When not only community of the information, but the elected government (...) of the first country in the world decides, deliberately and apparently for transitory political reasons and without interest, to reveal the identity of a secret agent, the new one makes the effect of a shock in the whole world (...)" One cannot make confidence with the Americans", is said one never does it. "
Larry Johnson contradicted the assertions of the republican Party according to which Plame was not really a clandestine agent since it worked at the HQ of the CIA with Langley, or that it is it which had organized the mission of her husband in Niger. These untrue assertions were repeated by various republican members of Parliament.
For the former treating officer of the CIA Jim Marcinkowski, the refusal of high persons in charge for the government to take their responsabilities following this rupture for confidence, created large a faintness with the power station "They played hide-and-seek with the truth and to semantic plays for more than two years, at the expense of the safety of the American people", he has said.
While were held these hearings, one learned in the New York Times that the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald considers the possibility of accusing of perjury Karl Rove and Lewis Libby because of contradictions in their testimonys and of obstruction of justice.
The White House hopelessly tries to bury the business of uranium native of Niger
EIR learned from several sources in Washington that the White House makes its possible to prevent three bodies of press from revealing the origins of the falsified documents of the government native of Niger, intended to make believe that Saddam Hussein sought to obtain significant quantities of uranium native of Niger to produce nuclear weapons. After having taken knowledge of these documents, appeared in Italy at the end of 2001, Dick Cheney asked the information agencies to check information, which was to lead to the mission of the Wilson ambassador in Niger in February 2002.
A news service, a chain of American television and a newspaper have each one surveyed into the origin of the forgeries. Last year, the emission of CBS, "60 minutes", cancelled at the last minute the diffusion of a special sequence on the business of uranium native of Niger to cover the "scandal" which had just burst concerning the military service of George W Bush. The two other media are about to finish their investigations, and according to our sources, the White House exerts pressures so that they extinguish the business.
In Italy, the Parliament comes to conclude a study on the origins and the consequences from the forgeries, and according to certain sources, the report/ratio mentions among the principal suspects Michael Ledeen, Dewey Clarridge, Ahmed Chalabi and Francis Brookes.
Let us recall that Ledeen works like "consultant" near the service of Italian information SISMI since long years (since the beginning of the Eighties and the bursting of the scandal around the P2 cabin). To December 2001, at the time where the documents natives of Niger were transmitted to the SISMI, it went to Rome in company of Harold Rhode and of Lawrence Franklin of the Pentagon, officially to meet Manucher Ghorbanifar, large protagonist of the Business Iran-Countered. Franklin is at the present time accused to have transmitted secret information to the AIPAC like with a person in charge for the embassy of Israel.
The fact that Clarridge, Chalabi and Brookes (related to Iraqi National Congress (Inc)), are mentioned is particularly interesting. With the end of the year 2001, the tsar of the counter-terrorism of the White House was the General (Cr) Wayne DOWNING. He proposed to take Clarridge for assistant. Brookes came from Rendon Group, a cabinet of "public relations" that the Pentagon engaged to promote Chalabi and the Inc.
Which is the role of the White House in these forgeries? Did the government only exploit the information to arrive to its ends, or a group of néo-conservative around Cheney it took part in their manufacture? No one will not be astonished by the current efforts of the White House to prevent this business from bursting at the great day. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Aug 21, 2005 8:59 pm Post subject: Prosecutor Fitzgerald indicts Novak's former big boss at Chi |
| Prosecutor Fitzgerald indicts Novak's former big boss at Chicago Sun Times
Sunday, August 21, 2005
by Wayne Madsen
August 20, 2005
August 20, 2005 -- Another Patrick Fitzgerald shot across the bow of the neo-cons. U.S. Attorney for Chicago (and special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame/BJ & A White House leak) Patrick Fitzgerald has indicted former Chicago Sun-Times publisher David Radler for the theft of $32 million from the Sun-Times parent company, Hollinger Corporation. Radler is also a past owner of Canada's Ottawa Citizen and Vancouver Sun.
Owned until 2003 by Conrad Black, Hollinger also includes the Jerusalem Post and London Daily Telegraph, two papers that have been propaganda arms of the neocon movement and at the forefront of attacks on anti-Iraq war politicians. Although Fitzgerald did not indict Black, it is believed the prosecutor will have Radler testify against his former business partner. Former Hollinger board member and arch-neocon Richard Perle was, in addition to Radler and Black, cited in a 2004 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) report on fraudulent financial activity at Hollinger. Black's wife, Barbara Amiel Black, a strongly pro-Israeli columnist for the Telegraph and Maclean's and a former Vice President of Hollinger, was cited in a class action lawsuit brought by Canadian investors in Hollinger. Amiel Black has been vociferous in attacking politicians, including British MP George Galloway, who have criticized the invasion of Iraq. The indictment of the Sun Times' former publisher Radick, who has been another strong promoter of Likud and neocon causes, is also significant in light of the Plame matter.
The Sun Times syndicates Robert Novak, the first journalist to reveal in his column Valerie Plame's CIA identity and that of her Brewster Jennings non official cover company. That leak is at the center of Fitzgerald's probe of Karl Rove, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and others in the Bush administration for violations of national security
laws.http://www.libertythink.com/
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 8:40 am Post subject: A CIA Cover Blown, a White House Exposed |
| http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-leak25aug25,0,61238.story?coll=la-home-headlines
THE NATION
A CIA Cover Blown, a White House Exposed
By Tom Hamburger and Sonni Efron
Times Staff Writers
August 25, 2005
WASHINGTON — Toward the end of a steamy summer week in 2003, reporters were peppering the White House with phone calls and e-mails, looking for someone to defend the administration's claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
About to emerge as a key critic was Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat who asserted that the administration had manipulated intelligence to justify the Iraq invasion.
At the White House, there wasn't much interest in responding to critics like Wilson that Fourth of July weekend. The communications staff faced more pressing concerns — the president's imminent trip to Africa, growing questions about the war and declining ratings in public opinion polls.
Wilson's accusations were based on an investigation he undertook for the CIA. But he was seen inside the White House as a "showboater" whose stature didn't warrant a high-level administration response. "Let him spout off solo on a holiday weekend," one White House official recalled saying. "Few will listen."
In fact, millions were riveted that Sunday as Wilson — on NBC's "Meet the Press" and in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post — accused the administration of ignoring intelligence that didn't support its rationale for war.
Underestimating the impact of Wilson's allegations was one in a series of misjudgments by White House officials.
In the days that followed, they would cast doubt on Wilson's CIA mission to Africa by suggesting to reporters that his wife was responsible for his trip. In the process, her identity as a covert CIA agent was divulged — possibly illegally.
For the last 20 months, a tough-minded special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has been looking into how the media learned that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative.
Top administration officials, along with several influential journalists, have been questioned by prosecutors.
Beyond the whodunit, the affair raises questions about the credibility of the Bush White House, the tactics it employs against political opponents and the justification it used for going to war.
What motivated President Bush's political strategist, Karl Rove; Vice President Cheney's top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; and others to counter Wilson so aggressively? How did their roles remain secret until after the president was reelected? Have they fully cooperated with the investigation?
The answers remain elusive. As Fitzgerald's team has moved ahead, few witnesses have been willing to speak publicly. White House officials declined to comment for this article, citing the ongoing inquiry.
But a close examination of events inside the White House two summers ago, and interviews with administration officials, offer new insights into the White House response, the people who shaped it, the deep disdain Cheney and other administration officials felt for the CIA, and the far-reaching consequences of the effort to manage the crisis.
July 6, 2003
Ten weeks after Bush landed aboard an aircraft carrier in front of a banner that proclaimed "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, Wilson created his own media moment by questioning one of the central reasons for going to war.
He told how he was dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate the claim that Iraq had sought large quantities of uranium from the African nation of Niger. Wilson told "Meet the Press" that he and others had "effectively debunked" the claim — only to see it show up nearly a year later in the president's State of the Union speech.
Wilson appeared to be an eyewitness to administration dishonesty in the march to war.
The State of the Union speech had been a pillar of the administration's case for war, and Wilson was raising questions about one of its key elements: the claim that Iraq was a nuclear threat.
At the time of Wilson's disclosure, U.S. and United Nations officials had yet to turn up evidence of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. A ragtag Iraqi insurgency had begun to strike back.
In public, the White House was predicting that weapons of mass destruction would be found. But behind the scenes, officials were worried about the failure to find those weapons and the possibility that the CIA would blame the White House for prewar intelligence failures.
Wilson seemed a credible critic: His diplomatic leadership as charge d'affaires in the U.S. Embassy in Iraq just before the 1991 bombing of Baghdad had earned him letters of praise from President George H.W. Bush.
That made him dangerous to the administration.
July 7, 2003
Within 24 hours, the White House reversed its view of the damage Wilson could do. He began to receive the attention of Rove, a man with a reputation for discrediting critics and disciplining political enemies, and of Libby, a longtime Cheney advisor and CIA critic.
There were grounds to challenge the former diplomat on the substance of his uranium findings: Wilson had no special training for that kind of mission; his conclusions about Niger were not definitive and were based on a few days of informal interviews; and they differed from the conclusions of British intelligence.
But it appears Rove was more focused on Wilson's background, politics and claims he ostensibly had made that his mission was initiated at the request of the vice president.
Rove mentioned to reporters that Wilson's wife had suggested or arranged the trip. The idea apparently was to undermine its import by suggesting that the mission was really "a boondoggle set up by his wife," as an administration official described the trip to a reporter, according to an account in the Washington Post.
This approach depended largely on a falsehood: that Wilson had claimed Cheney sent him to Niger. Wilson never made such a claim.
Libby reportedly told prosecutors that he did not know Plame's identity until a journalist told him. His lawyer did not return calls for comment.
Rove's lawyer has said his client did not know Plame's name or her undercover status when he first talked with reporters after Wilson's public statements.
"The one thing that's absolutely clear is that Karl was not the source for the leak and there's no basis for any additional speculation," attorney Robert Luskin said, adding that he was told Rove was not a target of the inquiry.
A Rove ally has said it was necessary for Rove to counter Wilson's exaggerated claims about the import of his mission.
However, some of Rove's colleagues say that he and others used poor judgment in talking about Wilson's wife.
"With the benefit of hindsight, it's clear our focus should have been on Wilson's facts, not his conclusions or his wife or his politics," said one official who was helping with White House strategy at the time.
In one White House conversation, investigators have learned, Rove was asked why he was focused so intently on discrediting the former diplomat.
"He's a Democrat," Rove said, citing Wilson's campaign contributions. By that time, Wilson had begun advising Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign.
Wilson's Mission
Joe Wilson's mission was launched in early 2002, after the Italian government came into possession of documents — later believed to have been forged — suggesting Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger.
Cheney had been briefed about this, a Senate Intelligence Committee report said, and had asked for more information.
At CIA headquarters, agency officials cast about for ways to respond to the vice president's interest. An official recommended sending Wilson to Niger because of his experience there, including a previous mission for the CIA.
What role Plame played in securing the mission for her husband has become a noisy sideshow to the substantive questions his trip raised about prewar intelligence. It is not clear why Plame's role would have been relevant to Wilson's uranium findings. But it was very important in the campaign to discredit him.
Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper wrote that when he first asked Rove about Wilson on July 11, the presidential advisor told him Wilson's wife was "responsible" for her husband's trip.
Plame was then working in Washington under "nonofficial cover," meaning she posed as a nongovernment employee. A review of official documents shows that she had mentioned her husband as a possible investigator, emphasizing his familiarity with Niger and later writing a note to the chief of the CIA's counterproliferation division.
"My husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity," she wrote. Wilson says his wife wrote that note at the request of her boss after he was suggested by others. There are contradictory accounts of Plame's role, but CIA officials have said she was not responsible for sending Wilson.
Wilson was not an intelligence officer or investigator, but his resume suggested he was a logical candidate. He had served as ambassador to Gabon and in U.S. embassies in Congo and Burundi; he had experience with the trade of strategic minerals; and he was senior director for Africa on the National Security Council in the Clinton administration.
On his trip, he interviewed Niger officials and citizens and talked with French mine managers. He also spoke with the U.S. ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, who recently had examined the Iraq uranium claim herself — as had a four-star general, Carlton W. Fulford Jr., deputy commander of the U.S. European Command.
Like Fulford and the ambassador, Wilson said, he concluded that there was little reason to believe Iraq had tried to purchase yellowcake from Niger. He did learn, however, that Iraqi officials had previously met with counterparts from Niger.
Back in the U.S., Wilson presented his report orally to CIA officers. They wrote up his findings, gave him a middling "good" rating for his performance and, on March 9, routinely sent a copy to other agencies — including the White House — without marking it for the attention of senior officials.
Wilson would write later that his trip led him to believe that the administration had lied about the reasons for going to war. But in reading his report, some analysts thought that evidence of previous Iraqi visits to Niger was a sign of interest in that country's most valuable export, uranium. Others thought Wilson's report put to rest a dubious claim. The Senate Intelligence Committee and top CIA officials said his report was inconclusive.
Cheney, Libby and the CIA
At the Pentagon and in Cheney's office, a profound skepticism of the CIA produced what one State Department veteran termed an ongoing "food fight" over prewar intelligence.
The atmosphere prevailed even though the CIA joined the White House and Pentagon in concluding, incorrectly, that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was making progress developing weapons of mass destruction.
An ingrained antipathy toward the CIA may help explain the hostile reaction to Wilson's public claim that he and others had debunked the reported Iraqi interest in uranium from Niger.
That skepticism was validated for Cheney and Libby by more than a decade of CIA blunders they had observed from their days at the Pentagon.
"It's part of the warp and woof and fabric of DOD not to like the intelligence community," said Larry Wilkerson, a 31-year military veteran who was former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's chief of staff.
When Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Cheney was secretary of Defense and Libby was a deputy to Paul D. Wolfowitz, then undersecretary of Defense for policy.
After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, U.N. inspectors discovered that Hussein had far greater capabilities in chemical, biological and nuclear weapons than the CIA had estimated.
For Cheney and Libby, this experience shaped their skepticism about the CIA and carried over to preparations for the war in Iraq, said a person who spoke with Libby about it years later.
"Libby's basic view of the world is that the CIA has blown it over and over again," said the source, who declined to be identified because he had spoken with Libby on a confidential basis. "Libby and Cheney were [angry] that we had not been prepared for the potential in the first Gulf War."
In the view of these officials, who would go on to form George W. Bush's war cabinet, the CIA had stumbled through the 1990s, starting with the failure to predict the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. In 1995, Hussein's son-in-law defected and led U.N. inspectors to an previously unknown biological weapons cache. In 1998, the agency failed to anticipate a nuclear weapon test by India.
Later that year Rumsfeld — then a corporate chief executive who served on defense-related boards and commissions — wrote what Brookings Institution scholar Ivo H. Daalder called "one of the most critical reports in the history of intelligence," arguing that the ability for enemies to strike the United States with ballistic missiles had been grossly underestimated.
On the eve of the Iraq war, with Rumsfeld as Defense secretary, these men were fighting yet another battle with the CIA, this time over the credibility of Iraqi exile leader Ahmad Chalabi.
Rumsfeld, Libby and Wolfowitz were longtime supporters of Chalabi, the Iraqi National Congress leader who was a key source of the now-discredited intelligence that Hussein had hidden huge stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. The CIA viewed Chalabi as a "fake," said Daalder, a former Security Council staffer.
Rumsfeld's Pentagon established an independent intelligence operation, the Office of Special Plans, which essentially provided the Defense Department and White House with an alternative to CIA and State Department intelligence. The competing operations would create confusion in preparations for the invasion of Iraq.
When the disclosure of Wilson's CIA mission to Niger put the White House on the defensive, one administration official said it reminded a tightknit group of Bush neoconservatives of their longtime battles with the agency and underlined their determination to fight.
Many of those officials also were members of the White House Iraq Group, established to coordinate and promote administration policy. It included the most influential players who would represent two elements of the current scandal: a hardball approach to political critics and long-standing disdain for CIA views on intelligence matters.
The group consisted of Rove, Libby, White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, and Mary Matalin, Cheney's media advisor. All are believed to have been questioned in the leak case; papers and e-mails about the group were subpoenaed.
Before the war, this Iraq group promoted the view that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was seeking more. In September 2002, the White House embraced a British report asserting that "Iraq has sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
But the CIA was skeptical. When White House speechwriters showed the CIA a draft of a presidential speech in October that made reference to Iraqi uranium acquisition, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet asked that the reference be removed. The White House pulled it.
While Tenet expressed skepticism, the national intelligence estimate he ordered up to assess Iraq's weapons programs before the war seemed to embrace a different view — perhaps because of a mistake in assembling the document.
The national intelligence estimate on "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction," released in October 2002, was meant to reflect a consensus of the nation's intelligence-gathering agencies. It included the consensus view that Iraq sought weapons of mass destruction and a description of Britain's account of the Niger deal.
The British information went unchallenged in that chapter of the intelligence estimate. But the State Department's intelligence arm, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, disagreed with much of the nuclear section of the estimate and decided to convey its views in text boxes to highlight the dissent.
However, the text box on the African uranium claim was "inadvertently separated" and moved into another chapter of the intelligence estimate, where it could be overlooked, the Senate Intelligence Committee said.
A couple of months later, a White House speechwriter consulted the estimate while preparing the State of the Union speech, according to one source familiar with the process.
The Speech
As the Jan. 28, 2003, speech — and the invasion of Iraq — drew near, CIA officials decided the uranium allegation was "overblown" and not backed by U.S. intelligence; they notified the White House. But the decision was made to leave it in the address, attributed to the British.
Wilson was at a Canadian television network's Washington studio that night, providing commentary on the speech and preparations for war. He remembers being puzzled on hearing the now-famous 16 words: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
At first, Wilson thought, "Either they are wrong, or I'm wrong and there is some additional evidence I don't know about from some other country in Africa."
When he learned later that the speech was based on the claims about Niger, his puzzlement turned to resolve to make the government correct the record. "The allegation was false but the U.S. went to war anyway after President Bush first deceived the nation and the world," he would later write in a book.
In coming months, he would talk to reporters and others to get the word out about his mission to Niger.
Powell at the U.N.
Two weeks later, on Feb. 5, Powell appeared before the U.N. and made the case for war. Although his much-anticipated speech was tough, he did not mention the British intelligence on African uranium. He did say, generally, that Iraq had sought weapons of mass destruction.
The original outline of the speech, given to Powell by Libby, had been much stronger.
The competing intelligence estimates created a nightmare for Powell's top aide, Wilkerson. His job was to make sure Powell got his facts right.
A week before the speech, Powell had walked into Wilkerson's office with the 48-page document provided by Libby that laid out the intelligence on the Iraqi weapons program.
Most of it was rejected because its facts could not be verified. Wilkerson believes that draft was based at least in part on data provided to Cheney by Rumsfeld's intelligence group.
"Where else did they get this 48-page document that came jam-packed with information that probably came first from the [Iraqi National Congress], Chalabi and other lousy sources?" Wilkerson asked.
To sort out the conflicting intelligence, Wilkerson convened a three-day meeting at CIA headquarters. Its rotating cast included the administration's major foreign policy players: Libby, Hadley, Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage, Tenet, Deputy CIA Director John E. McLaughlin and Rice.
Wilkerson was told that Libby had said the 48-page document was designed to offer Powell "a Chinese menu" of intelligence highlights to draw from for his speech. Powell and his team were skeptical of most of it. Rice, Tenet and Hadley were trying to reinsert bits of intelligence they personally favored but that could not be corroborated. Hadley offered an unsubstantiated report of alleged meetings between Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague shortly before the attacks.
"The whole time, people were trying to reinsert their favorite … pet rocks back into the presentation, when their pet rocks weren't backed up by anything but hearsay, or Chalabi or the INC or both," Wilkerson said.
In the end, Powell agreed with Tenet to rely mainly on the national intelligence estimate on Iraq, which had been vetted by the CIA. Wilkerson came to believe that the Pentagon officials, and their allies in the White House, doubted what the intelligence community said because "it didn't fit their script" for going to war.
The day of Powell's speech, U.S. officials provided the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog arm, the International Atomic Energy Agency, with documents supporting the assertion that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium ore from Niger. Within weeks, the agency determined the documents were clumsy fakes. The episode has never been explained.
"It was very clear from our analysis that they were forgeries," Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the atomic energy agency, said in an interview. "We found 20 to 30 anomalies within a day."
But the British have stood by their claim that Hussein sought uranium from an unnamed African country as late as 2002.
Two weeks after the atomic energy agency report, Bush issued a statement saying Iraq continued "to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
Two days after that, on March 20, he sent troops into Iraq.
Wilson Goes Public
At first, Wilson worked behind the scenes to press his case.
He says he spoke to Walter Pincus of the Washington Post and to New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof on a not-for-attribution basis, telling both about his mission and questioning why the administration would continue to cite the Niger connection.
As news reports proliferated about the CIA fact-finding trip to Niger, more people in the administration became familiar with Wilson as the unnamed source for these accounts.
By summer 2003, the stories were creating a problem for a White House trying to cope with the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. Bush's poll ratings were beginning to take a hit. The Republican nominating convention was a year away, and the basis for the president's principal first-term act — going to war — was being undermined.
After a June 12 Washington Post story made reference to the Niger uranium inquiry, Armitage asked intelligence officers in the State Department for more information. He was forwarded a copy of a memo classified "Secret" that included a description of Wilson's trip for the CIA, his findings, a brief description of the origin of the trip and a reference to "Wilson's wife."
The memo was kept in a safe at the State Department along with notes from an analyst who attended the CIA meeting at which Wilson was suggested for the Niger assignment. Those with top security clearance at State, like their counterparts in the White House, had been trained in the rules about classified information. They could not be shared with anyone who did not have the same clearance.
Less than a month later, Wilson went public with his charges.
The next day, July 7, this memo and the notes were removed from the safe and forwarded to Powell via a secure fax line to Air Force One. Powell was on the way to Africa with the president, and his aides knew the secretary would be getting questions.
Fitzgerald has become interested in this memo, the earliest known document seen by administration officials revealing that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Powell told prosecutors that he circulated the memo among those traveling with him in the front section of Air Force One. It is believed that all officials in that part of the aircraft had high-level security clearance.
At first, White House personnel responding to Wilson's New York Times op-ed article July 6 made no reference to Wilson's wife. Then-Press Secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters the next day that the former diplomat's article contained nothing new — "zero, nada, nothing" — and that the vice president knew nothing about Wilson's trip to Africa. But Fleischer acknowledged that the president's State of the Union statement on African uranium may have relied on bad information.
That evening, as Air Force One streaked toward Africa, officials decided that to defuse the pressure, they would issue a formal acknowledgment to selected journalists that, as the New York Times reported the next morning, the White House "no longer stood behind Mr. Bush's statement about the uranium — the first such official concession on the sensitive issue of the intelligence that led to the war."
But that only fueled interest in Wilson's charges and the broader concern about the reliability of pre-war intelligence. Soon, however, the public's attention would turn away from Wilson's charges and toward him and his wife.
Enter Bob Novak
Early that week, someone in the administration told syndicated newspaper columnist Robert Novak that Wilson's CIA operative wife had instigated his trip to Niger. "I didn't dig it out; it was given to me," Novak said later about the leak. "They thought it was significant."
On July 9, according to a source close to Rove, Novak told Rove what he had heard.
"I heard that too," or words to that effect, Rove replied, according to the source. Rove said Novak told him Plame's name, the first time Rove had heard it, the person said.
The Blame Game
The delegation to Africa was distracted daily by reporters pressing Bush for his reply to Wilson's allegations and the mistake in the State of the Union address.
On July 11, the traveling White House launched a coordinated effort to end the controversy.
First, Rice told Tenet that she and the president planned to tell the media that Bush's speech "was cleared by intelligence services," as the president said that day in Uganda.
Hours later, Tenet — traveling in Idaho — released his own statement that at first appeared helpful to the White House. It took responsibility for allowing the uranium claim into the State of the Union.
"This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches, and CIA should have ensured that it was removed," Tenet said. He also described Wilson's trip as inconclusive, and said it was authorized by lower-level CIA officials and was never flagged for review by top officials.
But Tenet added that the CIA had earlier provided cautions about using the Niger evidence to conclude Iraq had obtained uranium. In effect, he was pointing a finger at the White House for failing to heed previous warnings.
"We're screwed," said one White House official, reading the statement on his Blackberry. Blame-shifting intensified amid media speculation about how the words got into the speech.
That same day, Rove took the call from Time's Cooper and, in response to a question, told him that Wilson's wife was in the CIA and was responsible for her husband's mission. Cooper says that Rove did not use her name.
Afterward, Rove e-mailed Hadley to tell him he had the conversation and had "waved Cooper off" Wilson's Niger claims.
The next day, a Saturday, Libby, responding to a question, told Cooper that he had heard the same thing about Plame. Another official, whose identity is not publicly known, mentioned Wilson's wife in passing to Pincus, telling him that she had arranged the trip.
The message: Contrary to the image the White House said Wilson promoted, he was not a well-qualified analyst who was sent to Niger by the vice president. He went to Niger on a boondoggle arranged by his wife.
On Monday, July 14, Wilson was at his breakfast table in Georgetown when he saw Novak's column, which said in part: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counterproliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him."
Wilson later recalled that Plame suppressed her anger by compiling a list of the things she had to do to protect information and two decades' worth of contacts overseas. An entire career, she told her husband, had gone down the tubes, "and for no purpose."
Wilson says there was a purpose: to smear him, intimidate critics and distract the public from charges that prewar intelligence had been manipulated.
Novak's disclosure touched off a flood of questions about prewar intelligence, the State of the Union speech and the release of Plame's identity. The following week, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan denied any White House role in leaking Plame's name. "I'm telling you, flatly, that that is not the way this White House operates."
Later, he qualified the statement to deny any role in "illegally" leaking information. Months later, Bush said "yes" when asked whether he would fire whoever was responsible for the leak. He would also qualify this later to say he would take such action "if someone committed a crime."
But on July 21, according to Wilson, NBC's Chris Matthews said that Rove had told him Plame was "fair game." McClellan later called suggestions of Rove's involvement "ridiculous."
On July 30, the CIA notified the Justice Department that federal law might have been breached with the disclosure of Plame's identity. By the end of December 2003, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, a former client of Rove's, recused himself from the matter; the department named Fitzgerald, U.S. attorney for Chicago, as a special prosecutor.
Those who knew Fitzgerald predicted he would charge hard and range far. Nonetheless, his investigative sweep startled the White House. He asked immediately for White House telephone logs, call sheets, attendance lists for meetings of the Iraq group, party invitation lists and even phone logs from Air Force One.
Fitzgerald also asked for something unusual: a generic waiver of confidentiality agreements from all White House employees for the journalists with whom they spoke during the period in dispute.
When most reporters made it clear that the generic waiver was unacceptable because it was viewed as coercive, the prosecutor worked with individual sources, reporters and their lawyers to get their testimony.
Pincus testified after being assured that he would not have to name his source, even though Fitzgerald knew who it was. Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler and NBC's Tim Russert also testified after getting assurances from Libby.
After reading about their testimony, Cooper approached Libby about a waiver for himself.
Without a personal waiver, Cooper and his editors believed they could not reveal the source — which meant that the news organization would join the New York Times in a losing court battle.
Cooper did not ask Rove for a waiver, in part because his lawyer advised against it. In addition, Time editors were concerned about becoming part of such an explosive story in an election year.
Rove's attorney, meantime, took the view that contacting Cooper would have amounted to interfering with the ongoing court battle between reporter and prosecutor.
Although Fitzgerald said Cooper's testimony was necessary to conclude his investigation, he did not ask Rove to give the reporter a waiver, according to Rove's attorney, Luskin.
The result was that Cooper's testimony was delayed nearly a year, well after Bush's reelection. "The reason this resolution was delayed had nothing to do with anything Karl [Rove] did or failed to do," he said.
Rove granted the waiver this summer after Cooper's attorney called Luskin hours before Cooper was to be sent to jail; the reporter testified on July 13. Reporter Judith Miller of the New York Times, meanwhile, was jailed for refusing to testify.
Cooper wrote afterward that he told the jury he had called Rove in July 2003 and that, in response to his query about Wilson and his claims, Rove informed him that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and "she was responsible for sending Wilson."
Individuals close to the case say that Fitzgerald is likely to wrap up his inquiry this fall.
*
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Times staff writers Douglas Frantz and Richard B. Schmitt contributed to this report.
*
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Chronology
Events surrounding the White House's role in the leak of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent:
2002
February: Vice President Dick Cheney asks whether Iraq sought uranium from Niger.
Feb. 12: The CIA sends Joseph Wilson to Niger.
March 9: Wilson says he finds little evidence for such claims, but notes a prior visit to Niger by Iraqi officials.
Aug. 26: Cheney says: "We now know that Saddam [Hussein] has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons."
Oct. 5-6: CIA Director George Tenet persuades the White House to remove the uranium claim from a Bush speech.
2003
Jan. 28: President Bush's State of the Union cites a British report that Iraq sought uranium.
March 7: A U.N. nuclear agency finds uranium documents are "not authentic."
March 20: The U.S. invades Iraq.
July 6: Wilson goes public on his Niger trip and findings.
July 7-8: Administration sources tell columnist Robert Novak about Wilson's CIA wife.
July 7: The White House admits to a mistake in citing the uranium claim.
July 11: Karl Rove tells Time's Matthew Cooper that Wilson's wife arranged the Niger trip.
July 14: A Novak column unmasks Valerie Plame.
July 30: The CIA asks the Justice Department to investigate the leak of the agent's identity.
Sept. 16: The White House says suggesting Rove leaked her identity is "ridiculous."
Sept. 29: A White House spokesman says the leaker will be fired.
Sept. 30: Wilson endorses John Kerry for president.
Dec. 30: Patrick Fitzgerald is named special prosecutor.
2004
Jan. 23: Weapons inspector David Kay says there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
July 10: A Senate panel faults prewar intelligence and calls Wilson's report inconclusive.
Nov. 2: Bush is reelected.
2005
Feb. 15: A court orders journalists Judith Miller and Cooper to cooperate with a grand jury.
July 6: Miller refuses to testify and is jailed; Cooper agrees to testify after getting express permission from his source, Rove.
July 18: Bush says the leaker will be fired if a crime was committed.
Sources: Times reporting, media reports, White House and Senate documents
Los Angeles Times | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 3:10 am Post subject: |
| http://www.waynemadsenreport.com
August 31, 2005 -- A convergence of investigations: AIPAC and ATC. As reported previously on WMR, federal investigators are poring over wiretap transcripts and other intelligence that link the Larry Franklin/Rosen/Weissman AIPAC investigation to the investigation of who in the White House leaked the name of Valerie Plame Wilson and her Brewster Jennings & Associates non-official cover company to journalists, including Robert Novak. According to intelligence insiders, a new nexus of the investigation is the intelligence relationship discovered between AIPAC and the American Turkish Council (ATC). As with the AIPAC and Mossad penetration of the Pentagon, a similar ATC and Turkish intelligence penetration of the Defense Department was discovered and it reportedly involved some of the same players involved in the AIPAC probe, including former Deputy Secretary of Defense for Policy and Plans Douglas Feith.
In addition, two former U.S. ambassadors to Turkey -- Marc Grossman (who has since joined the Cohen Group of former Defense Secretary William Cohen) and Eric Edelman, who replaced Feith at the Pentagon, were identified in FBI wiretaps as key players with the ATC. The AIPAC and ATC link involves individuals who profit from the use of Turkey as a base for nuclear materials proliferation, including fissile material from the former Soviet Central Asian states, and heroin distribution from Afghanistan and other countries to Europe and North America. The AIPAC-ATC links also involved persons and businesses tied to the A. Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network that was headquartered in Pakistan but had operational offices in Turkey. Those links, involving Israeli citizen and nuclear smuggler Asher Karni and Turkish Jewish businessman Zeki Bilmen and his New Jersey-based Giza Technologies, were first reported by WMR on August 1.
Another company that has reportedly been making entrees to the ATC-AIPAC influence peddling consortium is the Ashcroft Group, a firm set up in May 2005 by former Attorney General John Ashcroft to help countries with law enforcement and counter-terrorism. Ashcroft's partner in the Ashcroft Group is Juleanna Glover Weiss, who worked for Ashcroft, Steve Forbes, Rudolph Giuliani, and Vice President Dick Cheney. As one intelligence insider put the AIPAC-ATC links, "these have nothing to do with religion or politics, just pure greed." | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 4:51 am Post subject: The Plame Case: How about Focusing on the Real Issues? |
| http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/100905E.shtml
The Plame Case: How about Focusing on the Real Issues?
By Larry Johnson
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 07 October 2005
Want to know one reason why the CIA has been unable to recruit spies? Just reflect on how a potential recruit would react to the outing of Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA operations officer.
The investigation into which administration officials compromised Plame, wife of former US ambassador Joseph Wilson, is nearing completion. Lost in the recent spurt of press reporting, however, is the fact that the outing of Ms. Plame (and, as night follows the day, her carefully cultivated network of spies) has done great damage to US clandestine operations - not to mention those she recruited over her distinguished career.
Ms. Plame, a very gifted case officer, was a close colleague of mine at the CIA. Her dedication and courage were made abundantly clear when she became one of the few to volunteer to assume the risks of operating under non-official cover - meaning that if you get caught, too bad, you're on your own: the US government never heard of you.
The supreme irony is that Plame's now-compromised network was reporting on the priority-one issue of US intelligence - weapons of mass destruction. Thus, it was made clear to all, including active and potential intelligence sources abroad, that even when high-priority intelligence targets are involved, Bush administration officials do not shrink from exposing such sources for petty political purpose. The harm to the CIA and its efforts to recruit spies instinctively wary of the risks in providing intelligence information is immense.
Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, Ambassador Wilson publicly exposed an important lie - and the president as liar-in-chief - when Wilson debunked reporting that Iraq was seeking uranium in the African country of Niger. Still, as Wilson himself has suggested, the primary purpose of leaking his wife's employment at the CIA was not so much to retaliate against him personally, but rather to issue a warning to others privy to administration lies on the war not to speak out. Administration officials felt they needed to provide an object lesson of what truth tellers can expect in the way of swift retaliation.
... and It Was All Based on a Forgery
Whether or not indictments come down, our domesticated mainstream media probably will continue to play down the damage to US intelligence. Even more important, they are likely to ignore completely the very curious event that started the whole business - the forging of documents that became the basis of reporting that Iraq was seeking uranium in Niger for its (non-existent) nuclear weapons program. Together with other circumstantial evidence, the neuralgic reaction of Vice President Dick Cheney to press reports that he was point man for promoting the bogus "intelligence" report suggests that he may also have been its intellectual author/authorizer.
Yes, I am suggesting that it may have been an inside job. Cheney and his chief of staff Lewis Libby may well have had a hand in commissioning the forgery, as a way of manufacturing an intelligence report, with "mushroom cloud" written all over it - in order to deceive Congress into approving an unnecessary war. The more you look into the whole affair, the curiouser and curiouser it becomes. Why, for example, would Senate Intelligence Committee chair Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) adamantly refuse to investigate the provenance of a forgery used to start a war?
And why did former Secretary of State Colin Powell, addressing the UN on February 5, 2003, decide to delete from his very long laundry list of spurious charges against Iraq its alleged attempt to acquire uranium from Niger? Even though he himself had avoided repeating the famous "16 words" used by President Bush just five weeks before (see below), Powell was forced to listen stoically as Mohammed El-Baradei, head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, reported on worldwide TV that his own and outside experts had concluded that the Iraq-Niger documents were "not authentic." The White House left it to Powell to concede that El-Baradei was correct, and Powell eventually did so.
Perhaps special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will be able to shed light on some of this.
These are some of the key neglected issues underneath the superficial who-said-what-to-whom-when treatment that has characterized most press reporting. Small wonder that many of those trying to follow this important story are missing the forest for the trees. It is important that a fuller story be available to citizens of this country, to enable us to judge the enormity and significance of what happened. Accordingly, my Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) colleagues and I thought it would be useful to boil down into digestible, chronological form the key facts at the beginning of the story:
February 13, 2002: According to the Senate Intelligence Committee's "Report on the US Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq" of July 2004 (pp 38-39), Vice President Cheney asked his CIA morning briefer for the CIA's analysis of a report, which he had seen in a Defense Intelligence Agency publication, alleging that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from Niger. In response, the Director of Central Intelligence's Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC) issued an intelligence assessment with limited distribution. It said, "Information on the alleged uranium contract between Iraq and Niger comes exclusively from a foreign government service report that lacks crucial details, and we are working to clarify the information and to determine whether it can be corroborated." The assessment also noted, "Some of the information in the report contradicts reporting from the US Embassy in Niamey (Niger). US diplomats say the French Government-led consortium that operates Niger's two uranium mines maintains complete control over uranium mining and yellowcake production." The CIA sent a separate version of the assessment to the Vice President's office, which differed only in that it named the foreign government service.
February 19: Officials of the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO) have told the Senate committee that DO managers - not Valerie Plame - decided to send former ambassador Wilson to Niger to make immediate inquiries. Wilson, who was acting ambassador in Baghdad when the 1991 Gulf War began, had earlier served in Niger, and had wide contacts there. On February 19, after meeting with DO managers and other intelligence community officials at CIA headquarters, Wilson was commissioned to go to Niger and investigate.
February 26: Ambassador Wilson arrived in Niger. He determined during the course of his visit that there was no substance to the allegation that Iraq was trying to procure uranium in Niger. The US Ambassador to Niger told the Senate Committee that Ambassador Wilson's conclusion was the same as that reached earlier by the US embassy in Niamey.
Early March: Vice President Cheney asked his CIA briefer for an update on the Niger issue. According to the Senate report on the pre-war performance of intelligence, Cheney had not forgotten his original request. And so CIA officers immediately debriefed Ambassador Wilson on the results of his trip, wrote up his report, and disseminated the report on 8 March (p. 42 of the Senate report).
Fall of 2002: CIA officials repeatedly warned the administration and Congress not to accept as fact the claim that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium. According to the Senate report (p. 54), the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency told Senator Kyl, for example, that the CIA did not agree with the British view that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium. On October 6, 2002, CIA Director Tenet called Deputy National Security Advisor Hadley to warn him not to introduce the bogus information into the speech being readied for the president to use the next day (just three days before Congress voted to authorize war). Hadley removed the passage from the speech (p. 56).
January 28, 2003: In his State of the Union Address, President Bush included the (in)famous "16 words," saying, "The British government has learned (sic) that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
May: Vice President Cheney's office was irate over a May 6 article by New York Times columnist Nick Kristof regarding the mission of a "former US ambassador" to Niger, and in particular to Kristof's assertion that the Vice President had instigated the trip. According to former senior CIA officials, Cheney's aides were "very uptight about the vice president being tagged that way."
June: The White House, with the participation of Karl Rove and Lewis Libby (and, according to one recent report, the president and vice president themselves), conceived and then executed a plan to discredit Ambassador Wilson. A variety of reports from journalists and others show that as early as the end of May, White House officials were trying to dig up dirt on Ambassador Wilson. And the State Department drafted a top-secret memorandum on the Iraq-Niger affair, identifying Valerie Plame by her maiden name.
July 13: Robert Novak, citing two Administration sources, identified Valerie Plame by name as a CIA operative. Plame was still under cover when Novak published her name, thus compromising not only Plame, but also the many agents she had recruited. She conducted several overseas missions as part of her cover job.
Betrayal. There is no other word for it. Except some might call it treason.
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Larry Johnson worked as a CIA intelligence analyst and State Department counter-terrorism official. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
An earlier version of this article appeared on TomPaine.com | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
