(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)

The Washington Post’s Peter Eisner reports on the front page today (4/3/07):

It was 3 a.m. in Italy on Jan. 29, 2003, when President Bush in Washington began reading his State of the Union address that included the now famous — later retracted — 16 words: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Like most Europeans, Elisabetta Burba, an investigative reporter for the Italian newsweekly Panorama, waited until the next day to read the newspaper accounts of Bush’s remarks. But when she came to the 16 words, she recalled, she got a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She wondered: How could the American president have mentioned a uranium sale from Africa?

Burba felt uneasy because more than three months earlier, she had turned over to the U.S. Embassy in Rome documents about an alleged uranium sale by the central African nation of Niger. And she knew now that the documents were fraudulent and the 16 words wrong.

Nonetheless, the uranium claim would become a crucial justification for the invasion of Iraq that began less than two months later. When occupying troops found no nuclear program, the 16 words and how they came to be in the speech became a focus for critics in Washington and foreign capitals to press the case that the White House manipulated facts to take the United States to war.

Dozens of interviews with current and former intelligence officials and policymakers in the United States, Britain, France and Italy show that the Bush administration disregarded key information available at the time showing that the Iraq-Niger claim was highly questionable.

Read more »

Chart from Brad Blog

Is there a possibility that Tenet is the one who told Cheney and Rove that Plame was a covert agent? He resigned, got a medal and hasn’t been heard from since. Just wondering………. there’s that black empty space on the chart they used today…..the unknown who told Cheney and Rove……. could it be Tenet???
Am I the only one wondering this?

June 03, 2004 News of the day from the Jurist

President Bush has met with a Washington attorney about an ongoing grand jury investigation to determine who in the administration leaked the name of an undercover CIA agent to the media, according to the White House. Bush is not the subject of the investigation, but he may be interviewed by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald or may need to testify in the investigation. Fitzgerald was appointed to investigate six months ago, and has been bringing witnesses before the grand jury since January. Bush may have sought outside counsel because discussions with White House counsel Alberto Gonzales are not covered by the attorney-client privilege. Bush has called on members of the administration to cooperate in the investigation into who leaked information that Valerie Plame, wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, was an undercover CIA operative. Newsday has more.

and

CNN is reporting that President Bush has accepted the resignation of CIA Director George Tenet. Tenet cited personal reasons for his resignation. The text of Bush’s comments can be found here.

UPDATE: AP has text of George Tenet’s remarks to CIA employees following the announcement of his resignation.

Dr. James Knodell Notell, director of the Office of Security at the White House testified today regarding the Plame leak. He said there was no investigation, to date, from within the White House. Rep. Cummings was “shocked” to hear this. (I don’t know why…..we are talking about the Bush administration). Victoria Toensing also testified, and Waxman bitch slapped her really good at the end. I can’t find a transcript of his closing statement, but he thanked her for coming to testify, at the request of the minority party. He also stated he thought that alot of what she claimed was not accurate and that they would check the validity of her statements before entering it into record. I wish I could find a video of that. I love Waxman.

Video of exchange between Knodell and Cummings.

Like her husband, she was a class act and a great witness. Republicans tried to make two false points. 1. They wanted to place doubt she was a covert agent. 2. They wanted it to be the CIA’s fault she was outted. I’d say they failed on both points, and in the process made themselves look like idiots. Nothing new there. Their loyalty to the crooks in the White House is unbelievable. Westmoreland made an even bigger ass of himself when he questions Plame as to her and her husbands political affiliation. This, from the 10 Commandments genius!! I would hope that this hearing cleared up, DEFINITELY, that she WAS covert. Of course, we’re talking about Republicans here, so in their minds, if they keep saying it isn’t so, it isn’t so. She stated several times how happy she was to testify UNDER OATH.

Her opening statement:

Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee.

My name is Valerie Plame Wilson, and I am honored to have been invited to testify under oath before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on the critical issue of safeguarding classified information.

I am grateful for this opportunity to set the record straight.

I’ve served the United States loyally and to the best of my ability as a covert operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency. I worked on behalf of the national security of our country, on behalf of the people of the United States, until my name and true affiliation were exposed in the national media on July 14th, 2003, after a leak by an administration official.

Today I can tell this committee even more.

In the run-up to the war with Iraq, I worked in the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA, still as a covert officer whose affiliation with the CIA was classified. I raced (ph) to discover solid intelligence for senior policymakers on Iraq’s presumed weapons of mass destruction program.

While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence.

I loved my career, because I love my country. I was proud of the serious responsibilities entrusted to me as a CIA covert operations officer. And I was dedicated to this work.

It was not common knowledge on the Georgetown cocktail circuit that everyone knew where I worked. But all of my efforts on behalf of the national security of the United States, all of my training, all the value of my years of service, were abruptly ended when my name and identity were exposed irresponsibly.

In the course of the trial of Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff, Scooter Libby I was shocked by the evidence that emerged. My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior government officials in both the White House and the State Department.

All of them understood that I worked for the CIA. And, having signed oaths to protect national security secrets, they should have been diligent in protecting me and every CIA officer.

The CIA goes to great lengths to protect all of its employees, providing at significant taxpayers’ expense painstakingly devised and creative covers for its most sensitive staffers.

The harm that is done when a CIA cover is blown is grave. But I can’t provide details beyond that in this public hearing. But the concept is obvious.

Not only have breaches of national security endangered CIA officers, it has jeopardized and even destroyed entire networks of foreign agents, who in turn risk their own lives and those of their families to provide the United States with needed intelligence.

Lives are literally at stake.

Every single one of my former CIA colleagues, from my fellow covert officers to analysts to technical operations officers to even the secretaries, understand the vulnerabilities of our officers and recognize that the travesty of what happened to me could happen to them.

We in the CIA always know that we might be exposed and threatened by foreign enemies.

It was a terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my cover.

Furthermore, testimony in the criminal trial of Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff, who has now been convicted of serious crimes, indicates that my exposure arose from purely political motives.

Within the CIA, it is essential that all intelligence be evaluated on the basis of its merits and actual credibility. National security depends upon it.

The tradecraft of intelligence is not a product of speculation. I feel passionately, as an intelligence professional, about the creeping, insidious politicizing of our intelligence process.

All intelligence professionals are dedicated to the ideal that they would rather be fired on the spot than distort the facts to fit a political view, any political view or any ideology.

As our intelligence agencies go through reorganizations and experience the painful aspects of change, and our country faces profound challenges, injecting partisanship or ideology into the equation makes effective and accurate intelligence that much more difficult to develop.

Politics and ideology must be stripped completely from our intelligence services, or the consequences will be even more severe than they have been, and our country placed in even greater danger.

It is imperative for any president to be able to make decisions based on intelligence that is unbiased.

The Libby trial and the events leading to the Iraq war highlight the urgent need to restore the highest professional standards of intelligence collection and analysis, and the protection of our officers and operations.

The Congress has a constitutional duty to defend our national security. And that includes safeguarding our intelligence.

That is why I am grateful for this opportunity to appear before this committee today and to assist in its important work.

Thank you. And I well welcome any questions.

Think Progress has a video of her statement.

I hope this hearing is on C-Span tomorrow.

WASHINGTON Valerie Plame’s life changed the day her name appeared in a newspaper column, her job as a CIA officer exposed in black and white.

She goes before a House committee Friday as both a shadowy figure and a celebrity, with lucrative book and movie deals in the works, a magazine cover in her past and her unceremonious unmasking four years ago the subject of persistent intrigue.

Now she is lifting the veil by her own hand, and to maximum effect.

The House is not in session Friday and Plame’s only competition for attention in Washington is a Senate subcommittee hearing on next year’s budget for smaller federal agencies, and the annual St. Patrick’s Day exchange of shamrocks at the White House between President Bush and Ireland’s prime minister. In other words, it’s no contest.

She’s telling her story to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, where Democrats are eager to explore the circumstances of her outing and how the White House responded to the leak of her identity.

Although she’s had little to say publicly, Plame has made more than a few splashy appearances with her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson (news, bio, voting record). Last month alone, the Wilsons attended a book party for Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic Party chairman, and were spotted having lunch with actress Morgan Fairchild at the Four Seasons.

More at Editor & Publisher

(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)

Caesar: Antonius!
Antony: Caesar.
Caesar: Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Antony: Fear him not, Caesar, he’s not dangerous;
He is a noble Roman, and well given.
Caesar: Would he were fatter!
- Julius Caesar, 1.2, 190-198, William Shakespeare

Bush’s men are both fat and still hungry. As corrupt as these men and women get, they are never satiated. But they-ve been choking these past few weeks. Our boy-emperor need not fear plots with daggers - but subpoenas are another matter.

Libby has been found guilty. The FBI’s abuse of the Patriot Act and their lies about their activities have been revealed. Alberto Gonzales has been laid bare as the fraud and liar he is. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are testing the limits of how low an approval rating can go. And Karl Rove, who is still accusing the Democrats of playing dirty politics, is watching more and more of his dirty tricks being exposed.

The more we learn about the Bush administration, the worse they look. And hallelujah, Congress is scrutinizing them, and the general public is seeing more of the truth.

A year ago, this U.S. attorney scandal, a mere fraction of the wrongdoing perpetrated by this administration, would have been furious fodder for liberal blogs, but little probably would have been done. This time, the liberal blogs were right as usual - and the mainstream media actually listened. Is this a dream? Not that all the coverage is fantastic, but isn-t this widespread furor over obvious misdeeds, incompetence and villainy exactly what’s supposed to happen? Not that everything is going well, but isn-t this cause for hope?

Did the divine inspiration and brilliant instincts of George W. Bush warn him of this? Has Dick Cheney’s unerring judgment fled to an undisclosed location? Did Karl Rove see this in the entrails of a crony, or have his powers of prognostication left him?

In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Marc Antony says:

The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones.

The truth always comes out eventually. But there’s now real hope that some of the evil can be dug out while the culprits are still alive, or even while they-re still in office. Every lie exposed and misdeed challenged is a small victory. And the permanent discrediting of these knaves and scoundrels is a matter of national security. There is providence in the fall of an attorney general. (Or something like that.)

Happy Ides of March!

WASHINGTON - Valerie Plame, the CIA operative exposed after her husband criticized President Bush’s march to war, will testify next week before lawmakers probing how the White House dealt with her identity, the chairman of the panel said Thursday.

Also invited to testify March 16 before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is Patrick Fitzgerald, who this week won conviction of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby of obstruction and perjury in the case, said Chairman Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif.

Plame has accepted the invitation, Waxman said, but Fitzgerald has not responded.

In a letter to the prosecutor, Waxman proposed a meeting with ranking Republican Tom Davis of Virginia to discuss the terms of any testimony.

“The trial proceedings raise questions about whether senior White House officials, including the vice president and Senior Adviser to the President Karl Rove, complied with the requirements governing the handling of classified information,” Waxman wrote in his invitation to Fitzgerald.

“They also raise questions about whether the White House took appropriate remedial action following the leak and whether the existing requirements are sufficient to protect against future leaks,” Waxman added. “Your perspective on these matters is important.”

Read more at YahooNews

Joe Wilson is a class act……

NEW YORK When Lewis “Scooter” Libby was convicted today in the CIA leak case, Valerie Plame Wilson “wept when she heard the news,” her husband, former Ambassdor Joseph Wilson said tonight. She called him at a restaurant and said, “four out of five guilty!”

Wilson gave his first TV interview on MSNBC’s “Countdonw.” He said that he and his wife will “both sleep more easily tonight.”
[tag]
Plame[/tag], the former CIA agent who outing was at the center of the case, is now having trouble getting her book on the case past the CIA clearance, Wilson revealed. He said the agency didn’t have a problem with the content but would not acknowledge she had even worked at the agency before 2002 (when she was often deep-cover). “We may have to litigate,” he said. “I hope she can write the book.”

The Wilsons are pressing a suit and hope through discovery to get at the grand jury testimony of Karl Rove, Libby, Richard Armitage and others.

Wilson also said, “Now that the trial is over, the president and vice president should stop hiding” and share what they told prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

He pointed out that while the president had expressed sadness for Libby and his family he had “never” expressed sympathy for Plame, who had served her country for more than 20 years, sometimes at great risk.

Read more at Editor & Publisher

Bring on the pardons! (You know it’s gonna happen)

Think Cheney may be a little nervous right about now? Bunch of rat-bastards.

CNN.com:

‘Scooter’ Libby guilty on four of five counts

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby has been found guilty on four of five counts in his perjury and obstruction of justice trial.

Libby, 56, faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and a fine of $1 million.

Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice, making a false statement and two counts of perjury.

Jurors cleared him of a second count of making a false statement.

The indictment against the former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney concerned how Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA operative and what Libby said to a grand jury concerning the case.

Libby was not accused of exposing Plame. He resigned in 2005 after the grand jury indicted him.

Prosecutors contended Libby disclosed Plame’s covert profession to reporters as part of a plan to discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador who alleged that the Bush administration twisted some intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Robert Novak should be sitting in a prison cell.

WASHINGTON: The newspaper columnist Robert Novak testified Monday that two high officials in the Bush administration told him the identity of a CIA agent whose unmasking touched off a scandal, but that Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., did not.

Novak recalled in Federal District Court how Richard Armitage, then a deputy secretary of state, and Karl Rove, the White House political adviser, told him the identity of the covert agent, Valerie Wilson. But, Novak said, “I got no help or no confirmation from Mr. Libby on that issue.”

Nor was Armitage helpful early on, Novak said, recalling how Armitage refused his requests for an interview again and again. “He just didn’t want to see me,” Novak said.

But finally Armitage relented, confirming the agent’s identity in a one-on- one interview on July 8, 2003, Novak said. A day later, Novak said, Rove provided additional confirmation.

Novak’s appearance at Libby’s criminal trial was at once dramatic and anticlimactic, since the roles of Armitage and Rove have been known for many months. But the columnist provided insights into how news is gathered in Washington.

Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice. Prosecutors maintain he tried to thwart an investigation into who leaked the name of Wilson, whose husband, the former diplomat Joseph Wilson 4th, had traveled to Africa to investigate rumors that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Niger.

Some critics of the Bush administration have asserted that Valerie Wilson was unmasked in retaliation against her husband, who wrote an Op-Ed article for The New York Times on July 6, 2003, that cast doubt on the uranium rumors and the administration’s rationale for going to war against Iraq.

Novak’s column of July 14, 2003, first revealed to the public that Wilson was “an agency operative” specializing in weapons of mass destruction.

Read more at the International Herald Tribune

I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby told a grand jury that he largely “could not recall” several details of conversations he had with Vice President Cheney and others regarding Joseph C. Wilson IV, the war critic who accused the administration of twisting intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq, according to audiotapes played in court this afternoon.

Carefully and deliberately testifying in 2004 as part of the probe that eventually led to criminal charges against him, Libby, who was then Cheney’s chief of staff, said he did remember his boss telling him in June 2003 that former ambassador Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA. But Cheney said it in “sort of an offhand manner, as a curiosity,” Libby said.

The vice president used a tone unlike his regular voice, Libby said, which “was much more matter of fact and straight.”

The audiotapes of Libby’s own words are being played to a jury that is weighing whether he is guilty of lying to investigators probing the leak of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity to the media.
Read more at the Washington Post

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A former White House spokesman testified Monday that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby informed him about a CIA operative three days before Libby told investigators he had learned her identity from a reporter.

Ari Fleischer said the revelation came during a June 7, 2003, lunch as he and Libby talked about Fleischer’s departure as President Bush’s press secretary. Fleischer held the job from 2001-2003.

The timing is crucial since Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, is accused of lying about when he learned that administration critic Joseph Wilson was married to CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. (Watch how the timeline is key

Libby is charged with lying to the FBI and a grand jury investigating who leaked the CIA employee’s identity to reporters in 2003. (Full story)

No one has been charged with leaking her name.

Libby has said that he first got the information from Tim Russert of NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Libby told a grand jury that he believed he learned Plame’s identity from Russert on July 10, 2003, according to The Associated Press.

His attorneys blame bad memory for any discrepancies in what he told investigators and the grand jury and say he may have been distracted by urgent national security matters.

Read more here

Jan. 26, 2007 - White House anxiety is mounting over the prospect that top officials-including deputy chief of staff Karl Rove and counselor Dan Bartlett-may be forced to provide potentially awkward testimony in the perjury and obstruction trial of Lewis (Scooter) Libby.
Both Rove and Bartlett have already received trial subpoenas from Libby’s defense lawyers, according to lawyers close to the case who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters. While that is no guarantee they will be called, the odds increased this week after Libby’s lawyer, Ted Wells, laid out a defense resting on the idea that his client, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, had been made a “scapegoat” to protect Rove. Cheney is expected to provide the most crucial testimony to back up Wells’s assertion, one of the lawyers close to the case said. The vice president personally penned an October 2003 note in which he wrote, “Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the other.” The note, read aloud in court by Wells, implied that Libby was the one being sacrificed in an effort to clear Rove of any role in leaking the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, wife of Iraq war critic Joe Wilson. “Wow, for all the talk about this being a White House that prides itself on loyalty and discipline, you-re not seeing much of it,” the lawyer said.

Read more at MSNBC

So he wasn’t charged with anything. (why?)

MSNBC reports the special prosecutor in Valerie Plame case says Vice President Dick Cheney was “deeply involved” in the CIA leak about Plame.

NBC’s David Schuster says prosecutors believe “Cheney wrote out what (aid Scooter) Libby should say in a conversation with New York Times reporter Matt Cooper.”

In that conversation between Libby, who was Cheney’s chief of staff, and Cooper, Libby reportedly brought up Plame’s name.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald used his opening statement in the CIA leak trial Tuesday to describe a tumultuous week early in the Iraq war, when he said the White House was “under direct attack” and pushed back against criticism by former ambassador Joseph Wilson, Plame’s husband.

Fitzgerald said Cheney told Libby, in 2003 that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA and Libby spread that information to reporters. When that information got out, it triggered a federal investigation.

“But when the FBI and grand jury asked about what the defendant did,” Fitzgerald said, “he made up a story.”

I. Lewis Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction. He told investigators he was surprised to learn Wilson’s wife’s identity from NBC News reporter Tim Russert, not from the vice president. But Fitzgerald told jurors that was clearly a lie because Libby had already been discussing the matter inside and outside of the White House.

“You can’t learn something on Thursday that you’re giving out on Monday,” Fitzgerald said.

Libby says he didn’t lie but was simply bogged down by national security issues and couldn’t remember details of what he told reporters about CIA officer Valerie Plame.

Fitzgerald believes Libby feared political embarrassment and worried he might lose his job for discussing classified information with reporters. President Bush originally threatened to fire anyone who disclosed such information so, Fitzgerald says Libby had a reason to lie.

Read more here

Hey, don’t knock it! A good, healthy coat of slime has helped many a Republican slither out of and away from tight places…

Foley to escape punishment by his peers

LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The House’s investigation of a page sex scandal has only one certainty: Former Rep. Mark Foley will escape punishment by his peers.

It is the Florida Republican’s sexually explicit electronic messages to teenage former male pages that have ignited what has become a pre-election firestorm.

Congress only can punish current members, officers and employees.

link

And this…

Secret Papers Could Halt CIA Case

Libby Intends to Present Classified Evidence; Judge Skeptical

Associated Press
Saturday, October 7, 2006; Page A08

Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff intends to load up his criminal trial with information about nine national security matters, the names of foreign leaders and details about various terrorist groups, according to court filings in the Valerie Plame leak case.

In court documents, prosecutors argued that it would be “unnecessarily wasteful of time” to allow Libby to present “names of foreign leaders or government officials of other countries, or the names and histories of various terrorist groups.”

The danger for prosecutors is that the sheer volume and sensitivity of the classified information Libby wants to introduce could scuttle the trial. Once the judge identifies classified information Libby is entitled to present, U.S. intelligence agencies must rule on whether the secrets can be declassified. The trial would collapse if the intelligence agencies refuse to declassify the information.

link