Looks like the announcements will be tomorrow, so you libs out there will have to wait until Friday for your Fitzmas celebrations:
The prosecutor in the CIA leak investigation presented a summary of his case to a federal grand jury yesterday and is expected to announce a final decision on charges in the two-year-long probe tomorrow, according to people familiar with the case.
Even as Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald wrapped up his case, the legal team of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has been engaged in a furious effort to convince the prosecutor that Rove did not commit perjury during the course of the investigation, according to people close to the aide. The sources, who indicated that the effort intensified in recent weeks, said Rove still did not know last night whether he would be indicted…
The down-to-the-wire moves in Fitzgerald’s investigation have made for a harrowing week at the White House, where officials are girding for at least one senior administration official to be indicted, according to aides.
Most concern is focused on Rove and Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Both had testified that they talked with reporters about Plame in the summer of 2003, according to lawyers familiar with their accounts, but both said they did not discuss her by name or disclose her covert status.
Yesterday was another surreal day at the White House, according to aides, with staff members wondering about who might be indicted. Rove and Libby continued to sit in on high-level meetings.
Tom Maguire has more on the Russert connection, which he dubs a cover-up.
If you have anything I have missed, put it in the comments and I will update.
Stormy70
Plamed out 4 evah! He’s playing everyone like a fine fiddle. I like Fitzy for that reason alone.
ppGaz
Stormy, I know I promised to be nice to you for a whole month and everything, so this may be walking a fine line …
But back in the days when I could go out and carouse with my pals and lift a few too many jars of suds, if I said something like your blurb, above, nest morning, they’d say that I was “still drunk from last night.”
Surely you know that Fitz has the power to knock the little Spud pretender off his pedestal so hard that he’ll spend the next three years trying to crawl back on?
Tim F
Byron York reports that those neighbor interviews were not repeats. First time all around.
Like I said, this looks extremely strange as a last-minute decision.
Stormy70
Please, Fitz may indict, but it will not knock everyone off their game. Wilson is a liar, and the trial will be fun for the entertainment of the defense grilling his ass. Indictments for Scooter Libby will be inside the beltway stuff, anyway. He resigns, and the world moves on.
ppGaz
I doubt that when all the facts are known, it will look srange at all. I’ve already posited one rather bland plausible explanation, but since it’s early on a nice day here and I’m feeling feisty, I’ll come up with another one:
There is a flurry of last-minute negotiating going on between Fitz and the lawyers for people who are targets. Those lawyers are floating some (desperate?) exculpatory “stuff” (crap?) out there in an effort to buy negotiating room for their clients. One of these lawyers said to Fitz, in my putative scenario, well, you know, you can’t indict my client for revealing Plame’s cover because she and her husband were already exposing it … right to their own neighbors! Fitz simply called their bluff. Really? Let’s go find out what they told the neighbors.
Phone call back to Lawyer X: Sorry, big guy, but we canvassed the neighborhood and your story won’t hold up. You don’t have to take my word fot it, it’s in all the papers. Now, does your client want to make that deal?
Sojourner
It’s so great to hear Stormy unabashedly support the outing of CIA agents.
It warms my heart to know such a true patriot.
ppGaz
Stormy, get a clue, honestly. First of all, Wilson is not part of this case. Secondly, the “defense” is not going to go near him, for the simple reason that it will expose the entire sorry spectacle of WHIG and the whole real story behind this collossal fuckup to public scrutiny which it could not otherwise get.
Exposure of Wilson and the Nigergate story is the last thing the White House wants. If you don’t get that, you don’t understand anything about this story at all. That was the whole reason they tried to squash Wilson in the first place!
Steve S
So this Tom Maguire guy… What kind of drugs is he on?
And I still don’t understand what Wilson has to do with this. He could have said the Sky is purple and we are being invaded as space aliens… and that would not take away from the fact that the Whitehouse purposefully and maliciously outed an undercover CIA agent as part of their damage control operation.
The Whitehouse committed high treason. It’s time we see a little frontier justice here, and get some rope.
Tim F
Stormy posts purely for the pleasure of an angry response far too often for my tastes. I find it highly doubtful the she believes half of the stuff that she posts.
Ancient Purple
So let’s just out CIA agents because it’s all fun and games in politics. Whee!
You are a monument to American national security, Stormy.
Stormy70
OH, I believe Wilson is a liar. I have never heard of a covert spy wanting her husband to pick a fight with her boss on the pages of the liberal New York Times. Seems someone might look into why a partisan, media hungry, blowdried hack was sent on this mission to begin with. Then they may wonder why he leaked lies to the press. Even that idiot, Kerry had to drop him from the campaign. Did she take her toddlers to spy drops on her lunch hour, when she was working in the CIA headquarters? If she is the caliber of spy the CIA relies on, then I am not surprised they missed 9/11. The CIA should be cleaned out, and the muck of the beltway cocktail set cleaned out. That is all.
I am glad my first appointment rescheduled so I could come in here and throw a wrench into the circle jerk John’s threads have become.
Ya’ll miss me, tell the truth, now.
Gotta go, have a good time dreaming your Plame dreams today.
Stormy70
I rely on the Department of Defense for National Security, not the clueless CIA. Really, gotta leave now.
Shygetz
That’s kinda the point, Stormy–you never heard of the covert spy because, until now, outing her as a covert spy was a no-no. And the blow-dried hack got the Niger story right, didn’t he? No yellowcake sales from Niger, were there?
ppGaz
There you have it, folks. The Texas Big Hair Society (of course I mean Kay Bailey, and not our own lovable Stormy) will try to make the case that it’s the CIA that is the problem.
Amazing, laughable, dishonorable …. but hardly surprising.
Jorge
Stormy wrote “Seems someone might look into why a partisan, media hungry, blowdried hack was sent on this mission to begin with.”
I think it might be because of this rec letter he got from the 41st President of the United States.
“Dear Joe — Both Barbara and I appreciated your note of Jan. 25. Even more we appreciate your service to your country and your courageous leadership when you were in Baghdad. Good Luck. Many Thanks. George Bush”
Vladi G
God, they’re still on this bit of drivel. Hey, I hear that guy that writes the blog “balloon juice” is a NOC, but hey, I didn’t say his name, which just happens to be written all over his blog, so it’s not a crime.
Seriously, what’s next? “They used her name, but they had their fingers crossed when they did it!”
ppGaz
?
What’s next is the “No controlling legal authority” defense.
After that comes the “We don’t want the result of Fitzpatrick’s attacks to be a mushroom cloud” defense.
Then comes the Ollie North defense: Sure, I’m a criminal, but I’m a patriotic criminal who was acting in your interests.
Defense Guy
Unless you read the NYTimes whose outing of some CIA shell corporations happened not so long ago. Do you suppose Fitz will investigate that next?
Ancient Purple
So, because they are clueless, it is okay to out one of their operatives?
You’re a disgrace.
Vladi G
Do you have a link for this? I hadn’t heard about this one (I assume you aren’t talking about Brewster-Jennings).
Defense Guy
Vladi G
Sure, here you go.
Defense Guy
Vladi
Another one for you, outed by the 9/11 commission no less.
RA
This whole affair demonstrates the hypocracy of the left. The NYT outed the Air Carrier they were using for covert operations. This really endangered and exposed many an agent but no one on the left said boo.
Now a do-nothing paper pusher has her name come out. No one in danger. No serious ramifications. The left calls this a federal crime.
The American hating left is merely criminalizing politics. They actually want our real agents outed. It is only when they can trump up charges for political reasons that they “really care”.
Shygetz
DefenseGuy–It is not illegal for the press to report classified information given to it. It is illegal for whoever leaked the information. And yes, if that information was classified, there should be an investigation as to who leaked it.
And Pavitt was not an undercover agent. This is a speech he gave on the CIA website before his 9-11 testimony.
And here is a speech at Duke University, also before his testimony.
His identity as Deputy Director was public. See, whole different thing.
Defense Guy
Sure, mocking is the best way to handle uncomfortable situations. Ignore it, in other words.
Defense Guy
That last one wasn’t for you ShyGetz, but nice spin.
Tim F
Dang, I’m too late.
Yesterday I planned to post a simple question: will the diehard MCs respond to the indictments with anger at the perps, or anger at “the left.”
I think we have our answer.
Defense Guy
BTW – If she was covert, and the law was broken, heads should roll. I have not changed my postion on that. I’m waiting for the word from the man at this point.
Shygetz
RA–You caught me. I love it when US undercover agents are outed. I go home every day hoping that there will be a CNN report of a CIA outing that I can masturbate to.
You know what else I love? Eating babies. Especially Christian babies. Mmmmm, babies.
Matt
Funny, I would have said the people who committed criminal acts in pursuit of political goals would have been the ones who were “criminalizing politics.”
Lines
Lets see, the press makes an article about charter flights that take Terror suspects to other countries for rendition and now DG thinks they outted a CIA operation for nothing.
Rendition, DG, is still illegal until the Cheney “we loves us some torture” Act is passed.
Shygetz
Is rendition illegal? I know it’s immoral and should be illegal, but is it really illegal?
p.lukasiak
This whole affair demonstrates the hypocracy of the left. The NYT outed the Air Carrier they were using for covert operations. This really endangered and exposed many an agent but no one on the left said boo.
But I thought “everybody knew” that the Air Carrier was CIA? And under the “Plame-Wilson” rule, that makes it okay to do just about anything!
Certainly, there was more than enough information publicly available to determine that it was a CIA corporation. It was openly reported in the international media that the US was flying around captured “terrorists” on private jets, and it was all very “hush-hush.”
What we are looking at here, however, is a whole different kettle of fish. The “airline” was not being used as a cover for NOC agents — it was being used to hide certain unsavory practices by the US government.
Its also different because if someone confirmed that the airline was CIA, they did so as a whistleblower, because the airline was being used to ILLEGALLY transport terrorism suspects to nations where they would be tortured — and the US knew it. It wasn’t a crime for Joe Wilson to tell America about his trip to Africa, and there was no “whistleblower” motive in outing his wife in retaliation.
Defense Guy
Nice dodge, but factually incorrect. Selective outrage.
Lines
Would you like to put up or shut up, DG?
Defense Guy
Show me the US code, thats the rule of law the CIA and the fed operate under.
Defense Guy
The other thing, of course, is that if they wanted to talk about the practice of rendition, they could have done it without outting a CIA operation. Once again, the outrage is selective.
Lines
The US is a signatory to that law. They broke international law. I don’t care if its illegal in the US or not (its questionable, according to lawyers), it broke treaties we signed onto.
Of course, that doesn’t matter to you, because you want to win this argument and you’ll use any technicality to do it, right?
Shygetz
Umm, DefenseGuy, I point you to the US Constitution, Article 4, Clause 2:
“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”
Time to conceed, my friend.
Lines
It was a CIA operation specifically designed to transport suspects FOR rendition.. Are you really that clueless or are you just trying to see how much stupidity we can take before we just leave the thread altogether?
Tim F
The CIA, almost by definition, does things that are against the law. Though I approve of some of those things and disapprove of others, I can’t necessarily condemn them on those grounds alone. If what they’re doing is completely stupid and contradictory to American interests, as is wholesale and indiscriminate torture, then those are the grounds on which I’d criticize them.
The NY Times, and in a twisted sort of way Bob Novak as well, did what the press do, which is reveal what they are capable of revealing and find newsworthy. If the CIA assesses that the leak damaged their operations then they have every right to ask a special prosecutor to find out who broke the law.
If the CIA simply did a poor job covering their tracks and the NYT found this out on their own, then nobody’s in any legal trouble at all. End of story.
Defense Guy
The story could have been told without naming the outfits. It was the outting of clandestine CIA operations of a nature that have occured under the last 2 administrations. The reason you cannot get your head around that is selective outrage. You agree with the reasoning for outting the CIA in this case, so you think it’s fine. You don’t really care about outting CIA personel. You are a hypocrite.
Defense Guy
Thanks, at least you see the problem with the action.
I will concede the US being a signatory to the UNCAT and apparently not following it for at least the last 2 administrations, or so it would appear.
Lines
Lets see if this is an apples to apples kind of situation which would indicate hypocracy:
1) Outting of a CIA agent for political purposes to discourage and distract from her husband’s reports that argued the Administrations excuses for war.
vs.
2) Outting a CIA operation that existed only for the illegal rendition of terror suspects. An operation that appears was tracked down easily by journalists and didn’t rely on “leaks”.
Hmm, appears to be comparing apples to fruit roll-ups.
Defense Guy
Selective outrage. I’ll leave it at that. You agree with it on the one hand, because there were no ‘leaks’, so it must be hunky dory. You are a true friend to the CIA. Stand up and take a bow.
At least from now on I know where you really stand in the whole plamegate issue.
Shygetz
The press did its job. If someone leaked the info to the press, their heads should roll (even though I’m glad the info got out). Otherwise, the press did its job. I’m not calling for Novak’s head to roll for publishing Plame’s name; I’m calling for the head of whoever leaked the info in the first place. I will support a call to do so in the case of the NY Times story, too.
Lines
So because we’ve gotten away with it before, its ok to keep doing it? now who’s advocating hypocracy?
ppGaz
The “outfits”, which are fictitious and do not actually exist, were named at least a year earlier in a story about something else entirely. They are not exactly secret.
The airplanes’ N-numbers can be looked up by anyone and the “outfits” names are right there, public record. FAA.
Lines
DG, I’m in favor of those that broke the law paying the price. Those that permit and order rendition should be arrested and tried. Those that leak names for political purposes should be arrested and tried. Those that purposely lie to either the public or to a grand jury should be tried for slander/perjury/obstruction.
I’m in favor of the law, you seem to be the selective one. What law was broken in outting an illegal CIA operation?
Shygetz
DefenseGuy, what the NY Times did wasn’t illegal. They followed a story and found out something the government didn’t want found out. That’s what the press does. What happened in the Plame case (apparently) involved the breaking of a law. Unless there was a leak or something similar in the NY Times case, then there’s nothing to be selectively outraged about. It’s part of the cost of a free press, which I believe is essential to democracy.
Tim F
FWIW, I feel the same way about Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. That he did the right thing, at least in my opinion, doesn’t change the fact that he knowingly broke the law. It’s up to history to decide whether what you did was right, the judge decides whether you what you did was illegal.
Defense Guy
Right, so no one here now was upset that a covert agent was outed, they are upset the law was broken. I will note that for the future.
Lines
OMG, you get it!
Oh, wait, you’re being sarcastic.
The reason so many are outraged about Plame is that it was done for spite and politics. Thats why the level of outrage is higher.
Ancient Purple
I am dying to know what inside sources you have in the CIA who have concluded that the blown cover of Brewster-Jennings has placed no one in dancer or had no serious ramifications.
Care to cite your sources?
Defense Guy
I’m not being sarcastic. Your outrage is not over the outing of a CIA agent, thats just something you use to bump up your outrage. I honestly thought that was important to you, having read comments along those lines. Now I know better.
Tim F
Bullshit. I said that I think that Ellsberg, like Rove and Libby and whomever, should go to jail because they broke the law. I left unsaid that I think Rove et al are human scum who deserve to rot for what they did.
To sum up: Ellsberg, right but illegal. Rove et al., wrong and illegal.
If you want to put words in my mouth try and make them erasonable facsimiles of what I might say.
feral1
How dare all those “American hating” commies over at the CIA “criminalize politics” by referring for investigation the disclosure of an undercover agent’s identity.
I have to say it’s been an entertaining couple of years wathching the wingnuts first turn on the CIA when the wouldn’t play along with their most fevered delusions and then to see them train their sites on federal prosecutors is almost more than I can stand.
Tim F
BTW, impugn-the-motives is another form of the ad hominem fallacy. Defense guy hasn’t actually said anything worth responding to in quite a while.
Defense Guy
Tim F
I thought I had you covered when I stated that you were upset by the NY Times issue. Go back to the beginning of this post and you will see what I am talking about.
Defense Guy
And yet there you are responding, and acting aggreived when you felt I lumped you in, which I didn’t. I’m just tired of the rhetorical ploy that uses the outing of a CIA agent as a source of fake outrage to be dropped when the mood suits. To head you off, I don’t lump you in there either. Yours was the post that I was hoping for, solid in it’s statement that it is a bright line bad thing to out a covert agent of the US. Period.
ppGaz
Snort. Amazing concession. What we may find out soon is that whether anyone thinks it’s a “bright line” bad thing or not, it is against the law. And if so, the charge will be what matters, not the blogosphere rendition.
Krista
Personally, I was alarmed that she was outed. But I’m outraged at the thought that it was done for petty, political reasons.
Tim F
What you had in mind disagrees with what you had on keyboard:
I am perfectly happy to leave our conversation where it stood after my post about the NYT, and yoru reply. I’m also more than happy to go to the mat with liberal friends over matters of principle. That’s why the particular wording of your post surprised and irritated me. If you had something in mind other than what I interpreted then feel free to ignore my following posts.
Defense Guy
Clearly, and we may even find out tomorrow what the charges are.
I’m happy to leave it at that point too, which is why I made sure to follow up with your post taking issue with my imprecise language use. I’ve been trying to wean myself off the liberal and leftist language, and will add this latest to my list as well.
Tim F
News:
When it rains, it pours:
I had completely forgotten about the Ohio “coingate.” How many investigations do we have going right now? Jeebus, and to think that Fitz might ask the judge for another go round, to have a look at the Niger forgeries scandal.
When it’s all over, who’ll be left in charge of the Republican party?
Sojourner
Harriet Miers
Lines
Sojourner’s Miers a year from now:
Mr. Fitzgerald, you are the greatest special prosecutor evah! Our country is so, like, lucky to have you as its special prosecutor!
Gratefulcub
Don’t forget little ol’ Kentucky. Governor Fletcher fired all the democrats in merit positions, and hired republicans. 9 aides and associates were indicted, he pardoned them all.
In all fairness, it really is more of a political fight as opposed to outrageous corruption, but the irony is the campaign slogan that got Fletcher elected:
“We are going to clean up Frankfort”
Halffasthero
Stormy, the people claiming Joe Wilson lied are the same ones who were hell-bent determined to go to war on extremely wrong/docotored? intelligence. Frankly, he may have lied about a couple things for all I know (which I don’t) but he was right in his assessment of the yellow cake circus. You can’t change that. There were NO WMD. You can’t change that fact either. I don’t care if Cheney did or did not refer him for the job. He did the job and reported on it. He was then attacked – there is no denying this – for his LTE. If the people who are given intel are abusing it as a means to an end, what recourse do you suggest people to take? A firm scolding? That is bullshit.
This WH wanted this war so badly they could taste it and they were not taking “no” for an answer. They stomped on everyone that tried to question them. Mark Dayton asked what the sudden urgency was for this war and was hit again and again by Rumsfeld for daring to ask. Now that we are bleeding, literally and financially, just who is supposed to take the fall? Joe Wilson and the CIA because he lied about who referred him (assuming he did)? Bullshit again. This whole damn war has been a fuck up from the start and there is no happy ending to it.
Not sure how articulate this is because I have to type and work at the same time. Feel free to snark it.
slide
Joe Wilson and his wife are American heros. They dedicated their entire adult lives to serving the United States. They both exhibited extradordinary courage – Ms. Wilson as a covert NOC agent, risking arrest and imprisonment every day that she toiled for this nation. Joe Wilson? Stood up to Saddam Hussein at great risk to his own personal safey. He was hailed as “truly inspiring” and “courageous” by George H. W. Bush after sheltering more than one hundred Americans at the US embassy in Baghdad, and mocking Saddam Hussein’s threats to execute anyone who refused to hand over foreigners.
But the chicken hawk cowards on the right want to attack them to this very day. Unfortunatly for them, the Wilsons weren’t like Paul O’Neil that shut up when threatened. No, the Wilsons have a lot of expereice standing up to thugs and now the whole ball of wax is going to unravel for the boy president and his merry men. So, continue Stormy to attack those that serve this nation for your own partisan political reasons, Americans are going to see quite shortly who are the real traitors to this great nation.
VictorRay
You got that right: the real traitors are Joe Wilson and Richard Clarke. Don’t be surprised if both names turn up in the indicments tomorrow. Who do you think the two people who work outside the White House who are facing indictment are?
I hope that no one forgets we are at war now. To be tearing down the president right now is essentially treason.
Cyrus
You know what? I would love, absolutely love, to have the messenger taken of the table and out of the discussions. It’s always “Do liberals support outing this CIA agent but not that one.” And “Did Joe Wilson lie about why he went to Niger and/or what he found there.” And “Are supporters of the war soldiers/veterans.” Yes, I’d apply it to the “chickenhawk” thing too. Hell with it. I admit I’ve made those accusations here and there, and I think there is substance to them, but that substance has little or nothing to do with the reasons for the war itself, so it’s like concluding that JFK was a terrible leader based on his womanizing.
But when this and every thread out there are doomed to degenerate almost immediately into attacks on credibility, we can’t even see the “gone too far” point any more.
Was a NOC outed? Was it done intentionally? Was doing so illegal? (In a related but seperate question, was doing so harmful, and/or was that foreseeable?)
So unless someone is suggesting (seriously suggesting) that Joseph Wilson outed his wife and framed Karl Rove, I don’t care if he’s a liar. And unless someone is claiming that anonymous commenters on this blog have a personal connection to Plame, Rove or the CIA, I don’t care if the commenter has different opinions on different instances of media reaction to CIA secrets.
I guess that’s just me, fighting my own quixotic war to keep blogs from resembling the worst corners of Usenet.
Should “quixotic” be capitalized?
Geek, Esq.
Murray Waas strikes again.
ppGaz
DougJ, you naughty boy.
Tim F
Over Pat Roberts’s dead body they are.
slide
Moron alert:
How dumb is the right? how deluded have they become? How unable to comprehend?
slide
did I get DougJ’d? Damn I hate when that happens.
Krista
DougJ – you know you’ve become legendary when your name has become a verb.
Tim F
Doug has declared that he’s not VictorRay. If so we all need to have a serious talk about how a niche works.
ppGaz
Tell him to expect an indictment.
Steve S
What is it about Republicans that they always feel this need to defend the indefensible?
Mac Buckets
All you Democrats make stupid generalizations like this.
Sojourner
LOL. Good one!
ppGaz
These are also known as “declarations of fact.”