It has been a while since we had one of these, but there appears to be some news:
The special prosecutor in the CIA leak case alleged that Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff was engaged in a broader web of deception than was previously known and repeatedly lied to conceal that he had been a key source for reporters about undercover operative Valerie Plame, according to court records released yesterday.
The records also show that by August 2004, early in his investigation of the disclosure of Plame’s identity, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald had concluded that he did not have much of a case against I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby for illegally leaking classified information. Instead, Fitzgerald was focused on charging Cheney’s top aide with perjury and making false statements, and knew he needed to question reporters to prove it.
If you have anything to add, you know what to do.
Pb
As usual, some good informed speculation on this from emptywheel. Nothing really new here that I saw, but it’s nice to have a few more details from Fitz about Libby leaking like a sieve–blabbing to Ari, Russert, Miller, etc.–and Fitz likely going after Rove.
Par R
This is old news. The latest, and potentially far more important news, is Linked to at Instapundit. It’s been reported that Senator Jay Rockefeller, Minority Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is believed by the intelligence community to be the primary source for the New York Times’ stories of the NSA terrorist surveillance program.
Pb
Par R.,
Sounds good to me–Instapundit is far more credible than the WaPo, and I’m sure that Jed Babbin doesn’t have an agenda here!
The Disenfranchised Voter
Well if it turns out it was Rockafeller, then congrats to him.
He is a true American patriot for bring the illegal wiretapping to the American public.
Steve
The right wing is always trying to smear Rockefeller as having leaked this and that. I’m not sure why they have a hard-on for him, as he’s a fairly ineffectual Democrat. You can still find wingnuts who believe to an absolute certainty that Rockefeller revealed a secret satellite program on the Senate floor.
To me it sounds like a cheap attempt to smear the guy’s name and I’m really not inclined to analyze it any further.
Bob In Pacifica
Gee, all sorts of news in the Plame arena over the last couple of days. Drop into Firedoglake once in a while, or Murray Waas’. My fave is that Cheney and Bush had been fully briefed that the Niger documents were fakes by at least June 2003 before the smear of Wilson, probably earlier, and yet Cheney was on Meet The (Obedient) Press in September 2003 still lying about it.
So here’s some speculation of my own: If Cheney was so wedded to pushing the yellowcake as to lie to the American Public about it three months later, and at least knowing that his staff were up to their eyeballs smearing Wilson and exposing a CIA agent, how far away was Cheney from the original cut-and-paste job in Italy? Are there records in the VP’s office of a phone call from Hadley asking, “Hey Boss, now what was the name of the interior minister again?”
Anderson
Yes, the Tatel op confirms what we knew.
Interesting that the D.C. Cir. was evidently taking it on faith that Plame’s status was classified in some way.
And no doubt it bears repeating: lying to prosecutors makes prosecuting the underlying offense difficult if not impossible. That’s why indicting Libby for lying to prosecutors isn’t some sort of abuse of Fitzgerald’s powers.
Unless we’re to assume that Libby was lying just for the fun of it?
ppGaz
You are giving them too much credit. They “believe” whatever they can get away with believing, or more to the point, whatever they can get away with saying.
Belief requires a certain amount of sincerity. There’s no sincerity in their bullshit. It’s all just recital and doctrine and self-hypnosis.
There’s no rational reason to hate and fear something like a liberal worldview. One can argue its pros and cons, but to obsess over it like they do requires irrational demonization. Once you cross that road, then the Rockefeller lie or the Clinton-Foster lies or the Waco-flamethrower lies are just devices. They’d “believe” that the moon was made of green cheese if they thought that saying it would give them an inch of political advantage.
Steve
Surely you’re overstating the case. I mean, liberalism is akin to socialism, which is akin to communism. And you can’t have communism without authoritarianism. And we all know conservatives are opposed to authoritarian government.
p.lukasiak
to me, the big news was that the wingnuts who have been saying that Plame was not covert had their asses handed to them once again. FitzG had told the judge that Plame had acted in a covert capacity in the previous five years — a representation he could not have made without facts to back it up.
And, of course, the Post gets the “no IIPA charge” story wrong. FitzG told the court that an IIPA charge was “off the table” until he got more information — specifically, he wanted to know what Libby had told Miller about Plame after he found out that Plame worked for CPD….and repeated that information to Fleischer. Millers testimony, however, was far too ambiguous/evasive to get a conviction on IIPA (not to mention the fact that a trial on an IIPA charge would have been much more complicated), so Fitz did the smart thing, and went with his “open-and-shut” perjury/obstruction case.
CaseyL
Aw, c’mon. I saw your name in the comments over at TM’s place. The locals there are still claiming Plame was “just a desk jockey.” The latest revelations sailed right over their tiny little pointed heads.
Oh, and TM’s soliciting donations for Libby’s defense fund. Isn’t that sweet: asking people who probably don’t make half of Libby’s salary (Hudson’s paying him at least $160K, plus he’s free to take on other gigs) to pony up for his legal fees.
Ancient Purple
Does this mean you wingnuts have abandon the “Fitzgerald is going to indict Joe Wilson first” meme?
Please say yes.
Pb
CaseyL,
Re: Libby’s defense fund–I’m not surprised really–I guess someone out there must be watching Oliver North’s War Stories, too.
Pb
Ancient Purple,
Check the link; your snark detector is on the blink.
Par R
This is all so very laughable. Plame was about as covert as David Brock’s sexuality is when he’s around Oliver Willis. And what kind of a fucking idiot cites Firedoglake as an authoritative source for anything more than Duncan Black’s bowel movements!?!
chefrad
The smart money here in DC, among the Intel community, is on the McNulty and Feith investigations proving to be a much bigger deal than the Plame affair.
Interestingly, all three touch upon rationales for going to war.
Meanwhile, people are digging into Abramoff connections to apartheid South Africa.
Pb
Par R,
I know, it’s so much less reliable and more partisan than Instahack…
ats
“liberalism is akin to socialism, which is akin to communism.”
Why is it that people who use “akin to” in this slovenly way are always the same people who say, “you and your ilk.”
I call them “akin & ilkers.” They are the kind of people who form their worldview from US News & World Report. They are the kind of people who talk about “kinds of people.”
John
Steve says
“I mean, liberalism is akin to socialism, which is akin to communism. And you can’t have communism without authoritarianism. And we all know conservatives are opposed to authoritarian government.”
That kind of slick association of “groups” is a very cheap and dishonest way of simplifying your own biases and views.
Hitler and Mussolini were conservatives and authoritarians in their right as was Thatcher. So spare us the 2nd grade logic.
These terms that you lump together with such absolute certainty are completely unrelated in their own right.
Steve
Goddamn, John, and you called ME humor-impaired!
John
That was my first post to you….ever. Must be a diffeent John
ppGaz
The original DC-8 airliner was the loudest whoosh at almost any airport 30+ years ago. Before they started putting the noise abatement exhausts on the the engines. I mean, up close, the thing would actually damage your hearing permanently.
But this …. this was a louder whoosh, don’t you think?
Steve
Mm-hmm, yeah, the John who owns the blog. And yeah, whoosh-o-rama :)
The Disenfranchised Voter
Heh. Aww I love irony.
You know what’s I find funny though. It was the Republicans and conservatives who talked more than anybody about how evil the Soviet’s Communism was, and here we all thought they opposed it because of it’s authoritarian nature.
Well as it turns out, they must have only opposed it because of its high-tax nature because many Republicans seems a-okay with Bush having absolute power in the WoT…
The Disenfranchised Voter
*what I find
VidaLoca
… when actually they only opposed it because someone else was running it
Ancient Purple
Oh, dear!
What will those claiming that Plame was not covert when she was outted do now?
moflicky
then where are the indictments? why did fitz abandon the “outing” investigation so early, focusing instead on perjury? I mean, if material damage to national security was done, then I would think that would remain fitz’s focus, doncha think?
CJ
As someone already pointed out, if the parties to an act, illegal or otherwise, are lying about it, it is difficult to get to the bottom of what happened. Best practices would seem to dictate nailing the liars for the lying first and proceed from there. It’s unlikely that, faced with serious jail time, that all the parties will maintain strict silence and stick with the lies.
CJ
Ancient Purple
Right. Because Fitzgerald is required to file indictments and run investigations according to your taste and timetable.
Give me a break.