Scooter Libby Indicted, resigns

[Gary Floyd 0]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9837835/

 

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was indicted Friday on five charges that include obstruction of justice, making false statements and perjury in the investigation into the leak of a covert CIA agent’s name.

 

also, he's resigned.

[iliketurtles 0]

The guy making baseball references to this is pretty funny.

[Special K 0]

That was the most oblique way possible to just say "intent is a very important factor here."

[Vampiro69 0]

This guys nickname is Scooter? OMG it is Scott Keith!

[SuperJerk 0]

No crime was actually committed.[/Republican hack mode]

[Vampiro69 0]

When things go bad they go bad. I see this geting worse. Would it not be great if they discovered that the leak was a janitor at the White House named Milos?

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

Bush Orders Staff to Attend Ethics Briefings

White House Counsel to Give 'Refresher' Course

 

By Jim VandeHei

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, November 5, 2005; Page A02

 

President Bush has ordered White House staff to attend mandatory briefings beginning next week on ethical behavior and the handling of classified material after the indictment last week of a senior administration official in the CIA leak probe.

 

According to a memo sent to aides yesterday, Bush expects all White House staff to adhere to the "spirit as well as the letter" of all ethics laws and rules. As a result, "the White House counsel's office will conduct a series of presentations next week that will provide refresher lectures on general ethics rules, including the rules of governing the protection of classified information," according to the memo, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post by a senior White House aide...

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...5110402040.html

[bobobrazil1984 0]

the white house staff is giong to ethics school! the jokes tell itself.

[Art Sandusky 0]

So Condi gets to be the sexual harassment target?

[Guest InuYasha]

...and the information continues to come out:

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060409/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cia_leak

 

WASHINGTON - President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should speak publicly about their involvement in the CIA leak case so people can understand what happened, a leading Republican senator said Sunday.

 

"We ought to get to the bottom of it so it can be evaluated by the American people," said Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record) of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

 

In a federal court filing last week, the prosecutor in the case said Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, testified before a grand jury that he was authorized by Bush, through Cheney, to leak information from a classified document that detailed intelligence agencies' conclusions about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

 

A lawyer knowledgeable about the case said Saturday that Bush declassified sensitive intelligence in 2003 and authorized its public disclosure to rebut Iraq war critics, but he did not specifically direct that Libby be the one to disseminate the information.

 

"I think it is necessary for the president and vice president to tell the American people exactly what happened," Specter told "Fox News Sunday."

 

"There's been enough of a showing that the president of the United States owes a specific explanation to the American people ... about exactly what he did," Specter said.

 

Libby faces trial, likely in January, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice for allegedly lying to the grand jury and investigators about what he told reporters about CIA officer Valerie Plame.

 

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald did not say in the filing that Cheney authorized Libby to leak Plame's identity, and Bush is not accused of doing anything illegal.

 

The investigation is looking into whether Plame's identify was disclosed to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, an Iraq war critic. Wilson had accused the administration of twisting prewar intelligence to exaggerate the threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

 

Wilson said Sunday that Bush and Cheney should release transcripts of their interviews with Fitzgerald.

 

"It seems to me that first and foremost, the White House needs to come clean on this matter," Wilson said on ABC's "This Week." "My own view of this is that the White House owes the American people and particularly our service people who have been sent into war, an apology for having misrepresented the facts."

 

The lawyer knowledgeable about the case said Bush instructed Cheney to "get it out" and left the details about disseminating the intelligence to him. The lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case for the White House, said Cheney chose Libby and communicated the president's wishes to his then-top aide.

 

It is not known when the conversation between Bush and Cheney took place. The White House has declined to provide the date when the president used his authority to declassify the portions of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.

 

"There has to be a detailed explanation as to precisely what Vice President Cheney did, what the president said to him and an explanation by the president as to what he said," Specter said.

[SuperJerk 0]

Bush admits he declassified intelligence document

 

By TOM HAMBURGER

The Los Angeles Times

 

WASHINGTON — President Bush told a Washington audience Monday he had declassified intelligence information in 2003 to help the American public understand the basis for statements the administration had made about Iraq before the start of the war.

 

“I wanted people to see the truth,” Bush said in response to a question from a member of the audience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

 

“You’re not supposed to talk about classified information, and so I declassified the document. I thought it was important for people to get a better sense for why I was saying what I was saying in my speeches.”

 

Federal court pleadings last week disclosed that a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, had testified he released portions of the secret National Intelligence Estimate to a New York Times reporter after being authorized to do so by Cheney and Bush in July 2003.

 

Bush’s comments Monday were his first on the matter. The White House has not commented directly on the claim Bush had explicitly authorized a leak to a single reporter, but officials have not denied it.

 

On July 18, 2003, the White House formally announced it had declassified portions of the secret National Intelligence Estimate and then distributed the cleared portions to all reporters. The leak to The New York Times reporter occurred 10 days earlier.

 

Both efforts were designed to counter criticism from a former ambassador, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had been dispatched to Africa by the CIA in 2002 to investigate claims Iraq was seeking nuclear material. Wilson found little evidence to support those claims and, in mid-2003, publicly charged the administration had “twisted” intelligence data to make the case for war.

 

The former ambassador’s claims were unnerving to a White House worried about an upcoming re-election and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

 

In addition to releasing the National Intelligence Estimate, at least two White House officials mentioned to reporters that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA. White House aides mentioned Wilson’s wife as a way of undermining his credibility, suggesting his trip to Africa was part of a “junket” arranged by his spouse.

 

Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, a covert operative, was subsequently identified by name in a newspaper column. Prosecutors have spent the past two years investigating the leak of her name.

 

It is a crime to knowingly identify a CIA undercover employee. Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff, has been charged with obstruction of justice, lying to federal agents and perjury in connection with that inquiry.

 

The court papers filed by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald last week do not say Bush or Cheney leaked Plame’s name. But the filing does describe an effort by several White House officials to “discredit, punish or seek revenge against” Wilson.

 

On Sunday, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, R-Pa., urged Bush and Cheney to tell “exactly what happened.”

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/14313390.htm

 

So if he declassified it, no crime was committed?

 

Bush is starting to remind me of Cobra Commander who (no matter how stupid the scheme) always escaped capture at the end of every "GI Joe" episode.

[Dr. Zaius 0]

Check it out...news...

 

Sources: State Department official source of Plame leak

 

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the source who revealed the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to syndicated columnist Robert Novak in 2003, touching off a federal investigation, two sources familiar with Armitage's role tell CNN.

 

The sources said Armitage revealed Plame's role at the CIA almost inadvertently in a casual conversation with Novak, and it is not clear if he knew her identity was classified at the time.

 

Armitage was not indicted by the federal grand jury that investigated the disclosure of Plame's name to Novak and other journalists. Deliberately revealing the identify of a CIA operative can be a crime.

 

The revelation that Armitage was the source of Novak's column is somewhat anticlimactic for Bush administration critics who had used the story as a weapon in Washington's partisan battles.

 

During the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003, Armitage was viewed as one of the more skeptical voices in the administration about the need to depose Saddam Hussein by force.

 

In a July 14, 2003, column, Novak noted that Plame was a CIA operative, citing two senior administration officials. The column was primarily about Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, a former career diplomat and critic of the intelligence underlying the invasion of Iraq.

 

Wilson and some Democrats contend Plame's identity was released by the White House to retaliate against her husband for writing a July 2003 column in The New York Times that questioned the administration's use of prewar intelligence on Iraq. (Full story)

 

Last month, Plame and Wilson filed a civil lawsuit alleging a conspiracy that "was motivated by an invidiously discriminatory animus towards those who had publicly criticized the administration's stated justifications for going to war with Iraq" and culminated with the disclosure that Plame worked at the CIA. This revelation destroyed Plame's career with the agency, according to the suit.

 

The scenario described by the sources familiar with Armitage's role, however, appears to contradict those arguments.

 

But the Wilsons' attorney, Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the revelation that Armitage was the original source for the leak did not undercut the charge that Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's former chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and White House adviser Karl Rove acted to retaliate against Wilson by engaging in a "whispering campaign" about his wife.

 

The couple plans to proceed with the lawsuit, Sloan said.

 

"Mr. Armitage's conduct does not change the facts of what Libby, Cheney and Rove did," Sloan told CNN. "The case is about the abuse of government power."

 

Novak has never revealed the original source of the information about Plame. However, he has said that Rove confirmed the information and was the second source cited in the column.

 

Novak has said he would not reveal the identity of the original source unless the source came forward. However, he said the special counsel in the CIA leak investigation, Patrick Fitzgerald, learned who the source was independently.

 

Fitzgerald has said he does not plan to bring any charges against Novak's original source.

 

Calls to Armitage for comment were not returned Tuesday.

 

The Armitage connection to the Novak column is also outlined in a new book titled "Hubris" by Michael Isikoff and David Korn.

 

In the book, Armitage is quoted as telling former Assistant Secretary of State Carl Ford that "I'm afraid I may be the guy that caused this whole thing."

 

Calls to Ford for comment also were not returned Tuesday.

 

In September 2003, Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, Illinois, was appointed as a special counsel to investigate whether any laws were broken with the disclosure.

 

No one has been indicted for leaking Plame's identity, but Libby has been charged with perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators for allegedly giving false information about his discussions with journalists about Plame.

 

Libby has denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty.

 

Fitzgerald notified Rove that he wouldn't be charged in the case, Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said in June.

 

As part of his investigation, Fitzgerald subpoenaed then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller and then-Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper. In 2005, Miller spent nearly 12 weeks in jail after she refused to testify to identify her source to Fitzgerald. (View a timeline of the CIA leak case)

 

Miller was released after her source, Libby, called her and personally waived their confidentially agreement.

 

Armitage, 65, was No. 2 at the State Department under former Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2001 to 2005.

 

He left his post after Powell resigned at the beginning of Bush's second term.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/30/lea...tage/index.html

[Guest InuYasha]

Check it out...news...

 

Sources: State Department official source of Plame leak

 

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the source who revealed the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to syndicated columnist Robert Novak in 2003, touching off a federal investigation, two sources familiar with Armitage's role tell CNN.

 

The sources said Armitage revealed Plame's role at the CIA almost inadvertently in a casual conversation with Novak, and it is not clear if he knew her identity was classified at the time.

 

Armitage was not indicted by the federal grand jury that investigated the disclosure of Plame's name to Novak and other journalists. Deliberately revealing the identify of a CIA operative can be a crime.

 

The revelation that Armitage was the source of Novak's column is somewhat anticlimactic for Bush administration critics who had used the story as a weapon in Washington's partisan battles.

 

During the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003, Armitage was viewed as one of the more skeptical voices in the administration about the need to depose Saddam Hussein by force.

 

In a July 14, 2003, column, Novak noted that Plame was a CIA operative, citing two senior administration officials. The column was primarily about Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, a former career diplomat and critic of the intelligence underlying the invasion of Iraq.

 

Wilson and some Democrats contend Plame's identity was released by the White House to retaliate against her husband for writing a July 2003 column in The New York Times that questioned the administration's use of prewar intelligence on Iraq. (Full story)

 

Last month, Plame and Wilson filed a civil lawsuit alleging a conspiracy that "was motivated by an invidiously discriminatory animus towards those who had publicly criticized the administration's stated justifications for going to war with Iraq" and culminated with the disclosure that Plame worked at the CIA. This revelation destroyed Plame's career with the agency, according to the suit.

 

The scenario described by the sources familiar with Armitage's role, however, appears to contradict those arguments.

 

But the Wilsons' attorney, Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the revelation that Armitage was the original source for the leak did not undercut the charge that Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's former chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and White House adviser Karl Rove acted to retaliate against Wilson by engaging in a "whispering campaign" about his wife.

 

The couple plans to proceed with the lawsuit, Sloan said.

 

"Mr. Armitage's conduct does not change the facts of what Libby, Cheney and Rove did," Sloan told CNN. "The case is about the abuse of government power."

 

Novak has never revealed the original source of the information about Plame. However, he has said that Rove confirmed the information and was the second source cited in the column.

 

Novak has said he would not reveal the identity of the original source unless the source came forward. However, he said the special counsel in the CIA leak investigation, Patrick Fitzgerald, learned who the source was independently.

 

Fitzgerald has said he does not plan to bring any charges against Novak's original source.

 

Calls to Armitage for comment were not returned Tuesday.

 

The Armitage connection to the Novak column is also outlined in a new book titled "Hubris" by Michael Isikoff and David Korn.

 

In the book, Armitage is quoted as telling former Assistant Secretary of State Carl Ford that "I'm afraid I may be the guy that caused this whole thing."

 

Calls to Ford for comment also were not returned Tuesday.

 

In September 2003, Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, Illinois, was appointed as a special counsel to investigate whether any laws were broken with the disclosure.

 

No one has been indicted for leaking Plame's identity, but Libby has been charged with perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators for allegedly giving false information about his discussions with journalists about Plame.

 

Libby has denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty.

 

Fitzgerald notified Rove that he wouldn't be charged in the case, Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said in June.

 

As part of his investigation, Fitzgerald subpoenaed then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller and then-Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper. In 2005, Miller spent nearly 12 weeks in jail after she refused to testify to identify her source to Fitzgerald. (View a timeline of the CIA leak case)

 

Miller was released after her source, Libby, called her and personally waived their confidentially agreement.

 

Armitage, 65, was No. 2 at the State Department under former Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2001 to 2005.

 

He left his post after Powell resigned at the beginning of Bush's second term.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/30/lea...tage/index.html

So, Armitage is throwing himself on his sword so Bush and Cheney don't get the axe? It's Nixon and Watergate all over again. Who's going to be Deep Throat this time?

[Dr. Zaius 0]

Reminds me more of how Casper Weinberger took the fall for Iran-Contra, except far less of a big deal.