Bush is soft on crime

I've been interested in Scooter Libby's role in "Plamegate" since 2003. Ultimately, Libby was convicted of perjury, not leaking classified information, and sentenced to 30 months in jail, a $250,000 fine and 2 years probation.

Today, an appeals court ruled that Libby would have to start serving his jail time. Then, hours later, President Bush commuted that part of his sentence:

I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.

My decision to commute his prison sentence leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby. The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged. His wife and young children have also suffered immensely. He will remain on probation. The significant fines imposed by the judge will remain in effect. The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant, and private citizen will be long-lasting.

Given that Libby supporters have contributed $3 million to his legal defense, it seems hard to believe that a $250,000 fine is all that onerous.

My guess is that he'll get that back in a book advance and speaking fees.

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, by the way, was not pleased::

“In this case an experienced federal judge considered extensive argument from the parties and then imposed a sentence consistent with the applicable laws,” Mr. Fitzgerald said in a statement. “It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals.”

The President seemingly agrees, as he declared on 6-6-06:

As Americans, we revere freedom and equality, the rights and dignity of every individual, and the supremacy of the rule of law.

Ah, hypocrisy.

Happy fourth of July everyone.


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Libby and his Superiors

This has been widely reported, but I wanted to save a copy of this quote on the blog. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wrote the following in a January 23 letter to Lewis Libby's attorneys. AP, February 9:

"We also note that it is our understanding that Mr. Libby testified that he was authorized to disclose information about the NIE to the press by his superiors,"

Libby's lawyers deny that such a defense is planned, nor do I think it would be especially relevant since Libby is not charged with leaking classified information.

He's charged with obstruction of justice, making false statements (2) and perjury (2). Five counts in all.

In any case, for the record, Libby's immediate superior was Vice President Dick Cheney, though he also worked as an Assistant to President George W. Bush. Presumably, some of Bush's top aides were viewed as superiors to Libby, who was the Veep's Chief of Staff.


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Filed as: Plame and Libby

Plausible update: the whisper campaign

Swopa at Needlenose suggests that Judith Miller may have been Novak's source. If you read the press conference transcript carefully, it notes that

Mr. Libby's story that he was at the tail end of a chain of phone calls, passing on from one reporter what he heard from another, was not true.

It was false. He was at the beginning of the chain of phone calls, the first official to disclose this information outside the government to a reporter. And then he lied about it afterwards, under oath and repeatedly.

This strongly implies that reporters started talking to one other. Libby (though this sounds like classic Rove) launched a whisper campaign.

So how did Fitzgerald say it began?

In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson.

Interesting.

The right remains in denial

Some on the right continue to argue that the leak of Valerie Plame's identity wasn't a crime because she wasn't a covert agent. Commenter chicagomac on RedState.org:

It is clear that, at least by sometime in January 2004 -- and probably much earlier -- Fitzgerald knew this law had not been violated. Plame was not a "covert" agent but a bureaucrat working at CIA headquarters.

Read the thread and lots of commenters continue to claim that Plame was not covert, and thus could not have been outed.

Here's the truth from the Libby indictment:

At all relevant times from January 1, 2002 through July 2003, Valerie Wilson was employed by the CIA, and her employment status was classified.

The indictment also says that the Vice President told Libby that Plame worked in the "Counterproliferation Division," which as Josh Marshall points out, is in the Operations Directorate. The work of the OD is so secret that there's virtually no discussion of it on the CIA webpage.

The CIA webpage is kind of ambiguous on OD's organization, but the Senate Intelligence Committee in its July 2004 report on Iraq made clear that the "Counterproliferation Division" is in OD.

The right's apologists completely ignore the part of the indictment that notes Libby's legal responsibilities for handling all classified information. In other words, it wouldn't matter if she was still a NOC or not:

LIBBY was obligated by applicable laws and regulations, including Title 18, United States Code, Section 793, and Executive Order 12958 (as modified by Executive Order 13292), not to disclose classified information to persons not authorized to receive such information, and otherwise to exercise proper care to safeguard classified information against unauthorized disclosure. On or about January 23, 2001, LIBBY executed a written “Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement,” stating in part that “I understand and accept that by being granted access to classified information, special confidence and trust shall be placed in me by the United States Government,” and that “I have been advised that the unauthorized disclosure, unauthorized retention, or negligent handling of classified information by me could cause damage or irreparable injury to the United States or could be used to advantage by a foreign nation.”

Conceivably, Libby could have been charged with treason under some readings.

Numerous commenters also refer to Fitzgerald's "2-year investigation" as if the entire process was an unreasonable waste of time, given the outcome.

Well, the grand jury investigation began in January 2004 and was nearly finished by May. Remember, Matt Cooper (Time) and Judith Miller (The New York Times) fought their subpoenas to testify, in May 2004. This meant the beginning of a legal process that went all the way to the Supreme Court as the reporters kept losing (the Court refused to intervene on their behalf in June 2005).

Cooper finally agreed to testify in July 2005 and Miller went to jail that same month. Miller agreed to testify on September 30, which means it took Fitzgerald only one month to finish the investigation after he secured her testimony. It took about six to eight onths of total investigative work to wrap up the entire business. A year or more was lost fighting a winning battle against the reporter targets of the leaks.

Beyond Libby?

To me, this is the key paragraph in the Libby indictment. This pertains to Count 1, obstruction of justice:

21. On or about July 10 or July 11, 2003, LIBBY spoke to a senior official in the White House (“Official A”) who advised LIBBY of a conversation Official A had earlier that week with columnist Robert Novak in which Wilson’s wife was discussed as a CIA employee involved in Wilson’s trip. LIBBY was advised by Official A that Novak would be writing a story about Wilson’s wife.

Who is Official A, other than one of Robert Novak's apparent sources?

If one reads the entire document, it is clear that Libby was not one of Robert Novak's sources. If he was, that would have been mentioned because the document discusses quite a number of people who Libby told, including journalists, that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA.

By the way, it also mentions that Libby had four different sources within the government confirming this fact for him.

I suppose it is possible that Libby admitted telling Novak, and therefore did not lie about it. However, the prosecutor then could have gotten to Libby's "state of mind" and considered an Espionage Act prosecution. As Fitzgerald said when using the "baseball analogy" in the press conference, the Prosecutor couldn't make such a charge because Libby was not telling the whole story and often lied.

So, who were Novak's sources? The paragraph I just quoted implies strongly that it is official A. Who is Official A? Multiple reports say Official A is Karl Rove. Rove's own attorney acknowledges that Rove remains in legal jeopardy.

Who is Novak's original second source? Most likely, it is one of the unindicted people who apparently testified against Libby -- but who are not mentioned by name in the indictment. Good guesses are John Hannah, David Wurmser or perhaps Fred Fleitz. If one or all of these men cut a deal with the Prosecutor, then they probably aren't going to be indicted. They may nonetheless lose their jobs in the administration once their testimony is required at trial.

Suffice to say that there are many unanswered questions.

As some bloggers and even The New York Times are noting, there's also good reason to believe that Fitzgerald is using Libby to pressure Vice President Cheney. The indictment mentions that Libby learned of Plame's status from the Veep, that persons in the Veep's office collectively discussed how to address media inquiries about the Wilson Niger trip, etc. I'll defer to Andrew Sullivan on this one.

Twenty-two skidoo?

Off by one?

Start with the 2 most commonly mentioned people: I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Karl Rove.

Add the 8 remaining members of WHIG: Nicholas Calio, Andrew Card, Stephen Hadley, Karen Hughes, Lewis Libby, Mary Matalin, Condi Rice, and James Wilkinson.

That's 10

From the rumor mill, add John Hannah (who apparently will plead guilty to a lesser count, or be granted immunity) and Dick Cheney.

12

Oh hell, let's just add in the entire list of administration officials alleged to be involved from the Think Progress list...but that's 12 more, 23 in all, and they're missing Calio.

Hmmm, 24.

I'd cut Colin Powell from the Think Progress list.

Oh, right, and the grand jury cannot indict the President.

22!

If Hannah (did you know he used to direct an AIPAC-affiliated group?) received an immunity deal, maybe we should add John Bolton or Fred Fleitz? Hannah was essentially tasked to Cheney from Bolton's office at State, where Fleitz worked.

Of course, we can still ask these questions of President Bush: "What did he know, and when did he know it?"

Don't you love the phrase, "unindicted co-conspirator."

Maybe I should have entitled this post "Catch 22."

Communication Breakdown

Apparently, the media has a hard time getting its story straight when it's not simply reporting White House press releases.

As commenter E-mart points out, some news agencies say that Valerie Plame didn't work in Winpac. Was Libby passing along disinformation? Was someone passing along disinformation to Libby? Or was Judith Miller just wondering about Winpac after learning that "Flame" worked on wmd issues at CIA?

I'm checking firedoglake regularly now because the talented writers there are following the news stories about "Treasongate" very closely. Plus, at least one of the bloggers there seems to be a former prosecutor. That blog, and others, have reported that Miller didn't really have a security clearance.

Hmmm.

The blogosphere and the media are truly exploding with energy about the different and rapidly changing angles on this story.

For example, writers are not merely speculating that Dick Cheney is a target of the leak investigation. No, some already have him thinking about resignation! The most fantastic speculation concerns the identity of Bush's new Veep. While some are saying Condi Rice, my money would be on a politico from the congressional leadership -- or a Governor from a red state. The person would have to be totally clean on the selling of the Iraq war, and there aren't many in the administration who are.

Vice President Marc Racicot?

Other rumors concern the theory that someone in the administration has flipped and is volunteering evidence to the leak investigators. John Hannah's name has surfaced. Remember, Hannah's name already emerged in February 2004 as a possible leaker -- along with Irv Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Moreover, reporters are starting to turn on Judith Miller. Laura Rozen recalls that Miller didn't want to believe that the anthrax attacks were home-grown terrorism, and former Times colleague Barbara Crossette says Miller's oil-for-food stories were unsubstantiated.

Here's my contribution to these developments. Hannah not only worked in Cheney's office, he was apparently the point man in the Veep's office to receive Iraq intell info directly from the INC. From Newsweek:

For months, Cheney’s office has denied that the veep bypassed U.S. intelligence agencies to get intel reports from the INC. But a June 2002 memo written by INC lobbyist Entifadh Qunbar to a U.S. Senate committee lists John Hannah, a senior national-security aide on Cheney’s staff, as one of two "U.S. governmental recipients" for reports generated by an intelligence program being run by the INC and which was then being funded by the State Department. Under the program, "defectors, reports and raw intelligence are cultivated and analyzed"; the info was then reported to, among others, "appropriate governmental, non-governmental and international agencies." The memo not only describes Cheney aide Hannah as a "principal point of contact" for the program, it even provides his direct White House telephone number. The only other U.S. official named as directly receiving the INC intel is William Luti, a former military adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who, after working on Cheney’s staff early in the Bush administration, shifted to the Pentagon, where he oversaw a secretive Iraq war-planning unit called the Office of Special Plans.

Did you notice the way the Office of Special Plans figured in there too?

If Hannah has flipped, he might know a lot about the origins of the Niger uranium story.

This is getting good.

Now, who could it be?

While I was out of town, Judith Miller published her version of events in the Valerie Plame investigation. The New York Times also printed its long story about Miller's involvement in the investigation. Here's one interesting tidbit from the latter story:

On July 8, two days after Mr. Wilson's article appeared in The Times, the reporter and her source met again, for breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel, near the White House.

The notebook Ms. Miller used that day includes the reference to "Valerie Flame." But she said the name did not appear in the same portion of her notebook as the interview notes from Mr. Libby.

During the breakfast, Mr. Libby provided a detail about Ms. Wilson, saying she worked in a C.I.A. unit known as Winpac; the name stands for weapons intelligence, nonproliferation and arms control.

So, before Robert Novak published his story, Miller had a name very much like Valerie Plame...who worked at CIA's shop specializing in weapons of mass destruction.

Does everyone remember the only time I've mentioned Winpac on this blog?

Bonus points for those who recall that John Bolton's chief of staff, Frederick Fleitz, ordinarily worked at Winpac. Bolton was one of the more famous people to visit Miller while she was incarcerated.

What an interesting coincidence.

This is a fascinating section from Miller's account:

Mr. Fitzgerald asked if I could recall discussing the Wilson-Plame connection with other sources. I said I had, though I could not recall any by name or when those conversations occurred.

Before the grand jury, Mr. Fitzgerald asked me questions about Mr. Cheney. He asked, for example, if Mr. Libby ever indicated whether Mr. Cheney had approved of his interviews with me or was aware of them. The answer was no.

In my grand jury testimony, Mr. Fitzgerald repeatedly turned to the subject of how Mr. Libby handled classified information with me. He asked, for example, whether I had discussed my security status with Mr. Libby. During the Iraq war, the Pentagon had given me clearance to see secret information as part of my assignment "embedded" with a special military unit hunting for unconventional weapons.

Miller doesn't recall her other sources? "How convieeenient," as the Church Lady used to say.

If the Democrats take Congress in 2006, maybe we can watch a updated version of "Church Chat."

After all, there are so many questions to answer.

How would Miller know if Libby told Cheney that he was speaking to her?

Miller had a security clearance?

Really? After what happened in fall 2001?

I wonder who granted that? Some say Donald Rumsfeld himself.

Curious.

Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney worked together in the Ford administration, so those guys are supposed to be old pros.

Wait, they also worked together in the secretive Nixon administration.

Maybe they are old pros.

WHIGs

According to some bloggers and reporters, Plame-leak prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald may be investigating the WHIG members in the Bush administration.

No, this isn't a reference to the early 19th century political party of Zac Taylor and Millard Fillmore.

WHIG stands for "White House Iraq Group." This was the small club of administration officials who in August 2002 started "selling" the Iraq threat to the general public (and perhaps indirectly then, to Congress).

This is an interesting development because this investigation could explode into an array of unpredictable directions. For example, the neocons in the administration are and were embedded in many of these positions. Moreover, there are real or possible links to the fabricated Niger documents, the "16 words" in the State of the Union address, and the AIPAC spy case.

Who were the WHIG members? Sourcewatch lists this membership: Nicholas Calio, Stephen Hadley, Karen Hughes, Lewis Libby, Mary Matalin, Condi Rice, Karl Rove, and James Wilkinson. Andrew Card may have played a key role in the formation of WHIG. Later, Dan Bartlett apparently helped spin the Yellowcake-from-Africa tale.

This political operation seemed to operate with a membership separate from the "Office of Special Plans," which was an independent intelligence agency within the Department of Defense established to analyze information about Iraq's alleged "threat."

However, it has long been reported the OSP fed information to WHIG (and to the White House and Vice President's office directly) in order to help spread the word about Iraq threats.

Who was in OSP, or contracted to help its operations? Apparently, Youssef Aboul-Enein, William Bruner, Doug Feith, Larry Franklin, Michael Ledeen (!), Harold Rhode, Michael Rubin, Abram Shulsky, and David Wurmser. William Luti was the DoD overseer.

To position OSP within the vast Pentagon bureaucracy, this graphic is very helpful.

OPS had clear ties to the Iraqi National Congress, as some individuals were very friendly with Ahmad Chalabi and crew. Both the WHIG and OSP had former members of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Some of these people are represented by Benador Associates too.

Judith Miller is a "Connector" (see Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point) who can help someone like Fitzgerald piece all the clues together.

While this is merely a teaser of fairly overt connections, I'm guessing that several of the people I've mentioned in this post are going to be indicted in the next month or so.

Just sit back, wait a few weeks, and then enjoy the show!

This weekend, maybe, buy some popcorn.

Turn Turn Turn

Have you read Scooter Libby's September 15, 2005, letter to Judith Miller, who was at that point still incarcerated? It closes with this:

"You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover—Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work—-and life. Until then, you will remain in my thoughts and prayers."

A lot of bloggers have tried to make heads or tails of the passage.

Is this just more of Libby's notorious purple prose?

It is based on fact.

Or, is it a code, perhaps written to look like purple prose?

As Robert Novak, of all people, reported on September 22, a bunch of rich conservatives recently gathered in Aspen, Colorado, to talk policy...and bash President Bush!

For two full days, George W. Bush was bashed. He was taken to task on his handling of stem cell research, population control, the Iraq war and, especially, Hurricane Katrina. The critics were no left-wing bloggers. They were rich, mainly Republican and presumably Bush voters in the last two presidential elections.

The Bush-bashing occurred last weekend at the annual Aspen conference sponsored by the New York investment firm Forstmann Little & Co. Over 200 invited guests, mostly prestigious, arrived Thursday night (many by private aircraft) and stayed until Sunday...They faithfully attended the discussions presided over by PBS's Charlie Rose on such serious subjects as "global poverty and human rights" and "the 'new' world economy." The connecting link was hostility to President Bush.

Hmmm.

The Aspens have turned in a cluster, have they?

And maybe it is their neocon roots that connect them?

Interesting.

Miller, by the way, authored a book on biological weapons and received one of the (hoax) anthrax letters in fall 2002.

Put that with her false reporting about WMD in Iraq and she's had a busy decade already.

I'm not 100% sure why Libby thinks there will be biological threats to report this fall, though I guess he could just be thinking of the bird flu.

In any case, I think one of the most interesting theories is that Libby was telling Miller it was OK to turn on someone (Bush? Rove? Bolton?) because everyone was turning already. People connected at the roots, like she and he, would live long and prosper.


Notes: big money conservatives have long had a thing for Aspen.

Some people argue that Bolton is not a neocon, and others report that he is actually "a libertarian who despises the neocons."

Naming names

In the past week, I've heard a number of Republican-friendly commenters on TV go on-and-on about the "fact" that neither Karl Rove nor Lewis "Scooter" Libby used Valerie Plame's name in their summer 2003 conversations with journalists. To these analysts, this means that no crime could have been committed in the case.

Today, NRO Corner writer John Podhoretz explains that NBC's Tim Russert might have used the same excuse with the grand jury when he attempted to explain his apparent conversation with Libby (who says he learned of Plame from Russert). I've put the key part in italics:

Is somebody lying? Maybe -- but on the other hand maybe there's a lot of weaseling going on here and some of it is Tim Russert's. Knowing as his lawyer must have that the criminally dangerous portion of the statute being invoked requires the actual use of Plame's name, maybe Russert told the special prosecutor he didn't use the NAME. "Joe Wilson's wife" is not Valerie Plame's name.

Regardless of Podhoretz's claim, check out the statute apparently in question. It only requires that someone reveal information that identifies the individual. It says nothing about leaking a name (see italicized parts of all 3 key sections):

Intelligence Identities and Protection Act (1982)

Section 421. Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources
(a) Disclosure of information by persons having or having had
access to classified information that identifies covert agent

Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified
information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses
any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not
authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the
information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the
United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert
agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be
fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or
both.

(b) Disclosure of information by persons who learn identity of
covert agents as result of having access to classified
information

Whoever, as a result of having authorized access to classified
information, learns the identify of a covert agent and
intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert
agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified
information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies
such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative
measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship
to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned
not more than five years, or both.

(c) Disclosure of information by persons in course of pattern of
activities intended to identify and expose covert agents

Whoever, in the course of a pattern of activities intended to
identify and expose covert agents and with reason to believe that
such activities would impair or impede the foreign intelligence
activities of the United States, discloses any information that
identifies an individual as a covert agent to any individual not
authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the
information disclosed so identifies such individual and that the
United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such
individual's classified intelligence relationship to the United
States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than
three years, or both.

(d) Imposition of consecutive sentences

A term of imprisonment imposed under this section shall be
consecutive to any other sentence of imprisonment.

Sorry for including the entire section, but this makes it clear that Podhoretz and the talking heads I've seen on TV are quite wrong.

Other commentators, by the way, have suggested that other crimes may have been committed by those leaking Plame's identity. John Dean mentioned the Espionage Act of 1917, for example, in a mid-August 2003 column. Liberal Oasis notes that Russert himself pointed to the possibility that one or more leakers might have violated the terms of their basic Standard Form-312, which goes along with their classified security clearance.

Podhoretz also writes that Libby is an experienced hand who couldn't possibly have been so stupid as to have revealed Plame's identity. Then again, Podhoretz writes that "Libby saw friends and colleagues sucked into special-prosecutor investigations throughout the 1980s."

I wonder if Podhoretz would have written in the '80s that Elliott Abrams, John Poindexter, and Caspar Weinberger were too smart to lie to Congress?


Note: Podhoretz is Abrams's brother-in-law as Abrams married Podhoretz's half-sister.

Legal update

There are new leaks about the Valerie Plame case. Many of the leaks, however, are contradictory and concern the "chicken-and-egg" part of the story. Administration officials often claim that they heard about Plame's status from journalists...but the journalists say they learned from the officials. Hmmm. There's also the question of who read that memo I discussed yesterday.

Let's continue to consider the apparent main characters: Libby, Rove, and Fleischer.

First, there's this Bloomberg news report from earlier today:

Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned from NBC News reporter Tim Russert of the identity of Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, one person said. Russert has testified before a federal grand jury that he didn't tell Libby of Plame's identity, the person said.

This begs the question. Even if Libby is telling the truth, how did Russert find out? Which one is telling the truth? Who has more to gain by lying?

Rove: The American Prospect's Murray Waas reports that Karl Rove never disclosed talking to Matt Cooper about Valerie Plame.

White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove did not disclose that he had ever discussed CIA officer Valerie Plame with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper during Rove’s first interview with the FBI, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

Cooper also said that they never talked about welfare reform (Rove says that was the subject of the discussion) -- though Cooper acknowledges that his voice message may have mentioned it and he had been assigned such a story earlier. But the Wilson/Plame story pushed welfare reform to the back burner.

Finally, on July 18, 2005, Bloomberg reported that White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer was among those who looked over the State Department memo identifying Valerie Plame as a secret agent:

Fleischer was among a group of administration officials who left Washington later that day on a presidential trip to Africa. On the flight to Africa, Fleischer was seen perusing the State Department memo on Wilson and his wife, according to a former administration official who was also on the trip.

However, today's NY Times says that Fleischer denies having read the memo:

Mr. Fleischer told the grand jury that he never saw the document, a person familiar with the testimony said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the prosecutor's admonitions about not disclosing what is said to the grand jury.

Deny, deny, deny.

"I heard that too"

In case you were wondering, this AP photo (hat tip to Dan Froomkin) was taken in June 2003. Karl Rove and Robert Novak are side-by-side at a party celebrating Novak's 40 years writing a newspaper column. Rove's button says, "I'm a source, not a target."

Seriously.

Keep in mind that Ambassador Joe Wilson wrote his op-ed disputing the Bush administration's claims about uranium from Niger on July 6, 2003. However, he was already on the White House radar screen because he had been talking off-the-record to reporters for weeks. Wilson was ticked that the 2003 State of the Union address claimed Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa -- and he was trying very hard to spread the story about his 2002 trip (sponsored by CIA in response to a request from the Vice President's office about the possible uranium deals), which he felt debunked Bush's claim.

Novak disclosed Valerie Plame's identity in his column on July 14. Rove apparently claims that Novak told him that Wilson's wife (Plame) was CIA. When Novak asked Rove about Wilson's wife and job, the presidential advisor apparently said he had "heard that too."

Time Magazine's Matt Cooper also identified Rove as a source for his story, which appeared a few days later.

"Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the C.I.A. and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'W.M.D.'? Yes."

In short, Karl Rove has been publicly named as someone who told reporters that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent -- and yet he continues to serve as Bush's brain.

For those following the potential criminal implications of this case, note that government officials granted access to official secrets sign an oath promising not even to confirm the accuracy of an unauthorized disclosure of classified information. They have an obligation first to try to find out if the information has been declassified. If they confirm an unauthorized disclosure, that too is an unauthorized disclosure.

According to his account, Cooper also talked to Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff, on the following day. Get this, Libby also apparently said, "Yeah, I've heard that too," when Cooper asked him if Plame arranged Wilson's Africa trip.

Unauthorized disclosure #2?

None of this smells good.

Here's an ironic twist concerning Libby's alleged involvement:

Libby is strikingly reticent to volunteer personal details about himself. He refuses to use his first name, for example, using only his initial, nor does he offer any details about his marital or family status.

There are lots of ways to think about what happened. I like to consider the big picture. Clearly, someone in the White House was trying to retaliate against Wilson and possibly discourage future whistle-blowers. The Boston Globe's Derrick Z. Jackson called the White House attempts to silence the truth "dirty tricks." The NY Times columnist Frank Rich said it was all "Worse Than Watergate," because the point of the original lying and the political dirty trick was to cover up a weak case for war.

Bad news continues to leak out of Washington. Even the potentially distracting nomination of a political hack to the Supreme Court hasn't pushed the story off the front page. The Washington Post reports, Thursday July 21 on p. A1:

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials.

You can safely ignore those Republican loyalists on TV who keep claiming that Plame's identity was "well known," or that she wasn't really a spy.

"Secret" is an official government classification level. This is from a government intelligence page outlining the different levels:

Secret, which refers to national security information that requires a substantial degree of protection. The test for assigning a Secret classification is whether its unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to the national security.

The memo was apparently prepared for Secretary of State Colin Powell, based on notes from a meeting held February 19, 2002. It was written by someone in State's INR June 10, 2003 for Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman (a career Foreign Service Officer), but delivered to Powell on July 7, 2003. Powell took the memo on Air Force One for a trip to Africa with President Bush and key members of the White House staff (but neither Rove nor Libby!).

Former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was apparently seen reading the memo on Air Force one.

I've read quite a number of recent news stories and blog entries about the leak story. There are numerous ties to the big picture -- the administration was selling a bunch of lies about Iraqi nukes, some key people in (and out) of Washington knew it, and the hacks tried to pressure them into keeping their mouths shut. In this case, since Wilson didn't work for the government any more, they tried to apply leverage through his wife.

The key question: will anyone be held accountable?

Investigations update

I need to update the "neo-convicts" post already.

First, all four investigations I mentioned yesterday may be the same.

The Franklin case is apparently linked to the Plame leak and linked to the Feith op and linked to the Chalabi case.

Former CIA agent and current MSNBC talking head Larry Johnson said the other day that the Franklin affairs "was linked to the investigation on the forged uranium documents." I've found a MSNBC transcript from August 27 on LexisNexis:

I've heard about this investigation for, you know, several months now. And you know it is -- it actually is tied into the forged memo regarding the sale of uranium to Iraq from Niger.

(CROSSTALK)

JOHNSON: What I've been told is that there's a strong belief that the forgery was carried out by Israel in an effort to help build up the evidence to allow the United States to justify going to war. So, this whole thing that started with the outing of Valerie Plame, the CIA officer, started growing and expanding when they saw that there's this forged memo and then people linked to the office of -- in the office of Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Fife [sic] at the Department of Defense were seen as having some very close contacts and sharing information with the Israeli intelligence sources.

The Marshall, Rozen, and Glastris story doesn't mentioned Israeli agents present at the Franklin/Rhode meetings with Ledeen, Ghorbanifar and SISMI in Rome.

Hmmmm.

Warren Strobel of Knight-Ridder more directly makes a connection that I suggested yesterday. The Franklin-Israel investigation does tie directly to the Chalabi-Iran leaks:

An FBI probe into the handling of highly classified material by Pentagon civilians is broader than previously reported, and goes well beyond allegations that a single mid-level analyst gave a top-secret Iran policy document to Israel, three sources familiar with the investigation said Saturday.

The probe, which has been going on for more than two years, also has focused on other civilians in the Secretary of Defense's office, said the sources, who spoke on condition they not be identified, but who have first-hand knowledge of the subject.

In addition, one said, FBI investigators in recent weeks have conducted interviews to determine whether Pentagon officials gave highly classified U.S. intelligence to a leading Iraqi exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, which may in turn have passed it on to Iran....both center on the office of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's No. 3 official.

Richard Sale of UPI links several investigations together indirectly. For example, he ties the "non lawful" intelligence op Feith was allegedly running to the neocons in Vice President Cheney's office -- the primary area of interest to the Plame investigators, apparently:

[William] Luti, a former Navy captain, switched to the Pentagon from Vice President Richard Cheney's staff, according to a congressional investigative memo.

According to other congressional memos, Luti was made deputy undersecretary and reported directly to Feith.

Luti also presided over the NESA office that worked closely with OSP "with sometimes an interchangeable staff," according to one congressional memo described the OSP "as a loose group of acolytes and hired hands" for Cheney, and (Cheney's chief of staff) I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Feith -- all "performing a mixture of intelligence, planning and other unspecified operational duties in support of preordained policy."

In regard to the Chalabi leak, Sale specifically discusses Harold Rhode a great deal, saying that he has had his security clearances lifted in the past (as did Ledeen in the '80s) and may even now be on administrative leave:

According to one former senior U.S. intelligence official who maintained excellent contacts with serving U.S. intelligence officials in the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, "Rhode practically lived out of (Ahmad) Chalabi's office."

This same source quoted the intelligence official with the CPA as saying, "Rhode was observed by CIA operatives as being constantly on his cell phone to Israel," and that the information that the intelligence officials overheard him passing to Israel was "mind-boggling," this source said.

It dealt with U.S. plans, military deployments, political projects, discussion of Iraq assets, and a host of other sensitive topics, the former senior U.S. intelligence official said.

Sale also reports that Michael Ledeen worked on a contract basis for OSP under Feith!

Cheney's office, where Libby and Hannah worked, dispatched Luti to Feith, who already served as boss to Franklin, Ledeen, and Rhode. Did these guys prompt someone (Israel? Italy?) to cook up the Niger uranium story, burn Plame when that forgery was found out, and leak all kinds of state secrets to their pals in Israel and the INC? And then, Chalabi screwed them all over by leaking to Iran?

That's the picture that may be coming into focus.

It is such a tangled web. Thanks go out to uggabugga for the visual aid.



Notes: Wolfowitz's name is starting to pop up in the stories, but so far I've seen no allegations tied to him.

Also, one potential problem with Sale's story is that he quotes Karen Kwiatkowski and may have used her as a source for many of his claims. Some bloggers wonder if she's 100% reliable on all this, since she allegedly tried to peddle her story to one of Lyndon LaRouche's rags. The Weekly Standard throws a lot of mud too.

Neo-convicts?

If 2002 was the year of the neocon in Washington, 2004 (well, maybe 2005) may yet prove to be the year of the neo-convict.

The neocons and their associates are apparently the subject of three investigations by various parts of the Justice Department and have the attention of several key Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee as well. All these inquiries seem to overlap, as all involve key national security figures and topics.

Here are the investigations. I'll try to highlight a few points of overlap.

1. Most recently, a former Defense Intelligence Agency expert on Iran is apparently under investigation by the FBI for allegedly leaking to Israel information about US policy toward Iran. The Washington Post reported on August 29, 2004:

FBI officials have been quietly investigating for months whether [Lawrence] Franklin gave classified information -- which officials said included a draft of a presidential directive on U.S. policies toward Iran -- to two Israeli lobbyists here who are alleged to have passed it on to the Israeli government.

Franklin works in the Bush Pentagon in the office of William Luti, deputy undersecretary of defense for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs. Luti's office is under the purview of Douglas Feith, the #3 man in Secretary's Rumsfeld's civilian chain-of-command.

Franklin last appeared in this blog as part of a travel story, as he and some prominent neocons had an interesting adventure in Rome during December 2001 and June 2002.

More on that below.

2. Earlier this summer (the first week of June), various media sources reported that Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi leaked to Iran highly classified US intelligence information. The fear is that Chalabi told Iran that the US had broken its codes -- and could therefore easily monitor Tehran's secret communications. From Newsweek:

"This is an enormous loss to the U.S. intelligence community," one former U.S. intelligence official said today about the reported leak of the secret code system. "Obviously, the Iranians are not going to use that code anymore. We're going from having a complete window into what their intelligence service was doing to having no window at all."

That's very bad, whether you think Iran is evil, or not.

Where did Chalabi receive top US secrets? That is the $100,000 question:

[There are a] spate of media reports alleging that Chalabi or one of his associates told the Iranians that U.S. intelligence had cracked a secret code system used by the Iranian intelligence service. U.S. political activists close to Chalabi have told reporters in recent days that Chalabi learned about the codebreaking in Baghdad from a drunken U.S. official....

But, given that Chalabi is not a U.S. citizen and does not have a U.S. security clearance, the more critical issue for investigators will be to find out who in the U.S. government might have leaked such highly sensitive information to Chalabi and the INC, some officials say. Law-enforcement sources indicated that the American investigation will likely focus on whether sensitive information might have been leaked to Chalabi by officials in either the Pentagon or the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad.

Some sources say the investigation is centering upon US authorities based in Baghdad.

The New York Times more specifically said that investigators were taking aim at Chalabi's neocon supporters, but didn't name any names:

The inquiry, still in an early phase, is focused on a very small number of people who were close to Mr. Chalabi and also had access to the highly restricted information about the Iran code.

Some of the people the F.B.I. expects to interview are civilians at the Pentagon who were among Mr. Chalabi's strongest supporters and served as his main point of contact with the government, the officials said.

After a little digging on the internet, I discovered two guys who are often named as suspects by bloggers.

First, consider Harold Rhode, who met with Michael Ledeen, Manucher Ghorbanifar, Larry Franklin, and the head of Italian Intelligence (SISMI) in Rome in December 2001, possibly to talk about Iraq's alleged uranium trade:

Rhode got another big break when Pentagon hawks sent him to Baghdad this spring as their chief liaison (read: handler) to Iraqi National Congress chief Ahmed Chalabi, the hawks' favorite exile.

But problems cropped up then, too, when, during his stay at the occupation headquarters in Baghdad, Rhode quickly alienated most of the American military and civilian pros in the country...Later he holed himself up with Chalabi at the latter's hunt-club headquarters...

So after working with Feith in the DoD, Rhode was Chalabi's handler in Iraq and lived in his compound. Interesting, eh?

Anyone else a viable possibility? Well, I always shop for neocons at Benador Associates. From the agency's webpage:

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, having recently served 18 months in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as an Iraq and Iran advisor, during which time he was also seconded to the Coalition Provisional Authority [CPA] governance team. The only CPA official to live outside the American security bubble, Rubin was free to travel Iraq and without restriction to a single region, and so was able to maintain extensive contacts with ordinary Iraqis, be they Arab Sunnis or Shi'a, or Kurds.

Both Rubin and Rhode are neocons who were living in Iraq, had ready access to Chalabi, and served in the Pentagon during the buildup to the war.

Motive, means and opportunity?

3. As I've occasionally discussed, someone leaked Valerie Plame's name in an attempt to discredit Joseph Wilson in June 2003. At the time, Wilson was publicly challenging the administration's claim that it had not known that the uranium from Africa story was based on fabricated documents at the time of the President's 2003 State of the Union Address.

While some fingers were first pointed at Karl Rove, the Justice Department investigation has apparently centered upon the neocons in the Vice President's office: Lewis "Scooter" Libby's name has appeared prominently, as has John Hannah's , in numerous news stories.

Libby is a neocon who signed the Project for a New American Century's "Statement of Principles," dated June 3, 1997. Other notable Bush administration signatories include Elliott Abrams, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Zalmay Khalilzad, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.

I'm not sure why Feith was not part of PNAC, but he did work for Richard Perle in DoD earlier in his career.

4. In an attachment to the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Iraq, US Senators Jay Rockefeller (WV), Richard Durbin (IL) and Carl Levin (MI) criticize Doug Feith's office for running a private intelligence failure that was "non lawful" during the runup to the war in Iraq. Here's what they say:

The Intelligence Community’s findings did not support the link between Iraq and the 9/11 plot Administration policy officials wanted to help galvanize public support for military action in Iraq. As a result, officials under the direction of Under Secretary Feith took it upon themselves to push for a change in the intelligence analysis so that it bolstered Administration policy statements and goals.

After Feith and crew failed to convince the intelligence agencies to change their assessment, they took their case directly to the White House in a September 16, 2002, briefing. CIA Director George Tenet learned of this briefing in March 2004.

Following the publication of the Intelligence Community’s terrorism and weapons of mass destruction analytical estimates and the subsequent congressional vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq, Administration public statements leading up to the war became increasingly hyperbolic and urgent.

The qualifications the Intelligence Community placed on what it assessed about Iraq’s links to terrorism and alleged weapons of mass destruction programs were spurned by top Bush Administration officials, early casualties in the war with Iraq....

By the time American troops had been deployed overseas and were poised to attack Iraq, the Administration had skillfully manipulated and cowed the Intelligence Community into approving public statements that conveyed a level of conviction and certainty that was not supported by an objective reading of the underlying intelligence reporting.

Again, Rockefeller called Feith's intelligence op "non-lawful," but it's hard to say whether he was referring to the Office of Special Plans, the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group or the Rome adventure.

Maybe it's a trifecta?

In any case, all these investigations (save the Plame) are focusing on the same small group of neocons who are suddenly facing some serious problems.

As Jim Lobe wrote back in June, "the neocon retreat has turned into a rout."

More speculation on Plame affair

I'm in DC this weekend, spending my days at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Working Group of the Project on Preemptive and Preventive Military Intervention is meeting -- under the auspices of the University of Pittsburgh's Ridgway Center for International Security Studies.

Today, some of us were talking about the failure of the press to cover the UPI story alleging that Lewis Libby and John Hannah are the guys who leaked Valerie Plame's name.

It occurred to me that the media's relative silence might reflect the story. Remember, whoever leaked called a handful of reporters. Thus, if those reporters or their media outlets run this story, they almost serve as sources confirming the story.

This could mean that one or both of the named guys are not the sources.

Or, it might just mean that those reporters don't want other reporters calling for them to confirm or deny the names. It's interesting.

At least one person at the Working Group confirmed that a well-known reporter had told him that one of the two named people is accurate. Sorry for the ambiguity, but this is still kind of iffy to me.

I also had a conversation with another scholar about blogging. I told him about my blog because he's planning some sort of scholarly discussion of the "blogosphere" later this year. I'll let you know when I hear more about it.

Warning: Wild speculation

Tinfoil hat time. This happened today:

CIA Director George Tenet gave a much-covered speech, at least partially taking the fall for the faulty WMD intelligence. When was the last time a CIA Director gave such a public address? Can anyone remember?

Hours later, a public break in the Valerie Plame investigation: the names John Hannah and Lewis "Scooter" Libby leak to the press (UPI).

Not enough? Just hours later, "straight shooter" Senator John McCain is said to be one of the panelists to be named Friday to the independent commission investigating WMD intelligence.

Are they even now? Karl Rove has certainly been a busy man lately.

Cheney's office and the weak intelligence evidence

I apologize for helping to spread the "false, unsubstantiated accusations" that Lewis Libby leaked Valerie Plame's name in July. Scott McClellan (as reported by ABC) says the man known as "Scooter" was not the source of the information -- and that Libby doesn't know the identity of the leaker. And he does not condone the leak.

I'll let you know if the White House denies that Libby (and Cheney) went to CIA to pressure agents into "sexing up" the intelligence (to use a phrase the British have used on this story).

Actually, they probably have denied this -- but that doesn't mean they didn't apply pressure. Heck, there's even evidence that the neocon cabal pressured the less-hawkish members of the Bush administration. Even Colin Powell.

Go back to news reports from late June and early July to recall the roots of the Plame affair. I think I missed this Jim Lobe story the first time that included these supposed quotes from Colin Powell:

[The London Guardian] quotes Powell, whose forceful case to the council was decisive in persuading US public opinion that Baghdad represented a serious threat, as being "apprehensive" about the evidence presented to him by the intelligence agencies. He reportedly expressed the hope that the actual facts, when they came out, would not "explode in their faces".

US News reported, for example, that during a rehearsal of Powell's presentation at Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters on February 1, the normally mild-mannered retired general at one point "tossed several pages in the air. 'I'm not reading this', he declared. 'This is bullshit'."

Making some connections...

Recent news stories reveal that the pre-war intelligence information provided by Iraqi defectors was of very little value. An internal assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, in fact, found that less than 1/3 of the information had value -- and that the data on WMD was particularly bad.

This is connected to the Niger Story, of course, since it was the neocons who embraced the weak evidence suggesting Iraq was pursuing uranium from Africa. Hence, Ambassador Wilson was sent to Niger to check it out.

It's easy to pick any moment and create a very odd circle. Actually, I guess it's more of a network of like-minded neo-cons.

Judith Miller of the NYT, for example, apparently relied upon this false information about Iraqi WMD from defectors like Ahmad Chalabi. Then, VP Cheney and others pointed to the NYT story to support their case publicly. This was noted by John MacArthur in the Columbia Journalism Review:

Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on NBC's Meet the Press to brandish Saddam's supposed nuclear threat. Prompted by a helpful Tim Russert, Cheney cited the aluminum tubes story in that morning's New York Times

Cheney's office, it seems, is still trying to push the widely discredited story that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague. A Washington Post story from this Monday's paper reported that Cheney staff members (guys like Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Stephen Hadley) were even trying to get Powell to use the Atta story in his big UN presentation. Powell, of course, didn't.

But Cheney, Libby and Hadley (one fall guy for the 16 words) have been persistent.

Libby, by the way, is one of the names mentioned by those speculating about the leak of Wilson's wife's job at CIA. Check out the Matthew Yglesias blog, for example.

And Libby is also thanked "for his timely and generous assistance" in the acknowledgements of Laurie Mylroie's book that blames Iraq for most of the anti-US international terrorism of the 1990s. As regular readers know, I've been blogging a lot about Mylroie's claims -- and the tremendous press coverage she received post 9/11.

The neocons should have known that the intelligence people know how to leak too. For example, they've almost completely discredited Mylroie's thesis. Paul Sperry of WDN:

Their findings were presented to the president Oct. 2 in a still-secret report on Iraq. The summary, or "key judgments" section, of the 90-page National Intelligence Estimate was declassified Friday. WorldNetDaily obtained a copy from the National Security Council. (The report is different from the unclassified 25-page white paper the CIA made public on its website last October.)

Page 4 of the report states: "... [W]e have no specific intelligence information that Saddam's regime has directed attacks against U.S. territory."

In a phone interview with Sperry, the author herself conceded: "Yeah, DIA was given a copy of my book, and they couldn't make the connection," Mylroie said. Her thesis, remember, was that Iraq bombed the WTC in 1993 -- and likely did it again in 2001.

A former UNSCOM inspector is also quoted as saying, "Her theory is wacky." And no, it's not Scott Ritter. That's from retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Stephen Franke, an Arabic translator.

This all makes for a complicated tale. But it sure looks like the intelligence agencies are striking back against the neocons, but Cheney's office hasn't given up yet and the White House is trying to spin everything as "stop the leaks."

Stay tuned.