KARL ROVE _EXPOSED_ Valerie Plame's SECRET cia identity to TIME's Matt Cooper... NOT vice-versa....

According to Bush Sr. (former president George H.W. Bush "41") illegally disclosing the SECRET identity of an undercover CIA agent was tantamount to "INSIDIOUS TREASON."

In the case of VALERIE PLAME, not only did the Bush (Jr. "43") White House disclose the name of Ms. Plame, thereby blowing HER cover... but in doing so they RUINED HER ENTIRE COVER ORGANIZATION, Brewster-Jennings Energy Consultants co.

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Matthew Cooper Testifies Rove Told Him About Plame
By Laurie Asseo (Bloomberg)
Jan. 31 2007
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aKqCOEH3eUaw



-- Former Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper testified today that top presidential aide Karl Rove was the first person to tell him that an Iraq war critic's wife was a CIA official.

Cooper, testifying in Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby's perjury trial, also contradicted Libby's account of a conversation the two had the following day, on July 12, 2003, about war critic Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame.

Libby, 56, Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide, is accused of lying to investigators probing whether U.S. officials deliberately leaked Plame's identity to retaliate against Wilson for attacking the administration's Iraq war claims. Prosecutors say Libby falsely told a grand jury that, when Cooper asked about Plame, he said he heard about her from other reporters and didn't know if the information was true.

``I asked what he heard about Wilson's wife'' sending him to Niger to find out if Iraq sought to buy uranium there, Cooper said. ``Mr. Libby said words to the effect of `yeah, I heard that too.'''

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald asked whether Libby said where he had learned about Plame.

``Not in any way,'' said Cooper, now Washington editor of a new magazine, Conde Nast Portfolio. Asked whether Libby said he heard about her from other reporters, Cooper replied no.

Wilson wrote a column in the New York Times on July 6, 2003, saying he found no evidence that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Niger and accusing the Bush administration of ``twisting'' intelligence to justify invading Iraq.

State of the Union

The day after Wilson's article, the White House acknowledged that President George W. Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address shouldn't have included a claim that Saddam Hussein had sought to buy uranium in Africa.

Cooper said he was looking into the controversy over that statement when he spoke on July 11, 2003, to Rove, who hasn't been charged in the leak investigation.

Rove said, ``A number of things were going to be coming out about Mr. Wilson that would cast him in a different light,'' including who was involved in sending Wilson to Africa, Cooper testified.

``I said `who' and he said, `like, his wife,''' Cooper said. Rove said Wilson's wife worked in weapons of mass destruction at ``the agency,'' which Cooper said he took to mean the Central Intelligence Agency. Rove then said, ``I've already said too much. I've got to go,'' Cooper said.

Rove testified five times before a grand jury that investigated the leak of Plame's identity.

Grand Jury Testimony

Libby is charged with perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements. He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of obstruction, the most serious charge. Libby resigned after he was indicted in October 2005.

Cooper said he remembered his July 12 conversation with Libby vividly, and that he mentioned nothing about who told him about Plame.

According to the indictment, Libby -- testifying in March 2004 before the grand jury -- said that in his conversation with Cooper about Plame, ``I was very clear to say reporters are telling us that, because in my mind I still didn't know it as a fact.``

Libby told the grand jury, ``All I had was this information that was coming in from reporters,'' according to the indictment.

Cross-Examination

Under cross-examination by defense lawyer William Jeffress, Cooper conceded his memory was ``cloudy'' about Libby's exact words in saying he had heard about Plame. Cooper's draft of an article for Time magazine quoted Libby differently, and Cooper later sent his editors an e-mail changing the quote to the one he told the jury today, Jeffress said.

The defense lawyer questioned Cooper in detail about his reporting and note-taking methods, displaying to jurors his typewritten notes on the interview with Libby and e-mails to his editors and another Time reporter.

Jeffress asked Cooper about a note on the interview with Libby that referred to Wilson and said ``not sure if it's ever,'' breaking off at that point.

Jeffress suggested that if Cooper meant to type ``even'' rather than ``ever,'' Libby might have said he was ``not sure that it's even true.'' Cooper said Libby didn't say that.

Confirmation?

Jeffress also asked Cooper whether he viewed Libby's statement, ``I heard that too,'' as a confirmation that Wilson's wife was a CIA official.

``I took it that way from Mr. Libby, yes,'' Cooper responded.

``Did you ask him where he'd heard it?'' Jeffress asked.

``I did not,'' said the reporter. He acknowledged that a memo he wrote to his editors about his conversation with Libby didn't mention Wilson's wife.

Cooper appeared on the witness stand after former New York Times reporter Judith Miller. The two fought subpoenas seeking their testimony, and Miller went to jail for 85 days in 2005 rather than disclose Libby as her source. She said she decided to testify after Libby released her from a promise of confidentiality.

Miller testified yesterday that Libby told her about Plame in June 2003. Prosecutors say Libby told investigators he learned about her on July 10, 2003, from NBC journalist Tim Russert.

Novak Column

On July 14 of that year, eight days after Wilson's column in the New York Times, syndicated columnist Robert Novak publicly revealed that Wilson's wife was a CIA operative. Fitzgerald then began investigating the leak.

Fitzgerald told U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton he expects to finish presenting his case on Feb. 5 or 6 after testimony from Russert, another ``witness we have to discuss,'' and other evidence.

Defense lawyer Ted Wells said that among the witnesses he will call is Jill Abramson, who was the Times's Washington bureau chief at the time of Miller's conversation with Libby. Miller testified yesterday that although she didn't write an article about Wilson's wife, she recommended to Abramson that the Times pursue the matter.

Walton has said he expects the trial, now in its second week of testimony, to last four to six weeks.

The case is U.S. vs. Libby, 05-394, U.S. District Court, the District of Columbia.

To contact the reporter on this story: Laurie Asseo in Washington at lasseo1@bloomberg.net

The ORIGINAL crime: Investigation of LEAK of CIA agent's identy FOCUSES on the BUSH WHITE HOUSE.....

Nothing illustrates the POLITICAL DERELICTION of DUTY of the JOHN KERRY CAMPAIGN than that this INVESTIGATION, which was "FOCUSED ON THE WHITE HOUSE" as early as September 2003, WAS NOT USED AS A CAMPAIGN ISSUE by the pathetic Kerry campaign ALL THROUGH the 2004 election season.



Bush Administration Is Focus of Inquiry
CIA Agent's Identity Was Leaked to Media

By Mike Allen and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 28, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A11208-2003Sep27¬Found=true

At CIA Director George J. Tenet's request, the Justice Department is looking into an allegation that administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist, government sources said yesterday.

The operative's identity was published in July after her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly challenged President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy "yellowcake" uranium ore from Africa for possible use in nuclear weapons. Bush later backed away from the claim.


CIA Director George J. Tenet wants to know whether officials in the White House broke federal law.

The intentional disclosure of a covert operative's identity is a violation of federal law.

The officer's name was disclosed on July 14 in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak, who said his sources were two senior administration officials.

Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. Wilson had just revealed that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson's account touched off a political fracas over Bush's use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq.

"Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak.

Sources familiar with the conversations said the leakers were seeking to undercut Wilson's credibility. They alleged that Wilson, who was not a CIA employee, was selected for the Niger mission partly because his wife had recommended him. Wilson said in an interview yesterday that a reporter had told him that the leaker said, "The real issue is Wilson and his wife."

A source said reporters quoted a leaker as describing Wilson's wife as "fair game."

The official would not name the leakers for the record and would not name the journalists. The official said there was no indication that Bush knew about the calls.

It is rare for one Bush administration official to turn on another. Asked about the motive for describing the leaks, the senior official said the leaks were "wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility."

Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's occupation, has suggested publicly that he believes Bush's senior adviser, Karl C. Rove, broke her cover. Wilson said Aug. 21 at a public forum in suburban Seattle that it is of keen interest to him "to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs."

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday that he knows of no leaks about Wilson's wife. "That is not the way this White House operates, and no one would be authorized to do such a thing," McClellan said. "I don't have any information beyond an anonymous source in a media report to suggest there is anything to this. If someone has information of this nature, then he or she should report it to the Department of Justice."

McClellan, who Rove had speak for him, said of Wilson's comments: "It is a ridiculous suggestion, and it is simply not true." McClellan was asked about Wilson's charge at a White House briefing Sept. 16 and said the accusation is "totally ridiculous."

Administration officials said Tenet sent a memo to the Justice Department raising a series of questions about whether a leaker had broken federal law by disclosing the identity of an undercover officer. The CIA request was reported Friday night by MSNBC.com. Administration sources familiar with the matter said the Justice Department is determining whether a formal investigation is warranted.

An intelligence official said Tenet "doesn't like leaks."

The CIA request could reopen the rift between the White House and the intelligence community that emerged this summer when Bush and his senior aides blamed Tenet for the inclusion of the now-discredited uranium claim -- the so-called "16 words" -- in the State of the Union address in January.

Tenet issued a statement taking responsibility for the CIA's approval of the address before it was delivered, but made clear the CIA had earlier warned the White House not to use the allegations about uranium ore. After an ensuing rush of leaks over White House handling of intelligence, Bush's aides said they believed in retrospect it had been a political mistake to blame Tenet.

The Intelligence Protection Act, passed in 1982, imposes maximum penalties of 10 years in prison and $50,000 in fines for unauthorized disclosure by government employees with access to classified information.

Members of the administration, especially Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, have been harshly critical of unauthorized leakers, and White House spokesmen are often dismissive of questions about news reports based on unnamed sources. The FBI is investigating senators for possibly leaking intercept information about Osama bin Laden.

The only recipient of a leak about the identity of Wilson's wife who went public with it was Novak, the conservative columnist, who wrote in The Washington Post and other newspapers that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, "is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." He added, "Two senior administration officials told me that Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger."

When Novak told a CIA spokesman he was going to write a column about Wilson's wife, the spokesman urged him not to print her name "for security reasons," according to one CIA official. Intelligence officials said they believed Novak understood there were reasons other than Plame's personal security not to use her name, even though the CIA has declined to confirm whether she was undercover.

Novak said in an interview last night that the request came at the end of a conversation about Wilson's trip to Niger and his wife's role in it. "They said it's doubtful she'll ever again have a foreign assignment," he said. "They said if her name was printed, it might be difficult if she was traveling abroad, and they said they would prefer I didn't use her name. It was a very weak request. If it was put on a stronger basis, I would have considered it."

After the column ran, the CIA began a damage assessment of whether any foreign contacts Plame had made over the years could be in danger. The assessment continues, sources said.

The CIA occasionally asks news organizations to withhold the names of undercover agents, and news organizations usually comply. An intelligence official told The Post yesterday that no further harm would come from repeating Plame's name.

Wilson was acting U.S. ambassador to Iraq during the run-up to the Persian Gulf War of 1991. He was in the diplomatic service from 1976 until 1998, and was the Clinton administration's senior director of African affairs on the National Security Council. He is now an international business consultant. Wilson said the mission to Niger was unpaid except for expenses.

Wilson said he believes an inquiry from Cheney's office launched his eight-day mission to Niger in February 2002 to check the uranium claim, which turned out to be based at least partly on forged documents. "The way it was briefed to me was that the office of the vice president had expressed an interest in a report covering uranium purchases by Iraq from Niger," Wilson said in a telephone interview yesterday.

He said that if Novak's account is accurate, the leak was part of "a deliberate attempt on the part of the White House to intimidate others and make them think twice about coming forward."

Sources said that some of the other journalists who received the leak did not use the information because they were uncomfortable with unmasking an undercover agent or because they did not consider the information relevant to Wilson's report about Niger.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has been pushing the FBI to investigate the disclosure since July, said yesterday that it "not only put an agent's life in danger, but many of that agent's sources and contacts."

Staff writer Richard Leiby contributed to this report.

Pardons for Rove-gate, the illegal and treasonous 'OUTING" of undercover CIA operatives..? HELL NO!

Tomgram: De la Vega, Debunking the Armitage Story
by TomDispatch.com
Oct. 12, 2006
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=129554


In the first of her two-part series on the Libby case (Pardon Me?), former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega suggested that George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their supporters might already be preparing the groundwork for a Libby presidential pardon, perhaps even before the case begins in mid-January. After all, who wants all that ugly 2002-2003 linen aired, as it will be, under oath? Aren't things bad enough?

Well, not exactly. As the Republicans brace for House losses that, according to the Washington Post, could go as high as 30 seats (a veritable tsunami in our thoroughly gerrymandered age), as that Senate majority begins to look more wobbly, as the President fights for a little media air (with a tad of help from his old axis-of-evil pal, Kim Jong Il), as Iraq simply melts down in a bloodbath of civilians and we're told that the Army's Chief of Staff is planning to maintain present troop levels into the year 2010 (or even go higher), as the Bush Bump of September morphs into the Bush polling freefall of October and every trend turns against the Republicans, as Americans now claim to find Democrats more "trustworthy" on any issue you care to mention, including (for the first time in what seems forever) "moral values" and "the war on terror," as the corruption bullet the Republicans thought they ducked when next to no one seemed to pay attention to the various Abramoff lobbying scandals circles around and comes in for the kill in a number of races nationwide, thanks to Rep. Foley's instant sex messages and the Congressional cover-up of his behavior, a Libby trial, not to speak of a Special Counsel who is still on the loose, must seem an ever less palatable proposition to look forward to.

Call it a Hobson's choice: Face the firestorm of a pardon scandal before January 15 or a riveted public focused on the political equivalent of an OJ trial later that month. In the meantime, the CIA leak case that left agent Valerie Plame twisting, twisting in the wind back in 2003, has itself gained so many twists and turns, not to speak of blind alleys and treacherous cul-de-sacs that many people have simply lost the ability to follow it -- which is why Elizabeth de la Vega offers a complex guided tour to some pretty venal territory that no one should skip. Before we're done, one way or the other, this case is guaranteed to take some more air out of the Bush political room. Tom

Who Said All Roads Lead to Karl?

How CIA-Leak Pardons Could Clear the Decks for 2008
By Elizabeth de la Vega
Who said, "All roads lead to Karl?" And by Karl, of course, I mean President Bush's key political strategist and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove.

Actually, "all roads lead to Karl" is such a true and succinct statement of Rove's influence in the White House and Republican Party that it has often been repeated. But the originator of the comment is Reagan's former Chief of Staff Ken Duberstein. He was quoted using this phrase in a March 2005 New York Times article that described Rove's uniquely powerful role in the Bush administration. As it turns out, Duberstein could just as easily have made the same remark about himself.

Wait a minute. Isn't this supposed to be Part II of Pardon Me? Scooter Libby's Trial Strategy? As I explained last week, the trial of Cheney's former senior aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is set for January 17, 2007 and defense options for court dismissal of the perjury, false statements, and obstruction of justice charges are dwindling. (The indictment arose, as most will recall, out of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of a CIA operative's identity -- that operative being Valerie Plame Wilson, former ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife.) Faced with the looming trial date, the wealthy, elite Republican friends of Libby and of the Bush administration appear to be paving the way for him to receive a Presidential pardon -- possibly even before trial -- by portraying the lead prosecutor as a renegade and the case as inconsequential.

So what does Ken Duberstein have to do with the CIA leak case and this apparent Republican strategy of desensitizing the public to the impact of a pardon? That's what I wondered six weeks ago when he suddenly appeared in this already Byzantine story.

Richard Armitage: Deus Ex Machina

Ancient Greek and Roman playwrights often extricated their protagonists from sticky situations through the use of a deus ex machina, the Latin phrase for "god from a machine." Nowadays, we apply the term to any out-of-the-blue solution to a problem. Dei ex machinae -- I think that's the plural -- may satisfy a theater audience, but in real life, they're hard to swallow.

That was precisely my difficulty when former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was "revealed" in Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War -- the new book by the Nation's David Corn and Newsweek's Michael Isikoff -- as one of two senior administration officials who, on July 8, 2003, told Chicago Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame Wilson worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction and that she had arranged the trip to Niger of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was her husband. I have no doubt that Armitage did disclose this classified information to Novak on that day, but everything else about the story (not the book itself) -- including its details, its provenance, and the reaction it has provoked -- is highly suspect.

The first red flag is that this "bombshell" is not exactly a bombshell. What is being hailed by pundits as the "poison pill" that destroys Fitzgerald's case -- the news that Armitage was the first person to reveal Mrs. Wilson's identity to Novak -- is essentially a confirmation of stories that have floated through both commercial and independent media since November of 2005, shortly after the indictment was released. Furthermore, as in-court statements by Libby's attorneys clearly indicate, they've known that the first person to leak to Novak -- "official A" in the indictment -- was Armitage all along. In addition, as the Libby defense team well knows, the trial judge has made it equally clear that possible leaks by Armitage or anyone else are irrelevant to whether or not Libby made intentional false statements.

Another reason for skepticism about the Armitage story is that it is filled with suspicious gaps and internal contradictions -- far too many to catalog. Here are only a few:

Armitage talked to Novak on July 8, 2003, two days after Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times questioning President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to acquire "yellowcake" uranium in Africa. Novak then relayed the information to Rove, who replied -- according to Novak -- "Oh, you know that too?" Novak then used this confirmation as a basis for disclosing these nuggets in a July 14th column. Yet, as the story is told in Hubris, Armitage had no idea he was Novak's source until October 1, 2003 when he read a new Novak article that described one of the leakers as "no partisan gunslinger." At that point, Armitage was allegedly pained and distressed to realize that Novak must be referring to him.

Let's stop right there. A public furor about the leak had begun to simmer in mid- July, almost immediately after Novak's column appeared. Throughout August and September, the controversy had escalated into calls for an investigation. Yet Armitage claims to have been blissfully unaware that any of this brouhaha related to him. He gave not a thought to his conversation with Novak -- and apparently did not talk about the leak controversy with anyone -- not even on Friday September 26, 2003 when news broke that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to investigate the Plame leak. (Novak himself hired a lawyer on that day.)

By Monday, September 29, according to Hubris, "The Plame leak was the news consuming Washington." At the daily White House briefing, press spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters that "the President expects everyone in his administration to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. No one would be authorized to do such a thing." McClellan vouched for both Rove and the Office of the Vice President as having no involvement in the leak. Yet Armitage -- who, as Hubris reports, had told Iran-Contra investigators in 1987, "I am pretty nosy and frankly I think I've learned the lesson in a bureaucracy that the more you know, the more you can put things together." -- was reportedly completely oblivious?

After the aha! moment when Armitage realized he was the only non-partisan gunslinger in town-- so the story goes -- he immediately called his then-boss and close friend, Secretary of State Colin Powell. Both promptly called... Ken Duberstein.

Why? They insist that they were not trying to get help setting their stories straight; instead, they claim, Powell wanted his old friend "Duberdog" (as he affectionately calls him) to contact Novak and ask if Armitage was indeed his source. Why bring in Duberdog? If Armitage were genuinely surprised by this sudden revelation and truly felt he had nothing to hide, why didn't he just call Novak himself?

Next, Powell and Armitage called the State Department's lawyer, William Taft IV, who notified the Justice Department. Taft also called White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales. Corn and Isikoff write that Taft was purposefully "oblique" with Gonzales because neither he, nor Powell, nor Armitage wanted the White House to know about what Armitage had done. Therefore, Taft allegedly told Gonzales "someone" from the State Department would be providing information about the leak to the Justice Department. Then he asked if Gonzales wanted to know more and Gonzales -- Isikoff writes in Newsweek -- "playing by the book," said no. Powell, Armitage, and Taft were happy that the White House would be kept in the dark, and so, according to Hubris, Armitage's story remained a secret to everyone but the investigating FBI agents to whom he promptly confessed all.

Deus Ex Machinations?

By this point in the story, all of my vestigial prosecutorial hackles were fully raised.

For starters, by early October, Armitage not only had an obvious reason to shade the truth; he also knew precisely how to do so. The requirements for proof of an Intelligence Identities Protection Act violation had been much-discussed by then, so Armitage was well aware that there was no violation if he had not acted intentionally. It is not surprising, therefore, that this Deputy Secretary of State, a savvy and scrappy thirty-year veteran of government affairs and political intrigue, suddenly transformed himself into a cross between Mr. Rogers and the famed gossip columnist Liz Smith. Even though he had met with Novak on a day when the Bush administration was in full crisis mode about Joseph Wilson's criticisms and was actually answering a question asked by Novak, Armitage insisted he had merely told Novak offhandedly, as "just gossip," that Wilson's trip had been arranged by his wife who was a CIA analyst working on weapons of mass destruction.

Armitage did not confess on October 2, 2003. Instead, while professing to be forthright, and after discussing his story with at least three people, he admitted to no wrongdoing whatsoever. Fortunately for Armitage, however -- according to Hubris -- the prosecution chose not to charge him because it could not prove he knew Mrs. Wilson was a covert agent.

At the same time, from the perspective of the White House, Armitage's "admission" would get Rove and Libby off the hook. If the investigation had focused solely on the genesis of the disclosures that led to Novak's column, as the Bush administration obviously thought it would, Libby would not have been at risk at all and Armitage's story would have absolved Rove as well. Armitage claimed he had acted inadvertently and Rove, on his part, was merely confirming a rumor to a trusted columnist. This is, in fact, just what Rove and Libby have been saying all along.

Coincidentally, this MO for the two leaks to Novak precisely mirrors the information-laundering technique Rove is famous for using, especially with Novak. As Corn and Isikoff explain, Rove will frequently give information to Novak off the record, suggesting that Novak call someone else to confirm it, thereby using "Novak to play political brushback without leaving any fingerprints."

And what of Armitage's voluntary trip to the FBI in October 2003? The nonconfession confession, such as the one he offered that day, is an old ploy in multiple-defendant cases. You offer up one person as a fall guy -- a scapegoat -- who suffers only minor scratches because he admits to nothing more than inadvertence or confusion, all the while appearing to be remorseful and disarmingly honest. Everyone else then blames that person, maybe even seeming to be angry with him. If the plan works, the case will go away and all can ride off happily together into the sunset.

The recent entrance of Richard Armitage into the CIA leak story as if he were a new figure -- when he was not -- looks less like a case of deus ex machina than of deus ex machinations. Despite his official refusal to be interviewed for Hubris, Armitage obviously allowed his friends and confidants -- including the head of the State Department's intelligence branch Carl Ford, who (by his own admission in the book) has known about Armitage's involvement for at least a year -- to leak the story in a way favorable to him.

Even more important, according to Hubris, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales also knew that a State Department official was involved in the leak, but allegedly said nary a word about it to the President. Notwithstanding its cavalier tone, the account of Gonzales' declining State Department attorney Taft's offer of information is extremely damaging to Gonzales. Under these circumstances, such a refusal would not be "playing by the book" at all -- at least not by any law book.

Gonzales was counsel to the President. In other words, President Bush was his client and the only person whose interests he represented. Beginning in late September, the President was publicly insisting that he wanted to know who the leakers were and he wanted to "know the truth." Therefore, the matter of the leak inquiry was of the utmost concern to Gonzales' client -- the President -- and, as such, Gonzales was ethically obligated to communicate Taft's offer of information to him. Any failure to do so would violate the Code of Professional Responsibility -- not, apparently, the book by which Gonzales was playing. Yet the White House has let this account of a serious ethical breach stand without offering comment or defense, and none of the President's surrogate spokespersons have issued a peep.

Who Is Ken Duberstein and Why Is He Here?

What is the final tell -- the fact that reveals what is actually going on here?

It is, I believe, the introduction of Ken Duberstein into the mix. The most striking defect in Armitage's confession is that it provides no believable explanation for why he happened to be speaking with Novak on July 8, 2003 -- the very time when the administration was struggling to control the damage from Wilson's op-ed. Novak says he had been contacted out of the blue by Armitage's office two weeks previously, which would have been approximately June 22, but he doesn't know why. Hubris reports that Duberstein, sometime after the investigation began, told "others" that he "may have" arranged the meeting as a favor to Powell. This vague suggestion by persons unknown is, of itself, nearly meaningless. But what makes it more suspect is that Duberstein himself has never made this statement publicly, nor has Armitage -- and Novak says he knows nothing about it.

Yet Duberstein has allowed this story to be offered and repeated -- in the New York Times and elsewhere. In these articles, Duberstein is described as a friend and adviser to Powell and Armitage.

But Duberstein is not just their friend; he is everyone's friend. Since Ronald Reagan's second term when he famously took over as Chief of Staff and pulled the President out of the huge hole he was in as a result of the Iran-Contra affair, Duberstein has been a key adviser to and "fixer" for Republican politicians. He shepherded Clarence Thomas through the Supreme Court nomination process for the first President Bush. He began the 2000 presidential primary season as Arizona Senator John McCain's campaign adviser, but when McCain was deciding whether to drop out, Duberstein acted as a conduit to the Bush campaign. Not long after that, he joined Rove and Vice President Cheney's key advisor Mary Matalin, in the "Gang of Six," Bush's inner circle of campaign counselors. (At the same time, Armitage, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice were members of the President's foreign policy brain trust.) In May of 2003, when Wilson's allegations were surfacing publicly, Duberstein -- along with Karl Rove, Andy Card, and others -- was already meeting with Bush to plan for the 2004 election. In 2005, when the Armitage story began leaking out, Duberstein, Rove, and friends were, of course, gearing up for the 2006 congressional elections.

Duberstein is not "merely" a key Republican adviser; he is also one of the most powerful Republican lobbyists in Washington. He lobbies for, among others, the American Gaming Association, the Direct Marketing Association, the National Cable Television Association, AARP, St. Paul Companies, Fannie Mae, and Time-Warner, as well as numerous pharmaceutical companies and defense contractors. One of his clients is Boeing. Armitage consulted for Boeing before he was appointed Deputy Secretary of State. Another of Duberstein's clients is General Motors. Funny thing, in the 1990s, Andy Card -- who was considered to be as powerful as Karl Rove while he was White House Chief of Staff -- was the head of government relations for General Motors. Duberstein also lobbies for ConocoPhillips, one of the three oil companies that benefited most directly from the reopening of trade relations with Libya, a project the State Department was working on during Armitage's tenure there.

So rewinding to spring 2003, when Wilson began speaking out publicly, were Karl Rove, "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney, and others in the Office of the Vice President the only Executive Branch officials who had reason to discredit him, undermine his story, and possibly just get him to pipe down? Of course not.

Certainly, there was infighting in the administration. Armitage and Powell were at odds with Cheney, Libby, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and others. They are now seen as comparative moderates and, since leaving, have vigorously attempted to distance themselves from responsibility for the invasion of, and ongoing war in, Iraq.

In the lead-up to the invasion, however, every time Powell and Armitage were called upon by White House Chief of Staff Card, Libby, Cheney, or the President to advance the case for war, they did. Armitage made speeches and testified before Congress, arguing that the threat from Iraq was so urgent we couldn't wait any longer for the United Nations to act. Powell, as we all know, went to the UN and made the speech that convinced a then-doubting public to support the President's decision to invade.

All along, however, Powell and Armitage knew -- because their own intelligence branch had been telling them -- that the facts they were citing as grounds for war were questionable, if not completely false. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) had repeatedly explained why aluminum tubes the Iraqis were purchasing were neither suitable nor intended for nuclear-weapons manufacture, as administration officials, including Powell, were contending. INR had also warned that the uranium-from-Niger claim was baseless. Indeed, Powell's and Armitage's own analysts had concluded there was no basis for asserting that Iraq even had a nuclear-weapons program. Joseph Wilson's public criticisms were, in short, making Powell and Armitage look very bad.

Perhaps more significant, Wilson's persistent comments were inviting inquiry into the entire case for war and, in the process, potentially jeopardizing Bush's chances for reelection. Keeping a Republican president in office and a Republican majority in Congress was -- it now seems clear -- the overriding motivation of all of the actors, including Armitage, in this whole sordid affair. Ultimately, every phase of the CIA leak case, including the propaganda campaign that is occurring right now, has been about maintaining the wealth and power of the Republican Party.

Remember I mentioned how everyone may be able to ride off into the sunset if one person offers himself as a scapegoat? Consider some of Richard Armitage's activities these days. He is on the board of ManTech International, whose U.S. defense and homeland security contracts have increased roughly 20% each quarter since he signed on in the spring of 2005. Along with his good friend -- and everyone else's -- lobbyist Kenneth Duberstein, he is also on the board of ConocoPhillips, the company that has now been able to reopen its oil pipelines in Libya. Finally -- just to round out the family circle -- Duberstein is a Trustee Emeritus of the Hudson Institute, the corporate-funded conservative think tank where Scooter Libby now works.

Both Armitage and Duberstein, as well as numerous other powerful Republicans, are also now acting as informal advisers for Arizona Senator John McCain's possible 2008 presidential campaign. Reportedly, McCain and Rove have made peace for the sake of the Party -- and McCain's candidacy. Things would work out so much better for everyone if that pesky Libby case and, indeed, the entire Special Counsel investigation, went away. As Bush, Cheney, Libby, Armitage, Duberstein, and so many others well know from the Iran-Contra affair, the President doesn't have to wait until anyone is convicted, or even charged, to exercise his constitutional power of clemency. On December 24, 1992, just weeks before former Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger's trial for charges arising out the Iran-Contra investigation was set to begin, President George H.W. Bush pardoned all of the defendants, not only for past convictions, but for any charges that might subsequently arise out of Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh's investigation.

Given that our Chief Executive has demonstrated an utter disregard for the truth and the law in the execution of nearly all of his presidential duties, there is every reason to believe that an October surprise is not the only one in the offing. I dearly hope I am completely wrong about this, but if the Libby trial remains set for January, a December surprise may also be in store.

Elizabeth de la Vega is a former federal prosecutor with more than 20 years of experience. During her tenure, she was a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and Chief of the San Jose Branch of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California. Her pieces have appeared in the Nation Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and Salon. She writes regularly for Tomdispatch and is the author of the upcoming book U.S. v. George W. Bush et. al., a Tomdispatch project to be published by Seven Stories Press in late November. She may be contacted at ElizabethdelaVega@Verizon.net.

Copyright 2006 Elizabeth de la Vega

ROVE-gate NOW INCLUDES the ABRAMOFF CORRUPTION SCANDAL!

Karl Rove White House Aide Susan Ralston RESIGNS due to questions linking the Abramoff bribery and corruption scandal to the White House.



Rove-Abramoff, Abramoff-Rove.

We wonder... just WHO was Mr. Abramoff talking to in the White House when he called all those hundreds of times, and WHAT did he want from the White House?

And what Jack Abramoff wanted in 2002 and 2003, Jack Abramoff usually got, funnelling hundreds of thousands of 'legal fees' and corporate donations through his lobbying company... and then directly to Republican Congressional campaigns.

As we may recall, Mr. Jack Abramoff was the LEAD LOBBYIST, THE K-St. heavy, of the Tom DeLay "twist their arms off until they pop out of their sockets" protection-racket Congress.

Ooops! WRONG metaphor! Mr. DeLay's nickname in that Congress was "The Hammer," and he was promoted from Deputy House Minority Whip to House Majority WHIP after the Republicans gained control of the Congress in 1995 riding the anti-incumbent "term limits" tide orchestrated by "Contract on America" Newt Gingrich. (DeLay's bio courtesy Wikipedia.com)

So "WHIP," "HAMMER," or "ARM-TWISTER".... choose the metphor for Mr. DeLay that suits you best!

But Mr. DeLay's lead partner in Republican "BASH THOSE WHO OPPOSE US" politics in the WHITE HOUSE, after George W. Bush was installed as president by Supreme Court fiat in 2001, was undoubtably Mr. Bush's campaign- and later Domestic Policy director, KARL ROVE.

And just as uber-lobbyist JACK ABRAMOFF was the lead conduit for Tom DeLay's most profitable extortion racket squeezes (oops!, "lobbyist-fundraising"), so too, it turns out, did Mr. Abramoff HAVE CLOSE CONTACTS with the BUSH-ROVE White House.

==============================


Rove Aide Linked To Abramoff Resigns
Scandal Claims Its First West Wing Job
By Peter Baker and James V. Grimaldi
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 7, 2006; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR2006100600965.html?nav=E8

A top aide to White House strategist Karl Rove resigned yesterday after disclosures that she accepted gifts from and passed information to now-convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, becoming the first official in the West Wing to lose a job in the influence-peddling scandal.

Susan B. Ralston submitted her resignation to avoid causing political damage to President Bush a month before the midterm elections, officials said. "She did not want to be a distraction to the White House at this important time," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

A congressional report showed last week that Ralston accepted sometimes-pricey tickets to nine sports and entertainment events from Abramoff while she provided him with inside White House information. The bipartisan report said there is no evidence that Rove knew of or approved of Ralston's actions, and sources said yesterday that the White House was surprised by the report's revelations.

The White House counsel's office conducted a review of the report, but with Ralston's departure it closed its inquiry yesterday. "Nothing more will come from the report, no further fallout from the report," Perino said.

A senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the counsel's office reached no conclusion about whether Ralston violated gift limits because her resignation made the point moot. But the official said there were "mitigating circumstances" in her case because she had a preexisting relationship with Abramoff, for whom she worked before joining the White House. The official said the White House made no criminal referral in her case. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

The sprawling Abramoff investigations have triggered prosecutions on Capitol Hill and on K Street, but Ralston's resignation brought the scandal into the White House proper. The only other White House official caught up in the probe has been David H. Safavian, the procurement chief for the Office of Management and Budget, who was convicted in June of lying about his ties to Abramoff.

As right hand to the president's most important adviser, Ralston was closer to the center of the Bush operation. She was a key organizer of presidential events, coordinating with White House political, scheduling, advance and public liaison offices. "She will be missed because she solves problems, and finding people in government who solve problems" is rare, a colleague said.

Ralston, who earned $122,000 a year, had been a minor player in the scandal for more than a year, but it was not until her e-mails with the lobbyist were released by the House Government Reform Committee last week that her role became known.

The information supplied by Ralston to Abramoff often involved procedural matters, social events and possible administration appointments, the committee said.

Rules ban White House officials from accepting gifts worth more than $20 from anyone doing business with the government. Exceptions can be made for preexisting relationships, although ethics officers generally advise officials to avoid anything that might be misinterpreted.

Rove has been out of town all week and declined to comment yesterday. A colleague said that neither Rove nor anyone else at the White House pushed Ralston to leave. Ralston did not respond to telephone or e-mail messages yesterday, and her attorney, Bradford A. Berenson, declined to comment.

In a letter to the president dated Thursday, Ralston wrote: "It has been a tremendous privilege to work at the White House and now after almost six years the time has come for me to pursue other opportunities." The White House did not announce the resignation until Friday afternoon, timing that is often used to minimize bad news.

"She leaves without any animosity from us," said White House counselor Dan Bartlett. "She's been a tireless worker for the president, and we will be sad to see her leave."

As a former Abramoff assistant, Ralston played intermediary between the lobbyist and Rove. The congressional report found 66 Abramoff contacts with the White House, more than half of them with Ralston. In addition, Abramoff's lobbying colleagues contacted Ralston 69 times.

On Oct. 21, 2001, Ralston e-mailed Abramoff that Rove had read an Abramoff memo about a political endorsement in the Mariana Islands governor's race, a little-noticed election but one important to Abramoff because he had lucrative clients there. Ralston reported to Abramoff that Rove had agreed, writing the next day: "You win :)."

More often, Abramoff fell short at the White House. Abramoff contacted Ralston to get Rove to place a close ally, Mark Zachares, as head of the Interior Department's Office of Insular Affairs. Ralston rebuffed a meeting with Rove for Zachares, saying it was unnecessary because Rove was on their side. But Zachares did not get the position.

In November and December 2003, Abramoff e-mailed Ralston about Iraqi bonds apparently issued by one of his clients, American Bondholders Foundation, the House committee said. In response, Ralston indicated that the National Security Council had not "gotten back to me yet." Six days later, she had an answer. "The NSC is very suspect of this proposal," she wrote. "The White House will not support it."

Ralston helped Rove get tickets from Abramoff for a game in the NCAA basketball tournament but told Abramoff that "Karl has to pay for his tickets." The White House said last week that Rove paid for his tickets. But Ralston apparently did not pay for tickets she accepted to Bruce Springsteen and Andrea Bocelli concerts and Washington Capitals, Washington Wizards and Baltimore Orioles games.

"Are floor seats available," Ralston asked in December 2001 for four Wizards tickets worth a combined $1,300, the report said.

"For you? Anything!" Abramoff replied. "How many do you need?"

Ralston: "4"

"You got 'em," Abramoff said. "I'll organize."

Rove co-conspirator Lewis Libby pleads "NATIONAL SECURITY SECRETS!" as to why he OUTED an undercover CIA operation to the DC press/media....

President Bush's STONEWALL of the CIA "outing" scandal is, at the very least, succeeding in DELAYING and CONFUSING the case. As we recall, Ambassador Joe Wilson published an op-ed in the New York Times in July of 2003 that not only directly contradicted Mr. Bush's stating that Iraq was purchasing African uranium ore ("yellowcake") for an alleged nuclear weapons program, but Mr. Bush KNEW THE STORY HE WAS TELLING WAS FALSE when he included it in his January 2003 State of the Union speech as a means of drumming up support for an attack, invasion, and occupation of Iraq. Shortly after Ambassador Wilson's op-ed hit the New York Times editorial pages, the DC press was suddenly flooded with stories that the Ambassador's wife was actually a CIA undercover spy, operating under "NOC" rules - NON-OFFICIAL-COVER - which meant that should such a person be arrested in a foreign country for spying, they would have NO official protection from the US government, and could thus be executed or imprisoned as a spy.

Not only did the DC press reports "out" Mrs. Plame-Wilson's UNDERCOVER identity, but the same stories also RUINED, DESTROYED, DEMOLISHED the cover of the cover company Mrs. Plame-Wilson was working for, an entirely CIA run company then called Brewster-Jennings energy consultants.

This month, we learn from a leading member of that "DC press corps" (the Washington Post) that Mr. Libby, charged with a felony for his role in the "outing scandal" is pleading that STATE SECRETS will PROVE that he is innocent, and that therefore his trial must be thrown out of court.

That is how Mr. Bush's Washington works.... Innocent health experts are WRONGLY blamed for the ANTHRAX TERROR ATTACKS and have their lives ruined by the US government; and administration insiders who answered directly to the President and Vice-President find the government running "INTERFERENCE" on a criminal prosecution to save THEIR hides.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR2006100601554.html

Such is inJustice in George Bush's America... and the ANTHRAX TERRORIST STILL ROAMS FREE, given LICENSE BY THE BUSH WHITE HOUSE to possibly STRIKE AGAIN IN THE FUTURE.

--------------------------------------------------------------


Secret Papers Could Halt CIA Case
Libby Intends to Present Classified Evidence; Judge Skeptical
Associated Press
Saturday, October 7, 2006; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR2006100601499.html?nav=E8

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

The papers filed this week hint at what has been taking place behind closed doors as Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald tries to limit the amount of classified data that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is permitted to use at his trial, scheduled for January.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton is asking whether classified evidence would overlap with what Libby is likely to say in his testimony. Libby's attorneys have said he will take the witness stand to deny lying to the FBI in its investigation of the disclosure of Plame's identity to the media.

Even if prosecutors agreed ahead of time about the importance of the "nine national security matters" he wants to disclose, Libby would be entitled to introduce additional evidence, the lawyers wrote.

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

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

Libby is charged with five felony counts of perjury, obstruction and making false statements to the FBI. He is accused of lying about how he learned of Plame's CIA employment and what he told reporters about her when her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, was accusing the Bush administration of twisting prewar intelligence to help sell the public on waging war against Iraq.

Libby plans to use what his attorneys call "a memory defense" and must be allowed to demonstrate how busy he was, the lawyers say.

While Rove has not been indicted for "outing" an undercover CIA operation, the Scandal has all the markings of a typical Rove SMEAR operation...

CIA LEAK CASE
Why Rove Testified For A Fifth Time
By Murray Waas, NationalJournal.com
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, April 28, 2006
http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0428nj1.htm


Appearing for a fifth time before the federal grand jury in the CIA leak case, White House adviser Karl Rove on Wednesday was questioned extensively about contradictions between his sworn testimony and that of Time magazine writer Matthew Cooper on the substance of their July 2003 conversation regarding then-agency operative Valerie Plame, according to attorneys involved in the case.

Much of the questioning of Rove on Wednesday focused on contradictions between Cooper's and Rove's accounts of their crucial July 11 conversation.

In several hours of testimony, Rove was again asked how he learned three years ago that Plame worked for the CIA, and the circumstances of how he relayed that information to Cooper, according to people familiar with his testimony.

Rove also testified to the grand jury that when he told Cooper that Plame worked at the agency, he was only passing along unverified gossip.

In contrast, Cooper has testified that Rove told him in a phone conversation on July 11, 2003, that Plame worked for the CIA and played a role in having the agency select her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, to make a fact-finding trip to Niger in 2002.

Cooper has also testified that Rove, as well as a second source -- I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then-chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney -- portrayed the information about Plame as accurate and authoritative. Cooper has testified that based on his conversations with Rove and Libby, he felt confident enough about the information to identify Plame as a CIA officer in a July 17 Time story.

It has been widely reported that Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fizgerald has been trying to determine whether Rove tried to mislead the FBI and the grand jury in the early stages of the leak probe when he failed to disclose that he had talked to Cooper about Plame three days before she was outed as a CIA officer. But it has not been previously known that much of the questioning of Rove on Wednesday also focused on the contradictions between Cooper's and Rove's accounts of their crucial July 11 conversation.

Rove did not disclose the conversation with Cooper when he was first interviewed in the early stages of the leak probe by the FBI in October 2003, and again during his first appearance before the grand jury in February 2004. Later, Rove voluntarily returned to the grand jury and testified about the Cooper conversation, saying he had forgotten about it in his earlier statements to the FBI and in his first grand jury appearance.

The outing of Plame was part of a broad effort by the Bush administration in the first half of 2003 to discredit Wilson, a vocal administration critic who charged that the president and others in his administration had misrepresented intelligence information to make the case to go to war with Iraq.

Wilson had been dispatched in 2002 on a CIA-sponsored overseas mission to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase weapons-grade uranium from Niger. Wilson reported back to the agency that the allegation was mostly likely unfounded; however, in his State of the Union address in January 2003, President Bush stated the British government had information that Hussein did try to buy the uranium from the African nation.

To blunt the criticism, Rove and other senior administration officials mounted an intensive effort against Wilson, alleging that he had been sent to Niger only on the recommendation of his wife, Plame, an agency officer.

Last October, Libby was indicted by the grand jury in the leak case on five counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice as part of an alleged effort to conceal his own role, and perhaps that of other Bush administration officials, in outing Plame as a covert officer.

Plame's identity was blown on July 14, 2003 in a column by nationally syndicated writer Robert Novak. Novak and Rove have since said that Rove was one of two sources for that column. Both men have also said they did not know of Plame's covert status.

Three days later, on July 17, Time published Cooper's article on its Web site identifying Plame as a CIA officer. Cooper has since testified and written in the magazine that it was Rove and Libby who told him that Plame worked for the CIA.

After initially not telling the FBI and federal grand jury of his conversation with Plame, Rove formally revised his testimony during a grand jury appearance on October 15, 2004. In that testimony, Rove said he believed that he had spoken to Cooper about Plame, but still had little independent recollection of what was said.

Rove's new testimony came as a result of the discovery of a July 11 White House email that Rove had written to then-deputy National Security advisor Stephen J. Hadley in which Rove said he had spoken to Cooper about the Niger controversy.

Rove has insisted that he did not initially volunteer information to the FBI and the grand jury about his July 11 conversation with Cooper because of a faulty memory. He has said that he has so many conversations and phone calls in the course of the work day that he simply had forgotten about that conversation until the email surfaced.

Rove and his attorney, Robert Luskin, have also argued that it would have been foolhardy for Rove to lie, knowing that Cooper might someday testify against him, and that other evidence might surface showing that the two had talked about Plame.

Central to Fitzgerald's decision on whether to bring charges against Rove is whether Rove's failure to disclose his conversation with Cooper early in the investigation was because of a faulty memory, or whether he was trying to conceal the conversation.

Fordham University law school professor Dan Richman, a former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, said that Fitzgerald's decision to summon Rove before the grand jury repeatedly "reflects the importance that prosecutors-and ultimately juries-place on motive in [potential] perjury or obstruction cases."

Such cases are typically difficult to bring, Richman said, because "in many instances you almost have to literally take the jury inside a defendant's head... to demonstrate their intent."

The fact that Rove voluntarily returned to the grand jury to testify about his conversation with Cooper might "prove to be an obstacle to any [potential] obstruction or perjury case in that the person ultimately cooperated and told what he knew," Richman said.

But if Rove only revised his earlier statements when faced with the likelihood that he was going to be found out anyway, Richman said, that would demonstrate the crucial element of intent to a jury. "You do score points for coming in and retracting or clarifying your previous false testimony," Richman said. "But it is an entirely different case if you are doing so only out of fear that you are about to be caught."

More recently, Luskin provided evidence to prosecutors about his own contacts with another Time reporter, Viveca Novak, in an attempt to show that Rove has testified as honestly as he could to the federal grand jury.

Luskin told prosecutors that Novak told him prior to Rove's first grand jury appearance that she had heard from colleagues at Time that Rove was one of the sources for Cooper's story about Plame. Luskin in turn said that he told Rove about this, but Rove still did not disclose to the grand jury that he had ever spoken to Cooper about Plame.

On Wednesday, Rove reportedly testified to the federal grand jury that earlier he had no reason to hide that he had spoken to Cooper, if indeed he recalled the conversation, because he already knew from Luskin that Novak and others at Time were saying they had been told that Rove had been a source for Cooper. Another reason, Rove said, is that he knew Cooper might himself one day testify in the case.

In her own sworn testimony in the case, however, Novak could not pinpoint the date that she had her conversation with Luskin, telling prosecutors that she was not sure wheter it was before or after the first time Rove testified before the grand jury. In a highly unusual move, Rove waived attorney-client privilege in a limited way, so that Luskin could testify that he remembered the conversation with Novak having occurred earlier than she had.

According to legal sources familiar with Rove's testimony, Rove said that prior to talking with Cooper on July 11, 2003, he believed that he first heard that Plame worked for the CIA from a person who was a journalist, although he has also testified that he could not recall the name of the person or the circumstances of the conversation.

Rove also has testified that he spoke with Robert Novak about Plame on July 9, 2003. During that conversation, Rove has testified, Novak told him that he had heard that Plame -- referred to during the conversation only as Wilson's wife -- worked for the CIA. Because of that conversation with Novak, Rove has testified to the grand jury, he believed that Plame worked for the CIA.

Novak and Rove have both testified that in their July 9 conversation Rove briefly said that he had heard the same information about Plame that Novak had heard. But Novak has also testified that as a result of the July 9 conversation, he used Rove as a second source for his July 14 column outing Plame as an "agency operative."

"If you believe both of them, Novak was saying that Rove was his source, and Rove was saying that Novak was his source," said one person with first-hand knowlege of the grand jury accounts of both men.

Rove also testified to the grand jury that he had heard from Libby that Plame worked for the CIA. But Rove testified that Libby told him that he only heard the information as rumors being passed on to him by journalists.

Cooper has said he told the grand jury that Libby was a second source for his July 17 story reporting that Plame worked for the CIA. Libby spoke to him on July 12, one day after his conversation with Rove.

Libby testified to the grand jury, in contradiction to Cooper's testimony, that when he told Cooper that Plame worked for the CIA he was careful to say that the information was only an unsubstantiated rumor that Libby himself had first heard from others.

Regarding his conversation with Cooper, according to the indictment of Libby, he told the grand jury: "I was very clear to say reporters are telling us that because in my mind I still don't know it as fact. Later, Libby added: "And I said [to Cooper] reporters are telling us that, I don't know if it's true."

If Rove's and Libby's accounts to the grand jury are correct, journalists wrote about Plame's CIA employment even though both White House aides said the information was unsubstantiated gossip. Both reporters have said that the information was not qualified in any way, and that they believed it authoritative enough to publish.

Some journalism professors say that, in Washington, there is often a rush to print information.

"Much of what passes for news in Washington is very hurried leaks from officials in power, whether in a corridor conversation or a thirty second phone call," said Mark Feldstein, a former investigative correspondent for CNN, who is currently a professor of journalism at George Washington University. "And the media is far too credulous of accepting the word of Washington officialdom when it comes to self-serving leaks or publishing self-serving information."

Geneva Overholser, a journalism professor at the University of Missouri, former chair of the Pulitzer Prize board, and former editor of the Des Moines Register, went even further, questioning whether columnist Novak should have used Karl Rove as a source that Plame worked for the CIA based on brief comments that Rove made that he simply heard the same information that Novak did. -- Previous coverage of pre-war intelligence and the CIA leak investigation from Murray Waas.

Rove-gate: America, you've been "Punked"!

Rovegate...

Retired CIA officer Larry Johnson has written one of those rare editorials so packed with information, where when you try to excerpt the 3 or 4 most vital words, phrases, or sentences, you end up lifting whole paragraphs!

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20051019/dick_cheneys_covert_action.php


Because the "major media", and especially the hard-copy "news content leaders" (i.e. the Washington Post and New York Times) have ABROGATED their responsibility to advise the public and provide vital information necessary for an informed public to demand accountability from its elected officials, we must instead get our "HARD INFORMATION" from editorial sources such as this. Fortunately, the flood-gates of free and open discourse are opening, and excellent editorial and policy articles such as this example by Mr. Johnson are appearing everywhere, not just on the internet(s), but slowly filtering back to the "hard copy" print media (i.e. newspapers and magazines, which have always had the space to cover a story in more detail and depth than a 2-minute, 5 minute, or even one-hour media broadcast show).

Here is my attempt to edit and amplify the key phrases from Mr. Johnson's article.

The basic premise is nothing short of stunning: that in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, where the Bush White House PURPOSELY (or incompetently) IGNORED a CIA briefing entitled "bin Laden DETERMINED TO ATTACK IN AMERICA," the White House repeated its 9-11 failure, by refusing to heed new CIA warnings that the Intel used to justify American's war of choice against Iraq was "FABRICATED" and FRAUDULENT."

Regarding the 9-11 attacks, the White House did not so much as put out a single "Traveller's Alert" or "General Airline Advisory." This in and of itself was a criminal failure, and gross case of dereliction of duty, because as we now know, such alerts and advisories are temporary in nature, and after an initial cost (of travel delays and security inspections), there is no lasting damage from such a security alert should nothing come of it. While REPEATED security alerts may lead to a "boy who cried wolf" syndrome, in the summer of 2001, the Bush administration, White House, and senior levels of government REFUSED to so much as put out ONE SINGLE hijacking or terrorist alert or advisory. A SINGLE SUCH ALERT would have made the hijacker's execution of their murderous plot much more difficult: in November or December of 2001, the MILLENIUM BOMB PLOT (to bomb Los Angeles airport) was thwarted when a SINGLE lone customs official at a remote Canadian border post insisted on a more thorough search of a suspect's auto. Regarding the 9-11 hijackers, there are even rumors that an American celebrity was so concerned to be aboard a "PRACTICE flight" by the hijackers, that when the plane landed (and up to three potential hijack suspects disembarked from scattered seats in the first-class section of a cross-country flight), he went to authorities and complained, and his warnings were ignored or buried under a mountain of files.

_____________________________________


America has been victimized, our citizens have been "Punked" by a CIA-style "COVERT ACTION Campaign" - usually synonymous with a military coup sponsored by the CIA against an overseas government - but in this case a classic DISINFORMATON CAMPAIGN conducted by the Cheney-Bush White House, AGAINST THE ADVICE and protests of both mid-level AND SENIOR CIA authorities.


<< The agency TRIED TO REJECT 'BOGUS INTEL REPORTS' and 'FABRICATED DOCUMENTS' [alleging Iraq WMD efforts], BUT Bush Admin SENIOR OFFICIALS * IGNORED the INTEL Community" * and * "PERSISTED IN TRYING TO MAKE THE FRAUDULENT CASE' against Iraq. * >>


<<
Yet the Bush administration ignored the intelligence community on these questions, and SENIOR POLICYMAKERS—like VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY—PERSISTED IN TRYING TO MAKE THE **FRAUDULENT** CASE.
>>



<<

We learned last May that in the summer of 2002, the Bush administration told our British allies that they would "fix the facts" around the intelligence. In other words, the United States SOUGHT TO MANUFACTURE A CASE that Iraq was trying to build a nuclear capability. Note, not only did BOGUS intelligence REPORTS and FABRICATED DOCUMENTS surface, but SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS—Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney—WENT TO GREAT LENGTHS to try to convince Americans that the United States would soon face the wrath of Iraqi attacks. Remember the smoking mushroom cloud?

Despite repeated attempts by the Italian intelligence service to help us cook the books, the senior CIA intelligence analysts resisted the administration’s effort to sell the bogus notion that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Niger. Even in the much-maligned October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, the entire intelligence community remained split on the reliability of the Iraq/Niger claim. During briefings subsequent to the publication of the NIE, ** SENIOR CIA officials REPEATEDLY DEBUNKED THE CLAIM that Iraq was trying to buy uranium. They also dismissed as unreliable reports from Great Britain, which also were derived from the faulty Italian intelligence reports.

It is now clear that Italy’s intelligence service, SISME, had a hand in producing the FORGED DOCUMENTS delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Rome in early October 2003 that purported to show a deal with Niger to buy uranium. Many in the intelligence community are convinced that a PROMINENT NEOCON with longstanding ties to SISME played a role in the forgery. The truth of that proposition remains to be proven. This much is certain: Either SISME or someone with ties to SISME helped forge and circulate those documents, which some tried to use to bolster the case to go to war with Iraq.

Although some in the intelligence community, specifically analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of Energy, believed the report, ** THE INTEL COMMUNITY AS A WHOLE DID **NOT** PUT MUCH STOCK IN THE REPORTS and FORGED DOCUMENTS, and REPEATEDLY TOLD POLICY MAKERS that these reports were NOT reliable. **

Yet the Bush administration ignored the intelligence community on these questions, and SENIOR POLICYMAKERS—like VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY—PERSISTED IN TRYING TO MAKE THE **fraudulent** CASE.

>>

<< Two weeks before President Bush spoke the infamous 16 words in the January 2003 State of the Union speech, the Department of Defense was fanning the flames about Iraq’s alleged Nigerien uranium shopping trip. Starting in late 2001, senior Department of Defense officials, including Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith, provided favored military talking heads with talking points and briefings to reinforce messages the administration wanted the public to remember.

One of those who frequently attended these affairs, Robert Maginnis, a former Army officer and now a commentator for Fox News and the Washington Times , published an op-ed on January 15, 2003, for United Press International, subsequent to one of the briefings. In writing about the case for attacking Iraq, Maginnis affirmed that Saddam, “failed to explain why Iraq manufactures fuels suited only for a class of missile that it does not admit to having and why it sought to procure uranium from the African nation of Niger.”

Notwithstanding repeated efforts by intelligence analysts to downplay these intelligence reports as unreliable, DOD officials fanned the flames. This, my friends, is one example of “cooking intelligence.” These facts further expose as farce the Bush administration’s effort to blame the CIA for the misadventure in Iraq. We did not go to war in Iraq primarily because of bad intelligence and bad analysis by the CIA. The Bush administration started a war of choice.

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Return to: Opinions
Dick Cheney's Covert Action
Larry C. Johnson
October 19, 2005
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20051019/dick_cheneys_covert_action.php


Larry Johnson worked as a CIA intelligence analyst and State Department counter-terrorism official.  He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Face it, America. You’ve been punk'd.