Religions > Atheism > Prosecutor In CIA Leak Case Casting A Wide Net ( White House Effort To Discredit Critic Examined in Detail)
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Michelle Malkin" |
| Date: |
27 Jul 2005 07:06:42 PM |
| Object: |
Prosecutor In CIA Leak Case Casting A Wide Net ( White House Effort To Discredit Critic Examined in Detail) |
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/26/AR2005072602069.html
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^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
Michelle Malkin (Mickey) aa list#1
alt.atheism atheist/agnostic list name collector
BAAWA Knight & EAC Bible thumper thumper
http://questioner.www2.50megs.com
^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
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| User: "johac" |
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| Title: Re: Prosecutor In CIA Leak Case Casting A Wide Net ( White House Effort To Discredit Critic Examined in Detail) |
29 Jul 2005 01:34:04 AM |
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In article <GoGdnaxXDYgVvHXfRVn-pA@comcast.com>,
"Michelle Malkin" <hypatiab7@comcast.net> wrote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/26/AR200507260206
9.html
Curiouser and curiouser
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
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| User: "Dubh Ghall" |
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| Title: Re: Prosecutor In CIA Leak Case Casting A Wide Net ( White House Effort To Discredit Critic Examined in Detail) |
29 Jul 2005 02:56:57 PM |
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On Thu, 28 Jul 2005 23:34:04 -0700, johac <jhachm@ixpres.com> wrote:
In article <GoGdnaxXDYgVvHXfRVn-pA@comcast.com>,
"Michelle Malkin" <hypatiab7@comcast.net> wrote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/26/AR2005072602069.html
Curiouser and curiouser
Prosecutors have questioned former CIA director George J. Tenet
and deputy director John E. McLaughlin, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow,
State Department officials,
No prob, so far, but...
and even a stranger who approached columnist
Robert D. Novak on the street.
....I wonder how they managed that trick.
--
Puck Greenman
The spelling, Like any opinion stated here,
is purely my own
#162 BAAWA Knight.
Plonked by Rob Duncan
Na bister 500,000
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: Prosecutor In CIA Leak Case Casting A Wide Net ( White House Effort To Discredit Critic Examined in Detail) |
06 Aug 2005 09:23:39 PM |
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On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 20:06:42 -0400, "Michelle Malkin"
<hypatiab7@comcast.net> wrote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/26/AR2005072602069.html
Prosecutor In CIA Leak Case Casting A Wide Net
White House Effort To Discredit Critic Examined in Detail
By Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 27, 2005; Page A01
The special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe has interviewed a wider
range of administration officials than was previously known, part of
an effort to determine whether anyone broke laws during a White House
effort two years ago to discredit allegations that President Bush used
faulty intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to several
officials familiar with the case.
Prosecutors have questioned former CIA director George J. Tenet and
deputy director John E. McLaughlin, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow,
State Department officials, and even a stranger who approached
columnist Robert D. Novak on the street.
In doing so, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has asked not
only about how CIA operative Valerie Plame's name was leaked but also
how the administration went about shifting responsibility from the
White House to the CIA for having included 16 words in the 2003 State
of the Union address about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from
Africa, an assertion that was later disputed.
Most of the questioning of CIA and State Department officials took
place in 2004, the sources said.
It remains unclear whether Fitzgerald uncovered any wrongdoing in this
or any other portion of his nearly 18-month investigation. All that is
known at this point are the names of some people he has interviewed,
what questions he has asked and whom he has focused on.
Fitzgerald began his probe in December 2003 to determine whether any
government official knowingly leaked Plame's identity as a CIA
employee to the media. Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C.
Wilson IV, has said his wife's career was ruined in retaliation for
his public criticism of Bush. In a 2002 trip to Niger at the request
of the CIA, Wilson found no evidence to support allegations that Iraq
was seeking uranium from that African country and reported back to the
agency in February 2002. But nearly a year later, Bush asserted in his
State of the Union speech that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa,
attributing it to British, not U.S., intelligence.
Fitzgerald has said in court that he had completed most of his
investigation at a time when he was pressing for New York Times
reporter Judith Miller to testify about any conversations she had with
a specific administration official about Plame during the week before
Plame's identity was revealed.
Miller, who never wrote a story about the matter, is in jail for
refusing to comply with a court order to testify. Court records show
Fitzgerald is seeking information about communications she had with
the Bush official between July 6 and July 13, 2003, when the White
House was attempting to discredit Wilson and his allegations.
Fitzgerald appears to believe that Miller's conversations may help him
get to the bottom of the leak and the damage-control campaign
undertaken by senior Bush officials that week.
Using background conversations with at least three journalists and
other means, Bush officials attacked Wilson's credibility. They said
that his 2002 trip to Niger was a boondoggle arranged by his wife, but
CIA officials say that is incorrect. One reason for the confusion
about Plame's role is that she had arranged a trip for him to Niger
three years earlier on an unrelated matter, CIA officials told The
Washington Post.
Miller's role remains one of many mysteries in the leak probe. It is
unclear whom, if anyone, she spoke to about Plame, and why she emerged
as a central figure in the probe despite never having written a story
about the case. Also murky is the role of Novak, who first publicly
identified Plame in a syndicated column published July 14, 2003.
Lawyers have confirmed that Novak discussed Plame with White House
senior adviser Karl Rove four or more days before the column
identifying her ran. But the identity of another "administration"
source cited in the column is still unknown. Rove's attorney has said
Rove did not identify Plame to Novak.
In a strange twist in the investigation, the grand jury -- acting on a
tip from Wilson -- has questioned a person who approached Novak on
Pennsylvania Avenue on July 8, 2003, six days before his column
appeared in The Post and other publications, Wilson said in an
interview. The person, whom Wilson declined to identify to The Post,
asked Novak about the "yellow cake" uranium matter and then about
Wilson, Wilson said. He first revealed that conversation in a book he
wrote last year. In the book, he said that he tried to reach Novak on
July 8, and that they finally connected on July 10. In that
conversation, Wilson said that he did not confirm his wife worked for
the CIA but that Novak told him he had obtained the information from a
"CIA source."
Novak told the person that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA as a
specialist in weapons of mass destruction and had arranged her
husband's trip to Niger, Wilson said. Unknown to Novak, the person was
a friend of Wilson and reported the conversation to him, Wilson said.
Novak and his attorney, James Hamilton, have declined to discuss the
investigation, as has Fitzgerald.
Harlow, the former CIA spokesman, said in an interview yesterday that
he testified last year before a grand jury about conversations he had
with Novak at least three days before the column was published. He
said he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use
without revealing classified information, that Wilson's wife had not
authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name
should not be revealed.
Harlow said that after Novak's call, he checked Plame's status and
confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called
Novak back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong
and that Plame's name should not be used. But he did not tell Novak
directly that she was undercover because that was classified.
In a column published Oct. 1, 2003, Novak wrote that the CIA official
he spoke to "asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never
again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name
might cause 'difficulties' if she travels abroad. He never suggested
to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he
had, I would not have used her name."
Harlow was also involved in the larger internal administration battle
over who would be held responsible for Bush using the disputed charge
about the Iraq-Niger connection as part of the war argument. Based on
the questions they have been asked, people involved in the case
believe that Fitzgerald looked into this bureaucratic fight because
the effort to discredit Wilson was part of the larger campaign to
distance Bush from the Niger controversy.
Wilson unleashed an attack on Bush's claim on July 6, 2003, appearing
on NBC's "Meet the Press," in an interview in The Post and writing his
own op-ed article in the New York Times, in which he accused the
president of "twisting" intelligence.
Behind the scenes, the White House responded with twin attacks: one on
Wilson and the other on the CIA, which it wanted to take the blame for
allowing the 16 words to remain in Bush's speech. As part of this
effort, then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley spoke
with Tenet during the week about clearing up CIA responsibility for
the 16 words, even though both knew the agency did not think Iraq was
seeking uranium from Niger, according to a person familiar with the
conversation. Tenet was interviewed by prosecutors, but it is not
clear whether he appeared before the grand jury, a former CIA official
said.
On July 9, Tenet and top aides began to draft a statement over two
days that ultimately said it was "a mistake" for the CIA to have
permitted the 16 words about uranium to remain in Bush's speech. He
said the information "did not rise to the level of certainty which
should be required for presidential speeches, and the CIA should have
ensured that it was removed."
A former senior CIA official said yesterday that Tenet's statement was
drafted within the agency and was shown only to Hadley on July 10 to
get White House input. Only a few minor changes were accepted before
it was released on July 11, this former official said. He took issue
with a New York Times report last week that said Rove and Vice
President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, had a
role in Tenet's statement.
The prosecutors have talked to State Department officials to determine
what role a classified memo including two sentences about Plame's role
in Wilson's Niger trip played in the damage-control campaign.
People familiar with this part of the probe provided new details about
the memo, including that it was then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard
L. Armitage who requested it the day Wilson went public and asked that
a copy be sent to then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to take with
him on a trip to Africa the next day. Bush and several top aides were
on that trip. Carl W. Ford Jr., who was director of the Bureau of
Intelligence and Research at the time and who supervised the original
production of the memo, has appeared before the grand jury, a former
State Department official said.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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Contempt of Congress meter reading-offscale.
Hello, theocracy with a fundamentalist US Supreme
Court who will ensure church and state are joined
at the hip like clergy and altar boys.
America 1776-Jan 2001 RIP
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul
of the people. On some great and glorious day the
plain folks of the land will reach their heart's
desire at last and the White House will be adorned
by a downright moron." --- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
Religion is the original war crime.
-Michelle Malkin (Feb 26, 2005)
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