Rove, Libby Accounts Differ With Those of Reporters
Rove, Libby Accounts in CIA Case Differ With Those of Reporters
22 July 2005 (Bloomberg) -- Two top White House aides have
given accounts to a special prosecutor about how reporters first
told them the identity of a CIA agent that are at odds with what
the reporters have said, according to people familiar with the case.
Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, Vice President ***** 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.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told Fitzgerald
that he first learned the identity of the CIA agent from syndicated
columnist Robert Novak, according a person familiar with the matter.
Novak, who was first to report Plame's name and connection
to Wilson, has given a somewhat different version to the special
prosecutor, the person said.
These discrepancies may be important because Fitzgerald is
investigating whether Libby, Rove or other administration officials
made false statements during the course of the investigation.
The Plame case has its genesis in whether any administration
officials violated a 1982 law making it illegal to knowingly
reveal the name of a covert intelligence agent.
`Twisted' Intelligence
The CIA requested the inquiry after Novak reported in a July 14,
2003, column that Plame recommended her husband for a 2002
mission to check into reports Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger.
Wilson, in a July 6, 2003, article in the New York Times, had said
President George W. Bush's administration ``twisted'' some of the
intelligence on Iraq's weapons to justify the war.
Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, said yesterday that Rove told
the grand jury ``he had not heard her name before he heard it from
Bob Novak.'' He declined in an interview to comment on whether
Novak's account of their conversation differed from Rove's.
There also is a discrepancy between accounts given by Rove
and Time magazine reporter Mat Cooper. The White House aide
mentioned Wilson's wife -- though not by name -- in a July 11, 2003,
conversation with Cooper, the reporter said. Rove, 55, says that
Cooper called him to talk about welfare reform and the Wilson
connection was mentioned later, in passing.
Cooper wrote in Time magazine last week that he told the grand
jury he ....................
More :
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=an7SakVWGrTQ&refer=us
---------------------------------
Rove Apparently is Unnamed Source for NYT Article Attempting
to Spin His and Scooter Libby's Side of the Story as More Damaging
Information to Both of Them Emerges. Rove's Line of Defense is
That They Were Both Just Trying to Defend the Administration
Against an Attack [of Truth] by Joe Wilson. The Truth is Toxic
to this Administration. The Truth to the Bush Administration is
Like Sunlight was to Count Dracula.
For Two Aides in Leak Case, 2nd Issue Rises
By DAVID JOHNSTON Published : July 22, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/22/politics/22leak.html
---------------------------------
Plame's Identity Marked As Secret in Bush Administration Memo.
"The paragraph identifying her [Valerie Wilson] as the wife of
former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked
to show that it contained classified material at the 'secret' level,
two sources said. The CIA classifies as 'secret' the names of
officers whose identities are covert, according to former senior
agency officials." Rove is the Benedict Arnold of Our Age and
Bush is His Enabler of Treason.
Plame's Identity Marked As Secret
Memo Central to Probe Of Leak Was Written By State Dept. Analyst
Thursday 21 July 2005 By Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei;
Washington Post A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/20/AR2005072002
517_pf.html
---------------------------------
"The second, more disturbing, possibility is that Bush authorized,
either explicitly or implicitly, the leak to retaliate against Joseph C.
Wilson IV, who publicly presented evidence that the administration
was distorting facts to sell the American people on going to war."
Will Bush give Rove a pass ?
20 July 2005
NOTHING IN the Bush administration happens ''by accident."
George W. Bush did not win two terms as president by accident.
He did it with the carefully thought-out ideas of Karl Rove.
Rove has never done anything in his political career without first
considering all angles. He then acts when he believes it will further
his or his boss's political cause.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2005/07/
20/will_bush_give_rove_a_pass
---------------------------------
The Wall Street Journal will break the news that not only was
the damning State Department memo reported labeled "secret",
it was classified as "top secret." And, according to WSJ National
Political Editor John Harwood, the memo also lists the Plame
revelation as "SNF," or "Secret, No Foreign," in terms of parties
to whom the information can or cannot be disclosed.
Breaking News On Treasonous-Rove Case-VIDEO
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/07/21.html#a4074
---------------------------------
"I expect every member of this administration to stay well
within the boundaries that define legal and ethical conduct.
This means avoiding even the appearance of problems."
- George W. Bush in 2001 -
Look Over There !
Tuesday 19 July 2005 By Dan Froomkin; Special
to washingtonpost.com 1:00pm
The stonewall's not working so well. Neither is the legalistic
parsing. The furor over who leaked a CIA operative's name
shows no sign of abating.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/07/19/BL2005071900947
..html
---------------------------------
Bush Africa gaggle from 2003 disappears from White House
Web site
21 July 2005
The July 9th 2003 press gaggle while in Africa use to be at
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07 but it's gone. ****
Well the Bush administration must be shitting itself right about
now, never before has the administration ever been asked
to explain itself, and the media is starting to ask some real
questions. They were hoping to god that the new Supreme
Court nominee would distract the world from the mounting
issues, but the "look over here" tactic seemed to fail
http://www.bushsamerica.com
**** Here it is : http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2003/07/dos071003.html
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
(Pretoria, South Africa)
July 9, 2003
PRESS GAGGLE WITH ARI FLEISCHER TO THE TRAVEL POOL
Union House
Pretoria, South Africa
QUESTION : So what's happening this morning ?
( ..... )
Q: What's the final language, Ari, your final position on the State
of the Union speech and the uranium -- I know they were working
on stuff last night, but I never got a chance to read it.
Q: Is this on the record ?
MR. FLEISCHER : Yes, we're back on the record. After the
speech, information was learned about the forged documents.
With the advantage of hindsight, it's known now what was not
known by the White House prior to the speech. This information
should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech. There
was reporting, although it wasn't very specific, about Iraq's seeking
to obtain uranium from Africa. It's a classic issue of how hindsight
is 20-20. The process was followed that led to the information
going into the State of the Union; information about the yellow
cake was only brought to the White House's attention later.
But there's a bigger picture here, and this is what's fundamental
-- the case for war against Iraq was based on the threat that Saddam
Hussein posed because of his possession of weapons of mass
destruction, chemical and biological, and his efforts to reconstitute
a nuclear program. In 1991, everybody in the world underestimated
how close he was to getting a nuclear weapon. The case for going
to war against Saddam is as just today as it was the day the
President gave that speech.
Q: Ambassador Wilson said he made a case months before
that there was no basis to the belief --
MR. FLEISCHER : No, he reported that Niger denied the allegation.
That's what Ambassador Wilson reported.
Q: Was that report weighed against other --
MR. FLEISCHER : And of course they would deny the allegation.
That doesn't make it untrue. It was only later -- you can ask Ambassador
Wilson if he reported that the yellow cake documents were forged.
He did not. His report did not address whether the documents were
forged or not. His report stated that Niger denied the accusation.
He spent eight days in Niger and concluded that Niger denied the
allegation. Well, typically, nations don't admit to going around
nuclear nonproliferation.
Q: But he said there was a basis to believe their denials.
MR. FLEISCHER : That's different from what he reported. The
issue here is whether the documents on yellow cake were forged.
He didn't address that issue. That's the information that subsequently
came to light, not prior to the speech.
Q: Walk us through how much, if any of this --
MR. FLEISCHER : It was based on the national intelligence estimate;
it was based on contemporaneous reporting leading up to the speech,
which with the advantage of hindsight we now know that the yellow
cake ties to Niger were not accurate. But again, in 1991, the world
underestimated how close Iraq was to obtaining nuclear weapons.
There is a bigger picture here that is just as valid today as it was
the day of the speech.
Q: Are we going the other way now in overestimating their ability
to reconstitute --
MR. FLEISCHER: Well, obviously the regime is gone, they're not
reconstituting anything anymore.
Q: But that really wasn't the question. Did we overestimate his
capacity for doing this before the regime was --
MR. FLEISCHER : It remains clear from the United Nations and
others that Saddam had biological weapons, chemical weapons
that he had not accounted for. Those are weapons of mass destruction.
We continue to learn about the Iraqi nuclear program, information
such as the scientist who had buried material in his garden for
the purpose of bringing it out after the sanctions were imposed.
The concerns are valid. The yellow cake report may have turned
out to be inaccurate, but the broader concerns remain valid.
So it's important to get this in context. It's important to understand
whether one specific sentence based on yellow cake was wrong,
that does not change the fundamental case from being right.
Q: Does this increase the onus or the need to come up with
significant discoveries of WMD that so far haven't been found ?
MR. FLEISCHER : I think the American people continue to express
their support for ridding the world of Saddam Hussein based
on just cause, knowing that Saddam Hussein had biological and
chemical weapons that were unaccounted for that we're still
confident we'll find. I think the burden is on those people who
think he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world
where they are. We know he had them in the '90s, he used them.
So just because they haven't yet been found doesn't mean they
didn't exist. The burden is on the critics to explain where the
weapons of mass destruction are. If they think they were
destroyed, the burden is on them to explain when he destroyed
them and where he destroyed them.
Q: What's the estimate on how long it will take, and what more
access, if any, they need --
MR. FLEISCHER : It will take as long as it takes until they're
discovered. The world is safer.
Q: Ari, back on the State of the Union, is there anything that the
White House, that the administration is going to do differently
to prevent something like that from happening, like how a piece
of information that does not rise to the level that should be included
in a speech, that ends up being inaccurate --
MR. FLEISCHER : There's always a thorough vetting process.
We'll continue to follow the vetting process. But it is the nature
of events that information can later be discovered after a speech
-- and when that happens, as is in this case, it's important to be
forthright, which is what this administration has done --
to discuss it openly, and that's what this administration has done.
Q: When you talked about the contemporaneous reporting right
before the speech, what exactly do you mean ?
MR. FLEISCHER : There was the national intelligence estimate,
intelligence community.
Q: So you had other reports about Niger and about the yellow
cake from Niger.
MR. FLEISCHER: -- part of the intelligence community's reporting
leading up to the speech --
Q: There wasn't a lot --
Q: Some British --
MR. FLEISCHER: -- which subsequently -- no, the President
in the State of the Union cited the British report. But there had
been an independent American report which in the instance of
yellow cake, subsequently turned out not to be valid. But keep
in mind, again, we've said that about the yellow cake for an
extended period of time. This administration has been forthright.
( ..... )
Q: Is there anything else to link Saddam Hussein's attempt
to acquire weapons to Africa, now that this yellow case --
Niger thing has been discussed ?
MR. FLEISCHER : Yes, there was other reporting. But as I said,
it didn't rise to the level of sufficient specificity. But there was
other reports, yes.
Q: Is the President still concerned about Africa being a source
-- potential source for these weapons ?
MR. FLEISCHER: No, because the regime is gone. The regime
is gone. You know, just because something didn't make it to the
level where it should have been included in a presidential speech,
in hindsight, doesn't mean the information was necessarily inaccurate.
It means it should not have risen to his level.
This is the nature of some intelligence information. But, again,
this is why I go right back to the bigger point, why did we go to war.
We went to war because of chemical weapons, biological weapons.
And as you know, in the case of nuclear, there are other issues that
go into nuclear, not just yellow cake. So, again, that's why I urge
you all to just keep this in perspective about what this one sentence
means. And we have been honest about discussing the one sentence
-- and I think that it's a case to be fair to the administration.
Q: Apparently, the Iraqi intelligence agent who had met with
Atta in Prague, has there been help -- been apprehended, any
information on that ?
MR. FLEISCHER : I saw a report on it in the media. I don't have
anything beyond that.
More : http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2003/07/dos071003.html
---------------------------------------------------
Government 'intelligence' report on Iraq revealed as plagiarism
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2003/02/uk020603.html
The British government's latest report on Iraq's non-compliance
with weapons inspections, which claims to draw on "intelligence
material", has been revealed as a wholesale plagiarism of three
old and publicly-available articles, one of them by a graduate
student in California. The compiler did not even clean up the
typos or standardize the spelling.
The dossier, released by the British government on Monday,
is entitled "Iraq - Its Infrastructure Of Concealment, Deception
And Intimidation". It is reproduced online at
http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page7111.asp
(references below to page numbers relate to the downloadable
Word version). The first sentence of the document claims that it
draws "upon a number of sources, including intelligence material".
This is somewhat misleading.
The bulk of the 19-page document (pp.6-16) is directly copied
without acknowledgement from an article in last September's
Middle East Review of International Affairs entitled "Iraq's
Security and Intelligence Network: A Guide and Analysis".
http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2002/issue3/jv6n3a1.html
The author of the piece is Ibrahim al-Marashi, a postgraduate
student at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. He has
confirmed that his permission was not sought; in fact, he didn't
even know about the British document until Glen Rangwala,
a Cambridge-based Iraq analyst, mentioned it to him.
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2003/02/uk020603.html
---------------------------------
The origins of the questionable intelligence on Iraqi weapons.
An African diplomat sold Italian intelligence the forged documents
shown here, claiming Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger, sources
say. For nearly a week, the Bush administration has been trying
to explain how it came to pass that President Bush, in his State
of the Union speech, erroneously claimed that Saddam Hussein
was trying to get uranium in Africa.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/US/uranium030714_docs.html
---------------------------------
Why A Special Prosecutor's Investigation Is Needed
To Sort Out the Niger Uranium And Related WMDs Mess
The heart of President Bush's January 28 State of the Union
address was his case for going to war against Saddam Hussein.
In making his case, the President laid out fact after fact about
Saddam's alleged unconventional weapons. Indeed, the claim
that these WMDs posed an imminent threat was his primary
argument in favor of war.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20030718.html
---------------------------------
America silences Niger leaders in Iraq nuclear row
America has warned the Niger government to keep out
of the row over claims that Saddam Hussein sought
to buy uranium for his nuclear weapons programme
from the impoverished West African state.
Herman Cohen, a former assistant secretary of state for
Africa and one of America's most experienced Africa hands,
called on Mamadou Tandja, Niger's president, in the capital
Niamey last week to relay the message from Washington,
according to senior Niger government officials.
One said : "Let's say Mr Cohen put a friendly arm around the
president to say sorry about the forged documents, but then
squeezed his shoulder hard enough to convey the message,
"Let's hear no more about this affair from your government.
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/08/03/wwmd03.xml
----------------------------------------------------------
Secrets and Lies - The True Story Of The Iraq War
( ..... )
The book is divided into three sections :
Towards Invasion, Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Aftermath.
Each section reveals the unvarnished truth and encourages us
to weep at human folly, error, stupidity and deceit.
Following Blair's meeting with Bush at Camp David the two
leaders gave a joint press conference and showed satellite pictures
indicating new construction activity at what appeared to be
Tuweitha, the site of the French-built nuclear reactors destroyed
by Israel in a daring, clandestine air raid in June 1981. This was
evidence, they claimed, that Iraq was working on a nuclear-arms
programme. On September 10, Hans Blix said that Unmovic
did not draw the same conclusion from the satellite images.
( ..... )
Unlike in the 1991 Gulf war, when the BBC and CNN shared
a duopoly in airing the images of the hostilities this time the
Arab TV channels - especially Al Jazeera - successfully broke
the Anglo-American stranglehold over war reporting. Repeatedly
Al Jazeera provided footage that contradicted claims made
by Centcom. What incensed the Anglo-American alliance was
the realization that the TV channels in Europe, Russia, the Far East,
South Asia and Latin America bought and aired Al Jazeera
TV footage. Little wonder that Centcom made a point of rocketing
the Al Jazeera Bureau in Baghdad, killing one of its leading reporters.
The overall result of this healthy competition between the powerful,
established Anglo-American television channels and the emergent
Arab channels was that for the first time in history noncombatants,
in most parts of the world, could see for themselves the horrors
of real war as experienced by civilians and soldiers in real time.
( ..... )
The book brings to light many unpalatable facts : Bush and Blair
had not completely drained the swamp that bred Islamic terrorists.
Instead of focusing on finishing the onerous task of decimating
Al Qaida and its associates - in which they had the ongoing backing
of the international community - they planned to invade Iraq,
an illegal adventure disapproved of by the majority of UN Security
Council members that would result in creating a bigger, more
menacing swamp, conducive to breeding Islamic extremists.
Until then, the authoritarian but secular regime of Saddam Hussein
had ensured that there were no Islamic extremist groups functioning .......
More :
http://www.kurdmedia.com/reports.asp?id=2649
------------------------------------------------------------
Secrets and Lies
The Planning, Conduct and Aftermath of Blair and Bush's War
Author : Dilip Hiro
Publisher : Methuen Publishing
Year : 2005
ISBN : 184275128X
Pages: 464
Format : Paperback
Price : £ 9.99
http://www.politicos.co.uk/item.jsp?ID=5114
To order Secrets and Lies for £9.99 with free UK p&p
call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875 or go to
www.guardian.co.uk/bookshop
.
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