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October 14, 2005
Plame Thread II
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Larry Johnson: Why Patrick Fitzgerald Gets It
Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald understands very well that something beyond a crime was committed when Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and other White House operatives spread the name of undercover CIA officer, Valerie Plame, around Washington as part of a coordinated effort to discredit her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson. Someone needs to alert Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen that he is a nitwit and moron for trying to advance White House supplied talking points that no real crime occurred.
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Richard Cohen is dead wrong to argue that the best thing Patrick Fitzgerald can do is leave town. To the contrary, the best thing Patrick Fitzgerald can do is a send a clear message to politicians in both parties that when it comes to political hardball intelligence assets must be kept out of the game. At the end of the day our nation’s security is no game, it is a matter of life and death.
She is part of the crime so what else could she do?
turn. i don’t think she took the fifth. my guess is that fitz knew prior to her testimony that the WH was cooking a brew for wilson before the article came out.( i don’t think this is about judy, i think he’s developing a timeline to circle cheney. cheney was present at whig meetings in may and june. if he can established debunking wilson started at that time he can tie cheney to the plan, maybe even the source, or that he ordered it) after her testimony fitz called her lawyer and tipped him that if she didn’t come clean about any prior meetings she’d be a cooked duck. hence, once they knew fitz knew they ‘discovered’her earlier notes. if he had the note , what’s the point of pleading the fifth?
from a comment in the diaries:
” If one relies on the fifth, and then is granted immunity, a further refusal to testify will result in another contempt (criminal perhaps) citation.”
do we have a lawyer in the house?
fitz could have found out as early as last year cheney attended may/june whig meetings when he subpoenaed emails and attendance records. all he has to do is establish they were discussing wilson earlier than they stated.
remember their line is they didn’t know wilson until they read about him in the paper. fitz is not interested in taking down judy.
would you be? if you could nail the man himself?
Posted by: annie | Oct 14 2005 13:55 utc | 4
Miller’s meeting with prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will occur Tuesday in Washington, Abrams said, but it will not be conducted in front of the grand jury looking into the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA operative However, Abrams said, Fitzgerald could decide after the interview to have Miller make another grand jury appearance..
not be conducted in front of the grand jury means fitz was offering her a plea bargain, we know she accepted it because…..she made another appearance (and discovered a notebook!) now he has another meeting w/rove today , wonder if he’ll lessen his charges in exchange for turning just a wee bit. (remember karl offered to appear) come on karl, throw us a bone.
noose tighter noose tighter
Posted by: annie | Oct 14 2005 15:02 utc | 5
I have always thought that Cheney was Fitz’s target and that HW was orchestrating behind the scenes. I predict an attorney general spot for Fitz in the Jeb! administration.
Posted by: gylangirl | Oct 14 2005 20:27 utc | 6
@gylan girl – I predict an attorney general spot for Fitz in the Jeb! administration.
That would require a bit of slaughter in the lower ranks and not touching anybody liek Libby or Rove. May well be but I don´t see it likely.
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On the Miller vs. NYT drama
Since her release, reporters say, she has not been cooperative with the paper’s investigation into her role in events surrounding the case. Two reporters allege there have been newsroom outbursts between Keller and Miller over her refusal to talk to the paper’s own reporters.
Rove testified 4 1/2 hours today? Miller had 75 minutes yesterday.
Now that CNN is showing how how Illusions are created, doesn’t that signal to him that it’s okay to go after the REAL culprits rather than merely their functionaries? As long as Rove & libby get Felonies on their records I’d settle for them not doing jail time, if the 2 Traitor-in-Chiefs hang from Washington Monument.
Everyone knows they ran the operation. The idea that they were out of the loop is preposterous. I’m extremely disturbed that Fitzy agreed to limit Miller’s testimony to only one day…I’d rather he just give her full immunity in exchange for disgorging all…
Posted by: jj | Oct 14 2005 20:48 utc | 9
Fitzgerald threatened ?
The word inside the Beltway is that if Fitzgerald delivers indictments against senior White House officials he will face unspecified “consequences.”
I can’t find it, but I remember Cheney warning Wellstone about “consequences.” not long before he (Wellstone) took the long dirt nap.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 14 2005 21:02 utc | 10
Fuck!..sorry.
Fitzgerald threatened ?
The word inside the Beltway is that if Fitzgerald delivers indictments against senior White House officials he will face unspecified “consequences.”
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 14 2005 21:05 utc | 11
Collateral damaged from Fitz’s investigation?
Or as longtime Times observer Michael Wolff told me: “The distinction between the 3rd floor and the 14th floor used to be real. The editor was always in charge. That’s no longer the case. And it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that while Pinch has been running the paper, it just lurches from crisis to crisis. At some point you have to question the quality of his leadership.”
And that questioning has already begun, leading to the unspeakable being whispered among big media players. As one of them boldly asserted to me: “Mark my words, this will end with Sulzberger’s resignation.”
Posted by: lonesomeG | Oct 14 2005 21:05 utc | 12
from b’s link
Fitzgerald appears to be focusing on evidence that top White House officials began seeking information about Wilson and his wife in May and June of 2003, well before Wilson came out publicly accusing the administration of twisting intelligence to justify the Iraq war.
hmm, sounds good to me
Posted by: annie | Oct 14 2005 22:41 utc | 13
Unca, you’re wonderful. You must have missed my post on this – last night I think. The funny part is that I even offered the same reminder about threat of “consequences” to Wellstone if he defied God Dick Cheney & voted against Iraq resolution.
Since this is DC, does anyone recall the explosion of Orlando Letelier’s car?
Posted by: jj | Oct 15 2005 0:40 utc | 14
@jj
You must have missed my post on this[…]
Yeah, I lost my connection last night and my isp was not reachable, it’s been iffy all week.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 15 2005 1:07 utc | 15
no problem, Uncle…I thght. it was amusing that we both had identical association w/the story, else I wouldn’t even have commented on yr post 🙂
Posted by: jj | Oct 15 2005 2:27 utc | 17
@Malooga
Doesn’t DIA now trump CIA and NSA trumps em all? It’s Cheney’s and Rummy’s world we just live in it.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 15 2005 2:55 utc | 18
Some tidbits from WaPo:
Rove Pressed On Conflicts, Source Says
Rove’s defense team asserts that President Bush’s deputy chief of staff has not committed a crime but nevertheless anticipates that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald could find a way to bring charges in the next two weeks, the source said.
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One person who will not be charged is Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who spent 85 days in jail for refusing to testify in the case before making two recent appearances before the grand jury. Miller was recently told by Fitzgerald that she is only a witness in the case, according to a source close to Miller.
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Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said yesterday that Miller is now cooperating with fellow reporters on the story.
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Wilson’s campaign caught the attention of Vice President Cheney’s office nearly two months before Plame was unmasked, according to senior administration officials. Cheney’s aides pressed the CIA for information about Wilson.
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Instead, the lawyers, who based their opinions on the kinds of questions Fitzgerald is asking and not on firsthand knowledge, think the special prosecutor may be headed in a different direction. They said Fitzgerald could be trying to establish that a group of White House officials violated the Espionage Act, which prohibits the disclosure of classified material, or that they engaged in a conspiracy to discredit Wilson in part by identifying Plame.
Another possibility, the lawyers say, is that Fitzgerald could charge Rove or others with perjury or providing false testimony before the grand jury. This is a popular avenue for prosecutors in white-collar criminal cases.
LA Times has this bit
Some people close to the case said Fitzgerald’s office had recently asked them questions that suggested he was fact-checking a document, although the nature of the document was unclear. They said he set Friday as a deadline to begin their responses.
What might that document be about?
Cheney’s Energy Task Force Documents? One can dream right?
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 15 2005 9:14 utc | 23
I would like to hope that we may be at a point similar to that which occurred when the Ellsberg-psychiatrist break-in was found to be tied up to the Watergate break-in. That is, I would like to hope that one of the nodes in the many many possible skeins of criminal collusion characteristic of the Bush administration is about to be revealed. It could involve the Kelly “suicide”, Sibel Edmonds gagging, Israeli intelligence and the Feith OSP operation, infiltration of the FBI, arms and drug contraband, or any one of a number of other rotting corpses so far only signalled by the smell of putrefaction.
This is for now only a hope, and I don’t think we should depend on Fitzgerald to drag the corpses into the sunlight, but it begins to seem possible that the smell
will be too much even for the olfactorily challenged U.S. public.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Oct 15 2005 9:28 utc | 24
Yeah, they sure shut ol’ Sibel up quick!
By the way, tomorrow is the day for Pinch to cut Judy loose. Or at least one can hope.
Jay Rosen thinks Miller will not talk in any substantial way to here collegues reporting on the case in the NYT.
He also finds a hint that the NYT as a corporation might well have (had) a “problem” with Fitzgrald itself. I am sure they have withhold some stuff Fitzgerald wanted to see and were caught in the act. I find no other way to explain their behaviour.
The expected On-Miller piece seams to be out at the NYT website: The Miller Case: From a Name on a Pad to Jail, and Back
I am just starting to read …
here’s one thing i notice rather glaringly missing from the article. after she gets out of jail and speaks to the gj there is just one little additional paragraph
She testified before the grand jury for a second time on Wednesday about notes from her first meeting with Mr. Libby.
nothing about how she had to come back because she had failed to disclose that first meeting during the first round.
there is also a thread over a kos pointing out that nyt has NEVER mentioned whig. i find that interesting. the idea that miller is perhaps part of whig?? also i notice in the article the reference to her as ms runamuk and the inference that she kind of runs outside the pack and doesn’t have to play by the same rules as everyone else. this leads me to believe she may herself work for the gov. others have implied this before but it does explain her reluctance to testify further. because if she passed on the info to novak she would actually be the person who carried the info from a gov agent to a civilian. not libby. but who knows , it’s just speculation.
Posted by: annie | Oct 15 2005 21:16 utc | 28
That NYT article is holding back big-time. Showing their underwear up until…Miller was forced to out Libby and inevitably, Cheney. She was in the hot seat and had to make a deal. She may have saved herself but Sultzberger is in deeeeep shit (not to mention the primo govt perps.)
I predict that the paper of record is now not good enough for toilet paper; has been flushed away, and it is about time. Those lying criminals have been at it for many years and thought – thought – thought that as long as they had govt (Cheneyco) support, that it could go on forever.
It. Has. Ended.
Hoping and expecting that Friedman and his cohorts are in freefall (bottomless pit) and don’t expect to contact the bottom for a couple of centuries. If ever.
There is more – lots more. This crap won’t end until her majesty the queen is hanged by the neck.
Posted by: rapt | Oct 15 2005 21:49 utc | 29