The Right's Own WSJ Reports on Wider Probe by Fitzgerald

[host]

The blogging "world" on the internet is ablaze the last few days with speculation that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's two year old investigation of the leak that led to the disclosure that Valerie Plame was a CIA "operative", was planned and authorized by a politican as high up as VP Dick Cheney.

This article, by a major publication that is consistantly sympathetic to the Bush administration, seems to endorse speculation that Fitzpatrick's investigation includes the participation of Karl Rove and "Scooter Libby" in the "selling of the Iraq war" to the American people as far back as Aug. 2002.

Libby uniquely holds three "titles" in this administration:
Chief of Staff to the VP
National Security Advisor to the VP
Special Asst. to president Bush

Do you think that this article is an accurate assessment of the current status of Fitzgerald's investigation? Do you think that Rove and Libby will be indicted? Do you think that this will lead to the exposure of the falsification of evidence by members of the Bush administration in an effort to "sell" the invasion of Iraq?

I am pessimistic that much harm will come to members of the Bush administration from Fitzgerald's indictments. By the time anyone is prosecuted or convicted, the federal appeals courts and the SCOTUS should be sufficiently "stacked" with folks such as Roberts and Miers to make it very likely that any damaging results of actual prosecutions will be overturned. Pardons by Bush himself are a trump card. This assumes that it will even get that far. If actually cornered, Bush and Cheney have previously non-existant "powers" to declare national emergencies, or even martial law. The "war" president, in a time of perpetual, self declared "war", seems to place himself above the law.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article...html?mod=blogs
By JOHN D. MCKINNON, JOE HAGAN and ANNE MARIE SQUEO
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
October 12, 2005; Page A3

The New York Times reporter who went to jail to avoid testifying in the CIA leak case was quizzed by the special prosecutor again yesterday and has agreed to return to the grand jury today.

Judith Miller's additional testimony comes as the endgame is intensifying in the legal chess match that threatens to damage the Bush administration.

There are signs that prosecutors now are looking into contacts between administration officials and journalists that took place much earlier than previously thought. Earlier conversations are potentially significant, because that suggests the special prosecutor leading the investigation is exploring whether there was an effort within the administration at an early stage to develop and disseminate confidential information to the press that could undercut former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Central Intelligence Agency official Valerie Plame.

Mr. Wilson had become a thorn in the Bush administration's side, as he sought to undermine the administration's claims that Iraq had sought to buy materials for building nuclear weapons from other countries, such as uranium "yellowcake" from Niger. Ultimately, his wife's name and identity were disclosed in a newspaper column, prompting the investigation into whether someone in the administration broke the law by revealing the identity of an undercover agent.

Ms. Miller, the Times reporter, was interviewed again yesterday to discuss conversations she had with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff. She testified on Sept. 30 before a grand jury about conversations she had with Mr. Libby in July 2003.
[Patrick Fitzgerald]

Since then, her lawyers have told Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the leak of the CIA agent's identity, that Ms. Miller's notes show that she also spoke with Mr. Libby in late June, information that was not previously given to the grand jury.

Mr. Fitzgerald's pursuit now suggests he might be investigating not a narrow case on the leaking of the agent's name, but perhaps a broader conspiracy.

Mr. Wilson's initial complaints were made privately to reporters. He went public in a July 6 op-ed in the New York Times and in an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press." After that, White House officials, who were attempting to discredit Mr. Wilson's claims, confirmed to some reporters that Mr. Wilson was married to a CIA official. Columnist Robert Novak published Mr. Wilson's wife's name and association with the agency in a column that suggested she had played a role in having him sent on a mission to Niger to investigate the administration's claims.

Until now, Mr. Fitzgerald appeared to be focusing on conversations between White House officials such as Mr. Libby and Karl Rove, President Bush's senior political adviser, after Mr. Wilson wrote his op-ed. The defense by Republican operatives has been that White House officials didn't name Ms. Plame, and that any discussion of her was in response to reporters' questions about Mr. Wilson, the kind of casual banter that occurs between sources and reporters.

Mr. Rove, who has already testified three times before the grand jury and was identified by a Time magazine reporter as a source for his story on Mr. Wilson, is expected to go back to the grand jury, potentially as early as today, to clarify earlier answers.

Lawyers familiar with the investigation believe that at least part of the outcome likely hangs on the inner workings of what has been dubbed the White House Iraq Group. Formed in August 2002, the group, which included Messrs. Rove and Libby, worked on setting strategy for selling the war in Iraq to the public in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion. The group likely would have played a significant role in responding to Mr. Wilson's claims.

Given that the grand jury is set to expire on Oct. 28, it is possible charges in this case could come as early as next week. Former federal prosecutors say it is traditional not to wait for the last minute and run the risk of not having enough jurors to reach a quorum. There are 23 members of a grand jury, and 16 are needed for a quorum before any indictments could be voted on. This grand jury has traditionally met on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Since Ms. Miller first testified to the grand jury on Sept. 30, she has not published an article about her conversations with Mr. Libby in the New York Times, though she has given interviews to the paper and other media outlets. She hasn't publicly disclosed what she told the prosecutor.

In a memo to staffers yesterday, New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller confirmed that Ms. Miller would return to the grand jury "to supplement her earlier testimony," and noted that this means Ms. Miller is "not yet clear of legal jeopardy."

Mr. Keller had earlier said the paper would publish a full account of everything Ms. Miller knew, but her continuing legal exposure has prevented the Times from doing so. Mr. Keller said yesterday in his memo that once Ms. Miller's "obligations to the grand jury are fulfilled, we intend to write the most thorough story we can of her entanglement with the White House leak investigation."

[maximusveritas]

I have no idea where all these leaks are coming from, but it seems more like speculation than an accurate picture of what's going on. I'm hopeful that the investigation will lead somewhere so that we can at least find out what happened.
There's very little chance that anyone in the Bush administration will serve jail time, but any exposure of their lies/deceit might damage Bush in the polls even further and hurt the Republicans in 2006.

[Elphaba]

Do you think that this article is an accurate assessment of the current status of Fitzgerald's investigation? Do you think that Rove and Libby will be indicted? Do you think that this will lead to the exposure of the falsification of evidence by members of the Bush administration in an effort to "sell" the invasion of Iraq?

We can only assume that this is speculation on the part of the authors, but they certainly aren't alone in thinking an important shift has occurred. If Rove and Libby are indicted on the exposure of Plame, I believe it will have to be via the less stringent espionage law. Should they be convicted, I expect an immediate pardon from Bush.

The big question for me has always been the involvement of Novak and Miller. Both have been conduits for administrative spin and I don't believe either one were duped into performing that role. Novak outs Plame, but we know little about any testimony he has given. Miller doesn't print a word about Plame, but she becomes central to Fitzgerald's investigation. I don't believe he has extended the scope of his investigation to include the Miller articles in support of going to war in Iraq, but I find it likely that he has found something pointing to the administration trying to discredit Wilson before his op/ed piece was published.

Blumenthal suggests Miller is central, as well.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blument.../index_np.html

Who Will Be Indicted, and When?
By Sidney Blumenthal
Salon.com

Wednesday 12 October 2005

As dread descends on the White House, all of Washington waits for the Valerie Plame endgame.

From the steakhouses of the lobbyists to the cloakrooms of the Senate, from book launch parties to news bureaus, the main subject in Washington is who will be indicted and when. As the inquiry of independent counsel Patrick Fitzgerald into the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity approaches its deadline of Oct. 28, the cast of characters appears for final performances before the grand jury. Trailing clouds of mystery, they disappear into the windowless chamber and emerge illuminating nothing. Fitzgerald's airtight office, leaking to no reporter, only fuels the fires of rumor by its silence.

Once again, on Tuesday, New York Times reporter Judith Miller was summoned to the prosecutor's sanctum. Miller was the stovepipe for disinformation from the administration and Ahmad Chalabi (self-proclaimed "hero in error") directly onto the front page of the Times in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. When former ambassador Joseph Wilson, in his Times Op-Ed of July 6, 2003, "What I Didn't Find in Niger," disclosed his CIA mission before the war that debunked the tale that Saddam Hussein had sought enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, he exposed more than the falsity of the president's claim; his account was also a blow to the credibility of Miller's stories. Ten months later, the Times published an extraordinary editors note saying that some of its coverage was "not as rigorous as it should have been." Miller's identity went unmentioned.

After spending 85 days in prison for contempt of court, protecting the anonymity of the source already revealed for a story she never wrote on Wilson and his wife, Plame, Miller extracted the fig leaf of a letter from that source, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, who reminded her that he had given her a waiver a year ago. Frantically, she raced out of jail and appeared before the grand jury. If she had not hastily flipped, she might have faced indictment for criminal contempt and obstruction of justice.

The Times, unlike the Washington Post, NBC News and Time magazine, whose reporters all testified in the case, had decided Miller's fight was an essential defense of freedom of the press. Inevitably, her cause was deflated. Journalists, after all, are citizens, and they must testify if they witness crimes, according to a 1972 Supreme Court decision that the courts were bound to uphold. Miller's adamantine martyrdom with the full support of the Times obliterated the customary privilege of reporters that had existed solely in deference to the now punctured status of the press. The Post's lawyers anticipated the result beforehand and counseled cooperation, but the Times decided instead to accept Miller at her word, and her refusal as a principled stand, and to force an issue it was destined to lose.

After her first appearance before the grand jury, Miller suddenly discovered notes of a conversation with Libby, having previously declared that she had no such notes. That conversation about Wilson took place on June 23, 2003, two weeks before Wilson's Op-Ed was published. Two people I spoke with who visited Miller in prison report that she appeared completely convinced of her stance as press martyr. But rumor-plagued Washington has divided into two camps: Was Miller a self-deluded dupe or a co-conspirator?

The Times, meanwhile, has subordinated its news coverage to her legal defense, withholding reportage on what she has told the grand jury, though the Times promises a full account. Will it include her colleagues' recollections of how livid she was that the Times published Wilson's Op-Ed?

Unlike in Watergate, which was largely advanced by the press, this scandal has unfolded despite much of the press corps' efforts to avoid, demean or restrain the story until very recently. Also unlike in Watergate, major influences in the press have aligned with their sources in the administration, not with the professionals in the government acting as whistle-blowers. (One of Miller's sources, John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, graciously paid her a visit in jail.) For his part, Bob Woodward, who has written two books describing in detail events from the perspective of the Bush administration, supported the White House version of the Niger incident by charging in July 2004 that "there were reasonable grounds to discredit Wilson."

Even as Bush's popularity has crumbled over the past nine months, leading figures of the press have sustained cheerleading for the political brilliance of Karl Rove, arguing that like a superhero he will rescue Bush. Indeed, a number of prominent journalists have received lucrative advances to write books extolling Rove's genius. Those panegyrics, however, may take unexpected twists in the late chapters. This week Rove is scheduled to testify before the grand jury for the fourth time.

Inside the West Wing the lowering atmosphere of dread is like that of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and Pendulum:" "Down - steadily down it crept."