RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Bushgate

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Bush Directed Cheney To Counter War Critic

President Bush told the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case that he directed Vice President Dick Cheney to personally lead an effort to counter allegations made by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV that his administration had misrepresented intelligence information to make the case to go to war with Iraq, according to people familiar with the president's statement.

Bush told prosecutors he directed Cheney to disclose classified information that would not only defend his administration but also discredit Wilson.

Bush also told federal prosecutors during his June 24, 2004, interview in the Oval Office that he had directed Cheney, as part of that broader effort, to disclose highly classified intelligence information that would not only defend his administration but also discredit Wilson, the sources said.

But Bush told investigators that he was unaware that Cheney had directed I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, to covertly leak the classified information to the media instead of releasing it to the public after undergoing the formal governmental declassification processes.

Bush also said during his interview with prosecutors that he had never directed anyone to disclose the identity of then-covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife. Bush said he had no information that Cheney had disclosed Plame's identity or directed anyone else to do so.

Libby has said that neither the president nor the vice president directed him or other administration officials to disclose Plame's CIA employment to the press. Cheney has also denied having any role in the disclosure.

On October 28, 2005, a federal grand jury indicted Libby on five felony counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice, for allegedly concealing his own role, and perhaps that of others, in outing Plame as a covert CIA officer.
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National Journal
Guess we now understand why Bush ammended his original statement about the leaks.

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the G-man said:
This has got to be the worst day for the Angry Left ... For months they have been the day that the grand jury handed up indictments of Rove and--who knows?--maybe even the vice president himself.... look around the Web and you can find examples of the Angry Left going through the five stages of grieving...Denial

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Matter-eater Man said:
If you noticed G-man, the National Review article was about Bush being responsable for the leak.

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Bush also said during his interview with prosecutors that he had never directed anyone to disclose the identity of then-covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife. Bush said he had no information that Cheney had disclosed Plame's identity or directed anyone else to do so.

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the G-man said:
I find it ironic, hell, I find wildly hypocritical, that the same people who constantly whine about wanting "open government" suddenly consider it a high crime for the President of the United States, of all people, to decide to release information that was his to classify or declassify in the first place.

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As noted in the past, it seems that the actual standard that the MEM's of the board want is that information that is potentially embarrasing to Bush should be public, whilr the rest should be classified.

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no, but its easy for you to say that and ignore the real issue. We want information that is important to be released. Like what the government is doing, not who some guys wife is.
We have an administration that has on the record lies that got us into war, unanswered questions about 9/11, "free speech zones" to keep any dissenting voice far from the president, torture, failure in wars, and Bush chooses to be open about some minor bullshit so it can hurt some guy who questioned him.

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Furthermore, I find it equally ironic that the MEMs of the board think that this debate should be so damn one-sided. They want the Joe Wilsons to be able to say whatever they want without challenge, but as soon as the Bush team tries to point out flaws in Wilson's case, or potential conflicts of interest he might have, then suddenly they don't want debate. Instead, they cry "foul" and "character assasination."

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Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has informed my attorneys that, after two and one-half years, his investigation of the CIA leak case concerning matters directly relating to me has been concluded.

Published reports that I took the Fifth Amendment, made a plea bargain with the prosecutors or was a prosecutorial target were all untrue.

For nearly the entire time of his investigation, Fitzgerald knew -- independent of me -- the identity of the sources I used in my column of July 14, 2003.That Fitzgerald did not indict any of these sources may indicate his conclusion that none of them violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

I learned Valerie Plame's name from [husband] Joe Wilson's entry in Who's Who in America.

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Now that Karl Rove won't be indicted, now that the president won't fire him, now that it really doesn't matter anymore, more details of the Valerie Plame leak investigation trickle out.


In his latest syndicated column released Wednesday, columnist Robert Novak revealed his side of the story in the Plame affair, saying Rove was a confirming source for Novak's story outing the CIA officer, underscoring Rove's role in a leak President Bush once promised to punish.


The columnist said he learned of Plame's CIA employment from a source he still refuses to publicly identify, and then confirmed with Rove and then-CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, whose roles in talking to Novak have been previously reported.


Novak said for the first time that prosecutors looking into the leaks already knew his sources when he agreed to disclose them.


Novak comes late to the Plame game, long after several other reporters talked publicly about the involvement of Rove and of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, in leaking the CIA identity of the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson. Novak says he kept his mouth shut so long because prosecutors asked him to.


A month ago, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said he didn't anticipate seeking charges against Rove. Novak wrote that, more recently, Fitzgerald told his lawyer that after 2 1/2 years his investigation of the CIA leak case concerning matters directly relating to Novak has been concluded, freeing him to talk now.


Triggering the criminal investigation that resulted in Libby being charged with perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI, Novak revealed Plame's CIA employment on July 14, 2003, eight days after her husband went on the attack against the Bush administration.


Initially refusing to identify his sources to the FBI, Novak knew that Fitzgerald had obtained signed waivers from every official who might have provided Novak information about Plame. Despite that, Novak was prepared to resist. He says he relented in early 2004 when it became clear that Fitzgerald "knew the names of my sources."


Novak could still have protected his sources, but his lawyer told him "I was sure to lose a case in the courts at great expense."


In contrast to other reporters whose news organizations footed the bill for lengthy and expensive legal battles, the fact that Novak was a no-show in contentious court proceedings fed a rumor mill.


"Published reports that I took the Fifth Amendment, made a plea bargain with the prosecutors or was a prosecutorial target were all untrue," Novak writes. The facts were simpler. He was telling prosecutors everything he knew, and taking a beating in public for not talking about it.


Keeping quiet had the effect of providing protection for the Bush White House during the 2004 presidential campaign, because the White House had denied Rove played any role in the leak of Plame's CIA identity.


As Rove's legal problems grew a year ago, Bush said he stood by his pledge to "fire anybody" in his administration shown to have leaked Valerie Plame's name. His press secretary, after checking with Rove and Libby, assured the public that neither man had anything to do with the leak.


Now that he's finally opening up, Novak is stirring up more trouble, saying without elaboration that his recollection of his conversation with Rove about Plame differs from Rove's. Rove's spokesman says the difference amounts to very little.


"I have revealed Rove's name because his attorney has divulged the substance of our conversation, though in a form different from my recollection," Novak wrote. Novak did not elaborate.


A spokesman for Rove's legal team, Mark Corallo, said that Rove did not even know Plame's name at the time he spoke with Novak, that the columnist called Rove, not the other way around, and that Rove simply replied he had heard the same information that Novak passed along to him regarding Plame.


"There was not much of a difference" between the recollections of Rove and Novak, said Corallo.


Novak says he told Fitzgerald that Harlow of the CIA had confirmed information about Plame.


Harlow declined to comment Tuesday night. But a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the matter denied that Harlow had been a confirming source for Novak on the story. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Harlow repeatedly tried to talk Novak out of running the information about Plame and that Harlow's efforts did not in any way constitute confirming Plame's CIA identity.


The official spoke on condition of anonymity because Harlow may end up being a witness in a separate part of Fitzgerald's investigation, the upcoming criminal trial of Libby.

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r3x29yz4a said:...
I believe Bush originally said that anyone who leaked the name, had no place in his administration....

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the G-man said:
The problem is that Rove didn't leak Plame's name.

Novak says that someone else told him that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent, that he (Novak) found additional information from Wilsons own autobiographical entry at Who's Who, and that Rove and another CIA official later confirmed the info.

[In fact] That's why Rove wasn't indicted.

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Conservative Scarborough: 'Accidental' leak story 'garbage'

Fox News and some right-wing commentators are touting columnist Robert Novak's version of the CIA leak story, but Republican commentator Joe Scarborough says he has his doubts.

Novak has claimed the leak was accidental, and was not a personal attack on Joe Wilson for his efforts to discredit the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium for use in nuclear weapons. Scarborough disagrees that the leak of Valerie Plame's covert status was "accidental", calling it "garbage".

Scarborough goes on to say:

"Conservative commentators are already trumpeting Novak's claim that the leak was inadvertent and accidental... Maybe I'm cynical or perhaps it's because I worked in Congress for years. But you know what, I always found that leaks of this size were rarely mistakes regardless of what the writer or the right-wing people may tell you. I can assure you that if you assign selfish motives to leakers, you will rarely be proven wrong."

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I saw no such campaign [to discredit Wilson through Plame]. Nobody in the administration ever said anything critical about Wilson to me. And my column was not critical of Wilson. The information came out to me in the course of an interview by a person who was not, believe me, not in the business of playing political dirty tricks. I initiated the call to Karl Rove [for confirmation]. We talked about Joe Wilson's wife for maybe 20 seconds in the course of the conversation, which I took as a confirmation.

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Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

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wannabuyamonkey said:
I still wonder why you guys are so willing to bend over backwords grasping at straws for this "leak" case, but don't seem at all concerned w/ the New York Times leak case.

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r3x29yz4a said:
me personally, it goes towards power. I want my newspapers to give me information on what the government is doing.

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the G-man said:

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r3x29yz4a said:
me personally, it goes towards power. I want my newspapers to give me information on what the government is doing.

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Robert Novak's story was published in a newspaper.

It was about what a branch of the government, the CIA, was doing.

No one has seriously shown that Novak's story in any way assisted terrorists or impeded agency operations.

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r3x29yz4a said:
Novak's story helped Bush to attack Wilson.

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r3x29yz4a said:

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wannabuyamonkey said:
I still wonder why you guys are so willing to bend over backwords grasping at straws for this "leak" case, but don't seem at all concerned w/ the New York Times leak case.

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me personally, it goes towards power. I want my newspapers to give me information on what the government is doing. i don't want elected leaders using their information to attack people who disagree with them.
besides, bush said after 9/11 they'd be tracking money and bank transfers so any smart terrorist/criminal would've thought of that.

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the G-man said:
More on Woodward's role, and who the leaker might have really been, from Newsweek:

One by one last week, a parade of current and former senior officials, including the CIA's George Tenet and national-security adviser Stephen Hadley, denied being the source.

A conspicuous exception was former deputy secretary of State Richard Armitage, whose office would only say, "We're not commenting."

If Armitage was the original leaker, that undercuts the argument that outing Plame was a plot by the hard-liners in the veep's office to "out" Plame. Armitage was, if anything, a foe of the neocons who did not want to go to war in Iraq. He had no motive to discredit Wilson. On "Larry King Live" last month, Woodward was dismissive of the special prosecutor's investigation, suggesting that the original leak was not the result of a "smear campaign" but rather a "kind of gossip, as chatter ... I don't see an underlying crime here."

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wannabuyamonkey said:

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r3x29yz4a said:

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wannabuyamonkey said:
I still wonder why you guys are so willing to bend over backwords grasping at straws for this "leak" case, but don't seem at all concerned w/ the New York Times leak case.

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me personally, it goes towards power. I want my newspapers to give me information on what the government is doing. i don't want elected leaders using their information to attack people who disagree with them.
besides, bush said after 9/11 they'd be tracking money and bank transfers so any smart terrorist/criminal would've thought of that.

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Right wich is exactly why there was no need for the Times to publish teh details to assist terrorists in hiding thier money. As you statted we all knew the gov. was doing it so it wasn't in the public intrest to disclose details. Also who do you want making policy decicisions in regard to the national security, elected officials or unelected newspaper editors?

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Plame files suit against Cheney, Rove, Libby

Valerie Plame, the undercover CIA operative whose identity was revealed to reporters, has filed suit against Vice President Dick Cheney, former top presidential policy adviser Karl Rove, and Cheney's ex-chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on Thursday, RAW STORY has learned.

Plame is reportedly accusing the men of conspiring against her, targeting her career and reputation.

Conservative columnist Robert Novak revealed Plame's status as an undercover CIA operative in a July 14, 2003 opinion column. The piece ran just one week after Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, wrote a New York Times op-ed claiming that the Bush administration had manipulated pre-war intelligence on Iraq.

The couple have started a website, wilsonsupport.org, aimed at raising funds to cover legal costs.

Novak last week claimed that the revelation of Plame's name may have been an accident.

"Robert Novak, some other commentators and the Administration continue to try to completely distort the role that Valerie Wilson played with respect to Ambassador Wilson's trip to Niger," Wilson responded in a statement to RAW STORY today. "The facts are beyond dispute."

Wilson re-iterated then what he contends to be the facts in the Plame Affair:

"Robert Novak, some other commentators and the Administration continue to try to completely distort the role that Valerie Wilson played with respect to Ambassador Wilson's trip to Niger. The facts are beyond dispute. The Office of the Vice President requested that the CIA investigate reports of alleged uranium purchases by Iraq from Niger. The CIA setup a meeting to respond to the Vice President's inquiry. Another CIA official, not Valerie Wilson, suggested to Valerie Wilson's supervisor that the Ambassador attend that meeting. That other CIA official made the recommendation because that official was familiar with the Ambassador's vast experience in Niger and knew of a previous trip to Africa concerning uranium matters that had been undertaken by the Ambassador on behalf of the CIA in 1999. Valerie Wilson's supervisor subsequently asked her to relay a request from him to the Ambassador that he would like the Ambassador to attend the meeting at the CIA. Valerie Wilson did not participate in the meeting.


"As the CIA itself has officially confirmed, Valerie Wilson did not send Ambassador Wilson to Niger and she neither suggested him nor recommended him for the trip. Furthermore, the Ambassador agreed to travel to Niger pro bono with only his travel expenses being paid.""

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RAW
Looks like someone jumped the gun changing the name of this topic

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Matter-eater Man said:
I do hope PaulWellr comes back & changes his thread to something more appropiate now that Rovegate is back in play. I'm surprised he changed it to "Rovegate no more" without posting anything a couple of months ago.

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Matter-eater Man said:
...now that Rovegate is back in play...

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