quote:

Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Ahh, too many bones in 'em. But in all seriousness, let's take this back a step. For two years now the White House and Rove himself had claimed that Rove did not leak anything to reporters. We have known this entire week that this is false. There is no spin to get away from that point. Do you confirm of deny this, given what we know so far (and admittedly we only know what's given in the press)? Let's just answer that question and go from there. I'll speak more on this tomorrow. I've got a hot date with the Mrs. down by that lovely Knob Creek...

You said "knob"...again!

quote:

Originally posted by Trancer-X Hey, did it ever occur to you that your argument would be more substantiated if you would learn to attack the message itself, rather than the messenger?

seriously, if you are referring to yourself as the messenger, i was not attacking you. i just saw some irony in the message. that's all.

p.s. that irony was brought to my attention by another source. i stand by it.

quote:

Originally posted by MisterOpus1 For two years now the White House and Rove himself had claimed that Rove did not leak anything to reporters. We have known this entire week that this is false. There is no spin to get away from that point. Do you confirm of deny this, given what we know so far (and admittedly we only know what's given in the press)?

confirm or deny? i'm smarter than to fall into that question...and in my assumption of your intelligence, you should know it's not that simple given what we know.

quote:

Originally posted by igottaknow As Q5 legal council, I recommend he not answer any of your questions because the investigation is on going and he might incriminate himself. If he must reply I suggest he use the Scott McClelland stone wall or the Ari Fleischer redirect.

are you typing?

The gigantic problem with this whole ordeal is that we are merely receiving leaks from the press, which either side is interpreting for themselves and against their adversaries. The other huge problem is that new stuff keeps coming up every day that adds new twists to the story. Based on what we know so far, I do think it's pretty obvious that Rove has some involvement of some sorts, here, and what's also obvious is both he and the White House denied him having any involvement for over two years.

That is an inescapable conclusion for right now.

We have confirmation from this from yesterday's WaPost:

quote:

White House senior adviser Karl Rove indirectly confirmed the CIA affiliation of an administration critic's wife for Robert D. Novak the week before the columnist named her and revealed her position, a lawyer involved in the case said last night. The operative, Valerie Plame, is the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who had publicly disputed the White House's contention that Saddam Hussein had sought to buy uranium from Niger for possible use in a nuclear weapon. The lawyer, who has knowledge of the conversations between Rove and prosecutors, said President Bush's deputy chief of staff has told investigators that he first learned about the operative from a journalist and that he later learned her name from Novak. Rove has said he does not recall who the journalist was who first told him that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, or when the conversation occurred, the lawyer said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...5071500036.html

The NYTimes has a nearly identical article here ON THE VERY SAME DAY, in which the WaPost also mentions:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/15/p...artner=homepage

But the very interesting part is the firm identification of Rove being one of Novak's two sources:

quote:

On Oct. 1, 2003, Mr. Novak wrote another column in which he described calling two officials who were his sources for the earlier column. The first source, whose identity has not been revealed, provided the outlines of the story and was described by Mr. Novak as "no partisan gunslinger." Mr. Novak wrote that when he called a second official for confirmation, the source said, "Oh, you know about it." That second source was Mr. Rove, the person briefed on the matter said. Mr. Rove's account to investigators about what he told Mr. Novak was similar in its message although the White House adviser's recollection of the exact words was slightly different. Asked by investigators how he knew enough to leave Mr. Novak with the impression that his information was accurate, Mr. Rove said he had heard parts of the story from other journalists but had not heard Ms. Wilson's name.

The other interesting part of this new "leak" by some mysterious lawyer who has detailed information on the case (I'll give you one guess who that lawyer might be) is also stating that rather than Rove leaking the name, that it's the other way around - someone in the press (*hint* *hint* Judith Miller) leaked the name to Rove and/or Novak, then Novak turns around to Rove to confirm the name in which Rove replied, "yeah, I heard that too."

This leaves the tiniest amount of wiggle room for Rove to come out of this, which is seemingly the deliberate attempt of this leaking lawyer who has direct information on this story. And if anyone else is suspicious of this "source" to hit the two biggest newspapers in the country with the exact same information, you damn well should be. That's fishy as hell. We'll see exactly how that angle holds up. But from the looks of it by today's new information from the CIA, that may not hold up very well at all. In today's NYTimes we have this:

quote:

WASHINGTON, July 15 - Prosecutors in the C.I.A. leak case have shown intense interest in a 2003 State Department memorandum that explained how a former diplomat came to be dispatched on an intelligence-gathering mission and the role of his wife, a C.I.A. officer, in the trip, people who have been officially briefed on the case said. Investigators in the case have been trying to learn whether officials at the White House and elsewhere in the administration learned of the C.I.A. officer's identity from the memorandum. They are seeking to determine if any officials then passed the name along to journalists and if officials were truthful in testifying about whether they had read the memo, the people who have been briefed said, asking not to be named because the special prosecutor heading the investigation had requested that no one discuss the case. The memorandum was sent to Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, just before or as he traveled with President Bush and other senior officials to Africa starting on July 7, 2003, when the White House was scrambling to defend itself from a blast of criticism a few days earlier from the former diplomat, Joseph C. Wilson IV, current and former government officials said.[b/] Mr. Powell was seen walking around Air Force One during the trip with the memorandum in hand, said a person involved in the case who also requested anonymity because of the prosecutor's admonitions about talking about the investigation. Investigators are also trying to determine whether the gist of the information in the document, including the name of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, Mr. Wilson's wife, had been provided to the White House even earlier, said another person who has been involved in the case. Investigators have been looking at whether the State Department provided the information to the White House before July 6, 2003, when Mr. Wilson publicly criticized the way the administration used intelligence to justify the war in Iraq, the person said.[b/]

State department? Another possible twist. So Powell had it and was likely doing his duty to pass it off to the President and the rest of the Administration.

So now we have confirmation that this Administration had the name of Valerie Plame and her CIA identity days BEFORE Novak wrote the column via the memorandum from the CIA itself.

And don't think for a second that the CIA is happy about having one of their operatives being exposed like this to the public. They are likely doing everything they can to cooperate with Fitzgerald. Moving on:

quote:

The prosecutors have shown the memorandum to witnesses at the grand jury investigating how the C.I.A. officer's name was disclosed to journalists, blowing her cover as a covert operative and possibly violating federal law, people briefed on the case said.

So from the press we learn that the prosecutor also believes Plame was a covert CIA operative, which is what I have been stating from the getgo. Otherwise, why pursue this matter for over 2 years?

quote:

The prosecutors appear to be investigating how widely the document circulated within the administration, and whether it might have been the original source of information for whoever provided the identity of Ms. Wilson to Robert D. Novak, the syndicated columnist who first disclosed it in print. On Thursday, a person who has been officially briefed on the matter said that Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, had spoken about Ms. Wilson with Mr. Novak before Mr. Novak published a column on July 14, 2003, identifying the C.I.A. officer by her maiden name, Valerie Plame. Mr. Rove, the person said, told Mr. Novak he had heard much the same information, making him one of two sources Mr. Novak cited for his information.

That should put the issue to rest on whether or not Rove was involved with Novak. One of two sources. Moving on, and I'm editing a few pieces out for brevity:

quote:

But the person said Mr. Rove first heard from Mr. Novak the name of Mr. Wilson's wife and her precise role in the C.I.A.'s decision to send her husband to Africa to investigate a report, later discredited, that Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire nuclear material there. It is not clear who Mr. Novak's original source was, or whether Mr. Novak has revealed the source's identity to the grand jury. Mr. Rove also held a conversation about Mr. Wilson's mission to Africa with Matthew Cooper, ..... ...Mr. Rove told the grand jury in the case that the e-mail message was consistent with his assertion that he had not intended to divulge Ms. Wilson's identity but instead intended to rebut Mr. Wilson's criticisms of the administration's use of intelligence about Iraq, The A.P. reported, citing legal professionals familiar with Mr. Rove's testimony. Dozens of White House and administration officials have testified to the grand jury, and several officials have been called back for further questioning.

Whom to believe? Doesn't sound like the prosecutor buys into Rove's story very well.

quote:

The special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has sought to determine how much [b]Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman at the time of the leak, knew about the memorandum. Lawyers involved in the case said Mr. Fitzgerald asked questions about Mr. Fleischer's role. Mr. Fleischer was with Mr. Bush and much of the senior White House staff in Africa when Mr. Powell, who was also with them, received the memorandum. A spokeswoman for Mr. Powell said he was out of the country and could not comment on the document. Mr. Fleischer said in an e-mail message this week that he would not comment on the case. Mr. Fitzgerald has also looked into any role that I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, may have played. Lawyers in the case have said their clients have been asked about Mr. Libby's conversations in the days after Mr. Wilson's article - in part based on Mr. Libby's hand-written notes, which he turned over to the prosecutor. In addition, several journalists have been asked about their conversations with Mr. Libby. At least one, Tim Russert of NBC News, has suggested that prosecutors wanted to know whether he had told Mr. Libby of Ms. Wilson's identity. After Mr. Russert met with Mr. Fitzgerald, NBC said that he did not provide the information to Mr. Libby. The existence of the State Department memorandum has been previously reported by news organizations including The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and The Daily News. But new details of how it came about and how it circulated within the administration could offer clues into who knew what and when.

Wow! Ari Fleisher, Scooter Libby, Tim Russert, and some newspapers being investigated. Fitzgerald is definitely not fucking around! Here's the doozy:

quote:

The memorandum was dated June 10, 2003, nearly four weeks before Mr. Wilson wrote an Op-Ed article for The New York Times in which he recounted his mission and accused the administration of twisting intelligence to exaggerate the threat from Iraq. The memorandum was written for Marc Grossman, then the under secretary of state for political affairs, and it referred explicitly to Valerie Wilson as Mr. Wilson's wife, according to a government official who reread the document on Friday. kaboom. So we now know that someone in the State Department had Valerie's identity nearly ONE MONTH before Novak's column. Whether or not that got out to the rest of the Administration then is unknown, but we do know that this Administration had it IMMEDIATELY after Wilson's first op-ed: [QUOTE]When Mr. Wilson's Op-Ed article appeared on July 6, 2003, a Sunday, Richard L. Armitage, then deputy secretary of state, called Carl W. Ford Jr., the assistant secretary for intelligence and research, at home, a former State Department official said. Mr. Armitage asked Mr. Ford to send a copy of the memorandum to Mr. Powell, who was preparing to leave for Africa with Mr. Bush, the former official said. Mr. Ford sent it to the White House for transmission to Mr. Powell. It is not clear who asked for the memorandum, but in the weeks before it was written, there were several accounts in newspapers about an unnamed former diplomat's trip to Africa seeking intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program. On May 6, 2003, Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The Times, wrote of a "former U.S. ambassador to Africa" who had reported to the C.I.A. and the State Department that reports of Iraq seeking to acquire uranium in Niger were "unequivocally wrong." The memorandum was prepared at the State Department, relying on notes by an analyst who was involved in meetings in early 2002 to discuss whether to send someone to Africa to investigate allegations that Iraq was pursuing uranium purchases. The C.I.A. was asked by Mr. Cheney's office and the State and Defense Departments to look into the reports. According to a July 9, 2004, Senate Intelligence Committee report, the notes described a Feb. 19, 2002, meeting at C.I.A. headquarters on whether Mr. Wilson should go to Niger. The notes, which did not identify Ms. Wilson or her husband by name, said the meeting was "apparently convened by" the wife of a former ambassador "who had the idea to dispatch" him to Niger because of his contacts in the region. Mr. Wilson had been ambassador to Gabon. The Intelligence Committee report said the former ambassador's wife had a different account of her role, saying she introduced him and left after about three minutes. The information in the State Department memorandum generally tracked the information Mr. Novak laid out for Mr. Rove in their conversation, according to the account of their exchange provided by the person briefed on what Mr. Rove has told investigators. But it appears to differ in at least one way, raising questions about whether it was the original source of the material that ultimately made its way to Mr. Novak. In his July 14, 2003, column, Mr. Novak referred to Ms. Wilson as Valerie Plame. The State Department memorandum referred to her as Valerie Wilson, according to the government official who reread it on Friday. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/16/p...agewanted=print

Damn interesting. Huge twists and turns, but one thing is definitely clear - Rove is, in fact a definite part in this leakage. Another thing is clear - this Administration had Plame's identity at least a week before Novak's column. What's also clear is that this prosecutor believes Plame was covert, and he's a freakin' bulldog on the case.

So who do you think is probably warming up their oven here for that crow, folks on the Left or on the Right?

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

Last edited by MisterOpus1 on Jul-16-2005 at 20:53

logic would say whoever is the furthest out on the limb, eats the crow...and that would be you.

Rove has known that he was not the leaker just about longer than any body. word around the beltway is he's playing the Dems.

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo logic would say whoever is the furthest out on the limb, eats the crow...and that would be you. Rove has known that he was not the leaker just about longer than any body. word around the beltway is he's playing the Dems.

Don't think for a second that the Dems. don't believe this possibility - hence the "leak" from an unknown lawyer (uhh, Rove's lawyer maybe?) to the two biggest newspapers yesterday. The biggest problem here is that Rove is used to playing this political smear and evasion game with the Press and his adversaries.

What he is NOT used to, however, and what is the underlying problem for him, is that this is not merely a political game anymore - but a legal one to boot. He can leak and play the political game all he wants to the public, but Fitzgerald could give two shits about politics. Fitzgerald himself is the one who smells blood, or at least smells something very bad about Rove and his involvement, otherwise he wouldn't still be pursuing this as a criminal matter. So if Rove wants to play the political diversion and smear game that he normally plays, I say let him play it. In the end he doesn't have to answer to the public.

He has to answer to Fitzgerald - and given what we know so far, that ain't good for Rove.

And furthermore, I might add the more Rove is leaking to the press in hopes to clear his case, the more it further demonstrates his involvement. IOW, it's starting to backfire on him. Another interesting thing to note, from July 15, 2003 WaPost article written by Walter Pincus (one of the few actual investigative journalists remaining out there):

quote:

A key component of President Bush's claim that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program -- its alleged attempt to buy uranium in Niger -- was disputed by a CIA-directed mission to the central African nation in early 2002, according to senior administration officials and a former government official. But the CIA did not pass on the detailed results of its investigation to the White House or other government agencies, the officials said. The CIA's failure to share what it knew was one of a number of steps in the Bush administration that helped keep the uranium story alive until the eve of the war. A senior intelligence official said the CIA's action was the result of "extremely sloppy" handling of a central piece of evidence in the administration's case against then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. A senior CIA analyst said the case "is indicative of larger problems" involving the handling of intelligence about Iraq's alleged weapons programs and its links to al Qaeda, which the administration cited as justification for war. "Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded and information that was [consistent[ was not seriously scrutinized," the analyst said. The controversy has expanded with the failure so far of U.S. teams in Iraq to uncover proscribed weapons.

The most interesting line in that was:

quote:

"Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded."

To me this article hints a bit at not just the Administration's negligence of evidence counter to their claims of WMD's in Iraq, but ol' George Tenet's willingness to do the same.

This leaves open the possibility that, admittedly, Wilson's report may not have made it back to Cheney's office because it was not consistent with what they had falsely concluded about Saddam's WMD status.

And it seriously draws in the much much bigger question involving this whole affair, one that is inescapable - just how exactly did this Administration get our country involved in this whole mess in Iraq in the first place? This is the question they are ultimately avoiding, and ultimately attempting to divert away from at all costs. Couple this with the Downing Street Memo, and you've got some serious questions that need serious answers by this Administration.

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

As I said earlier, more and more stuff continues to be leaked out. From the looks of it, we have a possible identification of the 2nd source of Novak's column.

First source confirmed - Karl Rove. Second source: Scooter Libby:

quote:

While media coverage in recent days has focused on conversations White House senior adviser Karl Rove had with reporters, two sources say Miller spoke with Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, during the key period in July 2003 that is the focus of Fitzgerald's investigation. The two sources, one who is familiar with Libby's version of events and the other with Miller's, said the previously undisclosed conversation occurred a few days before Plame's name appeared in Robert D. Novak's syndicated column on July 14, 2003. Miller and Libby discussed former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, Plame's husband, who had recently alleged that the Bush administration twisted intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, according to the source familiar with Libby's version. But, according to the source, the subject of Wilson's wife did not come up. Miller and the Times have said the reporter has chosen jail to keep promises she made to protect the identity of confidential sources. But Libby's attorney, Joseph A. Tate, has told the New York Times that he provided reporters with assurances that they could rely on the waivers releasing them to talk to Fitzgerald. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...er=emailarticle

Wow. Yet another twist.....

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

Top Cheney Aide Among Sources in CIA Story

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide was among the sources for a Time magazine reporter's story about the identity of a CIA officer, the reporter said Sunday.


Until last week, the White House had insisted for nearly two years that vice presidential chief of staff Lewis Libby and presidential adviser Karl Rove were not involved in the leaks of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity.

The White House refused last week to repeat those assertions when it was revealed that Rove had told Time reporter Matt Cooper that the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson apparently works at the CIA and that she had authorized his trip to Africa. The CIA dispatched Wilson to check out a report that the government of Niger had sold yellowcake uranium to Iraq for nuclear weapons.

Cooper said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he spoke to Libby after first learning about Wilson's wife from Rove.

According to Cooper, Libby and Rove were among the government officials referred to in Cooper's subsequent Time story that said Wilson's wife was a CIA official and that she was involved in sending her husband on a trip to Africa.

Cooper's article was headlined, "A War on Wilson?"

On Sunday, Cooper also said there may have been other sources for that information. He declined to elaborate.

In a first-person account in the latest issue of Time, Cooper said Rove ended their telephone conversation with the words, "I've already said too much." Cooper speculated that Rove could have been worried about being indiscreet or "it could have meant he was late for a meeting or something else."

Republicans are responding to the revelations about Rove's role in the leak by saying that the deputy White House chief of staff first heard about Wilson's wife from a reporter.

The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman, told NBC that the disclosure about getting the information from a reporter vindicates Rove and that Democrats who have called for Rove's dismissal should apologize.

But John Podesta, former White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration, said the White House's assurance in 2003 that Rove was not involved in the leak "was a lie." Rove's credibility "is in shreds," said Podesta, who appeared with Mehlmen.

Wilson was the top U.S. diplomat in Iraq during the Persian
Gulf War.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050717...investigation_2

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo seriously, if you are referring to yourself as the messenger, i was not attacking you. i just saw some irony in the message. that's all.

Go back to your post and re-read what you wrote. Who were you attacking? The messenger.

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo you know, it's funny you posted this by Korn (who is the beady eyed epitome of a left wing shill) talking about how the administration's malice was the cause of Plames outing when, in all honesty, it was him that actually outed Plame (...).

okay. your point? the irony was not your doing, it was Korn's. i'll attack Korn till i'm blue in the face. all you did was post it here.

given what you've read in his two articles (one in which you posted. the other, i think is a huge assumption on my part that you, in fact, did.) don't you see a little irony? the timing of these being published is key. if not then...whatever.

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo the irony was not your doing, it was Korn's.

Thanks for pointing out the obvious.

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo i'll attack Korn till i'm blue in the face.

Have fun, but try not to have an aneurysm while you're doing it.






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