[quote]harris447 wrote:
I was referring to the whole “she wasn’t THAT covert” nonsense.
And…who has been fired? [/quote]
No one – who has been proven to have violated the law?
Did it ever occur to you that a leak damage assessment would be classified?
No, of course not.
More possible news… if it turns out to be accurate, I can only say, holy shit!
Fitzgerald Will Seek New White House Indictments
[i]
It may seem as though it’s been moving along at a snail’s pace, but the second part of the federal investigation into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson is nearly complete, with attorneys and government officials who have remained close to the probe saying that a grand jury will likely return an indictment against one or two senior Bush administration officials.
These sources work or worked at the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council. Some of these sources are attorneys close to the case. They requested anonymity because they were not permitted to speak publicly about the details of the investigation.
[b]In lengthy interviews over the weekend and on Monday, they said that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has started to prepare the paperwork to present to the grand jury seeking an indictment against White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove or National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.
Although the situation remains fluid, it’s possible, these sources said, that Fitzgerald may seek to indict both Rove and Hadley, charging them with perjury, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy related to their roles in the leak of Plame Wilson’s identity and their effort to cover up their involvement following a Justice Department investigation.[/b]
The sources said late Monday that it may take more than a month before Fitzgerald presents the paperwork outlining the government’s case against one or both of the officials and asks the grand jury to return an indictment, because he is currently juggling quite a few high-profile criminal cases and will need to carve out time to write up the indictment and prepare the evidence.
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[quote]Marmadogg wrote:
Did it ever occur to you that a leak damage assessment would be classified?
No, of course not.[/quote]
Yes, it did. Does that mean you get to speculate about that and about the possibility of damage too?
[quote]vroom wrote:
More possible news… if it turns out to be accurate, I can only say, holy shit!
Fitzgerald Will Seek New White House Indictments
[i]
It may seem as though it’s been moving along at a snail’s pace, but the second part of the federal investigation into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson is nearly complete, with attorneys and government officials who have remained close to the probe saying that a grand jury will likely return an indictment against one or two senior Bush administration officials.
These sources work or worked at the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council. Some of these sources are attorneys close to the case. They requested anonymity because they were not permitted to speak publicly about the details of the investigation.
[b]In lengthy interviews over the weekend and on Monday, they said that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has started to prepare the paperwork to present to the grand jury seeking an indictment against White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove or National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.
Although the situation remains fluid, it’s possible, these sources said, that Fitzgerald may seek to indict both Rove and Hadley, charging them with perjury, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy related to their roles in the leak of Plame Wilson’s identity and their effort to cover up their involvement following a Justice Department investigation.[/b]
The sources said late Monday that it may take more than a month before Fitzgerald presents the paperwork outlining the government’s case against one or both of the officials and asks the grand jury to return an indictment, because he is currently juggling quite a few high-profile criminal cases and will need to carve out time to write up the indictment and prepare the evidence.
[/i][/quote]
That would be huge – we’ll see what happens. I will be very interested to see the specific crimes charged when and if such indictments are granted.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Marmadogg wrote:
Did it ever occur to you that a leak damage assessment would be classified?
No, of course not.
Yes, it did. Does that mean you get to speculate about that and about the possibility of damage too?[/quote]
It is a shame I can not tell what I know.
Hmm, this is pretty interesting reading…
Insulating Bush
http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0330nj1.htm
[i]
Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush’s 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address – that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon – might not be true, according to government records and interviews.
Hadley was particularly concerned that the public might learn of a classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, specifically written for Bush in October 2002. The summary said that although “most agencies judge” that the aluminum tubes were “related to a uranium enrichment effort,” the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department’s intelligence branch “believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons.”
Three months after receiving that assessment, the president stated without qualification in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.”
…
“Presidential knowledge was the ball game,” says a former senior government official outside the White House who was personally familiar with the damage-control effort. “The mission was to insulate the president. It was about making it appear that he wasn’t in the know. You could do that on Niger. You couldn’t do that with the tubes.” A Republican political appointee involved in the process, who thought the Bush administration had a constitutional obligation to be more open with Congress, said: “This was about getting past the election.”
Most troublesome to those leading the damage-control effort was documentary evidence – albeit in highly classified government records that they might be able to keep secret – that the president had been advised that many in the intelligence community believed that the tubes were meant for conventional weapons.
The one-page documents known as the “President’s Summary” are distilled from the much lengthier National Intelligence Estimates, which combine the analysis of as many as six intelligence agencies regarding major national security issues. Bush’s knowledge of the State and Energy departments’ dissent over the tubes was disclosed in a March 4, 2006, National Journal story – more than three years after the intelligence assessment was provided to the president, and some 16 months after the 2004 presidential election.
The President’s Summary was only one of several high-level warnings given to Bush and other senior administration officials that serious doubts existed about the intended use of the tubes, according to government records and interviews with former and current officials.
In mid-September 2002, two weeks before Bush received the October 2002 President’s Summary, Tenet informed him that both State and Energy had doubts about the aluminum tubes and that even some within the CIA weren’t certain that the tubes were meant for nuclear weapons, according to government records and interviews with two former senior officials.
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Didn’t we have discussions in the past about what Bush knew and whether or not he had already decided on a course of action?
It’s quite long, but if you have been following along, give the original a read through. I’m predicting a lot of dirty laundry will get aired in the years after Bush leaves office.
Rove being led out of the White House in handcuffs?
I think it’s great that Rove, Hadley and Cheney have finally turned on each other now. Rove was the source of 250 emails from Cheney’s office that Fitzgerald subpeonaed, that Cheney said had been lost. Seeing these ethically challenged Bushies turn on each other in order to avoid personal jail time, is like watching a battle between a couple of rabies-infected rats fighting over the last peanut. The President’s top advisor is backstabbing the Vice President. That’s a beautiful thing.
Is this what Bush meant when he promised to bring integrity back to the White House? (I know, I know, Bush made all kinds of bullshit promises. I don’t really expect an answer, that’s a rhetorical question).
Never put off til tomorrow, what you can do today.
Hmm, according to this Rove is cooperating…
Rove said cooperating in CIA leak inquiry
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Roves_cooperation_seen_to_advance_inquiry_0327.html
[i]
Karl Rove, Deputy White House Chief of Staff and special adviser to President George W. Bush, has recently been providing information to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the ongoing CIA leak investigation, sources close to the investigation say.
According to several Pentagon sources close to Rove and others familiar with the inquiry, Bush’s senior adviser tipped off Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to information that led to the recent “discovery” of 250 pages of missing email from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.
…
Sources say the rift between Rove and the Vice President’s office crystallized when Rove quietly attempted to gauge the temperature for replacing Cheney on the 2004 Presidential ballot last year.
“Rove was the source of ‘feelers’ put out before the last presidential election in which he was suggesting that Cheney could be replaced on the ticket with someone who had better poll ratings,” said one of the former experts approached who wished to remain anonymous.
“White House polls were showing that Cheney was a drag on the reelection ticket and that the Iraq war issue might be responsible for about a three percent drop, with Cheney the principal object of voter hostility in this percentage of anti-war sentiment among the general public,” the source added.
Cheney, the source said, got wind of “Rove’s political soundings” and the already tense relationship between the Bush and Cheney camps became almost impossible.
Whether or not Rove’s recent cooperation will spare him an indictment and a Fitzgerald probe remains unclear. But according to last week’s New York Times, associates say Rove is “increasingly certain” he will not be indicted in the case.
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Okay, this is just funny. I scooped it from a blog…
[i]
“I did not have relations with that man, Mr. Abramoff,” President Bush said. “Any pictures you might of seen of me and Jack together are what we call illusions, like those things you see in the desert when your water bottle is empty. There might have been someone named Jack Abramoff managing my transition team for the Department of the Interior, but I think that was a different Jack Abramoff than the one there aren’t any pictures of me together with, which there aren’t, and even if there were, there’s pictures of me with a lot of people and that doesn’t prove anything anyway. How am I supposed to know everyone in charge of my own transition teams?”
Mr. Bush went on to detail a litany of other non-acquaintanceships, some, on the surface, quite striking.
“I never met anybody named Tom DeLay, never heard of him, sure don’t have any plans to meet him,” the president declared. "So any of that stuff my old friend Tom DeLay did had nothing to do with me. I also don’t know anybody named, what was that again? Karl Rove? Karl Rove.
I might have seen the name on a newspaper at the supermarket or in a picture at the post office, but that’s it. Same thing with Scooter Libby. What the heck kind of a name is Scooter Libby, anyway? If I knew someone named Scooter, I bet you I’d remember it. So if any of these guys leaked that CIA woman, Valerie Plame’s name to the press, I didn’t even know the guys."
“I also never had anything to do with somebody called Donald Rumsfeld,” the president continued. "If things aren’t going too well in Iraq, torture, secret prisons, well, he’s the one to blame, and I never met Donald Rumsfeld, so it’s not my fault. Where the heck would I meet someone called Donald Rumsfeld? Paul Wolfowitz? I do not know the man.
And I heard someone mention Dick Cheney. I think I seen someone named Dick Cheney at the office, but I never talked to him personally. If you might have seen pictures of me and Dick Cheney together, that’s because people tell me sometimes he sneaks up behind me when I’m giving a speech, but that’s it. Never heard of anybody called Halliburton, either. Or Valerie Plame."