Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Exclusive: Cheney’s admissions to the CIA leak prosecutor and FBI

Exclusive: Cheney’s admissions to the CIA leak prosecutor and FBI

By murrayw Tuesday December 23, 2008 11:14am

Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a still-highly confidential FBI report, admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.

Cheney conceded during his interview with federal investigators that in drawing attention to Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s Africa trip reporters might also unmask her role as CIA officer.

Cheney denied to the investigators, however, that he had done anything on purpose that would lead to the outing of Plame as a covert CIA operative. But the investigators came away from their interview with Cheney believing that he had not given them a plausible explanation as to how he could focus attention on Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s trip without her CIA status also possibly publicly exposed. At the time, Plame was a covert CIA officer involved in preventing Iran from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, and Cheney’s office played a central role in exposing her and nullifying much of her work.

Cheney revised the talking points on July 8, 2003– the very same day that his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller and told Miller that Plame was a CIA officer and that Plame had also played a central role in sending her husband on his CIA sponsored trip to the African nation of Niger.

http://murraywaas.crooksandliars.com/2008/12/23/exclusive-cheneys-admissions-to-the-cia-leak-prosecutor-and-fbi/

Sometime in the next 27 days, this traitor will be pardoned. You can take that to the bank.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Career Army Specialist sues Rumsfeld, Cheney, saying no evacuation order given on 9/11

Career Army Specialist sues Rumsfeld, Cheney, saying no evacuation order given on 9/11

Stephen C. Webster
Published: Wednesday December 17, 2008


A career Army specialist who survived the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, claims that no evacuation was ordered inside the Pentagon, despite flight controllers calling in warnings of approaching hijacked aircraft nearly 20 minutes before the building was struck.

According to a time-line of the attacks, the Federal Aviation Administration notified NORAD that American Airlines Flight 77 had been hijacked at 9:24 a.m. The Pentagon was not struck until 9:43 a.m.

On behalf of Spc. April Gallop, who served in the Network Infrastructure Services Agency as an administrative specialist, California attorney William Veale has filed a civil suit against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and former US Air Force General Richard Myers, who was acting chairman of the joint chiefs on 9/11. It alleges they engaged in conspiracy to facilitate the terrorist attacks and purposefully failed to warn those inside the Pentagon, contributing to injuries she and her two-month-old son incurred.

"The ex-G.I. plaintiff alleges she has been denied government support since then, because she raised 'painful questions' about the inexplicable failure of military defenses at the Pentagon that day, and especially the failure of officials to warn and evacuate the occupants of the building when they knew the attack was imminent" said Veale in a media advisory.

more...

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/911_survivor_blasts_Rumsfeld_Cheney_No_1217.html

Fantastic! I wonder who the John Does could be. Ed Eberhart? Marc Grossman?



Legal minds respond to landmark 9/11 civil suit against Rumsfeld, CheneyStephen C. Webster
Published: Thursday December 18, 2008


On behalf of Spc. April Gallop, who served in the Network Infrastructure Services Agency as an administrative specialist, California attorney William Veale on Monday filed a civil suit against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and former US Air Force General Richard Myers, who was acting chairman of the joint chiefs on 9/11.

The suit alleges they engaged in conspiracy to facilitate the terrorist attacks and purposefully failed to warn those inside the Pentagon, contributing to injuries she and her two-month-old son incurred. Additional, unnamed persons with foreknowledge of the attacks are also named.

snip

According to the Sterns & Walker Web site, the firm represents survivors of aircraft and other major accidents and catastrophes. The firm "has been involved in almost every major air carrier accident case, and hundreds of other cases involving claims against major defendants," including the United States of America.

"We have already had a precursor of this, which unfortunately for the plaintiff, spells out what will happen to her case. Ex-CIA agent, Valerie Plame, whose cover was deliberately blown by Cheney and probably others at the White House, in retaliation for the unkind remarks her husband made after his investigation concerning the Bush claim that Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase raw material for a weapon of mass destruction from a country in Africa, filed a damage suit against Cheney and others for destroying her career," said Sterns.

more...

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Legal_minds_respond_to_landmark_911_1218.html

I fear Sterns is right. But I admire the hell out of Gallop for her efforts.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Confirmed: Cheney's Role in Approving Torture

Confirmed: Cheney's Role in Approving Torture

On Monday of this week, George W. Bush's scowling sidekick and secretive Svengali, Dick Cheney, emerged from his hiding place to speak with ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl. In his interview with the American TV network, Cheney acknowledged his approval of the torture methods the Bush-Cheney gang has employed in its hapless "war on terror."

Notes commentator Matthew Duss in Britain's Guardian: "The notion that the presidency of George [W.] Bush has been a disaster for the U.S. approaches the level of self-evident truth. It has actually become quite difficult to find anyone who isn't a personal friend of the president who will argue otherwise. But...Dick Cheney isn't sorry about any of it." In his ABC News interview he "betrayed no second thoughts - and certainly no remorse - about the policies pursued by the administration that he both served and, according to some, led. Watching Cheney's brusque dismissal of concerns about his methods in the [so-called] war on terror, you'd be forgiven for coming to the mistaken impression that these methods have worked. There is no evidence that they have."

Duss points out that, in the interview, when "pressed" by reporter Karl "on concerns" about the military jail at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, "where suspects are held indefinitely as 'illegal combatants,' Cheney claimed that many of them 'have been released back to their home countries.' He then insisted: 'What we have left is the hard core.' But, of course, Cheney has always insisted that those held in Guantánamo were the hard core - the 'worst of the worst,' as former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put it - while ignoring evidence that many were falsely imprisoned there, and assiduously working to quash efforts to ascertain their actual guilt or innocence. Confronted with criticisms of the Bush administration's torture policy, Cheney simply lied, saying: 'We don't do torture. We never have.'" However, later in the ABC News interview, "Cheney bluntly admitted that he had supported the waterboarding of al-Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Waterboarding is, of course, torture, devised by torturers as a method of torture, an inconvenient fact...Cheney [had earlier] dealt with by simply declaring waterboarding [to be] 'not torture,' and then finding a lawyer or two willing to go along" with that assertion.


Agence France Presse, also referring to the ABC News interview, reports: "According to Cheney, some 30 detainees who were released from Guantánamo 'ended up back on the battlefield again, and we've encountered them a second time around. But they've either been killed or captured in further conflicts with our forces.'" Of the waterboarding to which Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was subjected, Cheney said: "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do....And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it...." Agence France Presse notes: "ABC asked him if, in hindsight, he thought the tactics went too far. 'I don't,' Cheney said."

more...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=15&entry_id=33714

Nothing shadowy about Dick Cheney's shadow government anymore. What's to cover up when there's no accountability? That's how brazen and arrogant Cheney and the rest of the misadministration have become. The operative rationale for any questioning of this criminality is "So what?"

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Who's really responsible for Mumbai? Dick Cheney doesn't want you to know.

As the news trickles in regarding the one terrorist captured alive in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, the finger of suspicion continues to be pointed at two prime suspects: the organization Lashkar-e-Toiba and international criminal Dawood Ibrahim.


Police: Mumbai suspect admits Pakistan link

Maria identified the suspect as Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, from the Faridkot village in the Okara district of Pakistan's Punjab province. He is the son of Mohammed Amir Kasab, the police commissioner said.

snip

Maria said Kasab spent the past 18 months training at various camps run by Lashkar-e-Tayyiba -- a Pakistan-based terror group allied with al Qaeda. Kasab told police he joined the group, known by its acronym LeT, six months before he began training.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/12/03/india.attacks/index.html

Is 'the most dangerous man in the world' behind the Mumbai attacks?

Security officials in India believe that an Indian citizen once called 'the most dangerous man in the world' masterminded the well orchestrated string of terror attacks that left at least 174 people dead in India's financial capital of Mumbai last week.

The man, Dawood Ibrahim, is believed to be hiding in Pakistan. Ibrahim is wanted in India for his suspected role in the 1993 bombings in Mumbai, in which more than 250 people died in a string of 13 coordinated bombings.

snip

The connection to Ibrahim was established during the questioning of one of the attackers,
Amir Kasab, 21, who told the Indian authorities that he had been sent to Mumbai by Ibrahim after having undergone training in Pakistan.


http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1042197.html

I'm not sure if Mumbai Joint Police Commissioner of Crime Rakesh Maria is being short-sighted, if MSM is being oblivious, or both, but one inconvenient truth being ignored is that both LeT and Dawood Ibrahim have used various means of receiving financing through the same method: A.Q. Khan's nuclear proliferation network. The connections between Khan and LeT is something I discovered four years ago in the 1st edition of American Judas:



Lashkar-e-Toiba - or LET is a terrorist group of Pakistan, consisting of Pakistani, Afghan and Arab cadres, headed by Pakistani office-bearers, with its headquarters at Muridke near Lahore. Its annual conventions at Muridke are attended, amongst others, by serving and retired officers of the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, by serving and retired scientists of the Pakistani nuclear and missile establishment and by political leaders.

Amongst those, who regularly attend its annual conventions, are Lt. Gen. (retd) Hamid Gul and Lt.Gen.(retd) Javed Nasir, both former Directors-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),Dr. Abdul Qadir Khan, the self-styled father of the Pakistani atom bomb, Dr.Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, the former scientist of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission who was recently detained by the Pakistani authorities under US pressure for being in contact with bin Laden and Mohd.Rafique Tarar, former President of Pakistan.(http://www.saag.org/papers4/paper381.html )

To finance its day-to-day activities, the LeT leverages its contacts in Saudi Arabia as well as launches donation campaigns with overseas Pakistanis, especially middle class and wealthy Punjabis in Britain, Australia and the Middle East. According to Jane's Terrorism & Insurgency Centre, Osama bin Laden has also financed LeT activities until recently. The LeT, under its new name JuD, uses its outreach networks including schools, social service groups and religious publications to attract and brainwash recruits for jihad in Kashmir and other places.(http://www.crikey.com.au/politics/2004/05/18-0003.html )

Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) has been showing increasing interest in taking jihad to the Muslims of the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka. The LET is very close to the ISI and it would not have taken its initial moves to explore the possibility of using Sri Lanka as a clandestine base for its activties and for creating sleeper cells there without the knowledge and prior clearance of the ISI.(http://www.saag.org/papers11/paper1026.html )


http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2007/01/american-judas-1st-edition.html


Then there's Dawood Ibrahim. His connection with A.Q. Khan starts with a little organization that might be familiar to John Kerry fans called BCCI:

Right from its inception, the clandestine nuclear and missile projects in Pakistan were treated as a top secret intel op of the ISI to ensure deniability. All payments to the foreign suppliers were made not from the accounts of the Govt of Pakistan, but from private accounts in the BCCI, which collapsed in 1991, and other Dubai and Geneva based banks. These accounts were opened by the Gokul brothers of Geneva, one of whom was jailed for cheating in the UK after the collapse of the BCCI; Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan’s present Finance Minister, who was working in the Gulf for the Citibank in the 1990s; Dawood Ibrahim, the mafia leader who was designated by the US as an intl terrorist in Oct; Dubai-based Pakistani smugglers, and AQ Khan and other trusted Pakistani scientists.(http://www.kashmirherald.com/featuredarticle/nuclearjihad.html)

Ibrahim is also connected to the network through B.S.A. Tahir:

B.S.A. Tahir - The recent investigations into the clandestine nuclear proliferation activities of A.Q.Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistan atom bomb, have revealed that Bukhary Seyed Abu Tahir, a Sri Lankan Tamil Muslim of Indian origin, married in Malysia and with business interests in Kuala Lumpur and Dubai, was one of the external kingpins of Pakistan's clandestine nuclear procurement network. In a speech at the National Defence University of Washington DC in February last, President Bush had described this Sri Lankan Tamil-speaking Muslim as the "chief financial officer and money-launderer" of A.Q.Khan's clandestine operations.

http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2007/01/american-judas-1st-edition.html

* Tahir's family was closely connected with Dawood Ibrahim, the Indian mafia leader living in Pakistan, who had helped the nuclear and missile establishments of Pakistan in their clandestine procurement and shipping activities. The Dawood group is well-entrenched in Singapore and Malaysia. Its activities in Singapore include: Investment in real estate; a shipping company (name not known) and hawala operations to South India. Among the hawala operators of Singapore allegedly associated with Dawood is a company called the Abdul Gafoor and Company. Before Musharraf visited India in 2001 for the Agra summit, the ISI secretly sent away Dawood to Malaysia through Singapore with the help of one Rakesh Tulshiyan and Shahid Sohail. He stayed in Malaysia as a guest of Tahir's family. He returned to Karachi later. Dawood is believed to have extensive mining interests in Malaysia from where he and his group indulge in the smuggling of silver into India via Nepal.

http://www.saag.org/common/uploaded_files/paper931.html

There is one other area where I feel Mumbai Joint Police Commissioner of Crime Rakesh Maria is being short-sighted: his focus doesn't seem to extend beyond Pakistanis.

Maria said all 10 attackers were Pakistanis, something that Pakistani officials have denied, blaming instead "stateless actors."

The band of gunmen attacked 10 targets in Mumbai last Wednesday night, sparking three days of battles with police and Indian troops in the heart of the city that is the hub of India's financial and entertainment industries. Most of the 179 deaths occurred at the city's top two hotels, the Oberoi and the Taj Mahal.


http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/12/03/india.attacks/index.html

There is evidence suggesting otherwise. Here are two eyewitness accounts:

Then, the "foreign looking, fair skinned" men, as Mr Mishra remembers them, simply carried on killing.

snip

Gaffar Abdul Amir, an Iraqi tourist from Baghdad, says he saw at least two men who started the firing outside the Leopold Cafe.

He was returning to his hotel from the seaside with a friend when he saw two men carrying bags and brandishing AK-47s walking in front of them, shooting.

"They did not look Indian, they looked foreign. One of them, I thought, had blonde hair. The other had a punkish hairstyle. They were neatly dressed," says Mr Amir.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7752625.stm

Perhaps Pakistanis, perhaps not. There is more evidence of Russian, perhaps Chechen fingerprints on this operation:

Mumbai terrorists used Chechen tactics
The terrorists in the Indian city of Mumbai, who killed more than 150 people and injured over 300, used the same tactics that Chechen field militants employed in the Northern Caucasus, says Russian counter terrorism presidential envoy Anatoly Safonov.

In towns of the Northern Cauasus in 1990s, terrorists seized homes and hospitals and took numerous hostages.

"These tactics were used during raids by militant Chechen field commanders Shamil Basayev and Salman Raduyev against the towns of Buddyonnovsk and Pervomaiskoye. For the first time in history the entire towns were terrorized, with homes and hospitals seized. The Mumbai terrorists have learned these tactics well," Safonov told Russian news agency Interfax on Thursday.


http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/33921

Terror mail routed through Pakistan's Lahore
2 Dec 2008, 0407 hrs IST, TNN

NEW DELHI: Indian agencies tracing the source of the email sent by an outfit calling itself Deccan Mujahideen to a TV channel claiming
responsibility for the terror attacks on Mumbai have found that the text was routed through Lahore in Pakistan before travelling to different locations through anonymous "remailer" service.

Though other locations are yet to be traced, the experts — who took help of different foreign agencies — found that the terrorists used a Russian server to avail the remailer service which is the most secure and least traceable way to send emails.


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Terror_mail_routed_through_Pakistans_Lahore/rssarticleshow/3781555.cms

I would like to give credit to Michael Ruppert for examining the possibility of Chechen involvement. Visit Act 2: From the Wilderness' Peak Oil Blog for more information: http://mikeruppert.blogspot.com/

The purpose of examining this possibility is not to set up a false dichotomy of either Blame Pakistan or Blame Chechnya. It is to understand that we are dealing with a network that is global in its outreach to a degree that our intelligence agencies have yet to completely comprehend:


BLACK MARKET BUSINESS

Khan, an admired figure in Pakistan, was arrested in January 2004 for his central role in the black market that sold Pakistani nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya and offered technology to Iraq and perhaps other countries.

Although officially pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf, Khan remains under house arrest.
After Pakistan acted against Khan, President George W. Bush declared that the network had been shut down.
But the IISS report said that "at least some of Khan's associates appear to have escaped law enforcement attention and could, after a period of lying low, resume their black market business."

It also concluded that "the few prosecutions and light sentences that have been imposed to date (on Khan and his accomplices) are not commensurate with the scale of the proliferation that the Khan network abetted
."


http://www.iiss.org/whats-new/iiss-in-the-press/press-coverage-2007/may-2007/cia-did-not-focus-enough-on-khan-network



This is where Dick Cheney comes in. To quote directly from the 2nd edition of American Judas:

In the two and a half years since the research from “The Plame Indictment Threads” inspired me to write American Judas, much has happened regarding the investigation of the outing of Valerie Plame that has validated our findings. Though some were wary of the source reporting that one aspect of Plame’s work involved tracking the nuclear smuggling network of A.Q. Khan, this fact was corroborated by the research of Larisa Alexandrovna in 2006 that while Plame’s team was focused on Iran, they “would have come in contact with A.Q. Khan’s network”. http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Outed_CIA_officer_was_wor... Her research was confirmed in a report on MSNBC. http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/MSNBC_confirms_Raw_St... The OUTING THE CIA papers by Mark G. Levey thoroughly document how and when Plame was tracking the Khan network. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/1/183411/6866, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/7/112015/2282 Through the ongoing trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, we have seen evidence presented that Cheney was deeply involved in the leak of Plame, even going so far as to write out what his former Chief of Staff Libby should say to Time reporter Matt Cooper. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16771573 / Libby learned about Plame from Cheney http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_di... and even told an FBI agent that he may have talked of outing Plame with Cheney. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2... / In addition to this criminal trial, there is the upcoming civil suit by Joseph and Valerie Wilson against Dick Cheney, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Karl Rove, Dick Armitage and John Does 1-9. http://www.wilsonsupport.org / Much has been publicized in the mainstream media about Armitage being the first to leak the identity of Valerie Plame to a reporter, Bob Woodward. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14533384/site/newsweek / Whether Armitage engaged in malicious or oblivious gossip is almost of secondary importance; our research proves Cheney was the ringleader who helped to instigate such a poisonous environment against the Ambassador, who publicly contradicted the WMD intelligence that helped mislead the nation into war, and his wife, who secretly tracked WMD proliferation, that by the time the dust settled, the leak of a CIA operative and her Counter-Proliferation Division (CPD) cover company could be reduced to such a trivial and tawdry affair that someone as high up the ladder as a Deputy Chief of Staff to the President, Karl Rove, could feel comfortable saying to MSNBC reporter Chris Matthews that Wilson’s wife is “fair game”. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8445696/site/newsweek / This poisonous environment was created initially through the machinations of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) and the Office of Special Plans (OSP).

http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2007/03/american-judas-2nd-edition-investigate.html


Let me clear: I'm not saying Dick Cheney orchestrated the Mumbai attacks. It's not that simple. By destroying the cover of Valerie Plame and Brewster Jennings and Associates, Cheney destroyed one of the few sources through which the CIA was able to monitor Khan's proliferation network, impairing their capacity for up to ten years. So whenever this hydra-headed monster strikes, Cheney and the rest of the Vulcans get to have their cake and eat it too: they maintain plausible deniability while ensuring that future generations will continue to fight the Frankenstein they created, cementing "the war that will not end in our lifetime". But never forget, they are responsible.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Cheney, Gonzales indictments dropped

Cheney, Gonzales indictments droppedRAW STORY
Published: Monday December 1, 2008



A judge in Raymondville, Texas has dropped indictments against Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Judge Manuel Banales, after surviving a motion to have him removed from the case, threw out eight of the indictments brought by Willacy County District Attorney Juan Guerra, including those against two special prosecutors, two district judges, and a district clerk.

Judge Banales ruled the grand jury returned the indictments against Cheney and Gonzales unlawfully. Banales also tossed an indictment for corruption against State Senator Eddie Lucio Jr., a Democrat.

Charges were brought against Vice President Cheney and former AG Gonzales for blocking the investigation into a prisoner's murder in a private prison in Raymondville.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Cheney_Gonzales_indictments_dropped_1201.html

Oh well, it looked like a long shot. Doesn't change the fact they'll get pardoned before January 20 anyway.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Cheney Indicted in Texas, Wilson v. Cheney to the Supreme Court

Two very big stories just hit:


Vice President Dick Cheney Indicted by South Texas Grand Jury

By Mark Whittington, published Nov 19, 2008

Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have been indicted by a grand jury in Willacy County in South Texas in a bizarre case involving a privately run federal prison and a prosecutor who himself has been under indictment.

Also included in the indictments are state Senator Eddie Lucio Jr and some other public officials who were connected to Willacy County District Attorney Angel Guerra's legal problems. Guerra was under indictment for a year and a half for allegedly extorting money from a bail bondsman and using his office for personal business. An appeals court has ruled that a special prosecutor was improperly appointed to investigate Guerra.

Guerra is ending his term as District Attorney as he was defeated earlier this year in the Democratic primary. Guerra has a certain reputation for strange behavior, having once parked outside the local courthouse in a borrow camper with a horse, three goats and a rooster.

Vice President Dick Cheney's indictment accuses him of "engaging in an organized criminal activity related to the vice president's investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds financial interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and "at least misdemeanor assaults" on detainees because of his link to the prison companies."

more...

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1225277/vice_president_dick_cheney_indicted.html



Plame, Wilson to take CIA leak lawsuit to Supreme CourtNick Cargo
Published: Tuesday November 18, 2008


Former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, plan to take their civil lawsuit against Bush administration officials to the Supreme Court after a federal circuit court refused to rehear the case on Monday.

Wilson v. Cheney, filed in 2006, charges that Bush administration officials such as Vice President Cheney, and aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, violated Plame's constitutional rights in allegedly engineering the outing Plame, who was undercover at the time, as retaliation against her husband, an Iraq war critic, who had been sent to Niger in 2002 to investigate the possible sale of yellowcake uranium to Iraq. While Wilson reported back that such sales were unlikely to have taken place, President Bush asserted to the contrary in his 2003 State of the Union address, prompting Wilson to speak out publicly in a July 6, 2003 New York Times piece entitled "What I Didn't Find in Africa."

Plame Wilson's cover was famously blown while she was helping track distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction in Iran. Her name was leaked to columnist Robert Novak, who published it in his July 14, 2003 column. He said in July 2007 that the source of the leak was former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, but said that it was not meant to be a deliberate act on the part of the White House to hurt the Wilsons.

In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld a district judge's dismissal of the suit saying that it failed to establish a constitutional issue.

more...

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Plame_Wilson_to_take_CIA_leak_1118.html

I think this might be the first time in history that a sitting Vice President has been indicted. Can you smell pardons due to arrive this winter?

Friday, August 8, 2008

"Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president."

The charge in Ron Suskind's new book, The Way of the World, that the White House ordered the preparation of a forged letter linking Saddam Hussein with lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta is so explosive, it caused White House press spokesman Tony Fratto to mimic Nixon administration Press Secretary Ron Ziegler. (Fratto called Suskind's book "gutter journalism", Ziegler called Woodward & Bernstein's Watergate investigation "shabby journalism".) The aftermath of the media spotlight and the subsequent political blowback caused his sources to backtrack on their support of Suskind's charge. In response, Suskind did something he describes as "contrary to my practice across 25 years as a journalist" by releasing transcripts of his interviews with one of his sources, Rob Richer. It is worth reading it all to get a sense of context, but this exchange sticks out:

Ron: Now this is from the Vice President's Office is how you remembered it--not from the president?

Rob: No, no, no. What I remember is George saying, 'we got this from'--basically, from what George said was 'downtown.'

Ron: Which is the White House?

Rob: Yes. But he did not--in my memory--never said president, vice president, or NSC. Okay? But now--he may have hinted--just by the way he said it, it would have--cause almost all that stuff came from one place only: Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president.

Ron: Yeah, right.

Rob: But he didn't say that specifically. I would naturally--I would probably stand on my, basically, my reputation and say it came from the vice president.
http://www.ronsuskind.com/thewayoftheworld/transcripts/

Philip Giraldi has a source that both confirms and refutes portions of this statement:

An extremely reliable and well placed source in the intelligence community has informed me that Ron Suskind’s revelation that the White House ordered the preparation of a forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda and also to attempts made to obtain yellowcake uranium is correct but that a number of details are wrong.

The Suskind account states that two senior CIA officers Robert Richer and John Maguire supervised the preparation of the document under direct orders coming from Director George Tenet. Not so, says my source. Tenet is for once telling the truth when he states that he would not have undermined himself by preparing such a document while at the same time insisting publicly that there was no connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda. Richer and Maguire have both denied that they were involved with the forgery and it should also be noted that preparation of such a document to mislead the media is illegal and they could have wound up in jail.

My source also notes that Dick Cheney, who was behind the forgery, hated and mistrusted the Agency and would not have used it for such a sensitive assignment. Instead, he went to Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans and asked them to do the job. The Pentagon has its own false documents center, primarily used to produce fake papers for Delta Force and other special ops officers traveling under cover as businessmen. It was Feith’s office that produced the letter and then surfaced it to the media in Iraq. Unlike the Agency, the Pentagon had no restrictions on it regarding the production of false information to mislead the public. Indeed, one might argue that Doug Feith’s office specialized in such activity.

http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2008/08/07/suskind-revisited/

Exactly how did this "shop around the vice president" specialize in such activity? I believe William Pitt gives the best description:

WHIG, and its intention to sell an unnecessary war to a shell-shocked public, is only half the story. The other half of the manipulative sales team could be found in the neighborhood occupied by the Department of Defense. The Office of Special Plans, or OSP, was created by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld specifically to second-guess and reinterpret intelligence data to justify war in Iraq. Think of it like baseball: the OSP pitched, and WHIG caught.

The OSP was on no government payroll and suffered no Congressional oversight. Their tainted information and interpretations overtopped the Iraq data being provided by the State Department and CIA. The OSP was able to accomplish this thanks to devoted patronage from high-ranking members of the administration, most prominently Vice-President Cheney.

The highest levels of the OSP were staffed by heavy-hitters like Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and William Luti, a former Navy officer who worked for Cheney before joining the Pentagon. When the OSP wanted to intimidate analysts into shaping conclusions to fit the already-made war decision, Cheney went to CIA headquarters on unprecedented visits. Once there, he demanded "forward-leaning" interpretations of the evidence. When Cheney was unable to go to the CIA, his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, went in his place.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101705I.shtml

Or if anyone wants to dig deeper into OSP and their "B Team", CTEG, here's a direct link to my 2nd edition of American Judas:

http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2007/03/american-judas-2nd-edition-investigate.html

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

"The Ripist" Speaks; FBI Coaching is "Duley" noted.

Thank you Glenn Greenwald, Larisa Alexandrovna and all the vigilant watchdogs over at Democratic Underground for all your probing. It was Glenn Greenwald's great piece today:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/05/anthrax/index.html?source=rss

That led me to the testimony regarding the peace order that Ivin's "theripist" Jean Duley was seeking:


Ivins was supposed to have a permanent commitment hearing at Sheppard Pratt, but Duley said his attorney advised him to check himself in voluntarily so that he may leave when he wished. Drawbaugh told the court he probably was being released from the hospital as the hearing was going on. --

She decided to get the peace order after an FBI agent working the case suggested it.

Drawbaugh: "At this time, Ms. Duley, are you fearful for your personal safety?"

Duley: "I am and so is the FBI."

Drawbaugh: "OK. And can you tell the court why it is based on what you have testified to during the course of since July 9 that you are fearful of your safety?"

Duley: "As far back as the year 2000, the respondent has actually attempted to murder several other people either through poisoning. He is a revenge killer. When he feels he that he has been slighted or has had ... especially towards women ... he plots and actually tries to carry out revenge killing. He has been forensically diagnosed by several top psychiatrists as a sociopathic homicidal killer."

Roberts granted the temporary peace order and set a hearing for a final peace order Thursday -- a day before Duley was set to testify against Ivins before a federal grand jury. The court ordered Ivins not to abuse or contact Duley or go to her home or job. The order was dismissed Thursday after Ivins' apparent suicide.

http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?StoryID=78406

My initial questions: She's fearful of her safety since July 9, yet she doesn't file for a peace order until the FBI tells her to?! He's attempted to murder several people through poisoning since 2000? Did he just happen to slip that nugget to her and neglect to mention "Oh, by the way, I mailed out all that anthrax after 9/11 too"? Or did she find that out from those "several top psychiatrists"?

Puhleeze. I want to know if there is one sentence she uttered that wasn't coached out of her by the FBI.

Then I checked back with a fantastic thread started by autorank on DU:

Anthrax, Bruce Ivins Case Research-Resource Thread - Update & Rate Please
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3728633

In post 115, autorank has a great comment on the story:

From your link to the Frederick Post story above -

Ivins and hospitalization:

"Ivins was supposed to have a permanent commitment hearing at Sheppard Pratt, but Duley said his (Ivins) attorney advised him to check himself in voluntarily so that he may leave when he wished. Drawbaugh told the court he probably was being released from the hospital as the hearing was going on. --

"This is wrong, lacks any logic. You don't "check" yourself in to preserve the option to leave - IF YOU ARE A DANGER TO SELF AND OTHERS. That's the law everywhere. If there was a worry on Ivins and/or his attorney's part that he'd be detained once in the hospital, the voluntary or involuntary commitment would not be the issue. The issue would focus on the evaluation that took place. The fact that Ivins checked in, understandable given the intensity of the pressure, could be an argument in favor of his mental stability, e.g., 'he was so confident that he wasn't unstable, he checked himself into a major psychiatric hospital knowing that they'd release him after a respite period.'

That's what's bothersome about so much with Duley, it just doesn't make a lot of sense. By the logic of Duley's statement from Frederick paper, we would have this situation: Ivins voluntarily checks himself in at Shepard Pratt. They decide that he is all those things that she says he is. They want him to stay but Ivins says, 'Sorry, you can't make me do that since I checked myself in voluntarily which means, NO MATTER WHAT YOU FOUND ABOUT ME, I get to leave since I voluntarily admitted myself.'

And what's a "permanent commmittment?" You are given a life sentence in psychiatric care. People do get better. So by Duley's logic - Ivins is "permanently committed." He has a total recovery. They decide it was some chemical that caused a temporary break. But they can't let him go since he's "permanently committed." Give me a break!


In response to this, sfexpat2000 and suffragette refer to a thread with links to the audiotapes of Duley's testimony and the revelation as reported by Scott Creighton that where Bruce Ivins was concerned, "she was helping the FBI FRAME HIM"-!!!

Most of reporting uncritically based on Duley's restraining order hearing audio
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3724189

To quote vickiss on a thread I started, "Do all government employees below the WH level have the same middle name? Patsy?"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3730203

The plot thickens...

Monday, August 4, 2008

Grand Jury Investigating the Anthrax Attacks? Who's the Prosecutor?

Everyone who followed closely the trickle of information coming out of the grand jury investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame and blown cover of Brewster, Jennings & Associates knew who was in charge of that investigation long before Scooter Libby was ever indicted. Hell, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was so famous that the anticipation of who would be indicted and when created a new term in the lexicon of the blogosphere: Fitzmas. What came as a surprise to me in the wake of the "suicide" of anthrax suspect Bruce Ivins as he was supposedly about to be indicted for the attacks that killed five people in the months after 9/11 is that there was a grand jury investigating the matter at all.


Anthrax Indictment May Have Been Weeks Away
by Dina Temple-Raston

Government investigators tell NPR that they were still several major legal steps away from indicting army researcher Dr. Bruce Ivins for the 2001 anthrax attacks when he killed himself this past week.

While they had written up the case and told officials at the Department of Justice they were prepared to go forward, the department had not yet approved the case. What is more, the evidence against Ivins had not yet been presented in its entirety to a grand jury and jurors had not yet been asked to vote on an indictment. That process could have taken weeks.

more...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93241941&ft=1&f=2


So who is in charge of investigating this? And who was cross-examining this person?


August 03, 2008
Jean C. Duley... tell us again...

Okay, well the more research I do into the now infamous Ms. Jean C. Duley - the "therapist" who filed a restraining order against the alleged anthrax attacks suspect Bruce E. Ivins - the more her story sounds like a whole load of crap.

Let's rehash Ms. Duley's role in the whole saga.
According to The Smoking Gun, documents they obtained and posted show that Ms. Duley filed a restraining order request against Bruce Ivins on July 24th. In that complaint, she wrote the following (the errors are hers):
client has a history dating to his graduate days of homicidal threats, actions, plans, threats & actions toward theripist. Dr. David Irwin his psychiatrist called him homicidal, sociopathic with clear intentions will testify with other details FBI involved, currently under investigation & will be charged with 5 capital murders. I have been subpoena to testify before a federal grand jury August 1, 2008 in Washington, D.C.

snip

Okay, I give up. Why did this woman have to spend all her money on attorneys? She clearly filed the restraining order herself. So how is it that she incurred any attorney fees? Unless, of course, her boyfriend means that she incurred attorney fees for her DUI jury trial in 06 and ongoing fees relating to her probation? Why did Ms. Duley lose her job? Is it because as a "therapist" working with drug addiction cases, she was found driving under the influence?

I don't know what to make out of all of this. Is this woman jumping on the bandwagon hoping to pen a book deal or something? Is she simply lying? Is she telling the truth about Ivins? Is she as nutty as she claims him to be? I don't know. What I think, however, is that if this witness was dragged into a court in which I was the defense attorney, her credibility would quickly be shot down. Somehow, I think, we will soon see a Fox Noise exclusive interview with this woman and her boyfriend who will "reveal" what it is that they know. At this point, I am not buying this story and I am not sure why the media has jumped on her claims as though they were gospel.

http://www.atlargely.com/2008/08/jean-c-duley-te.html

OK, so we have a prosecutor who subpoenaes this piece of work. Now that the patient of this "theripist" is dead, what will become of the grand jury? Will we ever find out who testified and what they said unless indictments are issued? And why isn't the prosecutor treating Brian Ross of ABC News the same way Patrick Fitzgerald treated Judy Miller for refusing to reveal her sources?

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft. Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."

ABC News' claim -- which they said came at first from "three well-placed but separate sources," followed by "four well-placed and separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It's critical to note that it isn't the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.

more...http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

Remember there was a SCOTUS precedent set in 1972:

Finally, if the confidential information relates to criminal activity, the U.S. Supreme Court said in 1972 (in Branzburg vs. Hayes) that should a grand jury investigating the crime need the information, the journalist must turn it over — despite the freedom of the press guaranteed under the 1st Amendment.

No reporter can enter into an agreement that violates that law. Rather, an agreement of confidentiality is subject to it. The so-called news person's privilege, just like the attorney-client privilege or a president's executive privilege, is a qualified privilege. When a judge holds a reporter in contempt for violating the law, that judge is merely upholding the law of the land.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-sources6feb06,0,6080347.story?coll=la-sunday-commentary

So who is upholding the law of the land now?!

Friday, August 1, 2008

Focus Should be on Cheney in the Wake of the Anthrax Suspect "Suicide"

In the past couple days there have been some revelations that have been very illuminating regarding our own Number Two squatting in the White House. Seymour Hersh, who has been vigilant in reporting Cheney's lust for an attack on Iran before the voters at long last kick him out of 1600 Pennnsylvania Avenue, had some fascinating new details to tell yesterday:

EXCLUSIVE: To Provoke War, Cheney Considered Proposal To Dress Up Navy Seals As Iranians And Shoot At Them»

Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh — a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker — revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran.

In Hersh’s most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The “meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. ‘The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,’” according to one of Hersh’s sources.
During the journalism conference event, I asked Hersh specifically about this meeting and if he could elaborate on what occurred. Hersh explained that, during the meeting in Cheney’s office, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected:

HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. (Emphasis added)

Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

more...

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/31/cheney-proposal-for-iran-war/


Seeing that Cheney has the inclination to initiate a false flag operation of Americans killing Americans where Iran is concerned, can we find an example where Cheney might be involved in a false flag operation that was carried out? We need only look deeper into the implications of the reported suicide of the anthrax suspect Bruce E. Ivins. Glenn Greenwald has updated a remarkable expose today:

Friday Aug. 1, 2008 05:36 EDT

Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News

(updated below - Update II - Update III)

The FBI's lead suspect in the September, 2001 anthrax attacks -- Bruce E. Ivins -- died Tuesday night, apparently by suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to charge him with responsibility for the attacks. For the last 18 years, Ivins was a top anthrax researcher at the U.S. Government's biological weapons research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, where he was one of the most elite government anthrax scientists on the research team at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID).

snip

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft. Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."

ABC News' claim -- which they said came at first from "three well-placed but separate sources," followed by "four well-placed and separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It's critical to note that it isn't the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.

snip

UPDATE III: See this important point from Atrios about Richard Cohen's admission that he was told before the anthrax attacks happened by a "high government official" to take cipro. Atrios write: "now that we know that the US gov't believes that anthrax came from the inside, shouldn't Cohen be a wee bit curious about what this warning was based on?"

more...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

This is some damning information against ABC News. I hope this helps ignite a public uproar against them to release the identities of these "four well-placed and separate sources". Is it possible that one of them was Bruce E. Ivins? He certainly was "well-placed" enough to comment on the phony bentonite-positive test results on the anthrax. And who is Richard Cohen's "high government official"? Could that official be one of ABC News' "well-placed" sources? And how might Cheney be involved in this? I can only answer the last question:

White House Mail Machine Has Anthrax
By Sandra Sobieraj
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2001; 8:11 p.m. EDT

snip

At least some White House personnel were given Cipro six weeks ago. White House officials won't discuss who might be receiving the anthrax-treating antibiotic now.

On the night of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House Medical Office dispensed Cipro to staff accompanying Vice President Dick Cheney as he was secreted off to the safety of Camp David, and told them it was "a precaution," according to one person directly involved. (Emphasis added)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20011023/aponline201158_000.htm


The first set of anthrax letters were postmarked on September 18, 2001, one week after Cheney and his staff started taking Cipro.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks


We need to be prepared to raise holy hell if the FBI decides to close shop in the wake of the Ivins "suicide" by declaring his guilt as a "lone nut". We've heard that dismissive song to many times in the past to take it on face value. I put the word "suicide" in quotes because in the wake of Glenn Greenwald's revelations there are simply too many connected "well-placed and separate sources" caught in a bald-faced lie who would benefit from having a patsy silenced. Only a full, thorough and independent investigation will verify the truth. But don't hold your breath. As X instructed Garrison in the movie JFK, "Stir the shit storm".

Friday, July 18, 2008

Fitzgerald says Rove was trying to fire him during CIA leak probe

Fitzgerald says Rove was trying to fire him during CIA leak probe
Marcy Wheeler
Published: Thursday July 17, 2008

In a supplement to his responses to the House Judiciary Committee, Patrick Fitzgerald confirms what we've always suspected: Karl Rove was trying to have Patrick Fitzgerald fired while Fitzgerald was still investigating Rove for his role in leaking Valerie Wilson's identity--and the timing lines up perfectly with the Administration's efforts to fire a bunch of US Attorneys.

Remember back in June, when Fitzgerald publicly suggested he had more details to share with Congress about Rove's efforts to get him fired?

"If I owe a response [about the putsch to remove him from his job], I owe it to Congress, first," Fitzgerald said when asked about all this after the verdict.

Well, it turns out Fitzgerald did share those details with Congress. And those details make it clear that Fitzgerald learned Rove was trying to fire him while Fitzgerald was still actively investigating Rove's role in the leak of Valerie Wilson's identity.

more...

http://rawstory.com//news/2008/Fitzgerald_says_Rove_was_trying_to_0717.html

The frogmarch is looooooooooong overdue!

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Waxman threatens AG with contempt unless he gets FBI's Cheney transcripts

Waxman threatens AG with contempt unless he gets FBI's Cheney transcripts
Nick JulianoPublished: Tuesday July 8, 2008

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) says his committee will vote next week to hold Attorney General Michael Mukasey in contempt if the Bush appointee continues to refuse to hand over transcripts of an FBI interview with Vice President Dick Cheney.

Waxman says the interview transcript is vital to the Oversight Committee's investigation of the outing of former CIA agent Valerie Plame. In a letter to Mukasey (.pdf), Waxman noted that Cheney's former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told the FBI it was "possible" that Cheney told him to expose Plame after her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, publicly undercut the administration's claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.

"The arguments you have raised for withholding the interview report are not tenable," Waxman told Mukasey. "When the FBI interview with the Vice President was conducted, the Vice President knew that the information in the interview could be made public in a criminal trial and that there were no restrictions on Special Counsel Fitzgerald's use of the interview."

Mukasey has invoked executive privilege -- the Bush administration's go-to response to Congress's attempts at oversight -- in refusing to hand over transcripts of the interviews with the president and vice president. The interviews were conducted in relation to Patrick Fitzgerald's probe of Plame's outing. Libby was the only person convicted as a result of that inquiry, although it eventually revealed that Karl Rove and former State Department official Richard Armitage also had leaked Plame's name.

more...

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Waxman_threatens_AG_with_contempt_unless_0708.html

Friday, June 20, 2008

McClellan: Cheney should testify about CIA leak

McClellan: Cheney should testify about CIA leak

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Vice President Dick Cheney should testify before Congress about his role in the leaking of a CIA agent's identity, former White House spokesman Scott McClellan told members of the House Judiciary Committee on Friday.

"The vice president has information that has not been shared publicly," McClellan said in response to a question from Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, about who Congress should question in connection with the leaking of Valerie Plame Wilson's name to the media.
"You could go down the list: Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer ..." McClellan added, referring to President Bush's former political adviser and first White House spokesman.

snip

McClellan also also said he could not rule out that Cheney had ordered his former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, to leak Plame Wilson's identity. A later investigation showed that Libby, in fact, had been involved in the leaking of the CIA operative's name.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/20/mcclellan.testimony/index.html

It's heating up again! Wexler and Kucinich asking for impeachment too!

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Waxman Urges FBI To Release Bush, Cheney Interviews In CIA Leak Case

Waxman Urges FBI To Release Bush, Cheney Interviews In CIA Leak Case
By Daniel W. Reilly
Jun 3, 2008

(The Politico) House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) urged Attorney General Michael Mukasey Tuesday to release FBI interviews of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney as part of the investigation into the leak of the identity of former CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Waxman cited new information from the FBI interview of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby--who was convicted in the case--and the recent disclosures in a tell-all book written by former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan.

"In his interview with the FBI, Mr. Libby stated that it was “possible” that Vice President Cheney instructed him to disseminate information about [Plame] to the press," Waxman said in a letter to Mukasey.

"This is a significant revelation and, if true, a serious matter. It cannot be responsibly investigated without access to the Vice President’s FBI interview."

more...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/03/politics/politico/thecrypt/main4148682.shtml

Good to see the drip, drip, drip back! If this concludes favorably in 2009, I have no problem with skipping the tardy impeachment proceedings and going straight to the imprisonment phase of these criminals.

Friday, May 30, 2008

Plamegate is Back!

White House doesn't deny McClellan's Bush-to-Libby leak allegation
Eric BrewerPublished: Friday May 30, 2008

In Scott McClellan's recent statements to the press regarding his apostasy, he says that one of the things that pushed him over the edge was the revelation on April 6, 2006, that President Bush had secretly authorized the selective release to reporters of classified information, something that both the president and his then-spokesman McClellan had been vigorously condemning in their public statements about the Valerie Plame leak case.

"I walk onto Air Force One and a reporter had yelled a question to the president trying to ask him a question about this revelation that had come out during the [Libby] legal proceedings," McClellan told the Today Show's Meredith Viera on Thursday morning. "The revelation was that it was the president who had authorized, or enabled, Scooter Libby to go out there and talk about this information. And I told the president that that's what the reporter was asking. He was saying that you, yourself, were the one that authorized the leaking of this information. And he said, 'Yeah, I did.' And I was kinda taken aback."

So "taken aback" evidently that he announced his resignation thirteen days later.

At Friday's morning gaggle in the White House briefing room I asked Press Secretary Dana Perino whether McClellan's claim about what Bush said to him on Air Force One was true. The classified information McClellan was talking about was the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq, portions of which were leaked to reporters in the summer of 2003 as part of the Bush administration's counter-attack on Joe Wilson, who had accused the White House of using twisted intelligence to support the invasion of Iraq.
Yesterday, another reporter asked a similar question, but had interpreted Scott's remark as referring to the Plame leak, which is not a claim McClellan explicitly makes.
Today I asked Perino the following question (note: the gaggle was off-camera, and no official transcript was provided by the White House):
Me: Yesterday you were asked about Scott's assertion that in early April 2006 he relayed to President Bush a reporter's question about whether the president had personally authorized Scooter Libby's leaking of classified information, to which the president replied, according to Scott, "Yeah, I did." Did the president make that statement?
Perino: The question I got was whether or not the president had authorized the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity. That's not what the book says. That's what the question was, that's not what the book says. And that's the question that I didn't answer because I knew that's not what the book says.
Me: But can you answer my question, right now?
Perino: I didn't understand your question, because you asked me about a question I was asked yesterday that was mischaracterized.
Me: Well, Scott has asserted that in early April of 2006 he relayed to President Bush a reporter's question about whether the president had personally authorized Scooter Libby's leaking of classified information, to which the president replied, according to Scott, "Yeah, I did." Did the president say "Yeah, I did" to Scott?
Perino: I have no idea whether he said that or not.
Me: Well, have you asked him?
Perino: No, I haven't. And I think it's kind of unreasonable to expect anyone to remember a specific conversation like that. But let me just say one thing. That's commenting specifically on the Libby and Plame case. Because it's still a matter of civil litigation, I'm not going to get myself embroiled in that. I don't think there's anything improper about pushing back on the public record when it needs to be pushed back on. And the case that you're talking about is the NIE on Iraq, and that was declassified.
At least that's the story put out by the Bush administration and by Scooter Libby, who was convicted of two counts of perjury, one count of making false statements to the FBI, and one count of obstruction of justice.
In reality, the NIE was "officially declassified" (those are Scott McClellan's words, by the way) on July 18, ten days after Scooter Libby leaked it to the New York Times's Judy Miller in their meeting in the St. Regis Hotel. But there was something else that Scooter leaked to Judy at that July 8 meeting.
As firedoglake's Marcy Wheeler has pointed out, Scooter Libby was asked to leak something to Judy Miller on July 8 that was so unprecedented, so hush-hush, so on the Q.T., that he wasn't willing to do it until he had gotten assurances from Vice President Cheney that the president himself had authorized it. It doesn't make sense that he would have been that worried about leaking the NIE, because he had already leaked the NIE twice before, to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post on June 27, and to David Sanger of the New York Times on July 2.
So what was it then that made Scooter so nervous? The other thing he leaked to Judy that day at the St. Regis was that Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/White_House_doesnt_deny_McClellans_BushtoLibby_0530.html