by Larry C. Johnson
The Republican spin machine is fully engaged and the word is out on the indictment of Scooter Libby: NO UNDERLYING CRIME WAS COMMITTED.
In other words, Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald did not file any charges against Libby for compromising a CIA officer’s cover under the Identities Protection Act. Nope. He just charged Libby with technicalities like perjury and obstruction of justice.
Ignore for a moment that Fitzgerald said at the start of his press conference that Valerie Wilson’s cover was blown. Cover your ears and pretend that he really did not mean to say that prior to Robert Novak’s infamous column her association with the CIA was known only in classified circles.
Here is a novel idea. Fitzgerald is proscecuting Libby because he has obstructed or blocked or hindered (you choose the word) the investigation. He, Libby, has refused to provide the evidence he has of the crime of helping finger Valerie as an intelligence officer. As a result, he gets an obstruction of justice charge and lying to a federal law enforcement officer. Just because Patrick Fitzgerald has not yet collected sufficient evident to charge Libby with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, because Libby has tried to cover up his crime, does not mean a crime was not committed.
So, let’s keep a list of all those who repeat this mantra, but especially keep track of the media luminaries who say it. At a mnimum we will see the names of William Safire, Andrea Mitchell, Pete Williams, David Brooks, Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, and Bob Woodward. Then, one day (hopefully sooner rather than later), Patrick Fitzgerald will file charges. At that point, all of these Administration apologists will have to come to grips with the fact that senior Bush Administration officials engaged in a conspiracy to expose the identity of an undercover CIA officer. Looks like the term “journalism” is in jeopardy of becoming a synonym for “administration cheerleader.”
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Larry C. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international business-consulting firm that helps corporations and governments manage threats posed by terrorism and money laundering. Mr. Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism (as a Deputy Director), is a recognized expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management. Mr. Johnson has analyzed terrorist incidents for a variety of media including the Jim Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio, ABC’s Nightline, NBC’s Today Show, the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and the BBC. Mr. Johnson has authored several articles for publications, including Security Management Magazine, the New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. He has lectured on terrorism and aviation security around the world. Further bio details.
Larry C. Johnson
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A scarier thought is to consider how many of them might be on a payroll to help shape media perception and public relations. It wouldn’t be the first time
Payola Pundits for War?
Maybe I’m just getting too cynical in my middle age. Damned if this all doesn’t sound conspiratorial though.
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By Steve Gilliard BlogSpot — Friday, October 28, 2005
Resignation Statements by POTUS and VP Cheney
Yeah, Scooter, lie to the FBI, your ass gets indictedOverlooked in the current discussion.
Go to page 5 of the indictment. Top of the page, item #9.
On or about June 12, 2003, LIBBY was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson’s wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Divison. LIBBY understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA.
This is a crucial piece of information. the Counterproliferation Division (CPD) is part of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, i.e., not Directorate of Intelligence, the branch of the CIA where ‘analysts’ come from, but where the spies come from.
Libby’s a long time national security hand. He knows exactly what CPD is and where it is. So does Cheney. They both knew. It’s right there in the indictment.
By Robert Parry ◊ October 30, 2005
As an outsider to Washington, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald appears to have misunderstood the finer points of how national security classifications work when a secret is as discrete – and sensitive – as the identity of an undercover CIA officer.
Under the rules of classification, however, to see such secrets an official must not only have a top-secret clearance but also special code-word clearance that grants access to a specific compartment governed by strict need-to-know requirements.
In both the Libby indictment and a hour-long press conference on Oct. 28, Fitzgerald showed no indication he understood how extraordinary it was for White House officials to be bandying about the name of a covert CIA officer based on the flimsy rationale that she was married to an ex-diplomat who had been sent on a fact-finding trip to Niger.
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼▼▼ READ MY DIARY
Those words from Newsweek may be true to some extent but I found a Time article that says he’s taking this seriously.
(bold – my emphasis)
TIME covers the “Fall of a Vulcan” and says Fitzgerald refused to give Scooter Libby a plea deal 10/31
Linked from buzzflash.com
JOE WILSON was a PISTOL with Wolfie … he slapped Wolfie a couple times.
Here’s a “BUZZ” item from Daou Report, “Time Reporter Says He Learned Agent’s Identity From Rove”:
Hi Susan,
What were you referring to when you said Wilson pistol-whipped Wolfowitz? please provide link. Tx.
It was on CNN.
Oh, now i get it. Wolfie Blitzer. I wish he would have denounced that BS “Valerie sent you on the mission” talking point more strongly.
Covert? If he really said “Scooter libby, confirmed to him that ..Wilson’s wife, Valorie Plame, was a COVERT CIA OPERATIVE” The Game is OVER.
I saw it this morning, and I don’t think he said covert. Charlie Gibson kept trying to get the “who can remember that long ago?” talking point in there, but Cooper wouldn’t let him get away with it.
Looks like the term “journalism” is in jeopardy of becoming a synonym for “administration cheerleader.”
Well, frankly, I always thought since 2000, this was their job!!!!!!!! :o)
Hmmm. So let’s see here. Police arrive to find a dead woman with a knife wound in her back. Kneeling over her is her butler who is spattered with high velocity spray and holding a knife. The police hold him while they question him, but have not yet arrested him.
Therefore, according to Republican and media logic, no crime has been committed. Uh-huh.
…indulge me in this speculation for just a moment.
Fitzgerald continually refers to Valerie in the indictment as either Valerie Wilson or Joe Wilson’s wife. Nowhere does the name Plame come up. Even when discussing allegations concerning discussions that WH employees had regarding Valerie, there’s never mention of Plame.
I’ve also seen mentions in the blogosphere that Libby told Judy that he thought Valerie worked with WINPAC on the Directorate of Intelligence side (not the covert side). Most people believe this is either a lie or he was just mistaken.
But, suppose for a minute that Valerie WILSON did work at WINPAC as either a consultant or in a conventional analyst role. Suppose that she did, in Winpac meetings, suggest that her husband might be a good fit to investigate the Niger story.
My point is <tinfoil> what if Valerie PLAME was a mole disguised as Valerie WILSON </tinfoil> (I’m not suggesting that these are two different people, merely aliases used to separate her covert and overt lives at CIA) to help the spooks at CIA discredit the WINPAC folks who were stovepiping bad intel to OVP and the WH as rationale for Iraq invasion. A sort of counter-intelligence ploy, if you will.
Perhaps Scooter and others thought that Valerie Wilson was merely an analyst at first, until Big Time pressures somebody in the know at CIA, and finds out she’s a spook (June 12th, according to indictment). You can imagine how scared they must have been then that the whole charade would implode. So they concoct an elaborate whisper campaing around the Washington press corps and beltway insiders spreading the “Valerie Wilson is an analyst at CIA and she sent her husband to Niger” meme in hopes that someone would pick this up and run with it in an effort to discredit Joe Wilson. (and separate the OVP from efforts to find out what was going on in Niger). Note that this must have been going on the last two weeks of June, and I wonder if the June 23rd meeting with Miller, that Libby was so eager to hide, had several discussions along this line. Note also, that if this scenario is true, it doesn’t constitute a violation of IIPA, since they were just “outing” her overt CIA offiliation. However, this info was certainly classified and as such, could be prosecuted under the Espionage act.
But the smear campaign backfires when Joe Wilson finds out, prompting his NYT op-ed, and “coming out” as the ambassador. This invites a push-back from OVP (the Get Wilson campaign) with the meetings of OVP officials to plan the coordinated leak effort to tar Wilson with the “wife sent him” brush. Again, this is not IIPA, per se, but could be prosecuted under Espionage. (and certainly might form the basis for conspiracy indictments). However, Rove and Libby thought they had a good cover story in that they claimed to have heard about Valerie Wilson as CIA from reporters back in late June/Early July when rumors were flying, and their current leak campaign in middle of July was only to point reporters to Ari Fleischer’s press gaggle regarding what Wilson’s report purpotedly had said (a bunch of lies, see emptywheel’s analysis over at TNH), or to just say that OVP had nothing to do with sending Joe Wilson, that it was the “overzealous” CIA who sent him (setting up the “blame Tenet” strategy). If the reporter then shot back, I heard that Joe Wilson’s wife works at CIA and she might have helped send him, then they merely confirmed that they heard that too.
The hope was that someone would take the bait and connect the dots between Valerie and Joe Wilson, and say that CIA was influencing Wilson’s report (shifting the blame to Tenet for bad intel and the sixteen words).
But somewher in all of this, the name Valerie Plame came up. I don’t know if Scooter or Rove had even heard the name Plame, maybe they laundered it to Novak somehow, or maybe Novak had his own sources (Fleitz? Wurmser?). But it was a colossal miscalculation, because linking Valerie Plame of Brewster Jennings to CIA and Joe Wilson blew the cover off of that operation, and that’s where the real damage occurred.
Perhaps Libby and Cheney figured out that Plame was a mole in WINPAC, and she needed to be neutralized, damn the consequences (some have speculated that she was onto other, more nefarious schemes).
But I want to know, who gave the Plame Name to Novak? Because it seems to me, from the indictment, that that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish perhaps waiting in the wings. And I’m sure the charges on that side are much much more serious.
wants it to be. Looking back at the notes I took during the Fitz presser he said stuff like (and these may be paraphrased):
“not quite done yet”
“I got as much done as I could before Oct. 28”
and
“I’ll give you a brief readout of where we are”
This sounds like a man that has more indictments coming, we just need to pass this rethug mogul in the press.
Here’s a summary of other connections that might help explain why Fitzgerald isn’t done and why nobody is off the hook yet. This goes right to the heart of sveral different threads here, like the Italian connection of the Niger issue.
I’ve been following this and figured that his investigation as well as Richard Perle’s were both part of information surfacing that expanded the Plame leak investigation. I couldn’t decide on an excerpt because they’re all too good.
Top Ten Things You Never Knew About Jack Abramoff
I swear, you just can’t make up shit like this.