The latest RWNM line is there is nothing in the indictment about the underlying crime — revealing a covert operatives name in violation of the statute. What no one on the RWNM is mentioning is the Special Prosecutor has wide discretion to bring whatever charges he wants. It is obvious Fitzgerald is going after a simpler case because it is far easier to win.
Read MoreHalloween Witch
angel copyright 6-26-99
Petals and Thorns
Each year they parade her about,
the traditional Halloween Witch.
Misshapen green face, stringy scraps of hair,
a toothless mouth beneath her deformed nose.
Gnarled knobby fingers twisted into a claw
protracting from a bent and twisted torso
that lurches about on wobbly legs.
Most think this abject image to be the creation
of a prejudiced mind or merely a Halloween caraicature.
I disagree.
I believe this to be how Witches were really seen.
REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER
11 pm Friday
Bill Maher welcomes fmr Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke, reporter Helen Thomas, comedian Billy Connolly, talk show host Tony Snow and reporter Nadira Hira – Friday at 11 pm.
Read MoreOf course, Cheney lies. We all know that. But how does he get away with it again and again? In all the attention that has been given the indictment of Lewis Libby by Patrick Fitzgerald, one detail has been overlooked so far. What is stated in the indictment directly contradicts public statements made by the Vice President. For instance, the indictment reads:
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 Division. LIBBY understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA.
However, on September 14, 2003 Cheney told Tim Russert the following on Meet the Press:
No. I don’t know Joe Wilson. I’ve never met Joe Wilson. A question had arisen. I’d heard a report that the Iraqis had been trying to acquire uranium in Africa, Niger in particular. I get a daily brief on my own each day before I meet with the president to go through the intel. And I ask lots of question. One of the questions I asked at that particular time about this, I said, “What do we know about this?” They take the question. He came back within a day or two and said, “This is all we know. There’s a lot we don’t know,” end of statement. And Joe Wilson–I don’t who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back.
(The source is here–a very good source to ferret out more of Cheney’s lies)
Cheney sure as hell knew who Joe Wilson was back in June, and was interested enough in him to find out who his wife was and where she worked.
Yet in the presidential press conference on this last Tuesday, October 25, Scott McClennan said it was a “ridiculous suggestion” that the VP doesn’t always tell the truth. (Link to BooTrib diary here. See Catnip’s comment towards the bottom.)
Is Cheney going to get away with his lies again?
Read MoreYesterday longtime UPI intelligence reporter Richard Sale, posting via Patrick Lang’s account, took issue with an October 25th New York Times article identifying Vice President Dick Cheney as I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s original source for the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson. The Times indicated that Libby’s notes suggested that Cheney had learned about Plame from former CIA Chief George Tenet and had passed the information on to Libby on June 12, 2003, nearly a month before Joseph Wilson went public about his March 2002 mission to Niger for the CIA (during which he had concluded that reports of efforts by Iraq to buy yellowcake from Niger were false).
According to Sale’s sources, “former senior and serving current intelligence officials,” “Libby’s notes on this are misleading and inaccurate or both.” Sale insists that he has four sources who allege that “it was a telephone call from the Department of State that first gave Libby the name of Plame,” and that while no one is certain who placed the call, it “definitely came from the State Department office of John Bolton, then the arms control chief of the department.” Sale implicates two Bolton employees in the leak, David Wurmser, “a virulent pro-war hawk,” and Frederick Fleitz, “a CIA officer detailed to Bolton’s office from the agency.” Sale reports that Wurmser learned about Valerie Plame from Fleitz.
Back on September 20, 2005 Arianna Huffington also implicated Bolton and Fleitz in the outing of Valerie Wilson.
Time will tell if Sale’s sources are correct, but there is a wealth of circumstantial evidence to suggest that, at the very least, John Bolton was intimately involved in the Bush administration’s efforts to disseminate the Niger Yellowcake rumors, and that he might well have been in a position to learn of Valerie Plame’s identity long before Robert Novak leaked it on July 14, 2003.
Fred Fleitz apparently had worked with John Bolton in the past, and when Bolton went to work at the State Department he requested of the CIA that Fleitz be assigned to him there. The person at CIA who ”facilitated” that request was Alan Foley, then director of the CIA office of Weapons, Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control (Winpac). Foley was Bolton’s main contact at CIA in the area of WMD, and he spoke regularly with both Fleitz and Bolton “at least once a week or three times a month,” according to his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff during Bolton’s confirmation hearings for his United Nations appointment. What is so interesting about this is that Alan Foley, as the head of Winpac, would have almost certainly known and worked closely with one Valerie Plame Wilson who worked in Non-Proliferation Division of the CIA, the operational side that worked hand-in-hand with Alan Foley’s Winpac in the area of WMD.
Read More
