Month: October 2005

I was hoping that this would happen.

 From Salon.com (you may have to watch an ad to get it free for one day):

Black civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks would become the first woman to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda under resolutions considered Thursday by lawmakers.

Parks’ refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955 led to a 381-day boycott of the city’s bus system and helped spark the modern civil rights movement. She died Monday in Detroit at age 92.

The Senate approved a resolution Thursday allowing her remains to lie in honor in the Rotunda on Sunday and Monday “so that the citizens of the United States may pay their last respects to this great American.” The House was expected to consider the resolution Friday.

Of course, only former presidents, sitting presidents who die in office, members of Congress and military commanders are given this honor.

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Made you look! Made you look!

But seriously, Bush has got a tough choice ahead, especially since Harriet was “the most qualified candidate” he could find. I guess we’ll be settling for no better than second best.

We’ve been working on this problem over here, and we think we’ve come up with a STELLAR list.

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Just in…

Rove will not be indicted…remains under investigation…grand jury will ask to extend its term…

more as we get it…

Update [2005-10-27 22:45:35 by catnip]:: Here’s the link to the NYT story which reads:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 – Associates of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, expected an indictment on Friday charging him with making false statements to the grand jury in the C.I.A. leak inquiry, lawyers in the case said Thursday.

Karl Rove, President Bush’s senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, will not be charged on Friday, but will remain under investigation, people briefed officially about the case said. As a result, they said, the special counsel in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, was likely to extend the term of the federal grand jury beyond its scheduled expiration on Friday.

As rumors coursed through the capital, Mr. Fitzgerald gave no public signal of how he intends to proceed, further intensifying the anxiety that has gripped the White House and left partisans on both sides of the political aisle holding their breath.

[…]

Administration officials said that the White House would seek to keep as low a profile as possible if indictments were issued; Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, did not schedule a briefing for Friday, and Mr. Bush plans to leave in the afternoon for a weekend at Camp David.

Note: I heard about this NYT story originally on CNN’s NewsNight show with Aaron Brown who said exactly what I had written: that Libby will be indicted according to the NYT. The NYT article does not actually say as much. I will double-check Brown’s transcript once it’s up. – catnip

[editor’s note, by catnip]: Brown has now read the partial text of the NYT’s article on his show and discussed with WH correspondent John King that the indictment of Libby is “expected”. King says he’s spoken to several collegues of Libby’s tonite and that they too expect him to be indicted but none of them would say for certain.

more updates on the flip side including a statement from Booman, currently on assignment…

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Who is your favorite looney tune?

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Posted by Patrick Lang

State Department phone call gave key aide name of CIA officer


By Richard Sale, Intelligence Correspondent

A State Department phone call, not Vice President Cheney, revealed to I. Lewis Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff, the identity of the CIA operative at the heart of the current CIA leak investigation being conducted by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, according to former senior and serving U.S. intelligence officials.

An October 25 account in The New York Times, alleged that Libby first learned of the agent’s real name weeks before her identity became public in 2003 during a June 12 conversation between Cheney and Libby.

According to the Times account, Cheney told Libby the covert name of the wife of Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. diplomat who had publicly alleged that the administration had mishandled of intelligence relating to Iraq’s nuclear weapons programs.

But several former and serving U.S. intelligence officials strongly disputed this. “That is simply not accurate,” a very former senior CIA official told this reporter. “Libby’s notes on this are misleading and inaccurate or both.”

This source, supported by three others, alleged that it was a telephone call from the Department of State that first gave Libby the name of Plame.

The name of the caller? No one is sure. But these sources said that the call definitely came from the State Department office of John Bolton, then the arms control chief of the department.

These same sources alleged that two employees of Bolton, David Wurmser, a virulent pro-war hawk, first told Libby that Valerie Plame had sent Wilson to Niger to attempt to discredit the administration’s line on Iraq’s nuclear weapons programs.

These same intelligence sources alleged that Wurmser, as Bolton’s special assistant, got his knowledge of Plame’s classified identity from a colleague in his office, Frederick Fleitz, a CIA officer detailed to Bolton’s office from the agency who worked in the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center (WINIPAC.)

“We do not know yet which of the two called,” the former very senior intelligence official said.

“We are almost positive the outing of Plame came from State,” said another former senior U.S. intelligence officiel.

But he and others insisted that Fleitz had knowledge of Plame and her cover.

Fleitz, still at the State Department, is on leave and could not be reached for comment.

Wurmser did not return calls.

Continued below:

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