Author: Dean Pajevic

Raw Story reports that LIBBY IS INDICTED.

We’ll post the names and links of the documents submitted by Patrick Fitzgerald on his Web site.

Your analyses and questions will be important while we review the documents and wait for Fitzgerald’s press conference at 2pm ET/11am PT. C-SPAN will air the press conference, as will all major television networks (I would expect).

Update [2005-10-28 12:49:21 by susanhu]: Libby is indicted on FIVE counts — obstruction of justice, on perjury (two counts), and making false statements (two counts). CNN. (Docs still not up on Fitz’s site.)

Update [2005-10-28 12:54:41 by susanhu]: NEW THREAD ABOVE.

NOTE: All earlier updates are now below the fold.

Fitzgerald Announcement: “11am PT / 2pm ET“

Patrick Fitzgerald will hold a news conference today at 2pm ET / 11am PT, according to CNN. I anticipate that many online outlets will air this live, including C-SPAN, Washington Post (no video link up yet), and NPR (can’t confirm) or Air America Radio.

   “The grand jury was expected to meet this morning, with an announcement by Fitzgerald expected about midday,” reports the Los Angeles Times, via Daou Report.

Here’s the address for Fitz’s place.

Will the Froggy Bottom Cafe be open until Fitz shows up for his little speech? Or should we head over to Fitz’s? (His place is a bit plain looking — patriotic, but plain nonetheless — and I don’t see any party treats. Shall we get a hat and whistle for Fitz? ‘course, he’d probably rather have a stiff shot and a nap.)

No, this isn’t like a campaign party. Leave your checkbooks at home. This one’s on the government!

P.S. That’s the NYT photo of Scooter being driven to work this morning. Someone “Photoshopped” in a cardboard box. No idea why they did that.

It may turn out — in the great war being waged by disaffected members of the intelligence community network against the Neocon cabal inside the Bush administration — that Valerie Plame Wilson is as incidental as Monica Lewinsky was in the unending campaigns against Bill Clinton.

While the White House-spoonfed pundits nitpick over Joseph Wilson’s veracity and Valerie Wilson’s photo in Vanity Fair, the intelligence community is in a full-court press to undo the Bush administration’s gross mishandling of intelligence information, officers, agents, and agencies.

Imagine you’re in that community, and you witness the following:

• Neocon ideologue David Wurmser and the members of the post-9/11 newly created Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans — none of whom are experts in analyzing and assessing raw intelligence — are given carte blanche to cherry-pick and artificially produce “evidence not only linking Iraq to Al Qaeda, which we now know was false and which the CIA all along believed was false,” said Mother Jones reporter Robert Dreyfuss in an interview with his subject former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman on Democracy Now!, Nov. 6, 2003.
  

  
  

• “As the campaign against Iraq intensified, a former aide to Cheney told me, the Vice-President’s office, run by his chief of staff, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, became increasingly secretive when it came to intelligence about Iraq’s W.M.D.s. As with Wolfowitz and Bolton, there was a reluctance to let the military and civilian analysts on the staff vet intelligence,” writes Seymour Hersh in an October 2003 New Yorker interview of V.P. Cheney’s spokesperson Cathie Martin who — like Wurmser — is being eyed by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.
  

  
  

• “[E]ven before [9/11], a number of senior White House officials sought to brand the CIA as soft in its analysis and unwilling to offer more clear-cut views on the threats to America.” WSJ, Oct. 28, 2005
  

• There are endless more examples of which you are also aware.

The retired/active intelligence community will not stand down and allow a Neocon cabal to dismantle its historic structure — allowing ideologues to place sensitive intelligence in the hands of wholly unqualified amateurs such as David Wurmser.

Take another look at this graphic from the Wall Street Journal, posted in Catnip’s WSJ news summary last night. Catnip also quoted BoomanTribune contributors Patrick Lang and Larry Johnson in today’s WSJ piece:

Beyond the very large, and networked, community of retired intelligence officers, there are all of the active agents and analysts who were pressured or coerced in the run-up to the war. Many of them are joined in gunning for the Neocon cabal that created and marketed its own fictional rationales for the Iraq war.

The intel community also sees grave danger in the erosion of power of the CIA — and the rearranging of the deck chairs on Bush’s Titanic:

Pat Lang, a frequent contributor to BoomanTribune.com, appeared on today’s first segment of the “Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer. Crooks & Liars is posting the video. Col. Lang’s bio is below the fold.

BLITZER: Turning now to our security council. Tomorrow the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is expected to make an announcement on whether or not there will be indictments in the CIA leak case. But how much damage was actually done to U.S. intelligence by the outing of the CIA operative Valerie Plame?

Joining us now, retired U.S. Army Colonel Pat Lang, a former chief analyst for the Pentagon’s defense intelligence agency, and our own national security correspondent David Ensor. Two guys who know this subject well.

How much damage do you believe was actually done as a result of her name being released?

COL. WALTER “PAT” LANG, U.S. ARMY (RET): I think quite a lot. I mean, she actually was functioning in kind of a covered status in which she remained covered so that when she went overseas to meet people in conjunction she — the operation would be secure. And the thing she was running in particular were blown away obviously by these — this disclosure.

But I think the larger issue is that the very fact that the U.S. government seems to have in fact disclosed the identity of one of its covert officers would cause people around the world to think that we have no credibility and that we could not be trusted to protect their identities if they cooperated with us.

BLITZER: We’re seeing some pictures, by the way, as we speak, of the president down in south Florida. He’s touring some of the areas damaged and devastated, if you will, some of the people suffering as a result of Hurricane Wilma. We’ll show those pictures from time to time as they are available. Some members of the staff there with the president.

As far as you know, David, there was no postmortem official that was document submitted to the Senate or House Intelligence Committee outlining what they believe was the damage?

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, that’s right. There will be once all of the judicial matters — all the trials or plea bargains or whatever we’re going have next are over with. There will be a complete damage assessment done.

But there was a quick, first, sort of operations check. And as Pat said, there clearly was damage. Her past career, any sources she may have drawn, the current career, those people who were in real trouble. Any future work she might have been able to do as a 20-year veteran, very experienced, is lost. Plus, and most importantly, all around the world anybody who is thinking of working for U.S. intelligence as a spy now sees that from time to time, at least, the U.S. hurts the home team and that’s not good.

More Pat Lang below the fold:

The tireless John Amato at Crooks & Liars has scored yet another interview! He spoke with U.S. Senate candidate Paul Hackett, about his upcoming race in Ohio. (It’s also available in Podcast format.)

I’m interested in Sherrod Brown’s primary candidacy as well, and would like to know more about both candidates. Brown represents Ohio’s 13th District in Congress.

I’ve seen posts here about both. What do you all know about these two candidates, and which are you more inclined to support? (I’m assuming we’ll support whoever wins the primary, right?)