We are looking for someone to take over active duty for this blog. I have started a course of study that doesn't allow time for this fun but time-consuming project. I think it truly is a worthy one. Valerie Plame and all of the leaks, cracks, and chasms that have opened up and imploded since her exposure are at the heart of our political challenges. Please contact me if you are interested in taking on this project.
Thanks to al who have taken the time to read this blog. I hope it will keep going. When I have time I will still post although time is the key word.
Best,
Susi Levi-Sanchez

MSNBC confirms Larisa Alexandrovna's Raw Story report from February that Valerie Plame was working on tracking Iran's nuclear weapons program when Rove and Libby exposed her identity. (via Mark Kleiman)

Should the judge in the Scooter Libby case impose a gag order on the lawyers for both sides, stopping leaks to the press? Tom Maguire, Jeralyn Merritt, emptywheel, and Jane Hamsher debate the matter. Merritt provides links to the legal documents and sums up the issue (as well as providing more in-depth analysis):

Shorter Fitz: His office didn't leak anything and because his office doesn't talk to the media about the case he takes no position on whether there should be a gag order.

Shorter Libby: Team Libby admits to two disclosures, explains and justifies them, (quite well in my opinion) and opposes a gag order.

I think the Judge will not issue a gag order based on Libby's response.

Jason Leopold says that Fitzgerald has presented the Plame case grand jury with new evidence against Karl Rove.

The grand jury session in federal court in Washington, DC, sources close to the case said, was the first time this year that Fitzgerald told the jurors that he would soon present them with a list of criminal charges he intends to file against Rove in hopes of having the grand jury return a multi-count indictment against Rove.

In an interview Wednesday, Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove remains a "subject" of Fitzgerald's two-year-old probe.

"Mr. Rove is still a subject of the investigation," Luskin said. In a previous interview, Luskin asserted that Rove would not be indicted by Fitzgerald, but he was unwilling to make that prediction again Wednesday.

...

Fitzgerald is said to have introduced more evidence Wednesday alleging Rove lied to FBI investigators and the grand jury when he was questioned about how he found out that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA and whether he shared that information with the media, attorneys close to the case said.

If you're interested in the perspective from the left, Daily Kos has several plame-related features for your perusal today. See SusanG's frontpage report of her private conversation with Joe Wilson here, Georgia10's open thread roundup here, and a recommended diary by BenGosh on how the left should frame the issue here.

It's looking bad for the administration right now, especially if the best they can do is try to claim legitimate declassification.

White House Tries to Quell Anger Over Leak Claim
David Stout, NY Times Yes, I would say they will have to come up with some kind of valid defense for an authorization to leak even if it was 'just the NIE' for 2002.
The argument seems to be that it wasn’t a leak because Bush declassified and Bush didn’t know because he only declassified the NIE on some uncommented on date. Hmmm…
The AP reports that ‘Bush merely instructed Cheney to ‘get it out’ and left the details to him…”AP: Lawyer: Bush left leak details to Cheney

President Bush declassified sensitive intelligence in 2003 and authorized its public disclosure to rebut Iraq war critics, but he did not specifically direct that Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, be the one to disseminate the information, an attorney knowledgeable about the case said Saturday.
Bush merely instructed Cheney to "get it out" and left the details to him… …It is not known when the conversation between Bush and Cheney took place. The White House has declined to provide the date when the president used his authority to declassify the portions of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, a classified document that detailed the intelligence community's conclusions about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq....Because Bush declassified the intelligence document, the White House does not view Libby's conversations about it as a leak. But that determination is difficult to make without knowing precisely when Bush decided to declassify the information.

Okay…so…didn’t Bush think about the fact that the Plame leak might have been part of the Iraqi/Niger NIE declassification? Couldn’t he have cleared this up by simply stating that he declassified the NIE and a mistake was made due to that declassification? Or did he actually declassify it later and if we knew the actual date several people would look guilty as all hell? Many questions, too few answers…
Tom Maguire has this to say about it and he seems quite annoyed by lefty blogoshere:

So - Libby hasn't said that Cheney ordered him to out Plame; Tenet hasn't said that he warned Cheney that Plame was covert - this is quite a compelling case that is coming together. That said, Fitzgerald did speak with Addington (an attorney in the Office of the Vice President who has been moved up to Libby's old spot), Bush and Cheney, so we can presume that Libby's story was not flatly contradicted. But did Bush and Cheney respond with "I don't recall that? We don't know.

(AP)"...Q: Now that the story is out that Bush and Cheney put Libby in play, are the president or the vice president expected to be called to testify at Libby's trial?

A. The prosecution and the defense have not signaled their intentions. "
(Maguire)"Put Libby in play"? As the story eventually notes (see MORE, below), the timeline is hazy at best. This is partly because, at the time Libby testified, Special Counsel Fitzgerald was unaware of Libby's chats with Judy Miller and Bob Woodward in June 2003; consequently, Fitzgerald's questions to Libby about his conversations with reporters focused on July, and the issue of whether Libby was cleared to talk with Woodward did not arise.
As a result, it is hard to judge whether Libby began leaking and then sought authorization, or the reverse. That is assuming that the authorization even occurred, and is not a convenient ex post fiction (The Anon Lib wonders about this).

Libby passed the information about the document to New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003. It was 10 days later, on July 18, when the same portions of the document that Libby discussed with Miller were released publicly.

This date is far less important than the Woodward date which was in June. If the White House declassified the NIE in July than Libby sought it post leak. If Bush declassified it in June than Libby had authority to ‘leak’ some info and Bush should have fessed up to the cause of the possible Plame error three years ago.

On another note – I guess there will be no graymail defense success afterall:
CIA Leak Judge Says No to Secret Arguments

Walton said the government may in some cases present the court the actual classified information that Libby wants for his defense without letting the defendant and his lawyers see it. The judge would then determine whether some of the deletions or substitutions that the government is making are proper. "Despite the fact that the defendant is a former national security official and some of his defense team hold security clearances, this does not entitle them to view documents that exceed the level of their security clearances or documents that may discuss particularly sensitive issues with profound national security implications," the judge wrote.

From Firedoglake:

Hypocrisy has a way of catching up to you at the most inopportune time, doesn’t it? You know, like when you are down to 36% in the polls, before the story of your sneaky, half-truth maneuver ever hit the news wires? I bet George Bush is a peach of a guy to be around the weekend. Here’s a sampling of this morning’s headlines on the Leaker In Chief

Comment
Posted by: Tom Maguire | April 8, 2006 10:38 PM
I am troubled by this:

If Bush declassified it in June than Libby had authority to ‘leak’ some info and Bush should have fessed up to the cause of the possible Plame error three years ago.

Obviously you are aware of the difference between the NIE leak and the Plame leak, so why blur thenm here?

And even the WaPo has noted that in Fitzgerald's filing Bush got a bit of a pass:

During this time, while the President was unaware of the role that the Vice President’s Chief of Staff and National Security Adviser [i.e., Libby, who had both jobs] had in fact played in disclosing Ms. Wilson’s CIA employment...

"The President was unaware" should be inconsistent with Bush authorizing the Plame leak.

I don't have time to dig into the many topics until later. One pertinent point a friend brought up I just need to say:
The Oral Order of the Fuhrer is the Supreme Law -- What is this? Well, two things:
a) The established rule of Nazi's under the Third Reich and
b) Bush's declassification policy if indeed he says it out loud and therefore it is done
Slate has two entries about Libbyhere and here. He talks about something I brought up a while ago which is Libby's ultimate role as scapegoat but he points out that Libby's squealing may be so loud that distancing him only draws him closer. The Wapo talks about the point that the declassification of the NIE has nothing to do with the Plame outing. I will be back in a little while to discuss this because I don't fully agree.

The Washington Post has a similar take as I do about the White House's reasoning:

"President Bush authorized White House official I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to disclose highly sensitive intelligence information to the news media in an attempt to discredit a CIA adviser whose views undermined the rationale for the invasion of Iraq..."

"President Bush personally authorized leaking classified information to deflect Iraq war critics at a time when declining public support for the invasion threatened his reelection campaign, according to testimony from a former senior White House aide."

Scott McClellan:

“There's been nothing, absolutely nothing, brought to our attention to suggest any White House involvement, and that includes the vice president’s office as well."

White House, 9/29/03

Okay, I know the New York Sun broke the story but I’m leading with Murray Waas who has been a steady hand and great reporter on the Plamegate issue:

"Libby also testified that an administration lawyer told him that Bush, by authorizing the disclosure of classified information, had in effect declassified the information. Legal experts disagree on whether the president has the authority to declassify information on his own."

If the info was already declassified why did Bush say this on Sept 30, 2003: (from Tom Maguire)

"And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of.

If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action.

People who broke the law were to be fired; folks who leaked classified info were to be treated appropriately."

"Some of the responses to the Bush Connection are over-done - Fitzgerald does not come close to alleging wrong-doing by President Bush."

The Smoking Gun has a pdf of Fitz’s filing here

Firedoglake harkens back:

"And it sure does bring the interview with Fox News after Dick Cheney shot the old man in the face into a sharper focus, doesn’t it?

In an interview with Fox News in February, Mr. Cheney, who has a reputation for secrecy, acknowledged that he has sometimes pressed for the official release of classified records.

"I’ve certainly advocated declassification and participated in declassification decisions," he said.

Asked if he had ever "unilaterally" declassified material, Mr. Cheney replied, "I don’t want to get into that. There is an executive order that specifies who has classification authority, and obviously focuses first and foremost on the president, but also includes the vice president."

Talk about things that make you go "hmmmmm.""

"I also want to take away from the notion that somehow we should take an obstruction charge less seriously than a leak charge.
This is a very serious matter and compromising national security information is a very serious matter. But the need to get to the bottom of what happened and whether national security was compromised by inadvertence, by recklessness, by maliciousness is extremely important. We need to know the truth. And anyone who would go into a grand jury and lie, obstruct and impede the investigation has committed a serious crime."

For whom is Scooter Libby covering? That question just got a whole lot more interesting as I’m reading through the Fitz motion response."

Firedoglake also posted a reader's response:

"Page 24 of the Fitz filing. Only 3 people Pres, VP and Libby knew that Pres had authorized disclosure of NIE (which Addington gave an off the cuff opinion amounted to de-classifiaction).
Yest despite the fact that the Pres supposedly had already declassified it, and Libby had already revealed it to Miller, the WH was still pressing for it for it to be declassifed???
How can the Pres request the declassification of something he has already declassified???
Help, the room is spinning! Opps, that was my head going 360."

Responding with:

"Is it because: … …(b) Bush was grifting his own administration and not being forthcoming about having already declassified the information because he either wanted it declassified to cover his butt or because he didn’t want them to know he had previously declassified the information because…he knew what was done with it — including revealing Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity — was wrong? (And criminal, in the case of outing a CIA NOC?)"

JOSH GERSTEIN of the New York Sun broke this story. Thank you.

Dailykos reflects:

"The testimony is being picked apart throughout the blogosphere. Did the President personally authorize the selected release of classified information meant to manipulate public opinion about Iraq? Or did Cheney lie? If Cheney corroborates Scooter Libby's story, he implicates the President. If he denies it, he calls his former Chief of Staff a liar.

Lots of questions, though I suspect we won't be receiving any answers from the White House. After all, the President doesn't comment on ongoing investigations (except, of course, when he does). "

The Washington Note wonders out loud - Does the President Plan to Fire Himself?

Here’s Pete Yost’s take in the AP

The Jurist has a small bit and

American Journalism Review keeps The Confidentiality Crisis subject alive with this oh so pertinent bit:

He also touched on the question of whether bloggers should be covered by shield laws that guard journalists from revealing confidential sources.

All I can say right now is Oh. My. God. I will have a slew of links up later today. There are so many contradictions to list about Bush being King Leak in the Plame debacle my little brain needs to cut through the maze.
Come back after 9 p.m. PST.
I will leave you with this one from The Smoking Gun.

A reader points out that blowing Iran intel makes it easier to start a war there:

Perhaps outing plame was a pre-meditated two-fer. It's hard to instigate war against solid intelligence, but much easier to do it based on sketchy intelligence. In compromising Plame, they broke the whole Iran nukes intel machine. Now they can make stuff up (as they are doing), justify a strike and then blame the CIA for incompetance later. Cheney is not stupid, but he doesn't mind the label. I wouldn't either if my assets were growing in 10x increments.

Posted by: Bat Guano | April 6, 2006 12:24 PM

David Glenn crafts a perceptive analysis of veteran intel reporter Walter Pincus in Columbia Journalism Review. It's aptly titled The Optimist. The theme throughout is journalists and sources.

"Pincus scoffs at the idea of turning over his Wilson notes, which, he says, could not possibly include anything relevant to the perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges facing I. Lewis Libby. ... ...
But during precisely the same conversations, alongside the avuncular growls, there are moments when Pincus’s eyes light up and he launches into a soliloquy about some interesting new thing he has learned. He attended Georgetown Law School part-time beginning in 1995 and graduated in 2001, at the age of sixty-eight. While there, he says, he picked up new perspectives on the history and structure of the reporter-source privilege..."

On a different but earth shattering and loud note -- from Steve Clemons at The Washington Note: On Iran, Intelligence-Blind American War Planners Should Consult with the Better-Informed Israelis

Add to this the Valerie Plame affair -- in which it has been reported that she too was working to gain intelligence on Iran's nuclear program. Of course, that operation has been spiked.
And does anyone remember that it was Ahmed Chalabi's team who informed Iran that the U.S. had broken its codes. It was the Iraqi National Congress's intel chief who turned out to be an Iranian spy. Chalabi's operation worked out of Douglas Feith's legal office before Feith moved into DoD. And Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress's lawyer was former CIA Director R. James Woolsey.
Yes, those putting war plans together for Iran think carefully. We have botched so much already; don't repeat errors.
And in this case, TALK TO THE ISRAELIS -- the ones responsible for national security there. I found their sensibilities on Iran to be remarkably well informed, nuanced, confident, and sensible.

it seems that while U.S. hawks are worried about a nuclear Iran, Israeli hawks are more worried about the consequences of a deranged U.S. attack on Iran.

Meanwhile, Talkleft continues investigating LIbby's blame State campaign --'Predicting Scooter Libby's Next Move'

Mark Kleiman condemns Joe Wilson for gay-baiting, and for saying he wants to punch Zalmay Khalilzad in the face, in a speech Wilson recently made at Florida State University. As Kleiman points out, Wilson's flaws should have no bearing on moral or legal judgments about the exposure of Valerie Plame's identity.

This just in...(hat tip Mark Kleiman)
Talkleft on jason Leopold's claim that 'Fitzgerald Knew Identity of Leaker From Start'.

"Jason Leopold breaks more news in the Valerie Plame investigation, confirming John Hannah cooperated early with Fitz and rolled on Libby and Rove. He also writes that Fitz is close to presenting an Indictment to the grand jury for Karl Rove."

"...In the interest of fairness, any person identified in this story who believes he has been portrayed unfairly or that the information about him is untrue will have the opportunity to respond in this space."

By the way, I'm back.
Media Matters expresses its anger over the lack of reporting on Iraqi prewar intel as doesAmerican Politics Journal "National Journal's Murray Waas, who is proving to be one of the nation's most important investigative journalists, published what may be the best comprehensive article on why counterproliferation NOC Valerie Plame's CIA cover was blown by the White House: as the 'Baggers wrote, "Karl Rove knew Bush had repeated bogus claims about Iraq, despite having briefings on the subjects, and was very nervous in the summer of 2003 that 'Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration.'" Blogs covered it. Major news organizations ignored the story. Pathetic."
Hey, just grab onto anybody as your ship sinks. Why not blame State -- hey, at least it's not up the chain at the glistening castle in the sky...CIA leak figure Armitage joins ConocoPhillips board, Reuters ..."The court filing suggests Libby's team may try to pin blame on the State Department for the leak of Plame's identity to the public after her husband. U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, criticized the Bush administration's Iraq policy."
While the coup crew is at it may as well try to shoot the messenger -- too bad the only honest guy in the room is now the focus of Libby's propaganda slam...Libby Says Prosecutor Trying to Keep Post "Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is narrowing the description of his powers in an effort to counter calls for dismissal of the criminal case he brought against Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, defense lawyers said Friday...." I really don't hold much hope for this investigation if they manage to purge it of Fitz. We'll see...

Libby Defense May Highlight Infighting, by Pete Yost, Associated Press, March 18, 2006

Finally we get some more news about the Plame issue. Libby will have a new defense strategy that the administration most certainly isn't going to like: "There was so much other recrimination going on that I coudn't possbily have remembered something so comparatively insignificant as outing a NOC."

New legal documents raise the potential that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's trial could turn into a political embarrassment for the Bush administration by focusing on whether the White House manipulated intelligence to justify the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

In a court filing late Friday night, Libby's legal team said that in June and July 2003, the status of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame was at most a peripheral issue to "the finger-pointing that went on within the executive branch about who was to blame" for the failure to find weapons of mass destruction.

"If the jury learns this background information" about finger-pointing, "and also understands Mr. Libby's additional focus on urgent national security matters, the jury will more easily appreciate how Mr. Libby may have forgotten or misremembered ... snippets of conversation" about Plame's status, the defense lawyers said.

Obviously, Scooter is not taking this lying down, and he will not be the sacrificial lamb for whatever administration higher-ups authorized this.

Further reading: Frontpage poster SusanG at Daily Kos comments on this issue.

Vanity Fair's Judy Miller Rehab: Blame the Bloggers, by Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post, March 13, 2006

Arianna Huffington attacks Marie Brenner's Vanity Fair article on the Plame case, calling the article an unconvincing apologia for Brenner's friend Judy Miller. Huffington complains that Brenner is too biased to write about Miller objectively, doesn't disclose the friendship until late in the article, leaves out many important facts from the Judy Miller story, and that

Brenner's central thesis is wrong. Her overarching premise is that that Judy Miller went to jail for a noble cause -- the ability of reporters to protect confidential sources -- but the public and the press (led by those nasty bloggers) failed her and now it's open season on the free press.

"Traditionally," she writes, "there have been two generally recognized exceptions to journalistic privilege: matters of life and death and imminent actual threat to national security." But there is a third exception that Brenner conveniently leaves out, an exception spelled out in the ethical guidelines of the New York Times: "We do not grant anonymity to people who use it as cover for a personal or partisan attack." This was unequivocally the case with Plamegate. And, as the Times' ethical guidelines make clear, there is a world of difference between sources using confidentiality to blow the whistle on government or corporate misconduct, and sources using it to promote a war -- or to smear a critic of that war.

Doesn't the Plame leak arguably fall into the first two categories as well, at least if the second category is interpreted broadly? How do we know the leak didn't harm national security? And it may well have been a matter of life and death--for Plame's sources on WMD proliferation.

WASH POST's Ben Bradlee Claims Plame Leaker Was Richard Armitage, Drudge Report, March 13, 2006

THE WASHINGTON POST's famous Watergate editor Ben Bradlee claims that it was former State Department Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage who was the individual who leaked the identity of CIA official Valerie Plame.

In the latest issue of VANITY FAIR: "Woodward was in a tricky position. People close to him believe that he had learned about Plame from his friend Richard Armitage, Colin Powell's former deputy, who has been known to be critical of the administration and who has a blunt way of speaking. 'That Armitage is the likely source is a fair assumption,' former WASHINGTON POST editor Ben Bradlee said."

'I had heard about an e-mail that was sent that had a lot of unprintable language in it.'"

Via Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft, who comments:

This makes eminent sense to me as Fitz has implied Woodward's source was an innocent who would not be charged, hence, his refusal to name him in pleadings in the Libby case.

UPDATE: Tom Maguire also comments on this development.

Judy, Judy, Judy by Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake
"I was told last year that Vanity Fair was eagerly courting Judy Miller to write an article for them about her Traitorgate odyssey. According to today's Editor and Publisher, it doesn't seem they were able to get her and instead had to settle for her friend and apologist Marie Brenner (who also helped organize Judy's farewell dinner before she was shipped off to eagerly embrace her martyrdom)."

Preview of 'Vanity Fair' Article on Plamegate: Too Much of Nothing? by Greg Mitchell, March 11, 2006
"NEW YORK A massive Vanity Affair review of the Plame/CIA case coming to newsstands on Tuesday is notable for the absence of major revelations. The article, “Lies and Consequences,” covers all or parts of 17 pages but the money quote is merely a joke, from the normally bland Bob Woodward. He quips that while insiders argue the fine points of special counsel Patrick J. Fitzpatrick’s probe, those in the rest of the country “think Fitzgerald is the author of ‘The Great Gatsby.’" "

Market Predicts Libby In Orange Jumpsuit, by Justin Rood, TPM Muckraker, March 8, 2006

"...online traders are betting in favor of the former White House aide receiving a guilty verdict.

Futures contracts on a guilty verdict for Libby have soared to 57 percent in recent days on the web-based trading site intrade.com. The higher the figure, the more 'certain' the market is of an event coming to pass."

"What the Hell has Happened to the News Media" by Daniel McKivergan, Worldwide Standard, March 7, 2006
"The March/April 2006 Columbia Journalism Review has a revealing profile of Walter Pincus, the Washington Post's leading national security correspondent."
The piece is not online, but McKivergan presents some excerpts. Pincus mentions his friendship with Hans Blix and his transition from WMD believer to skeptic just before the Iraq invasion. Here's his take on Plamegate:

...Pincus believes that the Bush administration acted obnoxiously when it leaked Valerie Plame's identity, but he has never been convinced by the argument that the leaks violated the law. "I don't think it was a crime," he says. "I think it got turned into a crime by the press, by Joe" -- Wilson -- "by the Democrats. The New York Times kept running editorials saying that it's got to be investigated -- never thinking that it was going to run around and bit them." The entire Plame investigation, he says, has been a distraction from a more fundamental conversation about how the White House handled evidence before the war.

The investigation has been a distraction? I don't get it. In some trivial sense, any given political issue is a "distraction" from every other issue, because time spent discussing X could be spent discussing Y. But has Fitzgerald's investigation done more to distract people from the administration's manipulation of intelligence on Iraq, or to draw attention to that manipulation, since the desire to cover it up it is what motivated the administration to leak Plame's name? And as important as questions about prewar intelligence misuse are, the exposure of a CIA agent for political purposes is a rather important issue in its own right, even if it might not have been technically illegal.

Libby Responds to Fitzgerald's CIA Filing by Jeralyn Merritt, TalkLeft, March 8, 2006

Libby's lawyers have filed a response (pdf) to the CIA's affadavit. Merritt analyzes the argument and opines:

The thrust behind the pleading seems to be that Libby was distracted by hugely important national matters and couldn't be expected to remember his Plame conversations with reporters at the time he was questioned by FBI agents or the grand jury. Once, I might believe. But on four separate occasions? You'd also have to buy that Libby didn't prepare either for his two FBI interviews or his two grand jury appearances. I'm skeptical. Even if he hadn't lawyered up for the FBI interviews, he did so before his grand jury appearances and no lawyer lets his client go into a federal grand jury without prepping him, least of all a lawyer with a client as high-profile as Libby. And the media has consistently reported that Libby took copious notes.

It seems more likely to me that Libby intentionally misled investigators and the grand jury in an attempt to protect Cheney (see the timeline here), never dreaming that the reporters would be subpoenaed, and now in hindsight is trying to reconstruct not his memory but an alternative explanation for having lied.

CIA Opposes Libby Access to PDBs by Firedoglake, March 8, 2006 "The CIA filed a motion on Friday opposing Scooter Libby's request for access to the Presidential Daily Briefings (PDBs), citing substantial national security concerns at allowing any of the information contained therein become public. The motion was unsealed on Tuesday, according to the AP (via Forbes)..."

CIA Leak Path: Cheney, Libby, Woodward by Jason Leopold, Truthout.org, March 6, 2006 Opinion piece...

MSNBC reports that Scooter Libby has hired a leading expert on memory, Harvard professor Daniel Schacter, to help with his "I forgot" defense.:

Libby's lawyers hinted in court filings last week that memory loss will be [one of the?] "central themes" of Libby's defense. Libby's lawyers write: "...any misstatements he made during his FBI interviews or grand jury testimony were not intentional, but rather the result of confusion, mistake or faulty memory."

Libby's lawyers say that, during Libby's hectic days handling sensitive national-security matters, "it is understandable that he may have forgotten or misremembered relatively less significant events. Such relatively less important events include alleged snippets of conversations about Valerie Plame Wilson's employment status."

Slate's John Dickerson comments on the new website of Scooter Libby's legal defense fund. He finds it "remarkable" that Libby still has many friends in high places within the GOP. Dickerson discusses how the site, with its testimonials from Libby's friends and supporters, seems to preview Libby's possible defenses, from lauding Libby's character to playing up the limitations of his memory to attacking Patrick Fitzgerald.

To anyone out there reading this blog,
I have too much going on until the end of March to keep this site up to date. I think there will be some interesting bits coming down the pike. Nick and Dante work on this blog with me and they are probably way more able than I am so hopefully they will keep the page updated. If they don't have time, please know that I will be back at the beginning of April.
Best,
Susi

Fitzgerald discloses White House recently turned over 250 pages of emails in CIA leak inquiry by John Byrne, Raw Story, Feb. 24, 2006

Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald said in a court hearing Friday that the White House "recently located and turned over" 250 pages of emails from the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney, according to an article filed by the Associated Press Friday evening.

The AP article focused primarily on the fact that U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton told Vice President's former chief of staff I. Lewis Libby that he was not entitled to know the name of the individual who "outed" CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson.

The AP had three articles about the Plame case today. The first one by Locy via Forbes
reports

that Libby wants Fitzgerald fired because Comey didn't have the authority to hire… … because Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was not appointed by the president with the consent of the Senate.

The defense attorneys also said Fitzgerald's appointment violates federal law because his investigation was not supervised by the attorney general. They said only Congress can approve such an arrangement.

Libby's lawyers warned U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton that he may need to require the Justice Department to turn over records - including a secret letter from Comey to Fitzgerald - to determine whether the special counsel's appointment is legal.

Meanwhile, the very busy AP reports via The Southern Standard, that Tennessee's Senator is preparing for the worst:
Thompson joins effort to fund defense of Cheney's former aide

Actor and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson has signed up to help raise at least $5 million for the legal defense of …"Scooter" …

Then on the strikes for and against, Locy reports via Salon - Identity of Official to Be Kept From Libby

Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, charged with perjury in the CIA leak case, cannot be told the identity of another government official who is said to have divulged a CIA operative's identity to reporters, a federal judge ruled Friday.

At the same time, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said Libby could have copies of notes he took during an 11-month period in 2003 and 2004 while serving as chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

The judge also set the stage for a showdown in late April over the defense's plans to subpoena reporters and news organizations for notes and other documents in the leak of Valerie Plame's identity.... ...

The judge put off deciding whether Libby can have access to highly classified presidential daily briefs, ... ...

Walton said he is concerned that Libby's request could "sabotage" the case because President Bush probably will invoke executive privilege and refuse to turn over the classified reports.

"The vice president -- his boss -- said these are the family jewels," the judge said,

On the Libby’s such a busy man to bother swatting at a simple fly like Plame/Wilson defense, Salon’s Tim Grieve provides a very useful timeline as to just how important they were to Scooter at the time. Talkleft provides links to all of the flurry legal activities –the order, the response, and this letter. Thanks so much for sharing this valuable research. In this same post Talkleft also discusses the defense memory argument further:

One thing I noted in a brief review of the Libby's pleadings on the document issue is the continued emphasis on Libby's faulty memory. Team Libby says it has spent months researching the principles of memory. It sounds like there could be a battle royale at trial between psychological memory experts discussing the three phases of memory -- the acquisition stage, the storage phase and the retrieval phase. I'm looking forward to this, having studied it extensively with two of the nation's leading experts, Elizabeth Loftus and Gary Wells, as it relates to eyewitness identification.

Firedoglake .explains in unlegal legalease why she thinks Libby’s motion is utter BS and she cites the National Review Online Corner’s cogent argument based on experience. Byron York hashes it out with McCarthy as well. Firedoglake also points to the WaPo which gives another legal perspective:

"I think it's a nice try, but I don't give it much chance of success," said Scott Fredericksen, an associate independent counsel during the Reagan administration who helped investigate scandals at the Department of Housing and Urban Development

Experts said the Libby defense claim is similar to a challenge the Supreme Court rejected by a vote of 7-1 in 1988. In that case, Morrison v. Olson , the Justice Department sought to quash subpoenas of its officials by an independent counsel. They argued that the law that allowed the appointment of independent counsels violated the president's authority under the Constitution and gave such independent investigators inappropriately broad powers.
I've said this previously, but it is worth repeating: prosecutors and law enforcement investigators get incredibly annoyed with people who lie to them or otherwise obstruct their case -- precisely because the lying and obstruction is designed to derail a criminal investigation and thwart justice. We are a nation of laws, and no one should be exempt from accountability for breaking them. Period. Justice is blind for a reason -- and trying to cheat her is conduct for which one should pay a penalty.

I’m sure there is more. Pressing engagements press on me right now…

Posted by Suzanne Levi-Sanchez at 06:17 PM | Permalink

It's Libby's turn to defend and the poor guy says he just can't get a fair trial if his position as secret keeper means he can't share his secrets. Pete Yost reports about it for the AP
Libby's Lawyers Deny 'Greymail' Claims

The government's `greymail' accusation is not only false, but insulting," said Libby's lawyers, who assert that they are entitled to the classified material so that their client can get a fair trial.

One point they emphasize - the defense really does want to learn what other reporters told Fitzgerald, whether it involved Libby or not. Frankly, I don't see how a judge can dispute its relevance...

NSC, Cheney Aides Conspired to Out CIA Operative by Jason Leopold, Truthout, February 20, 2006
"The sources said it was during this time that Libby, Hadley, Joseph, Hannah and Rove plotted to silence Wilson by leaking his wife's name to a specific group of reporters, saying that she chose him for the fact-finding mission to Niger and as a result his investigation was highly suspect. It's unclear what role, if any, Cheney played, but the sources said Fitzgerald is trying to determine if the vice president was involved."
Via Swopa of needlenose.com, who has commentary on the article: "Jason Leopold is either steadily breaking open the story of who outed Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA officer, or he's just plain making stuff up; I'm not sure which....How would Leopold's supposed State Dept./CIA sources know all this?..."

As a rather gossipy aside -- has anybody heard about the female Ambassador who was present at the shooting? Has anyone else heard that the reason for the delay was that she was Cheney's girl and needed to be removed? Could be idle gossip but...
I am taking the rest of the day off. I apologize for two earlier posts that didn't work and/or were inappropriate...

Libby's Bid for Classified Documents Opposed Associated Press by way of Washington Post, February 18, 2006 More on Scooter's justice evasion...

Intelligence, Policy,and the War in Iraq By Paul R. Pillar, Foreign Affairs, Council on Foreign Relations, March/April Issue, 2006 This one is worth a read.
"...During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community's former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the community's expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case...." Hat tip: Tom Maguire

Maureen Dowd - Irretrievably Inaccurate by Tom Maguire, Justoneminute, February 18, 2006 "...On the off-chance that anyone still reads Maureen Dowd, let me quickly praise her latest coinage - Cheney and Libby are now "Shooter and Scooter"...."

Evidence Dick Didn't Declassify the NIE by Emptywheel, The Next Hurrah, February 17, 2006
"And I'm fairly certain the answer to that question is no. Why am I certain that Dick didn't declassify the NIE? Simple. Because 10 days after Libby shared pieces of the NIE with Judy, the NIE was declassified...."
Emptywheel cites this Truthout.org article

Prosecutor Says Libby Seeks to Thwart Criminal Case By Neil A. Lewis, The New York Times, February 18, 2006
"A federal prosecutor has said I. Lewis Libby Jr., former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, is trying to sabotage the criminal case against him by insisting through his lawyers that he be given sensitive government documents for his defense...."

Of Greymail, CIPA, Scooter and Fitz by Reddhedd, Firedoglake, February 18, 2006
..."It's a high stakes gamble on all sides, but I would argue that the case law makes it clear that if the documents and evidence requested are neither "material" nor "relevant" to the charges in the indictment, nor are exculpatory (shorthand: make Libby look not so guilty), then the defendant is not entitled to the discovery...."

Firedoglake's Reddhedd links to the Department of Justice's 2054 Synopsis of Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) Reddhedd also links to analysis of this issue by Frederic. F. Manget, the Deputy General Counsel, Central Intelligence Agency
Another System of Oversight
Intelligence and the Rise of Judicial Intervention

More Comments on Libby's 'strategy' by Think and Ask, February 17, 2006
"...It sounds like Lewis Scooter Libby had an idea too...His new testimony reveals that he was authorized to disclose "sensitive information;" ... ... Libby was indicted on five counts of perjury, obstruction, and lying to the FBI about how he discovered Plame's identity..."

Update 1: Judge Weighs Libby's Request for Documents By Tony Locy, Associated Press, in Forbes Magazine, February 17, 2006
Just another way to obstruct justice -- legally. Salon has more below...

Fitzgerald: Libby Lawyers Are "Graymailing" The Government by Tim Grieve, War Room, Salon.com, February 17, 2006 At least Fitzgerald is clear about why he indicted Libby.

Fish Or Cut Bait by Reddhedd, Firedoglake, February 17, 2006
"...Never play poker with Fitz. That's all I'm saying."

From Hunter To Hunted by Joan Vennochi, Globe Columnist, Boston Globe, February 16, 2006
"Cheney, the hunter, is now Cheney, the hunted. The media have him in their sights, with fresh ammunition thanks to the shots he accidentally fired at Whittington. As a political lame duck, he can dodge the press as he sees fit. But what about the special prosecutor? Fitzgerald's investigation is not as easily sidestepped."

Analysis of Executive Order 13292 By Public Citizen, Bushsecrecy.org, February 16, 2006
Changes in Classification Policy Imposed By the Bush Administration Executive Order

Selective Prosecution by Dean Lawrence R. Velvel, Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, Lee Rockwell.com,February 16, 2006
"...One is not speaking of selective prosecution of Libby, who is not being prosecuted for disclosing classified information but for lying to the grand jury. One is speaking, rather, of those persons whom Bush has ordered found..."