"Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff has testified that President Bush authorized him to disclose the contents of a highly classified intelligence assessment to the media to defend the Bush administration's decision to go to war with Iraq, according to papers filed in federal court on Wednesday by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case.* reddhedd:
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby testified to a federal grand jury that he had received "approval from the President through the Vice President" to divulge portions of a National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein's purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to the court papers. Libby was said to have testified that such presidential authorization to disclose classified information was "unique in his recollection," the court papers further said.
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."
"Which begs the question, what sort of follow-up permission may have been sought from President Bush when Libby’s first disclosure to Judy Miller of the selective release of parts of the NIE didn’t bear fruit in the attempt to discredit Wilson and undercut the Administration’s critics? Or was the permission to out Valerie Plame Wilson already an implicit part of the effort? How intimately involved in all of this was Dick Cheney?* eriposte:
[]
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?"
"Why is this so weird?
Well, because the key judgements of the NIE made no mention of the uranium from Africa claim at all! It was specifically agreed to at the IC coordination meeting on the NIE that the uranium claim should NOT be in the Key Judgments. So, releasing the Key Judgments would have actually made Wilson's case appear stronger!"
* thinkprogress: "In October, a source told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that President Bush was directly involved in the CIA leak scandal. It looks like Stephanopoulos’ source was right."
* wow - that's an interesting start to the day. CNNI even covered it a 'breaking news' - is it getting any TV coverage in the US?
* one interesting thing is that fitz has known this all along... let's hope he is really angry
more soon.
(thnx rimone)
9 comments:
one interesting thing is that fitz has known this all along... let's hope he is really angry
i'm so sick of writing/thinking/saying it, but please please please please PLEASE!
i'm not sick of the PLEASE PLEASE thing
as long as we are saying that then we at least have some hope
lukery, rimone:
Go see booman's thread on dKos here and let me know what you think.
Short Booman: Miller was a DoD agent/plant at NYT and had a security clearance to be given pre-war classified intel and write stories about a case for war. The preznit authorizing Scooter's leak is a smokescreen for the real truth: that the American people are a victim of a massive domestic propaganda op.
The question it leaves me with then, is Plamegate a smokescreen for this greater crime? Was Plame maybe outed just to give a face-saving method to prosecute those involved in this larger plot?
I tend to think no, that somehow Plame is related to the whole bogus WMD intel anyway. My more tin-foily theory is that she was onto this bogus intel story and knew that Miller was supposed to "find" WMD in her little sojurn in the desert, but she (Plame) helped run an op to interdict any import of WMDs from (Turkey? Iran?) maybe. Miller was then hounding Libby for info on why she never discovered the WMDs, and somehow they discovered Plame's network during their investigation.
bah...i think my head just exploded again. i'm confused but this comment really gets me going, if true:
'also classified: Judy's NYTimes severance deal which apparently enjoins the paper from reporting anything about Miller's role in taking this country to war. The New York Times could not report what's in this diary, for example. For that matter, the Times has still not retracted any of the (more than a dozen) editorials touting Miller as a first amendment martyr.'
rimone--
I don't know what to think anymore. Emptywheel seems to think Miller's just a useful tool, and very naive (and eager to please the Neocon masters in power). I trust her judgement a great deal. That's why I was finding Booman's assertions difficult to digest.
But Booman speaks with some sort of authority in his diaries about this subject (and about 9/11) that just scream to me "Trust me, I know more about this. I can't tell you how I know, but I know."
Plus, Booman, of all the liberal blogs, has been able to get both former CIA "official cover" agent and analyst Larry Johnson, as well as former head of DIA Near Eastern Bureau Col. Pat Lang to agree to frontpage on his blog. I think he, at the minimum has deep IC connections, and may have been former CIA or other IC himself.
And it really makes sense when he lays it all out. It would nicely explain how Judy was getting all that info on bogus pre-war intel back in Sept and October of 2002. Though I disagree with him that Libby was the one doing the sharing. I think if she truly was an "agent" she was getting her intel straight up from the analysts over at OSP.
viget - according to larisa, Plame was basically working only on iran - not turkey
Really? That seems strange to me. Because according to her bio, she can speak English, French and Greek fluently, but not Farsi (unless that's classifed, maybe).
That's why when it first came out that she was watching Turkey it made sense to me, given that she had a Greek background (maybe she was a liason with Greek intelligence). But I don't see how Greek is helpful in tracking WMD in Iran.
Also, since Sibel seemed to be most involved with US-Turkish relations, I assumed she came across Plame through those translations and Plame met Joe Wilson at an ATAC dinner, so it all seemed logical.
But if Larisa says she was working the Iran account, I believe her. I just don't know how all that fits in.
In truth, that makes "burning" her all the more egregious because we know that we have historically had a hard time getting good HUMINT from Iran, and it seems like now the whole network has been rolled up (it would be interesting if that was a consequence of outing Plame). I wouldn't be surprised if that's why the CIA is so pissed off about this case, in essence, buring Plame basically unraveled our whole Iranian network.
But of course, that fits right in with the neocons' plan, cause now they can stovepipe any intel they like, and the CIA will have no way to independently verify it. I guess they "learned" (if you want to call it that) from their Iraq mistakes.
viget - here is Larisa's article - read it very closely
i'll have some more in my interview
"(it would be interesting if that was a consequence of outing Plame)"
it would be interesting if that was THE INTENTION of outing Plame
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