White House Conspiracy

Evidence Suggests White House Conspiracy By Jason Leopold

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald stated in a court filing late Wednesday in the CIA leak case that his investigators have obtained evidence during the course of the two-year-old probe that proves "multiple" White House officials conspired to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a critic of the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence.

This is the first time the special counsel has acknowledged that White House officials are alleged to have engaged in a coordinated effort to undercut the former ambassador's credibility by disseminating classified intelligence information that would have contradicted Wilson's public statements.
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Furthermore, Libby's attorneys have argued that they are entitled to the evidence in order to prove Libby was not engaged in a "plot" to discredit Wilson. However, Fitzgerald says the evidence he has obtained proves there was a coordinated effort by White House officials to discredit Wilson.

Fitzgerald wrote in the filing, "There exist documents, some of which have been provided to defendant and there were conversations in which defendant participated, that reveal a strong desire by many, including multiple people in the White House, to repudiate Mr. Wilson before and after July 14, 2003."
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A footnote in the court filing states that Hadley was involved in conversations and meetings at Cheney's office in which White House officials discussed how to respond to Wilson's statement that the administration used bogus intelligence to make a case for war.

Hadley suggested declassifying a portion of the highly sensitive National Intelligence Estimate and leaking it to reporters as a way of responding to Wilson's statements.

"The government is producing to defendant Mr. Hadley's notes of meetings and conversations in which both defendant and Mr. Hadley participated, and in which the potential declassification of the NIE was discussed," the court filing says.
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McClellan's public statement and the fact that President Bush vowed to fire anyone in his office involved in the leak were motivating factors that led Libby to lie during an interview with FBI investigators in November 2003, Fitzgerald states in the court filing: "Thus, as defendant approached his first FBI interview he knew that the White House had publicly staked its credibility on there being no White House involvement in the leaking of information about Ms. Wilson and that, at defendant's specific request through the Vice President, the White House had publicly proclaimed that defendant was 'not involved in this.'"