" Fitzgerald's office would not confirm that the prosecutor sent such a letter nor would his office confirm that Rove is truly free from the burden of a criminal indictment. But that has not stopped the media and even some naïve bloggers from taking Luskin at his word and printing news stories with sentences like "Fitzgerald said Rove won't be charged" when in fact Fitzgerald said no such thing.
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Hadley had avoided making public comments about the veracity of the Niger documents, going as far as ignoring a written request by IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei to share the intelligence with his agency so his inspectors could verify the claims. Hadley is said to have known the Niger documents were crude forgeries, but pushed the administration to cite them as evidence that Iraq was a nuclear threat, according to the State Department officials, who said they personally told Hadley in a written report that the documents were bogus.
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CIA and State Department officials said that a day after Wilson's March 8, 2003, CNN appearance, they attended a meeting at the Vice President's office with Cheney, Hadley and others who worked in the Office of the Vice President and it was there that a decision was made to discredit Wilson.
"The way I remember it," the CIA official said about that first meeting he attended in Cheney's office, "is that the vice president was obsessed with Wilson. He called him an 'asshole,' a son-of-a-bitch. He took his comments very personally. He wanted us to do everything in our power to destroy his reputation and he wanted to be kept up to date about the progress."
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"Cheney and Libby made it clear that Wilson had to be shut down," the CIA official said. "This wasn't just about protecting the credibility of the White House. For the vice president, going after Wilson was purely personal, in my opinion.""
Saturday, July 15, 2006
more leopold, wilson
* jason leopold :
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12 comments:
For all that virtually everyone's been lining up to lynch Leopold for the Rove indictment story, he slips one vital note into this story: the only public statement we have on a Rove non-indictment is Luskin's.
No, I'm not saying Rove has been indicted, but there's a curious lack of solid fact on the whole mess. The silence from the Fitzgerald camp is truly deafening.
It'll be very interesting to watch the Plame suit play out.
he sure is hanging pretty tightly onto that story.
i really really wish the plame suit would hurry up. we probably arent going to see a resolution (if any) till 2009 - let's hope they can rush through discovery
Don, it has been fascinating since day one of the Leopold dust-up that nobody appeared to notice what just leaped out at me at the time: Fitz's silence. That and the MSM's leap to conclusions that ignored the modifiers in the statement Luskin attributed to Fitz. It's nice to have company.
You're not the only one wishing for a fast track on this suit, Luke. However, before there is any discovery, we're probably going to be treated to motions to dismiss on any number of arguments, including I-can-do-anything-I-want-because-I-have-immunity to I-don't-have-to-tell-you-anything-because-we're-at-war-and-must-use-national-security-as-a-shield.
Light candles, cross fingers, and pray . . .
I'm thinking about two lawsuits that in a fair world would explode in the news media long about October 26th: Wilson vs. BFEE Creeps, and the one just filed by Mike Papantonio and Bobby Kennedy, Jr. going after the election machinery folks on fraud. MP3 Air America Interview from July 12 on the Mike Malloy Show.
BTW, I think I saw on FDL (or somewhere??) that the new website for the Wilsons Legal Support fund crashed today from an overabundance of visitors - apparently already a lot of donations. TWN also posted a blurb about the site and recommended sending any loose cash there. Steve pointed out that Scooter Libby is raking in financial support from the GOP big hitters for his legal defense fund, and in Steve's opinion, the Wilsons are the better choice. Y'all have probably already noticed that they are not doing this lawsuit for personal financial gain. Didn't you already post something about that part, Luke?
hiya lee
yeah - i posted that - any 'surplus' will go to orgs like sibel's (yay)
btw - haven't seen 'BFEE' around for ages - is that a bartcop term?
Cheney's reported vendetta against the Wilsons suggests to me something far deeper is going on than what was indicated in your post, Lukery. Cheney is portrayed there as rather irrationally obsessed with the Wilsons. I generally assume people are more rational than they might appear, and not so irrational.
The Wilsons by virtue of their unique positions in the government in diplomatic and covert CIA operations must have a great deal of knowledge about a lot of secret drugs/arms trafficking deals and relationships between people that can expose the profound corruption of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal as well as interfere with the pursuit of their semi-hidden agenda in the Middle East. I suspect there is far more going on between these legal rivals than meets the eye.
ewastud - yeah - totally agree.
wilson spent time in turkey as well, remember, which is central to the sibel story. i suspect that wilson knows where many of the skeletons are.
and totally agree that there's much more to this story than 'getwilson' - i've always said as much. they were desperately tracking wilson's move up to the time that his book came out. i suspect they had many sleepless nights wondering what he was gonna put in there.
also, remember that plame was, in part, tracking AQKhan's network. it wouldnt surprise me if members of the egadministration were also benefiting from that network. they certainly don't appear to be pushing very hard to getting access to AQKhan, and havent shown much displeasure at his exoneration.
Yup. BartCop uses BFEE and sometimes BCFEE. I don't remember where I picked them up.
Speaking of BartCop, check out Vol. 1000, scroll down about a third of the page and see a photo of a grandma wearing a blue jacket, red pants, and a "sandwich-board" style protest sign that says, "Don't Kill My Grandson for Oil."
I found her taking a break on her way with the rest of us - tens of thousands of peace marchers - in Seattle on February 15, 2003. The shot also has a wee bit of additional editorializing above her head that I didn't notice until I downloaded the photos. Heh.
You probably remember that was the day that brought out something like 15 million people all around the world trying to stop this madness. I believe raisinbrain called us a focus group.
yay, lee. great pic.
many tears from me that day, and many remembering it since.
('raisanbrain' is funny)
Thank you, sir.
Damned frustrating mess. Drives me nuts when I look at the photos from that day and see all the 100% accurate protest signs. We were right and couldn't get the right people to listen - or I guess I should say ENOUGH of the right people.
('Raisinbrain' is courtesy of Mike Malone on AAR)
"couldn't get the right people to listen"
yeah - cos the media coverage was appalling - and it was too late by then - 'everyone' had deciderated that invasion was 'go'
i did have one brief flurry of something that might have been called 'hope' when i watched this speech, also through many tears - i knew it wouldnt make the slightest bit of difference, yet at the same time it was so compelling that i KNEW it should have stopped the invasion.
(will post more pix of that day if yuo want to send em thru)
Re: Wilson/Cheney
With Wilson in Iraq ahead of Gulf '91, and Cheney as SecDef at the time, I'm finding it very difficult to believe they hadn't crossed paths prior to the Bush43 presidency.
From WikiPedia:
As a result, in 1990, he also became the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein (Wilson, 2003). When Saddam sent a note to Wilson (along with other embassy heads in Iraq) threatening to execute anyone sheltering foreigners in Iraq, Wilson publicly repudiated the dictator by appearing at a press conference wearing a homemade noose around his neck and saying "If the choice is to allow American citizens to be taken hostage or to be executed, I will bring my own fucking rope." Saddam offered a public apology for the diplomatic note.
OTOH, it could just be jealousy over being able to use the F-word effectively in public, backing down a dictator, and get a medal for it. Da man's got balls...
BTW, "BFEE" and "BCFEE"?
Good to hear from Leopold again.
At the risk of waking up WakeUp, I'll say again, that Luskin's word has never been sufficent for me to conclude that Rove was off any hooks, despite his little shit eating grin.
When I say I think the Court imposed limited immunity on Rove, only for the crime of leaking Plame's name, not general immunity, it is because Fitz has said nothing and the fact that Luskin 's announcement came on the same day as the last hearing in Libby's trial.
Now it appears that on the morning of June 12, Fitz appeared before Judge Hogan, presding over the Grand Jury, then sent Luskin the alleged letter, and then appeared before Judge Walton in the Libby trial in the afternoon.
Speaking purely as an average citizen here, I say there is a connection between Luskin's announcement and Rove's expected testimony in Libby's trial.
Haven't checked Fitz's site recently to see if it's updated.
Darth VEEP's extreme reaction to Wilson's opinion, doesn't surprise me. He must have applied his One Percent Doctrine to those Niger Forgeries and who knows how many other homemade fake dox he had up his sleeve, ready to roll out, to get us to go on Iran, Syria, Lebanon.
I think he wanted to put Plame and Co. out of business in Iran and send a shot across any the bowsof any future dissenters thinking of thinking aloud.
I'll go further and say that I think Darth VEEP was directly involved with procuring the Niger forgeries, with Dopey's consent.
According to Henry Waxman, Fred Fleitz was on loan to Cheney from John Bolton's office and that phone records show that Bolton was on the phone with Fleitz so frequently, they have reason to believe Bolton was actively involved in getting the infamous 16 words into the State Dept. Memo, and then, that Bolton mislead the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about being questioned in connection with a criminal investigation, namely Plame. I've always felt, after first reading about this Plame afair, that Bolton was the original leaker to Novak. Bolton was the first person to receive the forgeries in the State Dept., too and retaliation against those who disagree with him is his modus operendi.
Cheney and Bolton seem to be well matched in vitriol for this task. He certainly was rewarded with his recess appointment to represent the US at the UN.
Further, I disagree with prevailing opinion, that Rove and Libby are the big fish. They are simply employees, while Dopey, Darth, Abu Gonzales and even Revoltin Bolton, and Rummy, all have to take an oath of office, which gives them a greater trust responsiblility. Hence, if Fitz has to let Rove or Libby off any hooks, it's because there are bigger fish to fry.
This is not to say that I think it's inevitable that Fitz will prevail. Team Bush always has their fall back play of "I'm the Deciderator/Declassifyerator/ War Monger-In-Chieferator.
To the rest of us, Bush is the Prevaricator-In-Chief.
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