Fleischer ultimately testified under a grant of immunity

* waas:

"Despite the saturation media coverage of the trial today, one disclosure overlooked so far has been that former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer took the Fifth Amendment when originally called before the federal grand jury hearing evidence in the CIA leak case.

Fleischer ultimately testified under a grant of immunity."

* it appears as though Grossman was the person at State who knew (and invited?) that Wilson would go public.

* CHS:

"One of the issues that became very clear as Wells' opening droned on today is that Vice President Cheney's office has been operating as a second National Security apparatus — if not the pre-eminent one, over and above what Condeleeza Rice had been running at the time — because of the high level national security decisions that were being made, pushed, and countermanded through what the Vice President was ordering Libby to disseminate to the media on his behalf.

We ended the day with the testimony of Marc Grossman, former number three man at the State Department. One of the more interesting tidbits to come out about Mr. Grossman is that, the night before his statement was taken by the FBI, he had a visit from Richard Armitage. Armitage told Grossman that he had been the person who initially leaked to Robert Novak regarding Valerie Wilson. This is a very odd occurence — Grossman characterized it on the stand as Armitage giving him a professional courtesy by telling him up front, himself, and then saying he could feel free to mention it to the FBI — which Grossman did the next day. I find it very odd indeed that a witness who had already been debriefed by the FBI, at the level that Armitage was, would feel as though it was acceptable to discuss his own debriefing with Federal agents with someone who was about to also be debriefed. Very odd indeed."

* jeff:

"Likewise, I believe, the implication of this development for Libby's prospects for a pardon has been misunderstood. Both Josh Marshall and Michael Isikoff (in an otherwise excellent article) think Libby's blame-Rove tactic means Libby is giving up on a presidential pardon. It strikes me that the opposite may be the case: putting distance between himself and the White House provides a little more political cover for Bush to issue a pardon should Libby be convicted."

?


* nyt:

"Prosecutors say Libby learned it days earlier from a stream of government officials. The first two witnesses in the case bolstered that argument. Marc Grossman, the former No. 3 official at the State Department, and Robert Grenier, the CIA's former top official on Iraq, said they both told Libby about Plame."

* wapo:

"Libby was so eager to learn the details of Wilson's trip that he had Grenier called out of a 4:15 p.m. meeting with then-CIA Director George Tenet for an update on what Grenier had learned in the previous three hours, Grenier said. He said he told Libby that, in addition to Cheney's office, the Departments of State and Defense also had been interested in the Africa mission.

Grenier said he told Libby that Wilson's wife, whose name he did not know, had worked in the CIA unit that arranged the trip."

* alterman:

"Well, now there's a hot topic that almost nobody in the West wants to touch with a 10-foot pole. The killing of a Turkish-Armenian journalist received little note in Western news sources. Definitely a Page 12 item in most papers. After all, Muslim Turkey is an ally, and we need to tread carefully when making accusations of a Muslim slaughter/genocide of a Christian minority, so that sort of thing sort of slides under the radar."