Bush Authorized Plame Leak
Jonny_Paycheck
17,825 Posts
WASHINGTON, April 6 ??? President Bush authorized Vice President Dick Cheney in July 2003 to permit Mr. Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., to leak to a reporter key portions of a classified prewar intelligence estimate on Iraq, according to Mr. Libby's grand jury testimony disclosed in court papers filed late Wednesday.The court filing provided the first indication that Mr. Bush, who has long assailed leaks of classified information as a national security threat, played a direct role in the disclosure of the intelligence report on Iraq and was also involved in the swirl of events leading up to the disclosure of the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer.The grand jury testimony by Mr. Libby, who has been charged with perjury and obstruction in the C.I.A. leak case, is said by prosecutors to indicate that Mr. Cheney obtained explicit approval from Mr. Bush to permit Mr. Libby to divulge portions of a National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons.The disclosure prompted Democrats to demand that the White House be forthcoming about Mr. Bush's role. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, released a statement saying: "In light of today's shocking revelation, President Bush must fully disclose his participation in the selective leaking of classified information. The American people must know the truth."The court filing, which was first reported this morning on the New York Sun Web site, said that Mr. Libby testified that the "Vice President advised defendant that the President had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the N.I.E." The prosecutors said that Mr. Libby testified that he recalled the circumstances "getting approval from the President through the Vice President to discuss material that would be classified but for that approval ??? were unique in his recollection."The leak was intended, the court papers suggested, as a rebuttal to the Op-Ed article published in The New York Times on July 6, by Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador, who wrote that he had traveled to Africa in 2002 after Mr. Cheney had raised questions about possible nuclear purchases. Mr. Wilson wrote that he concluded it was "highly doubtful" that Iraq had sought to purchase nuclear fuel from Niger.At Mr. Cheney's office, the Op-Ed article was viewed "as a direct attack on credibility of the Vice President (and the President) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq," according to the court papers.The presidential authorization was provided, the court papers said, in advance of a meeting on July 8, 2003 between Mr. Libby and Judith Miller, then a reporter for the New York Times. Mr. Libby brought a brief abstract of the N.I.E.'s key judgments to the meeting with Ms. Miller in the lobby of the St. Regis Hotel about two blocks from the White House.Mr. Libby testified, the prosecutors said, that he was "specifically authorized in advance of the meeting to disclose the key judgments of the classified N.I.E. to Miller on that occasion because it was thought that the N.I.E. was 'pretty definitive' against what Ambassador Wilson had said and that the Vice President thought that it was 'very important' for the key judgments of the N.I.E. to come out."The court filing said that Mr. Libby said "he understood that that was to tell Ms. Miller, among other things, that "a key judgment of the N.I.E. held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium." Mr. Libby, the prosecutors, said, testified that the meeting with Ms. Miller was the "only time he recalled in his government experience when he disclosed a document to a reporter that was effectively declassified by virtue of the President's authorization that it be disclosed."Mr. Libby testified that he first told Mr. Cheney that he could not have such a conversation with Ms. Miller because the intelligence estimate on Iraq was classified. Mr. Libby testified that Mr. Cheney later told him that Mr. Bush had authorized the release of "relevant portions."In addition, Mr. Libby told the grand jury that he also spoke with David Addington, then a lawyer for Mr. Cheney whom Mr. Libby regarded as an expert on national security law. "Mr. Addington opined that Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to declassification of the document."Mr. Libby testified that at the meeting he did not discuss Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, the C.I.A. officer at the center of the leak inquiry, because "he had forgotten by that time that he learned about Ms. Wilson's C.I.A. employment a month earlier from the Vice President."Ms. Miller in her Oct. 16, 2005, account of the meeting said that her notes showed that the two had discussed Mr. Wilson's wife, who, according to her notes, worked in a unit of the C.I.A. that is engaged in the intelligence assessments of unconventional weapons.Ms. Miller said that Mr. Libby discussed a chronology of what she said he described as "credible evidence" of Iraq's efforts to acquire uranium. She made no reference to whether Mr. Libby referred to any material as derived from the intelligence estimate, but said that he alluded to two reports, one in 1999 and another in 2002, that seemed to support the contention that Iraq was interested in obtain uranium.
Comments
I've decided to limit myself to posting one political story a day. It was between this and the New policy of making 125 nuclear bombs a year.
I chose the latter
Yup
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Too bad reporters didn't bother doing their jobs earlier.
When Fitzgerald released the indictment of Libby it was huge news. The local paper here, the S.F. Chronicle committed almost its entire front page and had several full pages inside with transcripts, timelines etc. It did get pretty good coverage because it was such a high level member of the administration. Since then the two sides have been arguing over secret documents in petitions to the judge so there hasn't been anything to really report until this came out.
I mean that reporters should have been prying a bit deeper into "who, what where and how" when Bush was flat lying about it when the Valerie Plame case first came to light.
They should've been digging deeper during the whole fucking run up to the war instead repeating everything the administration said.
the days of Woodward and Bernstein are waaaay behind us.
Looking at the CNN site now this story is almost a blip.
I hope a whitegirl goes missing soon so they'll finally be something worth reporting on
you can stop reading right about there. As the previous president illustrated, such testimony means nothing when the witness has no credibility.
I think the scarriest thing about supporters of this president is that they believe him when he says he is infallible (and by the way, his statement in the '04 election that he hasn't made any mistakes was probably the most UNCHRISTIAN thing I've ever heard). I don't know why Libby has no credibility; he seemed to have enough cred to work his way into the highest levels of government, and earn the trust of the Vice-President and President. Now that he's saying things that might damage your holy, exalted ruler, it is time to drag him through the mud like everyone else who DARES disagree with his highness.
The failure of Republicans to hold their leader responsible for his actions, and their blind support and efforts to STAY ON MESSAGE, no matter the cost, and the most frightening thing about the Bush Administration and its supports. Including you, Saba.
Siezing on every mistep, either real or imagined[/b], and trying to blow it up into some kind of 21st century Watergate, is certainly easier than coming up with any coherent policy, about anything, that's for sure. And the strategy certainly worked wonders for Mr. Kerry (who?).
While that could indeed prove to be the case(or not...Mr Libby was plenty credible enough to the administration while he worked in it, but I digress), I still can't wait to hear the denials from the horse's mouth. Which we as Americans and taxpayers deserve, to at least hear Mr Bush explicitly deny that he or Cheney had ANY involment in this mess. But we won't because they just want to ignore the mess.
This has nothing to do with John Kerry. This has everything to do with a SECURITY, WAR TIME President, who likes to throw out a lot of guns and butter to the people, and then shits the bed when it comes to anything as nuanced as actually fighting a war. This is not an imaginary issue; this is a man who campaigns and prides himself on being the best man for the security of our nation, who is then willing to compromise the safety of one of our own intelligence agents (who we need NOW MORE THAN EVER, in this POST 9/11 world) for something as petty as a beef with a NEWS-FUCKING-Paper. And even if he isn't the one who did that, he tacitly complied by giving his most trusted advisors the permission to do what they saw fit.
That is irresponsiblity of the highest order. And your failure to realize that, and to diminish the importance of that is as ignorant and unimpressive as the act itself.
Hmm, Sabada talking about "coherent policy"???
- Joe Wilson, a foreign dipolomat for the US, wrote an op-ed piece in the nyt after traveling to Africa and said that Bush lied and there was no evidence Iraq tried to buy enriched uranium from Niger.
- the white house flipped out because Wilson stated in the article that the CIA paid for his trip, which established his credibility.
- Libby claims that to rebut this article, Bush authorized him to leak classified information to the press which would help support Bush's claim that it was reasonable to believe Iraq was trying to purchase uranium to make wmds.
- Libby also says that Cheney revealed to him the identity of Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame. Plame was a CIA agent. This is significant because if the white house could leak this information, then people might be skeptical of Wilson's claims, considering that he established credibility by saying that "the CIA" funded his trip. If his wife sent him there....
- This article does NOT say that Bush told Libby to leak the info identifying Plame as a CIA agent...which is significant because "outing a CIA agent" is a federal crime since legislation was passed after Watergate.
- However, the fact that Bush leaked classified info at all, if LIbby is telling the truth, is extremely signficant when you look at his motives - trying to cover his own ass.
Here is Wilson's nyt op-ed piece : http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0706-02.htm
Nice speach, but the whole idea that outing an agent who's husband is telling lies, and I don't think anyone has been as thoroughly debunked as Joe Wilson; an agent who doesn't even satisfy the requirements of the statute that was supposedly broken, is an imaginary issue.
I'm not a policy maker, it is not my job to come up with a coherent policy. I am a taxpayer, a voter, and I know when I'm getting fucked. It is my job to keep my asshole a one-way street when it comes to you and your ilk.
Since Sabadabadaba is too self-involved to actually know or learn anything about the matter at hand he instead brings in completely irrelevant players such as Kerry and Clinton. Persuasive arguing at it's finest.
Sorry Sabada, but Wilson hasn't beend debunked.
He did go to Niger and interviewed various government officials that said that Iraq had not tried to buy uranium. He did come across one business transaction between Iraq and Niger that did bring up questions. When the CIA reviewed his report they basically agreed with him, but said they needed to look into the one business transaction. His overall findings turned out to be true, Iraq did not try to buy uranium from Niger.
The one point of controversy was over whether Cheney knew about his findings or not. It was Cheney who when briefed about a possible Niger deal told the CIA to look into it. That was what led to Wilson being sent there. When Wilson returned, he assumed that Cheney had been briefed about his findings so when Bush claimed that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa in his speech, Wilson thought that Cheney must know this was untrue. He leaked this to reporters and then went public. Cheney denied it, and the Senate Intelligence Report on Pre-War Intelligence claimed that Wilson was actually wrong, Wilson's report had not gone up the chain of command to Cheney's office.
Fitzgerald's investigation however found that Cheney eventually found out about Wilson's report and when Wilson started criticizing the administration over this Niger claim, it was Cheney's office through Libby who worked to discredit him through leaks to the media about his wife being a CIA agent and sending him there. I don't remember off the top of my head whether Cheney immediately heard about Wilson's report after he came back or until Wilson started talking to the press though. I'd have to look that up.
You have to admit it. You're old enough to remember something like Cuomo's speech at the 80 convention (was it?), back then the dems had ideas. Or people like Tip O'Neil that had real credibility and common sense. I was a dem for a long time, an active one, but it seems like if they don't pander to the reactionary left they can't get their message out any more. It seems like each week they have a new slogan or some new outrageous, unacceptable, unchristian, reckless, incident of incompetence to howl about that you just tune it out. They don't recognize anything that might be positive, but I'm yet to hear of any coherent alternative. One or two voices of reason don't mean anything when you cant get the weight of the entire party behind you.
The Bush administration repeatedly tried to insert this Niger claim into speeches but was told by the intelligence community NOT to use it because they didn't think it was true. Finally the White House changed to the language to British intelligence found evidence of the deal, and dropped Niger and replaced it with Africa, to include in Bush's state of the Union Speech.
The President's own Foreign Intelligence Board reviewed this and found that the administration purposely did this because they were so desperate to prove that Iraq was doing wrong that they ignored the U.S. intelligence community.
By the time they started attacking Wilson for his talking to the press, the claim was in fact dead and proven untrue. The White House was just trying to get some political payback for Wilson questioning them.
So it's actually the Bush Administration that has been discredited in this situation.
Nobody's credibility is lower than the President's, so this will quickly become a race to the bottom of who-lied-worst-when. And Joe Wilson is not the posterboy for the model diplomat.
All that aside, it does NOTHING to excuse the potential danger of this situation. Lookinig at this in the abstract, if a CIA agent is outed, the results could be disasterous. What if they had information on the next great TERRORIST ATTACK, and this sort of irresponsibility got them killed. G.W. Bush would then be responsible for ANOTHER terrorist attack, since he did a great job of ignoring all the signs about the first one (along with Clinton, so just keep that out of this).
Trying to diminish this by saying Plame was at a desk, or Joe Wilson lied is spin to cover up an act that is both dangerous and hypocritical. Why not hold someone, even the President, accountable for that? He isn't Jesus. He DOES fuck up...quite frequently, despite his better judgement.
Sabada I've rarely heard you talk about ANYTHING coherent when it comes to politics.
But you are right about one thing, the Democrats are incoherent in making any kind of unified ideas about much these days. But I'm not a Democrat so...
Dog, where are you coming from?
Assuming Libby is telling the truth, we now know that Bush was playing damage control by voluntarily leaking classified information. If you think this is kosher please show me the law that says a President has the right to de-classify.
Next, considering that it is a known fact that Iraq was NOT trying to buy uranium from Africa, why are you quibbling over whether Plame was the type of CIA agent the law was technically covering? THe fact is that the white house admitted that their info was FALSE. Wilson debunked? C'mon man, go run to the Rush Limbaugh website and gather all the technicalities that WIlson missed. The bottom line is that even if the white house had some info linking Iraq to uranium in AFrica....it was fucking false! However, the truth is that Bush didn't want to do his homework, he was willing to take any bullshit information on Iraq he could get. You know how I know this....because there is evidence which shows Bush wanted to go to war with Iraq since the day he stepped in the white house!