First Indictments in the CIA Leak Case

By Christine Gates

 This story is never ending… Lewis “Scooter” Libby resigned as VP Chief of Staff after a twenty-two month investigation were he was indicted on 1 count of obstruction of justice, 2 counts of giving false statements to a grand jury, and 2 counts of perjury on Friday, October 28, 2005.  (For those of you who are keeping track of such things, Clinton made 267 provably “erroneous” statements to a grand jury.  No indictments were filed.) 

 Libby was only indicted, but US Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s wording to the press was suspiciously strong and definitive as if he had just been convicted by a jury after a trail.  In the press conference after the indictments were announced, Fitzgerald did not use the typical legal verbiage like “alleged…” or “the government’s case will demonstrate the law as broken in this manner….”   Instead, he said -----

 After the indictments were handed down, a Washington reporter asked federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about any leaks from Libby.  Fitzgerald replied that Libby’s investigation was not about an outing of a Plame.  Then what was the crime being investigated? 

 This is then likened to someone giving you a test on all the things you did and said at work for the last five years.  Libby turned over all notes and fully cooperated with the prosecutor and all grand jury appearances.  Libby is said to be an excellent lawyer and should know the threshold for perjury.  Surely, he would not perjure himself.  Suppose Libby were given 500 questions to answer about his job for the last five years and the test-giver has all of his notes to compare every single answer to.  Libby missed 5 questions.  Those would be the one’s he was indicted on, because Fitzgerald officially stated on Friday that Libby was not being investigated for outing Plame.  This is terribly confusing and seemingly unfair.  Apparently, in Libby’s case, there was no crime until Libby’s memory “failed” him.

 However, the President’s top advisor Carl Rove, aka Bush’s Brain, is still under investigation for involvement in the CIA Leak because the grand jury did not indict Rove.  But Prosecutor Fitzgerald will have to convene a new grand jury since this one’s term ended on Friday 10/28/05, which, unfortunately for us, means this whole investigation may have to start over.

(notes to my editor for submission.)

====== the story could end here for just the indictment news.

/

/

/ADD LATER: 

/ AFTER 2 YEARS – NO GREATER INDICTMENTS THAN THESE

/

====== the rest is summarized history of the Leak Case – Very interesting for me but I’m sure you’ll [my editor] yawn.  I love this!!!   My editor at L-RC did not run this “history” part story.  She felt it was boring and no one would care.  I loved doing this investigation to see what was under those rocks.  I could easily make a living doing this kind of analysis.  Or at least, doing the research for someone else to do the analysis.

 
CIA Leak Case History

by Christine Gates

 During a series of interviews in 2003 on WMD’s NewYork Times Washington bureau reporter, Judith Miller, asked many questions of Carl Rove and Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, about details about the validity of WMD’s story.  One question she had was who was sent to Niger to investigate this for the U.S?  The answer was Joseph Wilson, husband of CIA employee Valerie Wilson-Plame.  Months ago, Cheney said on Meet-the-Press he referred to Plame as, “that woman who is married to Wilson and works for the CIA” but he says he did not know her name.  Her employment was common knowledge in all Washington circles. 

 One reason why Miller was asking these questions was because Robert Novak originally and used her name in a July 14, 2003, article in the New York Times.  Novak writes, “Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction.”  He wrote a previous opinion article on July 8, 2003, asking the question why Joseph Wilson was chosen for the CIA investigation when he was clearly unqualified.  Matt Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine, also wrote a story asking the same questions.  He has also been cleared of any wrong doing by federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and the grand jury.  

 But Miller spent 85 days in jail for contempt of court because she would not divulge her source for identifying Plame by name.  Now that she is out of jail and we find out that Rove and Libby both gave her permission more than a year ago to discuss the details of their interviews, I guess I really don’t know why she went to jail unless she is protecting someone else.

 It turns out now that Miller is out of jail, her notebook read on a blank page Valerie “Flame,” not Plame.  The most mystifying part of this whole story is that now she can’t remember exactly who told her Plame’s name.  What?  How could that be, she went to jail 4 months instead of revealing her source.  Was she able to remember the source’s name before jail?  Maybe she should have written it down before she went to jail. 

 The media claims that CIA agent Valerie Plame was alledgedly outted by either Rove, President Bush’s closest advisor, or  Libby during interviews with Miller, Cooper and/or Novak. 

 
A guide to keep these “players” straight:

Robert Novak – reporter, columnist, author; originally used her name in print

Matt Cooper – Time magazine reporter who worked on the story before Judith Miller

Valerie  Wilson-Plame – CIA employee whose current and past employment is unclear

Joseph Wilson – diplomat and husband of Valeria Plame

Judith Miller – New York Times reporter who is spent time in jail to protect a source

Patrick Fitzgerald – Independent Council in this case, a federal prosecutor

Carl Rove – Bush’s top aid

Lewis “Scooter” Libby – VP Cheney’s Chief of Staff

Legal background –Victoia Tunseng, Ronald Reagan’s Chief Counsel, drafted and negotiated the 1982 “Intelliegence Protection Law.”  She has been on a few TV and radio news shows and written numerous articles telling people for months that no law has been broken in this case.  Tunseng states that the law was written so that intelligence reporting could still take place, especially the reporting of wrongdoing by the government.

  It has been said of Fitzgerald that his “greatest talent is his creative ways to interpret laws.”  Tunseng commented on this colleague’s description of Fitzgerald this way, “This [creativity] is okay in civil law, but absolutely wrong in criminal law where the law and crime are to be clear” so that the government doesn’t contrive laws to arrest and prosecute individuals.  Something our Founding Fathers took issue with in the British government three hundred years ago and spelled out such individual protections in our Constitution.

 In an interview on October 26, 2005, Ed Meese, former Attorney General for Ronald Reagan, says he is withholding judgment about the case, but he is very puzzled by the investigation because on the surface he does not see where a law has been broken.

 Patrick J. Fitzgerald, US prosecuting attorney, has kept the evidence in this case secret.  All aspects of the investigation are uncommented on by his office.  So why is this such a big story?  All the speculation on who and when someone will be indicted so silly, because we don’t even know exactly what the focus of the investigation is.

 According to Tunseng, who drafted this Intelligence Protection Law, it is legal to print or report the name of non-covert CIA agents.  It is legal for former covert agents to write books and tell of their adventures in the CIA (with CIA approval).  It is legal for the names of these former covert agents to be reported in the media as long as they have not been undercover for within the last five years and as long as the report does not compromise national security.  So where has the law been broken? 

 If either Rove or Libby named Plame directly or indirectly, she has not been undercover for eleven to at least 8 years and, according to some who know her, she has or had no intention of going back under cover with the CIA since she had her twins in 2000. 

 We know she has not been undercover, because Plame she is not living under a false identity to protect her, her cover, and/or national security; she uses her real name at work and at home.  She drives herself to work at the CIA headquarters and enters through the front doors.  If she were still undercover she would never openly enter the front doors of the CIA building.  Her neighbors all knew she worked for the CIA.  The Washington DC elite, party-goers all knew she worked for the CIA.  Her employment was not secret.  After the indictments on Friday, most media is referring to her as “covert.”  

 If she were really covert, why did she posed for a January, 2004, Vanity Fair magazine story with her husband the diplomat, Joseph Wilson?  This seems illogical, if she really were a covert CIA agent.  According to many Republicans in Washington, “Wilson is a known liar.”  He claimed that Dick Cheney sent him to investigate yellow-cake uranium mining in Niger, then he retracted that statement later.  Cheney claims he has never met Wilson.  Now, this goes back to the Bob Novak story from 2003 about why Wilson was chosen for this very sensitive assignment.

 So what is the big deal about outing a CIA employee who is not covert?  There must be more to this story than meets the eye.  It may be a political hack job against the Bush administration.  It may be an Executive Branch cover-up to protect past officials and not necessarily anyone from this administration.  Maybe this is an example of Judith Miller and the New York Times trying to make news not just report the news.  But after of the Friday indictments, it is just confusing.  Stay tuned there will be to come.  If you want to read any of the archived articles, go to: http://www.factcheck.org/article337.html.