Criminal Prosecution and Accountability

www.unitedforpeace.org

As horrible as the November 2005 massacre in Haditha was, it appears to be the tip of the iceberg. Today's news brings reports of another alleged mass killing of civilians by U.S. troops in Iraq, including a 6-month-old baby, last March.

While the details of that incident remain murky, the story of Haditha has now been told in chilling detail by numerous respected sources. In a several-hour-long rampage, a group of U.S. Marines shot 24 Iraqi civilians execution-style, at close range -- among them a 77-year-old amputee confined to a wheelchair and seven children ranging in age from 1 to 15. A 41-year-old woman was killed while trying to shield the youngest baby with her body.

By Associated Press

Baghdad, Iraq -- The U.S. military is bracing for a major scandal over the alleged slaying of Iraqi civilians by Marines in Haditha -- charges so serious they could threaten President Bush's effort to rally support at home for an increasingly unpopular war.

And while the case has attracted little attention so far in Iraq, it still could enflame hostility to the U.S. presence just as Iraq's new government is getting established, and complicate efforts by moderate Sunni Arab leaders to reach out to their community -- the bedrock of the insurgency.

By Toni Locy, Associated Press

If a prosecutor calls him as a witness, Vice President Dick Cheney probably can't avoid testifying in his former chief of staff's perjury trial, legal experts said Thursday.

"There may be significant issues of executive privilege and significant issues of classified information. But there are obviously significant factual issues that bear on the charges the prosecutor has brought" in the CIA leak investigation, said former federal prosecutor E. Lawrence Barcella Jr.

By TONI LOCY, Associated Press

A federal judge on Friday ordered Time magazine to turn over documents for a former White House aide to use in his defense to perjury and other charges in the CIA leak case.

The order by U.S. District Reggie B. Walton also said the New York Times might have to turn over some information but reduced the scope of documents the newspaper and other news organizations would have to provide to lawyers for the defendant, former top vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

By Gayle S. Putrich, The Marine Times

A key member of Congress said he "wouldn't be surprised" if a dozen Marines faced courts-martial for allegedly killing Iraqi civilians Nov. 19. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., told Marine Corps Times that the number of dead Iraqis, first reported to be 15, was actually 24. He based that number on a briefing from Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Mike Hagee on Wednesday.

By Murray Waas, National Journal, http://news.nationaljournal.com

On September 29, 2003, three days after it became known that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to investigate who leaked the name of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, columnist Robert Novak telephoned White House senior adviser Karl Rove to assure Rove that he would protect him from being harmed by the investigation, according to people with firsthand knowledge of the federal grand jury testimony of both men.

By Toni Locy, Associated Press

Washington - Could Vice President Dick Cheney be a star prosecution witness in the perjury trial of his former chief of staff?

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald suggested in a court filing Wednesday that Cheney would be a logical witness for the prosecution because the vice president could authenticate notes he jotted on a copy of a New York Times opinion column by a critic of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Vice President May Be Called as Witness
By R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post

Vice President Cheney was personally angered by a former U.S. ambassador's newspaper column attacking a key rationale for the war in Iraq and repeatedly directed I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then his chief of staff, to "get all the facts out" related to the critique, according to excerpts from Libby's 2004 grand jury testimony released late yesterday by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

By James Gordon Meek, New York Daily News

Washington - Two top CIA officials will bolster prosecutors' charge that Vice President Cheney's chief aide lied to them, court papers show.

Prosecutors say disgraced Cheney chief of staff Lewis (Scooter) Libby learned CIA spy Valerie Plame's identity from, among others, agency officials who will be called to testify at his trial for perjury, false statements and obstruction of justice.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com

NEW YORK Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has emerged as a key witness in the CIA leak probe, Kenneth R. Baziet and James Gordon Meek of New York's Daily News report.

They write that he has been questioned several times, but is not expected to be indicted by the federal grand jury investigating who outed CIA officer Valerie Plame to journalists in 2003.

www.salon.com

We don't know whether Karl Rove will be indicted today, tomorrow, later this week or never. But we do understand that there's a distinction between Truthout's Jason Leopold and the bloggers who've been writing about him, and that gives us at least one leg up on the folks at the Wall Street Journal.

The Journal's Anne Marie Squeo checks in today on Leopold's report that Rove has already been indicted in the Valerie Plame case, and she uses her story as an occasion for a little blog-bashing. Squeo says that bloggers have "blurred the lines with traditional media and changed both the dynamics of the reporting process and how political rumors swirl," and she quotes Jay Rosen for the proposition that the blogosphere has a "let's see if this holds up" philosophy when it comes to news.

By Marc Ash, www.truthout.org

For the past few days, we have endured non-stop attacks on our credibility, and we have fought hard to defend our reputation. In addition, we have worked around the clock to provide additional information to our readership. People want to know more about this, and our job is to keep them informed. We take that responsibility seriously.

Here's what we now know: I spoke personally yesterday with both Rove's spokesman Mark Corallo and Rove's attorney Robert Luskin. Both men categorically denied all key points of our recent reporting on this issue. Both said, "Rove is not a target," "Rove did not inform the White House late last week that he would be indicted," and "Rove has not been indicted." Further, both Corallo and Luskin denied Leopold's account of events at the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm that represents Karl Rove. They specifically stated again that no such meeting ever occurred, that Fitzgerald was not there, that Rove was not there, and that a major meeting did not take place. Both men were unequivocal on that point.

By Rob Kall, http://www.opednews.com

As editor of OpEdnews, I started wondering when Jason Leopold's news that Karl Rove was indicted, which we made our main headline, did not show up in the mainstream news. He's been superbly reliable and great and bringing news ahead of others. So I wrote to him:

I’m getting emails asking why the mainstream media aren’t reporting on Rove’s indictment. And now, one of my Trusted Authors has written this article

By David Johnston, New York Times

Washington - Vice President Dick Cheney made handwritten notations on a July 2003 newspaper column that indicate he was focused on a critic of the administration's Iraq policy, according to a court filing in the C.I.A. leak case.

Mr. Cheney's notes were cited in a prosecution brief in the case against the vice president's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr. The entries were made on a copy of an Op-Ed article by Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador, that was published in The New York Times on July 6, 2003. The leak case involves the disclosure that Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie, was a C.I.A. officer.

By Evelyn Pringle

Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for OpEd News and an investigative journalist
focused on exposing corruption in government and corporate America
evelyn.pringle@sbcglobal.net

On April 28, 2006, Jason Leopold, an investigative journalist who has consistently forecast up-coming events in the CIA leak case far in advance of the mainstream media, is citing "sources knowledgeable about the probe" in reporting that:

Hand-written notes by the Vice President surface in the Fitzgerald probe.
By Michael Isikoff, Newsweek

May 13, 2006 - The role of Vice President Dick Cheney in the criminal case stemming from the outing of White House critic Joseph Wilson's CIA wife is likely to get fresh attention as a result of newly disclosed notes showing that Cheney personally asked whether Wilson had been sent by his wife on a "junket" to Africa.

By PETE YOST, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — In a new court filing, the prosecutor in the CIA leak case revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney made handwritten references to CIA officer Valerie Plame — albeit not by name — eight days before her identity was publicly exposed.

The new court filing is the second in little more than a month by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald mentioning Cheney as being closely focused with his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, on Plame's CIA identity and on her husband, Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson.

By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | www.truthout.org

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent more than half a day Friday at the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm representing Karl Rove.

During the course of that meeting, Fitzgerald served attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an indictment charging the embattled White House official with perjury and lying to investigators related to his role in the CIA leak case, and instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 hours to get his affairs in order, high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said Saturday morning.

By BETH DeFALCO, Associated Press Writer

TRENTON, N.J. -- Two New Jersey public interest lawyers sued Verizon Communications Inc. for $5 billion Friday, claiming the phone carrier violated privacy laws by turning over phone records to the National Security Agency for a secret government surveillance program.

Attorneys Bruce Afran and Carl Mayer filed the lawsuit Friday afternoon in federal district court in Manhattan, where Verizon is headquartered.

A privacy advocate explains why Americans should care about the NSA’s database of phone records.
By Susanna Schrobsdorff, Newsweek

May 12, 2006 - Domestic spying or national security? The debate over whether the government is poking too closely into Americans’ lives was inflamed this week following reports that the National Security Agency (NSA) is creating a massive database of millions of phone records—and that three major telecom companies have cooperated in the effort. For privacy advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a San Francisco-based nonprofit, the answer is clear: the NSA is spying on Americans. And, according to EFF, it is illegal for telecom companies to supply customer calling details to the NSA unless they follow established legal procedures to obtain a warrant.

By John Markoff, New York Times

The former chief executive of Qwest, the nation's fourth-largest phone company, rebuffed government requests for the company's calling records after 9/11 because of "a disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any legal process," his lawyer said yesterday.

The statement on behalf of the former Qwest executive, Joseph P. Nacchio, followed a report that the other big phone companies - AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon - had complied with an effort by the National Security Agency to build a vast database of calling records, without warrants, to increase its surveillance capabilities after the Sept. 11 attacks.

By Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | www.truthout.org

Within the last week, Karl Rove told President Bush and Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, as well as a few other high level administration officials, that he will be indicted in the CIA leak case and will immediately resign his White House job when the special counsel publicly announces the charges against him, according to sources.

Details of Rove's discussions with the president and Bolten have spread through the corridors of the White House where low-level staffers and senior officials were trying to determine how the indictment would impact an administration that has been mired in a number of high-profile political scandals for nearly a year, said a half-dozen White House aides and two senior officials who work at the Republican National Committee.

http://www.eff.org

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T on January 31, 2006, accusing the telecom giant of violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in its massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications.

www.rawstory.com

Reporters at the major cable television networks plan to be on the ground Friday outside a federal district court where the jury considering the fate of President Bush's senior adviser Karl Rove.

No formal indication has been given of Rove's status, though lawyers close to the case have said his fate is likely to be determined soon. Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who is investigating the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame, is scheduled to meet with the grand jury in the case Friday.

Telcos Could Be Liable For Tens of Billions of Dollars For Illegally Turning Over Phone Records
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/11/telcos-liable/

This morning, USA Today reported that three telecommunications companies – AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth – provided “phone call records of tens of millions of Americans” to the National Security Agency. Such conduct appears to be illegal and could make the telco firms liable for tens of billions of dollars. Here’s why:

By Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director, ACLU

Please join us at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning at the U.S. Courthouse in Alexandria, VA for the oral arguments in El Masri v. Tenet, our challenge to the Bush Administration's practice of “extraordinary rendition”:

When:
Tomorrow, Friday, May 12 at 10 a.m.

Where: Albert V. Bryan U.S. Courthouse
401 Courthouse Square
Alexandria, VA 22314

By Rep. John Conyers, http://www.dailykos.com

Last night, I filed an amicus brief with 71 other Democratic Members of Congress in two cases challenging the Bush Administration's illegal warrantless domestic spying.

It is very disturbing that, on the same day we learn that the NSA has been secretly collecting the phone records of tens of millions of Americans, we also learn that the Department of Justice has abruptly cancelled its investigation into the Agency's warrantless wiretapping program. These developments clearly point to the urgent need for oversight and review of this program. Congress has failed to provide this critical oversight which has led us to the courts.

David Shuster is convinced that Rove will be frog marched very soon.
LINK

By Reuters

Geneva - The United States has put on trial more than 100 armed forces' staff accused of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq, twice the number asserted by rights groups, a US official said on Monday.

Defending US policy before the United Nations' Committee against Torture, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Charles Stimson said all allegations of mistreatment of detainees were investigated.

By Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report

Hundreds of pages of emails and memos "discovered" by the White House in February and turned over to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald show that Karl Rove played a much larger role in the Valerie Plame Wilson leak case than he had previously disclosed to a grand jury and FBI investigators.

In February, TruthOut was the first to report the existence of the 250 pages of emails from Vice President Dick Cheney's office and the Office of the President that were written in mid-2003.