Evidence

Her supporters point to principles her silence undermines
By FAIR.org

No reasonable person believes that a journalist's right to protect their confidential sources is absolute. Yet one is virtually required to act as though it is, and any exception to this right will have a devastating effect on investigative journalism, in order to justify New York Times reporter Judith Miller's non-cooperation with the special prosecutor investigating the Valerie Plame Wilson leak.

That journalists' privilege cannot be absolute is easy to demonstrate: If after obtaining a promise of strict confidentiality, Karl Rove had told Time's Matthew Cooper that he was a serial killer planning to strike again, who would argue that Cooper should not immediately go to the police--let alone defy a subpoena from a grand jury seeking evidence of Rove's crimes?

Downing Street Minutes, July 23, 2002
Also known as the Downing Street Memo
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/1

All Eight Leaked Downing Street Documents
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/833

Iraq Options Paper, March 8, 2002
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/834

Legal Background Paper, March 8, 2002
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/835

David Manning Memo, March 14, 2002
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/836

Christopher Meyer Letter, March 18, 2002
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/837

Peter Ricketts Letter, March 22, 2002
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/838

Jack Straw Memo, March 25, 2002
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/839

Cabinet Office Briefing Paper, July 21, 2002
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/189

Downing Street Minutes, July 23, 2002
Also known as the Downing Street Memo
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/1

PDF VERSION
Image of Original

CONFIDENTIAL AND PERSONAL
Text of the Jack Straw Memo - March 25, 2002 memo from Jack Straw (UK Foreign Secretary) to Tony Blair in preparation for Blair’s visit to Bush’s Crawford ranch, covering Iraq-al Qaida linkage, legality of invasion, weapons inspectors and post-war considerations.
SECRET AND PERSONAL
PM/02/019
CRAWFORD/IRAQ
1 The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few. The risks are high, both for you and for the Government. I judge that there is at present no majority inside the PLP for any military action against Iraq, (alongside a greater readiness in the PLP to surface their concerns). Colleagues know that Saddam and the Iraqi regime are bad. Making that case is easy. But we have a long way to go to convince them as to:

PDF VERSION

Text of the Peter Ricketts Letter - March 22, 2002 memo from Peter Ricketts (Political Director, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office) to Jack Straw (UK Foreign Secretary) providing Ricketts’ advice for the Prime Minister on issues of the threat posed by Iraq, connections to al Qaida, post-war considerations and working with the UN.
Confidential and Personal PR.121
From: P F Ricketts, Political Director
Date: 22 March 2002
CC: PUS
Secretary of State
IRAQ: Advice for the Prime Minister
1 You invited thoughts for your personal note to the Prime Minister covering the official advice (we have put up a draft minute separately). Here are mine.

PDF VERSION
IMAGES OF LETTER

Text of the Christopher Meyer Letter - March 18, 2002 memo from Christopher Meyer (UK ambassador to the US) to David Manning (UK Foreign Policy Advisor) recounting Meyer’s meeting with Paul Wolfowitz (US Deputy Secretary of Defense).
DAVID MANNING
CONFIDENTIAL AND PERSONAL
British Embassy Washington
From the Ambassador
Christopher Meyer KCMG
18 March 2002
Sir David Manning KCMG
No 10 Downing Street
1. Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, came to Sunday lunch on 17 March.

PDF VERSION
Image of Original

Text of the David Manning Memo - March 14, 2002 memo from David Manning (UK Foreign Policy Advisor) to Tony Blair recounting Manning’s meetings with his US counterpart Condoleeza Rice (National Security Advisor), and advising Blair for his upcoming visit to Bush’s Crawford ranch.
SECRET - STRICTLY PERSONAL
FROM : DAVID MANNING
DATE: 14 MARCH 2002
CC: JONATHAN POWELL
PRIME MINISTER
YOUR TRIP TO THE US

PDF Version

OVERSEAS AND DEFENCE SECRETARIAT
CABINET OFFICE
8 MARCH
SECRET UK EYES ONLY

Text of the Iraq: Legal Background-March 8, 2002 memo from UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (office of Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary) to Tony Blair advising him on the legality of the use of force against Iraq.
CONFIDENTIAL
IRAQ: LEGAL BACKGROUND
(i) Use of Force: (a) Security Council Resolutions
(b) Self-defence
(c) Humanitarian Intervention
(ii) Security Council Resolutions relevant to the sanctions regime
(iv) Security Council Resolutions relating to UNMOVIC

PDF VERSION

THE DOWNING STREET PAPERS, Transcriptions
Text of the Iraq Options paper - March 8, 2002 Memo from Overseas and Defence Secretariat
IRAQ: OPTIONS PAPER SECRET UK EYES ONLY
SUMMARY
Since 1991, our objective has been to re-integrate a law-abiding Iraq which does not possess WMD or threaten its neighbors, into the international community. Implicitly, this cannot occur with Saddam Hussein in power. As at least worst opinion, we have supported a policy of containment which has been partially successful. However:

All eight leaked documents in one PDF.

THE DOWNING STREET PAPERS, Transcriptions
Text of the Iraq Options paper - March 8, 2002 Memo from Overseas and Defence Secretariat
IRAQ: OPTIONS PAPER SECRET UK EYES ONLY
SUMMARY
Since 1991, our objective has been to re-integrate a law-abiding Iraq which does not possess WMD or threaten its neighbors, into the international community. Implicitly, this cannot occur with Saddam Hussein in power. As at least worst opinion, we have supported a policy of containment which has been partially successful. However:

. . . or an amazing 9-minute recreation thereof that uses the exact words of the "Downing Street Memo."

This remarkable audio production conveys far more clearly than the written word what went on behind closed doors that day three years ago. The cast and credits for this production, are as follows.

Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee John Scarlett -- Anonymous
Sir Richard Dearlove, the Chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) – John Rafter Lee
Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, Chief of Defence Staff – Demian Martell
Then Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon – Ed Asner

By Matthew Cooper
Time Magazine
Monday 25 July 2005 Issue

Matthew Cooper reveals exactly what Karl Rove told him--and what the special counsel zeroed in on.

It was my first interview with the President, and I expected a simple "Hello" when I walked into the Oval Office last December. Instead, George W. Bush joked, "Cooper! I thought you'd be in jail by now." The leader of the free world, it seems, had been following my fight against a federal subpoena seeking my testimony in the case of the leaking of the name of a CIA officer. I thought it was funny and good-natured of the President, but the line reminded me that I was, very weirdly, in the Oval Office, out on bond from a prison sentence, awaiting appeal--in large part, for protecting the confidence of someone in the West Wing. "What can I say, Mr. President," I replied, smiling. "The wheels of justice grind slowly."

- By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer
Sunday, July 17, 2005

(07-17) 12:58 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

The vice president's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, was a source along with the president's chief political adviser for a Time story that identified a CIA officer, the magazine reporter said Sunday, further countering White House claims that neither aide was involved in the leak.

In an effort to quell a chorus of calls to fire deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove, Republicans said that Rove originally learned about Valerie Plame's identity from the news media. That exonerates Rove, the Republican Party chairman said, and Democrats should apologize.

By Martin Bright and Peter Beaumont
Sunday July 17, 2005, The Observer

A controversial fly-on-the wall account of the Iraq war by one of Britain's most senior former diplomats has been blocked by Downing Street and the Foreign Office.

Publication of The Costs of War by Sir Jeremy Greenstock, UK ambassador to the UN during the build-up to the 2003 war and the Prime Minister's special envoy to Iraq in its aftermath, has been halted. In an extract seen by The Observer, Greenstock describes the American decision to go to war as 'politically illegitimate' and says that UN negotiations 'never rose over the level of awkward diversion for the US administration'. Although he admits that 'honourable decisions' were made to remove the threat of Saddam, the opportunities of the post-conflict period were 'dissipated in poor policy analysis and narrow-minded execution'.

By valabor, DailyKos

In all the focus on the minutia of the Plame leak, and with a possible Gonzalez Supreme Court nomination, I wanted to remind everyone of this Harkin moment in the Congressional Record (after the flip).

Could Alberto Gonzalez be a subject in the cover-up portion of the Plame investigation???

In short, after Attorney General John Ashcroft delayed mounting any investigation into the Plame leak, he then delayed informing the White House of the investigation (in order to trigger their duty to preserve documents). Once Ashcroft did notify the White House, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez asked if he could wait until the next day to send out the official notice to White House staff to preserve documents relevant to the investigation. Even though the request was extraordinary, and outside any normal prosecutorial procedures, Ashcroft obliged. Harkin laid it all out way back in October 2003:

By David Sirota

I am not one who likes to engage in a lot of speculation, but the Karl Rove/leak scandal has really gotten me thinking: why won't they just fire Rove? The answer is not that Rove is innocent, or even that they can't because he's too powerful - I'm starting to think the reason is because while Rove was definitely involved and definitely deserves to face legal consequnces, he wasn't the root. Somebody else was the root of this leak - and that somebody is likely a person the Bush administration can't just cut loose like they could even Rove, who is after all, a staffer. It must be somebody even higher up on the food chain.

Editor and Publisher
By E&P Staff

NEW YORK Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald may seek criminal contempt charges against New York Times reporter Judith Miller, which could significantly lengthen her time in jail, Howard Kurtz and Carol Leonnig report in today's Washington Post.

They also reveal that, according to two sources, Miller spoke with Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, during the period in July 2003 just before Robert Novak's fateful column appeared.

"Fitzgerald and Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan have both raised the possibility in open court that Miller could be charged with criminal contempt if she continues to defy Hogan's order to cooperate in the investigation of who may have unlawfully leaked the name of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame to the media," the Post observes.

By American Progress Action Fund

In August 2004, Karl Rove told CNN, "I didn't know her name and didn't leak her name." The New York Times reveals this morning that Rove was not truthful on both counts. According to the Times, "Mr. Rove has told investigators that he learned from the columnist [Robert Novak] the name of the C.I.A. officer" and confirmed that she was employed at the CIA. Rove told Novak upon hearing of Plame's identity and occupation, "I heard that, too." The growing scandal that President Bush has called "a very serious matter," a matter which has forced him and his vice president to be interviewed by a federal prosecutor, is now forcing the White House to deal with a major credibility problem over unanswered questions. The New York Times writes, "The disclosure of Mr. Rove's conversation with Mr. Novak raises a question the White House has never addressed: whether Mr. Rove ever discussed that conversation, or his exchange with [Time magazine reporter Matt] Cooper, with the president." The credibility of the entire Bush White House is at stake, and it's time for them to stop playing politics and address the issue candidly.

Report Shows Karl Rove May Have Lied to Federal Agents, a Federal Crime, During Oct 2003 Testimony Into CIA Agent Leak
July 14, 2005
By Jason Leopold
http://www.opednews.com

Looks like Karl Rove did break the law, the same federal law that got Martha Stewart sentenced to six months in prison.

It now appears that Rove, President Bush’s chief of staff, may have lied to the FBI in October 2003—a federal crime—when he was questioned by federal agents investigating who was responsible for leaking information about a covert CIA operative to the media.

During questioning by the FBI about his role in the Plame affair, Rove told federal agents that he only started sharing information about Plame with reporters and White House officials for the first time after conservative columnist Robert Novak identified her covert CIA status in his column on July 14, 2003, according to a report in the American Prospect about Rove’s testimony in March 2004, a copy of which can be found at http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/webfeatures/2004/03/waas-m-03-08....

Source says Rove spoke to columnist
By David Johnston and Richard W. Stevenson
THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON - Karl Rove, the White House senior adviser, spoke with columnist Robert Novak as Novak was preparing an article in July 2003 that identified an undercover CIA officer, someone who has been officially briefed on the matter said Thursday.

Rove has told investigators that he learned from Novak the name of the CIA officer, who was referred to by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, and the circumstances in which her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, traveled to Africa to investigate possible uranium sales to Iraq, the person said.

The Ambassador Strikes Back, Answers to the Right Wing Spin Machine
*** A BRAD BLOG EXCLUSIVE ***

Ambassador Joseph Wilson fired back today at the Rightwing Spin Machine, which, having been issued marching orders late yesterday in a set of talking points from the RNC , is...

Ambassador Joseph Wilson fired back today at the Rightwing Spin Machine, which, having been issued marching orders late yesterday in a set of talking points from the RNC, is once again hoping to distract from the potentially treasonous crimes that George W. Bush's top political operative and Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove is being alleged to have committed.

More useful evidence, if more were needed, that Bush-Blair intentionally took their nations to war on false pretenses: LINK.

While the Media has picked up the Rove story and missed the central point that what he did was part of an attempt to deceive a nation about justifications for war, the GOP is continuing to attack Joseph Wilson for exposing its lies. (Will the Media cover these talking points? But then what would they use as the basis for their next articles?)

Exclusive: GOP talking points on Rove seek to discredit Wilson
RAW STORY

RAW STORY has obtained an exclusive copy of Republican talking points on Bush adviser Karl Rove's leaking the name of a CIA agent to a reporter, circulated by the Republican National Committee to "D.C. Talkers" in Washington.

Salon.com
By Tim Grieve

Scott McClellan refused to answer all sorts of questions about Karl Rove at Monday's White House press briefing and again at this morning's press gaggle. At one point in Monday's contentious briefing, McClellan refused even to say who Karl Rove was. But it wasn't just Rove that McClellan wouldn't discuss Monday. Scott McClellan wouldn't say much about Scott McClellan, either -- including, for instance, whether Scott McClellan himself has consulted with an attorney about the Plame case.

McClellan's reluctance to talk is understandable. Back in the fall of 2003, McClellan made it as clear as he possibly could that Karl Rove wasn't involved in the outing of Valerie Plame; he called the allegation "ridiculous" and said that there was "simply no truth" to it. As we know now, there's a lot of truth to the allegation and not so much truth to McClellan's denials. But is McClellan's sudden refusal to talk about the Plame case driven by something more than Rove's legal problems and McClellan's own embarrassment? Maybe.

By Robert Parry
July 11, 2005

A key national security principle for dealing with top-secret information, such as the identity of undercover CIA officers, is strict compartmentalization, often called “the need to know

Here's a pointed comment from TalkingPointsMemo.com:
SO WE'VE GOT Karl Rove's latest story, as recounted by his lawyer, Robert Luskin.
Rove did spill the beans about Plame in an effort to discredit Joe Wilson. Only he didn't mention the name 'Valerie Plame'. He only spilled the beans about 'Joe Wilson's wife'.
I'm no lawyer. But I'd hate to go into court with my case resting on that distinction.
And remember, the president has certainly known all of this from the beginning.
-- Josh Marshall

The other claim we can imagine Rove making is that he didn't know Plame was undercover. And here's another useful comment from TalkingPointsMemo.com on October 9, 2003:

The Serious Implications Of President Bush's Hiring A Personal Outside Counsel For The Valerie Plame Investigation
By JOHN W. DEAN
----
Friday, Jun. 04, 2004

Recently, the White House acknowledged that President Bush is talking with, and considering hiring, a non-government attorney, James E. Sharp. Sharp is being consulted, and may be retained, regarding the current grand jury investigation of the leak revealing the identity of Valerie Plame as a CIA covert operative.

(Plame is the wife of Bush critic and former ambassador Joe Wilson; I discussed the leak itself in a prior column, and then discussed further developments in the investigation in a follow-up column.)

What Karl Rove told Time magazine's reporter
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek

July 18 issue - It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper was tapping out an e-mail to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy. "Subject: Rove/P&C," (for personal and confidential), Cooper began. "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation..." Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, "please don't source this to rove or even WH [White House]" and suggested another reporter check with the CIA.

Time to get ready for the Karl Rove frog-march?
By David Corn
Huffington Post

I don't usually log on Saturday evenings. But I've received information too good not to share immediately. It was only yesterday that I was bemoaning the probability that -- after a week of apparent Rove-related revelations--it might be a while before any more news emerged about the Plame/CIA leak. Yet tonight I received this as-solid-as-it-gets tip: on Sunday Newsweek is posting a story that nails Rove. The newsmagazine has obtained documentary evidence that Rove was indeed a key source for Time magazine's Matt Cooper and that Rove--prior to the publication of the Bob Novak column that first publicly disclosed Valerie Wilson/Plame as a CIA official -- told Cooper that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife apparently worked at the CIA and was involved in Joseph Wilson's now-controversial trip to Niger.

Sydney Morning Herald

A leaked document from Britain's Defence Ministry says the British and US governments are planning to reduce their troop levels in Iraq by more than half by mid-2006, the Mail on Sunday newspaper reported.

The memo, reportedly written by the Defence Minister, John Reid, said Britain would reduce its troop numbers to 3,000 from 8,500 by the middle of next year.

"We have a commitment to hand over to Iraqi control in Al Muthanna and Maysan provinces [two of the four provinces under British control in southern Iraq] in October 2005 and in the other two, Dhi Qar and Basra, in April 2006," the memo was reported to have said.

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

In my judgment, a smear campaign operated out of the White House is unethical, to say the least. The First Amendment specifically says that nothing should be done to abridge a citizen's right to petition his government to redress a grievance. The attack on me, through the compromise of Valerie's identity, is an assault on not just my petition to redress a grievance, but it is also a deterrent to other citizens who might step forward. That is why I have always argued that Rove should be fired, even if no indictments are forthcoming.

* * *

If there's a list of people who have fearlessly stood up for democracy, decency and the truth against the corrupt buzzsaw of the Bush Administration, Ambassador Joe Wilson is certainly at the top of the list.