Evidence

Here.

By Jason Leopold
ZNet.com
Monday 07 November 2005

Did Vice President Dick Cheney help cover-up the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson in the months after conservative columnist Robert Novak first disclosed her identity?

That's one of the questions Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is likely trying to figure out. It's unclear what Cheney said to investigators back in 2004 when he was questioned - not under oath - about the leak, particularly what he knew and when he knew it.

The five-count criminal indictment handed up by a grand jury last month against Cheney's former Chief of Staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, sheds new light on a pattern of strategic deception by the Vice President and the White House to defuse an inquiry into who leaked the name of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson to the press. Months after Plame's identity was disclosed by conservative columnist Robert Novak, Cheney continued to hide the fact that he and his aides were intimately involved in disseminating classified information about her to journalists.

From an article on FindLaw.com by James Dean (former counsel to Richard Nixon):

...Fitzgerald has clearly thrown a stacked indictment at Libby, laying it on him as heavy as the law and propriety permits. He has taken one continuous false statement, out of several hours of interrogation, and made it into a five-count indictment. It appears he is trying to flip Libby - that is, to get him to testify against Cheney - and not without good reason. Cheney is the big fish in this case.

By Larry C. Johnson

The radical right is desperate and grasping at straws in the wake of Scooter Libby's indictment. They are carrying copies to most TV interviews of the report by the Senate Intelligence Committee from July 2004 regarding what the intelligence community knew and reported on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. One poor soul on Wolf Blitzer the other day tried reading from it in a desperate bid to try to make Joe Wilson the focus of the story. Sorry guys, Joe didn't get indicted for perjury, Scooter did. Let's keep our liars list up to date. Okay?

That said, it is also worth noting that the Senate Intel report is an abomination. It is full of misleading information and was deliberately crafted to shield Vice President Cheney and his staff from scrutiny. Unfortunately, the Democrats rolled over and signed off on the report.

Tracing the Leak
Online Journal's editors

A five-count indictment alleges "Scooter" Libby learned of Valerie Plame's connections to the CIA from numerous government sources ... and that he shared information with reporters. Ms. Plame's identity and role were first revealed publicly in a column by Robert Novak on July 14, 2003.

SEE MORE AT THE LINK

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/005859.php

October 28, 2005 Press Release

October 28, 2005 Indictment

October 28, 2005 Media Advisory

Libby Indictment Document

Here is an excellent Powerpoint presentation prepared by Michael Smith, the British reporter who originally broke the story of the Downing Street Memo.

SLIDE1
That is only one of a number of strange conclusions by those charged with investigating the way flaky intelligence was used to justify the 2003 Iraq War.

The most vociferous advocates of an attack on Iraq were Dick Cheney, the vice-president, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld’s deputy Paul Wolfowitz. They needed Congressional support and they set about obtaining it in a very aggressive fashion, insisting that not only did Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction threaten America and its allies but that he was closely linked to al-Qa’eda.

This is copied from a PDF file on the official Fitzgerald site (http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/):

SPECIAL COUNSEL PATRICK J. FITZGERALD TO HOLD PRESS CONFERENCE
Washington, D.C. -- U.S. Department of Justice Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald will hold a press conference at 2:00 P.M. EDT today, Friday October 28, 2005, regarding the status of the Special Counsel's criminal investigations.

WHO: Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald FBI Special Agent-in-Charge John C. Eckenrode

WHAT: Release of public information and press conference

WHERE: Department of Justice 7th Floor Conference Center 950 Constitution Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20530

(October 25, 2005 -- 09:25 PM EDT // link)
As I hinted at in this post from earlier this evening, in his 2003 State of the Union address President did not say "Iraq purchased uranium from Niger" or even that "the British say that Iraq purchased uranium from Niger." He said something much more specific and couched, using language the significance of which would only become clear months later.

"The British government," said the president in the famous sixteen words, "has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

As we learned later that summer and fall, those carefully chosen words had a very precise rationale behind them. The White House tried and failed to get the uranium claim into the October 7th, 2002 Cincinnati speech. The same battle was refought in late January of 2003 as the same parties struggled back and forth over whether the claim would be inserted in the State of the Union address. The CIA refused to countenance the use of the claim. So a compromise of sorts was struck. The president wouldn't be a fact witness to the allegation. He'd hang it on the Brits.

(October 26, 2005 -- 01:14 AM EDT // link)
The LA Times picks up the La Repubblica story ...

As anticipation swirled in Washington of potential indictments — and what it would mean for a Bush administration already beset by low approval ratings, the Iraq war and an embattled Supreme Court nomination — a related controversy was brewing in Italy over how the Niger allegations made their way into the intelligence stream.
Italian parliamentary officials announced Tuesday that the head of Italy's military secret service, the SISMI intelligence agency, would be questioned next month over allegations that his agency gave the disputed documents to the United States and Britain, according to an Associated Press report. A spokeswoman said Nicolo Pollari, the agency director, asked to be questioned after reports this week in Italy's La Republica newspaper claiming that SISMI sent the CIA and U.S. and British officials information that it knew to be forged.

The tsunami flows over into Italy. From the Associated Press ...

The head of Italy's military secret services will be questioned by a parliamentary commission next week over allegations that his organization gave the United States and Britain disputed documents suggesting that Saddam Hussein had been seeking uranium in Africa, officials said Tuesday.

Nicolo Pollari, director of the SISMI intelligence agency, will be questioned on Nov. 3 by members of the commission overseeing secret services, said Micaela Panella, a commission spokeswoman.

She said Pollari asked to be questioned after reports Monday and Tuesday in the Rome daily La Repubblica claiming SISMI passed on to the CIA, U.S. government officials and Britain's MI6 intelligence services a dossier it knew was forged.

Italy's intelligence chief met with Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley just a month before the Niger forgeries first surfaced.
By Laura Rozen
American Prospect

With Patrick Fitzgerald widely expected to announce indictments in the CIA leak investigation, questions are again being raised about the intelligence scandal that led to the appointment of the special counsel: namely, how the Bush White House obtained false Italian intelligence reports claiming that Iraq had tried to buy uranium "yellowcake" from Niger.

The key documents supposedly proving the Iraqi attempt later turned out to be crude forgeries, created on official stationery stolen from the African nation's Rome embassy. Among the most tantalizing aspects of the debate over the Iraq War is the origin of those fake documents -- and the role of the Italian intelligence services in disseminating them.

Filed by Jason Leopold and Larisa Alexandrovna
www.RawStory.com

With the possibility of indictments just days away, sources close to the investigation into who outed covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson have provided RAW STORY a more detailed account into how and why Plame's name was leaked and what role the Pentagon and the vice president's office played.

Those close to the investigation say that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has been told that David Wurmser, then a Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney on loan from the State Department, met with Cheney and his chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter

Arianna posted eloquently today on Judith Miller's plaintive cry, "We were all wrong."

Nuh-uh, Ms. Miller.

The truth is, many ordinary people knew a lie when they saw one. Indeed, most of the world knew the Bushies were pushing lies.

A few politicos had it right from the start, too. A few stepped up when others were still in hiding.

For instance, here's a couple (note--both of whose campaigns I have worked for)--two who not only challenged the Bush lies, but did so eloquently and clearly and prophetically.

By Josh Marshall
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006775.php

A question about the story beneath the story, the origins of the Niger forgeries and who covered up the trail.

The FBI was tasked with investigating the origins of the forgeries, who forged them and why. That was in March, 2003, soon after the IAEA publicly revealed the documents as forgeries.

But no real investigation ever took place. When reports of FBI footdragging became public a year ago, the Bureau begged off with feeble excuses about not having received permission from the Italian government to interview the key player in the mystery.

By Larry C. Johnson

The CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, has finally got approval to publish his book, which will hit the streets on December 27, 2005. The CIA has sat on the book for more than a year and tried to stop its publication. Although the book is not intended as a criticism of President Bush, it will land another body blow to the beleaguered Bush Presidency. Bernsten's key point in the book is his testimonty that he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. According to NEWSWEEK, "Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora--intelligence operatives had tracked him--and could have been caught. He was there."

Source: Chalabi responsible for forged WMD documents
http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=7732

As Antiwar.com readers found out on Wednesday, prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s investigation into the Plame leak case has broadened to include a probe into the catalyzing event that set off the "outing" of CIA agent Valerie Plame to begin with: the Niger uranium forgeries. These documents, which purported to show that the Iraqis were trying to procure uranium from the African nation of Niger, were utilized by the Bush administration in making the case for war – but, alas, they turned out to be crudely done fakes. The question of who forged them has always been at the heart of this case, and now it looks like Fitzgerald is getting close to the answer.

By Murray Waas, special to National Journal
National Journal Group Inc.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller told the federal grand jury in the CIA leak case that she might have met with I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby on June 23, 2003 only after prosecutors showed her Secret Service logs that indicated she and Libby had indeed met that day in the Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House, according to attorneys familiar with her testimony.

When a prosecutor first questioned Miller during her initial grand jury appearance on September 30, 2005 sources said, she did not bring up the June 23 meeting in recounting her various contacts with Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. Pressed by prosecutors who then brought up the specific date of the meeting, Miller testified that she still could not recall the June meeting with Libby, in which they discussed a controversial CIA-sponsored mission to Africa by former Ambassador Joe Wilson, or the fact that his wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.

Brad Blog
Guest blogged by David Edwards

Rove and Libby 'compared notes' about leaks to reporters
FULL STORY:
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001937.htm

By Eli Stephens
Left I on the News
http://lefti.blogspot.com

There's so much going on these days that sometimes it's easy to forget even
critical information. A brief (less than two minutes; I really can't stand
any more) listen to Hardball a little while ago reminded me of one of them.
Chris Matthews, after first making the absurd argument that the invasion of
Iraq might have been done by mistake because it was done in such "haste"
after 9/11 (yeah, Chris, only a year and a half had gone by), then went into
the usual song-and-dance about intelligence, was it lies,
misinterpretations, or just (as Matthews contended), "worst-case scenarios

By Francis A. Boyle

On 19 March 2003 President Bush Jr. commenced his criminal war against Iraq
by ordering a so-called decapitation strike against the President of Iraq in
violation of a 48-hour ultimatum he had given publicly to the Iraqi
President and his sons to leave the country. This duplicitous behavior
violated the customary international laws of war set forth in the 1907 Hague
Convention on the Opening of Hostilities to which the United States is still
a contracting party, as evidenced by paragraphs 20, 21, 22, and 23 of U.S.
Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956). Furthermore, President Bush Jr.'s attempt to

October 19, 2005
The Fitzgerald/Plame investigation goes in a new direction
By Justin Raimondo
AntiWar.com

Amid all the brouhaha over whether I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Karl Rove, or any number of Bush administration insiders had a hand in leaking the name of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame, the essential crime at the core of the investigation – and its probable starting point – often gets lost in the shuffle. The "outing" of Plame was not an end in itself: the outers didn't just one day decide that they were going to go after her and Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, her husband, because they were in a vindictive mood. They were out to get them because Wilson drew attention to the provenance of the infamous "16 words" uttered by President Bush in his 2003 state of the union address, in which Bush claimed that Iraq had sought out uranium to make a nuclear bomb in "an African country." Perhaps without knowing it, Wilson – in taking an interest in this subject – was getting too close to the enormous fraud at the center of the War Party's propaganda campaign.

Fitzgerald Investigating 22
By Larry C Johnson

Had lunch today with a person who has a direct tie to one of the folks facing indictment in the Plame affair. There are 22 files that Fitzgerald is looking at. These include Stephen Hadley, Karl Rove, Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney, and Mary Matalin (there are others of course). Hadley has told friends he expects to be indicted. No wonder folks are nervous at the White House.

___________

Cheney aide cooperating with CIA outing probe, sources say
By RAW STORY, Larisa Alexandrovna and Jason Leopold

consortiumnews.com

By Robert Parry
October 15, 2005

Less than two months before invading Iraq, George W. Bush fretted that his war plans could be disrupted if United Nations weapons inspectors succeeded in gaining Saddam Hussein’s full cooperation, possibly leaving Bush “looking weak,

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/

October 12, 2005 -- MSNBC -- (Keith Olbermann)
The Nexus of Politics and Terror

Secaucus - Last Thursday on Countdown, I referred to the latest terror threat - the reported bomb plot against the New York City subway system - in terms of its timing. President Bush's speech about the war on terror had come earlier the same day, as had the breaking news of the possible indictment of Karl Rove in the CIA leak investigation.
I suggested that in the last three years there had been about 13 similar coincidences - a political downturn for the administration, followed by a "terror event" - a change in alert status, an arrest, a warning.

Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) -- A special counsel is focusing on whether Vice President Dick Cheney played a role in leaking a covert CIA agent's name, according to people familiar with the probe that already threatens top White House aides Karl Rove and Lewis Libby.

The special counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, has questioned current and former officials of President George W. Bush's administration about whether Cheney was involved in an effort to discredit the agent's husband, Iraq war critic and former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson, according to the people.

Fitzgerald has questioned Cheney's communications adviser Catherine Martin and former spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise and ex-White House aide Jim Wilkinson about the vice president's knowledge of the anti-Wilson campaign and his dealings on it with Libby, his chief of staff, the people said. The information came from multiple sources, who requested anonymity because of the secrecy and political sensitivity of the investigation.

By Marie Woolf
The Independent UK
Sunday 16 October 2005

George Bush told the Prime Minister two months before the invasion of Iraq that Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and North Korea may also be dealt with over weapons of mass destruction, a top secret Downing Street memo shows.

The US President told Tony Blair, in a secret telephone conversation in January 2003 that he "wanted to go beyond Iraq".

He implied that the military action against Saddam Hussein was only a first step in the battle against WMD proliferation in a series of countries.

Mr Bush said he "wanted to go beyond Iraq in dealing with WMD proliferation", says the letter on Downing Street paper, marked secret and personal.

http://impeachbushcoalition.blogspot.com

[The Institute for Policy Study's Marcus Raskin and Joseph A. Vuckovich wrote the following article entitled: "George W. Bush: Legal Arguments for Impeachment".

We thank them for granting us permission to use the arctile here at the IBC. ]

This statement outlines the legal arguments for impeaching President Bush. The public policy grounds for impeachment (including the long-term effects of failure to hold the executive accountable for constitutional violations) are of equal significance, and we will discuss them in a separate statement.

Abuse of War Powers