""Watergate-level event" is about to occur in

by **Col Quisp** » Mon Oct 17, 2005 10:55 pm

Getting interesting: <a href="http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Senior_Democrats_call_for_explanation_of_1017.html">rawstory.com/news/2005/Se..._1017.html</a> Go Conyers, Go! My hero! Judy wore a uniform! my god. Was she goose-stepping as well? <blockquote>Quote:<hr>While traveling with MET Alpha, according to Pomeroy and one other witness, she wore a military uniform. "The magazine adds "Miller guarded her exclusive access with ferocity. When the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman overlapped in the unit for a day, Miller instructed its members that they couldn’t talk with him. According to Pomeroy, “She told people that she had clearance to be there and Bart didn’t.” (One other witness confirms this account.)"<hr></blockquote> Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=colquisp>Col Quisp</A> at: 10/17/05 8:59 pm

by **Peachtree Pam** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 5:20 am

The latest from firedoglake, it is getting better and better: <a href="http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/">firedoglake.blogspot.com/</a>

by **Peachtree Pam** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 6:55 am

Note the initials of this person posting his comments at the next hurrah. Any guesses, dbeach, as to who this brilliant poster could be: Posted by: cs | October 18, 2005 at 03:28 In hindsight, Scooter looks dumb for coaching Judy's testimony and his coded message: us right-wingers (codeword "Aspen" referring to the right-wing conference) connected at the roots (we're all in this together) will all go down if one of us goes down (turn in clusters). But remember, Fitz told Scooter he didn't want to see that letter so Scooter presumably thought he could get away with it. Hamsher, Swopa and/or Emptywheel (I forget exactly which combination of the Plamegate Blogger Trinity) put forth a lot of speculation as to who could have screwed Libby over. Based on the fact that Tate's letter (Scooter's lawyer) looked like an original, while Abrams' letter (Judy's 1st Amendment lawyer) looked like a copy, the collective wisdom was that it was Tate or someone in Tate's office. (BTW, I'm doing this from memory so my apologies if I'm being inaccurate to Hamsher, Swopa and/or Emptywheel, all of whom I deeply admire for the quality of their blogging.) Thinking it over and in light of new information, I don't think Tate or someone at Dechert (Libby's old law firm and where Tate is partner) leaked these letters. Now, I'm an attorney as well, and I've worked at big law firms. The politics between partners at a big law firm can be vicious, and yes, it is possible that enemies of Tate or old enemies of Libby at Dechert wanted to screw them over. But I just can't see an attorney--even one who hated Libby or Tate--divulging attorney-client privileged information like that. It's grounds for immediate firing and permanent disbarment if you get caught. What's the point of taking such a career-busting move? Libby's probably going to do down anyway. However, one other person had an original of the letter from Tate--Bennet (Judy's crim lawyer). Bennett would also have been cc'd on Abrams' letter (hence the copy) as co-counsel, and received a copy of Libby's strange letter printed on plain paper from his client, Judy, who got the original. Think about it from Bennett's perspective: Libby and Tate are trying to coach Judy's testimony. If Judy follows the coaching and these letters come out at a later date, Judy's screwed for obstrution of justice. If Judy doesn't follow the instructions and rats out Scooter, then Scooter's going to turn on Judy ("Aspens turning in clusters"). The key point is, JUDY DOESN'T WANT TO RAT OUT SCOOTER because if she did, "the aspens connected at the roots would turn." So what do Bennett and Judy do? They know they're going to hold out on Fitz because to do otherwise would mean Judy admitting countless other sorts of stuff. But to hold out on Fitz while counting on the letters staying hidden is naive. The solution? Bennett leaks the letters to send Libby and Tate a message: Shut up. You're only making things worse for yourselves and you're dragging down Judy. Having clipped Libby, Judy then goes in and tries to keep Fitz at bay. Even after Fitz nails her for holding out, Judy does her best to protect Libby (and consequently herself), but by stating in her article that she told Fitz that Libby's letter could be "perceived" as coaching, she sends the message to Libby that I'm not the one responsible for your letter, you screwed it up. Judy then relates the rest of her B.S. testimony with holes large enough to hide all of the missing Iraqi WMD to send Libby the message, see I didn't try to nail you. Bennett reinforces this message by going out in public to say how stupid Libby was to try to coache Miller's testimony. Now why would a smart, experienced Washington lawyer go out of his way to trash in public a (soon to be ex-)power player in D.C.? He's trying to tell Libby and Tate that their attempts to interfere were unnecessary since Miller would, in attempting to save her own worthless hide, have protected Libby as well. With Scooter's letter leaked, and Judy saying Scooter's letter could be "perceived" as an attempt to coach, Judy protects herself from charges that she was following Scooter's coaching when she intended to hold out on Fitz from the very beginning anyway. My conclusion: Tate screwed up. You can't expect your client to think rationally in situations like this. As the attorney, you have to penetrate everyone's motivations and hidden messages and send out your hidden messages without landing your client in deeper trouble. Tate seems to lack the subtlety necessary to do the job. I'm beginning to believe Abrams when he says Tate bitched that Libby's waiver was coerced. Also, I bet that "the stories that Judy should be covering" mentioned by Libby in his letter were the areas where Libby knows the dirt on Judy. If I were Libby's lawyer, I would have told Libby to cut it off there. Judy would have gotten the message since she knows where her skeletons are located, and while the passage would have seemed strange, it would have been defensible. <a href="http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2005/10/were_the_coveru.html#more">thenexthurrah.typepad.com....html#more</a>

by **Peachtree Pam** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 7:43 am

of Libby's coaching letter to St Judith is on this site, in pdf format: <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/libbys-letter-to-miller_b_8185.html">www.huffingtonpost.com/ar..._8185.html</a>

by **antiaristo** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 7:45 am

Pam, I'm as much a CS booster as anyone. But unfortunately that comment was by saugatak. The cs comment was checking for rodeos in 2003. Well worth posting, though!

by **Peachtree Pam** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 7:52 am

You are quite right, the poster name is below the comment. It really sounded like cs, though, and was a good post. Miller and Libby are so crooked I don't see how Fitz cannot indict her for something - perjury, if nothing else. I wish cs would post his views in an analysis.

by **antiaristo** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 8:17 am

Hi Pam, Another interesting thought... <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Similarly, I think Rove knew quite well that Matt Cooper's call wouldn't show up in the White House phone logs when he offered up the Wilson's-wife leak just before going on vacation, and he chose his words carefully when he wrote that email to Steve Hadley -- of which Billmon wrote at the time it was first reported, "The thing really does read as if Rove was trying to establish an alibi, although at that point I don't know why he would have believed he'd ever need one." I think Rove and Libby were trying to establish alibis, which is also why they confirmed leaks with identical "I've heard that, too" responses to Bob Novak and Matt Cooper, respectively (and Novak and Cooper's written accounts match Rove and Libby's reported testimony in saying this). Of course, one could reasonably ask why they went through the trouble of taking all these precautions ... was it just the survival instinct of two lifelong scumbags political street-brawlers, or did it reflect the knowledge that exposing a CIA "analyst" was in fact a crime?<hr></blockquote> <a href="http://www.needlenose.com/index.php">www.needlenose.com/index.php</a> Seems to me proving intent is central to the IIPA (though of course not the Espionage Act). And at the time JA was at the helm, ready to nudge any investigation towards the IIPA (the CS "grand conspiracy" thesis).

by **Qutb** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 8:49 am

<a href="http://news.ft.com/cms/s/ff92e968-3f4b-11da-932f-00000e2511c8.html" target="top">Financial Times</a> It's getting interesting... CIA leak probe 'widening to include use of intelligence' By Caroline Daniel and Edward Alden in Washington Published: October 17 2005 21:39 | Last updated: October 17 2005 21:39 Evidence is building that the probe conducted by Patrick Fitzgerald, special prosecutor, has extended beyond the leaking of a covert CIA agent's name to include questioning about the administration's handling of pre-Iraq war intelligence. According to the Democratic National Committee, a majority of the nine members of the White House Iraq Group have been questioned by Mr Fitzgerald. The team, which included senior national security officials, was created in August 2002 to “educate the public” about the risk posed by weapons of mass destruction on Iraq. (...) The US failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq resulted in two inquiries into the prewar intelligence, one led by the Senate intelligence committee and the other by a White House-appointed panel. But both panels confined themselves to investigating the intelligence community, concluding that the White House was largely the innocent victim of faulty intelligence. Neither delved into the political use of the available intelligence by the administration. Qutb means "axis," "pole," "the center," which contains the periphery or is present in it. The qutb is a spiritual being, or function, which can reside in a human being or several human beings or a moment. It is the elusive mystery of how the divine gets delegated into the manifest world and obviously cannot be defined.

by **chiggerbit** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 9:35 am

Wouldn't it be ironic if it turns out that the leaker is Cheney's wife or one of his kids? Other Americans' kids get sent to war to die over his lie, and then his kid or wife gets sent to jail. snip <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/17/AR2005101701888_pf.html">www.washingtonpost.com/wp...88_pf.html</a> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>In the Bush White House, Cheney typically has operated secretly, relying on advice from a tight circle of longtime advisers, including Libby; David Addington, his counsel; and his wife, Lynne, and two children, including Liz, a top State Department official. But a former Cheney aide, who requested anonymity, said it is "implausible" that Cheney himself was involved in the leaking of Plame's name because he rarely, if ever, involved himself in press strategy.<hr></blockquote> Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=chiggerbit@rigorousintuition>chiggerbit</A> at: 10/18/05 7:36 am

by **hmm** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 1:13 pm

"Time and Newsweek held back publishing yesterday... I put them out when they come in and if they hold back, and it might even be till tommorrow, you know something big is about to happen." <a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5090306&mesg_id=5090345">www.democraticunderground...id=5090345</a>

by **antiaristo** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 1:14 pm

I've just worked out what's been going on. As ever, the Brits are the clue. Do you remember what happened with David Kelly? When Campbell and Blair wanted to "out" Kelly they played a game with the press. They gave out enough clues for an educated pundit to narrow the field down to a few names. They then said they would confirm the name if any journalist found it. Richard Norton-Taylor guessed three, and the third was David Kelly. The plame conspirators were facing the identical situation across the water. They wanted to get a name into the public domain. But unlike Kelly, Plame had committed no infraction. So they went about it in a different way. They broke the basic information down into pieces and gave different pieces to different people at different times. They put in some slight variations of the name and exactly what she did in order to cover themselves against the IIPA. But they knew these people gossip, and they knew there were enough clues that only an idiot would fail to work it out. Classic Masonic conspiracy, led by the highest ranking Freemason in American public life. And Pat has been known to roll up his trouser leg. To quote that other Miller (General Geoffrey of Abu Ghraib), you just have to "set the conditions". Attribution required. Here's the link to the Miller/Kelly thread. <a href="http://p216.ezboard.com/frigorousintuitionfrm13.showMessage?topicID=56.topic">p216.ezboard.com/frigorou...D=56.topic</a> Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=antiaristo>antiaristo</A> at: 10/18/05 11:22 am

by **hmm** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 1:23 pm

"One important use of conspiracy charges is that it relieves prosecutors of the need to prove the particular roles of conspirators. If two persons plot to kill another (and this can be proven), and the victim is indeed killed as a result of the actions of either conspirator, it is not necessary to prove with specificity which of the conspirators actually pulled the trigger." i believe in the USA one can be charged with conspiracy even if the act one is conspiring to achieve isnt of itself illegal.

by **chiggerbit** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 4:22 pm

Yikes! <a href="http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Cheney_aide_cooperating_with_CIA_outing_1018.html">rawstory.com/news/2005/Ch..._1018.html</a> Cheney aide cooperating with CIA outing probe, sources say Larisa Alexandrovna and Jason Leopold A senior aide to Vice President Dick Cheney is cooperating with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, sources close to the investigation say. Individuals familiar with Fitzgerald’s case tell RAW STORY that John Hannah, a senior national security aide on loan to Vice President Dick Cheney from the offices of then-Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, John Bolton, was named as a target of Fitzgerald’s probe. They say he was told in recent weeks that he could face imminent indictment for his role in leaking Plame-Wilson’s name to reporters unless he cooperated with the investigation. Others close to the probe say that if Hannah is cooperating with the special prosecutor then he was likely going to be charged as a co-conspirator and may have cut a deal. Hannah did not return two calls and several emails to his White House address seeking comment. Fitzgerald is investigating whether officials in the Bush Administration illegally outed a CIA agent to get back at her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was a critic of the Administration’s faulty intelligence and lead-up to war. In a July 2003 editorial, Wilson wrote that the Bush administration “twisted” pre-Iraq war intelligence in order to win public support for the Iraq conflict. Specifically, Wilson called into question the veracity of President Bush’s claim in his January 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq tried to purchase yellow-cake uranium from Africa. Wilson had been sent on a fact-finding mission to Niger a year before and reported that those allegations were unfounded. Bush administration officials said Wilson’s trip was a boondoggle, and was set up by his wife who worked at the CIA on weapons of mass destruction. Those close to the investigation said in June 2003, Hannah was given orders by higher-ups in Cheney’s office to leak Plame’s covert status and identity in an attempt to muzzle Wilson, who had been a thorn in the side of the administration since May 2003, when he started questioning the administration’s claims that Iraq was an imminent threat to the U.S. and its neighbors in the Middle East. The specifics of who issued those orders and what directives were given were not provided. Hannah had been fingered by Wilson To many following the case, Hannah’s involvement will not come as a surprise. Wilson pointed to Hannah as a possible leaker in his book, The Politics of Truth. “In fact, senior advisers close to the president may well have been clever enough to have used others to do the actual leaking, in order to keep their fingerprints off the crime,” Wilson writes. “John Hannah and David Wurmser, mid-level political appointees in the vice-president’s office, have both been suggested as sources of the leak …Mid-level officials, however, do not leak information without the authority from a higher level,” Wilson notes. The revelation that Hannah has become a prosecution witness strongly suggests that Fitzgerald is now looking into the motive for outing Plame and how Wilson’s complaints threatened to destroy public support for the war, which the Bush administration worked diligently to win. Fitzgerald may be looking at a broader conspiracy case of pre-war machinations by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) and by the Pentagon’s ultra-secret Office of Net Assessment, the former operating out of Dick Cheney’s office and tasked with “selling” the war in Iraq, and the latter operating out of Defense Under Secretary for Policy, Douglas Feith’s office and tasked with creating a war to “sell,” as some describe. To spread its message that Saddam Hussein was a nuclear threat, the White House Iraq Group relied heavily on New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who, after meeting with several of the organization’s members in August 2002, wrote an explosive story that many critics of the war believe laid the groundwork for military action against Iraq. On Sunday, Sept. 8, 2002, for example, Miller wrote a story for the Times quoting anonymous officials who said aluminum tubes found in Iraq were to be used as centrifuges. Her report turned out to be wrong. Hannah under investigation for role with Chalabi group Hannah is currently under investigation by U.S. authorities for his alleged activities in an intelligence program run by the controversial Iraqi National Congress (INC) and its leader, Ahmed Chalabi. According to a Newsweek article, a memo written for the Iraq National Congress (INC) raised questions regarding Cheney’s role in the build up to the war in Iraq. During the lead up to the war, Newsweek asserts, the INC was providing intelligence on the now discredited Iraqi WMD program through Hannah and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff. “A June 2002 memo written by INC lobbyist Entifadh Qunbar to a U.S. Senate committee lists John Hannah, a senior national-security aide on Cheney’s staff, as one of two ‘U.S. governmental recipients’ for reports generated by an intelligence program being run by the INC and which was then being funded by the State Department. Under the program, ‘defectors, reports and raw intelligence are cultivated and analyzed’; the info was then reported to, among others, ‘appropriate governmental, non-governmental and international agencies.’ The memo not only describes Cheney aide Hannah as a “principal point of contact” for the program, it even provides his direct White House telephone number.” “…Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, were the two Cheney employees,’ We believe that Hannah was the major player in this,’ one federal law-enforcement officer told the magazine. According to the Washington Post, Libby discussed Wilson's wife with at least two reporters before her identity became public. Originally published on Tuesday October 18, 2005. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=chiggerbit@rigorousintuition>chiggerbit</A> at: 10/18/05 2:23 pm

by **chiggerbit** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 4:33 pm

More on Hannah from Juan Cole from way back in Feb, 2004: <a href="http://www.juancole.com/2004/02/john-hannah-allegedly-focus-of-plame.html">www.juancole.com/2004/02/...plame.html</a> Saturday, February 07, 2004 John Hannah Allegedly Focus of Plame Probe Richard Sale, respected intelligence reporter for UPI, has given credibility to a story that had been rumored for several weeks . It is that the FBI investigation into the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame is increasingly focusing on two officials in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, Lewis "Scooter" Libby and John Hannah. Sale assures me that the information is solid. Last summer, former ambassador Joseph Wilson went public about his 2002 report refuting the allegation that Saddam tried to buy Niger uranium. Someone in the Bush administration attempted to punish him by identifying his wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative involved in trying to prevent proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The information was given to the press, but only one reporter, CNN commentator Robert Novak, was sleazy enough to publish it. (Outraged readers should please email CNN demanding that they fire Novak for having wilfully damaged US national security). Novak did not commit a crime. But whatever Bush administration official leaked the information to him did. Libby and Hannah form part of a 13-man vice presidential advisory team, sort of a veep NSC, which helps underpin Cheney's dominance in the US foreign policy area. Hannah is a neoconservative and old cold warrior who is really more of a Soviet expert than a Middle East expert. But in the 90s he for a while headed up the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a think tank that represents the interests of the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC). Hannah is said to have been behind Cheney's and consequently Bush's support for refusing to deal with Yasser Arafat. But he was also deeply involved in getting up the Iraq war. If Hannah and Libby initiated the outing of Valerie Plame, why? Of course, both their involvement and their motives can only be speculated about at this point. But on December 9, Newsweek reported that: "a June 2002 memo written by INC lobbyist Entifadh Qunbar to a U.S. Senate committee lists John Hannah, a senior national-security aide on Cheney's staff, as one of two 'U.S. governmental recipients' for reports generated by an intelligence program being run by the INC and which was then being funded by the State Department. Under the program, 'defectors, reports and raw intelligence are cultivated and analyzed'; the info was then reported to, among others, 'appropriate governmental, non-governmental and international agencies.' The memo not only describes Cheney aide Hannah as a 'principal point of contact' for the program, it even provides his direct White House telephone number. The only other U.S. official named as directly receiving the INC intel is William Luti, a former military adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who, after working on Cheney's staff early in the Bush administration, shifted to the Pentagon, where he oversaw a secretive Iraq war-planning unit called the Office of Special Plans." It is possible that Wilson posed a special danger to Hannah, since Hannah was at the center of the "cherry-picking bad intelligence" effort that led Cheney to maintain that Saddam and Bin Laden were Siamese twins and that Iraq was floating in biological and chemical weapons and within 3-5 years of having an atomic bomb. (All of these positions, which Cheney has repeatedly alleged, are completely false and were known to be in 2002 by anyone not wearing ideological blinders). Hannah had fingers in all three rotten pies from which the worst intel came--Sharon's office in Israel, the Pentagon Office of Special Plans (for which Hannah served as a liaison to Cheney), and fraudster Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. Hannah had probably been the one who fed Cheney the Niger uranium story, triggering a Cheney request to the CIA to verify it and thence Joe Wilson's trip to Niamey in spring of 2002, where he found the story to be an absurd falsehood on the face of it. The WINEP pro-Likud network, which includes Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith in the Pentagon as well as Libby and Hannah at Cheney's office, has virtually dictated Bush administration Middle East policy. Wilson's debunking of one of its central claims might well have led Cheney to fire Hannah or to disregard his opinion. The WINEP crowd takes no prisoners and is very determined, over decades, to get its way. (Josh Marshall notes that they are already trying to protect Hannah with denials he could possibly have been involved, presumably meaning that they would be willing to throw Libby to the dogs.) Wilson had to be punished, from their point of view, and if possible marginalized, to protect Hannah's position. Being male chauvinist pigs, they appear to have hoped to show that Wilson's trip was the result of nepotism or of female influence, and that Plame had recommended her husband for the job (an unfounded charge). Somehow they seemed to think that this allegation would help discredit Wilson, but to this day I haven't figured out their weird reasoning on the matter. It is also possible that they were worried that Wilson's opinion piece might encourage more whistle blowers to step forward. Hannah and the Iraqi National Congress are being accused of peddling patently false "intelligence." This is a criminal enterprise, and there was always the danger that others in Plame's department at the agency, which specializes in preventing weapons proliferation, might be tempted to find ways of revealing the extent of Hannah's bad faith. Hannah may have wanted to send a clear signal that whistleblowers would have their careers ruined, as Valerie Plame's was, as a way of ensuring that the details of his operation did not become public. Sale is digging. Stay tuned. posted by Juan @ 2/07/2004 09:08:05 AM

by **chiggerbit** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 4:50 pm

Time to review an article from AntiWar this past summer: <a href="http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6677">antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6677</a> snip, emphasis mine <blockquote>Quote:<hr>...The mere existence of a highly placed cabal that was engaged in collecting and utilizing highly sensitive information – a kind of intelligence bank that existed outside of normal governmental channels – would be of great interest to the FBI's counterintelligence unit, and word is out that they've been plenty busy lately. Who made withdrawals from this Intelligence Bank, and did any of these account holders include foreign governments – such as Iran, which received an intelligence treasure trove from neocon poster boy Ahmed Chalabi, and Israel, which is already under suspicion because of the Franklin affair, and has close links to several of the suspects in the Plame-gate investigation? And then there is the question of the Niger uranium forgeries themselves: who forged the documents that fooled a president? Wilson's exposure of the Niger uranium ploy angered whoever introduced those documents into the U.S. intelligence stream – it was Hannah and Libby, by all accounts, who fought to keep these allegations in the president's speech, in spite of opposition from the CIA and the State Department. The same crowd that pushed this phony intelligence must have known something about the murky origins of what turned out to be a crude forgery.<hr></blockquote> Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=chiggerbit@rigorousintuition>chiggerbit</A> at: 10/18/05 3:05 pm

""Watergate-level event" is about to occur in

Raw Story

Cheney in his sights

Our old friend explaining Libby's letter to St Judith

The full text

Re: Our old friend explaining Libby's letter to St Judith

Hi Anti,

Re: Hi Anti,

Re: 'widening to include use of intelligence'

Re: 'widening to include use of intelligence'

rumour has it Time & Newsweek held back publishing yeste

Modus Operandi

Re: Modus Operandi - but then its a conspiracy?

Re:John Hannah Cooperating??

Re: Re:John Hannah Cooperating??

Re: Re:John Hannah Cooperating??

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