Blockbuster info on Plamegate

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Blockbuster info on Plamegate

Postby Peachtree Pam » Wed Nov 02, 2005 6:23 pm

This has just gone up on Raw Story:<br><br>Laywers involved in leak case say Bolton's chief of staff gave Plame info to Libby<br>Jason Leopold and Larisa Alexandrovna<br><br>John Bolton, the former Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs who is now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was contacted by I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby in late May 2003 to find out who sent Ambassador Joseph Wilson on a fact-finding mission to Niger to investigate reports that Iraq had tried to purchase yellowcake uranium from the African country, lawyers involved in the CIA outing investigation told RAW STORY over the weekend.<br><br>The attorneys, along with intelligence officials, have provided RAW STORY additional insight into the unnamed identities of key players referred to in the five-count indictment against Libby, who resigned last Friday as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. <br><br>Specifically, they relayed what two key prosecution witnesses now cooperating with the probe told Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about the events that led to Libby learning about Wilson’s mission and Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity. Plame Wilson, the wife of the former ambassador, was outed as a CIA agent working on weapons of mass destruction issues after Wilson begin criticizing the Bush Administration's failed Iraq intelligence.<br><br><br>Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Fitzgerald, told RAW STORY that he could not comment or offer “guidance” on the specifics of this story.<br><br>The 22-page indictment posted on Fitzgerald’s website Friday says that on May 29, 2003 Libby “asked an Under Secretary of State (“Under Secretary”) for information concerning the unnamed ambassador’s travel to Niger to investigate claims about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium yellowcake. The Under Secretary thereafter directed the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research to prepare a report concerning the ambassador and his trip. The Under Secretary provided Libby with interim oral reports in late May and early June 2003, and advised Libby that Wilson was the former ambassador who took the trip.” <br><br>News reports have identified the Undersecretary as Marc Grossman. This is technically correct, in that he is the one who had received the June 10, 2003 classified Intelligence and Research memo for Libby about Wilson’s Niger trip, in addition to information about Plame’s covert CIA status and her relationship to Wilson.<br><br>But the attorneys said that two former Libby aides, John Hannah and David Wurmser, told the special prosecutor that Libby had actually first contacted Bolton to dig up the information. Wurmser, who worked as a Middle Eastern affairs aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, was on loan from Bolton’s office. <br><br>Both Wurmser and Hannah have been cooperating with Fitzgerald's probe for some time, the lawyers said.<br><br>In addition, sources say that the memo was written on Libby’s behest as part of a work-up order orchestrated out of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), which operated out of the Cheney’s office and was chaired by Special Advisor to President Bush, Karl Rove.<br><br>How Plame’s name got to Libby<br><br>Grossman asked Carl Ford, the Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research, to write the memo. Ford is the State Department official who testified before a the Senate Foreign Relations Committee against Bolton during his unsuccessful UN confirmation hearings and described Bolton as a “bully.”<br><br>Bolton was later appointed to the UN during a Congressional recess. His name came up several times during the course of the two-year investigation into Plame’s outing, notably when he paid a visit to the federal prison where New York Times reporter Judith Miller was housed for refusing to testify in the case. <br><br>The attorneys also said that Frederick Fleitz, Bolton's chief of staff who was also a CIA official, supplied Bolton with Plame’s identity. Bolton passed this to his aide, Wurmser, who in turn supplied the information to Hannah, they added. <br><br>Upon receiving this information, Libby asked Bolton for a report on Wilson’s trip to Niger, which Wilson presented orally to the CIA upon his return. Fleitz was one of a handful of officials who was in a position to know Plame’s maiden name, the sources said.<br><br>Fleitz is named in the indictment as an unnamed CIA senior officer, they added. <br><br>Fleitz had long history with Bolton<br><br>The indictment cites Fleitz’s CIA role, but not his on-loan status to Bolton’s office. It reads, “On or about June 11, 2003, LIBBY spoke with a senior officer of the CIA to ask about the origin and circumstances of Wilson’s trip, and was advised by the CIA officer that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and was believed to be responsible for sending Wilson on the trip.”<br><br>Fleitz has been a trusted source of information to Bolton for some time and vice versa. In his book, “Peacekeeping Fiascoes of the 1990s: Causes, Solutions, and U.S. Interests,” Fleitz thanked Bolton for advising him on research and providing him with guidance in writing the book.<br><br>It has long been rumored that Bolton had his own connections to agents at the CIA who shared his political philosophy on Iraq. Greg Thielman, a former director at the State Department who was assigned to Bolton and entrusted with providing the former under secretary of state with intelligence information, told New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh that Bolton had become frustrated that Thielman was not providing him with smoking gun intelligence information on Iraq that he wanted to hear.<br><br>“He surrounded himself with a hand-chosen group of loyalists, and found a way to get CIA information directly,” Thielman said in Hersh's book, “Chain of Command.” (Page 223)<br><br>“In essence, the undersecretary (Bolton) would be running his own intelligence operation, without any guidance or support,” Hersh wrote. (Page 222)<br><br>“Eventually, Thielman said, Bolton demanded that he and his staff have direct electronic access to sensitive intelligence, such as foreign agent reports and electronic intercepts," according to the book. "In previous administrations, such data had been made available to undersecretaries only after it was analyzed, usually in the specific secured offices of the INR.” (Page 222)<br><br>Bolton testified to grand jury, MSNBC said<br><br>According to MSNBC, Bolton testified before the grand jury investigating the Plame leak. Questions were raised about whether Bolton knowingly left that fact out of the questionnaire related to his UN confirmation hearing. <br><br>Wurmser likely cooperated because he faced criminal charges for his role in leaking Wilson's name on the orders of higher-ups, the lawyers said. Hannah, a key aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and one of the architects of the Iraq war, was cooperating with Fitzgerald after being told that he was identified by witnesses as a co-conspirator in the leak, they added.<br><br>It is unclear whether Bolton played any other role in the Plame outing, but his connection to the Iraq uranium claims certainly gave him a motive to discredit Wilson, who had called into question the veracity of the Niger documents. A probe by the State Department Inspector General revealed that Bolton’s office was responsible for the placement of the Niger uranium claims in the State Department’s December 2002 “fact sheet” on Iraq’s WMD program.<br><br>The attorneys said it is unlikely that the information Hannah and Wurmser had provided Fitzgerald and included in the indictment will ever become public, but their testimony in the case was crucial in that it allowed Fitzgerald to put together a timeline that showed how various governmental agencies knew about Plame’s covert CIA status.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://rawstory.com/">rawstory.com/</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>No wonder Bolton visited St Judith TWICE in prison!<br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
Peachtree Pam
 
Posts: 950
Joined: Sat Jul 02, 2005 9:46 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Blockbuster info on Plamegate

Postby chiggerbit » Wed Nov 02, 2005 7:45 pm

Bringing up a quote in another thread for comparison:<br><br><br>www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLIT...novak.cia/<br><br><br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>...."Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this," Novak said on "Crossfire." "There is no great crime here." <br><br>Novak said Monday that he was working on the column when a senior administration official told him the CIA asked Wilson to go to Niger in early 2002 at the suggestion of his wife, whom the source described as "a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction." <br><br>Another senior administration official gave him the same information, Novak said,<!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong> and the CIA confirmed her involvement in her husband's mission.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> <br><br>In his column, Novak attributed the information about Plame's involvement in Wilson's trip to Africa to two unnamed senior administration officials. <br><br>"They asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative and not in charge of undercover operators," Novak said. <br><br>The Washington Post quoted a "senior administration official" in a story Sunday as saying that two top White House officials disclosed the identity of Wilson's wife in calls to at least six Washington journalists. Novak was the only recipient of the information who published it, the Post reported.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br><br>Ok, now compare the above information from Novak with this:<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>The indictment cites Fleitz’s CIA role, but not his on-loan status to Bolton’s office</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Do we have Novak's CIA person assigned to answer his questions, as well as his senior administration official number one or number two, Bolton? <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=chiggerbit@rigorousintuition>chiggerbit</A> at: 11/2/05 5:12 pm<br></i>
chiggerbit
 
Posts: 8594
Joined: Tue May 10, 2005 12:23 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Blockbuster info on Plamegate

Postby dbeach » Wed Nov 02, 2005 8:00 pm

bolten visited judi in da slammer<br>I really luv romance<br><br>whata thoughtful guy!!<br><br>maybe there is an extra space for boltie in dat same slammer <p></p><i></i>
dbeach
 
Posts: 2650
Joined: Sun Jul 10, 2005 7:40 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)


Return to Plame Investigation

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 6 guests