Fitzgerald Going Back to Grand Jury

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

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will present evidence next week to a grand jury in his two year-old investigation into the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson in the hopes of securing a criminal indictment against an undetermined number of senior officials in the Bush administration for playing some sort of role in the leak, attorneys who have been working on this case since its inception said.

Adding a new wrinkle in the ongoing drama surrounding a federal probe into the Plame Wilson leak, Bob Woodward, the assistant managing editor of the Washington Post, disclosed that he testified under oath this week before Fitzgerald, stating that he too was told about Plame Wilson’s CIA status in June 2003 by an administration official.

Plame Wilson had recommended that her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, an outspoken critic of the administration’s pre-war Iraq intelligence, be sent to Niger to investigate allegations that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country. President Bush had cited the Iraq-uranium claims in his January 2003 State of the Union address. Wilson had told reporters privately in May 2003 that he had been the CIA’s special envoy sent to Niger to look into that rumor, reporting back to the CIA that the charges were false.

Woodward’s testimony contained information about several individuals at the White House that led Fitzgerald directly back to another grand jury, the substance of which sources would not divulge saying it could taint the case. Sources said the evidence involved additional aides in the Vice President’s office as well as senior officials who were part of a clandestine faction known as the White House Iraq Group, which was set up by President Bush’s Chief of Staff Andrew Card in August 2002 to "market" the Iraq war to the public via selective leaks to major newspapers about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction program.

In January 2004, Fitzgerald sent the White House subpoenas seeking documents from July 6 to July 30, 2003 of the little-known White House Iraq Group. Now, according to sources, he’s going to use that evidence in his grand jury proceedings, which may unintentionally shed some light on how the Niger claims ended up in Bush’s State of the Union address.

The WHIG had operated under the radar for quite some time. In August 2003, the Washington Post published the only account of the group's existence. During its very first meetings, Card's Iraq group ordered a series of white papers showing Iraq’s arms violations. The first paper, "A Grave and Gathering Danger: Saddam Hussein's Quest for Nuclear Weapons," was never published. However, the paper was drafted with the assistance of experts from the National Security Council and Cheney's office.

"It met weekly in the Situation Room, The Post said, and its regular participants included senior political adviser Karl Rove; communication strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas Calio; policy advisers led by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley; and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney," according to a March 5, 2004 report in Newsday.

According to two intelligence officials at the CIA with knowledge of the inner workings of the White House Iraq Group, Vice President Dick Cheney was present at several of those meetings and personally discussed with those individuals in attendance at least two interviews Wilson gave to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff and Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus, claiming that the administration "twisted" pre-war intelligence, and what the response from the administration should be.

When Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times on July 6, 2003 attacking the administration’s assertion that Iraq tried to purchase uranium, CIA Director George Tenet was forced one day later to take responsibility for not omitting the Niger claim from Bush's State of the Union speech, citing pressure from the National Security Council. Within days of Tenet’s mea culpa, NSC deputy Stephen Hadley admitted he forgot seeing two memos from the agency expressing doubts about the intelligence related to Niger.

Although bulletproof evidence has surfaced during the past few months that proves Cheney played an active role in obtaining information from administration officials about the then-unnamed CIA official, and disseminating the classified material to senior aides - perfectly legal - there are doubts that the Vice President himself was the source who leaked the information to Woodward.

In a statement published in the Washington Post Wednesday, Woodward, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter whose investigative stories on the Watergate scandal forced the resignation of President Richard Nixon, said he had first learned about Plame Wilson’s identity in mid-June 2003, during a time when Cheney and his senior aides had gone to great lengths to find out her identity in the hopes of silencing Wilson, who at the time had been causing a stir behind the scenes by calling into question the veracity of the administration’s pre-war intelligence.

Woodward said that he had spoken with two administration officials on June 20 and June 23, 2003. It is unclear which of these dates Woodward had spoken with Cheney and Hadley, whether it was in person or during a phone interview. Cheney was in Boca Raton, Fla., on June 20, 2003 speaking to the International Petroleum Association about the war on terror and the ongoing war in Iraq. On June 23, 2003 Cheney was the headliner at a fundraiser for the 2004 presidential campaign in Hopkinton, Mass. The vice president’s office would not return calls seeking information as to whether Cheney returned to Washington following the fundraiser and speech.

On Friday, Hadley refused to respond to questions from the Associated Press denying he was Woodward’s source. A spokeswoman for the National Security Council said Hadley categorically denied being Woodward’s source, adding that the two did not meet in June 2003. However, the spokeswoman refused to go on the record and asked that her statements be attributed to a "White House official" because of the sensitivity of the matter. When asked why her statement could not be attributed to the NSC she said, "This situation is too sensitive and that is the line we are telling other reporters."

The New York Times reported Thursday that Cheney and Hadley hadn’t joined the chorus of top administration officials who have publicly denied speaking to Woodward about Plame. Those ruled out or who have issued statements saying they did not speak to Woodward include President Bush; Bush's Deputy Chief of Staff Andrew Card; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; John McLaughlin; Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who remains in legal limbo for his role in the leak; and White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett.

At the time Woodward had spoken with Hadley, he was writing a book, "Plan of Attack," about the invasion of Iraq. Ironically, it was during the 30th anniversary of Watergate when Woodward was told about Plame Wilson. However, the reporter seemed to be unaware that the disclosure would become, next to Watergate, one of the biggest scandals in White House history.

In his statement, Woodward said he met with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff, who was indicted on five counts of obstruction of justice and lying to a grand jury, about his role in the leak, "at 5:10 p.m. in his office adjacent to the White House. I took the 18-page list of questions with the Page-5 reference to 'yellowcake' to this interview and I believe I also had the other question list from June 20, which had the 'Joe Wilson's wife' reference."

With Hadley and Libby being named as the administration officials who shared classified information with Woodward in June 2003, as well as other top reporters covering the White House, the theory that there was a coordinated effort within the office of the vice president to pummel Wilson seems credible.

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Jason Leopold spent two years covering California's electricity crisis as Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires. Jason has spent the last year cultivating sources close to the CIA leak invesigation, and will be a regular contributer to t r u t h o u t.