Fitzgerald Will Seek New White House Indictments

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

It may seem as though it's been moving along at a snail's pace, but the second part of the federal investigation into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson is nearly complete, with attorneys and government officials who have remained close to the probe saying that a grand jury will likely return an indictment against one or two senior Bush administration officials.

These sources work or worked at the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council. Some of these sources are attorneys close to the case. They requested anonymity because they were not permitted to speak publicly about the details of the investigation.

In lengthy interviews over the weekend and on Monday, they said that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has started to prepare the paperwork to present to the grand jury seeking an indictment against White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove or National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

Although the situation remains fluid, it's possible, these sources said, that Fitzgerald may seek to indict both Rove and Hadley, charging them with perjury, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy related to their roles in the leak of Plame Wilson's identity and their effort to cover up their involvement following a Justice Department investigation.

The sources said late Monday that it may take more than a month before Fitzgerald presents the paperwork outlining the government's case against one or both of the officials and asks the grand jury to return an indictment, because he is currently juggling quite a few high-profile criminal cases and will need to carve out time to write up the indictment and prepare the evidence.

In addition to responding to discovery requests from Libby's defense team and appearing in court with his attorneys, who are trying to obtain additional evidence, such as top-secret documents, from Fitzgerald's probe, the special prosecutor is also prosecuting Lord Conrad Black, the newspaper magnate, has recently charged numerous individuals in a child pornography ring, and is wrestling with other lawsuits in his home city of Chicago.

Details about the latest stage of the investigation began to take shape a few weeks ago when the lead FBI investigator on the leak case, John C. Eckenrode, retired from the agency and indicated to several colleagues that the investigation is about to wrap up with indictments handed up by the grand jury against Rove or Hadley or both officials, the sources said.

The Philadelphia-based Eckenrode is finished with his work on the case; however, he is expected to testify as a witness for the prosecution next year against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff who was indicted in October on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators regarding his role in the leak.

Hadley and Rove remain under intense scrutiny, but sources said Fitzgerald has not yet decided whether to seek charges against one or both of them.

Libby and other officials in Cheney's office used the information they obtained about Plame Wilson to undermine the credibility of her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Wilson was an outspoken critic of the Iraq war. He had alleged that President Bush misspoke when he said, in his January 2003 State of the Union address, that Iraq had tried to acquire yellow-cake uranium, the key component used to build a nuclear bomb, from Niger.

The uranium claim was the silver bullet in getting Congress to support military action two months later. To date, no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, and the country barely had a functional weapons program, according to a report from the Iraq Survey Group.

Wilson had traveled to Niger more than a year earlier to investigate the yellow-cake claims and reported back to the CIA that intelligence reports saying Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger were false.

On Monday, though, attorneys close to the leak case confirmed that Fitzgerald had met with the grand jury half a dozen times since January and recently told the jurors that he planned to present them with the government's case against Rove or Hadley, which stems from an email Rove had sent to Hadley in July of 2003 indicating that he had a conversation about Plame Wilson with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper.

Neither Hadley nor Rove disclosed the existence of the email when they were questioned by FBI investigators or when they testified before a grand jury, the sources said, adding that Rove testified he found out about Plame Wilson from reporters and Hadley testified that he recalled learning about Plame Wilson when her name was published in a newspaper column.

Rove testified before the grand jury four times. He did not disclose the existence of the email during the three previous times he testified, claiming he simply forgot about it because he was enmeshed with the 2004 Presidential election, traveling around the country attending fundraisers and meetings, working more than 15 hours a day on the campaign, and just forgot that he spoke with Cooper three months earlier, sources familiar with his testimony said.

But Rove and Libby had been the subject of dozens of news stories about the possibility that they played a role in the leak, and had faced dozens of questions as early as August 2003 - one month after Plame Wilson was outed - about whether they were the administration officials responsible for leaking her identity.

The story Rove and his attorney, Robert Luskin, provided to Fitzgerald in order to explain why Rove did not disclose the existence of the email is "less than satisfactory and entirely unconvincing to the special counsel," one of the attorneys close to the case said.

Luskin did not return numerous calls for comment. A spokeswoman for the National Security Council said she could not comment on an ongoing investigation and has vehemently denied that Hadley was involved in the leak "because Mr. Hadley told us he wasn't involved."

In December, Luskin made a desperate attempt to keep his client out of Fitzgerald's crosshairs.

Luskin had revealed to Fitzgerald that Viveca Novak - a reporter working for Time magazine who wrote several stories about the Plame Wilson case - inadvertently tipped him off in early 2004 that her colleague at the magazine, Matt Cooper, would be forced to testify that Rove was his source who told him about Plame Wilson's CIA status.

Novak - who bears no relation to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, the journalist who first published Plame Wilson's name and CIA status in a July 14, 2003, column - met Luskin in Washington DC in the summer of 2004, and over drinks, the two discussed Fitzgerald's investigation into the Plame Wilson leak.

Luskin had assured Novak that Rove learned Plame Wilson's name and CIA status after it was published in news accounts and that only then did he phone other journalists to draw their attention to it. But Novak told Luskin that everyone in the Time newsroom knew Rove was Cooper's source and that he would testify to that in an upcoming grand jury appearance, these sources said.

According to Luskin's account, after he met with Viveca Novak he contacted Rove and told him about his conversation with her. The two of them then began an exhaustive search through White House phone logs and emails for any evidence that proved that Rove had spoken with Cooper. Luskin said that during this search an email was found that Rove had sent to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley immediately after Rove's conversation with Cooper, and it was subsequently turned over to Fitzgerald.

"I didn't take the bait," Rove wrote in the email to Hadley immediately following his conversation with Cooper on July 11, 2003. "Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he's got a welfare reform story coming. When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn't this damaging? Hasn't the president been hurt? I didn't take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn't get Time far out in front on this."

Luskin wound up becoming a witness in the case and testified about his conversation with Viveca Novak that Luskin said would prove his client didn't knowingly lie to FBI investigators when he was questioned about the leak in October 2003, just three months after Rove told Cooper that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.

The email Rove sent to Hadley, which Luskin said he found, helped Rove recall his conversation with Cooper a year earlier. Rove then returned to the grand jury to clarify his previous testimonies in which he did not disclose that he spoke with journalists.

Still, Rove's account of his conversation with Cooper went nothing like he had described in his email to Hadley, according to an email Cooper sent to his editor at Time magazine following his conversation with Rove in July 2003.

"It was, KR said, [former Ambassador Joseph] Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized [Wilson's] trip," Cooper's July 11, 2003, email to his editor said. "Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The email characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger... "

It is unclear whether Rove was misleading Hadley about his conversation with Cooper, perhaps, because White House officials told their staff not to engage reporters in any questions posed about Wilson's Niger claims.

But Fitzgerald's investigation has turned up additional evidence over the past few months that convinced him that Luskin's eleventh-hour revelation about the chain of events that led to the discovery of the email is not credible. Fitzgerald believes that Rove changed his story once it became clear that Cooper would be compelled to testify about the source - Rove - who revealed Plame Wilson's CIA status to him, sources close to the case said.

If any of the people named in this story believe they have been unfairly portrayed or that what was written in this story is untrue, they will have an opportunity to respond in this space.

Woodward's Plame-Leak Deep Throat

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

He is referred to as "official one" and he is the mysterious senior Bush administration official who unmasked the identity of an undercover CIA operative to Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Bob Woodward in mid-June 2003 and conservative columnist Robert Novak a month later.

The identity of this official is shrouded in secrecy. In fact, his name, government status, and the substance of his conversation with Woodward about the undercover officer are under a protective seal in US District Court for the District of Columbia.

But Woodward tape-recorded the interview he had with "official one." Woodward gave a copy of the tape and a transcript to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

Woodward emerged as central figure in the leak of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson in November. For the better part of two years, Woodward had publicly discounted the importance of the Plame Wilson leak and had referred to Fitzgerald as a "junkyard dog" prosecutor in interviews during the course of the investigation. He then revealed in November that he had been told about Plame Wilson's CIA employment in June 2003 - before any other journalist.

Woodward wrote a first-person account in the Washington Post in November about the individual who told him that Plame Wilson worked for the CIA. He identified his source as a "senior administration official." He also said that the interview with the official who told him about Plame Wilson had been set up simply as "confidential background interviews for my 2004 book 'Plan of Attack' about the lead-up to the Iraq war, ongoing reporting for the Washington Post and research for a book on Bush's second term to be published in 2006."

White House officials who are sympathetic to Libby say "official one" is former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. But numerous senior officials at the State Department, the CIA, and the National Security Council have said that "official one" is National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Hadley had been a source of information for Woodward when he wrote Plan of Attack, according to the book's footnotes.

Hadley was also a member of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), which was formed in August 2002 by Andrew Card, President Bush's chief of staff, to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. WHIG operated out of Cheney's office. The group has become wrapped up in Fitzgerald's investigation. The special prosecutor last year subpoenaed the WHIG's emails and other documents.

But news reports over the past week have given more weight to Armitage as Woodward's source, based solely on the fact that former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee gave an interview to Vanity Fair suggesting that it's fair to assume Armitage was Woodward's source. Bradlee issued a statement a day after the article was published saying he was misquoted and never mentioned Armitage.

One thing is for sure, neither Hadley nor Armitage are commenting, not even to issue a denial. Last week, Armitage's assistant at his lobbying firm, Armitage International, said last week that Armitage would comment on the "rumors" once Fitzgerald completed his investigation. Hadley's spokesman would not confirm or deny anything related to the National Security Adviser's involvement in the leak.

It does appear, however, that Libby's defense team is actively trying to shift the blame for the leak onto other parts of the government, including the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council. They have engaged in a game of semantics, saying that when Libby testified that he heard about Plame Wilson from reporters his testimony wasn't limited to a specific reporter.

With Woodward's tape-recorded interview now in the hands of the special counsel, the attorneys representing I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff who is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for allegedly lying to a grand jury and FBI investigators about his role in the Plame Wilson leak, have zeroed in on three words "official one" apparently uttered during his conversation with Woodward: "Everyone knows it."

But one of the attorneys on Libby's defense team wasn't supposed to mention the existence of the tape-recorded interview in open court because it may cause the unknown government official to come under intense media scrutiny.

"Your Honor, there is one thing that I neglected to mention and again this is subject to filings that have been made under seal but there is, in fact, a transcript of a tape recording that involves official one," Libby's attorney William Jeffress said during the two and a half hour hearing.

"In the particular transcript there is, and the government filed something else yesterday, there is a factual dispute as to what is said or what is meant by a portion of the transcript wherein it appears the official saying, "everyone knows it," referring to the wife's employment at the CIA," Jeffress added. "We have not heard that tape. If, in fact, as the transcript suggests that one official said, 'Everyone knows it,' who did he mean by 'Everyone knows it?'"

Libby's attorneys argued that those three words refer to reporters, meaning that it was common knowledge among journalists that Plame Wilson was employed by the CIA, even though her status was classified.

Fitzgerald disagreed with the interpretation.

"Your Honor, now that we have sort of burned what was sealed, my understanding of that conversation, there are people talking over each other, my understanding is that was a reference that everyone knows it, that Mr. Wilson is the unnamed ambassador," Fitzgerald said. "Mr. Wilson didn't reveal himself as the unnamed ambassador until July 6. This was prior to that time. We turned it over in an abundance of caution but I don't believe that says it, and frankly there is a very limited number of reporters that we found out who had known it. I can't represent we know every reporter because we took seriously the attorney general guidelines."

"Official one" faces no criminal charges in the ongoing investigation into the leak of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson and is said to be cooperating with the special counsel's two year-old probe.

But Libby's defense attorneys suggested during the February 24 court hearing that "official one" is responsible for the leak.

Jeffress and Theodore Wells, another attorney on Libby's defense team, have argued that Fitzgerald should provide the defense with all of the evidence his investigation has obtained regarding "official one" because it's crucial in proving that Libby wasn't lying when he testified that he heard about Plame Wilson's CIA work from reporters.

"Your Honor, simply it is a fact that is key to this case to know what reporters out there knew or had heard about Wilson's wife, what they were saying to each other, what they were saying to government officials," Jeffress said. "And here is a key person, the first person that we know of, according to the evidence, actually discussed Mr. Wilson's wife's employment with a reporter and not only did it then but did it again with a separate reporter later. This is some person not in the White House."

At the February 24 court hearing, Jeffress, Libby's attorney, in arguing that the defense should be provided with additional evidence such as handwritten notes, transcripts, letters, emails and phone logs Fitzgerald collected during the investigation, said "official one" discussed Plame Wilson's CIA status with at least two reporters, one of whom told Libby that "official one" told him that Plame Wilson was a CIA officer.

Sources close to the case have identified Woodward and Novak as the reporters "official one" spoke to about Plame Wilson.

Fitzgerald argued that Libby's attorneys are routinely circumventing the facts surrounding the case against Libby, which is about perjury not who first unmasked Plame Wilson's identity.

"Your Honor, the one thing that is clear is we should focus on what the allegations are," Fitzgerald said. "The indictment alleges that on Monday Mr. Libby told [former White House press secretary Ari] Fleischer this information about Mr. Wilson's wife and indicated that it wasn't widely known, on a Monday."

"On Wednesday he claims to have learned it as if it were new for the first time from ["Meet the Press's" Tim] Russert in his conversation even though we've alleged six different conversations, more than six conversations in the month before he discussed it with everyone from the vice president to people at the CIA, to ranking officials at the State Department," Fitzgerald added.

Libby Attorneys Identify CIA Officials in Plame Leak

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

The identity of intelligence officials who are thought to have passed information about covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson to Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, surfaced in a federal court document filed Friday evening.

Separately, Libby's defense team has once again attempted to engage in a high-stakes gambit to devalue the nature of Plame Wilson's status and work with the CIA. The attorneys claim that Plame Wilson was not a very important figure at the CIA and that therefore no damage was done to national security by unmasking her identity.

"The prosecution has an interest in continuing to overstate the significance of Ms. Wilson's affiliation with the CIA," the court filing states.

However, in previous hearings, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has pointed out time and again that Plame Wilson's CIA status is not the issue. Rather it's Libby's repeated lies to the grand jury and the FBI that's at issue.

"We are trying a perjury case," Fitzgerald said during a February 24 court hearing on issues related to additional evidence Libby's attorneys were trying to obtain from Fitzgerald's probe. "What I am going to say to the jury in opening and closing and rebuttal is that Mr. Libby knowingly lied about what he did.

"And the issue is whether he knowingly lied or not," Fitzgerald added. "And if there is information about actual damage, whatever was caused or not caused that isn't in his mind, it is not a defense. If she turned out to be a postal driver mistaken for a CIA employee, it's not a defense if you lie in a grand jury under oath about what you said and you told people I didn't know he had a wife. That is what this case is about. It is about perjury, if he knowingly lied or not."

In Friday's filing, Libby's attorneys attempted to push the blame for the leak onto other officials at the CIA and the State Department and said these officials will likely be called to testify at next year's criminal trial. In doing so, the attorneys disclosed in the 39-page document the identities of four CIA employees who possibly provided their client with information about Plame Wilson's work for the CIA.

The individuals were previously identified by their job titles in the five-count indictment handed up by a grand jury in late October against Libby. In Friday's court filing, Libby's defense team argued that they should be entitled to receive additional evidence being used by the Special Prosecutor to prove Libby lied to the FBI and the grand jury when he was questioned about his role in the leak.

In describing the evidence and the prosecution witnesses it pertains to, Libby's attorneys revealed the names of previously unknown CIA officials who may have communicated Plame Wilson's classified CIA work to Libby. It is not a crime for the CIA to disseminate classified information to

White House officials like Libby who have the security clearance to receive such intelligence.

What's interesting, however, is that one of the CIA officials named in the indictment as a possible source of information for Libby is Robert Grenier, 51, head of the agency's top counterterrorism office. Grenier was fired last month because he opposed using torture tactics against al-Qaeda suspects at secret detention facilities abroad, intelligence sources and news reports said.

"When al Qaeda struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, Grenier was station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan," < the Washington Post reported in February. "Among the agency's most experienced officers in southwest Asia, Grenier helped plan the covert campaign that preceded the U.S. military ouster of al Qaeda and its Taliban allies from Afghanistan."

Former CIA Director George Tenet promoted Grenier in 2002 to head up the Iraq Issues Group, a position created specifically to prepare for the March 2003 Iraq invasion.

"Grenier's predecessor at the Counterterrorism Center, who remains undercover, moved on to become chief of the National Clandestine Service, the successor to the CIA's directorate of operations," the Post report added.

In their court filing Friday, Libby's attorneys wrote that if not Grenier, it's possible that John McLaughlin may be the CIA official who provided Cheney's former chief of staff with information on Plame Wilson.

"On or about June 11, 2003, Libby was informed by a senior CIA officer [possibly Robert Grenier or John McLaughlin] that Wilson's wife was employed by the CIA and that the idea of sending him to Niger originated with her," Friday's court filing states. This passage is identical to the October indictment filed against Libby. However, the indictment did not include the names of the individuals, only their positions in government.

McLaughlin was deputy director of the CIA. He resigned from the agency in November 2004 over bureaucratic infighting.

Separately, the filing also reveals the identities of a few CIA briefers that Libby complained to in June 2003 for "selective leaking" of concerns the agency had with pre-war Iraq intelligence that Libby claimed made the White House and the vice president's office look bad.

Friday's filing also states that "On or about June 14, 2003, Libby met with a CIA briefer. During their conversation he expressed displeasure that CIA officials were making comments to reporters critical of the Vice President's office, and discussed with the briefer, among other things, 'Joe Wilson and his wife Valerie Wilson,' in the context of Wilson's trip to Niger." The indictment also quotes Mr. Libby as criticizing the CIA for "selective leaking" of various "intelligence matters."

The filing states "We believe that the briefer referred to is Craig Schmall and that he will be a witness for the government at trial too. (However, it is also possible that the briefer referenced in this paragraph is Peter Clement or Matt Barrett.)." Clement has worked at the CIA for nearly 30 years. He was the director of intelligence for the agency and has published books on Soviet foreign policy, Russian domestic politics, and politics in Central Asia.

Fitzgerald Previews Government's Case Against Libby

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

The criminal trial against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, may still be nearly a year away, but the special counsel prosecuting the case has already provided a preview into the government's criminal case against the ex-White House official, who is accused of lying to the FBI and a grand jury about his role in the leak of a covert CIA operative.

During a recent federal court hearing, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said he plans to focus on the week of July 7 to 14, 2003, in which Libby allegedly told several reporters that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA and was responsible for convincing the agency to send her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger in 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq sought 500 tons of uranium from the African country.

"I'm not going to argue it was the most important issue consuming the Bush administration," Fitzgerald told US District Court Judge Reggie Walton during a February 24 federal court hearing, a transcript of which was obtained by this reporter.

"I will argue during that week Mr. Libby was consumed with [Wilson] to an extent more than he should have been but he was and you can look at the time he spent with people," Fitzgerald added. "When talking about Mr. Wilson for the first time, he described himself as a former Hill staffer. He meets with people off premises. There were some unusual things I won't get into about that week. At the end of the day we're talking about someone who spent a lot of time during the week of July 7 to July 14 focused on the issue of Wilson and Wilson's wife."

Libby told FBI investigators and testified before a grand jury that he found out about Plame Wilson's CIA employment from reporters on July 9 or 10, 2003. But Fitzgerald said Libby discussed Plame Wilson with former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer on July 7, 2003, and Fleischer testified that Libby said the information was "hush, hush" on the "QT" and was not widely known ...

Libby's defense team responded to Fitzgerald's comments, saying that Plame Wilson was a blip on Libby's radar screen and that Libby was too busy dealing with terrorism, the Iraq war and national security issues to pay any attention to her.

If Libby did not provide accurate answers to the FBI or the grand jury, his attorneys said, it's only because he was dealing with national security matters and therefore forgot about how and when he found out about Plame Wilson. He did not intentionally lie, Libby's attorneys William Jeffress and Theodore Wells said during the court hearing.

But Fitzgerald said the evidence he has collected speaks for itself and proves Libby knowingly lied about his involvement in the leak.

On July 7, 2003, Libby "had a lunch where he imparted that information in what was described as a weird situation," Fitzgerald said at the hearing. "He had a private meeting with a reporter outside the White House with this meeting. He was quoted in a very rare interview on a Saturday on the record in an interview with Time magazine, a very weird circumstance. There are a lot of markers I won't get into that show that this was a very important focus, the Wilson controversy from July 7 to 14 because it was a direct attack on the credibility of the administration, whether accurate or not, and upon the vice president and people were attacking Mr. Libby. So it was a focus."

Additionally, Fitzgerald said that during Libby's trial he will argue that because Libby tiptoed around Washington when meeting with reporters, Fleischer, and others to discuss Plame Wilson's CIA work, he must have known that her status was classified.

"We will argue that [Libby] knew or should have known it was classified and that he was being investigated for disclosing classified information," Fitzgerald told Judge Walton. "We will argue that he committed the crime of lying."

Ambassador Wilson emerged in February 2003 as a vocal critic of the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence. He accused the White House of ignoring his March 2002 oral report to the CIA, in which he told a CIA analyst that there was no truth to intelligence reports about Iraq's attempts to acquire uranium from Niger. It would later be revealed that the intelligence documents on Niger were forgeries.

Despite Wilson's findings, and warnings from the State Department and the CIA that the Niger intelligence was suspect, President Bush cited Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium in his January 2003 State of the Union address, which helped convince the public and Congress to back the war. Wilson exposed the administration's flawed Niger intelligence in a July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed column.

Plame Wilson's identity was unmasked by high-ranking White House officials, including Libby and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove, according to several reporters who testified before the grand jury. Rove remains under investigation for his role in the leak. Wilson has charged that the leak was in retaliation for his criticism of the Bush administration.

Libby and numerous other White House officials were questioned by investigators about their role in the leak and whether they were involved in a campaign to discredit Wilson. Libby told the FBI in October and November 2003 that he first learned from NBC News correspondent Tim Russert that Plame Wilson worked at the CIA and that she was Ambassador Wilson's wife.

Russert vehemently denied Libby's account, and it has since been reported that Libby had actually been a source for at least two reporters who wrote about Plame Wilson in July 2003.

Fitzgerald secured a five-count indictment against Libby in late October, charging him with perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators about the Plame Wilson leak.

The two-and-a-half hour courtroom hearing also shed light on the defense strategy that will be employed in an attempt to prove Libby's innocence. Instead of focusing on the obstruction of justice and perjury charges their client is charged with, Libby's attorneys have attempted to downplay the importance of Plame Wilson's CIA status and work with the agency.

By devaluing Plame Wilson's work and status with the agency, Libby's attorneys said they hope to prove to a jury that their client had no incentive to lie to investigators and the grand jury about how and when he found out that she was a CIA employee as well as Ambassador Wilson's wife.

Proving how adept the defense can be in circumventing the facts related to the perjury and obstruction of justice charges filed against Libby, at one point during the hearing, Wells suggested that Plame Wilson's undercover status should have been declassified five years ago, but wasn't because of a bureaucratic error.

"I need to understand is she covert or not," Wells said. "If she's classified, is she really classified or is just classified because some bureaucracy didn't unclassify her five years ago when they should have. I just want to know the facts. I want to know when [Fitzgerald] stands up is there nothing to it because maybe she, even if she was classified based on a piece of paper, it was some bureaucracy."

Furthermore, Libby's attorneys have once again argued that Fitzgerald should be required to provide the defense with a so-called damage assessment on the Plame Wilson leak. The defense has argued that since no damage was done to national security by leaking Plame Wilson's identity the case has no merit.

But Fitzgerald said he does not intend to offer any proof at trial of "actual damage" as a result of the leak because the case is about perjury and obstruction of justice.

"We don't intend to offer any proof of actual damage," Fitzgerald told Judge Walton in response to Wells' comments. "We're not going to get into whether that would occur or not. It's not part of the perjury statute. It's not part of the underlying statutes."

Wells fired back.

"Mr. Fitzgerald has indicated correctly that under the perjury or obstruction statues that showing actual damage is not an essential element of the offense," Wells said. "We both agree with that. But there's no question, he is going to stand up in front of that jury and he's going to convey to that jury that Mr. Libby has engaged in a very serious crime involving disclosing the identity of a CIA agent. It's in the indictment. I don't even understand how the government can draft the indictment, put these issues in play and then act like it's not an issue at trial.

Walton indicated that he would likely determine that if Fitzgerald made that argument during the trial it would not be admissible.

But Fitzgerald told the judge that Wells has confused the issue and has continued to ignore the facts surrounding the charges against Libby.

"The argument they are making is Mr. Libby had no motive to lie to the grand jury," Fitzgerald said. "Since nothing bad happened, there is no actual damage. There is no showing, not even an attempt or proffer that Mr. Libby had any idea what the damage was. We would never intend to put in actual damage" that took place by leaking Plame Wilson's CIA employment.

"Our only view would be the materiality of the perjury is that, you know, it's a serious matter if he lied about whether or not he talked about a CIA employee's association and we believe that there will be evidence at the trial that at times he talked about it with other people as if he couldn't talk about it on an open telephone line or told someone else it was hush, hush or QT," Fitzgerald said.

GOP Again Bids to Take ANWR

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

The Senate is prepared to vote on a budget bill Thursday that includes a measure to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling - just as the region suffers through one of the worst oil spills in history.

The provision to permit drilling in ANWR was included in a resolution passed last week by the Senate Budget Committee. The full Senate is expected to vote on the issue as early as Thursday.

The measure was prepared by the Republican-controlled Senate in such a way that it would be protected from a filibuster by Senate Democrats opposed to the issue. Drilling in ANWR has been debated at least half a dozen times over the past five years.

The issue is one of the cornerstones of President Bush's National Energy Policy. Bush has said that drilling in ANWR is crucial in order for the United States to cut its dependence on foreign oil.

Environmentalists and numerous lawmakers have derided the plan, saying it would lead to the destruction of caribou and other wildlife that live in the refuge. Moreover, severe safety and technological issues have plagued the big oil companies that drill in nearby Prudhoe Bay and who would be responsible for breaking ground in ANWR should the Senate measure pass.

Because the companies have yet to take measures to address the safety issues at their Prudhoe Bay operations and make much-needed technological upgrades, there have been dozens of oil spills in the area. The situation would likely become even worse if ANWR were to be opened up to exploration, according to environmental officials and activist groups.

Just two weeks ago, the worst spill in the history of oil development in Alaska's North Slope forced the closure of five oil processing centers in the region. Alaskan state officials said that as much as 260,000 gallons of crude oil leaking out of a pipeline in an oil field jointly owned by Exxon Mobil, BP Plc and ConocoPhillips blanketed two acres of frozen tundra near Prudhoe Bay - just a short distance from where President Bush has proposed opening up ANWR to drilling.

The oil spill went undetected for about five days before an oilfield worker detected the scent of hydrocarbons during a drive through the area on March 2 that led him to believe there was a spill from one of the facilities.

It's expected that last week's spill will take a crew of 60 at least two weeks to clean up and to restore crude production to pre-spill levels. The petroleum processing centers will remain closed until then.

The spill underscores the hazards of drilling in the Arctic, despite the fact that oil company executives have downplayed the severity of the technological problems likely to be associated with it.

Last year, unbeknownst to the federal lawmakers who debated the merits of drilling in ANWR, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation started laying the groundwork to pursue civil charges against BP and the corporation's drilling contractor for failing to report massive oil spills at its Prudhoe Bay operation, located just 60 miles west of ANWR.

Despite those dire warnings, neither Congress nor the Senate has shown interest in investigating the whistleblowers' claims or held hearings about the potential problems that could result from drilling in ANWR.

But BP employees have warned lawmakers that oil spills like the one that took place a couple of weeks ago could happen in ANWR if upgrades aren't made to the oil companies' drilling equipment.

In March of 2002, a BP whistleblower went public with his claims of maintenance backlogs and employee shortages at BP's Prudhoe Bay operations that he said could become even worse if ANWR is opened up to exploration.

The whistleblower, Robert Brian, who worked as an instrument technician at Prudhoe Bay for 22 years, had a lengthy meeting with aides to Senators Joseph Lieberman and Bob Graham, both Democrats, to discuss his claims. But the senators have never followed up on his claims.

At the time, Brian said he supported opening up ANWR to oil exploration but said BP has imperiled that goal because it is "putting Prudhoe workers and the environment at risk."

"We are trying to change that so we don't have a catastrophe that ends up on CNN and stops us from getting into ANWR," he said, according to a March 13, 2002, report in the Anchorage Daily News.

BP has long been criticized for poorly managing the North Slope's aging pipelines, safety valves and other critical components of its oil production infrastructure.

The company has in the past made minor improvements to its valves and fire detection systems and hired additional employees but has dropped the ball and neglected to maintain a level of safety at its facilities on the North Slope.

Chuck Hamel, a highly regarded activist who is credited with exposing dozens of oil spills and the subsequent cover-ups related to BP's shoddy operations at Prudhoe Bay, sent a letter to Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) on April 15, 2005, saying the senator was duped by oil executives and state officials during a recent visit to Alaska's North Slope.

"You obviously are unaware of the cheating by some producers and drilling companies," Hamel said in the letter to Domenici, an arch proponent of drilling in ANWR. "Your official Senate tour" of Alaska last March "was masked by the orchestrated 'dog and pony show' provided you at the new Alpine Field, away from the real world of the Slope's dangerously unregulated operations."

Back in the 1980s, Hamel was the first person to expose weak pollution laws at the Valdez tanker port as well as electrical and maintenance problems with the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.

Hamel has said that not only do oil spills continue on the North Slope because BP neglects to address maintenance issues, but the oil behemoth's executives have routinely lied to Alaskan state representatives and members of the United States Senate and Congress about the steps they're taking to correct the problems.

Hamel has obtained some damning evidence on BP to back up his claims. He has photographs showing oil wells spewing a brown substance known as drilling mud, which contain traces of crude oil, on two separate occasions.

Hamel says he's determined to expose BP's shoddy operations and throw a wrench in President Bush's plans to open up ANWR to drilling.

"Contrary to what President Bush has been saying, the current BP Prudhoe Bay operations - particularly the dysfunctional safety valves - are deeply flawed and place the environment, the safety of the operations staff and the integrity of the facility at risk. The president should delay legislation calling for drilling at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," Hamel told the Wall Street Journal last year.

In April of 2001, whistleblowers informed Hamel and former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who at the time was touring the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, that the safety valves at Prudhoe Bay, which kick in in the event of a pipeline rupture, failed to close. Secondary valves that connect the oil platforms with processing plants also failed to close. And, because the technology at Prudhoe Bay would be duplicated at ANWR, the potential for a massive explosion and huge spills are very real.

"A major spill or fire at one of our [processing centers] will exit the piping at high pressure, and leave a half-mile-wide oil slick on the white snow all the way," Hamel said at the time in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

That year, the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission found high failure rates on some Prudhoe wellhead safety valves. The company was put on federal criminal probation after one of its contractors dumped thousands of gallons of toxic material underground at BP's Endicott oil field in the 1990s. BP pleaded guilty to the charges in 2000 and paid a $6.5 million fine, and agreed to set up a nationwide environmental management program that has cost more than $20 million.

Hamel also claimed that whistleblowers had told of another cover-up, dating back to 2003, in which Pioneer Natural Resources and its drilling contractor, Nabors Alaska Drilling, allegedly disposed of more than 2,000 gallons of toxic drilling mud and fluids through the ice "to save the cost of proper disposal on shore."

Hamel has had his share of detractors, notably BP executives and several Alaskan state officials, as well as the federal EPA, who have branded him a conspiracy theorist.

But last March, Hamel was vindicated when Alaska's Department of Environmental Conservation confirmed his claims of major spills in December 2004 and July 2003 at the oil well owned by BP and operated by its drilling contractor, Nabors, on the North Slope, which the company had never reported as required by state law.

Hamel filed a formal complaint in January 2005 with the EPA, claiming he had pictures showing a gusher spewing a brown substance. An investigation by Alaska's Department of Environmental Conservation determined that as much as 294 gallons of drilling mud was spilled when gas was sucked into wells, causing sprays of drilling mud and oil that shot up as high as 85 feet into the air.

Because both spills exceeded 55 gallons, BP and Nabors were obligated under a 2003 compliance agreement that BP signed with Alaska to immediately report the spills. That didn't occur, said Leslie Pearson, the agency's spill prevention and emergency response manager.

President Bush has said that the oil and gas industry can open up ANWR without damaging the environment or displacing wildlife. But the native Gwich'in Nation, whose 7,000 members have lived in Alaska for more than 20,000 years, say President Bush is wrong.

"Existing oil development has displaced caribou, polluted the air and water and created havoc with the traditional lifestyles of the people," said Jonathan Solomon, chairman of the Gwich'in Steering Committee, in a May 7, 2005, interview with the Financial Times. "No one can tell us that opening the Arctic Refuge to development can be done in an environmentally sensitive way with a small footprint. It cannot be done."

Obstruction Trial May Jog Libby's Memory

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

Attorneys representing Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff in the CIA leak case believe they have a rock solid defense to present in their client's perjury and obstruction of justice trial expected to begin next year.

In numerous court filings over the past few months, lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby have maintained that their client did not intentionally lie to federal investigators and a grand jury regarding the role he played in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson during the summer of 2003.

Instead, Libby's attorneys have said that their client was dealing with other, more crucial matters, such as the Iraq war, terrorism, and national security and simply forgot about how he first learned that Plame was employed by the CIA when he told the grand jury - untruthfully - that a reporter told him that she worked for the spy agency.

However, that defense strategy may unravel when Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald calls to the stand some of Libby's former White House colleagues who have promised to tell a much different story about Libby's alleged memory lapse, according to six sources close to Fitzgerald's investigation.

A secretary for Ted Wells, one of Libby's defense attorneys, said Wells was traveling. The secretary wrote down questions for Wells and said she passed them on to him. But he did not respond. A second and third attempt to reach Wells was unsuccessful.

Libby was indicted in October on five-counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators about his role in the leak. The case grew out of a 2002 intelligence query from the vice president's office about Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from Niger. Cheney asked the CIA for information on a report claiming Iraq tried to purchase 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from the African country.

In response to Cheney's questions, the CIA sent former Ambassador Joseph Wilson on a fact-finding mission to Niger to investigate the claims. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was working undercover at the CIA at the time and told her superiors that her husband had good contacts in Niger. When Wilson returned, he reported back to the CIA that the uranium intelligence was bogus.

But in January 2003, President Bush in his State of the Union address cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium as a sign of President Saddam Hussein's interest in acquiring nuclear weapons. In July, Wilson wrote an op-ed column for the New York Times saying the administration "twisted" intelligence on the Iraqi threat and inserted the uranium claims into the president's State of the Union address to win support for the war.

Some of the officials who worked with Libby in the office of the vice president and who are said to have faced criminal charges in the case have made deals with the special prosecutor in exchange for their testimony, sources close to the case said.

Other officials who work or worked in the State Department, the CIA, and the National Security Council at the time of the leak have also decided to cooperate with Fitzgerald; however, it's unknown whether these people faced any criminal charges before agreeing to testify at a trial.

Libby was questioned by investigators twice in 2003 - in October and November - and he testified in 2004, repeating the answers to questions he had provided to investigators months earlier: that he did he retaliate against the ambassador's criticism of the administration's rationale for war, and that he found out Wilson's wife worked at the CIA from reporters.

It was revealed last year that Libby had actually been a source for at least two reporters who wrote about Plame Wilson in July of 2003.

When Libby's trial begins in 2007, Libby's claim of forgetfulness is expected to be contradicted by his former colleagues who worked closely with him on foreign policy issues. These officials have told Fitzgerald over the past year that Libby continued his campaign against Wilson long after Libby and other White House officials allegedly unmasked Plame Wilson's identity to reporters in late June and early July 2003.

In September 2003, Libby is said to have first instructed his staff to monitor the Internet for any new articles related to Wilson and his wife during this time and provide him with printed versions, which he kept in a binder, the sources said.

The sources close to the case said the officials also told Fitzgerald that Libby's "obsession" with Wilson lasted well into October 2003 - the first time Libby was questioned by investigators probing the leak - and into March of 2004, when Libby testified before the grand jury.

Additionally, these officials are expected to testify at Libby's criminal trial that during the time of Libby's grand jury appearance in 2004, the time frame in which his attorneys say Libby allegedly forgot about Wilson and his wife, Libby had a packet of information on Wilson that included every comment, interview and media appearance Wilson had made since early 2003 when Wilson first started to criticize the administration's rationale for war.

Moreover, the administration officials told Fitzgerald that from September 2003 through March 2004 Libby urged White House communications director Dan Bartlett on numerous occasions to aggressively respond to Wilson's further attacks against the administration. Libby's attorneys have said in court documents that Libby had forgotten about Wilson during this time and that is the reason his grand jury testimony wasn't accurate.

Libby also discussed with Cheney and other aides to the vice president Wilson's relentless "campaign against the administration" and sought his colleagues' support for issuing a response, one person close to the investigation said.

"Mr. Libby was a lone wolf in that regard," this person said. "He did not receive any backing from the administration. Everyone thought he should just let it go."

Still, Libby's attorneys have said in several court documents that during his grand jury testimony, nearly eight months after the leak, Libby had been dealing with more serious matters and as a result he could not remember the true facts about Plame Wilson or how and when he first learned about her, because it took place months earlier.

Weeks before he was questioned by investigators probing the leak in November 2003, people close to the case said, Libby had discussed Wilson with unnamed individuals of the Republican National Committee and sought help in discrediting Wilson.

Libby reportedly became angry when Joseph Wilson's book, "The Politics of Truth," was released in April 2004. He had been closely following the book's release during the prior weeks, which coincides with his grand jury appearance, and had again pressed the White House to respond to certain passages he believed were untrue, according to sources close to the case.

"The Wilson affair was still very much on his mind," said one attorney who is representing a witness in the case. "Mr. Libby seemed to be consumed by it."

CIA Leak Path: Cheney, Libby, Woodward

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

In mid-June 2003, when former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's criticism against the White House's use of pre-war Iraq intelligence started to make national headlines, Vice President Dick Cheney told his former chief of staff and close confidant I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to leak classified intelligence data on Iraq's nuclear ambitions to a legendary Washington journalist in order to undercut the charges made against the Bush administration by the former ambassador.

On June 27, 2003, Bob Woodward, the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, became the first journalist to whom Libby leaked a portion of the classified National Intelligence Estimate that purportedly showed how Iraq tried to acquire yellowcake uranium from Niger.

This story is based on interviews with current and former administration officials who work or worked at the CIA, the State Department and the National Security Council. All of the individuals are familiar with the events that took place in the days that led up to Libby's meeting with Woodward and other journalists in which the NIE was discussed.

Woodward, currently an assistant managing editor of the Washington Post, did not return calls for comment. Leonard Downie, the executive editor of the Post, would not comment for this story. A spokeswoman for Cheney said she could not comment for this story, and attorneys for Libby did not return calls for comment.

Libby was indicted in October on five-counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators related to his role in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, Ambassador Wilson's wife.

The leak of the NIE to Woodward was orchestrated by Cheney and Libby in mid-June 2003 in hopes that Woodward would write a story for the Washington Post that would contradict the assertions made by Wilson - that there was no truth to intelligence cited by the Bush administration on numerous occasions that Iraq tried to purchase 500 tons of uranium from Niger.

Just two weeks earlier, Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus wrote an article attacking the administration's use of the Niger uranium allegations in President Bush's January 28, 2003 State of the Union address. Pincus's article was based on an unnamed source - later learned to be Joseph Wilson - who called into question the veracity of the White House's use of the documents that supposedly proved Iraq sought uranium from Niger.

Cheney and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley led a campaign beginning in March 2003 to discredit Wilson, according to current and former State Department and CIA officials. Although the officials said they helped prepare negative information on Wilson about his personal and professional life and had given it to Libby and Cheney, Wilson seemed to drop off the radar once the Iraq war started on March 19, 2003.

With no sign of weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq, news accounts started to call into question the credibility of the administration's pre-war intelligence. In May 2003, Wilson re-emerged at a political conference in Washington sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. There he told the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff that he had been the special envoy who traveled to Niger in February 2002 to check out allegations that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from the country. He told Kristoff that he briefed a CIA analyst that the claims were untrue. Wilson said he believed the administration had ignored his report and had been dishonest with Congress and the American people.

Then rumors started to swirl inside the Beltway in mid-June 2003 that Wilson would soon go public and reveal that he was tapped by the CIA to travel to Niger a year earlier to check out whether there was any truth to the intelligence that claimed Iraq tried to acquire uranium from the African country. He reported back to the CIA in March 2002 that the intelligence was bogus.

A day or two after Pincus's article was published in the Post, a meeting took place in Cheney's office to coordinate a response to the charges. In attendance were Libby, Cheney, and several other senior aides to the vice president as well as officials from the State Department, and the National Security Council.

It was then that Cheney decided the only way to counter Wilson's criticism was by having Libby leak portions of the NIE to a select group of reporters whose previous work in their respective publications had advanced the White House's political agenda.

For an administration that despises leaks, the decision by Cheney to declassify highly sensitive portions of the NIE and have his most trusted aide leak it to reporters in order to attack the former ambassador's credibility shows how personal the Wilson issue had become for the vice president.

Perhaps it's just a coincidence, but the timing of an executive order signed by President Bush supposedly granting Cheney the authority to declassify such national security intelligence fits nicely into the time frame when he and his senior aides spearheaded a campaign to discredit Wilson.

The executive order was signed on March 23, 2003, four days after the start of the Iraq war, and two weeks after Wilson first appeared on the administration's radar.

In an interview with Fox News last month, Cheney said he had the legal authority to declassify intelligence as he saw fit. There is still strong debate about the interpretation of the executive order Cheney referred to that provided him with such power. Cheney's comments came on the heels of a disclosure Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald made in a letter to defense attorneys representing Libby in the leak case.

In the letter, Fitzgerald said Libby testified before a grand jury that he was authorized by his "superiors" to leak portions of the NIE to journalists.

Woodward was first on deck. He met with Libby on June 27, 2003, in Libby's office next to the White House. A week or so earlier, Woodward met with two other government officials, one of whom told him in a "casual" and off-handed manner that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.

Woodward said the meeting with Libby and the other government officials had been set up simply as "confidential background interviews for my 2004 book "Plan of Attack" about the lead-up to the Iraq war, ongoing reporting for the Washington Post and research for a book on Bush's second term to be published in 2006."

Woodward wrote a first-person account for the Washington Post after he gave sworn deposition to Fitzgerald about information he had learned about Valerie Plame Wilson. It was a shocking revelation at the time. Woodward had publicly discounted the importance of the Plame Wilson leak and had referred to Fitzgerald as a "junkyard dog" prosecutor. He then revealed in November that he had been told about Plame Wilson's CIA employment in June 2003 - before any other journalist.

In that first person account published in the Post, the Watergate-era journalist wrote that when he met with Libby on June 27, 2003, "Libby discussed the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, mentioned "yellowcake" and said there was an effort by the Iraqis to get it from Africa. It goes back to February '02. This was the time of Wilson's trip to Niger."

The information in the NIE about Niger was still considered highly classified and extremely sensitive, and although Woodward had been the recipient of classified information on other occasions during the course of gathering material for his books, the data he was provided with concerning the NIE had been authorized by Cheney in order to rebut Wilson. Woodward never wrote a story for the Post about the intelligence information he was given.

Libby also met with former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, another Pulitzer Prize winner, and leaked the same portions of the NIE when questions were raised by Miller about Wilson's claims about the administration's use of pre-war Iraq intelligence.

Miller and Woodward had been handpicked by Libby to receive the information contained in the NIE, sources familiar with the events that led up to the meetings said, and were urged by Libby to write stories to undercut Wilson's credibility by showing that the NIE disagreed with Wilson's claims.

Miller never wrote a story for the Time, either. She testified before a grand jury that Libby gave her information in the NIE concerning Iraq's attempt to acquire yellowcake uranium from Niger.

In the meantime, while Libby had been leaking portions of the NIE in late June to back up the administration's use of the Niger claims, other officials from Cheney's office and the National Security Council had been speaking with a select group of journalists and had revealed Plame Wilson's identity.

On July 6, 2003, Wilson went public. A week later, his wife's name and covert status were published in newspaper reports.

Details Emerge in Latest Round of Plame Emails 'Discovered' by the White House

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

The White House confirmed Tuesday that it recently turned over to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald 250 pages of emails from the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney related to covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence. The emails were not submitted three years ago when then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales ordered White House staffers to turn over all documents that contained any reference to Valerie and Joseph Wilson.

Gonzales's directive in October 2003 came 12 hours after he was told by the Justice Department that it was launching an investigation to find out who leaked Plame Wilson's undercover CIA status to reporters in what appeared to be an attempt to discredit and silence her husband from speaking out against the administration's rationale for war. Gonzales spent two weeks with other White House attorneys screening emails and other documents his office received before turning them over to Justice Department investigators.

News of the 250 pages of emails was revealed to Libby's attorneys during a court hearing Friday.

In addition to witness testimony, investigators working with Fitzgerald are said to have discovered the existence of the emails from computers that investigators had confiscated from the Office of the Vice President, people familiar with developments in the investigation said.

Attorneys for Libby and the US District Court reporter in the Libby case, William McAllister, reading from Friday's transcript of the hearing, confirmed that Libby's defense attorneys were told during Friday's hearing that the emails were recently turned over by the White House to Fitzgerald.

According to a copy of the transcript from Friday's hearing, Libby's attorney, Ted Wells, said he was "told that there are an additional approximately 250 pages of documents that are emails from the office of the vice president," the transcript states.

Your Honor, may recall that in earlier filings it was represented or alluded to that certain e-mails had not been preserved in the White House. That turns out not to be true. There were some e-mails that weren't archived in the normal process but the office of the vice president or the office of administration I guess it is has been able to recover those e-mails. Gave those to special counsel I think only on February 6 and those again are going to be produced to us. We don't know what's in there. We've been led to believe it's probably not anything startling in those e-mails.

A spokesman for Cheney would only confirm the accuracy of what was said in court: that the White House recently turned over the emails. The spokesman would not comment further.

Remarkably, other than a brief citation buried inside an Associated Press story, Friday's development about the White House's "discovery" of the 250 pages of emails was not covered by any major news media.

But that particular bit of courtroom dialogue between Libby's attorneys and Specials Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was an explosive development in the three year-old criminal probe.

For one thing, it raises numerous questions: why weren't the emails located in late 2003, when Gonzales enjoined roughly 2,000 White House staffers to turn over any communication about Plame Wilson and her husband, as so ordered by a Justice Department subpoena? Do the emails provide greater insight into the campaign to discredit Wilson and identify the officials who unmasked his wife's undercover CIA status to reporters?

A spokesperson for Gonzales did not return numerous calls for comment. But sources close to the investigation said that unnamed senior officials in Cheney's office had deleted some of the emails before Fitzgerald learned of their existence earlier this year, and others never turned them over to Gonzales as requested. Separately, according to people close to Fitzgerald's probe, there are some emails that Gonzales has refused to turn over to Fitzgerald, citing "executive privilege" and "national security."

It's unclear whether a formal subpoena was issued to the White House for the emails or whether the request came in the form of a letter from Fitzgerald. Sources said the White House did not voluntarily turn them over to Fitzgerald's staff.

The emails from Cheney's office that were turned over to Fitzgerald earlier this month were written by senior aides and sent to various officials at the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Office of the President. The emails were written as early as March 2003 - four months before Plame Wilson's cover was blown in a report written by conservative columnist Robert Novak. The contents of the emails are said to be damning, according to sources close to the investigation who are familiar with their substance. The emails are said to implicate Cheney in a months-long effort to discredit Wilson - a fact that Cheney did not disclose when he was interviewed by federal investigators in early 2004, these sources said.

The emails also show I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff who was indicted in October on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators related to his role in the leak, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, as well as former Under Secretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton and other top officials in the vice president's office also took part in discussions about ways in which the administration could respond to Wilson's public criticism about the Bush administration's use of intelligence that claimed Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Niger.

Wilson had traveled to Niger in February 2002 on behalf of the CIA to investigate those claims and reported back that there was no substance to the allegations. But the Niger uranium claims made it into President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address and Wilson had accused the administration of "twisting" intelligence on the Iraqi threat to win public support for the war.

Cheney and his senior aides did not disclose to federal investigators the fact that they either received or sent emails about either Joseph Wilson or Valerie Plame Wilson when they were first questioned about their knowledge and/or role in the leak in early 2004, people close to the investigation said.

Witnesses who work or worked at the CIA, the National Security Council, and the State Department who have been interviewed in the case, and some of who are cooperating with the probe, said they told Fitzgerald that they had received or sent emails to senior aides in Vice President Cheney's office, the State Department and the National Security Council as early as March 2003 about Joseph Wilson.

Other emails show that in mid-June 2003 these officials had sent emails that mentioned "Valerie Wilson" - not Valerie Plame - and her employment with the CIA, sources close to the leak investigation said.

One email about Wilson and his wife is said to have been sent by Libby to an unknown senior individual at the National Security Council in early June 2003, after Libby was told by Marc Grossman, then Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and that Grossman's colleagues told him that Plame Wilson was involved in organizing Wilson's trip to Niger in February 2002 to investigate whether Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country.

However, copies of the emails were never found in the more than 10,000 documents that Fitzgerald's staff has collected during the course of their investigation, the sources said.

Rove and Libby both testified that they learned about Plame Wilson from reporters - a fact disputed by the emails and witness testimony - and that they were not involved in a campaign to discredit Wilson. Rove remains under scrutiny. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, did not return calls for comment.

Hadley's role in the leak is also being closely looked at by Fitzgerald and his staff, sources said, adding that new evidence has surfaced showing that the National Security Adviser played an intimate role in the effort to discredit Wilson and that he may be one of the still unnamed administration officials who spoke to reporters about Plame Wilson's work for the CIA.