Grand Jury Hears Evidence Against Rove

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

Just as the news broke Wednesday about Scott McClellan resigning as White House press secretary and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove shedding some of his policy duties, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald met with the grand jury hearing evidence in the CIA leak case and introduced additional evidence against Rove, attorneys and other US officials close to the investigation said.

The grand jury session in federal court in Washington, DC, sources close to the case said, was the first time this year that Fitzgerald told the jurors that he would soon present them with a list of criminal charges he intends to file against Rove in hopes of having the grand jury return a multi-count indictment against Rove.

In an interview Wednesday, Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove remains a "subject" of Fitzgerald's two-year-old probe.

"Mr. Rove is still a subject of the investigation," Luskin said. In a previous interview, Luskin asserted that Rove would not be indicted by Fitzgerald, but he was unwilling to make that prediction again Wednesday.

"Mr. Fitzgerald hasn't made any decision on the charges and I can't speculate what the outcome will be," Luskin said. "Mr. Rove has cooperated completely with the investigation."

Fitzgerald is said to have introduced more evidence Wednesday alleging Rove lied to FBI investigators and the grand jury when he was questioned about how he found out that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA and whether he shared that information with the media, attorneys close to the case said.

Fitzgerald told the grand jury that Rove lied to investigators and the prosecutor eight out of the nine times he was questioned about the leak and also tried to cover-up his role in disseminating Plame Wilson's CIA status to at least two reporters.

Additionally, an FBI investigator reread to jurors testimony from other witnesses in the case that purportedly implicates Rove in playing a role in the leak and the campaign to discredit Plame Wilson's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose criticism of the Bush administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence lead to his wife being unmasked as a covert CIA operative.

Luskin said Rove has not discussed any plea deal with Fitzgerald.

"Mr. Rove's cooperation is not contingent on any plea agreement with the prosecutor," Luskin said. "He has always cooperated voluntarily and unconditionally."

Luskin would not discuss the substance of his most recent communication with Fitzgerald nor would he say whether Rove would testify against his former White House colleague, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, who was indicted in the leak case for perjury and obstruction of justice.

Luskin wouldn't comment on whether the investigation of Rove continues to center on alleged misleading statements to which Rove testified regarding a July 2003 conversation he had about Plame Wilson with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper.

Sources close to the investigation, however, confirmed that is exactly what Fitzgerald has continued to focus on and what he discussed with the grand jury Wednesday.

Luskin said that Rove simply forgot about his conversation with Cooper when he testified before the grand jury because Rove had been dealing with other pressing matters, such as Bush's reelection campaign.

Rove's story began to unravel when Fitzgerald discovered the existence of an email Rove sent to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley after he spoke with Cooper on July 11, 2003.

Rove did not disclose the existence of the email during his first two appearances before the grand jury. Rove testified that he found out about Plame Wilson after her identity was disclosed in several news stories.

"I didn't take the bait," Rove wrote in the email to Hadley immediately following his conversation with Cooper. "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."

Hadley, sources said, is also a subject of the investigation.

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

Luskin 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 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 sent to Hadley immediately and it was subsequently turned over to Fitzgerald.

Still, Rove's account of his conversation with Cooper went nothing like he 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.

Bush and Cheney Discussed Plame Prior to Leak

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

In early June 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney met with President Bush and told him that CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson and that she was responsible for sending him on a fact-finding mission to Niger to check out reports about Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium from the African country, according to current and former White House officials and attorneys close to the investigation to determine who revealed Plame-Wilson's undercover status to the media.

Other White House officials who also attended the meeting with Cheney and President Bush included former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, her former deputy Stephen Hadley, and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove.

This information was provided to this reporter by attorneys and US officials who have remained close to the case. Investigators working with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald compiled the information after interviewing 36 Bush administration officials over the past two and a half years.

The revelation puts a new wrinkle into Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's two-year-old criminal probe into the leak and suggests for the first time that President Bush knew from early on that the vice president and senior officials on his staff were involved in a coordinated effort to attack Wilson's credibility by leaking his wife's classified CIA status.

Now that President Bush's knowledge of the Plame Wilson affair has been exposed, there are thorny questions about whether the president has broken the law - specifically, whether he obstructed justice when he was interviewed about his knowledge of the Plame Wilson leak and the campaign to discredit her husband.

Details of President Bush's involvement in the Plame Wilson affair came in a 39-page court document filed by Fitzgerald late Wednesday evening in US District Court in Washington.

Fitzgerald's court filing was made in response to attorneys representing I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, who was indicted on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators for not telling the grand jury he spoke to reporters about Plame Wilson.

Libby's attorneys have in the past months argued that the government has evidence that would prove Libby's innocence and that the special prosecutor refuses to turn it over to the defense. Fitzgerald said in court documents he has already turned over thousands of pages of evidence to Libby's attorneys and that further discovery requests have been overly broad.

The attorneys and officials close to the case said over the weekend that the hastily arranged meeting was called by Cheney to "brief the president" on Wilson's increasing public criticism about the White House's use of the Niger intelligence and the negative impact it would eventually have on the administration's credibility if the public and Congress found out it was true, the sources said.

Bush said publicly in October 2003 that he had no idea who was responsible for unmasking Plame Wilson to columnist Robert Novak and other reporters. The president said that he welcomed a Justice Department investigation to find out who was responsible for it.

But neither Bush nor anyone in his inner circle let on that just four months earlier, they had agreed to launch a full-scale campaign to undercut Wilson's credibility by planting negative stories about his personal life with the media.

A more aggressive effort would come a week or so later when Cheney - who, sources said, was "consumed" with retaliating against Wilson because of his attacks on the administration's rationale for war - met with President Bush a second time and told the president that there was talk of "Wilson going public" and exposing the flawed Niger intelligence.

It was then that Cheney told Bush that a section of the classified National Intelligence Estimate that purported to show Iraq did seek uranium from Niger should be leaked to reporters as a way to counter anything Wilson might seek to publish, these sources said.

Throughout the second half of June, Andrew Card, Karl Rove, and senior officials from Cheney's office kept Bush updated about the progress of the campaign to discredit Wilson via numerous emails and internal White House memos, these sources said, adding that some of these documents were only recently turned over to the special counsel.

One attorney close to the case said that Bush gave Cheney permission to declassify the NIE and that Cheney told Libby to leak it to Bob Woodward, the Washington Post's assistant managing editor, which Libby did on June 27, 2003.

But Woodward told Libby shortly after he received the information about the NIE that he would not be writing a story about it for the Post but that he would use the still classified information for the book he was writing at the time, Plan of Attack.

Woodward would not return calls for comment nor would Libby's attorneys Ted Wells and William Jeffress.

Libby told Cheney that he had a good relationship with New York Times reporter Judith Miller and that he intended to share the NIE with her. Libby met with Miller on July 8, 2003 and disclosed the portion of the NIE that dealt with Iraq and Niger to her.

According to four attorneys who last week read a transcript of President Bush's interview with investigators, Bush did not disclose to the special counsel that he was aware of any campaign to discredit Wilson. Bush also said he did not know who, if anyone, in the White House had retaliated against the former ambassador by leaking his wife's undercover identity to reporters.

Attorneys close to the case said that Fitzgerald does not appear to be overly concerned or interested in any alleged discrepancy in Bush's statements about the leak case to investigators.

But "if Mr. Libby continues to misrepresent the government's case against him ... President Bush and most certainly Vice President Cheney may be caught in an embarrassing position," one attorney close to the case said. "Mr. Fitzgerald will not hesitate to remind Mr. Libby of his testimony when he appeared before the grand jury."

Speaking to college students and faculty at California State University Northridge last week, Wilson said that after President Bush cited the uranium claims in his State of the Union address he tried unsuccessfully for five months to get the White House to correct the record.

"I had direct discussions with the State Department, Senate committees," Wilson said during a speech last Thursday. "I had numerous conversations to change what they were saying publicly. I had a civic duty to hold my government to account for what it had said and done."

Wilson said he was rebuffed at every instance and finally decided to write an op-ed in the New York Times and expose the administration for knowingly "twisting" the intelligence on the Iraqi nuclear threat to make a case for war. The op-ed appeared in the newspaper July 6, 2003. Wilson wrote that had he personally traveled to Niger to check out the Niger intelligence and had determined it was bogus.

"Nothing more, nothing less than challenging the government to come clean on this matter," Wilson said. "That's all I did."

In the interest of fairness, any person identified in this story who believes he has been portrayed unfairly or that the information about him is untrue will have the opportunity to respond in this space.

Libby Filing: A Denial and a Mystery

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

Libby's court filing of late Wednesday evening does little to refute the government's charges against him.

Defense attorneys for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby said in a court filing late Wednesday that the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney doesn't remember a conversation he had with a State Department official in June 2003 in which the official told Libby that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA.

But the conversation did take place, according to current and former administration officials and attorneys who have remained close to the two-year-old CIA leak probe. At least a half-dozen witnesses who testified before a grand jury over the past two years said that they were at the meeting when Marc Grossman, the former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, told Libby that Plame Wilson worked for the CIA, according to attorneys and US officials close to the two-year-old CIA leak probe. Grossman also told Libby that Plame Wilson got the CIA to send her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, on a fact-finding trip to Niger in February 2002 to check out reports that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from the African country. Wilson took the trip and reported back to the CIA in March that he found no evidence that Iraq tried to acquire uranium.

"It's not just Mr. Grossman's word against Mr. Libby's," said one former State Department official knowledgeable about the substance of the conversation between Grossman and Libby. "There were other people present at the meeting at the time when Mr. Grossman provided Mr. Libby with details about Ms. Plame's employment with the agency. There is an abundance of evidence Mr. Fitzgerald has that will prove this."

Plame Wilson was unmasked as a covert CIA operative in a July 14, 2003, column written by Robert Novak. Ambassador Wilson believes White House officials leaked his wife's name as retribution because he publicly accused the administration of "twisting" intelligence to win support for the war against Iraq.

Libby's defense attorneys said Libby did not intentionally lie about how he found out that Plame Wilson worked for the CIA. They said Libby was dealing with national security issues and other pressing matters and simply forgot about the details regarding how he found out about Plame Wilson's employment.

The meeting between Libby and Grossman is a crucial part of the government's case against Libby. It demonstrates that Libby knew about Plame Wilson a month or so before her name was published in a newspaper column and proves that Libby lied to the grand jury when he testified that he found out about Plame Wilson from reporters in July 2003.

The facts surrounding Libby's conversation with Grossman surfaced in the obstruction of justice and perjury indictment Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald secured against Libby last October.

In the indictment, Fitzgerald wrote that Grossman told Libby "on or about June 11 or 12, 2003, that, in sum and substance, Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and that State Department personnel were saying that Wilson's wife was involved in the planning of his trip."

But Libby's attorneys, for the first time Wednesday, said Libby doesn't "recall" speaking with Grossman about Plame Wilson.

"During his grand jury appearances, Mr. Libby testified that he did not recall any conversations with Mr. Grossman about Mr. Wilson's wife," says the court filing written by Libby's attorneys.

Grossman has turned out to be an important witness for the prosecution, people close to the probe said.

The former Under Secretary of State derided the campaign to discredit Wilson and was outraged that the White House retaliated against Wilson by leaking his wife's identity to reporters, people close to Grossman said.

Grossman has provided FBI investigators and Fitzgerald with detailed information about the behind-the-scenes effort by Libby and other White House officials to undercut Ambassador Wilson's credibility. Grossman testified before a grand jury that the leak of Plame Wilson's name and CIA status to reporters was an "act of revenge" against her husband's criticism of the administration's use of the uranium claims in President Bush's January 28, 2003, State of the Union address.

Grossman, now vice chairman at The Cohen Group, an international lobbying firm in Washington, DC, was traveling Thursday. His assistant said he could not be reached for comment.

Attorneys as well as current and former administration officials close to the case said Grossman was the lone dissenting unnamed official quoted in a September 28, 2003, Washington Post story who told two Post reporters that "two top White House officials" called "at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife."

"Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the Washington Post quoted the senior administration official, whom sources have identified as Grossman, as saying. According to sources, Grossman told the Post that the Plame Wilson leak was "wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility."

Additionally, Grossman provided a dissenting opinion for a July 20, 2005, Associated Press story. Identified as a "retired state department official," Grossman told the AP that a classified State Department memo disputed the legitimacy of administration claims that Iraq sought to acquire uranium from Niger. The memo also contained a few lines about Plame Wilson's CIA employment, which were marked as secret.

The memo was written in June 2003 by Carl Ford, the former head of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), at the request of Grossman. The memo was prepared after a Washington Post story quoted an unnamed former US official who said the White House knowingly used bogus intelligence about Iraq's threat to purchase uranium from Niger. The US official who spoke to the Post on background has since been identified as former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Speaking to the AP on background, Grossman said the INR memo "wasn't a Wilson-Wilson wife memo. It was a memo on uranium in Niger and focused principally on our disagreement" with the White House.

"The former State Department official stressed the memo focused on Wilson's trip and the State Department intelligence bureau's disagreement with the White House's claim about Iraq trying to get nuclear material. He said the fact that the CIA officer and Wilson were husband and wife was largely an incidental reference," the July 20, 2005, AP story says, quoting Grossman, according to people close to the leak case.

In the interest of fairness, any person identified in this story who believes he has been portrayed unfairly or that the information in this story is untrue will have the opportunity to respond in this space.

Bush at Center of Intelligence Leak

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

Attorneys and current and former White House officials close to the investigation into the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson said Thursday that President Bush gave Vice President Dick Cheney the authorization in mid-June 2003 to disclose a portion of the highly sensitive National Intelligence Estimate to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward and former New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

These current and former White House officials are among the 36 witnesses who have testified before a grand jury and have been cooperating with the special counsel's probe since its inception.

The officials, some of whom are attorneys close to the case, added that more than two dozen emails that the vice president's office said it recently discovered and handed over to leak investigators in February show that President Bush was kept up to date about the circumstances surrounding the effort to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

The sources indicated that the leak probe is now winding down, and that soon, new information will emerge from the special counsel's office that will prove President Bush had prior knowledge of the White House campaign to discredit Plame Wilson's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who accused the administration of "twisting" intelligence on the Iraqi threat in order to win public support for the war.

The new information that surfaced late Wednesday places President Bush at the center of the probe for the first time since the investigation into the leak began more than two years ago and raises new questions as to whether Bush knew in advance the lengths to which senior White House officials went to discredit Wilson.

In the court filing, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wrote that Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, "testified that he was specifically authorized in advance of the meeting to disclose the key judgments of the classified NIE to [former New York Times reporter Judith] Miller on that occasion because it was thought that the NIE was 'pretty definitive' against what Ambassador Wilson had said and that the Vice President thought that it was 'very important' for the key judgments of the NIE to come out."

"Defendant further testified that he at first advised the Vice President that he could not have this conversation with reporter Miller because of the classified nature of the NIE. Defendant testified that the Vice President later advised him that the President had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE," the filing further states. "Defendant testified that he also spoke to David Addington, then Counsel to the Vice President, whom defendant considered to be an expert in national security law, and Mr. Addington opined that Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to a declassification of the document. Defendant testified that he thought he brought a brief abstract of the NIE's key judgments to the meeting with Miller on July 8. Defendant understood that he was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium. Defendant testified that this July 8th meeting was the only time he recalled in his government experience when he disclosed a document to a reporter that was effectively declassified by virtue of the President's authorization that it be disclosed. Defendant testified that one of the reasons why he met with Miller at a hotel was the fact that he was sharing this information with Miller exclusively."

In October 2003, three months after Plame Wilson's CIA status and identity were unmasked in print by columnist Robert Novak, President Bush said publicly that it was unlikely that the individual who leaked her name would ever be found.

"I mean this is a town full of people who like to leak information," Bush said during a press conference on Oct. 7, 2003. "And I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official. Now, this is a large administration, and there's lots of senior officials. I don't have any idea."

Details of President Bush's involvement in the effort to counter the former ambassador's claims came in a court document filed late Wednesday evening in US District Court in Washington by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, which was first reported by the New York Sun newspaper.

President Bush retained a private attorney when he was interviewed in the leak probe two years ago, specifically about whether he knew about it or had authorized it.

According to four attorneys who over the past two days have read a transcript of the President Bush's interview with investigators, Bush did not disclose to either investigators or the special counsel that he had authorized Cheney or any other administration official to leak portions of the NIE to Woodward and Miller or any other reporter. Rather, these people said the president said he frowned upon "selective leaks."

Bush also said during the interview two years ago that he had no prior knowledge that anyone on his staff had been involved in a campaign to discredit Wilson or that individuals retaliated against the former ambassador by leaking his wife's undercover identity to reporters.

The 39-page court document Fitzgerald filed late Wednesday included previously unreported testimony given to a grand jury by Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Libby was indicted in October on five-counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators about how he discovered Plame Wilson's identity.

Libby testified that Cheney had received explicit instruction from President Bush to declassify a portion of the October 2002 NIE that said Iraq tried to purchase 500 tons of yellowcake uranium ore from Niger and share that information with reporters like Miller and Woodward, whose previous work proved to be sympathetic to the administration and would help to discredit Wilson, according to the court document and attorneys and current and former administration officials close to the investigation.

Libby's "participation in a critical conversation with Judith Miller on July 8 (discussed further below) occurred only after the Vice President advised defendant that the President specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the NIE," the Fitzgerald's filing states. "Defendant testified that the circumstances of his conversation with reporter Miller - getting approval from the President through the Vice President to discuss material that would be classified but for that approval - were unique in his recollection."

"Defendant further testified that on July 12, 2003, he was specifically directed by the Vice President to speak to the press in place of Cathie Martin (then the communications person for the Vice President) regarding the NIE and Wilson," the court filing states. "Defendant was instructed to provide what was for him an extremely rare "on the record" statement, and to provide "background" and "deep background" statements, and to provide information contained in a document defendant understood to be the cable authored by Mr. Wilson."

On June 27, 2003, two weeks before Libby's meeting with Miller and disclosing to her portions of the NIE, Libby met with Woodward, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, and leaked the portion of the NIE that dealt with Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Niger, which was first reported by this reporter in March.

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 a 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.

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.

President Bush signed an executive order in March 2003 authorizing Cheney to declassify certain intelligence documents. 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.

Evidence Suggests White House Conspiracy

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

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald stated in a court filing late Wednesday in the CIA leak case that his investigators have obtained evidence during the course of the two-year-old probe that proves "multiple" White House officials conspired to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a critic of the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence.

This is the first time the special counsel has acknowledged that White House officials are alleged to have engaged in a coordinated effort to undercut the former ambassador's credibility by disseminating classified intelligence information that would have contradicted Wilson's public statements.

Fitzgerald's court filing was made in response to attorneys representing I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, who was indicted on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators related to his role in the leak. The attorneys are desperately trying to obtain evidence from the government that will prove Libby did not intentionally lie to the grand jury when he was asked how he found out about Plame Wilson and whether he shared that information with the media.

Furthermore, Libby's attorneys have argued that they are entitled to the evidence in order to prove Libby was not engaged in a "plot" to discredit Wilson. However, Fitzgerald says the evidence he has obtained proves there was a coordinated effort by White House officials to discredit Wilson.

Fitzgerald wrote in the filing, "There exist documents, some of which have been provided to defendant and there were conversations in which defendant participated, that reveal a strong desire by many, including multiple people in the White House, to repudiate Mr. Wilson before and after July 14, 2003."

Although Fitzgerald makes it abundantly clear that Libby is not charged with conspiracy, he argues that Libby's suggestion that there was no White House plot to discredit Wilson is ludicrous, given the amount of evidence Fitzgerald has in his possession that suggests otherwise.

"Once again, defendant ignores the fact that he is not charged with participating in any conspiracy, much less one defined as a 'White House-driven plot to punish Mr. Wilson,'" the filing states. "Moreover, given that there is evidence that other White House officials with whom defendant spoke prior to July 14, 2003, discussed Wilson's wife's employment with the press both prior to, and after, July 14, 2003 - which evidence has been shared with defendant - it is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish' Wilson."

Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was an undercover CIA operative whose identity was unmasked to reporters, in what the former ambassador claims was an attack after he penned an op-ed in the New York Times in July 2003 exposing the administration's use of flawed intelligence on the Iraqi nuclear threat.

Fitzgerald did not name the other White House officials who were involved in the effort to undercut Wilson, but sources close to the case said that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley are the officials who were involved in the alleged plot.

A footnote in the court filing states that Hadley was involved in conversations and meetings at Cheney's office in which White House officials discussed how to respond to Wilson's statement that the administration used bogus intelligence to make a case for war.

Hadley suggested declassifying a portion of the highly sensitive National Intelligence Estimate and leaking it to reporters as a way of responding to Wilson's statements.

"The government is producing to defendant Mr. Hadley's notes of meetings and conversations in which both defendant and Mr. Hadley participated, and in which the potential declassification of the NIE was discussed," the court filing says.

Moreover, Wednesday's court filing lays out for the first time how White House press secretary Scott McClellan came to publicly exonerate Libby and Rove during a press briefing in October 2003, three months after Plame Wilson's identity was unmasked.

The filing suggests that Libby lied about his role in the leak when McClellan asked him about it in October 2003. Libby, with Vice President Cheney's backing, persuaded the press secretary to clear his name during one of his morning press briefings, and prepared notes for him to use.

"Though defendant knew that another White House official had spoken to Novak in advance of Novak's column and that official had learned in advance that Novak would be publishing information about Wilson's wife, defendant did not disclose that fact to other White House officials (including the Vice President) but instead prepared a handwritten statement of what he wished White House Press Secretary McClellan would say to exonerate him:

People have made too much of the difference in
How I described Karl and Libby
I've talked to Libby.
I said it was ridiculous about Karl.
And it is ridiculous about Libby.
Libby was not the source of the Novak story.
And he did not leak classified information."

"As a result of defendant's request, on October 4, 2003, White House Press Secretary McClellan stated that he had spoken to Mr. Libby (as well as Mr. Rove and Elliot Abrams) and "those individuals assured me that they were not involved in this."

McClellan's public statement and the fact that President Bush vowed to fire anyone in his office involved in the leak were motivating factors that led Libby to lie during an interview with FBI investigators in November 2003, Fitzgerald states in the court filing: "Thus, as defendant approached his first FBI interview he knew that the White House had publicly staked its credibility on there being no White House involvement in the leaking of information about Ms. Wilson and that, at defendant's specific request through the Vice President, the White House had publicly proclaimed that defendant was 'not involved in this.'"

Fitzgerald Knew Identity of Leaker From Start

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

The special counsel appointed in late December 2003 to investigate the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson found out the identity of the Bush administration official who disclosed her undercover status to syndicated columnist Robert Novak just two months after the probe began.

But in early February 2004, a month after he started the investigation, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald shifted gears and started to build a perjury and obstruction of justice case against White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney's former Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby according to several attorneys close to the investigation.

That month, Justice Department investigators working on the leak case approached a senior official in the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney who had been identified by witnesses as having played a major role in the Plame Wilson leak.

The Bush administration official was given an ultimatum: either cooperate with the special counsel's probe or face criminal charges for his involvement in the leak, attorneys close to the case said.

The senior official decided to cooperate with the investigation and told Fitzgerald that Libby and Rove spoke to reporters about Plame Wilson, the attorneys said.

The official has been identified by attorneys and four current and former White House officials as John Hannah, a senior national security aide on loan to Vice President Dick Cheney from then-Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs John Bolton.

Hannah worked with Libby on the issue of weapons of mass destruction as part of an informal team known as the "White House Iraq Group." Hannah told friends last year that he was worried he might be implicated by the investigation, according to a report in the Washington Post.

Libby was indicted on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators related to his role in the leak. Hannah was named Cheney's national security adviser the day Libby was indicted.

Hannah's cooperation early on in the leak investigation ultimately helped Fitzgerald and his staff discover the identity of the Bush administration official who leaked information about Plame Wilson's work with the CIA to Novak, these sources said.

The identity of the individual is still unknown. No one in the White House was aware that Hannah was cooperating with the special counsel, the sources said, adding that information Hannah provided to Fitzgerald was instrumental in securing a perjury indictment against Libby. Hannah's attorney did not return numerous calls for comment.

The disclosure of Plame Wilson's identity and CIA status was an attempt by White House officials to discredit Plame Wilson's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a critic of the administration's pr-war Iraq intelligence.

Wilson wrote an editorial in the New York Times on July 6, 2003, accusing President Bush of knowingly "twisting" Iraq intelligence by citing bogus claims in his January 2003 State of the Union address about Iraq's attempt to acquire yellow-cake uranium from Niger. Wilson revealed that he had personally traveled to Niger a year earlier on behalf of the CIA to check out the uranium allegations and had reported back that it was untrue.

A week after Wilson's editorial was published, Novak printed the identity of Wilson's wife and said she worked at the CIA. He said two White House officials told him the trip was a boondoggle because Plame Wilson had recommended her husband to check out the Niger claims.

Fitzgerald was tapped by the Department of Justice in December 2003 to investigate whether White House officials violated a 1982 federal law making it a felony to knowingly disclose the identity of an undercover CIA officer.

A month or so after obtaining testimony from Hannah and more than a dozen other senior White House officials who may have been involved in the leak, Fitzgerald sent a letter to his boss, then-acting Attorney General James Comey, seeking confirmation that he had the authority to investigate and prosecute individuals for additional crimes that may have been committed during the probe.

Comey responded to Fitzgerald in writing on February 6, 2004, confirming that the special prosecutor had the authority to prosecute "perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses."

It was the conflicting testimony Fitzgerald obtained from I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Karl Rove that prompted Fitzgerald to send a letter to Comey, attorneys and current and former administration officials close to the probe said.

From the moment Fitzgerald received Comey's response, the investigation changed course and moved to an obstruction of justice and perjury probe against Rove and Libby, the sources close to the investigation said.

Rove was questioned by FBI investigators at least five times between October 2003 and February 2004. Libby was questioned by investigators at least twice during that time, according to attorneys familiar with Rove and Libby's interviews with investigators.

Libby and Rove said in interviews with FBI investigators that they found out about Plame Wilson's identity from reporters. Rove testified that he couldn't recall who in the media told him that Plame Wilson worked for the CIA and was married to the former ambassador.

Rove told FBI investigators on five occasions and testified twice before a grand jury that he distributed damaging information about Plame to the Republican National Committee, outside political consultants and the media after Novak had disclosed her identity, according to the attorneys who are familiar with Rove's testimony.

However, Rove was actually a source for Novak and another reporter who wrote about Plame Wilson but failed to disclose that fact in nearly a dozen times he was questioned about his role in the leak.

Sources said that Fitzgerald is now preparing the paperwork to present to a grand jury outlining the charges against Rove in hopes of securing an indictment.

The attorneys close to the case said that in order to build a rock-solid perjury and obstruction case against Libby, Fitzgerald needed to secure the testimony of the journalists Libby spoke to about Plame Wilson.

The investigation surely would have ended in 2004, the attorneys said, but journalists Fitzgerald subpoenaed went to court to fight the subpoena and the legal challenge delayed the case for nearly a year.

In the end, the testimony of Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller - both of whom identified Libby as their source of information on Plame Wilson - convinced the grand jury that Libby lied about his role in the leak.

In the interest of fairness, any person identified in this story who believes he has been portrayed unfairly or that the information about him is untrue will have the opportunity to respond in this space.

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.