Lawyer: Rove won't be charged in CIA leak case

bobbyjoe

Feck...................

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/06/13/rove.cia/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- White House senior adviser Karl Rove has been told by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald that he will not be charged in the CIA leak case, according to Robert Luskin, Rove's lawyer.

"In deference to the pending case, we will not make any further public statements about the subject matter of the investigation," Luskin said in a written statement Tuesday. "We believe that the special counsel's decision should put an end to the baseless speculation about Mr. Rove's conduct."

A grand jury has heard testimony from Rove in five appearances, most recently April 26.

After that appearance, Luskin issued a statement saying, "In connection with this appearance, the special counsel has advised Mr. Rove that he is not a target of the investigation

Hobbes

Truthout said they would out thier contacts if they had gotten stitched up.

haven't seen any update yet.

Although Roves bit always seemed like Clintons "I did not have sexual relations" type argument of not lying.

So any word on whos going to get the chop for it?

sovtek

You know I don't actually have a problem with outing CIA agents. I think they all should be outed and the institution disbanded.
Its kinda like Nixon bombing the **** out of Southeast Asia...killing roughly 4 million people in the process and then getting called to the carpet because he supposedly ordered some thugs to break into a hotel.

TomF

Glad to see that this whole "Get Rove" witch-hunt finally ended in a fizzle, not a bang.

Hobbes

TomF wrote:

Glad to see that this whole "Get Rove" witch-hunt finally ended in a fizzle, not a bang.

Yea glad to see if you want to out someone from the CIA you only have to say "Joe Wilsons wife" not her name and you can get off scot free from treason. Although if I recall the attorney mentioned "Perjury" charges, which is not the same thing.

As Clinton showed us, its not the lie but how you lie.

Btw, turns out Truthout are now claiming that until its official (other then Roves attorney) they stand by thier story.

http://forum.truthout.org/blog/story/2006/6/13/104836/605

We are stunned by the magnitude of the reaction to the article we published yesterday morning. We have put our cards on the table. We invite Mr. Luskin to do the same.

To clarify: The entire basis for the information that "Rove has been cleared" comes from a verbal statement by Karl Rove's attorney. No one else confirms that. As Karl Rove's attorney Robert Luskin is bound to act - in all regards - in Rove's best interest. We question his motives.

Philistine

So any word on whos going to get the chop for it?[/QUOTE]

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The CIA leak investigation is "not over," special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said Friday after announcing charges against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.

Hobbes

[edit]

I checked that news story and it doesn't sync up with anything recent then I noticed..

2005/POLITICS/10/28/leak.probe/

your story is wee bit out of date.

bonkey

Hobbes wrote:

Yea glad to see if you want to out someone from the CIA you only have to say "Joe Wilsons wife" not her name and you can get off scot free from treason

Alternately, it oculd be because the whole thing was instigated at the instruction of the President.

Yes indeed. At least one report today are saying that he told prosecutors that he did indeed instruct Cheney to discredit Wilson, and included the disclosure of highly classified documents.

It was, apparently, just an honest mistake that Cheney took this to mean that he should get Libby to leak them to the press, rather than actually declassifying them into the public domain.

Wonderful.

Of course, if this does get any air-time at all, it'll just go down as another footnote in history - yet another example of those in power brazening through what should have been unacceptable.

TomF wrote:

Glad to see that this whole "Get Rove" witch-hunt finally ended in a fizzle, not a bang.

I'm sure you are indeed glad TomF, but your continuous suggestion that this was a witch-hunt will only fool those already on your side.

What the Bush Administration did was despicable, especially when taken in llight of later claims that they really, honestly believed that Saddam had WMDs and all that. Sure they did - thats why the President and Vice President colluded to discredit someone who could make a cogent case that they were making unsound claims.

But, as always, there will be no shortage of people to stand up and applaud such actions.

jc

Hobbes

I watched this again last night...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6423.htm

Looking at that then and where we are now I honestly believe that Bush administration is going to get away with it all.

I hate the whole hitler/godwin analogy but one of the things that came out of WWII was the question "How did this guy ever get into power, and keep the power considering everything that went on?".

Zombrex

There are dark forces at work here that none of us fully understand

TomF

Maybe it's just me, but I can't get the advanced search function to work, and so I may be posting information that those in-the-know already know, but here goes anyway.

After all the champagne bottle uncorkings over the news that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby were going to be put in jail by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the U.S., there is a small item that seems to have passed under the radar.

We now learn that the source of the leak that "outed" a CIA agent wasn't Rove or Libby, but Richard Armitage. Reading all this, I don't detect any regret over the damage done to Rove or Libby. I would be glad to be told where the politics board has any notice of all this, too.

Armitage On CIA Leak: 'I Screwed Up'
WASHINGTON, Sept. 7, 2006(CBS) In an exclusive interview with CBS News national security correspondent David Martin, Richard Armitage, once the No. 2 diplomat at the State Department, couldn't be any blunter.

"Oh I feel terrible. Every day, I think I let down the president. I let down the Secretary of State. I let down my department, my family and I also let down Mr. and Mrs. Wilson," he says.

When asked if he feels he owes the Wilsons an apology, he says, "I think I've just done it."

In July 2003, Armitage told columnist Robert Novak that Ambassador Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, and Novak mentioned it in a column. It's a crime to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover CIA officer. But Armitage didn't yet realize what he had done.

So, what exactly did he tell Novak?

"At the end of a wide-ranging interview he asked me, 'Why did the CIA send Ambassador (Wilson) to Africa?' I said I didn't know, but that she worked out at the agency," Armitage says.

Armitage says he told Novak because it was "just an offhand question." "I didn't put any big import on it and I just answered and it was the last question we had," he says.

Armitage adds that while the document was classified, "it doesn't mean that every sentence in the document is classified.

"I had never seen a covered agent's name in any memo in, I think, 28 years of government," he says.

He adds that he thinks he referred to Wilson's wife as such, or possibly as "Mrs. Wilson." He never referred to her as Valerie Plame, he adds.

"I didn't know the woman's name was Plame. I didn't know she was an operative," he says.

He says he was reading Novak's newspaper column again, on Oct. 1, 2003, and "he said he was told by a non-partisan gun slinger."

"I almost immediately called Secretary Powell and said, 'I'm sure that was me,'" Armitage says.

Armitage immediately met with FBI agents investigating the leak.

"I told them that I was the inadvertent leak," Armitage says. He didn't get a lawyer, however.

"First of all, I felt so terrible about what I'd done that I felt I deserved whatever was coming to me. And secondarily, I didn't need an attorney to tell me to tell the truth. I as already doing that," Armitage explains. "I was not intentionally outing anybody. As I say, I have tremendous respect for Ambassador. Wilson's African credentials. I didn't know anything about his wife and made an offhand comment. I didn't try to out anybody."

That was nearly three years ago, but the political firestorm over who leaked Valerie Plame's identity continued to burn as Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald began hauling White House officials and journalists before a grand jury.

Armitage says he didn't come forward because "the special counsel, once he was appointed, asked me not to discuss this and I honored his request."

"I thought every day about how I'd screwed up," he adds.

Armitage never did tell the president, but he's talking now because Fitzgerald told him he could.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/07/eveningnews/main1981433.shtml

Hobbes

What regret?

Printed proof that libby was suggesting to get to the reporter through thier wife.

Or how about Rove on US TV saying that yes he sent an email to the reporter saying that Plame was a CIA agent but didn't name her by name just referred to her as "Plames wife".

Amazing how that information was overlooked.

The whole thing is rovian anyway. Armitage will get flack for the outing (because technically its treason), and then be given a free pardon when Bush leaves office.

TBH the way things are now Bush could eat babies and would still be safe from anything happening to him. There are no checks and balances anymore.

TomF

Today Robert Novak, the American columnist who originally wrote about a CIA operative in his column after learning her identity from an un-named Bush Administration source, gets to tell how that source was Richard Armitage, and how the left fringe is deeply frustrated with the whole thing. The irony of the whole thing is hugely satisfying.:D

Novak: Real story behind Armitage story
September 13, 2006

BY ROBERT NOVAK [Chicago, Illinois, USA] SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

When Richard Armitage finally acknowledged last week he was my source three years ago in revealing Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA employee, the former deputy secretary of state’s interviews obscured what he really did. I want to set the record straight based on firsthand knowledge.

First, Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he had heard and that he ‘‘thought’’ might be so. Rather, he identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked, and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former Amb. Joseph Wilson.

Second, Armitage did not slip me this information as idle chitchat, as he now suggests. He made clear he considered it especially suited for my column.

An accurate depiction of what Armitage actually said deepens the irony of him being my source. He was a foremost internal skeptic of the administration’s war policy, and I long had opposed military intervention in Iraq. Zealous foes of George W. Bush transformed me improbably into the president’s lapdog. But they cannot fit Armitage into the left-wing fantasy of a well-crafted White House conspiracy to destroy Joe and Valerie Wilson. The news that he and not Karl Rove was the leaker was devastating news for the left.

A peculiar convergence had joined Armitage and me on the same historical path. During his quarter of a century in Washington, I had no contact with Armitage before our fateful interview. I tried to see him in the first 2 years of the Bush administration, but he rebuffed me — summarily and with disdain, I thought.

Then, without explanation, in June 2003, Armitage’s office said the deputy secretary would see me. This was two weeks before Joe Wilson surfaced himself as author of a 2002 report for the CIA debunking Iraqi interest in buying uranium in Africa.

I sat down with Armitage in his State Department office the afternoon of July 8 with tacit rather than explicit ground rules: deep background with nothing said attributed to Armitage or even an anonymous State Department official. Consequently, I refused to identify Armitage as my leaker until his admission was forced by Hubris, a new book by reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn that absolutely identified him.

Late in my hourlong interview with Armitage. I asked why the CIA had sent Wilson — lacking intelligence experience, nuclear policy or recent contact with Niger — on the African mission. He told the Washington Post last week that his answer was: ‘‘I don’t know, but I think his wife worked out there.’’

Neither of us took notes, and nobody else was present. But I recalled our conversation that week in writing a column, while Armitage reconstructed it months later for federal prosecutors. He had told me unequivocally that Mrs. Wilson worked in the CIA’s Counter-Proliferation Division and that she had suggested her husband’s mission.

As for his current implications that he never expected this to be published, he noted that the story of Mrs. Wilson’s role fit the style of the old Evans-Novak column — implying to me it continued reporting Washington inside information.

Mrs. Wilson’s name appeared in my column July 14, 2003, but it was not until Oct. 1 that I heard about it from Armitage. Washington lobbyist Kenneth Duberstein, Armitage’s close friend and political adviser, called me to say the deputy secretary feared he had ‘‘inadvertently’’ (the word Armitage used in last week’s interviews) disclosed Mrs. Wilson’s identity to me in July and was considering resignation. (Duberstein’s phone call was disclosed in the Isikoff-Corn book, which used Duberstein as a source. They reported Duberstein was responsible for arranging my unexpected interview with Armitage.)

Duberstein told me Armitage wanted to know whether he was my source. I did not reply because I was sure that Armitage knew he was the source. I believed he contacted me Oct. 1 because of news the weekend of Sept. 27-28 that the Justice Department was investigating the leak. I cannot credit Armitage’s current claim that he realized he was the source only when my Oct. 1 column revealed that the official who gave me the information was ‘‘no partisan gunslinger.’’

Armitage’s silence the next 2œ years caused intense pain for his colleagues in government and enabled partisan Democrats in Congress to falsely accuse Rove of being my primary source. When Armitage now says he was mute because of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s request, that does not explain his silence three months between his claimed first realization that he was the source and Fitzgerald’s appointment on Dec. 30. Armitage’s tardy self-disclosure is tainted because it is deceptive.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak14.html

lostexpectation

TomF wrote:

Today Robert Novak, the American columnist who originally wrote about a CIA operative in his column after learning her identity from an un-named Bush Administration source, gets to tell how that source was Richard Armitage, and how the left fringe is deeply frustrated with the whole thing. The irony of the whole thing is hugely satisfying.:D


http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak14.html

novak the honest independent anti-war reporter ???

still doesn't exclude the rove whitehouses involvement...

TomF

"Mr. Rove, can you prove to our satisfaction here that you did not, on the evening of February 4, 2001, in fact dine on a steak of the endangered and nearly-extinct species, the Manatee?"

[Apologies for my plagerising this from someone who recently wrote something similar somewhere.]

Hobbes

So Novak and Armitage are going to face treason charges then?

On another note is truthout going to out thier sources now. Although they did say they wouldn't till next year when the case actually finishes.

btw, TomF I am not sure why you keep going on about Rove being innocent in all this. He is on record in front of a camera of declaring that he gave away her cover.

The only thing saving his ass is that supposedly someone else did it before him.

Zombrex

TomF wrote:

"Mr. Rove, can you prove to our satisfaction here that you did not, on the evening of February 4, 2001, in fact dine on a steak of the endangered and nearly-extinct species, the Manatee?"

[Apologies for my plagerising this from someone who recently wrote something similar somewhere.]

TomF not quite sure you are fully up to speed with the fact of the case

Everyone suspected Armitage had leaked the information to Novak, as well as to Bob Woodward. Rove leaked the same information to Matt Copper of TIME magazine.

It is rather ridiculous to claim that because Armitage leaked the name first to a different reporter, that Rove did nothing wrong by leaking the same name a few days later to Copper, before Novak piece was published.

TomF

I'm beginning to wonder if Karl Rove, or some other nefarious Bush Administration staffer, is watching this forum and publishing answers to some of the comments that we read here.:eek:

Case in point, published today:

"Mr. Armitage, who came forward after Mr. Libby was indicted, was told in February 2006, after two grand jury appearances, he would not be indicted. Mr. Rove, however, after five grand jury appearances, was not informed until July 2006 he would not be charged. Mr. Fitzgerald made the Rove decision appear strained, a close call. Yet of the two men's conduct, Mr. Armitage's deserved more scrutiny. And Mr. Fitzgerald knew it. Each had testified before the grand jury about a conversation with Mr. Novak. Each had forgotten about a conversation with an additional reporter: Mr. Armitage with Mr. Woodward, Mr. Rove with Time's Matt Cooper. However, Mr. Rove came forward pre-indictment, immediately, when reminded of the second conversation. When Mr. Woodward attempted to ask Mr. Armitage about the matter, on two separate occasions pre-indictment, Mr. Armitage refused to discuss it and abruptly cut him off. To be charitable, assume he did not independently recall his conversation with Mr. Woodward. Would not two phone calls requesting to talk about the matter refresh his recollection? Now we also know Messrs. Armitage and Novak have vastly different recollections of their conversation. Isn't that what Mr. Libby was indicted for?"

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html

Hobbes

Isn't that what Mr. Libby was indicted for?"

No Libby was indicted for saying "I didn't say her name to the reporter, I referred to her as Plames Wife is a CIA agent".

As I recall the overall case won't be finished until next year so Rove isn't out of the woods just yet.

Amazing that everyone might get off scott free for Treason (which alledgely to the CIA caused the death of one of thier operatives).

TomF

If Libby said "Plames wife", he must have misspoken, or was misquoted, because it is my understanding that Valerie Plame is a woman, and that she is Joseph Wilson's third wife.

If Libby didn't say it, maybe somebody's epee went astray in trying for a riposte.:)

TomF

Karl Rove must be sending cryptosphere messages to me again, because I just inspired to read an interesting analysis of the Libby case. The authoress doesn't mention anything about Libby being indicted for saying "I didn't say her name to the reporter, I referred to her as Plames Wife is a CIA agent". Be that as it may be, here is an excerpt from the piece:

"Count one of the Libby indictment charges, inter alia: 'On or about June 11 or 12, 2003, the Under Secretary of State orally advised Libby in the White House 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.' The undersecretary referred to is Grossman, and Libby says he has no recollection of any such conversation. He also denies that Grossman told him of Plame's identity.

In the indictment, the prosecutor puts great weight on Grossman's recollection of this conversation, as he does of every scrap of information suggesting Libby knew of Plame before Armitage's disclosure to Novak. Fitzgerald connects the dots to a baffling June 23, 2003, conversation Libby had with Judith Miller, which then allows him to tag Libby 'it'--making him the 'first to tell' a reporter of Plame. (The weight he places on this is such that it seems almost as if Fitzgerald is trying to justify to himself his decision to go after Libby, who didn't leak to Novak, while treating Armitage, who did leak, as an "innocent accused.") Fitzgerald's theory that Libby was "first to tell" was always a stretch, given the variety of people who already knew Wilson's story. It collapsed definitively when Woodward--whom Armitage had twice in 2004 refused to grant a waiver of confidentiality, finally getting one after the indictment of Libby--came forward to say that on June 12, 2003--well before the Libby-Miller conversation--Armitage had told him of Plame and her role in Wilson's trip. Further, Woodward has revealed that he bumped into Libby in the hallway that same day, that his notes indicate he might well have told Libby what he'd heard from Armitage, but that those same notes do not show Libby as having responded. He has added that if he'd been asked earlier, when his recollection was fresher, he could perhaps have shed more light on their conversation.

If the prosecutor had asked and Armitage had failed to reveal the conversation with Woodward, and Armitage had then for years refused to allow Woodward to reveal this information to the prosecution, Armitage obstructed the investigation. If, as seems more likely, the prosecutor, with Armitage's notebooks and calendar in hand, never asked him about his conversations with other reporters, Fitzgerald would now seem to be trying to disguise his own mishandling of the investigation as obstruction by others. You cannot wear blinders and suggest someone kept you from seeing the whole picture.

The sum and substance of the charges against Libby are his differing recollections of conversations with three reporters: Matthew Cooper (formerly with Time magazine), Judith Miller, and Tim Russert of NBC. Libby's defense is that he was very busy during this period, that Plame's identity was then a minor point to him, and that he testified to the best of his recollection on these matters--which in any event he would have had no motive to lie about, and which seem not to have been material to any other crime, none having ever been charged.

Here, in summary, is what we know from the Libby indictment and from the May 16, 2006, discovery hearing, at which some evidentiary matters not disclosed previously were revealed:

* Matthew Cooper: Libby recalled and testified that on July 12, 2003, Cooper called him and he (Libby) raised the subject of Wilson's wife. Cooper, on the other hand, says that he recalls it differently, that he raised the matter with Libby. In fact, it appears both may have faulty recollections. As Libby's lawyer argued in May: 'Mr. Cooper took notes--He sat there and typed on his computer as he talked to Libby of everything they talked about. We have those. There is no reference to the wife whatsoever. Immediately after the call with Mr. Libby, Mr. Cooper sent to his editor an email describing the important things that Libby said. There is no reference to the wife. None whatsoever.

'There is another email. Again, we have this one. There is an email by Mr. Cooper, again to his editor, on July 16, four days after his conversation with Mr. Libby and five days after his conversations with Mr. Rove, about the article they are planning to write in which they are going to mention the wife. And the email says--talks about him having an administration source for the information about Mrs. Wilson.'

Time testified that it had another document, which it had not turned over to Libby, that mentioned Plame. But, 'even if other Time, Inc. reporters knew about Ms. Plame,' the Time lawyer contended, 'that would in no way support Mr. Libby's grand jury testimony.' The judge reviewed documents in Time's possession that they had not turned over to Libby, and ruled that no matter how Cooper testified, the documents would make his testimony impeachable. That is, no matter how Cooper testifies, there is evidence in Time's documents that might well discredit his testimony.

It is far from clear why the prosecutor felt testimony in which Libby said he thought he raised the issue to Cooper becomes a charge for false testimony in the indictment, when Cooper said he raised it, and when, moreover, Cooper's contemporaneous notes do not reflect any discussion with Libby about Plame. Nor is it easy to imagine a jury would find this a compelling count either."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/720lutwz.asp

Hobbes

TomF wrote:

If Libby said "Plames wife"

Do you even bother to read up on the case itself?

In Karl Roves email to the reporter he said...

"Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip,"

TomF

I think the whole business boils down to a flakey U.S. ex-ambassador to an African country being recommended to handle a secret fact finding mission for the U.S. Vice President about uranium ore being sought in another African country by Iraq.

The flakey one seems to have been actively recruited through his CIA-employed wife who didn't like Bush & Co. The report he made in secret was then, in effect, published by him in an anti-Bush Administration piece in the New York Times.

The report being published, was then effectively no longer secret. The Vice President seems to have noticed this and asked why the flakey one was chosen for the mission in the first place. The V.P.'s people learned that the report author's wife recommended him for the job, and that she and he were both anti-Administration.

Then it gets murky.

Did the V.P.'s man leak anything that wasn't already well-known, especially after the big newspaper piece? From what I've posted before, it doesn't seem so.

Did Rove leak anything ditto? Patrick Fitzgerald doesn't think so, but he may be moving into damage control and worried that his own reputation is down the drain.

I like what the Washington Post wrote (although they are still stuck in the "it was classified information" mode which is probably not true, because the flakey one had already unclassified his mission and report).

Bottom line? I'd say it's over, and we should all get used to it.

End of an Affair

It turns out that the person who exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame was not out to punish her husband.

Friday, September 1, 2006; Page A20

WE'RE RELUCTANT to return to the subject of former CIA employee Valerie Plame because of our oft-stated belief that far too much attention and debate in Washington has been devoted to her story and that of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, over the past three years. But all those who have opined on this affair ought to take note of the not-so-surprising disclosure that the primary source of the newspaper column in which Ms. Plame's cover as an agent was purportedly blown in 2003 was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage.

Mr. Armitage was one of the Bush administration officials who supported the invasion of Iraq only reluctantly. He was a political rival of the White House and Pentagon officials who championed the war and whom Mr. Wilson accused of twisting intelligence about Iraq and then plotting to destroy him. Unaware that Ms. Plame's identity was classified information, Mr. Armitage reportedly passed it along to columnist Robert D. Novak "in an offhand manner, virtually as gossip," according to a story this week by the Post's R. Jeffrey Smith, who quoted a former colleague of Mr. Armitage.

It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House -- that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame's identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson -- is untrue. The partisan clamor that followed the raising of that allegation by Mr. Wilson in the summer of 2003 led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, a costly and prolonged investigation, and the indictment of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, on charges of perjury. All of that might have been avoided had Mr. Armitage's identity been known three years ago.

That's not to say that Mr. Libby and other White House officials are blameless. As prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has reported, when Mr. Wilson charged that intelligence about Iraq had been twisted to make a case for war, Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney reacted by inquiring about Ms. Plame's role in recommending Mr. Wilson for a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger, where he investigated reports that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium. Mr. Libby then allegedly disclosed Ms. Plame's identity to journalists and lied to a grand jury when he said he had learned of her identity from one of those reporters. Mr. Libby and his boss, Mr. Cheney, were trying to discredit Mr. Wilson; if Mr. Fitzgerald's account is correct, they were careless about handling information that was classified.

Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/31/AR2006083101460.html

bonkey

I like your repeated use of the word flakey there, TomF.

It highlights your impartiality.

TomF

I calls 'em like I sees 'em.

bonkey

TomF wrote:

I calls 'em like I sees 'em.

Thats pretty much what I said.

It highlights your impartiality....or just how much impartiality you (don't) have when it comes to this story.

If you can't refrain from irrelevant character-denigrating partisanship when offering commentary, then go right ahead and call 'em like you see 'em.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that if you have to call the guy names to try and make your point, your point isn't half as strong as you'd like to make it out to be.

TomF

Well, I thought it was over, but I didn't realise that meant it is over for Patrick Fitzgerald. It appears that the Special Prosecutor could possibly become the object of an investigation. Would he be investigated by a Special Special Prosecutor? You can read the full text of a letter to the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility that calls for an investigation of Fitzgerald. Here are the beginning paragraphs and the closing paragraph of a long letter:

Re: Patrick Fitzgerald’s handling of the Plame Case
...

I am writing to suggest that if one is not underway yet, it is long past due to undertake an investigation into the circumstances of the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald and the way in which he has conducted this matter.

As a general overview of the inappropriate way in which he handled this matter, I reference this article in the Weekly Standard.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/720lutwz.asp

As to more specific references to inappropriate conduct not outlined there, I draw your attention to his statements in the press conference announcing the indictment and particularly ask that you read those statements in light of recent developments: It is now apparent that Mr. Fitzgerald knew from the outset of his appointment that the source of the 'leak' to Robert Novak was Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. In spite of this, Mr. Fitzgerald appears to have never fully explored with Armitage whether Armitage had spoken to other reporters in addition to Novak—although it is now known that Armitage spoke about Plame to at least one other reporter, Bob Woodward, and quite possibly other reporters who have testified before the Grand Jury. That conversation happened a full month before the Novak article was published.

Mr. Woodward has volunteered that he himself told other people during the month in question, but it seems that Mr. Fitzgerald was uninterested in whether this provided an alternate path for information to spread through the Washington press corps, including quite possibly other reporters who have testified before the Grand Jury. Nor did Mr. Fitzgerald seek waivers of confidentiality for any reporters with whom Armitage spoke with regard to Plame (with the possible exception of Novak himself). The 'good leakers', 'bad leakers' and 'whistleblower' distinctions made by the prosecution are a frank prescription for criminalizing politics and were unprofessional. And the suggestion in those statements that the defendant had deliberately disclosed the identity of an undercover agent and harmed national security in so doing, prejudiced the defendant, slandered him in the public eye, and far exceeded the evidence in the prosecution’s possession and the indictment itself.

Further, the affidavit he filed in the Miller appeal was a model of misdirection and disingenuousness clearly designed to mislead the Court. Taken as a whole, the affidavit conflates the Armitage leak to Novak with Libby’s quite apparently innocent conversations with other reporters, presenting a materially false impression of the facts the prosecution already had determined. Whether Libby’s recollections of those conversations were accurate, or his conversational partners’ recollections were more accurate, both sides to each conversation recall something entirely benign.
...

I recognize that the special prosecutor is acting in a unique capacity. On the other hand, since the appointment of a Department of Justice employee as Special Prosecutor created a special circumstance that was not contemplated by the Statute, it seems logical that Mr. Fitzgerald should be covered by the operations of your office. In support of that position, I draw your attention to the fact that both Mr. Comey and Mr. Fitzgerald provided affidavits to the Court in support of their own contention that the operations of the Special Prosecutor are under Department of Justice supervision. If you feel that this is not the case, I would appreciate your disclosing that to me even though I appreciate that non-jurisdictional issues are and should remain non-public during any investigation. Because I am convinced that the above described conduct imperatively demands investigation, I will seek it in another forum if this matter is beyond your jurisdiction.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5870[HTML][/HTML]