A recent Bloomberg report suggested Ari Fleischer got a call from Robert Novak on July 7 and was later seen reading the state department memo aboard AF1. I am concerned Fleischer is being set up to take the fall. Any thoughts?
Posted by btb at July 20, 2005 08:49 AMI am concerned Fleischer is being set up to take the fall. Any thoughts?
Well, there seems to be lots of scattered evidence that several administration figures knew what was going on. Even if Fleischer made the first call, I would bet that other people have gotten their hands dirty during the conspiracy to cover his tracks.
This new detail about the memo--that it focused not on Plame, but on the substantive question of Nigerien uranium (or, rather, the lack thereof)--means trouble for the White House.
Posted by Matt Davis at July 20, 2005 09:02 AMFleicher is no saint. I worked for McCain in South Carolina in 2000 and I remember Ari directing the dishonest push-polling before the primary. If his fingers are in this pie, I won't be surprised.
Posted by rlprather at July 20, 2005 09:34 AMHere is the WSJ article.
A classified State Department memo that may be pivotal to the CIA leak case made clear that information identifying an agent and her role in her husband's intelligence-gathering mission was sensitive and shouldn't be shared, according to a person familiar with the document.
A special prosecutor is investigating whether Bush administration officials broke the law by intentionally outing a covert intelligence operative. Investigators are trying to determine if the memo, dated June 10, 2003, was how White House officials learned that Valerie Wilson was an agent for the Central Intelligence Agency.
[Karl Rove]
News that the memo was marked for its sensitivity emerged as President Bush yesterday appeared to backtrack from his 2004 pledge to fire any member of his staff involved in the leaking of the CIA agent's name. In a news conference yesterday that followed disclosures that his top strategist, Karl Rove, had discussed Ms. Wilson's CIA employment with two reporters, Mr. Bush adopted a different formulation, specifying criminality as the standard for firing.
"If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration," Mr. Bush said. White House spokesman Scott McClellan later disputed the suggestion that the president had shifted his position.
The memo's details are significant because they will make it harder for officials who saw the document to claim that they didn't realize the identity of the CIA officer was a sensitive matter. Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, may also be looking at whether other crimes -- such as perjury, obstruction of justice or leaking classified information -- were committed.
On July 6, 2003, former diplomat Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times, disputing administration arguments that Iraq had sought to buy uranium ore from Africa to make nuclear weapons. The following day, President Bush and top cabinet officials left for Africa, and the memo was aboard Air Force One.
The paragraph in the memo discussing Ms. Wilson's involvement in her husband's trip is marked at the beginning with a letter designation in brackets to indicate the information shouldn't be shared, according to the person familiar with the memo. Such a designation would indicate to a reader that the information was sensitive. The memo, though, doesn't specifically describe Ms. Wilson as an undercover agent, the person familiar with the memo said.
Generally, the federal government has three levels of classified information -- top secret, secret and confidential -- all indicating various levels of "damage" to national security if disclosed. There also is an unclassified designation -- indicating information that wouldn't harm national security if shared with the public -- but that wasn't the case for the material on the Wilsons prepared by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. It isn't known what level of classification was assigned to the information in the memo.
Who received the memo, which was prepared for Marc Grossman, then the under secretary of state for political affairs, and how widely it was circulated are issues as Mr. Fitzgerald tries to pinpoint the origin of the leak of Ms. Wilson's identity. According to the person familiar with the document, it didn't include a distribution list. It isn't known if President Bush has seen the memo.
Mr. Fitzgerald has subpoenaed the phone logs from Air Force One for the week of the Africa tour, which precedes the revelation of Ms. Wilson's CIA identity in a column by Robert Novak on July 14. In that piece, Mr. Novak identified Valerie Plame, using Ms. Wilson's maiden name, saying that "two senior administration officials" had told him that Ms. Wilson suggested sending her husband to Niger.
Mr. Novak attempted to reach Ari Fleischer, then the White House press secretary, in the days before his column appeared. However, Mr. Fleischer didn't respond to Mr. Novak's inquiries, according to a person familiar with his account. Mr. Fleischer, who has since left the administration, is one of several officials who testified before the grand jury.
In an October 2003 article4 on the memo, The Wall Street Journal reported that it details a meeting in early 2002 in which CIA officials discussed how to verify reports that Iraq had sought uranium ore from Niger. Ms. Wilson, an agent working on issues related to weapons of mass destruction, recommended her husband, an expert on Africa, to travel to Niger to investigate the matter.
White House officials had been warning reporters off the notion that the trip to Niger was ordered by Vice President Dick Cheney, as Mr. Wilson had suggested. Emails and a first-person account published this week of his grand-jury testimony by Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper support this notion. The grand jury is set to expire in October in this case, though its tenure could be extended for six months.
It is possible that reporters learned Ms. Wilson's identity from government officials who hadn't seen the memo. Mr. Cooper has testified and written that he was first told of Mr. Wilson's wife by Mr. Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff. Mr. Rove didn't identify Ms. Wilson by name. Similarly, one of Mr. Cooper's other sources, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, said he had heard Mr. Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, but he didn't identify her any further, according to Mr. Cooper.
The fact that two top White House officials discussed a CIA agent with reporters has prompted a furor in Washington, with Democrats calling for the firing of Mr. Rove.
A new ABC News poll signaled how the matter has damaged the administration's credibility -- and the political peril Mr. Rove still faces. Just 25% of Americans say the White House is fully cooperating with the federal investigation into the leak of Ms. Wilson's identity, down from about half when the investigation began nearly two years ago. Moreover, 75% said Mr. Rove should lose his job if he leaked classified information. The poll of 1,008 adults, conducted July 13-17, has a margin of error of three percentage points.
Posted by Bad Ass at July 20, 2005 10:04 AMJoe Wilson just said, on Al Franken, that people are looking into Rove's contacts with members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to see if he may have instigated what Wilson called a "smear" perptrated by that Committee. I assume he means the "Additional Comments" submitted by Roberts, Bond and Hatch...
Posted by Oleary at July 20, 2005 10:07 AMGod, it really is shocking sometimes to think that the WSJ can have such good reporting and such LOUSY editorial/op-ed content.
Posted by Matt Davis at July 20, 2005 10:13 AM(7/20/05)TOON OF THE DAY:Fighting Poll Numbers
Posted by jjoats at July 20, 2005 10:35 AMFrom the WSJ article:
White House officials had been warning reporters off the notion that the trip to Niger was ordered by Vice President Dick Cheney, as Mr. Wilson had suggested.
Can anyone provide a link to exactly where Wilson supposedly said this. If I hear this one more time from the right, I'm going to scream. Is there actually a time when Wilson claimed Cheney sent him?? I heard Mehlman say that Wilson's op-ed made this claim--it clearly did not. I heard someone say he said it on CNN, but a transcript shows he clearly stated the Cheney didn't even know he went. Is this just really bad spin, or did he say this somewhere?
Posted by CG at July 20, 2005 02:00 PMCG:
Check out the previous post by eriposte that disputes this and many of the talkings points being used by the Republican Pundits. Here the link: TreasonGate
Posted by Bad Ass at July 20, 2005 03:12 PMAh, thanks. I had read that, but must have missed the part that said " WILSON: Well, I went in, actually in February of 2002 was my most recent trip there—at the request, I was told, of the office of the vice president, which had seen a report in intelligence channels about this purported memorandum of agreement on uranium sales from Niger to Iraq."
At least that comes close to what the right is saying. I wondered if there was a place he really really said the VP sent him. Since he did say his wife had no involvement in his trip, which I do consider pretty much a lie, I was wondering if he really did say that Cheney sent him. Not that that would excuse Rove mentioning Plame to warn Cooper off a story.
Posted by CG at July 20, 2005 04:15 PMi guess it's a crime to lie to the FBI, huh?
Posted by benjoya at July 20, 2005 06:07 PMdon't you sass me, benjoya. you know i'm a man of my word, a straight shooter, i like to call myself. i said i would fire anyone in my administration that commits a crime in a month with an "R" in it. I meant every word of that. Except "fire."
Posted by dubya at July 20, 2005 06:49 PMCG,
There's a major difference between saying;
I went in February of 2002 at the request of the VP.
And;
I went in February of 2002, I was told, at the request of the office of the VP.
The office of the VP is more than just Cheney. It's his entire staff. Wilson stated he did not think Cheney was probably aware of his trip. Wilson does not say that Cheney asked for him to go. What he said was that his understanding was that there were questions within the office of the VP. These questions were expressed to the CIA and the CIA arranged Wilsons trip. Joe Wilson never said Dick Cheney asked him to go.
As for Wilson's wifes involvement in "getting him the assignment" I haven't seem any evidence that that was the case. Do you know of some. His wife works for the CIA on WMD issues. If his name came up as a person to send on this trip is it unreasonable to think that she would not get involved in some introductions for her husband leading up to his going? Does that constitute her 'being involved in his getting the assignment"? Not in my book.
Dubya: "No, let me change that. I will fire anyone who is convicted of a crime and sent to prison."
Posted by Judith at July 20, 2005 07:25 PMI believe that the homework of finding exactly where Wilson allegedly said this was assigned on this thread.
Also, getting someone else to do your homework is cheating.
Posted by caroline at July 20, 2005 07:33 PMRe treasongate: Big story in WaPO
Posted by Ga6thDem at July 20, 2005 08:45 PMMuckcat, yeah, I think if his wife mentioned his name as a possible candidate for the trip, that means she was involved. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but I think that's involvement. Just like Rove was involved by mentioning Plame's identity to Cooper, whether it was a crime or not, whether he knew she was covert or not, etc. He was involved and said he wasn't. Wilson apparently said in his book I think (no time to find a link right now) that his wife had no involvement at all in his being sent to Niger. That's a stretch. Not trying to demonize Joe Wilson--I really don't care what he said because it has nothing to do with the leak. I'm just saying I was wondering if he ever did say Cheney sent him. Apparently the closest he came to that was the "I was told" comment, which is not close at all.
Posted by CG at July 21, 2005 05:59 AMyes, joe wilson was less than forthcoming
Posted by 100,000 dead iraqis at July 21, 2005 07:12 AMagreed.
Posted by 1700 dead US soldiers at July 21, 2005 07:25 AM