CIA Leak Widens to Probe 'Broader Conspiracy' around Iraq

[Vanni Fucci]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101205I.shtml

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: CIA Leak Widens to Probe 'Broader Conspiracy' around Ira

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101205I.shtml

this is far from over.... (might just be the unravelling.....

 

[no1important]

RE: CIA Leak Widens to Pr

......one can hope.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: CIA Leak Widens to Probe 'Broader Conspiracy' around Ira

Cheney May Be Entangled in CIA Leak Investigation, People Say
by Richard Keil

A special counsel is focusing on whether Vice President Dick Cheney played a role in leaking a covert CIA agent's name, according to people familiar with the probe that already threatens top White House aides Karl Rove and Lewis Libby.

The special counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, has questioned current and former officials of President George W. Bush's administration about whether Cheney was involved in an effort to discredit the agent's husband, Iraq war critic and former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson, according to the people.

Fitzgerald has questioned Cheney's communications adviser Catherine Martin and former spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise and ex-White House aide Jim Wilkinson about the vice president's knowledge of the anti-Wilson campaign and his dealings on it with Libby, his chief of staff, the people said. The information came from multiple sources, who requested anonymity because of the secrecy and political sensitivity of the investigation.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who has now testified twice before a federal grand jury probing the case after spending 85 days in jail for refusing to cooperate with Fitzgerald, wrote in yesterday's New York Times that Fitzgerald asked her whether the vice president ``had known what his chief aide,'' Libby, ``was doing and saying'' regarding Wilson, a critic of the war in Iraq.

Fitzgerald has told lawyers involved in the case that he hopes to conclude soon -- the grand jury's term expires Oct. 28, although it could be extended -- and there is a growing sense among knowledgeable observers that the outcome will involve serious criminal charges. ``Fitzgerald is putting together a big case,'' Washington attorney Robert Bennett, who represents Miller, said on the ABC-TV program ``This Week'' yesterday.

Possible Charges

The charges could range from a broad conspiracy case to more narrowly drawn indictments for obstruction of justice or perjury, according to lawyers involved in the case. Charges are considered less likely on the law that initially triggered Fitzgerald's probe, which makes it illegal to deliberately unmask an undercover intelligence agent, because of the difficulty in meeting that statute's exacting standards for prosecution.

Lea Anne McBride, a Cheney spokesman, declined to comment yesterday on whether the vice president, 64, has been contacted by Fitzgerald about his status in the case, except to say: ``This is an ongoing investigation, and we are fully cooperating.'' Randall Samborn, a Fitzgerald spokesman, declined to comment. Calls to Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, and Joseph Tate, Libby's lawyer, weren't returned.

There's no indication Fitzgerald is considering criminal charges against the vice president, who gave unsworn testimony to investigators last year. One option for Fitzgerald is to outline his findings about Cheney's role if he files a final report on the investigation.

Questioned Officials

Fitzgerald, 45, has also questioned administration officials about any knowledge Bush may have had of the campaign against Wilson. Yet most administration observers have noted that on Iraq, as with most matters, it's Cheney who has played the more hands-on role.

One lawyer intimately involved in the case, who like the others demanded anonymity, said one reason Fitzgerald was willing to send Miller to jail to compel testimony was because he was pursuing evidence the vice president may have been aware of the specifics of the anti-Wilson strategy.

And both U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan and an appellate-court panel -- including David Tatel, a First Amendment advocate -- said they ruled in Fitzgerald's favor because of the gravity of the case.

Pace of Probe

Katy Harriger, a political scientist at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who has written extensively about special-counsel investigations, said the pace and trajectory of Fitzgerald's probe suggests it will end with the indictment of Rove, Libby or both.

Harriger said she anticipates indictments in part because of the special prosecutor's willingness to jail Miller. ``That's not something you do unless you really have something more going on that isn't obvious to the public,'' she said.

Larry Barcella, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said the recent activity in the case suggests criminal charges are likely, although not in connection with the 1982 law making it illegal to disclose a covert agent's identity.

A more likely focus is possible ``false statements, conspiracy or obstruction of justice,'' said Barcella, now a defense lawyer for the Washington-based law firm of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker. ``It's obviously not good that Rove and Libby have spent so much time before the grand jury.''

An Active Participant

To make a case against Cheney as part of a conspiracy indictment, Fitzgerald would have to show the vice president was an active participant in a decision to smear Wilson, Barcella said. ``It's a case most easily made if you can prove a person knowingly entered into an agreement to do something illegal,'' he said. ``Beyond that, it can be tricky.''

Fitzgerald's status differs in one potentially important respect from the independent counsels who investigated alleged wrongdoing during earlier administrations. They reported to a panel of appellate judges, while Fitzgerald reports to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who at least theoretically must approve any indictment.

Given the prospect of both protracted criminal cases and then civil lawsuits, it now seems possible the issue will bedevil the final years of Bush's presidency, much as the Iran- contra affair burdened President Ronald Reagan's second term and the Monica Lewinsky scandal plagued President Bill Clinton's.

No Leaks

While there have been virtually no leaks out of Fitzgerald's office, and even the subjects of his investigation are unsure about his intentions, White House officials and Bush supporters are fearful that recent developments spell legal jeopardy for Rove, the central strategist behind Bush's political campaigns and much of his presidency, and Libby, a key architect of the Iraq war strategy.

When the investigation began, White House officials asserted that neither Rove nor Libby played any role in the outing of Plame, and both aides told Fitzgerald that they learned of her identity from journalists.

In her Times account, Miller said she told Fitzgerald and the grand jury that Libby, 55, raised the subject of Wilson's wife during a meeting with Miller on June 23, 2003. That was before Wilson, 55, went public in a Times op-ed piece with his accusation that Bush and his aides had ``twisted'' intelligence findings to justify invading Iraq, although administration officials knew he was privately critical.

Contracted Account

While Miller didn't say Libby had identified Plame as a covert agent, her account calls into question Libby's assertion that he first learned of Plame's identity from reporters.

Miller, 57, said she went to jail rather than testify because, unlike other reporters, she didn't feel Libby had given her specific and voluntary permission to speak about their confidential conversations. She relented when Libby contacted her by telephone and letter last month, saying he had always expected her to testify.

Those communications with Miller may pose legal problems for Libby. His letter to her stated that ``the public report of every other reporter's testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame's name or identity with me.''

Miller wrote in her Times article that Fitzgerald asked her to read that portion of the letter aloud to the grand jurors and asked for her reaction to Libby's words. She said that part of the letter had ``surprised me because it might be perceived as an effort by Mr. Libby to suggest that I, too, would say we had not discussed Ms. Plame's identity. Yet my notes suggested that we had discussed her job.''

`Stupid Thing to Do'

Bennett, Miller's attorney, yesterday called that part of Libby's letter ``a very stupid thing to do.'' Other lawyers suggested it could become part of any obstruction-of-justice charge Fitzgerald might bring.

Rove's testimony also has been contradicted by others, such as Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper. He said his July 2003 conversation with the White House aide focused more on Wilson and his wife than Rove had testified, while adding Rove had not identified her by name. There is also at least one discrepancy between Rove's version and that of columnist Robert Novak, who first identified Plame as a Central Intelligence Agency operative in July 2003, according to persons familiar with their accounts.

Rove, 54, returned to the grand jury for a fourth time on Oct. 14 and testified for more than four hours. His lawyer, Luskin, who has spoken frequently with reporters, has gone from public optimism that his client faces little legal danger to cautiously noting only that Fitzgerald hasn't told them Rove is a ``target.''

Wilson's Assignment

Wilson was dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports, since discredited, that Saddam Hussein's regime was trying to buy uranium in Niger as part of a nuclear- weapons program. After Bush cited similar reports in his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union speech and the U.S. invaded Iraq in March of that year, Wilson began telling some journalists anonymously that the claim was questionable.

That prompted behind-the-scenes administration attempts to discredit Wilson. In his June 2003 meeting with Miller, Libby told her, in the context of a conversation critical of the CIA, that Wilson's wife worked for the spy agency, according to an account published in the Times yesterday.

Wilson went public with his criticism on July 6, 2003. In his Times piece, he concluded: ``Some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.''

Talked with Reporters

Over the next week, Libby and Rove talked to reporters, on the condition they not be identified, about Wilson's article and the fact that his CIA-employed wife may have had a role in giving him the Niger assignment.

Plame's identity was first published by Novak on July 14. He cited ``two senior administration officials'' as the sources of the information that Plame, 42, suggested Wilson for the Niger trip. Novak hasn't commented publicly on those sources.

Miller never wrote a story about Wilson or his wife -- although in one of her notebooks, dated July 8, 2003, a notation appears for ``Valerie Flame.''

One of the subplots is the role played by the New York Times. In addition to Miller's personal account, the Times yesterday published a separate 5,800-word piece that criticized both Miller and the way the newspaper handled the story.

Never Saw Notes

The article reported the paper's publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and its executive editor, Bill Keller, unequivocally supported their reporter in her legal battle although ``they knew few details about Ms. Miller's conversations with her confidential source,'' and ``did not review'' her notes.

Miller, who wrote many influential pre-war war stories about Hussein's purported weapons of mass destruction that the Times later acknowledged were flawed, told the grand jury she recommended in 2003 that the newspaper pursue the Plame story. Jill Abramson, the newspaper's managing editor, said Miller never made any such recommendation.

In an interview yesterday, Wilson said that once the criminal questions are settled, he and his wife may file a civil lawsuit against Bush, Cheney and others seeking damages for the alleged harm done to Plame's career.

If they do so, the current state of the law makes it likely that the suit will be allowed to proceed -- and Bush and Cheney will face questioning under oath -- while they are in office. The reason for that is a unanimous 1997 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that Paula Jones' sexual harassment suit against then-President Bill Clinton could go forward immediately, a decision that was hailed by conservatives at the time.

could get interesting....

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: CIA Leak Widens to Probe 'Broader Conspiracy' around Ira

October 19, 2005
No Final Report Seen in Inquiry on C.I.A. Leak
By DAVID JOHNSTON
and RICHARD W. STEVENSON

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 - The special counsel in the C.I.A. leak case has told associates he has no plans to issue a final report about the results of the investigation, heightening the expectation that he intends to bring indictments, lawyers in the case and law enforcement officials said yesterday.

The prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, is not expected to take any action in the case this week, government officials said. A spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald, Randall Samborn, declined to comment.

A final report had long been considered an option for Mr. Fitzgerald if he decided not to accuse anyone of wrongdoing, although Justice Department officials have been dubious about his legal authority to issue such a report.

By signaling that he had no plans to issue the grand jury's findings in such detail, Mr. Fitzgerald appeared to narrow his options either to indictments or closing his investigation with no public disclosure of his findings, a choice that would set off a political firestorm.

With the term of the grand jury expiring Oct. 28, lawyers in the case said they assumed Mr. Fitzgerald was in the final stages of his inquiry.

The focus of Mr. Fitzgerald's inquiry has remained fixed on two senior White House aides, Karl Rove, who is President Bush's senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., who is Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Both had conversations with reporters about a C.I.A. officer whose name was later publicly disclosed.

It is not clear whether Mr. Fitzgerald has learned who first identified the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, to the syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak in July 2003.

Some of the lawyers in the case say Mr. Fitzgerald seems to be wrestling with decisions about how to proceed, leaning toward indictments but continuing to weigh thousands of pages of documents and testimony he has compiled during the nearly two-year inquiry.

In recent days, Mr. Fitzgerald has repeatedly told lawyers in the case that he has not made up his mind about criminal charges.

Mr. Fitzgerald has been investigating whether administration officials deliberately disclosed Ms. Wilson's identity - she is also known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame - in response to criticism by her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, of the administration's use of intelligence about Iraq's weapons programs before the invasion.

Some lawyers in the case had expressed hope that a final report would provide Mr. Fitzgerald with a vehicle to disclose his investigative findings even if he absolved everyone of wrongdoing. Democrats in Congress had also expressed a desire for such a report, apparently hoping it would offer fresh details about the administration's actions.

Any decision will be announced in Washington and not in Chicago, where Mr. Fitzgerald is the United States attorney, Justice Department officials said.

In his daily news briefing, Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday that a successful completion to the inquiry would be one in which Mr. Fitzgerald would "determine the facts and then outline those facts for the American people."

Asked if that meant the White House would favor a public report if there were no indictments, Mr. McClellan said that the decision was Mr. Fitzgerald's, but that "we would all like to know what the facts are."

Such a report could not only show where evidence failed to result in criminal charges, but also make recommendations for changes in law, disciplinary actions or criticize the conduct of public officials whose actions did not rise to the level of criminal behavior.

Given the political ramifications attached to Mr. Fitzgerald's decisions, officials at the White House have begun discussing what would happen if Mr. Rove was indicted.

Among the names being discussed to take some of Mr. Rove's responsibilities should he have to step aside, an outside adviser to the White House said, are Dan Bartlett, currently Mr. Bush's counselor; Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee; and Robert M. Kimmitt, the deputy Treasury secretary.

Under Justice Department regulations, it is not clear whether Mr. Fitzgerald has the authority to issue a final report, even if he wanted to, although he has operated under a broad delegation of authority, issued in a pair of letters by James B. Comey, the former deputy attorney general. Those directives gave Mr. Fitzgerald virtually the same power as the attorney general to conduct criminal inquiries.

But even the attorney general is restricted in what information he can release publicly or present to Congress when it has been obtained, as Mr. Fitzgerald has gathered it, through extensive use of a grand jury, whose proceedings are secret. Even so, some lawyers have argued that Mr. Fitzgerald could issue such a report and have said there is general authority to report his findings if they are requested by Congress.

Without a report, it seems likely that questions about the case may remain unanswered and that a complete account of the administration's activities may never be known, including the details of testimony by the scores of administration officials who were interviewed in the inquiry.

The likelihood that crucial details might be kept secret would be increased if Mr. Fitzgerald brought charges that were narrowly focused on perjury, false statement or obstruction of justice counts involving misstatements by officials in their testimony. But he has also examined broader potential violations, among them whether there was an illegal effort, directed by senior officials, to disclose Ms. Wilson's identity.

Officials who testified or were questioned by investigators also included John Hannah, Mr. Cheney's principal deputy national security adviser.

could get VERY "interesting.".

 

[jimmoyer]

RE: CIA Leak Widens to Probe 'Broader Conspiracy' around Ira

Her Life in the CIA
Former Agent Tells of the Allure to Become A Spy and the Subsequent Disillusionment

By Jessica Sabbath
The Winchester Star


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CIA agents can’t infiltrate terrorist networks by using the Cold War tactic of circulating diplomatic cocktail parties to find foreign spies, a former CIA case officer said Wednesday afternoon.

Lindsay Moran, who worked as a CIA agent from 1998 to 2003, said CIA agents must receive longer training, understand cultures better, and learn languages long ignored by the CIA to be successful.

“[Osama] bin Laden and his cohorts aren’t circulating at those parties” Moran said at an International Topics Forum sponsored by Shenandoah University’s John O. Marsh Institute.

Moran documented her life as a CIA spy and criticized the intelligence agency in her book, “Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy.”

CIA case officers are still taught primarily to try to find foreign spies in a Cold War-era way, Moran said, posing as an American diplomat while they “work” the recruit.

It is more dangerous for CIA agents to use a cover other than a diplomat, but the increased risk is more likely to produce better results, Moran said.

She said she resigned when she became disillusioned with the CIA’s tangled bureaucracy and the way it handled pressure to find intelligence leading up to the War in Iraq, Moran said.

Moran turned a childhood dream into reality when she was hired as a CIA case officer. As a child, she adored Harriet the Spy novels.

“I would spy on my neighbors,” Moran said. “I would spy on my parents. I was always very adept at lying, as my parents can attest to. I thought espionage was the perfect career for me.”

Moran graduated from Harvard College in 1991 and received a master’s in fine arts degree at Columbia University in 1994.

She lived in San Francisco when she applied to be a CIA case officer.

After an informational interview, Moran received a call from “Dave,” an agent who gave her specific instructions to meet at a hotel for an interview.

Following instructions, she took the stairs rather than the elevator and knocked twice when meeting an agent covering as Dave.

Dave turned up the volume on the television, he explained, so hotel visitors couldn’t hear their conversation through the walls.

“It was very disconcerting, having this interview for my dream job with Teletubbies blaring in the background,” said Moran.

She said she soon discovered her vision of the CIA was much more romantic and exciting than the reality.

The man conducting her background check was so inept, he actually knocked on her door and asked if she knew “Lindsay Moran.”

“I was starting to have some hints that this organization that I had always thought of as mythical and omnipresent wasn’t so perfect,” Moran said.

The closest Moran came to the Hollywood portrayal of CIA case officers was her training on the CIA’s “Farm,” where she trained to become a case officer.

Bur during her training, Moran realized she wouldn’t be scaling walls like Catwoman or putting herself in danger.

Instead, the case officers looked for potential foreign spies that would put themselves in danger.

“I quickly learned I was naive about what a case officer does,” Moran said. “The job of a CIA case officer is not really to steal secrets. The job of the case officer is to recruit foreign spies to steal secrets.”

They were trained to look for recruits who had vulnerabilities they could use to encourage them to work for the CIA.

Spotting, working, and recruiting a spy could take months or years, Moran said.

She was sent on her first assignment to Macedonia, a country once part of Yugoslavia.

Moran was in Macedonia during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The CIA’s lack of foresight on the attacks increased Moran’s disillusionment with the CIA.

“Everybody at the agency, from [former CIA director] George Tenet on down learned about the September 11 attacks from CNN,” Moran said. “Then, nothing really changed at the agency, no heads rolled.”

Moran said her relationship really began to strain when she was told by CIA headquarters to cut all ties with a potential spy she’d been recruiting in Macedonia, because he had ties to Islamic extremists.

“This was precisely the type of person I felt the CIA should be recruiting to fight the War on Terror,” Moran said.

She returned to the United States and learned Russian before she was transferred to work on intelligence leading up to the War in Iraq.

She was ultimately pushed to resign when she heard a mid-level manager tell employees the president had already decided he wanted to go to war with Iraq and the CIA’s job was to find evidence to support the decision.

Although Moran described the CIA as “conservative and hawkish,” she said most of the agents didn’t believe intelligence showed the necessity of the war.

“There was nobody there really gunning for this war,” Moran said.

She said she decided to write her book because she wanted to expose inadequacies and financial waste in the agency to American taxpayers. The United States spends an estimated $40 billion on intelligence a year, Moran said.

She had to get permission from the CIA to write her book because of a secrecy agreement she’d signed.

The board asked Moran to remove a few sections, but did not edit any of her criticisms of the agency.

“The agency was very professional in weighing highly classified information and my First Amendment right to freedom of speech,” Moran said.

Despite her criticisms, Moran said she would still encourage students to pursue jobs at the CIA.

“It is an exciting way to serve your country,” Moran said. “And if the agency is ever going to change it’s going to need young and bright people.”

 

[Jo Canadian]

Re: CIA Leak Widens to Probe 'Broader Conspiracy' around Ira