Now we’re getting somewhere. I’ve maintained all along that the key figuring out what really happened is figuring out why Libby (and Rove) told these particular lies. Of course, the whole NIE thing is muddled up because practically everybody in the Administration was under orders to tell Woodward everything for his book. I think that’s why the Woodward/NIE stuff is pretty irrelevant.

On a side note, Bush and Cheney could certainly turn over their statements to Libby themselves. I wonder if they have. If not, why not?

If you were their lawyers, would you let them be interviewed and not take your own notes? I certainly wouldn’t.

I totally missed the significance of Fitzgerald’s statement about Libby’s notes on the July 8 meeting. He’s as much as saying that Cheney ordered Libby to out Plame.

I can understand why Fitz doesn’t want to release it, but wouldn’t WE benifit from being able to see the transcrips of george and dick’s â€interviews†???

be a lot easier to nail the lying bastards to the wall if we had their words to throw in their faces

look how rummy reacted to having his lies thrown into his face

â€I never said thatâ€

EW, you wrote: We know, however, that Libby leaked the NIE materials to Woodward on June 27 (and possibly over the phone on July 23), which raises two possibilities: either that Libby leaked the still-classified document to Woodward or he leaked the NIE to Judy earlier, on June 23

Did you mean June 23 instead of July 23?

emptywheel,

On page 31 of the May 5 transcript, Fitzgerald says this (in answer to a quesiton about the relevance of the NIE declassification):

Only to the extent that if Mr. Libby had an instruction to tell information to Ms. Miller on July 8 and he’s saying the instruction reflected in his notes to tell me Judith Miller refers to the NIE. He says he did not discuss Mr. Wilson’s wife that day. To our understand both were discussed.

I think what this says is that Libby’s notes say that he was supposed to tell Judy Miller something on July 8. Libby’s testimony is that the something was the NIE. When the story of Libby’s testimony about the NIE leak came out, I thought the whole thing was bogus. The bit about leaking classified bits of the NIE being so unique was especially laughable since somebody (nicknamed Scooter, I’ll wager) had been leaking stuff from the NIE to Judy Miller for months (aluminum tubes, anyone?). I just couldn’t figure out why Libby spun that lie. Now, it all makes sense.

I think Libby basically told the truth, with one little exception. Everywhere he said â€leak the NIE†just replace that with â€out Valerie Plameâ€. Go re-read page 23 of Fitzgerald’s response to Libby’s motion to compel discovery (from 04/05/2006) and make that substitution and the whole thing makes a lot more sense.

lemond

Yes indeedee I did mean June. Thanks!

&y

I’d have to look. But I know it’s quite vague.

This NIE go-stop-go stuff doesn’t make any sense, even by Libby’s own testimony.

We know that Libby supposedly testified that it was supposedly very unusual that he would have received a directive to leak the NIE stuff. He says nothing like that ever happened before, and that he went to both the VP and Addington in order to make sure it was A-OK. He was told that Bush & Cheney could declassify and that it was okay. (This always struck me as disingenuous given that Libby was probably the same guy leaking the aluminum tubes stories to Judy miller months earlier. Why would Libby all of a sudden be running around to make sure everything is legal? Yet I assume Addington could support this version of events.)

But now, according to Fitz’s summary of another part of Libby’s GJ testimony, Libby admits that he may have disclosed the classified NIE without authorization (Fitz: â€He says maybe he disclosed it before he had the authority.â€). So what the heck is going on with this? Was it a memorable leak, or not?

If there is an after-the-fact cover-up consisting of more than Rove and Libby, Cheney would seem to be part of it. Cheney could vaguely tell investigators the same (false) declassification story as Libby as a smokescreen to explain all of the discreet meetings with Miller. Or something. I really don’t get this, but it seems suspicious.

Wells seems pretty concerned about the NIE stuff, like he wants Fitz to promise right now that he will not bring additional charges related to it, or promise not to bring it up at trial. Happily, Fitz refuses to promise anything, mostly because I think he’s worried that Wells will argue that Libby always follows the rules–which the NIE business shows is not the case.

And in terms of the July 2 date, I can’t tell if it came up during Libby’s GJ testimony (in which case, Libby and Wells know all about it), or if this is related to Woodward’s recent revelations. I tend to think Fitz knew all about it by the time of Libby’s testimony because how else could he get Libby to wonder whether he may have leaked the NIE without authorization?

Jim E. Can you clarify what you mean by your last sentence â€I tend to thinkâ€?

I kind of think there may be two things going on on July 2. A meeting at which Libby was instructed to leak (and it may have included a warning from, say, Tenet, that they shouldn’t leak Plame’s name, which is the other reference here). And then a meeting with either Judy or Novak or some other journalist. So while Libby may have admitted to the July 2 instruction, he didn’t admit to the July 2 meeting (with whomever). Wells is either stupid (and we know he’s not), surprised by the July 2 comment, or deliberately ignoring it.

One thing I’m not sure about is, did he really leak the NIE with permission, or is that ALL a cover story. Given the aluminum tubes (as Jim E points out), I tend to believe it’s a cover story, perhaps something they couldn’t deny, but something that was relatively harmless (not least because they went on to declassify it a few weeks later). But if they didn’t do this planned NIE leak, it suggests they may have finalized the smear Plame plan on July 2 (or maybe they had it planned in June, they were trying to back off of it on July 2, then after Wilson’s op-ed, they decided to go for broke.

Frankly, I don’t know WHAT to make of this yet. But I sense it’s pretty fundamental. And, yeah, Wells recognizes that. But then why is Wells playing dumb on the July 2 meeting? And why can’t Wells see that Fitz almost certainly has proof to counter whatever Libby will say about July 8? These guys are a lot smarter than they appeared at this hearing.

Rove informs the WH he will be indicted (!):

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051206Y.shtml

Maybe a little media foreshadowing before the big event?

just to clear something up, I think the aluminum tube story predates the NIE (it was around before the NIE was written)

free

It definitely was. If you believe Bob Graham, the declassified NIE was actually just talking points, the classified NIE came later. And the aluminum tubes is almost certainly a WHIG leak that probably occurred as they were finalizing those talkign points. But it is the same kind of leak, after all. Either that was usual (in which case the NIE is no big deal, which I think is the case). Or it was unusual, and the NIE story carries some weight.

I have to catch up with all the insights, and I haven’t looked a second time at the hearing transcript, but I found what I was thinking about, and I’d be willing to bet this is the July 2 conversation. It’s Sanger. From Libby’s 5-1-06 response to the motions to quash from the media folks, p. 23 (transcribing):

To date there are at least three New York Times reporters known to the defense who have relevant testimony: Ms. Miller, Nicholas Kristof . . ., and David Sanger (who interviewed Mr. Libby on July 2, 2003 concerning the 16-words controversy).

I have to do some checking on what Sanger published that might have tipped Fitzgerald off to Libby leaking the NIE to him, or if Libby might have volunteered it. But Sanger was all over the issue in July 2003 – it was Sanger who prompted Fleischer to go completely off the rails at the press gaggle on July 7 and simulltaneously provided a kind of amazing commentary on what was happening. And I observe that it was Sanger who cowrote with Miller the NYT story (on July 23, 2003) on the eventful Hadley-Bartlett news conference of July 22, and it’s that story that talks about the January 24, 2002 Walpole-to-Hadley memo that was almost certainly the third document (along with the NIE and the CIA report from Wilson’s trip) that Fitzgerald says was being pressed for declassification within the administration in July 2003. I don’t know whether Sanger was the person who asked Hadley and Bartlett about that document at the July 22 press conference, but someone did, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it were Sanger. There is little if any other mention of this document in the press reports, as best as I can tell, and I remain curious whether it was declassified along with the NIE and just got overshadowed, or whether Sanger (or Miller) got some kind of special access to it from within the administration. The bit of their story on it on July 23, in any case, is mighty White House-friendly.

â€â€™If an indictment is returned by the grand jury, it will be filed under seal.’ Why would Fitzgerald do that?â€

&Y:
Typically, an indictment will be sealed so that the coppers can arrest the bad guy before he flees, but that almost certainly wouldn’t be the reason here. The possibility I prefer is that the indictment would be sealed to protect an on-going investigation.

I’m still looking for June stories on the NIE that have unnamed White House sources.

All I’ve found is pretty weak stuff, mostly from July 8 and later. If Libby was leaking NIE stuff in late June and early July (as in July 2), it appears no one was writing about it. We already knew that was the case with Miller and Woodward, but I can’t find anything in my admittedly quick search that is turning up any senior administration official as sources on NIE matters.

Jim E. – This is not helpful in the search for NIE leaks in June, but it is interesting that Pincus’ July 8 piece for the WaPo, which reports the stunning July 7 White House admission of error, refers to a pretty clear NIE leak on the uranium stuff from a senior administration official on July 7:

A senior administration official said yesterday that a classified version of a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s weapons programs, completed last September, contains references to intelligence reports that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from three African countries, not just Niger. The other two countries are Namibia and Gabon, according to intelligence sources.

Namibia and Gabon? Hilarious. Anyway, I wonder whether this SAO and this event isn’t the other government official Libby allegedly caused to release the information, and I wonder who it was. I presume Cathie Martin doesn’t count as an SAO. I wonder if it could have been Fleischer, talking with Pincus after being caused to leak the NIE by Libby at their lunch that day.

Wow. A wealth of information where you don’t expect it: a new filing from Fitzgerald on what articles the government intends to introduce, and I was wrong about my guess about Libby causing anothing government official to leak the NIE.

Cheney annotated Wilson’s July 6 op-ed.

Also:

It was during a conversation concerning Mr. Pincus’ inquiries [for his June 12 article] that the Vice President advised the defendant that Mr. Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA.

Also an answer to Tom’s question about that notice to Libby and someone else about the damage from outing Plame:

The July 14 Chicago Sun Times column by Mr. Novak is relevant because on the day the article was published, a CIA official was asked in the defendant’s presence, by another person in the OVP, whether that CIA official had read that column. (The CIA official has not.) At some time thereafter, as discussed briefly at the March [sic: should be â€Mayâ€] 5 oral argument, the CIA official discussed in the defendant’s presence the dangers posed by disclosure of the CIA affiliation of one of its employees as had occurred in the Novak column. The evidence directly contradicts the defense position that the defendant had no motive to lie because at the time of his interview and testimony the defendant thought that neither he nor anyone else had done anything wrong. Moreover, the evidence rebuts the defense assertion that the defendant could have easily forgotten his conversations with reporters Cooper and Miller on July 12 if he learned of the potential consequences of such disclosure as a result of the publication of the Novak column on July 14.

And so on, including:

In addition, there will be evidence that the defendant discussed aspects of the Novak article at other relevant times after July 14 but prior to his FBI interview and grand jury testimony.

And this, in connection with iterated interaction with Cooper:

The defendant testified to the contrary – that he did not think that Ms. Plame played any role in sending Mr. Wilson on the trip prior to reading the Novak article. The defendant testified that he thought Mr. Wilson to be fully qualified for what he did. The defendant’s gran jury testimony indicates that he did not express any belief to Mr. Cooper on July 12 that Mr. Wilson was sent on the trip because of his wife and had not thought about that possibility until he read Novak’s July 14 column.

And so the significance of the alleged lie about the Cooper conversation becomes clearer.

Rather, the defendant claims that he told reporters that he was not sure Mr. Wilson even had a wife. Mr. Cooper, to the contrary, testified that the defendant had advised him on July 12 that the defendant had heard that Mr. Wilson’s wife was involved in sending Mr. Wilson on the trip to Niger. (This conflict in testimony heightens the relevance of the annotations on Exhibit A concerning whether Mr. Wilson’s wife had sent him on a â€junket.â€)

Oops, my guess tonight about who that other government official was that Libby caused to leak the NIE was wrong. Here we go:

In addition, the government’s evidence at trial (including the defendant’s grand jury transcript) will refer to a July 17, 2003, Waal Street Journal editorial entitled â€Yellowcake Remix,†which contained quotations from the 2002 National Intelligence Esstimate (â€NIEâ€). This editorial resulted from the defendant’s trasmittal, through another government official, of a copy of portions of the NIE to the Wall Street Journal shotrly before the editorial was published.

Libby and others in OVP also annotated multiple copies of an October 2003 New Yorker article by Hersh.

Jeff, do you have a link on that new filing from Fitzgerald, which apparently shows Cheney annotating Wilson’s Op Ed? That’s explosive stuff. Where can I read it?

Jeff

Sanger would have come up because information on conversations with him were subpoenaed in the second batch of subpoenas. Presumably, the investigators asked him about all the reporters on the list with whom he had had contact.

Jeff,

In response to your above excerpt of the Pincus article:

Yeah, I saw that. But I notice that the second sentence is attributed to intelligence sources, while the first one is attributed to a senior administration official (which does sound like Libby). The thing that struck me is that while Pincus lists Namibia and Gabon, I believe the Sanger article from the same day lists Somalia and Congo as the other two countries, which is weird.

Anyways, I’m going to peruse the new Fitz stuff.

EW,

Gabon used to be a uranium producer but stopped production in 1999. Namibia is a uranium producer.
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/005037.php

I hadn’t seen this claim before. Clearly, someone was making stuff up as they leaked to Pincus.