hey jodi, did you understand that one ???

Karl Rove testified that he had a conversation with Libby about the upcoming publication of an article about Valerie Plame.

since you insist that you are too stupid to understand all of this evidence, I’ll spell it out for you

scooter claims that he â€learned again, as if it were new information†that Valerie Plame was a NOC Agent by reading novakula’s column

and KKKarl rove testified that kkkarl TOLD SCOOTER about the upcoming novakula article BEFORE it was published

still think this evidence is so fucking complicated ???

kkkarl told scooter about the content of the article before it was published, and scooter claims he totally forgot his conversation with kkkarl, and learned something new by reading novakula’s article

and kkkarl’s conversation with scooter was one of SEVEN FUCKING CONVERSATIONS about Valerie Plame that scooter participated in BEFORE the novacula conversation was published

still believe the evidence is â€TOO CONFUSING†for a jury to understand ???

unless we can find 12 people with congnative dissonance as strong as you practice, there ain’t gonna be any doubt that scooter is guilty

so, are you still confused ???

Bingo, EW. The great irony in all of this is, who has succeeded more than anyone else in the GWOT? Patrick Fitzgerald. He got the blind sheikh and a few others behind bars, fair and square. If he, rather than Cheney’s office, had been in charge of the Padilla case, I like to believe that Padilla would have received better treatment by the Feds. There’s another interesting parallel in these two cases: Mark Corallo was the spokesperson for Ashcroft when Padilla was first apprehended and Corallo’s the spokesperson for Rove. Oh what a tangled web. . .

lemond54: If [Pat Fitzgerald], rather than Cheney’s office, had been in charge of the Padilla case, I like to believe that Padilla would have received better treatment by the feds.

Right, because the evidence doesn’t support a case against Padilla. Fitz is smart enough not to charge when he knows ahead of time that he can’t convict. So, if you agree that â€no charges filed, suspect released†= â€better treatment,†I think you’re absolutely right.

See, this is the problem with testimony obtained via torture- the victim has a huge incentive to just make shit up, in order to get the torture to stop.

12 days…

’According to a witness’???????????

’would be writing a story about Wilson’s wife.’

It’s not Scooter, Roves or the VPs job to run around saying you can’t write about a wife. Official A informed Rove and libby that they were obligated to tell CNN they could not write the story?

Plame sponsored the trip as a CIA operations officer and she is Wilson’s wife, so, as a wife, did she make a mistake in planning the trip or as a CIA employee paying CIA contractor money to a husband?

Maybe Official A did not explain she was going on the news as a CIA operations officer, paramilitarily trained. Plame is just Wilson’s wife.

scooter libby was hired by dead eye dick because scooter libby had a mind like a steel trap. scooter is supposed to be one of the smartest people in washington, and is supposedly able to remember the details of several complicated issues and have command of the facts of several complicated isses at his fingertips

and then, all of the sudden, scooter forgets the details of SEVEN CONVERSATIONS, not to mention the NOTES scooter took about some of those conversations, at a very convienient time, while scooter is providing information to FBI agents and a Grand Jury ???

don’t sound very likely to me

and i’ll bet a Washington DC Jury don’t buy scooter’s feigned ignorance either

scooter libby’s resume says scooter is a liar

the FBI says scooter is a liar

the Grand Jury says scooter is a liar

there isn’t a single objective source on the planet that says that it is likely that scooter forgot all of the conversations he had about Valerie Plame

scooter’s own â€Memory Expert†was laughed out of court

and some of you fools still think it is believable that scooter libby learned about Valerie Plame’s identity from a reporter who had NO IDEA that Valerie Plame was a NOC agent ???

face it, scooter libby’s claims are not believable on any level

the FBI didn’t believe scooter

the Grand Jury didn’t believe scooter

Patrick Fitzgerald didn’t believe scooter libby

and Judge Walton didn’t believe scooter libby

how many people have to tell you that scooter libby is a liar before you begin to believe that scooter is a liar ???

will the informed judgement of 12 good and honest jurors convice you ???

or will you continue to come here and claim that everybody else is wrong, in the face of all evidence ???

there is a clinical term for that condition

cognative dissonance

you could look it up

the war is over, you can get new parts for your head now

Thanks for the kind words, katie. I’m glad to know that such long comments remain comprehensible. [And as to your question: ’could be’…]

The bizarre Ashcroft in Russia presser on Padilla also figures in here, as far as I can tell.

Mainstream pundit types were tripping over themselves to talk about how unimportant perjury (along with the Plame leak generally) was, while there was potentially significant harm done to extremely valuable undercover American personnel abroad. Meanwhile, the Attorney General of the United States holds a press conference in a foreign country to announce that a somewhat misguided young man was arrested for not much of anything a month before.

Our entire justice system operates much the same way, in that young white cocaine addicts, for example, are sent to treatment so that they can clean their lives up from these small missteps, compared to young black men who buy small amounts of marijuana, who get sent to prison. With the stakes so high for the entire country in the Plame case, one would think that we would get over this tendency to excuse what wealthy white people do, but apparently not.

Walter

My guess is Ari. Could be Martin or Hadley–not many other people.

Hmm. Immunity. Probably not Hadley; probably somebody lower on the totem pole who knew they were at risk for prosecution, who could expose others up stream. But Ari or Martin? still seems weird to me that Ari bailed out when he did, as he did. I’d vote for Ari.

What’s that do to the theory Ari is the 1 and/or the 2 in 1×2×6?

pow wow

I made the point on my AP WSJ discussion that if they were interested in learning why the investigation continued past Armitage, they would have asked for Novak’s subpoena to testify. Why, after he supposedly testified truthfully in October 2003 and twice in January 2004, did Fitz need Novak to go before the grand jury? Why not just accept a deposition, as he had with Russert and several other journalists?

I had a second session with Fitzgerald at Swidler Berlin on Feb. 5, 2004, after which I was subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury. I testified there at the U.S. courthouse in Washington on Feb. 25.

I would submit that that rationale for subpoena would tell AP and WSJ everything they need to know–about why the Novak leak, at least, continued.

Thanks Mary at 18:00.

OT, wrt Scooter’s Wingnut Welfare, it’s the Hudson Institute, Hudson Scholars.
Judge â€strict constructionist†Bork also picks up his welfare check there. When the executive branch wants to shred the Constitution, it’s ok with Bork. Anyone else, they’re a wimp trying to legislate from the bench.

EW 9:36 — nuts, I should have checked the date on Ari’s resignation, had it in my head it was late June and not May.

(But he was there for the Gannon/Guckert debacle!)

Novak did call Fleischer, though; we just don’t know if Fleischer spoke with Novak, right? Open to correction, as I have often been wrong and not particularly encyclopedic in my Plamemania.

Walter – I don’t have any particular insight to add about the 1/3 Libby jury instruction response’s statement that â€â€¦the Jencks material shows that at least one immunized witness will likely testify.†It does seems clear that the reference is to a prosecution witness, as Jeff and cboldt point out in the JOM thread you reference. I’ll guess that someone invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, and was subsequently offered ’use immunity’ once it was determined that the person was a peripheral player at most. In that regard, the hints about Fleischer and email(s)/contact(s) with reporter(s) after his 7/7 lunch with Libby would seem to align, wouldn’t they?

Title 18 U.S.C. § 6002 provides use immunity instead of transactional immunity. The difference between transactional and use immunity is that transactional immunity protects the witness from prosecution for the offense or offenses involved, whereas use immunity only protects the witness against the government’s use of his or her immunized testimony in a prosecution of the witness — except in a subsequent prosecution for perjury or giving a false statement. – From the 1997 Criminal Resource Manual 717

EW – The unique thing about Judge Tatel’s Opinion and the two Special Counsel affidavits prepared for the District and Circuit Courts, is that they elaborate on and provide a justification for the grand jury subpoenas to Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper. That happened because those two testimony subpoenas were challenged and contested (beyond preliminary resistance), unlike the others issued in the investigation. A privilege that other witnesses didn’t receive in this investigation, but that Miller and Cooper received because of their subpoena resistance, was these lengthy justifications from the Special Counsel for calling them to testify in front of a grand jury. Unscrupulous reporters would love to be considered ’special citizens’ in that way, and to not need to appear as other citizens do in response to grand jury testimony subpoenas, but so far they have no such rights in federal proceedings. [Although the DOJ guidelines do direct that reporters be treated with kid gloves by government prosecutors, and only called as a last resort. That directive, however, is not legally binding.]

To fully make his case for the testimony of Miller and Cooper, Fitzgerald took the extra step of providing these lengthy justifications, via his sealed affidavits, to give the Court(s) every chance to understand the ’context and perspective’ of the grand jury investigation, before the Court(s) ruled on the Miller and Cooper subpoena challenges. Fitzgerald made a point of stating that he did not consider such justifications to be a requirement that the prosecution must comply with before obtaining grand jury testimony from reporters, because of course that would create two tiers of citizenship, in effect, if such a course of action was mandated (although that seems to be one aim of a federal reporter â€shield†law in some formulations). Nevertheless, he did in fact prepare lengthy confidential affidavits for the information of the Court with regard to those two proposed witnesses.

Now, after this extra scrutiny of their testimony subpoenas that Miller and Cooper were privileged to receive from three Courts, as informed by the Special Counsel’s affidavits, the media (AP and Dow Jones) are attempting to take advantage of that special treatment, by forcing the grand jury secrets contained in those affidavits (and repeated in Tatel’s Opinion) out into the open.

Whereas the information contained in the subpoena to Robert Novak would almost certainly be just the standard cut-and-dried request for testimony and documents, without any of the extra accompanying justifications, including citations of grand jury testimony, that were provided (under seal) in the cases of Miller and Cooper. It’s the ’forthcoming’ (to the Court) actions of the Special Counsel which the AP and Dow Jones are trying to capitalize on. Without that extra information from the Special Counsel to target, their fishing expedition would have to resort to – gasp – all their many (unused) resources for investigative journalism and Libby trial coverage.

EW – I’m separating the process Fitzgerald would have followed in accordance with DOJ guidelines to obtain testimony from reporters, from the sealed affidavits he submitted to Court in support of the subpoenas. If you read the descriptions Fitzgerald includes in various filings attesting that he has met (or exceeded) DOJ guidelines for requesting the testimony of reporters, they’re straightforward and undetailed with regard to specific grand jury testimony. Yes, he would also have had to do that with regard to Novak’s subpoena obviously, but I don’t think that that process for either Novak, Cooper, or Miller (or any other reporter) would come remotely close to revealing the sort of information that is contained in the two affidavits at issue in the AP/Dow Jones Motion to Unseal. But if you’re right, and more background is included as part of the DOJ process, that remains an internal DOJ record, I would think, perhaps accessible via a FOIA request, but not by a motion in Court.

Yes, I believe there’s an affidavit relating primarily to Cooper, which appears to be very much entangled with information relating to Rove’s testimony. Thus, Fitzgerald was unable to release more of that affidavit a year ago, when Dow Jones filed their first motion to unseal right after the Libby indictment. [I excerpted in the AP/Dow Jones thread a quote referencing that grand jury secrecy ’entanglement’ issue with regard to that affidavit.] However, I haven’t gone back and ascertained exactly when each affidavit was first submitted and why, so there may be nuances I’m missing about these affidavits (and there may be more than two, as well).

A grand jury subpoena should cover both deposition and grand jury testimony. Both Pincus and Russert, for example, received subpoenas which they initially resisted, but ended up testifying by way of depositions rather than in front of the grand jury, as I recall. Same with Cooper with regard to his initial Libby testimony. With the DOJ guidelines requiring extra hurdles before any testimony from reporters can be requested, I’d think most of the requests for testimony from reporters were quite formally issued, except where (as with Woodward?) sources cleared the way and reporters weren’t resisting giving testimony as a result.

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