What exactly was â€unsatisfactory†to Cheney? Perhaps it was the fact that the statement, wherein Tenet takes total responsibility on himself and the CIA for the 16 words â€slipping in†the SOTU, doesn’t â€make some heads roll†for the â€slip up.†What Cheney was demanding, I’ll hypothesize, is that those in the CIA who were responsible for the pushback were allowed to get their message out to the public in such a way that the president – and worse yet – Cheney himself were â€in the neckgrinder†now.

This hypothesis fits with a corresponding hypothesis that links past efforts by people in the CIA to pushback against Cheney manipulations to the results that occurred over the following days in July 2003. Cheney knew about Valerie Plame and her work well before may or June or July 2003. Let’s look at the possible opportunities for her to attract the â€Eye of Sauronâ€: Curveball; October Bush speech in Cincinnati; SOTU back and forth over yellowcake and aluminum tubes. Then, on March 8, Wilson starts pushing back in public. He was vetted by OVP. He’s not only a long-haired big mouth with a penchant for grandstanding, he’s also – Oh My God! – the husband of that hot blonde and the agc who has been one of the biggest pains for years. Bingo! Crisis, meet opportunity.

By this hypothesis, Cheney and the gang knew about â€Valerie Plame†for quite a while by May or June or July 2003. But it was in the late Winter or Spring of 2003 that they put her together with Joe Wilson. When Ari hit the panic button on July 8, Cheney and Scooter, with assists from Rove and Hadley, turned the tap on the leak. The story was already out there among some, such as Armitage and Woodward and Novak and Miller. In July, post the Wilson op ed, that fact was seized on to create the obvious cover story – the journalists told Scooter, and Scooter just said â€I heard that tooâ€! Meanwhile Cheney was pulling the lever connected to the leaky tap, and the so-called President was given enough info to implicate him and bring him on board with the caper without compromising public denialbility.

Marcy
How you can sustain this level of detail, is beyond me.

This is some serious piece of analysis

Help me understand this — why did they care whether the President had told a lie in the SOTU? Any normal human with a lively curiousity and access to the internet knew by early 2002 (1) that the President and the Administration were lying across the board about Iraq as a threat. That was not news — Wilson simply supplied a new piece.

Was it all just various power centers within our ruling factions not wanting to be on the hook as the source of a particular falsehood? That is, was it an insider fight?

It didn’t really matter much to the rest of us, US and Iraqi, which little part of the whole lying apparatus furnished which falsehood — the results were quite clear. And while I know there are people of professional integrity involved in developing these government estimates, at the level this went on at, truth was simply never one of the criteria used to determine what was a â€fact.â€

HMRoberts

I know someone who bought the book from an NYC B&N yesterday, so it will hopefully be in NH shortly.

The timing has more to do with delays in the printing than anything else–but that’s life with books. It’s hard to time these things perfectly.

EW:

I agree – not exactly. Also if you compare para 3 in the draft to para 2 in the final (excluding the 1 sentence [para) – you’ll see how the OVP’s talking points got more fully inserted.

I would suggest to you that Martin’s note goes to the heart of knowledge and intent.

While one could (and I would) argue that just because someone works in Counterproliferation (which is in DO) that does not axiomatically mean one was classified or covert (though likely most were). However, when you couple counterproliferation, DO, â€joint task force,†â€mounting espionage operations†there starts to become a preponderance of evidence that knowledge of said JTFI (at that moment in time) would have resulted in knowledge of said JTFI senior manager, and duties and responsibilities thereto.

MT, thank you for taking on this important job. I learn something new everyday. Today I am leaning toward the theory that someone in Winpac sabotaged the work done by the rest of the CIA. This is based on Eriposte’s detailed and wonderful analysis of the evidence coming out of the trial.

(1)He makes it clear that certain redactions to testimony presented to the Senate Security Committee were made, not for security reasons, but to support the WH position that Iraq had indeed sought to buy yellowcake. GOP Senator Pat Roberts was the one who made those those strategic redactions. An example: The British informed the CIA of the Niger claim. REDACTED: The CIA expressed doubts about the reliability of that information.

(2)Eriposte’s analyses also seem to prove that the CIA HAD REPEATEDLY found the Iraq Niger story presented by the Italians not to be creditable. The only way it could have gotten into WH statement would be if it was inserted/suggested by a rogue CIA member of WINPAC.

(3)There is also an interesting note of an unprecedented meeting between the Italian Secret Service and Bush. The sequence then, seems to go like this: the Italians had tried to get the CIA to accept their story of the attempted yellowcake buy, the CIA kept refusing to do so. Someone in Winpac told the pres to go with the 16 words, and had the Italians meet with him to assure him the story was true.

Wheel, I love the live blogging, but it’s great to have you back doing analysis. Question: didn’t Hadley make a statement a week or two later where he accepted some responsibility? What motivated that? Also, I think it was last year around this (Super Bowl) time that I was trying to get you to check out â€K Street,†which was in the process of being shot when a lot of this broke. Mary Matalin’s role is especially revealing (basically her biggest concern is that good people are going to have to get lawyers).

Saltin

I did get K Street. Didn’t get very far in it, though. I’ll have to revisit it.

Hadley was forced into that mea culpa bc, after Tenet was made to take the fall, CIA leaked the details of the October 2002 discussion about the Niger claims, in which Tenet told Hadley to â€take it the fuck out.†In other words, Hadley knew he was wrong, knew the Niger claims were wrong, and CIA was leaking that he knew.

I ordered AOD from Barnes & Noble online (first time I’ve ever ordered from them) when it first became possible to do so because amazon didn’t have it yet … it still hasn’t come … I should have waited for amazon … B&N online sucks.

I cannot figure out why Tenet acquiesced to the mea culpa in the first place. That CIA quickly forced Hadley to apologize subsequently only adds to my frustration.

Though Tenet throws in hints in his mea culpa that CIA were less than willing to agree to the 16 words, Tenet still went out of his way to repeat most of OVP talking points re: Wilson. (WH did not send Wilson, WH not briefed on findings of Wilson’s trip, even if WH had been notified Wilson’s trip was not conclusive, even if Wilson found out thises things Nigerien officials would have had reason to be less than truthful to Wilson knowing it would get back to Washington, etc).

If Bush/Cheney have something on Tenet, so what? Now is the time to get it out there. The Wilsons have already shown the way to sacrifice in the name of American democracy. Wish that Tenet (with or without his Medal of Freedom) would publish his book already–lift up a major rock and allow us to look on as all the critters scurry for safety.

It has always bothered me that the CIA talks about intelligence â€product†which it provides to its â€customers†in the government. Taking the business analogy too far leads to the well worn phrase â€the customer is always right.†(as in this real world case). Stop pleasing the customer, CIA. Your customer is corrupt.

Mitchell says this on her July 8 Capitol Report:

High-level people at the CIA did not really know that it was false, never even looked at Joe Wilson’s verbal report or notes from that report, didn’t even know that it was he who had made this report, because he was sent over by some of the covert operatives in the CIA at a very low level, not, in fact, tasked by the vice president.

holy chit! I didn’t realize that Mitchell was reporting on July 8 that Joe Wilson was sent by â€covert operatives in the CIAâ€.

There is still so much here that doesn’t make sense. Why should Cheney be so upset about being connected to the yellowcake claim? Why did the Italians do the forgery in the first place, and even if Rocco Martini or whatever his name is did it for money, why did they keep pushing it on the US? Are these things related? Is there something else here we aren’t supposed to find?

Libby really is a coward, isn’t he, hiding behind Cathie Martin’s skirts. What a first class jerk.

There’s a time problem with Libby sourcing Mitchell on that (from EW’s liveblogging)

DB Yes. Believed he contacted Mitchell after 7/10 more likely after 7/14, according to Libby Mitchell had made negative comments about OVP, and he wanted to discuss them. He said he spoke to her. Mr Libby told us he explained to her about . Mitchell asked question about why VP sent him to Niger. may have told her what reporters were telling him that Wilson’s wife worked at CIA. Said it in way that she wouldn’t ask him how he found out, didn’t want her to know he learned it from Russert. Libby told us he thought it might be awkward, if he said he learned it from Russert.
3:24
DB Told us he didn’t speak to Novak week of 7/7. Talked to him later, around 7/25.

—–

There would be a problem with Libby telling Mitchell that Wilson was sent by covert operatives, in that Fitzgerald says he has no evidence that Libby knew Plame was covert, and Libby was saying Plame sent Wilson. So we don’t â€know†Libby was Mitchell’s source, unless we â€know†more than Fitzgerald.
Note also that he did not speak to Novak the week you mentioned on CSPAN.

What I think you’re missing, MayBee, is that Cathie Martin testified that on July 8, apparently during the day, Libby was tasked by the Vice President to call Mitchell and David Martin, whom Martin had heard were both working on stories for the evening news. Martin witnessed Libby talking to one of them over the phone – and in light of the story that was done that evening by Mitchell, Martin was suggesting LIbby had talked with her, especially since Hadley was pissed and accused her, while Libby looked down at his notes at the meeting.

I don’t know what time Libby might have spoken with Mitchell, or what time the relevant show we’re discussing was on or was taped. But the point is that if the show happened after this newly disclosed phone call Martin was suggesting happened, that means that Libby has to enter the pool of candidates for having revealed information that Mitchell used – it at least throws into somewhat more doubt the use Maguire has been making of Mitchell’s appearance for a long time, to presume that the CIA gave her that information.

ps. There is also testimony that Mitchell had called Harlow.

MayBee

I should also mention that Bond was reporting Libby’s testimony, not vouching for its accuracy. Indeed, it’s quite clear that in numerous respects that she thinks Libby was providing false information, at least some of it deliberately. I didn’t focus on what she had to say about Libby-Novak, so i don’t know if you can read anything about the status off of that. But it is important not to take what she reports Libby saying as testimony as to what actually happened back in July 2003.

Jeff re your 22:45- True. But at the same time, Libby hasn’t been charged with perjury on any of that testimony, and that is the testimony Fitzgerald sought to highlight at trial.

But MayBee, I can cite back to you White House folks saying the same thing: Fleischer and Bartlett both were doing it during that week. And you seem to be making a distinction between the storyline that someone within CIA sent her and the storyline that Wilson’s wife sent him. But of course those two storylines were far from necessarily mutually exclusive.

All true. I’m really just trying to augment my point- which you have mostly agreed with- that we don’t seem to now know that it was probably Libby that told Mitchell.
Although I do think there is a point where the storyline about Wilson’s wife sent him diverges from the CIA-coworkers sent him storyline. That is, the â€wife sent him†story line doesn’t necessarily exclude the â€co-workers sent him†storyline, while the â€co-workers sent him†storyline often seeks specifically to exclude the idea that the wife sent him.
What that means about why Mitchell reported it the way she did, I don’t know.

The notion that Libby would have been charged specifically for each and every false statement that the investigators judged to be a lie is clearly incorrect. So your comment is neither here nor there on the question of whether we should take Libby at his word on that.
Again, true. I have no idea how Fitzgerald decided to make his charges. He didn’t seem to hesitate to charge on some very fine points, though I don’t know how he determined which ones were important.
And absolutely, I don’t mean to imply that we know exact dates of various conversations- few of the witnesses have been stellar in that regard. I’m sure Libby got some dates wrong, just as most of those testifying against him have done.

MayBee

I think it might help to review what Fitz charged on and what he didn’t to get an understanding of why. The odder of the two charges is the Cooper one. But the alleged lie in question: that he said he heard from journalists and he said he didn’t know if it was true–goes right to obstruction of IIPA. It is Libby lying to prevent any IIPA charge. Plus, with Martin Fitz has more than a he said she said (however weak Martin’s testimony is).

And then the Russert charge has many more people as witnesses (part of this alleged lie is that he didn’t know about Wilson). But again, it goes to the heart of the IIPA obstruction.

Other known lies–such as about telling Kessler–goes to a conspiracy or cover-up that Fitz isn’t after. And the suspected lie that Cheney told Libby to leak the NIE to Judy, when he actually leaked Plame, depends too much on Judy and he otherwise has not credible witnesses for.

If he wanted to go after the Mitchell lie, it would be the same as the case with Judy–one less than credible witness (give Mitchell’s public statements) and otherwise Cheney and Libby’s word. That of course doesn’t prove that Libby did leak to Mitchell, but it provides some explanation for why not charging it would be consistent.

Let me put it this way.

Fitzgerald is arguing that Libby lied in a way that specifically took the IIPA off the table. He allegedly did so by lying about where he learned of Plame (Russert lie), and he did so by lying about how he presented his knowledge to reporters when he passed on that news (Cooper lie), which reinforced his alleged efforts to admit to spreading the Plame news, but doing so in such a way that IIPA would be off the table.

In other words, while the Cooper charge may appear â€weak and small,†it is a fundamental part of making the argument that Libby lied specifically to take the IIPA off the table.

That seems to be the deciding factor on whether Fitz did or didn’t charge known lies.

Agree, Sebastian.