What!?!? No comments, no suggestions from the master???

Damn I must be onto something!

Here’s one more bit of BS from the talking point document. Just after it says the January 24 document didn’t include the INR disclaimer, it says,

In fact, two weeks earlier the State Department had issued a white paper that cited the Iraqi attempts to procure Uranium from Niger as proof that the Iraqi Declaration under UNSCR 1441 was false.

Of course, it was Bolton who issued this statement, in spite of INR’s attempts to take this out. (And the date is wrong.) OVP trying to use its flackey’s activities to suggest that State had changed its mind on the objections to NIger.

I agree entirely with the gist of this. One item to add by way of confirmation, and one qualification. The confirmation is that Woodward reports in Plan of Attack that Libby did indeed make his big presentation of the case that Saturday, January 25.

The qualification is that I think we have to leave open the possibility that there were multiple interactions between NSC and CIA over the Niger story, not just the one between Joseph and Foley. Part of the reason I say this is because, I believe, Suskind in One Percent Doctrine dates the – or a – Foley-Joseph conversation to the day before or even the very day of the SOTU, that is, January 27 or 28. It’s possible that Suskind just got it wrong. But it’s also possible that there were ongoing discussions over the issue, including discussion on January 22 or 23 and discussion on January 27 or 28.

If there were multiple conversations, it certainly wouldn’t undercut, and would probably in fact strengthen, your conclusions here. It just would make the story somewhat different from what you’ve got here.

I’ll also just add that the notion of multiple conversations, with Foley and Joseph having their conversation on January 27 or 28, would fit very nicely with everything that is said in the somewhat puzzling section of the SSCI report, pp. 64-66.

One last thing: the NIO-to-NSC fax on January 24 was in response, according to the SSCI, to a request for additional details regarding IC input on the case for Saddam possessing WMD. The fact that not only were there no additional details provided, and instead just a cut and paste of the October 2002, the fact that that reptiotion was about fragmentary and uncertain information, and that evidently no progress whatsoever had been made in verifying it, may help to explain why the January 24 document would have been completely unconvincing to the folks at State. Indeed, it would seem to bolster, as a reasonable judgment, the idea that the Niger story was unreliable and perhaps even baseless.

E.W,

I have to ask, what were you doing around the time of the Iran Contra scandal. Back then my only solice came from reading books on the topic but none of the literature came out during the trials. I was absolutely tied in knots back then and imagine that if you and eRiposte had been around, maybe we wouldn’t be sitting here to day dissecting this b.s. Thank you, great post.

Are you Marcy? I was recommended to post my question to Marcy at The Next Hurrah, so here it is:

I read the article at the following link and am quite puzzled by it: http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/02/l ibby_trial_the_nbc_connection.html

I’ve been following the liveblog pretty closely and I can’t figure out what this guy is talking about. Namely, why would he say that Russert gave a false affidavit? I mean I understand the ethical issues and lack of forthrightness of talking to the FBI and then claiming confidentiality in retrospect through the NBC legal actions. (I just cracked that up to Russert’s not being too bright until the lawyers and real journalists smacked him up side the head.)

And then they go on to impugn the FBI agent for various reasons (including for retiring), say that the FBI report says that Russert DID tell Libby about Plame, and conclude that the evidence from the FBI and Russert are not credible.

Can someone fill me in on what I may have missed?
(PS I have considered the source, but I still want to understand what they could have based this on)

Thanks for the background Pete.

Wrt Journalists lying in the Scooter trial, â€it’s hard to find swans in the sewer.â€

If Russert is lying, that does not mean that Scooter is telling the truth.

Marcy – Walter Pincus had reported this earlier about a Jan 2003 memo from the NIO:

Tenet interceded to keep the claim out of a speech Bush gave in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, but by Dec. 19 it reappeared in a State Department â€fact sheet.†After that, the Pentagon asked for an authoritative judgment from the National Intelligence Council, the senior coordinating body for the 15 agencies that then constituted the U.S. intelligence community. Did Iraq and Niger discuss a uranium sale, or not? If they had, the Pentagon would need to reconsider its ties with Niger.

The council’s reply, drafted in a January 2003 memo by the national intelligence officer for Africa, was unequivocal: The Niger story was baseless and should be laid to rest. Four U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge said in interviews that the memo, which has not been reported before, arrived at the White House as Bush and his highest-ranking advisers made the uranium story a centerpiece of their case for the rapidly approaching war against Iraq.

Was Pincus wrong? Or were there two memos from the NIO around the same time?

Or is there a third possibility? Most of the thirty some pages of this memo are blacked off, except for the two bullet points. Are these referred to in some context as alternate (and not definitive) viewpoints (planted by someone like Feith)?

eriposte posted once about a document which seemed to say something but when the redacted portions were exposed said something else. Could the same be true of this memo?

I learned as a child that the reason for telling the truth is that you don’t have to keep up with what story you told to which person. The story is always the same. We’ve got a lot of people in Washington right now who never figured this out [then again, they didn’t have Master eriposte and Grasshopper emptywheel looking over their shoulders when they were kids].

Pete

No, there were two reports from two different NIOs (National Intelligence Officers–the top intell officer on a particular subject). There was the rehashing of the NIE from the NIO for WMD and there was the â€this is shite†memo from the NIO for Africa. Both arrived around the same time, but I think it probably went NIO from Africa, Foley intercedes, then they rehash the NIE.

Marcy, are you going to DC this week?

ohioblue

Just arrived. I’m back on the liveblog.

Oh, one more thing about Clarice’s rant. The FBI agent whose notes from Libby’s second interview were less than stellar? That’s not Eckenrode. I can look in the liveblog. But suffice it to say that Eckenrode didn’t take those notes…

Yea! Glad you’re back. Swopa was great, but you wrote the book on the subject. You are super detail oriented and we appreciate it.

Hey Pete
Try looking at the archives of the stories Leopold wrote more than a year ago and I think you will find that many of them were dead on–at least if you read how the trial has progressed so far and what it has confirmed.

Leopold was more more often right than not.

I do not want to debate Leopold.

What I found amusing (and I stated it quite poorly in my earlier thread) was that Clarice who has bashed Leopold countless times was now actually qouting from one of Leopold’s article because that piece supported her viewpoint.

Well, it appears from the NYt tonight that Mr Cheney will testify, and Mr Libby won’t.

Still, I doubt that Mr Cheney will be able to put everyone’s concerns to rest.

According to Isikoff, Russert’s deal in testifying to Fitzgerald (rather than the grand jury) was:

Aug. 1 issue – A deal that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald cut last year for NBC â€Meet the Press†host Tim Russert’s testimony may shed light on the emerging White House defense in the Valerie Plame leak case. The agreement between Fitzgerald and NBC avoided a court fight over a subpoena for Russert’s testimony about his July 2003 talk with Dick Cheney’s top aide, Lewis (Scooter) Libby. The deal was not, as many assumed, for Russert’s testimony about what Libby told him: it focused on what Russert told Libby.

—-
Which seems to be pretty much the same thing he did when the FBI phoned him at home. I don’t know what ’college try’ you think Russert gave Libby, as he was already on record with the FBI saying he wasn’t Libby’s source. Of course, that was a secret.

As to Libby calling Russert, it seems there was a lot of calling going around (Armitage’s friend to Novak), or even home visits (Armitage visiting Grossman). Improper? Maybe.
There was a lot of pressure on Libby to get his witnesses to testify. They were using the fact that they wouldn’t against him (see the letter from Conyers).

I’m pretty confident that Barry Quincy Tate is Jason Leopold, as per usual, pretending to be someone else. Wrt Jason being â€right,†it’s easy when you steal the insights of emptywheel and others, who have done the hard work without attribution. That’s why Jason spends so much time here, he’s trying to find more insights for which he can invent â€anonymous†sources to hide behind. What’s â€wrong†about Jason, among other things, is that he is a serial plagiarist.
Further amplifying his crime, once he publishes what he’s stolen from others, he appears at FDL and tnh to drive traffic to his plagiarism.

As to Libby calling Russert, it seems there was a lot of calling going around (Armitage’s friend to Novak), or even home visits (Armitage visiting Grossman). Improper? Maybe.

I love this. Perhaps you want to suggest that Armitage’s conduct was improper, yet you can’t quite without acknowledging that Libby’s was improper. Grab both horns! They were both completely improper, clear efforts to shape the testimony of witnesses.

There was a lot of pressure on Libby to get his witnesses to testify. They were using the fact that they wouldn’t against him (see the letter from Conyers).

In fall 2003? In early 2004? What was the date of the Conyers letter? And wasn’t part of the issue why, on his own initiative, Libby personally contacted Russert, rather than brokering it through lawyers? The Miller thing was different, because she set as one of her conditions that she hear directly from Libby, but even then when they talked it was in the presence of lawyers. And oh yeah, there was that letter where Libby tried to coach Miller’s testimony anyway in the full view of everybody, telling her what to say and suggesting she only talk about July 2003 – which she did, until pressed pretty hard on it by the prosecutor (and yes that’s what I believe happened and no, I wouldn’t expect the prosecution to depict it that way at trial).

Swopa has a great article today.

Libby’s motive with regard to Matt Cooper is apparent: his false admission provided a convenient — and presumably intentional — cover for Karl Rove’s failure to admit any conversation with Cooper. (If there really was a plan to â€sacrifice†Libby to protect Rove, Scooter seems to have been a willing co-conspirator.) And evidence brought out during the trial implies a similar role for the Kessler confession.

Jason, I look forward to hearing from your lawyer. As an officer of the court I am very confident he will be interested in the vile physical threats you made against DHinMI under the pseudonym â€Harry
Shed.†In my opinion you are a very sick and dangerous man. I have no plans to apologize nor make any retraction.

Any further emails I receive from you, I will consider evidence of harassment and I will block your address. You have made vile statements about me under various pseudonyms at tnh. If I hear from your lawyer, I can share these as well.

You see, according to Libby’s second GJ appearance, he called Russert between his two GJ appearances, personally.

I don’t think this is exactly right. Libby is vague as to when he actually talked to Russert–probably deliberately so, but he doesn’t actually admit to talking to Russert between his grand jury appearances:

Q. Okay. And, and what do you mean by not directly?A. I mean, I spoke to him but not — I didn’t talk to him about the content of the investigation. I did call him atone point to ask if he would be willing to talk to my lawyer.

[snip]

Q. And do you know the time when you reached out to talk to Mr. Russert?
A. A few weeks back.

Q. Okay. A few weeks back being in March of 2004 or —
A. February, March, somewhere in there.

Q. And have you spoken to Mr. Russert since?
A. No.

MayBee – It is Libby’s GJ testimony we are talking about right. The guy who lied and covered up throughout his GJ testimony. The guy who used his letter to Miller to highlight that it was ok to talk about July 2003