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Dick’s Talking Points, Two

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When Libby was first asked about any discussions he had with Cheney in response to Joe Wilson’s op-ed, he first claimed he had not discussed the op-ed until after the Novak column (though with his aborted discussion of a "conver–"sation, he may have been thinking of the July 9 conversation he had with Novak and subsequently hid).

I don’t recall that conversation until after the, until after the Novak piece. I don’t recall it during this week of July 6. I recall it after the Novak conver — after the Novak article appeared I recall it , and I recall being asked by the Vice President early on, you know, about this envoy, you know, who is it and — but I don’t recall that, early on he asked about it in connection with the wife, although he may well have given the note that I took.

Q. And so your recollection is that he wrote on July — that you discussed with the Vice President, did his wife send him on a junket? As a response to the July 14th Novak column that said, he was sent because his wife sent him and she works at the CIA?

A. I don’t recall discussing it –yes, I don’t recall discussing it in connection with when this article first appeared. I recall it later.

Then, when Fitz points out the utter absurdity of discussing with Cheney, speculatively, that Plame was purportedly involved in sending her husband, after Novak had already reported that fact directly, Libby shifts, and tries to claim they talked about it after July 10 when–he claimed–Tim Russert had told him of Plame’s identity.

Q. And are you telling us under oath that from July 6th to July 14th you never discussed with Vice President Cheney whether Mr. Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA?

A. No, no, I’m not saying that. On July 10 or 11 I learned, I thought anew, that the wife — that, that reporters I lwere telling us that the wife worked at the CIA. And I may have had a conversation then with the Vice President either late on the 11th or on the 12th in which I relayed that reporters were saying that.

Basically, Libby was trying to date the notations Cheney had made on Wilson’s op-ed ("Or did his wife send him on a junket?") Read more →

Would George Bush Consider a PatFitzPack of Pardons?

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JMart reports that Dick Durbin wrote Bush in support of a pardon for George Ryan (really, Durbin?!?!?!).

Obama’s colleague and close friend Sen. Dick Durbin sent a letter to the president this week requesting that he release Ryan, who is doing a 6 1/2 year federal sentence on corruption-related charges

Crazy as it sounds, I think Durbin’s onto something. In fact, I think he should start pitching a "PatFitzPack of Pardons" for Bush.

After all, we know that Scooter Libby is bound to get a pardon in the next few weeks.  Conrad Black has already asked for a pardon; and what neocon President could resist that request? Throw George Ryan in there, and you’ve got a hat trick.

George Bush’s 69 for Scooter Libby

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Tweety has started to count the days left for George Bush to pardon Scooter Libby. Bush has 69 days left to–as Tweety accurately describes it–complete the cover-up of the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity.

I’m glad Tweety’s bringing this to attention, particularly since, with Waxman’s designs on John Dingell’s Chairmanship at the Energy and Commerce Committee, Waxman may well drop his quest to get Dick Cheney’s FBI interview report from DOJ. 

But it’s worth remembering this pardon will only complete the cover-up of one of Bush’s crimes. I’m just as interested in discussing the names of those–like David Addington, or Turdblossom, or Alberto Gonzales, or Cheney himself–whose silence Bush may be contemplating buying in the next 69 days. That discussion is particularly relevant since President-elect Obama seems intent on making a deal that will give Congress some of the documents they were entitled to in their oversight role, rather than have the principle of Congressional oversight of the President affirmed. 

Libby’s just the guy who got caught. He’s by no means the only one carrying out a cover-up.

Bush Prepares His Pardon Pen

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Former US Pardon Attorney Margaret Love reviews of Bush’s pardons and commutations to date (however ignoring his most famous–that of Scooter Libby) and ends with this tidbit:

Word on the street is that there will be more pardons after the election – and possibly even some before it. I would not be surprised to see a difference in the profile of those receiving pardons in the final weeks.

No, really, ya think?!? You think Bush is going to start working through the stack of requests from his thuggish pals to make sure he gives them a get out of jail free card before he leaves office?

You think maybe he’s got the letters all drawn up, with the names of Dick and Addington and Yoo and Turdblossom and Clemons and Gonzales and Libby on them (note, given Dusty Foggo’s dubious plea deal, Bush won’t have to pardon Wilkes now)?

But what I find most fascinating is the suggestion that Bush might pardon people before the election. Eight days away, and the pardon won’t wait? 

It sort of makes you wonder whether he’s taking a page out of Poppy’s book, halting the investigation that would eventually incriminate him personally, as Poppy did with Cap? It sort of makes you wonder whether Bush knows that Nora Dannehy’s investigation into the firing of David Iglesias won’t otherwise end up proving–as newspapers have reported–that Bush personally gave the order to fire Iglesias for not prosecuting Democrats in time to influence the election?

Habbush’s Freedom Fries Forgeries

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In his description of how Tahir Jalil Habbush Al-Tikriti negotiated protection from the United States, Ron Suskind writes,

Bush, Cheney, and top aides to the vice president wanted Habbush, in essence, to earn his passage. The United States was working furiously on "the case." It needed damning disclosures, not the Iraqi intelligence chief–who was given the code name "George"–saying there were no WMD.

Suskind doesn’t describe how, in spite of the fact that he insisted Iraq didn’t have WMD, Habbush still managed to convince the US to take him to Jordan and install him with $5 million in hush money. Suskind notes–but does not explain–that Habbush got out of Iraq early, close to the start of the war.

Habbush was ready. He slipped out of Baghdad with the help of U.S. intelligence and into Amman, Jordan, where he’d had his meetings with Shipster.

It is instructive, then, to look at the two other Habbush letters sent during the early war period. First, there’s the April 24, 2003 letter designed to frame British (then) Labour MP George Galloway as having been bought off with money from Saddam’s oil sales (h/t for all of these articles to a friend).

Saddam Hussein’s former head of protocol said yesterday that the document found by The Daily Telegraph saying that George Galloway received substantial payments from the Iraqi regime was "100 per cent genuine".

Haitham Rashid Wihaib, who fled to Britain with his family eight years ago after death threats, said he had no doubt that the handwritten confidential memorandum addressed to the dictator’s office apparently detailing how the Labour MP benefited from Iraq’s oil sales was authentic.

Sitting in a cafe in central London, a world away from Saddam’s palace where he spent 13 years arranging the dictator’s daily schedule, he carefully studied the letter discovered in the looted foreign ministry in Baghdad.

As Mr Galloway continued to denounce the letter as a forgery, Mr Wihaib said he recognised the "clear and distinctive" handwriting as that of Tahir Jalil Habbush Al-Tikriti, head of the Iraqi intelligence service, who is number 14 – the jack of diamonds – on America’s "most wanted" list.

The letter would have been intended to smear Galloway for his efforts to forestall the war–and his campaign to show how unfairly Iraq was treated under sanctions.

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The Anthrax Prosecutor: The Daughter of the Defense Attorney for BushCo’s “Germ Boy”

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Guess who they’ve got prosecuting the anthrax case? Amy Jeffress, daughter of Bill Jeffress, the guy who was last seen trying to keep Scooter Libby, known within the Administration as "Mr. Germ," out of the pokey. Yeah. That gives me confidence in the investigation.

First, from an account of today’s meeting with Judge Lamberth (h/t JimWhite and bmaz):

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the release of hundreds of pages of documents, including more than a dozen search warrants issued as the government closed in on Ivins in an investigation into events that killed five, sickened dozens and rattled the nation a few weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

The long-sealed material was expected to be available to the public within hours.

Lamberth ordered the release after consultation with Amy Jeffress, a national security prosecutor at the Department of Justice. [my emphasis]

Next, the wedding announcement showing who Amy Jeffress’ daddy is:

The bride, 34, is known as Amy and is keeping her surname. She is an assistant United States attorney in Washington. She graduated magna cum laude from Williams College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received a master’s degree in political science from the Free University in Berlin and a law degree from Yale University.

The bride is the daughter of Judith and William Jeffress Jr. of Arlington, Va. Her mother is a social worker at the Adoption Service Information Agency in Washington. Her father is a partner in Miller, Cassidy, Larocca & Lewin, a Washington law firm where the bridegroom is an associate. [my emphasis]

And finally, here’s Jeremy Scahill on Libby’s role as "Germ Boy" within the administration.

In mid-2002, as they struggled desperately to sell the war, these key players in "Plamegate" were engaged in full-out offensive aimed at convincing Americans that the country faced an imminent threat of a smallpox attack. To underscore this "threat," Libby began fanatically pressing to have the entire US population preemptively vaccinated against smallpox (which was declared eradicated in 1980).

[snip]

What Hauer and his colleagues at HHS may not have known is that smallpox was a career-long obsession of Libby’s–so much so that his nickname in the administration was "Germ Boy."

[snip]

More than a decade later, Libby was facing renewed frustration with another group of experts challenging his obsession. Read more →

Once Again, Forgeries?

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Everyone’s buzzing about the revelation from Ron Suskind that a letter revealed in December 2003, alleging that Mohammed Atta trained in Iraq, was a CIA-created forgery.

According to Suskind, the administration had been in contact with the director of the Iraqi intelligence service in the last years of Hussein’s regime, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti.

“The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,” Suskind writes. “It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq – thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President’s Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link.”

[snip]

Suskind writes in his new book that the order to create the letter was written on “creamy White House stationery.” The book suggests that the letter was subsequently created by the CIA and delivered to Iraq, but does not say how.

Here’s Con Coughlin, the reporter who first reported the letter, on MTP in 2003.

Coughlin: Well, this is an intriguing story, Tom. I mean, basically, when I was in Baghdad, I picked up a document that was given to me by a senior member of the Iraqi interim government. It’s an intelligence document written by the then-head of Iraqi intelligence, Habush to Saddam. It’s dated the 1st of July, 2001, and it’s basically a memo saying that Mohamed Atta has successfully completed a training course at the house of Abu Nidal, the infamous Palestinian terrorist, who, of course, was killed by Saddam a couple of months later. Now, this is the first really concrete proof that al-Qaeda was working with Saddam. I saw your interview with James Woolsey earlier and he was talking about the article in The Weekly Standard. And there is a lot of detail there. But this is a document, and I’ve had it authenticated. This is the handwriting of the head of Iraqi intelligence, Habush, is one of the few people still at large who is in the pack of cards. And it basically says that Atta was in Baghdad being trained under Saddam’s guidance prior to the 9/11 attack. It’s a very explosive development, Tom. [my emphasis]

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Michael Isikoff’s Chat with Cheney’s Lawyer

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One of the details that most surprised me in Scott McClellan’s account of the CIA Leak investigation and aftermath was his description of the White House response to the confirmation–on April 5, 2006–that Libby had testified he had leaked the NIE with the authorization of the President.

Now the fact that he himself had authorized the selective leaking of national security information to reporters made him look hypocritical.

[snip]

In time, we would learn that the president’s penchant for compartmentalization had played an important role in the declassification story. The only person the president had shared the declassification with personally was Vice President Cheney. Two days after the Fitzgerald disclosure, Cheney’s lawyer told reporters that the president had "declassified the information and authorized and directed the vice president to get it out" but "didn’t get into how it would be done." Then the vice president had directed his top aide, Scooter Libby, to supply the information anonymously to reporters. [my emphasis]

Granted, I was on a business trip in India when this all went down. But this was a detail I missed. "Cheney’s lawyer told reporters"? I was used to Libby’s lawyer prior to the indictment, Joseph Tate, telling reporters all manner of things under the cover of anonymity. Robert Luskin’s anonymous, wild spinning of reporters? Kind of goes without saying. But Cheney’s lawyer, Terry O’Donnell?

But it all made sense when someone pointed me to the one piece of journalism he could find repeating that citation–would you believe it, a Michael Isikoff piece?

A lawyer familiar with the investigation, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, told NEWSWEEK that the "president declassified the information and authorized and directed the vice president to get it out." But Bush "didn’t get into how it would be done. He was not involved in selecting Scooter Libby or Judy Miller." Bush made the decision to put out the NIE material in late June, when the press was beginning to raise questions about the WMD but before Wilson published his op-ed piece. [my emphasis]

I double checked with McClellen to make sure that’s the public statement he meant, and he said,

Dan Bartlett volunteered to me that the vice president’s lawyer was telling at least some reporters anonymously what I reference on page 295, which is specifically referring to the Newsweek article …

In other words, yes, Cheney’s lawyer was the one spreading that story to–of all people–Michael Isikoff. Now everything began to make sense.

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Scott McClellan Dismantles Cheney’s Plame Firewall

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When evidence from the Scooter Libby trial showed that Dick Cheney had probably ordered Scooter Libby to leak Valerie Plame’s identity, Cheney built a firewall that legally excused the leak–but still insulated George Bush from involvement in knowingly outing a CIA spy. Cheney claimed, on at least two occasions, that he himself had the authority to declassify classified information, presumably up to and including Valerie Plame’s identity. Yet new information from Scott McClellan dismantles Cheney’s firewall; McClellan reveals that in the same period when Cheney was claiming he had the authority to declassify such information, the White House Counsel’s Office under Harriet Miers disagreed that the Vice President had such declassification authorities.

The Evidence Cheney Ordered Libby to Leak Plame’s Identity

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In spring of 2006, evidence was accumulating that Dick Cheney had ordered Scooter Libby to leak Valerie Plame’s identity to Judy Miller. We learned (and then, during the trial, we saw) that on July 7 0r 8, Cheney had ordered Libby to leak something to Judy Miller. We learned from Miller’s newspaper account (and then, during the trial, from her testimony) that after receiving that order, Libby proceeded to leak Plame’s identity to Miller.

And, as we got more information, we learned that Scooter Libby’s cover story for that order and that leak–that Cheney had only ordered him to leak the National Intelligence Estimate–could not be true. That’s because (among other reasons), Libby claimed he did not leak the classified information Cheney ordered him to leak until he got reassurances from David Addington that the President could insta-declassify classified information, thereby making such a leak legal.

I had previously spoken to our General Counsel, David Addington, and our General — and ask our General Counsel, does the President have the ability if he wants to take any document and say it’s declassified, go talk about it?

And Libby further explained that, at the same conversation where he got those reassurances from David Addington, he asked about Wilson’s probable contract with the CIA.

Q. And can you recall what — in your conversation with Mr. Addington about declassification, do you recall if you discussed any other topics with Mr. Addington at the time?

A. Yes. I also discussed in that conversation or close to that conversation, the question of whether there was a contractual obligation for Mr. Wilson.

Given these details, Libby’s notes, and Addington’s testimony (Addington said the conversation took place after Joe Wilson’s op-ed appeared), we can date this conversation to July 7 or 8. (Indeed, Libby even says the conversation declassifying the information itself may have happened on July 7 or "some time at the end of the previous" week.) Read more →

Bob Novak Is One Key to Libby’s Aspen Letter

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Alright. Admittedly this discovery is rather dated. But hell–what are blogs for, if not to rehash that old Aspen letter Libby sent Judy in September 2005? Especially if, after rehashing the letter, you discover that Bob Novak may be there hiding among the Aspen trees?

Back when I first analyzed the letter, I compared how Libby’s description of the testimony of journalists matched up against published accounts about that testimony.

Because, as I am sure will not be news to you, the public report of every other reporter’s testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame’s name or identity with me, or knew about her before our call.

I compared that statement to the public reports from Tim Russert and Matt Cooper and agreed (after some coaching from readers), that Russert "did not discuss Ms. Plame’s name or identity with [Libby]" and Cooper "knew about her before [Libby’s] call." Surprise! Even in a cryptic letter, it appeared, Libby was being transparent and honest with Judy. Which struck me as rather suspicious–that Libby might tell such transparent truths in such cryptic language.

But I did that analysis a month before I first speculated that Libby had spoken to Bob Novak the week of the leak, and a full year before Libby’s and Novak’s conversation on July 9 was confirmed in court filings. That is, when Libby wrote the Aspen letter, we didn’t know that Novak was among the journalists who had testified about a conversation with Libby, but Libby knew it. And if my reading of the script Libby sent Judy via Steno Sue and Pool Boy was correct, then Judy would have known about the conversation, though not that Novak had testified. As a reminder, here’s how I first speculated that Libby and Novak had spoken:

Steno Sue’s Secret Message
The morning Judy testified the first time to the Grand Jury, one of Libby’s allies managed to get the following passage inserted into the newspaper that will replace the NYT as the nation’s newspaper of record.

[snip]

The Novak Surprise
Now we come to far and away the most curious part of this coaching session:

Libby did not talk to Novak about the case, the source said.

Is this still a message for Judy? Why would Libby’s friend need to remind Judy that Libby hadn’t spoken to Novak in the case? Unless she knew that he had spoken to Novak? I think it highly possible that Libby’s friend is telling Judy not to mention the fact that she knew Libby spoke to Novak about this case.

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