Libby Tells Of Plan To Leak Secrets, Jurors hear new details Options

[painter]

The talking point from one side, formal decalcification procedures aside, if the president exposes information then the information is 'automatically' declassified. There is a problem with this argument on a fundamental level: In this instance what was 'declassified' was the fact that Joseph Wilson's wife 'worked for the CIA' -- when the truth of the matter was she was a high level, undercover CIA assent with NOC; the head of a cover organization, Brewster Jennings, which was in the business of monitoring WMD proliferation, nuclear weapons in particular.

Watch what is happening folks, this trial may yet blow up to the point where there will be a move to force both Cheney and Bush out of office.

In tapes, Libby tells of plan to leak secrets
Jurors hear new details of efforts to discredit Wilson
- Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times
Wednesday, February 7, 2007

(02-07) 04:00 PST Washington -- Former White House official Lewis "Scooter" Libby told a grand jury in 2004 that Vice President Dick Cheney was upset by an ambassador's public questioning of the Iraq war and that President Bush, Cheney and Libby were involved in a plan -- kept secret from other senior White House officials -- to leak previously classified intelligence to counter the criticism.

Libby's audiotape testimony, played for jurors in federal court here, offered new details about how the White House orchestrated a campaign to discredit the Iraq war critic, Ambassador Joseph Wilson. His wife, undercover CIA operative Valerie Wilson, also known by her maiden name Plame, was subsequently exposed in the media, triggering a criminal investigation.

As Libby sat silently in the courtroom, jurors heard his voice describe how he was instructed to leak intelligence secrets to selected reporters, even as other White House officials were expressing concern over the leaks and debating whether the administration should formally declassify intelligence reports on Iraq to combat criticism of the case for war.

At one point, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald can be heard on the tapes expressing disbelief that Libby would take part in those meetings without disclosing that the president had effectively already declassified key portions of one of the main prewar pieces of intelligence on Iraq, a national intelligence estimate on the nation's alleged banned weapons programs.

"Was that unusual for you to have the national security adviser, the director of central intelligence, the White House chief of staff, among others, in the dark as to something that you had done regarding declassification?" Fitzgerald asked.

"It is not unusual for the vice president to tell me something which I am not allowed to share with others," Libby replied.

Libby's remarks came during a day in court devoted entirely to playing audiotapes of the former Cheney aide's grand jury testimony, allowing jurors to listen to the defendant's voice as he made statements prosecutors have labeled lies.

Libby faces five felony counts alleging perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice for what he told investigators about his role in the campaign to discredit Wilson.

The tapes offer an intriguing window into the reaction within the White House to mounting criticism of its case for war with Iraq, as well as a chance to witness Fitzgerald's method as he sparred with Libby during eight hours of grand jury testimony.

Libby can be heard describing how Cheney was upset when Wilson went public with allegations that the White House had twisted intelligence to make the case for war. In an op-ed article, Wilson said he had been sent to investigate a key claim -- that Iraq was seeking uranium from the African nation of Niger -- and found it untrue, months before President Bush included the allegation in his 2003 State of the Union speech.

"It was a serious accusation," Libby said. "It was a very serious attack." It also quickly became a "topic that was discussed on a daily basis" in the White House.

Libby said that Cheney "thought we should get some of these facts out to the press. He then undertook to get permission from the president to talk about this" to reporters.

Libby said Cheney's lawyer, David Addington, had advised him that merely getting such permission from the president rendered the intelligence declassified. Bush has publicly acknowledged doing so.

Libby's subsequent conversations with reporters and other White House officials are now at the center of the perjury trial. Prosecutors have produced a series of witnesses over the past week, including former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, to say that they learned of Valerie Wilson's identity from Libby.

Libby has testified that he learned about her from Cheney in June 2003, but then forgot that detail and didn't share it with others until he heard it from NBC News reporter Tim Russert in a phone call on July 10 or 11.

Recounting that conversation, Libby said in taped testimony that Russert asked him, " 'Did you know that Ambassador Wilson's wife works at the CIA?' and I was a little taken aback by that. ... And I said, 'No I don't know that' intentionally because I didn't want him to take anything I was saying as in any way confirming what he had said."

Russert, who is expected to testify this week, has said he did not tell Libby about Wilson.

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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file...MNGISO03RI1.DTL

[jo56]

I certainly hope that is what happens.

It's the only solution. It will be the JUSTICE AMERICA has long awaited!

This post has been edited by jo56: Feb 7 2007, 03:10 PM

[jadenter]

It's entirely possible that Cheney-Bush-Libby's disclosure of Valerie Plame had nothing to do with hubby Joe Wilson's reporting on the false story of Niger yellow-cake uranium and/or the President's State of the Union speech.

If in fact the neocon madmen listed above have always had their eyes on a "pre-emptive" nuclear war (WW IV) with Iran, they would have had to eliminate and discredit Valerie Plame's and Brewster Jenning's intelligence on Iranian WMD and nuclear weapons programs. With Plame/Brewster Jennings nuetralized, the war mongers in the White House would be free to spin their lies and false stories to justify another bogey-man regime to invade and destroy for their oil and also block the pending global economic collapse of the dollar caused by the Iranian Oil Bourse attack on the "petro-dollar" created by Kissinger and Nixon in 1972-3.

[maturin42]

Your lips to God's ears, Painter.

I just don't think they will carry the pretense of representing the people that far. It seems to this layman that Fitzgerald has a prima fascie case for a charge of Conspiracy to commit treason against the entire cabal if he wants it. I doubt that the standard of proof would be as high as proving the treason charge itself. Blowing the cover of an entire undercover operation and cover company just seems to me to be a big deal in the intel world, and the idea of guys like Cheney, Rove, and Libby mucking around in the matter and declassifying things for political convenience (and cover) smacks of criminal negligence at the very least.

And Cheney is supposed to be the brains of the outfit. Wow!

Watch what is happening folks, this trial may yet blow up to the point where there will be a move to force both Cheney and Bush out of office.

[mftorso]

You know what's so B.S. about this whole Libby trial?

In Wilson's words...

"For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as chargé d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council".



With those facts as a preface:


For ANY of these people-

Cheney, Libby, Rice, Hadley, Rove, the entire Bush political family, Abrams, Rumsfeld, Negroponte, Wolfwowitz- for the LOT of them to suggest they DON'T KNOW who JW is/was? Shocked to hear that his wife is CIA? Surprised when "informed by a journalist" ??

THAT IS ABSURD!!

You tellin' me the H.W. crowd, the post Iran/Contra crowd, the recipients of "A thousand points of light" crowd, the perp's of Desert Storm, all the crew who worked on that debacle? that it took Bob Novak or Dick Armitage to "out" this whole thing???

None of these "naive government personel" remember the US chargé d'affaires assigned to Iraq at the time of Gulf War 1??


They've probably known of JW and VP for YEARS!!!


What a joke.



To be one of "them" and not know of this guy nor his wife?

BULLSH..!

Dat ain't how life works!!




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