Search Results from War and Piece
A bunch of interesting points and connections leap out of this masteful 2005 Robert Dreyfuss piece on Goss's rein at the CIA, via Mary at the Left Coaster. The Goss-Gingrich alliance:By 1996, Goss, having established an alliance with Newt Gingrich,...
Posted in War and Piece on May 3, 2009 01:36 PM
Abrams' exit interview. Steve Clemons notes an interesting recent Jerusalem Post interview with former senior Bush NSC official Elliot Abrams. Because of a couple moderate statesmen-type sources who think highly of Abrams and who described him to me as a...
Posted in War and Piece on February 16, 2009 12:30 PM
Murray Waas: "Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a still-highly confidential FBI report, admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer...
Posted in War and Piece on December 26, 2008 10:13 PM
MJ: Obama's intelligence brain-trust: ... But even though matters such as politicized intelligence, torture, domestic surveillance, and preventing terror attacks are among the most controversial issues of the Bush legacy, intelligence has remained largely a stealth topic in the presidential...
Posted in War and Piece on September 25, 2008 12:42 AM
Just Out: Intel: How to Fix a Post-Bush Nation: Interviews with former CIA officials Milt Bearden, William Murray, Valerie Plame Wilson, and Paul Pillar. Bearden: "The Bush legacy, in its most reduced and understandable form, will be that the limits...
Posted in War and Piece on September 7, 2008 02:10 PM
Dan Froomkin: "When honest people are confronted with a false accusation, they typically respond without caveats. But Fratto's response is a far cry from a categorical denial that anything akin to what Suskind describes took place. Indeed, given recent White...
Posted in War and Piece on August 7, 2008 08:11 AM
Former White House spokesman accuses Bush White House of mounting propaganda campaign on Iraq; Rove, Libby of colluding to possibly obstruct investigation of Plame outting: The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing...
Posted in War and Piece on May 27, 2008 09:28 PM
Rezko Trial and -- Rove? Newsweek: " ... Last week, prosecutors [in the Rezko trial] threw a curveball, telling the judge that one of their witnesses is prepared to raise the name of another prominent Washington hand: Karl Rove. Former...
Posted in War and Piece on April 27, 2008 12:30 PM
CounterSpy: Philip Agee dies in Cuba: ... Agee's actions in the 1970s inspired a law criminalizing the exposure of covert U.S. operatives. But in 2003, he drew a distinction between what he did and the exposure of CIA officer Valerie...
Posted in War and Piece on January 9, 2008 10:54 AM
Just Out: Operation Stop Talking: "John Kiriakou called it hypocritical for the White House and Congress to point fingers at the CIA for its harsh interrogation techniques. Now his former employer, with the help of the Justice Department, is trying...
Posted in War and Piece on December 21, 2007 08:19 PM
"Who is This Punk?" When then Senate Intelligence committee chairman Pat Roberts declared a witness's tesitmony to the committee secret to suppress him from testifying in public, Michigan city attorney Jim Marcinkowski contemplated what was happening to him -- and...
Posted in War and Piece on December 16, 2007 12:05 PM
Just Out: "After Fair Game: The Story Valerie Plame Couldn't Tell":When former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson got the redacted manuscript of her draft memoir back from the CIA Publications Review Board (PRB) earlier this year, her book publisher realized...
Posted in War and Piece on December 14, 2007 10:57 PM
Just Out: my reported afterword to a spy memoir, Fair Game. Nice review here. First chapter here. Still awaiting my copy but I may just go to the bookstore and buy it....
Posted in War and Piece on October 22, 2007 10:36 AM
Washington Whispers previews Robert Novak's book. Marcy recently made a compelling case that Libby in fact was a source for Novak on a key aspect of his column, disclosures from the still classified trip report....
Posted in War and Piece on July 3, 2007 02:53 PM
Dana Milbank: Standing by their Man. More on the letters from Mike Abramowitz. A Plameologist friend writes that this HuffPost account is one of the better takes....
Posted in War and Piece on June 6, 2007 03:35 PM
Newsweek: Plame was covert, Fitzgerald says....
Posted in War and Piece on May 29, 2007 10:26 PM
Outside email at the White House. A reader who has a security role at a federal agency writes, "On the issue of using outside/unofficial e-mail address from official sites, the CIO at [redacted] has expressly forbade the practice for security...
Posted in War and Piece on March 28, 2007 08:47 AM
Novak: Was Valerie Plame covert?...
Posted in War and Piece on March 22, 2007 12:18 AM
Waxman Plame hearing up now....
Posted in War and Piece on March 16, 2007 10:21 AM
Marcy Wheeler is liveblogging the closing arguments in the Libby trial. Part II of prosecution summation: "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a case about lying. Not conspiracy, No White House conspiracy, no NBC conspiracy; Libby is not here because of...
Posted in War and Piece on February 20, 2007 10:00 AM
From Marcy Wheeler's account of the Libby trial proceedings today:[Judge] Walton–a juror question: In reference to call between Libby and [NBC's Andrea] Mitchell, you indicated some concerns about NIE being revealed. Can you tell us what your concerns were? [Cathie...
Posted in War and Piece on January 29, 2007 01:13 PM
Newsweek wrap up of the Libby trial today:Libby, it was widely thought by legal experts, was going to be the good soldier. He would play it safe at his trial in order to preserve his options; mainly, if convicted, to...
Posted in War and Piece on January 24, 2007 12:52 AM
"The person to be protected was Karl Rove." Fireworks at the Libby trial. According to Empty Wheel liveblogging it at FDL, this is Libby lawyer Ted Wells:Mr. Libby was not concerned about losing his job. He was concerned about being...
Posted in War and Piece on January 23, 2007 02:24 PM
Catch up with the first day of the Libby trial here, here, and here and here. Today was just about jury selection. But what ultimately is at stake? "We are going to get unprecedented insight into the workings of the...
Posted in War and Piece on January 16, 2007 07:08 PM
Murray Waas previews the start of the Libby trial next week, with a run-down of key testimony to the grand jury concerning Cheney's alleged role in directing the leak:...Aboard Air Force Two, Cheney, Libby, and Martin discussed a then-still highly...
Posted in War and Piece on January 12, 2007 07:09 PM
Newsweek: Plame's book blocked. "The [CIA Publications Review Board] panel refused Plame permission to even mention that she worked for the CIA because she served as a 'nonofficial cover' officer (or NOC) posing as a private businesswoman, according to an...
Posted in War and Piece on January 7, 2007 06:41 PM
Not to be lost in the bizarre fuss over what the State Department official told al Jazeera about the US's foibles in Iraq is that he was giving the interview in Arabic. In an administration not always known for its...
Posted in War and Piece on October 22, 2006 11:41 PM
University of Minnesota political science professor Jeff Lomonaco reports in The American Prospect on Cheney's centrality to the CIA leak investigation: ... More dramatically, deep in one of the hearings last spring during the discovery phase, Fitzgerald came closer to...
Posted in War and Piece on October 14, 2006 09:42 AM
What to make of Bob Novak's latest on Armitage and what he says was Armitage's very deliberate role in telling him about Plame? I'll take a shot at it. Novak's message is that Armitage is a far more canny and...
Posted in War and Piece on September 13, 2006 04:42 PM
Warren Strobel: With permission from Fitzgerald, Armitage reveals that he was a source of Plame leak....
Posted in War and Piece on September 7, 2006 07:55 PM
Newsweek on Armitage's role in the Plame saga. Update: But Swopa raises a good point. If Armitage told Justice Department investigators about his role in the leak to Novak back in October 2003, how come Fitzgerald didn't include it in...
Posted in War and Piece on August 27, 2006 08:02 AM
Plame/Wilson civil suit....
Posted in War and Piece on July 13, 2006 04:57 PM
Howard Kurtz: Novak acknowledges identifying his confidential sources on Plame. And he had three sources, one who he still won't publicly name, who is described as a "senior administration official," who has never publicly revealed himself.Syndicated columnist Robert Novak acknowledged...
Posted in War and Piece on July 11, 2006 06:40 PM
Speaking "truthiness to power" -- Editor & Publisher:Colbert, who spoke in the guise of his talk show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged the Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, “and...
Posted in War and Piece on April 30, 2006 08:25 AM
Reader S writes with an interesting connection that hadn't occurred to me:...Also, there was a story in the WaPo this week about [the recently fired former CIA Inspector General officer Mary] McCarthy:A onetime Africa specialist who served in the early...
Posted in War and Piece on April 29, 2006 05:30 PM
E.J. Dionne:... These arguments merely distract attention from why Fitzgerald's disclosure was so important. When a fuss was kicked up in the fall of 2003 about the leaking of the name of Wilson's wife, former CIA operative Valerie Plame, to...
Posted in War and Piece on April 10, 2006 11:13 PM
WaPo: Cheney at center of Anti-Wilson campaign.As he drew back the curtain this week on the evidence against Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time described a "concerted action" by "multiple people...
Posted in War and Piece on April 8, 2006 11:05 PM
Cheney's Role in Authorizing Plame Leak. I also thought the Fitzgerald filings portrayed Cheney as being at the center of the conspiracy to attack Wilson by leaking to reporters information about his wife. This from the Post today seemed to...
Posted in War and Piece on April 8, 2006 07:58 AM
Reporter Jeff Smith in Friday's WaPo: "Once the disclosure of Plame's name became the target of an investigation, Libby 'implored White House officials' to issue a statement exonerating him, according to Fitzgerald's account. When he was rebuffed, Libby requested that...
Posted in War and Piece on April 6, 2006 10:32 PM
NY Sun: "Bush Authorized Leak to Times."...The new disclosure could be awkward for the president because it places him, for the first time, directly in a chain of events that led to a meeting where prosecutors contend the identity of...
Posted in War and Piece on April 6, 2006 10:04 AM
Woodward's Plame source was Armitage, Ben Bradlee tells Vanity Fair (according to Drudge). (I thought so -- after thinking it was about three other people.) More....
Posted in War and Piece on March 13, 2006 11:17 AM
New York mag: Why Cheney's more trouble than he's worth... but won't go:Start with the fact that Cheney, irrevocably, has gone from being a figure of fear to being a punch line—and not just in the hands of Leno, Letterman,...
Posted in War and Piece on February 27, 2006 06:31 PM
Senate Intelligence committee chairman Pat Roberts accused of writing the White House a "series of blank checks" in one of the major hometown papers, the Wichita Eagle: "Roberts' credibility on the line:... From Abu Ghraib abuses to secret CIA detainee...
Posted in War and Piece on February 19, 2006 10:23 PM
Along the same lines as the thinking the Vice President is expressing here, 2006 GOP hopefuls shouldn't run away from the Plame matter, but run on it. They should run on the virtues of leaking classified information for partisan attack,...
Posted in War and Piece on February 10, 2006 04:58 PM
Another scoop from Murray Waas' blog -- last Friday. President Bush briefed on Wilson's trip to Niger in his President's Daily Brief? Apparently, yes:In court papers made public late last week, Fitzgerald revealed that there was information regarding Wilson’s mission...
Posted in War and Piece on February 10, 2006 04:08 PM
Newsweek: Plame was still covert....
Posted in War and Piece on February 5, 2006 07:42 PM
What a phony: "The existence of this secret program was revealed in media reports after being improperly provided to news organizations. As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort...
Posted in War and Piece on December 17, 2005 12:43 PM
Sen. Charles Schumer joins Bob Novak in asking President Bush who from the White House leaked Plame's name....
Posted in War and Piece on December 15, 2005 08:46 AM
Viveca Novak testimony to help Rove defense? And get this: Novak and Rove attorney Luskin -- are friends:...Viveca Novak ... has been asked to provide sworn testimony to Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald in the next few weeks after Rove...
Posted in War and Piece on November 28, 2005 11:38 PM
Listening to Meet the Press, heard Russert mention that now Time's Viveca Novak has been asked to testify by Fitzgerald. She wrote the big Time piece on Woodward's conversation with his source ... Is she being asked to testify about...
Posted in War and Piece on November 27, 2005 01:21 PM
The PDBs. The WaPo reports on one stockpile of pre-war Iraq intelligence product the White House had and the Congress did not: that which was in the President's Daily Brief for a few years. Democratic lawmakers are trying to get...
Posted in War and Piece on November 19, 2005 01:08 PM
Note in this WaPo piece on the Plame investigation, how differently is being portrayed Woodward's role in encouraging his source to come forward to Fitzgerald. According to this newer account, in reporting a story in advance of the Libby indictment,...
Posted in War and Piece on November 19, 2005 07:30 AM
Kevin Drum makes an important point here:Why did Bob Woodward's source suddenly decide to come forward earlier this month and tell Patrick Fitzgerald that he had revealed Valerie Plame's CIA status to Woodward in mid-June 2003? Because Woodward himself suggested...
Posted in War and Piece on November 18, 2005 06:09 PM
Whodunnit, Cont'd The AP reports that, from South Korea, national security advisor Stephen Hadley won't say whether he spoke to Woodward about Plame: ... Referring to news accounts about the case, Hadley said with a smile, "I've also seen press...
Posted in War and Piece on November 18, 2005 02:09 PM
Woodward-source Whodunnit -- Armitage? More informed analysis from the NYT. The paper hints it's someone higher up, someone who Woodward did long interviews with, could be current or former senior administration official, and adds some names to those who denied...
Posted in War and Piece on November 18, 2005 08:51 AM
Cheney not Woodward's first source, the AP's John Solomon reports. Well, we kind of knew that. But this is peculiar:...Woodward did not talk with the vice president that day, did not provide the information that's been reported in Woodward's notes...
Posted in War and Piece on November 17, 2005 11:02 PM
The Post piece on Woodward's Plame knowledge from Wednesday (not the new one in tomorrow's paper) says:In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame...
Posted in War and Piece on November 17, 2005 12:59 AM
Went to see a preview of the new film Syriana, written/directed by the team who did Traffic, and based in part on the work of former CIA officer Bob Baer, tonight. Learned a little detail in the Q and A...
Posted in War and Piece on November 16, 2005 12:13 AM
Libby's notebooks suggest that he has been covering for Cheney, the Post reports: ... Libby, according to Fitzgerald's indictment, gave a false story to agents and, later, to a grand jury, even though he knew investigators had his notes, and...
Posted in War and Piece on November 13, 2005 11:32 AM
Murray Waas' latest on the Plame investigation....
Posted in War and Piece on November 11, 2005 09:33 PM
This Plamegate poll analysis is quite interesting. Only 12% think it's of little or no importance....
Posted in War and Piece on November 3, 2005 11:40 AM
Libby learned about Plame's identity from...Cheney, the NYT reports: I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks...
Posted in War and Piece on October 24, 2005 09:27 PM
What prompted Judy Miller to suddenly find her notes from the June 23, 2003 meeting with Scooter Libby? Murray Waas reports:When a prosecutor first questioned Miller during her initial grand jury appearance on September 30, 2005 sources said, she did...
Posted in War and Piece on October 20, 2005 07:25 PM
More on Cheney's cold war against the CIA, its long history and possible relevance to the Plame case, from the LA Times' Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten:...Leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Cheney worked with Defense Secretary Donald...
Posted in War and Piece on October 20, 2005 11:19 AM
One thing we know from the Fitzgerald investigation: the campaign to discredit Joe Wilson by saying he had only gotten the trip to Niger as a boondoggle from his wife, a CIA officer, was part of a larger, concerted effort...
Posted in War and Piece on October 19, 2005 12:20 PM
An interesting take on Miller from a colleague, Newsweek's Christopher Dickey, who worked in Cairo with her twenty years ago:...Judy’s great talent as a reporter is in gaining access. Full stop. She doesn’t always know what she has when she’s...
Posted in War and Piece on October 18, 2005 11:56 PM
Fitzgerald probe focuses on Libby, Murray Waas reports tonight at the National Journal:...According to attorneys familiar with his testimony, Libby told the grand jury that at the meeting, he told Miller that Plame had something to do with Wilson's being...
Posted in War and Piece on October 18, 2005 07:06 PM
Slate's Eric Umansky:...Citing "lawyers familiar with the case and government officials," the Post's off-lead says the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case investigation has "zeroed in" on Vice President Cheney's office and that the tension between that office and...
Posted in War and Piece on October 18, 2005 10:27 AM
Holy moly. From the NY Daily News:A special prosecutor's intensifying focus into who outed a CIA spy has raised questions whether Vice President Cheney himself is involved, knowledgeable sources confirmed yesterday. At least one source and one reporter who have...
Posted in War and Piece on October 18, 2005 10:10 AM
Plame didn't work for WINPAC after all, as Libby allegedly told Miller. But did the State Department memo on how Wilson got the trip say she did? And what does the fact that Libby thought she did tell investigators about...
Posted in War and Piece on October 18, 2005 01:46 AM
From Tuesday's Washington Post: "Cheney’s Office Is A Focus in Leak Case; Sources Cite Role Of Feud With CIA."As the investigation into the leak of a CIA agent’s name hurtles to an apparent conclusion, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has...
Posted in War and Piece on October 17, 2005 10:55 PM
Poynter's Jim Romenesko is posting some interesting letters on various aspects of the Miller/Plame/Fitzgerald case....
Posted in War and Piece on October 17, 2005 11:05 AM
The NYT's David Johnston reports tonight that, "Lawyers with clients in the case have said that the rapid flow of events and intensity of Mr. Fitzgerald's final push suggest that the prosecutor is preparing to accuse someone of wrongdoing. But...
Posted in War and Piece on October 16, 2005 11:36 PM
A colleague and reader pointed out something really chilling to me today, that a Nexis search confirms. Until Frank Rich mentioned it in his column today, the New York Times has never mentioned the White House Iraq Group. Not once....
Posted in War and Piece on October 16, 2005 05:51 PM
This has obviously been speculated about for months on the blogs. But it's worth remembering, wasn't Bolton's acting chief of staff Frederick Fleitz wearing a second hat when he was working for Bolton? That hat was....wait....an analyst with the CIA's...
Posted in War and Piece on October 16, 2005 02:30 PM
This is just creepy. From Miller's report:...When I was last before the grand jury, Mr. Fitzgerald posed a series of questions about a letter I received in jail last month from Mr. Libby. The letter, two pages long, encouraged me...
Posted in War and Piece on October 15, 2005 10:02 PM
The Miller Case:In a notebook belonging to Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times, amid notations about Iraq and nuclear weapons, appear two small words: "Valerie Flame." Ms. Miller should have written Valerie Plame. That name is at...
Posted in War and Piece on October 15, 2005 05:46 PM
This WaPo story advances the Plame investigation story in a few ways here: Fitzgerald has advised Miller that she is only being considered as a witness and not as a subject of his investigation; Miller is cooperating with the NYT...
Posted in War and Piece on October 15, 2005 12:03 AM
Rove testifies. Still there. Update: It's Rover, as Atrios says, 4 1/2 hours later. I wonder why Fitzgerald didn't call Libby back to testify about the notes from the June 23 2003 conversation Miller testified about earlier this week. Why...
Posted in War and Piece on October 14, 2005 12:36 PM
"Intense uncertainty" in the Bush White House, the NYT reports, as Karl Rove prepares to testify to the Plame grand jury for a fourth time Friday:...These days, though, the leak investigation is almost never spoken of openly within the West...
Posted in War and Piece on October 13, 2005 11:06 PM
Among the several stories out this morning noting the release of NYT reporter Judy Miller from further obligations to the Plame grand jury, this graph in the WaPo piece is interesting:...As early as May of that year [2003], Cheney's office...
Posted in War and Piece on October 13, 2005 08:49 AM
Perhaps my eyes are getting tired, but according to this CNN headline, Miller revealed she had a second source about Miller/Plame. But where in this report does it explain that? The news seems to be that she revealed a previously...
Posted in War and Piece on October 12, 2005 01:27 PM
I think Kevin Drum is asking the right question here: has Fitzgerald already subpoenaed the White House Iraq Group's documents and correspondence from June 2003? Newsday's Tom Brune reported on March 5, 2004 that Fitzgerald had subpoeaned WHIG documentation dating...
Posted in War and Piece on October 12, 2005 01:05 PM
It's worth revisiting WaPo reporter Walter Pincus' Nieman Watchdog report on the Plame investigation:...On July 12, 2003, an administration official, who was talking to me confidentially about a matter involving alleged Iraqi nuclear activities, veered off the precise matter we...
Posted in War and Piece on October 12, 2005 12:51 PM
More digging in the WHIG archives. This from Dan Froomkin's White House briefing in February 2004:...Plame Watch Tom Brune of Newsday has gotten a hold of the subpoenas issued in January as part of the probe over who leaked Valerie...
Posted in War and Piece on October 12, 2005 11:17 AM
From tomorrow's WSJ Plame article:...There are signs that prosecutors now are looking into contacts between administration officials and journalists that took place much earlier than previously thought. Earlier conversations are potentially significant, because that suggests the special prosecutor leading the...
Posted in War and Piece on October 11, 2005 11:35 PM
"Libby did not tell grand jury about a key conversation," Murray Waas reports in National Journal:In two appearances before the federal grand jury investigating the leak of a covert CIA operative's name, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff to...
Posted in War and Piece on October 11, 2005 04:16 PM
Atrios digs through the archives to remind us of the White House campaign to deliberately leak Plame's name and occupation to reporters, in order to retaliate against her husband. This from the WaPo's Dana Priest and Mike Allen from September...
Posted in War and Piece on October 10, 2005 12:39 PM
Miller "finds more notes" -- from a JUNE 2003 conversation with Lewis Libby. Reports Reuters:New York Times reporter Judith Miller discovered notes from an earlier conversation she had with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and turned them over...
Posted in War and Piece on October 7, 2005 04:28 PM
"Rove Assured Bush He Was Not Leaker," Murray Waas reports at National Journal:White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove personally assured President Bush in the early fall of 2003 that he had not disclosed to anyone in the press...
Posted in War and Piece on October 7, 2005 03:42 PM
The NYT describes Rove as being summoned by Fitzgerald, and not the other way around, and says things aren't looking good for the White House:The special prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case has summoned Karl Rove, the senior White House...
Posted in War and Piece on October 6, 2005 07:43 PM
Rove to testify to Plame grand jury, at his request:Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer's leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee...
Posted in War and Piece on October 6, 2005 03:38 PM
Off the Record on the NYT and the Plame case. Money quote:...But a lawyer familiar with the case said it was Mr. Fitzgerald who seemed to be getting desperate. “It was coming close to the end of the term; obviously,...
Posted in War and Piece on October 5, 2005 09:16 AM
The NYT says, a story on the Miller-Libby-Plame issue is coming....
Posted in War and Piece on October 3, 2005 11:28 PM
Russ Hoyle's thoughts on what Miller may really be protecting are definitely worth a read:...It may be time to admit that we’ve probably been asking the wrong questions about Judith Miller. The chattering classes so far have completely ignored the...
Posted in War and Piece on October 3, 2005 08:27 AM
Reader JH notes, that Newsweek is reporting that Fitzgerald intended to impanel a new grand jury, "a move that could have kept Miller in jail for another year and a half." Also this:...Tate acknowledges that Libby did indeed tell Miller...
Posted in War and Piece on October 2, 2005 02:28 PM
This theory of a criminal conspiracy charge from the Plame investigation as described in this WaPo piece comes from lawyers who have been dealing with Fitzgerald:...But a new theory about Fitzgerald's aim has emerged in recent weeks from two lawyers...
Posted in War and Piece on October 2, 2005 11:11 AM
Miller's comments to reporters after testifying, from E&P. And from Dan Froomkin:Reporter/blogger Murray Waas writes: "Miller's testimony is central to whether special [counsel] Fitzgerald brings criminal charges against I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney....
Posted in War and Piece on September 30, 2005 04:40 PM
A bunch of readers have sent reports that Judith Miller has been released from jail. From the Philadelphia Inquirer via Raw Story:...She was released after she had a telephone conversation with the Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I....
Posted in War and Piece on September 29, 2005 09:06 PM
Arianna Huffington's sources:...So could Ambassador Bolton actually be a target of Pat Fitzgerald's investigation? When considering this question, it's important to keep in mind that he's never been subpoenaed or questioned by the Plamegate grand jury -- and, as a...
Posted in War and Piece on September 21, 2005 12:11 PM
Is Bush promising to oversee an investigation into what went wrong with Katrina response sort of like his vow to fire whoever in his administration leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame's name? Update: Look at the bright side. He could have...
Posted in War and Piece on September 6, 2005 12:09 PM
Big comprehensive Plame/Fitzgerald story from the LAT. It's not that there's so much new in here as it has the whole chronology and teases out the details and the patterns. What the piece reiterates is how the Rovean strategy of...
Posted in War and Piece on August 25, 2005 10:13 AM
Murray Waas has the latest on the Plame investigation, and interestingly, the decision to appoint a special prosecutor in the first place:...The combination of Ashcroft's close relationship with Rove, the omission of critical information from the FBI by Rove during...
Posted in War and Piece on August 14, 2005 06:22 PM
Plame prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's new boss....
Posted in War and Piece on August 13, 2005 10:40 AM
Via Kevin Drum, I noticed this interesting tidbit about Susan Ralston, Karl Rove's "right hand" personal assistant who testified to the Plame grand jury last Friday. Ralston apparently used to be the right hand to...Jack Abramoff. And since we're drifting...
Posted in War and Piece on August 2, 2005 06:19 PM
A third administration source on Plame, not a 'partisan gun-slinger'....who? Hadley?...
Posted in War and Piece on July 27, 2005 11:17 PM
The WaPo has the latest on the Plame leak investigation. Senate Intelligence committee chair Pat Roberts may not be interested in administration influence on pre-war intelligence misstatements, but Fitzgerald apparently is:Prosecutors have questioned former CIA director George J. Tenet and...
Posted in War and Piece on July 27, 2005 10:37 AM
Kevin Drum is spot on here:...Until Patrick Fitzgerald finishes his investigation, we won't know everything that really happened here. In fact, we still might not know even then. But we've learned one thing already: when presented with even a hint...
Posted in War and Piece on July 26, 2005 10:28 PM
As a colleague just reminded me, the Next Hurrah has some great coverage of the Plame leak investigation, esp. blogger Empty Wheel. More on the investigation here and here, via Romenesko....
Posted in War and Piece on July 25, 2005 11:45 AM
On Face the Nation today (.pdf document linked), Alberto Gonzales said that he told Andy Card about the Justice Department investigation of the Plame leak at 8pm, and they determined not to notify White House staff to preserve all relevant...
Posted in War and Piece on July 24, 2005 04:41 PM
Fitzgerald surprised to learn Rove was Cooper's first source on Plame, the WaPo reports....
Posted in War and Piece on July 23, 2005 11:24 AM
Here we go. This NYT piece on the Plame leak case suggests that Rove and Libby may have been the White House officials involved in pushing back on Wilson to reporters, because they were simultaneously working on a PR effort...
Posted in War and Piece on July 21, 2005 10:46 PM
Excellent Jonathan Alter column on Rove/Plame, and the cost of Rove's treating every national security issue as fair game for politicking....
Posted in War and Piece on July 18, 2005 11:12 AM
New tidbits from the LAT:Activities aboard Air Force One are also of interest to prosecutors — including the possible distribution of a State Department memo that mentioned Wilson's wife. Prosecutors are seeking to find out whether anyone who saw the...
Posted in War and Piece on July 18, 2005 10:34 AM
This Newsweek article on Rove moves some new information to the fore:...In May, the State Department's intelligence unit had prepared a secret memorandum about the provenance of Wilson's journey and its classified results—including the curious fact that Wilson's wife, a...
Posted in War and Piece on July 17, 2005 10:47 AM
Have been re-reading articles on the rather sudden coming apart of the administration's Iraq-Niger uranium claims in March 2003 literally as the US invaded Iraq, and on the evolution of the investigation of the outting of Valerie Plame, from when...
Posted in War and Piece on July 17, 2005 08:13 AM
The most comprehensive take on the Plame case so far, from the WaPo's Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen. Update: What's really useful in this piece is the timeline....
Posted in War and Piece on July 16, 2005 10:36 PM
State and the Valerie Wilson memo. Blogger Next Hurrah and I have been batting back and forth theories of the State Department memo on Joseph Wilson's fact finding trip to Niger reported on today in the NYT, and it's got...
Posted in War and Piece on July 16, 2005 05:51 PM
How does State fit in the Plame outting mix?Prosecutors in the C.I.A. leak case have shown intense interest in a 2003 State Department memorandum that explained how a former diplomat came to be dispatched on an intelligence-gathering mission and the...
Posted in War and Piece on July 15, 2005 11:02 PM
Truly interesting Hitchens review of Woodward's new book, and on leaks, Watergate, Plame, etc. This line really catches one's eye, "Counter-leaking against the C.I.A. has had the grotesque result of putting a reporter for this newspaper behind bars." That's a...
Posted in War and Piece on July 15, 2005 01:10 PM
This NYT account, which describes Rove as Novak's second 'source' confirmation on Plame, begs the question, who was his first administration source? The "no partisan gunslinger?" The article seems to hint it was someone from Cheney's office:Mr. Novak's July 14,...
Posted in War and Piece on July 15, 2005 10:38 AM
What Karl Rove told the grand jury:Presidential confidant Karl Rove testified to a grand jury that he learned the identity of a CIA operative originally from journalists, then informally discussed the information with a Time magazine reporter days before the...
Posted in War and Piece on July 15, 2005 09:21 AM
Karl Rove and the press, and his history with the Bush family:[George W. Bush and Rove] came together during young adulthood, when an ambitious former Texas congressman, George H.W. Bush, held the job of chairman of the Republican National Committee....
Posted in War and Piece on July 13, 2005 12:09 PM
Reporter Murray Waas has an interesting piece tonight, on Novak's testimony to the grand jury investigating the Plame leak. In it he asserts that one thing that caught prosecutor Fitzgerald's attention were phone records of a series of calls between...
Posted in War and Piece on July 13, 2005 12:35 AM
The White House on the defensive about its previous denials that Karl Rove had a role in outting Joseph Wilson's wife as a CIA operative. More from the Post: · Rove and his lawyer's denials that he was involved in...
Posted in War and Piece on July 11, 2005 06:46 PM
Two more from tomorrow's papers on Rove/Plame, from the WaPo and the NYT....
Posted in War and Piece on July 10, 2005 11:08 PM
Newsweek's Mike Isikoff has gotten ahold of Time's Matt Cooper's emails revealing Rove as his original source on Joe Wilson's wife working for the CIA:It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper...
Posted in War and Piece on July 10, 2005 08:27 AM
Hosenball and Isikoff on Cooper, Miller and the White House:...But with today’s developments, the political atmosphere could change. For openers, Cooper would inevitably have to tell the grand jury exactly which “government official” had “noted” to Time that Plame worked...
Posted in War and Piece on July 7, 2005 12:09 PM
Walter Shapiro:...The Bush White House has been the most locked-down in history for reporters. And future administrations, even Democratic ones, are likely to emulate this nearly impenetrable Karen Hughes-inspired, message-discipline approach, under which even innocuous unauthorized conversations with the press...
Posted in War and Piece on July 7, 2005 07:14 AM
Howard Kurtz gets this strange moment right:...A White House that routinely whispers sensitive information to reporters continues to decry the practice of leaking, even as the probe raises questions about the involvement of the president's top political adviser... A media...
Posted in War and Piece on July 7, 2005 07:04 AM
Is it Rove? Not so fast, argue David Corn and Murray Waas. President Bush's top political advisor probably never expected from the liberal media such a defense of waiting to hear all the facts first concerning his being outted as...
Posted in War and Piece on July 5, 2005 04:10 PM
The NYT's Scott Shane profiles Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson....
Posted in War and Piece on July 4, 2005 10:47 PM
Swopa's got me thinking. Is "Wilson's wife" the same thing as "Valerie Plame"? Rove's attorney said Rove "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA." But did he...
Posted in War and Piece on July 3, 2005 12:38 PM
Plame Perjury Investigation? David Ignatius reports. (Via Kevin Drum)....
Posted in War and Piece on May 13, 2005 02:22 PM
Plame investigation effectively over? Journalist Murray Waas reports in The American Prospect that Plame special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald filed court papers last month saying "he completed virtually all aspects of his federal grand jury investigation as long as six months...
Posted in War and Piece on April 6, 2005 12:21 PM
Journalist Murray Waas is promising to deliver a scoop on the Plame investigation soon. [Thx to RP]....
Posted in War and Piece on April 5, 2005 04:35 PM
Was outting Valerie Plame as a CIA operative a crime? The WaPo's Dan Eggen reports that "A federal court should first determine whether a crime has been committed in the disclosure of an undercover CIA operative's name before prosecutors are...
Posted in War and Piece on March 24, 2005 10:50 AM
The WaPo's Charles Lane on the Valerie Plame leak case -- did Novak take the fifth?:But Novak is not before the court, and a key question in the case is why he is not, because he presumably knows the identities...
Posted in War and Piece on November 29, 2004 10:53 AM
Karl Rove spent more than two hours testifying before the Plame grand jury Friday. As Josh Green's profile of Roveian tactics makes clear, Rove pretty much deserves to face criminal prosecution for something. Whether it be for leaking Plame's name,...
Posted in War and Piece on October 15, 2004 04:58 PM
Does Kenneth Starr still bear a grudge against the NYT? The WaPo reports that Judith Miller could be going to jail: A federal judge held a reporter in contempt Thursday for refusing to divulge confidential sources to prosecutors investigating the...
Posted in War and Piece on October 7, 2004 02:22 PM
Anonymous has company. Plame name leaker Bob Novak has an interesting column in today's print edition of the Washington Post, leaking the name of the lead author of the National Intelligence estimate on Iraq. That would be the NIE that...
Posted in War and Piece on September 27, 2004 11:38 AM
Plame leak update: When confidential sources no longer want confidentiality: When you read this, isn't it clear that the Post source who voluntarily revealed his identity to Fitzgerald recently is I. Lewis Libby? But the Post, understandably, goes through contortions...
Posted in War and Piece on September 16, 2004 04:16 PM
A grand unifying theory for all Bush administration foreign policy and intelligence malfeasance wrapped up in this one two year old FBI counterintelligence investigation probing AIPAC and Feith's office? So reports the Washington Post and Knight Ridder. "The whole ball...
Posted in War and Piece on September 2, 2004 11:49 PM
Congress wants answers. This from ranking House Judiciary Committee member John Conyers, which popped into my email inbox just now: August 31, 2004 The Honorable F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. Chairman Committee on the Judiciary 2138 Rayburn House Office Building Washington,...
Posted in War and Piece on September 1, 2004 02:00 PM
Time's Matt Cooper gives limited testimony to Plame investigator Fitzgerald. Seems there is much interest in Scooter Libby:Fitzgerald has shown a continuing interest in Libby. Witnesses have said Fitzgerald has e-mails and phone records showing his contacts with reporters and...
Posted in War and Piece on August 24, 2004 12:19 PM
Singing like a canary? Markos "Daily Kos" has heard some pretty hyperventilation-inducing rumors about the Plame investigation. We'll be sure to keep an eye on this....
Posted in War and Piece on August 23, 2004 06:39 PM
Swopa and Kevin Drum have some interesting theories regarding today's news about Tim Russert and the Valerie Plame inquiry. I myself don't quite understand why each journalist seems to be being treated differently by the judge. Time's Matthew Cooper has...
Posted in War and Piece on August 9, 2004 06:55 PM
More signs the Plame inquiry is wrapping up? The FBI agent leading the investigation has just been promoted to head the FBI's Philadelphia field office....
Posted in War and Piece on July 30, 2004 12:37 PM
Swopa is right. Someone appears to be planting just the kinds of stories you would expect to see were the administration to be anticipating indictments in the Plame affair very soon. Check out this Wash Times piece from today, highlighted...
Posted in War and Piece on July 23, 2004 01:31 PM
The WaPo's Glenn Kessler agreed to be questioned by the Plame special prosecutor on his two phone conversations witih I. Lewis Libby last July. Apparently, Lewis signed a waiver asking Kessler to testify because Libby says he did not mention...
Posted in War and Piece on June 23, 2004 10:00 AM
Commissioner Tim Roemer just asked US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who is testifying at the 9/11 commission, if he has anything to say about the Plame investigation. I'm listening on the radio so couldn't see Fitzgerald's reaction, but everybody laughed. Nice...
Posted in War and Piece on June 16, 2004 11:09 AM
The coming reports. The CIA is trying to suppress publication of up to 40% of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee's report on pre-war intelligence blunders, according to the NYT.The Central Intelligence Agency has ruled that large portions of a report...
Posted in War and Piece on June 16, 2004 07:29 AM
Check out Bob Dreyfuss' "Investigation Summer" post today at TomPaine. Between the FBI Valerie Plame investigation, the forthcoming 9/11 commission report, the Senate Select Intelligence committee report on pre-war intelligence, the multiple counterintelligence investigations of who leaked US intelligence to...
Posted in War and Piece on June 15, 2004 12:42 PM
Meantime, the Plame inquiry seems to be drawing to a head....
Posted in War and Piece on June 6, 2004 04:31 PM
In anticipation of the 9/11 commission report, which will almost certainly recommend the creation of an American 'MI5,' FBI director Robert Mueller has proposed the creation of a special intelligence unit at the FBI. Seems George Tenet is not the...
Posted in War and Piece on June 4, 2004 12:14 PM
Plame prosecutor wants journalists to testify at grand jury. That's not likely to happen. WaPo's Susan Schmidt asks, does that mean, desperation, since Justice department guidelines indicate journalists are to be asked to testify only as a last resort? Or...
Posted in War and Piece on May 17, 2004 11:27 AM
A thumbnail review of Amb. Joe Wilson's forthcoming Politics of Truth, out Friday, is the second item here. Post Script: This longer article on Wilson's book has a couple surprises, and reiterates what I have recently heard from government sources:...
Posted in War and Piece on April 29, 2004 08:47 AM
Plame investigation speculation, via Atrios: From Tweety's Show: [Newsweek's Howard] FINEMAN: Remember the leak investigation? CHRIS MATTHEWS: Yes. Mr. FINEMAN: Who leaked that name? That's getting big behind the scenes, and I think it's going to be a bigger story...
Posted in War and Piece on April 13, 2004 06:28 AM
As Tapped's Matthew Yglesias points out, surely this Wall Street Journal opinion piece on the Valerie Plame affair today exposes more about the WSJ's hypocrisy than that of those Democrats demanding justice for Plame....
Posted in War and Piece on March 15, 2004 01:21 PM
Certain names keep appearing again and again associated with the many controversies surrounding the manipulation of Iraq intelligence before the war: the Plame outting, the failing to alert the NSC and White House leadership of caveats in the National Intelligence...
Posted in War and Piece on March 11, 2004 09:51 AM
The Prospect's Murray Waas has quite a scoop on the Plame investigation: Karl Rove's grand jury testimony....
Posted in War and Piece on March 8, 2004 04:33 PM
Amb. Joseph Wilson to name names in his book, due out in May. Will he get scooped by the FBI?...
Posted in War and Piece on March 2, 2004 09:39 PM
Fear at the White House in the silence among those interviewed in the Plame proble, the New York Times reports: "At the White House, the topic is rarely discussed openly among those who have already been drawn into the investigation...
Posted in War and Piece on February 12, 2004 11:56 PM
Fox News reports that the reason former White House press aide Adam Levine may have been interviewed by the Plame leak grand jury is "because Fleischer and Bartlett were with Bush on a July 7-12 trip to Africa just prior...
Posted in War and Piece on February 11, 2004 12:29 PM
Newsday has a nice timeline of the Plame leak affair, here....
Posted in War and Piece on February 11, 2004 12:23 PM
The White House press aide interviewed this week by FBI officials in relation to the Plame leak investigation, Adam Levine, apparently left the White House in December. Which is when John Aschroft recused himself from the investigation. Now several news...
Posted in War and Piece on February 10, 2004 12:42 PM
"K Street" Meets Plame-Leak Grand Jury: "White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday that he talked to the grand jury last week," the Post reports. "Mary Matalin, former counselor to Vice President Cheney, testified Jan. 23, the sources said....
Posted in War and Piece on February 9, 2004 11:16 PM
Bush may have appointed a commission to look into the Iraq intelligence imbroglio. But pretty much everything any voter needs to know is here, in this old article by the New Republic's Franklin Foer and Spencer Ackerman on the Office...
Posted in War and Piece on February 7, 2004 07:03 PM
Juan Cole advances the Plame inquiry story honing in on two staffers of the office of vice president Cheney, here....
Posted in War and Piece on February 7, 2004 06:46 PM
A word of caution on two previous posts. Josh Marshall notes news orgs seem to be sitting on the UPI report that suggests the Plame probe is close to moving against two leading officials in the office of the Vice...
Posted in War and Piece on February 6, 2004 11:54 AM
Indictments in the Plame affair forthcoming, report Josh Marshall and Matt Yglesias. Two members of Vice President Cheney's office, John Hannah and Lewis "Scooter" Libby being named by UPI. Hannah is Cheney's top Mid-East analyst, and a former deputy director...
Posted in War and Piece on February 5, 2004 04:00 PM
Grand jury seated in the Plame leak affair, reports Time. "One conclusion to be drawn from this latest step, said one lawyer familiar with the case, is that investigators clearly have a sense of how the case is shaping up....
Posted in War and Piece on January 22, 2004 10:48 PM
A group of ex-CIA officers has written to Congress asking for an investigation into the Novak-Plame leak affair. Meanwhile, while the progress of the Justice Department's investigation of who in the Bush administration leaked Plame's identity to Novak remains unclear,...
Posted in War and Piece on January 22, 2004 05:03 AM
The Plame leak investigation gathers pace. The American Prospect's Tapped reports that Ashcroft has recused himself from the investigation. As we are blogging on a Spanish keyboard we will get the links up to speed after New Year's. Until then,...
Posted in War and Piece on December 30, 2003 03:28 PM
You've got to love Congressman Henry Waxman. The California Democrat was out there ahead of his colleagues investigating the fat in the President's requested budget for Iraq, and now he's pushing the House Government Reform committee to investigate who leaked...
Posted in War and Piece on December 9, 2003 05:05 PM
War & Piece has been slogging through deep snow in Boston to attend a journalism conference, and has a meaty article assignment to get out before it can resume full force, later this week. But a few articles attracted our...
Posted in War and Piece on December 8, 2003 11:07 AM
Surreal: "At the buffet at [NBC correspondent Campbell] Brown's home in Adams Morgan, former ambassador Joseph Wilson IV waxed indignant about the perfidies of the senior administration officials who he believes leaked the identity of his CIA-agent wife, Valerie Plame...
Posted in War and Piece on October 22, 2003 10:19 AM
Smouldering Anger at Ashcroft's Justice Department from within the ranks, on the Plame inquiry. Read it here (NYT, reg. req.)....
Posted in War and Piece on October 15, 2003 11:47 PM
Leak-Gate Must Read, here. Several new bits of information here, including the timing and the evolution of the White House's campaign to try to discredit Wilson, by trying to convince reporters he was only chosen to go to Niger because...
Posted in War and Piece on October 11, 2003 11:57 PM
The Wall Street Journal has discovered that Brewster Jennings Associates, Valerie Plame's cover firm, was registered with Dun & Bradstreet in 1994, registered at a Boston address, 101 Arch St. as a legal services firm, that has no record of...
Posted in War and Piece on October 11, 2003 01:14 PM
Fingerprints from Cheney's office on Leak? ..."A former intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, says Plame worked under non-official cover in overseas assignments, meaning she claimed no affiliation to any government agency.... "In Washington, Plame was assigned to the...
Posted in War and Piece on October 1, 2003 11:09 AM
Was the Plame Leaker Not From the White House? Increasingly, this seems to be what the reports of three of the journalists who were contacted by "administration officials" outting Valerie Plame are suggesting. The NYT reports tonight: "The Justice Department...
Posted in War and Piece on September 30, 2003 11:29 PM
Novak, Liar: In his July 14 column outting Amb. Joseph Wilson's wife's identity, Novak wrote: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told...
Posted in War and Piece on September 30, 2003 12:07 AM