Rovegate

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Op woensdag 20 juli 2005 22:34 schreef Lyrebird het volgende:
Ik liep net langs het Shriners Burns hospital, hier in Boston, toen er net een groep kinderen naar binnen ging. De kinderen, die ernstig tot zeer ernstig verbrand waren, worden daar verpleegd. Ze hadden hun ouders bij zich en er waren ook kinderen bij die volgens mij regelrecht uit Irak te kwamen. Moeilijk in te schatten, want ze hadden geen naamkaartjes op. Maar sommige moeders hadden hoofddoekjes om.

Het ziekenhuis wordt 100% filantropisch gefinancierd door de Shriners en wordt alleen gebruikt voor de operatie en verpleging van kinderen met brandwonden. De Shriners zijn een club hele rijke mensen.

Je kunt veel over Amerikanen zeggen, maar zo'n ziekenhuis zul je in Nederland niet zien.

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Rove, Libby Accounts in CIA Case Differ With Those of Reporters

Two top White House aides have given accounts to a special prosecutor about how reporters first told them the identity of a CIA agent that are at odds with what the reporters have said, according to people familiar with the case.

Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned from NBC News reporter Tim Russert of the identity of Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, one person said. Russert has testified before a federal grand jury that he didn't tell Libby of Plame's identity, the person said.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told Fitzgerald that he first learned the identity of the CIA agent from syndicated columnist Robert Novak, according a person familiar with the matter. Novak, who was first to report Plame's name and connection to Wilson, has given a somewhat different version to the special prosecutor, the person said.

These discrepancies may be important because Fitzgerald is investigating whether Libby, Rove or other administration officials made false statements during the course of the investigation. The Plame case has its genesis in whether any administration officials violated a 1982 law making it illegal to knowingly reveal the name of a covert intelligence agent.

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10/5/01: Bush Pulls Security Clearances From 92 Senators

“We can’t have leaks of classified information. It’s not in our nation’s interest.” - President George W. Bush, 10/9/01

President Bush’s defiant statement came in the immediate weeks following 9/11, as the administration clamped down on the information it provided to Congress. President Bush issued an order limiting access to classified intelligence only to 8 members of Congress — the Speaker of the House, House Minority Leader, Senate Majority Leader, Senate Minority Leader, and chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees.

What precipitated this course of action?

Gannett News Service reported on 10/1/01 that Bush was restricting information because, “The Washington Post reported last week that various lawmakers had been told there would be more terrorist attacks if the United States retaliated.”

Here’s what the Washington Post reported:

Asked whether more terrorist attacks are inevitable if the United States retaliates, [Sen. Richard] Shelby said, “You can bet on that.” … U.S. intelligence officials have told members of Congress there is a high probability that terrorists associated with Osama bin Laden will try to launch another major attack on U.S. targets here or abroad. [Washington Post, 10/6/01]

So at this slightest whiff of evidence that information was being leaked, President Bush pulled classified intelligence access for 92 senators. There was no ongoing criminal investigation nor was there evidence that all the members who had their access limited had leaked information. And now he refuses to hold Karl Rove and Scooter Libby to anywhere near the same standard, despite confirmation of their involvement in the leak of an undercover CIA agent’s identity.

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Op zaterdag 4 februari 2006 13:08 schreef Monidique het volgende:

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[q]Fitzgerald Hints White House Records Sought in CIA Leak Case Were Lost[/b]

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is raising the possibility that records sought in the CIA leak investigation could be missing because of an e-mail archiving problem at the White House.

The prosecutor in the criminal case against Vice President Dick Cheney\'s former chief of staff said in a Jan. 23 letter that not all e-mail was archived in 2003, the year the Bush administration exposed the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame.

Lawyers for defendant I. Lewis \"Scooter\" Libby this week accused prosecutors of withholding evidence the Libby camp says it needs to mount a defense.

\"We are aware of no evidence pertinent to the charges against defendant Libby which has been destroyed,\" Fitzgerald wrote in a letter to the defense team.

But the prosecutor added: \"In an abundance of caution, we advise you that we have learned that not all e-mail of the Office of Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system.\" His letter was an exhibit attached to Libby\'s demand for more information from the prosecution.

Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for Cheney, said the vice president\'s office is cooperating fully with the investigation, and referred questions to Fitzgerald\'s office.

Libby is charged with five counts of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI regarding how he learned of Plame\'s identity and what he did with the information.

The Presidential Records Act, passed by Congress in 1978, made it clear that records generated in the conduct of official duties did not belong to the president or vice president, but were the property of the government.

The National Archives takes custody of the records when the president leaves office.

\"Bottom line: Accidents happen and there could be a benign explanation, but this is highly irregular and invites suspicion,\" said Steve Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists government secrecy project.

\"A particular subset of records sought in a controversial prosecution have gone missing,\" Aftergood said. \"I think what is needed is for the national archivist to ascertain what went wrong and how to ensure it won\'t happen again.\"

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Bush authorized leak of Iraq intelligence estimate, indicted ex-Cheney aide says

A former White House aide under indictment for obstructing a leak probe, I. Lewis Libby, testified to a grand jury that he gave information from a closely-guarded "National Intelligence Estimate" on Iraq to a New York Times reporter in 2003 with the specific permission of President Bush, according to a new court filing from the special prosecutor in the case

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A Fresh Focus on Cheney
Hand-written notes by the Vice President surface in the Fitzgerald probe.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek

May 13, 2006 - The role of Vice President Dick Cheney in the criminal case stemming from the outing of White House critic Joseph Wilson's CIA wife is likely to get fresh attention as a result of newly disclosed notes showing that Cheney personally asked whether Wilson had been sent by his wife on a "junket" to Africa.

Cheney's notes, written on the margins of a July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed column by former ambassador Joseph Wilson, were included as part of a filing Friday night by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the perjury and obstruction case against ex-Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

The notes, Fitzgerald said in his filing, show that Cheney and Libby were "acutely focused" on the Wilson column and on rebutting his criticisms of the White House's handling of pre-Iraq war intelligence. In the column, which created a firestorm after its publication, Wilson wrote that he had been dispatched by the CIA without pay to Niger in February, 2002 to investigate an intelligence report that Iraq was seeking uranium from the African country for a nuclear bomb. Wilson said he was told Cheney had asked about the intelligence,but the White House subsequently ignored his findings debunking the Niger claims.

In the margins of the op-ed, Cheney jotted out a series of questions that seemed to challenge many of Wilson's assertions as well as the legitimacy of his CIA sponsored trip to Africa: "Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an Amb. [sic] to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?"

It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for Cheney's own notes to be made public. The notes—apparently obtained as a result of a grand jury subpoena—would appear to make Cheney an even more central witness than had been previously thought in the criminal probe. Fitzgerald's prosecution has created continued problems for the White House. Karl Rove, the President Bush's chief political advisor, recently made his fifth grand jury appearance in the case and remains under scrutiny while Fitzgerald weighs whether to file criminal charges against him. For now, Libby is the only figure charged in the case.

Lea Ann McBride, a spokeswoman for the vice president, declined to comment on the newly disclosed notes. "We continue to cooperate in the investigation as we have since its inception," she said.

Fitzgerald first alleged that Cheney had questioned whether Wilson's trip was a "junket" in a court filing last month. In that filing, Fitzgerald also asserted that the vice president, acting with the approval of President Bush, had authorized Libby to disclose portions of the classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq to rebut some of Wilson's claims.

But the notes provide significant new context to that assertion. They show the vice president personally raised questions about Wilson's trip right after the publication of the Wilson column-and five days before Libby confirmed to Time reporter Matt Cooper that he had "heard" that Wilson's wife, former CIA agent Valerie Plame, had played a role in sending him to Africa.

Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame after the White House Correspondents' dinner in Washington in AprilLibby, questioned by the FBI and by federal prosecutors in two grand jury appearances, denied providing that confirmation to Cooper and insisted he had heard about Wilson's wife a day or two earlier from NBC TV Meet the Press host Tim Russert—an account that Fitzgerald charged in an indictment last October was a lie. Fitzgerald in his court filing indicated he plans to introduce a copy of Cheney's annotated version of the Wilson column to show the vice president's interest in the circumstances surrounding Wilson's trip was an important matter to Libby that week and explains many of his actions. Those actions, according to the indictment, include discussing Plame's employment at the CIA—a matter Fitzgerald has said was classified at the time—with New York Times reporter Judy Miller on July 8, 2003.

Fitzgerald also said in his court filing that he plans to introduce a copy of Robert Novak's July 14, 2003 newspaper column that first identified Plame as a CIA "operative" who worked issues related to weapons of mass destruction. Fitzgerald said he will do so in order to introduce evidence about a series of conversations that he argued could undercut one of Libby's principal defenses: that he had no reason to believe Plame's employment was a sensitive matter and therefore had no reason to lie to the grand jury about when and with whom he spoke about it.

According to Fitzgerald's filing, on the day that the Novak column was published, a CIA official was asked in Libby's presence by another Cheney aide whether he had read the column. The CIA official had not. But shortly thereafter, the unidentified CIA official discussed in Libby's presence "the dangers posed by disclosure of the CIA affiliation of one of its employees as had occurred in the Novak column," Fitzgerald wrote.

This evidence, Fitzgerald added, "directly contradicts" the assertion by defense lawyers that Libby "had no motive to lie" to the FBI and to the grand jury because he "thought that neither he nor anyone else had done anything wrong." Instead, Fitzgerald asserts, "the evidence about the conversation concerning the Novak column provides a strong motive for the defendant to provide false information and testimony about his disclosures to reporters."

A spokeswoman for Libby declined comment on the filing.

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Cheney could be witness in CIA leak case

WASHINGTON, May 24 Vice President Dick Cheney could be called to testify in the CIA leak case involving his former chief of staff, a U.S. prosecutor said in a pre-trial filing made on Wednesday.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald told a federal court that Cheney's hand-written notes on a newspaper article referring to Valerie Plame shortly before she was exposed as a CIA operative were uniquely relevant to the issues in the case.

Fitzgerald was referring to a July 6, 2003, article written by Plame's husband, Bush administration critic and former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Shortly after the article appeared, Plame's identity as a covert CIA operative was leaked to journalists. Fitzgerald is investigating whether Bush administration officials broke the law by disclosing Plame's identity.

"At the time, the vice president, rather than other potential witnesses, was upset that his personal credibility had been attacked unfairly in his view," Fitzgerald said.

Cheney's former aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby was charged with obstruction of justice and lying to FBI agents and a grand jury during the investigation. He has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go to trial in January.

Fitzgerald said understanding what conversations took place between Cheney and Libby in the week after Wilson's opinion piece was published was critical to determining whether Libby thought it was necessary or appropriate to disclose Wilson's wife's CIA status with reporters.

A spokesperson for Cheney was not immediately available for comment.

Cheney, whose name has surfaced in other court documents as well, told the Fox News Channel in February that he may be called as a witness in the case.

In the court filing, Fitzgerald said Libby has acknowledged that he and the vice president discussed Wilson's article.

"Here as defendant has acknowledged, the vice president communicated to defendant the facts he considered notable, and also directed defendant to get out to the public 'all' the facts in response to the Wilson Op Ed," Fitzgerald wrote in the court filing.

"The state of mind of the vice president as communicated to defendant is directly relevant to the issue of whether defendant knowingly made false statements to federal agents and the grand jury regarding when and how he learned about Ms. Wilson's employment and what he said to reporters regarding this issue," Fitzgerald said in the court filing.

However, Fitzgerald noted that the government has not commented on whether it intends to call Cheney as a witness.