1) Nonpartisan diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV is sent by the George W. Bush administration to Niger, Africa to check out intel that claimed Saddam was trying to get yellowcake uranium from said country.
2) No evidence was found, Wilson returned to the US and reported that fact.
3) Bush makes the claim in his State of the Union address that Saddam had, in fact, sought to obtain yellowcake through Niger (pronounced NEE-JEHR).
4) Wilson does an op-ed in the NYT claiming that the Bush 43 Admin is squelching his findings and pumping up incorrect intel to help justify the Iraq Attack
5) The name of Wilson's wife is leaked to the press. The catch is that his wife was an undercover CIA agent and it's a treasonous act to expose the identity of an undercover agent because it can not only endanger her life but an operation that could do as much as start a war.
6) Naturally, the government wants to know who leaked her name to the press. Strangely, they go after Time Mag reporter Matthew Cooper and NYT reporter Judith Miller for what they know but CNN's Robert Novak isn't on the hotseat despite the fact that they all mentioned Wilson's wife's name in their reporting.
7) Time Mag gives in and turns over Miller's notes which point the source-finger at Rove. Yep, big surprise, it's Rove who leaked the Wilson's wife's name. If you know anything about Rove, you know that he did it to get back at Wilson for speaking out about the Bush 43 Admin trying to bury the yellowcake-non-story.
Here are some links pertaining to this story. The first bunch are from right here at ThePete.Com. Many are "round-up" posts just like this one because there was so much coverage of this story back when it first broke. How Bush still got away with lying escapes me at the time of this post.
From ThePete.Com:
(oldest to newest)
http://thepete.com/wow-bush-43-admin-admits-a-mistake-a-big-mistake/
http://thepete.com/usgov-spins-web-of-defense-against-accusations-of-misleading-the-world-on-iraq/ (July 10, 2003)
http://thepete.com/bush-knew/ (July 10, 2003)
http://thepete.com/more-usgov-spin-on-iraquraniumniger-evidence/ (July 11, 2003)
http://thepete.com/iraquraniumniger-usukgov-spin-round-up/ (July 13, 2003)
http://thepete.com/iraqnigeruranium-lie-news-round-up/ (July 14, 2003)
http://thepete.com/bush-misled-about-more-than-niger-evidence/ (July 17, 2003)
http://thepete.com/niger-evidence-news-round-up/
http://thepete.com/oo-they-said-the-i-word/
http://thepete.com/rove-leaked-cia-agents-name-big-fucking-surprise/
Off-Site links:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/politics/05wilson.html?ei=5065&en=098db82eca21fe76&ex=1121227200&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print|Private Spy and Public Spouse Live at Center of Leak Case] (NYTimes.com)
The above links to a pretty good basic article regarding the whole thing. Of course, it doesn't bring up what really matters, why Bush has yet to be impeached for clearly lying to us all. It does include this tidbit:
Former C.I.A. officers differ on the impact of Mr. Novak's identification of Ms. Wilson, who had been working against weapons proliferation in Europe and elsewhere while posing as an analyst for a shell company in Boston, Brewster Jennings & Associates, set up by the agency.
Clandestine service officers working under such "nonofficial cover" - rather than the traditional guise of diplomat - are considered to hold the most sensitive and vulnerable jobs in intelligence, lacking the protection of diplomatic immunity if they are unmasked overseas. Disclosing the C.I.A. employment of officers under cover can endanger the officers, their operations and their agents, as well as violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, the law that prompted the current leak investigation.
The article goes on to quote CIA officers who feel that her cover was already pretty thin--to that I ask this question:
Is there a law that can't be broken if you can find the right qualifiers?
Here's another question:
When do we stop breaking our laws?
More links:
[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8445696/site/newsweek/|The Rove Factor?] (MSNBC.com / Newsweek)
The above article confirms that it was Rove that leaked the agent's name. So, technically, he should be brought up on treason charges, right? Or at the very least he should be arrested for violation of that 1982 law, right?
[http://reuters.myway.com/article/20050705/2005-07-05T200854Z_01_N05132438_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-MEDIA-LEAK-DC.html|Prosecutor jail for journalists in leak case] (Reuters.com / MyWay.com)
Here's where things get dicey. I'm going to do a separate blog entry on this part of the story, so if you've already read about this, my apologies. While I'm all for catching the guy who leaked this agent's name, freedom of speech is something that I am very passionate about and it's being threatened in this situation. See, these reporters who revealed the agent's name in their reporting are now being forced to give up their source. I think this is wrong despite the fact that it's too late. See, I feel that these reporters should be put on trial for violating that 1982 law--not for refusing to turn over their sources. Journalists should be protected from being forced to give up their sources. However, someone disagrees with me. Here's a quote from the above linked article:
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald urged Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan to reject requests from New York Times correspondent Judith Miller and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper for home detention instead of jail.
"Journalists are not entitled to promise confidentiality -- no one in America is," Fitzgerald, a U.S. Justice Department prosecutor, wrote in one of the court filings.
Isn't that nice? So, now, apparently any of us Americans can say whatever we want but we can be forced to admit who told us what we are saying. According to this DoJ prosecutor it's illegal to keep secrets if they are given to you by someone else.
Is God still blessing America? I can't really tell at this point.
I'm really curious why Robert Novak isn't being nailed for this along with Miller and Cooper since it's my understanding that he mentioned the agent's name in his reporting, too.
UPDATED 7/11/5: Well, the scuttlebutt about Novak is that he's done some sort of deal with the USG to avoid prosecution. How the guy sleeps at night without letting us know what that deal is is beyond me. I'm beginning to think Jon Stewart was right when he called Novak "Douchebag for Freedom."
Anyway, here's another link on this story:
[http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8525978/site/newsweek/|Matt Cooper's Source] (MSNBC.com / Newsweek)
This article basically explains that Rove mentioned to Cooper that Wilson's wife was the instigator of his mission to Africa. He also mentioned that she was a CIA Agent working on WMD issues for the agency. In the end, this article is quite fuzzy as to just what the hell Rove meant by the info. Still, have a read and if it makes sense to you, be a dear and explain it to me?
From NYTimes.com:
July 5, 2005Private Spy and Public Spouse Live at Center of Leak Case
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, July 1 - For nearly two years, the investigation into the leak of a covert C.I.A. officer's name has unfolded clamorously in the nation's capital, with partisan brawling on talk shows, prosecutors interviewing President Bush and top White House officials, and the imminent prospect that reporters could go to jail for contempt of court.
But the woman at the center of it all, Valerie E. Wilson, has kept her silence, showing the discipline and discretion that colleagues say made her a good spy. As her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, has become a highly visible critic of the administration and promoted his memoirs, Ms. Wilson has ferried their 5-year-old twins to doctors' appointments, looked after their hilltop house in the upscale Palisades neighborhood of Washington and counseled women with postpartum depression.
On June 1, after a year's unpaid leave, Ms. Wilson, now known to the country by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, returned to a new job at the Central Intelligence Agency, determined to get her career back on track, her husband said. Neither the agency nor Mr. Wilson would describe her position, except to make what might seem an obvious point: she will no longer be working under cover, as she did successfully for almost 20 years.
"Before this whole affair, no one would ever have thought of her as an undercover agent," said David Tillotson, a next-door neighbor for seven years who got to know the Wilsons well over back-fence chats, shared dinners and play dates for their grandchildren with the Wilsons' children, Trevor and Samantha.
"She wasn't mysterious," Mr. Tillotson said. "She was sort of a working soccer mom."
He recalled his incredulity on July 14, 2003, when his wife, Victoria, spotted in The Washington Post, in a syndicated column by Robert Novak, a line identifying their neighbor by her maiden name and calling her an "agency operative." Ms. Tillotson kept calling out: "This can't be! This can't be!"
The Wilsons' neighbor on the other side, Christopher Wolf, was similarly aghast. As he sat on his deck staring at the Novak column, Mr. Wilson came out his back door.
"I said: 'This is amazing! I had no idea,' " Mr. Wolf recalled. "He sort of motioned to me to keep my voice down."
A Jaguar-driving, cigar-smoking, silver-haired former ambassador, Mr. Wilson, 55, interpreted the leak of his wife's C.I.A. connection as an act of vengeance from White House officials for his public accusations of deceit in building a case for the Iraq war. Days before the leak, he had gone public in a New York Times Op-Ed article and television appearances to charge that the administration had covered up his own debunking of reports that Iraq had bought uranium in Africa.
What he calls a "smear campaign" against the couple has catalyzed his transformation from nonpartisan diplomat - he worked closely with the first President Bush and his top aides during the first gulf war - to anti-Bush activist.
On Wednesday, a federal judge is expected to decide whether two reporters, Judith Miller of The Times and Matt Cooper of Time magazine, will go to jail for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigation into the leak. That the leaker appears willing to permit journalists to be incarcerated rather than taking public responsibility for his actions simply shows the leaker's "cravenness and cowardice," Mr. Wilson said.
It is not known what information, if any, Mr. Novak supplied to prosecutors, but he is not facing jail time.
Meanwhile, Ms. Wilson, 42, whose husband said she has used her married name both at work and in her personal life since their 1998 marriage, declined to speak for this article. She has guarded her privacy, with rare exceptions. She posed with her husband for a Vanity Fair photographer, wearing sunglasses and with a scarf over her blond hair. She drafted an op-ed article to correct what she felt were distortions of her and her husband's actions, but the C.I.A. would not authorize its publication, saying it would "affect the agency's ability to perform its mission."
Former C.I.A. officers differ on the impact of Mr. Novak's identification of Ms. Wilson, who had been working against weapons proliferation in Europe and elsewhere while posing as an analyst for a shell company in Boston, Brewster Jennings & Associates, set up by the agency.
Clandestine service officers working under such "nonofficial cover" - rather than the traditional guise of diplomat - are considered to hold the most sensitive and vulnerable jobs in intelligence, lacking the protection of diplomatic immunity if they are unmasked overseas. Disclosing the C.I.A. employment of officers under cover can endanger the officers, their operations and their agents, as well as violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, the law that prompted the current leak investigation.
"This situation has been very hard on her, professionally and personally," said Melissa Boyle Mahle, a former C.I.A. case officer and a friend of Ms. Wilson. "Not only have you removed from the playing field a very knowledgeable counterproliferation officer at a time when we really need her services. But before this she was on a fast track as a candidate for senior management at the agency. With something like this, her career will never recover."
But other former C.I.A. officers say that by 2003 Ms. Wilson's cover was already thin. Any serious inquiry would have revealed that Brewster Jennings was little more than a mailbox. Though she traveled regularly, Ms. Wilson, who speaks French, German and Greek, had been working for some time at agency headquarters in Langley, Va. And her marriage to a senior American diplomat, Mr. Wilson, ended any pretense of having no government ties.
"At that point, she looks, walks and quacks like an overt agency employee," said Fred Rustmann, a C.I.A. officer from 1966 to 1990, who supervised Ms. Wilson early in her career and calls her "one of the best, an excellent officer."
Yet outside the spy world, word of her real employment came as a shock. To have such a carefully nurtured identity shattered in a single stroke was traumatic, Mr. Wilson said. "Your whole network of personal relationships over 20 years are compromised," he said.
Ms. Wilson had to explain to friends and relatives that she had never leveled with them since joining the agency shortly after graduating from Pennsylvania State University with a degree in journalism in 1984.
"My sister-in-law turned to my brother," Mr. Wilson recalled, "and said, 'Do you think Joe knew?' "
Joe knew. As their relationship grew serious after they met at a 1997 reception at the Turkish ambassador's residence, Valerie Plame revealed her real job to Mr. Wilson, who had a top secret clearance. Three months after they married, he retired from the State Department after a 23-year career that included an ambassadorship to two countries, Gabon and São Tomé and PrÃncipe. Now he consults on business projects in Africa as J. C. Wilson International Ventures.
Their marriage was her second and his third; he is also the father of 26-year-old twins from his first marriage. Friends say that after the birth of their twins in 2000, Ms. Wilson suffered postpartum depression, which prompted her to become active in helping other mothers.
The Wilsons have had a low-key social life, friends say. Mr. Wilson said they had attended only one "A-list Washington party," given by Ben Bradlee, the retired Washington Post editor. Before July 2003, some neighbors knew them from the playground only as "Trevor and Samantha's mom and dad."
Their turn in the limelight changed that temporarily, as liberal celebrities embraced them; they were honored in late 2003 at a dinner at the guesthouse of the television producer Norman Lear, with guest list that included Warren Beatty.
The couple's actions in 2002 have become, in the polarized politics of the Iraq war, subject to divergent interpretation. All agree that Mr. Wilson traveled to Niger in February 2002 at the C.I.A.'s request to assess reports that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium there. There the agreement ends.
In the version of his Republican critics, laid out in part by members of the Senate Intelligence Committee last year, Mr. Wilson's trip was a junket orchestrated by his wife. Further, the critics say, Mr. Wilson's findings on the uranium question were equivocal. But as a partisan Democrat, they say, he exploited his minor involvement to attack the president, asserting that Mr. Bush misled the American people by citing the questionable uranium claim in his 2003 State of the Union address.
Mr. Wilson has laid out his own account in interviews and in his memoir, "The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies That Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's C.I.A. Identity." The 514-page book, which features on the back cover photographs of Mr. Wilson with the first President Bush, President Bill Clinton and Saddam Hussein, has sold 60,000 copies in hardcover, according to the publisher, Carroll & Graf. The just-published paperback includes an 11,000-word essay by Russ Hoyle, an investigative reporter recruited by Carroll & Graf to examine factual disputes raised by the case.
Mr. Wilson said that though his wife wrote a memorandum describing his expertise at the request of a C.I.A. superior, she did not propose him for the Niger trip. He scoffs at the notion that a trip to one of the poorest countries on earth, for which he was paid only his expenses, was some kind of prize.
He has acknowledged he may have misspoken about a few details, like the date he became aware of forged documents purporting to show a uranium sale. But conservatives' attacks on his credibility, he said, are merely an effort to distract Americans from a far graver fact: that the United States went to war on the basis of flimsy, distorted evidence.
"I'm deeply saddened that the debate before the war did not adequately take into consideration issues that a number of us had raised," Mr. Wilson said.
While his wife has shunned publicity, he has become an always-available news media voice, lending the weight of international experience and insider status to criticism of Mr. Bush's conduct of the war.
Despite conservatives' efforts to portray him as a left-wing extremist, he insisted he remained a centrist at heart. But after his tangle with the current administration, he admits "it will be a cold day in hell before I vote for a Republican, even for dog catcher."
Mr. Wilson ended a long interview in a downtown hotel when he realized he was late to pick up the twins. As the first gulf war loomed, and Mr. Wilson was the last American official to meet with Saddam Hussein, his older twins, Joe and Sabrina, were 12 years old, and worried that their father might not make it out of Baghdad to join them in the United States, he said.
During this war with Iraq, the gravest danger to him has been political vilification. He and his wife, Mr. Wilson said, have tried to insulate their children from the hubbub that followed the leak of her name.
It has not always been easy. Once, when Trevor was 3, he recognized his father on yet another show.
"He banged on the TV," Mr. Wilson recalled, "and said, 'Dad, get out of the box!' "
Lynette Clemetson contributed reporting for this article.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
From MSNBC.com and Newsweek:
The Rove Factor?
Time magazine talked to Bush's guru for Plame story.
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
July 11 issue - Its legal appeals exhausted, Time magazine agreed last week to turn over reporter Matthew Cooper's e-mails and computer notes to a special prosecutor investigating the leak of an undercover CIA agent's identity. The case has been the subject of press controversy for two years. Saying "we are not above the law," Time Inc. Editor in Chief Norman Pearlstine decided to comply with a grand-jury subpoena to turn over documents related to the leak. But Cooper (and a New York Times reporter, Judith Miller) is still refusing to testify and faces jail this week.
At issue is the story of a CIA-sponsored trip taken by former ambassador (and White House critic) Joseph Wilson to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium from the African country of Niger. "Some government officials have noted to Time in interviews... that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," said Cooper's July 2003 Time online article.
Now the story may be about to take another turn. The e-mails surrendered by Time Inc., which are largely between Cooper and his editors, show that one of Cooper's sources was White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, according to two lawyers who asked not to be identified because they are representing witnesses sympathetic to the White House. Cooper and a Time spokeswoman declined to comment. But in an interview with NEWSWEEK, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove had been interviewed by Cooper for the article. It is unclear, however, what passed between Cooper and Rove.
The controversy began three days before the Time piece appeared, when columnist Robert Novak, writing about Wilson's trip, reported that Wilson had been sent at the suggestion of his wife, who was identified by name as a CIA operative. The leak to Novak, apparently intended to discredit Wilson's mission, caused a furor when it turned out that Plame was an undercover agent. It is a crime to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover CIA official. A special prosecutor was appointed and began subpoenaing reporters to find the source of the leak.
Novak appears to have made some kind of arrangement with the special prosecutor, and other journalists who reported on the Plame story have talked to prosecutors with the permission of their sources. Cooper agreed to discuss his contact with Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide, after Libby gave him permission to do so. But Cooper drew the line when special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald asked about other sources.
Initially, Fitzgerald's focus was on Novak's sourcing, since Novak was the first to out Plame. But according to Luskin, Rove's lawyer, Rove spoke to Cooper three or four days before Novak's column appeared. Luskin told NEWSWEEK that Rove "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA." Luskin declined, however, to discuss any other details. He did say that Rove himself had testified before the grand jury "two or three times" and signed a waiver authorizing reporters to testify about their conversations with him. "He has answered every question that has been put to him about his conversations with Cooper and anybody else," Luskin said. But one of the two lawyers representing a witness sympathetic to the White House told NEWSWEEK that there was growing "concern" in the White House that the prosecutor is interested in Rove. Fitzgerald declined to comment.
In early October 2003, NEWSWEEK reported that immediately after Novak's column appeared in July, Rove called MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews and told him that Wilson's wife was "fair game." But White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters at the time that any suggestion that Rove had played a role in outing Plame was "totally ridiculous." On Oct. 10, McClellan was asked directly if Rove and two other White House aides had ever discussed Valerie Plame with any reporters. McClellan said he had spoken with all three, and "those individuals assured me they were not involved in this."
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
From Reuters.com and MyWay.com:
Prosecutor jail for journalists in leak case
Jul 5, 4:08 PM (ET)
By James Vicini
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two journalists should be jailed for refusing to reveal their confidential sources to a grand jury investigating the leak of a covert CIA operative's name to the news media, a federal prosecutor said on Tuesday.
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald urged Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan to reject requests from New York Times correspondent Judith Miller and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper for home detention instead of jail.
"Journalists are not entitled to promise confidentiality -- no one in America is," Fitzgerald, a U.S. Justice Department prosecutor, wrote in one of the court filings.
He said he would defer to the judge on whether the two journalists should be confined in the Washington, D.C., jail or in some other nearby federal detention facility.
The judge has scheduled a hearing on Wednesday to consider the punishment for Miller and Cooper for refusing to disclose their sources and comply with a subpoena requiring them to turn over documents and testify before the grand jury.
They have been found in contempt by Hogan and each could be jailed for up to 120 days, the remainder of the grand jury's term. The investigation seeks to determine who in the Bush administration leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame in 2003.
Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, a diplomat in the Clinton administration, has accused the White House of being responsible for the leak. He said officials did so because Wilson had publicly disputed a prewar claim by President Bush about Iraq's attempts to buy nuclear weapons parts.
Although Time magazine has handed over subpoenaed records, Fitzgerald said after reviewing the documents that Cooper's testimony was still necessary for his investigation.
Fitzgerald said "special treatment" for the journalists would "enable, rather than deter, defiance of the court's authority."
"Although confinement in a federal detention facility would separate Cooper from his family, special counsel reiterates that all Cooper need do to avoid this result is to follow the law as all American citizens are required to," he said.
Fitzgerald made a similar argument in the Miller case and said she would be jailed only for as long as she refuses to comply. "Miller could avoid even a minute of separation from her husband if she would do no more than just follow the law."
Fitzgerald said the judge should reject an alternative request by the journalists that they be sent to a specified federal prison camp instead of to a local jail.
Cooper's attorneys said in court documents that his refusal to testify was a matter of personal and professional ethics involving his desire to keep his obligation to protect the identity of his confidential sources.
Miller's attorneys made similar arguments.
They said she must have confidential access to high-level government sources to do her job. "Nothing less will do in a free society with an independent press."
Copyright 2005 Reuters
From MSNBC.com and Newsweek:
Matt Cooper's Source
What Karl Rove told Time magazine's reporter.
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
July 18 issue - It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper was tapping out an e-mail to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy. "Subject: Rove/P&C," (for personal and confidential), Cooper began. "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation ..." Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, "please don't source this to rove or even WH [White House]" and suggested another reporter check with the CIA.
Last week, after Time turned over that e-mail, among other notes and e-mails, Cooper agreed to testify before a grand jury in the Valerie Plame case. Explaining that he had obtained last-minute "personal consent" from his source, Cooper was able to avoid a jail sentence for contempt of court. Another reporter, Judith Miller of The New York Times, refused to identify her source and chose to go to jail instead.
For two years, a federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, has been investigating the leak of Plame's identity as an undercover CIA agent. The leak was first reported by columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. Novak apparently made some arrangement with the prosecutor, but Fitzgerald continued to press other reporters for their sources, possibly to show a pattern (to prove intent) or to make a perjury case. (It is illegal to knowingly identify an undercover CIA officer.) Rove's words on the Plame case have always been carefully chosen. "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name," Rove told CNN last year when asked if he had anything to do with the Plame leak. Rove has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife. But last week, his lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed to NEWSWEEK that Rove did—and that Rove was the secret source who, at the request of both Cooper's lawyer and the prosecutor, gave Cooper permission to testify.
The controversy arose when Wilson wrote an op-ed column in The New York Times saying that he had been sent by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate charges that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from the African country of Niger. Wilson said he had found no evidence to support the claim. Wilson's column was an early attack on the evidence used by the Bush administration to justify going to war in Iraq. The White House wished to discredit Wilson and his attacks. The question for the prosecutor is whether someone in the administration, in an effort to undermine Wilson's credibility, intentionally revealed the covert identity of his wife.
In a brief conversation with Rove, Cooper asked what to make of the flap over Wilson's criticisms. NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the e-mail that Cooper sent his bureau chief after speaking to Rove. (The e-mail was authenticated by a source intimately familiar with Time's editorial handling of the Wilson story, but who has asked not to be identified because of the magazine's corporate decision not to disclose its contents.) Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger ... "
Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative. Nonetheless, it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak's column appeared; in other words, before Plame's identity had been published. Fitzgerald has been looking for evidence that Rove spoke to other reporters as well. "Karl Rove has shared with Fitzgerald all the information he has about any potentially relevant contacts he has had with any reporters, including Matt Cooper," Luskin told NEWSWEEK.
A source close to Rove, who declined to be identified because he did not wish to run afoul of the prosecutor or government investigators, added that there was "absolutely no inconsistency" between Cooper's e-mail and what Rove has testified to during his three grand-jury appearances in the case. "A fair reading of the e-mail makes clear that the information conveyed was not part of an organized effort to disclose Plame's identity, but was an effort to discourage Time from publishing things that turned out to be false," the source said, referring to claims in circulation at the time that Cheney and high-level CIA officials arranged for Wilson's trip to Africa.
Fitzgerald is known as a tenacious, thorough prosecutor. He refused to comment, and it is not clear whether he is pursuing evidence that will result in indictments, or just tying up loose ends in a messy case. But the Cooper e-mail offers one new clue to the mystery of what Fitzgerald is probing—and provides a glimpse of what was unfolding at the highest levels as the administration defended a part of its case for going to war in Iraq.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
No comments:
Post a Comment