Inaccurate Info May Help CIA Leak ProbeTue Oct 18, 2005 00:5864.140.158.25
The Charles Goyette Show - 10/17/05 - KXXT - 1010 AM
Judith Miller - a/k/a Ms. Run-A-Muck !!
2005-10-17-Charles-03.mp3 (audio/mpeg Object)
http://www.charlesgoyette.com/archive/media/2005-10-17-Charles-03.mp3
Inaccurate Info May Help CIA Leak Probe
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5350688,00.html
Tuesday October 18, 2005 12:01 AM
AP Photo WX18
By JOHN SOLOMON and PETE YOST
Associated Press Writers
WASHINGTON (AP) - Information attributed to Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff in New York Times reporter Judith Miller's interview notes is incorrect, offering prosecutors a potential lead to tracking the bad information to its original source.
Miller disclosed this weekend that her notes of a conversation she had with I. Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby on July 8, 2003 stated Cheney's top aide told her that the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson worked for the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC) unit.
Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, never worked for WINPAC, an analysis unit in the overt side of the CIA, and instead worked in a position in the CIA's secret side, known as the directorate of operations, according to three people familiar with her work for the spy agency.
The three all spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the current secrecy requirements of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury investigation into the leak of Plame's identity in 2003 to the media.
The revelation came as President Bush weighed in Monday by declining to say what he would do if one of his aides were indicted in the investigation, and the Pentagon looked into Miller's claim that she was granted a security clearance in 2003 while reporting with a military unit during the Iraq war.
Libby previously testified to the grand jury and it is not known whether he provided the information about WINPAC during his testimony.
Whether it came from Libby or Miller's notes, former federal prosecutors and investigators said the incorrect information provides a significant lead for Fitzgerald and FBI agents to follow. It could suggest Libby thought Plame was not an undercover spy, and therefore couldn't have knowingly revealed her occupation, or that he got his information from uninformed sources, they said.
``The fact that the information is inaccurate may make it of even greater interest to the grand jury than accurate information,'' said Lance Cole, former Democratic counsel to the Senate Whitewater Committee and now a law professor at Penn State Dickinson School of law.
``Accurate information presumably can come from any number of sources. If he got it from a particular document or in a meeting and that document or notes of that meeting are the only place that the inaccuracy is present, then that establishes the source,'' Cole said.
Danny Coulson, a former top FBI official who conducted several investigations of leaks, said the possibility that Libby passed on wrong information to a reporter may indicate he didn't get his information from a credible, official source.
``What it tells me is he probably got his information from dinner talk,'' Coulson said. Presidential aides ``had access to the official information and if they had used that, you would think they would have had the right stuff.''
Even if Libby or other White House aides did not knowingly reveal Plame's covert identity, the prosecutor could consider other charges such as the mishandling of classified information, false statements and obstruction of justice, lawyers have said.
In her story published Sunday recounting her legal battle and imprisonment for refusing to testify earlier, Miller described her breakfast meeting conversation on July 8, 2003 with Libby and the point at which it turned to Plame.
``My notes contain a phrase inside parentheses: 'Wife works at Winpac.' Mr. Fitzgerald asked what that meant,'' Miller wrote.
``I told the grand jury that I believed that this was the first time I had heard that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for Winpac,'' she wrote. ``In fact, I told the grand jury that when Mr. Libby indicated that Ms. Plame worked for Winpac, I assumed that she worked as an analyst, not as an undercover operative.''
With the investigation nearing an end, Bush on Monday declined to say whether he would remove an aide under indictment.
``There's a serious investigation,'' the president said. ``I'm not going to prejudge the outcome of the investigation.'' He commented in response to reporters' questions during a meeting with Bulgaria's president, Georgi Parvanov.
Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, as well as Libby have been questioned by the grand jury. Rove last week made his fourth and final appearance, where he was pressed on conflicts between his account and those of other witnesses.
At the Pentagon, officials also looked into Miller's claim that she had a security clearance while working as an embedded reporter during the Iraq war, shortly before her conversations with Libby.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he was unaware of Miller having a security clearance. He said security clearances are covered by privacy laws, so he couldn't talk about it.
But Whitman said reporters who were embedded with military units during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars signed ground rules in which they agreed not to make public sensitive or secret information that they learned while with the unit.
``For a security clearance you have to go through any number of specific background investigative checks, and there are different agencies that do those. And depending on the level of clearance that's required, there's certain paperwork that has to be filled out and it has to be adjudicated,'' said Whitman.
He said commanders can't simply give a reporter a security clearance while in the field with the unit.
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Have been waiting for an excuse to use this picture, and this evening feels just about right. You can feel it, too, can't you? That ever-growing feeling of pressure and tension in the air. That hint of ozone from the lightning striking closer and closer. It's not just me this evening, is it?
First, there was this article in the Guardian online, regarding the fact that the probe that Fitz is leading has caught a break bcause the details that Judy Miller was given by Scooter Libby were incorrect. My mind is racing through all the possibilities and I come back to two:
(1) Someone deliberately gave Scooter inaccurate information because they didn't trust him and wanted to see what he would do with it. To have given him accurate information was too much of a risk, and had a higher damage potential, so this was a way to limit damage if he leaked it. (Ooops...good call, if so.)
(2) Scooter gets all his good information on people at cocktail parties with CIA agents who drink too much. (Not as likely, but hey...trying to be fair.)
But there are clearly at least three CIA folks (ex or current) (or NSA or national security related somehow) who were willing to vouch for the fact that Valerie Plame Wilson never worked for WINPAC, but instead worked for the directorate of operations -- which is a whole other thing altogether, and extra super double secret probation kind of material.
And it looks like Judy Miller didn't really have any super secret clearance for herself after all. According to the Guardian (who got a quote from Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman which essentially details exactly what someone has to go through to get clearance and his snide tone indicates that Judy did no such thing).
NBC came to the same conclusion on La Vida Judy, with Jim Miklaszewski reporting that:
Officials from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon say they have no idea what New York Times reporter Judith Miller was talking about when she claimed to have been given a "security clearance" while she was embedded with a U.S. Army unit in Iraq in 2003.
Ouch -- "no idea." Not even a "let me check on that and get back to you." Double ouch. Although if Judy were to have been given clearance and then revealed classified information she obtained through her clearance access...well, maybe she'd better put Bob Bennett on speed dial.
Then, I stumbled onto this Financial Times story that Fitz's probe has widened to take a peek at pre-war intelligence handling, including a majority of the WHIG membership. Apparently, the political use of intelligence information has now become a matter of interest for our boy Fitz -- especially given that it may have been used as a weapon against the critics of the Administration.
Um...hello...schadenfreude hotline? I need a double helping, please....
Then, there is this piece from The Raw Story, claiming that the NY Daily News will report in tomorrow's edition that a well-placed source within the WH has flipped and has been helping Fitzgerald. And that all eyes are absolutely on Dick Cheney. Haven't see the NYDaily News piece yet. No idea what it says. But I swear, my birthday may be coming a day early this year if it is true.
Can you hear the thunder in the distance?
posted by ReddHedd @ 10:40 PM
http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/
Crooks & Liars has the video of Bob Bennett up from This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Bennet on Libby's letter:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/10/17.html#a5425
GS: Did she believe that that letter was an attempt to steer her testimony?
BB: Well I...I wouldn't say the answer to that was yes, but it was very troubling. Our reaction when we got that letter, both Judy's and mine, was that was a very stupid thing to put in a letter, because it just complicated the situation. It was a very foolish thing to put in a letter.
According to Judy's article, much of her questioning before the grand jury was focused on that letter. Both Judy and Bennett seem to be tapdancing through landmines as they struggle to keep from giving a straight answer about whether she thought Scooter was trying to influence her testimony.
George S. did not press Bennett on the far more interesting question -- whether they saw Libby's letter as an attempt to influence Judy to only testify about the July meetings, and conveniently "forget" about the June one, and whether this was something she had actually done.
Scooter may vie with Judy for the this year's Bulwer-Lytton Prize for wretched writing, but alas The Hard Hitting Journalist of the Year Award will not be going to George.
posted by Jane Hamsher @ 10:10 PM
http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/
The Miller Case: A Notebook, a Cause, a Jail Cell and a Deal
By DON VAN NATTA Jr., ADAM LIPTAK and CLIFFORD J. LEVY
Published: October 16, 2005
CLICK FULL REPORT:
CIA LEAK: JUDITH MILLER
OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD ASSET!
http://www.apfn.org/APFN/JUDITH_MILLER.HTM
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