LEAK-GATE
BUSH, "F**K LEAKGATE"
Thu Jan 8 22:49:38 2004
64.140.158.20

BUSH, "F**K LEAKGATE"
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LEAK-GATE/links/
The moment that piece hit the op-ed page of the New York Times, it was all-out war between the pro- and anti-war factions, and between the CIA and its critics. I am told by what I regard as a very reliable source inside the White House that aides there did, in fact, try to peddle the identity of Joe Wilson's wife to several reporters. But the motive wasn't revenge or intimidation so much as a desire to explain why, in their view, Wilson wasn't a neutral investigator, but, a member of the CIA's leave-Saddam-in-place team.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LEAK-GATE/message/15

Brian Downing Quig (RIP) ARCHIVED SITE - LOTS OF READING HERE:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/dcia.com

Former ambassador blames White House for leak
Former Ambassador Joe Wilson, an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, blames the White House for telling a newspaper columnist that his wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA operative. The Justice Department is investigating the claim at the request of the CIA.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LEAK-GATE/message/11

Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs
CIA REPORT AND WEB PAGE ---Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd/Iraq_Oct_2002.htm

LEAK-GATE
This White House Scandal Finally Tips the Scale!
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/leakgate.htm

LEAK-GATE MESSAGE BOARD
Without Justice, there is JUST_US!
http://www.disc.server.com/Indices/149495.html

WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications
This new Carnegie Report studies what the intelligence community understood about Iraq's WMD programs before the war and outlines policy reforms designed to improve threat assessments, deter transfer of WMD to terrorists, and avoid politicization of the intelligence process.
http://www.ceip.org/files/projects/npp/resources/iraqintell/home.htm
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS ON LEAK-GATE
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LEAK-GATE/

LEAK - GATE:
This White House Scandal Finally Tips the Scale!
http://www.apfn.org/APFN/LEAKGATE.HTM

Subscribe: LEAK-GATE-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Unsubscribe: LEAK-GATE-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
List owner: LEAK-GATE-owner@yahoogroups.com

REP. JOHN CONYERS JR.
Ashcroft's delayed recusal leaves credibility damage
Wed Jan 7 01:57:58 2004
64.140.158.143

LOCAL COMMENT: Salvaging CIA leak investigation

Ashcroft's delayed recusal leaves credibility damage
January 6, 2004

BY JOHN CONYERS JR.
http://www.freep.com/voices/columnists/econy6_20040106.htm

When the Independent Counsel law expired in 1999, it was clear that we had a "Ken Starr" problem. A man with zero prosecutorial experience was charged with investigating President Bill Clinton even though he himself had irreconcilable conflicts of interests -- among other things, his law firm's involvement in the Paula Jones case, and his financial ties to Richard Mellon Scaife, the implacable political foe of Clinton.

Since Congress was unable to reach consensus on the appropriate safeguards to build into the Independent Counsel law, it was permitted to expire. However, the Justice Department quickly issued regulations ensuring that the attorney general would be able to appoint "special counsels" -- outside individuals with a "reputation for integrity" -- when the investigation presented a conflict of interest for the department.

By failing to appoint a single special counsel during his tenure, Attorney General John Ashcroft has permitted a pendulum to swing too far in the other direction, and we now have an administration that is unwilling to permit any meaningful independent review of allegations of misconduct against it and its friends.

That shortsighted view has now reached its logical conclusion in the department's investigation of the leaking of a CIA operative's identity. Here we have a case where the attorney general was investigating the very White House responsible for the resuscitation of his political career. In addition, the investigation involves the political Svengali, Karl Rove, who was inextricably tied to the attorney general by virtue of receiving a staggering $746,000 for consulting on his past Senate and governor's races.

It's difficult to conceive of a more blatant conflict of interest.

The attorney general's recusal and delegation of authority to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald does not solve this problem or right this wrong by any stretch of the imagination.

First off, the three-month delay before Ashcroft removed himself has already done severe damage to the credibility of the case. Leak investigations must move quickly before the trail becomes "old and cold." Yet at the outset of the case, the White House was inexplicably given a one-half day heads-up before the investigation officially commenced. During the crucial initial stages of the investigation, FBI officials admitted they moved a "bit slower" because "this will get scrutinized at our headquarters and at Justice in a way that lesser, routine investigations wouldn't."

Who knows what documents and phone logs disappeared while the investigation was delayed or which recollections faded while the FBI dragged its feet as the attorney general headed the case?

In addition, by failing to appoint an outside individual with no ties to the department or loyalty to the administration, the public can have little faith the investigation will be pursued diligently and impartially. Fitzgerald may be a fine prosecutor, but at the end of the day he still owes his job to President George W. Bush. If it turns out the White House engaged in an organized smear campaign against former Ambassador Joseph Wilson -- including outing his wife -- to exact revenge for pointing out the lies in the pre-war Iraq intelligence, this would do incalculable harm to the president's credibility and the case for his re-election. That is why I am not surprised that White House officials recently admitted their goal was to "let the earth-movers roll in on this one" and that on the heels of Ashcroft's announcement, Republican legal sources acknowledged that the recusal will have the effect of providing political cover for the administration if no indictment is issued.

Moreover, the recent assignment to Fitzgerald contains none of the safeguards against politicization that come with the formal appointment of a special counsel. He doesn't have the ability to seek whatever financial resources are needed to pursue the case as a special counsel is able to. Fitzgerald does not have the guarantee that he can be fired only for misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity or other good cause as is the case with a special counsel. And there is no requirement that the attorney general provide the public with a written explanation of why any action proposed by the prosecutor was not taken, as is specified in the special counsel regulations.

Whether the Justice Department was investigating the president's good friend Ken Lay or former Army Secretary Thomas White in the Enron scandal, Vice President Dick Cheney in the Halliburton accounting case, or top Republican legislators implicated in the Westar scandal, John Ashcroft has yet to find a case that warrants any semblance of an independent investigation.

Certainly, Ken Starr taught us that the Independent Counsel law was subject to abuse. But by failing to appoint even the far tamer special counsel that has replaced it, the attorney general has created a far more serious problem -- an administration that can flout the law and face little prospect of independent scrutiny.

U.S. REP. JOHN CONYERS JR., D-Detroit, who represents the 14th District, is ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee. Write to him at 2426 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515.

=====================================

Chicago's top prosecutor takes over CIA leak investigation
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20031230-1545-fitzgeraldprofile.html


Searched the web for APFN + LEAKGATE.

The Bush Old Guard Shows Its True Colors The Treasonous Lies of
Bob Novak and Karl Rove
By Cheryl Seal
10-5-3
http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg108411.html

As the saying goes, you cannot serve two masters. Bob Novak and Karl Rove, representing the most arms of America most subverted by the NeoCon regime - the White House and the media - are making it emminently clear who they serve, and it isn't the American public.

I watched "Meet the Press" on Sunday (Oct 5), a show that more accurately should be called the "Tim Russert Kiss-ass Hour" (or TRKA - which, appropriately, sounds like the title of one of the more knuckle-dragging species of college fraternities). The show's sole purpose for being is to allow Bush administration officials and other darlings of the rightwing to drop by for coffee-and-camera time each Sunday morning and present their slanted version of the latest outrage they have committed on America while Russert smiles, nods and simpers.

This week's episode of the TRKA Hour was dedicated to spinning the Valerie Plame story. As you will recall, Valerie Plame is the CIA operative who was outed in a collusion between, mostly probably, Karl Rove and, most definitely, Bob Novak, a blustering, pompous old coot who remains on the payroll of the "Chicago Sun-Times" for God knows what reason (maybe he has accumulated sufficient dirt on the folks who would probably LOVE to fire him). Novak has the distinction of being about the last dedicated Bush administration apologist out there amongst the "major columnists" who make regular rounds of shows like the TRKA Hour.

First up with Russert was Joseph Wilson, husband of Valerie Plame, who, like a gallant husband and good citizen, is enraged by the outing of his wife. Outing a CIA agent is, as I have said before, tantamount to attempted murder, not mention felony theft of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of taxpayer dollars. To establish an effective cover for an agent may take years and a great deal of resources - all paid for by American citizens. An agent like Plame, who worked with overseas contacts, may have people in several different countries whose confidence they have laboriously worked to gain. Those contacts, in turn, have contacts, and so forth. Once an agent is outed, this entire network is compromised, as is the safety of everyone involved who can now be linked to Plame by the "bad guys." Not only that, but you may as well flush those taxpayer dollars spent to construct the cover down the toilet.

Wilson was not intimidated by Russert, who enjoys bullying anyone not in his Kalorama Kocktail Klub (the new KKK) circle, a mutual admiration society centered in the swank Kalorama neighborhood where Cheney and Russert dwell as chummy neighbors. Confronted by Wilson, Russert did what he always does when someone has a good point: first he interrupted Wilson mid-statement, then, when Wilson failed to be cowed, merely lapsed into silent sulking. Wilson stood by his guns. Although he of course could not be absolutely sure Karl Rove was behind the leak, Rove pushed the leak for days after Novak first wrote about Plame. It should also be pointed out that Karl Rove was FIRED by Bush I in the early 1990s for leaking damaging information about someone else to a reporter. And guess who that reporter was? His good buddy Bob Novak. Wilson also stood by his assertion that, should Rove be proven guilty, he should be frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.

Next, Novak himself appeared. Russert simpered and snickered and rapturously listened to every comment of this sellout "columnist," careful not to bring up any "difficult" points such as questioning Novak about his previous episode with Karl Rove in the early 1990s. If I were a Republican PR person, the last person I would have wished to have appear on the TRKA Hour was a character as unsympathetic in looks and manner as Novak. This sour, jowly, hound-dog-eyed old geezer looks like someone sent over from central casting to play the role of the Evil Bank Manager in a movie in which the bank forecloses on Sunnybrook Farm and Rebecca is evicted. Worse, Novack's only defense was bluster and the repeated claim: "I've been in this business 40 years" (repeated four times that I counted).

Let's take a look at the gaping holes in Novak's story:

NOVAK STORY: He claims he had absolutely no idea that the information about Plame was a big deal. He says he got the impression that she was a paper pusher in one of the CIA's DC offices. He said the comment about Plame working for the CIA was "just an offhand remark" at the end of the conversation.

HOLE: The fact that the White House informant called several other journalists looking for a place to plant the leak is, by itself, enough to blow this story out of the water. But even more damning to Novak's case is that in his article on Plame, he referred to her repeatedly as a CIA "operative." Since when would anyone - even the slowest-witted among us - describe someone who files papers in an office as a "CIA operative?"

NOVAK STORY: "I've been in this business 40 years."

HOLE: Anyone who has been a journalist for 40 years, unless they are senile (maybe that's Novak's best defense!) would know the difference between "CIA paper pusher" and "CIA operative."

NOVAK STORY: He claims he is not revealing his source because that is his prerogative as a journalist.

HOLE: That prerogative is supposed to apply only to sources who, at the time of imparting the information, made the journalist promise not to reveal the source. In the case of Turner vs. Dolcefino, for example, the issue was that the reporter had vowed silence in exchange for the information given by the source.

In addition, journalistic prerogative usually involves PRIVATE CITIZENS. The protection of White House officials is, to say the least, overstretching prerogative by most anyone's definition. Why? The press is supposed to be in the business of PROTECTING the public from unethical officials, not protecting the unethical officials! Once Novak knew that he had been induced to out a CIA agent, it should have become his duty as a journalist to expose the perpetrator. In any case, Novak claimed that the comment about Plame was "an offhand remark" made at the end of a regular conversation. Since when does an "offhand remark" at the end of an "ordinary conversation" involve swearing the listener to secrecy? C'mon, Novak. It was either leak and you KNEW it, or it was a casual conversation and needn't be kept secret.

NOVAK STORY: When Tim Russert asked Novak is he was afraid he might go to prison for refusing to reveal his sources, Novak smirked smugly and said he hardly thought that would be a danger.

HOLE: If Novak takes his own story about journalistic prerogative seriously, then he SHOULD be worried. Why isn't he worried? First, because he doesn't take his own line seriously - it's bullsh-t and he knows it. Second, because he knows in any case that his good buddy John Ashcroft would never put him in jail. That treatment is reserved for young women (Vanessa Leggett) without friends in high places who aren't jeapordizing national security and who aren't officially even journalists!

NOVAK STORY: The CIA called Novak and told him not to use Plame's name because it would make things very difficult for her, especially when she went abroad. Novak claims that this didn't seem strong enough to compel him not to reveal Plame's name.

HOLE: As Novak is so fond of saying he's "been in this business 40 years" and knows how Washington works. It this is true, then he KNOWS that the CIA can