DeLay Ex-Aide to Plead Guilty
in Lobby Case
Sat Nov 19, 2005 17:18
64.140.158.30
DeLay Ex-Aide to Plead Guilty in Lobby Case
By Anne E. Kornblut
The New York Times
Saturday 19 November 2005
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111905X.shtml
Washington - Michael Scanlon, a former top official for Representative Tom DeLay and one time partner of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, has agreed to plead guilty in a deal with federal prosecutors, according to his lawyer. The deal reveals a broadening corruption investigation involving top members of Congress.
Criminal papers filed in federal court outlined a conspiracy that not only named Mr. Scanlon but also mentioned a congressman, identified only as Representative No. 1, as part of the exchange of favors from clients funneled to lobbyists and officials.
This was the first time that a member of Congress, identified by lawyers in the case as Representative Bob Ney, Republican of Ohio, has been implicated in criminal papers as part of the inquiry, which has sprawled from Indian casinos to the lucrative lobbying firms of Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Scanlon and then reached to the Republican leadership.
Federal prosecutors announced a single conspiracy charge against Mr. Scanlon on Friday, in advance of a Monday court hearing at which he is expected to plead guilty in exchange for his cooperation. Investigators accused Mr. Scanlon of conspiring to defraud Indian tribes of millions of dollars as part of a lobbying and corruption scheme.
Mr. Scanlon, 35, is a former spokesman for Mr. DeLay. News of his cooperation with law enforcement officials sent a jolt through the Republican majority in Congress.
Mr. DeLay has been indicted in Texas on unrelated charges involving fund-raising practices for state Republicans. His ties to Mr. Abramoff, along with costly overseas trips, have been under investigation for more than a year. The indictment forced Mr. DeLay to step aside as House majority leader this fall.
Court papers filed Friday alleged that Mr. Scanlon and Mr. Abramoff, who has not been charged in the Indian lobbying case, had sought to "corruptly offer and provide things of value, including money, meals, trips and entertainment to federal public officials in return for agreements to perform official acts." The wording suggested that more than one lawmaker was under investigation.
But the document singled out Representative No. 1 as the main recipient of gifts, tickets and meals - including a now infamous golfing trip to Scotland - in exchange for helping Mr. Scanlon and Mr. Abramoff with their clients.
Mr. Ney, chairman of the House Administration Committee, has offered his cooperation to prosecutors, said Brian Walsh, his spokesman, who added that Mr. Ney had contended that he was tricked by Mr. Scanlon and Mr. Abramoff into assisting their clients.
Federal prosecutors and Congressional officials have been conducting extensive investigations into the lobbying practices of Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Scanlon, who earned about $82 million representing a handful of wealthy Indian tribes on gambling issues over four years. Investigators believe the two men funneled millions through charities and front organizations to skim profits, avoid taxes and mask incomplete work.
Beyond accusations of fraud, investigators have delved into the politically delicate territory of the relationship between lobbyists and lawmakers. Until last year, Mr. Abramoff ruled an industry governed by networking because of his close ties to Mr. DeLay, trading on his access to the rising Republican leader to build a lucrative lobbying practice. He and Mr. Scanlon are at the center of a Senate inquiry that held its final hearing this week.
In the eight-page criminal filing, prosecutors accused Mr. Scanlon of taking part in a "corruption scheme" between January 2000 and April 2004, working alongside a "Lobbyist A" who was identified by lawyers involved in the case as Mr. Abramoff.
The pair "provided a stream of things of value" to Representative No. 1 and members of his staff, the charge read. In return, both Mr. Scanlon and Mr. Abramoff received agreements from Mr. Ney "to perform a series of official acts," including "agreements to support and pass legislation, agreements to place statements into the Congressional Record," and meetings with their clients.
The court filing also states that the congressman helped one of the businessmen's clients apply for a license to install wireless telephone infrastructure in the House of Representatives. Mr. Ney's committee manages such issues.
Mr. Ney has been the focus of scrutiny for months after revelations that he took a 2002 golfing trip to Scotland that was sponsored by Mr. Abramoff. Mr. Ney has started a legal defense fund. His legal troubles have added to the growing ethics accusations against Congressional Republicans.
Other lawmakers including Mr. DeLay received campaign donations from Mr. Abramoff's and Mr. Scanlon's Indian clients. But Mr. Ney performed what prosecutors portrayed as blatant favors for Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Scanlon, inserting remarks helpful to their business into the Congressional Record and sponsoring bills at their behest.
Mark H. Tuohey, the lawyer representing Mr. Ney, said that the congressman had never offered any legislative help to the lobbyists in exchange for travel, like the 2002 golfing trip to Scotland, or gifts.
Mr. Ney has said that Mr. Abramoff deceived him over how the Scotland trip was paid for in his travel disclosure forms, saying it was paid for by a conservative educational group, not by Mr. Abramoff or his lobbying firm - and about the details of Mr. Abramoff's purchase of a casino boat fleet in Florida in 2001.
"I think the people who are named in this among others, Scanlon and Abramoff, didn't tell him the truth," Mr. Tuohey said of Mr. Ney.
Mr. Abramoff was indicted in Florida this year on fraud and conspiracy charges relating to a separate effort to buy Sun Cruz, a fleet of casino boats, in 2000. Although Mr. Scanlon did public affairs work for Sun Cruz, he was not charged in that case. It now appears that Mr. Scanlon has been cooperating with the authorities to reach a plea deal in the Indian gambling inquiry. Mr. Abramoff is not cooperating with law enforcement officials, people involved with the case said.
The lawyer for Mr. Abramoff, Abbe Lowell, declined to comment. The lawyer for Mr. Scanlon, Stephen Braga, confirmed that his client would enter a plea on Monday. "Mr. Scanlon and the Department of Justice will present a proposed plea agreement to the court to resolve the charge," Mr. Braga said.
How much Mr. Scanlon knows and has told prosecutors about the business practices of Mr. Abramoff and members of Congress remains unclear. "This puts a tremendous amount of pressure on Abramoff because Scanlon was reportedly his closest associate," said Lawrence Barcella, a former federal prosecutor who is now a prominent defense lawyer in Washington. As for politicians like Mr. DeLay and Mr. Ney, Mr. Barcella said, "I wouldn't be sitting as comfortably today as I was yesterday if I were them."
In addition to the corruption scheme, prosecutors say Mr. Scanlon and Mr. Abramoff carried out a secret kickback deal in which Mr. Abramoff encouraged his Indian clients to hire Mr. Scanlon for public affairs work. Mr. Scanlon then funneled half his profits to Mr. Abramoff. Their aim was "to enrich themselves by obtaining substantial funds from their clients through fraud and concealment and through obtaining benefits for their clients through corrupt means," the charge said.
Tribes in Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Michigan fell prey to the conspiracy, the Scanlon papers said.
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TRUTHOUT HOME:
November 18, 2005 | US Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald will convene a new grand jury to hear testimony in the CIA leak case, which has already seen the indictment of a top White House official.
(Photo: Charles Rex Arbogast / AP Photo)
http://www.truthout.org/index.htm
Fitzgerald Going Back to Grand Jury
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Investigative Report
Friday 18 November 2005
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will present evidence next week to a grand jury in his two year-old investigation into the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson in the hopes of securing a criminal indictment against an undetermined number of senior officials in the Bush administration for playing some sort of role in the leak, attorneys who have been working on this case since its inception said.
Adding a new wrinkle in the ongoing drama surrounding a federal probe into the Plame Wilson leak, Bob Woodward, the assistant managing editor of the Washington Post, disclosed that he testified under oath this week before Fitzgerald, stating that he too was told about Plame Wilson’s CIA status in June 2003 by an administration official.
Plame Wilson had recommended that her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, an outspoken critic of the administration’s pre-war Iraq intelligence, be sent to Niger to investigate allegations that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country. President Bush had cited the Iraq-uranium claims in his January 2003 State of the Union address. Wilson had told reporters privately in May 2003 that he had been the CIA’s special envoy sent to Niger to look into that rumor, reporting back to the CIA that the charges were false.
Woodward’s testimony contained information about several individuals at the White House that led Fitzgerald directly back to another grand jury, the substance of which sources would not divulge saying it could taint the case. Sources said the evidence involved additional aides in the Vice President’s office as well as senior officials who were part of a clandestine faction known as the White House Iraq Group, which was set up by President Bush’s Chief of Staff Andrew Card in August 2002 to "market" the Iraq war to the public via selective leaks to major newspapers about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction program.
In January 2004, Fitzgerald sent the White House subpoenas seeking documents from July 6 to July 30, 2003 of the little-known White House Iraq Group. Now, according to sources, he’s going to use that evidence in his grand jury proceedings, which may unintentionally shed some light on how the Niger claims ended up in Bush’s State of the Union address.
The WHIG had operated under the radar for quite some time. In August 2003, the Washington Post published the only account of the group's existence. During its very first meetings, Card's Iraq group ordered a series of white papers showing Iraq’s arms violations. The first paper, "A Grave and Gathering Danger: Saddam Hussein's Quest for Nuclear Weapons," was never published. However, the paper was drafted with the assistance of experts from the National Security Council and Cheney's office.
"It met weekly in the Situation Room, The Post said, and its regular participants included senior political adviser Karl Rove; communication strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas Calio; policy advisers led by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley; and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney," according to a March 5, 2004 report in Newsday.
According to two intelligence officials at the CIA with knowledge of the inner workings of the White House Iraq Group, Vice President Dick Cheney was present at several of those meetings and personally discussed with those individuals in attendance at least two interviews Wilson gave to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff and Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus, claiming that the administration "twisted" pre-war intelligence, and what the response from the administration should be.
When Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times on July 6, 2003 attacking the administration’s assertion that Iraq tried to purchase uranium, CIA Director George Tenet was forced one day later to take responsibility for not omitting the Niger claim from Bush's State of the Union speech, citing pressure from the National Security Council. Within days of Tenet’s mea culpa, NSC deputy Stephen Hadley admitted he forgot seeing two memos from the agency expressing doubts about the intelligence related to Niger.
Although bulletproof evidence has surfaced during the past few months that proves Cheney played an active role in obtaining information from administration officials about the then-unnamed CIA official, and disseminating the classified material to senior aides - perfectly legal - there are doubts that the Vice President himself was the source who leaked the information to Woodward.
In a statement published in the Washington Post Wednesday, Woodward, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter whose investigative stories on the Watergate scandal forced the resignation of President Richard Nixon, said he had first learned about Plame Wilson’s identity in mid-June 2003, during a time when Cheney and his senior aides had gone to great lengths to find out her identity in the hopes of silencing Wilson, who at the time had been causing a stir behind the scenes by calling into question the veracity of the administration’s pre-war intelligence.
Woodward said that he had spoken with two administration officials on June 20 and June 23, 2003. It is unclear which of these dates Woodward had spoken with Cheney and Hadley, whether it was in person or during a phone interview. Cheney was in Boca Raton, Fla., on June 20, 2003 speaking to the International Petroleum Association about the war on terror and the ongoing war in Iraq. On June 23, 2003 Cheney was the headliner at a fundraiser for the 2004 presidential campaign in Hopkinton, Mass. The vice president’s office would not return calls seeking information as to whether Cheney returned to Washington following the fundraiser and speech.
On Friday, Hadley refused to respond to questions from the Associated Press denying he was Woodward’s source. A spokeswoman for the National Security Council said Hadley categorically denied being Woodward’s source, adding that the two did not meet in June 2003. However, the spokeswoman refused to go on the record and asked that her statements be attributed to a "White House official" because of the sensitivity of the matter. When asked why her statement could not be attributed to the NSC she said, "This situation is too sensitive and that is the line we are telling other reporters."
The New York Times reported Thursday that Cheney and Hadley hadn’t joined the chorus of top administration officials who have publicly denied speaking to Woodward about Plame. Those ruled out or who have issued statements saying they did not speak to Woodward include President Bush; Bush's Deputy Chief of Staff Andrew Card; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; John McLaughlin; Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who remains in legal limbo for his role in the leak; and White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett.
At the time Woodward had spoken with Hadley, he was writing a book, "Plan of Attack," about the invasion of Iraq. Ironically, it was during the 30th anniversary of Watergate when Woodward was told about Plame Wilson. However, the reporter seemed to be unaware that the disclosure would become, next to Watergate, one of the biggest scandals in White House history.
In his statement, Woodward said he met with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff, who was indicted on five counts of obstruction of justice and lying to a grand jury, about his role in the leak, "at 5:10 p.m. in his office adjacent to the White House. I took the 18-page list of questions with the Page-5 reference to 'yellowcake' to this interview and I believe I also had the other question list from June 20, which had the 'Joe Wilson's wife' reference."
With Hadley and Libby being named as the administration officials who shared
By Anne E. Kornblut
The New York Times
Saturday 19 November 2005
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111905X.shtml
Washington - Michael Scanlon, a former top official for Representative Tom DeLay and one time partner of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, has agreed to plead guilty in a deal with federal prosecutors, according to his lawyer. The deal reveals a broadening corruption investigation involving top members of Congress.
Criminal papers filed in federal court outlined a conspiracy that not only named Mr. Scanlon but also mentioned a congressman, identified only as Representative No. 1, as part of the exchange of favors from clients funneled to lobbyists and officials.
This was the first time that a member of Congress, identified by lawyers in the case as Representative Bob Ney, Republican of Ohio, has been implicated in criminal papers as part of the inquiry, which has sprawled from Indian casinos to the lucrative lobbying firms of Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Scanlon and then reached to the Republican leadership.
Federal prosecutors announced a single conspiracy charge against Mr. Scanlon on Friday, in advance of a Monday court hearing at which he is expected to plead guilty in exchange for his cooperation. Investigators accused Mr. Scanlon of conspiring to defraud Indian tribes of millions of dollars as part of a lobbying and corruption scheme.
Mr. Scanlon, 35, is a former spokesman for Mr. DeLay. News of his cooperation with law enforcement officials sent a jolt through the Republican majority in Congress.
Mr. DeLay has been indicted in Texas on unrelated charges involving fund-raising practices for state Republicans. His ties to Mr. Abramoff, along with costly overseas trips, have been under investigation for more than a year. The indictment forced Mr. DeLay to step aside as House majority leader this fall.
Court papers filed Friday alleged that Mr. Scanlon and Mr. Abramoff, who has not been charged in the Indian lobbying case, had sought to "corruptly offer and provide things of value, including money, meals, trips and entertainment to federal public officials in return for agreements to perform official acts." The wording suggested that more than one lawmaker was under investigation.
But the document singled out Representative No. 1 as the main recipient of gifts, tickets and meals - including a now infamous golfing trip to Scotland - in exchange for helping Mr. Scanlon and Mr. Abramoff with their clients.
Mr. Ney, chairman of the House Administration Committee, has offered his cooperation to prosecutors, said Brian Walsh, his spokesman, who added that Mr. Ney had contended that he was tricked by Mr. Scanlon and Mr. Abramoff into assisting their clients.
Federal prosecutors and Congressional officials have been conducting extensive investigations into the lobbying practices of Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Scanlon, who earned about $82 million representing a handful of wealthy Indian tribes on gambling issues over four years. Investigators believe the two men funneled millions through charities and front organizations to skim profits, avoid taxes and mask incomplete work.
Beyond accusations of fraud, investigators have delved into the politically delicate territory of the relationship between lobbyists and lawmakers. Until last year, Mr. Abramoff ruled an industry governed by networking because of his close ties to Mr. DeLay, trading on his access to the rising Republican leader to build a lucrative lobbying practice. He and Mr. Scanlon are at the center of a Senate inquiry that held its final hearing this week.
In the eight-page criminal filing, prosecutors accused Mr. Scanlon of taking part in a "corruption scheme" between January 2000 and April 2004, working alongside a "Lobbyist A" who was identified by lawyers involved in the case as Mr. Abramoff.
The pair "provided a stream of things of value" to Representative No. 1 and members of his staff, the charge read. In return, both Mr. Scanlon and Mr. Abramoff received agreements from Mr. Ney "to perform a series of official acts," including "agreements to support and pass legislation, agreements to place statements into the Congressional Record," and meetings with their clients.
The court filing also states that the congressman helped one of the businessmen's clients apply for a license to install wireless telephone infrastructure in the House of Representatives. Mr. Ney's committee manages such issues.
Mr. Ney has been the focus of scrutiny for months after revelations that he took a 2002 golfing trip to Scotland that was sponsored by Mr. Abramoff. Mr. Ney has started a legal defense fund. His legal troubles have added to the growing ethics accusations against Congressional Republicans.
Other lawmakers including Mr. DeLay received campaign donations from Mr. Abramoff's and Mr. Scanlon's Indian clients. But Mr. Ney performed what prosecutors portrayed as blatant favors for Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Scanlon, inserting remarks helpful to their business into the Congressional Record and sponsoring bills at their behest.
Mark H. Tuohey, the lawyer representing Mr. Ney, said that the congressman had never offered any legislative help to the lobbyists in exchange for travel, like the 2002 golfing trip to Scotland, or gifts.
Mr. Ney has said that Mr. Abramoff deceived him over how the Scotland trip was paid for in his travel disclosure forms, saying it was paid for by a conservative educational group, not by Mr. Abramoff or his lobbying firm - and about the details of Mr. Abramoff's purchase of a casino boat fleet in Florida in 2001.
"I think the people who are named in this among others, Scanlon and Abramoff, didn't tell him the truth," Mr. Tuohey said of Mr. Ney.
Mr. Abramoff was indicted in Florida this year on fraud and conspiracy charges relating to a separate effort to buy Sun Cruz, a fleet of casino boats, in 2000. Although Mr. Scanlon did public affairs work for Sun Cruz, he was not charged in that case. It now appears that Mr. Scanlon has been cooperating with the authorities to reach a plea deal in the Indian gambling inquiry. Mr. Abramoff is not cooperating with law enforcement officials, people involved with the case said.
The lawyer for Mr. Abramoff, Abbe Lowell, declined to comment. The lawyer for Mr. Scanlon, Stephen Braga, confirmed that his client would enter a plea on Monday. "Mr. Scanlon and the Department of Justice will present a proposed plea agreement to the court to resolve the charge," Mr. Braga said.
How much Mr. Scanlon knows and has told prosecutors about the business practices of Mr. Abramoff and members of Congress remains unclear. "This puts a tremendous amount of pressure on Abramoff because Scanlon was reportedly his closest associate," said Lawrence Barcella, a former federal prosecutor who is now a prominent defense lawyer in Washington. As for politicians like Mr. DeLay and Mr. Ney, Mr. Barcella said, "I wouldn't be sitting as comfortably today as I was yesterday if I were them."
In addition to the corruption scheme, prosecutors say Mr. Scanlon and Mr. Abramoff carried out a secret kickback deal in which Mr. Abramoff encouraged his Indian clients to hire Mr. Scanlon for public affairs work. Mr. Scanlon then funneled half his profits to Mr. Abramoff. Their aim was "to enrich themselves by obtaining substantial funds from their clients through fraud and concealment and through obtaining benefits for their clients through corrupt means," the charge said.
Tribes in Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Michigan fell prey to the conspiracy, the Scanlon papers said.
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TRUTHOUT HOME:
November 18, 2005 | US Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald will convene a new grand jury to hear testimony in the CIA leak case, which has already seen the indictment of a top White House official.
(Photo: Charles Rex Arbogast / AP Photo)
http://www.truthout.org/index.htm
Fitzgerald Going Back to Grand Jury
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Investigative Report
Friday 18 November 2005
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will present evidence next week to a grand jury in his two year-old investigation into the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson in the hopes of securing a criminal indictment against an undetermined number of senior officials in the Bush administration for playing some sort of role in the leak, attorneys who have been working on this case since its inception said.
Adding a new wrinkle in the ongoing drama surrounding a federal probe into the Plame Wilson leak, Bob Woodward, the assistant managing editor of the Washington Post, disclosed that he testified under oath this week before Fitzgerald, stating that he too was told about Plame Wilson’s CIA status in June 2003 by an administration official.
Plame Wilson had recommended that her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, an outspoken critic of the administration’s pre-war Iraq intelligence, be sent to Niger to investigate allegations that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country. President Bush had cited the Iraq-uranium claims in his January 2003 State of the Union address. Wilson had told reporters privately in May 2003 that he had been the CIA’s special envoy sent to Niger to look into that rumor, reporting back to the CIA that the charges were false.
Woodward’s testimony contained information about several individuals at the White House that led Fitzgerald directly back to another grand jury, the substance of which sources would not divulge saying it could taint the case. Sources said the evidence involved additional aides in the Vice President’s office as well as senior officials who were part of a clandestine faction known as the White House Iraq Group, which was set up by President Bush’s Chief of Staff Andrew Card in August 2002 to "market" the Iraq war to the public via selective leaks to major newspapers about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction program.
In January 2004, Fitzgerald sent the White House subpoenas seeking documents from July 6 to July 30, 2003 of the little-known White House Iraq Group. Now, according to sources, he’s going to use that evidence in his grand jury proceedings, which may unintentionally shed some light on how the Niger claims ended up in Bush’s State of the Union address.
The WHIG had operated under the radar for quite some time. In August 2003, the Washington Post published the only account of the group's existence. During its very first meetings, Card's Iraq group ordered a series of white papers showing Iraq’s arms violations. The first paper, "A Grave and Gathering Danger: Saddam Hussein's Quest for Nuclear Weapons," was never published. However, the paper was drafted with the assistance of experts from the National Security Council and Cheney's office.
"It met weekly in the Situation Room, The Post said, and its regular participants included senior political adviser Karl Rove; communication strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas Calio; policy advisers led by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley; and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney," according to a March 5, 2004 report in Newsday.
According to two intelligence officials at the CIA with knowledge of the inner workings of the White House Iraq Group, Vice President Dick Cheney was present at several of those meetings and personally discussed with those individuals in attendance at least two interviews Wilson gave to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff and Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus, claiming that the administration "twisted" pre-war intelligence, and what the response from the administration should be.
When Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times on July 6, 2003 attacking the administration’s assertion that Iraq tried to purchase uranium, CIA Director George Tenet was forced one day later to take responsibility for not omitting the Niger claim from Bush's State of the Union speech, citing pressure from the National Security Council. Within days of Tenet’s mea culpa, NSC deputy Stephen Hadley admitted he forgot seeing two memos from the agency expressing doubts about the intelligence related to Niger.
Although bulletproof evidence has surfaced during the past few months that proves Cheney played an active role in obtaining information from administration officials about the then-unnamed CIA official, and disseminating the classified material to senior aides - perfectly legal - there are doubts that the Vice President himself was the source who leaked the information to Woodward.
In a statement published in the Washington Post Wednesday, Woodward, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter whose investigative stories on the Watergate scandal forced the resignation of President Richard Nixon, said he had first learned about Plame Wilson’s identity in mid-June 2003, during a time when Cheney and his senior aides had gone to great lengths to find out her identity in the hopes of silencing Wilson, who at the time had been causing a stir behind the scenes by calling into question the veracity of the administration’s pre-war intelligence.
Woodward said that he had spoken with two administration officials on June 20 and June 23, 2003. It is unclear which of these dates Woodward had spoken with Cheney and Hadley, whether it was in person or during a phone interview. Cheney was in Boca Raton, Fla., on June 20, 2003 speaking to the International Petroleum Association about the war on terror and the ongoing war in Iraq. On June 23, 2003 Cheney was the headliner at a fundraiser for the 2004 presidential campaign in Hopkinton, Mass. The vice president’s office would not return calls seeking information as to whether Cheney returned to Washington following the fundraiser and speech.
On Friday, Hadley refused to respond to questions from the Associated Press denying he was Woodward’s source. A spokeswoman for the National Security Council said Hadley categorically denied being Woodward’s source, adding that the two did not meet in June 2003. However, the spokeswoman refused to go on the record and asked that her statements be attributed to a "White House official" because of the sensitivity of the matter. When asked why her statement could not be attributed to the NSC she said, "This situation is too sensitive and that is the line we are telling other reporters."
The New York Times reported Thursday that Cheney and Hadley hadn’t joined the chorus of top administration officials who have publicly denied speaking to Woodward about Plame. Those ruled out or who have issued statements saying they did not speak to Woodward include President Bush; Bush's Deputy Chief of Staff Andrew Card; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; John McLaughlin; Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who remains in legal limbo for his role in the leak; and White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett.
At the time Woodward had spoken with Hadley, he was writing a book, "Plan of Attack," about the invasion of Iraq. Ironically, it was during the 30th anniversary of Watergate when Woodward was told about Plame Wilson. However, the reporter seemed to be unaware that the disclosure would become, next to Watergate, one of the biggest scandals in White House history.
In his statement, Woodward said he met with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff, who was indicted on five counts of obstruction of justice and lying to a grand jury, about his role in the leak, "at 5:10 p.m. in his office adjacent to the White House. I took the 18-page list of questions with the Page-5 reference to 'yellowcake' to this interview and I believe I also had the other question list from June 20, which had the 'Joe Wilson's wife' reference."
With Hadley and Libby being named as the administration officials who shared
