A Blast from the past…

Bush Directed Cheney To Counter War Critic

President Bush told the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case that he directed Vice President Dick Cheney to personally lead an effort to counter allegations made by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV that his administration had misrepresented intelligence information to make the case to go to war with Iraq, according to people familiar with the president’s interview.

Bush also told federal prosecutors during his June 24, 2004, interview in the Oval Office that he had directed Cheney, as part of that broader effort, to disclose highly classified intelligence information that would not only defend his administration but also discredit Wilson, the sources said.

But Bush told investigators that he was unaware that Cheney had directed I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff, to covertly leak the classified information to the media instead of releasing it to the public after undergoing the formal governmental declassification processes.

Bush also said during his interview with prosecutors that he had never directed anyone to disclose the identity of then-covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, Wilson’s wife. Bush said he had no information that Cheney had disclosed Plame’s identity or directed anyone else to do so.

http://news.nationaljournal.co…..703nj1.htm

VP “…sacrifice the guy [this President] asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder …,” :) :)

Wow!!!!! In other words this points to BUSH…BUSH…BUSH himself being the ONE that asked LIBBY to do the dirty work!!! In Libby was merely directed to “go through normal channels” to declassify the sections of the NIE then what was the RISK? How was Libby being asked to “Stick his head in the meat grinder”? The main thing where Libby would risk putting his head in the meat grinder was if he was surrepticiously leaking the identity of a classified CIA agent.

Does anyone else see the significance of this? CHENEY fingered Bush, then said, maybe I shouldn’t say WHO asked Libby to “stick his head in the meat grinder”!!!! SMOKING GUN!?? It strips away the Presidents plauible deniability!

I looked under my desk there was a shopping bag full of my notebooks. Looked through July, picked up June, and discovered entire conversation in June, that I had forgotten about. I happened to be on phone with Bennett…

Wow, is she a bad liar!

And she completely forgot about that cionversation with her editor about Wilson and “Flame”, which she then remembered???? Two in which he’s all upset and agitated, and a meeting with her editor, and she fails to recall them before the GJ??? Maybe she realized that if she had spoken about an article with her editor the “cat was out of the bag” and that was why she thought the GJ kept pushing her on her recollections. Or that there was some other bit of evidence.

Suddenly her memories grew much sharper! After finding her notes!

[Obviously she lied, realized that she had been caught out, then “recalled” her meetings…but Team Libby will attack her recovered recollections. Will she admit that she initially perjured herself to save Libby?]

Second thing that surprised me, I wondered how the CIA would have permitted him to write such an article attacking the president.
All these crazy Bush loyalists seem to have had this real paranoia that folks in the CIA were singlemindedly out to undermine the Bush administration’s credibility and of course they thought Plame and Wilson were part of the CIA plot. Motherwit: honest people sleep better at night. (and they’re less paranoid.)

Remember that Libby kept saying that Joe Wilson was the clandestine guy indicating that this mission was a covert one…that perhaps Wilson himself was undercover as a diplomat!

In actuality the mission was undertaken fairly openly with all of Wilson’s sources knowing that he was there at the behest of the USG…though likely they thought either the NSC or State Department.
Nothing “spook” about his trip.

But Libby makes the trip out to be something that the CIA has leaked in order to get back at the President or Vice-President….to cover up for their own flawed estimates about WMD’s.

In Libby’s version of the trip to JUDY it’s Wilson that’s the spy, Plame is the “merely an analyst”, the VP got Wilson’s report BEFORE he inquired, and none of the rumors are known to be based of fraudulent fakes before the SOTU. Tenet never says “Hold the Nigerien Mayo” to Condi or Hadley in October 2002…etc.

This is a very different story she’s given that what he plants with ARI.

Swopa @ 86

She was covering for him, apparently. (Or at least not wanting it known publicly that she’d given him the knife.)

She contradicts Ari’s testimony, that Libby told him specifically CPD… cleverly obscures whether or not Libby knew Plame was clandestine…

I think it needs to be pointed out that what Libby told Miller doesn’t undercut or contradict Ari’s testimony since they are not testifying about the same conversation with Libby.

Libby could have been feeding Miller a whole different set of bulldada than he provided Ari.

For example, he might have told Miller that Plame worked in WINPAC simply to make it appear that her position was non-classified…an analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence…rather than the Counter-Proliferation Division of Operations. Miller, as opposed to Ari, would know the difference, given her background.

But I don’t know what to make of all the bulldada that Wilson himself was clandestine except to perhaps make it seem that the CIA was leaking secret documents and missions intentionally to attack the President. The use suggests that Wilson himself was covert.

Then notice all the bulldada he shovels out to her about all the reports that indicated that Niger had been repeatedly contacted by Iraq and made contracts with them…even though by June 2003 these reports were known to be based on fraudulent documents. He even cites Wilson’s report [saying it DID go up the HILL) that documented a meeting in Iraq between Nigerien officials and an Iraqi trade delegation.

In fact, no such delegation actually was noted to have travelled TO NIGER in Wilson’s debrief. In fact, the Niger official only heard about this delegation from an Algerien businessman according to Wilson’s report. AND there was never any such meeting that occurred. Wilson’s report simply says that the Niger PM THOUGHT that the approach might relate to Iraq wanting yellowcake. But that was only an INFERENCE.

It turns out that this “approach” (by a Third Party) occurred in Algeria, and it’s unclear what the “delegation” wanted. Perhaps they wanted to discuss trading some oil for a vote in the UN against contining Civil Sanctions…which was coming up for renewal in the Security Council that year?

But in any case Wilson’s report doesn’t support that Iraq ever approached Niger about yellowcake. As for Pakistan and Iran…that’s a different story.

And from Judy’s characterization, it is only AFTER receiving the Wilson report and forgery-based tales of “contracts” does the OVOP tell the CIA to investigate further. Thus he’s telling her that the OVP had nothing to do with Wilson’s visit!

In other words, Libby appears to be shovelling unmitigated BS down Judy’s unquestioning gullet. It was simply a different tale that he had Ari pass on to reporters, but the goal was to get as much of this stuff out there that some of it might stick to the wall.

Regarding all the posts about Judy’s notebooks in a bag under her desk:

I’ve been in news bureaus and the places I’ve seen are never very organized looking or tidy. (snip) Besides, we don’t want to be sidetracked by something that isn’t really as relevant as we might have thought.

Umm – I would surmise that any reporter, no matter how “sloppy,” might dig through his/her notebooks to “refresh” his/her memory after spending 85 days in jail and before finally testifying before a grand jury.

Just sayin…

i don’t know if anybody’s brought this up yet:

what must judy miller be feeling right now, under oath, having to answer questions posed by the guy who got her sent to jail, with her answers being heard by another guy who let her sit there all those months….?

Exactly what I was wondering.

And I find it really hard to believe that she “forgot” about the conversations she was sent to jail for not disclosing. If she didn’t remember the conversations then what what she stonewalling Fitz for?

Liar, liar pants on fire.

I’ve been in news bureaus and the places I’ve seen are never very organized looking or tidy. The reporters (my daughter is one) do tend to stuff things in drawers and boxes or pile them around the room in, what appears to me at least, a somewhat chaotic fashion to be dealt with someday when they have a free minute (rarely get to it – instead they go out for drinks with other journalists. That’s why their workspace tends to be sloppy). Their focus is rarely on the past, but rather on the current stories they are working on. I think they figure they’ll find old notes if they have to (and they rarely do have to unless there is a controversy of some sort or the story is ongoing). Otherwise, they’re on to new territory. I’m definitely not a Judy supporter, but I thought that this would add a little insight into reporters. Besides, we don’t want to be sidetracked by something that isn’t really as relevant as we might have thought.