Bush Authorized Leak to Times, Libby Told Grand Jury

Bush Authorized Leak to Times, Libby Told Grand Jury

A former White House aide under indictment for obstructing a leak probe, I. Lewis Libby, testified to a grand jury that he gave information from a closely-guarded "National Intelligence Estimate" on Iraq to a New York Times reporter in 2003 with the specific permission of President Bush, according to a new court filing from the special prosecutor in the case.

The court papers from the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, do not suggest that Mr. Bush violated any law or rule. However, the new disclosure could be awkward for the president because it places him, for the first time, directly in a chain of events that led to a meeting where prosecutors contend the identity of a CIA employee, Valerie Plame, was provided to a reporter.

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Well, like this would be a surprise...

Plame was never an "agent" she was basically a 'clerk". Thus no law violated...end of stupid story..........

Loam, you're going to give me a heart attack.

This must be a mistake!!!

Not our Bush. :shk: :shk:

Also, i dont know if i heard correctly, (off subject) but i think i just heard the inspectors found NOTHING in Iran. Nothing nuclear.I';d research it but i am trying to get rid of a massive headache.
Did you hear this, Loam? If so, maybe you could post it. Thanks!

Originally posted by thermopolis
Plame was never an "agent" she was basically a 'clerk". Thus no law violated...end of stupid story..........

Where did you get this from? From everything i have heard she was an agent working on the field.

Originally posted by dgtempe
Also, i dont know if i heard correctly, (off subject) but i think i just heard the inspectors found NOTHING in Iran. Nothing nuclear.I';d research it but i am trying to get rid of a massive headache.
Did you hear this, Loam? If so, maybe you could post it. Thanks!

According to this, they aren't expected there until tomorrow...

IAEA inspectors to visit Iran Friday: report

OK, i swear i heard it on Faux of all places...but i caught the tail end of it and its possible i didnt hear right. Thanks!

And here I thought Grand Jury testimony was supposed to be secret. Looks like we need an investigation into how grand jury testimony was leaked, and who did it, who authorized it.

Originally posted by thermopolis
Plame was never an "agent" she was basically a 'clerk". Thus no law violated...end of stupid story..........

Urgh.. not this again...

Actually, she was an agent. A secret one, no less. Let's think about what that means for a minute or two, and then put this to rest. Hint: the operative word is secret.

May as well check out en.wikipedia.org... as well.

I smell a BIGGGG problem ahead. With the WH in an uproar about this news, i think now is the time something will happen

:shk:

Only thing I can say is, "Let it roll" or was it "Let's roll."

I see it two ways here; 1st. Scooter originally confessed to the grand jury, under oath none-the-less, that it was Dick Cheney who authorized the Plamegate leak. Now he is contradicting his own testimony with a new direct order coming directly from President Bush himself?

What will Scooter confess to next?

Geeze before you know it, he'll suggest, under oath again, that Plamegate was conspired by some treasonous committee named WHIG.

Run Colin, Run! Just like Forrest did..


My Suggestion to Mr. Dubya: Look in the mirror!



"If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is."
-- George W. Bush, September 30, 2003



[edit on 6-4-2006 by syntaxer]

Syntaxer,

The man has no problem lying.

I don't usually post in the political forums as I'm not much on flame attacks, but this conversation seems to be well mannered so here goes:

As I see it, what Libby has told the Grand Jury could mean one of two things:

1) He is implicating Bush in the leak which, if the Dems are able to stage a Congressional coup this November, could be a major problem for the Administration.

2) He is closing the door on the whole thing, but implying that Bush's request to leak the information was tantamount to declassifying it, rendering the whole question of treason/law breaking moot.

Either way, it speaks to the motive and motivation of the Administration and offers yet another example of how capricious they are willing to get with the country's future over some short-term (Joe Wilson bashing) political need.

To speak to the contention that Valerie Plame was simply a clerk, from what I understand, she acted, at risk, as a NOC for the CIA while working for a front company designed to facilitate foreign surveilance under a legitimate cover. Outing her not only put her life directly at risk, it likely also destroyed the credibility and background work put into the front company, so that asset is lost to intelligence gathering efforts as well. Not to mention the fact that it is unlikely that the CIA would go to such lengths to establish a front company for one agent, so others have probably been vicariously outed also. Finally, if such effort was undergone to create and maintain the front company for a decade, the intelligence flowing from it was probably pretty good. Sha-na-na-na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye...

At this point all that is left is the theoretical thought experiment of guessing the overall damage to the intelligence community as a result of losing these assets.

Now I'm not the type of person to condone going to war to save the life of a single, or even a handful of intelligence operatives as they are likely well aware of the risks and the possibility that they could become compromised and subsequently captured or killed, but the intelligence, dammit. We lost the intelligence. One's decision making prowess is keenly limited by the information one has available to make the decision. Sacrificing intelligence assets for political gain inevitably leads to more ill-informed and potentially bad decisions.

So from a strategic standpoint, I believe it was an egregious crime. Unfortunately, if the argument can be made that a Presidential request to publically identify a covert operative is tantamount to declassification, leaking Plame's identity may have been nothing more than a longstanding diversion from other Administrative nefarity.

"...the White House exposure of Valerie Plame .... was intended to retaliate against the CIA's work in limiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.....the CIA Counter-Proliferation Division prevented the shipment of binary VX nerve gas from Turkey into Iraq in November 2002. The Brewster Jennings network in Turkey was able to intercept this shipment which was intended to be hidden in Iraq and later used as evidence that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. U.S. intelligence sources revealed that this was a major reason the Bush White House targeted Plame and her network."

waynemadsenreport.com...

He maliciously let the cat out of the bag.

He looked at the camera and lied AGAIN.

Originally posted by dgtempe
I smell a BIGGGG problem ahead. With the WH in an uproar about this news, i think now is the time something will happen

:shk:

As you remember, each time, Bush is in deep *****, the terrorist treat alert system goes from yellow to orange to red hot !!!

So I guess, be prepare for a major attack (I hope not), to change the subject.

Yes, by tomorrow we'll be facing a full fledged alert as the WH prepares their excuse for more lies.

Umm, it is not a "leak" if it was authorized by the President and he went through the process of declassification..
ATSNN




seekerof

What kept you?

Right. Technicalities. The fact is this president is a sleeze ball, and he did act maliciously, and lie TO THE NATION ABOUT THIS.

Where were you when he said he would FIRE anyone who leaked anything...
To a sleeze it does not apply. Malice, absolute malice.

Tell that to someone else, please.

I posted that for you - thought you might be interested