Thursday, October 06, 2005

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Plame Game - The Final Curtain

Via inside tip: , confirming Reuters, that indictments in the Plame case are to be announced this week.

However...

1. No surprise,

There will be no indictment for Rove or Libby. However, some journalists (Familiar names) may be tapped on conspiracy to obstruct a Federal investigation, and other second tiered charges, yet it is not expected that any substantive indictments will be announced.

Fitzgerald will announce that there was no statuatory leak of Valerie Plame's identitiy did NOT occur as the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Specifically 421(a)(b)(c), did not apply to subject Valerie Plame, and were therefore not considered in this case.

Therefore the charges will be strictly related to the above mentioned secondary charges, if any.

Extra note: Word is that Judith Miller's 'publicity stunt' and book deal hasn't set well with the Prosecutorial team.

More to come.

UPDATE: Rove's three month offer of additional testamony has been accepted, although Fitzgerald has had the written testamony all along. This addition testamony has nothing to do with Miller or Scooter, but has to do with Cooper, who as everyone should have noticed is markedly absent of late.

More: My feeling is that Fitz now needs this additional testimony to move towards Cooper, whom I long had suspicion that he all along worked in a setup on Rove.

Normally at this point in a investigation, "11th hour" testamony is crossing the "Ts", getting things down, now that Fitz SHOULD have the story of what happened, it all points back to Cooper, although other media types should be ducking as well.

I can't see, nor can my source see Rove's testimony being accepted at this time just to "fry him".

Tracked to Tom Mcguire.

UPDATE II: As usual Lawrence (Liar, Liar) O'Donnell doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground:

"Fitzgerald does not have to send Rove or anyone else a target letter before indicting him. The only reason to send target letters now is that Fitzgerald believes one or more of his targets will flip and become a prosecution witness at the pre-indictment stage. A veteran prosecutor told me, "If Fitzgerald is sending target letters at the end of his investigation, those are just invitations to come in and work out a deal."

That's crap (Since when is Huffington a veteran prosecutor?)

then he adds this update:

"Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th-hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer's leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee he won't be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.

What this means is Rove's lawyer, Bob Luskin, believes his client is defintely going to be indicted. So, Luskin is sending Rove back into the grand jury to try to get around the prosecutor and sell his innocence directly to the grand jurors."


How should I put this......

Bullshit. Again, the key is that Rove offered this additional testamony back in July.

My bet is that Rove has never been a target, but quite possibly a prosecution witness. Again, Cooper began to flap his gums back in July, but has shut his trap of recent. My bet, that Miller tipped Cooper who 'bated' Rove as part of a design instigated by Democratic party operatives, thus a "scam" from the get go.

In my years of law enforcement I learned, "It isn't nice to scam a prosecutor".

UPDATE III The NY Times adds, but then doesn't add much except this point - which is the point of Rove's return to the Grand Jury.

As Tom Mcguire gives us the possible reasons:

"So why accept Rove's offer to come back? To give the grand jury one last look at him before they (a) indict Karl; or (b) rely on Karl's testimony, augmented by new information from Ms. Miler, to indict someone else; (c) pack up and go home.'

The answer is B.

Via the Times:

"Mr. Luskin has said he had offered for Mr. Rove to return to the grand jury if needed to clarify any questions that were raised by the testimony in July by Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine, who was questioned about a conversation that he with Mr. Rove regarding Mr. Wilson's trip in July 2003."

Cooper IS a focus of the investigation. What he told the Grand Jury and more specifically the discrepancies between Cooper's email and the story he wrote in Time Magazine, which National Review's Byron York wrote about here.

""In an interview with National Review Online, Luskin compared the contents of a July 11, 2003, internal Time e-mail written by Cooper with the wording of a story Cooper co-wrote a few days later. "By any definition, he burned Karl Rove," Luskin said of Cooper. "If you read what Karl said to him and read how Cooper characterizes it in the article, he really spins it in a pretty ugly fashion to make it seem like people in the White House were affirmatively reaching out to reporters to try to get them to them to report negative information about Plame."

Further he adds:

"Luskin told NRO that the circumstances of Rove's conversation with Cooper undercut Time's suggestion of a White House "war on Wilson." According to Luskin, Cooper originally called Rove — not the other way around — and said he was working on a story on welfare reform. After some conversation about that issue, Luskin said, Cooper changed the subject to the weapons of mass destruction issue, and that was when the two had the brief talk that became the subject of so much legal wrangling. According to Luskin, the fact that Rove did not call Cooper; that the original purpose of the call, as Cooper told Rove, was welfare reform; that only after Cooper brought the WMD issue up did Rove discuss Wilson — all are "indications that this was not a calculated effort by the White House to get this story out."

"Look at the Cooper e-mail," Luskin continues. "Karl speaks to him on double super secret background...I don't think that you can read that e-mail and conclude that what Karl was trying to do was to get Cooper to publish the name of Wilson's wife."


The idea presented here is that Cooper initiated the call - turned the subject to Joe Wilson and then turned that conversation around and wrote his "blistering piece" in Time.

Fitz at this point knows one thing - that Cooper did not ONLY hear from Rove about Valerie Plame, indeed, the evidence is that Cooper knew who she was before he called Rove. The question is where did he learn it from, and why did he attempt to set up Rove in the process.

That is what Fitzgerald is pursuing now.

UPDATE IV:

The "Paper that is useful in the City" The NY Times, reports:

"WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 - The special prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case has summoned Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, to return next week to testify to a federal grand jury in a step that could mean charges will be filed in the case, lawyers in the case said Thursday.

The prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has held discussions in recent days with lawyers for several administration officials suggesting that he is considering whether to charge them with a crime over the disclosure of an intelligence operative's identity in a 2003 newspaper column.

Mr. Fitzgerald is said by some of the lawyers to have indicated that he has not made up his mind about whether to accuse anyone of wrongdoing and will use the remaining days before the grand jury's term expires on Oct. 28 to decide.

Mr. Rove has appeared before the grand jury on three previous occasions.

Meanwhile, Mr. Fitzgerald has indicated that he is not entirely finished with Judith Miller, the reporter for The New York Times who recently testified before the grand jury after serving 85 days in jail. According to a lawyer familiar with the case, Mr. Fitzgerald has asked Ms. Miller to meet him next Tuesday to further discuss her conversations with I. Lewis Libby, the vice president's chief of staff.

Ms. Miller went to jail rather than divulge the identity of her source, but agreed to testify after Mr. Libby released her from a pledge of confidentiality.

Mr. Fitzgerald has not indicated whether he plans to summon Ms. Miller for further testimony before the grand jury."


Now I'm 'smelling it", talk about "spin". This article is full of 'newspeak' - which is a whole lot of words saying nothing at all. Rove "summoned"? Ok, spin it Times - he volunteered this testamony three months ago.

and .... "Indications that Fitzgerald isn't through with Judy Miller, but has not planned to summon her.."? Which is it Times?

In Michelle Malkin's words, "Snort!".....

At this point I wonder if it would be a public service to just issue the "Paper of Record" a gag order.

Again, more "spin":

"Mr. Fitzgerald has focused on whether there was a deliberate effort to retaliate against Mr. Wilson for his column and its criticism of the Bush administration's Iraq policy. Recently lawyers said that they believed the prosecutor may be applying new legal theories to bring charges in the case."

(Throughout this story, there has been this "story" often repeated, never clarified. So let's do that. Let's not forget that Wilson was proven to be a liar through the SIR. The MSM can keep harping these "The White House was getting Wilson back" DNC talking points, but I'm telling you that Fitzgerald isn't that stupid. There was nothing to retaliate for - Wilson fibbed.)

"One new approach appears to involve the possible use of Chapter 37 of the federal espionage and censorship law, which makes it a crime for anyone who "willfully communicates, delivers, transfers or causes to be communicated" to someone "not entitled to receive it" classified information relating the national defense matters.

Under this broad statute, a government official or a private citizen who passed classified information to anyone else in or outside the government could potentially be charged with a felony, if they transferred the information to someone without a security clearance to receive it."


Again, "Snort!"...

If you thought the IIPA was vague - try Chapter 37 - Tom Mcquire recounts the pros and cons of using this statute in this case. I'll make it short, better chance of nailing jello to a tree. For it to apply to Rove, Libby they would have had to have been the originators of the leak, which is with what we know as fact is not the case.

Again, here's the gist - despite of all the MSM's "he said, she said", and obsesssion with "Karl's toast", here's what we know.

We know Rove talked to Cooper, AFTER Cooper called Rove/ Miller talked to Libby, AFTER Miller contacted Libby, etc. We know that before anyone at the White House picked up the phone (initiated), but that reporters were all over the story of "Wilson's Rogue Mission" to Niger. Proberbial party of the first part (Journalists) to the party of the second part (White House). Who broke the law first? Who told first?

(Paging Mr. Cooper....Mr. Cooper?.....) Talk about Karl missing.......(actually active in the Meirs decision), where in the hell IS Mr. Cooper.

At this point Fitzgerald, I believe in spite of two years and millions of dollars, hasn't really got squat on the orginal investigation, but early stumbled into a something BIGGER, that I began to detail here way back yonder.

UPDATE V: Just preliminary, but a question: "What did Judy tell Fitzgerald about Cooper?" The answer, "What Rove is going to be talking about".

UPDATE: Moving to New Post here.







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