More Allegations of Libby Lies Revealed
By Carol D. Leonnig
The Washington Post
Ref: www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020406A.shtml

Saturday 04 February 2006

The special prosecutor in the CIA leak case alleged that Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff was engaged in a broader web of deception than was previously known and repeatedly lied to conceal that he had been a key source for reporters about undercover operative Valerie Plame, according to court records released yesterday.

The records also show that by August 2004, early in his investigation of the disclosure of Plame's identity, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald had concluded that he did not have much of a case against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby for illegally leaking classified information. Instead, Fitzgerald was focused on charging Cheney's top aide with perjury and making false statements, and knew he needed to question reporters to prove it.

The court records show that Libby denied to a grand jury that he ever mentioned Plame or her CIA job to then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer or then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller in separate conversations he had with each of them in early July 2003. The records also suggest that Libby did not disclose to investigators that he first spoke to Miller about Plame in June 2003, and that prosecutors learned of the nature of the conversation only when Miller finally testified late in the fall of 2005.

All three specific allegations are contained in previously redacted sections of a US Court of Appeals opinion that were released yesterday. The opinion analyzed Fitzgerald's secret evidence to determine whether his case warranted ordering reporters to testify about their confidential conversations with sources.

Fitzgerald revealed none of these specifics when he publicly announced Libby's indictment in October on charges of making false statements, perjury and obstruction of justice.

The once-sealed portions of the federal court opinion were written in February 2005 by US Circuit Judge David S. Tatel, who was a member of a three-judge panel that agreed with Fitzgerald that the testimony of two reporters, Miller and Time magazine's Matthew Cooper, was crucial to his investigation.

Yesterday, the same panel concluded that because Libby was indicted and now faced public charges, the court no longer had to keep secret many of the details of the grand jury investigation that Tatel analyzed. Dow Jones Inc., parent company of the Wall Street Journal, had petitioned the court to release the eight-page Tatel opinion. Three of the pages were redacted.

Attorneys for Libby and Fleischer and a spokesman for Fitzgerald declined to comment yesterday.

Since January 2004, Fitzgerald has been investigating whether senior Bush administration officials knowingly leaked Plame's identity to discredit allegations made by her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Plame's name and her CIA role were first mentioned publicly in a column by syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003, eight days after Wilson publicly accused the administration of twisting intelligence to justify a war with Iraq.

According to Tatel's summary of the evidence that Fitzgerald presented in the court's chambers in August 2004, the prosecutor had at least a good circumstantial case on perjury but charging Libby with intentionally leaking classified information was "currently off the table," though it could be "viable" if he gained new evidence.

Tatel wrote that interviewing Miller would be crucial to making that decision, because Libby might have mentioned to her that he knew Plame's status was covert. He concluded that simply lying about a national security matter was serious enough to warrant ordering the reporters to testify about their conversations with Libby.

"While it is true that on the current record the special counsel's strongest charges are for perjury and false statements rather than security-related crimes ... perjury in this context is itself a crime with national security implications," he wrote.

The information gives a fuller picture of the case that Fitzgerald will likely put on against Libby. Yesterday, a federal judge scheduled his trial to start on Jan. 8, 2007.

In public remarks about the indictment, Fitzgerald has accused Libby of lying when he said that he believed he first learned of Plame from NBC reporter Tim Russert and passed along that information strictly as unverified gossip to Miller and Cooper.

Tatel's opinion also includes previously unknown details about testimony by Libby and other officials. For example, Libby acknowledged to investigators that Cheney told him in mid-June 2003 about Plame's CIA role and said she helped send her husband on a mission to Niger to determine whether Iraq was seeking nuclear material from the African nation.

That was soon after a Washington Post article on Wilson's Niger trip appeared. Libby emphasized in his testimony that Cheney only said it "in an off sort of curiosity sort of fashion."

Fitzgerald also contended that Libby lied to the grand jury when he said he never mentioned Plame or her CIA job to Fleischer when they had lunch on July 7. Fleischer recalled before the grand jury that Libby did mention Plame and said she worked in the "counterproliferation area of the CIA." Fleischer said Libby stressed that "the vice president did not send Ambassador Wilson to Niger . . . the CIA sent Ambassador Wilson to Niger . . . he was sent by his wife."

Fleischer added that he thought the lunch was "kind of weird" because the normally "closed-lip" Libby was sharing confidences and remarking that the information was "hush-hush" and "on the q.t."

Libby was also asked about two July conversations he had with Miller. He said he never mentioned Wilson's wife to Miller in the first conversation but passed along some information another reporter told him about Plame in the second, according to the documents.

Miller testified last year, however, that she thought Libby was the first government official to mention Wilson's wife to her and that he did so in three conversations: on June 23, when she visited his office in the Executive Office Building, and on July 8 and 12.

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New Details Revealed on CIA Leak Case
By David Johnston
The New York Times
Ref: www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020406X.shtml

Saturday 04 February 2006

Washington - Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff told prosecutors that Mr. Cheney had informed him "in an off sort of curiosity sort of fashion" in mid-June 2003 about the identity of the CIA officer at the heart of the leak case, according to a formerly secret legal opinion, parts of which were made public on Friday.

The newly released pages were part of a legal opinion written in February 2005 by Judge David S. Tatel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. His opinion disclosed that the former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., acknowledged to prosecutors that he had heard directly from Mr. Cheney about the Central Intelligence Agency officer, Valerie Wilson, more than a month before her identity was first publicly disclosed on July 14, 2003, by a newspaper columnist.

"Nevertheless," Judge Tatel wrote, "Libby maintains that he was learning about Wilson's wife's identity for the first time when he spoke with NBC Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert on July 10 or 11." Mr. Russert denied Mr. Libby's account. Ms. Wilson is married to Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who has criticized the Bush administration's Iraq policy.

Over all, the new material amplified and provided new details on charges outlined in the October 2005 indictment against Mr. Libby. The indictment accused Mr. Libby of falsely telling investigators that he had first learned about Ms. Wilson from reporters, when he had, according to the charging document, learned of it from other government officials like Mr. Cheney.

Mr. Libby appeared in federal court in Washington on Friday for the first time in several months. A federal trial judge, Reggie B. Walton, set a calendar that means Mr. Libby's trial will not begin for at least 11 months, with jury selection to begin on Jan. 8, 2007.

Judge Walton had hoped to start the trial in the fall of 2006 but Mr. Libby's chief lawyer, Theodore V. Wells Jr., said he would be involved in another trial at that time.

Judge Tatel's comments in the formerly secret legal opinion were largely drawn from affidavits supplied by the special counsel in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, that were written nearly two years ago, in August 2004. At that time, Mr. Fitzgerald was seeking to compel grand jury testimony from two reporters, Judith Miller, then a reporter for The New York Times, and Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine.

By that point, the newly disclosed pages showed, Mr. Fitzgerald had centered his inquiry on possible perjury charges against Mr. Libby, although that was not publicly known at the time. Mr. Fitzgerald had abandoned a prosecution based on a federal law that makes it a crime to disclose the identity of a covert officer at the CIA Such charges, Judge Tatel wrote, were "currently off the table for lack of evidence."

Judge Tatel wrote his opinion as part of a unanimous decision by the three-judge panel which ruled on Feb. 15, 2005, that Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper had potentially vital evidentiary information and could not refuse to testify to the grand jury in the leak case on First Amendment grounds.

In a separate affidavit filed by Mr. Fitzgerald and disclosed Friday, the prosecutor wrote that Mr. Libby had testified that he had forgotten the conversation with Mr. Cheney when he talked to Mr. Russert. "Further according to Mr. Libby, he did not recall his conversation with the Vice President even when Russert allegedly told him about Wilson's wife's employment."

About eight pages of Judge Tatel's concurring opinion were deleted from the opinion released in 2005. After Mr. Libby's indictment, lawyers for The Wall Street Journal went to court and succeeded in obtaining the material released Friday by order of the same three-judge panel.

Not all of the previously withheld material was released. Several pages, which apparently contained information about Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation of Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, remained under seal. Mr. Rove has not been charged, but remains under investigation although his lawyer has expressed confidence that Mr. Rove will be cleared.

The release of new material represented an important First Amendment ruling for the right of public access to court records, said Theodore J. Boutros Jr., a lawyer for The Journal. "We're pleased that the court recognized that grand jury secrecy is not absolute and that there's an important public interest in the public being able to scrutinize the basis for a judicial decision."

The newly disclosed information provides new details about other events, like a previously reported lunch on July 7, 2003, in which Mr. Libby told Ari Fleischer, then the White House press secretary, about Ms. Wilson.

In his opinion, Judge Tatel said that Mr. Fleischer said that Mr. Libby had told him that Ms. Wilson sent had her husband on a trip to Africa to examine intelligence reports indicating that Iraq had sought to buy uranium ore from Niger.

Judge Tatel wrote that Mr. Fleischer had described the lunch to prosecutors as having been "kind of weird" and had noted that Mr. Libby typically "operated in a very closed-lip fashion." Judge Tatel added: "Fleischer recalled that Libby 'added something along the lines of, you know, this is hush hush, nobody knows about this. This is on the q.t.' "