RawStory >> NYT: Questions surround what Bush knew about Plame leak

[sabra]

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Questions_surround_what_Bush_knew_about_1105.html

Questions surround what Bush knew about Plame leak
RAW STORY


"Administration officials and Bush himself have carefully avoided disclosing anything about any involvement the president may have had in the events surrounding the disclosure of the officer's identity or anything about what his aides may have told them about their roles. Citing the continuing investigation and now the pending trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, they have declined to comment on almost any aspect of the case," the New York Times will report in Sunday editions, RAW STORY has learned. Excerpts follow.

#
While there has been no suggestion that Bush did anything wrong, the portrait of the White House that was painted by the special counsel last week in the indictment of Libby was one in which a variety of senior officials, including Cheney, played some role in events that preceded the disclosure of the officer's identity.

The fact that so many of Bush's aides seem to have been involved in dealing with the issue that eventually led to the leak -- how to rebut or discredit Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat who had challenged the administration's handling of prewar intelligence -- leaves open the question of what the president knew.

People involved in the case have confirmed that Rove told Bush and other White House colleagues in September 2003 that he had no involvement, but it is not known what, if anything, Rove has told Bush since testifying to the grand jury last year and this year that he had conversations with two reporters that touched on the identity of the officer, Valerie Wilson. What, if anything, Cheney and Libby may have told Bush remains a mystery.

Has * ever really been in the loop?

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

1. This is one of those "limited value" articles...

...we already know about the "open questions" and "mysteries." Other than keeping their iron in the fire, how is the NYT moving the story forward?

[Gman]

3. Sounds like a fluff story

regurgitating what's already known in different words.

[tuvor]

4. I'm glad to see "bush" and "Plame" in the same headline.

Doesn't happen often enough.

Headlines like this will not help bush's poll numbers to go up.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

10. You're right, that constitutes 100% of the value...

...keeping the story in the headlines keeps it in the public eye. Keeping it in the public eye drops Bush's approval points. On THAT level, it works for me. I'd like more NEW, concrete info...but I'll settle for a hobbled Bush.

:patriot:

[ClintonTyree]

6. What did he know and when did he know it...........

the question has already been asked, NYT. They're a bit late on the draw, as usual. I wonder how everything is going with Judas Miller over there? When they fire her ass I'll start taking them seriously again.

[MelissaB]

2. I love a good preview.

Thanks!

[stepnw1f]

5. Of Course Bush Knew

A megolomaniac such as himself wanted to know and decide on everything even if it was something he had no understanding of.

[FreedomAngel82]

8. Yep

You can get that information from Richard Clarke and his testimony that Bush was trying to get anything on Iraq. See his interview on "Meet the Press" that's shown in F911. You can also see that proof from when he was campaigning in 1999 he was talking about invading Iraq in 1999.

[spindrifter]

7. Fanning the fires..

the real question is what ideas does *have on his own. All we really know is that he likes to dress in military costumes, ride his bike, have temper tantrums around the WH. But what real, substantive idea has he ever had? We hear loads more about the ideas of those who populate his arena more than his ideas.

[rodeodance]

9. recall this? "Bush Dunnit"

......http://www.juancole.com/2005_10_01_juancole_archive.html

> Monday, October 03, 2005
>
> Bush Dunnit
>
> George Stephanopolous dropped a bombshell on his show on Sunday. Toward the end, as Judd notes, he said,
>
>
> ' Definitely a political problem but I wonder, George Will, do you think it’s a manageable one for the White House especially if we don’t know whether Fitzgerald is going to write a report or have indictments but if he is able to show as a source close to this told me this week, that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were actually involved in some of these discussions. '
>
>
>
> The implication is that Bush and Cheney took part in discussions with Karl Rove, Lewis Libby and other administration spinmeisters about what to do about that pesky Joseph Wilson IV, former acting ambassador to Iraq who had stood up to Saddam in fall of 1990. Wilson had gone to Niger in spring of 2002 to check out the stories circulating in intelligence circles that Saddam had bought uranium there recently. Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney (when people are in legal trouble the tradition is to drop the nicknames) had asked the CIA about the stories. Wilson had found that the structure of the uranium industry in Niger (which frankly was in French hands) made the purchases implausible. What Wilson did not know at the time was that the stories were generated by actual documents, a set of clumsily forged letters generated by Italian military intelligence officer Rocco Martini (who claimed he was the tool of "higher powers.")
>
> Wilson wrote his report and assumed it was passed by then CIA direct George Tenet and thence went to Cheney, who had initiated the inquiry. Wilson watched with amazement and outrage as the Bush administration went on relentlessly to hype Iraq's alleged nuclear program as a basis for the Iraq War that they got up. By May of 2003, Wilson had had enough, and he went public with an editorial in the New York Times, in which he told his story.
>
> The whole point of Bushism is to punish dissidence within the ranks immediately and ruthlessly. Wilson, a former State Department official, had to be destroyed for having stepped out of line. Everyone should remember that when former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill decided to come out with a tell-all memoir about being in the Bush cabinet for a year, he proclaimed, "I'm old, I'm rich, and there is nothing they can do to me" (or words to that effect). Then all of a sudden the Bush administration was finding signs of classified documents in O'Neill's book, implicitly threatening him with spending the rest of his life in jail for having revealed government secrets. O'Neill feebly protested that he had not had access to classified documents. But all of a sudden he disappeared from the airwaves. He had discovered that there were, too, things that could be done to him. He must have been astonished that the Bushes of Kennebunkport would behave like Vladimir Putin. Everyone always underestimates the malevolence of the Bushes of Connecticut.........

[rodeodance]

11. and this?---Sources Say Bush Directly Involved In Leak Scandal

......

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=914257&ct=1477747


ETHICS
Sources Say Bush Directly Involved In Leak Scandal

In September 2003, White House spokesman Scott McClellan had this to say about the CIA leak scandal: "The President has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration." (McClellan added, "here's been nothing, absolutely nothing, brought to our attention to suggest any White House involvement, and that includes the Vice President's office.") Since July, we've known that top administration officials -- including Karl Rove and Scooter Libby -- were involved, speaking to reporters about Joe Wilson's wife and her role at the CIA. Over the weekend, startling new evidence emerged that suggested direct involvement in the scandal by Vice President Cheney and President Bush.

SOURCE -- BUSH DIRECTLY INVOLVED IN LEAK SCANDAL: On ABC's This Week, George Stephanopolous said the leak scandal could become unmanageable for the White House if "as a source close to this told me this week, President Bush and Vice President Cheney were actually involved in some of these discussions." This would help explain why Bush spent more than an hour answering questions about the leak with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. But it would also explode the notion, carefully maintained by the White House, that Bush is merely a bystander who wants to “get to the bottom” of what happened.

SOURCE -- CHENEY DIRECTLY INVOLVED IN LEAK SCANDAL: The New York Times reported Saturday that "a lawyer who knows Mr. Libby’s account said the administration efforts to limit the damage from Mr. Wilson’s criticism extended as high as Mr. Cheney." Specifically, on July 12, 2003, "Mr. Libby consulted with Mr. Cheney about how to handle inquiries from journalists about the vice president’s role in sending Mr. Wilson to Africa in early 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear material there for its weapons program." The leaking of Cheney's role by a source who appears sympathetic to the White House may be an effort to manage the story. Similarly, the first details about Karl Rove’s role were released by his own lawyer.

TOP ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS MAY BE INDICTED FOR CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY: The public defense of both Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in the CIA leak scandal have focused on the specific claim they they didn’t know Valerie Plame’s name. But even if Patrick Fitzgerald is unable to prove a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Rove, Libby and others could still be charged with perjury if they lied to investigators. The Washington Post reports another possibility: "Fitzgerald is considering whether he can bring charges of a criminal conspiracy perpetrated by a group of senior Bush administration officials." Significantly, "To prove a criminal conspiracy, the actions need not have been criminal, but conspirators must have had a criminal purpose."

[spindrifter]

12. But these do not refer to any ideas that

are *'s other than everyone has to hunker together. I fully believe he was around during discussions of the "Wilson" problem, or at the very least someone told him they were involved in some shenanigans involving a perceived problem. But everything seems to come back to Ch*neyman and his henchmen being the idea guys.