Karl Rove

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by SuzeQuze

Okay, this is what is insane about this whole thing. Novak writes the column but Miller and Cooper are held in contempt and face jail time? And why did the Supreme Court refuse Miller's appeal? This is very frightening. "Freedom of the press" is long gone. Why did Novak reveal Plame's identity? Just because someone tells you who an operative is does not mean you should print it. This whole story stinks of something really awful.

Oh yes. This thing could go in a lot of different directions, none of them pretty.
It was speculated for a while that Plame was actually outed because her WMD work was leading her in the direction of Cheney.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Newsweek: Rove spoke to reporter before leak
Bush adviser didn't reveal confidential information, attorney says

Heh. All Luskin did was reveal what Rove had already told the grand jury.

[gldstwmn]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblo...inha_3637.html

07.04.2005 Lawrence O'Donnell

Rove's I-did-not-inhale Defense
Karl Rove's lawyer, Robert Ruskin, had his holiday weekend ruined on Friday when I broke the story that the e-mails that Time delivered to the special prosecutor that afternoon reveal that Karl Rove is the source Matt Cooper has been protecting for two years. The next day, Luskin was forced to open the first hole in the Rove two-year wall of silence about the case. In a huge admission to Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times, Luskin confessed that, well, yes, Rove did talk to Cooper. It is a huge admission in a case where Rove and Luskin have never, before Friday, felt compelled to say a word about Rove's contact with Cooper or anyone else involved in the case.

Luskin then launched what sounds like an I-did-not-inhale defense. He told Newsweek that his client "never knowingly disclosed classified information." Knowingly. That is the most important word Luskin said in what has now become his public version of the Rove defense.

Not coincidentally, the word 'knowing' is the most important word in the controlling statute ( U.S. Code: Title 50: Section 421). To violate the law, Rove had to tell Cooper about a covert agent "knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States."

So, Rove's defense now hangs on one word—he "never knowingly disclosed classified information." Does that mean Rove simply didn't know Valerie Plame was a covert agent? Or does it just mean that Rove did not know that the CIA was "taking affirmative measures" to hide her identity?

In Luskin's next damage control session with the press, let's see if any reporter can get him to drop the word 'knowingly' from the never-disclosed-classified-information bit.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblo...inha_3637.html

07.04.2005 Lawrence O'Donnell

Rove's I-did-not-inhale Defense
Karl Rove's lawyer, Robert Ruskin, had his holiday weekend ruined on Friday when I broke the story that the e-mails that Time delivered to the special prosecutor that afternoon reveal that Karl Rove is the source Matt Cooper has been protecting for two years. The next day, Luskin was forced to open the first hole in the Rove two-year wall of silence about the case. In a huge admission to Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times, Luskin confessed that, well, yes, Rove did talk to Cooper. It is a huge admission in a case where Rove and Luskin have never, before Friday, felt compelled to say a word about Rove's contact with Cooper or anyone else involved in the case.

Luskin then launched what sounds like an I-did-not-inhale defense. He told Newsweek that his client "never knowingly disclosed classified information." Knowingly. That is the most important word Luskin said in what has now become his public version of the Rove defense.

Not coincidentally, the word 'knowing' is the most important word in the controlling statute ( U.S. Code: Title 50: Section 421). To violate the law, Rove had to tell Cooper about a covert agent "knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States."

So, Rove's defense now hangs on one word—he "never knowingly disclosed classified information." Does that mean Rove simply didn't know Valerie Plame was a covert agent? Or does it just mean that Rove did not know that the CIA was "taking affirmative measures" to hide her identity?

In Luskin's next damage control session with the press, let's see if any reporter can get him to drop the word 'knowingly' from the never-disclosed-classified-information bit.

and the def. of "is" is . . . What an ass.

[irishgrl]

Ah, the wonder boy may have made a HUGE tactical error..... I tell you, if he does go down, there may be a glimmer of hope yet for this country, for without the puppet master, the puppet is nothing more than wood and string.....
Let us pray...........

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by irishgrl

Ah, the wonder boy may have made a HUGE tactical error..... I tell you, if he does go down, there may be a glimmer of hope yet for this country, for without the puppet master, the puppet is nothing more than wood and string.....
Let us pray...........

Well, he's still got Cheney to prop him up. But it look like if Karl goes down, this would pretty much lead to Cheney's door so we shall see.

[strandinthewind]

Sharks Smelling the Blood in the Water

_________________________________________________

Plame Prosecutor Demands Time Journo Testify

Tuesday, July 05, 2005



WASHINGTON — A federal prosecutor on Tuesday demanded the grand jury testimony of Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper (search), even though Time Inc. has surrendered e-mails and other documents to the investigation into the leak of a CIA officer's identity.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald (search) also opposed the request of Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller (search) to be granted home detention — instead of jail — for refusing to reveal their sources.

Fitzgerald said allowing them home confinement would make it easier for them to continue to defy a court order to testify.

Special treatment for journalists may "negate the coercive effect contemplated by federal law," Fitzgerald wrote.

"Journalists are not entitled to promise complete confidentiality — no one in America is," Fitzgerald wrote in filings with the court.

Miller and Cooper could be ordered to jail as early as Wednesday when U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan will hear arguments from Fitzgerald and lawyers for the reporters about whether they should testify.

Hogan has found the reporters in contempt of court for refusing to divulge their sources and he indicated last week that he is prepared to send them to jail if they do not cooperate.

In his court filings, Fitzgerald said it is essential for courts to enforce their contempt orders so that grand juries can get the evidence they need.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,161595,00.html

[strandinthewind]

and another:

Prosecutor: Time reporter must testify about CIA leak

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A federal prosecutor on Tuesday demanded that Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper testify before a grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA officer's identity, even though Time Inc. has surrendered e-mails and other documents in the probe.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald also opposed the request of Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller to be granted home detention -- instead of jail -- for refusing to reveal their sources.

Allowing the reporters home confinement would make it easier for them to continue to defy a court order to testify, he said. Special treatment for journalists may "negate the coercive effect contemplated by federal law," Fitzgerald wrote in filings with the court.

"Journalists are not entitled to promise complete confidentiality -- no one in America is," Fitzgerald wrote.

Fitzgerald is investigating who in the administration leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.

Plame's name was first published in a 2003 column by Robert Novak, who cited two unidentified senior Bush administration officials as his sources. Novak has refused to say whether he has testified or been subpoenaed.

Miller and Cooper could be ordered to jail as early as Wednesday when U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan will hear arguments from Fitzgerald and lawyers for the reporters about whether they should testify.

Hogan has found the reporters in contempt of court for refusing to divulge their sources and he indicated last week that he is prepared to send them to jail if they do not cooperate.

In his court filings, Fitzgerald said it is essential for courts to enforce their contempt orders so that grand juries can get the evidence they need.

The case is among the most serious legal clashes between the media and the government since the Supreme Court in 1971 refused to stop the Times and The Washington Post from publishing a classified history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers.

Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia have shield laws protecting reporters from having to identify their confidential sources. Legislation to establish such protection under federal law has been introduced in Congress.

Time Inc. is owned by Time Warner, which is the parent company of CNN.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/07/05/ci....ap/index.html

[SuzeQuze]

I guess if you read between the lines Novak must have talked and whatever he said pointed to the other two reporters. However, he's not saying anything so it is hard to tell. Also, by forcing these reporters to reveal sources, isn't that inhibiting the freedom of the press as protected in the first amendment?

First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Here's another story:

Reporters argue against jail after Time surrenders notes

By The Associated Press
07.05.05

WASHINGTON — Time magazine and New York Times reporters, held in contempt for refusing to name sources, tried to stay out of jail on July 1 by arguing for home detention instead after Time Inc. surrendered its reporter’s notes to a prosecutor.

Producing the documents makes it unnecessary for Time reporter Matthew Cooper to testify to the federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA officer’s identity, Cooper’s attorneys argued in papers filed with a federal judge.

“The decision of Time Inc. to comply with the special counsel’s demand should obviate the need to enforce the subpoena served on Mr. Cooper and the contempt citation against him,” the court papers stated. “Mr. Cooper submits that his testimony would be duplicative and unnecessary.”

New York Times reporter Judith Miller will never reveal her sources and depriving her of her freedom “offers absolutely no realistic likelihood” that she will tell the prosecutor what she knows, her attorneys wrote.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan found the two reporters and Time Inc. in contempt for refusing to cooperate in the investigation of who in the Bush administration disclosed the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.

Plame’s name was first published in a 2003 column by Robert Novak, who cited two unidentified senior Bush administration officials as his sources. Novak has refused to say whether he has testified or been subpoenaed.

Cooper, who wrote a subsequent story naming Plame, and Miller, who gathered material but never wrote an article, could be ordered to jail at the conclusion of a hearing before Hogan tomorrow.

Time turned over the documents four days after the Supreme Court refused to consider the case.

If Hogan refuses to lift his civil contempt order, a term of home detention would be appropriate for Cooper and Miller, the court papers stated. In the alternative, Cooper should be sent to the Federal Prison Camp in Cumberland, Md., and Miller to the Federal Prison Camp for women in Danbury, Conn., lawyers for each said.

Home detention would restrict Cooper’s activities “without unduly punishing” his wife and very young son, his lawyers said.

Nine members of the Army with whom Miller spent time when she was covering the war in Iraq submitted letters on her behalf, saying that she is someone who keeps her word and would never reveal secrets or her confidential sources under any circumstances.

One of the letters was from Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who is in command of training Iraqi security forces.

On Capitol Hill, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said on July 1 that several unidentified Senate Republicans had placed a hold on a proposed resolution declaring support for Miller and Cooper.

“Cowards!” Lautenberg said of the Republicans. “Under the rules, they have a right to refuse to reveal who they are. Sound familiar?”

Lautenberg’s resolution is co-sponsored by Sens. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. It says that no purpose would be served by imprisoning Miller and Cooper and that the First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees freedom of the press.

Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia have shield laws protecting reporters from having to identify their confidential sources. Legislation to establish such protection under federal law has been introduced in Congress.

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=15517

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

and another:

Prosecutor: Time reporter must testify about CIA leaak

It's on!

[irishgrl]

ok....I dont know where this is going but I will say this: Reporters are RABID about protecting sources and will willingly endure jail so as not to reveal them.... including my Grandmother, the first woman reporter for the Oakland Tribune...

if its up to the reporters, then its jail time......if the paper gives it up, what's the point????

in any event, I hope and pray Rove and the entire row of dominoes goes D.O.W.N.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by irishgrl

ok....I dont know where this is going but I will say this: Reporters are RABID about protecting sources and will willingly endure jail so as not to reveal them.... including my Grandmother, the first woman reporter for the Oakland Tribune...

if its up to the reporters, then its jail time......if the paper gives it up, what's the point????

in any event, I hope and pray Rove and the entire row of dominoes goes D.O.W.N.

Well, since, I think, the 70's, they have no Const. right to keep a source a secret if it is relevant evidence in a criminal case. That is the law and it was just reiterated by the USSC. I mean we cannot pick and chose which USSC decision to apply or we are back to half of Georgia being declared by The Court to belong an Indian nation and the President (Jackson I think) saying, oh yea, well let The Court go enforce its verdict because I and the Congress are not

[Nixxxed]

A former WH Counsel for Nixon was just on Countdown (sorry, didn't catch his name), and basically called the Shrub Admin cowards and liars.

He said letting the reporters go down, as opposed to whoever revealed the info stepping up and admitting so, is the same thing that drug cartel czars and Mafia kingpins do.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by irishgrl

ok....I dont know where this is going but I will say this: Reporters are RABID about protecting sources and will willingly endure jail so as not to reveal them.... including my Grandmother, the first woman reporter for the Oakland Tribune...

if its up to the reporters, then its jail time......if the paper gives it up, what's the point????

We're talking about a couple of different things here. First of all, Time magazine, who Matt Cooper works for was asked by Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald for his notes or they would be penalized on daily basis.
Wanting to avoid that and hoping to grease the wheels a bit for Cooper, Time handed them over. Fitz said that's nice but Cooper and Judith Miller of the New York Times still need to testify. He also pretty much laughed off Miller's request for house arrest.
Now, I'm not sure if you're aware of what Miller's role in all of this is. She never published a story. But the New York Times issued an unprecedented apology due to a string of Miller stories in the run up to the war that were complete propaganda.
http://www.manticeye.com/article.php?id=303_0_4_0_C

When George W. Bush and Tony Blair made their fraudulent case to attack Iraq, the Times, along with most corporate media outlets in the United States, became cheerleaders for the war. And while Jayson Blair was being crucified for his journalistic sins, veteran Times national security correspondents Judith Miller and Michael Gordon were filling the Times' front pages with unchallenged government propaganda. Unlike Blair's deceptions, Miller and Gordon's lies provided the pretext for war. Their lies took lives.

The White House war propaganda blitz was launched on September 7, 2002, at a Camp David press conference. British Prime Minister Tony Blair stood side by side with his co-conspirator, President George W. Bush. Together, they declared that evidence from a report published by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) showed that Iraq was "six months away" from building nuclear weapons.

But there was no such IAEA report. But the following day, "evidence" popped up in the Sunday New York Times under the twin byline of Gordon and Miller. Their article began "More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today."

The Bush administration knew just what to do with the story it had fed to the Newspaper of Record. The day the Times story ran, Vice President Dick Cheney made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows to advance the administration's bogus claims. On NBC's Meet the Press, Cheney declared that Iraq had purchased aluminum tubes to make enriched uranium. It didn't matter that the IAEA refuted the charge both before and after it was made. But Cheney didn't want viewers just to take his word for it. "There's a story in The New York Times this morning," he said. "And I want to attribute the Times."

This was the classic disinformation two-step: the White House leaks a lie to the Times, the newspaper publishes it as a startling exposé, and then the White House conveniently masquerades behind the credibility of the Times.

Much of The Times coverage of Iraq in the build-up to the invasion relied on Iraqi dissidents, most prominently Ahmed Chalabi-head of the Iraqi National Conference. This week's New Yorker has a piece on Chalabi called "The Manipulator," which looks at Chalabi's role. The piece quotes a key Chalabi aide Francis Brooke as saying "This war would not have been fought had it not been for Ahmed Chalabi."

Brooke told The New Yorker that Chalabi's sophisticated marketing operation at the I.N.C. was "an amazing success." Brooke met Chalabi when they both worked at the Rendon Group's Iraq project, a London-based C.I.A.-funded program to influence global opinion on Saddam Hussein. According to Brooke, the Rendon Group signed a secret contract with the C.I.A. that guaranteed the company a ten-per-cent management fee on top of whatever money it spent on the campaign.

The New Yorker also revealed that Ahmad Chalabi's niece, Sarah Khalil, was hired last year by Patrick E. Tyler, the chief correspondent for The New York Times, to be the paper's office manager in Kuwait. The magazine cites Chalabi's daughter Tamara as saying that Khalil actively supported her uncle's efforts while she was working for the Times. In April, 2003, after Chalabi was stranded in the desert shortly after U.S. forces airlifted him into the country, he used a satellite phone to call his niece for help. According to the magazine, Khalil commandeered money from I.N.C. funds and rounded up a convoy of S.U.V.s which she herself led across the border into Iraq, while she was working for the Times. Khalil was dismissed when word of her employment reached editors in New York.

So while you're going to watch the corporate media whores spin that this is about protecting sources, I can assure you that it is not.
We are talking about national security here. These journalists not only betrayed the CIA and Valerie Plame, they betrayed the public whose best interest they are supposed to be working in.
Plame's duties included work with WMD'S and nuclear proliferation. Ponder for just a minute how long it has taken to put that network together. With a vengeful little phone call, in fact many phone calls, Plame was outed as a CIA agent and everyone who ever came in contact with, and everyone who came in contact with them and so on was suspect. We have no idea how many people have been killed because of this. It's effectively destroyed a good part of our intelligence network on WMD'S and nuclear proliferation, making us less safe as a nation.
Again, this is not about protecting a journalist's sources. This trumps that. Whoever did this put our country's security at stake. And isn't that a big part of W's line? He's gonna make us safer. The red state folks think he'll keep us safer?
I'll get into the part where this could very well lead to the vice president later.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

. . . Again, this is not about protecting a journalist's sources. This trumps that . . . .

Yes it does - and I would like to remind everyone that this is a bitter pill to swallow when the chips fall in favor of the opponent, which they did not here. But, the rule of law must govern and it will.