Richard Sale for Truthout.org:
If no action is taken today, it will take place on Friday, according to [federal law enforcement and senior US intelligence officials].
I. Scooter Libby, the chief of staff of Vice President Richard Cheney, and chief presidential advisor Karl Rove are expected to be named in indictments this morning by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.
Others are to be named as well, these sources said. According to US officials close to the case, a bill of indictment that named five people has been in existence since before October 17. Various names have surfaced, such as National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, yet only one source would confirm that Hadley was on the list. Hadley could not be reached for comment.
But letters from Fitzgerald notifying various White House officials that they are targets of the investigation,went out late last week, a former senior US intelligence official said…
[Federal] law enforcement officials told this reporter that Fitzgerald was likely to charge the people indicted with violating Joe Wilson’s civil rights, smearing his name in an attempt to destroy his ability to earn a living in Washington as a consultant. The civil rights charge is said to include that “the conspiracy was committed using US government offices, buildings, personnel and funds,” one federal law enforcement official said.
Other charges could include possible violations of US espionage laws, including the mishandling of US classified information, these sources said.
That Vice President Cheney is at the center of the controversy comes as no surprise. Last Friday, Fitzgerald investigators were talking to Cheney’s attorneys, and detailed questionnaires, designed to pin down in meticulous sequence what Cheney knew, when he knew it, and what he told his aides, were delivered to the White House on Monday, according to these sources.
The probe is far from being at an end. According to this reporter’s sources, Fitzgerald approached the judge in charge of the case and asked that a new grand jury be impaneled. The old grand jury, which has been sitting for two years, will expire on October 28.
Thanks to a letter of February, 2004, in which Fitzgerald asked for and obtained expanded authority, the Special Prosecutor is now in possession of an Italian parliament investigation into the forged Niger documents, alleging Iraq’s interest in purchasing Niger uranium, sources said.
They said that Fitzgerald is looking into such individuals as former CIA agent Duane Claridge, military consultant to the Iraqi National Congress Gen. Wayne Downing, another military consultant for INC, and Francis Brooke, head of INC’s Washington office in an effort to determine if they played any role in the forgeries or their dissemination. Also included in this group is long-time neoconservative Michael Ledeen, these federal sources said.
