Tag: Scandals

It’s hard to find someone to root for in this behind-the-scenes glimpse into the inner workings of the Gang of 500 in Washington.

At Scooter Libby’s perjury trial on Tuesday, lawyers argued about whether to admit notes Libby took from a conversation he had with former Vice Pres. Cheney adviser, Mary Matalin, in the week before Bob Novak revealed the secret identity of WMD specialist Valerie Plame. But the juiciest bit from the notes had nothing to do with the trial:

According to the notes, Matalin told Libby that Wilson’s charge was fitting into the “Democratic story on the Hill” and that the “story is not going away.” The notes say, “We need to address the Wilson motivation.” Matalin suggested that Libby call Meet the Press host Tim Russert. “He hates Chris — he needs to know it all,” the notes say, in a reference to Hardball host Chris Matthews, who had been promoting Wilson’s accusations on the air and slamming Libby by name. On the same page, Libby wrote, “Wilson is a snake.”

This is how the nation’s capital works. A scandal erupts, and the spinners go into damage control and try to manipulate the press however they can. In this instance, Matalin apparently believed Cheney’s office could play Russert against Matthews.

Chris Matthews is loathesome, especially when he chews up airtime with his spittle-spewing hatred of all things Clinton. And while this does edge my estimation of Tim Russert up from minus-50 to minus-49.5, now we know that even Vice Pres. Cheney considered him to be an easily manipulated Republican media tool.

The fact that Libby’s notes indicated that Matalin referried to Joe Wilson as a “snake” is particularly telling. Republicans like her are constantly impugning the patriotism of anyone who dares to criticize this administration. Joe Wilson is nearly unique among the players in this drama in that he did the right thing in ratting them out for lying to the American people. His behavior — unlike Matalin’s, Libby’s or their bosses’ — was truly patriotic.

Ari’s testimony at Scooter Libby’s perjury trial in the CIA Leak scandal certainly does not bode well for Scooter:

Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer testified Monday that then-colleague I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby told him over lunch that the wife of a prominent war critic worked at the CIA.

Fleischer said the conversation happened June [sic] 7, 2003, days before Libby told investigators he was surprised to learn about the CIA operative from a reporter. That discrepancy is at the heart of Libby’s perjury and obstruction trial.

This and AP sources say Fleischer testified that his lunch with Libby was on June 7, 2003, but apparently the correct date was July 7. (Which Firedoglake confirms here.)

According to this Plame case timeline, NBC’s Tim Russert received a phone call from Libby on July 10 or 11, 2003, in which they discussed the network’s coverage of the purported Iraq-Niger uranium deal — but during which the subject of Amb. Joe Wilson and his wife, the secret agent, Valerie Plame, did not come up. However, Libby would later claim in testimony before a Grand Jury that he first learned about Plame’s identity from Russert during that call.

Reporting from inside the courtroom in the CIA leak-related trial of Scooter Libby this week revealed that former White House spokesman Ari Fleisher sought immunity from prosecution because he was worried he might have committed treason — and even fearred he was in jeopardy of receiving the death penalty:

It turns out Ari Fleischer will be the next witness, once court resumes Monday [Jan. 29, 2007]. The defense team wants to note — for the jury’s benefit — that Fleischer demanded immunity before he would agree to testify, because this might cast Fleischer’s testimony in a different light.

And here Fitzgerald makes a nice little chess move: Fine, he says, we can acknowledge that Fleischer sought immunity. As long as we explain why. Turns out Fleischer saw a story in the Washington Post suggesting that anyone who revealed Valerie Plame’s identity might be subject to the death penalty. And he freaked. Of course, if Fleischer was this worked up about it during the time period in question, that suggests Libby would have been, too. (Which again undermines the notion that Libby had much bigger fish to fry.)

Can we extrapolate from this that the normally uber-unctious Fleischer was feeling a wee bit — what’s the word — guilty?

With the prospect of a lethal injecution put to rest, Fleischer spilled the beans. In particular, he told prosecutors that he learned Plame’s identity from Libby in the summer of 2003. Now Libby’s lawyers are now firing back, questioning the conditions of Fleischer’s immunity deal:

Defense attorneys are skeptical [and] are preparing court documents demanding to know exactly what Fleischer promised in exchange for immunity.

“I’m not sure we’re getting the full story here,” defense attorney William Jeffress said in court.

It is doubtful anyone will be charged with treason in this matter, even though it is clear that exposing the identity of a secret agent was the aim of this enterprise, and that it was done on direct orders from the vice president.

In any case, Ari can rest easy. He’s not going to fry. He’ll just have to live with being persona non grata among his former colleagues. (And he should probably buy a polonium detector.)

Newsweek:

White House anxiety is mounting over the prospect that top officials—including deputy chief of staff Karl Rove and counselor Dan Bartlett-may be forced to provide potentially awkward testimony in the perjury and obstruction trial of Lewis (Scooter) Libby.

I have long suspected that Ari Fleischer was up to this eyeballs in the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity to Bob Novak. Yesterday, during the lawyers’ opening statements in the perjury trial of Scooter Libby, Fleischer’s activities at the time were revealed — as was new information that Fleischer testified about his involvement under a grant of immunity from prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald:

[As] the two legal teams began their courtroom battle, new information was disclosed about the leak affair, including the revelation that Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary at the time of the leak, had identified Valerie Wilson as a CIA officer to NBC News reporter David Gregory a week before the leak appeared in Robert Novak’s July 14, 2003 column, and that Fleischer, during the subsequent criminal investigation, took the Fifth Amendment and demanded (and received) immunity before testifying to Fitzgerald’s’ grand jury.

Fleischer told the grand jury that he had learned about Valerie Wilson’s CIA affiliation first from Libby and then from Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. (This directly implicated yet two more White House officials in the scandal.) Gregory, though, did not report the information, and he later declined to talk to Fitzgerald about his conversation with Fleischer. Fitzgerald never subpoenaed him. (In a response to an email from a colleague asking about today’s disclosure, Gregory emailed, “I can’t help you, sorry.”) The first day of the trial also brought the news that after the Justice Department opened an investigation of the CIA leak in fall 2003, Cheney pressured the White House press office to make a statement clearing Libby of any wrongdoing.

What prompted all this was former Amb. Joe Wilson’s column on July 7, 2003, in the New York Times, titled, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” in which he accused Pres. Bush of lying about Iraq’s nuclear weapons program in his State of the Union speech in January 2003. It appears that Fleischer gave reporter David Gregory Plame’s identity within a day or two after Wilson’s article appeared.

Fleischer had announced his resignation in May 2003, and was a short-timer when Plame’s name was leaked to Novak. He was replaced by Scott McClellan on July 15, 2003, the day after Novak’s column was published.

In his opening statement to jurors today, Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s lawyer said Libby believed his colleagues in the Bush administration were setting him to take a fall for Karl Rove in the CIA Leak investigation:

I. Lewis Libby’s attorney countered with a White House effort of his own, one in which Libby was blamed for the leak to protect Bush political adviser Karl Rove’s own disclosures.

“They’re trying to set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial lamb,” attorney Theodore Wells said, recalling a conversation between Libby and his boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, as the leak investigation heated up in 2003. “I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected.”

In laying out his case against Libby, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald told jurors he had eveidence that at the time of the leak, Libby learned the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, a spy assigned to monitor the black market for weapons of mass destruction, from five different sources inside the government, including his boss, Vice Pres. Dick Cheney.

But later, when he was interrogated by the F.B.I. and a grand jury, Libby did not mention any of the five sources:

Libby told investigators he learned about Plame from NBC News reporter Tim Russert. But Fitzgerald told jurors that was clearly a lie because Libby had already been discussing the matter inside and outside of the White House.

“You can’t learn something on Thursday that you’re giving out on Monday,” Fitzgerald said.

Culture of deception: White House spokesman Tony Snow revised history yesterday:

I think the public ought to just listen to what the president has to say. You know that the mission accomplished banner was put up by members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, and the president, on that very speech, said just the opposite, didn’t he?

This is wrong is so many ways. ThinkProgress sets the record straight:

[On] May 1, 2003, Bush stood in front of a large banner that read, “Mission Accomplished.” In the opening of his speech, he declared, “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” He called the “battle of Iraq” a “victory.” In his radio address shortly after the speech, he boasted, “I delivered good news to the men and women who fought in the cause of freedom: their mission is complete and major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”

Additionally, as Bob Woodward reported in October, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had to pressure the White House to take out of the speech the actual phrase “Mission Accomplished,” but he couldn’t “get the sign down.”

In Oct. 2003, then-White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan admitted that the White House — not members of USS Lincoln — had “take[n] care of the production of the banner.”

Olbermann last night, referring to Snow:

I mean, you were hired to lie. At least do it well. We‘re not all third graders out here.