Newsweek: Fitzgerald Suspects Rove Is Not Telling The Whole Truth...

[kpete]

Newsweek: Fitzgerald Suspects Rove Is Not Telling The Whole Truth...
Newsweek | Michael Isikoff, Evan Thomas | April 30, 2006 at 02:39 PM

It was August 2004, and special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was zeroing in on I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby as the leaker in the Valerie Plame case. Fitzgerald had been quizzing reporters, searching for evidence that the vice president's chief of staff had leaked the identity of the CIA covert operative to a news organization in an attempt to undermine her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had been an irritant to the Bush administration. Wary of identifying their confidential sources, reporters from big news organizations like The Washington Post and NBC were talking to Fitzgerald under strict ground rules aimed at narrowing the scope of his questions.

Matt Cooper, Time magazine's deputy Washington bureau chief at the time, agreed to tell Fitzgerald about his contacts with Libby--but not about his conversations with anyone else. Given permission to testify by Libby, who waived the usual reporter-source confidentiality agreement, Cooper met with Fitzgerald at the Washington office of Cooper's lawyer, First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams. Yes, Cooper acknowledged to the prosecutor, he had spoken to Libby. And, yes, Libby had confirmed that Wilson's wife had worked at the CIA and had played a role in sending Wilson to Africa on a fact-finding trip aimed at discovering whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq was trying to buy uranium from the country of Niger. But according to Cooper, Libby had been offhand, passive--"Yeah, I've heard that, too," Libby allegedly replied when Cooper asked him about the role played by Wilson's wife. In other words, Libby was not Cooper's original source. Well, then, who was?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12554162/site/newsweek/
via:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/04/30/newsweek-fitzgera_n_20094.html

[NewJeffCT]

1. Rove, not totally honest?

Wow, a Republican not being totally honest. There's a first time for everything.

:sarcasm:

[lonestarnot]

2. wheeew damn you got that so right!

[Spinzonner]

3. Gee, ya think ?

[emulatorloo]

4. well, duh . . . .

I thought Issy was supposed to be smart? :shrug:

[Garbo 2004]

5. Not just Fitz and not just recently. Recall WHY Ashcroft recused himself

from the investigation? Early in the investigation the investigators thought they weren't getting the truth from some of the people they talked to, including Rove. And also of concern was Ashcroft's long and close relationship with Rove. How can one conduct an investigation when there's a possibility that the details of the investigation could be pipelined directly to those being investigated?

Murray Waas' Aug 2005 article here, for example, goes into what was behind the Ashcroft recusal and the appointment of a Special Counsel for the investigation: http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0533,waasweb1,66861,2.html

A previous Waas article, from July 2004 here: http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8073

It was clear to investigators in Fall 2003 that there were inconsistencies, contradictions and an apparent lack of "truthiness" in what they were being told by Administration staff. And recall, this was only three months after Plame's cover was publicly blown. Not just a matter of Libby and Rove, etc. being "forgetful" or "confused" in subsequent grand jury testimony over the course of two years. Three months after the events in question they were lying to investigators regarding their involvement.

When Fitz stepped in, Libby and Rove were stuck with their original stories to investigators. They tried to tough it out through the grand jury testimony, apparently hoping that journos wouldn't talk or that they could explain away their previous statements to investigators and subsequent testimony (the "poor memory" excuse). But no doubt Fitz from the beginning "suspected" Rove and Libby were lying, but getting proof of that required testimony from the journos they had spoken to, especially Cooper and Miller.

[Me.]

6. Don't Really Know Why Isikoff Bothered With This

There's nothing new, though to me there seemed to be a slant towards Rove not being indicted.

*shadow government*