DID BUSH OUT PLAME? Leaked CIA Memo Contained Reference to Plame

[leveymg]

INTRODUCTION

In articles published the last couple of days, I have argued that a prima facie case can be made that Bush committed Obstruction of Justice by lying to Fitzgerald about authorizing Libby to disclose a classified CIA National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). During questioning by Fitz in June 2004, Dubya had denied any role in the White House effort to out Plame and discredit her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson. I said it was perhaps unwise at this point to make accusations beyond that simple and self-evident fact that Bush lied to Fitz when the President was interviewed. The leak of the NIE, I wrote, involves legal and factual issues that are more easily spun and confused by White House apologists, and that we might best keep the message simple. Bush lied - he committed Obstruction of Justice.

I did suggest, however, that alternative grounds for prosecuting Bush should be discussed. The article that follows traces out the evidence for prosecution of the President and his men for other charges, including conspiracy to reveal Plame as a covert CIA agent, a crime punishable under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) of 1982.

Did Bush Out Plame?

Last Thursday, the story broke that Libby had testified before the Plame Grand Jury that President Bush authorized him to disclose a classified 59-page CIA National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). That document, identifying Valerie Wilson as a CIA weapons analyst, was leaked by Libby to NYT reporter Judith Miller ten days before the Agency first declassified it in part.

By his summary declassification, prior to the normal action by the head of the Agency, Bush set off the chain of events that directly lead to the public disclosure by columnist Robert Novak of an non-official cover CIA analyst working under her maiden name, Valerie Plame. This leak also led to the CIA Director "taking it in the chest" for faulty Iraq WMD intelligence, and a bitter struggle between the CIA and the White House over blame for the failed Iraq occupation.

The prosecution of the Plame leak was originally requested by the CIA Inspector General following a report finding massive and long-tern damage had been done to the ability of the covert CIA nuclear proliferation unit Plame had been assigned to as an analyst working on Middle East WMD programs.

That classified NIE contained an annex referencing Valerie Wilson as a CIA analyst in a concluding memo prepared by the State Dept. challenging the assertion put forward by the White House that Iraq had sought uranium yellowcake from Niger as part of its alleged nuclear weapons program.

Bush started the ball rolling in outing Plame, lied about this to the Special Prosecutor, and committed the felony offense of Obstruction of Justice. He may have also opened himself to charges as a co-conspirator under the IAIPA.
__________________________________________________

Minority Report: The Plame Dissent in the INR

Since publication of the July 12, 2003 Washington Post article we have heard periodic reference to declassification efforts related to an NIE dealing with Iraq's WMD program. The NIE was first publicly mentioned in the famous article that reported the Bush Administration had been forced to back off its assertions that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear and chemical/bio weapons program, after no significant stockpiles were found in Iraq by occupying coalition forces.

That Post story reported that the White House had laid full blame for that misrepresentation on the CIA:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45901-2003Jul11?language=printer
Bush, Rice Blame CIA for Iraq Error
Tenet Accepts Responsibility for Clearing Statement on Nuclear Aims in Jan. Speech

By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 12, 2003; Page A01

President Bush and his national security adviser yesterday placed full responsibility on the Central Intelligence Agency for the inclusion in this year's State of the Union address of questionable allegations that Iraq's Saddam Hussein was trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa.

The president defended use of the allegation by saying the Jan. 28 speech "was cleared by the intelligence services."

The Post story contains a background report on a press briefing given on board Air Force 1 by Condi Rice and Ari Fleisher the previous day -- the very day that Scooter Libby revealed sections of the NIE to Judy Miller over breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, DC. The Post quotes Condi describing the NIE as containing an dissenting view in its classified annex. That document contained a State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) report. Condi discussed the INR report with reporters during a White House trip to Africa, in which she and other senior officials accompanied President Bush and then Secretary of State Powell.

Pincus and Milbank quote then National Security Adviser Condi Rice describing the NIE as the source of dissenting views from U.S. intelligence about Iraq weapons. Despite the reservations expressed in that document, President Bush had told the UN during the January General Assembly address that Iraq had attempted to purchased uranium yellowcake from Niger. Bush cited British sources for that allegation, a claim that was later proved false.

Rice discussed the issue for nearly an hour on Air Force One. Asked about the CIA efforts to discourage the British from making the claim , Rice said: "If there were doubts about the underlying intelligence in the NIE" -- the National Intelligence Estimate that mentioned "yellow cake," a term for uranium ore -- "those doubts were not communicated to the president."

She said the only mention of doubts was in a "standard INR footnote, which is kind of 59 pages away from the bulk of the NIE." INR is the State Department's intelligence arm, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. "If there was a concern about the underlying intelligence there, the president was unaware of that concern, as was I," Rice said.

She said Secretary of State Colin L. Powell did not include the uranium allegation in the speech he gave to the United Nations on Feb. 5, eight days after the president spoke. She said that was because INR had questioned the matter. Neither Powell nor other State Department officials questioned its inclusion.

Release of the NIE and the White House Plot to Get Valerie Plame

A later report by Pincus co-written with Jim VanderHei makes it clear that the subject of the offending INR footnote was Valerie Plame. This raises the obvious conclusion that Plame was the target, and that Bush authorized the White House conspiracy to ruin her career by publicly revealing her identity as a covert CIA officer.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/20/AR2005072002517.html
Plame's Identity Marked As Secret
Memo Central to Probe Of Leak Was Written By State Dept. Analyst

By Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 21, 2005; Page A01

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials. Plame -- who is referred to by her married name, Valerie Wilson, in the memo -- is mentioned in the second paragraph of the three-page document, which was written on June 10, 2003, by an analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), according to a source who described the memo to The Washington Post.

The paragraph identifying her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the "secret" level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as "secret" the names of officers whose identities are covert, according to former senior agency officials. Anyone reading that paragraph should have been aware that it contained secret information, though that designation was not specifically attached to Plame's name and did not describe her status as covert, the sources said. It is a federal crime, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, for a federal official to knowingly disclose the identity of a covert CIA official if the person knows the government is trying to keep it secret.

Prosecutors attempting to determine whether senior government officials knowingly leaked Plame's identity as a covert CIA operative to the media are investigating whether White House officials gained access to information about her from the memo, according to two sources familiar with the investigation.

SNIP

While the NIE was written months before the June 10, 2003 INR referenced in Pincus' 2005 article, it appears that the INR attachment is essentially the same document as the version that refers to Plame. If this is the case, and Fitzgerald would certainly have pinned that down, then Bush may well be indictable for playing a lead role in a conspiracy to out a covert CIA agent under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) of 1982.
______________________________________
2006. Mark G. Levey

[panader0]

1. Clear and comprehensive. I'll save this article.

[marylanddem]

2. Wow! K & R! This is the first I've read that makes the Plame

connection with the NIE document clear (that Plame was noted in an "annex" of the report) - Thank you for posting this.

[CdnObserver]

3. On the second day of Fitzmas....

I had no idea that Plame's name was actually in that doc!

They are screwed! I figured that the declassification of the NIE would just be used to show a pattern of behaviour but now it's obvious that the NIE is everything.

Plus we now hear who was bribed to forge the Niger docs, so how long until we find out who bribed them?

Let's see what we get on the third day of Fitzmas!

[marylanddem]

4. Mark - could you state your source for the Plame

name being in the "annex" of the NIE document? Thanks

[leveymg]

11. Read the 2005 WaPo article.

We don't know when the original INR was prepared, There are reports that Bolton saw a draft of the INR in February, 03.

As for the 10/02 release date of the NIE and the 6/03 version of the INR, these are several different versions of the same documents. Miller had access to the same core documents that formed the NIE evn before the NIE was written. See, Booman23, yesterday. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/4/7/135428/8999

The particular version of the NIE that Scooter discussed with Miller in early July '03 was prepared after the 6/10/03 INR.

Front ends and back ends. They get mixed and matched for different consumers all the time.

[Roland99]

5. Nice find!

[Sparkly]

6. The memo is key, BUT...

so far there isn't evidence, that I see, that Chimp or Cheney authorized, or knew of, leaks of that memo or its contents... I'm not saying they didn't (I think they did) but the new info about their pushing Scooter to disclose parts of tne NIE to reporters doesn't necessarily mean the State Dept. memo was part of that, does it?

BTW, this is the same memo that somehow got into Jim/Jeff Guckert/Gannon's hands, isn't it?

[Garbo 2004]

7. Libby testified authorized to disclose NIE Key Judgments info to Miller

Libby testified that Cheney told him he was authorized to disclose info from the NIE's Key Judgments section to Miller. He did not testify that he was told the entire NIE was declassified or that he was authorized to turn over the entire NIE.

As I posted in another thread, page 23 of Fitz's 39 page April 5 filing states that Libby testified he was specifically authorized to release to Miller information from the Key Judgments portion of the NIE. Libby testified that he took to the July 8 Miller meeting a brief abstract of the Key Judgments to discuss with Miller. (Libby also testified that he didn't and couldn't have leaked Plame's identity to Miller at that meeting since as he first said, he didn't know it. Then later he said he'd forgotten he knew it.)

Libby didn't testify he was authorized to disclose the entire "59 page" NIE to Miller. And neither Fitz's court filing or Judy's public recounting of her testimony indicate that at the July 8 meeting Libby gave Miller a 59 page document or any document as far as I can tell, although your post certainly seems to suggest that.

The declassified Key Judgments portion of the NIE were released on July 18, 2003. Here is a direct link to the .PDF: http://www.ceip.org/files/projects/npp/pdf/Iraq/declassifiedintellreport.pdf

In that other thread I excerpted portions of Miller's public recounting of her Grand Jury testimony regarding her meetings/conversations with Libby and why IMO, in terms of Libby's leaking Plame to Miller the business of the NIE really isn't all that significant and is serving as a distraction. (And is leading people to promulgate info that is not supported by Fitz's court filing.) Don't forget, Libby first mentioned Wilson's wife to Miller on June 23, a meeting he didn't disclose to the grand jury and thus didn't provide a cover story for why he was talking to Judy and what they discussed.

Just cutting and pasting from my other post:

Miller's version of the July 8 Libby meeting and discussion of NIE info from her NYT article:

"An unclassified version of that estimate had been made public before my interviews with Mr. Libby. I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I had pressed Mr. Libby to discuss additional information that was in the more detailed, classified version of the estimate. I said I had told Mr. Libby that if The Times was going to do an article, the newspaper needed more than a recap of the administration's weapons arguments. According to my interview notes, though, it appears that Mr. Libby said little more than that the assessments of the classified estimate were even stronger than those in the unclassified version.

Although I was interested primarily in my area of expertise - chemical and biological weapons - my notes show that Mr. Libby consistently steered our conversation back to the administration's nuclear claims. His main theme echoed that of other senior officials: that contrary to Mr. Wilson's criticism, the administration had had ample reason to be concerned about Iraq's nuclear capabilities based on the regime's history of weapons development, its use of unconventional weapons and fresh intelligence reports." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/national/16miller.html?pagewanted=3&ei=5070&en=8b5d65316dd57414&ex=1144641600

Further along in Miller's first person saga:

"Mr. Fitzgerald asked me to examine a series of documents. Though I could not identify them with certainty, I said that some seemed familiar, and that they might be excerpts from the National Intelligence Estimate of Iraq's weapons. Mr. Fitzgerald asked whether Mr. Libby had shown any of the documents to me. I said no, I didn't think so. I thought I remembered him at one point reading from a piece of paper he pulled from his pocket."

Now, no doubt Miller spun and weaseled in her NYT article and may also have weaseled in her grand jury testimony. But Fitz had her by the shorties and wanted certain pieces of the puzzle from her to add to his larger mosaic of information. Presumably he got the info he wanted from her and so far, this version of Judy's testimony and the court docs are what we have on the matter.

Clearly, Libby's discussions with Miller went beyond what he told the grand jury he was "authorized" to reveal to her. I've previously suggested that the NIE info was Libby's cover story for meeting with Miller on July 8. The point of the Libby-Miller's discussions was to discredit Wilson (and somewhat ironically those awful "selective leakers" at the CIA who were providing info contrary to the Administration's Iraq WMD assertions).

Focusing on the NIE on July 8, while interesting, is also a bit of distraction IMO in terms of Libby's dealings with Miller and the leaking of Plame's CIA employment. The NIE story "explained" why he met with Miller after Wilson's July 6 Op Ed. Libby also insisted he had not disclosed Plame's identity to Miller. He first said that on July 8 he couldn't have told Miller Wilson's wife worked at the CIA because he didn't yet know that, Russert hadn't yet told him. But Russert spilled and refuted Libby's version of their conversation. Furthermore, Fitz had documented that Libby was told of Plame's CIA employment in June, if not earlier. So Libby's memory refreshed and he said when he spoke to Judy he'd "forgotten" he knew Plame worked at the CIA so he still couldn't have told Miller. Heh.

In fact of course, Libby and others had been working to discredit Wilson well before he went public with his Op Ed. And Libby had told Miller that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA both during and prior to the July 8 meeting. They'd met on June 23 and Libby mentioned Wilson's wife to Judy. Note that neither Libby or Miller initially disclosed to Fitz/Grand Jury the fact that they had met on June 23. At that meeting, according to Judy, Libby bitched about the CIA and told her that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA.

Perhaps since the focus of the investigation seemed to be on what happened after Wilson's July 6 Op Ed, it seemed safe to Libby not to mention the June meeting. Plus he likely figured that his bud Judy, Queen of the First Amendment, wouldn't talk to Fitz. But, as with Russert, he was wrong about Judy. Judy cracked and testified about the July 8 meeting. Bad enough, but it appeared she still was trying not to fully rat out Libby since she didn't mention their June meeting. But Fitz had an ace up his sleeve: he knew they had met on June 23. So after Judy's initial grand jury testimony, which didn't mention the June 23 discussion with Libby, Fitz encouraged her to go back and "refresh" her memory. And she just by coincidence happened to discover her notes on the June 23 meeting. (Whooo, these poor folks all need a memory course, don't they?)

Libby's camp is likely happy about the dust storm over the NIE and the July 8 meeting. Among other reasons, it confuses matters, directs attention away from Libby himself and keeps the Libby/Miller June 23 meeting under the public radar. In short, Libby didn't need no stinkin' NIE or super secret "declassification" of the NIE to blab about Plame to Miller. IMO, the NIE is a smokescreen when we look at how and when Libby leaked Plame's CIA employment to Miller.

[Disturbed]

8. "the NIE is a smokescreen."

Excellent! This is why Libby brought it up. He and his team are throwing everything they can throw to keep him out of prison.

[unc70]

10. and remember "Flame" in the notes -- typical Bush behavior

It appears that Bush needs to give nicknames to those he is trying to control or belittle. Calling her Flame would fit the pattern. As soon as I heard about the nicknames, I was convinced that Bush was present in the early strategy meetings. I hope "Stretch" will ask a question about it.

[leveymg]

12. Miller may have known more than Libby about the NIE when they

putatively discussed that at the St. Regis. You should read his parallel timelines of what appeared in Judy's articles and what was revealed later to be in the NIE. He makes a fine case that Judy was part of the team formulated the Iraq WMD NIE, and she published selected details months before they were compiled in the October 2002 NIE. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/4/7/135428/8999 Read it and let's talk again. THANKS!

Hint: Judy had interests in common with FO-3, Naor Gilon, the Mossad COS. The Lawrence Franklin indictment references her. She was a key player, and even a strategist.

See the Franklin indictment regarding the June 3, 2003 conversation at the Pentagon Officers Athletic Club, between Larry Franklin and Naor Gilon about Judith Miller. This case becomes a time bomb if it is revealed that Mossad had a part in the outing of CIA agent Plame. Judith Miller is Unnamed Woman in AIPAC Spy Ring Indictment

link to www.sw-asia.com

---
"On or about June 3, 2003 FRANKLIN met with FO-3 at the POAC, and the discussion centered on a specific person, not in the United States government, and her thoughts concerning the nuclear program of the Middle Eastern country and, separately, certain charity efforts in Foreign Nation A."
---

Page 24 Paragraph numbered 7of the AIPAC Spy Ring Indictment (see below)
http://news.findlaw.com/nytimes/docs/dod/usfrnklin80205ind.pdf

This is in reference to a meeting between FRANKLIN (Larry Franklin) and FO-3 (Naor Gilon) at the Pentagon Officers Athletic Club. The woman referenced is Judith Miller. Miller is a reporter for the New York Times who is as I write held in a Federal Facility in contempt of court. She wrote many now discredited stories on WMDs for the Times. The Charitable work was The Iraqi Jewish Archive which Judith Miller and Harold Rhode cooperated on with Ahmad Chalabi.

[Garbo 2004]

15. Yeah, that's what I was thinking, Libby probably couldn't tell her much

she didn't already know. And she probably could have told him a lot he didn't know. After all, she'd been in the pipeline for years. The Administration even cited her reporting as "comfirmation" of the aluminum tubes story.

I'll check out the links later. :)

[Catrina]

24. Excellent ~ thank you for pulling all that together so beautifully. I

remembered that Judith Miller was connected to the Pentagon Spy case but couldn't remember how ~

That would be explosive information were the media ever to cover it ~ and you're right, she most likely knew more than Libby at that point.

Gilon fled the country, didn't he after Larry Franklin's arrest? I don't understand though why he can't be extradicted ~ was it Miller who blew the FBI investigation into the Spy case? I can't remember, but I do recall that someone did.

Maybe Judith needs to be worried. Fitzgerald mentioned the case he was involved in a few years ago where the government planned to raid a suspected Muslim Charity but as he said 'The NYT' warned the Charity and 'interfered with the government's case'. He said that in the recent interview he gave at his former high-school. We already know that he had tangled with Judith Miller before and it was regarding this case. From his interview, it seems she is still on his mind from back then.

I wonder if he has evidence that she was a plant ~ it certainly seems that way. And also, in the middle of all this, during the period of the Africa trip on AF1 and the outing of Plame, Dr. Kelly committed suicide in England. Judith Miller never revealed that she had been in touch with him through email shortly before he died, when she wrote about his death in the NYT.

[Patsy Stone]

19. Not only are they happy at Camp Libby

I think they all MIHOP. Sorta. The focus of Fitz's questioning of * in June 2004 was about whether an official leaked Plame's name. Thus, it was necessary to "leak" information that would cover up the Plame leak.

The plan: If the president didn't leak the agent's name, and leaked instead useless info he declassified and thus didn't leak at all, unless there's a trail back to him about leaking Plame's name, he's off the hook for lying to Fitz.

Simplemente! :crazy:

[bleever]

20. Too clever by half. Again.

Every attempt to clean up leaves even more fingerprints.

Too bad. :)


:hi:

[Patsy Stone]

21. Who knew they were so bad at this?

I always thought they had a real knack for a cover up. :shrug:

:hi:

[CdnObserver]

9. Page 5 and 6 of the declassified NIE talk about the INR memo

So at least some information from the INR memo that had Plame's name in it was authorized to be leaked.

You don't think they would walk Judy "Whore of Babylon" Miller all the way up to that line without crossing it do you?

Probably something about how this dissent came from Joe Wilson's wife at CIA and that they needed to get their side of the story out since Valerie "Flame" was trying to burn them by getting her side of the story out through her husband.

It seems to me more and more like Valerie Plame (and/or her allies in CIA) DID arrange to send Joe Wilson so that he could come back and publically tell the world what the CIA already knew but could not come out and say.

I think this sort of forms the basis of the "she outed herself" defense. They were pulling off THEIR leak in order to counter HER leak, plus get revenge on HER, not on Joe Wilson himself.

They ALL knew EXACTLY who his Joe Wilson and his wife were from the start and why they needed to be countered at all costs.

[Garbo 2004]

14. Wilson went to Niger in Feb 2002. You're saying the CIA had the foresight

in Feb 2002 to know they would need Joe Wilson to publicly dispute a Niger claim that would not be publicly asserted by the Administration until January 2003?

Libby told Judy about Wilson's wife on June 23 at a meeting he didn't mention to the grand jury. Yet according to Libby's testimony in July he was so mightly concerned about the prospect of giving Judy selected info from the NIE's Key Judgments to on July 8 that he even sought legal counsel. (Yeah, right.) Seems to me that the NIE didn't have anything to do with Libby leaking Plame's CIA employment to Miller on July 8 or June 23.

[CdnObserver]

16. Ok, probably not.

But then again, when did behind-the-scenes discussion of these issues take place? Did the CIA know from the beginning that this was all a setup? Maybe they did have some idea of what was to come. When did they start trying to push the Niger info publically? Tenet stopped it in one case prior to the State of the Union.

Certainly, they must have known exactly what this crew is capable of. I'm sure that they all knew exactly how the war was being sold from the beginning on complete fabrications.

[Garbo 2004]

27. You forget that the Niger claims had previously been "debunked" by State

Dept INR (in at least 2001, IIRC). The claims/rumors about Niger yellowcake had been circulating for some time, it wasn't anything new. From what I can tell, no one seriously informed credited the Niger claims.

Joe Wilson was at least the third person to actually go to Niger, investigate on the ground, and say there was nothing to it. First, the US Ambassador to Niger had been sending reports back saying this isn't good info, a General had been sent to investigate and reported the same. Then the CIA sent Wilson, just for completeness, since Cheney had inquired about the issue to the CIA. What Wilson reported back wasn't anything singular, it just confirmed what others had already reported. It was no big deal for the CIA at the time or Wilson even. Just further confirmation.

In the fall of 2002, the Administration was pushing the Iraq War Resolution through Congress. That's when behind the scenes they were pushing the Niger yellowcake story and the aluminum tubes....to make the case for Iraq trying to reconstitute its nuclear weapon program. Both were crap, of course. And the Administration overrode dissenting views/opinions/facts. The Niger claims were so dicey that Tenet reportedly intervened to keep them out of a Bush speech. The aluminum tubes story was served up for them publicly by Judy Miller in the NYT in Sept 2002.

Bear in mind, all they wanted was the IWR to pass. Bush was going to take the US to war, regardless. (The leaked Brit minutes, memos confirm that.) The stories in the media, even the moves in the UN and the SOU were simply marketing and PR. It was never about facts or real threats.

Subsequently, as I recall, the aluminum tubes and Niger claims were publicly debunked by the IAEA, but it didn't matter. The IWR had passed.

After the invasion, and no WMD were being found, the Administration was in defend against critics by attack mode. Stuff had been coming out, not just Wilson, indicating that the Administration had rigged their justifications for going to war. Their concern wasn't really about Iraq by that time, it was a done thing. But 2004 was coming up and it was an election year. And that was their main concern: remaining in power.

[Igel]

13. Your post has the same problem that others do.

It concludes with "it appears". A perfectly good, rock-solid "it appears." Because nobody knows if the multipage INR memo (claimed to have been drafted in 6/03 is the same as the "INR annex" footnote in the 10/02 NIE.

The footnote would have been to discuss evidence throwing doubt on the uranium claims in the body of the NIE--a "dissent". I'd think the focus would be on the evidence against claims that Hussein was trying to procure uranium in West Africa (not just Niger) and discussing both the forged documents, Wilson's trip, his predecessor's trip and the British claims, among who knows what other info. It might have referred to Plame, but if her role in the genesis of the trip that produced a part of the information discussed is as trivial as everybody says, it's not highly likely. She may have been the analyst that wrote the NIE dissent: but then her relationship to Wilson wouldn't have been the person who 'suggested' he go, but the one that would have 'spun' her hubbie's trip to Niger. Which would get greater political mileage? WWRD: What would Rove do?

The INR memo was presumably written to discuss the genesis of Wilson's trip, among other things. It was Wilson-specific, IIRC. Plame's salience, however slight, would have been greater if only for that reason. If the Wilson trip was outlined in sufficient detail in the NIE memo to reference Plame (who, apparently, was not the main focus of the INR memo in 6/03), I'm surprised some overworked wonk just didn't say, "Look, you don't need a new memo, didn't you read the other one? 80 copies of the NIE were produced, ask your secretary and look at the annex on pages x through y."

The other problem is based on the court filing. First, if the NIE obviously contained Plame's name--and I have to assume Fitz would have asked this question, if not, he's a blithering fool and I wouldn't stand too close to him lest I get drool on my shoes--it's worth a mention. Perhaps he's saving it for some later, grander, indictment. But he seems to rule out the possibility that NIE leak = Plame leak by saying this isn't a big legal problem, in his understanding. But I think Libby's testimony predates he conclusion that leaking Plame's name is a problem. I can't reconcile the facts.

None of this shows that the INR memo and dissent didn't greatly overlap, or that Plame's name wasn't in the dissent; but it raises reasonable questions as to whether this is the case. And it means that the assumption that they were essentially the same document requires some evidence; I'd seriously like to see it. I like my conclusions to not be "it appears". "It appears" is roughly "seems" or "I think". "It seems that * outed Plame" is hardly a show stopper. We're left with a hypothesis.

And, of course, all this is a different thing from saying Libby didn't leak Plame's name.

[lovuian]

17. Everything is connected and there are No coincidences...

Its all been an elaborate conspiracy to bring the country to war destroy the CIA and the FBI
and take over this country by a cabal

Think about it without the Iraq War ... no Patriot act...

this is all interconnected... I see plans within plans...OOO

[annabanana]

18. hey leveymg!!

It was GOOD to see you on Daily Kos! The more exposure of your excellent work, the better!:applause:

[leveymg]

22. Revised version of this article posted over at DKos

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/4/8/165035/8373

There are some important revisions. After hours of back and forth with several really savvy people, I'm convinced there are some major gaps in the evidence to support a charge that Bush could be convicted under the Intelligence Agents Identities Protection Act (IAIPA).

However, Bush DID lie to Fitz when he was interiewed in June 2004. Therefore, Shrub set himself up for an Obstruction of Justice charge.

Contrary to what I wrote in my original article, I don't think there's yet sufficient grounds to conclude that Plame is actually identified in the NIE he ordered declassified without Agency approval. That puts him a step back from being indictable for conspiracy to violate IAIPA.

It's yet to be shown what Bush's orders were regarding the State Dept. INR that does identify Plame. It may turn out that Fitz can convince the GJ that Bush improperly authorized that to be leaked to reporters aboard AF1, but we don't seem to be there, just yet.

Sorry, I overreached.

[countryjake]

25. Thanks for the update!

I appreciate being able to watch the processing of any analysis or theory on a situation. Your explanations have helped in arriving at an understanding on this one, big time!

[stop the bleeding]

23. Thanks leveymg

I hope that I played a small role in this wonderful post. K&R

[leveymg]

26. Always best with friends.

We've had some excitement round here this week. It's amazing to see the memes we talked about 6 months, a year, 2 years ago become widespread. Subjects like coups, resignations, phony wars that seemed kinda out there just a while ago are now almost respectable.

Not sure I want to be a member of a club that'll accept me! When you strip back the respectable veneer of American exceptionalism, you see how insane a country we've become!