.comment-link {margin-left:.6em;}

Born at the Crest of the Empire

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Plame Gossip - D-Day?

Needless to say, lots of ink, but is there anything new since last night?

(UPDATE 2( just finished) has the latest juicy gossipy, gossipy. No way to tell if it's true, but some people who usually are pretty good are citing it.)

A little more formal statement of what has been reported and rumored from the WaPo.

In a possible sign that Fitzgerald may seek to charge one or more officials with illegally disclosing Valerie Plame's CIA affiliation, FBI agents as recently as Monday night interviewed at least two people in her D.C. neighborhood. .....

The White House expects indictments to come today, according to a senior administration official. ....

It is not clear what charges Fitzgerald will seek, if any. After setting out on his original investigation, he won the explicit authority to also consider perjury and other crimes government officials might have committed during the nearly two-year-long probe.

To me, that last section reiterates that early on Fitzgerald knew somebody (Libby/Rove) was lying to him. ABCNews has virtually the same story. As does the NYTimes and Reuters.

Arianna Huffington's got a sort of interesting post on this(a bit of a surprise to me.)

Clearly, these guys knew that what they were up to should be kept in the shadows. Hence Rove's desire to have his conversation with Cooper be kept on "double super secret background," his self-assessment that he'd "already said too much" to Cooper, and Libby's request that Judy Miller identify him as a "former Hill staffer" instead of the usual "senior administration official."

Cheney, Rove, and Libby obviously felt that their actions had to be covered up. ....

The reason why Cheney, Rove, and Libby were so aggressive in attacking anyone who questioned their rationale for war is because, by the summer of 2003, it was becoming embarrassingly clear how wrong they had been about Iraq -- wrong about WMD, wrong about flowers thrown at our feet, wrong about the cost of the war. Had their incompetence not been so grotesquely manifest, there would have been no need for the attack on Wilson -- and the resulting coverup -- that has now landed them all in such legal hot water.

Laura Rozen has got an AP piece that says that Pollari, the former head of SISMI, has asked to testify to the Italian Parliament in relation to the Niger forgeries. And Josh Marshall has some more definitive comments as well as a little trip backwards through some previous stories on on the forgeries.

Firedoglake has a pretty good collection of Republican statements on perjury from the Clinton era.

Check out this Gary Hart editorial on the Phillip Agee and the outing of covert agents, if for no other reason than the irony at the end.

The frenzy has reached the point that the wire services are giddily reporting that Fitzgerald is actually meeting with the grand jury. Duh. I haven't turned on the TV yet this AM, do we have a Michael Jackson like media circus yet outside the Pretty building?

UPDATE: AP and CNN confirm Clemons yesterday.

A Justice Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the grand jury probe, said no announcement was expected Wednesday by Fitzgerald.

The federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA operative's identity could hand up charges as early as today, but Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is not expected to make any public announcements Wednesday, one source with knowledge of the probe told CNN.


However, I wonder if the indictments can really be kept quiet for a day.

UPDATE 2: This is from Rawstory so many grains of salt. They've been batting just over .500 in the last two weeks.

Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has asked the grand jury investigating the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson to indict Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and Bush’s Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, lawyers close to the investigation tell Rawstory. ....

Fitzgerald has also asked the jury to indict Libby on a second charge: knowingly outing a covert operative, the lawyers said. ...

Two other officials, who are not employees in the White House, are also expected to face indictments, the lawyers said......

Those close to the investigation said Rove was offered a deal Tuesday to plead guilty to perjury for a reduced charge. Rove’s lawyer was told that Fitzgerald would drop an obstruction of justice charge if his client agreed not to contest allegations of perjury, they said.

Rove declined to plead guilty to the reduced charge....

And I know nothing about this guy Sale - a former UPI guy.
An hour ago I was contacted by a U.S. government official close to the Fitzgerald case. This person told me that there WILL be indictments announced later this afternoon, and the Special Prosecutor will hold a press conference tomorrow.
I can't get that section to link, so try here.

But on an earlier rumor post, Rawstory links to him, and Kos links to him. And in that post, Sale reveals four attempted indictments, two of them Libby and Rove and maybe Hadley. He also said that very detailed questionaires about specifics regarding Cheney were dropped off at the White House Monday.

And most explosively, Sale claims that Fitzgerald has approached the judge to empanel another grand jury to look into the Niger forgeries and some named(neocon) individuals, Duane Claridge, Francis Brooke, and (oooohhhh) Michael Ledeen. Oh, that felt good to write.

I know nothing about Richard Sale, but he's getting alot of plugs and coverage, so judge for yourself. Quite frankly, if the second piece, announcements today hold true, I'll be much more likely to believe the first.

So gossipy, gossipy, people.
.

2 Comments:

  • Weird about not contesting perjury--isn't that a slam dunk?

    By Blogger JUSIPER, at 1:26 PM  

  • I really hope there's a second grand jury. And I have to say, I really much prefer a prosecutor doing this than Congress.

    By Blogger JUSIPER, at 2:57 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home