Libby 'Authorized' to leak Classified Information
This is not a Plame Gossip column, because Murray Waas does not say that the Plame leak was authorized, BUT....
Okay, so what "superiors" does Libby have besides Cheney? I count one.
Rereading the "delegation of powers" letters off Fitzgerald's site, this would appear to me to fall outside his investigatory scope, but it does strike me as the heart of the pre-war intelligence operation run out of the WHIG. And, you figure, like the Niger forgeries, Fitzgerald must have come across a fair amount of information about the pre-war/post-war intel op.
Curious question. No real details are offered as to how this came up in Libby's grandjury testimony, probably in response to, "have you ever disclosed classified information?" But would the extension question be asked to Cheney, "have you ever authorized the release of classified information?" Think he'd perjure himself on that?
UPDATE: Different snippet are going to be floating around, but Libby's lawyers seem to be making a finely worded point on this. They are specifically saying that Cheney didn't authorize the outing of Plame, leaving open the possibility that he ordered the release of other classified info to promote his political goals.
Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.
Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein's purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.
Okay, so what "superiors" does Libby have besides Cheney? I count one.
Rereading the "delegation of powers" letters off Fitzgerald's site, this would appear to me to fall outside his investigatory scope, but it does strike me as the heart of the pre-war intelligence operation run out of the WHIG. And, you figure, like the Niger forgeries, Fitzgerald must have come across a fair amount of information about the pre-war/post-war intel op.
Curious question. No real details are offered as to how this came up in Libby's grandjury testimony, probably in response to, "have you ever disclosed classified information?" But would the extension question be asked to Cheney, "have you ever authorized the release of classified information?" Think he'd perjure himself on that?
UPDATE: Different snippet are going to be floating around, but Libby's lawyers seem to be making a finely worded point on this. They are specifically saying that Cheney didn't authorize the outing of Plame, leaving open the possibility that he ordered the release of other classified info to promote his political goals.
posted by mikevotes at
12:55 PM
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