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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Plame Gossip

There were a couple stories late yesterday on the Libby team fishing in the deep waters trying to get classified materials regarding Plame's undercover status(WaPo version here.) As I read somewhere else, I think this question of whether the CIA thought Plame was undercover was pretty much resolved as they were the ones who referred the outing to the Justice dept in the first place. If she wasn't NOC, the CIA wouldn't have referred the case. Duh!

But the interesting item today, came out of the NYDaily News, last paragraph.
Fitzgerald, who is fighting Libby's request, said in a letter to Libby's lawyers that many e-mails from Cheney's office at the time of the Plame leak in 2003 have been deleted contrary to White House policy.

Don't really know what this means, but it's the first official(?) mention of electronic shredding of documents. And, as we all know, the shredder doesn't hide innocence.

Josh Marshall has it with Fitzgerald phrasing it like this(I haven't seen the letter yet.)
"we have learned that not all email of the Office of Vice President and the Executive Office of President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system."

Just curious at this point. Atrios goes back to the original 12 hour delay by Gonzales and Card between their notification of the investigation and their freeze on all documents. 12 hours is alot of time to shred in this electronic age.

(Oh, and I left this off this post earlier. I think we're entering "conspiracy," I prefer "criminal conspiracy," territory here. Because the shredding of these emails had to involve at least two parties. Either Gonzales or Card telling someone, and then that someone or someones going around scrubbing the records.)

Rawstory has the letter(pdf), and it's a broad slap down of the information requests by the Libby defense. The only part that relates to the "missing emails" is the excerpt I have above.

5 Comments:

  • Thanks. I wish I could offer more interpretation, but Fitzgerald is a stone face. He gives nothing. Were these emails significant? intentionally deleted? is Fitzgerald claiming coverup? No way to know.

    That's part of his charm, I think. Nobody respected leak a day Ken Starr. Then again, that was alot easier to cover because of it.

    Mike

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 3:10 PM  

  • Maybe I didn't write very clearly. Certainly Fitzgerald should, and judging from his shrewd performance so far he has, at least to some degree, discerned something about those emails.

    My point was in the frustration of covering the guy. He gives up nothing until he wants to use it. No leaks, no unintended info.

    But, yeah, watching the guy as closely as I have, I would guess that he wouldn't even mention those emails unless he knew what was in them. He is the most extreme example I've ever seen of the lawyer's proverb, "never ask a question unless you already know the answer." He says nothing and does nothing unless he is in full control.

    So, yeah, I think he has at least a good idea of what's in those emails.

    And, from his performance so far, I respect the heck out of the guy and the way he's done things. I'm quite certain that he is investigating these emails as part of the broader "conspiracy." He has given me no reason to doubt his thoroughness.

    And, right now, I think he is either waiting on an open plea or pleas, or is in the process of pulling together the next indictment. But that's just a guess.

    Rove is the next target.

    Mike

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 4:38 PM  

  • Your right Mike. I think Fitzgerald has run an exemplary investigation. At least from what one can see as an observer. Of course he wouldn't ask a question or make a statement that he didn't know the answer for.. He's not a congressman after all. Gonzo is complicit in this whole thing, his ambitions outweigh his good sense.

    By Blogger Yukkione, at 6:34 PM  

  • I wonder how complete their shredding was and how many mainframes the WH backed its email up on... hopefully a bunch.

    By Blogger JUSIPER, at 8:13 PM  

  • Well, I don't think it was a professional job cleaning up, or Fitzgerald wouldn't know about it. It could be other emails that reference the missing ones, or there could be numbers missing from a sequential list, or he could have logs showing the traffic but the originals were gone.

    Now, the implicating question is why wasn't it professional? Did Libby, Rove etc try to clean their own mess? Was there just not enough time in the twelve hours to completely eradicate them?

    Either of these answers tells me that this was not a large effort, which raises my suspicions highly.

    Just at the guessing phase right now.

    Mike

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 8:55 PM  

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