Plame Gossip - The Coverup

There's a new story from Jason Leopold on the 250 pages of email that suddenly reappeared after Fitzgerald let it be known in a court filing that he knew they existed. Some of the correspondents in these emails, beyond Libby, were Cheney, Rove, Hadley, and Bolton. Dollars to donuts those are the majority of the conspiracy, although there were probably some minor players as well like Robert Joseph.

Anyway, back to the story of the missing emails.

But sources close to the investigation said that unnamed senior officials in Cheney's office had deleted some of the emails before Fitzgerald learned of their existence earlier this year, and others never turned them over to Gonzales as requested. Separately, according to people close to Fitzgerald's probe, there are some emails that Gonzales has refused to turn over to Fitzgerald, citing "executive privilege" and "national security."...

The emails from Cheney's office that were turned over to Fitzgerald earlier this month were written by senior aides and sent to various officials at the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Office of the President. The emails were written as early as March 2003 - four months before Plame Wilson's cover was blown in a report written by conservative columnist Robert Novak. The contents of the emails are said to be damning, according to sources close to the investigation who are familiar with their substance. The emails are said to implicate Cheney in a months-long effort to discredit Wilson - a fact that Cheney did not disclose when he was interviewed by federal investigators in early 2004, these sources said.....

Cheney and his senior aides did not disclose to federal investigators the fact that they either received or sent emails about either Joseph Wilson or Valerie Plame Wilson when they were first questioned about their knowledge and/or role in the leak in early 2004, people close to the investigation said.

So, we have "senior officials" in Cheney's office deleting emails and others hiding more from Gonzales. The emails are characterized as very damning and "to implicate Cheney in a months-long effort to discredit Wilson - a fact that Cheney did not disclose when he was interviewed by federal investigators in early 2004." And then Cheney and aides didn't mention these emails when asked about it by the investigation?

Tell me this doesn't smell like a coverup littered with chargable crimes. These emails appear to be a key that may crack open this conspiracy. But it does make me wonder, much like the Nixon tapes, what was so bad that risking charges of perjury and obstruction makes rational sense.

Oh, and Hadley's still very much in play.

Hadley's role in the leak is also being closely looked at by Fitzgerald and his staff, sources said, adding that new evidence has surfaced showing that the National Security Adviser played an intimate role in the effort to discredit Wilson and that he may be one of the still unnamed administration officials who spoke to reporters about Plame Wilson's work for the CIA.

Great work, Jason.

Also, The NY Daily News has two interesting revelations specific to the Libby case.

Seven officials have testified that Libby raised the CIA spy with them before columnist Robert Novak outed her. In the filing, Fitzgerald also revealed that his investigators also confiscated computers.

So, Libby's claim that he learned of Plame's status from journalists is not only rebutted by the testimony of those same journalists, but also from seven other administration officials. I guess that's why the "too busy to remember" defense is being tried. Ten or twelve people testifying that you're lying back to back to back tends to be difficult to refute.

And no proof, but what do you want to bet that those confiscated computers might have led to the missing emails. No description as to whose computers they were, but I'll bet that was a quiet day around the White House, everybody secretly mumbling into the phone trying to find a defense lawyer.

Bottom line. The investigation is ongoing and there appears to have been possible crimes committed in an effort to coverup and thwart Fitzgerald's investigation.

Regarding Fitzgerald, methodical means slow.