Will Rove Testify?

Drudge/Newsweek ^ | Jan 26, 2007 | Michael Isikoff

[woofie]

The president's political guru—and counselor Dan Bartlett—have been subpoenaed by Scooter Libby's lawyers. What it means for the most-watched trial in Washington—and who's next on the witness stand.

- White House anxiety is mounting over the prospect that top officials—including deputy chief of staff Karl Rove and counselor Dan Bartlett-may be forced to provide potentially awkward testimony in the perjury and obstruction trial of Lewis (Scooter) Libby.

Both Rove and Bartlett have already received trial subpoenas from Libby’s defense lawyers, according to lawyers close to the case who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters. While that is no guarantee they will be called, the odds increased this week after Libby’s lawyer, Ted Wells, laid out a defense resting on the idea that his client, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, had been made a “scapegoat” to protect Rove. Cheney is expected to provide the most crucial testimony to back up Wells’s assertion, one of the lawyers close to the case said. The vice president personally penned an October 2003 note in which he wrote, “Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the other.” The note, read aloud in court by Wells, implied that Libby was the one being sacrificed in an effort to clear Rove of any role in leaking the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, wife of Iraq war critic Joe Wilson. “Wow, for all the talk about this being a White House that prides itself on loyalty and discipline, you’re not seeing much of it,” the lawyer said.

Libby is charged with lying about when and from whom he learned about Plame during the spring and early summer of 2003, a time when the White House was working to discredit Wilson. (Blah Blah Blah)

[woofie]

That Wascally Wascall

[SevenofNine]

Would Karl Rove go down bastard or just bastard by FREEPERS LOL!

[woofie]

Rove has said in secret testimony that, during a chat on July 11, 2003, Libby told him he learned about Plame’s employment at the CIA from NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert, a legal source who asked not to be identified talking about grand jury matters told NEWSWEEK. If Rove repeats that story on the witness stand, it could back up Libby’s core assertion that he honestly, if mistakenly, thought he had heard about Wilson’s wife from the “Meet the Press” host—even though Russert denies he knew anything about Plame, and more than a half-dozen officials (including Cheney) have said they passed along the same information to Libby earlier than that.

Case closed

[Fairview]

Would Karl Rove go down bastard or just bastard by FREEPERS LOL!

What does this mean?

Are you a native English speaker?

[Rex Anderson]

Huh?

[Rex Anderson]

I think her posts are a puzzle to be solved, not a reply.

Let me know when you have something....

[Cinnamon]

Will Rove testify?

[tomcorn]

Given how narrowly the judge has interpreted relevance in this trial does it even matter that Rove is called?

[woofie]

Im still working on the turtle stuff from the Clinton days

[woofie]

can you say more?

[tomcorn]

-Would Karl Rove go down bastard or just bastard by FREEPERS LOL!-

No...Karl Rove go upsideways bastard and/or good bastard you Freepers now.

I hope this clears thing up for you...

( We Gibberite Bastards Know Good Lingo )

[tomcorn]

Well...Clearly the defense strategy is to open the trial up to alternate theories and the geopolitcal and political subtext of the Plame Affair. The Judge isn't having any of it. He is limiting the testimony to events directly related to Libby,Miller, Cooper, the FBI and the GJ. If they call Rove and Rove cannot respond to anything other than his testimony before the GJ and responses to the FBI then what point is there in that? I don't see how it helps Libby.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

Will Berger testify?
Will the dead testify?
Will Clinton Testify?

[Blind Eye Jones]

Rove will get his weather machine out and have it rain and flood the courthouse so that the trial will be postponed for the next couple years.

[joyce11111]

HUH??????

[JerseyDvl]

damn, that was the hardest I have laughed here in a while.
Thanks!

[tomcorn]

Welcome you lingo liker you. Happy Me Bastard you funny me find... Na Ha! Rodo....

[the Real fifi]

Let me see--we are supposed to believe that Libby's lawyers are calling them to provide damaging testimony against Libby?
What kind of bravo sierra is this?

[tomcorn]

I think this is a variant on the "bushy haired stranger " defense. What you do as a defense attorney is throw up a whole pile of alternative suspects and motives and then portray your client as the hapless victim of a grand unknowable conspiracy of unfathomable complexity and hope the jury throws up it hands being unable to decipher it all.

[woofie]

Its the Aspen Roots

[tomcorn]

Yep...in Wyoming I chopped out a lot of Aspen roots that were in a bed and it had no effect on the tree whatsoever. But These trees can really be a menace with their searching root systems. I have little trees popping up in my lawn from this same root system. But perhaps this is not what you wish to discuss.

[woofie]

They are interconnected ya know

[tomcorn]

That's Why they call them roots.

[IrishRainy]

Can anyone explain to me what the following means then:

The vice president personally penned an October 2003 note in which he wrote, “Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the other.” The note, read aloud in court by Wells, implied that Libby was the one being sacrificed in an effort to clear Rove...

If Cheney said he WOULDN'T protect one and sacrifice the other, then why does the "writer" turn around and say it implied Libby was being sacrificed????

This case is nuts!

[woofie]

Here is a guess and only a guess:


Wilson comes out swinging....Lots of talk about nutralizing Wilson(and why not?). Its not an officially organized effort but everyone is on the same page. The stuff about Plame is spread around . Someone calls em on it ...Everyone freaks. It turns out later that there is nothing to worry about as she is not covered by the statute, but they figure that out too late ....(it still looks like an organized effort) ..Fitz come in and is playing hardball ...Scooter didnt dot all the "I"s and cross all the "T"...

thats all there is to it

[STARWISE]

Well .. they could be sprouts ...:0

Hysterical repartee, there ... ROFL!!

[STARWISE]

Scooter ~~ Rove .......... PING!

[tomcorn]

Works except the Plame charge has nothing to do with the Obstruction and perjury charge. A Plame charge is not a required predicate charge to sustain perjury and obstruction. They are crimes in and of themselves. This is the reason the Judge has been so restrictive in his interpretation of relevance. He's nota fan of 'kitchen sink" defenses or broad scope charges. Narrowly drawn charges demand narrowly draw defenses.

[YaYa123]

According to MSNBC, Libby's full name is:

Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff Libby.

It's so funny reading the MSNBC scroll on the trial! It's as if MSNBC (along with Chris Matthews), can't bear to report on this without implicating Cheney.

[piasa]

The vice president personally penned an October 2003 note in which he wrote, “Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the other.” The note, read aloud in court by Wells, implied that Libby was the one being sacrificed in an effort to clear Rove of any role in leaking the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, wife of Iraq war critic Joe Wilson.

Now, without all the Isikoff bullspit :

The vice president personally penned an October 2003 note in which he wrote, “Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the other.”

Fixing it...[Isikoff includes some truth in his articles -he just squeezes a bit of it in there amidst a lot of crap so it's hard to recognize.]

The vice president personally penned an October 2003 note in which he wrote, “Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the other.” What the note means, read aloud in court by Wells, is unclear.

There, fixed.

Good grief, we know Armitage is the "leaker" so the whole theory of someone being sacrificed to protect Rove is just nonsense. The meaning of Cheney's note is open to interpretation because it's not even a complete sentence. Who is not going to be sacrificed? Who is meant by staffers is also unclear and unspecified. Unless there's more to the memo Isifoff's impressions of what was meant is not persuasive.

Isikoff was spewing Karen Kwiatkowski's erronous LaRouchie talking points in some of his later articles. She claimed she had attended Iraq planning meetings when she was really out of the loop and just a Morocco desk officer.

And then he came up with the allegations about the Gitmo Koran-flushing thing. Way to go there, Isikoff.

And then the spy Agee :

I don't know if it's been mentioned, but Isikoff has also cowritten articles with Mark Hosenball, a coauthor of Philip Agee who along with Agee was deported from Britain for revealing classified information on UK SIGINT in a 1975 article.
28 posted on 05/19/2005 2:11:32 PM PDT by Fedora I wonder if Agee's yucking it with Castro's brother these days.

[piasa]

Isikoff article ping.

Note also we had Isikoff, Novak, Walter Pincus and Hosenball and a few others -the same exact crew we see in the Plame thing- trying to quash the news of the meetings between Atta and the Iraqi intel officer, in one case I think it was Isikoff who claimed the Czech official Pavel had contacted the White House, etc.

[piasa]

This pack of libs names as I recall really began to "lose it" around April 2003 because they feared Syria was the next bus stop on the regime change route. Farouk Hijazi had reportedly been hiding out in Syria. I think there was a case where we sent troops in after people slipping into Syria too- Syria ended up coughing Hijazi up like a habanero hairball.

[piasa]

I think it has something to do with this :

APRIL 25, 2003 : (RUMSFELD BRIEFING ON THE CAPTURE OF IRAQI OFFICIAL FAROUK HIJAZI AND ANOTHER SENIOR IRAQI INTELLIGENCE OPERATIVE WITH THE 'AMERICAN PORTFOLIO' ) As US officials announced the capture of an Iraqi official with suspected al-Qaeda links, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said other key prisoners were providing useful information. Farouk Hijazi, Iraq's ambassador to Tunisia and a former high-ranking intelligence official, joins Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and others under interrogation. The key questions put to them: What happened to Saddam Hussein and the rest of the Iraqi leadership? Where are chemical and biological weapons hidden? What links did Saddam have to terrorist groups?
"You can be certain that the people who we have reason to believe have information are being interrogated by inter-agency teams, and they are in fact providing information that's useful," said Rumsfeld, briefing reporters yesterday [April 25, 2003] at the Pentagon. "He is significant. We think he could be interesting," Rumsfeld said of Hijazi. Rumsfeld said another senior Iraqi intelligence operative, who he said "had the American portfolio," was also captured. He did not identify that person.
Hijazi was captured at Iraq's border with Syria, US officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. He had been in Tunisia when the war started and sought refuge in Syria as Saddam's government fell, officials said. It was unclear whether the Syrians expelled him. President George W Bush's administration has been pressuring Syria to expel any Iraqi leaders who turn up there, and US officials said last week the Syrians appeared to be responding positively. Hijazi, born in Saudi Arabia, served as Iraq's ambassador to Turkey in the late 1990s. US officials believe he travelled to Afghanistan in December 1998, and they say he may have met with Osama bin Laden in Kandahar. What occurred at the alleged meeting - which Saddam's government denied took place - is unknown, but it is one of the events that US officials refer to in suggesting contacts between Iraq and the terror network al-Qaeda.
Hijazi also served as the director of external operations for the Iraqi Mukhabarat, or intelligence service, in the early 1990s - the service's No. 3 position. During that time, in 1993, Mukhabarat operatives are alleged to have plotted to assassinate former President George Bush with a car bomb, but Kuwaiti security forces foiled the plan.
If Hijazi was indeed a liaison to terrorist organisations, he would know to what extent Iraq assisted such groups, one official said. As a foreign ambassador, he may also have information on any efforts to acquire illicit materials abroad for Iraq's alleged weapons programs, the official said. Hijazi wasn't on the military's top-55 list of Iraqi leaders. -- "Iraqi intelligence agents held,"AP via TheAge.com.au, April 26 2003

[piasa]

APRIL 2003 late : (LONDON TELEGRAPH UNEARTHS DOCUMENTS LINKING AL QAEDA & IRAQI INTELLIGENCE; CONCERNS THAT CLINTON ADMIN HAD POLITICIZED INTELLIGENCE DATA - MENTION OF SUSAN RICE) The unearthing of documents directly linking Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization to Saddam Hussein this weekend may have hermetically sealed the Bush administration's case that dismantling Iraq's Baathist enterprise was in part necessary to undo terrorism's dynamic duo. But closing that case may reopen a Pandora's box for ex-Clinton administration officials who still believe their policy prescriptions protected U.S. national interests against the growing threat of terrorism during the past decade.
The London Telegraph's weekend revelations raise deeply disturbing questions about the extent and magnitude to which President Clinton, his national-security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, and senior terrorism and State Department officials — including Assistant Secretary of State for East Africa, Susan Rice — politicized intelligence data, relied on and even circulated fabricated evidence in making critical national-security decisions, and presided over a string of intelligence failures during the months leading up to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
Analysis of documents found in the rubble of Iraq's intelligence headquarters show that contrary to conventional wisdom, Iraqi military and intelligence officials sought out al Qaeda leaders, not the other way around, and ultimately met with bin Laden on at least two occasions. They also show that channels of communication between al Qaeda and Iraq were created much earlier and were wider ranging in scope than previously thought. The timing of the meetings sheds important new light on how grave the Clinton administration's intelligence failures may have been. On February 19, 1998, about six months prior to the attacks in Dar Es Salaam and Nairobi, Iraqi intelligence officials set in motion a plan to bring a senior and trusted bin Laden aide to Baghdad from Khartoum. One of the key Mukhabarat intelligence documents shows that a recommendation was made for "…the deputy director general to bring the [bin Laden] envoy to Iraq because we may find in this envoy a way to maintain contacts with bin Laden." The meetings took place in March 1998. "The Clinton Intel Record Deeper failures revealed. ," by Mansoor Ijaz, National Review Online, 4-29-2003

If you ever want to know what the clinton clingon liberals were up to... just look at what they accuse you of doing.

April 2003 was when the libs flipped out against Judith Miller of the NY Times over an article she wrote concerning an find in Iraq. The left hated her ever since... April 2003 was when Soros held council ans when Clinton just had to go out of the country to Mexico for a meeting.

[snugs]

I am still laughing at a recent interview when the VP was asked why he had invited Scooter to his Christmas Party. His simple answer was to show surprise at the question and then simply state he is a friend.

The interviewer still pressed implying was it wise to invite someone who is shortly to on trial to your party. The VP was ticked at that point emphasizing loyalty and friendship to a good man he had known for many years and that a Christmas party invitation is what you give to good friends.

I honestly think friendship and loyalty means nothing to the press regardless of being left or right wing.

[the Real fifi]

The only two people known to have deliberately leaks--Fleisher and Armitage were granted immunity by Fitz..Go figure. If you cannot see that this is a political prosecution now, you never will.

[woofie]

bump

[Della Street]

This is the reason the Judge has been so restrictive in his interpretation of relevance. He's nota fan of 'kitchen sink" defenses or broad scope charges. Narrowly drawn charges demand narrowly draw defenses.

You haven't been following the trial, I take it. There's live blogging and the judge is allowing quite a bit in.

[Della Street]

It's as if MSNBC (along with Chris Matthews), can't bear to report on this without implicating Cheney.

It was delicious the other day when Fitz witness Cathie Martin (former Cheney press spokeswoman) really slammed Hardball, while she was on the stand, in particular for its outrageous reporting on the story.

[A. Pole]

Case closed

Are they closing it?