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Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald famously declared in the Valerie Plame affair that "there is a cloud over the vice president." Last week's release of an FBI interview summary of Dick Cheney's answers in the criminal investigation underscores why Fitzgerald felt that way. On 72 occasions, according to the 28-page FBI summary, Cheney equivocated to the FBI during his lengthy May 2004 interview, saying he could not be certain in his answers to questions about matters large and small in the Plame controversy. The Cheney interview reflects a team of prosecutors and FBI agents trying to find out whether the leaks...

AP - Vice President Dick Cheney told the FBI he had no idea who leaked to the news media that Valerie Plame, wife of a Bush administration critic, worked for the CIA.

Former vice president Richard B. Cheney told a special prosecutor in 2004 that he could not remember playing any role in leaking the identity of Valerie Plame as a clandestine CIA officer, according to FBI records released under court order Friday. In his May 8, 2004, interview with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, Cheney said he could not recall when he learned that Plame, the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV, worked for the CIA; could not recall telling his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, about Plame's employment; and could not recall telling Libby to disclose...

The Associated Press reported today (Friday) that lawyers for certain detainees at the Gitmo Prison in Cuba, possibly violated federal criminal law by releasing the identity of CIA covert operatives. The current Justice Department investigation connects to both the Valerie Plame matter a few years ago, and the current issue of where and how Gitmo detainees should be charged and tried. First, the Plame affair. According to the mainstream media, that was about the “outing” of a CIA “covert operative” in violation of federal law. But that law applied only to people who had been a covert operative “within five...

Editor's Note: This special feature on Robert Novak first appeared in the March 2009 issue of Townhall Magazine.Robert David Sanders Novak has been called many names. His close friends call him “Bob.” Most people call him “Novak.” His wife calls him “Robert.” Keith Olbermann has called him “The Worst Person in the World.” His more petulant critics have viler names for him. Many critics and admirers have called him “The Prince of Darkness.” I have had the honor of calling him “Boss.” Since I went to work for him at the end of 2001, Novak has been a mentor and...

NEW YORK A lengthy Q and A with the ailing columnist Robert Novak-- who died today at age 78-- appeared last November in the Washingtonian. At the end, Barbara Matusow got around to asking about the CIA leak case and outed spy Valerie Plame Wilson. Novak replied: "From a personal point of view, I said in the book I probably should have ignored what I’d been told about Mrs. Wilson. "Now I’m much less ambivalent. I’d go full speed ahead because of the hateful and beastly way in which my left-wing critics in the press and Congress tried to make...

The saga of Scooter Libby continues with an in-depth report from Time on the final hours of the George Bush administration and Dick Cheney’s desperate attempt to get clemency for his former aide. Cheney “really got in the President’s face” like never before, according to one source close to Bush, but to no avail. By that time Bush had already been burned on one pardon — and for the president, the issue came down to one question: ----------------------------------------------------- On the Sunday before he left office, Bush invited Sharp to the executive mansion for a farewell cigar. While packing boxes in...

The Supreme Court announced Monday it will not give further consideration to a lawsuit brought by a fired CIA agent and her husband against high ranking Bush administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney. The decision is a victory for Cheney and his former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. They and nine unnamed co-defendants were sued by Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband Joseph after her CIA cover was leaked to reporters.

WASHINGTON – A federal judge said Thursday that he wants to look at notes from the FBI's interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney during the investigation into who leaked the identity of a CIA operative. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan's decision to review the documents followed arguments by Obama administration lawyers that sounded much like the reasons the Bush administration provided for keeping Cheney's interview from the public. Justice Department lawyers told the judge that future presidents and vice presidents may not cooperate with criminal investigations if they know what they say could become available to their political opponents...

Somewhere, Bill O'Reilly just threw a fit. The always-busy Sean Penn, fresh off his Best Actor win on Sunday night for playing Harvey Milk, is already lining up his next hot button, politically-tinged role that will rankle the ire of many a Fox News commentator. According to Variety, Mr. Penn is negotiating to play Ambassador Joseph Wilson in Fair Game, a new film based on the autobiography by Ambassador Wilson's wife, outed C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame Wilson. In a bit of fairly spot-on casting, Naomi Watts is signed on to play Ms. Wilson, with Doug Liman set to direct. Of...

Here is another example of a lib passing military secrets to the enemy. Where is the outrage of those who thought Cheney and Bush should hang for "blowing" the cover of an agent not currently undercover? Read on

I just can't seem to get off this topic. The question is, what could possibly possess Bush to refuse to pardon Libby? The more I think about it, the more I come up with bad or even unethical motives by Bush. I will not indulge them here, at least not now, because it is speculation of this sort that leads the nut-roots on the left to make all sorts of baseless allegations. But do let it be said that many reports now are that a number of influential people did try to convince Bush to make the pardon -- and...

In a move that has keenly disappointed some of his strongest conservative allies, President Bush has decided not to pardon Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, for his 2007 conviction in the CIA leak case, two White House officials said Monday. On Bush's last full day as president, Bush did commute the sentence of two former Border Patrol agents—Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos—for shooting a Mexican drug dealer and then lying about it. But White House press spokesman Tony Fratto told NEWSWEEK "you should not expect any more" pardons and commutations from Bush before...

In a move that has keenly disappointed some of his strongest conservative allies, President Bush has decided not to pardon Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, for his 2007 conviction in the CIA leak case, two White House officials said Monday. On Bush's last full day as president, Bush did commute the sentence of two former Border Patrol agents—Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos—for shooting a Mexican drug dealer and then lying about it. But White House press spokesman Tony Fratto told NEWSWEEK "you should not expect any more" pardons and commutations from Bush before...

Slide show of items found at Al-Tuwaitha nuclear research facility in the fall of 2003. In the fall of 2003 the US State Department along with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency undertook a mission to do cleanup at the Iraqi nuclear lab Al-Tuwaitha. This lab was subject to UN inspections however the UN teams were not able to fully inspect the site during the Saddam regime. This lab was one of the places from which Saddam's men were video recorded by satellite moving WMD material to Syria. The slide show shows what Saddam's men left behind in their haste to...

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney chose someone in his own likeness to be his new chief of staff. Like Cheney, David Addington shuns the limelight. And like Cheney, Addington already has made a large imprint on the Bush White House. At Cheney's side since the 1980s, Addington has been a behind-the-scenes player in one after another of the hot-button controversies the Bush administration has faced: _The CIA leak probe. _The fight to disclose which corporations advised the White House on energy policy. _The dispute over the treatment of suspected terrorists. _The White House disagreements with the Sept. 11 commission...

Valerie Plame was dealt another setback Tuesday when a U.S. court of appeals upheld a federal judge's decision to dismiss her lawsuit against members of the Bush administration. Given the media's fascination with this former CIA operative who has claimed for years she was illegally outed by the White House for political reasons, it will be interesting to see just how much attention this ruling gets in the next 48 hours.

Appeals court upholds CIA leak lawsuit dismissal Tue Aug 12, 2008 12:01pm EDT By Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday dismissed former CIA analyst Valerie Plame's lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney and several former Bush administration officials for disclosing her identity to the public. The Court of Appeals in Washington dealt another setback to the former spy, who has said her career was destroyed when officials blew her cover in 2003 to retaliate against her husband, Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson.

Back in 1998, he made a comment on CNN — what it was is not material here — that I considered beyond the pale. I decided I could henceforth do without his opinions and insights. He impressed me as a distinctly disagreeable man. And that was well before he outed covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. When the news broke a few days ago that Novak had a brain tumor and would retire, I was not made prostrate by grief. What I felt was that whisper of common mortality, that sense of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God one usually feels when tragedy strikes someone who...

Remember Joe Wilson? He's the diplomat who went to Niger to investigate Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium, a raw material used in building nuclear bombs, from Africa. He wrote in a July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed that he had spent the previous February in Niger, "drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people ... associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." A story that has to be the most underplayed...

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman warned Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Tuesday to turn over a copy of a FBI interview with Vice President Dick Cheney or face contempt charges. The document in question is an interview Cheney gave to the FBI in the investigation of the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, a covert CIA agent. “The arguments you have raised for withholding the interview report are not tenable,” Waxman wrote in a letter to Mukasey. “When the FBI interview with the Vice President was conducted, the Vice President knew that the information...

Ex-Bush aide critical of CIA 'leak' Scott McClellan, the former White House spokesman, has again criticised Bush administration officials for their role in covering up a leak that revealed a CIA operative's identity. McClellan told a congressional commitee on Friday he had reservations about publicly clearing Lewis "Scooter" Libby, an aide to Dick Cheney, over the leak, a claim that proved to be untrue. "I was reluctant to do it,'' McClellan told the Democratic party-led House Judiciary Committee. "I got on the phone with Scooter Libby and asked him point-blank, 'Were you involved in this in any way?' And he...

Scott McClellan appeared before the House Judiciary committee yesterday. When asked about Joseph Wilson and the defamation of Wilson’s character by Sheila Jackson- Lee McClellan seemed to sympathize with the harm that had been done by the evil forces in the White House during and before his tenure as Press Secretary. Jackson-Lee asked McClellan specifically about the Uranium in Niger that Wilson reported on. Later in his testimony Scott was confronted by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) with some disturbing facts via a declassified CIA report. McClellan visually surprised with these facts began to backtrack. (Video Included)

Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), one of the most vocal opponents of the Bush administration on Capitol Hill, said Scott McClellan's book and testimony justify the beginning of impeachment hearings against Vice President Dick Cheney. During questioning of McClellan, Wexler asked the former White House press secretary if he believed Bush authorized the leaking of Valerie Plame Wilson's name. When McClellan said no, Wexler said this meant that Cheney must have been the source of the leak, meaning Cheney was seeking to retaliate against the wife of an administration critic. In Wexler's view, this would be enough to support the initation...

Scott McClellan testifies this morning before the House Judiciary Committee beginning at 9:30 (eastern). It will be covered live on C-Span and the three cable networks.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour. Exodus 20:16May God Bless Tim Russert's family for the orderal they are suffering after Tim's untimely death. Though he was on the Left with the rest of the NBC news department, he would be considered a saint when compared to Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthhews. I have been wondering for some time if Tim Russert's vague testimony about a conversation he may have had with Scooter Libby had been the lynchpin that effectively lynched Libby. It was. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald had cavity-searched everything that walked in order to "get something" on...

Scott McClellan, the former Press Secretary to President Bush (now a puppet for the Left) has written a book named, "What Happened," (probably ghost-written by the tripartite efforts of Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean and Harry Reid) which suggests that: The president used propaganda at worst, or bogus intelligence at best, as a basis for the invasion of Iraq; that Scooter Libby, Vice president Cheney or Karl Rove leaked the name of the CIA operative, Valerie Plame, and if the president didn't authorize it, he, at least, had knowledge of it. Here is what really happened: • In February, 2002, Joseph...

Former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told the FBI that it was "possible" that Vice President Cheney instructed him to disseminate information about CIA agent Valerie Plame to the press, according to a redacted FBI report recently examined by Congressional investigators. In part as a result of that revelation, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today reiterated its request for more Plame investigation documents -- including reports on the interviews investigators conducted with Cheney and President Bush. In a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Committee Chairman Henry Waxman also writes that "[n]ew revelations by...

And having read the book, I have to hand it to McClellan. In a genre as routinely and justly derided as the Washington memoir, it takes a special talent to produce a specimen that even by those standards is this flaming-dirigible bad. It’s usually the sign of a weak reviewer that he feels the need to extrapolate some sort of psychoanalysis from the text, but in McClellan case it’s unavoidable. In fact, once I began reading McClellan’s book, I had to seek outside counsel to confirm my suspicions about his precarious mental state. Political consultant Mary Matalin — no stranger...

<p>A partisan Democratic mantra began earlier in the book. McClellan writes George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign "acquiesced to certain advisers, including Roger Ailes and the late Lee Atwater," who opposed Bush's "civility and decency." (McClellan, then 20 years old, played no part in that campaign.) McClellan contends that thanks to Rove in 2002, "the first cracks appeared in the facade of bipartisan comity."</p>

WASHINGTON - President Bush broke his promise to the country by refusing to fire aide Karl Rove for leaking a CIA agent's identity, said Scott McClellan, the president's chief spokesman for almost three years. "I think the president should have stood by his word and that meant Karl should have left," McClellan said Sunday in a broadcast interview about his new tell-all book, a scathing rebuke of the White House under Bush's leadership. McClellan now acknowledges he felt burned by Rove, Bush's top political adviser, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff. He said...

WASHINGTON - Former CIA operative Valerie Plame is trying to resurrect a lawsuit against those in the Bush administration she says illegally disclosed her identity. A federal judge dismissed Plame's lawsuit last year, saying there was no basis to bring a case. Plame's lawyers asked a federal appeals court Friday to send the case back before the judge and force him to consider its merits. Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, sued Vice President Dick Cheney; his former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; former White House political adviser Karl Rove and former Deputy Secretary of State...

The Prime Minister of Niger reported to the U.S. State Department in early 2002 that Iraq tried to buy uranium "yellow cake" (ore) -- a June 2003 Memo reveals. A declassified court exhibit introduced in the 2007 trial of Scooter Libbey proved that Saddam Hussein tried to get uranium ore from Niger -- covertly and under the table. This is clear evidence that Saddam Hussein was actively developing nuclear weapons. Iraq already had stockpiles of uranium "yellow cake" that it was not using -- but that uranium was being watched by UN inspectors. Iraq could have no reason for wanting...

During an appearance in Philadelphia last month, Hillary Clinton introduced a controversial couple as part of her presidential campaign. She defended them as victims of smear attacks. "Valerie and Joe have had their patriotism questioned," she insisted. "They have been maligned as un-American because they believed that President Bush was waging a preemptive war that was not in America's interests and now because we believe our troops should not police Iraq's civil war." Of course this wasn't true. Both Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson were accused of being untruthful (and shameless self-promoters), not unpatriotic. Plame was a CIA official who...

Everyone else in the media is pounding Hillary Clinton for her tale, now shown to be fanciful, of dodging bullets on a Bosnian tarmac as first lady. But if you're looking for the best recent example of the lengths Mrs. Clinton will go to win the Democratic Presidential nod, consider that last week in Philadelphia she used Joe and Valerie Wilson as campaign props. Was George Galloway not available? Mr. Wilson and his wife are darlings of the antiwar crowd for their roles as self-styled martyrs in the CIA "leak" fiasco. The former ambassador is still cashing in on his...

Former Cheney Aide Libby Disbarred Bush Commuted Libby's Prison Sentence Last Year POSTED: 10:41 am EDT March 20, 2008 UPDATED: 10:55 am EDT March 20, 2008 A Washington, D.C., radio station reports that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has been disbarred. A three-judge panel on the D.C. Court of Appeals stripped Libby of his ability to practice law after he was found guilty last year of obstructing the investigation in the CIA leak investigation, WTOP radio reported.

Valerie Plame Wilson says she's been through hell, and is still recovering from being outed as a spy. But she will recover -- of that she's certain. By Kim Ode, Star Tribune (kimode@startribune.com) Mata Hari, James Bond, Boris and Natasha -- the popular image of spies always seems to embrace glamour, lots of "dah-links" and sex. So to blond and vivacious Valerie Plame Wilson, who for an awful period was, of all things, the world's most famous spy.

    Shadow Warriors   By David ForsmarkFrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, February 04, 2008 Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of SurrenderBy Kenneth TimmermanCrown Forum, $25.95, 404 pp. At long last, the CIA and the State Department have targeted a government they have identified as an aggressive threat to world peace and largely countered its foreign policy through psy-ops, propaganda, selective leaks of intelligence and covert operations.And who was the target of this covert campaign? Are these operations aimed at the Islamofascists in Iran? How about Vladimir Putin and his increasingly fascist government in Russia?...

(Note: I could not find ANYTHING on the web about this issue of 'The Penn Stater', so following is a quick review and, hopefully, a few points of interest.) Penn State alumnus Valerie Plame ('85 Com) graces the cover of the latest (January/February 2008) 'The Penn Stater' magazine, which is the magazine sent out every two months to paid-up or Lifetime Members of the Penn State Alumni Association. I am a Lifetime Member, and so there it was in my mailbox on Saturday. The cover photo is a nice portrait of Plame by Jennifer S. Altman (Contour by Getty Images)...

When former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson got the redacted manuscript of her draft memoir back from the CIA Publications Review Board (PRB) earlier this year, her book publisher realized it had a problem. "We were looking at a manuscript where 20 percent of the author's story was deemed classified by her former employer [even though] much of the information was probably in the public domain," explains an editor at the publishing house, Simon & Schuster. "So the challenge was, if Valerie can't tell her own story because she is bound by her agreement, then how is this story going...

“BLOWBACK” is an intelligence term for adverse, unintended consequences of secret operations. The CIA first used it in a report on the 1953 operation that overthrew the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. Some in the intelligence community have been working with liberal journalists and Democrats on Capitol Hill to embarrass President Bush and to stymie his foreign policy initiatives. The most successful of these covert operations was the Valerie Plame affair, in which White House officials were falsely blamed for “outing” a CIA undercover officer who was not in fact undercover. (It was then Deputy Secretary of State Richard...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- President Bush granted pardons Tuesday to carjackers, drug dealers, a moonshiner and an election-laws violator but not to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, his vice president's former top aide who was convicted in the case of the leaked identity of a CIA operative. In all, Bush pardoned 29 convicts and reduced the prison sentence of one more in the end-of-the-year presidential tradition. Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin said Bush has granted 142 pardons and commuted five sentences since taking office in 2001 — lagging far behind the pace set by most modern presidents. The list was issued with...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is dropping his appeal in the CIA leak case, his attorney said Monday. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of perjury and obstruction for lying about his conversations with reporters about outed CIA operative Valerie Plame. "We remain firmly convinced of Mr. Libby's innocence," attorney Theodore Wells said. "However, the realities were, that after five years of government service by Mr. Libby and several years of defending against this case, the burden on Mr. Libby and his young family of continuing to...

Removing any doubt about how she sees the world from the left, Valerie Plame Wilson, in an interview Thursday which aired Saturday night on a Washington, DC area cable channel, admired the work of the far-left Media Matters as she revealed she seeks out the group's postings for their “accuracy” and presentation of “the facts.” Carol Joynt (her blog), a former CBS News producer who as the owner of the Nathans of Georgetown restaurant every week interviews a newsmaker in front of a lunch crowd in what becomes the hour-long Q&A Cafe on NewsChannel 8, asked whether she reads “news...

Valerie Plame is used to being exposed. She was famously exposed as a CIA agent by columnist Bob Novak and she’s no stranger to media exposure, what with appearances in Vanity Fair magazine, on “The Daily Show,” “Meet the Press” and “Real Time with Bill Maher,” just to name a few. But there’s one place Plame won’t get exposed: Playboy magazine. We found this out Wednesday when Plame stopped by Nathans of Georgetown Thursday to take part in the Q&A Cafe interview series. Host Carol Joynt couldn’t get over the fact that Plame was, well, pretty hot and, since a...

NBC News White House correspondent David Gregory, accused of being a partisan, made a false statement about the "Scooter" Libby case. In reporting former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s charge that the Bush administration fed false information, Gregory claimed Libby "went to jail for obstructing the leak investigation." Although Libby was sentenced to 30 months of prison, Libby never actually went to jail as Gregory claims. President Bush commuted Libby’s sentence, eliminating the prison term yet still upholding a hefty fine and probation. "Today," however, did not spend a lot of time on the McClellan charge, just a brief...

If Alan Colmes turns up at your Thanksgiving get-together sporting a couple shiners and a re-arranged smile, don't press the poor guy if he claims to have walked into a door. The FNC host just got clobbered by a certified DC heavyweight -- Bob Novak. Novak was a guest on this evening's Hannity & Colmes. Colmes first questioned the venerable reporter about the item he published this week regarding the Clinton campaign's claim to have a scandalous story about Barack Obama. For the record, Novak stated this evening that since first reporting the story, "I've had substantiation from another source,...

Spokesman 'did not intend to suggest' the president purposely misled him WASHINGTON - Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan does not believe President Bush lied to him about the role of White House aides I. Lewis Scooter Libby or Karl Rove in the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, according to McClellan's publisher. Peter Osnos, the founder and editor-in-chief of Public Affairs Books, which is publishing McClellan's book in April, tells NBC from his Connecticut home that McCLellan, "Did not intend to suggest Bush lied to him." Osnos says when McClellan went before the White House press corps in...

The publicist for a book written by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan released an excerpt on Monday that set all of the Old Media tongues to wagging again about the Valerie Plame Affair: "The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the...