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WASHINGTON - The No. 2 State Department official met with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in mid-June 2003, the same time the reporter has testified that an administration official talked to him about CIA employee Valerie Plame. Official State Department calendars, provided to The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act, show then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage held a one-hour meeting marked “private appointment” with Woodward on June 13, 2003.

FORT BELVOIR, Va., Aug. 18, 2006 – There’s plenty of fuel available to fill the tanks of U.S. military vehicles and aircraft despite widely reported accounts of a commercial oil pipeline rupture in Alaska, a senior Defense Department logistician said here yesterday. “We’re in good shape all the time. We have significant fuel reserves. If fuel became locally unavailable, … we could move fuel from elsewhere in the United States to cover DoD’s requirements,” John S. Bartenhagen Jr., Defense Energy Support Center deputy director for operations, said. The center buys fuel for defense department needs. It is a component...

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge told two San Francisco Chronicle reporters they must comply with a subpoena and tell a grand jury who leaked them secret testimony of Barry Bonds and other elite athletes ensnared in the government's steroid probe. The decision by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White means reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada must appear before a grand jury investigating the leak unless a higher court blocks the ruling. The pair have said they would not testify and would go to jail rather than reveal their source or sources.

BRITAIN tried to oust the man leading the international campaign to stop Iran developing a nuclear weapons programme while he was in the middle of negotiations with Tehran, Scotland on Sunday can reveal. Classified British government documents detail Tony Blair's attempts to stop Mohammed El Baradei getting a third term in charge of the UN's nuclear inspectorate, amid claims that he had lost the confidence of the United States.

The New York Times may not withhold reporters' phone records from a federal grand jury investigating an alleged leak of a pending government raid on two Islamic charities suspected of supporting terrorism, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday. A three-judge panel of the New York-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled 2 to 1 that the Times has no First Amendment or other legal right to refuse a demand for the records from the grand jury in Chicago, which was empaneled by U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald. The government's interest in rooting out a possible crime outweighs...

WASHINGTON — A federal grand jury investigating leaks of classified information has summoned a former National Security Agency officer who says he talked to reporters about the agency's warrantless eavesdropping program. Russell Tice received a subpoena to testify next Wednesday to a grand jury that is meeting in Alexandria, Va. The subpoena was posted Friday on a Web site run by a whistleblowers' group to which Tice belongs. "The grand jury is conducting an investigation of possible violations of federal criminal laws involving the unauthorized disclosure of classified information," according to a letter that accompanied the subpoena.

By Walter Pincus pincusw@washpost.com Courage in journalism today takes all the obvious, traditional forms -- reporting from a war zone or from a totalitarian country where a reporter's life or safety are issues. In Washington, D.C., where I work, it's a far less dramatic form of courage if a journalist stands up to a government official or a politician who he or she has reason to believe is not telling the truth or living up to his or her responsibilities. But I believe a new kind of courage is needed in journalism in this age of instant news, instant analysis,...

from The Hotline -- "Project Runway" returns and Bob Novak sewed up questions regarding his role in Valerie Plame case: Novak: "I called Rove. ... I called him for several reasons. I wanted to talk about the column I was writing about the mission to Niger. This is also, as almost all my conversations with Rove were, was not for attribution. And in the course of that, I asked him about Wilson's wife at the CIA working at the CIA and initiating this visit. And, as I remember the conversation very distinctly, Karl said to me, 'Yes, I know that,...

This week the deans of schools of journalism and communications at Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern, Berkeley and the University of Southern California wrote a brief article for The Washington Post on the question of whether to publish stories based on leaks of classified information. Their conclusion: “When in doubt, publish.”The deans considered the recent New York Times story revealing the details of a top-secret Treasury Department program targeting terrorist finances.Their verdict: Publish.They also considered the Times story revealing the top-secret National Security Agency (NSA) program that the Bush administration calls the “terrorist surveillance program” and its adversaries call “domestic spying.”Their verdict:...

WASHINGTON - Columnist Robert Novak said for the first time Tuesday that he cooperated with the investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame. Novak's decision to talk publicly came after he was notified a month ago by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald that he would not file criminal charges against one of Novak's sources, White House political aide Karl Rove. Fitzgerald "has informed my attorneys that, after two and one-half years, his investigation of the CIA leak case concerning matters directly relating to me has been concluded," Novak said in a statement. Novak promised to provide details...

This is a vanity post. As everyone knows, the NY Times recently published an article describing, in detail, a classified program intended to inhibit terrorist financing. Post your letters to the NY Times (letters@nytimes.com) and Exec. Editor Bill Keller below and we'll get a nice collection going!

Eric Lichtblau, one of two New York Times' reporters who broke today's story of a secret government monitoring of private banking records - which the Bush Administration sought to block - said the White House arguments to halt the story were not as strong as those that had kept a previous report on secret wiretapping out of the paper for a year. "They were similar in terms of the objections raised not to publish," Lichtblau told E&P today. "That the bad guys knew we were listening to them, but they don't know exactly how." But he said the objections "did...

Attorney General Gonzales: Indict the New York Times June 24th, 2006 Within days of the September 11th attacks, the head of Reuters’ worldwide news division, explaining the agency’s refusal to use the word “terrorist,” made the famous fatuous remark that “one man’s freedom terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Reuters, it seemed, wouldn’t be taking sides in America’s war on Islamic jihad, because as journalists, Reuters didn’t believe the American people and our allies are any “better” than our putrid enemies. Such is the repulsive state of the “moral equivalence” mongers in what passes for news journalism, even among those...

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday he might have to testify in the CIA leak trial of his former chief of staff. Cheney made the comment in a CNN interview, following last month's suggestion by prosecutors that the vice president would be a logical witness in the case of I. Lewis Libby, who is accused of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI. Libby is "one of the finest men I've ever known," Cheney said, then declined further comment. "I may be called as a witness." Cheney's state of mind is directly relevant to whether Libby lied to...

WASHINGTON, June 22 - Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.

Is The New York Times about to be indicted? That would be a fair inference from the strange exchanges that have gone back and forth over the past few days between the Justice Department and the editors of the paper. On Sunday, during the ABC news program, "This Week," Attorney General Gonzales was asked if the federal government might prosecute journalists who published classified information. "There are some statutes on the books," he answered, "which . . . would seem to indicate that this is a possibility." He went on to suggest that such prosecutions were implicitly authorized by the...

Wired has published a set of documents that a former AT&T employee says supports his allegations that the NSA built a "secret room" at AT&T headquarters in San Francisco for the purpose of spying on Internet traffic. A court had sealed the documents and denied a request from one privacy group to unseal them. Wired decided to published them anyway: A file detailing aspects of AT&T's alleged participation in the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic wiretap operation is sitting in a San Francisco courthouse. But the public cannot see it because, at AT&T's insistence, it remains under seal in court...

Federal Source to ABC News: We Know Who You're Calling May 15, 2006 10:33 AM Brian Ross and Richard Esposito Report: A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources. "It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation. ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A lawyer for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told a federal judge Tuesday that the former White House aide's right to a fair trial outweighs any special protection claimed by media organizations touched by the CIA leak investigation. "We are in a case that for better or worse, the press is right in the middle of," said William Jeffress, one of Libby's lawyers. During a three-hour hearing in U.S. District Court, Jeffress debated lawyers for NBC News, The New York Times and Time magazine over subpoenas seeking access to e-mails, drafts of news articles and reporters' notes that...

A senior CIA official, meeting with Senate staff in a secure room of the Capitol last June, promised repeatedly that the agency did not violate or seek to violate an international treaty that bars cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees, during interrogations it conducted in the Middle East and elsewhere. But another CIA officer -- the agency's deputy inspector general, who for the previous year had been probing allegations of criminal mistreatment by the CIA and its contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan -- was startled to hear what she considered an outright falsehood, according to people familiar with her...

WE ARE IN the first war of the Information Age, and we have a critical advantage over our enemy: We are far better at gathering intelligence. It's an advantage we must utilize, and it's keeping us safe. But every time classified national security information is leaked, our ability to gather information on those who would do us harm is eroded. We suffered a setback Thursday when USA Today ran a front-page story alleging that the National Security Agency was collecting domestic phone records. This article hurt our efforts to protect Americans by giving the enemy valuable insights into the Terrorist...

Though the investigation into who “outed” Plame was premised on the notion that (a) her identity was not publicly known before Robert Novak’s article in July 2003 and (b) the disclosure came from the Administration—particularly persons in the White House to somehow “punish” Wilson, there is increasing evidence that Wilson himself widely divulged that information to burnish his own credentials as an expert. I reported long ago that at the June 14, 2003 EPIC conference (where he listed his wife as Valerie Plame in the program) Wilson revealed he was the Ambassador who was the source for the May 2003...

"The same unit [the Office of Special Plans] that fed Chalabi's intelligence on WMD to Rumsfeld was also feeding him Chalabi's stuff on the prospects for postwar Iraq," said a leading US government expert on the Middle East. Says a former US ambassador with strong links to the CIA: "There was certainly information coming from the Iraqi exile community, including Chalabi--who was detested by the CIA and by the State Department--saying, 'They will welcome you with open arms.'"

In a development that got no media play over the weekend, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby's defense lawyer announced on Friday that he has located five witnesses who will testify that Joe Wilson outed his wife Valerie Plame as a CIA employee before Robert Novak did so in his July 2003 column. According to the NationalReviewOnline's Byron York, Libby's lawyer Ted Wells told the court that his witnesses "will say under oath that Mr. Wilson told them his wife worked for the CIA." Wells said that he expects Leakgate Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to call Wilson to testify in a bid to...

Another suggestion: who "outed" Plame I said that Wilson revealed he was the Ambassador who was the source for the May 2003 Nicholas Kristof piece and the June 2003 Walter Pincus piece, in which he falsely accused the Administration of jiggering evidence on June 14, 2003 at the Washington EPIC conference (where he also listed his wife’s name as “Valerie Plame.”) There’s ample reason to believe he flourished her name and connection to the agency in greater detail regularly, which makes the entire investigation into who publicly disclosed her identity particularly ridiculous. A shrewd reader at Free Republic has found...

ABC News has obtained a document seized by U.S. and British Special Forces during a recent raid of an alleged Zarqawi safe house about 20 miles southwest of Baghdad in the town of Yusufiyah. This was the raid where the military believes it narrowly missed capturing Zarqawi himself. The five-page document appears to sketch out a new strategy for Al Qaeda in Iraq: Reduce attacks in the Sunni dominated areas in the West and concentrate attacks inside Baghdad. "We will reduce our operations against [the Americans] in our areas for the near future, and will perform our work against them...

Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean is telling reporters that there's no doubt top White House aide Karl Rove is guilty in the Valerie Plame Leakgate case. Three years ago, however, Dean urged caution when it came to assessing the guilt of Osama bin Laden, whose role in the Sept. 11 attacks, he said, should not be prejudged. "There's no question that Rove was the one that leaked the information about the CIA agent's name," Dean told MSNBC's Nora O'Donnell on Friday. But when it came to the Al Qaida terror chief, Dean insisted that bin Laden was innocent until...

If Mary O. McCarthy should ever be so desperate as to need a character witness, or to require one so badly that she must stoop to my level, I declare in advance that I shall step forward pro bono. I am quite willing to accept that whatever she did or did not do or say about the surreptitious incarceration of al-Qaida suspects overseas (and let's not prejudge this), she did it from the most exalted motives.

The CIA'S war against the Bush administration is one of the great untold stories of the past three years. It is, perhaps, the agency's most successful covert action of recent times. The CIA has used its budget to fund criticism of the administration by former Democratic officeholders. The agency allowed an employee, Michael Scheuer, to publish and promote a book containing classified information, as long as, in Scheuer's words, "the book was being used to bash the president." However, the agency's preferred weapon has been the leak. In one leak after another, generally to the New York Times or the...

According to John Batchelor's website, Mary McCarthy will be a guest tonight and be interviewed by Jed Babbin along with the host. Larry Kudlow will also serve as co-host. The show is on at 10 pm EDT on WABC radio and WMAL.

Mary McCarthy, special assistant to President Clinton and senior director of intelligence in his White House, has been fired by the CIA. McCarthy allegedly told the Washington Post our NATO allies were secretly letting the CIA operate bases on their soil for the interrogation of terror suspects. Apparently, McCarthy failed several polygraph tests, after which she confessed. If true, she was faithless to her oath, betrayed the trust of her country, damaged America's ties to foreign intelligence agencies and governments, and broke the law. The Justice Department is investigating whether McCarthy violated the Espionage Act. Yet, while she may be...

National Review's Byron York sensibly asks: what are the next steps in the investigation into the intelligence community's leaking of classified information to the press, including the deeply sensitive detention arrangements for high-ranking al Qaeda captives (the so-called "black-site" prisons)? That disclosure profoundly harmed our nation's critical relationship with foreign intelligence services which have been assisting the war effort. In connection with the internal CIA end of that probe, one intelligence officer, Mary O. McCarthy, has been terminated for unauthorized contacts with members of the media, including the Washington Post's Dana Priest. It was Priest who reported the black-sites story...

Mary McCarthy, special assistant to President Clinton and senior director of intelligence in his White House, has been fired by the CIA. McCarthy allegedly told The Washington Post our NATO allies were secretly letting the CIA operate bases on their soil for the interrogation of terror suspects. Apparently, McCarthy failed several polygraph tests, after which she confessed. If true, she was faithless to her oath, betrayed the trust of her country, damaged America's ties to foreign intelligence agencies and governments, and broke the law. The Justice Department is investigating whether McCarthy violated the Espionage Act. Yet, while she may be...

Investigation 'not over yet,' officials say WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A U.S. official told CNN on Monday that the CIA officer fired for leaking classified information was accused of a "pattern of behavior," including multiple contacts with more than one reporter. Sources also confirmed to CNN that the officer fired last Thursday is Mary O. McCarthy, who last worked in the CIA inspector general's office. "It's not just about one story, it's a pattern of activity," the official said. Officials said the investigation into leaking to Dana Priest of The Washington Post, and other journalists, is ongoing. "It is not over...

Unfit for Command Once again John Kerry sides with the enemy. Did I say enemy? Yes. Anyone, like Mary McCarthy, who uses her public trust to undermine the war on terrorism is the enemy. The Washington Post can wrap itself and its source in civil liberties, but the public rightly won't buy it. These prisons in Europe reportedly exist to interrogate and house al Qaeda terrorists. While people may disagree over the war in Iraq, almost nobody disagrees that al-Qaeda must be destroyed. The Democrat party is clearly lining up behind McCarthy now. The talking points have already been issued....

Behold Mary O. McCarthy’s political contributions for the last few years: MCCARTHY, MARYBETHESDA, MD 20817U.S. GOVERNMENT/CIVAL SERVANT ANDREASEN, STEVEN PETERVIA ANDREASEN FOR CONGRESS 11/01/2002 200.00 22992926088 MCCARTHY, MARYBETHESDA, MD 20817US GOVERNMENT/ANALYST DNC SERVICES CORPORATION/DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE 10/29/2004 500.00 24981642504 MCCARTHY, MARY OBETHESDA, MD 20817CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTERNATIO OHIO DEMOCRATIC PARTY 10/05/2004 5000.00 24962561560 MCCARTHY, MARY OBETHESDA, MD 20817U.S. GOVERNMENT/ANALYST KERRY, JOHN FVIA JOHN KERRY FOR PRESIDENT INC 03/14/2004 2000.00 25971246238 I guess it comes as no suprise, given Ms. McCarthy was hired by Sandy Berger to serve in the Clinton administration.

McCarthy served as assistant to Clinton, senior director for intelligence programs WASHINGTON – A CIA officer fired for leaking classified information was appointed as special assistant to President Clinton and senior director for intelligence programs by former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, who pleaded guilty to stealing highly classified documents. Mary McCarthy Mary O'Neil McCarthy was fired Thursday for reportedly leaking classified information that contributed to a Washington Post report about alleged secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe. She most recently worked for the CIA inspector general's office and served as a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and...

The Central Intelligence Agency has dismissed a senior career officer for disclosing classified information to reporters, including material for Pulitzer Prize-winning articles in The Washington Post about the agency's secret overseas prisons for terror suspects, intelligence officials said Friday. The C.I.A. would not identify the officer, but several government officials said it was Mary O. McCarthy, a veteran intelligence analyst who until 2001 was senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council, where she served under President Bill Clinton and into the Bush administration. At the time of her dismissal, Ms. McCarthy was working in the agency's inspector...

WASHINGTON — The CIA has fired an employee for leaking classified information to the news media, including details about secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, officials said today. A federal criminal investigation has also been opened. CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said an officer had been fired for having unauthorized contacts with the media and disclosing classified information to reporters, including details about intelligence operations. "The officer has acknowledged unauthorized discussions with the media and the unauthorized sharing of classified information," Gimigliano said. "That is a violation of the secrecy agreement that everyone signs as a condition of employment with the...

A critic of mine tried to say that the recently released memos which showed no indication of Plame's identity being secret were actually marked secret. You can read our entire exchange HERE, and I figured I'd break down the evidence. First off, let's look at THE PICTURE of the memo: What you'll notice, and what the Left is trying to point out, is that the memo has the word Secret on it. It says UNCLASSIFIED at the top, but that designation was given to it recently. With all this shown, you would assume the entire memo was classified when this...

National Archives Vowed Silence Associated Press | April 18, 2006 WASHINGTON - The National Archives promised to avoid drawing "unnecessary public attention" to its efforts to remove declassified CIA documents from public view after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, according to a once-secret agreement with the spy agency. The agreement was made public Monday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by The Associated Press. It provided new details on the efforts of the nation's chief historical repository to hide the fact that U.S. intelligence was secretly trying to reclassify approximately 55,500 pages of previously public documents. Documents...

One of their main headlines is: Report: Cheney encouraged leak No link due to copyright complaints in the past by USA Today. The first thing you find when you type "leak" in google is a USA today headline about today's Cheney article by national review.

I don't know which of two news stories that hit last week should embarrass the Bush administration more. First, we learned that a Department of Homeland Security spokesman was charged with soliciting a minor over the Internet and then, a few short days later, court documents came to light alleging that President Bush himself was the leak in the ongoing investigation into a 2003 CIA scandal. Brian Doyle, 56, resigned form the Homeland Security Department Friday after being charged with seven counts of solicitation of a minor and 16 counts of transmitting pornographic material to a minor. Police say that...

As President Bush took questions from graduate students Monday, one of them raised a touchy subject that he had not yet publicly addressed — a court filing last week revealing that he had personally authorized the use of pre-war intelligence to rebut an administration critic. Bush said he would not talk about the court case of former White House aide I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, citing "a serious investigation." But the President did say why the White House had released part of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq when it was under attack by former ambassador Joseph Wilson and others in...

We journalists are environmentally friendly. We recycle. We've been recycling old news all weekend, without, of course, telling you it's old news."A senior administration official confirmed for the first time on Sunday that President Bush had ordered the declassification of parts of a prewar intelligence report on Iraq in an effort to rebut critics who said the administration had exaggerated the nuclear threat posed by Saddam Hussein," reported David Sanger and David Johnston in the New York Times Monday.For the first time? Here's the AP's Tom Raum on July 20, 2003: "The White House declassified portions of an October, 2002...

People suffer all sorts of indignities, but few things are more difficult to take than being falsely accused of misconduct. It is difficult to defend yourself both because it hard to prove a negative and, if you defend yourself strenuously, you risk appearing guilty for protesting too much. Do you remember Bill Clinton's vicious savaging of special prosecutor Ken Starr and how his goon squad twisted every negative revelation against Clinton into a sin of Starr's? They distorted the Starr Report from a meticulously documented record of a president's perjury and obstruction of justice into a pornographic novel penned by...

As more details are brought to the fore about the seamy underbelly of the Bush administration, the perpetually trusting souls among the American electorate are having trouble keeping those scales firmly in place on their eyes. The president has sunk so far down in the polls it’s hard to imagine he could get any lower without being adept at limbo dancing. And it’s no wonder: Even staunch loyalists are at pains to name one positive thing Bush has accomplished during his five years in office, except perhaps the seating of two new justices (presumed to be conservative by ardent Bush...

PRESIDENT BUSH was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. Presidents are authorized to declassify sensitive material, and the public benefits when they do. But the administration handled the release clumsily, exposing Mr. Bush to the hyperbolic charges of misconduct and hypocrisy that Democrats are leveling.

McDermott's leak is no better Sunday, April 9, 2006 - Page updated at 12:00 AM Editorial Ethical leadership should include members of Congress. Rep. Jim McDermott, Seattle Democrat, was not acting ethically a decade ago when he leaked an illegally taped phone conversation to The New York Times. The couple who taped it pleaded guilty and paid fines of $500 each. Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, and now House majority leader, was one of the men on the tape, and sued McDermott. He says he offered to drop his lawsuit three years ago if McDermott would apologize and donate $10,000 to...

Leak reveals official story of London bombings · Al-Qaeda not linked, says government· Internet used to plan 7/7 attack Mark Townsend, crime correspondent Sunday April 9, 2006 The Observer (UK) The official inquiry into the 7 July London bombings will say the attack was planned on a shoestring budget from information on the internet, that there was no 'fifth-bomber' and no direct support from al-Qaeda, although two of the bombers had visited Pakistan. The first forensic account of the atrocity that claimed the lives of 52 people, which will be published in the next few weeks, will say that attacks...