Posted on 10/06/2005 12:19:41 PM PDT by West Coast Conservative
Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th-hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer's leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee he won't be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.
The persons, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy, said Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has not made any decision yet on whether to file criminal charges against the longtime confidant of President Bush or others.
The U.S. attorney's manual requires prosecutors not to bring witnesses before a grand jury if there is a possibility of future criminal charges unless they are notified in advance that their grand jury testimony can be used against them in a later indictment.
Rove has already made at least three grand jury appearances and his return at this late stage in the investigation is unusual.
The prosecutor did not give Rove similar warnings before his earlier grand jury appearances.
10/28
Have they guaranteed to anyone that they won't be indicted?
It is true.....he is currently investigating corruption in Chicago's City Hall. Many think Daley himself may be in the crosshairs.
Rove's offer to testify again has been on the table since last July.
AP tries to make it sound like an act of desperation on Rove's part.
With this trumped up Earle prosecution of DeLay going on, I think that indicting Rove would be a very big risk unless they have some pretty good evidence against him.
agree
Look at this...Larry Johnson was RIGHT about Scooter Libby TWO years ago, now this:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20051006/a_case_of_treason.php
Case Of Treason
Larry Johnson
October 06, 2005
Larry Johnson worked as a CIA intelligence analyst and State Department counter-terrorism official. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
The investigation into who in the Bush administration leaked the fact that Valerie Plame, wife of former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was a CIA undercover operative, is nearing completion. Virtually lost in the recent spurt of press reporting is the fact that the compromise of Ms. Plame (and, as night follows the day her carefully cultivated network of spies) was unconscionable. Ms. Plame, a very gifted case officer, was a close colleague of mine at CIA. Her dedication and courage were clear in her willingness to assume the risks of an agent under non-official cover—meaning that if you get caught, too bad, you’re on your own; the US government never heard of you.
The supreme irony is that Plame’s network was reporting on the priority-one issue—weapons of mass destruction. Thus, it was made abundantly clear to all, including potential intelligence sources abroad, that even when priority-one intelligence targets are involved, Bush administration officials will not shrink from exposing such sources for petty political purpose. The harm to CIA and its efforts to recruit spies willing to take risks to provide intelligence information is immense.
Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, Ambassador Wilson publicly exposed an important lie, and the president as liar, when he debunked the report that Iraq was seeking uranium in the African country of Niger. Still, as Wilson himself has suggested, the primary objective of leaking his wife’s employment at CIA was not to retaliate against him personally, but rather to issue a stark warning to others privy to administration lies on the war not to speak out. Administration officials felt they needed to provide an object lesson of what truth tellers can expect in the way of swift retaliation.
All Based On A Forgery
Indictments or no, the mainstream media will continue to play down this key aspect of the story, and—equally important—prescind completely from the event that started the whole business—the forging of documents to feed the spurious report that Iraq was seeking uranium in Niger for its (non-existent) nuclear weapons program. Together with other circumstantial evidence, the neuralgic reaction of Vice President Dick Cheney to press reports that he was point man for promoting the bogus report suggests that he may also have been its founding father, so to speak. We do not rule out the possibility that he and his chief of staff Lewis Libby may have had a hand in commissioning the forgery, as a way to come up with an “intelligence report” with “mushroom cloud” written all over it, in order to deceive Congress into approving an unnecessary war.
These are the key neglected issues underneath the superficial who-said-what-to-whom-when press reportage. Small wonder that many of those following this story are missing the forest for the trees. It is important that a fuller story be available to citizens of this country, to enable us all to judge the enormity and significance of what happened. Accordingly, my Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) colleagues and I thought it would be useful to boil down some key facts in digestible form:
Feb. 13, 2002: According to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s “Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq” of July 2004 (pp 38-39), Vice President Cheney asked his CIA morning briefer for the Agency’s analysis of a report he had seen in a Defense Intelligence Agency publication that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from Niger. In response, the Director of Central Intelligence´s Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC) issued an intelligence assessment with limited distribution. It said, “Information on the alleged uranium contract between Iraq and Niger comes exclusively from a foreign government service report that lacks crucial details, and we are working to clarify the information and to determine whether it can be corroborated.” The assessment also noted, “Some of the information in the report contradicts reporting from the U.S. Embassy in Niamey. U.S. diplomats say the French Government-led consortium that operates Niger´s two uranium mines maintains complete control over uranium mining and yellowcake production." The CIA sent a separate version of the assessment to the Vice President’s office, which differed only in that it named the foreign government service. Officials from the CIA´s Directorate of Operations (DO) told the Senate Intelligence Committee that, in response to questions from the Vice President´s Office and also the Departments of State and Defense on the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal, all were told that the Agency would look into it further.
Feb. 19: CIA operations managers—not Valerie Plame—decide to send Joseph Wilson to Niger to make immediate inquiries, according to CIA officials. Wilson, who was acting ambassador in Baghdad when the 1991 Gulf War began, had also served in Niger before becoming ambassador to Gabon. After meeting with DO managers and other intelligence community officials at CIA headquarters on Feb. 19, Wilson was commissioned to go to Niger and investigate.
Feb. 26: Ambassador Wilson arrives in Niger. He determined during the course of his visit that there was no substance to the allegation that Iraq was trying to procure uranium in Niger. The U.S. Ambassador to Niger told the Senate Committee that Ambassador Wilson’s conclusion was the same as that reached earlier by the U.S. embassy in Niger.
Early March: Vice President Cheney asks his CIA briefer for an update on the Niger issue: According to the Senate report on intelligence prewar performance, Cheney had not forgotten his original request. And so CIA officers immediately debriefed Ambassador Wilson on the results of his trip, wrote up his report, and disseminated the report on 8 March (p. 42 of the Senate report).
Fall of 2002: CIA officials repeatedly warn Administration and Congressional officials not to accept as fact the claim that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium: According to the Senate report (p. 54), the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency told Senator Kyl that the CIA did not agree with the British view that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium. On Oct. 6, 2002, CIA Director Tenet called Deputy National Security Advisor Hadley and warned him not to use the information in a presidential speech the next day (three days before Congress voted to authorize war). Hadley removed the passage from the speech (p. 56).
Jan. 28, 2003: In his State of the Union Address, the President includes the (in)famous bogus “16 words.” The President says, “The British government has learned (sic) that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
May 23: Vice President Cheney’s office reacts neurologically to May 23 report by New York Times columnist Nick Kristof regarding the mission of a “former US ambassador” to Niger, and in particular to Kristof’s assertion that the Vice President had instigated the trip: According to former senior CIA officials, Cheney’s aides were ”very uptight about the vice president being tagged that way.”
June: The White House, with the participation of Karl Rove and Lewis Libby (and, according to one recent report, of the president and vice president themselves), conceives and then executes a plan to discredit Ambassador Wilson. A variety of reports from journalists and others show that as early as the end of May, White House officials were trying to dig up dirt on Ambassador Wilson. And the State Department reportedly drafted a top-secret memorandum that identified Valerie Plame by her maiden name and made the connection.
July 13 : Robert Novak, citing two Administration sources, identified Valerie Plame by name as a CIA operative. Plame was still undercover when Novak published her name and thus compromised not only Plame, but also the many agents she had recruited—to provide information on weapons of mass destruction, for example. She had conducted several overseas missions as part of her cover job.
How about getting on board with defending Karl Rove against what's clearly an unwarranted political investigation? I don't know much about Fitzgerald except that he's abusing his power, and that looks an awful lot like the same thing Earle is doing.
"FIRST, decide aye or nay whether Valerie was an agent UNDER COVER. I know that she was ON THE COVER of a national magazine w/her well-known blabber mouthed husband, Joe Wilson. Oh, she had on sun glasses and wore a scarf over her head? OKAY...'under cover'"
She and Wilson only did that some time after the Novak article identified her as a "CIA operative." At that point, if she had cover, it was already blown.
An example: There's a formerly secret bomb shelter for Congress in West Virginia, at the Greenbrier Resort. The secret came out, and Congress immediately gave up the notion of ever using it. Now it's on the brochures for the Greenbrier, as a tourist attraction. Those brochures are not "blowing the cover" of the formerly secret bomb shelter.
I hope the demonrats overplay their hands again. I hope this crap backfires on the low life SOB's!
LOL!:-)
Someone remind me what the charge is please....
Outing a covert CIA agent who was already outed, parked in the main lot, had her employment verified by the CIA over the phone and was not being protected in any way, by law or by statute?
So what's the potential indictment?
My take is that is was nothing more than a friendly perjury warning. (Don't get your story crossed up or I will be forced to bust your chops! Thank you very much for your complete attention.)
Seems like I remember Larry Johnson being discredited by many astute FReepers several months ago.
I don't think any of this has to do with the original Plame name game. That's long done and gone. This is about who said what and when since then. I've never heard of a friendly perjury warning. Sounds fairly nice. Let's hope so.
I dunno......... Maybe he's going to rat someone out and try to cut a deal?
I'll get on board when I know facts, IF he is indicted. Until then I'll have an open mind. We have zero idea who Fitzgerald's targets are, if any. But don't let facts or lack thereof get in the way of your kneejerk lynchmob. Lemme guess, Fitzgerald is a witch, because he floats?
I don't know much about Fitzgerald
That's quite clear. Yet you decide to slander him and compare him to someone without knowing who he is or his background. Witch's float, yes?
he doesn't need to "prove" it to get an indictment - that all the left wants out of this - an indictment. whether Rove/Libby is actually guilty of anything doesn't matter to them, they just want the indictment.
Huh?
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