According to Foxnews:
CIA Leak Probe Focuses on Possible Inaccuracies
WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff apparently gave New York Times reporter Judith Miller (search) inaccurate information about where Valerie Plame worked in the CIA, a mistake that could be important to the criminal investigation.
Miller's notes say I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby (search) told her on July 8, 2003, that the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson worked for the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation and Arms Control unit.
Plame, Wilson's wife, never worked for WINPAC (search), which is on the overt side of the CIA. She worked on the CIA's secret side, the directorate of operations, according to three people familiar with her work for the spy agency.
The Grand Jury meets on Wednesdays and Fridays, and is due to expire on the 28th. That leaves only four more days form them to hand down indictments. Rumors have been rampant every Monday and Tuesday for the last 3 weeks about supposed indictments on Wednesday. Many bloggers have said they don't think Fitzgerald wants to wait until the last day to announce indictments because that tends to taint the public's perception of them as rushed and weak. So if nothing happens tomorrow or Friday, there's a good chance nothing will. I think Democrats are feverishly pumping these rumors, hoping they might cause one of the key figures to "crack" and go back to the GJ and rat somebody (i.e. Rove) out. They are all full of crap, Fitzgerald is playing this close and nobody knows what he or the GJ will do.
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1502730/posts
The special counsel has indicated that he does not anticipate the need for Mr. Rove's further cooperation," the statement said.
In another Article he was also asked not to divulge his testimony , as it was critical to the investigation.
This does not look like someone that is a target of the SP, but a key witness.
LW kooks says its a Cheney aide.
they say its John Hannah
http://rawstory.com/admin/dbscripts/printstory.php?story=1326
A senior aide to Vice President Dick Cheney is cooperating with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, sources close to the investigation say.
Individuals familiar with Fitzgerald’s case tell RAW STORY that John Hannah, a senior national security aide on loan to Vice President Dick Cheney from the offices of then-Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, John Bolton, was named as a target of Fitzgerald’s probe. They say he was told in recent weeks that he could face imminent indictment for his role in leaking Plame-Wilson’s name to reporters unless he cooperated with the investigation.
Others close to the probe say that if Hannah is cooperating with the special prosecutor then he was likely going to be charged as a co-conspirator and may have cut a deal.
Hannah did not return two calls and several emails to his White House address seeking comment.
Fitzgerald is investigating whether officials in the Bush Administration illegally outed a CIA agent to get back at her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was a critic of the Administration’s faulty intelligence and lead-up to war.
In a July 2003 editorial, Wilson wrote that the Bush administration “twisted” pre-Iraq war intelligence in order to win public support for the Iraq conflict.
Specifically, Wilson called into question the veracity of President Bush’s claim in his January 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq tried to purchase yellow-cake uranium from Africa. Wilson had been sent on a fact-finding mission to Niger a year before and reported that those allegations were unfounded. Bush administration officials said Wilson’s trip was a boondoggle, and was set up by his wife who worked at the CIA on weapons of mass destruction.
Those close to the investigation said in June 2003, Hannah was given orders by higher-ups in Cheney’s office to leak Plame’s covert status and identity in an attempt to muzzle Wilson, who had been a thorn in the side of the administration since May 2003, when he started questioning the administration’s claims that Iraq was an imminent threat to the U.S. and its neighbors in the Middle East. The specifics of who issued those orders and what directives were given were not provided.
Hannah had been fingered by Wilson
To many following the case, Hannah’s involvement will not come as a surprise. Wilson pointed to Hannah as a possible leaker in his book, The Politics of Truth.
“In fact, senior advisers close to the president may well have been clever enough to have used others to do the actual leaking, in order to keep their fingerprints off the crime,” Wilson writes.
“John Hannah and David Wurmser, mid-level political appointees in the vice-president’s office, have both been suggested as sources of the leak …Mid-level officials, however, do not leak information without the authority from a higher level,” Wilson notes.
The revelation that Hannah has become a prosecution witness strongly suggests that Fitzgerald is now looking into the motive for outing Plame and how Wilson’s complaints threatened to destroy public support for the war, which the Bush administration worked diligently to win.
Fitzgerald may be looking at a broader conspiracy case of pre-war machinations by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) and by the Pentagon’s ultra-secret Office of Net Assessment, the former operating out of Dick Cheney’s office and tasked with “selling” the war in Iraq, and the latter operating out of Defense Under Secretary for Policy, Douglas Feith’s office and tasked with creating a war to “sell,” as some describe.
To spread its message that Saddam Hussein was a nuclear threat, the White House Iraq Group relied heavily on New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who, after meeting with several of the organization’s members in August 2002, wrote an explosive story that many critics of the war believe laid the groundwork for military action against Iraq.
On Sunday, Sept. 8, 2002, for example, Miller wrote a story for the Times quoting anonymous officials who said aluminum tubes found in Iraq were to be used as centrifuges. Her report turned out to be wrong.
Hannah under investigation for role with Chalabi group
Hannah is currently under investigation by U.S. authorities for his alleged activities in an intelligence program run by the controversial Iraqi National Congress (INC) and its leader, Ahmed Chalabi.
According to a Newsweek article, a memo written for the Iraq National Congress (INC) raised questions regarding Cheney’s role in the build up to the war in Iraq. During the lead up to the war, Newsweek asserts, the INC was providing intelligence on the now discredited Iraqi WMD program through Hannah and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff.
“A June 2002 memo written by INC lobbyist Entifadh Qunbar to a U.S. Senate committee lists John Hannah, a senior national-security aide on Cheney’s staff, as one of two ‘U.S. governmental recipients’ for reports generated by an intelligence program being run by the INC and which was then being funded by the State Department. Under the program, ‘defectors, reports and raw intelligence are cultivated and analyzed’; the info was then reported to, among others, ‘appropriate governmental, non-governmental and international agencies.’ The memo not only describes Cheney aide Hannah as a “principal point of contact” for the program, it even provides his direct White House telephone number.”
“…Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, were the two Cheney employees,’ We believe that Hannah was the major player in this,’ one federal law-enforcement officer told the magazine.
According to the Washington Post, Libby discussed Wilson's wife with at least two reporters before her identity became public.
Much ado about nothing.
Here are some facts I have managed to gather and an interesting timeline:
5/02/03 - In the Boston Globe on 10/02/05, Wilson states that he has been advising the Kerry campaign for about 5 months.
7/06/03 - Wilson writes his famous "What I Didnt Find in Africa" article for the NYT. Mind you, he was a Kerry adviser at the time.
7/14/05 - The Novak article comes out identifying Valerie Plame
7/29/04 - The Senate Committe investigating Wilson's report discredits it and says it was wrong and useless.
Matt Cooper of Time has testified that he called Rove initially, but it was Rove who said that Wilson's wife was CIA, but Rove didnt say she was covert and didnt name her.
Cooper subsequently brought up Plame's identity with Libby, who only confirmed it for him.
Rove confirmed Plame's identity with Novak.
Valerie's last overseas posting (strange wording by Mr. Wilson himself) ended in 1997, however, some reports say her cover was blown earlier by Aldrich Ames in 1994.
European and British intelligence agencies still stand by the claim that Iraq sought yellowcake from Niger.
Plame met Wilson in 1997, Wilson divorced his wife in 1998, he and Plame bought a house together in 1998. How, exactly, are affairs with married men by covert operatives considered by the CIA?
Valerie revealed her status as a NOC on her 3rd or 4th "date" with Wilson, according to Vanity Fair.
The upshot, while working for the Kerry campaign, Wilson wrote an untruthful column for the New York Times to smear Bush by altering the facts he gathered from a CIA mission. A mission that he got because of his wife. The Senate later discredited Wilson's claims and came to the opposite conclusion from his report. Wilson had claimed that Plame had nothing to do with it. After being discredited, Wilson was dropped from the Kerry campaign.
Here is my personal view for what it is worth:
1) There has been NO ABSOLUTE, IRREFUTABLE and CREDIBLE statement made regarding the status of Valerie Plame at the time her involvement in the Niger trip was exposed.
WAS SHE OR WAS SHE NOT OFFICIALLY A COVERT AGENT AT THAT TIME ?
Most of the people in this thread say she was not and their explanations span the gamut from her being in the USA for over 6 years ( yes, but was her covert status revoked ? ), and her employment in the CIA being known by most of her friends ( so what ?).
Therefore her OFFICIAL STATUS is crucial to the investigation. If she was not officially covert, then the issue is not the outing, because there is no "covert" status to out.
2) Even if her status were covert ( and this is a big IF ), for Rove and Libby to be indicted, there has to be proof beyond reasonable doubt that THEY INDEED BOTH *KNEW* and *MENTIONED* the fact of her covert status to reporters.
WE DON'T KNOW OF SUCH ACT. All we know as of this time is that Rove and Libby DID mention her involvement in the trip of Niger by her husband, Joe Wilson. Simply mentioning such invovlement WITHOUT mentioning her status DOES NOT CONSTITUTE SOMETHING THAT IS ILLEGAL or CRIMINAL.
3) The most worrisome element about this for Rove and/or Libby will then be --- whether or not her involvement ( i.e., recommendation of Wilson to the Niger trip ) was CLASSIFIED INFORMATION.
If it indeed was classified information ( and I don't know that ), then we have a case of Rove and/or Libby leaking classified information and THIS is illegal and indictable.
SO, IS HER RECOMMENDATION OF THE NIGER TRIP FOR HER HUSBAND *CLASSIFIED* INFO ? Does anyone know ?
4) If her involvement is classified info, then for me, IT MAKES NO SENSE TO SAY THAT WILSON's TRIP TO NIGER IS NOT CLASSIFIED EITHER.
You do not de-classify the nature of a trip only to classify the details of the trip. ONE SHOULD COME *TOGETHER* with the other. Wilson's trip *AND* Plame's involvement ( i.e., her recommending him ) SHOULD BOTH BE CLASSIFIED !!!
Now if both are classified, then I don't see why if they indict Rove and Libby for leaking classified info, they should not indict Joe Wilson too.
After all, the entire case got started because Joe Wilson WROTE ABOUT HIS TRIP IN THE NY TIMES ! Which means, he broadcast classified info to the whole world !
Therefore, if Rove and Libby are going to be indicted for leaking classified info, Joe Wilson HAS TO be indicted too.
Anyone disagree with my analysis ?
Wait now. The Special Prosecutor has been investigating this for two years! Surely we can assume that the law applies????!!!