Yup, They're scr..ed now
Posted on 11/09/2005 9:07:53 AM PST by areafiftyone
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's Leakgate investigation is coming unraveled, as witness after witness steps forward to challenge a key premise of his controversial probe.
Was the identity of Joseph Wilson's wife Valerie Plame really a deep dark secret before she was "outed" by columnist Robert Novak in July 2003?
The number of witnesses now saying "No" has climbed to four - and none of them have apparently been interviewed by Fitzgerald's investigators.
On Wednesday, Wayne Simmons, a 27-year veteran at the CIA, told Fox News Radio: "As most people now know, [Plame] was traipsed all over Washington many years ago by Joe Wilson and introduced at embassies and other parties as 'my CIA wife.'
Last week, Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely told WABC Radio's John Batchelor that during a 2002 conversation with Wilson while the two waited to appear on a TV show, Wilson casually mentioned that his wife worked at "the Agency." In Oct. 2003, NBC's diplomatic correspondent, Andrea Mitchell, told CNBC that Plame's occupation "was widely known among those of us who cover the intelligence community and who were actively engaged in trying to track down who among the foreign service community was the envoy to Niger."
Mitchell added: "So a number of us began to pick up on that."
And in Sept. 2003, NationalReviewOnline's Cliff May wrote that when Plame's CIA connection was mentioned in Novak's column - "That wasn't news to me."
"I had been told that [Plame was CIA] - but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of."
The day his report appeared, May told the Fox News Channel's John Gibson: "I knew this, and a lot of other people knew it."
In fact, rumors now swirl around Washington that Plame used to take her friends to lunch at the CIA's cafeteria.
So what has Mr.Fitzgerald - who was hailed as a "prosecutor's prosecutor" only weeks ago - done with the avalanche of testimony that contradicts his stated claim that Plame's job "was not widely known"?
Apparently nothing.
In the six days since he's gone public, Gen. Vallely says prosecutors have yet to contact him.
Ms. Mitchell has been mum since her "widely known" comment resurfaced last week, offering no indication whether Fitzgerald has bothered to check her story out.
If Mr. May has been interrogated, he's also keeping it to himself.
And Mr. Simmons has made no mention of any contact with Fitzgerald's team.
On the other hand, the prosecutor's prosecutor made a big show of interviewing two of the Wilsons neighbors just four days before he announced his indictment of Lewis Libby - in a bid to establish whether Ms. Plame's occupation was indeed secret.
It was, as far as her neighbors were concerned. But the revelation that Fitzgerald had waited till the last minute to confirm such a key aspect of his case raised more than a few eyebrows.
Now, with four witnesses on the record saying they knew what the Wilsons' neighbors didn't - and two of those witnesses coming forward even before the Leakgate investigation began - it's beginning to look like Mr. Fitzgerald deliberately ignored critical testimony that would have compelled him to close up shop well before he ever got to Mr. Libby.
"How does one get "un" indited I wonder? Libby could still get 30 years in jail for something he didn't do."
The defense can ask for a summary judgement.
Wilson is not the issue here. His lies are not germane to the indictment nor are the truths told about him. The question here was whether Libby hindered the probe into nothing. This was a probe about Nothing and should have been allowed to get to the bottom of Nothing. Holding up probes into Nothing can be illegal.
It does also go to the charge that Libby lied about where he learned about Wilson's wife. If it is generally known, I don't know how he can prove that Libby didn't learn it from a journalist, or more accurately, prove that Libby didn't believe that he learned it from a journalist at the time he testified that way.
See #22.
I want to see whatever paperwork the CIA sent over to the DOJ demanding the Plame investigation. I bet that would make interesting reading.
This will all come out in the trial....and the Dems will die on this one...all before the next election...we will see who the traitors are....
" So what has Mr.Fitzgerald - who was hailed as a "prosecutor's prosecutor" only weeks ago - done with the avalanche of testimony that contradicts his stated claim that Plame's job "was not widely known"?
Apparently nothing."
Fitzgerald's behavior during his hour plus performance would have gotten any other US Attorney or AUSA fired by 5pm that day.
He needs a review course on the canon of ethics for federal prosecutors.
The media mantra that he is a " prosecutor's prosecutor " is fiction.
Apparently, Fitzgerald has been busy.
Thomas DeFrank, the DC Bureau chief of the NY Daily News said last week that Fitzgerald " was all over town talking to newspaper and magazine editors trying to get evidence on Rove."
It's called "quashing" an indictment.
Look for this to happen in the coming days.
wilson is the main issue. he should be the one under oath. not some mid level functionary passing along info which he almost heard from the cocktail circuit in addition to his official capacity.
wait the government comes after your medical reocrds and taxes.
Fitzgerald is setting himself set up to retire from government service, join a prestigious law firm and convert his pious endeavors into cash.
Do you have inside info? Heard rumors? Just wondering because the last I heard it sounded as if Libby's lawyers were looking forward to the trial with relish. Wouldn't be the first time lawyers tried two different tracks at once though.
How do the mechanics of quashing an indictment work? Is a motion submitted to the supervising judge?
And it does undercut the Fitz's stipulation in his indictment, that what Libby did was somehow pernicious. That's my paraphrase, of course. I don't remember the precise words, but Fitz certainly made it out as something evil. If Plame's "cover" is a joke, how can Fitz make anyone believe that anything Libby might have said was evil? (I don't trust Russert any further than I can throw the fat slob, anyway.)
How can there be a "cover up" if there was nothing to cover up in the first place?
That's the point of the article.
Even this stupid, non-nuanced conservative hick from South Philly can figure that much out.
The judge could dismiss the charges.
Ask Martha Stuart..
Hey, I agree with you, its stupid in the first place, and the media, if they were doing their job, should be asking this question every day, in each story about Libby..
If she was a real spy she would not have let her husband write the Op-Ed in the NY Times. She would have been at the very least reprimanded by her superiors for allowing such an article.
Exactly! Libby may have misremembered WHICH journalist he heard it from, but if this was widely known around town, Cheny may have been giving LL no new information when he said that Plame was a CIA employee.
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