Posted on 12/08/2005 10:42:58 AM PST by Daralundy
Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald spent more than an hour Thursday morning at a law firm representing Viveca Novak, a Time magazine reporter whose testimony was being sought in the CIA leak case.
Fitzgerald and an associate emerged from the office of attorney Hank Schuelke at 11:30 a.m. EDT, declined to answer questions and rode away in a taxi cab. A short time later, a court stenographer left the building.
An hour later, Schuelke escorted Novak from the building and helped her flag a taxi. He declined comment when asked if she had provided sworn testimony in Fitzgerald's investigation of the leak of an undercover CIA agent's identity.
The special counsel's meeting with Novak and Schuelke comes a day after Fitzgerald spent three hours meeting with grand jurors about the leak inquiry, which so far has yielded the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby.
Fitzgerald had been seeking testimony from Novak about her conversations with Robert Luskin, an attorney for deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove, who is still under investigation.
Novak, a reporter in Time's Washington bureau, had agreed to cooperate in Fitzgerald's investigation, according to an article in the Dec. 5 issue of the magazine.
For nearly two years, Fitzgerald has been looking into who in the administration leaked the identity of CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame's identity to the news media.
Plame's CIA status was disclosed eight days after her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, publicly accused the administration of twisting intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat in the run-up to the war.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
The media is still stuck on stupid. Even Fitz acknowledged Plame wasn't undercover.
Expect wall to wall coverage of the non-story of the non-agent on the 20th and 24th ranked cable news programs between 7 pm and 9 pm on MSLSD.
It would be nice to know whether Plame was or was not "covert" by meaning of the United States Code.
Think Fitz will ever tell us?
MSM ignores the most important person in the game because Novak identified him as non-partisan. Such identification would undermine the slant of the conversation about a partisan agenda.
I think he already did by refusing to refer to her as "covert" in that deplorable press conference, but rather using the word "classified."
PETE YOST
Alert!!!!
former editor of SJ Mercury News...socialist
He didn't bring any charges related to the "outing". I take that as an implicit acknowledgement that he thinks that law wasn't broken.
I was being a bit sarcastic, should have mentioned that.
Yeah, "classified", which is not covert.
Two years investigating a non-crime. I'd tell him to take a leap.
Is this statement true? There seems to be plenty of "confusion" as to when her CIA status was disclosed, especially after Bob Woodward's admission. I hadn't heard before that it was pinned down to eight days after Wilson went public.
They evidently took Novak's deposition. Not too many questions, though.
And I was being a bit of a dunce :)
Does anyone find it rather troubling that Fitzgerald seems to be giving instant credibility to the testimony of the media figures involved in this case, but automatically discredits or dis-believes the testimony of administration officials?
We need to keep him around to investigate all of the other CIA leaks. That should keep him busy for years.
Fitz is spending even more dollars on a bogus investigation.
Too bad Bush & Company did such a rotten job of this whole thing.
It took him about two days to determine that Valerie Plame was not an undercover agent, that her identity was well known, and that talking to Novak about it was not a crime. He spent the next year and 363 days trying to figure out what he could charge someone with so he would not have to close up shop and go home.
We know now that in the past month, Fitzgerald has spent "more than an hour interviewing Viveca Novak". The real question is: What did he do during the other 160 working hours during that month? Is his rate of newsworthy interviews 1 per month?
No, that timeline is horsecrap. Why has not Fitzgerald called on Woodward? Why has he not deposed anyone else disputing the lies of Joe Wilson?
Abdurahman Alamoudi's "Oil for Yellowcake"
NigerGate: FBI to Conduct In-Depth Investigation
NigerGate: Update - FBI and SISMI to Investigate Foreign, Including US, Citizens
I wouldn't expect anything out of Fitzgerald except more indictments of Administration people.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.