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In a filing Thursday at U.S. District Court in the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby CIA/Leak case, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald -- in a 19-page affidavit -- offered few clues about the identity of the official or officials involved in the leak of former CIA employee, Valerie Wilson Plame's name to reporters, other than Libby himself. Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted last year on charges that he lied about how he learned Plame’s identity and when he told reporters. The affidavit does not unravel the mystery of who Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's "official"...

Lawyers for Vice President Cheney's former top aide asked a federal judge Thursday to dismiss his indictment because the special prosecutor in the case lacked authority to bring the charges. In a court filing, lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby said the indictment violates the Constitution because Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was not appointed by the president with the consent of the Senate. The defense attorneys also said Fitzgerald's appointment violates federal law because he was not supervised by the attorney general or approved by Congress. "Those constitutional and statutory provisions have been violated in this case," Libby's lawyers wrote....

Prosecutors have asked former vice presidential Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to help them decipher his handwritten notes for use in an ongoing investigation stemming from the leak of a CIA agent's identity. The request to Libby was discussed in two court hearings February 3, including a closed session involving classified material. A transcript of the closed session was made public Monday. It revealed that five government agencies will review evidence that may be used at Libby's trial, scheduled to start in January 2007, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. In the transcript, special counsel Patrick...

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records. According to sources with firsthand knowledge, Cheney authorized Libby to release additional classified information, including details of the NIE, to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence in making...

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is raising the possibility that records sought in the CIA leak investigation could be missing because of an e-mail archiving problem at the White House. The prosecutor in the criminal case against Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff said in a Jan. 23 letter that not all e-mail was archived in 2003, (((GET THIS: ***the year the Bush administration exposed the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame.***)))) (They aren't even faking journalistic integrity in leaving out the word "allegedly.") Lawyers for defendant I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby this week accused prosecutors of withholding evidence...

Libby's Defense Goes after Antique Media Reporters January 30th, 2006 Last week, Lewis Libby filed a long-anticipated motion to compel discovery of reporters and organizations, making a significant strategic move in the perjury and obstruction case brought against him by the Special Prosecutor. As anticipated, he seeks broad discovery of the reporters and news organizations which covered the fake charges of Joseph C. Wilson IV and the claimed Administration response to it. As we know, Wilson’s well-hyped story, of a White House deliberately ignoring what he claimed to have found in Africa, was not true and the Senate Select Commission...

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney who was indicted in the CIA leak case, has a new job, focusing on Asia and anti-terrorism at a conservative think tank. Libby, who has pleaded not guilty to obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements, will serve as senior adviser to the Hudson Institute. "Scooter Libby brings decades of experience to Hudson Institute that will strengthen our robust research efforts," the think tank's chairman, Walter Stern, said in a statement. Libby, who stepped down as Cheney's chief of staff after he was indicted, is a...

The Dec. 1 edition of The New York Times carried a story about the damage done to U.S. interests by the revelation that the CIA maintains a number of secret interrogation prisons for terrorists in Europe and elsewhere. (“Reports of Secret U.S. Prisons in Europe Draw Ire and Otherwise Red Faces.”) Governments throughout the continent are now demanding explanations from the U.S. Department of State and otherwise strutting their outrage that the U.S. might be kidnapping suspected terrorists from European soil and transferring them to other nations. How did this bit of classified information become public? It was a leak...

The reporter for Time magazine who recently agreed to testify in the CIA leak case is central to White House senior adviser Karl Rove's effort to fend off an indictment in the two-year-old investigation, according to two people familiar with the situation. Viveca Novak, who has written intermittently about the leak case for Time, has been asked to provide sworn testimony to Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald in the next few weeks after Rove attorney Robert Luskin told Fitzgerald about a conversation he had with her, the two sources It's not clear why Luskin believes Novak's deposition could help Rove,...

"There seems to be a complete lack of discretion motivated purely by politics, and not by concern for abuses of power or the safety of the American people." Former Ambassador Joe Wilson has told anyone and everyone that his wife’s identity as a CIA employee was revealed as revenge for criticizing President Bush’s claim that Iraq sought to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger. He, with great hubris, demanded investigations and wanted to watch White House officials do a “perp walk.” Why isn’t anyone investigating Joe Wilson? Investigate Joe Wilson you say? Why, is he not the person...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said he will have to bring more information before a new grand jury in the CIA leak probe, adding that his work is not complete. In a new court filing, Fitzgerald said sensitive information from his investigation still needs to be protected, especially since proceedings will involve a different jury than the one that indicted former Lewis Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney. The panel hearing that part of the inquiry expired that day. Fitzgerald does not say that new charges definitely will be brought. Instead, the filing discusses what...

Both the mainstream media and the Bush administration have ignored the elephant in the living room in the Scooter Libby perjury case - the blatant lies former Ambassador Joe Wilson has told about his role. The administration is hurting itself by leaving truth-telling to columnists and bloggers. Libby was indicted because he told a grand jury he learned that Wilson’s wife was a CIA official from reporters; the special prosecutor says he got that information from colleagues. The prosecutor was appointed to investigate a CIA allegation that someone had outed an undercover agent in revealing to columnist Robert Novak that...

NEW YORK After months of complaints from what he calls “bloggers on the right,” among others, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has posted at his paid TimesSelect page a clarification on his now-famous, but somewhat flawed, column that played a central role in the still-enveloping Plame/CIA leak case. Kristof said the reasons for correcting the record now were that the Libby indictment had revived interest in the May, 6, 2003 column -- and he has been pressing for Vice President Cheney to “tell all” about the case so “here's my effort to do the same.” It came just hours...

Something is very rotten, and mostly unreported in the Wilson/Plame leak case. Stephen Hayes has written three very fine articles about Joe Wilson, his lack of credibility and the CIA's hypocrisy and what would seem obvious role in the leak investigation. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/281pokap.asp http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/266weygj.asp http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/244chpdw.asp Now, to what's rotten: Before we all move on or get too narrowly focused, and I know it's not part of the indictment, however, two aspects of the whole affair (which I think are critically important) that have gotten short shrift by all reporters are these: 1. Why was there no written report from Wilson upon...

Seymour Hersh, one of journalism's crankier bulldogs, was in an upbeat mood. At least for him. A confidential, well-placed source had told him that U.S. special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's 22-month inquiry into the outing of former CIA agent Valerie Plame, wife of ex-diplomat Joseph Wilson IV, would go further than anyone had heretofore thought. "He's going to save America," Hersh predicted, on the phone from his home in Washington, just days before Fitzgerald announced indictments against I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, on Friday.

What Republicans have to do to to protect major Republican leaders from the continuation of career assassination via opportunistic charges and prosecutions on the flimsiest of grounds is to follow the advice provided by Sean Connery’s Jim Malone to Kevin Costner’s Elliot Ness in Brian de Palma’s The Untouchables (1987): Connery: lf you open the ball on these people, you must be prepared to go all the way. Because they won’t give up the fight until one of you is dead. Costner: l want to get Capone. l don’t know how. Connery: Here’s how you get Capone: he pulls a...

The prosecutor in the CIA leak investigation presented a summary of his case to a federal grand jury yesterday and is expected to announce a final decision on charges in the two-year-long probe tomorrow, according to people familiar with the case.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With charges expected as early as Wednesday, federal officials investigating the exposure of CIA operative Valerie Plame conducted last-minute interviews with her neighbors and associates of Karl Rove and other top White House aides, lawyers said on Tuesday. Marc Lefkowitz, who lives across the street from Plame, told Reuters two FBI agents asked him on Monday if he knew about Plame's CIA work before her identity was leaked to the press in 2003. Lefkowitz said he told them: "I didn't know."

Miller Surrenders Additional Notes According to sources involved in the Judith Miller case, lawyers for Miller have turned over an additional, previously unreported batch of notes on the New York Times reporter's conversations with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald. The notes, a source said, could significantly change the time frame of Miller's involvement with Libby. After spending 85 days in jail for civil contempt, Miller testified before Fitzgerald's grand jury on September 30 and turned over one set of edited notes. Those notes covered a pair of conversations she had with Libby, the vice president's chief...

WASHINGTON -- Accuracy in Media (AIM) said today that Judith Miller's release from jail in the CIA leak investigation demonstrates that her claim about protecting sources was fraudulent from the start. "Miller has decided to cooperate with a grand jury investigation of possible criminal activity in the CIA leak case," said AIM Editor Cliff Kincaid. "This proves that her decision to go to jail, rather than testify, was a ploy all along."