WP:Prosecutor in CIA Leak Case Corrects Part of Court Filing

[cal04]

The federal prosecutor overseeing the indictment of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, yesterday corrected a claim in an earlier court filing that Libby had misrepresented the significance placed by the CIA on allegations that Iraq attempted to buy uranium from Niger.

Last week, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald wrote that, in conversation with former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Libby described the uranium story as a "key judgment" of the CIA's 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, a term of art indicating there was consensus within the intelligence community on that issue. In fact, the alleged effort to buy uranium was not among the estimate's key judgments and was listed further back in the 96-page, classified document.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, Fitzgerald wrote yesterday that he wanted to "correct" the sentence that dealt with the issue in a filing he submitted last Wednesday. That sentence said Libby "was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium."

Instead, the sentence should have conveyed that Libby was to tell Miller some of the key judgments of the NIE "and that the NIE stated that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium." Libby is not charged with misportraying or leaking classified information. He was indicted last year for allegedly lying to the FBI and a grand jury about what he said to reporters. The indictment came as part of Fitzgerald's investigation into who leaked to the media the name of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose husband became a public critic of the Bush administration's case for the Iraq war.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/11/AR2006041101440.html

[rodeodance]

1. for me this is significant--as it allows that other key things were in the

NIE statement that were downplayed by the WH.

instead of 'the key', Fritz changes to 'some of the key"--meaning he has broadened his statement. There were other key judgments-in the NIE.


Cleaver boy that Fritz.

[burrowowl]

2. KICK!

YES!

[stop the bleeding]

3. yes and as well as the broader view of the NIE his statement also

includes the dissenting view from the INR footnote of page 89 of the NIE, the same INR footnote that was on AF1 with Plame's name/status and marked Secret and passed around by Ari, Powell, Rice, and Card.

Yep he is leaving "all options" on the table to quote a familiar phrase.

[Fiendish Thingy]

4. STB, where did you get this info re: INR footnote on pg. 89 of NIE? n/t

[stop the bleeding]

6. see here at this thread I posted

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/stop%20the%20bleeding/12

I provided 2 links, disregard what was said in the first part of the post and goto the links towards the bottom.

I have not been able to nail down any part of the NIE that was made public to/that includes any more of the INR footnote.

In other words I have not been able to find the whole NIE document that may or may not have Plame's name/status in it as contained in additional parts of the INR footnote that may not be public information.


Also on edit the footnote is on page 84 not 89 my bad

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:bhwV7vJBkT8J:www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/iraq-wmd.html+National+Intelligence+Estimate&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

[cal04]

5. Left Coaster: this revelation is strange and actually worse

this revelation is strange and actually worse for Libby's case. Why?

(snip)
(1) If Libby merely told Miller some of the "key judgements" in support of the Bush administration's claims, then he would have only been revealing what was already in the unclassified White Paper. After all, the unclassified White Paper was nothing but the Key Judgements of the classified NIE with all the IC caveats and challenges deleted - deliberately. Which means that if Libby was not actually declassifying the Key Judgements of the classified NIE (or leaking the entire contents of the unclassified Key Judgements of the NIE), then the portions highlighted in bold (below) in the classified NIE key judgements are the key pieces of information that would have remained hidden from reporters in the context of any discussion on Saddam's alleged nuclear capabilities:

(too long to post)

(snip)
So, if Libby, Cheney and Bush were leaking or declassifying the entirety of the NIE Key Judgements, then the truth about the major challenges to Bush's SOTU claim on nuclear reconstitution would have been revealed. If they were not declassifying or leaking the entirety of the NIE Key Judgements, then that would be proof that they were trying to hide all the information that showed the Bush administration in poor light.

2) The Key Judgements did not have the uranium claim anyway - so if Libby was out there to discuss the uranium claim with Miller - why would he be reinforcing some of the key judgements when those did not mention the uranium claim? Perhaps, he was trying to change the topic to talk about the "other" evidence for "nuclear constitution"...but in this case, just using the key judgements of his liking without revealing the State/INR dissent that was very much embedded inside the classified key judgements would have been a deliberate attempt to continue to mislead the public and the press.

3) Further, if Libby was peddling the uranium claim from the body of the NIE without mentioning that INR rebutted that claim in another portion of the NIE, then that would have also been an attempt to mislead.

At this point, we should ask the White House to clearly state what it was that Libby was asked to leak. This new revelation by Fitzgerald doesn't help Libby or the White House.

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/007343.php

[southernleftylady]

7. here is a thread about this now :)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x912384