Libby: Bush OK'd Secret Intel Leak

FreeChile said:
Yeah. It looks like Libby is trying to drown the prosecution with paperwork. He wants vast amounts of paper from different agencies and he wants the government to go through the job of giving it to him. That is an all too common litigation tactic.
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His strategy is smarter than that, and rarer (though quite common in these particular kinds of cases). He's trying to induce the administration to move to withhold documents on either national security or executive privlege grounds. If he can do that, I can pretty much guarantee that it will be that (or those) precise, exact document(s) which will establish his innocence beyond any doubt if only they could be released, Mr. Judge, your Honor. If the judge rules that he has right to the documents, the government is faced with releasing the documents or dropping the case or appealing the ruling, dragging the bad press on for another couple months. If the judge rules against him he has some PR talking points and an appealable issue.
 
manny said:
His strategy is smarter than that, and rarer (though quite common in these particular kinds of cases). He's trying to induce the administration to move to withhold documents on either national security or executive privlege grounds. If he can do that, I can pretty much guarantee that it will be that (or those) precise, exact document(s) which will establish his innocence beyond any doubt if only they could be released, Mr. Judge, your Honor. If the judge rules that he has right to the documents, the government is faced with releasing the documents or dropping the case or appealing the ruling, dragging the bad press on for another couple months. If the judge rules against him he has some PR talking points and an appealable issue.
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Good points. And this all also distracts the prosecution's efforts by having to constantly come up with explanations for not revealing documents. I mean look at the "... Response to Third Motion to Compel Discovery," it is filled with legal justifications which the prosecution had to go dig out.
 
Nova Land said:
Whether the president, vice-president, or Libby were legally entitled to leak the information is not the key issue here. It's a distraction.

In 2003 a CIA officer was outed in the media. An investigation was authorized to determine the facts of the matter. It was agreed at that time, by the White House as well as others, that this was a serious matter and that it was important to get to the bottom of who did what.

At that time people at the White House were claiming to have had no involvement in the matter. Whether they were weaseling and actually meant that (in their opinions) they had no criminal involvement is irrelevant. The point is that, in order to determine the facts of the matter, Fitzgerald needed to talk to people who had knowledge of the leak and needed to find out what they knew. And instead of cooperating with the investigation the people at the White House stalled, delayed, evaded, and dissembled.

Some of them -- notably Scooter Libby -- made statements to the investigators and testimony to the Grand Jury which turned out to be significantly false. That is what Libby is charged with -- making false and misleading statements which have hindered the investigation.

It is very difficult to know who is guilty of what if people lie to investigators or otherwise obstruct the investigation. And if investigators cannot determine who to charge and what to charge them with, then criminals walk free. That's why obstruction of justice is a serious matter.

It is nice if Libby is now telling the truth about how Valerie Wilson's name got leaked and her cover blown. If this is indeed the truth, it may help Fitzgerald get to the bottom of that matter and determine whether criminal charges are warranted (and if so which ones, and against whom). But that doesn't alter the fact that for the past couple of years Libby and others appear to have willfully tried to stymie Fitzgerald's investigation.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Libby did indeed have knowledge about how Valerie Wilson came to be outed -- that he had information pertinent to the investigation of that outing, and that instead of cooperating with the investigation as he was legally required to do he chose to conceal what he knew and to muddy the investigative waters. And his latest statements serve as one more confirmation of that increasingly obvious fact.

That is what Libby is charged with. That is what he is going to be tried for. And so far his defense seems to be one attempt after another to distract attention from that basic fact.
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Nicely said Nova Land, although I am not sure anyone here was significantly disagreeing with this. I thought there were a lot of hypotheitical questions inspired by the facts of the case but that weren't neciessarily being raised to contradict any of the basic facts of the case that you outlined.

I have a question which has been touched on, but I still don't see how this new revelation (which was actually, I think, assumed to be true before this) helps Libby or why he would go down this path.

I saw Libby's strategies as these:
1. drag this out as long as possible to wear down the resolve of the govenment to continue to pursue this,
2. make a request for information that the government's failure to supply will cause a case dismissal
3.play for a presidential pardon near the end of Bush's term
4. hold back damaging Bush info, keeping some blackmail material for when it could be used to his best advantage.

The release of this information doesn't seem to be part of any of the strategies I saw for him and it does nothing to move forward the idea that he is innocent of what he has been charged with. So why did it do this? Is it possible he is truly pissed at the people who he sees as abandoning him and he's just striking out?

ETA: What will all the Republican elites that have signed up for helping with Libby's defense fund think about the direction of Libby's strategy?
 
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Jocko most of your posts in this thread were in breach of your Membership Agreement therefore I have split them to AAH and am issuing you a warning, repetition of such breaches may result in further action including suspension or banning.

Shemp several of your posts were also in breach of your Membership Agreement therefore I am issuing you a warning.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Darat
 
Wow oh wow! Imagine that!

Bush got so ticked that someone tried to undercut his war rationale that he used his official powers as President to hurt the man's credibilty as opposed to actually dealing with what he had to say.

It is no wonder that the leak of the Plame data has come from the highest circles of power in the White House: hopefully, the truth about this item will be soon exposed as well.
 
Darat said:
Jocko most of your posts in this thread were in breach of your Membership Agreement therefore I have split them to AAH and am issuing you a warning, repetition of such breaches may result in further action including suspension or banning.

Shemp several of your posts were also in breach of your Membership Agreement therefore I am issuing you a warning.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Darat
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I was wondering why the response count went down overnight. You sent all the good stuff to AAH. ;)
 
manny said:
It builds the case that the administration was very highly focused on rebutting the false statements Wilson had made.
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What false statments? And, if they were false why did they not rebut vs. go after his wife?

Daredelvis
 
daredelvis said:
What false statments?
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The main one for purposes of this case seems to be that he reported to the CIA that Iraq was not seeking uranium yellowcake from Niger. Iraq was, and the NIE conclusion that it was was based in part on Mr. Wilson's trip.

And, if they were false why did they not rebut vs. go after his wife?
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It's still not known exactly who disclosed Ms. Plame's status first, and why, and whether it was a crime. However, the purpose of authorizing the disclosure of information from the NIE was exactly to rebut the claim, not to go after any individual.
 
manny said:
It's still not known exactly who disclosed Ms. Plame's status first, and why, and whether it was a crime. However, the purpose of authorizing the disclosure of information from the NIE was exactly to rebut the claim, not to go after any individual.
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Right. The fact that her husband was a political enemy of the Bush Administration was just a lucky coincidence. :rolleyes:
 
CFLarsen said:
If you want to chicken out on the questions, perhaps you could explain why I "have no leg to stand on" regarding this topic?
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The congress are not controlled by the president; they do not have to do anything he says. They are not appointed by him. What's so confusing about that?
 
manny said:
The main one for purposes of this case seems to be that he reported to the CIA that Iraq was not seeking uranium yellowcake from Niger. Iraq was, and the NIE conclusion that it was was based in part on Mr. Wilson's trip.
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That does not sound right.

Nope - not an accurate statement.
I refer you to the Senate Report on Pre-War Intelligence Assessments on Iraq. pages 36 - 71.
 
Zbu said:
Plus we have to keep in mind that the outing of Plame was to teach someone a lesson who was going to bring new information to light that Saddam wasn't seeking nukes through African uranium.
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You are wrong. Learn2google. Wilson said the receipt was phony but Iraq had tried to aquire African uranium.
 
fishbob said:
That does not sound right.

Nope - not an accurate statement.
I refer you to the Senate Report on Pre-War Intelligence Assessments on Iraq. pages 36 - 71.
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I re-referred to it. It did not make a finding as to whether Iraq was seeking yellowcake. It did find that there was disagreement within the intelligence community and, and here's one important part for purposes of this discussion, that the NIE did not make that sufficiently clear. At the time the President declassified the NIE he was of the belief that the intelligence community had indeed found that Iraq was seeking the stuff. Further, the Senate Report concluded that the people who debriefed Wilson came away with a substantially different conclusion about his trip than the one he portrayed in the Times.
 
Seems like the usual Republican slight of hand at work here. Keep returning to whether Bush has the right to release classified information, ignoring how Bush once again lied and misled us regarding what was going on with these leaks. he feigned ignorance about how the information got out, vowed to fire anyone who was caught leaking classified information, etc. leading us all to think he had nothing to do with it, knew nothing about it.

If this was just a release of information done for National Security, why all the secrecy and dishonesty about where it came from? What is there to hide? Pretty dishonest and unethical at the very least, even if it wasn't technically illegal.
 
Renfield said:
he feigned ignorance about how the information got out, vowed to fire anyone who was caught leaking classified information, etc. leading us all to think he had nothing to do with it, knew nothing about it.
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What information are you referring to?
 
manny said:
I re-referred to it. It did not make a finding as to whether Iraq was seeking yellowcake. It did find that there was disagreement within the intelligence community and, and here's one important part for purposes of this discussion, that the NIE did not make that sufficiently clear. At the time the President declassified the NIE he was of the belief that the intelligence community had indeed found that Iraq was seeking the stuff. Further, the Senate Report concluded that the people who debriefed Wilson came away with a substantially different conclusion about his trip than the one he portrayed in the Times.
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You previously claimed - regarding Iraq seeking uranium from Niger: "Iraq was".
Whatever Wilson said or whatever Bush believed is irrelevant. You appear to have knowledge where the NIE did not of what was going on with the uranium. And now you have knowledge that the NIE did not have of what Bush believed.

I expect the black helicopters will be dropping by your house real soon.
 
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