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So guess who authorized the leak(s)?

post #1 of 47
4/6/06 at 1:45pm
Thread Starter 
Papers: Cheney Aide Says Bush OK'd Leak

Quote:
WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide told prosecutors President Bush authorized the leak of sensitive intelligence information about Iraq, according to court papers filed by prosecutors in the CIA leak case.


Before his indictment, I. Lewis Libby testified to the grand jury investigating the CIA leak that Cheney told him to pass on information and that it was Bush who authorized the disclosure, the court papers say. According to the documents, the authorization led to the July 8, 2003, conversation between Libby and New York Times reporter Judith Miller.
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post #2 of 47
4/6/06 at 2:12pm
Holy crap.

*reaches for the popcorn*

This is going to get interesting.
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post #3 of 47
4/6/06 at 2:17pm
Oh noes! Bu5h gtg2 jailxorz!?
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post #4 of 47
4/6/06 at 2:18pm
Probably not. No way this makes the mainstream news.
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post #5 of 47
4/6/06 at 2:23pm
It was the top story on AP radio news at lunch. Of course, they also pointed out that he authorized the leaks of WOMD material, and not the names of CIA agents.
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post #6 of 47
4/6/06 at 2:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nigel St. Buggering
Probably not. No way this makes the mainstream news.

Uh, that's a link to an AP story.
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post #7 of 47
4/6/06 at 2:26pm
Yeah, but it's still total gossip, Devin.*

*Inter-thread joke
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post #8 of 47
4/6/06 at 2:35pm
Differences between the 24 President and our real one? Now purely aesthetic.
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post #9 of 47
4/6/06 at 2:40pm
its (edit) almost top story on fox and cnn.

and juniormint is a hermaphroditic tool.
that too is gossip. But I have proof.
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post #10 of 47
4/6/06 at 2:41pm
Everybody knows AP is run by liberal, gay atheists.

Anyway, I'm afraid that Bush will walk away scot-free. Just as he did countless times during the past few years.

Apparently, there are more important stories than the prsesident breaking the law. Like Brad Pitt allegedly not liking his new house.
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post #11 of 47
4/6/06 at 2:53pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucidz
its (edit) almost top story on fox and cnn.

and juniormint is a hermaphroditic tool.
that too is gossip. But I have proof.
Yeah, I probably shouldn't have put those pictures out in mailshot form.

And does this mean you finally admit that your argument in the Gossip Gargoyles thread is a steaming load?
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post #12 of 47
4/6/06 at 3:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheJuniorMint
Yeah, I probably shouldn't have put those pictures out in mailshot form.

And does this mean you finally admit that your argument in the Gossip Gargoyles thread is a steaming load?
It will remain gossip because I can't bear to let go of these pictures. Seriously dude, 6x9's was that really nessecary?

My argument in the Gossip thread started out as opinion and got bogged down in a bunch of bullshit. My initial point is so far lost in that thread I don't even care any more. The last 30 posts of that thread have nothing to do with what I was trying to say and I'm pretty sure its a lost cause at this point.
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post #13 of 47
4/6/06 at 3:11pm
I feel a Lisa Simpson, "the system works!" moment coming on...

If that scene was a riff on Mr Smith goes to Washington, I apologize for my immaturity.
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post #14 of 47
4/6/06 at 3:22pm
Man, I was telling people back in January that President Logan was behind the whole thing. Incompetent, oh, sure -- like a fox!

Edit to credit: Damn, Crow beat me to it.
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post #15 of 47
4/6/06 at 3:46pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mastronikolas
Anyway, I'm afraid that Bush will walk away scot-free. Just as he did countless times during the past few years.
I'm not so sure-- his polls are in the toilet and dropping, there's a movement to censure him starting to gain steam, DeLay resigned, GOP party memebers are pissed at him, there's massive protest about his new immigration laws, Homeland Security officials are trying to boink little girls...I don't think he's got the leverage to make this go away at the moment.
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post #16 of 47
4/6/06 at 3:47pm
Its way too early to tell how this is going to play out in the courts. But when you take into account all the other stories (UK memos, aluminum tubes) floating around the media ether, its obvious that this was a coordinated campaign to go to war in Iraq, truth and consequences be damned.
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post #17 of 47
4/6/06 at 4:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by g-dude
I'm not so sure-- his polls are in the toilet and dropping, there's a movement to censure him starting to gain steam, DeLay resigned, GOP party memebers are pissed at him, there's massive protest about his new immigration laws, Homeland Security officials are trying to boink little girls...I don't think he's got the leverage to make this go away at the moment.
But none of this matters, as Bush is in power because the powerful want him there. His poll numbers could be at zero percent and he'd still be there.
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post #18 of 47
4/6/06 at 7:27pm
Someone please tell me I'm a dumbass who's wrong. I hope I didn't just say what everyone else was trying not to think.
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post #19 of 47
4/6/06 at 8:06pm
The news programs this evening have been on this story like white on rice. Good for them.
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post #20 of 47
4/6/06 at 8:14pm
Cool, but they'll never pin it on him conclusively. Too many people watching his back.
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post #21 of 47
4/6/06 at 8:36pm
Just watched John Kerry on Hardball talking about this, hopefully more people tuned into that. He pretty much spelled out what it would mean if the President were indibted for these charges and convicted, that he had indeed misled America about Iraq all along.

I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but this is definitely big news. And I doubt Bush is just going to get away with this. He wasn't indibted for criminal charges before, now it's a very real possibility.
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post #22 of 47
4/6/06 at 8:44pm
Kerry's an idiot. The time for tough talk was during the debates.
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post #23 of 47
4/6/06 at 8:46pm
Completely irrelevent given the current situation, it's not really all that important to point out it was Kerry on Hardball either. The point is Bush probably isn't just going to get by with this one.
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post #24 of 47
4/6/06 at 9:07pm
Dare I raise my hopes again, one more time?
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post #25 of 47
4/6/06 at 9:07pm
The problem is that anyone with half a brain already knew Bush was misleading the public on Iraq. The moment Saddam lost power and US troops occupied Baghdad, it became evident that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And yet, Bush got re-elected.

That's why I sincerely doubt the American public will care enough to follow this through.
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post #26 of 47
4/6/06 at 10:37pm
I'm shocked. Shocked to my very core.
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post #27 of 47
4/6/06 at 10:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mastronikolas
That's why I sincerely doubt the American public will care enough to follow this through.
I think the problems coming to light during the second term are making it a lot harder not to care for the American public if those approval ratings are any indication. It's not exactly another issue where the Administration can wave their 9/11 trump card and distract again.

At least, that's my hope.
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post #28 of 47
4/6/06 at 10:56pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mastronikolas
The problem is that anyone with half a brain already knew Bush was misleading the public on Iraq. The moment Saddam lost power and US troops occupied Baghdad, it became evident that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
That's where you're wrong. Half the country doesn't believe a word of that.
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post #29 of 47
4/6/06 at 11:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Desslar
That's where you're wrong. Half the country doesn't believe a word of that.
Well most of the country will soon be celebrating talking inflamed shrubbery and a zombie messiah. Logic doesn't seem to be our strong suit.
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post #30 of 47
4/6/06 at 11:13pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt Goldberg
Well most of the country will soon be celebrating talking inflamed shrubbery and a zombie messiah.
You know, you make Easter sound pretty kickass. I want to see the movie. I like Vince Vaughn for the shrubbery.
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post #31 of 47
4/7/06 at 4:22am
I just can't get my hopes up again that anything will come of it. It's gotten to the point where the only thing I believe in is corruption. Things will play out in whatever way will make the most money for those in power. And Bush going up on charges doesn't sound very lucrative. I realize that this is a cynical point of view, but where's the evidence to the contrary? Seriously, I'd love to see it.
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post #32 of 47
4/7/06 at 4:23pm
When questioned about Executive Authority in regards to the declassification of National Intelligence documents, arguably for political purposes, the President had this to say:

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post #33 of 47
4/7/06 at 5:03pm
Interesting update on the legality of it all:

http://www.arktimes.com/weblogs/Webl...c-7ed16bb5ed5b
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post #34 of 47
4/9/06 at 7:40am
So, what does Fitzgerald have to say? Where's he going to go with this.

Quote:
A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic
Prosecutor Describes Cheney, Libby as Key Voices Pitching Iraq-Niger Story

By Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers

As he drew back the curtain this week on the evidence against Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time described a "concerted action" by "multiple people in the White House" -- using classified information -- to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" a critic of President Bush's war in Iraq.

Bluntly and repeatedly, Fitzgerald placed Cheney at the center of that campaign. Citing grand jury testimony from the vice president's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald fingered Cheney as the first to voice a line of attack that at least three White House officials would soon deploy against former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.
The rest of the article goes further into what Special Counsel Fitzgerald can prove. For now, Bush seems isolated from prosecution, but its not looking so good for Bush politically though. Its too hard to tell where Fitzgerald is going with all stuff, but it seems like when he isn't poking holes in Libby's defense, he's circling the wagons around Cheney (circling to KILL!).[/edit]
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post #35 of 47
4/9/06 at 1:59pm
I thought it said he was going after Cheney. "Circle the wagons" means to defend someone. Or maybe I missed something.
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post #36 of 47
4/9/06 at 2:25pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Schwartz
I thought it said he was going after Cheney. "Circle the wagons" means to defend someone. Or maybe I missed something.

No, you're right.
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post #37 of 47
4/9/06 at 11:58pm
Let's go with "tightening the noose", then.
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post #38 of 47
4/10/06 at 3:30pm
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HD11Aa01.html

Wonderfully written piece on this issue.

Quote:
Final jeopardy over CIA leak
By Elizabeth de la Vega

The latest in a parade of horrors emanating from the Bush administration appeared on Thursday in the form of a revelation buried in papers filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in his investigation into the outing of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent Valerie Plame.

I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, now under indictment on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, told the grand jury that Fitzgerald convened that President George W Bush had - via Cheney - authorized him to disclose selected information from a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, which he did during a private breakfast meeting at the St Regis Hotel on July 8, 2003.

In a news conference on Friday, which bore a striking similarity to Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" routine, Bush's spokesman Scott McClellan dutifully responded to reporters' questions about the disclosure. No, the increasingly robotic McClellan said, the White House would not comment on an ongoing case. But, he assured the assembled journalists, the president could declassify whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, however he wanted.

So, McClellan implied, it would have been perfectly legal for the president to have taken this action, which he could not, of course, comment on because this was an ongoing case (and so on).

Thus has begun a debate in the US media whose starting questions usually run along the lines of: "Is what the president did legal?" or "Does the president have authority to declassify information at will?" (Given the president's failure to deny Libby's allegation, it has largely been accepted as true.) The answer to those questions has generally been: yes, the president - as chief executive - has the authority to declassify information at will.

But it is not only in the TV game show world of Jeopardy! that the correct answer to a problem depends on the question asked. And, as it happens, those are simply not the right questions.

<she then goes on awhile about the events leading up to the disclosure...read the link for those details>

We now have sufficient information to frame the Final Jeopardy! question. This is it:

Is a president, on the eve of his re-election campaign, legally entitled to ward off political embarrassment and conceal past failures in the exercise of his office by unilaterally and informally declassifying selected - as well as false and misleading - portions of a classified National Intelligence Estimate that he previously refused to declassify, in order to cause such information to be secretly disclosed under false pretenses in the name of a "former Hill staffer" to a single reporter, intending that reporter to publish such false and misleading information in a prominent national newspaper?

The answer is obvious: no. Such a misuse of authority is the very essence of a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States. It is also precisely the abuse of executive power that led to the impeachment of Richard M Nixon.
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post #39 of 47
8/29/06 at 9:29pm
Well, it was Richard Armitage after all ...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14533384/site/newsweek/
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post #40 of 47
8/29/06 at 9:58pm
Right, I'm sure he just nonchalantly gave out the information, that makes complete and total sense. How does Libby fit into all of this now?
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post #41 of 47
8/29/06 at 10:48pm
The article implies Armitage just likes to gossip;

Quote:
Armitage, a well-known gossip who loves to dish and receive juicy tidbits about Washington characters, apparently hadn't thought through the possible implications of telling Novak about Plame's identity. "I'm afraid I may be the guy that caused this whole thing," he later told Carl Ford Jr., State's intelligence chief. Ford says Armitage admitted to him that he had "slipped up" and told Novak more than he should have. "He was basically beside himself that he was the guy that f---ed up. My sense from Rich is that it was just chitchat," Ford recalls in "Hubris," to be published next week by Crown and co-written by the author of this article and David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation magazine.
He also told Woodward about it.

He's also more on the Powell camp, than in the let's go to war against Iraq neocon / Rove camp.

No idea what this means for the Libby stuff ...
Quote:
But officials at the White House also told reporters about Wilson's wife in an effort to discredit Wilson for his public attacks on Bush's handling of Iraq intelligence. Karl Rove confirmed to Novak that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, and days later offered the same information to Time reporter Matt Cooper. The inquiry into the case led to the indictment of Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
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post #42 of 47
8/31/06 at 3:30pm
Watching this thread come to a screeching halt at the Armitage news gave me a chuckle. For that, I thank you, chud.com.
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post #43 of 47
8/31/06 at 3:51pm
It came to a screeching halt four months before that, actually.

I don't understand the jocularity.

Quote:
Karl Rove confirmed to Novak that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, and days later offered the same information to Time reporter Matt Cooper.
Tee hee?

I don't know why anyone would be pleased at how the Bush Administration is semi-successfully covering up its attempts to smear its own agents out of spite. If Karl Rove is completely innocent, all it means is there's another creep worthy of equal disdain in the White House. Hardly cause for celebration.
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post #44 of 47
8/31/06 at 4:04pm
Am I supposed to think more of this administration because it was Armitage who leaked Plame's name?
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post #45 of 47
8/31/06 at 4:42pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Capt. Cutshaw
Watching this thread come to a screeching halt at the Armitage news gave me a chuckle. For that, I thank you, chud.com.
So happy we could please you, Guy-With-9-Posts-Who-Never-Posts-Here.
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post #46 of 47
1/24/07 at 3:36pm
Libby's defense is interesting. I wonder if Cheney will be pulled in further.
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post #47 of 47
1/24/07 at 3:54pm
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