Raw Story was the first to report that Bloomberg News was going to break a story saying Karl Rove and Lewis Libby may have lied to the grand jury. The upshot is that these Administration officials may have lied about where they first heard of Valerie Plame - claiming they heard it from reporters when they did not. In other words, they may have used the reporters as shields, to avoid disclosing they learned it from either a classified document or someone in the Government.

Lewis “Scooter'’ Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned from NBC News reporter Tim Russert of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson. Russert has testified before a federal grand jury that he didn’t tell Libby of Plame’s identity.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told Fitzgerald that he first learned the identity of the CIA agent from syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who was first to report Plame’s name and connection to Wilson. Novak, according to a source familiar with the matter, has given a somewhat different version to the special prosecutor.

Think Progress was the first to get the actual article text of the article, which appears below. Murray Waas was the first to break the story yesterday.

The Washington Post leads today with an article about the June 9, 2003 State Department memo that identified Valerie Wilson as the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson:

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials.

The paragraph identifying her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the "secret" level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as "secret" the names of officers whose identities are covert, according to former senior agency officials.

Anyone reading that paragraph should have been aware that it contained secret information, though that designation was not specifically attached to Plame's name and did not describe her status as covert, the sources said.

Given that Colin Powell had the memo with him on July 7, 2003 on Air Force One when the President and his entourage left for Africa, and that Fitzgerald subpoenaed phone records for Air Force one during that period, Fitzgerald may be assuming that someone leaked information from the memo. So, who saw the memo on Air Force One besides Colin Powell?

Sports Book is giving odds on Karl Rove being fired or resigning:

Washington, D.C. (July 20, 2005) - Sportsbook.com has entered the fray in the latest political storm to rock the White House by offering odds on the future of its Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove. The opening line is that Rove will not be dismissed or resign in the wake of an ongoing criminal investigation, with odds at 1-6.

The betting line is a reflection of President Bush's seeming flip-flop on the issue based on comments he has offered since the scandal broke in 2003. Initially, Bush said he would fire anyone from the administration found to have been the source of the leak. After Rove was revealed to be the source, however, Bush said he would only dismiss an administration official who had engaged in criminal activity.

This just in:

Committee investigates leaking of classified information:

SENATE AND HOUSE DEMOCRATIC PANELS TO HOLD OVERSIGHT HEARING ON NATIONAL SECURITY CONSEQUENCES OF DISCLOSING THE IDENTITY OF A COVERT INTELLIGENCE OFFICER 10:00 AM -- FRIDAY, JULY 22

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) -- The U.S. Senate Democratic Policy Committee (DPC) and the U.S. House Government Reform Committee Minority will conduct a joint hearing at 10:00 AM, Friday, July 22, in Room 138 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, to examine the national security implications of disclosing the identity of a covert intelligence officer. The hearing will be co-chaired by Senate DPC Chairman Byron Dorgan (D-ND), and U.S. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), the Ranking Member of the House Government Reform Committee.

The panel of witnesses will include former intelligence officers and analysts who will discuss the impact of such disclosures, based on decades of experience and service to our country on intelligence and national security matters.

The Supreme Court nomination of John G. Roberts couldn't come at a better time for Bush. What better way to distract us from the Karl Rove issue?

Murray Waas is breaking another story about Karl Rove, and why grand jury investigators believe Rove didn't tell the truth in the first interview....when he claimed, as we wrote here, that he learned of Valerie Plame's identity from a journalist, but he couldn't remember which one. Waas writes:

White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove did not disclose that he had ever discussed CIA officer Valerie Plame with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper during Rove’s first interview with the FBI, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The omission by Rove created doubt for federal investigators, almost from the inception of their criminal probe into who leaked Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak, as to whether Rove was withholding crucial information from them, and perhaps even misleading or lying to them, the sources said.

Crooks and Liars has the letter that eleven former CIA agents sent to Congress yesterday about the outing of Valerie Plame. They are angry. They explain that contrary to White House talking points, Valerie Plame most definitely was undercover.

The disclosure of Ms. Plame’s name was a shameful event in American history and, in our professional judgment, may have damaged U.S. national security and poses a threat to the ability of U.S. intelligence gathering using human sources. Any breach of the code of confidentiality and cover weakens the overall fabric of intelligence, and, directly or indirectly, jeopardizes the work and safety of intelligence workers and their sources. The fact is that there are thousands of U.S. intelligence officers who "work at a desk" in the Washington, D.C. area every day who are undercover. Some have official cover, and some have non-official cover. Both classes of cover must and should be protected.

The agents are not making a judgment about whether disclosure violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. They acknowledge they are not lawyers.

It's no picnic for Judith Miller in the Alexandria Detention Center, reports Bill Keller of the New York Times in an interview.

She's not eating due to stomach problems from the food. For more on the conditions, check out this former prisoner's diary.

It doesn't sound like Miller is about to change her mind, though.

Via AmericaBlog and Billmon, Bloomberg News is reporting that Ari read the State Department memo on Air Force One during Bush's July 7 to 12 trip to Africa.

The memo, prepared by the State Department on July 7, 2003, informed top administration officials that the wife of ex- diplomat and Bush critic Joseph Wilson was a CIA agent. Seven days later, Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was publicly identified as a CIA operative by syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

On the same day the memo was prepared, White House phone logs show Novak placed a call to White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, according to lawyers familiar with the case and a witness who has testified before the grand jury. Those people say it isn't clear whether Fleischer returned the call, and Fleischer has refused to comment.

The Novak call may loom large in the investigation because Fleischer was among a group of administration officials who left Washington later that day on a presidential trip to Africa. On the flight to Africa, Fleischer was seen perusing the State Department memo on Wilson and his wife, according to a former administration official who was also on the trip.

President Bush breaks his silence today. He says he'll fire anyone in his administration "who committed a crime." [Via HuffPost.]

Is he saying an indictment won't be enough, he'll insist on a conviction? That would be the American way, after all, a charge is not proof of guilt.

Prediction: Bush will announce his Supreme Court pick earlier than scheduled - within the next few days - to deflect attention from this scandal. Will the furor erupting over RoveGate make him play nice and give us a mainstream moderate to placate us?

Update: Buzzflash Editorial today.

Update: Arianna weighs in here.

I'm working today, so here's a theory I received by e-mail from a criminal defense attorney in Florida on why Judith Miller has chosen jail. What do you all think of it?

I'm totally convinced that Judy Miller is in jail not because of her assertion of the 1st Amendment privilege, but because she wants to avoid asserting her 5th Amendment privilege. The reporter’s privilege arguments are convenient cover for her right now.

I believe the NYT is loudly supporting her fiction that she is a 1st Amendment heroine to try to cover for their horrendous mistake (mistake or cover up?) of not “throwing her under the bus” when it was revealed that she was nothing but a propagandist for the administration on WMD in the run up to war when they were forced to apologize for their coverage of Iraq.

Now, while I believe they (NYT) do know or suspect that she has some substantive criminal liability to hide (recall the split in the joint defense with Time when Time decided to accept the waivers but Judy did not and Time got new counsel), the NYT is still stuck with having to explain publicly Judy’s refusal to testify, even with waivers, to preserve their “reputation” as a credible newspaper, rather than the house organ of the Cheney Administration in the march to war.

Update: Thanks to Mark Hatch-Miller of Majority Report at Air America Radio for pointing this out:

This is Wilson on Democracy Now! from September 2003:

“Well, first of all the Vice President is right, we've never met. He was Secretary of Defense when I was in charge of our agency in Baghdad and as one of the principals of the National Security Council, he was certainly in National Security Council meetings chaired by President Bush when discussions were being held on reports that I was submitting on a regular basis from Baghdad. While we've never met he certainly knows who I am and should know unless his memory is flawed and faulty.”

Joseph Wilson will be on their show tonight.

Update: Thanks to Bob Harris for providing this shorter version:

Shorter version: during the first Gulf War, Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense. And America's man in Baghdad passing along White House demands to Saddam was... Joe Wilson. Dick Cheney doesn't know who this guy is?

**************
In September, 2003, on Meet the Press, Dick Cheney that said he did not know Joseph Wilson and had never met him.

MR. RUSSERT: Now, Ambassador Joe Wilson, a year before that, was sent over by the CIA because you raised the question about uranium from Africa. He says he came back from Niger and said that, in fact, he could not find any documentation that, in fact, Niger had sent uranium to Iraq or engaged in that activity and reported it back to the proper channels. Were you briefed on his findings in February, March of 2002?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I don’t know Joe Wilson. I’ve never met Joe Wilson. A question had arisen. I’d heard a report that the Iraqis had been trying to acquire uranium in Africa, Niger in particular. I get a daily brief on my own each day before I meet with the president to go through the intel. And I ask lots of question. One of the questions I asked at that particular time about this, I said, “What do we know about this?” They take the question. He came back within a day or two and said, “This is all we know. There’s a lot we don’t know,” end of statement. And Joe Wilson—I don’t who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back.

...like I say, I don’t know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn’t judge him. I have no idea who hired him and it never came...

Dick Cheney was Defense Secretary under former President Bush during Gulf War I. Joseph Wilson was charge d'affaires in Baghdad.

The Vanity Fair article on Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame Wilson is available online here. It's worth re-reading yet again, not for anything new, but to put some of things we've all learned and confirmed in the past few weeks into sharper focus. A couple of paragraphs that stand out to me:

After Wilson returned to America, a C.I.A. reports officer visited him at home and later debriefed him. Since Wilson's trip had been made because of Cheney's office's request, he assumed that the vice president had received at least a phone call about his findings. "There would have been a very specific answer provided ... to the very specific question that he asked," Wilson says. (The vice president's office denies that Cheney heard back from the C.I.A. or knew about Wilson's trip until he read about it in the newspaper many months later. Tenet confirmed the trip was made on the C.I.A.'s "own initiative." )