Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, married to former CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose identity was outed by journalist Robert Novak who reportedly got it from senior White House officials, has a new book out, The Politics of Truth.

In it, he names three possible leakers of the information, among them, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Our copy of the book arrived today. The book charges that the White House crossed the line from promoting policy to willful deceptions and possible violations of federal law. Wilson says this Administration has become a danger to the nation.

Get your copy now.

The Politics of Truth
by Joseph Wilson

by TChris

The latest book to shed light on the dark innards of the Bush administration is (take a deep breath) The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity by Joseph Wilson. The wife in question is Valerie Plame, famously outed to Bob Novak as a CIA agent by persons as yet unknown in the Bush administration.

So who gave Novak the goods? Wilson points to Dick Cheney's office as a sensible place to start the investigation.

In the book, he named four administration aides, including Libby, who might have leaked the information. But he did not accuse any of them of doing so. Wilson said he has based his allegations on information supplied to him from multiple sources inside and outside the Bush administration.

Wilson connects Cheney to the events involving his wife through a meeting he said occurred in March 2003. He charged that Cheney's staff — with at least the "implicit" involvement of the vice president — met and decided to investigate his background. The investigation, he said, uncovered his wife's role at the CIA.

Plame's cover was blown after Wilson publicly accused the administration of lying about intelligence findings in order to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq. Wilson says his wife's identity was revealed to intimidate other potential critics.

Update (TL): Buzzflash interviews Joe Wilson here.

The New York Times reports that the investigation into whether White House officials leaked the identity of former CIA operative Valerie Plame has broadened. Prosecutors are now investigating whether White House officials lied to investigators or improperly handled classified information:

The broadened scope is a potentially significant development that represents exactly what allies of the Bush White House feared when Attorney General John Ashcroft removed himself from the case last December and turned it over to Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago.

....Mr. Fitzgerald is said by lawyers involved in the case and government officials to be examining possible discrepancies between documents he has gathered and statements made by current or former White House officials during a three-month preliminary investigation last fall by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department....The suspicion that someone may have lied to investigators is based on contradictions between statements by various witnesses in F.B.I. interviews, the lawyers and officials said. The conflicts are said to be buttressed by documents, including memos, e-mail messages and phone records turned over by the White House.

Looks like some heads are going to roll over this one -- hopefully, before November.

[comments now closed]

The American Prospect has a new article with details of Karl Rove's testimony to the FBI in the Valerie Plame investigation.

Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak's column. He also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

What do you think? Is he being truthful? If so, who was the leaker?

The Guardian profiles Karl Rove today. His dirty tricks date back to 1970 when working for a campaign, he flooded Chicago's red light and soup kitchen district with invitations to a campaign event promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing."

This sounds like him:

At high school in Utah, Rove was known as a nerd and a motor-mouth, unpopular but irrepressibly opinionated.

Somehow Rove got from there to here:

The nerdy political brawler with only a secondary school education is now the man the president likes to call his "boy genius" - a testament to Rove's role in orchestrating Bush's rise from a feckless, hard-drinking politician's brat to Texas governor to president in barely a decade. And unlike other electoral svengalis who have gone before him, Rove has carried his power intact from the campaign bus to the White House.

Where's he going?

The Republicans now control the presidency, the senate, and the house of representatives. Rove's task now is to consolidate that dominance of the White House and Capitol Hill and then use it to recast the Washington's third source of power, the supreme court, from its current cautious conservatism to a more red-blooded Republicanism.

But maybe the grand jury will get him first:

Last year, however, Rove's taste for personal politics entangled him in an extraordinary spy scandal. He is reported to have made calls to Washington journalists last July identifying a CIA undercover agent, Valerie Plame, who was married to Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador who had called into question the administration's claims about Iraq's alleged nuclear programme. Rove allegedly told the journalists that Plame was "fair game" because her husband had gone public with his criticism.

A grand jury is now investigating the leak of Plame's name, a federal felony. Rove has denied being its source, and Wilson believes now he may have tried to push the story only after her name had already been published. Rove has yet to appear before the grand jury, but he has retained an expensive Washington lawyer.

The kicker? Bush's pet name for rove is "Turd Blossom."

....a Texanism for a flower that blooms from cattle excrement.

by TChris

The grand jury investigating the source behind Robert Novak's story exposing Valerie Plame as a CIA officer issued subpoenas to the White House in January. The investigation arises out of concerns that Bush administration officials revealed Plame's identity in an attempt to discredit her husband's criticism of the administration's Iraq policy. Plame is married to former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. More background information can be found at TalkLeft posts here and here.

The subpoenas seek a number of White House documents:

• Records of Air Force One telephone calls from July 7 to 12, about a week before Novak's revelation. The President was visiting several African nations that week. The White House has not made public the identities of those on the plane with Bush.

• A transcript (missing from a White House website collecting press briefing transcripts) of an informal press briefing on July 12 by former press secretary Ari Fleischer, during which Fleischer discussed Wilson and his report that, contrary to White House assertions, Iraq did not try to buy uranium "yellow cake" in Niger.

• A list of attendees at a White House reception (closed to the press) on July 16 for Gerald Ford's 90th birthday. Again, the White House has declined to make that list public.

• Records created by the White House Iraq Group, "a little-known internal task force established in August 2002 to create a strategy to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein."

• Records about White House staff contacts with Novak and a number of other journalists.

The subpoenas demanded the production of documents before the grand jury in January and February. However, the current press secretary, Scott McClellan, said today that the White House was "still in the process of complying fully."

Bush's press secretary Scott McClelland announced today that he has testified before the grand jury investigating the leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame:

I'm doing my part to cooperate, as the president directed all of us to do," McClellan said aboard Air Force One during Bush's trip to Springfield, Mo.

Now, that's what we call spin.

Update: The New York Times has these details of the grand jury investigation:

In addition to the grand jury appearances, which are believed to include other Bush administration officials, prosecutors have conducted meetings with presidential aides that lawyers in the case described as tense and sometimes combative.

Armed with handwritten White House notes, detailed cellphone logs and copies of e-mail messages between White House aides and reporters, prosecutors have demanded explanations of conversations between aides and reporters for some of the country's largest news organizations that under ordinary circumstances would never be publicly discussed. So far, no reporter has been questioned or subpoenaed.

One set of documents that prosecutors repeatedly referred to in their meetings with White House aides are extensive notes compiled by I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and national security adviser. Prosecutors have described the notes as "copious," the lawyers said. In addition, the prosecutors have asked about cellphone calls made last July to and from Catherine J. Martin, a press secretary for Mr. Cheney.

Richard Sale, an intelligence correspondent for UPI, is reporting that Federal law enforcement officials say there is "hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct" by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office relating to the leak of the identity of former CIA operative Valerie Plame.

The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice
Department official said. According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby were the two Cheney employees.

"We believe that Hannah was the major player in this," one federal law
enforcement officer said. Calls to the vice president's office were not returned. Hannah and Libby did not return calls. The strategy of the FBI is to make clear to Hannah "that he faces a real possibility of doing jail time," as a way to pressure him to name superiors, one federal law enforcement official said.

Time Magazine reports that a federal grand jury has begun hearing testimony in the investigation into the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity:

Prosecutors are believed to be starting with third-party witnesses, people who were not directly involved in the leak of Plame's identity. Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, claims that the leak was an act of retaliation against him for undercutting Bush's weapons-of-mass-destruction rationale for going to war in Iraq. Soon enough, witnesses with more direct knowledge will be called to testify, and a decision to subpoena journalists for their testimony will also be made.

[link via Atrios.]

Congress is considering launching it's own probe into the leak:

Members of Congress and 10 ex-CIA officials are seeking a broader inquiry into the leak of an undercover officer's name, aiming to determine if U.S. national security was compromised and to discourage future leaks.

In addition, a leading Democratic critic of the Justice Department investigation into the matter says the Bush administration should release details of the probe to show the public whether officials are cooperating as President Bush promised.

John Dean gives his theory on why Ashcroft removed himself from the Plame investigation:

Dean contends that the progress of the investigation -- including Attorney General Ashcroft's decision to recuse himself -- strongly suggests that at least one key witness has already come forward to cooperate with the government.

Hmmm.....who would that be? Did s/he get immunity? Can you trust the word of someone who's singing for his or her supper in such a high stakes investigation without some strong corrorboration?

We're dubious of Dean's theory. We think it's more likely that they know the culprit and Ashcroft is so close to him or her that everyone would scream "whitewash" if Ashcroft were still in charge at the end when he isn't charged. If you missed Dean's earlier column in which he argues the leak is a felony, you can read it here.

We also note that despite the headline of this article suggesting that Bush is urging his staff to cooperate with the investigation, he hasn't said that he told them to release reporters from their confidentiality agreements.

The San Francisco Chronicle says Ashcroft's recusal from the Plame investigation is not enough to assure integrity:

Both Comey and the man he selected as special counsel to direct the investigation, U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald of Chicago, are political appointees who were tapped by President Bush. The fine reputations of Comey and Fitzgerald notwithstanding, this is still a situation of the Bush team investigating the Bush team.

As we said at the time this scandal broke, the public would be best served by vigorous independent investigation. Either an outside counsel should look into these serious allegations, or Congress should commit the resources necessary for a thorough inquiry of its own.

Via Atrios who got it from Time:

FBI investigators looking into the criminal leak of a CIA agent's identity have asked Bush Administration officials including senior political adviser Karl Rove to release reporters from any confidentiality agreements regarding conversations about the agent. If signed, the single-page requests made over the last week would give investigators new ammunition for questioning reporters who have so far, according to those familiar with the case, not disclosed the names of administration officials who divulged that Valerie Plame, wife of former ambassador Joe Wilson, worked for the CIA.

We're glad to see this issue brought up. The investigation may not get too far if it's just based on interviews and emails of White House officials. And we think that's what the White House is counting on. We doubt we'll see the White House encourage reporters to come forward. From the October 5, 2003 Washington Post (available on Lexis.com):

Victoria Toensing, who as an aide to the late senator Barry Goldwater helped write the 1982 law banning the disclosure of covert operatives' names, said journalists were exempted because they, unlike federal officials, don't have clearances for classified information. The only exception is if a journalist engages in a "pattern" of naming operatives, inspired in part by CIA agent-turned-author Philip Agee, who repeatedly tried to expose agency personnel around the world.

Asked about the possibility of subpoenaing journalists in this case, Toensing, a former federal prosecutor, said: "I don't think it's ever a good idea. You're just going to make a hero out of the reporters, who can raise their book prices. It's like calling a lawyer to talk about attorney-client privileged information. You're not going to get it."

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press, said journalists -- like doctors, lawyers, therapists and the clergy -- deserve to be shielded from having to testify. But if Novak were dragged into court, she said, "you think he wouldn't gladly face contempt? This is the kind of thing that young journalists dream of. They love to go to jail."

Maybe, maybe not. But subpoenas in leaks probes have been tried before--usually unsuccessfully. The Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill case is one example: