Plame affair grand jury investigation

In his July 14, 2003 Washington Post column, Robert Novak[1] revealed the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame, wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had covert status.

On August 13, 2005, journalist Murray Waas reported that Justice Department and FBI officials had recommended appointing a special prosecutor to the case because they felt that Karl Rove had not been truthful in early interviews, withholding from FBI investigators his conversation with Cooper about Plame and maintaining that he had first learned of Plame's CIA identity from a journalist whose name Rove could not recall.

[4] An October 2, 2003 New York Times article similarly connected Karl Rove to the matter and highlighted his prior employment in three previous political campaigns for Ashcroft.

Columnist Robert Novak, who later admitted that the CIA attempted to dissuade him from revealing Plame's name in print, "appears to have made some kind of arrangement with the special prosecutor" (according to Newsweek)[10] and he was not charged with contempt of court.

This second statement has since been called into question by an e-mail, written three days before Novak's column, in which Cooper indicated that Rove had told him Wilson's wife worked at the CIA.

[24] New York Times reporter Judith Miller served a civil contempt jail sentence from early July 2005 to September 29, 2005, for refusing to testify to the grand jury.

Although I was interested primarily in my area of expertise — chemical and biological weapons — my notes show that Mr. Libby consistently steered our conversation back to the administration's nuclear claims.

[18] On October 6, 2005, Fitzgerald recalled Karl Rove, for the fourth time, to take the stand before the grand jury investigating the leak of Plame's identity.

[5] Libby was charged with lying to FBI agents and to the grand jury about two conversations with reporters, Tim Russert of NBC News and Matt Cooper of Time magazine.

[32] In December 2005, Patrick Fitzgerald responded to a motion by Dow Jones & Company, Inc., to unseal all or part of the redacted portion of a United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia opinion issued on February 15, 2005.

[37] Reportedly, Fitzgerald states: A formal assessment has not been done of the damage caused by the disclosure of Valerie Wilson's status as a CIA employee, and thus we possess no such document.

[49] In a court filing on May 12, 2006, Fitzgerald included a copy of Wilson's op-ed article in the New York Times "bearing handwritten notations by the vice president" (See photograph).

[50] Fitzgerald's filing declares that Libby ascertained Plame's name from Cheney through conferences by the vice president's office about "how to respond to a June 2003 inquiry from Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus about Wilson's trip to Niger".

Libby's lawyers sought communications between Matthew Cooper and Massimo Calabresi, authors of an article published by Time magazine on July 17, 2003, and titled, "A War on Wilson?"

[52]On May 26, 2006, Judge Walton ruled on the motion: However, upon reviewing the documents presented to it, the Court discerns a slight alteration between the several drafts of the articles, which the defense could arguably use to impeach Cooper.

Because of the inevitability that Cooper will be a government witness at trial, this Court can fathom no reason to delay the production of these documents to the defendant, as they will undoubtedly be admissible for impeachment.

[54] On August 30, 2006, CNN reported that Armitage had been confirmed "by sources" as leaking Valerie Plame's role as a CIA operative in a "casual conversation" with Robert Novak.

[citation needed] On January 23, 2007, the Associated Press reported that Wells alleged "that administration officials sought to blame Libby for the leak to protect Bush political adviser Karl Rove's own disclosures".

[citation needed] Given those non-binding guidelines, according to lawyer, author, New Yorker staff writer, and CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin on Anderson Cooper 360°, such a sentence could likely be between "one and a half to three years".

[60] As reported in CNN Newsroom, and subsequently on Larry King Live on CNN and by various other television networks, including MSNBC (on Scarborough Country), one juror — "Denis Collins, a Washington resident and self-described registered Democrat", who is a journalist and former reporter at The Washington Post and the author of a book on espionage and a novel — "said he and fellow jurors found that passing judgment on Libby was 'unpleasant.'

In the statement, Wolf stated that "while it appears that Mr. Rove will not be called to answer in criminal court for his participation in the wrongful disclosure of Valerie Wilson's classified employment status at the CIA, that obviously does not end the matter.

[69] On December 22, 2006, the Associated Press reported that AP and Dow Jones, parent company of the Wall Street Journal, have requested a federal court to force the CIA to release testimony records.

The AP and Dow Jones allege that special prosecutor Fitzgerald never needed to subpoena the media's records, including those of the New York Times and Washington Post, because he knew the source of the leak all along.

General Paul E. Vallely has criticized Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald on FOX News for not contacting a number of people who publicly stated they knew of Plame's job at the CIA.

Many of us as private citizens really challenged the depth and the extensiveness of Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald because he never called in Joe Wilson or Valerie Plame, who was an analyst by the way, and that's documented, or any of the hierarchy of the CIA.

An editorial in the Washington Post reads: The special counsel was principally investigating whether any official violated a law that makes it a crime to knowingly disclose the identity of an undercover agent.

The public record offers no indication that Mr. Libby or any other official deliberately exposed Ms. Plame to punish her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Rather, Mr. Libby and other officials, including Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff, apparently were seeking to combat the sensational allegations of a critic.

On October 28 of this year, your office released a press statement in which you stated that "A major focus of the grand jury investigation was to determine which government officials had disclosed to the media prior to July 14, 2003, information concerning Valerie Wilson's CIA affiliation, and the nature, timing, extent, and purpose of such disclosures, as well as whether any official made such a disclosure knowing that Valerie Wilson's employment by the CIA was classified information."

Troubling, from an historical point of view, is the fact that the narrowness of your investigation, which apparently is focusing on the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (making it a crime to uncover the covert status of a CIA agent), plays right into the hands of perpetrators in the Administration.