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Cheney Told Libby Valerie Wilson Was Covert Operative
Hey, by now everybody and his brother and sister knows Libby’s been indicted. But what’s most interesting about the New York Times chronology of the Libby/Cheney perfidy is this passage:
Pat Fitzgerald: man of the hour (credit: Jim Bourg/Reuters)¶On June 12, 2003, Mr. Libby was told by Mr. Cheney that Ms. Wilson worked in the C.I.A. counterproliferation division, most of whose employees work under covert or classified status. Mr. Cheney’s information was understood to have come from the C.I.A. Lawyers involved in the case have said that Mr. Libby’s notes of the meeting indicated that Mr. Cheney’s information came from George J. Tenet, then the direction of central intelligence. Mr. Tenet has declined to comment.
Earlier, the Times had reported merely that Cheney told Libby that she worked at the CIA (but not the specific division within it). If the remainder of this passage is indeed true, then one would have to ask why Tenet outed one of his own covert operatives? One would also want to know why Cheney passed the information on to Libby IF NOT to blow her cover.
With gnashing of teeth, Cheney girds for war? Speaking in Georgia Friday during Fitzgerald’s press conference (credit: Stephen Morton/AP)I don’t want to jump the gun here, but if I’m reading this correctly then Cheney is directly implicated in outing Wilson. What I can’t understand is why Fitzgerald is essentially letting Cheney off the hook. Yes, I can certainly understand why politically he might not want to escalate his investigation so that it threatens a sitting vice-president. But if everything leads to Cheney and you don’t charge him then it seems passing strange. Perhaps, Fitzgerald’s thinking that by the time he’s done tearing Libby into shreds on the stand that Cheney’s reputation too will be irreparably harmed even without an indictment.
As for Rove, I hope this speculation (probably emanating from defense lawyers–possibly even his own) turns out not to be true:
Lawyers in the case said Mr. Fitzgerald had misgivings about whether he could prove that Mr. Rove had deliberately sought to mislead investigators about his conversation with a reporter. Allies of Mr. Bush said the expectation within the White House was that Mr. Rove would not be charged although he had received no official word of being cleared.
I think it’s really pernicious for the Times to allow such vague sourcing. If they don’t give you even a hint of which side the lawyers are on you can’t judge the credibility or veracity of the information. I just hope the reporters are double sourcing so that they don’t rely only on a dubious, self-interested attorney for their material.
NPR reports that Rove’s attorney said that when he met with Fitzgerald this week, the latter told him he planned to indict Rove. But the attorney claimed that his arguments against an indictment “gave Fitzgerald pause.” We’ll see. It all seems too self-serving. I’m hoping Pat’s just keeping his powder dry and crossing every ‘T’ and dotting every ‘I’ in the case before bringing a Rove indictment.
