[Sosfbay-discuss] LA Times: Libby testimony says Bush and Cheney planned leaks to reporters(LA Times)

[JamBoi]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-libby7feb07,0,4241792.story?track=tothtml
Libby testimony details plot to discredit critic
On tape, he says Bush and Cheney planned leaks to reporters.
By Greg Miller, Times Staff Writer
February 7, 2007 


WASHINGTON - Former White House official I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told
a grand jury in 2004 that Vice President Dick Cheney was upset by an
ambassador's public questioning of the Iraq war and that President
Bush, Cheney and Libby were involved in a plan - kept secret from other
senior White House officials - to leak previously classified
intelligence to reporters to counter the criticism.

Libby's audiotape testimony, played for jurors in federal court here,
offered new details about how the White House orchestrated a campaign
to discredit the Iraq war critic, former envoy Joseph C. Wilson IV.
Wilson's wife, undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame, was subsequently
exposed in the media, triggering a criminal investigation.

As Libby sat silently in the courtroom, jurors heard his recorded voice
describe how he was instructed to leak intelligence secrets to select
reporters, even as other White House officials were expressing concern
over the leaks and debating whether the administration should formally
declassify intelligence reports on Iraq to combat criticism of the case
for war.

At one point, Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald can be heard on
the tapes expressing disbelief that Libby would take part in those
meetings without disclosing that the president had effectively already
declassified key portions of one of the main prewar pieces of
intelligence on Iraq, a national intelligence estimate on Saddam
Hussein's alleged banned weapons programs.

"Was that unusual for you to have the national security advisor, the
director of Central Intelligence, the White House chief of staff among
others in the dark as to something that you had done regarding
declassification?" Fitzgerald asked.

"It is not unusual for the vice president to tell me something which I
am not allowed to share with others," Libby replied.

Libby's remarks came during a day in court devoted entirely to playing
audiotapes of the former Cheney aide's grand jury testimony, allowing
jurors to listen to the defendant's voice as he made a series of
statements that prosecutors have labeled lies.

Libby faces five felony counts alleging perjury, making false
statements and obstruction of justice for what he told investigators
about his role in the campaign to discredit Wilson. 

The tapes offer an intriguing window into the reaction within the White
House to mounting criticism of its crumbling case for war with Iraq, as
well as a chance to witness Fitzgerald's method as he sparred with
Libby during eight hours of grand jury testimony.

Libby can be heard describing in a low voice how Cheney was "upset"
when Wilson went public with allegations that the White House had
twisted intelligence to make the case for war. In an op-ed article,
Wilson said he had been sent to investigate a key claim - that Iraq was
seeking uranium from the African nation of Niger - and found it untrue
months before Bush included the assertion in his 2003 State of the
Union speech.

"It was a serious accusation," Libby said. "It was a very serious
attack." It also quickly became a "topic that was discussed on a daily
basis" in the White House.

Libby said that Cheney "thought we should get some of these facts out
to the press. He then undertook to get permission from the president to
talk about this" to reporters. 

Libby said that Cheney's lawyer, David S. Addington, had advised him
that merely getting such permission from the president rendered the
intelligence declassified. Bush has publicly acknowledged doing so.

Libby's subsequent conversations with reporters and other White House
officials are at the center of the perjury trial. Prosecutors have
produced a series of witnesses over the last week, including former
White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, to say that they learned of
Plame's identity from Libby.

Libby has testified that he learned about Plame from Cheney in June
2003, but then forgot that detail and didn't share it with others until
he heard it from NBC News reporter Tim Russert in a phone call on July
10 or 11.

Recounting that conversation, Libby said in taped testimony that
Russert asked him, " 'Did you know that Ambassador Wilson's wife works
at the CIA?' and I was a little taken aback by that.. And I said, 'No,
I don't know that,' intentionally because I didn't want him to take
anything I was saying as in any way confirming what he had said." 

Russert, who is expected to testify this week, has said he did not tell
Libby about Plame.

Libby's testimony also puts him at odds with other former White House
officials. At one point, Fitzgerald asks if he recalled sharing Plame's
name with Fleischer, as the former press secretary 
testified. 

"Isn't it a fact, sir, that you told Mr. Fleischer over lunch that this
was hush-hush or on the Q.T.?" Fitzgerald asked.

"I don't recall that," Libby replied.

___________________

JamBoi
Jammy The Sacred Cow Slayer

"Live humbly, laugh often and love unconditionally" (anon)
http://dailyJam.blogspot.com


 
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