NY Daily News: Fitz Has "Senior Cooperating Witness" >>>

[Stephanie]

Here is the article Raw Story anticipated. The Daily News actually has a great Washington Bureau, which includes Helen Thomas.

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/356858p-304125c.html

Cheney may be target of probe

BY JAMES GORDON MEEK, THOMAS M. DeFRANK and KENNETH R. BAZINET
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - A special prosecutor's intensifying focus into who outed a CIA spy has raised questions whether Vice President Cheney himself is involved, knowledgeable sources confirmed yesterday.

***

Cheney's name has come up amid indications Fitzgerald may be edging closer to a blockbuster conspiracy charge - with help from a secret snitch.

"They have got a senior cooperating witness - someone who is giving them all of that," a source who has been questioned in the leak probe told the Daily News yesterday.

***

Cheney and Libby spend hours together in the course of a day, which causes sources who know both men very well to assert that any attempts to discredit Wilson would almost certainly have been known to the vice president.

"Scooter wouldn't be freelancing on this without Cheney's knowledge," a source told the Daily News. "It was probably some off-the-cuff thing: 'This guy could be a problem.'"

[tk2kewl]

1. .

[gristy]

2. big thread on this on the greatest page

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5086149

[Stephanie]

6. yup , but now we have the actual article to decode

the suspense is killing me!

[librechik]

3. WooHoo! Someone in the administration has a conscience!

Perhaps there is hope

[JuniorPlankton]

5. More likely a deal of some sort

But I'll take it!

:kick:

[FreedomAngel82]

43. I agree

They're probably not wanting to go to jail. Heh heh.

[willing dwarf]

14. A pudgy finger covered with cookie crumbs points to robbed the cookie jar

Or, in other words, perhaps it's no one with a conscience, but with a highly cultivated sense of when to rat on others in order to save one's self. That would be Rove, in a final spectacular display of the sort of "me-first" approach that got him to the top, singing like a canary in a coal mine to save his own pink skin.

At this point I don't care if any of them have a conscience, because they haven't acted as if they have up till now. Let them all be hoisted on Rove's pitard or anyone else in their gang.

So appalling yet satisfying to see the rapacious appetite of the snake, attempting to save himself by eating his own while they are still alive....

[willing dwarf]

16. Wow, something just tipped me off...

...to the extreme antipathy I have for Rover-- let's see, I likened him to Porky Pig, a rat, a canary, a lawless buccaneer, and a snake, in just five sentences.

I guess I won't invite him to my next birthday party!

[Just Me]

4. Powell?

:shrug:

[Carni]

7. This is driving me F.R.E.A.K.I.N.G NUTS!!!!!!

ARRRRGGGHHHH!

Announce it already!

I am telling you people... I am not sure I can stand another two days of suspense (or God forbid another week)

I am going to go outside and scream at traffic now -- pardon that unseemly outburst.

[Demobrat]

8. As much as we are all dying to know

who flipped, if we knew, it would mean THEY knew, and the person probably wouldn't live until October 28.

Whoever they are, the world owes them.

[H2O Man]

9. History in the making!

This is a fascinating episode in American history. The media is finally recognizing what is at stake.

[Stephanie]

11. The money quote is "senior cooperating witness" - NOT senior WH official

So that opens the gate a little wider, I think. Could be someone from State in that case. I'm thinking about Armitage. It's interesting that tidbit from the WaPo story that the memo from State was written while Powell and Armitage were OUT OF TOWN!

[H2O Man]

17. Funny world.

That old hippie lawyer Fitzgerald must be on to something.

[Stephanie]

19. LOL!

I love hippies!

[H2O Man]

41. And have you read

kohodog's thread on DU:GD about a thread from last summer?

[Just Me]

24. Ahhhh, yes,....Armitage. That is also a possibility.

What other "senior official" involved at that time would challenge the neoCON-backed BFEE? Not many.

It does appear we can exclude any reporters on the "flip list" since none qualify as a "senior official".

[Dhalgren]

10. It's a hard rain, Dick, a fucking really hard rain...

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways,
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

[madokie]

28. Leon Russell

Think I'll have to give a listen.

[Catherine Vincent]

12. No Fitzgerald pics Stephanie?

You're slipping. :-)

[Stephanie]

15. good point!

edited...

[napi21]

13. I know everybody guesses Powell, because he seems like the only

Pub who had a bit of a concience. But I keep hearing "senior cooperating witness", or "senior official". I wouldn't put POwell in that catagory.

What edxactly IS a Senior official?

[NNadir]

30. Powell has no conscience. He is way overrated for integrity.

[realFedUp]

18. I bet it's Karl Rove's secretary

Susan Ralston, previously Abramoff's personal assistant. Ralston has since become an insider's insider.

more here:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Susan_B._Ralston#Gatekeeper

[Stephanie]

21. I highly doubt she has a conscience.

But she might have an instinct for self-preservation.

Why Are These Men Laughing?
-Ron Suskind
Esquire, January 2003.

***

Eventually, I met with Rove. I arrived at his office a few minutes early, just in time to witness the Rove Treatment, which, like LBJ’s famous browbeating style, is becoming legend but is seldom reported. Rove’s assistant, Susan Ralston, said he’d be just a minute. She’s very nice, witty and polite. Over her shoulder was a small back room where a few young men were toiling away. I squeezed into a chair near the open door to Rove’s modest chamber, my back against his doorframe.

Inside, Rove was talking to an aide about some political stratagem in some state that had gone awry and a political operative who had displeased him. I paid it no mind and reviewed a jotted list of questions I hoped to ask. But after a moment, it was like ignoring a tornado flinging parked cars. "We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!" As a reporter, you get around—curse words, anger, passionate intensity are not notable events—but the ferocity, the bellicosity, the violent imputations were, well, shocking.

http://www.ronsuskind.com/newsite/articles/archives/000032.html

[realFedUp]

22. she certainly links all the players.

If Fitzgerald got her to talk, she probably
has a lot to tell.

[realFedUp]

25. TreasonGate- Beyond Karl Rove

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Treasongate:_Beyond_Karl_Rove

[librechik]

40. Senior administration official describes about 10 people at most

none are "secretaries"--except of State and Defense and Labor, like that. Those are Senior Administration officials.

My bet is on Card. He seems like a regular guy just doing his job, not a Macchiavellian head case, like the rest of them.

Here's a list of possibles: not all of these folks can be described as "Senior" but TP goes into detail about most.

http://www.thinkprogress.org/leak-scandal

[peekaloo]

20. Moby Dick

has been placed on the endangered feces list.

:bounce:

[Bernardo de La Paz]

23. Cheney's snarl is freaking amazing. Is it a partial stroke aftereffect?

[kywildcat]

35. It is the face of someone without a conscience

His snarl is a mimicked smile. A smile is generated by feelings. He possesses none so must mimick those around him. When people around him are emotionally closed; their faces are not reflecting what they feel, he is unable to take a clue by their facial expressions. Hence, his strange facial expressions.
IMHO

[realFedUp]

26. 23 Administration Officials Involved In Plame Leak

23 Administration Officials Involved In Plame Leak
http://www.thinkprogress.org/leak-scandal


Karl Rove
I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby
Condoleezza Rice
Stephen Hadley
Andrew Card
Alberto Gonzales
Mary Matalin
Ari Fleischer
Susan Ralston
Israel Hernandez
John Hannah
Scott McClellan Dan Bartlett
Claire Buchan
Catherine Martin
Jennifer Millerwise
Jim Wilkinson
Colin Powell
Karen Hughes
Adam Levine
Bob Joseph
Vice President Dick Cheney
President George W. Bush

[peacetalksforall]

36. Has anyone read the Fleischer book? Did he propagandize in the

book the way he did on the job or was there some self-questioning that could indicate a conscious?

[realFedUp]

44. didn't read it.

Let's guess...I'd say it was the same kind
of performance he gave in the WH press room.

[KittyWampus]

27. whoever is cooperating might be riding the tiger though, lying or telling

half truths or setting someone up (including themselves) to take the fall.

[mmonk]

29. Whoever it is,

they may have had enough of the neocons and aren't willing to take a fall for them.

[WA98296]

31. Sounds promising...but does it seem weird that Lynne Cheney is out pimping

her new book on American History today?

According to the teaser on the Today show (haven't seen the segment yet on the WC), Lynne Cheney feels that American families need to know more about American History.

Seems weird...these people are too strange.

[peacetalksforall]

32. Why does everyone have so much faith in Powell? His history

stinks. Iran-Contra, Vietnam incidents, the vial.

Look at all the human consequences of his self designed career moves.

[Just Me]

33. Well, 'cause it's not a matter of "faith". Why wouldn't he save his,...

,...own ass under the circumstances? The neoCON-backed BushCO cabal never particularly liked him and he knows damn well that cabal would willingly set him up to save their own asses.

When you look at the list of those 23 witnesses called to testify, mark off the reporters (since they don't qualify as "senior officials"), and look at who's left: the neoCONs and BushCO cabal stay tight as hell to CYA, no matter what. Whereas, Powell and Armitage are far more likely to act independently to save their own rear-ends and remove the risk of being set-up.

Just MHO.

[peacetalksforall]

34. I was asking in general about why he is a hero to some, but you make

a very strong argument for Powell or Armitage as a whistleblower. I agree with you.

[Demobrat]

37. He did say that the UN speech was the low point of his life

or words to that effect. Maybe being made a liar out of in front of the whole world pissed him off more than anybody knew.

[Supersedeas]

38. Less focus on Cheney and more attention to WHIraqGroup

Everyone in this group needs to be exposed as a treasonous leper

[bmbmd]

39. Drat that Raw Story!

Right again. Good job.

[FreedomAngel82]

42. Go Fitzgerald!

:loveya: I wonder if Cheney would ever turn on Bush. :shrug:

[Neil Lisst]

45. The White House is WHIGGIN over this

The Plame Game

Libby, Libby, bo bibby, banana fanna fo fibby, Libby.

Judy, Judy, bo booty, banana fanna

[bettyellen]

46. kicked + nominated

thanks steph!
:hi: