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kpete Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 10:05 AM
Original message
FITZ Adds To Speculation That CHENEY Will Have To Testify In CIA Leak Trial
Fitzgerald mum on Cheney in leak case
By Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press Writer | December 15, 2006

WASHINGTON --Speculation that Vice President Dick Cheney would testify in the CIA leak trial intensified when Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said he didn't expect Bush administration officials to resist calls to testify.

..............

Cheney, who would be the trial's most anticipated witness, has said he may be called to testify. If so, prosecutors could ask how the White House responded to Wilson's criticisms. Cheney was upset by Wilson's comments, Fitzgerald has said, and told Libby that Plame worked for the CIA.

That conversation is a key to Fitzgerald's perjury case. Libby testified that he learned about Plame's job from a reporter.

Cheney could also help prosecutors undermine Libby's defense that he was so preoccupied with national security matters, he forgot details about the less-important Plame issue. Prosecutors argue that Plame was a key concern of the vice president, and thus would have been important to Libby.

more at:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/12/15/fitzgerald_mum_on_cheney_in_leak_case/?rss_id=Boston.com+%2F+News+%2F+Nation
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H2O Man Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 10:20 AM
Response to Original message
1. Pretrial documents
have already made it clear that VP Cheney will be a witness in the trial -- unless, of course, it does not go to trial.
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kpete Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 01:08 PM
Response to Reply #1
20. Happy Holidays H20 Man -
You are one of many who keep me here at DU...

Peace, kp
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Ganja Ninja Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 10:27 AM
Response to Original message
2. Then along came Fitz
slow moving Fitz
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H2O Man Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 10:37 AM
Response to Reply #2
4. Things are not really that slow.
One thing that I think happens is that people stop following the case closely, and assume it means that nothing is happening. In May, people were pretty interested in the possibility of Rove getting indicted. After he wasn't indicted, many people became discouraged. But let's look at one simple indicator:

In the Libby case, "Document 100" (Team Libby's Response to Mr. Fitzgerald's Motion for Reconsideration of the 4-5 Opinion Concerning Ex Parte Submissions per CIPA) was filed on May 1. On December 1, Document 209 (Another Judge Walton Mmorandum Opinion) was filed.

The pace of pretrial hearings, as well as communications between Team Libby and Mr. Fitzgerald (which have reduced the conflict over evidence to be allowed into court by an uncanny extent), are reflected in these numbers.

There is a hell of a lot going on -- it's just beneath the surface. It reminds me of the spring of '05, when many DUers thought the investigation had ended. In the first months of '07, things will pick up.
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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 11:17 AM
Response to Reply #4
10. Thanks for this info, H20 Man! You are a brick, as they used to say!
What do you mean by "uncanny"? (vampires? ghouls? what?)
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H2O Man Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 12:22 PM
Response to Reply #10
14. The amount of
disagreement regarding what evidence is going to be allowed in, and what is not, is remarkable. This happened with conferences involving Mr. Fitzgerald and the more talented part of Team Libby. Judge Walton did not have to play as large a role as many anticipated.

There is a lot going on behind the scenes. I still would not be surprised if Libby makes a plea before the trial. His attorneys know he is going to be convicted, and that the errors that might reverse the convictions are disappearing.
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Jeffersons Ghost Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 12:35 PM
Response to Reply #2
18. neat song parody Sentinel Chicken... how about IF I HAD A "HAMMER" trial?...
Has Brother Tom selected a suitable Judge to try his case yet? I mean talk about a major DeLay in justice... sheesh.
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acmavm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 10:28 AM
Response to Original message
3. Gee, it so hard to believe that right about now last year we
were all hoping for a Merry Fitzmas.

Whatever.
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Dinger Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 11:10 AM
Response to Reply #3
8. Ditto That
This story has been strung out for too long. Fitzgerald is a great lawyer, but this waiting used to be frustrating, now it's just old. Whatever.
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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 11:11 AM
Response to Reply #3
9. And a Fitzy New Year to you!
Really, please stop this mindless "Fitzmas" thing. Once is funny. A thousand times is not funny. It's like people who complain about slow vote counts. Slow is good. Careful is good. Counting every vote, even if it takes weeks, is good. Whipping out hackable, insecure, secretly programmed electronic vote "totals" in lickety-split time to "feed" to the evening "news," so the corporate news monopolies can "adjust" their exit polls to "fit" the "official result," is not good. Not good at all. You want instant prosecution of the most dangerous people on earth, by a prosecutor on a "white horse"--the "savior" of our democracy--go to the movies!

Patience, friends! The case is all set up...slowly, carefully, with almost zero publicity and no grandstanding. It may still vanish, in the hurricane winds blowing behind the scenes in this government. I do object to that--to the public not knowing what the hell is going on, generally, while category 8 winds howl through the aspens, and the King of Saudi Arabia summons our acting president. Not too much democracy left in our democracy. But of the things that are left, I think Fitzgerald is one of the sturdier pillars--whether he succeeds or not in the goals of this prosecution.
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H2O Man Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 10:49 AM
Response to Original message
5. This is interesting:
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Mist Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 11:07 AM
Response to Reply #5
6. That IS interesting--two reporters being pressured to testify by Libby's
attorneys, presumably to offset the testimony for the prosection of Miller (AKA "the Administration's Bitch") and Timmy. This is also the first I've heard of a tape of Woodward and Armitage.
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H2O Man Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 11:10 AM
Response to Reply #6
7. It is interesting
to consider the options regarding which journalists would be opposed to testifying. I think that Novak might be one, as he has reason to not want to testify about his late summer/early fall 2003 discussions with Rove.
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Mist Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 11:20 AM
Response to Reply #7
11. Novak??!! Wow, that's a juicy possibility! I like to think one of them IS Novak--
it's totally appropriate it would all come full circle to the guy that was so involved at the beginning.
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Me. Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 11:23 AM
Response to Reply #7
12. And #2
The other Novak, the one who helped Rove? Or?
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H2O Man Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 12:23 PM
Response to Reply #12
16. The one with
perhaps the most reason to want to fight this is Mr. Woodward.
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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 11:34 AM
Response to Reply #7
13. Yup, as I understand it, Rove and Novak cooked up a cover story.
I still think that what Novak did on July 22, 2003--outing the entire Brewster-Jennings WMD counter-proliferation network--is more important than what he did a week before, on July 14 (outing Plame). I suspect it's a the key to the whole thing.

What happened in between: Judith Miller's old bud, David Kelly, the Brits' WMD expert, who had been whistleblowing to the BBC, was found dead, under highly suspicious circumstances. So it goes like this:

July 14, 2003: Plame outed (by Novak)

July 18, 2003: Kelly found dead (had bled to death all night, outdoors under a tree, after slitting the minor artery of one wrist--not enough blood at the scene, according to paramedics whose testimony was suppressed); his office and computers are searched.

July 22, 2003: The entire network is outed (also by Novak), by naming the front company (Brewster-Jennings), putting all of our covert agents/contacts around the world in great danger of getting killed, and disabling all their WMD counter-proliferation projects.

Odd thing to do, at a time when tracking and stopping WMDs around the world was so important.
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H2O Man Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 12:23 PM
Response to Reply #13
15. Yep.
Not where Novak wants to venture.
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hootinholler Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 01:23 PM
Response to Reply #15
21. So is Sealed vs Sealed Cheney Vs Rove?
I'm thinking that it's parties in the case and not US vs Sealed, which is generally how it's done when the gubmint is involved, no?

That is exactly where we need to drag Novak though.

-Hoot
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H2O Man Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 02:18 PM
Response to Reply #21
22. I do not
count the "sealed vs sealed" as a factor in the Plame case. I know that other people have, and they may be correct. But I do not think so.

Rove ran his mouth not only to Novak, with whom he has agreed to a cover story investigators never believed ..... but he talked "big stuff" to Matthews about Plame being "fair game." Ugly stuff to be bringing out as the civil case draws nearer.
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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 01:03 PM
Response to Reply #13
19. Anybody else have suspicions that Rumsfeld's ouster had nothing to do with
Edited on Fri Dec-15-06 01:12 PM by Peace Patriot
the midterm elections, and may instead have something to do with this prosecution? I mean, since when do Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld give a crap about the opinion of the American people?

Thesis: Stopping any honest dealings (inspections, intelligence, prevention) on WMD proliferation was of most particular interest to Rumsfeld. He set up a whole Pentagon intel shop to circumvent honest intelligence. He is the master-mind of the Plame/Brewster-Jennings outings.

They had it set up so that the Niger/Iraq nuke forgeries would be followed by a "find" of nuke weapons or material in Iraq. By making them "crude" forgeries (easily detectable), they drew the CIA into a known no-nukes-in-Iraq position. They intended to discredit the CIA forever and purge the agency of all honest professionals, when nukes that they were illicitly moving into Iraq were "found" by the US troops who were hunting for WMDs (accompanied by J Miller), and also to thus cement Bush's and Blair's political positions (justification for the war, when nukes were "found").

But something went wrong. Maybe somebody in the B/J network caught the illicit movement of nukes and prevented it. David Kelly found out about it (circa May '03); he began whistleblowing anonymously to the BBC about the "sexed up" pre-war intel (out of conscience; he was a straight-shooter); he was outed to his bosses and interrogated at a "safe house" (Hutton report), where they found out what he knew (phrased thusly: Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things"--not had said; COULD say); Tony Blair was informed July 7 (a day after Wilson's publication) (Hutton report); a week later Plame was outed (cover story--Rovian revenge for Wilson's article); four days later, Kelly was assassinated (he knew too much, and was already off the reservation as a whistleblower)--they searched his office and found a connection to the Brewster-Jennings network; a week later, the entire B/J network was ADDITIONALLY outed (consequence--all its coverts dead or disabled). This act of treason is why Rumsfeld resigned.

Bush, Cheney, Libby, Rove--none of them want to be nailed for it. It was his baby. He had to leave. One of them--or someone else in the know--ratted to Fitzgerald, or to Republican "aspens" (powers that be), and/or to Bush Cartel operatives (Baker? Daddy Bush? --who were also hearing complaints from their masters in Saudi Arabia, re Iran/Shias winning the war under Rumsfeld). Rumsfeld had to go. The election was just a coincidence--an excuse to try to make it look like Bush Jr. is listening to criticism. (--much like the coincidence of the Wilson publication, 7/6/03, with Kelly interrogation results going to Blair the next day, 7/7/03. The Wilson article provided a political cover story for the real reasons for outing Plame-B/J. The midterm elections provided a cover story for Rumsfeld's exit.)

Michael Ladeen and other rabid NeoCons on the Pentagon payroll, the notorious Iran-Contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar--all of them with connections to Chalabi--and the head of Italian intel, Polari, were the participants at a meeting in Rome in late 2001, where it is suspected that the Niger forgeries were cooked up. But why the forgeries were so "crude" and easily detectable, and why they kept putting this disproven allegation back into Bush's speeches, after the CIA and State Dept. had taken it out, remain a mystery. This thesis--that part 2 of the Niger forgeries plot was to plant the nukes in Iraq, to confirm the nuke allegation in the public's mind--solves that mystery (--those master spies and dirty dealers in Rome couldn't come up with good forgeries??). It also explains why the Bushites would ADDITIONALLY out the entire Brewster-Jennings network. They did not know for sure WHO in that network had foiled their grand scheme. So they disabled EVERY covert agent/contact in the network--as punishment for honest work, and to eliminate the best agents/contacts. They may also have had an additional scheme to track these nukes to Iran, to justify crossing the border, or hopes that the Iraq scheme could still be accomplished--which the B/J network stood in the way of. But whether they did or not, their reactions during the weeks of June-July 2003, smell of panic at being discovered--of their whole nefarious scheme coming out. (And I'm speaking just of the known reactions--their many calls to reporters, to get Plame outed, etc. What was the urgency?) (The simultaneous reactions of the Blairites to Kelly, in England, also smell of panic.)

Theories, hypotheses, theses: Whether this speculation is close to the truth, or far off--it could be either (not enough is known yet)--the question remains: Is Rumsfeld's ouster connected to this case? His name has not been mentioned in connection with it--even though he was the one with the most vital and immediate interest in screwing up US intelligence, and was in the best position to do so. Cheney has been named in court docs, and discussed as a potential witness. The trial is of his chief aide, Libby--for obstructing the investigation. I suspect that Cheney's markings on the Wilson newspaper clipping--which have come out in court docs--were made after the fact, to reinforce the political cover story. Cheney may think he can evade prosecution with politics as the motive. But what in fact may have been going on was that Cheney was taking direction from mastermind Rumsfeld on a premeditated an act of high treason. Not to mention low, wormy, slimy, gutter-level deception of the American people and the world.

And/or, they're going to fess up, eventually, and blame it all on Rumsfeld, who will be long gone to Paraguay by then.
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H2O Man Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 02:20 PM
Response to Reply #19
23. The case for going
into Iraq will be put on the table for the public to review, in great detail, as Scooter attempts to convince the jury that he was so very busy. This is not what Bush wants in January and February, as he attempts to convince the public to support the "surge" against the Madhi militia.
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rosesaylavee Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-16-06 09:19 AM
Response to Reply #23
24. Perhaps what will be revealed
in this trial will be enough to impeach the top layer of criminals in this administration. If so, the change will be much quicker than the critics of impeachment fear.

Clean break with the past - restoration of law and order. Am I dreaming or what?
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H2O Man Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-16-06 10:20 AM
Response to Reply #24
28. It will be at
a tough time for the various factions within the administration. There are two groups that we might find have conflicting interests: the Office of the President, and the Office of the Vice President. They are slightly different, though largely overlapping interests in Iraq and the Middle East. But Bush wants to salvage his presidency, while Cheney wants to solidify a specific course of investments/action.

In the Libby case, the media will be examining the reasons we went to war in the context of: {a} a public that has withdrawn support for the administration's Iraqi policy; {b} a new Congress that resulted from public dissatisfaction; {c} an administration plan to "surge" against the Madhi militia; and {d} conflicts between the administration, the Pentagon, and the Baker group.

We also have the Wilson civil case on a back burner. Add this to Team Libby's plan to shift focus from Scooter to Karl Rove.

It's going to be a strange time.
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bobbolink Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-16-06 09:26 AM
Response to Reply #23
25. Do you think that is a factor in why so many Dems are even talking
about not investigating the lies leading to the invasion?

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H2O Man Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-16-06 10:21 AM
Response to Reply #25
29. Yes.
I do. However, I expect that things will continue to shift in the Congress, in Washington, and across the country.
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blogslut Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Dec-15-06 12:33 PM
Response to Original message
17. Kick
I love a slow, deliberate case. :)
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Doctor_J Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-16-06 09:30 AM
Response to Original message
26. Cheney's already said that subpoenas mean nothing to him
he will just refuse, and none of the right-wing judges that now overrun the federal bench will hold him in contempt.

IOW, this will make for a little good copy, but will amount to nothing at the end of the day.
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H2O Man Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-16-06 10:13 AM
Response to Reply #26
27. Not really.
VP Cheney will not refuse to honor a subpoena to participate in the trial. What his legal team is concerned with is if he would actually have to take the witness stand in the courtroom, or if he could film a statement with limited responses to attorneys' questions, and have it played to the jury.
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Patsy Stone Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Dec-16-06 11:24 AM
Response to Original message
30. Looking forward to 2007!
This gets more interesting with each little bit that dribbles out.

Can't wait to find out who the two reporters are, can't wait to hear the "how we were lied into war" bits (which will only add to the public's disgust with this cabal), and can't wait to see how Cheney will skirt around the edges and give up as little as he can.

Go, Fitz! Have a very merry new year.
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