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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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November 18th,
2008 - Valerie Plame to Petition High Court to Review Lawsuit |
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Valerie Plame
to Petition High Court to Review Lawsuit Against Cheney By Jason Leopold The Public Record November 18, 2008 Former covert CIA operative
Valerie Plame Wilson will petition the U.S. Supreme Court to review her civil
lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior Bush
administration officials, who blew her cover to reporters five years ago, an
attorney for Plame said Monday. The announcement was made
after the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. Circuit turned down Plame’s request
for a rehearing on a lawsuit that was rejected by a District Court judge. She
and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, sued Cheney, his former
Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, ex-White House political adviser
Karl Rove, former Deputy Secretary of State and unnamed administration
officials for allegedly violating their civil rights. Libby was convicted on four
of five counts and was sentenced to 30 months in prison. President George W.
Bush later commuted the sentence, sparing Libby jail time and dangling the
possibility of a full pardon at the end of his term. In August, in a 2-1 vote,
the Republican-dominated federal Appeals Court judges let stand a district
judge’s order dismissing the lawsuit stating there was no constitutional
precedent established to allow the case to move forward and the court
declined to set one. Melanie Sloan, the executive
director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the
organization representing the couple, said Monday that despite the denial for
a rehearing “it is not over yet.” “The Wilsons and their
counsel are certainly disappointed by the Court of Appeals’ decision,” Sloan
said. “Now we will petition the Supreme Court to hear the case.” Sloan
continued, “There must be consequences when government officials abuse their
power and endanger national security for political ends. This is an issue
worth fighting over and we will not give up.” A federal investigation led
by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald later found that numerous White House
officials - including Cheney and Libby - had retaliated against and sought to
discredit Joseph Wilson for publicly claiming that the administration had
manipulated prewar Iraq intelligence. Administration officials
countered Joseph Wilson’s criticism by disclosing to reporters, privately,
Valerie Plame worked at the CIA and had arranged to send her husband to Niger
to investigate allegations that Iraq tried to purchase 500 tons of yellowcake
uranium. The White House was trying to imply that Wilson’s trip was the
result of nepotism. Plame testified before Congress last year that she had
had no role in selecting her husband for the mission to Niger. Libby was convicted on four
of five counts and was sentenced to 30 months in prison. President George W.
Bush later commuted the sentence, sparing Libby jail time and dangling the
possibility of a full pardon later. U.S. District Court Judge
John Bates dismissed the civil lawsuit last year. At the time, Bates wrote,
as a technical legal matter, Plame and Wilson can't sue under the
Constitution. Bates added that the defendants - Cheney, Rove, Libby, and
others - had the right to rebut criticism aimed at Wilson, who accused the
administration of twisting prewar Iraq intelligence. Bates said the leak of
Plame's undercover CIA status to a handful of reporters was
"unsavory" but simply a casualty of Wilson's criticism of the administration. "The alleged means by
which defendants chose to rebut Mr. Wilson's comments and attack his
credibility may have been highly unsavory," Bates wrote. "But there
can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public criticism, such as
that levied by Mr. Wilson against the Bush administration's handling of
prewar foreign intelligence by speaking with members of the press, is within
the scope of defendants' duties as high-level Executive Branch
officials." “This case is not just about
what top government officials did to Valerie and me." Wilson said
following Bates’s ruling last year. "We brought this suit because we
strongly believe that politicizing intelligence ultimately serves only to
undermine the security of our nation. Today's decision is just the first step
in what we have always known would be a long legal battle and we are
committed to seeing this case through." Senior Bush administration
officials disclosed Plame’s identity to several journalists in June and July
of 2003 amid White House efforts to discredit her husband, former U.S.
Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for challenging Bush’s use of bogus intelligence to
justify invading Iraq. Her CIA employment was
revealed in a July 14, 2003, article by right-wing columnist Robert Novak,
effectively destroying her career. Two months later, a CIA complaint to the
Justice Department sparked a criminal probe into the identity of the leakers. Initially, Bush professed
not to know anything about the matter, and several of his senior aides,
including Rove and Libby followed suit. However, it later became
clear that Rove and Libby had a hand in the Plame leak and that Bush and
Cheney had helped organize a campaign to disparage Wilson by giving critical
information to friendly journalists. On June 24, 2004, Special
Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald interviewed Bush for 70 minutes about the Plame
leak. The only other member of the Bush team in the room during the meeting
was Jim Sharp, the private lawyer that Bush hired, according to a press
briefing by then-press secretary Scott McClellan. ”The President … was pleased
to do his part to help the investigation move forward,” McClellan said. “No
one wants to get to the bottom of this matter more than the President of the
United States.” Fitzgerald had interviewed a
couple of weeks earlier, Cheney. According to sources
knowledgeable about the vice president’s testimony, Cheney was specifically
asked about conversations he had with senior aides, including Libby, and
queried about whether he was aware of a campaign led by White House officials
to leak Plame’s identity. It is unknown how Cheney
responded to those questions. Cheney retained a private attorney, Terrence
O’Donnell. Neither O’Donnell nor Sharp returned calls for comment on Monday. CREW, House Judiciary
Committee Chairman John Conyers, and Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, have been trying to gain access
to Cheney’s interview transcript, but have been rebuffed by the Justice
Department. In September, the agency
responded to CREW’s Freedom of Information Act request by saying that it
could not turn over the transcript because some of the statements Cheney made
during his interview with Fitzgerald were classified. It was the first time
the DOJ had made the claim. In a letter sent to CREW
Chief Counsel Anne Weismann, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) said the
documents have been withheld, in part, because it contains information
“protected from disclosure by the National Security Act.” “We are withholding the
records ... because they are protected by the deliberative process,
presidential communications, and law enforcement investigative privileges,”
states the Sept. 18 letter sent by OLC attorney Paul Coborn to CREW chief
counsel Anne Weissman. “We are also withholding them ... because the records
were compiled for law enforcement purposes and their production “could
reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.” The
Department is concerned that releasing the records could interfere with
future Department investigations by discouraging voluntary cooperation. “Finally, we are withholding
portions of the records ... because they are classified and contain
information protected from disclosure by the National Security Act of 1947.” Waxman subpoenaed Attorney
General Michael Mukasey in June for Cheney’s interview transcript as well a
copy of Bush’s interview transcript with Fitzgerald. Waxman also subpoenaed
Rove’s grand jury testimony. But Mukasey did not state
that the either of the transcripts contained classified information when he
refused to comply with Waxman’s subpoena. Mukasey advised Bush to assert his
executive privilege powers to block release of the transcripts. “I am greatly concerned
about the chilling effect that compliance with the [House Oversight]
Committee’s subpoena would have on future White House deliberations and White
House cooperation with future Justice Department investigations,” Mukasey
wrote in a letter to Bush on July 16. Fitzgerald, who spent three
years investigating White House officials’ role in the Plame leak, said in a
letter sent to Waxman in July that the interviews he conducted with Bush and
Cheney in 2004 were not protected by grand jury secrecy rules and could
arguably be turned over to Congress if authorized by the Justice Department. Moreover, Fitzgerald said
that in his capacity as special counsel he did not enter into a pre-arranged
agreement with the White House to keep secret Bush and Cheney’s interview
transcripts. “I can advise you that as to
any interviews of either the President or Vice President not protected by the
rules of grand jury secrecy, there were no agreements, conditions and
understandings between the Office of Special Counsel or the Federal Bureau of
Investigation” and either the president or vice president “regarding the
conduct and use of the interview or interviews,” Fitzgerald’s July 3 letter
addressed to Waxman says. Fitzgerald has turned over
to Waxman’s committee “FBI 302 reports” of interviews with CIA and State
Department officials and other individuals involved in the CIA leak, Waxman
said in a letter to Mukasey last December. But “the White House has
been blocking Mr. Fitzgerald from providing key documents to the Committee,”
including transcripts of Fitzgerald’s interviews with Bush and Cheney, Waxman
said. Conyers also subpoenaed
Mukasey for a wide range of documents related to the Plame leak and was
denied. Conyers and Waxman’s
interest in the CIA leak case was revived with the publication in June of
former White House press secretary McClellan’s memoir which suggested Bush
and Cheney played a larger role in the matter than they have admitted
publicly. McClellan says Rove arranged
a private meeting with Libby in 2005 when the two men were under mounting
suspicion for leaking Plame’s identity. Calling the scene “one
moment during the leak episode that I am reluctant to discuss,” McClellan
writes in his new memoir “in 2005, during a time when attention was focusing
on Rove and Libby, [the meeting] sticks vividly in my mind. … “Following [a meeting in
Chief of Staff Andy Card’s office], Scooter Libby was walking to the entryway
as he prepared to depart when Karl turned to get his attention. ‘You have time
to visit?’ Karl asked. ‘Yeah,’ replied Libby.” In his book, What Happened:
Inside the Bush White House and the Culture of Washington Deception,
McClellan doesn’t offer substantive evidence that Rove and Libby used the
meeting in 2005 to coordinate their cover stories. “I have no idea what they
discussed, but it seemed suspicious for these two, whom I had never noticed
spending any one-on-one time together, to go behind closed doors and visit
privately,” McClellan writes. “At least one of them, Rove,
it was publicly known at the time, had at best misled me by not sharing
relevant information, and credible rumors were spreading that the other,
Libby, had done at least as much,” McClellan said. “I don’t know what they
discussed, but what would any knowledgeable person reasonably and logically
conclude was the topic?” For more than a year in
three separate appearances before a federal grand jury, Rove had insisted he
was not a source for columnist Robert Novak and Time magazine reporter
Matthew Cooper, two journalists who were told about Plame’s CIA identity when
it was still secret. Rove told the grand jury
that he first learned that Plame worked for the CIA when he read it in
Novak’s column, according to Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin. But the truth was
Rove had been an unnamed source for both Novak and Cooper. During closing arguments at
Libby’s trial, Cheney was implicated in the leak, as Fitzgerald acknowledged
that Cheney was intimately involved in the scandal and may have told Libby to
leak Plame’s status to the media. Fitzgerald told jurors that
his investigation into the true nature of the vice president’s involvement
was impeded because Libby obstructed justice. Libby’s attorney, Theodore
Wells, told jurors during his closing arguments that Fitzgerald had been
trying to build a case of conspiracy against the vice president and Libby and
that the prosecution believed Libby may have lied to federal investigators
and to a grand jury to protect Cheney. “Now, I think the
government, through its questions, really tried to put a cloud over Vice
President Cheney,” Wells said. Rebutting Wells, Fitzgerald
told jurors, “You know what? [Wells] said something here that we’re trying to
put a cloud on the vice president. We’ll talk straight. There is a cloud over
the vice president. He sent Libby off to [meet with New York Times reporter]
Judith Miller at the St. Regis Hotel. At that meeting - the two-hour meeting
- the defendant talked about the wife [Plame].” External link: http://tinyurl.com/5obj84 |