Reading Judy, Part Three

by emptywheel

Summary: In this post, I speculate that Libby was trying to use Judy as a cut-out on July 8; he was trying to get her to publish three pieces of intelligence attacking Joe Wilson's case to save OVP the trouble of declassifying it. It was intended to repeat the early September 2002 operation, where Judy made classified information public, so Administration officials could then talk about it. I then suggest that Joseph Tate started leaking the content of Libby's testimony--revealing that Dick strategized with Libby on July 12--to draw suspicions away from earlier involvement, precisely the cut-out operation he approved earlier in the week.

I wrote two posts after Judy published her tell-all, analyzing the truth and probable falseness of what she wrote. The pieces stand up remarkably well, IMHO, even given all the details we've learned since then. But I think it's worth returning to her statement given the recent details about the orderly leakage of the NIE and other documents. After all, two of the three items in one of her summary statements (which I suspect was an attempt to telegraph to Libby the questions Judy thought he might not have expected) include references to pertinent items:

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, asked me whether Mr. Libby had shared classified information with me during our several encounters before Mr. Novak's article. He also asked whether I thought Mr. Libby had tried to shape my testimony through a letter he sent to me in jail last month. And Mr. Fitzgerald asked whether Mr. Cheney had known what his chief aide was doing and saying.

Judy seemed to recognize the NIE stuff and the Dick stuff might pose some risk. Well, we certainly know Fitzgerald is having fun with them now.

The NIE Three Classified Documents Leakage

Judy mentioned the NIE leaking, certainly. But look at how she describes it:

Mr. Fitzgerald asked me to examine a series of documents. Though I could not identify them with certainty, I said that some seemed familiar, and that they might be excerpts from the National Intelligence Estimate of Iraq's weapons. Mr. Fitzgerald asked whether Mr. Libby had shown any of the documents to me. I said no, I didn't think so. I thought I remembered him at one point reading from a piece of paper he pulled from his pocket. [emphasis mine]

A few things about this. First, Fitzgerald asked Judy about more than the NIE, he asked about a series of documents. But she only admitted to the NIE, which (incidentally) has been publicized enough that it is plausible that someone who hadn't seen the classified copy would recognize it, based on its content. Perhaps she only admitted to the NIE because it was not that incriminating to be able to identify it.

We now know, though, that Libby was pushing other people to declassify three documents.

Defendant testified in the grand jury that he understood that even in the days following his conversation with Ms. Miller, other key officials – including Cabinet level officials – were not made aware of the earlier declassification even as those officials were pressed to carry out a declassification of the NIE, the report about Wilson’s trip and another classified document dated January 24, 2003.

The NIE, Wilson's trip report, and (I have speculated) an early draft of the SOTU. But as I suggested (and eRiposte, followed belatedly by the media-for-pay, described extensively wrt the NIE), Libby was presenting misleading versions of those documents:

So, Libby was presenting the body of the NIE as if it were key judgments. Libby was presenting the CIA report, written by one or two Reports Officers, as if Wilson wrote it himself. And, I'm arguing, Libby and his friends were presenting a January 24 draft (after the "Niger" and "500 tons" claims had been removed, but still early enough to appear to be a draft) as if it were the only draft.

That may be one of the reasons Judy presented Libby as having read from a document in his pocket--perhaps she didn't see the documents themselves. Judy's not the brightest bulb on the dimming Christmas tree of media-for-pay, but she's not totally stupid. And she might have picked up the fact that Libby was misrepresenting the documents, if she had looked at them directly.

Or, she might just have been trying to protect Libby. Given what we now know, I suspect she was trying to protect Libby when she used the word "alluded" to describe Wilson's trip report.

As I told Mr. Fitzgerald and the grand jury, Mr. Libby alluded to the existence of two intelligence reports about Iraq's uranium procurement efforts. One report dated from February 2002. The other indicated that Iraq was seeking a broad trade relationship with Niger in 1999, a relationship that he said Niger officials had interpreted as an effort by Iraq to obtain uranium.

My notes indicate that Mr. Libby told me the report on the 1999 delegation had been attributed to Joe Wilson.

Mr. Libby also told me that on the basis of these two reports and other intelligence, his office had asked the C.I.A. for more analysis and investigation of Iraq's dealings with Niger. According to my interview notes, Mr. Libby told me that the resulting cable - based on Mr. Wilson's fact-finding mission, as it turned out - barely made it out of the bowels of the C.I.A.

If, by allude, you mean talked about it directly, perhaps even read you a summary, even if he totally misrepresented it, huh Judy? She basically supports what I've been arguing--Libby misrepresented the trip report. And note how she describes "the resulting cable": "attributed to Joe Wilson," "based on Mr. Wilson's fact-finding mission, as it turned out." You see, on July 8, Libby presented this as if Wilson had written it, that it was "attributed" to Wilson. But since Judy had found that out in the interim, she includes a caveat, "based on" to describe it here.

Which makes Libby's backtracking from these claims on July 12 interesting.

My notes of this phone call show that Mr. Libby quickly turned to criticizing Mr. Wilson's report on his mission to Niger. He said it was unclear whether Mr. Wilson had spoken with any Niger officials who had dealt with Iraq's trade representatives.

I think Judy and Libby had two conversations on July 12 because Libby needed to backtrack off some of the claims he made on July 8, but needed to do so from a secure location. As Murray Waas points out, Libby and Judy had two conversations, the second one substantive.

Four days after the Libby-Miller breakfast and Libby's discussion with Addington, Libby gave Miller additional information on Wilson and Plame, according to legal sources familiar with Miller's testimony.

Phone records reviewed by the grand jury in the CIA leak investigation appear to confirm that Libby and Miller had a three-minute conversation on July 12 while Miller was apparently in a taxicab returning home. When the reporter got home, she and Libby spoke for a 37 minutes, according to the phone records.

And as I pointed out recently, in his affidavit from August 2004, Fitzgerald appears to have believed that Judy only spoke to Libby once on July 12, the three minute conversation while Judy was still in the cab.

The grand jury needs to know when Libby advised Miller about Wilson's wife--during their private meeting outside the White House on July 8 or during the three minute telephone call on July 12--and whether Libby qualified his disclosure to Miller by stating that he had heard it only from a reporter and did not know if it were true.

I suspect, Fitzgerald learned in the interim about the second conversation. That would suggest Libby had obscured the longer, more substantive discussion through his FBI interviews and his grand jury testimony. I suspect he would have hid the second conversation under two circumstances--either the second conversation was incriminating enough Libby had felt the need to go somewhere safe to have the conversation (as he had met with Judy earlier at the St. Regis). Or that Libby wanted to hide the extent of their July 12 conversation. Or hell, why not both?

One thing about Judy's tell all, though. No apparent mention of the January 24 document. Did Libby not raise it? Or did Judy guard it more closely for some reason?

Unless the document related more specifically to Plame's classification. This was the conversation, remember, where the WINPAC canard came up. Did Libby show Judy something that very specifically described Judy's covert status? Perhaps described her transition from CPD to WINPAC, which meant she was technically still covered (Libby's Nixon-lawyer's term), but that she was now serving as an analyst?

In any case, a lot of us Plameologists (and all those amateurs who have returned to the fold of obsession lately!) have been wondering why Libby asked Judy to attribute this leakage conversation to a "former Hill staffer" if Dick had already declassified the NIE. Maybe it wasn't the NIE leakage they were hiding. Maybe it was the other two documents, Wilson's trip report and the mysterious January 24 document (certainly, if the January 24 document related to Plame's status, I can imagine why he'd go to false attribution).

I have one more suggestion. BooMan has rightly pointed out that Judy had gotten classified information before, before her aluminum tubes article (though I would stress that Judy saw the intelligence the NIE was based on, given the timing, not the NIE key judgments themself). The reason she received it in early September was so Administration officials could refer to her article and therefore avoid declassifying the underlying intelligence. They could just refer to the A1 story in the NYT, and not have to refer (directly) to any classified intelligence.

Did Libby call Judy down to DC on July 8 for a face-to-face to arrange a similar leak? Did Dick authorize all this leaking to Judy, so she could serve as a cut-out to allow them to avoid having to declassify these three documents? Is that why everyone else claims not to know that Libby had "declassified" these items? Did they try to go through Judy the cut-out so they could totally misrepresent the intelligence, rather than let Tenet present the actual contents of it? It might explain the tensions surrounding the Tenet-Libby-Hadley conversations from that week...

And it sure would explain the high-level involvement. Murray Waas has been connecting the NIE leak with earlier leaking for two months:

Beyond what was stated in the court paper, say people with firsthand knowledge of the matter, Libby also indicated what he will offer as a broad defense during his upcoming criminal trial: that Vice President Cheney and other senior Bush administration officials had earlier encouraged and authorized him to share classified information with journalists to build public support for going to war. Later, after the war began in 2003, Cheney authorized Libby to release additional classified information, including details of the NIE, to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case for war.

Is he suggesting operation Judy-cut-out was the same both times?

It's not that they were authorizing the leaking, they were authorizing Libby to use Judy as a cut-out so they could avoid declassifying intelligence and so they could misrepresent it. Pity for the cabal Judy had already so thoroughly trashed her reputation in their cause that NYT wouldn't let her play the A1 cut-out again.

The Dick Stuff

And there's the Dick stuff. There's admittedly not much here, just Judy shooting down the idea that Cheney was ever involved in this leaking.

Before the grand jury, Mr. Fitzgerald asked me questions about Mr. Cheney. He asked, for example, if Mr. Libby ever indicated whether Mr. Cheney had approved of his interviews with me or was aware of them. The answer was no.

Pretty convenient, that quick "no" denying Dick's involvement?

As I point out in Reading Judy Two, though, there's something suspicious about timing. David Johnston published a September 30 story on the Judy testimony that included the following leak, which was then one of the first references to Dick's involvement coaching Libby on July 12:

Mr. Libby said he told Mr. Cheney that reporters had been pressing the vice president's office for more details about who sent Mr. Wilson to Africa. The two men spoke when Mr. Cheney was on a trip to Norfolk, Va., for the commissioning of the carrier Ronald Reagan.

Mr. Libby said Mr. Cheney directed him to refer reporters to Mr. Tenet's statement, which said that the C.I.A. had been behind Mr. Wilson's selection for the trip.

As I asked in that post,

The NYT story was the story reporting her September 30 testimony. That is, the NYT received a leak regarding Libby's notes on Cheney on the same day Judy responded to questions about Cheney the first time. And the leak of Libby's notes probably came from his lawyer, Joseph Tate. What a remarkable conincidence!  Why, would you imagine, would Joseph Tate leak the contents of that note immediately after Judy testified? [emphasis mine]

I still wonder how Tate knew that he had to leak it, that Judy had been asked about Dick (go read the earlier post for speculation on it). But we may now have a plausible answer for why he leaked what he did. Before Judy publishes any account revealing that Fitzgerald suspects Dick, he pre-empts her story by suggesting that Dick was involved in the leak on July 12. Thereby preventing anyone from speculating that Dick might have been involved earlier. Say, before Libby tried to use Judy as a cut-out on July 8.

The Aspens Turning, Again and Again

Which brings me to the third item that Judy felt warranted her summary statement, Libby's Aspen letter. Here's how she explains herself.

Mr. Fitzgerald also focused on the letter's closing lines. "Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning," Mr. Libby wrote. "They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them."

How did I interpret that? Mr. Fitzgerald asked.

In answer, I told the grand jury about my last encounter with Mr. Libby. It came in August 2003, shortly after I attended a conference on national security issues held in Aspen, Colo. After the conference, I traveled to Jackson Hole, Wyo. At a rodeo one afternoon, a man in jeans, a cowboy hat and sunglasses approached me. He asked me how the Aspen conference had gone. I had no idea who he was.

"Judy," he said. "It's Scooter Libby."

Cocky sonsofbitches, all of them.

I'll simply repeat one of my speculations regarding this passage. All conferences that take place in Aspen or named Aspen aside, Judy boldly asserts this relates to Jackson Hole. Jackson Hole, where anyone who follows his fishing habits knows, Dick has a house, IIRC (pollyusa, help!) in a development with Aspens in the name. I don't know whether there ever was a rodeo. But Dick's the wild west shooter cowboy in this crowd, not Libby. I strongly suspect this is a reference to meeting Dick in Jackson Hole. A suggestion, perhaps, that Judy placed Libby in the role Dick had played, to protect their cluster's Dick.

I don't know why Judy included it (because the reference to Jackson Hole makes it fairly transparent, I think). Maybe it was an accidental moment of truth? Maybe they are just cocky sonsofbitches. But this is, I'm sure, a way for Judy to say that she helped Libby sustain the cover-up. That while she testified to a lot about Libby's guilt, she covered up Cheney's efforts from earlier in the week.

Comments

[emptywheel]

Sorry to post and run, but it's well past bed time here. And I've got client meetings tomorrow (thankfully, starting at a reasonable hour, but still). I'll check in tomorrow...

[tryggth]

Great post emptywheel. I think taking this backward look at the Miller stuff is relevent to anyone trying to get a grip and what happened when Libby was tasked to replay the tubes story.

I wonder if the January 24th document was the National Intelligence Officer document that has not yet seen the light of day. That would be dynamite.

[tryggth]

Oops, forgot. I think you are right about the "Its me, Scooter." surmise. More pointedly, I think she is reminding him that he told her in August that it was a complete cluster he got involved in because Cheney tasked him to do those leaks.

[obsessed]

>and all those amateurs who have returned to the fold of obsession lately!

I never left! This is one of my favorite EW posts since the original Judy series. I've missed old Judy badly in recent chapters of this never-ending mystery. That last paragraph of her tell-all is just so bizarre! I can't help but think it's like the old Coppola/Hackman classic "The Conversation". Gene spends the whole movie listening to this tape where they say "They'd kill us if they could" and finally at the end, Gene, and the viewers, realize that it was really "They'd kill us if they could" - transforming the victims into the killers by changing the stress of two words.

It seems like Judy's saying that Scooter Libby approached her, wearing the cowboy get-up and said "Judy - it's [me] Scooter Libby". But if the same words were coming from Cheney, or someone else, they could be taken to mean "Judy, it's Scooter Libby" as in "Judy, in response to your question, the answer is: 'It's Scooter Libby'."

In any case, there's a huge mystery as to Judy's motivations in all this. Why on earth would she include such a cryptic paragraph? And why in the hell did she not take advantage of the golden opportunity she had to blow the whistle on the scumbags who destroyed her reputation to cynically promote what she now knew that they knew all along was going to be a cynical and immoral exercise in war-profiteering? Judy could have been one of the heroes in this passion play - instead she's the goat.

[tryggth]

Sorry, that January report was from the "National Intelligence Council", not "Official".

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/08/AR2006040800916_2.html

[JohnLopresti]

I relocated some specific information about the Wyo meeting posted there. Sorry it took a while to probe the internet for it; it is full of side links, as well.

[emptywheel]

obsessed

LOL! I was wondering how you'd respond to that! I know you've never given up. I'm just amused by the for-pay-media climbing back on this bus, and desperately trying to catch up.

[lukery]

great post again EW

when you write "described Judy's covert status" - i suspect you mean Plame's status

[John Casper]

Thanks for the terrific post emptywheel.
Just saw this in the NYT's and thought how cool it would be to read an answer in the NYT's to one of your questions:
"Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, will answer questions in this space about the newspaper and the news. Questions will be selected from e-mails sent to asktheeditors@nytimes.com, and Mr. Keller will answer as many this week as time permits. Afterward, these discussions will continue with other Times editors."
OT: Fred Hiatt got destroyed in the WaPo blog over his "Good Leak" editorial.

[Jeff]

This has been known for a while, but it's just reemerged with new significance that the NIE's phrase about Iraq vigorously trying to procure uranium - and is it from Africa or in Niger? -, which Libby was determined to misrepresent as one of the NIE's Key Judgments, comes straight from DIA, and more specifically probably from the DIA's February 12 2002 intelligence product, which was based on the February 5 report on Niger-Iraq, which caught Cheney's eye, and which prompted him to ask the CIA for more, in turn prompting them to do the Wilson trip. Yesterday's WaPo article had this near the very end:

On July 30, 2003, two senior intelligence officials said in an interview that Niger was never an important part of the CIA's analysis, and that the language of Iraq's vigorous pursuit of uranium came verbatim from a Defense Intelligence Agency report that had caught the vice president's attention.

And today's Pincus article specifies the time period of the DIA report:

Some of Libby's comments about the NIE that he made to reporter Judith Miller, then of the New York Times, on July 8, 2003, were inaccurate. Libby said one "key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium." That was not an NIE key judgment, and the CIA officials who wrote the document disputed that statement. The "vigorously trying to procure" quote came from an unconfirmed Defense Intelligence Agency report from early 2002 that had caught Cheney's eye.

So this is probably the February 12 DIA report. It's pretty amazing that the NIE passage on Niger was based on this report - though the rationale from the CIA was that that NIE, especially since it was put together so quickly, had a kitchen sink quality to it, and this stuff was included for the sake of completeness. But it's also amazing that Libby would keep working it in June-July 2003. It also strikes me as likely that Libby did not show the February 5 or 12 report or the report based on Wilson's trip to Miller. Because then she would have been able to recognize that he was cherry-picking and misrepresenting on the fly. That is, just as with the NIE, so with Wilson's trip report, he was acting as though one feature of them was much more prominent and significant than it really was.

[William Ockham]

Here's the question I want to answer: What are Miller and Libby hiding?

When Libby was interviewed by the FBI (back in October and November 2003), they already had his handwritten daily notes. I believe that this was first reported by Murray Waas in July, 2004 [http://www.prospect.org/web/printfriendly-view.ww?id=8073]. You can tell this is definitely true by looking carefully at the Libby indictment. Libby had to explain away the fact that Cheney had told him about Plame in June.

Once you realize that Libby's notes have been in the hands of investigators from the very beginning, you have to start wondering why Libby told the story that he told. That is, not just why he lied, but why he came up with the story that he did. He had to know that the FBI would eventually get around to Grossman and that Grossman would certainly not help him out. By the time he testified before the Grand Jury, Libby knew that, even if the reporters never testified, he was at significant risk for a perjury charge if Fleischer testified truthfully. And Ari had every reason to do just that.

One possible explanation is that Libby was trying to pin the whole thing on Rove. If Libby could hide his contacts with reporters before July 10, then Rove and Mr. X were responsible for outing Plame to Novak. But if that was Libby's strategy, why spin the whole NIE story? Maybe the NIE story was in his notes, but I don't think so or Waas would have told us about it long before now.

I think Libby was hiding something else; something that wasn't in his notes; something that Miller either knows or could point Fitzgerald to if she testified truthfully; something that Libby's lawyers are desperately trying to figure out if Fitzgerald already knows (that's why they seem to be blundering in their discovery motions); something that's more damaging to the Bush administration that the NIE/Plame/Aluminum tubes fiasco.

[Jeff]

A possible alternative for that third classified document from January 2003 emerged from Gellman and Linzer's article in the WaPo yesterday - and even if this is not that document, the fact that this one exists is huge, and it's amazing we haven't heard about it before (if we haven't):

Tenet interceded to keep the claim out of a speech Bush gave in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, but by Dec. 19 it reappeared in a State Department "fact sheet." After that, the Pentagon asked for an authoritative judgment from the National Intelligence Council, the senior coordinating body for the 15 agencies that then constituted the U.S. intelligence community. Did Iraq and Niger discuss a uranium sale, or not? If they had, the Pentagon would need to reconsider its ties with Niger.

The council's reply, drafted in a January 2003 memo by the national intelligence officer for Africa, was unequivocal: The Niger story was baseless and should be laid to rest. Four U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge said in interviews that the memo, which has not been reported before, arrived at the White House as Bush and his highest-ranking advisers made the uranium story a centerpiece of their case for the rapidly approaching war against Iraq.

Others have noted this, but this is such huge news it's worth underlining as strongly as possible. The sheer fact that there was a January 2003 document embodying the authoritative judgment of the intelligence community declaring the Niger story baseless is just extraordinary. And though the Post does not make entirely clear if the memo reached the White House just before or just after the SOTU, either way its existence is a huge embarrassment for the White House - and might even be the thing they did not want discovered that explains, finally, the huge overreaction to Wilson. As a matter of fact, they've succeeded until now from keeping this quiet.

But now it's out. And my suspicion is that part of why it has come out now may be that it is in fact that third document from January 24, 2003 that Fitzgerald mentions. The WaPo's description of the timing of the NIC document fits a January 24, 2003 date perfectly. Of course, from the WaPo's description, it sure sounds like the NIC memo decisively undercut, rather than supporting, the White House case, so why would they be pressing for its declassification? Well, Fitzgerald doesn't actually say that it was Libby or anyone else at the White House pressing for the declassification of the January 24 2003 document. It could have been someone else - say, the CIA. And remember that when July 18 rolled around, the portions of the NIE released to reporters in fact contained a bunch of the stuff that undermined the White House case. I have always wondered about that, and my guess has been that there were multiple, not always agreeing forces at work in the declassification process that produced the July 18 version of the NIE. The CIA in particular would have wanted different things to get out from the White House. In fact, my guess is that this explains part of why Bush-Cheney-Libby circumvented the ordinary declassification process - they knew what the result would be, and they wanted to manage the narrative more unilaterally.

Also, as a way to make this suggestion a more plausible alternative to a SOTU draft being the classified January 24, 2003, I wonder whether a draft of the SOTU would be classified.

In any case, regardless of whether the January 24 2003 document Fitzgerald refers to is this NIC report or not, the very fact of this report is a huge bombshell. It needs to and, I suspect, will become a center of attention in coming days.

[emptywheel]

Jeff

Also there's a January 24 DIA document eRiposte has referenced. I actually think that is more likley than the NIO document, because it would presumably support the Dick story.

But still. We have evidence of Tenet and Condi declassifying the NIE. We have evidence of Tenet and Ari declassifying the CIA trip report. I think the third thing is either so inflammatory that somehow Tenet convinced Bush he couldn't declassify it (Plame's role at WINPAC?) or something we saw evidence of declassification.

[William Ockham]

Here's another question to ponder when thinking about Judy Miller. If you were a reporter who got a leak about classified information and you knew that it had been approved by Bush, what would you think this Bush quote meant:

"I have no idea whether we'll find out who the leaker is, partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers."

[p.lukasiak]

someone needs to explain to me why this tidbit from Fitz's depo hasn't received much attention.... (page 19 of http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/files/Libby_FitzResp_060405.pdf )

At some point after the publication of the July 6, 2003 Op Ed by Mr. Wilson, Vice President Cheney, defendant’s immediate superior, expressed concerns to defendant regarding whether Mr. Wilson’s trip was legitimate or whether it was in effect a junket set up by Mr. Wilson’s wife.

Soon after July 6, Dick Cheney wonders whether the Wilson trip is a junket set up by Valerie Plame. On July 14, Bob Novak publishes a column with that very premise.

[Jeff]

ew - Yeah, I'll add a little to that. There are actually two documents we know of dated January 24, 2003, and I bet one of them is the third classified document. There is the DIA document, and then there is a fax from the NIO to the NSC. The relevant passages on them seem to be SSCI report pp. 63-64 and Robb-Silberman p. 78 (and attendant footnotes), which seems to be based largely on the passage in the SSCI report, though there are some slight variations. I bet one of those two documents is the third document. One thing pointing to the NIO fax to the NSC is that it basically recapitulated or even just reproduced precisely the "vigorous procurement" passage from the October 2002 NIE. Here's what the SSCI says (transcribing):

The fax contained the information from the October 2002 NIE on Iraq's vigorous attempts to procure uranium ore and yellowcake from Niger and other countries in Africa.

So the likely scenario here is that it was Libby or someone like him who was pressing to declassify that document, because it would show the reassertion of the vigorous procurement efforts claim from the intelligence community right before the SOTU. And it does.

But then what about the document yesterday's WaPo describes? There are several possible candidates mentioned in the SSCI and Robb-Silberman in the same area of the text, although none is presented as being as categorically negative as the WaPo's sources describe our document. That could be a reflection of the systematic effort of the SSCI to mislead. Or the document the WaPo reports on may be entirely left out of the SSCI and Robb-Silberman.

So we still need to know what this document was, what precisely it said, when exactly it was produced, when (especially in relation to the SOTU) the White House saw it, who saw it, what was done with it, and also whether this document had any role in the fact that Powell did not include the uranium claim in his disgraceful UN presentation such a short time after the SOTU.

On that last note, the SSCI passage about the NIO fax just cited continues with this odd note:

The information was used to prepare for Secretary Powell's presentation of intelligence to the UN in February 2003.

Well, Powell definitely didn't end up using the bs about Iraqi vigor in trying to procure uranium from Africa. Was this one of the documents Libby was pushing on Powell? Why did Powell push back? Did he use other parts of the NIO's fax to NSC? Inquiring minds want to know.

The WaPo's bombshell about the January dismissal of the uranium claim is still one of the main places this story should go.

[Jeff]

lukasiak - I totally agree that that is another place this story should go. Cheney is now cited for the first time voicing almost exactly one of the main talking points against Wilson, and the one that started this whole mess. When exactly did he say that? Might Cheney himself have been Pincus' source on July 12 - after all, Cheney took Cathie Martin, the usual communications person, off the case on July 12, replacing her with Libby. Presumably he did so because he considered the job particularly important, and that having someone with Libby's credibility and position doing the job was called for. Maybe he stepped in personally as well.

In any case, it's on the record now that Cheney himself was talking the talk about Wilson's trip maybe being a junket - aka a boondoggle? - set up by his wife. That is big news in its own right, and deserves to be followed up on.

I take it so far it hasn't gotten that much attention because it's been overshadowed by the newly revealed role of Bush. But attention should turn to Cheney's role too.

[emptywheel]

Jeff

So far that's the only convincing known January 24 document (to me, at least). Unlike all the other suggestions (except my SOTU one) it could plausibly be considered one of the things getting declassified. Because the press was scrambling to pressure Condi on why Powell had rejected the intell Bush hadn't. If they could find an excuse--in the form of a still un-debunked document--it would help their case.

Btw, I didn't answer your doubt about a classified speech. I'm increasingly convinced it would be considered classified. The reason that passage didn't appear in the SOTU, after all, was because of Sources and Methods concerns (at least ostensibly). Given the way they treat info in the Bolton hearings (in which precisely this kind of vetting, involving Alan Foley, was at issue), I'm sure if something is rejected because it would compromise sources and methods, the draft itself would still be classified.

[emptywheel]

p luk

My biggest question about that is, who testified to that effect? Cathie Martin?

I'm enticed by the Dick as Pincus source idea. Because it would mean Dick still qualified as one of the multiple WH sources who was leaking Plame's name, also referenced in the document. If Cathie Martin was Pincus' source, then we're one WH source short of multiple WH sources publicizing Plame's ID, barring Hadley being Novak's Mr. X.

[&y]

A bit off-topic. I recently chanced across the (scary) transcript of a speech + Q&A by (scary) Sec. Def. Cheney at the (scary) Federalist Society (1/19/90). At the beginning of his speech, he tells the story of the Wyoming cowboy who got him elected to Congress. Those who are obsessing over Judy's "It's Scooter Libby" line (and/or Cheney shooting a lawyer in the face) may enjoy this. Beyond that, it's just a pointless bit of Cheneyalia.

CHENEY: I like to tell the story that happened to me -- a true story. As I began my campaign, that first campaign, I was -- in January -- up in a place called Dubois in Wyoming. I don't know how many of you know Wyoming, but Dubois is a small community up behind Jackson Hole in the high mountain country. And in January, the snow's about hip deep and there's absolutely nothing to do in Dubois in the winter time except go down to the Ram's Horn Bar and Grill where everybody goes for lunch every day.

And when it was my time to go work the community of Dubois, I went down to the Ram's Horn Bar and Grill at noon, where all the local elite were assembled, and was introduced around as Dick Cheney, young candidate for congress. And there was and old cowboy over at the bar, had his boot up on the rail, cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes, and he looked over at me. He said, "Son," he said, "are you a Democrat?" I said, "No, sir." He said, "Are you a lawyer?" I said, "No." He said, "I'll vote for you." (Laughter.)

Well, told that story all over the state of Wyoming, and that's how I won. (Laughter.) (Applause.) It was five years before the Bar Association invited me to speak to them. (Laughter.)

My source is the Lexis-Nexis; I couldn't find the same thing anywhere in google. So I have no link.

[Jeff]

So far that's the only convincing known January 24 document (to me, at least).

Which, the DIA document, or the NIO-to-NSC document? If I had to bet, I'd bet on the latter.

If Cathie Martin was Pincus' source, then we're one WH source short of multiple WH sources publicizing Plame's ID

I don't get it - why wouldn't Martin count equally as Cheney as White House? Is it that the VP himself is part of the White House for these purposes, but not his staff? Also, it is worth noting that Fitzgerald is talking about both before and after Novak's column, right? So it remains possible the multiplicity was reached after July 14 - though I doubt it.

[William Ockham]

I noticed that comment about Cheney and the junket. It is interesting that Fitzgerald doesn't source that comment to anyone. If Libby had testified to that, I would have expected Fitzgerald to cite that fact. I can't imagine Cheney testified to that. Perhaps it is something else contained in Libby's notes.

[emptywheel]

NIO to NSC.

And Martin wouldn't be such an obvious WH source because she didn't have an office there. Cheney's "OVP Office" is in EOB, but he has an office in the WH.

[Jeff]

And Martin wouldn't be such an obvious WH source because she didn't have an office there. Cheney's "OVP Office" is in EOB, but he has an office in the WH.

Makes sense. But we know in any case that Pincus' source was a White House official, since he's told us that - finally, after two years of saying "administration official" or "senior administration official." So there's your multiplicity of White House officials even before Novak's column, whoever Pincus' source was.

[4jkb4ia]

EW, I'm in trouble over at TM's. Has Joe Wilson ever named a specific person who he thinks leaked about his wife?