Mar 19 2006

Libby Defense Shows Its Hand

Published by at 12:52 pm under All General Discussions,Plame Game

Tom Maguire has a gold mine post regarding recent filings by the Libby defense team, including more detail on the witness list – which I had pretty well covered in my list of predictions. The media names I had listed illustrated a strategy I would have pursued, which is to demonstrate how the Wilson’s shopped the Niger forgeries story and how many people in the media ended up knowing Valerie was Joe’s wife. Apparently team Libby is, right now, focused on how the news echoed through government circles first (more on that in a moment).

My instincts tell me that even before Novak wrote about Valerie some in the media where postulating the White House would ‘retaliate’ against this blockbuster story about going to war with Iraq based on forgeries. Why did they believe this? Because the media bought into the forgery angle and believed the administration was finally caught in a lie. Never forget the perspective and drivers of the time. Many in the press probably suspected the leak about Valerie was the retaliation THEY had expected and is was probably they who passed that idea onto Joe Wilson.

The angle about the Niger forgeries began unravelling quickly because the timing of Joe’s trip and the forgeries surfacing was all wrong. So Joe and his backers needed to switch the focus to something else besides the Niger forgeries and that impossible sequence.

Anyway, the fact is Libby’s defense filings are focused on the way the issue went through the government first, leaving the issue of the press (beyond the ones subpoened) until a later round.

I will not repeat all the great items Tom Maguire has out, except to try and discern the tactics behind the defense strategy (which is something way outside my field of expertise – fair warning!) and the tactics in the filing itself.

The filing is an effort to do a few things: get key information, request extra information that can be negotiated away if needed, send signals to Fitzgerald that might force his hand or make decisions on tactics beneficial to the defense, and to send signals to witnesses.

In my mind the key information is that regarding how the information flowed inside the govermment. Tom Maguire notes the battles going on between departments, but I think he glosses over the significance a little bit:

John Dickerson gets a mention for his “Where’s My Subpoena” column. The defense cites his point that the White House and the CIA were ‘at war” over the sixteen words, and ruminates about possible anti-Libby bias on the part of thr CIA witnesses. No!

Well, yes – and it is important. Fitzgerald is on very thin ice here. He claims one set of government officials (Armitage and/or Grossmanm etc) were (a) the source of the classified information being broadcast inside the government (classified information cannot be shared inside or outside the government) and (b) they will be prosecution witnesses against other people leaking classified information inside the government. It is too simple minded of Fitzgerald to think a leak of retribution goes directly to the media from the masterminds. The days of leaking to the press directly primarily exist in Hollywood and some rare examples like Deep Throat.

Fitzgerald apparently has not given much thought or credence to the possibility that the State Department was the source of the retribution – not the White House. One way to leak classified information is to tell people who interact with the media the information in question – and conveniently forget to mention the information is classified. I see this tactic in this filing statement noted by Tom:

We expect that documents from the White House, the State Department and the CIA will corroborate Mr. Libby’s account that Ms. Wilson’s affiliation with the CIA was regarded throughout the government as a minor issue prior to Mr. Novak’s article. Such documents will show that the overwhelming focus of the government’s response to Mr. Wilson’s charges…

It is not a stretch to show the information was being spread wide in the government in hopes it would leak to the press. Libby’s defense team is taking no risks assuming everyone in the government had pure intentions. They cannot afford that luxury given what Libby faces. But the tactic is not unreasonable either. The statement about Grossman in the filing that Tom points to is a great example of this:

Documents pertaining to Mr. Wilson’s trip from Mr. Grossman’s files must also be examined carefully by the defense because Mr. Grossman may not be a disinterested witness.

Indeed. The possible motivations run from the innocent to the near criminal. The innocent story (the one easiest to demonstrate actually) is that all of the Plame debate at the time inside the government caused a typical breakdown on controlling classified information. That the talk became so broad so fast that it was not always being done with proper classifications involved.

Or there is an even more obvious explanation. To this day it is believed, but not established, Valerie was not covered under the statute covering the exposure of a covert agent. So it must have been the same at the time all this was going on. Unclear classification is not uncommon or criminal. I have been in briefings where information was discussed, and then there was a debate on whether it was classidied or not. It happens. People are not clear and sometimes classified information is exposed for a time. I point this out not to say everything Plame was all accidental, but to illustrate how people can get mixed signals on classification and innocently conclude nothing was classified.

If Libby can show lots of people discussing and passing on the information in all the various areas of government, he can claim it seemed the information was broadly known, and therefore he had no reason to cover anything up. These are alluded to in this statement:

The documents we have requested may further corroborate expected witness testimony that within the government Ms. Wilson’s employment status was not regarded as classified, sensitive or secret, contrary to the allegations in the indictment.

I really am intrigued by the phrase ‘expected witness testimony‘. While some see Ari and Grossman and others being confrontational witnesses for Libby, they could just as easily get on the stand and say ‘we tried to explain to Fitzgerald this was all well known in the government, but he did not seem to appreciate the implications’.

Also, there is a chance to show the prosecutor created an environment to generate shaded testimony and/or biased results. If Ari Fliescher also passed information on to the media, then Fitzgerald seems to be picking who was a good leaker verses a bad leaker based on how close the person was to the Vice President. Did he hint to some witnesses he would look past their indescretion if they could provide some information regarding Libby? Did he apply pressure that will come back to haunt him as witnesses like Ari get on the stand and expose that Fitzgerald’s interests seemed to focus on the OVP and not who leaked to the media?

In any event, Fitzgerald may have looked past a lot more leaks of the information Libby apparently did not leak to the media (a basis of the indictment) which would indicate he has not been discovering what happened but instead building a case to support a preconception.

The guy basically lied about his torment and jailing of journalists, saying he needed to get testimony on the outing of Plame. What he was really doing was trying to nail down sufficiently vague statements to apply pressure to Libby. Since Libby’s ‘crimes’ have no bearing on the original intent of the investigation (since Fitzgerald stipulates Libby never once leaked the inside infromation he had to the media, just lied about where he learned about Plame supposedly), and others have been discovered to have leaked to the press on the prime matter of this investigation, one can only conclude the investigation is a means to an end. An end different than the stated purpose of the investigation.

I am glad to see this included into what the defense hopes to establish:

Contrary to Mr. Wilson’s claims, he did not debunk as forgeries documents suggesting that Iraq was attempting to purchase uranium from Africa.

Which will remind everyone of what the intent of Joe Wilson’s efforts were. While the review of who knew what and when in the government is a prime focus to many, I have always felt it was a bit of a diversion. In reviewing comments at Tom’s site I was reminded that Joe Wilson exposed himself at an EPIC conference where he was a speaker. It was at this conference where Joe Wilson said in his own words (from an audio recording of the conference) that to get Bush required generating an eye catching story in the media. This is how I captured Joe Wilson’s comments on ‘the plan’ to get Bush – which he discusses openly in the Q&A session after his speech – when I reviewed the EPIC audio last summer/fall:

Starting just around 12:30 into this 15 minute segment Wilson points out the administration was careful to only talk about uranium with respect to Africa initially. he says that until the story turned to Niger, and then the Niger angle was denied by state, it was difficult to make the case that the march to war was built on lies. Wilson admits, in his own words, that to attack Bush’s policies required the story to be about Niger and not Africa. Why? Well, because the forgery angle only applies to Niger, and the broader Africa angle has more substantiating intel and history.

Wilson also clearly states that people on the inside (CIA and others against the war in Iraq) could easily make the case if they could have been given voice. Which is what Joe Wilson would be doing in a few short days in the NY Times Op-Ed pages.

Fitzgerald has a real problem with Wilson. Wilson will be forced under oath to face his own recorded words outlining his plans (for Kerry?) to create a story out of whole cloth. Wilson had a plan to stage stories about the march to war with Iraq which have been proven to be a tissue of lies. Lies which were being addressed accurately by the administration. If Fitzgerald is not careful the trial will demonstrate he ignored, was fooled by or aware of Wilson’s lies in the media.

More on this once I have time to read the reference material in detail.

Addendum 1: Starting with the shortest filing first, I am struck by this request for information from CIA, DoS, NSC and WH, specifically the date:

(c) subsequent discussion, comment or analysis concerning the trip, including government documents concerning the trip and/or Ms. Wilson’s role in it, that were generated after May 6, 2003.

Why is this tied to the date of Kristof’s NY Times piece? Item (a) in the list is comprehensive in nature:

(a) the origins of Mr. Wilson’s trip to Niger, including any role played by Ms. Wilson in connection with the trip;

I guess this could just be for completeness sake, but then wouldn’t the request cover all material Fitzgerald has from the press as well? Seems odd to focus on the government information only, and then specify this as an important date separating it out from all of the information requested in (a)?

Then there is this item which has an interesting angle:

All documents reflecting Mr. Wilson’s communications with officials at the State Department or other government agencies concerning his trip to Niger or the “sixteen words.”

Emphasis mine. Now I know why this is being done because Wilson already admitted he talked to people at State to demonstrate he was really concerned about the Niger forgeries he supposedly debunked- but why limit it to State? Would a Rand Beers communication fall under this? Didn’t Wilson claim he had talked to people in government outside State? The ‘sixteen words’ angle opens the list up to a wider range of contacts than just the Niger trip and, therefore, may be restricted by the judge.

And Finally this one:

Any notes from the September 2003 meeting in the Situation Room at which Colin Powell is reported to have said that (a) everyone knows that Mr. Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and that (b) it was Mr. Wilson’s wife who suggested that the CIA send her husband on a mission to Niger.

I had not heard of this meeting, but then again September 2003 means Powell could simply be repeating Andrea Mitchell’s statement which I believe came earlier. The second half of the statement was well known by September – so I wonder what this buys the Libby Defense? Or is this one of those items they could afford to lose if they had to.

10 responses so far

10 Responses to “Libby Defense Shows Its Hand”

  1. Snapple says:

    This March 18, 2006 article has a list of the people the defense is calling to testify.

    The article says :

    Libby’s court filing says the defense team believes that [former CIA spokesman Bill] Harlow is the unidentified government official in the indictment who told Catherine Martin, assistant to the vice president for public affairs, that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and advised Libby of it. http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/feeds/ap/2006/03/18/ap2604759.html

  2. Snapple says:

    My post above says that the court filing names Harlow as the official who told that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA. But this article doesn’t mention his name. What am I missing?

    “The identity of intelligence officials who are thought to have passed information about covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson to Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, surfaced in a federal court document filed Friday evening….In Friday’s filing, Libby’s attorneys attempted to push the blame for the leak onto other officials at the CIA and the State Department and said these officials will likely be called to testify at next year’s criminal trial. In doing so, the attorneys disclosed in the 39-page document the identities of four CIA employees who possibly provided their client with information about Plame Wilson’s work for the CIA.”

    “Libby’s attorneys revealed the names of previously unknown CIA officials who may have communicated Plame Wilson’s classified CIA work to Libby. It is not a crime for the CIA to disseminate classified information to White House officials like Libby who have the security clearance to receive such intelligence.

    What’s interesting, however, is that one of the CIA officials named in the indictment as a possible source of information for Libby is Robert Grenier, 51, head of the agency’s top counterterrorism office. Grenier was fired last month because he opposed using torture tactics against al-Qaeda suspects at secret detention facilities abroad, intelligence sources and news reports said.

    “When al Qaeda struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, Grenier was station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan,” the Washington Post reported in February. ‘Among the agency’s most experienced officers in southwest Asia, Grenier helped plan the covert campaign that preceded the U.S. military ouster of al Qaeda and its Taliban allies from Afghanistan.'”

    “In their court filing Friday, Libby’s attorneys wrote that if not Grenier, it’s possible that John McLaughlin may be the CIA official who provided Cheney’s former chief of staff with information on Plame Wilson.”

    “Friday’s filing also states that “On or about June 14, 2003, Libby met with a CIA briefer. During their conversation he expressed displeasure that CIA officials were making comments to reporters critical of the Vice President’s office, and discussed with the briefer, among other things, ‘Joe Wilson and his wife Valerie Wilson,’ in the context of Wilson’s trip to Niger.” The indictment also quotes Mr. Libby as criticizing the CIA for “selective leaking” of various “intelligence matters.” The filing states ‘We believe that the briefer referred to is Craig Schmall and that he will be a witness for the government at trial too. (However, it is also possible that the briefer referenced in this paragraph is Peter Clement or Matt Barrett.).'”

  3. Snapple says:

    This article is based on an unnamed source close to the investigation who is debunking Libby’s defense. The unnamed source sounds like a lawyer for a government witness:

    “Attorneys representing Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff in the CIA leak case believe they have a rock solid defense to present in their client’s perjury and obstruction of justice trial expected to begin next year.”

    “In numerous court filings over the past few months, lawyers for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby have maintained that their client did not intentionally lie to federal investigators and a grand jury regarding the role he played in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson during the summer of 2003.”

    “Some of the officials who worked with Libby in the office of the vice president and who are said to have faced criminal charges in the case have made deals with the special prosecutor in exchange for their testimony, sources close to the case said.”

    “Other officials who work or worked in the State Department, the CIA, and the National Security Council at the time of the leak have also decided to cooperate with Fitzgerald; however, it’s unknown whether these people faced any criminal charges before agreeing to testify at a trial.”

    Instead, Libby’s attorneys have said that their client was dealing with other, more crucial matters, such as the Iraq war, terrorism, and national security and simply forgot about how he first learned that Plame was employed by the CIA when he told the grand jury – untruthfully – that a reporter told him that she worked for the spy agency.

    “However, that defense strategy may unravel when Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald calls to the stand some of Libby’s former White House colleagues who have promised to tell a much different story about Libby’s alleged memory lapse, according to six sources close to Fitzgerald’s investigation.”

    “When Libby’s trial begins in 2007, Libby’s claim of forgetfulness is expected to be contradicted by his former colleagues who worked closely with him on foreign policy issues. These officials have told Fitzgerald over the past year that Libby continued his campaign against Wilson long after Libby and other White House officials allegedly unmasked Plame Wilson’s identity to reporters in late June and early July 2003.”

    “the administration officials told Fitzgerald that from September 2003 through March 2004 Libby urged White House communications director Dan Bartlett on numerous occasions to aggressively respond to Wilson’s further attacks against the administration. Libby’s attorneys have said in court documents that Libby had forgotten about Wilson during this time and that is the reason his grand jury testimony wasn’t accurate.”

    “‘Mr. Libby was a lone wolf in that regard,” this person said. “He did not receive any backing from the administration. Everyone thought he should just let it go.'”

    “The Wilson affair was still very much on his mind,” said one attorney who is representing a witness in the case. “Mr. Libby seemed to be consumed by it.”

  4. Snapple says:

    Sorry again. Here is the link.
    http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_jason_le_060319_obstruction_trial_ma.htm

    This article makes it seem like he is being hung out to dry by the White House.

  5. Snapple says:

    You see this?

    [The] “defense strategy may unravel when Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald calls to the stand some of Libby’s former White House colleagues who have promised to tell a much different story about Libby’s alleged memory lapse, according to six sources close to Fitzgerald’s investigation.” http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_jason_le_060319_obstruction_trial_ma.htm

  6. Snapple says:

    The former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow now works for NBC
    as a news analyst
    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11373537/

    this article discusses the Saddam tapes. Harlow is commenting on these tapes.

    Transcripts of Saddam’s tapes reviewed by NBC News show him ruminating about future terror attacks in the United States using weapons of mass destruction.

    Saddam says:
    “‘We shouldn’t be surprised to see a car bomb with nuclear [material] explode [in] Washington, either germ or chemical,’ Saddam tells aides. “So this is coming,” Saddam says on the tapes, “but not from Iraq,” he adds, seeming to indicate that Iraq would not be the source of any such attack.”

    Saddam says:
    “It is possible in the future to see a booby trap and the explosion turns out to be nuclear, germ or chemical.”

    This Bill Harlow says that the Saddam tapes show that Saddam was
    “trying to deceive the U.N., but it doesn’t show that he actually had weapons in his possession at the time of the invasion.”

    Then the article closes with this point:

    “NBC News has not listened to the tapes and has not been able to independently confirm the accuracy of the translations.”

    It seems to me that Harlow is commenting as an expert but he has not yet studied these tapes the military has.

    Also, Harlow says the tapes don’t show he had weapons in his possession at the time of the invasion.

    So what? Maybe they got rid of the weapons. It certainly shows what Saddam hoped to do.

    I thought it was interesting that a Saddam aid said that an AMERICAN could make biological weapons:

    “biological weapons are easy to construct: “… any biologist can make it in water tank and kill 100,000 person … so you can’t accuse a country, one person can do it. One American person can do it in a house, next to the White House.”

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11373537/

    It makes me wonder if they had some plan to have some Americans make and use biological weapons here. Then they could hide their hand.

    I think all of these politicians and spies would like to kill each other more than they would like to protect us by killing the terrorists.

    Sigh…

  7. Snapple says:

    Basically Harlow is debunking the military intelligence even though he is not familiar with the information.

    Able Danger shows that the military was also looking into terrorists here in America.

    Just speculating, but maybe Able Danger wasn’t just looking at Al Qaeda terrorists. They might have also looked at Iraqi agents and at possible linkages between Iraqi agents and Al Qaeda types to front for them.

    And there is no reason why Iraqi agents couldn’t be Americans.

    Saddam and his aid both suggested that biological terrorism could happen in America “but not from Iraq.”

    Probably the aid was more candid when he said, “you can’t accuse a country [of using biological weapons], one person can do it.”

    Probably they both were really saying that Iraq could hide its hand.

  8. mervb says:

    Since we know that Wilson’s story about how he came to know about the forged documents was false, it raises the question of how he did come to know about them and why did he construct a web of lies to cover for the person who told him about the forgeries. I suspect he got the info from someone close to him who wanted to use him to get the info to the media to undercut the President’s war effort. Could it have come from Valerie? Why has not this leak been investigated? While it has correctly been used to undercut Wilson’s credibility, why has there been no investigation of Wilson’s real source for the leak?

  9. MerryJ1 says:

    I just hope Libby’s attorneys do not forget to ferret out exactly WHO all those “sources close to Fitzgerald’s investigation” are.

    These “sources” have been leaking anything, whether half-true, sort of true, or completely false, so long as it’s detrimental to the Bush Administration, since Fitzgerald was named to the post.

    And that includes information that was supposed to be covered by grand jury gag rules.