Plame criminal case

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A federal grand jury investigated for over three years the circumstances by which the identity of former CIA operative Valerie Plame was leaked to the press. The investigation, which was led by special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, led to the indictment of then-Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby.


The United States v. I. Lewis Libby refers to the criminal case brought against former Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff for concealing his role and that of Cheney in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. After an investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, a federal grand jury indicted Libby of five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators. Libby was found guilty of four of the charges. His sentence was commuted by then-President George Bush, but Bush refused to pardon Libby-- despite Cheney lobbying Bush that he do so.


2005

"For nearly two years, the investigation into the leak of a covert C.I.A. officer's name has unfolded clamorously in the nation's capital, with partisan brawling on talk shows, prosecutors interviewing President Bush and top White House officials, and the imminent prospect that reporters could go to jail for contempt of court. "But the woman at the center of it all, Valerie E. Wilson, has kept her silence, showing the discipline and discretion that colleagues say made her a good spy. As her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, has become a highly visible critic of the administration and promoted his memoirs, Ms. Wilson has ferried their 5-year-old twins to doctors' appointments, looked after their hilltop house in the upscale Palisades neighborhood of Washington and counseled women with postpartum depression. "On June 1, after a year's unpaid leave, Ms. Wilson, now known to the country by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, returned to a new job at the Central Intelligence Agency, determined to get her career back on track, her husband said. Neither the agency nor Mr. Wilson would describe her position, except to make what might seem an obvious point: she will no longer be working under cover, as she did successfully for almost 20 years. "`Before this whole affair, no one would ever have thought of her as an undercover agent," said David Tillotson, a next-door neighbor for seven years who got to know the Wilsons well over back-fence chats, shared dinners and play dates for their grandchildren with the Wilsons' children, Trevor and Samantha. "`She wasn't mysterious," Mr. Tillotson said. `She was sort of a working soccer mom.'"

2006

  • Murray Waas, "Cheney Authorized Libby to Leak Classified Information," National Journal, February 9, 2006.
  • Murray Waas, "What Bush Was Told About Iraq" National Journal, March 2, 2006. "Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records."
  • Murray Waas, "Rove-Novak Call Was Concern to Leak Investigators," National Journal, May 25, 2006.
  • Dan Froomkin, "A Compelling Story," White House Watch Blog/Washington Post, March 31, 2006.
  • Murray Waas, "What Ashcroft Was Told," National Journal, June 8, 2006.
  • Murray Waas, "Bush Directed Cheney to Counter War Critic", National Journal, July 3, 2006.
  • Murray Waas, "Insulating Bush," National Journal, March 30, 2006: "Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon -- might not be true, according to government records and interviews."
  • Dan Froomkin, "Another Stab at the Truth," Washington Post, July 14, 2006: "There are some hugely important aspects of the Bush presidency that remain insufficiently examined, and the most important are about the run-up to war in Iraq. Polls show that a majority of Americans believe President Bush and his associates intentionally misled the public in making their case for war. It's a terribly serious charge, if true. In fact, it's hard to imagine a more serious charge against a president."
  • "US officials 'betrayed' CIA agent," BBC, July 14, 2006.

2007

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