Traitorgate: Plame and Wilson hired Lawyer
| Date: | Thursday October 02, @08:23PM |
|---|
| Author: | ewing2001 |
|---|
| Topic: | News |
|---|
| from the NY-POst dept. |
NEWSFLASH: John Pilger Telefon Interview today on INN TV, Stream at 6PM EST
Outed CIA Woman and Hubby mull suit
Update: 2 Disclaim Leaking Name of Operative (10/05)
Update: White House Staff Given Until Tuesday to Turn in CIA Leak Information (10/03)
Update: Suspicion centers on Lewis Libby (Salon 10/03)
Please read also
Karl Rove and the Domino Effect
Wilsongate: CIA wants to investigate
NY Post -Friday October 3
October 3, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - The CIA officer whose cover was blown by an alleged Bush administration leak and her diplomat husband have retained a Washington lawyer to find out who they can sue and how much money they can seek.
Also, the investigation, first focused on the White House and CIA, is now broadening to include the State and Defense departments, officials said.
"There's no question that the Wilsons' legal rights have been violated," their lawyer, Christopher Wolf, told The Post. "More importantly, the country's legal rights have been violated, and that's first and foremost what they're interested in."
Wolf said he's representing former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was sent by the CIA earlier this year on a mission to find out if Iraq tried to buy enriched uranium in Niger, and his wife, CIA analyst Valerie Plame, whose name was leaked to columnist Robert Novak.
Suspicion centers on Lewis Libby
Salon -October 3, 2003
Criminal leak investigations are notoriously futile, and the identity of the administration officials who illegally blew the cover of CIA operative Valerie Plame may never be known. But one name keeps coming up, and so far it hasn't provoked a specific, emphatic White House denial: Lewis "Scooter" Libby, assistant to the president and Vice President Dick Cheney's powerful chief of staff.
On Wednesday the New York Daily News reported that "Democratic congressional sources said they would like to hear from Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby." On MSNBC's "Buchanan and Press" on Wednesday, Pat Buchanan asked an administration critic who claims to know the leaker's name point blank if "Scooter Libby" was the culprit (the critic wouldn't answer).
And Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, made a veiled reference on CNBC this week, suggesting that President Bush could better manage the current crisis by, "sitting down with [his] vice president and asking what he knows about it."
But below the surface there's even more chatter. Says one former senior CIA officer who served under President Bush's father, "Libby is certainly suspect No. 1."
White House Staff Given Until Tuesday to Turn in CIA Leak Information
AP - Oct 3, 2003
WASHINGTON (AP) - From top advisers to junior staff, nearly 2,000 White House employees were ordered to come forward by Tuesday with any documents that might help the criminal investigation into the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity.
A memo Friday cautioned the staff not to seek advice from President Bush's attorneys. The White House counsel's office works solely for the president in his official capacity and is not a private attorney for anyone, the memo warned, meaning that staff members should hire their own lawyers if they think they need counsel.
From Chuck Schumers letter to John Ashcroft
...Clearly, there is the appearance of a conflict of interest for the Department of Justice to investigate whether senior White House officials committed federal felony offenses, especially in such a highly-charged context. Since you no longer have the option of asking that an Independent Counsel be appointed, I am writing to encourage you to appoint a Special Counsel. Although a Special Counsel will not have complete independence from the Justice Department, he or she would have the full panoply of powers available to a US Attorney and federal regulations require that any interference in the investigation ultimately be reported to Congress.
In short, the appearance of a conflict of interest is not totally removed, but it is substantially mitigated. Appointing a Special Counsel may not be the perfect way to conduct this investigation, but it is clearly the best alternative available.
We need a person with a pristine reputation to lead this probe, someone who has to make sure that this investigation gets to the bottom of what happened. Federal regulations require that the Special Counsel be a "lawyer with a reputation for integrity impartial decision-making" and "shall be selected from outside the United States Government." immediately obvious possibilities include:
Warren Rudman, George Mitchell, Sam Frank Keating. Should you agree that a Special Counsel is necessary, I encourage you with Congressional leaders from both parties before making an appointment.
2 Disclaim Leaking Name of Operative
NY Times -October 5
...Spokesmen said I. Lewis Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, and Elliott Abrams, the director of Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, were not sources of the leak. The White House has said the same of Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser.
All trademarks and copyrights on this
page are owned by their respective companies.
printed from Traitorgate: Plame and Wilson hired Lawyer on 2004-04-29 21:44:27