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Libby Pardon?

Econ101

Well-known member
Jailed reporter reaches deal in CIA leak probe
The New York Times' Miller: 'It's good to be free'

Friday, October 28, 2005; Posted: 2:17 p.m. EDT (18:17 GMT)

story.miller2.cnn.jpg
New York Times reporter Judith Miller after she testified before a federal grand jury Friday.


(CNN) -- After spending 12 weeks in jail for refusing to name a source, The New York Times reporter Judith Miller testified Friday before a federal grand jury looking into a CIA leak case after her source gave her permission.

Miller said she agreed to testify before the grand jury only after she received a personal letter and telephone call from her source, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and a promise from the special investigator that her testimony would be limited to her communication between her and her source.

Libby made a telephone call to Miller in prison September 19 to personally free her from the pledge of confidentiality, a move that contributed to her release, Libby's attorney, Joseph Tate of Philadelphia, told CNN.

"These were not form waivers," Miller said after leaving federal court in Washington. "They were not discussions among lawyers." (Watch Miller's statement -- 5:43| Text)

"I testified as soon as I could," she said. "I knew what my conscience would allow."

Miller did not identify the source.

"I am hopeful that my very long stay in jail will serve to strengthen the bond between reporters and their sources," Miller said.

She did not discuss her testimony before the grand jury.

New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said the newspaper supported Miller's decision to testify.

"We are very pleased that she has finally received a direct and uncoerced waiver, by phone and in writing, releasing her from any claim of confidentiality and enabling her to testify," he said in a statement.

Miller was released from a federal facility in Alexandria, Virginia, about 4 p.m. after a contempt order against her was vacated by a federal judge, a source with detailed knowledge of her case told CNN.
Had refused to testify

The chain of events that led to the contempt charges against Miller began in July 2003, when syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who is also a CNN contributor, identified Valerie Plame as a CIA operative in his column. He cited unidentified senior administration sources for the information.

Plame's husband is Joe Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Wilson charged that his wife's name was leaked to retaliate against him after he disputed Bush administration statements that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium in Africa.

Because federal law makes it a crime to deliberately reveal the identity of a CIA operative, the Justice Department launched an investigation, headed by Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago.

As part of his probe, Fitzgerald subpoenaed a number of journalists to testify about their sources, including Miller. Despite the fact that she never actually wrote a story on Plame or Wilson, Miller refused to testify about sources she developed during her reporting, and she was jailed for contempt in July.

She could have been held in jail until October, when the grand jury's term will expire.

New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said that until recently, Miller had received "only a generic waiver" of her confidentiality promise, "and she believed she had ample reason to doubt it had been freely given."

"In recent days, several important things have changed that convinced Judy that she was released from her obligation," Keller said in a statement. He did not provide details of what those changes were.

Miller said in her statement that she would not comment until after she testifies before the grand jury.
'Why didn't someone call us?'

After news broke Thursday of Miller's release from prison, Tate said Libby signed a waiver of confidentiality more than a year ago and that Tate followed up with a phone call to Abrams assuring him Libby's waiver was voluntary.

But Tate said Miller's attorney, Bob Bennett, told him over the Labor Day weekend that Miller did not accept that waiver because "it came from lawyers."

Tate said he wondered "why didn't someone call us 80 days ago" -- before Miller entered prison.

Tate said Libby has testified before the grand jury about his "conversations with Judy Miller and everyone else."

While it was unclear what Libby said in his testimony, Tate said Libby "did not know the name Valerie Plame until he read it in Robert Novak's article."

Tate also mentioned two Washington Post reporters, Glenn Kessler and Walter Pincus. He said both men have testified that they did not talk to Libby about the case.

CNN's Kelly Wallace and Dana Bash contributed to this report.

Judith Miller spent 12 weeks in jail for not saying anything about her source for the leak. The Bush administration saw to that.

Why should Scooter, who was told to leak (assuming) by Cheney, get a pardon? This misdeed lead to Judith's jailing. It was intentional.


This is hypocrisy at its finest.
 

Mike

Well-known member
MSNBC host Chris Matthews spoke with Libby juror Ann Redington on HARDBALL. Juror [#10] says she would support a Bush pardon for Libby.

Transcript:

Chris: You're for a pardon out of sympathy for the defendant.

Ann: Yeah, I think in the big picture, um, it kind of bothers me that there was this whole big crime being investigated and he got caught up in the investigation as opposed to in the actual crime that was supposedly committed.

Chris: Which is the leaking of a CIA agents name.

Ann: Exactly.

End
**********************************************************

Wasn't it shown that Armitage was the "Leaker"?
 

Texan

Well-known member
Mike said:
Wasn't it shown that Armitage was the "Leaker"?

Source of C.I.A. Leak Said to Admit Role
By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 — Richard L. Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state, has acknowledged that he was the person whose conversation with a columnist in 2003 prompted a long, politically laden criminal investigation in what became known as the C.I.A. leak case, a lawyer involved in the case said on Tuesday.

Mr. Armitage did not return calls for comment. But the lawyer and other associates of Mr. Armitage have said he has confirmed that he was the initial and primary source for the columnist, Robert D. Novak, whose column of July 14, 2003, identified Valerie Wilson as a Central Intelligence Agency officer.

The identification of Mr. Armitage as the original leaker to Mr. Novak ends what has been a tantalizing mystery. In recent months, however, Mr. Armitage’s role had become clear to many, and it was recently reported by Newsweek magazine and The Washington Post.

In the accounts by the lawyer and associates, Mr. Armitage disclosed casually to Mr. Novak that Ms. Wilson worked for the C.I.A. at the end of an interview in his State Department office. Mr. Armitage knew that, the accounts continue, because he had seen a written memorandum by Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman.

Mr. Grossman had taken up the task of finding out about Ms. Wilson after an inquiry from I. Lewis Libby Jr., chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Libby’s inquiry was prompted by an Op-Ed article on May 6, 2003, in The New York Times by Nicholas D. Kristof and an article on June 12, 2003, in The Washington Post by Walter Pincus.

The two articles reported on a trip by a former ambassador to Africa sponsored by the C.I.A. to check reports that Iraq was seeking enriched uranium to help with its nuclear arms program.

Neither article identified the ambassador, but it was known inside the government that he was Joseph C. Wilson IV, Ms. Wilson’s husband. White House officials wanted to know how much of a role she had in selecting him for the assignment.

Ms. Wilson was a covert employee, and after Mr. Novak printed her identity, the agency requested an investigation to see whether her name had been leaked illegally.

Some administration critics said her name had been made public in a campaign to punish Mr. Wilson, who had written in a commentary in The Times that his investigation in Africa led him to believe that the Bush administration had twisted intelligence to justify an attack on Iraq.

The complaints after Mr. Novak’s column led to the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s identity.

The special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, did not bring charges in connection with laws that prohibit the willful disclosure of the identity of an C.I.A. officer. But Mr. Fitzgerald did indict Mr. Libby on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, saying Mr. Libby had testified untruthfully to a grand jury and federal agents when he said he learned about Ms. Wilson’s role at the agency from reporters rather than from several officials, including Mr. Cheney.

According to an account in a coming book, “Hubris, the Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War’’ by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, excerpts of which appeared in Newsweek this week, Mr. Armitage told a few State Department colleagues that he might have been the leaker whose identity was being sought.

The book says Mr. Armitage realized that when Mr. Novak published a second column in October 2003 that said his source had been an official who was “not a political gunslinger.’’

The Justice Department was quickly informed, and Mr. Armitage disclosed his talks with Mr. Novak in subsequent interviews with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, even before Mr. Fitzgerald’s appointment.

The book quotes Carl W. Ford Jr., then head of the intelligence and research bureau at the State Department, as saying that Mr. Armitage had told him, “I may be the guy who caused this whole thing,’’ and that he regretted having told the columnist more than he should have.

Mr. Grossman’s memorandum did not mention that Ms. Wilson had undercover status.

Apart from Mr. Ford, as quoted in the book, the lawyer and colleagues of Mr. Armitage who discussed the case have spoken insisting on anonymity, apparently because Mr. Armitage was still not comfortable with the public acknowledgment of his role.

He was also the source for another journalist about Ms. Wilson, a reporter who did not write about her. The lawyers and associates said Mr. Armitage also told Bob Woodward, assistant managing editor of The Washington Post and a well-known author, of her identity in June 2003.

Mr. Woodward was a late player in the legal drama when he disclosed last November that he had the received the information and testified to a grand jury about it after learning that his source had disclosed the conversation to prosecutors.
 

Econ101

Well-known member
I saw the interview, Mike. The juror was very competent.

My problem is that this was not the view the judge had when he threw Miller in the slammer.

Washington D.C. is a rumor mill with leaks and planned leaks. Many times this is for political ends. This administration has tried to control leaks more than any other. Bush even came out strongly against the person who did the leak. It is disingenuous for the administration to make such a big deal out of Miller and then pardon their own.

I think this would have just been D.C. if Miller hadn't been put in jail. Leaks have been a part of that city. I really think that Bush was ignorant of the details or he wouldn't have said what he said about national security leaks and this wouldn't have been a big deal at all. It just goes to show that Cheney was running this op.
 

Mike

Well-known member
I don't buy all this Bush/Cheney conspiracy garbage.

The Dems made a big deal out of it cause Joe Wilson was on their side. It was headlines for weeks and weeks. The Dems were trying to make an "IRAQ" issue of it.

They had what they thought was ammo to get at Bush.

Politics as usual. We have much more important issues to discern.

Pardon the man (Libby).
 

Texan

Well-known member
Econ101 said:
It is disingenuous for the administration to make such a big deal out of Miller and then pardon their own.
How did the administration "make such a big deal out of Miller"? The judge is the one that threw her ass in jail. Libby gave her a waiver - even before she went to jail. Don't you consider Libby part of the administration?
 

Econ101

Well-known member
Texan said:
Econ101 said:
It is disingenuous for the administration to make such a big deal out of Miller and then pardon their own.
How did the administration "make such a big deal out of Miller"? The judge is the one that threw her ass in jail. Libby gave her a waiver - even before she went to jail. Don't you consider Libby part of the administration?

The administration made a big deal about leaks. It was Libby who leaked. Miller didn't even say anything. Libby is the one who lied.

I don't think he should go to jail necessarily, but Miller shouldn't have either. I didn't know Libby gave the waiver before she went in jail. The press tried to keep the rights of the press intact with Miller's actions.
 

Steve

Well-known member
econ101:
It was Libby who leaked.

actually it was "Richard L. Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state,"

a fact known be the prosecution "before" Miller went to jail..

The Times claims that White House counsel Alberto Gonzales was informed that Armitage was involved on October 2, 2003, but asked not to be told details. Patrick Fitzgerald began his grand jury investigation three months later knowing Armitage was a leaker (as did Attorney General John Ashcroft before turning over the investigation)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Armitage


In July of 2005, Miller was jailed for contempt of court for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury investigating a leak naming Valerie Plame as a covert CIA agent. Miller did not write about Plame, but was reportedly in possession of evidence relevant to the leak investigation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller_%28journalist%29

So in effect his investigation should have ended in Oct. 2003...he knew who was the person who leaked the information,,,by why let facts stop a good witch hunt?
 

aplusmnt

Well-known member
Serves Miller right, just because someone leaks who a CIA agent is to you does not mean you should be telling anyone else let alone the whole world. You can ask my 9 year old rather an American should ever broadcast to the world who one of our spies are and he would tell you NO.

Exercising your freedom of speech and the press does not mean you are exercising your obligation of being a Good American.

She deserves her jail time if nothing else but for the fact she repeated information that she should have kept quiet. No worse to be the inside man telling who a CIA operative is and being on the Outside putting it in the paper.

And I have no problem if he is Pardoned but like Texan and Mike said, only after he has went through the appeals system. He should serve jail time just like the Border Patrol until then.
 

passin thru

Well-known member
Not telling you where I stand, but foof for thought.

How many Dems that are condemning a pardon kept their mouth shut during the Mark Rich pardon?
 

Econ101

Well-known member
passin thru said:
Not telling you where I stand, but foof for thought.

How many Dems that are condemning a pardon kept their mouth shut during the Mark Rich pardon?

Good point, passin. There has been a big abuse of pardons on both sides of the aisle. Of course you know, it really started with Nixon. I don't remember any previous presidents before who abused it so much but maybe some one else does.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Texan said:
Mike said:
Pardon the man (Libby).
Wait until the appellate process is done. What's good for the Border Patrol guys is good enough for Libby.

But how come Libby is walking around free for the appellate process and the Border Patrol gus are behind bars and being stuck in with the general criminal population? Do we now have a Federal Justice system based on who you are :???:

Libby will never spend a day behind bars of a real prison.......
 
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