User:Leak watcher/Valerie Plame affair: New details uncovered

September 13, 2006

A portion of the Fitzgerald affidavit edited to insert names based on space and context. Click to enlarge

According to a March 1, 2006 redacted court document produced by Patrick Fitzgerald, I. Lewis Libby "indisputably" had knowledge of one of Robert Novak's sources for his column before Novak had publicly announced his identity. Libby had testified before a grand jury that he learned about Robert Novak writing a column about Joe Wilson and his wife before it was published, and that he had done so on July 10 or July 11.

By attempting to place names of persons involved in the case into the redacted spaces within the document, Wikinews editor leak watcher has concluded that a match based on spacing and appropriate font size can be made. From this, this contributor concludes that Karl Rove had told Libby about the Novak column several days before it was published. The document was an ex parte affidavit, meaning the document's contents were written by Patrick Fitzgerald under oath, and I. Lewis Libby did not have access to the document.

Click to enlarge.

On July 11, according to the National Journal, Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby met at the close of a White House senior staff meeting, coinciding with the date given in special prosecutor Fitzgerald's document. In Libby's indictment, it is noted that on July 10 or July 11, Libby spoke to a senior official in the White House, "Official A," who informed Libby of a conversation he had had with Robert Novak prior to the publication of his article on July 14.

Rove once said before a grand jury, according to The Washington Post , that Libby may have been his source for information concerning the status of Joe Wilson's wife as a CIA operative. It was reported in June 2006 that Rove will not face an indictment in the case when his legal team made a public announcement. One analyst then posited that Rove was not indicted because he had told the truth to the FBI regarding his role in the leak.

Robert Novak and Matthew Cooper calls

In a July 14, 2003 column, Robert Novak wrote that the wife of Ambassador Joe Wilson was a CIA operative for weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials had said to Novak that Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had an agreement with Niger to buy "yellowcake" uranium. Recent media inquiries have revealed the main source of Robert Novak's column to be former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Armitage confirmed to the New York Times he was the original source of Robert Novak. Novak has said that Karl Rove confirmed his other source's claims.

According to the Boston Globe, I. Lewis Libby wrote in his waiver of his confidentiality to Judith Miller, "As noted above, my lawyer confirmed my waiver to other reporters in just the way he did with your lawyer. Why? Because as I am sure will not be news to you, the public report of every other reporter's testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame's name or identity with me, or knew about her before our call."

Because Libby knew other reporters had known Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA by the time of the phone call between Libby and Miller, if Libby is truthful in his waiver, Libby's phone conversation with Miller would have identified Joe Wilson's wife by her name for the first time using information he had gotten from Karl Rove, who had in turn heard the name from Robert Novak.

A portion of the Fitzgerald affidavit edited to insert names based on space and context reveals that at the time of Libby having written the waiver, he did not know Woodward had spoken with Armitage. Click to enlarge.

Bob Woodward learned about Joe Wilson's wife being a CIA operative from Richard Armitage on June 13, according to media reports and redacted portions of Fitzgerald's affidavit that had been edited based on context and the amount of text that would fit in blank spaces left by redactions. However, it is not known if Armitage mentioned Plame by name, and even if Armitage had, Libby still would not have known so before the waiver was signed.

According to another edited portion of the Fitzgerald affitavit, and other court documents from the case, Libby received a transcript of Woodward's conversation with Armitage, with Armitage's name redacted, under the legal process of discovery some time between early January 2006 and March 1, 2006. The July 12 contact with Miller is the only time the Libby indictment mentions they had talked by telephone rather than by meeting.

The July 9 phone call lasted fifteen or twenty minutes and originally concerned a separate column on the appointment of Frances Fragos Townsend as deputy national security advisor for terrorism, according to one Washington Post source. When Novak said he had learned Wilson's wife is a CIA operative at the end of the conversation, Rove responded, "I've heard that, too." The source for the Washington Post article says the call happened in the week before Novak published his column, according to White House call logs, aligning with the National Journal's claim the call happened on July 9.

Bill Harlow, who had been a CIA spokesman in July 2003, said in a July 2005 interview with the Washington Post that he had testified before the grand jury one year earlier that at least three days before Novak published the column, Novak had a conversation with him in which he said that Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed. After Novak's call, Harlow checked Valerie Plame's status as a CIA agent and confirmed her status was as an undercover operative, but could not tell she was undercover because the status was classified.

On July 11, according to Cooper's own account, Matthew Cooper called Karl Rove, who had been in his White House office in Washington, D.C. according to Cooper's memory that the call had gone through a White House switchboard, for information relating to the essay written by Joe Wilson titled "What I Didn't Find in Africa". During the conversation, Rove allegedly indicated that Wilson's wife worked for the "agency," that she worked on "WMD issues," and that she was responsible for sending Wilson. On July 12, I. Lewis Libby and Matthew Cooper held a phone conversation. During the conversation, when Cooper asked if he had heard anything about her being sent to Niger, "Libby replied, 'Yeah, I've heard that too,' or words to that effect." At the end of his article, Matthew Cooper noted that during the phone conversation, Rove informed him that "things would be declassified soon."

The memo to Colin Powell

Meanwhile, from July 7 to July 12, members of the Bush administration had been taking a trip to Africa on board the Air Force One. According to separate accounts in The Washington Post and The Associated Press, the memo was taken by Powell on board the plane and circulated amongst its passengers: President Bush, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Andrew Card, Ari Fleischer, and other top aides.

Associated Press sources have said Richard Armitage ordered the head of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Carl Ford, to send the memo to Colin Powell on July 6, and it arrived on board the Air Force One on July 7. The Washington Post "current and former government official" sources make no mention of Armitage in this role, but do say Ford had been asked for the memo to be sent the memo on July 6, and he changed the addressee from Grossman to Powell.

The name "Armitage" was put into parts of the document relating to June phone interviews with Bob Woodward, which aligned with the Associated Press article mentioning that he had met with Bob Woodward on June 13, 2003, and another recent article by The Washington Post uses sources claiming he had accidentally let the information that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA slip during the conversation with Woodward, before a separate phone conversation with Robert Novak about a month later. It was claimed in late 2005 by the Associated Press , the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post that Armitage had been "out of the country," or "traveling," during June, with Colin Powell, causing him to be excluded from speculation.

On June 10, three days before the Woodwood-Armitage phone conversation, Powell had been in Buenos Aires, Chile. According to sources of an August 2005 Time article, Powell had already read the memo in mid-June. According to an article in The Los Angeles Times entitled "A CIA Cover Blown, a White House Exposed" by Tom Hamburger and Sonni Efron, published on August 25, 2005, after Armitage had read a June 12 The Washington Post story, Armitage requested of intelligence officers in the Department of State that more information be given to him. The article says, "He was forwarded a copy of a memo classified "Secret" that included a description of Wilson's trip for the CIA, his findings, a brief description of the origin of the trip and a reference to 'Wilson's wife.'" According to the sources used in the Time article, Powell did not tell the White House about the memo until after July 6.

Approximately one month after the phone conversation with Bob Woodward, Richard Armitage spoke to Robert Novak and stated during the phone conversation that Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. While Richard Armitage professes that he did so in an offhand way, Robert Novak has recently criticized Richard Armitage for distorting the events to make it look as if the disclosure was more casual.

According to Armitage, it was on October 1, 2003 that he realized he had accidentally mentioned Valerie Wilson's name to Robert Novak, and he then telephoned Colin Powell, before they later discussed the matter with the top State Department lawyer. On September 28, 2003, The Washington Post had reported that the Department of Justice had been doing a criminal investigation into the administration leak at the request of CIA Director George Tennet.

Court documents show that on September 29, John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to CIA Director George Tennet asking if the CIA had any contacts with the Department of Justice to request an investigation into the disclosure of a CIA employee's identity. The CIA director of congressional affairs wrote back, on the request of George Tennet, that on July 30 a CIA attorney left a message with the Chief of the Counterintelligence Section expressing concern with news articles related to the disclosure of that employee's identity, and on July 30 the CIA had informed the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

John Conyers, in December 2005, introduced two bills, H. Res. 636 and H. Res. 637, that would censor the President and Vice President, respectively, "based on indisputable evidence of unaccounted for misstatements and abuse of power in the public record." According to the THOMAS section of the Library of Congress website, the first bill had 17 sponsors, while the second bill had 18 sponsors, as of September 4, 2006.

On April 28, 2005, Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior advisor to Bill Clinton, wrote in The Guardian that staff members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee believed Ambassador John Bolton had been spying on Colin Powell. John Bolton had then been the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security with the title of "Senior Adviser to the President and the Secretary of State for Arms Control, Nonproliferation and Disarmament." The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee discovered Bolton had gained access to 10 intercepts of conversations by the National Security Agency, which monitors government official conversations.

At the time, Powell had opposed John Bolton's appointment as U.N. ambassador to the United Nations, The Guardian had reported five days earlier. Blumenthal's account stated Richard Armitage orchestrated much of the action against John Bolton. Carl W. Ford, Jr., who had sent the memo in the first place, described Bolton as a "serial abuser." Angering the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Condoleezza Rice refused to release the intercepts Bolton obtained. John Bolton was later appointed to the position of U.S. ambassador in a recess appointment.

Fleischer's role

Ari Fleischer had already been told on July 7 by I. Lewis Libby that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, according to Libby's indictment, which only mentions him by his former title of White House Press Secretary. Ari Fleischer was reported by Bloomberg as having seen the July 7 memo, and Andrea Mitchell said on the MSNBC program Hardball with Chris Matthews on October 11 that "Ari Fletcher" had seen the memo, according to an October 12 transcript. Bloomberg also claimed their sources had told them that at that time, the investigation had been expanded from investigating to see whether a 1982 law prohibiting knowingly revealing the identity of a CIA agent that had worked overseas within five years, to investigating whether officials, including Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer, that had already testified had falsely testified or obstructed justice.

Like with Rove, the investigation on Fleischer seems to have already finished, if there was such one. The New York Times reported in July 2006 that Libby is the only administration member left under scrutiny. In a letter dated March 31, 2006, though, Libby's lawyers write that they believe Ari Fleischer will be called as a government witness.

In a recent June 2006 court document, the judge presiding over the case, Reggie B. Walton, has said that the 1982 law only has "peripheral pertinence to this case," and the only question the jury will be asked to answer is if Libby intentionally lied when he testified before the grand jury and to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Miller's notes and Miller's waiver

While President Bush's trip lasted from July 7 to July 12, according to a source used by the Washington Post familiar with Libby's account of his conversation, Libby had met with Judith Miller to interview him about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq on July 8. When Miller asked why Wilson was picked to investigate whether Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger, Libby replied "the White House was working with the CIA to find out more about Wilson's trip and how he was selected." The source said I. Lewis Libby, on that day, did not know where Wilson's wife worked, but according to Miller's account of her own notes in a New York Times article, when he spoke with Miller on July 8, he expressed a belief she worked at the CIA. In her notes, Miller wrote the name "Valerie Flame," and told Patrick Fitzgerald she could not remember where the name came from, when it was written, or the reason it was misspelled, but she said she did not believe it came from Libby because it was not written in the part of Miller's notebook as the notes from her interviews with him.

Libby, according to Miller's notes for June 23, denied that the vice president ever knew of Joe Wilson, what he did, or what he said, and the "agency" had not reported to them. Miller also wrote, "Wife works in bureau?", when Libby allegedly said Wilson's wife may work at a bureau of the CIA, according to I. Lewis Libby's indictment.

Libby's indictment states he learned from Dick Cheney on July 12 what CIA division Wilson worked in, and understood Cheney had learned this from the CIA, but because Libby's conversation with Miller had happened earlier, he would have learned where in the CIA she worked independently. Although during the June conversation with Miller, Libby had been allegedly dissatisfied that President Bush may have made inaccurate statements based on CIA intelligence on Iraq, during the July 8 phone call Libby he questioned the credibility of Wilson's findings by noting 2002 and 1999 reports. Notes taken on July 12 included the name "Victoria Wilson" written inside a box.

According to a court document written under oath, "Mr. Libby had received more information than the Vice President because the CIA was responding to Mr. Libby's questions or providing supplemental information on subjects in which he had expressed an interest previously."

The National Intelligence Estimate document

The memorandum itself that Colin Powell received is three pages long, and Plame, referred to by the name Valerie Wilson, is mentioned in the second paragraph of the document. The information concerning Valerie Wilson takes up two sentences of the seven sentence long paragraph, according to a The Washington Post article. The New York Sun obtained a declassified copy of the document, in which one of the two sentences is revealed, but the other is redacted. The sentence says, "In a February 19, 2002, meeting convened by Valerie Wilson, a CIA WMD manager, and the wife of Joe Wilson, he previewed his plans and rationale for going to Niger."

The document was marked with the words SECRET, NOFORN, and ORCON. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Security Guide, this meant that its dissemination could reasonably be expected seriously damage national security if done without authorization, the information may not be allowed to be passed to foreign officials, and any additional distribution or dissemination of the document is controlled by its originator.

According to the Department of State's guide to the meaning of codes used in giving justification for classification of documents, the document was classified because it revealed intelligence activities (including special activities), sources or methods, or cryptology, and it revealed foreign relations of the United States, including confidential sources. When it was originally classified, it was exempted from automatic declassification within 10 years, under Section 1.6 of Executive Order 12958, because its dissemination would reveal an intelligence source, method or activity, or a cryptologic system or activity.

I. Lewis Libby's indictment claims that after Libby asked an Under Secretary of State for information about Joe Wilson's trip on May 29, 2003, that Under Secretary of State, (Marc Isaiah Grossman, according to CNN sources ) directed the Bureau of Intelligence and Research to prepare a report on the trip, and meanwhile the Under Secretary provided Libby with oral reports. Libby once requested that he be provided with all documents relating to his morning intelligence briefings, and his notes from May 6, 2003 until March 24, 2004. The Associated Press reported on August 10, 2006 that Libby had been provided summaries of his daily briefings by the CIA. Until August 2006, Libby had had difficulty obtaining his morning briefings because they contained sensitive intelligence. According to an affidavit by a CIA officer, many of them were with the Vice President.

The July 12 phone calls

On July 12, Libby flew on board the Air Force Two with Dick Cheney to Norfolk, Virginia from Washington, D.C. and back in the same day, according to an October 2005 The Washington Post article. During that time, it is alleged in his indictment that Libby discussed with "other officials" aboard the plane that July 12 how to handle "pending media inquiries" about Joe Wilson, including questions from Matthew Cooper. Libby's indictment places his phone call with Cooper on that July 12 afternoon. In the article, the only officials other than Libby on board the plane are Dick Cheney and Catherine Martin, a press aide. While Cheney and Libby were in Norfolk, Dick Cheney commissioned the USS Ronald Reagan as he stood aboard its deck. This is confirmed by the White House website and the website of the USS Ronald Reagan.

On July 12, also according to his indictment , Libby also expounded upon a statement he had allegedly already said to Judith Miller on July 8. According to the indictment, on June 23, Libby said he believed Wilson's wife worked at a bureau of the CIA, on July 8, Libby said he believed Joe Wilson's wife was a CIA agent, and on July 12 in the late afternoon he had contacted Judith Miller by telephone and told her she worked at the CIA. Also according to his indictment, he had made a false statement under his grand jury testimony that he had learned the information from other reporters.

July 12, 2003 is the date Libby has claimed since at least mid-April 2006 to have been the day Cheney authorized a leak of a CIA report, after having shifted his position in his grand jury testimony. Four out of five of Libby's charges involve false statements or perjury concerning his conversations with journalists Tim Russert and Matthew Cooper, while the remaining one is for obstruction of justice. According to a recent New York Times report, Libby is taking the defense that he did not lie willingly under oath.

Libby's legal team argued in March 2006 that Libby had simply forgotten he had mentioned to Judith Miller where Joe Wilson's wife worked, and his indictment overemphasized the amount of importance Libby and other government officials had attributed to Valerie Plame's employment status, and they were more concerned with publicly disputing the report by Joe Wilson. They contended the indictment should have focused more on whether or not he lied by saying he learned Plame's identity from reporters, rather than leaking her status as a CIA agent, which he was not charged with.

In a June 2006 court document, it is reported that Libby currently contends that any discussions he had with government officials and news reporters were legitimately conducted solely for rebutting the accuracy and the merits of Joe Wilson's findings.

He also contended that government officials were more focused on making counterarguements to reporters that Wilson was not sent by Dick Cheney to Niger, and before the President's State of the Union address, the report was not shared with Dick Cheney or any senior officials in the White House. I. Lewis Libby's lawyers claim only declassified information was disseminated, , and Matthew Cooper claimed in his Time column that Karl Rove stated that "things" would be declassified soon. Dick Cheney would have been able to declassify the information before Libby leaked it on July 12, using powers he said had been granted to him by an executive order, during a FOX News interview. This executive order, Executive Order 13292, was given by President Bush on March 25, 2003, amending Executive Order 12958. When Dick Cheney was asked if he had ever declassified information unilaterally, he responded, "I don't want to get into that."

In Patrick Fitzgerald's affidavit, he writes, "Moreover, Mr. Russert and Mr. Kessler have each published accounts of their absence of conversations with Libby about Wilson and his wife. And while Libby cites Andrea Mitchell's account implying that she knew about Wilson’s wife before July 14, there is a later statement by NBC that she did not." I. Lewis Libby's indictment says that he had said to the Federal Bureau of Investigation the false statements that he learned the identity of Joe Wilson's wife from Tim Russert on July 10 or July 11, that Russert said "all the reporters" already knew Plame's identity, and that Libby was "surprised to hear" Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. A Newsweek article dated August 1, 2006 has already reported that in a deal cut between Patrick Fitzgerald and Tim Russert, NBC made a statement last year that "he did not provide that information to Libby." The author of the Newsweek article said that his source was close to Karl Rove and the source had requested anonymity because the FBI asked participants not to comment publicly. The FBI interview happened October 10, 2003, according to Libby's attorneys.

According to the information in the Fitzgerald affidavit, when edited, "July 10 or July 11", the same days Libby says he remembers meeting Karl Rove, were the days Libby had earlier told the grand jury that he had remembered talking to Russert. The New York Times reported on October 25, 2005, three days before the Libby indictment, that Libby had learned Plame's identity from taking notes during a June 12 conversation with Dick Cheney, rather than from journalists, using lawyers involved in the case as sources. If the sources of the New York Times article had spoken the truth, this would mean Libby would have already known Joe Wilson's wife's role by the date Libby's indictment alleges he had a phone conversation with Tim Russert concerning Libby's portrayal in the media.

According to MSNBC News Services , an attorney "knowledgable about the case" has stated to them that President Bush did not tell Cheney specifically to use Libby to leak information, but he directed Cheney to "get it out."

Note from the author

Redacted information in the document was revealed by simply having Microsoft Paint emulate the font and text size used in Fitzgerald's document by typing over unredacted words he had written. Then I proceeded to fill in the few possible names that would fit the context of surrounding words until one fit inside the empty space left by the redaction. The redacted affidavit by Patrick Fitzgerald is available for Internet access in several different places, such as on the white collar crime section of a blogging network for law professors. The section in particular is maintained by Peter J. Henning, who is a Professor of Law at Wayne State University Law School, and Ellen S. Podgor, who is the Associate Dean of Faculty Development & Distance Education and a Professor of Law at Stetson University College of Law.