Category Archives: Bye-Bye Karl

Matt Cooper Outs Rove On Meet The Press…And Nobody Cares?

So I’m so busy trying to not pay attention to Karl Rove on Meet The Press yesterday morning, that I don’t bother to watch the rest of the show…
Where as, luck, or in this case, NBC, would have it, Matt Cooper apparently let the cat out o’ the bag about Rove leaking Valerie Plame’s identity. All casual and shit.
Then Gregory moves on to another topic…like nothing important was even said.
I wouldn’t have even have known to go back and look at my recording if my trusty t r u t h o u t newsletter hadn’t have informed me.



Gregory: Matt Cooper, let’s pick up on an aspect of the interview with, with Karl Rove having to do with the leak case, the CIA leak case, that you were part of as well. And something that’s very interesting, he, he went out of his way to say, “I would not have been a confirming source on this kind of information” and taking issue with, with Novak’s testimony in his column that he knew who Valerie Plame was. He said he would never confirm that information. That’s different from your experience with him.
Cooper: Yeah, I, I think he was dissembling, to put it charitably. Look, Karl Rove told me about Valerie Plame’s identity on July 11th, 2003. I called him because Ambassador Wilson was in the news that week. I didn’t know Ambassador Wilson even had a wife until I talked to Karl Rove and he said that she worked at the agency and she worked on WMD. I mean, to imply that he didn’t know about it or that this was all a leak by someone else…
Gregory: Or that he had heard it from somebody else…
Cooper: or that he heard it as some rumor out in the hallway is, is nonsense.
Gregory: But he makes no apologies to Valerie Plame.
Cooper: Karl Rove never apologizes. That’s not what he does.
Then Gregory just changes the subject…”Back to politics…”
I thought they were talking about politics…

Libby Found Guilty

Ah. That feels better. But just a little, because it would seem that Dick and Karl got off without a scratch. Damn!
Sure didn’t take too long for the Jury to find Libby guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice.
Libby Found Guilty in CIA Leak Trial
By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN and MATT APUZZO
Associated Press Writers
via t r u t h o u t

Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was convicted Tuesday of lying and obstructing an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative’s identity.
Libby is the highest-ranking White House official to be convicted of a felony since the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s. The conviction focused renewed attention on the Bush administration’s much-criticized handling of weapons of mass destruction intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war.
The verdict culminated a nearly four-year investigation into how CIA official Valerie Plame’s name was leaked to reporters in 2003. The trial revealed how top members of the Bush administration were eager to discredit Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who accused the administration of doctoring prewar intelligence on Iraq…
He faces up to 30 years in prison when he is sentenced June 5 but under federal sentencing guidelines is likely to face far less. Defense attorneys immediately promised to ask for a new trial or appeal the conviction…
Reaction to the conviction on Capitol Hill was swift. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid welcomed the jury’s verdict and called on Bush to pledge not to pardon Libby. Before the trial began, the Justice Department said it had no pardon file active for Libby.
“It’s about time someone in the Bush Administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics,” Reid said…
U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton ordered a pre-sentencing report be completed by May 15. Judges use such reports to help determine sentences. Libby will be allowed to remain free while awaiting sentencing.

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Scooter Names Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer In Plame Scandal

This is from the April 13, 2006 program.
Libby’s latest court filings name Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer as people who were also involved in leaking the information about Valerie Plame to the press. In Ari Fleischer’s grand jury testimony, he describes a day when Scooter Libby took him to lunch, which had never happened before, and Scooter told him that Joseph Wilson’s wife was a CIA agent, and that it was not widely known. (wink wink) Ari said that he took that to mean that he should leak it to the press. But the important part here is, of course, that Scooter has named Karl Rove as being involved in the conspiracy.
Video – Rove Implicated by Libby (Quicktime 17 MB)

Audio – Rove Implicated by Libby (MP3 9 MB)

Joseph Wilson On Keith Olbermann

This is from the April 10, 2006 program of
Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
As always, Keith Olbermann is the only guy in the news media thoroughly covering this story.
Joseph Wilson clarifies the details and emphasizes seriousness of the situation.



 In a nutshell, President Bush, Cheney and Karl Rove are traitors. Together, they conspired to out Valerie Plame as a CIA agent in retaliation for her husband’s going to the media about how Saddam hadn’t really purchased uranium from Niger, and therefore, how Iraq’s WMDs didn’t exist.


Video – Joe Wilson on Olbermann – All (37 MB)

Video – Joe Wilson on Olbermann – Intro (9 MB)

Video – Joe Wilson on Olbermann – Wilson Interview (13 MB)

Video – Joe Wilson on Olbermann – Shuster Analysis (10 MB)

Audio – Joe Wilson on Olbermann – All (18 MB)

Audio – Joe Wilson on Olbermann – Intro (5 MB)

Audio – Joe Wilson on Olbermann – Wilson Interview (9 MB)

Audio – Joe Wilson on Olbermann – Shuster Analysis (6 MB)

Joseph Wilson On 60 Minutes – How Valerie Plame Leak Threatens Our National Security

This is from the October 30, 2005 program of 60 minutes
I’ve been clearing off my TIVO since I’ve been home so much lately, and what do I run across but a 60 Minutes piece from October 30, 2005 about Valerie Plame. Not about the scandal per se, but about Valerie: who she was, what she did, and the lives potentially at risk and irrepairable damage that has been done to our National Security as a result of her identity being revealed.

Valerie was an undercover Agent gathering intelligence about numerous countries’ Nuclear Weapons programs. She dedicated her life to protecting the National Security of the United States. She recommended her husband, Joseph Wilson, to go on another patriotic mission to Nigeria to verify whether or not Saddam Hussein had purchased uranium from there. Wilson went on this mission, almost as a favor, for the Vice President himself. When Wilson came back with the truth – that the documents saying Saddam had purchased uranium were forged, the Vice President wanted Wilson to keep quiet about it.

When he did not, and instead offered up to the press what he had uncovered, our Bush, Cheney and Rove conspired to reveal his wife’s identity in retaliation.
Wow. You’ve really got to see this for yourself.

Video – 60 Minutes On The CIA Leak – All

Video – 60 Minutes On The CIA Leak – Part One

Video – 60 Minutes On The CIA Leak – Part Two

Audio – 60 Minutes On The CIA Leak – All

Audio – 60 Minutes On The CIA Leak – Part One

Audio – 60 Minutes On The CIA Leak – Part Two

MP3s Now Available Of Meet The Press Interviews Of Rove and Rummy

I’ve been shaping up my library a bit. Going through old hard drives and making sure that I have uploaded things before I clear off my drive.
What I’m actually finding is a file or two I forgot to upload, or sets of video files I forgot to generate MP3s for. So…
That’s what I did today: generated MP3s of Rove and Rummy on Meet The Press:
Rummy on Meet The Press – February 6, 2005

Rummy MP3s (MP3s)

Rummy Videos (Videos)
Rove on Meet the Press – November 7, 2004

Rove MP3s

Rove Videos

What A Set Up – Libby’s Trial Set For January 2007

Scooter Libby’s trial has been conveniently calendered for AFTER the upcoming election.

Libby Trial Date Set for January 2007
By Edwin Chen for the The Los Angeles Times

A US District Court judge today set a January, 2007 trial date for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a former top White House official who was indicted on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI in a federal investigation on how a CIA operative’s identity was exposed.
Libby, who was Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff and his top national security adviser, has proclaimed his innocence.
“We are very happy with the trial date,” Theodore Wells, Libby’s lawyer, said after today’s court hearing. “The Jan. 8 date will permit us the time we need to prepare our defense,” he said, adding his client was “totally innocent.”
Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald launched the investigation after the CIA operative, Valerie Plame, was identified in the news media in 2003. At the time, her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador, had emerged as a prominent critic of the manner in which the Bush Administration had used intelligence to build a case to launch the Iraq war.

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The Waters Rise Around Rove and Libby

This is from October 21, 2005.
Patrick Fitzgerald has a nice website containing documents about the case now, too!

Cover-Up Issue Is Seen as Focus in Leak Inquiry
By David Johnston for the NY Times.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 – As he weighs whether to bring criminal charges in the C.I.A. leak case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel, is focusing on whether Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, sought to conceal their actions and mislead prosecutors, lawyers involved in the case said Thursday.
Among the charges that Mr. Fitzgerald is considering are perjury, obstruction of justice and false statement – counts that suggest the prosecutor may believe the evidence presented in a 22-month grand jury inquiry shows that the two White House aides sought to cover up their actions, the lawyers said.
Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have been advised that they may be in serious legal jeopardy, the lawyers said, but only this week has Mr. Fitzgerald begun to narrow the possible charges. The prosecutor has said he will not make up his mind about any charges until next week, government officials say.
With the term of the grand jury expiring in one week, though, some lawyers in the case said they were persuaded that Mr. Fitzgerald had all but made up his mind to seek indictments. None of the lawyers would speak on the record, citing the prosecutor’s requests not to talk about the case…
Mr. Wilson had become an irritant to the administration in the late spring and early summer of 2003 even before he went public as a critic of the war in Iraq by writing a July 6, 2003 Op-Ed article in The New York Times.
In that article he wrote that he had traveled to Africa in 2002 to explore the accuracy of intelligence reports that suggested Iraq might have tried to purchase uranium ore from Niger. Mr. Wilson said that he had been sent on the trip by the C.I.A. after Mr. Cheney’s office raised questions about one such report, but that he found it unlikely that any sale had taken place…
Mr. Rove did not tell the grand jury about his phone conversation with Mr. Cooper until months into the leak investigation, long after he had testified about his conversation with Mr. Novak, the lawyers said. Later, Mr. Rove said he had not recalled the conversation with Mr. Cooper until the discovery of an e-mail message about it that he sent to Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser. But Mr. Fitzgerald has remained skeptical about the omission, the lawyers said.
In Mr. Libby’s case, Mr. Fitzgerald has focused on his statements about how he first learned of Ms. Wilson’s identity, the lawyers said. Mr. Libby has said that he learned of Ms. Wilson from reporters. But Mr. Fitzgerald may have doubts about his account because the journalists who have been publicly identified as having talked to Mr. Libby have said that they did not provide the name, that they could not recall what had been said or that they had discussed unrelated subjects.

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