In Plame Sight
Scooter Libby’s Trial Unearthed Evidence to Fully Explain the Valerie Plame CIA Leak. It Just Took Until Now for Someone to Tell You.
[NOTE: Eventually, time permitting, this will be a full-fledged website with links, multiple pages, etc.. -- but as a starting point for those interested in the Plame leak scandal, here's an unpublished article I originally wrote several years ago.
This is just a single web page with no links; there is some underlining, but just for emphasis (and don't let the light-blue font for the footnotes fool you! You'll have to scroll manually to the end to see the notes). But the key details are all here, hopefully presented in a reasonably engaging narrative. Happy reading! - Swopa]
It broke into public view in July 2003 as an irresistible, almost implausibly Hollywood-like narrative: a beautiful, blonde female CIA covert employee, outed by her own government in the midst of political infighting over a controversial war. And when the Washington Post raised the stakes in late September with an incendiary scoop—in which an anonymous “senior administration official” seemed to blow the whistle on his own colleagues, claiming “two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists” to expose the CIA officer—the scandal erupted into a full-scale media feeding frenzy, with journalists and talking heads speculating about just who had been caught red-handed, and by whom.
But then, it all faded away somehow. Yes, eventually a special prosecutor was named at the end of 2003 to examine how Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA employment had been revealed. And more than three years later, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff to vice president Dick Cheney, was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice.
But the prolonged investigation and trial changed the media’s focus. A procedural narrative replaced the once-tantalizing whodunit angle: Who was testifying to the grand jury? Would there be indictments? Then came months of pretrial maneuvering between Patrick Fitzgerald’s team of prosecutors and Libby’s lawyers, followed by the day-to-day soap opera of the trial and jury deliberations.
By the time President Bush commuted Libby’s sentence in early July of 2007, the press showed little interest in going back to the original questions of how the leak happened. When Libby was indicted in October 2005, some major news outlets put together a “tick-tock,” assembling the freshly revealed evidence into a chronological narrative.[1] None did so after the jury delivered its verdict.
The resulting vacuum left most Americans with jumbled impressions of the scandal. In the casual conventional wisdom, State Department deputy Richard Armitage was singled out as totally responsible for the leak to veteran Washington, D.C. columnist Robert Novak (a view encouraged by partisan efforts to minimize the Bush administration’s intentional role in outing Plame).
There were leaks by other officials, too, but the lack of any attempted explanation in the press made them seem like random events. And though everyone knew Libby had been convicted of lying, no one could say why he lied—except to suspect he was covering for his boss, Vice President Dick Cheney. But again, it seemed impossible to explain what either Libby or Cheney was trying to hide.
The Libby trial, however, produced enough evidence to solve nearly all of these mysteries… if anyone had just bothered to look more closely. Here are some of the things you should have been told before now.
1. Robert Novak’s Secret Source: Scooter LibbyAs the journalist who revealed Valerie Wilson’s CIA employment in July 2003, Robert Novak became the focus of initial scrutiny over the leak. Apparently unprepared for the attention, Novak revised his explanation of how it happened[2] with almost comic regularity. Just days after the column appeared, Novak told Newsday’s Timothy Phelps and Knut Royce, "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me… They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."[3]
After the Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation in late September, Novak switched to describing the leak—both in print and on television a few days later[4]—as “offhand,” coming at the end of a wide-ranging interview with a single official. Richard Armitage recognized himself in this description, and he contacted the FBI on October 1st (the same day of Novak's printed column alluding to him) to admit his role.[5]
Novak reversed field again as Libby’s trial approached, however, claiming that Armitage “identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked, and… made clear he considered it [Plame’s identity] especially suited for my column.”[6]
You’d imagine some heads might turn if, once the trial started, the journalistic “Prince of Darkness” confessed he’d talked to Scooter Libby, too… except that this is exactly what happened, and hardly anyone noticed.[7] Novak admitted a phone bill showing he had left a message for Libby at 4:46 pm on July 8, 2003 (the same afternoon he spoke to Armitage) was accurate, and said Libby got back to him by the next day—something he hadn’t told his column readers or TV viewers.[8]
Novak swore he “got no help, and no confirmation” from Libby on the subject of Valerie Plame Wilson. But his column exposing her contained some arcane talking points about the controversy that led to Plame’s outing (the CIA-sponsored visit to Niger by her husband, Joseph Wilson, to examine claims that Iraq had tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons)—arguments that Scooter had tried to impress on other journalists.[9] One sought to absolve Libby’s boss of responsibility for Wilson’s trip, as Novak wrote that “The White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, and not just Vice President Cheney, asked the CIA to look into” the subject that spurred it. Libby considered this claim to be so important that he underlined and circled it during the same conversation with Cheney where they first discussed Plame.[10]
As his trial revealed, Scooter had been sharing another tidbit of information in the day or two before he (or Richard Armitage, for that matter) spoke to Novak: namely, that Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA and had been involved in arranging his Niger assignment. Libby mentioned Plame's role in Wilson's trip to Ari Fleischer over lunch on July 7th, and to Judith Miller in a breakfast meeting on the morning of the 8th.
More so than Miller or Fleischer (or just about everyone else on the planet), Novak was actually interested in that angle of the story. Does it make any sense to believe that the subject of Plame didn’t come up at all between the two men as they discussed the Wilson controversy on July 9th?
Libby is only slightly less likely than Novak, who died in 2009, to come clean about exactly what was said in their conversation. But it’s at least possible that Novak (who called Rove after the FBI investigation was announced to promise, “I protect my sources”[11]) intentionally hid and then understated what Scooter told him, shielding Libby by doing his best to frame Armitage as the sole source of the Plame leak.
2. Libby’s Perjury Involved Making Up Leaks, Not Denying ThemScooter Libby’s silence about his conversation with Robert Novak contrasts starkly with the tangle of lies that got him convicted. Few people remember this, but Libby didn’t deny that he had talked to reporters about Valerie Plame Wilson. In fact, he freely admitted mentioning her to three different journalists: Matt Cooper (then with Time magazine), Judith Miller of the New York Times, and Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post. Libby just claimed it was no big deal, since he was just passing along gossip he’d heard from NBC’s Tim Russert.
And that’s where he got into trouble, because this alibi forced him to deny discussing Joseph Wilson’s wife with a long list of Bush administration officials in the preceding weeks. When a half-dozen of those officials—whom Libby must have known would be questioned by the FBI—contradicted him under oath, his perjury was obvious.[12]
But Scooter could have taken the opposite approach: admit to schmoozing within government circles about Joe Wilson’s wife, but (consistent with his successful strategy vis-à-vis Novak) swear he hadn’t disclosed her identity to any reporters, and defy investigators to prove him wrong. Had Libby picked this course, his legal jeopardy would have vanished; no indictments, no trial, no anything. Because absent his own admissions, no one could prove he had done any leaking.
Don’t believe me? Well, it’s true that Libby confirmed Plame’s identity to Matt Cooper (who had first learned about her from Karl Rove). But as the trial revealed, Libby saying "I've heard that, too" in response to Cooper’s query was so inconsequential that the Time reporter didn’t bother to write it in his notes. Press aide Catherine Martin, an otherwise damning prosecution witness, was in the room with Libby during the call, but she didn’t remember hearing it, either.
Though Scooter’s exchanges with Judith Miller were far more substantial—Miller testified that Libby had discussed Plame with her on three separate occasions, two of which happened before Novak and Richard Armitage crossed paths—she was only drawn into the case because he told investigators he had mentioned Joe Wilson's wife in the last of their three conversations, weaving it into his convoluted alibi. Since Miller never wrote an article on the Wilson/Niger uranium squabble, if Libby had just said they never discussed it, no one would have known the difference.
And Glenn Kessler? Here is where the tale gets even stranger, because he testified that no one had leaked to him at all—in fact, he and Scooter hadn’t even discussed Joe Wilson, much less his wife.[13]
So let’s check the scoreboard here: Libby admitted to three leaks about Plame. Only two of them actually happened, though, and it would have been both easier and safer to admit none at all. Why did he go out of his way to choose a more dangerous path?
3. The Fall Guy: Why Libby LiedGiven the results—and the simpler option of just denying any leaks—it’s obvious that Libby didn’t lie to protect himself. And his defense attorneys’ suggestion that he was guilty of nothing more than a faulty memory was rejected easily during the trial. (All told, Scooter lied about ten conversations regarding Plame: denying six where he discussed her, and making up four others. All ten people involved swore his version of events didn’t happen. Nobody’s memory is that bad.)
With regard to Matt Cooper, though, there’s an obvious (if cynical) explanation for Libby’s perjury: He was lying to protect Karl Rove, who was Cooper’s original source for the leak. By a mysterious coincidence, Cooper’s call to Rove didn’t appear in the White House phone logs, nor did Rove tell the FBI about it—just as the logs apparently didn’t show the call from Bob Novak that Scooter failed to admit.
Libby’s false claim that he was the first to tell Cooper about Plame fooled the FBI and Patrick Fitzgerald, only unraveling after Cooper’s own deposition several months later and a yearlong legal battle to force him to testify about his other sources.[14] Logic suggests that Rove and Libby must have planned this “You say no, I’ll say yes” coverup regarding Cooper, but there’s no hard evidence to prove it.
There is a paper trail, though, suggesting why Libby might invent a leak to Glenn Kessler. A printed copy of an October 12, 2003 Washington Post story (by Mike Allen and Walter Pincus) was found in Libby’s files and submitted as evidence during his trial. It included this passage:
On July 12, two days before Novak's column, a Post reporter was told by an administration official that the White House had not paid attention to the former ambassador's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction.[15]
The article had been marked up, with the “boondoggle” sentence underlined (along with several other passages). And a timestamp showed it was printed out on October 14th, the same day Libby met with FBI investigators probing the Plame leak.[16]
During one session of Libby’s grand jury testimony, which was replayed during the trial, Scooter referred to his FBI interview:
What I've previously said, which I think is still true . . . is that I recall a conversation with a Washington Post reporter where the Washington Post reporter talked to me about a boondoggle. I think it was Mr. Kessler.[17]
It’s true that Libby returned a call from the Post’s Kessler on July 12th, the date cited in the article. But since they didn’t actually discuss the Niger trip at all, the only basis for Libby’s claim was the language he’d underlined in the newspaper article… like an actor reviewing his lines before a performance. Maybe Scooter didn’t have such a poor memory, after all.
When Libby met with the FBI in October 2003, there were two publicly reported cases of specific journalists besides Robert Novak being told about Valerie Wilson’s identity before her outing: the not-yet-identified Washington Post reporter, and Matt Cooper (or one of his Time colleagues). Coincidentally, Libby confessed that he had informed both Cooper and the Post’s Kessler about Plame—even though neither claim was true.
In retrospect, is there any doubt that Libby was attempting to pose as the source of both of the known non-Novak leaks?
4. That Washington Post Story About Six Reporters Getting Leaks? Libby Believed It… and He Wasn’t Alone.Then again, Libby admitted to three leaks, not two. And the third name he offered couldn’t have been a casual afterthought, since it was Judith Miller—the one journalist Libby had clearly leaked to about Plame. So why did Libby feel compelled to mention her?
Once again, the October 12th Post article that Libby marked up before meeting with FBI investigators suggests an explanation. In addition to the “boondoggle” sentence, Libby had underlined a passage in the preceding paragraph…
That same week, two top White House officials disclosed Plame's identity to least six Washington journalists, an administration official told The Post…
… a line that reiterated a high-profile scoop the Post had published two weeks earlier:
Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of [Joseph] Wilson's wife…
Almost two decades later, it’s hard to convey just how explosive this claim was. The furor over the initial Novak column in July had subsided after a few weeks. Combined with the FBI officially launching an investigation into the Plame leak, though, the Post’s late-September revelation ignited a media firestorm. Suddenly the issue was no longer who furtively whispered to a single columnist (Novak), but who took part in a coordinated Bush administration effort to expose Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA employment—and might go to jail as a result.
The Justice Department had little choice but to take notice as well.[18] By the time Patrick Fitzgerald took over the probe, the combination of one senior administration official (the Post's source), two White House officials (the leakers), and six or more reporters had become known in shorthand as "1x2x6" to the special prosecutor’s team in questioning witnesses.[19]
By telling the FBI barely two weeks after the initial 1x2x6 story that he’d talked about Plame to all three reporters he’d spoken to on July 12th—the date cited by the not-yet-named Post reporter in the newspaper article he had marked up—Libby appears to have wanted investigators to believe that he was one of the two culprits, accounting for half of the six reported leaks.
The other half? Well, Ari Fleischer, who had been the White House press secretary during the week Plame was outed, had read the original 1x2x6 article on the Saturday night it first appeared on the Post website. Describing Fleischer’s reaction to the judge and defense attorneys early in the Libby trial, prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg said, “It was one of those moments where your heart goes in your throat.”[20] Ari had sought help from a top Washington, D.C., law firm the next Monday, refusing to say anything to investigators without first being promised immunity from prosecution.
When Fleischer testified against Libby, he explained (as he had to the grand jury after immunity was granted) why he recognized himself in reading the Washington Post that night. During a presidential trip in Africa that week, Fleischer claimed, he had told two, or perhaps three, reporters about Joe Wilson’s wife working for the CIA as they stood along a roadside in Uganda.
Writing about the Libby case in his book Tangled Webs, James Stewart depicts the FBI’s lead investigator, John Eckenrode, as inferring from Fleischer’s account that “he was clearly one of the two officials referred to in Allen’s Washington Post article.”[21]
Which, in a way, was correct. But like Scooter Libby, the story Fleischer told under oath wasn’t the truth.
5. Wait… Ari Fleischer Lied, Too? After Getting Immunity? And Even Though He Testified Against Libby?That’s right. Fleischer was the closest thing Patrick Fitzgerald had to a star witness against Libby, with his crucial testimony that Scooter told him about Valerie Plame (even using her maiden name) over lunch three days before supposedly hearing about her “as if I was learning it for the first time” from Tim Russert. But judged by the same standards that got Libby convicted, Ari’s account of what he told reporters was a lie, too.
Just like with Libby, none of the journalists cited in Fleischer’s sworn testimony backed him up; in fact, all of them had long since gone on the record with contrary accounts.[22]
Nearly two years before the trial, for example, Tamara Lipper of Newsweek[23] and John Dickerson in Time[24] each contributed to stories with nearly identical depictions of what had really happened in Uganda that morning. Both articles said Fleischer and White House communications aide Dan Bartlett had prodded reporters to ask the CIA who authorized Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger—but hadn’t given the answer themselves. (Dickerson, writing in more detail for Slate a year before Libby’s trial, said, “I thought I got the point: He'd been sent by someone around the rank of deputy assistant undersecretary or janitor.”[25])
Also, again like Libby, Fleischer was convincingly contradicted about a conversation where he denied mentioning Plame. This one didn’t occur on a roadside in Uganda; instead, Ari telephoned the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus the next day from Air Force One as President Bush and his entourage returned from Africa.
Fleischer swore at Libby’s trial that he hadn’t brought up Joe Wilson’s wife in that call, but Pincus testified that he had—and the Post supplied notes to Fitzgerald’s investigation to confirm it.[26] Pincus also was alarmed enough by the personal nature of what Ari told him that he called Wilson (whom he had interviewed the previous month) the same day and warned, “Watch out, they’re coming after you.”[27]
More visibly, Pincus also described the phone conversation for the Washington Post in the October 12th story that inspired Libby’s lie about leaking to Glenn Kessler. A closer look, though, reveals similar characterizations in the original bombshell 1x2x6 article by Mike Allen and Dana Priest two weeks earlier, attributed to “sources familiar with the conversations” or one of the “journalists who received the leak.”[28]
Which, if true, is news no one has previously acknowledged: It means Allen and Priest were convinced Pincus was one of the “at least six Washington journalists” told about Plame by “two top White House officials”—one of whom, apparently, was Ari Fleischer.
But then, Mike Allen may have had good reason to think of Pincus when he learned about the leaks. As it happens, they were collaborating on a story for the next day’s Post when Fleischer made his call from Air Force One in July.[29] If Pincus happened to tell his co-author, “Hey, Ari just told me Joe Wilson’s wife works for the CIA,” and then a few months later Allen heard the same tale from the opposite end (“I heard Ari Fleischer tell a reporter on July 12th that Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA”)… well, who wouldn’t connect those dots right away?
An unequivocal connection to the 1x2x6 leaks, though, would only be justified if Fleischer and someone else had been calling a string of reporters at the time. But guess what? During Libby’s trial, the former press secretary described the circumstances of his conversation with Pincus:
Q. Is it a fact, Mr. Fleischer, that you and Dan Bartlett, on July the 12th on the plane headed back from Africa, agreed to contact several, print and television media journalists? A. That's my recollection, yes. Q. And did you decide that you would contact the New York Times and The Washington Post? A. That's my recollection.[30]
Hmmmm… that’s kind of interesting, isn’t it?
6. The Unreported Leaks Behind the Post’s 1x2x6 ScoopFleischer’s admission would have been a jaw-dropping revelation in an alternate universe—one where the whodunit of exposing a covert CIA employee remained a compelling story for reporters. But with a top Washington, D.C. official on trial, no one was keeping track of clues from years-old news articles. Instead, journalists with deadlines to meet after several hours of detailed testimony wrote up what Ari had to say about Scooter Libby, not himself. Literally no one caught the relevance of two Bush administration officials calling several journalists and (perhaps) leaking classified information about Valerie Plame Wilson.
Then again, even many close observers of the Plame scandal lost track of the nuances of the Washington Post’s initial 1x2x6 articles as the investigation inched forward. Among those who cared enough to speculate, any combination of two leakers and a handful of recipients was considered a possible solution to the mystery. Like the Shadow (or perhaps Santa Claus), the Post’s omniscient whistleblower could be assumed to know what had happened, whether the leaks occurred via telephone, email, or late-night meetings in parking garages.
But the original articles weren’t that vague. Instead, they narrowly described a single event where two Bush administration officials phoned a series of reporters, within earshot of another official who wasn’t happy about what he or she overheard.
For instance, the first 1x2x6 story by Mike Allen and Dana Priest specifically says “called” and “the calls” in discussing the leaks (rather than “spoke to,” “contacted,” or some other generic alternative). A next-day solo follow-up by Allen was even more precise, saying that “the two White House officials had cold-called at least six Washington journalists...”
And only someone who was physically there when the calls were made could describe them as Allen and Walter Pincus depict in their October 12th article:
The source elaborated on the conversations last week, saying that officials brought up Plame as part of their broader case against Wilson. "It was unsolicited," the source said. "They were pushing back. They used everything they had."
Should I add here that Air Force One is exactly the kind of confined space where a top administration official might hear phone calls that press aides would normally make from the privacy of their White House offices?
The presence of a firsthand witness also explains Ari Fleischer’s dramatic reaction to the Post’s initial scoop on September 28th. If all he did was make an offhand remark about Plame while talking with a few reporters in Uganda—who supposedly ignored him!—why would he panic reading a news story about two officials making a string of phone calls? Even if he’d discussed the same subject once, who could have known enough to testify against him?
But let’s leave the imaginary world of Fleischer’s sworn testimony behind us. Instead, let’s assume Ari remembered perfectly well what he told Walter Pincus. And that he knew he (along with Dan Bartlett) had repeated the same thing in a series of telephone conversations from Air Force One.
Now imagine him reading a specific accusation on the Washington Post’s front page that “two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife.” For good measure, recall that the story’s headline announced the opening of a criminal leak investigation by the Justice Department. How Fleischer could possibly take that any other way than the senior administration official saying to him and Bartlett, “I know what you did last summer”?
Ari was never publicly accused of outing Plame to anyone but Pincus, and no other journalists stepped forward as being leaked to by him or Bartlett. So we don’t know for sure if the Post’s whistleblowing source told the same story to the FBI. But one of Patrick Fitzgerald’s first acts after taking over the investigation was to subpoena the phone records from Air Force One for that week in July—before either Pincus or Fleischer had given any testimony.[31] And Ari’s roadside alibi notwithstanding, a 2004 affidavit unsealed after the trial included the unredacted suspicion that Fleischer had leaked to other reporters (including perhaps Matt Cooper) besides Pincus.[32]
7. Why Cover Up the 1x2x6 Leaks?Even so, something here doesn’t add up. Why would Fleischer deny leaking to reporters by phone on July 12th, only to claim (however dubiously) that he’d done it in person a day earlier? More importantly, why would Scooter Libby—the right-hand man to an immensely powerful vice president—lie to take the fall for an unremarkable flunky like Dan Bartlett?
To be honest, Ari’s testimony about calling reporters from Air Force One may have been ignored for one simple reason: No one cares who he or Bartlett leaked to. If Fleischer had testified that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby were sitting next to each other making phone calls about Plame, people probably would have taken notice. But he and Bartlett were classic apparatchiks… so why pay attention to what they might have done?
The thing about apparatchiks, though, is they don’t act on their own. As Joseph Wilson himself noted in 2005, “I have read in the Post that two leakers called six reporters. But the leakers were probably not the decision-makers. They just carried out the decisions of their superiors.”[33]
In his closing argument at Libby’s trial, Patrick Fitzgerald emphasized how Vice President Cheney, through Libby and Catherine Martin, had micromanaged the administration’s talking points during the week before Plame was outed. On July 7, 2003, the day after Plame’s husband had gone public with his charges of misused intelligence about Iraq, Martin emailed a list of four key points to Fleischer, based on discussions with Libby and Cheney.[34]
The very next day, Cheney had personally dictated revised talking points to create a mystery he hoped reporters would investigate (changing “The Vice President's office did not request the mission to Niger" to "It is not clear who authorized Joe Wilson's trip to Niger"). As Fitzgerald told the Libby jury four years later, the question was raised so that Valerie Plame Wilson would be discovered as part of the answer.
Aside from Robert Novak, though, the press didn’t take the bait—so by July 11th, the hints from the Bush administration became more pointed. In Africa with the president, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice set the tone in a morning press briefing with Ari Fleischer. Asked about Wilson and Niger, Rice wasn’t subtle: “That mission was not known to anybody in the White House. And you should ask the Agency at what level it was known in the Agency.”[35]
Does that phrasing sounds familiar? Both John Dickerson of Time and Tamara Lipper of Newsweek reported getting the same message from Fleischer and Dan Bartlett a few hours later.[36] Such strict message discipline is understandable for any large organization (especially during a sudden controversy), and the Bush administration was justifiably famous for it.
That’s one more reason to believe Fleischer lied under oath about discussing Plame along a Ugandan roadside that day, and that Walter Pincus wasn’t the only reporter he told about her by phone the next day from Air Force One. He and Dan Bartlett weren’t rogue operatives. If their message changed from not mentioning Joe Wilson’s wife on July 11th to telling reporters that she worked for the CIA on July 12th, someone almost certainly told them to change it.
Vice President Cheney had been dictating the Wilson talking points earlier in the week. (The other possible suspect, Karl Rove, left town on vacation the afternoon of the 11th.) Covering up Cheney’s role in turning the faucet wide open on the Valerie Plame Wilson leaks would clearly explain why both Fleischer and Libby lied about it—each substituting more innocent versions where they mentioned Plame casually, not consulting with anyone.
8. The (Until Now) Secret History of the Plame LeaksIronically, Patrick Fitzgerald’s acknowledgment of a “cloud over the Vice Presidency” was perhaps the lone remnant of the original Plame whodunit to briefly survive Scooter Libby’s trial. But with the investigative marathon ending, it went unexplored, along with the all of the previously unknown evidence that had been presented.
The media’s collective choice wasted the opportunity to reveal more clearly how the Bush administration counterattacked Joe Wilson. As noted earlier, Libby had already paved the way for Wilson’s wife to be exposed as a CIA employee before Dick Armitage sat down with Bob Novak. Over the previous 36 hours, he had shared the “hush-hush” information with Ari Fleischer—whose job consisted of talking to the press—and Judith Miller, an investigative reporter for the New York Times.
In addition, the trial revealed that Novak tipped off Karl Rove about his column outing Wilson’s wife a few days before it was printed[37]—and Rove promptly told Libby about it. For supposedly secondary sources, Karl and Scooter reacted as if it was something close to Christmas in July (“Rove was animated that Novak was animated about this,” Libby had told the grand jury[38]).
Rove’s excitement would play a crucial role in the leaks to other reporters. He received a phone call from Matt Cooper of Time magazine the same Friday morning that Secretary of State Condi Rice, Ari Fleischer, and Dan Bartlett were in Africa repeating the latest revision of the administration’s talking points: "Ask the CIA who authorized Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger."
Knowing Novak was going to press with the answer, Rove stretched the message a bit further. He told Cooper information would be coming out soon about who was involved in sending Wilson. And when Cooper pressed him, saying, “Who?”, Rove couldn’t resist blurting out, “Like his wife!” (Apparently aware of the line he had crossed, he remarked “I’ve already said too much” as he ended the call.[39])
Rove may have warned Libby about his impulsive leak, just as he had shared the news of Novak’s upcoming column. Because the next morning, July 12th, press aide Catherine Martin approached Scooter for help answering some queries from reporters—one of whom was Matt Cooper. After some discussion, Libby excused himself to consult at length with Vice President Cheney, informing Martin when he returned that he would call Cooper himself.[40]
A searing line of questions during Libby’s grand jury testimony demonstrated Patrick Fitzgerald’s suspicions about this strategy session. As replayed during the trial, the special prosecutor bombarded Libby with a list of motivations for outing Plame (including how Cheney had been pressing his chief of staff all week about the need to “get the full story out” about Joe Wilson) before repeating Scooter’s concession to the FBI that “it is possible” they considered whether to tell reporters about her. Libby answered in an apologetic near-whisper: “It remains true that it was possible, I don't remember it happening.”[41]
As Libby and Cheney deliberated early on Saturday, the scandal sparked by Wilson’s allegations of misused intelligence about Iraq was still raging. A statement on Friday evening by CIA director George Tenet taking partial responsibility hadn’t quelled the media firestorm. Plame’s alleged role in her husband’s trip to Niger was the one card the Bush administration hadn’t played, at least in public. In two days, Robert Novak would tell the world about it—but that Monday column would come too late for the weekend deadlines of Time and Newsweek, not to mention Sunday television shows like “Meet the Press,” which would in part be driven by that morning's headlines in the New York Times and Washington Post.[42] What could they do now, before Monday, to push back against Wilson to all of those media outlets?
Ari Fleischer’s phone call to Walter Pincus (as he and Dan Bartlett contacted multiple reporters from Air Force One) happened early that afternoon, followed by Libby’s own conversation with Cooper where he confirmed Plame’s identity. Did Scooter and his boss decide that between Novak’s writing and Rove’s whim, Valerie Wilson’s employment really wasn’t a secret anymore? In that case, why not tell Fleischer and Bartlett to “use everything they had” (as the Washington Post’s 1x2x6 source put it) in their calls to journalists?
9. “The Incompetence of Others”As the saying goes, however, it’s all fun and games until the Justice Department opens an investigation. And while Rove and Libby could deftly camouflage their conversations with Novak by pinning his outing of Plame on Dick Armitage, the probe would be broader: Time’s Matt Cooper had written about being leaked to, and the Washington Post had alleged a half-dozen phone calls to journalists (including one from the Post). No convenient scapegoat existed for those leaks.
Clearly, though, some sort of coordination must have occurred. Three separate Bush administration officials lied about what they had said to reporters (Libby and Robert Novak, Karl Rove and Matt Cooper, and Ari Fleischer and Walter Pincus). But in each case a cover story was provided, and no two officials took credit for the same leak.
Is there any way this could happen without anyone comparing notes in private, and orchestrating false stories? In particular, what are the odds that Libby would confess falsely to two specific leaks (Cooper, and substituting Glenn Kessler for Pincus) unless there was an intentional cover-up scheme?
A provocative piece of evidence unveiled during Libby’s trial hinted at just such an arrangement. Just after the start of the leak investigation in October 2003, Vice President Cheney had scribbled a note describing Scooter as “the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others.”[43] In his own FBI interview, Cheney downplayed this as referring to Libby’s burden of answering questions from the press during the Wilson controversy (with the CIA being the “incompetent” party).[44]
The vice president contradicted this point, however, earlier in the same interview. Claiming not to remember his involvement in crafting anti-Wilson talking points, Cheney had dismissed talking to journalists as a routine part of Scooter’s job, saying he “had confidence in Libby’s abilities and experience in handling such inquiries.” But why would he refer such a mundane task—one he supposedly paid no attention to at the time—as “stick[ing] his neck in the meat grinder”? How could it have stirred such an angry description three months later?
Let’s consider a different possibility: First, Karl Rove’s leak to Matt Cooper on July 11th was a mistake. Rove had nearly apologized for it while talking to Cooper (“I’ve already said too much”), then left it out of a follow-up email he sent to deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley.[45] If he then confessed privately to Libby that he had lurched beyond the day’s approved Wilson talking points, Rove may have helped inspire a change in those talking points the next morning.
Whatever the cause, Ari Fleischer’s call to Walter Pincus suggests that the message did change, at which point he and Dan Bartlett may have compounded Rove’s error with a second one: Not paying attention to who else might be listening in the confined space of Air Force One. If even one official—for the sake of convenience, let's call him "Colin Powell"—overheard what Fleischer and Bartlett said about Valerie Wilson to reporters, and took offense at the leaks, there’s your Washington Post 1x2x6 scoop waiting to happen. (This would be true even if Powell or another official misheard the calls, thinking mistakenly that what Fleischer said to Pincus was told to all of the journalists. Another intriguing possibility is that Bartlett himself was Mike Allen's source, giving further fuel for the line that "It is rare for one Bush administration official to turn on another.")
The Post’s blockbuster (whoever the source was), and the wider leak investigation that it guaranteed, likely caused severe recriminations within the Bush administration. Rove and Fleischer (as well as Bartlett) may have bitterly complained that Libby didn’t warn them Plame might be a covert CIA employee. And this might have been part of why Scooter had to put himself in legal jeopardy by providing a false “confession” to cover their leaks.
Libby and Dick Cheney, though, may have resented Karl Rove’s lack of self-control in leaking to Matt Cooper, and Fleischer and Dan Bartlett’s carelessness in making calls from Air Force One (or Bartlett's impetuous decision to blow the whistle to the Washington Post). To them, perhaps, these blunders were the only reason Libby—whose own telephone exchange with Robert Novak was concealed easily enough—was forced to risk indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice.
If you were Scooter’s longtime boss and ally, as Dick Cheney was, you might have been inclined to say that he was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others.
10. The AftermathTwenty years later, everyone has long since moved on. Scooter Libby settled into a sinecure as senior vice president of the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank (where his online profile gracefully avoids mentioning his multiple felony convictions).[46] Karl Rove continues to ply his Machiavellian trade as a Republican political strategist, while Ari Fleischer is a freelance PR consultant and a part-time talking head on CNN. Valerie Plame herself published a pair of spy novels, and recently ran unsuccessfully for Congress in New Mexico; she divorced Joseph Wilson in 2017, and Wilson died in 2019.
So why look back? Since some of the players still occupy the public stage, knowing where they’ve been and what lies they’ve apparently told may be useful. And as George Bush and Dick Cheney fade into being vaguely remembered elder statesmen, it would be valuable for the public to grasp more clearly how the outing of Plame was approved—and then covered up—from the highest levels of their administration.
In his infamous “meat grinder” note, which unsubtly hinted at Libby’s fall-guy legal strategy, Cheney began to write “this President” had asked Libby to sacrifice himself before thinking better of it.[47] Libby had lied to cover up the actions of the president’s most powerful aides (Rove and Cheney), and then was rescued by that same president from spending a single night in jail. Is that really a difficult story to tell? Shouldn’t it be told?
Hoary exhortations about failing to remember history aside, journalists should also be wary of giving future (or, um, recent) administrations a road map for successfully obscuring scandals. Replacing the initial Plame whodunit with a protracted legal narrative exhausted the press’s collective memory. But in an online age, with so much information available to anyone almost indefinitely, that shouldn’t be allowed to happen. And in 2023, with a former president under indictment for brazen misuse of classified information and obstruction of justice, is it possible that the American media set a bad precedent by not taking this more seriously when it happened two decades earlier?
To this day, the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson is regarded as something of a mystery, or an accident. It shouldn’t be.
Notes [*Disclaimer: Many of the web links below may be defunct - they worked when I first wrote this article several years ago, but I haven't checked them all to make sure they're still live.*]
[1] For example, Barton Gellman, “A Leak, Then a Deluge,” Washington Post, October 30, 2005: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/29/AR2005102901478_pf.html.[2] And why he used her maiden name, Valerie Plame.[3] “Columnist Blows CIA Agent's Cover” by Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce, published on Tuesday, July 22, 2003 by the Long Island, NY Newsday, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0722-04.htm[4] “The CIA Leak,” Robert Novak, October 1, 2003 http://townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/2003/10/01/the_cia_leak/page/full and Meet the Press, October 5, 2003: “I know when somebody’s trying to plant a story. This thing—this came up almost offhandedly in the course of a very long conversation with a senior official about many things, many things, including Ambassador Wilson’s report.”[5] James Stewart, Tangled Webs: How False Statements Are Undermining America, p. 158 (NY: Penguin, 2011)[6] “Armitage’s Leak,” Robert Novak, September 14, 2006. http://townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/2006/09/14/armitages_leak[7] Except for blogger Marcy Wheeler (a/k/a Emptywheel), who had inferred before the trial from tangential references in court proceedings and news articles that such a conversation occurred; http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2005/11/what_libby_want.html (Nov. 3, 2005) and http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/31/264225/-What-Did-Novak-Meet-with-Libby-About (Oct. 31, 2006). Also, David Corn mentioned it in the ninth paragraph of a blog post on the day’s trial news: "Libby Trial: What Scooter Didn't Do," David Corn, The Nation, February 12, 2007. http://www.thenation.com/blog/156303/libby-trial-what-scooter-didnt-do[8] Testimony of Robert Novak, Murray Waas, The United States v. I. Lewis Libby (Union Square, June 2007), pp. 414-419.[9] Libby had emphasized one of these points (about a 1999 Iraqi trade overture described to Wilson by a Nigerien official) just the previous day to Judith Miller during their now-infamous July 8th breakfast, and would repeat it to Matt Cooper of Time magazine a few days later: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/national/16miller.html, Judith Miller, “My Four Hours Testifying in the Federal Grand Jury Room,” New York Times, Oct. 16, 2005; and Cooper’s interview notes in Waas, The United States v. I. Lewis Libby, p. 556 (also Libby’s talking points for the interview, p. 546).[10] http://wid.ap.org/documents/libbytrial/jan30/GX10401.PDF, exhibit introduced during Libby’s trial.[11] James Stewart, Tangled Webs, pp. 163-164. [12] Seen in this light, Patrick Fitzgerald’s extended battle to compel testimony from the journalists Libby cited (especially Cooper, Miller, and Russert) may have been motivated by a desire to give Scooter the benefit of the doubt—or at least check every part of his alibi—rather than an obsessed prosecutor’s effort to bolster a flimsy case. Had even one reporter backed up Libby’s account, he probably wouldn’t have been indicted.[13] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62265-2004Jun22.html, Susan Schmidt, “Post State Dept. Reporter Questioned in Leak Probe,” Washington Post, Wednesday, June 23, 2004, page A22. Cheney’s press aide Catherine Martin was with Libby during the call and also testified that Valerie Wilson wasn’t discussed; Waas, The United States v. I. Lewis Libby, p. 113.[14] http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/files/040927_fitzgerald_affadavit_june_2007_unseal.pdf, p. 29: “At Cooper's sworn deposition [in August 2004], Special Counsel was quite surprised -- to say the least -- to learn that Cooper recalled only a very brief, passing conversation about Wilson's wife with Libby...”[15] Walter Pincus and Mike Allen, “Probe Focuses on Month Before Leak to Reporters,” Washington Post, Oct. 12, 2003, p. A1. [16] http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB215/govt_ex/GX42201.PDF, exhibit introduced during Libby trial.[17] http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/exhibits/0207/GX2.txt, transcript of Libby’s grand jury testimony introduced during trial. Only near the end of the session does Patrick Fitzgerald inform a crestfallen Libby that his team knew the actual Post reporter who received the leak was Walter Pincus. [18] Indeed, since Richard Armitage confessed his role in leaking to Novak literally as soon the probe began, the still-unexplained six leaks reported in the Post (in addition to Libby and Karl Rove’s already-suspicious testimony) were a leading reason why Attorney General John Ashcroft was forced to stand aside and allow the appointment of a special prosecutor. [19] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/10/politics/10LEAK.html, David Johnston, “Top Bush Aide Is Questioned in C.I.A. Leak,” February 10, 2004. [20] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/26/politics/main2402342.shtml, Jennifer Hoar, “Next At Libby Trial: An Immunity Issue,” January 26, 2007.[21]Stewart, Tangled Webs, p. 185.[22] http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2005/11/circle_the_wago.html, partial transcript of Dick Gregory on Tim Russert CNBC show, October 29, 2005, excerpted by Tom Maguire at “Just One Minute” blog, November 2, 2005, http://www.slate.com/id/2158157/entry/2158492/, John Dickerson, "My Surreal Day at the Libby Trial," Jan. 29, 2007; and http://www.slate.com/id/2158157/entry/2158819/, John Dickerson, "Matt Cooper's Unmagical Notes," Feb. 1, 2007. [23] http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2005/07/24/rove-at-war.html, Howard Fineman, "Rove at War," Newsweek, July 25, 2005: “... on a long Bush trip to Africa, Fleischer and Bartlett prompted clusters of reporters to look into the bureaucratic origins of the Wilson trip. How did the spin doctors know to cast that lure?”[24] http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1083924,00.html, “The Rove Problem,” Time, Sunday, Jul. 17, 2005: “Some traveling reporters to Africa were told on background that Wilson was sent to Niger by a low-level staff member at the CIA. At one point, White House officials on the trip were saying, ‘Look who sent him,’ as if to spur reporters to dig deeper.”[25] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2006/02/wheres_my_subpoena.html[26] http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/files/040827_fitzgerald_affadavit_june_2007_unseal.pdf, page 21, paragraph 51.[27] Ibid., page 6, paragraph 13; also Joseph Wilson, The Politics of Truth, p. 345. [28] On October 12th, Pincus (writing with Allen) had said about the Fleischer leak that “the purpose of the disclosure did not appear to be to generate an article, but rather to undermine Wilson’s report.” Writing his fullest account of the call in Nieman Reports in July 2005, Pincus added, “I didn’t write about that information at that time because I did not believe it true that she had arranged his Niger trip.” Compare this with passages from the initial Allen-Priest piece: “Sources familiar with the conversations said the leakers were seeking to undercut Wilson's credibility…. some of the other journalists who received the leak [i.e., besides Novak] did not use the information because they were uncomfortable with unmasking an undercover agent or because they did not consider the information relevant to Wilson's report about Niger.”[29] http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0713-02.htm, Walter Pincus and Mike Allen, “CIA Got Uranium Reference Cut in October,” Washington Post, July 13, 2003[30] Testimony of Ari Fleischer during Libby trial; Waas, The United States v. I. Lewis Libby, pp. 170-171. Also see http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/files/040827_fitzgerald_affadavit_june_2007_unseal.pdf, p. 22; a 2004 affidavit filed by Fitzgerald and unsealed after the trial confirming that "The call to Pincus was one of several calls Fleischer placed to reporters that day…" [31] http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0305-02.htm, Tom Brune, “Air Force One Phone Records Subpoenaed” Newsday, March 5, 2004.[32] http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/files/040827_fitzgerald_affadavit_june_2007_unseal.pdf, p. 15, footnote 10.[33] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/04/25/109548/-Ambassador-Wilson-White-House-Operatives-Are-Traitors, interview with Joseph Wilson posted online, April 25, 2005.[34] Waas, The United States v. I. Lewis Libby, p. 100.[35] http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030711-7.html, press gaggle with Ari Fleischer and Dr. Condoleezza Rice aboard Air Force One, July 11, 2003.[36] See footnotes 23 and 24.[37] Testimony of Robert Novak in Murray Waas, The United States v. I. Lewis Libby (Union Square, June 2007), p. 425; and http://www.newsweek.com/id/68495, Michael Isikoff, "A Man Of Mystery," Newsweek, Feb. 26, 2007.[38] http://www.npr.org/documents/2007/feb/libby/libby_hour4.pdf, transcript of Libby grand jury testimony, p. 166.[39] Testimony of Matt Cooper in Waas, The United States v. I. Lewis Libby, pp. 226-227.[40] Testimony of Catherine Martin in Waas, The United States v. I. Lewis Libby, p. 111.[41] http://www.npr.org/documents/2007/feb/libby/libby_hour8.pdf, transcript of Libby grand jury testimony, pp. 169-172.[42] Libby described the conversation with Cheney as being about “the whole issue of now the Tenet statement was out, what would we do?” Ibid., p. 177.[43] http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB215/govt_ex/GX53201.PDF, exhibit submitted during the Libby trial; also in Waas, United States v. I Lewis Libby, p. 558.[44] http://www.governmentattic.org/6docs/FBICheneyPlame_2004.pdf, notes of Cheney FBI interview.[45] http://www.latimes.com/bal-rove0715,0,7649590.story, article by John Solomon for Associated Press, July 15, 2005.[46] https://www.hudson.org/experts/601-lewis-libby[47] http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB215/govt_ex/GX53201.PDF, exhibit submitted during the Libby trial; also in Waas, United States v. I Lewis Libby, p. 558.
[1] For example, Barton Gellman, “A Leak, Then a Deluge,” Washington Post, October 30, 2005: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/29/AR2005102901478_pf.html.[2] And why he used her maiden name, Valerie Plame.[3] “Columnist Blows CIA Agent's Cover” by Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce, published on Tuesday, July 22, 2003 by the Long Island, NY Newsday, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0722-04.htm[4] “The CIA Leak,” Robert Novak, October 1, 2003 http://townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/2003/10/01/the_cia_leak/page/full and Meet the Press, October 5, 2003: “I know when somebody’s trying to plant a story. This thing—this came up almost offhandedly in the course of a very long conversation with a senior official about many things, many things, including Ambassador Wilson’s report.”[5] James Stewart, Tangled Webs: How False Statements Are Undermining America, p. 158 (NY: Penguin, 2011)[6] “Armitage’s Leak,” Robert Novak, September 14, 2006. http://townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/2006/09/14/armitages_leak[7] Except for blogger Marcy Wheeler (a/k/a Emptywheel), who had inferred before the trial from tangential references in court proceedings and news articles that such a conversation occurred; http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2005/11/what_libby_want.html (Nov. 3, 2005) and http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/31/264225/-What-Did-Novak-Meet-with-Libby-About (Oct. 31, 2006). Also, David Corn mentioned it in the ninth paragraph of a blog post on the day’s trial news: "Libby Trial: What Scooter Didn't Do," David Corn, The Nation, February 12, 2007. http://www.thenation.com/blog/156303/libby-trial-what-scooter-didnt-do[8] Testimony of Robert Novak, Murray Waas, The United States v. I. Lewis Libby (Union Square, June 2007), pp. 414-419.[9] Libby had emphasized one of these points (about a 1999 Iraqi trade overture described to Wilson by a Nigerien official) just the previous day to Judith Miller during their now-infamous July 8th breakfast, and would repeat it to Matt Cooper of Time magazine a few days later: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/national/16miller.html, Judith Miller, “My Four Hours Testifying in the Federal Grand Jury Room,” New York Times, Oct. 16, 2005; and Cooper’s interview notes in Waas, The United States v. I. Lewis Libby, p. 556 (also Libby’s talking points for the interview, p. 546).[10] http://wid.ap.org/documents/libbytrial/jan30/GX10401.PDF, exhibit introduced during Libby’s trial.[11] James Stewart, Tangled Webs, pp. 163-164. [12] Seen in this light, Patrick Fitzgerald’s extended battle to compel testimony from the journalists Libby cited (especially Cooper, Miller, and Russert) may have been motivated by a desire to give Scooter the benefit of the doubt—or at least check every part of his alibi—rather than an obsessed prosecutor’s effort to bolster a flimsy case. Had even one reporter backed up Libby’s account, he probably wouldn’t have been indicted.[13] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62265-2004Jun22.html, Susan Schmidt, “Post State Dept. Reporter Questioned in Leak Probe,” Washington Post, Wednesday, June 23, 2004, page A22. Cheney’s press aide Catherine Martin was with Libby during the call and also testified that Valerie Wilson wasn’t discussed; Waas, The United States v. I. Lewis Libby, p. 113.[14] http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/files/040927_fitzgerald_affadavit_june_2007_unseal.pdf, p. 29: “At Cooper's sworn deposition [in August 2004], Special Counsel was quite surprised -- to say the least -- to learn that Cooper recalled only a very brief, passing conversation about Wilson's wife with Libby...”[15] Walter Pincus and Mike Allen, “Probe Focuses on Month Before Leak to Reporters,” Washington Post, Oct. 12, 2003, p. A1. [16] http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB215/govt_ex/GX42201.PDF, exhibit introduced during Libby trial.[17] http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/exhibits/0207/GX2.txt, transcript of Libby’s grand jury testimony introduced during trial. Only near the end of the session does Patrick Fitzgerald inform a crestfallen Libby that his team knew the actual Post reporter who received the leak was Walter Pincus. [18] Indeed, since Richard Armitage confessed his role in leaking to Novak literally as soon the probe began, the still-unexplained six leaks reported in the Post (in addition to Libby and Karl Rove’s already-suspicious testimony) were a leading reason why Attorney General John Ashcroft was forced to stand aside and allow the appointment of a special prosecutor. [19] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/10/politics/10LEAK.html, David Johnston, “Top Bush Aide Is Questioned in C.I.A. Leak,” February 10, 2004. [20] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/26/politics/main2402342.shtml, Jennifer Hoar, “Next At Libby Trial: An Immunity Issue,” January 26, 2007.[21]Stewart, Tangled Webs, p. 185.[22] http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2005/11/circle_the_wago.html, partial transcript of Dick Gregory on Tim Russert CNBC show, October 29, 2005, excerpted by Tom Maguire at “Just One Minute” blog, November 2, 2005, http://www.slate.com/id/2158157/entry/2158492/, John Dickerson, "My Surreal Day at the Libby Trial," Jan. 29, 2007; and http://www.slate.com/id/2158157/entry/2158819/, John Dickerson, "Matt Cooper's Unmagical Notes," Feb. 1, 2007. [23] http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2005/07/24/rove-at-war.html, Howard Fineman, "Rove at War," Newsweek, July 25, 2005: “... on a long Bush trip to Africa, Fleischer and Bartlett prompted clusters of reporters to look into the bureaucratic origins of the Wilson trip. How did the spin doctors know to cast that lure?”[24] http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1083924,00.html, “The Rove Problem,” Time, Sunday, Jul. 17, 2005: “Some traveling reporters to Africa were told on background that Wilson was sent to Niger by a low-level staff member at the CIA. At one point, White House officials on the trip were saying, ‘Look who sent him,’ as if to spur reporters to dig deeper.”[25] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2006/02/wheres_my_subpoena.html[26] http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/files/040827_fitzgerald_affadavit_june_2007_unseal.pdf, page 21, paragraph 51.[27] Ibid., page 6, paragraph 13; also Joseph Wilson, The Politics of Truth, p. 345. [28] On October 12th, Pincus (writing with Allen) had said about the Fleischer leak that “the purpose of the disclosure did not appear to be to generate an article, but rather to undermine Wilson’s report.” Writing his fullest account of the call in Nieman Reports in July 2005, Pincus added, “I didn’t write about that information at that time because I did not believe it true that she had arranged his Niger trip.” Compare this with passages from the initial Allen-Priest piece: “Sources familiar with the conversations said the leakers were seeking to undercut Wilson's credibility…. some of the other journalists who received the leak [i.e., besides Novak] did not use the information because they were uncomfortable with unmasking an undercover agent or because they did not consider the information relevant to Wilson's report about Niger.”[29] http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0713-02.htm, Walter Pincus and Mike Allen, “CIA Got Uranium Reference Cut in October,” Washington Post, July 13, 2003[30] Testimony of Ari Fleischer during Libby trial; Waas, The United States v. I. Lewis Libby, pp. 170-171. Also see http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/files/040827_fitzgerald_affadavit_june_2007_unseal.pdf, p. 22; a 2004 affidavit filed by Fitzgerald and unsealed after the trial confirming that "The call to Pincus was one of several calls Fleischer placed to reporters that day…" [31] http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0305-02.htm, Tom Brune, “Air Force One Phone Records Subpoenaed” Newsday, March 5, 2004.[32] http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/files/040827_fitzgerald_affadavit_june_2007_unseal.pdf, p. 15, footnote 10.[33] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/04/25/109548/-Ambassador-Wilson-White-House-Operatives-Are-Traitors, interview with Joseph Wilson posted online, April 25, 2005.[34] Waas, The United States v. I. Lewis Libby, p. 100.[35] http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030711-7.html, press gaggle with Ari Fleischer and Dr. Condoleezza Rice aboard Air Force One, July 11, 2003.[36] See footnotes 23 and 24.[37] Testimony of Robert Novak in Murray Waas, The United States v. I. Lewis Libby (Union Square, June 2007), p. 425; and http://www.newsweek.com/id/68495, Michael Isikoff, "A Man Of Mystery," Newsweek, Feb. 26, 2007.[38] http://www.npr.org/documents/2007/feb/libby/libby_hour4.pdf, transcript of Libby grand jury testimony, p. 166.[39] Testimony of Matt Cooper in Waas, The United States v. I. Lewis Libby, pp. 226-227.[40] Testimony of Catherine Martin in Waas, The United States v. I. Lewis Libby, p. 111.[41] http://www.npr.org/documents/2007/feb/libby/libby_hour8.pdf, transcript of Libby grand jury testimony, pp. 169-172.[42] Libby described the conversation with Cheney as being about “the whole issue of now the Tenet statement was out, what would we do?” Ibid., p. 177.[43] http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB215/govt_ex/GX53201.PDF, exhibit submitted during the Libby trial; also in Waas, United States v. I Lewis Libby, p. 558.[44] http://www.governmentattic.org/6docs/FBICheneyPlame_2004.pdf, notes of Cheney FBI interview.[45] http://www.latimes.com/bal-rove0715,0,7649590.story, article by John Solomon for Associated Press, July 15, 2005.[46] https://www.hudson.org/experts/601-lewis-libby[47] http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB215/govt_ex/GX53201.PDF, exhibit submitted during the Libby trial; also in Waas, United States v. I Lewis Libby, p. 558.