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Possible indictments of Bush top aides....
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canuckistan
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 6:20 am    Post subject: Possible indictments of Bush top aides.... Reply with quote

First Tom Delay....it's amusing to see how they're trying to spin this....

http://reuters.myway.com/article/20051025/2005-10-25T212533Z_01_KRA572753_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-BUSH-LEAK-DC.html

Quote:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bracing for indictments against top aides, the White House on Tuesday rallied behind Vice President Dick Cheney but refused to answer questions about whether he told his chief of staff about the CIA officer at the heart of a two-year leak investigation.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan would neither confirm nor deny a report in The New York Times that Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, first learned about the CIA officer, Valerie Plame, in a conversation with the vice president on June 12, 2003, weeks before her identity became public in a newspaper column by Robert Novak on July 14, 2003.

President George W. Bush ignored a shouted question about Cheney's role amid growing signs that federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will seek charges as early as Wednesday, when the grand jury is scheduled to reconvene.

In addition to Libby, Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, could be indicted, as well as others, lawyers close to the case said.

Plame's identity as covert operative was leaked after her diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson, accused the administration of twisting prewar intelligence on Iraq. Wilson based the criticism in part on a CIA-sponsored mission he made to Africa in 2002 to check out an intelligence report that Iraq sought uranium from Niger.

The Times report about the previously undisclosed conversation put a spotlight on Cheney and raised questions about assertions the vice president made in a September 2003 television interview that he did not know Wilson or who sent him on the trip to Niger.

Administration officials had sought to cast Wilson's trip to Niger as a boondoggle arranged by his wife, and in so doing, revealed her identity, people close to the case said. Wilson said the CIA sent him on the mission after Cheney's office sought more information about the uranium deal.

Asked if Cheney always tells the truth to the American people, McClellan said: "Yes." He dismissed as "ridiculous" a question about whether Bush stood by Cheney's account of his role in the matter. "The vice president, like the president, is a straight-forward, plain-spoken person," McClellan said.

Earlier, the spokesman said: "The vice president is doing a great job as a member of this administration."

POSSIBLE CHARGES

The Times account of the June 12, 2003, conversation also appeared to run counter to Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he first learned about Wilson's wife from reporters.

Fitzgerald is said by lawyers to be considering bringing charges against Libby for making false statements and possibly obstruction of justice.

Libby's notes indicate that Cheney got his information about Plame from George Tenet, who was then the CIA director, according to The Times.

The notes did not show Cheney knew the name of Wilson's wife. But they did show Cheney knew and told Libby she was employed by the CIA and that she may have helped arrange her husband's trip to Niger.

A Republican source with ties to Cheney said there was nothing illegal about Cheney and Libby discussing Wilson and his wife since they have security clearances.

But it could be a crime to pass along that information to the public.

While Fitzgerald could still charge administration officials with knowingly outing Plame to retaliate against her husband, lawyers in the case said the prosecutor appeared more likely to seek charges for easier-to-prove crimes such as making false statements, obstruction of justice and disclosing classified information.

Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Randall Samborn, Fitzgerald's spokesman, declined to comment.



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Ya-ta Boy



Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994

PostPosted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 6:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Does this send shivers down anyone else's spine? I remember the last time VeePs and top aides were indicted. It was entertaining in a weird kind of way, but not something I'd like to go through again.
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EFLtrainer



Joined: 04 May 2005

PostPosted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 6:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

See anything unusual in the NAMES?? Or any repetetive actions?? Jeez... makes ya wonder if there IS a huge right-wing conspiracy! Scumbags...

Had to post it all...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/26/MNG62FDUGL1.DTL&feed=rss.news

Washington -- Whether or not Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald decides to bring indictments in the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative -- and whether or not any crimes were actually committed -- one element of the case is central to an understanding of what happened and why: At the time of the leak, administration supporters of the Iraq war were determined to neutralize the CIA's doubts about the White House case that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, most notably nuclear weapons.

It is also not the first time -- and it most likely won't be the last -- that conflicts over intelligence have had momentous political consequences.

As far back as the 1950s, when the Air Force claimed there was a missile gap between the United States and Russia, the CIA proved to be a sticking point. Only when the agency sent its new U-2 spy plane soaring over the Soviet Union, taking pictures of air bases and missiles from 80,000 feet, did U.S. arms-control advocates have the ammunition they needed to beat back the furor.

In the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon's policy of detente was under attack by some former military officials and conservative policy intellectuals, Ford administration officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were among those challenging as too soft the CIA's estimate of Moscow's military power.

Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted to create a "Team B," which would have access to the CIA's data on the Soviets and issue its own conclusions. Cheney, as White House chief of staff, and Rumsfeld, as secretary of Defense, championed Team B, whose members included the young defense strategist Paul Wolfowitz, who a quarter-century later would be one of the chief architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

CIA Director William Colby rejected the Team B idea and was fired. Colby's successor as head of the spy agency, George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, accepted it.

Team B's conclusion that the CIA was indeed soft on the Soviets was leaked to sympathetic journalists and generated public support for a new round of military spending, particularly on missiles. Team B's conclusions turned out, years later, to be false.

"In retrospect, and with the Team B report and records now largely declassified, it is possible to see that virtually all of Team B's criticisms ... proved to be wrong," Raymond Garthoff, a former U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria, wrote in a paper for the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence three years ago. "On several important specific points it wrongly criticized and 'corrected' the official estimates, always in the direction of enlarging the impression of danger and threat."

Another run at controlling the CIA was taken when then-President Ronald Reagan appointed businessman William Casey CIA director with a mandate to ride herd on supposed agency liberals. Casey set up the irregular, covert operation led by Marine Corps Col. Oliver North, which eventually ended in the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. Likewise, when Reagan's Secretary of State George Schultz wanted to secretly back Saddam Hussein against the Iranians, Schultz bypassed the CIA and sent Rumsfeld, then a businessman, to Baghdad to seal the deal.

The path to Plame's outing also led through Baghdad, this time via Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, who had been abandoned by the CIA in the late 1990s as too troublesome, unreliable and corrupt.

Among Chalabi's key supporters were Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz. When the three came back into power in January 2001, the CIA and State Department still refused to back Chalabi.

Cheney began visiting CIA headquarters to challenge its analysts over their intelligence on Hussein's weapons. To Richard Kerr, the former chief of CIA analysis who later studied the agency's pre-war reporting on Iraq, Cheney displayed no anti-CIA animus at the time.

"My experience was to the contrary," Kerr said by e-mail. "He would not accept all our analysis without skepticism and believed we were better on some subjects than others. But those are the characteristics of a good customer."

Over at the Pentagon, however, Rumsfeld was reprising Team B by creating his own intelligence shop. The Chalabi organization's alarmist reports on Hussein's nuclear weapons, which later proved to be false, bypassed the CIA and went directly to the White House.

"That's why they set up an intelligence unit in [Undersecretary of Defense Douglas] Feith's office," said intelligence historian James Bamford. "The whole purpose was to get that kind of information and send it to Cheney."

In 2002, CIA analysts thought so little of a report that Hussein had obtained uranium yellow cake from Niger to build a bomb that they didn't even include it in the president's daily briefing, Bamford said.

"The Pentagon got it and flagged it to get Cheney's attention," he added, riling the White House further. Then covert CIA officer Plame, a specialist on weapons of mass destruction, helped arrange for her husband, career diplomat Joseph Wilson, to investigate the yellow cake claim in Niger.

As the world now knows, Wilson reported that there was nothing to it. And after President Bush offered the Niger intelligence as fact in his 2003 State of the Union speech, Wilson went public with his findings in an opinion piece in the New York Times later that year.

The fallout may be enough to put someone in jail for a time, and it may shake up the White House in major ways. But as past episodes have shown, even that will probably not disarm the combatants in the long and unending war over who controls intelligence.

Jeff Stein is National Security Editor at Congressional Quarterly where a longer version of this article originally appeared.
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EFLtrainer



Joined: 04 May 2005

PostPosted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 6:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

WHY BUSH IS UNIMPEACHABLE By Ted Rall
1 hour, 27 minutes ago

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=127&e=5&u=/ucru/20051026/cm_ucru/whybushisunimpeachable

Cracks Appear in the Constitution

NEW YORK--The phone rings with a blocked caller ID but I know who it is. My friend the film critic has just put down the same article I've just finished reading, a front-page blockbuster in the New York Daily News. It says that George W. Bush knew about Karl Rove's scheme to blow CIA agent Valerie Plame's cover for years, that he was Rove's partner in treason from the start, that his claims of ignorance were lies. The News article is anonymously sourced but we know it's 100 percent true because the White House won't deny that Bush is a traitor.

"So they'll impeach him now, right?"

My friend asked the same thing in 2001 when recounts proved Bush lost Florida, when the 9/11 fetishist admitted that he'd never even tried to catch Osama, when WMDs failed to turn up in Iraq, and when his malignant neglect killed hundreds of Americans in post-Katrina New Orleans.

"This means impeachment. Right?" Wrong.

Any one of Bush's crimes towers over the combined wickedness of Nixon and Clinton. And there are so many to choose from! How many times has Bush "made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States" (a key count in the Nixon impeachment)?

Stop laughing, you.

Unfortunately for my friend and the United States, impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. Nixon and Clinton faced Congresses controlled by the other party. Because Bush belongs to the same party as the majorities in the House and Senate, nothing he does can get him impeached.

Our failed Constitutional system means we're stuck with this disastrous demagogue for three more years. Gloat now, Republican readers, but party loyalty's stranglehold on impeachment can easily take the form of a complacent Democratic Congress overlooking the misdeeds of a batty Democratic president.

Any safe can be cracked; every system of safeguards breaks down eventually. We can't get rid of Bush because the Founding Fathers, who were smart enough to think of just about everything, dropped the ball when they drafted the article that provides for presidential impeachment. Because there were no national political parties back in 1787, their otherwise ingenious system of checks and balances failed to account for the possibility that a Congress might choose to overlook a president's crimes.

Small parties were active on the state and local level during the late 18th century, but James Madison, George Washington and most of the other Founders despised these organizations as harbingers of petty "factionalism" that ought to be banned or severely limited. Washington used the occasion of his 1796 farewell address to decry "the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration," he warned. "It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another; foments occasionally riot and insurrection...In governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged." Voting blocs were the enemy of good government.
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Bulsajo



Joined: 16 Jan 2003

PostPosted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 8:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Possible indictments of Bush top aides....

I really need to hear how Bill O'Riley is no-spinning this.... anyone got a link or two?

They'll probably manage to stay out of jail, no story there; The real story will be how breaking laws and just barely staying out of jail will be hailed as a triumph of righteousness and good governence by the Right, and poor Dennis Kozlowski and the Enron execs will be going "WTF?!?" from their cells...


Last edited by Bulsajo on Wed Oct 26, 2005 8:34 am; edited 1 time in total
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ontheway



Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...

PostPosted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 8:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Interesting story. But not very accurate.

Actually, EVERY recount, including independent recounts done by media groups showed that, however close the election was, Bush was the actual winner. I really despise both Bush Presidents, but dubya did win.

As a matter of opinion, George W. Bush cannot compare in his evil deeds to Nixon. He ain't got enough brains to be so evil. George H.W. Bush was definitely more evil than his son and could have them both beat, but fortunately he didn't get another 4 years to lock down the title.

As for Clinton, he and his wife were so adept at selling the services of the Governor's office through well washed bribes paid to her through the now bankrupt Rose lawfirm, that they were able to go from being dirt poor, barely employable Arkies to fairly rich in a short time. Even Hillary's one time, amazing, exactly $100,000 profit on commodities, made on a $1000 investment that was also a "gift", was actually a bribe. It was well researched and analyzed by the Wall Street Journal. Fortunately for the Clintons, his well timed BJs from Monica saved his Presidency. This distraction stopped the investigations into the real crimes.

The ranking of dishonor:

1 Nixon
2 GHW Bush
3 GW Bush
4 Clinton

They all should have been removed or never elected. The US does need a better system of "Impeachment".
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EFLtrainer



Joined: 04 May 2005

PostPosted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 9:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

ontheway wrote:
Interesting story. But not very accurate.

Actually, EVERY recount, including independent recounts done by media groups showed that, however close the election was, Bush was the actual winner. I really despise both Bush Presidents, but dubya did win.


That would depend a little on the degree of vote fraud, of which there was plenty. Most of it simply keeping people out of the polls.

hmmm....
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Ya-ta Boy



Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994

PostPosted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 1:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
As for Clinton, he and his wife were so adept at selling the services of the Governor's office through well washed bribes paid to her through the now bankrupt Rose lawfirm, that they were able to go from being dirt poor, barely employable Arkies to fairly rich in a short time. Even Hillary's one time, amazing, exactly $100,000 profit on commodities, made on a $1000 investment that was also a "gift", was actually a bribe. It was well researched and analyzed by the Wall Street Journal. Fortunately for the Clintons, his well timed BJs from Monica saved his Presidency. This distraction stopped the investigations into the real crimes.


I totally disagree with this. Whitewater etc were investigated at both the state and federal levels and nothing much was ever found. I don't pretend to know anything about it. It was my feeling that I could ignore the story until indictments were made. They never were. End of story.
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Kuros



Joined: 27 Apr 2004

PostPosted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 10:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ontheway wrote:
As for Clinton, he and his wife were so adept at selling the services of the Governor's office through well washed bribes paid to her through the now bankrupt Rose lawfirm, that they were able to go from being dirt poor, barely employable Arkies to fairly rich in a short time. Even Hillary's one time, amazing, exactly $100,000 profit on commodities, made on a $1000 investment that was also a "gift", was actually a bribe. It was well researched and analyzed by the Wall Street Journal. Fortunately for the Clintons, his well timed BJs from Monica saved his Presidency. This distraction stopped the investigations into the real crimes.


What a load. The reason Clinton was harangued so much by the FBI was because Louis Freeh made a pact with the devil in 1994. The Republican Congress was incensed at the FBI for failures and inefficiencies before that time and Freeh agreed to devote a great deal of attention to Clinton in exchange for a pass on meaningful reforms in the FBI.

As for GHWB being worse than the son, I don't have any idea where you're coming from. Not having enough brains to be evil? Well, George W Bush is plenty incompetent.
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igotthisguitar



Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)

PostPosted: Thu Oct 27, 2005 12:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Indictments against these crooks you say?

Don't hold your breath.
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EFLtrainer



Joined: 04 May 2005

PostPosted: Thu Oct 27, 2005 1:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Disgusting Stat of the Day:

Quote:
The public appeared divided about the controversy. A CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll taken over the weekend found 39 percent of Americans believe the leak of Plame's name was illegal, another 39 percent believed it was unethical but not illegal and the remainder saw nothing wrong or were not sure.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051027/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/cia_leak_investigation

What the heck is wrong with the American populace? Do they not understand basic law? Do they not understand the ever-widening wave of damage this "outing" has had on the CIA, it's employees and the many secret contacts? Do they not understand lives have changed forever, and some likely have died or will die/be imprisoned, etc.?? Is it partisan bull?

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE U.S. of AMERICA?
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Kuros



Joined: 27 Apr 2004

PostPosted: Thu Oct 27, 2005 3:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

EFLTrainer wrote:
Do they not understand basic law?


The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 is fairly narrowly defined. The person who leaks needs to be authorized to have access to the agent's information and must purposely give out the information that they are an agent. That's pretty difficult to prove. So I'd say that the American public is showing a real knowledge of the issues to be split both ways as to whether any laws were broken, but almost wholeheartedly acknowledging that what happened was unethical and dangerous. As for the other 22, they either disagree with this position or are unsure. I don't think it's a mistake for someone who hasn't been following this case closely to be unsure.

But it gets more complicated, because this document might apply, which is sometimes called the espionage act. But frankly nobody knows will know for sure which law applies where except for the grand jury that has been convening for 2 days a week for the past 2 years to painstakingly review who should be indicted and for what.
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EFLtrainer



Joined: 04 May 2005

PostPosted: Thu Oct 27, 2005 3:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kuros,

Sometimes we can try too hard to find a hair to split. They knew she was with the CIA, they told a reporter, he reported it. They did so with malice aforethought. It matters not a tiny bit that they didn't say her name. Wilson's wife. Who else could it be? Is he a bygmist?

This is a no-brainer. As to not following what's been happening: that's not an explanation, it's an excuse. Get involved, people, is all I have to say to those not paying attention.

I understand your comments, but don't find it a relevant argument. The flow of the info is too clear, even without the results from a trial. As to which law, don't know for sure, but the one that's been talked about is fully applicable, so far as I can tell.

String 'em up.
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ontheway



Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...

PostPosted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 7:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kuros,

You really need to go back and look at what the Clintons did. Hillary's legal career was in the can before Bill attained statewide office in Arkansas. They couldn't scrape up the downpayment on a house. That's why their first bribe of $100,000 was paid to them disguised as profits from commodities trading. Many politicians take cash bribes. But the Clintons were so poor, that a large cash bribe would have been impossible for them to hide. The Wall Street Journal did an analysis of the paper trades and showed that no such trades could have occurred on those days. There were no trades. The money was transferred from Tyson's foods, through a crooked lawyer and a crooked commodities broker to the Clintons. This was in payment for services Bill performed for Tyson's.

Subsequently, Hillary's income jumped by a factor of 20+. She went from 15,000/year to 300,000 per year and became the biggest rainmaker at her new law firm. The companies that Bill assisted as Governor paid huge retainers for performing no work to the Rose law firm. Hillary got paid a huge salary for doing no work at the Rose law firm and Bill did the dirty deeds. Get it. Bribery. This was all layed out in the financial press of that era. Unfortunately, most people, including the reporters for NBC, ABC and CBS and the big papers cannot read or understand the financial press. And Ken Star had a lot of trouble getting witnesses to confess their roles in these illegal activities. That's what the Clinton affiar was originally about.

"Whitewater" was just one of hundreds of illegal deals. But, the money was well laundered. Everything was cleaned except Monica's dress and the minds of the dirty old men in Congress.


Last edited by ontheway on Fri Oct 28, 2005 8:07 am; edited 1 time in total
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Bulsajo



Joined: 16 Jan 2003

PostPosted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 8:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

So today's the day the grand jury expires... no news yet!
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