John Hannah?!?

We are pondering the Raw Story splash telling us that John Hannah, a mid-level aide to Dick Cheney, has become a cooperating witness in the Plame investigation:

A senior aide to Vice President Dick Cheney is cooperating with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, sources close to the investigation say.

Individuals familiar with Fitzgerald’s case tell RAW STORY that John Hannah, a senior national security aide on loan to Vice President Dick Cheney from the offices of then-Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, John Bolton, was named as a target of Fitzgerald’s probe. They say he was told in recent weeks that he could face imminent indictment for his role in leaking Plame-Wilson’s name to reporters unless he cooperated with the investigation.

Others close to the probe say that if Hannah is cooperating with the special prosecutor then he was likely going to be charged as a co-conspirator and may have cut a deal.

...Those close to the investigation said in June 2003, Hannah was given orders by higher-ups in Cheney’s office to leak Plame’s covert status and identity in an attempt to muzzle Wilson, who had been a thorn in the side of the administration since May 2003, when he started questioning the administration’s claims that Iraq was an imminent threat to the U.S. and its neighbors in the Middle East. The specifics of who issued those orders and what directives were given were not provided.

John Hannah (not this one; focus!) has slipped into this story a couple of times before:

Feb 5, 2004, UPI:

Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said.

According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were the two Cheney employees. "We believe that Hannah was the major player in this," one federal law-enforcement officer said. Calls to the vice president's office were not returned, nor did Hannah and Libby return calls.

(Hat tip to a Valued Commenter and Jeralyn Merritt).

And Mr. Hannah reappeared in speculation offered by Editor & Publisher in Aug 2004.

Now, look at Mr. Hannah's background, and the Judy Miller saga seems a lot more understandable.  Knight-Ridder has background, and Newsweek has this:

A memo written by a top Washington lobbyist for the controversial Iraqi National Congress raises new questions about the role Vice President Dick Cheney’s office played in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

The memo, obtained by NEWSWEEK, suggests that the INC last year was directly feeding intelligence reports about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and purported ties to terrorism to one of Cheney’s top foreign- policy aides. Cheney staffers later pushed INC info—including defectors’ claims about WMD and terror ties—to bolster the case that Saddam’s government posed a direct threat to America. But the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies have strongly questioned the reliability of defectors supplied by the INC.

For months, Cheney’s office has denied that the veep bypassed U.S. intelligence agencies to get intel reports from the INC. But a June 2002 memo written by INC lobbyist Entifadh Qunbar to a U.S. Senate committee lists John Hannah, a senior national-security aide on Cheney’s staff, as one of two “U.S. governmental recipients” for reports generated by an intelligence program being run by the INC and which was then being funded by the State Department. Under the program, “defectors, reports and raw intelligence are cultivated and analyzed”; the info was then reported to, among others, “appropriate governmental, non-governmental and international agencies.” The memo not only describes Cheney aide Hannah as a “principal point of contact” for the program, it even provides his direct White House telephone number. The only other U.S. official named as directly receiving the INC intel is William Luti, a former military adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who, after working on Cheney’s staff early in the Bush administration, shifted to the Pentagon, where he oversaw a secretive Iraq war-planning unit called the Office of Special Plans.

Hannah did not respond to a request for comment. But another Cheney aide insisted that the memo was misleading, and flatly denied that the vice president received “raw” intelligence from the INC. Hannah discussed only Iraqi political issues with INC representatives, not intelligence, the aide said

My, my - John Hannah was a conduit for intel from Ahmed Chalabi and the INC.  But so was Judy Miller! Might he be a source about whom Judy did not want to be questioned?  (Okrent's thoughts on the Times reporting here; major Time piece not yet unearthed.)

One presumes that the possible connections between Hannah and Miller are endless.  On the other hand, Fitzgerald was studying Hannah twenty months ago - it surely dawned on him that Hannah might have a tie to Ms. Miller.

And in his infamous column, Novak described two of his sources as "Two senior administration officials".  Hannah would not seem to qualify.  So, to whom did he leak?

We are giving Raw Story some credence because, as passed along by the WaPo, the Daily News reported that "" '[Fitzgerald has] a senior cooperating witness - someone who is giving them all of that,' a source who has been questioned in the leak probe told the Daily News yesterday."

A few questions - the UPI story fingering Hannah is from Feb 2004, when Fitzgerald had been on the case only a month, and just after the second round of subpoenas (and before the White House had fully complied with them).

This was also before the discovery of Rove's e-mail had dragged Matt Cooper into the story, and before the other reporters (Kessler, Pincus, Libby, Russert, and Miller) fought their subpoenas and, eventually, testified.

So - what might Fitzgerald have known at that point?  And as another puzzle, Raw Story says that Hannah was ordered "to leak Plame’s covert status and identity", even though the leaks from Libby and Rove seemed to be about "Wilson's wife" at the Agency.

Oh, why not - here is some wild speculation.  Fitzgerald, or his predecessor, explained to Bob Novak that there is no reporter exemption in the Espionage Act, thereby prompting Mr. Novak to fold up like a cheap suitcase and identify his primary source as John Hannah, who received a battlefield promotion when Novak wrote his column.

And the hapless Mr. Hannah, unlike Libby and Rove, really did say "Valerie Plame, operative".  We have no idea how Hannah might have known that, although there does seem to be a thread connecting Hannah, David Wurmser, John Bolton, Fred Fleitz, and Valerie Plame.  Since Fred Fleitz also spent time at the CIA, he may have known of Ms. Plame there.

On another tack - TIME recently reported that "Fitzgerald, says a lawyer who's involved in the case, "knows who [Novak's original source] is--and it's not someone at the White House".

OK - is Hannah at the White House?  Here is press release with his background:

John Hannah, a senior national security aide on loan to Vice President Dick Cheney from the offices of then-Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, John Bolton,

 

Does "at the White House on loan from the State Dept" equal "not at the White House"?

And can a "senior national security aide" be a "senior Administration official"?  Why not?

Developing...

 

Comments

[Devin McCullen]

Wait a minute. The goofy brother from the Mummy movies? He's in the middle of all this?

[Steve J.]

Like Howard Fineman said, the tip of the lance that will pierce this criminal Administration is their lies about Iraq.

[flackcatcher]

GOOD GRIEF! Do you folks know how crazy you sound.(And people wonder why I got out D.C.)

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

The Rawstory article is co-authored by Jason Leopold, who I'm proud to say called me a right wing nazi in the comments section of Brad DeLong's blog where I was starring in a humiliation of Paul Krugman over Krugman running with one of Leopold's other fictions; that then Sec'y of the Army Tom White had engaged in multi-million dollar securities fraud while at Enron.

Leopold managed to get fired from Salon over it. I'm guessing he's up to his old tricks with this on Hannah.

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/archives/000947.html

[TCO]

wow. This doesn't sound good for the home team.

I actually don't consider the leaking that bad. (I'm sure that the "outing" was accidental...people did not know Plame was NOC and it did not do real damage*). But if they leaked and then got called on it...they should have admitted it and took their lumps immediately. Cover up is unconsionable. I don't want liars in my white house. (And I'm a repug.)

*That said, I agree that even inadvertant releases of classified information are wrong and prosecutable.

[Toby Petzold]

I've read a lot of melodramatic and self-important crap about how terrible it is that Valerie Plame's identity was exposed and what it means for God, country, and the CIA. I'm not impressed. If that woman ---Mrs. Wilson--- was so concerned about her secret identity, then she should have dissuaded her husband from betraying the trust that her employers put in him when he went and told his story in the pages of the New York Times. But, as should be clear to all, the Wilsons had no interest in preserving her secret identity because that would have defeated their purpose: achieving martyrdom and celebrity.

Let these indictments come. It'll give us all a chance to revisit the many lies of Joe Wilson ---and, maybe in the bargain, expose Big Media's extreme interest in sabotaging our war efforts.

[macranger]

Christopher Dickey, sort of confirms a theory of mine (sort of confirmed by Agency friends), that Ahmed maybe the source.

Man would that be a 'pisser'....

[Sue]

A pisser for who?

[TCO]

Who is ahmed. And dish a little more, company man...

[red dog]

Per the main part of the thread...Ahmed Chalabi

[TCO]

Ok...I don't know who that is...but ok...will figure it out. (and he was barely mentioned in the thread...had to look for the name pretty hard).

On other topic, I think TM is getting a bit pedantic to hold out for the use of "senior" as proving wrong a labeling of Hannah. Senior is in the eye of the beyolder. Besides, Novak already said that he misused the word "operative" and now you want to trust him for word precision?

[Syl]

What in hell is the BIG DEAL about getting intelligence analyzed that originated from the INC? I know in information gathering circles, data from defectors has to be especially scrutinized because of motive. But you can't simply IGNORE it either.

And it doesn't look like Hannah got the raw stuff anyway. The State Dept. analysis (INR?) should indicate degree of plausibility.

And this goes right to the battle between INR and WINPAC over Iraq intelligence. INR didn't want to believe it, WINPAC (most of them) did.

See my comment here regarding INR vs WINPAC.

That WINPAC won the battle over INR is maddening to the Left and anti-war types...especially since the intelligence provided by Chalabi turned out to be mainly false and no WMD stockpiles were found.

Obviously Hannah et al erred on the side of caution.

And what's this bit in the Newsweek article about 'imminent threat'. That bs rears its ugly head again.

Iraq was not an imminent threat to America. That only comes in to play IF we attack Saddam and he attempts to retaliate. It has nothing to do with the threat we feared Iraq would become if we left him alone.

The Iraq war was never a question of 'yes' or 'no'. It was simply a matter of 'now' or 'later'. And 'later' was deemed to be too late.

[topsecretk9]

Waas has abandoned the Cheney line and is back on Libby, Maybe too many giddy with thought of VP Condi.

[Rick Ballard]

Toby,

I almost agree with you in hoping for at least one indictment. An affirmative defense would probably involve having Victoria's Secret Flame Wilson on the stand explaining why all the press hounds were at her hubby's soiree two days before the NYT elevated him to "worst liar ever to appear on the editorial page". I'd especially like to see her explain the length and depth of her relationship with Corn, Pincus et al. It would be, at minimum, entertaining and possibly very enlightening.

[topsecretk9]

and hey, TM never took up the AP and Reuters 3 sneakies saying Val didn't work WINPAC but "covert" DO

[CaseyL]

"Let these indictments come. It'll give us all a chance to revisit the many lies of Joe Wilson ---and, maybe in the bargain, expose Big Media's extreme interest in sabotaging our war efforts.

Excellent, Toby! You're an invaluable member of the "I Know Wilson's Gonna Be Indicted, I Just KNOW It" Club.

I think you and Seven Machos should get together and concoct the Super Secret Super Truth, about how Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame are the real reasons Iraq went FUBAR. Extra points if you can blame them for 9/11, too!

[Syl]

Wilson's Corn article was disinformation. I think Wilson was trying to panic those who revealed his wife worked at the CIA.

Perhaps force them to attempt to cover-up. And move focus away from his wife's real work for the agency.

[Brad DeLong]

Patrick Sullivan should have given this URL as well: http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/002969.html. It's recommended to those who are curious about Tom White's role at ENRON.

[topsecretk9]

Syl

so the cia guy, harlow, who spoke to Novak 2ce screwed up?

[topsecretk9]

this is a semi- wrinkle in the raw story

"Mr. Bennett called Mr. Tate on Aug. 31. Mr. Tate told Mr. Bennett that Mr. Libby had given permission to Ms. Miller to testify a year earlier. "I called Tate and this guy could not have been clearer - 'Bob, my client has given a waiver,' " Mr. Bennett said."

[topsecretk9]

oops--meant Waas story, my bad

[topsecretk9]

Lessons on Millers note taking skills

new newsweek

.. "For some reason none of us had a tape recorder, so on the flight back to Casablanca we compared our notes from the one interview we’d had with a Moroccan general a few hours before. We wanted to be sure the phrases we’d scribbled down were accurate. But there was a problem. Judy had many more quotes in her notebook than I and another reporter had in ours. And Judy’s were much better. Then I realized why. I’d done a lot more homework on that particular story than she did, and I was asking much more detailed questions. She’d written them down, and now she thought they came from the general, but many of the quotes actually were from … me." ...

"Given the way Judy takes notes, I’m not surprised that she can’t remember who first gave her the name of “Flame.” I’ve even seen speculation that it came from one of her other not-so-reliable sources, Iraqi exile leader (and now vice president) Ahmad Chalabi, who peddled so many of the WMD rumors that wound up as facts in the Times. Ahmad keeps close tabs on his enemies, and I know first-hand that he counted many people at the C.I.A. on that list. When I e-mailed one of Chalabi’s aides to ask point blank if Chalabi was Judy’s source for Plame’s name, the aide responded: “Come on Chris … get back to serious work.” That seemed like a non-denial denial, so I asked again. “I'm not going to dignify it any further,” was the reply. “It is utter rubbish and you really should know better than to even listen to such rehashed '...' claptrap.”

So, I don’t know if Ahmad was the source. But I do know this. His agenda was to get Saddam ousted at any price..."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9742110/site/newsweek/

[jukeboxgrad]

Syl said "Iraq was not an imminent threat to America."

Maybe you weren't paying attention when Bush said "the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order were given."

Or maybe you have a peculiar definition of "imminent." Or maybe you're acknowledging that Bush was full of it.

[TM]

TM never took up the AP and Reuters 3 sneakies saying Val didn't work WINPAC but "covert" DO

Good point, and if anyone sees any sensible guess as to what that means, clue me in.

My only stab at it now - since Fred Fleitz was at WINPAC, *MAYBE* someone confused "Fred knows her from WINPAC" with "Fred works with her at WINPAC".

[TCO]

Wasn't Krugman at Enron?!? When I was at McKinsey, the place was thick with Democrat types who touted Enron all the time. It was all part of their New Economy shill. And Gupta was thick with the Clintons...

[TCO]

If Iraq was an imminent threat, then why did we take 14 months to argue the war before going in? I agree that Bush admin was wrong in Iraq having missiles on the rails. But the main issue was "now or later".

I gave Bush2 the bene of the doubt on the WMDs since I had disbeleived Bush1 about them with the previous war and then we found out it was worse than we thought. And never forget that the pacifist Senate demos voted against GW1 in droves (44 of them) even though Iraq had entered Kuwait and 5 miles into Saudi Arabia.

[ATM]

Wasn't it Blair who said the 45 minute thing?

[Rick Ballard]

"Good point, and if anyone sees any sensible guess as to what that means, clue me in."

Geez, Tom, why can't we use NYT/WaPo journalism standards and just make somethin' up? Or can I write it up on my blog and ask Syl to cite it?

[Syl]

JBG

Your reading comprehension skills are the reason you're usually out in la-la land. Read my comment again.

'Imminent' threat only comes to bear IF we attack Saddam and he retaliates. Iraq as imminent threat was never used as a justification for removing Saddam.

[Seven Machos]

I have no idea about the validity of this. However, Hannah definitely and without any question falls into the "senior administration official" category. He is also "no partisan gunslinger." Of course, so is Chalabi.

My hunch is that this is important news, but that the left is making way too much hay with it and trying too hard (as usual) to make it into some kind of death blow against the administration (proabably because BUSH LIED!!!!). I note that Hannah, A TARGET, has not spent the equivalent of a day with the grand jury. That's how it's done, kids. Make a note of it. Especially you, Geek, because it may come up on one of your law-school exams.

Neither Libby nor Rove will be indicted.

[Syl]

topsecretk9

"so the cia guy, harlow, who spoke to Novak 2ce screwed up?"

That's never been in doubt. Valery's status was NOC and Harlow should never have confirmed anything.

[Tollhouse]

This is getting even better.

It's like the roulette table. Pick any person from the Bush admin, and someone will manage to point the finger that way.

Rove, Libby, Bolton, Cheney, Fleischer, Rove, Bolton, Hannah, Harry, Houdini, Bush, Rice, Rove, Ramirez, Rather, Miller, Libby....

Around and around we go. :) Getting whiplash.

[topsecretk9]

That's never been in doubt. Valery's status was NOC and Harlow should never have confirmed anything.

yes I knew that, what I should have said is really, really screwed up

[macranger]

At least the MSM isn't hiding the agenda anymore...

"Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's CIA-leak inquiry is focusing attention on what long has been a tactic of U.S. President George W. Bush's administration: slash-and-burn assaults on its critics, particularly those opposed to the president's Iraq war policies."

More http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/18/leakprobe.ap/index.html

Heh....

[topsecretk9]

NYT's story- of course seen as bad news for Bush, but considering he has no obligation and the secrecy with GJ

No Final Report Seen in Inquiry on C.I.A. Leak

By DAVID JOHNSTON and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 - The special counsel in the C.I.A. leak case has told associates he has no plans to issue a final report about the results of the investigation, heightening the expectation that he intends to bring indictments, lawyers in the case and law enforcement officials say.

The prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, is not expected to take any action in the case this week, government officials said. A spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald, Randall Samborn, declined to comment.

A final report had long been considered an option for Mr. Fitzgerald if he decided not to accuse anyone of wrongdoing, although Justice Department officials have been dubious about his legal authority to issue such a report.

By signaling that he had no plans to issue the grand jury's findings in such detail, Mr. Fitzgerald appeared to narrow his options either to indictments or closing his investigation with no public disclosure of his findings, a choice that would set off a political firestorm.

With the term of the grand jury expiring Oct. 28, lawyers in the case said they assumed Mr. Fitzgerald was in the final stages of his inquiry.

The focus of Mr. Fitzgerald's inquiry has remained fixed on two senior White House aides, Karl Rove, who is President Bush's senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., who is Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Both had conversations with reporters about a C.I.A. officer whose name was later publicly disclosed.

It is not clear whether Mr. Fitzgerald has learned who first identified the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, to the syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak in July 2003.

Some of the lawyers in the case say Mr. Fitzgerald seems to be wrestling with decisions about how to proceed, leaning toward indictments but continuing to weigh thousands of pages of documents and testimony he has compiled during the nearly two-year inquiry.

In recent days, Mr. Fitzgerald has repeatedly told lawyers in the case that he has not made up his mind about criminal charges.

http://nytimes.com/2005/10/19/politics/19leak.html?ei=5094&en=adcf3adabff56617&hp=&ex=1129694400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

22 months and it's still not clear cut

[syn]

Bush said "we cannot wait until Saddam BECOMES an imminent threat" but some doofus reporter over at the NY Times bastardized the quote to invoke a completely different message that Saddam was an imminent threat.

And, that was Blair who mentioned the 45 minute threat.

Sheeple, get your Hilter's straight!:)

[TCO]

sorry...not a Plameaholic. What is the AP and 3 sneakies a ref to? Linkie thingie?

[Lee]

Does anybody have information if the CIA has ever stated if Plame was indeed "covert" at the time she was mentioned in the Novak article? I believe Novak wrote that he contacted the CIA and said that he was going to use Plame's name in an article and the CIA had no problem with him using her name. If that is the case, what is all this "disclosing an covert operative, deep cover, super spy" bullshit all about. If she was driving to work everyday to Langley, going to parties with Joe "I'll have another sweet mint tea, please" Wilson and posing for Vanity Fair, how undercover or covert could she be. If she was just a desk jockey at CIA, this whole investigation is nothing but a JOKE!

[TCO]

Did Rove and Libby tell the press spokesmodel that they had "nothing to do" with the Plame outing? If so, and they did, then they need to get fired just for that. I will listen to an argument that they weren't really involved or that there was some miscommunication. But if there was deliberate dishonesty (or Clintonian deception) with the spokesguy, I want those guys gone.

Is that clear?

[ordi]

The Administration FULL quote is

And according to the British government, the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order were given.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020926-7.html

and

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020928.html

As to President Bush saying Iraq was an 'Imminent' threat, it is revisionist spin!

In President Bush's State of the Union Address in January 03,

'Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late.'

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html

Reading comprehension and honstly quoting President Bush on the left is seriously lacking.

[Syl]

We may never know more than we know at this moment.

Would Fitzgerald issue indictments just to avoid a political firestorm?

Nope.

So either indictments are coming, or they're not, based only on Fitzgerald's determination a crime was committed and he could prove it in court.

It may mean nothing, but the Democrats recent noises and requests for a report may indicate they suspect the case is weak and may just go away.

[Sue]

For the record, I had nothing to do with the italics this time. :)

[topsecretk9]

uh-oh we have italics, syl not gonna like it

TCO- here is one, the AP has 3 anonymous

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051018/ts_nm/bush_leak_dc;_ylt=AtiUEe2QbfIV0hGWx4193J934T0D

[Syl]

Italics alert!!

TCO

AP and 3 sneakies here.

LEE

You're WAY behind. You've got to catch up.

[Syl]

syn

"Sheeple, get your Hilter's straight!:)"

LOL!

[Sue]

off

[Sue]

Did it work?

[ordi]

You gotta check this out Byron York posted

'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE FITZMAS

The inhabitants of some quarters on the Left are almost beside themselves with excitement tonight as they contemplate the possibility of indictments against Karl Rove, Lewis Libby, and perhaps others in the Plamegate investigation. In fact, they've been in a state of high agitation for weeks now.

As they say read the whole thing!

http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_10_16_corner-archive.asp#080020

It is too funny!

[Lee]

Sorry for the italics, new to this stuff. Still, no one from the CIA has answerd the question of when Novak called the CIA and stated that he was going to use Plame's name in an article and the CIA did not have a problem with it. If she was covert or undercover don't you think that the CIA would tell Novak that by publishing her name he would be committing a crime. My thinking is that she was not undercover or covert at the times in question and this is nothing more than a turf battle between the CIA and the Bush Adminstration. And yes, I am WAY behind on the story, I 'd rather be on the golf course.

[topsecretk9]

1.A final report had long been considered an option for Mr. Fitzgerald if he decided not to accuse anyone of wrongdoing, although Justice Department officials have been dubious about his legal authority to issue such a report.

2.Mr. Fitzgerald appeared to narrow his options either to indictments or closing his investigation with no public disclosure of his findings, a choice that would set off a political firestorm.

It isn't appropriate to issue a report, in that the evidence is secret and it could be dubious to witnesses and "players" that do not appear favorable. There is a better legal way to say this, Lawyer? It isn't considered fair to put out bad parts about people who may not had a chance at a full airing? IE Wilson