Judy Remembers!

Per Reuters, embattled Times reporter Judith Miller has found new notes about her conversations with Lewis Libby.  Bring the hype:

A New York Times reporter has given investigators notes from a conversation she had with a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney  weeks earlier than was previously known, suggesting White House involvement started well before the outing of a CIA operative, legal sources said.

Times reporter Judith Miller discovered the notes -- about a June 2003 conversation she had with Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby -- after her testimony before the grand jury last week, the sources said on Friday. She turned the notes over to federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and is expected to meet him again next Tuesday, the sources said.

Miller's notes could help Fitzgerald establish that Libby had started talking to reporters about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson, weeks before Wilson publicly criticized the administration's Iraq policy in a Times opinion piece, the sources said.

Yes, I suppose they could help establish that.  Does Reuters take the position that all contacts between reporters and journalists White House officials are illegal?  It is hardly news that reporters were buzzing about the Wilson trip in mid-June, so it is hardly surprising that Ms. Miller was buzzing as well - here is a TIME excerpt telling us about the INR memo, the Pincus article, and more.

In addition, the WaPo had strongly hinted last Sunday that Libby was a source for the Pincus article when they wrote this:

By early June, several weeks before Libby is said to have known Plame's name, the State Department had prepared a memo on the Niger case that contained information on Plame in a section marked "(S)" for secret. Around that time, Libby knew about the trip's origins, though in an interview with The Washington Post at the time, he did not mention any role played by Wilson's wife.

So learning that Miller and Libby talked about the Niger trip in June is not nearly as exciting as Reuters makes it.

However - who is Judy kidding?  She just found these notes now, *after* testifying?

And legal minds will ponder this - why is she producing them at all, since her subpoena seemed limited as to dates.  Here is an excerpt from a court ruling summarizing her subpoena:

In the meantime, on August 12 and August 14, grand jury subpoenas were issued to Judith Miller, seeking documents and testimony related to conversations between her and a specified government official “occurring from on or about July 6, 2003, to on or about July 13, 2003, . . . concerning Valerie Plame Wilson (whether referred to by name or by description as the wife of Ambassador Wilson) or concerning Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium.” Miller refused to comply with the subpoenas and moved to quash them.

That covered a July 8 meeting and a follow-up phone call between Miller and Libby.  The highly plausible presumption has been that Libby had already testified to that meeting, thus prompting the subpoena to Miller so that Fitzgerald could get her side.

But what about a June conversation?  If Libby did not mention it to Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald would have had no basis for a subpoena.  Or perhaps Libby mentioned it, Fitzgerald thought it irrelevant, but then Fitzgerald asked Miller about it anyway in her recent session.  The obvious problem with that idea is, why would Fitzgerald take Libby's word for the conversation being unimportant?  Why not put it in the original subpoena just to gain verification?

[Jane Hamsher at firedoglake makes the excellent point that Fitzgerald, in his letter to Libby's attorney Tate, only mentions Libby's testimony about July talks.  Odds that Libby mentioned a June chat?  Negligible.  More about Ms. Hamsher in an UPDATE.]

Fitzgerald had previously subpoenaed the White House phone logs - could it be that that call was not noted there?  Maybe - Cooper's call to Rove apparently slipped through this system as well (by the subtle ploy of calling the main switchboard and being reconnected there to Libby.  Whose job it it to log the redirected calls, which must occur all the time?).  IF that is what happened, I could see where Fitzgerald might find these errors to be troubling, although we don't have any real idea how fool-proof the White House call-logging systems actually is (has anyone performed and published any sort of "Call Capture" evaluation and determined an "Overlooked" rate?)

On the other hand, Fitzgerald had also asked for the White House Iraq Group contacts, but for the "wrong" dates:

The subpoenas also seek documents from July 6 to July 30 relating to the White House Iraq Group, a group of communications, political, national security and legislative aides who met weekly in the Situation Room.

And why is Ms. First Amendment all talkative suddenly?  Shouldn't she hold out for a new subpoena, and a chance to go back to jail?  Or is she facing a legal threat herself?

Let's add that the theory that Miller was protecting Libby, even though Libby had "waived" confidentiality, goes up a point or two.  The notion - Ms. Miller knew she had talked to Libby about Wilson in June.  She took one look at the subpoena, and inferred that Fitzgerald did not know about the chat because Libby had not mentioned it.  She then surmised that, regardless of the original waiver, her full and complete testimony could cause problems for Libby.

This seems like a terrible time for Libby to be surprising Fitzgerald with new, relevant testimony.

[However, it gives one answer the puzzle posed by Mickey and the Anon Lib - *if* Libby was coaching Miller's testimony, he had an obvious motive.]

STRAY THOUGHT:  Regarding the rumor of twenty-two indictments:  IF Fitzgerald has decided that any talk about the Wilson trip, not just talk about his wife, was a leak of classified info (which it was), then the list of possible suspects widens enormously - anyone who talked to a reporter about the Wilson trip committed a crime, whether they mentioned the wife or not.

Would the indictments look silly, since Tenet effectively de-classified the trip with his July 11 statement?  Maybe, but they might be useful bargaining chips.

UPDATE:  Jane Hamsher of firedoglake thinks Fitzgerald baited a mousetrap and caught Judy Miller.  My can't-do-it-justice summary is that Fitzgerald knew about the June 25 chat and has ensnared Miller in a perjury rap. 

Mark Kleiman summarizes the theory, and, in his second UPDATE, leans towards Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft in minimizing Ms. Miller's new legal problems.  Put me with TalkLeft - I think that if Fitzgerald had evidence of a June talk, he would have been obliged to mention it in the subpoena.  My tip to Dems - focus on Libby's problems.

Comments

[kim]

Not a great time for Miller to be surprising Fitz with new, relevant testimony, either.
==============================================

[Anon]

in case you missed it - Judy Miller was interviewed the other day by Lou Dobbs.

Partial transcript and link to the full video here:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/10/05/miller.dobbs/

I think I'll leave the parsing to those truly devoted, but there seems to be some things of interest in there - for instance:

"You know, I didn't want to participate in a fishing expedition. And we had asked the special counsel over a year ago, would he narrow his investigation to the source of his interest and the subject of interest? And he wouldn't do it then. When he agreed to do it, when I asked in August, that was it. I knew I'd be able to -- sorry, in September, I knew I'd be able to get out of jail."

[kim]

First Amendment Lala Land.
============================

[kim]

She and Dobbs were just trying to build a little credibility for her to the left.
=================================

[JoeDuke]

Pincus (Wilson's bud), Kristof (see article below) and Miller (CIA WMD contact) knew about Joe Wilson and Valarie from the start. Wilson was Kristof's source for his May 9, 2003 'Missing in Action: Truth" article:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/unmovic/2003/0506missing.htm

And as you/WaPo suggest Wilson was a source for Pincus' June 13, 2003 article.

Miller may have called Libby in June to attempt to confirm this. My guess she provided him with more info about this then he did to her.

Miller and the other jouranlists should be the one's sweating, not Rove or Libby. If Rove or Libby truly did anything clearly wrong, both would have been out shortly after the Nov 2004 elections. Not now.

[kim]

Yabba dabba doo.
=================

[jerry]

You might want to read emptywheel's theory of these events at TheNextHurrah, bad news for everyone by this analysis - including, but not especially, the NYTimes.

[pollyusa]

I don't think Reuter's is having much of a problem with reporters talking to journalists, however they find it news worthy that a reporter was talking to a senior WH official. As you say even exciting.

As I'm sure you are aware, the excitement isn't that Miller and Libby talked about the Niger trip, it's that Judy and Libby may well have talked about the "trip's origins", since as Pincus tells us Libby was aware of the "trip's origins"(code for Wilson's wife) by June 12.

The next paragraph in the Pincus Sunday WAPO article you mention.

By July 12, however, both Rove and Libby and perhaps other senior White House officials knew about Wilson's wife's position at the CIA

I will add here that it looks like someone may have played Pincus, since Pincus in his 10/12/03 article was told a different story regarding when the information about Plame was known.

No one brought up Wilson's wife, and her employment at the agency was not known at the time the article was published.[The article Pincus is referring to here is the WAPO article he published on June 12 2003 WAPO]

[Thom]

If the theory is that the White House outed Plame in retaliation for Wilson's NYT op-ed, which was published July 6th, doesn't the fact that Libby and Miller may have been discussing Wilson/Plame in June undercut the theory of retaliation and disclosure of a covert agent (ignoring the dispute over her status) for an improper purpose?

[clarice]

Here's another theory:She didn't want anyone to know that she had in essence ratted out Kristof and his ties to Wilson to Libby. Think, if you worked at the NYT, picked up scuttlebutt about the Kristof's new best friend and passed it on to the WH as your colleague was using Wilson's info(lies) to attack the WH, would you want that known? Just asking. You don't think your office mates might consider that a betrayal?

[pollyusa]

JoeDuke

That Wilson was leaking to Pincus and Kristof is common knowledge, both reporters were released by Wilson in 2003.

How you conclude that Kristof, Pincus or Miller knew about Plame "from the start" is a mystery.

[SteveMG]

Thom:
"Doesn't the fact that Libby and Miller may have been discussing Wilson/Plame in June undercut the theory of retaliation and disclosure of a covert agent (ignoring the dispute over her status) for an improper purpose?"

Well, Wilson was shopping his (mostly dishonest) story to various reporters (Kristoff, Corn, John Judis in TNR, Miller?) well before his op-ed piece was published on 7/6. They fell for it and some (Kristoff and Judis) published falsehoods from Wilson, e.g., that he saw the Niger documents and knew they were forgeries.

Miller likely heard about Wilson's allegations either from Kristoff or maybe Wilson himself and was working on a story when she called Libby on 6/25. Interesting that Fitzgerald phoned Wilson the very day that Miller was to testify. Hmm.

I'm still convinced that Miller knew Plame before she discussed her with Libby et al.

I'm equally convinced that Libby, Rove et al. did not reveal Plame's status in order to punish Wilson or to retaliate against his criticisms. Doesn't make sense unless one believes in the "neocons are thugs and evil and want to take over the world" perspective.

One can drive himself crazy trying to figure this story out. We're relying on statements from people who are spinning things and from reporters and news organizations that have been shown to habitually get things wrong or incomplete.

[kim]

It's real simple. Joe's stupid lie about debunking the Yellow Cake Papers pricked up the White House ears, who didn't think they had been debunked so early and it was off to the hounds, barking themselves hoarse in the fog.
================================================

[Florence Schmieg]

Thom, I agree with you. This June meeting undercuts the entire idea that this was retaliation for the article. Didn't that start all of this? Maybe Rove and Libby will get indicted but not for the original charge, which is awful. Do we really want out of control prosecutors fishing and inventing novel charges just to get at high level politicians for engaging in politics? If we were talking about those people who leak CIA classified info to the New York Times to publish on page one, I could see it. But how chilling to turn off all political discussion in this way.

[Syl]

Well, let's talk about memories. Rove didn't remember his talk with Cooper. Cooper didn't remember his call was about welfare reform.

Perhaps Libby learned Plame was Wilson's wife from Miller and thought it was during the 6/25 conversation. And that's what he testified to.

But Miller finally testifies (with her notes) on the 6/25 conversation and nope, she doesn't tell Libby about Plame.

What the hey? Is somebody lying.

Ah. But Miller remembers she DID tell Libby and realizes Libby is in trouble because he testified about the wrong conversation. So to keep her good graces she goes back and finds her notes on the earlier conversation where the revelation actually took place.

Hey, it's as good a theory as anyone else's.

[Syl]

pollyusa

Miller may not have know about Plame, but it's not impossible that she did. Between scuttlebut on Wilson, who was a social climber and proud he was married to a CIA "spy", and Miller's work on wmd, it's very possible she actually may even have known Plame personally.

[topsecretk9]

oooh Clarke

She didn't want anyone to know that she had in essence ratted out Kristof and his ties to Wilson to Libby.

I was thinking that in essence she had gone to bat for Kristof (sniffing up WH info and knowledge for him) and that is why the martyr trip and the NYTimes illogical and weird devotion

Your wrinkle makes me think...maybe both. In that, her attempts to get info for Kristof she goofed and screwed them

and Syl

Good theory. I was thinking the notes were an attempt for Judy NOT to be in a cooper situation (Coopers say no WReform, then re-reads his notes! Oops, then make sure to inlcude in his story...maybe I DID talk Welfare Reform)

[pollyusa]

Thom

Wilson was an anonymous source for both the 5/6/03 Kristof column and Pincus's 6/12/03 WAPO article. The Kristof column is what started the WH looking into the Niger trip.

When Pincus was calling the administration for comment on his 6/12/03 article, the administration knew that the anonymous source for Kristof was Wilson. It was clear that Wilson was going to be a source for the Pincus article as well.

The WH was starting to push back against the version of events that Wilson was leaking. Before the July 6th op-ed, they played down Wilson's trip and tried to distance Cheney from the story in the June Pincus article.

Somehow, Libby and Rove had found out about Plame by June 12, 2003. It is not known if they told any reporters about Plame in June, if they did no one published and Pincus was not told about Plame at that time.

It is possible that Miller was told about Plame in June before the op-ed, she did have a meeting with Libby presumably about Wilson and or Plame.

The 6/10/03 INR memo, which details the 2/02 meeting where the "Niger trip by Wilson was discussed", is probable source of the information that Plame was CIA.

[TM]

Not a great time for Miller to be surprising Fitz with new, relevant testimony, either.

Well, this is her first testimony, so she is hardly open to perjury.

I don't think Reuter's is having much of a problem with reporters talking to journalists,

Good point. However (and I am finding Polly to be very interesting), based on this next bit I think I am not alone in my Saturday morning reading comprehension problems.

since as Pincus tells us Libby was aware of the "trip's origins"(code for Wilson's wife) by June 12.

The next paragraph in the Pincus Sunday WAPO article you mention.

By July 12, however,...

My guess - "July 12" looks like "June 12" if you read quickly.

IF that is the error, welcome to the club. As I read it, Libby did *not* mention the wife to Pincus in June.

And Reuters has nothing suggesting he mentioned the wife to Miller, either, prompting my "So what?"

[TM]

All that said - on the notion that the June talks undermine the notion that outing the wife was punishment:

One might argue (I don't) that in June, the White House held back, and limited themselves to rebutting Wilson.

When he went public in July, they switched to punishment mode, and outed his wife.

Alternatively, there had been talk about Wilson since he started his silly leaks in May, and news of his wife's roles eventually started bouncing between reporters and officials.

And when Wilson went public, the story went ballistic, and all the talk escalated quickly. No plan, no punishment, just more gossip.

Novak told Rove; Russert (maybe) and Cooper told Libby.

Plenty of State Dept people knew something about the wife as of June, and some of them talk to to the press.

[topsecretk9]

TM
whats your take on Fitz calling Wilson. No big thing?

[SteveMG]

TM:
"IF Fitzgerald has decided that any talk about the Wilson trip, not just talk about his wife, was a leak of classified info (which it was)"

Just a small stray thought? Throw it out there for discussion, I suppose?

One never knows. This is fundamentally the problem with these special or independent prosecutors. No controlling legal authority, so to speak (as a former-VP-now-poster-child-for-thorazine) once said.

Always has been - whether it was Lawrence Walsh or Ken Star. The left and right had agreed to this after the Lewinsky matter but as Doc Johnson said, men need reminding more than they need being informed.

SMG

[clarice]

P.S. I think your stray thoughts are, how can I put it?--Stray? Wilson talked about the trip to Corn,Pincus, Kristof and they printed tidbits about it, BUT he didn't have to sign a confidentiality agreement about the trip..If he could talk freely about it, the writers could publish, I should think..

The problem for the reporters is any secret stuff they got--i.e. "the forged doc", possibly Plame's status if she really was undercover (which I doubt);In other words, if his report wasn't "classified information" (interesting question why it wasn't) reporting about what he said about it can't be, can it?

[topsecretk9]

hmmm dee dumm dumm dumm (sorry if this has been posted, but didn't notice)

"...WASHINGTON -- The prosecutor in the CIA leak case is exploring a range of possible crimes, lawyers in the case say, suggesting that the investigation has moved well beyond its initial focus on whether anyone in the Bush administration illegally disclosed the identity of a CIA operative...

...The notes refer to Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador to Gabon. An Op-Ed article that he wrote for The Times, on July 6, 2003, which was critical of the administration's Iraq policy, started the events that led to the disclosure of the identity of his wife, Valerie Wilson, a CIA operative, and subsequently to Fitzgerald's inquiry..."

http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/2813064p-9258411c.html

[topsecretk9]

sorry, JoeDuke first pointed this out on MacMind blog

[Sue]

Who first cast the cloud over the '16 words' that started this whole thing?

[MeTooThen]

TM,

Alternatively, there had been talk about Wilson since he started his silly leaks in May, and news of his wife's roles eventually started bouncing between reporters and officials.

And when Wilson went public, the story went ballistic, and all the talk escalated quickly. No plan, no punishment, just more gossip.

Novak told Rove; Russert (maybe) and Cooper told Libby.

Plenty of State Dept people knew something about the wife as of June, and some of them talk to to the press.

Getting closer.

And closer.

And why is not Joseph Charles Wilson IV the target of Fitzgerald's investigation at this point?

It seems just as likely that Wilson was the source as to Valerie Plame's identity (NB: the Who's Who entry) as anyone at this time.

TM's suggestion here seems spot on. Wilson began this whole nonesense, then first he, vis a vis the NYT piece, and then he and Double-O-Plame, in Vanity Fair, had seemingly everything to do with the so-called "outing".

Sheesh.

[topsecretk9]

Wilson began this whole nonesense, then first he, vis a vis the NYT piece

senseless fodde...

I have ahem been accused --ahem ---of make what pappa bear refers to as "wife noises"

So when Blitzer asked Wilson (7-14-05) about this...

"at the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs."

and Wilson responded--

WILSON: Well, it was a statement that I'd made at a meeting in Seattle. And as my wife later told me, she thought I'd gone a little over the top, so I took the handcuffs off.

I wondered why a still employeed by the CIA "covert" agent would not be interested in reinging in her husbands big mouth in 2003?

[kim]

T, the new and relevant evidence that Judy is surprising Fitz with is the June notes. Unless, of course, they are no surprise to him.
==============================================

[Kate]

Are we expecting that all 22 indicted will be Bush admin figures? Any chance that it would be Plame and CIA types since there was leaking going on there too.

If they indict 22 people for yapping about widely known classified info, this may cure the leak problem for years to come in DC. Maybe that is Fitzgerald's goal.

I think this would be very unfair because both sides have used leaks for years.

[Dwilkers]

"It seems just as likely that Wilson was the source as to Valerie Plame's identity (NB: the Who's Who entry) as anyone at this time."

I've always thought that was true. After all, the fact that his wife worked in WMD at CIA could just as easily be used by Wilson to reinforce his conclusions ("of course I know what I'm talking about! My wife works at the CIA FGS!) as to descredit him. Moreover, Wilson has always seemed to me to be the type to blab off that way.

Whatever. Unless the media is spinning us really hard (imagine that!) it seems as if we're going to see at least someone in the administration indicted over this. Frankly, when I sit back and think about the whole story I just don't see it (admin indictments). Sounds to me like a bunch of water cooler talk and bar gossip.

I can't wait for the whole thing to be over so we can finally find out what was really going on.

[TM]

whats your take on Fitz calling Wilson. No big thing?

I had officially predicted that Wilson should have been called, and declaimed the fact that no one in the press was even trying for a story based on that, on Aug 2.

Demonstrating that you find what you look for, on Aug 4 Wilson said this:

JOSEPH WILSON: I have not spoken to Pat Fitzgerald for almost a year-and-a-half. I was interviewed by him once early in his tenure. My wife was interviewed by him once early in his tenure in a separate interview from mine, and neither of us have spoken to him since. We have not been before the Grand Jury. We're not part of this case. And, of course, he has appropriately not shared with us any information he might have.

Sure, he might have been lying. Or Fitzgerald might be following the rule about not putting potential indictees in front of the grand jury(!).

Or Fitzgerald might be giving him a pass.

As to my stray thought - I am not saying htat the reporters who talked to Wilson are guilty of anything.

I am saying that an Admin official (WH, State, whatever) who talked to a reporter about the Wilson trip was disclosing classified info, whether or not they mentioned the wife.

SO, if Libby was a source for Pincus's June 12 article, he committed a crime, even if he never mentioned the wife.

And no, I don't know why Wilson is not guilty of something - I would guess a combination of the lack of a non-disclosure, and the fact that Wilson is not an authorized official with access to the info, he is a private citizen.

[clarice]

New wrinkle:WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The special prosecutor in the CIA leak investigation will interview New York Times reporter Judith Miller next week, according to one of Miller's attorneys, Floyd Abrams. Miller's meeting with prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will occur Tuesday in Washington, Abrams said, but it will not be conducted in front of the grand jury looking into the leak of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative. However, Abrams said, Fitzgerald could decide after the interview to have Miller make another grand jury appearance. http://edition.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/07/cia.leak/

Maybe this resolves your inquiry earlier, TM--She turned over the notes but apparently is not going before the gj so fast..Is he trying to get her to do this voluntarily because as you note it goes beyond the subpoena? If she doesn't and he needs a new subpoena, is she, as you once theorized, trying to run out the clock?

If her testimony is important and she doesn't give in voluntarily, will Fitz punt?Will he say there is evidence of other crimes, ask for a new prosecutor to persue those and not file a report on the grounds it may interfere with any new investigation?

HMM??

[kim]

Wait, Wilson can talk about his trip, but no one else can? I know you are not trying to say that.
==============================================

[Sue]

TM,

I would say you are correct, if you read the actual request from the CIA to the Justice department, no mention of 'outing' a covert operative, but definitely a mention of classified information. I believe that has been where the investigation has been going all along. But I can't see how that would let Wilson off the hook. He may not have signed a disclosure form but he was working for the government in his roll as 'envoy', which takes away his claim as private citizen. And there is still that little thing about 'seeing' a classified document he wasn't supposed to see that he later claimed to have misspoken about. And not all indictees appear before the grand jury, but lots of witnesses do.

[pollyusa]

Oops, you are quite right, I misread the date...thank you for being kind.

However the paragraph you quoted from Sunday's Pincus article makes the case that Libby knew in June.

Around that time, Libby knew about the trip's origins

[SteveMG]

"Is he trying to get her to do this voluntarily because as you note it goes beyond the subpoena?"

Overzealous, out-of-control prosecutor?

Or, "Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?"

I stand by my argument that Miller and Keller and the Times are terrified of Fitztgerald going beyond this Plame matter and delving into other areas where classified information was discussed with Miller.

Not only in the Plame affair but a whole host of other issues over the years both in the Bush Administration and Clinton. Administration officials AND government ones. CIA, NSA, DIA, et cetera.

IIRC, Fitzgerald is obligated under law to follow any leads of criminality or at least required to forward information of wrong-doing on other non-Plame matters to Justice.

SMG

[clarice]

"pursue", not persue (how embarrassing is it to see the many typos and evidence of poor proofreading skilles?

Thanks for the Aug 4 reference..I had remembered reading that, but couldn't remember where..It's just a guess, of course, but were I the sp, Plame and Wilson would be my last witnesses (after I had everyone else's stories--esp the reporters");) Because they are obvious targets if you carefully read the public reports on this case, and because the press has probably "outed" their role by now..

[topsecretk9]

TM'

I was referring to the Fitz call to Wilson, on 9-29-2005

"However, there was an additional sign that Fitzgerald continued to investigate aggressively. He phoned Wilson on Sept. 29, the same day Miller, the New York Times reporter jailed for refusing to divulge her confidential source, was released from jail after agreeing to testify in the case. She testified the next day." More here.

or maybe you knew that, link from LA TImes...not a subscriber

[Jeff]

TM - In light of this new development, don't you think Libby's letter to Miller looks more suspicious, since he says (transcribing and emphasizing myself),

The Special Counsel identified every reporter with whom I had spoken about anything in July 2003.

And this sentence comes right after Libby says that he waived his confidentiality privielege regarding "any discussions I may have had related the Wilson-Plame matter," so the second sentence now sure sounds like the point is: I know I waived confidence with regard to all conversations, but Fitzgerald has only identified you as someone I spoke to in July 2003, so please only talk about our July conversations.

Obviously I don't know how Fitzgerald found out about this conversation (which, by the way, the Times today specifies took place on June 25), but we know from way back that investigators were interested in June as well as July 2003. As for how Fitzgerald got access to Miller's testimony and notes about it, again we don't know the details, but I think this raises again a question I raised a couple of days ago: what exactly were the terms of the deal Fitzgerald and Miller worked out? It seems probable that Fitzgerald got something in return for eliminating the broad Niger uranium topic -- and perhaps by extension Miller's crappy WMD reporting -- from the scope of his questioning of Miller. If Fitzgerald only got an expansion of the timespan covered by the subpoena of Miller, but the scope -- Plame -- remained the same, then it is more likely that Libby is in deep trouble, since it means that the June 25 Miller-Libby conversation embraced Wilson's wife. However, all we have from reports so far is that the conversation had to do with Wilson's trip, which may mean that Libby's conversation with Miller echoes his earlier conversation with Pincus, in which Plame was not mentioned. For that to be the case, however, the deal between Fitzgerald and Miller would have to have broadened the subject matter covered beyond Plame to include Wilson's trip altogether. Maybe this is what Fitzgerald was after all along, and so he didn't really give anything up in forgoing discussion with Miller of everything else about Niger and uranium and WMD.

pollyusa - As TM notes, there's nothing in the WaPo piece to indicate that Libby knew about Plame's role back in early June. I'm not saying he didn't. But I see no reason to read the admittedly ambiguous phrase "the trip's origins," about which he knew, as code for Plame's role.

TM - As for this

And when Wilson went public, the story went ballistic, and all the talk escalated quickly. No plan, no punishment, just more gossip.

Novak told Rove; Russert (maybe) and Cooper told Libby.

Here we go again with the ambiguous "X told Y," where what you say is incomplete at best. Novak brought it up with Rove, but Rove said he already had heard. Cooper brought it up with Libby, but Libby said he had already heard. So neither Libby nor Rove appear to have learned anything from reporters. And we know from multiple sources that all sorts of administration officials were encouraging reporters to pursue the story of the origins of Wilson's trip during the week of July 6-13 -- at least Fleischer, Bartlett and Rice, and it appears that Libby may have been doing the same with Miller. This makes the "no plan, just gossip" scenario less plausible. We can't be as sure about the role of Russert, who has been as misleading as any of the principals.

[Anonymous Liberal]

TM, I can see why you take issue with the spin Reuters puts on Miller turning over these newly found notes. They don't seem to have anything to base it on. But then again, perhaps they're simply repeating the spin provided to them by their source. After all, who leaked the fact that Miller was turning over more notes? Unless Fitzgerald's office has finally sprung a leak, it would seem that Miller or one of her attorneys is the most likely source for this story. Why would they leak such information? Perhaps they want to give Libby's side a 'heads up' that potentially damaging information is on the way. If so, they might have hinted to Reuters what the notes might "help establish." That way Libby doesn't get blind-sided by Fitzgerald.

[Syl]

Kim

"Wait, Wilson can talk about his trip, but no one else can? I know you are not trying to say that."

Sure he can say that. And it would be true. A private citizen can say anything, true or false, but confirmation can only come from officials. So one either believes the private citizen or one does not.

That's why we're in so much trouble around the world. People can and do say anything about our motives and intents and goings on. But the officials have their hands tied and in most cases can't set the record straight without compromising info that would harm something else.

And when an official does speak, nobody believes the gubmint anyway.

[don]

Just a little input from someone with clearance and worked in intelligence community. the non-disclosure is freaking joke. If that is why this "federal prosecutor" is looking at, this is way overblown. Violations of this agreement were commonly administrative in nature - the scrutiny in this case is certaintly more overhyped than in any normal case.

[pollyusa]

Waas must have read your comment about the missing link, it's up now...twice

[richard mcenroe]

"Times reporter Judith Miller discovered the notes -- " When they fell out of an old Rose Law Firm file folder...

"Overzealous, out-of-control prosecutor?" There's no such thing unless he indicts a Democrat...

[clarice]

Jeff. Piffle--Unless you're arguing that hearing about something is the same as divulging something..and unless you have no idea about the press and how it operates..The minute the first stories appeared, other reporters were on the phone chatting in the hope of getting a story, and often they throw out something which may or may not be true to see if they can get something useful.

Decades ago, I was handling a high profile case,,almost daily the NYT reporter covering it would call and say he heard something to see if he could get me to give him some info--90% of the time that report was nonsense and designed only to thrown me off guard and divulge something I wouldn't have otherwise.

Rove testified he got his information from other reporters about Wilson's wife whose name and position he didn't know.And I believe him--he probably gets calls from dozens of reporters a day and these tidbits (as he claims in the Cooper call) are just that --bits thrown in in the middle of a conversation about something else entirely--and not likely to be memorable later.

[Jeff]

While we're interested in June 2003, there's this tidbit from Wilson's book, which I don't know that I've ever seen in the mix:

A few days after Rice's interview [on MTP on June 8], the House and Senate Intelligence Committees announced that they ewre going to look into prewar intelligence, including the uranium claim. I called the staffs of both committees and volunteered to brief them about my trip and findings. I ended up briefing them separately within a few days of each other in mid-June, disclosing what I knew to the appropriate oversight bodies. [p. 419; my transcription]

Has anyone ever paid any attention to this aspect of the story? It's interesting too that immediately after that passage, Wilson notes that a week later, a reporter told him that his name was soon to be made public, and elsewhere in the book he specifies (assuming there were not two warnings) that it was in a soon-to-be-released article (evidently never published). [p. 3] Also, describing the same time frame, and in similar terms, Wilson on p. 332 also says that two weeks after the Rice remarks on MTP, which puts us at June 22 or so, his name was openly circulating among the press, which may refer to the one article or to other circumstances as well.

[Jeff]

clarice - To clarify, my point was that citing those interactions between reporters and Rove or Libby (with the possible exception of Russert) do not indicate that Rove or Libby learned anything from those reporters. In typing, I left out "those." So my point is not that they divulged anything, but that they did not learn anything from those reporters, and at the same time possibly one of them at least and definitely several other administration officials were pushing reporters to look into the origins of Wilson's trip. Together, those things make the idea that there was no deliberate effort to go after Wilson, but just gossipt shared between reporters and gov't officials, less plausible.

[clarice]

Don't you think it interesting that these are the people not yet reported as having been before the gj:Wilson, Plame, Corn, and Novak?

Corn first disclosed that Plame was an "undercover agent"; Novak first said Plame worked at the CIA; Wilson and Plame are the obvious sources for significant disclosures about the Niger trip and Wilson was caught flatfooted--he was the source of a June 12, 2003 Wash Post (Pincus) report which referenced the forged document about Niger, which the SCCI says he couldn't have seen while on his assignment..because the CIA didn't get them until 8 months later..(He and Plame have already testified under oath before the SCCI) which discredited their testimony.

Chapter 37 if it's to mean anything has to cover these things and these are the Only principals who haven't been before the GJ--Did they get target letters? Has the sp just saved them for last, after he has obtained everything he could from everyone else..Does he even need their testimony to make out Chapter 37 indictments?

[Don]

The proper procedure to making people turn is threaten prosecution and turn as witness for the government. This is not the mob where you indict them all and hope something sticks. Again, there is the ethics part of this.

Perhaps, the key to this is really Novak - it would explain his silence and refusal to talk to the media. He acts like a major witness for the government who has made a deal and what does he really have to say...he got his info from Rove and Libby - it may not be fair, but the only potential targets have to be Rove and Libby. But as I said before, the prosecutors behavior toward them is truly unusual (i.e. no target letter, repeated testimony in front of grand jury) If you got a case, you don't want or need them to testify at the grand jury (or journalists that back up their story).

The indicting of 22 people or 10 people is just plain silly. So we are going to line up 10 journalists and 10 government officials and indict them all, and try to get them to turn on each other, asking them to testify against each other to find out who was the ORIGINAL first source. This investigation has already been deemed borderline ridiculous.

If we go there,leaks as we know it, will be forever changed. I won't be so disappointed but I am sure the left would not like the results.