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

[kim]

Back to 'imminent' and the passion driving this debate. What is your solution to Saddam?

Trial starts today, by the way. Might be fun. I'm predicting no conviction, maybe no charging, in the Jalaba gassing.
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[jukeboxgrad]

"Sorry about that"

No prob.

"What is your solution to Saddam?"

We've covered that. To coin a phrase, I'm not taking the bait.

[kim]

It's the fishing that's fun; the catching isn't necessary.
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[TCO]

jbg, certainly if we thought there were actual stockpiles of WMDs, then it follows that there could have been launches in minutes. And of course, we were wrong. There were no WMDs (in this case). Of course there were in 1991, when the Demos in the Senate voted against the Gulf War (and immediately played mum about when it worked out so well).

That does not mean that the "45 minutes" was the justification for the war, since we spent 14 months trying to assemble as many allies as we could to do the war. From a strategic point of view, from a secdef, USNI Proceedings point of view, the danger was strategic vice tactical. I would also add that a strong component of the justification of the war (maybe not to you...or to simpletons...but to policy types who argued for doing it) was related to enforcing the results of GW1 and of the cat and mouse game that Saddam was playing in terms of trying to evade these restrictions. (Why did the inspectors only go in with a war looming...why did France, UN et al not push this stuff earlier...instead arguing for weakening things.)

[jukeboxgrad]

"Why did the inspectors only go in with a war looming"

Bush holding a gun to Saddam's head was a smart thing. Pulling the trigger prematurely was a dumb thing.

"the cat and mouse game that Saddam was playing"

Bush didn't sell the war by telling us Saddam was playing a cat and mouse game, hoping someday to be able to get WMD. Bush sold the war by telling us Saddam had WMD and was ready to blow us up. Big difference.

"a strong component of the justification of the war"

There are all sorts of revisionist arguments we hear lately about why we "really" went to war. But the bottom line is that pre-war, what we were sold was imminent danger and fear. "45 minutes" was part and parcel of that.

You're attempting to rewrite history by suggesting WMD was merely one of the rationales for war. It was by far the leading rationale. Bush's famous pre-war address focused mostly on WMD, with barely a few words of lip-service regarding the "power of freedom." Also focusing very heavily on WMD fear-mongering, and with only passing mention of "freedom," was the prewar SOTU.

[kim]

Once again, Bush was not the only one who thought Saddam had WMD. So did Joe Wilson.
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[kim]

Look, if nothing else, this may serve to instruct you at how warped the Moorian vision is. Joe Wilson is more in bed with Saudis than Bush is.
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[obsessed]

Syl - Thanks for making the "Occam's Razor" theory a lot clearer for me!

[Joe]

I this the same John Hannah? Curiouser, and curiouser