Ah. That feels better. But just a little, because it would seem that Dick and Karl got off without a scratch. Damn!

Sure didn't take too long for the Jury to find Libby guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Libby Found Guilty in CIA Leak Trial
By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN and MATT APUZZO
Associated Press Writers

via t r u t h o u t

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was convicted Tuesday of lying and obstructing an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity.

Libby is the highest-ranking White House official to be convicted of a felony since the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s. The conviction focused renewed attention on the Bush administration's much-criticized handling of weapons of mass destruction intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war.

The verdict culminated a nearly four-year investigation into how CIA official Valerie Plame's name was leaked to reporters in 2003. The trial revealed how top members of the Bush administration were eager to discredit Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who accused the administration of doctoring prewar intelligence on Iraq...

He faces up to 30 years in prison when he is sentenced June 5 but under federal sentencing guidelines is likely to face far less. Defense attorneys immediately promised to ask for a new trial or appeal the conviction...

Reaction to the conviction on Capitol Hill was swift. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid welcomed the jury's verdict and called on Bush to pledge not to pardon Libby. Before the trial began, the Justice Department said it had no pardon file active for Libby.

"It's about time someone in the Bush Administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics," Reid said...

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton ordered a pre-sentencing report be completed by May 15. Judges use such reports to help determine sentences. Libby will be allowed to remain free while awaiting sentencing.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CIA_LEAK_TRIAL?SITE=NYSTA&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-03-06-13-11-06

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

Libby Found Guilty in CIA Leak Trial

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN and MATT APUZZO
Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was convicted Tuesday of lying and obstructing an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity.

Libby is the highest-ranking White House official to be convicted of a felony since the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s. The conviction focused renewed attention on the Bush administration's much-criticized handling of weapons of mass destruction intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war.

The verdict culminated a nearly four-year investigation into how CIA official Valerie Plame's name was leaked to reporters in 2003. The trial revealed how top members of the Bush administration were eager to discredit Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who accused the administration of doctoring prewar intelligence on Iraq.

Libby, who was once Cheney's most trusted adviser and an assistant to Bush, was expressionless as the jury verdict was announced on the 10th day of deliberations. His wife choked out a sob and sank her head.

He faces up to 30 years in prison when he is sentenced June 5 but under federal sentencing guidelines is likely to face far less. Defense attorneys immediately promised to ask for a new trial or appeal the conviction.

"We have every confidence Mr. Libby ultimately will be vindicated," defense attorney Theodore Wells told a throng of reporters. "We believe Mr. Libby is totally innocent and that he didn't do anything wrong."

Libby did not speak to reporters.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has led the leak investigation, said no additional charges would be filed. That means nobody will be charged with the leak and Libby, who was not the source for the original column outing Plame, will be the only one to face trial.

"The results are actually sad," Fitzgerald said. "It's sad that we had a situation where a high-level official person who worked in the office of the vice president obstructed justice and lied under oath. We wish that it had not happened, but it did."

White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said Bush watched news of the verdict on TV in the Oval Office. Perino said the president respected the jury's verdict but "was saddened for Scooter Libby and his family."

Perino said "I would not agree" with any characterization of the verdict as embarrassing for the White House.

"I think that any administration that has to go through a prolonged news story that is unpleasant and one that is difficult - when you're under the constraints and the policy of not commenting on an ongoing criminal matter - that can be very frustrating," she said.

Libby was convicted of one count of obstruction, two counts of perjury and one count of lying to the FBI about how he learned Plame's identity and whom he told. Prosecutors said he learned about Plame from Cheney and others, discussed her name with reporters and, fearing prosecution, made up a story to make those discussions seem innocuous.

Libby said he told investigators his honest recollections and blamed any misstatements on a faulty memory. He was acquitted of one count of lying to the FBI about his conversation with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper.

One juror who spoke to reporters outside court said the jury had 34 poster-size pages filled with information they distilled from the trial testimony. They discerned that Libby was told about Plame at least nine times and they didn't buy the argument that he forgot all about it.

"Even if he forgot that someone told him about Mrs. Wilson, who had told him, it seemed very unlikely he would not have remembered about Mrs. Wilson," the juror, Denis Collins, said.

Collins, a former Washington Post reporter, said jurors wanted to hear from others involved in the case, including Bush political adviser Karl Rove, who was one of two sources for the original leak. Defense attorneys originally said both Libby and Cheney would be witnesses and Rove was on the potential witness list.

"I will say there was a tremendous amount of sympathy for Mr. Libby on the jury. It was said a number of times, 'What are we doing with this guy here? Where's Rove? Where are these other guys?' " Collins said. "I'm not saying we didn't think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of. It seemed like he was, as Mr. Wells put it, he was the fall guy."

Reaction to the conviction on Capitol Hill was swift. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid welcomed the jury's verdict and called on Bush to pledge not to pardon Libby. Before the trial began, the Justice Department said it had no pardon file active for Libby.

"It's about time someone in the Bush Administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics," Reid said.

Perino would not discuss Reid's pardon concerns.

Wilson and Plame have sued Libby, Cheney and several other administration officials in federal court. Attorneys at the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, which brought the lawsuit, praised the conviction and Fitzgerald's team.

"Their prosecution of a senior White House official illustrates that we are a nation of laws and that no man is above the law," attorneys said in a prepared statement.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton ordered a pre-sentencing report be completed by May 15. Judges use such reports to help determine sentences. Libby will be allowed to remain free while awaiting sentencing.

This is from the April 13, 2006 program.

Libby's latest court filings name Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer as people who were also involved in leaking the information about Valerie Plame to the press. In Ari Fleischer's grand jury testimony, he describes a day when Scooter Libby took him to lunch, which had never happened before, and Scooter told him that Joseph Wilson's wife was a CIA agent, and that it was not widely known. (wink wink) Ari said that he took that to mean that he should leak it to the press. But the important part here is, of course, that Scooter has named Karl Rove as being involved in the conspiracy.

Video - Rove Implicated by Libby (Quicktime 17 MB) Audio - Rove Implicated by Libby (MP3 9 MB)

This is from the April 10, 2006 program of
Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

As always, Keith Olbermann is the only guy in the news media thoroughly covering this story.

Joseph Wilson clarifies the details and emphasizes seriousness of the situation.

In a nutshell, President Bush, Cheney and Karl Rove are traitors. Together, they conspired to out Valerie Plame as a CIA agent in retaliation for her husband's going to the media about how Saddam hadn't really purchased uranium from Niger, and therefore, how Iraq's WMDs didn't exist.

Video - Joe Wilson on Olbermann - All (37 MB)

Video - Joe Wilson on Olbermann - Intro (9 MB)

Video - Joe Wilson on Olbermann - Wilson Interview (13 MB)

Video - Joe Wilson on Olbermann - Shuster Analysis (10 MB)

Audio - Joe Wilson on Olbermann - All (18 MB)

Audio - Joe Wilson on Olbermann - Intro (5 MB)

Audio - Joe Wilson on Olbermann - Wilson Interview (9 MB)

Audio - Joe Wilson on Olbermann - Shuster Analysis (6 MB)

This is from the October 30, 2005 program of 60 minutes

I've been clearing off my TIVO since I've been home so much lately, and what do I run across but a 60 Minutes piece from October 30, 2005 about Valerie Plame. Not about the scandal per se, but about Valerie: who she was, what she did, and the lives potentially at risk and irrepairable damage that has been done to our National Security as a result of her identity being revealed.

Valerie was an undercover Agent gathering intelligence about numerous countries' Nuclear Weapons programs. She dedicated her life to protecting the National Security of the United States. She recommended her husband, Joseph Wilson, to go on another patriotic mission to Nigeria to verify whether or not Saddam Hussein had purchased uranium from there. Wilson went on this mission, almost as a favor, for the Vice President himself. When Wilson came back with the truth - that the documents saying Saddam had purchased uranium were forged, the Vice President wanted Wilson to keep quiet about it.

When he did not, and instead offered up to the press what he had uncovered, our Bush, Cheney and Rove conspired to reveal his wife's identity in retaliation.

Wow. You've really got to see this for yourself.

Video - 60 Minutes On The CIA Leak - All

Video - 60 Minutes On The CIA Leak - Part One

Video - 60 Minutes On The CIA Leak - Part Two

Audio - 60 Minutes On The CIA Leak - All

Audio - 60 Minutes On The CIA Leak - Part One

Audio - 60 Minutes On The CIA Leak - Part Two

I'm late for lunch and swamped finishing my masters (three more days!)....

But I just finished uploading Keith Olbermann's report on this situation from last Thursday, April 6, 2006, so I wanted to at least make it available to you raw style until I can blog it properly later.

The file is available as "all three parts together" and in three parts here w/pics.

1- Olbermann's overview

2-Shuster's take on it

3- John Dean's take on it.

This is from Sunday, April 9, 2006:

A "Concerted Effort" to Discredit Bush Critic
Prosecutor describes Cheney, Libby as key voices pitching Iraq-Niger story.
By Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer for The Washington Post

As he drew back the curtain this week on the evidence against Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time described a "concerted action" by "multiple people in the White House" - using classified information - to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" a critic of President Bush's war in Iraq.

Bluntly and repeatedly, Fitzgerald placed Cheney at the center of that campaign. Citing grand jury testimony from the vice president's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald fingered Cheney as the first to voice a line of attack that at least three White House officials would soon deploy against former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Cheney, in a conversation with Libby in early July 2003, was said to describe Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger the previous year - in which the envoy found no support for charges that Iraq tried to buy uranium there - as "a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife," CIA case officer Valerie Plame.

Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for denying under oath that he disclosed Plame's CIA employment to journalists. There is no public evidence to suggest Libby made any such disclosure with Cheney's knowledge. But according to Libby's grand jury testimony, described for the first time in legal papers filed this week, Cheney "specifically directed" Libby in late June or early July 2003 to pass information to reporters from two classified CIA documents: an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and a March 2002 summary of Wilson's visit to Niger.

One striking feature of that decision – un-remarked until now, in part because Fitzgerald did not mention it - is that the evidence Cheney and Libby selected to share with reporters had been disproved months before.

United Nations inspectors had exposed the main evidence for the uranium charge as crude forgeries in March 2003, but the Bush administration and British Prime Minister Tony Blair maintained they had additional, secret evidence they could not disclose. In June, a British parliamentary inquiry concluded otherwise, delivering a scathing critique of Blair's role in promoting the story. With no ally left, the White House debated whether to abandon the uranium claim and became embroiled in bitter finger-pointing about whom to fault for the error. A legal brief filed for Libby last month said that "certain officials at the CIA, the White House, and the State Department each sought to avoid or assign blame for intelligence failures relating to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."

It was at that moment that Libby, allegedly at Cheney's direction, sought out at least three reporters to bolster the discredited uranium allegation. Libby made careful selections of language from the 2002 estimate, quoting a passage that said Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure uranium" in Africa.

The first of those conversations, according to the evidence made known thus far, came when Libby met with Bob Woodward, an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, on June 27, 2003. In sworn testimony for Fitzgerald, according to a statement Woodward released on Nov. 14, 2005, Woodward said Libby told him of the intelligence estimate's description of Iraqi efforts to obtain "yellowcake," a processed form of natural uranium ore, in Africa. In an interview Friday, Woodward said his notes showed that Libby described those efforts as "vigorous."

Libby's next known meeting with a reporter, according to Fitzgerald's legal filing, was with Judith Miller, then of the New York Times, on July 8, 2003. He spoke again to Miller, and to Time magazine's Matt Cooper, on July 12...

Fitzgerald wrote that Cheney and his aides saw Wilson as a threat to "the credibility of the Vice President (and the President) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq." They decided to respond by implying that Wilson got his CIA assignment by "nepotism."

They were not alone. Fitzgerald reported for the first time this week that "multiple officials in the White House" - not only Libby and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who have previously been identified - discussed Plame's CIA employment with reporters before and after publication of her name on July 14, 2003, in a column by Robert D. Novak. Fitzgerald said the grand jury has collected so much testimony and so many documents that "it is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish' Wilson."

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/08/AR2006040800916.html

A "Concerted Effort" to Discredit Bush Critic
By Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer
The Washington Post

Sunday 09 April 2006

Prosecutor describes Cheney, Libby as key voices pitching Iraq-Niger story.

As he drew back the curtain this week on the evidence against Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time described a "concerted action" by "multiple people in the White House" - using classified information - to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" a critic of President Bush's war in Iraq.

Bluntly and repeatedly, Fitzgerald placed Cheney at the center of that campaign. Citing grand jury testimony from the vice president's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald fingered Cheney as the first to voice a line of attack that at least three White House officials would soon deploy against former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Cheney, in a conversation with Libby in early July 2003, was said to describe Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger the previous year - in which the envoy found no support for charges that Iraq tried to buy uranium there - as "a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife," CIA case officer Valerie Plame.

Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for denying under oath that he disclosed Plame's CIA employment to journalists. There is no public evidence to suggest Libby made any such disclosure with Cheney's knowledge. But according to Libby's grand jury testimony, described for the first time in legal papers filed this week, Cheney "specifically directed" Libby in late June or early July 2003 to pass information to reporters from two classified CIA documents: an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and a March 2002 summary of Wilson's visit to Niger.

One striking feature of that decision – un-remarked until now, in part because Fitzgerald did not mention it - is that the evidence Cheney and Libby selected to share with reporters had been disproved months before.

United Nations inspectors had exposed the main evidence for the uranium charge as crude forgeries in March 2003, but the Bush administration and British Prime Minister Tony Blair maintained they had additional, secret evidence they could not disclose. In June, a British parliamentary inquiry concluded otherwise, delivering a scathing critique of Blair's role in promoting the story. With no ally left, the White House debated whether to abandon the uranium claim and became embroiled in bitter finger-pointing about whom to fault for the error. A legal brief filed for Libby last month said that "certain officials at the CIA, the White House, and the State Department each sought to avoid or assign blame for intelligence failures relating to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."

It was at that moment that Libby, allegedly at Cheney's direction, sought out at least three reporters to bolster the discredited uranium allegation. Libby made careful selections of language from the 2002 estimate, quoting a passage that said Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure uranium" in Africa.

The first of those conversations, according to the evidence made known thus far, came when Libby met with Bob Woodward, an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, on June 27, 2003. In sworn testimony for Fitzgerald, according to a statement Woodward released on Nov. 14, 2005, Woodward said Libby told him of the intelligence estimate's description of Iraqi efforts to obtain "yellowcake," a processed form of natural uranium ore, in Africa. In an interview Friday, Woodward said his notes showed that Libby described those efforts as "vigorous."

Libby's next known meeting with a reporter, according to Fitzgerald's legal filing, was with Judith Miller, then of the New York Times, on July 8, 2003. He spoke again to Miller, and to Time magazine's Matt Cooper, on July 12.

At Cheney's instruction, Libby testified, he told Miller that the uranium story was a "key judgment" of the intelligence estimate, a term of art indicating there was consensus on a question of central importance.

In fact, the alleged effort to buy uranium was not among the estimate's key judgments, which were identified by a headline and bold type and set out in bullet form in the first five pages of the 96-page document.

Unknown to the reporters, the uranium claim lay deeper inside the estimate, where it said a fresh supply of uranium ore would "shorten the time Baghdad needs to produce nuclear weapons." But it also said US intelligence did not know the status of Iraq's procurement efforts, "cannot confirm" any success and had "inconclusive" evidence about Iraq's domestic uranium operations.

Iraq's alleged uranium shopping had been strongly disputed in the intelligence community from the start. In a closed Senate hearing in late September 2002, shortly before the October NIE was completed, then-director of central intelligence George J. Tenet and his top weapons analyst, Robert Walpole, expressed strong doubts about the uranium story, which had recently been unveiled publicly by the British government. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, likewise, called the claim "highly dubious." For those reasons, the uranium story was relegated to a brief inside passage in the October estimate.

But the White House Iraq Group, formed in August 2002 to foster "public education" about Iraq's "grave and gathering danger" to the United States, repeatedly pitched the uranium story. The alleged procurement was a minor issue for most US analysts - the hard part for Iraq would be enriching uranium, not obtaining the ore, and Niger's controlled market made it an unlikely seller - but the Niger story proved irresistible to speechwriters. Most nuclear arguments were highly technical, but the public could easily grasp the link between uranium and a bomb.

Tenet interceded to keep the claim out of a speech Bush gave in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, but by Dec. 19 it reappeared in a State Department "fact sheet." After that, the Pentagon asked for an authoritative judgment from the National Intelligence Council, the senior coordinating body for the 15 agencies that then constituted the US intelligence community. Did Iraq and Niger discuss a uranium sale, or not? If they had, the Pentagon would need to reconsider its ties with Niger.

The council's reply, drafted in a January 2003 memo by the national intelligence officer for Africa, was unequivocal: The Niger story was baseless and should be laid to rest. Four US officials with firsthand knowledge said in interviews that the memo, which has not been reported before, arrived at the White House as Bush and his highest-ranking advisers made the uranium story a centerpiece of their case for the rapidly approaching war against Iraq.

Bush put his prestige behind the uranium story in his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address. Less than two months later, the International Atomic Energy Agency exposed the principal US evidence as bogus. A Bush-appointed commission later concluded that the evidence, a set of contracts and correspondence sold by an Italian informant, was "transparently forged."

On the ground in Iraq, meanwhile, the hunt for weapons of mass destruction was producing no results, and as the bad news converged on the White House - weeks after a banner behind Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln - Wilson emerged as a key critic. He focused his ire on Cheney, who had made the administration's earliest and strongest claims about Iraq's alleged nuclear program.

Fitzgerald wrote that Cheney and his aides saw Wilson as a threat to "the credibility of the Vice President (and the President) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq." They decided to respond by implying that Wilson got his CIA assignment by "nepotism."

They were not alone. Fitzgerald reported for the first time this week that "multiple officials in the White House" - not only Libby and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who have previously been identified - discussed Plame's CIA employment with reporters before and after publication of her name on July 14, 2003, in a column by Robert D. Novak. Fitzgerald said the grand jury has collected so much testimony and so many documents that "it is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish' Wilson."

At the same time, top officials such as then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley were pressing the CIA to declassify more documents in hopes of defending the president's use of the uranium claim in his State of the Union speech. It was a losing battle. A "senior Bush administration official," speaking on the condition of anonymity as the president departed for Africa on July 7, 2003, told The Post that "the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech." The comment appeared on the front page of the July 8 paper, the same morning that Libby met Miller at the St. Regis hotel.

Libby was still defending the uranium claim as the administration's internal battle burst into the open. White House officials tried to blame Tenet for the debacle, but Tenet made public his intervention to keep uranium out of Bush's speech four months earlier. Hadley then acknowledged that he had known of Tenet's objections but forgot them as the State of the Union approached.

Hoping to lay the controversy to rest, Hadley claimed responsibility for the Niger remarks.

In a speech two days later, at the American Enterprise Institute, Cheney defended the war by saying that no responsible leader could ignore the evidence in the NIE. Before a roomful of conservative policymakers, Cheney listed four of the "key judgments" on Iraq's alleged weapons capabilities but made no mention of Niger or uranium.

On July 30, 2003, two senior intelligence officials said in an interview that Niger was never an important part of the CIA's analysis, and that the language of Iraq's vigorous pursuit of uranium came verbatim from a Defense Intelligence Agency report that had caught the vice president's attention. The same day, the CIA referred the Plame leak to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, the fateful step that would eventually lead to Libby's indictment.

From the "Hey is anybody listening? The information we've been waiting for years to break has broken" department, Jason Leopold and like five other reporters are covering what has got to be the most exciting development in this dismal administration: not only did Cheney tell Libby to leak the information to the press about Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, being a CIA agent, but , according to Libby himself, Bush told Cheney to tell him to do it.

I have some nice clips from Keith Olbermann going up next, but this story published this morning in the Times sums it up nicely too.

Bush and Cheney Discussed Plame Prior to Leak
by Jason Leopold for t r u t h o u t.

In early June 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney met with President Bush and told him that CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson and that she was responsible for sending him on a fact-finding mission to Niger to check out reports about Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium from the African country, according to current and former White House officials and attorneys close to the investigation to determine who revealed Plame-Wilson's undercover status to the media.

Other White House officials who also attended the meeting with Cheney and President Bush included former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, her former deputy Stephen Hadley, and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove.

This information was provided to this reporter by attorneys and US officials who have remained close to the case. Investigators working with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald compiled the information after interviewing 36 Bush administration officials over the past two and a half years.

The revelation puts a new wrinkle into Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's two-year-old criminal probe into the leak and suggests for the first time that President Bush knew from early on that the vice president and senior officials on his staff were involved in a coordinated effort to attack Wilson's credibility by leaking his wife's classified CIA status.

Now that President Bush's knowledge of the Plame Wilson affair has been exposed, there are thorny questions about whether the president has broken the law - specifically, whether he obstructed justice when he was interviewed about his knowledge of the Plame Wilson leak and the campaign to discredit her husband.

Details of President Bush's involvement in the Plame Wilson affair came in a 39-page court document filed by Fitzgerald late Wednesday evening in US District Court in Washington.

Fitzgerald's court filing was made in response to attorneys representing I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, who was indicted on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators for not telling grand jury he spoke to reporters about Plame Wilson.

Libby's attorneys have in the past months have argued that the government has evidence that would prove Libby's innocence and that the special prosecutor refuses to turn it over to the defense. Fitzgerald said in court documents he has already turned over thousands of pages of evidence to Libby's attorneys and that further discovery requests have been overly broad.

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041006Z.shtml

Bush and Cheney Discussed Plame Prior to Leak
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report

Monday 10 April 2006

In early June 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney met with President Bush and told him that CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson and that she was responsible for sending him on a fact-finding mission to Niger to check out reports about Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium from the African country, according to current and former White House officials and attorneys close to the investigation to determine who revealed Plame-Wilson's undercover status to the media.

Other White House officials who also attended the meeting with Cheney and President Bush included former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, her former deputy Stephen Hadley, and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove.

This information was provided to this reporter by attorneys and US officials who have remained close to the case. Investigators working with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald compiled the information after interviewing 36 Bush administration officials over the past two and a half years.

The revelation puts a new wrinkle into Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's two-year-old criminal probe into the leak and suggests for the first time that President Bush knew from early on that the vice president and senior officials on his staff were involved in a coordinated effort to attack Wilson's credibility by leaking his wife's classified CIA status.

Now that President Bush's knowledge of the Plame Wilson affair has been exposed, there are thorny questions about whether the president has broken the law - specifically, whether he obstructed justice when he was interviewed about his knowledge of the Plame Wilson leak and the campaign to discredit her husband.

Details of President Bush's involvement in the Plame Wilson affair came in a 39-page court document filed by Fitzgerald late Wednesday evening in US District Court in Washington.

Fitzgerald's court filing was made in response to attorneys representing I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, who was indicted on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators for not telling grand jury he spoke to reporters about Plame Wilson.

Libby's attorneys have in the past months have argued that the government has evidence that would prove Libby's innocence and that the special prosecutor refuses to turn it over to the defense. Fitzgerald said in court documents he has already turned over thousands of pages of evidence to Libby's attorneys and that further discovery requests have been overly broad.

The attorneys and officials close to the case said over the weekend that the hastily arranged meeting was called by Cheney to "brief the president" on Wilson's increasing public criticism about the White House's use of the Niger intelligence and the negative impact it would eventually have on the administration's credibility if the public and Congress found out it was true, the sources said.

Bush said publicly in October 2003 that he had no idea who was responsible for unmasking Plame Wilson to columnist Robert Novak and other reporters. The president said that he welcomed a Justice Department investigation to find out who was responsible for it.

But neither Bush nor anyone in his inner circle let on that just four months earlier, they had agreed to launch a full-scale campaign to undercut Wilson's credibility by planting negative stories about his personal life with the media.

A more aggressive effort would come a week or so later when Cheney - who, sources said, was "consumed" with retaliating against Wilson because of his attacks on the administration's rationale for war - met with President Bush a second time and told the president that there was talk of "Wilson going public" and exposing the flawed Niger intelligence.

It was then that Cheney told Bush that a section of the classified National Intelligence Estimate that purported to show Iraq did seek uranium from Niger should be leaked to reporters as a way to counter anything report Wilson might seek to publish, these sources said.

Throughout the second half of June, Andrew Card, Karl Rove, and senior officials from Cheney's office kept Bush updated about the progress of the campaign to discredit Wilson via numerous emails and internal White House memos, these sources said, adding that some of these documents were only recently turned over to the special counsel.

One attorney close to the case said that Bush gave Cheney permission to declassify the NIE and that Cheney told Libby to leak it to Bob Woodward, the Washington Post's assistant managing editor, which Libby did on June 27, 2003.

But Woodward told Libby shortly after he received the information about the NIE that he would not be writing a story about it for the Post but that he would use the still classified information for the book he was writing at the time, Plan of Attack.

Woodward would not return calls for comment nor would Libby's attorneys Ted Wells and William Jeffress.

Libby told Cheney that he had a good relationship with New York Times reporter Judith Miller and that he intended to share the NIE with her. Libby met with Miller on July 8, 2003 and disclosed the portion of the NIE that dealt with Iraq and Niger to her.

According to four attorneys who last week read a transcript of President Bush's interview with investigators, Bush did not disclose to the special counsel that he was aware of any campaign to discredit Wilson. Bush also said he did not know who, if anyone, in the White House had retaliated against the former ambassador by leaking his wife's undercover identity to reporters.

Attorneys close to the case said that Fitzgerald does not appear to be overly concerned or interested in any alleged discrepancy in Bush's statements about the leak case to investigators.

But "if Mr. Libby continues to misrepresent the government's case against him ... President Bush and most certainly Vice President Cheney may be caught in an embarrassing position," one attorney close to the case said. "Mr. Fitzgerald will not hesitate to remind Mr. Libby of his testimony when he appeared before the grand jury."

Speaking to college students and faculty at California State University Northridge last week, Wilson said that after President Bush cited the uranium claims in his State of the Union address he tried unsuccessfully for five months to get the White House to correct the record.

"I had direct discussions with the State Department, Senate committees," Wilson said during a speech last Thursday. "I had numerous conversations to change what they were saying publicly. I had a civic duty to hold my government to account for what it had said and done."

Wilson said he was rebuffed at every instance and finally decided to write an op-ed in the New York Times and expose the administration for knowingly "twisting" the intelligence on the Iraqi nuclear threat to make a case for war. The op-ed appeared in the newspaper July 8, 2003. Wilson wrote that had he personally traveled to Niger to check out the Niger intelligence and had determined it was bogus.

"Nothing more, nothing less than challenging the government to come clean on this matter," Wilson said. "That's all I did."

In the interest of fairness, any person identified in this story who believes he has been portrayed unfairly or that the information about him is untrue will have the opportunity to respond in this space.

Jason Leopold spent two years covering California's electricity crisis as Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires. Jason has spent the last year cultivating sources close to the CIA leak investigation, and is a regular contributor to t r u t h o u t.

Scooter Libby's trial has been conveniently calendered for AFTER the upcoming election.

Libby Trial Date Set for January 2007
By Edwin Chen for the The Los Angeles Times

A US District Court judge today set a January, 2007 trial date for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a former top White House official who was indicted on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI in a federal investigation on how a CIA operative's identity was exposed.

Libby, who was Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and his top national security adviser, has proclaimed his innocence.

"We are very happy with the trial date," Theodore Wells, Libby's lawyer, said after today's court hearing. "The Jan. 8 date will permit us the time we need to prepare our defense," he said, adding his client was "totally innocent."

Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald launched the investigation after the CIA operative, Valerie Plame, was identified in the news media in 2003. At the time, her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador, had emerged as a prominent critic of the manner in which the Bush Administration had used intelligence to build a case to launch the Iraq war.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-020306libby_lat,0,1476603.story

Also available at truthout:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020306R.shtml

Libby Trial Date Set for January 2007
By Edwin Chen
The Los Angeles Times

Friday 03 February 2006

Washington - A US District Court judge today set a January, 2007 trial date for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a former top White House official who was indicted on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI in a federal investigation on how a CIA operative's identity was exposed.

Libby, who was Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and his top national security adviser, has proclaimed his innocence.

"We are very happy with the trial date," Theodore Wells, Libby's lawyer, said after today's court hearing. "The Jan. 8 date will permit us the time we need to prepare our defense," he said, adding his client was "totally innocent."

Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald launched the investigation after the CIA operative, Valerie Plame, was identified in the news media in 2003. At the time, her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador, had emerged as a prominent critic of the manner in which the Bush Administration had used intelligence to build a case to launch the Iraq war.

Libby, who resigned after being indicted in late October, attended today's hearing, which lasted about 45 minutes, but said little.

The judge, Reggie Walton, said he expected jury selection to take a few days. And lawyers for both sides said they expected the trial to last about a month.

Still at issue is whether Fitzgerald has turned over all the relevant documents being sought by the defense. The prosecutor said the process was "99% complete," including the delivery of 1,250 pages to the defense team this week. But Wells said he believed that Fitzgerald still had "thousands and thousands and thousands of pages" in documents that should be turned over.

And you can bet he wasn't treated well by either one. While he's looking through what's left of his house, a couple goons with M-16s handcuff him for a while to let him know who's boss. Meanwhile, E-bay removes his photos of the wreckage from his website.
Physician who told Cheney to go F*ck Himself Lost his Home in Katrina, Detained, Cuffed by Cheney's M-16-carrying Goons

By Jackson Thoreau for OpEdNews.

Dr. Ben Marble, a young emergency room physician who plays in
alternative rock bands and does art on the side, needs our help. Since
he was the one who told Dick Cheney to "go fuck yourself" on Sept. 8,
that's the least we can do.

Marble is a complex guy, to say the least. Some of the lyrics he writes
can be considered harsh by some ? personally what I've heard is very
much on target - but he has a softer side as an organizer of breast
cancer fund-raisers, not to mention an ER doctor.

When he, like thousands of others, lost his home due to Hurricane
Katrina last week, it was the single most traumatic week of his life.
That led to his Sept. 8 confrontation with the man who best represents
the worst of the most callous, heartless, shittiest administration in
U.S. history...

"I had no intention of harming anyone but merely wanted to echo Mr.
Cheney's infamous words back at him," Marble wrote. "At that moment, I noticed the Secret Service guys with a panic-stricken look on their
faces, like they were about to tackle me, so I calmly walked away back
to my former house."

His friend videotaped a little bit longer and then came back to Marble's house. As they were salvaging a few things from Marble's home, two military police waving M-16's showed up and said they were looking for someone who fit Marble's description who had cursed at Cheney.

"I told them I was probably the person they were looking for, and so
they put me in handcuffs and 'detained' me for about 20 minutes or so," Marble wrote. "My right thumb went numb because the cuffs were on so tight, but they were fairly courteous and eventually released me after getting all my contact info. They said I had NOT broken any laws so I was free to go."

Here is the full text of the story in case the link goes bad:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_jackson__050909_physician_who_told_o.htm

Physician who told Cheney to go F*ck Himself Lost his Home in Katrina,
Detained, Cuffed by Cheney's M-16-carrying Goons

by Jackson Thoreau

Dr. Ben Marble, a young emergency room physician who plays in
alternative rock bands and does art on the side, needs our help. Since
he was the one who told Dick Cheney to "go fuck yourself" on Sept. 8,
that's the least we can do.

Marble is a complex guy, to say the least. Some of the lyrics he writes
can be considered harsh by some ? personally what I've heard is very
much on target - but he has a softer side as an organizer of breast
cancer fund-raisers, not to mention an ER doctor.

When he, like thousands of others, lost his home due to Hurricane
Katrina last week, it was the single most traumatic week of his life.
That led to his Sept. 8 confrontation with the man who best represents
the worst of the most callous, heartless, shittiest administration in
U.S. history.

As Marble explains, he was driving to his destroyed house Sept. 8 in
Gulfport, Ms., when military police refused to allow him to cross a
barricade that was about 200 feet from his home. They forced him to
drive an extra 20 minutes and spend even more on gasoline.

"Thanks to Dubya Gump and Mr. Cheney, gas is really expensive and
extremely hard to get anywhere Katrina has destroyed," Marble wrote.
"So needless to say, I was extremely aggravated that they wouldn't let
me pass."

Suddenly a long line of dark cars pulled up, and they honked at Marble
to back up to let them through the barricade that supposedly no one
could drive through. That only made Marble madder so he did what most
of us would do ? or at least consider doing.

"I waved a middle finger at the caravan," Marble wrote.

After driving the extra 20 minutes and filming video of destruction
along the way, he made it to his home. Marble overheard a neighbor say
that Cheney was down the street talking to people. That's when he got
the idea to go meet Dr. Evil himself.

"I am no fan of Mr. Cheney because of several reasons," Marble wrote.
"For those who don't know, Mr. Cheney is infamous for telling Senator
[Pat] Leahy 'go fu** yourself' on the Senate floor. Also, I am not
happy about the fact that thousands have died due to the slow action of
FEMA, not to even mention the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong
time, i.e. Iraq."

So Marble, who was wearing an old Mr. T "I Pity Da Fool" t-shirt since
he was sifting through the wreckage, asked a couple of police officers
if he and a friend could walk down to Cheney. They told him Cheney was
"looking forwardî to talking to ìthe locals.î

"So we grabbed my Canon digital rebel and my Sony videocamera and
started walking down the street," Marble wrote. "And then right in
front of the destroyed tennis court I used to play on, Dick Cheney was
giving a pep rally, talking to the press. The Secret Service guys
patted us down and waved the wands over us, and then let us pass."

As he stood about 10 feet away from Cheney and his friend and some
camera operators from CNN and other media filmed the scene, Marble
suddenly yelled, "Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney! Go fuck yourself, you
asshole!"

Hey, at least Marble was polite. After all, he referred to Cheney as
ìMr. Cheney.î

"I had no intention of harming anyone but merely wanted to echo Mr.
Cheney's infamous words back at him," Marble wrote. "At that moment, I
noticed the Secret Service guys with a panic-stricken look on their
faces, like they were about to tackle me, so I calmly walked away back
to my former house."

His friend videotaped a little bit longer and then came back to Marbleís
house. As they were salvaging a few things from Marble's home, two
military police waving M-16's showed up and said they were looking for
someone who fit Marble's description who had cursed at Cheney.

"I told them I was probably the person they were looking for, and so
they put me in handcuffs and 'detained' me for about 20 minutes or so,"
Marble wrote. "My right thumb went numb because the cuffs were on so
tight, but they were fairly courteous and eventually released me after
getting all my contact info. They said I had NOT broken any laws so I
was free to go."

So letís get this straight: A physician with a newborn baby loses most
everything he owns in the hurricane, does what most of us WANT to do and
ìechoesî Cheneyís words he spoke on the Senate floor last year, walks
away harmlessly, mission accomplished, and then once the media cameras
leave, he is treated like a foreign terrorist as Cheneyís goons waving
M-16s handcuff him in front of his destroyed home? Had it not been for
the media cameras filming the initial scene, I doubt Cheneyís goons
would have just let Marble go after 20 minutes.

America, land of the free?

Marble and his family have been in the media spotlight before, including
his wife, Lisa, and baby, Sofia Grace, who was born shortly after the
storm, on CNN. Marble has also been interviewed in art magazines and the
Biloxi Sun Herald about his concert fund-raisers and musical success ó
one of his bands, dR. O, has had at least 20 No. 1 songs on the MP3.com
charts.

"The truth is even with all our losses, we are still luckier than many
people down here because at least we didn't die," Marble wrote. "But I
thought I could try to raise some awareness to the bad policies of the
Dubya Gump administration and also possibly raise some money to replace
the many things we lost, and so I decided I would auction the videotape
my friend shot of the event. I will also grant an interview to the
winner if so desired."

So go to eBay here and place a bid for this important video to help
Marble raise some needed funds. I have done so and was at least at one
time the high bidder.

Marble also has an Internet site with photographs of some damage in his
town at www.HurricaneKatrinaSucked.com. A photo of him is here, and you
can also email Marble at clone9@yahoo.com.

Dr. Ben Marble, you rock. May we all return the favor.

UPDATE: Late Friday, Sept. 9, and again on Sept. 10 and Sept. 11, eBay,
which is owned by strong Bush-Cheney supporters, took down Marble's
site.

Marble said it was because he didnít bleep out the first ìfuî of ìfuck,î
which he said in an email to me was ìpretty silly.î I think itís a
bunch of BS - I did some searches on eBay of profanity they allow that
is not even partially bleeped out and found more than 1,250 items on
there with the word "bitch,î more than 400 items on there with the word
"bastard,î more than 60 ìgo to hellî phrases and even two ìgoddamned son
of a bitchî items. Yet, they say they won't even allow "f***.î Thatís
fu****. If you want to complain to an eBay bigwig, email meg@ebay.com.

The bidding on Marbleís second auction was over $1,900 at one time. He
is also considering auctioning off some of his paintings.

More at http://www.opednews.com

I saw this in the November 9, 2004 NY Times on page C4 of the Business Section. But I couldn't find it online, so I decided to just retype it here.

From the NY Times (From Reuters):

The Halliburton Company, the oil services company, has disclosed in a regulatory filing that one of its joint ventures may have improperly paid Nigerian officials to win a multibillion-dollar contract. The company also said the United States officials had issued subpoenas to current and former employees of Kellogg Brown & Root, its engineering and construction unit. Halliburton said in September that an internal investigation has found that members of the TSKJ consortium, which it helps lead, may have considered bribing Nigerian officials a decade ago. Nigeria is also investigating allegations that the consortium paid as much as $180 million to secure a contract for the TSKJ liquefied natural gas project. (Reuters)

This is from the June 21, 2004 program.

Stewart: "Mr. Vice President, I have to inform you: You're pants are on fire."

Cheney said he never stated that it was "pretty well confirmed" that meetings had taken place between Saddam's Officials and Al Queda members. The Daily Show dug up the Meet the Press coverage from December 9, 2001 that proves otherwise.

As a blogger and "traditional" journalist, I always hesitate to throw the word "lie" around unless I can validate my statement. How wonderful that we live in an age where I can present my case and back it up with evidence all on one interactive medium (for those that have quicktime, anyway...)

I also had the luxury of having the Daily Show With Jon Stewart to do my homework for me.

Here's the Complete Video Clip of the contradicting statements as presented within this larger daily show clip. (The larger clip also contains footage of the Shrub and Rummy making excuses for their past inaccurate statements.)

Here'sa tiny clip of Cheney denying he ever said the meeting was "pretty well confirmed.
(Source: CNBC)

CNBC: "You have said in the past that it was quote "pretty well confirmed."

Cheney: "No, I never said that. Never said that. Absolutely not."

Here's a little clip of the Meet the Press footage
where he clearly did say just that such a meeting was "pretty well confirmed."
(Source: Meet The Press, December 9, 2001)

Cheney: "It's been pretty well confirmed, that he didn't go to Prague and he did meet with a Senior Official of the Iraqi Intelligence service."

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

This just in from Eric Idle:

The FCC Song.

Here's
My mirror of the song, in case you have trouble with the first link.

Lyrics:

Here's a little number I wrote the other day while out duck hunting with a judge.

Fuck you very much the FCC
Fuck you very much for fining me
Five thousand bucks a fuck
So I'm really out of luck
That's more than Heidi Fleiss was charging me

So fuck you very much the FCC
for proving that free speech just isn't free
Clear Channel's a dear channel
So Howard Stern must go
Attorney General Ashcroft doesn't like strong words and so
He's charging twice as much as all the drugs for Rush Limbaugh
So fuck you all so very much

So fuck you very much, Dear Mr. Bush
For heroically sitting on your tush
For Halliburton, Enron, all the companies who fail
Let's send them a clear signal and stick Martha straight in jail
She's an uppity rich bitch
and at least she isn't male
So fuck you all so very much

So fuck you dickhead Mr. Cheney too
Fuck you and fuck everything you do
Your pacemaker must be a fake
You haven't got a heart
As far as I'm concerned you're just a pasty-faced old fart
And as for Condoleeza she's an intellectual tart
So fuck you all so very much

So fuck you very much, the EPA
For giving all Alaska's oil away
It really is a bummer
When I can't fill my hummer
The ozone's a nogozone now that Arnold's here to say:
"The nuclear winter games are going to take place in LA"
So fuck you all so very much

So what the planet fails
Let's save the great white males
And fuck you all so very much

This is from the May 2, 2004 program of
Meet the Press.

This directory contains the entire interview in one big file and three smaller files:

Joseph Wilson On Meet The Press.

Check out Joseph Wilson's new book:
The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir.

One thing Joseph said that sticks out in my mind is that daddy Shrub said whoever leaked the information about Wilson's wife was an "insidious traitor."
Does anyone know where he said this or when? Update: Oh okay. He said it in 1999. But it still applies -- to Karl Rove and the Cheney gang in this case:
"I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the names of our [intelligence] sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors."

This just in from a friend of mine:

As the September 11th Commission grills President Bush and Vice President Cheney about their contradictory statements today, we wanted to alert you to a powerful new tool to help journalists, activists and the public compare the Bush administration's claims against well-documented facts.

The Center for American Progress today launched a comprehensive

Claim vs. Fact database that documents statements from conservatives like President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Members of Congress and Fox News personalities, and compares those statements to the facts.

Each fact is sourced, and in many cases includes a web link directly to that source.

This is from the January 25, 2003 program of
60 Minutes.

This piece is riveting from beginning to end. Don't miss a second of it.

I've made the files available as a single download or in three smaller parts.

Doing Business With The Enemy
(60 Minutes - January 25, 2004)

Leslie Stahl is my new hero. She's been taking her responsibility of reporting for one of the best rated news programs in the United States very seriously by going out of her way to fill us in on things we need to know about what the Shrub Administration and its good friend, Corporate America, have been up to lately. Specifically, doing things behind our backs with our own money.

And it's not pretty. In this piece, we learn that virtually anyone in the U.S. with a pension plan could unknowingly have their money invested in one of several "terrorist" countries.

Turns out that the reason companies like Halliburton, GE, and Conoco are allowed to do business with these "terrorist" driven countries to begin with, is that they have operations located in the Cayman Islands.

So Leslie goes to the Cayman Islands to check out Halliburton's offices there, but it turns out that Halliburton's Cayman island office doesn't really exist. Not a single employee of Halliburton actually works there and all of the mail is re-routed to Texas. (Leslie sneaked in a hidden camera to interview the manager of the bank in the Caymans where Haliburton rents space to find all this out.)

The hidden camera gets some priceless footage of the bank president explaining that a lot of American companies do this, and some of them actually do hire people to sit in the office and push paper, and others (such as Halliburton) don't.

This story was produced by Richard Bonin and Adam Ciralsky.

Here's Leslie Stahl's opening statement:

When President Bush said "Money is the lifeblood of terrorist operations," did it ever occur to you that the money he's talking about is, in large part, yours, mine, and every other American's?

Turns out, just about every one of us with a 401K, pension plan, or mutual fund, has money invested in companies that are doing business with so called "rogue states."

In other words, there are U.S. companies that are helping drive the economies of countries like Iran, Syria, and Libya, that have sponsored terrorists.

Air Force One Phone Records Subpoenaed
By Tom Brune for Newsday.

The federal grand jury probing the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity has subpoenaed records of Air Force One telephone calls in the week before the officer's name was published in a column in July, according to documents obtained by Newsday.

Also sought in the wide-ranging document requests contained in three grand jury subpoenas to the Executive Office of President George W. Bush are records created in July by the White House Iraq Group, a little-known internal task force established in August 2002 to create a strategy to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

And the subpoenas asked for a transcript of a White House spokesman's press briefing in Nigeria, a list of those attending a birthday reception for a former president, and, casting a much wider net than previously reported, records of White House contacts with more than two dozen journalists and news media outlets.

The three subpoenas were issued to the White House on Jan. 22, three weeks after Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, was appointed special counsel in the probe and during the first wave of appearances by White House staffers before the grand jury.

The investigation seeks to determine if anyone violated federal law that prohibits officials with security clearances from intentionally or knowingly disclosing the identity of an undercover agent...

White House implicated

The subpoenas underscore indications that the initial stages of the investigation have focused largely on the White House staff members most involved in shaping the administration's message on Iraq, and appear to be based in part on specific information already gathered by investigators, attorneys said Thursday.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usleak0305,0,3272655,print.story?coll=ny-top-span-headlines

Air Force One Phone Records Subpoenaed
By Tom Brune
Newsday

Friday 05 March 2004

Grand jury to review call logs from Bush’s jet in probe of how a CIA agent’s cover was blown.

WASHINGTON -- The federal grand jury probing the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity has subpoenaed records of Air Force One telephone calls in the week before the officer's name was published in a column in July, according to documents obtained by Newsday.

Also sought in the wide-ranging document requests contained in three grand jury subpoenas to the Executive Office of President George W. Bush are records created in July by the White House Iraq Group, a little-known internal task force established in August 2002 to create a strategy to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

And the subpoenas asked for a transcript of a White House spokesman's press briefing in Nigeria, a list of those attending a birthday reception for a former president, and, casting a much wider net than previously reported, records of White House contacts with more than two dozen journalists and news media outlets.

The three subpoenas were issued to the White House on Jan. 22, three weeks after Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, was appointed special counsel in the probe and during the first wave of appearances by White House staffers before the grand jury.

The investigation seeks to determine if anyone violated federal law that prohibits officials with security clearances from intentionally or knowingly disclosing the identity of an undercover agent.

White House implicated

The subpoenas underscore indications that the initial stages of the investigation have focused largely on the White House staff members most involved in shaping the administration's message on Iraq, and appear to be based in part on specific information already gathered by investigators, attorneys said Thursday.

Fitzgerald's spokesman declined to comment.

The investigation arose in part out of concerns that Bush administration officials had called reporters to circulate the name of the CIA officer, Valerie Plame, in an attempt to discredit the criticism of the administration's Iraq policy by her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

In 2002, Wilson went to Niger at the behest of the CIA to check out reports that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium "yellow cake" to develop nuclear weapons. He reported that Iraq sought commercial ties but that businessmen said the Iraqis didn't try to buy uranium.

All three subpoenas were sent to employees of the Executive Office of the President under a Jan. 26 memo by White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez saying production of the documents, which include phone messages, e-mails and handwritten notes, was "mandatory" and setting a Jan. 29 deadline.

"The president has always said we would fully comply with the investigation, and the White House counsel's office has directed the staff to fully comply," White House spokeswoman Erin Healy said Thursday.

The Novak column

Two of the subpoenas focus mainly on White House records, events and contacts in July, both before and after the July 14 column by Robert Novak that said "two senior administration officials" told him Plame was a CIA officer.

The third subpoena repeats an informal Justice Department document request to the White House last fall seeking records about staff contacts with Novak and two Newsday reporters, Knut Royce and Timothy Phelps, who reported on July 22 that Plame was a covert agent and Novak had blown her cover.

The subpoena added journalists such as Mike Allen and Dana Priest of the Washington Post, Michael Duffy of Time magazine, Andrea Mitchell of NBC's "Meet the Press," Chris Matthews of MSNBC's "Hardball," and reporters from The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Associated Press. There have been no reports of journalists being subpoeaned.

The subpoenas required the White House to produce the documents in three stages -- the first on Jan. 30, a second on Feb. 4 and the third on Feb. 6 -- even as White House aides began appearing before the grand jury sitting in Washington, D.C.

The subpoena with the first production deadline sought three sets of documents.

It requested records of telephone calls to and from Air Force One from July 7 to 12, while Bush was visting several nations in Africa. The White House declined Thursday to release a list of those on the trip.

That subpoena also sought a complete transcript of a July 12 press "gaggle," or informal briefing, by then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer while at the National Hospital in Abuja, Nigeria.

That transcript is missing from the White House Web site containing transcripts of other press briefings. In a transcript the White House released at the time to Federal News Service, Fleischer discusses Wilson and his CIA report.

Finally, the subpoena requested a list of those in attendance at the White House reception on July 16 for former President Gerald Ford's 90th birthday.

The White House at the time announced the reception would honor Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, but said the event was closed to the press.

The White House Thursday declined to release the list and the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, which paid for the event, did not return phone calls.

The subpoena with the second production deadline sought all documents from July 6 to July 30 of the White House Iraq Group. In August, the Washington Post published the only account of the group's existence.

What about Karl Rove?

It met weekly in the Situation Room, the Post said, and its regular participants included senior political adviser Karl Rove; communication strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio; policy advisers led by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Stephen J. Hadley; and I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Wilson alleged in September that Rove was involved in the leak but a day later pulled back from that, asserting that Rove had "condoned" it.

Hughes left the White House in the summer of 2002. Matalin, who left at the end of 2002, did not return a call for comment. Matalin appeared before the grand jury Jan. 23, the day after the subpoenas were issued.

The subpoena with the last production date repeated the Justice Department's informal request to the White House last fall for documents from Feb. 1, 2002, through 2003 related to Wilson's February 2002 trip to Niger, to Plame and to contacts with journalists.

Current White House press secretary Scott McClellan, press aide Claire Buchan and former press aide Adam Levine have told reporters they appeared before the grand jury Feb. 6. At least five others have reportedly been questioned.

This is from the December 12, 2003 program of NOW With Bill Moyers.

Bill Moyers:

Everywhere you look today, or try to look, our right to know is under assault. In the name of fighting terrorists, the government is pulling a veil of secrecy around itself. Information that used to be readily accessible is now kept out of sight.

To cover this story, NOW is collaborating with U.S. News and World Report. Their five month investigation finds that, although the government regularly cites 911 as the basis for secrecy, the true reasons, in many cases, have nothing to do with the War On Terror.

INVESTIGATIVE REPORT: The untold story of the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy
How the public's business gets done out of the public eye

Here's the t r u t h o u t archive of the complete U.S. News and World Report article: Keeping Secrets, written by Christopher H. Schmitt and Edward T. Pound.

This segment was produced by David Brancaccio and Peter Meryash.

Veil of Secrecy - Complete (Small - 40 MB)

Veil of Secrecy - Part 1 of 3 (Small - 11 MB)
Veil of Secrecy - Part 2 of 3 (Small - 16 MB)
Veil of Secrecy - Part 3 of 3 (Small - 13 MB)

Here's some technical information about getting quicktime going to watch these movies.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
(link and text of other article is directly below it)

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/usinfo/press/secrecy.htm

Breaking News 12/12/03
INVESTIGATIVE REPORT: The untold story of the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy
How the public's business gets done out of the public eye

Friday, Dec. 12, the PBS television program NOW with Bill Moyers will air a report on Bush administration secrecy produced in collaboration with U.S. News. Please visit pbs.org for stations and airtimes in your area. The U.S. News article, "Keeping Secrets," will be publshed in Monday's edition. Full text will be available on USNews.com Saturday, Dec. 13, at 6 p.m.

The Bush administration has removed from the public domain millions of pages of information on health, safety, and environmental matters, lowering a shroud of secrecy over many critical operations of the federal government.

The administration's efforts to shield the actions of, and the information held by, the executive branch are far more extensive than has been previously documented. And they reach well beyond security issues.

A five-month investigation by U.S. News details a series of initiatives by administration officials to effectively place large amounts of information out of the reach of ordinary citizens, including data on such issues as drinking-water quality and automotive tire safety. The magazine's inquiry is based on a detailed review of government reports and regulations, of federal agency Web sites, and of legislation pressed by the White House.

U.S. News also analyzed information from public interest groups and others that monitor the administration's activities, and interviewed more than 100 people, including many familiar with the new secrecy initiatives. That information was supplemented by a review of materials provided in response to more than 200 Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the magazine seeking details of federal agencies' practices in providing public access to government information.

Among the findings of the investigation:

Important business and consumer information is increasingly being withheld from the public. The Bush administration is denying access to auto and tire safety information, for instance, that manufacturers are required to provide under a new "early-warning system" created following the Ford-Firestone tire scandal four years ago. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, meanwhile, is more frequently withholding information that would allow the public to scrutinize its product safety findings and product recall actions.

New administrative initiatives have effectively placed off limits critical health and safety information potentially affecting millions of Americans. The information includes data on quality and vulnerability of drinking-water supplies, potential chemical hazards in communities, and safety of airline travel and others forms of transportation.

Beyond the well-publicized cases involving terrorism suspects, the administration is aggressively pursuing secrecy claims in the federal courts in ways little understood--even by some in the legal system. The administration is increasingly invoking a "state secrets" privilege that allows government lawyers to request that civil and criminal cases be effectively closed by asserting that national security would be compromised if they proceed.

New administration policies have thwarted the ability of Congress to exercise its constitutional authority to monitor the executive branch and, in some cases, even to obtain basic information about its actions.

There are no precise statistics on how much government information is rendered secret. One measure, though, can be seen in a tally of how many times officials classify records. In the first two years of Bush's term, his administration classified records some 44.5 million times, or about the same number as in President Clinton's last four years, according to the Information Security Oversight Office, an arm of the National Archives and Records Administration.

MEDIA CONTACT: Rchard Folkers, Director of Media Relations(rfolkers@usnews.com or 202-955-2219)

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/121403A.shtml

Keeping Secrets
By Christopher H. Schmitt and Edward T. Pound
U.S. News & World Report

Friday 12 December 2003

The Bush administration is doing the public's business out of the public eye. Here's how--and why

"Democracies die behind closed doors."
--U.S. Appeals Court Judge Damon J. Keith

At 12:01 p.m. on Jan. 20, 2001, as a bone-chilling rain fell on Washington, George W. Bush took the oath of office as the nation's 43rd president. Later that afternoon, the business of governance officially began. Like other chief executives before him, Bush moved to unravel the efforts of his predecessor. Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, directed federal agencies to freeze more than 300 pending regulations issued by the administration of President Bill Clinton. The regulations affected areas ranging from health and safety to the environment and industry. The delay, Card said, would "ensure that the president's appointees have the opportunity to review any new or pending regulations." The process, as it turned out, expressly precluded input from average citizens. Inviting such comments, agency officials concluded, would be "contrary to the public interest."

Ten months later, a former U.S. Army Ranger named Joseph McCormick found out just how hard it was to get information from the new administration. A resident of Floyd County, Va., in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, McCormick discovered that two big energy companies planned to run a high-volume natural gas pipeline through the center of his community. He wanted to help organize citizens by identifying residents through whose property the 30-inch pipeline would run. McCormick turned to Washington, seeking a project map from federal regulators. The answer? A pointed "no." Although such information was "previously public," officials of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission told McCormick, disclosing the route of the new pipeline could provide a road map for terrorists. McCormick was nonplused. Once construction began, he says, the pipeline's location would be obvious to anyone. "I understand about security," the rangy, soft-spoken former business executive says. "But there certainly is a balance--it's about people's right to use the information of an open society to protect their rights."

For the past three years, the Bush administration has quietly but efficiently dropped a shroud of secrecy across many critical operations of the federal government--cloaking its own affairs from scrutiny and removing from the public domain important information on health, safety, and environmental matters. The result has been a reversal of a decades-long trend of openness in government while making increasing amounts of information unavailable to the taxpayers who pay for its collection and analysis. Bush administration officials often cite the September 11 attacks as the reason for the enhanced secrecy. But as the Inauguration Day directive from Card indicates, the initiative to wall off records and information previously in the public domain began from Day 1. Steven Garfinkel, a retired government lawyer and expert on classified information, puts it this way: "I think they have an overreliance on the utility of secrecy. They don't seem to realize secrecy is a two-edge sword that cuts you as well as protects you." Even supporters of the administration, many of whom agree that security needed to be bolstered after the attacks, say Bush and his inner circle have been unusually assertive in their commitment to increased government secrecy. "Tightly controlling information, from the White House on down, has been the hallmark of this administration," says Roger Pilon, vice president of legal affairs for the Cato Institute.

Air and water
Some of the Bush administration's initiatives have been well chronicled. Its secret deportation of immigrants suspected as terrorists, its refusal to name detainees at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the new surveillance powers granted under the post-9/11 U.S.A. Patriot Act have all been debated at length by the administration and its critics. The clandestine workings of an energy task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney have also been the subject of litigation, now before the Supreme Court.

But the administration's efforts to shield the actions of, and the information obtained by, the executive branch are far more extensive than has been previously documented. A five-month investigation by U.S. News detailed a series of initiatives by administration officials to effectively place large amounts of information out of the reach of ordinary citizens. The magazine's inquiry is based on a detailed review of government reports and regulations, federal agency Web sites, and legislation pressed by the White House. U.S. News also analyzed information from public interest groups and others that monitor the administration's activities, and interviewed more than 100 people, including many familiar with the new secrecy initiatives. That information was supplemented by a review of materials provided in response to more than 200 Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the magazine seeking details of federal agencies' practices in providing public access to government information.

The principal findings:
Important business and consumer information is increasingly being withheld from the public. The Bush administration is denying access to auto and tire safety information, for instance, that manufacturers are required to provide under a new "early-warning" system created following the Ford-Firestone tire scandal four years ago. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, meanwhile, is more frequently withholding information that would allow the public to scrutinize its product safety findings and product recall actions.

New administration initiatives have effectively placed off limits critical health and safety information potentially affecting millions of Americans. The information includes data on quality and vulnerability of drinking-water supplies, potential chemical hazards in communities, and safety of airline travel and other forms of transportation. In Aberdeen, Md., families who live near an Army weapons base are suing the Army for details of toxic pollution fouling the town's drinking-water supplies. Citing security, the Army has refused to provide information that could help residents locate and track the pollution.

Beyond the well-publicized cases involving terrorism suspects, the administration is aggressively pursuing secrecy claims in the federal courts in ways little understood--even by some in the legal system. The administration is increasingly invoking a "state secrets" privilege (box, Page 24) that allows government lawyers to request that civil and criminal cases be effectively closed by asserting that national security would be compromised if they proceed. It is impossible to say how often government lawyers have invoked the privilege. But William Weaver, a professor at the University of Texas-El Paso, who recently completed a study of the historical use of the privilege, says the Bush administration is asserting it "with offhanded abandon." In one case, Weaver says, the government invoked the privilege 245 times. In another, involving allegations of racial discrimination, the Central Intelligence Agency demanded, and won, return of information it had provided to a former employee's attorneys--only to later disclose the very information that it claimed would jeopardize national security.

New administration policies have thwarted the ability of Congress to exercise its constitutional authority to monitor the executive branch and, in some cases, even to obtain basic information about its actions. One Republican lawmaker, Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, became so frustrated with the White House's refusal to cooperate in an investigation that he exclaimed, during a hearing: "This is not a monarchy!" Some see a fundamental transformation in the past three years. "What has stunned us so much," says Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a public interest group in Washington that monitors government activities, "is how rapidly we've moved from a principle of `right to know' to one edging up to `need to know.' "

The White House declined repeated requests by U.S. News to discuss the new secrecy initiatives with the administration's top policy and legal officials. Two Bush officials who did comment defended the administration and rejected criticism of what many call its "penchant for secrecy." Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, says that besides the extraordinary steps the president has taken to protect the nation, Bush and other senior officials must keep private advice given in areas such as intelligence and policymaking, if that advice is to remain candid. Overall, Bartlett says, "the administration is open, and the process in which this administration conducts its business is as transparent as possible." There is, he says, "great respect for the law, and great respect for the American people knowing how their government is operating."

Bartlett says that some administration critics "such as environmentalists . . . want to use [secrecy] as a bogeyman." He adds: "For every series of examples you could find where you could make the claim of a `penchant for secrecy,' I could probably come up with several that demonstrate the transparency of our process." Asked for examples, the communications director offered none.

There are no precise statistics on how much government information is rendered secret. One measure, though, can be seen in a tally of how many times officials classify records. In the first two years of Bush's term, his administration classified records some 44.5 million times, or about the same number as in President Clinton's last four years, according to the Information Security Oversight Office, an arm of the National Archives and Records Administration. But the picture is more complicated than that. In an executive order issued last March, Bush made it easier to reclassify information that had previously been declassified--allowing executive-branch agencies to drop a cloak of secrecy over reams of information, some of which had been made available to the public.

Bait and switch
In addition, under three other little-noticed executive orders, Bush increased the number of officials who can classify records to include the secretary of agriculture, the secretary of health and human services, and the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Now, all three can label information at the "secret" level, rendering it unavailable for public review. Traditionally, classification authority has resided in federal agencies engaged in national security work. "We don't know yet how frequently the authority is being exercised," says Steven Aftergood, who publishes an authoritative newsletter in Washington on government secrecy. "But it is a sign of the times that these purely domestic agencies have been given national security classification authority. It is another indication of how our government is being transformed under pressure of the perceived terrorist threat." J. William Leonard, director of the information oversight office, estimates that up to half of what the government now classifies needn't be. "You can't have an effective secrecy process," he cautions, "unless you're discerning in how you use it."

From the start, the Bush White House has resisted efforts to disclose information about executive-branch activities and decision making. The energy task force headed by Cheney is just one example. In May 2001, the task force produced a report calling for increased oil and gas drilling, including on public land. The Sierra Club and another activist group, Judicial Watch, sued to get access to task-force records, saying that energy lobbyists unduly influenced the group. Citing the Constitution's separation of powers clause, the administration is arguing that the courts can't compel Cheney to disclose information about his advice to the president. A federal judge ordered the administration to produce the records, prompting an appeal to the Supreme Court.

Energy interests aren't alone in winning a friendly hearing from the Bush administration. Auto and tire manufacturers prevailed in persuading the administration to limit disclosure requirements stemming from one of the highest-profile corporate scandals of recent years. Four years ago, after news broke that failing Firestone tires on Ford SUVs had caused hundreds of deaths and many more accidents, Congress enacted a new auto and tire safety law. A cornerstone was a requirement that manufacturers submit safety data to a government early-warning system, which would provide clues to help prevent another scandal. Lawmakers backing the system wanted the data made available to the public. After the legislation passed, officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said they didn't expect to create any new categories of secrecy for the information; they indicated that key data would automatically be made public. That sparked protests from automakers, tire manufacturers, and others. After months of pressure, transportation officials decided to make vital information such as warranty claims, field reports from dealers, and consumer complaints--all potentially valuable sources of safety information--secret. "It was more or less a bait and switch," says Laura MacCleery, auto-safety counsel for Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer group. "You're talking about information that will empower consumers. The manufacturers are not going to give that up easily."

Get out of jail free
Government officials, unsurprisingly, don't see it that way. Lloyd Guerci, a Transportation Department attorney involved in writing the new regulations, declined to comment. But Ray Tyson, a spokesman for the traffic safety administration, denies the agency caved to industry pressure: "We've listened to all who have opinions and reached a compromise that probably isn't satisfactory to anybody."

Some of the strongest opposition to making the warning-system data public came from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. The organization, whose membership comprises U.S. and international carmakers, argued that releasing the information would harm them competitively. The Bush administration has close ties to the carmakers. Bush Chief of Staff Card has been General Motors' top lobbyist and head of a trade group of major domestic automakers. Jacqueline Glassman, NHTSA's chief counsel, is a former top lawyer for DaimlerChrysler Corp. In the months before the new regulations were released, industry officials met several times with officials from the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

The administration's commitment to increased secrecy measures extends to the area of "critical infrastructure information," or CII. In layman's terms, this refers to transportation, communications, energy, and other systems that make modern society run. The Homeland Security Act allows companies to make voluntary submissions of information about critical infrastructure to the Department of Homeland Security. The idea is to encourage firms to share information crucial to running and protecting those facilities. But under the terms of the law, when a company does this, the information is exempted from public disclosure and cannot be used without the submitting party's permission in any civil proceeding, even a government enforcement action. Some critics see this as a get-out-of-jail-free card, allowing companies worried about potential litigation or regulatory actions to place troublesome information in a convenient "homeland security" vault. "The sweep of it is amazing," says Beryl Howell, former general counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Savvy businesses will be able to mark every document handed over [to] government officials as `CII' to ensure their confidentiality." Companies "wanted liability exemption long before 9/11," adds Patrice McDermott, a lobbyist for the American Library Association, which has a tradition of advocacy on right-to-know issues. "Now, they've got it."

Under the administration's plan to implement the Homeland Security Act, some businesses may get even more protection. When Congress passed the law, it said the antidisclosure provision would apply only to information submitted to the Department of Homeland Security. The department recently proposed extending the provision to cover information submitted to any federal agency. A department spokesman did not respond to requests for comment. Business objections were also pivotal when the Environmental Protection Agency recently backed off a plan that would have required some companies to disclose more about chemical stockpiles in communities.

If the administration's secrecy policies have helped business, they have done little for individuals worried about health and safety issues. The residents of the small town of Aberdeen, Md., can attest to that. On a chilly fall evening, some 100 people gathered at the Aberdeen firehouse to hear the latest about a toxic substance called perchlorate. An ingredient in rocket fuel, perchlorate has entered the aquifer that feeds the town's drinking-water wells. The culprit is the nearby U.S. Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground, where since World War I, all manner of weapons have been tested.

Trigger finger
After word of the perchlorate contamination broke, a coalition of citizens began working with the Army to try to attack the unseen plume of pollution moving through the ground. But earlier this year, the Army delivered Aberdeen residents a sharp blow. It began censoring maps to eliminate features like street names and building locations--information critical to understanding and tracking where contamination might have occurred or where environmental testing was being done.

The reason? The information, the Army says, could provide clues helpful to terrorists. Arlen Crabb, the head of a citizens' group, doesn't buy it. "It's an abuse of power," says Crabb, a 20-year Army veteran, whose well lies just a mile and a half from the base. His coalition is suing the Army, citing health and safety concerns. "We're not a bunch of radicals. We've got to have the proof. The government has to be transparent."

Aberdeen is but one example of the way enhanced security measures increasingly conflict with the health and safety concerns of ordinary Americans. Two basics--drinking water and airline travel--help illustrate the trend. A public health and bioterrorism law enacted last year requires, among other things, that operators of local water systems study vulnerabilities to attack or other disruptions and draw up plans to address any weaknesses. Republicans and Democrats praised the measure, pushed by the Bush administration, as a prudent response to potential terrorist attacks. But there's a catch. Residents are precluded from obtaining most information about any vulnerabilities.

This wasn't always the case. In 1996, Congress passed several amendments to the Clean Water Act calling for "source water assessments" to be made of water supply systems. The idea was that the assessments, covering such things as sources of contamination, would arm the public with information necessary to push for improvements. Today, the water assessments are still being done, but some citizens' groups say that because of Bush administration policy, the release of information has been so restricted that there is too little specific information to act upon. They blame the Environmental Protection Agency for urging states to limit information provided to the public from the assessments. As a result, the program has been fundamentally reshaped from one that has made information widely available to one that now forces citizens to essentially operate on a need-to-know basis, says Stephen Gasteyer, a Washington specialist on water-quality issues. "People [are] being overly zealous in their enforcement of safety and security, and perhaps a little paranoid," he says. "So you're getting releases of information so ambiguous that it's not terribly useful." Cynthia Dougherty, director of EPA's groundwater and drinking-water office, described her agency's policy as laying out "minimal standards," so that states that had been intending to more fully disclose information "had the opportunity to decide to make a change."

The Federal Aviation Administration has its own security concerns, and supporters say it has addressed them vigorously. In doing so, however, the agency has also made it harder for Americans to obtain the kind of safety information once considered routine. The FAA has eliminated online access to records on enforcement actions taken against airlines, pilots, mechanics, and others. That came shortly after the 9/11 attacks, when it was discovered that information was available on things like breaches of airport security, says Rebecca Trexler, an FAA spokeswoman. Balancing such concerns isn't easy. But rather than cut off access to just that information, the agency pulled back all enforcement records. The FAA has also backed away from providing access to safety information voluntarily submitted by airlines.

As worrisome as the specter of terrorism is for many Americans, many still grumble about being kept in the dark unnecessarily. Under rules the Transportation Security Administration adopted last year--with no public notice or comment--the traveling public no longer has access to key government information on the safety and security of all modes of transportation. The sweeping restrictions go beyond protecting details about security or screening systems to include information on enforcement actions or effectiveness of security measures. The new TSA rules also establish a new, looser standard for denying access to information: Material can be withheld from the public, the rules say, simply if it's "impractical" to release it. The agency did not respond to requests for comment.

This same pattern can be seen in one federal agency after another. As Joseph McCormick, the former Army Ranger trying to learn more about the pipeline planned for Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, learned, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission now restricts even the most basic information about such projects. The agency says its approach is "balanced," adding that security concerns amply justify the changes.

The Bush administration is pressing the courts to impose more secrecy, too. Jeffrey Sterling, 36, a former CIA operations officer, can testify to that. Sterling, who is black, is suing the CIA for discrimination. In September, with his attorneys in the midst of preparing important filings, a CIA security officer paid them a visit, demanding return of documents the agency had previously provided. A mistake had been made, the officer explained, and the records contained information that if disclosed would gravely damage national security. The officer warned that failure to comply could lead to prison or loss of a security clearance, according to the lawyers. Although vital to Sterling's case, the lawyers reluctantly gave up the records.

What was so important? In a federal courtroom in Alexandria, Va., a Justice Department attorney recently explained that the records included a pseudonym given to Sterling for an internal CIA proceeding on his discrimination complaint. In fact, the pseudonym, which Sterling never used in an operation, had already been disclosed through a clerical error. Mark Zaid, one of Sterling's attorneys, says the pseudonym is just a misdirection play by the CIA. The real reason the agency demanded the files back, he says, is that they included information supporting Sterling's discrimination complaint. Zaid says he has never encountered such heavy-handed treatment from the CIA. "When they have an administration that is willing to cater [to secrecy], they go for it," he says, "because they know they can get away with it." A CIA spokesman declined comment.

In this case, which is still pending, the administration is invoking the "state secrets" privilege, in which it asserts that a case can't proceed normally without disclosing information harmful to national security. The Justice Department says it can't provide statistics on how often it invokes the privilege. But Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor active in national security matters, says: "In the past, it was an unusual thing. The Bush administration is faster on the trigger."

Surveillance
At the same time, the government is opening up a related front. Last spring, the TSA effectively shut down the case of Mohammed Ali Ahmed, an Indian Muslim and naturalized citizen. In September 2001, Ahmed and three of his children were removed from an American Airlines flight. Last year, Ahmed filed a civil rights suit against the airline. But TSA head James Loy intervened, saying that giving Ahmed information about his family's removal would compromise airline security. The government, in other words, was asserting a claim to withhold the very information Ahmed needed to pursue his case, says his attorney, Wayne Krause, of the Texas Civil Rights Project. "You're looking at an almost unprecedented vehicle to suppress information that is vital to the public and the people who want to vindicate their rights," Krause says.

Secret evidence of a different kind comes into play through a little-noticed effect of the U.S.A. Patriot Act. A key provision allows information from surveillance approved for intelligence gathering to be used to convict a defendant in criminal court. But the government's application--which states the case for the snooping--isn't available for defendants to see, as in traditional law enforcement surveillance cases. With government agencies now hoarding all manner of secret information, the growing stockpile represents an opportunity for abusive leaks, critics say. The new law takes note of that, by allowing suits against the federal government. But there's an important catch--in order to seek redress, one must forfeit the right to a jury trial. Instead, the action must be held before a judge; judges, typically, are much more conservative in awarding damages than are juries.

Most Americans appreciate the need for increased security. But with conflicts between safety and civil rights increasing, the need for an arbiter is acute--which is perhaps the key reason why the vast new security powers of many executive-branch agencies are so alarming to citizens' groups and others. A diminished role of congressional oversight is just one area of fallout, but there are others. Some examples:

It took the threat of a subpoena from the independent commission investigating the 9/11 attacks to force the White House to turn over intelligence reports. Even at that, family members of victims complain, there were too many restrictions on release of the information. In Congress, the administration has rebuffed members on a range of issues often unrelated to security concerns.

In a huge military spending bill last year, Congress directed President Bush to give it 30 days' notice before initiating certain sensitive defense programs. Bush signed the bill into law but rejected the restraint and said he would ignore the provision if he deemed it necessary.

Initial contracts to rebuild Iraq, worth billions of dollars, were awarded in secret. Bids were limited to companies invited to participate, and many had close ties to the White House. Members of Congress later pressed for an open bidding process.

Many public interest gro