Some people LIKE war!

Cheney's boundless Iraq profiteering
from Australia's THE AGE
July 31, 2005
Things are going well in Iraq for the invaders. Well, at least for some people, such as US Vice-President Richard Cheney. He is receiving more than $1 million a year from Halliburton, the company of which he was CEO from 1995 to 2000, in "deferred remuneration" while he is VP. He is worth every penny.Last week, two Democrat senators and a house member wrote to Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld asking if he knew about Halliburton's latest money-making dodge in Iraq. Keep in mind that Halliburton and its subsidiary, Kellogg Brown and Root, have a nice little earner going in supplying support for the US Army and for, ostensibly, putting out oil well fires. The Centre for Public Integrity in Washington counts Halliburton's windfall at more than $10 billion - a little bit coming from the US Treasury but most coming from Iraqi oil revenue that is supposed to be used to reconstruct the country for the benefit of the people.
The centre counts another 30 members of the Defence Policy Board with ties to American companies with $76 billion (as of 2002) in largely uncontested and un-auditable military contracts.The Democrats reckon that Halliburton may have overstepped even its sloppy moral line by making life impossible for another American company that has committed the crime of undercutting the Vice-President's company. In their letter to Rumsfeld, the Democrats say that US company Lloyd-Owen International is being prevented from delivering fuel to Iraq from Kuwait (Who says the liberation hasn't been a success? What next? Ice to the Inuit?) by forcing LOI trucks to use a civilian crossing where the checks are so slow that the company can't get its 140 trucks a day through. The speedy, wave-'em-through military crossing is controlled by who? The Iraqi military? The US military? Nope, by the Vice-President's firm, which is also in the fuel delivery business. The Democrats say that the LOI crime is delivering fuel to Iraq for 18 US cents a gallon while Halliburton provides the same service at $1.30 a gallon. The LOI spokesman says he could understand if Halliburton simply doubled the price, to 36 cents a gallon. But at $1.30 a gallon even a Texas carpetbagger should blush. Halliburton has a $2.5 billion contract for managing the fuel distribution system in Iraq. The man from LOI says that "we have not, to date, seen a functioning KBR (Kellogg Brown and Root) piece of equipment to where we deliver". He also says that his chaps have only come across one KBR employee at these sites. LOI needed Defence Department ID cards to make its deliveries and, in order to get them from - you guessed it - Halliburton, they had to make a delivery for Mr Cheney of construction material to Fallujah last month. The convoy was attacked and three men were killed and seven injured. KBR staff were ordered not to provide any assistance to the injured. "Many people volunteered to help, but were told not to by our management," according to a Halliburton employee. Presumably the convoy crew were a bunch of mercenaries, in Iraq to make a buck. As George the Smaller told an audience at the West Point and Virginia Military Institute, America is "the single surviving model of human progress".





Former CIA officer: U.S. plans nuclear attack on Iran
from GLOBAL NEWS MATRIX
Posted on Sunday, July 31
The United States is developing a nuclear plan to attack military bases in Iran, said Philip Giraldi, a former CIA intelligence officer. Giraldi said that the U.S. nuclear strike against Iran would take place after a 9/11-style attack on the United States, and that the planned attack would be analogous to the unprovoked invasion of Iraq. The former CIA officer also said that an attack on the U.S. would serve as the pretext for putting the plan into action. He noted that some Air Force officers are opposed to the nuclear strike plan "but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections."

Several U.S. officials have indicated that Washington has developed contingency plans to use nuclear arms to attack military targets in Iran and North Korea. One recent study, released before the election of former Taliban mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency on June 23, asserts that the U.S. assault on Iran has already started. The analysis, prepared by former United Nations nuclear arms inspector Scott Ritter, reveals that the CIA aids Iranian opposition groups. It also said that the Washington plans to stage military attacks against the Islamic republic with U.S. forces from the neighboring Republic of Azerbaijan.

Analysts say that although the Bush administration intensified its war of words against Iran, the propaganda offensive didn’t reach the intensity achieved during the 2002-2003 build-up for the invasion of Iraq. They say that the U.S. failure in Iraq and the American public's declining support for the invasion have made such a propaganda offensive less viable at this moment. However, a new attack on the U.S. soil could provoke a large sector of the American public and encourage the Bush administration to launch an attack on Iran. Since an attack on the U.S. is, according to experts, almost inevitable, the Bush administration would likely be given the justification to attack Iran. Some believe that the Bush administration would not even seek congressional approval and launch the attack on the basis of alleged self-defense.

Analysts say that Iran is considerably stronger than Iraq, and that a U.S. attack on Iran will cause chaos in the Middle East. The U.S. claims that Iran that it is secretly developing an atomic weapons program and wants to refer its nuclear file to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. The Islamic republic denies the U.S. allegations, insisting that its nuclear plans are strictly for the peaceful generation of electricity. Naturally, Israel would also encourage a U.S. attack on Iran, as it considers Iran a serious threat to its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. In late June, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Daniel Ayalon, said that Iran must be stopped from making nuclear arms. "The clock is ticking, and time is not on our side," he said. Moreover, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has reportedly handed the U.S. President W. Bush photographs of Iran's nuclear facilities.



Subcontractor who got rich in wake of 9/11 investigated
Auditors say expense claims of $15 million cannot be substantiated
Washington Post/Houston Chronicle
July 29, 2005
The company, Eclipse Events, was among the most important of the 168 subcontractors hired by prime contractor NCS Pearson. The cost of the overall contract rose in less than a year to $741 million from $104 million, and federal auditors concluded that $303 million of that was unsubstantiated. Spurred by that audit, federal agents are examining the entire contract and focusing on Eclipse, according to government officials and Pearson. A deeper examination of the Eclipse subcontract illustrates the chaos that accompanied Homeland Security initiatives after the terrorist attacks and shows how contractors were allowed to operate with little government oversight.

Finger points to British intelligence as al-Qaeda websites are wiped out
The Sunday Times - Britain
July 31, 2005
Over the past fortnight Israeli intelligence agents have noticed something distinctly odd happening on the internet. One by one, Al-Qaeda’s affiliated websites have vanished until only a handful remain. Tens of similar sites, some offering detailed information on how to build and use biological weapons, have also been shut down. (Maybe they should be asking who really created them in the first place?)
Ironically, the most readily available sources of accurate online information on bomb-making are the websites of the radical American militia. “I have not seen any Al-Qaeda manuals that look like genuine terrorist training,” says Professor Michael Clarke, of King’s College London, who is director of the International Policy Institute.

Bolton Lied to Congress about past Testimony

John Bolton lied to US Congress!
John Bolton, President Bush's nominee for U.N. ambassador, mistakenly told Congress he had not been interviewed or testified in any investigation over the past five years, the State Department said Thursday. Bolton was interviewed by the State Department inspector general as part of a joint investigation with the Central Intelligence Agency into prewar Iraqi attempts to buy nuclear materials from Niger, State Department spokesman Noel Clay said. The admission came hours after another State Department official said Bolton had correctly answered a Senate questionnaire when he wrote that he has not testified to a grand jury or been interviewed by investigators in any inquiry over the past five years. When Bolton filled out a Senate questionnaire in March in connection with his nomination, ``he didn't recall being interviewed by the State Department's inspector general. Therefore, his form, as submitted, was inaccurate,'' Clay said. ``He will correct it.''
Uh, right. Guess that shoots down the executive appointment during Congressional recess!
The new information does not change the Bush administration's commitment to Bolton's nomination, said a senior State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the subject.
"It seems unusual that Mr. Bolton would not remember his involvement in such a serious matter," said Joseph Biden of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "In my mind, this raises more questions that need to be answered. I hope President Bush will not make the mistake of recess appointing Mr. Bolton."

AFL-CIO announces anti-war resolution
"All of the unions now from the left to the right of the AFL-CIO are now on record saying that they want U.S. troops pulled out of Iraq as soon as possible. That's going to mean that all of these unions are going to financially support the peace movement from now on, and I think that's going to be a big boost to the peace movement."

Who procured the forged Niger documents for Rove & Ledeen?
"Karl Rove’s foreign-policy advisor, Michael Ledeen, proclaimed "the rightness of the fascist cause" in 1972. In 1984 he got George Bush Sr to appoint Iranian arms merchant and Iranian/Israeli double-agent Manucher Ghorbanifar as a middleman in the scandalous Iran-Contra affair. Ledeen has been a fixture in Washington and Israel ever since, advocating a modern version of the Crusades against Islamic nations. Michael Ledeen, Rove’s "brain," is one of the leading advocates for a US attack on Iran. The Washington Post quoted Ledeen as saying that Rove told him, "Anytime you have a good idea, tell me." I guess that means we can look forward to the Bush team drumming up a war with Iran."
....
The FBI caught Larry Franklin, 58 -- a Pentagon analyst on Iran and an Air Force Reserve colonel -- meeting two agents of AIPAC, Israel’s US "lobby," in an Alexandria, VA, restaurant in June 2003. AIPAC employees --Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman -- had been under FBI surveillance for a couple of years. The FBI was surprised by Franklin showing up and began investigating him, too. The FBI arrested Franklin, on May 4, 2005, for illegally disclosing highly classified information to AIPAC -- spying for AIPAC, in other words. He is free on bond and is expected to plead innocent at his trial. Why hasn’t the FBI arrested anyone at the AIPAC? Who in the Bush administration is blocking justice in this case?

Dept. of Justice puts Al-Qaeda terrorist handbook on their website-- BBC reports UK govt. upset.
"The Department is only providing the following selected text from the manual because it does not want to aid in educating terrorists or encourage further acts of terrorism."
Then why post it at all?

Cythina McKinney re-opens 9/11 investigation independently
"Congresswoman McKinney is viewed as a contrarian," said panelist Melvin Goodman, a former CIA official, "and I hope someday her views will be considered conventional wisdom."

Panelists maintained that Bush ignored numerous warnings from the CIA, the Federal Aviation Administration, foreign governments and others who told him before 9/11 that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack the United States and that terrorists were likely to use hijacked airliners as weapons. But why would the president or his administration want the 9/11 attacks to occur? Power, the panelists agreed. In the wake of the attacks, the administration was able to greatly expand the president's power and the reach of the federal government, they said, but whistle-blowers and other potential witnesses who could have testified to the Sept. 11 commission about such things were either prevented from speaking or ignored in the commission's final report. Panelists called the commission's report "a cover-up." "The American people have been seriously misled," said panelist Peter Dale Scott.

"We need a common enemy to unite us." - Condoleeza Rice, March 2000

Why withhold Roberts papers--what's to hide?

White House withholding John Roberts' papers.
The White House is stonewalling the Senate on releasing documents from John G. Roberts' time as Deputy Solicitor General in the Bush I administration. The documents may detail Roberts' role in the pardons of leading Iran-contra criminals as well as the eleventh hour commutation of the 55-year prison sentence of Pakistani heroin smuggler Aslam Adam. Roberts served under Bush I Solicitor General Kenneth W. Starr, who was later the Independent Special Prosecutor of President Clinton in the Lewinsky Affair.

Why is the White House flip-flopping on whether John Roberts was a "member" of the Federalist Society?

REPORTER: It was reported, as you know, that he was in the Federalist Society, which is an important legal group on the conservative side. Then the White House said, ‘No, it was not the case.’ And now it appears that he was part of the leadership group. What is the real story here?

SCOTT McCLELLAN: He has no memory of ever joining or paying dues to the Federalist Society. He has no recollection of that. He has participated in events and panel discussions. He has given speeches at Federalist Society forums, but he doesn't have any recollection of ever paying dues or joining the organization.

REPORTER: Isn’t that kind of a simple thing to nail down? Prior to now?

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Well, David, he has answered this over the last few years. The issue has come up, and he certainly has participated in some of the events that they have sponsored or that they’ve hosted, but he just doesn't have any memory of ever paying any dues to the organization.
What kind of a bogus line of reasoning is that? He never paid dues, so he wasn't involved with them? Why don't these reporters laugh in McClellan's face?

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Al Ross, head of the Institute for Democratic Studies, who got a hold of the document that said that John Roberts, the Supreme Court nominee, was on the -- in the directory of the Federalist Society in 1997/1998. Now, John Roberts claims he cannot remember if he joined or not.

ALFRED ROSS: Well, Roberts, whether he’s paid his dues or not, was prominently listed in the 1997/1998 leadership directory published by the Federalist Society itself. So it is very difficult to believe that he didn't have any membership. He was on the Steering Committee. The important question is not whether he paid dues as a member or not. The question really at stake here is where does Roberts and his Federalist Society cronies plan to steer our ship of state. If one looks at the history of the Federalist Society, which was established at the inspiration of Robert Bork in the early 1980s, their entire trajectory has been to move our judicial system in an extremely radically right wing direction.

NY TIMES: London bombers were tricked into carrying bombs on board trains and bus. The New York Times is reporting today that a number of London police investigators are skeptical that the July 7 bombers knew that they were embarking on a suicide mission. EUROPOL investigators agree with the assessment of their British counterparts that the bombers may have been fooled into believing they were going to leave bombs with timers on trains and a bus and then escape. Police also believe that there is a single mastermind or a group of conspirators behind the bombings.

Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) intends to interfere in Fitzgerald probe. Roberts, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, announced that his commitee will be "reviewing" the criminal probe by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald of the White House leak of the identities of covert CIA agents. If Roberts is serious and not just grandstanding, this may indicate that the White House is looking to give Fitzgerald's targets (Karl Rove, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and others) congressional general immunity from prosecution in return for their testimony before Roberts' committee. This was the method by which John Poindexter and Oliver North were able to avoid jail time for their roles in Iran-contra, their convictions being overturned by a federal appeals court because of their previously granted congressional immunity. There is also a bit of Watergate redux in Roberts' statement. Pressure by the GOP on Fitzgerald is reminiscent of the Nixon administration's decision to fire Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox. That prompted the resignations of Nixon's Attorney and Deputy Attorney General.

Innocent man shot in London, backpacks searched in NYC subways

On July 22, MTA in New York announced that all backpacks were subject to random searches in the NY subway system, and in London a man in a "bomber" jacket was shot 5 times in the back with absolutely no proof he was guilty of anything except jumping a turnstyle:

A man shot dead by police hunting the bombers behind Thursday's London attacks was a Brazilian electrician unconnected to the incidents.
"We are now satisfied that he was not connected with the incidents of Thursday 21st July 2005. For somebody to lose their life in such circumstances is a tragedy and one that the Metropolitan Police Service regrets." According to a witness quoted in London's Daily Mail, the man "looked absolutely petrified" as he ran onto the train. The witness told the newspaper that the suspect, just a few yards away from him, fell to the ground and officers were on him immediately. "The policeman nearest to me had the black automatic pistol in his left hand. He held it down to the guy and unloaded five shots into him..."
Alexander Sraha, a 36-year-old professional who lives near the search area and is black, noted that everyone is getting jumpy. He wore a New York Yankees cap and jeans. "We're all suspects at the moment," he said. "If I were to put on an all black outfit and carry a rucksack, I'd probably get shot. The police are a little bit paranoid. Everyone is on edge."
....
Suspect shot dead 'had no bomb'
"The suspect, described as being of Asian appearance and wearing a thick, bulky jacket, vaulted over a ticket barrier when challenged by police and ran down the escalator and along the platform of the Northern Line. When the armed officers reached the platform with their guns drawn, they shouted at everyone to get down. As waiting passengers and those already on a train that had pulled into the station dived to the floor, the suspect jumped on the train. Two witnesses said that as he entered the train he tripped, ending up half in and half out of the carriage, on all fours. Within seconds, as the clock tower outside the station chimed 10am, the officers caught up with the man and pushed him hard to the floor. Witnesses said that they then fired up to five bullets into him at close range, killing him instantly."
They couldn't just handcuff him and interrogate him somewhere else?
"Anthony Larkin, 30, was waiting on the platform when he saw a man in a black bomber jacket and jeans running towards him being chased by the officers. Mr Larkin, a care assistant, from Hartlepool, Teesside, said: “The officers were shouting, ‘Get down, get down’. I immediately hit the ground. I saw the man fall over and then I heard two shots that I believe went into his back. There was lots of panicking, people ran screaming out of the station and they were keeping their heads down. I just got up and joined them, running as fast as I could.”
WOW, just like a movie!!!

The four powers who are behind the al-Qaeda conspiracy?
"You have read much about the threat of one particular conspiracy. Here is another. There is an unwitting conspiracy between four separate powers to represent the worldwide al-Qaeda network as fiendishly clever, powerfully effective and deeply involved in the London bombings....
First, the news media. Secondly, the Government. Thirdly, the security services. Finally, of course, the terrorist himself. From a certain point of view, the journalist, the politician, the police chief and the terrorist can be seen as locked in a macabre waltz of the mind, no less distorting for being unconscious. We should not join that dance. Us v Them is the narrative a politician is most at home with. The BBC’s The Power of Nightmares made an important point: fear silences opposition, and governments walk tallest when an external threat can be identified and they can lead us against it. “Evil” is a more convenient opponent than stupidity, inadequacy and human dysfunction."

Did Michael Ledeen Circulate The Niger Forgeries For Karl Rove?
Remember him, from the Iran-Contra affair?
Seems like disinformation is his stock-in-trade.
"Michael Ledeen is a long-time Jewish Zionist activist who cherishes great animosity towards Iraq and Iran, making this known at every turn, as can be seen by looking through his articles at National Review Online, where he is a staff writer. He is also a member of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), two influential Washington think tanks. He has close connections with Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, who also headed the Pentagon’s now-disbanded Office of Special Plans (OSP), an ad hoc bureau formed for the purpose of manufacturing a casus belli for the recent invasion of Iraq. Ledeen has a long-standing relationship with Manucher Ghorbanifar, the dissident Iranian arms dealer who was involved in the Iran Contra Scandal. Ghorbanifar has been identified by the CIA as a forger of intelligence documents. Michael Ledeen is also a full-time advisor to Karl Rove on international affairs.
Ghorbanifar has admitted discussing regime change in Iran with Harold Rhodes and Larry Franklin, both of whom worked for the OSP under Feith, in a meeting arranged by Michael Ledeen. Larry Franklin was recently indicted for passing classified information to AIPAC."
......
"When Joseph Wilson IV wrote his op-ed in the New York Times, giving the lie to the contention that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Niger, he may have been undoing the carefully executed handiwork of Karl Rove’s henchman Michael Ledeen. Naturally, Rove may have wanted to retaliate. If it was not Rove, it may have been someone near him or some other official in the White House. And when el-Baradei denounced the forgeries, it would have been another wrench in the machinery. So it stands to reason that someone like John Bolton would seek to retaliate against el-Baradei by trying to prevent his election for a third term at the IAEA."
.........
Michael Ledeen, Consultant on Chaos
"If Stephen Bryen is the military technology guru in the neo-con pantheon, Michael Ledeen is currently its leading theorist, historian, scholar and writer. It states in the website of his consulting firm, Benador Associates, that he is ”...one of the world’s leading authorities on intelligence, contemporary history and international affairs“ and that....”As Ted Koppel puts it, ‘Michael Ledeen is a Renaissance man....in the tradition of Machiavelli.’"
.....
"Michael Ledeen, for all practical purposes an Israeli fifth columnist, is a for the cabal, a Fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, who ... was deeply involved in the Iran-Contra crimes. longtime propagandistLedeen is one of the most vocal proponents of "total war," calling for the overthrow of Iraq, Iran, Syria and even Saudia Arabia. [Oliver] North and [Michael] Ledeen have worked together in a number of operations in recent years, very different, but all, one way or another, involving psyops or disinformation. In 1983, North was involved in the Grenada invasion. The media were excluded and U.S. Army psyops took over the local press and radio. The mainstream U.S. media got a bizarre white paper authored by Michael Ledeen, purportedly based upon the three tons of documentation the U.S. invaders seized.<> That same year Ledeen and North participated in a National Security Council planning group that led to the creation of the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy. North fed the office CIA and DIA material on Nicaragua, grist for its propaganda mill, while Ledeen and others churned it out.
.......
One of the most powerful pro-lsrael flacks is Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense. Wolfowitz has been in the Pentagon and the State Department since the early 1970s, except for the Clinton years. He was ambassador to Indonesia during some of the worst years of the Suharto dictatorship and worked hard during the 2000 presidential campaign to keep the Reagan-Bush support for Suharto out of the debate.
Also part of this group is Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Feith is on JINSA's board of advisers and is the most vocal proponent of another fundamental tenet of the Israel lobby (and others), that any and all arms limitation treaties are anathema. Feith was in charge of oversight of the short-lived Office of Strategic Influence.
Another key figure is John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. He is truly the fox in charge of the chicken coop; he was instrumental in Washington's decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. He led the U.S. attack on the International Criminal Court. Bolton was vice-president of the American Enterprise Institute and on the boards of the avowedly racist Manhattan Institute and the New American Century. Together with Ariel Sharon, he endorsed the game plan that, after Iraq, the United States and Israel must deal militarily with Iran and Syria."

Song of the week...

37hz. "Death of Democracy", Pain Teens-style cut up of
GWB. You can listen to it here.

"There's lots of senior officials."
In October 2003, in an unusual move, Bush said he doubted that a Justice Department investigation would ever turn up the source of the leak, suggesting that it was a waste of time for lawmakers to question the administration and for reporters to follow up on the story.
"I mean this is a town full of people who like to leak information," Bush told reporters following a meeting with Cabinet members on Oct. 7, 2003. "And I don’t know if we’re going to find out the senior administration official. Now, this is a large administration, and there’s lots of senior officials. I don’t have any idea.”
Sen. Frank Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, responded to the president’s statement in an Oct. 10, 2003, interview with the New York Times. “If the president says, ’I don’t know if we’re going to find this person,’ what kind of a statement is that for the president of the United States to make?’’ Lautenberg asked. “Would he say that about a bank-robbery investigation?”

What's in the eight redacted pages about two "senior administration officials"?
"One of the ruling judges on the case of the two reporters who refused to divulge their Plame-outing source was about to go easy on them when he read Fitzgerald's new information -- eight pages of which were redacted from the public -- and said that the national-security seriousness of what he read changed his mind. The court then ordered Time's Matthew Cooper and the New York Times' Judith Miller to testify or else; Cooper finally did, and Miller is in jail for contempt of court. We don't know what is in those eight blacked-out pages -- and, if they really do involve national-security matters, we may never be permitted to know precisely. But apparently they provide the locus around which Fitzgerald is building a case that could result in perjury indictments, at the least, for a number of Administration officials and perhaps journalists as well. (Another judge said that the prosecutor's classified filing -- those missing eight pages -- "decides the case." In other words, to quote Lawrence O'Donnell: "All the judges who have seen the prosecutors secret evidence firmly believe he is pursuing a very serious crime, and they have done everything they can to help him get an indictment.") Further, depending on what Bush and Cheney knew and when they knew it -- and what they did or covered-up in the possible light of such knowledge -- there may be plenty of ammunition for likely impeachment hearings."
...
"How did we get to Cheney and Rice scaring the population with talk of "mushroom clouds" and wild tales of Iraqi WMD that might be made available to al-Qaida terrorists? It was 2002. The Administration already had decided to bomb and invade Iraq, but was having trouble figuring out how to manipulate the propaganda so as to fool Congress, the American people, and the international community into giving them permission to do so. It was not smooth sailing. Not only were the Democrats and leakers within the CIA beating up on Bush's plans for war, but prestigious conservative Republican leaders, such as Gen. Brent Scowcroft, James Baker III, Dick Army, and Trent Lott also were warning against an invasion of Iraq. Something had to be done. The disinformation campaign was launched by the WHIG and others inside and outside the White House."

Rovegate—let's pull the thread!
"The prospect of getting booted into a jail cell didn't look good to the paranoid, alcoholic Nixon. I wonder how it looks to George W. Bush, ex-boozer and cokehead, or to Dick Cheney and their fellow conspirators. What's more, Rovegate is far worse than Watergate, far worse. Rovegate, the conspiracy to take America to war illegally, has caused the death of nearly 1,800 American fighting men and women, caused upwards of 12,000 casualties, and the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqis. In fact next to Rovegate, Watergate is a mere stone dropped in a pond, a plop in the roiling cauldron of history. But the consequences of Rovegate can blow that cauldron apart."

Rep. Waxman uncovered 11 Security Breaches in Plame Case, not 3:
Including one to Talon News blogger Jeff Gannon....

Justin Raimondo:Patrick Fitzgerald also questioned John Bolton in Plame Case!
"After the War Party met in solemn conclave, and the command went out from Cheney: "Bring me the head of Joe Wilson!", there was only one logical place for Cheney's minions to go. Who in the administration would've had access to the specific information regarding Plame-Wilson's role in a deep-cover CIA operation involving nuclear proliferation? Why, the man who was the State Department deputy secretary in charge of "weapons of mass destruction" – the somewhat irritable if not downright reckless John Bolton, would-be ambassador to the UN, who played a central role in promulgating the Niger Uranium Myth. Conveniently, two of Bolton's assistants, David Wurmser and John Hannah, also worked in Cheney's office."
Now, as Joshua Marshall and Steve Clemons note, we learn that Bolton was called to testify by Plame-gate prosecutor Patrick J. "Bulldog" Fitzgerald. Somehow, Bolton forgot to disclose this on the occasion of his confirmation hearings as UN ambassador.
Maybe now GWB won't appoint him during the congressional recess??

Testimony from a London subway bombing train passenger:
``"The policeman said 'mind that hole, that's where the bomb was'. The metal was pushed upwards as if the bomb was underneath the train. They seem to think the bomb was left in a bag, but I don't remember anybody being where the bomb was, or any bag," he said.''
Perhaps that's why they don't want an inquiry?

Israelis know what kind of explosives were used in London?
"The explosives material used in the Mike's Place bombing was unique and has been found to be remarkably similar to that used in the multiple attacks in London. Israeli officials have been ordered by the Sharon regime not to link the London attacks with attacks on Israel in any manner. Israeli officials have therefore been reluctant to suggest that Britain's soft position with regard to terror groups like Hamas may have contributed to their own misfortune."

Blair "to reject bombs inquiry"

Police are appealing to the public to hand over mobile phone images, video footage or photographs taken after Thursday's bomb attacks on London.
"They believe the footage could provide vital clues as the search for bodies and forensic evidence continues.As prayers were said for the 49 killed and 700 injured, police insisted: "London is open for business". Police revealed 1,700 people had already contacted the anti-terrorist hotline since the bombings. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick said: "We believe these images could contain vital information to assist us in the investigation." Mr Paddick said some of the calls were "proving to be very, very valuable".

Blair 'to reject bombs inquiry'
"As police and security services on Sunday continued searching for the bombers - thought to be Islamist terrorists - Downing Street said the prime minister believed an inquiry now into the outrage which killed at least 49 people would be a "ludicrous diversion." Instead, in a statement to the Commons on Monday following last week's Group of Eight summit, Mr Blair is expected to focus on the direction the government must take to ensure future terrorism is defeated."

Here's a fascinating webpage about the bombings in London:
Scroll down to see:
"Tony Blair is expected to reject Conservative demands for an inquiry into the London bombings when he makes a statement to MPs later on Monday. Conservative leader Michael Howard has called for an inquiry, to see if any lessons could be learned. But minister Hazel Blears said the idea was unhelpful and may distract police. She said that in the normal course of their inquiries the police would examine how things had gone in the aftermath of Thursday's atrocities but she did not want them distracted and forced to take their "eyes off the ball". Downing Street meanwhile said it had two priorities: identifying the dead and informing the relatives, and finding the forensic clues that would help capture the perpertrators.

"It's not time for a knee-jerk response," the spokesman added."
What makes an inquiry a knee-jerk response?

BIG TIMES extended for one last week!
Due to popular demand and sold-out shows, BIG TIMES
goes officially from Off-off-Broadway to Off-Broadway
for one last fun-filled week. Don't miss this unique musical show!
Here's what the critics are saying about us:

"...enchantingly nostalgic score by the Moonlighters..."
-- Time Out NY

"...most of the singing (and all of the music) is carried by the topnotch Moonlighters..."
-- NYTheatre.com

"Providing original music are the Moonlighters, a great ukulele-steel-guitar close-harmony band that specializes in 1920's-style Hawaiian music and grabs the flavor of the era."
-- New York Times

July 11-July 16th, 8:00pm, Mon-Sat
Additional matinee 2:00 Sat July 16
The Moonlighters will be performing onstage in the
off-Broadway one-act comedy "Big Times" featuring
10 all-brand-new Moonlighters original songs!
Walkerspace
46 Walker Street (bet. Broadway & Church)
2 blocks south of Canal (A/C/E or N/R to Canal
or 1/9 to Franklin)
Tickets are $19 from http://www.smarttix.com
or call 212-868-4444.

Tragedy in London--why and who?

Who warned the British Police prior to the blasts?
British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity. Israel was holding an economic conference near the scene of one of the explosions. Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was supposed to attend, but the attacks occurred before he arrived. Just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy and said warnings of possible attacks had been received, the official said.


Phony reports link Al Qaeda to London attacks
A group calling itself "The Secret Organization of Al Qaeda in Europe" posted a statement on an internet site, claiming responsibility for the deadly attacks that hit London on Thursday. But MSNBC TV translator Jacob Keryakes said that the statement in which the group claimed responsibility for the attacks contained an error in one of the Qura’nic verses it cited. That suggests that the claim is phony, he said. "This is not something Al Qaeda would do," he said.


Was it a diversion?
As I look at the political events in America, Karl Rove is in deep trouble over leaking an undercover CIA operative`s name to the press, Americans were losing faith in the "War on Terror". There is chatter about impeachment. All this is now driven from the main stream media as the focus is diverted onto the attacks in London. Then I ask myself, just whose interest does this attack serve?


Who profits from these attacks?
The Israeli Embassy in London was notified in advance, resulting in Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu remaining in his hotel room rather than make his way to the hotel adjacent to the site of the first explosion, a Liverpool Street train station, where he was to address and economic summit. The warning contradicts the fact that the original explanation of a power surge went out for an hour or more. They knew it was an attack but put out a false explanation. Plus why did Netanyahu get a warning and the victims didn't? But, of course, now the mainstream media is starting to change their story, saying that there was no warning.

This seems to me as either a MI5, CIA, or Mossad Operation. The reason I say this is because on July 4th, Britain made the announcement that they would be pulling their troops out of Iraq over the next 18 months, but now, they have a reason to stay in Iraq, how convenient for Tony Blair and George W. Bush. Also this will help the Brittish and US Governments to Institute National ID card Programs, while tightening up "security" at all bus and train depots, like they got with the airline industry after 9/11. Then there is also the increased level of fear amongst the general populace. Fear is an effective tool when one wants to scare many into submitting to things they would otherwise not accept.

The Lie Factory

From Mother Jones:
THE LIE FACTORY
"Either the system broke down," former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was sent by the CIA to visit Niger and whose findings helped show that the documents were forged, told Mother Jones, "or there was selective use of bits of information to justify a decision to go to war that had already been taken."

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald on Judith Miller:
"The court should advise (Judith) Miller that if she persists in defying the court's order that she will be committing a crime," Fitzgerald wrote. "Miller and The New York Times appear to have confused Miller's ability to commit contempt with a legal right to do so....Much of what appears to motivate Miller to commit contempt is the misguided reinforcement from others (specifically including her publisher) that placing herself above the law can be condoned."

Miller/Cooper Case Reaches Supreme Court Thursday; White House Has No Comment
MR. McCLELLAN: The President has actually talked about both the questions that you brought up recently. He talked about this situation and said he wasn't going to weigh in on it, essentially. That's a matter the courts are working to address. And in terms of these two individuals, and in terms of the whole investigation that is being overseen by the special prosecutor, I think we've made our views very well known when it comes to that. No one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the President of the United States, and he has urged anyone who has information that can help resolve this matter to come forward and give that information to the prosecutors.

White House scrambles to stop criminal indictment of Rove:
'As a top White House aide, Rove has "code level" clearance on security matters and would easily have had access to Plame's status at the CIA. White House sources say he requested additional information on both Plame and Wilson before talking to reporters. If Rove knowingly disclosed classified information he could face federal felony indictments. Sources within the investigation say special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is pursuing such an indictment against Rove but that the White House is pressuring the Justice Department to put the brakes on such a move.

“It’s a power game,” says one Justice Department attorney familiar with the investigation. “The White House is very, very worried that this will come back down on Rove and them.”'

Fake Iraq documents 'embarrassing' for U.S.
March 14, 2003, WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Intelligence documents that U.S. and British governments said were strong evidence that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons have been dismissed as forgeries by U.N. weapons inspectors.The documents, given to International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, indicated that Iraq might have tried to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger, but the agency said they were "obvious" fakes.

President Bush even highlighted the documents in his State of the Union address on January 28. "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," Bush said. U.S. officials said that the assertion by the president and British government was also based on additional evidence of Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium from another African country. But officials would not say which nation and a knowledgable U.S. official said that there was not much to that evidence either.

Rovegate update

from WAYNE MADSEN REPORT blog:
July 5, 2005 -- More on Rovegate. According to Washington insiders, Karl Rove is not the only "person of interest" being investigated by a Federal special prosecutor and the FBI for leaking the name of covert CIA agent to the media. In addition to the leak, itself a crime,prosecutors are looking at criminal conspiracy involving a non-White House "pass through" that leaked the classified information on Valerie Plame and Brewster Jennings Associates to Robert Novak. Although Novak's now infamous column appeared on July 14, 2003, the focus is on a phone call or calls made by Rove to a non-White House player on July 6, 2003, the same day Ambassador Joseph Wilson's OP-ED on the bogus Niger intelligence appeared in The New York Times. Rove's lawyer is now claiming that Rove did not "knowingly" disclose the name of a CIA agent. Rove's claim is incredulous considering the fact that it is doubtful Rove would have cared about Plame's identity and then sought to spread it throughout the media if she worked for the Bureau of Land Management or the Comptroller of the Currency.The Rove investigation is also dovetailing with two other investigations -- AIPAC espionage on behalf of Israel and the forgery of Niger government documents used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Click on the above highlighted names to read VANITY FAIR & NY TIMES links.

KARL ROVE: WORSE THAN OSAMA BIN LADEN
By Ted Rall
Mon July 4, 2005

NEW YORK--In war collaborators are more dangerous than enemy forces, for they betray with intimate knowledge in painful detail and demoralize by their cynical example. This explains why, at the end of occupations, the newly liberated exact vengeance upon their treasonous countrymen even they allow foreign troops to conduct an orderly withdrawal. If, as state-controlled media insists, there is such a creature as a Global War on Terrorism, our enemies are underground Islamist organizations allied with or ideologically similar to those that attacked us on 9/11. But who are the collaborators? The right points to critics like Michael Moore, yours truly, and Ward Churchill, the Colorado professor who points out the gaping chasm between America's high-falooting rhetoric and its historical record. But these bête noires are guilty only of the all-American actions of criticism and dissent, not to mention speaking uncomfortable truths to liars and deniers. As far as we know, no one on what passes for the "left" (which would be the center-right anywhere else) has betrayed the United States in the GWOT. No anti-Bush progressive has made common cause with Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan or any other officially designated "terrorist" group. No American liberal has handed over classified information or worked to undermine the CIA.

But it now appears that Karl Rove, GOP golden boy, has done exactly that.
<> Last week Time magazine turned over its reporter's notes to a special prosecutor assigned to learn who told Republican columnist Bob Novak that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent. The revelation, which effectively ended Plame's CIA career and may have endangered her life, followed her husband Joe Wilson's publication of a New York Times op-ed piece that embarrassed the Bush Administration by debunking its claims that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from Niger. Time's cowardly decision to break its promise to a confidential source has had one beneficial side effect: according to Newsweek, it indicates that Karl Rove himself made the call to Novak.
One might have expected Rove, the master White House political strategist who engineered Bush's 2000 coup d'état and post-9/11 permanent war public relations campaign, to have ordered a flunky underling to carry out this act of high treason. But as the Arab saying goes, arrogance diminishes wisdom. Rove, whose gaping maw recently vomited forth that Democrats didn't care about 9/11, is atypically silent. He did talk to the Time reporter but "never knowingly disclosed classified information," claims his attorney. But there's circumstantial evidence to go along with Time's leaked notes. Ari Fleischer abruptly resigned as Bush's press secretary on May 16, 2003, about the same time the White House became aware of Ambassador Wilson's plans to go public. (Wilson's article appeared July 6.) Did Fleischer quit because he didn't want to act as spokesman for Rove's plan to betray CIA agent Plame? Another interesting coincidence: Novak published his Plame column on July 14, Fleischer's last day on the job. <>If Newsweek's report is accurate, Karl Rove is more morally repugnant and more anti-American than Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden, after all, has no affiliation with, and therefore no presumed loyalty to, the United States. Rove, on the other hand, is a U.S. citizen and, as deputy White House chief of staff, a high-ranking official of the U.S. government sworn to uphold and defend our nation, its laws and its interests. Yet he sold out America just to get even with Joe Wilson. Osama bin Laden, conversely, is loyal to his cause. He has never exposed an Al Qaeda agent's identity to the media.

"[Knowingly revealing Plame's name and undercover status to the media]...is a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and is punishable by as much as ten years in prison," notes the Washington Post. Unmasking an intelligent agent during a time of war, however, surely rises to giving aid and comfort to America's enemies--treason. Treason is punishable by execution under the United States Code.

How far up the White House food chain does the rot of treason go? "Bush has always known how to keep Rove in his place," wrote Time in 2002 about a "symbiotic relationship" that dates to 1973. This isn't some rogue "plumbers" operation. Rove would never go it alone on a high-stakes action like Valerie Plame. It's a safe bet that other, higher-ranking figures in the Bush cabal--almost certainly Dick Cheney and possibly Bush himself--signed off before Rove called Novak. For the sake of national security, those involved should be removed from office at once.

Rove and his collaborators should quickly resign and face prosecution for betraying their country, but given their sense of personal entitlement impeachment is probably the best we can hope for. Congress, and all Americans, should place patriotism ahead of party loyalty.

The Deep Throat of Dirty Tricks

"More vicious than Tricky Dick" by John Dean:
"I thought I had seen political dirty tricks as foul as they could get, but I was wrong. In blowing the cover of CIA agent Valerie Plame to take political revenge on her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for telling the truth, Bush's people have out-Nixoned Nixon's people. And my former colleagues were not amateurs by any means."

Oct. 15, 2004
"My client appeared voluntarily before the grand jury and has cooperated with the investigation since it began," said Karl Rove's attorney Robert Luskin. "He has been assured in writing as recently as this week that he is not a target of the investigation."

Lawrence O'Donnell from the HUFFINGTON POST:
July 3, 2005
On Friday, I broke the story that the e-mails that Time turned over to the prosecutor that day reveal that Karl Rove is the source Matt Cooper is protecting. That provoked Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, to interrupt his holiday weekend to do a little defense work with Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times. On Saturday, Luskin decided to reveal that Rove did have at least one conversation with Cooper, but Luskin told the Times he would not “characterize the substance of the conversation.”

Luskin claimed that the prosecutor “asked us not to talk about what Karl has had to say.” This is highly unlikely. Prosecutors have absolutely no control over what witnesses say when they leave the grand jury room. Rove can tell us word-for-word what he said to the grand jury and would if he thought it would help him. And notice that Luskin just did reveal part of Rove’s grand jury testimony, the fact that he had a conversation with Cooper. Rove would not let me get one day of traction on this story if he could stop me. If what I have reported is not true, if Karl Rove is not Matt Cooper’s source, Rove could prove that instantly by telling us what he told the grand jury. Nothing prevents him from doing that, except a good lawyer who is trying to keep him out of jail.

Rove said to be source of Plame leak
Schumer demands Rove speak up about leak
WASHINGTON, July 3 (UPI) -- Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, called Sunday for Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove to personally deny leaking the name of a CIA official. Saturday, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin told The Washington Post Rove had not disclosed the name of Valerie Plame to Newsweek in a 2003 interview. Sunday, Schumer, who led the push for a Congressional inquiry into the leak, issued a challenge for Rove to speak for himself.

"We've heard it from his lawyer, but it would be nice to hear it directly from Mr. Rove that he didn't leak the identity of Valerie Plame, and that he didn't direct anyone else to do such a dastardly thing," Schumer said in a statement. "I have said from the first day ... whoever leaked the classified information should be punished to the full extent of the law."

The panel is investigating the leak of Plame's name to various news outlets in 2003. It is a federal crime for a government employee to reveal the name of an undercover operative after the employee learns it from classified material.

O'Donnell said at a Friday taping of the syndicated show "The McLaughlin Group" that Rove, President George W. Bush's top political adviser and White House Deputy Chief of Staff, would be revealed as the leaker in documents Time Inc. has agreed to turn over to a grand jury. The panel is investigating the leak of Plame's name to various news outlets in 2004. It is a federal crime for a government employee to reveal the name of an undercover operative. Time Inc. said Thursday it will turn over the records of reporter Matt Cooper, who -- along with New York Times reporter Judith Miller -- faces jail time for refusing to identify sources. On Saturday, O'Donnell went beyond his Friday statement, Editor & Publisher reported. Writing on the Huffington Post blog, O'Donnell said that after he revealed "the big scoop," he had it confirmed by "yet another highly authoritative source."O'Donnell said the story "should break wide open" now.

"I know Newsweek is working on an 'It's Rove!' story," O'Donnell said, "and will probably break it tomorrow."

"A unanimous three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington ... held that the reporters, Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, may have witnessed a federal crime - the disclosure by government officials of the (CIA) officer's identity. The First Amendment, the panel ruled, does not give reporters the right to refuse to cooperate with grand juries investigating such crimes."

Here are the facts of the story, as compiled by http://www.absoluteastronomy.com
Valerie Plame

Valerie Plame was an American Central Intelligence Agency employee who was identified as a CIA "operative" in a newspaper column by Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. This created a political controversy and eventually led to a Justice Department investigation into possible violation of U.S. criminal law regarding exposure of covert government agents. As of April 2005 the investigation continued without apparent result. Plame's life history has been documented in the January 2004 Vanity Fair article *'Double Exposure.' But little is known of Plame's professional career. She has described herself as an energy analyst for the private company Brewster Jennings & Associates, which was subsequently acknowledged by the CIA as a front. It has been reported that this cover was not executed very convincingly.

Plame is the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Wilson is her second husband. Plame met him at a Washington party in early 1997. She was able to reveal her CIA role to him while they were dating because he held a high-level security clearance. At the time Wilson was married to, but separated from, his second wife Jacqueline, a former French diplomat. Wilson and Plame are the parents of three-year-old twins.

Plame was identified as a CIA "operative" in Novak's column, which read in part: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the allegation." According to Novak, administration sources claimed that it had been at Plame's suggestion that the CIA sent her husband to Niger in 2002 to investigate the Yellowcake Forgery, documents implying that Iraq had attempted to illegally purchase uranium from that country. This appeared to contradict Wilson's claim that he was sent to Niger at the request of Vice President Cheney. Cheney has denied any knowledge of Wilson's Niger visit. Wilson charged that his wife's CIA association had been deliberately exposed by the White House in order to destroy her career, in retaliation for his public charge that the Bush administration had lied to the American people about U.S. intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In an article in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, Wilson denounced the Bush administration, saying that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Under certain circumstances, the exposure of a covert government agent would violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years. The act applies itself to a person who "learns the identity of a covert agent and intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States." The Novak column did describe Plame as an "operative", but did not use the description "covert". Novak has stated that the CIA made "a very weak request" that he not name Plame publicly. WSJ.com columnist James Taranto suggests that this indicates the absence of "affirmative measures to conceal" necessary for a violation of the law.

The matter is currently under investigation by the Justice Department and the FBI. Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the investigation in December 2003. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald currently heads the investigation. In March 2004, the independent counsel subpoenaed the telephone records from Air Force One.

On April 7, 2005 the Washington Post reported that unnamed sources indicated Fitzgerald was not likely to seek an indictment for the alleged crime of knowingly exposing a covert officer (which prompted the inquiry), although he may possibly charge a government official with perjury for giving conflicting information to prosecutors during the investigation.

David Corn had predicted that the investigation would die in the CIA -- that George J. Tenet would protect the Bush White House through his purported loyalty to it. Anonymous political weblog Just One Minute (JOM) writes: "Evidently not. One guess - Mr. Tenet, pondering Bush's declining poll numbers and faced with in-house annoyance, decided to do the right thing. One presumes that, with Congress back in town, Mr. Tenet checked with his supporters on both sides of the aisle before proceeding." Both Mark Kleiman and Josh Marshall have made recent comments on the matter, according to JOM.

Novak's initial column identified Plame as "an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." He has since stated that he believed Plame was merely an analyst at the CIA, not a covert operative—the difference being that analysts are not undercover, so identifying them is not a crime. Critics contend that after decades as a Washington reporter Novak was well aware of the difference and would be unlikely to make such a mistake. Novak has also claimed that Plame's CIA employment was an open secret in Washington, indicating that effective "affirmative measures" to conceal her relationship to the CIA were not being taken. Several ex-CIA operatives who knew Plame have indicated she was at one time a NOC (nonofficial cover) covert operative. In his October 1, 2003 article 'The CIA Leak' Novak states this explanation for the two "senior administration officials" and the "CIA official" referenced in his June 14 article:

"During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: "Oh, you know about it." The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue. At the CIA, the official designated to talk to me denied that Wilson's wife had inspired his selection but said she was delegated to request his help. He asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause "difficulties" if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name. I used it in the sixth paragraph of my column because it looked like the missing explanation of an otherwise incredible choice by the CIA for its mission."

Although there have been many discussions about government and journalistic ethics promulgated by the Valerie Plame matter there has been little or no attention given to possible ethical breaches committed by Novak in foregoing his sources' warnings not to reveal Plame's name.

February 12, 2004 Murray S. Waas for the American Prospect wrote that two "administration officials" spoke to the FBI and challenged Novak's account about not receiving warnings not to publish Plame's name. According to one of the officials, "At best, he is parsing words... At worst, he is lying to his readers and the public. Journalists should not lie, I would think."

February 2002
Wilson travels to Niger at the request of the CIA

January 2003
On January 29 President George W. Bush gives his State of the Union speech. Toward the end of the speech he says, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

May 2003
Wilson becomes a foreign policy advisor for the John Kerry for President campaign.

July 2003
"Administration officials told columnist Robert D. Novak then that Wilson, a partisan critic of Bush's foreign policy, was sent to Niger at the suggestion of Plame, who worked in the nonproliferation unit at CIA. The disclosure of Plame's identity, which was classified, led to an investigation into who leaked her name.

The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional."

6 July 2003: Wilson's Op-Ed article "What I Didn't Find in Africa" published in New York Times.

12 July 2003: Press Gaggle with Ari Fleischer at The National Hospital in Abuja, Nigeria: (Fleischer) [Saddam Hussein] "had previously obtained yellow cake from Africa. In fact, in one of the least known parts of this story, which is now, for the first time, public -- and you find this in Director Tenet's statement last night -- the official that -- lower-level official sent from the CIA to Niger to look into whether or not Saddam Hussein had sought yellow cake from Niger, Wilson, he -- and Director Tenet's statement last night states the same former official, Wilson, also said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him and insisted that the former official, Wilson, meet an Iraqi delegation to discuss expanding commercial relations between Iraq and Niger. The former official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales. ... This is in Wilson's report back to the CIA. Wilson's own report, the very man who was on television saying Niger denies it, who never said anything about forged documents, reports himself that officials in Niger said that Iraq was seeking to contact officials in Niger about sales."

13 July 2003: "A Question of Trust" is published at Time Magazine's website, publication date for the magazine being July 21. Journalist Matthew Cooper contributed to this article. This article and the subsequent 17 July 2003 "A War On Wilson?" are the subject matters of the Plame investigations, as indicated in the 15 February 2005 United States Circuit Court opinion ordering Cooper and New York Times journalist Judith Miller to respond to grand jury subpenas. "A Question of Trust" traces the controversy surrounding President Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech and the African uranium controversy. Anonymous sources of information are attributed to "two senior Administration officials," "another official," and "an intelligence official."

14 July 2003: "Mission to Niger" by Robert Novak: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger.... The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him."

17 July 2003: "A War on Wilson" is published at Time Magazine's web site as a web exclusive. Matthew Cooper is listed as lead journalist. The article indicates that some of the sources for "A Question of Trust" had informed at least one Time journalist about Valerie Plame's status. "And some government officials have noted to TIME in interviews, (as well as to syndicated columnist Robert Novak) that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. These officials have suggested that she was involved in her husband's being dispatched Niger to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein's government had sought to purchase large quantities of uranium ore, sometimes referred to as yellow cake, which is used to build nuclear devices."

21 July 2003 Another article displaying intelligence leaks is Newsday's July 21 piece, "Columnist Names CIA Iraq Operative." The authors are Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce. Both have been subpenaed in the Plame investigation. They attribute intelligence information independenyly leaked to them about Plame as coming from "intelligence officials" and a "senior intelligence official."

30 July 2003: When pressed, Scott McClellan told reporters: “I’m saying no one was certainly given any authority to do anything of that nature, and I’ve seen no evidence to suggest there’s any truth to it.” ... To date, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) have called for investigations and any number of other senators have told reporters that some sort of inquiry is probably in order.

August 2003
8 August 2003: Days after Wilson "publicly voiced doubts about a reported Iraqi weapons program," Wilson says he became "a target of a campaign to discourage others like him from going public.... [and] Wilson's wife was identified by name as a covert C.I.A. operative in a column by the conservative columnist Robert Novak, a disclosure that Mr. Novak has attributed to senior administration officials."

26 August 2003: Wilson participated in a "public panel in Washington" on Thursday, August 21st, and is quoted as having said "At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words." See transcript of August 21st panel discussion.

September 2003
29 September 2003: White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan on Karl Rove: "He wasn't involved... The president knows he wasn't involved... It's simply not true."

29 September 2003: "'Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this,' Novak said, saying the information was disclosed to him while he was interviewing a senior Bush administration official.... Novak said the administration official told him in July that Wilson's trip was 'inspired by his wife,' and that the CIA confirmed her 'involvement in the mission for her husband.' ... 'They asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else,' he said, adding that a source at the CIA told him Plame was 'an analyst -- not a covert operator and not in charge of undercover operators.'"

1 October 2003: Wilson told Ted Koppel on Nightline that "Washington reporters told him that senior White House adviser Karl Rove said his wife was 'fair game'." Wilson "plans to give the names of the reporters to the FBI, which is conducting a full-blown investigation of the possible leak."

1 October 2003: "While Novak's decision to use Plame's name begs a journalism ethics debate, releasing her name to him or any reporter may well constitute a felony. Sunday [29 September 2003], The Washington Post said that White House officials had contacted six Washington reporters to disclose Plame's CIA identity."