[Misiotoagodia]

Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is wrapping up his inquiry regarding Leaks & Lies; there is a good possibility that indictments of some top Bush Administration officials are on the horizon. Indictments would mean a quick exit from the White House for anyone so served.

Who deserves an indictment and why?

Vote for more than one if you see fit.

Heck, vote for them all if itwill make you feel better!

[id2008]

Old Scooter is definitely getting one, especially considering his brilliant plan of intimidating reporters.

Knock on wood, I think Karl Rove's getting a surprise this week, too.

[wrbwrbwrb]

Wow, seeing any of them in prison fatigues would be immensely satifying. Arresting Karen Hughes would put to rest my believe that she is actually a man by demonstrating what prison she would be sent to.

Overall, I think they are all indictable and guilty of destroying our nation, perhaps beyond repair. I think I need to move beyond who should get indicted and determine who should be tried for treason and be sentenced accordingly.

DICK CHENEY should be on death row.
KARL ROVE should be on death row.
DONALD RUMSFELD should be on death row.
GEORGE W. BUSH should be on death row.
CONDI RICE should be on death row.

I think they have all committed treason.

I'm not worried about who'll be indicted. I'm worried about who'll be pardoned.

[Arximedus]

Old Scooter is definitely getting one, especially considering his brilliant plan of intimidating reporters.

Anyone called Scooter should definitely do some quality time in the slammer.

[Tuqofiw]

Yes and he would be scooting for the pleasure of his cellmate!

[Frdsdx26]

They better ready a whole darned wing in that Federal Prison...

The Financial Times is reporting that "Evidence is building that the probe conducted by Patrick Fitzgerald, special prosecutor, has extended beyond the leaking of a covert CIA agent's name to include questioning about the administration's handling of pre-Iraq war intelligence."

Go here: http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/sh...9&postcount=71

And Raw Story is saying:

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS TO REPORT THAT SOURCES BELIEVE SOMEONE HAS FLIPPED IN WHITE HOUSE, AIDING LEAK INVESTIGATION.... DEVELOPING...//

[MarlboroCig]

Yes and he would be scooting for the pleasure of his cellmate!

Or would that be clenching?

[UKkoXJvF]

Very Thatchery.

[pipitous]

From the Financial Times. This is pretty damning. But, is this the ploy to get rid of Cheney and bring in a viable 2008 nominee before the election? It's hard to believe anything anyone is saying.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/afdb7b0c-40...00e2511c8.html

Cheney 'cabal' hijacked foreign policy
By Edward Alden in Washington
Published: October 20 2005 00:00 | Last updated: October 20 2005 00:19

Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.

In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

“Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”

Mr Wilkerson said such secret decision-making was responsible for mistakes such as the long refusal to engage with North Korea or to back European efforts on Iran.

It also resulted in bitter battles in the administration among those excluded from the decisions.

“If you're not prepared to stop the feuding elements in the bureaucracy as they carry out your decisions, you are courting disaster. And I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran.”

The comments, made at the New America Foundation, a Washington think-tank, were the harshest attack on the administration by a former senior official since criticisms by Richard Clarke, former White House terrorism czar, and Paul O'Neill, former Treasury secretary, early last year.

Mr Wilkerson said his decision to go public had led to a personal falling out with Mr Powell, whom he served for 16 years at the Pentagon and the State Department.

“He's not happy with my speaking out because, and I admire this in him, he is the world's most loyal soldier."

Among his other charges:

■ The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was “a concrete example” of the decision-making problem, with the president and other top officials in effect giving the green light to soldiers to abuse detainees. “You don't have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you've condoned it.”

■ Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and now secretary of state, was “part of the problem”. Instead of ensuring that Mr Bush received the best possible advice, “she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president”.

■ The military, particularly the army and marine corps, is overstretched and demoralised. Officers, Mr Wilkerson claimed, “start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam. . . and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel”.

Mr Wilkerson said former president George H.W. Bush “one of the finest presidents we have ever had” understood how to make foreign policy work. In contrast, he said, his son was “not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either”.

“There's a vast difference between the way George H.W. Bush dealt with major challenges, some of the greatest challenges at the end of the 20th century, and effected positive results in my view, and the way we conduct diplomacy today.”

[iroxmxinau]

Some interesting analysis, with thanks to those brainy guys who love the GOP:

TREASONGATE:

A Sitting President Can Be Indicted

(And so can a sitting Vice President.)

http://citizenspook.blogspot.com/

For a change, I'm not going to give you my own analysis. Instead, I'm going to quote arch conservative lawyer, the legal sidekick of Rush Limbaugh, the infamous Mark Levin of the Landmark Legal Foundation, aka "The Great One". Let's have a look at what he has to say, and what Rush totally agreed with, regarding the indictment of a sitting President (albeit another President, another time).

This comes from an official Landmark Legal brief ( http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/9694/Rush.html ):


LANDMARK LEGAL FOUNDATION

Can A President Be Indicted While in Office, Or Must He First Be Impeached?

BY MARK R. LEVIN AND ARTHUR F. FERGENSON
January 23, 1998

Can a president be indicted while in office, or must he first be impeached?

Recent events in Washington have renewed this once obscure debate.

Article I, Section 3 of the United States Constitution states, in part:
"Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States: but the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law."There are two different concepts expressed in this part of the Constitution. First, impeachment is a political response, and the violations do not have to be specifically enumerated in a criminal code. It allows the public, through its representatives in Congress, to act on its revulsion with a president.

Some point to Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution and claim it requires criminal wrongdoing as a condition of impeachment. That section states, "The president, vice president and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction, of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

No less than the late constitutional expert Raoul Berger, who was one of the nation's leading scholars on the subject of impeachment, among others, wrote that treason, bribery, "'high crimes and misdemeanors' appear to be words of art confined to impeachments, without roots in the ordinary criminal law and which had no relation to whether an indictment would lie in the particular circumstances."

Second, the language in Article I, Section 3 makes clear that impeachment is not an exclusive remedy. A president is still subject to criminal prosecution, if warranted. He can be impeached and removed from office, but this is a limited remedy. Given this limitation, the Founding Fathers wanted to make clear that impeachment would not immunize a president and bar subsequent criminal prosecution. Obviously, this concern only arises in cases where impeachment precedes criminal prosecution. Therefore, if criminal prosecution precedes impeachment, it is not an issue.

[drislerfottor]

Juicy Scoop?

Fitzgerald gossip straight from my inbox

Here's a juicy e-mail I got from a Hill staffer.

Posted by Jan Frel at 12:44 PM on October 19, 2005.

http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/frel/27082/

just got this e-mail from a Democratic House member's staffer with tons of good dirt on the Plame investigation. I'm reprinting it whole cloth to share all, and show that while these Hill staffers are well-informed, they sure could use some capitalization classes.


Among the things I hadn't seen before:-Fred Flights, an assistant to John Bolton, is a named name who could be indicted.

-Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham have been suggested as replacements for Dick Cheney.

-Colin Powell told John McCain he showed the infamous memo with Plame's identity on it two just two people; Dick Cheney and George Bush.

-Fitzgerald is looking at the precedent set from the indictment of Tricky Dick's veep Spiro Agnew to pursue against Cheney.
That's red meat folks.
Text of the e-mail:

below, some extremely sensitive information about the impending conclusion of the valerie plame investigations. the sources include two senior members of senate and key staffers; counsel for individuals that have been called before the grand jury; and two journalists taking a lead position in investigating the case. the following represents a composite of the information from those sources.

plamegate coming to conclusion. the investigation has focused mostly closely on vice president cheney and his staff, as well as us ambassador to the un (and former undersecretary of state for arms control) john bolton and his staff. we are told that eight indictments have already prepared, with the possibility of another ten. these indictments include senior white house staff, most notably vice president cheney's chief of staff scooter libby, fred flights (special assistant to john bolton), and--very surprisingly--national security adviser steve hadley. apparently, libby and hadley have both been told by their lawyers to expect indictments. the indictment of senior bush political advisor karl rove seems highly probable.

most critically, a plea bargain process has evidently been opened with vice president cheney's lawyer. that does not mean that an indictment is coming. but i've some critical background around the issue.

in the past several days, former secretary of state colin powell had a meeting with senator john mccain (R-AZ), primarily about the mccain-sponsored amendment on inserting a rider prohibiting torture onto the us defense budget (a bill which powell has himself been lobbying heavily for, against objections of president bush).

during the meeting, powell recounted to the senator that he had traveled on air force one with bush and cheney, and brought to their attention a classified memorandum about the issue of whether there was indeed a transaction inolving niger and yellow cake uranium. the document included ambassador joe wilson's involvement and identified his wife, valerie plame, as a covert agent. the memorandum further stated that this information was secret. powell told mccain that he showed that memo only to two people--president and vice president. according to powell, cheney fixated on the wilson/plame connection, and plame's status.

powell testified about this exchange in great length to the grand jury investigating the plame case. according to sources close to the case, powell appeared convinced that the vice president played a focal role in disclosing plame's undercover status.

in his conversation with mccain, powell felt that--at a minimum--there would be a serious shakeup at national security council as a consequence. in particular, vice president cheney would no longer hold a pivotal role in us national security affairs. powell apparently did not discuss the potential of a cheney resignation.

lead prosecutor patrick fitzgerald has apparently been looking at the precedent of formerly indicted nixon vice president spiro agnew. this shows the likely path, because addressing executive immunity and privilege questions would necessarily begin start with a plea-bargain deal that would entail a resignation.

this is all likely to occur within the next week. 28 october (next friday) is the last day of the grand jury, and no requests have been made to extend their session. the investigator is expecting to wrap up by then.

there are enormous implication for what would be the biggest white house shakeup since the iran-contra scandal in the reagan era. president bush's approval rating at 39% has already led to a significant decrease in policy efficacy with key legislators in congress. i'll spin out the broader policy implications when i have some time to write at greater length, but i wanted to get this out immediately.

one interesting point though--it is worth noting that a parade of senior republican senators have evidently been privately pushing mccain to lobby to be cheney's replacement. senator lindsey graham (R-SC) has also been mentioned. meanwhile, the white house has already been developing countermeasures--notably including senior white house officials privately voicing president bush's disappointment in karl rove's involvement in the case, calling it "misconduct." an urgent search for a rove replacement is already underway.

***

[Xxedxevh]

This should be an exciting site in coming weeks...

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/index.html

[varrozans]

Full Story: http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/sh...1&postcount=80

Bush at Bay

By MARTIN WALKER
UPI Editor

http://www.upi.com/InternationalInte...3-104217-9679r


WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 (UPI) -- The CIA leak inquiry that threatens senior White House aides has now widened to include the forgery of documents on African uranium that started the investigation, according to NAT0 intelligence sources.

This suggests the inquiry by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald into the leaking of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame has now widened to embrace part of the broader question about the way the Iraq war was justified by the Bush administration ...

[namaikaimvputka]

<font size="4">
<b><i><font size="5"><font color="red">>>> The POLLS are CLOSED

[bellson]

90% of Americans believe Bush Administration has acted illegally / unethically ...


Poll: Few doubt wrongdoing in CIA leak

CNN
October 25, 2005

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/...eak/index.html


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Only one in 10 Americans said they believe Bush administration officials did nothing illegal or unethical in connection with the leaking of a CIA operative's identity, according to a national poll released Tuesday.

Thirty-nine percent said some administration officials acted illegally in the matter, in which the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative, was revealed.

The same percentage of respondents in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll said administration officials acted unethically, but did nothing illegal.

The poll was split nearly evenly on what respondents thought of Bush officials' ethical standards -- 51 percent saying they were excellent or good and 48 percent saying they were not good or poor.

The figures represent a marked shift from a 2002 survey in which nearly three-quarters said the standards were excellent or good and only 23 percent said they were fair or poor.

The latest poll questioned 1,008 adults October 21-23 and has a sampling error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Federal law makes it a crime to deliberately reveal the identity of a covert CIA operative, and special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is heading a probe into the matter. (Fitzgerald profile)

With the grand jury investigating the leak set to expire Friday, FBI agents interviewed a Washington neighbor of Plame for a second time.

The agents asked Marc Lefkowitz on Monday night whether he knew about Plame's CIA work before her identity was leaked in the media, and Lefkowitz told agents he did not, according to his wife, Elise Lefkowitz.

Lefkowitz said agents first questioned whether the couple was aware of Plame's CIA work in an interview several months ago.

Members of Fitzgerald's team also talked to a former White House official to gather last-minute information about the role of Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, a source familiar with the conversation told CNN.


CNN's Kelli Arena, Dana Bash and Suzanne Malveaux contributed to this report.

[Sxedlawb]

October 28, 2005

Cheney Aide Appears Likely to Be Indicted; Rove Under Scrutiny

By DAVID JOHNSTON
and RICHARD W. STEVENSON

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 - Lawyers in the C.I.A. leak case said Thursday that they expected I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, to be indicted on Friday, charged with making false statements to the grand jury.

Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, will not be charged on Friday, but will remain under investigation, people briefed officially about the case said. As a result, they said, the special counsel in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, was likely to extend the term of the federal grand jury beyond its scheduled expiration on Friday.

As rumors coursed through the capital, Mr. Fitzgerald gave no public signal of how he intended to proceed, further intensifying the anxiety that has gripped the White House and left partisans on both sides of the political aisle holding their breath.

Mr. Fitzgerald's preparations for a Friday announcement were shrouded in secrecy, but advanced amid a flurry of behind-the-scenes discussions that left open the possibility of last-minute surprises. As the clock ticked down on the grand jury, people involved in the investigation did not rule out the disclosure of previously unknown aspects of the case.

White House officials said their presumption was that Mr. Libby would resign if indicted, and he and Mr. Rove took steps to expand their legal teams in preparation for a possible court battle.

Among the many unresolved mysteries is whether anyone in addition to Mr. Libby and Mr. Rove might be charged and in particular whether Mr. Fitzgerald would name the source who first provided the identity of a covert C.I.A. officer to Robert D. Novak, the syndicated columnist. Mr. Novak identified the officer in a column published July 14, 2003.

The investigation seemed to be taking an unexpectedly extended path after nearly two years in which Mr. Fitzgerald brought more than a dozen current and former administration officials before the grand jury and interviewed Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney to determine how the identity of the officer, Valerie Plame Wilson, became public.

Mr. Fitzgerald is expected to hold a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington on Friday. His spokesman, Randall Samborn, declined to comment.

Mr. Fitzgerald has examined whether the leak of Ms. Wilson's identity was part of an effort by the administration to respond to criticism of the White House by her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat. After traveling to Africa in 2002 on a C.I.A.-sponsored mission to look into claims that Iraq had sought to acquire material there for its nuclear weapons program, Mr. Wilson wrote in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, that the White House had "twisted" the intelligence regarding the suspected transaction to justify the invasion of Iraq.

At the White House, the withdrawal of Harriet E. Miers as the president's nominee to the Supreme Court dominated the day. Still, officials waited anxiously for word about developments in the investigation, which has the potential to shape the remainder of Mr. Bush's second term.

Officials said that Mr. Bush, who traveled to Florida on Thursday to view the damage from Hurricane Wilma, would keep to his planned schedule on Friday, including a speech on terrorism in Norfolk, Va., if indictments were announced.

Administration officials said that the White House would seek to keep as low a profile as possible if indictments were issued; Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, did not schedule a briefing for Friday, and Mr. Bush plans to leave in the afternoon for a weekend at Camp David.

With so much about the outcome of the case still in doubt, political strategists in Washington spent the day gaming out the implications of different endings.

The apparent delay in a decision about whether to charge Mr. Rove, and the continuation of the criminal inquiry, is a mixed outcome for the administration. It leaves open the possibility that Mr. Rove, Mr. Bush's closest and most trusted adviser, could avoid indictment altogether, an outcome that would be not just a legal victory but also the best political outcome the White House could hope for under the circumstances.

Yet, in apparently leaving Mr. Rove in legal limbo for now, Mr. Fitzgerald has left him and Mr. Bush to twist in the uncertainty of a case that has delved deep into the innermost workings of the White House and provided Democrats an opportunity to attack the administration's honesty and the way it justified the war to the American people.

Mr. Rove has had to step back from many of his public duties, including appearing at fund-raisers, and he is likely to have to keep a low profile as long as the investigation continues. It could also leave him distracted, depriving the White House of his full attention at a time when Mr. Bush is struggling to regain his political footing after months in which the bloody insurgency in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the failed Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers have left the administration stumbling.
An indictment of Mr. Libby, who is seen by many people in the White House as Mr. Cheney's alter ego, would also keep a focus on the way in which the administration built its case that Saddam Hussein was a threat who had to be dealt with. Any trial of Mr. Libby would likely shine a spotlight in particular on Mr. Cheney and his prewar role.

Mr. Fitzgerald has been closely examining the truthfulness of accounts given by Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby about their conversations with reporters about Ms. Wilson. As early as February 2004, two months after he was appointed, Mr. Fitzgerald obtained a specific written authorization from James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general who appointed him, permitting him to investigate efforts to mislead the inquiry.

The prosecutor has inquired how Mr. Libby and Mr. Rove first learned that Ms. Wilson was employed at the C.I.A. and whether the discussions were part of a deliberate effort to undermine the credibility of her husband, according to lawyers in the case. The lawyers declined to be named, citing Mr. Fitzgerald's request not to discuss the case.

Allies of Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have hoped that Mr. Fitzgerald could be convinced that any misstatements were inadvertent and not intended to conceal their actions from prosecutors.

In addition, they have hoped that the prosecutor would conclude it would be difficult to convince a jury that Mr. Rove or Mr. Libby had a clear-cut motive to misinform the grand jury. Lawyers for the two men declined to comment on their legal status.

In Mr. Rove's case, the prosecutor appears to have focused on two conversations that Mr. Rove had with reporters. The first, on July 9, 2003, was with Mr. Novak. Mr. Rove told the grand jury that Mr. Novak mentioned Ms. Wilson and that was the first time he had heard Ms. Wilson's name.

Mr. Rove's second conversation took place on July 11, 2003, with Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine. Earlier this year, Mr. Cooper wrote that Mr. Rove did not name Ms. Wilson but told him that she worked at the C.I.A. and had been responsible for sending her husband to Africa.

In his first sessions with prosecutors, Mr. Rove did not disclose his phone conversation with Mr. Cooper, the lawyers said, though he disclosed from the start his conversation with Mr. Novak. The lawyers added that Mr. Rove did not recall the conversation with Mr. Cooper until the discovery of an e-mail note about the conversation that he had sent to Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser. But Mr. Fitzgerald has been skeptical about the omission, the lawyers said.

In Mr. Libby's case, Mr. Fitzgerald has focused on his statements about how he first learned of Ms. Wilson's identity. Early in the investigation, Mr. Libby turned over notes of a meeting with Mr. Cheney in June 2003 that indicated the vice president had told him about Ms. Wilson, the lawyers said.

But Mr. Libby told the grand jury that he learned of Ms. Wilson from reporters, lawyers involved in the case said. Reporters who are known to have talked to Mr. Libby have said that they did not provide him the name, could not recall what had been said or had discussed unrelated subjects.

• Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[MIBgirlsXXL]

one down (click for details) ...

LIBBY INDICTED

5 COUNTS ...

[Morageort]

According to John W. Dean (who knows a thing or two about indictments and corruption in the White House):
it appears Libby's saga may be only Act Two in a three-act play. And in my view, the person who should be tossing and turning at night, in anticipation of the last act, is the Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney. More here: http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/sh...9&postcount=99

Extra Bonus Audio Clip:

Dick on Life without Scooter ...

http://www.realitybasednation.com/bl...20Oct%2005.mp3

I will be useless as a witness ... I get all nervous and I forget stuff

[Percocetti]

Only 2 MORE DAYS to get your VOTE registered !!!

[irrascaft]

<b><font size="7">> The POLLS are CLOSED