[Mb-civic] Plame update - Jeff Gannon involved

[Mike Blaxill]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2005/10/07/rove_inquiry/print.html

Rove's nightmare
If Karl Rove told federal officials in 2003 he
wasn't involved in outing Valerie Plame, he could
face charges.

By Joe Conason

Oct. 07, 2005 | To understand why Karl Rove is
believed to be in grave danger of indictment for
his role in the Wilson leaks, let's return to the
earliest days of the investigation. If Rove is
found criminally liable for lying, then the
falsehoods that led to his downfall may well have
been uttered during the weeks when his old friend
and client John Ashcroft was still in charge of
the leaks probe -- and before the case was turned
over to the special counsel, U.S. Attorney
Patrick Fitzgerald.

During the autumn of 2003, after repeated
requests from the CIA, Ashcroft finally exercised
his duty as attorney general to investigate the
disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson's identity by
administration officials to various journalists.
Although the CIA first notified the Justice
Department as early as July 30 of a potentially
serious crime -- namely, a violation of the
Intelligence Identities Protection Act -- Justice
didn't open an investigation until the end of
September, after the CIA informed the department
that it had completed its own review of the
facts.

For three months, until Ashcroft decided to
recuse himself, the investigation remained under
his control, despite the well-founded suspicions
of Rove's involvement. Ashcroft willfully ignored
his own inherent conflict in overseeing a case
that might lead to an indictment of Rove, who had
assisted his political campaigns in Missouri and
had directed the process that led to his
appointment as attorney general. Only after
repeated protests from Democrats in Congress,
strong editorial comment on the unseemliness of
Ashcroft's conduct, and polls showing public
demand for an independent counsel did he finally
recuse himself from the Wilson matter.

By then, however, the investigation had already
begun, and Rove, among others in the White House,
was already on record publicly denying any
involvement in the leaks. Indeed, those denials
by Rove himself and White House press secretary
Scott McClellan returned to haunt them and the
president earlier this year, following evidence
provided by Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper
about his July 2003 conversation with Rove
concerning the Wilsons.

So now we know the truth about Rove's role -- or
at least part of the truth -- and we know that he
wasn't being honest back then. The question is
what he may have told the FBI agents assigned to
investigate the matter during those autumn weeks,
before Ashcroft turned over the case to
Fitzgerald in late December.

On Oct. 24, 2003, the Washington Post reported
that Rove and McClellan, among dozens of others,
had submitted to FBI interrogation about the
leaks. Two months later, the Post quoted
administration officials saying that Rove had
been among the very first people to be
interviewed by the FBI in pursuit of information
about the case.

Back then, Rove might well have assumed that the
case would be buried without any undue
inconvenience to him. The president had publicly
predicted, after all, that the perpetrators of
the leak were unlikely to be identified. There
was no reason, at the outset, to think that an
independent-minded prosecutor would take over
from Ashcroft a few months later.

If Rove told the FBI agents the same story that
he and McClellan were telling the press, then he
might have set himself up for a felony charge of
lying to a federal law enforcement official. And
if he lied, then he need not have been under oath
to have committed a crime.

Another intriguing possibility in the leaks case
brings back the baroque personality of right-wing
pressroom denizen Jeff Gannon, born James
Guckert.

The New York Times reported Friday that in
addition to possible charges directly involving
the revelation of Valerie Wilson's identity and
related perjury or conspiracy charges, Fitzgerald
is exploring other possible crimes. Specifically,
according to the Times, the special counsel is
seeking to determine whether anyone transmitted
classified material or information to persons who
were not cleared to receive it -- which could be
a felony under the 1917 Espionage Act.

One such classified item might be the
still-classified State Department document,
written by an official of State's Bureau of
Intelligence and Research, concerning the CIA's
decision to send former ambassador Joseph Wilson
to look into allegations that Iraq had tried to
purchase uranium from Niger. Someone leaked that
INR document -- which inaccurately indicated that
Wilson's assignment was the result of lobbying
within CIA by his wife, Valerie -- to right-wing
media outlets, notably including Gannon's former
employers at Talon News. On Oct. 28, 2003, Gannon
posted an interview with Joseph Wilson on the
Talon Web site, in which he posed the following
question: "An internal government memo prepared
by U.S. intelligence personnel details a meeting
in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the
agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi
weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent
to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that?"

Gannon later hinted, rather coyly, that he had
learned about the INR memo from an article in the
Wall Street Journal. He also told reporters last
February that FBI agents working for Fitzgerald
had questioned him about where he got the memo.
At the very least, that can be interpreted as
confirming today's Times report about the
direction of the case.

All such speculation about criminal indictments
must be tempered with caution. Nobody outside
Fitzgerald's office can be certain what charges
he is considering or whose fate he is mulling
over. Even the highest-ranking figures in the
Bush White House, which would deprive others of
their constitutional rights and has already done
so, deserve the presumption of innocence.

But certain persons in this government committed
a serious offense against the national security
of the United States to serve political partisan
ends -- and they don't deserve to get away it.