My theory on why Rove will be indicted soon

Before reading this post, check out this LA Times article:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-rove29oct29,0,440699.story

In sum, Fitzgerald was planning to indict Rove up until a few days ago. However, Rove gave Fitzgerald some new information this last Tuesday that gave Fitzgerald "pause." But if you read the LA Times story, the emails Rove handed over were not that significant. Matt Cooper half-jokingly described Rove as talking to him about Valerie Plame on "double super secret background" so why would Rove then go and tell everyone in the White House later that day that he'd told Cooper about Plame? It should be nearly completely irrelevant.

However, Fitzgerald is a thorough prosecutor and he had to check out every lead. Thus, over the next couple of days, we see a flurry of people connected to this Tuesday revelation being interviewed or reinterviewed. But time was running out. Not only did the grand jury expire on Friday, but Fitzgerald had to do the extra interviews, process that information gained, present it to the grand jury in a coherent fashion, and so forth. There just wasn't enough time.

My take? Rove held back this last bit of information until the last possible moment. He hoped that by throwing Fitzgerald a loop at the very end, Fitzgerald wouldn't have time to deal with it before the expiration of the grand jury, and then maybe Fitzgerald would decide not to call a new grand jury and Rove would squeak out unindicted.

However, Fitzgerald is still continuing with a new grand jury. It shouldn't take him long to finish sorting this Tuesday revelation out and getting the new jurors up to speed on the case. Then we'll see an indictment against Rove. Because, based on the LA Times story, I can't possibly see how the emails discussed could bolster Rove's defense in any significant way. Further, by pulling this almost childish move to delay the day of reckoning, Rove probably really pissed Fitzgerald off.

This is just a theory. But if it proves true, it could end up being a foolish move on Rove's part in the long run. Had Libby and Rove both been indicted on the same day, the whole Libby aspect would have been just a side note to the more important Rove story. If they're indicted on different days, the Libby aspect gets much more play than it ever would have, and the overall political damage to the White House is much greater.

not have the authority..and after listening to him I was not sure he was asking for one at this time..

if you know please tell me...

A grand jury sits at all times in DC, so the special prosecutor can call them together if needed.

I'll be horrified if it's not true

Fitz said in his conference yesterday that it's common to have another grand jury available after one's term has expired. No grand jury has been assigned yet to this investigation but it doesn't mean one won't be and I've a good feeling one will be.

at any point. They are available for use by any federal prosecutor while they are empaneled, IIRC.

I think there is always a federal grand jury available in each of the jurisdictions, empaneled and ready for use.

special Fed grand jury there would be, as deadparrot has noted, a regular Fed grand jury sitting to replace the one that expired.

I would add a slightly different twist. By insuring that there may be additional work to do in order not to indict "an innocent man"--Rove is splitting the target. He protects the Big Kahuna and gets the nation to focus on the Veep and his croneys. R*ve believes that the Dickster will resign for health reasons, if necessary. That cleans up the slime in the WH and everyone goes back to destroying public education, grabbing big profits and designing intelligence.

I didn't understand how an email to a different person, which did not mention Plame or Cooper, could possibly prove the irrelevence of what Rove told Cooper? Where's the logic in that? Especially if what Rove told Cooper was double super secret? Why would Rove be expected to mention it in every other email he sent that day?

I don't get it (unless, as pointed out, it was purely a piss poor smoke screen to delay/prevent indictment of Rove).

But it could be that Rove doesn't really have a better defense to fall back on. Consider Libby. It seems he's going for the "my memory is hazy" defense, and that's going to be Rove's defense as well. In Libby's case, there's so much against him, how he could possibly think that line of defense could work is beyond me. Maybe Rove, too, is grasping at straws.

...that Libby's lying was strategic. It goes like this: He intentionally lies, he pleads guilty, no one else is charged, the truth never sees the light of day.

John Dean said yesterday that the Nixon WH discussed perjury as strategy, and that could be what's going on here. Everyone says Libby is too smart to have uttered such lies. We must consider the possibility that the WH wargamed this strategy. Libby lies intentionally about the process, the underlying crimes are obfuscated, Libby then pleads guilty, no other charges are brought, and the matter is never investigated. The end.

That is why Fitzpatrick must NOT make a plea bargain with Libby. No, no, no!

Grasswire (MrsP on TT)

Rove's lawyer used an "I can prove my client can't remember" case that caused Fitz to pause Rove's indictment. Luskin used an email on the same day as the Cooper conversation claiming that his client did not mention the exchange with Mr. Levine. Thus using this as a bullshit excuse to prove that the conversation with Cooper was no big deal and proving it as unmemorable. If Fitz is really considering this as a viable out for Rove, then I fear he won't indict, but on the other hand, I can also see this this as really pissing Fitz off, and even possibly resulting in an other obstruction charge.

"The e-mail exchange reviewed by prosecutors was between Rove and former White House media spokesman Adam Levine, and it focused on a topic unrelated to Plame or Wilson.

The exchange occurred several hours after Rove had talked to Time reporter Cooper. Prosecutors went back and interviewed Levine again this week, asking whether Rove had mentioned his conversations with Cooper. Rove did not initially tell investigators about his conversation with Cooper. In another session, Rove recalled that he had spoken with the reporter.

Levine told investigators that Rove had not brought up Plame or the Cooper conversation — suggesting that the topics were not priorities for Rove at the time.

"Levine's acknowledgment that the Cooper conversation did not come up in my client's conversation with Rove seems to support a theory that it just wasn't that important to Rove and could therefore have been easily forgotten," said Daniel French, Levine's attorney.

God willing, Fitz will use this bogus excuse against Rove.

asking the Chief Judge for another Grand Jury.

Fitz then can do what he wants with the GJ, including expanding the focus of the investigation up the foodchain to Cheney's (and possibly Dubya's) role in conspiring with Libby on outing Plame, and then laterally so that it intersects with the OSP-AIPAC case. Larry Franklin is the link with other Americans implicated in the forged Niger Yellowcake documents and with similar espionage operations with Israeli intelligence.

If this happens, this will finally blow the Administration out of the water.

What do you think, Paul? Do you think Fitz will go there?

My guess is, he wants to keep this rather narrowly focused. If he was expanding the scope of the inquiry, he probably would have asked for a confirmation of his powers to do that, even if he thought he had those powers, just to be absolutely clear. He already did that once, back in early 2004.

I think probably the most one could expect would be a conspiracy charge still centered around the leaking of Plame that would name a number of people. Which would be a shame if that's the most one can expect, as I'd really like to see him especially get to the bottom of how the documents originated in the first place. But of course, I'm only guessing, like everyone else.

That is why libby has to keep lying till hell freezes over and everyone else too. If motive is established by multiple people, conspiracy is established and a lot more laws like RICO kick in

over at DKos. The original diary is trash, but the response postings contain some gems about who cooked up the papers (Ledeen & Co) and distributed them to the White House (Hadley). I note that Hadley got called back before the GJ 2-3 weeks ago, and the recent articles that Fitz read the Italian parliamentary report -- I believe Fitz has already gone deeply into this, details of which were published in La Republicca.


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/29/211121/82
Huummmm... (4.00 / 2)

I don't want to be a wet blanket but that the Italians and Berlusconi thought this up by themselves is suspicious to me.

First "copies" of the forged papers, not the forged document itself had been peddled all over before it ever got to SISMI.

Here's the timeline Rozen and Marshall put together from the facts known and the prior article in La Repubblica. And the players.

(American Players = Ledeen and Hadley)
(Italian Player = Nicolo Pollari, Intelligence Chief)

#Pollari met with Ledeen, Franklin and Rhode in Rome in 2001..and also with the old Iran Contra arms dealer...reportedly about Iran.

# Pollari, the same intelligence chief met with Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley just a month before the Niger forgeries first surfaced

# Nicolo Pollari, chief of Italy's military intelligence service, known as Sismi, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002.

# Sismi had reported to the CIA on October 15, 2001, that Iraq had sought yellowcake in Niger, a report it also plied on British intelligence, creating an echo that the Niger forgeries themselves purported to amplify before they were exposed as a hoax.

# Pollari also met secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

# Pollari had previously insisted that the only member of the U.S. administration he met with was his former CIA counterpart George Tenet.

# La Repubblica also now quotes a Bush administration official saying, "I can confirm that on September 9, 2002, General Nicolo Pollari met Stephen Hadley."

But...Berlusconi could have been aiding and abetting because three days later after the Pollari and Hadley meeting, a story in Panorama a weekly owned by Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi claimed that Iraq's intelligence agency, the Mukhabarat, had acquired 500 tons of uranium from Nigeria through a Jordanian intermediary.

I don't doubt the Italians had a hand in it but there was some US neo coordinating going on also....after being rejected by the CIA, someone with insider contacts , either the WH or the imfamous OSP or most likely Ledeen told Pollari directly who to take the copies of the forgeries to.

But we do know now the CIA had spurned the fakes for a year or more before the WH got the copies and then spurned them again when the WH sent them over and then used them anyway....

This was clearly a two way street and trying now to throw it all off on Berlusconi isn't going to cover the fact that the WH knew the long sorted history of the fakes and used it anyway.


by Cal45 on Sat Oct 29, 2005 at 10:33:21 PM PDT
< Reply to This | none0: Troll1: Unproductive2: Marginal3: Good4: Excellent >


SNIP

Jefferson Morley at the WaPo (4.00 / 2)http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/worldopinionroundup/2005/10/dsm_the_sequel.html

also wrote about this last week.

He says La Republicca is more specific in identifying who in the administration might have been fixing the intelligence:

There is one important difference between the DSM and La Repubblica stories. The Downing Street Memo itself did not identify the U.S. officials with whom Dearlove met in the summer of 2002. The La Repubblica series is more specific. It raises the question of whether Hadley deliberately circulated false information about Saddam's nuclear activities after his meeting with Pollari in September 2002.
referring to Stephen Hadley, now the National Security Advisor.

The first reader comment is also interesting:

Dear Jefferson,

I read the Repubblica story in Italian and you left out some information that makes this story even more damning: The rogue cop showed the mis-intelligance first to the French government, who saw immediately that it was false, having been the colonial power in Niger, and discarded it. This was in 2000.

In March of 2003, prior to our going to war, the French government let the US government know that the misintelligence about uranium sales and aluminium tubes was false, according to Repubblica.
We went to war anyway.

Repubblica does not imply that it was a scam by the French to mislead the US, but rather it was one of the reasons France did not want to support the war.

Best, Kathleen


SNIP

another connection between Ledeen and Martino (4.00 / 4)

is that both are members of JINSA according to Richard Sale via Patrick Lang (BoomanTribune).

THE NIGER FORGERIES http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/10/26/183630/00


In fact, the head of SISMI, NICOLO POLLARI, as well as the Italian Defense Minister, ANTONIO MARTINO, attended the meeting. Martino, it should be noted, is a member of JINSA, the hardline, right-wing pro-Israeli organization. Since Ledeen is a also member of JINSA and has often been a keynote speaker, the link is not unimportant.

According to Rozen, who confirmed details with this reporter, Ghorbanifar told her he had had fifty meetings with Michael Ledeen since September 11, 2001 and that he had given Ledeen "4,000 to 5,000 pages of sensitive documents" concerning Iran, Iraq and the Middle East, "material no one else has received."



by sofia on Sat Oct 29, 2005 at 09:28:10 PM PDT
< Parent | Reply to This | none0: Troll1: Unproductive2: Marginal3: Good4: Excellent >

XXXXXX

Also, Paul, you should read Marshall and Rozen's article, if you haven't already done so. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0410.marshallrozen.html

And maybe it also says - the big deal here is motive, and the motive has still not been established conclusively BUT everyone in America needs to think about the WHY. Why was this done? Why was an operative outed?

HINT Think about foreign policy - the motive involves foreign policy not domestic politics. Rove is the domestic strategist and is not a Straussian as best I can figure. Libby was the foreign policy stategist and a close associate of Wolfowitz.

People like Karl Rove don't go down easily, but I think Fitzgerald will be up to the task.

"At the time of Wilson's disclosures, U.S. and United Nations officials had not turned up evidence of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. In public, Cheney and Bush were predicting that weapons of mass destruction would be found. But behind the scenes, there was worry about the failure to locate those weapons, which were never found.

Libby, insiders say, was especially concerned that the CIA might be trying to undercut the White House. And he was angry that Wilson had suggested that Cheney had inspired his mission to Niger and should have been aware of his findings.

Rove had a different perspective. He saw Wilson as a dangerous critic emerging a year before the presidential election. Wilson was a political problem: He embodied doubts about the war, and he had credibility. He had shown diplomatic leadership as charge d'affaires in the U.S. Embassy in Iraq just before the 1991 bombing of Baghdad. That had earned him letters of praise from President George H.W. Bush.

But Wilson had also begun to work for Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign. Rove had already researched Wilson's campaign contributions and sputtered to an aide: "He's a Democrat."

--
It does sound like Rove is going to be indicted eventually. IMO

is that Fitzgerald told Sharp that he needs to talk to *. I think the "new" information from Rove will necessitate testimony from Poppy's boy.

He said it only seemed as if there were an unusual amount of activity but that was a perception due to more focus by the media. I'm paraphrasing here. I understood him to mean that there was no more activity than normal in this investigation, it just appeared that way because people were paying more attention, especially the media.

As for the rest of it, Rove is playing a very dangerous game. He's probably getting off on it, but no way will he outfox Fitzgerald. That's what I believe.

I know very little about the law, but I wonder: how can Rove justify turning over these emails on the last possible day? Certainly, Fitzgerald must have ordered him to turn over all revelant communications months earlier. I don't see how it could be plausible for Rove to argue that he just found them that day or thereabouts. He obviously had them and was holding onto them like an ace in the hole.

Could failure to turn over evidence in a timely manner in and of itself lead to an obstruction of justice charge? Furthermore, if Rove had these emails and Fitzgerald did not (which seems to be the case), then what OTHER emails might there be that Rove has been sitting on which don't help his case at all? I'll bet as soon as Fitzgerald was given those emails, he immediately got the ball rolling to search for whatever other emails there may have been from the same computer or source that Rove got these ones from. That process, no doubt, will take some time and there's no way Fitzgerald could have done it in the one or two days left before that grand jury expired. I wonder if in the end Rove may be digging an even deeper hole for himself?

Why would he do that? Maybe he's desperate to do anything to keep his job as "Bush's brain" for a few weeks or months longer.

amytime in the future.

I don't buy it. I think the new email witness defense for Rove is contrived to cover what really happened in the last minute maneuvering between Luskin and the Fitzgerald.

I believe the story may have been invented by Luskin to cover the true fact that his client flipped and assisted the SP investigation. That's something that Rove would not want public and they would need a cover story as to why he wasn't charged at present.

When you look at the "Official A" description of Rove in the indictment, designed not to effect any future possible indictments of Rove, by not naming him in Libby's indictment, seems to indicate that "Official A" is a co-operating witness. Often that tactic is used to protect such witnesses by not naming them.

Plus the unusual 11th hour visit to Bush's criminal attorney's office. I can think of only two reasons for Fitzgerald to be there on that day. First and most unlikely as a deferential informative visit to inform the President indirectly of what would occur during the afternoon's events. Or secondly and more likely, to inform the President that his office is now a target of the probe.

That visit would have been the result of Rove flipping, Rove would not have been indicted, he wouldn't have been named in the Libby indictment, and Bush's attorney would have to have been provided a target letter. I don't think you wait for snail mail for that task and if it's going to the President, you as a prosecutor deliver it in person. For the effect as much as anything.

Perhaps I'm just inventing stuff I would like to see happen. That also is a real danger in this tea leave reading exercise. I'm most likely dead wrong. But that's my read, FWIW.

:shrug:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5218335

more impact...gives Fitz the illusion of more power. Kind of like when a company starts firing people. After the first few, all sit, waiting breathlessly...wondering when...

Rove held off on bringing up the Adam Levine email until sometime Tuesday. He's used to these last minute political maneuvers: that's his experience with "tactics" and that's what his people went with here. Then the question is, when is the new grand jury empanelled, how soon can they be brought up to speed on the case, and when can/will Fitzgerald submit a request for indictment?

to form the basis of an indictment. I think you're right in that he may just have run out of time. I keep hearing that Fitzgerald is the type who likes to really feel he can definitely prove his case at trial, before he indicts. If that's true, I could see him holding off till every single fat little duck is in a row.

So I think you are onto something.

Even Rove probably knows he's still in trouble, but he's using the opportunity to set up his PR spin machine.

First, as a post in another thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5213925&mesg_id=5214529

Later, per suggestion to make it into a thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5215921&mesg_id=5215921

I didn't see your posts, but indeed that's almost the same thinking. You also raise a good point which I'm going to quote at length here:

Because of this legal maneuver, Rove, if not already indicted under sealed indictments by the original Grand Jury, could have taken his chances that he might be able to cast a reasonable doubt on a majority of new Grand Jurists knowing full well that the Rehnquist appointed Federal Judge Thomas Hogan, presiding over this Grand Jury investigation, would not extend the now expired Grand Jury today - not even for an additional week!

This Grand Jury was the one that personally observed Rove make false statements, commit perjury, and obstruct justice. They saw Rove up close and saw him in serious legal jeopardy. They witnessed his testimony and personally understood what he did.

By causing Fitzgerald to empanel a new Grand Jury, this element of Roves testimony will have been lost upon the newly empaneled Grand jurors, and Rove may be calculating that while it is only a slight advantage, that it may be the difference between being indicted and not being indicted.

---

I think that could help explain his move. But again, that raises my question that by doing this, could he face new charges based on this strategic move? If he was ordered many months before to turn over all relevant communications and he holds onto them only until the last possible day, isn't that in and of itself a crime, an obstruction of justice? It seems dodgy, at the very least.

I have suspicions, too, that Fitzgerald got a secret indictment against Rove with this grand jury, just to be on the safe side. If he did, not even Rove nor his laywer would be aware of it yet - it's truly secret from everyone but the prosecutors, the judge, and the grand jury. So I'm with you there on that speculation, too.

We are not alone in this line of thinking.

check these post and tell me if you agree:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5215617&mesg_id=5216080

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5215853&mesg_id=5216046

thanks.

I'm not sure what you wanted me to see with those links? Those threads seemed to be on other topics.

But I just can't get past the insufficiency of the communications with Levine as any sort of justification of Rove's "forgetfulness" or lack of focus on Plame.

People at this high level routinely multitask and compartmentalize their work. What need would Levine have to merit any mention by Rove of the Cooper discussion he had about Plame earlier in the day?

It's a complete non sequitor to me and doesn't pass the common sense test. Either the reporter got it wrong, or Luskin left out material facts, or I don't buy the story.

It's a cover, but for what I don't know.

i think will be more like 2-3 months. as you point out, fitz is thorough, and they have quite a lot of info from the previous grand jury to present to the new grand jury.

most important, fitz has to adjust himself and his staff to the notion that they're starting from scratch as far as the new grand jury is concerned.

Their minions are on TV saying that it's over. Libby is the only person that will be indicted. They all agree that V. Wilson was not a covert CIA opererative and this entire investigation was a fishing expedition.

I feel that they are full of shit and sweating that Rove and more will be charged with criminal acts. I feel that Cheney was the prime mover on this action to derail Joe Wilson and his wife's WMD proliferation operation.

if and when more indictments come down.
Again the reich wing noise machine
just looks manipulative and foolish.

We thought it was 22 indictments. Pretty clear now it was 22 pages. It was out there for over a week -- I think.

Newsweek has a story on this, saying Rove's last minute revelations have gotten him off the hook:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9865842/site/newsweek

I'm very skeptical of this report. Michael Isikoff, the writer of the piece, said just after the press conference that Fitzgerald was done with his investigation based on his body language presented during the conference. So he sounds like a reporter who has his mind made up already. Isikoff has written some good things in the past, but he also was almost irrationally obessed with the Monica Lewisky case back in the day and served as a Repub tool on that.

This new Washington Post story backs up what I and others have been thinking about Rove. It's also in complete contradiction to what Isikoff was speculating. It shouldn't be surprising that Rove has many eager defenders, but I think the below is closer to the truth:

Rove's attorney provided Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald with a last-minute flurry of material and evidence supporting Rove's contention that he simply forgot his conversation about Wilson's wife with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper -- rather than lied about it, according to people close to Rove. The sources said it gave Fitzgerald "pause" about his earlier intentions to charge Rove with false statements to the FBI, and he agreed to continue investigating.

But two legal sources intimately familiar with Fitzgerald's tactics in this inquiry said they believe Rove remains in significant danger. They described Fitzgerald as being relentlessly thorough but also conservative throughout this prosecution -- and his willingness to consider Rove's eleventh-hour pleading of a memory lapse is merely a sign of Fitzgerald's caution.

The two legal sources point to what they consider Fitzgerald's careful decision not to charge Libby with the leak of a covert agent's identity, given that the prosecutor had amassed considerable evidence that Libby gave classified information, which he knew from his job should not be made public, to reporters. Another prosecutor might have stretched to make a leak charge, on the theory that a jury would believe, based on other actions, that Libby acted with bad intentions.

Another warning sign for Rove was in the phrasing of Friday's indictment of Libby. Fitzgerald referred to Rove in those charging papers as a senior White House official and dubbed him "Official A." In prosecutorial parlance, this kind of awkward pseudonym is often used for individuals who have not been indicted in a case but still face a significant chance of being charged. No other official in the investigation carries such an identifier.

---

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/30/AR2005103000348.html

So, in other words, Fitzgerald is being cautious in following up on Rove's last minute info, but he isn't being deterred by this basically irrelevant info that Rove gave him.

Rove squealed on Libby ----> Libby looking at 30 years in the naughty house ----> Libby gets no deal from Fitzgerald ----> Libby's family doesn't want to visit daddy in jail for 20 years ----> Libby knows where all Rove's skeleton's are buried ----> Libby tells Fitzpatrick ----> Rove goes :nuke:

After all, he's supposed to be even more ideological than Cheney. But will Fitzgerald be able to get Rove and others without Libby breaking?

<opinion>

This portion of the news conference leaves us to consider that Libby's leaks did not rise to the level of violation of the Espionage Act that Rove's leaks did, because Rove's leaks directly resulted in the publication of Novak's column and the mass outing of Plame.

Rove's leak seems more apt to be the one to draw the Espionage indictment.

Therein may be the explanation for Fitzgerald's choice of words in saying, "the right case to charge that statute:"

FITZGERALD: "And all I'll say is that if national defense information which is involved because her affiliation with the CIA, whether or not she was covert, was classified, if that was intentionally transmitted, that would violate the statute known as Section 793, which is the Espionage Act.

That is a difficult statute to interpret. It's a statute you ought to carefully apply.

I think there are people out there who would argue that you would never use that to prosecute the transmission of classified information, because they think that would convert that statute into what is in England the Official Secrets Act.

Let me back up. The average American may not appreciate that there's no law that's specifically just says, If you give classified information to somebody else, it is a crime.

There may be an Official Secrets Act in England. There are some narrow statutes, and there is this one statute that has some flexibility in it.

So there are people who should argue that you should never use that statute because it would become like the Official Secrets Act.

I don't buy that theory, but I do know you should be very careful in applying that law because there are a lot of interests that could be implicated in making sure that you picked the right case to charge that statute.

That actually feeds into the other question. When you decide whether or not to charge someone with a crime, you want to know as many facts as possible. You want to know what their motive is, you want to know their state of knowledge, you want to know their intent, you want to know the facts.

Let's not presume that Mr. Libby is guilty. But let's assume, for the moment, that the allegations in the indictment are true. If that is true, you cannot figure out the right judgment to make, whether or not you should charge someone with a serious national security crime or walk away from it or recommend any other course of action, if you don't know the truth.

So I understand your question which is: Well, what if he had told the truth, what would you have done? If he had told the truth, we would have made the judgment based upon those facts. We would have assessed what the accurate information and made a decision.

We have not charged him with a crime. I'm not making an allegation that he violated that statute. What I'm simply saying is one of the harms in obstruction is that you don't have a clear view of what should be done. And that's why people ought to walk in, got into the grand jury, you're going to take an oath, tell us the who, what, when, where and why -- straight.

And our commitment on the other end is to use our judgment as to what we prosecute.

FITZGERALD: And if we don't prosecute, we keep quiet.

And we're simply saying in here, we didn't get the straight story, and we had to -- had to take action."

*******************************************************

<opinion>

In this near to last portion of the news conference, Fitzgerald dodges the conspiracy related line of questioning from the media.

However, the Libby indictment was written in such a way as to suggest a conspiracy, without actually charging it.

Fitzgerald made an effort to give more information than required in this indictment, and the information detailed by Fitzgerald suggests that there is a group of people involved in what led to the outing of a classified CIA employee.

Further, Libby's False Statements, Perjury, and Obstruction may have been purposefully offered in his calculated effort to avoid giving the Special Counsel testimony that supports the larger conspiracy allegations.

Fitzgerald seems inclined to indict on Conspiracy and he is letting his targets think about that:

"QUESTION: Maybe we can hone this down just a little bit.

We know that there could not be a conspiracy of one -- and he has not been charged with conspiracy. Considering that with which he is charged at this point, do you believe that Mr. Libby acted alone?

FITZGERALD: I'm going to comment beyond the indictment. Don't read anything into that. But I just -- the indictment sets forth a charge. We're not going to go there."

*******************************************************

<opinion>

It is easy to draw an opinion, based on these offerings, that the Special Counsel is posturing in an aggressive way toward the targets of his investigation, and that he is attempting to instill in their minds that he has the ability and goods to make the Espionage charge against Rove, and the determination to make the Conspiracy charges against Cheney, Libby, Rove, Novak, and potentially others.

At this point, I am inclined to believe that Fitzgerald is proceeding in this direction, that he would have indicted Rove on Perjury, Obstruction, and Espionage already, had Rove's attorney not pulled the GREAT legal maneuver in the 11th Hour.

As far as the conspiracy charges, I believe that the obstruction efforts by Libby and Rove remain obstacles that Fitzgerald is attempting to overcome by issuing the other indictments, but that he is aiming for the Espionage and Conspiracy charges and demonstrating by his language in the Libby indictment, rather than his body language, that he can get it done.

*******************************************************

<opinion>

Lastly, let me remind you all that nobody in the Administration would have believed, in advance, that all of the following things would occur:

1). CIA would compel the office of the Attorney General to conduct an investigation of something that most Republicans believe is not a crime.

2). Fitzgerald would be named as Special Counsel with a duty to investigate whether or not Bush Administration officials committed the crime the CIA alleges in outing Plame, and any subsequent crimes hindering his investigation of that charge.

3). That Fitzgerald would put any involved reporters in jail until they cooperated and provided a Grand Jury with evidence.

4). That Fitzgerald would come across information that could aid him in piecing together very secret Bush Administration activities that would reveal evidence pointing toward Espionage and Conspiracy.

This is the best rationale for Libby's inexplicable behavior toward Fitzgerald, the FBI, and the Grand Jury.

Libby offered a "The buck stops here" performance that was intended to shield the VP from the consequences of his own plot.

Libby knows he'll be pardoned if convicted, and he knows the mission* is more important than him.

* What is the mission?

Does it seem like a Military coup d'etat slowly taking place?

Hello everyone, this is not news to the Special Counsel, but just the Republicans trying to baffle the public with Bull Shit!

Libby claimed that he told Cooper that other reporters are saying that Wilson's wife works at the CIA.

The indictment alleges that Libby * confirmed * to Cooper that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, meaning, as the above post suggests, that ROve is the one who will be charged with Espionage.

Wasn't Rove's lawyer working out a deal too? And Fitzgerald made it pretty clear in his press statement not to fuck with him or the case. Sounds like he was mad in his voice about something like that with Libby lying and he was sending a message to anyone else who gets involved with the case. They want to get it done and get back to their other job(s).