The Mystery Man in Scooter Libby Trial

A Man of Mystery
Richard Hohlt is the heavy hitter you've never heard of

Robert Novak, as usual, had a scoop to unload—only this time, it was from the witness stand. Testifying last week in the trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the conservative columnist gruffly described how he first learned from two top Bush administration officials that Valerie Plame, wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson, was a CIA officer. But then Novak injected a new name into the drama—one that virtually nobody in the courtroom knew.

Asked by one of Libby's lawyers if he had talked about Plame with anybody else before outing her in his column, Novak said he'd discussed her with a lobbyist named Richard Hohlt. Who, the lawyer pressed, is Hohlt? "He's a very good source of mine" whom I talk to "every day," Novak replied. Indeed, Hohlt is such a good source that after Novak finished his column naming Plame, he testified, he did something most journalists rarely do: he gave the lobbyist an advance copy of his column. What Novak didn't tell the jury is what the lobbyist then did with it: Hohlt confirmed to NEWSWEEK that he faxed the forthcoming column to their mutual friend Karl Rove (one of Novak's sources for the Plame leak), thereby giving the White House a heads up on the bombshell to come.

The trial of Libby— who is charged with lying about his own alleged role in the disclosure of Plame's identity—has revealed much about how government officials and journalists swap secrets. But Hohlt's outing was especially revealing. Unlike many of the high-profile Washington players who have populated the Plame affair, Hohlt is a Beltway power broker of a different sort. He works quietly, rarely makes the papers and likes it that way. Hohlt, 58, came to Washington more than 30 years ago as an aide to Sen. Richard Lugar. He now represents A-list clients like Bristol Myers, Chevron, JPMorgan Chase and the Nuclear Energy Association. At the same time, he raises buckets of cash for the Republican Party: he was designated a "Super Ranger," a fund-raiser who raked in more than $500,000 for President Bush's re-election.

But Hohlt's more significant role may be his leadership of a secretive social group of GOP heavy hitters and, occasionally, White House officials, who convene to smoke cigars and mull over politics. The group's name: the Off The Record Club. Hohlt is the club's "keeper of the flame," says one participant who, like others contacted for this story, didn't want to be named because it violates the group's rules.

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17202408/site/newsweek/

Some news. Wow.

From Crossfire:

NOVAK: You know, before we go back to the CO2 question, I just want to paint the picture of the mood in Washington, and I'd like to have a wonderful quote from the famous lobbyist Richard Hohlt, Rick Hohlt, it was in "The Wall Street Journal" a while back. He said: "We have come out of the cave, blinking in the sunlight, saying to one another, my God, now we can actually get something done!"

Nancy, isn't it the case that after eight years of the president, and the labor bosses, and the left-wingers suppressing the just aspirations of business, it is time for business to get some of these things done?

PELOSI: Well, I don't know Rick Hohlt, but I do think he is acting like a caveman. I think that what is happening in Washington, D.C. is a survival of fittest mentality. I think that what you said in your opening remarks, business is on a roll -- the rolling over working families in America, whether it is workers' safety, whether it is in a bankruptcy bill, which went too far, whether it is in the environment, the very air that we breathe.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0103/16/cf.00.html

"It's really just a bunch of old-timers who like to shoot the breeze," Hohlt tells NEWSWEEK. "We can complain about our clients, complain about what's going on on the Hill."

~s~

Thanks to last week's testimony, his cover—like Valerie Plame's—is now blown.

ummmmm yeah except our ability to monitor nuclear proliferation was damage/destroyed in the middle eastern world, big difference:eyes:

and didn't do a thing to stop it. I mean, not even like, ask nicely, say. Something a decent moral human being might do.

isn't it? No one in the WH leaked - and of course he did not know :eyes:

They lied.

kick is in order! :hi:

They called six reporters in one week trying to get her outed. They went searching for and found their most willing lapdog, Novak. They scattered her identity all over town so it would bounce back to the them and they could say "everybody knew." (That's what Libby got indicted for lying about.) Some bombshell. Might be described as a bunker buster dropped on Valerie Plame's head and the heads of every one of her deep cover WMD counter-proliferation agents and contacts around the world, by Dick Cheney & Co. But by no means a surprise to them, since THEY did it!

MSNBC. Rat turds.

:kick:

:kick:

I don't know why I continue to be surprised and amazed by anything these cowards do... except that there's such a level of outrageousness that it repeatedly succeeds in making my mouth drop open.

:wow: