….but where’s Ex. A??!

Oh, two more things of interest. First, several of us have been looking foward to the day when Fitz hand over Jencks material (well, okay, primarily me and Jeff). That will happen on December 22, and Libby will provide reverse Jencks on January 2. So December 22 (conveniently in time for a Christmas pardon) is when Libby will see whatever he’s been after all this time.

And then there’s this. In Fitzgerald’s letter to Jeffress telling him that he will introduce all of Libby’s GJ testimony into evidence, he says this:

Dear Bill:

This letter is in response to your letter of October 20, 2006, in which you inquire whether it remains the government’s intention to introduce at trial the entirety of Mr. Libby’s grand jury testimony. We have reflected on this matter and the short answer to your question is, â€Yes, we do.â€

I’m a bit fond of it–â€Yes Jeffress, we haven’t changed our mind.â€

Fitz should play the tapes of Libby’s GJ testimony, and then put him on the stand, ask him to explain the contradictions… and hit him with ANOTHER count of perjury.

Buying up near-term popcorn futures, EW, can’t wait!!

Hey, did you happen to catch this bit? A fellow FirePup left it in threads, laughed at the feeble but continued disinfo attempt in this bit of trash; just scan down to â€Plameâ€.

Jeff Gannon. What a useless and deluded whore, actually takes himself seriously as both a journo and a prostitute. Good old fashioned conservative values, the kind that might have won the election for the Repugs if only the neo-cons in the party weren’t more fond of racketeering than whoring and propaganda.

I would assume he wants to call Pincus to force him to reveal his source (which has not yet been revealed–and which Swopa believes to be Ari Fleischer, I think).

I would assume he wants to call Woodward to talk about his Armitage conversation.

And I would assume he wants to call Mitchell and really grill her about whether or not she did learn of Plame’s ID–if he can raise any doubt in the minds of the jury, then it might cast doubt on whether fellow NBCer Tim Russert really didn’t know of Plame.

And btw, just a guess, but I suspect they won’t subpoena Woodward to testify until after they get Jencks on December 22. They want to know what he said, particularly wrt the NIE leak, before they call him.

I wondered if Vinovka was merely an instrumentality in weakening of Libby’s alibi, or if Fitzgerald would want to talk about her reporter notes more. There was a time last year when I thought Fitzgerald was prepared to get chalk on the cleats with respect to some of Libbys attorney’s efforts to keep on giving a slanted story to the press. I can hear Judge Walton wishing Viveca would not exacerbate that already delicate topic about which he has warned counsel for both sides. And I continue to ponder, in a parallel world, the matter ew raised the other day about the government’s work to use a GJ subpoena to prevent unreleased documents from entering into evidence, wondering if there is some distant expectation in the administration that a favorable ruling in that other matter might occur with timing suitable to serve as a backdoor way to accomplish what Jeffress might not achieve in the Libby matter via frontal graymailing.

I had worried about Gerson’s enhanced information sourcing now that he is at WaPo, as well. I understand Viveca was an inadvertent source of information in a specific one-time conversation.

ew,

Your Gmail glitch is our gain … but â€close to done†is so, well, tantalizingly close.

As for Jencks, I seem to remember hearing last year that Dec. 22 is Fitz’s birthday; heck of a way to spend it.

If Ari is the one who leaked to Pincus (it’s possible, though I think Hadley is much more likely), then Libby knows. He has Pincus’ testimony. And while Pincus no doubt doesn’t name his source, the questioner surely did.

But don’t forget Ari was claimed to be the Novak source, which would be impossible given the INR memo, and we now know, according to Novak, is not true.

Katie, I have a feeling (just a feeling) you may be right. My sense is that Bush probably was told in March, 2003, that the UN had figured out that the Niger documents were forged, and that Joe Wilson was on CNN talking about it without being all that specific. Then, about the time of â€mission accomplished†Wilson is back, clearly the source behind Kristoff’s column. At some point in there, GWB gives one of those â€command-decider†orders — â€Cut off this guy’s balls.†It’s left to the staff to figure out how to exactly accomplish this.

EW — Have you read Moore and Slater’s â€The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power?†Fascinating on a number of levels. He has one of the best integrations of the source of the Niger Forgeries I’ve yet seen — focused on the role of Ledeen — with much info about earlier relationships between Rove and Ledeen, and Ledeen to the Feith operations in DOD. Did Fitzgerald take Ledeen to the GJ? Recently I saw a note somewhere that FBI was re-opening their investigation of the forgery — probably a consequence of the election returns. Not only will Rockefeller be finishing that Intelligence Report, but Leahy may do some oversight on FBI Tradecraft in such investigations. Moore/Slater have a journalistic summary of the state of what’s known and unknown — (and I wonder if the FBI’s is as thorough?) but I suspect it will take oaths and a threat of contempt of congress to get answers to the open holes in the story about who forged the Niger Documents.

Jeff

Based on the Andrea Mitchell decision, I think they can hold on Jencks until the witness is deemed admissible. In other words, to some degree they’ll have to go blind on Woodward. But I could be wrong.