Fascinating, but still leaving us with the question of why Fitzgerald didn’t ask the grand jury to indict anyone else besides Libby. What did Rove say in that magic 4th grand jury appearance that suddenly seemed to make all the problems go away for everyone except Libby? How much of Rove’s e-mail (esp. that stored on the RNC server) did (and does) Fitzgerld have?

Cranky

ab initio and Cranky

No, first of all, I suspect that Libby, not Rove, leaked the trip report. Libby already had leaked it, to Judy (then again, he also had already leaked Plame’s ID). And I find it implausible that Rove would leak the contents of the report, AND stress that it was classified waiting to be declassified. This also mirrors what Rove did with Cooper–set him to asking for it, but not leak it itself beyond saying–as Novak says he did–that it was inconsistent. Furthermore, if (as Apuzzo reported–though as always with Apuzzo, I’ll wait till I see the documents for myself) Fitz was working on an Espionage charge when he wrote the affy to the Appeals court, it may well have related to leaking the indubitably still-classified trip report to Novak.

As to Rove, we still have the problem with the fact that we don’t have reliable witnesses (Novak and Armitage) against Rove’s primary lies.

As to Cheney, we still have to prove that he ordered Libby to leak Plame’s ID and the trip report to Judy and Novak.

Marcy:
On the 1999 question posed by Fitzgerald – shouldn’t it be Novak: (for the response)
instead of Rove: — maybe, I am not reading that correctly.

Marcy, any chance we can get a â€round-up†of the importance of all of this info that’s leaking out in dribs & drabs, getting brilliantly analyzed by you, but creating a big jigsaw puzzle that we’re trying to put together without a picture on the boxtop? I read TNH every day, and I still can’t follow more than 40% of it.

Maybe a once every few weeks or so [like when the Critters are out on recess] summary of â€what we’ve learned since last time; where we are now.â€

I’m sorry if it is nitpicky, but under the heading â€Fitzgerald Objects,†the second line has â€Libby hadn’t told Libby….†It just throws the flow off enough to make the less well versed person (me) say â€whaaaa?â€

freepatriot-

patrick fitzgerald is as sharp and principled a prosecutor as you will find in the united states.

but you probably knew that.

he is also, in my opinion, a superb, disciplined tactician.

think of joe montana at the height of his competence.

none of this is a one-man/woman show.

So maybe the famous Novak meltdown, with Carville (Aug 05), had to do with the â€inaccurate†grand jury testimony by the Dark Prince… Carville knew from Matalin that Novak got Plame’s name from Libby maybe (my best ad lib of my memory of the issues)??

Glad to see the Plame fires still burning.

I still wonder about the fact that Fitzgerald never puts Novak’s name or article outing Plame in his Libby indictment. Fitzgerald does use the publication DATE of Novak’s article in the Libby indictment to delimit the investigation of the leak. By contrast the dates, authors and titles of other relevant newspaper articles and editorials are meticulously documented in the Libby indictment.

To a (future) reader looking at this indictment in a vacuum, the (unmentioned Novak article) date in the indictment appears to be arbitrarily chosen–at least unexplained.

As I wrote before, I have no idea how this would help or hurt Team USA (and/or Libby) to include this extra detail, but I assume it does because it was a conscious decision on Fitzgerald’s part to leave Novak’s name and title of the outing article off the Libby indictment.

Will I lost the link to the book if I acknowledge that the vast majority of this originates with you anyway?

A couple of more mundane explanations for those bits of questioning by Fitzgerald. Several of them, it seems to me, may have been Fitzgerald laying the groundwork for questioning either Rove or Libby, just in case either of them ended up testifying. Getting Novak to acknowledge that he told Rove about his reaction to Wilson in the green room helps to bolster the argument the prosecution made in its closing that Libby’s memory was extremely precise when he wanted it to be – he was able to recount in great detail what he heard from Rove on July 11 about Novak’s response to Wilson in the green room. (The question of whether this is all or part bs is, of course, another story that was suspended for the purposes of the trial.) It also sets up a possible line of questioning showing that the administration had an animus against Wilson, one of the things Libby was at pains to sort of deny in his gj testimony.

Getting Novak to admit that he talked to Rove about the still-classified Wilson trip report sets up several potential lines of questioning and argument wrt to Rove and/or Libby. First, it enables the prosecution to argue, at least with regard to Rove, that the administration was playing fast and loose with classified information in their response to Wilson. It also sets up the possibility of questioning Rove and arguing about the chain of custody of that information – where Rove got it from. Also, along the lines suggested in the post, it opens up the question of how Novak got the substance of the information about the Iraqi trade delegation.

Separately, let me add that looking back at Libby’s 3-5 grand jury testimony, around 110, it’s clear Fitzgerald had testimony that Libby had considered preparing a timeline of the preparation of the SOTU for Novak – but it looks like he got this information from Martin, so it’s not clear that he had heard from Novak about it at that point. Also of note is that from his questioning, it looks possible that Fitzgerald was at that hypothesizing that it was in that context that Martin talked with Harlow (as she did) and found out from him that Wilson’s wife was a CIA agent, as she wrote in her notes, though we now know that that conversation appears to have taken place a month earlier, in June 2003. Recall too that Fitzgerald, in one of his recent filings or the sentencing hearings, mentioned that they initially had doubts about the truthfulness of Martin’s testimony. In other words, it looks like in March 2004 Fitzgerald might have been hypothesizing that Novak talked to Libby and Libby agreed, at least provisionally, to prepare a timeline on the SOTU, worked with Martin on it, heard at that point from CIA via Martin about Wilson’s wife, and may have communicated that to Novak. That’s at least possibly what Fitzgerald was hypothesizing. Of course, it’s also possible that by then Fitzgerald had already heard from Novak about his conversation with Libby, though I’m holding out for the possibility that Fitzgerald only went back to Novak about that considerably later.

The thing that completely baffles me is why Fitzgerald objected to the defense questioning Novak about Libby as a non-source for his column, and why that objection at least succeeded in the defense backing off questioning.

The whole thing was a house of cards.

Jodi

I think it’s wrong to suggest tha the defense didn’t do a good job of defending Libby.

I’m a little squeamish about the entire let’s-read-Fitz’s-mind school of Plameology (especially since I’m not a lawyer), but it seems to me that since Libby was the one on trial rather than Novak, the point of underlining that Novak/Libby spoke was to impugn Libby’s honesty in testifying before the grand jury, not Novak’s.

The reason for asking about Novak’s dislike of Wilson, and details from the trip report, could be to support the general picture of a personally motivated campaign to attack Wilson’s credibility using classified information — all of which relates to Libby’s motivation for leaking about Plame.

It appears obvious that Armitage, by accident, leaked Plame’s name to Novak; Army even says so; Army even rushes to DofJustice to confess his error and take responsibility; Army even says that his office initiated the call to Novak to invite him for the interview, when there had never before been a relationship; and the DoJ just sat quietly on his confession with no headsup to Plame?

The above leak makes no sense except as standard-operating-procedure for a professional, covert operative. A read of his apparent background is telling.

His mea culpa to the DoJ serves to establish both his goof and the â€fact†of first-leak. Stereotypical cover story to deflect further inquiry and make the story go away, like used fishwrap.

While none of this can be â€provedâ€, it is enough be aware of the dismal track-record of this administration’s integrity.

Yes, Jodi, you are right. The whole Iraq/Niger uranium story was indeed a house of cards which came tumbling down once it was exposed.

Swopa and emptywheel

I think Swopa gave clearer crisper explanations congruent with the ones I was offering, as far as they went, though in addition I’m pretty convinced by the explanation of why Fitzgerald objected to the defense bringing out Novak’s testimony that Libby was not a source, I guess. But it doesn’t explain how he managed to object more or less successfully.

But I also do think the bit about the trip report might be particularly significant, and Fitzgerald might have been setting up the more specific line of questioning to Rove or Libby about where Rove got that information which he conveyed to Novak. Finally, don’t you think if Fitzgerald was confident that Libby had given details of the trip report to novak he would have raised that in his cross-examination as well?

That’s basically persuasive to me, though I assume when you say

Fitzgerald didn’t have evidence of anything beyond the fact that Novak and Libby had talked

you really mean that Fitzgerald of course had no affirmative evidence that Novak and Libby talked about Plame. You don’t mean he had no evidence of the substance of their conversation, right? I mean, it’s pretty clear that Novak gave some substantive account of their conversation.

I do believe Novak was vague.

However, I suspect the last question: â€it would be inaccurate to say you didn’t talk to him.†does nail Novak. That is, I suspect that was enough to discredit NOvak at this point.

Novak confirmed on July 8.

That means he heard the name before then from someone of Senior level.

He said three sources, two in the White House.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, â€CROSSFIREâ€)

ROBERT NOVAK, CO-HOST: As a professional journalist with 46 years experience in Washington, I do not reveal confidential sources. When I called the CIA in July, they confirmed Mrs. Wilson’s involvement in a mission for her husband on a secondary basis, who is — he is a former Clinton administration official. They asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

His above statement implies intent, after 46 years he knows a failure to comfirm on record means no go with the Company.

Trying to put this at July 8 is being easy on Novak. He called for confirmation and someone had a person remind him not to say what he went on to say.

If he was asking confirmation on the 8th then he clearly got word in well before.

Go to his prior times he mentioned persons known as part of the story, look for stories not related, but compare the timelines that he talked with them.

Most of the time he worked a half week on said stories.

That relates timelines. I’m seeing the dates Grand Jury testimony was filed, not the days the testimony recalled as relevant to the case material in your post.

We need the timeline comparisons for the phone call, the meeting on the street, his call to the CIA(most likely on the 8th), and the White House visitors directory for the week.

That’s why Cheney still forbids compliance. They’ve already committed perjury there with Federal Wintesses and their coaching was illegal.

The trial can simply expand for that reason.

Fitz has other reasons, relating to what he knows. He needs someone to verify what Cheney said regarding intent, the item needed to prove IIPA law as applied to Senior Clearance levels.

He has enough to act on Cheney now, perhaps not enough to drive through Grand Jury with the kind of judicial standards he knows he’ll face, without the compulsory confimation he was seeking.

WOOLSEY: â€Absolutely.

I think that Porter Goss, the chairman of the House committee, had a very good point when he pointed out, in this recent report, that we didn’t have enough collection by individuals on the ground. There are some things that really can only be done by spies, essentially. You can’t find out a lot about terrorist groups and some other things by the satellites.â€
(same CNN link)

Thus sentencing was not harsh enough when you consider what the barrier to discovery was…