Wonderful. Just a glitch here: Fitzgerald’s not buying it. In one passage, he asks him Dick annotation by Dick annotation

Several glitches. Didn’t drink enough coffee before I posted, I guess.

MK

There’s one more passage where Fitz seems to address provenance.

The fact that comments regarding Wilson’s wife were included among the Vice President’s annotations also supports the proposition that defendant’s conversation with the Vice President regarding Mr. Wilson’s wife more likely than not occurred shortly after the publication of the Wilson Op Ed, rather than later, as defendant claimed.5 Evidence placing defendant’s conversation with the Vice President shortly after the publication of the Wilson Op Ed also corroborates the accounts of a number of government witnesses who will testify that defendant discussed Mr. Wilson’s wife on or before July 8, 2003.

First, he seems less sure here than in the passage I cited above when the conversation occurred. But the â€Evidence placing…†seems to say that he does have some kind of evidence that the conversation occurred, which would go straight to provenance questions (that is, if Dick and Libby had a conversation about the annotations, then it suggests that one of them actually wrote the annotations). Though I don’t know what that evidence could be. It also sounds like he has more witnesses to Libby talking about Plame on July 8. In the indictment he mentions Addington, and he places the Cathie Martin conversation on or before July 8 (wonder if he knows it was July 8).

As I read the filing, it seems like Fitzgerald has drawn a pretty straight line to Cheney, and that Fitzgerald is more or less acknowledging that Cheney probably told Libby what to do, that Libby was probably just â€following orders,†but that Libby lied about it.

Is Cheney Fitzgerald’s ultimate target? And how does Libby defend himself without throwing Cheney under the bus, and eliminating any possibilty of a pardon by a pissed-off president?

â€but I don’t recall that early on he asked about it in connection with the wifeâ€

â€when I learned about the wifeâ€

:pffffft:

Feminist that I am, I cringe when I hear some chavinistic, porn-writing, fart-faced bastard refer to an accomplished woman with the disregard used for mere property. The wife?

Or… is he still playing the game that betraying her was a strike against her husband, and that Ms Plame/Flame was insignificant, lest we uncover too much information that silencing her and destroying the Brewster-Jennings operation was their primary goal in the march towards warfare throughout the Middle East.

Too bad no one seems to give a damn.

Glad to see Johnston at the New York Times covering this story, foregrounding the possibility that Cheney will be a trial witness. Even so, I keep thinking that if we lived in a functioning democracy — one whose media/corporate interests didn’t fall so completely in this administration’s lap — we would already hear drums beating for Cheney’s impeachment. Not only are Cheney’s notes a smoking gun, the fact of other witnesses to Libby/Cheney conversations might very possibly illuminate the Vice President’s own efforts to deceive the FBI and Fitzgerald.

This trial will be a spectacle. Believe me, when it comes to lying to the police and lying to the public, Americans do give a damn, particularly when the same man lied us into war. Despite the Times’ studied reticence on the subject, those bigger lies will be Cheney’s legacy, and plenty of Americans already connect the dots.

Did anybody notice this passage in Jeffrey Smith’s WaPo story on Libby this morning:

A previous court filing by Fitzgerald revealed that Cheney had annotated his copy of the column with this question about Wilson: â€Did his wife send him on a junket?†Cheney’s defense lawyers said in a subsequent filing that Libby had testified he never saw those annotations until the FBI showed him a copy. In Libby’s actual testimony, as released by Fitzgerald, he said, â€It’s possible if it was sitting on his desk that, you know, my eye went across it.â€

See that 3rd sentence: â€Cheney’s defense lawyers said…†Is this a typo? Did they mean Libby’s lawyers? Or has Cheney been filing motions in the case also? If so, I don’t remember hearing that previously. Weird.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..02597.html

Hahahahaha!!

That’s priceless, bling. Because it is a typo, it must mean Libby’s lawyers (because they said just that in their last filing). But Smith is just admitting what everyone realizes–that these guys are really working to save Dick’s ass.

It may not be enough to indict him on (Jeff makes a good argument that Fitz wouldn’t keep mentioning these details about Cheney if he intended to indict, though I’m not entirely convinced). But Libby’s defense is causing this evidence to get out there anyway.

EW, I think it is exactly Libby that is forcing Fitz’s hand here. See his response above about who was on the witness list… he was playing his cards close but Libby’s team keeps filing motions to compel…

the government has not commented on whether it intends to call the Vice President as a witness, and the representations it has made regarding the identity of potential government witnesses have been limited to responses to the defense assertions in defendant’s Third Motion to Compel.

To me this says Fitz could very well charge the VP too and then he may or may not be called as a witness for the gov’t against Libby because he would self-incriminate. Fitz is just leaving all the options open… but it’s Libby who is making all this stuff public by trying to call Fitz’s bluff, probably on orders from Cheney to see what kind of a case they have against him… a pretty good one it would seem…