Libby's PowerPoint Defense
/in emptywheel /by emptywheelThanks to Jeralyn for posting the most recent Libby filing, in which his team explains they want to show a PowerPoint to exonerate Libby for outing a NOC.
No, seriously, the filing is a list of classified documents they want to introduce at trial, including:
- The PowerPoint
- A range of classified documents (including Libby’s notes and Morning Daily Briefings–MDBs) for the periods June 9 to June 14, and July 5 to July 12
- A "representative sample" (other wise known as cherry picked) of classified documents (again, Libby’s notes and MDBs) from other periods to corroborate Libby’s memory defense
- "Wilson/Niger" documents–including documents Libby created and documents others created
Keep reading for my take on how they plan to use these.
The Armitage Bombshell that Isikoff Didn't Mention
/in emptywheel /by emptywheelGotta go have a good old old fashioned floor fight at my state convention (Go Amos Williams!!), so will have to post more later. But here are the most important passages in Isikoff’s new article:
Armitage acknowledged that he had passed along to Novak informationcontained in a classified State Department memo: that Wilson’s wifeworked on weapons-of-mass-destruction issues at the CIA. (The memo madeno reference to her undercover status.)
[snip]
Fitzgerald found no evidence that Armitage knew of Plame’s covert CIA status when he talked to Novak and Woodward.
I’ll come back and examine whether this means Armitage’s source his leak to Woodward was the first version of the INR memo or not. But this very strong suggests that Armitage only had the information included in the INR memo. That, in turn, strongly suggests he didn’t leak Plame’s cover identity (remember, he told Woodward Plame was an analyst).
Therefore, whoever else leaked to Novak told him that Plame was an operative.
Yoo Misleads You
/in emptywheel /by emptywheelThe most breathtaking moment in John Yoo’s op-ed today in the LAT comes when he seamlessly moves from claiming British "advantages" over our civil liberties protections don’t go far enough to throwing out probable cause as equally old fashioned.
But increasing detention time or making warrants easier to come by merely extends an old-fashioned approach to catching terrorists. These tools require individualized suspicion and "probable cause"; police must have evidence of criminal activity in hand. Such methods did not prevent 9/11, and stopping terrorists, who may have no criminal record, requires something more.
Yoo never mentions probable cause again in his op-ed. But he’s already done it–declared probable cause old-fashioned, "quaint" in the same way the Geneva Conventions are.