Cribbed from FireHimNow today for time and efficiency...:
A State Department memo that circulated on Air Force One shortly before Robert Novak wrote his infamous column naming Valerie Plame is the subject of the latest scrutiny over the Plame affair. According to the LA Times, prosecutors are looking into who on Bush's plane might have seen the memo, and how the information got to reporters.
Recall that last year, the phone records from AFO were subpoenaed by the special prosecutor, perhaps to try and figure out if the information was leaked to reporters from there. From NY Newday in March, 2004:
WASHINGTON -- The federal grand jury probing the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity has subpoenaed records of Air Force One telephone calls in the week before the officer's name was published in a column in July, according to documents obtained by Newsday. Also sought in the wide-ranging document requests contained in three grand jury subpoenas to the Executive Office of President George W. Bush are records created in July by the White House Iraq Group, a little-known internal task force established in August 2002 to create a strategy to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
And of course, there was the confirmation today that Cheney's chief deputy, Scooter Libby, was Matthew Cooper's second source for his Time magazine story.
More on the memo:
WASHINGTON — Prosecutors investigating whether Bush administration officials disclosed the name of an undercover CIA operative to news reporters have focused on a 2003 State Department memo that investigators believe might help point to the source of the leak, according to those directly familiar with the proceedings.The memo detailed how a former diplomat was chosen to investigate claims that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium from the African nation of Niger, and it included a description of the role that the CIA operative, who was the diplomat's wife, played in suggesting his name for the assignment.
... The memo was sent by State Department officials to then- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who according to news reports has testified before the grand jury. Powell had the memo with him on Air Force One when President Bush traveled to Africa on July 7, 2003, the day after Wilson's piece was published, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation.
What happened on Air Force One has been of interest to prosecutors, who want to know whether anyone who saw the memo learned Plame's identity and told it to journalists.Telephone logs from the presidential aircraft have been subpoenaed. Among those on the flight was then-Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, who has testified before the grand jury.Fleischer declined to comment for this article, referring all questions to prosecutors. But in a Sept. 29, 2003, e-mail to The Times, Fleischer denied he was the source of the leak. "I have no idea who told Novak, but it was not me," he wrote. [LA Times]
According to the NYT, which originally broke the story, Witnesses in the case have been questioned about the memo, presumably including Libby and Rove, and could provide another source of corroboration for perjury charges if either of them lied to investigators.
The fact that the memo was sent to Powell from within the state department renews my interest in the John Bolton theory of leak evolution, but so far, there's no hard evidence of that, and it certainly renews interest in Mr. Hadley.
But again, the key question here is did any of these people lie to investigators, and does the special prosecutor have something else, some other track he's investigating, besides possible violations of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (which most legal analysts say probably doesn't apply...)
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