...or at least they used to be. Now, Ari Fleischer could become a witness in the CIA leak case, and the PNAC veteran's worst nightmare. From TalkLeft:
Ari Fleischer is a very dangerous witness for Scooter Libby. Check out Fitz's affidavit from August, 2004 submitted in the Judith Miller subpoena suit, which was unsealed by the Court in February, 2006. You can read the unredacted portions in the Court's opinion here or in my prior summary with lengthy quotes.
It's not just that Libby allegedly told Fleischer at lunch on July 7 before Fleischer left for Africa with President Bush that Joseph Wilson's wife worked in the Counterproliferation area of the CIA and that she was involved in the decision to send Wilson to Niger. It's that Fleisher told Fitz and the grand jury that Libby told him the information was "hush-hush" and "on the qt."
For example, then-White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer recalls that over lunch on July 7, the day before Libby's meeting with Miller, Libby told him, "[T]he Vice-President did not send Ambassador Wilson to Niger . . . the CIA sent Ambassador Wilson to Niger. . . . [H]e was sent by his wife. . . . [S]he works in . . . the Counterproliferation area of the CIA." (II-545-47.) Describing the lunch as "kind of weird" (II-590-91), and noting that Libby typically "operated in a very closed-lip fashion" (II-592), Fleischer recalled that Libby "added something along the lines of, you know, this is hush-hush, nobody knows about this. This is on the q.t." (II-546-47.) Though Libby remembers the lunch meeting, and even says he thanked Fleischer for making a statement about the Niger issue, he denies discussing Wilson's wife. (I-108-09, 156, 226-27.) Libby is denying he discussed Valerie Wilson with Fleischer at lunch on July 7. He either has to destroy Fleischer's credibility at trial--or else convince the jury that Fleischer was mistaken. ... The main trouble for Libby is that his conversations with Ari came very close to his convos about Mrs. Wilson with other government officials, and with reporters. It's going to be tough to prove that he forgot so much in so little time.
Also, Libby had been claiming he heard Valerie Plame's name form reporters. But if he told Ari, and presumably, Ari took the conversation as a suggestion that he should leak that information to reporters, then Libby's defense has things exactly backwards.
Either way, I think Libby's team is increasingly in a corner. I don't see how he proves, with all the information coming out, including from his side, about the flurry of activity around discrediting Joe Wilson, that he simply forgot where he heard the name. It just doesn't make sense. And by the way, Fleischer has no real motivation to help Scooter out here. Because if he can be proved to have leaked what he knew to be classified information to reporters, after hearing the information from Libby, aboard Air Force One, from that State Department memo or from anywhere else, his keester is on the line, too.
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Tags: Plamegate, Karl Rove, Valerie Plame, Politics, Libby, Bush, Cheney, Rove, Ari Fleischer, Patrick Fitzgerald, Fitzmas, |
