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Jul. 4th, 2005 02:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaThe Supreme Court that installed President Bush in 2000 may have just brought him down.
Some background on this. Some time ago, someone in the White House leaked the name of a secret agent to several reporters, one of whom printed the agent's name -- Valerie Plame -- in a newspaper essay. This was an act of vengeance against Plame's husband, a spook and former ambassador who wrote an op-ed piece critical of the administration's Iraq policy. But it was also an all-out assault on the CIA; a large number of field agents were endangered by the revelation.
The leak was illegal, and a grand jury was convened to investigate. The reporters refused to say who the source was though, arguing that the confidentiality of anonymous sources is crucial to the way the press operates. The grand jury held two reporters, one from Time Magazine and one from the New York Times, in contempt of court. The two reporters, having recently exhausted their legal options with the Supreme Court's ruling, were prepared to go to jail, until Time Magazine announced that it was going to give up the information the grand jury wants.
The source of the leak is Karl Rove, the Bush campaign mastermind.
So what was it that Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, said that made the White House so upset in the first place? Wilson contended that the White House was twisting and fixing evidence to make it seem like they had a strong case for going to war with Iraq -- which is precisely what is shown happening in the Downing Street memos. So the grand jury, and perhaps more people in Congress, will hopefully become curious enough about why this charge would so upset the White House, that this matter of the fraudulent "case for war" will finally receive the scrutiny it deserves.
Bush hired a lawyer for his defense in the Plame leak case last year, before the election.
Some background on this. Some time ago, someone in the White House leaked the name of a secret agent to several reporters, one of whom printed the agent's name -- Valerie Plame -- in a newspaper essay. This was an act of vengeance against Plame's husband, a spook and former ambassador who wrote an op-ed piece critical of the administration's Iraq policy. But it was also an all-out assault on the CIA; a large number of field agents were endangered by the revelation.
The leak was illegal, and a grand jury was convened to investigate. The reporters refused to say who the source was though, arguing that the confidentiality of anonymous sources is crucial to the way the press operates. The grand jury held two reporters, one from Time Magazine and one from the New York Times, in contempt of court. The two reporters, having recently exhausted their legal options with the Supreme Court's ruling, were prepared to go to jail, until Time Magazine announced that it was going to give up the information the grand jury wants.
The source of the leak is Karl Rove, the Bush campaign mastermind.
Time Magazine has turned over documents to the Grand Jury which is investigating the Valerie Plame leak. On the McLaughlin Group Friday night, Lawrence O'Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, said that the leak came from Karl Rove.
Here is the transcript of O'Donnell's remarks:
"What we're going to go to now in the next stage, when Matt Cooper's e-mails, within Time Magazine, are handed over to the grand jury, the ultimate revelation, probably within the week of who his source is.
"And I know I'm going to get pulled into the grand jury for saying this but the source of...for Matt Cooper was Karl Rove, and that will be revealed in this document dump that Time magazine's going to do with the grand jury."
from Rove Source of Plame Leak?
So what was it that Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, said that made the White House so upset in the first place? Wilson contended that the White House was twisting and fixing evidence to make it seem like they had a strong case for going to war with Iraq -- which is precisely what is shown happening in the Downing Street memos. So the grand jury, and perhaps more people in Congress, will hopefully become curious enough about why this charge would so upset the White House, that this matter of the fraudulent "case for war" will finally receive the scrutiny it deserves.
Bush hired a lawyer for his defense in the Plame leak case last year, before the election.
