WASHINGTON (July 17) - The vice president's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, was a source along with the president's chief political adviser for a Time story that identified a CIA officer, the magazine reporter said Sunday, further countering White House claims that neither aide was involved in the leak.
Until last week, the White House had insisted for nearly two years that Libby and Rove had no connection to the leak. [Valerie] Plame's husband is Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, the top U.S. diplomat in Iraq at the start of the Persian Gulf War.
The cover-up is starting to unravel. Let's face it. Wilson went to Nigers to investigate allegations that uranium yellowcake was sold to Iraq. He didn't find evidence supporting these allegations. However, the Bush Administration refuted Wilson's intelligence report, claiming that Saddam was developing his weapons of mass destruction. The yellowcake purchase was another rational for the U.S. to invade Iraq. After Wilson criticized the Bush White House in a New York Times editorial, conservative columnist Robert Novak published a column saying that Wilson's wife was an undercover CIA agent.
This is a White House smear campaign to discredit and destroy Wilson, after he criticized the Bush Administrations rational for going to war. Deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove was a source of Plame's leak in both Cooper's story, and Novak's column. Novak claimed that Rove was the second source and the first source who spilled the story was a "non-partisan gunslinger" type. However, Novak is not credible in this "non-partisan" statement. This entire Plame story is completely partisan--Plame's cover was broken in Novak's column after Wilson published his editorial.
And now we learn that the vice president's chief of staff Libby was also a source for Cooper's story.
Libby and Rove were among the unidentified government officials who provided information for a Time story about Wilson, Cooper told NBC's ''Meet the Press.''
Cooper also said there may have been other government officials who were sources for his article. Time posted ''A War on Wilson?'' on its Web site on July 17, 2003.
The reporter refused to elaborate about other sources. He said that he has given all information to the grand jury in Washington where he was questioned for 2 1/2 hours.
In his first-person account, Cooper said Rove ended their telephone conversation with the words, ''I've already said too much.'' Cooper speculated that Rove could have been ''worried about being indiscreet, or it could have meant he was late for a meeting or something else.''
''This was the first time I had heard anything about Wilson's wife,'' Cooper wrote of his phone call with Rove.
Cooper also had a conversation about Wilson and his wife with Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.
According to Cooper, ''Libby replied, 'Yeah, I've heard that too' or words to that effect'' when Cooper asked if Libby had heard anything about Wilson's wife sending her husband to Niger. Cooper's testimony about Libby came in August 2004, after Libby, like Rove this month, provided a specific waiver of confidentiality, Cooper said.
Someone like Lewis Libby does not just spill the beans on a CIA agent by himself. As the vice president's chief of staff, he would certainly have had access to classified material regarding CIA operations, and he would have known the serious consequences of leaking an agent's identity to the news media. He would not have leaked this information on his own--he would have had authorization. He would have gotten authorization from his boss--Vice President Dick Cheney. And Libby would not have leaked the story only to Cooper. He was probably also the first source--the non-partisan gunslinger--who gave the story to Novak. Rove could have easily gotten this information from both Libby and Cheney in developing this smear campaign against Wilson. Rove and Libby started this campaign of planting information to the reporters to see who would take the bait--Cooper sniffed it, New York Times reporter Judith Miller probably also received the information from those two, but didn't publish the story. It was Robert Novak who took the bait from both Rove and Libby and published the story.
So now Lewis Libby is in a major jam. He has been identified as a major source to the Cooper story. There is no doubt that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will place some heavy pressure on Libby to confirm if he was also Novak's source. Libby would have had access to classified information--he could have easily gotten Plame's identity. There's a good chance that Fitzgerald could charge Libby with leaking Plame's name to the press. The question now is will Libby keep his mouth shut, and become the fall guy for the administration? Or will Libby cut a deal with the special prosecutor, telling the prosecutor and the gran jury what he knows in exchange for lesser charges? How loyal will Libby be if he is going to be charged, convicted, and sent to federal penitentiary? Because the heat is now on him.
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