The Wall Street Journal (subscription only) adds its voice in Friday’s edition to those at the NYT and WaPo which have both reported that Libby will likely be indicted for making false statements and that Karl Rove is still in serious legal jeopardy, regardless of the fact that Patrick Fitzgerald’s current grand jury ends its term on Friday. Indictments of others involved in the Plame leak case have not been ruled out.
Mr. Rove’s lawyer has tried in recent weeks to persuade Mr. Fitzgerald not to charge his client, and met with the prosecutor as recently as Tuesday to discuss the case.
The potential indictment of Mr. Rove has been considered a nightmare scenario by members of the Republican party,
Welcome to the nightmare the rest of us have been living ever since Bush and Turdblossom took over the country.
In a WSJ companion piece on the leak investigation, “At Root of Leak Probe
Is Prewar Dispute”, reporter Jay Solomon details the rift between the White House and the CIA with the help of two of our regular contributors: Larry Johnson and Col. Patrick Lang.
WASHINGTON — At the root of the investigation into the leaking of the identity of a CIA operative is a feud between the Central Intelligence Agency and the White House over whether top administration officials politicized intelligence information in the buildup to the Iraq war.
With charges likely to be filed as early as today, the ripple effects of that feud are still being felt. The same tension over prewar intelligence that led to the leaking of a CIA operative’s identity also led to finger-pointing between the agency and the White House and contributed to a decision to reorganize the intelligence community and put the CIA under new White House oversight. Dozens of senior CIA analysts and covert operatives, including the No. 2 at the Directorate of Operations — the agency’s clandestine network — have in recent months left the Langley, Va., offices, often to higher wages in the private sector.
Now some intelligence professionals think indictments might help clear the air by effectively penalizing administration aides for intruding into intelligence matters and prompting the White House to tread more carefully. And that, say current and former intelligence officials, might embolden the CIA to be more forceful in its analysis, without fearing information would be twisted.
Any indictments would be a “huge deal … because they will help restore hope that the system works,” said Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and counterterrorism official at the State Department.
According the article, there is also growing tension as Bush appointee John Negroponte, Director of the Office of National Intelligence, attempts to reorganize the system by “stripping out some units of the CIA and placing them under his direct control” along with “seeking to institute standard procedures across the intelligence community, such as ways to handle clandestine agents”.
Much displeasure has also been aimed at Porter Goss who has been tasked with overseeing the restructuring of the CIA:
Critics say Mr. Goss brought senior-level aides and an aloof management style that didn’t mesh with the CIA’s culture, and failed to restore the confidence of the U.S.’s principal intelligence body.
The article goes on to look at the history of conflicts between the White House, CIA analysts and former CIA Director George Tenet who claimed the CIA had a “slam dunk” case to invade Iraq.
Responding to the White House’s claims that there was no political pressure on intelligence analysts and professionals before the war to fix the intelligence and that the Fitzgerald investigation may finally prove that there was, Col. Patrick Lang tells the WSJ:
“Many people will feel vindicated,” said Patrick Lang, a former head of human intelligence collection at the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, who has regular contact with many active analysts and agents. “There’s a deep sense of satisfaction among those who were pressured [on intelligence issues] but were told not to say they were pressured.”
