Jason Leopold and Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story report:
Rove failed to tell investigators at the time that he had spoken about Plame to Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper and conservative columnist Robert Novak, both of whom later cooperated in the case. Novak outed Plame in a July 14, 2003 column.
The Chicago prosecutor briefed the second grand jury investigating the outing last week for more than three hours. During that time, he brought them up to speed on the latest developments involving Rove and at least one other White House official, the sources said. The attorneys refused to identify the second person.
As of Monday, neither Rove nor his attorney Robert Luskin has explained Rove’s misstatements to Fitzgerald’s satisfaction, those familiar with the case said. Eleventh-hour testimony from Time Magazine reporter Viveca Novak—who Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin fingered as a crucial witness in keeping his client out of court—does not appear to have been helpful in dodging an indictment, they added.
I suspect the second person is National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. Larry Johnson told us that friends of Hadley said he fully expected to be indicted back in October. It appears that the Viveca Novak defense was ineffective and only served to delay the indictments of Rove and Hadley.
Only true-blue Plameologists need to concern themselves with the Novak defense, but it comes down to this:
Viveca Novak was an occasional lunch drinking partner of Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin. Sometime after Rove talked to the FBI in 2003 Luskin told Novak that Rove didn’t have anything to worry about and Novak told him that she heard he had leaked to a reporter at Time magazine (Matt Cooper). According to Luskin, this was the first he had heard of this, that Rove had forgotten it happened, and that upon learning this news he did a thorough search of email and telephone records. He discovered an email that Rove wrote to Hadley only minutes after getting off the phone with Cooper that disclosed that the conversation was about Wilson.
This defense is pretty weak. Just because Rove didn’t disclose this information to his lawyer doesn’t mean that he had forgotten about it. And how do we know that his lawyer is telling the truth. But it may actually be more incriminating than exculpatory. Rove testified in January February 2004 before the Grand Jury and he did not disclose his conversation with Cooper. He did not correct the record until October 2004. So, even if he had forgotten about his phone call with Cooper and his email to Hadley, he still obstructed Fitzgerald’s investigation for months after being reminded of them. It appears the Novak defense was a mere stalling tactic:
We may be having a BooParty very soon.
VandeHei catches a case of DC loose lip?
On Hardball Yesterday:
VandeHei : “We still don’t know exactly where Karl Rove originally learned about Valerie Plame, that’s still one of the mysteries. We know one of them he had heard it from was Hadley as sort of just chatter inside the office, but he had learned it earlier from some other place and we still don’t know where that is.”
(Did Jim just let a cat out of the bag?)
VandeHei Today: oops, darnest thing, meant to say Libby not Hadley.
Crooks & Liars has the poop.
That little slip-up was corrected today by the Post.
Jim meant to say “Libby.”
But I’ll bring the quesadillas if there’s a party, BooMan.
:}
Fitzmas for Christmas?????? (Please!)
I’m not going to go fully wild and crazy till the trial(s), when we hear how far up the chain of command this trail leads, and hopefully we’ll see Cheney and Bush squirming in their seats…
If this true we’ll have the entire James Brown Revue in for the party.
Boo, you write so well that even an eight-year-old could understand and since that’s about the level of my brain (sinuses stuffed) these days, I’m very grateful.
I was trying to read all the posts and blog items, but I felt like I was walking into the last half of a movie … it was hard to figure out what was going on.
You’ve explained it so well. Thank you.
Party on, dudes!
Everybody sing it now…Oh when the frogs…go marching out….oh when the frogs go marching out…I want to be there at the White House….when the frooooogs go marching out out…bwwwwwwwwwwwwwrrrrraaaaaaahhhaaahhhaaa
In my fantasy, Joe and Valerie Wilson would be standing on the lawn as Karl is marched out … with Joe holding up the key to Karl’s handcuffs.
What a delightful image!
I see the key glittering brightly in the sunlight — while Cheney retreats so far into his ‘undisclosed location’ he can smell the breath of Hades.
Wow! It would be like “home for the holidays” for Cheney. T’is the season to be jolly! Fa la la la la la la.. et al.
Karl slinks out through an underground garage, like a vampire who can’t live in the light of day, while Joe and Valerie Wilson lay a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery honoring all who were sacrificed by the lies of the WHIG.
and then Cheney are indicted and Bush stands all alone going visable crazier so that the whole nation can see what a fruitcake we have installed at the top of our nation!
It’s times like these when I recall the words of J. Michael Straczynski as spoken by Vir Kotto on Babylon-5. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the show, a Mr. Morden was acting as an agent for a group that was trying to stir up trouble between various groups in the Bab-5 universe. (This is a gross oversimplification.) They did this by promising the people and aliens involved money, power, and whatever else they desired. Morden, trying to get through to Kotto, asked him what it was he wanted, and Vir, bless his Centauri heart, responded:
I’d like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I’d look up at your lifeless eyes and wave like this. Can you and your associates arrange it for me, Mr. Morden?
and he gave Morden a timid little finger-wave.
Someday I hope we will all be able to stand on the sidelines as the miscreants are frog-marched out of power and into their new lives at Club Fed, smiling and finger-waving as they go.
We’ll sing it loud, Leezy, and sing it strong. From sea to shining sea.
…..aaack, I can’t. emptywheel, I ain’t, but I do know this much.
Two, small, teensy corrections:
An interesting wrinkle to part 2 is that when she originally met with Fitzgerald at her attorney’s office, not under oath, she could only find 2 entries in her calendar for this meeting, one in January (as per Luskin) and one in May. She seemed to think that the conversation about Cooper was in May.
However, when she was deposed, under oath, by Fitzgerald for the GJ, all of the sudden she finds a new meeting date, March 1, 2004, which she previously missed because she logged it at 5am rather than 5pm (I don’t know about you, but I don’t know of many bars that are open at 5 am). Now she seemed to think that it was most likely this March meeting where the conversation took place, but she still didn’t really remember.
I don’t know if this whole January, March, May bit means anything, but it is curious how yet another player in all this mysteriously finds something new the 2nd time they go before Fitzgerald. I mean we have Rove with the email, Novak with the new meeting date, Pincus with the “forgotten” conversation with Woodward, and of course, Judy, with the “forgotten” June 23rd meeting with Scooter. Is anybody in this case actually telling the truth? Or is there some mysterious “amnesia virus” that seems to be infecting the inside the beltway crowd?
To paraphrase Colin Powell’s shameless plug for a beltway drug of choice, I’d say everyone there still uses Ambien — which has been shown to impair memory significantly in relation to verbal cues.
But seriously, folks ..
Nah. I think there’s something in the water. Or at least in the cocktail party teeny weenies. People who don’t have “access” seem to have much better memories, and minds.
Aha — yet another problem with a likely cause in teeny weenies. Will it never end?
LOL, WW.
“Will it ever end?” Alas, probably not. Or at least not as long as the teeny weenies people are in power.
Make of that what you will, Mr. Freud!
We would be LUCKY if Ambien was the furthest extent of it.
Almost every one of the players in this game are medicated up the yin yang.
BET on it.
Do you think that Butch’s wild swings from smooth front man to on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown debater happen on the NATCH?
That Cheney’s snarl is just a little facial tic?
That Fat Karl is losing weight by dieting and exercise?
PLEASE!!!
It USED to be a Barnum and Bailey world.
Now it’s a Rush Limbaugh world.
Betty Ford was just a pioneer.
Dr. Big Brother is the unindicted (and unsung by the media, most of whose members are ALSO strung out on prescription drugs if my observations of THEIR tics and wobbles are any indication)) co-conspirator in ALL of this bullshit.
Bet on it.
AG
violating the IIPA or the Treason Act?
Are we going to have to settle for obstruction and false statements? That sounds petty, I know, but, really, have the cover-uppers truly succeeded in denying true justice for the outing of a CIA Operative?
I guess in the end, we have to settle for what we can get, and if these fuckers are driven out, it doesnt really matter how. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be a little disappointed, eh?
Bravo, Mr. Fitzgerald!
With investigation after investigation, indictment after indictment coming to media light, perhaps — just perhaps — our drowsy fellow citizens might get a clue as to the true functioning of our ‘leadership’.
.
Viveca Novak was an occassional lunch partner of Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin. Sometime after Rove talked to the FBI in 2003 Luskin told Novak that Rove didn’t have anything to worry about and Novak told him that she heard he had leaked to a reporter at Time magazine (Matt Cooper).
According to Luskin, this was the first he had heard of this, that Rove had forgotten it happened, and that upon learning this news he did a thorough search of email and telephone records. He discovered an email that Rove wrote to Hadley only minutes after getting off the phone with Cooper that disclosed that the conversation was about Wilson.
This should read in her own words as follows ::
Fitzgerald asked how often Luskin and I met during the period from fall 2003 to fall 2004 (about five times), when, where and so forth. I had calendar entries that helped but weren’t entirely reliable. Did I take notes at those meetings? No. Luskin was more likely to speak freely if he didn’t see me committing his words to paper. Did Luskin ever talk to me about whether Rove was a source for Matt on the subject of Wilson’s wife?
That was the “chicken bone” Fitzgerald had referred to, the conversation Luskin had told him about that got me dragged into the probe. Here’s what happened. Toward the end of one of our meetings, I remember Luskin looking at me and saying something to the effect of “Karl doesn’t have a Cooper problem. He was not a source for Matt.“
I responded instinctively, thinking he was trying to spin me, and said something like, “Are you sure about that? That’s not what I hear around TIME.” He looked surprised and very serious. “There’s nothing in the phone logs,” he said. In the course of the investigation, the logs of all Rove’s calls around the July 2003 time period–when two stories, including Matt’s, were published mentioning that Plame was Wilson’s wife–had been combed, and Luskin was telling me there were no references to Matt. (Cooper called via the White House switchboard, which may be why there is no record.)
… If I could have a do-over, I would have kept my mouth shut; since I didn’t, I wish I had told my bureau chief about the exchange. Luskin walked me to my car and said something like, “Thank you. This is important.”
What is astonishing, just like Bob Woodward with WaPo and Judith Miller with NYT, Viveca Novak did not confide with her editor she had spoken with Rove’s lawyer Bob Luskin¹ on the Valerie Plame case, in which TIME was involved through journalist Matt Cooper. Even at the time in November 2005, Viveca Novak spoke with Fitzgerald in the office of her personal lawyer Schuelke, without informing TIME magazine. Interesting to read Ms Novak described Bob Luskin with liberal sympathies for representing Mark Middleton.
Bob Luskin¹ – Member of Phi Beta Kappa– just like George H. Bush, son GWB but also Patrick Fitzgerald and David Boies.
Lawrence O’Donnell – Rove’s Lawyer an On-the-Record Liar
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
yep. a very hasty and sloppy post on my part. mainly because none of it really matters, but still inexcuseable…
.
My personal feeling ::
WH and trustworthy journalists joint forces as they were coming under attack by DOJ Patrick Fitzgerald. Their line of defense was the protection under the 1st Amendment as they would have liked to keep all WMD info under wraps in dark secrecy.
As I analyze the sequence of events, Vaveca Novak was set up by Bob Luskin to be used at his discretion at a later date in an attempt to fool DOJ Patrick Fitzgerald. Just as in the case of Judith Miller and Bob Woodward, this meant a delay in the investigation but hasn’t changed the chances of an indictment, on the contrary.
Glad some persons from CIA HQ and federal prosecutors are steadily moving forward to our common goal.
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Which call was in question for Ralston when she was called in the (2nd?) time? Was that the Matt Cooper call she was instructed specifically not to log in? Would that be how it was forgotten or possibly the one they really wanted to forget?
.
Diary :: Susan Ralston Moves Away from Karl Rove & White House?
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
It has been noted elsewhere that Fitzgerald knew that other calls that came in through the switchboard were logged so using the switchboard excuse/not logging wasn’t going to fly for Cooper’s call. If Rove knew, or counted on journalists not testifying(Cooper) then he could feel relatively safe that it wouldn’t come up. If Rove testified first (FBI under Ashcroft) that he hadn’t talked to reporter(s) about Plame, then later he has some correcting to do.
Some speculation would say that maybe the email was fabricated after the fact to explain the conversation and still be able to have forgotten it, conveniently, but Cooper’s account didn’t jive with Rove’s 2nd story. He corrects again….then 3rd time and 4th?
The thing about the phone call that Ralston was specifically told not to log is that it would make it slightly unusual and stand out in memory. Evidently he tried to disremember it until Ralston testified otherwise.
Here’s the tip-off in my view. The same authors as the article in this diary who are fantastic, dedicated journalists noticed that by the time of the Novak-Luskin cocktails, enough rumor had circulated that Luskin should not have been shocked to hear it from Novak. Rove and Luskin use that, or set it up as the cause to look again for further memory and by luck, find the email. The timing of the Novak-Luskin conversation would show when Rove knew what others knew and it looks like he really botched owning up to the Cooper call.
Out of curiosity, why did Rove instruct Ralston not to log the call but it was important enough to send an email about right after it ended? If Rove gave that instruction when the call came in, he wouldn’t have had any idea what Cooper wanted unless he already knew what would transpire. Either way, it looks like he should have remembered before he testified that it didn’t happen, or happened like he didn’t remember, several times.
They also noted that Fitz has had Rove since Oct 2003 for discrepencies in testimony so this (my guess) is more weight for a larger target.
Your link to the list of famous Phi Beta Kappa members is interesting, but GWB isn’t on it (GHWB and Jeb, yes, GWB, no). (Somehow the idea of W being invited to join an academic honor society startled me – that’s why I went to check at the link.)
.
For setting GWB’s collegiate record straight.
Memory must be failing … or crossed skull and bones society.
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼▼▼ READ MY DIARY
Glad you noticed this, too, JS. I was just about to give back my key!!!!
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Viveca Novak:
“Did I take notes at those meetings? No. Luskin was more likely to speak freely if he didn’t see me committing his words to paper.”
During such unique meetings, I wouldn’t take notes either, not to stall the conversation and let someone open up with information I needed.However, I have never met a reporter would didn’t jot down the useful knowledge gained during these special meetings, especially with the lawyer of the Karl Rove. Or would she have more important conversations in her career than these with a White House under pressure from DOJ and later prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.
To keep any date with a person, sure she would have kept it in her agenda, as would Bob Luskin, as these weren’t four or five meetings by chance at the same place —
We’d occasionally meet for a drink – he didn’t like having lunch – at Café Deluxe on Wisconsin Avenue, near the National Cathedral and on my route home. In October 2003, as we each made our way through a glass of wine, he asked me what I was working on. I told him I was trying to get a handle on the Valerie Plame leak investigation. “Well,” he said, “You’re sitting next to Karl Rove’s lawyer.” I was genuinely surprised, since Luskin’s liberal sympathies were no secret …
Surprise, surprise what do you know! It’s Rove’s lawyer.
.
Bob Luskin is partner and works on same floor as Benjamin Ginsberg, chief legal counsel; both are partners at the law and lobbying firm Patton Boggs, provided outside counsel to the Bush re-election campaign as well as to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth
When did John Ashcroft recuse himself and when did Patrick Fitzgerald step in?
Signs that a Key Witness May Have Come Forward
John W. Dean @ FindLaw’s Legal Commentary
On December 30, Deputy Attorney General Comey held a press conference to announce that Ashcroft had removed himself from the investigation. Comey said that the investigation would instead be headed by Fitzgerald. Of note to me, was Comey’s comment that “this has come together really in the last week” — meaning, apparently, the week of December 22-26 — the Christmas holiday week during which the FBI raised the prospect of a grand jury.
As Comey explained, given Fitzgerald’s U.S. Attorney status — which will be continuing concurrent with his “special counsel” status — there will be no interruption in the investigation. Comey noted that if Fitzgerald “needs to issue a subpoena involving the media, for example, or if he wants to grant immunity to somebody,” he will not have to obtain approval of the Justice Department. (The reference to the media certainly hints at subpoenaing Novak’s phone records, or calling him before the grand jury — again suggesting progress in the inquiry.)
On January 2, NBC News reported that the FBI was focusing on the White House as the probable source of the leak. It also reported that the FBI had asked White House staffers “to sign a form releasing reporters from any promises of confidentiality they may have made to their sources.”
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼▼▼ READ MY DIARY
AWWW, yeeeeahhhhh!
Now I’ll have a reason to COMPLETELY blow off shopping. “Santa couldn’t come this year, honey, he was busy tuning into the MSNBC coverage of Rove’s fall from grace…”
Gee, what will the people at all the holiday family gatherings have to talk about?
What baffels me the most is, how everyone can tell a story and it not be exactly how it is or was and then go off on a tangent and tell a few lies to get away with things. If I took care of my life and business the way these critters do, I would certainly fall out of grace with even my family!!!!
I think Viv is just a 2nd degree payer who wants a little attention and things she can do it by saying things that may/may not mean anything. Why they dont tell their boss is way beyond me too. Off all ppl the boss should have known by all the players.
This also seems to supply more proof that VNovack can confirm that Rove leaked the Plame name to a reporter (Cooper). Great..Libby was saving her to use her and now her testomony will help nail Rove. Question..Did Libby, and when I say Libby I mean Rove, try to get Fitz to hold off on indicting Rove just so his name was not included in the first round of indictments? Did he think the second round would not bring any fanfare or Press? Also..if true..Rove is one selfish bastard…to keep this going longer he just keeps the giant dark cloud over the Bush Admin and White House and keeps the story around longer. What a son of a bitch prick Rove is.
Rove “a son of a bitch prick”? My, how could you say that of the soul and spirit (Rove) of the Bush Admonsteration?
He might be meeting with the grand jury today, but I doubt an indictment is coming today, at least. Imminent, maybe. If he was going to be indicted today, I would think that we’d know about it and Rove’s lawyer would know about it, and Fitz’s spokesperson wouldn’t be saying he can’t confirm or deny that Fitz is meeting with the GJ. Soooon, I hope.
Better it comes on a day when DKOS is functioning, please…..