Karl Rove:After 2001

❌

January 2002: Rove: Republicans Can Win Elections on Issue of Winning War against Terror
White House political guru Karl Rove tells the Republican National Committee: “We can go to the American people on this issue of winning the war [against terrorism]. We can go to the country on this issue because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America’s military might and thereby protecting America.” In 2008, current deputy White House press secretary Scott McClellan will write: “Rove was the first administration official to publicly make the case for winning the war as a partisan issue, a marked shift in tone from [President] Bush’s repeated emphasis on unity and bipartisanship in confronting and defeating radical Islam.… Rove’s candor about this strategy infuriated suspicious Democrats, who condemned Rove for trying to politicize the war.” Bush will soon begin campaigning for Republicans in the midterm elections using Rove’s strategy. McClellan will note: “As governor [of Texas], he’d maintained good relations with friendly legislators by refusing to campaign against them, even if they were members of the opposing party. Bush’s actions prompted concern and anxiety among Democrats.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 112-113] Entity Tags: Scott McClellan, Bush administration, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Republican National Committee Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Domestic Propaganda

January 18, 2002: Karl Rove Hints at Using ‘War on Terrorism’ as Partisan Weapon Speaking at the Republican National Committee’s annual winter conference, President Bush’s chief political strategist Karl Rove says, “We can go to the country on this issue [of terrorism], because [Americans] trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America’s military might and thereby protecting America.” Political commentator Joe Conason says that with this comment, Rove “revealed his plans to regain control of the Senate and retain control of the House by turning the war [on terrorism] into a partisan weapon. His wording was blander, of course, but his meaning was perfectly clear.” [NEW YORK OBSERVER, 1/27/2002] Author Ron Suskind will similarly comment in 2006 that Rove’s comment suggested that “the historic public affirmation, thus far, of the ‘war on terror,’ would surely translate into equally historic gains in the 2002 mid-term elections.” [SUSKIND, 2006] Entity Tags: Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, 2004 Presidential Election

January 19, 2002: Rove: Republicans Should Use War on Terror as Campaign Theme White House political adviser Karl Rove says that the Republican Party should campaign primarily on the war on terror in the 2002 midterm elections. “Americans trust the Republicans to do a better job of keeping our communities and our families safe,” Rove tells the Republican National Committee. “We can also go to the country on this issue because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America’s military might and thereby protecting America.” President Bush has said repeatedly that the war on terror should not be considered fodder for partisan political gain. Just days before Rove’s speech, Bush told a gathering in California, “It’s time to take the spirit of unity that has been prevalent when it comes to fighting the war and bring it to Washington, DC.” And Rove recently told reporters that Bush had told his aides: “Politics has no role in this. Don’t talk to me about politics for a while.” Now Rove is publicly advising Republicans to politicize the war. Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe says: “If the White House is politicizing the war, that’s nothing short of despicable. For Karl Rove to politicize the issue is an affront to the integrity of the entire United States military.” McAuliffe’s Republican counterpart, Marc Racicot, calls on McAuliffe “to help stop the politics of obstruction.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 1/19/2002] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, George W. Bush, Republican National Committee, Terry McAuliffe, Marc Racicot Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, 2004 Presidential Election

March 20, 2002: Lawsuit Said to Spur Raid; Targets Allegedly Have Protection from High Republican Figures

Grover Norquist. [Source: Publicity photo] Counterterrorism expert John Loftus files a lawsuit against Sami al-Arian, a Florida professor with suspected ties to US-designated terrorist groups. Hours later, the SAAR network, a group of charities based in Herndon, Virginia, is raided (see March 20, 2002). Loftus claims that a January 2002 raid on the network was cancelled for political reasons, so he filed his lawsuit to force the raid. The SAAR network investigation grew out of an investigation of al-Arian and other people in Florida in the mid-1990s. In 2004, Loftus will claim that for years, people like al-Arian and Abdurahman Alamoudi, one of the targets of the SAAR raid, were able to operate with impunity “because [US agents had] been ordered not to investigate the cases, not to prosecute them, because they were being funded by the Saudis and a political decision was being made at the highest levels, don’t do anything that would embarrass the Saudi government.… But, who was it that fixed the cases? How could these guys operate for more than a decade immune from prosecution? And, the answer is coming out in a very strange place. What Alamoudi and al-Arian have in common is a guy named Grover Norquist. He’s the super lobbyist. Newt Gingrich’s guy, the one the NRA calls on, head of American taxpayers. He is the guy that was hired by Alamoudi to head up the Islamic Institute and he’s the registered agent for Alamoudi, personally, and for the Islamic Institute. Grover Norquist’s best friend is Karl Rove, the White House chief of staff, and apparently Norquist was able to fix things. He got extreme right wing Muslim people to be the gatekeepers in the White House. That’s why moderate Americans couldn’t speak out after 9/11. Moderate Muslims couldn’t get into the White House because Norquist’s friends were blocking their access.” [ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, 3/21/2002; MSNBC, 10/23/2005] Entity Tags: Sami Al-Arian, John Loftus, Karl Rove, Abdurahman Alamoudi, Grover Norquist, SAAR Foundation Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

May 16, 2002 and After: Democrats Raise Questions about Bush’s Warning of 9/11 Attacks Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) says he is “gravely concerned” to learn that President Bush “received a warning in August about the threat of hijackers,” referring to a CBS News report revealing that Bush had been warned about a possible hijacking over a month before the 9/11 attacks (see August 6, 2001). Daschle calls on the White House to provide the classified briefing to Congressional investigators. House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-MO) says, using the language of Watergate investigators, “I think what we have to do now is find out what the president, what the White House knew about the events leading up to 9/11, when they knew it, and, most importantly, what was done about it at the time.” White House deputy press secretary Scott McClellan will later write that, as objectionable as the White House finds these statements, “the Democrat who most aroused the ire of the White House and Republicans was New York’s Democratic senator, Hillary Clinton.” Clinton takes the floor of the Senate and says, “We learn today something we might have learned at least eight months ago: that President Bush had been informed last year, before September 11, of a possible al-Qaeda plot to hijack a US airliner.” She displays a New York Post headline that reads, “BUSH KNEW” (see May 15, 2002) and “9/11 BOMBSHELL.” “The president knew what?” Clinton asks. McClellan will write that he and his White House colleagues are “incensed” at Clinton’s rhetoric: “To us, such grandstanding appeared to be a return to the ugly partisan warfare that had come to define Washington and its culture during the 1990s. Politics as war, the innuendo of scandal, and the egregious implication that the president had deliberately neglected the country’s safety—it was all in service of the November election results. All the familiar elements were there. The story and the partisan accusations that followed provided great controversy for the media to cover.” (In this passage, McClellan fails to note that White House political guru Karl Rove had, months before, advised Bush and Republican candidates to use the war to attack Democrats in the November 2002 elections—see January 2002). McClellan will complain that Clinton “had not even bothered to call [the White House] to find out more about the facts behind the headlines before delivering her speech,” and will note: “To us, the disingenuous way the leaders rushed to create a damning story line about the president and his administration crossed a line. Republicans objected vehemently and aggressively in a counteroffensive led by the White House,” with Vice President Dick Cheney calling the Democrats’ questions “incendiary” (see May 16, 2002) and Bush declaring, “Had we any inkling, whatsoever, that terrorists were about to attack our country, we would have moved heaven and earth to protect America.” Bush adds: “And I’m confident that President Clinton would have done the same thing (see September 7, 2003). Any president would have.” McClellan will call Bush’s statement “a gesture toward the rapidly vanishing spirit of bipartisanship.” He will write that Democrats did not, by themselves, break the bipartisanship that had supposedly reigned before CBS broke the news of the August 6 briefing: “Democrats were responding in part to perceived efforts by Republicans seeking political advantage from the president’s aggressive efforts to wage war against Islamist terrorists,” and will note that in 1998, Republicans accused President Clinton of “wagging the dog”—launching military strikes against Iraq to distract the nation from the Monica Lewinsky scandal (see December 16-19, 1998). [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 117-118] Entity Tags: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bush administration, George W. Bush, Tom Daschle, Scott McClellan, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Richard Gephardt, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

August 2002: Top Bush Officials Form Group to Sell Iraq War to Public, Congress, and Allies White House chief of staff Andrew Card forms the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, which aims to “educate the public” about the alleged threat from Iraq. WHIG is formed concurrently with the Office of Special Plans (see September 2002). A senior official involved with the group will later describe it as “an internal working group, like many formed for priority issues, to make sure each part of the White House was fulfilling its responsibilities.” [WASHINGTON POST, 8/10/2003] According to White House deputy press secretary Scott McClellan, the WHIG is “set up in the summer of 2002 to coordinate the marketing of the [Iraq] war,” and will continue “as a strategic communications group after the invasion had toppled Saddam [Hussein]‘s regime.” McClellan, who will become a full-fledged member of the WHIG after rising to the position of senior press secretary, will write: “Some critics have suggested that sinister plans were discussed at the WHIG meetings to deliberately mislead the public. Not so. There were plenty of discussions about how to set the agenda and influence the narrative, but there was no conspiracy to intentionally deceive. Instead, there were straightforward discussions of communications strategies and messaging grounded in the familiar tactics of the permanent campaign.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 142] Author Craig Unger will sum up the WHIG’s purpose up more bluntly: “to sell the war.” Members of the group include White House political advisers Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, James R. Wilkinson, and Nicholas E. Calio, and policy advisers led by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, her deputy Stephen Hadley, and Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby. They meet weekly in the White House Situation Room. A “strategic communications” task force under the WHIG is charged with planning speeches and writing position papers. [WASHINGTON POST, 8/10/2003; UNGER, 2007, PP. 241] Marketing Fear, Idea of Invasion as Reasonable - After Labor Day 2002—and after suitable test marketing—the group launches a full-fledged media marketing campaign. The images and storyline are simple and visceral: imminent biological or chemical attack, threats of nuclear holocaust, Saddam Hussein as a psychopathic dictator who can only be stopped by American military force. A key element of the narrative is forged documents “proving” Iraq sought uranium from Niger (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, October 15, 2001, October 18, 2001, November 20, 2001, February 5, 2002, March 1, 2002, Late April or Early May 2002-June 2002, and Late June 2002). One of the main objectives is to swing the dialogue ever farther to the right, creating the assumption in the public mind that war with Iraq is a thoughtful, moderate, well-reasoned position, and delegitimizing any opposition. To that end, Cheney stakes out the “moderate” position, with statements like “many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon” (see August 26, 2002), and neoconservatives such as Michael Ledeen pushing the extremes ever rightward with calls to invade not only Iraq, but Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia (see September 20, 2001, August 6, 2002, and September 4, 2002). The real push is delayed until the second week of September. As Card reminds the group, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August” (see September 6, 2002). The first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is a perfect opportunity to launch the new campaign (see September 8, 2002). [UNGER, 2007, PP. 250-251] Wilkinson, the group’s communications director, is tasked with preparing one of the group’s first public releases, a white paper that will describe the “grave and gathering danger” of Iraq’s “reconstituted” nuclear weapons program. Wilkinson will claim that Iraq “sought uranium oxide, an essential ingredient in the enrichment process, from Africa.” [COUNTERPUNCH, 11/9/2005] 'Push[ing] the Envelope' - According to an intelligence source interviewed by the New York Daily News in October 2005, the group, on “a number of occasions,” will attempt “to push the envelope on things.… The [CIA] would say, ‘We just don’t have the intelligence to substantiate that.’” [NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, 10/19/2005] In 2003, three unnamed officials will tell a Washington Post reporter that the group “wanted gripping images and stories not available in the hedged and austere language of intelligence,” what author and reporter Charlie Savage will call “a stark display of the political benefits that come with the power to control information.” [SAVAGE, 2007, PP. 357] In 2008, McClellan will write of “the heightened rhetoric on Iraq, including unequivocal statements that made things sound more certain than was known.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 137] Using Friendly Media Outlets - An important part of the WHIG strategy is to feed their messages to friendly journalists, such as New York Times reporter Judith Miller. James Bamford, in his book A Pretext for War, will write: “First OSP [Office of Special Plans] supplies false or exaggerated intelligence; then members of the WHIG leak it to friendly reporters, complete with prepackaged vivid imagery; finally, when the story breaks, senior officials point to it as proof and parrot the unnamed quotes they or their colleagues previously supplied.” [BAMFORD, 2004, PP. 325] Entity Tags: Stephen J. Hadley, Scott McClellan, Saddam Hussein, Nicholas E. Calio, White House Iraq Group, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Mary Matalin, Andrew Card, Craig Unger, James Bamford, Charlie Savage, Karen Hughes, James R. Wilkinson, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

September 19, 2002: White House Sends Draft of Resolution Authorizing Military Force Against Iraq to Congress The White House delivers a draft of a strongly worded resolution to Congress authorizing the president to use “all appropriate means” against Iraq. The 20-paragraph draft includes provisions that would allow Bush to ignore the UN and “use all means that he determines to be appropriate, including force, in order to enforce” the UN’s Security Council resolutions, “defend the national security interests of the United States against the threat posed by Iraq, and restore international peace and security in the region.” According to the Associated Press, “Three senior White House aides familiar with the draft said it would give Bush maximum flexibility to confront the threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, including an explicit OK to use military force.” Although numerous congresspersons complain that the proposed wording of the resolution would provide Bush with a blank check to use military force anywhere in the Middle East and Persian Gulf, several senators—Democrats and Republicans alike—say that an amended version of the resolution would likely pass. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 9/19/2002; LONDON TIMES, 9/19/2002; INDEPENDENT, 9/19/2002; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 9/20/2002] The draft lists several allegations against Iraq, depicting the country as an imminent threat against the US and its citizens. It states that Iraq continues to “possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations, thereby continuing to threaten the national security interests of the United States and international peace and security.” It also claims that Iraq “continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations,” including members of al-Qaeda. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 9/20/2002] The proposed resolution asserts that the use of military force against Iraq would constitute self-defense. It reads, “Whereas the United States has the inherent right, as acknowledged in the United Nations Charter, to use force in order to defend itself.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 9/20/2002] The draft calls on Congress to authorize the president to use military force against Iraq. “The President is authorized to use all means that he determines to be appropriate, including force, in order to enforce the United Nations Security Council Resolutions referenced above, defend the national security interests of the United States against the threat posed by Iraq, and restore international peace and security in the region.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 9/20/2002] At a photo opportunity with Secretary of State Colin Powell the same day, Bush tells a gathering of reporters, “At the United Nations Security Council it is very important that the members understand that the credibility of the United Nations is at stake, that the Security Council must be firm in its resolve to deal with a truth threat to world peace, and that is Saddam Hussein. That the United Nations Security Council must work with the United States and Britain and other concerned parties to send a clear message that we expect Saddam to disarm. And if the United Nations Security Council won’t deal with the problem, the United States and some of our friends will.” Allies of the US that Bush expects to join in moving against Iraq “heard me loud and clear when I said, either you can be the United Nations, a capable body, a body able to keep the peace, or you can be the League of Nations.” Of the resolution, Bush says, “I am sending suggested language for a resolution. I want—I’ve asked for Congress’ support to enable the administration to keep the peace. And we look forward to a good, constructive debate in Congress.” Bush emphasizes that the resolution must pass before the upcoming November midterm elections: “I appreciate the fact that the leadership recognizes we’ve got to move before the elections” (see September 24, 2002). [WHITE HOUSE, 9/19/2005] White House political adviser Karl Rove will later claim that the White House does not want to push the resolution through Congress before the elections in order to avoid politicizing the issue, a claim that is demonstrably untrue (see November 20, 2007). Entity Tags: Bush administration, US Congress, Karl Rove, Colin Powell Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

September 24, 2002: Bush Urges Congress to Pass Iraq Resolution Now In a press conference, President Bush urges Congress to pass its resolution authorizing military force against Iraq (see September 19, 2002) before the midterm elections. “Congress must act now to pass a resolution which will hold Saddam Hussein to account for a decade of defiance,” he says. “I’m confident a lot of Democrats here in Washington, DC, will understand that Saddam [Hussein] is a true threat to America. And I look forward to working with them to get a strong resolution passed.” [WHITE HOUSE, 9/24/2002] White House political adviser Karl Rove will later claim that the White House did not want the resolution to go up for debate until after the elections, a claim that is demonstrably untrue (see November 20, 2007). Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Saddam Hussein Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

November 2002 and After: Karl Rove Concerned about 9/11 Investigation Presidential adviser Karl Rove is concerned about the 9/11 Commission, which is soon to be established (see November 15, 2002). Author Philip Shenon will say this is because he thinks that “in the wrong hands… [it] could cost President Bush a second term.” According to Democratic Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, Republican Senator Trent Lott says that behind-the-scenes opposition to the commission’s creation is orchestrated by Rove and the White House’s political office. “It’s all Rove,” Lott tells Daschle. Rove is also involved in the selection of the Commission’s initial chairman, Henry Kissinger (see November 27, 2002), and his successor Tom Kean (see December 14, 2002). [SHENON, 2008, PP. 15, 29] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, 9/11 Commission Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

December 14, 2002: Karl Rove Asks Thomas Kean If He Would Consider 9/11 Commission Chairmanship Following Henry Kissinger’s resignation as 9/11 Commission chairman the day before (see November 27, 2002), presidential aide Karl Rove calls Thomas Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, to ask if he is willing to be considered as chairman of the Commission. Kean, who does not know Rove well and has been out of politics for some time, is surprised that he is being considered for the job. He is even more surprised that it is Rove making the call, especially given Rove’s reputation as the brain behind the rise of President George W. Bush. However, he says that he may do the job, if chosen. Kean will later speak to the president’s chief of staff Andy Card about the job, and formally accept it in a call from President Bush. Rove will later say that he thinks it was he who first suggested Kean as chairman, but will add that he regrets this, due to later battles with the White House. Card will also say he thinks he was the first to suggest Kean. [SHENON, 2008, PP. 16-7, 25] Entity Tags: Thomas Kean, Karl Rove, 9/11 Commission Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

January 25, 2003: Libby Presents Early Draft of Powell UN Speech to Several Top Officials Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, presents the latest draft of a paper that is meant to serve as a rebuttal to Iraq’s December 7 declaration (see February 5, 2003) to Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Paul Wolfowitz, Karl Rove, Richard Armitage, Michael Gerson, and Karen Hughes. The paper, written with the help of John Hannah, is supposed to serve as the basis for the speech Secretary of State Colin Powell will deliver to the UN Security Council on February 5 (see February 5, 2003). In his presentation, Libby says that intercepts and human intelligence reports indicate that Saddam Hussein has been attempting to conceal items. He doesn’t know what items are being hidden by the Iraqis, but he says it must be weapons of mass destruction. He also claims that Iraq has extensive ties to al-Qaeda, and cites the alleged meeting between Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi Intelligence agent (see April 8, 2001) as one example. While Armitage is disappointed with Libby’s presentation, Wolfowitz and Rove seem impressed. Karen Hughes warns Libby not to stretch the facts. [BAMFORD, 2004, PP. 368; ISIKOFF AND CORN, 2006, PP. 175] Entity Tags: Stephen J. Hadley, Richard Armitage, Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Gerson, Condoleezza Rice, Karen Hughes, Karl Rove, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

Late January 2003: White House Counsel Gonzales Denies 9/11 Commission Access to White House Documents White House counsel Alberto Gonzales denies a request made by the 9/11 Commission for access to a number of White House documents pertaining to 9/11, citing executive privilege. The documents date from both the Clinton and Bush administrations. The request is made by Philip Zelikow, the Commission’s executive director, who believes the Commission must see the documents if it is to do its job properly, and that the White House has already indicated the Commission will get what it wants. The documents include highly classified presidential daily briefings (PDBs), the “crown jewels” of US intelligence reporting. Only a very few such PDBs have ever been made available, from the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Zelikow says the Commission needs to see the PDBs so it can determine what warnings Clinton and Bush received about al-Qaeda. However, the PDBs had not been provided to the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, and Gonzales says they will not be given to the 9/11 Commission either. Zelikow tells Gonzales that this would be bad for the Commission and the US, recalling the uproar that ensued when it was discovered the CIA had withheld documents from the Warren Commission that investigated the murder of President Kennedy. Zelikow also pressures Gonzales by threatening to resign from the Commission if it is not given the documents, knowing this will generate extremely bad publicity for the White House. Refusal to Meet with Zelikow - However, Gonzales refuses to cave in and, a few days later, makes what author Philip Shenon calls a “blunt and undiplomatic” phone call to Tom Kean, the Commission’s chairman. He tells Kean that he does not want to see Zelikow ever again, which means that in the future he will only discuss access to the documents with Kean and Commission Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton. Alleged Involvement of Rove - The battle over access to documents and witnesses will go on for some time (see June 2003), and commissioner John Lehman will say that White House political adviser Karl Rove is “very much involved” in it. According to Lehman, “Gonzales cleared everything with Rove,” and friends tell him that “Rove was the quarterback for dealing with the Commission,” although the White House will deny this. [SHENON, 2008, PP. 73-76, 176] Entity Tags: Philip Zelikow, Thomas Kean, John Lehman, Alberto R. Gonzales, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

March 9, 2003 and After: White House Begins Campaign to Smear, Discredit Wilson A day after former ambassador Joseph Wilson appears on CNN questioning the validity of the administration’s claims about the Iraq-Niger uranium purchase (see March 8, 2003), Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley begin a campaign to discredit him. The information comes from senior sources within the State Department, the CIA, and the National Security Council (NSC), all with direct knowledge of the campaign, and from Wilson himself. The sources will say that they and other officials are directed to unearth or “invent” embarrassing information on Wilson that could be used against him in public. Aides in the Office of the Vice President and others, including the sources, prepare a “workup” on Wilson, including memos and classified material on him for Cheney and the NSC. Officials meet regularly in Cheney’s office to discuss the progress of the campaign with Cheney, Hadley, and other officials. Visit to CIA Headquarters - According to an official in the CIA’s Counterproliferation Division (CPD), Cheney and Hadley visit the CIA the day after Wilson’s interview on CNN. Cheney’s original target for discrediting was not Wilson, but David Albright, the former UN weapons inspector who has also challenged the credibility of the Iraq-Niger claims and the rationale for invading Iraq (see March 8, 2003). Cheney asked several CIA officials to find “dirt” on Albright for use in discrediting him in the media. At the outset, the CIA official will say: “Vice President Cheney was more concerned with Mr. Albright. The international community had been saying that inspectors should have more time, that the US should not set a deadline. The vice president felt Mr. Albright’s remarks would fuel the debate.” The CIA will eventually send a “binder” to Cheney’s office containing information about Albright; it is not clear to what, if any, use that information is put. Cheney 'Enraged' - But Wilson’s appearance on CNN and his public ridicule of the Iraq-Niger uranium claim enraged Cheney, who saw Wilson’s comments as a personal attack against him. Hadley also took an interest in Wilson’s remarks because he personally allowed the Iraq-Niger claim to remain in Bush’s State of the Union address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) even after being informed that the documents the claim was based upon were forgeries. Both Cheney and Hadley view Wilson as a possible impediment to the public’s acceptance of the impending Iraq invasion. Cheney chairs a meeting in his office the day after Wilson’s appearance on CNN, attended by, among others, Hadley, White House political guru Karl Rove, Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s deputy national security adviser John Hannah, and several officials from the CIA and State Department, including the officials who will later discuss the matter with the press. “The way I remember it,” says the CIA official, “is that the vice president was obsessed with Wilson. He called him an ‘_sshole,’ a son-of-a-b_tch. He took his comments very personally. He wanted us to do everything in our power to destroy his reputation and he wanted to be kept up to date about the progress.” Hadley says he will write an editorial about the Iraqi threat that should offset Wilson’s remarks; the State Department will redistribute a February 16, 2003 editorial by Hadley that appeared in the Chicago Tribune to newspaper editors around the country. Cheney will appear on NBC’s Meet the Press to refute the challenges to the Iraq-Niger claims (see March 16, 2003). [TRUTHOUT (.ORG), 2/9/2006] In 2004, Wilson will write: “I learned that a meeting right around the time of this particular CNN appearance (see March 8, 2003) led to the decision to produce a ‘workup’ on me for the Office of the Vice President. It was not made clear to me whether Dick Cheney himself attended this meeting, although I was told that senior members of his staff and quite possibly other senior Republicans, including former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, were present and that Gingrich actively participated in a strategy session, the objective of which was to figure out how to discredit me.” [WILSON, 2004, PP. 326-327] False Allegations of 'Womanizing,' Drug Use - Within days, officials in the CIA, NSC, and State Department pass on information to Cheney and Libby that purportedly shows Wilson is a “womanizer” who had occassionally used drugs in his youth; the sources later say that the allegations are entirely false. The sources will say that they are unsure the material was ever used to discredit Wilson, since after the war began on March 19, the media lost interest in Wilson’s warnings. [TRUTHOUT (.ORG), 2/9/2006] Wilson later writes that the meeting about him does “not include discussion of how the president and his senior staff might address the indisputable, if inconvenient, fact that the allegation I had made was true. In other words, from the very beginning, the strategy of the White House was to confront the issue as a ‘Wilson’ problem rather than as an issue of the lie that was in the State of the Union address.… The immediate effect of the workup, I am told by a member of the press, citing White House sources, was a long harangue against the two of us within the White House walls. Over a period of several months, Libby evidently seized opportunities to rail openly against me as an ‘assh_le playboy’ who went on a boondoggle ‘arranged by his CIA wife’—and was a Democratic Gore supporter to boot.” [WILSON, 2004, PP. 441-442] New Interest in Wilson - Cheney’s interest in Wilson will be renewed in May 2003 (see May 2003), when Wilson informs New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof that he was the special envoy who had gone to Niger in February 2002 to investigate the uranium claims (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). Entity Tags: Office of the Vice President, National Security Council, David Albright, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Joseph C. Wilson, John Hannah, Karl Rove, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, CNN, Central Intelligence Agency, US Department of State, Newt Gingrich, Stephen J. Hadley, Valerie Plame Wilson Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

May 1-4, 2003: Many in Media Give Enthusiastic Endorsement to Bush’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ Event

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. [Source: Broadcatching (.com)] The media response to President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” event (see May 1, 2003) is overwhelmingly positive. Of his entrance in a fighter jet, the Detroit Free Press writes that Bush brought his “daring mission to a manly end.” The Washington Post’s David Broder, the dean of the Washington press corps, says that the “president has learned to move in a way that just conveys a great sense of authority and command.” [UNGER, 2007, PP. 304] Matthews Lauds Bush's 'Guy' Status - One of the most effusive cheerleaders for Bush is MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. On an episode of his Hardball broadcast, Matthews gushes about Bush’s “amazing display of leadership” and his appearance as a “high-flying jet star.” Bush “deserves everything he’s doing tonight in terms of his leadership. He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics. Do you think he is defining the office of the presidency, at least for this time, as basically that of commander in chief?” Matthews compares Bush, who sat out Vietnam in the Texas Air National Guard, with former president Dwight D. Eisenhower, who commanded US forces in Europe during World War II. But, Matthews observes: “He looks great in a military uniform. He looks great in that cowboy costume he wears when he goes West.” His “performance tonight [is] redolent of the best of Reagan.” Guest Ann Coulter, a staunch conservative, calls Bush’s performance “huge,” and adds: “It’s hard to imagine any Democrat being able to do that. And it doesn’t matter if Democrats try to ridicule it. It’s stunning, and it speaks for itself.” Democratic pollster Pat Caddell says when he first heard about it, he was “kind of annoyed” because “[i]t sounded like the kind of PR stunt that Bill Clinton would pull. But and then I saw it. And you know, there’s a real—there’s a real affection between him and the troops.… He looks like a fighter pilot.” Matthews continues, “[H]e didn’t fight in a war, but he looks like he does.” Later that night, on Keith Olbermann’s Countdown, Matthews waxes poetic about Bush’s manly qualities: “We’re proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who’s physical, who’s not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like [former Democratic presidential candidates Michael] Dukakis or [Walter] Mondale, all those guys, [George] McGovern [whom Matthews does not identify as a pilot during World War II]. They want a guy who’s president. Women like a guy who’s president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It’s simple. We’re not like the Brits. We don’t want an indoor prime minister type, or the Danes or the Dutch or the Italians, or a [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. Can you imagine Putin getting elected here? We want a guy as president.” 'Fighter Dog' - CNN’s Wolf Blitzer refers several times to Bush’s days as a fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard, without referring to the swirling controversy over whether he used the Guard to get out of serving in Vietnam, and calls Bush “a one-time fighter dog.” Other media pundits and journalists use Bush’s appearance and service record to laud his performance. NBC’s Brian Williams says: “And two immutable truths about the president that the Democrats can’t change: He’s a youthful guy. He looked terrific and full of energy in a flight suit. He is a former pilot, so it’s not a foreign art farm—art form to him. Not all presidents could have pulled this scene off today.” Fox News’s Jon Scott says that Bush “made just about as grand an entrance tonight as the White House could have asked for.… Now, of course, President Bush flew fighters in the Air National Guard, but no pilot, no matter how experienced, can land on an aircraft carrier first time out. The president did take the stick for a short time during his flight, but he let another pilot handle the landing.” Fox’s Wendell Goler continues the tale of Bush actually flying the fighter plane by saying that Bush “took a 20-minute flight to the ship during which he briefly called on his skills as a pilot in the National Guard.” Goler quotes Bush as saying “he flew the plane about a third of the way from North Island Naval Air Station to the carrier Lincoln. He says the pilot asked him if he wanted to do some maneuvers, but he flew it mostly in a straight line.” [WASHINGTON POST, 5/2/2003; MEDIA MATTERS, 4/27/2006] Dowd's Rhetorical Excesses - One of the more extreme reactions comes from New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. She writes of the jet landing and Bush’s exit from the plane: “The tail hook caught the last cable, jerking the fighter jet from 150 mph to zero in two seconds. Out bounded the cocky, rule-breaking, daredevil flyboy, a man navigating the Highway to the Danger Zone, out along the edges where he was born to be, the further on the edge, the hotter the intensity. He flashed that famous all-American grin as he swaggered around the deck of the aircraft carrier in his olive flight suit, ejection harness between his legs, helmet tucked under his arm, awestruck crew crowding around. Maverick [a reference to the iconic action film Top Gun] was back, cooler and hotter than ever, throttling to the max with joystick politics. Compared to Karl Rove’s ‘revvin’ up your engine’ myth-making cinematic style, Jerry Bruckheimer’s movies [Bruckheimer produced Top Gun] look like Lizzie McGuire (a Disney Channel show). This time Maverick didn’t just nail a few bogeys and do a 4G inverted dive with a MiG-28 at a range of two meters. This time the Top Gun wasted a couple of nasty regimes, and promised this was just the beginning.” [EDITOR & PUBLISHER, 5/3/2008] Press Coverage and Later Response - The next day’s press coverage is equally enthusiastic. PBS reporter Gwen Ifill says Bush was “part Tom Cruise [another Top Gun reference], part Ronald Reagan.” The New York Times’s Elisabeth Bumiller calls Bush’s speech “Reaganesque.” New York Times reporter David Sanger writes that Bush’s entrance echoed the movie Top Gun. The Washington Post also reports Bush’s claim of having actually flown the fighter for a period of time. On CBS’s Face the Nation, host Bob Schieffer calls the image of Bush in the flight suit “one of the great pictures of all time,” and adds, “[I]f you’re a political consultant, you can just see campaign commercial written all over the pictures of George Bush.” Schieffer’s guest, Time columnist Joe Klein, adds: “[T]hat was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day.… And it just shows you how high a mountain these Democrats are going to have to climb.” Fox News anchor Brit Hume says Bush was brave for risking the “grease and oil” on the flight deck while “[t]he wind’s blowing. All kinds of stuff could have gone wrong. It didn’t, he carried it off.” Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham tells CNN viewers: “Speaking as a woman… seeing President Bush get out of that plane, carrying his helmet, he is a real man. He stands by his word. That was a very powerful moment.” [WASHINGTON POST, 5/2/2003; MEDIA MATTERS, 4/27/2006; EDITOR & PUBLISHER, 5/3/2008] Entity Tags: David S. Broder, Chris Matthews, Tom Cruise, Texas Air National Guard, Ronald Reagan, Public Broadcasting System, Walter Mondale, Washington Post, Wendell Goler, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, Ann Coulter, Bob Schieffer, Pat Caddell, Brian Williams, CBS News, Wolf Blitzer, Brit Hume, New York Times, Vladimir Putin, Michael Dukakis, George S. McGovern, Fox News, CNN, Elisabeth Bumiller, Detroit Free Press, David Sanger, Dwight Eisenhower, George W. Bush, NBC News, Jerry Bruckheimer, Keith Olbermann, Gwen Ifill, Karl Rove, Laura Ingraham, Jon Scott, MSNBC, Joe Klein, Maureen Dowd Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda

Summer 2003 - November 2004: Gay Prostitute and Fake Journalist Helps GOP Win Key Senate Contest

’Jeff Gannon’ taking part in a White House press briefing. [Source: C-SPAN / Media Bistro] Gay prostitute James Guckert, who moonlights as conservative “journalist” Jeff Gannon (see January 26, 2005), writes a series of articles for the conservative Internet news site Talon News in an attempt to discredit the South Dakota Argus Leader and its veteran political writer, David Kranz. Gannon/Guckert writes a series of articles falsely alleging that Kranz, who had gone to college with Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD), was not only sympathetic to Daschle’s re-election campaign, but was actually working for Daschle. (The National Journal later writes that the blog assault “opened a new and potentially powerful front in the war over public opinion.”) The stories get a tremendous amount of play on right-wing blogs and conservative news Web sites, and the resulting barrage of complaints to the Argus Leader results in that newspaper altering its coverage to more strongly favor Daschle’s opponent, Republican John Thune. Thune’s campaign manager Dick Wadham is an old political crony of White House political guru Karl Rove. Several of the so-called “independent” bloggers decrying the Argus Leader’s coverage are actually working for Wadham. The bloggers and Gannon/Guckert continue their string of allegations, with Gannon/Guckert alleging that Daschle had claimed an improper tax exemption on his Washington home, a story instantly picked up on by Wadham’s cadre of “independent” bloggers. Thune uses the story as the basis of a political ad claiming Daschle is a resident of Washington, not South Dakota. Daschle aides call Gannon/Guckert “the dumping ground for opposition research.” Gannon/Guckert, who also hosts an Internet radio show called “Jeff Gannon’s Washington,” has Thune on as a guest; already having some experience as a member of the White House press corps (see February 18, 2005), he is touted as South Dakota’s “resident DC expert” by Wadham’s paid bloggers. Thune, who narrowly defeats Daschle, later gives interviews touting the impact of independent Internet bloggers and correspondents—without revealing the fact that neither Gannon/Guckert nor the bloggers were actually independent agents. [CBS NEWS, 2/18/2005; SALON, 2/18/2005] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, David Kranz, Dick Wadham, John Thune, National Journal, Tom Daschle, James Guckert, South Dakota Argus Leader, Talon News Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda

June 23-24, 2003: Karl Rove Calls 9/11 Commission Executive Director Zelikow Twice White House adviser Karl Rove makes two telephone calls to Philip Zelikow, the 9/11 Commission’s executive director. The first call comes at 4:40 p.m. and is taken by Karen Heitkotter, an executive secretary at the Commission. Rove says: “This is Karl Rove. I’m looking for Philip.” Heitkotter wonders why Rove is calling Zelikow, but it is not her place to ask for a reason. Therefore, as Zelikow is out of the office, she gives Rove Zelikow’s cell phone number. Heitkotter has been keeping an unofficial record of Zelikow’s calls in a notebook she purchased herself, and logs the calls as “Karl Rove—gave PZ cell #.” Rove calls again the next day, looking for Zelikow. As he is again absent, Heitkotter takes a message. [SHENON, 2008, PP. 106-107] Zelikow will later describe two interactions with Rove during the Commission’s lifetime. It appears that, according to Zelikow, this exchange of calls was “related to past correspondence with me in my Miller Center role [Zelikow previously worked there as a historian], related to presidential library preparation (I had no horse in that race). It was a brief conversation and we did not discuss the Commission.” [ZELIKOW AND SHENON, 2007 ] However, a “senior White House official familiar with Rove’s memory of the contacts with Zelikow” will dispute this, saying that there had been “ancillary conversations” about the workings of the Commission. Rove will talk to Zelikow again in September (see September 4-15, 2003). Interviewed around mid-September 2003, 9/11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton will say that they were not aware of the calls and seem surprised by them, but accept Zelikow’s innocent explanation. [SHENON, 2008, PP. 173-174] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, Karen Heitkotter Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003: Rove: White House Needs to Emphasize that Cheney Did Not Send Wilson to Niger During the morning meeting for senior White House officials, political strategist Karl Rove tells the assemblage that the White House needs to “get the message out” about war critic Joseph Wilson (see July 6, 2003). Rove emphasizes the need to push the point that Wilson was not sent to Niger by Vice President Dick Cheney (see July 6, 2003, July 6-10, 2003, and July 7-8, 2003). At the meeting are Cheney, President Bush, Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis Libby, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and chief of staff Andrew Card, who will soon take over the administration’s response to the Iraq-Niger controversy (see (July 11, 2003)). [US DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 3/5/2004 ] Libby brings an underlined copy of Wilson’s July 6 New York Times op-ed to the meeting. [OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT, 7/7/2003] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Andrew Card, Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice, Joseph C. Wilson, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003: Cheney Communications Director Sends Talking Points concerning Wilson to White House Press Spokesman Just after a morning meeting where White House political strategist Karl Rove emphasized that White House officials need to tell reporters that Vice President Dick Cheney did not send Joseph Wilson to Niger (see 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003), Cheney’s communications director, Cathie Martin, e-mails talking points to White House press secretary Ari Fleischer that state: “The vice president’s office did not request the mission to Niger.” “The vice president’s office was not informed of Joe Wilson’s mission.” “The vice president’s office did not receive briefing about Mr. Wilson’s misson after he returned” (see March 5, 2002). “The vice president’s office was not aware of Mr. Wilson’s mission until recent press reports accounted for it” (see 4:30 p.m. June 10, 2003). [OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT, 7/7/2003; US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, 3/5/2004 ] Minutes later, Fleischer presents these talking points in the morning press briefing. He says of the Wilson op-ed: “Well, there is zero, nada, nothing new here. Ambassador Wilson, other than the fact that now people know his name, has said all this before. But the fact of the matter is in his statements about the vice president—the vice president’s office did not request the mission to Niger. The vice president’s office was not informed of his mission and he was not aware of Mr. Wilson’s mission until recent press accounts—press reports accounted for it. So this was something that the CIA undertook as part of their regular review of events, where they sent him.” [WHITE HOUSE, 7/7/2003; MARCY WHEELER, 10/30/2009] Entity Tags: Bush administration, Joseph C. Wilson, Cathie Martin, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 8, 2003: Deputy Secretary of State Discusses Plame Wilson’s CIA Status with Columnist Syndicated columnist Robert Novak discusses former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s journey to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002) with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see Late June 2003). Novak asks Armitage, “Why in the world did [the CIA] send Joe Wilson on this?” and Armitage answers by revealing what he has learned from a State Department intelligence memo (see June 10, 2003) that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, is a CIA agent who works with the issue of weapons of mass destruction. “I don’t know,” Armitage says, “but his wife works out there.” Armitage also tells Novak that Plame Wilson “suggested” her husband for the Niger trip. [FOX NEWS, 9/8/2006; WILSON, 2007, PP. 256; MARCY WHEELER, 2/12/2007] Novak has already learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA status from White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (see July 7, 2003). Either later this day, or sometime during the next day, Novak also learns of Plame Wilson’s CIA status from White House political adviser Karl Rove (see July 8 or 9, 2003). Novak will publicly reveal Plame Wilson’s CIA status in his next column, apparently as part of an effort to discredit her husband (see July 6, 2003 and July 14, 2003). [NEW YORK TIMES, 7/15/2005; NEW YORK TIMES, 7/16/2005] Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Karl Rove, Richard Armitage, Central Intelligence Agency, Joseph C. Wilson, Robert Novak Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 8 or 9, 2003: Rove Confirms Plame Wilson’s Identity to Columnist White House political strategist Karl Rove returns a telephone call from conservative columnist Robert Novak. Rove has prepared for the call, assembling talking points and briefing materials (see July 7-8, 2003), some drawn from classified government personnel files provided by White House political director Matt Schlapp and other staffers. None of the materials directly involve Valerie Plame Wilson, the CIA agent who Novak will “out” in a soon-to-be-published column (see July 14, 2003). Instead, Rove is preparing to discuss Frances Fragos Townsend, the newly appointed deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism. It is unclear whether Rove speaks with Novak on the evening of July 8 or during the day of July 9. [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 12/16/2005; MARCY WHEELER, 2/12/2007] Combating 'Rearguard' Effort to Undermine Townsend - President Bush has asked Rove to counter what he believes to be a “rearguard” effort within his own administration—led by senior members of Vice President Dick Cheney’s staff—to discredit Townsend and derail her appointment, perhaps because she was once a senior attorney in the Justice Department under then-President Clinton. Novak has been calling other White House officials about Townsend, and Rove intends to give him the White House slant on her: that President Bush, CIA Director George Tenet, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice all have full confidence in her. Part of the conversation is completely off the record, while other parts are on background, freeing Novak to quote Rove as a “senior administration official.” Novak will write his material on Townsend much as Rove lays it out for him. Reporter Murray Waas will later learn that opposition to Townsend within Cheney’s office is so intense that Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby, contemplates leaking damaging material about her to the press in an attempt to disrupt her appointment. Waas will write, “Libby’s tactics against Townsend appear to have paralleled those he took around the same period of time in attempting to blunt [former ambassador Joseph] Wilson’s criticism of the administration’s use of prewar intelligence.” Libby will indeed leak information on Townsend to selected Republicans in Congress, and they in turn will use that information to criticize her appointment. [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 12/16/2005] Novak Broaches Subject of Plame Wilson - It is after they finish discussing Townsend that the submect of Valerie Plame Wilson comes up. Novak and Rove will both tell federal prosecutors that it is Novak who broaches the subject of Plame Wilson, saying he had heard that “Wilson’s wife” had been responsible for sending her husband on a CIA mission to Niger (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, and October 17, 2003). According to later published accounts, Rove replies, “I heard that too.” Novak’s version of events will be slightly different, with him claiming Rove says, “Oh, you know about it.” Novak has already learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (see July 7, 2003) and from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see July 8, 2003). Novak tells Rove that he is still going to write a negative column on Townsend, but implies that he will also write about Wilson and his wife. “I think that you are going to be unhappy with something that I write,” he tells Rove, “and I think you are very much going to like something that I am about to write.” Novak’s July 10 column will attack Townsend as an “enemy within,” a Democratic partisan who will likely not be loyal to the Bush administration. Four days later, he will write his column exposing Plame Wilson as a CIA agent as part of his attack on Wilson’s credibility as a war critic. Investigators will be unable to independently verify that Novak, not Rove, first brought up the subject of Plame Wilson during their conversation; for his part, Rove will deny leaking Plame Wilson’s name to any reporter, and will deny even knowing who she is. [NEW YORK TIMES, 7/15/2005; NEW YORK TIMES, 7/16/2005; NATIONAL JOURNAL, 12/16/2005] Entity Tags: Murray Waas, Joseph C. Wilson, Frances Townsend, Bush administration, Karl Rove, Matt Schlapp, Robert Novak, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Valerie Plame Wilson Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 10 or 11, 2003: Libby, Russert Speak; Libby Will Claim Russert Informed Him of Plame Wilson’s CIA Status Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, and NBC News reporter and anchor Tim Russert speak on the telephone. Libby wants to complain to Russert about an MSNBC talk show host, Chris Matthews, and Matthews’s coverage of the Iraq-Niger controversy (see July 10, 2003). Libby will later claim that, during the conversation, Russert informs him that Valerie Plame Wilson, the wife of war critic Joseph Wilson, is a CIA officer. “All the reporters know” that Plame Wilson is a CIA officer, Libby will testify that Russert says. Russert will testify that he and Libby never discuss Plame Wilson (see November 24, 2003 and February 7-8, 2007), and at the time he has no knowledge of her CIA status. [US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, 3/5/2004 ; WASHINGTON POST, 1/10/2006; MSNBC, 2/21/2007] It is unclear whether Libby speaks to Russert before or after his conversation with White House political strategist Karl Rove, who tells him that he has “outed” Plame Wilson to columnist Robert Novak (see July 10 or 11, 2003). Entity Tags: Robert Novak, Chris Matthews, Karl Rove, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Valerie Plame Wilson, Tim Russert Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 10 or 11, 2003: Rove Informs Libby that He Told Reporter about CIA Agent Shortly after he reveals to columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame Wilson is a CIA agent (see July 8, 2003), White House political strategist Karl Rove advises Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, of the conversation. According to the 2005 indictment filed against Libby (see October 28, 2005), “Libby spoke to a senior official in the White House (Official A) who advised Libby of a conversation Official A had earlier that week with… Novak, in which [Joseph] Wilson’s wife was discussed as a CIA employee involved in Wilson’s trip. Libby was advised by Official A that Novak would be writing a story about Wilson’s wife.” Attorneys involved in the case will later confirm that “Official A” is Rove. [US DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 10/28/2005 ; NATIONAL JOURNAL, 11/12/2005] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Joseph C. Wilson, Robert Novak, Valerie Plame Wilson, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

(July 11, 2003): CIA Spokesman Warns Novak Not to ‘Out’ Plame Wilson Bill Harlow, a CIA spokesman, has a conversation with conservative columnist Robert Novak regarding Novak’s plans to reveal the CIA status of Valerie Plame Wilson in a forthcoming column (see July 14, 2003). Novak has learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see July 8, 2003), and has already spoken to White House political strategist Karl Rove (see July 8 or 9, 2003). Harlow will testify about his conversation with Rove to the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson leak in 2004. In speaking with Novak, Harlow warns as strongly as he can without revealing classified information (i.e. Plame Wilson’s covert status) that Plame Wilson did not authorize her husband’s mission to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002) and Novak should not reveal her name or CIA identity. After their conversation ends, Harlow checks with other CIA officials, and confirms that Plame Wilson is an undercover operative. He then calls Novak back and reiterates that her name should not be used (see Before July 14, 2003). Harlow does not tell Novak that Plame Wilson is an undercover operative, because that information is classified. Novak will ignore Harlow’s warnings and reveal Plame Wilson’s name in his July 14 column. In an October 2003 column, he will minimize Harlow’s warnings, writing that an unidentified CIA official (Harlow) “asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause ‘difficulties’ if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that [she] or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name” (see October 1, 2003). [WASHINGTON POST, 7/27/2005] Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Bill Harlow, Valerie Plame Wilson, Robert Novak, Richard Armitage, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003: Rove Attempts to Turn Iraq-Niger Story against CIA, White House Critic; Outs CIA’s Plame Wilson to Time Reporter White House political adviser Karl Rove, leading the White House’s damage control operation to recoup the losses from Joseph Wilson’s recent op-ed about the fraudulent Iraq-Niger documents (see July 6, 2003), speaks to Time reporter Matthew Cooper. Rove has already discussed Wilson with columnist Robert Novak (see July 8, 2003). Cooper Digging for White House Smear Details - According to Cooper’s notes, an e-mail from Cooper to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy, and Cooper’s later testimony (see July 13, 2005), Cooper is interested in the White House’s apparent smear attempts against Wilson (see March 9, 2003 and After and May 2003). “I’m writing about Wilson,” Cooper says, and Rove interjects, “Don’t get too far out on Wilson.” Rove insists that their conversation be on “deep background,” wherein Cooper cannot quote him directly, nor can he disclose his identity. Rove tells Cooper that neither CIA Director George Tenet nor Vice President Dick Cheney sent Wilson to Niger, and that, Cooper will later write, “material was going to be declassified in the coming days that would cast doubt on Wilson’s mission and his findings.” Outing Plame Wilson - Rove says that it is Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame Wilson “who apparently works at the agency [CIA] on wmd issues who authorized the trip… not only [sic] the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. [Rove] implied strongly there’s still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger.” Rove does not identify Plame Wilson, only calling her “Wilson’s wife,” but Cooper has no trouble learning her name. Rove ends the call with a cryptic teaser, saying, “I’ve already said too much.” Cooper will recall these words two years later when he testifies to the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson identity leak (see January 2004). [COOPER, 7/11/2003 ; NEW YORK TIMES, 7/16/2005; TIME, 7/17/2005; UNGER, 2007, PP. 311-312] Later, Cooper will write: “I have a distinct memory of Rove ending the call by saying, ‘I’ve already said too much.’ This could have meant he was worried about being indiscreet, or it could have meant he was late for a meeting or something else. I don’t know, but that sign-off has been in my memory for two years.” [TIME, 7/17/2005] Cooper will later testify that Rove never told him about Plame Wilson’s covert status. [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 10/7/2005] Call Not Logged - Rove asks his personal assistant, Susan Cooper, to ensure that Cooper’s call does not appear on the White House telephone logs. [COUNTERPUNCH, 12/9/2005] Cooper E-mails Editor - After hanging up, Cooper sends an e-mail to his editors at Time about the conversation (see 11:07 a.m. July 11, 2003). Conversation with Deputy National Security Adviser - After the conversation with Cooper, Rove sends an e-mail to Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, saying he “didn’t take the bait” when Cooper suggested that Wilson’s criticisms had been damaging to the administration (see After 11:07 a.m. July 11, 2003). White House Getting Message Across - Author Craig Unger later notes that while the conversation is on background, the White House is getting across its message that something about Wilson’s trip is questionable, and it has something to do with his wife. Unger writes, “And a White House press corps that relied heavily on access to high level administration officials was listening intently and was holding its fire.” [COOPER, 7/11/2003 ; NEW YORK TIMES, 7/16/2005; TIME, 7/17/2005; NATIONAL JOURNAL, 10/7/2005; UNGER, 2007, PP. 311-312] Rove later testifies that his references to “Niger,” “damaging,” and Bush being “hurt” all referred to the potential political fallout from Wilson’s allegations. As for the statement that “If I were him I wouldn’t get that far out in front of this,” Rove will say he merely wanted to urge Cooper to use caution in relying on Wilson as a potential source. [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 10/7/2005] Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Stephen J. Hadley, Joseph C. Wilson, Matthew Cooper, Bush administration, Michael Duffy, Central Intelligence Agency, George J. Tenet, Craig Unger, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

11:07 a.m. July 11, 2003: Time Reporter Discusses Rove Conversation with Editors Time reporter Matthew Cooper, after learning from White House political strategist Karl Rove that Valerie Plame Wilson is a CIA official (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), e-mails his editor, Michael Duffy, about the conversation. In the e-mail to Duffy entitled “Subject: Rove/P&C” (for personal and confidential), Cooper begins, “Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation.” After noting some of the details above and making some recommendations as to how to handle the story, Cooper concludes, “please don’t source this to rove or even WH [White House].” He suggests that Duffy have another reporter check with CIA spokesman Bill Harlow. [COOPER, 7/11/2003 ; NEWSWEEK, 7/10/2005] Cooper will later explain the “double super secret background” reference as a joke, referring to the movie Animal House, in which the fraternity is placed on “double secret probation.” [WILSON, 2007, PP. 223-224] Entity Tags: Michael Duffy, Karl Rove, Valerie Plame Wilson, Matthew Cooper Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

After 11:07 a.m. July 11, 2003: Rove Alerts Deputy National Security Adviser of Reporter Questioning Iraq-Niger Claims White House political strategist Karl Rove, upon concluding a phone conversation with Time reporter Matthew Cooper in which Rove divulged the CIA status of Valerie Plame Wilson (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), e-mails Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley about the conversation. “Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he’s got a welfare reform story coming,” Rove writes. “When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn’t this damaging? Hasn’t the president been hurt? I didn’t take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn’t get Time far out in front on this.” According to the Associated Press, this is the first indication that an intelligence official knew Rove talked to Cooper before Cooper’s Time article about Plame Wilson and the White House effort to discredit her husband, war critic Joseph Wilson (see July 17, 2003). Rove will testify about the e-mail to the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson leak in 2004 (see October 15, 2004 and October 14, 2005), telling the jury that he never intended to leak Plame Wilson’s identity, but rather wanted to warn Cooper about some of the allegations Wilson was making about the White House’s use of intelligence to bolster its case for war with Iraq. Rove is aware that conservative columnist Robert Novak, whom he has already spoken to about Plame Wilson (see July 8, 2003 and July 8 or 9, 2003), is planning an article on the Wilsons (see July 14, 2003). He also knows that CIA Director George Tenet is planning to take responsibility for the false Iraq-Niger uranium claims made by President Bush and other White House officials (see July 11, 2003 and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 7/15/2005; WASHINGTON POST, 12/3/2005] In 2005, investigative reporter Jason Leopold will note that Rove’s version of the conversation as he recounts it to Hadley is substantially different from the material Cooper records in his notes. Most notably, Rove fails to tell Hadley about his outing of a CIA official. Leopold will write, “It is unclear whether Rove was misleading Hadley about his conversation with Cooper, perhaps, because White House officials told its staff not to engage reporters in any questions posed about Wilson’s Niger claims.” [COUNTERPUNCH, 12/9/2005] Entity Tags: Matthew Cooper, Bush administration, Jason Leopold, Karl Rove, Valerie Plame Wilson, Stephen J. Hadley Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

12:45 p.m. July 11, 2003: Time Reporter E-Mails Cheney’s Communications Director with Questions concerning Iraq-Niger Claims
Time reporter Matthew Cooper, after learning from White House political strategist Karl Rove that Valerie Plame Wilson is a CIA official, and discussing the conversation with his editors at Time (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), e-mails Vice President Dick Cheney’s communications director, Cathie Martin. Cooper sends Martin a list of questions pertaining to their conversation. He focuses on the White House’s attempt to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, Joseph Wilson, and does not ask about Plame Wilson. Martin prints the e-mail and annotates it with brief answers to some of Cooper’s questions. Cooper wants to know: “Who in the vice president’s office communicated to the CIA their interest in the Niger allegations (see (February 13, 2002) and July 6, 2003)? How and when was that communication performed?” “Did the VP or a member of his staff discuss the Niger allegation in any of his personal visits to Langley [CIA headquarters]” (see 2002-Early 2003)? Martin writes “No” beside the question. “Did the VP or a member of his staff play any role in the inclusion of the allegation in the president’s SOTU [State of the Union address]?” Martin writes “No” beside the question (see July 6, 2003, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, and July 8, 2003). “In addition to the VP sitting in on the president’s regular intel briefings, what other intel briefings does the VP get? Part of the answer to this, if I recall correctly from newspaper accounts, is that he often or regularly gets his own CIA briefing in the morning as he’s being driven to work.” “How many persons are employed by the veep’s national security staff?” “In previous VP stories Time has done (before my time), we’ve been told that the VP has a voracious appetite for ‘raw’ intelligence. Still true?” [WHITE HOUSE, 7/11/2003] Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Cathie Martin, Bush administration, Matthew Cooper, Joseph C. Wilson, Karl Rove, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Valerie Plame Wilson Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

After 1:00 p.m. July 11, 2003: Time Reporters Agree to Report on Plame Wilson Leak Time reporter John Dickerson speaks with his colleague Matthew Cooper about Cooper’s recent conversation with White House political strategist Karl Rove (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Rove told Cooper that war critic Joseph Wilson’s wife is the CIA official who sent Wilson on his mission to Niger (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, and October 17, 2003). Cooper sent an e-mail to his editors at Time about the conversation (see 11:07 a.m. July 11, 2003). Dickerson has just recently learned that Wilson’s wife is a CIA official from another White House source (see 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). The two reporters agree that Cooper should pursue the story. As Dickerson will later write: “Matt and I agreed to point out in our files to the cover story that White House officials were going so directly after Wilson. We also agreed that I wouldn’t go back to my sources about the wife business. The universe of people who knew this information was undoubtedly small. Mentioning it to other officials would potentially out Rove as Time’s source to his colleagues. Plus, it was Matt’s scoop and his arrangement with Rove. He had a better sense of how to get the information confirmed without violating their agreement.” [SLATE, 2/7/2006] Six days later, Time will print a story co-authored by Cooper and Dickerson that uses Rove’s disclosure as a central element (see July 17, 2003). Entity Tags: Joseph C. Wilson, John Dickerson, Valerie Plame Wilson, Matthew Cooper, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003: CIA Officially Retracts Uranium-from-Africa Claim Referring to President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), CIA Director George Tenet says in a written statement: “I am responsible for the approval process in my agency.… These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president.” Tenet denies that the White House is responsible for the mistake, putting the blame squarely on himself and his agency. His statement comes hours after Bush blamed the CIA for the words making it into the speech (see July 11, 2003). [CNN, 7/11/2003; CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, 7/11/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 7/12/2003] CIA Chose to Send Wilson to Niger - Tenet also confirms that it was the CIA’s choice to send former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), apparently in an effort to rebut claims that Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the mission. Tenet states: “There was fragmentary intelligence gathered in late 2001 and early 2002 on the allegations of Saddam’s efforts to obtain additional raw uranium from Africa, beyond the 550 metric tons already in Iraq. In an effort to inquire about certain reports involving Niger, CIA’s counterproliferation experts, on their own initiative, asked an individual with ties to the region [Wilson] to make a visit to see what he could learn.” Tenet says that Wilson found no evidence to believe that Iraq had attempted to purchase Nigerien uranium, though this did not settle the issue for either the CIA or the White House. [CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, 7/11/2003] Coordinated with White House - Tenet’s admission was coordinated by White House advisers for what reporter Murray Waas will call “maximum effect.” Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, White House political strategist Karl Rove, and Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis Libby had reviewed drafts of Tenet’s statement days in advance; Hadley and Rove had suggested changes in the draft. [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 3/30/2006] Cheney rejected an earlier draft, marking it “unacceptable” (see July 11, 2003). White House Joins in Blaming CIA - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice also blames the CIA. Peppered with questions from reporters about the claim, she continues the White House attempt to pin the blame for the faulty intelligence on the CIA: “We have a higher standard for what we put in presidential speeches” than other governments or other agencies. “We don’t make the president his own fact witness. That’s why we send them out for clearance.” Had the CIA expressed doubts about the Niger claim before the State of the Union? she is asked (see January 26 or 27, 2003, March 8, 2003, March 23, 2003, April 5, 2003, Early June 2003, June 9, 2003, and June 17, 2003). “The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety,” she replies. “If the CIA, the director of central intelligence, had said, ‘Take this out of the speech,’ (see January 27, 2003) it would have been gone without question. If there were doubts about the underlying intelligence, those doubts were not communicated to the president, to the vice president or to me.… What we’ve said subsequently is, knowing what we know now, that some of the Niger documents were apparently forged, we wouldn’t have put this in the president’s speech—but that’s knowing what we know now.” Another senior White House official, defending the president and his advisers, tells ABC News: “We were very careful with what the president said. We vetted the information at the highest levels.” But another intelligence official, also interviewed by ABC, contradicts this statement. [CNN, 7/11/2003; WHITE HOUSE, 7/11/2003; WASHINGTON POST, 7/12/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 7/12/2003; RICH, 2006, PP. 99; MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 171-172] Tenet’s mea culpa is apparently enough for Bush; press secretary Ari Fleischer says, “The president has moved on.” [WHITE HOUSE, 7/11/2003; RICH, 2006, PP. 99] White House press secretary Scott McClellan will later claim that at this point Rice is unaware that her National Security Council is far more responsible for the inclusion than the CIA. He will write that the news media reports “not unfairly” that Rice is blaming the CIA for the inclusion. [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 171-172] News Reports Reveal Warnings Not to Use Claim - Following Tenet’s statement, a barrage of news reports citing unnamed CIA officials reveal that the White House had in fact been explicitly warned not to include the Africa-uranium claim. These reports indicate that at the time Bush delivered his State of the Union address, it had been widely understood in US intelligence circles that the claim had little evidence supporting it. [BOSTON GLOBE, 3/16/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 3/23/2003; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 6/12/2003; KNIGHT RIDDER, 6/12/2003; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 6/12/2003; KNIGHT RIDDER, 6/13/2003; ABC NEWS, 6/16/2003; NEWSDAY, 7/12/2003; WASHINGTON POST, 7/20/2003] For example, CBS News reports, “CIA officials warned members of the president’s National Security Council staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa.” And a Washington Post article cites an unnamed intelligence source who says, “We consulted about the paper [September 2002 British dossier] and recommended against using that material.” [CBS NEWS, 7/10/2003; CNN, 7/10/2003; WASHINGTON POST, 7/11/2003] Claim 'Technically True' since British, Not US, Actually Made It - White House officials respond that the dossier issued by the British government contained the unequivocal assertion, “Iraq has… sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa” and that the officials had argued that as long as the statement was attributed to the British intelligence, it would be technically true. Similarly, ABC News reports: “A CIA official has an idea about how the Niger information got into the president’s speech. He said he is not sure the sentence was ever cleared by the agency, but said he heard speechwriters wanted it included, so they attributed it to the British.” The same version of events is told to the New York Times by a senior administration official, who claims, “The decision to mention uranium came from White House speechwriters, not from senior White House officials.” [ABC NEWS, 6/12/2003; CBS NEWS, 7/10/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 7/14/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 7/19/2003] Decision Influenced by Office of Special Plans - But according to a CIA intelligence official and four members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who are investigating the issue, the decision to include the Africa-uranium claim was influenced by the people associated with the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (see September 2002). [INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE, 7/16/2003] Reactions - Rice says that the White House will not declassify the October 2002 NIE on Iraq (see October 1, 2002) to allow the public to judge for itself whether the administration exaggerated the Iraq-Niger claim; McClellan will write that Rice is currently “unaware of the fact that President Bush had already agreed to ‘selective declassification’ of parts of the NIE so that Vice President Cheney, or his top aide Scooter Libby, could use them to make the administration’s case with selected reporters” (see 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003). [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 171-172] Two days later, Rice will join Bush in placing the blame for using the Iraq-Niger claim solely on the CIA (see July 13, 2003). McClellan will later write, “The squabbling would leave the self-protective CIA lying in wait to exact revenge against the White House.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 172] Former Ambassador Considers Matter Settled - Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times revealing his failure to find any validity in the claims during his fact-finding trip to Niger (see July 6, 2003 and February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), is pleased at Tenet’s admission. According to his wife, CIA analyst Valerie Plame Wilson, “Joe felt his work was done; he had made his point.” [WILSON, 2007, PP. 140] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, George J. Tenet, Central Intelligence Agency, Joseph C. Wilson, Condoleezza Rice, Ari Fleischer, Bush administration, Karl Rove, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Murray Waas, Valerie Plame Wilson, ABC News, Stephen J. Hadley, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Scott McClellan, CBS News, Office of Special Plans Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

4:00 p.m. July 11, 2003: Novak Sends Plame Wilson Column to Conservative Lobbyist, Who Faxes Copy to Rove Conservative columnist Robert Novak gives a draft of his upcoming column, which outs CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson in the process of criticizing her husband, war opponent Joseph Wilson (see July 14, 2003), to lobbyist Richard Hohlt. Hohlt, whom Novak describes as “a very good source of mine” whom he talks to “every day,” faxes a copy of the Novak column to White House political strategist Karl Rove, one of Novak’s sources for Plame Wilson’s identity (see July 8, 2003 and July 8 or 9, 2003). Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff will later learn that Hohlt facilitated the conversation between Rove and Novak. Hohlt will confirm his action to Isikoff, who will write that by faxing the copy of the column to Rove, Hohlt is “giving the White House a heads up on the bombshell to come.” Hohlt lobbies on behalf of clients such as Bristol Myers, Chevron, JPMorgan Chase, and the Nuclear Energy Association. He is also a powerful fundraiser for the Republican Party, and will bring in over $500,000 to the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. Hohlt is also the head of an influential group of Republicans called the “Off the Record Club,” whose membership includes other influential Republican lobbyists as well as White House officials such as Rove and Joshua Bolten. While Hohlt will minimize the group’s influence to Isikoff, Isikoff will describe it as “help[ing] the White House with damage control.” He will describe Hohlt as “[a]n accomplished information trader [who] serves as a background source for a select group of Washington journalists—Novak above all.” One club member will say that if you want information to appear in Novak’s column, the best way to make it happen is to work with Hohlt. Isikoff will write that Hohlt did not know that Rove told Novak of Plame Wilson’s identity. “I was just trying to be helpful,” Hohlt will say of the Rove fax. [NEWSWEEK, 2/26/2007] Novak will later testify that he “assumed” that Hohlt would not share the column with anyone, though he will admit to a “vague recollection” that “he had told the WH [White House] that there was an interesting piece coming out.” [MARCY WHEELER, 2/12/2007] Entity Tags: Off the Record Club, Joshua Bolten, Joseph C. Wilson, Karl Rove, Michael Isikoff, Richard Hohlt, Valerie Plame Wilson, Robert Novak, Republican Party Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003: Libby Confirms Plame Wilson’s CIA Status to Time Reporter Lewis Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, confirms to Time reporter Matthew Cooper that Valerie Plame Wilson is a CIA officer. Libby has been in regular communication with senior White House officials, including political strategist Karl Rove, to discuss how to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, war critic Joseph Wilson. On July 11, the two spoke privately after a staff meeting. According to later testimony from both Rove and Libby, Rove told Libby that he had spoken to columnist Robert Novak on July 9 (see July 8 or 9, 2003), and that Novak would soon write a column about Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003). Today, Libby joins Cheney and others flying to and from Norfolk, Virginia, aboard Air Force Two; on the return trip, Libby discusses with the others what he should say in response to media inquiries about Wilson’s recent column (see July 6, 2003 and July 12, 2003). After returning to Washington, Libby calls Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine, who has already learned from Rove that Plame Wilson is a CIA officer (see July 8, 2003 and 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). According to Libby’s 2005 indictment (see October 28, 2005), “Libby confirmed to Cooper, without elaboration or qualification, that he had heard this information, too,” that Plame Wilson was CIA. [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 3/30/2006] Libby speaks “on the record” to deny that Cheney had anything to do with the CIA’s decision to send Joseph Wilson to Niger (see July 6, 2003, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, and July 8, 2003). On background, Cooper asks Libby if he knows anything about Wilson’s wife being responsible for sending him to Niger. Libby replies, “Yeah, I’ve heard that too.” [COOPER, 7/12/2003 ; COOPER, 7/12/2003 ; UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT, 12/8/2004 ; TIME, 7/17/2005; US DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 10/28/2005 ] Cheney’s communications director Cathie Martin and Libby’s aide Jenny Mayfield are present for Libby’s call to Cooper. [US DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 10/30/2006 ] Later this afternoon, Libby phones New York Times reporter Judith Miller and discusses Plame Wilson’s CIA status (see Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Entity Tags: Matthew Cooper, Jennifer Mayfield, Joseph C. Wilson, Cathie Martin, Bush administration, Karl Rove, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Valerie Plame Wilson Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 14, 2003: Columnist Outs CIA Agent, Apparently to Discredit Administration Critic

Robert Novak. [Source: MediaBistro (.com)] Conservative columnist Robert Novak, after being told by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and White House political guru Karl Rove that Valerie Plame Wilson is a CIA officer (see July 8, 2003), writes a syndicated op-ed column that publicly names her as a CIA officer. The column is an attempt to defend the administration from charges that it deliberately cited forged documents as “evidence” that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger (see July 6, 2003). It is also an attempt to discredit Joseph Wilson, Plame Wilson’s husband, who had gone to Niger at the behest of the CIA to find out whether the Iraq-Niger story was true (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Novak characterizes Wilson’s findings—that an Iraqi deal for Nigerien uranium was highly unlikely—as “less than definitive,” and writes that neither CIA Director George Tenet nor President Bush were aware of Wilson’s report before the president’s 2003 State of the Union address where he stated that Iraq had indeed tried to purchase uranium from Niger (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). Novak writes: “Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials [Armitage and Rove, though Novak does not name them] told me that Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counterproliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. ‘I will not answer any question about my wife,’ Wilson told me.” Wilson’s July 6 op-ed challenging the administration’s claims (see July 6, 2003) “ignite[d] the firestorm,” Novak writes. [TOWN HALL (.COM), 7/14/2003; UNGER, 2007, PP. 312-313] Novak also uses the intelligence term “agency operative,” identifying her as a covert agent and indicating that he is aware of her covert status. Later, though, Novak will claim that he came up with the identifying phrase independently, and did not know of her covert status. [AMERICAN PROSPECT, 7/19/2005] Asked Not to Print Plame Wilson's Name - Novak will later acknowledge being asked by a CIA official not to print Plame Wilson’s name “for security reasons.” Intelligence officials will say they thought Novak understood there were larger reasons than Plame Wilson’s personal security not to publish her name. Novak will say that he did not consider the request strong enough to follow (see September 27, 2003 and October 1, 2003). [WASHINGTON POST, 9/28/2003] He will later reveal the CIA official as being agency spokesman Bill Harlow, who asked him not to reveal Plame’s identity because while “she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment… exposure of her agency identity might cause ‘difficulties’ if she travels abroad.” In 2008, current White House press secretary Scott McClellan will write: “This struck Novak as an inadequate reason to withhold relevant information from the public. Novak defended his actions by asserting that Harlow had not suggested that Plame or anybody else would be endangered, and that he learned Plame’s name (though not her undercover identity) from her husband’s entry in the well-known reference book Who’s Who in America.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 173-174] McClellan will note, “Whether war, smear job, or PR offensive gone haywire, the CIA took the leak of Plame’s name very seriously.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 174] Plame Wilson Stricken - According to Wilson’s book The Politics of Truth, his wife’s first reaction is disbelief at Novak’s casual destruction of her CIA career. “Twenty years of loyal service down the drain, and for what?” she asks. She then makes a checklist to begin assessing and controlling the damage done to her work. She is even more appalled after totalling up the damage. Not only are the lives of herself and her family now endangered, but so are those of the people with whom she has worked for 20 years (see July 14, 2003). [NEW YORK TIMES, 5/12/2004] In 2005, Joseph Wilson will tell a reporter: “[Y]ou can assume that even if 150 people read the Novak article when it appeared, 148 of them would have been the heads of intelligence sections at embassies here in Washington and by noon that day they would have faxing her name or telexing her name back to their home offices and running checks on her: whether she had ever been in the country, who she may have been in contact with, etc.” [RAW STORY, 7/13/2005] Intimidation of Other Whistle-Blowers? - In 2007, author Craig Unger will write: “The implication from the administration was that the CIA’s selection of Wilson was somehow twisted because his wife was at the CIA. But, more importantly, the administration had put out a message to any and all potential whistle-blowers: if you dare speak out, we will strike back. To that end, the cover of Valerie Plame Wilson, a CIA operative specializing in WMD, had been blown by a White House that was supposedly orchestrating a worldwide war against terror.” [UNGER, 2007, PP. 312-313] Outing about Iraq, Not Niger, Author Says - In 2006, author and media critic Frank Rich will write: “The leak case was about Iraq, not Niger. The political stakes were high only because the scandal was about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a CIA operative who posed for Vanity Fair. The real victims were the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprits—the big enchilada, in John Ehrlichman’s Nixon White House lingo—were not the leakers but those who provoked a war in Iraq for their own motives and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from the fight against those who did attack America on 9/11, and had since regrouped to deadly effect.… Without Iraq, there never would have been a smear campaign against an obscure diplomat or the bungled cover-up [that followed]. While the Bush White House’s dirty tricks, like [former President] Nixon’s, were prompted in part by a ruthless desire to crush the political competition at any cost, this administration had upped the ante by playing dirty tricks with war.” [RICH, 2006, PP. 184] Elevating Profile of Controversy - In 2008, McClellan will write, “By revealing Plame’s status, Novak inadvertently elevated the Niger controversy into a full-blown scandal.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 173] Entity Tags: Scott McClellan, Robert Novak, Valerie Plame Wilson, Richard Armitage, George J. Tenet, Joseph C. Wilson, Bill Harlow, Bush administration, Karl Rove, Central Intelligence Agency, Frank Rich, George W. Bush, Craig Unger Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 17, 2003: Time Reports Administration Attempts to Smear Former Ambassador Time magazine, in an article by Matthew Cooper and two other reporters, asks the question, “Has the Bush administration declared war on a former ambassador who conducted a fact-finding mission to probe possible Iraqi interest in African uranium?” Its answer: “Perhaps.” The ambassador is Joseph Wilson, who flew to Africa in February 2002 to find the truth behind the charges that Iraq had secretly attempted to purchase uranium from Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). Wilson found no evidence to back up those claims (see March 4-5, 2002), and recently wrote a New York Times op-ed blasting the administration’s use of those claims to justify invading Iraq (see July 6, 2003). White House Says Wilson's Report Bolstered Claims - Cooper reports that since Wilson’s op-ed was published, “administration officials have taken public and private whacks at Wilson, charging that his 2002 report, made at the behest of US intelligence, was faulty and that his mission was a scheme cooked up by mid-level operatives.” CIA Director George Tenet and White House press secretary Ari Fleischer have both criticized Wilson and disputed his conclusion, even stating that his findings in Niger actually strengthened the administration’s claims of an Iraq-Niger connection, saying that he reported a meeting with a former Nigerien government official who discussed being approached by an Iraqi official in June 1999 who wanted to expand commercial relations between the two countries. According to government officials, Wilson interpreted that overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales. Fleischer said: “This is in Wilson’s report back to the CIA. Wilson’s own report, the very man who was on television saying Niger denies it… reports himself that officials in Niger said that Iraq was seeking to contact officials in Niger about sales” (see February 1999). Wilson disputes the characterization, saying that he never interpreted the discussion in the way the White House claims he did: “That then translates into an Iraqi effort to import a significant quantity of uranium as the president alleged? These guys really need to get serious.” Wilson and the Forged Documents - Tenet has blasted Wilson for never discussing the forged Iraq-Niger documents (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001); for his part, Wilson said that he did not discuss the documents because he never saw them. And Fleischer says that Wilson erred in taking Nigerien officials at their word: “He spent eight days in Niger and he concluded that Niger denied the allegation. Well, typically nations don’t admit to going around nuclear nonproliferation.” Claims that Wilson Sent at Behest of Wife - Other unnamed White House officials have insinuated that Wilson was sent to Niger at the behest of his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson (see February 13, 2002, February 13, 2002, Shortly after February 13, 2002, February 20, 2002, and February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), whom Cooper identifies as “a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction” (see (June 12, 2003)). Cooper learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA status from White House political adviser Karl Rove (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), though he does not cite Rove as his source in his article. Cooper writes, “These officials have suggested that she was involved in her husband’s being dispatched [to] Niger” (see February 19, 2002). Wilson, according to Cooper, angrily disputes the contention that his wife sent him to Niger, saying: “That is bullsh_t. That is absolutely not the case. I met with between six and eight analysts and operators from CIA and elsewhere [before the February 2002 trip]. None of the people in that meeting did I know, and they took the decision to send me. This is a smear job.” Wilson Sent Due to Cheney's Pressure? - A source whom Cooper identifies as “close to the matter” confirms that Wilson was sent to Niger after Vice President Dick Cheney pressured the CIA to find out about the Iraq-Niger allegations (see Shortly after February 12, 2002), though both Tenet and Cheney’s office deny doing so (see (February 13, 2002)). Cooper quotes Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby, as saying: “The vice president heard about the possibility of Iraq trying to acquire uranium from Niger in February 2002. As part of his regular intelligence briefing, the vice president asked a question about the implication of the report. During the course of a year, the vice president asked many such questions and the agency responded within a day or two saying that they had reporting suggesting the possibility of such a transaction. But the agency noted that the reporting lacked detail. The agency pointed out that Iraq already had 500 tons of uranium, portions of which came from Niger, according to the International Atomic Energy Administration (IAEA—see 1979-1982). The vice president was unaware of the trip by Ambassador Wilson and didn’t know about it until this year when it became public in the last month or so.” Other administration officials, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, claim they, too, heard nothing of Wilson’s report until recently. [TIME, 7/17/2003] Cooper to Testify about Sources - Cooper will eventually testify about his contacts with Rove and Libby during the investigation of the Plame Wilson identity leak (see May 21, 2004, August 24, 2004, July 6, 2005, and July 13, 2005). Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Joseph C. Wilson, George J. Tenet, Bush administration, Ari Fleischer, Karl Rove, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Matthew Cooper, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Time magazine Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 18-21, 2003: Journalists Tell Wilson of ‘Off the Wall’ White House Allegations against Him and Wife According to a later interview with former ambassador Joseph Wilson, after the Robert Novak column outing his wife Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA official appeared (see July 14, 2003), Wilson begins receiving telephone calls from Washington journalists and news agencies about the leak of his wife’s identity. Wilson will characterize the calls as saying, “The White House is saying things about you and your wife that are so off the wall we can’t even put them up.” Shortly afterwards, “a respected journalist” calls Wilson to say, “White House sources are telling us that this story is not about the 16 words,” referring to the specious Iraq-Niger claim made in President Bush’s State of the Union address (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). Instead, the journalist tells him, the White House is saying, “this story is about Wilson and his wife.” The calls culminate with a warning from MSNBC host Chris Matthews that White House political strategist Karl Rove has declared Plame Wilson “fair game” for reporters (see July 21, 2003). [MSNBC, 10/5/2003] Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Bush administration, Robert Novak, Chris Matthews, Karl Rove, Joseph C. Wilson Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 20, 2003: Wilson Learns White House Trying to Focus Media Attention on Him and His Wife Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose wife Valerie Plame Wilson has recently been “outed” as a CIA agent by conservative columnist Robert Novak (see July 14, 2003), learns from NBC political reporter Andrea Mitchell that “senior White House sources” have told her that “the real story here is not the 16 words in the State of the Union address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) but Wilson and his wife.” Mitchell does not reveal her sources. The next day, Wilson learns that White House political chief Karl Rove has declared his wife “fair game” (see July 21, 2003). [WILSON, 2004, PP. 5] Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Andrea Mitchell, Joseph C. Wilson, Karl Rove, Robert Novak Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 21, 2003: Rove Tells News Anchor that Plame Wilson Is ‘Fair Game’ White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove declares that covert CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson, recently outed by conservative columnist Robert Novak (see July 14, 2003), is now “fair game,” presumably for media attacks. Plame Wilson learns of Rove’s declaration when she walks into her den to find her husband Joseph Wilson just getting off the phone. She will later write: “[H]e had a look on his face that I’d never seen before. He said he had just been talking with journalist and Hardball host Chris Matthews [the host of a political discussion show on MSNBC], who had told [Wilson] that he had just spoken with the powerful presidential adviser Karl Rove.” [WILSON, 2007, PP. 147] Wilson himself will later write that Matthews tells him: “I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says, and I quote, ‘Wilson’s wife is fair game.‘… I will confirm that if asked.” Wilson will write: “Those are fighting words for any man, and I’d just had them quoted to me.… Rove was legendary for his right-wing zeal and take-no-prisoners operating style. But what he was doing now was tantamount to declaring war on two US citizens, both of them with years of government service.… For a president who promised to restore dignity and honor to the White House, this behavior from a trusted adviser was neither dignified nor honorable. In fact, it was downright dirty and highly unethical even in a town where the politics of personal destruction are the local pastime.” He cannot be sure why he and his wife are being targeted. Surely, he muses, no one believes that his wife sent him on his mission to Niger (see Shortly after February 13, 2002 and February 19, 2002), or that his trip to one of the poorest countries in Africa had been some sort of pleasure jaunt. He realizes that the ultimate target might not be either his wife or himself, but others who may feel impelled to speak out against the administration, a point he makes later in the day to two reporters from Newsday (see July 21, 2003). [WILSON, 2004, PP. 1-5] Wilson will later write: “To make a political point, to defend a political agenda, to blur the truth that one of the president’s own staffers had scripted a lie into the president’s mouth, one of the administration’s most senior officials found it perfectly acceptable to push a story that exposed a national security asset. It was appalling.” [WILSON, 2004, PP. 351] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Chris Matthews, Bush administration, Valerie Plame Wilson, Joseph C. Wilson Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

August 21, 2003: Wilson Blames Rove for Leaking Wife’s Identity, Says He Should Be ‘Frog-Marched out of White House in Handcuffs’ Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose wife Valerie Plame Wilson’s cover as a CIA agent was blown by two administration officials (see July 14, 2003), says that he believes deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove is responsible for outing his wife. At a public forum in Seattle, Wilson names Rove as the person most likely to have leaked his wife’s covert identity and says he is keenly interested “to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.” [WASHINGTON POST, 9/28/2003] As Wilson will later recall, the comment is greeted by a storm of boos and catcalls, “followed by applause at the thought of everyone’s favorite ogre being frog-marched.” Wilson’s wife is not pleased by Wilson’s turn of phrase, and later warns him to temper his words. [WILSON, 2004, PP. 372] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Valerie Plame Wilson, Joseph C. Wilson Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

Fall 2003: Reports: Bush Aware of Rove’s Role in Plame Wilson Leak President Bush is aware of, and angered by, White House political strategist Karl Rove’s role in the Plame Wilson identity leak, according to an October 2005 report by the New York Daily News. An unidentified “presidential counselor” will tell reporter Thomas DeFrank: “He made his displeasure known to Karl. He made his life miserable about this.” Another “well-placed source” will tell DeFrank that the story of Rove intentionally deceiving Bush about his role in the leak is false, a story spread by White House insiders trying to put distance between Bush and the leak. [SALON, 10/19/2005; WASHINGTON POST, 6/13/2006] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Bush administration, New York Daily News, Thomas DeFrank, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

September 4-15, 2003: Karl Rove Again Calls 9/11 Commission Executive Director Zelikow White House adviser Karl Rove makes two telephone calls to 9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow, one on September 4, the other on September 15. The subject of the calls, which are unofficially logged by Karen Heitkotter, an executive secretary with the Commission, is unclear. Zelikow and Rove had a previous exchange of calls in June (see June 23-24, 2003). [SHENON, 2008, PP. 107, 171-174] According to Zelikow, it concerns “this matter of his elderly friend who had these papers. It had no relation to contemporary problems; he [Rove] was being gracious to someone.” [ZELIKOW AND SHENON, 2007 ] This will be confirmed by a White House official, who will say that Rove calls Zelikow on behalf of an elderly neighbor who had been a senior lawyer at the State Department at the end of World War II. The neighbor wonders whether the Miller Center, a historical research institute Zelikow used to work for, would like to see his papers and talk to him. However, a “senior White House official familiar with Rove’s memory of the contacts with Zelikow” will say this is not the only topic discussed and that there are also “ancillary conversations” about the workings of the Commission. Interviewed around mid-September 2003, 9/11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton say that they are not aware of the calls and seem surprised by them, but accept Zelikow’s innocent explanation. [SHENON, 2008, PP. 173-174] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Karen Heitkotter, Philip Zelikow, Lee Hamilton, Thomas Kean, 9/11 Commission Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

September 7, 2003: ’Propaganda’ Docudrama of 9/11 Airs, Portrays Bush as ‘Action-Movie Superhero’

The video sleeve for ‘DC 9/11.’ [Source: Internet Movie Database (.com)] Showtime broadcasts a “docudrama” about the 9/11 attacks and the White House’s response, entitled DC 9/11: Time of Crisis. According to New York Times author and media critic Frank Rich, the film drastically rewrites history to portray President Bush as “an unironic action-movie superhero.” In the movie, Bush—portrayed by actor Timothy Bottoms, who played Bush in Comedy Central’s satiric That’s My Bush!—is shown overruling his Secret Service detail and ordering Air Force One to return to Washington immediately, an event which never happened (see 10:32 a.m. September 11, 2001 and (4:00 p.m.) September 11, 2001). “If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me!” the movie Bush shouts. “I’ll be at home, waiting for the b_stard!” The movie Bush has other lines that establish his desire to get back to Washington, including, “The American people want to know where their damn president is!” and “People can’t have an AWOL president!” In one scene, a Secret Service agent questions Bush’s demand to return to Washington by saying, “But Mr. President—” only to be cut off by Bush, who snaps, “Try ‘Commander in Chief.’ Whose present command is: Take the president home!” In reality, most of the orders on 9/11 were given by Vice President Dick Cheney and counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke, but in the movie, Bush is the man in charge. “Hike military alert status to Delta,” he orders Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “That’s the military, the CIA, foreign, domestic, everything,” he explains. “And if you haven’t gone to Defcon 3, you oughtta.” To Cheney, he barks: “Vice? We are at war.” The White House team are, in Rich’s words, “portrayed as the very model of efficiency and derring-do.” [WASHINGTON POST, 6/19/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 9/5/2003; RICH, 2006, PP. 25-26] New York Times reviewer Alessandra Stanley notes that Bush is the unquestioned hero of the film, with British Prime Minister Tony Blair portrayed as “not very eloquent” and Cheney depicted as “a kowtowing yes-man.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 9/5/2003] Conservative Pundits Influenced Script - The movie is produced by Lionel Chetwynd, whom Rich calls “the go-to conservative in B-list Hollywood.” For the movie script, Chetwynd was given unprecedently broad access to top White House officials, including Bush. He also received the assistance of conservative Washington pundits Charles Krauthammer, Morton Kondracke, and Fred Barnes, who cover the Bush White House for such media outlets as Fox News, the Weekly Standard, and the Washington Post. Rich later writes that much of the film seems based on Bob Woodward’s “hagiographic [book] Bush at War (see November 25, 2002).” [WASHINGTON POST, 6/19/2003; RICH, 2006, PP. 25-26] Propaganda Effort? - Before the movie airs, Toronto Sun columnist Linda McQuaig called the film an attempt to mythologize Bush in a fashion similar to Hollywood’s re-creation of the Wild West’s Wyatt Earp, and wrote that the film “is sure to help the White House further its two-pronged reelection strategy: Keep Americans terrified of terrorism and make Bush look like the guy best able to defend them.” Texas radio commentator Jim Hightower added that the movie would present Bush as “a combination of Harrison Ford and Arnold Schwarzenegger.… Instead of the doe-eyed, uncertain, worried figure that he was that day, Bush-on-film is transformed into an infallible, John Wayne-ish, Patton-type leader, barking orders to the Secret Service and demanding that the pilots return him immediately to the White House.” Chetwynd himself has acknowledged that he is a “great admirer” of Bush, and has close ties to the White House. In late 2001, Bush appointed him to the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. “This isn’t propaganda,” Chetwynd insisted during the shooting of the movie, adding: “Everything in the movie is [based on] two or three sources. I’m not reinventing the wheel here.… I don’t think it’s possible to do a revision of this particular bit of history. Every scholar who has looked at this has come to the same place that this film does. There’s nothing here that Bob Woodward would disagree with.… It’s a straightforward docudrama. I would hope what’s presented is a fully colored and nuanced picture of a human being in a difficult situation.” [WASHINGTON POST, 6/19/2003] Rich will later write that the film is “unmistakably a propaganda effort on behalf of a sitting administration.” [RICH, 2006, PP. 25-26] Blaming the Clinton Administration - Perhaps most questionably, Stanley writes, the film “rarely misses a chance to suggest that the Clinton administration’s weakness was to blame for the disaster.” Bush, she notes, is portrayed as a more decisive leader than his predecessor: in the film, he tells Blair over the telephone: “I want to inflict pain [on the attackers]. Bring enough damage so they understand there is a new team here, a fundamental change in our policy.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 9/5/2003] 9/11 Widow Unhappy with Film - Kristen Breitweiser, who lost her husband in the attack on the World Trade Center, calls the film “a mind-numbingly boring, revisionist, two-hour-long wish list of how 9/11 might have gone if we had real leaders in the current administration.” She adds: “It is understandable that so little time is actually devoted to the president’s true actions on the morning of 9/11. Because to show the entire 23 minutes from 9:03 to 9:25 a.m., when President Bush, in reality, remained seated and listening to ‘second grade story-hour’ while people like my husband were burning alive inside the World Trade Center towers, would run counter to Karl Rove’s art direction and grand vision.” Breitweiser questions numerous aspects of the film: “Miscellaneous things that surprised me included the fact that the film perpetuates the big fat lie that Air Force One was a target. Forgive me, but I thought the White House admitted at the end of September 2001 that Air Force One was never a target, that no code words were spoken and that it was all a lie (see 10:32 a.m. September 11, 2001 and September 12, 2001). So what gives?… Not surprisingly, there is no mention of accountability. Not once does anyone say, ‘How the hell did this happen? Heads will roll!’ I was hoping that, at least behind closed doors, there were words like, ‘Look, we really screwed up! Let’s make sure we find out what went wrong and that it never happens again!’ Nope, no such luck.” [SALON, 9/8/2003] Entity Tags: Charles Krauthammer, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Richard A. Clarke, Showtime, Alessandra Stanley, Tony Blair, Bob Woodward, Morton Kondracke, Lionel Chetwynd, Timothy Bottoms, Kristen Breitweiser, Donald Rumsfeld, Clinton administration, Fred Barnes, Frank Rich, Karl Rove, George W. Bush, Linda McQuaig, Jim Hightower Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Domestic Propaganda, 2004 Presidential Election

September 15, 2003: Time Reporter Publishes Article Sourced from Rove Conversation Outing Plame Wilson Time reporter Matthew Cooper publishes a brief article on the Bush administration’s attempts to reform the US welfare program. The article is in part sourced to information obtained by Cooper from White House political strategist Karl Rove, in the same conversation where Rove outed CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). [TIME, 9/15/2003] Entity Tags: Bush administration, Valerie Plame Wilson, Matthew Cooper, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

September 16, 2003: Rove Lies to Press Secretary about Role in Plame Wilson Leak After being asked about the Plame Wilson leak in a press conference (see September 16, 2003), White House press secretary Scott McClellan asks White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove about his involvement in the leak. McClellan has called questions about Rove’s involvement “ridiculous,” and wants to have Rove confirm McClellan’s public denial. McClellan will later write: “I wanted to make sure I hadn’t climbed out on a limb. Rove had known [conservative columnist Robert] Novak (see July 8, 2003 and July 14, 2003) for years and spoke with him from time to time, and of course he was known for playing hardball politics. But surely even he knew that leaking classified national security information would cross a line.” As McClellan recalls, he asks Rove: “A reporter asked me today if you were one of Novak’s sources and ‘burned the cover’ of [former ambassador Joseph] Wilson’s wife. I said it was totally ridiculous. You weren’t one of Novak’s sources, right?” Rove responds, “Right.” McClellan says, “Just wanted to make sure.” Rove affirms, “You’re right.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 179-180] Entity Tags: Scott McClellan, Karl Rove, Robert Novak Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

September 16, 2003: White House Press Secretary Fends Off Aggressive Questioning Regarding Rove’s Involvement in Plame Wilson Leak

Russell Mokhiber. [Source: Democracy Now!] White House Press secretary Scott McClellan is asked by journalist Russell Mokhiber about the likelihood of White House political chief Karl Rove’s possible involvement in the Plame Wilson leak. McClellan will call Mokhiber “a Ralph Nader associate and liberal White House critic… interested in gotcha reporting, plain and simple, to damage an administration he held in low regard.” Mokhiber notes that Plame Wilson’s husband Joseph Wilson believes Rove leaked her name to Robert Novak (see August 21, 2003), and adds, “[T]his is apparently a federal offense, to burn the cover of a CIA operative.” McClellan will write that he has not discussed the matter with Rove as yet, and is somewhat taken aback by Mokhiber’s “emotionally offputting” phrasing. He “confidently” tells Mokhiber, “That’s just ridiculous.” He will continue denying any involvement by Rove, and will later write, “It was the stance I would maintain as the scandal blossomed.” [WHITE HOUSE, 9/16/2003; MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 179] Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Russell Mokhiber, Joseph C. Wilson, Karl Rove, Scott McClellan Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

September 26, 2003: FBI Begins Criminal Investigation into Plame Wilson Identity Leak The Justice Department authorizes the FBI to open a criminal investigation into leaks of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert identity by sources within the Bush administration (see July 14, 2003, July 30, 2003, and September 16, 2003). [MSNBC, 2/21/2007; WASHINGTON POST, 7/3/2007] The investigation is headed by the Justice Department’s counterespionage chief, John Dion. [VANITY FAIR, 1/2004] Questions of Impartiality - Dion is a veteran career prosecutor who has headed the counterespionage section since 2002. He will rely on a team of a half-dozen investigators, many of whom have extensive experience in investigating leaks. However, some administration critics are skeptical of Dion’s ability to run an impartial investigation: he will report to the Justice Department’s Robert McCallum, who is an old friend and Yale classmate of President Bush. Both Bush and McCallum were members of the secret Skull & Bones Society at Yale. Others believe the investigation will be non-partisan. “I believe that the career lawyers in Justice—the people who preceded [Attorney General] John Ashcroft and who will be there after he leaves—will do a nonpolitical investigation, an honest investigation,” says legal ethics specialist Stephen Gillers. “Ashcroft’s sole job is to stay out of it.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 10/2/2003; LOS ANGELES TIMES, 10/2/2003] CIA Director Filed Request - The request for an investigation (see September 16, 2003) was filed by CIA Director George Tenet; a CIA official says Tenet “doesn’t like leaks.” White House press secretary Scott McClellan says he knows of no leaks about Wilson’s wife: “That is not the way this White House operates, and no one would be authorized to do such a thing. I don’t have any information beyond an anonymous source in a media report to suggest there is anything to this. If someone has information of this nature, then he or she should report it to the Department of Justice.” McClellan calls Joseph Wilson’s charges that deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove leaked his wife’s name (see August 21, 2003) “a ridiculous suggestion” that is “simply not true.” A White House official says that two administration sources (later revealed to be Rove and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage—see June 13, 2003, July 8, 2003, and 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003) leaked Plame Wilson’s name to six separate journalists (see Before July 14, 2003). The White House is notoriously intolerant of leaks, and pursues real and supposed leakers with vigor. Wilson says that if the White House did indeed leak his wife’s name, then the leak was part of what he calls “a deliberate attempt on the part of the White House to intimidate others and make them think twice about coming forward.” [WASHINGTON POST, 9/28/2003] White House, Democrats Respond - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says that the White House is willing to have the Justice Department investigate the charges. “I know nothing of any such White House effort to reveal any of this, and it certainly would not be the way that the president would expect his White House to operate,” she tells Fox News. “My understanding is that in matters like this, a question like this is referred to the Justice Department for appropriate action and that’s what is going to be done.” However, some Democrats want more. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) says the Justice Department should appoint a special counsel to investigate the charges, since the department has an inherent conflict of interest: “I don’t see how it would be possible for the Justice Department to investigate whether a top administration official broke the law and endangered the life of this agent (see July 21, 2003). Even if the department were to do a thorough and comprehensive investigation, the appearance of a conflict could well mar its conclusions.… Leaking the name of a CIA agent is tantamount to putting a gun to that agent’s head. It compromises her safety and the safety of her loved ones, not to mention those in her network of intelligence assets. On top of that, it poses a serious threat to the national security of this nation.” Representative Richard Gephardt (D-MO) says the White House should find out who is responsible for the leak, and Congress should investigate the matter as well. [WASHINGTON POST, 9/28/2003; FOX NEWS, 9/29/2003] FBI Will Acknowledge Investigation - The FBI officially acknowledges the investigation on September 30 (see September 30, 2003), and informs the White House of the investigation. [NEW YORK TIMES, 2006] Entity Tags: Richard Gephardt, Karl Rove, Richard Armitage, Stephen Gillers, US Department of Justice, Joseph C. Wilson, Valerie Plame Wilson, Scott McClellan, John Dion, Robert McCallum, George W. Bush, Charles Schumer, Condoleezza Rice, Bush administration, George J. Tenet, Federal Bureau of Investigation, John Ashcroft Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

After September 26, 2003: Rove Assures Bush He Did Not Leak Plame Wilson’s Identity to Press Shortly after the FBI launches its investigation into the Plame Wilson leak (see September 26, 2003), White House political strategist Karl Rove assures President Bush that he had no involvement in leaking Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity to the press (see July 8, 2003 and 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Rove also assures Bush that he had nothing to do with leaking information to the press concerning Plame Wilson’s husband, war critic Joseph Wilson. He does not tell Bush about his July 2003 conversation with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, in which he identified Plame Wilson as a CIA agent, nor does he tell him that he told Cooper that Plame Wilson had arranged for her husband to go to Niger (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, and October 17, 2003). According to a 2005 story in the National Journal, Rove will also fail to disclose this information in his upcoming interviews with FBI investigators. Because of Rove’s assurances, Bush will tell White House press secretary Scott McClellan that he vouches for Rove’s non-involvement in the Plame Wilson affair (see September 29, 2003), and will give special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald the same assurances (see June 24, 2004). [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 10/7/2005] Entity Tags: Joseph C. Wilson, Federal Bureau of Investigation, George W. Bush, Matthew Cooper, Karl Rove, National Journal, Valerie Plame Wilson Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

September 29, 2003: Rove Denies Leaking Plame Wilson’s Identity to Press ABC News producer Andrea Owen asks White House political guru Karl Rove about leaking Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity: “Did you have any knowledge or did you leak the name of the CIA agent to the press?” Rove answers, “No.” When Owen asks, “What is your response to the fact that Justice is looking into the matter (see September 29, 2003)?” Rove shuts his car door without answering, and drives away. [ABC NEWS, 9/29/2003] Entity Tags: ABC News, Valerie Plame Wilson, Karl Rove, Andrea Owen Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

September 29, 2003: White House Denies Rove Involvement in Plame Wilson Leak, Says Leaker Should Be Fired

Scott McClellan and Karl Rove. [Source: Doug Mills / New York Times] Newly promoted White House press secretary Scott McClellan takes part in his first truly contentious White House press briefing. He will later recall feeling “well prepared,” both from the morning’s less formal “press gaggle” and from a prebriefing preparation session with his staff. He has confirmed from President Bush and White House chief of staff Andrew Card that the White House had no involvement in the Plame Wilson leak (see September 29, 2003). McClellan is authorized to say that anyone involved in the leak “would no longer be in this administration”; Bush has said, “I would fire anybody involved.” McClellan will later write, “I had his full, unequivocal approval.” Bush has also reminded McClellan to ask reporters to come forward if they know who the leakers are. [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 187-189] Leakers 'Would No Longer Be Part of This Administration' - During the briefing, McClellan says that it is “simply not true” that White House political adviser Karl Rove is involved in the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity (see September 26, 2003 and September 27, 2003). He says, after frequent questioning about Bush being “passive” about the possibility of criminal activities in the White House, “If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.” [WHITE HOUSE, 9/29/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 2006] Denying Rove's Involvement - McClellan denies again and again that Rove or any other White House official leaked Plame Wilson’s identity to the press. “[T]hat is not the way this White House operates,” he says. “The president expects everyone in his administration to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. No one would be authorized to do such a thing. Secondly, there—I’ve seen the anonymous media reports, and if I could find out who ‘anonymous’ was, it would make my life a whole lot easier.… [A]nyone—anyone—who has information relating to this should report that information to the Department of Justice.” The only information suggesting White House involvement has come from the media, McClellan says. A reporter asks McClellan about his statement earlier in the day that “the president knows” Rove did not leak Plame Wilson’s name. McClellan says: “I’ve said that it’s not true. And I have spoken with Karl Rove.… [Bush is] aware of what I’ve said, that there is simply no truth to that suggestion. And I have spoken with Karl about it.” When pressed about discussing the matter with Rove, McClellan adds, somewhat contradictorily: “I’ve known Karl for a long time, and I didn’t even need to go ask Karl, because I know the kind of person that he is, and he is someone that is committed to the highest standards of conduct.… I have spoken with Karl about this matter and I’ve already addressed it.” McClellan refuses to answer repeated questions about any possible White House investigations or attempts to find the leakers, repeating his answer that any such investigation is a task best left to the Justice Department and repeatedly asking reporters if they have any information about the leaks. He dodges repeated questions about the possibility of Attorney General John Ashcroft appointing a special counsel to investigate the leaks (see December 30, 2003). [WHITE HOUSE, 9/29/2003] 'Aggressive' Push Back against Reporters' 'Assumptions' and 'Challenges' - McClellan will later describe his performance at the briefing as “push[ing] back aggressively on assumptions embedded in the questions, and challeng[ing] reporters to produce information suggesting that White House aides were responsible for the leak.” He will write: “Those last words [the statement that anyone caught leaking information ‘would no longer be part of this administration’] would get plenty of media play over the next few years, particularly as important information came to light. With the president’s approval and his oft-stated commitment to honor and integrity embedded in my mind, I could not have been more confident in what I said.” The post-briefing critique with his staff, he will recall, is “very positive.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 187-189] Entity Tags: Bush administration, Karl Rove, Scott McClellan, Andrew Card, John Ashcroft, US Department of Justice, Valerie Plame Wilson, George W. Bush Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

September 29, 2003: Bush Assures Press Secretary that Rove Not Involved in Plame Wilson Leak White House press secretary Scott McClellan obtains a third confirmation from White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove (see September 27, 2003) that he had “neither leaked nor condoned leaking [CIA agent Valerie] Plame [Wilson]‘s identity,” as McClellan will write in 2008. McClellan will add, “That day would be the last time I would talk to or hear from Karl about anything specifically related to the leak.” When McClellan asks President Bush about it, as he will later write: “‘Karl didn’t do it,’ the president reflexively said.… The ‘it’ clearly meant disclosing Plame’s identity to reporters.… ‘He told me he didn’t do it,’ the president continued.… Rove had already denied to me that he’d leaked Plame’s name, and now I was learning that he had also told the president that he was not involved.” Both Bush and McClellan catch sight of White House chief of staff Andrew Card, who, in McClellan’s recollection, “had raised his hands above his waist and was now gesturing down with both to indicate to the president that he should keep quiet and stop talking about what was fast becoming a sensitive subject.” Bush says, “with a slight hint of irritation in his voice: ‘What? That’s what Karl told me.’” Card responds: “I know. But you shouldn’t be talking about it with anyone, not even me.” McClellan believes Card is referring to the strictures imposed on the White House staff by the Justice Department investigation (see September 26, 2003 and September 30, 2003). In McClellan’s recollection, Bush has little interest in observing Card’s warning. McClellan tells Bush that though he has already told the press that Rove was not involved in the leak, he will undoubtedly be asked again. Then he asks Card, “Do we know anything more about the investigation?” Card says he knows of nothing new. McClellan will later write, “The discussion in the Oval [Office] that morning—the day we would learn that an investigation was indeed under way—was a moment Andy would later recollect for prosecutors, and that I would be asked to confirm under oath to a federal grand jury.” McClellan confirms the line to take during the morning “press gaggle” (see September 29, 2003): the leak “of classified information is a serious matter,” it should be “pursued to the fullest possible extent,” and “the Department of Justice is the appropriate agency to look into it.” Bush agrees, and adds, “And I hope they find who did it.” McClellan then asks Card, “I am still good to say that nothing has been brought to our attention to suggest White House involvement, beyond what we have read in the papers, right?” Card agrees, and adds, “[L]ast I heard from Al [White House counsel Alberto Gonzales], he did not either.” As McClellan will later write, “We were all on the same page.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 182-185] Shortly after the FBI launched its investigation (see September 26, 2003), Rove had personally assured Bush that he had not disclosed Plame Wilson’s identity to anyone in the press (see After September 26, 2003). Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Scott McClellan, Bush administration, Karl Rove, Andrew Card, Alberto R. Gonzales, US Department of Justice Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

September 29, 2003: Novak Promises to ‘Protect’ Rove from FBI Investigation Columnist Robert Novak, who revealed the secret CIA identity of Valerie Plame Wilson to the public (see July 14, 2003) after learning of her identity from White House officials Richard Armitage (see June 13, 2003) and Karl Rove (see July 8, 2003), calls Rove three days after the Justice Department announced that the CIA had asked it to investigate the source of the Plame Wilson leak (see September 26, 2003). Novak assures Rove that he will protect him from being harmed by the investigation. The conversation between Novak and Rove will later be revealed during statements given to the FBI (see October 8, 2003). Attorney General John Ashcroft will later be told by the FBI that it suspected Rove and Novak of colluding to concoct a cover story to protect Rove (see October and November 2003). Rove will later testify that during the conversation, Novak tells him, “You are not going to get burned,” and, “I don’t give up my sources.” According to Rove, Novak also refers to a 1992 incident in which Rove was fired from the Texas gubernatorial campaign of George W. Bush after the campaign learned that he had been the source for a Novak column criticizing the campaign’s inner workings. Novak assures Rove that nothing like that will happen now. “I’m not going to let that happen to you again,” Novak tells Rove. Rove will testify that he believes Novak means that he will say Rove was not a source for the Plame Wilson information—in essence, that Novak would lie about Rove’s involvement. Rove will call their conversation “curious,” and say he was unsure what to make of it. In 2006, Washington lawyer Stanley Brand says that for potential witnesses to discuss a case with one another “raises the inference that they are comparing each other’s recollections and altering or shaping each other’s testimony.… [There is a] thin line between refreshing each other’s recollections… and suborning someone to lie under oath.” Journalism professor Mark Feldstein will later say that Novak may have stretched the boundaries of journalistic ethics, or broken them entirely, by contacting Rove after the criminal investigation had been announced. “A journalist’s natural instinct is to protect his source,” Feldstein will say. “Were there no criminal investigation, it would have been more than appropriate for a reporter to say to a source, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to out you.’ But if there is a criminal investigation under way, you can’t escape the inference that you are calling to coordinate your stories. You go very quickly from being a stand-up reporter to impairing a criminal investigation.” A close friend of Rove’s will say in 2006 that he doubts either Rove or Novak will ever change their stories and testify against the other, regardless of the evidence or the truth of the matter. “These are two people who go way back, and they are going to look out for each other,” the friend says. [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 5/25/2006] Entity Tags: US Department of Justice, John Ashcroft, Karl Rove, Mark Feldstein, Valerie Plame Wilson, Stanley Brand, Robert Novak Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

September 30, 2003: White House Orders Staff to Cooperate with FBI Investigation of Plame Wilson Identity Leak The FBI publicly acknowledges that it has opened an investigation into the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see September 26, 2003). The White House directs its staff to fully cooperate with the investigation (see September 29-30, 2003). President Bush tells the press: “If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated the law, he will be taken care of.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 9/30/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 2006] (In White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s later recollection, “he’d made clear that if anyone in his administration had been responsible for the leak, he or she would have to leave.”) [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 216] Bush says there are “just too many leaks” from both the White House and Congress. The Justice Department instructs the White House, through White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, to preserve all records relating to the case, including any involving contacts with columnist Robert Novak (who first publicly outed Plame Wilson—see July 14, 2003), and two Newsday reporters, Timothy Phelps and Knut Royce (see September 30, 2003). Phelps and Royce wrote a July 2003 article claiming that “intelligence officials” had confirmed and expanded on Novak’s identification of Plame Wilson, and stated that Plame Wilson worked for the CIA in “an undercover capacity” (see July 21, 2003). Bush tells reporters that he is “absolutely confident that the Justice Department will do a very good job” of investigating the case, indicating that he will not support calls for an outside special counsel to take over the probe. The Justice Department has not ruled out asking for a special counsel, though Attorney General John Ashcroft says his department is more than capable of handling the investigation itself. Democrats say that Ashcroft’s Justice Department should not conduct any such investigation because of Ashcroft’s close connections to White House personnel who may be involved in the leak, such as White House political adviser Karl Rove. At a fundraising luncheon, Bush indirectly dismisses the controversy over the Plame Wilson outing as part of the “needless partisan bickering that dominates the Washington, DC, landscape.” A Republican source close to the White House tells the New York Times that the investigation will blow over within a matter of days. “The general view inside the White House among senior staff is that this is going to create a few rocky political days, that it’s mainly the Democrats pushing it and that if all the Republicans stay on board, the story goes away,” the source says. [NEW YORK TIMES, 9/30/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 2006] Plame Wilson’s husband, former ambassdor Joseph Wilson, will later call this an “absurdly broad net, as there were only a very small number of people in the administration whose responsibilities overlap the national security and the political arenas, the best pool of possible suspects in which to start looking.” Wilson will note, “If the president really wanted to ‘come to the bottom of this,’ as he claimed to reporters on October 7 (see October 7, 2003), he could have acted like the strong chief executive he claims to be and brought his senior people into a room and demanded that they produce the leaker.” [WILSON, 2004, PP. 399] Entity Tags: Joseph C. Wilson, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Bush administration, Alberto R. Gonzales, John Ashcroft, Valerie Plame Wilson, US Department of Justice, Timothy Phelps, Scott McClellan, Knut Royce, Robert Novak, Karl Rove, George W. Bush Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

September 30, 2003: Senate Democrats Fail to Pass Resolution Asking for Special Counsel in Plame Wilson Investigation Senate Democrats attempt to pass a non-binding resolution asking Attorney General John Ashcroft to name a special counsel to investigate the Plame Wilson leak, but Republicans squelch the resolution on procedural grounds. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), the sponsor of the resolution, says, “This is not just a leak; this is a crime, plain and simple” and deserves an independent inquiry. Democrats say the Justice Department has an inherent conflict of interest in investigating the White House; they note that top Bush strategist Karl Rove, who has been accused of having a role in the leak, once was a consultant to Ashcroft. [WASHINGTON POST, 10/1/2003] US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald will be named as special counsel for the investigation (see December 30, 2003). Entity Tags: John Ashcroft, Charles Schumer, US Department of Justice, Valerie Plame Wilson, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

September 30, 2003: Bush: ‘I Want to Know Who the Leakers Are’ At an afternoon press briefing at the University of Chicago, President Bush is questioned about the Plame Wilson leak investigation (see September 26, 2003). Bush says that there are “too many leaks of classified information in Washington. There’s leaks at the executive branch; there’s leaks in the legislative branch. There’s just too many leaks. And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of.” He is “absolutely confident that the Justice Department will do a very good job” in the investigation. “I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business.” Asked whether White House political strategist Karl Rove might be the source of the leak (see July 8, 2003, July 8 or 9, 2003, and 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), Busn replies: “Listen, I know of nobody—I don’t know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I’d like to know it, and we’ll take the appropriate action.” He remarks that “Washington is a town where there’s all kinds of allegations,” and again asks that if anyone has any “solid information, please come forward with it. And that would be people inside the information who are the so-called anonymous sources, or people outside the information—outside the administration. And we can clarify this thing very quickly if people who have got solid evidence would come forward and speak out. And I would hope they would. And then we’ll get to the bottom of this and move on.… I want to know who the leakers are.” [WHITE HOUSE, 9/30/2003; CBS NEWS, 9/30/2003] Entity Tags: Bush administration, Karl Rove, US Department of Justice, George W. Bush Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October and November 2003: FBI Informs Attorney General of Attempts by Rove, Libby to Mislead Investigators FBI agents investigating the Plame Wilson identity leak inform Attorney General John Ashcroft that they believe White House political strategist Karl Rove and conservative columnist Robert Novak may be conspiring to hide the truth behind Rove’s involvement in the leak. They also inform Ashcroft that they believe Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has lied to FBI investigators about his role in leaking Plame Wilson’s identity to the press. Although it is unclear who provides this briefing to Ashcroft, he is usually briefed on the status of the investigation by John Dion, the head of the FBI investigation, and Christopher Wray, the assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division. [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 5/25/2006; NATIONAL JOURNAL, 6/8/2006] Novak's Attempt to Protect Rove - They inform Ashcroft of a telephone conversation between Rove and Novak, in which Novak promised to protect Rove from the FBI investigation, presumably by either refusing to disclose him as a source of his knowledge of Plame Wilson’s identity (see September 29, 2003) or lying to investigators. Although Ashcroft receives routine briefings on the status of the FBI investigation, the bureau considers this important enough to warrant a special briefing for him on the matter. The FBI believes that after the conversation with Rove, Novak did indeed change his story about the leak, characterizing White House officials’ role in it as entirely passive. A week after Novak publicly outed Plame Wilson, he told reporters that he didn’t “dig out” the Plame Wilson information, but rather “it was given to me.… They thought it was significant. They gave me the name, and I used it” (see July 21, 2003). This account suggests that Rove was actively trying to expose Plame Wilson as a CIA officer, as reporter Murray Waas will later write. But the same day he spoke with Rove, Novak provided a different story, saying no one at the White House gave him the information (see September 29, 2003). Novak’s first story fits more closely with accounts later given by reporters such as Time’s Matthew Cooper (see July 13, 2005) and the New York Times’s Judith Miller (see September 30, 2005). [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 5/25/2006] Libby's Lies to FBI - The FBI also informs Ashcroft that it has acquired evidence—personal notes from Libby—that contradicts Libby’s assertions that he learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from journalists (see October 14, 2003). Libby also told investigators that he had merely considered the information about Plame Wilson’s covert CIA status “unsubstantiated rumors” when he leaked that information to reporters (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, and 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003), another lie. [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 6/8/2006] Ashcroft Declines to Recuse Himself - Ashcroft will recuse himself from participation in the investigation in December, in part because of the potential of a conflict of interest stemming from his previous relationship with Rove (see December 30, 2003) as well as other White House officials. Some FBI investigators believe that he should have recused himself as soon as he learned that Rove and Libby were possibly involved in the leak; some have also noted privately that many of Ashcroft’s top aides came from the Republican National Committee (RNC), which they suspect has been working closely with the White House to pressure Ashcroft not to name a special prosecutor. In 2006, law professor Stephen Gillers will say: “There is always going to be an interim period during which you decide you will recuse or not recuse. But [Ashcroft] should have had an ‘aha!’ moment when he learned that someone, figuratively, or in this case literally, next door to the president of the United States—who was Ashcroft’s boss—was under suspicion.” Ashcroft’s spokesman Mark Corallo has explained that Ashcroft declined to recuse himself because of his intense interest in the probe. Corallo will later become the spokesman for Rove. Fellow law professor Charles Wolfram, like Gillers a specialist in legal ethics, agrees with Gillers. In 2006, Wolfram says the “most distressing” ethical aspect of the case is that Ashcroft continued overseeing the probe even after Cheney’s name arose. “This should have been a matter of common sense,” Wolfram will note. Ashcroft “should have left it to career prosecutors whether or not to go after politically sensitive targets. You can’t have Ashcroft investigate the people who appointed him or of his own political party.” [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 6/8/2006] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Christopher Wray, Charles Wolfram, Federal Bureau of Investigation, John Dion, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Mark Corallo, Stephen Gillers, John Ashcroft, Murray Waas, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Robert Novak Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 3, 2003: Columnist Points to Libby as Likely Source of Plame Wilson Leak Salon columnist and media observer Eric Boehlert notes that while the White House has specifically, and emphatically, denied Karl Rove leaked the CIA identity of Valerie Plame Wilson (see September 29, 2003), it has not yet given such coverage to Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney. Circumstantial evidence that the White House may be leaving Libby to, in Boehlert’s words, “twist in the wind” is mounting. The New York Daily News has reported that “Democratic Congressional sources said they would like to hear from… Lewis Libby.” On MSNBC, an administration critic, former counterterrorism official Larry Johnson, who says he knows who the leaker is, would not deny it was Libby. And Senator Chuck Hagel has implied that the leak originated from the vice president’s office when he said that President Bush needs to sit down with Cheney and “ask… what he knows about it.” A former senior CIA officer says, “Libby is certainly suspect No. 1.” Even Cheney’s own spokeswoman, Cathie Martin, refuses to deny Libby’s involvement, saying only, “This is a serious matter and we shouldn’t be speculating in light of an ongoing investigation.” Boehlert notes that conservative columnist Robert Novak, who outed Plame Wilson in one of his columns (see July 14, 2003), has dropped several hints about his primary source that point (inconclusively) to Libby. Novak’s assertion that his source is “no partisan gunslinger” (see October 1, 2003) is a better characterization of Libby than of Rove. Since Novak has referred to his source as “he,” the source cannot be National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice or any other White House female. Most interestingly, Boehlert notes, Novak was never looking for Plame Wilson’s identity when he spoke with his sources in July 2003. Rather, he wanted to know why former ambassador Joseph Wilson was chosen to go to Niger (see Shortly after February 13, 2002 and February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). The logical place for Novak to begin such an inquiry, Boehlert writes, was Cheney’s office. Wilson believed Cheney was primarily, if indirectly, responsible for sending him to Niger (see (February 13, 2002)). Time magazine ran a story that revealed Libby was talking to reporters about Wilson (see July 17, 2003). And Boehlert notes other, less significant clues that add incrementally to the evidence showing that Libby might well have been Novak’s source. Finally, Boehlert comes back to Larry Johnson. Johnson confirmed for PBS that Plame Wilson was an undercover CIA agent and not merely an “analyst,” as Novak has asserted. He recently said flatly on MSNBC, “I know the name of the person that spoke with Bob Novak,” and that person works “at the White House,” and more specifically, “in the Old Executive Office Buildings.” Cheney’s office is located inside the Old Executive Office Building. Johnson was asked by co-host Pat Buchanan: “Scooter Libby. Now, is Scooter Libby the name you heard?” Johnson replied, “I’m not going to comment on that.” [SALON, 10/3/2003] The day after Boehlert’s column appears, White House press secretary Scott McClellan gives reporters the same assurance about Libby that he gave to Rove (see October 4, 2003). Entity Tags: Larry C. Johnson, Cathie Martin, Bush administration, Chuck Hagel, Karl Rove, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Robert Novak, Eric Boehlert, Office of the Vice President, Valerie Plame Wilson, Patrick Buchanan, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 4, 2003: Cheney Writes ‘Meat Grinder’ Note Recommending Libby Be Exonerated by White House

Cheney’s original ‘meat grinder’ note. [Source: Office of the Vice President / FireDogLake] Vice President Dick Cheney writes a note, later dubbed the “meat grinder” note, saying that the Bush administration should tell reporters that his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, should be issued a denial of involvement in the Plame Wilson leak, just as White House political strategist Karl Rove has received (see September 29, 2003). The note reads: “Has to happen today. Call out to key press saying same thing about Scooter as Karl. Not going to protect one staffer & sacrifice the guy the Pres [the words “the Pres” are scratched out] that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others—” The rest of the note contains talking points for the denial. It is unclear if the note is for Cheney’s own reference or intended for someone else [OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT, 10/4/2003; MARCY WHEELER, 6/9/2008], though Cheney has received a request from Libby that he be publicly exonerated (see Before October 4, 2003). The same day, White House chief of staff Andrew Card asks press secretary Scott McClellan to issue a denial on behalf of Libby (see October 4, 2003). McClellan complies (see October 4, 2003). Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Andrew Card, Karl Rove, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Scott McClellan Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 5, 2003: Two White House Officials Deny Leaking CIA Officer’s Identity Through White House spokesmen, two senior Bush officials deny being involved in the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see July 14, 2003 and July 17, 2003). Neither Lewis “Scooter” Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, nor Elliott Abrams, the director of Middle East affairs for the National Security Council, were involved in the leak, according to spokesmen; the same claim has been made for White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove. According to press secretary Scott McClellan, Libby “neither leaked the classified information, nor would he condone it.” The disclaimers are in response to reporters’ questions. [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/5/2003] In 2007, the prosecution in the Libby perjury trial (see January 16-23, 2007) will enter into evidence a page of undated notes taken by Libby around this time. The notes are talking points for McClellan, and indicate that McClellan should use lines such as “I’ve talked to Libby. I’ve said it was ridiculous about Karl and it is ridiculous about Libby. Libby was not the source of the Novak story. And he did not leak classified information.” Libby’s notes also advise McClellan to say something like, “Not going to protect one staffer & sacrifice the guy the Pres that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others.” Cheney has crossed out the words “the Pres,” obviously not wanting McClellan to reference President Bush (see October 4, 2003). [OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT, 9/2003 ; NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO, 3/7/2007] Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Elliott Abrams, George W. Bush, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Valerie Plame Wilson, Karl Rove, Scott McClellan Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 7, 2003: Bush: Identity of Administration Leaker May Never Be Known President Bush says offhandedly of the Plame Wilson leak (see June 23, 2003, July 7, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, July 8, 2003, 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, and Before July 14, 2003) that Washington “is a town full of people who like to leak information. And I don’t know if we’re going to find out the senior administration official.… You tell me: How many sources have you had that’s leaked information, that you’ve exposed or had been exposed? Probably none.” Many find Bush’s insouciance astonishing, considering the lengths his administration has gone to in the past to punish leakers. In response, Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) calls for a special counsel to investigate the leak. Schumer also asks for an investigation of the three-day delay between the original announcement of the investigation and the instructions to the White House staff to preserve all relevant records (see September 29-30, 2003), and the possible conflict of interest concerning Attorney General John Ashcroft, who had once employed White House political strategist Karl Rove, named as a likely source of the leak (see September 30, 2003). [VANITY FAIR, 1/2004; RICH, 2006, PP. 102] Plame Wilson’s husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, will later write that he was “particularly offended” when Bush told reporters he wanted to know the truth, but then placed the responsibility upon journalists themselves to find the source of the leak. Wilson will reflect, “His lack of genuine concern stunned and disappointed me.” [WILSON, 2004, PP. 397] Entity Tags: Joseph C. Wilson, John Ashcroft, Valerie Plame Wilson, Karl Rove, Charles Schumer, George W. Bush Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 7, 2003: Press Secretary Again Says Rove, Libby, Abrams Not Involved in Leak White House press secretary Scott McClellan reiterates the White House’s stance that three senior aides—deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and National Security Council official Elliott Abrams—bear no responsibility for leaking the identity of covert CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson to the press. McClellan has already made the same assurances before (see September 29, 2003 and October 4, 2003). During a press briefing, he is asked: “Scott, you have said that you personally went to Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, and Elliott Abrams to ask them if they were the leakers. Is that what happened? Why did you do that? And can you describe the conversations you had with them? What was the question you asked them?” McClellan replies: “Yes, unfortunately, in Washington, DC, at a time like this, there are a lot of rumors and innuendo. There are unsubstantiated accusations that are made. And that’s exactly what happened in the case of these three individuals. They’re good individuals. They’re important members of our White House team. And that’s why I spoke with them, so that I could come back to you and say that they were not involved. I had no doubt with that, in the beginning (see October 4, 2003), but I like to check my information to make sure it’s accurate before I report back to you. And that’s exactly what I did.” A reporter asks: “You’re saying, categorically, those three individuals were not the leakers or did not authorize the leaks. Is that what you’re saying?” McClellan responds: “That’s correct. I have spoken with them.” A reporter then asks, “Did the president direct you to check with those individuals and get—to find out if they were the leaker?” McClellan refuses to answer directly, but says that President Bush “wants… to get to the bottom of this matter, the sooner the better,” and touts the White House’s “full cooperation” with the Justice Department investigation. Asked the same question again, McClellan again emphasizes the White House’s cooperation with the investigation, and adds, “I think part of cooperating fully is looking into these unsubstantiated accusations that were made to make it clear to everybody that those individuals are not involved.” He gives a similar answer when asked if Bush wants someone “to individually poll senior staff members to find out who the leaker is,” and adds that no one in the White House has any more information on the matter than has been made available in the media—a blanket, if indirect, denial of any White House involvement. McClellan also notes that it would be “premature” to speculate if the White House will claim executive privilege to keep any information out of the investigation (see October 7, 2003). [WASHINGTON TRANSCRIPT SERVICE, 10/7/2003] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Bush administration, Elliott Abrams, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, George W. Bush, US Department of Justice, Scott McClellan, Valerie Plame Wilson Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 8, 2003: Rove Lies to FBI about Outing Plame Wilson White House political strategist Karl Rove testifies under oath to FBI investigators probing the Plame Wilson identity leak (see September 26, 2003). Rove says he did not speak to any journalists about Valerie Plame Wilson until after columnist Robert Novak outed her in his column (see July 14, 2003). Instead, Rove says, he circulated and discussed potentially damaging information about Plame Wilson with his colleagues within the White House as well as with outside political consultants and journalists. But he insists he was not the official who leaked Plame Wilson’s name to Novak. He only circulated that information about her after Novak’s column appeared, he says. He also claims that such dissemination was a legitimate means to counter criticism from Plame Wilson’s husband, Joseph Wilson. Lying under Oath - Rove is lying about his role in the exposure of Plame Wilson to Novak and other journalists (see July 8, 2003, July 8 or 9, 2003, and 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Rove and his lawyer, Robert Luskin, will later claim that Rove “forgot” about his discussions with at least one of the above journalists, Time’s Matthew Cooper, until he found an e-mail confirming their conversation (see After 11:07 a.m. July 11, 2003 and March 1, 2004). For reasons that are unclear, the e-mail in question does not turn up in an initial search for all documents and materials pertaining to the FBI investigation (see September 29-30, 2003). Additionally, Rove’s assistant, Susan Ralston, will later testify that Rove asked her not to log the call from Cooper (see July 29, 2005). [AMERICAN PROSPECT, 3/8/2004; RAW STORY, 10/31/2005; COUNTERPUNCH, 12/9/2005; NATIONAL JOURNAL, 5/25/2006] Fails to Disclose 'Protection' Conversation with Reporter - Rove also fails to disclose a conversation with Novak, in which Novak promised to “protect” him during the investigation (see September 29, 2003). Rove was a source for Novak, who revealed Plame Wilson’s identity in his column (see July 14, 2003). [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 5/25/2006] Claims to Have Learned Plame Wilson Identity from Reporter - During his testimony, Rove claims that he learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from a reporter, though he cannot remember who that reporter was. [AMERICAN PROSPECT, 7/19/2005] Discloses Names of Six White House Participants in Wilson Smear Campaign - Rove tells the FBI the names of at least six other White House officials involved in the smear campaign against Wilson (see June 2003, June 3, 2003, June 11, 2003, June 12, 2003, June 19 or 20, 2003, July 6, 2003, July 6-10, 2003, July 7, 2003 or Shortly After, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, July 11, 2003, (July 11, 2003), July 12, 2003, July 12, 2003, July 18, 2003, October 1, 2003, April 5, 2006, and April 9, 2006). He says he and his fellow White House officials believed the campaign was justified by Wilson’s “partisan” attacks on the White House’s Iraq policies. [AMERICAN PROSPECT, 3/8/2004] Entity Tags: Joseph C. Wilson, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert Luskin, Bush administration, Robert Novak, Karl Rove, Matthew Cooper, Valerie Plame Wilson Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 10, 2003: Legal Experts Find White House Statements Regarding Leak Investigation Questionable Many legal experts are highly critical of President Bush’s recent declaration that the identity of the leaker of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity may never be known (see October 7, 2003), and the White House’s declaration that three senior aides—Karl Rove, Lewis Libby, and Elliott Abrams—are not responsible for the leak (see October 4, 2003 and October 5, 2003). They echo criticisms leveled by Senate Democrats, who say that such declarations undermine the investigation into the leak (see October 10, 2003). Not only do such statements call into question the independence of the Justice Department investigation (see September 26, 2003), the experts say, but the propriety of attempting to clear top officials before the investigation has concluded is equally questionable. Law professor Mary Cheh calls such statements “quite irregular” and says that they could have a chilling effect on the investigation. “It will take someone of considerable fortitude [in the Justice Department] to look past such statements” and investigate any of the officials, she notes. Abner Mikva, former White House counsel to President Clinton, says that despite the White House’s assurances that the three officials are innocent: “I would hope that the Justice Department will do whatever it is supposed to do anyway. But does it have a chilling effect? Sure it does.” Defense lawyer Jeralyn Merritt says if Bush claims not to know the identity of the leaker, neither he nor any White House officials can rule out the involvement of any of their personnel. “I think a special counsel would be an excellent idea,” she says. Law professor Stephen Gillers says White House press secretary Scott McClellan has no way to know if any of the three officials are innocent or guilty. If any of them are guilty, Gillers notes, they can be expected to go to great lengths to keep their participation secret. Gillers also says that Bush appears to be soft-pedaling the investigation by publicly doubting its effectiveness, even if most leak investigations do not yield the name of the leaker. Cheh says the only way the Justice Department can conduct a fair and independent investigation is if the White House ensures that the investigators are “walled off” from political considerations. [CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 10/10/2003] Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Elliott Abrams, Abner Mikva, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Scott McClellan, Jeralyn Merritt, Valerie Plame Wilson, Stephen Gillers, US Department of Justice, Mary Cheh Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 10, 2003: Democrats Say Statements by Bush, White House Officials Undermining Plame Wilson Investigation

Frank Lautenberg, one of the Senate Democrats critical of the White House’s response to the leak investigation. [Source: Washington Post] Congressional Democrats question whether President Bush and White House officials are trying to influence the Plame Wilson leak investigation through their comments. Recently, Bush told reporters that he doubted the person or persons who leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity to the press would ever be identified (see October 7, 2003). While administration officials say Bush was just acknowledging the difficulties such an investigation presents, Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) says his comments threaten to undermine the investigation by lowering expectations. “If the president says, ‘I don’t know if we’re going to find this person,’ what kind of a statement is that for the president of the United States to make?” Lautenberg asks. “Would he say that about a bank-robbery investigation? He should be as indignant as everybody else is over this breach.” Bush, says Lautenberg, “certainly seems far less certain about finding the leaker than he is about finding Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein.” Plame Wilson’s husband Joseph Wilson agrees. “This goes far beyond someone identifying my wife,” he says. “This was a breach of public trust, and I would think it would behoove the president to ensure that the appropriate assets are devoted to identifying the leaker.” In contrast, White House press secretary Scott McClellan says that criticism of the investigation “appear[s] to be more about politics than about getting to the bottom of the investigation.” Democrats are also critical of the White House’s vocal opposition to the appointment of a special prosecutor to handle the investigation. And they question McClellan’s recent attempts to exonerate three administration officials—Karl Rove, Lewis Libby, and Elliott Abrams—from any responsibility for the leak (see October 4, 2003 and October 5, 2003). In a letter to Bush, four Democratic senators—Tom Daschle (D-SD), Carl Levin (D-MI), Joseph Biden (D-DE), and Charles Schumer (D-NY)—write that McClellan’s assurances are part of an overall pattern of missteps and errors surrounding the White House’s response to the leak investigation. McClellan lacks the legal expertise to question possible suspects, they note. “The White House has now put the Justice Department in the position of having to determine not only what happened, but also whether to contradict the publicly stated position of the White House,” the senators write. Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo says that anything White House officials say has “nothing to do with this investigation. The investigation will follow the facts.” [NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, 10/10/2003] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Charles Schumer, Carl Levin, Bush administration, Valerie Plame Wilson, Frank R. Lautenberg, US Department of Justice, Scott McClellan, Joseph Biden, Joseph C. Wilson, Elliott Abrams, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Mark Corallo, Tom Daschle, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 10, 2003: Press Secretary Reiterates Denial of Involvement in Plame Wilson Leak by Rove, Abrams, Libby In a press conference, White House press secretary Scott McClellan once again denies that White House officials Karl Rove, Elliott Abrams, and Lewis Libby had any involvement in the Plame Wilson identity leak. A reporter asks “whether any of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame [Wilson] worked for the CIA,” and McClellan responds: “Those individuals—I talked—I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this. And that’s where it stands.… They assured me that they were not involved in this.” [WHITE HOUSE, 10/10/2003] Entity Tags: Elliott Abrams, Bush administration, Valerie Plame Wilson, Scott McClellan, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 13, 2003: Time Magazine Reports Rove Not Involved in Plame Wilson Leak, Although Reporters, Editor Know Rove Leaked to One of Them

John Dickerson. [Source: Writers Voice (.net)] Time magazine carries an article suggesting that White House official Karl Rove is no longer under suspicion for leaking the identity of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson. However, at least three reporters involved in the writing and editing of the article know that Rove leaked the name, according to an analysis by the Media Matters website. The article prominently features White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s denial that Rove had any involvement in the leak (see September 29, 2003). Reporter Matthew Cooper, who himself had Plame Wilson’s identity leaked to him by Rove (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), and editors Michael Duffy and John Dickerson all know of Rove’s involvement in the leak. Duffy learned of the Rove leak from an e-mail Cooper sent him. Dickerson will later acknowledge that he, too, is aware of Rove’s leak to Cooper at the same time (see February 7, 2006). Although both Cooper and Dickerson are credited with writing the article, and Duffy edits it, none reveal their knowledge that McClellan’s denial is false and that Rove had, indeed, leaked Plame Wilson’s identity. Indeed, Media Matters will note, the article gives implicit credence to the notion that Rove is no longer under suspicion for the leak. Media Matters will also note that Dickerson will go on to co-write a January 2004 Time article with another reporter, Viveca Novak, which will say in part, “If there are culprits in the White House who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, they may now be dependent on reporters to protect their identities.” Media Matters will note that Dickerson was well aware that there were indeed “culprits” in the White House who outed Plame Wilson: “He knew there was at least one, and he knew who it was. Yet he told readers it was an open question and that no charges were likely.” Media Matters will also note that Novak knew at some point that Rove was Cooper’s source, though it is unclear if she knows it when she co-writes the January 2004 article with Dickerson. [TIME, 1/12/2004; MEDIA MATTERS, 2/6/2006] In 2005, the Los Angeles Times will report that Time magazine justified its reporting by saying it was “concerned about becoming part of such an explosive story in an election year.” [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 8/25/2005] Entity Tags: Scott McClellan, Karl Rove, John Dickerson, Bush administration, Matthew Cooper, Michael Duffy, Valerie Plame Wilson, Viveca Novak, Media Matters Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 28, 2003: Conservative Faux Journalist Interviews Wilson, Reveals Knowledge of Classified Memos Former ambassador Joseph Wilson sits down with Jeff Gannon of Talon News to discuss the outing of his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, as a CIA agent (see July 14, 2003), his trip to Niger that helped debunk the claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from that country (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and July 6, 2003), and his concerns over the Iraq war. Wilson is unaware that Gannon is in reality James Guckert, a gay prostitute who moonlights as a fake journalist for the right-wing Talon News (see January 26, 2005 and January 28, 2005). Little of what Gannon/Guckert elicits is new information. Access to Classified Information? - However, early in the interview, Gannon/Guckert refers to a classified memo when he says, “An internal government memo prepared by US intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports.” The FBI will investigate Gannon/Guckert’s knowledge of the memo, but he will deny ever having seen it. It is not clear from whom he learned of the memo [TALON NEWS, 10/28/2003; WILSON, 2007, PP. 216], though he will insist that he received the information from “confidential sources.” [ANTIWAR (.COM), 2/18/2005] America Did Not Debate Redrawing the Middle East as a Rationale for War - Wilson notes that he considered “the invasion, conquest, and occupation of Iraq for the purpose of disarming Saddam [Hussein] struck me as the highest risk, lowest reward option.… [W]e ought to understand that sending our men and women to kill and to die for our country is the most solemn decision a government has to make and we damn well ought to have that debate before we get them into harm’s way instead of after.” He explains why the idea that his wife selected him for the Niger mission is incorrect. When Gannon/Guckert attempts to pin him down by citing the initial meeting in which Plame Wilson suggested Wilson for the mission (see February 13, 2002), Wilson notes, “[T]hat fact that my wife knows that I know a lot about the uranium business and that I know a lot about Niger and that she happens to be involved in weapons of mass destruction, it should come as no surprise to anyone that we know of each others activities.” Wilson says that the aims of the administration’s neoconservatives—to redraw “the political map of the Middle East,” is something that has not been debated by the nation. The US did not debate the war with Iraq “on the grounds of redrawing the map of the Middle East,” he notes. Wilson Did Not Violate CIA Secrecy in Revealing Niger Mission - Gannon/Guckert asks if Wilson violated CIA secrecy in going public with the results of his Niger mission, as some on the right have asserted. Wilson reminds Gannon that his was not a clandestine trip, “not a CIA mission,” but an aboveboard fact-finding journey. Those circumstances were well understood by the CIA before he left for Niger. Implications of French Complicity in Niger Allegations Debunked - Gannon/Guckert tries to insinuate that the French may have had something to do with keeping the alleged uranium sales secret, and Wilson quickly shoots that line of inquiry down, saying, “The fact that you don’t like the French or that the French seem to have favored a different approach on this is far different from the French violating UN Security Council resolutions of which they are signatories, and clandestinely transferring 500 tons of uranium to a rogue country like Iraq is a real reach.” He then describes just how impossible it would have been for the French to have facilitated such a secret uranium transfer even had it wished. Refuses to Accuse Rove Directly - Wilson refuses to flatly name White House political strategist Karl Rove as the person behind the leaks of his wife’s clandestine identity, though he notes that Rove indeed labeled his wife “fair game” to the press (see July 21, 2003) and that Rove was in a perfect position to have orchestrated the leak. When Gannon/Guckert tells Wilson that conservative columnist Robert Novak, who first published Plame Wilson’s name and occupation, denies that the White House gave him the information on her identity, Wilson retorts, “Novak has changed his story so much that it’s hard for me to understand what he is talking about” (see September 29, 2003). When a Leak Is Not a Leak - Gannon/Guckert brings up the allegation from New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof that Plame Wilson was revealed as an undercover agent by Russian spy Aldrich Ames in 1994. Because Ames may have revealed Plame Wilson’s identity to the Russians, Gannon/Guckert asks, isn’t it possible that she was no longer an undercover agent? Wilson refuses to validate the Ames speculation, and finally says that the CIA would not be treating this so seriously if it were as frivolous an issue as Gannon/Guckert suggests. “[R]emember this is not a crime that has been committed against my wife or against me,” he says. “If there was a crime, it was committed against our country. The CIA has referred the matter to the Justice Department for further investigation, I don’t believe that’s a frivolous referral.” [TALON NEWS, 10/28/2003] Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Guckert, Talon News, Robert Novak, Karl Rove, US Department of Justice, Central Intelligence Agency, Joseph C. Wilson, Valerie Plame Wilson Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

December 30, 2003: Justice Department Names Patrick Fitzgerald as Special Counsel for Plame Wilson Leak Investigation

Patrick Fitzgerald. [Source: US Department of Justice] Citing potential conflicts of interest, Attorney General John Ashcroft formally recuses himself from any further involvement in the investigation of the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see September 26, 2003 and September 30, 2003). The Justice Department names Patrick Fitzgerald, the US attorney for the Chicago region, to handle the investigation. In a letter to Fitzgerald authorizing the position, Deputy Attorney General James Comey writes: “I hereby delegate to you all the authority of the attorney general with respect to the department’s investigation into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee’s identity, and I direct you to exercise that authority as special counsel independent of the supervision or control of any officer of the department.” Many believe that Ashcroft’s continued involvement has become politically untenable, and that the investigation has reached a point where his potential conflicts of interest can no longer be ignored. The White House steadfastly denies that any of its officials leaked Plame Wilson’s name to conservative columnist Robert Novak, who first outed Plame Wilson in his column (see July 14, 2003), or any other member of the press. The FBI has already spoken to White House political adviser Karl Rove, suspected of being one of Novak’s sources; Rove has close political ties to Ashcroft. Upon Ashcroft’s recusal, the investigation was given over to Comey, who immediately named Fitzgerald to head the investigation. Fitzgerald and Comey, himself a former Manhattan prosecutor, are close friends and colleagues. [OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL, 12/30/2003 ; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 12/30/2003; NEW YORK TIMES, 12/31/2003] Appearance of Conflict of Interest - Comey tells the press: “The attorney general, in an abundance of caution, believed that his recusal was appropriate based on the totality of the circumstances and the facts and evidence developed at this stage of the investigation. I agree with that judgment. And I also agree that he made it at the appropriate time, the appropriate point in this investigation.” Comey says that while Ashcroft denies an actual conflict of interest exists, “The issue that he was concerned about was one of appearance.” White House officials say that President Bush had no role in the decision; some White House and law enforcement officials were surprised upon learning of Comey’s decision. Investigation Reaching into White House? - Some Democrats believe that Ashcroft’s recusal is an indication that the investigation is moving into the White House itself. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) says of Comey’s decision, “This isn’t everything that I asked for, but it’s close.” In regards to Fitzgerald, Schumer says, “I would have preferred to have someone outside the government altogether, but given Fitzgerald’s reputation for integrity and ability—similar to Comey’s—the glass is three-quarters full.” Governor Howard Dean (D-VT), a leading Democratic contender for the presidency, says Ashcroft’s decision “is too little, too late.” For the last three months, the investigation has been run by John Dion, the Justice Department’s chief of counterespionage. Whether Fitzgerald will ask Dion or other Justice Department investigators to remain on the case remains to be seen. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought maybe he ought to keep some or all of the career folks involved,” says Comey. Fitzgerald has the authority to issue subpoenas and grant immunity on his own authority, Comey confirms. “I told him that my mandate to him was very simple. Follow the facts wherever they lead, and do the right thing at all times. And that’s something, if you know this guy, is not something I even needed to tell him.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 12/31/2003] Fitzgerald's 'Impressive Reputation' - Fitzgerald has earned an “impressive reputation,” in Plame Wilson’s words, as a government prosecutor. In 1993, he won a guilty plea from Mafia capo John Gambino, and a conviction against Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (see July 3, 1993). He put together the first criminal indictment against Osama bin Laden. In 2003 he indicted former Illinois Republican governor George Ryan on fraud and conspiracy charges; in 2005, he indicted several aides of Chicago Democratic mayor Richard Daley on mail fraud. He brought charges of criminal fraud against Canadian media tycoon Conrad Black. As Plame Wilson will write, “Fitzgerald was not easily intimidated by wealth, status, or threats.” 'Belated Christmas Present' - In 2007, Plame Wilson will write: “It was a belated but welcome Christmas present. Ashcroft had clearly given some thought to his extensive financial and personal ties to Karl Rove, who even then was believed to have had a significant role in the leak, and made the right decision.” She will also add that several years after the recusal, she hears secondhand from a friend of Ashcroft’s that Ashcroft was “troubled” and “lost sleep” over the administration’s action. [WILSON, 2007, PP. 174-175] Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Karl Rove, US Department of Justice, John Dion, Patrick Fitzgerald, James B. Comey Jr., Bush administration, Charles Schumer, Howard Dean, George W. Bush, John Ashcroft Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

January 2004: Karl Rove Orders Poll to Determine Public Interest in 9/11 Commission White House adviser Karl Rove orders a Republican Party poll to determine public interest in a number of issues: Martha Stewart’s insider trading case, Enron’s collapse, and the 9/11 Commission’s investigation. The poll suggests that the public is not that interested in the Commission, which, according to author Philip Shenon, is “a relief at the White House.” Apparently, this is not the only poll Rove orders about the 9/11 Commission. Shenon will add that Rove “would have been a fool not to keep an eye on the Commission, given the potential trouble it could create for Bush on the eve of his reelection campaign—a campaign that would be centered almost entirely on the president’s record on terrorism.” Perhaps partly because of this, the Commission and its staff have “a sense of being watched” by Rove, and commissioner John Lehman will say that Rove views the Commission as a “mortal threat” to Bush’s reelection chances. [SHENON, 2008, PP. 175-176] Entity Tags: Philip Shenon, 9/11 Commission, John Lehman, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 2004 Presidential Election

January 2004: FBI Takes Tougher Stance in Third Interview of White House Press Secretary After Deputy Attorney General James Comey announces the naming of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to head the Plame Wilson CIA identity leak investigation (see December 30, 2003), White House press secretary Scott McClellan is contacted by Ron Roos, the FBI’s deputy counterespionage director, to arrange a time where McClellan can testify before Fitzgerald’s grand jury. This time, Roos says, he would like McClellan to come alone, without a White House lawyer (see October 10, 2003). McClellan’s sister-in-law, a former assistant district attorney, advises him to retain a lawyer, as many of his co-workers have done, but McClellan decides not to do so. Perhaps, he will later write, he was lulled by the almost-perfunctory interview sessions he has already participated in (see Mid-October 2003 and Late October or Early November, 2003). McClellan meets with Roos and other prosecutors for a pre-jury interview. This time, McClellan will recall, the interview is far more adversarial than the first two. Roos asks McClellan why he publicly exonerated Karl Rove (see September 29, 2003) and Lewis Libby (see October 4, 2003), and then asks why McClellan failed to mention in previous interviews that Rove had spoken with columnist Robert Novak. McClellan, later writing that he was “taken aback” by the question, reminds Roos that he had indeed informed them of Rove’s contact with Novak in an earlier interview. Afterwards, McClellan will write, he worries about the FBI’s “initial hard-edged approach.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 224-225] Entity Tags: Ron Roos, Bush administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Karl Rove, Scott McClellan, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Robert Novak Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

January 2-5, 2004: Fitzgerald Investigators to Ask for Blanket Waivers of Confidentiality from White House Officials Federal investigators working with special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in the Plame Wilson identity leak investigation (see December 30, 2003) will ask White House officials to sign waivers freeing journalists from any pledges of confidentiality they may have granted during discussions about CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson. A senior administration official says that a number of top aides to President Bush will be asked to sign a one-page form giving permission for journalists to describe any such conversations to investigators, even if the journalists promised not to reveal the source. Bush’s promises of full cooperation will put “tremendous pressure” on the aides to comply, the official says. However, some investigators believe that many journalists will not respect such “blanket waivers,” and will refuse to reveal sources regardless of whether the White House aides sign them or not. The form reads that it is the wish of the White House official that “no member of the media assert any privilege or refuse to answer any questions” about the leak, according to a copy of the form obtained by the press. One aide sent a copy of the form is White House political strategist Karl Rove. [WASHINGTON POST, 1/2/2004] By January 5, Bush has not publicly stated that White House officials should, or should not, sign the waivers, according to press secretary Scott McClellan, who directs journalists to steer questions about the forms to the Justice Department. One unnamed government official is more forthcoming, however, calling the forms a “quintessential cover-your-rear-end” move by investigators. “It provides political cover, because you can say you tried everything, and this is a very politically charged environment,” the official says. “There’s no other value to it.” [WASHINGTON POST, 1/6/2004] Entity Tags: Scott McClellan, Bush administration, George W. Bush, Patrick Fitzgerald, US Department of Justice, Valerie Plame Wilson, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

January 12, 2004: Fitzgerald Informs Novak of Waivers from Sources Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald informs conservative columnist Robert Novak, the author of the column that exposed the CIA identity of Valerie Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003), that he intends to bring waivers of journalistic confidentiality (see January 2-5, 2004) from Novak’s sources for the column, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see July 8 or 9, 2003) and White House political strategist Karl Rove (see July 8, 2003), to a meeting with Novak. Novak will later write, “In other words, the special prosecutor knew the names of my sources.” [HUMAN EVENTS, 7/12/2006] Novak will speak three times to Fitzgerald’s investigators (see January 14, 2004, February 5, 2004, and September 14, 2004). Entity Tags: Patrick Fitzgerald, Karl Rove, Valerie Plame Wilson, Robert Novak, Richard Armitage Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

January 14, 2004: Novak Discloses Sources to Fitzgerald Columnist Robert Novak, who outed Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert CIA status in a column in July 2003 (see July 14, 2003), is questioned by Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the Plame Wilson leak (see December 30, 2003). Novak has already discussed some of his knowledge of Plame Wilson’s covert CIA status with FBI investigators (see October 7, 2003). As with the FBI session, the Fitzgerald interview takes place at the law offices of Swidler Berlin, the firm representing Novak. Fitzgerald comes to the interview with waivers (see January 2-5, 2004) from Novak’s sources (see January 12, 2004) for his column outing Plame Wilson—White House political strategist Karl Rove and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see July 8, 2003), as well as a waiver from CIA official Bill Harlow, who asked Novak not to divulge Plame Wilson’s identity when Novak called him with the information from his other sources that Plame Wilson was a CIA official (see Before July 14, 2003). Novak is uncomfortable in accepting that Fitzgerald’s waivers make it ethically acceptable for him to disclose the three men as his sources, but his lawyer, James Hamilton, says he will almost certainly lose a court challenge as to their propriety. Novak will later write, “I answered questions using the names of Rove, Harlow, and my primary source,” which at the time of his writing had not yet been revealed as Armitage. [HUMAN EVENTS, 7/12/2006] Novak will be questioned again several weeks later (see February 5, 2004). Entity Tags: Patrick Fitzgerald, Bill Harlow, James Hamilton, Karl Rove, Robert Novak, Valerie Plame Wilson, Swidler Berlin, Richard Armitage Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

February 2004: Rove Testifies before Plame Wilson Grand Jury, Withholds Information White House political adviser Karl Rove testifies before the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see December 30, 2003). Rove acknowledges discussing Plame Wilson with columnist Robert Novak, who publicly identified her as a CIA agent (see July 14, 2003), but does not tell the jury that he also disclosed her CIA status to Time reporter Matthew Cooper (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). [NEW YORK TIMES, 2006] He tells the grand jury that he indeed confirmed Plame Wilson’s CIA identity for Novak, but he knew very little about her at the time. Rove says that Novak knew more about her than he did, and that he believes he learned more about Plame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson, from Novak than Novak learned from him. Rove tells jurors that he may have learned Plame Wilson’s identity from a journalist or someone else outside the White House, but cannot recall that person’s name or anything about their conversation. [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 11/12/2005] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Valerie Plame Wilson, Robert Novak, Bush administration, Matthew Cooper Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

February 2004: Rove Testifies before Plame Wilson Grand Jury, Does Not Disclose His Leaks to Reporters White House political strategist Karl Rove testifies before the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson identity leak. Rove does not tell the jury that he discussed Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA status with reporters other than columnist Robert Novak (see July 8, 2003 and July 8 or 9, 2003). At a minimum, Rove is failing to disclose conversations he has had about Plame Wilson with Time’s Matthew Cooper (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). [NEW YORK TIMES, 11/4/2005; NEW YORK TIMES, 2006; NEW YORK TIMES, 4/27/2006] There is some mystery about the date and content of Rove’s second testimony to the grand jury; in 2006, reporter Michael Isikoff will say that Rove testifies twice during February 2004. In neither appearance does he admit to leaking Plame Wilson’s CIA identity to reporters. [NEWSWEEK, 5/8/2006] Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Bush administration, Karl Rove, Michael Isikoff, Matthew Cooper Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

February 6, 2004: Press Secretary Testifies before Grand Jury White House press secretary Scott McClellan testifies before the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson leak. He is quizzed before some 35 or 40 jurors by prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg. Most of the questions are reiterations of those asked in earlier interviews (see Mid-October 2003, Late October or Early November, 2003, and January 2004), but Zeidenberg asks some that have not yet been asked. One question is whether McClellan had told National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to say that White House political adviser Karl Rove was not involved in the leak before her September 28 appearance on Meet the Press. Though Rice had not specifically discussed the leak on that broadcast, McClellan recalls briefing her on a number of issues. He cannot recall, he testifies, whether he discussed the subject of the leak with Rice or not, and tells Zeidenberg that he probably told her what he said publicly (see September 29, 2003), and to refer back to that if pressed. McClellan is startled when Zeidenberg asks him bluntly whether President Bush had told him in the Oval Office that Rove had denied to him any involvement in the leak. McClellan knows that Bush has not yet testified, but chief of staff Andrew Card has, and Card most likely revealed Bush’s comments. McClellan will later write: “Knowing the president’s preference that his private conversations remain private, I hesitated momentarily [in answering the question]. But this was different. A frog in my throat, I managed to confirm that the president had indeed made such a statement.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 225-227] Days after McClellan’s testimony, someone the Washington Post identifies as “a source close to the investigation” will say that McClellan and other White House witnesses are asked about cell phone calls, and shown handwritten, diary-style notes from colleagues and e-mails from reporters to administration officials. The source will say the questioning of McClellan and others is often quite aggressive, with agents focusing on specific conversations with journalists. “Even witnesses that they describe as being potentially helpful are being treated as adversaries,” the source will say. [WASHINGTON POST, 2/10/2004] Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Scott McClellan, Peter Zeidenberg, George W. Bush, Andrew Card, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

March 1, 2004: Rove Finds Documentation Proving July 2003 Conversation with Time Reporter Robert Luskin, the lawyer for White House political strategist Karl Rove, has his client search White House records immediately after speaking with reporter Viveca Novak (see March 1, 2004). Luskin wants Rove to find any potential documentation of a July 2003 conversation between himself and Cooper. Rove finds an e-mail message from himself to Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley recounting the conversation between himself and Cooper (see After 11:07 a.m. July 11, 2003). Rove will later admit to the grand jury hearing evidence in the investigation that he had indeed spoken to Cooper about Plame Wilson (see October 15, 2004 and October 14, 2005). [NEW YORK TIMES, 12/2/2005; COUNTERPUNCH, 12/9/2005] (The Washington Post will later report that it was Luskin, not Rove, who actually found the e-mail, and that Luskin first shared it with Rove and then with special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. [WASHINGTON POST, 12/3/2005] ) Entity Tags: Robert Luskin, Karl Rove, Bush administration, Patrick Fitzgerald, Stephen J. Hadley, Viveca Novak Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

March 1, 2004: Reporter Alerts Rove Lawyer of Colleague’s Info regarding Plame Wilson Leak The lawyer for White House official Karl Rove, Robert Luskin, speaks with Time magazine reporter Viveca Novak, about the Plame Wilson leak investigation. Novak informs Luskin that a colleague of hers at Time, Matthew Cooper, may have learned Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from Rove (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). [NEW YORK TIMES, 12/2/2005] According to Novak’s later recollection, Luskin says something along the lines of: “Karl doesn’t have a Cooper problem. He was not a source for Matt.” Novak isn’t convinced by Luskin’s words, and asks: “Are you sure about that? That’s not what I hear around Time.” Luskin, she will recall, “looked surprised and very serious,” and says, “There’s nothing in the phone logs,” referring to the White House telephone logs from July 2003, when Rove discussed Plame Wilson’s identity with Cooper, and when Cooper and other Time reporters published stories regarding the White House’s attempts to damage the credibility of Plame Wilson’s husband, Joseph Wilson (see July 17, 2003). Novak later notes that Cooper called Rove through the White House switchboard, which may explain the lack of phone logs. Novak is surprised at Luskin’s response. “I had been pushing back against what I thought was his attempt to lead me astray,” she will later write. “I hadn’t believed that I was disclosing anything he didn’t already know. Maybe this was a feint. Maybe his client was lying to him.” Novak immediately begins wishing she had not said anything to Luskin. Reporters don’t, as a rule, tip off people involved in investigations. “Thank you,” Luskin says as he walks her to her car. “This is important.” [TIME, 12/11/2005] In 2005, investigative reporter Jason Leopold will posit that Novak may have been trying to convince Luskin that she knew more about Cooper’s source than she did. According to Leopold, Novak is repeating a months-old rumor that Rove leaked Plame Wilson’s identity to Cooper, a rumor that has swirled throughout the Washington journalistic community. Leopold’s sources will bolster Novak’s claim that she had no intention of “tipping off” Luskin to anything. [COUNTERPUNCH, 12/9/2005] The press will later report Novak’s meeting with Luskin as taking place in the late summer or fall of 2004, and Novak will initially tell special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that it took place in May 2004, but according to her final testimony, the meeting occurs on March 1 (see December 8, 2005). [NEW YORK TIMES, 12/2/2005; TIME, 12/11/2005] Leopold will date the Novak-Luskin conversation to “the summer of 2004.” [COUNTERPUNCH, 12/9/2005] Upon the conclusion of his conversation with Novak, Luskin will immediately prompt Rove to begin searching for documentation of his conversation with Cooper (see March 1, 2004). Entity Tags: Viveca Novak, Matthew Cooper, Karl Rove, Time magazine, Jason Leopold, Robert Luskin Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

May 12, 2004: Dean: Wilson’s Book Details ‘Vicious Hatchet Job’ against Him, Wife Author and former Nixon White House counsel John Dean reviews former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s new book, The Politics of Truth (see April 2004). Dean, who has long been a fierce critic of the Bush administration, uses the review to examine aspects of the controversy surrounding the White House’s disproven claim that Iraq attempted to buy uranium from Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and July 6, 2003) and the outing of Wilson’s wife as a CIA agent through a White House leak (see June 23, 2003, July 7, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, July 8, 2003, 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, Before July 14, 2003, and July 14, 2003). Dean calls the book “riveting and all-engaging… provid[ing] context to yesterday’s headlines, and perhaps tomorrow’s, about the Iraq war and about our politics of personal destruction,” as well as detailed information about Wilson’s long diplomatic service in Africa and the Middle East, and what Dean calls “a behind-the-scenes blow-by-blow of the run-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf war.” 'Anti-Dumb-War' - Dean also admires Wilson’s opposition to the Iraq war, saying that “Wilson is not antiwar. Rather, he is ‘anti-dumb-war’” and noting that while Wilson is not himself particularly conservative (or liberal), he considers the neoconservatives who make up the driving force in President Bush’s war cabinet “right-wing nuts.” 'Vicious Hatchet Job' - Dean quickly moves into the White House-orchestrated attempt to besmirch Wilson’s credibility, calling it “the most vicious hatchet job inside the Beltway since my colleague in Richard Nixon’s White House, the dirty trickster Charles W. Colson, copped a plea for defaming Daniel Ellsberg and his lawyer (see June 1974).… It was an obvious effort to discredit Wilson’s [Niger] report, and, Wilson believes, a you-hurt-us-we-will-hurt-you warning to others.” While Wilson writes with passion and anger about the outing of his wife, he restrains himself from giving too many personal details about her, relying instead on material already revealed in press interviews and reports. Dean notes that Wilson believes his wife’s name was leaked to the press by any or all of the following White House officials: Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney; Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political strategist; and Elliott Abrams, a national security adviser and former Iran-Contra figure (see October 7, 1991). Though Dean is correct in noting that Wilson comes to his conclusions “based largely on hearsay from the Washington rumor mill,” he will be proven accurate in two out of three of his assertions (see July 8, 2003, 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Wilson continues to fight attacks from Bush supporters, but, Dean notes, if they actually read his book, “they should understand that they have picked a fight with the wrong fellow.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 5/12/2004] Entity Tags: Joseph C. Wilson, Bush administration, John Dean, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

June 10, 2004: Bush Says He Will Stand by Pledge to Fire Leakers A reporter asks President Bush in reference to allegations that White House officials leaked the identity of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson, “[D]o you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so” (see September 29, 2003)? Bush responds: “Yes. And that’s up to the US Attorney to find the facts.” [WHITE HOUSE, 6/10/2004] Bush will later modify his position to say that he would fire anyone convicted of a criminal offense (see July 18, 2005), and will refuse to fire White House political strategist Karl Rove (see July 13, 2005) after he admits to being one of the leakers (see July 10, 2005). Entity Tags: Karl Rove, George W. Bush, Bush administration Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

June 10, 2004: Bush Vows to Fire Anyone Found to Have Leaked Plame Wilson’s Identity During a press conference, President Bush is asked, “[D]o you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have” leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson’s name to the press? Bush replies, “Yes.” [WHITE HOUSE, 6/10/2004] Not only will Bush not fire either his chief political adviser Karl Rove or Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, when evidence clearly shows both men leaked Plame Wilson’s name to the media, but when Libby is later convicted of lying about his leaks and obstructing justice in the investigation, Bush will commute his sentence, ensuring that Libby does not pay for his crimes (see July 2, 2007). Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Valerie Plame Wilson, George W. Bush Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 31, 2004: Rove Tells Reporters He Did Not Divulge Plame Wilson’s Name to Press White House political strategist Karl Rove denies leaking CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson’s name to the press. Rove is lying (see July 8, 2003, July 8 or 9, 2003, 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), though his words are carefully chosen to be technically accurate. At the Republican convention nominating George W. Bush as the party’s presidential candidate, Rove tells a CNN reporter: “I didn’t know her name and didn’t leak her name. This is at the Justice Department. I’m confident that the US Attorney, the prosecutor who’s involved in looking at this is going to do a very thorough job of doing a very substantial and conclusive investigation.” Rove is correct in saying he did not tell reporters Plame Wilson’s name, but he identified her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, making it easy for reporters to find her name for themselves. [CNN, 7/5/2005; RAW STORY, 7/7/2005] Entity Tags: Bush administration, Valerie Plame Wilson, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 15, 2004: Rove Testifies for Third Time to Plame Wilson Grand Jury, Names Libby as Source of Plame Wilson Information Deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove, President Bush’s top political adviser, testifies for a third time before the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see December 30, 2003). (The date of Rove’s second testimony to the grand jury is not publicly known, though Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff later says Rove testified twice in February 2004.) Rove tells the jury that he spoke with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), a conversation he has failed to disclose in previous testimony both before the jury and when interviewed by FBI agents (see October 8, 2003 and February 2004). Rove now says he recalls speaking with Cooper, but cannot remember details of their conversation. His lawyer, Robert Luskin, says Rove “answered fully and truthfully every one of their questions,” and did not try to avoid answering questions on legal grounds. White House press secretary Scott McClellan says that Rove’s testimony shows he is “doing his part to cooperate” in the probe. Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, charges that Rove and other Bush aides are refusing to tell the public everything they know about the outing of Plame Wilson as a CIA official. “Karl Rove needs to come clean and tell us what he told the grand jury today,” McAuliffe says. Luskin claims that Rove has been informed he is not a target of the inquiry. [TIME, 10/15/2004; NEW YORK TIMES, 10/16/2004; NATIONAL JOURNAL, 4/28/2006; NEWSWEEK, 5/8/2006] Names Libby - Rove informs the jury that he may have learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from former White House official Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Almost a year later, the Washington Post will learn of Rove’s naming of Libby from “a source familiar with Rove’s account.” Days before Plame Wilson’s identity was publicly revealed (see July 14, 2003), Libby and Rove discussed conversations they had had with Cooper and other, unnamed reporters. Both Plame Wilson’s CIA identity and her husband, war critic Joseph Wilson, were discussed, Rove tells the jury. He says that his conversations with Libby were confined to information the two men heard from reporters. He also says he heard about Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from “someone outside the White House,” but cannot recall that person’s identity. [WASHINGTON POST, 10/20/2005] Claim of Memory Failure - Rove has claimed not to remember the conversation between himself and Cooper, but has recently found an e-mail he sent to Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley confirming the conversation (see After 11:07 a.m. July 11, 2003). Rove and Luskin claim that Rove only recently found the e-mail and immediately turned it over to Fitzgerald’s investigators. They claim that Rove never intended to withhold evidence from the investigation. [NEW YORK TIMES, 11/4/2005] Kerry Campaign Calls for Full Disclosure from White House - Joe Lockhart, the campaign spokesman for the presidential campaign of John Kerry (D-MA), says: “With two weeks to go before the election, the American people are still in the dark about how it is that their White House leaked the name of an undercover CIA operative to the press, jeopardizing the life of this agent and possibly violating federal law. Instead of hiding behind the lawyers he so often likes to criticize, George Bush should direct Karl Rove and anyone else involved to go to the White House briefing room and come clean about their role in this insidious act.” [SALON, 10/15/2004] Entity Tags: Scott McClellan, Terry McAuliffe, Stephen J. Hadley, Matthew Cooper, Robert Luskin, Karl Rove, Bush administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Joe Lockhart, George W. Bush Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 29, 2004: In Speech Released Just Prior to US Elections, Bin Laden Criticizes President Bush and Takes Credit for 9/11 Attacks for First Time

Bin Laden makes his Towers of Lebanon speech. [Source: Al-Jazeera] Four days before the presidential election in the US, Osama bin Laden releases a new video in which he addresses the US people and alludes to his role in 9/11. The tape was handed to an employee at Al Jazeera’s bureau in Islamabad, Pakistan, on the day it was broadcast. [MSNBC, 10/30/2004] Bin Laden Had Idea of 'Destroying Towers in America' - In his strongest admission yet that he was involved in planning 9/11, bin Laden says, “Allah knows that the plan of striking the towers had not occurred to us, but the idea came to me when things went just too far with the American-Israeli alliance’s oppression and atrocities against our people in Palestine and Lebanon.” After likening the US and Israel to “a crocodile devouring a child,” he continues, “As I looked at those destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me to punish the oppressor in kind by destroying towers in America, so that it would have a taste of its own medicine and would be prevented from killing our women and children.” He attempts to isolate the US from other Western countries, pointing out that “security is one of the pillars of human life” and that al-Qaeda has not attacked Sweden, for example, because Sweden has not attacked the Middle East. “If the US leaves Muslims alone, they will leave it alone.” Criticizes Bush's Inaction on 9/11 - Bin Laden is critical of President Bush and his inaction on 9/11, saying: “It did not occur to us that the commander in chief of the American armed forces would leave fifty thousand of his citizens in the two towers to face this great horror on their own, just when they needed him most. It seems that a little girl’s story about a goat and its butting was more important than dealing with airplanes and their butting into skyscrapers.” He comments that the Bush administration favors certain corporations and has mismanaged public funds: “To some analysts and diplomats, it seems as if we and the White House are on the same team shooting at the United States’ own goal, despite our different intentions.” He concludes: “I say unto you in truth that your security lies not in the hands of Kerry, Bush, or al-Qaeda. It lies in your own hands, and whichever state does not encroach on our security thereby ensures its own. Allah is our master; you have none. Peace be upon those who follow true guidance.” [LADEN, 2005, PP. 237-244] Speech Will Benefit Bush - Despite the criticism of Bush in the speech, most commentators think it will actually help Bush get reelected. For example, Time magazine correspondent Karen Tumulty says: “I find it hard to find any way that this helps John Kerry. What we’ve seen over and over and over again is that when terrorism is the topic, and when people are reminded of 9/11, Bush’s numbers go up.” [CNN, 10/29/2004] The CIA also concludes this is what bin Laden intended (see October 29, 2004). And on this evening, an aide brings up the new bin Laden video tape to Bush’s senior adviser Karl Rove, who is with the president in Ohio, campaigning for the election. “This has the feel of something,” Rove says slowly, “that’s not gonna hurt us at all.” [DRAPER, 2007, PP. 263] Entity Tags: Karen Tumulty, Karl Rove, George W. Bush, John Kerry, Osama bin Laden Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 2004 Presidential Election

November 3, 2004: Poor Poll Question Leads to False Claims that ‘Moral Values’ Drove Votes over Iraq, Terrorism, Economy The day after President Bush’s presidential election victory over Senator John Kerry (D-MA), an Associated Press exit poll indicates that 22 percent of voters made their choice because of “moral values”—a higher ranked criterion than the Iraq war, the threat of terrorism, or the economy. The mainstream media seizes on the poll as an indication of a new focus on morality among American voters. “It really is Michael Moore versus Mel Gibson,” says former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, comparing the liberal documentary maker to the actor who has wooed conservatives with his recent film, The Passion of the Christ. News analysts say that singer Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction,” where she showed her right breast for a moment during the February 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, was “the socio-political event of the past year.” Bush campaign manager and White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove says, “I think it’s people who are concerned about the coarseness of our culture, about what they see on the television sets, what they see in the movies.” Conservative columnist Robert Novak uses the poll to claim that “the anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, socially conservative agenda is transcendant.” Author and media critic Frank Rich will note that the interpretation of the poll is transparently false. First, he will point out, if one adds together the 19 percent who chose terrorism and the 15 percent who chose Iraq as the issues that most drove their vote, then it is “clear that national security was of greater concern to Americans than ‘moral values.’” Moreover, the poll itself is suspect: the category of “moral values” is so general as to mean anything from, as Rich will write, “abortion to aiding the poor to being nice to your mother.” According to a Pew Research Center analysis, the over-generalized category of “moral values” is an easy way for voters to choose “none of the above” instead of choosing a specific issue as their single motivator. According to Rich, Pew will find that “when voters were given no menu of suggestions to choose from, Iraq, the economy, and terrorism led by far, and issues that might be labeled as ‘values’ polled in the low single digits.” Worse for the conservative “moral values” argument, 60 percent of those polled actually favored either same-sex marriage or civil unions, and 55 percent support abortion in one form or another. ABC News polling director Greg Langer later notes that the erroneous “moral values” claim “created a deep distortion—one that threatens to misinform the political discourse for years to come.” [RICH, 2006, PP. 150-151] One effect of the new “moral values” perception is the decision by 66 ABC affiliates not to air the World War II film Saving Private Ryan over Memorial Day over fears that the profanity and violence portrayed in the film might result in fines from the Federal Communications Commission (see November 11, 2004). Entity Tags: Newt Gingrich, ABC, Associated Press, Frank Rich, Pew Research Center, Robert Novak, Greg Langer, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda

February 18, 2005: Fake Reporter Linked to White House’s Rove Investigative reporters for CBS and other mainstream outlets find ties between faux journalist “Jeff Gannon” (see January 26, 2005) and White House political guru Karl Rove. Gannon, a conservative Internet “reporter” and gay male escort whose real name is James Guckert, says he only met Rove once, at a White House Christmas party. But the ties between Gannon/Guckert and Rove run much deeper. Circumstantial evidence includes the ease with which Gannon/Guckert obtained White House press corps day passes, and the fact that Rove has talked with the extremist Internet political organization GOPUSA, which owns Talon News. Gannon/Guckert formerly wrote for Talon. Both GOPUSA and Talon are owned by Bobby Eberle, a Texas Republican and business associate of conservative direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie. Bobby Eberle has boasted of Talon’s “conservative slant” and GOPUSA’s “instant built-in bias.” Gannon/Guckert also played a key role in the defeat of former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) in his 2004 bid to keep his Senate seat (see Summer 2003 - November 2004). CBS political editor Dotty Lynch calls Gannon/Guckert and Talon News “mini-Drudge Reports: a ‘news’ source which partisans use to put out negative information, get the attention of the bloggers, talk radio, and then the [mainstream media] in a way that mere press releases are unable to achieve.” [CBS NEWS, 2/18/2005] Eberle has posted what author and media critic Frank Rich later calls “effusive thanks on the Web to both [talk show host G. Gordon] Liddy and Karl Rove ‘for their assistance, guidance, and friendship.’” [RICH, 2006, PP. 171] Entity Tags: G. Gordon Liddy, Bush administration, Bobby Eberle, CBS News, Frank Rich, Karl Rove, Richard Viguerie, James Guckert, GOPUSA, Talon News, Tom Daschle, Dotty Lynch Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda

July 1, 2005: Progressive Pundit Reveals Rove as Source for Time Reporter

Lawrence O’Donnell. [Source: PBS] Progressive author and pundit Lawrence O’Donnell reveals that Time magazine e-mails will prove that White House political strategist Karl Rove was the source for reporter Matthew Cooper’s knowledge that Valerie Plame Wilson is a CIA official (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). O’Donnell reveals his knowledge during the taping of a segment of the syndicated political talk show The McLaughlin Group. The next day, O’Donnell will write, “I have known this for months but didn’t want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury” investigating the Plame Wilson leak. “Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week.” The next day, Newsweek will print an article revealing Rove as Cooper’s source. [HUFFINGTON POST, 7/2/2005] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Matthew Cooper, Valerie Plame Wilson, Lawrence O’Donnell Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 3, 2005: Rove Lawyer Admits His Client Spoke to Reporter, Will Not Divulge Contents of Conversation According to lawyer Robert Luskin, White House political strategist Karl Rove did speak to Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003) in the days before CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity was exposed in the press (see July 14, 2003). Luskin is Rove’s attorney. He says he will “not characteriz[e] the subject matter of that conversation” between Cooper and his client. He adds: “Karl did nothing wrong. Karl didn’t disclose Valerie Plame [Wilson]‘s identity to Mr. Cooper or anybody else.… Who outed this woman?… It wasn’t Karl.” Rove “certainly did not disclose to Matt Cooper or anybody else any confidential information,” he says. Luskin notes that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has assured him that he and his investigators “have no reason to doubt the honesty of anything [Rove has] said.” [CNN, 7/4/2005] In the days ahead, Cooper will testify that Rove leaked Plame Wilson’s identity as a CIA official to him (see July 6, 2005, July 10, 2005, and July 13, 2005). Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Karl Rove, Patrick Fitzgerald, Matthew Cooper, Robert Luskin Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 6, 2005: Time Reporter Agrees to Testify before Leak Investigation Grand Jury; Rove Identified as His Source Time reporter Matthew Cooper agrees to testify before the grand jury in the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak investigation (see December 30, 2003 and July 13, 2005) after the source he has been protecting, White House political adviser Karl Rove, gives him a waiver dissolving their confidentiality agreement. Sources say that Cooper will identify Rove as a person who revealed Plame Wilson’s CIA identity to him. Cooper says he is prepared to remain “in civil contempt,” and ready to go to jail for defying the grand jury subpoenas, “because even though Time magazine had, over my objections, turned over my notes and e-mails to the special counsel under a court order, and even though the prosecutor has all that information now, I wanted—I was prepared to go and remain in civil contempt because I had given a word to my source for two years, which I have kept my word to that source today, for two years. This morning, in what can only be described as a stunning set of developments, that source agreed to give me a specific personal and unambiguous waiver to speak before the grand jury.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 7/7/2005] Cooper has not asked Rove for a waiver before, in part because his lawyer advised against it. Additionally, Time editors were worried about becoming part of such an explosive story in an election year. And Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, believed that contacting Cooper would have amounted to interfering with the ongoing court battle between reporter and prosecutor. [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 8/25/2005] Cooper adds, “It’s with a bit of surprise and no small amount of relief that I will comply with this subpoena.” Cooper refuses to publicly divulge the source he has been protecting, but a person briefed on the case confirms Cooper’s source as being Rove. [NEW YORK TIMES, 7/7/2005] Cooper did not speak to Rove directly on the issue. The waiver of confidentiality is the product of what the New York Times describes as “a frenzied series of phone calls” between Cooper’s lawyer Richard Sauber, Rove’s lawyer Luskin, and special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Cooper views his case as substantially different from that of his New York Times colleague, Judith Miller (see July 6, 2005). Miller has consistently refused to testify, but Cooper has already testified once, describing conversations he had with White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby (see August 24, 2004). And while the New York Times has consistently supported Miller, Time magazine has been more equivocal, turning over documents to Fitzgerald that identified Rove as Cooper’s source. Cooper’s friend Steven Waldman, a former US News and World Report editor who has talked with Cooper in recent days, says, “The question that was on his mind, and this is my words, is: do you go to jail to protect the confidentiality of a source whose name has been revealed, and not by you but by someone else?” Still, Cooper resisted until he saw an article in the Wall Street Journal that quoted Luskin as saying, “If Matt Cooper is going to jail to protect a source, it’s not Karl he’s protecting.” That statement prompted a round of telephone discussions between Luskin, Sauber, and Fitzgerald, culminating in Cooper’s decision to testify. “A short time ago,” Cooper tells the court, “in somewhat dramatic fashion, I received an express personal release from my source.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 7/10/2005] Entity Tags: Richard Sauber, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Karl Rove, Judith Miller, Matthew Cooper, Patrick Fitzgerald, Valerie Plame Wilson, Robert Luskin, Steven Waldman, New York Times, Time magazine Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 10, 2005: White House Press Secretary Shocked by Press Revelation that Rove Involved in Leak White House press secretary Scott McClellan knows that Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff is planning another article detailing what White House official Karl Rove told reporter Matt Cooper (see July 10, 2005). McClellan believes the Isikoff article will reveal that Cooper asked about former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife, but McClellan has been personally assured by Rove that he told Cooper nothing (see September 16, 2003 and September 27, 2003). President Bush has also assured McClellan that Rove is not the source of the leak (see September 29, 2003). McClellan will later write, “Maybe I did not want to believe that Karl had not been completely forthcoming, or that what he had told me—and the president—was not true.” White House counsel Harriet Miers tells McClellan, “There’s some news that’s likely to come out tomorrow about Karl in the leak investigation that may appear to contradict what you said nearly two years ago” (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003 and July 13, 2005). She warns him not to comment on the investigation. As he will later write, “In effect, she was forbidding me from talking and setting the record straight about my previous comments.” Miers then apologizes and leaves McClellan to mull over the impact of the Rove revelation. He will later disclose the “painful, chilling effect” the revelation has on his “relationships with reporters,” and will reflect: “[I]f some of the highest-ranking officials of the Bush White House hadn’t been forthright with the president’s chief spokesman, how could anyone assume they were honest with the public? The White House had a serious credibility problem, and I was now going to take the heat for it.” He will compare the impact of the Isikoff article to “getting whacked upside the head with a two-by-four. I never saw it coming, given Karl’s personal assurances to me and the president, at least not until the final few days before it became public. And even then I convinced myself not to believe the growing buzz in Washington because of the personal assurances I had received.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 257-260] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Bush administration, George W. Bush, Matthew Cooper, Harriet Miers, Scott McClellan, Michael Isikoff, Valerie Plame Wilson Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 10, 2005: Rove Revealed as Source of Plame Wilson Identity Leak Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff reveals that White House political strategist and deputy chief of staff Karl Rove was Time reporter Matthew Cooper’s source in revealing that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Isikoff learns that Rove was Cooper’s source from Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin. Rove has given Cooper permission to testify about their conversations surrounding Plame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson, and anonymously confirms his identity as the source. There is no indication in Cooper’s notes or e-mails to suggest that Rove knew Plame Wilson was a covert operative. However, Isikoff notes, “it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak’s column appeared; in other words, before Plame’s identity had been published.” A “source close to Rove” says, “A fair reading of the [Cooper] e-mail makes clear that the information conveyed was not part of an organized effort to disclose Plame’s identity, but was an effort to discourage Time from publishing things that turned out to be false.” In 2008, current White House press secretary Scott McClellan will write that Luskin’s confirmation is “part of Karl’s and Luskin’s strategy.” Luskin continues to publicly insist that Rove never actually leaked Plame Wilson’s identity. [NEWSWEEK, 7/10/2005; MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 261] He tells a Washington Post reporter that while Rove mentioned someone he identified as “Wilson’s wife,” he never actually identified her to Cooper by name. Rove also identified Plame Wilson, falsely, as the person who sent Wilson to Niger on behalf of the CIA (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, and October 17, 2003). [WASHINGTON POST, 7/11/2005] Entity Tags: Michael Isikoff, Karl Rove, Joseph C. Wilson, Matthew Cooper, Robert Luskin, Scott McClellan, Valerie Plame Wilson Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 11, 2005: Press Secretary Grilled by White House Press Corps over Rove-Plame Revelations

David Gregory. [Source: TopNews (.us)] In light of the revelation that White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove was a source for a reporter in the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see July 10, 2005), the White House press corps grills press secretary Scott McClellan unmercifully on the entire issue. Plame Wilson will reveal a modicum of sympathy for the beleaguered McClellan, whom she will note “endured what had to be one of his hardest days on the job as reporters competed to ask the next question.” The reporters are eager to pry information out of McClellan and are exasperated at his refusal to answer questions in any depth. Fire Rove? - One of the most probing questions involves the White House’s promise to fire anyone involved in the leak (see September 29, 2003). Asked, “Does the president stand by his pledge to fire anyone involved in the leak of a name of a CIA operative?” McClellan responds that the White House is not going to comment on an ongoing investigation, an answer the gathered reporters find less than satisfactory. “Excuse me,” the reporter continues, “but I wasn’t actually talking about any investigation. But in June of 2004, the president said that he would fire anybody who was involved in the leak. And I just want to know, is that still his position?” McClellan continues to deflect the question with the standard “refusal to comment on an ongoing investigation” line. He also refuses to answer the direct question, “Did Karl Rove commit a crime?” McClellan Cleared Rove, Others of Culpability - Another reporter, apparently NBC’s David Gregory, asks why McClellan told reporters that Rove, along with National Security Council staffer Elliott Abrams and the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, were definitely not involved in the leak. “[Y]ou said, ‘I’ve gone to each of those gentlemen, and they have told me they are not involved in this’—do you stand by that statement?” McClellan confirms he said that “as part of helping the investigation move forward on the investigation we’re not going to get into commenting on it. That was something I stated back near that time, as well.” The reporter calls McClellan’s response “ridiculous,” and says: “The notion that you’re going to stand before us after having commented with that level of detail and tell people watching this that somehow you decided not to talk. You’ve got a public record out there. Do you stand by your remarks from that podium, or not?” When McClellan says he will go into further detail “at the appropriate time,” Gregory interjects, “Why are you choosing when it’s appropriate and when it’s inappropriate?” McClellan begins, “If you’ll let me finish—” and Gregory cuts him off, saying: “No, you’re not finishing—you’re not saying anything. You stand at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now we find out that he spoke out about Joseph Wilson’s wife. So don’t you owe the American public a fuller explanation? Was he involved, or was he not? Because, contrary to what you told the American public, he did, indeed, talk about [Wilson’s] wife, didn’t he?” McClellan continues to refuse to answer. Later in the conference, he is asked if “you will be consistent with your word and the president’s word that anybody who was involved would be let go?” McClellan says he “will be glad to talk about it at that point.” Ordered to Stop Talking? - Another reporter, following up on Gregory’s relentless questioning, asks: “When did they ask you to stop commenting on it, Scott? Can you peg down a date?” McClellan answers vaguely, “Back in that time period.” The reporter then notes that “the president commented on it nine months later (see June 10, 2004). So was he not following the White House plan?” Again, McClellan refuses to answer. Another reporter tries a different tack, asking, “Can you walk us through why, given the fact that Rove’s lawyer has spoken publicly about this, it is inconsistent with the investigation, that it compromises the investigation to talk about the involvement of Karl Rove?” McClellan answers that “those overseeing the investigation expressed a preference to us that we not get into commenting on the investigative side while it’s ongoing.” When Did Bush Know? - McClellan is asked bluntly, “When did the president learn that Karl Rove had—” to which McClellan interrupts with, “I’ve responded to that question.” Changing the Subject - McClellan then calls on Raghubar Goyal of the India Times, who he is sure will ask a foreign policy question having nothing to do with Rove or Plame Wilson. He manages to keep the subject more or less off of Rove for the remainder of the conference. Plame Wilson will recall, “I almost felt sorry for McClellan, who was perspiring and had that deer-in-the-headlights look to him.” [WHITE HOUSE, 7/11/2005; WILSON, 2007, PP. 223-227] Change in Media Focus - After this press conference, as Plame Wilson will note, the press begins issuing far more skeptical reports on the leak and its investigation, depending less on White House spin about the Wilsons’ supposed culpability and zeroing in on the roles of Rove, Libby, and other White House officials. Plame Wilson will recall that for the first time, the pressure was easing off of them and being refocused onto the White House. [WILSON, 2007, PP. 227-228] McClellan: Press Conference 'Brutal,' 'Humiliating' - McClellan will later characterize the press conference as “brutal.” He calls NBC’s Gregory “mocking” when Gregory asks whether he still stands by his old assertions of no involvement by Rove (see September 29, 2003), Lewis Libby (see October 4, 2003), and Elliott Abrams (see October 5, 2003). ABC’s Terry Moran is incredulous that McClellan would try to hide behind a refusal to “comment on an ongoing investigation.” McClellan will later write, “Eventually, long after leaving the White House, I came to see that standing in front of the speeding press bus in those days had much more to do with protecting the president and the White House from further political embarrassment than respecting the sanctity of the investigation.” McClellan will reflect that it was during this press conference, as he felt his “reputation crumbling away, bit by bit,” that he began to lose his “affection for the job.” He will write: “The ridicule I received that day and the following ones, though dispiriting and humiliating, was justified, given what I had previously said. Since my hands were tied (see July 10, 2005), about all I could do was go into a defensive crouch.” After the conference, McClellan receives a brief verbal apology from Rove. McClellan will write, “It’s clear to me, Karl was only concerned about protecting himself from possible legal action and preventing his many critics from bringing him down.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 260-261] Entity Tags: Elliott Abrams, Joseph C. Wilson, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, David Gregory, Bush administration, Raghubar Goyal, Karl Rove, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Scott McClellan, Valerie Plame Wilson, Terry Moran Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 12, 2005: Novak Cooperated with Plame Wilson Investigation, Press Learns
The press learns that conservative columnist Robert Novak, who outed CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson almost two years ago (see July 14, 2003), has been cooperating with the Plame Wilson leak investigation headed by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. The news of Novak’s cooperation comes from attorneys familiar with his testimony. Novak’s lawyer, James Hamilton, refuses to comment. Novak, according to the sources, said that his Bush administration sources (see July 7, 2003, July 8, 2003, and July 8 or 9, 2003) did not identify Plame Wilson as a covert CIA official (see Fall 1992 - 1996). His use of the word “operative” to describe Plame Wilson in his column was his own formulation, he has said, and not the words of his sources. The lawyer for White House political strategist Karl Rove, Robert Luskin, has told reporters that Rove never told Novak or other reporters that Plame Wilson was a covert operative. Reporter Murray Waas writes: “Federal investigators have been skeptical of Novak’s assertions that he referred to Plame as a CIA ‘operative’ due to his own error, instead of having been explicitly told that was the case by his sources, according to attorneys familiar with the criminal probe. That skepticism has been one of several reasons that the special prosecutor has pressed so hard for the testimony of Time magazine’s [Matthew] Cooper (see July 13, 2005) and New York Times reporter Judith Miller” (see September 30, 2005). Investigators are also interested in telephone conversations between Novak and Rove, and other White House officials, in the days after the press reported the FBI was opening an investigation into the Plame Wilson leak (see September 29, 2003 and October and November 2003). And, in other testimony, a US government official told investigators that Novak asked him specifically if Plame Wilson had some covert status with the CIA. It is unclear who that official is or when he talked to investigators. [MURRAY WAAS, 7/12/2005] Entity Tags: Patrick Fitzgerald, James Hamilton, Bush administration, Judith Miller, Matthew Cooper, Karl Rove, Robert Novak, Robert Luskin, Murray Waas, Valerie Plame Wilson Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 13, 2005: Time Reporter Testifies before Plame Wilson Grand Jury Time reporter Matthew Cooper testifies before the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see December 30, 2003 and July 1, 2005). [WASHINGTON POST, 7/3/2007] “I testified openly and honestly,” Cooper says after the session. “I have no idea whether a crime was committed or not. That is something the special counsel is going to have to determine.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 7/14/2005] Four days later, Cooper will write of his testimony for Time, though special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald told him he would rather Cooper remained silent. Cooper is under no legal obligation not to divulge his grand jury testimony. He will say that while grand juries are famously passive, ready to “indict a ham sandwich if a prosecutor asks it of them,” this one is unusually active. About a third of the questions he answers are from jurors, not prosecutors. Cooper testifies that in the week after Joseph Wilson’s now-famous op-ed disclosing the fraudulence of the Iraq-Niger uranium claims (see July 6, 2003), the administration had done something it rarely does: admit a mistake. It was admitting that it had erred in using that claim to advance its arguments for war with Iraq (see July 8, 2003). That was big news, and Cooper, having been at Time less than a month, was aggressively covering it. He was curious about the White House’s apparent efforts to smear Wilson, and called White House political adviser Karl Rove on July 11 to discuss the apparent smear campaign (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). The jury is interested, and apparently amused, at Cooper’s choice of words regarding the status of his conversation with Rove: “double super secret background.” Cooper concludes, “So did Rove leak Plame’s name to me, or tell me she was covert? No. Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the ‘agency’ on ‘WMD’? Yes. When he said things would be declassified soon, was that itself impermissible? I don’t know. Is any of this a crime? Beats me. At this point, I’m as curious as anyone else to see what Patrick Fitzgerald has.” [TIME, 7/17/2005] Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Joseph C. Wilson, Bush administration, Karl Rove, Matthew Cooper, Time magazine, Patrick Fitzgerald Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 13, 2005: Bush Will Not Fire Rove over Plame Wilson Leak President Bush says he is withholding judgment on whether senior political adviser Karl Rove was one of the administration officials who leaked the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson to the press. Rove has been identified in court testimony as having disclosed Plame Wilson’s identity to two separate journalists, Robert Novak (see July 14, 2005) and Matthew Cooper (see July 6, 2005). Bush has said repeatedly that anyone identified as leaking Plame Wilson’s identity would be fired (see September 29, 2003 and June 10, 2004). He now says it would be wrong for him to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation. “I have instructed every member of my staff to fully cooperate in this investigation,” he says. “I also will not prejudge the investigation based on media reports.” Bush makes these statements with Rove literally sitting at his elbow. Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin indicates that Rove already told the grand jury of his conversation with Cooper (see July 17, 2003). “Rove has cooperated completely with the special prosecutor, and he has been repeatedly assured he is not a target of the investigation,” Luskin says. “Rove has done nothing wrong. We’re confident that he will not become a target after the special prosecutor has reviewed all evidence.” Rove’s supporters inside and outside the administration emphasize that Rove never told the reporter Plame Wilson’s actual name, nor mentioned her undercover status, but merely told Cooper that “Joseph Wilson’s wife” worked at the CIA. Critics note that it would take anyone a matter of moments to identify Plame Wilson as Wilson’s wife. Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have asked Bush to revoke Rove’s security clearance. Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) says the issue of whether Rove actually broke the law is not the only issue. “We just don’t hold those working at the closest and highest levels to the president to a criminal standard and say, ‘If you have not committed a crime, show up for work tomorrow morning,’” he says. [NEW YORK TIMES, 7/14/2005] Days later, Bush will modify his earlier statements, saying that someone who has committed a crime would no longer work in his administration (see July 18, 2005). Entity Tags: House Intelligence Committee, Bush administration, George W. Bush, Richard Durbin, Karl Rove, Robert Luskin Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 13, 2005: Senate Minority Leader Calls upon White House to Revoke Rove’s Security Clearance Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) calls upon the White House to strip political adviser Karl Rove of his security clearance, referring to Rove’s involvement in leaking the CIA identity of Valerie Plame Wilson (see July 10, 2005). Reid says that the administration should have done so long ago, but instead has refused to discuss Rove’s involvement and attacked its critics. “This is what is known as a cover-up,” Reid says. “This is an abuse of power.” In response, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) accuses Democrats of resorting to “partisan war chants.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 7/15/2005] Shortly after Reid’s statement, the progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters notes that Rove has, apparently, violated the strictures of the federal government’s Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement (Standard Form 312), and that those strictures call for the removal of Rove’s security clearance. The organization goes on to note that with few exceptions, the mainstream media has repeated Democratic calls for Rove to lose his clearance without mentioning Rove’s violation of the Nondisclosure Agreement. According to the Agreement, “dissemination” or “confirmation” of classified information constitutes an “unauthorized disclosure,” even after that information has been published in a “public source.” [MEDIA MATTERS, 7/19/2005] In October, Rove will admit to having leaked Plame Wilson’s name to two reporters (see October 14, 2005). Entity Tags: Bush administration, Bill Frist, Harry Reid, Karl Rove, Media Matters Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 14, 2005: House Democrats Send Letter to Bush Asking Rove to Explain His Involvement in Plame Wilson Leak

Some of the 91 signatures on the letter from House Democrats to the president. [Source: House Judiciary Committee / Raw Story] Representative John Conyers (D-MI), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and 91 other House members send a letter to President Bush asking that White House political adviser Karl Rove either explain his role in outing CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson, or resign. Conyers and the co-signers write, “[W]e believe it is not tenable to maintain Mr. Rove as one of your most important advisers unless he is willing to explain his central role in using the power and authority of your administration to disseminate information regarding Ms. Plame [Wilson] and to undermine her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) do not sign the letter, but send their own letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) asking that relevant House committees schedule hearings on the Plame Wilson matter. In their letter, Pelosi and Hoyer write: “We urge you to direct that committees with jurisdiction over the Plame matter schedule hearings immediately. In previous Republican Congresses the fact that a criminal investigation was underway did not prevent extensive hearings from being held on other, much less significant matters” (see July 29, 2005). [RAW STORY, 7/15/2005] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Dennis Hastert, George W. Bush, John Conyers, Nancy Pelosi, Valerie Plame Wilson, House Judiciary Committee, Steny Hoyer Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 14, 2005: Source Confirms Rove Spoke with Columnist about Plame Wilson A source from within the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak investigation confirms that White House political adviser Karl Rove had spoken with conservative columnist Robert Novak before Novak published his column identifying Plame Wilson as a CIA officer (see July 8, 2003 and July 14, 2003). Rove discussed Plame Wilson with Novak. However, according to the source, Rove first heard about Plame Wilson from Novak, as well as learning from Novak that she had played a role in recommending her husband, Joseph Wilson, for a trip to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from that country (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and July 6, 2003). According to the source, Novak, not Rove, initiated the conversation about Plame Wilson. It is not clear who revealed Plame Wilson’s identity to Novak, or whether Novak has identified that source to the grand jury. [NEW YORK TIMES, 7/15/2005; NEW YORK TIMES, 7/16/2005] In its reporting, the New York Times publicly reveals the July 8, 2003 conversation between Rove and Novak (see July 8, 2003). [NEW YORK TIMES, 7/15/2005] Novak has disputed Rove’s version of events, saying that Rove confirmed Plame Wilson’s identity to him and not the other way around (see October 7, 2003, February 5, 2004, and September 14, 2004). Entity Tags: Robert Novak, Joseph C. Wilson, Karl Rove, Valerie Plame Wilson Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 15, 2005: Unnamed Sources Reveal Former White House Press Secretary as Possible Leaker One day after the New York Times revealed that Karl Rove was a source for the 2003 outing of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2005), unnamed sources tell the New York Daily News that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is also examining the role of former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer in the leak. “Ari’s name keeps popping up,” one of the sources tells the Daily News. The press is not yet aware that Fleischer is, indeed, one of the White House officials who leaked Plame Wilson’s identity (see July 7, 2003, 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, 1:26 p.m. July 12, 2003), nor is it aware that Fitzgerald has offered Fleischer immunity in return for his testimony in his investigation (see February 13, 2004, June 10, 2004, and September 2004). Sources also note that Fitzgerald is focusing on Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis Libby, whom one source describes as “totally obsessed with [Joseph] Wilson,” the husband of Plame Wilson who angered the administration by publishing an op-ed debunking a key claim President Bush used to justify his decision to invade Iraq (see July 6, 2003). And, the sources say, Fitzgerald is keenly interested in a State Department memo revealing Plame Wilson’s identity (see June 10, 2003 and (July 15, 2005)). [NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, 7/15/2005] Author and blogger Marcy Wheeler, covering the Libby perjury trial in 2007, will write of her suspicions that the information to the Daily News was leaked by Rove, or someone close to him, to attempt to turn media attention away from himself and onto someone else. “Clearly, the behind-the-scenes media campaign was giving reporters fresh meat (in the form of Fleischer) to distract them from Rove,” Wheeler will write. Wheeler will note that while the media remains interested in Rove, the apparent distraction attempt will work, with media attention focusing on Fleischer and how the memo may incriminate him in the investigation. She will write, “The press, which just a day before had been in a frenzy reporting Rove’s demonstrable role in the CIA leak, had abruptly shifted its attention to chasing down a story implicating Fleischer and (to a lesser degree) [former Secretary of State] Colin Powell in unsubstantiated ways.” Wheeler goes on to observe: “The leak campaign against Fleischer served one other purpose, albeit a crafty one. Since Libby had told Fleischer of Valerie [Plame] Wilson’s identity in such a way that made it appear that Libby knew her identity was classified, Fleischer was a potential witness against Libby. Focusing suspicion on Fleischer would undermine his role as a witness if Libby were to face charges. The leaks about Fleischer and the [State Department] memo served several purposes: They distracted the press corps from validated revelations of Rove’s involvement; they provided an alternative source for the Novak leak and a provenance for that leak outside the White House; and they impugned a potential witness at a trial. All of this was possible because some journalists didn’t question what they were being fed by their unnamed sources.” [MARCY WHEELER, 2/4/2007] Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Ari Fleischer, Karl Rove, Patrick Fitzgerald, Valerie Plame Wilson, Marcy Wheeler Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 17, 2005: Woodward Denigrates ‘Plamegate’ Investigation, Fails to Reveal Own Knowledge Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward criticizes the investigation into the identity leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson. Woodward does not mention that he is one of the reporters who was contacted by a Bush administration official about Plame Wilson being a CIA agent (see June 13, 2003); he has also withheld his knowledge of the case from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and his own editors (see November 16-17, 2005). Woodward tells a CNN audience: “I’m not sure there’s any crime in all of this. The special prosecutor has been working 18 months. Eighteen months into Watergate we knew about the tapes. People were in jail. People had pled guilty. In other words, there was a solid evidentiary trail. I don’t see it here.… Well, it may just be politics as usual. I mean, [White House senior adviser Karl] Rove’s defenders say, look, the evidence is, and the evidence is, that he was saying Joe Wilson [Plame Wilson’s husband], who was criticizing the administration on weapons of mass destruction really had an ax to grind and got his job because his wife had worked at the CIA and recommended him, so there’s fuzziness to this.” [MEDIA MATTERS, 11/16/2005] Entity Tags: Bush administration, Bob Woodward, Valerie Plame Wilson, Patrick Fitzgerald, Karl Rove, Joseph C. Wilson Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 18, 2005: Bush Changes Standard of Accountability for Rove, Now Says He Will Fire Any White House Official Who ‘Committed a Crime’ During a press conference, President Bush is asked if he still intends to fire anyone involved in the Plame Wilson leak, and if he is “displeased that Karl Rove told a reporter that Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife worked for the [CIA] on WMD issues.” Bush, described as looking “mildly annoyed,” responds, “We have a serious ongoing investigation here,” and adds: “[I]t’s being played out in the press. And I think it’s best that people wait until the investigation is complete before you jump to conclusions. And I will do so, as well. I don’t know all the facts. I would like to know all the facts. The best place for the facts to be done is by somebody who’s spending time investigating it. I would like this to end as quickly as possible so we know all the facts, and if someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration.” The last line regarding a “crime” was carefully selected before the conference by White House communications director Dan Bartlett, who, press secretary Scott McClellan will later write, wanted to “redefine the terms of firing someone who might have been involved in the leak, specifically Karl.” The New York Times observes, “The remarks appeared to shift the standard for dismissal that has been expressed repeatedly over many months by Mr. Bush’s spokesmen—from promises to fire anyone who played a role in the disclosure, to Mr. Bush’s statement today that criminal conduct would have to be involved.” McClellan dutifully echoes the new phrase in his own press conference, “barely objecting that it did not square with what the president had previously committed to do” (see September 29, 2003 and June 10, 2004). “I think that the president was stating what is obvious when it comes to people who work in the administration: that if someone commits a crime, they’re not going to be working any longer in this administration,” McClellan tells reporters. “I think that you should not read anything into it more than what the president said at this point.” McClellan will later describe himself as “psychologically battered” by this point (see July 11, 2005). [NEW YORK TIMES, 7/18/2005; WHITE HOUSE, 7/18/2005; NEW YORK TIMES, 7/19/2005; MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 262-263] Accusations of Shifting Standards, 'Lowering the Ethics Bar' - Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) says he is disappointed in what he believes to be Bush’s shifting stance. “The standard for holding a high position in the White House should not simply be that you didn’t break the law,” he says. Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) writes a letter to Bush charging that he has “significantly changed” his position, and that a president has “an affirmative obligation” to take quick action to protect national security secrets without waiting for a prosecution to run its course. [NEW YORK TIMES, 7/18/2005] Other Democrats charge that Bush has “lowered the ethics bar” for his administration. Representative John Conyers (D-MI) says: “It appears that an administration that came to office promising ‘honesty and integrity’ and to avoid ‘legalisms’ is now defining ethical standards downward. In this White House, apparently no aide will be fired or forced to resign unless and until the jail cell door is locked behind him.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 7/18/2005] Rove Held to Different Standard of Accountability, Say Experts - Some experts say that by insisting on waiting for a final legal verdict, Bush is setting a different standard of accountability for Rove than for other government employees. Elaine Kaplan, who headed the Office of Special Counsel from 1998 through 2003, says: “Government employees and officials who are negligent with classified information can lose their jobs for carelessness. They don’t have to be convicted of intentionally disseminating the information. Crime has never been the threshold. That’s not the standard that applies to rank-and-file federal employees. They can be fired for misconduct well short of a crime.” Beth Slavet, the former chair of the Merit Systems Protection Board, adds: “The government can fire a Civil Service employee if it can show, by a preponderance of the evidence, that it would ‘promote the efficiency of the service’ to do so. The person does not have to be guilty of a crime. You can be dismissed because you didn’t submit paperwork on time, you didn’t follow instructions, you repeatedly showed up late for work, or you yelled at supervisors and fellow workers.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 7/19/2005] Entity Tags: Beth Slavet, Charles Schumer, Dan Bartlett, Henry A. Waxman, Elaine Kaplan, Scott McClellan, George W. Bush, John Conyers, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 22, 2005: Press Learns that Libby, Rove Claim to Have Learned Plame Wilson’s CIA Identity from Reporters Bloomberg News reports that Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, testified that he first learned of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity from NBC bureau chief Tim Russert. Libby will make this claim a staple of his defense in his upcoming perjury trial (see January 16-23, 2007). He is referring to a conversation he had with Russert in July 2003 (see July 10 or 11, 2003). He testified to the claim when he was interviewed by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald as part of the Plame Wilson identity leak investigation (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003). Russert has told FBI investigators that he did not tell Libby of Plame Wilson’s identity (see November 24, 2003 and August 7, 2004). Similarly, White House political strategist Karl Rove has testified that he learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from columnist Robert Novak (see September 29, 2003, October 8, 2003, and October 15, 2004). Novak has told investigators that he learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from Rove, CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see October 7, 2003, February 5, 2004, and September 14, 2004). Fitzgerald has determined that both Libby and Rove may have deliberately lied to the FBI and to his investigations in making their claims (see October and November 2003). According to Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin, Rove told Fitzgerald’s grand jury that “he had not heard her name before he heard it from Bob Novak.” Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) says that the White House should suspend Libby and Rove’s security clearances (see July 13, 2005), and that President Bush should fire anyone involved in the leak, presumably meaning Libby and Rove. [BLOOMBERG, 7/22/2005; WASHINGTON POST, 7/23/2005] Entity Tags: Richard Armitage, Karl Rove, Charles Schumer, Bill Harlow, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Robert Luskin, Robert Novak, Valerie Plame Wilson, Tim Russert, Patrick Fitzgerald Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

July 29, 2005: Rove Aides Testify before Grand Jury Susan Ralston and Israel Hernandez, two aides to White House political strategist Karl Rove, testify before the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson identity leak. Ralston still works for Rove, while Hernandez has moved to the Commerce Department. Both are asked about the testimony given by reporter Matthew Cooper (see July 13, 2005), who told the grand jury of the conversation he had with Rove concerning Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Both aides are asked why Cooper’s call was not entered in Rove’s office telephone logs; Ralston says that the call was not logged because Cooper did not call Rove directly, but was transferred from the White House switchboard. [NEW YORK TIMES, 8/3/2005; WASHINGTON POST, 10/7/2005] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Israel Hernandez, Matthew Cooper, Susan Ralston Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 14, 2005: Rove Testifies for Fourth Time before Plame Wilson Grand Jury, Admits to Second Leak

Karl Rove (right) and his lawyer, Robert Luskin. [Source: Doug Mills / The New York Times] White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove testifies for a fourth time before the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see December 30, 2003). [WASHINGTON POST, 10/15/2005; WASHINGTON POST, 7/3/2007] Rove amends and clarifies his earlier testimony, most notably his failure to remember outing Plame Wilson to Time reporter Matthew Cooper (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spends a large portion of Rove’s session focusing on the omission. In earlier testimony, Rove attempted to claim that he had only a “hazy recollection” of hearing Plame Wilson’s name (see October 15, 2004) before reading Robert Novak’s column which publicly outed her as a CIA agent (see July 14, 2003). He now testifies that he informed Cooper of her status as a CIA agent days before the article appeared, and his memory apparently failed him during his earlier statements to the grand jury. Rove testifies that his recollection was prompted by the discovery of an e-mail message to Stephen Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, that he wrote after talking to Cooper (see March 1, 2004). [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 10/7/2005; NEW YORK TIMES, 10/15/2005] He insists that he never identified Plame Wilson by her name, but “merely” as the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, and did not intentionally reveal her as a covert CIA official because he did not know of her clandestine status. [WASHINGTON POST, 10/15/2005] He says he may have learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from fellow White House official Lewis Libby, and says that both he and Libby learned of her CIA employment status from reporters. He says someone else outside the White House also told him of Plame Wilson’s identity, but he cannot remember who that was. [WASHINGTON POST, 10/20/2005] Previously, Rove insisted that he learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from reporters, and not the other way around, as many reporters and others have already testified. Rove has said that one of the reporters who told him that Plame Wilson was a CIA official was Novak, a statement Novak has contradicted (see October 7, 2003, February 5, 2004, and September 14, 2004). Rove also testified that he never told Cooper Plame Wilson’s name, but merely identified her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 7/15/2005] Rove's Testimony No Distraction, White House Officials Claim - White House spokesman Scott McClellan says Rove’s testimony has not distracted the administration from its usual affairs: “[W]hile there are other things going on, the White House doesn’t have time to let those things distract from the important work at hand.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/15/2005] White House chief of staff Andrew Card concurs. “Well, obviously we’re all human beings and we know that there are external activities that impact the environment you’re working in,” he says. “It is something that is there, but it is something that we don’t talk about because it would be inappropriate.… I haven’t found anyone that is distracted because of the ongoing investigation, but we all know that it’s taking place and we’re all working to cooperate with the investigators.” [WASHINGTON POST, 10/15/2005] Lawyer: Rove 'Always Honest' with FBI, Jury, President - Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, says that his client “has always attempted to be honest and fully forthcoming” to anyone “he has spoken to about this matter, whether that be the special prosecutor or the president of the United States. My client would not hide anything, because he has nothing to hide. It would not be to his benefit to do so.” Previously, Rove had failed to disclose his discussion with Cooper to either the FBI or to President Bush (see After September 26, 2003). [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 10/7/2005] “The special counsel has not advised Mr. Rove that he is a target of the investigation and affirmed that he has made no decision concerning charges.” [WASHINGTON POST, 10/15/2005] Fitzgerald Mulling Criminal Charges against Rove - Sources close to the Fitzgerald investigation say Rove’s statements to Bush and to the FBI are at the heart of the decision whether or not to charge him with making false statements to investigators, or with obstruction of justice. Lying to the president could in itself be worthy of charges. Law professor Rory Little, a former federal prosecutor and assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration, says: “The president is the top law enforcement official of the executive branch. It is a crime to make a false statement to a federal agent. If the president was asking in that capacity, and the statement was purposely false, then you might have a violation of law.” However, if Bush had discussed the matter with Rove in a more informal capacity, then, Little says, a case for making false statements to a federal agent would be more difficult to prove. Law professor Randall Eliason says that if Rove deliberately lied to the president, a prosecutor could construe the lie as an “overt act… in furtherance of a criminal plan.” Law professor Stephen Gillers notes: “Misleading the president, other officials of the executive branch, or even the FBI might not, in and of themselves, constitute criminal acts. But a prosecutor investigating other crimes—such as obstruction of justice or perjury—might use evidence of any such deception to establish criminal intent. And a lack of candor might also negate a claim of good faith or inadvertent error in providing misleading information to prosecutors.” [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 10/7/2005] Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Joseph C. Wilson, Valerie Plame Wilson, Bush administration, Karl Rove, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, Stephen J. Hadley, Andrew Card, Scott McClellan, Randall Eliason, Stephen Gillers, Matthew Cooper, Robert Luskin, Patrick Fitzgerald, Rory Little, Robert Novak Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 18, 2005: Columnist: Fitzgerald’s Investigation a ‘Disaster’ for Freedom of Press and Freedom of Speech

Slate’s Jacob Weisberg. [Source: Paid Content (.org)] Jacob Weisberg, a senior editor of Slate magazine, warns liberals that the possible prosecution of White House official Karl Rove and/or former White House aide Lewis Libby may not be cause for celebration. “Opponents of the Bush administration are anticipating vindication on various fronts—justice for their nemesis Karl Rove, repudiation of George W. Bush’s dishonest case for the Iraq war, a comeuppance for Chalabi-loving reporter Judith Miller of the New York Times, and even some payback for the excesses of independent counsels during the Clinton years,” he writes. Weisberg calls support for the potential prosecutions “self-destructive,” and explains: “Anyone who cares about civil liberties, freedom of information, or even just fair play should have been skeptical about [special prosecutor Patrick] Fitzgerald’s investigation from the start. Claiming a few conservative scalps might be satisfying, but they’ll come at a cost to principles liberals hold dear: the press’s right to find out, the government’s ability to disclose, and the public’s right to know.” Weisberg calls the law that is at the heart of the Plame Wilson investigation, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), “flawed,” and the entire Fitzgerald investigation “misbegotten.” The law is difficult to use for a conviction because it requires that prosecutors prove intent to do harm. “Under the First Amendment, we have a right to debate what is done in our name, even by secret agents,” Weisberg writes. “It may be impossible to criminalize malicious disclosure without hampering essential public debate.” After calling the White House “negligent” and “stupid” for revealing Plame Wilson’s CIA status, he says that no one has shown Rove, Libby, or any other official leaked her name with the intent of causing her or her career harm. Weisberg writes: “[A]fter two years of digging, no evidence has emerged that anyone who worked for Bush and talked to reporters about Plame… knew she was undercover. And as nasty as they might be, it’s not really thinkable that they would have known. You need a pretty low opinion of people in the White House to imagine they would knowingly foster the possible assassination of CIA assets in other countries for the sake of retaliation against someone who wrote an op-ed they didn’t like in the New York Times” (see July 6, 2003). The outing of Plame Wilson was “accidental,” Weisberg claims, part of the Bush administration’s attempts to defend itself against its failure to find WMD in Iraq. Weisberg calls Fitzgerald “relentless and ambitious,” implying that he is pursuing the case for the fulfillment of his personal ambition, and says that no evidence exists of anyone breaking any laws, whether it be the IIPA, statutes against perjury or conspiracy, obstruction of justice, or anything else. Fitzgerald will indict someone for something, Weisberg states, because not to do so would seem like he failed in his investigation. Fitzgerald is sure to bring what Weisberg calls “creative crap charges of his own devising” against someone, be it a White House official or a reporter. Weisberg concludes by calling Fitzgerald’s investigation “a disaster for freedom of the press and freedom of information.” [SLATE, 10/18/2005] Entity Tags: Judith Miller, Bush administration, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Patrick Fitzgerald, Jacob Weisberg, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 26, 2005: White House Communications Official Testifies about Conversations with Rove The grand jury hearing evidence in the Plame Wilson CIA leak investigation hears testimony from White House communications official Adam Levine. Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald quizzes Levine about conversations he had with White House political strategist Karl Rove, and with neighbors of Valerie Plame Wilson. [WASHINGTON POST, 10/27/2005] Levine has already testified before the grand jury (see February 6, 2004). Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Adam Levine, Valerie Plame Wilson, Patrick Fitzgerald Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 26, 2005: Grand Jury Hears Summary Argument in Plame Wilson Investigation The grand jury hearing evidence in the Plame Wilson CIA leak investigation hears the summation of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. The final weeks of the jury’s tenure have been marked by what the Washington Post calls “a furious effort” by lawyers for White House political strategist Karl Rove to convince Fitzgerald that Rove should not be prosecuted for perjury. The press is unsure what criminal charges Fitzgerald may have asked the jury to bring, or whether he asked them to vote on possible indictments. The grand jury’s term is expiring, and observers believe Fitzgerald is reluctant to empanel a second grand jury to consider further evidence. Law professor Lori Shaw says this jury is well-versed and invested in the investigation. “You have to consider: They are not rookies at this anymore,” she says. “I have a feeling that by now this grand jury has a good idea of what crime, if any, occurred.” White House officials believe that either Rove or Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, and perhaps both of them, will face criminal charges. But the White House is downplaying the current status of the investigation. Press secretary Scott McClellan tells reporters, “We certainly are following developments in the news, but everybody’s got a lot of work to do.” And President Bush has tried to shift the public’s attention away from the investigation and onto what he calls his successful economic policies. [WASHINGTON POST, 10/27/2005] Two days later, the jury will indict Libby (see October 28, 2005). Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Bush administration, George W. Bush, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Lori Shaw, Patrick Fitzgerald, Scott McClellan Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 28, 2005: Libby Indicted for Perjury, Obstruction of Justice over Outing of CIA Officer

Screen graphic from CNN’s coverage of Lewis Libby’s indictment. [Source: CNN / Flickr] Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, is indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice. Libby is accused of “outing” Valerie Plame Wilson, an undercover CIA agent, to the press (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, and 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003), and then lying about it to the FBI and to a grand jury empaneled by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald (see December 30, 2003, March 5, 2004, and March 24, 2004). Libby immediately resigns his position as Cheney’s chief of staff. [CNN, 5/14/2003; US DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 10/28/2005 ; MSNBC, 2/21/2007; WASHINGTON POST, 7/3/2007] Five Counts of Obstruction, Two Counts of Perjury - Libby is indicted on five counts of obstruction of justice and two counts of perjury. [US DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 10/28/2005 ; MSNBC, 2/21/2007] Though the original investigation was of the Plame Wilson leak, Fitzgerald says it is important to understand that Libby’s crimes, though not the prime focus of the initial investigation, should be prosecuted as well. “Investigators do not set out to investigate the statute, they set out to gather the facts,” he says. The indictment does not charge Libby with knowingly disclosing the identity of a covert agent. [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/28/2005] Confirms that CIA Agent's Status Classified; Important to National Security - Fitzgerald confirms that the fact of Plame Wilson’s employment at the CIA was in and of itself classified information, and not to be shared to the media or the public. He says: “The fact that she was a CIA officer was not well known, for her protection or for the benefit of all us. It’s important that a CIA officer’s identity be protected, that it be protected not just for the officer, but for the nation’s security.… [T]he damage wasn’t to one person. It wasn’t just Valerie Wilson. It was done to all of us” (see Before September 16, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, October 23-24, 2003, and February 13, 2006). [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/28/2005; NATION, 3/16/2007] Libby Lied about Knowledge of Plame Wilson's Status, Indictment Charges - The indictment charges that Libby lied when he claimed that he learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA status from NBC reporter Tim Russert (see November 24, 2003, March 5, 2004, March 24, 2004, and August 7, 2004). Instead, the indictment charges, Libby learned about Plame Wilson and her possible role in sending her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger to investigate claims of Iraqi attempts to buy uranium (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002) from a number of people, including an undersecretary of state (see June 10, 2003), a CIA officer who regularly briefed him on national security issues (see 2:00 p.m. June 11, 2003), an unidentified “senior CIA officer,” and from his superior, Cheney (see (June 12, 2003)). In his turn, Libby shared that information with several officials in the Office of the Vice President, including Cheney’s senior counsel David Addington (see July 8, 2003), Cheney’s national security adviser John Hannah (see May 29, 2003), and Cheney’s press secretary at the time, Cathie Martin (who may have actually informed Libby—see 5:27 p.m. June 11, 2003). “In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson” (see June 23, 2003), Fitzgerald says. “[T]o be frank, Mr. Libby gave the FBI a compelling story,” he adds. “It would be a compelling story that will lead the FBI to go away if only it were true. It is not true, according to the indictment.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/28/2005; US DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 10/28/2005 ; NATIONAL JOURNAL, 10/30/2005] (The unidentified “senior CIA officer” is later revealed to be Frederick Fleitz, who served both as a senior officer at the Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC) desk and as Undersecretary of State John Bolton’s chief of staff—see (June 11, 2003).) [RAW STORY, 11/2/2005] Jeralyn Merritt, a criminal defense attorney who writes for the progressive blog TalkLeft, notes that according to the indictment, the phrases used by Libby in his denials to the grand jury were nearly verbatim echoes of Cheney’s own denials as told to NBC’s Tim Russert in September 2003 (see September 14, 2003). [JERALYN MERRITT, 10/31/2005] Sought Information on Plame Wilson's CIA Status - The indictment also charges that Libby sought information from the CIA and the State Department about Plame Wilson’s CIA status, and tried to determine whether she had been responsible for sending her husband to Niger. According to the indictment, Libby asked David Addington, the chief counsel to Cheney, “in sum and substance, what paperwork there would be at the CIA if an employee’s spouse undertook an overseas trip.” The court papers do not say what action, if any, Addington may have taken in response to Libby’s request. [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/28/2005; US DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 10/28/2005 ; NATIONAL JOURNAL, 12/16/2005] Discussed with Multiple Officials before Leaking to Reporters - In a press conference, Fitzgerald walks reporters and listeners through the indictment: from Libby’s learning of Plame Wilson’s identity from State Department and CIA sources and from Cheney, through his discussing it with at least three White House officials, all before the supposed “disclosure” from Russert. Libby subsequently lied to the FBI and to Fitzgerald’s grand jury about those discussions with government officials and again with Miller and Time reporter Matthew Cooper. “[H]e lied about it afterwards,” Fitzgerald says, “under oath and repeatedly.… [A]nyone who would go into a grand jury and lie, obstruct, and impede the investigation has committed a serious crime.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/28/2005] Leak Seriously Jeopardized National Security - Fitzgerald tells reporters that the leaking of a CIA officer’s identity is a serious breach of national security. “This is a very serious matter and compromising national security information is a very serious matter,” he says. “But the need to get to the bottom of what happened and whether national security was compromised by inadvertence, by recklessness, by maliciousness is extremely important.” Fitzgerald continues: “At a time when we need our spy agencies to have people work there, I think just the notion that someone’s identity could be compromised lightly… [discourages] our ability to recruit people and say, ‘Come work for us… come be trained… come work anonymously here or wherever else, go do jobs for the benefit of the country for which people will not thank you.” Senator John D. Rockefeller (D-WV), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, says: “Revealing the identity of a covert agent is the type of leak that gets people killed. Not only does it end the person’s career… it puts that person in grave personal danger as well as their colleagues and all the people they have had contact with.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/28/2005; NATIONAL JOURNAL, 10/30/2005] Charges Are Serious, Not 'Technicalities' - Responding to a question about Republican charges that Libby is being charged as a “technicality,” and Fitzgerald “overreached” his authority in filing the indictment, Fitzgerald says: “That talking point won’t fly. If you’re doing a national security investigation, if you’re trying to find out who compromised the identity of a CIA officer and you go before a grand jury and if the charges are proven… that the chief of staff to the vice president went before a federal grand jury and lied under oath repeatedly and fabricated a story about how he learned this information, how he passed it on, and we prove obstruction of justice, perjury, and false statements to the FBI, that is a very, very serious matter.… [T]he truth is the engine of our judicial system. And if you compromise the truth, the whole process is lost.… Any notion that anyone might have that there’s a different standard for a high official, that this is somehow singling out obstruction of justice and perjury, is upside down.… If these facts are true, if we were to walk away from this and not charge obstruction of justice and perjury, we might as well just hand in our jobs. Because our jobs, the criminal justice system, is to make sure people tell us the truth. And when it’s a high-level official and a very sensitive investigation, it is a very, very serious matter that no one should take lightly.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/28/2005] Explanation for Delay in Filing Indicitment - Fitzgerald gives one reason for the delay in filing the indictment against Libby. When asked why he went to such lengths to compel the testimony of reporters such as Miller (see September 30, 2005) and Cooper (see July 13, 2005), Fitzgerald replies that the rights of the accused are paramount in his mind. The testimony of Miller, Cooper, and other journalists could bolster the case against Libby, or could help exonerate him. The possibility that he might charge someone, only to learn later that one of the journalists who had declined to testify had information to clear the person, was something that “frightens me,” Fitzgerald says. “I think the only way you can do an investigation like this is to hear all eyewitnesses.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/28/2005; NATIONAL JOURNAL, 11/12/2005] No Charges against Cheney - Asked whether the investigation found evidence of criminal acts by Cheney, Fitzgerald answers: “We make no allegation that the vice president committed any criminal act. We make no allegation that any other people who provided or discussed with Mr. Libby committed any criminal act. But as to any person you asked me a question about other than Mr. Libby, I’m not going to comment on anything.” Fitzgerald refuses to comment on whether White House political strategist Karl Rove or anyone else will be named as co-conspirators, charged, or even named in court. [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/28/2005] Entity Tags: John Hannah, Judith Miller, John D. Rockefeller, John R. Bolton, Karl Rove, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Joseph C. Wilson, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Jeralyn Merritt, Frederick Fleitz, Central Intelligence Agency, David S. Addington, Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control, Valerie Plame Wilson, Federal Bureau of Investigation, US Department of State, Cathie Martin, Tim Russert, Patrick Fitzgerald, Matthew Cooper Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

October 30, 2005: ABC Reporter: McClellan ‘Unwittingly’ ‘Lied’ to Reporters about Rove and Libby, Rove Lied to McClellan Terry Moran, ABC News’s chief White House correspondent, tells ABC host George Stephanopoulos that he believes White House press secretary Scott McClellan unwittingly lied to reporters when he asserted that White House staffers Karl Rove (see September 16, 2003, September 27, 2003, September 29, 2003, and September 29, 2003) and Lewis “Scooter” Libby (see October 4, 2003 and October 4, 2003) knew nothing of the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak. “He was telling falsehoods right at us over and over unwittingly,” Moran says. Asked if McClellan knew he was lying, Moran replies: “No. And he signaled he wants to tell us the story,” referring to McClellan’s comments that he would like to be able to discuss his public support of Rove and Libby. Stephanopoulos asks, “[Y]ou say he didn’t know it, so that means Karl Rove lied to him?” “Yes,” Moran answers, “yes.” Moran notes that the White House will most likely do nothing except continue to “stonewall” and deny involvement: “My sense it right now they’ll kick this down the road. They’ll say it’s a continuing case and we’re going to kick it down the road.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 265-266] Entity Tags: Terry Moran, ABC News, Bush administration, George Stephanopoulos, Karl Rove, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Scott McClellan Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

November 4, 2005: Fitzgerald Focusing on Possible Perjury Charge against Rove Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is narrowing his focus on the potential criminal actions of White House political strategist Karl Rove. According to lawyers involved in the Lewis Libby perjury investigation, Fitzgerald is abandoning inquiries into whether Rove lied to a grand jury about his role in the Plame Wilson identity leak, and his characterization of the involvement of President Bush in the leak. Now Fitzgerald is focusing on whether Rove tried to conceal from the grand jury a conversation he had with Time reporter Matthew Cooper in the week before Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity was revealed (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003 and October 15, 2004). Fitzgerald is not sure Rove was fully forthcoming about the belated discovery of an internal e-mail in which he described the conversation with Cooper (see After 11:07 a.m. July 11, 2003 and March 1, 2004), and some within the investigation speculate that Rove may have perjured himself. White House officials have said that Rove will not be asked to leave the administration if he is not indicted. Democratic leaders in Congress have renewed their call for him to resign, reminding Bush of his pledge to demand the “highest ethical standards” from the members of his administration. [NEW YORK TIMES, 11/4/2005] Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, will point to a casual conversation between himself and journalist Viveca Novak as proof that Rove did not deliberately lie about the conversation with Cooper (see March 1, 2004). However, a source familiar with the case tells reporters that Rove had informed Luskin about the Cooper conversation even before his first testimony to the grand jury in February 2004 (see February 2004). Rove then told the jury that he did not remember speaking with Cooper about Plame Wilson. According to the source, Fitzgerald finds it suspicious that Rove did not find the e-mail until after he had subpoenaed Cooper to testify before his grand jury (see May 21, 2004). [WASHINGTON POST, 12/3/2005] Entity Tags: Patrick Fitzgerald, George W. Bush, Bush administration, Karl Rove, Matthew Cooper, Robert Luskin, Valerie Plame Wilson, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Viveca Novak Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

November 10, 2005: Time Reporter Tells Fitzgerald of Conversation with Rove’s Lawyer Time reporter Viveca Novak testifies in the Plame Wilson leak investigation. She and her lawyer, Hank Schuelke, meet in Schuelke’s office with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald agrees to limit his questioning to Novak’s conversations with Robert Luskin, the lawyer for White House political adviser Karl Rove (see March 1, 2004). In Novak’s later writing, she characterizes the questioning as “No fishing expeditions, no questions about my other reporting or sources in the case.” Fitzgerald says he wants to “remove the chicken bone without disturbing the body.” He asks general questions about when and how often Novak met with Luskin during the period from the fall of 2003 through the fall of 2004; Novak says they met about five times, but she took no notes from their meetings as Luskin did not speak as freely when she took notes. Then Fitzgerald gets to the “chicken bone,” asking if Luskin ever discussed Rove telling reporter Matthew Cooper that Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA agent (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Novak reveals the contents of her conversation with Luskin, and tells Fitzgerald that she believes the conversation may have occurred in May 2004, though she is not sure. As the meeting comes to an end, Fitzgerald tells her that he may want her to testify again, this time under oath. He does not foresee needing to bring her before his grand jury. Eight days later, Schuelke will inform Novak that Fitzgerald does indeed want her to testify under oath (see December 8, 2005). [TIME, 12/11/2005] Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Hank Schuelke, Karl Rove, Matthew Cooper, Viveca Novak, Patrick Fitzgerald, Robert Luskin Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

November 17, 2005: Post Analysts Says Woodward Revelation May Benefit Libby A Washington Post analysis posits that the revelation that Post reporter Bob Woodward was the first to learn of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity (see June 13, 2003 and November 14, 2005) may “provide a boost” to the legal defense of indicted White House leaker Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005). Woodward has testified that another government official leaked Plame Wilson’s name to a member of the press—himself—well before Libby’s leaks to other reporters (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Furthermore, Woodward has testified that Libby did not divulge Plame Wilson’s name to him during their two conversations in late June (see June 23, 2003 and June 27, 2003), a time period in which special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald says Libby was passing information about Plame Wilson to reporters and colleagues. The Post writes, “While neither statement appears to factually change Fitzgerald’s contention that Libby lied and impeded the leak investigation, the Libby legal team plans to use Woodward’s testimony to try to show that Libby was not obsessed with unmasking Plame and to raise questions about the prosecutor’s full understanding of events.” Former federal prosecutor John Moustakas says: “I think it’s a considerable boost to the defendant’s case. It casts doubt about whether Fitzgerald knew everything as he charged someone with very serious offenses.” But Randall Eliason, formerly the head of the public corruption unit in the Washington, DC, US Attorney’s Office, says he doubts the Woodward account will have much effect on Libby’s case, and calls such theories “defense spin.” Eliason says: “Libby was not charged with being the first to talk to a reporter, and that is not part of the indictment. Whether or not some other officials were talking to Woodward doesn’t really tell us anything about the central issue in Libby’s case: What was his state of mind and intent when he was talking to the FBI and testifying in the grand jury?… What this does suggest, though, is that the investigation is still very active. Hard to see how that is good news for [White House deputy chief of staff Karl] Rove or for anyone else in the prosecutor’s cross hairs.” The Libby defense team is calling Woodward’s testimony a “bombshell” with the potential to derail Fitzgerald’s case. Rove’s defense lawyers add that Woodward’s testimony benefits their client also. A source the Post calls “close to Rove” says: “It definitely raises the plausibility of Karl Rove’s simple and honest lapses of memory, because it shows that there were other people discussing the matter in what Mr. Woodward described as very offhanded, casual way. Let’s face it, we don’t all remember every conversation we have about significant issues, much less those about those that are less significant.” [WASHINGTON POST, 11/17/2005] Criminal defense lawyer Jeralyn Merritt, writing for the progressive blog TalkLeft, notes: “Fitzgerald did not say that Libby was the first administration official to disclose Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity to a reporter. He said Libby was the first person known to the government to have disclosed her identity. There’s a sea of difference between the two.… I think it’s perfectly clear what Fitzgerald meant in light of his statement at the beginning of the conference—Libby was the first person the investigation uncovered who disclosed the information to a reporter. I see nothing in Woodward’s revelations that affect the charges against Libby. He’s not charged with leaking Plame Wilson’s identity or with engaging in a vendetta against Wilson, although some have said he did both. He’s charged with lying to Fitzgerald’s investigators and the grand jury about what he told reporters and when and what reporters told him—and obstructing justice.” [JERALYN MERRITT, 11/16/2005] Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Jeralyn Merritt, Bob Woodward, John Moustakas, Karl Rove, Randall Eliason, Washington Post, Valerie Plame Wilson, Patrick Fitzgerald Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

December 2005: Influential Neoconservative Denies Any Role in Iraq-Niger Fabrication Author and Vanity Fair reporter Craig Unger interviews Michael Ledeen regarding the false claims that Iraq attempted to purchase massive amounts of uranium from Niger (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). Ledeen, a prominent neoconservative who holds the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute, is well known to have extensive ties to the Italian intelligence community and for his relationship with discredited Iranian arms merchant Manucher Ghorbanifar (see 1981 and December 9, 2001). Ledeen denies any involvement in promulgating the fraudulent uranium allegations. “I’m tired of being described as someone who likes fascism and is a warmonger,” he says. (Ledeen has written books and articles praising Italy’s Benito Mussolini, and wrote numerous articles in the run-up to the Iraq invasion calling for the US to forcibly overthrow numerous Middle Eastern governments along with Iraq’s—see September 20, 2001, December 7, 2001, and August 6, 2002.) “I think it’s obvious I have no clout in the administration. I haven’t had a role. I don’t have a role.” He barely knows White House political adviser Karl Rove, he says, and has “no professional relationship with any agency of the federal government during the Bush administration. That includes the Pentagon.” The facts contradict Ledeen’s assertions. Since before Bush’s inauguration, Rove has invited Ledeen to funnel ideas to the White House (see After November 2000). Former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski says Ledeen “was in and out of [the Pentagon] all the time.” Ledeen is very close to David Wurmser, who held key posts in the Pentagon and State Department before becoming the chief Middle East adviser for Vice President Dick Cheney. Ledeen also has close ties to National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Of course, none of this proves or disproves his connections, if any, to the Iraq-Niger fabrications. [UNGER, 2007, PP. 231] Entity Tags: Manucher Ghorbanifar, Bush administration, American Enterprise Institute, Craig Unger, David Wurmser, Karen Kwiatkowski, Karl Rove, Stephen J. Hadley, Michael Ledeen, US Department of Defense, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

December 2, 2005: Media Learns that Rove Altered Testimony after Reporter Told Lawyer of Leak

Viveca Novak. [Source: Annenberg Public Policy Center] The New York Times learns that a conversation between the lawyer for White House official Karl Rove and Time magazine reporter Viveca Novak led Rove to change his testimony to the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson identity leak (see October 14, 2005). Novak told Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, that her colleague at Time, Matthew Cooper, had possibly learned of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA status from Rove (see March 1, 2004). Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has summoned Novak to testify before his grand jury about the Luskin conversation. Sources say Fitzgerald is still determining whether Rove has been truthful and forthcoming in his multiple testimonies before the jury, and whether he altered his testimony after learning that Cooper might identify him as a source (see October 15, 2004). Previously, Rove testified that he only spoke to columnist Robert Novak (no relation to Viveca Novak) about Plame Wilson’s secret CIA identity (see July 8, 2003), and failed to disclose his similar leak to Cooper (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Rove testified that he simply forgot about his conversation with Cooper during previous testimony. [WASHINGTON POST, 11/29/2005; NEW YORK TIMES, 12/2/2005] Progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters notes that Novak never disclosed her conversation with Luskin to Fitzgerald, and failed to inform her readers of her contacts and her knowledge of the case in several articles she wrote about the investigation subsequent to her conversation with Luskin. Media Matters also notes that Novak “provid[ed] Luskin with information that might prove crucial to Rove’s defense in the case.… Novak, an experienced journalist working for a prestigious publication, disclosed to Rove’s lawyer information that she did not give to her readers and that Cooper would zealously try to withhold for more than a year on the basis of the purportedly sacrosanct anonymity agreement between a reporter and a source.… Novak may have affirmatively helped Rove—a source the magazine covers and will continue to cover—beat a perjury rap, not by exonerating him through a story in the course of her job, but by providing his lawyer with information in a private conversation.… Novak apparently felt free to disclose to Rove’s lawyer that Cooper might be compelled to testify before a grand jury about the conversation between Cooper and Rove, but she did not accord Time readers the same privilege.” [MEDIA MATTERS, 12/2/2005] The Washington Post notes that Luskin and Novak are friends. [WASHINGTON POST, 11/29/2005] Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Media Matters, Matthew Cooper, Karl Rove, Patrick Fitzgerald, Robert Novak, Viveca Novak, Robert Luskin Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

December 7, 2005: Fitzgerald Meets with Grand Jury; Rove Indictment Possible Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald meets for almost three hours with the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson identity leak; observers believe Fitzgerald is still considering whether to bring charges against White House political strategist Karl Rove. This grand jury is newly empaneled; the first grand jury, after spending almost two years investigating the leak, was dismissed after bringing an indictment against former White House official Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005). Its term expired that same day. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 12/7/2005; WASHINGTON POST, 7/3/2007] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Patrick Fitzgerald Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

December 8, 2005: Time Reporter Testifies under Oath to Plame Wilson Prosecutor Time reporter Viveca Novak testifies under oath in the Plame Wilson leak investigation, in an interview at her lawyer Hank Schuelke’s office. Novak has already spoken with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald (see November 10, 2005) about her conversations with Robert Luskin, the lawyer for White House aide Karl Rove (see March 1, 2004), but did not inform her editors of either her conversations with Luskin or her discussion with Fitzgerald until after Fitzgerald asked her to testify under oath. In late November, she informed Time bureau chief Jim Carney, who informed managing editor Jim Kelly. As Novak will later write, “Nobody was happy about it, least of all me.” Before her testimony, various leaks about her involvement in the investigation began appearing in the press, making her “feel physically ill.” Novak also rechecked her notes and found that she had misinformed Fitzgerald about the date of her conversation with Luskin concerning Rove: it was most likely March 1, 2004 and not May 2004. Novak will later write that the second interview is “more focused” than the first one, and her responses are, if anything, even more confused and vague than during her first interview. “I was mortified about how little I could recall of what occurred when,” she will later write. Fitzgerald again focuses on her exchanges with Luskin, sticking to their previous agreement “not to wander with his questions.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 12/8/2005; TIME, 12/11/2005] The leaks about Novak apparently began with Luskin, who told Fitzgerald that Novak inadvertently alerted him last year that her colleague, Matthew Cooper, would have to testify that Rove was his source for an article about Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson (see July 17, 2003). Investigative reporter Jason Leopold writes that it seems Luskin is trying to derail a potential criminal indictment of Rove (see December 7, 2005). [COUNTERPUNCH, 12/9/2005] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Jason Leopold, Hank Schuelke, Jim Carney, Joseph C. Wilson, Patrick Fitzgerald, Valerie Plame Wilson, Jim Kelly, Matthew Cooper, Viveca Novak, Robert Luskin Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

December 9, 2005: Reporter: Fitzgerald Suspicious about Rove E-Mail Claim Investigative reporter Jason Leopold notes that, according to his sources, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald does not believe the story that White House political strategist Karl Rove and his lawyer, Robert Luskin, are telling about the fortuitous discovery of an internal e-mail that led Rove to admit that he told Time reporter Matthew Cooper about Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity. In March 2004, Time reporter Viveca Novak told Luskin that she was sure Rove outed Plame Wilson to Cooper; that information prompted Luskin to have Rove search the White House e-mail archives for information bearing out Novak’s assertion, and Rove found an e-mail he had sent to Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley about his conversation with Hadley (see March 1, 2004). Novak testified yesterday about her conversation with Luskin (see December 8, 2005). “Fitzgerald is said to be suspicious about the chain of events that led up to the discovery of the email,” Leopold writes. “Moreover, he is said to be convinced that Rove had changed his story once it became clear that Cooper would be compelled to testify about the source—Rove—who revealed Plame Wilson’s CIA status to him.” Luskin has said that his client, Rove, initially forgot about his conversation with Cooper in his first testimonies before Fitzgerald’s grand jury, and claimed he was not Cooper’s source (see October 8, 2003). According to Leopold’s sources, some of which are inside the Fitzgerald team, Fitzgerald does not find Rove and Luskin’s assertions “believable.” [COUNTERPUNCH, 12/9/2005] Entity Tags: Patrick Fitzgerald, Jason Leopold, Karl Rove, Robert Luskin, Matthew Cooper, Valerie Plame Wilson, Stephen J. Hadley, Viveca Novak Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

December 11, 2005: Time Reporter Writes of Testifying to Fitzgerald regarding Plame Wilson Leak Time magazine reporter Viveca Novak writes an article discussing her recent testimony to the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson identity leak. Novak was asked to testify (see December 2, 2005) after special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald learned of her conversation with Robert Luskin, the lawyer for White House official Karl Rove. Rove is a primary focus of the leak investigation. In 2004, Novak alerted Luskin that her colleague, Matthew Cooper, had learned of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from Rove (see March 1, 2004). That information prompted Luskin to have Rove “alter” his testimony before Fitzgerald’s grand jury, and admit that he had leaked Plame Wilson’s identity to Cooper (see October 14, 2005). Novak defends her conversation with Luskin, admitting that she and Luskin had been casual friends since 1996, and she had used him as a source for several years. Luskin, Novak recalls, informed her in late October 2005 that he had told Fitzgerald of their 2004 conversation, and that Fitzgerald might want to subpoena her to testify. Novak writes that she never considered refusing to testify, since there was no need to try to protect Luskin as a source, and Luskin wanted her to testify anyway. Novak hired a lawyer but did not inform her editors at Time of the upcoming testimony. She spoke with Fitzgerald on November 10 (see November 10, 2005) and testified a month later (see December 8, 2005). Novak notes that Luskin is displeased about her decision to write about their conversation, but, she writes, “I feel that he violated any understanding to keep our talk confidential by unilaterally going to Fitzgerald and telling him what was said. And, of course, anyone who testifies under oath for a grand jury (my sworn statement will be presented to the grand jury by Fitzgerald) is free to discuss that testimony afterward.” After this article is published in Time, the magazine announces, “By mutual agreement, Viveca Novak is currently on a leave of absence.” [TIME, 12/11/2005] Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Karl Rove, Matthew Cooper, Patrick Fitzgerald, Viveca Novak, Robert Luskin, Time magazine Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

January 20, 2006: Rove: Use Warrantless Wiretapping Controversy to Paint Political Opponents as ‘Weak on Terrorism’ President Bush’s top political adviser, deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove, tells a meeting of the Republican National Committee that the warrantless wiretapping controversy (see December 15, 2005 and December 18, 2005) can be used to boost Republicans’ election chances in the 2006 midterm elections. Republicans should emphasize that the wiretapping proves that Bush is willing to do whatever it takes to defeat terrorism and keep Americans safe. Critics of the program, therefore, can be painted as weak on terrorism. “The United States faces a ruthless enemy, and we need a commander in chief and a Congress who understand the nature of the threat and the gravity of the moment America finds itself in,” Rove says. “President Bush and the Republican Party do; unfortunately, the same cannot be said of many Democrats.… Let me be clear as I can be: President Bush believes if al-Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interests to know who they’re calling and why. Some important Democrats clearly disagree.” [WIS-TV, 1/20/2006; SAVAGE, 2007, PP. 203] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Democratic Party, Republican Party, Republican National Committee, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties

February 2, 2006: Libby Will Claim Authorization by Cheney, Others for Intelligence Disclosures According to sources with firsthand knowledge, alleged perjurer Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005), the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, has given indications of the nature of his defense in his upcoming trial (see January 16-23, 2007). Libby will tell the court that he was authorized by Cheney and other senior Bush administration officials to leak classified information to reporters to build public support for the Iraq invasion and rebut criticism of the war. Prosecutors believe that other White House officials involved in authorizing the leak of classified information may include former Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and White House political strategist Karl Rove. Libby has already made this claim to the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson identity leak (see March 24, 2004). As he told the grand jury, Libby will claim that he was authorized to leak classified information to rebut claims from former ambassador Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame Wilson’s husband, that the Bush administration had misrepresented intelligence information to make a public case for war. Libby allegedly outed Plame Wilson, a covert CIA agent, as part of the White House’s effort to discredit Wilson. Libby is not charged with the crime of revealing a covert CIA agent, but some of the perjury charges center on his denials of outing Plame Wilson to the FBI and to the grand jury. Libby has admitted revealing Plame Wilson’s identity to reporter Judith Miller (see August 6, 2005); he also revealed classified information to Miller. Risk of Implicating Cheney - Law professor Dan Richman, a former federal prosecutor, says it is surprising that Libby would use such a defense strategy. “One certainly would not expect Libby, as part of his defense, to claim some sort of clear authorization from Cheney where none existed, because that would clearly risk the government’s calling Cheney to rebut that claim.” Reporter Murray Waas writes that Libby’s defense strategy would further implicate Cheney in the White House’s efforts to discredit and besmirch Wilson’s credibility (see October 1, 2003), and link him to the leaks of classified information and Plame Wilson’s CIA identity. It is already established that Libby learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA status from Cheney and at least three other government officials (see 12:00 p.m. June 11, 2003 and (June 12, 2003)). Similarities to North's Iran-Contra Defense Strategy - Waas compares Libby’s defense strategy to that of former Colonel Oliver North, charged with a variety of crimes arising from the Iran-Contra scandal (see February 1989). Libby’s defense team includes John Cline, who represented North during his trial. Critics call Cline a “graymail” specialist, who demands the government disclose classified information during a trial, and uses potential refusals to ask for dismissal of charges. Cline won the dismissal of many of the most serious charges against North when Reagan administration officials refused to declassify documents he said were necessary for North’s defense. The special counsel for the Iran-Contra investigation, Lawrence Walsh, believed that Reagan officials refused to declassify the documents because they were sympathetic to North, and trying North on the dismissed charges would have exposed further crimes committed by more senior Reagan officials. It is likely that Cline is using a similar strategy with Libby, according to Waas. Cline has already demanded the disclosure of 10 months’ worth of Presidential Daily Briefings (PDBs), some of the most highly classified documents in government (see January 31, 2006). The Bush administration has routinely denied requests for PDB disclosures. A former Iran-Contra prosecutor says: “It was a backdoor way of shutting us down. It was a cover-up by means of an administrative action, and it was an effective cover-up at that.… The intelligence agencies do not declassify things on the pretext that they are protecting state secrets, but the truth is that we were investigating and prosecuting their own. The same was true for the Reagan administration. Cline was particularly adept at working the system.” Michael Bromwich, a former associate Iran-Contra independent counsel and a former Justice Department inspector general, says it might be more difficult for the Bush administration to use a similar strategy to undercut special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, because Fitzgerald was appointed by the attorney general, not a panel of judges as were Walsh and Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth Starr. Both Walsh and Starr alleged that they were impeded by interference from political appointees in the Justice Department. Bromwich’s fellow associate Iran-Contra counsel William Treanor, now the dean of Fordham University’s Law School, agrees: “With Walsh or Starr, the president and his supporters could more easily argue that a prosecutor was overzealous or irresponsible, because there had been a three-judge panel that appointed him,” Treanor says. “With Fitzgerald, you have a prosecutor who was appointed by the deputy attorney general [at the direction of the attorney general]. The administration almost has to stand behind him because this is someone they selected themselves. It is harder to criticize someone you yourself put into play.” [NATIONAL JOURNAL, 2/6/2006] 'This Is Major' - Progressive author and columnist Arianna Huffington writes: “This proves just how far the White House was willing to go to back up its deceptive claims about why we needed to go to war in Iraq. The great protectors of our country were so concerned about covering their lies they were willing to pass out highly classified information to reporters. And remember—and this is the key—it’s not partisan Democrats making this claim; it’s not Bush-bashing conspiracy theorists, or bloggers reading the Aspen roots (see September 15, 2005). This information is coming from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald as filed in court papers. This is major.” [HUFFINGTON POST, 2/9/2006] Entity Tags: Judith Miller, Valerie Plame Wilson, Joseph C. Wilson, Dan Richman, Bush administration, Arianna Huffington, Stephen J. Hadley, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, William Treanor, Patrick Fitzgerald, Lawrence E. Walsh, Kenneth Starr, Karl Rove, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Reagan administration, Murray Waas, John Cline, Michael Bromwich Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

February 7, 2006: Former Time Reporter Writes of His Learning of Plame Wilson’s Identity Slate reporter John Dickerson, who formerly worked for Time magazine during the initial Plame Wilson identity leak investigation coverage, writes of his knowledge of, and participation in, the investigation, including his knowledge that White House official Karl Rove leaked Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity to Dickerson’s colleague, Matthew Cooper (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Dickerson co-wrote a July 2003 Time article with Cooper (see July 17, 2003) that led to Cooper’s subpoena from the Patrick Fitzgerald investigation (see August 9, 2004 and September 13, 2004), his being held in contempt of court (see October 13, 2004), and his eventual testimony (see July 13, 2005). However, Dickerson was never subpoenaed to testify before the Fitzgerald grand jury. He writes that he accompanied the gaggle of reporters with President Bush on his trip to Africa in July 2003, and of the extensive time spent by two “senior administration official[s]” telling him how partisan and unreliable Plame Wilson’s husband Joseph Wilson is, and how he should investigate what “low-level” CIA official sent Wilson to Niger (see July 11, 2003). “I thought I got the point,” Dickerson writes. “He’d been sent by someone around the rank of deputy assistant undersecretary or janitor.” Dickerson goes on to observe, “What struck me was how hard both officials were working to knock down Wilson” (see October 1, 2003). After returning from the trip, Cooper told Dickerson that Rove had informed him of Plame Wilson’s CIA identity. “So, that explained the wink-wink nudge-nudge I was getting about who sent Wilson,” Dickerson writes. Cooper and Dickerson were careful, Dickerson writes, to ensure that other reporters would not learn of Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from either of them. And Dickerson did not want to encroach on Cooper’s arrangement with Rove. Dickerson writes: “At this point the information about Valerie Plame was not the radioactive material it is today. No one knew she might have been a protected agent—and for whatever reason, the possibility didn’t occur to us or anyone else at the time. But it was still newsworthy that the White House was using her to make its case. That Scooter Libby and Karl Rove mentioned Plame to Matt was an example of how they were attempting to undermine Wilson. They were trying to make his trip look like a special family side deal not officially sanctioned by the agency.” [SLATE, 2/7/2006; SLATE, 2/7/2006] In 2007, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer will testify that he informed Dickerson of Plame Wilson’s identity (see 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), a statement that Dickerson will dispute. [SLATE, 1/29/2007] Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, George W. Bush, Bush administration, Ari Fleischer, John Dickerson, Karl Rove, Patrick Fitzgerald, Time magazine, Valerie Plame Wilson, Matthew Cooper, Joseph C. Wilson Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

March 17, 2006: Libby Defense Team Lists Intended Witnesses A court filing by Lewis Libby’s defense team lists the witnesses the lawyers say they intend to put on the stand in their client’s defense. The list includes: Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see June 13, 2003, After October 28, 2005, and November 14, 2005); Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (see July 7, 2003, 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, and 1:26 p.m. July 12, 2003); Former Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman (see June 10, 2003); Former Secretary of State Colin Powell (see July 16, 2004); White House political strategist Karl Rove (see July 8, 2003, July 8 or 9, 2003, and 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003); Former CIA Director George Tenet (see June 11 or 12, 2003, July 11, 2003 and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003); Former US ambassador Joseph Wilson (see July 6, 2003); Former CIA covert operative Valerie Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003); National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley (see July 21, 2003 and November 14, 2005); CIA briefers Craig Schmall (see 7:00 a.m. June 14, 2003), Peter Clement, and/or Matt Barrett; Former CIA officials Robert Grenier (see 4:30 p.m. June 10, 2003, 2:00 p.m. June 11, 2003, and 5:27 p.m. June 11, 2003) and/or John McLaughlin (see June 11 or 12, 2003); Former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow (see 5:27 p.m. June 11, 2003, (July 11, 2003), and Before July 14, 2003); Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington (see July 8, 2003); Former Cheney press secretary Cathie Martin (see 5:27 p.m. June 11, 2003); and Cheney himself (see July 12, 2003 and Late September or Early October, 2003). The defense also: Wants notes from a September 2003 White House briefing where Powell reportedly claimed that many people knew of Plame Wilson’s CIA identity before it became public knowledge; Implies that Grossman may not be an unbiased witness; Suspects Fleischer may have already cooperated with the investigation (see June 10, 2004); Intends to argue that Libby had no motive to lie to either the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) or the grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004); and Intends to argue that columnist Robert Novak’s primary source for his column exposing Plame Wilson as a CIA official was not Libby, but “a source outside the White House” (see July 8, 2003). [US DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 3/17/2006 ; JERALYN MERRITT, 3/18/2006] Criminal defense attorney Jeralyn Merritt believes Libby’s team may be preparing to lay blame for the Plame Wilson leak on Grossman. She writes that, in her view, “Libby’s lawyers are publicly laying out how they intend to impeach him: by claiming he is not to be believed because (either or both) his true loyalty is to Richard Armitage rather than to the truth, or he is a self-aggrandizing government employee who thinks of himself a true patriot whose duty it is to save the integrity of the State Department.” [JERALYN MERRITT, 4/4/2006] Libby’s lawyers indicate that they will challenge Plame Wilson’s significance as a covert CIA official (see Fall 1992 - 1996, April 2001 and After, Before September 16, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, October 23-24, 2003, and February 13, 2006). “The prosecution has an interest in continuing to overstate the significance of Ms. Wilson’s affiliation with the CIA,” the court filing states. They also intend to attempt to blame Armitage, Grossman, Grenier, McLaughlin, Schmall, and/or other officials outside the White House proper as the real sources for the Plame Wilson identity leak. [US DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 3/17/2006 ; TRUTHOUT (.ORG), 3/18/2006] Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Robert Novak, Robert Grenier, Cathie Martin, Colin Powell, Ari Fleischer, Central Intelligence Agency, Bush administration, Bill Harlow, Richard Armitage, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Stephen J. Hadley, Matt Barrett, George J. Tenet, Peter Clement, Craig Schmall, Jeralyn Merritt, John E. McLaughlin, David S. Addington, Karl Rove, Joseph C. Wilson, Marc Grossman, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

April 9, 2006: Fitzgerald: ‘Multiple’ White House Officials Involved in Leak Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald accuses “multiple people in the White House” of engaging in a “concerted action” to smear the character of war critic Joseph Wilson (see June 2003, June 3, 2003, June 11, 2003, June 12, 2003, June 19 or 20, 2003, July 6, 2003, July 6-10, 2003, July 7, 2003 or Shortly After, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, July 11, 2003, (July 11, 2003), July 12, 2003, July 12, 2003, July 18, 2003, October 1, 2003, and April 5, 2006), using classified information (see April 5, 2006) to do so. Fitzgerald places Vice President Dick Cheney at the heart of the smear campaign. He uses grand jury testimony from Cheney’s former chief of staff, Lewis Libby (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004), to substantiate his charges. Libby’s efforts to spread false rumors via classified information include his June 2003 meeting with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward (see June 27, 2003), his two conversations with New York Times reporter Judith Miller (see 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003 and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003), and his conversation with Time reporter Matthew Cooper (see 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003). Fitzgerald says that White House officials besides Cheney, Libby, and White House political strategist Karl Rove are involved in the Wilson smear campaign. According to Fitzgerald, the grand jury has collected so much testimony and so many documents that “it is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to ‘punish’ Wilson.” [WASHINGTON POST, 4/9/2006] Entity Tags: Joseph C. Wilson, Bush administration, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Karl Rove, Patrick Fitzgerald, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

April 12, 2006: Libby Team Indicates It May Call Wilson, Rove, Others to Testify Lewis Libby’s defense team files a response to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s rejection of its demands for more classified documents (see April 5, 2006). Defense Lawyers Intend to Subpoena Wilson, White House Officials - In the filing, Libby’s lawyers indicate that they intend to call for testimony a number of people involved in the Plame Wilson leak, including former ambassador Joseph Wilson (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and July 6, 2003), White House political strategist Karl Rove (see July 8, 2003, July 8 or 9, 2003, and 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), State Department official Marc Grossman (see June 10, 2003), former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (see July 7, 2003, 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, and 1:26 p.m. July 12, 2003), and former CIA Director George Tenet (see June 11 or 12, 2003, July 11, 2003 and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). The defense would consider Wilson a “hostile witness” if they indeed subpoena his testimony. Many of these potential witnesses were also disclosed by the Libby team a month earlier (see March 17, 2006). Limiting Document Requests - The defense also agrees to limit its future document requests “to documents that are currently in the actual possession of the OSC [Office of Special Counsel] or which the OSC knows to exist.” Libby Claims No Memory of Key Conversation - Libby’s lawyers also assert that Libby remembers nothing of conversations he had with Grossman, in which Grossman has testified that he told Libby of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA status (see May 29, 2003, June 10, 2003, 12:00 p.m. June 11, 2003, and October 17, 2003). [US DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 4/12/2006 ; TRUTHOUT (.ORG), 4/14/2006] However, sources close to the case say that “a half-dozen witnesses” have testified as to the accuracy of Grossman’s claims. A former State Department colleague of Grossman’s says: “It’s not just Mr. Grossman’s word against Mr. Libby’s. There were other people present at the meeting at the time when Mr. Grossman provided Mr. Libby with details about Ms. Plame’s employment with the agency. There is an abundance of evidence Mr. Fitzgerald has that will prove this.” Investigative reporter Jason Leopold observes: “The meeting between Libby and Grossman is a crucial part of the government’s case against Libby. It demonstrates that Libby knew about Plame Wilson a month or so before her name was published in a newspaper column and proves that Libby lied to the grand jury when he testified that he found out about Plame Wilson from reporters in July 2003.” [TRUTHOUT (.ORG), 4/14/2006] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer, Joseph C. Wilson, George J. Tenet, Jason Leopold, Patrick Fitzgerald, Valerie Plame Wilson, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Marc Grossman Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

April 17, 2006: New York Sun: State Department Memo ‘Proves’ Plame Wilson Not Covert or Classified CIA Official A news article by the New York Sun claims that a June 2003 memo from then-Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman never indicated that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA official, or that her status was classified in any way (see June 10, 2003 and July 20, 2005). (Contrary to the Sun’s reporting, Plame Wilson was a NOC—a “non-official cover” agent—the most covert of CIA officials; see Fall 1992 - 1996, July 22, 2003, and September 30, 2003). The Sun bases its report on a declassified version of a memo provided to it through the Freedom of Information Act. The memo was drafted by the State Department’s head of its intelligence bureau, Carl Ford Jr., in response to inquiries by Grossman. Grossman sent the memo to various White House officials, including the then-chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby. Previous news reports have indicated that the memo was notated to indicate that the information it contained was classified and should not be made public, but according to the Sun, the paragraph identifying Plame Wilson as a CIA official was not designated as secret, while the other paragraphs were. Robert Luskin, the lawyer for White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, says the memo proves that neither Libby, Rove, nor any other White House official broke any laws in revealing Plame Wilson’s CIA status. The Sun also asserts that the memo proves Plame Wilson was responsible for sending her husband, Joseph Wilson, to Niger to find the truth behind claims that Iraq was trying to clandestinely purchase Nigerien uranium, an assertion Wilson calls “absolutely inaccurate” (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, October 17, 2003, and July 20, 2005). [NEW YORK SUN, 4/17/2006] The CIA requested that Plame Wilson’s identity not be divulged (see (July 11, 2003) and Before July 14, 2003), and the agency as well as former officials have acknowledged that the damage done by the disclosure of Plame Wilson’s covert CIA status was “severe” (see Before September 16, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, October 23-24, 2003, October 29, 2005, and February 13, 2006). Entity Tags: New York Sun, Central Intelligence Agency, Carl W. Ford, Jr., Joseph C. Wilson, Karl Rove, Robert Luskin, US Department of State, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Valerie Plame Wilson, Marc Grossman Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

April 20, 2006: Rove Removed as Chief of White House Domestic Policy, Possibly Due to Plame Wilson Involvement According to the White House, deputy chief of staff Karl Rove gives up his day-to-day control over the Bush administration’s domestic policy in order to concentrate on the upcoming midterm elections. The announcement comes on the same day as press secretary Scott McClellan’s resignation announcement (see April 20, 2006). Many observers believe that the internal shakeup has something to do with the ongoing Plame Wilson identity leak investigation, and the upcoming trial of former White House aide Lewis Libby (see January 16-23, 2007). The shakeup is being handled by White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten, himself a recent replacement for the departed Andrew Card. Rove will retain his title and his position as President Bush’s senior adviser. “The president and the new chief of staff said they wanted me focused on the big strategic issues facing the administration,” Rove says. Rove’s domestic policy duties will be assumed by Joel Kaplan, the White House’s deputy budget director. Rove’s recent mishandling of the White House’s failed attempt to “sell” the privatization of Social Security to Congress and the citizenry is also a factor in his reassignment, observers note, as well as his poor handling of the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina and the failed attempt to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws. Some Congressional Republicans believe Rove has too much influence within the White House, and is being distracted by the Plame Wilson investigation. The director of American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, James Thurber, says: “Karl Rove is a great guy in terms of developing issues for a campaign, but he’s not done well on advocating policy in a governance setting. The job is diminished, but he probably doesn’t mind that. He’s a racehorse in a campaign.” White House communications director Nicolle Wallace says Rove’s reassignment takes the White House back to its successful personnel strategy from the first Bush term: “We’re returning to the structure we had at the beginning of the first term. All that changes is that the management of the day-to-day policy process will be put under Joel. Karl will keep the high-yield strategic role that he’s always had.” But former Republican House member Vin Weber, a lobbyist who is close to the White House, says that Rove’s role in the White House will change little, and that the reassignment is largely cosmetic. “The notion that this is a demotion just doesn’t ring true to me,” Weber says. “He’s been the guy who wrote his own job description pretty much. I think that is still more true than less true.” Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) applauds the change, saying: “The White House has never separated politics from policy and that’s been one of the reasons for its undoing. Late is better than never, but the key for the White House will be getting a new person in charge of policy independent from Karl Rove who understands that policy is not simply politics.” Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean calls Rove’s reassignment a “demotion,” and says Bush should have fired Rove over his role in the Plame Wilson identity leak (see July 10, 2005). [NEW YORK TIMES, 4/20/2006] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Vin Weber, Andrew Card, Scott McClellan, Charles Schumer, Nicolle Wallace, Karl Rove, Howard Dean, James Thurber, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Joshua Bolten, Joel Kaplan, Bush administration Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

May 23, 2006: Evidence Indicates Karl Rove May be Involved in Pentagon Propaganda Operation

Memo from Dallas Lawrence citing “karl and dorrance smith.” [Source: US Department of Defense] (click image to enlarge) Pentagon official Allison Barber circulates a memo destined for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Dorrance Smith. The memo suggests that “[b]ased on the success of our previous trips to Iraq with the Retired Military Analysts, I would like to propose another trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. Smith is referencing the Pentagon’s Iraq propaganda operation (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond), which uses retired military officers as “military analysts” for the various television news channels to promote the Pentagon and White House’s Iraq policies. The same day, Pentagon official Dallas Lawrence, who is directly involved in the propaganda operation (see June 21, 2005 and June 24, 2005), replies to Barber’s memo. Lawrence advises Barber to drop the request for an Afghanistan tour because it may not happen, and by leaving it out of the proposal, “we (you) won’t find yourself having to explain why it didn’t happen after he briefed it to karl at the weekly meeting.” The reference to “karl” cannot be proven to be White House political adviser Karl Rove, but, as Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald will note in 2008, “In the documents I reviewed, I haven’t seen any other ‘Karl’ referenced who works at the [Defense Department]. These are fairly high-ranking [Defense Department] officials and there aren’t many people they’re worried about having to explain themselves to (Smith’s position as Assistant Defense Secretary was one requiring Senate confirmation and he reported to Rumsfeld). Given the significant possibility that this program was illegal (see April 28, 2008 and May 6, 2008), and given [White House Press Secretary Dana] Perino’s denial of the White House’s knowledge of it (see April 30, 2008), this question—whether the ‘karl’ being briefed on the program was Karl Rove—certainly seems to be one that should be asked.” The likelihood that Rove is indeed involved in the propaganda program is bolstered by other Defense Department e-mails from Lawrence and other officials noting that they are attempting to have both President Bush and Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley (see April 30, 2008), an idea that “was submitted to karl and company from dorrance smith last week.” Greenwald will write that due to the proposed involvement of Bush and Hadley, the “karl” of the memos must by necessity be Karl Rove. If true, Rove’s involvement means that the White House is directly involved in a highly unethical and probably illegal (see April 28, 2008) domestic propaganda operation. [SALON, 5/16/2008] Entity Tags: Dana Perino, Allison Barber, Bush administration, Dallas Lawrence, US Department of Defense, Dorrance Smith, Stephen J. Hadley, Karl Rove, Glenn Greenwald Timeline Tags: US Military, Iraq under US Occupation, Domestic Propaganda

Spring 2007: Neoconservative Tells Bush He Must Bomb Iran to ‘Prevent Another Holocaust’ Norman Podhoretz, one of the founding fathers of neoconservatism, meets with President Bush to urge a military strike against Iran. Podhoretz meets privately with Bush at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City, with Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove taking notes. The meeting is not logged in Bush’s schedule. Podhoretz will become senior foreign policy adviser to presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani (R-NY) (see October 28, 2007). The London Times characterizes the meeting as evidence of “the enduring influence of the neoconservatives at the highest reaches of the White House, despite some high-profile casualties in the past year.” Iran Discussed - Podhoretz will say of his meeting with Bush: “I urged Bush to take action against the Iranian nuclear facilities and explained why I thought there was no alternative.… I laid out the worst-case scenario—bombing Iran—versus the worst-case consequences of allowing the Iranians to get the bomb.” Podhoretz recalls telling Bush: “You have the awesome responsibility to prevent another holocaust. You’re the only one with the guts to do it.” Podhoretz recalls Bush looking “very solemn.” Primarily, Bush listens without responding, though Podhoretz will recall both Bush and Rove laughing when he mentions giving “futility its chance,” a phrase used by fellow neoconservative Robert Kagan about the usefulness of pursuing United Nations sanctions against Iran. No Sign of Agreement - “He gave not the slightest indication of whether he agreed with me, but he listened very intently,” Podhoretz will recall. Podhoretz is convinced that “George Bush will not leave office with Iran having acquired a nuclear weapon or having passed the point of no return”—a reference to the Iranians’ acquisition of sufficient technical capability to produce a nuclear weapon. “The president has said several times that he will be in the historical dock if he allows Iran to get the bomb. He believes that if we wait for threats to fully materialize, we’ll have waited too long—something I agree with 100 percent.” No Need to Use Nukes - Podhoretz tells Bush that the US could neutralize Iran’s nuclear program without using its own nuclear weapons: “I’m against using nuclear weapons and I don’t think they are necessary.” Podhoretz is preparing a book, World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, which echoes the points he makes with Bush. According to Podhoretz, World War IV is the global struggle against terrorism (World War III was the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union). “The key to understanding what is happening is to see it as a successor to the previous totalitarian challenge to our civilization,” he says. Podhoretz asserts that Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran are merely different fronts of the same long war. [LONDON TIMES, 9/30/2007] Podhoretz says that “the debate [over Iran] is secretly over and the people who are against military action are now preparing to make the case that we can live with an Iranian bomb.” [DAILY TELEGRAPH, 11/1/2007] Entity Tags: Rudolph (“Rudy”) Giuliani, Norman Podhoretz, Karl Rove, George W. Bush Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran

March 16, 2007: White House Director of Security: White House Never Investigated Leak

James Knodell. [Source: CommonDreams (.org)] White House Director of Security James Knodell testifies to the House Oversight Committee that the White House never investigated the possible involvement of White House officials in exposing Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity. [THINK PROGRESS, 3/16/2007; EDITOR & PUBLISHER, 3/18/2007; NATION, 3/19/2007] Knodell says he is aware of no such internal investigation or report from anyone in the White House: “I have no knowledge of any investigation in my office.” The White House Office of Security would be the lawful body to conduct such an investigation. Knodell testifies only after the White House dropped its resistance to his appearing before the committee, which had threatened to subpoena the White House for Knodell’s testimony. Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) says that President Bush had promised a full internal probe (see September 30, 2003 and September 30, 2003), and Knodell again states he knows of no such probe. He adds that he has never talked to Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, political strategist Karl Rove, or anyone in the White House about the Plame Wilson leak. His knowledge of the affair, he says, comes from “the press.” He tells the committee that those who had participated in the leaking of classified information are required by law to own up to this, but he is not aware that anyone, including Rove, had done that. Representative Elijah Cummings (D-MD) calls the failure of the White House to mount an internal investigation “shocking,” and says that Knodell’s office’s failure to mount such a probe constitutes a “breach within a breach.” Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) calls it a “dereliction of duty.” Knodell promises to “review this with senior management.” He attempts to assert that since a criminal investigation was launched, no such internal probe was needed, but committee Democrats challenge his statement, saying that the criminal probe is narrowly focused, began only after months of inaction and stonewalling by the White House, and is required by law regardless of whatever other investigations are underway. Waxman asks, “[T]here was an obligation for the White House to investigate whether classified information was being leaked inappropriately, wasn’t there?” to which Knodell replies, “If that was the case, yes.” Committee Democrats also note that anyone who leaked information about classified information is required by law to have their security clearances denied, and ask Knodell why Rove still has such clearance. [THINK PROGRESS, 3/16/2007; EDITOR & PUBLISHER, 3/18/2007] Entity Tags: House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Bush administration, Elijah Cummings, Henry A. Waxman, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, White House Office of Security, Karl Rove, Valerie Plame Wilson, James Knodell, George W. Bush Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

April 25, 2007: Knight Ridder Editor, Reporters Discuss Their Skepticism of Claims of Iraq-9/11 Connections

Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel. [Source: PBS] John Walcott, the bureau chief of Knight Ridder Newspapers (now McClatchy), recalls that he and his colleagues did not believe the Bush administration’s assertions of the connections between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks. “It was not clear to us why anyone was asking questions about Iraq in the wake of an attack that had al-Qaeda written all over it,” he recalls. He assigned his two top foreign affairs and national security reporters, Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, veterans with more than 40 years’ experience between them, to investigate the claims. Strobel recalls, “We were basically, I think, hearing two different messages from—there’s a message, the public message the administration was giving out about Iraq—it’s WMD, the fact there was an immediate threat, grave threat, gathering threat—but that was so different from what we were hearing from people on the inside, people we had known in many cases for years and trusted.” Strobel and Landay learned from reliable sources inside the US intelligence community that few outside the White House believed the assertions of an Iraq-9/11 connection. “When you’re talking to the working grunts, you know, uniform military officers, intelligence professionals, professional diplomats, those people are more likely than not—not always, of course, but more likely than not—to tell you some version of the truth, and to be knowledgeable about what they’re talking about when it comes to terrorism or the Middle East, things like that,” says Strobel. He and Landay wrote numerous articles detailing the skepticism about the administration’s claims, but, in many cases, editors chose not to use their work. “There was a lot of skepticism among our editors because what we were writing was so at odds with what most of the rest of the Washington press corps was reporting and some of our papers frankly, just didn’t run the stories,” Strobel says. “They had access to the New York Times wire and the Washington Post wire and they chose those stories instead.” Walcott explains his own rationale: “A decision to go to war, even against an eighth-rate power such as Iraq, is the most serious decision that a government can ever make. And it deserves the most serious kind of scrutiny that we in the media can give it. Is this really necessary? Is it necessary to send our young men and women to go kill somebody else’s young men and women?” Outside the Beltway - Knight Ridder did not have newspapers in either Washington or New York City, and therefore was viewed by many insiders as “out of the loop.” Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus says: “The administration can withstand the Knight Ridder critique because it wasn’t reverberating inside Washington. And therefore people weren’t picking it up.” Walcott describes Knight Ridder as “under the radar most of the time.… We were not a company that, I think, Karl Rove and others cared deeply about, even though in terms of readers, we’re much bigger than the New York Times and the Washington Post. We’re less influential. There’s no way around that.” Strobel half-humorously asks: “How many times did I get invited on the talk show? How many times did you [Landay] get invited on a talk show?” Landay replies: “You know what? I’ll tell you who invited me on a talk show. C-SPAN.” Self-Doubts - Strobel says of that time period: “But there was a period when we were sittin’ out there and I had a lot of late night gut checks where I was just like, ‘Are we totally off on some loop here?‘… ‘Are we wrong? Are we gonna be embarrassed?’” Landay adds, “Everyday we would look at each other and say—literally one of us would find something out—and I’d look at him and say, ‘What’s going on here?’” Media analyst Eric Boehlert says: “But I think it’s telling that they didn’t really operate by that beltway game the way the networks, the cable channels, Newsweek, Time, New York Times, Washington Post. They seem to sort of operate outside that bubble. And look at what the benefits were when they operated outside that bubble. They actually got the story right. What’s important is it’s proof positive that that story was there. And it could have been gotten. And some people did get it. But the vast majority chose to ignore or not even try.” Former CNN news chief Walter Isaacson confirms the solid reporting of Strobel and Landay: “The people at Knight Ridder were calling the colonels and the lieutenants and the people in the CIA and finding out, ya know, that intelligence is not very good. We should’ve all been doing that.” [PBS, 4/25/2007] Entity Tags: Knight Ridder, Eric Boehlert, C-SPAN, Bush administration, Al-Qaeda, John Walcott, Karl Rove, Time magazine, Washington Post, New York Times, Newsweek, Jonathan Landay, Walter Isaacson, Warren Strobel, Walter Pincus Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Domestic Propaganda

June 26, 2007: Waxman Gives Examples of Cheney Asserting Executive Privilege Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, disputes Vice President Dick Cheney’s assertion that he is not strictly part of the executive branch (see 2003). The dispute relates to reporting of document classification—Cheney argues his office does not have to report on its classification activities, partly because it is not a fully-fledged member fo the executive branch. In a letter to White House counsel Fred Fielding, Waxman also criticizes the administration’s handling of classified information and security issues. White House staffers regularly block inspections by security officials checking for compliance with security rules, Waxman writes, but also regularly ignore security breaches reported by the Secret Service and CIA, and mismanage the White House Security Office for political reasons. And President Bush’s top political adviser, Karl Rove, recently had his security clearance renewed even though it was prohibited under guidelines signed by Bush. Rove is believed to have leaked classified information in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. [CBS NEWS, 6/27/2007] Entity Tags: House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Central Intelligence Agency, Fred Fielding, Henry A. Waxman, Karl Rove, Valerie Plame Wilson, George W. Bush, White House Security Office, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Secret Service Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties

November 20, 2007: Rove Claims White House Did Not Want Iraq Vote before Midterm Elections

President Bush and Karl Rove. [Source: New York Times] Former White House political adviser Karl Rove says that the Bush administration was opposed to holding the Congressional vote on authorizing force against Iraq before the 2002 midterm elections, a claim that is demonstrably false (see September 3, 2002 and September 24, 2002). “The administration was opposed to voting on it in the fall of 2002,” Rove says, adding that his forthcoming book will make the same claim. Talk show host Charlie Rose says, “But you were opposed to the vote.” Rove replies, “It happened. We don’t determine when the Congress vote on things. The Congress does.” [THINK PROGRESS, 11/21/2007] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Bush administration, Charlie Rose Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

November 20, 2007: Former White House Press Secretary Says Bush, Cheney, Rove, Libby, Card Responsible for ‘False Information’ about Plame Outing

Scott McClellan. [Source: White House] Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan says he “passed along false information” at the behest of five top Bush administration officials—George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Lewis Libby, and Andrew Card—about the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson during his time in the White House. McClellan is preparing to publish a book about his time in Washington, to be titled What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and What’s Wrong With Washington and available in April 2008. [EDITOR & PUBLISHER, 11/20/2007] According to McClellan’s publisher Peter Osnos, McClellan doesn’t believe that Bush deliberately lied to him about Libby’s and Rove’s involvement in the leak. “He told him something that wasn’t true, but the president didn’t know it wasn’t true,” Osnos says. “The president told him what he thought to be the case.” [BLOOMBERG, 1/20/2007] Early in 2007, McClellan told reporters that everything he said at the time was based on information he and Bush “believed to be true at the time based on assurances that we were both given.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 11/21/2007] In his book, McClellan writes: “Andy Card once remarked that he viewed the Washington media as just another ‘special interest’ that the White House had to deal with, much like the lobbyists or the trade associations. I found the remark stunning and telling.” [MCCLELLAN, 2008, PP. 155] White House Denials; Outrage from Plame, Democrats - White House press secretary Dana Perino says it isn’t clear what McClellan is alleging, and says, “The president has not and would not ask his spokespeople to pass on false information,” adding that McClellan’s book excerpt is being taken “out of context.” Plame has a different view. “I am outraged to learn that former White House press secretary Scott McClellan confirms that he was sent out to lie to the press corps,” she says. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) adds, “If the Bush administration won’t even tell the truth to its official spokesman, how can the American people expect to be told the truth either?” [BLOOMBERG, 1/20/2007; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 11/21/2007] Senator and presidential candidate Christopher Dodd (D-CT) calls for a Justice Department investigation into Bush’s role in the Plame outing, and for the new attorney general, Michael Mukasey, to lead the investigation. [RAW STORY, 11/21/2007] Alleged Criminal Conspiracy - Investigative reporter Robert Parry writes: “George W. Bush joined in what appears to have been a criminal cover-up to conceal the role of his White House in exposing the classified identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson. That is the logical conclusion one would draw from [McClellan’s book excerpt] when it is put into a mosaic with previously known evidence.” [CONSORTIUM NEWS, 11/21/2007] Author and columnist John Nichols asks if McClellan will become the “John Dean of the Bush administration,” referring to the Nixon White House counsel who revealed the details of the crimes behind the Watergate scandal. Nichols writes: “It was Dean’s willingness to reveal the details of what [was] described as ‘a cancer’ on the Nixon presidency that served as a critical turning point in the struggle by a previous Congress to hold the 37th president to account. Now, McClellan has offered what any honest observer must recognize as the stuff of a similarly significant breakthrough.” Former Common Cause President Chellie Pingree says: “The president promised, way back in 2003, that anyone in his administration who took part in the leak of Plame’s name would be fired. He neglected to mention that, according to McClellan, he was one of those people. And needless to say, he didn’t fire himself. Instead, he fired no one, stonewalled the press and the federal prosecutor in charge of the case, and lied through his teeth.” [NATION, 1/21/2007] Entity Tags: Peter Osnos, Public Affairs, Michael Mukasey, Scott McClellan, Robert Parry, Richard M. Nixon, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Valerie Plame Wilson, Karl Rove, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, John Nichols, Central Intelligence Agency, Andrew Card, Bush administration, Charles Schumer, Joseph C. Wilson, Christopher Dodd, George W. Bush, Dana Perino, Chellie Pingree Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

November 22, 2007: Wilson, Plame Highlight McClellan Revelation, Blame Media for Ignoring It Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, jointly respond to former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s revelation that he had unknowingly misled the public as part of a White House campaign of deception surrounding the “outing” of Plame Wilson, then an undercover CIA agent (see November 20, 2007). The Wilsons quote the words of former President George H. W. Bush in labeling the Bush administration officials they believe betrayed Plame’s identity—Lewis Libby, Karl Rove, Richard Armitage, and Ari Fleischer—as “the most insidious of traitors” (see April 26, 1999). McClellan’s naming of George W. Bush as being “involved” in orchestrating the campaign of deception makes Bush, they write, a “party to a conspiracy by senior administration officials to defraud the public.” The two continue: “If that isn’t a high crime and misdemeanor then we don’t know what is. And if the president was merely an unwitting accomplice, then who lied to him? What is he doing to punish the person who misled the president to abuse his office? And why is that person still working in the executive branch?” Criticism of Mainstream Media - The Wilsons are particularly irate at the general failure of the mainstream media, with the exception of several MSNBC pundits and reporters, to pay much attention to McClellan, instead dismissing it as “old news.” The Wilsons write: “The Washington press corps, whose pretension is to report and interpret events objectively, has been compromised in this matter as evidence presented in the courtroom demonstrated. Prominent journalists acted as witting agents of Rove, Libby and Armitage and covered up this serious breach of US national security rather than doing their duty as journalists to report it to the public.” They quote one reporter asking if McClellan’s statement was not anything more than “another Wilson publicity stunt.” The Wilsons respond: “Try following this tortuous logic: Dick Cheney runs an operation involving senior White House officials designed to betray the identity of a covert CIA officer and the press responds by trying to prove that the Wilsons are publicity seekers. What ever happened to reporting the news? Welcome to Through the Looking Glass.” They conclude with the question, again using the elder Bush’s words: “Where is the outrage? Where is the ‘contempt and anger?’” [HUFFINGTON POST, 11/22/2007] Entity Tags: Scott McClellan, Valerie Plame Wilson, Richard Armitage, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Central Intelligence Agency, Bush administration, Ari Fleischer, MSNBC, George Herbert Walker Bush, Joseph C. Wilson, George W. Bush, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

June 3, 2008: Oversight Chairman Requests Interview Transcripts from CIA Leak Investigation Henry Waxman (D-CA), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, writes to Attorney General Michael Mukasey requesting access to the transcripts of interviews by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the “outing” of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson (see Shortly after February 13, 2002). The interviews were conducted as part of the investigation of former Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Waxman notes that he made a similar request in December 2007 which has gone unfulfilled. Waxman wants the reports from Bush and Cheney’s interviews, and the unredacted reports from the interviews with Libby, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, former White House aide Cathie Martin, “and other senior White House officials.” Information revealed by McClellan in conjuction with his new book What Happened, including McClellan’s statement that Bush and Cheney “directed me to go out there and exonerate Scooter Libby,” and his assertion that “Rove, Libby, and possibly Vice President Cheney… allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie,” adds to evidence from Libby’s interviews that Cheney may have been the source of the information that Wilson worked for the CIA. For Cheney to leak Wilson’s identity, and to then direct McClellan to mislead the public, “would be a major breach of trust,” Waxman writes. He adds that no argument can be made for withholding the documents on the basis of executive privilege, and notes that in 1997 and 1998, the Oversight Committee demanded and received FBI interviews with then-President Clinton and then-Vice President Gore without even consulting the White House. [US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 6/3/2008; TPM MUCKRAKER, 6/3/2008] Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Cathie Martin, Al Gore, George W. Bush, Henry A. Waxman, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Karl Rove, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, Scott McClellan, Michael Mukasey Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

June 9, 2008: Senate Report Ignores White House Propaganda Group The recently released Senate Intelligence Committee report on misleading, exaggerated, and inaccurate presentations of the prewar Iraqi threat by the Bush administration (see June 5, 2008) leaves out some significant material. The report says that the panel did not review “less formal communications between intelligence agencies and other parts of the executive branch.” The committee made no attempt to obtain White House records or interview administration officials because, the report says, such steps were considered beyond the scope of the report. Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus notes that “[o]ne obvious target for such an expanded inquiry would have been the records of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a group set up in August 2002 by then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr.” WHIG (see August 2002) was composed of, among other senior White House officials, senior political adviser Karl Rove; the vice president’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby; communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, and James Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas Calio; and a number of policy aides led by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley. WHIG Led Marketing of War - Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary, recently wrote in his book What Happened that WHIG “had been set up in the summer of 2002 to coordinate the marketing of the war to the public.… The script had been finalized with great care over the summer [for a] “campaign to convince Americans that war with Iraq was inevitable and necessary.” On September 6, 2002, Card hinted as much to reporters when he said, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August” (see September 6, 2002). Two days later, the group scored its first hit with a front-page New York Times story about Iraq’s secret purchase of aluminum tubes that, the story said, could be used to produce nuclear weapons (see September 8, 2002). The information for that story came from “senior administration officials” now known to be members of WHIG. The story was the first to make the statement that “the first sign of a ‘smoking gun’ [proving the existence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program] may be a mushroom cloud” (see September 4, 2002); that same morning, the same message was repeated three times by various senior administration officials on the Sunday talk shows (see September 8, 2002, September 8, 2002, and September 8, 2002). WHIG did not “deliberately mislead the public,” McClellan claimed in his book, but wrote that the “more fundamental problem was the way [Bush’s] advisers decided to pursue a political propaganda campaign to sell the war to the American people.… As the campaign accelerated,” caveats and qualifications were downplayed or dropped altogether. Contradictory intelligence was largely ignored or simply disregarded.” Records Perusal Would 'Shed Light' - If indeed the White House “repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even nonexistent,” as committee chairman John D. Rockefeller (D-WV) has said, then an examination of WHIG’s records would, Pincus writes, “shed much light” on the question. [WASHINGTON POST, 6/9/2008] Entity Tags: New York Times, Karen Hughes, John D. Rockefeller, James R. Wilkinson, Condoleezza Rice, Bush administration, Andrew Card, Karl Rove, Mary Matalin, Senate Intelligence Committee, Stephen J. Hadley, Walter Pincus, White House Iraq Group, Nicholas E. Calio, Scott McClellan, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda

August 4, 2008: Conservative Radio Host Hannity: No One Can Claim He or Other Conservatives Have ‘Made an Issue of Obama’s Race;’ Facts Prove Otherwise

Sean Hannity. [Source: Halogen Guides (.com)] Conservative radio show host Sean Hannity tells his listeners that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama “can’t point to a single instance in which President Bush or [Republican candidate John] McCain or [Bush political adviser] Karl Rove or Sean Hannity or talk radio or any other major Republican has made an issue of Obama’s race.” Hannity’s claim is proven false by data collected by progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters. Hannity himself asked his audience on March 2, 2008, “Do the Obamas have a race problem of their own?” He has also repeatedly distorted the content of Michelle Obama’s 1985 Princeton University senior thesis to suggest that Mrs. Obama believes, in Hannity’s words, “blacks must join in solidarity to combat a white oppressor.” (Mrs. Obama was documenting the attitudes of some black Princeton alumni from the 1970s and not expressing her own views.) [MEDIA MATTERS, 8/7/2008] Media Matters has also documented numerous examples of other radio and TV personalities making “an issue of Obama’s race” (see January 24, 2007, February 1, 2008, May 19, 2008, June 2, 2008, June 26, 2008, and August 1, 2008 and After). The issue of race will continue with conservative pundits and radio hosts (see August 25, 2008, September 22, 2008, October 7, 2008, October 20, 2008, October 22, 2008, October 28, 2008, and November 18, 2008). Entity Tags: Media Matters, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, John McCain, Karl Rove, Princeton University, Sean Hannity, Michelle Obama Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, 2008 Presidential Election

December 8, 2008: Conservative Pundits: Mainstream Media ‘Overstating’ Economic Crisis to Help Obama Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly and former Bush administration political director Karl Rove tell listeners that media journalists are “overstating” the current economic problems in order to help the incoming Obama administration. O’Reilly asks Rove, “All right, so you are agreeing with me then that there is a conscious effort on the part of the New York Times and other liberal media to basically paint as drastic a picture as possible, so that when Barack Obama takes office that anything is better than what we have now?” Rove’s response: “Yes.” O’Reilly says that the “plot” is to “blame everything on Bush for quite a long period of time.” Rove calls the economic reporting little more than “scare tactics.” O’Reilly concludes: “All I want is an honest press. I’m not hoping one way or the other.” Amanda Terkel of the Center for American Progress observes: “For years, in fact, the Bush administration has tried Rove and O’Reilly’s strategy of insisting that nothing is wrong. Although the United States has been in a recession since December 2007, the Bush administration has continued to insist that the economy was strong. The result? A government unprepared to deal with ‘the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.’” [THINK PROGRESS (.ORG), 12/9/2008] Entity Tags: Karl Rove, Center for American Progress, Fox News, Amanda Terkel, Bill O’Reilly Timeline Tags: Global Economic Collapse, Domestic Propaganda

January 26, 2009: Gonzales Says He Did Nothing Wrong as Attorney General, Blames Subordinates for ‘Lapses’ Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales tells an NPR reporter that he never allowed the Justice Department (DOJ) to become politicized, and that he believes the historical judgment of his tenure in the department will be favorable. He acknowledges making some errors, including failing to properly oversee the DOJ’s push to fire nine US attorneys in 2008, a process many believe was orchestrated by the White House with the involvement of Gonzales and then-White House political guru Karl Rove. Failure to Engage - “No question, I should have been more engaged in that process,” he says, but adds that he is being held accountable for decisions made by his subordinates. “I deeply regret some of the decisions made by my staff,” he says, referring to his former deputy Paul McNulty, who resigned over the controversy after telling a Senate committee that the attorney firings were performance-related and not politically motivated. Gonzales says his then-chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, was primarily responsible for the US attorney review process and for working with McNulty. “If Paul McNulty makes a recommendation to me—if a recommendation includes his views—I would feel quite comfortable that those would be good recommendations coming to me” about the qualifications of the US attorneys under question, Gonzales says. He adds that he has “seen no evidence” that Rove or anyone at the White House tried to use the US attorneys to politicize the work at the DOJ. A review by the DOJ’s Inspector General found that the firing policy was fundamentally flawed, and that Gonzales was disengaged and had failed to properly supervise the review process. Claims He Was Unfairly Targeted by 'Mean-Spirited' Washington Insiders - Gonzales says he has been unfairly held responsible for many controversial Bush administration policies, including its refusal to abide by the Geneva Conventions (see Late September 2001, January 9, 2002, January 18-25, 2002, January 25, 2002, August 1, 2002, November 11, 2004, and January 17, 2007) and its illegal eavesdropping on US citizens (see Early 2004, March 9, 2004, December 19, 2005, Early 2006, and February 15, 2006), because of his close personal relationship with former President Bush. Washington, he says, is a “difficult town, a mean-spirited town.” He continues: “Sometimes people identify someone to target. That’s what happened to me. I’m not whining. It comes with the job.” Visiting Ashcroft at the Hospital - In 2004, Gonzales, then the White House counsel, and White House chief of staff Andrew Card raced to the bedside of hospitalized Attorney General John Ashcroft to persuade, or perhaps coerce, Ashcroft to sign off on a secret government surveillance program (see March 10-12, 2004). The intervention was blocked by Deputy Attorney General James Comey (see March 12-Mid-2004). Gonzales says he has no regrets about the incident: “Neither Andy nor I would have gone there to take advantage of somebody who was sick. We were sent there on behalf of the president of the United States.” As for threats by Justice Department officials to resign en masse over the hospital visit (see Late March, 2004), Gonzales merely says, “Lawyers often disagree about important legal issues.” Warning about Plain Speaking - Gonzales says Obama’s attorney general nominee, Eric Holder, should refrain from making such statements as Holder made last week when he testified that waterboarding is torture. “One needs to be careful in making a blanket pronouncement like that,” Gonzales says, adding that such a statement might affect the “morale and dedication” of intelligence officials and lawyers who are attempting to make cases against terrorism suspects. [NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO, 1/26/2009] Entity Tags: US Department of Justice, Eric Holder, Bush administration, Andrew Card, Alberto R. Gonzales, Geneva Conventions, George W. Bush, James B. Comey Jr., Karl Rove, Paul McNulty, Kyle Sampson Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties

February 3, 2009: Rove Echoes Erroneous Statement about Prohibition of Torture Endangering America George W. Bush’s former political guru Karl Rove echoes incorrect statements made by former Bush lawyer John Yoo. In an op-ed, Yoo claimed that President Obama’s prohibition against torture, and the mandate for US interrogators to use the Army Field Manual as their guide, prevents interrogators from using long-established, non-invasive techniques to question prisoners (see January 29, 2009). In an address at Loyola Marymount University, Rove tells his listeners: “The Army Field Manual prohibits ‘good cop, bad cop.’ All that stuff you see on CSI—the Army Field Manual prohibits it.… If you stop collecting that information, you begin to make America more at risk.” [TORRANCE DAILY BREEZE, 2/3/2009] Both Rove and Yoo are wrong. The Army Field Manual explicitly permits many of the “coercive techniques, threats and promises, and the good-cop bad-cop routines” Yoo and Rove claim it bans. [ARMY, 9/2006] Entity Tags: Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Civil Liberties

May 26, 2009: Rove: Supreme Court Nominee May Not be Smart Just Because She Graduated from Princeton and Yale Former Bush White House political director Karl Rove attacks Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) on the grounds that she is less than intelligent. During a debate with former Clinton political director James Carville, moderator Charlie Rose notes, “She is very smart.” Rove responds, “Not necessarily.” Rose notes that Sotomayor “went to Princeton where she graduat[ed] with honors and then went on to Yale Law School,” to which Rove replies, “I know lots of stupid people who went to Ivy League schools.” Rose points out that Rove himself never graduated from college, and Rove says, “Message to the kids out there—don’t do what I did—I am the last of a generation.” [HUFFINGTON POST, 5/26/2009] In an appearance on Fox News, Rove continues denigrating Sotomayor’s intellect, saying that according to former colleagues, she was more like a “schoolmarm” than an intellectual force. Rove says: “What she would do is she would mark them up [legal opinions] like she was your English school teacher and—with your typos and misspellings and other words that she wanted to have changed and send it back to her colleagues. Not exactly the best way to ingratiate yourself with your colleagues. Rather than say, ‘Oh, I thought you had an interesting legal argument here and I’d like to talk to you more about this here,’ she was acting like sort of a schoolmarm.” [THINK PROGRESS, 5/27/2009] Entity Tags: US Supreme Court, Charlie Rose, James Carville, Sonia Sotomayor, Karl Rove Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda

May 28, 2009: Rove: Supreme Court Nominee’s ‘Empathy’ Code for ‘Liberal Activism’ Former White House political director Karl Rove continues his attacks on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009). In a column for the Wall Street Journal, Rove echoes former Justice Department official John Yoo in claiming that the Obama administration chose “empathy” over capability in Sotomayor’s selection (see May 26, 2009). Rove goes one step further than Yoo in equating Sotomayor’s “empathy” with “liberal judicial activism.” “‘Empathy’ is the latest code word for liberal activism,” Rove writes, “for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn’t pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would generate voter backlash.” He accuses Sotomayor, and indirectly President Obama, of a “readiness to discard the rule of law whenever emotion moves them.” He also accuses Obama of attempting to “placate Hispanic groups who’d complained of his failure to appoint more high profile Latinos to his administration.… Mr. Obama also hopes to score political points as GOP senators oppose a Latina. Being able to jam opponents is a favorite Chicago political pastime.” Rove advises Republicans to use Sotomayor’s nomination as an opportunity to “stress their support for judges who strictly interpret the Constitution and apply the law as written.” He notes: “A majority of the public is with the GOP on opposing liberal activist judges. There is something in our political DNA that wants impartial umpires who apply the rules, regardless of who thereby wins or loses.” [WALL STREET JOURNAL, 5/28/2009] Hours after his attack column is printed, Rove tells a Fox News audience that Republicans need to treat Sotomayor with “respect” and criticize her over her “philosophy,” not her background. [THINK PROGRESS, 5/29/2009] Entity Tags: Obama administration, Barack Obama, Karl Rove, US Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda

June 5, 2009: Corporations Bankrolling ‘Grassroots’ Organizations Opposing Supreme Court Nominee A press investigation reveals that corporate interests are behind a supposedly grassroots effort to block Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) from ascending to the high court. Raw Story reporters Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane have learned that the Committee for Justice (CFJ), an organization they call “an astroturf group established by big business in July 2002 to create an appearance of popular support for President Bush’s judicial nominees,” is taking the lead in the effort to oppose the Sotomayor nomination. The head of the CFJ, Curt Levey, lambasted Sotomayor as an “intellectual lightweight” the day of her nomination (see May 26, 2009), and has made regular media appearances since then attacking her as racist and biased. CFJ was created in 2002 by Senator Trent Lott (R-MS), who recruited Washington lawyer C. Boyden Gray to “create a fake grassroots organization” to support conservative, pro-business jurists such as Charles Pickering and Chief Justice John Roberts. Gray, a former White House counsel, received the support of former President George H. W. Bush, Republican political adviser Karl Rove, and former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour. Gray has a strong history of creating “astroturf” organizations, which are lobbying and activist groups supposedly founded and led by ordinary citizens but that in fact are created and funded by large political and corporate interests. CFJ is one of the most successful of these creations, and has often been successful in placing pro-business judges on the bench. CFJ and other astroturf organizations founded or assisted by Gray have been funded by, among other firms, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, insurance giant AIG, and the Ameriquest Capital Corporation, receiving over $100 million since 1998. CFJ’s board includes Stan Anderson, the legal advisor to the Chamber of Commerce; John Engler, the president of the National Association of Manufacturers; former Republican governor Frank Keating, now president of the American Council of Life Insurers; and former Republican Senator Connie Mack. [RAW STORY, 6/5/2009] Entity Tags: Connie Mack, US Chamber of Commerce, Trent Lott, US Supreme Court, Wal-Mart, Charles Pickering, Ameriquest Capital Corporation, Stan Anderson, AIG (American International Group, Inc.), American Council of Life Insurers, Committee for Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, Muriel Kane, George W. Bush, Haley Barbour, George Herbert Walker Bush, Curt Levey, Frank Keating, National Association of Manufacturers, Karl Rove, Home Depot, Larisa Alexandrovna, Clayland Boyden Gray, John B. Roberts II, John Engler Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda

October 26, 2009: Analysis: Eight Prominent Republicans, Including Three Former Bush Administration Officials, Are Regulars on Fox News

A screenshot of the logo for Mike Huckabee’s Fox News show. [Source: Fox News] According to an analysis by the progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters, Fox News has become the place for eight former Bush administration officials and other Republican lawmakers, strategists, and future presidential candidates to espouse their views. Media Matters says “[a] revolving door exists between the Republican Party and Fox News Channel… further demonstrating that Fox is effectively a conservative political organization and not a legitimate news outlet.” Media Matters analyzed Fox News broadcasts aired between September 1 and mid-October. Karl Rove - The former deputy chief of staff of the Bush White House, Karl Rove, the Bush administration’s chief political adviser, is now labeled as a political adviser and commentator for Fox. He appears, on average, twice a week, usually on prime-time programs hosted by Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly. Dana Perino - Formerly the White House press secretary, Dana Perino is now a frequent contributor and analyst for Fox, and writes a column for Fox Forum. Perino appears most often on Hannity’s show, though she has made several appearances on Fox Business Channel. John Bolton - The former ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton is now a regular Fox contributor and analyst. Mike Huckabee - Mike Huckabee, the ex-governor of Arkansas and dark-horse presidential candidate in 2008 has his own show, Huckabee, on Fox. Frequently, Huckabee directs viewers to “go to balancecutsave.com,” which redirects visitors to a Web page soliciting donations for his political action committee, which financially supports Republican candidates and also pays his daughter’s salary. Newt Gingrich - Newt Gingrich is the former speaker of the House and a possible presidential candidate in 2012. He has been a regular on Fox since singing a contract with the network in 1999 after resigning from the House in disgrace. John Kasich - Formerly a Republican House member from Ohio and now a candidate for governor of Ohio, John Kasich used to host a show on Fox, Heartland with John Kasich. He is a regular contributor and commentator on several Fox prime-time broadcasts. Dick Morris - A Republican who once crossed party lines to advise then-President Clinton, Dick Morris is a frequent guest on Fox, appearing at least 20 times since September 1, usually on shows hosted by Hannity, O’Reilly, or Greta Van Susteren. During the 2008 election cycle, Morris repeatedly urged viewers to donate to an anti-Obama political action committee, without divulging that the PAC had paid a firm connected to him. Morris also uses his Fox appearances to raise funds for a conservative group of which he is chief strategist. Frank Luntz - Frank Luntz, a GOP strategist and pollster, regularly appears on Fox shows hosted by Hannity, O’Reilly, and Glenn Beck, who asked Luntz to instruct his audience on the signs “the tea party people should be carrying.” [MEDIA MATTERS, 10/26/2009] Entity Tags: Fox Business Channel, Republican Party, Sean Hannity, Dick Morris, Bush administration, Bill O’Reilly, Newt Gingrich, Dana Perino, Mike Huckabee, Karl Rove, Glenn Beck, Frank Luntz, Media Matters, Fox News, John Kasich, John R. Bolton, Greta Van Susteren Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda