Why do I have to read news like this in my brother’s blog rather than major media? Read today’s column — scroll down to “Fitzgerald lets loose”.
[The NY Sun’s Josh] Gerstein writes that according to [special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s latest] filing, Libby “testified to a grand jury that he gave information from a closely-guarded ‘National Intelligence Estimate’ on Iraq to a New York Times reporter in 2003 with the specific permission of President Bush.”
…
That reporter, of course, was Judith Miller.
Here’s an excerpt from Fitzgerald’s filing: “Defendant testified that he was specifically authorized in advance of the meeting to disclose the key judgments of the classified NIE to Miller on that occasion because it was thought that the NIE was ‘pretty definitive’ against what Ambassador Wilson had said and that the vice president thought that it was ‘very important’ for the key judgments of the NIE to come out.”
Gerstein writes: “Mr. Libby is said to have testified that ‘at first’ he rebuffed Mr. Cheney’s suggestion to release the information because the estimate was classified. However, according to the vice presidential aide, Mr. Cheney subsequently said he got permission for the release directly from Mr. Bush. ‘Defendant testified that the vice president later advised him that the president had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE,’ the prosecution filing said.”
That is, as my brother says “a shocker”.
Yet, he writes, “In fact, as of this writing, none of the major news outlets has published a word on the subject.”
(Although, I see that since he wrote that, at 12:35 the Associate Press has moved the story.)
Get ready!! Tickets to the constitutional crisis road show are being printed! Venues to be announced. Don’t look for an announcement in the MSM.
As of this writing there are 415 stories at news.google.com.
well, the Bone-heads at CNN initially reported this as “Bush authorized leak of Plame’s name to reporter.” (Not the NIE.)
But missing is the entire MSM discusssion of How this WH operates with the *canned* line of “we don’t leak info and weren’t involved – wipe all finger prints from the smoking gun evidence – over WHY have a secretly authorized declassification of only key points from the NIE via Cheney to Libby to an “exclusive” to Miller IF the NIE was SOOoo helpful to their cause in the MSM? And then Deny it? If declassification was “nothing illegal” and completely appropriate – why this roundabout method of producing this information as a confidential (change my source attribution) to a single, lone reporter?
And I forget about the full NIE report, but wasn’t there also other contrary evaluations and opinions as to the success in Iraq and Saddam’s possession of WMD’s – clearly not such a slam-dunk case outlined in that estimate?
But just proves how the lies and dissembling go straight to the top and come directly from The Pres. mouth to the American People! Bleh!
It’s Fitzmas-time in the Spring! 🙂
Impeach!