Re:
"Witnesses told a federal grand jury President George W. Bush knew about, and took no action to stop, the release of a covert CIA operative's name to a journalist in an attempt to discredit her husband, a critic of administration policy in Iraq."
I know Grand Jury testimony is supposed to be secret... so I have to wonder: how Grand Jury testimony leaked (Rove testified three times, for example)? And, if this leak is accurate, exactly who gave this testimony?
"A federal grand jury has questioned numerous White House and administration officials to learn who leaked the name of CIA operative Plame, wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to the news media.... Wilson has suggested in a book that the leaker was Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. But Wilson's book, "The Politics of Truth," gave no conclusive evidence for the claim."
"...Wilson also said it's possible the leak came from Elliott Abrams, a figure in the Reagan administration Iran-Contra affair and now a member of Bush's National Security Council. And Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, may have circulated information about Wilson and Plame "in administration and neoconservative circles" even if Rove was not himself the leaker, Wilson wrote."
Now... Elliot Abrams and Karl Rove --- those are two people I could easily see stooping to political intimidation tactics such as these.
"Another possibility is that two lower-level officials in Cheney's office - John Hannah or David Wurmser - leaked Plame's identity at the behest of higher-ups "to keep their fingerprints off the crime," Wilson speculated."
"Sources within the investigation say evidence points to Rove approving release of the leak. They add that their investigation suggests the President knew about Rove's actions but took no action to stop release of Plame's name."
'Sources within the investigation' --- so this info was itself leaked from the Special Prosecutor's office?
Curiouser and curiouser... if a leak were 'authorized' at the top, then the President would be off the hook of having to follow-through on his promise to fire any identified leaker, right? |
