Democrats Invite Valerie Plame to Testify

Valerie Plame has been invited to testify before Congress. About nothing in particular. Democratic lawmakers are eager to hear from outed CIA operative Valerie Plame as they try to make political fodder out of the 2003 leak scandal. Plame was scheduled to testify before a congressional committee Friday, but it was unlikely the hearing would offer any new information about the ...

Blogging the Scooter Libby Trial

Jay Rosen has a long homage to those who blogged the Scooter Libby trial, most notably the Firedoglake gang. As a critic who follows the fortunes of the American press, and writes about its collapse under Bush, I found it extremely painful to sit on the sidelines for this event. But as compensation I had the pleasure of watching Firedoglake, ...

Libby Juror: Scooter Guilty but the Fall Guy

Scooter Libby juror Denis Collins explains the thought process of the jury. It confirms and expands on some quotes highlighted yesterday at the Drudge Report. Jurors in I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's perjury trial were certain of the former vice presidential aide's guilt, but they also harbored sympathy for him as a "fall guy," one of them said Tuesday after the ...

Plame vs. Wilson

Kevin Drum finds it interesting that Ari Fleischer today testified that Scooter Libby told him, four days before Bob Novak's story was filed, about Valerie Plame's role in sending her husband, Joe Wilson, to Niger. Not "Valerie Wilson," the name she used socially, but "Valerie Plame," her maiden name and one that she used only on agency business. . . . ...

Libby Prosecution Witness Grossman Makes Defense Case

In cross-examination by Ted Wells, Marc Grossman, the first prosecution witness, explained the reason that neither he nor his boss Richard Armitage had read a high critical article by Nicholas Kristoff that sparked the chain of events of the Valerie Plame affair this way: "I had about a billion things to do" and "couldn't be troubled" to find out what ...

Libby Trial: ‘The Wife’ Versus ‘That Woman’

Scooter Libby attorney Wells has repeatedly used the phrase "the wife" to refer to Valerie Plame/Wilson. He must have said it well over one hundred times and the statement is not yet over. He's doing it to downplay her significance. She was just the wife, so why would an important, busy man like Libby pay her any ...

Libby Judge: Valerie Plame Status Irrelevant

Judge Walton has instructed the jury that Valerie Plame's actual status with the CIA or the degree to which any revelations made by Scooter Libby put her in danger are totally irrelevant to the facts of this case. The only issue is whether the statements he made before the grand jury were factual and his state of mind in ...

CIA Won’t Let Plame Write Book

The CIA Publications Review Board is denying Valerie Plame permission to write about her work for the Agency, or even mention that she did so, Michael Isikoff reports in the latest Newsweek. The panel refused Plame permission to even mention that she worked for the CIA because she served as a "nonofficial cover" officer (or NOC) posing as a private businesswoman, ...

Human Events - Closing the Book on NovakGate

My latest for Human Events Online, "Closing the Book on NovakGate," is up.

Rove Indicted?

Jason Leopold, writing at both "Truthout" and "OpEd News," reports that Karl Rove has already been indicted. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent more than half a day Friday at the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm representing Karl Rove. During the course of that meeting, Fitzgerald served attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an indictment ...