October 2005

From reading the actual
New York Daily
News article that Raw Story mentioned last night, it is not Cheney who has
turned over on the investigation but rather someone close to him. With that
going on, you can be certain the work atmosphere in Cheney's office is very
unpleasant. I bet everyone continues to look over their shoulder to see who is
watching who.

Full
Article:

Cheney may be target of probe

BY JAMES GORDON MEEK, THOMAS M. DeFRANK and KENNETH R. BAZINET DAILY NEWS
WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - A special prosecutor's intensifying focus into who outed a
CIA spy has raised questions whether Vice President Cheney himself is
involved, knowledgeable sources confirmed yesterday. At least one source and
one reporter who have testified in the probe said U.S. Attorney Patrick
Fitzgerald is pursuing Cheney's role in the Valerie Plame affair.

In addition, at least six current and former Cheney staffers - most
members of the White House Iraq Group - have testified before the grand
jury, including the vice president's top honcho, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, and
two top Cheney national security lieutenants.

Cheney's name has come up amid indications Fitzgerald may be edging
closer to a blockbuster conspiracy charge - with help from a secret snitch.

"They have got a senior cooperating witness - someone who is giving them
all of that," a source who has been questioned in the leak probe told the
Daily News yesterday.

Cheney was questioned last year by prosecutors and has hired a private
attorney, former colleague Terrence O'Donnell, who declined to comment when
contacted by The News.

Back in August, when Camp Casey was in full swing outside of Bush's Crawford
Ranch, the right wingers found some information they loved. That information was
about Cindy Sheehan having past tax troubles. She had acquired some liens
against her property over the years for a problem that many Americans face. It
was a great talking point for the right. I even remember O'Reilly and Limbaugh
trying to discredit her because she did not do her patriotic duty of paying her
taxes.

Now lets see what the right will say about Supreme Court Nominee Harriett
Miers.

Washington -- The year Harriet Miers began work as a senior presidential
aide in the White House, the city of Dallas slapped three liens in three
months on a property she controls in a low-income minority Dallas
neighborhood, records show.

The city placed the liens in 2001 to force her to reimburse it for
clearing the vacant lot of tall grass, weeds and debris after Miers failed
to have the work done herself, as required by city law, and after she did
not respond to city notices to maintain the property.

It was not the first time the city had to take action. Records show that
since Miers assumed power of attorney for her ailing mother in 1995, the
city has issued seven other liens on vacant lots that Miers controls in the
same neighborhood around Tipton Park.

All 10 liens, totaling less than $2,000, have been paid, a city spokesman
said.

But the failure of Miers, a former Dallas City Council member, to comply
with city law, and her slow response in reimbursing the city, run counter to
her image as a meticulous, detail-oriented attorney who is always well
prepared.

Full article

here.

Howard Kurtz has an interesting column in the

Washington Post today where he has examined the response of the blogosphere
to Judith Miller's story.

While questions are being asked around the internet about her security
clearance that she received from the Department of Defense (see this article at
Poynter Online by
former CBS correspondent Bill Lynch), there  is also mounting questions
being raised over her true integrity has a journalist. One part of Kurtz's
column raises that question even more where he talks about a former contract
writer for the New York Times, Craig Pyes, who worked with Miller on a story
about Al Qaeda in 2000. Pyes was so disgruntled with the work of Miller that he
actually wrote the editors and asked his name not appear on the byline.

"I'm not willing to work further on this project with Judy Miller," wrote
Pyes, who now writes for the Los Angeles Times. He added: "I do not trust
her work, her judgment, or her conduct. She is an advocate, and her actions
threaten the integrity of the enterprise, and of everyone who works with her
. . . She has turned in a draft of a story of a collective enterprise that
is little more than dictation from government sources over several days,
filled with unproven assertions and factual inaccuracies," and "tried to
stampede it into the paper."

Full story

here

Back in August when the Valerie Plame investigation was really heating up,
Robert Novak tried to say he learned that Joe Wilson's wife was Valerie Plame
through Who's Who in America. Of course the Bush supporters jumped on that
because they thought it would exonerate any wrong doing. This of course was not
the case because it was quickly brought to light that saying Joe Wilson's wife
worked at the CIA was essentially the same as saying Valerie Plame.

The Who's Who argument is something that Judith Miller will not be able to
invoke. In her article in the New York Time's she lost any chance of giving that
defense by this statement:

I was not permitted to take notes of what I told the grand jury, and my
interview notes on Mr. Libby are sketchy in places. It is also difficult,
more than two years later, to parse the meaning and context of phrases, of
underlining and of parentheses. On one page of my interview notes, for
example, I wrote the name "Valerie Flame." Yet, as I told Mr.
Fitzgerald, I simply could not recall where that came from, when I wrote it
or why the name was misspelled.

Full Article

Here.

Now since she had the name wrong in her notes that implies she was
transcribing something she was told either via phone or verbally. Perhaps she
talked to Bob Novak about it, but that is most likely not the case. Someone had
to actually tell her Valerie Plame's name and she wrote it down wrong, as is
common when transcribing something verbally.