WP:Post State Dept. Reporter Questioned in (Plame) Leak Probe

[DeepModem Mom]

Post State Dept. Reporter Questioned in Leak Probe

By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 23, 2004; Page A22


A Washington Post reporter was questioned yesterday by the special prosecutor investigating the possibly illegal leak of a CIA employee's identity by Bush administration officials.

State Department reporter Glenn Kessler submitted to a tape-recorded interview that will be provided to a grand jury investigating the disclosure last summer of CIA employee Valerie Plame's name to columnist Robert D. Novak.

Kessler said he agreed to be interviewed about two phone conversations he had with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, at Libby's urging. At the prosecutor's request, Libby and other White House aides have signed waivers saying they agree to release reporters they have talked to from keeping confidential any disclosures about Plame.

Kessler said he told prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald that, during conversations last July 12 and July 18, Libby did not mention Plame or her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, or Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger to investigate whether Iraq tried to buy uranium there....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62265-2004Jun22.html

[BootinUp]

1. Sounds like the coverup may work

The reporter is corrupterating
:grr:

[KoKo]

6. Article written by "Steno Sue" of Media Whore fame. This story smells

because isn't talking about testimony you gave to a Grand Jury illegal?

Very odd story, particularly considering the source.

[leftynyc]

18. I agree that anything Steno Sue writes

is subject to skepticism but witnesses to a grand jury are not under a gag order. They can say anything they like.

[gWbush is Mabus]

2. please clarify this sentence

Kessler said he agreed to be interviewed about two phone conversations he had with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, at Libby's urging.

did Libby urge the interview or the phone conversation?

[KAZ]

3. I read it as the interview. n/t

n/t

[salin]

5. That is how I read it as well.

Guessing that the phone records indicated the telephone call (including that the call was initiated from the Veeps office /Libby).

Interesting who is reporting the story, though. Isn't this "Steno Sue" - suggesting that either the story is too big to completely stifle, or that she is on the job running spin to try to minimize the damage of the story and give it a frame that can be spun by the WH to try to deflect the implications of the story.

[KoKo]

7. LOL's, Salin. I posted about "Steno Sue" the same time you were posting

"minds" think alike. :D

[Tatiana]

20. I'll take "minimizing the damage of the story" for 200, salin.

Something big is about to break in this investigation. I suspect Fitzgerald has a pretty good idea already who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame, but he is making sure he has overwhelming evidence.

[gratuitous]

4. That IS anti-matter language, isn't it?

Good to see the Post's editors are still snoozing on the job.

But if the reporter is talking to the grand jury, and the Post is allowing it, that probably means he doesn't have anything to worry about, liability-wise. Could it be that Scooter was shopping the Plame story around, and nobody at the Post would play ball with him? Libby had to go to Novakula, faithful servant of the bloodthirsty neocons, to get the Plame story out to the public in order to discredit her husband's testimony?

Curious. Very curious.

[salin]

9. editors snoozing? Nah - they knew what they were doing when

Steno Sue got the story.

[peacetalksforall]

8. So grand jury testimony doesn't need to be secret?

Is the WP cleansing themselves?

Did Libby dream up the campaign against Wilson-Plame on his own?

America needs to know.

We pay for Libby and Cheney.

Let's hear them use the phrase honor and integrity and rule of law and a few other phrases they used as a mantra during the 90's.

Let's bring back a sex and lie scandal. America was more at peace then.

[BeFree]

21. America needs a five-cent sex scandal

These expensive and highly damaging, top level lapses are costing American lives. Let's go back to cheap and non-life threatening scandals like we used to have during those eight years of peace and prosperity.

[fob]

22. Wasn't Martha Stewart convicted for discussing why she

WASN'T guilty? And this guy gets to go all loudmouth about his grand jury testimony since it seems to provide cover for "scooter"?

WTF!?!?!

[teryang]

10. Sell the administration's defense, hide the facts.

Prior Post reporting circuitously minimized. Since when are the facts (only those spun favorably for the administration) in on ongoing grand jury investigation published in the press?

<In October, The Post reported that "on July 12, two days before Novak's column, a Post reporter was told by an administration official that the White House had not paid attention to the former ambassador's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction."

The article said Plame's name was not mentioned and the purpose of the disclosure was to cast doubt on Wilson's report rather than reveal her identity...>

Just who is Wilson's wife, someone other Ms. Plame? Is this how they claim they didn't have specific intent? That's pretty weak. Why isn't the reporter in the July 12 story identified? Why isn't the reporter's source identified?

[nixonwasbetterthanW]

12. more Q's than A's

If the WP reports are accurate, then:

1.) the WP reporter mentioned in the October story is not Kessler or

2.) the reporter is Kessler but he talked to a different administration official about Wilson/Plame/etc.

Either way, the roundabout way in which the paper is protecting internal and external sources is producing more questions than answers.

[DeepModem Mom]

11. This is a curious, puzzling little story, by SS, on pg A22 -- n/t

[madrchsod]

13. ah- since when does a

citizen get to do "taped" interview to a grand jury? the people in the grand jury have the right to ask questions. you cannot refuse to answer unless you plead the 5th. the whole story stinks..but it`s the washington post/times

[Rose Siding]

14. Waivers signed by "other White House aides"

It doesn't say ALL WH aides that may be involved. All this means is that Scooter didn't discuss it with Kessler, and that's if the testimony is to be believed.

[Bandit]

15. Anyone remember the Vanessa Leggett case?

Leggett was incarcerated longer than any reporter in U.S. history for refusing to disclose research collected in the course of newsgathering. As is usual in states like Texas with no shield laws, neither the district court nor the Fifth Circuit showed compassion for Leggett's professional integrity and loyalty to her confidential sources. She was forced to serve the maximum term for contempt of court, which was the shorter of either the duration of the grand jury investigation or eighteen months.

But the most disconcerting aspect of the Leggett case is that neither court adequately investigated the actions of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) or balanced the interests of the First Amendment against the government's need for Leggett's research. Indeed, there may have been no need for her information at all. On January 8, 2002, four days after Leggett's release, the U.S. attorney empanelled another grand jury to investigate Robert Angleton. It was able to hand down an indictment in sixteen days without subpoenaing Leggett or her records.

Although this scenario has played out between the media and law enforcement agencies many times before, Leggett's contempt citation and the Fifth Circuit's holding represent an especially damaging blow to the reporter's privilege because the court held that the First Amendment did not apply to her case at all. Although the Fifth Circuit settled in dicta the issue of whether Leggett was a journalist and thus able to claim the reporter's privilege, it held that the case did not turn on that question. Rather, the Fifth Circuit made the sweeping pronouncement in Leggett's case and an earlier reporter's privilege case that the Constitution does not offer any testimonial or material privilege for reporters in the context of a grand jury or even a criminal proceeding.

http://articles.corporate.findlaw.com/articles/file/00970/008942

[Mandate My Ass]

16. Very weird

Kessler said he told prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald that, during conversations last July 12 and July 18, Libby did not mention Plame or her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, or Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger to investigate whether Iraq tried to buy uranium there.

In October, The Post reported that "on July 12, two days before Novak's column, a Post reporter was told by an administration official that the White House had not paid attention to the former ambassador's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction."

The article said Plame's name was not mentioned and the purpose of the disclosure was to cast doubt on Wilson's report rather than reveal her identity. Novak had reported a similar account on July 14 that he said was provided him by two administration officials.

Kessler said he would not have agreed to testify if it had violated any promise of confidentiality.

How can you discuss casting doubt on a report if you don't mention
the author of the report by name? Did they use pseudonyms to create plausible deniability? Did he speak to anyone else during the call? It would be nice of the WaPo, you know them being journalists and all :eyes: , to mention that two other people corroborated Wilson's report.

Why tape record the interview and play it for the grand jury?
Why not just go? It seems like damage control, IMHO.

[ItsThePeopleStupid]

17. it might be something legalistic

I half remember something about intent to disclose a CIA operative identity, as opposed to just doing it incidentally. Maybe the Bushies plan to get off on a technicality.

[lancdem]

19. It's also unusual for the prosecutor to conduct interviews himself

Anyone have a clue what that means?