Ari Fleischer Guilty in Leak Case? Did He Testify Against Bush?
Don't be surprised if former WH PRess Secretary Ari Fleischer is indicted soon by the Plame Grand Jury. Although in his testimony, Fleischer denied reading the INR memo on AF One, 'Comical Ari' was said to have been seen reading it. This could mean a perjury charge.
And Ari's log shows a call from Novakula the day after the July 6 Wilson article came out! Rove said Novak told him the name. Did Ari tell Robert who then told Karl? Or is that just more Karl CYA?And did Ari 'flip' for Fitz and testify against Bush?!?!
Links on the Ari Flip!
Sherlock Google's diary :: :: Among those asked if he had seen the memo was Ari Fleischer, then the White House press secretary, who was on Air Force One with Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell during the Africa trip. Mr. Fleischer told the grand jury that he never saw the document, a person familiar with the testimony said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the prosecutor's admonitions about not disclosing what is said to the grand jury.
Mr. Fleischer's role has been scrutinized by investigators, in part because his telephone log showed a call on the day after Mr. Wilson's article appeared from Mr. Novak, the columnist who, on July 14, 2003, was the first to report Ms. Wilson's identity.
In his column, Mr. Novak referred to her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, which she had used when first employed by the C.I.A. Mr. Fleischer has told the grand jury that he did not return Mr. Novak's call, a person familiar with the testimony said.
NY Times
On the same day the memo was prepared, White House phone logs show Novak placed a call to White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, according to lawyers familiar with the case and a witness who has testified before the grand jury. Those people say it is not clear whether Fleischer returned the call, and Fleischer has refused to comment.
The Novak call may loom large in the investigation because Fleischer was among a group of administration officials who left Washington later that day on a presidential trip to Africa. On the flight to Africa, Fleischer was seen perusing the State Department memo on Wilson and his wife, according to a former administration official who was also on the trip."

To The People of "The Thief":

It is time that many people on this board start adding their flavor, taste, and opinions to articles posted on this site. Failure to do so will only create an environment which is boring, unstimulating, and useless. "The Thief" will never survive long-term if it fails to act on my suggesstion. It seems that there are only a few people on this board who actively participate and offer strong suggesstions and opinions to articles posted.

Many kudos should be given out to the individuals who have contributed to the knowledge of this website, including the "silent assasian," "collin cartier," and "27." It is quite easy to post documents on this website, but to not voice your opinion on an article is tragic and goes against the whole concept of what this site is supposed to be. I encourage every member of "The Thief" to start engaging in insigghtful dialogue and start making this website what it can be by adding comments to posted articles. Thank you.

Signed,

XXX

- Back the Nat.

Bloomberg Columnists: "Oct. 5 (Bloomberg) -- What if former President Bill Clinton had nominated his White House counsel, Bernie Nussbaum, to the Supreme Court? I can hear Bill Frist now. What does Slick Willy think he's doing -- filling a job at FEMA?
At first glance, there seems to be no other reason for
Harriet Miers's nomination to the Supreme Court other than that
she is President George W. Bush's Bernie Nussbaum. The notion
that a careerist corporate lawyer would have risen to the top of
Bush's list if she weren't down the hall is preposterous.
Unlike famous self-selector Dick Cheney, no one suspects
the modest Miers looked in the mirror and saw the best
replacement for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor staring back at her.
Only Bush could see the ``heart'' and ``character'' in Miers
that made her the perfect selection. She's been his consigliore,
fixer and confidante for more than two decades, and she thinks
the way he does.
The fact that Miers is a woman helps enormously. It looks
as if Bush listened to wife Laura, who publicly suggested he
should replace a woman with a woman. It's far more likely that
Laura publicly suggested it because he already had decided to do
so. The choice prompts automatic praise from some liberals,
excites Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and
placates Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein."

"George Stephanopolous dropped a bombshell on his show on Sunday. Toward the end, as Judd notes, he said,' Definitely a political problem but I wonder, George Will, do you think it%u2019s a manageable one for the White House especially if we don%u2019t know whether Fitzgerald is going to write a report or have indictments but if he is able to show as a source close to this told me this week, that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were actually involved in some of these discussions. ' The implication is that Bush and Cheney took part in discussions with Karl Rove, Lewis Libby and other administration spinmeisters about what to do about that pesky Joseph Wilson IV, former acting ambassador to Iraq who had stood up to Saddam in fall of 1990. Wilson had gone to Niger in spring of 2002 to check out the stories circulating in intelligence circles that Saddam had bought uranium there recently. Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney (when people are in legal trouble the tradition is to drop the nicknames) had asked the CIA about the stories. Wilson had found that the structure of the uranium industry in Niger (which frankly was in French hands) made the purchases implausible. What Wilson did not know at the time was that the stories were generated by actual documents, a set of clumsily forged letters generated by Italian military intelligence officer Rocco Martini (who claimed he was the tool of 'higher powers.')Wilson wrote his report and assumed it was passed by then CIA direct George Tenet and thence went to Cheney, who had initiated the inquiry. Wilson watched with amazement and outrage as the Bush administration went on relentlessly to hype Iraq's alleged nuclear program as a basis for the Iraq War that they got up. By May of 2003, Wilson had had enough, and he went public with an editorial in the New York Times, in which he told his story.The whole point of Bushism is to punish dissidence within the ranks immediately and ruthlessly. Wilson, a former State Department official, had to be destroyed for having stepped out of line. Everyone should remember that when former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill decided to come out with a tell-all memoir about being in the Bush cabinet for a year, he proclaimed, 'I'm old, I'm rich, and there is nothing they can do to me' (or words to that effect). Then all of a sudden the Bush administration was finding signs of classified documents in O'Neill's book, implicitly threatening him with spending the rest of his life in jail for having revealed government secrets. O'Neill feebly protested that he had not had access to classified documents. But all of a sudden he disappeared from the airwaves. He had discovered that there were, too, things that could be done to him. He must have been astonished that the Bushes of Kennebunkport would behave like Vladimir Putin. Everyone always underestimates the malevolence of the Bushes of Connecticut."

Oh MoDo Where Art Thou?
The Judy Miller affair is perfect Maureen Dowd material. NeoCon princess with a history of spreading misinformation for her Pentagon pals across the front page of the New York Times like a fine layer of nuclear waste, the 'irresponsible martyrdom' that lead her to wrap herself in the First Amendment with all the subtlety of Norma Desmond begging for a klieg light, the paltry parade of C-list defenders and a 'compromise' so self-serving even the mouth breathers mock her. The barbs verily write themselves.

And yet not one word has MoDo written about the woman who now brags to her friends about her $1.2 million book deal. Her lip must be in utter shreds for having been bitten so hard for so long.

In fact, not a peep on Miller has been uttered by the entire Times punditry corps. One can only conclude that they have been effectively muzzled. This is a tragedy of epic proportions for the blogosphere, who are still reeling from the loss of these voices behind the $49.95 TimesSelect wall (as blogger Attaturk lamented, 'Well goodbye to bashing Bobo and Tierney....[that's] half my act.')"

Congress has always had its share of extremists. But the DeLay era is the first time the fringe has ever been in charge.
Oct. 10, 2005 issue - A decade ago, I paid a call on Tom DeLay in his ornate office in the Capitol. I had heard a rumor about him that I figured could not possibly be true. The rumor was that after the GOP took control of the House that year, DeLay had begun keeping a little black book with the names of Washington lobbyists who wanted to come see him. If the lobbyists were not Republicans and contributors to his power base, they didn't get into 'the people's House.' DeLay not only confirmed the story, he showed me the book. His time was limited, DeLay explained with a genial smile. Why should he open his door to people who were not on the team?"