FBI forced to xxell
FBI interviews of Bush, Cheney subpoenaed.
If Waxman Were to Act on Halliburton!
American Chronicle, CA - Jun 15, 2008In that case, Waxman would almost certainly immediately pull out one or more of his analyses of President Bush's or Vice President Cheney's abuses of power, ...
House committee demands files from probe of CIA leak
McClatchy - Tribune www.baltimoresun.com
june 17, 2008
WASHINGTON - A House committee subpoenaed yesterday records of the FBI's interviews with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney during the investigation into the leak of a covert CIA officer's name.
The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform demanded the documents from Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey days before former White House press secretary Scott McClellan is expected to testify about Cheney's role in leaking CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity to the news media in 2003.
Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat, asked for the transcripts late last year and renewed his request earlier this month after the committee received an unedited transcript of grand jury testimony in which former Cheney aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was quoted as saying it was "possible" that Cheney had told him to leak Plame's name.
Waxman said that McClellan's book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, also raised questions about whether Cheney had directed McClellan to "mislead the public."
Waxman also wants the unredacted transcripts of FBI interviews with McClellan, former White House political adviser Karl Rove, Libby and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said the department was reviewing the subpoena to determine how to respond. The committee set a deadline of noon Monday.
Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, has accused high-level White House officials of leaking his wife's identity to retaliate for his criticism of the Iraq war.
After a two-year investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, Libby was indicted and convicted in connection with the leak on charges of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI. After Bush commuted Libby's 2 1/2 -year sentence and Fitzgerald acknowledged that he didn't anticipate indicting Rove, the investigation was seen as essentially over.
McClellan, who's expected to testify Friday before the House Judiciary Committee, renewed questions about the leak with his book. He wrote that Bush and Cheney directed him to "exonerate" Libby in his daily news briefings and that Cheney may have been among the senior White House officials who knew the truth but encouraged the former spokesman "to repeat a lie." McClellan also contended that Bush told him he had authorized the leak of Plame's name.
Bush said in a 2004 news briefing: "If there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. If the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of."
Last week, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Keith Nelson turned down the committee's request for the FBI reports on Bush and Cheney, saying that the committee's request "raises serious separation of powers" and confidentiality concerns.
But Waxman said there were "no sound reasons" that the Justice Department couldn't release the documents. He has accused the Justice Department of blocking Fitzgerald from turning over the documents.
More articles
House panel subpoenas FBI interviews of Bush, Cheney
By PETE YOST – 18 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — A House committee issued a subpoena Monday for FBI reports from interviews with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in the CIA leak investigation.
The subpoena to Attorney General Michael Mukasey from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is the latest move by Congress to shed light on Cheney's precise role in the leak of Valerie Plame's CIA identity.
On Friday, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan is scheduled to testify to the House Judiciary Committee.
He is expected to talk about White House higher-ups directing him to publicly deny that Cheney's chief of staff and White House political adviser Karl Rove played any role in leaking the CIA employment of Plame, who is married to Bush administration war critic Joseph Wilson.
Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and Rove were among the leakers of the CIA identity of Wilson's wife. Both have since left the White House.
In publicly released grand jury testimony, Libby acknowledges having told the FBI early in the Plame probe that "it's possible" he spoke to Cheney about whether to share information with the press about Wilson's wife.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., has been trying to get FBI interviews of Bush and Cheney since last year. Waxman renewed the request June 3 and Mukasey says the department is considering a response. Monday's subpoena also seeks other documents related to the Plame probe, the committee said in announcing the action.
Libby was convicted of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI.
Last July, Bush commuted Libby's 2 1/2-year sentence, sparing him from serving any prison time.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman is demanding the Justice Department hand over transcripts of FBI interviews with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney conducted during the investigation into who outed former covert CIA agent Valerie Plame.
The committee on Monday issued subpoenas ordering the Justice Department to hand over the transcript. Of course, if the Bush administration treats this subpoena like they have virtually every other one issued by Congress, it could take months or even years of legal wrangling before the issue is resolved.
Waxman (D-CA) requested the transcripts of the FBI interviews earlier this month, after publication of Scott McClellan’s tell all memoir revealing Bush administration deception. A transcript of Cheney’s interview would be of particular interest because his former aide, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was the only official convicted of a crime in relation to the Plame probe.
Libby told the FBI that it was “possible” Cheney instructed him to leak Plame’s name, Waxman wrote in his initial letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
The affair that would become known as Plamegate began in the summer of 2003, when Plame, wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, was named in conservative pundit Robert Novak’s syndicated newspaper column. Novak eventually revealed that his source was former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, but investigations revealed that several White House officials, including Libby and former Bush political adviser Karl Rove, also disclosed Plame’s identity.
Many believed that Libby and Rove were exacting political revenge on Wilson, who weeks earlier had gone public with revelations that undercut the administrations’ claims that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy nuclear materials from Africa.
In his book, McClellan accuses Libby and Rove of misleading him about their role in the controversy, which in turn caused him to lie to the press, and he suggests the two may have privately discussed their involvement for the sake of getting their stories straight before testifying in court. McClellan also writes that he was “directed” by Bush and Cheney to publicly exonerate Libby, who went on to be convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice before Bush commuted his prison sentence.
In first requesting the FBI transcripts, Waxman noted the need to clarify any questions about high level involvement.
“It would,” he wrote, “be a major breach of trust if the Vice President personally directed Mr. McClellan to mislead the public.”
Related Stories
Further Reading:
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Iraq reconstruction contracting.
Congressman John Conyers, The Constitution in Crisis.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on domestic contracting.
Barack Obama, Statement of Senator Barack Obama on his Amendment to stop no-bid contracts for Gulf Coast Recovery & Reconstruction, May 2, 2006.
Oliver Morgan, Congress probes hurricane clean up contracts, The Observer, September 11, 2005.
Farah Stockman, US firms suspected of bilking Iraq funds: millions missing from program for rebuilding, Boston.com World News, April 16, 2006.
Adam Zagorin & Timothy J. Burger, Beyond the Call of Duty, Time.com, May 18, 2008.
Scandal In Plain Sight
Wednesday, July 16, 2008; Page A17
A sitting president collecting secret cash in unlimited sums from corporations and wealthy favor-seekers.
This might sound outrageous, and it is. But it's also perfectly legal, as fundraisers for sitting presidents work to fill the coffers of future presidential libraries with six- and seven-figure checks.
This is an underappreciated scandal of bipartisan dimensions. Bill Clinton did it -- with much ensuing embarrassment, as his last-minute pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich came after Rich's ex-wife had donated $450,000 to Clinton's presidential library. Now, it's George W. Bush's turn.
My immediate impetus for raising this topic is a sting operation by the Sunday Times of London. The Times duped Texas consultant Stephen Payne into believing that an exiled Kazakh politician wanted to arrange meetings between Kyrgyzstan's former president, Askar Akayev, and Bush administration officials.
Bush himself might be tough, Payne told the politician, known to him as Eric Dos. But Vice President Cheney is "possible," Payne added. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser Stephen Hadley -- that might be arranged.
Then Payne segued into how. "I think that the family, children, whatever, should probably look at making a contribution to the Bush library," Payne suggested. "It would be like, maybe a couple of hundred thousand dollars . . . not a huge amount but enough to show that they're serious. . . . I think that would probably get the attention of the people raising the money." Payne's firm, he said, would require an additional $450,000.
Unfortunately for Payne, Dos was actually working for the Sunday Times, which posted an unflattering video of the conversation. Payne said in a statement that he was entrapped and his words misconstrued, and that his later e-mails made clear that there was no quid pro quo. "Over the course of an hour-long conversation in a social setting, isolated comments can be taken out of context," he said.
Payne's résumé reads like a classic tale of political back-scratching -- a man who did well while doing good for political allies. He was a Bush "Pioneer" in 2000, raising at least $100,000, and a "Ranger" in 2004, collecting more than $200,000. He told Dos that he had brought in more than $1 million for the GOP.
Payne was rewarded in the ordinary ways, small but useful. He served on the 2001 Inaugural Committee and now sits on an advisory panel for the Department of Homeland Security. His firm's Web site advertised that Payne "assists the White House as a Senior Advance Representative traveling internationally in advance of and with" Bush and Cheney, and that he "facilitated discussions" between Cheney and President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, a leader as autocratic as he is corrupt.
I'm not suggesting that the Bush administration is knowingly peddling access to senior officials in exchange for library donations. There's no evidence that "the people raising the money" for the library would deliver what Payne was dangling. The library probably won't accept foreign donations -- while Bush is in office, anyway. But letting sitting presidents raise money for their future libraries -- and secretly -- is a recipe for this sort of sleaze.
My first encounter with this subject came in October 1999, when I wrote a news story for The Post reporting that Clinton's fundraisers had collected more than $20 million in secret pledges. There was not a single question about the story at the next day's White House briefing. The issue exploded only after the pardons.
The Bush library won't say how much it has collected in gifts or pledges, and it got an extension for filing the tax form that would provide the information, spokesman Dan Bartlett said.
Presidents -- more precisely, the people who raise money for presidents -- recoil at postponing library fundraising until their term ends. Bringing in $250 million is a lot easier when your guy is still in charge.
The argument for keeping the names of donors secret is that some admirers might not want their generosity on public display. But a presidential library is no ordinary charity. It is built with private money and turned over to the National Archives to operate. If requiring disclosure might deter a generous patron with a penchant for anonymity from giving, so be it.
There ought to be a law. Actually, there would be one if it weren't for Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska. A measure requiring disclosure of library donations -- during a presidency and for four years afterward -- has twice passed the House. But Stevens blocked the measure in March, arguing that it was unfair to "change the rules" on Bush -- even as library officials claim they haven't really started fundraising.
Mr. President, take a look at the video. Then decide whether taking checks in secret is really how you want to end your presidency.
marcusr@washpost.com
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