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Excerpt:  This diary condenses the huge and detailed timeline laid out in the previous diary "Plame leak timeline II".

It lays the case for the leak of the classified 2002 CIA memo to [phony White House reporter] Jeff Gannon [whose actual name may vary].

Grand Jury told: Bush knew about leak of CIA operative's name

Excerpt:  Witnesses told a federal grand jury President George W. Bush knew about, and took no action to stop, the release of a covert CIA operative's name to a journalist in an attempt to discredit her husband, a critic of administration policy in Iraq.

Their damning testimony has prompted Bush to contact an outside lawyer for legal advice because evidence increasingly points to his involvement in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

Excerpt:  I knew that my credibility would be challenged the moment I publicly stated that President Bush's statement about Saddam trying to acquire yellowcake from Niger was false, and I made preparations to defend it. I was not going to let the rabid ankle-biters of the right deny me a voice in the debate or impugn my integrity. I had earned the right to be heard, the same right enjoyed by other responsible citizens. I spoke out confident in the belief that our democracy remains strong precisely because we have a long and proud tradition of citizens challenging our government when it lies to the people.

However, for all the insults I knew I would suffer, I never expected the White House itself to do anything like what it did: come after my wife.

Excerpt:  Mr. Novak who has "over 40 years journalistic experience" as he reminded everyone several times Sunday, should know when he's being played. Either he knew what he was doing and ruined the career of a CIA operative on purpose to help this administration get revenge on a "dissenting voice and suspected Democrat", or he was the only sucker in town that'd take the bait.

I have two general observations. First, why does this story break NOW? Why is the CIA demanding an investigation NOW? I mean, crap, we have no resources whatsoever, but we’ve been following this misadventure since July.

And second, why are all the radio reporters (on NPR, anyway) reporting as fact rather obvious lies like my favorite repeated whopper, heard on several newscasts yesterday: “Bush has instructed his staff to co-operate.” Was there no air time left to squeeze in a few extra syllables: “Bush says he has instructed his staff to co-operate”?   =H&HH=

Joseph C. Wilson IV, a retired ambassador who was a secret envoy of the Bush administration to Africa and who publicly voiced doubts about a reported Iraqi weapons program, says he has become a target of a campaign to discourage others like him from going public.

In the prewar effort to uncover information about weapons in Iraq, Mr. Wilson made a fact-finding trip to Niger in February 2002 at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency. His findings challenged contentions in an unsubstantiated document that Iraq was trying to obtain nuclear-weapons material from the West African country.

But it was not until after Mr. Wilson made his account public last month in an op-ed article in The New York Times, to the intense discomfort of President Bush's aides, that the White House acknowledged that it had erred in including the disputed accusations in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address in January.

Days after the column, another chapter opened. Mr. Wilson's wife was identified by name as a covert C.I.A. operative in a column by the conservative columnist Robert Novak, a disclosure that Mr. Novak has attributed to senior administration officials.

Officials are barred by law from disclosing the identities of Americans who work undercover for the C.I.A. That provision is intended to protect the security of operatives whose lives might be jeopardized if their identities are known.

Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security — and break the law — in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?

It sure looks that way, if conservative journalist Bob Novak can be trusted.

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