WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 – I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby’s testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war.

Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Mr. Libby’s notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson’s undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent’s identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent’s undercover status.

It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government’s deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, to be an illegal effort to impede the inquiry.

White House officials did not respond to requests for comment, and Mr. Libby’s lawyer, Joseph Tate, would not comment on Mr. Libby’s legal status. Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald, declined to comment on the case.

Mr. Fitzgerald is expected to decide whether to bring charges in the case by Friday, when the term of the grand jury expires. Mr. Libby and Karl Rove, President Bush’s senior adviser, both face the possibility of indictment, lawyers involved in the case have said. It is not publicly known whether other officials also face indictment.
nytimes.com

Facing a convergence of crises threatening his administration, President Bush and his team are devising plans to salvage the remainder of his presidency by applying the lessons of past two-term chief executives and refocusing attention on the president’s larger economic and foreign policy goals.

Rarely has a president confronted as many damaging developments that could all come to a head in this week. A special counsel appears poised to indict one or more administration officials within days. Pressure is building on Bush from within his own party to withdraw the faltering Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers. And any day the death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq will pass the symbolically important 2,000 mark.

To deal with what they consider the darkest days of the Bush presidency, White House advisers have developed a twofold strategy — confront head-on problems such as the Iraq death toll, while shifting attention to other areas such as conservative economic policies, according to a senior White House official, who spoke about internal deliberations only under the condition of anonymity. Bush advisers are taking clues from the playbooks of former presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, both of whom weathered second-term scandals.

The White House strategy will unfold over the next several days, starting with yesterday’s announcement of a new Federal Reserve Board chairman and continuing today with a presidential speech on Iraq at Bolling Air Force Base. Anticipating a barrage of criticism when the death toll hits 2,000, Bush will try to put the sacrifice in perspective by portraying the Iraq war as the best way to keep terrorists from striking the United States again, the official said. He will make the same case in another speech Friday in Norfolk.
washingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON – The CIA leak inquiry that threatens senior White House aides has now widened to include the forgery of documents on African uranium that started the investigation, according to NAT0 intelligence sources.

This suggests the inquiry by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald into the leaking of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame has now widened to embrace part of the broader question about the way the Iraq war was justified by the Bush administration.

Fitzgerald’s inquiry is expected to conclude this week and despite feverish speculation in Washington, there have been no leaks about his decision whether to issue indictments and against whom and on what charges.

Two facts are, however, now known and between them they do not bode well for the deputy chief of staff at the White House, Karl Rove, President George W Bush’s senior political aide, not for Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

The first is that Fitzgerald last year sought and obtained from the Justice Department permission to widen his investigation from the leak itself to the possibility of cover-ups, perjury and obstruction of justice by witnesses. This has renewed the old saying from the days of the Watergate scandal, that the cover-up can be more legally and politically dangerous than the crime.

The second is that NATO sources have confirmed to United Press International that Fitzgerald’s team of investigators has sought and obtained documentation on the forgeries from the Italian government.

Fitzgerald’s team has been given the full, and as yet unpublished report of the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the affair, which started when an Italian journalist obtained documents that appeared to show officials of the government of Niger helping to supply the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein with Yellowcake uranium. This claim, which made its way into President Bush’s State of the Union address in January, 2003, was based on falsified documents from Niger and was later withdrawn by the White House.

This opens the door to what has always been the most serious implication of the CIA leak case, that the Bush administration could face a brutally damaging and public inquiry into the case for war against Iraq being false or artificially exaggerated. This was the same charge that imperiled the government of Bush’s closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, after a BBC Radio program claimed Blair’s aides has “sexed up” the evidence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
commondreams.org

by Patrick Buchanan
While President Bush and his War Cabinet bear full moral responsibility for Iraq, they could not have taken us to war without the complicity of the “adversary press” and “loyal opposition.”

Today, this town is salivating over the prospect that Karl Rove and “Scooter” Libby will be indicted for outing Joe Wilson’s wife as a CIA operative. Thirty months ago, many of those anxious to see the White House brought down were hauling its water. Consider the role played by our newspaper of record, the New York Times.

To stampede us into a war neoconseratives had been plotting for a decade, Douglas Feith, the Pentagon’s No. 3, set up an Office of Special Plans. Its role: Cherry-pick the intel that Saddam was acquiring weapons of mass destruction and hell-bent on using them on the United States. Then, stovepipe the hot stuff to the White House Iraq Group, and ignore the contradictory evidence.

A primary source of the hot intel about poison gas vans and nuclear bomb programs was a tight-knit exile group led by Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress and neocon-Pentagon favorite to lead the new Iraq.

But once the hyped intel suggesting Saddam was an imminent and mortal threat had been extracted, the WHIG needed to run it through a media centrifuge to convert it into hard news.

Enter Judy Miller, self-styled “Ms. Run Amok” and the go-to girl for the War Party. Miller took the cherry-picked intel and planted it on Page 1, enabling War Party propagandists to hit the TV talk-show circuit and reference ominous stories in the New York Times about how imminent a threat Saddam had become.

These propagandists were parroting their own pre-cooked intel, but it now had the imprimatur of the Times. The White House had seduced the good Gray Lady of 43rd Street into turning tricks for war.
informationclearinghouse.info

The US Senate committee which accused MP George Galloway of receiving oil money from Saddam Hussein has accused him of lying under oath.

Mr Galloway gave evidence to a Washington hearing in May, where he ridiculed its claims.

Now the senators claim they have fresh evidence linking the Respect MP and his wife to Iraq’s oil-for-food programme.

Mr Galloway said: “I did not lie under oath in front of the senate committee.” His wife has previously issued denials.

Mr Galloway told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The specific allegation against me is that I lied under oath in front of a senate committee.

“In this case the remedy is clear – they must charge me with perjury and I am ready to fly to the US today, if necessary, to face such a charge because it is simply false.”

The committee says it has seen bank records linking Mr Galloway and his wife Dr Amineh Abu-Zayyad with Iraqi government vouchers.

Chairman Norm Coleman said documents it had uncovered were “the smoking gun”.

Mr Coleman claimed that Mr Galloway had “been anything but straight” with the committee.

But the Bethnal Green and Bow MP launched an attack on senate investigators.

He said: “They have been cavalier with any idea of process and justice so far, but I am still willing to go to the US and I am still willing to face any charge of perjury before the senate committee.”

However, in regards to the claims levelled at his estranged wife, Mr Galloway said he had “absolutely no idea” about her alleged business dealings.

“I am not responsible for my wife,” he said.

The MP, who said he was not in a position to answer questions on her behalf, went on: “I am bemused at the news that I see on the front of the newspapers.”

Mr Galloway appeared before a US Senate committee on 17 May. The former Labour MP travelled to Washington after senators accused him of receiving credit to buy Iraqi oil.

One of the main allegations raised by the senate sub-committee was that Mr Galloway received oil allocations with the assistance of Fawaz Zureikat.

Mr Zureikat, who was chairman of the Mariam Appeal set up by Mr Galloway to help a four-year-old Iraqi girl with leukaemia, has strongly denied making any arrangements linked to oil sales on behalf of the MP.

BBC Washington correspondent Justin Webb said the development meant the senators’ confrontation with Mr Galloway had “reached a new and more serious stage”.

Mr Galloway has always denied funds from the sale of Iraqi oil were funnelled through the Mariam Appeal.

In December, Mr Galloway won £150,000 in libel damages from the Daily Telegraph over its separate claims he had received money from Saddam’s regime. The paper is currently awaiting the result of its appeal against that ruling.
bbc.co.uk

The international Middle East envoy, James Wolfensohn, has accused Israel of behaving as if it has not withdrawn from the Gaza Strip, by blocking its borders and failing to fulfil commitments to allow the movement of Palestinians and goods.

Mr Wolfensohn, the special envoy of the “Quartet” of the US, UN, EU and Russia overseeing the “road map” peace plan, said Israel continued to block the free movement of Palestinians between the strip and Egypt, even though they do not enter Israel. “The government of Israel, with its important security concerns, is loath to relinquish control, almost acting as though there has been no withdrawal, delaying making difficult decisions and preferring to take difficult matters back into slow-moving subcommittees,” he wrote in a letter earlier this month to Quartet members.

Israel has almost entirely sealed off the Gaza Strip since its withdrawal on September 12. Hundreds of Palestinian workers who used to enter Israel each day via the Erez crossing in the north are not now allowed to do so, and the Karni cargo crossing has been closed, except to allow Israelis to import palm leaves for Jewish religious ceremonies earlier this month.

However, Mr Wolfensohn’s principal complaint concerns the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, the only way for most Palestinians to leave and enter the territory. Israel has refused to allow the crossing to reopen, except for periodic humanitarian considerations. “The Israelis have not agreed to accept the EU’s generous offer to consider the role of a third party to supervise the crossing,” he said. Israel is also blocking the implementation of a proposal by Mr Wolfensohn and the World Bank for a temporary system of convoys to move Palestinians and goods lorries between Gaza and the West Bank.
guardian.co.uk

Wolfhensohn. Wolfowitz predecessor at the World Bank. Seems like there’s a big bail-out going on. The rats are jumping off the sinking ship…

The man who was stabbed to death during weekend rioting in Birmingham was set upon by up to 11 armed youths as he walked home from the cinema with his brother, it emerged yesterday.
Isiah Young-Sam, 24, had not been involved in any of the confrontations between the Pakistani and African-Caribbean communities that erupted on Saturday evening, officers from the West Midlands police said.

The victim was, they said, innocently walking home with his younger brother, Zephaniah, and two friends, when three cars pulled up alongside them and launched into a furious attack. Detective Superintendent Dave Mirfield said: “The group was approached by three cars. Those cars contained, we believe, between 10 and 11 men. These men got out of the cars, armed with knives, and attacked Isiah and his friends.”

Yesterday it emerged that Mr Young-Sam, described as a gentle and deeply religious man who read the Bible each day, was oblivious to the febrile atmosphere that had developed in the Lozells area of Birmingham on Saturday. He and his brother had spent the late afternoon and early evening in the cinema. Afterwards they caught a bus from the city centre and were just a few hundred metres from home when they were set upon. Mr Young-Sam, an IT analyst at Birmingham city council, was taken to hospital but was dead on arrival. Yesterday, as riot police returned to the troubled streets of Lozells, his family paid tribute to a man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Tensions were also raised further by a second murder, the shooting of a man in Newtown, less than a mile away from the scene of Saturday’s disturbance.
guardian.co.uk

…The human toll for the U.S. military in the Iraq war is not limited to the… 2,000 [as of this morning] troops deaths since the March 2003 invasion. More than 15,220 also have been wounded in combat, including more than 7,100 injured too badly to return to duty, the Pentagon said. Thousands more have been hurt in incidents unrelated to combat.
commondreams.org

…Aubrey de Grey…the 42-year-old English biogerontologist has made his name by claiming that some people alive right now could live for 1,000 years or longer. Maybe much longer. Growing old is not, in his view, an inevitable consequence of the human condition; rather, it is the result of accumulated damage at the cellular and molecular levels that medical advances will soon be able to prevent — or even reverse — allowing people to go on living pretty much indefinitely. We’ll still have to worry about angry bears and falling pianos, but aging, the biggest killer of all, will cease to be a threat. Death, as we know it, will die.
chronicle.com

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. prison population, already the largest in the world, grew by 1.9 percent in 2004, leaving federal jails at 40 percent over capacity, according to Justice Department figures released on Sunday.

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Inmates in federal, state, local and other prisons totaled nearly 2.3 million at the end of last year, the government said. The 1.9 percent increase was lower than the average annual growth rate of 3.2 percent during the last decade.

According to the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College in London, there are more people behind bars in the United States than in any other country.

China had the second-largest prison population with 1.5 million prisoners, according to statistics updated in April and cited by King’s College. The total U.S. population is about 296 million, while China’s is 1.3 billion.

The Justice Department said the U.S. incarceration rate hit 486 sentenced inmates per 100,000 last year, up 18 percent from 411 a decade ago.

The five states with the highest incarceration rates last year were all in the South, led by Louisiana with 816 sentenced prisoners per 100,000 state residents. The five states with the lowest rates were all in the North, with Maine experiencing 148 sentenced inmates per 100,000 state residents in 2004, according to the Justice Department figures.

The U.S. prison population continued to grow last year even though reports of violent crime during 2004 were at the lowest level since the government began compiling statistics 32 years ago, according to a government report released in September.
news.yahoo.com