WASHINGTON. February 8 - The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) has filed a FOIA request asking for declassification and release of the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) given to President Bush in June 2003, just weeks before the identity of CIA analyst Valerie Plame was illegally revealed.
The existence of that PDB was first made public late last week in the course of the prosecution of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who served as former White House advisor to both Vice President Cheney and President Bush. A letter dated January 9 from Patrick Fitzgerald contained reference to the PDB which had been requested as part of discovery by Libby's defense team. MORE BELOW
In a related development, David Corn reported in The Nation this week that Libby's attorney was pursuing a "greymail" defense strategy, requesting documents the government might be expected to refuse release, in the hopes of raising an appeal point.
http://www.thenation.com/...
That tactic now appears to have backfired, after Fitzgerald obtained redacted versions of the President's daily brief. In an intriguing development, Fitzgerald makes explicit reference in his letter to one or more PDBs, and hinted that there is additional writing "contained within or written on" them. http://www.dailykos.com/...
Fitzgerald also alludes to approaches that were made to a third Time Magazine reporter by ranking White House aides on July 11, 2003 during the President's trip to Africa. http://www.dailykos.com/...
Time Magazine correspondent John Dickerson writes in Slate about being team-tagged by Condi Rice and a second ranking aide on that trip in an apparent coordinated effort to draw TIME journalists attention to Valerie Plame. See, http://www.slate.com/... /
Where's My Subpoena?
Valerie Plame, Scooter Libby, and me.
By John Dickerson
<snip>
In July 2003, I was a White House correspondent for Time magazine, traveling with the president in Africa. Bush was trying to promote his $15 billion AIDS assistance package but he kept getting interrupted. He would visit a clinic and give a speech, but all reporters wanted to ask about was faulty prewar intelligence. Joe Wilson had published his infamous op-ed in the New York Times just before the trip. That, along with other disclosures, led White House spokesman Ari Fleischer to make a rare public admission: The 16 words mentioning Saddam's efforts to buy uranium from Africa were "incorrect" and should not have been in the 2003 State of the Union address.
...
The senior administration official spoke to me on background about Wilson and the president's amazing decision to blame the CIA. Other reporters wandered in and out of the conversation, but there were stretches where it was just the two of us (my tedious newsmagazine questions always had a tendency to drive other deadline-oriented reporters away). The official walked me through all the many problems with Wilson's report: His work was sloppy, contradictory, and hadn't been sanctioned by Tenet or any senior person. Some low-level person at the CIA was responsible for the mission. I was told I should go ask the CIA who sent Wilson.
...
An hour later, as Bush spoke at an AIDS treatment center, I chatted with a different senior administration official, also on background. We talked about many different aspects of the story--the fight with the CIA, the political implications for the president, and the administration's shoddy damage control. This official also pointed out a few times that Wilson had been sent by a low-level CIA employee and encouraged me to follow that angle. I thought I got the point: He'd been sent by someone around the rank of deputy assistant undersecretary or janitor.
...
It had been a long week. I was co-writing a long story on the trip for the European edition, filing each day to the Web site and also filing for the domestic cover story on the fallout over the 16 words. Oh, and I also had to file a story on violence in Liberia. My inbox was a mess. In the middle of it was an e-mail from Matt Cooper telling me to call him from a land line when I had some privacy. At some time after 1 p.m. his time, I called him. He told me that he had talked to Karl Rove that morning and that Rove had given him the same Wilson takedown I'd been getting in Uganda. But Matt had the one key fact I didn't: Rove had said that Wilson's wife sent him.
FAS FOIA SEEKS BUSH'S PDB
In new development, the Federation of American Scientists has submitted a Freedom of Information Request for declassication and release of PDB and related materials referencing the Wilson and Plame matters. This FOIA is part of ongoing litigation over release of PDBs with which FAS is already involved. In a letter dated today to the CIA, Steven Aftergood, FAS Senior Analyst, writes:
"We request a copy of redacted versions of the President's Daily Brief and PDB-related material that were declassified and provided to the Office of the Special Counsel in connection with the prosecution of Mr. I. Lewis Libby.
*
While the Plame case has been long delayed, and the start of Libby's trial has been put off for another year by U.S. Circuit Court Judge Reggie Walton, it appears that the investigation is very much alive.
Hopefully, actual documents revealing the knowledge of Libby's "superiors" about Plame will be made available to the public before too much longer.
2006, Mark G. Levey