This story doesn't even come from Scooter Libby it comes from stuff that Fitzgerald has fed to AP about Libby's testimony.

Who says Fitzgerald is neutral and doesn't have an ax to grind?

More info here:

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/013098.php

At least Mr. Libby bothered to get the okay from his superiors... which is certainly more than can be said for certain self-righteous Democratic Senators, or the anti-Bush crowd at State, CIA, NSA, and the FISA court.

With Woodward coming forward, Fitzgerald got burned bad. If he doesn't find something, his career has peeked. If he never had an axe to grind before, he does now. It a question of what is his integrity like. Because if he doesn't have any, I'm sure this is going to get uglier before its over, facts aside.

Anybody catch this from the article:

"Wilson's revelations cast doubt on President Bush's claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that Niger had sold uranium to Iraq to develop a nuclear weapon as one of the administration's key justifications for going to war in Iraq."

Despite the Senate Intelligence Committee Report and the fact that the Brits STILL stand by their assertion that Saddam was trying to buy yellowcake from Niger, the media keeps repeating this meme. To put it bluntly, Wilson lied when he "cast doubt on President Bush's claim". Yet he still gets cover from the media.

Fair. Accurate. Unbiased. Layers of fact-checkers.

BULLSH*T!

docjim noticed the same thing I did. I call it The Lie That Won't Die. Not only did Wilson lie, TOM (The Old Media) lie when they assert that the President claimed, "that Niger had sold uranium to Iraq."

That's not what he said.

There was no basis in fact to the Niger-Yellowcake-Iraq story. It was bullsh*t - badly forged docs - peddled by a former italian intellegence agent to make some extra cash. The CIA knew it was crap from the start (they actually got it pulled from a speech Bush gave in Ohio a few months before the SOTU address) but Hadley picked it up from the Italian ambassador, passed it to the WHIG group, and into the SOTU it went. In the aftermath of the SOTU snafu Tenet and Condi came out and said that it was bull. Get your heads out of your arses people - read up on this and then come back and talk about the conspiricy in TOM or whatever. I would give you a link or two, but at this point I think it might do you some good to try digging all this up yourselves. There's no excuse for this sort of ignorance - it's been out there for months now.

Back on topic though, this story is a big deal, and a 'leak' is just what happend. NIE's are some of the most highly classified docs in government. Ther contain very sensitive info, and no-one, on matter how high up, is allowed to "release" this info to the press or anyone else until the doc has been declassified by an official declassifier type person (I don't really know what the offical titel for this sort of person - can you tell?)so while this has no bearing on why Libby lied to the FBI and the GJ, it does cast THe VP's actions in a rather bad light. Leaking top secret info for political porposes - that's just not cool, man.

It took CNN.com all the way to the 4th paragraph to metion that this ahd nothing to do with the Plame issue. I guess they learned hat most readers stop reading after the 3rd paragraph.

ummmm...Tah-Dah? No one's talking about the forged italian documents, they're talking about stuff like Wilson reporting that the people in Niger told him that they'd been approached by the Iraqis (and rebuffed, which is why the President didn't say 'bought' but 'sought') and other British intelligence that I don't believe has been disclosed (but which resulted in the Brits finding the SOTU statement 'well founded'), and isn't exclusively tied to Niger, which are all parts of why he said "British Intelligence has learned" and "Africa". Nobody's hanging their hat on the craporific italian documents except people that keep kicking it around pretending that's what the president was talking about...oh, yeah, people like you.

No one was talking about Niger or the forged docs Falze?

"Despite the Senate Intelligence Committee Report and the fact that the Brits STILL stand by their assertion that Saddam was trying to buy yellowcake from Niger, the media keeps repeating this meme."

No, you're right, the above has nothing to do with it at all.

As far as I know the British intel is the same forged docs, or transcripts of the same (this is also the source of the mis-leading "two sources" nonsense here in the US). Perhaps you know better, in which case I'd like to hear about it. As far as I know the way it went was this. The president said that the brits had learned that Iraq had recently sought quantities of uranium from Africa. This statement was based entirely on the Italian docs and, as Tenet and Condi were forced to admit later, it was not accurate and should not have been included in the SOTU address. The push back against Wilson and other critics who questioned the quality and veractiy of pre-war intelligence was led by Cheney. In an attempt to discredit Wilson they outed his wife, a NOC CIA agent. They blew the cover of of of our own spies, one working in the WND arena no less, as an act of retaliation, because Wilson dared quetion the veractiy of a statemement, a statement that they knew to be false. In the words of George H W Bush that is the worst kind of treason.

NYT's--- Insert "ORDERED LEAK" in place of OK'd. The article then in the first paragraph says Cheney "authorized" Libby to use portions of NIE.

It's gotten to the point that I suspect total stupidity vs. just bias. I think journos are just dumb.