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Oct. 28, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
48:44
October 28, 2005, Friday, Hour #3
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Hi, welcome back.
Great to have you folks.
It's the Rush Limbaugh program, award-winning and thrilled packed.
I am America's anchorman, America's truth detector and doctor of democracy, combined into one harmless, lovable little fuzzball.
Live from the Southern Command in Sunny, South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
All right, folks, look, when I when I when I say to you that there's nothing in the 22-page document that mentions anything about the outing of claim, but I mean there's there's no reference to that as being a crime.
Of course, she her uh the mention of her name is being referenced here in the one one uh one paragraph describes Libby uh informing Judith Miller that Wilson's wife might work at a bureau of the CIA.
But that's the Libby is not being charged with having violated the law in so doing, is what I mean.
There's not one word in this indictment in this document.
It talks about the outing of playing as a crime.
And remember, that's what the whole media focus on this has been from the get-go.
I'll tell you something else when the trial comes down to Pike.
If there is one, Judy Miller is gonna be a witness.
And when Judy Miller gets called, whoever Libby's attorney is gonna say, are you your name Miss Runamuk at the New York Times, right?
And he's gonna cite these le latest uh batches of stories talking about how she can't be trusted, she's a liar, she's this or that and the other thing.
Uh and other members of the press are going to be brought in as witnesses as well, if this goes to trial, uh, which is going to make them most uncomfortable.
Now, a note to our affiliates.
Uh note to the board ops of our affiliates.
I'm going to go to commercial break here way early in this segment.
We're going to go about uh three and a half or four minutes from now.
Uh, because the press conference with Patrick Fitzgerald is scheduled to start in six minutes.
I'm hoping it'll be a little bit late.
I'm assuming that it will be as originally scheduled for two o'clock.
Now has been moved back to 215, so we're going to take our uh our 17 commercial break at 12.
They're going to move it up about uh five minutes.
A little uh inside baseball there.
Let's go back to the oil for food scandal report.
Western industrial titans Siemens A. G. And Dimer Chrysler were among thousands of companies that helped Iraq's Saddam Hussein exploit a UN humanitarian program to collect nearly two billion dollars in illegal surcharges and kickbacks, according to the Volcker report.
That final report, uh, headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker, detailed the case and the ease uh with which Hussein managed to bend the U.N.'s oil for food program to his own purposes, with the help of Western companies willing to pay illegal kickbacks, UN officials willing to look the other way, and an array of politicians in such countries as Russia and France, who were willing to support the Hussein regime in exchange for lucrative oil allocations.
Now, is it any wonder why the French and the Russians opposed us going into Iraq at the Security Council?
It's not.
They had kickback deals going on with Saddam Hussein.
It was known long before this report came out.
I just find it interesting that France and Russia, uh, along with Germany, are the countries that the Democrats want us to really work closely with here.
They are our true allies.
We must bring them in, said John Kerry on every decision that we make.
We're gonna be a global test.
The biggest recipients of Iraqi oil were Russia and France, the countries that Saddam Hussein saw as most sympathetic to his long-standing campaign to end the UN sanctions against his country.
Uh the report linked politicians in both countries, including former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, to oil allocations for Mr. Hussein.
Says Mr. Pasqua was offered an allocation of 11 million barrels, though Mr. Pasqua denies any knowledge of the uh charge.
Also, Mark Rich, the fugitive commodities tycoon named in the Volcker report as having made millions on a corrupt oil for food kickback deal with Saddam Hussein.
Uh and we know that Mrs. Rich contributed 450,000 to the Clinton Presidential Library and a double-wide massage parlor.
Uh and that is suspiciously timed with Mark Rich's pardon by uh by by Bill Clinton.
And we also know that uh well it is said in the report that the British Labor Party member George Galloway, a hero to the American left, was also enriched mightily, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars in the kickback scheme.
He has testified before a Senate committee on this, chaired by Norm Coleman of Minnesota.
Uh and uh Coleman says he's committed perjury.
Coleman says he lied about it, according to the report, and they will want to talk to him further uh about this.
In the meantime, the media covering the indictment today of Scooter Libby portraying it as the forerunner of an investigation into lying us into war by the White House.
They continue to make this case.
I when you look I know, I know Snerdley's reading the indictment, and when you look when you read the indictment, it's he said she said it's uh uh don't want to call it hearsay because it's a legal term, but it is.
He said she said, he said, she said it's it's it's basically nothing about the central allegation that Valerie Plain was outed uh as a CIA operative, a covert operative.
That aspect of this, they've got no evidence of any crime having been committed.
We'll take our break now when we come back.
We'll be pretty close to the um the start of Patrick Fitzgerald's press conference announcing his findings and what looms in the future.
Back right after this.
You are listening to Rush Limbaugh on the excellence in podcasting network.
But it was not widely known outside the Intelligence Committee.
Raller Wilson's friends, neighbors, college classmates, had no idea she had another life.
The fact that she was a CIA officer was not well known for her protection or for the benefit of all of us.
It's important that the CIA officer's identity be protected, that it be protected not just for the officer, but for the nation's security.
Valerie Wilson's cover was blown in July 2003.
The first sign of the cover being blown was when Mr. Novak published a column on July 14, 2003.
But Mr. Novak was not the first reporter to be told that Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson, Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie, worked at the CIA.
Several other reporters were told.
In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told the reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson.
Now something needs to be born in mind about a criminal investigation.
I recognize that there's been very little information about this criminal investigation, but for a very good reason.
It may be frustrating, but when investigations are conducted in secret, when investigations use grand juries, it's important that the information be closely held.
So let me tell you a little bit about how an investigation works.
Investigators do not set out to investigate a statute.
is set out to gather the facts.
It's critical that when an investigation is conducted by prosecutors, agents, and a grand jury, they learn who, what, when, where, and why.
Then they decide based upon accurate facts whether a crime has been committed, who was committed the crime, whether you can prove the crime, and whether the crime should be charged.
Agent Eckenrode doesn't send people out when a million dollars misses for is missing from a bank and tells them just come back if you find wire fraud.
The agent finds embezzlement, they follow through on that.
That's the way this investigation was conducted.
It was known that a CIA officer's identity was blown.
It was known that there was a leak.
We needed to figure out how that happened, who did it, why, whether a crime was committed, whether we could prove it, whether we should prove it.
And given that national security was at stake, it was especially important that we find out accurate facts.
There's another thing about a grand jury investigation.
One of the obligations of the prosecutors and the grand jurors is to keep the information obtained in the investigation secret, not to share it with the public.
And as frustrating as that may be for the public, that is important, is the way our system of justice works.
If information is gathered about people and they are not charged with a crime, we don't hold up that information for the public to look at.
We either charge them with a crime or we don't.
And that's why we've safeguarded information here to date.
What is important as it is for the grand jury to follow the rules and follow the safeguards to make sure Information doesn't get out.
It's equally important that the witnesses who come before a grand jury, especially the witnesses who come before a grand jury who may be under investigation, tell the complete truth.
It's especially important in the national security area.
The laws involving disclosure of classified information in some places are very clear, and in some places they're not so clear.
And grand jurors and prosecutors making decisions about who should be charged, whether anyone should be charged, what should be charged, even make fine distinctions about what people knew, why they knew it, what they exactly said, why they said it, what they were trying to do, what appreciation they had for the information, and whether it was classified at the time.
Those fine distinctions are important in determining what to do.
That's why it's essential when a witness comes forward and gives their account of how they came across classified information and what they did with it, that it'd be accurate.
Now that brings us to the fall of 2003, when it was clear that Valerie Wilson's cover had been blown, an investigation began.
In October 2003, the FBI interviewed Mr. Libby.
Mr. Libby is the Vice President's chief of staff.
He's also an assistant to the President and assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs.
The focus of the interview was what was it that he had known about Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson, what he knew about Ms. Wilson, what he said to people, why he said it, and how he learned it.
And to be frank, Mr. Liby gave the FBI a compelling story.
What he told the FBI is that essentially he was at the end of a long chain of phone calls.
He spoke to a reporter, Tim Russert, and during the conversation, Mr. Russer told him that, hey, do you know that all the reporters know that Mr. Wilson's wife works at the CIA?
And he told the FBI that he learned that information as if it were new, and it struck him.
So he took this information from Mr. Russert, and later on he passed it on to other reporters, including reporter Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine, reporter Judith Miller of the New York Times.
And he told the FBI that when he passed the information on on July 12 of 2003, two days before Mr. Novak's column, that he passed it on, understanding that this was information he had gotten from a reporter, that he didn't even know if it was true.
And he told the FBI that when he passed the information on to the reporters, he made clear that he did not know if this were true.
This was something that all the reporters were saying, and in fact, he just didn't know.
And he wanted to be clear of that.
Later, Mr. Libby went before the grand jury on two occasions in March of 2004, he took an oath and he testified.
And he essentially said the same thing.
He said that, in fact, he had learned from the Vice President earlier in June 2003 information about Wilson's wife, but he had forgotten it.
He learned it as if it were new.
And when he passed the information on to reporters, Cooper and Miller late in the week, he passed it on thinking it was just information he received from reporters, and that he told the reporters that in fact he didn't even know if it were true.
He was just passing gossip from one reporter to another at the long end of a chain of phone calls.
It would be a compelling story that would lead the FBI to go away if only it were true.
It is not true, according to the indictment.
In fact, Mr. Libby discussed the information about Valerie Wilson at least half a dozen times before this conversation with Mr. Russert ever took place, not to mention that when he spoke to Mr. Russett, Mr. Russett and he never discussed Valerie Wilson or Wilson's wife.
He didn't learn it from Mr. Russert, and if he had, it would not have been new at the time.
Let me talk you through what the indictment alleges.
The indictment alleges that Mr. Libby learned the information about Valerie Wilson at least three times in June of 2003 from government officials.
And let me make clear there was nothing wrong with government officials discussing Valerie Wilson or Mr. Wilson or his wife in imparting the information to Mr. Libby.
But in early June, Mr. Libby learned about Valerie Wilson and the role she was believed to play in having sent Mr. Wilson on a trip overseas, from a senior CIA officer on or around June 11th, from an under-secretary of state on or around June 11th, and from the Vice President on or about June 12th.
It's also clear, as set forth in the indictment, that sometime prior to July 8th, he also learned it from somebody else working in the Vice President's office.
So at least Four people within the government told Mr. Libby about Valerie Wilson, often referred to as Wilson's wife, working at the CIA and believed to be responsible for helping organize a trip that Mr. Wilson took overseas.
In addition to hearing it from government officials, it's also alleged in the indictment that at least three times Mr. Libby discussed this information with other government officials.
It's alleged in the indictment that on June 14th of 2003, a full month before Mr. Novank's column, Mr. Libby discussed it in a conversation with the CIA briefer in which he was complaining to the CIA briefer, his belief that the CIA was leaking information about something or making critical comments, and he brought up Joe Wilson and Valerie Wilson.
It's also alleged in the indictment that Mr. Libby discussed it with the White House Press Secretary on July 7, 2003 over lunch.
What's important about that is that Mr. Libby, the indictment alleges, was telling Mr. Fleischer something on Monday that he claims to have learned on Thursday.
In addition to discussing it with Mr. the press secretary on July 7th, there was also a discussion on or about July 8th, in which counsel for the Vice President was asked a question by Mr. Libby as to what paperwork the Central Intelligence Agency would have if an employee had a spouse go on a trip.
So there are at least seven discussions involving government officials prior to the day when Mr. Libby claims he learned this information as if it were new from Mr. Russert, and in fact, when he spoke to Mr. Russert, they never discussed it.
But in addition to focusing on how it is that Mr. Libby learned this information and what he thought about it, it's important to focus on what it is that Mr. Libby said to the reporters.
And the account he gave to the FBI and to the grand jury was that he told reporters Cooper and Miller at the end of the week on July 12th, and that what he told them was he gave them information that he got from other reporters, that other reporters were saying this, that Mr. Libby did not know if it were true, and in fact, Mr. Libby testified that he told the reporters he did not even know if Mr. Wilson had a wife.
And in fact, we now know that Mr. Libby discussed this information about Valerie Wilson at least four times prior to July 14, 2003, on three occasions with Judith Miller of the New York Times, and on one occasion with Matthew Cooper of Time magazine.
The first occasion on which Mr. Libby discussed it with Judas Miller was back in June 23rd, 2003, just days after an article appeared online in The New Republic, which quoted some critical commentary from Mr. Wilson.
After that discussion with Judith Miller on June 23, 2003, Mr. Libby also discussed Valerie Wilson on July 8th, 2003.
And during that discussion, Mr. Libby talked about Mr. Wilson in a conversation that was on background as a senior administration official, and when Mr. Libby talked about Wilson, he changed the attribution to a former Hill staffer.
During that discussion, which was to be attributed to a former Hill staffer, Mr. Libby also discussed Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson, working at the CIA.
And then finally again on July 12th.
In short, and in those conversations, Mr. Libby never said this is something that other reporters are saying.
Mr. Libby never said that this is something that I don't know if it's true.
Mr. Libby, Lister Libby never said, I don't even know if she had a wife.
At the end of the day, what appears is that Mr. Libby's story that he was at the tail end of a chain of phone calls, passing on from one reporter what he heard from another was not true.
It was false.
He was at the beginning of the chain of the phone calls, the first official to disclose this information outside the government to a reporter, and that he lied about it afterwards, under oath and repeatedly.
Now, as I said before, this grand jury investigation has been conducted in secret.
I believe it should have been conducted in secret, not only because it's required by those rules, but because the rules are wise.
Those rules protect all of us.
We are now going from a grand jury investigation to an indictment, a public charge, and a public trial.
The rules will be different.
But I think what we see here today, when a Vice President's chief of staff is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, it does show the world that this is a country that takes its law seriously, that all citizens are bound by the law.
But what we need to also show the world is that we can also Apply the same safeguards to all our citizens, including high officials.
Much as they must be bound by the law, we must follow the same rules.
So I ask everyone involved in this process, anyone who participates in this trial, anyone who covers this trial, anyone sitting home watching these proceedings, to follow this process with an American appreciation for our values and our dignity.
Let's let the process take place.
Let's take a deep breath and let justice process the system.
I would be remiss at this point if I didn't thank the team of investigators and prosecutors who worked on it, led by Agent Eckenrod, but particularly the staff under John Diam from the Counterespionage Section and the Department of Justice, Mr. Zeidenberg from public integrity, and as well as the agents in the Washington Field Office and my close friends of the Chicago U.S. Attorney's Office, all of whom contributed to a joint effort.
And with that, I'll take questions.
Yes, sir.
Mr. McCarroll, this began as a leak investigation, but no one is charged with any leaking.
Is your investigation finished?
Is this another leak investigation that doesn't lead to a charge of leaking?
Let me answer two the two questions you asked in one.
Okay, is the investigation finished?
It's not over, but I'll tell you this.
Very rarely do you bring a charge in a case that's going to be tried, and would you ever end a grand jury investigation?
I can tell you the substantial bulk of the work in this investigation is concluded.
This grand jury's term has expired by statute.
It could not be extended.
But it's an ordinary course to keep a grand jury open to consider other matters, and that's what we will be doing.
Let me then ask your next question.
Well, why is this leak investigation that doesn't result in a charge?
I've been trying to think about how to explain this, so let me try.
I know baseball analogies are the fad these days.
Let me try something.
If you saw a baseball game and you saw a pitcher wind up and throw a fastball and hit a batter right smack in the head and really really hurt them, uh, you'd want to know why the pitcher did that.
And you'd wonder whether or not the person just reared back and decided, I've got bad blood with this batter, he hit two home runs off me.
I'm just going to hit him in the head as hard as I can.
You also might wonder whether or not the pitcher just let go of the ball or his foot slipped, and he had no idea to go any throw the ball anywhere near the batter's head.
And there's a lot of shades of gray in between.
You might learn that you wanted to hit the batter in the back, it hit him in the head because he moved.
You might want to throw it under his chin, but end up hitting him in the head.
And what you'd want to do is have as much information as you could.
You want to know what happened in the dugout.
Was this guy complaining about the person he threw at?
Did he talk to anyone else?
What was he thinking?
How does he react?
All those things you'd want to know.
And then you'd make a decision as to whether this person should be banned from baseball, whether he should be suspended, whether you should do nothing at all and just say, hey, the person threw a bad pitch, get over it.
In this case, it's a lot more serious than baseball.
And the damage wasn't to one person, it wasn't to Valerie Wilson, it was done to all of us.
As you sit back, you want to learn why was this information going out?
Why were people taking this information about Valerie Wilson and giving it to reporters?
Why did Mr. Libby say what he did?
Why did he tell Judith Miller three times?
Why did he tell the press secretary on Monday?
Why did he tell Mr. Cooper?
And was this something where he intended to cause whatever damage was caused?
Or did he intend to do something else and where are the shades of gray?
And what we have when someone charges obstruction of justice is the umpire gets sand thrown in his eyes.
He's trying to figure out what happened, and somebody blocked their view.
As you sit here now, if you're asking me what his motives were, I can't tell you.
We haven't charged it.
So what you were saying is the harm in an obstruction investigation is it prevents us from making the very fine judgments we want to make.
But I also want to take away from the notion that somehow we should take an obstruction charge less seriously than a leak charge.
This is a very serious matter, and compromising national security information is a very serious matter.
But the need to get to the bottom of what happened and whether national security was compromised by inadvertence, by recklessness, by maliciousness, is extremely important.
And we need to know the truth.
And anyone who would go into a grand jury and lie, obstruct, and impede the investigation, has committed a serious crime.
I will say this Mr. Libby is presumed innocent.
He would not be con he would not be guilty unless and until a jury of twelve people came back and returned a verdict saying so.
But if what we allege in the indictment is true, then what is charged is a very, very serious crime that will vindicate the public interest in finding out what happened here.
Yes, sir.
Mr. Fitzgerald, do you have any evidence that the Vice President of the United States, one of Mr. Libby's original sources for this information, uh, encouraged him to leak it or encouraged him to lie about leaking?
I'm not making allegations about anyone, nor charged in the indictment.
Now let me back up, because I know what that sounds like to people if they're sitting at home.
We don't talk about people that are not charged with a crime in the indictment.
I would say that about anyone in this room who has nothing to do with the offenses.
We make no allegation uh that the vice president committed any criminal act.
We make no allegation that any of the other people who provided or discussed with Mr. Libby committed any criminal act.
But as to any person you ask me a question about, other than Mr. Libby, I'm not going to comment on anything.
That's not that please don't take that as any indication that someone has done something wrong.
That's a standard practice.
If you followed me in Chicago, I say that a thousand times a year.
Uh, and we just don't comment on on people because we could start telling you, well, this person did nothing wrong, this person did nothing wrong, and then if we stop commenting, then you'll start jumping to conclusions.
So please take no more.
Mr. Izakov.
All right.
For all the sand thrown in your eyes, it sounds like you do know the identity of the weaker.
There's a reference to a senior official at the White House, uh, official A, uh, who had a discussion with Robert Novak about Joe Wilson's wife.
Can you explain why that official was not charged in the uh in this right?
And I'll explain this.
I know that people want to know whatever it is that we know, and they're probably sitting at home at TV thinking, I want to jump through the TV, grab them by his collar and tell him to tell us everything they figured out over the last two years.
We just can't do that.
It's not because we enjoy holding back information from you.
That's the law.
And one of the things we do with the grand jury is we gather information, and the the explicit requirement is if we're not going to charge someone with a crime, if we decide that a person did not commit a crime, we cannot prove a crime, doesn't merit prosecution, we do not stand up and say we gathered all this information on the commitment that we're going to follow the rules of grand jury secrecy, which say we don't talk about people not charged with a crime, and then at the end say, well, it's a little inconvenient not to give answers out, so I'll give it out anyway.
I can't give you answers on what we know and don't know other than what's charged in the indictment.
It's not because I enjoy being in that position, it's because the law is that way.
I actually think the law should be that way.
We can't talk about information not contained in the four corners of the indictment.
Sir, is is Carl Rove off the hook?
Uh and are there any other uh individuals who might be charged?
You say you're not quite finished.
And all I can say is the same answer I gave before.
If you ask me any name, I'm not going to comment on anyone named uh because we either charge someone or we don't talk about them and don't read that answer in the context of the name you gave me.
Carol.
What could you say about what you're still working on then?
I can't.
I mean, uh let's be s you know I I don't mean that flippy, but the grand jury doesn't give an announcement about what they're doing, what they're looking at, unless they charge an indictment.
I can tell you that no one wants this thing to be over as quickly as I do, as quickly as Mr. Eckenro does.
I'd like to wake up in my bed in Chicago, he'd like to wake up in his bed in Philadelphia, and we recognize that uh we want to get this thing done.
Uh I will not end the investigation until I can look uh anyone in the eye and tell them that we have carried out our responsibility uh sufficiently to be to be sure that we've uh done what we could to make intelligence decisions about when to end the investigation.
We hope we hope to do that as soon as possible.
I just hope that people will take a deep breath uh and and just allow us to do to continue to do what we have to do.
Yes, sir.
Mr. Pittsburgh, uh you said that there was damage uh done to all of us, uh damage to the entire nation.
Can you be any more specific about what kind of damage you're talking about?
Uh the short answer is no, but I can just say this.
I'm not gonna comment on on things beyond what's said in the indictment.
I can say that for the people who work at the CIA and work at other places, they have to expect that when they do their jobs, that classified information will be protected, and they have to expect that when they do their jobs, that information about whether or not they're affiliated with the CIA will be protected, and they run a risk when they work for the CIA.
charge somebody with violating that then.
They have to make sure that they don't run the risk that something bad is going to happen to them or something done by their own fellow government employees.
But getting the specifics of the damage, I won't But I do owe Carol the next question.
You mentioned the importance to you of grand jury secrecy, and you have been leak-free.
But I want to know what your thoughts are about a series of leaks about your investigation.
How what was your interpretation of what some people have described as um manipulative, selective leaking about your investigation by people close to your witnesses?
And all I can say is I well, I'll just say this.
I'm not gonna comment on on why certain things were leaked or any speculation I might have where it was leaked from.
I think the average person does not understand that the rule of grand jury secrecy binds the prosecutors in the grand jury.
It binds the the um agents who come across the grand jury information, it binds the grand jurors.
Any one of us could go to jail if we leak that information.
It does not bind witnesses.
Witnesses can decide to tell their testimony or not.
So if this were a bank robbery and we put a witness in the grand jury about the bank robbery, I would go to jail, he would go to jail, and the grand jurors would go to jail if they walked out and told you about it.
But the person who went in to the grand jury could walk out and hold a press conference on the front steps.
So they're not breaking the law by discussing their grand jury information.
I would prefer for the integrity of the investigation to not be discussed.
But I just think people may not understand that certain people are not restricted in talking about grand jury information, and certain are.
All I can do is is make sure that myself and everyone on our team uh follows those rules.
Yes, sir.
Mr. Fichelle, you said that uh it was okay for government officials to be discussing among themselves uh Mrs. Wilson's trouble, though, that at least a half dozen people outside the CIA seem to be talking about this in the weeks before her name was disclosed.
I I my job is to investigate whether or not a crime is committed can be proved and should be charged.
I'm not gonna comment on one what to make beyond that.
And there's you know my uh jurisdiction, not my job, not my judgment.
Yes, ma'am.
I know you just talked about the evidence standing your eyes and we have the obstruction charge here.
Can you give any sense of how you think you might how long it might take you now to determine if there was this underlying crime that occurred with the unauthorized unauthorized disclosure?
Uh I can't and I wouldn't.
And if I had predicted, you know, two years ago when it started when we'd be done, I would have been done a year ago.
So I I I'm not I'm gonna all I can tell you is as soon as we can get it done, we will.
Yes, sir.
Okay, you identified Mr. Schmeiser as one of the people that uh Mr. Libby spoke with.
Could you say who the counsel for the VP was and also the undersecretary of state that he spoke with?
Um we we've identi we've referred to people by their titles in the indictment, just because that's a practice, we don't allege they did anything wrong, but uh we said White House press secretary and we talked about counsel for the Vice President, and I generally don't identify people beyond the indictment, and I'll talk to Randy Sanborn who tells me what I'm allowed to do at the break.
If we can provide you those names, we will.
I'm not so sure we can, so we better not do it in front of a microphone.
Let me just go over here.
In the end, was it worth keeping Judy Mill in jail for 85 days in this case?
And can you say how important her testimony was uh in product this?
Let me just say this.
No one wanted to have a dispute uh with the New York Times or anyone else.
We can't talk generally about witnesses.
There's much said on the public record.
I would have wished nothing better that when the subpoenas were issued in August 2004, witnesses testified then, and we would have been here in in October 2004 instead of October 2005.
No one would have went to jail.
I didn't have a vested interest in litigating it.
I was not looking for a First Amendment showdown.
I also had to say my my job was to find out what happened here, make reasoned judgments about what testimony was necessary, and then pursue it.
And we couldn't walk away from that.
I could not have told you a year ago that we think that there may be evidence that a crime is being committed here or obstruction, that there may be a crime behind it.
I'm just gonna walk away from it.
And our job was to find the information responsibly.
We then, when we issued the subpoenas, we thought long and hard before we did that.
And I can tell you there's a lot of reporters whose reporting and contacts have touched upon this case that we never even talked to.
We didn't bluff people, and what we decided to do is to make sure before we subpoenaed any reporter that we really needed that testimony.
In addition to that, we scrubbed it thoroughly within ourselves, but we also, when we went to court, we could have taken the position that it's our decision whether to issue a subpoena, but we made sure that we put a detailed, classified, sealed filing before the district court judge, the chief judge uh Hogan in the District of Columbia.
So we wanted to make sure that if he thought our efforts were off base, if what we were saying, uh representing to him uh was the case was off, that he would have those facts when he made the decision.
Judge Hogan agreed and felt that we met whatever standard there might be uh for issuing a subpoena.
That wouldn't then went up to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals with that same filing, and they found uh the the same results and then went to the Supreme Court.
So I think what we did in Seeking that testimony was borne out by how the judges ruled.
At the end of the day, I don't know how you could ever resolve this case to walk in to you a year ago and say, you know what?
Forget the reporters.
We have someone telling us that they told Mr. Cooper and Ms. Miller that they didn't know if this information were true.
They just heard it from other reporters.
They didn't know if he had a wife and charge a person with perjury, only to find out that's what happened.
That would be reckless.
On the other hand, um, if we walked away and said, Well, there are indications that in fact this is not how the conversation would happen.
There are indications that there might be perjury or obstruction of justice here, but I'm going to fold up my tent and go home.
That would not uh fulfill our mandate.
I tell you, I will say this, I do not think that the reporters should be subpoenaed anything close to routinely.
It should be an extraordinary case.
But if you're dealing with a crime, and what's different here is the transaction is between a person and a reporter.
They're the eyewitness to the crime.
If you walk away from that and don't talk to the eyewitness, you are doing a reckless job of either charging someone with a crime that may not turn out to be been committed.
And that frightens me, because there are things that you can learn from a reporter that would show you the crime wasn't committed.
What if, in fact, you know, the allegations turned out to be true that he said, hey, I sourced it to other reporters, I don't know if it's true.
So I think the only way you can do an investigation like this is to hear from all the witnesses.
I wish Ms. Millard spent not a second in jail.
I wish we didn't have to spend time uh arguing very, very important issues and just got down to the brass tax and made the call of where we were.
But I think it had to be done.
Yes, sir.
Hello.
Um said earlier in your statement here that Mr. Libby was the first person to leak this information outside of the government.
First of all, that implies that there might have been other people inside the government who made some clean.
Secondly, in paragraph 21 that went about official A, uh you imply that Novak might have heard this information about the woman uh Mrs. Wilson from another source, but you don't actually say that.
What can you tell us about the existence that you know of or don't know of or whatever of other leakers?
Are there definitely other leakers?
Is Ms. official area a leaker or just uh uh facilitator?
Uh are you continuing to investigate other other possible leakers?
I'm afraid I'm I'm gonna have to find a polite way of repeating my answer to Mr. Isakov's question, which is to simply say I can't go beyond the four corners of the indictment, and I'll probably just say I repeat it so I don't misstep and give you anything more than I should.
Yes.
Can you say whether or not you know whether Mr. Libby knew that Valerie Wilson's identity was covert and whether or not that was pivotal at all in your inability or your your decision not to charge under the Intelligence Identity Protection Act?
Let me say two things.
Number one, I am not speaking to whether or not Valerie Wilson was covert, and anything I say is not intended to say anything beyond this, that she was a CIA officer uh from January first, 2002 forward.
I will confirm that her association with the CIA was classified uh at that time through July 2003.
And all I'll say is that look, we have not made any allegation that Mr. Libby knowingly intentionally um out of the covert agent.
We have not charged that.
There it is.
So I'm not making that assertion.
There it is.
Yes, sir.
Did you oppose a congressional investigation considering Lika Valerie claims identity?
And if not, would you be willing to cooperate with such an investigation by handing over the work product with your investigation?
Well, I guess that's two questions, and I'm not sure I know I can answer the first can't I can answer the the the second part.
Turning over the work product, there are strict rules about grand jury secrecy if there were an investigation, and frankly, I have to pull the book out and get the the people smarter than me about grand jury rules in Chicago and sit down and tell me how it works.
My gut instinct is that we do not um uh very very rarely is grand jury information shared with uh uh congr uh the with the Congress.
And I also think I have to be careful about what my charter is here.
I don't think it's my my role to opine on whether the Justice Department uh would oppose or not oppose uh some other investigation.
So I I'm certainly not gonna figure that out standing up here with a bunch of cameras pointing at me.
Yes, sir.
Mr. Mitchell, your your critics uh are charging that you are you are a partisan who is uh conducting what in a thing.
You told me.
I don't think a political witch.
I mean, how do you respond to these since you are in Washington?
Okay.
I don't know, you know, sort of when you stop beating your wife.
Uh I've read one one day I I read that I was a Republican hack, another day I read I was a Democratic hack, and the only thing I did between those two nights was sleep.
Um I'm not partisan, I'm not registered as part of a party, and I'll leave it there.
You noted earlier that the grand jury's term expired, but you said something about holding it open, or will you be working with the new grand jury?
The grand jury, by its terms, can serve uh was an 18-month grand jury by its statute, to my understanding, uh can only be extended six months.
That six months expired.
It's it it's routine in in long investigations that you would have available a new grand jury if you needed to go back to them.
Uh that and that's nothing unusual, and I don't want to raise any expectations by that.
That's an ordinary practice.
Yes, sir.
Um I think you've kind of answered this, but uh I assume that you have no plans and don't even think you'd be allowed to issue a final report of any sort.
You're correct.
Uh but let me explain that.
I think people um what people may be confused about is that reports used to be issued by independent counsels, and one of the complaints about the independent counsel statute was that an ordinary citizen, when investigated, they're charged with a crime or they're not.
They're not charged with a crime, people don't talk about it.
Because of the interest in making sure that uh well, there was an interest in independent counseling making sure those investigations were done thoroughly, but then people ended up issuing reports for people not charged, and one of the criticisms leveled was that you should not issue reports about people who are not charged with a crime.
That statute lapsed.
I am not an independent counsel, and I do not have the authority to write a report, and frankly, I don't think I should have that authority.
I think we should conduct this like any other criminal investigation, charge someone or be quiet.
Yes, sir.
Isn't it uh true that uh uh Mr. Comey's letter to you make to you and ask them told us the de facto attorney general and you can abide or not abide by the CFRs or the regulations as to whether or not to write to write a report or not to write a report.
And the follow-up is every special counsel prior to has in fact written a report and turned it over to Congress.
And they've gotten around the grand jury issue as well.
Um let me say this.
I think any prior special counsel may have been special counsel appointed to preserve certain regulations for people outside the Department of Justice, which I do not fit into.
I'm not an independent counsel.
I may be unique in this sense.
Uh I can tell you I'm very comfortable, very clear that I do not have that authority.
And the extent that I was given sort of the acting attorney general hat for this case, it's the acting attorney general, but the attorney general can't violate the law.
And the law and grand jury secrecy is the law.
So I may have a lot of power for this one case as acting attorney general hat, but I followed the code of federal regulations in this case, and I certainly would follow the law.
Yes, ma'am.
Mr. Um the Republicans previously talking points and anticipation in your indictment, and they said that if you didn't indict on the underlying crimes and were indicted on things exactly like you did indict, tell statements, perjury instruction, these were quote unquote technicalities, and that it really was overreaching and excessive.
And since when they when and if they make those claims now that you have indicted, you won't respond.
I want to give you an opportunity now to respond to to that allegation, which they they may make.
It seems like that's a road they're going down.
And I don't know who provided those talking points, I assume.
I'm not asking.
Okay.
In anticipation of your that talking point won't fly.
If you're doing a national security investigation, if you're trying to find out who compromised the identity of a CIA officer, and you go before a grand jury, and if the charges are proven, just remember there's a presumption of innocence.
But if it is proven that the chief of staff, the vice president went before a federal grand jury and lied under oath repeatedly and fabricated a story about how he learned this information, how he passed it on, and is can and we prove obstruction of justice, perjury, uh, and and uh false statements to the FBI, that is a very, very serious matter.
And I'd say this.
I think people might under might not understand this.
We, as prosecutors and FBI agents, have to deal with false statements, obstruction of justice, and perjury all the time.
The Department of Justice Charges those statutes all the time.
When I was in New York working as a prosecutor, we brought those cases because we realized that the truth is the engine of our judicial system.
And if you compromise the truth, the whole process is lost.
In in Philadelphia, where Jack works, they prosecute false statements and obstruction of justice.
When I got to Chicago, I knew the people before me had prosecuted false statements, obstruction, and perjury cases.
And we do it all the time.
And if a truck driver pays a bribe or someone else does something, where they go into a grand jury afterward and lie about it, they get indicted all the time.
Any notion that anyone might have that there is a different standard for a high official that this is somehow singling out obstruction of justice of perjury is upside down.
Bill Clinton.
If we if these facts are true, if we were to walk away from this and not charge obstruction of justice as perjury, we might as well just hand in our jobs.
Because our jobs in the criminal justice system is to make sure people tell us the truth, and when it's a high level official and a very sensitive investigation, it is a very, very serious matter that no one should take lightly.
Bill Clinton?
This doesn't relate to the charges, so I'm hoping maybe you can shed some light on this.
In your investigation, have you determined how it was that uh Ambassador Wilson became the person to be sent to Niger to investigate the situation?
How directly involved was his wife in this election, how much pressure she may have put on officials.
And also I'm wondering uh about the uh cooperation you have received from the uh CIA.
And I think all government agencies that we have turned to for cooperation have cooperated.
I'm not gonna comment on the circumstances of the trip.
I think the only thing that's relevant, frankly, is the belief in the mind of some people that she was involved in the trip or responsible for sending the trip.
The dispute as to whether in fact she was is irrelevant to the charge before us.
What we're talking about is why uh the the investigation was why someone compromised her identity, and the issue in this indictment is whether or not Mr. Libby knowingly and intentionally lied about the facts and whatever happened in in that in that trip and what role, if any of the wife played is really irrelevant and not our focus.
What is set forth is a belief on his part that she played a role in the trip, and that is set forth in the indictment.
Whether that belief is a hundred percent true, a hundred percent false, or a mixture of both is sort of irrelevant, but it does set forth in there that he had that belief that she was involved in the trip.
Are you at all concerned that Mr. Libby or his counsel uh sought to uh discourage the testimony of Judy Willer uh by withholding a so-called personal waiver allowing her to testify not withstanding a pledge of confidentiality or letter to her that she reportedly received when she was doing?
And I'm not gonna comment on uh uh anything that's not in the indictment, but I can tell you that we're not relying upon anything other than the indictment, which the obstruction of justice charges set forth, the statements by Mr. Libby to the FBI and the testimony under oath to the grand jury as being the basis of the obstruction charge and nothing else.
Yes, sir.
Thank you.
Uh the indictment describes Lewis Libby giving classified information concerning the identity of a CIA agent to some individuals who are not uh uh eligible to receive that information.
Uh can you explain why that does not in and of itself constitute a crime?
That's a good question.
And I think knowing that he gave the information to someone who was outside the government not entitled to receive it, and knowing that the information was classified is not enough.
You need to know at the time that he transmitted the information, he appreciated that it was classified information, that he knew it uh or acted in in certain statutes of verse.
And that is sort of what gets back to my point.
And trying to figure that out.
You need to know what the truth is.
So our allegation is in trying to drill down and find out exactly what we got here, if we receive false information, that process is frustrated.
But at the end of the day, I think I want to say one more thing, which is when you do a criminal case, if you find a violation, it doesn't really in the end um matter what statute you use if you vindicate the interest.
If Mr. Libby is proven to have done what we have alleged, convicting him of obstruction of justice, perjury, and false statements, very serious felonies will vindicate the interest of the public in making sure he is held accountable.
It's not as if you know you say, well, this person was convicted, but under the wrong statute.
I think but I will say this The whole point here is that we're going to make fine distinctions and make sure that before we charge someone someone with a knowing intentional crime, we want to focus on why they did it, what they knew and what they appreciated.
We need to know the truth about what they said and what they knew.
Carol.
Does that mean you don't feel that you know the truth about whether he intentionally did this and he knew and appreciated it?
Or does that mean you're exercising your prosecutorial discretion and being conservative?
Well, I I don't want to uh look, a person is charged with a crime, they're presumed innocent, and I haven't charged with any other crime.
And all I'm saying is the harm in the obstruction crime is it shields us from knowing the full truth.
I won't go beyond that.
Will you first will you actually prosecute this case individually yourself?
And second, have you learned anything about the way the inside Washington works that surprises you through this investigation?
The latter, yes.
Um the former, yes and no.
I I will be involved in the in the prosecution, but uh if you meant individually, will I personally participate?
Yes.
If you meant individually, I haven't done this individually.
I have a great team uh from DC, Maine Justice, FBI, and Chicago, and uh it will be a team effort.
Yes, if if during the course of uh the public trial information comes out with regard to other people who have leaked the source of the leak, or other people who have uh who exposed uh uh Ms. Claim's identity, uh, would this then reverberate back to you since you had uh been studying this if new information is forthcoming during the course of the trial?
If I can take it with answer your question with a bucket of cold water and say, let's not read too much into it.
Any new information that would ever come to light while the investigation open is open would be handled by our investigative team concerning these.
That's key, because I think part of what's going on here is fishing for a rat.
But I don't want to create a lot of things.
This whole thing is about trying to get somebody else to come forward.
Really wants Rose.
Yes, sir.
Uh, just to be clear, uh touched on this earlier.
With uh with the grand jury's time being done, you have no plans to append another grand jury related to this case at all, is that correct?
No, I think what I said is we could use any other grand jury uh or uh uh available at another grand jury, we couldn't use the grand jurors whose service expired today any further.
Yes, sir.
Mr. Fitzgerald, can you can you clarify for us this is not just uh the word of three reporters versus the vice president's chief of staff?
Uh and I ask that in the sense of how it may be difficult to proceed at trial with memories about something that happened long ago.
Comment on the trial evidence, and I won't tell you uh the witnesses, but we simply you know, I can't.
Sorry.
Uh, that that take it down here, Joseph that that is a great question because he's basically sounds very mad at to me, he sounds very mad for lying to the media.
That Libby lied to the media.
But what we know here, he's admitted that uh they're making no allegation that Libby knowingly outed a covert agent, yet that's all he's talked about during this press conference.
For the uh for the for the most part, bring it back up.
Let's go to a trial.
Uh let's reserve judgment.
And our burden is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
By indicting, we're committing to doing that, but he is presumed innocent, and let's let the process play out.
Yes.
Can you explain in general terms why a subject or witness would be given multiple opportunities to come back before the grand jury?
Are there times that you give them the opportunity uh to set the record straight?
I don't want to answer that in this context because I think people will read too much into it.
So I'm not gonna give a hypothetical answer to something where I think your questions are based upon beliefs that are not hypothetical.
So I I I don't want to comment on when generally what happens in grand jury investigations when you're here after we've just returned the indictment from a particular grand jury investigation.
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