Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post reports Patrick Fitzgerald and the Justice Department has created a website relating to the Plame Grand jury.

Here it is.

Former White House aides are now charging Libby orchestrated a campaign to discredit Joseph Wilson that continued into 2004. The LA Times reports it has received documents establishing this from the former aides.

Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff was so angry about the public statements of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a Bush administration critic married to an undercover CIA officer, that he monitored all of Wilson's television appearances and urged the White House to mount an aggressive public campaign against him, former aides say.

Those efforts by the chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, began shortly after Wilson went public with his criticisms in 2003. But they continued into last year — well after the Justice Department began an investigation in September 2003, into whether administration officials had illegally disclosed the CIA operative's identity, say former White House aides.

Who's sticking up for Libby? Cheney Chief Cheerleader Mary Matalin. [hat tip Patriot Daily.]

Bump and Update: Bad news. Kidnapped lawyer Saadoun Sughaiyer al-Janabi has been killed.

*****
Original Post (10/20)

The AP is reporting:

Ten masked gunmen kidnapped the lawyer for one of Saddam Hussein's co-defendants Thursday, police said. Saadoun Sughaiyer al-Janabi, who was in the courtroom for Wednesday's opening session of the trial, is one of two lawyers for Awad Hamed al-Bandar, one of seven Baath Party officials being tried with Saddam.

by TChris

The police want to search a house but they don't have a warrant. They ask the occupants for consent to search. One says yes but the other says no. Can the police search?

In Connecticut, the state supreme court said "no" in a decision released yesterday.

The court ruled 3-2 that opposition to a search by one resident invalidates permission granted by another, which is contrary to most case law on the issue nationwide. Defense lawyers predict the ruling will be troublesome for police, and could apply not only to attempted searches of homes but also to searches of businesses and cars with several occupants.

by TChris

As TalkLeft discussed here, Sen. John McCain sponsored a bill to make clear that American soldiers are prohibited from torturing prisoners. McCain makes the point that soldiers deserve clear guidance as to what they can and cannot do when interacting with prisoners. Despite overwhelming support for that proposition in the Senate, the Bush administration opposes any effort to limit its options. The administration's effort to weaken or jettison the provision has been hampered, however, by new accusations that American soldiers mistreated the corpses of Taliban members in Afghanistan.

McCain said the fresh abuse allegations serve as "another argument to make sure that our men and women in the military know exactly what the parameters are [and] what they can and cannot do in regards to prisoners."

by TChris

Unsurprisingly, Tom DeLay would prefer to have his case heard by a judge who votes for Republicans rather than Democrats. The judge assigned to DeLay's case donated money to MoveOn prior to the last election, a fact that DeLay seized upon to ask the judge to remove himself from the case.

DeLay's lawyer argued that MoveOn has been "selling T-shirts with Mr. DeLay's mug shot on it," an assertion that MoveOn denies. Will that tenuous connection between the judge and anti-DeLay sentiment be enough to convince the judge to take himself off the case? It doesn't sound like it.

Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin explains Bush's pardon power in the context of Plamegate.

• A president's pardon power is unreviewable
• He can pardon people before they are charged with a crime or anytime after they are charged or convicted

Why Bush might pardon his cronies in Plamegate:

• To avoid being called as a witness in a criminal prosecution

Why Bush might not pardon his cronies, at least right now

• The political fallout. He is only in the first year of his second term.

The New York Times reports tonight:

• Fitzgerald has advised both Libby and Rove they are in serious legal jeopardy. He will decide whether to charge next week.

• Fitzgerald is considering charges of Perjury, Obstruction of Justice and Making a False Statement to Federal Officials. He seems less focused on charges over the leak. It's the cover-up, not the crime.

• Fitzgerald knows who Novak's source is, and it's not someone who works at the White House.

• Additional persons could be charged.

There may be others in the government who could be charged for violations of the disclosure law or of other statutes, like the espionage act, which makes it a crime to transmit classified information to people not authorized to receive it.

Reading between the lines from a legal standpoint, here's how I interpret this, and remember, it's just speculation: Fitzgerald is done. All that's left are the pre-indictment plea deals. He's previously made deals with John Hannah and David Wurmser. Now he's offered them to Rove and Libby. As I've said before, it's their "come to Jesus moment." I suspect both will accept the best deals their lawyers can negotiate. Rove will fall on his sword to protect Bush, and Libby will fall on his to protect Cheney.

Eriposte at Left Coaster has written a few pieces on Judith Miller's statements that she can't remember who told her about "Valerie Flame" or how that name got into her notes. Asptrader at Daily Kos has more on this, particularly Robert Novak's reference to "Valerie Flame" in this October 6, 2003 Human Events column. Novak's TownHall column on October 1 had the name spelled correctly as Valerie Plame. Or did it back then?

Murray Waas breaks more news about Judith Miller, which is confirmed by her lawyer Robert Bennett.

Miller was asked about the June Meeting with Libby during her first grand jury appearance, and didn't recall it until Fitzgerald showed her secret service logs showing she had been at the White House Annex that day.

When a prosecutor first questioned Miller during her initial grand jury appearance on September 30, 2005 sources said, she did not bring up the June 23 meeting in recounting her various contacts with Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. Pressed by prosecutors who then brought up the specific date of the meeting, Miller testified that she still could not recall the June meeting with Libby, in which they discussed a controversial CIA-sponsored mission to Africa by former Ambassador Joe Wilson, or the fact that his wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.

When a prosecutor presented Miller with copies of the White House-complex visitation logs, she said such a meeting was possible.

Lawrence O'Donnell, who broke the news that Karl Rove was Time Reporter Matt Cooper's second source, was interviewed yesterday by John Amato of Crooks and Liars. You can listen here.

He was very revealing to C&L about the reasons why he leaked Karl Rove's name when he did and the thoughts that went through his mind before he uttered the name Rove to the world at large. Lawrence also felt that because he leaked Karl's name when he did, it forced his lawyer to take much quicker action than he would have. O'Donnell also stated that there were other people who knew about the Rove-Cooper connection.

Arianna has an indispensable timeline for those tracking discrepancies between Libby and Tim Russert. Tom Maguire at Just One Minute has more today. Jane at Firedoglake has the background.

As background, the New York Times reported on July 16, 2005: