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Fitz Includes Cheney's Handwritten Notes on Wilson's Op-Ed in Court Filing


Is Dick Cheney the next "Official A"?

Late Friday, Patrick Fitzgerald filed a new pleading in the Scooter Libby case. Empty Wheel at Next Hurrah posts the pleading and analyzes the contents, including this exhibit, a copy of Joseph Wilson's July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed with Cheney's handwritten notations.

In the notations, Cheney writes,

Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an Amb to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?

Newsweek's Michael Isikoff's take is here.

It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for Cheney's own notes to be made public. The notes--apparently obtained as a result of a grand jury subpoena--would appear to make Cheney an even more central witness than had been previously thought in the criminal probe.

....Fitzgerald first alleged that Cheney had questioned whether Wilson's trip was a "junket" in a court filing last month. In that filing, Fitzgerald also asserted that the vice president, acting with the approval of President Bush, had authorized Libby to disclose portions of the classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq to rebut some of Wilson's claims.

....Fitzgerald in his court filing indicated he plans to introduce a copy of Cheney's annotated version of the Wilson column to show the vice president's interest in the circumstances surrounding Wilson's trip was an important matter to Libby that week and explains many of his actions.

Here's another nuggat from the Friday filing: Fitz is going to introduce the Novak column outing Valerie Plame. Isikoff writes:

Fitzgerald said he will do so in order to introduce evidence about a series of conversations that he argued could undercut one of Libby's principal defenses: that he had no reason to believe Plame's employment was a sensitive matter and therefore had no reason to lie to the grand jury about when and with whom he spoke about it.

According to Fitzgerald's filing, on the day that the Novak column was published, a CIA of