Fitzgerald Focuses on Missing White House Emails

13 February 2006

Fitzgerald Focuses on Missing White HouseEmails By Jason Leopold t r u t h o u t | Report From:http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020306J.shtml Friday 03 February 2006

More thantwo dozen emails sent to various senior Bush administrationofficials between May 2003 and early July 2003 related tocovert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband,former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, are missing, and thespecial prosecutor investigating the case suspects that thecommunications may have been destroyed, according to highlevel sources close to the two-year old probe.

Thesources, who are knowledgeable about Special ProsecutorPatrick Fitzgerald's investigation and have read hundreds ofpages of grand jury testimony, said the emails in questionwere sent between May and July 2003 by I. Lewis "Scooter"Libby, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove,then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, formerCIA official Frederick Fleitz, former Cheney aide JohnHannah, former Cheney National Security assistant DavidWurmser, former Under Secretary of State for Arms Controland International Security Affairs John Bolton, and WhiteHouse Chief of Staff Andrew Card.

Fitzgerald alsosuspects that some emails sent to Vice President Cheney byLibby and senior officials at the CIA as well as Libby andCheney's email replies during this time were not turned overto Fitzgerald's staff.

The sources added thatFitzgerald had learned about the existence of the missingemails during grand jury testimony given by key players inthe case, some of whom are now cooperating with the probe inorder to avert an indictment for their own roles in theleak.

The emails contained references to Valerie PlameWilson's identity and CIA status, but did not say that shewas an undercover operative of the CIA. Moreover, accordingto sources, the emails contained suggestions by theofficials on how the White House should respond to what itbelieved were increasingly destructive comments Wilson hadbeen making about the administration's pre-war Iraqintelligence.

The witnesses, who are current andformer White House officials who are cooperating in thecase, told the grand jury that they communicated verballyand through email with Libby and Rove and other seniorofficials about Wilson's comments to reporters about theadministration's intelligence and how the White House shouldrespond to the media regarding that.

Fitzgerald'sstaff, however, could not locate the email communication theofficials disclosed during their grand jury testimony in thethousands of documents his staff had obtained during thecourse of his investigation.

Fitzgerald's suspicionsabout the possibility of evidence destruction arose just afew weeks after he took over the probe into the leak ofPlame Wilson's undercover CIA status in early 2004. By then,sources close to the case said, he already believed thatRove and Vice President Dick Cheney's then-chief of staff I.Lewis "Scooter" Libby - who was indicted on five counts ofperjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigatorsrelated to his role in the leak - were hindering hisinvestigation.

Acting on a tip received during theearly stages of the investigation that Rove may havewithheld or destroyed an email that would have implicatedhim in the Plame Wilson leak, these sources said, Fitzgeraldsent a letter in January 2004 to his boss, then-actingAttorney General James Comey, seeking confirmation that hehad the authority to investigate and prosecute individualsfor additional crimes, including obstruction of justice,perjury and destroying evidence. The leak investigation hadbeen centered up to that point on an obscure law making it afelony for any government official to knowingly disclose theidentity of an undercover CIA officer.

Comey respondedto Fitzgerald in writing on February 6, 2004,confirming that Fitzgerald had the authority to prosecute"perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence,and intimidation of witnesses."

Fitzgerald'ssuspicions may have been right: on Wednesday, he wrote aletter to Libby's attorneys in response to a defense requestfor prosecution documents related to the probe. The letterconfirmed a new development in the case first published by this reporter inmid-December: that some electronic communication related tovarious officials' roles in the leak had not been turnedover to his investigative staff as ordered by a federalsubpoena more than two years ago.

The same dayFitzgerald received the response letter from Comey, theWhite House faced a deadline for turning over administrationcontacts with 25 journalists to the grand jury investigatingthe leak.

Three months earlier, in late 2003,then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales enjoined all WhiteHouse staff to turn over any communication about ValeriePlame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson. Gonzales'sdirective came 12 hours after senior White House officialshad been told of the pending investigation.

In therecent letter sent to Libby's attorneys dated January 23,Fitzgerald says that during the course of his investigation,he had been told that some emails from the offices ofPresident Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had not beensaved. His letter does not claim that any member of the Bushadministration discarded the emails, but sources close tothe probe say that is what Fitzgerald has been allegingprivately.

"In an abundance of caution," Fitzgerald'sJanuary 23 letter to Libby's defense team states, "we adviseyou that we have learned that not all email of the Office ofthe Vice President and the Executive Office of the Presidentfor certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through thenormal archiving process on the White House computersystem."

According to sources, Libby, Rove and Cardstarted sending emails to each other and otheradministration officials in mid- to late May about theexplosive allegations made against the Bush administration'spre-war Iraq intelligence by former Ambassador JosephWilson, who accused the White House of "twisting" theintelligence so it could get the public and Congress tosupport a pre-emptive strike against Iraq.

Oneparticular email that didn't turn up early on in theinvestigation is an email Rove sent to then-Deputy NationalSecurity Adviser Stephen Hadley in early July 2003, whichlater proved Rove had spoken to Time magazine reporterMatthew Cooper about Plame - a fact that Rove omitted whenhe was first interviewed by the FBI and during his firstgrand jury testimony in February 2004.

Hadley was alsorequired to comply with the subpoena and the Gonzales order.But it's unknown whether he turned over the email toFitzgerald or to Justice Department and FBI investigatorssome three months earlier. If he did, Fitzgerald knew of itsexistence all along - even while Rove, for nearly a year,was not being forthcoming with Fitzgerald or the grandjury.

If, in addition to Rove, Hadley also failed tolocate and turn over the email, it raises more questionsabout his own role in the matter.

Hadley wasinterviewed by investigators to determine if he was involvedin the leak, but has so far not entertained questions abouthis role, if any.

Rove still remains under intensescrutiny for his role in the leak while Fitzgerald respondsto the numerous questions asked about the case by the newgrand jury he empanelled in November. Fitzgerald has alsobeen dealing with high-profile criminal cases in Chicagowhile the grand jury in the Plame Wilson case familiarizesitself with the probe.

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Jason Leopold spent two years coveringCalifornia's electricity crisis as Los Angeles bureau chiefof Dow Jones Newswires. Jason has spent the last yearcultivating sources close to the CIA leak invesigation, andwill be a regular contributer to t r u t h o u t.

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