Thursday, July 07, 2005

Plame Hotting Up:
Bolton Involvement?

This from the Huffington Post:
According to the players, the key to whether this story has real legs -- and whether it will spell the end of Rove -- is determining intent. And a key to that is whether there was a meeting at the White House where Rove and Scooter Libby discussed what to do with the information they had gotten from the State Department about Valerie Plame


This is hotting up (as Phil Liggett would say) like a Tour de France sprint finish. Remember John Bolton was Under Secretary, Arms Control and International Security at the State Deptartment from05/11/2001 to 06/01/2005. Maybe there is a larger reason the White House was stonewalling on those NSA intercepts.

This from the Left Coaster on June 6 is very ominous in light of what has happened in the Miller case :
The story has gone under the radar screen since the first report by Jehl, either because of the usual White House clamp down (remember that the sources for the original story were pro-Bolton and anti-Bolton administration insiders), or because the original story was a misdirection attempt to get the media off the trail of something even more onerous. I had thought with every passing day of no news on this story that the misdirection angle was the likely reason. Then last Thursday afternoon, I received a tip that the real story may not be the export ban angle after all, but rather something more damaging to Bolton: he requested the NSA intercepts to spy on his co-workers.


Appears Bolton was interested in one intercept concerning Armitage and Powell but this finally from the Left Coaster link:
....there looms a bigger question surrounding the remaining 9 NSA intercepts that the White House is refusing to release to the Senate: who else was Bolton spying upon?


Perhaps Valerie Plame??????

Yesterday Left Coaster says when looking at Plame look towards Bolton. He puts forward:
  • When I take a look at the strings of yarn on the Plame case and Bolton’s NSA intercepts, I think there is another reason why the White House doesn’t want to turn over the intercepts, which speaks to why Bolton hasn’t been recess-appointed by now, in light of the revelation just late last week that the Plame case was breaking into full view.
  • It should be noted that as of late, Miller has turned her guns to where else, the UN,---snip---In fact, Miller requested the UN assignment and has been doing the bidding of the Bolton and Cheney wing by producing a string of anti-UN pieces since that assignment.
  • And one last thing: how tight are Bolton and Novak? Well, Novak is a Bolton cheerleader, and is arguing that the White House bypass the Senate and do the recess appointment.
So what if Bolton were a source to Miller and she told Rove about Plame? According to WaPo "sources close to the investigation say there is evidence in some instances that some reporters may have told government officials -- not the other way around." Then Rove took the ball from there. Sounds fanciful but with this administration perhaps not. And this would be huge as this moves beyond perjury or outing a CIA operative to Conspiracy with the WH stonewalling on the intercepts to cover Bolton as the leaker. It's always the cover-up as they say......
With this perhaps unfolding I'd be crashing a bike too!

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