Inaccurate Information About CIA Operative in Reporter's Notes

[cal04]

Inaccurate Information About CIA Operative in Reporter's Notes Could Lead to Source

Information attributed to Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff in New York Times reporter Judith Miller's interview notes is incorrect, offering prosecutors a potential lead to tracking the bad information to its original source. Miller disclosed this weekend that her notes of a conversation she had with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on July 8, 2003 stated Cheney's top aide told her that the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson worked for the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC) unit.

Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, never worked for WINPAC, an analysis unit in the overt side of the CIA, and instead worked in a position in the CIA's secret side, known as the directorate of operations, according to three people familiar with her work for the spy agency. The three all spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the current secrecy requirements of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury investigation into the leak of Plame's identity in 2003 to the media. The revelation came as President Bush weighed in Monday by declining to say what he would do if one of his aides were indicted in the investigation, and the Pentagon looked into Miller's claim that she was granted a security clearance in 2003 while reporting with a military unit during the Iraq war.

Libby previously testified to the grand jury and it is not known whether he provided the information about WINPAC during his testimony. Whether it came from Libby or Miller's notes, former federal prosecutors and investigators said the incorrect information provides a significant lead for Fitzgerald and FBI agents to follow. It could suggest Libby thought Plame was not an undercover spy, and therefore couldn't have knowingly revealed her occupation, or that he got his information from uninformed sources, they said.

"The fact that the information is inaccurate may make it of even greater interest to the grand jury than accurate information," said Lance Cole, former Democratic counsel to the Senate Whitewater Committee and now a law professor at Penn State Dickinson School of law. "Accurate information presumably can come from any number of sources. If he got it from a particular document or in a meeting and that document or notes of that meeting are the only place that the inaccuracy is present, then that establishes the source," Cole said. Danny Coulson, a former top FBI official who conducted several investigations of leaks, said the possibility that Libby passed on wrong information to a reporter may indicate he didn't get his information from a credible, official source.
Even if Libby or other White House aides did not knowingly reveal Plame's covert identity, the prosecutor could consider other charges such as the mishandling of classified information, false statements and obstruction of justice, lawyers have said.

more
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBKJNACXEE.html

[Straight Shooter]

1. I believe Judas Miller was deliberately obfuscating her notes.

That's what I would do in such a "delicate" situation. Just in case things went wrong, Ms. Miller deliberately introduced duplicity into her notes (and was probably advised to do so, we don't know by whom).

Her misspelling of Flame instead of Plame tells me that she intentionally created some rabbit trails.

[peacetalksforall]

2. They are saying that WINPAC is in her notes? Are these the notes she

found after she got out of prison? If yes, it is very suspect and a way to reduce trouble. They might have figured this out during her 85 plus day stay in prison. If yes, it is potentially very convenient.