Holes in the Bush Empire

Below written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.

THE PLAME CASE, MISSING EMAIL, AND THE PRESIDENT'S DAILY BRIEF

The government failed to preserve certain official email messages
generated by the Office of the Vice President and the Executive
Office of the President in 2003 as required by law, Special
Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed in a January 23 letter.

The contents and quantity of the missing email are unknown.

In another letter dated January 9, Mr. Fitzgerald also disclosed that
his Office has received redacted versions of the President's Daily
Brief ("a very discrete amount of material relating to PDBs")
concerning Valerie Plame Wilson or Amb. Joseph Wilson's trip to
Niger. Mr. Libby's attorney had requested all copies of the
President's Daily Brief "in its entirety" from May 2003 through
March 2004.

These and several other interesting nuggets emerged in correspondence
between the Special Prosecutor and attorneys for I. Lewis "Scooter"
Libby, the former aide to Vice President Cheney who is being
prosecuted for perjury in connection with the CIA Plame leak
investigation.


See the December 14 discovery request from Libby attorney John D.
Cline, and the January 9 and January 23 letters from Mr. Fitzgerald,
all of which were filed in DC District Court on January 31, here (this is a download of pdf files).

While it has apparently proved feasible to declassify portions of
PDBs from 2 or 3 years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency still
insists that 40 year old PDBs regarding the Vietnam War cannot
possibly be declassified.

That dispute is the subject of an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by UC Davis Professor Larry Berman. For background on the case see this National Security Archive update.