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CIA Leak Investigation Focuses on Ari Fleischer

HeadlineJul 19, 2005

As calls build for the firing or resignation of Karl Rove, there is much speculation in Washington over who else in the administration may have been involved in the outing of Plame and the covering up of any criminal or questionable actions. In recent days, an increasing amount of attention has been focused on former White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer, either as a leaker himself or as a participant in a cover-up. The New York Daily News reports that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is “looking beyond” the question of who leaked Plame’s identity to see whether White House aides tried to “cover their tracks” after her name became public. Meanwhile, the Bloomberg news agency reported earlier this week that “people familiar with the inquiry” were saying that Fitzgerald was reviewing Fleischer’s Grand Jury testimony. Much of the speculation surrounding Fleischer focuses on a Bush administration trip to Africa shortly after Valerie Plame’s husband Joseph Wilson published his New York Times Op-Ed debunking the Niger uranium story. Fleischer accompanied Bush and then Secretary of State Colin Powell on that trip. Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff told CNN that Powell took a classified report with him on that trip, and that the report contained information about Plame’s job at the CIA. The prosecutor, Fitzgerald, served a subpoena seeking a transcript of a press briefing Fleischer gave in Africa, one in which he criticized Wilson as a “lower-level official” who had made flawed and incomplete statements. Fitzgerald has also sought phone records from Air Force One to determine whether presidential aides used the aircraft’s phones to leak Plame’s name. Fleischer has denied he played any role in the outing.

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