Copping a plea - conspiracies fall apart both sides of the Atlantic

President Bush's White House Press moist lipped mouthpiece Ari Fleischer logged on to the Washington Post's website late on September 27th 2003 and was alarmed to read.....

"Bush Administration Is Focus of Leak Inquiry" ran the screaming headline - which would appear the followng morning on Washington DC's breakfast tables, well above the fold.

"CIA Agent's Identity Was Leaked to Media." ran the sub head of Mike Allen and Dana Priest's well sourced and detailed Plamegate story ..... the sweat stood out on Ari's receding forehead ...

He headed for the toilet and then for his lawyer.

Ari had disclosed Plame's identity and CIA status to more than one journalist. He had told NBC News reporter David Gregory, and other unnamed reporters, that Plame was married to Wilson. As the case for perjury and obstruction of justice trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby unfolds it seems half the White House were talking to most of the White House journos about nothing else at the time ..on the "QT" .. "strictly off the record, old boy" or whatver damn Yankees say in such circumstances.

According to feisty Peter Zeidenberg, an assistant US attorney working with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald , Fleischer (presumably on the advice of his lawyer) asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and would answer questions before a grand jury only if Fitzgerald promised he would not prosecute him. In February 2004 he got his court-ordered immunity.

Fleischer, who had quietly resigned his White House position in July 2003, would sing like a canary for the Grand Jury if he was guaranteed immunity... and he did... his book Taking Heat: The President, the Press, and My Years in the White House published in March 2005 - Searching the index shows no mention of Plame, Wilson or the Niger uranium - his immunity deal silenced him from discussing the issue.

Fleischer in testimony in court today 29th January said that the conversation happened on Monday, July 7, 2003, the day after former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's op-ed article appeared in the New York Times, and he was a guest on "Meet the Press," accusing the administration of "twisting" intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs. Libby - according to prosecutors - told Fleischer at lunch at the White House that the information that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA was "hush-hush."

Its always enjoyable and entertaining, even instructive when political conspiracists fall out and rush to the exit hoping to save at least their skins even if their reputation lis shredded in the process.

Back in Blighty, it is evident that PC Plod has been carefully identifying those who conspired to secretly finance New Labour for the last election ( and collect their coronet on the way past GO ) and finally like Ari, one has decide to do a deal - which of course po-faced lawyers maintain you cannot do under English law (Ho.Ho.).

So when a jaunty, very well suited, bouffant haired left handed, bon vivant and master of an elegantly turned phrase had a quiet tete a tete over the Earl Grey last week with Commander Yates's men, it is understood that it was held in the offices of one of the finer legal brains in W1.

Not too far from where Kevin Gately 21, year old maths student at Warwick University a member of the International Marxist Group, was killed, on June 15th 1974, it is alleged, by a mounted policeman’s truncheon - the first demonstrator to be killed in Britain for 55 years. (pic memorial painting in Warwick University Students Union)

It remains to be seen if a deal can be stitched up - charges for stealing paper clips and incorrect use of an umbrella stand can be brought to bear for help in explaining the way the systems of noble preferment, not to mention inter office communications in New Labour worked in the recent past.

Mr McTernan is in Edinburgh busily organising the complete and utter fucking disaster that awaits New Labour in the forthcoming Scottish elections.