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(回答先: パトリックフィッジェラルド特別検察官のウエブサイトオープン! 投稿者 サラ 日時 2005 年 10 月 22 日 05:55:32)
本日の英文ロイター記事によれば、おそらく週明けの火曜日か水曜日には大陪審にて訴追のための投票(Vote)があるらしいとのことです。日本語版のロイターでは乗っていなかったので原文をそのまま貼り付けます。
Possible cover-up a focus in CIA leak case-lawyers
Fri Oct 21, 2005 4:52 PM ET
By Adam Entous
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Prosecutors investigating the outing of a covert CIA operative opened a Web site on Friday to post possible indictments next week and were said by lawyers in the case to be focusing on whether top White House aides tried to conceal their actions from investigators.
Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's top political adviser, and Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, are at the center of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
Plame's identity was leaked to the media after her diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson, challenged the Bush administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq.
The lawyers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said Fitzgerald appeared likely to bring charges next week in the nearly two-year leak investigation.
The CIA leak grand jury, which expires on October 28, convened on Friday with two of the lead prosecutors present, but it was unclear what issues they were working on.
Fitzgerald is expected to meet with the grand jury for a possible vote on indictments as early as Tuesday or Wednesday.
Lawyers involved in the case said prosecutors have likely already started laying out their final case to jurors, either for bringing indictments or to explain why there was insufficient evidence to do so.
After the grand jury broke up, the two prosecutors, lugging giant legal briefcases, left the courthouse without comment.
In what some lawyers interpreted as a sign Fitzgerald would bring indictments, the Justice Department created a special Web site for the leak investigation at http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/index.html.
"It raises the prospects" of indictments, one lawyer in the case said, arguing it was doubtful Fitzgerald would launch the site if he had no intention of taking action.
Others in the case suggested it could be part of an effort by Fitzgerald to increase pressure on potential targets to cut a deal. "We're all grasping at straws," one lawyer conceded.
Fitzgerald's spokesman, Randall Samborn, dismissed all the speculation. "I caution you not to read into it," he said.
While Fitzgerald could still charge administration officials with knowingly revealing Plame's identity, several lawyers in the case said he was more likely to seek charges for easier-to-prove crimes such as making false statements, obstruction of justice and disclosing classified information. He also may bring a broad conspiracy charge, the lawyers said.
Legal sources said Rove may be in legal jeopardy for initially not telling the grand jury he talked to Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper about Plame. Rove only recalled the conversation after the discovery of an e-mail message he sent to Stephen Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser.
Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, had no immediate comment.
Luskin said earlier this week that Rove "has at all times strived to be as truthful as possible and voluntarily brought the Cooper conversation to Fitzgerald's attention."
Libby could be open to false statement and obstruction charges because of contradictions between his testimony and that of New York Times reporter Judith Miller and other journalists. Miller has testified she discussed Wilson's wife with Libby as many as three times before columnist Robert Novak publicly identified her.
Libby has said he learned of Wilson's wife from reporters, but journalists have disputed that.
Wilson says White House officials outed his wife, damaging her ability to work undercover, to discredit him for accusing the administration of twisting intelligence to justify the Iraq war in a New York Times opinion piece on July 6, 2003.