I have basically been supportive of the administration's point that it was
simply fooled - that the intelligence community, including the UK, Germany,
France, Jordan - other countries that confirmed what we had in our intelligence
package, yet we were all just fooled.

Lately, I'm growing increasingly concerned because two things have just
happened here that really make me wonder.

And the one is the questioning of Sheikh al-Libby where his confessions
were obtained through interrogation techniques other than those authorised by
Geneva.

It led Colin Powell to say at the UN on 5 February 2003 that there were
some pretty substantive contacts between al-Qaeda and Baghdad. And we now know
that al-Libby's forced confession has been recanted and we know - we're pretty
sure that it was invalid.

But more important than that, we know that there was a defence
intelligence agency dissent on that testimony even before Colin Powell made his presentation. We never heard about that.

Follow that up with Curveball, and the fact that the Germans now say they
told our CIA well before Colin Powell gave his presentation that Curveball - the
source to the biological mobile laboratories - was lying and was not a
trustworthy source. And then you begin to speculate, you begin to wonder was
this intelligence spun; was it politicised; was it cherry-picked; did in fact
the American people get fooled - I am beginning to have my concerns.

BLITZER: In this new article you have in The New Yorker, you also write
this about the president: " 'The president is more determined than ever to stay
the course,' the former defense official said. 'He doesn't feel any pain. Bush
is a believer in the adage, "People may suffer and die, but the Church
advances." ' He said that the president had become more detached, leaving more
issues to Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney. 'They keep him in the gray world
of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,' the former defense official
said." Could you be more specific on this former defense official?

HERSH: Sure, in this day and age, Wolf. No. I mean, that's -- we're having
a war over sourcing right now.

BLITZER: But this is someone who had day to day or contact, direct contact
with the president?

HERSH: Suffice to say this, that this president in private, at Camp David
with his friends, the people that I'm sure call him George, is very serene about
the war. He's upbeat. He thinks that he's going to be judged, maybe not in five
years or ten years, maybe in 20 years. He's committed to the course. He believes
in democracy.

HERSH: He believes that he's doing the right thing, and he's not going to
stop until he gets -- either until he's out of office, or he falls apart, or he
wins.

BLITZER: But this has become, your suggesting, a religious thing for him?

HERSH: Some people think it is. Other people think he's absolutely
committed, as I say, to the idea of democracy. He's been sold on this notion.
He's a utopian, you could say, in a world where maybe he doesn't have all the
facts and all the information he needs and isn't able to change. I'll tell you,
the people that talk to me now are essentially frightened because they're not
sure how you get to this guy.

We have generals that do not like -- anymore -- they're worried about
speaking truth to power. You know that. I mean that's -- Murtha in fact, John
Murtha, the congressman from Pennsylvania, which most people don't know, has
tremendous contacts with the senior generals of the armies. He's a ranking old
war horse in Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. The generals know him and like
him. His message to the White House was much more worrisome than maybe to the
average person in the public. They know that generals are privately telling him
things that they're not saying to them. And if you're a general and you have a
disagreement with this war, you cannot get that message into the White House.
And that gets people unnerved.

BLITZER: Here's what you write. You write, "Current and former military and
intelligence officials have told me that the president remains convinced that it
is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to
political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he
disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is
proceeding."Those are incredibly strong words, that the president basically
doesn't want to hear alternative analysis of what is going on.

HERSH: You know, Wolf, there is people I've been talking to -- I've been a
critic of the war very early in the New Yorker, and there were people talking to
me in the last few months that have talked to me for four years that are
suddenly saying something much more alarming. They're beginning to talk about
some of the things the president said to him about his feelings about manifest
destiny, about a higher calling that he was talking about three, four years ago.

I don't want to sound like I'm off the wall here. But the issue is, is this
president going to be capable of responding to reality? Is he going to be able
-- is he going to be capable if he going to get a bad assessment, is he going to
accept it as a bad assessment or is he simply going to see it as something else
that is just a little bit in the way as he marches on in his crusade that may
not be judged for 10 or 20 years. He talks about being judged in 20 years to his
friends. And so it's a little alarming because that means that my and my
colleagues in the press corps, we can't get to him maybe with our views. You and
you can't get to him maybe with your interviews. How do you get to a guy to
convince him that perhaps he's not going the right way?

Jack Murtha certainly didn't do it. As I wrote, they were enraged at Murtha
in the White House. And so we have an election coming up -- Yes. I've had people
talk to me about maybe Congress is going to have to cut off the budget for this
war if it gets to that point. I don't think they're ready to do it now. But I'm
talking about sort of a crisis of management. That you have a management that's
seen by some of the people closely involved as not being able to function in
terms of getting information it doesn't want to receive.

Fitzgerald will present evidence to the grand jury later this week, obtained from other witnesses who were interviewed by the Special Prosecutor or who testified, showing that Rove lied during the three times he testified under oath and that he made misleading statements to Justice Department and FBI investigators in an attempt to cover up his role in the leak when he was first interviewed about it in October 2003, the sources said.

The most serious charges Rove faces are making false statements to investigators and obstruction of justice, the sources said. He does not appear to be in jeopardy of violating the law making it a crime to leak the name of a covert CIA agent, because it's unlikely that Rove was aware that Plame Wilson was undercover, the sources said.

However, according to the sources, two things are very clear: either Rove will agree to enter into a plea deal with Fitzgerald or he will be charged with a crime, but he will not be exonerated for the role he played in the leak, based on numerous internal conversations
Fitzgerald has had with his staff. If Rove does agree to enter into a
plea, Fitzgerald is not expected to discuss any aspect of his probe into Rove,
because Rove may be called to testify as a prosecution witness against Lewis
"Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby
was indicted last month on five counts of lying to investigators, perjury, and
obstruction of justice related to his role in the leak.

Moreover, a second high-ranking official in the Bush administration also faces the possibility of indictment for making false statements to investigators about his role in the leak: National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

Hadley had been interviewed in 2004 about his role in the leak and had vehemently denied speaking to reporters about Plame Wilson, the sources said. However, these sources have identified Hadley as sharing information about Plame Wilson with Washington Post editor Bob Woodward, whose stunning revelation two weeks ago - that he was the first journalist to learn of Plame Wilson's identity in mid-June 2003 and had kept that fact secret for two years - led Fitzgerald to return to a second grand jury. A spokeswoman at the National Security Council denied that Hadley was Woodward's source. Hadley, on the other hand, would neither confirm nor deny that he was Woodward's source when he was questioned by reporters two weeks ago. Woodward testified two weeks ago about what he knew and when he knew it. Woodward would not publicly reveal the identity of his source.

Rove had emailed Hadley following the conversation he had with Cooper in July 2003 regarding former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's trip to Niger to investigate allegations Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country, which President Bush had referred to in his January 2003 State of the Union address, and which many critics believe was the silver bullet that convinced the American public and Congress to support a pre-emptive strike against Iraq.

Rove has remained under intense scrutiny because of inconsistencies in his
testimony to investigators and the grand jury. According to sources, Rove
withheld crucial facts on three separate occasions and allegedly misled
investigators about conversations he had with Time magazine reporter Matthew
Cooper.

The attorneys say that Rove’s former personal assistant, Susan B. Ralston
-- who was also a special assistant to President Bush -- testified in August
about why Cooper’s call to Rove was not logged. Ralston said it occurred because
Cooper had phoned in through the White House switchboard and was then
transferred to Rove’s office as opposed to calling Rove’s office directly. As
Rove’s assistant, Ralston screened Rove’s calls.

But those close to the probe tell RAW STORY that Fitzgerald obtained documentary evidence showing that other unrelated calls transferred to Rove’s office by the switchboard were logged. He then called Ralston back to testify.

Earlier this month, attorneys say Fitzgerald received additional testimony from Ralston -- who said that Rove instructed her not to log a phone call Rove had with Cooper about Plame in July 2003.

Ralston also provided Fitzgerald with more information and “clarification”
about several telephone calls Rove allegedly made to a few reporters, including
syndicated columnist Robert Novak, the lawyers said.

If true, this is perhaps the most significant evidence Fitzgerald has obtained suggesting Rove deliberately sought to mislead investigators. Her testimony may help Fitzgerald prove that there were inconsistencies in Rove’s account of his role in the leak and assess why he withheld a crucial fact from the prosecutor: that he had spoken with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper as well as Novak about Plame and confirmed that she was an undercover CIA agent.