title: Plame affair

text: In his memoir, "Courage and Consequence", Rove devotes three chapters to Wilson's "New York Times" op-ed and subsequent grand jury investigation. Rove writes that before his third appearance before the grand jury, Robert Luskin went back and looked through all of Rove's saved emails from April through September 2003. Luskin, according to Rove, uncovered an email Rove had written to Steve Hadley in which Rove discussed a conversation he had had with Matt Cooper concerning Wilson's op-ed. Rove writes that while the "email didn't jog any better recollection of the call", he immediately told Fitzgerald, after being sworn in, that he wanted to "set the record straight." After presenting the email to Fitzgerald, Rove writes that "it was as if I'd detonated a bomb in the shabby little room." Rove writes that before his fourth appearance before the grand jury he received a "target warning" by Fitzgerald. Rove describes his fourth appearance as "brutal from the first moment", and that the grand jury "hung on Fitzgerald's every word." After Rove's testimony, Fitzgerald told Luskin "All things being equal, we are inclined to indict your client." According to Rove, Luskin and Fitzgerald meet for hours in Chicago on October 20 to discuss the matter. At some point during the meeting, "Fitzgerald turned to what was really bothering him: my conversation with Matt Cooper. Was I lying about not being able to recall my phone conversation with him the morning of July 11, 2003?" Specifically, Rove writes, Fitzgerald wanted to know why "in December 2003 or January 2004 did I ask my aides ... to find any evidence of contact with Matt Cooper." It was at this moment, according to Rove, that Luskin revealed his conversation with Viveca Novak in which Luskin learned that Cooper "had insisted around "Time"s Washington bureau that he had talked to [Rove about Plame]." Luskin then revealed to Fitzgerald that it was he who instructed Rove to have his aides find any records of that contact. According to Rove, Fitzgerald was "stunned", and stated to Luskin, "You rocked my world." Rove writes that it "was clear Fitzgerald had originally intended to indict Libby and me on the same day." Rove also writes that in the end, Luskin had a "charitable view of Fitzgerald ... the prosecutor never leaked, and he treated Luskin with respect and was forthcoming about his evidence and concerns."


title: Plame affair

text: According to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, Libby first learned of Valerie Wilson's employment at the CIA in early June 2003 from Vice President Dick Cheney and proceeded to discuss her with six other government officials in the following days and months before disclosing her name to reporters Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper in early July 2003. Fitzgerald asserts that Vice President Cheney told Libby about Mrs. Wilson's CIA employment as the two crafted a response to an inquiry about Wilson's trip from reporter Walter Pincus. While her name was not disclosed to Pincus, Fitzgerald asserts that Pincus's inquiry "further motivated [Libby] to counter Mr. Wilson's assertions, making it more likely that [Libby's] disclosures to the press concerning Mr. Wilson's wife were not casual disclosures that he had forgotten by the time he was asked about them by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and before the grand jury."


title: Plame affair

text: Libby does not dispute that he initially heard about Mrs. Wilson from Cheney, but he claims that he had no recollection of that fact when he told the FBI in October 2003 and the grand jury in March 2004 that he remembered first learning about Mrs. Wilson in a conversation with NBC's Tim Russert on July 10, 2003.


title: Plame affair

text: Libby told the grand jury "it seemed to me as if I was learning it for the first time" when, according to his account, Russert told him about Plame on July 10 or 11, 2003. Only later, when looking at his calendar and notes, Libby said, did he remember that he actually learned the information from Cheney in June 2003. Libby told the grand jury: "In the course of the document production, the FBI sent us a request for documents, or Justice Department, I'm not sure technically. In the course of that document production I came across the note that is dated on or about June 12, and the note ... shows that I hadn't first learned it from Russert, although that was my memory, I had first learned it when he said it to me." The note Libby referred to contains no suggestion that either Cheney or Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson's undercover status or that her identity was classified, but they do show that Cheney did know and told Libby that Ms. Wilson was employed by the CIA and that she may have helped arrange her husband's trip.


title: Plame affair

text: Testifying as a prosecution witness, Russert said that although he and Libby did indeed speak on July 10, 2003, they never discussed Plame during their conversation. Libby had claimed he had forgotten by the time of the conversation with Russert that he had earlier learned Ms. Plame's job from Cheney around June 12, 2003. Libby also testified to the federal grand jury that when Russert purportedly told him about Plame, he had absolutely no memory of having heard the information earlier from anyone else, including Cheney, and was thus "taken aback" when Russert told him. Libby told the FBI that Russert told him on July 10 or 11, 2003, that she worked at the CIA and "all the reporters knew that." In his opening argument, Fitzgerald, referring to Libby's conversation with Russert on July 10, said: "You can't be startled about something on Thursday [July 10] that you told other people about on Monday [July 7] and Tuesday [July 8]." Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer testified as a prosecution witness that on July 7, 2003, Libby told Fleischer, "Ambassador Wilson was sent by his wife. His wife works for the CIA." Fleischer testified that Libby referred to Wilson's wife by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, and "he added it was hush-hush, on the Q.T., and that most people didn't know it." Libby was also alleged by prosecutors to have lied to the FBI and a federal grand jury in claiming that when he mentioned Plame's name to two reporters—Matthew Cooper, then of Time magazine, and Judith Miller, then of "The New York Times"—he was careful to point out to them he was simply repeating rumors that he had heard from Russert. Cooper and Miller testified that Libby stated no such qualifications to them in telling them about Plame.


title: Plame affair

text: During Libby's trial, Libby's lawyers argued that Libby's testimony to the grand jury and his interviews with the Federal Bureau of Investigation may have contained inaccuracies but that they were the result of innocent memory lapses explained by his pressing schedule of national security issues. Libby's defense lawyers also challenged the memory and recollections of each prosecution witness.


title: Plame affair

text: According to press accounts, Cheney told investigators that he had learned of Mrs. Wilson's employment by the CIA and her potential role in her husband being sent to Niger from then-CIA director George Tenet, though it's unclear whether Cheney was made aware of her classified status. Tenet has told investigators that he had no specific recollection of discussing Plame or her role in her husband's trip with Cheney. Tenet did recall, however, that he made inquiries regarding the veracity of the Niger intelligence information as a result of inquires from both Cheney and Libby. According to press accounts, Libby told investigators that on July 12, 2003, while aboard Air Force Two, he and Cheney may have discussed leaking information about Plame to reporters. Libby told investigators he believed at the time that the information about Plame had come from Russert. After arriving back in Washington, according to Cooper's and Miller's testimony at Libby's trial, Libby spoke to both of them by telephone and confirmed to them that Plame worked for the CIA and may have played a role in sending her husband to Niger. FBI agent Deborah Bond testified at Libby's trial that during Libby's second FBI interview in his office on November 23, 2003, Libby was asked about the July 12 flight. Bond testified Libby told the FBI "there was a discussion whether to report to the press that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA." She added that Mr. Libby expressed some doubt, however, adding "Mr. Libby told us he believed they may have talked about it, but he wasn't sure." She testified that Libby did say he had discussed Wilson's wife with Cheney sometime after allegedly discussing her with Russert. Libby reportedly told investigators that neither the president nor the vice president specifically directed him or other administration officials to disclose Plame's CIA employment to the press.


title: Plame affair

text: According to court documents, by December 2004 Fitzgerald lacked evidence to prove Libby had violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and was pursuing charges related to "perjury, false statements and the improper disclosure of national defense information."


title: Plame affair

text: During Libby's trial, the prosecution focused the jury on a sequence of events occurring between May and July 2003. According to prosecutors, given the level of interest coming from the Vice President's office regarding Joe Wilson, it was impossible for Libby to have forgotten during his FBI interviews and grand jury testimony that he already knew that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.


title: Plame affair

text: After the verdict was read to the court, Denis Collins, a member of the jury and a journalist who has written for "The Washington Post" and other newspapers, spoke to the press. According to Collins, some in the jury felt sympathy for Libby and believed he was only the "fall guy". Collins said that "a number of times" the jurors asked themselves, "what is [Libby] doing here? Where is Rove and all these other guys. I'm not saying we didn't think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of. It seemed like he was, as Mr. Wells [Ted Wells, Libby's attorney] put it, he was the fall guy."


title: Plame affair

text: What we're in court deciding seems to be a level or two down from what, before we went into the jury, we supposed the trial was about, or had been initially about, which was who leaked [Plame's identity]. Some jurors commented at some point: 'I wish we weren't judging Libby. You know, this sucks. We don't like being here.' But that wasn't our choice.


title: Plame affair

text: What we came up with from that was that Libby was told about Mrs. Wilson nine times ... We believed he did have a bad memory, but it seemed very unlikely he would not remember about being told about Mrs. Wilson so many times ... Hard to believe he would remember on Tuesday and forget on Thursday.


title: Plame affair

text: Collins told the press "Well, as I said before, I felt like it was a long, you know, haul to get this jury done. And if Mr. Libby is pardoned, I would have no problem with that."


title: Plame affair

text: Another member of the jury, Ann Redington, who broke down and cried as the verdict was being read, also told Chris Matthews, in a March 7, 2007, appearance on "Hardball", that she hoped Libby would eventually be pardoned by President Bush; she told Matthews that she believed Libby "got caught in a difficult situation where he got caught in the initial lie, and it just snowballed" and added: "It kind of bothers me that there was this whole big crime being investigated and he got caught up in the investigation as opposed to in the actual crime that was supposedly committed."


title: Plame affair

text: On May 25, 2007, in a court filing, Fitzgerald asked Judge Reggie B. Walton to sentence Libby to 30 to 37 months in jail, because Libby had "expressed no remorse, no acceptance of responsibility and no recognition that there is anything he should have done differently." Fitzgerald stated "Mr. Libby was a high-ranking government official whose falsehoods were central to issues in a significant criminal investigation, it is important that this court impose a sentence that accurately reflects the value the judicial system places on truth-telling in criminal investigations." The defense sought leniency based on Libby's record of public service.


title: Plame affair

text: The Probation Office's recommended sentence to Judge Walton was cited in court documents to be no more than 15 to 21 months of incarceration. According to court documents, the Probation Office states its opinion that the more serious sentencing standards should not apply to Libby since "the criminal offense would have to be established by a preponderance of the evidence, ... [and] the defendant was neither charged nor convicted of any crime involving the leaking of Ms. Plame's 'covert' status."


title: Plame affair

text: On June 5, 2007, Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison, a fine of US$250,000, and two years of probation (supervised release) after the expiration of his prison term. According to "The Washington Post", Judge Walton expressed his belief that the trial did not prove Libby knew that Plame worked in an undercover capacity when he disclosed her identity to several reporters. He added, however, that "anybody at that high-level position had a unique and special obligation before they said anything about anything associated with a national security agency [to] ... make every conceivable effort" to verify their status before releasing information about them. Walton stated "While there is no evidence that Mr. Libby knew what the situation was, he surely did not take any efforts to find out, ... I think public officials need to know if they are going to step over the line, there are going to be consequences. ... [What Libby did] causes people to think our government does not work for them."


title: Plame affair

text: On July 2, 2007, President Bush commuted the sentence. No pardon was given, and the fine and probation, as well as the felony conviction remain. The statement said:


title: Plame affair

text: Mr. Libby was sentenced to thirty months of prison, two years of probation, and a $250,000 fine. In making the sentencing decision, the district court rejected the advice of the probation office, which recommended a lesser sentence and the consideration of factors that could have led to a sentence of home confinement or probation. I respect the jury's verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison. My decision to commute his prison sentence leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby.


title: Plame affair

text: On July 5, 2007, it was reported that Libby had sent a cashier's check dated July 2 in the amount of $250,400 to the court clerk of the District of Columbia. NBC News reported that Libby paid the fine through his personal funds and not through a defense fund set up in his name.


title: Plame affair

text: On July 12, 2007, President Bush held a press conference and was asked about his commutation of Libby's prison sentence. Bush told reporters:


title: Plame affair

text: First of all, the Scooter Libby decision was, I thought, a fair and balanced decision. Secondly, I haven't spent a lot of time talking about the testimony that people throughout my administration were forced to give as a result of the special prosecutor. I didn't ask them during the time and I haven't asked them since. I'm aware of the fact that perhaps somebody in the administration did disclose the name of that person, and I've often thought about what would have happened had that person come forth and said, I did it. Would we have had this, you know, endless hours of investigation and a lot of money being spent on this matter? But it's been a tough issue for a lot of people in the White House, and it's run its course and now we're going to move on.


title: Plame affair

text: In December 2007, Libby, through his attorney Theodore Wells, announced he had dropped his appeal of his conviction. A statement released by Wells read "We remain firmly convinced of Mr. Libby's innocence. However, the realities were, that after five years of government service by Mr. Libby and several years of defending against this case, the burden on Mr. Libby and his young family of continuing to pursue his complete vindication are too great to ask them to bear." Wells also stated that an appeal "would lead only to a retrial, a process that would last even beyond the two years of supervised release, cost millions of dollars more than the fine he has already paid, and entail many more hundreds of hours preparing for an all-consuming appeal and retrial."


title: Plame affair

text: Press reports indicated that Vice President Cheney "repeatedly pressed Bush to pardon Libby" to no avail in the final days of the Bush administration. Cheney told "The Weekly Standard", "[Libby] was the victim of a serious miscarriage of justice, and I strongly believe that he deserved a presidential pardon. Obviously, I disagree with President Bush's decision." Cheney was reportedly "furious" with Bush over his decision not to pardon Libby.


title: Plame affair

text: On April 13, 2018, President Donald Trump pardoned Scooter Libby, saying, "I don't know Mr. Libby, but for years, I have heard that he has been treated unfairly ... Hopefully, this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life." In response to news of the pardon, Valerie Plame stated, "Trump's pardon is not based on the truth," and case prosecutor Fitzgerald also said in a statement that Trump's decision to pardon Libby "purports to be premised on the notion that Libby was an innocent man convicted on the basis of inaccurate testimony caused by the prosecution. That is false."


title: Plame affair

text: In January 2007, during the first week of Scooter Libby's trial, it was revealed in court proceedings that former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was granted immunity from prosecution by Patrick Fitzgerald in February 2004. Fleischer reportedly acknowledged discussing Valerie Plame with reporters, but promised to cooperate with Fitzgerald's investigation only if granted immunity. When the deal was struck, Fleischer told Fitzgerald that he had discussed Plame with David Gregory of NBC News and John Dickerson of "Time" in July 2003, days before leaving his job at the White House. Fleischer testified that he first learned about Plame and her CIA affiliation during a July 7, 2003, lunch with Libby. Fleischer also testified that four days later, while aboard Air Force One and during a five-day trip to several African nations, he overheard Dan Bartlett reference Plame. According to Fleischer, Bartlett stated to no one in particular "His wife sent him ... She works at the CIA." Shortly after overhearing Bartlett, Fleischer proceeded to discuss Plame with Gregory and Dickerson. According to Fleischer, neither Gregory nor Dickerson showed much interest in the information. Dickerson has denied Fleischer's account. Gregory has declined to comment on the matter. With regard to the immunity deal, Fitzgerald told the court "I didn't want to give [Fleischer] immunity. I did so reluctantly." Libby's attorney, William Jeffress, sought to learn more about the deal, telling the court "I'm not sure we're getting the full story here." According to Matt Apuzzo of the Associated Press, "Prosecutors normally insist on an informal account of what a witness will say before agreeing to such a deal. It's known in legal circles as a proffer, and Fitzgerald said [in court] he never got one from Fleischer."


title: Plame affair

text: In the closing arguments of Libby's trial, defense lawyer Ted Wells told the jury "The government in its questioning really tried to put a cloud over Vice President Cheney ... And the clear suggestion by the questions were, well, maybe there was some kind of skullduggery, some kind of scheme between Libby and the vice president going on in private, but that's unfair." Patrick Fitzgerald responded to this assertion by telling the jury, "You know what? [Wells] said something here that we're trying to put a cloud on the vice president. We'll talk straight. There is a cloud over the vice president. He sent Libby off to [meet with former "New York Times" reporter] Judith Miller at the St. Regis Hotel. At that meeting, the two-hour meeting, the defendant talked about the wife [Plame]. We didn't put that cloud there. That cloud remains because the defendant obstructed justice and lied about what happened."


title: Plame affair

text: At a press conference after the verdict was read, Fitzgerald was asked about his statement to the jury that there is a "cloud" over the vice president. Fitzgerald stated:


title: Plame affair

text: What was said in court was a defense argument made that we put a cloud over the White House, as if, one, we were inventing something or, two, making something up, in order to convince the jury that they ought to convict. And I think in any case where you feel that someone's making an argument that you are inventing something or improperly casting a cloud on someone, you respond. And we responded fairly and honestly by saying there was a cloud there caused bynot caused by us. And by Mr. Libby obstructing justice and lying about what happened, he had failed to remove the cloud. And sometimes when people tell the truth, clouds disappear. And sometimes they don't. But when you don't know what's happening, that's a problem. And so the fact that there was a cloud over anyone was not our doing. It was the facts of the case. It was the facts of the case. It was aggravated by Mr. Libby telling falsehoods. And that's what we said. We're not going to add to that or subtract to that. That's what we said in court, and that's the context in which we said it.


title: Plame affair

text: After the trial ended, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) attempted to have the transcript of Cheney's interview with the special prosecutor released. The release was opposed by the Bush administration. In July 2009, the Department of Justice filed a motion with United States District Court for the District of Columbia stating that the position of the Obama administration was that the transcript should not be released. In the motion, the DOJ states:


title: Plame affair

text: Therefore, if law enforcement interviews of the President, Vice President or other senior White House officials become subject to routine public disclosure, even upon the conclusion of an investigation, there is an increased likelihood that such officials could feel reluctant to participate in voluntary interviews or, if they agree to such voluntary interviews, could decline to answer questions on certain topics.


title: Plame affair

text: In October 2009, the courts ruled in CREW's favor and the US Justice Department was required to release a transcript of Cheney's testimony to the FBI regarding the Plame affair. According to Cheney's testimony, Cheney could not recall information 72 times.


title: Plame affair

text: This included that Cheney could not remember discussing Valerie Plame with Scooter Libby, although Mr. Libby testified that he remembered discussing Valerie Plame with Cheney on two occasions. Cheney had considerable disdain for the CIA, as he spoke of the incompetence of the organization, and three times said "amateur hour" in reference to CIA actions. Some observers say that Cheney's faulty memory was his method to avoid telling the truth, and to avoid potential prosecution. In closing arguments at Libby's trial, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said "a cloud over the vice president, persisted."


title: Plame affair

text: In a January 23, 2006, letter to Scooter Libby's defense team, Patrick Fitzgerald states: "... [W]e advised you during the January 18 conference call that we were not aware of any reporters who knew prior to July 14, 2003, that Valerie Plame, Ambassador Wilson's wife, worked at the CIA, other than: Bob Woodward, Judith Miller, Bob Novak, Walter Pincus and Matthew Cooper."


title: Plame affair

text: On November 16, 2005, in an article titled "Woodward Was Told of Plame More Than Two Years Ago", published in "The Washington Post", Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig revealed that Bob Woodward was told of Valerie Wilson's CIA affiliation a month before it was reported in Robert Novak's column and before Wilson's July 6, 2003 editorial in "The New York Times". At an on-the-record dinner at a Harvard University Institute of Politics forum in December 2005, according to the "Harvard Crimson", Woodward discussed the matter with fellow Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, responding to Bernstein's claim that the release of Plame's identity was a "calculated leak" by the Bush administration with "I know a lot about this, and you're wrong." The "Crimson" also states that "when asked at the dinner whether his readers should worry that he has been 'manipulated' by the Bush administration, Woodward replied, 'I think you should worry. I mean, I worry.'"


title: Plame affair

text: Although it had been reported in mid-November 2005 that Novak's source was National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, almost a year later media reports revealed that the source of this information was Richard Armitage, which Armitage himself also confirmed.


title: Plame affair

text: On February 12, 2007, Woodward testified in "Scooter" Libby's trial as a defense witness. While on the witness stand, an audiotape was played for the jury that contained the interview between Armitage and Woodward in which Plame was discussed. The following exchange is heard on the tape:


title: Plame affair

text: "The New York Times" reporter Judith Miller also claims to have learned Plame's CIA affiliation from Scooter Libby. Though she never published an article on the topic, Miller spent twelve weeks in jail when she was found in contempt of court for refusing to divulge the identity of her source to Fitzgerald's grand jury after he subpoenaed her testimony. Miller told the court, before being ordered to jail, "If journalists cannot be trusted to keep confidences, then journalists cannot function and there cannot be a free press." Miller was released from jail on September 29, 2005, after Libby assured her in a telephone call that a waiver he gave prosecutors authorizing them to question reporters about their conversations with him was not coerced. Libby also wrote Miller a letter while she was in jail urging her to cooperate with the special prosecutor. The letter has come under scrutiny, and Fitzgerald asked Miller about it during her grand jury testimony. Fitzgerald attempted to enter the letter into evidence at Libby's trial, arguing it showed Libby tried to influence her prospective testimony to the grand jury. Judge Walton ruled it inadmissible.


title: Plame affair

text: Miller testified twice before the grand jury and wrote an account of her testimony for "The New York Times".


title: Plame affair

text: In her testimony at Libby's trial, Miller reiterated that she learned of Plame from Libby on June 23, 2003, during an interview at the Old Executive Office Building, and on July 8, 2003, during a breakfast meeting at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington D.C. At the July 8 meeting, which occurred two days after Joe Wilson's op-ed in "The New York Times", Libby told the grand jury "that he was specifically authorized in advance ... to disclose the key judgments of the classified [October 2002] NIE to Miller" to rebut Wilson's charges. Libby "further testified that he at first advised the Vice President that he could not have this conversation with reporter Miller because of the classified nature of the NIE", but testified "that the Vice President had advised [Libby] that the President had authorized [Libby] to disclose relevant portions of the NIE."


title: Plame affair

text: Miller was pressed by the defense at Libby's trial about conversations she may have had with other officials regarding the Wilsons. Miller also testified that after her conversation with Libby, she went to "The New York Times" managing editor Jill Abramson and suggested the "Times" look into Wilson's wife. Abramson, however, testified at the trial that she had "no recollection of such a conversation."


title: Plame affair

text: According to Denver criminal defense attorney Jeralyn Merritt, a press-accredited blogger who attended the trial, "After Judith Miller's testimony, Libby lawyer Ted Wells told the judge he would be moving for a judgment of acquittal on a count pertaining to her." Neil A. Lewis reported in "The New York Times" on February 9, 2007, that "The Libby defense won a victory of sorts when Judge Reggie B. Walton agreed to exclude part of one of the five felony counts against Mr. Libby. But it remained unclear whether the change, which was not contested by the prosecutors, would matter in jury deliberations," and some speculated that Libby's conversation with Miller would be dropped from count 1 of the indictment. At Libby's sentencing hearing, Libby's lawyers filed a response to the Government's sentencing request. Libby's filing read, in part, "At the close of the government's case, the defense moved to dismiss from the indictment the allegation that Mr. Libby had lied about his July 12 conversation with Ms. Miller, because the evidence did not support this allegation. The government did not oppose this motion, and the Court granted it."


title: Plame affair

text: After the verdict was read, a juror told the press that while Miller's memory may have been bad, many on the jury felt sympathy for her due to the nature of her cross-examination. The juror also stated that Miller was deemed credible during deliberations because she had made notes of her meeting with Libby.


title: Plame affair

text: Judith Miller writes that Joe Tate, Libby's lawyer until the criminal trial, revealed to her in a 2014 interview that Fitzgerald had "twice offered to drop all charges against Libby if his client would 'deliver' Cheney to him." According to Miller, Tate stated that Fitzgerald told him, "unless you can deliver someone higher up-the vice president-I'm going forth with the indictment." Miller also writes that Fitzgerald declined to discuss the case with her."


title: Plame affair

text: On April 14, 2018, Judith Miller wrote an op-ed for Foxnews.com in which she detailed her reasoning for being "pleased" with President Trump's decision to pardon Scooter Libby.


title: Plame affair

text: Walter Pincus, a "Washington Post" columnist, has reported that he was told in confidence by an unnamed Bush administration official on July 12, 2003, two days before Novak's column appeared, that "the White House had not paid attention to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's CIA-sponsored February 2002 trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction." Because he did not believe it to be true, Pincus claims, he did not report the story in "The Washington Post" until October 12, 2003: "I wrote my October story because I did not think the person who spoke to me was committing a criminal act, but only practicing damage control by trying to get me to stop writing about Wilson. Because of that article, The Washington Post and I received subpoenas last summer from Patrick J. Fitzgerald."


title: Plame affair

text: On February 12, 2007, Pincus testified during Libby's trial that he learned Wilson's wife worked at the CIA from Ari Fleischer. According to Pincus, Fleischer "suddenly swerved off" topic during an interview to tell him of her employment. Fleischer, who was called to testify by the prosecution, had earlier testified he told two reporters about Valerie Plame, but on cross-examination testified that he did not recall telling Pincus about Plame.


title: Plame affair

text: Days after Novak's initial column appeared, Matthew Cooper of "Time" magazine published Plame's name, citing unnamed government officials as sources. In his article, titled "A War on Wilson?", Cooper raises the possibility that the White House has "declared war" on Wilson for speaking out against the Bush Administration. Cooper initially refused to testify before the grand jury, and was prepared to defy a court order and spend time in jail to protect his sources. At a court hearing, where Cooper was expected to be ordered to jail, Cooper told U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan: "I am prepared to testify. I will comply. Last night I hugged my son good-bye and told him it might be a long time before I see him again. I went to bed ready to accept the sanctions." Cooper explained that before his court appearance, he had received "in somewhat dramatic fashion" a direct personal communication from his source freeing him from his commitment to keep the source's identity secret. In an interview with "National Review", Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, stated: "Cooper's lawyer called us and said, 'Can you confirm that the waiver [Rove originally signed in December 2003 or in January 2004] encompasses Cooper?' I was amazed ... So I said, 'Look, I understand that you want reassurances. If Fitzgerald would like Karl to provide you with some other assurances, we will.'" Cooper testified before the grand jury and wrote an account of his testimony for "Time". Cooper told the grand jury his sources for his article, "A War on Wilson?", were Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.


title: Plame affair

text: During his appearance at Libby's trial, Cooper recounted how he first learned about Valerie Wilson on July 11, 2003, from Rove. Cooper testified that Rove told him to be wary of Joe Wilson's criticisms in "The New York Times". "Don't go too far out on Wilson," Cooper recalled Rove saying, adding that Wilson's wife worked at "the agency." Rove reportedly ended the call by saying, "I've already said too much." Cooper testified that when he spoke to Libby, he told Libby that he had heard that Joe Wilson's wife worked at the C.I.A. According to Cooper, Libby responded, "I heard that too." In Libby's grand jury testimony, Libby recalled telling Cooper that he'd heard something to that effect but that he didn't know for sure if it were true. In Libby's trial, Cooper's notes became the subject of intense scrutiny by the defense.


title: Plame affair

text: Libby was acquitted on one count involving Cooper. A juror told the press that count three of the indictment came down to Libby's word versus Cooper's word, and thus provided enough reasonable doubt.


title: Plame affair

text: According to Patrick Fitzgerald and the grand jury Investigation indictment, in his sworn testimony, Libby claimed to have heard of Plame's CIA status from Tim Russert.


title: Plame affair

text: Both Russert and Libby testified that Libby called Russert on July 10, 2003, to complain about the MSNBC program "Hardball" and comments that were made on that show about Libby and Cheney with regard to Wilson's Niger trip and subsequent op-ed. Libby contends, however, that at the end of that conversation, Russert asked him: "Did you know that Ambassador Wilson's wife works at the CIA? All the reporters know it."


title: Plame affair

text: At Libby's trial, Russert was questioned by prosecutors for only 12 minutes, but underwent more than five hours of pointed cross-examination over two days from defense attorney Theodore Wells Jr. Russert told prosecutors that he could not have told Libby about Plame because he had not heard of her until she was publicly revealed by Novak on July 14, 2003, four days after Russert spoke with Libby by phone. Wells challenged Russert's memory and his version of the events that led to his crucial grand jury testimony. Wells also questioned Russert about his reaction to the announcement of Libby's grand jury indictment.


title: Plame affair

text: Wells also focused on a November 24, 2003, report by John C. Eckenrode, the FBI Special Agent who interviewed Russert as part of the DOJ investigation. In that report, Eckenrode writes:


title: Plame affair

text: Russert does not recall stating to Libby, in this conversation, anything about the wife of former ambassador Joe Wilson. Although he could not completely rule out the possibility that he had such an exchange, Russert was at a loss to remember it, and moreover, he believes that this would be the type of conversation that he would or should remember. Russert acknowledged that he speaks to many people on a daily basis and it is difficult to reconstruct some specific conversations, particularly one which occurred several months ago.


title: Plame affair

text: Russert testified, however, that he does not believe that he said what Eckenrode reports; while he acknowledged on cross examination that he was not asked about any conversations he may have had with David Gregory or Andrea Mitchell regarding Plame during his deposition with Fitzgerald, he also told the jury that "they never came forward" to share with him anything they were learning about Joe Wilson or Valerie Plame from administration officials, and he testified that after Novak's column was published, the NBC Washington bureau (which he heads) debated whether pursuing Plame's role in the story would compromise her job at the CIA and ultimately decided to pursue the story.


title: Plame affair

text: According to multiple news accounts of the trial, Russert's testimony was key to Libby's conviction or acquittal, and on the day that the defense rested, February 14, 2007, the judge refused to allow the defense to call Russert back to the stand. A juror told the press that the members of the jury found Russert to be very credible in his testimony. "The primary thing that convinced us on most of the counts was the conversation, alleged conversation with Russert," the juror told the press.


title: Plame affair

text: There are some major legal issues surrounding the allegations of illegality by administration officials in the CIA leak scandal, including Executive Order 12958, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the Espionage Act, Title 18 Section 641, conspiracy to impede or injure officers, the Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement, other laws and precedents, perjury, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and compelling the media to testify.


title: Plame affair

text: A topic of much public debate centered on whether Plame's CIA status fit the definition of "covert" outlined under Intelligence Identities Protection Act.


title: Plame affair

text: The government and Libby's defense filed sentencing memoranda after Libby's conviction. According to Fitzgerald:


title: Plame affair

text: On March 8, 2007, two days after the verdict in the Libby trial, Congressman Henry Waxman, chair of the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform, announced that his committee would hold hearings and ask Plame to testify on March 16, in an effort by his committee to look into "whether White House officials followed appropriate procedures for safeguarding Plame's identity."


title: Plame affair

text: On March 16, 2007, Valerie E. Wilson testified before the committee. Henry Waxman read a prepared statement that was cleared by CIA director Michael Hayden, which, in part, states:


title: Plame affair

text: During her employment at the CIA, Ms. Wilson was undercover. Her employment status with the CIA was classified information, prohibited from disclosure under Executive Order 12958. At the time of the publication of Robert Novak's column on July 14, 2003, Ms. Wilson's CIA employment status was covert. This was classified information. Ms. Wilson served in senior management positions at the CIA in which she oversaw the work for other CIA employees and she attained the level of GS-14—Step Six under the federal pay scale. Ms. Wilson worked on some of the most sensitive and highly secretive matters handled by the CIA. Ms. Wilson served at various times overseas for the CIA.


title: Plame affair

text: In the run-up to the war with Iraq, I worked in the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA, still as a covert officer whose affiliation with the CIA was classified. I raced to discover solid intelligence for senior policy makers on Iraq's presumed weapons of mass destruction program. While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence."


title: Plame affair

text: In reply to the committee's request that she define the term "covert", she replied: "I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that the CIA is taking affirmative steps to ensure that there is no links between the operations officer and the Central Intelligence Agency."


title: Plame affair

text: When asked if she was ever told whether her status fit the definition under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Mrs. Wilson replied: "No," adding: "I'm not a lawyer, but I was covert. I did travel overseas on secret missions within the last five years ... [but] no, no one told me that [I fit the definition under the IIPA]."


title: Plame affair

text: Valerie Wilson also told the committee: "For those of us that were undercover in the CIA, we tended to use 'covert' or 'undercover' interchangeably. I'm not—we typically would not say of ourselves we were in a 'classified' position. You're kind of undercover or overt employees."


title: Plame affair

text: She told the committee that she believed that her "name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior officials in the White House and State Department." She testified that "I could count on one hand the number of people who knew where my true employer was the day that I was—my name was—and true affiliation was exposed in July 2003."


title: Plame affair

text: As a result of her exposure as a CIA operative, Mrs. Wilson testified: "I could no longer perform the work for which I had been highly trained." In reply to a question about whether or not she had any evidence government officials knew she was covert when disclosing her identity to reporters, Mrs. Wilson responded: "That, I think, is a question better put to the special prosecutor, Congressman."


title: Plame affair

text: Dr. James Knodell, Director of the Office of Security at the White House, testified before the committee as well. He was asked whether the White House conducted any internal investigation, as is required by Executive Order 12958. Knodell said that he had started at the White House in August 2004, a year after the leak, but his records showed no evidence of a probe or report: "I have no knowledge of any investigation in my office," he said. When asked why no internal investigation was conducted or disciplinary actions taken after he took office, Knodell replied "there was already an outside investigation that was taking place, a criminal investigation. So that's why we took no action." In response to Knodell's testimony, Waxman sent a letter to White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolton asking for clarification as to the "steps that the White House took following the disclosure of Ms. Wilson's identity."


title: Plame affair

text: According to Waxman: "Mr. Knodell could not explain, however, why the White House did not initiate an investigation after the security breach. It took months before a criminal investigation was initiated, yet according to Mr. Knodell, there was no White House investigation initiated during this period."


title: Plame affair

text: Citing Executive Order 12958, Waxman observes that the "White House is required to 'take appropriate and prompt corrective action' whenever there is a release of classified information." On September 29, 2003, approximately two and a half months after the disclosure of Plame's identity and subsequent filing of a crimes report by the CIA with the Justice Department, White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters: "The president believes leaking classified information is a very serious matter and it should be pursued to the fullest extent by the appropriate agency and the appropriate agency is the Department of Justice." McClellan also stated that the White House would not launch an internal probe and would not ask for an independent investigation into the matter.


title: Plame affair

text: Attorneys Mark Zaid and Victoria Toensing also testified before the committee. Each testified that Plame may not have been covert under the IIPA, and that the legal definition is more narrow than the general CIA designation. Zaid told the committee, "Mrs. Toensing is absolutely correct with many of her questions with respect to the Intelligence Identities Act, which has a very exacting standard. Mrs. Plame, as she indicated, was covert. That's a distinction between possibly under the Intelligence Identities Act, and that classified information was leaked. And the question then is it of a criminal magnitude versus something less than that and these could be any number of penalties."


title: Plame affair

text: Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was also asked to testify. In a letter to Waxman, Fitzgerald responded to Waxman's request, in part stating:


title: Plame affair

text: I also do not believe it would be appropriate for me to offer opinions, as your letter suggests the committee may seek, about the ultimate responsibility of senior White House officials for the disclosure of Ms. Wilson's identity, or the sufficiency of the remedial measures that White House officials took after the leak. Prosecutors traditionally refrain from commenting outside of the judicial process on the actions of persons not charged with criminal offenses. Such individuals have significant privacy and due process interests that deserve protection as do the intemal deliberations of prosecutors relating to their conduct.


title: Plame affair

text: According to Robert Novak, Rep. Peter Hoekstra and Hayden were in a conference together five days after the committee hearing. Novak reported that Hayden "did not answer whether Plame was covert under the terms of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act" when pressed by Hoekstra. Novak reported on April 12, 2007 that:


title: Plame affair

text: Hayden indicated to me he had not authorized Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman to say Plame had been a "covert" CIA employee, as he claimed Hayden did, but only that she was "undercover"... I obtained Waxman's talking points for the hearing. The draft typed after the Hayden-Waxman conversation said, "Ms. Wilson had a career as an undercover agent of the CIA." This was crossed out, the hand-printed change saying she 'was a covert employee of the CIA' ... Hayden told me that the talking points were edited by a CIA lawyer after conferring with Waxman's staff. "I am completely comfortable with that," the general assured me. He added he now sees no difference between "covert" and "undercover"... Mark Mansfield, Hayden's public affairs officer, next e-mailed me: "At CIA, you are either a covert or an overt employee. Ms. Wilson was a covert employee"... On March 21, Hoekstra again requested that the CIA define Plame's status. A written reply April 5 from Christopher J. Walker, the CIA's director of congressional affairs, said only that 'it is taking longer than expected' to reply because of "the considerable legal complexity required for this tasking."


title: Plame affair

text: There has been debate over what kinds of damage may have resulted from the public disclosure of Valerie Wilson's identity as a CIA operative in Novak's column and its fallout, how far and into what areas of national security and foreign intelligence that damage might extend, particularly vis-à-vis Plame's work with her cover company, Brewster Jennings & Associates. Plame has characterized the damage as "serious", noting, "I can tell you, all the intelligence services in the world that morning were running my name through their databases to see, `Did anyone by this name come in the country? When? Do we know anything about it? Where did she stay? Well, who did she see?'" In an op-ed published by the "Los Angeles Times", Joe Wilson wrote "She immediately started jotting down a checklist of things she needed to do to limit the damage to people she knew and to projects she was working on."


title: Plame affair

text: On October 3, 2004, "The Washington Post" quotes a former diplomat predicting immediate damage: "[E]very foreign intelligence service would run Plame's name through its databases within hours of its publication to determine if she had visited their country and to reconstruct her activities. ... That's why the agency is so sensitive about just publishing her name."


title: Plame affair

text: In contrast, in an October 27, 2005, appearance on "Larry King Live", Bob Woodward commented: "They did a damage assessment within the CIA, looking at what this did that [former ambassador] Joe Wilson's wife [Plame] was outed. And turned out it was quite minimal damage. They did not have to pull anyone out undercover abroad. They didn't have to resettle anyone. There was no physical danger to anyone, and there was just some embarrassment."


title: Plame affair

text: In an appearance the next night, October 28, 2005, on "Hardball", Andrea Mitchell was quoted as saying: "I happen to have been told that the actual damage assessment as to whether people were put in jeopardy on this case did not indicate that there was real damage in this specific instance."


title: Plame affair

text: Following Mitchell's appearance on "Hardball", on October 29, 2005, "The Washington Post"s Dafna Linzer reported that no formal damage assessment had yet been conducted by the CIA "as is routinely done in cases of espionage and after any legal proceedings have been exhausted." Linzer writes: "There is no indication, according to current and former intelligence officials, that the most dire of consequences—the risk of anyone's life—resulted from her outing. But after Plame's name appeared in Robert D. Novak's column, the CIA informed the Justice Department in a simple questionnaire that the damage was serious enough to warrant an investigation, officials said."


title: Plame affair

text: Mark Lowenthal, who retired from a senior management position at the CIA in March 2005, reportedly told Linzer: "You can only speculate that if she had foreign contacts, those contacts might be nervous and their relationships with her put them at risk. It also makes it harder for other CIA officers to recruit sources."


title: Plame affair

text: Another intelligence official who spoke anonymously to Linzer cited the CIA's interest in protecting the agency and its work: "You'll never get a straight answer [from the Agency] about how valuable she was or how valuable her sources were."


title: Plame affair

text: On October 28, 2005, the Office of Special Counsel issued a press release regarding Libby's indictment. The following is stated regarding Plame:


title: Plame affair

text: Prior to July 14, 2003, Valerie Wilson's employment status was classified. Prior to that date, her affiliation with the CIA was not common knowledge outside the intelligence community. Disclosure of classified information about an individual's employment by the CIA has the potential to damage the national security in ways that range from preventing that individual's future use in a covert capacity, to compromising intelligence-gathering methods and operations, and endangering the safety of CIA employees and those who deal with them, the indictment states.


title: Plame affair

text: In a November 3, 2005, online live discussion, in response to a question about the Fitzgerald investigation, "The Washington Post"s Dana Priest, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist specializing in matters of national security, stated: "I don't actually think the Plame leak compromised national security, from what I've been able to learn about her position."


title: Plame affair

text: In a January 9, 2006, letter addressed to "Scooter" Libby's defense team, Patrick Fitzgerald responded to a discovery request by Libby's lawyers for both classified and unclassified documents. In the letter, Fitzgerald writes: "A formal assessment has not been done of the damage caused by the disclosure of Valerie Wilson's status as a CIA employee, and thus we possess no such document." He continues: "In any event, we would not view an assessment of the damage caused by the disclosure as relevant to the issue of whether or not Mr. Libby intentionally lied when he made the statements and gave the grand jury testimony which the grand jury alleged was false."


title: Plame affair

text: On March 16, 2007, Valerie Wilson told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform: "But I do know the Agency did a damage assessment. They did not share it with me, but I know that certainly puts the people and the contacts I had all in jeopardy, even if they were completely innocent in nature."


title: Plame affair

text: During Libby's trial, Judge Reggie Walton told the jury: "No evidence will be presented to you with regard to Valerie Plame Wilson's status. That is because what her actual status was, or whether any damage would result from disclosure of her status, are totally irrelevant to your decision of guilt or innocence. You must not consider these matters in your deliberations or speculate or guess about them." During court proceedings, when the jury was not present, Walton told the court: "I don't know, based on what has been presented to me in this case, what her status was. ... It's totally irrelevant to this case. ... I to this day don't know what her actual status was."


title: Plame affair

text: Larisa Alexandrovna of The Raw Story reports that three intelligence officials, who spoke under condition of anonymity, told her that


title: Plame affair

text: While Director of Central Intelligence Porter Goss has not submitted a formal damage assessment to Congressional oversight committees, the CIA's Directorate of Operations did conduct a serious and aggressive investigation.


title: Plame affair

text: According to her sources, "the damage assessment ... called a 'counter intelligence assessment to agency operations' was conducted on the orders of the CIA's then-Deputy Director of the Directorate of Operation James Pavitt ... [and showed] 'significant damage to operational equities.'"


title: Plame affair

text: Alexandrovna also reports that while Plame was undercover she was involved in an operation identifying and tracking weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran, suggesting that her outing "significantly hampered the CIA's ability to monitor nuclear proliferation." Her sources also stated that the outing of Plame also compromised the identity of other covert operatives who had been working, like Plame, under non-official cover status. These anonymous officials said that in their judgment, the CIA's work on WMDs has been set back "ten years" as a result of the compromise.


title: Plame affair

text: MSNBC correspondent David Shuster reported on "Hardball" later, on May 1, 2006, that MSNBC had learned "new information" about the potential consequences of the leaks: "Intelligence sources say Valerie Wilson was part of an operation three years ago tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran. And the sources allege that when Mrs. Wilson's cover was blown, the Administration's ability to track Iran's nuclear ambitions was damaged as well. The White House considers Iran to be one of America's biggest threats."


title: Plame affair

text: In March 2007, Richard Leiby and Walter Pincus reported, in "The Washington Post", that Plame's work "included dealing with personnel as well as issues related to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Iran." CBS news would later confirm that Plame "was involved in operations to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons", and may have been involved in Operation Merlin.


title: Plame affair

text: On September 6, 2006, David Corn published an article for "The Nation" titled "What Valerie Plame Really Did at the CIA", reporting that Plame was placed in charge of the operations group within the Joint Task Force on Iraq in the spring of 2001 and that, "when the Novak column ran", in July 2003: "Valerie Wilson was in the process of changing her clandestine status from NOC to official cover, as she prepared for a new job in personnel management. Her aim, she told colleagues, was to put in time as an administratorto rise up a notch or twoand then return to secret operations. But with her cover blown, she could never be undercover again.


title: Plame affair

text: According to Vicky Ward, in "Double Exposure", "In fact, in the spring [of 2003], Plame was in the process of moving from NOC status to State Department cover. [Joe] Wilson speculates that "if more people knew than should have, then somebody over at the White House talked earlier than they should have been talking."


title: Plame affair

text: In testifying before Congress, Valerie Wilson described the damage done by her exposure in the following way:


title: Plame affair

text: In her memoir, "", Valerie Plame Wilson states that after her covert and then-still-classified CIA identity "Valerie Plame" appeared in Novak's column in July 2003, she feared for her children's safety but was denied protection by the Agency. On October 26, 2005, her former CIA colleague Larry Johnson told Wolf Blitzer, on the CNN program "The Situation Room", that she "had received death threats overseas from Al-Qaeda"; according to Johnson, after the FBI contacted her and told her of the threat made by al-Qaeda, she called the CIA and asked for security protection but was told: "you will have to rely upon 9-1-1."


title: Plame affair

text: On November 12, 2010, "The Washington Post" published a letter to the editor written by R.E. Pound. According to the "Post", Pound served in the CIA from 1976 to 2009. Pound writes, "I was at one point charged with looking into possible damage in one location caused by Valerie Plame's outing. There was none. ... It was wrong to expose Plame. It was ludicrous for her to claim that the exposure forced an end to her career in intelligence."


title: Plame affair

text: In his memoir, "Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA", John A. Rizzo, a career lawyer at the CIA, details his involvement with the Plame investigation. According to Rizzo, after the CIA assessment of Novak's column, "the Plame leak appeared to be a most unlikely candidate for a full blown Justice/FBI investigation." Rizzo writes that there was "no evidence that any CIA source or operation-or Plame herself, for that matter-was placed in jeopardy as a result of the 'outing'." Rizzo also writes that "dozens if not hundreds of people knew she was an Agency employee." While describing Plame as a "capable, dedicated officer", Rizzo lays blame on her husband for the end of her CIA career. Rizzo also writes that it was he who declined Plame's request for round-the-clock security protection. According to Rizzo, there was "no credible information" indicating she was in any danger.


title: Who's That Knocking at My Door

text: Who's That Knocking at My Door, originally titled I Call First, is a 1967 American independent drama film written and directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Harvey Keitel and Zina Bethune. It was Scorsese's feature film directorial debut and Keitel's debut as an actor. Exploring themes of Catholic guilt similar to those in his later film "Mean Streets", the story follows Italian-American J.R. (Keitel) as he struggles to accept the secret hidden by his independent and free-spirited girlfriend (Bethune).


title: Who's That Knocking at My Door

text: J.R. is a typical Catholic Italian-American young man on the streets of New York City. Even as an adult, he stays close to home with a core group of friends with whom he drinks and carouses around. He gets involved with a local girl he meets on the Staten Island Ferry, and decides he wants to get married and settle down. As their relationship deepens, he declines her offer to have sex because he thinks she is a virgin and he wants to wait rather than "spoil" her.


title: Who's That Knocking at My Door

text: One day, his girlfriend tells him that she was once raped by a former boyfriend. This crushes J.R., and he rejects her and attempts to return to his old life of drinking with his friends. However, after a particularly wild party with friends, he realizes he still loves her and returns to her apartment one early morning. He awkwardly tells her that he forgives her and says that he will "marry her anyway." Upon hearing this, the girl tells him marriage would never work if her past weighs on him so much. J.R. becomes enraged and calls her a whore, but quickly recants and says he is confused by the whole situation. She tells him to go home, and he returns to the Catholic church, but finds no solace.


title: Who's That Knocking at My Door

text: "Who's That Knocking at My Door" was filmed in New York City over the course of two years, undergoing many changes, new directions and different names along the way. The film began in 1965 by Scorsese as a student short film about J.R. and his do-nothing friends called "Bring on the Dancing Girls". In 1967, the romance plot with Zina Bethune was introduced and spliced together with the earlier film, and the title was changed to "I Call First". Haig Manoogian, Scorsese's professor at NYU, provided $5,000 in seed money before raising an additional $65,000 from independent investors. Apart from the three producers, no one who worked on the film was over the age of twenty-five.


title: Who's That Knocking at My Door

text: The film was shot with a combination of 35 mm and 16 mm cameras. Scorsese shot most of the 35 mm footage with a Mitchell BNC camera, a very cumbersome camera that impeded mobility. He opted to shoot several scenes with the 16 mm Eclair NPR camera in order to introduce greater mobility, then blow up the footage to 35 mm.


title: Who's That Knocking at My Door

text: The film received its world premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival in November 1967. A year later, in 1968, exploitation distributor Joseph Brenner offered to purchase the film and distribute it on the condition that a sex scene be added so they can market the film as a sex exploitation. Scorsese shot and edited a technically beautiful but largely gratuitous montage of J.R. fantasizing about bedding a series of prostitutes (shot in Amsterdam, the Netherlands with a visibly older Keitel). The film was re-titled "Who's That Knocking at My Door" (named for the 1959 song by The Genies which closes the film).


title: Who's That Knocking at My Door

text: The film was re-issued in February 1970 by Medford Film Distribution under the title "J.R.". However, all subsequent releases have been published under the 1968 title.


title: Who's That Knocking at My Door

text: American critic Roger Ebert gave the film an extremely positive review after its world premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival in November 1967 (when it still went by the name "I Call First"). He called the film "a work that is absolutely genuine, artistically satisfying and technically comparable to the best films being made anywhere. I have no reservations in describing it as a great moment in American movies." "Variety" described the film as "more of a class exercise than a commercially sound film". The review later stated, "Scorsese occasionally brings the film to life, as in a weekend drive by J.R. and two buddies to an upstate village where the camera shows up their 'big city' shallowness in comparison to the townspeople. Generally, however, his script and direction lack any dramatic value and give far too much exposure to sexual fantasies on the part of the boy."


title: Who's That Knocking at My Door

text: When the film received its theatrical release two years later, Ebert admitted that he had been perhaps too eager with his first review, admitting that "Scorsese was occasionally too obvious, and the film has serious structural flaws." However, he was still highly positive towards the film, and suggested that "It is possible that with more experience and maturity Scorsese will direct more polished, finished films." Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" acknowledged that Scorsese has "composed a fluid, technically proficient movie, more intense and sincere than most commercial releases." However, he felt Scorsese hadn't "succeeded in making a drama that is really much more aware than the characters themselves. The result is a movie that is as precise—and as small—as a contact print."


title: Who's That Knocking at My Door

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 71% based on 21 reviews, with an average rating of 5.9/10. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 63 out of 100 based on nine critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."


title: Who's That Knocking at My Door

text: Martin Scorsese's mother, Catherine, appears briefly as J.R.'s mother cooking at the beginning of the film and serving food near the end. Mrs. Scorsese would continue to appear in many of her son's films until her death in 1997. Scorsese himself appears uncredited as one of the gangsters. To this day, he still makes cameo appearances in many of his films.


title: Who's That Knocking at My Door

text: The role of Sally Gaga is played by Michael Scala, the father of NYC Council District 32 2017 candidate and former rapper Michael "Pizon" Scala.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: The seventh season of the American drama television series "24", also known as Day 7, premiered in the United States on Fox on January 11, 2009, and concluded on May 18, 2009. The season was originally scheduled to premiere on January 13, 2008, but was delayed due to the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike. On November 23, 2008, Fox aired "", a two-hour TV movie set between seasons. Unlike all of the other seasons, this season's DVD set was released one day after the season finale. The season's storyline begins and ends at 8:00 a.m.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: The seventh season takes place 46 months after season six and two months after . Jack Bauer is on trial for alleged crimes he committed while working for CTU. Senator Blaine Mayer has disbanded CTU and strengthened the policies of Allison Taylor's administration against torture. Bauer is brought into another counter-terrorist operation when FBI agent Renee Walker interrupts the hearing to tell him about an imminent threat.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: Day 7 begins in a U.S. Senate hearing during which Jack Bauer defends the necessity of his actions to Senator Blaine Mayer. Agent Renee Walker postpones the proceedings saying that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) urgently needs Jack's help. Even though Jack refuses to believe it at first, she reveals that Tony Almeida is still alive and that he is launching an attack against the government that betrayed him. When a contact agrees to talk to Bauer and Walker and is assassinated, the sniper leads them to Tony's location. Jack captures Tony and brings him to the FBI but learns that he is part of an undercover operation involving Bill Buchanan and Chloe O'Brian that aims to expose corruption in the government.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: Jack breaks Tony out of the FBI's headquarters and meets with Bill and Chloe at a hideout that serves as a sort of underground CTU. There, he learns that Benjamin Juma and Iké Dubaku have infiltrated the government in order to stop the U.S. from invading Sangala. Dubaku plans to attack government infrastructure using the "CIP device" and have the Sangalan President, Ule Matobo, kidnapped. Jack and Tony team up with one of Dubaku's contacts, David Emerson, and proceed to kidnap Matobo. Along the way, Renee Walker discovers them. Instead of killing her, Jack manages to keep his cover safe by shooting her in the neck, burying her alive and sending her location to Chloe and Bill. After Tony reluctantly kills Emerson, the group hand Matobo over to Dubaku's henchmen and begin an assault once they learn Dubaku's location. During the assault, they rescue Matobo and destroy the CIP device but Dubaku escapes.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: Dubaku attempts to manipulate President Taylor by kidnapping Henry Taylor but Jack and Renee find the First Gentleman by interrogating a U.S. Secret Service agent. During the rescue, Henry Taylor suffers a gunshot wound from which he eventually recovers. With Dubaku on the run, Walker and Bauer are able to find him with the help of his girlfriend Marika. Although Dubaku's vehicle crashes in a car chase killing Marika, Dubaku survives with enough strength to provide Bauer with a list of names of his co-conspirators. Buchanan uses this list to begin making arrests. When the arrests are in progress, Tony informs Jack that General Juma is planning an attack and tells him that Senator Mayer's chief of staff Ryan Burnett knows the details. Jack begins to torture Burnett but he is apprehended before he can finish. Juma is able to attack his target—which turns out to be the White House—and Jack, Bill and Taylor find themselves held hostage.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: Although Jack plans to save the hostages by sacrificing himself, Bill Buchanan does this instead, saying that a dangerous conspiracy still remains and that Jack is the only person he trusts to unravel it. When Jack tries to get further information out of Burnett, a mercenary arrives who kills Burnett and frames Bauer for the murder. When Jack escapes, he learns that the mercenary, John Quinn, works for Starkwood—a defense contractor with an interest in developing bioweapons—led by a man named Jonas Hodges. After he is framed for the murder of U.S. Senator Mayer, Jack kills Quinn and learns the location of a bioweapon that just arrived from Sangala. He and Tony initiate a raid, which results in Tony's capture by Starkwood. Jack drives the weapon away from the port but is delayed when he stops to seal one of the leaking canisters. This not only exposes him to the pathogen but allows Starkwood to recapture it as well.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: Jack learns that he is dying and tries to see the operation through to the end before he dies. He has an emotional meeting with his daughter Kim and tells Kim that he does not want her to try to save him with stem cells. FBI and military forces land in the Starkwood base and meet Tony Almeida but Starkwood forces outnumber them and force them to retreat. Tony sneaks away from the group and is able to remain at the base unseen. Co-ordinating with Jack, he destroys the canisters of the prion which allows the government to move in and arrest Hodges. To everyone's surprise, a Starkwood operative, Robert Galvez is seen with a surviving canister of the pathogen and a helicopter with Tony Almeida and Larry Moss on board gives chase. Tony betrays the FBI by killing Moss and helping Galvez escape the perimeter before escaping himself. Furious, Jack learns from Hodges that Tony has been in league with private military contractors all along and that he is working to have Islamic-Americans carry out a biological attack.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: Tony and a co-conspirator named Cara Bowden force an innocent Muslim man to frame himself for a subway attack, by making a video and riding the subway, without knowing the details of what he's being framed for. Bowden delivers the canister of pathogenic agent, with a fifteen-minute timer on it, to the subway car the young man is riding, then exits. Jack intercepts the canister just in time but is forced to turn on the FBI and free Tony when he learns that Bowden's operatives are following Kim. Tony convinces Cara and the leader of their group named Alan Wilson to harvest the pathogen from Jack's body. Tony tells Jack in private that his plan is really to bring Alan Wilson into the open so that he can be murdered; Alan Wilson was the man behind Charles Logan, who had both David Palmer and Michelle Dessler murdered. FBI agents arrive at the compound having learned of Jack's location from a rescued Kim Bauer. A firefight ensues which is ended by Jack and Renee who stop Almeida from killing Wilson. Renee decides to torture Wilson when she learns that he has covered all his tracks. After Jack's doctor induces a coma, Kim arrives and begs her to begin the stem cell procedure that Jack told her not to undergo. The season ends with Kim at her father's side, left with a thread of hope that he may survive.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: Producers were determined to reinvent the series after receiving criticism over the sixth season. They initially devised a storyline which would have Jack Bauer traveling to Sangala trying to find himself, and becoming caught up in a coup with "Black Hawk Down"-style results.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: The decision to scrap the storyline and start over delayed production from July to late August. Filming was delayed a second time (from August 27 to September 10) in order for writers to complete additional scripts.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: The crew was scheduled to film scenes with Kiefer Sutherland at the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro on Monday October 22, 2007; however, filming was canceled for health reasons due to raging wildfires in the area. Cast and crew had blurry vision and difficulty breathing from the smoke. United States Navy SEALs helped battle fictional terrorists at Camarillo Airport during filming of an episode on August 12–13, 2008.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: After completion of the 18th episode, production was temporarily shut down on September 15, 2008, for two weeks in order to perform script rewrites for the final six episodes. In an "Entertainment Weekly" interview, Howard Gordon responded "We just couldn't get this direction to work, and we found another one that we liked better, so we wound up retooling it."


title: 24 (season 7)

text: Executive producer and "24" co-creator Joel Surnow left the series on February 12, 2008. His contract with 20th Century Fox was due to expire on April 30 but he requested an early release. "I did some soul-searching. I took [the strike] as an opportunity to write on my own and do other things. After doing "24", I don't know if I want to do a mainstream show again. I like what's going on in cable; there is an opportunity to stretch dramatically there, which is something I'm trying to do." Series co-creator and executive producer Robert Cochran also left the show after the twelfth episode. The position held by Surnow was filled by showrunner Howard Gordon.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: Season 7 was dedicated to the memory of Larry Davenport, who was the assistant editor and editor since the first season. He died January 19, 2009.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: Tony Almeida was seeming killed in Season 5, but was revealed to be alive in this seventh season. Showrunner Howard Gordon mentioned in an interview that they purposely filmed Tony's death in a way that would allow his eventual return.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: The debut trailer aired on October 25, 2007. In the trailer, Jack is seen testifying before Congress concerning his past extralegal activities, including the torture of terrorist Ibrahim Haddad. The international version of the trailer is largely identical but features an additional line where Bauer implies personal enjoyment from torturing a suspect. This line is cut from the US version.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: A second trailer emphasized the plot concerning the United States losing control of its power lines, water supplies and air traffic control. Jon Cassar confirmed on the Fox message board that the "" DVD would have a new alternate trailer for the season as an extra feature and that it contains scenes from the first fourteen episodes.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: On October 25, 2007, Fox premiered the first trailer and announced the return date for season 7 as January 13, 2008. Just eleven days later, on November 5, 2007, the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike began. Rather than airing the eight completed episodes, Fox executives immediately postponed the season to ensure that it "can air uninterrupted, in its entirety." Fox scheduling chief, Preston Beckman, admitted "It's not a decision we wanted to make, but it's one based on how we feel the viewers expect us to schedule the show."


title: 24 (season 7)

text: Kiefer Sutherland claims the strike was beneficial to the show: "The time allowed us to do something that has never been done before — create a map of the entire season before we started shooting. So I can tell you without hesitation, I know for a fact, that season 7 is going to be the best season yet." Sutherland reiterated this in an interview with "TV Guide" on August 18, 2008.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: To make up for the lack of any "24" episodes in 2008, Fox aired a two-hour TV movie on Sunday, November 23, 2008, that bridges the gap between seasons 6 and 7.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: The storyline takes place during Inauguration Day for the next U.S. President, Allison Taylor, and is shot partially in South Africa. "[Jack] is a soul in turmoil and has been moving from place to place trying to find somewhere he can be at peace," says co-executive producer, Manny Coto. "But he winds up in Sangala, an imaginary country in Africa in the middle of a military coup." While at Sangala, Bauer is subpoenaed to appear before the Senate hearing, but he doesn't want to go. "Redemption" takes place approximately 42 months after Day 6 and Day 7 takes place 65 days after "Redemption".


title: 24 (season 7)

text: Howard Gordon said that "24" cares about the issue of global warming and takes fighting climate change seriously. Measures were taken during the filming of season 7 to make the show carbon neutral. These measures include increased energy efficiency (hybrid vehicles), burning of cleaner fuels (natural gas, biodiesel), and purchase of renewable energy. Through these efforts, the crew was able to reduce the carbon emissions of the show's production by 43%. The remaining emissions will be eliminated with the purchase of carbon offsets. In addition, a series of PSAs with Kiefer Sutherland and other main cast members were produced to educate the public on what they can do to help with the issue.


title: 24 (season 7)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the season has an approval rating of 76% with an average score of 8.3 out of 10 based on 33 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "New characters and old faces appear as "24" begins to challenge the ethics and morals of its characters."


title: 24 (season 7)

text: Cherry Jones, who played President Allison Taylor, won the Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, becoming the second Emmy Award-winning performer of the show, after Kiefer Sutherland in 2006. IGN's review of Season 7 praises Jon Voight's performance as Jonas Hodges saying "Hodges ends up being more of a Bond villain than a 24 villain – over the top at times, but creative and willing to stop at nothing to execute his plan." The same review disapproves of the season's focus on the politics of torture saying "it was a bit much, putting too much real world politics into what in the past has been great escapist entertainment." On the review aggregator website Metacritic, the seventh season scored 72 out of 100, based on 21 reviews, indicating "Generally favorable reviews" and was considered a huge improvement over the previous season.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: John Fox (born February 8, 1955) is an American football coach and former player who is a senior defensive assistant for the Indianapolis Colts. He was the head coach of the Carolina Panthers (2002–2010), Denver Broncos (2011–2014) and Chicago Bears (2015–2017) of the National Football League (NFL). He coached the Panthers to Super Bowl XXXVIII and the Broncos to Super Bowl XLVIII.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: Fox played football at Castle Park High School in Chula Vista, California under local celebrated coaches Gil Warren and Reldon "Bing" Dawson, and Southwestern College also in Chula Vista from 1974–1975, before going to San Diego State, where he played defensive back with future NFL player and head coach Herman Edwards. Fox received a bachelor's degree in physical education and earned teaching credentials from San Diego State. He then proceeded to the NFL as a free agent and signed a two-year contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. After that contract was over he retired from the NFL.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: Fox was defensive backs coach at U.S. International University. Sid Gillman, past head coach of the San Diego Chargers, was the athletic director at the time. In 1980, Fox was the defensive backs coach for the Boise State University Broncos when they won the NCAA Division I-AA Football Championship. In 1983, Fox was a member of Mike Gottfried's University of Kansas staff, as the secondary coach. Fox followed Gottfried to the University of Pittsburgh when Gottfried became Head Coach at Pitt in 1986. Fox was first the Defensive Backs coach and then was promoted to Defensive Coordinator by Gottfried. While at Pitt, Fox made some contacts with Pittsburgh Steeler coaches and when Gottfried was let go by Pitt, Fox got his first NFL coaching gig with the Steelers.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: Fox began his first professional football coaching stint in the short-lived United States Football League with the Los Angeles Express in 1985.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: He entered the NFL in 1989 as the secondary coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, later also holding this job with the San Diego Chargers. Fox was the defensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Raiders and later that of the New York Giants during Super Bowl XXXV, which they lost.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: On January 25, 2002, Fox was signed as the third head coach of the Carolina Panthers, whose previous coach George Seifert had led the team to a disastrous 1-15 record in 2001, including 15 consecutive losses to end the season. Fox's first regular season game was a 10–7 victory over the Baltimore Ravens which ended the Panthers' 15-game losing streak dating to the previous season. Fox and the Panthers posted a 7–9 record for the 2002 season (his first with the team), demonstrating a drastic improvement over the previous season.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: In the 2003 season Fox led the Panthers to Super Bowl XXXVIII, losing 32–29 to the New England Patriots on a last-second field goal by Adam Vinatieri. Fox joined Vince Lombardi as the only other coach to inherit a team that had won only one game in the season prior, and then take that team to an NFL Championship game. Fox also took the Carolina Panthers to the NFC Championship game in the 2005 season, but they were defeated by the Seattle Seahawks.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: The 2006 season was disappointing for Fox and the Panthers, as a team that had Super Bowl aspirations finished 8-8 and out of the playoffs.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: The 2007 season saw the team finish with a record of 7–9, before finishing with a 12–4 record in the 2008 season, again heading to the playoffs in which they were beaten by the Arizona Cardinals.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: The 2009 season was disappointing to Fox and the Panthers much like 2006. The Panthers finished the season 8-8 and in third place in the NFC South division, missing the playoffs again.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: The 2010 season saw the Panthers finish last in the league, at 2–14. As of this time, Fox was one of only two coaches, and the only one as a head coach, still working on the NFL sidelines that was once a member of former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Chuck Noll's coaching staff, the other being Minnesota Vikings wide receivers coach George Stewart. Tom Moore, currently an offensive consultant for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, is still active in the league but works from home.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: On December 31, 2010, Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson announced that he would not be renewing Fox's contract at the conclusion of the 2010 season.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: On January 13, 2011, Fox was selected to be the 14th head coach of the Denver Broncos. He was signed to a 4-year $14 million deal. He was chosen by the Broncos out of a list of five possible head coach candidates that included Broncos interim head coach and running backs coach Eric Studesville, Atlanta Falcons offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter, Houston Texans offensive coordinator Rick Dennison and New York Giants defensive coordinator Perry Fewell. Fox was chosen based on his previous head coaching experience plus his 20+ years as an NFL coach. At the conclusion of the 2011 season, the Broncos finished tied for 3rd in the NFL in sacks and 1st in rushing offense, again with Fox.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: In April 2012, Fox received a three-year contract extension worth between $5 million and $6 million per year, replacing his contract that expired at the end of the 2014 NFL season.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: In week two of the 2012 season, Fox was fined $30,000 for chiding the replacement officials. The Broncos would go on to win their last 11 games after a 2–3 start. In week 17 of the 2012 season, Fox won his 100th career game as an NFL head coach, including the playoffs, beating the Kansas City Chiefs 38–3. However, the Broncos were upset in the divisional playoffs to the Baltimore Ravens, in double-overtime.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: Owing to a cardiac-related issue, starting with week 10 of 2013, Fox was replaced by Broncos defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio as Fox underwent an aortic valve replacement. Fox, while playing golf in North Carolina near his offseason home in Charlotte during the Broncos bye week, reported feeling dizzy and was taken for examination to the hospital, where doctors told him not to put off valve replacement surgery any longer; he had done so earlier in the year to continue coaching this season. On November 4, Fox temporarily relinquished his head coaching duties, and Del Rio was named interim head coach for the remainder of the 2013 season regular season. Fox then underwent successful aortic valve replacement surgery.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: In the 2013 NFL season, quarterback Peyton Manning threw for 5,477 yards and 55 touchdowns, both records, and the offense combined for 7,317 yards, also a record. Fox coached the Broncos to Super Bowl XLVIII, where they played the NFC champion Seattle Seahawks. He is one of four head coaches to win both an NFC and an AFC championship game along with Bill Parcells, Dan Reeves, and Andy Reid, and one of seven coaches to reach the Super Bowl with multiple teams. On February 2, 2014, the Broncos lost to the Seahawks 43–8.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: Fox coached the Broncos to another strong season in 2014; the Broncos finished the regular season 12–4. They earned the AFC's number 2 seed and a first-round playoff bye. Hosting Peyton Manning's former team, the Indianapolis Colts at home in the Divisional Round, the Broncos were upset 24–13 and were eliminated from the playoffs.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: On January 12, 2015, the day after Denver lost in the Divisional Round of the playoffs, Fox and the Broncos mutually agreed to part ways. Fox left the Broncos with the highest regular season win percentage in team history. However, general manager John Elway felt the Broncos hadn't shown enough fight at critical times in the playoffs.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: Fox is only the second head coach in NFL history to win four straight division titles since joining a new team; He is also the only head coach in Broncos history to have never missed the playoffs in their tenure.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: On January 16, 2015, Fox accepted a four-year deal to become head coach of the Chicago Bears. Fox led the Bears to a 6–10 record in his first season, only the second time in his career where he had double-digit losses. In the third game of the season, a 26-0 road loss against the Seattle Seahawks, the Bears punted on all of its ten possessions, the only time a team has punted on all of its possessions at least since 1980.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: Fox finished his second season with the Bears with a 3–13 record, tied for the worst record for the Bears since the NFL changed to a 16-game season, as well as the first consecutive losing season in Fox's head coaching career.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: After a 1–3 start in 2017, Fox benched quarterback Mike Glennon in favor of rookie Mitchell Trubisky in Week 5. With Trubisky, the Bears finished the season 5–11, and Fox was fired at the season's end on January 1, 2018. His overall record with the Bears was 14–34, the second-lowest win percentage in franchise history, as the team failed to record a winning streak longer than two games and finished last in the NFC North in all three seasons.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: On March 27, 2022, it was announced that Fox was hired by the Indianapolis Colts to be their senior defensive assistant under head coach Frank Reich. This is Fox's first coaching position after a 5-year hiatus and his first as an assistant coach in 21 years.


title: John Fox (American football)

text: Fox was born in Virginia Beach, Virginia and raised in San Diego, California after moving there at age 15. His step-father, Ron, was a US Navy SEAL. Fox and his wife, Robin, have four children. Known to his friends as "Foxy", he is an active community leader in the Carolinas. He and his wife co-chair the annual Angels & Stars Gala, which benefits St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.


title: Asparagales

text: Asparagales (asparagoid lilies) is an order of plants in modern classification systems such as the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG) and the Angiosperm Phylogeny Web. The order takes its name from the type family Asparagaceae and is placed in the monocots amongst the lilioid monocots. The order has only recently been recognized in classification systems. It was first put forward by Huber in 1977 and later taken up in the Dahlgren system of 1985 and then the APG in 1998, 2003 and 2009. Before this, many of its families were assigned to the old order Liliales, a very large order containing almost all monocots with colorful tepals and lacking starch in their endosperm. DNA sequence analysis indicated that many of the taxa previously included in Liliales should actually be redistributed over three orders, Liliales, Asparagales, and Dioscoreales. The boundaries of the Asparagales and of its families have undergone a series of changes in recent years; future research may lead to further changes and ultimately greater stability. In the APG circumscription, Asparagales is the largest order of monocots with 14 families, 1,122 genera, and about 36,000 species.


title: Asparagales

text: The order is clearly circumscribed on the basis of molecular phylogenetics, but it is difficult to define morphologically since its members are structurally diverse. Most species of Asparagales are herbaceous perennials, although some are climbers and some are tree-like. The order also contains many geophytes (bulbs, corms, and various kinds of tuber). According to telomere sequence, at least two evolutionary switch-points happened within the order. The basal sequence is formed by TTTAGGG like in the majority of higher plants. Basal motif was changed to vertebrate-like TTAGGG and finally, the most divergent motif CTCGGTTATGGG appears in "Allium". One of the defining characteristics (synapomorphies) of the order is the presence of phytomelanin, a black pigment present in the seed coat, creating a dark crust. Phytomelanin is found in most families of the Asparagales (although not in Orchidaceae, thought to be the sister-group of the rest of the order).


title: Asparagales

text: The leaves of almost all species form a tight rosette, either at the base of the plant or at the end of the stem, but occasionally along the stem. The flowers are not particularly distinctive, being 'lily type', with six tepals and up to six stamina.


title: Asparagales

text: The order is thought to have first diverged from other related monocots some 120–130 million years ago (early in the Cretaceous period), although given the difficulty in classifying the families involved, estimates are likely to be uncertain.


title: Asparagales

text: From an economic point of view, the order Asparagales is second in importance within the monocots only to the order Poales (which includes grasses and cereals). Species are used as food and flavourings (e.g. onion, garlic, leek, asparagus, vanilla, saffron), in medicinal or cosmetic applications ("Aloe"), as cut flowers (e.g. freesia, gladiolus, iris, orchids), and as garden ornamentals (e.g. day lilies, lily of the valley, "Agapanthus").


title: Asparagales

text: Although most species in the order are herbaceous, some no more than 15 cm high, there are a number of climbers ("e.g.", some species of "Asparagus"), as well as several genera forming trees (e.g. "Agave", "Cordyline", "Yucca", "Dracaena", "Aloe" ), which can exceed 10 m in height. Succulent genera occur in several families (e.g. "Aloe").


title: Asparagales

text: Almost all species have a tight cluster of leaves (a rosette), either at the base of the plant or at the end of a more-or-less woody stem as with "Yucca". In some cases, the leaves are produced along the stem. The flowers are in the main not particularly distinctive, being of a general 'lily type', with six tepals, either free or fused from the base and up to six stamina. They are frequently clustered at the end of the plant stem.


title: Asparagales

text: The Asparagales are generally distinguished from the Liliales by the lack of markings on the tepals, the presence of septal nectaries in the ovaries, rather than the bases of the tepals or stamen filaments, and the presence of secondary growth. They are generally geophytes, but with linear leaves, and a lack of fine reticular venation.


title: Asparagales

text: The seeds characteristically have the external epidermis either obliterated (in most species bearing fleshy fruit), or if present, have a layer of black carbonaceous phytomelanin in species with dry fruits (nuts). The inner part of the seed coat is generally collapsed, in contrast to Liliales whose seeds have a well developed outer epidermis, lack phytomelanin, and usually display a cellular inner layer.


title: Asparagales

text: The orders which have been separated from the old Liliales are difficult to characterize. No single morphological character appears to be diagnostic of the order Asparagales.


title: Asparagales

text: As circumscribed within the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group system Asparagales is the largest order within the monocotyledons, with 14 families, 1,122 genera and about 25,000–42,000 species, thus accounting for about 50% of all monocots and 10–15% of the flowering plants (angiosperms). The attribution of botanical authority for the name Asparagales belongs to Johann Heinrich Friedrich Link (1767–1851) who coined the word 'Asparaginae' in 1829 for a higher order taxon that included "Asparagus" although Adanson and Jussieau had also done so earlier (see History). Earlier circumscriptions of Asparagales attributed the name to Bromhead (1838), who had been the first to use the term 'Asparagales'.


title: Asparagales

text: The type genus, "Asparagus", from which the name of the order is derived, was described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753, with ten species. He placed "Asparagus" within the "Hexandria Monogynia" (six stamens, one carpel) in his sexual classification in the "Species Plantarum". The majority of taxa now considered to constitute Asparagales have historically been placed within the very large and diverse family, Liliaceae. The family Liliaceae was first described by Michel Adanson in 1763, and in his taxonomic scheme he created eight sections within it, including the Asparagi with "Asparagus" and three other genera. The system of organising genera into families is generally credited to Antoine Laurent de Jussieu who formally described both the Liliaceae and the type family of Asparagales, the Asparagaceae, as Lilia and Asparagi, respectively, in 1789. Jussieu established the hierarchical system of taxonomy (phylogeny), placing "Asparagus" and related genera within a division of Monocotyledons, a class (III) of "Stamina Perigynia" and 'order' Asparagi, divided into three subfamilies. The use of the term "Ordo" (order) at that time was closer to what we now understand as Family, rather than Order. In creating his scheme he used a modified form of Linnaeus' sexual classification but using the respective topography of stamens to carpels rather than just their numbers. While De Jussieu's "Stamina Perigynia" also included a number of 'orders' that would eventually form families within the Asparagales such as the Asphodeli (Asphodelaceae), Narcissi (Amaryllidaceae) and Irides (Iridaceae), the remainder are now allocated to other orders. Jussieu's Asparagi soon came to be referred to as "Asparagacées" in the French literature (Latin: Asparagaceae). Meanwhile, the 'Narcissi' had been renamed as the 'Amaryllidées' (Amaryllideae) in 1805, by Jean Henri Jaume Saint-Hilaire, using "Amaryllis" as the type species rather than "Narcissus", and thus has the authority attribution for Amaryllidaceae. In 1810, Brown proposed that a subgroup of Liliaceae be distinguished on the basis of the position of the ovaries and be referred to as Amaryllideae and in 1813 de Candolle described Liliacées Juss. and Amaryllidées Brown as two quite separate families.


title: Asparagales

text: The literature on the organisation of genera into families and higher ranks became available in the English language with Samuel Frederick Gray's "A natural arrangement of British plants" (1821). Gray used a combination of Linnaeus' sexual classification and Jussieu's natural classification to group together a number of families having in common six equal stamens, a single style and a perianth that was simple and petaloid, but did not use formal names for these higher ranks. Within the grouping he separated families by the characteristics of their fruit and seed. He treated groups of genera with these characteristics as separate families, such as Amaryllideae, Liliaceae, Asphodeleae and Asparageae.