News broke yesterday that more than 40 Democratic congressmen wrote to prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, asking him to widen the probe in the CIA leak case to include whether senior Bush administration officials -- including possibly the president himself -- violated the law by submitting false information to Congress to persuade the body to authorize the invasion of Iraq. Here's the original letter which was actually sent back in September, spearheaded by NY Congressman Maurice Hinchey. (Hinchey was on MSNBC last night discussing the moves, which he conceded he doesn't believe will come to fruition).
Still, there are reasons to think Fitzgerald might have "lying to Congress" in mind -- particularly the news from the Italian press that the forged document accusing Saddam Hussein of trying to acquire yellow cake uranium from Niger may have been brought into the White House by none other than Stephen Hadley -- the sitting National Security Advisor and then aide to Condoleezza Rice. Clearly, the goal of the Veep's office in smearing Wilson and attempting to tie his Niger trip to nepotism was to defuse what could have been an explosive storyline: that Dick Cheney, Condi Rice and even the president, knowingly presented a false case to Congress and to the American people that Iraq posed a potential nuclear threat to the United States. Without the nuclear piece, it's arguable that the Congress would not have so easily backed broad war-making powers for the president vs. Iraq. And it is increasingly clear that Plamegate came about as a result of an White House effort to discredit the Iraq naysayers in the CIA.
On the rumor front, the Washington Note is reporting that Fitzgerald may be digging in for the long haul -- having leased office space in D.C. Last night on "The Situation," Tucker Carlson speculated that the door to door interviews with the Wilson's neighbors smells more like prep for a trial than a grand jury mop-up... The Note's Steve Clemons (who's recuperating from a car accident) also offers the juicy gossip that WH emissaries approached John McCain to possibly step into the veep spot if Cheney is forced to step down "for health reasons" (meaning, because of Plamegate,) and that McCain's answer was a definitive "no." This is a follow-up to an Oct 25 post that delved more deeply into the McCainations and even predicted a Miers deep-sixing...) McCain sure likes to say "No" to entreaties to join any team. He's clearly not a joiner. Perhaps his ego just won't let him accept being number two ... or maybe he's not interested in going down with this particular ship, even if it could theoretically help him in 2008.
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Tags; CIA leak, Plame, Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson , Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, White House, PlameGate, Iraq, Middle East, War, Terrorism, Foreign Policy, politics, John McCain |
