The more we learn, the more it appears that the obvious is in fact, the truth: that there was a widespread, intense White House effort to discredit former Ambassador Joe Wilson in the months immediately following the Iraq invasion, as the rationale for the war began to fall apart. The effort was centered in the White House, and it involved "multiple officials," the Pat Fitgerald grand jury has apparently learned, and at the head of that conspiracy, according to Scooter Libby's testimony, were the tacit and/or overt directions, approvals and highly irregular "strategic declassification" of documents to make Wilson look like a liar, and make the case for war look stronger.
Before Libby was indicted, the president, either personally or through his spokesman Scott McClellan repeatedly asserted -- eight times in the public record in fact -- that he didn't know who the Plame leaker was and denied any prior knowledge of it.
Now we know that Bush not only knew, he authorized the leak of the underlying classified information (cherrypicked from a National Intelligence Estimate) that set the Plame leak in motion. He may not have directed Scooter (or Karl Rove or Stephen Hadley) to leak Ms. Plame's identity specifically, but Cheney fingers him as having given the veep the blanket authority to get information out that would discredit Wilson's claims -- and we also now know that Dick Cheney not only discussed Ms. Plame's identity with Scooter Libby, contrary to his denials of ever even knowing who Wilson or whis wife were, he was at the head of the cattle drive to take Wilson down.
We also can surmise, though it's not definitive, that Hadley, the then deputy national secrity advisor, was the source for another leak recipient, Bob Woodward of the Washington Post. (Scoter's assignment was to leak to Judy Miller).
What does this look like? Rather like a conspiracy, inside the White House, to undermine a war critic and cement what the White House knew to be a shaky case for war. Apparently Bush knew that more than just 16 words of his SOTU speech were bogus, even before the invasion. But to keep that knowledge from getting out, and from impacting Bush's reelection prospects (they must have known he was under no impeachment threat, given the largely servile Republican Congress,) the White House Iraq Group pulled out all the stops to take down Joe Wilson, and his wife's classified identity became the first casualty of that war.
Now, the only question remains is, what does that mean for the president and vice president, legally and Constitutionally...
BTW, I would think Murray Waas should be credited with getting ahead of this story some 42 days ago when he reported that Bush authorized the leak of classified information to Woodward for the WaPo reporter's book, "Bush at War."
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Tags: Plamegate, Karl Rove, Valerie Plame, Politics, Libby, Bush, Cheney, Rove, Stephen Hadley, Patrick Fitzgerald, Fitzmas, Scooter Libby |
