|
For those who want the straight reporting, by the journalist credited
with doing the best work. Although Bush and Cheney’s direct involvement were known earlier, it
was underreported in the MSM. This
link refers to an Oct. 2005 reference. http://www.thinkprogress.org/2005/10/02/bush-directly-involved/ See the links to previous reporting from National Journal on this
topic, below. kwc Cheney Authorized Leak Of CIA Report, Libby Says By Murray Waas, National Journal, Friday,
April 14, 2006 Vice President Dick Cheney directed his then-chief of
staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby,
on July 12, 2003 to leak to the media portions of a then-highly classified CIA
report that Cheney hoped would undermine the credibility of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, a critic of the Bush
administration's Iraq policy, according to Libby's grand jury testimony in the
CIA leak case and sources who have read the classified report. The March 2002
intelligence report was a debriefing of Wilson by the CIA's Directorate of
Operations after Wilson returned from a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger to
investigate claims, later proved to be unfounded, that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure
uranium from the African nation, according to government records. The debriefing report
made no mention of Wilson's wife, Valerie
Plame, then a covert CIA officer, or any role she may have played in
her husband's selection by the CIA to go to Niger, according to two people who
have read the report. The previously
unreported grand jury testimony is significant because only hours after Cheney
reportedly instructed Libby to disclose information from the CIA report, Libby
divulged to then-New York Times
reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper that Plame was a CIA
officer, and that she been involved in selecting her husband for the Niger
mission. Both Libby and Cheney
have repeatedly insisted that the vice president never encouraged, directed, or
authorized Libby to disclose Plame's identity. In a court filing on April 12,
Libby's attorneys reiterated: "Consistent with his grand jury testimony,
Mr. Libby does not contend that he was instructed to make any disclosures
concerning Ms. Wilson [Plame] by President
Bush, Vice President Cheney, or anyone else." But the disclosure
that Cheney instructed Libby to leak portions of a classified CIA report on
Joseph Wilson adds to a growing body of information showing that at the time
Plame was outed as a covert CIA officer the vice president was deeply involved
in the White House effort to undermine her husband. A spokesman for the
vice president declined to comment. On April 5, the
special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, Patrick
J. Fitzgerald, asserted in a court filing that Joseph Wilson's July 6, 2003 op-ed piece in
The New York Times criticizing
the Bush administration's Iraq policies "was viewed in the office of Vice
President as a direct attack on the credibility of the Vice President (and the
President) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in
Iraq." Moreover, on July 12,
2003, the same day that Libby spoke to both Cooper and Miller, Libby and Cheney
traveled aboard Air Force Two for the dedication of a new aircraft carrier in
Norfolk, Va. During the flight either to or from Norfolk, Cheney, Libby, and Cathie Martin, then-assistant to the vice
president for public affairs, discussed how they might rebut Wilson's charges
and discredit him, according to federal court records, and interviews with
people with first-hand knowledge of accounts that all three provided to federal
investigators. It has long been known
that Cheney was among the first people in the government to tell Libby that
Plame worked for the CIA. The federal indictment of Libby -- who has been
charged with five counts of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false
statements to federal investigators in the CIA leak case -- states: "On or
about June 12, 2003, Libby was advised by the Vice President of the United
States that Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the
Counterproliferation Division. Libby understood that the Vice President had
learned this information from the CIA." Fitzgerald asserted
that just days before Libby divulged Plame's identity to Miller and Cooper on
July 12, "Vice President Cheney, [Libby's] immediate superior, expressed
concerns to [Libby] regarding whether Mr. Wilson's trip was legitimate or
whether it was a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife." Although contained
in a public court filing, this second conversation between Cheney and Libby had
gone unreported. The new disclosure
about the CIA report further raises questions about the vice president's role
in directly authorizing the leak of classified information outside the formal
declassification process. Last week it was reported that Libby also testified
to the grand jury that Cheney told him that as part of the effort to rebut
Wilson's criticism, President Bush had authorized the leaking of portions of a
then-classified National Intelligence Estimate concerning purported attempts by
Iraq to develop nuclear weapons. The Bush
administration has asserted that presidents have the constitutional right to
declassify information. Although vice presidents haven't shared such authority,
President Bush issued an executive order in March 2003 allowing Cheney to share
such authority with him. According to Fitzgerald's April 5 filing, Libby has
also testified that in July 2003, then-Counsel to the Vice President David
Addington "opined that Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a
document amount to a declassification of the document." Jeffrey
Smith,
a former general counsel for the CIA, said in an interview, however, that while
there are executive orders that apparently allow the vice president "on
his own to determine what to declassify and to whom," that authority
should "not exempt him or anyone from exercising prudence or good
judgment" in doing so. "You would want the president or the vice
president to seek the views of the CIA or any other intelligence agencies... to
make sure that there is no potential disclosing an intelligence source" or
some other sensitive information. Criticizing the
decision to leak portions of the NIE, Rep. Jane
Harman, D-Calif., the ranking member on the House Intelligence
Committee, said last week: "Leaking classified information to the press when
you want to get your side out or silence your critics is not appropriate. If I
had leaked the information, I'd be in jail. Why should the president be above
the law? I am stunned." In his grand jury
testimony, according to Fitzgerald's filing, Libby portrayed himself as a
reluctant subordinate in July 2003 who took orders from higher ups. Libby
"testified that he at first advised the Vice President that he could not
have this conversation with [Judith] Miller because of the classified nature of
the NIE," said the special counsel's filing. "[Libby] testified that
the Vice President later advised him that the President had authorized [Libby]
to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE." It was during this time
that Libby says he spoke to Addington on the matter. Steve
Aftergood,
a senior research analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, who
tracks government secrecy and classification issues, said that Libby
"presents himself in this instance and others as being very scrupulous in
adhering to the rules. He is not someone carried on by the rush of events. If
you take his account before the grand jury on face value, he is cautious and
deliberative in his behavior. "That is almost
the exact opposite as to how he behaves when it comes to disclosing Plame's
identity," Aftergood said. "All of a sudden he doesn't play within
the rules. He doesn't seek authorization. If you believe his account, he almost
acts capriciously. You have to ask yourself why his behavior changes so
dramatically, if he is telling the truth that this was not authorized and that
he did not talk to higher-ups." Libby has insisted
that the vice president never authorized or told him to discuss Plame's
identity. Although Libby discussed Plame with Miller and Cooper on July 12, 2003
-- the same day he says he was authorized by Cheney to leak portions of the NIE
and the CIA report -- Libby insists the two actions are unrelated. The new disclosure
also raises the question whether President Bush or his aides knew that Cheney
may have been deciding on his own to authorize the leaking of classified
information. Senior government officials said that top Bush aides -- including
then-deputy National Security Adviser Stephen
J. Hadley and White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett -- were not aware that Cheney
had authorized the disclosure of the CIA report on Wilson's Niger mission.
These officials raised the possibility that Bush himself was unaware at the
time of Cheney's action. Regarding the release
of Plame's name and CIA employment, a senior administration official said that
even if Cheney did not directly authorize Libby to leak the information to the
press, the vice president might have set a climate in which his aides viewed it
as routine to release classified information whenever it served their purposes.
The administration was
interested in discrediting Wilson because the former ambassador asserted in his
op-ed piece that he found no evidence in Niger to substantiate Bush
administration claims that Saddam had attempted to purchase uranium from that
country. Wilson alleged that the administration had misrepresented intelligence
by making that claim in its case to go to war with Iraq. Six days after the Times published Wilson's piece, Libby
leaked Plame's identity to Miller and Cooper. Cheney and other Bush
administration officials also believed that the CIA debriefing report might
undermine Wilson's claims because it showed that Wilson's Niger probe was
inconclusive on the uranium questions. Wilson was restricted on the persons he
was able to interview in Niger, and he was denied some intelligence information
before undertaking the trip. In reportedly
directing Libby to disclose portions of the March 2002 CIA report on Wilson's
mission, Cheney apparently kept in the dark a number of administration
officials who were working to declassify that very same document. According to
Fitzgerald's recent filing, Libby "testified that on July 12, 2003, he was
specifically directed by the Vice President to speak to the press in the place of
Cathie Martin (then the communications person for the Vice President) regarding
the NIE and Wilson. [Libby] was instructed... to [also] provide information
contained in a document [he] understood to be the cable authored by Mr. Wilson.
During the conversations that followed on July 12 [Libby] discussed Ms.
Wilson's [CIA] employment with both Matthew Cooper (for the first time) and
Judith Miller (for the third time)." The purported Wilson
cable refers to the classified CIA debriefing of Wilson, according to sources
who have read the document. Wilson never himself authored a cable on his Niger
mission. Rather, the CIA Directorate of Operations, which sent Wilson to Niger
in February 2002, produced a March 8, 2002 report based on Wilson's debriefing
by intelligence officers. The report did not name Wilson, or even describe him
as a former ambassador, but rather as a "contact with excellent access who
does not have an established reporting record" to protect the-then covert
nature of the trip. The report was then
"widely distributed in routine channels," according to a 2004 Senate
Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's prewar intelligence on Iraq. It is
unclear whether Cheney or his office received the report at the time it was
distributed, or sometime later. But two government
officials with first-hand knowledge of events said during the summer of 2003,
Libby and other White House officials sought any reports and other classified information
regarding Wilson's Niger trip, and it was provided at that time. A relatively small
amount of information derived from the March 2002 report was revealed on July
11, 2003, when then-CIA Director George Tenet
released a statement regarding Wilson's trip to Niger in which he disclosed
some aspects of the debriefing described in the document. But other portions
remained highly classified at the time that Cheney directed Libby to leak
portions of the report, two senior government officials said in interviews.
These officials say the White House abandoned its attempt to declassify all or
part of the March 2002 report when Tenet released his statement. The federal indictment
of Libby states: "On or about June 9, 2003, a number of classified
documents were faxed to the Office of the Vice President to the personal
attention of Libby and another person in the Office of the Vice President. The
faxed documents, which were marked as classified, discussed, among other
things, Wilson and his trip to Niger, but did not mention Wilson by name. After
receiving these documents, Libby and one or more persons in the Office of the
Vice President handwrote the names 'Wilson' and 'Joe Wilson' on the
documents." It is unclear if one
of the documents in question, or the one with Wilson's name handwritten on it
by someone in the Vice President's office, was the March 2002 CIA report, but
the fact that it did not mention Wilson by name suggests that it possibly was
indeed the one with the handwriting. Cheney, Libby, and others
wanted to leak and declassify portions of the report because they believed that
it would undercut the perception that Wilson's mission had disproved the
allegations definitively that Iraq had attempted to procure uranium from Niger,
two senior government officials said in interviews. Among other things,
Wilson had agreed only to interview former Nigerien officials, instead of
current ones, so as not to step on the toes of the State Department or its
then-ambassador to Niger, and he was disadvantaged in his inquiries, the two
senior government officials said. In an interview,
Wilson said it was unnecessary to interview current Nigerien officials because
the then-U.S. ambassador was conducting her own inquiry, and a decision was
made for him to speak to former Nigerien officials while the ambassador made
her inquiries of the current government. "When I arrived
in Niger, I spoke to the ambassador who thought that she had already debunked
the allegations with current Niger officials," Wilson said. "We agreed
then that I would speak to former government officials, who I knew better than
she did because I worked with them while I was on the NSC staff at the White
House, and thereafter. So that was the division of labor." Wilson also said that
the ambassador told her that a "four-star Marine general had also already
talked to current officials, and that he too had concluded and reported that he
believed there was nothing to the allegations." -- National Journal correspondent Shane Harris
also contributed to this report. http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0414nj3.htm Recent
Coverage From National Journal... · Libby
Says Bush Authorized Leaks (04/06/2006) · Insulating
Bush (03/30/2006) · What
Bush Was Told About Iraq (03/02/2006) · Cheney
'Authorized' Libby to Leak Classified Information (02/09/2006) · Iraq,
Niger, And The CIA (02/02/2006) · Why
Novak Called Rove (12/16/2005) · Key
Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel (11/22/2005) · Senate
Ethics Committee Clears Shelby (11/13/2005) · Libby
Testimony Is Key To Rove Inquiry (11/12/2005) · Addington's
New Role Draws Fresh Attention (10/30/2005) · Cheney,
Libby Blocked Papers To Key Panel (10/27/2005) · Secret
Service Records Prompted Key Miller Testimony (10/20/2005) · CIA
Leak Prosecutor Focuses On Libby (10/18/2005) · Libby
Did Not Tell Grand Jury About Key Conversation (10/11/2005) · Rove
Assured Bush He Was Not Leaker (10/7/2005) |
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
