Cheney finally connected to Plame Leak?

A rather off-the-beaten-path web paper has just released a report that claims several former and current Administration Officials have now come forward to state that the outing of Valerie Plame's identity was part of a coordinated effort by Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Stephan Hadley to discredit Joseph Wilson and his OP-ed on Niger.

Update: Truthout.org also has had the story posted as of Feb 9th, apparently this is the original source. Details over the flip.

As Reported.

Vice President Dick Cheney and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley led a campaign beginning in March 2003 to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson for publicly criticizing the Bush administration's intelligence on Iraq, according to current and former administration officials.

The officials work or had worked in the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council in a senior capacity and had direct knowledge of the Vice President's campaign to discredit Wilson.

These officials have apparently testified before they Grand Jury already, but another issue which comes to mind is - did these person reveal this information to the Grand Jury and FBI? If so, then Fitz has a great deal more information at his fingertips than he's let on -- if not, they may be subject to the same charges as Libby.

The officials said they decided to speak out now because they have become disillusioned with the Bush administration's policies regarding Iraq and the flawed intelligence that led to the war.

Now, they've become disillusioned?

They said their roles, along with several others at the CIA and State Department, included digging up or "inventing" embarrassing information on the former Ambassador that could be used against him, preparing memos and classified material on Wilson for Cheney and the National Security Council, and attending meetings in Cheney's office to discuss with Cheney, Hadley, and others the efforts that would be taken to discredit Wilson.

A former CIA official who has worked in the counter-proliferation division, and is familiar with the undercover work Wilson's wife did for the agency, said Cheney and Hadley visited CIA headquarters a day or two after Joseph Wilson was interviewed on CNN.

I wasn't able to locate this interview which the article indicates took place on March 2, 2003, but I did find one that took place on July 8th, 2003 with CNN's Bill Hemmer. Wilson's New York Times Op-Ed describing what he hadn't found in Niger had been been published the previous day.

These were the first public comments Wilson had made about Iraq. He said the administration was more interested in redrawing the map of the Middle East to pursue its own foreign policy objectives than in dealing with the so-called terrorist threat.

The indication that Wilson had spoken to CNN before the start of the War is relatively new to me. But this story indicates that this was when Wilson first came only Cheney and Hadley's radar. This became a bit more heated when Wilson begin to leak information to reporters in May as Wilson discussed his trip with Nicholas Kristoff of the New York times which eventually lead to a column.

Wilson said he believed the administration had ignored his report and were dishonest with Congress and the American people.

After the Kristoff column:

What in the previous months had been a request to gather information that could be used to discredit Wilson now turned into a full-scale effort involving the Office of the Vice President, the National Security Council, and the State Department to find out how Wilson came to be chosen to investigate the Niger uranium allegations.

The report indicates that Cheney and Libby made it clear Wilson had to be "shut down".

Cheney was personally involved in this aspect of the information gathering process as well, visiting CIA headquarters to inquire about Wilson, the CIA official said. Hadley had also raised questions about Wilson during this month with the State Department officials and asked that information regarding Wilson's trip to Niger be sent to his attention at the National Security Council.

That's when Valerie Plame Wilson's name popped up showing that she was a covert CIA operative. The former CIA official who works in the counter-proliferation division said another meeting about Wilson took place in Cheney's office, attended by the same individuals who were there in March. But Cheney didn't take part in it, the officials said.

Libby himself was deeply involved in the effort to discredit Wilson, but exactly who made the decision to reveal Valerie Wilson's identity was not known by the sources.

One key factor mentioned in the reports is that Cheney, Hadley and Libby were aware that Plame was a Covert Agent, which would put them in violation of the Intelligence Agent Identities Act when they revealed her CIA connections to reporters.

As far as I recall the indication that Valerie Plame was connected to sending Joseph Wilson to Niger was originally planted (although the CIA has vigorously denied that Plame "sent" Wilson to Niger) in a Classified INR Memo on June 10th. This would be a month after the Kristoff column - this Memo essentially seeded the ground for the disinformation campaign to come once Wilson went fully public in July.

Libby's claims that his "superiors" (Cheney and Hadley?) had requested him to release classified information to discredit Wilson including, but not limited to, the NIE of Iraq WMD programs and the revelation by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that White House emails (which might either confirm or refute Libby's story) have disappeared, is very interesting.

Some of the claims made here are quite damning, but also need to be seriously questioned and verified. It's almost too good to be true for Bush-bashers -- could it be like the (possibly) forged National Guard documents, giving the Blue-Staters exactly what they've been salivating for just before yanking the rug out?

The fact that this report comes from Jason Leopold who has frequently written for Truthout.org lends it a considerable level of credibility to me.

We'll just have to see, won't we?

Vyan