Crossposted on Dailykos.
Scotter Libby's recent anouncement that he was given authority by the Vice-President to release classified information has created an avalanche of information in the last few days.
During his
interview yesterday Vice-President Cheney has essentially confirmed that he was granted the authority to declassify information via
Executive Order. What truly interesting is the timing of all this.
On March 2,2003 Joseph Wilson was interviewed by CNN. and criticized the Bush Administration.
WILSON: The problem is, it seems to me, is this is not a disarmament exercise any longer. The president made it very clear in his speech at the American Enterprise Institute and his comments at the White House that this is a regime-change activity. This is a war to go in, invade, conquer and occupy Iraq, and it doesn't make any difference what Saddam Hussein does. ...
WILSON: Well, the underlying objective, as I see it, the more I look at this, is less and less disarmament, and it really has little to do with terrorism, because everybody knows that a war to invade and conquer and occupy Iraq is going to spawn a new generation of terrorists.
So you look at what's underpinning this, and you go back and you take a look at who's been influencing the process. And it's been those who really believe that our objective must be far grander, and that is to redraw the political map of the Middle East...
...
The question is, can you really bring democracy at the point of a bayonet or at the point of a gun? And is it really America's military's responsibility to go in and occupy a country for 10 years, in the hopes that you're going to create a democracy, which probably will not be any more pro-American than what you've got in the region?
This interview apparently also featured David Albright who argument that the inspectors
needed more time angered the Vice-President so much that the very next day he visited the CIA with NSA director Stephen Hadley to "dig up information on Albright".
Wilson went on CNN a second time on March 8, where he discussed assertions made by Dr. El Baradea of the IAEA that claims made by Colin Powell about Iraq's WMD and Nuclear capability were faked.
WILSON: Well, you know what it's like when you go into court. A prosecutor comes up with some evidence that is obviously false, it casts doubt on every other bit of evidence that he produces. And I think it's safe to say that the U.S. government should have or did know that this report was a fake before Dr. ElBaradei mentioned it in his report at the U.N. yesterday.
According to
Jason Leopold these comments brought a strong reaction from Cheney.
The CIA and State Department officials said that a day after Wilson's March 8, 2003, CNN appearance, they attended a meeting at the Vice President's office chaired by Cheney, and it was there that a decision was made to discredit Wilson. Those who attended the meeting included I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff who was indicted in October for lying to investigators, perjury and obstruction of justice related to his role in the Plame Wilson leak, Hadley, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and John Hannah, Cheney's deputy national security adviser, the officials said. "The way I remember it," the CIA official said about that first meeting he attended in Cheney's office, "is that the vice president was obsessed with Wilson. He called him an 'asshole,' a son-of-a-bitch. He took his comments very personally. He wanted us to do everything in our power to destroy his reputation and he wanted to be kept up to date about the progress."
It's at this point that the digging operations begins into Wilson's background and in all likelyhood the employment of his wife was discovered.
Cheney knew the State Department had prepared a report saying the Niger claims were false, but he thought the report had no merit, the two State Department officials said. Meanwhile, the CIA was preparing information for the vice president and his senior aides on Wilson should the former ambassador decide to speak out against the administration again.
On March 19th, the Iraq War Began.
On March 25th, the executive order granting the Vice-President nearly co-equal powers to the President to classify and declassify information was signed. This document would allow the Vice-President legal cover to release any information which he may have discovered regarding Wilson or others who opposed their view of Iraq and the War.
Wilson began attempting to contact members of Congress behind the scenes concerning the lack of Iraq Nuclear intentions, meanwhile the weapons of mass destruction remained elusive. In May, Wilson went to the Press and began talking to Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times about his trip to Niger, which resulted in a scathing column criticizing the Vice-President.
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. "Cheney and Libby made it clear that Wilson had to be shut down," the CIA official said. "This wasn't just about protecting the credibility of the White House. For the vice president, going after Wilson was purely personal, in my opinion."
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.
It was at this point that Cheney himself appeared to take a back seat.
"Libby led the meeting," one of the State Department officials said. "But he was just as upset about Wilson as Cheney was." The officials said that as of late May 2003 the only correspondence they had had was with Libby and Hadley. They said they were unaware who had made the decision to unmask Plame Wilson's undercover CIA status to a handful of reporters.
On June 10th, a memo was attached to CIA document regarding Wilson's Niger trip which (incorrectly) indicated that his wife, a CIA employee,
had sent him. The source of this memo was someone within the State Department. Apparently the plot at this time was to create a "false fact" within the intelligence data, then to let that information leak out in various ways so that it's original source couldn't be traced - and with the Vice-President's Office now having the "cover" of being able to declassify such information at will.
By June 23rd, after two more articles on Wilson's Niger trip had appeared, Libby spoke to Judith Miller of the New York Times and informed her that "Wilson's Wife might work for the CIA." which laid the groundwork for the leak to begin and it's origin to be hidden.
On July 6th Wilson's Op-ed "What I didn't find in Africa" was released by the New York Times, but by that point in time the efforts to undermine Wilson were well underway according to Patrick Fitzgerald.
The next day, July 7th, Libby discussed with the White House Press Secretary that "Wilson's Wife worked for the CIA" creating another potential leak source. He spoke again with Judith Miller on July 8th, and with Tim Russert on July 10th (although Wilson's wife was not discussed with Russert).
By now Robert Novak through other reporters and officials to whom the rumor had been spread (by Libby) learned of the connection between Plame and the CIA and had contacted "Official A" (who is generally known to be Karl Rove) indicating that he intended to write an article on the subject, even though the CIA had warned him not too.
On July 14th, Novak's column on Wilson was published - this was the first public revelation of Plame's status as a CIA employee. This exposed not only her, but the CIA anti-proliferation front organization Brewster Jennings & Associates.
We now know due to Newsweek that Valerie Plame WIson was an undercover CIA operative, a NOC. And that her work with in trying to prevent Iran from creating a Nuclear Weapon. As far as I'm concerned Scooter Libby, at the Vice-President's urging has commited Treason and Sedition.
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States. If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
The Vice-President, with the tacit aid of the President in giving him declassification authority, attempted to discredit a critic of claims that Iraq was attempting to gain nuclear materials - a claims which was completely correct according to the Dulfer Report - and in the process may have done significant harm to our own efforts to curtail Iran's Nuclear aims.
The President and Vice-President may have maneuvered this situation so that what occurred is technically legal, but as to whether what has occured represents a "High Crime and Misdemeaner" I think the answer is clearly, Yes.
Vyan
