Did Vice President
Dick Cheney help cover-up the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame
Wilson in the months after conservative columnist Robert Novak first disclosed
her identity?
That�s one of the
questions Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is likely trying to figure out.
It�s unclear what Cheney said to investigators back in 2004 when he was
questioned�not under oath�about the leak, particularly what he knew and when he
knew it.
The five-count
criminal indictment, handed up by a grand jury last month, against Cheney�s
former Chief of Staff I. Lewis �Scooter� Libby sheds new light on a pattern of
strategic deception by the vice president and the White House to defuse an
inquiry into who leaked the name of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson to
the press. Months after Plame�s identity was disclosed by conservative
columnist Robert Novak, Cheney continued to hide the fact that he and his aides
were intimately involved in disseminating classified information about her to
journalists.
What the Vice
President Denied Knowing
The indictment
against Cheney�s Chief of Staff, I. Lewis �Scooter� Libby, clearly states that
Cheney and Libby discussed, in early June of 2003, Plame�s undercover CIA
status and the fact that her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, traveled
to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq tried to acquire yellowcake uranium
from the African country.
Yet the following
month, Cheney and then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer asserted
that the vice president was unaware of Wilson�s Niger trip, who the ambassador
was, or a classified report Wilson wrote about his findings prior to the
ambassador�s July 6, 2003, op-ed in the New York Times.
We now know,
courtesy of the 22-page Libby indictment, that Cheney wasn�t being truthful.
Cheney did see the report; he knew full well who Wilson was. He also knew that
the CIA arranged for Wilson to travel to Niger, and he personally sought out
information about Wilson�s trip to Niger, was briefed about the fact-finding
mission, and even obtained classified information about Plame�s covert CIA
status. He also came to know one other important nugget: that Plame may have
recommended her husband for the trip.
Cheney�s public
campaign and that of other White House officials to discredit Wilson and
strategically lie about the Plame leak started on Sept. 14, 2003, during an interview with Tim Russert of NBC's
�Meet the Press.�
During the
interview, Cheney maintained that he didn�t know Wilson or anything about his
trip.
�I don�t know Joe
Wilson,� Cheney said, in response to Russert who quoted Wilson as saying there
was no truth to the Niger uranium claims. �I�ve never met Joe Wilson. And Joe
Wilson�I don�t who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw
when he came back . . . I don�t know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn�t judge
him. I have no idea who hired him and it never came . . ."
�The CIA did,�
Russert interjected.
�Who at the CIA? I
don�t know,� Cheney said. �He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he
came back.�
What happened once
Cheney received information on Plame and Wilson in June 2003 remains unclear.
But the indictment illustrates�in no uncertain terms�that the vice president�s
office staged a concerted effort to undermine Wilson for questioning the veracity
of the Niger claims.
Fitzgerald has eyed
Cheney in seeking to ascertain who ordered the leak, as previously
reported. While the vice president stands accused of no wrongdoing, his role
may come into greater focus during a trial.
In an interview
with the syndicated radio program �Democracy Now,� Wilson argued that Cheney
may have been lying to Russert when he said he didn�t know about the
ambassador�s Niger trip.
�While we've never
met, he certainly knows who I am and should know unless his memory is flawed
and faulty,� Wilson said during the Sept. 16, 2003, interview. �There were at a
minimum three reports that had been generated shortly after the vice president
had asked the question, �What do we know about this?��
The vice president
certainly must have known Wilson during his tenure as secretary of defense
during the first President Bush�s administration. In the weeks leading up to
the first Gulf War, Wilson served as the acting U.S ambassador on the ground in
Baghdad. In fact, Wilson was the only line of communication between Washington
and Saddam Hussein. The White House held daily briefings with Wilson, and
Cheney sat in on a majority of those briefings.
White House
Suggested Investigation Was Waste of Time
In hindsight, it
now seems that the White House, including President Bush, attempted to steer
reporters away from covering the Plame leak by saying the �leaker� would never
be found.
On October 7, 2003,
Bush and his spokesman, Scott McClellan, said that the White House ruled out
three administration officials�Rove, Libby and Elliot Abrams, a senior official
on the National Security Council, as sources of the leak (a day before FBI
questioned the three of them)�based on questions McClellan said he asked the
men.
The very next day,
however, Rove was questioned by FBI investigators and said that he spoke to
journalists about Plame for the first time after Novak�s column was published�a
lie, it appears, based on Time reporter Matthew Cooper�s emails which stated
that Rove told Cooper about Plame.
Bush told reporters
the same day he doubted that a Justice Department investigation would ever turn
up the source of the leak, suggesting that it was a waste of time for lawmakers
to question the administration and for reporters to follow up on the story.
"I mean this
is a town full of people who like to leak information," Bush said. "And I
don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official. Now,
this is a large administration, and there's lots of senior officials. I don't
have any idea.�
Senator Frank
Lautenberg (D-NJ) responded to the president�s statement in the New York Times.
�If the president
says, 'I don't know if we're going to find this person,' what kind of a
statement is that for the president of the United States to make?� Lautenberg
asked. �Would he say that about a bank robbery investigation?�
Facing a deadline
on turning over documents, emails and phone logs to Justice Department
officials, Bush said that the White House could invoke executive privilege and
withhold some �sensitive� documents related to the leak case. Democrats
speculated that the White House had something to hide.
Classified Leak
or Truthful Rebuttal?
Unable to keep
emails from investigators, the White House mounted a defense. They would seek
to distinguish between �unauthorized leaks� and something perfectly legal:
�setting the record straight.�
On Oct. 6, 2003, in
response to questions about whether Rove was Novak�s source, McClellan tried to
explain the difference between unauthorized disclosure of classified
information and "setting the record straight" about Wilson�s public
criticism of the Administration�s handling of intelligence on Iraq.
�There is a
difference between setting the record straight and doing something to punish
someone for speaking out,� McClellan said.
"There were
some statements made [by Wilson] and those statements were not based on
facts," McClellan said. "And we pointed out that it was not the vice
president's office that sent Mr. Wilson to Niger.�
Wilson, it turned
out, had never said that the vice president�s office had sent him to Niger.
Jason Leopold is the author of the explosive
memoir, News Junkie, to be released in the spring of 2006 by Process/Feral
House Books. Visit Leopold's website at www.jasonleopold.com
for updates.