President George Bush and Vice President Bush are having a bad week. Just when it seems like it can't get any worse, more bad news keep arriving in droves. Now, Jason Leopold writes in Truthout, on Monday April 10, 2006 that
Bush and Cheney Discussed Plame Prior to Leak. Inside sources tell Jason Leopold that Cheney came to Bush with the idea in June 2003 and included former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, her former deputy Stephen Hadley, and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove.
But much worse for Bush and Cheney, according to four attorneys who have read the transcript of their interview with Fitzgerald, neither Bush nor Cheney informed Fitzgerald of their involvement and knowledge of the staffs activities, despite the fact that emails prove they were informed.
In early June 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney met with President Bush and told him that CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson and that she was responsible for sending him on a fact-finding mission to Niger to check out reports about Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium from the African country, according to current and former White House officials and attorneys close to the investigation to determine who revealed Plame-Wilson's undercover status to the media.
Card, Rice, Hadley, and Rove All in on June Meeting
And it looks like the whole gang was in on this "coordinated" effort from the beginning. I'm not a lawyer but my understanding of the relevant USC 18 Sections 1001 and 371 mean that if any of them are later convicted of a felony in carrying out the plan wouldn't this mean trouble for all of them? I will need to hear a lawyer to explain exactly what the requirements for conspiracy charges are.
Other White House officials who also attended the meeting with Cheney and President Bush included former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, her former deputy Stephen Hadley, and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove.
This information was provided to this reporter by attorneys and US officials who have remained close to the case. Investigators working with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald compiled the information after interviewing 36 Bush administration officials over the past two and a half years.
Did Bush and Cheney Commit Obstruction of Justice?
Another interesting legal question comes up with regard to whether or not President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney committed obstruction of justice. Although, Leopold's account mentions that Fitzgerald does not seem to be either investigating this or showing any interest in this angle. Could that be because he feels that is the purview of the Congress? Or is he just working his way up from the top? It seems hard to imagine it's due to lack of evidence.
The revelation puts a new wrinkle into Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's two-year-old criminal probe into the leak and suggests for the first time that President Bush knew from early on that the vice president and senior officials on his staff were involved in a coordinated effort to attack Wilson's credibility by leaking his wife's classified CIA status.
Now that President Bush's knowledge of the Plame Wilson affair has been exposed, there are thorny questions about whether the president has broken the law - specifically, whether he obstructed justice when he was interviewed about his knowledge of the Plame Wilson leak and the campaign to discredit her husband.
Cheney Calls Meeting To Brief President On Wilson's Public Criticisms
Leopold's account of Dick Cheney's high level of concern about Joseph Wilson going public is consistent with other accounts we've heard this week.
The attorneys and officials close to the case said over the weekend that the hastily arranged meeting was called by Cheney to "brief the president" on Wilson's increasing public criticism about the White House's use of the Niger intelligence and the negative impact it would eventually have on the administration's credibility if the public and Congress found out it was true, the sources said.
Bush said publicly in October 2003 that he had no idea who was responsible for unmasking Plame Wilson to columnist Robert Novak and other reporters. The president said that he welcomed a Justice Department investigation to find out who was responsible for it.
But neither Bush nor anyone in his inner circle let on that just four months earlier, they had agreed to launch a full-scale campaign to undercut Wilson's credibility by planting negative stories about his personal life with the media.
A more aggressive effort would come a week or so later when Cheney - who, sources said, was "consumed" with retaliating against Wilson because of his attacks on the administration's rationale for war - met with President Bush a second time and told the president that there was talk of "Wilson going public" and exposing the flawed Niger intelligence.
It was then that Cheney told Bush that a section of the classified National Intelligence Estimate that purported to show Iraq did seek uranium from Niger should be leaked to reporters as a way to counter anything Wilson might seek to publish, these sources said.
Card, Rove, And Others Kept George Bush Informed Of Campaign Against Wilson
Leopold has reported previously that his inside sources have asserted that the mysterious White House emails that were "accidentally" not archived, but retrieved from the White House computer system, indicate that Cheney was the central Kingpin and that President Bush was informed of developments in the Wilson camping all along. As soon as this material becomes public and is on the record, the President and Vice President will be in a real pickle with regard to their denials to the public of any knowledge.
Throughout the second half of June, Andrew Card, Karl Rove, and senior officials from Cheney's office kept Bush updated about the progress of the campaign to discredit Wilson via numerous emails and internal White House memos, these sources said, adding that some of these documents were only recently turned over to the special counsel.
One attorney close to the case said that Bush gave Cheney permission to declassify the NIE and that Cheney told Libby to leak it to Bob Woodward, the Washington Post's assistant managing editor, which Libby did on June 27, 2003.
But Woodward told Libby shortly after he received the information about the NIE that he would not be writing a story about it for the Post but that he would use the still classified information for the book he was writing at the time, Plan of Attack.
Libby told Cheney that he had a good relationship with New York Times reporter Judith Miller and that he intended to share the NIE with her. Libby met with Miller on July 8, 2003 and disclosed the portion of the NIE that dealt with Iraq and Niger to her.
Four Attorney say Bush Did Not Disclose Awareness Of Wilson Campaign To Fitzgerald
Perhaps the most tantalizing claim in Leopold's piece for me is that four attorneys close to the case say that they have read the transcript of the President and Vice Presidents interview with Prosecutor Fitzgerald and say they neither disclosed any knowledge or participation.
According to four attorneys who last week read a transcript of President Bush's interview with investigators, Bush did not disclose to the special counsel that he was aware of any campaign to discredit Wilson. Bush also said he did not know who, if anyone, in the White House had retaliated against the former ambassador by leaking his wife's undercover identity to reporters.
Attorneys close to the case said that Fitzgerald does not appear to be overly concerned or interested in any alleged discrepancy in Bush's statements about the leak case to investigators.
But "if Mr. Libby continues to misrepresent the government's case against him ... President Bush and most certainly Vice President Cheney may be caught in an embarrassing position," one attorney close to the case said. "Mr. Fitzgerald will not hesitate to remind Mr. Libby of his testimony when he appeared before the grand jury."
Joseph Wilson Tried For Five Months To Get Administration To Retract False Niger Claims in SOTU Address
The only subject of this rapidly emerging story that come out looking good is Joseph Wilson. He must feel a great deal of vindication. And deserves considerable credit for standing up to this classic Administration tactic of personally destroying anyone who defies their plans.
Speaking to college students and faculty at California State University Northridge last week, Wilson said that after President Bush cited the uranium claims in his State of the Union address he tried unsuccessfully for five months to get the White House to correct the record.
"I had direct discussions with the State Department, Senate committees," Wilson said during a speech last Thursday. "I had numerous conversations to change what they were saying publicly. I had a civic duty to hold my government to account for what it had said and done."
Wilson said he was rebuffed at every instance and finally decided to write an op-ed in the New York Times and expose the administration for knowingly "twisting" the intelligence on the Iraqi nuclear threat to make a case for war. The op-ed appeared in the newspaper July 6, 2003. Wilson wrote that had he personally traveled to Niger to check out the Niger intelligence and had determined it was bogus.
"Nothing more, nothing less than challenging the government to come clean on this matter," Wilson said. "That's all I did."
Conclusions
When it rains it pours. Bush has a lot of explaining to do. Joseph Wilson has called for President Bush to reveal the transcript of his interview with Patrick Fitzgerald. This will be an absolutely critical piece of evidence, and it seems hard to imagine how he can resist revealing now that so many questions have come up.
Arlen Specter (R-AZ), and Chairmen of the Senate Judiciary Committee has joined calls for President Bush to explain his role in the PlameGate affair.
The public now has no doubt that the President lied to us in his repeated denials. But he has lied so often and about so many things, he may be able to claim precedent. However, making false statements to a Federal Prosecutor in the context of a criminal investigation is not a proper or acceptable thing for a President of the US to do. The precedent here is this is grounds to launch impeachment hearings.
So this makes the release of the Fitzgerald transcript a crucial piece of evidence that public has the right to know about. And the Bush Administration ought to be clever enough to realize that it will come out. Either in dribs and drabs over whatever period of time they try to stonewall, or all at once, as Machiavellian advised.
But if this transcript reveals that Bush and Cheney lied or intentionally misled Prosecutor Fitzgerald, it is hard to imagine how a sufficient number of Republicans would not feel impelled to at least call for a House Judiciary Committee investigation and hearings that would be a prelude to a possible impeachment hearing in the full House.
But, if I do not need this transcript, nor HJC hearings to know that from my point of view, President Bush's and Vice President Cheney's repeated lies and deceptions of the public is enough for me to endorse HoundDog's call for their resignations. The public and country deserve better leaders than this. And we should not have to drag our country through a destructive and humiliating impeachment process to get them.