A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic
By Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 9, 2006; A01
As he drew back the curtain this week on the evidence against Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time described a "concerted action" by "multiple people in the White House" -- using classified information -- to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" a critic of President Bush's war in Iraq. Bluntly and repeatedly, Fitzgerald placed Cheney at the center of that campaign. Citing grand jury testimony from the vice president's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald fingered Cheney as the first to voice a line of attack that at least three White House officials would soon deploy against former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Cheney, in a conversation with Libby in early July 2003, was said to describe Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger the previous year -- in which the envoy found no support for charges that Iraq tried to buy uranium there -- as "a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife," CIA case officer Valerie Plame.
Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for denying under oath that he disclosed Plame's CIA employment to journalists. There is no public evidence to suggest Libby made any such disclosure with Cheney's knowledge. But according to Libby's grand jury testimony, described for the first time in legal papers filed this week, Cheney "specifically directed" Libby in late June or early July 2003 to pass information to reporters from two classified CIA documents: an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and a March 2002 summary of Wilson's visit to Niger.
One striking feature of that decision -- unremarked until now, in part because Fitzgerald did not mention it -- is that the evidence Cheney and Libby selected to share with reporters had been disproved months before. United Nations inspectors had exposed the main evidence for the uranium charge as crude forgeries in March 2003, but the Bush administration and British Prime Minister Tony Blair maintained they had additional, secret evidence they could not disclose. In June, a British parliamentary inquiry concluded otherwise, delivering a scathing critique of Blair's role in promoting the story. With no ally left, the White House debated whether to abandon the uranium claim and became embroiled in bitter finger-pointing about whom to fault for the error. A legal brief filed for Libby last month said that "certain officials at the CIA, the White House, and the State Department each sought to avoid or assign blame for intelligence failures relating to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction." [.....]
Specter Says Bush, Cheney Should Explain Leak
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 10, 2006; A04
President Bush and Vice President Cheney need to explain what classified information was authorized to be leaked to reporters in July 2003 and why, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said yesterday. "I think that there has to be a detailed explanation precisely as to what Vice President Cheney did, what the president said to him, and an explanation from the president as to what he said so that it can be evaluated," Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) said. He was referring to last week's revelation in a court document that Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, testified that Cheney told him Bush approved leaking parts of a classified document about intelligence estimates of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Specter said on "Fox News Sunday" that he had heard yesterday morning about a report, first published by the Associated Press, that a lawyer close to the case said Bush "didn't tell the vice president specifically what to do, but just said get it out."
Bush approved providing information from the then-classified October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald said in a memorandum filed in federal court Wednesday. The prosecutor cited Libby's testimony to a grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA operative's name.
There has been no confirmation of Bush's role, nor of what exactly Libby was authorized to disclose from the 90-page NIE. Fitzgerald's memo, which provided new information on several aspects of the CIA leak case, came as a result of a request by Libby's lawyers for a range of classified documents to defend their client against charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements to the FBI.
Libby, according to the memo, told the grand jury that Cheney "specifically had authorized" him to disclose "certain information" from the classified NIE. Libby also testified that he was "directed" by the vice president to speak to reporters about the NIE and to provide information from a "cable authored by [retired ambassador Joseph C.] Wilson." The latter apparently referred to a classified March 2002 CIA summary of Wilson's report on his trip to Niger in February 2002 to find out whether Iraq was trying to buy uranium. Some of Libby's comments about the NIE that he made to reporter Judith Miller, then of the New York Times, on July 8, 2003, were inaccurate. Libby said one "key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium." That was not an NIE key judgment, and the CIA officials who wrote the document disputed that statement.
Libby also inaccurately described the CIA report on Wilson's trip, saying the former ambassador reported information about an Iraqi delegation visiting Niger in 1999 that was "understood to be a reference to a desire to obtain uranium." In fact, Wilson said he was told that a Niger official was contacted at a meeting outside the country by a businessman who said an Iraqi economic delegation wanted to meet with him. The Niger official guessed that the Iraqis might want to talk about uranium because Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger in the mid-1980s. But when they met, no talk of uranium took place....
Yeah, I'm really expecting the administration to clarify this in an open, forthright, direct, and honest manner. Because, really, this administration has been so very open, forthright, direct, and honest so frequently during the past three years. After all, this very case shows how open, forthright, direct and honest this administration can be, at its best.
In all seriousness, the GOP has to be wondering, "OK, what next?" They're tethered to an administration that makes Nixon's Watergate scandal look like the epitome of public service. Between the administration and the more impressively corrupt members of the more corrupt of our two major parties, they seem to be averaging one big scandal revelation per month, which is not the way to maintain undisputed power. With the exception of McCain (possibly), the major contenders to replace Our Glorious Leader seem to be only moderately less corrupt than anyone else in this administration, which means that the Democrats, should they choose to use it, will have all sorts of interesting, well-documented fodder to use against them in the upcoming campaigns.
And Our Glorious Leader also appears to be once again headed for historic lows in the public's opinion of him -- as well he should be.
Political reversals at home and continued bad news from Iraq have dragged President Bush's standing with the public to a new low and boosted Democratic chances of wresting control of Congress from Republicans in the November elections, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The new survey found that 38 percent of the public approved of the job Bush is doing as president, down 3 percentage points in the past month and his worst showing in Post-ABC polling on this key measure since he became president. Sixty percent disapproved of his performance.
Bush's overall job approval has remained below 50 percent for nearly a year while the proportion of the public critical of the president consistently has topped 50 percent. And perhaps more ominously for the president, 47 percent say they "strongly" disapproved of Bush's handling of the presidency -- more than double the percentage who strongly approved (20 percent) and the second straight month that the proportion of Americans intensely critical of the president was larger than his overall job approval rating....
[...] The continued bloodshed and political chaos in Iraq continues to drag down support for the war, the new survey found. Barely four in 10 -- 41 percent -- currently say the war was worth fighting, down five percentage points since December. Nearly six in 10 -- 58 percent -- currently say the war was not worth the cost while nearly half say they "strongly" feel the conflict wasn't worth fighting. The latest result marked the 13th consecutive Post-ABC survey since December 2004 in which a majority of Americans has questioned the value of U.S. involvement in Iraq.
With support for Bush at a new low and continued broad dissatisfaction with the situation in Iraq, the latest survey offers bleak news to Republicans but encouragement to Democrats poised to challenge the GOP in congressional elections less than seven months away....
The question is, to what extent will "swing voters", whatever and whoever they may be, hold all of this against the GOP in general, as well as the president in particular. Mid-term elections have historically swung against the party in power -- this administration has been an exception to that rule, but then, you need to allow that the only such election it's endured came only a year after 9/11, when the country was still in a reflexive, unthinking reactionary mode.
Given their previous behavior, I might not put it past this administration to try to engineer some sort of crisis to try to put people back into that mode -- their escalation of rhetoric against Iran could serve nicely. That said, given the drumbeat of revelations of unethical behavior in this administration, such an attempt could backfire, the way Al-Qaeda's attack in Madrid a few years ago did. Attempts to make the country stop thinking could also make them realize that under this administration, we're actually far less secure than we were before.
The next two years will be, as the curse says, "interesting times".
Posted by iain at April 10, 2006 12:31 PM
