Jason Leopold has a potentially explosive article up at Truthout. If the allegations of his article are true, it will bring us several steps closer to the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The most important revelations relate to the foreknowledge of George W. Bush and the state of mind of Dick Cheney, in the effort to discredit Ambassador Joe Wilson.
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.
A friendly reminder: Wilson went public on July 6, 2003. His wife was outed on July 14, 2003. So, the administration was concerned that Wilson might go public for a month before he actually did.
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…
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…
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.
So, Cheney, got wind of Joe Wilson’s behind the scenes criticisms of the Niger intelligence, called a hasty meeting, and told the President that there was a problem brewing. Then he specifically told the President about Valerie Plame Wilson. A week or so later, feeling threatened by the increasing possibility that Wilson might go public, he allegedly received permission to leak selected and misleading classified information. Cheney then tasked Libby (and others) to go on a preemptive campaign of distortion and ass-covering. And, they kept Bush aware of their progress.
But, Bush and Cheney did not willingly offer these facts to the prosecutor and his investigators.
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.
If Bush didn’t know who leaked Plame’s identity in advance, he certainly knew that the Vice-President was directing the effort to discredit Wilson. He knew the name Plame Wilson from the lips of Dick Cheney before Robert Novak penned them in his column.
Somehow this strikes me a bit more serious than:
I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I’m going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never. These allegations are false. And I need to go back to work for the American people.”
