Posted on 02/06/2004 5:59:25 AM PST by churchillbuff
From UPI: 'Hard Evidence' Shows Cheney's Staff Outed CIA Operative By RICHARD SALE Feb 6, 2004, 08:22
Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said.
According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were the two Cheney employees. "We believe that Hannah was the major player in this," one federal law-enforcement officer said. Calls to the vice president's office were not returned, nor did Hannah and Libby return calls.
The strategy of the FBI is to make clear to Hannah "that he faces a real possibility of doing jail time" as a way to pressure him to name superiors, one federal law-enforcement official said.
The case centers on Valerie Plame, a CIA operative then working for the weapons of mass destruction division, and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who served as ambassador to Gabon and as a senior U.S. diplomat in Baghdad in the early 1990s. Under President Bill Clinton, he was head of African affairs until he retired in 1998, according to press accounts.
Wilson was sent by the Bush administration in March 2002 to check on an allegation made by President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address the previous winter that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from the nation of Niger. Wilson returned with a report that said the claim was "highly doubtful."
On June 12, Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus revealed that an unnamed diplomat had "given a negative report" on the claim and then, on July 6, as the Bush administration was widely accused of manipulating intelligence to get American public opinion behind a war with Iraq, Wilson published an op-ed piece in the Post in which he accused the Bush administration of "misrepresenting the facts." His piece also asked, "What else are they lying about?"
According to one administration official, "The White House was really pissed, and began to contact six journalists in order to plant stories to discredit Wilson," according to the New York Times and other accounts.
As Pincus said in a Sept. 29 radio broadcast, "The reason for putting out the story about Wilson's wife working for the CIA was to undermine the credibility of [Wilson's] mission for the agency in Niger. Wilson, as the last top diplomat in Iraq at the time of the Gulf War, had credibility beyond his knowledge of Africa, which was his specialty. So his going to Niger to check the allegation that Iraq had sought uranium there and returning to say he had no confirmation was considered very credible."
Eight days later, columnist Robert Novak wrote a column in which he named Wilson's wife and revealed she was "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." Since Plame was working undercover, it exposed her and, in the opinion of some, ruined her usefulness and her career. It also violated a 1982 law that prohibits revealing the identity of U.S. intelligence agents.
On Oct. 7, Bush said that unauthorized disclosure of an undercover CIA officer's identity was "a criminal matter" and the Justice Department had begun its investigation into the source of the leak.
related to the unlawful exposure
could lead to indictments
And it has yet to be determined if there is even a crime.
LOL! "Hard Evidence" to the media is when their anonymous gooney-bird repeats the claims . . . thereby allowing them to say they had two witnesses.
All the same, I'd like to see what Debka thinks before I make up my mind
What about the Washington Post, The New Yawk Times, and Walter Pincus . . . which are all quoted as fact-purveyors in this article?
I give you a quote about Pincus . . .
"Pincus was uniquely positioned to delve into the intricacies of the weapons question. At 70, he had been reporting on national security for 25 years at the Post. Along the way he had cultivated sources in Congress, the CIA, the Pentagon, and the scientific community. For decades, he has been close to chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix."
Pincus had an agenda before the war started. Whether his agenda proves to be accurate or not doesn't matter . . . he formed his opinions before the facts, ANY FACTS, were in and he's been running with his "pre-ordained" conclusion ever since. He's won all kinds of awards over his long career . . . but so have the owner of the New Yawk Times and it's editorial staff.
Jeanne Dixon used to be a sooth-sayer widely quoted in newspapers and magazines and on TV . . . about her phenomenally predicting the future. No one brought up the thousands and thousands of predictions that were wrong . . . just the miniscule amount that had come close to being right.
I give you Walter Pincus. If he was so concerned about us "lying" about WMD's in 2002 . . . why didn't his righteous indignation rear it's ugly head in . . . oh say 1998? Which, I think, is the year Congress declared our Iraqi policy was one of "regime change." Or any other period between 1992 and 2000? We bombed Iraq because of WMD's. We threatened much more. Where were Mr. Pincus and all the other "righteous" protestors then?
Feeding at Pee Wee and Hitlery Clinton's trough . . . that's where.
Also, him being good friends with Inspector Blix should make most rational folks question anything he quotes as fact.
My point is this about the WMD subject . . . What in the hell's the hurry? Why can't everyone in the media just wait for the facts to come out? They will . . . they always do. Answer . . . there's a conservative in the White House and this is an election year.
I know this thread isn't about WMD's but you say because the hip bone is connected to the thigh bone and it's connected to the leg bone . . . then the entire body is conservative. I say when the parts making up the hip bone quote liberal sources who wouldn't know the truth if it bit them on the teeter, then I'll go with my gut feeling and question all the conclusions reached by this body.
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