Criminal probe implicates Cheney subordinates

Indian Country News ^ | 2-13-04 | Jerry Reynolds

[Fighting Irish]

Has anyone seen this story yet?

WASHINGTON - The FBI has traced the criminal exposure of a CIA covert agent to the office of Vice President Richard Cheney, according to the Insight on the News online wire service.

Richard Sale, a United Press International correspondent, quotes unnamed federal law enforcement officials in the Feb. 5 article that has been little-noted by mainstream U.S. media outlets. (Finally though, on Feb. 11, the English Manchester Guardian drew on some of Sale’s information as a source for its own story. The Guardian reported that three of the five individuals under FBI scrutiny worked for Cheney.) These same mainstream outlets have kept the Valerie Plame case in circulation, so that the basic outline is well known. But Sale’s report is early word on widespread speculation that Cheney subordinates leaked the name of an undercover CIA agent.

In a sequence of events first noted in the Washington Post and related exhaustively since, political columnist Robert Novak ended up revealing Plame’s undercover CIA career in print. Novak followed a tip whose trail now leads to the U.S. executive branch. Plame associates and her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, say the exposure has jeopardized her person and canceled her career.

If proven, the leak to the press that "burned" Plame (in espionage slang) could have consequences for other careers too. (The Guardian, for instance, reported that Cheney’s political career is at stake.) Under a 1982 law, it is a federal crime to leak classified information that exposes a covert CIA agent. A special prosecutor has been appointed in the Plame case, and according to many accounts at least one grand jury has been convened in connection with it. The Guardian identifies two parallel grand juries, one investigating the forgery of documents that helped foment war fever by alleging Iraqi nuclear armament efforts in Niger, the other looking at alleged bribery payments by oil giant Haliburton at a time when Cheney was its chief executive.

Sale now reports that the FBI is trying to impress the alleged Plame tipster with the gravity of the charges that could be filed against him.

If so, this course of action would be consistent with cases where a suspect ultimately pleads to reduced charges in return for information on superiors in the chain of command who were in position to influence the conduct of subordinates.

Wilson was a career ambassador, considered especially credible on matters North African, at the time of his 1998 retirement. In the build-up to making war on Iraq, the administration of President George W. Bush recruited Wilson to visit Niger, the African nation, in March 2002. His task was to check out intelligence reports that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium and nuclear tubing from Niger. The assertion had already made the varsity cut for inclusion in the president’s State of the Union address that January, as he shaped the case for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as an imminent threat justifying war. But Wilson discredited the information coming from Niger.

By all accounts, Wilson’s report was unwelcome in the White House, more so when he published an op-ed accusing the administration of misrepresenting the facts on the ground in Niger, and by extension Iraq. Wilson has maintained that as the administration worked to keep America on a war footing, it moved to discredit his buzz-killing report on the Iraq-Niger nuclear connection. In the process, Plame’s name made it into print in Novak’s column as a CIA "operative on weapons of mass destruction."

Days later, in October now, President Bush termed the disclosure a criminal matter. The Department of Justice launched an investigation that eventually led to the appointment of a special prosecutor and FBI involvement.

The investigation’s reach to the vice presidency is significant in that it has potential for introducing intentionality to the flawed intelligence that helped bring on war - intentional misrepresentation at the highest levels as opposed to lapses of information, communication and judgment at lower ones. To date these latter have formed the administration’s public defense of its many statements on Iraqi capacity for mass destruction that have proved false. Cheney was a primary architect of the administration’s uncompromising case for war.

[Fighting Irish]

When will this ever end?

[Fighting Irish]

Sorry...more accurate link:

http://www.indiancountry.com/?1076686296

[Dog]

This isn't news......Scooter Libby is the lefts bogey man.....like the evil Ashcroft....../sarcasm.

[End Times Sentinel]

Another dem scam.  Mrs. Palme wasn't an undercover operative and hadn't been one for several years.  She knows this as does her husband, but when you're a liberal, you get used to overlooking inconvenient facts.  Yet they and the shills in the press are shrilly screeching about "What W. Did!!!"

 

It's just a replay of the Senate Share Drive debacle. 

 

The left's ability to turn logic and comon sense on its head will never cease to amaze me.

Owl_Eagle

”Guns Before Butter.”

Another dem scam.  Mrs. Palme wasn't an undercover operative and hadn't been one for several years.  She knows this as does her husband, but when you're a liberal, you get used to overlooking inconvenient facts.  Yet they and the shills in the press are shrilly screeching about "What W. Did!!!"

 

It's just a replay of the Senate Share Drive debacle. 

 

The left's ability to turn logic and comon sense on its head will never cease to amaze me.

Another dem scam.  Mrs. Palme wasn't an undercover operative and hadn't been one for several years.  She knows this as does her husband, but when you're a liberal, you get used to overlooking inconvenient facts.  Yet they and the shills in the press are shrilly screeching about "What W. Did!!!"

It's just a replay of the Senate Share Drive debacle. 

The left's ability to turn logic and comon sense on its head will never cease to amaze me.

[MEG33]

When newspapers quit printing unnamed sources of rumors,and when the public quits buying it as the truth...then it will end.

[Mr. Bird]

I have a feeling that this situation is the thread with which Tenet clings to his job. If Tenet approved the burn, it's not illegal. And Tenet may well say he did approve it, having been made a fool by Plame (referring her mint-tea sipping husband as some sort of qualified spook. By even his own account, he merely took a CIA-paid vacation).

Tempest in a teapot, probably, but a public that consumes Clancy and Ludlum novels like Pringles love their spy stories.

[GraniteStateConservative]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1074892/posts

[MineralMan]

"When newspapers quit printing unnamed sources of rumors,and when the public quits buying it as the truth...then it will end.

"

The same could be said of the current Kerry bimbo eruption scandal. No sources there, either. Bottom line is that this story will lead the news and the Kerry story won't.

[plastic_positive]

I agree. Of course, if the papers hadn't printed the anonymous source from Novak in the first place, we wouldn't be sitting around wasting time with this story.

[snooker]

Or how about the headline

Criminal Probe Implicates Teresa Kerry's Subordinate.

The Teresa Heinz Kerry foundation's former board member and Ex Enron boss, Key Lay ....

Now that would be a news story.

[MEG33]

The Kerry story is a non issue even if later proven true,a momentary diversion!...Now the AWOL story has legs and IS very, very important,even if it has been proven false.Ask Terry Moran and Terry McAuliff.

The Kerry story is a rumor.

[antiRepublicrat]

Bush himself said the disclosure was a "very serious matter" and a "criminal action," and now it gets traced back to Cheney's office. Bad, very bad.

Even worse, this would make the DU 100% correct on an issue concerning alleged wrongdoings on the part of the Bush administration (shivers due to a case of the creeps).

[MEG33]

Do you know this for a fact?

[antiRepublicrat]

Do you know this for a fact?

If this story is true, then the Bush administration and many others had better get the spin machine cranking.

[MEG33]

I prefer to wait for the facts.

[MineralMan]

"I prefer to wait for the facts."

Me, too. On this Plame thing. On the Kerry thing. On everything.

I love FreeRepublic, but the propensity of some of its members to jump on any rumor, like the Kerry thing, and treat it as though it were gospel, is troubling.

Is Cheney involved with the Plame outing? I don't know. You don't know. Nobody knows. Will we find out? Perhaps, and perhaps not.

Did Kerry have this affair with this unnamed woman? Maybe. I don't know. You don't know. Nobody knows. Will we find out? Perhaps, and perhaps not.

By jumping on rumors and half-told stories, we Freepers leave ourselves open to all sorts of stuff.

For example, someone posted a photo here of Kerry standing next to Jane Fonda. It was bogus, but it is now spreading all over the net. Another photo of Kerry in front of the N. Vietnamese flag was also posted here, and is now spreading like wildfire all over the net. We knew it was PhotoShopped, but in many places, that information is not provided.

It came from Free Republic, though. Dangerous and potentially damaging to the site's reputation.

[MEG33]

I also knew the AWOL claim was bogus,but the mainstream press was all over it..so I don't blame freepers for being gossips or for photoshopped pictures published that people don't check out.

The 2 originals were also posted here.Media outlets correct their mistakes less quickly than FR does.The anti Kerry veterans site tells that the flag/Kerry picture is photoshopped.