Cheney and The Plame-Wilson Talking Points

By Cernig

Murray Waas has been doing some digging.

Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a still-highly confidential FBI report, admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.

Cheney conceded during his interview with federal investigators that in drawing attention to Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s Africa trip reporters might also unmask her role as CIA officer.

Cheney denied to the investigators, however, that he had done anything on purpose that would lead to the outing of Plame as a covert CIA operative. But the investigators came away from their interview with Cheney believing that he had not given them a plausible explanation as to how he could focus attention on Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s trip without her CIA status also possibly publicly exposed. At the time, Plame was a covert CIA officer involved in preventing Iran from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, and Cheney’s office played a central role in exposing her and nullifying much of her work.

The FBI report detailling Chewney's interview with Fitzgerald he quotes from is one that Congress has been trying - unsuccessfully - to get its hands on for over a year. Despite that, all of his usual outlets - ABC,  Harper's and elsewhere - told him they were unable to ruin his piece because there was other, more important, news to cover. Yet with the Republican loyal-follower press for Bush to grant Scooter Libby a pardon growing daily, this picture is an essential part of the big picture surrounding Libby's conviction

Go read, as the say, the whole thing.

Comments

[Ron Beasley]

Cheney is evil personified. At 62 I have disagreed with many if not most politicians/presidents/vice presidents but for the first time in my life I have seen this country controlled by genuinely evil people.

[Peter G.]

On the principle of not attributing to malice what can fully be explained by stupidity I'm gonna cut George a little slack. In the case of Cheney I could not agree more heartily Ron. This man may be the most profoundly evil person to hold high office in the US in my lifetime. Organized psychopath just about covers it.