The Political Chase

Cheney, Libby, the CIA and Niger

Murray Waas has a piece in The National Journal which should be rather unsettling to Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby. The CIA definitively informed Cheney and Libby that they clearly found without merit the allegations that Saddam Hussein attempted to purchase yellow-cake uranium from Niger. This evolves from a June 17, 2003 letter that CIA analysts wrote to George Tenet, the former Director, Central Intelligence (and Medal of Freedom recipient), which in turn was promptly proffered to the Office of the Vice President.

This piece yields at least three significant items:

• Substantially puts a greater focus on Dick Cheney’s knowledge, activities, and requests of the CIA as it directly relates to Plamegate — the purposeful intent to destroy former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.
• Knocks Scooter Libby’s defense counselors out of the park in their attempts to portray Libby as too busy and too important to remember the “minutiae” of any discussion regarding Valerie Plame Wilson.
• Further substantiates motive.

Tagging the Vice President

Vice President Cheney and his then-Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby were personally informed in June 2003 that the CIA no longer considered credible the allegations that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium from the African nation of Niger, according to government records and interviews with current and former officials. The new CIA assessment came just as Libby and other senior administration officials were embarking on an effort to discredit an administration critic who had also been saying that the allegations were untrue. [Emphasis added.]

CIA analysts wrote then-CIA Director George Tenet in a highly classified memo on June 17, 2003, “We no longer believe there is sufficient” credible information to “conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad.” The memo was titled: “In Response to Your Questions for Our Current Assessment and Additional Details on Iraq’s Alleged Pursuits of Uranium From Abroad.”

Tenet requested the previously undisclosed intelligence assessment in large part because of repeated inquiries from Cheney and Libby regarding the Niger matter and Wilson’s mission. One indication of Cheney’s personal interest in the subject was that some of Libby’s earliest and most detailed information regarding Plame’s CIA employment came directly from the vice president, according to information contained in Libby’s grand jury indictment.

Scooter Libby’s Obsession

Waas’ article clearly indicates the extent of Scooter Libby’s obsession; obsessive to the point of paranoia and blatant denial of overwhelming facts and evidence.

Libby, according to people with knowledge of the events, said that he and Cheney had come to believe that WINPAC was presenting Saddam Hussein’s pursuit of such weapons in a far more benign light than Iraq’s intents and capabilities reflected. Libby cited CIA bureaucratic inertia and caution and his view that many of WINPAC’s analysts were aligned with foreign-policy elites who did not support the war with Iraq.

Libby and others in the office of the vice president apparently were even more suspicious because they mistakenly believed that Plame worked for WINPAC, according to these sources. When they also learned that Plame possibly played a role in Wilson’s selection for the Niger mission, their suspicions only intensified.

[A]t one point during that period — the summer of 2003 — Libby confronted a senior intelligence analyst briefing him and the vice president and accused the CIA of willfully misleading him and the administration on Niger. Libby was said to be upset that the CIA, in his view, had routinely minimized the extent to which Iraq was pursuing weapons of mass destruction and was now prematurely attempting to distance itself from the Niger allegations.

Fortified Motive

There has always been an assumption that Scooter Libby’s alleged charges were founded on the basis of protecting himself. Libby had many conversations with journalists and others, where, he at minimum conveyed classified information and seemingly attempted to destroy the Wilsons. But, Libby’s intellect and his alleged crimes are contradictory to the self-preservation instinct.

As Libby awaits trial, one of the unresolved mysteries is why Libby insisted in interviews with the FBI and during his grand jury testimony that he learned about Plame’s employment from journalists, when investigators already had Libby’s own copious notes indicating that he had first learned many of the details of Plame’s CIA employment from Cheney and other senior government officials.

One possibility examined by investigators is that Libby was attempting to cover for Cheney because of the political or legal fallout that might occur if it was determined that the vice president had been involved in the effort to discredit Wilson.

Defense Obstacles

I noted yesterday that Libby’s lawyers seemed to be pursuing a defense plan that, simply stated, Libby was too busy and had too many important things to do, and therefore was unable to keep track of the “minutiae.” Voila, no criminal intent. That dog just will not hunt.

The disclosure that Cheney and Libby were told of a CIA assessment that the agency considered the Niger allegations to be untrue, and that Tenet requested the assessment as a result of the personal interest of Cheney and Libby, would “demonstrate even further that Niger was a central issue for Libby,” said [Stephen] Gillers [a law professor at New York University], and would “make it even harder, although not impossible, to claim a faulty memory.”

Watergate was :dismissed” with the indictment of the plumbers — nothing else to it, so “they” said. And, then there was John Dean having a nice chat with the late Sen. Sam Ervin (D-NC).

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