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Cheney Dick (667) Conspiracy (385) Plamegate Investigation (279) Treason US (93) Culture Of Corruption (65) People Scooter Libby (60)
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The Public Record The scandal revolves around actions taken in June and July of 2003 when Rove, Libby and other administration officials leaked information to reporters aimed at discrediting Ambassador Wilson, who had challenged the truthfulness of Bush's pre-invasion claims that Iraq had purchased yellowcake uranium from Niger. During the investigation, it was revealed that Bush authorized portions of a classified National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq's alleged WMD to be disseminated to select reporters as part of the anti-Wilson campaign. Cheney dispatched Libby on that mission. However, it is still unknown whether Libby was authorized to pass on information about Plame's work at the CIA or whether he did that on his own. Other administration officials, including Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Rove, also served as sources for journalists on Plame's identity as a CIA officer. Right-wing columnist Robert Novak blew Plame's cover on July 14, 2003, in an article suggesting that Plame had helped arrange her husband's trip to Africa as some kind of junket. Wilson, a diplomat who had served in Iraq and Africa, was selected by the CIA's non-proliferation office, where Plame worked, to travel to Niger in early 2002 to examine the Iraq-yellowcake allegations. Wilson returned to the United States and reported to CIA officials that the claims appeared to have no merit, a finding that matched with inquiries from other U.S. officials. Nevertheless, in January 2003, seeking to dramatize the need for invading Iraq, President Bush cited the Niger claims in his State of the Union speech. That set the stage for Wilson to begin criticizing the misuse of this intelligence. Initially, Wilson avoided giving all the details about his role but finally went fully public in a New York Times op-ed on July 6, 2003. Knowing Nothing As the probe got underway In September 2003, Bush professed to know nothing about the controversy and publicly called on anyone with information to step forward. At the time, however, he was withholding the fact that he had authorized declassification of some secrets about the Niger uranium issue and had ordered Cheney to arrange for those secrets to be given to reporters to undermine Wilson's criticism. Fitzgerald indicted Libby in October 2005 on five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice. In October 2005, I first reported that Fitzgerald also was investigating whether Cheney played a role in the leak. I reported, too, that Bush and Cheney discussed Plame prior to the leak, undercutting Bush's claims some three months later that he was unaware of nuances of the case. In February 2007, during closing arguments at Libby's trial, defense attorney Theodore Wells told jurors that the prosecutors had been attempting to build a case of conspiracy against the Vice President and Libby, and that the prosecutors believed Libby may have lied to federal investigators and to a grand jury to protect Cheney.
http://www.pubrecord.org Jason Leopold is editor of the online investigative news magazine The Public Record, http://www.pubrecord.org, and the author of the National Bestseller, "News Junkie," a memoir. Visit www.newsjunkiebook.com for a preview. He is also a two-time winner of the Project Censored award, most recently, in 2007, for an investigative story related to Halliburton's work in Iran. He was recently named the recipient of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation's Thomas Jefferson Award for a series of stories he wrote that exposed how soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have been pressured to accept fundamentalist Christianity.
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