Sunday, October 23, 2005
Big Leak Players
A careful read of the latest New York Times story on the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame could well tell readers the names of players in the administration who will be indicted by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.
Drum roll please...!
Bush administration's justification for the war in Iraq...preoccupied the White House for more than three years, repeatedly threatening President Bush's credibility and political standing, and has now once again put the spotlight on Vice President Dick Cheney, who assumed a critical role in assembling and analyzing the evidence about Iraq's weapons programs.
Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Colin Powell while he was secretary of state, who complained of a "cabal" between Mr. Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld when it came to Iraq and other national security issues
[F]ocus on the threat from Iraq has put some of his aides, especially I. Lewis Libby Jr., his chief of staff, in the middle of an investigation by a special prosecutor into the leak of the C.I.A. operative's name.
"[T]he leak case has ensnared other officials, most prominently Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's senior adviser.
Mr. Libby's involvement in assembling the case that Iraq's weapons constituted an urgent threat began well before the invasion. Along with Paul D. Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, then senior Pentagon officials, Mr. Libby was immersed in painting a dark picture of Iraq's weapons capabilities and alleged that Iraq had ties to Al
Qaeda.
Mr. Libby's deputy, John Hannah, had close ties to John R. Bolton, then the under secretary of state for arms control; David Wurmser, a Bolton aide who later joined Mr. Cheney's office; and Robert Joseph, then the senior director for nonproliferation on the National Security Council.
So the players in the leak are Cheney, Rumsfeld, Liddy, Rove, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Douglas Feith, John Hannah, David Wurmser and Robert Joseph.
