Ray McGovern (Tom Paine): Cheney and Plame (Tuesday)

[Jack Rabbit]

From TomPaine.com
Dated Tuesday July 19

Cheney And Plame
By Ray McGovern

In yesterday’s essay, Why Plame Matters , we suggested that the White House assault on the reputations of former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife had much to do with “the particular lie that Wilson exposed,” and we discussed the unusual role Vice President Dick Cheney played regarding the bogus “intelligence” about Iraq seeking to acquire uranium from Niger. Our Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) files provide contemporaneous insight into Cheney’s unusual involvement and throw light on continuing attempts to disguise it.

Continuing attempts? Investigative journalist Robert Parry, writing today for consortiumnews.com, notes that atop the Republican National Committee’s list of “Joe Wilson’s Top Ten Worst Inaccuracies and Misstatements” sits “Wilson insisted that the Vice President’s office sent him to Niger.” That’s not exactly what Wilson said, but let’s leave that point aside for the moment. What strikes me is the rather transparent two-year-old campaign to dissociate Cheney from L’Affaire Iraq-Niger.

On July 14, 2003, the day of Robert Novak’s opening salvo against the Wilsons, VIPS wrote a Memorandum for the President with two main sections: “The Forgery Flap,” and “The Vice President’s Role.” In that memo, we also made an important recommendation that appeared a bit extreme at the time, but it was already possible to discern what was going on:

We recommend that you call an abrupt halt to attempts to prove Vice President Cheney “not guilty.” His role has been so transparent that such attempts will only erode further your own credibility. Equally pernicious, from our perspective, is the likelihood that intelligence analysts will conclude that the way to success is to acquiesce in the cooking of their judgments, since those above them will not be held accountable. We strongly recommend that you ask for Cheney’s immediate resignation.

Read more.

This piece is a follow up one posted yesterday. The discussion is here.