White House Leak? Maybe it was Cheney...

[Scaramouche]

I was reading Will the leak of a CIA agent's name be the next big political scandal? by Jack Shafer over at Slate and a this jumped out at me:

Novak's White House sources aren't the only potentially prosecutable leakers. The identity of an undercover operative such as Plame would not automatically be something in circulation at the White House. Somebody at the CIA would have had to tell the White House that Plame was Wilson's wife and that she was undercover. Any aggressive Justice dragnet is as likely to collect CIA employees as it is White House officials.

It is not necessarily true that there was a leak originating from the CIA. Dick Cheney spent an inordinate amount of time at the CIA preceding the War in Iraq. So it's plausible that he met Valerie Plame there during one of his briefings. Maybe he recognized her as the wife of Ambassador Wilson. Maybe he even tried to influence her analysis on Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Leading Democrats also have questions for the Vice President:

According to The Washington Post, June 5, 2003, you made "multiple" "unusual" visits to CIA to meet directly with Iraq analysts. The Post reported: "Vice President Cheney and his most senior aide made multiple trips to the CIA over the past year to question analysts studying Iraq's weapons programs."

These visits were unprecedented. Normally, Vice Presidents, yourself included, receive regular briefings from CIA in your office and have a CIA officer on permanent detail. In other words, there is no reason for the Vice President to make personal visits to CIA analysts.

According to the Post, your unprecedented visits created "an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration's policy objectives."

Now why would Cheney have an interest in trying to discredit Wilson of the Niger Yellow Cake Scandal. Could it be that he wanted to distance himself from the fact he had received information on the Wilson findings? Could he be trying to deny that his office had anything to do with the investigation? Could he have struck back at the CIA for leaking the story that it had given Wilson's report to Vice President's Office in early July?

More questions for Cheney:

According to The New York Times of May 6, 2003, "more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. Ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger."

The ambassador "reported to the CIA and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged," according to the Times. Indeed, that former U.S. Ambassador, Joseph Wilson, wrote in The New York Times, July 6, 2003, "The vice president's office asked a serious question. We were asked to help formulate the answer. We did so, and we have every confidence that the answer we provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government."

Moreover, your chief of staff, Mr. Libby, told Time magazine this week that you did in fact express interest in the report to the CIA briefer. Our understanding is that Standard Operating Procedure is that if a principal asks about a report, he is given a specific answer.

Personally I don’t find it implausible that Robert Novak picked up the phone and called Cheney or one of his staff to get to the bottom of the story of the day.

Also, I find Josh Marshall’s from Talking Point Memo description of Cheney rather true to life:

The problem I suspect is that Dick Cheney is really the von Clausewitz of political gamesmanship. All frontal attacks and massed troops and beating the enemy into the ground. He's got none of what B.H. Liddell Hart called the "indirect approach."

In the calculus of the Bush White House political game Cheney isn't just the heavy. He's the anvil. Whenever there is a hint of trouble -- like when the first intelligence failure revelations came out -- you can bet they'll send out Dick Cheney to go right for the Dems' jugular.

Cheney is like the mob goon who comes to your house, looks at you with maniacal eyes, wrings your neck with his clammy hands and tells you if you don't cool it he's not just gonna kill you, he's gonna wipe out your family, knee-cap your nephew, saw your dog in half, and pour salt and bleach all over your lawn so nothing grows on it again for another hundred years.

By the time somebody gets done getting the treatment like that they don't even remember the questions they once had the temerity to ask…

Now this is pure speculation on my part, since I don’t know if Cheney talked to Novak, but he had the means, motive, and opportunity which definitely makes him a suspect.

On edit 1: clarity
On edit 2: spelling
On edit 3: html

[NoKingGeorge]

1. Who would know Identity AND duties of an operative?

rOve had to be told the name AND the duties of Mrs.Wilson because I do not think his position authorizes him to have that. The head of NSC would have it as well as the fake President. Would a VP be have that bit of classified information. The nameS AND their official duties?

[Scaramouche]

4. The guy had been hanging around the CIA for a year...

I'm sure there were introductions...

[realFedUp]

2. I think it came out of this office also...

don't ask me why.

[skip fox]

3. The entire stench has a Scooter Libby flavor.

Purpose, again, not PRIMARILY for revenge (Cheney knows better) or warning OR to imply nepotism (the fact that's what Novak played this does not make it the intent), but to discredit Wilson, implying he was a maverick dying to get at the administration and so had himself sent to Niger. THIS has Cheney-Libby fingerprints on it.

[Scaramouche]

5. Cheney is the eye of the Huricane...

as this was the beginning of this story...

This was about discrediting Wilson on the story that the VP ofdice asked for a report on NIGER Yellow Cake. Thus they must've got the report for the CIA. Which means they should not have put the 16 Word in the State of the Union Adress.

No hius wife got hime the job. By the way she works at the CIA...

Cheneny is the Prime mover and with Ashcroft the will never get to the bottom.

However this is serious, but who will take the fall for a possible 10 year sentence. I don't think the Watergate crimes had comparable sentences...

[Scaramouche]

6. kick...n/t

[skip fox]

7. Reports said that Wilson was sent by VP. Who would Novak have called?

Scooter Libbly, Cheney's Chief-of-Staff or somebody directly unbder Scooter. (Novak was, as he claimed, interested to know how a Clinton appointee had been sent by the administration to undertake such an investigation.) So he naturally calls Scooter (at the time of the editorial, Wilson was said to have been sent by the Vice President's Office. Remember?), and Scooter was ready for him.

They talked about Wilson's editorial, why the State-of-the-Union Speech referred to Nigerian yellow-cake uranium and why Powell didn't mention it at the UN, and how Cheney had never heard of Wilson. Then Scooter explains, telling Novak that Cheney, the previous summer, had asked the CIA to look into the reports of uranium sales to Iraq from Niger and that it was the CIA who had sent Wilson. Then Scooter lets it drop, "Well, you know Wilson's wife? Valerie Plame? She was the CIA agent who had him sent." Novak's ears perk up (all he hears is "nepotism," missing the real insinuation: that Wilson put his wife up to having him sent because he had an anti-War agenda or because he was anti-administration and wanted to put the breaks on the rising crescendo of war rhetoric that fall). Novak checks spelling ("P-L-A-M-E"), thanks Scooter, hangs up. Checks second source, etc.

It's important to realize the purpose was to discredit Wilson as a maverick-with-an-agenda, getting his wife to send him on a mission the results of which would undercut Bush's bellicose rhetoric or make Bush pull back from his decision to invade Iraq.

Given the circumstance of the following summer (2003) when everyone was questioning the existence of WMD and then to have a key item in the President's State of the Union Speech undercut in a NY Times editorial-length letter, Scooter's plant was artful and effective, despite Novak's dull-witted interpretation (nepotism). I was clever without crushing anyone (Libby is more circumspect and pragmatic than Rove). The purpose was not primarily to inflict revenge upon Wilson, nor was it necessarily a warning to others who might take similar public stands, but to undercut an opponent who had momentarily risen in their midst. Bloodlessly, swiftly.


A MORE speculative section:

I'm guessing Scooter Libby is spending the day with lawyers and staff, figuring out how to minimize legal and politial damage. Tomorrow he'll resign.

[Scaramouche]

8. I don't think they'll find a fall guy that easy...

This does carry a possible 10 year sentence. Besides it besmirch the the VP's office.

Maybe if if they could cop a plea for a year or two at club fed, then they could find a patsie.

But that could cost them the next election. I think they're gonna' stonewall on this.