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was the cover story that the outing of Plame was Rovian political revenge (so typical of Rove, easy to believe) for Wilson's public dissent on the WMD justification for the war. This is possibly the main reason why Rove has not been indicted--this, and possibly his cooperation to avoid prosecution--that he was, in truth, something of an errand boy on this particular mission. (There is a story in Wilson's book about a dustup between Libby and Rove about this--re Rove left holding the bag.) I was in fact glad to hear that Rove wasn't indicted for perjury or obstruction, which means he may be cooperating. It would have been nice, politically, for the '06 elections, but it would have been a bad sign re this prosecution, that the wall of obstruction was impenetrable.
And why would they need a political revenge cover story? I think the reason is that Valerie Plame and her Brewster-Jennings network of covert WMD counter-proliferation agents and contacts around the world was not the "collateral damage" of the Rovian political revenge story, but they were the main target. I suspect it was masterminded by Rumsfeld (which may be the reason he's been ousted), and had to do with a plot to plant nukes in Iraq, to be "found" by the US troops who were hunting for them after the invasion (and who were accompanied by Judith Miller, the NYT war propagandist and "Mata Hari" who was also meeting in secret with Libby to leak government secrets to the press, including possibly Valerie Plame's identity). If I'm right--that they were trying to plant the weapons--then that plan got foiled by someone, with Plame and the B/J network having one of the best position in the world to detect and stop illicit weapons movements. That was their job. And we know that Rumsfeld did not want honest intelligence--or honest agents. He wanted cooked intelligence, and agents he could intimidate. He created his own intelligence shop for that purpose--to circumvent the honest professionals at the CIA. The Niger/Iraq nuke forgeries were the most cooked up item of all--and suspicion falls on a Rome meeting in late 2001, attended by NeoCons on the Pentagon payroll, the head of Italian intelligence and the notorious Iran-Contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. The Niger stationary that the forgeries were written on came from a burglary at the Niger embassy in Rome. These forgeries were the infamous item that kept getting put back in Bush's speeches, after the CIA and State Dept. took this evidence out as obviously bogus. Why did anyone want Bush to keep talking about something that was provably false?
Well, one reason is that it was part 1 of a larger plot--the plot to plant nukes in Iraq. The Niger forgeries are often described as "crude" forgeries (easily detectable--wrong names, dates, etc.). But you'd think that Italian intelligence and Manucher Ghorbanifar could come up with better forgeries. Why didn't they? So here's the scenario: Bush makes the accusation and sets up the expectation that Iraq has nukes. The CIA debunks these easily detectable forgeries. But the Bushites won't give up--it keeps being repeated. So the CIA debunks it again--and gets into a known position (or even a public position) of no-nukes-in-Iraq. Then the phony nukes--spirited into Iraq and placed in the pathway of the US troops (and Judith Miller) looking for WMDs--are "discovered." Bush's and Blair's political positions are cemented--the war is justified. And the CIA is made to look like fools--and is made more easily purge-able--for having gotten it wrong.
There is a further twist to this theory, having to do with David Kelly, the Brits WMD expert, who was found dead, in highly suspicious circumstances, four days after Valerie Plame was outed. His office and computers were searched; four days later, Novak ADDITIONALLY outed the entire Brewster-Jennings network, putting all of our covert agents and contacts, doing WMD detection and counter-proliferation, in great danger of being killed, and disabling all projects. The coincidence of dates in the Plame/B-J and Kelly affairs is certainly provocative. We have top WMD experts getting outed or killed on both sides of the Atlantic in the same week. And we have the honesty of these professionals--vs the lying sacks of shit in the Bush and Blair governments--as the common theme. Wilson (connected to Plame) was trying to get the truth out about the WMDs. Kelly was, at the same time, whistleblowing anonymously to the BBC about the "sexed up" pre-war WMD intel. He was discovered and interrogated at a "safe house" in the first week of July, and, on July 7, a day after Wilson's article was published, Tony Blair was informed that Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things" (COULD say, not had said). (Hutton report.) What "uncomfortable things" could Kelly have known that got him killed? A plot to plant WMDs in Iraq fills the bill in every way--and, since he was already "off the reservation" (whistleblowing) he could not be trusted with such a secret. (Plame on the other hand will take her secrets to the grave--she is a CIA agent and sworn to it. Not so Kelly.)
THIS would explain why Libby and Bush & Co. needed elaborate cover stories. And the key to it is the SECOND outing by Novak--of the entire Brewster-Jennings network. Why do that--at such high risk of treason charges--to punish Wilson for his dissent?
And maybe if they HADN'T done it, we wouldn't have rogue elements running Polonium-210 all over Europe. It was the responsibility of Plame and her network to stop proliferation of nuclear and other dangerous materials and weapons.
What we are about to be witness to--Libby's trial for perjury and obstruction--may never touch on the real reasons for outing Plame and Brewster-Jennings, because that is what the perjury and obstruction are covering up. Fitzgerald may never get past Cheney--the second line of defense of this nefarious scheme (if that's what it was) to plant the weapons in Iraq. Their story is that it was political revenge (first line of defense, Rove; that didn't wash, now it's Libby, then Cheney, all with their panties in a twist about an ex-diplomat's dissenting op-ed, something that might otherwise have drowned in the war profiteering corporate news monopoly newsstream)--and they have Fitzgerald chasing down those pathways, trying to find out who did what--a sensational story, all by itself, and a great scandal, and treason enough (in the opinion of many of us)--but the Libby/Cheney defense will be that it was no big deal, a political mistake occurring in the heat of battle. Libby has already set this up--he was so busy he couldn't remember who he talked to about Plame or what he said. The thrust of it is to downplay the importance. It was merely a political mistake--and not (what this theory lays out) treason, and not a conspiracy for vast deception (planting nukes), and not murder. The panic evident in their behavior during the weeks of July 6-22, 2003, however, says otherwise--as does the pre-planning evident in the "crude" Niger forgeries.
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