Cheney's Handwritten Notes Implicate Bush in Plame Affair

[jamesinca]

Cheney's Handwritten Notes Implicate Bush in Plame Affair
By Jason Leopold and Marc Ash
t r u t h o u t | Report

Wednesday 31 January 2007

Copies of handwritten notes by Vice President Dick Cheney, introduced at trial by defense attorneys for former White House staffer I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, would appear to implicate George W. Bush in the Plame CIA Leak case.

Bush has long maintained that he was unaware of attacks by any member of his administration against Wilson. The ex-envoy's stinging rebukes of the administration's use of pre-war Iraq intelligence led Libby and other White House officials to leak Wilson's wife's covert CIA status to reporters in July 2003 in an act of retaliation.

But Cheney's notes, which were introduced into evidence Tuesday during Libby's perjury and obstruction-of-justice trial, call into question the truthfulness of President Bush's vehement denials about his prior knowledge of the attacks against Wilson. The revelation that Bush may have known all along that there was an effort by members of his office to discredit the former ambassador begs the question: Was the president also aware that senior members of his administration compromised Valerie Plame's undercover role with the CIA?

Further, the highly explicit nature of Cheney's comments not only hints at a rift between Cheney and Bush over what Cheney felt was the scapegoating of Libby, but also raises serious questions about potentially criminal actions by Bush. If Bush did indeed play an active role in encouraging Libby to take the fall to protect Karl Rove, as Libby's lawyers articulated in their opening statements, then that could be viewed as criminal involvement by Bush.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/013107Z.shtml

[TheDebbieDee]

1. What did he know and when did he know it???????????

[wakeme2008]

2. I would not trust the person...Firedoglake maybe but not TO/Leopold

:shrug:

[Kagemusha]

6. I do not want to see Leopold as breaking news.

Apologies to those who consider that impolite or unjustified but, frankly, FDL won't touch him with a 10 foot pole, because they're sticklers for verification.

I won't mind if Cheney's notes indicate just what he claims though.

[jamesinca]

9. I am waiting for them to post

I would like more than one source to put this up on their site. I was just at CNN and Firedoglake, nothing yet.

[kansasblue]

13. This seems to be backed up by the Washington Post. (link)

Libby, Wells said, told Cheney he feared "people in the White House are trying to set me up." Wells then showed the jury the text of a note Cheney had jotted that said: "Not going to protect one staffer + sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/23/AR2007012300125.html

[Epiphany4z]

14. If you go back to

Firedoglake and read the testimony from tues..it is there...it is true....

I was reading it yesterday


snip from truth out
Cheney had written "not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of incompetence of others": a reference to Libby being asked to deal with the media and vociferously rebut Wilson's allegations that the Bush administration knowingly "twisted" intelligence to win support for the war in Iraq.


snip from truth out

However, when Cheney wrote the notes, he had originally written "this Pres." instead of "that was."

snip
During cross-examination Tuesday morning, David Addington was asked specific questions about Cheney's notes and the reference to President Bush. Addington, former counsel to the vice president, was named Cheney's chief of staff - a position Libby had held before resigning.

"Can you make out what's crossed out, Mr. Addington?" Wells asked, according to a copy of the transcript of Tuesday's court proceedings.

"It says 'the guy' and then it says, 'this Pres.' and then that is scratched through," Addington said.

"OK," Wells said. "Let's start again. 'Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy ...' and then what's scratched through?" Wells asked Addington again, attempting to establish that Cheney had originally written that President Bush personally asked Libby to beat back Wilson's criticisms.

"T-h-i-s space P-r-e-s," Addington said, spelling out the words. "And then it's got a scratch-through."

"So it looks like 'this Pres.?'" Wells asked again.

"Yes sir," Addington said.

Thus, Cheney's notes would have read "not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy this Pres. asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others." The words "this Pres." were crossed out and replaced with "that was," but are still clearly legible in the document.

[meuniermr]

3. You know the word..

[oldtime dfl_er]

4. Merry Fitzmas!!

If you didn't love Fitz before, get on the Fitz-love bandwagon now!:loveya:

[jamesinca]

5. yet it has nothing to do with Libby and perjury

I love the dirt this political soap opera is exposing. Boy did they loose thier message discipline when it comes to this case.

[Kagemusha]

7. Well in all due fairness, that's one reason for Fitz to bring this case

Rustle the bushes, drive the snakes into the sunlight. Fitz' thing is mafia cases after all.

[kenny blankenship]

8. Jesus- has Bush done ANYTHING in the past 3 years that wasn't an impeachable offense?

Our scene: the Oval Office --sometime late in 2002...
"Get my chief of staff in here, and get Turdblossom too. OK Andy, Karl, listen to me now...very carefully. I'm tired boys. I'm tired of wastin my time here. DON'T BUG ME WITH THE SMALL SHIT ANYMORE. From now on, all I want to do is the impeachable shit. Unnerstan? Don't bring me ANYTHING to sign off on, unless it's a high crime of state, treasonous usurpation, warcrimes, or an impeachable case of nest-feathering for Halliburton, GOT IT? Now get the fuck out of here. I've got to get drunk and pass out.

[demnan]

10. No

n/t

[dogfacedboy]

11. Well, it's not illegal to generally be a babbling idiot, so there's one. n/t

[Lilith Velkor]

12. nope

[FiveGoodMen]

15. Probably not. But that makes sense.

I'm quite certain that the US Government was, for all intents and purposes, hijacked in 2000.

They lied, cheated, bribed, and stole three elections for the sole purpose of using our economic and military power for personal, illegal, unconstitutional, and ultimately un-American reasons.

Assuming that's the case, why would they do anything remotely honest or useful except as a cover-up?

[KansDem]

21. Didn't he fall off a bike once?

I seem to recall he fell off a bike sometime during the last 3 years or so...now I'm not a constitutional scholar but I wouldn't think that would constitute an "impeachable offense."

[jamesinca]

22. But I am sure he lied about it NT

[fasttense]

16. Oh! I thought the note didn't make sense

but with the words "this pres." in it, it makes sense. It is a complete thought with this president in it. Without this pres., it is not complete. Now I understand it.

Thanks for the great info.

IMPEACH, IMPEACH (sorry to shout) Impeach now!

[trof]

17. Here's the note:

And the context:

[BuyingThyme]

19. I think it says "the Pres."

[BuyingThyme]

20. Actually, I'm almost sure it says "the Pres." and not "this Pres."

[calimary]

24. The other handwriting here (middle sample) - whose?

Anybody know?

[malaise]

27. Don't know but someone

should teach him how to spell ridiculous.:D

Days of our Lies is the best soap in town. Hope this ends with Soap On the Rope - more than a few men should be swinging in the wind by thetime this is completed.

[calimary]

28. Addington, maybe? Or snotty scotty?

Ari? Not sure of the date of this.

Must say I AM curious.

[williesgirl]

18. Sure don't understand why mods moved this to GD from LBN - 1st I've heard of

this angle. recommended and thanks for posting

[tabasco]

23. Haha! Ya' know Ol' Chicken Dickie ain't gonna take the fall all by himself!

He probably wrote it two days ago.

[bridgit]

25. well of course, bush is the decider ain't he...

:shrug:

[Garbo 2004]

26. But does it? Or did Cheney overreach yet again and thought better of it?

Who asked Libby to leak? Bush or the hands on Cheney, who even wrote out scripts for staffers, including Ari Fleischer, to use when talking to the media about the Niger claims. Wouldn't be the first time that Cheney tried to claim or did claim Presidential authority for something he undertook on his own initiative, if that's indeed what happened.

There's a 2006 Fitzgerald filing that contained an interesting statement that people haven't paid much attention to IMO. H20 Man recently posted it in one of his Plame threads (I've added the bold font):

One of the most important pre-trial documents in the case is the Government’s Response to Defendant’s Third Motion to Compel Discovery, filed on April 5, 2006. On pages 27-28, we find the following:

"During this time, while the President was unaware of the role that the Vice President’s Chief of Staff and National Security Adviser had in fact played in disclosing Ms. Plame’s CIA employment, defendant implored White House officials to have a public statement issued exonerating him. When his initial efforts met with no success, defendant sought the assistance of the Vice President in having his name cleared. Though the defendant knew that another White House official had spoken with Novak in advance of Novak’s column and that official had learned in advance that Novak would be publishing information about Wilson’s wife, defendant did not disclose that fact to other White House officials (including the Vice President) but instead prepared a handwritten statement of what he wished White House Press Secretary McClellan would say to exonerate him...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=63805

Was Fitz in his filing simply naive? Wrong? Intentionally and uncharacteristically misrepresenting the evidence he has before the court?

I'm just not convinced that Cheney's scrawl is a smoking gun as the Libby defense team wants to portray it.