Sterling Character
In a single week, we learn that Vice President Cheney shot his good friend, and betrayed his country.
The shooting appears to have been a legitimate accident.
The treason, however, was on purpose:
Now, according to documents filed in the CIA-leak case by Fitzgerald, Libby has testified that his “superiors” in the White House instructed him to leak information from a highly classified intelligence report suggesting Iraq was trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction. The National Journal reported that Cheney himself had authorized the leak, although it’s unclear whether anyone bothered to declassify the information before Libby passed it on to reporters.
Included in the information Libby leaked was the identity of CIA Agent Valerie Plame. At the time, Plame was deep undercover.
Plame’s identity was published in July 2003 by columnist Robert Novak after her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused the administration of twisting intelligence about Iraq’s efforts to buy uranium in Niger. The year before, the CIA had sent Wilson to Niger to determine the accuracy of the uranium reports.
Wilson’s revelations cast doubt on President Bush’s claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that Niger had sold uranium to Iraq to develop a nuclear weapon as one of the administration’s key justifications for going to war in Iraq.
Outing an undercover agent is a serious breach of national security, and a crime known as treason.
Outing an undercover agent for reasons of revenge?
I don’t have any word low enough for that.
What surprises me about this whole thing, is that anybody would be surprised that Cheney was directly involved.
Scooter Libby was Cheney’s Chief of Staff.
A Chief of Staff is the most trusted and intimate staffer anyone can have.
There is no way Scooter Libby would take an action like this without direct orders from his boss.
