Jason Leopold at TruthOut has possibly explosive revelations on the Plame affair. Here’s a teaser:
The White House turned over last week 250 pages of emails from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. Senior aides had sent the emails in the spring of 2003 related to the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed during a federal court hearing Friday.
The emails are said to be explosive, and may prove that Cheney played an active role in the effort to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush administration’s prewar Iraq intelligence, sources close to the investigation said.
Sources close to the probe said the White House “discovered” the emails two weeks ago and turned them over to Fitzgerald last week. The sources added that the emails could prove that Cheney lied to FBI investigators when he was interviewed about the leak in early 2004. Cheney said that he was unaware of any effort to discredit Wilson or unmask his wife’s undercover status to reporters.
Cheney was not under oath when he was interviewed. He told investigators how the White House came to rely on Niger documents that purportedly showed that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country.
Cheney said he had received an intelligence briefing on the allegations in late December 2003, or early January 2004, and had asked the CIA for more information about the issue.
Cheney said he was unaware that Ambassador Wilson was chosen to travel to Niger to look into the uranium claims, and that he never saw a report Wilson had given a CIA analyst upon his return which stated that the Niger claims were untrue. He said the CIA never told him about Wilson’s trip.
However, the emails say otherwise, and will show that the vice president spearheaded an effort in March 2003 to attack Wilson’s credibility and used the CIA to dig up information on the former ambassador that could be used against him, sources said.
So, then: are we watching the rumored White House fault lines widen & an attempt to give Scattershot the boot?
That’s what I was wondering…Oh, and of course a pardon.
Sure, why not?
In any case, I predicted last year that Cheney wouldn’t serve more than two years of Bush’s second term; I thought the reason would involve his health (or ‘health’). We’ll see ..
That is a great reason for a resignation!!
I’m willing to bet that we see Cheney fired and charged as part of a “clean up DC” PR campaign in the run-up to the 2006 elections. The Republicans will go on and on about the great things that Bush has done, and pin the blame for all the bad stuff on Cheney. Either the anointed 2008 Presidential candidate or another stalking horse will be pushed up to the VP slot.
The Democrats will, of course, go along with it passively.
Maybe the shooting incident was suppose to be the WH so called “duck and cover” to boot Cheney from his VP post.
Until I see Fitz standing in front of a mic, I am not holding my breath for good news. I just have had my hopes up too many times these past five years with “this is nail in the coffin” stories.
I want to believe it, I really do. In a sense, I agree with you…need to see/hear/read about a formal announcement. But I have the feeling that people are gonna get sick of all the crap re: this admin and it will happen. The question is when?
Some real frog-march news! It’s been weeks!
And wouldn’t it be nice to know more about how those emails just happened to be “discovered”?
We need to start a poll on how many felonies everybody in the White House ends up getting tagged with.
Yes, Arminius! Let’s do hope.
The timing of the e-mail discovery is interesting.
But I”ll always wonder what was in the e-mails and documents that got purged after Abu gave the WH a head’s up before the docs had to be supplied.
The most damaging emails are like “My Darling Clementine” – lost and gone forever.
Richard Nixon was more honest and had more respect for the Presidency than does G.W. Bush.
We are talking about documents that were apparently “lost” for over 2 years. I can’t think of information that would be more damaging to the administration than evidence Cheney directed the whole operation, other than emails showing Bush knew too (which doesn’t sound likely to me, he’s not a hands-on manager). If they really are jettisoning Cheney we should have confirmation soon.
Incidentally, one reason I’ve been spending time every day for seven months now on this particular little pond is that I’ve come to generally trust the instincts of the local large critters (unlike the top critters at DKOS). Thus, when BooMan says he thinks the news is “possibly explosive,” I tend to believe him–and when I check it out further, once again my instinct is confirmed. I damn sure don’t agree with this group on some issues. Just on the ones I think are most important these days. I’m real happy to have this pond to hop around in.
Know exactly what you mean. And, there are other pluses: all of the better/more inteligent writers are here, and people here are more friendly/likely to help out.
A few months ago a couple of us speculated that GWB was the source of the leak. I’ll stand by that one. Bush to Woodie.