Bush and Cheney Discussed Plame Prior to Leak
In early June 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney met with President Bush and told him that CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson and that she was responsible for sending him on a fact-finding mission to Niger to check out reports about Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium from the African country, according to current and former White House officials and attorneys close to the investigation to determine who revealed Plame-Wilson's undercover status to the media.
Now this does change things. If there's actual proof that Bush knew that the plan was to out Wilson's wife then his every action after the leak was a cover up.Other White House officials who also attended the meeting with Cheney and President Bush included former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, her former deputy Stephen Hadley, and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove.
This information was provided to this reporter by attorneys and US officials who have remained close to the case. Investigators working with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald compiled the information after interviewing 36 Bush administration officials over the past two and a half years.
The revelation puts a new wrinkle into Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's two-year-old criminal probe into the leak and suggests for the first time that President Bush knew from early on that the vice president and senior officials on his staff were involved in a coordinated effort to attack Wilson's credibility by leaking his wife's classified CIA status.
Now that President Bush's knowledge of the Plame Wilson affair has been exposed, there are thorny questions about whether the president has broken the law - specifically, whether he obstructed justice when he was interviewed about his knowledge of the Plame Wilson leak and the campaign to discredit her husband.
Details of President Bush's involvement in the Plame Wilson affair came in a 39-page court document filed by Fitzgerald late Wednesday evening in US District Court in Washington.
As I argued here, I find it impossible to believe that, as Bush knew Cheney wanted to discredit Wilson's evidence, that they didn't discuss whether they were the people behind the leak after Valerie Plame's name became public.
But if there's proof that Cheney discussed her status with Bush before she was outed then it's an open and shut case. And Bush appointing an investigator was nothing more than a cynical attempt at a cover up.
I'm still interested in seeing a transcript of Bush and Cheney's sessions with Fitzgerald. I wonder if they told him that the information was "no longer classified" or if that's a new rabbit they've pulled out of a hat. After all Fitzgerald was appointed to look into the leaking of classified information.
I also see that the repugs are getting very rattled by Fitzgerald as Bill Kristol is now claiming that the leak story is "absurd" and that Fitzgerald is now out to"discredit the Bush administration".
Kristol's worried that the lies are starting to unravel.
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