Vice President's role in outing of CIA agent under examination, sources close to prosecutor say
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is trying to determine whether Vice President Dick Cheney had a role in the outing
of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame-Wilson, individuals close to Fitzgerald say. Plame’s husband was a vocal critic of
prewar intelligence used by President George W. Bush to build support for the Iraq war.
The investigation into who leaked the officer's name to reporters has now turned toward a little known cabal of
administration hawks known as the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), which came together in August 2002 to publicize the
threat posed by Saddam Hussein. WHIG was founded by Bush chief of staff Andrew Card and operated out of the Vice
President’s office.
Fitzgerald’s examination centers on a group of players charged with not only selling the war, but according to sources
familiar with the case, to discredit anyone who openly “disagreed with the official Iraq war” story.
The group’s members included Deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove, Bush advisor Karen Hughes, Senior Advisor to
the Vice President Mary Matalin, Deputy Director of Communications James Wilkinson, Assistant to the President and
Legislative Liaison Nicholas Calio, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and I.
Lewis “Scooter”Libby - Chief of Staff to the Vice President and co-author of the Administration's pre-emptive strike
policy.
Rice was later appointed Secretary of State; her deputy Hadley was made National Security Advisor. Wilkinson departed to
become a spokesman for the military's central command, and later for the Republican National Convention. Hughes was
recently appointed Undersecretary of State.
Several members of the group have testified before Fitzgerald’s grand jury.
Cheney’s role under scrutiny
Two officials close to Fitzgerald told RAW STORY they have seen documents obtained from the White House Iraq Group which
state that Cheney was present at several of the group's meetings. They say Cheney personally discussed with individuals
in attendance at least two interviews in May and June of 2003 Wilson gave to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof
and Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus, in which he claimed the administration “twisted” prewar intelligence and
what the response from the administration should be.
Cheney was interviewed by the FBI surrounding the leak in 2004. According to the New York Times, Cheney was asked
whether he knew of any concerted effort by White House aides to name Ms. Wilson.
Sources close to the investigation have also confirmed that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is trying to determine
Vice President Cheney's role in the outing of Mrs. Wilson, more specifically, if Cheney ordered the leak.
Those close to Fitzgerald say they have yet to uncover any evidence that suggests Cheney ordered the leak or played a
role in the outing of Mrs. Wilson. Still, the sources said they are investigating claims that Cheney may have been
involved based on his attendance at meetings of the Iraq group. Previous reports indicate Cheney was intimately involved
with the framing of the Iraq war.
On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal confirmed that the Iraq group was under scrutiny.
“Formed in August 2002, the group, which included Messrs. [Karl] Rove and [Lewis] Libby, worked on setting strategy for
selling the war in Iraq to the public in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion,” the Journal reported. “The
group likely would have played a significant role in responding to [former Ambassador Joseph] Wilson's claims” that the
Bush administration twisted intelligence when it said Iraq tried to acquire yellow-cake uranium from Africa.
Rove's "strategic communications" task force operating inside the group was instrumental in writing and coordinating
speeches by senior Bush administration officials, highlighting in September 2002 that Iraq was a nuclear threat.
Background
The White House Iraq Group operated virtually unknown until January 2004, when Fitzgerald subpoenaed for notes, email
and attendance records. Bush Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. created the group in August of 2002.
“A senior official who participated in its work called it "an internal working group, like many formed for priority
issues, to make sure each part of the White House was fulfilling its responsibilities," according to an Aug. 10, 2003,
Washington Post investigative report on the group’s inner workings.
Senior Bush adviser Karl Rove chaired meetings of the group.
The group relied heavily on New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who, after meeting with several of the organization’s
members in August 2002, wrote an explosive story that many critics of the war believe laid the groundwork for military
action against Iraq.
On Sunday, Sept. 8, 2002, Miller wrote a story for the Times quoting anonymous officials who said aluminum tubes found
in Iraq were to be used as centrifuges. Her report said the "diameter, thickness and other technical specifications" of
the tubes -- precisely the grounds for skepticism among nuclear enrichment experts -- showed that they were "intended as
components of centrifuges."
She closed her piece by quoting then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice who said the United States would not sit
by and wait to find a smoking gun to prove its case, possibly in the form of a “a mushroom cloud." After Miller’s piece
was published, administration officials pursued their case on Sunday talk shows using Miller’s piece as evidence that
Iraq was pursuing a nuclear bomb, even though those officials were the ones who supplied Miller with the story and were
quoted anonymously.
Rice's comments on CNN’s “Late Edition” reaffirmed Miller’s story. Rice said that Saddam Hussein was "actively pursuing
a nuclear weapon" and that the tubes -- described repeatedly in U.S. intelligence reports as "dual-use" items -- were
"only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs."
Cheney, on NBC's "Meet the Press," also mentioned the aluminum tubes story in the Times and said "increasingly, we
believe the United States will become the target" of an Iraqi atomic bomb. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, on
CBS's "Face the Nation," asked viewers to "imagine a September 11th with weapons of mass destruction.”
President Bush reiterated the image of Rice’s mushroom cloud comment in his Oct. 7, 2002 speech.
The International Atomic Energy Agency later revealed that Iraq’s aluminum tubes were never designed to enrich uranium.
In February of 2003, WHIG allegedly scripted the speech Powell made to the United Nations presenting the United States’
case for war.
Powell’s speech to the UN, United Press International reported, “was handled by the White House Iraq Group, which…
provided Powell with a script for his speech, using information developed by Feith's group. Much of it was unsourced
material fed to newspapers by the OSP. Realizing this, Powell's team turned to the now-discredited National Intelligence
Estimate on Iraq. But some of Feith's handiwork ended up in Powell's mouth anyway.”
Miller appears in Jury room again
Miller’s second appearance before the grand jury investigating the CIA leak seems to be tied to her meeting and
discussions in June of 2003 with I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, sources close to the
investigation said. The meeting came one year before the New York Times printed a lengthy mea culpa discrediting a
half-dozen of Miller’s prewar stories on the Iraqi threat.
Fitzgerald’s investigation resulted when allegations surfaced that Bush Administration officials had called reporters to
circulate the name of the CIA officer, Valerie Plame-Wilson, in an attempt to discredit her husband, former Ambassador
Joseph Wilson, a critic of the administration's Iraq policy.
Wilson went to Niger in 2002 at the request of the CIA to investigate reports that Iraq was trying to buy uranium
"yellow cake" to develop nuclear weapons. He found that the reports were not credible.
Until now, Fitzgerald’s two-year investigation has focused on conversations Karl Rove and Lewis “Scooter” Libby have had
with individual journalists, including Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller.
That has now changed. Fitzgerald has retraced his steps to an earlier period when he first began to examine the White
House Iraq Group.
During its very first meetings, Card's Iraq group ordered a series of white papers showing Iraq’s arms violations. The
first paper, "A Grave and Gathering Danger: Saddam Hussein's Quest for Nuclear Weapons," was never published. However,
the paper was drafted with the assistance of experts from the National Security Council and Cheney's office.
“In its later stages, the draft white paper coincided with production of a National Intelligence Estimate and its
unclassified summary. “But the WHIG, according to three officials who followed the white paper's progress, wanted
gripping images and stories not available in the hedged and austere language of intelligence,” according to the Post.
Eight months later, Joseph Wilson began to question the veracity of the Bush administration’s prewar intelligence in
private conversations with reporters. His talk threatened to undercut the administration’s successful marketing
campaign: that Iraq was an imminent threat to the United States and its neighbors in the Middle East.
Wilson’s allegations threatened to chip away at the credibility of individuals such as Cheney, who, in dozens of
speeches just a few months prior had said that Iraq was dangerously close to acquiring a nuclear weapon. It also
threatened to ruin Miller’s credibility. It was then that Administration officials started to discredit Wilson.
Now Fitzgerald is trying to find out whether Cheney was involved.
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© 2005 Jason Leopold
Jason Leopold is the author of the explosive memoir, News Junkie, to be released in the spring of 2006 by Process/Feral
House Books. Visit Leopold's website at www.jasonleopold.com for updates.