Cheney, Libby Blocked Papers To Senate Intelligence Panel

By Murray Waas, special to National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005

Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources.

cont'd.

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2005/1027nj1.htm

(Fuck Irv)

My search brought up nothing. I guess it's worth repeating. :-)

Sometimes when it comes up the second time you feel even better. Ok my bad.

We can keep circulating these stories until the rest of America starts to listen.

A former administration official said that "this might have been about politics on some level, but it is also personal. feels that his honor has been questioned, and his instinct is to strike back."

Now, as Libby battles back against possible charges by a special prosecutor, he might be seeking vindication on an entirely new level.

So is taking dead aim at Cheney the course? Where does Judith fit in the scheme of things?

Even asshat Roberts claims the war wouldn't have been authorized had the committee known what this report contained.

After the release of the report, Intelligence Committee, Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said they doubted that the Senate would have authorized the president to go to war if senators had been given accurate information regarding Iraq's programs on weapons of mass destruction.

What's the point of even having a committee if they're to be denied info to do their jobs effectively?

" Had the withheld information been turned over, according to administration and congressional sources, it likely would have shifted a portion of the blame away from the intelligence agencies to the Bush administration as to who was responsible for the erroneous information being presented to the American public, Congress, and the international community."

Administration sources also said that Cheney's general counsel, David Addington, played a central role in the White House decision not to turn over the documents. Addington did not return phone calls seeking comment. Cheney's office declined to comment after requesting that any questions for this article be submitted in writing.

Remember Addington?

Cheney's Lawyer Addington Penned Key Torture Memo

David Addington, the General Counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, was the actual author of one of the now-infamous White House "torture memos" that claimed for President Bush the authority to violate the Geneva Conventions on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, in the so-called "war on terrorism." The immediate result of this Hitlerian document was the scenes of inhuman torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, and the as-yet untold tales of similar torture at other secret prison locations in Afghanistan, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in other countries around the world.

The revelation that Addington was the author of the Jan. 25, 2002 draft memorandum for the President, first appeared in a July 3 report in Newsweek online. An unnamed aide to White House General Counsel Alberto Gonzales told the magazine's Daniel Klaidman, "The memo was actually penned not by Gonzales but by Dick Cheney's top lawyer, David Addington, a hard-charging hawk."

This is big!

n/t

should not be underestimated. And I include the implications of this being reported now, at this unique point in time. I will speculate that the VP's office is nkot behind the leak. Rather, it is some group delivering a subtle message ......

Committee, hopefully to the point of taking some action.

The House and Senate need to consider their obligation to this nation.

Cheney and his boy got around a lot didn't they?

i owe you a drink, buddy.
we have to meet up soon!
B

(The drawn blood, that is. It needs to be hammered home to the media.):

Had the withheld information been turned over, according to administration and congressional sources, it likely would have shifted a portion of the blame away from the intelligence agencies to the Bush administration as to who was responsible for the erroneous information being presented to the American public, Congress, and the international community.

In April 2004, the Intelligence Committee released a report that concluded that "much of the information provided or cleared by the Central Intelligence Agency for inclusion in Secretary Powell's speech was overstated, misleading, or incorrect."

Both Republicans and Democrats on the committee say that their investigation was hampered by the refusal of the White House to turn over key documents, although Republicans said the documents were not as central to the investigation.

A former senior administration official familiar with the discussions on whether to turn over the materials said there was a "political element" in the matter. This official said the White House did not want to turn over records during an election year that could used by critics to argue that the administration used incomplete or faulty intelligence to go to war with Iraq. "Nobody wants something like this dissected or coming out in an election year," the former official said.

But the same former official also said that Libby felt passionate that the CIA and other agencies were not doing a good job at intelligence gathering, that the Iraqi war was a noble cause, and that he and the vice president were only making their case in good faith. According to the former official, Libby cited those reasons in fighting for the inclusion in Powell's U.N. speech of intelligence information that others mistrusted, in opposing the release of documents to the Intelligence Committee, and in moving aggressively to counter Wilson's allegations that the Bush administration distorted intelligence findings.

you are messing with the law,you old snaggletoothed bastard. It only works when you are putting one over on the American public.

Finally all the shit these cockroaches have been hiding in the dark is coming into the light.