A FAILED COVER-UP: What The Libby Trial Is Revealing (WaPo)

A Failed Cover-Up
What the Libby Trial Is Revealing

By David Ignatius
Friday, February 2, 2007; Page A15

Why was the White House so nervous in the summer of 2003 about the CIA's reporting on alleged Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Niger to build a nuclear bomb? That's the big question that runs through the many little details that have emerged in the perjury trial of Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

The trial record suggests a simple answer: The White House was worried that the CIA would reveal that it had been pressured in 2002 and early 2003 to support administration claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and that in the Niger case, the CIA had tried hard to resist this pressure. The machinations of Cheney, Libby and others were an attempt to weave an alternative narrative that blamed the CIA.

The truth began to emerge on July 11, 2003, when CIA Director George Tenet issued a public statement disclosing that the agency had tried to warn the White House off the Niger allegations. In that sense, the Libby trial is about a cover-up that failed.
.............

The bottom line? Grenier was asked in court last week to explain the White House's 2003 machinations. Here's what he said: "I think they were trying to avoid blame for not providing (the truth) about whether or not Iraq had attempted to buy uranium." Let me say it again: This trial is about a cover-up that failed.

more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020101784.html

all those involved spend many years in jail contemplating their complicity.

The crime with Watergate was basically just breaking & entering. The crime here is high fucking treason.

what was the title of that John Dean book? Oh yeah, "Worse Than Watergate."
My guess is the Bush/Cheney memoir will be called Mein Kampf.

Deliberate LIES to invade and occupy a foreign country, MURDERING hundreds of thousands.


... and We The People watch American Idol. :puke:

Lying to get the US into a war.

Or, as Catch22Dem says, "high fucking treason."

(Don't forget, the US media failed, too.)

White House 'exaggerating Iraqi threat'
Bush's televised address attacked by US intelligence

October 9, 2002
Officials in the CIA, FBI and energy department are being put under intense pressure to produce reports which back the administration's line, the Guardian has learned. In response, some are complying, some are resisting and some are choosing to remain silent.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,807286,00.html

A (supposedly "democratic") government document...

officially stating that the Intelligence was being...

fixed around the policy...

I thought only military juntas like the Nazis or the Serbs...

were commiting these types of crimes...

In fact, it seems the "new" juntas R keeping their old names...

Because they need cover ups. :puke:

...because we know he was hoping for a "chance to invade" long before 2002...

(sorry, I couldnt resist O8) )

From http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0829-22.htm (among many other places...)

in Congress over the OVP's behavior. Seems like it was a fairytale world back then.

D'oh -- and we have over 3,000 dead American soldiers who died for these lies to boost republicon oil & munitions profits.

All led by the shameful likes of Commander AWOL and Dick 'Five Military Deferments' Cheney

The republicons are lacking in all honor.

Why do the republicons hate and lie to America?

It's them damn libruls who hate 'murika and want to tear it down. Corporate profit is the 'murikan dream! :eyes:

Because they are ignorant, stupid, arrogant, full of shit lying bastards...that's why.

Dough.

which brings wealth

There was a great bit on the Daily Show a while back where Stewart said there comes a time in every presidency where the president has to deny what has already become conventional wisdom. Stewart then went back to Nixon saying "I am not a crook," and Clinton saying, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman..." as previous examples of a president denying what everybody already has accepted as the truth.

For this president, it is, (cut to Bush), "Nobody likes to see innocent people die."

:)

"I'm not a traitor" is appropriate for this.

:)

This is one more aspect of the news slant we get as a result of the corporcracy.

What should be the most important article is buried and we hear aboud Joe Biden saying something stupid, but not terribly important for days.

and they sent me a very lame answer. "We have covered it"

grrrr!

that it wasn't the "intelligence" that failed.

We know from the 8/6/01 PDB that the CIA and/or FBI was making it clear that they believed bin Laden was planning something big. We know -- and by "we" I mean the generally informed public, aka DU ;-) -- that various agencies had planned training scenarios involving large planes and large buildings. We know there were FBI agents like Colleen Rowley and Kevin Williams (?) who were trying to alert their superiors of potential terrorist pilots-in-training. We know Sibel Edmonds was trying to alert people. We know Valerie Plame was on the job.

So it bugs me to hear the blame shifted to "We got bad intelligence," when I don't think that was the case. There may have been politican machinations at the top of some of those agencies, but I really and truly don't think the day-to-day intelligence gathering was "bad."

Now, to take it logically from there, if the intelligence was "good," something had to happen to make people base decisions on "bad" intelligence. Like, maybe that something was putting out fake "bad" intelligence, or not letting the "good" intelligence -- meaning, the intelligence that provided solid evidence there were no WMDs, there was not stockpiling of bio and chem weapons, etc., etc., etc. -- be revealed.

Woodward's book "State of Denial" seems to present a case that there was, and still is, solid evidence that the (b)Administration knew there was no real threat from Iraq and/or Saddam Hussein, knew without a doubt and didn't care that there was no threat because they simply wanted the war. And they didn't care how they got it.

Putting the blame on the intelligence community -- regardless what we may think of the conservative political nature of the intelligence community as a whole -- for failing to do their job of collecting intelligence is nothing more than a diversion. The accuracy of Joe Wilson's reporting -- as he became an ad hoc member of the intelligence community -- ought to support that premise. And I think that's what this WaPo piece is trying to say: Stop blaming the spies; they did their job and they did it as well as they possibly could and ultimately they were RIGHT.

So it's not only the cover-up in this case, but WHAT they were trying to cover up..

One of the ten commandments that so many rightwingers, including the current (b)administration, would like to have posted all over our public buildings commands that "Thou shalt not bear false witness." Now, in a society that didn't have courts and juries and lawyers and rules of evidence quite like ours, I think that commandment was intended to cover a broad spectrum of what might generically be called lying. So you not only don't perjure yourself when you've taken a formal oath in a court of law, but you don't accuse people of doing things they didn't do, you don't accuse of them of not doing things they did, you don't fail to remember your own deeds whether good or bad. In other words, you just plain don't fucking lie.

For a high-ranking member of the (b)administration, Lewis Libby's lies and the whole process of "outing" Valerie Plame constitute a crime, possibly an impeachable offense, perhaps even as high as treason. But for all those fundamentalist "christians" who scream and chain themselves to big stones in front of courthouses, this whole fiasco is an offense against their "God."

May they all rot in the hell that they believe their god intended for them.

Tansy Gold, who doesn't believe in any gods but what the heck. . .. .

.

everyone knew that 'the dossier' was fake

to say the same thing. He was getting pissed off that the CIA was getting all the blame for "bad intelligence," when in fact the White House was just ignoring any intelligence that would absolve Iraq and Saddam of any current threat. At the same time, Chalibi was feeding the false intelligence to the Office of Special Plans (OSP) in the Pentagon, the special group formed by Rumsfeld because he didn't like the intelligence that he was getting from the CIA and others. They in turn would send it to the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) who used it to justify starting the war.

for impeachment that was set in 1999.

I tell you this is going down that road folks

And for all of you who are going what are the dems waiting for impeachment? Them ducks in that damn legal row.

But it is comming, I can snell it

he said don't focus on the CIA leak case (just like the old days)

A week ago, some might have called it "conspiracy theory".

I'm going to put my helmet on now. :tinfoilhat: The sky is clearly falling. B-) :evilgrin: :bounce:

Those of us who lived through Watergate remember the drip, drip, drip (sorry I couldn't resist) of news coverage--small articles buried in the back of the newspaper about this little break-in at the DNC headquarters. The media thought it was no big deal. It took months and months before it reached the loud crescendo that had the country crying out for impeachment.

documents that turned up in Italy, IIRC. I wonder if we'll ever find out who created them.

by Brent Budowsky, who was one of the original authors of the CIA Identities Law


The Cheney Trial, Within the Libby Trial

When we were writing the original law, not one of us, could have ever imagined that identity disclosers would be high officials in the U.S. government. The law was aimed at people very hostile to the U.S., who were acting in a manner that helped the KGB.

It was unthinkable to all of us, that anyone involved in these disclosures, felonious or not, would be high in the U.S. government. Anyone who goes on television and says otherwise is a liar.

Why?

My theory, with substantial evidence to back it up, is that the danger of Joe Wilson was not the damage that Wilson's view did to the Administration policy. It was the danger that Wilson's work would unravel a long term, well planned, highly deceptive campaign that preceded Joe's involvement to deceive the country to drive us to war.



He points the finger directly at Cheney. Must read!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brent-budowsky/the-cheney-trial-within-_b_40305.html

awards Tenet with the medal of freedom award, this is almost something out of a Hollywood B movie...!