http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=517051
Cheney accused of smear campaign by ambassador
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
01 May 2004
The former ambassador Joe Wilson yesterday accused Vice-President *****
Cheney and his senior officials of launching a smear campaign against
him and of illegally identifying his wife as an undercover intelligence
officer in an apparent act of revenge. In doing so they "betrayed
America's national security".
Mr Wilson said that in the spring of 2003, officials gathered in Mr
Cheney's office and a decision was taken to discredit him over his view
that allegations that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium for nuclear
weapons were false. His wife's identity and her position as a covert CIA
operative were later leaked to a right-wing newspaper columnist.
"According to a number of sources there was a meeting held in the office
of the Vice-President, chaired by either the Vice-President or more
likely his chief of staff [Lewis] "Scooter" Libby in which the decision
was made to do a 'work-up' on me," he said. "They clearly came across my
wife's name and decided to put [her] name out on the street as part of a
campaign to drag my wife into the public square to get at me. That's
it."
The allegation by Mr Wilson has the potential to be extremely damaging
to the Bush administration as the President and his deputy campaign for
re-election. The leaking of an intelligence officer's identity is a
criminal offence and the matter is currently being investigated by a
team of FBI officers headed by an outside prosecutor.
Should an official as senior as Mr Libby be charged, let alone
convicted, of leaking the identity of Mr Wilson's wife, it would be
terribly damaging to the administration. Should Mr Cheney be personally
implicated, the consequences would be politically devastating. Mr Wilson
believes that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was also involved.
Mr Cheney's office said yesterday that no one was available to comment.
On Thursday a White House spokesman, Scott McAllen, said: "Joe Wilson
has said his primary objective is a political agenda to defeat the
president. I don't intend to promote or review a book of someone whose
primary objective is grounded in a political objective." Mr Wilson's
allegations are contained within a new book The Politics of Truth:
Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed my Wife's CIA Identity,
published today. An exclusive serialisation of extracts of the memoir
begins in The Independent on Monday.
In the book Mr Wilson details how in early 2002 he was asked to travel
to Niger at the request of Mr Cheney's office to investigate claims -
based on a classified document - that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium to
restart its nuclear weapons programme.
Mr Wilson, a former ambassador to several African countries, travelled
to Niger and reported back that the claim was demonstrably false and
that the document must be a fake. Though the claim was contained in the
British government's September 2002 dossier on Iraq, the document was
later confirmed as a fake by the UN nuclear watchdog.
Despite Mr Wilson's findings, Mr Bush used the false claim in his State
of the Union speech, in 2003, claiming "the British government has
learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of
uranium from Africa".
It was in the summer of 2003, after the administration continued to
claim it had not been told the uranium claim was false, that Mr Wilson
went public - first in The Independent on Sunday and then in the New
York Times. It was at that point that the identity and job of his wife,
Valerie Plame, were leaked to columnist Bob Novak, who named her.
In his memoir Mr Wilson writes: "For all the insults I knew I would
suffer I never expected the White House itself to do anything like what
it did: come after my wife. The disclosure of her employment was
unprecedented and the [investigation] will decide whether it was a
criminal act. Whether convictions are obtained or not it was
unquestionably beneath the conduct that we have every right to demand
from our public servants."
(c) 2004 Independant Digital (UK) LTD.
Stoney
"Designated Rascal and Rapscallion
and
SCAMPERMEISTER!"
When in doubt, SCAMPER about!
When things are fair, SCAMPER everywhere!
When things are rough, can't SCAMPER enough!
/end humour alert
alt.atheism military veteran #11
{so much for the 'no atheists in foxholes' rubbish}
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