Vice President ***** Cheney's press officer, Cathie Martin, approached
his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on Air Force Two on July
12, 2003, to ask how she should respond to journalists' questions
about Joseph Wilson. Libby looked over one of the reporters' questions
and told Martin: "Well, let me go talk to the boss and I'll be back."
On Libby's return, Martin testified in federal court last week, he
brought a card with detailed replies dictated by Cheney, including a
highly partisan, incomplete summary of Wilson's investigation into
what was suspected to be Iraq's program for weapons of mass
destruction.
Libby subsequently called a reporter, read him the statement, and said
-- according to the reporter -- he had heard that Wilson's
investigation was instigated by his wife, an employee at the CIA,
later identified as Valerie Wilson. The reporter, Matthew Cooper of
Time magazine, was one of five people with whom Libby discussed
Valerie Wilson's CIA status during those critical weeks that summer.
After seven days of such courtroom testimony, the unanswered question
hanging over Libby's trial is, did the vice president's former chief
of staff decide to leak that disparaging information on his own?
No evidence has emerged that Cheney told him to do it. But Cheney's
dictated reply is one of many signs to emerge at the trial of the vice
president's unusual attentiveness to the controversy and his desire to
blunt it. His efforts included the extraordinary disclosure of
classified information, including one-sided synopses of Joseph
Wilson's report and a 2002 intelligence estimate on Iraq.
Under questioning from FBI agent Deborah Bond, Libby acknowledged that
he and Cheney may have talked aboard the plane from Norfolk that day
about whether to make public Valerie Wilson's CIA employment, Bond
testified Thursday.
Her testimony brought Cheney closer than ever to the heart of the
controversy surrounding the Bush administration's efforts to discredit
Joseph Wilson, who had accused the White House of twisting
intelligence he had gathered as it sought to justify the invasion of
Iraq.
White House officials testified that Cheney was irritated because he
thought Joseph Wilson had alleged the vice president sent him on the
fact-finding trip to Niger but rejected the investigation's
conclusions. Time after time at the height of the controversy, they
said, Cheney directed the administration's response to Wilson's
criticism and Libby carried it out.
Cheney personally dictated other talking points for use by the White
House press office; helped negotiate the wording of a key statement by
then-CIA Director George Tenet; instructed Libby to deal directly with
selected reporters; told Libby to disclose selected passages from the
national intelligence estimate and other classified reports; and held
a luncheon for conservative columnists to discuss the controversy.
Throughout this period, Cheney kept a news clipping of Wilson's
criticisms on his desk, annotated with the question, "did his wife
send him on a junket?" according to court statements. Libby told a
grand jury that he and Cheney discussed it on multiple occasions each
day.
Wilson was a former U.S. ambassador dispatched by the CIA the previous
year -- at the suggestion of his wife but on a decision by other
officials -- to determine whether Iraq had recently tried to acquire
nuclear materials from Niger. The agency later said that it was
responding to inquiries made by Cheney's office, the State Department
and the Defense Department.
On July 6, 2003, 16 months after his return, Wilson publicly accused
the administration of ignoring his report, which debunked the Iraq-
Niger speculation.
Wilson's allegations provoked a political firestorm. Within days, the
White House was forced to repudiate a key assertion President Bush had
made in his State of the Union address, and Tenet issued an unusual
public apology for failing to stop the president from making it. But
rather than tamping down the controversy, the administration's
backtracking only "made it flare up," as then-White House spokesman
Ari Fleischer testified last week.
In its response, the White House wound up training its fire not only
on the substance of Wilson's allegations but on him personally, trial
testimony has shown.
Over the course of that week in July, bracketed by Wilson's published
criticism and Cheney's flight back from Norfolk, three senior White
House officials -- Libby, Fleischer and special presidential assistant
Karl Rove -- inaccurately told or suggested to five reporters that
Wilson had been dispatched to Niger by his wife, according to the
testimony. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage separately told
columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Wilson -- who is also know by her
maiden name Plame -- worked at the CIA, and Novak made that news
public July 14.
The belittling implication of the disclosure, as Fleischer and others
testified last week, was that nepotism, rather than Joseph Wilson's
knowledge and experience, lay behind his involvement in the matter.
Cheney and Libby have asserted that their sole intent in contacting
journalists was to defend the credibility of their policy, but
prosecutors disclosed new evidence on Wednesday that the
administration was focusing on Wilson himself. Cheney's then-
communications director, Mary Matalin, advised Libby in a phone call
July 10, prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg said.
Matalin, according to notes Libby made of the conversation, called
Wilson a snake and warned that his "story has legs," Zeidenberg said.
She laid out a plan: "We need to address the Wilson motivation. We
need to be able to get the cable out. Declassified. The president
should wave his wand."
Valerie Wilson's employment at the CIA was classified, making it
illegal for any official to knowingly and intentionally disclose it.
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's 22-month investigation did not
produce charges of that offense.
But Libby was indicted on charges of making false statements,
obstruction of justice and perjury for denying that he was aware of
Valerie Wilson's employment and had disclosed it to journalists.
In courtroom testimony, witnesses have asserted that Cheney and two
others told Libby about Valerie Wilson in June, and that he told two
journalists and Fleischer -- who in turn said he told two more
journalists. It was, in short, a hot topic of gossip by the
administration.
Several months later, White House spokesman Scott McClellan cleared
Rove of leaking Valerie Wilson's name -- inaccurately, as it turned
out -- but provided no such statement about Libby.
According to Cheney's own notes, introduced at the trial last week,
Cheney told McClellan that such a statement "has to happen today. Call
out key press saying same thing about Scooter as Karl. Not going to
protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his
neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others."
.
|
