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Chickens Come Home to Roost on Cheney
By Ray McGovern
10/20/05 "ICH
" -- -- Indictments are expected to come down shortly
as special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald completes the investigation
originally precipitated by the outing of a CIA officer under deep
cover. In 21-plus months of digging and interviewing, Fitzpatrick
and his able staff have been able to negotiate the
intelligence/policy/politics labyrinth with considerable
sophistication. In the process, they seem to have learned
considerably more than they had bargained for. The investigation has
long since morphed into size "extra-large," which is the only size
commensurate with the wrongdoing uncovered - not least, the
fabrication and peddling of intelligence to "justify" a war of
aggression.
The coming months are likely to see senior Bush administration
officials frog marched out of the White House to be booked, unless
the president moves swiftly to fire Fitzgerald - a distinct
possibility. With so many forces at play, it is easy to lose
perspective and context while plowing through the tons of
information on this case. What follows is a retrospective and
prospective, laced with some new facts and analysis aimed at helping
us to focus on the forest once we have given due attention to the
trees.
Background
In late May 2003, the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC)
informed me that a former US ambassador named Joseph Wilson would be
sharing keynote duties with me at a large EPIC conference on June
14.
I was delighted - for two reasons. This was a chance to meet the
"American hero" (per George H.W. Bush) who faced down Saddam
Hussein, freeing hundreds of American and other hostages taken when
Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. More important, since Wilson had served
as an ambassador in Africa, I thought he might be able to throw
light on a question bedeviling me since May 6, when New York Times
columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote an intriguing story about a mission
to Niger by "a former US ambassador to Africa."
There Once Was an Ambassador in Niger ...
According to Kristof, that mission was undertaken at the behest of
Vice President Dick Cheney's office to investigate a report that
Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. The report was an entirely
convenient "smoking gun." Since Iraq lacked any non-military use for
such uranium, it had to be for a nuclear weapons program, if the
report were true. Or so went the argument. The former ambassador
sent to Niger had found no basis for the report, pulling the rug out
from under the "intelligence" the administration had used during the
previous fall to conjure up the "mushroom cloud" that intimidated
Congress into authorizing war.
Kristof's May 6 column had caused quite a stir in Washington. The
only one to have totally missed the story was then-National Security
Adviser and now Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (assuming she is
to be taken at her word). Rice claimed that the information did not
come to her attention until more than a month later. Right. (And the
celebrated aluminum tubes were for nuclear enrichment - not
artillery. Right.)
This ostensibly nuclear-related "evidence" was no mere sideshow; it
went to the very core of the disingenuous justification for war. The
Iraq-Niger report itself was particularly suspect. The uranium mined
in Niger is very tightly controlled by a French-led international
consortium, and the chances of circumventing or defeating the
well-established safeguards and procedures were seen as virtually
nil. On March 7, Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International
Atomic Energy Agency, announced to the UN Security Council that the
documents upon which the Iraq-Niger reporting was based were "not
authentic." Colin Powell swallowed hard but took it as well as could
be expected under the circumstances. A few days later he conceded
the point entirely - with neither apology nor embarrassment, as
befits the world's sole remaining superpower.
The Sixteen Words
Powell had long since decided that the Iraq-Niger report did not
pass the smell test. But he was apparently afraid to incur Cheney's
wrath by telling the president. Powell's own intelligence analysts
at the State Department had branded the story "highly dubious," so
he had chosen to drop it from the long litany of spurious charges
against Iraq that he recited at the UN on February 5, 2003, a
performance that Powell now admits constitutes a "blot" on his
record. Asked to defend President George W. Bush's use of the
Iraq-Africa story in his state-of-the-union address in January 2003,
the best Powell could do was to describe the president's (in)famous
"16 words" as "not totally outrageous," a comment that did not help
all that much.
Those in Congress who felt they had been misled by the story, which
the White House PR machine had shaped into a "mushroom cloud," were
in high dugeon. For example, in the days before the attack on Iraq,
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) wrote the president to complain that
Waxman and his colleagues had been deceived out of their
constitutional prerogative to declare or otherwise authorize war.
None of this put the brakes on the intrepid Cheney, who three days
before the war told NBC's Tim Russert, "We believe he [Saddam
Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."
Cheney, of course, had been assured by the likes of neo-conservative
armchair general Kenneth Adelman that the war would be a "cakewalk,"
that US forces would be greeted as "liberators," and that in the
glow of major victory, only the worst kind of spoilsport would
complain that the "justification" was based largely on a forgery. By
May 2003, however, it had become clear that the cakewalk was a
pipedream and that no sign of a "reconstituted" nuclear weapons
program was likely to be found. In this context, the information in
Kristof's May 6 op-ed was like pouring salt into an open wound.
Do You Know the Ambassador?
When introduced to former ambassador Wilson at the June 14
conference, I wasted no time asking him - rather naively, it turned
out - if he knew who the former US ambassador who went to Niger was.
He smiled and said, "You're looking at him." I asked when he
intended to go public; in a couple of weeks, was the answer.
Wilson then turned dead serious and, with considerable emphasis,
told me the White House had already launched a full-court press in
an effort to dredge up dirt on him. He added, "When I do speak out,
they are going to go after me big time. I don't know the precise
nature the retaliation will take, but I can tell you now it will be
swift and vindictive. They cannot afford to have people thinking
they can escape unscathed if they spill the beans on the dishonesty
undergirding this war." (Sad to say, the White House approach has
worked. There are perhaps a hundred of my former CIA colleagues who
know about the lies; none - not one - has been able to summon the
courage to go public.)
Wilson's tone was matter of fact; the nerves were of steel. Hardly
surprising, thought I. If you can face down Saddam Hussein, you can
surely face down the likes of Dick Cheney. Wilson's New York Times
op-ed of July 6, 2003, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," pulled no
punches. Worse still from the administration's point of view, Wilson
then dropped the other shoe during an interview with the Washington
Post also on July 6.
Consummate diplomats like Wilson typically do not speak of "lies."
So outraged was Wilson, though, that this bogus story had been used
to "justify" an unprovoked war, that he made a point to note that
the already proven dishonesty begs the question regarding "what else
they are lying about."
It was a double whammy. And, as is now well known, the White House
moved swiftly - if clumsily (and apparently illegally) - to
retaliate.
It was clear from the start that Vice President Dick Cheney and his
sidekick "Scooter" Libby, as well as Karl Rove, were taking the lead
in this operation to make an object lesson of Wilson and his wife.
And it is somewhat reassuring to notice that some newly tenacious
mainstream pundits are now waking up to this. Better late than
never, I suppose.
Still Good Advice: Fire Cheney
Watching matters unfold at the time, we Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity on July 14, 2003, issued a Memorandum for
the President, with chapter and verse on how "your vice president
led this campaign of deceit." We pointed out that this was no case
of petty corruption of the kind that forced Vice President Spiro
Agnew out by the side door. It was, rather, a matter of war and
peace, with thousands already killed and no end in sight. We offered
the president the following suggestion:
Recommendation #1: We recommend that you call an abrupt halt to
attempts to prove Vice President Cheney "not guilty." His role has
been so transparent that such attempts will only erode further your
own credibility. Equally pernicious, from our perspective, is the
likelihood that intelligence analysts will conclude that the way to
success is to acquiesce in the cooking of their judgments, since
those above them will not be held accountable. We strongly recommend
that you ask for Cheney's immediate resignation. President George W.
Bush rejected our advice (not for the first time). But now the
president may have to let Cheney go after all. Why? Because special
prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is taking his job seriously.
Frog Marching
During a speech in Seattle in August 2003, former ambassador Wilson
imagined a scene in which police are frog marching presidential
adviser Karl Rove out of the White House. This appeared a bit
far-fetched at the time, but not now. Indeed, it seems there will be
a need for multiple handcuffs and marshals.
From the beginning of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's
investigation in January 2004, Wilson expressed confidence that the
truth would emerge. And because of Fitzgerald's professionalism and
tenacity, we are about to see at least some of the perpetrators of
this fraud get their comeuppance. Normally, Schadenfreude is
exceedingly hard to resist in such circumstances. But it is harder
still to allow oneself any joy at the misfortune of others, when the
focus needs to be placed on the huge damage already done to our
country, its values, and its reputation.
Fire the Special Prosecutor? Shades of Watergate
When the Watergate scandal reached a similar stage in October 1973,
President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson
to fire the intrepid special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. Richardson
resigned rather than carry out Nixon's order; and so did his deputy
William Ruckleshaus. So Nixon had to reach farther down into the
Justice department where he found Robert Bork, who promptly
dismissed Cox in the so-called Saturday Night Massacre.
Fitzgerald is at least as vulnerable as Cox was. Indeed, in recent
days some of the fourth estate, Richard Cohen in the Washington Post
and John Tierney in The New York Times, for example, seem to have
accepted assignments to help lay the groundwork for Fitzgerald's
dismissal.
Will the White House decide to fire special prosecutor Patrick
Fitzgerald, and simply absorb the PR black eye, as Nixon did? There
is absolutely nothing to prevent it. Can you imagine Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales refusing on principle an order from
President Bush?
Could Bush himself be named an un-indicted co-conspirator? If that
or something like it happens, we can expect a circling of the wagons
and Fitzgerald cashiered.
If the case Fitzgerald has built, however, is not strong enough to
implicate Bush personally, it seems likely that the president will
acquiesce in wholesale frog marching of others from the White House
and then go off for a Thanksgiving vacation in Crawford - oops, more
likely, Camp David. For Cindy Sheehan is planning Thanksgiving in
Crawford: she still hopes to see the president so that he can
explain to her personally what the "noble cause" was for which her
son died.
It promises to be an interesting autumn. By all means stay tuned.
Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the
ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was a CIA
analyst for 27 years, and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
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