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Indictment Gives Glimpse Into a Secretive Operation
By DOUGLAS JEHL
10/29/05 "
New York Times " -- -- WASHINGTON - Over a seven-week
period in the spring of 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney's suite in
the Old Executive Office Building appears to have served as the
nerve center of an effort to gather and spread word about Joseph C.
Wilson IV and his wife, a C.I.A. operative.
I. Lewis Libby Jr., the vice president's chief of staff, is the only
aide to Mr. Cheney who has been charged with a crime. But the
indictment alleges that Mr. Cheney himself and others in the office
took part in discussions about the origins of a trip by Mr. Wilson
to Niger in 2002; about the identity of his wife, Valerie Wilson;
and whether the information could be shared with reporters, in the
period before it was made public in a July 14, 2003, column by
Robert D. Novak.
The indictment identifies the other officials only by their titles,
but it clearly asserts that others involved in the discussion
involved David Addington, Mr. Cheney's counsel; John Hannah, deputy
national security adviser; and Catherine Martin, then Mr. Cheney's
press secretary.
Mr. Grossman, Mr. Hannah, Mr. Addington and Ms. Martin have all
declined to comment, citing legal advice. The fact that they were
not named in the indictment suggests that they will not be charged,
but all can expect to be called as witnesses in any trial of Mr.
Libby, setting up a spectacle that could be unpleasant for the
administration.
That Mr. Cheney and his office sparred with the C.I.A. before the
invasion of Iraq has never been a secret. Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby
made repeated trips to C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., in the
months before the American invasion in March 2003, and Mr. Libby was
often on the phone with senior C.I.A. officials to challenge the
agency's intelligence reports on Iraq. A principal focus, former
intelligence officials say, was the question of whether Al Qaeda had
had a close, collaborative relationship with Saddam Hussein's Iraqi
government, an argument advanced publicly by Mr. Cheney but rejected
by the C.I.A. intelligence analysts.
The antipathy felt by Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby toward Mr. Wilson, in
the aftermath of the invasion, has also long been known. But the
events spelled out in the 22-page indictment suggest a far more
active, earlier effort by the vice president's office to gather
information about him and his wife.
The indictment provides a rare glimpse inside a vice presidential
operation that, under Mr. Cheney, has been extraordinary both for
its power and its secrecy. It tracks a period in the spring of 2003,
at a time when the American failure to find illicit weapons in Iraq
meant that the administration's rationale for war was beginning to
unravel, and when early reports about Mr. Wilson's 2002 trip, which
had not yet identified him by name, raised questions about whether
the White House should have known just how weak its case been,
particularly involving Iraq and nuclear weapons.
By any measure, the indictment suggests that Mr. Libby and others
went to unusual lengths to gather information about Mr. Wilson and
his trip. An initial request on May 29, 2003, from Mr. Libby to Marc
Grossman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, led Mr.
Grossman to request a classified memo from Carl Ford, the director
of the State Department's intelligence bureau, and later for Mr.
Grossman to orally brief Mr. Libby on its contents.
Later requests appear to have prompted C.I.A. officials to fax
classified information to Mr. Cheney's office about Mr. Wilson's
trip, on June 9. Mr. Cheney himself is alleged to have shared
details about the nature of Ms. Wilson's job with Mr. Libby, on June
12. The indictment says that Mr. Libby first shared information
about Mr. Wilson's trip with a reporter, Judith Miller of The New
York Times, on June 23; but it also describes discussions involving
Mr. Libby, Mr. Addington, Mr. Hannah, Ms. Martin and White House
officials, about whether the information could be shared with
reporters.
Among the discussions, the indictment says, were one on June 23,
2005, in which Mr. Libby is said to have told Mr. Hannah that there
could be complications at the C.I.A. if information about Mr.
Wilson's trip was shared publicly. It is also not clear how Mr.
Cheney may have learned "from the C.I.A." that Ms. Wilson worked in
the agency's counterproliferation division, a fact that meant she
was part of the C.I.A.'s clandestine service, and that she might
well be working undercover.
Lawyers in the case say that notes taken by Mr. Libby indicate that
detail was provided to Mr. Cheney by George J. Tenet, then the
director of central intelligence, but several former intelligence
officials say they do not believe that Mr. Tenet was the source of
the information.
Many questions remain unanswered in the indictment. The special
counsel, Mr. Fitzgerald, said that Ms. Wilson's affiliation with the
C.I.A. had been classified, but he did not assert that Mr. Libby
knew that she had covert status, something the prosecutor would have
had to prove to support a charge under the Intelligence Identities
Protection Act.
It is not clear, for example, what guidance, if any, Mr. Cheney gave
to Mr. Libby about whether or how to share information about Mr.
Wilson's trip with reporters. Among their discussions, lawyers in
the case have said, was one on July 11, 2003, on a trip to Norfolk,
Va., that preceded by a day what two reporters, Ms. Miller and
Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, have said were conversations in
which Mr. Libby mentioned Mr. Wilson's wife.
Beyond Mr. Cheney's office, some of the government officials
involved in the discussions have yet to be identified. It is not
clear from the indictment, for example, who faxed the "classified
information from the C.I.A." about Mr. Wilson's trip to the vice
president's office on June 9, or which "senior C.I.A. officer"
provided further information to Mr. Libby on June 11.
Another question is whether Mr. Libby made appropriate use of the
briefings provided to him by the C.I.A., a privilege afforded to
only eight or nine other members of the Bush administration. The
indictment says that Mr. Libby complained to a C.I.A. briefer on
June 14 that C.I.A. officials were making comments critical of the
Bush administration, and that he mentioned, among other things, "Joe
Wilson" and "Valerie Wilson" in the context of Mr. Wilson's trip to
Niger. Also still unclear is how Ms. Martin, the press secretary,
may have learned in June or early July that Mr. Wilson's wife worked
at the C.I.A. The indictment says that Ms. Martin learned the
information from "another government official" and shared that
information with Mr. Libby.
Mr. Grossman, who served under Colin L. Powell, left the government
in January and is now a private consultant. Mr. Addington, still Mr.
Cheney's counsel, has been a major participant in debates within the
administration about the treatment of suspected terrorists,
including questions surrounding interrogation rules, and whether
those held at the American facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, should
face military tribunals. Mr. Hannah, a Middle East specialist, was a
main liaison between the vice president's office and Ahmad Chalabi,
who as an Iraqi exile was a major force in urging the administration
toward war.
Mr. Hannah and Mr. Libby were also the main authors of a 48-page
draft speech prepared in January 2003 that was intended to make the
administration's case for war in Iraq before the United Nations. The
draft was provided to Mr. Powell, in advance of his speech to the
Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, but most of its contents were cast
aside by Mr. Powell and Mr. Tenet, who during several days of review
at C.I.A. headquarters rejected many claims related to Iraq, its
weapons program and terrorism as exaggerated and unwarranted.
It has long been understood that Mr. Libby, Mr. Cheney and others
felt hostility toward Mr. Wilson by July 6, 2003, the day the former
ambassador emerged publicly, in an Op-Ed article in The New York
Times and an appearance on "Meet the Press," to describe his trip to
Niger and to criticize the administration.
Mr. Wilson suggested that he had taken the trip at the behest of Mr.
Cheney's office, and that the office had been briefed on his
findings. Neither assertion was strictly accurate (the C.I.A. had
dispatched Mr. Wilson on its own, after questions from Mr. Cheney
about a possible uranium deal between Iraq and Niger; and his
findings, briefed orally to the agency, were never shared with Mr.
Cheney's office). After Mr. Wilson's public appearance, the White
House worked aggressively to challenge his statements.
But the indictment shows that, within Mr. Cheney's office, the
pushback against Mr. Wilson began far earlier, at a time when the
only news accounts about his trip had referred to him only as a
"former ambassador." Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times wrote
about Mr. Wilson on May 6, 2003, without naming him. But the
timeline spelled out in the indictment suggests that it was a second
round of news media inquiries, this time from Walter Pincus of The
Washington Post, whose article appeared on June 12, that set Mr.
Libby and the vice president's office on the path toward digging out
the information that is now at the heart of the case against Mr.
Libby.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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