Pressure mounts on Cheney over smears against diplomat and 'outing' of CIA

Pressure mounts on Cheney over smears against diplomat and 'outing' of CIA wife
Row that began with 'IoS' interview deepens as Vice-President's officials are accused of serious felony
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
02 May 2004


Vice-President Dick Cheney was under mounting pressure last night after he and his senior officials were accused of smearing a former ambassador and outing his wife as an undercover CIA officer in a deliberate act of revenge hatched inside the White House.

In a row which began with off-the-record comments he made to The Independent on Sunday last year, a former diplomat, Joe Wilson, said Mr Cheney oversaw a group of neo-conservatives who decided to try to damage his reputation. Because of Mr Wilson, the White House was forced to admit that a key claim in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address - that Iraq was seeking uranium for nuclear weapons - should not have been made.

The controversy over what happened next could prove to be the most damaging yet to engulf the Bush administration. A criminal inquiry is investigating the unveiling in the press of Mr Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA agent - a serious felony under US law. If one of Mr Cheney's senior officials were charged, the damage would be huge.

Should the Vice-President be personally implicated - which Mr Wilson believes he is - the outcome would be devastating for both Mr Cheney and Mr Bush as they campaign for re-election.

~snip~
more: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=517287

and an excerpt of the book here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/books/chapters/chapter-wilson.html

.

~snip~
In a book he described as part memoir, part political attack, Wilson claims that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, helped organize a March 2003 meeting to start gathering dirt on Wilson.

The planning, which the book asserts also may have involved the vice president and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., came after Wilson publicly questioned now-discredited statements by President Bush that Iraq was attempting to purchase nuclear-weapons materials in Africa.

The "work-up," as Wilson describes it, laid the groundwork for a political and public relations attack that the White House launched against him and his wife in July after he further detailed his concerns in a New York Times opinion column -- which ultimately led to the outing of his wife in the Novak column.

Wilson also said he discusses how Bush political chief Karl Rove called journalists and others after publication of the Novak column in an effort to discredit Wilson. But Wilson said he does not identify Rove as the perpetrator of the initial leak.

~snip~
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0404/30cialeak.html?urcm=y

a member of Cheney's American Enterprise Institute. It well could have been Gingrich.

What a bunch of crooks.

But the fact that no action has been taken against that misanthrope
Novak and he still appears on television, many shows, is really
aggravating.

I don't think he was ever really held accountable for amplifying all that right-wing hatred that disassembled our country's unity. I hope they throw the book at him now.

That aging turdsucker's been evil since Watergate.

We need to retire his wrinkly old ass this year..... permanently.