The Valerie Plame Affair: pre-election things to watch out for [Archive] - Audio & Video Forums

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Woochifer
06-04-2004, 07:37 PM
With the resignation of CIA director Tenet, another news item kinda slipped under the radar yesterday. President Bush confirmed that he has sought outside legal counsel, and the person that he consulted was the attorney who defended Richard Secord during the Iran-Contra scandal. Speculation is that this step has to do with the ongoing investigation into who inside the Administration revealed Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA undercover agent. The grand jury has now convened in that case, and they could very well could come back with indictments.

Last week, local liberal talkradio host Bernie Ward interviewed former ambassador Joseph Wilson (Plame's husband) and he thought that the grand jury would issue indictments well before the fall election. In addition to recapping a lot of what's already been widely written up about his trip to Niger, his NY Times op-ed piece about the uranium cake and how it got into the 2003 State of the Union address, and his belief that certain administration officials outed his wife to get back at him, Wilson in that interview also indicated that he and his wife intend to file a civil suit against those administration officials.

The whole Plame affair has not made much news of late ever since Atty. Gen. Ashcroft recused himself from the case, but if a senior administration official like Karl Rove or Scooter Libby gets indicted, AND Wilson and Plame follow through with a civil suit, this could really mushroom into a big scandal. Not because of who may or may not be found guilty, but because during both processes a lot of ugly questions will get asked. In this case, Bush's well known loyalty to his staff members and propensity to defend them at all cost might be interpreted as a cover up, which is almost always how political scandals take on a life of their own.

From that interview with Wilson, that man is downright pissed and motivated to file suit, not because of the monetary damages since he and his wife already live very comfortably, but because a civil suit will force a discovery process where administration officials can be deposed under oath. And with the precedent set by the civil suit against Clinton, a sitting president can also be forced to depose.

So, as we move through summer, this story could very well reemerge in a big way as the grand jury investigation moves forward, and if Wilson and Plame's civil suit goes through.

Some other interesting items that came out of the Joseph Wilson interview relating to the Iraq war:

- Wilson said that State Dept. personnel he's talked to in Iraq assess the situation on the ground as two major occupying forces: the Americans in the center of the country, and the Shia militias that are occupying the south. The mutual dislike of the Americans is the only force that's keeping the country out of a civil war.

- the investigation into Ahmed Chalabi is more extensive than just checking into whether he supplied coded intelligence to the Iranians during the American occupation. Supposedly, he took several trips into Tehran BEFORE the war began. This would have been during a period in which he was feeding much of the now-discredited intelligence to Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the Office of Special Plans that provided the justification for invading Iraq. Wilson's on the fence, but he increasingly believes that Chalabi very well might have been working for the Iranians all along. If this turns out to be true, then much of the evidence that Colin Powell presented at the U.N. last February was supplied by an Iranian agent. Consider that both Chalabi and the Iranians were mortal enemies of Saddam Hussein and had much to gain by goading the U.S. into invading Iraq, and this scenario is well within the rhelm of possibility.

trollgirl
06-04-2004, 09:01 PM
The plot sickens, does it not??

Laz