[A-List] US state: Plame-Novak scandal

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

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
The Independent on Sunday, 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.

Mr Wilson has made his allegations in a newly published book, The Politics
of Truth, subtitled "Inside the lies that led to war and betrayed my wife's
CIA identity". In it he writes: "I am told ... that the Office of the
Vice-President - either the Vice-President himself or more likely his chief
of staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby - chaired a meeting at which a decision was
made to do a work-up on me. As I understand it, this meant they were going
to take a close look at who I was and what my agenda might be."

The former diplomat has claimed elsewhere that it was also at this meeting
that the issue of his wife's identity and her role as a covert CIA operative
was discussed. Mr Wilson said he believed it was very unlikely that Mr
Cheney was not aware of this.

In an exclusive interview in his office in Washington, just a quarter of a
mile from Mr Cheney's, he said: "I find it difficult to believe that a chief
of staff would be undertaking something like this without - at a minimum -
the Vice-President's knowledge." Mr Wilson stopped short of asking for Mr
Cheney's resignation, but said: "If he [did not know] about it, he should be
saying so. The leak took place at the nexus of national security, policy and
politics."

His struggle with the White House dates to a mission in early 2002, at the
request of Mr Cheney's office. He was sent to the west African state of
Niger, where he was once ambassador, to investigate claims that Iraq was
seeking to purchase uranium to develop nuclear weapons. The claims were
based on a document obtained by Italian intelligence services, which had
passed the information to Washington.

In less than a week Mr Wilson proved that the claim was false and that the
document must be a fake. Returning to Washington, he reported this to a
debriefer from the CIA. Later, experts from the UN nuclear watchdog, the
International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed the document was a crude
forgery. But when Mr Bush and his senior officials continued to make the
claim - first publicised in the British Government's September 2002 dossier
on Iraq - he felt it was his duty to speak out. In an interview with The
Independent on Sunday, in which he asked that he not be identified, and
subsequently in a signed piece in The New York Times, Mr Wilson pointed out
that it was inconceivable that senior US and British officials were not
aware of his findings.

After he went public, his wife was identified as a CIA operative by the
syndicated right-wing columnist Bob Novak, a veteran Washington journalist
with close links to the Republicans. It was her suggestion to send Mr Wilson
to Africa, claimed Mr Novak, who said in his column he had been provided
with the information by "two senior administration officials".

The leaking of an intelligence officer's identity is a criminal offence. An
FBI team is investigating the leak and has called a grand jury to hear
evidence and question potential witnesses. Earlier this year it was reported
that Mr Libby and numerous other officials from Mr Cheney's office had been
questioned by the FBI. Mr Wilson alleges that it was Mr Bush's senior
political adviser, Karl Rove, who was responsible for "pushing" the story of
Ms Plame's CIA position, and that a senior national security council
official, Elliott Abrams, may also have been involved.

The White House has been very careful in its remarks on the affair,
insisting that Mr Rove, Mr Elliott and Mr Libby were "not involved in
leaking classified information". It has stopped short of an outright denial.
One reason the White House may have been keen to smear Mr Wilson is because
it knew his allegations would be taken seriously. In the run-up to the first
Gulf War he helped to secure the release of US citizens taken hostage by
Saddam Hussein. He was the last US official to meet Saddam while he was in
power.

Mr Wilson told the IoS that his wife still worked for the CIA, but that her
work had been severely disrupted. He said that she might also be at risk
from anyone who wished to harm her because of her previous undercover work.

"It has been irredeemably changed," he said, adding that his wife felt she
had been a victim of the political ambitions of senior officials within the
administration.