For three years, the Bush administration has played coy about who leaked secret agent Valerie Plame’s name to the news media, but the trail often seemed to loop back to Vice President Dick Cheney. President Bush once vowed to get to the bottom of the matter, but his ardor stalled when the investigation led into Cheney’s inner circle. As for Cheney himself, his role remains obscure, though it is past time for him to reveal himself to the public.
In 2003, Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, wrote a column for The New York Times questioning the administration’s reasons for launching the Iraq war. Wilson challenged the president’s claim that during the 1990s the African nation of Niger sold uranium yellowcake (used in making nuclear bombs) to Iraq. Wilson said he found no evidence of the sales when he visited Niger in 2002 at the CIA’s request.
Soon thereafter, someone told journalists that Wilson is married to Plame, then an active – and undercover – CIA officer. The leaks may have compromised any people who had served as Plame’s sources and contacts and thus damaged America’s intelligence-gathering ability. The purpose apparently was to discredit or punish Wilson.
Now Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff, faces trial over whether he lied to a grand jury about what he knew of the matter. Last Friday, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald filed evidence that Cheney became interested in Wilson as soon as the article was published.
The filing revealed Cheney’s handwritten notes in the margins of The Times’ opinion page. “Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an Amb. (ambassador) to assess a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?”
These scribbles indicate Cheney knew Wilson was married to a CIA operative.
When Libby was indicted last fall, Fitzgerald didn’t allege any wrongdoing by Cheney, but last week’s disclosure put the spotlight on the vice president.
Cheney is the one person who knows exactly what he did or didn’t do in 2003. Libby says he got the go-ahead from Cheney to leak Plame’s identity, and that Bush signed off on the escapade.
It’s high time that Cheney publicly addresses his role in the matter, including whether he acted on the president’s orders in telling Libby to shred Plame’s all-important cover.
Meanwhile, Fitzgerald must follow the evidence wherever it leads, whether that’s Cheney’s desk or the Oval Office.
