Incredible how things get totally screwed up. And how easily folks fall for them, especially the predisposed and the biased.
Here is the document that has served as the basis for the recent furor about Bush indirectly telling Libby to out Plame:
thesmokinggun.com
I know a lot folks here skim, but you don't.
The document says that Libby claims that Cheney told him that he was authorized to leak certain aspects of an NIE, exactly which aspects we don't know.
An NIE is a National Intelligence Estimate. There is no way in hell that I would expect it to contain the identity of a covert CIA agent. Ergo, how could Bush by authorizing selective disclosure of information, which he is authorized to do, be acting improperly when the document containing the information likely has nothing to do with Plame's identity?
The skimmers here failed to notice this in the report concerning the issue:
There was no indication in the filing that either Bush or Cheney authorized Libby to disclose Valerie Plame's CIA identity
breitbart.com
More:
Before his indictment, Libby testified to the grand jury investigating the CIA leak that Cheney told him to pass on prewar intelligence on Iraq and that it was Bush who authorized the disclosure, the court papers say. According to the documents, the authorization led to the July 8, 2003, conversation between Libby and New York Times reporter Judith Miller. In that meeting, Libby made reference to the fact that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.
I suppose no one notices the non sequitur, huh? Without some specific link to Cheney or Bush between the July 8 meeting and the disclosure of Plame's identity, the fact that a meeting took place after Cheney and Libby spoke means zip, nada. Not even the prosecutors are saying it does, and they are a heck of a lot more interested in uncovering criminal activity than the predisposed and the biased here.
Nothing but nothing in any document suggests that Bush or Cheney authorized Libby to divulge Plame's identity to Miller or to anyone else.
Has there been an effort to nail Bush or Cheney for this? Not at all. That says a lot more to me than anything else. |
