Top White House aide quits

Locke

Active member
Taken from The Age

Top White House aide quits

IN A damaging blow to a beleaguered White House, Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, has been indicted for obstructing justice, perjury and lying after a two-year investigation into the leak of a covert CIA operative's identity.

Mr Libby immediately resigned from his White House post and faces up to 30 years in prison in a case that has put a spotlight on how the administration sold the nation on the war in Iraq and countered its critics.

Mr Cheney said Mr Libby would "fight the charges brought against him". Mr Libby predicted: "At the end of this process I will be completely and totally exonerated."

President George W. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was not indicted along with Mr Libby, but special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has made clear to Mr Rove that he remains under investigation and in legal jeopardy, lawyers said.

"It's not over," Fitzgerald told a news conference.

Mr Bush said the investigation and legal proceedings were "serious and now the process moves into a new phase".

Reggie Walton, the federal judge chosen to handle Mr Libby's case, was appointed by Mr Bush to the court. An arraignment for Mr Libby to enter a plea has yet to be scheduled.

Mr Libby's indictment raises the spectre of a politically damaging criminal trial. Lawyers involved in the leak case said Mr Cheney and other top White House officials could expect to be called as witnesses.

The White House is already reeling over the slow response to Hurricane Katrina, growing opposition to the Iraq war and the withdrawal of Mr Bush's nominee for the US Supreme Court, Harriet Miers, under fire from Mr Bush's conservative base.

Despite initial denials, both Mr Rove and Mr Libby spoke to reporters in June and July 2003 about the CIA operative, Valerie Plame.

Mr Libby, who played a major behind-the-scenes role in building the case for the Iraq war, was accused in the five-count indictment of making false statements about how and when he learned and disclosed to reporters classified information about Plame.

Office of the President is 'defiled'

Plame's cover was blown after her diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson, accused the Bush administration of twisting pre-war intelligence to support military action against Iraq. Mr Wilson said it was done deliberately to erode his credibility.

"Today is a sad day for America," Mr Wilson said. "When an indictment is delivered at the front door of the White House, the Office of the President is defiled."

Some Republicans have accused Mr Fitzgerald of being overzealous by pursuing "legal technicalities" instead of the underlying crime. Mr Libby was not charged with illegally disclosing the name of a covert CIA operative.

"I'll be blunt," Fitzgerald said in response. "That talking point won't fly."

He also sought to distance the charges from the growing national debate over the Iraq war, saying the issue was whether "Mr Libby lied or not" and not whether "the war was justified or unjustified."

If convicted, Mr Libby, 55, faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $1.25 million ($A1.66 million) fine.

Mr Libby is accused of lying to FBI agents who interviewed him on October 14, 2003, and November 26, 2003, committing perjury while testifying under oath to the grand jury twice in March 2004, and engaging in obstruction of justice by impeding the grand jury's investigation.

Mr Fitzgerald dismissed as "false" Mr Libby's story that he learned about Mr Wilson's wife from reporters. "He was at the beginning of the chain of phone calls, the first official to disclose this information outside the Government to a reporter. And then he lied about it afterwards, under oath and repeatedly," Mr Fitzgerald said.

Mr Wilson based his criticism of the administration in part on a CIA-sponsored mission he made to Africa in 2002 to check an intelligence report that Iraq sought uranium from Niger.

Mr Bush cited intelligence that Iraq sought uranium from Africa in his 2003 State of the Union address, but Mr Wilson later said the claim was unsubstantiated.

Rove still under scrutiny

Mr Cheney's office sought to discredit Mr Wilson and his findings by suggesting the trip had been arranged by his wife.

The indictment showed that Mr Libby began seeking information about Mr Wilson and his wife in late May 2003, some six weeks before Ms Plame's identity was publicly disclosed in a July 14, 2003, newspaper column by Robert Novak.

It appears that Mr Libby first learned that Mr Wilson's wife worked at the CIA - and that she was involved in organizing his trip to Niger - on June 11 or June 12, 2003, in conversations with the undersecretary of State and a senior officer at the CIA, who were not identified. The undersecretary referred to in the documents is Marc Grossman.

The indictment also highlighted Mr Cheney's role. Mr Libby learned from Mr Cheney himself on June 12, 2003, that Wilson's wife worked in the counterproliferation division of the CIA.

Legal sources said Mr Rove could still face perjury charges for initially failing to tell the grand jury he talked to Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper about Ms Plame.

Prosecutors did not identify Mr Rove by name in the indictment, referring to him only as "Official A". Prosecutors said "Official A" told Mr Libby that Mr Novak was writing a column about Ms Plame.

"The special counsel has advised Mr Rove that he has made no decision about whether or not to bring charges," Mr Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said.
 
No, it means he is the designated fall guy who will take the rap for the crap so the big boys will come out the other end clean. Read - Oliver North.
 
I read that his team has been working on Iraq since 2003, playing the media so the people would warm up for a nice war. Also that this CIA agent's cover was blown because her husband refused to withdraw is statement that there weren't weapons of mass destruction.

Suppose that he admits, will some people everhere have new insights or continu to believe what the want? It started because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that changed to spreading democracy. And now the architect of this war is indited because he was lying. Interesting isn't it?
 
http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/1130561868303.html

Okay here we go. I'm sorry that it is in Dutch, but I haven't found the info in English yet. In short they say that Libby leaked the identity of a CIA operative to a reporter. But his motives for doing so are far more interesting.
They say that it was done to discredit Joseph Wilson. Wilson went to Niger to check out the story that Saddam was buying uranium. Wilson said that this was unfounded and therefor no true.
Libby and his WHIG (White House Iraq Group) were working the public over the make it a just invasion. When Wilson didn't cooperate and stuck his view that Iraq's threat was intentionally overstated. By saying Wilson wife works for the CIA they tried to discredit him too.

If the public heard that there were no weapons of mass destruction, why invade Iraq? This story on bringing peace and democracy started when it became clear that there weren't any of such weapons. So, in my opinion, it has a lot to do with the war in Iraq. And if he is found quilty I hope they make him console the parents of those 2000 dead GI's that went there because he lied to his own country and to them!
 
Ok let's see:

Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR2005102801787.html:

"Nevertheless, it is also a fact that Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, after substantially completing his two-year investigation, has brought no criminal charges in the leak of Ms. Plame's identity to journalists and its publication by columnist Robert D. Novak"...
Mr. Libby himself is not charged with any wrongdoing in revealing Ms. Plame's identity to journalists...
he special counsel was principally investigating whether any official violated a law that makes it a crime to knowingly disclose the identity of an undercover agent. The public record offers no indication that Mr. Libby or any other official deliberately exposed Ms. Plame to punish her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Rather, Mr. Libby and other officials, including Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff, apparently were seeking to combat the sensational allegations of a critic. They may have believed that Ms. Plame's involvement was an important part of their story of why Mr. Wilson was sent to investigate claims that Iraq sought uranium ore from Niger, and why his subsequent -- and mostly erroneous -- allegations that the administration twisted that small part of the case against Saddam Hussein should not be credited. To criminalize such discussions between officials and reporters would run counter to the public interest...
But nothing in this indictment suggests a broad-based conspiracy that requires endless further investigation by Congress or others. Nor does this case prove (or refute) charges that President Bush misled the country about the grounds for war. As Mr. Fitzgerald said yesterday: "This indictment is not about the war"

Rivkin and Casey on the Washington Post nowhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR2005102801771.html:

"Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby should be the final proof that the system of "special prosecutors" is bankrupt and ought to be abandoned...
It is clear that, at least by sometime in January 2004 -- and probably much earlier -- Fitzgerald knew this law had not been violated. Plame was not a "covert" agent but a bureaucrat working at CIA headquarters. Instead of closing shop, however, Fitzgerald sought an expansion of his mandate and has now charged offenses that grew entirely out of the investigation itself. In other words, there was no crime when the investigation started, only, allegedly, after it finished".

Now, the analysis of the New York Times. Remember that the NYT is leftist and opposes Bush http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/29/p...&en=1a7f0cdf4321d9a4&ei=5094&partner=homepage:

NYT: "The prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, brought no charges on the issue that prompted his investigation: whether someone in the government committed a crime by leaking the classified C.I.A. identity of the wife of one of the sharpest critics of the administration's rationale for war with Iraq".

The NYT op-ed now http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/29/opinion/29sat1.html:

He didn't indict anyone for seemingly minor discrepancies in testimony. He didn't indict on vague conspiracy charges. He didn't indict anyone for leaking classified information...
The indictment merely demonstrated that the cliché about the cover-up being worse than the crime is especially true when there was no crime to begin with.


The Wall Street Journal:

Libby is charged with lying about a crime that wasn't committed".
"A possible 30-year jail term and $1.25 million in fines for a Bush Administration official who was merely attempting to expose the truth about Mr. Wilson, a critic of the Administration who was lying to the press about the nature of his involvement in the Niger mission and about the nature of the intelligence that it produced. In other words, Mr. Libby was defending Administration policy against political attack, not committing a crime".

The prestigious Michael Barone says http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/baroneblog/home.htm:

"The Libby indictment raises in my mind the question of whether it is just to indict someone for false statements in the course of the investigation of what was never a crime".

But most importantly I would like you to read what Fitzgerald himself says http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/politics/28text-fitz.html?pagewanted=print, read carefully:

QUESTION: A lot of Americans, people who are opposed to the war, critics of the administration, have looked to your investigation with hope in some ways and might see this indictment as a vindication of their argument that the administration took the country to war on false premises.
Does this indictment do that?
FITZGERALD: This indictment is not about the war. This indictment's not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel.
This is simply an indictment that says, in a national security investigation about the compromise of a CIA officer's identity that may have taken place in the context of a very heated debate over the war, whether some person -- a person, Mr. Libby -- lied or not.
The indictment will not seek to prove that the war was justified or unjustified. This is stripped of that debate, and this is focused on a narrow transaction.
And I think anyone's who's concerned about the war and has feelings for or against shouldn't look to this criminal process for any answers or resolution of that.
 
Right. And my wife being pregnant has nothing to do with having sex. Everything in politics is related, like life, everything is connected even if only in the paranoia of a select few. It doesn't matter what people say, it's what they do.
 
Maybe we should seperate the facts from suspicions. From a judicial point of view Libby is still in the clear. But dimissing that this has nothin to do with the war in Iraq is too easy.
This man was in over his head and you know that. And now saying that he might have done these things because of..... of what actually? Just retrace the steps and see who will benefit the most. And it sure as hell isn't that Wilson man. Why would Libby do this? Did he have the spring in his head? No, it was because of something larger. And since Bush got his 2nd term because of this war, who profitted from that? Just retrace and you'll learn enough. Whether they can prove this, that is a second. But I guess you have shredders in the US too.
 
I couldn't agree with you more Italian Guy. So tell me; what are the Americans doing in Iraq. In 2003 Bush told the world that Saddam was buying uranium for weapoms of mass destruction. He invaded before any evidence was found. Weapon inspectors have scoured Iraq for proof and didn't find any. This was not enough to convince the Bush administration.
Proof... who needs proof in the US? So once again you and I agree but fill it out differently. If proof is what you are looking for don't invade first. If you do invade without proof, don't start asking for it when it bites you in the ass.
 
Ted said:
I couldn't agree with you more Italian Guy. So tell me; what are the Americans doing in Iraq. In 2003 Bush told the world that Saddam was buying uranium for weapoms of mass destruction. He invaded before any evidence was found. Weapon inspectors have scoured Iraq for proof and didn't find any. This was not enough to convince the Bush administration.
Proof... who needs proof in the US? So once again you and I agree but fill it out differently. If proof is what you are looking for don't invade first. If you do invade without proof, don't start asking for it when it bites you in the ass.

Reasons why Bush went into Iraq:

1)Weapons of mass destruction: French, UN and Russian intelligence all believed Saddam had them, that is why resolutions were passed at the UN sending inspectors to see how advanced his disarmamenting process had gone. Saddam himself said he had those weapons and the burden of the proof was on him, not on Bush. Remember, the French, Russian and UN intelligence believed he had them.

2)Democratization of the country: in progress now. This has been a rationale for the war for years, core point for the neocon strategy which I soundly happen to agree on.

3)Terrorism/Baghdad connections: proved and crushed thanks to the war.

You say "In 2003 Bush told the world that Saddam was buying uranium for weapoms of mass destruction". No you're wrong: In fact Bush didn't say that. He said Baghdad had been trying to acquire uranium from various African countries, on his Speech on the State of the Union Jan 28, 2003. "Sought to acquire", not "bought", or "was buying". Those documents were fabricated in France and French services fervently believed that Saddam had been trying to buy uranium from Niger. But Bush never used information contained in there. I prompt you to read the independent and bipartisan reports of Lord Butler in UK and the Intelligence Commission Senate Report in Washington DC.
 
IG, You could not have explained it any more clearly. Let me give you some advice you gave me that I listened to and thank you for. Don't let yourself be drawn out by someone repeating the same mantra over and over again that everything is President Bush's fault and the Monster of the Middle East was just an innocent bystander. Give `em hell. :evil:
 
Nice one Italian Guy......

I'm am writing this second bit as my white flag on this issue, but don't get me wrong on my stance towards the Middle East. I have no beard and think their governments are "dubious" to say the least.
The porblem for me is the haphazard way in saying he is wrong and he is right. This shuts out all the middle routes in this long way to peace. The easy option of saying "he's wrong and should be gotten rid off" does more wrong than right. I miss the carefull balanced opinions in some of you, which is needed when going to war. Firing the rifle is the easy part. Making the others not pick up theirs is the hard part.
 
1) safe and secure oil supply

2Weapons of mass destruction: French, UN and Russian intelligence all believed Saddam had them, that is why resolutions were passed at the UN sending inspectors to see how advanced his disarmamenting process had gone. Saddam himself said he had those weapons and the burden of the proof was on him, not on Bush. Remember, the French, Russian and UN intelligence believed he had them.

3)Democratization of the country: in progress now. This has been a rationale for the war for years, core point for the neocon strategy which I soundly happen to agree on.

4)Terrorism/Baghdad connections: proved and crushed thanks to the war.
 
Rabs

I going to put this day down on my calender "the day mmarsh and Rabs agreed on something". :D. Yes I agree that oil was most certainly an issue if not the principal issue.

I am going to offer one more. Sphere of Influance. Right now the US has bases in both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as we know are Whabbist Muslim (a school of Islam the most fundimentalist, most violent, and intolerant of all). This of course is a breeding ground for people like bin Laden and other like minded fundimentalists. This makes operating in Saudi Arabia both very dangerous and embarrassing to the USA as the house of Saud is possibly the most ruthless dictatorship in the Middle East.

Iraq on the other hand is much more secular (relatively speaking). People are much better educated in Iraq than Saudi Arabia which makes religous extremism less of a threat. (Most extremists in Iraq are foreigners or take orders from countries such as Iran). Also Iraq is much better situated geographically to keep better tabs on troublemakers in the region. My suspicion is that the Neocons though that Iraq would be a better place to set up military bases than Saudi Arabia. Of course they might be rethinking that position by now.
 
A War for Oil? Not This Time

By Max Boot

The New York Times, February 13, 2003


When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visited "Old Europe" last week, the placards and protesters lining his path were a visceral reminder of what the Bush administration already knew: Solid majorities in key European countries think that greed is our motive for wanting to depose Saddam Hussein. In fact, in a recent Pew Research Center poll 75 percent of respondents in France, 54 percent in Germany and 76 percent in Russia said that America wants to invade Iraq because "the U.S. wants to control Iraqi oil."

Although Americans are divided on the wisdom of an invasion, only 22 percent of us subscribe to the cynical view that it's just about oil. Even Jimmy Carter, hardly a hawk, rebutted the accusation at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony: "I know my country, I know my people, and I can assure you that's not the policy of my government." What accounts for this trans-Atlantic disconnect? To answer that question, start by considering the accusation on the merits: Is America going into Iraq in search of "black gold"?

The charge has a surface plausibility because Iraq does have the second-largest known reserves in the world. But we certainly don't need to send 250,000 soldiers to get at it. Saddam Hussein would gladly sell us all the oil we wanted. The only thing preventing unlimited sales are the United States-enforced sanctions, which Baghdad (and the big oil companies) would love to see lifted. Washington has refused to go along because Saddam Hussein flouts United Nations resolutions. This suggests that our primary focus is the threat he poses, not the oil he possesses.

It's true that overthrowing Saddam Hussein would lead to the lifting of sanctions and a possible increase in oil exports. But it would take a lot of time and money to rebuild Iraq's dilapidated oil industry, even if the regime didn't torch everything on the way out. A study from the Council on Foreign Relations and the James A. Baker III Institute at Rice University estimated that it would take three years and $5 billion to restore Iraqi production just to its pre-1990 level of 3.5 million barrels a day. That would increase total world production by only 1.3 percent, and might not reduce prices at all if other countries cut output or banded together to keep prices stable.

Some optimists think a postwar Iraq would stiff OPEC and slash prices radically. This seems unlikely, if the experience of Kuwait is anything to go by. While oil prices spiked before the Persian Gulf war and plummeted afterward, the long-term impact has been close to nil. Kuwait hasn't exactly been offering to fill up American sport utility vehicles free out of gratitude for being liberated. It hasn't even carried out its pledge to allow direct foreign investment in state-owned oil fields.

As with Kuwait, a liberated Iraq would likely remain an enthusiastic member of OPEC because it would need to establish its nationalist credentials and maintain amicable relations with its oil-cartel neighbors.

For that matter, would our government really want a steep drop in prices? The domestic oil patch -- including President Bush's home state, Texas -- was devastated in the 1980's when prices fell as low as $10 a barrel. Washington is generally happy with a range of $18 to $25 a barrel, about where oil was before the strikes in Venezuela and jitters about Iraq helped push prices over $34 a barrel. If we were really concerned about cheap oil above all, we'd be sending troops to Caracas, not Baghdad.

The other possible economic advantage in Iraq would be for American companies to win contracts to put out fires, repair refineries and help operate the oil industry, as they did in Kuwait. What's the total value of such work? It's impossible to say, but last year Iraq signed a deal with Russian companies (since canceled by Saddam Hussein) to rebuild oil and other industries, valued at $40 billion over five years.

Yet the White House estimates the military operation alone would cost $50 billion to $60 billion. (Others suggest the figure would be far higher.) And rebuilding of the country's cities, roads and public facilities would cost $20 billion to $100 billion more, with much of that money in the initial years coming from the "international community" (read: Uncle Sam).

Thus, if a capitalist cabal were running the war, it would have to conclude it wasn't a paying proposition.

This doesn't mean that oil is entirely irrelevant to the subject of Iraq. It does matter in one very important way: Oil revenues make Saddam Hussein much more dangerous than your run-of-the-mill dictator, because they give him the ability to build not only palaces but also top-of-the-line weapons of mass destruction.

Americans recognize this. Europeans don't. Why not? Here's my theory: Europeans are projecting their own behavior onto us. They know that their own foreign policies have in the past often been driven by avarice -- all those imperialists after East Indian spices or African diamonds. (This tradition is going strong today in Russia and France, whose Iraq policies seem driven at least in part by oil companies that were granted lucrative concessions by Saddam Hussein.)

Nobody would claim that America's global intentions have always been entirely pure. Still, our foreign policy -- from the Barbary war to Kosovo -- has usually had a strain of idealism at which the cynical Europeans have scoffed. In the case of Iraq, they just can't seem to accept that we might be acting for, say, the general safety and security of the world. After more than 200 years, Europe still hasn't figured out what makes America tick.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is author of "The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power."
 
Back
Top