Here is what Alan Foley, the head of the CIA's Weapons Intelligence Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC), told his senior staff in December 2002:
"If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so."WINPAC led the CIA's analysis of Iraq's purported WMD, so Foley is at the very center of what happened. It's quite possible that outed CIA agent Valerie Plame was one of the staff he was addressing. More at A Tiny Revolution.
Speaking of Valerie Plame, here's Dan Froomkin today:
In Friday's eminently readable court filing, Fitzgerald quotes the Libby defense calling his prosecution "unwarranted, unjust, and motivated by politics." In responding to that charge, the special counsel evidently felt obliged to put Libby's crime in context. And that context is Dick Cheney.Any thinking observer knows full well that it was Cheney who directed the Plame outing, Cheney who master-minded the Iraq War WMD lies, and Cheney who generally pulls the strings of his dumbass puppet President.
Libby's lies, Fitzgerald wrote, "made impossible an accurate evaluation of the role that Mr. Libby and those with whom he worked played in the disclosure of information regarding Ms. Wilson's CIA employment and about the motivations for their actions."
It was established at trial that it was Cheney himself who first told Libby about Plame's identity as a CIA agent, in the course of complaining about criticisms of the administration's run-up to war leveled by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson. And, as Fitzgerald notes: "The evidence at trial further established that when the investigation began, Mr. Libby kept the Vice President apprised of his shifting accounts of how he claimed to have learned about Ms. Wilson's CIA employment."
The investigation, Fitzgerald writes, "was necessary to determine whether there was concerted action by any combination of the officials known to have disclosed the information about Ms. Plame to the media as anonymous sources, and also whether any of those who were involved acted at the direction of others. This was particularly important in light of Mr. Libby's statement to the FBI that he may have discussed Ms. Wilson's employment with reporters at the specific direction of the Vice President."
Did you know that the CIA front company Valerie Plame supposedly worked for was named after the late Benjamin Brewster Jennings, a president and founder of the Socony-Vacuum oil company? Socony-Vacuum later became Mobil Oil, then merged with Exxon to become ExxonMobil. Funny how oil companies keep turning up in this game, isn't it?
Didn't Condi Rice have an oil tanker named after her? Funny, that. Come on, smile, Dick!
Meanwhile, across the pond, former top Blair aide Alastair Campbell has decided to voluntarily withhold 90% of the shocking revelations - including how and why Blair decided to support Bush in Iraq - from his upcoming tell-all (i.e. tell 10%) memoirs:
Still loyal to Labour, Mr Campbell asked himself, "Can I imagine [Conservative Party leader] David Cameron using that to damage a Labour prime minister?" when making cuts.Ah yes, loyalty to party uber alles. So now we get the story about the story we won't be getting.
What's all this got to do with John Howard? Why, nothing of course. Nothing at all. When the shit hits the fan, the chickens come home to roost and the bloody stain of truth begins to seep out of the woodwork, Howard is never anywhere to be found. We all know that.
