1 Boring Old Man

Trial Spotlights Cheney’s Power as an Infighter

The trial against Mr. Libby has centered on a narrow case of perjury, with days of sparring between the defense and prosecution lawyers over the numbing details of three-year-old conversations between White House officials and journalists. But a close reading of the testimony and evidence in the case is more revelatory, bringing into bolder relief a portrait of a vice president with free rein to operate inside the White House as he saw fit in order to debunk the charges of a critic of the war in Iraq.

The evidence in the trial shows that Vice President Dick Cheney and Mr. Libby, his former chief of staff, countermanded and even occasionally misled colleagues at the highest levels of Mr. Bush’s inner circle as the two pursued their own goal of clearing the vice president’s name in connection with flawed intelligence used in the case for war.

The testimony in the trial, which is heading for final arguments as early as Tuesday, calls into question whether Mr. Cheney, known as a consummate inside player, operated as effectively as his reputation would hold. For all of his machinations, Mr. Cheney’s efforts sometimes faltered as he tried, with the help of Mr. Libby, to push back against critics during a crucial period in the early summer of 2003, when Mr. Bush’s initial case for war was beginning to fall apart. In some of their efforts, Mr. Cheney and his agent, Mr. Libby, appeared even maladroit in the art of media management.

While the article adds little new information to the endless dialog about the case, it is significant and encouraging that the New York Times published this article saying clearly that Vice President Cheney and his Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, were actively involved in the retaliation against Valerie Plame. What the article adds is the level of infighting that went on among Agencies as this affair unfolded.

But Cheney’s also the target of a new Murray Waas atricle:

The Libby-Cheney Connection
Libby Testimony Raises More Questions About Cheney’s Role In The CIA Leak Case

In the fall of 2003, as a federal criminal probe was just getting underway to determine who leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to the media, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the-then chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, sought out Cheney to explain to his boss his side of the story.

The explanation that Libby offered Cheney that day was virtually identical to one that Libby later told the FBI and testified to before a federal grand jury: Libby said he had only passed along to reporters unsubstantiated gossip about Plame that he had heard from NBC bureau chief Tim Russert.

The grand jury concluded that the account was a cover story to conceal the role of Libby and other White House officials in leaking information about Plame to the press, and indicted him on five felony counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice.

At the time that Libby offered his explanation to Cheney, the vice president already had reason to know that Libby’s account to him was untrue, according to sources familiar with still-secret grand jury testimony and evidence in the CIA leak probe, as well as testimony made public during Libby’s trial over the past three weeks in federal court.

It’s heartening to find that there’s a real hope in all of this media attention that the investigation will not stop with the Libby Trial. We need to know this whole story – a malicious cover-your-ass move by the OVP. But it’s also the Royal Road to the much bigger story – the fallacious pre-war campaign to invade Iraq. There’s no reason for us not to go all the way to the bottom of this barrell of rotten apples.

Our Constitution depends on it…