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Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he’s got a welfare reform story coming. When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn’t this damaging? Hasn’t the president been hurt? I didn’t take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn’t get Time far out in front on this.
Karl Rove email to Stephen Hadley, July 11, 2003
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Stephen Hadley looks like Clark Kent, mild mannered reporter. But he’s been in the middle of things from the start. He was Wolfowitz’s aide in drafting the Defense Guidance under George H.W. Bush. He was an advocate of the tactical use on nuclear weapons in the Clinton years at NIPP. In Bush Jr.’s Administration, he was Deputy to National Security Adviser Condi Rice. He was in W.H.I.G. He was an advocate of including the Atta Prague meeting theory. And he apparently pushed adding the 16 words in Bush’s 2003 SOTUS, later saying that Tenet had told him that the Niger story was shaky, but he forgot – and had never passed that along to Rice. He offerred to resign, taking the blame for the 16 words [this forgetting story is simply impossible to believe].Rove bailed himself out of a perjury charge by discovering an email to Hadley written immediately after talking to Matt Cooper – outing Valerie Plame. He said it jogged his memory [no one believes that one either]. The day before, Hadley was in Cheney’s Office reporting that Rice had cleared the leaks with Bush. He reported on the progress declassifying Plame and the N.I.E. to Cheney and Libby. In all that’s followed, he’s been vaguely named as Woodward’s source or Novak’s source, but nothing stuck. In the meantime, he was promoted to National Security Adviser and Rice was moved to the State Department.
So, here’s what I think. HadleyRice was in charge of the Plame Affair. He was the coordinator for the operation – the go between for Rice, Bush/Rove, Cheney/Libby. It was his show, maybe his idea. He’s the big fish and the one Conyers ought to ask Scott McClellan about, and maybe subpoena. If he weren’t in the middle of the thing, why was he sitting in Cheney’s Office reporting on the Military and C.I.A. declassification, reporting on Rice’s checking things out with the President? Why was Rove writing him about his talk with Matt Cooper? Maybe Cheney and Libby were reporting to him. And then there’s this: 
Was Cheney’s complaint about sacrificing his staffer [Libby] because of the "incompetence of others," referring to Hadley’s blunder in using the "16 words" in the SOTUS? It was those 16 Words that got Joseph Wilson stirred up in the first place. Hadley was, after all, the one that met with Pollari about the Yellowcake and drank the kool-ade that got them into this mess. So then he must have been tasked with getting them out of it, including an offer to sacrifice himself for "forgetting" that the Niger Story was vapor-ware…
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