[Mb-civic] IMPORTANT: Another White House is buying silence - Derrick Z. Jackson - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  Another White House is buying silence

By Derrick Z. Jackson  |  April 8, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

THE NEXT thing you know, President Bush will channel Richard Nixon to 
say, ''I am not a crook."

The clock has started on whether Bush will make this declaration. Court 
documents released this week show that I. Lewis ''Scooter" Libby, the 
former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, has testified that 
both Cheney and President Bush authorized him to leak classified 
intelligence about Iraq in July 2003.

The leak scandal, which has Libby facing trial for lying and obstruction 
of justice, began as an effort to mop up the mess created when Bush 
falsely claimed a half-year earlier in his State of the Union address 
that Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire uranium in Africa. Libby was 
supposed to leak intelligence reports in a crass attempt to blame the 
intelligence community for bad intelligence. The high point of the 
scandal was the exposing of undercover CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson.

The leak came two days after Wilson's husband wrote an Op-Ed column in 
the New York Times about his 2002 investigation that determined that any 
uranium transactions between Niger and Iraq were ''highly doubtful." 
Wilson wrote in the Times, ''Did the Bush administration manipulate 
intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an 
invasion of Iraq? Based on my experience with the administration in the 
months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that 
some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear program was twisted 
to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

The documents do not disclose whether Libby was directly told to leak 
Valerie Plame Wilson's name as retaliation for Joseph Wilson's Op-Ed. 
What special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's documents say is that 
Cheney told Libby about her employment the month before. ''The evidence 
will show," the documents say, ''that the July 6, 2003 op-ed by Mr. 
Wilson was viewed in the office of the vice president as a direct attack 
on the credibility of the vice president (and the president) on a matter 
of signal importance; the rationale for the war in Iraq. Defendant 
undertook vigorous efforts to rebut this attack during the week 
following July 7, 2003."

One of those efforts involved leaking information on July 8 to then New 
York Times reporter Judith Miller. According to Libby's testimony, it 
''occurred only after the vice president advised defendant that the 
president specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain 
information in the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate)." Fitzgerald's 
report said Libby testified that ''getting the approval from the 
President through the vice president to discuss material that would be 
classified . . . [was] unique in his recollection."

Bush indeed has the authority to declassify information. But these 
latest charges by the former insider Libby destroy the credibility of 
White House press secretary Scott McClellan when he said on Sept. 29, 
2003, ''There's no information that has been brought to our attention, 
beyond what we've seen in the media reports, to suggest White House 
involvement . . . if anyone in this administration was involved in it, 
they would no longer be in this administration."

It destroys the credibility of Bush himself when he said Oct. 6, 2003, 
''I don't know who leaked the information."

This is beginning to look like June 3, 1973, when the Washington Post 
reported that White House counsel John Dean told Senate investigators 
and federal prosecutors that President Nixon was highly informed and 
involved in the cover-up of Watergate to the point of charging that 
Nixon knew about payment to buy the silence of Watergate defendants.

This came after an Aug. 29, 1972, declaration from Nixon that ''no one 
in this administration, presently employed, was involved in this very 
bizarre incident."

The months after the Post story saw the bizarre self-destruction of the 
Nixon White House. There was the exploding controversy over the Nixon 
tapes and the ''Saturday Night Massacre," where Nixon fired special 
prosecutor Archibald Cox and forced the resignations of Attorney General 
Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. By 
November of 1973, Nixon, virtually on the run, declared, ''People have 
got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a 
crook."

As the facts emerge, the possibility looms that while it is Libby who 
may be nailed for the crime, Bush and Cheney were the kingpins. Bush may 
or may not officially be a crook. The crooked road he chose to invade 
Iraq is becoming a crime against humanity.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/04/08/another_white_house_is_buying_silence/
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