NOW IT GOES BIG TIME

NOW IT GETS WEIRD Libby heard about Plame from Cheney.  And this story that was big before hits Big Time.[story]

I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby’s testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war.

Now who will bite the bullet?  And who will take a bullet in the head?

AND SOME WILL SAY so what?  Why wouldn’t Cheney and Libby talk about Plame?

But the notes, now in Mr. Fitzgerald’s possession, also indicate that Mr. Libby first heard about Ms. Wilson — who is also known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame — from Mr. Cheney. That apparent discrepancy in his testimony suggests why prosecutors are weighing false statement charges against him in what they interpret as an effort by Mr. Libby to protect Mr. Cheney from scrutiny, the lawyers said.

AND THE HERETIK ASKS the obvious question: what about Cheney would need less scrutiny?  Is the secret location a place so paranoid that even honest answers need see no light of day?  Or is there something more dark that until now has lain in secret?  What is out and now going back into the shadows is Cheney’s name linked directly in this chain of fools.

. . . the evidence of Mr. Cheney’s direct involvement in the effort to learn more about Mr. Wilson is sure to intensify the political pressure on the White House in a week of high anxiety among Republicans about the potential for the case to deal a sharp blow to Mr. Bush’s presidency.

UNDER PRESSURE In the light Cheney will be a target for more speculation as to what he has done, even if he does not get a target letter. 

Matt at The Tattered Coat has one word : Bombshell.  The Heretik says the greater concern for Bush must more be shrapnel.  This bomb will leaves shards in everyone close to him.  Much blood everywhere.  So it is with secrets and those who tell them. 

NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES [Jane Hamsher/Firedog Lake] Is Scooter trying to play "Let's Make a Deal?" And is the fact that they were leaked to the press -- with all their damning implications for Cheney -- an indication that Scooter is no longer willing to fall on a sword for his boss?

AS THE HERETIK SAID about Rove: There will be plenty of swords around ready to be buried in the backs of the falling.  More Godfather moments come to mind: Like when Vito Corleone realizes it's not Tattaglia against him, it's Barzini.  Now the question:  who leaked this to the NY Times?  Who benefits and is a winner here?  There certainly will be plenty of losers.

ONE AMONG MANY LEGAL ANGLES [Talk Left] Is a false statement or obstruction charge being readied against Dick Cheney for his statements to investigators in 2004? Did he tell them, as he said on Meet the Press in September, 2003, that he first learned of Wilson and his trip to Africa after Wilson's op-ed in the paper? Or did he come clean with investigators, thereby unwittingly setting Libby up to take a fall? 

THE HERETIK HIGHLY RECOMMENDS Talk Left for a thorough series of questions raised tonight, particularly why Tenet didn't get another interview and the timing of the others. 

AND WHAT ABOUT Bolton?  Blogenlust asks the question The Heretik has previously asked about the mustached man who visited Judy Miller in July.  In the end, the surprise in this administration may not be who is involved, but the few who are not.

SO HOW DID WE GET HERE?
RECOMMENDED RELATED READING
SO WHAT? It’s all politics. And the point of battle is Joe Wilson, not his wife. [Walter Pincus, Dana Milbank WaPo]

Wilson's critics in the administration said his 2002 trip to Niger for the CIA to probe reports that Iraq was trying to buy uranium there was a boondoggle arranged by his wife to help his consulting business.

The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial page, defending the administration, wrote yesterday that, "Mr. Wilson became an antiwar celebrity who joined the Kerry for president campaign." Discussing his trip to Niger, the Journal judged: "Mr. Wilson's original claims about what he found on a CIA trip to Africa, what he told the CIA about it, and even why he was sent on the mission have since been discredited."

THE HERETIK REALIZES few partisans will move from their partisan conclusions.  Those firmly against the war will see vindication in the latest revelations.  Those firmly in favor of the war will see more politics obscuring the evil they see in Iraq and the rightness of their noble cause.  The question now is how the less committed will see the Plame affair and the war as well.


SCOWCROFT ON CHENEY [WaPo]

He said he had once considered Vice President Cheney "a good friend," but "Dick Cheney I don't know anymore." . . . . The unusual on-the-record bashing comes at a difficult period for the White House, which this week is also bracing for the 2,000th military fatality in the Iraq conflict.

THE HERETIK RECALLS  before there was a Powell Doctrine of using overwhelming force, before Colin Powell made the Pottery Barn Proviso (If you break it, you own it), there was the sensible “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  Cheney didn’t much care for Powell or anything anyone else might say. It seems the whole Bush administration felt the same way

Scowcroft, in his interview, discussed an argument over Iraq he had two years ago with Condoleezza Rice, then-national security adviser and current secretary of state. "She says we're going to democratize Iraq, and I said, 'Condi, you're not going to democratize Iraq,' and she said, 'You know, you're just stuck in the old days,' and she comes back to this thing that we've tolerated an autocratic Middle East for fifty years and so on and so forth," he said. The article stated that with a "barely perceptible note of satisfaction," Scowcroft added: "But we've had fifty years of peace."

THE HERETIK MUST PRESUME peace for some is not enough.

ALSO RECOMMENDED: Tom Maguire says um Just One Minute: What Tom sees is a lot of maybe and maybe some nothing.  Always on point and entertaining.

MORE TO FOLLOW.

Comments

[ol cranky]

I'm getting a really weird trackback error, but let's just say the karaoke has begun in Crankistan

[Kate]

It would be some sort of luscious wet dream to see Cheney go down in this. Oh to dream the impossible dream!!!

Perhaps for once the windmills will actually be horse-borne fighters. Imagine!!

[nimotop]

Honesty, integrity and a persuasive mentality are the most important qualities of an elected official
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See you

[virtual]

More or less nothing seems important. It's not important. Shrug. Whatever. I've just been hanging out doing nothing, but eh. I can't be bothered with anything lately.

[buddhism]

The school paddle is, is not an effective instrument to deal with bad students

[Lee]

Prejudice will always be a part of society

[Steve]

My life's been bland. I've basically been doing nothing to speak of, but what can I say? Not that it matters. Eh. Such is life.