Uncle Dick, the Blonde and the Baby
Dick Cheney, our own Darth Vader clone replete with wheeze and throaty growl, continues to work his dark majik behind the scenes. He now enjoys an 18% approval rating which I’m sure impacts him not at all. Darth … errr … Dick does not give a rap what the American people think [he's actually said so,] nor does he allow little things to stand in his way [think Constitution.]
Below you’ll find out that Valerie Plame has finally been confirmed covert at the time of her outing, and that Cheney’s office … hence, Cheney … was responsible for her illegal outing. And let’s remember that that is a Federal Crime! Fitzgerald, in a fit of pique over the Rabid Right criticisms that he enjoyed a witch hunt in going after Libby, is pointing a finger at Uncle Dick as the heart of darkness … errr … the problem.
We are not surprised.
Nor are we surprised that when Mary Cheney-Mary Cheney had her baby, Uncle Dick and wife Lynne posed with a picture of the child, just button-busting proud, but the little guys parents are nowhere to be found. Shy, are they? Or hidden in the next room at Uncle Dick’s command, so as not to offend his conservative friends. The grandparents look like a pair of elderly kidnappers.
Perhaps the worst of this short collection is a sentence or two about Dick’s dark doings regarding Iran. You’ll find it toward the end of the post, and it will give you pause. Darth may be in rebellion against the Little Emperor — and that’s NOT good news, knowing what we know about Dick’s ability with the Force. We have mostly abandoned the Puppet Master rhetoric we used in the first years of Bush’s reign, but it remains no less true … or worrisome.
Last, you’ll find a link announcing John Conyer’s joining those who are standing for impeachment of both Dick and George. There are activist op’s there, if you wish to demand action on such a project, which is gaining in popularity.
Jude
Was She or Wasn’t She?
Arguing that Libby deserves jail time, Fitzgerald says Plame was a covert agent
Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek
May 29, 2007
In new court filings, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has finally resolved one of the most disputed issues at the core of the long-running CIA leak controversy: Valerie Plame Wilson, he asserts, was a “covert” CIA officer who repeatedly traveled overseas using a “cover identity” in order to disguise her relationship with the agency.
Fitzgerald cites Wilson’s covert status as part of his argument—advanced in two strongly worded memos filed in recent days—that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, should be sentenced to up to three years in prison.
Libby was convicted last March of four counts of obstruction of justice, false statements and perjury relating to what he knew, and with whom he shared information, about Valerie Plame Wilson in the weeks prior to her outing by columnist Robert Novak in a July 14, 2003 newspaper column. Libby, who is appealing the verdict, is due to be sentenced next Tuesday by U.S. Judge Reggie Walton—an event that could well reignite a fierce political controversy over whether President Bush should pardon the former Cheney aide.
Libby’s lawyers, and many conservative partisans of his cause, have argued that Libby should be spared prison in part because there was no underlying crime in the disclosure of Valerie Wilson’s identity. (As his trial established, Wilson’s identity was leaked to a number of reporters by several Bush administration officials who were interested in discrediting the attacks by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, on the White House’s handling of Iraq pre-war intelligence.)
A major theme of Libby’s defenders has been that, at the time of her outing, Valerie Wilson was little more than a desk analyst who was not covered by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act—the 1982 law making it a crime to disclose the identity of a covert officer. Fitzgerald was originally appointed to investigate whether this statute had been violated. But in two memos—and in a document entitled, “Unclassified Summary of Valerie Wilson’s CIA Empooyment and Cover History”— Fitzgerald attempts to shoot down the idea that the agent’s job was mostly analysis.
“It was clear from very early in the investigation that Ms. Wilson qualified under the relevant statute”—the Intelligence Identities act— “as a covert agent whose identity had been disclosed by public officials, including Mr. Libby, to the press,” Fitzgerald wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed late last Friday night.
A spokeswoman for Libby’s defense team declined to comment, saying his lawyers will address the issue when they file their own sentencing memorandum with Judge Walton in the next few days.
In the “unclassified summary” of his memom which was based on information cleared by the CIA and became publicly available Tuesday, Fitzgerald provided new details about Wilson’s previously classified activities at the agency. In January, 2002, she was working for the agency “as an operations officer” in the Directorate of Operations’s Counterproliferation Division (CPD) and serving as “chief” of a unit with responsibility for weapons proliferation issues related to Iraq. In that capacity, he added, she traveled overseas in an undercover capacity.
“She traveled at least seven times to more than 10 countries,” the document states. “When traveling overseas, Ms. Wilson always traveled under a cover identity….At the time of the initial unauthorized disclosure in the media of Ms. Wilson’s employment relationship with the CIA on 14 July 2003, Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employe for whom the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States.”
Libby’s trial earlier this year established that at least three other Bush administration officials —former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (who testified under a grant of immunity) — also disclosed information about Valerie Wilson’s identity to journalists. But Fitzgerald contends that Libby’s disclosures—primarily to New York Times reporter Judith Miller—were made “deliberately and for the purpose for influencing media coverage of the public debate concerning intelligence leading to the war in Iraq” and, according to Libby’s own testimony, “may have been sanctioned by the Vice President.”
Moreover, while Libby denied ever knowing that Valerie Wilson was a covert agent (and prosecutors never introduced any evidence that he had) “other evidence obtained by the grand jury indicated that defendant learned that Ms. Wilson worked at the CIA from multiple government officials under circumstances that, at a bare minimum, warranted inquiry before the information was publicly disseminated.”
For all his strong language-Fitzgerald elsewhere asserts that Libby “lied repeatedly and blatantly about matters at the heart of a criminal investigation”— it is unlikely that the prosecutor’s new filings will temper the enthusiasm among Libby’s backers. Since his conviction last March, a number of conservative partisans—who shared with Libby his ardent support of the Iraq war—have mounted a vigorous public campaign in his defense and sought to lay the groundwork for a presidential pardon. In mid-May, Libby was a featured guest at a New York dinner honoring Norman Podhoretz, one of the neo-Conservative movement’s intellectual godfathers. According to reports from the scene, the dinner, organized by Commentary Magazine, opened with cheers and a “standing ovation” for Libby.
Libby’s advocates have also found allies on Capitol Hill. In an appendix to a new report released last week by the Senate Intelligence Committee about Iraq war intelligence, three Republican senators-including Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, vice chairman of the panel—filed “additional views” harshly criticizing Valerie Wilson and her husband for allegedly misleading the committee in 2004 about the role she played in suggesting her husband’s trip to Niger to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. Citing allegedly contradictory statements she has made more recently to a House committee, the GOP senators called for a re-interview of Valerie Wilson.
One of Libby’s most ardent defenders, Richard Carlson, a former chief of the Voice of America who serves as a member of a defense trust set up for Libby, reacted harshly to Fitzgerald’s latest filings. “I think it’s certainly unseemly that he is kicking him while he’s down,” Carlson said. “For Fitzgerald, to get on his high horse, it’s disgusting and he should be ashamed of himself.”
Fitzgerald Again Points to Cheney
snipped from Dan Froomkin, Washington Post
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald has made it clearer than ever that he was hot on the trail of a coordinated campaign to out CIA agent Valerie Plame until that line of investigation was cut off by the repeated lies from Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
Libby was convicted in March of perjury and obstruction of justice. Fitzgerald filed a memo on Friday asking U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, who will sentence Libby next week, to put him in prison for at least two and a half years.
Despite all the public interest in the case, Fitzgerald has repeatedly asserted that grand-jury secrecy rules prohibit him from being more forthcoming about either the course of his investigation or any findings beyond those he disclosed to make the case against Libby. But when his motives have been attacked during court proceedings, Fitzgerald has occasionally shown flashes of anger — and has hinted that he and his investigative team suspected more malfeasance at higher levels of government than they were able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
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.
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.”
Not clear on the concept yet? Fitzgerald adds: “To accept the argument that Mr. Libby’s prosecution is the inappropriate product of an investigation that should have been closed at an early stage, one must accept the proposition that the investigation should have been closed after at least three high-ranking government officials were identified as having disclosed to reporters classified information about covert agent Valerie Wilson, where the account of one of them was directly contradicted by other witnesses, where there was reason to believe that some of the relevant activity may have been coordinated, and where there was an indication from Mr. Libby himself that his disclosures to the press may have been personally sanctioned by the Vice President.”
Up until now, Fitzgerald’s most singeing attack on Cheney came during closing arguments at the Libby trial in February. Libby’s lawyers had complained that Fitzgerald was trying to put a “cloud” over Cheney without evidence to back it up — and that set Fitzgerald off. As I wrote in my Feb. 21 column, the special counsel responded with fire: “There is a cloud over what the Vice President did that week. . . . He had those meetings. He sent Libby off to [meet then-New York Times reporter] Judith Miller at the St. Regis Hotel. At that meeting, the two-hour meeting, the defendant talked about the wife. We didn’t put that cloud there.
That cloud remains because the defendant has obstructed justice and lied about what happened. . . .
“That’s not something that we put there. That cloud is something that we just can’t pretend isn’t there.”
To those of us watching the investigation and trial unfold, Cheney’s presence behind the scenes has emerged in glimpses and hints. (The defense’s decision not to call Cheney to the stand remains a massive bummer.) But I suspect that people looking back on this story will see it with greater clarity: As a blatant — and thus far successful — cover-up for the vice president.
The Coverage
What little traditional media coverage there was of Fitzgerald’s filing focused on sentencing issues…
Welcome to Grandpa’s World, Baby Cheney
Robert Scheer, TruthDig
May 30 2007
Thank the Almighty, whatever that might mean, for planting the seed of life in the lesbian body of Mary Cheney and for granting her parents the opportunity to show support for a homosexual couple raising a child in an atmosphere of love. The message, carried prominently in news reports throughout the world, is that America has come of age in recognizing, as do most truly modern countries, that homosexuality is indeed normal.
Perhaps they knew not what they did, but the picture the White House released of Vice President Dick Cheney, coming as close as he does to a smile, and his beaming wife, Lynne, cradling their newborn grandson, Samuel David Cheney, was a milestone in the nation’s struggle for human rights for all. Never again will it be possible for conservative Republicans to shun homosexuals in any facet of American life without appearing outrageously hypocritical.
If it is right for Mary Cheney and Heather Poe, partners of 15 years, to be entrusted with the birthing and raising of a child, then how is it logical, as this White House has insisted, to deny the legal status of marriage to same-sex couples seeking to have their commitment legally acknowledged? Does not the life of Mary Cheney, born to God-fearing parents in a home of presumably high moral tone, and herself an activist in the Republican Party that has exploited homophobia for temporal political advantage, definitively answer the argument that homosexuality is not a fickle choice but a facet of the natural order of things? On what basis could this nation logically deny Mary Cheney the right to equal participation in any aspect of our publicly governed life, be it through military or civic institutions?
The problem is that the inalienable human rights to freedom and the pursuit of happiness do not, according to the law, apply to Mary Cheney. Living as she does in Virginia, she must assume full responsibility for her child without being able to legally rely on her partner, who has no state-recognized connection to the child. As another example of the absurd contradictions that mark the law in this area, had Mary Cheney sought to fight in the war in Iraq, which her father did so much to cause, she would have been rejected because of the very honesty she exhibited in her personal life.
Surely Mary Cheney’s commitment to a monogamous relationship would indicate that she would be less likely to engage in any sexual philandering that might disturb the tranquility of barracks life. One cannot imagine her participating in the abuse, with its bizarre perversion of same-sex contact, that heterosexual men and women in the U.S. military staged at Abu Ghraib prison to the shock of the world. And certainly her energetic work as a staffer in the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign should provide ample assurance that homosexuals can be as mindlessly pro-war as anyone. Given that papa Cheney ducked the draft when it was his turn to fight, a Mary Cheney in the military would have done much to demonstrate that this family is willing to share in the sacrifice they demand from others.
But what of the future of baby Samuel David Cheney? Considering the homophobia that his grandpa’s Grand Old Party has perpetuated in past decades, it is not likely that he will have an easy time. Chances are overwhelming that he will turn out heterosexual–and admiring of his homosexual parents–given the statistical precedents. After all, the mind-numbing contradiction in any public discussion of the so-called “homosexual lifestyle” is that the gay community often approximates the ideal of hardworking, taxpaying stability that has provided a healthy core to the renewal of just about every city in the red or blue zone.
Yes, baby Samuel, even in the care of far less famous gay couples, would be more likely exposed to the best family values, not to mention a higher level of art, music and croissants, than he would had he been born to a heterosexual family. But if the GOP base that put Cheney in power continues to have its way with our politics, the stigma that has tainted Mary Cheney’s life will harm the vice president’s grandson in ways that are as varied as they are immoral. So how about it, Grandpa? Take the next step and join PFLAG, or Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, whose members have done so much to redress the grievances with which you have long been associated.
Cheney Defies Bush On Iran
Is Dick Cheney starting a war with Iran behind President Bush’s back?
Dr. Bruce Prescott, Mainstream Baptist, reposted at Alternet
May 29, 2007
Raw Story is reporting that Washington insiders are saying that Vice President Chency is employing “an end run strategy” around President Bush and Secretary of Defense Gates in regard to policy with Iran.
Quoting Steve Clemons of the Washington Note:
-
The zinger of this information is the admission by this Cheney aide that Cheney himself is frustrated with President Bush and believes, much like Richard Perle, that Bush is making a disastrous mistake by aligning himself with the policy course that Condoleezza Rice, Bob Gates, Michael Hayden and McConnell have sculpted.
According to this official, Cheney believes that Bush can not be counted on to make the “right decision” when it comes to dealing with Iran and thus Cheney believes that he must tie the President’s hands. [emphasis added - J]
If this is true, it may be time to impeach Cheney for “criminal insubordination.”
Dr. Bruce Prescott is Executive Director of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists and President of the Oklahoma Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Conyers Comes Out For Impeachment
The House Judiciary Committee chairman breaks with Pelosi and joins the growing list of legislators around the country supporting Bush and Cheney’s impeachment.
David Swanson
5/30/07
[open link for activist op]
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
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