Have they done this sort of thing? Send an Amb to answer a question?, Part Two

This is the second post in a series. In the prior post, I showed that, when Libby asked David Addington about paperwork relating to a CIA employee’s spouse traveling for the CIA, he was interested in identifying all backup documents to Wilson’s 2002 trip and/or the paperwork associated with Wilson’s 1999 trip to Niger relating to AQ Khan. In this post, I’ll show that, the two questions Libby asked Addington reflect the annotations Cheney wrote on Wilson’s op-ed.

As best as we can tell, on late July 6 or early July 7, 2003, DickCheney returned to DC from a long weekend in Jackson Hole. He broughtwith him his copy of Joe Wilson’s op-ed, folded vertically. In addition to a bunch of underlines Cheney had made, he had written at the top:

Have they done this sort of thing?

Send an Amb to answer a question?

Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us?

Or did his wife send him on a junket?

I have shownthat Cheney clearly read (and presumably annotated) this op-ed beforeJuly 8.That’s because the talking points he dictates to Cathie Martinon July 8 refer explicitly to what Wilson says in his op-ed.

But the important point about these talking points is that Cheney references Wilson’s op-ed. Ashard as Libby tries, he cannot claim that Cheney only read Wilson’sop-ed after the Novak article. Cheney uses an attack–the ridiculousattack about Wilson going pro bono–that he wrote in his op-ed talkingpoints in the talking points he dictated to Martin on July 8.

If you’ve got a strong heart, Fitzgerald does a much (much!) weedier version of this in his closing argument,showing that many of Cheney’s underlines and notes show up in thesetalking points. Both Fitzgerald’s and my version make it crystal clear thatCheney’s changed his instructions to Cathie Martin–and OVP’s standard talking points addressing Joe Wilson–in response to reading Wilson’s op-ed.

But what about Libby? Did Cheney change his instructions for Libby after annotating Wilson’s op-ed? If we can prove he was, it adds one more piece ofevidence to the accumulating collection of evidence showing that Cheneyordered Libby to leak Plame’s identity.

image_print
  1. margaret says:

    Are you saying that Libby, therefore, definitely knew Mrs. Wilson was covert before he leaked to the press and therefore committed a greater crime than perjury?

  2. Jodi says:

    emptywheel,

    it has always seemed to me that those notes on the edge of the paper by Cheney were questions to check out, not as you call them â€talking points.â€

    But anyway, my earlier question still waits.

    What is the purpose here? Libby is the dead horse and can’t be whipped any more to any effect. Are you trying to drum up something on Cheney?

    And by the way, I kind of agree with your strategy on Rove.

  3. Slothrop says:

    Cheney is guilty of treason if he ordered Valerie Wilson’s covert identity uncovered. The evidence suggests that he ordered it. So, there’s no â€drumming up†to it.

    The really serious problem here is that no one wants to go there and seriously make the treason accusation against a sitting Vice President. Even if it’s true.

    What’s needed at this point is a discussion of why this is.

  4. earlofhuntingdon says:

    The â€junket†language is derogatory, implying that the purpose and the results of Wilson’s trip are corrupt and, therefore, so are the people involved in it. A typical Cheney attack; but it’s also defensive, because it distracts from the underlying issue – did Cheney lie us into war.

    Disclosing a junket – a waste of govt resources – would be a standard exception to confidentiality obligations. It’s the sort of thing a whistlebower would do and be thanked for. But given Cheney’s attitude toward whistleblowers – send them to the Russian front – and his having few problems with overpriced, no bid defense contracts, Cheney is not interested in reducing govt waste. He is attacking an opponent. In his fictional Wild West version of macho, he’s calling Joe Wilson a eunuch because his wife had to get him work; it sells well inside the beltway, despite it being a daily occurence that dual career couples use to make millions.

    The â€junket†is a DC bureaucrat’s cover for an attack, but’s not the primary attack. As EW describes, that’s the exposure.

  5. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Related to Cheney’s arrogance generally, see Scott Horton’s â€Return of the Reaganitesâ€. Excellent essay with extended quote from Bruce Fein. Shorter Horton: â€Congress faces a foe [Cheney] that regales itself over Congress’s lack of resolve and continuous hesitation. Soon we’ll see whether President Cheney’s contempt is justified.â€

  6. earlofhuntingdon says:

    The money quote from the Bruce Fein article quoted by Scott Horton:

    â€Presidents have been characteristically jealous of their constitutional turf.

    â€Mr Bush is a monumental exception. He entered politics not because of philosophical conviction or even a raw desire for power, but for a lack of anything better to do. His policies fluctuate like a human weather vane. Mr Bush eagerly agreed to Mr Cheney’s tacit demand that the lion’s share of the presidency be outsourced to the vice-president’s office. Unlike Mr Bush, Mr Cheney craves unchecked power.â€

    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2e22f3…..fd2ac.html

  7. radiofreewill says:

    I think this is right on.

    It looks like Cheney is, once again, asking Libby to ’bait the field’ with information he already has from another source, in order to both lead reporters to a ’find’ and mask Cheney’s manipulative involvment.

    When Cheney sends Libby to Miller with ’something’ to tell her – Libby knew that that ’something’ was classified.

    And it wasn’t the NIE. As EW says, Libby had been leaking the NIE for a while without objecting to it being classified.

    A way to explain the whole unfolding of events, imho, is to assume Cheney and Libby knew that Valerie’s identity was classified – but not that she was covert. Bush and Cheney declassified her employment at the CIA to Libby on the morning of July 8th with the intent of exposing the Wilson’s as a team of bureaucratic political operatives.

    That would explain the ’jack in the box’ shock, deer-in-the-headlights reaction of BushCo when the IIPA story broke – they were in the middle of a smear op on the Wilson’s, justified with paperwork showing the boondoggle (â€see, they did it before in ’99, tooâ€)…

    …and this time Cheney shot himself in the face.

  8. radiofreewill says:

    Oops! I left out a phrase, my bad.

    I think this is right on.

    It looks like Cheney is, once again, asking Libby to ’bait the field’ with information he already has from another source, in order to both lead reporters to a ’find’ and mask Cheney’s manipulative involvment in ’shooting down’ the Wilsons.

    When Cheney sends Libby to Miller with ’something’ to tell her – Libby knew that that ’something’ was classified.

    And it wasn’t the NIE. As EW says, Libby had been leaking the NIE for a while without objecting to it being classified.

    A way to explain the whole unfolding of events, imho, is to assume Cheney and Libby knew that Valerie’s identity was classified – but not that she was covert. Bush and Cheney declassified her employment at the CIA to Libby on the morning of July 8th with the intent of exposing the Wilson’s as a team of bureaucratic political operatives.

    That would explain the ’jack in the box’ shock, deer-in-the-headlights reaction of BushCo when the IIPA story broke – they were in the middle of a smear op on the Wilson’s, justified with paperwork showing the boondoggle (â€see, they did it before in ’99, tooâ€)…

    …and this time Cheney shot himself in the face.

  9. radiofreewill says:

    My money is on Tenet being Cheney’s ’secret source.’

    Tenet handed Cheney a box with a crank handle on it and said, â€Valerie Plame Wilson’s employment at the CIA is Classified. Don’t play political intrigue with her.â€

    Cheney replied with some version of â€Go Fuck Yourself†and began madly intriguing (cranking the handle on the box – to the tune of tiddlywinks) to politically smear the Wilsons and..

    …boing!!!

  10. Anonymous says:

    Slothrop: I’ll do it.

    Dick Cheney is a traitor to the United States. He must be impeached, removed from office, and then charged with treason and war crimes.

    Now, if only I looked like Russert, we could make ourselves a nice little YouTube clip.

  11. chris says:

    I have tried and tried and never could figure out why it was so important that State/DOD asked about the yellowcake story but I think I am finally getting it.

    EW, are you hinting that Cheney had access to the information in the CIA docs all along- but he had to figure out how to get reporters to ask the right questions to get CIA to leak information to them that would point to Valerie Plame’s invlovement and info that would reveal that she was covert? Since there was info about State/DOD in one of Valerie’s emails, reporter’s questions could lead to reveling that and other information from those emails. And similarly, asking about the â€junket†and â€do we do this†would lead to other pieces of information that could potentially out Valerie.

    This would make sense. But why would Scooter ask Addington questions about where to find this information? Wouldn’t Dick already have that info? Maybe Scooter wanted Addington to do something more. Cheney seems to have encircled himself with people who just did things because they knew Big Dick wanted them done. I do not remember from his testimony whether Addington contacted anyone with regard to Scooter’s questions.

    There seem to be a few facilitators in this story that still lurk in the shadows. Like that guy Hohlt. And was it just a chance happenstance that Armitage met with Novak for the first time when he never had before.

    Would people in the CIA take calls from reporters like Judy and verify stuff? When Libby was talking to Grenier, was he seeking information for himself or just checking to see what information was being disseminated and possibly going to reporters? Or was the plan just to have Grenier tell Cathie Martin what Scooter already knew and then she would tell reporters who would then call Scooter and Rove for verification and S&R would say they heard that too.

  12. orionATL says:

    who is the â€they†in

    â€have they done this sort of thing….â€?

    the whole question seems odd.

  13. Anonymous says:

    chris

    Yes, that’s the idea. Cheney clearly had Libby invent an alternative source for the DOD/State talking point–I’m increasingly convinced Libby knew the info he pretended not to know when he called Grenier. And I’m suggesting he may have been doing the same here.

    Though, yes, Judy may have access to taht kind of info through State or someone like John Bolton, a favorite source of hers. And we know she collected a good deal of information that week.

  14. Boston1775 says:

    So if I’m reading you correctly, EW, the purposes for the conversation with Addington were to find the â€normal†CIA channels one would look to for information about the junkets this flunky got to go on. I have to wonder if Libby got cold feet, you know, just before doing his master’s dirty work, and wanted to double check that insta-declassification thing. (He has the wife and young children to think of.)

    No problem, no problem Addington replies. The precedent will hold up (whatever the case is on the list).

    And now that the three of them have given this plan that extra little bit of fact-checking, Libby is cleared and ready for take off.

  15. Katie Jensen says:

    I believe that Libby did not trust Cheney. Libby is a follower. He became â€the trusted†of a very authoritarian man. (that means you get punished when you don’t do as you are told or when you fail to do it good enough). Libby was afraid he was getting himself into hot water. Harriet Meiers, not so smart. Gonzalez not so smart. Libby- weird, but smart. He knew, and that is exactly why Bushco needed to get him out of jail. He’d been on the end of Cheney’s **ckstick too long. I believe that Fitz did a pretty good job of trying to get him to flip. And cheneyco knew it.

  16. Jodi says:

    So you paint the picture of the Master Magician, Dick Cheney!

    Now you are getting somewhere.

    But he doesn’t leave tracks, prints, emails, only a jotted note occasionally.

    He convinced the young Prince George Bush that all life was an illusion, and all one had to do was believe, and the castles sprang into the air.

  17. felonious says:

    It says here that not only did Cheyney know that Valerie Plame’s status at the agency was classified, he knew she was covert, what her cover was and what she was working on. He wanted to blow up her operation and he wanted to do it for his patrons in Saudi Arabia. The idea that blowing her cover was the clumsy bi-product of a botched smear campaign doesn’t pass the smell test.

  18. Boston1775 says:

    Felonious – It certainly does not pass the smell test. As a matter of fact, on the day the Libby verdict, while waiting, I was on the FDLgabblychat. Someone referred to those who died as a result of Brewster Jennings being outed by Cheney and Libby.

    I asked for some proof and was given links to two stars appearing at the CIA at the dates corresponding to the outing of Valerie. I was also given links to the murders of a couple in South America (while their young children slept in rooms close by) and the death of someone in the Middle East (I think).

    I have no proof that these deaths are related to the outing of the agency Valerie worked for, but that moment changed everything for me, as has Pat Tillman’s death and cover-up.

    Treason.

  19. semiot says:

    From Chris:

    â€EW, are you hinting that Cheney had access to the information in the CIA docs all along- but he had to figure out how to get reporters to ask the right questions to get CIA to leak information to them that would point to Valerie Plame’s invlovement and info that would reveal that she was covert? Since there was info about State/DOD in one of Valerie’s emails, reporter’s questions could lead to reveling that and other information from those emails. And similarly, asking about the â€junket†and â€do we do this†would lead to other pieces of information that could potentially out Valerie.â€

    I have long suspected and suggested this: that Cheney knew of Valerie Plame Wilson and her role at CIA re WMD well before July 6, 2003. When did he learn, and how? Emptywheel seems to be getting closer to that answer with every turn of the inquiry and every post. Then again, we may never know precisely. Cheney (or Libby, or some other of Dick’s minions, and I reckon EW would have some hypothesis to test here) may have actually met Valerie on one of those arm-twisting excursions to Langley is pursuit of dodgy â€evidence†to â€justify†their coming little illegal war of aggression in Iraq. Frankly, I think Dennis Kucinich was about to ask Valerie in the Waxman hearing if she had every met Mr. Cheney – and Waxman cut his time right then.

    Having said all that, I think we are closer to actual motive here:

    Pillow talk.

    Dick Cheney burned Valerie Plame Wilson because he feared that she and Joe Wilson were â€plotting and planning†against him.

    This fits in with the larger effort to discredit sources of â€intel†that Cheney couldn’t control. It fits with the mentality – and also with the marriage arrangements – Dick Cheney has set up for himself.

    Now, Cheney’s fear certainly cannot justify the action he took – it was, IMHO, at least bordering on treason. But was he pursuing a reasonable hypothesis in thinking that the Wilsons might be â€conspiring†against him? That, my friends is the kernal of plausibility in the wingnut defense of all the BushCo action surrounding this little caper. It hinges on the credibility and integrity of the Wilsons.

  20. knut wicksell says:

    Is it possible that Cheney might have some information going back to his days as SecDef? Wilson was in Baghdad giving Saddam the double-dare just before the invasion, and something about his wife may have slipped out in private conversation. Or is this too early for her service?

  21. radiofreewill says:

    There is no doubt – whatsoever – If Cheney knew Valerie was Covert, then outing her was an act of Treason.

    Like EW says, if it can be reasonably inferred from documents like the overseas cable and Valerie’s internal memoranda that she was Covert and that Cheney had access to them, then it would be hard not to conclude that he knowingly, slyly outed a National Security Assett for his own political purposes.

    When Major Andre clandestinely tucked the site plans for West Point into his boot, he implicated Benedict Arnold – the Commandant of West Point – as the source of the Treason.

    Sending Libby out with ’something’ tucked in his boot – if that something was Valerie’s Covert Status (name – position – and employment at the CIA) – is the same treachery with National Security Assetts as giving away the plans to West Point.

    Rashly de-classifying Valerie’s employment at the CIA would be extremely bad judgment, bordering on ’negligent treason’ all by itself – but outing her Covert status would be straight-up Treason.

  22. Katie Jensen says:

    One thing is certain regarding damage to the cia. WE don’t know. I get so upset with the (the supporters of treason) who concretely state â€that there was no damage done.†These identities would be protected even in death.

    That said, I seriously doubt that this information would ever be made available to the american public. Fact is there is no way for us to know whether or not the cia suffered casualties as a result of Plame’s outting. We may never know. So given that, the fact that her name was outted regardless of proof of damage, has to be considered an act of treason, with or without casualties (because such damage would never see the light of day!!).

    The act is treasonous because it COULD have endangered the lives of under cover assets in the middle east. PERIOD, that’s enough !!! The cia cannot be put in the position of having to prove that damage was done. If it were to have to prove it, it would mean the end to our intel and it’s structure. It doesn’t matter whether or not there was damage or whether or not it â€was a big dealâ€. It was a â€big deal†for structure and principle’s sake. We cannot have the cia having to defend themselves in a public way. EVER. If they are left undefended it hurts our country. IF they are defended it hurts our country. It has to be that these folks are protected with no loopholes. There is just no logic to their position what so ever. The stated position is so unpatriotic that it makes me sick.

    They just sound so damn pompous when they say it.

  23. semiot says:

    Katie Jensen:

    â€The stated position is so unpatriotic that it makes me sick.â€

    Same goes for the cowardly attack by Cheney and his minions on the Wilsons. It was launched against a person – Valerie – who was barred by law (the same laws that Cheney et al were breaking) from defending herself, and on a man – Joe – who could count only on his own experience and rhetorical skills to combat the combined propaganda arms of the Washington foreign policy establishment.

    And I still can’t accept that Richard Armitage didn’t know pretty much exactly what he was doing when he talked to Novak about Valerie – whether he was â€Colon Powell’s guy†or not, he is tantimount to a trator for discussing the identify of a CIA asset with a journalist of Novak’s ilk. He was simply too experienced in the ways of Washington to be so naive to have done this dastardly act unawares. â€Gossip†– my ass.

  24. earlofhuntingdon says:

    The CIA damage assessment on the outing of Brewster Jennings is mysterious. Some allege it was never compiled; if true, that would be grossly negligent on the part of the CIA. If compiled, it would likely be of great embarrassment to Cheney. In any event, it should remain confidential to avoid further damage, unless, of course, Bush decides he wants to instadeclassify portions of that, too.

    The odds seem good that outing an operation that investigated the illicit trade in weapons of mass destruction would lead to severe consequences. Those likely to engage in that lucrative trade are actual or aspiring heavyweight criminals; they do not wait for proof beyond a reasonable doubt, unlike govts that aspire to operate according to the rule of law. They are, by definition, criminals. If they survive, they use instinct, probability and ruthless execution as well as considered strategies.

    Anyone suspected of having blown their operation, such as someone connected with Brewster Jennings, risked being terminated with extreme prejudice. The odds that nothing happened other than a few job losses seem as likely as the US getting out of Iraq with its integrity or its treasury intact. Pretending otherwise is, well, pretending.

  25. Anonymous says:

    A formal â€Damage Assessment†may not have been filed or put in that form; but the background research for it would have had to be done at the time, you can’t wait for years to do that. So, the knowledge is possessed by the CIA. Cheney had his boy Porter Goss installed as head of CIA for some period of time. They know exactly what the damage was, and if the result was innocuous and there was no damage, can there be any question whatsoever but that they would either declassify it and present it, or at a minimum leak it? I think not.

  26. QuickSilver says:

    In other words, is it Cheney’s position, as of July 7th, to go full steam ahead on outing Plame, while still perhaps finding justification and plausible deniability for their most aggressive debunking of Wilson’s mission? I still look at â€or did the wife send him on a junket?†as a press talking point of Cheney’s own design, one that couldn’t be hatched fully without revealing knowledge of the cable, perhaps, which Cheney and Rove would have liked to paint as incriminating… Wasn’t â€junket†the story Libby was trying to sell to Judy? Am I simplifying?

  27. William Ockham says:

    The key fact is that Cheney knew the answers to those questions when he wrote them down. He’s writing down the questions he wants journalists to ask to launder the leak. It is no accident that Novak’s column answers those questions in exactly the way that Dick Cheney wanted.

  28. chris says:

    Wasn’t Wilson stirring things up before his op-ed? Didn’t he contact some news agencies and probably govt agencies questioning Bush’s 16 words? Likely, word got back to Cheney. I suspect he found out everything he could about Wilson before the op-ed or at the very latest immediately after the op-ed ran. So, how did he get all the info about Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. Was there some secret classified presidential order giving him peeking rights to everything going on in the CIA? Perhaps he could just call up Bolton and get it all faxed to Wyo.

    I think Cheney’s request for info on the yellowcake was part of Cheney’s attempt to get the forgeries stovepiped in the first place- or perhaps an attempt to get the â€new†British version stovepiped after the CIA debunked the forgeries. Somebody(s) at the CIA are aiding this process. Likely there was some push back on this which may be another reason he went after Plame. I have no confidence in any new intelligence reports because of the turnover in the CIA- I just do not know if they are Cheney loyalists or intellignece experts.