It’s now clear: the effort to discredit a prominent critic came from the top…
President George Bush directed his vice-president, Dick Cheney, to take personal charge of a campaign to discredit a former ambassador who had accused the administration of twisting prewar intelligence on Iraq, it emerged yesterday.
The revelation by the National Journal, a respected weekly political magazine, that Mr Bush took a personal interest in countering damaging allegations by the former ambassador, Joe Wilson, reveals a White House that was extraordinarily sensitive to any criticism of its prewar planning. It also returns the focus of the criminal investigation into the outing of a CIA agent to the White House only weeks after the senior aide Karl Rove was told he would not face prosecution.
When you read this piece you need to think back months to the expressions of shock and outrage Bush made about the leaking of this info. Now all of those are inoperative: partisans, who previously pointed to them as evidence that the President was aloof from any of this (then considered) unseemly political back surgery, now basically ignore past statements…because this new info suggests that it was Bush himself who was behind the effort to “discredit” — in what years ago was what was called a “smear campaign.” (“Discredit” is to “smear campaign” what “pre-owned cars” is to “used cars”). MORE:
The Journal said Mr Bush made the admission in a July 24 2004 interview in the Oval Office with the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, who is leading the investigation into the outing of the CIA agent, Valerie Plame. Ms Plame is married to Mr Wilson, who says her cover was broken in retaliation after he accused the administration of knowingly using false information on Saddam Hussein’s weapons programme.
According to the National Journal, Mr Bush told prosecutors he directed Mr Cheney to disclose classified information both to defend his administration and to discredit Mr Wilson.
Elsewhere, the magazine quotes other government officials as saying that Mr Bush was very anxious to use classified information to counter Mr Wilson’s charges, telling the vice-president: “Let’s get this out.”
However, the president told investigators that he never directed anyone to disclose Ms Plame’s identity. He also said that he was unaware Mr Cheney had directed his chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, to covertly leak the information, rather than formally declassify it.
So this raises the questions:
–Did Mr. Cheney and Libby go too far without Bush’s knowledge?
–Or is this a case of “plausible deniability”?
Valid questions. A reminder about journalist Robert Novak’s comments about “ask the President” on this case. Those comments make more sense now…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.