@@ Fallout from PlameGate runs deep @@
Arash
October 30, 2005
Fallout From PlameGate Runs Deep
By Wayne Madsen
Indictment aftermath and review. The GOP (Grand Old Party, Republicans) spin machine
is claiming that the indictment of Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff Irv Lewis "Scooter"
Libby (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Libby) is not a big deal because he was not
indicted on the underlying charge of exposing a covert CIA agent to the media.
To the contrary, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Fitzgerald) went to great lengths in the
obstruction of justice count to explain in as much detail as possible Libby's damage
to the national security of the United States.
Lewis Libby: There is more behind his motives than to politically retaliate against a
Bush critic. It is Libby's background and network of associates that remains a major
issue.
The prosecutor is also empanelling a new group of jurors in the grand jury process to
investigate the motives behind Libby's and others' leaking of highly-sensitive
classified information to the media. Karl Rove, Stephen Hadley
(http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/hadley/hadley.php), Dick Cheney, and others
remain under active investigation. When Fitzgerald said that the bulk of his
investigation is over, he is correct. He and his team of Justice Department
prosecutors and FBI special agents have investigated the leak and who was involved.
They know the damage caused to a network of covert CIA operative engaged in sensitive
counter proliferation tasks. All that remains is establishing the motives of the
perpetrators (or should that be perpe-traitors?) The motives are where criminal
conspiracy enters the fray. Fitzgerald supplemented his team with FBI agents from the
counter-intelligence section of the bureau. They are looking into possible foreign
entanglements of the perpetrators. This is a road that leads to cells of neo-con
operatives across the Potomac at the Pentagon and in Rome, London, and Jerusalem.
This is also where Fitzgerald's investigation dovetails with that of U.S. Attorney
for Eastern Virginia (and incoming Deputy Attorney General) Paul McNulty.
It is sad that President Bush uttered words of praise for Lewis Libby and his actions
before he fled Washington for Camp David yesterday. Bush said Libby "sacrificed
much", serving the administration in "extraordinary times in our nation's history".
What BullShit! Libby sacrificed our nation's national security on behalf of a shadowy
political agenda crafted in right-wing funded think tanks in Washington and the back
rooms of London, Rome, and Jerusalem.
Lewis Libby and his co-conspirators are traitors in every sense of the term. Libby
joins Aldrich Ames, John Walker, Robert Hanssen, Jonathan Pollard, and Benedict
Arnold in the halls of treason. For Bush to praise such an individual is yet more
proof that this swaggering dolt and failed human being is certainly no leader and is,
in fact, traitorous to the United States as much as his top aides who remain under
investigation.
Bush and Cheney aided and abetted treason inside the White House. They should not
only be impeached and tried by the Senate, but jailed for the rest of their lives as
an example to future American leaders who believe it is proper to place the security
of the nation in jeopardy for selfish political purposes. Bush should also be
forewarned: any attempt to pardon Lewis Libby and others convicted for treason will
mean the end of the Republican Party and the end of the Bush political dynasty.
There are several cross currents in the aftermath of the Libby indictment. One is
that the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's name and status to the media did not have a
drastic effect on the CIA's counter-proliferation work. This is being spun by the
stenographer-laden Washington Post and other apologists for the Bush administration.
WMR can report that the damage to the CIA, as well as allied intelligence services,
was "devastating" -- a term consistently conveyed by a number of CIA and intelligence
community insiders.
Not only did the White House leak put Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband,
Ambassador Joseph Wilson, in potential jeopardy but the entire Brewster Jennings &
Associates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster_Jennings_&_Associates) non-official
cover (NOC) operation was "rolled up".
The term "rolled up" has also been described to the editor by a number of current and
former CIA sources. Foreign, including "denied nation", security services, even went
to the lengths of checking out the hotels where Brewster Jennings employees stayed,
when they stayed there, and what parties associated with their own nuclear programs
stayed there at the same time. These individuals were identified and, in some cases,
tortured and executed. Foreign security services had an easier time of checking
attendee lists at various conferences to see whether their own officials and
businessmen were in attendance with Brewster Jennings employees.
In addition to Brewster Jennings, a Boston-based brass plate firm, a predecessor CIA
front company, Synergistic Technologies, Inc. -- its brass plate being based in
Pittsburgh -- was also compromised. In the early 1990s, there was a nexus between the
work of the two firms in their efforts to counter WMDs. That nexus was also
compromised by the White House leak.
Bush's hand-picked CIA Director, Porter Goss, has just about completed his purge of
the CIA's upper and mid-level management levels, replacing seasoned officers with
Bush lickspittles. One of these is reportedly Burt Bechtel, the new head of the CIA's
Counter Proliferation Division. Bechtel is spinning, along with Jennifer Millerwise
Dyke (the CIA's public affairs spokeswoman who worked with Scooter Libby in the Vice
President's office as press secretary and Porter Goss as spokesperson for the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) and Goss himself, the story that the
Valerie Plame/BJ&A leak had little effect on the CIA's counter proliferation program.
That will be news to the half dozen or so BJ&A non-official cover agents who were put
in physical harm by the leak. It will also be news to the hundreds of people BJ&A had
spotted and helped recruit into a complex global network of informants and agents who
closely worked with CIA case officers -- from North Korea to Pakistan, Iran to South
Africa, and Libya to Malaysia -- in identifying sources and destinations for nuclear
materials and components. After the revelation of the identities of the CIA
counter-WMD team, there were reverberations around the world -- in places with names
like Natanz, Bushehr, Dayr al Hajar, Yongbyon, King Abdulaziz City of Science and
Technology, Salaspils, Almaty, Chelyabinsk, Nilore, and Kahuta. Midnight knocks on
doors, computer disk erasing, paper shredding and burning, quick get aways, and
worse, were the order of the day. No big deal, according to the Bush apologists.
http://www.rense.com/general68/ldldh.htm