An Interview With Scott McClellan

Source Page w/ transcript

McClellan agrees to testify before House Judiciary Committee regarding the Plame leak.

Bush & Cheney Were Behind The CIA Leak

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClennon drops a bombshell in his forthcoming book- He admits that Bush and Cheney were in fact involved in the leaking of Classified information for political purposes. In the process, they not only ruined the career of a CIA officer, but they put her safety at risk, as well as the safety of her foreign contacts. They also damaged national security, since the ability of the CIA to continue using the sources that Mrs. Plame developed had been destroyed by her outing.

Both Scooter Libby & the White House have already admitted that there was involvement at higher levels of government. But Bush & Co. would never respond to detailed questioning. McClennon's statement provides further confirmation and the first good look at what was happening from the perspective of someone who was on the inside. He admits that they used him to spin the Plame story in order to take the heat off. He now says that his claims of no White House involvement were all lies.

Congress should have pursued this matter much more aggressively. Instead, it has been swept under the rug....like so many other crimes by Bush & Co.

These are in fact impeachable offenses, even though a President can declassify just about whatever he wants. However, political leaders cannot use sensitive information in such a malicious, threatening, bullying and irresponsible way, for political purposes.

I am disappointed with Patrick Fitzgerald for not being more aggressive. I guess he just didn't have the courage. But this highlights another problem. The fact that Federal Prosecutors are political appointees, is one of the fundamental problems with Washington D.C. The same goes for the Attorney General being chosen by politicians. The Federal justice system is not independent, and can never be independent, until this is changed (which will never happen). Because of this fundamental flaw in the U.S. system, Washington D.C. has been allowed to become a cesspool, full of corruption.

I have mentioned before that the Attorney General should be an elected position, protected from the influence of the White House, or Congress. Anyone running for the position must be independent.... not affiliated with any political party. In fact, political affiliation of a candidate should be disqualifying. Attorney Generals should be elected every 4-6 years in a national election (just like the election for President). U.S. Attorneys should be appointed by the elected Attorney General.

The Attorney General and Justice Department should be overseen by a special panel of Federal Judges, by the Supreme Court, and by the U.S. Congress. It should be an independent organization, rather than the inherently political one that it is today.

This political conflict of interest likely made Fitzgerald back down, although he knew he had a huge conspiracy case against the White House (in fact he hinted at that several times). In the end, he knew that he could only take it so far due to political considerations.

This should also help to vindicate Valerie Plame, who was branded a liar, traitor, unpatriotic and all sorts of other nonsense by the Right Wing Republican commentators.

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Valerie Plame Comes Out Swinging in New Memoir

Review by Chuck Leddy
Boston Globe, Oct. 22, 2007

When former undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson's identity was revealed by columnist Robert Novak in The Washington Post, she found herself at the center of a political and media maelstrom. Novak's July 14, 2003, column appeared a week after Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, had attacked President Bush for faulty intelligence claims prior to the Iraq invasion.

Wilson's New York Times op-ed piece contradicted Bush's contention that Saddam Hussein had tried to procure yellowcake uranium (used for developing nuclear weapons) from Niger. Wilson himself had gone to Niger the year before to investigate these claims and had found them baseless. Instead of answering Wilson directly, the White House went into attack mode.

Plame gets her book title from Karl Rove's assertion that Joseph Wilson's wife was "fair game." Plame meticulously describes the "smear campaign" orchestrated from the vice president's office intended to discredit her husband. Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, revealed Plame's identity to Novak and other media members, leading to Libby's indictment and a 30-month prison sentence. No charges were brought against Cheney or Rove, and on July 2 of this year President Bush used his executive power to commute Scooter Libby's 30-month prison sentence.

Plame, who worked on nuclear nonproliferation while at the CIA, remains disillusioned with both the White House and the media: "I believed in our democratic institutions," writes Plame, "I believed that the truth would prevail, but I would soon find out that in Washington, the truth is not always enough." Ironically, Plame's book seems to support the Bush administration's basic claim that Saddam's Iraq was a real threat. She describes pre-war Iraq as "dangerous and erratic," although she contends the White House oversold dubious intelligence to the public.

Plame admits to being shocked when she heard President Bush make the Niger yellowcake claim in his 2003 State of the Union address, and while watching Secretary of State Colin Powell's televised presentation to the UN regarding Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD): "I had been tracking Iraqi WMD efforts carefully for some time and the facts I knew simply did not match up with what Powell had just presented." Plame explains in great detail exactly why these pre-war intelligence claims were unreliable, despite being trumpeted by the White House as some sort of "slam dunk" case for war. Plame had a front-row seat on both the politicization of pre-war intelligence and White House efforts to stem post-invasion criticism.

Plame describes pervasive efforts to shut her and her husband up. Plame labels it "classic Karl Rove": "Their tactics would have made Joseph McCarthy proud: fearmongering, defamation of character, shameless disregard for the truth, and distortions of reality." Indeed, Plame's book was reviewed by the CIA prior to its publication, and she hasn't been allowed to disclose some of the relevant facts, which the CIA deems classified. Plame wonders whether her book, like her formerly covert CIA status, has been compromised because of political imperatives coming from the White House. Readers may be left thinking, "it wouldn't exactly be the first time."

Exhausted from court battles and a seemingly-endless smear campaign, Plame packed up her belongings and left Washington earlier this year, moving with her husband and two kids to Santa Fe "We had told the truth and tried to live honorably," Plame writes in her tale's final paragraph. The fact that her story ends in a symbolic retreat says something worrisome about our nation. Valerie Plame Wilson can be viewed as a canary in the proverbial coal mine, and her book reads like a grim testament to the noxious atmosphere of our current politics.

Related Links

Audio Report From NPR

MSNBC Report... including the CIA's effort to redact much of the book.

Coverage from Bradblog, including video from a recent 60 Minutes Interview.

Cheney Implicated in Plame Leak

New Documentary - Cheney's Law