The Scandal isn't the Leak, But the Illegal War

"Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!"

--Walter Scott

The conspiracy that bubbles around Judith Miller protecting a source -- whose name she couldn't remember -- and Robert Novak using his column to out undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame should soon evaporate. The next step should lead Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald to the heart of the matter: a much more pernicious conspiracy designed to mislead the United States into war with Iraq. The crime to name a covert CIA official pales in comparison with conspiring to lead the nation to war under false pretenses.

Novak served as White House mastermind Karl Rove's press poodle. He punished former Ambassador Joseph Wilson by revealing his wife's name and ending her career on Juuly 14, 2003, eight days after Plame's husband revealed in a NY Times op-ed (July 6, 2003) the fraudulence of Bush Administration claims that Iraq had tried to purchase African uranium for its nuclear weapons program.

Instead of following the logic of Wilson's story, that the White House had conspired to lead the country into an unjust war, the media focused on the leak of a CIA' official's name. Reporters should have seen the Wilson story as one piece of a larger puzzle. They should have read Wilson's Times op ed and other stories as an opening to look for who had motive to forge a document and plant it, so that the media would get properly "spun" and accept this forged paper as proof of Saddam's perfidy.

Now, it begins to emerge that the White House undertook a major effort to mislead and manipulate the media and U.S. public opinion in general in order to get support for an unjust war.

In February 2002, the CIA had dispatched Wilson to investigate the claim based on this document that Iraq intended to buy nuclear material. When he returned from Niger, he reported that the evidence lacked credibility, but both Bush and Cheney refused to acknowledge his refutation. So he went public in the NY Times.

The unraveling of the Valerie Plame affair is but a step toward exposing this truly epic scam. Beyond compromising the identity of a CIA officer, the Bush administration had carried out what former intelligence official Larry Johnson called "a classic 'covert action' program against the citizens of the United States."

Part of this involved planting stories to "shape public opinion." Apparently, one member of the Coalition of the Willing, Italy under the right wing Berlusconi, agreed to fabricate reports dated in 2001 and 2002 that Iraq had reached an agreement with Niger to buy 500 tons of yellowcake uranium. When news of these reports supposedly reached Cheney's office, the Vice President requested that the Agency check the story. Thus, the CIA dispatched Wilson to verify the report in Africa.

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