Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Cheney's Dirty Little Secret

In the top right corner of The New York Times front-page -- where the biggest news happens daily -- a news scoop has placed Vice President Cheney atop the CIA leak scandal pyramid.

The revelation was discovered in Lewis (Scooter) Libby's own notepad, according to sources identified by the Times only as "lawyers involved in the case." The new evidence sheds bright light on the vice president's role, at last. And it sheds dark light on the past statements of the loyal vice presidential chief-of-staff. Libby had maintained, publicly and under oath that he just couldn't remember who told him the key info that became the centerpiece of his effort to discredit former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had emerged as Bush-Cheney Iraq policy critic. Libby's notes show it was his boss who told him it was Wilson's wife, a CIA officer, who suggested her husband for the controversial mission to Niger.

Cheney's outing comes some two years after President Bush, Cheney and their spokespeople promised they would urge everyone connected with the incident to be candid and forthcoming with the public and the prosecutor. Straight truth has been hard to come by for the prosecutor and for the press _ the latter sadly often knew more than it reported publicly. No evidence has surfaced that Cheney knew Valerie Plame was a secret agent, so his actions so far seem political but not illegal. But Cheney apparently touched off the chain of events that began as a political-getting-even-as-usual but wound up as a special prosecutor's probe that has shaken the Bush-Cheney White House to its foundation.