Wayne Madsen Report

October 29, 2005 -- Indictment aftermath and review. The GOP spin machine is claiming that the indictment of Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff 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 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.

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, 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 US Attorney for Eastern Virginia (and incoming Deputy Attorney General) Paul McNulty.

It is sad that President Bush uttered words of praise for 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 B.S.! 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. 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 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 Mrs. Wilson and her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, in potential jeopardy but the entire Brewster Jennings & Associates non-official cover 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.