Bush's Plame-gate Cover-up
By Robert Parry
November 21, 2007
In early fall 2003, George W. Bush joined in what appears to have been a criminal cover-up to conceal the role of his White House in exposing the classified identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson.
That is the logical conclusion one would draw from a new statement by then-White House press secretary Scott McClellan when it is put into a mosaic with previously known evidence.
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This White House cover-up might have worked, except in late 2003, Ashcroft recused himself because of a conflict of interest, and Deputy Attorney General James Comey picked Patrick Fitzgerald – the U.S. Attorney in Chicago – to serve as special prosecutor.
Fitzgerald pursued the investigation far more aggressively. Over the next three-plus years, the Plame-gate affair would become a slow-growing infection eating away at White House credibility, despite the best efforts of the President’s political and media allies to confuse the issue or to shift the blame onto Wilson.
In October 2005, Fitzgerald indicted Libby on five counts of lying to federal investigators and obstructing an investigation. Libby was convicted on four of five counts in March 2007 and sentenced to 30 months in jail, but Bush commuted Libby’s sentence to spare him any jail time. That also eliminated any incentive for Libby to turn state’s evidence against Bush and Cheney.
Now, however, McClellan has become the first White House insider to acknowledge the original lies that senior administration told about the Plame-gate affair – and to put the President in the middle of the cover-up.
The next question might reasonably be: what are the Democrats in Congress going to do about it?
more at:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/112007a.html