Fitzgerald Speaks
In the immediate aftermath of the narrow Senate vote, confirming Federalist Society darling Samuel Alito as Supreme Court Justice, replacing Sandra Day O'Connor, Special Council Patrick Fitzgerald released a series of court documents in the Libby case, which rekindled Cheneygate.
First, Fitzgerald released a letter to Libby's attorneys, informing them that he possessed evidence that e-mails relevant to the Plame case had been destroyed in the Office of the Vice President (EIR, Feb. 17, 2006). Other court submissions, previously kept from the public, were then released, via an Appellate Court ruling, indicating that, in his grand jury testimony, Libby had, in effect, said that he had been ordered by "higher-ups" to leak Iraq War-related classified information, including select portions of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, to reporters. Libby's now-released grand jury statements, in short, sank Dick Cheney.
The new Fitzgerald revelations sent Cheney into a predictable flight forward. During the same Feb. 15, 2006 Fox TV interview with the neo-con-friendly Brit Hume, in which he defended his stall-and-appeal behavior following the Whittington shooting, Cheney claimed that an Executive Order signed by President Bush had empowered him, as Vice President, to declassify national security secrets. In response to Libby's "the Devil made me do it" defense, Cheney replied with an assertion of Vice Presidential powers bordering on the divine rights of kings.
Well-placed Washington sources say that Cheney, now more than ever, is on the top of Fitzgerald's hit parade—along with John Bolton, Frederick Fleitz, and Stephen Hadley. Fitzgerald's grand jury mandate extends well into 2007, and the Libby trial is scheduled to begin next January. Fitzgerald is expected to interrogate the Vice President sometime before the start of that trial.
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http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2006/3308cheney_being_self.html