Remember "Chinagate"? Scooter's treadmarks are on that, too

[JHB]

Robert Parry at ConsortiumNews.com dicusses Scooter Libby's role in the blaming of Democrats for Republican intelligence leaks:


Libby & Nuclear Secrets to China
By Robert Parry
November 4, 2005

Indicted ex-White House aide Lewis Libby played a key role in an earlier case of slanting U.S. intelligence for political gain – four years before the Iraq War when he was legal adviser to a House investigation into how communist China got U.S. nuclear secrets. In 1999, Libby, a China expert, served on a special Republican-controlled House committee that laid the blame for the compromise of U.S. secrets almost exclusively on Democrats, despite evidence that the worst rupture of nuclear secrets actually occurred during the Reagan-Bush administration in the mid-1980s. The committee’s findings served as an important backdrop for Election 2000 when George W. Bush’s backers juxtaposed images of Democrat Al Gore attending a political event at a Buddhist temple with references to the so-called “Chinagate” scandal.
.....

The American public was led to believe that $30,000 in illegal “soft-money” donations from Chinese operatives to Democrats in 1996 were somehow linked to China’s access to U.S. nuclear secrets. Millions of Americans may have been influenced to vote against Gore and for Bush because they wanted to rid the U.S. government of people who had failed to protect national security secrets. But the reality was that the principal exposure of U.S. nuclear secrets to China appears to have occurred when Beijing obtained U.S. blueprints for the W-88 miniaturized hydrogen bomb, a Chinese intelligence coup in the mid-1980s on the watch of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. The intelligence loss came at a time when the Reagan-Bush administration was secretly collaborating with communist China on arms shipments to the Nicaraguan contra rebels, an operation so sensitive that Congress and the American people were kept in the dark, even as White House aide Oliver North colluded with Chinese agents. The House report – with Libby as a top adviser – obscured this central fact by setting up a timeline that placed nearly all entries about compromised intelligence in the years of Jimmy Carter’s or Bill Clinton’s presidencies. Only a close reading of the report’s text would clue someone in on the actual timing of the W-88 leak to China.

Libby’s role in this earlier manipulation of intelligence information for political gain is relevant after his Oct. 28 indictment for perjury, lying to FBI investigators and obstruction of justice.
.....

North described the same meeting in his autobiography, Under Fire. To avoid coming under suspicion of being a Chinese spy, North said he first told the FBI that the meeting had been sanctioned by national security adviser Robert C. McFarlane. “Back in Washington, I met with a Chinese military officer assigned to their embassy to encourage their cooperation,” North wrote. “We enjoyed a fine lunch at the exclusive Cosmos Club in downtown Washington.” North said the Chinese communists saw the collaboration as a way to develop “better relations with the United States.” Knowing about the illicit shipments to the contras also put Beijing in position to leverage U.S. policy in the future. It was in this climate of cooperation that other secrets, including how to make miniaturized hydrogen bombs, allegedly reached communist China. Though the evidence of North’s secret contacts with Chinese intelligence had been public knowledge since the late 1980s, the “Chinagate” report in 1999 made no reference to this secret collaboration between Reagan’s White House and China.


Full article at:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2005/110305.html

[leveymg]

1. Bob Parry has an amazing institutional memory of BushCo's criminal record.

And, he's already been fired from TIME Magazine for writing about it. So he's not shy to share the details.

If I had some money, I'd set him up with a column and as a Senior Editor in a mass distribution outlet. Paging Mr. Soros.

[JHB]

4. It was Newsweek actually...

...but that's just a nit.

And you don't need to be Soros to contribute to Consortium News.

[deminks]

2. Thank you for posting. A must read.

A great review of the Cox report and Chinagate as well.

[donkeyotay]

3. But, I thought Republicans were keeping us safe?

The intelligence loss came at a time when the Reagan-Bush administration was secretly collaborating with communist China on arms shipments to the Nicaraguan contra rebels, an operation so sensitive that Congress and the American people were kept in the dark, even as White House aide Oliver North colluded with Chinese agents.

Yes, someone should give Mr. Parry a bigger microphone.