Bush, Powell and Condi...what did THEY know and when did they know it?

[mom cat]

Bush, Powell and Condi...what did THEY know and when did they know it?

Several articles posted on DU yesterday raised some very intriguing questions:

1. Powell and Bush. On July 7, 2003 (one day after Wilson’s July 6, 2003 op-ed publicly refuting Bush’s claim of African Uranium going to Iraq) Colin Powell is aboard Air Force One with George Bush.

State Dept. Memo Gets Scrutiny in Leak Inquiry on C.I.A. Officer
By RICHARD STEVENSON
This article was reported by Douglas Jehl, David Johnston and Richard W. Stevenson and was written by Mr. Stevenson.
WASHINGTON, July 15 - Prosecutors in the C.I.A. leak case have shown intense interest in a 2003 State Department memorandum that explained how a former diplomat came to be dispatched on an intelligence-gathering mission and the role of his wife, a C.I.A. officer, in the trip, people who have been officially briefed on the case said.
Investigators in the case have been trying to learn whether officials at the White House and elsewhere in the administration learned of the C.I.A. officer's identity from the memorandum. They are seeking to determine if any officials then passed the name along to journalists and if officials were truthful in testifying about whether they had read the memo, the people who have been briefed said, asking not to be named because the special prosecutor heading the investigation had requested that no one discuss the case.
The memorandum was sent to Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, just before or as he traveled with President Bush and other senior officials to Africa starting on July 7, 2003, when the White House was scrambling to defend itself from a blast of criticism a few days earlier from the former diplomat, Joseph C. Wilson IV, current and former government officials said.
Mr. Powell was seen walking around Air Force One during the trip with the memorandum in hand, said a person involved in the case who also requested anonymity because of the prosecutor's admonitions about talking about the investigation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/16/politics/16memo.html?pagewanted=print

From the statement above, we can deduce that one of the following is true:
1. Powell simply carried around the piece of paper in his hand, but did not discuss it with anyone on the plane, (yeah sure)
2. Powell talked about the memo with at least one person aboard Air Force One…with Bush aboard but did not talk to Bush about it. (low probability)
3. Powell did discuss the memo with Bush (this is the most likely of the three)

2. Rove’s July 11th 2003 e-mail to Stephen Hadley, president Bush's number two security adviser second only to Condoleezza Rice.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050715/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cia_leak_rove&printer=1;_ylt=AuBKUSDrCixYytDhzE9UgnAGw_IE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-
In that e-mail Rove assures Hadley that he endeavored to derail an investigation by Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper and assuring Rove that he did not “take the bait” about damage to the president.
My question is whether Stephen Hadley would have kept that information from Condoleezza Rice. The e-mail certainly extends the controversy to the office of the National Security Adviser... specifically to the number two person.

3. This for me raises the question as to whom Judith Miller is protecting. I doubt if she is going through all this bother to protect the likes of Karl Rove.

I would like to get your ideas about what might be going on here.

[Tamarin]

1. I'm following you, the only missing piece is what Judith Miller

knows.

[mom cat]

5. Just a hunch, or a gnawing question, something that just does not make

sense to me. I know that Miller expressed fear about talking. I just wonder who is behind that fear. The other sources on Rove are talking having been released from the promise of confidentiality. If Judith Miller were just protecting Rove, then she could cash in on the Get Out Of Jail Free Card like everybody else. If it is not Rove that she is protecting, then Rove's offer is pretty meaningless for her. So why won't she, or why can't she talk? It is clear that someone else is involved, perhaps many other people. This is so reminiscent of Watergate win a whole team of people piled on to protect Nixon. So who are the other suspects, Cheney, Stephen Hadley, at least boss Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and of course George Bush who was on the plane while the memo about Valery Plame was being discussed by Colin Powell.
My question about Judith Miller is really a question who else is involved, and I think that this is a lot bigger than Rove!

[Tamarin]

8. Oh, I agree.

Once the media catches up with the Bloggers, we should begin to hear more about Judith Miller and her role in this.

[joemurphy]

2. All your speculations are good ones. Hang on for a bumpy ride!

My guess is the fly in the ointment is Dick Cheney -- who has been incommunicado for around the last three weeks. Supposedly he checked into a Vail, Colorado cardiac clinic briefly, left, and hasn't been heard much from since. His absence, given the furor over Rove/Plame/Wilson, is notable. Normally he's out spewing talking points, lying his ass off, and generally serving as the Bush Administration's attack dog in instances such as these. He's either in bad health or, more likely, using rumors of bad health to duck press questions that he doesn't want to answer.

My guess is that Miller either doesn't want to lose her access to the Bush Administration or is scared shitless of outing Cheney and his cabal's role in the WMD intelligence hyping (in which she seems definitely complicit). Judy's source has waived her obligation to remain silent. So why's Judy in jail? I think Judy isn't talking because Judy wants to protect Judy.

[wli]

3. are you sure?

Who's to say Cheney hasn't absconded with his profits? Also, where's Rummy?

[joemurphy]

4. Good question on Rummy, Forgot about him.

The Cheney-Rummy connection is interesting. Both of them were involved in the in-house Pentagon OSP intelligence operation that produced most of the hyped or fabricated intelligence that got us into a war in Iraq. Do you think they've formed a suicide pact? Are they brain-dead? How will anyone be able to tell? Sounds like a job for Dr. Frist!

[mom cat]

10. The Cheney, Rummy, OSP connection brings up another wrinkle:

While Cheney, Rummy and crew were hyping phony Iraq W.M.D. stories, the CIA was working diligently to find out the real truth about weapons of mass destruction in a unit that included the Valerie Plame. The CIA was fighting the phony Iraq stories and trying to focus on the real terrorist threats. The CIA picked somebody that they knew would come down on the side of truth: Joe Wilson, that's why they sent him to Africa to shoot down the phony story that was gaining strength especially with Cheney.
So here is the wrinkle: how much had Valerie Plame been a thorn in the side of the administration. Certainly her outing can be seen as punishment to Joe Wilson's openness. Was it also an intentional attempt to shut down a unit in the CIA that was contradicting the story that the administration wanted to spread. If so, then Valerie Plame's outing is even more dastardly.

[mom cat]

6. Rummy, Cheney and Rice have all been very quiet lately.

[mom cat]

7. Cheney definitely has been quiet, as have Rice and Rummy. I think

that we might see the administration trying to let Rove be the scapegoat. Rove took a flight with Bush today on Air Force One and I'm wondering what they will be discussing. The most recent revelations certainly point beyond and above Rove... now to the head of the State Department and the office Of the National Security Adviser. This might be like Watergate where many of the principals of government are implicated. In addition to Bush, Cheney, Rove, Powell, Rice and Hadley, one has to wonder about the relative silence of Rumsfeld and also wonder what John Ashcroft might have known.
If the administration offers Roves' head on a platter, we should hold our applause until the final act.

[Emit]

9. We shouldn't forget that Miller at one time

had been a client of Benador Associates:
<<snip>>
Benador Associates is a public relations firm that was founded by Eleana Benador, the former director of Daniel Pipe's Middle East Forum, a hard-line think thank whose members have urged for wider U.S. intervention in the Middle East. Benador's list of experts reads like a who's who of heavy hitters in the neoconservative advocacy world. Clients include Frank Gaffney, Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, and James Woolsey.

Wrties journalist Jim Lobe of Benador's work: "When historians look back on the United States war in Iraq, they will almost certainly be struck by how a small group of mainly neo-conservative analysts and activists outside the administration were able to shape the US media debate in ways that made the drive to war so much easier than it might have been. . . . But historians would be negligent if they ignored the day-to-day work of one person who, as much as anyone outside the administration, made their media ubiquity possible. Meet Eleana Benador, the Peruvian-born publicist for Perle, Woolsey, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney and a dozen other prominent neo-conservatives whose hawkish opinions proved very hard to avoid for anyone who watched news talk shows or read the op-ed pages of major newspapers over the past 20 months." (2)

Also on Benador's client list is Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi nuclear scientist who fled to the United States in the early 1990s, where he wrote a book claiming that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear bomb. When pressed on the issue, he denied saying that Iraq had a bomb, despite the fact that he says exactly that in his book's opening pages. (3) Says Benador of Hamza (and Iraqi National Congress figure Kanan Makiya), " really my most powerful voices right now." (2)
<<snip>>

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/corp/benador.php

[mom cat]

11. Thanks for the info on Benador. I wonder how her art business is doing

today? I can't help but wonder if she knew in advance about the invasion of Iraq and somehow facilitated that information being transferred to the people who looted the national treasuries of art and antiquity. Just a thought.