:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 5.14.2006 ::

:: "CIA leak case court filing focuses on Cheney" ::

From The Washington Post
By Kevin Drawbaugh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. prosecutor in the CIA leak case has told a court he plans to use as evidence a newspaper article with notes that he says were hand-written by Vice President Dick Cheney referring to Valerie Plame shortly before she was exposed as a CIA operative.

The notes show Cheney and his former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were "acutely focused" on the July 6, 2003, article written by Plame's husband, Bush administration critic and former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, said Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in the pre-trial filing made on Friday.

The article asked whether the administration manipulated intelligence in the run-up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In the article, Fitzgerald wrote he went to Niger in 2002 at the CIA's request to check out reports that the African nation had sold uranium yellowcake to Iraq in the late 1990s. The processed ore can be used to make a nuclear weapon.

Wilson said he concluded on his tip that it was unlikely such a transaction ever took place. Later, the alleged African uranium connection was cited by the war's backers as evidence that Iraq had developed or had tried to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Shortly after Wilson's article appeared, the identity of Plame, his wife, as a covert CIA operative was leaked to journalists. Fitzgerald is probing who blew Plame's cover.

The copy of the article where Fitzgerald said Cheney made his notes ask if it is ordinary for former ambassadors to travel for the government to check out reports. "Or did his wife send him on a junket?" asks one notation.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:28:00 AM [+] ::
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