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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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June 4th,
2008 - Rep. Waxman Seeks Access to Bush, Cheney Interviews on CIA Leak |
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Rep. Waxman Seeks Access to
Bush, Cheney Interviews on CIA Leak The leading Democrat says the memoir by former Press Secretary Scott
McClellan raises new questions about the White House's role in divulging the
identity of then-CIA operative Valerie Plame. By Richard B. Schmitt Los Angeles Times June 4, 2008 Washington - House
investigators pressed their case Tuesday for access to interviews that a
special counsel conducted with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney
in the CIA leak case. Rep. Henry A. Waxman
(D-Beverly Hills) said in a letter to the Justice Department that the
transcripts were needed to address what he described as troubling new
questions about the role of the White House in divulging the identity of
then-CIA operative Valerie Plame in 2003. Waxman cited passages from
the recent memoir of former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. McClellan
wrote that he thought he had been deceived into telling reporters that
then-White House aides I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Karl Rove were
not involved in the episode. Aside from receiving assurances from the two
men, McClellan described a meeting in which Bush and Cheney decided to have
McClellan issue a special statement saying that Libby had no involvement. Libby was convicted of
perjury and obstruction of justice in the case. Rove was not charged, but he
told investigators that he had spoken with reporters about Plame. Plame's identity became
public as the administration was scrambling to rebut criticism from her
husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former U.S. envoy in Baghdad, about the
decision to invade Iraq. He had taken a CIA-backed trip to the African nation
of Niger that he said had disproved an administration claim that Iraq was
seeking material there to make nuclear weapons. That claim was one of the
grounds used to justify the invasion. McClellan wrote in his
memoir that he did not believe that Bush knew that Libby or Rove were
involved in the leaks. But he said that he could not be certain what Cheney
knew; at the time, Libby was the chief of staff to the vice president. Waxman, chairman of the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a letter to Atty.
Gen. Michael B. Mukasey on Tuesday that "it would be a major breach of
trust if the vice president personally directed Mr. McClellan to mislead the
public." Waxman first asked for
access to White House interviews with special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald
in December as part of an investigation into how the White House handled and
investigated the leak. The Justice Department made available some, but not
all, of the information, including redacted versions of interviews with Rove,
Libby and other senior officials. Waxman said those
transcripts revealed other information that needed to be pursued. One
question, he said, was whether Cheney directed Libby to circulate the fact
that Plame was employed by the CIA as part of a campaign to discredit Wilson
and insinuate that his trip to Africa was the product of nepotism. The White House referred
calls for comment to the Justice Department. "The Justice Department
will review Chairman Waxman's letter and respond as appropriate,"
spokesman Peter A. Carr said Tuesday. William Jeffress Jr., a
lawyer for Libby, whose 30-month prison sentence for the
perjury-and-obstruction conviction last year was commuted by Bush, criticized
the congressional request. McClellan, he said,
testified before the grand jury and was interviewed by Fitzgerald more than
once. "You can be certain
that if he had evidence that Scooter or Rove obstructed justice, Fitzgerald
would have called him as a witness at trial," Jeffress said. It is
"unbelievable that Rep. Waxman thinks there is something to be learned
or accomplished by continuing this farce." External link: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-cialeak4-2008jun04,0,7082707.story |