Treasongate: Anatomy of a scandal

In an article Wilson wrote for the Los Angeles Times last October 29 Wilson described the attacks on Valerie and himself as "upsetting, disruptive and vicious." Wilson elaborated, "They (the attacks) amounted to character assassination. Senior administration officials used the power of the White House to make our lives hell for the last 27 months." The neo-con cabal in the Bush administration ended Plame's nearly 20 years of stellar service to her country because husband Joe had the audacity to expose one of the big lies underlying the rational for going to war in Iraq, which Bush put forth in his 2003 State of Union address, namely that Iraq had attempted to purchase significant quantities of uranium from the African country of Niger.

The CIA sent Wilson to Niger to investigate and he found no substance to the claim. Wilson wrote a report that was buried, and true to its predictable pattern, the Bush administration ignored other reports since they contradicted its preconceived plan for regime change in Iraq. Wilson felt compelled to go public with his findings and wrote a New York Times opinion piece, forcing neo-con cabal front man George Bush to acknowledge publicly that the uranium claim was baseless.

But that would not be the end of the matter. The heretic would have to pay for speaking truth to power. In his Los Angeles Times article, Wilson explained what happened next: "Payback, not just to punish me but to intimidate the critics as well." Using their contacts and allies in the press and Congress, the neo-cons desperately tried to discredit Wilson's fact finding mission by claiming Valerie recommended her husband to undertake the Niger assignment.

Lackeys for the cabal tried to distort the issue by claiming that while Plame was on the CIA payroll, she was not actually undercover, so it was okay to reveal her name because she deserved no protection. As conservative journalist Michael Medved tried to explain it: "Let's be honest about this. Mrs. Plame, Mrs. Wilson, had a desk job in Langley (CIA headquarters). She was back and forth every single day."

Distorting the nature of Plame's job made other CIA agents, past and present, go ballistic. They wrote letters to Congress and testified before it. They appeared on TV to explain the effect that this political partisan attack on one of their own was having on CIA agency morale and on national security. In an "Open statement to the Leaders of the United States House of Representatives and the Senate," nine former CIA agents and one Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), wrote: "We stand in her (Plame's) stead, and ask that the Republicans and Democrats honour her service and stop the campaign of disparagement and innuendo aimed at discrediting Mrs. Wilson and her husband."

There has been more than disparagement and innuendo. Wilson has revealed that he and his wife have received death threats. Further, no one yet knows what has happened or will happen to the people who associated with Plame during her long spy career. But as Larry Johnson, a former CIA and State department official put it: "At the end of the day, the harm will be huge and some people potentially may have lost their lives." All of this is bad news for George Bush, Jr., whose floundering, incompetent administration has been hoping to put behind it the question of how it put led or misled our country into war. It also raises questions about the role Sneaky Dick Cheney has had in revealing Plame's identity. Who knows? Maybe if the trial of Treasongate, as this scandal is being dubbed, takes place, embarrassing details about how the White House makes policy could come out. Maybe we will even start hearing the familiar question we heard many times during Watergate: what did the President know and when did he know it?

Consider that in June 2004 Bush gave an unequivocal "yes" when asked if he would fire any aide that had leaked Plame's identity. In an article last October 19, however, the New York Daily News reported that Bush actually knew that Rove was involved in Treasongate two years ago. "He made his displeasure known to Karl," one presidential counselor told the Daily News. "He made his life miserable about this."

Bush must have breathed a deep sigh of relief when his puppeteer Karl Rove, was not indicted. Rove, however, is not out of the woods yet, for it can still happen. Meanwhile, some Democrats in Congress are calling for Bush to fire Rove, but that would be like asking George, Jr., to cut off his right arm.

The press has played a seminal role in this scandal and will continue to

play a big role at the trial. The names of three reportersJudith Miller

(New York Times), Mathew Cooper (Time), and Tim Russert (NBC) -- appear in the indictment and they all said they spoke with

Libby about Plame. Libby claims to have learned of Plame's identity from Russert, but the TV journalist has said that the two did not discuss the CIA agent. Both Miller and Cooper have said that Libby discussed Plame with them.

Miller has been linked prominently to Libby in the media, but this will not be a trial of simply "he said, she said." It will be "Libby said, they said." Libby will undoubtedly fall on is sword for his former bosses, so it will be interesting to see if the judicial system buys Libby's expected defense, which will be "I was too busy to remember."

(In the next column, the author will examine the role of the media in Treasongate.)

Ron Chepesiuk is a Visiting Professor of Journalism at Chittagong University and a Research Associate at the National Defense College.