Jason Barnes, NewsMax.com Wires
Saturday, Nov. 5, 2005

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WASHINGTON -- Former Senator Bob Graham says the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby has "pulled back the veil" from the Bush administration's "misuse" of intelligence information in the run-up to the Iraq war.

In a Friday morning conference call from the office of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the Florida Democrat told reporters it was "impossible to believe" that Libby acted as a "rogue agent" in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

As a result, he says, the American public deserves an explanation from Cheney.

The Vice President, Graham says, must tell the American people "what he knew about the broader issue about attempting, after the evidence of going to war with Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction had been manipulated, to go to the next step to try to destroy the reputation of good Americans who were aware that the information was false and manipulated.

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  "Ambassador Wilson and his wife were one of the objects (sic) of that plot to deceive and then destroy."

Graham says this has major implications for Cheney.

"It means that he has been a conspirator in one of the most reprehensible and damaging breaches in American security in modern history."

Graham failed to mention that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald explicitly stated in his press conference announcing Libby's indictment that there was no allegation of wrongdoing on the part of the Vice President.

He also failed to mention that Libby is not charged with outing a CIA agent, a charge that Fitzgerald did not deem credible enough for an indictment.

The entire controversy arose over the Bush administration's efforts to refute the claims of Joseph Wilson.

In an op-ed in the New York Times on July 6, 2003, Wilson alleged the Bush administration had twisted intelligence regarding Saddam Hussein's attempt to purchase yellowcake uranium from the government of Niger to drum up support for the war.

The Bush administration apparently worked feverishly to expose Wilson's claims as lies. Wilson alleged the administration "outed" his wife in an effort to get even, and eventually, Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald was called in to investigate.

Andrew McCarthy, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, finds fault with Graham's characterization of Joseph Wilson.

"Joe Wilson," McCarthy says, "is a serial liar when it comes to both the background of the entire Niger episode and his account of it, which includes a claim that he saw forged documents that he could not conceivably have seen because they were not even in the possession of the United States at the time he went on his mission.

"Nevertheless, he claimed to reporters afterwards that he had seen them, and they were obviously forgeries."

McCarthy's claims are supported by a bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee in July 2004 that concluded the evidence gathered by Wilson actually increased, rather than decreased, the likelihood that Saddam Hussein was actively seeking yellowcake uranium from Niger.

Moreover, McCarthy is supported by British intelligence, which has yet to back off its similar conclusion that Saddam was seeking yellowcake from Niger.

A June 28, 2004 story by the Financial Times claims the British were not alone. The Times detailed a strong consensus among European intelligence services that Niger was engaged in illicit negotiations regarding yellowcake uranium with North Korea, Libya, Iran, China and most importantly, Iraq.

"The abundant evidence," says McCarthy, "is that the Bush administration's claims about Niger were true. The curious thing is why they confessed error over something they hadn't made an error about in the first place."

Still, McCarthy says the charges against Libby, obstruction of justice and perjury, are serious. They just do not add up to the wide conspiracy theories suggested by Graham.

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