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such a concentration of panicky activity among the Bushites in late May-July 2003, and then particularly in the July 6-22 period, that it points to there being a specific trigger for the outings, and I don't mean Wilson's article (published July 6), which I think was long expected. The panic also points to plans gone awry--scrambling to cover something up--and not having a lot of time to do it carefully, without leaving so many fingerprints.
Back up a minute, and ask yourself: Why were the Niger/Iraq nuke forgeries such poor, easily detectable forgeries? Names wrong, dates wrong. If they were using existing forgeries (which seems to be the case), it would have been easy enough for experts to clean them up, and at least get the names and dates right. It took less than 24 hours for the CIA and others to completely debunk them. But what if they were MEANT TO BE easily detectable?
This is part 1 of the WMD-planting theory of Traitorgate: That the "crude" Niger forgeries were an enticement to the CIA--easily debunked forgeries--to lure them into a known no-nukes-in-Iraq position. Part 2 was to see that the Niger/Iraq nuke allegation got into Bush's SOTU speech, despite the objections of several agencies that the allegation was bogus, and to keep pumping that allegation, with all the "mushroom cloud" language, over and over, despite the complete lack of evidence. Part 2 was to procure the nukes and plant them in Iraq, after the invasion, to be "found" by the US troops who were "hunting" for them (notably accompanied by NYT WMD propagandist Judith Miller, who, according to her, had an embed contract signed Donald Rumsfeld to be there for the WMD "hunt"). The "big scoop" of a "find" of WMDs in Iraq would discredit the CIA forever, and, of course, cement Bush's and Blair's political positions with a justification of the war.
But something went wrong. Somebody foiled the illicit movement of the nukes into Iraq.
There was an earlier public whistleblower on the exaggerated pre-war WMD intelligence, than Joe Wilson--or, rather, they were almost simultaneous. And that was David Kelly in England, who began whistleblowing anonymously to the BBC on May 22. Wilson's dissent was mostly internal until his NYT publication (July 6). But it had been leaking out, and Libby and Miller were meeting about it--and about Plame--as early as mid-June (after Libby's meeting with Cheney). What else were they meeting about? Miller has kept that a dark secret--in fact, she remained in jail until Fitzgerald agreed not to question her about the "other" parts of that conversation.
I suspect that the other parts of that conversation were about David Kelly. Miller was an old colleague of David Kelly's. She had used him as a major quoted source in her book "Germs" (about germ warfare). Kelly was the Brits chief WMD expert, a top notch scientist, on loan to various British intelligence departments, and as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq. Kelly had supported the invasion; he wanted Saddam ousted. But something turned him around about it, several months after the invasion, when he began telling BBC reporters about the "sexed up" prewar intel (May 22). When these reports hit the BBC, they began hunting him down within the government, and he was mysteriously outed to his bosses in the last week of June (shortly after the Miller-Libby meeting). He was interrogated at a "safe house," and threatened with the Official Secrets Act in the first week of July, and, on July 7--one day after Wilson's publication--Tony Blair was informed that David Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things" (Hutton Report). Not HAD said. COULD say.
What were the "uncomfortable things" that Kelly "could say"? He told his interrogators that he "wasn't going to reveal any government secrets." (That the prewar intel was exaggerated was pretty well known by then.) So, he did know something MORE--what was probably the most important content of his interrogation (not in the Hutton report, of course).
IF what he knew--what he had found out, perhaps from his friends in Iraq--was that the US had tried to plant nukes in Iraq--a level of deceit that Kelly would have balked at (in my read on his character)--and that the scheme had been foiled--and Tony Blair found out what Kelly knew on July 7, and called Bush, then the subsequent events, in the next 2 weeks, begin to make a lot more sense.
Cheney and Rumsfeld were boiling with anger at having been foiled! And they probably suspected Plame (I have little doubt that they knew who Plame was all along), because of the Wilson article, and they would also be panicked that Plame or Wilson or SOMEONE was about to blow open the WMD-planting story. What they knew of the Brewster-Jennings WMD counter-proliferation network of deep cover agents/contacts in various countries, including in the Middle East, at this point, is hard to say. But the Bush propaganda machine goes into a full court press to get Plame outed as quickly as possible. They call six reporters in one week, looking for someone to out her, and trying to lay down a quick disinformation campaign that "everybody knew" her identity. Libby furthermore concocts a cover story that Rove did it, as political revenge. And a deeper layer of cover story is that Cheney did it for political revenge (complete with a copy of Wilson's article, marked up in Cheney's hand, pointing to political motives). (Fitzgerald penetrated the first layer, and is now at the second: Cheney.) And here's what happened next:
July 14, 2003: Plame outed (by Novak).
July 18, 2003: Kelly found dead, under highly suspicious circumstances; his office and computers are searched.
July 22, 2003: Novak ADDITIONALLY outs the entire Brewster-Jennings network, by printing the name of the front company in his column--thus disabling every covert agent/contact in the network, and putting their lives in grave danger.
The outings were a shotgun approach (appropriate to Dick Cheney) to silence everyone who could possibly know their dirty plans, to disable and endanger them, and to punish whoever foiled them. If they couldn't "get" the CIA the other way (discredit them with planted nukes), they would do it THIS way, by blowing their cover. And they had motive to do it brutally, not caring who they hurt, who got killed, what anybody knew or what their motives were, or about their ethical obligations, the law, protocol, loyalty, decency. They wanted to be rid of all of these people anyway, who believed that their job was to prevent war, not manufacture it
Rumsfeld was in charge of the operational end of this evil scheme--concocting the Niger forgeries, procuring/planting the nukes, creating the chaos and looting in Baghdad (sufficient confusion as cover for the operation), getting the NYT war propagandist positioned for the "find," circumventing the CIA and its snoops . Cheney was in charge of the political end--pushing the "mushroom cloud" language, getting the allegation frequently repeated (against all reason), making sure Bush said it (official), getting the CIA to investigate it (they sent Wilson)--and he has been dealing with the political and legal fallout of the failure of Rumsfeld's scheme ever since, starting with those panicked weeks of July 7-22, when they thought it was all about to come out. (Is this the real reason for Rumsfeld's departure?)
This is a THEORY, I want to stress. But it is a good one, as to details, and it helps explain many puzzles, including the Bushite's behavior. Why would they be so freaked about a mere op-ed, in a newsstream that they largely controlled in 2003? Ignore it, and it slips into the corporate river of forgetfulness. Or even if it caused a fuss. So what? They had a hundred "talking points" plantable in a hundred news outlets--and reporters and blatherers who would endlessly repeat the government line, until people were numb with boredom, and all meaning was beaten down. But they DID freak. Why? And why involve so many top Bushites in highly risky, treasonous behavior, over a newspaper article? Why was it the buzz of AF-1, with hot memos circulating? Why the flurry of clandestine meetings? And why on earth out an entire WMD counter-proliferation network at time of maximum national security need for WMD intel? How was THAT punishing Joe Wilson? Why were the Niger forgeries so "crude"? Why did Dick Cheney speak with such certainty that they were going to find WMDs? It would have been smart to fudge it a little, given what he knew of the cooked intel? He never blinked. They were THERE. On David Kelly's end, what could he have known that could have gotten him killed? Why were they so afraid of him--hunting him down, interrogating him at a "safe house," outing him to the press, then sending him home without protection and apparently without surveillance? The official story of his death is as absurd as the "magic bullet" theory of JFK's death. It screams coverup. Surely he was under surveillance. Where was his surveillance as he bled to death from one minor slit wrist, all night, outdoors in the rain near his home? Would a man like Kelly kill himself that way--a top scientist, a biochemist?
The coincidence of dates of the Plame and Kelly affairs is just too compelling to ignore. They killed him the same week that they outed her and her network, and for the same reason-- is a very reasonable surmise from these facts. It is a good working hypothesis. The A.Q. Nuclear Walmart (and who knows what else!)--and also, the big prize, Iran, and their intention to cook up more allegations and more evidence--are the reasons they INITIATED this plot, way back in 2001, or before, to discredit and purge the honest professionals in our government intelligence agencies. But the immediate circumstance of the outings appears to have been panic and fear of discovery of something quite specific and concrete--not just their lies. And I think this is the best candidate for it: they were trying to plant the weapons.
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