WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff was so angry about the public statements of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a Bush administration critic married to an undercover CIA officer, that he monitored all of Wilson's television appearances and urged the White House to mount an aggressive public campaign against him, former aides say.
Those efforts by the chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, began shortly after Wilson went public with his criticisms in 2003. But they continued into last year — well after the Justice Department began an investigation in September 2003, into whether administration officials had illegally disclosed the CIA operative's identity, say former White House aides.
While other administration officials were maintaining a careful distance from Wilson in 2004, Libby ordered up a compendium of information that could be used to rebut Wilson's claims that the administration had "twisted" intelligence to exaggerate the threat from Iraq before the U.S. invasion.
So now the details of the scandal are starting to show up. Scooter Libby had a vendetta against Joe Wilson for his criticisms against the Bush administration. And he was gathering up a lot of information on Wilson to use against him. Continuing on:
Libby pressed the administration to publicly counter Wilson, sparking a debate with other White House officials who thought the tactic would call more attention to the former diplomat and his criticisms. That debate ended after an April 2004 meeting in the office of White House Communications Director Daniel Bartlett, when staffers were told "don't engage" Wilson, according to notes taken during the meeting by one person present.
"Scooter had a plan to counter Wilson and a passionate desire to do so," said a second person, a former White House official familiar with the internal deliberations. Like other former White House staff, this person spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing criminal investigation.
So what was Scooter's plan? The Times does have some details:
Libby's anger over Wilson's 2003 charges has been known. But new interviews and documents obtained by The Times provide a more detailed view of the depth and duration of Libby's interest in Wilson. They also show that the vice president's office closely monitored news coverage.
On one occasion, the office prohibited a reporter from traveling with Cheney aboard Air Force Two, because the vice president's daughter said Cheney was unhappy with that newspaper's coverage.
Libby "would see something had appeared in the newspaper or on television and wanted to use the White House operation to counter it," one former official said.
After Wilson published a book criticizing the administration in April 2004, during the closely fought presidential campaign, Libby became consumed by passages that he believed were inaccurate or unfair to Cheney, former aides said. He ordered up a meticulous catalog of Wilson's claims and public statements going back to early 2003.
The result was a packet that included excerpts from press clips and television transcripts of Wilson's statements that were divided into categories, such as "political ties" or "WMD."
The compendium used boldfaced type to call attention to certain comments by Wilson, such as one in the Daily Iowan, the University of Iowa student newspaper, in which Wilson was quoted as calling Cheney "a lying son of a bitch." It also highlighted Wilson's answers to questions from television journalists about his work with Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee.
The intensity with which Libby reacted to Wilson had many senior White House staffers puzzled, and few agreed with his counterattack plan or its rationale, former aides said.
The more the details come out of this scandal, the more it reminds me of Watergate and the Nixon administration. Scooter Libby creating a single file of Joe Wilson containing press clips and video tapes--including a press clipping from a college newspaper. Nixon had his 'Enemies List' which included information and literature to unfairly attach candidates. There's the ongoing link of Libby and Rove planting Valerie Plame's name to the press. You can bet that Nixon's men planted their own stories in the press to destroy their opponents. It is incredible.
This is what happens when you place ideologues into positions of great power, where they are responsible to no-one. They feel it is their right to use that power--through any means necessary--to destroy the opponents who criticize their policies.
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