Cheney Chief-of-Staff Named as Spy-gate Leaker
by Justin Raimondo
October 2, 2003

MSNBC'S Buchanan & Press scored a major scoop on Wednesday, all but unmasking the high government official who "outed" a CIA operative via a July 14 column by Robert Novak. Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst who worked with Valerie Plame, the reported agent, all but identified "Scooter" Libby as the government official who outed her – and at least one other in the Vice President's office.

Who is "Scooter" Libby?

He's the nexus of the neocon network in Washington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and assistant to the President, whose office is the operational nerve center of the War Party. It is Libby and Cheney who made repeated trips to the CIA, pressuring them to accept tall tales of Al Qaeda connections and assorted "weapons of mass destruction" supposedly lurking in Baghdad – including the Niger-uranium yellowcake "evidence" that Iraq had acquired fissionable material for a nuclear weapon.

The documents purportly proving the Niger-Iraq uranium connection turned out to be a crude forgery.

Pressed by Pat Buchanan to name the leaker, Johnson refused to deny it was Libby; he furthermore stated that the perpetrator was no stranger to "scandal."

As Marc Rich's longtime lawyer, and a key figure in procuring the fugitive billionaire a presidential pardon, Lewis ""Scooter" Libby surely fits the bill.

Johnson also rebutted widespread stories that Plame wasn't an undercover intelligence officer. Clifford May, of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, has said her status was an open secret, and that she was an analyst whose life would not be placed in danger if her CIA connection was revealed. Asked by Buchanan if Plame's work would have taken her overseas, where compromising her CIA affiliation would put her in physical danger, Johnson's answer was an emphatic yes. Furthermore, he emphasized, her outing would put all her various overseas contacts in jeopardy.

Developing ...

Justin Raimondo is Editorial Director of Antiwar.com and the author, most recently, of An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000).