Cheney, the liar
Did Cheney Lie to the Plame Prosecutors?
By Scott Horton
In the prosecution that led to the conviction of former Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, Patrick Fitzgerald famously spoke of a “cloud over the vice president.” His remarks suggested that, while no charges had been pressed against Cheney, the vice president was considered an unindicted co-conspirator in a scheme to out covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. When, after a long struggle to protect Cheney from “embarrassment,” the Justice Department complied with a court order to disclose the FBI agents’ notes of the interview that Fitzgerald conducted with Cheney in 2004, the reason for these comments became clear. The cloud over Dick Cheney seems to be more of a fog bank engulfing him, however, and the fog is of Cheney’s making.
…Wheeler also points out that Cheney refused to answer Fitzgerald’s questions about his spontaneous declassification of data for purposes of trashing Joe Wilson, Plame’s husband. But just a short while later, Cheney’s attorney leaked all the details of this process to Newsweek’s Mike Isikoff. This perfectly demonstrates how Cheney views executive privilege–it was invoked to a criminal investigation in which he was in danger of being prosecuted, but it didn’t stand in the way of a good leak to the press when he felt it would help him with the Washington punditry. Secrecy in the world of Cheney is wielded for tactical political and personal purposes, not in the lofty national interest.
Cheney and his daughter have been sweating bullets about the prospect of a criminal investigation. These notes make clear that they have plenty to be worried about.</em>
Everyday that Dick Cheney walks around free to lie and slander, his traitorous misdeeds unanswered in a court of law, is a slap in the face to everything this nation is supposedly about. That he enlists his deranged wife and yattering airhead daughter to keep him out of jail with a stew of lies and libel is only more repellent.
