Condoleezza Rice at the Center of the Plame Scandal

[RedEarth]

Condoleezza Rice at the Center of the Plame Scandal
The Source Beyond Rove
By ROGER MORRIS
Former NSC staffer

"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

It was September 2002, and then-National Security Advisor, now-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was fastening on CNN perhaps the most memorable and frightening single link in the Bush regime's chain of lies propagandizing the war on Iraq. Behind her carefully planted one-liner with its grim imagery was the whole larger hoax about Saddam Hussein possessing or about to acquire weapons of mass destruction, a deception as blatant and inflammatory as claims of the Iraqi dictator's ties to Al Qaeda.

Rice's demagogic scare tactic was also very much part of the tangled history of alleged Iraqi purchases of uranium from Niger, the fabrication leading to ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson's now famous exposé of the fraud, the administration's immediate retaliatory "outing" of Wilson's wife Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, and now the revelation that the President's supreme political strategist Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff Lewis Libby were involved in that potentially criminal leak-altogether the most serious political crisis Bush has faced. In fact, though her pivotal role has been missed entirely ­or deliberately ignored-in both the media feeding frenzy and the rising political clamor, Condoleezza Rice was also deeply embroiled in the Niger uranium-Plame scandal, arguably as much as or more so than either Rove or Libby.

For those who know the invariably central role of the NSC Advisor in sensitive political subjects in foreign policy and in White House leaks to the media as well as tending of policy, especially in George W. Bush's rigidly disciplined, relentlessly political regime, Rice by both commission and omission was integral in perpetrating the original fraud of Niger, and then inevitably in the vengeful betrayal of Plame's identity. None of that spilling of secrets for crass political retribution could have gone on without her knowledge and approval, and thus complicity. Little of it could have happened without her participation, if not as a leaker herself, at least with her direction and with her scripting.


The evidence of Rice's complicity is increasingly damning as it gathers over a six-year twisting chronology of the Nigerien uranium-Wilson-Plame affair, particularly when set beside what we also know very well about the inside operations of the NSC and Rice's unique closeness to Bush, her tight grip on her staff, and the power and reach that went with it all. What follows isn't simple. These machinations in government never are, especially in foreign policy. But follow the bouncing ball of Rice's deceptions, folly, fraud and culpability. Slowly, relentlessly, despite the evidence, the hoax of the Iraq-Niger uranium emerges as a central thread in the fabricated justification for war, and thus in the President's, Rice's, and the regime's inseparable credibility. The discrediting of Wilson, in which the outing his CIA wife is irresistible, becomes as imperative for Rice as for Rove and Libby, Bush and Cheney. And when that moment comes, she has the unique authority, and is in a position, to do the deed. Motive, means, opportunity-in the classic terms of prosecution, Rice had them all.

.....

(This article owes a primary debt to the ground-breaking research of Professor Gary Leupp of Tufts University in his "Faith-Based Intelligence," CounterPunch.org, July 26, 2003.)

Roger Morris was Senior Staff on the National Security Council under both Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, until resigning over the invasion of Cambodia. Morris is the author of Partners in Power: the Clintons and Their America and with Sally Denton The Money and the Power: the Making of Las Vegas. He is completing Shadows of the Eagle, a history of US policy and covert interventions in the Middle East and South Asia over the past half-century, forthcoming from Alfred Knopf. Morris can be reached at: [e-mail]

This article originally appeared on the Green Institute GP360 web site, egp360.net.

http://www.counterpunch.org/morris07272005.html

[Demeter]

1. Of Course She Is

That's why she's hiding out in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, anywhere they'll let her in and give her a fancy dinner (skip Darfur, though; those guys play too rough!)

Still, it's a better country with her out of it. Now, if we could just convince her co-workers about the joys of a road-trip! (Then close the borders, quick!)

[fooj]

2. Yep. She's been "quiet" lately...

Doesn't surprise me at all.

Peace.

[newscott]

3. I don't know, she's always seemed like little more than

window dressing to me.

Some kind of idiot-savant, who sometimes talks a good game, but is just there for show.

At every turn in her career she has proven little more than a talking head with the right connections. Kind of like * himself.

This Niger mushroom cloud thing for me seems more like she was playing way over her head and will hopefully sink like a rock for it.

[ginnyinWI]

4. Because she is female

there may be a tendency by some to assume that she is just "going along" with ideas the men come up with. But she needs to be held every bit as accountable for what she says and does as any man would. This is the kind of bias that women often try to use to their advantage, and I hope she won't get away with it.

[newscott]

6. Not at all. Like a lot of Republicans appointees, they

seem to just pick the ones who raise the most money and remain the most loyal.

I mean after 9/11, she said "Who'd a thunk?" Even though she knew about the 8-6-2005 briefing. So I guess you make a case for her being absolutely inept, which I think, or recklessly playing with the truth. She's more like Reagan than Rove to me. I may be reading the situation wrong, but that's just my .02.

[katty]

5. a woman who would do anything for her king-not too bright CONdi