A CIA Leak Primer

Today I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was sentenced to 30 months in jail for his role in the CIA/Valerie Plame leak scandal. This has been going on for so long, and is so convoluted, that I thought I could "straighten it out" for you. Here goes...

The whole mess started in 1981 when Seyni Kountche, former President of Niger states that Niger would "sell uranium, even to the devil." This set the stage for Western Powers to be nervous about what Niger, and others in Africa, might be willing to do for, or sell to, "evildoers."

Fast-forward 21 years to 2002, when VP Cheney reads a DIA report on alleged Niger-Iraq uranium sales and asks the CIA to look into it. The DIA report in question was to be used in the Bush Administration's casus belli for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Naturally, since they are selling this report to the U.N., they want to make sure it is fact and not fiction. Enter: Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson IV. Ms. Wilson (Valerie Plame's legal, married name) suggested to her supervisors in CIA's Counterproliferation Division that her husband, Wilson, would be well suited to investigate this issue, as he had good contacts with government and mine officials in Niger. Bush Administration officials agreed that Wilson would be good for the job, and in late February of 2002, he was sent to Niger.

After Wilson returned to Washington D.C., he was debriefed by CIA officials where they learned that in Wilson's (very educated) opinion, it was unlikely that Niger had sold yellowcake uranium to Iraq or anyone else. This clashed with the carefully rehearsed lie the Bush Administration planned on presenting to the U.N. and The People of The United States, so a report was never written, and Wilson's ideas were dismissed.

Wilson was concerned that the information that he provided to the U.S. Government would be skewed or ignored and planned his own course of action. In the spring of 2003, Wilson informed administration officials that he planned on publishing an OpEd piece in the New York Times titled What I Didn't Find In Africa in early July. Weeks later, but before the article was actually published, VP Cheney leaked Valerie Plame's name to his Chief of Staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and Libby leaked Plame's name and job to conservative (and a$$hole) columnist Bob Novak, who then printed that information in his 14 July column in the Washington Post.

This is how it has come to pass that the Vice-President of the United States of America's Chief of Staff committed TREASON to shame and embarrass a family that had shamed and embarrassed his administration. You can form your own opinion from here, but I think that 30 months is a very light sentence considering what Libby could have been charged with (treason) and the punishment (the death penalty) he could have received. Libby was actually convicted on perjury charges, which are much, much less serious.

Remember, the President and his staff lied to the U.N., The People of The United States of America, and the world about why he sent three thousand, four hundred and ninety-six American soldiers to their needless deaths. Al-Queda was not in Iraq until we destabilized it, there were no weapons of mass-destruction, and Saddam was isolated and alone in the Arab world. Now there is a cause for the "evil-doers" to rally behind. The President has said the War in Iraq is to keep the terrorists from "following us home." We all see how that line has worked out for the administration...the Fort Dix Six and the plot brewing at JFK Intl. They're already following us home. Bring home the boys so they can protect us here!