WASHINGTON
-- Vice-President Dick Cheney was under mounting
pressure last night after he and his senior
officials were accused of smearing a former
ambassador and outing his wife as an undercover
CIA officer in a deliberate act of revenge hatched
inside the White House.
In
a row which began with off-the-record comments
he made to The Independent on Sunday last year,
a former diplomat, Joe Wilson, said Mr Cheney
oversaw a group of neo-conservatives who decided
to try to damage his reputation. Because of
Mr Wilson, the White House was forced to admit
that a key claim in President Bush's 2003 State
of the Union address - that Iraq was seeking
uranium for nuclear weapons - should not have
been made.
The
controversy over what happened next could prove
to be the most damaging yet to engulf the Bush
administration. A criminal inquiry is investigating
the unveiling in the press of Mr Wilson's wife,
Valerie Plame, as a CIA agent - a serious felony
under US law. If one of Mr Cheney's senior officials
were charged, the damage would be huge.
Should
the Vice-President be personally implicated
- which Mr Wilson believes he is - the outcome
would be devastating for both Mr Cheney and
Mr Bush as they campaign for re-election.
Mr
Wilson has made his allegations in a newly published
book, The Politics of Truth, subtitled "Inside
the lies that led to war and betrayed my wife's
CIA identity". In it he writes: "I
am told ... that the Office of the Vice-President
- either the Vice-President himself or more
likely his chief of staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby
- chaired a meeting at which a decision was
made to do a work-up on me. As I understand
it, this meant they were going to take a close
look at who I was and what my agenda might be."
The
former diplomat has claimed elsewhere that it
was also at this meeting that the issue of his
wife's identity and her role as a covert CIA
operative was discussed. Mr Wilson said he believed
it was very unlikely that Mr Cheney was not
aware of this.
In
an exclusive interview in his office in Washington,
just a quarter of a mile from Mr Cheney's, he
said: "I find it difficult to believe that
a chief of staff would be undertaking something
like this without - at a minimum - the Vice-President's
knowledge." Mr Wilson stopped short of
asking for Mr Cheney's resignation, but said:
"If he [did not know] about it, he should
be saying so. The leak took place at the nexus
of national security, policy and politics."
His
struggle with the White House dates to a mission
in early 2002, at the request of Mr Cheney's
office. He was sent to the west African state
of Niger, where he was once ambassador, to investigate
claims that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium
to develop nuclear weapons. The claims were
based on a document obtained by Italian intelligence
services, which had passed the information to
Washington.
In
less than a week Mr Wilson proved that the claim
was false and that the document must be a fake.
Returning to Washington, he reported this to
a debriefer from the CIA. Later, experts from
the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic
Energy Agency, confirmed the document was a
crude forgery. But when Mr Bush and his senior
officials continued to make the claim - first
publicised in the British Government's September
2002 dossier on Iraq - he felt it was his duty
to speak out. In an interview with The Independent
on Sunday, in which he asked that he not be
identified, and subsequently in a signed piece
in The New York Times, Mr Wilson pointed out
that it was inconceivable that senior US and
British officials were not aware of his findings.
After
he went public, his wife was identified as a
CIA operative by the syndicated right-wing columnist
Bob Novak, a veteran Washington journalist with
close links to the Republicans. It was her suggestion
to send Mr Wilson to Africa, claimed Mr Novak,
who said in his column he had been provided
with the information by "two senior administration
officials".
The
leaking of an intelligence officer's identity
is a criminal offence. An FBI team is investigating
the leak and has called a grand jury to hear
evidence and question potential witnesses. Earlier
this year it was reported that Mr Libby and
numerous other officials from Mr Cheney's office
had been questioned by the FBI. Mr Wilson alleges
that it was Mr Bush's senior political adviser,
Karl Rove, who was responsible for "pushing"
the story of Ms Plame's CIA position, and that
a senior national security council official,
Elliott Abrams, may also have been involved.
The
White House has been very careful in its remarks
on the affair, insisting that Mr Rove, Mr Elliott
and Mr Libby were "not involved in leaking
classified information". It has stopped
short of an outright denial. One reason the
White House may have been keen to smear Mr Wilson
is because it knew his allegations would be
taken seriously. In the run-up to the first
Gulf War he helped to secure the release of
US citizens taken hostage by Saddam Hussein.
He was the last US official to meet Saddam while
he was in power.
Mr
Wilson told the IoS that his wife still worked
for the CIA, but that her work had been severely
disrupted. He said that she might also be at
risk from anyone who wished to harm her because
of her previous undercover work.
"It
has been irredeemably changed," he said,
adding that his wife felt she had been a victim
of the political ambitions of senior officials
within the administration.
©
2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
