MICHAEL CARMICHAEL

FBI Agent, Mark Felt, “Deep Throat” (left) and Bob Woodward during Watergate (right).

At first glance, this surprising revelation shook Fitzgerald’s investigation and jeopardized his indictment of “Scooter” Libby.  At his press conference on the case, Fitzgerald contended that Libby was the first official at the White House to disclose the covert identity of Valerie Wilson to the press.  Woodward’s deposition falsifies that contention.   

Is Libby now off scot-free?  No, he is not.  By the end of the week, Fitzgerald had made moves to broaden and reinvigorate his investigation.  At the same time the noose is now tightening, not only around the throat of the expendable pawn, Scooter Libby, but around the throats of a growing number of higher ranking suspects. 

Over the last two weeks, there have been a series of three crucial triggering events leading up to the Special Prosecutor’s galvanic activation and the widening of his investigation.  Last week, John Dean published a powerful open letter to Patrick Fitzgerald.  It was Dean’s way of attempting a spinal transplant in a Special Prosecutor he found lacking in focus and will power. 

During the Watergate Era, John Dean was the White House attorney for President Richard Nixon.  For his involvement in the Watergate scandal, Dean was eventually sent out into the cold to serve as a criminal scapegoat for the conspiracy of others including President Nixon, himself.  Facing indictment, disbarment, prison and disgrace, Dean mutated from servile and obedient fall guy into the state’s leading witness.  In electrifying testimony before the Ervin Committee, John Dean revealed the full extent of the conspiracy to obstruct justice through the White House’s premeditated cover-up of the Watergate break-in.  While other members of the Nixon administration:  John Mitchell, Robert Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Jeb Stuart Magruder had committed perjury to enforce the cover-up, Dean refused.  Dean told the truth.  In doing so, he incriminated himself and became a national hero in one fell swoop. 

In his open letter to Fitzgerald, Dean reminded the Special Prosecutor that he wields the power of the Attorney General.  Furthermore, Dean urged Fitzgerald to broaden his investigation to encompass all of those involved in the conspiracy rather than merely concentrating on the one or two or three low level pawns and puppets who obediently leaked the classified intelligence to reporters.  In a brilliant but disturbing metaphor, Dean urged Fitzgerald not to be satisfied with merely indicting the lowest culprits and fall guys.  Dean said that to focus exclusively on the individuals who actually spoke to the press would have been like placing the lowly Watergate burglars into prison and then letting their superiors in the chain of command go scot-free.  If this had been allowed to happen in Watergate, Nixon would not have resigned.  Agnew would have stayed in his office, and Robert Haldeman, John Erlichman, John Mitchell, John Dean and many others would have remained in their high-ranking and powerful positions.   

In direct but elegant and inspiring language, Dean exhorted Fitzgerald to use his power to remove from office all of those who had taken any part in the conspiracy to commit the crime of leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent.  Citing precedents from Teapot Dome to Watergate, Dean admonished Fitzgerald for conducting a timid and narrow investigation to date.  Implying that Fitzgerald might be in fear of losing his job, Dean pointed out that Archibald Cox wore a badge of honor for his firing by Nixon who sought to remove a pebble from his shoe.  Dean’s letter was a backbone transplant procedure, but it will take time to determine whether or not it has been a success, however, the early indications appear to be positive.

Woodward has published friendly
accounts of the Bush presidency

Fall guy Stephen Hadley is the
lowly three of Spades in the
neocon deck.

When the CIA-leak investigation heated up with the indictment of Libby, Hadley was thrown into the breach yet again.  His testimony moves the seminal date for the major crime backward from July to June, 2003.  His disclosure of the earlier date for the leaking of the covert identity of Valerie Plame may cause more shockwaves for the Bush White House than it will avert, especially for his erstwhile boss, Condoleezza Rice. 

In July, Rice publicly stated that she had learned of the covert CIA status of Valerie Wilson from ABC news when they broke the story immediately after the publication of Robert Novak’s explosive gossip column.  However, Hadley has now confirmed that he told Woodward about Valerie Wilson one month before the ABC broadcast.  How did Rice’s deputy know more than she knew?  That is a crucial question for that is what Condoleezza Rice is now asking us to believe.  She is saying that she did not know the critical intelligence, the covert identity of Valery Wilson, until it broke into the print and broadcast media.  This, she expects to believe, in spite of her seniority to her former deputy who has just confessed to his role in the crime.  Does she expect us to believe that now that her erstwhile deputy has incriminated himself?  

Bob Woodward and Stephen Hadley have now testified that the covert identity of Valerie Wilson was common knowledge, tittle tattle, run-of-the-mill gossip and typical Washington chitter-chatter one month prior to the publication of Novak’s criminal column.  After Hadley confided Plame’s covert CIA identity to Woodward, the reporter did nothing.  Why not?  Woodward explained to the Special Prosecutor that he did not recognize the information as a news story, because it was concealed so stealthily as a tidbit of idle gossip.  Worse.  When the scandal broke, Woodward attempted to forget that he had ever heard the name of Valerie Wilson from Hadley.  He kept silent.  It had not dawned on Woodward that Hadley had skillfully attempted to plant a damning story about Valerie Wilson and her obstreperous husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who would proclaim to the world that there was never any reason to suspect that Saddam Hussein was pursuing a clandestine nuclear program.  Hadley had placed the bait directly in front of Woodward, and the Washington Post’s star reporter had done nothing about it.   

When Hadley’s Iagoesque ploy with Woodward failed, Dick Cheney’s other trusty pawn, Scooter Libby was moved into action.  Libby dutifully leaked Wilson’s identity to his paramour on the New York Times, Judith Miller.  We still do not know the identity of Novak’s source, but it is now much more likely that we shall find out. 

It is now known that Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and Stephen Hadley all trafficked the identity of a covert CIA agent to members of the press.  Libby has been indicted.  After his indictment, Libby resigned.  Hadley still sits in his powerful office.  Karl Rove still sits in his powerful office, and the others who were involved in the leakage of the covert identity of a CIA agent still sit in their high offices as well. 

Legal experts monitoring the case have identified twenty-three (23) administration officials apparently involved in the crime.  With the exception of Libby, they are all still serving under their Commander-in-Chief, George Bush, and his Vice President, Dick Cheney, both of whom were in charge of this lengthy chain of command before, during and after their dreadful collision with a major federal crime on their jolly road to Baghdad.   

Every one of the twenty-three federal officials in the line of fire are now poised on tinterhooks keenly awaiting the outcome of the Hadley gambit.  They are waiting to see whether the sacrifice of a lower piece, Hadley, will actually defuse the situation.  The Hadley gambit was designed to activate Bob Woodward.  The Pulitzer Prize winner has leapt into the breach, and he is now appearing in a blazing trail of shrill and alarmist interviews decrying Fitzgerald as a, “disgrace,”while proclaiming that no crime against the state was committed when the covert identity of Valerie Wilson, a covert CIA agent, was published in  a daily newspaper.   

In a searing burst of internal memos at the Washington Post, Bob Woodward has been lampooned pitilessly by his colleagues.  One Post journalist has called Woodward, “the 800 pound elephant among us,” in a thinly veiled reference to his partisan preference for the Republican Party.  Before joining the Post, Woodward served on the staff of a Republican congressman, and during Watergate, he would soothe the nerves of reluctant sources in the Committee to Re-Elect the President by telling them, “I am a Republican,” which was a memorable line from the Academy Award winning film, All the Presdient’s Men. 

Hadley’s testimony clearly places him in serious jeopardy of criminal indictment.  Perhaps, more significantly, the Hadley gambit casts the probing spotlight of justice directly on his erstwhile boss, Condoleezza Rice for the first time.   

It must be noted that Condoleezza Rice played a major role in the selling of the Iraq war by convincing the public about the non-existent nuclear program through her introduction of alarmist language.  In her pleadings of the case for war, Rice uttered the ominous statement about Saddam’s undiscovered WMD program, “But we do not want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” a metaphor that cast a giant shadow over the public attitude to Iraq.  

Before the Hadley gambit, Dick Cheney was in the direct line of enquiry exposed by the indictment of his deputy, Scooter Libby.  Now, the tables have been turned.  Condoleezza Rice is now in the hot seat. 

The overarching question concerning Rice’s role in the criminal investigation now unfolding is simply, What did Rice know, and when did she know it?