Michael Isikoff. Investigative correspondent for Newsweek and co-author of the book “Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War.”
From the Scooter's grand jury testimony:
Lewis "Scooter" Libby: "Did you know that his[Wilson] wife works at the CIA?"
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald: “And you said?”
Libby: "No, I don't know that."
Fitzgerald: “And his response?”
Libby: "’Yes’ -- something like, ‘Yes, yeah, all the reporters know”"
Fitzgerald: “And your response?”
Libby: "No, I don't know that."
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald: “And you said?”
Libby: "No, I don't know that."
Fitzgerald: “And his response?”
Libby: "’Yes’ -- something like, ‘Yes, yeah, all the reporters know”"
Fitzgerald: “And your response?”
Libby: "No, I don't know that."
Excerpts of Michael Isikoff's interview on DemocracyNow:
"The real question that I think everybody is scratching their heads waiting for the defense on is, will they bring the Vice President Cheney onto the witness stand? Will they bring Karl Rove? Will they bring Dan Bartlett? All of which had been bandied about as potential defense witnesses, but the stakes, where all of these people are currently in the White House, are very high -- Cheney, in particular -- because if there's any central revelation from the trial, it's just how central Vice President Cheney was in trying to rebut the Joe Wilson criticism. It's Vice President Cheney who first puts the wife into play, who suggests it was a junket in his own handwriting on the Joe Wilson article. Did his wife send him on a junket? It was Vice President Cheney who first told Scooter Libby about Valerie Plame Wilson's work at the CIA and where she worked in the counter-proliferation division of the directorate of operations. So Cheney would have to cop to that, and whether he wants to do that and then also undergo what’s certainly going to be a vigorous cross-examination from Patrick Fitzgerald, I think, is the central mystery right now in the case."
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Well, the significance of it is, it’s a sort of formal finding of what a lot of us have reported all along, that -- in our book, Hubris, that David Corn and I wrote, we have an extensive account of exactly how Feith's operation worked and how it did inject this really flimsy intelligence relating to alleged connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq into the intelligence pipe stream. In fact, one of the people who was briefed on it and who was eager to get it was Scooter Libby at the White House, particularly presenting these, what turned out to be, bogus allegations that Mohamed Atta, the 9/11 hijacker, had met in Prague with a Iraqi intelligence agent. This was presented by Feith’s office, according to the report and according to our book, as well, as a known contact, when, in fact, it was at that very moment already being vigorously disputed by the CIA and the FBI. But to have the finding that this was inappropriate just further adds to the case that I think has been pretty well documented by now, that the senior administration officials manipulated intelligence and embellished and exaggerated in order to make the case for the invasion of Iraq.
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Well, you get into a game of semantics: what’s intelligence, what’s policy? I talked to Doug Feith last night, actually, extensively about this, and, you know, he makes the case, and I think that what he was really doing was trying to -- what his office was really doing was trying to -- these were policy discussions, just looking at alternative intelligence assessments.
Actually, what's interesting in your question, and one of the things that comes out in the report is that all this was authorized at the very top by both Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who, of course, was the most vociferous on this issue, was the most insistent that there had to be a connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda and that the CIA was missing it. Wolfowitz, as we wrote in Hubris, was very much under the sway of the theories, the conspiracy theories of Laurie Mylroie, who thought that Saddam had to have been behind 9/11 and other terrorist acts, such as the embassy bombings, even though that had been completely discredited by the intelligence and law enforcement communities. So what you had were people who were absolutely insistent on trying to find these connections, because they thought it would strengthen the case for the invasion, and they were determined to push it at every level and had a receptive ear at the White House.
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Well, the significance of it is, it’s a sort of formal finding of what a lot of us have reported all along, that -- in our book, Hubris, that David Corn and I wrote, we have an extensive account of exactly how Feith's operation worked and how it did inject this really flimsy intelligence relating to alleged connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq into the intelligence pipe stream. In fact, one of the people who was briefed on it and who was eager to get it was Scooter Libby at the White House, particularly presenting these, what turned out to be, bogus allegations that Mohamed Atta, the 9/11 hijacker, had met in Prague with a Iraqi intelligence agent. This was presented by Feith’s office, according to the report and according to our book, as well, as a known contact, when, in fact, it was at that very moment already being vigorously disputed by the CIA and the FBI. But to have the finding that this was inappropriate just further adds to the case that I think has been pretty well documented by now, that the senior administration officials manipulated intelligence and embellished and exaggerated in order to make the case for the invasion of Iraq.
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Well, you get into a game of semantics: what’s intelligence, what’s policy? I talked to Doug Feith last night, actually, extensively about this, and, you know, he makes the case, and I think that what he was really doing was trying to -- what his office was really doing was trying to -- these were policy discussions, just looking at alternative intelligence assessments.
Actually, what's interesting in your question, and one of the things that comes out in the report is that all this was authorized at the very top by both Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who, of course, was the most vociferous on this issue, was the most insistent that there had to be a connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda and that the CIA was missing it. Wolfowitz, as we wrote in Hubris, was very much under the sway of the theories, the conspiracy theories of Laurie Mylroie, who thought that Saddam had to have been behind 9/11 and other terrorist acts, such as the embassy bombings, even though that had been completely discredited by the intelligence and law enforcement communities. So what you had were people who were absolutely insistent on trying to find these connections, because they thought it would strengthen the case for the invasion, and they were determined to push it at every level and had a receptive ear at the White House.
More on the interview.
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