CIA leak case probe expected to indict top US govt officials this week - report

I'm reading a book right now about Vladimir Putin's Russia (soon to be reviewed) and one of the major themes in the book is how deep corruption runs throughout modern Russia. Then of course you have the banana republics throughout the world, stolen elections, graft of millions, etc etc. Needless to say, whether it's in the US or anywhere else in the world, the old adage is as true as it ever was, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

What I love about my country is that while we have our own version of rampant cronyism and corruption, every once in a while somebody powerful gets slammed. hard (without having to be assassinated). Impeachment, recalls, forced resignations, and the occasional jail sentence pepper the news cycle as a way of reminding us that the justice system may not only be blind but also slower than poop, but eventually, the jerks in this country get their comeuppance.

It seems increasingly likely that the "Cheney Cabal" will go down for this Valerie Plame leak, as they should. Maybe Cheney won't be indicted but I'll settle for a forced resignation. Some would say, (like apparently Bill O'Reilly) that this is bad for the country. To that I say balderdash. This only proves that when it counts, the system works, and that's all I ask.

Here's the story:

The special prosecutor in the investigation into the leaking of information about CIA operative Valerie Plame, is 'widely expected' to issue indictments for one or more top administration officials, including Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff Lewis 'Scooter Libby, when the two-year probe reports this week, Newsweek magazine reports today.

Soon after Sept 11, 2001, Libby 'began routinely calling intelligence officials, high and low, to pump them for any scraps of information on Iraq', the report said.

'It was extraordinarily unusual for the vice president's office to step so far outside of channels and make personal appeals to mere analysts', the Newsweek report said.

'Together, the group largely despised the on-the-one-hand/on-the-other analyses handed up by the intelligence bureaucracy. Instead, they went in search of intel (intelligence) that helped advance their case for war', Newsweek reports.

Central to that case was the belief that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein 'was determined to get nukes -- a claim helped by a report that Saddam had attempted to buy uranium from Niger, which the White House doggedly pushed.'

US Ambassador Joseph Wilson damaged that claim with his landmark New York Times article on July 6, 2003, about his trip to Niger to investigate the story, during which he concluded it was not credible. Within the White House inner circle, Wilson's article was seen as an act of aggression against President Bush and Cheney, Newsweek reported.

'Someone, perhaps to punish the loose-lipped diplomat, let it be known to columnist Robert Novak and other reporters that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA operative, a revelation that is a possible violation of laws protecting classified information', Newsweek reported.

'Libby was the most relentless digger in Cheney's close-knit group of advisers, which also included Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, Rumsfeld's under secretary for policy', Newsweek said.

'The case has shed light on how Cheney and his clique of advisers cleared the way to war, and how they obsessed over critics who got in the way', the report said. 'The notion that they've become a gang has some merit,' a longtime colleague of Libby's is cited as saying. 'A small group who only talk to each other...You pay a price for that.'