while you were out. . . shooting friends

While I don’t think this was a planned misdirection play, the Veep’s gunplay has managed to distract a whole lot of us from some even more serious shots fired by—and at—Dead Eye Dick.

As reported Friday, an exchange about three weeks ago between Patrick Fitzgerald and Scooter Libby revealed that Libby had been directed by “superiors” (meaning at least Cheney, as reported by the National Journal) to leak portions of the National Intelligence Estimate to members of the press. Yes, Scooter claims outright that the Vice President told him to leak classified information—in this case, the identity of Joe Wilson’s wife, CIA NOC Valerie Plame—just to discredit a perceived political enemy. These reports came on the same day Cheney renewed his criticism of the New York Times’ revelations about the NSA’s illegal domestic surveillance program.

The Washington Note reported Monday (on a piece that originally appeared on Raw Story) that in blowing Plame-Wilson’s cover, the Vice Presidentially authorized leak not only put sources and methods at risk and essentially ended Plame’s career, it severely crippled US intel capabilities vis-à-vis Iranian Nuclear programs. . . and not just a little bit. The piece also notes that while Joe Wilson did not find any evidence of an Iraqi-Niger deal on yellowcake, he did report that Iran had made inquiries in Niger (this was reported in the Washington Post in the summer of 2004, but received little play at the time).

So, to recap these inglorious Cheney moments (and what we should definitely get back to talking about): the Veep had his henchman break the law and disseminate classified information, and this leak not only ruined a career, it ruined our future security by impeding intelligence gathering on a real nuclear threat while propagating a crap story about a false threat.

All this is not to say that the “hunting accident” is completely inconsequential. As they say in the movies, “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.” Bad enough that Cheney was not immediately interviewed by Texas law enforcement or administered a test for alcohol as the state requires after such incidents, it has now come out that there are competing versions of how this all came out. While Katherine Armstrong said it was her idea to contact the local Corpus Christi paper on Sunday, Scott McClellan initially stated that it was Cheney who directed her to approach the press. Later, though, the White House issued a report—as noted in the New York Times—that had Karl Rove coordinating with Armstrong 90 minutes after the Saturday afternoon shooting. Yes, that’s right, the White House is now “bragging” that Karl Rove knew about this “peppering” almost a day before the rest of America.

In a related story, the Bush administration spends over a billion dollars a year on PR, and that doesn’t include the salary of Karl Rove. . . or Katherine Armstrong.