[Mb-civic] With Vice President, He Shaped Iraq Policy - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

With Vice President, He Shaped Iraq Policy

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 29, 2005; Page A01

The indictment and resignation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby ends the 
partnership between two men -- Libby and Vice President Cheney -- who 
have shaped and often dominated policymaking throughout the Bush 
presidency, especially toward Iraq.

Libby was both Cheney's chief of staff and assistant to the president -- 
a title that gave him the same rank as the president's national security 
adviser. Cheney is arguably the most powerful vice president in U.S. 
history. Behind the scenes, working with allies in the Defense 
Department and other parts of the government, the two were early 
advocates of removing Saddam Hussein and highly effective in thwarting 
any opposition from the State Department and other bureaucratic rivals.

Both put the same high value on secrecy, and so their role in setting 
policy has been hard to trace. Cheney is famously guarded, his precise 
influence one of Washington's great mysteries. Libby, as the indictment 
issued yesterday by a federal grand jury here suggests, was in many ways 
Cheney's eyes and ears in the bureaucracy -- and the media.

While Cheney disdained the press and rarely gave interviews, Libby, 55, 
met with reporters over breakfast and lunch and enjoyed their company at 
parties. He was also totally loyal to Cheney, guarding his flanks and 
rarely providing much more than the company line.

The two men shared an obsession about possible threats to the United 
States, particularly biological and chemical weapons and a skepticism 
about the intelligence provided by the CIA. The charges announced by 
Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald describe how Libby was driven by 
his animus toward the CIA to battle what he viewed as unfair 
blame-shifting for the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Libby allegedly worked the bureaucracy to gather information about the 
mission of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV to Niger to investigate 
reports of uranium sales to Iraq. Court papers say Libby then tried to 
fashion public opinion against Wilson through conversations with 
reporters and White House officials, noting that Wilson's wife, Valerie 
Plame, played a role in setting up the trip in an effort to discredit 
Wilson's findings.

Strikingly, it was Cheney's office -- not the president's White House 
staff or the National Security Council -- that appears to have taken the 
lead in rebutting Wilson, even though Wilson was disputing information 
that appeared in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.

...continued at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR2005102802139.html?nav=hcmodule
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