UPI is reporting that federal investigators examining the Plame Game scandal now have “hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct” by two of Dick Cheney’s top aides — John Hannah and Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby. A Justice Department official told UPI that the investigation “could lead to indictments” against the two.
The UPI report quotes one federal law-enforcement officer as saying, “We believe that Hannah was the major player in this.”
The same article suggested that the FBI hopes to pressure Hannah, reminding him that he “faces a real possibility of doing jail time,” so he’ll be more inclined to “name superiors.” And who might that include? Let’s call him Dick C. No wait, that’s too obvious. How about we say his name is D. Cheney.
If the report is accurate — and, at this point, we don’t know for sure — it would confirm long-held suspicions about Libby’s involvement with the illegal leaks.
In October, for example, Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and counter-terrorism official at the State Department, explained that he knew the identity of at least one of the Novak Two. When pressed in an MSNBC interview, Johnson said, “I think if I’m the FBI, I start by having a discussion with Mr. Libby.”
A couple of days after attention on Libby started to intensify, the White House specifically said Libby was not involved. Scott McClellan said that Libby “neither leaked the classified information, nor would he condone it.” Of course, since we know McClellan is more than willing to play fast and loose with the truth, the denial wasn’t terribly persuasive at the time, and seems even less reliable now.
Hannah, on the other hand, is less well-known, but an equally likely player in light of his work with Cheney on hyping intelligence regarding Iraq.
Consider this background information from MSNBC:
For months, Cheney’s office has denied that the veep bypassed U.S. intelligence agencies to get intel reports from the INC. But a June 2002 memo written by INC lobbyist Entifadh Qunbar to a U.S. Senate committee lists John Hannah, a senior national-security aide on Cheney’s staff, as one of two “U.S. governmental recipients” for reports generated by an intelligence program being run by the INC and which was then being funded by the State Department. Under the program, “defectors, reports and raw intelligence are cultivated and analyzed”; the info was then reported to, among others, “appropriate governmental, non-governmental and international agencies.” The memo not only describes Cheney aide Hannah as a “principal point of contact” for the program, it even provides his direct White House telephone number. The only other U.S. official named as directly receiving the INC intel is William Luti, a former military adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who, after working on Cheney’s staff early in the Bush administration, shifted to the Pentagon, where he oversaw a secretive Iraq war-planning unit called the Office of Special Plans.
This suggests that Hannah was in a position whereby he’d have access to relevant information about Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. As Matt Yglesias explained at Tapped yesterday, “This group centered around the Vice President and the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans has been in the thick of inter-agency conflict with the CIA throughout the Bush administration, making it plausible that these people would highlight Joe Wilson’s CIA leaks as part of an effort to discredit him. Since their operation was basically dedicated to second-guessing the intelligence community’s work on WMD issues, moreover, it’s plausible that they would have access to information regarding Plame’s job which involved WMD work for the CIA.”
It two top Cheney aides are implicated in this scandal, and actually come under indictment, the story would have almost limitless potential. It’s not unrealistic to think that Cheney’s position on Bush’s ticket could be in jeopardy.