I’m only vaguely aware of this issue, but I have to admit the guy sounds like a pathalogical liar.
In response the Wilson/Plame comment. Reading between the lines on that one, it sounds like the typical bureaucratic mess. The Iraq/Niger among many others facts needed double-checking, the VP’s office told the CIA,”Oh, go ahead and see if it’s true.” Wilson was asked by CIA, with some suggestion from his wife, to check it out. His trip was hyped to him as “The VP wants you to check this out”.
He assumed he was on a mission of utmost importance direct from the Dickster himself, while as far as the VP’s office knew the CIA was just looking over some details and would eventually get back to them. Whether Cheney actually saw the results of his trip (did anyone want to present a contrary opinion to the VP?) or whether it was buried in the minutae of a thousand single-space pages dumped on the VP’s office every day – who cares? We know the high-ups were fond of “sexing up” the facts.
When the incorrect facts were used, Wilson mistakenly huffed in print “he asked me to check, I told him he was wrong, and he ignored it.” Cheney’s office took unbrage and counter-puffed “who is this bozo, and why is he making up lies about us?”
In his true traditional style, Cheney set out to straighten the record on someone who (he thought) was making up lies about him. They illegally exposed an agent as part of a concerted smear campaign, much as everyone on the Republican side would like to think no dmage was done. Presumably the CIA has sufficient leverage that Google cache no longer reveals which other people list the same “front” companies on their resume as Ms. Plame, but at one time you could find at least one. He hastily removed his online resume after a call from Wired magazine. Presumable foreign intelligence agencies do not let the US government clean their cache like Google would. Thanks for the tipoff, Dick!
