Salon
by Juan Cole

10/28/05

As Washington waits on pins and needles to see if Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald hands down indictments, the focus falls on Dick Cheney's inner circle. This group, along with that surrounding Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made up what Colin Powell's top aide, Lawrence Wilkerson, called 'a cabal' that 'on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.' Cheney is the first vice president to have had, in effect, his own personal National Security Council. This formidable and unprecedented rump foreign policy team, comprised of radical hawks, played a key role in every aspect of the war on Iraq: planning for it, gathering 'evidence' to justify it and punishing those who spoke out against it. It is not surprising that members of that team, and Cheney himself, have now also emerged as targets in Fitzgerald's investigation of the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson to the press, along with Bush adviser Karl Rove... [subscription or ad view required]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/10/28/vice_president/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

--------

All the President's Men – The Sequel Is Here
http://www.lewrockwell.com/hadar/hadar31.html