Dick's Vapor Rub...

Trial Reveals Wilson Smear Began Far Earlier

One by one, the witnesses testified: what they knew and when they knew it.

Speaking under the threat of a perjury penalty, the witnesses admitted for the first time that they had played a role in assisting the Office of the Vice President to attack the credibility of a staunch critic of the Iraq War.

The government officials conceded that a coordinated effort to discredit the man who dared to publicly question the Bush administration's rationale for war was hatched long before his name first entered the public record in July 2003. They said they dug up information about his wife's employment with the CIA, knowing that one of their colleagues would leak it to the media in what is believed to have been a retaliatory act against the war critic.

That is perhaps the revelatory aspect of the week-old perjury and obstruction-of-justice trial involving former vice presidential staffer I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

The list of officials linked to this case runs from Vice President Dick Cheney right on down to one of his low-level press officers. Testimony has revealed that a coordinated effort was put into place beginning in June 2003 by Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove, Libby, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, White House communications director Dan Bartlett, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, and as many as a dozen other officials to go after Wilson. In doing so, Wilson's wife's undercover CIA status was compromised, and a possible crime was committed. <more>

Artwork by Stephen Pitt