Is Cheney Still on the Hook?

Having written last week, before the Libby indictment was announced, that "it looks like Cheney will have to resign and may face criminal charges," some may wonder if my mind has changed, since the much of the media thinks the one indictment may be the only one.

I still think Cheney is in trouble, but it may or may not be with the Plame scandal by itself. John Dean, who knows a bit about big presidential scandals, wrote the following:

Indeed, when one studies the indictment, and carefully reads the transcript of the press conference, it appears Libby's saga may be only Act Two in a three-act play. And in my view, the person who should be tossing and turning at night, in anticipation of the last act, is the Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney.

Dean believes that Fitzgerald is trying to flip Libby and have him testify against Cheney. He also believes that Libby won't do that.

Libby Is The Firewall Protecting Vice President Cheney

The Libby indictment asserts that "[o]n or about June 12, 2003 Libby was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Division. Libby understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA."

In short, Cheney provided the classified information to Libby - who then told the press. Anyone who works in national security matters knows that the Counterproliferation Division is part of the Directorate of Operations -- the covert side of the CIA, where most everything and everyone are classified...

What Is Likely To Occur Next?

It has been reported that Libby's attorney tried to work out a plea deal. But Fitzgerald insisted on jail time, so Libby refused to make a deal. It appears that only Libby, in addition to Cheney, knows what Cheney knew, and when he knew, and why he knew, and what he did with his knowledge.

Fitzgerald has clearly thrown a stacked indictment at Libby, laying it on him as heavy as the law and propriety permits. He has taken one continuous false statement, out of several hours of interrogation, and made it into a five-count indictment. It appears he is trying to flip Libby - that is, to get him to testify against Cheney -- and not without good reason. Cheney is the big fish in this case.

Will Libby flip? Unlikely. Neither Cheney nor Libby (I believe) will be so foolish as to crack a deal. And Libby probably (and no doubt correctly) assumes that Cheney - a former boss with whom he has a close relationship -- will (at the right time and place) help Libby out, either with a pardon or financially, if necessary. Libby's goal, meanwhile, will be to stall going to trial as long as possible, so as not to hurt Republicans' showing in the 2006 elections.

Al Martin wrote this week that the going rate for going to prison to protect a cabalist as high-ranking as Cheney is $30 million.

The scuttlebutt in Washington is that Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, is negotiating the fee to be the scapegoat or fall guy in this Valerie Plame debacle.

The delay is that Scooter Libby is making a demand and sticking to his guns. In order to take the fall, he is demanding $30 million. That is the number being circulated around the Beltway. It would make sense considering he would potentially have to serve 3 years in jail before Bush can pardon him. Then $10 million a year is generally the fall-guy amount in Washington for somebody of his stature, since it would take some time after his being the designated scapegoat, shall we say, after he was released from Eglin AFB or Allenwood. Actually, he would have to spend time in both places.

According to Martin, the behind the scenes wrangling has to do with who is going to come up with the $30 million.

Everything is being manipulated and controlled behind closed doors. Anyway, to bring us up to the current situation, I think this is just a case that George Bush has told Dick Cheney he’s going to have to come up with the $30 mil, and that he, George Bush and Company, are not going to do it.

That is the scuttlebutt in Washington. And I think that’s what the delay is–that Cheney’s balking at it. Because it would severely deplete the assets of his offshore trust. Let’s put it this way. The last known reliable estimate of the assets of the DLC Trust was that it had about $70 million in it. That’s all because Dick has never been a heavyweight. Dick is not a James Baker or a George Schultz. He was always a level below. He’s never been a heavyweight, which means he wasn’t able to pull as much cash out of the frauds. He was essentially allowed into the scams. But if you look at the amount of money he made, it was always in the single millions. This guy ain’t thinking big. This guy ain’t the 10 or 20-million-dollar guy.

Really, there are two ways to look at this scandal. One, it is a a big show, slaps on the wrist will be issued, people will say "the system works" and nothing will change. In other words there is only one Cabal. The other view is that a civil war is going on behind the scenes and this is one manifestation of it, just like the steady leaks about torture gulags emanating from the CIA. In that view the Cabal does not have complete control. Those who hold the latter view, see the CIA as trying to exact vengeance against the Cabal.

Here is James Petras:

The prosecution of Libby however reveals the intense internal struggle over the control of the US imperial state between the neocons and the traditional leaders of its major institutions. Along with the indictment of Libby by a grand jury at the request of the special prosecutor, the FBI has arrested the two leading policy makers of the most influential pro-Israeli lobby (AIPAC) for spying for the State of Israel. These are not simply isolated actions by individual officials or investigators. To have proceeded against Libby and AIPAC leaders , they had to have powerful institutional backing; otherwise the investigations would have been terminated even before they began.

The CIA is deeply offended by the neocon usurpation of their intelligence role, their direct channels to the President, their loyalty to Israel. The military is extremely angry at their exclusion from the councils of government over questions of war, the disastrous war policy which have depleted the armed forces of recruits, devastated troop morale, and the neocons' grotesque ignorance of the costs of a colonial occupation. It is no wonder that General Tommy Frank referred to Douglas Feith as "the stupidest bastard I have ever met."

Whether the one view or the other is true may have to do with the role of Israel. Steven Lagavulin works his way around this issue in his Deconsumption blog:

First off I should remark that there are a certain number of people who view the situation in Iraq according to the "POSIWID" theory, which is an analytics term that holds "the Purpose Of a System Is What It Does". By this definition the "purpose" behind the war in Iraq has always been exactly the result we see happening: to cripple the region altogether, to stir up insurgency, civil war and general chaos which would destabilize perhaps even the whole of the Middle-East. And while I can certainly respect why this would seem the case, I don't see this view as being very realistic. Because while it's apparent that there is a great deal of profit to be had in "creative destruction" and "rebuilding", ultimately I can't help but think back to what is perhaps the single best "insider" account regarding the plans of Empire in Iraq, from John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hitman:

"The Reagan and Bush administrations were determined to turn Iraq into another Saudi Arabia...modern cities had risen from the Saudi desert, Riyadh's garbage-collecting goats had been transformed into sleek trucks, and now the Saudis enjoyed the fruits of some of the most advanced technologies in the world: state-of-the-art desalinization plants, sewage treatment systems, communications networks, and electric utility grids.”

What he says is probably true about one faction ruling class, but Lavagulin (and Perkins) leaves Israel completely out of the equation. Like Noam Chomsky, those who hold this view see Israel as a U.S. proxy in the Middle East. In my opinion that is no longer true. By now, plans to make the United States a proxy of Israel have proceeded apace. That, in a nutshell, is a main feature of the Likud plan. And the Likud party wants the Arab Middle East to splinter into warring factions, while the traditional U.S. elite want the Middle East to be controlled by stable dictatorships doing the bidding of the U.S. global corporate elite.

If we look at it that way, then the behind-the-scenes civil war in the ruling elite of the United States makes more sense, as does the Plame scandal. The question is: Are there factions in the U.S. ruling elite that are opposed to the United States being a client state of Israel? That is also why the situation is so dangerous now. Lagavulin again:

So it's difficult, in my mind, not to view Plame-gate as a major battle-front in this civil war.

Now I don't by any means believe that Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation is a complete false-flag operation...but at the same time his case seems to have encountered remarkably little resistance in its run to the White House (while, for example, Sibel Edmunds' case continues to languish in the lower courts...). Not to mention that the sudden "about-face" of Judith Miller makes infinitely more sense if we consider that she was perhaps suddenly given the green-light by the Times ("mouthpiece of the globalist agenda") to go ahead and open her notebooks.

Obviously all this is just loosely-based speculation, and should be taken as such (and will be subject to change on a whim as new information comes forward). But I offer it for consideration because if true, or at least close enough to true, then it means we might watch with suspicion how these proceedings unfold. Should they prove to be only a lot of "sound and fury" after all, if things drag on for months without dislodging any "public" figures, then it's likely all a side-show distraction. In which case I'd guess the unending, unbounded, unwinnable war will continue to rage on in other people's backyards, while the discontented here in the homeland are placated once again by the highly-televised "show of justice" against the Neo-Con scapegoats. But if we see a sudden, unexpected lunge toward impeachment, I'd be betting the bank that in less than a year we'll see a ringer brought into the White House who's been given the task to let loose the dogs of war.

If Cheney resigns, and some graybeard from the Bush I regime takes the position, then maybe the Neocons will have been defeated. If not, then the Neocons will have won. The problem is, in either case, plans for World War III will proceed.