After more than two years of dilly-dallying, lying, and obfuscating, we’re coming into the home stretch of the official “investigation” into who in the Bush administration “outed” covert CIA agent Valerie Plame, a felony offense. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is wrapping up his federal grand jury inquiry, and speculation is rampant about who may be indicted — or whether anyone will be indicted — for the main crime. White House senior adviser Karl Rove? Vice President Dick Cheney? Cheney’s Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby? New York Times reporter/propagandist Judith Miller?

More likely, any indictment(s) handed down will deal only with lesser crimes like obstructing an investigation, lying to investigators, or perjury. The chief culprits will be shielded from justice.

For those who may not have been following the Plame affair, I will try to summarize the case: immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, top Bush administration officials (Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and then-Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz) began pushing for an invasion of Iraq, even though they lacked evidence of Saddam Hussein’s involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Wolfowitz confirmed in interviews in 2003 that two days after the attacks, at a Camp David meeting with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, himself, and others, the debate about attacking Iraq was “about not whether but when.” The consensus on “when” was that the war on Iraq would have to wait until after Afghanistan.

The administration knew that a retaliatory invasion of Afghanistan would fly with the American public because Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorists were holed up there. But Iraq was more touch-and-go. The CIA and other intelligence sources were saying there was no evidence of a 9/11 or al-Qaeda connection to Saddam.

To justify attacking Iraq, the administration renewed charges that Saddam had a massive program underway to create weapons of mass destruction and, what’s more, that we were in imminent danger from a potential transfer of these WMDs by Saddam to Osama. The CIA’s analysts disagreed, so the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz (C-R-W) cabal set up its own secret operation at the Defense Department known as the Office of Special Plans, headed by Wolfowitz, to cook up “intelligence” that would contradict the CIA and condemn Saddam. Key to pulling off this strategic ruse was close collaboration by the nation’s “newspaper of record,” the New York Times, especially in the person of reporter Judith Miller, who had proven herself as a reliable shill through her propagandizing for the first Gulf War of George Bush, Sr. Miller became the Times’ chief fabricator of stories about Saddam’s WMD programs, which the Times later was forced to admit were bogus, bringing disgrace and scorn upon the newspaper from even its liberal media allies.

Early in 2002, the CIA sent former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson to Niger to investigate reports cited by the C-R-W cabal that Saddam was attempting to buy yellowcake uranium for his WMD program. Wilson reported finding no evidence to support the allegation. Undeterred, the C-R-W cabal pressed forward with the invasion of Iraq.

After the invasion of Iraq, in July 2003, Wilson became very vocal in exposing the bogus WMD evidence used to justify the war. This was proving not only embarrassing, but very damaging, to the administration. Wilson had to be silenced. Hmmm, why not expose his wife, Valerie Plame, as a covert operative and WMD expert for the CIA? Yes, it would be illegal, immoral, and might damage national security and put Wilson’s and Plame’s lives at risk. But, hey, it might stifle Wilson.

On July 8, 2003, two days after Wilson had issued a major newspaper and television blast against the administration for manipulating intelligence, the Times’ Judith Miller met for breakfast near the White House with Cheney’s top assistant, Scooter Libby. Miller and Libby were old friends and, like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and other members of the C-R-W cabal, are (or were) fellow neo-con members of the Council on Foreign Relations, the private organization that holds sway over U.S. foreign policy. Questioned by the FBI and grand jury, Libby gave conflicting stories, first insisting he had learned of Plame’s CIA role from journalists, but later admitting he had learned about Plame from his boss, Dick Cheney (who had learned from CIA Director — and CFR pal — George Tenet).

When subpoenaed to appear before the federal grand jury, Judith Miller assumed the martyr’s pose, insisting she couldn’t violate her confidentiality agreement with her unnamed source, Scooter Libby. The Times spent millions of dollars fighting the subpoena all the way to the Supreme Court. When that failed, Miller went to jail rather than reveal her source — even though Libby, a year earlier, had already given her permission to discuss their meeting. After 85 days in jail, Miller emerged to receive the “First Amendment Award” from the Society of Professional Journalists for her “heroic” adherence to principle.

However, Judith Miller’s jailhouse sojourn was no testimony to integrity; rather, it demonstrated the lengths to which she and her bosses at the Times — and their fellow CFR conspirators in government — will go to cover their tracks and obstruct justice.

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