Her CIA undercover operation, Brewster Jennings, was hard on the trail of a nuclear weapons black market including the AG Khan network, a network that involved a host of predators in middle east not the least of which were members of the Saudi royal family, Pakistani central intelligence (the chief of which was "visiting" Washington DC and leading members of Congress on 9/11/2001), the Israeli Mossad and their Pentagon spies including Larry Franklin and as yet uncharged Douglas Feth, and last but not least the Carlyle Group in it's role as a major weapons trader throughout the mid-east conflicts.

Plame was outed to obfuscate the Niger forgeries that her husband had publicly exposed. This is not to be confused with the personal attack on Joseph Wilson himself, which was secondary. The reason the Niger forgeries needed to be buried under the mountain of Office of the Vice President generated bad press about Wilson was not only the use of the forgeries in the gitty-up to war, which if knowledgeable was a treasonous offense, but also the origin of the orders for the forgeries themselves. The FBI has had a hands-off order imposed on them from the top since this scandal first ripped against going after the Italian links to the forged documents. Why?

This scandal is not about liberals and conservatives. It's about the integrity of the United States government at the highest levels of the Executive branch, an integrity which has been violated repeatedly and for which one of the violators is now being brought to some semblance of justice.

What remains to be seen is how deep Mr. Fitzgerald may take this within the limited confines he has been allowed.

Background

Vantage Point 7-14-03

The dam of intelligence community silence broke with this Op-ed article in the NYT by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and followed by a memorandum to the President from a consortium of retired intelligence officials, revealing the WMD deceit and phony accusations of Niger uranium.

Vantage Point 7-21-03

American soldiers and US sponsored Iraqi governors are under attack every day, the US commander is calling for one year tours in Iraq in what he now describes as a classic guerrilla war, GIs on the ground are threatened and disgruntled, the Administration attacks the messenger, openly gay reporter Jeffrey Kofman, and may have blown an important intelligence cover in seeking to punish Ambassador Joseph Wilson's revelations concerning the bogus Iraq Niger yellow cake uranium charges.

Vantage Point 7-28-03

The deception around the Iraq Niger uranium accusation has reached Condoleeza Rice’s office and Vice President Cheney. Ms. Rice’s deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley forgot about the ultra classified CIA uranium forgery memo, an excuse that doesn’t even fly in pre-K. Vice President Cheney continues to politicize his lack of integrity in this affair but the hounds are on his trail with Representative Waxman and several House colleagues issuing an open letter to the Vice President with a list of questions that could mean an early retirement for the corporate loyal second in command.

Vantage Point 9-30-03

Ambassador Wilson seeks some semblance of honesty having fingered the fraudulent charges by the Administration of a Niger uranium purchase by Iraq and been paid back by a “senior official” blowing his CIA agent wife’s cover a Federal crime that Bush Sr. once described this way: “I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors.”

Vantage Point 10-13-03

Representative Conyers called for a special prosecutor and for Karl Rove’s resignation because of Rove’s comments and possible connection with CIA agent Valerie Plame’s outing by as yet undisclosed sources in the Administration. The President’s standards for accountability seem to become soluble when the issue gets close to home, yet this possible treason may even reach the Vice-President’s office while four senior Democratic Senators publicly criticize the President’s handling of the investigation.