"Lesser Neocons of L'Affaire Plame"--by Christopher Deliso

[laststeamtrain]

Lesser Neocons of L'Affaire Plame

by Christopher Deliso
balkanalysis.com

From start to finish, the Niger deception and the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame depended on a relay team of hawkish officials providentially placed throughout various government agencies. These included the CIA, the Pentagon and its Office of Special Plans (now under official investigation by the Pentagon's Office of the Inspector General), the State Department, and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), performing a handoff of information from the point of origin (the CIA) to the ultimate "commissioners" of the inquiry, the masterminds in the White House and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Considering the frequently attested intra- and interfactional nature of all of these agencies, it is understandable why the highest officials in the land jostled to get their "people" strategically inserted throughout the departments, where they could garner inside information and hinder the objectives of their ostensibly direct employers whenever they conflicted with the goals of their real minders.

Aside from the high-visibility officials involved or presumably involved in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame – Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, etc. – we also have a generous sprinkling of neocons who, while somewhat less well known, have played a crucial role in not only the Plame outing but in policy-crafting and, perhaps, criminal activities as well.

The present study considers four such figures: David Wurmser and Frederick Fleitz, both formerly employed in the State Department office of the Madman with the Handlebar Mustache, John Bolton; Marc Grossman, a longtime State Department official recently turned lobbyist; and Eric Edelman, like Grossman a former ambassador to Turkey, longtime Cheneyite, and current recess appointee to Doug Feith's old position as No. 3 in the Pentagon....

http://www.antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=8137