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Kingston, NY - With indictment decisions likely to be announced this week in Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of who in the Bush Administration leaked the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame to the news media, Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) today renewed his call for an expansion of that probe to include the motive behind the name leak.
"It is imperative that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald look into not only who exposed Valerie Plame's identity, but also what the motive was for doing so," Hinchey said. "Getting to the bottom of who revealed Ms. Plame's covert identity is only scratching the surface of a much larger and significant story. All of the evidence points to a detailed attempt to discredit Plame's husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, since he was going public with firsthand information that disproved the Bush Administration's claims that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger for nuclear weapons. I'm confident that a thorough investigation of why Valerie Plame's identity was revealed will lead to substantive charges against top Administration officials for lying about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."
Last month, Hinchey led a group of 40 House members calling on Fitzgerald to expand the scope of his investigation to include the motive behind exposing Plame's identity. With indictments widely expected this week, Hinchey and his colleagues are renewing their push for Fitzgerald to examine any criminal violations that the White House may have committed by falsifying intelligence about Iraq.
Between January 20 and January 29, 2003, the Administration made a series of claims - which are now known to be false - that Iraq had sought uranium for nuclear weapons from Niger. These claims were at the very core of the president's final justification for war, and apparently were made despite broad internal disagreement over their veracity. Joseph Wilson then exposed the Administration's lies in his New York Times opinion piece on July 6, 2003. The desire to discredit Ambassador Wilson is the nearly-universally accepted motive behind the leaking of his wife's identity.
Since it is against the law to lie to Congress, it is fully possible that the Bush Administration's claims of an Iraq-Niger connection were illegal -- especially given the venues at which the claims were delivered (including President Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address before Congress). That fact, when combined with the link between the Administration's behavior and the subsequent exposure of Ms. Wilson (Valerie Plame), is sufficient justification for Mr. Fitzgerald to expand his efforts.
"The American people's confidence in the integrity of their government is what is ultimately at stake with this investigation," Hinchey said. "President Bush repeatedly used the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction as his primary justification for the need to invade Iraq. The disclosure of Valerie Plame's identity has the ability to unravel this elaborate scheme by the Bush Administration to invent the weapons of mass destruction excuse for war. Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald owes it to the nation to take this investigation as far as he needs to so that the American people know the whole truth."
With the grand jury scheduled to expire on October 28, Fitzgerald has the ability to either ask the presiding judge to extend the term of the grand jury or to use a new grand jury to examine further charges, including ones against Bush Administration officials for false uranium claims.
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