ROVEGATE: John Hannah Flipped
18 October 2005 12:05 pm by Taylor Marsh
A senior aide to Vice President Dick Cheney
is cooperating with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the outing of
CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, sources close to the investigation say. Individuals
familiar with Fitzgerald’s case tell RAW STORY that John Hannah, a senior
national security aide on loan to Vice President Dick Cheney from the offices
of then-Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security
Affairs, John Bolton, was named as a target of Fitzgerald’s probe. They
say he was told in recent weeks that he could face imminent indictment for
his role in leaking Plame-Wilson’s name to reporters unless he cooperated
with the investigation. TARGET:
JOHN HANNAH
We’ve got the guy who turned.
The story right now goes that John Hannah was evidently dispatched
by Vice President Dick Cheney’s office to leak Valerie Plame’s name in order
to “muzzle” Wilson.
Oops. Guess you better know the guy your dealing with, Dick,
before you decide to put a “hit” out on him.
To refresh your memory, Joe Wilson was the guy who walked into
a press conference back before the first Gulf War with a noose as a neck tie, basically
saying, Come and get me, Saddam. Wilson refused to leave when Saddam threatened him. So, after
staring down Saddam, it’s doubtful if W.’s Dick is going to scare him. Going
after this man’s wife? Well, Wilson ended up giving as good as he got.
Wilson fingered Hannah in his book.
Hannah is also a player in the “stovepiping”
of intelligence, which I’ve been discussing on this site since Seymour
Hersh pretty much coined the phrase.
The memo, obtained by NEWSWEEK,
suggests that the INC last year was directly feeding intelligence reports
about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and purported ties to terrorism to
one of Cheney’s top foreign- policy aides. Cheney staffers later pushed
INC info—including defectors’ claims about WMD and terror ties—to
bolster the case that Saddam’s government posed a direct threat to America.
But the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies have strongly questioned
the reliability of defectors supplied by the INC. Cheney
and the Raw Intelligence
(RawStory also links to this article)
The INC, Iraqi National Congress, was led by none other than
Ahmad Chalabi. (If you’ve ever watched “From 9/11 to Iraq” — it
appears in the left margin — Chalabi is shown towards the end of it.)
Chalabi and Judy Miller were (are?) tight and he allegedly was
feeding Miller information about WMDs that the the president, the vice president
and the administration wanted to hear.
Chalabi is the guy, you may remember, who brought us “Curveball.”
Hannah is currently under investigation over the INC intelligence
imbroglio. Fitzgerald gave him even bigger troubles. Want to bet it’s why he
flipped?
