Chicago Tribune Editorial - Answers, Mr. Cheney

Answers, Mr. Cheney
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
Published April 11, 2006

Vice President Dick Cheney is among the most secretive members of the Bush administration. But he's been in his bunker long enough. It's time for him to answer some questions--and not in the friendly venue of Fox News.

Given the allegations about his role in the surreptitious disclosure of classified information related to the war in Iraq, Americans have a right to hear his story. The best way to get it is by an unscripted news conference in which the vice president confronts all the questions that have been raised. For him to remain silent amid the current turmoil suggests that he--or the president--has something to hide.

Cheney has long been suspected of involvement in revealing the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame--whose husband, Joseph Wilson, had publicly disputed the Bush administration on Saddam Hussein's supposed attempts to obtain uranium for nuclear weapons. The vice president's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, has been indicted on perjury and obstruction of justice charges over conversations he had with reporters about Plame.

Last week, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald filed a brief that says Libby also leaked secret information from a CIA report on Iraq. According to this account, Libby says the vice president instructed him to tell a reporter that a key finding of a 2002 intelligence assessment was that Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure" uranium from Africa. The brief also says Libby was told by Cheney that President Bush had personally authorized the disclosure of this classified material.

The White House has not denied that allegation. In fact, it turns out that the president had ordered the intelligence estimate to be declassified. But whether the facts support what Libby reportedly says--or what Cheney purportedly told him--is yet to be established. A senior administration official told The New York Times that though Bush declassified the report, he did not tell anyone to discuss it with journalists.

So someone is lying. It could be that Libby acted on his own in leaking the information. It could be that Cheney told him to do so without the president's approval. Or it could be that Bush was behind the leak. Those are questions that the Cheney ought to step forward and answer, along with questions about the unmasking of Plame.

Another issue worth scrutiny goes to the accuracy of, and motive for, the leak. It came in July 2003, when the administration was being faulted for its failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq--which sparked claims that it dissembled in the runup to war. The leak was meant to show that the president had solid grounds to think Hussein might acquire nuclear weapons.

We now know, however, that the leak itself was anything but solid. In the first place, the charge about Hussein's quest for uranium was not among the four "key judgments" of the assessment. In the second place, far from confirming that allegation, the report said the evidence was "inconclusive."

Why would someone in the White House want to perpetrate this sort of deception? Excusing the failure to find the forbidden weapons is one explanation. Another, offered by prosecutor Fitzgerald, is that it was part of a "concerted action" to "discredit, punish or seek revenge" against Wilson.

Bush was well within his authority to declassify the report. But for anyone in the administration to misrepresent its conclusions, particularly if the motive was to punish a critic, is an abuse of the public trust on a subject of the gravest urgency--the decision to go to war.

Who was responsible for that apparent misconduct? We don't know. But the American people deserve an answer. And a no-holds-barred news conference with the vice president would go a long way toward providing one.