The latest revelation from Scott McClellan’s book proves what has long been suspected: Despite earlier statements professing ignorance about the conspiracy among his top officials, including Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, to betray a covert CIA program tracking the international black market for weapons of mass destruction, Bush knew about it all along:
The White House deftly distracted public attention away from the true scandal here — the treasonous acts of the president’s men — by focusing on the vivid personalities of the covert agent, Valerie Plame, and her husband Joe Wilson.

McClellan recalled a day in April 2006, when the unfolding perjury case against Libby revealed that the president had secretly declassified portions of a 2002 intelligence report about Iraq’s weapons capabilities to help his aides deflect criticism that his case for war was weak. Some of the most high-profile criticism was coming from Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.

The president was leaving an event in North Carolina, McClellan recalled, and as they walked to Air Force One a reporter yelled out a question: Had the president, who had repeatedly condemned the selective release of secret intelligence information, enabled Scooter Libby to leak classified information to The New York Times to bolster the administration’s arguments for war?

McClellan took the question to the president, telling Bush: “He’s saying you yourself were the one that authorized the leaking of this information.”

“And he said, ‘Yeah, I did.’ And I was kind of taken aback,” McClellan said.

Let’s look back at two of Bush’s statements to the press about this treasonous betrayal of a U.S. covert operation.

On Sept. 30, 2003, in response to a question from a reporter about his administration’s, George Bush said:

BUSH: I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business…

I don’t know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I’d like to know it, and we’ll take the appropriate action.

On July 18, 2005:

BUSH: We have a serious ongoing investigation here. (Laughter [from reporters].) And it’s being played out in the press. And I think it’s best that people wait until the investigation is complete before you jump to conclusions. And I will do so, as well. I don’t know all the facts. I want to know all the facts. The best place for the facts to be done is by somebody who’s spending time investigating it. I would like this to end as quickly as possible so we know the facts, and if someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration.

The Bush team and their enablers among Republicans in the Congress and the media deftly distracted public attention away from the true scandal here — the treasonous acts of the president’s men who revealed the identity of the secret agent in charge of the CIA WMD program — by focusing on the vivid personalities of the agent, Valerie Plame, and her husband Joe Wilson.

As much as one might admire the Wilsons, this has never been about them. It is about a power-crazed cabal in the White House who abused their power to go after their political enemies without giving a thought to the potentially catastrophic results of their actions. We’ll never know whether the next terror attack could have been prevented if Plame’s program had not been exposed. We’ll never know if any, or how many, of her operatives around the world have been killed or tortured because of the White House conspiracy.

If there ever was an act by a president that was prima facie impeachable, this is it.

H/t: Americans United for Change