On July 12, two days before Novak's column, a Post reporter [ed. Walter Pincus] was told by an administration official that the White House had not paid attention to the former ambassador's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction. Plame's name was never mentioned and the purpose of the disclosure did not appear to be to generate an article, but rather to undermine Wilson's report.

Boondoggle is defined as "a government-funded project with no purpose other than political patronage." Boondoggle is a synonym for junket.

Now, let's look at this for a moment. On July 6th, when Dick Cheney sat down to read the New York Times editorial page, he was realizing a fear he had expressed nearly a month before.

In early June 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney met with President Bush and told him that CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson and that she was responsible for sending him on a fact-finding mission to Niger to check out reports about Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium from the African country, according to current and former White House officials and attorneys close to the investigation to determine who revealed Plame-Wilson's undercover status to the media...

...The attorneys and officials close to the case said over the weekend that the hastily arranged meeting was called by Cheney to "brief the president" on Wilson's increasing public criticism about the White House's use of the Niger intelligence and the negative impact it would eventually have on the administration's credibility if the public and Congress found out it was true, the sources said...

A more aggressive effort would come a week or so later when Cheney - who, sources said, was "consumed" with retaliating against Wilson because of his attacks on the administration's rationale for war - met with President Bush a second time and told the president that there was talk of "Wilson going public" and exposing the flawed Niger intelligence. [emphasis mine]

Dick Cheney thought that Valerie Plame Wilson was responsible for Wilson's trip because he was told she was responsible for the trip by Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman on or about June 10th. Scooter Libby's notes show that he was informed of Plame's role by Cheney on June 12th. That is why Cheney wrote "...did his wife send him on a junket?" in the margins of Wilson's editorial. Now, let's jump ahead a little bit to September 14, 2003 when Dick Cheney appeared on Meet the Press:

VICE PRES. CHENEY:...I don’t know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn’t judge him. I have no idea who hired him and it never came...

MR. RUSSERT: The CIA did.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Who in the CIA, I don’t know.

Think about the level of deceit in that statement. We now know that Dick Cheney was keenly interested, from at least the time Nicholas Kristoff's column Missing in Action: Truth appeared on May 6, 2003, in how Wilson's trip came about . By June 10th, he was informed erroneously that his trip was arranged (at least in part) by Wilson's wife. By June 12th he had informed his chief of staff of Plame's role. By September 14th there was controversy over the outing of Plame (in fact, the CIA requested the Department of Justice conduct an investigation on September 16th...the same day Scott McClellan said it was 'ridiculous' to suggest that Libby or Rove had leaked Plame's name). And yet, there Cheney was on Meet the Press stating that he still had no idea who in the CIA was responsible for sending Wilson on the trip. Are we to believe that Dick Cheney had not been able to ascertain the facts surrounding the origin of Wilson's trip by that late date? It's ridiculous.

If he had been telling the truth it would be an admission that his earlier information and all the White House talking points about Plame had been erroneous (which they were). But what Cheney was really doing with Tim Russert was concealing his role in the outing of Valerie Plame. It was Cheney that originated the idea of calling calling Wilson's trip a 'junket' or a 'boondoggle'. That's what the marginalia tells us. And in order to make that case, it was imperative that reporters understand that his wife worked in the CIA.

Let's look at how that went down.

Then, on July 12 — two days before the immortal column in which Robert Novak mentioned that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA — Pincus was on the phone with a person he describes as an administration official (and not Lewis Libby). They were talking about a somewhat different topic, and then the official began to complain about the attention that Wilson’s arguments had been receiving. Didn’t Pincus know, the official said, that Wilson’s wife was at the CIA, and that she had cooked up the Niger trip? “It was, ‘Why are you writing about it? It’s a boondoggle. She arranged it,’” Pincus recalls.

This July 12 conversation, Pincus says, was the first time he ever heard of Valerie Plame’s CIA employment. (In previous accounts, he has not been entirely explicit about that point.)

...Pincus never wrote about Valerie Plame — in part, he says, because he already knew a fair amount about the origins of Wilson’s trip from various sources, including some in the CIA. He did not think it was true that Plame had arranged the trip; and even if that were so, he thought, it had little bearing on the merits or lack thereof of Wilson’s report. After Novak’s column ran, he says, “I talked to the agency people, and they said it wasn’t true.”

Not only did Pincus disbelieve their account (unlike paid jackasses like Clifford May) he then called Ambassador Wilson to tell him, "They're coming after you." Pincus's experiences followed the same pattern as the call between Rove and Matt Cooper that occurred on July 11th. Cooper told his editor that the information on 'Wilson's wife' was "on double super secret background" and Pincus said the "purpose of the disclosure did not appear to be to generate an article, but rather to undermine Wilson's report."

Robert Novak's column outing Valerie Plame appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times and other papers on July 14th, but it hit the syndicated wire service on July 11th. So, all these leaks were occurring in this same time period. What's not clear is why Novak used her name. As Fitzgerald revealed on May 5th, and again yesterday (.pdf), Cheney and Libby found out immediately they had fucked up by letting Novak go public.

The July 14 Chicago Sun Times column by Mr. Novak is relevant because on the day the article was published, a CIA official was asked in the defendant’s [ed. Libby's] presence, by another person in the OVP, whether that CIA official had read that column. (The CIA official had not.) At some time thereafter, as discussed briefly at the March 5 oral argument, the CIA official discussed in the defendant’s presence the dangers posed by disclosure of the CIA affiliation of one of its employees as had occurred in the Novak column. This evidence directly contradicts the defense position that the defendant had no motive to lie because at the time of his interview and testimony the defendant thought that neither he nor anyone else had done anything wrong.

There are still mysteries to solve in l'affair plame but we have a lot of answers. It's not clear whether or not Dick Cheney intended for Valerie Plame's name and front-company to be exposed. That could have been an accident. It could have been an act of recklessness or sloppiness on Novak's part. Rove told Cooper about Wilson's wife on super duper deep background. Pincus has never made it clear whether he felt free to publish her employment, but he didn't sense that was the leaker's intention.

What is definitely clear now is that it was Dick Cheney that came up with the idea to smear Wilson by telling reporters about his wife's employment. And that is more than enough reason for Cheney to be asked to resign, or to be impeached. Dick Cheney should take his underlings place on trial for his freedom.