Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Is John Hannah Coming Clean?
If this blog were The New York Post, the headline would include the word "rat" in it.
The Post always does that. Always calls informants "rats."
But if John Hannah is talking. If John Hannah is coming clean to Patrick Fitzgerald about everything he knows about the Plame leak, and - possibly - the falsification of WMD intelligence claims about Iraq, then he's certainly not a rat.
John Hannah would be a patriot.
Even if it's just to save his own scurvy neck.
At Raw Story, Larisa Alexandrovna and Jason Leopold have an article called "Cheney aide cooperating with CIA outing probe, sources say" which claims that John Hannah is singing his heart out in the Plame leake probe:
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.
Others close to the probe say that if Hannah is cooperating with the special prosecutor then he was likely going to be charged as a co-conspirator and may have cut a deal.
Last night, Raw Story leaked details from a New York Daily News article entitled "Cheney may be target of probe" written by James Gordon Meek, Thomas M. DeFrank and Kenneth R. Bazinet.
The Daily News claimed:
"They have got a senior cooperating witness - someone who is giving them all of that," a source who has been questioned in the leak probe told the Daily News yesterday.
But this isn't exactly the first time that Hannah has been fingered as a possible informant.
In fact, it was speculated about over a year-and-a-half ago for the Moonie-owned UPI/Insight in an article written by Richard Sale called "Cheney's Staff Focus of Probe".
Sale wrote:
Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said.
According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were the two Cheney employees. "We believe that Hannah was the major player in this," one federal law-enforcement officer said. Calls to the vice president's office were not returned, nor did Hannah and Libby return calls.
The strategy of the FBI is to make clear to Hannah "that he faces a real possibility of doing jail time" as a way to pressure him to name superiors, one federal law-enforcement official said.
Perhaps Jack Bauer went to work on Hannah and got him to talk.
Perhaps Hannah's seen the error of his neo-con ways (....yeah...right...).
Either way, if the reports are true then there is hope that the truth will come out.
If Hannah's really singing to the Feds, then many answers might be forthcoming.
Nearly 2,000 US troops have lost their lives in the illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq (over 2,000 Americans have died including contractors as Luke has written about a number of times but I guess they don't count to others).
For sure, Judith Miller has blood on her hands.
So does every other journalist who ignored the numerous articles in the international and alternative press which reported that Iraq had no WMDs.
I don't care if President Clinton and Clintonistas have gone on the record saying otherwise.
Why is it that right wingers only point to Clinton being truthful when it comes to the myth of Saddam's WMDs?
Judith Miller told her co-workers at the Times:
"W.M.D. - I got it totally wrong. The analysts, the experts and the journalists who covered them - we were all wrong. If your sources are wrong, you are wrong. I did the best job that I could."
But that was a lie.
And it's a disgrace that Don Van Natta Jr., Adam Liptak and Clifford J. Levy allowed that lie to run unchallenged.
We weren't all wrong.
We just weren't all hearing what we wanted to hear.
There's no need for me to link to the numerous articles that said otherwise...since this is the blogosphere...and all of us on the left had read them in 2002, well before the invasion.
Sing your heart out, John Hannah.
Sing the song that most of the world wants to hear.
The intelligence was perverted and manipulated by the Bush Administration, members of both political parties, and the Mainstream Media.
Rats don't sing. Patriots do.
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