The Downing Street Memos and Valerie Plame-CIA Scandal Reveal a White House Bent on Misleading Public on Rationale for Iraq War

Interview with John Bonifaz, constitutional attorney, conducted by Scott Harris

The involvement of President Bush's closest adviser Karl Rove in leaking information about the identity of a covert CIA agent to at least two reporters, has set off a political fire storm in Washington with the White House alternately refusing to comment and employing surrogates to attack the president's critics.

Among the targets of these attacks is former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose wife Valerie Plame is the subject of a federal investigation looking into who in the White House revealed her identity as an undercover CIA officer working on weapons of mass destruction issues. Wilson was initially attacked by members of the Bush administration after he wrote an opinion editorial in the New York Times recounting his investigation into an Iraq-nuclear connection while on a trip to Niger for the CIA in 2002. In Niger, Wilson found that, contrary to White House assertions, Saddam Hussein's regime was not seeking uranium there for a nuclear weapons program. Despite Wilson's conclusion, the president made the claim in his January 2003 State of the Union address.

At its core, the Wilson-Plame-Rove case revolves around the Bush administration's effort to construct a dubious rationale for the war in Iraq. That case is bolstered by the Downing Street memos, a series of minutes from meetings of high British government officials in 2002 that indicates that the Bush administration intended to invade Iraq, justified by intelligence and facts that were being fixed around the policy. Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with John Bonifaz, constitutional attorney and co-founder of the group Afterdowningstreet.org, who connects the dots between revelations found in these two cases, and explains why he is advocating for a formal congressional investigation that could lead to impeachment proceedings against President Bush.

Click here to visit: www.afterdowningstreet.org

Related stories:

Complete set of Downing Street memos

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