[lbo-talk] Gore: wiretapping could be impeachable offense

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Wed Jan 18 03:45:17 PST 2006


On Wed, 18 Jan 2006, Chuck Grimes wrote:


> As for Cheney, a similar heavy handed probe into Halliburton and the
> Pentagon, along with probes into Delay, Abramoff, Enron, and the massive
> public utility frauds that took place in the first term would likely make
> Cheney impeachable on fraud, collusion, conspiracy, and obstruction of
> justice.

It seems to me that under Michael Hoover's "moderate" criteria, Cheney could be indicted for all the same things as Bush. But if we are looking for something that passes his strict test, I think the best place to find it would probably be the faking of the Yellowcake affair. What Cheney did there -- meeting with Italian intelligence on his own without reporting it to the NSC -- is technically illegal under the NSC charter. As well as being perfectly representative of his high crimes and misdemeanors: he was the center of the faking of information to misled the country into war, and this was simply the highest profile and most clearly against the law example. The reason he met with them was specifically to stovepipe in a story that couldn't get in any other way because it had already been discredited. It was conscious and on the record manipulation.

When Patrick Fitzgerald (the Plame case investigator) gave his press conference, there were lots of rumors that he was looking into this. And of course there's the rest of the Plame case that might catch up with Cheney yet. It was, after all, his chief of staff who got indicted. And Fitzgerald is still burrowing.

Michael



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