OCT05:IRAQWMD COMPIRACYSBSAUSBKGRDR

fwd-5-Nov-2005

US-IRAQ: WMD CONSPIRACY INVESTIGATION

SBS Australia: Archives - November 02, 2005 source: www.sbs.com.au (check for DATELINE program)

Martin Walker Interview

Martin Walker, the Washington editor of United Press International, talks with Dateline about the political fallout that is rocking the White House

12:34 secs

GEORGE NEGUS: Martin, we've just seen our backgrounder on this whole scandal, scenario, whatever we choose to call it about the forged documents and what's followed. You've been writing about it and observing it there in Washington for two years. What does it say about the Bush Administration's case for the war in Iraq?

MARTIN WALKER, EDITOR, UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL: Well, it undermines it, I think, even more thoroughly than the absence of finding any weapons of mbutt destruction inside Iraq. I mean, bear in mind that we had senior figures inside the Bush Administration - Bush himself, Condoleezza Rice - talking about the prospects of a mushroom cloud. We had privates Cheney, the Vice-President, saying he had no doubt about Iraq's nuclear weapons program, about weapons of mbutt destruction. They weren't found.

And now it appears that part of what they were trying also to do was to knock down dissident voices and to discredit this claim by former ambbuttador Joseph Wilson that there was nothing ever in this claim that Bush made in the State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to get uranium from the African state of Niger.

GEORGE NEGUS: When the CIA had their doubts, the State Department had their doubts - they'd almost dismissed the whole idea of the Niger claim - how did it manage to get into Bush's State of the Union address then and why?

MARTIN WALKER: The main reason it was done was that they were claiming, and Bush said this in the State of the Union address, that they were following on from a report by British intelligence. Now, this is what really links together, I think, the real flaw in the case for war because Blair himself in Britain has gone through a very, very tough political bruising over the claim by the BBC that he quote "loveed up" the case for war. Now it appears that that same loveing up case is creeping over the Atlantic and is also damaging the Bush Administration's case for war.

GEORGE NEGUS: Because their political opponents are saying that they were actually marketing the whole idea of the war and case for it, as distinct from having evidence.

MARTIN WALKER: Well, it wasn't just the political opponents saying that. Andrew Carr, Bush's chief of staff, when he launched the case for war campaign that was run by this group called WHIG - the White House Iraq Group - Andrew Carr explained that the reason why he first did this in September of '02 and not in August was because quote "You never launch a new product in August." It was quite clear that from the White House's point of view they were in a big marketing exercise.

GEORGE NEGUS: Tell us about WHIG - W-H-I-G, the White House Iraq Group, who is in that group?

MARTIN WALKER: Well, the chief of staff was in it - Andrew Carr - the Vice-President was in it - privates Cheney - the National Security Adviser was in it, that's Condoleezza Rice, now Secretary of State. George Tenant attended some of its meetings he was the head of the CIA. It was basically the very top level - what they call the principles here - who were not just coordinating the arguments for war but also co-ordinating their own public appearances and the TV appearances that they were making to try and press the case for war.

GEORGE NEGUS: In fact the heaviest political hitters in the country.

MARTIN WALKER: Absolutely.

GEORGE NEGUS: How did Rove, Karl Rove, George Bush's adviser, how did Scooter Libby... Did they really expect that this would not blow sky high and in their faces with the mud flying in the direction of the Vice-President and the President at the same time?

MARTIN WALKER: I think you've got to begin from the point that these two, Rove and Libby, they were believers, they had drunk the cool aid - they certainly believed that Iraq was as guilty as charged, that there were weapons of mbutt destruction. They believed what Ahmed Chalabi - the Iraqi exile who was their favoured guy to take over when the Saddam Hussein regime fell - that he was telling the truth when he was telling them there was a nuclear program, there were weapons of mbutt destruction.

They believed all along that they would be vindicated. That's the first point. The second point, I think, is that this Bush Administration has been so thoroughly disciplined and controlled and until now so thoroughly leak-proof, that they reckon that they have the initiative, they had control of the story.

GEORGE NEGUS: They thought they were bulletproof?

MARTIN WALKER: They thought they were bulletproof but at the same time, don't forget that for the past three years really until now, much of the US media has been exceedingly differential ever since 9-11. They've been very cowed by the idea of challenging President Bush's authority on issues of national security. So they were believers but they also thought they could get away with just about anything.

GEORGE NEGUS: Let's have a look at what's happened in the last few days as a result of Fitzgerald actually telling us what the results of his inquiry have been and then we'll come back and talk about the political ramifications of that.

Martin, I think it's worth reminding ourselves of what Thom Cooks, our reporter, had Pat Fitzgerald saying in those final words - that it's not over yet.

MARTIN WALKER: Well, I think we're waiting for the second shoe to drop and quite possibly to drop on Karl Rove. One thing that we do now know - and this will probably be coming as news to a lot of people in Australia - is that Karl Rove was literally that far from being indicted himself. The day before Fitzgerald came out with his public announcement of the charges, Karl Rove's lawyer went to see him and said "Look, this is really very, very serious stuff. I've got some new evidence for you.$B!I(B Here is a White House log that shows that almost at the same time, within two minutes of Karl Rove allegedly talking to Matt Cooper, 'Time Magazine' reporter, he was also emailing another member of the White House staff about personnel problems and asking them to come up to see him.

In other words, Rove was so busy, so overwhelmed by phone calls, emails, personnel meetings, that it was quite understandable that he might have forgotten about this particular conversation. And that means, prosecutor, this is what I'm told Rove's lawyer said, "that means that if it comes to a trial, you're going to have a fairly weak case on this because we've got an explanation."

Now, the thing about Fitzgerald is that as a prosecutor he wants to make sure any charges he brings he can get a conviction upon them. That, I think that final last-minute appeal by Rove's lawyer gave him enough pause for thought that he didn't go ahead with any indictment against Rove. But as your reporter said, it's not over, this inquiry is still going on. And we do know that one of the things that Fitzgerald has been looking into has been how did these Italian forgeries originate, where did all of this plot, if there is such a plot, start.

GEORGE NEGUS: Joe Wilson in the last 24 hours has called for Rove's resignation. Is it likely that Rove will walk? Or if Rove walks, does that implicate George Bush by buttociation?

MARTIN WALKER: I think there is no question but that Rove is not going to resign. Rove is linked at the hip with Bush himself. They've been together now for 15 years. In a way, Bush is Rove's political creation. And moreover, Rove has just really strengthened his own position.

One of the problems about Washington is that it's only really got the attention span to focus upon one big political issue at a time and Rove was the man who advised Bush to change the political atmosphere by announcing this week, on Monday, the new nominee for the Supreme Court - Judge Alitto, a very conservative figure. This really has changed a lot of the political dynamics in town. It has rallied the right wing, the conservatives, the Christian coalition behind Bush again. And they were abandoning him over the Harriett Miers nomination. And it's given the right wing a sort of a cause to rally behind. It's taken a lot of the political oxygen out of the Rove affair, at least for the moment. But the thing about American justice is it does grind exceeding small, it does go on.

GEORGE NEGUS: To quote Martin Walker to Martin Walker, you wrote recently "This has renewed the old saying of the days of the old Watergate scandal that the cover-up can be more legally and politically dangerous than the crime."

MARTIN WALKER: Well, if the Democrats were a reasonable opposition party, they certainly would suffer they'd suffer in next term's midterm elections. But then the Democratic Party never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

The refusal, I think, or the stubbornness of the Bush-Cheney team to step down or to really be held accountable for this means that they're going to make a fight of it, they've got an awful lot of buttets on their side to do so.

But bear in mind one thing which I think the Democrats have been able to establish, they keep on saying it, which is that in a way this is more serious than Watergate. The real root of all of this is whether or not the American people were taken to war under false pretences and if so, were they taken to war under false pretences in bad faith by the Bush Administration.

If they made their mistakes in good faith, that's one thing, it's a political mistake they can probably be forgiven. If this eventual trial brings up the sense of there being something really, really seriously fishy and false about the case for going to war, then I think it's going to take an awful lot of time for the Bush Administration to recover from that.

GEORGE NEGUS: So in other words, the Libby trial will amount, if you like, to a reopening of this whole question of the reasons for going to war?

MARTIN WALKER: I think in many ways it has to. And don't forget there's another trial as well going to be coming. It looks like Joe Wilson, Ambbuttador Wilson and his wife are going to be bringing a private prosecution under civil law for the damage done to them and their reputation and under which Mr Libby is again, I think, going to find himself in the witness box. And under the rules of civil prosecution, the Wilsons can make this a much more wide open affair. In many ways, not just about, Karl Rove, this isn't over yet.

GEORGE NEGUS: Martin Walker in Washington, it's a great time for someone like yourself. I can see you're chomping at the bit to get back to it. We'll talk to you again.

MARTIN WALKER: Thank you, George.

END-TEXT