Maybe I just don't get it, but why was Cheney been so afraid of being seen as providing any impetus for Wilson's trip to Niger.
Sure, it makes him look like a fool for not listening to Wilson when he got back with the news there was nothing there.
But is that enough to spark the apparent panic about any possible link between Wilson's trip and Cheney's curiousity about what really happened in Niger?
Maybe I just can't imagine the mind of a neocon quite well enough, but take a look at this part of today's WaPo article and tell me what you think.
WaPo article
The pertinent bit is below the fold.
Cheney's staff was looking into Wilson as early as May 2003, nearly two months before columnist Robert D. Novak identified Wilson's wife as a CIA operative, according to administration sources familiar with the effort. What stirred the interest of the vice president's office was a May 6 New York Times column by Nicholas D. Kristof in which the mission to Niger was described without using Wilson's name. Kristof's column said Cheney had authorized the trip.
According to former senior CIA officials, the vice president's office pressed the CIA to find out how the trip was arranged, because Cheney did not know that a query he made much earlier to a CIA briefer about a report alleging Iraq was seeking Niger uranium had triggered Wilson's trip. "They were very uptight about the vice president being tagged that way," a former senior CIA official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. "They asked questions that set [off] a chain of inquiries."
By early June, several weeks before Libby is said to have known Plame's name, the State Department had prepared a memo on the Niger case that contained information on Plame in a section marked "(S)" for secret. Around that time, Libby knew about the trip's origins, though in an interview with The Washington Post at the time, he did not mention any role played by Wilson's wife.
By July 12, however, both Rove and Libby and perhaps other senior White House officials knew about Wilson's wife's position at the CIA and, according to lawyers familiar with testimony in the probe, used that information with reporters to undermine the significance of Wilson's trip.
Please, help me to understand why Cheney seemed at least as afraid that he would be seen as instigating Wilson's trip, as he was of the news Wilson brought back.