Plame...wheels within wheels...

From a commentor on Paul Begala's post at the TPM Cafe:

I think it's important to realize that the issue at stake is likely to be far more than a "retaliation outing".

Rumor has it that there is a far more serious reason for the Plame outing than "retaliation" - or at least retaliation against Joe Wilson.

The rumor is that Plame's CIA group was closing in on the people who forged the Niger documents - and they were shut down to protect the people we now are fairly sure were the forgers: Michael Ledeen, a couple CIA agents - and possibly all under the orders of Dick Cheney. The result of the shutdown supposedly compromised a hundred CIA undercover agents and interrupted a fairly successful WMD operation that was buying nuclear materials on the black market and thus removing them from that market.

The more serious rumor is that the Russian-Israeli Mafia was incensed at the success of Plame's operation, and using their Israeli connections to the neocons in the Pentagon and White House, got the operation shut down.

And THAT would be major treason against the United States.

And if the LeakGate investigation gets that far, it's "game over" for a lot of people around Bush.
Especially if what Sibel Edmonds, the FBI whistleblower, has said is true: that "senior elected government officials" are involved with Middle Eastern and Central Asian organized crime groups involved in drug and weapons smuggling.

Is it possible that we see here an overlap, not merely with the AIPAC spy scandal, but with the reasons why Edmonds was gagged in the name of "foreign relations" and "national security"?

Stay tuned.

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