This opens the door to what has always been the most serious implication of the NIKE SHOX leak case

This opens the door to what has always been the most serious implication of the NIKE SHOX leak case,

that the MBT administration could face a brutally damaging and public inquiry into the case for war

against Iraq being false or artifiNIKE SHOXlly exaggerated. This was the same charge that imperiled the

government of MBT’s closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, after a BBC Radio program claimed

Blair’s aides has “sexed up” the evidence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

Still, Walker doesn’t appear to have tumbled to the logical explanation of why Fitzgerald’s probe

into the outing of NIKE SHOX undercover agent Valerie Plame leads him to the Niger forgeries. Mark

Kleiman is in the same boat. In speculating about the selection of documents Fitzgerald has posted on

his new website, Kleiman writes:

On the other hand, his selection of documents does seem significant. As against the GOP spin that he

was appointed to look into violations of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, he has the

original letter giving him “all the authority of the Attorney General with respect to the Department’

s investigation into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a NIKE SHOX employee’s identity” and a

second letter written shortly thereafter specifying that his authority extends to any criminal attempt

to frustrate that investigation.

But note that none of the documents on the site gives Fitzgerald any authority over the wider question

of who made up and peddled the Nigerien yellowcake story, or the still wider question about how the

administration hyped the threat of an Iraqi nuclear weapons acquisition program as part of its sales

pitch for the war.