Fitzgerald's match: David Addington

So they get away with outing a CIA Agent just like that, Darn it they win again, the criminals take it out again.

July 6, 2006 -- While many people believe Karl Rove is the most powerful and heartless White House advisers in the Bush-Cheney administration, Dick Cheney's friend, counsel, and Chief of
Staff David Addington is not less influential and ruthless. Addington, an Army brat who lived in Saudi Arabia where his father was stationed, never made it through the Naval Academy having dropped out during his freshman year as a Midshipman. Addington, described as a conservative Catholic, received his undergraduate degree from Georgetown and law degree from Duke. After Ronald Reagan's inauguration, Addington worked in the General Counsel's office at the CIA where he helped cover up Director Bill Casey's secret and illegal role in involving the agency in the Iran-Contra scandal. Addington honed his cover-up skills at the CIA. Working with the Republican minority staff on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and becoming Republican counsel on the Iran-Contra committee, Addington ensured that details of Oliver North's and Elliott Abrams' global panhandling for the Contras remained as secretive as possible. After all, many of the countries involved in secretly funding the Contras were dictatorships close to Vice President George H. W. Bush, including Saudi Arabia.

Addington never liked congressional interference with illegal activities carried out by Republican administrations. He felt that Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan were hamstrung by meddlesome members of Congress, independent prosecutors, and federal judges. In this, Addington had an ideological soul mate in Dick Cheney, Ford's Chief of Staff. When George H. W. Bush became President and appointed Cheney as Secretary of Defense, Cheney hired Addington as his personal special assistant and later as General Counsel for the Defense Department. If Addington and Cheney were closer than friends and ideological doppelgangers, they would have had to go to Ikea to pick out furniture.

After Clinton became President in 1993, Addington would find that his old connections to Iran-Contra figures would pay off handsomely. Addington became senior vice president and general counsel for the American Trucking Association, a lobby long associated with right-wing causes. According to CIA sources who were involved with the Iran-Contra operations, one of the American Trucking Association's most influential member companies was McLean Trucking Company, one of America's largest trucking firms. The firm was reportedly connected to an entity called the McLean Foundation, which helped funnel money to the Contras. Whatever deals Addington knew about the relationship between McLean, the American Trucking Association, and the CIA, it was clear they were significant enough for the trucking industry to give him a high paying job after the Democrats took over the White House. During his stint for the truckers, Addington formed a political action committee called the Alliance for American Leadership, an exploratory committee for a presidential run by Cheney in 1996. Addington also worked for the Holland & Knight law firm, which is very close to Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

Fitzgerald's match: David Addington

Addington served on Cheney's transition team and then became his General Counsel. It was Addington who was largely behind the U.S. abrogation of the Geneva Conventions in dealing with war prisoners and who oversaw the whittling away of legal impediments to the torturing of prisoners. Addington also championed the creation of a "unitary executive," an all-powerful White House, with Congress and the Courts taking a back seat. Addington is identified in the events leading up to the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson, Ambassador Joseph Wilson's covert CIA wife. After Scooter Libby was indicted last October, Addington took his place and another Cheney aide who was named in the outing of Plame, John Hannah, became Cheney's National Security Adviser.

In Addington, CIA Leakgate Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has likely met his match. Addington never liked independent counsels let alone special prosecutors. The mere fact that Fitzgerald was threatening the unitary executive would have prompted Addington to pull out all the stops. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Addington likely interfered in the Fitzgerald Grand Jury process. The word in Washington is that Fitzgerald was told an indictment of Rove would go no where since Bush plans to place Libby's name on the next Christmas pardon list. Libby was indicted for lying to a Grand Jury. With a pardon of Libby, Fitzgerald would have been hard pressed to bring a case against Rove or Addington's alter ego, Cheney. Chicago's crime fighting Eliot Ness met his match in native Washingtonian J. Edgar Hoover. In Washington's Addington, Chicago's Fitzgerald has witnessed history repeating itself.

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