Here it is folks.

The Wilson Op-Ed piece, annotated in Cheney’s hand! This places the Vice President, once and for all, at the epicenter of the outing of Valerie Plame. A larger, legible copy may be found at the link below. Download and store it alongside your copy of the Constitution. CheneyNYTarticle515x460

In the July 2003, NYT piece, Joe Wilson describes his trip to Niger at the behest of the CIA and criticizes the White House for misusing intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

Wilson’s comment, “While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono)…” is underlined and Cheney has penned, "Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us?"

Cheney’s scribbling continues, "Or did his wife send him on a junket?"

This annotated article is one of the pieces of evidence Patrick Fitzgerald intends to introduce in the perjury and obstruction of justice trial of Scooter Libby. “Those annotations support the proposition that publication of the Wilson Op-Ed acutely focused the attention of the Vice President and the defendant -- his chief of staff -- on Mr. Wilson," Fitzgerald wrote in his filing.

In fact, whether it was Cheney's explicit intention or not, two days later Libby and White House political guru Karl Rove were telling reporters that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked at the CIA.

But, you tell me, what kind of sane person would consider a secret mission to an impoverished, landlocked country like Niger a junket? Someone quite delusional, you say? Or, someone so consumed with such a fury to discredit, punish and ruin his enemies that the preposterousness of the accusation doesn't really matter?

Fitzgerald is still considering filing charges against Rove, whose testimony, like Libby's, has changed dramatically over time. Cheney’s notes also offer an insight into an often overlooked aspect of the case, that the original objective was to imply that Wilson’s trip was some sort of nepotistic boondoggle.

Now, what plea would you expect from two men with super-secret security clearances and hyper-crypto endorsements, one of whom is sworn to uphold the Constitution “to the best of my ability” and who has access to all the information the U.S. government possesses? “We didn’t know she was a NOC”?

This is not the first time that connecting the dots placed Cheney at the center of the Plame case. Rove is said to have initially told the grand jury he first heard about Plame from some reporter -- then he said he heard it from Libby. Libby is said to have initially told the grand jury he first heard about Plame from reporters -- but Libby's own notes showed he first heard about her from Cheney.

The big question: Were Cheney’s scrawls on Wilson’s Op-Ed piece real questions or were they marching orders?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/cheney-notes/