Monday 24 October 2005

Source Says Secret Cabal Not In White House, But In Cheney Secret Bunker

Wing of VP Hideout Dedicated To Iraq War, Neocon Strategy; Decisions Made Over Coffee and Krispy Kremes

A former senior Hill operative has told The Garlic that the secret cabal, which includes Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield and others is not physically located in the White House, but in VP Cheney's Secret Bunker.

Last week, Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, stated in a speech at the New America Foundation, an independent public policy institute, said that the cabal of Cheney, Rumsfield and a small group of insiders, made "aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process".

The "small group of insiders" is believed to include among others, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Special White House Council Karl Rove, Lewis "Scooter: Libby, Cheney's Chief of Staff, former cabinet member Paul Wolfiwitz, and White House Iraq Group (WHIG) member Karen Hughes.

Wilkerson said that, when the time came to implement the decisions, they were "presented in such a disjointed, incredible way that the bureaucracy often didn't know what it was doing as it moved to carry them out."

The source told The Garlic that Vice President Cheney's Secret Bunker is "huge".

"It's probably about 30,000, to 40,000 square feet and has multiple levels. It has all the comfort amenities that one would want and has state-of-the-art technologies … Equipment even the Pentagon and other agencies don't have."

According to the source, many of the meetings discussing the policy for the war and occupation of Iraq were made in a special level of the bunker that required "extremely high security and clearance".

"They'd bring in coffee and Krispy Kremes and bang out the details."

This special wing of the Cheney's Secret Bunker was so "under the radar" that "even President Bush didn't know about it".

Wilkerson, in his speech, gives credibility to that, as he said that "you've got a president who is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either."

"They made these decisions, to cook the intelligence to go to war and then stomp on any critics of it from the bunker," the senior official said. "Then Cheney, Rice or Rumsfield would go over to the White House and tell the President what was going down. He was pretty clueless and out of the loop on most of it."

It's not clear, now that it has been exposed, if the cabal will continue to operate out of the Secret Bunker. Or if the possible indictments that may come this week against Rove and Libby will force the closure of it.

"It most likely will," said the source. "One of the reasons to run it out of the bunker was for legal reasons and plausible deniability. They already have the spin machine ready to roll on it, call it hogwash and an irresponsible charge. It's all built into the cabal. They expected this and have the info ready to shout it down."

As to Rove and Libby, it's doubtful the indictments will effect the cabal. However, it does give them a pretty big chip to play if it looks like they could get jail time."

Speculation is running that, if Rove were to be indicted, that RNC Head Ken Mehlman would replace Rove in the White House.

The Garlic asked the source if that would translate to Mehlman taking Rove's place in the secret cabal.

'Doubtful, said the source. 'The RNC has their own secret cabal and I would expect Mehlman to stay with that one."

President Bush was said to be "clueless" about the Secret Cabal that operates out of Vice President Cheney's secret bunker