What's a Bush Administration trial without a dose of Scientology? A trial without Tom Cruise, that's what!
According to testimony in Scooter Libby's trial, he was super proud of having met Tom Cruise and former beard Penelope Cruz back in 2003. Cruise was in Washington trying to get L. Ron Hubbard elected as God, and Libby was more than happy to meet the tiny movie star.
Libby wasn't the only Bush Administration bigshot anxious to make Cruise's dreams come true. Read all the xenutastic details, after the jump.
How much pull does the crazy Scientologist actor have with the Bush administration? Way back in August it was revealed that former State Department second-in-command Richard Armitage had a mysterious "private appointment" with Cruise in 2003 -- our lapdog press corps never bothered to look into it, focusing instead on how Armitage "leaked" some CIA "operative's" name to Bob Woodward.
Now we learn that Armitage wasn't the only upper lever administration staffer to consort with cult hero Cruise.
During the anxious days of late spring 2003 inside the White House, as the rationale for the Iraq war was eroding, Scooter Libby was especially worked up one morning about a visit from a couple of VIPs. CIA official Craig Schmall testified in Libby's perjury trial yesterday that notes he took from a June 14 intelligence briefing with Dick Cheney's then chief of staff included this sentence: "Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz at his office."According to Schmall, they were there to talk about the treatment of Scientologists in Germany, but that's obviously a front for something more nefarious. Could we be the only ones who notice that Cruise's two private Bush Administration visits coincide with the formation and collapse of Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq? The one that irreversibly fucked up reconstruction, dooming our mission in Iraq to eventual civil war? Did Tom Cruise lose this war?
We're forced to conclude that he did.
LA Weekly's Nikki Finke writes: "Here's what I find so utterly nauseating about this news: that the meeting coincided with a first wave of media stories about how morale was plummeting among U.S. soldiers three months after crossing into Iraq because there seemed to be no American postwar plan to control the chaos." Yeah, but Tom Cruise!
The Day Scooter Libby Met Tom Cruise [Deadline Hollywood]
A Heady Day at the White House [WP]
Earlier:Richard Armitage Opens Diplomatic Ties With Xenu, Galactic Confederacy
