[originaltext]M: Elizabeth Vega’s mock indictment appears in a new book entitl

M:  Elizabeth Vega’s mock indictment appears in a new book entitled United States v. George W. Bush, et al. Vega spent 20 years in the U.S. Attorney’s office. She joins us here in New York. Welcome to Democracy Now!
W: Thanks for having me, John.
M: Vega was a former federal prosecutor; she has drafted an indictment of President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top officials for tricking the nation into war and for conspiracy to defraud the United States.
W: Well, I was an Assistant U.S. Attorney up until 2004, so I was still working as an Assistant U.S. Attorney when the President and his senior aides started their marketing campaign for the war.
M: So, how did you come up with the mock indictment? What made you decide to do this?
W: At that time, the Enron case was happening, and I was observing the similarities between what the President was doing in order to deceive the public regarding the war and the same type of techniques that the Enron people used to defraud their investors.
M: What, then?
W: Of course, in the case of the Enron fraud, the public was absolutely outraged, and rightly so. And they have been, in the main, held accountable.
M: And the President?
W: Yet, the President, who has caused this fraud that has obviously been far graver in scope and the consequences have been horrific, has not been held accountable in any way. So, I wanted to explain to people in a very non-charged atmosphere, which is the atmosphere of a hypothetical grand jury, exactly how this fits into the elements of a crime, which is conspiracy to defraud the United States.