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Banned
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Aiding and Abetting a Traitor: Conspiracy to "Save" Rove via Repub's NEPOTISM "Op"
<h3>UPDATE July 15....if You Would Rather "Skim Through" the material presented in the 2- Post "Starter" here, go to the "condensed" version:</h3> http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...1&postcount=15
Here's the drill....."this thread starter" is spread over two consecutive posts.
The premise is that the common denominator to the "outing" of CIA employee Valerie Plame and the investigation that it triggered, is the seed of Karl Rove's demise. We start with examples of the "NEPOTISM" accusation, first connected directly to Rove by Newsweek's article about Matt Cooper's conversation with Rove in early July, 2003. (BOLD letters, scroll down....) Every Republican whoi has tried to discredit Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, and his 2002 factfinding trip to Niger, has followed Rove's example of playing the "NEPOTISM" card, even in this week's disinformation media blitz. Part II of this thread starter, IMO, is sensational. Read on....you owe it to yourself ! Near the bottom of Part I, you will discover that Dan Froomkin of washingtonpost.com , endorses a story by independent blog reporter, Murray Waas, that Rove is now a "subject" of prosecutor Fitzpatrick's investigation. MSM still will not cover this story, even to the extent that I am, now.
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http://roberts.senate.gov/07-09a-2004.htm
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - July 9. 2004
CONTACT: Sarah Ross (202) 224-4774
Iraq Pre-War Intelligence Report: Additional Views of Chairman Pat Roberts joined by Senator Christopher S. Bond, Senator Orrin G. Hatch
......Niger.........
What cannot be found, however, are <b>two conclusions upon which the Committee�s Democrats would not agree. </b>While there was no dispute with the underlying facts, my Democrat colleagues refused to allow the following conclusions to appear in the report:
<b>Conclusion: The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador�s wife, a CIA employee.</b>
The former ambassador�s wife suggested her husband for the trip to Niger in February 2002. The former ambassador had traveled previously to Niger on behalf of the CIA, also at the suggestion of his wife, to look into another matter not related to Iraq. On February 12, 2002, the former ambassador�s wife sent a memorandum to a Deputy Chief of a division in the CIA�s Directorate of Operations which said, �[m]y husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.� This was just one day before the same Directorate of Operations division sent a cable to one of its overseas stations requesting concurrence with the division�s idea to send the former ambassador to Niger.
Conclusion: Rather than speaking publicly about his actual experiences during his inquiry of the Niger issue, the former ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press accounts and from his beliefs about how the Intelligence Community would have or should have handled the information he provided.
At the time the former ambassador traveled to Niger, the Intelligence Community did not have in its possession any actual documents on the alleged Niger-Iraq uranium deal, only second hand reporting of the deal. The former ambassador�s comments to reporters that the Niger-Iraq uranium documents �may have been forged because �the dates were wrong and the names were wrong,�� could not have been based on the former ambassador�s actual experiences because the Intelligence Community did not have the documents at the time of the ambassador�s trip. In addition, nothing in the report from the former ambassador�s trip said anything about documents having been forged or the names or dates in the reports having been incorrect. The former ambassador told Committee staff that he, in fact, did not have access to any of the names and dates in the CIA�s reports and said he may have become confused about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct. Of note, the names and dates in the documents that the IAEA found to be incorrect were not names or dates included in the CIA reports.
Following the Vice President�s review of an intelligence report regarding a possible uranium deal, he asked his briefer for the CIA�s analysis of the issue. It was this request which generated Mr. Wilson�s trip to Niger. The former ambassador�s public comments suggesting that the Vice President had been briefed on the information gathered during his trip is not correct, however. While the CIA responded to the Vice President�s request for the Agency�s analysis, they never provided the information gathered by the former Ambassador. The former ambassador, in an NBC Meet the Press interview on July 6, 2003, said, �The office of the Vice President, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked and that response was based upon my trip out there.� The former ambassador was speaking on the basis of what he believed should have happened based on his former government experience, but he had no knowledge that this did happen.
These and other public comments from the former ambassador, such as comments that his report �debunked� the Niger-Iraq uranium story, were incorrect and have led to a distortion in the press and in the public�s understanding of the facts surrounding the Niger-Iraq uranium story. The Committee found that, for most analysts, the former ambassador�s report lent more credibility, not less, to the reported Niger-Iraq uranium deal.
During Mr. Wilson�s media blitz, he appeared on more than thirty television shows including entertainment venues. Time and again, Joe Wilson told anyone who would listen that the President had lied to the American people, that the Vice President had lied, and that he had �debunked� the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. As discussed in the Niger section of the report, not only did he NOT �debunk� the claim, he actually gave some intelligence analysts even more reason to believe that it may be true. I believed very strongly that it was important for the Committee to conclude publicly that many of the statements made by Ambassador Wilson were not only incorrect, but had no basis in fact............
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http://www.opinionjournal.com/editor...l?id=110006955
Karl Rove, Whistleblower
He told the truth about Joe Wilson.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove's head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we'd say the White House political guru deserves a prize--perhaps the next iteration of the "Truth-Telling" award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud.
For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real "whistleblower" in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He's the one who warned Time's Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson's credibility. He's the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn't a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove.
Media chants aside, there's no evidence that Mr. Rove broke any laws in telling reporters that Ms. Plame may have played a role in her husband's selection for a 2002 mission to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking uranium ore in Niger..........
............."While an investigation of the leak was justified, it is far from clear--at least on the public record--that a crime took place," the Post noted the other day. Granted the media have come a bit late to this understanding, and then only to protect their own, but the logic of their argument is that Mr. Rove did nothing wrong either.
The same can't be said for Mr. Wilson, who first "outed" himself as a CIA consultant in a melodramatic New York Times op-ed in July 2003. At the time he claimed to have thoroughly debunked the Iraq-Niger yellowcake uranium connection that President Bush had mentioned in his now famous "16 words" on the subject in that year's State of the Union address.
Mr. Wilson also vehemently denied it when columnist Robert Novak first reported that his wife had played a role in selecting him for the Niger mission. He promptly signed up as adviser to the Kerry campaign and was feted almost everywhere in the media, including repeat appearances on NBC's "Meet the Press" and a photo spread (with Valerie) in Vanity Fair.
But his day in the political sun was short-lived. <b>The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report last July cited the note that Ms. Plame had sent recommending her husband for the Niger mission.</b> "Interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD [Counterproliferation Division] employee, suggested his name for the trip," said the report............
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http://www.politicsoftruth.com/edito...Statement.html
Joe Wilson's response to the addendum of the Senate Intelligence
Committee's Report on pre-war intelligence posted by three of its
Republican members
Joseph C. Wilson, IV
July 15, 2004
The Honorable Pat Roberts
Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
The Honorable Jay Rockefeller
Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Dear Senator Roberts and Senator Rockefeller,
I read with great surprise and consternation the Niger portion of Senators Roberts, Bond and Hatch “additional comments to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee's Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Assessment on Iraq. I am taking this opportunity to clarify some of the issues raised in these comments.
First conclusion: “The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee.”
That is not true. The conclusion is apparently based on one anodyne quote from a memo Valerie Plame, my wife sent to her superiors that says “my husband has good relations with the PM (prime minister) and the former Minister of Mines, (not to mention lots of French contacts) both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.” There is no suggestion or recommendation in that statement that I be sent on the trip. Indeed it is little more than a recitation of my contacts and bona fides. The conclusion is reinforced by comments in the body of the report that a CPD reports officer stated the “the former ambassador's wife 'offered up his name'” (page 39) and a State Department Intelligence and Research officer that the “meeting was 'apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch him to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue.”
In fact, Valerie was not in the meeting at which the subject of my trip was raised. Neither was the CPD Reports officer. After having escorted me into the room, she departed the meeting to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. It was at that meeting where the question of my traveling to Niger was broached with me for the first time and came only after a thorough discussion of what the participants did and did not know about the subject. My bona fides justifying the invitation to the meeting were the trip I had previously taken to Niger to look at other uranium related questions as well as 20 years living and working in Africa, and personal contacts throughout the Niger government. Neither the CPD reports officer nor the State analyst were in the chain of command to know who, or how, the decision was made. The interpretations attributed to them are not the full story. In fact, it is my understanding that the Reports Officer has a different conclusion about Valerie's role than the one offered in the “additional comments”. I urge the committee to reinterview the officer and publicly publish his statement......
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http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP.../03/le.00.html
CNN LATE EDITION WITH WOLF BLITZER
Interview With Tom Ridge; Lott, Bayh Debate 9/11 Report; Interview With Joe Lieberman
Aired August 3, 2003 - 12:00 ET
......We're joined now by the man who went to Africa to personally investigate whether Iraq attempted to purchase uranium, the former U.S. acting ambassador to Iraq, Joseph Wilson.
Mr. Ambassador, welcome back to "LATE EDITION."
I want to get to that whole issue in just a moment, but listen to what David Kay, who is now working for the CIA, the former U.N. weapons inspector, says about the search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. DAVID KAY, FORMER U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: There is solid evidence being produced. We do not intend to expose this evidence until we have full confidence that it is solid proof of what we're proposed to take -- to talk about.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: I think he's being very cautious now, given some of the missteps in the past. But do you have confidence in David Kay, that they know what they're doing?
JOSEPH WILSON, FORMER U.S. ACTING AMBASSADOR TO IRAQ: Oh, absolutely, and I've had confidence in -- that we would find weapons of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction programs from the very beginning of the run-up to the war in Iraq.
687, the initial U.N. resolution dealing with weapons of mass destruction, demanded compliance, and it had as its objective disarmament. We had not yet achieved disarmament, so it was perfectly appropriate to continue to try and gather together the international consensus to disarm Saddam and his programs.
I think we'll find chemical weapons. I think we'll find biological precursors that may or may not have been weaponized. And I think we will find a continuing interest of -- on nuclear weapons. The question really is whether it met the threshold test of imminent threat to our own national security or even the test of grave and gathering danger.
BLITZER: And you believe, going into the war, that that threshold had not been met?
WILSON: No, not at all. I believe that we had to be aggressive in disarming and that the posture we had to take had to include the credible threat of force. And in order for that threat of force to be credible, we had to be prepared to use it.
What I disagreed with was the other agendas that were in play that led us to invade, conquer and now occupy Iraq.
BLITZER: But did they exaggerate the threat?
WILSON: Well, in my particular piece of this, the Niger piece, I think it's very clear that this rumor kept popping back up...
BLITZER: That they were seeking uranium -- enriched uranium from Africa.
WILSON: Right...
BLITZER: Which they have sought in the past. Which they have sought in the past.
WILSON: Which they had sought in the '80s, and all that was well documented. And there was, in fact, a delegation that went from Baghdad to Niamey in 1999. That visit was well documented in U.S. reporting as well.
BLITZER: I know you were sent to go on this mission long before the State of the Union Address. When Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, was on this program a few weeks ago, on July 13th, I asked her about your mission. Listen to this exchange I had with her.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: I didn't know Joe Wilson was going to Niger. And if you look in Director Tenet's statement, it says that counter-proliferation experts, on their own initiative, sent Joe Wilson. So, I don't know...
BLITZER: Who sent him?
RICE: Well, it was certainly not at a level that had anything to do with the White House.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: Is that true?
WILSON: <b>Well, look, it's absolutely true that neither the vice president nor Dr. Rice nor even George Tenet knew that I was traveling to Niger.
What they did, what the office of the vice president did, and, in fact, I believe now from Mr. Libby's statement, it was probably the vice president himself...</b>
BLITZER: Scooter Libby is the chief of staff for the vice president.
WILSON: Scooter Libby.
<b>They asked essentially that we follow up on this report -- that the agency follow up on the report. So it was a question that went to the CIA briefer from the Office of the Vice President. The CIA, at the operational level, made a determination that the best way to answer this serious question was to send somebody out there who knew something about both the uranium business and those Niger officials that were in office at the time these reported documents were executed.</b>
BLITZER: I want you to elaborate on what you said, I believe, in Time magazine, that this was a smear job against you, this entire post-mortem that's been coming up since then, including your wife, who works at the CIA exposing her, for example. What did you mean by that?
WILSON: Well, first of all, with respect to my wife, I don't answer any questions. And anything that I say with respect to that, the allegations about her are all hypothetical. I would not confirm or deny her place of employment. To do so would be, if she were, a breach of national security; and if she were not, at a minimum, what they have done is they have forced her to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions from neighbors and friends and whatnot.
But what I said to Time magazine and to others is that these attacks on me, which were really very minor -- Cliff May saying that I told the truth because I was a Democrat. I went out to Iraq because I was an American patriot and my government asked me to go out.
But the idea seemed to me, in going after me and then later making these allegations about my wife, was clearly designed to keep others from stepping forward.
If you recall, there were any number of analysts who were quoted anonymously as saying that the vice president had seemed to pressure them in his many trips out to the CIA. I don't know if that's true or not, but you can be sure that a GS-14 or 15 with a couple of kids in college, when he sees the allegations that came from senior administration officials about my family are in the public domain, you can be sure that he's going to be worried about what might happen if he were to step forward.
BLITZER: And you still want an investigation to find out if laws were broken in releasing this information, for example, about your wife?
WILSON: Well, yes, and hypothetically speaking, about my wife. If in fact she is as Mr. Novak alleged in his...
BLITZER: Bob Novak.
WILSON: ... Bob Novak, the journalist, alleged in his article, then the two senior administration officials, who leaked that information are libel or vulnerable to investigation under a 1982 law dealing with the identification of American agents.
BLITZER: How close in your estimate -- and you're an expert on this -- is the U.S. to finding Saddam Hussein? WILSON: It's a hit and miss thing. If Saddam is actually out in Mosul with the western tribes, as was asserted this morning, then he might be more exposed. If he's in a neighborhood in Baghdad, I think it's a little bit more difficult to find him, because the neighborhoods he's going to frequent are full of fervent Baathist supporters, and it's hard for U.S. troops to get in there unnoticed; it's hard to spring a surprise.
BLITZER: If they found Saddam Hussein, captured him or killed him, would be it over then? Would everything, sort of, fall into place and Ambassador Bremer could have, sort of, easy ride to get democracy, elections, a new Iraqi regime in place?
WILSON: Well, I actually think having found Qusay and Uday was better in driving the wooden stake through the heart of the idea that there would be a Hussein dynasty that would reemerge.
I think as the two senators said earlier, that Saddam is largely a spent force. Killing him will kill the tyrant, and that will be a good thing.
That said, I think that what we face here is we face the fact that we defeated the Sunni tribe, and the Sunni tribe would like to come back and reassert itself in power or at a minimum will want to defend itself against both U.S. occupation forces and what they fear is going to be a Shia attempt to assert their power over the country.
So I don't think over the medium and long term this is over by a long shot.
BLITZER: We want to have you back and talk about Liberia. You're an expert on Africa too. But we don't have time, unfortunately for that today.
Ambassador Joe Wilson, thanks for joining us.
WILSON: Good to be with you, Wolf. Thanks.
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Quote:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/05/06/nyt.kristof/
Nicholas Kristof: Why truth matters
By Nicholas D. Kristof
Op-Ed Columnist, New York Times
Tuesday, May 6, 2003 Posted: 6:23 AM EDT (1023 GMT)
When I raised the Mystery of the Missing W.M.D. recently, hawks fired barrages of reproachful e-mail at me. The gist was: "You *&#*! Who cares if we never find weapons of mass destruction, because we've liberated the Iraqi people from a murderous tyrant.".............
..........Consider the now-disproved claims by President Bush and Colin Powell that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger so it could build nuclear weapons. As Seymour Hersh noted in The New Yorker, the claims were based on documents that had been forged so amateurishly that they should never have been taken seriously.
I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.
The envoy reported, for example, that a Niger minister whose signature was on one of the documents had in fact been out of office for more than a decade. In addition, the Niger mining program was structured so that the uranium diversion had been impossible. The envoy's debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted — except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway.
"It's disingenuous for the State Department people to say they were bamboozled because they knew about this for a year," one insider said. ...........
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...¬Found=true
CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data
Bush Used Report Of Uranium Bid
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 12, 2003; Page A01
.........The CIA's failure to share what it knew, which has not been disclosed previously, was one of a number of steps in the Bush administration that helped keep the uranium story alive until the eve of the war in Iraq, when the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector told the Security Council that the claim was based on fabricated evidence...........
...Armed with information purportedly showing that Iraqi officials had been seeking to buy uranium in Niger one or two years earlier, the CIA in early February 2002 dispatched a retired U.S. ambassador to the country to investigate the claims, according to the senior U.S. officials and the former government official, who is familiar with the event. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity and on condition that the name of the former ambassador not be disclosed.
During his trip, the CIA's envoy spoke with the president of Niger and other Niger officials mentioned as being involved in the Iraqi effort, some of whose signatures purportedly appeared on the documents.
After returning to the United States, the envoy reported to the CIA that the uranium-purchase story was false, the sources said. Among the envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong," the former U.S. government official said.
However, the CIA did not include details of the former ambassador's report and his identity as the source, which would have added to the credibility of his findings, in its intelligence reports that were shared with other government agencies. Instead, the CIA only said that Niger government officials had denied the attempted deal had taken place, a senior administration said.
"This gent made a visit to the region and chatted up his friends," a senior intelligence official said, describing the agency's view of the mission. "He relayed back to us that they said it was not true and that he believed them.".......
............. The CIA's decision to send an emissary to Niger was triggered by questions raised by an aide to Vice President Cheney during an agency briefing on intelligence circulating about the purported Iraqi efforts to acquire the uranium, according to the senior officials. Cheney's staff was not told at the time that its concerns had been the impetus for a CIA mission and did not learn it occurred or its specific results.
Cheney and his staff continued to get intelligence on the matter, but the vice president, unlike other senior administration officials, never mentioned it in a public speech. He and his staff did not learn of its role in spurring the mission until it was disclosed by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof on May 6, according to an administration official............
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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/op...5ac468&ei=5070
NYTimes.com > Opinion
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
What I Didn't Find in Africa
By JOSEPH C. WILSON 4th
Published: July 6, 2003
.........In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.
After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government..............
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8525978/...wsweek/page/2/
Matt Cooper's Source
What Karl Rove told Time magazine's reporter.
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
July 18 issue - It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper was tapping out an e-mail to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy. "Subject: Rove/P&C," (for personal and confidential), Cooper began. "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation ..." Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, "please don't source this to rove or even WH [White House]" and suggested another reporter check with the CIA..........
.......In a brief conversation with Rove, Cooper asked what to make of the flap over Wilson's criticisms. NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the e-mail that Cooper sent his bureau chief after speaking to Rove. (The e-mail was authenticated by a source intimately familiar with Time's editorial handling of the Wilson story, but who has asked not to be identified because of the magazine's corporate decision not to disclose its contents.) <h3>Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip."</h3> Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger ... "
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http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/...vak/index.html
Thursday, October 2, 2003 Posted: 12:10 AM EDT (0410 GMT)
Novak at the center of the storm
WASHINGTON --Columnist and CNN contributor Robert Novak said Wednesday he resents the suggestion he was used as a pawn to reveal the identity of a CIA operative in order to retaliate against her husband, who criticized President Bush's evidence supporting claims that Iraq attempted to buy material for nuclear weapons.
Novak appeared on CNN's "Wolf Blitzer Reports" Wednesday.
BLITZER: He's at the center of this storm, the controversy that is raging here in Washington. The naming of the CIA operative appeared in his column back on July 14. That popular columnist syndicated across the country by The Chicago Sun-Times. And he's well-known, of course, to our CNN viewers as the co-host of "Crossfire."
Joining me now for an exclusive conversation, the veteran journalist, is my colleague, Bob Novak. Bob, thanks very much for joining us. Let's talk about this. What made you decide to go out, first of all, and write about former Ambassador Joe Wilson?
NOVAK: Former Ambassador Wilson broke the secrecy that a retired diplomat, unknown, had gone to Niger in the year 2002 to investigate whether the Iraqis tried to buy yellow cake, uranium from Niger.
BLITZER: You mean when he wrote that op-ed page article in The New York Times?
<b>NOVAK: New York Times ... That was on a Sunday morning. On Monday, I began to report on something that I thought was very curious. Why was it that Ambassador Wilson, who had no particular experience in weapons of mass destruction, and was a sharp critic of the Iraqi policy of President Bush and, also, had been a high-ranking official in the Clinton White House, who had contributed politically to Democrats -- some Republicans, but mostly Democrats -- why was he being selected?
I asked this question to a senior Bush administration official, and he said that he believed that the assignment was suggested by an employee at the CIA in the counterproliferation office who happened to be Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame. I then called another senior official of the Bush administration, and he said, Oh, you know about that? And he confirmed that that was an accurate story. I then called the CIA.</b> They said that, to their knowledge, he did not -- that the mission was not suggested by Ambassador Wilson's wife -- but that she had been asked by her colleagues in the counterproliferation office to contact her husband. So she was involved.
BLITZER: Because he was a former ambassador in Gabon, he knew that part of Africa, and that's, presumably, why they wanted to send him on this mission.
NOVAK: I'm not going into motives. I thought it was strange because he is not an expert in counterproliferation. He had not been ambassador to Niger, he had served in Niger at one time.
BLITZER: But he was a senior on African affairs at the [National Security Council] under Clinton?
NOVAK: Under Clinton, that's correct. So that was the story I wrote, was about the details of Ambassador Wilson's mission, which created a great storm. And in the sixth paragraph of a 10-paragraph story I mentioned that two senior administration officials had said it was suggested by his wife, who worked at the CIA.
BLITZER: Now, in today's column, I think you wrote in The Chicago Sun-Times and The Washington Post, appearing as well, you wrote this: "He asked me not to use her name," referring to a CIA official, "saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment, but that exposure of her name might cause difficulties if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name." How much did they press you and say, you know what, this is really a problem? Please don't use her name. She's a covert operative.
NOVAK: It was what I call a weak request. In journalism we are asked not to use things constantly. I'm sure you have been. Don't use that, Wolf. I was asked by the CIA official not to use it. He did not, at any point, say her life was in danger. He did not press it. I thought it was in the nature of a pro forma request after a conversation in which he had detailed Ambassador Wilson's mission, explained to me that the mission -- that there was never a written report. A lot of people don't even know that. There was no written report.
(CROSSTALK)
NOVAK: ... oral report. And that it was not very convincing, not a very convincing report. But it was -- and at the end of that suggested that I not -- asked me, requested that [I] not use the name.
BLITZER: But the notion, even that she would never be able to have a foreign assignment, shouldn't that alone have been enough to maybe give you pause?
NOVAK: Oh, no. Let's read what I said, Wolf, not what you said.
BLITZER: This is in today's column.
NOVAK: Yes, read what I said.
BLITZER: "He asked me not to use her name saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment."
NOVAK: Yes. That was not anything -- whether I wrote anything or not, he said she would never be given a foreign assignment. That was a fact that she had moved on to a different phase of her career. It was not because of anything I was writing.
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: ... this would only cause her difficulties? That's what they said to you?
NOVAK: Difficulties if she was traveling abroad, I guess, on vacation or something. But they said she would not be given a foreign assignment. I thought that was a very weak request, let me repeat. And the editor of The Washington Post, Fred Hyatt, said in an editorial as well that if the request had been made by the CIA not to put this information in for the fear of the safety of Mrs. Wilson or anybody else, I certainly would not have used her name. But that request was not made. Now, why was it not made? There's one of two reasons. One possible reason is that it was a mistake by the CIA. They screwed it up. The other reason is they didn't think her life was in danger. I don't know the answer. It's one of the two though.
BLITZER: It is the subject of an investigation right now. The other issue that's coming out is the use of your word "operative" to suggest that you knew she was a covert, clandestine operative as opposed to an analyst. There's been some debate. She's currently an analyst, but according to all the sources we have, she used to be an operative.
NOVAK: Well, I have sources, too. I have sources that tell me that she was never an analyst -- I mean, never an operative. She was never covert. She was never covert. Put it that way. She was never covert. She was always what they call "light covert." That is, she was covered, she was working under the cover of another government agency, but she was not a covert operator. I have been told that by other sources...
(CROSSTALK)
NOVAK: But I just want to say that the word operative that I said in today's column, Wolf, was a mistake, using that word on my part. I have called hack politicians operatives if you read my column carefully over 40 years. And it's just kind of a throw-away word. I had no knowledge whether or not she was an operative.
<b>BLITZER: All right, the other issue that's come out is this article that appeared in Newsday, the newspaper on Long Island, July 22 after your July 14 column. The reporters said this. They were following up on your story. "Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. `I didn't dig it out. It was given to me,' he said. `They thought it was significant, they gave me the name, and I used.' "
NOVAK: Now, these reporters made a bad mistake. They said they came to me with the information. I never told them that. And that's not in quotes, is it?
BLITZER: They said that the sources said they -- your sources had come to you...
NOVAK: Yes, but that's not in quotes.</b>
BLITZER: That's not in quotes.
NOVAK: So then they made that up. I never said that. I said I didn't dig it out in the sense I went through the files of the CIA. It was given to me, as I just told you. There's no inconsistency there at all. But that is -- you have to be very careful, Wolf, with these things because they say that the idea that -- they're saying they came to me. They did not come to me.
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: ... the quote part is correct, "I didn't dig it out. It was given to me."
NOVAK: I just told you it was given to me. I didn't dig it out of the files there. Let me tell you this. There are people putting out stories that the White House was trying to find a pawn to put out this information. They went through six people...
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: ... to smear Joe Wilson.
NOVAK: Yes. And finally came to me. That's not true. As I have told you in detail this story, nobody came to me. Nobody came to me. I never said that. The story in Newsday is absolutely incorrect. It's not in my quotes. They never came to me. I went to them in reporting that story.
BLITZER: Other reporters are suggesting that they got these calls, but they didn't do anything...
NOVAK: I don't know if they did or not. But I resent -- and I resented it when you said it the other day, I really resented when you said that they went to six people and finally found Novak. That is just not the truth. Nobody came to me with this story. I was reporting on Joe Wilson...
BLITZER: This was your initiative?
NOVAK: Entirely.</b>
BLITZER: All right. Now let's -- speaking of Joe Wilson, he was on "Nightline" last night. And he said, as he has in the past, some very, very derogatory words about Karl Rove, the chief political adviser to the president. Let's listen precisely to what Joe Wilson said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FORMER AMBASSADOR JOE WILSON: What I do know or what I have confidence in, based upon what respectable press people in this town have told me, is that a week after the Novak article came out, Karl Rove was still calling around, talking to press people saying Wilson's wife is fair game.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: And the suggestion has been made -- and we're not going to ask you to reveal your sources because I know you would never reveal your sources -- that Karl Rove somehow is manipulating this whole thing to get even with Joe Wilson who was critical of the president.
NOVAK: Ambassador Wilson, I'm not going to call him a liar. Certainly, it seems highly improbable that after the story had appeared in print and it was not -- I would like to say that this was a hell of column that rocked Washington. It didn't. It was in the sixth paragraph of a 10-paragraph story. But after it appeared, Mr. Rove, the idea that he would be going around trying to peddle this column after it appeared in print, it doesn't make sense to me. Maybe it did happen, maybe it didn't. I have no information of that. I would like to see the names of the reporters, though, wouldn't you?
BLITZER: Definitely. A lot of people want it a lot more. And I'm sure presumably in the days and weeks to come we'll know a lot more. We're almost out of time. But a couple -- just to wrap a couple things up. Had you known that this information, releasing the name, could have endangered her or her colleagues, you would never have reported this?
NOVAK: No, no. I want to rephrase your question. Had I known. You're saying it would have endangered her and her colleagues. I still don't know that to this day. I will tell you this. If a CIA official said, "You are endangering the life of Mrs. Wilson and her colleagues," I never would have printed it.
BLITZER: But do you have any reason to believe that the source or sources that you spoke to in the administration themselves knew that by giving her name or telling you about her, that this would be causing her any kind of problem?
NOVAK: I really resent that premise that it endangers her life because you're saying if they knew that...
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: ... they may have thought she was simply an analyst, too.
NOVAK: She might have been. You don't know whether she was and I don't know whether she was. There's no way -- we do not know that fact. I have been told, not by the official sources at the CIA, but the unofficial sources, that she was not a covert operative whose life was in danger.
BLITZER: Because this is significant, as you know, because the law also states that you have to have intent, you have to know that by revealing the identity of a covert agent, you're committing this crime. They may not have known.
NOVAK: Let me say one other thing I had in today's column. The person who gave me the original story, I said it was given in an off-handed way during in this conversation and he was not a partisan gun slinger. I said that. I'm not going to go into more description, but I did feel that the idea that this was some kind of a carefully arranged plot to destroy this woman and her husband, as far as I'm concerned, was nonsense. It didn't happen that way, and this kind of scandal that has perpetrated in Washington is Washington at its worst.
BLITZER: Bob Novak speaking bluntly as he always does. Thanks very much.
NOVAK: Thank you, Wolf.
BLITZER: Thank you and good luck.
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...071301138.html
or... http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr...nG=Search+News
Won't Defend? Then Attack!
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, July 13, 2005; 12:54 PM
(link for next excerpt)= http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...1301138_2.html
.........Luskin has previously said that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald had told him that Rove was not a "target" of the criminal investigation. All that would mean, however, is that Fitzgerald was at that point not ready to actually declare his intention to indict Rove.
<b>But Luskin has now told that National Review that Fitzgerald identified Rove, among others, as a "subject."</b>
In grand-jury talk a subject -- unlike an ordinary witness -- is someone who faces possible indictment.
<b>And investigative reporter Murray Waas blogs today that his sources tell him that columnist Robert Novak -- the first person to publish Plame's identity -- has in fact spoken at length to prosecutors...........</b>
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Quote:
http://whateveralready.blogspot.com/...ated-with.html
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Exclusive: Novak co-operated with prosecutors
THE PUBLIC LIBRARY, Washington D.C.-- Columnist Robert Novak provided detailed accounts to federal prosecutors of his conversations with Bush administration officials who were sources for his controversial July 11, 2003 column identifying Valerie Plame as a clandestine CIA officer, according to attorneys familiar with the matter.
Novak's attorney, James Hamilton, declined to comment earlier this morning. An assistant for Novak told me: "Mr. Novak, per his lawyer's instruction, does not comment on any aspect of that case." Kim Nerheim, a spokesperson for Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the leak of Plame's name said: "We do not confirm or deny any anything regarding an ongoing investigation."
Novak had claimed to the investigators that the Bush administration officials with whom he spoke did not identify Plame as a covert operative, and that use of the word "operative" was his formulation and not theirs, according to those familiar with Novak's accounts to the investigators.
White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove and at least two other Bush administration officials have told federal investigators that they had spoken to reporters about Plame, but that they did not know at the time that she was a covert operative with the CIA, the same sources told me..........
..............Federal investigators have been skeptical of Novak's assertions that he referred to Plame as a CIA "operative" due to his own error, instead of having been explicitly told that was the case by his sources, according to attorneys familiar with the criminal probe.
That skepticism has been one of several reasons that the special prosecutor has pressed so hard for the testimony of Time magazine's Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller.............
.................Also of interest to investigators have been a series of telephone contacts between Novak and Rove, and other White House officials, in the days just after press reports first disclosed the existence of a federal criminal investigation as to who leaked Plame's identity. Investigators have been concerned that Novak and his sources might have conceived or co-ordinated a cover story to disguise the nature of their conversations. That concern was a reason-- although only one of many-- that led prosecutors to press for the testimony of Cooper and Miller, sources said.
Lending credence to those suspicions was that a U.S. government official questioned by investigators said Novak specifically asked him whether Plame had some covert status with the CIA. The official told investigators that Novak appeared uncertain whether she was undercover or not. That account, on one hand, might lend credence to the claims by Rove and other Bush administration officials that they did not know Plame was a covert CIA officer. Conversely, however, the fact that Novak asked the question in the first place appeared to indicate that he might have indeed been told Plame was a covert operative, and was seeking confirmation of that fact................
posted by murray waas at 4:21 PM
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<h3>Part I of II ---- The following post continues the exposure of Rove's NEPOTISM "OP"....Classic Rove.....everybody using the same talking points...
Rove to Novak, to Matt Cooper, to Guckert (Gannon), to Sen. Pat Robertson, et al, to RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman.....and even</H3>...our own powerclown:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by powerclown
Do we know that Novak is going to testify? When??
This thing is so f----d up. Coverups, unknown sources, inter-government rivalries, nepotism, a million people with a million different agendas.........
.......Meanwhile, the guy who revealed the agent's name to the public - Novak - remains silent (and free).
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...&postcount=121 |
Last edited by host; 07-14-2005 at 10:02 PM..
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