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Old 07-14-2005, 04:17 AM   #6 (permalink)
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Google news searches for the terms guckert or jim (or james) sharp bush , serve up nothing, today. I predict that this will change. The WH press corps seem to have such short memories.............. do you think that they remain silent so as not to "risk" losing their "access". With the Bush WH, the question is, "access" to what?

Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...&notFound=true
White House Briefing: Dan Froomkin
Inside the Real West Wing

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, March 10, 2004; 10:15 AM

It's the most powerful place on Earth.

The West Wing of the White House is the part you don't get to see on the tours. It's where the Oval Office is located, and where a few dozen other people have offices only a few steps away.

You've heard of some of those people -- Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Scott McClellan. But some you've probably never heard of.
About White House Briefing

Today, I'm uncorking a rare thing -- unique on the Internet, as far as I can tell. It's a floor plan of the West Wing, showing precisely who sits where.

............ Which of These Is Not Like the Other?
<h3>
As Tom Brune reported last week in Newsday, the federal grand jury investigating the leak of Valerie Plame's identity as a covert CIA operative has subpoenaed White House records on contacts with 25 journalists.

The list (low on the page) is full of familiar names: Columnist Robert Novak, of course, and MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Time's James Carney, The Post's Mike Allen, Newsweek's Evan Thomas.

And then there's Jeff Gannon of Talon News.

Who? Of what?

I first wrote about Gannon in my Feb. 19 column. Gannon works for a tiny, supremely conservative organization called Talon News which publishes a Web site by the same name as well as one called GOPUSA.com. With the sole exception of Gannon, who says he is compensated, all the "reporters" are volunteers.

Gannon's presence in the White House briefing room is something of an irritant to most of the press corps, which considers his questions at briefings to be preposterous softballs. [Note: This paragraph has been corrected. Gannon does not have an assigned seat in the briefing room as was previously reported here.]

And in return, Gannon sometimes writes on his own Web site about his views of the corps and how there is "perhaps no depth to which it will not sink in order to undermine a presidency."

Anyway, the reason Gannon is on the list is most likely an attempt to find out who gave him a secret memo that he mentioned in an interview he had with Plame's husband, former ambassador and administration critic Joseph Wilson.

Gannon asked Wilson: "An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that?"</h3>

According to a December Washington Post story by Mike Allen and Dana Milbank, "Sources said the CIA is angry about the circulation of a still-classified document to conservative news outlets suggesting Plame had a role in arranging her husband's trip to Africa for the CIA. The document, written by a State Department official who works for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), describes a meeting at the CIA where the Niger trip by Wilson was discussed, said a senior administration official who has seen it."

On top of being secret, CIA officials said it was wrong.

Gannon won't talk about it. But he does keep lobbing those softballs. Sometimes he even brings props. And press secretary McClellan seems to appreciate it.

Yesterday, for instance, McClellan was getting hammered with questions about the 9/11 commission and the possible inappropriate juxtaposition of a visit to a 9/11 memorial with a fundraiser on Thursday.

It was getting ugly. "I'm not even going to dignify that with a response," McClellan said in response to a jibe. (See the full text of the briefing.)

Then he saw daylight:

"Go ahead, Jeff."

Gannon: "Thank you. First of all, I hope the grand jury didn't force you to turn over the wedding card I sent to you and your wife. (Laughter.) Do you see any hypocrisy in the controversy about the President's mention of 9/11 in his ads, when Democratic icon Franklin Delano Roosevelt's campaign issued this button, that says, 'Remember Pearl Harbor'? I have a visual aid for folks watching at home."

McClellan: "You're pointing out some historical facts. Obviously, Pearl Harbor was a defining moment back in the period of World War II, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was strongly committed to winning World War II and talked about it frequently."

Gannon: "So you think it certainly is valid that the President does talk about it and --"

McClellan: "Yes, he addressed this this weekend, when he was first asked about it. September 11th was a defining moment for our nation. We all shared in that experience. And it's important that we look at how we lead in a post-September 11th world. And that's an important discussion to have with the American people, and to talk about the differences in approaches to winning the war on terrorism and preventing attacks from happening in the first place."
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer
The When and How of Leak Being Probed
Timing of Disclosure of CIA Employee's Name a Factor in Deciding if Law Was Broken

By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 26, 2004; Page A06

A federal prosecutor investigating whether administration officials illegally leaked the name of an undercover CIA operative has directed considerable effort at learning how widely the operative's identity was disseminated to reporters before it was published last year by columnist Robert D. Novak, according to people with knowledge of the case.

Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald is trying to pinpoint precisely when and from whom several journalists learned that Joseph C. Wilson IV, an outspoken critic of the administration, was sent on an Iraq-related intelligence mission after a recommendation by his wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA employee. Plame's name first appeared in a July 14, 2003, column by Novak.

Robert D. Novak's July 14, 2003, column may have been seen by the White House before it ran. (CNN)


The timing could be a critical element in assessing whether classified information was illegally disclosed. If White House aides directed reporters to information that had already been published by Novak, they may not have disclosed classified information...........

.....Then-CIA Director George J. Tenet had issued a statement July 11, 2003, saying that Wilson's findings in Niger did not actually resolve the question of whether Hussein tried to buy uranium there. But Tenet nevertheless said the statement on Africa should not have been included in Bush's State of Union address, and he took responsibility for his agency's vetting of the speech. White House communications director Bartlett agreed, telling reporters that "there was no debate or questions with regard to that line when it was signed off on."

But an agency bureaucrat stirred a new round of confusion and White House anger the following week.

On July 16, two days after Novak's column appeared, Alan Foley, then-director of the CIA's intelligence, nonproliferation and arms control center, told Senate intelligence committee members that he had insisted the White House remove a reference to Niger and uranium from the State of the Union address. The White House maintained there was never any specific reference to Niger in drafts of the speech, nor, it said, had the CIA expressed any objection to referring to reports Iraq had attempted to buy uranium in Africa.

Foley later told the committee staff he may have been confused, according to a Senate committee report on Iraq intelligence released this year. The Senate report determined that Foley's original testimony had been incorrect and that the CIA had not raised concerns about the Iraq-Niger reporting in the speech.

<h3>It was in the ensuing days that television reporters Chris Matthews and Andrea Mitchell would tell Wilson they had heard from administration aides that the real story was not what Wilson found in Niger but his wife's role in selecting him for the trip.</h3>
Where the "real story", or NEPOTISM "OP", all began.......
(We've only known this for a few days.....and the MSM press snores...)
Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8525978/site/newsweek/
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek

July 18 issue

Page 2 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8525978/...wsweek/page/2/

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>
Karl played a "high stakes" strategy" that relied totally on the NEPOTISM card. The flaw in his plan was that, in order to discredit Wilson, Karl had to plant a scenario that Wilson's "factfinding" trip to Niger, was not an official assignment, sanctioned by VP Cheney or anyone else in the Bush administration, and the easiest way (so Karl thought....) was to plant the story, via the press, that Wilson's trip was a partisan plan to discredit Bush, because Wilson was chosen by his CIA wife, and was therfore, not a credible voice of criticism. An added dividend, as Wilson observed, was that Karl's tactic sent a warning to any other potential whistleblower.

It is ironic and a pathetic state of affairs that two years later the "so called liberal" media, none of it....can bring itself to print the name of Bush's private criminal attorney, or fake news reporter Jeff Guckert, both strongly associated with this case. Does the media fear Karl and the other "thugs" that he presides over, enough to avoid covering this story much longer?
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