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Banned
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powerclown, if you recall, we recently had the exchange, quoted below, in the <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=91795">"If Rove Is Indicted"........</a> thread. It seemed OT, continuing this on that thread, so I decided to post a followup here. I saw no point, until now, in replying to your last post, because we reached a point where.....aside from commenting on the reputations for reliability and accuracy of the sources that each of us cited to back our opposing opinions, there was no new information available to add more clarity to the issue of Joe Wilson's integrity and reputation. Now....IMO, there is more....(see the third quote box.)
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...03&postcount=9
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Originally Posted by host
Please explain your "Did Wilson do something sleazy? Yes." What can you offer to show that Wilson was not credible and forthright, in his July 6, 2003 NY Times Op-Ed piece, or subsequently, that comes from a non-partisan source. Wilson signed no NDA with the CIA before or after his trip to Niger. The subsequent revelations of the Duelfer WMD report, and the Jan. 12, 2005 admissions to reporters by Scott MCClellan, speaking on behalf of the president, <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/01/20050112-7.html">that the weapons that we all believed were there, based on the intelligence, were not there.</a>, only serve to strengthen Wilson's already strong credentials as a "whistleblower" acting appropriately in the wake of the failure of the executive administration to back it's oft repeated claims of the nature of the threat that Iraq posed to the U.S., that justified an military invasion of that sovereign country.
powerclown, you may accept Rove's distortions that "Wilson claimed Cheney sent him to Niger", or <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8525978/site/newsweek/page/2/">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.</a>
I don't accept it because there are no sources for those distortions besides "senior administration officials" and Sen. Pat Roberts partisan "addenedum".
This is a link to an accurate, IMO, of the distortions that are used to smear Wilson, and the defects in them: http://mediamatters.org/items/200507150008
Can you make a case that Wilson is "sleazy", inferring that he deserved the onslaught of Rove's campaign to marginalize Wilson and his wife, that Rove launched no later than immediately after Wilson wrote:
I have a hard time posting that anyone is "sleazy". I have to be certain of what I know, and not what others filter for me, before I'll post that about someone. What do you know, that persuades you that Wilson is sleazy? |
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...9&postcount=10
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Originally Posted by powerclown
Funny, you don't seem to have a hard time referring to members of the Bush Administration as " fuckers"or" thugs".
I'd hate to get on your bad side, host.
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Just a few reasons why Wilson is a sleazeball:
Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission
Saturday, July 10, 2004
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...602069_pf.html
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search
Prosecutor In CIA Leak Case Casting A Wide Net
White House Effort To Discredit Critic Examined in Detail
By Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 27, 2005; A01
The special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe has interviewed a wider range of administration officials than was previously known, part of an effort to determine whether anyone broke laws during a White House effort two years ago to discredit allegations that President Bush used faulty intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to several officials familiar with the case.
Prosecutors have questioned former CIA director George J. Tenet and deputy director John E. McLaughlin, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, State Department officials, and even a stranger who approached columnist Robert D. Novak on the street.
In doing so, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has asked not only about how CIA operative Valerie Plame's name was leaked but also how the administration went about shifting responsibility from the White House to the CIA for having included 16 words in the 2003 State of the Union address about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Africa, an assertion that was later disputed.
Most of the questioning of CIA and State Department officials took place in 2004, the sources said.
It remains unclear whether Fitzgerald uncovered any wrongdoing in this or any other portion of his nearly 18-month investigation. All that is known at this point are the names of some people he has interviewed, what questions he has asked and whom he has focused on.
Fitzgerald began his probe in December 2003 to determine whether any government official knowingly leaked Plame's identity as a CIA employee to the media. Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, has said his wife's career was ruined in retaliation for his public criticism of Bush. In a 2002 trip to Niger at the request of the CIA, Wilson found no evidence to support allegations that Iraq was seeking uranium from that African country and reported back to the agency in February 2002. But nearly a year later, Bush asserted in his State of the Union speech that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa, attributing it to British, not U.S., intelligence.
Fitzgerald has said in court that he had completed most of his investigation at a time when he was pressing for New York Times reporter Judith Miller to testify about any conversations she had with a specific administration official about Plame during the week before Plame's identity was revealed.............
....Using background conversations with at least three journalists and other means, Bush officials attacked Wilson's credibility. They said that his 2002 trip to Niger was a boondoggle arranged by his wife, but CIA officials say that is incorrect. One reason for the confusion about Plame's role is that she had arranged a trip for him to Niger three years earlier on an unrelated matter, CIA officials told The Washington Post..........
......Also murky is the role of Novak, who first publicly identified Plame in a syndicated column published July 14, 2003.
Lawyers have confirmed that Novak discussed Plame with White House senior adviser Karl Rove four or more days before the column identifying her ran. But the identity of another "administration" source cited in the column is still unknown. Rove's attorney has said Rove did not identify Plame to Novak.
In a strange twist in the investigation, the grand jury -- acting on a tip from Wilson -- has questioned a person who approached Novak on Pennsylvania Avenue on July 8, 2003, six days before his column appeared in The Post and other publications, Wilson said in an interview. The person, whom Wilson declined to identify to The Post, asked Novak about the "yellow cake" uranium matter and then about Wilson, Wilson said. He first revealed that conversation in a book he wrote last year. In the book, he said that he tried to reach Novak on July 8, and that they finally connected on July 10. In that conversation, Wilson said that he did not confirm his wife worked for the CIA but that Novak told him he had obtained the information from a "CIA source."
Novak told the person that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA as a specialist in weapons of mass destruction and had arranged her husband's trip to Niger, Wilson said. Unknown to Novak, the person was a friend of Wilson and reported the conversation to him, Wilson said.
Novak and his attorney, James Hamilton, have declined to discuss the investigation, as has Fitzgerald.
Harlow, the former CIA spokesman, said in an interview yesterday that he testified last year before a grand jury about conversations he had with Novak at least three days before the column was published. He said he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed.
Harlow said that after Novak's call, he checked Plame's status and confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called Novak back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong and that Plame's name should not be used. But he did not tell Novak directly that she was undercover because that was classified.
In a column published Oct. 1, 2003, Novak wrote that the CIA official he spoke to "asked me not to use her name, 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."
Harlow was also involved in the larger internal administration battle over who would be held responsible for Bush using the disputed charge about the Iraq-Niger connection as part of the war argument. Based on the questions they have been asked, people involved in the case believe that Fitzgerald looked into this bureaucratic fight because the effort to discredit Wilson was part of the larger campaign to distance Bush from the Niger controversy.
Wilson unleashed an attack on Bush's claim on July 6, 2003, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," in an interview in The Post and writing his own op-ed article in the New York Times, in which he accused the president of "twisting" intelligence.
Behind the scenes, the White House responded with twin attacks: one on Wilson and the other on the CIA, which it wanted to take the blame for allowing the 16 words to remain in Bush's speech. As part of this effort, then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley spoke with Tenet during the week about clearing up CIA responsibility for the 16 words, even though both knew the agency did not think Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Tenet was interviewed by prosecutors, but it is not clear whether he appeared before the grand jury, a former CIA official said.
On July 9, Tenet and top aides began to draft a statement over two days that ultimately said it was "a mistake" for the CIA to have permitted the 16 words about uranium to remain in Bush's speech. He said the information "did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches, and the CIA should have ensured that it was removed."
A former senior CIA official said yesterday that Tenet's statement was drafted within the agency and was shown only to Hadley on July 10 to get White House input. Only a few minor changes were accepted before it was released on July 11, this former official said. He took issue with a New York Times report last week that said Rove and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, had a role in Tenet's statement.
The prosecutors have talked to State Department officials to determine what role a classified memo including two sentences about Plame's role in Wilson's Niger trip played in the damage-control campaign.
People familiar with this part of the probe provided new details about the memo, including that it was then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage who requested it the day Wilson went public and asked that a copy be sent to then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to take with him on a trip to Africa the next day. Bush and several top aides were on that trip. Carl W. Ford Jr., who was director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the time and who supervised the original production of the memo, has appeared before the grand jury, a former State Department official said.
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The preceding report of the interview of former CIA spokesperson Bill Harlow makes it quite clear that Harlow is Novak's contact at the CIA, and that Harlow told Novak that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was confirmed by the CIA spokesman to have the status of an "undercover operative", and that Plame did not "send her husband, Joe Wilson, on a fact finding trip regarding the attempts by Iraq to purchase "yellowcake" uranium.
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Fitzgerald began his probe in December 2003 to determine whether any government official knowingly leaked Plame's identity as a CIA employee to the media. Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, has said his wife's career was ruined in retaliation for his public criticism of Bush. In a 2002 trip to Niger at the request of the CIA,
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Quote:
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Harlow, the former CIA spokesman, said in an interview yesterday that he testified last year before a grand jury about conversations he had with Novak at least three days before the column was published. He said he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed.
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As I posted earlier, here................
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...1&postcount=15
Quote Box - 3: On Oct. 1, 2003
Even Novak
tells CNN's Blitzer that senior Bush admin. officials told him that Wilson's wife suggested that he be sent to NIGER, but his source at the CIA said, "to their knowledge, he did not -- that the mission was not suggested by Ambassador Wilson's wife."
Quote Box - 4: In Wilson's July 6, 2003 Op-Ed column in the NY Times, he writes, "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".
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.....Novak, however, chose to ignore what CIA spokesman Bill Harlow told him,
and instead, publish Rove's Nepotism "OP" to discredit and make an example out of "whistleblower", Joe Wilson..............
Quote:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8658626/
Transcript for July 24
Fred Thompson, Dick Durbin, David Gregory, William Safire, Stuart Taylor & Nina Totenberg
BC News
Updated: 12:05 p.m. ET July 24, 2005
PLEASE CREDIT ANY QUOTES OR EXCERPTS FROM THIS NBC TELEVISION PROGRAM TO "NBC NEWS' MEET THE PRESS........
.............MODERATOR/PANELIST: Tim Russert, NBC News
............MR. RUSSERT: Four years of Latin, Canisius High School. Thank you, Brother Bill.
Let me turn to the CIA leaked case investigation. There have been numerous newspaper reports that the investigation is now focusing on perhaps perjury as opposed to the leak because the leak is difficult to prove under the law. What we know so far is that in terms of journalists, Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post, Russert of NBC, Matt Cooper of Time magazine have all testified, either in deposition or before the grand jury. We assume Robert Novak has testified because Judy Miller of The Times who didn't testify is in jail. And there's been numerous newspaper reports that there's a difference between the testimony of some of the reporters and Scooter Libby of Vice President Cheney's office and Karl Rove of President Bush's office. Bill Safire, what do we make of all this?...............
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Quote:
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5529639.html
Last update: July 27, 2005 at 7:06 PM
Editorial: CIA & Iraq/An effort to shift the blame
July 28, 2005 ED0728
In addition to potentially indicting one or more people in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame in the literal sense, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald could very well figuratively indict the Bush administration's case for going to war in Iraq, plus its cynical behavior when that case began to unravel. He could also expose just how badly columnist Robert Novak behaved in all this.
The Washington Post's Walter Pincus is the gold standard in trustworthy, hard-nosed reporting these days, and he, with Jim VandeHei, put together a powerful report for Wednesday's Post that illuminates several aspects of the Plame affair.
Pincus and VandeHei write that Fitzgerald is exploring the fight between the White House and the CIA over who was responsible for the discredited claim that Iraq sought to buy enriched uranium in Niger. He's exploring this because "the effort to discredit [Ambassador Joseph] Wilson was part of the larger campaign to distance Bush from the Niger controversy."...........
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powerclown, I ask you again....how do you come to label, on this forum, a man who has served his country as a respected diplomat, lauded, in 1991 by GWH Bush as a "hero", attacked by members of the Bush administration, along with his wife, a 20 year career, "undercover operative", in the description of the CIA's own recent spokesperson? Wilson was apparently sincere and forthright in all of his public statements....even the account that he provided in his recent book about Novak telling a "stranger on a DC street that Wilson was a liar and that his wife "was CIA" has now been corroborated in Pincus's new reporting.
I've posted links to back the point that WaPo reporter Pincus is the best and most reliable reporter of the details of this "story", that he has himself. provided testimony to Fitzpatrick's grand jury, and thus can be presumed to know the content of questions that Fitzpatrick asks reporters, and that, by testifying, Pincus presumably has an easier time approaching and comparing notes with those who have also testified, including Bill Harlow.
By reading and allowing your opinion to be influenced by talking points like the ones in this "example" article (see quote box below...), powerclown, and then by defending Rove, et al, and by smearing Wilson as a "sleaze", you do yourself and your reputation here no positive service, powerclown. Please reconsider who and what you have been supporting and...... denigrating.
Quote:
http://www.etherzone.com/2005/schm062205.shtml
JOSEPH WILSON
AND HIS AMAZING, TECHNICOLOR GOP TURNCOATS
By: Doug Schmitz
"It was this flat-out lie about what Wilson learned in Niger, and what he reported to the CIA upon his return, that fueled the "sixteen words" controversy and led to the publication of Wilson’s best-selling account, titled, ironically, The Politics of Truth. One can only conclude that Joseph Wilson has perpetrated one of the most astonishing hoaxes in American history."
– John Hinderaker, July 10, 2004, Powerlineblog.com
Based on the latest slant the elite media have put on stories over the last eight months to further smear the Bush administration, they seem to have resuscitated a once-useful breed of politician – besides anti-American Democrats – they can actually quote without resorting to the "anonymous source" tack: GOP turncoats who have lost their souls, as well as their backbones, in turning against Bush, our courageous troops and the war on terrorism. They seem to be the only kind of Republican the elite media will validate.
Take Joseph Wilson: The original GOP turncoat who has turned treason into a profitable career and betrayal into an art form. An ex-U.S. ambassador to Iraq under former President George H.W. Bush, Wilson has quickly made new friends – as well as a king’s ransom – by telling vicious lies and half-truths about President George W. Bush that has threatened to jeopardize our troops as they valiantly fight the just war in Iraq............
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Last edited by host; 07-28-2005 at 01:01 AM..
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