Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post

host · 09-14-2006, 12:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

So in other words the left wing press will no longer cover it because its no longer 'anti-Bush' and they are going to let their earlier unfounded smears and lies stick.

Its just too complex for the American people now.

Typical.

Here is the link:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/...t-novak14.html

and here is the link to my response to the last claim posted about the complexity of the Fitzgerald investigation of the Plame CIA leak:
<a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?p=2118609#post2118609">

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo
More of the left wing press dodging the Plame affair now...
Quote:
Matthews: Plame Story Too Complicated to Cover Now

</a>

(Click on any of the text in the preceding quote box to view my linked post.) 
Novak has reported this several ways, in the past. IMO, his POV is contradictory and unreliable, have a look:

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...102000874.html
Mission To Niger

By Robert D. Novak

Monday, July 14, 2003; Page A21

The CIA's decision to send retired diplomat Joseph C. Wilson to Africa in February 2002 to investigate possible Iraqi purchases of uranium was made routinely at a low level without Director George Tenet's knowledge. Remarkably, this produced a political firestorm that has not yet subsided........

......Wilson's mission was created after an early 2002 report by the Italian intelligence service about attempted uranium purchases from Niger, derived from forged documents prepared by what the CIA calls a "con man." This misinformation, peddled by Italian journalists, spread through the U.S. government. The White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, and not just Vice President Cheney, asked the CIA to look into it.

That's where Joe Wilson came in. His first public notice had come in 1991 after 15 years as a Foreign Service officer when, as U.S. charge in Baghdad, he risked his life to shelter in the embassy some 800 Americans from Saddam Hussein's wrath. My partner Rowland Evans reported from the Iraqi capital in our column that Wilson showed "the stuff of heroism." The next year, President George H.W. Bush named him ambassador to Gabon, and President Bill Clinton put him in charge of African affairs at the National Security Council until his retirement in 1998.

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me that Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counterproliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me..........

Quote:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...01/wbr.00.html
CNN WOLF BLITZER REPORTS

Did Rush Limbaugh go to Far? Is CIA Scandal Legit or Just Bush Bashing?

Aired October 1, 2003 - 17:00 ET
.......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?

ROBERT NOVAK, CO-HOST, "CROSSFIRE": 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"?

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. 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 NFC 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 ten-paragraph story I mentioned that two senior administration officials had said it was suggested by his wife, who worked at the CIA......

Did Armitage "tell" Novak, or did Novak ask Armitage about Plame? Novak's first column, excerpted two quote boxes back, gives the impression that even Novak knew that Palme's husband, Wilson was qualified, and was the preceding POTUS's national security advisor on Africa, as recently as 1998, but less than three months later in his excerpted Oct., 2003 interview with Wolf Blitzer, Wolf questioned Novak with the details of Novak's own July column, while Novak spins the notion that Wilson wasn't qualified to be sent by the CIA to Africa, and that he was motivated to question the "senior administration officials" about the "mystery" of who/why Wilson was sent to Niger. The Novak reversal seems ridiculous, since he already described Wilson as a "hero" who defied Saddam when he closed the Baghdad Embassy in 1991, for Bush-41, and then served Clinton as NSC Africa expert, and served in diplomatic posts in Gabon and Niger, before that.

Suddenly, in the Oct., 2003 Blitzer interview, what was obvious to Novak in his July, 2003 writing about why Wilson was qualified to be sent to Niger in 2002 for the CIA, became the "mystery" that caused Novak to ask the "right" question....and not as he reported earlier....that the "senior officials" were eager to tell him that "Wilson's wife who worked for the CIA, sent him to Niger". We know that this "new line" from Novak, was a transparent ruse to make the Bush administration intimidation and payback "Op' against Wilson, by outting his wife at CIA, seem a result of Novak's journalistic "sleuthing", instead of what it really was, as I detailed from John Dickerson's reporting,
here: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...on#post2117020 
or here: <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2135565/">Time's John Dickerson: "I was told I should go ask the CIA who sent Wilson."</a> or here:
<a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2135565/">Time's John Dickerson: "It seemed obvious that the people pushing me to look into who sent Wilson knew exactly the answer I'd find. Yet they were really careful not to let the information slip, which suggested that they knew at the time Plame's identity was radioactive."</a> and here:
<a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2129097/">Time's John Dickerson: "More astonishingly, we learn from the Fitzgerald indictment that Ari Fleischer knew about Plame and didn't tell anyone at all. He walked reporters, including me, up to the fact, suggesting they look into who sent Wilson, but never used her name or talked about her position. Why not? "</a>

Quote:

http://www.informationclearinghouse....rticle4190.htm
Columnist Blows CIA Agent's Cover

By Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce
WASHINGTON BUREAU; Timothy Phelps is the Washington bureau chief.

July 22, 2003: (Newsday) Washington - The identity of an undercover CIA officer whose husband started the Iraq uranium intelligence controversy has been publicly revealed by a conservative Washington columnist citing "two senior administration officials."....

........ "This might be seen as a smear on me and my reputation," Wilson said, "but what it really is is an attempt to keep anybody else from coming forward" to reveal similar intelligence lapses.

<h3>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 it."</h3>

Wilson and others said such a disclosure would be a violation of the law by the officials, not the columnist.

Novak reported that his "two senior administration officials" told him that it was Plame who suggested sending her husband, Wilson, to Niger.

A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked "alongside" the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.

But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. "They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising," he said. "There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason," he said. "I can't figure out what it could be."

"We paid his [Wilson's] air fare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you'd have to pay big bucks to go there," the senior intelligence official said. Wilson said he was reimbursed only for expenses.

Note in the preceding quote box, that Novak is reported to have said in an interview, that "he didn't dig it up". That was in July, 2003. By October, he was the suspicious columinist/reporter, asking the "right question".
He's still trying to pass off that bullshit, here in the Sept. 13, 2006, OP column:

Quote:

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/...t-novak14.html
.......Late in my hourlong interview with Armitage. I asked why the CIA had sent Wilson — lacking intelligence experience, nuclear policy or recent contact with Niger — on the African mission. He told the Washington Post last week that his answer was: ‘‘I don’t know, but I think his wife worked out there.’’...........

Time's John Dickerson reported, since last fall, on the fact that the administration "nepotism Op" was an obsession communicated to reporters:
"Ask us who sent Wilson to Niger." 
It's so fucking simple....and obvious, that this is what happened....and Novak had to shift to the "mantra" that he thought up and asked that question....on his own, after the CIA complained that classifies information about Plame's employment, had been leaked. 
....and these are the idiot misfits, keeping us all safe from terr-herrr....or are they the fucking terrorists? People still back these "frat boys" turned traitors!

IMO, it still seems an uncomplicated story about a US presidential administration behaving as intimidating thugs, too clever by half, intent on conning journalists into asking the officials about classified details about one CIA employee, to provide plausible deniability when they leaked the classified identity of the CIA employee, to the journalists who they conned into asking.
....All intended to set an example of what would happen to any other employee in the US intelligence community who thought about disclosing that the excuses for invading Iraq were known to be disputed, tenuous, or untrue, by officials such as Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Wolfowitz, and Perle, at al, when the uttered them to manipulate public support to pressure resistant senators and congressman to vote for the Oct., 2002 authorization to use force, as a last resort, against Iraq.

As far as this last bit of Novak "crap", flung at the wall in the hope of some of it actually "sticking":

Quote:

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/...t-novak14.html
..........Armitage’s silence the next 2œ years caused intense pain for his colleagues in government and enabled partisan Democrats in Congress to falsely accuse Rove of being my primary source. When Armitage now says he was mute because of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s request, that does not explain his silence three months between his claimed first realization that he was the source and Fitzgerald’s appointment on Dec. 30. Armitage’s tardy self-disclosure is tainted because it is deceptive..............

Re-read Novak's "crap", in the preceding quote box, and consider that Patrick Fitzgerald is much smarter than me, and he successfully prosecuted the 1993 WTC bombers. He's taking all of this bluster "in", to be sure. IMO, the Libby trial, early next year, will only be the beginning. Pat Fitzgerald KNOWS what I've described in this post, he admitted it to Libby's criminal trial judge, in this april, 2006 filing:

Quote:

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/do..._to_compel.pdf
Filed 04/05/2006
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ) ) CR. NO 05-394 (RBW) v. ) ) I. LEWIS LIBBY, ) also known as “Scooter Libby” ) GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSE TO DEFENDANT’S THIRD MOTION TO COMPEL DISCOVERY The UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, by PATRICK J. FITZGERALD, SPECIAL COUNSEL, respectfully submits the following response to the “Third Motion of I. Lewis Libby to Compel Discovery Under Rule 16 and Brady.”

(Begining near Bottom of Page 29: )
.....Defendant also asserts without elaboration that “documents that help establish that no White House-driven plot to punish Mr. Wilson caused the disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s identity also constitute Brady material.” Once again, defendant ignores the fact that he is not charged with participating in any conspiracy, much less one defined as a “White House-driven plot to punish Mr. Wilson.” Thus, putative evidence that such a conspiracy did not exist is not Brady material. Moreover, given that there is evidence that other White House officials with whom defendant spoke prior to July14, 2003 discussed Wilson’s wife’s employment with the press both prior to, and after, July 14, 2003 – which evidence has been shared with defendant – it is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to “punish” Wilson.10 Surely, defendant cannot claim that any document on its face that does not reflect a plot is exculpatory....

Bush will be forced to either fire Fitzgerald as special counsel, or pardon more than just Scooter Libby. I think that Armitage and Novak and the "buzz" we've seen from administration sympathizers, will motivate Fitzgerald to work even harder to expose this official thugishness. It amounts to treason during the GWOT, and folks here and in too many other places, defend it, or in the examples in prior posts here, attempt to obscure or belittle the reasoned arguments of accusers who know treasonous acts and cynical lies and manipulation of the working press, when they see it in front of their noses, as we have since Libby first requested an intelligence briefing about Plame and Wilson, at the sirection of Dick Cheney.

Quote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8600327/...wsweek/page/2/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8600327/...wsweek/page/2/
Rove at War
He rose using tactics his foes are turning against him. But never bet against Karl Rove.
By Howard Fineman Newsweek
Updated: 4:04 p.m. ET July 17, 2005

.........It's unlikely that any White House officials considered that they were doing anything illegal in going after Joe Wilson. Indeed, the line between national security and politics had long since been all but erased by the Bush administration. In the months after 9/11, the Republican National Committee, a part of Rove's empire, had sent out a fund-raising letter that showed the president aboard Air Force One in the hours after the attack. Democrats howled, but that was the Bush Rove was selling in the re-election campaign: commander in chief. Now Wilson was getting in the way of that glorious story, essentially accusing the administration of having blundered or lied the country into war.

How do you publicly counter a guy like that? As "senior adviser," Rove would be involved in finding out. Technically, Rove was in charge of politics, not "communications." But, as he saw it, the two were one and the same—and he used his heavyweight status to push the message machine run by his Texas protegé and friend, Dan Bartlett. Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was sent out to trash the Wilson op-ed. "Zero, nada, nothing new here," he said. Then, on a long Bush trip to Africa, Fleischer and Bartlett prompted clusters of reporters to look into the bureaucratic origins of the Wilson trip...........