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Banned
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
I just read the 3/7/07 article by Thompson posted by Host. I think I am begining to like Thompson, he certainly has a clear view of the Libby issue.
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ace.... you clearly foster support for commission of treasonous acts during a "time of war"...so does Thompson. Where would our country be if everyone condoned the outing of a secret CIA agent (or....in order for you to have a factual basis for your opinion......Patrick Fitzgerald has lied to the court, and Henry Waxman lied in his opening statement at a March 16, 2007 congressional committee hearing....) for "politcal payback".....or for any reason?
Quote:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...ert/index.html
Wednesday May 30, 2007 08:58 EST
Right-wing noise machine: Plame not covert
(Updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV - Update V - Update VI)
NBC News, yesterday:
An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame's employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was "covert" when her name became public in July 2003. . . .
The employment history indicates that while she was assigned to [Directorate of Operations - Counterproliferation Division], Plame, "engaged in temporary duty travel overseas on official business." The report says, "she traveled at least seven times to more than ten times." When overseas Plame traveled undercover, "sometimes in true name and sometimes in alias -- but always using cover -- whether official or non-official (NOC) -- with no ostensible relationship to the CIA" . . . .
The unclassified summary of Plame's employment with the CIA at the time that syndicated columnist Robert Novak published her name on July 14, 2003 says, "Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for who the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States."
The right-wing noise machine spent the last two years repeatedly, continuously and emphatically telling their followers the exact opposite:
Fred Barnes, Fox News Special Report, November 3, 2005 (via Lexis):
The CIA made such a big deal out of Valerie Plame and her name being published. She wasn't even an covert agent or anything.
Fred Barnes, July 17, 2005 - Fox News roundtable (via Lexis):
Well, wait a minute, though. I mean, look, if they were really pushing this case, really trying to get her name out and discredit and disclose that she was a CIA agent, really out her -- and I don't think she was a covert agent. She worked at a desk in Langley at CIA headquarters.
Mark Levin, National Review, July 18, 2005:
Despite all the hype, it appears that Plame works a desk job at the CIA. That's an admirable and important line of work. But it doesn't make her a covert operative, and it didn't make her a covert operative when Bob Novak mentioned her in his July 14, 2003, column, or the five years preceding the column's publication, during which time she hadn't served overseas as a spy, either.
Washington Times Editorial, July 19, 2005:
What is known thus far suggests that . . . In July 2003, when columnist Robert Novak first mentioned in passing that Mrs. Plame worked for the CIA, she was not functioning as a covert agent and her work for the CIA was common knowledge.
Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds, July 15, 2005:
Since it seems as clear as anything in this affair that Valerie Plame was not a covert agent the day before Novak's column either, I think we can chalk this up to Joe Wilson's habitual disingenuousness. . .
Nobody ever said that she wasn't working for the CIA -- the question is whether she was a covert spy or a paperpusher, and the answer seems pretty clearly to be the latter.
Rich Galen, Republican strategist, CNN's Situation Room, October 6, 2005 (via Lexis):
GALEN: At the time she was not undercover. She was not a covert -- and we call them officers, not agents. . . We're arguing whether or not she was a covert agent at the time and I'm saying she was not.
Alexander Haig, CNN, October 30, 2005 (via Lexis):
Now, let me tell you, he didn't lay a finger on anyone about a conspiracy associated with the war, or about an effort to get the so -- called State Department official's wife, who was really a bureaucrat and not a covert operator.
John Hinderaker Powerline, November 5, 2005:
When CIA leaks hurt the administration, these papers have gleefully passed them on. It was only when Scooter Libby mentioned the name of a non-covert CIA employee, Valerie Plame, that the Post, the Times, and other MSM outlets suddenly developed a faux concern about lapses in security.
Barbara Lerner, National Review, March 19, 2007:
The charge was false, and the CIA knew it was false from the get-go. Valerie Plame was their employee; they knew she was not a classified agent because she was not covert and had not worked abroad for more than five years.
Robert Novak, CNN's Crossfire, September 29, 2003 (via Lexis):
According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative, and not in charge of undercover operatives. So what is the fuss about? Pure Bush-bashing.
Many people who listen to right-wing commentators such as these get their "news" about the world primarily, even exclusively, from these sources. And these sources, knowing that, routinely create their own self-affirming though wildly warped realities, in the process denying the most established facts or asserting propositions for which there is no factual basis (Fred Barnes: "The CIA made such a big deal out of Valerie Plame and her name being published. She wasn't even an covert agent or anything" -- Glenn Reynolds: "Since it seems as clear as anything in this affair that Valerie Plame was not a covert agent the day before Novak's column").
And there are countless identical statements about Plame that are not included here where the commentator confined their assertion to whether Plame was "covert" within the parameters of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Victoria Toensing, for instance, repeatedly made misleading statements insinuating that Plame was not covert -- even calling for Senate Democrats to investigate the CIA's criminal referral of the Plame disclosure -- but typically couched those claims as a statutory analysis, rather than a straight-forward claim about her employment status with the CIA.
But the above-listed right-wing pundits simply made clear, unequivocal statements about Plame's status with the CIA that were outright false. They had no basis at the time for making such statements. But, as they so often do, they made them anyway, because those statements helped to defend the Leader and bolster their political agenda. Most of all, they know that their readers will trust what they say even when those statements are demonstrably false.
That is the purpose they serve -- to say whatever needs to be said, whether true or false, to diffuse concern among their followers that the Leader has engaged in any real wrongdoing. That is why Tim at Balloon-Juice -- who last night said: "I could entertain myself for hours looking up the hair-singingly civil manner that countless conservative blogs attacked the idea that Valerie Plame was a covert agent. If one in twenty corrects their error you can color me shocked" -- can rest easy. No shock is forthcoming. These falsehoods are never acknowledged, let alone retracted, because they are a critical part of the role they play.
UPDATE: This morning, I read through roughly 50 or so (at least) panel discussions and "news" items from Fox News over the last couple of years on the Plame matter. If Fox were your principal source of news, you would believe that the proposition that Valerie Plame was not considered "covert" by the CIA was a fact so established that nobody really questioned it:
Fox "moderate" Mort Kondracke, Special Report with Brit Hume, September 1, 2006 (via Lexis):
I don't think we know that Karl Rove knew and I assume that Scooter Libby may have known but he may have -- you know, she was not a covert officer, she was not a covert agent, and she was not covered by the intelligence agent's identities act. So, all of that is beside the point.
Laura Ingraham, Hannity & Colmes, March 7, 2007:
This is bizarre that this case would have gone this far when they knew who leaked this information, and they knew that this was not a situation where Valerie Plame, at this point in time, at least, was a covert agent.
David Rifkin & Lee Casey, National Review, January 25, 2007:
First and foremost, based on information in Wilson's book, among other places, it became abundantly clear that Valerie Plame was not a covert agent, but an official based in Langley whose identity was well-known around town.
Jonah Goldberg, National Review Corner, September 30, 2003:
Wilson's wife is a desk jockey and much of the Washington cocktail circuit knew that already.
Imagine having risked your life to go undercover for your country as a CIA operative and then having to listen to the likes of Jonah Goldberg, Fred Barnes and company belittle your work by falsely insulting you as a "desk jockey" and acting as though you were nothing but a worthless file clerk, all in order to protect the Leader and assure his followers that they did nothing wrong.
UPDATE II: Once Valerie Plame testified before a House Committee in March that she was covert and had traveled overseas in that capacity within the five years prior to her outing (a fact which the newly released CIA documents confirm), CIA Director Michael Hayden also confirmed that she was, indeed, "covert."
As a result, Fred Barnes -- who had spent the last two years stating unequivocally that she was not covert -- began saying things like this, on Brit Hume's March 16, 2007 show (via Lexis):
If anybody triggered the exposure of her as an agent and it's very unclear what "covert" actually means because it's not clear that under the act that actually designates whether an agent is covert or not, whether that applied to her or not.
In the face of conclusive evidence that Plame was "covert," Barnes simply abandoned his two-year-long assurances that she was not covert and began pretending that it was "unclear." He never once retracted anything he said or even acknowledged having spewed plainly false claims so emphatically, and he never will.
Who would possibly consider someone who engages in deceitful behavior like that to be even remotely credible? And Barnes' behavior here is merely illustrative; it was replicated by virtually the entire right-wing propaganda edifice.
UPDATE III: In February of 2006 this year, Tony Snow guest-hosted for chatted with Bill O'Reilly and said this (h/t Zack):
Very quickly -- very quickly, you got this Valerie Plame case. Now, it turns out that [special counsel] Peter (sic: Patrick) Fitzgerald doesn't -- can't even identify any harm. She wasn't a covert agent. She wasn't compromised. . . She wasn't covert anymore.
Are there any consequences at all for the White House Press Secretary to tell outright lies like that? Does that prompt any media scandals? Why can Tony Snow say with impunity that Plame "wasn't a covert agent" when their own CIA confirms that she was? Really, how can that be allowed? (Correction: Snow's statement was made in February, 2006, prior to his becoming Press Secretary. Dishonest defenses of the administration on Fox is how he trained for that job. He still ought to be asked about it).
UPDATE IV: In WashingtonPost.com today, Dan Froomkin notes an amazing fact:
Even as the Libby case was about to go to the jury, the Washington Post published a scathing opinion piece by Victoria Toensing in which she charged Fitzgerald "with ignoring the fact that there was no basis for a criminal investigation from the day he was appointed" because he "should have known (all he had to do was ask the CIA) that Plame was not covert, knowledge that should have stopped the investigation right there."
Just compare the statements Toensing made with such certainty to actual reality, to the truth, and one sees all one needs to in order to know exactly what Toensing is. That is who Bush followers pointed to as the authoritative source on the Plame matter -- someone who ran around accusing Patrick Fitzgerald of acting improperly because he "should have known (all he had to do was ask the CIA) that Plame was not covert."
Speaking of which, Glenn Reynolds mentions that "Patrick Fitzgerald says Plame was covert" without ever bothering to note that Reynolds emphatically told his readers the exact opposite. Then he adds an update claiming that he was contacted by a Salon reporter (I don't know who) "who wanted to know if [he] was going to 'retract'" his earlier false statements about Plame, and this is what Reynolds said: "I noted that one normally issues a retraction for original reporting, not commenting upon other people's news stories."
There you have it. Reynolds thinks he is free to spew all sorts of false statements and never retract them when proven wrong because one does not issue retractions when "commenting upon other people's news stories" -- even if what one says is factually and completely false.
Just as was true for his right-wing comrades, it was Reynolds' own affirmative statements about Plame which were false, not merely news stories he cited: e.g., "it seems as clear as anything in this affair that Valerie Plame was not a covert agent the day before Novak's column either" and "the question is whether she was a covert spy or a paperpusher, and the answer seems pretty clearly to be the latter." They will do anything to avoid admitting that the propaganda they fed their readers was false.
Reynolds also links to a post from Tom Maguire which is so self-evidently dishonest it is barely worth a reply. Maguire says he is still "unconvinced" that Plame was covert and that news reports confirming her covert status are merely based upon the belief that "when a prosecutor expresses an opinion in a sentencing memorandum, that is dispositive." That's just a deliberate falsehood.
Yesterday's story about Plame's covert status is based upon the CIA's own internal documents which make clear she was covert. That conclusion is consistent with the initial 2003 determination of the CIA that she was covert, the subsequent confirmation from the current CIA Director (handpicked by Bush and Cheney) that she was covert, which in turn was confirmed by Plame herself when testifying under oath, all of which led the Republican federal prosecutor to emphatically state this in court.
But even in the face of that conclusive evidence from multiple authoritative sources (all of which Maguire conceals from his readers by claiming it is all based on nothing more than "Fitzgerald's opinion"), Maguire still says the issue cannot be decided, presumably because Jonah Goldberg, Glenn Reynolds and Laura Ingraham say she was not covert and - hey! - who can say who is right? It's all still up in the air!
Blue Texan has much more on the Reynolds/Maguire game here, and Maguire shows up there to repeat his excuse-making in the comment section. But it does not matter how transparently false Maguire's claims are. They will link to it and rely on it because it does the trick -- it provides a hook for followers of the right-wing noise machine to avoid the recognition that they were lied to for two straight years about Plame, and more importantly, it provides an escape route for right-wing pundits to avoid admitting error ("we still don't know if Plame was covert!").
UPDATE V: Bill Bennett on the Bill O'Reilly Show, November 14, 2005 (h/t via email from this gentleman):
When this information was supposedly leaked about Valerie Plame, everybody went nuts. Turns out she wasn't covert.
The list simply would not have been complete without a contribution from the Virtuous One.
UPDATE VI: Here is an excellent summary of the mountain of evidence demonstrating Plame's covert status, all of which -- as noted there -- is being steadfastly ignored by those, such as Maguire, trying to claim that this is still an open question. As the post asks of Maguire: "Why pretend like Fitzgerald has formed his opinion out of thin air? Why ignore the evidence? Why not at least tell the whole story? Would it make your continued skepticism too difficult to maintain?"
Even if one accepted Maguire's "we-still-don't-know" defense, that amounts to a clear indictment (not that Maguire would ever say so) of all of the above-cited right-wing pundits (such as Toensing) who said definitively that we do know and that Plame was not covert. But now, the only ones who can claim that we still do not know if Plame was covert are the ones who desperately want to avoid knowing.
-- Glenn Greenwald
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Last edited by host; 05-31-2007 at 11:47 AM..
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