The Plame affair....... - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Ustwo · 09-01-2006, 01:21 PM

I think many of you know where this would be going, but let me post a bit from the Washington Post of all places.....

Quote:

End of an Affair
It turns out that the person who exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame was not out to punish her husband.

Friday, September 1, 2006; A20

WE'RE RELUCTANT to return to the subject of former CIA employee Valerie Plame because of our oft-stated belief that far too much attention and debate in Washington has been devoted to her story and that of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, over the past three years. But all those who have opined on this affair ought to take note of the not-so-surprising disclosure that the primary source of the newspaper column in which Ms. Plame's cover as an agent was purportedly blown in 2003 was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage.

Mr. Armitage was one of the Bush administration officials who supported the invasion of Iraq only reluctantly. He was a political rival of the White House and Pentagon officials who championed the war and whom Mr. Wilson accused of twisting intelligence about Iraq and then plotting to destroy him. Unaware that Ms. Plame's identity was classified information, Mr. Armitage reportedly passed it along to columnist Robert D. Novak "in an offhand manner, virtually as gossip," according to a story this week by the Post's R. Jeffrey

Smith, who quoted a former colleague of Mr. Armitage.

.....
Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...101460_pf.html

So its time to say you are sorry for blaming Mr. Rove, Bush, Cheney, and the real killers in the WTC. You, my friends, were duped.

Ch'i · 09-01-2006, 01:33 PM

You win this round...

ratbastid · 09-01-2006, 03:07 PM

It's still possible to turn this into a conspiracy. The fact that the actual leak was a redshirt who can be thrown to the wolves only underscores the canniness of the political manouver. I don't know...

Even if this gets Rove, Bush, and Cheney off the hook, it doesn't recover the PR points lost by the administration through this whole mess. The administration is hopelessly off the approval rails. Even if it the news today was that Wilson was single, the damage to the administration is done.

Willravel · 09-01-2006, 03:10 PM

That asshat. I was fooled.

Ch'i · 09-01-2006, 03:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

That asshat. I was fooled.

Couldn't have put it better myself...

roachboy · 09-01-2006, 05:59 PM

well, since we are referring--without necessarily knowing it of course, to a book that has yet to be released--and since that book is by david corn and michael issikof--and since we are cycling through editorials--i figured that posting a bit from david corn's website about the book as a whole--hubris--would be interesting in this context.

here is a version of the armitage information from david corn's website:

Quote:

HUBRIS: The Armitage Leak and What It Means (Plus More Info on the Book)

One mystery solved.

It was Richard Armitage, when he was deputy secretary of state in July 2003, who first disclosed to conservative columnist Robert Novak that the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson was a CIA employee.

A Newsweek article--based on the new book I cowrote with Newsweek correspondent Michael Isikoff, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War--discloses that Armitage passed this classified information to Novak during a July 8, 2003 interview. Though Armitage's role as Novak's primary source has been a subject of speculation, the case is now closed. Our sources for this are three government officials who spoke to us confidentially and who had direct knowledge of Armitage's conversation with Novak. Carl Ford Jr., who was head of the State Department's intelligence branch at the time, told us--on the record--that after Armitage testified before the grand jury investigating the leak case, he told Ford, "I'm afraid I may be the guy that caused the whole thing."

Ford recalls Armitage said he had "slipped up" and had told Novak more that he should have. According to Ford, Armitage was upset that "he was the guy that fucked up."

The unnamed government sources also told us about what happened three months later when Novak wrote a column noting that his original source was "no partisan gunslinger." After reading that October 1 column, Armitage called his boss and long-time friend, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and acknowledged he was Novak's source. Powell, Armitage and William Taft IV, the State Department's top lawyer, frantically conferred about what to do. As Taft told us (on the record), "We decided we were going to tell [the investigators] what we thought had happened." Taft notified the criminal division of the Justice Department--which was then handling the investigation--and FBI agents interviewed Armitage the next day. In that interview, Armitage admitted he had told Novak about Wilson's wife and her employment at the CIA. The Newsweek piece lays all this out.

Colleagues of Armitage told us that Armitage--who is known to be an inveterate gossip--was only conveying a hot tidbit, not aiming to do Joe Wilson harm. Ford says, "My sense from Rich is that it was just chitchat." (When Armitage testified before the Iran-contra grand jury many years earlier, he had described himself as "a terrible gossip." Iran-contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh subsequently accused him of providing "false testimony" to investigators but said that he could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Armitage's misstatements had been "deliberate.")

The Plame leak in Novak's column has long been cited by Bush administration critics as a deliberate act of payback, orchestrated to punish and/or discredit Joe Wilson after he charged that the Bush administration had misled the American public about the prewar intelligence. The Armitage news does not fit neatly into that framework. He and Powell were not the leading advocates of war in the administration (even though Powell became the chief pitchman for the case for war when he delivered a high-profile speech at the UN). They were not the political hitmen of the Bush gang. Armitage might have mentioned Wilson's wife merely as gossip. But--as Hubris notes--he also had a bureaucratic interest in passing this information to Novak.

On July 6--two days before Armitage's meeting with Novak--Wilson published an op-ed in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, that revealed that he had been sent by the CIA to Niger to investigate the charge that Iraq had been trying to buy uranium in that impoverished African nation. Wilson wrote that his mission had been triggered by an inquiry to the CIA from Vice President Dick Cheney, who had read an intelligence report about the Niger allegation, and that he (Wilson) had reported back to the CIA that the charge was highly unlikely. Noting that President George W. Bush had referred to this allegation in his 2003 State of the Union speech, Wilson maintained that the administration had used a phoney claim to lead the country to war. His article ignited a firestorm. That meant that the State Department had good reason (political reason, that is) to distance itself from Wilson, a former State Department official. Armitage may well have referred to Wilson's wife and her CIA connection to make the point that State officials--already suspected by the White House of not being team players--had nothing to do with Wilson and his trip.

Whether he had purposefully mentioned this information to Novak or had slipped up, Armitage got the ball rolling--and abetted a White House campaign under way to undermine Wilson. At the time, top White House aides--including Karl Rove and Scooter Libby--were trying to do in Wilson. And they saw his wife's position at the CIA as a piece of ammunition. As John Dickerson wrote in Slate, senior White House aides that week were encouraging him to investigate who had sent Joe Wilson on his trip. They did not tell him they believed Wilson's wife had been involved. But they clearly were trying to push him toward that information.

Shortly after Novak spoke with Armitage, he told Rove that he had heard that Valerie Wilson had been behind her husband's trip to Niger, and Rove said that he knew that, too. So a leak from Armitage (a war skeptic not bent on revenge against Wilson) was confirmed by Rove (a Bush defender trying to take down Wilson). And days later--before the Novak column came out--Rove told Time magazine's Matt Cooper that Wilson's wife was a CIA employee and involved in his trip.

Bush critics have long depicted the Plame leak as a sign of White House thuggery. I happened to be the first journalist to report that the leak in the Novak column might be evidence of a White House crime--a violation of the little-known Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a crime for a government official to disclose information about an undercover CIA officer (if that government official knew the covert officer was undercover and had obtained information about the officer through official channels). Two days after the leak appeared, I wrote:

Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security--and break the law--in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?

And I stated,

Now there is evidence Bushies used classified information and put the nation's counter-proliferation efforts at risk merely to settle a score.

The Armitage leak was not directly a part of the White House's fierce anti-Wilson crusade. But as Hubris notes, it was, in a way, linked to the White House effort, for Amitage had been sent a key memo about Wilson's trip that referred to his wife and her CIA connection, and this memo had been written, according to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, at the request of I. Lewis Scooter Libby, the vice president's chief of staff. Libby had asked for the memo because he was looking to protect his boss from the mounting criticism that Bush and Cheney had misrepresented the WMD intelligence to garner public support for the invasion of Iraq.

The memo included information on Valerie Wilson's role in a meeting at the CIA that led to her husband's trip. This critical memo was--as Hubris discloses--based on notes that were not accurate. (You're going to have to read the book for more on this.) But because of Libby's request, a memo did circulate among State Department officials, including Armitage, that briefly mentioned Wilson's wife.

Armitage's role aside, the public record is without question: senior White House aides wanted to use Valerie Wilson's CIA employment against her husband. Rove leaked the information to Cooper, and Libby confirmed Rove's leak to Cooper. Libby also disclosed information on Wilson's wife to New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

As Hubris also reveals--and is reported in the Newsweek story--Armitage was also the source who told Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in mid-June 2003 that Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. Woodward did not reveal he had learned about Wilson's wife until last November, when he released a statement recounting a conversation with a source (whom he did not name). Woodward acknowledged at that time that he had not told his editors about this interview--and that he had recently given a deposition to Fitzgerald about this conversation.

Speculation regarding Woodward's source quickly focused on Armitage. Last week, the Associated Press disclosed State Department records indicating that Woodward had met with Armitage at the State Department on June 13, 2003. In pegging Armitage as Woodward's source, Hubris cites five confidential sources--including government officials and an Armitage confidant.

Woodward came in for some harsh criticism when he and the Post revealed that he had been the first reporter told about Wilson's wife by a Bush administration official. During Fitzgerald's investigation, Woodward had repeatedly appeared on television and radio talk shows and dismissed the CIA leak probe without noting that he had a keen personal interest in the matter: his good source, Richard Armitage, was likely a target of Fitzgerald. Woodward was under no obligation to disclose a confidential source and what that source had told him. But he also was under no obligation to go on television and criticize an investigation while withholding relevant information about his involvement in the affair.

Fitzgerald, as Hubris notes, investigated Armitage twice--once for the Novak leak; then again for not initially telling investigators about his conversation with Woodward. Each time, Fitzgerald decided not to prosecute Armitage. Abiding by the rules governing grand jury investigations, Fitzgerald said nothing publicly about Armitage's role in the leak.

The outing of Armitage does change the contours of the leak case. The initial leaker was not plotting vengeance. He and Powell had not been gung-ho supporters of the war. Yet Bush backers cannot claim the leak was merely an innocent slip. Rove confirmed the classified information to Novak and then leaked it himself as part of an effort to undermine a White House critic. Afterward, the White House falsely insisted that neither Rove nor Libby had been involved in the leak and vowed that anyone who had participated in it would be bounced from the administration. Yet when Isikoff and Newsweek in July 2005 revealed a Matt Cooper email showing that Rove had leaked to Cooper, the White House refused to acknowledge this damning evidence, declined to comment on the case, and did not dismiss Rove. To date, the president has not addressed Rove's role in the leak. It remains a story of ugly and unethical politics, stonewalling, and lies.

A NOTE OF SELF-PROMOTION: Hubris covers much more than the leak case. It reveals behind-the-scene battles at the White House, the CIA, the State Department, and Capitol Hill that occurred in the year before the invasion of Iraq. It discloses secrets about the CIA's prewar plans for Iraq. It chronicles how Bush and Cheney reacted to the failure to find WMDs in Iraq. It details how Bush and other aides neglected serious planning for the post-invasion period. It recounts how the unproven theories of a little-known academic who was convinced Saddam Hussein was behind all acts of terrorism throughout the world influenced Bush administration officials. It reports what went wrong inside The New York Times regarding its prewar coverage of Iraq's WMDs. It shows precisely how the intelligence agencies screwed up and how the Bush administration misused the faulty and flimsy (and fraudulent) intelligence. The book, a narrative of insider intrigue, also relates episodes in which intelligence analysts and experts made the right calls about Iraq's WMDs but lost the turf battles.

And there's more, including:

* how and why the CIA blew the call on the Niger forgeries

* why US intelligence officials suspected Iranian intelligence was trying to influence US decisionmaking through the Iraqi National Congress

* why members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who doubted the case for war were afraid to challenge the prewar intelligence

* how Cheney and his aides sifted through raw intelligence desperately trying to find evidence to justify the Iraq invasion

* how Karl Rove barely managed to escape indictment with a shaky argument.

And there's more beyond that. In other words, this is not a book on the leak case. It includes the leak episode because the leak came about partly due to the White House need to keep its disingenuous sales campaign going after the invasion. Feel free to see for yourself

source: http://www.davidcorn.com/archives/20...s_the_armi.php

and another bit:

Quote:

HUBRIS: There's More News To Come

News coverage of HUBRIS continues. The Los Angeles Times had a good piece yesterday that noted at the top that the Armitage news came from a "new book" and then identified the book and its authors. The Washington Post, though, has twice covered the Armitage leak this week--in a news story and in an editorial--and neither time did it mention the story had been broken by our book. The liberal media-pokers of Media Matters posted a round-up of much of the conservative media reaction to the Armitage news and argued that rightwingers were mugging facts and context to help out Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and the White House. Over at Slate, Mickey Kaus picked up on the fight that did not happen yesterday between National Review's Byron York and me on Bloggingheads.tv, noting that this non-battle had "all the simmering hostility of a pre-fight weigh-in ceremony!" We'll get to York soon enough. Maybe Hitchens, too.

In the meantime, there should be more news out of HUBRIS next week--just as the book goes on sale. The book has revelations to discomfort folks on both sides of the aisle. But I wonder if the cons who embrace (and miscast) the Armitage news out of the book as absolution of the White House regarding the leak case will so eagerly accept the implications of these other disclosures. We might just see some end-of-summer cherry-picking.

source: http://www.davidcorn.com/

so i figure it is best to wait to read the actual book rather than rely on editorials that select certain factoids from the book, present a very odd case based on them (how exactly did the plame business get diverted onto a question of explicit motive anyway?). maybe you should consider actually reading the book too, ustwo, before you begin gloating over what appears--at the best, even in the truncated format of the editorial you bit--to be something of a pyrrhic victory for the right--if it even is that.

filtherton · 09-01-2006, 08:10 PM

Wait, we can't trust these people, they're obviously just trying to sell a book. Or something.

Marvelous Marv · 09-01-2006, 10:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

I think many of you know where this would be going, but let me post a bit from the Washington Post of all places.....

So its time to say you are sorry for blaming Mr. Rove, Bush, Cheney, and the real killers in the WTC. You, my friends, were duped.

I am absolutely overcome with nostalgia. Let's walk down memory lane with the rush-to-judgement, Cheney/Rove-is-the-devil bunch:

Quote:

Originally Posted by pan6467

Rove should be tried and punished to the fullest extent of the law.

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...82&postcount=6

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

I'm going to leave it to this mediamatters.org rebuttal of Rove's "fake reporter", Gannon/Guckert's foray into this controversy, waving his "secret memo" at Wilson. The beauty of all this, is that special prosecutor Fitzgerald will report his findings, and events will then determine who is "aiding and abetting". You have to overlook or ignore a bunch, if you claim that you read "most of what I posted, and you sitll cite a classic "mis-information" piece in your disagreement. Read Wilson's letter to the Republicans on the Senate Committee, read the sections of the committee report, cited below. Consider that Cooper, only this week, lays the origin of the NEPOTISM "OP", at Rove's feet.

Does it bother you that you are defending a high government official who outed a CIA agent, how can you justify doing that, stevo?

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...1&postcount=13

Quote:

Originally Posted by locobot

Um, mr. Stevo this thread and investigation are not about Wilson's credibility so you can stop waving that red herring like it's some kind of "get out of jail" card for Karl. I imagine if we do ever see a Rove perp. walk from the Whitehouse we'll find Stevo curled up in a dark corner of his basement, hands over ears, chanting, "Rove did nothing wrong Rove did nothing wrong Rove did nothing wrong..."

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...3&postcount=14

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevo

So is this thing over now? The more I read the more obvious it is that this is a non-story. Its it over yet people? Apparantly rove named nobody and Plame was outed decades ago. So like I said before, rove committed no crime, he did nothing wrong.

THE MEDIA TELLS THE COURT: PLAME'S COVER WAS BLOWN IN THE MID-1990s
As the media alleged to the judges (in Footnote 7, page 8, of their brief), Plame's identity as an undercover CIA officer was first disclosed to Russia in the mid-1990s by a spy in Moscow. Of course, the press and its attorneys were smart enough not to argue that such a disclosure would trigger the defense prescribed in Section 422 because it was evidently made by a foreign-intelligence operative, not by a U.S. agency as the statute literally requires.

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...7&postcount=28

Quote:

Originally Posted by superbelt

Rove should be given the Death Penalty for being a traitor (and getting 70 people killed) to the nation and I hope some agency of the government follows up on this.

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...07&postcount=1

Quote:

Originally Posted by superbelt

I think you give Rove too much credit. This seems to me to be the exact kind of vindictive behavior I have witnessed from him for the past 3 years. He takes pleasure in destroying honest people.

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...07&postcount=3

Quote:

Originally Posted by pan6467

The administration can and probably will sit there and claim they did nothing illegal, but it is immoral, unethical and flat assed wrong in every aspect.

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=23

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Lebell, in view of your decision to post links to the Toensing article on two threads, and your response and decision regarding my earlier Rove-Plamegate thread, made at a time when you admitted little knowledge of what was going on at TFP, I have to ask you if you have some kind of agenda, intending to steer our members away from more reliable information about "Plamegate"?

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...8&postcount=36

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Seaver, I've taken the time to become an expert on what happened in the Valerie Plame leak investigation.

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...27&postcount=3

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevo

because, as you see, rove did nothing wrong.

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...1&postcount=12

By my count, the only proven liar in this inconsequential, overblown scandal is Wilson. It's also now plain to see that Seaver, Stevo, and Powerclown based their opinions on facts and evidence, instead of the emotions so prominently displayed elsewhere. And now, after reading an incredible number of wildly disjointed and tangential source articles by a member who shall remain nameless, I feel the need for a shower. After which, I'm sure, I will read that my quoting the posts of other members constitutes "flaming."

Oh yeah, truthout.org needs to find another domain name.

host · 09-02-2006, 01:53 AM

I regret that some of you boys have gotten into a phenomena in the "news bidnuss" that you might not fully grasp. That's okay....I don't mind guiding you through it, because your posts indicate that you might be in "over your head".
In fairness, I don't expect you to "get it" in just one post with just a limited number of examples, like I display for you below, in this post. I got many more, all specific to recent Washington Post editorials, vs. what staff news reporters....employed by the same paper, relate to us in other pages at the washingtonpost.com website......

Briefly, here's how it works, and here's why us liber-ull adults, navigate through it. What is written in the Washington Post editorials, is predominately conservative bull shit that would be much more at home in the news pages of say....the Washington Times. Much of what is spewed from the WaPo editorial "side", as our examples below, show, is directly contradicted in that paper's news reporting.....almost as if the editorial writer does not even read the rest of the newspaper.

Nothing in the editorial in this thread's OP, changes the findings of fact of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, with regard to his disclosure of his findings in the investigation of the "Plame leak".

What is pleasant, however, is that you boys have now become partial to a small part of what appears in the Washington Post....a very small....and inconsequential portion. If you like, just ask one of us regular readers to guide you further, regarding what is reported in the "open loop", adult news sections of the WaPo, or if you prefer, just come by and visit the "closed loop" editorial page.....just don't mistake the editorials for reality based news reporting....because they aren't!

Quote:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200604100008
Mon, Apr 10, 2006 7:13pm EST

<h3><a name="article"></a>Ignoring its own paper and echoing GOP faithful, Wash. Post editorial furthered numerous CIA leak falsehoods</h3>

<blockquote><h4>Summary: Media Matters for America presents a side-by-side comparison of the claims put forth by an April 9 Washington Post editorial that repeated numerous falsehoods in defense of President Bush's reported authorization of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to disclose the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, the corresponding falsehoods forwarded by conservatives and Republicans in the media, and the Post's own reporting -- some of it appearing in the same edition of the paper as the editorial -- that debunks these falsehoods.</h4></blockquote>

On April 9 -- the same day that NBC Meet the Press host Tim Russert <a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12169680/page/4/">described</a> The Washington Post as "hardly an organ for Republican views" -- the Post published an editorial, titled "<a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/08/AR2006040800895_pf.html">A Good Leak</a>," that echoed numerous falsehoods also promoted by conservative media figures and Republican activists in defense of President Bush's reported authorization of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to disclose to the media classified portions of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction programs. The Post editorial board seemingly ignored its own paper's past reporting on the CIA leak scandal, which has thoroughly debunked the false claims made by conservative and Republican figures and echoed in the April 9 Post editorial.

The Post editorial commented on the April 6 revelation that <a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.thesmokinggun.com/graphics/pdf/libbyplame.pdf">court papers</a> pertaining to special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation of Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, indicated that Bush authorized Libby to disclose specific, classified portions of the NIE to former New York Times reporter Judith Miller. Libby was indicted in October 2005 on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to the FBI regarding the federal investigation into the <a href="http://mediamatters.org/issues_topics/cia_leak_investigation">leaking</a> of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

As Media Matters for America has <a href="http://mediamatters.org/items/200511160012">noted</a>, the Post's editorial page repeated without challenge the Bush administration's justifications for the Iraq war in the buildup to the March 2003 invasion and was complicit in forwarding many of the administration's false and misleading claims to justify the invasion retroactively. In a March 8 <a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2006/03/03/DI2006030301339.html">online discussion</a>, a reader asked Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt when the editorial writers will "own up" to this record. Hiatt responded, "[W]e've acknowledged that we were mistaken in our assumptions about WMD." But the Post has yet to <a href="http://mediamatters.org/items/200603200007">retract</a> its numerous false statements regarding an alleged Iraq-Al Qaeda connection and the Bush administration's use of intelligence. To the contrary, as the April 9 editorial shows, Hiatt has continued to print flagrant falsehoods concerning the Bush administration's efforts to justify the war, even while he and the board have every reason to know -- from the Post's own reporting -- that those assertions are false.

Below, Media Matters for America presents a side-by-side comparison of the claims put forth by the April 9 Post editorial, the corresponding falsehoods forwarded by conservatives and Republicans in the media, and the Post's own reporting -- some of it appearing in the same edition of the paper as the editorial -- that debunks these falsehoods. <table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tbody><tr> <td width="33%" valign="top">

False Republican / conservative talking point </td> <td width="33%" valign="top">

April 9 Washington Post editorial </td> <td width="34%" valign="top">

Prior Washington Post reporting </td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top">

"Surely the President has a right -- even a duty -- to set the record straight." 

-- April 8 Wall Street Journal <a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114445000371420611.html?mod=todays_us_opinion">editorial</a>, <a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.gop.com/News/Read.aspx?ID=6232">highlighted</a> on the Republican National Committee website </td> <td valign="top">

"Presidents are authorized to declassify sensitive material, and the public benefits when they do." </td> <td valign="top">

Contrary to the suggestion in the Post and Wall Street Journal editorials that the administration was performing a public service in leaking the information -- that is, that Bush was fulfilling a duty to inform the public -- Post staff writers Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer <a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/08/AR2006040800916_pf.html">reported</a> on April 9 that the classified information purportedly selected by Cheney and Libby to be leaked to the press, which asserted that Iraq had been "vigorously" attempting to procure uranium in Africa, had "been disproved months before." </td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top">

 "In authorizing Mr. Libby to disclose previously classified information, Mr. Bush was divulging the truth. That alone distinguishes it from the common 'leak.'"

--April 8 Journal <a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114445000371420611.html?mod=todays_us_opinion">editorial</a> </td> <td valign="top">

"President Bush was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons.

[...]

"As Mr. Fitzgerald pointed out at the time of Mr. Libby's indictment last fall, none of this is particularly relevant to the question of whether the grounds for war in Iraq were sound or bogus. It's unfortunate that those who seek to prove the latter would now claim that Mr. Bush did something wrong by releasing for public review some of the intelligence he used in making his most momentous decision." </td> <td valign="top">

The Post editorial's claim -- that in authorizing the release of the information, President Bush sought "to make clear" why he had thought that Saddam was seeking nuclear weapons -- rests on the assumption that the information leaked by Libby accurately reflected the intelligence available to the Bush administration during the buildup to war. In fact, as reported by Gellman and Linzer, Libby "made careful selections of language" from the NIE to bolster the administration's case regarding Saddam's nuclear ambitions, as the weblog Firedoglake <a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/04/09/does-fred-hiatt-even-read-the-washington-post/" title="http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/04/09/does-fred-hiatt-even-read-the-washington-post/">noted</a>. 

Moreover, Cheney reportedly instructed Libby to describe the uranium story as a "key judgment" of the NIE. In fact, "the alleged effort to buy uranium was not among the estimate's key judgments" because it "had been strongly disputed in the intelligence community from the start," as the Post reported and the weblog The Left Coaster <a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/007321.php" title="http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/007321.php">noted</a>. Indeed, elsewhere in the NIE, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research called the claim "<a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB129/nie_judgments.pdf#page=8">highly dubious</a>." </td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top">

"Constitutionally, the authority to declare documents 'classified' resides with the president. So, under the terms of an executive order first drafted in 1982, he can declassify a document merely by declaring it unclassified."

-- New York Post columnist <a href="http://mediamatters.org/items/200604070008">John Podhoretz</a>, April 7 <a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/62024.htm">column</a> </td> <td valign="top">

"Rather than follow the usual declassification procedures and then invite reporters to a briefing -- as the White House eventually did -- Vice President Cheney initially chose to be secretive, ordering his chief of staff at the time, I. Lewis Libby, to leak the information to a favorite New York Times reporter. The full public disclosure followed 10 days later. There was nothing illegal or even particularly unusual about that." </td> <td valign="top">

An April 7 <a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/06/AR2006040600333_pf.html">article</a> by Post staff writer R. Jeffrey Smith reported that "legal scholars and analysts" described it as "highly unusual for senior officials at the White House to take such an action so stealthily." Smith also noted that, in Fitzgerald's filing, Libby is said to have characterized the action as unique: "Defendant [Libby] testified that this July 8th meeting was the only time he recalled in his government experience when he disclosed a document to a reporter that was effectively declassified by the President's authorization that it be disclosed." </td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top">

"Mentioned this for the past couple of weeks, but the real question is this: Did Bush lie about yellowcake? Did the Brits lie about uranium in Niger or did [former ambassador and husband of Valerie Plame Joseph C.] Wilson [IV]? Did Wilson lie about Niger? Did Wilson commit treason? Did Wilson make up something that he's gonna sip tea and not even investigate, come back and just say what he wanted to say what the plan was?"

-- Nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh, <a href="http://mediamatters.org/items/200511010016">10/31/05</a>

"The Senate report includes a 48-page section on Wilson that demonstrates, in painstaking detail, that virtually everything Joseph Wilson said publicly about his trip, from its origins to his conclusions, was false."

--Weekly Standard senior writer Stephen F. Hayes, <a href="http://mediamatters.org/items/200510210001">10/24/05</a> </td> <td valign="top">

"The material that Mr. Bush ordered declassified established, as have several subsequent investigations, that Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth. In fact, his report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium." </td> <td valign="top">

Former CIA director George Tenet asserted in a July 11, 2003, <a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/press_release/2003/pr07112003.html">statement</a> that Wilson's Niger findings "did not resolve whether Iraq was or was not seeking uranium from abroad," as Post staff writers Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank <a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/24/AR2005102401690.html">reported</a> on October 25, 2005.

Further, in an April 10 Post <a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/09/AR2006040900107.html">article</a>, Pincus took issue with Libby's claim, detailed in Fitzgerald's court filing, that Wilson had "reported information about an Iraqi delegation visiting Niger in 1999 that was 'understood to be a reference to a desire to obtain uranium.' " The article rebutted this claim as follows: "In fact, Wilson said he was told that a Niger official was contacted at a meeting outside the country by a businessman who said an Iraqi economic delegation wanted to meet with him. The Niger official guessed that the Iraqis might want to talk about uranium because Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger in the mid-1980s. But when they met, no talk of uranium took place."

The Post has <a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/26/AR2005072602069.html">repeatedly</a> <a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/29/AR2005102901478_pf.html">reported</a> that Wilson, during his 2002 trip to Niger, "found no evidence to support allegations that Iraq was seeking uranium" from the African nation. </td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top">

"I mean, obviously there was no conspiracy to ... punish Joe Wilson for what he had said about Bush's claims about Iraq. And Wilson criticized him. It turns out his criticism was completely false and Bush was right."

-- Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes, Fox News' The Beltway Boys, 11/19/05

"What did we learn [from federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald] about this obsessed White House with Joe Wilson? That there was, in fact, no conspiracy to out his wife, that there was no coordinated smear campaign."

-- National Review columnist Kate O'Bierne, MSNBC's Hardball, 10/30/05

"[T]his idea that somehow they were discrediting Wilson in this release is nonsense. ... It's perfectly legitimate for a government to add in a fact which the guy had left out as a way to distort information. ... That's not discrediting him personally."

--Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, 4/9/06 </td> <td valign="top">

"Mr. Wilson subsequently claimed that the White House set out to punish him for his supposed whistle-blowing by deliberately blowing the cover of his wife, Valerie Plame, who he said was an undercover CIA operative. This prompted the investigation by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald. After more than 2 1/2 years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald has reported no evidence to support Mr. Wilson's charge." </td> <td valign="top">

Gellman and Linzer's April 9 Post <a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/08/AR2006040800916.html">article</a> reported that Fitzgerald wrote in his recent filing that "the grand jury has collected so much testimony and so many documents that 'it is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish' Wilson.' " They noted that the filing had "described a 'concerted action' by 'multiple people in the White House' -- using classified information -- to 'discredit, punish or seek revenge against' a critic of President Bush's war in Iraq." </td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top">

<a name="20060414" title="20060414"></a>He's [Rove is] 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. 

-- Wall Street Journal editorial, <a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006955" title="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006955">7/13/05</a>

<a name="20051021" title="20051021"></a>The administration did not send Wilson over to Niger. They were not his choice. George Tenet didn't send him. It was Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, who suggested him for the mission.

-- Rush Limbaugh, <a href="http://mediamatters.org/items/200507140001#20060410">7/11/05</a> </td> <td valign="top">

"In fact Mr. Wilson was recommended for the trip by his wife." </td> <td valign="top">

The Post's prior reporting on the issue of who sent Wilson to Niger presents it as a matter of ongoing dispute and far from "fact." Indeed, as Pincus and Milbank noted in their October 25 <a href="http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/24/AR2005102401690.html">article</a>, Wilson -- in response to the administration's claim that his selection for the Niger mission was the result of nepotism -- "has maintained that Plame was merely 'a conduit,' telling CNN last year that 'her supervisors asked her to contact me.'" Pincus and Milbank further reported: "The CIA has always said ... that Plame's superiors chose Wilson for the Niger trip and she only relayed their decision." </td> </tr> </tbody></table>

—J.K. & S.S.M.

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Aug11.html
The Post on WMDs: An Inside Story
Prewar Articles Questioning Threat Often Didn't Make Front Page

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 12, 2004; Page A01

Days before the Iraq war began, veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus put together a story questioning whether the Bush administration had proof that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction.

But he ran into resistance from the paper's editors, and his piece ran only after assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, who was researching a book about the drive toward war, "helped sell the story," Pincus recalled. "Without him, it would have had a tough time getting into the paper." Even so, the article was relegated to Page A17.

"We did our job but we didn't do enough, and I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder,"

Woodward said in an interview. "We should have warned readers we had information that the basis for this was shakier" than widely believed. "Those are exactly the kind of statements that should be published on the front page."

As violence continues in postwar Iraq and U.S. forces have yet to discover any WMDs, some critics say the media, including The Washington Post, failed the country by not reporting more skeptically on President Bush's contentions during the run-up to war.

An examination of the paper's coverage, and interviews with more than a dozen of the editors and reporters involved, shows that The Post published a number of pieces challenging the White House, but rarely on the front page. Some reporters who were lobbying for greater prominence for stories that questioned the administration's evidence complained to senior editors who, in the view of those reporters, were unenthusiastic about such pieces. The result was coverage that, despite flashes of groundbreaking reporting, in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times."The paper was not front-paging stuff," said Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks.

"Administration assertions were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday. There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?"

In retrospect, said Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., "we were so focused on trying to figure out what the administration was doing that we were not giving the same play to people who said it wouldn't be a good idea to go to war and were questioning the administration's rationale. Not enough of those stories were put on the front page. That was a mistake on my part."

Across the country, "the voices raising questions about the war were lonely ones," Downie said. "We didn't pay enough attention to the minority."

When national security reporter Dana Priest was addressing a group of intelligence officers recently, she said, she was peppered with questions: "Why didn't The Post do a more aggressive job? Why didn't The Post ask more questions? Why didn't The Post dig harder?"

Several news organizations have cast a withering eye on their earlier work. The New York Times said in a May editor's note about stories that claimed progress in the hunt for WMDs that editors "were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper." Separately, the Times editorial page and the New Republic magazine expressed regret for some prewar arguments.

Michael Massing, a New York Review of Books contributor and author of the forthcoming book "Now They Tell Us," on the press and Iraq, said: "In covering the run-up to the war, The Post did better than most other news organizations, featuring a number of solid articles about the Bush administration's policies. But on the key issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the paper was generally napping along with everyone else. It gave readers little hint of the doubts that a number of intelligence analysts had about the administration's claims regarding Iraq's arsenal."

The front page is a newspaper's billboard, its way of making a statement about what is important, and stories trumpeted there are often picked up by other news outlets. Editors begin pitching stories at a 2 p.m. news meeting with Downie and Managing Editor Steve Coll and, along with some reporters, lobby throughout the day. But there is limited space on Page 1 -- usually six or seven stories -- and Downie said he likes to feature a broad range of subjects, including education, health, science, sports and business.

Woodward, for his part, said it was risky for journalists to write anything that might look silly if weapons were ultimately found in Iraq. Alluding to the finding of the Sept. 11 commission of a "groupthink" among intelligence officials, Woodward said of the weapons coverage: "I think I was part of the groupthink."

<h3>Given The Post's reputation for helping topple the Nixon administration, some of those involved in the prewar coverage felt compelled to say the paper's shortcomings did not reflect any reticence about taking on the Bush White House. Priest noted, however, that skeptical stories usually triggered hate mail "questioning your patriotism and suggesting that you somehow be delivered into the hands of the terrorists.".........</h3>

I think the preceding paragraph indicates that some of you don't fully recognize just how much clout you have with regard to what the adult readers of the news reporting of the WaPo get to read.....or not. Just keep that "hate mail", a-comin' !

dc_dux · 09-02-2006, 05:56 AM

Ustwo...I think you are missing the bigger issue. Its not who outed Plame; its just another example of how this administration uses or abuses intellligence information to selectively represent or misrepresent the facts to further support a political agenda.

Quote:

Vice President Dick Cheney directed his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on July 12, 2003 to leak to the media portions of a then-highly classified CIA report that Cheney hoped would undermine the credibility of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, according to Libby's grand jury testimony in the CIA leak case and sources who have read the classified report.

full article:
http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0414nj3.htm

Its even more hypocritical of Bush/Cheney that they refuse to share NIE's with Congressional oversight committees, but will selective leak portions of an NIE for political purposes.

This should be an outrage to conservatives and liberals and anyone who values the truth.

ratbastid · 09-02-2006, 06:11 AM

YAY FOR DISTRACTIONS!

Please, nobody notice this: There was still no fucking yellowcake. We still killed tens of thousands and thousands of people for a lie.

dc_dux · 09-02-2006, 06:39 AM

Pat Roberts, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been stonewallilng for nearly two years the phase II investigation into wherther the White House manipulated pre-war intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

He delayed it again until AFTER the November elections. Will we ever know the truth?

From April of this year:

Quote:

Sen. Roberts seeks delay of Intel probe
By Alexander Bolton

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said he wants to divide his panel’s inquiry into the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq-related intelligence into two parts, a move that would push off its most politically controversial elements to a later time.

The inquiry has dragged on for more than two years, a slow pace that prompted Democrats to force the Senate into an extraordinary closed-door session in November. Republicans then promised to speed up the probe.

Roberts said in an interview shortly before the April recess that he could bring up the matter in a business meeting of the Intelligence Committee scheduled for tomorrow.

“We went over three reports that members are studying,” Roberts said, referring to three less controversial components of his committee’s inquiry. Roberts said his committee could approve the immediate publication of those components.

“We’ll have a business meeting first thing when we come back. I’d like to show some progress,” he said.

An aide to Sen. Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.), the panel’s ranking Democrat, said that Democrats are aware Roberts is mulling a decision on whether to divide the inquiry and that Rockefeller is unlikely to oppose such a move if Roberts goes through with it. But one Democrat who has followed the probe said separating the controversial elements would relieve pressure on Roberts to complete the entire inquiry soon.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” in February, host Tim Russert asked Roberts about the status of the inquiry.

Roberts and Rockefeller have already split their review of Iraq-related intelligence once before. In February 2004, they agreed to issue a report before the upcoming election on how well the nation’s intelligence agencies assessed the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Roberts and Rockefeller further agreed to publish a report on a second phase of the inquiry to after the (2004) election. Phase two was to focus on the politically sensitive issue of the Bush administration’s handling of intelligence findings.

At the time, some Democrats grumbled that Rockefeller had let slide an issue their party could have used against Bush’s reelection campaign.

Questions about the Bush administration’s handling of pre-war intelligence have new political relevance as the midterm elections draw nearer. Public concern about the war in Iraq is considered a major reason for Bush’s low job approval rating, which, in turn, is widely viewed as harmful to congressional Republicans’ political fortunes.

“It has resonance in the following way,” said Phil Singer, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “One of the major critiques against Republican incumbents in the Senate [is that] they take a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil approach to the administration on a number of issues, including on the Iraq issue. To the extent the Senate Republicans continue to refuse to ask tough questions and ask for accountability, it’s going to be a political liability for them.”

Roberts would like to wrap up work quickly on three relatively less controversial topics of the second phase of the inquiry:

• Pre-war intelligence assessments of what the political and security environment would be in Iraq after the American victory.

• Post-war findings about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and its links to terrorism and how they compare with prewar assessments.

• The U.S. intelligence community’s use of intelligence provided by the Iraqi National Congress.

A report on these three areas would be made separately from the most controversial aspects of the inquiry. Left unfinished would be a report on whether public statements and testimony about Iraq by senior U.S. government officials were substantiated by available intelligence information. Roberts also would leave unfinished another report on what Democrats have called possibly illegal activity in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, formerly headed by Douglas Feith, who is believed to have played an important role in persuading the president to invade Iraq.

The committee may review statements by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Democrats charged that the committee did almost nothing to evaluate the statements of public officials before November, when Democrats forced the Senate into closed session.

GOP spokespeople for Roberts and the committee did not return calls for comment.

Progress on evaluating the statements of senior Bush administration officials, as well as Democratic lawmakers, has been slow because of the massive amount of work involved. Partisan sparring over how to evaluate the statements has also slowed work.

At one point, Roberts wanted Intelligence Committee members to vote separately on scores of statements to determine whether each was justified — a proposal Democrats rejected.

Democrats also have pressed Roberts to interview government officials about their statements, something Roberts has not agreed to, although he told The Hill in November that he would conduct interviews and issue subpoenas as a last resort.

Roberts has deferred the job of looking into Feith’s role until the Department of Defense inspector general completes its own investigation of the former undersecretary’s activities.

Roberts is less than completely pleased about his committee’s focus on wrapping up phase two.

He recently complained in a U.S. News & World Report article that his committee has not made progress on overseeing intelligence on Iran, a growing national security concern, because Democrats are “more focused on intelligence failures of the past.”

http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/expo...506/news4.html

roachboy · 09-02-2006, 08:20 AM

doesn't look llike the right has much of anything to gloat about, does it?
unless you can find a way to take pride in shabby reasoning and cavalier treatment of evidence.

to buy this shabby thinking and cavalier treatment of facts, you would also have to buy conservativeland's attempts to reduce the problems around the plame affair to a question of consistent motive such that every last actor involved would have to have explicitly said I AM DOING THIS TO FUCK OVER A CRITIC OF THE WAR IN IRAQ or there is no problem

care to defend this one, ustwo?

Rekna · 09-02-2006, 11:06 AM

If this is a trump card for the adminstrations defense why has it not hit the mainstream media yet? I read foxnews daily and have yet to see it mentioned (and don't say liberal bias). Maybe this is not as exculpitory as the OP would like us to believe.

Ustwo · 09-02-2006, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marvelous Marv

Oh yeah, truthout.org needs to find another domain name.

Perhaps they are just out of truth

The important thing here for the left will be to keep trying to assault the character of the members of this administration, reguardless of proof. I mean remember Cheney was CEO of Haliburton!

Oh and Rekna is Newsweek mainstream enough for you?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14533384/site/newsweek/

How about CNN?

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/...nn_allpolitics

The left wing Washington Post?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...082801278.html

Oh and Yahoo.news gives this
Plame considering suing Armitage

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060822/..._leak_woodward

Case closed, but it never really was open. Just another kangaroo court of the left wing political spin machine.

roachboy · 09-02-2006, 02:19 PM

ok so in one thread you complain about the hall of mirrors that is information circulation within the mainstream media when it runs counter to your political agenda and in another you embrace exactly the same problem because you imagine that it benefits your boy bush.

nice.

then in this one,

you ignore a legion of problems with the way in which the factoids in the washington post edito were selected and presented.
you ignore the more extended version of the same information presented by one of the authors of the book that the wapo edito writer references (indirectly of course) and the--to say the least--complication of the edito and your interpretation of the information that you rely on for your fatuous conclusions.

so if i understand the procedure you apply to information it goes like this:

1. factoids, no matter how arbitrary, no matter how indefensable, are cool with you if they fit with your political predispositions

2. and if they dont, sweeping, shabby ill-considered claims about some kind of media conspiracy are just hunky dory.

3. never acknowledge critiques until they reach a critical mass that forces you to abandon a thread.

4. conflate this kind of idiocy with rational discourse.

excellent work.

Elphaba · 09-02-2006, 04:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rekna

If this is a trump card for the adminstrations defense why has it not hit the mainstream media yet? I read foxnews daily and have yet to see it mentioned (and don't say liberal bias). Maybe this is not as exculpitory as the OP would like us to believe.

It is an editorial/opinion piece. And just like aholes, everyone has one.

host · 09-02-2006, 08:18 PM

Something for the folks here who dismiss treason as a tool to be used for political revenge, to consider:

No democrat in congress has had the power to issue a subpoena to compell the testimony of any witness, since Jan., 2003. we will discover if that restriction is going to be reversed, less than nine weeks from now.

Now that this thread's author and his OP clearly endorse what appears in the Washington Post as "gospel", the following october, 2003 reporting, takes on a new demension. It also destroys the "no crime was committed" mantra of the "fringe" that sees no undermining of the CIA as treason. Little credence has been attributed to the fact that the CIA started the Plame investigation rolling when it complained that classified information about a CIA employee had been leaked to the press.

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer
washingtonpost.com
The Spy Next Door
Valerie Wilson, Ideal Mom, Was Also the Ideal Cover

By Richard Leiby and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 8, 2003; Page A01

One evening this summer, former diplomat Joseph Wilson sat amid the African-themed decor of his spacious Washington home, sipping a glass of beer and talking about a trip he took to Niger for the CIA. His wife, Valerie, was in the kitchen, preparing chicken for a cookout and arranging red, white and blue napkins.

Suddenly a giggling boy streaked nude into the living room and jumped into his father's lap. Bath time was nigh. Valerie Wilson rounded up the towheaded 3-year-old and his twin sister, efficiently taming the household whirlwind.

When Valerie E. Wilson -- maiden name Plame -- introduced herself to a reporter in her home on July 3, there was no hint she was anything other than a busy mother with an unflagging smile and classy wardrobe. She talked a bit about the joys and challenges of twins, then faded into the background.

One might have thought her to be a financial manager, maybe a real estate agent -- but never a spy. Few knew her secret: At 22, Plame had joined the Central Intelligence Agency and traveled the world on undercover missions.

A few months after that July evening, her name -- and her occupation -- would be published and broadcast internationally. In the public imagination, she would become "Jane Bond," as her husband later put it. A clandestine operative isn't supposed to be famous, but her identity was leaked to journalists by administration officials for what Joseph Wilson alleged was retaliation for his criticism of the White House's Iraq policies.

The Wilsons -- he's 53; she's 40 -- are at the center of a growing political controversy as the Justice Department investigates her unmasking, which occurred in a July 14 column by conservative pundit Robert Novak, who cited "two senior administration officials" as his sources. The outing has sparked a furor in the intelligence community, with some saying they feel betrayed by their government.

"We feel like the peasants with torches and pitchforks," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst who was in Plame's officer training class in 1985-86. "The robber barons aren't going to be allowed to get away with this."

In February 2002, the CIA dispatched Joseph Wilson, a retired ambassador who has held senior positions in several African countries and Iraq, to Niger to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein's government had shopped there for uranium ore that could be processed into weapons-grade material. He reported back that Niger officials said they knew of no such effort. His report has since been confirmed by U.S. intelligence officials.

On July 6, Wilson went public, saying the administration had exaggerated the case for war by including the so-called 16 words about uranium and Africa in the president's State of the Union message last January. A day later, the White House acknowledged it had been a mistake to include those words.

Novak's column suggested that Wilson got the assignment to Niger because of his wife, who was working on weapons proliferation issues for the CIA when she was outed. The agency and Wilson said Valerie Wilson was not involved in his selection. Wilson also said he was not paid for the assignment, though expenses for the eight-day trip were reimbursed.

<h3>Before the Novak column was published, at least six reporters were contacted by administration officials and allegedly told that Valerie Plame Wilson worked at the CIA. Whoever did so may have been trying to undermine the importance of Wilson's trip by implying it had been set up by his wife -- and therefore was not a serious effort by the agency to discover whether, in fact, Iraq had attempted to buy uranium in Niger.</h3>

The publication of her name left CIA officers aghast. "All the people who had innocent lunches with her overseas or went shopping or played tennis with her, I'm sure they are having heart attacks right now," said one classmate of Plame's who participated in covert operations. "I would be in hiding now if I were them."

Little is publicly known about the career of Valerie Plame (rhymes with "name"), and she did not respond to a request for an interview made through her husband. The CIA also declined to discuss her. But people close to her provided the basics of her biography: She was born in Anchorage, where her father, Air Force Lt. Col. Samuel Plame, was stationed, and attended school in a suburb of Philadelphia. Her mother, Diane, taught elementary school. She has a stepbrother, Robert, who is 16 years older.

Plame was recruited by the agency shortly after graduation from Pennsylvania State University, sources said. She later earned two master's degrees, one from the London School of Economics and one from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium.

Plame underwent training at "The Farm," as the facility near Williamsburg, Va., is known to its graduates. As part of her courses, the new spy was taken hostage and taught how to reduce messages to microdots. She became expert at firing an AK-47. She learned to blow up cars and drive under fire -- all to see if she could handle the rigors of being an undercover case officer in the CIA's Directorate of Operations, or DO. Fellow graduates recall that off-hours included a trip to the movies to watch the Dan Aykroyd parody "Spies Like Us."

Plame also learned how to recruit foreign nationals to serve as spies, and how to hunt others and evade those who would hunt her -- some who might look as harmless as she herself does now as a mom with a model's poise and shoulder-length blond hair.

Her activities during her years overseas remain classified, but she became the creme de la creme of spies: a "noc," an officer with "nonofficial cover." Nocs have cover jobs that have nothing to do with the U.S. government. They work in business, in social clubs, as scientists or secretaries (they are prohibited from posing as journalists), and if detected or arrested by a foreign government, they do not have diplomatic protection and rights. They are on their own. Even their fellow operatives don't know who they are, and only the strongest and smartest are picked for these assignments.

Five years ago Plame married Joseph Wilson -- it was her second marriage, his third. They crossed paths at a reception in Washington. "It was love at first sight," Joseph Wilson reports. When they met, in 1997, Wilson held a security clearance as political adviser to the general in charge of the U.S. Armed Forces European Command.

For the past several years, she has served as an operations officer working as a weapons proliferation analyst. She told neighbors, friends and even some of her CIA colleagues that she was an "energy consultant." She lived behind a facade even after she returned from abroad. It included a Boston front company named Brewster-Jennings & Associates, which she listed as her employer on a 1999 form in Federal Election Commission records for her $1,000 contribution to Al Gore's presidential primary campaign.

Administration officials confirmed that Brewster-Jennings was a front. The disclosure of its existence, which came about because it was listed in the FEC records, magnifies the potential damage related to the leak of Valerie Wilson's identity: It may give anyone who dealt with the firm clues to her CIA work. In addition, anyone who ever had contact with the company, and any foreign person who ever met with Valerie Plame, innocently or not, might now be suspected of working with the agency.

Friends and neighbors knew Valerie Wilson as a consultant who traveled frequently overseas. They describe her as charming, bright and discreet. "She did not talk politics," said Victoria Tillotson, 58, who has often socialized with the Wilsons.

"I thought she was a risk assessment person for some international investment company," said Ralph Wittenberg, a psychiatrist who chairs the nonprofit Family Mental Health Foundation, where Valerie Wilson is a board member. In recent years, he said, Valerie Wilson has been an "unstinting" volunteer, running peer support groups for women who suffered from postpartum depression, as she had.

"I would never have guessed in a million years" that she was a spy, Wittenberg said.

Another acquaintance active in raising awareness of postpartum depression, Jane Honikman, briefly contemplated the image of Valerie Wilson slinging an AK-47 assault rifle. "I can't imagine her holding anything other than a spoon, or a baby," she said.

A few months after delivering the twins in January 2000, Valerie Wilson "had a serious bout of postpartum depression and she'd had a terrible time getting help," Wittenberg said. "She didn't want any other woman to have to go through that."

He and others at the foundation knew her as someone willing to help anytime. She gave speeches to medical groups about the need for better screening of new mothers and mobilized resources for crisis interventions. Wittenberg said the foundation's hotline has helped save depressed mothers from killing themselves and their children.

"She's affected hundreds and hundreds of people's lives. . . . She's helped them," said Wittenberg, who added that Valerie Wilson had authorized him to talk about her.

Valerie Wilson's parents knew she worked for the CIA and fretted about her trips abroad, but said they never asked for details.

"We didn't want to know, and she never offered," Diane Plame, 74, said in an interview. She added that, since high school, her daughter had wanted "to do something of value to others, and she felt she was achieving that in what she's done in her work. She wanted to be of value to the country and to be patriotic.

"We've been very proud of her -- no question," she added. Diane Plame and her husband, who is 83 and a World War II veteran, are "very angry" about the disclosure and fearful for their daughter's safety.

"They spoiled it. They more than spoiled it -- they brought a lot of harm," Diane Plame said, referring to the leakers and to Novak. "For people to come out and say this would cause no harm, what kind of IQs do they have?"

Novak wrote in an Oct. 1 column that "the CIA never warned me that the disclosure of Wilson's wife working at the agency would endanger her or anybody else." He added, "It was well known around Washington that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA."

Over the July Fourth weekend, the Plames were with the Wilsons, assisting with the twins and other chores. After feeding the children and completing most of the preparations for a barbecue, Valerie Wilson announced from the kitchen: "Bath time!"

She gave instructions to her mother -- "Everything's here" -- and announced to her father, "I have to leave right now."

The twins whined for her to stay. She gently told her son, "Mommy has to go to a meeting."

It turned out Valerie Wilson was to lead a postpartum support group that evening. A group of other mothers was waiting at her church. The spy exited into the twilight.

Quote:

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstra...A90994DB404482
DEBATING A LEAK: THE DIRECTOR; C.I.A. Chief Is Caught in Middle by Leak Inquiry

October 5, 2003, Sunday
By ELISABETH BUMILLER (NYT); National Desk
Late Edition - Final, Section 1, Page 1, Column 2, 1432 words

At a few minutes before eight on Thursday morning, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, was parked in his usual chair just outside the Oval Office waiting to brief his chief patron, the president of the United States.

The morning newspapers were full of developments in what amounted to a war between the Central Intelligence Agency and the White House, and a Justice Department investigation that was barely 48 hours old into whether administration officials had illegally disclosed the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer.

Angry agency officials suspected that someone in the White House had exposed the officer, Valerie Plame, as a way to punish her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, for his criticism of the administration's use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq.

But after President Bush told his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., that he was ready to see Mr. Tenet -- ''O.K., George, let's go,'' Mr. Card called out to the intelligence chief -- Mr. Tenet, a rare holdover from the Clinton administration and a politically savvy survivor, did not even bring up the issue that was roiling his agency, Mr. Card said in an interview.

Instead, Mr. Tenet briefed the president on the latest intelligence reports, as he always does, and left it to the White House to make the first move about Mr. Wilson and Ms. Plame.

''I think I was the one who initiated it,'' Mr. Card recalled. The subsequent conversation between the president and Mr. Tenet about the investigation, he added, did not consume ''any significant amount of time or discussion or angst. It was basically, 'We're cooperating, you're cooperating, I'm glad to see the process is moving forward the way it should.' '' In conclusion, Mr. Card said, ''it certainly didn't reflect a strain in any relationship.''

And yet, six years into running the nation's primary spy organization, Mr. Tenet finds himself at one of the most difficult points in his tenure, caught between his loyalty to the president and defending an agency enraged at the White House. Although the leak investigation that is consuming Washington's political class has not, by all accounts, affected the chummy personal ties between the president and the director, it has still taken its toll on Mr. Tenet.

Even before this latest blowup, Mr. Tenet told friends that he was worn out from the relentlessness of his job since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that he felt he had served long enough. (Only Allen W. Dulles and Richard Helms held the job longer.) Mr. Tenet, who has directed an extensive overhaul and expansion of the C.I.A. since the attacks, had talked about stepping down by late summer or early fall, people close to him said.

''It's a lot harder job than it was in the Dulles era, and he's been doing it for a long while,'' an agency official said. ''But I think he's for the moment happily engaged.''

Friends of Mr. Tenet's said that the leak investigation might now keep him in place longer than he wanted, if only to prove that he was not a casualty of the latest furor -- or of the political fallout from the failure so far to find chemical or biological weapons in Iraq.

''He wants to leave on his own terms, but he doesn't want to leave when it looks like he's being chased out of town,'' a former C.I.A. official said. David Kay, the government's chief weapons inspector, who was chosen and supervised by Mr. Tenet, told Congress on Thursday that his team had failed to find illicit weapons after a three-month search in Iraq, a major setback for the White House.

The latest fight has turned out to be a particularly angry one in an intelligence tug of war that began before the invasion of Iraq. Some C.I.A. officers have long said that they believe the White House and the Pentagon exaggerated intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify the war, while White House and Pentagon officials have long said that the C.I.A. had been too cautious in its findings.

In the summer, the conflict broke into the open when Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said that Mr. Tenet had been primarily responsible for not stripping from the president's State of the Union address an insupportable claim that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from Niger. Mr. Tenet and his allies were enraged, and Stephen J. Hadley, Ms. Rice's deputy, eventually took the blame.

<h3>But within the C.I.A., the exposure of Ms. Plame is now considered an even greater instance of treachery. Ms. Plame, a specialist in nonconventional weapons who worked overseas, had ''nonofficial cover,'' and was what in C.I.A. parlance is called a Noc, the most difficult kind of false identity for the agency to create.</h3> While most undercover agency officers disguise their real profession by pretending to be American embassy diplomats or other United States government employees, Ms. Plame passed herself off as a private energy expert. Intelligence experts said that Nocs have especially dangerous jobs.

''Nocs are the holiest of holies,'' said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former agency officer who is now director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. ''This is real James Bond stuff. You're going overseas posing as a businessman, and if the other government finds out about you, they're probably going to shoot you. The United States has basically no way to protect you.''

Mr. Tenet's latest battle with the White House began on July 6, when Mr. Wilson, in an article on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times, wrote of a mission the C.I.A. sent him on in 2002 to investigate whether Iraq had tried to buy uranium for its nuclear weapons program from Niger. Mr. Wilson concluded that Iraq had not, and that the administration had twisted evidence to make the case for war in Iraq.

Eight days later, the syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak wrote that it was Mr. Wilson's wife who had suggested sending him on the mission, implying that Mr. Wilson's trip was of limited importance. Mr. Novak identified Ms. Plame, and attributed the information to ''two senior administration officials.'' Mr. Wilson subsequently accused Karl Rove, the president's chief political aide, of involvement in leaking the information to Mr. Novak to intimidate Mr. Wilson into silence and to keep others from coming forward. But he has since backed off and said that Mr. Rove at least condoned the leak.

But Mr. Tenet was aware of the Novak column, and was not pleased, the C.I.A. official said. As required by law, the agency notified the Justice Department in late July that there had been a release of classified information; it is a felony for any official with access to such information to disclose the identity of a covert American officer. It is unclear when Mr. Tenet became aware of the referral, but when he did, he supported it, the C.I.A. official said, even though it was clearly going to cause problems for the White House. ''I don't think he lost any sleep over it,'' the official said.

The important thing, the official said, was that ''the agency was standing up for itself.''

Friends of Mr. Tenet's say that he knows how important it is that he be seen as defending the agency from political attacks, and that one reason he has stayed so long is to demonstrate that the directorship of central intelligence is not a partisan job. The other reason for his longevity, friends and detractors alike say, is that this son of a Greek restaurant owner from Queens has been brilliant at cultivating the Yale-educated son of the only president, George H. W. Bush, to have been director of central intelligence.

Last week, Mr. Card said, the director took time out from the grimness of the intelligence reports to talk about a subject dear to the president. ''Baseball,'' Mr. Card said.

As the former C.I.A. official summed up Mr. Tenet: ''He's not liked by everybody in the administration, but the president loves him.''

Marvelous Marv · 09-03-2006, 08:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

YAY FOR DISTRACTIONS!

Please, nobody notice this: There was still no fucking yellowcake. We still killed tens of thousands and thousands of people for a lie.

Distractions are certainly evident here. The post is about who "outed" Valerie Plame, and we get host going off about WMDs and Nixon, and you going off about yellowcake.

BTW, the matter you refer to should accurately be described as an attempt to GET yellowcake, something that Bush-haters don't like to see clarified, since it actually happened. But you get points for diversionary tactics. And all this time we've been hearing about the REPUBLICANS who try to divert discussion from the actual topic.

Let's have some more of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

Ustwo...I think you are missing the bigger issue. Its not who outed Plame; its just another example of how this administration uses or abuses intellligence information to selectively represent or misrepresent the facts to further support a political agenda.

Wait--this thread IS about who outed Plame!!! Remember--that was the entire justification for the proposed execution of Rove, castration of Cheney, and impeachment of Bush.

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

How can an executive branch that leaks classified information and then covers it up at the highest levels, avoid congressional investigation? I cannot accept a shadow president (Rove) who commits a treasonous act, or a president who would follow closley and consistantly the direction of such a man.

Impeach Bush !!!!!

I absent-mindedly reached for a Kleenex when I read this one. I was certain my face HAD to have been sprayed with spittle.

Quote:

Originally Posted by djtestudo

I'm very interested in how you can get "'Bush's Brain' scrambling to avoid Indictment for Treasonous Act" from an article simply stating Rove is appearing before the grand jury without any protection from procecution.

Hell, the only way that title could be considered in any way accurate was if he REFUSED to appear without protection.

Quote:

Originally Posted by docbungle

I fail to see how this can be viewed as anything other than Rove saying, "No problem. I'll testify again; I have nothing to hide."

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

I'm having visions of....massive, writhing hordes of Lefties pleasuring themselves in dark corners right about now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pan6467

Hey, i don't know about anyone else, but i usually leave the lights on for politically fueled masturbation. Makes reading the newspaper easier.

Personally, I watch tapes of those hotties Ann Coulter and Greta Van and dream I'm the liberal filling in a Conservative Oreo.

Okay, now that was funny.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Superbelt

From what I've read, he's going in voluntarially because they asked for him.
They asked for him to return because his story changes a little every day and apparently isn't jiving with what Judy Miller is saying.
So, looks like they are giving him one last chance to get his story straight before they go ahead and frogmarch his crooked ass.

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

IMO, you can stick a fork in Rove....he's "done".

host · 09-03-2006, 08:56 AM

Marv, perhaps you've read nothing that I've provided with regard to news reporting, or of the tenuous thread that the perps who outted Plame the "noc", now hang by, since the odds favor democratic authority to issue subpoenas, conduct investigations, and question wiitnesses, under oath, as soon as in Jan., 2007.

Your taunts indicate that you are iin denial of where this treason as payback OP is headed. You seem to endorse the willful destruction of the CIA, under Bush/Cheney. Curious attitude on your part, during the GWOT which you buy into, dontcha think? The CIA requested the Plame investigation. #2 at DOJ decided that Ashcroft had a conflict of interest and appointed Bush appointed US Attorney for So. Illinois, Patriick Fitzgerald, to conduct an independent investiigation of the "leak", wiith all of the power of an independent attorney general. Fitzgerald iindicted the VP's COS for obstruction of justice. Those are the facts, the contrary crap is spin from those who object to the investigation.

Your posts and this thread's OP are part of that spin. They don't change the facts.......

roachboy · 09-03-2006, 09:12 AM

this is tedious beyond measure.

there is abundant information even in this thread to complicated the conservative gloating over their dubious (imaginary?) take on the information in the **still unreleased** david corn michael issikof book--which i bothered to research, and from which i posted information (by david corn) that to say the least complicates the arbitrary cherry-picked infotainment version that has the conservative set running down the street cheering like people celebrating a victory in the 7th inning of a baseball game.

or like a chess player who is so excited to have escaped the opening of a match without being crushed, and imagines that the middle game will unfold differently that he starts wildly celebrating without even thinking about the endgame.

but none of the conservative set can answer basic questions.
none of the conservative set even registers basic questions.

personally, i am took the plame thing as more an index of how the bushpeople operate than the signal event around which all problems turned.

the right seems to imagine this scenario to be reversed.
i assume that they have become accustomed to viewing the world upside-down over the past 6 sorry years.

let us rehearse the problems one last time before we retire from this thread and begin watching the actual game, as opposed the the game the conservative set pretends is in front of them:

1. it is only in conservativeland that the plame affair has been reduced to a very narrow question of motivation.
1a. it is only in conservativeland that this reduction to motivation requires that every last player be explicitly motivated by trying to fuck over a critic of the iraq debacle.
1b. it is only in conservativeland that the personal ambivalence about iraq that richard armitage means that the whole affair has been addressed

you have to have swallowed conservativelands bizarre narrative about the plame affair to find this information about armitage compelling.
even then, the information that the wapo article presents isself-evidently cherrypicked.
the population of conservativeland cannot even start to address any of this.

your narrative has no power, folks: your evidence has no weight because your narrative has no power.
but enjoy yourselves jumping up and down over some imaginary victory in a game that only you are playing (no-one outside of conservativeland accepts your idiotic reduction-to-explicit motive view of this affair).

i am going back to watching the real game.
we'll maybe chat about this and other such stuff in mid november

powerclown · 09-03-2006, 12:15 PM

roachboy · 09-03-2006, 03:09 PM

that's nice powerclown.
you found a democrat that agrees with you.
i dont see any particularl significance in that, but whatever floats your boat is, i suppose, fine.
how about you actually read through the thread and respond to the critiques of the infotainment that you are celebrating?

full disclosure: i was kind of watching this to see how it unfolded and was kind of agnostic about its significance. but i did see it as symptomatic of how the right operates.

i still see it as symptomatic of how the right operates: and the action of the conservative set here is pretty much as one would expect: rigid repetition of the official line of the moment, unable or unwilling to either pose or answer questions, one-dimensional thinking for a one-dimensional politics.

i'd be disappointed if i didnt already expect so little.

but i understand--it must be tough to be standing in a shrinking room, disaster in afghanistan, civil war in iraq, bush at about 34% approval in the polls, article after article outlining weakness in republican prosects for november, waiting to be crushed in the next elections, clutching at whatever straws your far right media presents you...it cant be easy.

powerclown · 09-03-2006, 03:44 PM

First Rule of Holes, roachboy.

roachboy · 09-03-2006, 05:06 PM

you are delusional, powerclown.
have a nice day.

powerclown · 09-03-2006, 05:48 PM

Very possibly.
Still, nothing can change Bob Beckel's opinion.

dc_dux · 09-03-2006, 07:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Bob Beckel - popular DEMOCRATIC strategist since the late 60's - agrees with Ustwo. As do I. Although I thought it was a political witchunt from day one anyway and stated so. Props to those forthright enough to concede with some grace.

I fail to see the relevance of the fact that one out-of-work democratic consultant did not agree with a DOJ investigation that was initiated by the CIA over concern with security leaks -- a politically motivated witchunt? Hardly.

By that logic, Bush's Iraq war policy is a "complete and total disaster" because one Republican Senator (actually more than one) has described it as such on numerous occasions.

powerclown · 09-03-2006, 09:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

I fail to see the relevance of the fact that one out-of-work democratic consultant did not agree with a DOJ investigation that was initiated by the CIA over concern with security leaks -- a politically motivated witchunt? Hardly.

Hardly? Hardly?
1+4+6+3+6+2-5-2-8+4+6-10 DOES NOT equal 2. Not in any sane human mind.
While I vouchsafe the Gordian intricacies, the presuppositions must surely be uncorroborated.

host · 09-03-2006, 09:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Very possibly.
Still, nothing can change Bob Beckel's opinion.

Unlike, foxnews shill, Bob Beckel only facts about the 'Plame Leak" case being investigated by special counsel Patrick Fitzerald, reported by news reporters with reputable track record and a proven history of reliable reporting, would influence me to change my opinion....and blame Joe Wilson instead of Bush administration officials for deliberately disclosing that Plame worked for the CIA, as "payback" for Wison's refuting Bush's "16 words" in his Jan., 2003 SOTU speech.

Bob Beckel has already changed his opiinion....once:

Quote:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,162161,00.html
FOXNEWS.COM HOME > POLITICS
White House Mum on Rove Role in CIA Leak
Monday, July 11, 2005

......Democrats have already begun to call for Rove's scalp. Some want him fired, others want him suspended and his security clearances revoked. <h3>Still others want Rove to testify in congressional hearings.

"He's not getting away with this one," Democratic strategist Bob Beckel told FOX News....</h>

Show us where these reporters, or CIA spokesman Bill Harlow have retracted any of the following:

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer
Bush Administration Is Focus of Inquiry
CIA Agent's Identity Was Leaked to Media

By Mike Allen and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 28, 2003; Page A01

At CIA Director George J. Tenet's request, the Justice Department is looking into an allegation that administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist, government sources said yesterday.

The operative's identity was published in July after her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly challenged President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy "yellowcake" uranium ore from Africa for possible use in nuclear weapons. Bush later backed away from the claim.

CIA Director George J. Tenet wants to know whether officials in the White House broke federal law.

The intentional disclosure of a covert operative's identity is a violation of federal law.

The officer's name was disclosed on July 14 in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak, who said his sources were two senior administration officials.

Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. Wilson had just revealed that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson's account touched off a political fracas over Bush's use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq.

"Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak.

Sources familiar with the conversations said the leakers were seeking to undercut Wilson's credibility. They alleged that Wilson, who was not a CIA employee, was selected for the Niger mission partly because his wife had recommended him. Wilson said in an interview yesterday that a reporter had told him that the leaker said, "The real issue is Wilson and his wife."

A source said reporters quoted a leaker as describing Wilson's wife as "fair game."

The official would not name the leakers for the record and would not name the journalists. The official said there was no indication that Bush knew about the calls.

It is rare for one Bush administration official to turn on another. Asked about the motive for describing the leaks, the senior official said the leaks were "wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility."

Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's occupation, has suggested publicly that he believes Bush's senior adviser, Karl C. Rove, broke her cover. Wilson said Aug. 21 at a public forum in suburban Seattle that it is of keen interest to him "to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs."

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday that he knows of no leaks about Wilson's wife. "That is not the way this White House operates, and no one would be authorized to do such a thing," McClellan said. "I don't have any information beyond an anonymous source in a media report to suggest there is anything to this. If someone has information of this nature, then he or she should report it to the Department of Justice."

McClellan, who Rove had speak for him, said of Wilson's comments: "It is a ridiculous suggestion, and it is simply not true." McClellan was asked about Wilson's charge at a White House briefing Sept. 16 and said the accusation is "totally ridiculous."

Administration officials said Tenet sent a memo to the Justice Department raising a series of questions about whether a leaker had broken federal law by disclosing the identity of an undercover officer. The CIA request was reported Friday night by MSNBC.com. Administration sources familiar with the matter said the Justice Department is determining whether a formal investigation is warranted. 

An intelligence official said Tenet "doesn't like leaks."

The CIA request could reopen the rift between the White House and the intelligence community that emerged this summer when Bush and his senior aides blamed Tenet for the inclusion of the now-discredited uranium claim -- the so-called "16 words" -- in the State of the Union address in January.

Tenet issued a statement taking responsibility for the CIA's approval of the address before it was delivered, but made clear the CIA had earlier warned the White House not to use the allegations about uranium ore. After an ensuing rush of leaks over White House handling of intelligence, Bush's aides said they believed in retrospect it had been a political mistake to blame Tenet.

The Intelligence Protection Act, passed in 1982, imposes maximum penalties of 10 years in prison and $50,000 in fines for unauthorized disclosure by government employees with access to classified information.

Members of the administration, especially Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, have been harshly critical of unauthorized leakers, and White House spokesmen are often dismissive of questions about news reports based on unnamed sources. The FBI is investigating senators for possibly leaking intercept information about Osama bin Laden.

The only recipient of a leak about the identity of Wilson's wife who went public with it was Novak, the conservative columnist, who wrote in The Washington Post and other newspapers that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, "is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." He added, "Two senior administration officials told me that Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger."

When Novak told a CIA spokesman he was going to write a column about Wilson's wife, the spokesman urged him not to print her name "for security reasons," according to one CIA official. Intelligence officials said they believed Novak understood there were reasons other than Plame's personal security not to use her name, even though the CIA has declined to confirm whether she was undercover.

Novak said in an interview last night that the request came at the end of a conversation about Wilson's trip to Niger and his wife's role in it. "They said it's doubtful she'll ever again have a foreign assignment," he said. "They said if her name was printed, it might be difficult if she was traveling abroad, and they said they would prefer I didn't use her name. It was a very weak request. If it was put on a stronger basis, I would have considered it."

After the column ran, the CIA began a damage assessment of whether any foreign contacts Plame had made over the years could be in danger. The assessment continues, sources said.

The CIA occasionally asks news organizations to withhold the names of undercover agents, and news organizations usually comply. An intelligence official told The Post yesterday that no further harm would come from repeating Plame's name.

Wilson was acting U.S. ambassador to Iraq during the run-up to the Persian Gulf War of 1991. He was in the diplomatic service from 1976 until 1998, and was the Clinton administration's senior director of African affairs on the National Security Council. He is now an international business consultant. Wilson said the mission to Niger was unpaid except for expenses.

Wilson said he believes an inquiry from Cheney's office launched his eight-day mission to Niger in February 2002 to check the uranium claim, which turned out to be based at least partly on forged documents. "The way it was briefed to me was that the office of the vice president had expressed an interest in a report covering uranium purchases by Iraq from Niger," Wilson said in a telephone interview yesterday.

He said that if Novak's account is accurate, the leak was part of "a deliberate attempt on the part of the White House to intimidate others and make them think twice about coming forward."

Sources said that some of the other journalists who received the leak did not use the information because they were uncomfortable with unmasking an undercover agent or because they did not consider the information relevant to Wilson's report about Niger....

Dana Priest co-wrote the preceding Sept.2003 news report;

Quote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Priest

Dana Priest is an author and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. Priest has worked almost twenty years for the Washington Post. As one of the Washington Post's specialists on National Security she has written many articles on the United States' War on terror. In February 2006, Ms. Priest was awarded the George Polk Award for National Reporting for her November 2005 article on alleged secret CIA detention facilities in foreign countries.

The article, published by the Washington Post above the fold on November 2, 2005, asserts the existence of clandestine, extraterritorial, CIA interrogation sites.[1] This article triggered a world-wide debate on these "black sites". Priest's article states that in addition to the 750 Guantanamo Bay detainees in military custody, the CIA held approximately 30 senior members of the al Qaeda and Taliban leadership and approximately 100 foot soldiers in their own facilities around the world. She wrote that several former Soviet Bloc countries had allowed the CIA to run interrogation facilities on their territory. On April 21, 2006 The New York Times reported that a European Union investigation has not proved the existence of secret CIA prisons in Europe.

In an interview, Priest confirmed that the CIA had referred her story to the Justice Department, and that various Congressmembers have called for an inquiry, to determine whether she or her sources had broken any laws.[2]. The Washington Post reported on April 21, 2006 that a CIA employee was fired for allegedly leaking classifed information to Ms. Priest and other journalists. NBC and The New York Times reported that the CIA employee is Mary O. McCarthy, appointed as Special Assistant to the President during the Clinton Administration by his former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger. The allegation has been disputed by McCarthy.

Priest is the author of a book entitled: "The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace With America's Military".[3] She was a guest scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace. She was a recipient of the MacArthur grant the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the National Defense in 2001, the NYPL Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.[4]

On April 17, 2006, Priest won a Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting. The announcement cited "her persistent, painstaking reports on secret 'black site' prisons and other controversial features of the government's counterterrorism campaign."

She lives in Washington, DC and is married to William Goodfellow who is Executive Director of the Center for International Policy.

....I've waited 13 month....so far.....for a civil, coherent response to my post #45 here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...48#post2078748

I am including it again because it still contains relevant facts in "the case'' that have never been impeached. It also demonstrates that the same game of the foks who won't discuss the facts or try to impeach them, still post only glib attacks against Plame's husband Joe Wilson, and apparently pass that off as relevant and informative addiition to a discussion that logic indicates, should be about analyzing and embracng or refuting, news reporting and statements by Patrick Fitzgerald and of the judges who have ruled on his motiions and those of Scooter Libby's attorneys......but it isn't....and it's not from a lack of trying to do just that....on my part.

Does the bashing of Joe Wilson mesh with the news reporting or the CIA request for investigation of the Plame leak, or with any Fitzgerald statement or of the court? Is it at all coherent in any examination of the facts? Show us how.....or stop doing it!

Quote:

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

Quote:

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

Quote:

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.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Just a few reasons why Wilson is a sleazeball:

Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission
Saturday, July 10, 2004

---
source

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.

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.

Quote:

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,

Quote:

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.

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".

.....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?...............

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."...........

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............

Powerclown, after at least 13 months of only glibness and avoidance from you, how about posting an answer that impeaches the reporting of WaPo's Dana Priest and statements of ex CIA spokesman, Blll Harlow? How about proviiding evidence
that refutes news reports that Plame's nearest neighbors did not know that she was a CIA employee, or show us credible support for the claim that 'Wilson's wife sent him to Niger". Show us where Wilson claimed that Cheney sent him to Niger. Show us how Bush's 16 SOTU words in Jan 2003, were legitimate, when he delivered them, and show us what unbiased 'mainstream" news reporters are on record, claiming that they personally knew that Plame worked for CIA before June, 2003. Please provide news reportiing...not ediitorials or opinion pieces, or claims of former CIA employees who left the agency ten or more years ago. I haven't seen any of those kind of citations provided, to transform your Wiilson bashing from a Rovian "fringe psy-Op", into an argument for discussion on its merits....in a poltics forum.

Ustwo · 09-03-2006, 10:36 PM

Powerclown the fact that there are democrats who see the error of their ways in this is disturbing.

I want them to continue to hound on it much like the dogged desperation, to find something out of nothing, we see in this thread.

The Republicans may not deserve another term based on their lack of domestic backbone (we didn't put them in there in 1994 to write a lot of checks) but they are still better than the alternative, though that line is now just about obliterated on the domestic front.

powerclown · 09-03-2006, 11:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Powerclown, after at least 13 months of only glibness and avoidance from you, how about posting an answer that impeaches the reporting of WaPo's Dana Priest and statements of ex CIA spokesman, Blll Harlow? How about proviiding evidence
that refutes news reports that Plame's nearest neighbors did not know that she was a CIA employee, or show us credible support for the claim that 'Wilson's wife sent him to Niger". Show us where Wilson claimed that Cheney sent him to Niger. Show us how Bush's 16 SOTU words in Jan 2003, were legitimate, when he delivered them, and show us what unbiased 'mainstream" news reporters are on record, claiming that they personally knew that Plame worked for CIA before June, 2003. Please provide news reportiing...not ediitorials or opinion pieces, or claims of former CIA employees who left the agency ten or more years ago. I haven't seen any of those kind of citations provided, to transform your Wiilson bashing from a Rovian "fringe psy-Op", into an argument for discussion on its merits....in a poltics forum.

YOU ARE JOKING RIGHT? OF COURSE I WON'T PROVIDE EVIDENCE HERE FOR YOU TO MOCK ONCE AGAIN. HAVEN'T WE ALL BEEN DOWN THAT ROAD OVER AND OVER AGAIN WITH YOU? BACK AND FORTH AND BACK AND FORTH AND BACK AND FORTH NO YOURE WRONG, NO YOURE WRONG, NO YOURE WRONG, NO YOURE WRONG, NO THAT SOURCE IS BIASED, NO THAT SOURCE IS BIASED HERE LOOK AT THIS ARTICLE FROM 1942 THAT SOURCE IS BIASED. YOU JUST CARRY ON AND CONTINUE PREACHING TO "YOUR AUDIENCE", YOU SUPERSTAR!

WHOEVER IS INTERESTED IN STUDYING THESE MATTERS NEED LOOK NO FURTHER THAN THEIR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD GOOGLE. FOR NOW ANYWAY, I'M DONE SPENDING TIME RESEARCHING MATERIAL FOR ANGSTY PLATEHEADS, PARANOID SCHIZOPHRENICS, POLITICOPHILES, PRIMADONNAS AND DENSITOMETERS.

WILL YOU SAY "PSY-OP" ONE MORE TIME THOUGH PLEASE?

Willravel · 09-03-2006, 11:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

YOU ARE JOKING RIGHT? OF COURSE I WON'T PROVIDE EVIDENCE HERE FOR YOU TO MOCK ONCE AGAIN. HAVEN'T WE ALL BEEN DOWN THAT ROAD OVER AND OVER AGAIN WITH YOU? BACK AND FORTH AND BACK AND FORTH AND BACK AND FORTH NO YOURE WRONG, NO YOURE WRONG, NO YOURE WRONG, NO YOURE WRONG, NO THAT SOURCE IS BIASED, NO THAT SOURCE IS BIASED HERE LOOK AT THIS ARTICLE FROM 1942 THAT SOURCE IS BIASED. YOU JUST CARRY ON AND CONTINUE PREACHING TO "YOUR AUDIENCE", YOU SUPERSTAR!

WHOEVER IS INTERESTED IN STUDYING THESE MATTERS NEED LOOK NO FURTHER THAN THEIR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD GOOGLE. FOR NOW ANYWAY, I'M DONE SPENDING TIME RESEARCHING MATERIAL FOR ANGSTY PLATEHEADS, PARANOID SCHIZOPHRENICS, POLITICOPHILES, PRIMADONNAS AND DENSITOMETERS.

WILL YOU SAY "PSY-OP" ONE MORE TIME THOUGH PLEASE?

I HOPE YOU ACCEDENTALLY LEFT YOUR CAPS LOCK ON, because if you did that purpously, then you were yelling and that's inapropriate. Besides, we're all politcophiles here.

As a paranoid schizophrenic, I have to say that I'm concerned that your only argument in this thread is that one democrat (out of tens of millions) is siding with this. I'm sure that you understand that's meaningless. Mr. Beckel isn't really privy to any information that we don't have access to. He simply came to a different conclusion than host or roach or dc or ratbastid (or myself). Until we actually have his line of thought, it's just a conclusion from another outside party.

The better argument here is the one made in the OP. The smart retort is "Where's the proof?". Bob Beckel seems like a nice guy, but we don't klnow what his level of involvement is in this situation. Until we do, he's opinion carries no more weight than mine or yours.

Ch'i · 09-04-2006, 01:32 AM

I can see I'm jumping into a shark tank; just know that I'm fresh to this forum.

Quote:

Bob Beckel seems like a nice guy, but we don't klnow what his level of involvement is in this situation. Until we do, he's opinion carries no more weight than mine or yours.

Well concluded.

Anyway. Novak's rebuttal to the allegations against him is filled with gaps. According to Novak, the official dropped the fact that Plame was employed by the CIA. Novak also defended that he only stated that Wilson's wife was an analyst, not a covert operative. I was curious, however, about Mrs. Plame funding of Al Gore in 1999 through her fake firm, Brewster Jennings & Associates. Novak claimed that...

Quote:

CIA people are not supposed to list themselves with fictitious firms if they're under a deep cover — they're supposed to be real firms, or so I'm told.

...which still seems a shallow defense for the possibility of blowing her cover.

Quote:

Novak
I was curious why a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC) was given this assignment. Wilson had become a vocal opponent of President Bush's policies in Iraq after contributing to Al Gore in the last election cycle and John Kerry in this one ... During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counter-proliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife

Its my understanding that a "noc" is classified and maintained in a secrecy unrivaled by any other covert status in the CIA. It is the most difficult cover to make. So why does it seem like it was easy for Novak to find discrepancies in her cover?

There is also the matter of this "senior administration official." If Novak claims to be innocent, then why not reveal the identity of this person? In an August 27, 2006 appearance on Meet the Press, Novak was asked if Armitage was his source. To which Novak responded:

Quote:

I told Mr. Isikoff...that I do not identify my sources on any subject if they’re on a confidential basis until they identify themselves...I’m going to say one thing, though, I haven’t said before. And that is that I believe that the time has way passed for my source to identify himself."

I know Novak said he prefered his source to identify himself, but when should it become apparent that this source would prefer to keep the investigation and media running in circles, rather than sabotage his own career?

Sources: Novak, Robert (October 1, 2003). "The CIA leak", www.usatoday.com/news/pdf/plame_lawsuit.pdf, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_Affair

dc_dux · 09-04-2006, 05:03 AM

i am still confounded by the fact that some see this entire affair as a politically motivated witchunt.

Was the initital CIA internal investigation a democratic ploy? Or the appointment of Fitzgerald by AG Ashcroft? Was the grand jury politically motivated? Where's the beef?

The facts speak for themselves.

Quote:

The five charges against I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby Jr. carry a total maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and $1.25 million in fines. A look at the charges as outlined in a 22-page indictment:

Count one: obstruction of justice
The grand jury charges that Libby did “knowingly and corruptly endeavor to influence, obstruct and impede the due administration of justice... by misleading and deceiving the grand jury” about when and how he learned that covert operative Valerie Plame worked for the CIA. He is also accused of misleading the grand jury about how he disclosed that information to the media.

Count two: false statement
The grand jury charges that Libby “did knowingly and willfully make a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement” in an FBI investigation. Specifically, the indictment says Libby misled FBI agents in response to questions about a conversation with Tim Russert of NBC News in July 2003.

Count three: false statement
Libby is charged with misleading FBI agents about his July 2003 conversation with another reporter, Matt Cooper of Time Magazine.

Count four: perjury
After taking an oath to testify truthfully, Libby knowingly made a “false material declaration” about his conversation with Russert, the grand jury alleges.

Count five: perjury
Also under oath, Libby is accused of knowingly making a “false material declaration” about his conversation with Cooper.

Where is the partisan witchunt?.

Clinton was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice. I guess that was a partisan witchunt as well.

host · 09-04-2006, 07:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

i am still confounded by the fact that some see this entire affair as a politically motivated witchunt.

Was the initital CIA internal investigation a democratic ploy? Or the appointment of Fitzgerald by AG Ashcroft? Was the grand jury politically motivated? Where's the beef?

The facts speak for themselves.

Where is the partisan witchunt?.

Clinton was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice. I guess that was a partisan witchunt as well.

A "fairy tale" diversion had to be crafted to distract the followers of this entire "vote for us or we'll get hit agaiin", adminitration, from ever consdering
that the administration outted a Cia "NOC" during it's own "GWOT" to demonstrate that dissent similar to what the NOC's husband publcly displayed would not be tolerated without political revenge.

Because of this act of spite at the least.....it will be more difficult to recruit new Cia NOCs smart enough to do the required job. The outting of Plame also goes against everything that those who believe and support the administration claim justifies their support for it.

Either they embrace the fairy tale that Plame's husband Wilson made the whole thing up and somehow got the Cia and DOJ to support Wilson and the republican controlled government to baselessly investigate and embarass the administration.....or.... they would have to react to what the administration actually did....from it's justification for iraq invasion to the outtiing of Plame as an 'example'.....and that would all require introspection that they are'nt ready to do.....they would have to honestly re-examine their fairy tale about what they say happened in Vietnam....fiirst.

Hence, all of the dysfunctiion and deniial of the record of the actual circumstances of the plame leak that even conservative federal appeals court justices and a republican appointed special counsel, as well as the rest of us....all have accepted for a while now....as findings of fact.

Marvelous Marv · 09-04-2006, 02:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Perhaps they are just out of truth

The important thing here for the left will be to keep trying to assault the character of the members of this administration, reguardless of proof. I mean remember Cheney was CEO of Haliburton!

Oh and Rekna is Newsweek mainstream enough for you?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14533384/site/newsweek/

How about CNN?

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/...nn_allpolitics

The left wing Washington Post?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...082801278.html

Oh and Yahoo.news gives this
Plame considering suing Armitage

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060822/..._leak_woodward

Case closed, but it never really was open. Just another kangaroo court of the left wing political spin machine.

Yes, the spunk is all over the blue dress on this one.

http://www.nationalreview.com/mccart...0507180801.asp

Quote:

July 18, 2005, 8:01 a.m.
Did the CIA “Out” Valerie Plame?
What the mainstream media tells the court ... but won’t tell you.

With each passing day, the manufactured "scandal" over the publication of Valerie Plame's relationship with the CIA establishes new depths of mainstream-media hypocrisy. A highly capable special prosecutor is probing the underlying facts, and it is appropriate to withhold legal judgments until he completes the investigation over which speculation runs so rampant. But it is not too early to assess the performance of the press. It's been appalling.

Is that hyperbole? You be the judge. Have you heard that the CIA is actually the source responsible for exposing Plame's covert status? Not Karl Rove, not Bob Novak, not the sinister administration cabal du jour of Fourth Estate fantasy, but the CIA itself? Had you heard that Plame's cover has actually been blown for a decade — i.e., since about seven years before Novak ever wrote a syllable about her? Had you heard not only that no crime was committed in the communication of information between Bush administration officials and Novak, but that no crime could have been committed because the governing law gives a person a complete defense if an agent's status has already been compromised by the government?

No, you say, you hadn't heard any of that. You heard that this was the crime of the century. A sort of Robert-Hanssen-meets-Watergate in which Rove is already cooked and we're all just waiting for the other shoe — or shoes — to drop on the den of corruption we know as the Bush administration. That, after all, is the inescapable impression from all the media coverage. So who is saying different?

The organized media, that's who. How come you haven't heard? Because they've decided not to tell you. Because they say one thing — one dark, transparently partisan thing — when they're talking to you in their news coverage, but they say something completely different when they think you're not listening.

You see, if you really want to know what the media think of the Plame case — if you want to discover what a comparative trifle they actually believe it to be — you need to close the paper and turn off the TV. You need, instead, to have a peek at what they write when they're talking to a court. It's a mind-bendingly different tale.

Quote:

SPUN FROM THE START
My colleague Cliff May has already demonstrated the bankruptcy of the narrative the media relentlessly spouts for Bush-bashing public consumption: to wit, that Valerie Wilson, nee Plame, was identified as a covert CIA agent by the columnist Robert Novak, to whom she was compromised by an administration official. In fact, it appears Plame was first outed to the general public as a result of a consciously loaded and slyly hypothetical piece by the journalist David Corn. Corn's source appears to have been none other than Plame's own husband, former ambassador and current Democratic-party operative Joseph Wilson — that same pillar of national security rectitude whose notion of discretion, upon being dispatched by the CIA for a sensitive mission to Niger, was to write a highly public op-ed about his trip in the New York Times. This isn't news to the media; they have simply chosen not to report it.

The hypocrisy, though, only starts there. It turns out that the media believe Plame was outed long before either Novak or Corn took pen to paper. And not by an ambiguous confirmation from Rove or a nod-and-a-wink from Ambassador Hubby. No, the media think Plame was previously compromised by a disclosure from the intelligence community itself — although it may be questionable whether there was anything of her covert status left to salvage at that point, for reasons that will become clear momentarily.

This CIA disclosure, moreover, is said to have been made not to Americans at large but to Fidel Castro's anti-American regime in Cuba, whose palpable incentive would have been to "compromise[] every operation, every relationship, every network with which [Plame] had been associated in her entire career" — to borrow from the diatribe in which Wilson risibly compared his wife's straits to the national security catastrophes wrought by Aldrich Ames and Kim Philby.

THE MEDIA GOES TO COURT ... AND SINGS A DIFFERENT TUNE
Just four months ago, 36 news organizations confederated to file a friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington. At the time, Bush-bashing was (no doubt reluctantly) confined to an unusual backseat. The press had no choice — it was time to close ranks around two of its own, namely, the Times's Judith Miller and Time's Matthew Cooper, who were threatened with jail for defying grand jury subpoenas from the special prosecutor.

The media's brief, fairly short and extremely illuminating, is available here. The Times, which is currently spearheading the campaign against Rove and the Bush administration, encouraged its submission. It was joined by a "who's who" of the current Plame stokers, including ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, AP, Newsweek, Reuters America, the Washington Post, the Tribune Company (which publishes the Los Angeles Times and the Baltimore Sun, among other papers), and the White House Correspondents (the organization which represents the White House press corps in its dealings with the executive branch).

The thrust of the brief was that reporters should not be held in contempt or forced to reveal their sources in the Plame investigation. Why? Because, the media organizations confidently asserted, no crime had been committed. Now, that is stunning enough given the baleful shroud the press has consciously cast over this story. Even more remarkable, though, were the key details these self-styled guardians of the public's right to know stressed as being of the utmost importance for the court to grasp — details those same guardians have assiduously suppressed from the coverage actually presented to the public.

Though you would not know it from watching the news, you learn from reading the news agencies' brief that the 1982 law prohibiting disclosure of undercover agents' identities explicitly sets forth a complete defense to this crime. It is contained in Section 422 (of Title 50, U.S. Code), and it provides that an accused leaker is in the clear if, sometime before the leak, "the United States ha[s] publicly acknowledged or revealed" the covert agent's "intelligence relationship to the United States[.]"

As it happens, the media organizations informed the court that long before the Novak revelation (which, as noted above, did not disclose Plame's classified relationship with the CIA), Plame's cover was blown not once but twice. The media based this contention on reporting by the indefatigable Bill Gertz — an old-school, "let's find out what really happened" kind of journalist. Gertz's relevant article, published a year ago in the Washington Times, can be found here.
THE MEDIA TELLS THE COURT: PLAME'S COVER WAS BLOWN IN THE MID-1990s
As the media alleged to the judges (in Footnote 7, page 8, of their brief), Plame's identity as an undercover CIA officer was first disclosed to Russia in the mid-1990s by a spy in Moscow. Of course, the press and its attorneys were smart enough not to argue that such a disclosure would trigger the defense prescribed in Section 422 because it was evidently made by a foreign-intelligence operative, not by a U.S. agency as the statute literally requires.

But neither did they mention the incident idly. For if, as he has famously suggested, President Bush has peered into the soul of Vladimir Putin, what he has no doubt seen is the thriving spirit of the KGB, of which the Russian president was a hardcore agent. The Kremlin still spies on the United States. It remains in the business of compromising U.S. intelligence operations.

Thus, the media's purpose in highlighting this incident is blatant: If Plame was outed to the former Soviet Union a decade ago, there can have been little, if anything, left of actual intelligence value in her "every operation, every relationship, every network" by the time anyone spoke with Novak (or, of course, Corn).

Quote:

THE CIA OUTS PLAME TO FIDEL CASTRO
Of greater moment to the criminal investigation is the second disclosure urged by the media organizations on the court. They don't place a precise date on this one, but inform the judges that it was "more recent" than the Russian outing but "prior to Novak's publication."

And it is priceless. The press informs the judges that the CIA itself "inadvertently" compromised Plame by not taking appropriate measures to safeguard classified documents that the Agency routed to the Swiss embassy in Havana. In the Washington Times article — you remember, the one the press hypes when it reports to the federal court but not when it reports to consumers of its news coverage — Gertz elaborates that "[t]he documents were supposed to be sealed from the Cuban government, but [unidentified U.S.] intelligence officials said the Cubans read the classified material and learned the secrets contained in them."

Thus, the same media now stampeding on Rove has told a federal court that, to the contrary, they believe the CIA itself blew Plame's cover before Rove or anyone else in the Bush administration ever spoke to Novak about her. Of course, they don't contend the CIA did it on purpose or with malice. But neither did Rove — who, unlike the CIA, appears neither to have known about nor disclosed Plame's classified status. Yet, although the Times and its cohort have a bull's eye on Rove's back, they are breathtakingly silent about an apparent CIA embarrassment — one that seems to be just the type of juicy story they routinely covet.

A COMPLETE DEFENSE?
The defense in Section 422 requires that the revelation by the United States have been done "publicly." At least one U.S. official who spoke to Gertz speculated that because the Havana snafu was not "publicized" — i.e., because the classified information about Plame was mistakenly communicated to Cuba rather than broadcast to the general public — it would not available as a defense to whomever spoke with Novak. But that seems clearly wrong.

First, the theory under which the media have gleefully pursued Rove, among other Bush officials, holds that if a disclosure offense was committed here it was complete at the moment the leak was made to Novak. Whether Novak then proceeded to report the leak to the general public is beside the point — the violation supposedly lies in identifying Plame to Novak. (Indeed, it has frequently been observed that Judy Miller of the Times is in contempt for protecting one or more sources even though she never wrote an article about Plame.)

Perhaps more significantly, the whole point of discouraging public disclosure of covert agents is to prevent America's enemies from degrading our national security. It is not, after all, the public we are worried about. Rather, it is the likes of Fidel Castro and his regime who pose a threat to Valerie Plame and her network of U.S. intelligence relationships. The government must still be said to have "publicized" the classified relationship — i.e., to have blown the cover of an intelligence agent — if it leaves out the middleman by communicating directly with an enemy government rather than indirectly through a media outlet.

LINGERING QUESTIONS
All this raises several readily apparent questions. We know that at the time of the Novak and Corn articles, Plame was not serving as an intelligence agent outside the United States. Instead, she had for years been working, for all to see, at CIA headquarters in Langley. Did her assignment to headquarters have anything to do with her effectiveness as a covert agent having already been nullified by disclosure to the Russians and the Cubans — and to whomever else the Russians and Cubans could be expected to tell if they thought it harmful to American interests or advantageous to their own?

If Plame's cover was blown, as Gertz reports, how much did Plame know about that? It's likely that she would have been fully apprised — after all, as we have been told repeatedly in recent weeks, the personal security of a covert agent and her family can be a major concern when secrecy is pierced. Assuming she knew, did her husband, Wilson, also know? At the time he was ludicrously comparing the Novak article to the Ames and Philby debacles, did he actually have reason to believe his wife had been compromised years earlier?

And could the possibility that Plame's cover has long been blown explain why the CIA was unconcerned about assigning a one-time covert agent to a job that had her walking in and out of CIA headquarters every day? Could it explain why the Wilsons were sufficiently indiscrete to pose in Vanity Fair, and, indeed, to permit Joseph Wilson to pen a highly public op-ed regarding a sensitive mission to which his wife — the covert agent — energetically advocated his assignment? Did they fail to take commonsense precautions because they knew there really was nothing left to protect?

We'd probably know the answers to these and other questions by now if the media had given a tenth of the effort spent manufacturing a scandal to reporting professionally on the underlying facts. And if they deigned to share with their readers and viewers all the news that's fit to print ... in a brief to a federal court.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

You remember Bill Gertz don't you, host? Here's what you said about him on 10/29/05:

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Marv, the times is not a real "news" paper, and Bill Gertz is not a real reporter.

Quote:

Originally Posted by host, in large type

Before the Novak column was published, at least six reporters were contacted by administration officials and allegedly told that Valerie Plame Wilson worked at the CIA. Whoever did so may have been trying to undermine the importance of Wilson's trip by implying it had been set up by his wife -- and therefore was not a serious effort by the agency to discover whether, in fact, Iraq had attempted to buy uranium in Niger.

"Allegedly." "Whoever did so." "may have been trying."

Who did it, Jimmy Hoffa? What a pathetic fabrication.

dc_dux · 09-04-2006, 06:01 PM

Perhaps I could understand the position of those who find fault with the whole "affair" if someone with that position can suggest the criteria that distinguish a politically motivated witchunt from a proper investigation of potential wrongdoing.

Is any investigation of potential or alleged misconduct, ethical lapses or criminal activity by this administration a witchunt? Would you apply the same standards if it was a Dem administration? How would you hold any administration accountable for its actions?

Ustwo · 09-04-2006, 08:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

Perhaps I could understand the position of those who find fault with the whole "affair" if someone with that position can suggest the criteria that distinguish a politically motivated witchunt from a proper investigation of potential wrongdoing.

The problem wasn't the investigation. That was a good and needed thing in a case like this. The problem was the spin and the hopeful, almost pleading, salivating, prayer from many members of the left that Rove (and or Cheney) was the one involved. He was convicted in the lefts kangaroo court on this board, and in various media, when it turns out that for quite a while it was known to the investigation that he was not the leak.

Guilt was assumed, it wasn't proven in the least, hell it didn't even make sense, but that didn't stop members of this board, and from propaganda sites like truthout.org and even mainstream media from left of center sources from convicting the man on no proof beyond the word of her husband, who ironically is perhaps the most to blame in this whole silly messy.

Even if we pretend it was Rove in some happy left wing Candy Land, its not even apparent that a law would have been broken as her status may not have been one that identification of her as an agent was illegal. That I'll leave to debate, as the Plame's are not answering the needed questions on that, and that also doesn't take into account that she may have been long compromised prior. I still think it would have been bad form by Rove to do so even in passing, but to claim it was done as a deliberate sabotage of some minor diplomats wife career is just asinine in the extreme. If mean spiritedness was in fact a motivation, I'm sure that the executive branch could ruin Mrs. Plame's career as a CIA agent without exposing themselves to legal action.

Ch'i · 09-04-2006, 09:09 PM

I agree in that whoever it was that leaked the information probably did not do it out of political spite. But why has Novak refused to reveal his source, unless he were given incentive not to, or connected in some way?

host · 09-04-2006, 09:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marvelous Marv

Yes, the spunk is all over the blue dress on this one.

http://www.nationalreview.com/mccart...0507180801.asp

You remember Bill Gertz don't you, host? Here's what you said about him on 10/29/05:

"Allegedly." "Whoever did so." "may have been trying."

Who did it, Jimmy Hoffa? What a pathetic fabrication.

Marv, there is no "alledgedly", in the text of any of these quotes from washington post's Mike Allen in his other reporting of the same comments from a "Senior Administration Official":

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...1208-2003Sep27

.......Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. Wilson had just revealed that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson's account touched off a political fracas over Bush's use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq........

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...&notFound=true
Probe Focuses on Month Before Leak to Reporters
FBI Agents Tracing Linkage of Envoy to CIA Operative

By Walter Pincus and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, October 12, 2003; Page A01

......... On July 7, the White House admitted it had been a mistake to include the 16 words about uranium in Bush's State of the Union speech. Four days later, with the controversy dominating the airwaves and drowning out the messages Bush intended to send during his trip in Africa, CIA Director George J. Tenet took public blame for failing to have the sentence removed.

That same week, two top White House officials disclosed Plame's identity to least six Washington journalists, an administration official told The Post for an article published Sept. 28. The source elaborated on the conversations last week, saying that officials brought up Plame as part of their broader case against Wilson.

"It was unsolicited," the source said. "They were pushing back. They used everything they had." ........

............... Officials have said Wilson, a former ambassador to Gabon and National Security Council senior director for African affairs, was not chosen because of his wife.

On July 12, two days before Novak's column, a Post reporter was told by an administration official that the White House had not paid attention to the former ambassador's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction. Plame's name was never mentioned and the purpose of the disclosure did not appear to be to generate an article, but rather to undermine Wilson's report.

After Novak's column appeared, several high-profile reporters told Wilson that they had received calls from White House officials drawing attention to his wife's role. Andrea Mitchell of NBC News said she received one of those calls.

Wilson said another reporter called him on July 21 and said he had just hung up with Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove. The reporter quoted Rove as describing Wilson's wife as "fair game," Wilson said. Newsweek has identified that reporter as MSNBC television host Chris Matthews. Spokespeople said Matthews was unavailable for comment.

McClellan, the White House spokesman, has denied that Rove was involved in leaking classified material but has refused to discuss the possibility of a campaign to call attention to the revelations in Novak's column.

On July 17, the Time magazine Web site reported that "some government officials have noted to Time in interviews, (as well as to syndicated columnist Robert Novak) that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." On July 22, Wilson appeared on NBC's "Today" show and said that disclosing the name of a U.S. intelligence officer would be "a breach of national security," could compromise that officer's entire network of contacts and could be a violation of federal law.

Wilson said that brought an immediate halt to the reports he had been getting of anonymous attacks on him by White House officials.

An administration source said, "One of the greatest mysteries in all this is what was really the rationale for doing it and doing it this way."

Quote:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...29/asb.00.html
CNN NEWSNIGHT AARON BROWN

Justice Department Launches Probe Into Outing of CIA Agent; Rough Patch for Governor Gray Davis

Aired September 29, 2003 - 22:00 ET

We're joined now by Mike Allen who had the byline or byline and a half I think on this one over the weekend. Mike, it's good to have you. This story literally has been floating out there since mid, late July. I looked at an e-mail I got in August about it. Why did it become news now?

MIKE ALLEN, "WASHINGTON POST": Well, Aaron, why didn't you act on that e-mail? You would have had a big scoop. You're right.

BROWN: Thank you. You're absolutely right.

ALLEN: You're right this built unbelievably slowly. Robert Novak's column disclosing this name appeared on July 14. We learned today that the first CIA written request for an investigation went to the Justice Department at the end of July.

But at the end of late last week how does anything come out in Washington, there was a briefing for some lawmakers on the Hill on the progress of the investigation that got the ball rolling on this news story. This morning the president in a very small meeting with a couple aides said I want to get to the bottom of this.

BROWN: Just one more question on this. It's not that any specific fact had changed from the first of August when I suspect a lot of people started to hear about this. It's that somebody in Congress took it more seriously.

ALLEN: Well, that's right. Somebody in Congress started talking about it so more people in the administration started talking about it.

BROWN: One of the things about your piece I found interesting is in an administration that's been pretty disciplined is there is now some backbiting if you will around the story, people talking about the leakers as not being very smart.

ALLEN: Yes, there's a lot of interest in what the motives are both of the leakers and the people talking about the leakers. One administration official who talked to us this weekend said that they thought that the leak was wrong and they thought it was a miscalculation that it may have hurt the administration more than it hurt Joe Wilson.

BROWN: And the motive is the motive for or -- let me try it this way. Based on your reporting was the motive for the leak essentially what Mr. Wilson has said it was, Ambassador Wilson, that it was revenge?

ALLEN: Yes, in addition to that Ambassador Wilson has said that he thought it was to intimidate others who might come forward. My colleague, Howard Kurtz, today talked to another one of the reporters who was told the name before it was published and their sense was just that the administration official thought that Joe Wilson was getting a big ride in the media and they wanted to sort of cast doubt on his whole investigation, which sort of pulled the plug out of the Niger uranium element.

BROWN: From what you've been able to find out how many reporters were called on this? Was it somebody just picking up the phone book and looking under reporters in the yellow pages and making cold calls?

ALLEN: It seems to be that this was a place where these were officials that had relationships with the reporters. There were some high profile people that were called. There's a variety of reasons. One thing that a lot of journalists started talking about among themselves today is why more people didn't do the story at the time.

But we were told that some people were uncomfortable with it. Some people thought it was a little bit off the point of what was being said about Ambassador Wilson so there were a variety of reasons but this weekend they all came together and no there's a great deal of attention to who talked to whom about this at what point.

BROWN: A couple more. What do you make of the White House reaction to it all today?

ALLEN: Well, as John King pointed out at the top of the broadcast they decided not to do any internal investigation. Nobody is being called in to ask what they said. At the briefing today, one reporter said it reminded them of a don't ask, don't tell investigation.

Quote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3129941/...wsweek/page/3/
Secrets and Leaks
By Evan Thomas and Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
Updated: 7:56 a.m. ET Oct 6, 2003

.......Wilson told NEWSWEEK that in the days after the Novak story appeared, he got calls from several well-connected Washington reporters. One was NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell. She told NEWSWEEK that she said to Wilson: “I heard in the White House that people were touting the Novak column and that that was the real story.” The next day Wilson got a call from Chris Matthews, host of the MSNBC show “Hardball.” According to a source close to Wilson, Matthews said, “I just got off the phone with Karl Rove, who said your wife was fair game.” (Matthews told NEWSWEEK: “I’m not going to talk about off-the-record conversations.”).......

Consider that Michael Isikoff co-reported the preceding Oct., 2003 excerpt and co-authored the book, with David Corn, that the OP editorial for this thread was published in response to; with an admittedly "flawed" spin on the signifigance of what Corn and Isikoff published, regarding the Plame CIA Leak investigation.

This legal pleading excerpt by Patrick Fitzgerald in response to a Discovery Motion by Scooter Libby's defense team, to the judge presiding over the criminal trial of Libby for five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice in the Plame CIA Leak investigation is certainly relevant:

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 Top of Page 27: )
.........On September 29, 2003, the Washington Post reported that “two White House officials leaked the information to selected journalists to discredit Wilson.” (Washington Post, “Bush Aides Say They’ll Cooperate With Probe Into Intelligence Leak,” by Mike Allen, September 29, 2003)............

(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....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

....... I still think it would have been bad form by Rove to do so even in passing, but to claim it was done as a deliberate sabotage of some minor diplomats wife career is just asinine in the extreme. If mean spiritedness was in fact a motivation, I'm sure that the executive branch could ruin Mrs. Plame's career as a CIA agent without exposing themselves to legal action.

Marv and Ustwo, unless you have read all of the pleadings on special counsel Fitzgerald's DOJ website; by your own posted words and the "influence" that you presumably put up little resistance towards (I visit the places that the "Joe Wilson is a sleazebag" folks read for the sustenance of their POVs), I suspect you have little comprehension of what is actually going to happen in the "Libby case" and in Fitzgerald's overall investigation. The next year, or three....are going to be interesting, unless Bush himself engineers a "Nixon style" saturday night massacre by firing Patrick Fitzgerald in an attempt to end this investigation and prosecutions that will result. Fitzgerald only hints at the evidence and testimony he has compiled. He won't even have to disclose most of it, to prosecute Libby. Only Libby and the Bush admin., faithful try to transform the Libby prosecution into a trial about the actual crime of disclosing classified information for political revenge. In this Libby trial, neither the judge nor Fitzgerald will permit that to happen. Fitzgerald won't have to disclose the bulk of the evidence he's gathered until further prosecutions of Bush administration officials, or in their sentencing hearings if they cop pleas....until late 2007 and through 2008.

.....and finally, Marvelous Marv....I'll leave it to other readers to decide for themselves, what your mocking quote of ole "host's" comments about Bill Gertz and your "allegedley" gambit, reveal about the respective earnestness of you....and of me.

Not only did you fail to reply to my post, ten months ago,
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...5&postcount=61
in which I provided a thorough rebuttal to your NRO/Bill Gertz "stuff", in your last post here,......but you copied and pasted the quote of my Bill Gertz comment from that ten month old post, to mock me on this thread.

I even posted a second time.....ten months ago, asking you to respond to the post I linked in the preceding paragraph:

Quote:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...25#post1924725
(post #65...on 10-29-2005)
host wrote:
Marv, you ignored my last post....presumably because the contents of it reduced your argument above to what it truly is....Rove/Libby/Cheney BS.....unsubstantiated.....found to have no merit by a three judge, federal circuit court appellant panel....in the Plame leak case,,,,the case that we are discussing here.

The fact that repub. shill Toensing advanced your argument....your Bill Gertz article.....to the court...with no accompanying sworn affidavits....not even one from "reporter" Gertz, himself, was already pointed out to you, and you ignore it and repeat the same, unsubstantiated misinformation, according to Gertz, from "unidentified" CIA sources, shows that you might not have anything else of substance to back you up........

.....The bar here is raised, Marv. Rise up to it's level and stop repeating arguments that have already been unmasked as crap, or defend them with facts that others can examine for themselves, like I (and others here) regularly do......

pan6467 followed the above linked post with a well referenced description of the publication that Bill Gertz writes for.....the washington times.

Marv, you're giving me an impression that your goal in your last post, and in any of your posts on this thread, is not to stimulate a discussion, or even to defend your POV.

09-01-2006, 01:33 PM	#2 (permalink)
Ch'i Artist of Life	You win this round... Last edited by Ch'i; 09-01-2006 at 03:21 PM..

09-01-2006, 03:07 PM	#3 (permalink)
ratbastid Darth Papa Location: Yonder	It's still possible to turn this into a conspiracy. The fact that the actual leak was a redshirt who can be thrown to the wolves only underscores the canniness of the political manouver. I don't know... Even if this gets Rove, Bush, and Cheney off the hook, it doesn't recover the PR points lost by the administration through this whole mess. The administration is hopelessly off the approval rails. Even if it the news today was that Wilson was single, the damage to the administration is done. Last edited by ratbastid; 09-01-2006 at 03:13 PM..

09-02-2006, 08:20 AM	#13 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	doesn't look llike the right has much of anything to gloat about, does it? unless you can find a way to take pride in shabby reasoning and cavalier treatment of evidence. to buy this shabby thinking and cavalier treatment of facts, you would also have to buy conservativeland's attempts to reduce the problems around the plame affair to a question of consistent motive such that every last actor involved would have to have explicitly said I AM DOING THIS TO FUCK OVER A CRITIC OF THE WAR IN IRAQ or there is no problem care to defend this one, ustwo? __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

09-02-2006, 02:19 PM	#16 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	ok so in one thread you complain about the hall of mirrors that is information circulation within the mainstream media when it runs counter to your political agenda and in another you embrace exactly the same problem because you imagine that it benefits your boy bush. nice. then in this one, you ignore a legion of problems with the way in which the factoids in the washington post edito were selected and presented. you ignore the more extended version of the same information presented by one of the authors of the book that the wapo edito writer references (indirectly of course) and the--to say the least--complication of the edito and your interpretation of the information that you rely on for your fatuous conclusions. so if i understand the procedure you apply to information it goes like this: 1. factoids, no matter how arbitrary, no matter how indefensable, are cool with you if they fit with your political predispositions 2. and if they dont, sweeping, shabby ill-considered claims about some kind of media conspiracy are just hunky dory. 3. never acknowledge critiques until they reach a critical mass that forces you to abandon a thread. 4. conflate this kind of idiocy with rational discourse. excellent work. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

09-03-2006, 09:12 AM	#21 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	this is tedious beyond measure. there is abundant information even in this thread to complicated the conservative gloating over their dubious (imaginary?) take on the information in the still unreleased david corn michael issikof book--which i bothered to research, and from which i posted information (by david corn) that to say the least complicates the arbitrary cherry-picked infotainment version that has the conservative set running down the street cheering like people celebrating a victory in the 7th inning of a baseball game. or like a chess player who is so excited to have escaped the opening of a match without being crushed, and imagines that the middle game will unfold differently that he starts wildly celebrating without even thinking about the endgame. but none of the conservative set can answer basic questions. none of the conservative set even registers basic questions. personally, i am took the plame thing as more an index of how the bushpeople operate than the signal event around which all problems turned. the right seems to imagine this scenario to be reversed. i assume that they have become accustomed to viewing the world upside-down over the past 6 sorry years. let us rehearse the problems one last time before we retire from this thread and begin watching the actual game, as opposed the the game the conservative set pretends is in front of them: 1. it is only in conservativeland that the plame affair has been reduced to a very narrow question of motivation. 1a. it is only in conservativeland that this reduction to motivation requires that every last player be explicitly motivated by trying to fuck over a critic of the iraq debacle. 1b. it is only in conservativeland that the personal ambivalence about iraq that richard armitage means that the whole affair has been addressed you have to have swallowed conservativelands bizarre narrative about the plame affair to find this information about armitage compelling. even then, the information that the wapo article presents isself-evidently cherrypicked. the population of conservativeland cannot even start to address any of this. your narrative has no power, folks: your evidence has no weight because your narrative has no power. but enjoy yourselves jumping up and down over some imaginary victory in a game that only you are playing (no-one outside of conservativeland accepts your idiotic reduction-to-explicit motive view of this affair). i am going back to watching the real game. we'll maybe chat about this and other such stuff in mid november __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

09-01-2006, 03:10 PM	#4 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	That asshat. I was fooled.

09-01-2006, 08:10 PM	#7 (permalink)
filtherton Junkie Location: In the land of ice and snow.	Wait, we can't trust these people, they're obviously just trying to sell a book. Or something.

09-02-2006, 06:11 AM	#11 (permalink)
ratbastid Darth Papa Location: Yonder	YAY FOR DISTRACTIONS! Please, nobody notice this: There was still no fucking yellowcake. We still killed tens of thousands and thousands of people for a lie.

09-02-2006, 11:06 AM	#14 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie	If this is a trump card for the adminstrations defense why has it not hit the mainstream media yet? I read foxnews daily and have yet to see it mentioned (and don't say liberal bias). Maybe this is not as exculpitory as the OP would like us to believe.

09-03-2006, 08:56 AM	#20 (permalink)
host Banned	Marv, perhaps you've read nothing that I've provided with regard to news reporting, or of the tenuous thread that the perps who outted Plame the "noc", now hang by, since the odds favor democratic authority to issue subpoenas, conduct investigations, and question wiitnesses, under oath, as soon as in Jan., 2007. Your taunts indicate that you are iin denial of where this treason as payback OP is headed. You seem to endorse the willful destruction of the CIA, under Bush/Cheney. Curious attitude on your part, during the GWOT which you buy into, dontcha think? The CIA requested the Plame investigation. #2 at DOJ decided that Ashcroft had a conflict of interest and appointed Bush appointed US Attorney for So. Illinois, Patriick Fitzgerald, to conduct an independent investiigation of the "leak", wiith all of the power of an independent attorney general. Fitzgerald iindicted the VP's COS for obstruction of justice. Those are the facts, the contrary crap is spin from those who object to the investigation. Your posts and this thread's OP are part of that spin. They don't change the facts.......

09-03-2006, 12:15 PM	#22 (permalink)
powerclown Junkie Location: Detroit, MI	<embed src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/player/media/swf/FLVVideoSolo.swf' flashvars='id=802382&emailUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.yahoo.com%2Futil%2Fmail%3Fei%3DUTF-8%26vid%3Daa866d3a96001d29b6da93dd0ff321fb.802382%26vback%3DStudio%26vdone%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fvideo.yahoo.com%252Fvideo%252Fstudio%253Fei%253DUTF-8&imUrl=http%253A%252F%252Fvideo.yahoo.com%252Fvideo%252Fplay%253F%2526ei%253DUTF-8%2526vid%253Daa866d3a96001d29b6da93dd0ff321fb.802382&imTitle=beck&searchUrl=http://video.yahoo.com/video/search?p=&profileUrl=http://video.yahoo.com/video/profile?yid=&creatorValue=YXN0YWFu' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' width='425' height='350'></embed> Bob Beckel - popular DEMOCRATIC strategist since the late 60's - agrees with Ustwo. As do I. Although I thought it was a political witchunt from day one anyway and stated so. Props to those forthright enough to concede with some grace. Hopefully, the Wilsons can now move on to more important things, like hawking their hard-won scandal books. Last edited by powerclown; 09-03-2006 at 12:45 PM..

09-03-2006, 03:09 PM	#23 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	that's nice powerclown. you found a democrat that agrees with you. i dont see any particularl significance in that, but whatever floats your boat is, i suppose, fine. how about you actually read through the thread and respond to the critiques of the infotainment that you are celebrating? full disclosure: i was kind of watching this to see how it unfolded and was kind of agnostic about its significance. but i did see it as symptomatic of how the right operates. i still see it as symptomatic of how the right operates: and the action of the conservative set here is pretty much as one would expect: rigid repetition of the official line of the moment, unable or unwilling to either pose or answer questions, one-dimensional thinking for a one-dimensional politics. i'd be disappointed if i didnt already expect so little. but i understand--it must be tough to be standing in a shrinking room, disaster in afghanistan, civil war in iraq, bush at about 34% approval in the polls, article after article outlining weakness in republican prosects for november, waiting to be crushed in the next elections, clutching at whatever straws your far right media presents you...it cant be easy. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 09-03-2006 at 03:12 PM..

09-03-2006, 03:44 PM	#24 (permalink)
powerclown Junkie Location: Detroit, MI	First Rule of Holes, roachboy.

09-03-2006, 05:06 PM	#25 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	you are delusional, powerclown. have a nice day. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

09-03-2006, 05:48 PM	#26 (permalink)
powerclown Junkie Location: Detroit, MI	Very possibly. Still, nothing can change Bob Beckel's opinion.

09-03-2006, 10:36 PM	#30 (permalink)
Ustwo Pissing in the cornflakes	Powerclown the fact that there are democrats who see the error of their ways in this is disturbing. I want them to continue to hound on it much like the dogged desperation, to find something out of nothing, we see in this thread. The Republicans may not deserve another term based on their lack of domestic backbone (we didn't put them in there in 1994 to write a lot of checks) but they are still better than the alternative, though that line is now just about obliterated on the domestic front. __________________ Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

09-04-2006, 06:01 PM	#37 (permalink)
dc_dux Location: Washington DC	Perhaps I could understand the position of those who find fault with the whole "affair" if someone with that position can suggest the criteria that distinguish a politically motivated witchunt from a proper investigation of potential wrongdoing. Is any investigation of potential or alleged misconduct, ethical lapses or criminal activity by this administration a witchunt? Would you apply the same standards if it was a Dem administration? How would you hold any administration accountable for its actions? __________________ "The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire

09-04-2006, 09:09 PM	#39 (permalink)
Ch'i Artist of Life	I agree in that whoever it was that leaked the information probably did not do it out of political spite. But why has Novak refused to reveal his source, unless he were given incentive not to, or connected in some way?