The Plame Game

[Bonnie]

Great post Kathianne!! Bravo!!

 

[Annie]

Great post Kathianne!! Bravo!!

I remembered reading that earlier, after you posted yours, which also was great.

 

[Max Power]

AS long as your willing to admit this whole feeeble charade the Dems are tyring to use is simply due to sour grapes and a hatred of Bush. Bottom line is there is no proof Rove did anything wrong but let the special council figure it out before you convict him!!

I just think Bush should be a man of his word and fire Rove; but he is not, and will not.
"If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action." -Bush
"If anyone in this administration was involved in it [the improper disclosure of an undercover CIA operative's identity], they would no longer be in this administration." -McClellan

It's up to the court to decide whether or not Rove did anything illegal. I have a strong suspicion he did something illegal... and I'll wait for the court to do it's job.

 

[Annie]

I just think Bush should be a man of his word and fire Rove; but he is not, and will not.
"If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action." -Bush
"If anyone in this administration was involved in it [the improper disclosure of an undercover CIA operative's identity], they would no longer be in this administration." -McClellan

It's up to the court to decide whether or not Rove did anything illegal. I have a strong suspicion he did something illegal... and I'll wait for the court to do it's job.

So will we all.

About the two quotes above, see the posts from Bonnie and me.

 

[freeandfun1]

I just think Bush should be a man of his word and fire Rove; but he is not, and will not.
"If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action." -Bush
"If anyone in this administration was involved in it [the improper disclosure of an undercover CIA operative's identity], they would no longer be in this administration." -McClellan

It's up to the court to decide whether or not Rove did anything illegal. I have a strong suspicion he did something illegal... and I'll wait for the court to do it's job.

How can one "leak" something already known?

 

[kurtsprincess]

LOL I realize that you envy me, but you don't have to copy everything I say.

I was simply pointing out that the WashTimes article was full of it... to say that she wasn't covert is idiotic - exposing her exposed an entire front company.

I'm sorry Max...........I'm having a hard time grasping just what it is that I'm envious of?

Are you sure you understood the intent of quoting your own words?

 

[kurtsprincess]

It continues to amaze me how libs are so angry about Rove and his "shady" politics........they give him all the credit for being the mastermid behind the Bush administration......beyond description, absolutely brilliant are words I've heard about his strategic abilities!!

And yet, they now believe that he was stupid enough to make this type of mistake? Come on people.....wake up! :rotflmao: :rotflmao:

Plus, does anyone really think that he and Bush didn't talk about this before Bush made that statement? I'm sure that Bush would not have made such a statement unless he was absolutely sure that Rove didn't do it.

I know the media, and the libs are trying their best to make it look like Rove is the leak, and some want so much to believe in the tooth fairy and Santa that they refuse to see reality. :fifty:

You can't leak what is already public knowledge. Just because the libs and the media hadn't seized upon it previously doesn't mean this information wasn't already out there. :scratch:

 

[kurtsprincess]

I just think Bush should be a man of his word and fire Rove; but he is not, and will not.
"If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action." -Bush
"If anyone in this administration was involved in it [the improper disclosure of an undercover CIA operative's identity], they would no longer be in this administration." -McClellan

It's up to the court to decide whether or not Rove did anything illegal. I have a strong suspicion he did something illegal... and I'll wait for the court to do it's job.

How's this for a different, non-liberal, fact based perspective on what Bush said he would do.

Monday, July 18, 2005 10:43 p.m. EDT
Press Fudges Bush Plamegate Pledge

The press is claiming that President Bush has changed his pledge to fire anyone in his administration involved in leaking Valerie Plame's name - saying he's now added the qualifier, "If someone committed a crime."

But that's exactly what Bush said when he was first asked about the Plame case on Sept. 30, 2003.

Story Continues Below




"If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is," the president told reporters back then. "And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of."
Dozens of news organizations quoted Bush's Sept. 2003 proviso, "if the person has violated law", including USA Today, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC, CBS, Fox and CNN.

On Monday, Bush made it clear his position hadn't changed one bit. Asked about the Plame case, he explained: "If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration."

Still, that didn't stop the Associated Press from charging: "On Monday, however,[Bush] added the qualifier that it would have be shown that a crime was committed."

The AP cited a June 10, 2004, news conference, where according to the wire service, a reporter simply asked if Bush stood by his earlier pledge to fire anyone found to have leaked Plame's name. Bush answered, "Yes. And that's up to the U.S. attorney to find the facts."

But the full June 10, 2004 exchange was somewhat more complicated:

REPORTER: Given recent developments in the CIA leak case, particularly Vice President Cheney's discussions with the investigators, do you still stand by what you said several months ago, suggesting that it might be difficult to identify anybody who leak the agent's name? And do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so?

BUSH: Yes. And that's up to the U.S. attorney to find the facts. [End of Excerpt]

Any honest reading of that exchange would acknowledge that when Bush answered, "Yes" - he meant he was standing by his earlier statement, not the reporter's distorted version: "Do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so?"

Bush hadn't offered any such pledge.

But what he had said several months previous was that if the leaker had "violated the law," he'd be "taken care of."

What Bush Really Said

 

[Gabriella84]

Why are we quoting a newspaper that is owned by The Moonies? :huh:

 

[Annie]

Why are we quoting a newspaper that is owned by The Moonies? :huh:

Why are you not responding to any of the articles posted? Looks like Max bowed out, what say you?

 

[dilloduck]

Why are we quoting a newspaper that is owned by The Moonies? :huh:

It won't be the silliest thing ever cited as a source in here !

 

[kurtsprincess]

Why are we quoting a newspaper that is owned by The Moonies? :huh:

By Moonies??????????

Facts are facts Miss Gabby. The most important thing is whether they are true or not.

Are you disputing the facts, or just the source? Perhaps you can find an acceptable source for whatever group you belong to that actually has the correct facts.

 

[Adam's Apple]

Excellent article from National Review, Kathianne. Just what was needed to inform people of the background facts of this whole manufactured non-story.

 

[no1tovote4]

Really? He said that?
Let's look at the transcript.

WILSON: My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity.
BLITZER: But she hadn't been a clandestine officer for some time before that?
WILSON: That's not anything that I can talk about. And, indeed, I'll go back to what I said earlier, the CIA believed that a possible crime had been committed, and that's why they referred it to the Justice Department.
http://mediamatters.org/static/video/wolf-200507150003.wmv (VIDEO)

Hmm, looks like he didn't say that at all! In fact, he refused to comment on it.
You just got OWNED no1tovote4.

What a silly little man. You didn't even answer the fact that the CIA does not have their operatives drive into HQ as Plame was doing at the time. Nobody who works at HQ is an operative because of the high visibility of their HQ. I explained this to you, you chose to ignore it as it doesn't fit in with your silly little scenario. It is silly to watch somebody attempt to make somebody more important than they were in an attempt to get at political enemies. There are far more important issues to look into than the identity of a person who worked at CIA HQ and therefore was already "blown".

 

[no1tovote4]

I just think Bush should be a man of his word and fire Rove; but he is not, and will not.
"If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action." -Bush
"If anyone in this administration was involved in it [the improper disclosure of an undercover CIA operative's identity], they would no longer be in this administration." -McClellan

It's up to the court to decide whether or not Rove did anything illegal. I have a strong suspicion he did something illegal... and I'll wait for the court to do it's job.

Ah, if you are talking about firing him for leaking classified info, I agree. Bush said that whomever leaked this classified info would be fired and he should follow his original statements on this in order to show the importance of "loose lips sink ships".

If you are attempting to say she was still an operative, you are simply wrong. No operatives work at the CIA HQ. You cannot be covert and work at that building as an analyst.

 

[Annie]

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2005/07/red_herrings_pl.html

Lots of links, of course.

Red Herrings, Please, With A Side Order Of BS

The NY Times re-spins the Plame leak investigation in an editorial titled "A Jar of Red Herrings". On a couple of points they get lost in Timesworld:

Joseph Wilson's report This is one of the biggest red herrings in this case - that administration officials were simply attempting to wave reporters off an erroneous story about this report.

In July 2003, Mr. Wilson wrote an Op-Ed article in The Times that described how he had been sent by the C.I.A. to investigate a report that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger. He said he had found no evidence to support the claim of a uranium purchase, or even a serious attempt to negotiate one, and that he had reported this to Washington. That is entirely accurate. Mr. Rove knew it when he spoke to Mr. Cooper, and he tried to give the impression that Mr. Wilson was an unreliable person who had been sent to Niger only because of his wife's influence...

Oh, for heaven's sake - last week, Josh Marshall tried to peddle the same line that Wilson was not saying anything sufficiently controversial to merit a rebuttal.

In fact, Joe Wilson's theme was that Dick Cheney (or his office) had asked the CIA to explore links between Saddam and uranium from Niger; Joe Wilson had come back with a report conclusively debunking any links; and Dick Cheney's office had chosen to ignore that.

Since the Times seems to have lost their copy, here is what Wilson wrote on July 6, 2003, in the NY Times:

The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.

...The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses.

And here is what Mr. Wilson said to Andrea Mitchell on Meet The Press that Sunday:

Ms. Mitchell: ...Were they not properly briefed on the fact that you had the previous February been there and that it wasn’t true?

AMB. WILSON: No. No. In actual fact, in my judgment, I have not seen the estimate either, but there were reports based upon my trip that were submitted to the appropriate officials. The question was asked of the CIA by the office of the vice president. The office of the vice president, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked and that response was based upon my trip out there.

MS. MITCHELL: So they knew months and months before they passed on these allegations that, in fact, that particular charge was not true. Do you think, based on all of this, that the intelligence was hyped?

AMB. WILSON: My judgment on this is that if they were referring to Niger when they were referring to uranium sales from Africa to Iraq, that information was erroneous and that they knew about it well ahead of both the publication of the British White Paper and the president’s State of the Union address.

That seemed to merit a rebuttal. George Tenet of the CIA provided one on July 11; Ari Fleischer piled on the next day.

The Times continues with its editorial confusion:

What really bothered Mr. Rove was Mr. Wilson's view that the administration had deliberately twisted the intelligence on Iraq and that Mr. Bush had misled Americans about the need for war. We don't know whether top officials heard about Mr. Wilson's findings and ignored them, or whether the findings never reached the upper levels...

I suppose it depends on what we mean by "know". The Senate Subcommittee on Intelligence seemed to "know" that Wilson's findings were not conclusive, did not change anyone's mind about the possibility of a Saddam-Niger link, and consequently, were not briefed to the Vice President's office.

And the Times seemed to "know" the same thing last July after the SSCI report came out. In a concealed, half-hearted Wilson debunker, James Risen wrote this:

Analysts at the C.I.A. did not believe that Mr. Wilson had provided significant information, so the agency did not brief Mr. Cheney about it, despite his clear interest in the issue, the Senate found.

We must be visiting the land the Times forgot. Well, it looks like they also forgot this Sanger/Stevenson piece from July 2004:

...now two new reports have reopened the question of whether Mr. Bush was indeed correct when, on Jan. 28, 2003, he told the nation and the world, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Oh, dear.

 

[Annie]

The spin has gotten out of control, threatening the very existence of the media:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20050718-092253-3802r.htm

Knifing Rove, whitewashing Wilson-Plame

July 19, 2005

Let's make it clear at the start: Were special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation to bring evidence to light that Karl Rove or anyone else in the Bush White House had anything to do with revealing the identity of any covert CIA agent, President Bush should fire them and they should be forced to face the full consequences of the law. But nothing in the public record thus far suggests that Mr. Rove or anyone else in the administration has committed such a violation in the case of Valerie Plame. Mrs. Plame is the former CIA agent who suggested that her husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson, an opponent of Mr. Bush's Iraq policy, be dispatched to Africa in February 2002 to investigate whether Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase "yellowcake" uranium from Niger.
What is known thus far suggests that:1) Mr. Wilson has misrepresented his wife's role in getting him the assignment and his own findings of his investigation in Niger; 2) In July 2003, when columnist Robert Novak first mentioned in passing that Mrs. Plame worked for the CIA, she was not functioning as a covert agent and her work for the CIA was common knowledge; and 3) That if there were-- against the public record -- a covert status to be exposed, it was possibly Mr. Wilson, with a speculative assist from David Corn, who writes for the Nation magazine.
Given what is known about Mr. Wilson and his veracity, it was almost surreal watching him interviewed on the "Today" show answering one softball question after another as he urged the president to fire Mr. Rove, and watching Mr. Wilson lionized as a purveyor of truth by Democrats like Sen. Charles Schumer in their effort to destroy the senior White House adviser. Last July, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a report that calls into serious question virtually every substantive assertion Mr. Wilson made about his Niger trip. In July 2003, Mr. Wilson publicly accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence in order to create a case for war with Iraq. He claimed that his investigation 17 months earlier should have debunked the idea that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger.
Here's the way that Susan Schmidt of The Washington Post (in a story buried inside on page A9), described the Senate Intelligence Committee report on July 10, 2004: "Wilson's assertions -- both about what he did in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report. The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Mr. Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union speech."
In the same story, The Post added that the committee's report "may bolster the rationale that administration provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee [purportedly Mrs.Plame], but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction." And the report "also said that Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong.'"
But Mr. Wilson's assertions on this point made no sense, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which said in its report: "Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports." Mr. Wilson lamely replied that he may have "misspoken" to the reporter for The Post when he said that the documents were forged. He also said "he may have become confused about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct and may have thought he had seen the names himself." The committee also found that, contrary to Mr. Wilson's repeated denials, Mrs. Plame had suggested him for the Niger mission. So much for the notion that Mr. Wilson is some vaunted whistleblower that the Bush administration was seeking to smear because of his vaunted insistence on telling the "truth."
What about the notion that, regardless of Mr. Wilson's dubious credibility, Mr.Rove(orperhaps someone else) compromised Mrs. Plame's identity as a covert CIA agent? Mr. Rove, to believe the critics, may have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 by revealing her identity. But the IIPA was written with a specific purpose in mind: to criminalize the behavior of someone like turncoat CIA agent Phillip Agee, who in the 1970s published the names of CIA agents working covertly overseas.
Congress made clear in the statute that this was the goal behind the IIPA, not to shield CIA employees or their spouses working in the United States (with little effort being made to conceal their identity) from all criticism of their behavior. The law requires that the CIA be attempting to keep the identity of the agent secret. But in interviews with The Washington Times, most of Mrs. Plame's neighbors in Northwest Washington said they knew she worked for the CIA. A former supervisor, Fred Rustmann, who spent 24 years in the CIA, noted that the agency was doing little to protect her cover, and she is listed in her husband's Who's Who in America entry.
As this newspaper reported on July 23, 2004: "The identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame was compromised twice before her name appeared in a new column that triggered a federal illegal-disclosure investigation ... Mrs. Plame's identity as an undercover CIA officer was first disclosed to Russia in the mid-1990s by a Moscow spy ... In a second compromise, officials said a more recent inadvertent disclosure resulted in references to Mrs. Plame in confidential documents sent by the CIA to the U.S. Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy in Havana ... Cubans read the classified material and learned the secrets contained in them, the officials said."
Ironically, Mr. Rove says he learned of Mrs. Plame's identity from a reporter. How did a journalist get that information? Very possibly, Mr. Wilson himself was the original source of the leak of his wife's identity as a secret agent. The first person to speculatively write on the assertion was Mr. Corn of the Nation, who wrote two days after Mr. Novak's original article was published that Mrs. Plame may have been a secret agent. Clifford May, writing last week in National Review Online, noted that Mr. Novak did not reveal that she was a secret agent. But Mr. Corn, who talked with Mr. Wilson, did raise the possibility of Mrs. Plame's "undercover" status. The bottom line is that based on what is currently known about the Plame case thus far, there is absolutely no legitimate reason to believe that Mr. Rove is the original source of the leak about Mrs. Plame's identity.
Beyond these criminal and national security issues, the White House has the separate political concern of maintaining the president's credibility regarding his earlier statements that he would fire the leakers in the Plame matter. This will have to be addressed once the grand jury has determined all the facts.

 

[freeandfun1]

I'll repeat it again...

I think the special prosecutor just might be going after Wilson himself. Considering it has been put to rest that no law was broken, the continuation of the special prosecutor is unnecessary. That is, unless during his investigation he discovered some other violation of the law... Such as perjury, obstruction of justice or perhaps even tampering with "official documents". I would not at all be surprised if the SP announces charges against Wilson and even, perhaps, Plame herself when his investigation is completed.

Now wouldn't that throw the dems for a loop?

 

[Annie]

I'll repeat it again...

I think the special prosecutor just might be going after Wilson himself. Considering it has been put to rest that no law was broken, the continuation of the special prosecutor is unnecessary. That is, unless during his investigation he discovered some other violation of the law... Such as perjury, obstruction of justice or perhaps even tampering with "official documents". I would not at all be surprised if the SP announces charges against Wilson and even, perhaps, Plame herself when his investigation is completed.

Now wouldn't that throw the dems for a loop?

Here's to hoping!

 

[Annie]

Interesting and plausible. Lots of links:

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2005/07/its_libby_its_l.html

It's Libby, It's Libby Not...

Arianna has a clear summary of the Judy Miller mystery [with a follow-up]- is she protecting a source, or protecting herself, in the Plame investigation:

Not everyone in the Times building is on the same page when it comes to Judy Miller. The official story the paper is sticking to is that Miller is a heroic martyr, sacrificing her freedom in the name of journalistic integrity.

But a very different scenario is being floated in the halls. Here it is: It's July 6, 2003, and Joe Wilson's now famous op-ed piece appears in the Times, raising the idea that the Bush administration has "manipulate[d]" and "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Miller, who has been pushing this manipulated, twisted, and exaggerated intel in the Times for months, goes ballistic. Someone is using the pages of her own paper to call into question the justification for the war -- and, indirectly, much of her reporting. The idea that intelligence was being fixed goes to the heart of Miller's credibility. So she calls her friends in the intelligence community and asks, Who is this guy? She finds out he's married to a CIA agent. She then passes on the info about Mrs. Wilson to Scooter Libby (Newsday has identified a meeting Miller had on July 8 in Washington with an "unnamed government official"). Maybe Miller tells Rove too -- or Libby does. The White House hatchet men turn around and tell Novak and Cooper. The story gets out.

Well. Newsday has also found Ms. Miller's name on the White House phone logs, back in March 2004.

Last fall, Ms. Miller was subpoenaed when a flurry of subpoenas went out relating to Lewis Libby; at the time, the WaPo reported that Ms. Miller's subpoena also related to her discussions with Libby.

Howard Kurtz and Carol Leonnig of the WaPo seemed to confirm that on July 16:

...two sources say Miller spoke with Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, during the key period in July 2003 that is the focus of Fitzgerald's investigation.

The two sources, one who is familiar with Libby's version of events and the other with Miller's, said the previously undisclosed conversation occurred a few days before Plame's name appeared in Robert D. Novak's syndicated column on July 14, 2003. Miller and Libby discussed former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, Plame's husband, who had recently alleged that the Bush administration twisted intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, according to the source familiar with Libby's version.

But, according to the source, the subject of Wilson's wife did not come up.

Two days later, however, Mr. Kurtz puzzled us with this:

Some even fault Judith Miller for her act of conscience in going to jail, saying the New York Times reporter is merely protecting Rove (though no one knows whether her source was the White House political adviser or someone else).

Huh? Didn't Kurtz himself tell us two days earlier that Miller's source was Libby? Or what did he tell us?

No one knows.

Mickey has thoughts on Ms. Miller:

a) But why couldn't she testify about her own role while keeping her source's identity secret?; and b) maybe she had no "source" as such, but directly observed Plame's CIA activities in the course of her previous reporting on WMD. For example, if she interviewed Plame.]

File under "Stray Thought" - aren't professional women encouraged to network? And wouldn't folks feel that both Valerie and Judy, as women in a male-dominated profession, really ought to meet?

OK, covert agents probably handle their networking a bit differently than lawyers or bankers. Still, don't we think that Judy knows some covert agents? These two getting together seems to be destined.

MORE: Lots of useful research at TalkLeft.

July 28, 2005