not sure if this has been posted already? But I think it's veeeeery interesting..

[Stephanie]

This came from the American Thinker

Spy Valerie and the rogue CIA
July 18th, 2005

Hold on to your hat. The plot is about to thicken.

Behind the scenes, the single most important reason for the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson farce is that CIA Director Porter Goss has finally started to clean house at Langley. Goss’s long-overdue shake-up is clearly backed by the White House, the top levels of the Pentagon and State Department, and the new National Director of Intelligence, John Negroponte.

Judging by Director Goss’s remarks at his Senate confirmation hearings, those whose jobs are most in danger include the CIA “experts” in WMD proliferation – Valerie Plame’s outfit – who completely failed to anticipate the Indian and Pakistani nukes, and just couldn’t figure out what was going on with Iraqi WMDs. Valerie Plame’s bosses are facing the axe for decades of failures.

And it’s about time, because Iran is within sight of its first nukes. You don’t suppose that has anything to do with the Plame/Wilson publicity stunt, do you?

Clearly the CIA managers who failed the United States so terribly on 9/11 should have been fired four years ago. Others now worried about their careers include officials who have long resisted the onerous task of building a topnotch human intelligence capability in the most dangerous parts of the world.


Porter Goss’s new broom should also sweep away:

1) personnel who utterly failed to thwart critical technology theft by China during the Clinton years;

2) those who constantly undermine the war on terror;

3) the ones who make a regular habit of dropping media stinkbombs against the White House.

4) Finally, there is the faction that supported Saddam Hussein’s hold on power, as Joe Wilson did.

It could be a bloodbath, and the Permanent Establishment knows it.

The farcical Plame/Wilson assault on Karl Rove is a shot across the bow of the White House. The spook bureaucracy is fighting for its perks, hand-in-hand with the Democrats and the media. This is exactly the same iron triangle that destroyed Richard Nixon.


The charge against Rove is based on a blatantly forged document, purporting to show that Saddam tried to buy Niger yellowcake uranium. We now know that the document was forged by the French government to embarrass Secretary Colin Powell, and undermine the American case against Saddam at the UN. It was classic disinformation bait. Powell flourished the Niger forgery at the Security Council, and the very next day “European intelligence agencies” leaked word that it was a laughable fraud.

Months later, the London Telegraph published the fact that it was all a French disinformation ploy.

The CIA has to know all about the French forgery, just as it knows that Joseph Wilson’s famous trip to Niger was pure bilgewater. Nobody sends a has-been diplomat to Africa to drink mint tea with corrupt old President Tandja Mamadou, expecting to discover whether Mamadou has secretly been selling nuke materials to Saddam.

That’s pure Inspector Clousseau.

Valerie Plame’s CIA bosses took care not to ask Mr. Wilson to sign a confidentiality agreement, routine in such cases, almost as if they wanted him to make a public fuss. They were not surprised, one might think, when Mr.

Wilson promptly took his story to New York Times Op-Ed Editor Gail Collins, one of the great Bush-haters of all time. As Joseph DiGenova, former US Attorney for DC, recently said, “The CIA isn’t stupid. They wanted this story out.”

It was a publicity stunt from the get-go. Wilson’s “confidential trip” to Niger gave him the superficial credentials to publish his “expose” in the Times. He’d gone there, talked to the top officials face to face, and by gum, they told him it was all a lie! Not even Gail Collins could possibly believe this banana sauce, but Wilson’s charges provided a useful stick with which to beat the White House.

What Karl Rove apparently did was to hint to reporters about the fraudulence of the whole Wilson stunt, and for that the media mob wants him drawn and quartered. No good deed goes unpunished.

Everything else Wilson has been saying on his two-year speaking tour around the country has been shown to be lies, but well-designed lies—- lies that fit right into the mad-dog world of the Democrat Left.

Telling lies to confirm somebody’s paranoid beliefs is a classic disinformation gambit, right out of Spy School 101. But such gambits would be far more usefully employed against al Qaeda, our opponent in war. If the United States is attacked again by terrorists, one reason will be that our CIA has wasted time fighting the White House rather than the enemy.

Given Wilson’s Niger trip, set up by wife Valerie for Joe Wilson to publicly show that a blatant forgery was, well, a forgery, the current media attack on the White House was completely predictable.

The Permanent Establishment had a perfect dress rehearsal last year with the uproar about Richard Clarke, who also worked in the Clinton White House, possibly next door to Joe Wilson. The barely-disguised message to George W. Bush was: if you try to get rid of us, we may pull a Deep Throat on you. J. Edgar Hoover would have seen through it instantly.

When the Twin Towers exploded in 2001, President Bush did not touch the FBI or the CIA. By comparison, after the Japanese decimated the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941, FDR and George Marshall churned the commanding ranks of the Army and Navy, elevating talented officers like Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton. They created Wild Bill Donovan’s OSS, the seed of the CIA. Donovan in his turn brought street spooks to the top, political correctness (of the day) be damned.

A lot of careers were broken, and the new talent skyrocketed. It worked like a charm. The infusion of new blood into a stale bureaucracy was the key to victory in World War II. The old crew had allowed a deplorable situation to develop, and were obviously incapable of recognizing what needed to be done.

So why didn’t Mr. Bush clean out the dead wood at CIA?

A reasonable guess is that his father warned against it. George Bush, Sr. is a former CIA Director, after all, and is intimately familiar with its ways. He was a GOP Congressman during Watergate, when Mark Felt destroyed Richard Nixon for thwarting his lifelong ambition to succeed J. Edgar Hoover.

Paraphrasing LBJ’s immortal words, it was smarter to keep the CIA inside the tent pissing out rather than the other way around. So George Tenet wasn’t fired, and as far as we can tell, neither was anybody else. Instead, the President met with Tenet every day for five years to get the latest about al Qaeda, and surely gained a deeper understanding of the intelligence maze at the same time.

The White House has played a very careful poker game since then, picking its cards one by one until it was ready to make the big move. Today, George Tenet is out, State and Defense are in the hands of Bush loyalists, the House and Senate have GOP majorities, and the new CIA Director is not an insider. The CIA itself is now subordinate to the new National Director of Intelligence, John Negroponte, a no-nonsense diplomat in the Kissinger mold. When Goss became Director, Agency bureaucrats complained bitterly to the press. Mr. Bush now holds all the cards, and it is time to play them.

All this isn’t just fun and games. It casts a deadly light on internecine warfare in Washington at a time of great national danger.

We know that Hoover blackmailed four successive Presidents by threatening to reveal confidential FBI secrets. We know that Hoover’s fair-haired boy, Mark Felt, destroyed the Nixon Presidency – a virtual coup d’etat that the media tell us was a victory of Democracy over the Secret Government. With the media as destiny’s servant.

We know that Nixon taped visitors to the Oval Office without their permission, but that FDR, LBJ, and Kennedy did the same, without facing media exposure. And during the unbelievable Clinton years we know that Bill and Hillary abused presidential power in a dozen egregious ways, and may still control copies of raw FBI files to use against their domestic enemies.

But it was Richard Nixon alone who got caught by a rogue FBI bureaucrat. Deep Throat showed how a president can be destroyed by a bureaucrat.

The farcical “outing” of Valerie Plame therefore raises a genuinely frightening monster from the swamp: A subversive alliance between the intelligence bureaucracy, the Democratic Party and the media. The common thread among all the characters in this low-brow comedy is hatred of President Bush and American power. Joe Wilson’s eyebrows go ballistic when he talks about the White House. Just watch him sometime.

The sneering media mob is on display on C-SPAN whenever the White House holds a press briefing. The Left is apoplectic: “Karl Rove + traitor” brought up 97,000 entries on google three days ago, and 124,000 this morning.

But Karl Rove is merely today’s target for a permanent state of rage so deep and hot that it is always seeking new witches to burn. As for the failed CIA spooks who are now living in fear of losing their perks, one can only imagine the steam blowing from their ears, as the day of reckoning draws closer.

I’m cheering for the good guys.

What are your thought's about this article???
James Lewis

 

[Adam's Apple]

Very interesting, as you said, Stephanie. I have read two or three other articles along this same line. It will be interesting to hear the story that comes out in the trial.

 

[Freedom Lover]

The more I see of this Valerie Plame baloney the more I am convinced that the Republicans need to begin right away a Senate and House investigation into this matter. Bring in Plame, Wilson, Novak, and the liberal media "journalists" and CIA employees involved and put them under oath, then see what they say.

I want to know who hired Joe Wilson at the CIA? Who sent him to Niger? What role did Plame play in his being hired and sent to Niger? Who was derlict in their duty by not having him sign a nondisclosure agreement? Why was there no written report and the White House not immediately briefed by the Director upon Wilson's return from Niger? Who at the CIA informed anyone at the White House that Plame was Wilson's wife and she was an agent, though not undercover? Who in the CIA claimed Plame was undercover, thus misleading the the Director, or another individual, to request the Justice Department to undetake an investigation about this so-called outing? These are just a few of the questions that need to be answered before anyone goes to trial, or is indicted.

If you ask me I smell treason here and the individuals who have committed it need to be brought to justice sooner rather than later.

 

[Annie]

A Wilson speech, pre-Novak column. There are a lot of links at site:

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2005/10/before-novak-joe-wilson-speech-that.html

Monday, October 31, 2005
Before Novak, The Joe Wilson Speech that Made Clear His Agenda

** The June 2003 Joe Wilson Speech You Are Not Supposed to Hear! **

ONE MONTH BEFORE ROBERT NOVAK WROTE HIS COLUMN, AMBASSADOR JOSEPH WILSON LAID OUT HIS AGENDA AGAINST THE US ADMINISTRATION AND ISRAEL AT THE LEFTIST 2003 IRAQ FORUM CONFERENCE,
AUDIO HERE (40:38 in duration)

In this speech, Ambassador Joseph Wilson:

* describes himself as the investigator sent to Niger by the government
* details the African trip as only he is capable of
* says the government sent him there and not the CIA (a lie)
* says there was nothing to the uranium story (a lie)
* describes the US as "occupiers" of Iraq (a shocking statement at the time)
* describes a conspiracy to help Israel dominate the Palestinians
* calls the Administration warmongers and a--holes
* says Bush is in office for sex

"As I used to say when I was doing my interviews before the war, the issue of weapons of mass destruction is primordial, it is important."

On June 14, 2003, three months after the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Joe Wilson gave a talk to the Leftist organization, "Education for Peace in Iraq Center".

The American Thinker wrote about this talk previously noting that Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame were both listed on the program.

Joe Wilson and wife Valerie Plame are listed on the "Education for Peace" website. Here are segments from the talk Joe Wilson gave on June 14, 2003 just three months since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom:

"Let me just start out by saying, as a preface to what I really want to talk about, to those of you who are going out and lobbying tomorrow, I just want to assure you that American ambassador who has been cited in reports in the New York Times and in the Washington Post, and now in the Guardian over in London, who actually went over to Niger on behalf of the government-not of the CIA but of the government-and came back in February of 2002 and told the government that there was nothing to this story, later called the government after the British white paper was published and said you all need to do some fact-checking and make sure the Brits aren't using bad information in the publication of the white paper, and who called both the CIA and the State Department after the President's State of the Union and said to them you need to worry about the political manipulation of intelligence if, in fact, the President is talking about Niger when he mentions Africa.

That person was told by the State Department that, well, you know, there's four countries that export uranium. That person had served in three of those countries, so he knew a little bit about what he was talking about when he said you really need to worry about this. But I can assure you that that retired American ambassador to Africa, as Nick Kristof called him in his article, is also pissed off, and has every intention of ensuring that this story has legs.

And I think it does have legs. It may not have legs over the next two or three months, but when you see American casualties moving from one to five or to ten per day, and you see Tony Blair's government fall because in the U.K. it is a big story, there will be some ramifications, I think, here in the United States, so I hope that you will do everything you can to keep the pressure on. Because it is absolutely bogus for us to have gone to war the way we did. (first 2 minutes)

Wilson continues:

...As I used to say when I was doing my interviews before the war, the issue of weapons of mass destruction is primortive (primordial?), it is important...(at 3:35)

...Going from 1441 to an invasion, conquest and occupation war was not the right thing to do...

... I remain on the view that we will find biological and chemical weapons and we may well find something that that indicates that Saddam's regime maintained an interest in nuclear weapons...(at 7:50)

...I remember this guys saying these warmongers,... As the sun was coming up I had my flag out there because I am not going to let these a--holes claim that they are more patriotic than I am!...(at 13:20)

...even our military officers were absolutely dismayed at the slaughter we were inflicting on those poorly trained on the way to Baghdad...(at 19:50)

...If you take out some of these countries that are, some of these governments that are antagonistic to Israel, then you provide the Israeli Government with greater wherewithal to impose its terms and conditions on the Palestinian people...(at 20:16)

...By next year,...The pressure here in the United States will begin to build, because by that time Ariel Sharon will have made life so miserable for the Palestinians that they will cross over to Jordan or you will just see a lot of bloodshed. You will see Hamas doing things every day and you will see Israeli gunships in there...(at 27:50)

...As they say in France, people get into politics for money, power and sex. And, most of the rest of the world is the same thing. And maybe here in the states its the same thing, the sex part for Mr. Bush.(at 37:35)

...Wasn't life simpler when all our president lied about was his sex life? (at 37:45)

The entire speech is 40:37 minutes long. You can be listen to the speech HERE

Also, from the website: He is married to the former Valerie Plame and has four children. (via American Thinker)

It is not shocking that this is not the only place where Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame are listed together. Here is their entry in the "Who's Who in America" from 2002.

"Copyright (c) 2002 by Reed Elsevier, Inc."

On August 5, 2005 Kevin Aylward from Wizbang found this out about Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson (via Instapundit):

Melvin Schuetz from Baylor's Moody Library forwarded Joseph Wilson's bio from the 2003 edition of Who's Who in America [Volume 2 (L-Z)]. He notes:

Wilson's entry carries over about 5 lines to the next column, which is why it cuts off in mid-sentence at the end. The relevant text is "m. Valerie Elise Plame, Apr. 3, 1998," which not only appears in the 2003 edition, but ALL editions from 1999-2005!

So, via Who's Who, the name "Valerie Plame" has been associated publicly with Joe Wilson since the Clinton era - nice secret... ***

Kevin Aylward continues:

I'm over generalizing here, but it seem like there wasn't an outing of an agent until two non-secret bits of information were combined.Joseph Wilson's wife's maiden name, most would now agree, was not a secret. That Wilson worked at the CIA was not widely known, but it was hardly a secret [See Cliff May at NRO and Just One Minute]. That Wilson's wife was (or had been) a covert operative was only known to (if reports are to be believed) the Cuban government and perhaps those receiving information form Aldrich Ames, but it was still a secret. Novak puts two pieces of non-secret information together and gets this flashpoint.

But how did that combination "out" a covert agent? It turns out the the Valerie Plame name (remember, according to many commenters her name's no big deal) was her cover. If her cover name was Valerie Jones how exactly would Novak's column as it was written have "outed" her? It wouldn't have. As former federal prosecJosephoesph DiGenoa contends it sure looks like the CIA didn't exactly bust a nut to "take every conceivable step to protect this person's identity."

Indeed!

Update: (Tuesday AM) Bill Hobbs wrote more on Joe Wilson's speech sponsored by the left-wing anti-war "Education for Peace in Iraq Center" back in September, 2003, and has added perspective, HERE and HERE.

Bill adds these other points from the speech:

* Wilson likens the "Shock and Awe" bombing of selected military and regime targets in Baghdad, done with great care to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible, to the firebombing of Dresden in World War II.

* Iraqis had a reason to not greet American and British troops as liberators.

Bill says (back in 2003) that Joe Wilson was lying about his wife, too.

Tigerhawk explains how Plame's dispatch of her husband to Niger for drinks was a clumsy plan.
Austin Bay breaks down the Senate Intelligence Report and how Joe Wilson was able to dodge a bullet. Oh,... and this question about beverage selection: The debriefing took place in his own home with his wife (Ms Plame/Mrs Wilson) acting as the hostess. Did she serve coffee? Tea? Bourbon?

Howard Dean shared his thoughts on the CIA Leak case last night. Musing Minds takes a closer look at Dean's interview.

Ace goes off on Wilson and the CIA today.