Why so little said here on "Plamegate"?

[Gavin in Va Beach]

The plot thickens....

 

WHIG

 

"So determined was the ring of top officials to win its argument that it morphed into a virtual hit squad that took aim at critics who questioned its claims, sources told the Daily News.

 

One of those critics was ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who debunked a key claim in a speech by President Bush that Iraq sought nuclear materials in Africa. His punishment was the media outing of his wife, CIA spy Valerie Plame, an affair that became a "side show" for the White House Iraq Group, the sources said. "

 

Looks like Judy Miller was part of the PR process to get us into war!

Gee, I wonder where the so-called "facts" came from that debunked Wilson???

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ON MAY 6, 2003, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof examined prewar U.S. claims of WMD in Iraq. His article included this curious passage:

 

 

I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.

 

The envoy reported, for example, that a Niger minister whose signature was on one of the documents had in fact been out of office for more than a decade. In addition, the Niger mining program was structured so that the uranium diversion had been impossible. The envoy's debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted--except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway.

 

It was the first of many times Joseph Wilson would tell his story to a reporter and the first of many times he would overstate his role and invent his supposed findings. The White House didn't pay much attention to the Kristof column. Few people knew about Wilson and his CIA-sponsored trip, and those who did know dismissed Wilson's claims as wildly inaccurate. Wilson, after all, had gone to Niger and returned some eight months before the U.S. government ever came into possession of the forged documents.

 

But if the White House shrugged off the story, Walter Pincus of the Washington Post did not. On June 12, 2003, Pincus published a story that "kicked everything off," according to a former White House official. Pincus wrote:

 

 

During his trip, the CIA's envoy spoke with the president of Niger and other Niger officials mentioned as being involved in the Iraqi effort, some of whose signatures purportedly appeared on the documents.

 

After returning to the United States, the envoy reported to the CIA that the uranium-purchase story was false, the sources said. Among the envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong," the former U.S. government official said.

 

Two days after the Washington Post story, on June 14, Wilson spoke at a forum sponsored by the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC). Although Wilson never told the gathering he was the source for the stories about "the ambassador's" trip to Africa, his comments revealed intimate knowledge of the mission.

 

 

I just want to assure you that 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.

 

The website for EPIC includes a biography of Wilson under the June 14, 2003, event that concludes with this sentence: "He is married to the former Valerie Plame and has four children."

 

Wilson also peddled his story to John Judis and Spencer Ackerman at the New Republic. And as in the whispered "telephone" game that kids play around the campfire, the story became more distorted the more it was told. In the New Republic's version, Vice President Cheney received the forged documents directly from the British a year before Bush spoke the "16 words" in the January 2003 State of the Union. Cheney then

 

 

had given the information to the CIA, which in turn asked a prominent diplomat, who had served as ambassador to three African countries, to investigate. He returned after a visit to Niger in February 2002 and reported to the State Department and the CIA that the documents were forgeries. The CIA circulated the ambassador's report to the vice president's office, the ambassador confirms to TNR. But, after a British dossier was released in September detailing the purported uranium purchase, administration officials began citing it anyway, culminating in its inclusion in the State of the Union. "They knew the Niger story was a flat-out lie," the former ambassador tells TNR.

 

It should be clear by now that the only one telling flat-out lies was Joseph Wilson. Again, Wilson's trip to Niger took place in February 2002, some eight months before the U.S. government received the phony Iraq-Niger documents in October 2002. So it is not possible, as he told the Washington Post, that he advised the CIA that "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." And it is not possible, as Wilson claimed to the New York Times, that he debunked the documents as forgeries.

 

That was hardly Wilson's only fabrication. He would also tell reporters that his wife had nothing to do with his trip to Niger and, as noted in the New Republic article, that Vice President Cheney's office had seen the report of his findings. Both claims were false.

 

It seems that very few people paid attention to the CIA's report on Wilson's trip to Niger. And those who did found that his account--particularly his revelation of the meeting between Mayaki and the Iraqis in 1999--supported the original reporting that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.

 

If the White House launched a campaign to counter the claims Wilson was making to columnists like Kristof, it doesn't appear to have been very comprehensive. Officials who worked on other aspects of the Iraq WMD story say they do not recall any coordinated effort to correct Wilson's misrepresentations. And, in any case, the results were hardly what you'd expect from a White House offensive. Several reporters known to have spoken with Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, the senior White House officials apparently at the center of the current investigation, have testified that they did not learn of Plame's identity or status from either person.

 

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Publ...06/217wnmrb.asp

[Campy]

It should be clear by now that the only one telling flat-out lies was Joseph Wilson.

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Wilson's truthfuness, or lackthereof, is not the issue. The fact that the administration outed a CIA operative in retribution of his dissent is the issue.

 

We know that Libby and Rove spoke to reporters about CIA operative Valerie Plame.

 

We know that two of Cheney's staffers have flipped and are providing the special investigation with evidence that Cheney's office coordinated an attempt to discredit Wilson.

 

We've just learned that Bush knew about Rove leaking the name in 2003. Bush wasn't happy with him, and reprimanded him, a full year before he went on television and assured us that there was no White House leak, but if they should find one, the person would be fired and prosecuted.

 

Weren't impeachment charges brought against Clinton for obstructing justice - because he BS'd us about getting a blowjob in the oval office? Isn't obstructing justice in the investigation of outing CIA operatives a slightly more egregious act than trying to cover up an extramarital hummer?

 

But that's right, let's blame Wilson.

[Alaska Darin]

Politics as usual.

[GG]

Wilson's truthfuness, or lackthereof, is not the issue.  The fact that the administration outed a CIA operative in retribution of his dissent is the issue. 

 

We know that Libby and Rove spoke to reporters about CIA operative Valerie Plame.

 

We know that two of Cheney's staffers have flipped and are providing the special investigation with evidence that Cheney's office coordinated an attempt to discredit Wilson.

 

We've just learned that Bush knew about Rove leaking the name in 2003.  Bush wasn't happy with him, and reprimanded him, a full year before he went on television and assured us that there was no White House leak, but if they should find one, the person would be fired and prosecuted.

 

Weren't impeachment charges brought against Clinton for obstructing justice - because he BS'd us about getting a blowjob in the oval office?  Isn't obstructing justice in the investigation of outing CIA operatives a slightly more egregious act than trying to cover up an extramarital hummer?

 

But that's right, let's blame Wilson.

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Who's blaming Wilson? He's being called out for factual inaccuracies, which are directly tied to the case the administration put forward to go to war.

 

Let's take a look at the chronology, and see if the actions are/were wrong at the time they were committed (based on what we think we know).

 

Cheney & staff are preparing the evidence to present to Congress & UN.

They learn that Wilson is in the background talking down the evidence.

They know he's wrong because his timeline doesn't correspond with the intelligence they're working on.

Wilson gets air time and his story gets legs, even though it's factually wrong.

Libby & Rove go on offensive behind the scenes to discredit Wilson (illegal or down & dirty?)

Libby & Rove discuss Plame with reporters - we don't know if she was an operative at the time, we don't know whether they initiated the discussions, we don't know if they did it intentionally (key to the law of outing the CIA agent).

 

 

To me it smacks of dirty laundry of the true political process being aired. If there is outrage about Libby & Rove outing a CIA gaent, where's the outrage about Wilson going public that he was using his role as a former diplomat to conduct clandestine investigations? Are you telling me that ambassadors are really agents of the CIA?

 

Shocking.

[Campy]

Who's blaming Wilson?  He's being called out for factual inaccuracies, which are directly tied to the case the administration put forward to go to war.

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For starters, I'd say that the article Gavin posted, claiming that the only person who lied was Wilson, was trying to put a fair amount of blame on his shoulders, wouldn't you?

 

Interestingly enough, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the chief of staff for the former Secretary of State Colin Powell, makes no mention of Wilson's alledged "inaccuracies which are directly tied to the case the administration put forward to go to war," but instead chooses to put the focus on the policy-makers (imagine that).

 

In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

 

“Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”

 

Mr Wilkerson said his decision to go public had led to a personal falling out with Mr Powell, whom he served for 16 years at the Pentagon and the State Department.

 

“He's not happy with my speaking out because, and I admire this in him, he is the world's most loyal soldier."

 

Among his other charges:

 

■ The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was “a concrete example” of the decision-making problem, with the president and other top officials in effect giving the green light to soldiers to abuse detainees. “You don't have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you've condoned it.”

 

■ Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and now secretary of state, was “part of the problem”. Instead of ensuring that Mr Bush received the best possible advice, “she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president”.

 

■ The military, particularly the army and marine corps, is overstretched and demoralised. Officers, Mr Wilkerson claimed, “start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam. . . and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel”.

 

 

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/afdb7b0c-40f3-11d...000e2511c8.html

 

EDIT: That link does go to a web page belonging to the bastion of that evil liberal media, the Financial Times.

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

For starters, I'd say that the article Gavin posted, claiming that the only person who lied was Wilson, was trying to put a fair amount of blame on his shoulders, wouldn't you? 

 

Interestingly enough, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the chief of staff for the former Secretary of State Colin Powell, makes no mention of Wilson's alledged "inaccuracies which are directly tied to the case the administration put forward to go to war," but instead chooses to put the focus on the policy-makers (imagine that).

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/afdb7b0c-40f3-11d...000e2511c8.html

 

EDIT:  That link does go to a web page belonging to the bastion of that evil liberal media, the Financial Times.

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What's your point, that Wilkerson disagrees with the administration's decision-making process? Because that's really the only hard fact in all that...and that has about as much to do with Wilson lying as Wilson lying has to do with outing his wife.

[Mickey]

Wilson's truthfuness, or lackthereof, is not the issue.  The fact that the administration outed a CIA operative in retribution of his dissent is the issue. 

 

We know that Libby and Rove spoke to reporters about CIA operative Valerie Plame.

 

We know that two of Cheney's staffers have flipped and are providing the special investigation with evidence that Cheney's office coordinated an attempt to discredit Wilson.

 

We've just learned that Bush knew about Rove leaking the name in 2003.  Bush wasn't happy with him, and reprimanded him, a full year before he went on television and assured us that there was no White House leak, but if they should find one, the person would be fired and prosecuted.

 

Weren't impeachment charges brought against Clinton for obstructing justice - because he BS'd us about getting a blowjob in the oval office?  Isn't obstructing justice in the investigation of outing CIA operatives a slightly more egregious act than trying to cover up an extramarital hummer?

 

But that's right, let's blame Wilson.

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I don't blame Wilson for the Iraq war, I blame Cindy Sheehan. I don't know precisely what she was doing in March of 2003 but I'm sure she was up to no good.

[Campy]

What's your point, that Wilkerson disagrees with the administration's decision-making process?  Because that's really the only hard fact in all that...and that has about as much to do with Wilson lying as Wilson lying has to do with outing his wife.

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I never said the two were related, they were brought up by others. The thread took a 90-degree turn somewhere up there.

 

My post was in response to the assertion that Wilson's "factual inaccuracies" are "directly tied to the case the administration put forward to go to war."

 

That may or may not be true. We already know that Cheney's office set out to discredit Wilson. There's no telling if their efforts were successful, or if Wilson did lie. The article that Gavin referenced seems to take the position that Wilson lied.

 

A senior official seems to think that there is a "cabel" (his words, not mine) between Cheney and Runsfeld which led to the administration's choice to go to war (the other stuff was more FYI). IMO it's a bit more than "disagreeing with policy-making process." It brings into question who's pushing whose agenda in the shrub house.

 

If a former senior official believes that, then I, as a private citizen, have no problem believing that Cheney's office is capable of executing a successful character assasination.

[Mickey]

For starters, I'd say that the article Gavin posted, claiming that the only person who lied was Wilson, was trying to put a fair amount of blame on his shoulders, wouldn't you? 

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Campy, if trying to determine whether or not Plame was outed as an agent as a political payback by the administration is your goal, then yeah, all that stuff about Wilson's trip is irrelevant. If, however, the point one (Gavin in this instance) is trying to make is that Wilson deserved the payback thus any technical illegalitites should be overlooked, then it is relevant. Seems to me that the right is more interested in the latter.

 

For me, I am just waiting to see what Fitzgerald does. Either he has something on these freaks or he doesn't. None of us know at this point if we are at the end of an investigation of the start of a prosecution. In the meantime I will just have to occupy my time framing the Delay arrest warrant above the mantel.

 

For those who haven't had a chance to check it out:

 

Delay Warrant

[KRC]

If, however, the point one (Gavin in this instance) is trying to make is that Wilson deserved the payback thus any technical illegalitites should be overlooked, then it is relevant.  Seems to me that the right is more interested in the latter.

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I do not remember anyone on the right (or left or center) stating that illegalities should be overlooked if it means payback. Not here...not in the media...nowhere. Please point me to some examples of the right excusing illegal behavior, in this case, if it means payback.

[Wacka]

Again, the law about outing covert spies does not apply. She was already compromised in the 90s and was a desk jockey at CIA HQ for over 5 years. People all over DC knew she worked at the CIA. Rove and Libby broke no law talking about her.

[Campy]

Again, the law about outing covert spies does not apply.

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To which law, exactly, are you referring?

[GG]

I never said the two were related, they were brought up by others.  The thread took a 90-degree turn somewhere up there. 

 

My post was in response to the assertion that Wilson's "factual inaccuracies" are "directly tied to the case the administration put forward to go to war."

 

That may or may not be true.  We already know that Cheney's office set out to discredit Wilson.  There's no telling if their efforts were successful, or if Wilson did lie.  The article that Gavin referenced seems to take the position that Wilson lied.

 

A senior official seems to think that there is a "cabel" (his words, not mine) between Cheney and Runsfeld which led to the administration's choice to go to war (the other stuff was more FYI).  IMO it's a bit more than "disagreeing with policy-making process." It brings into question who's pushing whose agenda in the shrub house.

 

If a former senior official believes that, then I, as a private citizen, have no problem believing that Cheney's office is capable of executing a successful character assasination.

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Then why did you bring up Wilkerson in a thread talking about outing Plame? Is your goal to opine on the obvious that this administration is very aggressive in attacking potential opponents? I don't think you'll get much disagreement on that.

 

Wilson's account was going to have a direct consequence on how the administration was going to put its plan forward. The administration had very good reasons to believe that he was lying, and took steps to discredit his account. The question remains whether laws were broken in that quest. If they were, they should be tried & fried.

 

No one is blaming Wilson for the Plame affair. But his apparent lying is critical to understand why Libby & Rove acted the way they did.

 

Would you believe for a minute that this whole thing is the continuation of the battle between CIA and the administration, after Bush & Co came down hard over intelligence failures?

 

BTW, I'm still waiting for Libby's indictment on passing classified information to Israel...

[Mickey]

I do not remember anyone on the right (or left or center) stating that illegalities should be overlooked if it means payback. Not here...not in the media...nowhere. Please point me to some examples of the right excusing illegal behavior, in this case, if it means payback.

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Gee, I dunno KRC, I guess the 6 gazillion posts here attacking Wilson, making light of the investigation, defending Rove, denigrating his wife's position in the CIA etc, etc, etc led me astray on this one that they really don't give a freak if a law was or was not broken. Why else spend so much time on these irrelevancies save to make the point that Wilson got what he deserved and that given his wife's role at the CIA, it was a minor boo-boo at most. Thus, and this is a good summary for most of the posts from the right I have read on the subject: "Who cares?"

 

You are right though, no one has said "Das Karl can rape someone and I would excuse it". That is why I didn't use any names or make any statistical declarations, I simply said, "...seems to me that..." which I thought made it clear that I was stating my opinion of their motivations. Given your freqent declarations regarding partisanship, is it such a stretch to opine that partisans of the right, despite the lack of explicit admissions, really don't care if Das Karl broke a law in this case?

[Campy]

Then why did you bring up Wilkerson in a thread talking about outing Plame? 

Because I was responding to Gavin's post where it was mentioned in the article he referenced that Wilson was "the only that lied." I don't see where the accuracy (or inaccuracy) of Wilson's report(s) is relavant to the adminstration's obstruction of justice and flaunting the law. But then again, I didn't post it, I only responded to it.

 

Is your goal to opine on the obvious that this administration is very aggressive in attacking potential opponents?

Yes and no. This may be semantics, but it's not the aggresivesness with which they respond that I find disturbing. It's the tactics they use.

 

I don't think you'll get much disagreement on that.

Well that's reassuring I guess, but there seems to be a fair amount of disagreement on whether the law was broken. I believe it was.

 

BTW, I'm still waiting for Libby's indictment on passing classified information to Israel...

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OK... Are you sure that you and I had that discussion? I don't think we did...

[Mickey]

To which law, exactly, are you referring?

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There are other laws involved besides that one that the prosecutor is investigating so again, we really have to wait and see what, if anything, develops. Besides, that is really a technical defense, it has nothing to do with the principle involved. The idea that this was a nasty political payback to someone who dared to disagree with the administration is really not even being debated anymore. Instead they have moved to a ticky-tack defense of whether the law technically applies to what happened. An important question for sure as to whether anyone goes to jail but not, in my opinion, all that important on the question of whether Rove and Libby are political henchman, hatchet artists operating barely within the broad confines of the law.

[KRC]

Gee, I dunno KRC, I guess the 6 gazillion posts here attacking Wilson, making light of the investigation, defending Rove, denigrating his wife's position in the CIA etc, etc, etc led me astray on this one that they really don't give a freak if a law was or was not broken. 

 

Pointing out that there may be another side to the story story means that they do not care about the law? Holy Hell, I am glad you are not my lawyer.

 

 

 

Why else spend so much time on these irrelevancies save to make the point that Wilson got what he deserved and that given his wife's role at the CIA, it was a minor boo-boo at most.  Thus, and this is a good summary for most of the posts from the right I have read on the subject: "Who cares?" 

 

So, you admit that you are just making things up to justify your partisan rants. Could it possibly be that they <gasp> disagree with your assessment of the situation?

 

 

 

Given your freqent declarations regarding partisanship, is it such a stretch to opine that partisans of the right, despite the lack of explicit admissions, really don't care if Das Karl broke a law in this case?

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Well, I guess you are ignoring the people who have specifically stated that if he broke the law, then he should be punished accordingly. I guess that if it doesn't fit your partisan rants, it does not exist.

[KRC]

Instead they have moved to a ticky-tack defense of whether the law technically applies to what happened. 

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Whether the law actually applies is "ticky-tack?"

[Campy]

Instead they have moved to a ticky-tack defense of whether the law technically applies to what happened. 

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Well, it seems that obstruction of justice is a given. This "law" that I keep seeing being bandied about by right-wing lemmings is something of a mystery to me. I'm not sure which law states that a person must be a covert operative when their name is leaked by the president's advisor to be a crime, but I am familiar with the Espionage Act of 1917.

 

Section 'D' of said Act delineates various acts which constitute espionage:

 

Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it.

 

To put it bluntly, you just don't go and advertise the names of CIA operatives. It's not only stupid, but as the analysts at STRATFOR have said, if US humint is "blind" in the wrong spot at the wrong time, it could be deadly.

 

Leaking a CIA operative's name to the press, especially one that was covert at one point in time, could most certainly cause injury to the US.

[Mickey]

Whether the law actually applies is "ticky-tack?" 

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Convenient how you left out the next sentence: "An important question for sure as to whether anyone goes to jail but not, in my opinion, all that important on the question of whether Rove and Libby are political henchman, hatchet artists operating barely within the broad confines of the law."

 

If you want to pretend that the only issue here is one of criminal law and ultimately whether or not Karl Rove goes to jail at club med for 60 days and ignore the political side, fine, I am not so inclined. The political issue of payback and hackery more deserving of the Corleones than of a Presidential administration is what I find most important and the technicalities of whether Rove beats the wrap or not is, by comparison, "ticky-tack".