Posted on 07/19/2005 11:55:01 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
The leak of a CIA agent's identity by White House political aide Karl Rove has sparked a criminal probe and several Democrats have urged president George W Bush to fire or sideline him. Time correspondent Matthew Cooper wrote that Rove did not disclose the woman's name, Valerie Plame, but told him in July 2003 that information would be declassified that would cast doubt on the credibility of her husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson.
"Don't get too far out on Wilson," Cooper quoted Rove as saying. Cooper said he had also discussed Wilson and his wife with a top aide to vice-president Dick Cheney.
Wilson took a CIA-funded trip in 2002 to investigate a charge that Iraq tried to buy nuclear materials in Africa, and later accused the Bush administration of exaggerating the Iraqi weapons threat in its case for war.
"So did Rove leak Plame's name to me, or tell me she was covert? No. Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'WMD'? Yes," Cooper wrote in Time's current edition.
bump
Then Rove's innocent of the charges.
No bias here.
How is it that we have to go to a foreign publication to get the facts without the spin? Pitiful...
You know the US media is pitiful when the Times of India gets the story closer to correct than do the ABCNYTCBSNBCCNNAPWPBG........
It's sad.
Now we'll hear the RD-MSM* gripe about this Times Of India headline coming right on the heels of the Indian's PM visit to the White House.
I found one other on the query but this site would not accept it. I'm sure if I took the time working through conservative media I would have located something, but I was interested in seeing how thick the bias is.
Amid the Rovemania it has been lost that Cooper admitted his article had other sources than Rove and Libby for the information. He said it wasn't to him, but he had two co-authors for the article.
The leaking began by Time magazine via Newsweek. It was a strategic leak because the Rove/Cooper conversation is the only one so far known where the conversation about Plame in particular was not promulgated by the media person him or herself.
That leak was countered with other leaks making Rove seem less culpable, and another throwing attention onto Powell and the State Dept. Still, Rove's got problems with the Cooper leak since he seems to have instigated it.
The most important character, Novak, is off the MSM radar since his initial source seems not to be a Bushie.
Someone want to tell me what is new in this article?
The national debate team, reporters and TV type critters, just saw a 'spot' of blood in the water and pounced on it.
"The leaking began by Time magazine via Newsweek."
IMHO, the leaking began on 7 July 2003 when Joe Wilson's OP ED piece released classified information through the media.
Whatever Miller did/did not do, her story was published through the NYT. She continues to due time as a result of their insistence of her/their not revealing a source. What is being hidden and who is hiding?
Cooper's version of events is new in this one.
Previously it was reported that when Cooper called Karl Rove, first they spoke about another issue, then he floated the idea of writing about Wilson's story and when cautioned by Rove that Wilson's claim to have been sent to Niger by the Vice President was not accurate. Then Cooper mentioned to Rove that he, Cooper, had heard that Wilson's wife worked at CIA and Rove said he had heard that, too.
I thought this version was the one Cooper - and Rove- told the Special prosecutor?
So which version of Cooper's "recollections" is true? It seems that this latest Time story is a major correction by Cooper or....... a lie based on the blowback to the press that is ocurring?
Page 39 of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on NIger mentions multiple times that the former ambassador's wife is a CPD employee. This is a public document. In order to find her name all you had to do was go to his web-site to find that she is the former Valerie Plame. Any pundit who did not do this is INCOMPETENT!!!!! MILLER, COOPER, MSNBC, CNN, NYT!!! ALL, ALL OF YOU ARE INCOMPETENT.
"IMHO, the leaking began on 7 July 2003 when Joe Wilson's OP ED piece released classified information through the media."
Good point. Actually it was earlier, he was "leaking" classified information to Brit and American papers.
He says he could talk because he didn't sign a confidentiality agreement.
Even his leaks were erroneous. He didn't prove the Niger docs to be forgeries, and whatever he thinks he told his CIA interviewers, they didn't get the impression that he proved there were no contacts about uranium.
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