Posted on 05/08/2006 10:12:48 AM PDT by the Real fifi
Though the investigation into who “outed” Plame was premised on the notion that (a) her identity was not publicly known before Robert Novak’s article in July 2003 and (b) the disclosure came from the Administration—particularly persons in the White House to somehow “punish” Wilson, there is increasing evidence that Wilson himself widely divulged that information to burnish his own credentials as an expert. I reported long ago that at the June 14, 2003 EPIC conference (where he listed his wife as Valerie Plame in the program) Wilson revealed he was the Ambassador who was the source for the May 2003 Nicholas Kristof piece and the June 2003 Walter Pincus piece, in which he falsely accused the Administration of jiggering evidence and disclosed his wife’s name..There’s ample reason to believe he flourished more than just her name, but as well her connection to the agency in greater detail regularly, which makes the entire investigation into who publicly disclosed her identity particularly ridiculous. A shrewd reader at Free Republic has found this article.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I think she outed herself just to get the big book deal.
This is an updated version with more new details.
.
Another person is working on what promises to be a well-researched piece showing how it was Wilson who suggested to reporters that what the WH was saying to refute him was a Vengeance outing of his wife. In other words, he first told them his wife worked at the agency on wmd's and then "interpreted" innocuous comments from the WH as proof of the plot against him.
There is evidence in Libby's last pleadings, for example, that NBC, Mitchell (who worked for Russert), Time and Miller and the NYT had all been talking to Wilson before the reporters contacted the WH and in Cooper's case the evidence is that his co-author, Calabresi, talked to Wilson just before and just after Cooper's call to Libby.
She got this info from an FR article posted here this weekend.
How narcissistic is Wilson--very. He's posted every appearance he's ever made on tv..http://www.sweetness-light.com/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/946959/posts
Could WMD become Bush’s Watergate? [RED PEPPER}
Red Pepper ^ | July 2003 | Robert Dreyfuss
Posted on 07/15/2003 11:37:35 PM PDT by seamole
Like OJ Simpson looking for his wife’s killer, the Pentagon is scouring Iraq for weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi links to al-Qaeda. So far, of course, they haven’t found any. And some reports claim they’ve run out of places to look.
But in Washington everybody is looking for a weapon of another kind: a ‘smoking gun’. Thirty years ago, the smoking gun of Watergate brought down the president.
With at least four separate official bodies conducting investigations into whether the Bush administration distorted or fabricated intelligence that it used to justify the war in Iraq, it’s at least an even bet that the scandal over Iraq’s missing weapons of mass destruction will explode in Bush’s face later this year.
John Dean, the whistleblower who helped unravel Nixon’s administration in 1973, is already comparing the current situation to Watergate. And Charles Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, says this scandal is far worse. ‘Watergate was an interference with the electoral process,’ Freeman says. ‘But this involves systematic deception, prevarication and lies in matters of national security.’
At the heart of the matter is a tiny but very powerful team of intelligence people who took root at the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (OSP). Started as a two-person shop in October 2001, the OSP swelled to 18 under the leadership of Abram Shulsky, a hard-line neo-conservative strategist with close ties to the hawks in the Bush administration.
Excerpted due to the length of the posted article. Go to the FR thread to read the entire article:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/946959/posts
Yup. Updated from the last posting, with more incriminating details.
Tracking back:
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/12/4/121656.shtml
Sunday, Dec. 4, 2005 12:13 p.m. EST
Joe Wilson: Bush Right to Attack Iraq
Joe Wilson, Iraq war supporter?
The darling of the anti-war left may be working overtime to bring down the Bush administration for "outing" his CIA wife, but Wilson said Saturday that the White House was right to go to war over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
"There was a lot of reason to be concerned about weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein," he told WABC Radio's Mark Simone. "I always thought that he probably had chemical and biological weapons and biological precursors as well."
Wilson said his primary policy difference with President Bush wasn't over Saddam's WMDs, but rather on the question of "how to construct a policy that gets to the national security issue of disarming Saddam Hussein and does so at minimum risk to other legitimate U.S. interests both in Iraq and in the region."
But aside from that, Wilson said he cheered President Bush's decision to topple the Iraqi dictator, telling Simone: "When the president went up to the U.N. and got the [war] resolution unanimously passed at the U.N., nobody applauded louder than I did."
Clifford May's article, Who Exposed Secret Agent Plame?published in National Review online, July 15th 2005, makes a strong case that, while Novak was the first person to expose "Wilson's wife", Corn is actually the journalist responsible for first publishing Plame's undercover/covert status:
"This just in: Bob Novak did not reveal that Valerie Plame was an undercover agent for the CIA. Read— or reread — his column from July 14, 2003. All Novak reports is that the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson is 'an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction'...SourceSo if Novak did not reveal that Valerie Plame was a secret agent, who did? The evidence strongly suggests it was none other than Joe Wilson himself. Let me walk you through the steps that lead to this conclusion.
The first reference to Plame being a secret agent appears in The Nation, in an article by DC published July 16, 2003, just two days after Novak’s column appeared. It carried this lead: 'Did Bush officials blow the cover of a U.S. 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?'
On what basis could Corn 'assume' that Plame was not only working covertly but was actually a 'top-secret' operative? And where did Corn get the idea that Plame had been 'outed' in order to punish Wilson? That is not suggested by anything in the Novak column...
The likely answer: The allegation that someone in the administration leaked to Novak as a way to punish Wilson was made by Wilson — to Corn. But Corn, rather than quote Wilson, puts the idea forward as his own.
Corn’s article then goes on to provide specific details about Plame’s undercover work, her 'dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material.' But how does Corn know about that? From what source could he have learned it?"
Since Novak did not report that Plame was 'working covertly' how did Corn know that’s what she had been doing? Corn follows that assertion with a quote from Wilson saying, 'I will not answer questions about my wife.' Any reporter worth his salt would immediately wonder: Did Wilson indeed answer Corn’s questions about his wife — after Corn agreed not to quote his answers but to use them only on background? Read the rest of Corn’s piece and it’s difficult to believe anything else. Corn names no other sources for the information he provides — and he provides much more information than Novak revealed...
Apparently Fitzgerald never questioned Corn. At least I cannot find that he did.
Nope, I think I saw somewhere that Corn was asked and stated that he had not talked with Fitzgerald's office - if true, this shows yet again the appalling malfeasance and bias of this so-called 'investigation' -- Fitzgerald just met with Joe, took his talking points as the agenda, and went off doing Joe and Valerie's dirty work at PUBLIC expense.....
From Wilson:
"In February (2003), I had lunch with David Corn, the articulate and determined critic of the war. I had become acquainted with him when we kept bumping into each other in the "green room" at Fox. I shared with him my concerns about the imperial nature of the administration's drive to war, and he asked me to write an article for the Nation. He felt my "establishment" credentials would lend credibility to the point of view espoused by the magazine - a point of view I hasten to add, that, by and large, I had come to share. I agreed and the piece, entitled "Republic or Empire," was published in mid-February."
Page 318, The Politics of Truth
Post #50, by Fedora:
David Corn writes that Bush's "obsessive focus on Saddam Hussein, transformed the 9/11 recall-a-thon into a prep session for war. They have exploited a terrible event for their next crusade. And on their watch, the horror of that day has been used not to lessen the distance between America and the rest of the world but to increase it, as other nations recoil from and fear Bush's march to war. [A friend in Europe wrote]: "One year ago, everybody here was with the American people, suffering and sympathizing [with them]... Can the Bush administration be for one minute aware of the solidarity and sympathy capital it has wasted?...People here are more afraid of George Bush than of Saddam Hussein." Euro-hyperbole? Perhaps. But on the same day, Joseph Wilson... the last US official to meet with Saddam, also sent me an email and observed, 'It is criminal that the world now fears American jingoism more than Saddam.' Bush has tainted a tragedy."
Thanks, ravingnutter, those are great finds!! I recalled reading some of that (about Wilson and Corn, etc.) but didn't know where or when. So Wilson and Corn were email buddies venting and ranting about the Bush administration. Oh, yeah, every "non-partisan" critic of the WH just naturally falls into being buddies with a far-left loon like David Corn, especially when you're married to a super-duper top-secret spy like Valerie Pflame.
Do you think he was as loquacious in the green room at Fox as he was in the same place with General Vallely?
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