Posted on 07/14/2006 7:00:17 AM PDT by new yorker 77
For nearly three years the Bush White House has been dogged by allegations that it outed a covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame, to discredit her husband, Joe Wilson, a harsh critic of the administration's handling of the war in Iraq.
Syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak first reported that Plame, in her official capacity at the CIA, helped initiate Wilson's 2002 trip to Niger to investigate whether Saddam Hussein had tried to obtain uranium there for use in developing nuclear weapons. Novak's disclosure in July 2003 prompted a flurry of accusations that the White House orchestrated the leak of Plame's identity in response to an opinion piece Wilson wrote a week earlier in The New York Times attacking the administration's claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa.
A 1982 law, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, makes it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover CIA agent. Amid an outcry from Democrats on Capitol Hill, the Justice Department named Patrick Fitzgerald as a special prosecutor to probe whether the law had been violated.
After spending more than two years and millions of dollars, Fitzgerald charged no one with the crime of outing Plame. He did persuade a judge to throw New York Times reporter Judith Miller in jail for 85 days for refusing to identify her confidential sources. Miller later relented and testified before the federal grand jury convened by Fitzgerald, as did Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper and Novak.
In the end, the only count issued by the grand jury focused on Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, who is accused of committing perjury during his grand jury testimony and is awaiting trial.
This week, after years of Fitzgerald's exhaustive probing into journalists' confidential sources, the truth finally has come out about who told Novak the name of Wilson's wife. According to Novak's account, no one told him Valerie Plame's name. He learned it from her husband's entry in “Who's Who in America.”
Plame's role in Wilson's Africa trip “was revealed to me in the middle of a long interview with an official who ... was not a political gunslinger,” Novak wrote. “After the federal investigation was announced, he told me through a third party that the disclosure was inadvertent on his part.” Significantly, however, the official never revealed Plame's name to Novak.
So, the plain truth is that, at least as far as Novak's disclosure was concerned, it was not an orchestrated attempt by the White House to out Valerie Plame. Administration officials may have sought to exploit Novak's revelation after the fact by discussing it with other reporters, such as Miller and Cooper. But Novak's report clearly was the product of solid journalistic digging, not a conspiracy hatched in the White House.
Conspiracy advocates will never accept this straightforward account of the facts, but the facts demonstrate that the accusations leveled against the White House for the last three years were groundless.
The same people whining about Plame/Wilson cheer about when the NYTimes "outs" our covert anti-terror programs.
Plame in the Flame, sequel to Witch in the Ditch
-it doesn't say that Bush's claim was that Iraq actually got uranium from Niger
-it doesn't say that Joe Wilson disproved something about Bush's claim
-it doesn't say that we know for sure that Plame was actually covert
How weird.
Yes, the Dems and their egregious accomplices, the MSM, have been exposed again -- printing lies, false accusations and anything but the truth -- as long as it suits their anti-American, leftist agenda.
The filthy scum of the left just continue on ---
So, does someone want to explain why this steaming pile of manure, now has decided her 15 miniutes of fame was not enought and has now decided to file suit against a number of folks who are blameless.
He is on right now. I want to slam his face in the podium. Geez. How can you trust someone like that? How.
I'm watching it now, and you're right, it is whiney.
Valerie Planme's current entry.
Yes, because suckers who donate to a legal defense fund will pay for their extended 15 seconds of fame. Plus, there are still mounds of books to sell and the dollar stores are soon coming to claim them.
He needs moonbat funding. Got me thinking. I do believe I just became a monthly donar here on FR. Thanks Joe.
The entirety of her achievements is this lie? What a sad pathetic life.
Remind everyone you know .. Aldrich Ames (the spy) outed Valerie, along with a bunch of other people who ended up being killed. Valerie was called back to the USA because of her name appearing on Aldrich's list. She was no longer "covert". That event happened more than 5 years before her name appeared in the article from Novak.
This lawsuit is frivilous .. and is intended to harrass and/or embarrass the admin because the whiners didn't get their way and destroy the Bush admin.
I hope the judge throws them out of court while he falls off his chair laughing.
I think their reasoning is three-fold. 1- They keep it in the headline to keep their moonbats deluded. 2- They HAD to do something like this to save face. I believe Wilson has been a source for some of the left wing bloggers who insisted Rove was indicted-- he had to do something. And 3- to raise money from above referenced moonbats. Like taking candy from babies. Delusional, irrational & angry babies.
Now MSNBC is doing a piece. Norah O'Donnell is talking about the "incredible embarrassment" that the Bush administration faces through testimony, depositions, etc.
One guest says that first it has to be determined whether a sitting VP can be sued for actions taken in the course of his duties. Norah's concern for the Bush administration's embarrassment may be premature.
This is actually part of the Dem Election Strategy for 2006. By initiating this frivolous lawsuit, the lies stay in the media until proven false in court. This won't be resolved by the Election and the Wilson's aren't paying the legal fees by themselves. Essentially they are paid hacks.
The same with the Rather case...While frivolous it keeps the National Guard story on the front page.
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