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Democrats said that the outing of a CIA agent, personnel, whatever, was bad, and said that someone's head in the Bush Administration had to roll. Democrats wanted Cheney, but didn't get him. When the New York Times outs Karzai's brother as supposedly being paid by the CIA to do who knows what, Democrats act as if it is no big deal. What gives?

WASHINGTON--A federal judge said the Federal Bureau of Investigation must publicly reveal much of its interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney during the investigation into who leaked the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency operative. The FBI interviewed Mr. Cheney in June 2004 as it was investigating the leak of Valerie Plame's identity after her husband criticized the Bush administration. Both the Bush and Obama administrations said they wanted to keep the interview confidential because future vice presidents may not cooperate with criminal investigations if it became public.

The Associated Press reported today (Friday) that lawyers for certain detainees at the Gitmo Prison in Cuba, possibly violated federal criminal law by releasing the identity of CIA covert operatives. The current Justice Department investigation connects to both the Valerie Plame matter a few years ago, and the current issue of where and how Gitmo detainees should be charged and tried. First, the Plame affair. According to the mainstream media, that was about the “outing” of a CIA “covert operative” in violation of federal law. But that law applied only to people who had been a covert operative “within five...

Security Breaches: Scooter Libby went to prison for the "outing" of a desk-jockey CIA agent. He forgot conversations. Pelosi forgets briefings. And the outing of our entire intelligence apparatus by Democrats is OK. Remember the thrilling days of yesteryear and the alleged outing of the already known CIA officer Valerie Plame? We were told then that the Vanity Fair cover girl's 15 minutes of fame jeopardized our national security even if everybody already knew who she was. "Scooter" Libby went to prison because his memory of events and who said what to whom regarding Plame differed from the recollections of...

Justice Department (through Solicitor General Elena Kagan) urges Supreme Court not to hear appeal from former CIA officer Valerie Plame, after lower courts threw out her lawsuit claiming damages from alleged scheme to invade her privacy by exposing her as a CIA employee. Plame’s exposure led to conviction of Cheney aide Lewis Libby on obstruction of justice charges. -- Josh Gerstein (3:31 p.m.)

First, Sean Penn played outed gay politician Harvey Milk. Now it looks like he may play the husband of outed CIA hussy Valerie Plame. “Fair Game,” based on the memoirs by Plame and Wilson, is being made in to a big budget Hollywood fiasco. Tinsel town normally calls a biographic picture a “bio-pic,” but in this case it might be more appropriate to call it a “lie-o-pic.” Producers are negotiating with Sean Penn to play ...

"Fair Game," the drama about the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, has come together with Naomi Watts starring, "Mrs. and Mrs. Smith" helmer Doug Liman directing and William Pohlad's River Road financing. But the big question is whether Oscar-winning "Milk" star Sean Penn will close a deal to play Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Penn is negotiating, but no deal has closed.Pohlad has a strong relationship with Penn: he was a producer on the Terrence Malick-directed "Tree of Life," which stars Penn and Brad Pitt, and Pohlad also was a producer and financier for "Into the Wild," which Penn directed....

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman warned Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Tuesday to turn over a copy of a FBI interview with Vice President Dick Cheney or face contempt charges. The document in question is an interview Cheney gave to the FBI in the investigation of the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, a covert CIA agent. “The arguments you have raised for withholding the interview report are not tenable,” Waxman wrote in a letter to Mukasey. “When the FBI interview with the Vice President was conducted, the Vice President knew that the information...

McClellan Late Show by: Ben Giles, June 25, 2008 Former press secretary Scott McClellan remains concerned about what he calls “a cloud of suspicion over the White House,” particularly concerning the leak of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity. In his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on June 19, McClellan expressed his frustration over alleged leaks and cover-ups by White House officials, and questioned the possible involvement of Vice President Dick Cheney. “I do not think the President had any knowledge,” said McClellan. “In terms of the Vice President, I do not know.” The allegations at the time were...

Scott McClellan testifies this morning before the House Judiciary Committee beginning at 9:30 (eastern). It will be covered live on C-Span and the three cable networks.

I guess things must not be going well with Joe Wilson's (and wife Valerie Plame's) movie. It was hyped bigtime over a year ago and now that Warner Bros project appears to have dropped out of sight. I sure know Wilson's book is way down in the DUMPS at #1,310,194 in Amazon. The paperback edition isn't doing much better at #266,321. This might explain Joe Wilson's over-the-top partisanship in favor of Hillary. 'Fess up, Joe. What did Hillary promise you? The Secretary of State slot if she is elected president? In any event, it is entertaining to watch Wilson...

Most Americans have never heard of Sibel Edmonds, and if the U.S. government has its way, they never will. The former FBI translator turned whistleblower tells a chilling story of corruption at Washington’s highest levels—sale of nuclear secrets, shielding of terrorist suspects, illegal arms transfers, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, espionage. She may be a first-rate fabulist, but Edmonds’s account is full of dates, places, and names. And if she is to be believed, a treasonous plot to embed moles in American military and nuclear installations and pass sensitive intelligence to Israeli, Pakistani, and Turkish sources was facilitated by figures in...

When former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson got the redacted manuscript of her draft memoir back from the CIA Publications Review Board (PRB) earlier this year, her book publisher realized it had a problem. "We were looking at a manuscript where 20 percent of the author's story was deemed classified by her former employer [even though] much of the information was probably in the public domain," explains an editor at the publishing house, Simon & Schuster. "So the challenge was, if Valerie can't tell her own story because she is bound by her agreement, then how is this story going...

Removing any doubt about how she sees the world from the left, Valerie Plame Wilson, in an interview Thursday which aired Saturday night on a Washington, DC area cable channel, admired the work of the far-left Media Matters as she revealed she seeks out the group's postings for their “accuracy” and presentation of “the facts.” Carol Joynt (her blog), a former CBS News producer who as the owner of the Nathans of Georgetown restaurant every week interviews a newsmaker in front of a lunch crowd in what becomes the hour-long Q&A Cafe on NewsChannel 8, asked whether she reads “news...

The ridiculous end to the scandal that distracted Washington. I had a feeling that I might slightly regret the title ("Case Closed") of my July 25 column on the Niger uranium story. I have now presented thousands of words of evidence and argument to the effect that, yes, the Saddam Hussein regime did send an important Iraqi nuclear diplomat to Niger in early 1999. And I have not so far received any rebuttal from any source on this crucial point of contention. But there was always another layer to the Joseph Wilson fantasy. Easy enough as it was to prove...

Seated at the Washington Gridiron dinner March 31, I was interrupted by a man crouching at my feet who was dressed Air Force formal with the four stars of a full general. It was CIA Director Michael Hayden, who complained to me profanely that my column had misrepresented him in the Valerie Plame Wilson case. Denying he favors Democrats, Gen. Hayden indicated to me he had not authorized Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman to say Mrs. Wilson had been a "covert" CIA employee, as he claimed Hayden did, but only that she was "undercover." Keeping busy at a Gridiron evening supposedly...

The publicist for a book written by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan released an excerpt on Monday that set all of the Old Media tongues to wagging again about the Valerie Plame Affair: "The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the...

What do you do when your heavily hyped book plummets from number 6 on the New York Times bestseller list to a mere 299 on Amazon.com in just a matter of a few weeks? If you're Valerie Plame, you turn to discredited "journalist" Jason Leopold for self-hype help as you can see in this video. Howard Kurtz has written of Leopold's dubious background in a March 9, 2005 Washington Post article: Jason Leopold got a journalistic black eye three years ago when Salon retracted a story the freelancer had written about a Bush administration official, saying it could not authenticate...

This is a fascinating video in many ways. One way is the fact that Valerie Plame allowed herself to be interviewed with a journalist described in a Howard Kurtz Washington Post ARTICLE as engaging in "lying, cheating, and backstabbing." The article also states that Leopold was a cocaine addict who has battled mental illness his whole life. So this is the person that Valerie Plame allows to interview her which says a lot about her. One interesting thing in this 10 minute video is that at 3:45 into it, Leopold FINALLY admits to being wrong about his infamous "scoop"...

WASHINGTON - Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said Sunday he was foolish to have revealed Valerie Plame's CIA identity. Armitage's acknowledgment came in response to comments by Plame, who said the former Bush administration official had no right to talk to a reporter about where she worked. A year ago, Armitage publicly apologized to Plame and her husband. The former No. 2 State Department official remains the only principal in the leak to have done so. At least three one-time administration officials in addition to Armitage discussed Plame's CIA status with reporters. They are former White House political...

The Prince of Journalism by: Malcolm A. Kline, October 29, 2007 It contains more useful information than any journalism textbook we have seen but don’t expect legendary reporter Robert Novak’s memoirs to become required reading in communications classes anytime soon. “I was too much of a right winger for most of America’s institutions,” Novak writes in The Prince of Darkness. The title refers to a nickname that a colleague gave Novak early in his career as a comment on his trademark pessimism that has stuck for decades. When he does get on campus, Novak tells college students something they seldom...

If Valerie Plame's memoir was intended to lay to rest the conflicting accounts of how she came to be outed as a covert CIA agent, it fails. Instead, she paints herself as a naïve, whinging victim of circumstance married to an angry, obstreperous egotist who volunteered to involve himself in a vicious battle between the White House and the CIA over how President Bush came to make untrue statements in a State of the Union speech. Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House (Simon and Schuster, $26) shows how mistaken her husband's judgment was....

To flip through the first third of Valerie Plame Wilson's "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House" is to confront an optical maze of gray stripes interrupting juicy anecdotes and methodical musings. CIA censors blacked out 10 percent of the text in her memoir, leaving its narrative disjointed and sometimes hard to follow. "I believe the vast majority of what is blacked out in the book has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with diminishing me and Joe," she said. Agency censors also wouldn't allow Plame Wilson to acknowledge working...

In a lame attempt to help ex-CIA operative Valerie Plame's soggy book sales (currently #33 on Amazon behind Stephen Colbert, Eric Clapton, Clarence Thomas, O.J./Goldman Family, Paul Krugman, and an umpteenth reprint of "War & Peace"), Katie Couric "conducted" an interview aimed at dummies who didn't pay much attention when the whole episode culminated in the Scooter Libby fiasco. For those of us who did pay attention, this whole episode continues to be an insult to our intelligence....

(CBS) Valerie Plame Wilson chides President Bush for not firing anyone for the leaking of her covert CIA identity, which caused a national scandal and an investigation resulting in a perjury and obstruction of justice conviction against Vice President Richard Cheney's chief of staff. She also tells Katie Couric that she has learned of the damage that the leaking of her identity caused agents of the clandestine service and it is serious. Plame Wilson and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accuse the Bush administration of leaking her identity to the press as retaliation for her husband's public charge that...

Columnist Robert Novak said Saturday Ambassador Joe Wilson did not forcefully object to the naming of his CIA operative wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, when Novak spoke to him prior to the publication of a column that sparked a federal investigation and sent White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby to jail. “He was not terribly exercised about it,” Novak said. Instead, Wilson focused on not being portrayed as simply an opponent of the Iraq war. Wilson also stressed that his wife went by his last name, Wilson, rather than Plame, Novak said. Novak forcefully defended his handling of the column...

Valerie Wilson may be the best known former intelligence operative in recent history, but a federal judge in New York ruled Wednesday that she was not allowed to say how long she worked for the Central Intelligence Agency in the memoir she plans to publish this fall. Although the fact that Ms. Wilson worked for the C.I.A. from 1985 to 2006 has been published in the Congressional Record and elsewhere, the judge, Barbara S. Jones of Federal District Court in Manhattan, said Ms. Wilson was not free to say so. “The information at issue was properly classified, was never declassified...

Apparently one of the movie roles that Alec Baldwin won't be playing in the future is that of Sherlock Holmes. Baldwin writes an entire Huffington Post blog, Prosecuting Those Responsible For Outing Valerie Plame, without once mentioning the name of the leaker---Richard Armitage. Baldwin starts out with a fantasy about the things he would do if he were play-acting as president: The fifth thing that I would do is to prosecute whoever is responsible for outing Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. At this point you would think that Baldwin would lash out at the leaker, Richard Armitage, or at...

It is amazing to me how many times in the course of our history, serious issues have taken a back seat to trivial and often foolish diversions that were politics-driven. Does anyone remember Quemoy and Matsu – nondescript islands off the coast of China whose status probably enabled John Kennedy to defeat Richard Nixon in 1960? Does anyone remember the “brainwashing” of George Romney or the pubic hair in the Coke can? How about the videos that someone in Judge Bork’s family viewed – videos that were gleaned from receipts fished out of the Bork family garbage by people who...

The hypocritical braying that has greeted George W. Bush's commutation of White House aide "Scooter" Libby's (pictured) prison sentence continues. "The president's critics are contrasting his leniency for Libby with his overall advocacy of stiff sentences," writes the San Francisco Chronicle this week. I think the scandal isn't the President's lenience for Libby, but that Libby was prosecuted in the first place. Here are the facts. A former ambassador named Joseph Wilson wrote an article in 2003, suggesting that the President had played fast and loose with intelligence to justify his invasion of Iraq. The piece appeared in The New...

Link references article which can't be posted here. ~~~~~ As always in the liberal Beltway, no one's ever questioned Fitzgerald's unsupervised free ride and tenure as Special Prosecutor in the Plame/Libby case by his college summer roommate, James Comey, now legal counsel for the giant, Lockheed Martin.

Merry Fitzmas, DUmmies!!! Yes, it's Fitzmas in July as a judge tosses OUT a lawsuit by Valerie Plame against the EVIL Bush Regime. Of course, this action has stirred up the residents of my DUmmie Ant Farm as you can see in this THREAD titled, "Valerie Plame's lawsuit dismissed." Freudenschade, baby! So let us now watch the DUmmies gloomily assess yet another DEFEAT in Bolshevik Red while the commentary of your humble correspondent, eagerly waiting for the DUmmie reaction when Libby wins his appeal, is in the [brackets]: WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Thursday dismissed former CIA operative...

Earlier today, NewsBuster Noel Sheppard posted an item wondering how the media would cover the dismissal of Valerie Plame's civil lawsuit against V.P. Cheney and Scooter Libby. We now have the answer from the New York Times: an article that miraculously manages to omit Plame's name from the headline! That's right. The Times article is cryptically entitled: "Judge Dismisses Suit by Former C.I.A. Operative". For the casual reader, it could have been any old former spook. Move along; nuthin to see here. Nice undercover work there by the Grey Lady. Do you think if Plame had won her case the...

Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson signed on with Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign yesterday, saying "it's entirely possible" his ex-spy wife will hit the trail with her, too. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a covert CIA operations officer by President Bush's advisers in 2003 as they sought to discredit her Iraq war critic husband. She's writing a memoir due in the fall. "I would expect her to be engaged [politically] probably after the book tour," Wilson told the Daily News after Clinton announced his endorsement. Wilson said his wife shunned politics during her two decades as a covert spy. But...

Editorial Cartoonist for Investor's Business Daily Get a unique perspective on today's issues with the political cartoons of IBD's Pulitzer Prize Winner, Michael Ramirez.

When I went to my office Monday, July 7, 2003, Joe Wilson was not in the forefront of my mind. Frances Fragos Townsend was. She had just been named deputy national security adviser at the White House though her background was in liberal Democratic politics, including Attorney General Janet Reno's inner circle during the Clinton administration. Her appointment was a political mystery of the kind I had been exploring for forty years in my column. I wrote the Townsend column Tuesday morning because I had a busy schedule the rest of the day, including a 3 p.m. appointment with Richard...

Scooter Libby Roundup FACE THE FACTS: The reason Bush commuted Scooter Libby's sentence was SO LIBBY WOULDN'T TALK. Bush “guaranteed not only that Libby wouldn’t talk, but retaining Libby’s right to invoke the Fifth. This amounts to nothing less than obstruction of justice.” Now, the Bush administration is legally protected from having to answer questions. If Libby had been in prison, anyone could have gotten to him. Now, no one can get Libby to say a word about the real culprits, which are obviously Rove and Cheney/Bush. **First of all, it's vitally important to understand what Valerie Plame was actually...

In drama – and in real life as well - players and events thrown together in improbable circumstances cause surprising or unanticipated outcomes ("situational irony"). When the drama is played out in Washington, D.C., there is always a Greek chorus of hypocrites who loudly criticize the players for infractions of which they, too, are guilty.With this in mind, isn’t it ironic that:† During the course ofan investigation to determine who identified Valerie Plame as a CIA employee, Richard Armitage - who admitted being the leaker - has not been indicted or prosecuted?† Rather than shutting down the investigation after the...

Three months after his felony conviction on perjury and obstruction of justice charges, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, 56, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has been sentenced to 2.5 years in prison and fined $250,000. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald asked U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton to impose a sentence of 30 to 37 months, on the grounds that Libby had lied about his role in leaking the identity of former CIA staffer Valerie Plame and impeded a serious investigation, and has not expressed remorse. Libby's lawyers argued for leniency, considering that no one was ever charged...

You won’t see it on CNN or MSNBC and you probably won’t see it in any major newspaper but she lied and we have it on record.

In a court filing today, Patrick Fitzgerald provides a summary of Valerie Plame Wilson's status with the CIA's Counterproliferation Division at the time she was outed to the press by members of the Bush administration. Guess what? She was covert: While assigned to CPD, Ms. Wilson engaged in temporary duty (TDY) travel overseas on official business. She traveled at least seven times to more than ten countries. When traveling overseas, Ms. Wilson always traveled under a cover identity — sometimes in true name and sometimes in alias — but always using cover — whether official or non-official cover (NOC) —...

If the Senate released a major study on Friday with information suggesting that a key Republican might have committed perjury, would the media report it?Probably every hour on the hour, with front-page headlines Saturday morning, correct?Well, the Senate issued a lengthy analysis on pre-Iraq war intelligence Friday, and in it was information contradicting Valerie Plame Wilson’s sworn testimony before the House in March.As reported by Byron York of National Review (emphasis added): When Valerie Plame Wilson swore that she did not recommend or suggest her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, for a fact-finding trip to Niger in 2002, Sen....

Outed CIA officer Valerie Plame has canceled her April 11 visit to the University of Florida. Plame, whose identity was revealed in a 2003 syndicated column by Robert Novak, canceled because she's still sorting out legal issues related to her upcoming book, according to Accent, the student-run speakers bureau that invited Plame. "She's pretty much still testifying in front of Congress and trying to resolve some legal issues with her book," said Andrew Brown, chairman of Accent. Plame testified before Congress early this month, and the scope of the testimony was heavily vetted in advance by CIA officials to ensure...

When Valerie Plame Wilson testified recently before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, just two Republicans — out of 17 on the committee — bothered to show up. Ranking Republican Rep. Tom Davis asked few questions and seemed largely uninterested in the matter. The only other Republican to appear, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia, showed more interest but appeared not to have mastered the details of the case. Now, however, Westmoreland wants to know more. In a letter to committee chairman Rep. Henry Waxman Friday, he submitted more questions for Mrs. Wilson and requested that Waxman ask the...

Plame’s testimony shifting, source says Mar 23, 2007 3:00 AM by Rowan Scarborough, The Examiner The public testimony of former CIA officer Valerie Plame before a House committee last week conflicts with what she told a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee three years ago, a government source told The Examiner this week. The difference centers on Plame’s role in a CIA supervisor’s decision in 2002 to send former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, her husband, on a trip to Niger to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein pursued uranium for nuclear bombs.The trip eventually embroiled the White House in a three-year criminal investigation.Plame...

For his level-headed professionalism, Lester Holt is on my [admittedly short] list of MSM faves. But while Holt did hit former Ambassador [to Gabon, São Tomé and Príncipe] Joseph Wilson with one tough question on this morning's "Today," he let Valerie Plame's husband hijack the beginning of the interview, lobbed him numerous softballs, and failed to confront Wilson on his blatant misrepresenation of Plame's role in sending him to Niger. View video here. In a set-up piece on this morning's "Today" that preceeded the interview, a clip was played of Rep. Lynn Westmoreland [R-Georgia] asking Plame, during yesterday's congressional...

Appears to me this lady was hired based on looks and not intelligence.

<p>ON CAPITOL HILL Valerie Wilson Testifies Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) chairs a House Oversight and Government Reform Ctme. hearing on the disclosure of CIA Agent Valerie Plame Wilson's identity. The hearing will look into whether White House officials followed appropriate procedures for safeguarding the identity of Ms. Wilson.</p>

His health is rough; he has been the most disastrous vice-president in history; he has lost two wars; he has lost every ally; he is despised in much of the country; he is now going to be the center of all the questions that the Libby guilty verdict raise. Why did he get so exercized about a two-bit critic during a critical time in the Iraq war? Why would he risk losing his most trusted aide by coordinating a media sting on a minor political opponent? Why would he risk committing a crime to pursue Wilson unless he had something...

Chairman Henry A. Waxman announced a hearing on whether White House officials followed appropriate procedures for safeguarding the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. At the hearing, the Committee will receive testimony from Ms. Wilson and other experts regarding the disclosure and internal White House security procedures for protecting her identity from disclosure and responding to the leak after it occurred. The hearing is scheduled for Friday, March 16. In addition, the Committee today sent a letter to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald commending him for his investigation and requesting a meeting to discuss testimony by Mr. Fitzgerald before the...