Posted on 05/24/2006 3:21:55 PM PDT by mondonico
After doing some research on Jason Leopold’s previous work, I came away with a (well-founded) suspicion that the Wilsons and Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) were sourcing a good deal of his work and using him as a mouthpiece. I discovered that this flock of people, the Wilsonistas, suddenly started writing less about the Plame investigation after Libby’s indictment. However, Jason Leopold started writing almost exclusively about the Plame investigation at about the same time, in October.
Instead of VIPS writing articles in Truthout and elsewhere about the imminent indictment of Rove, Cheney, Hadley and that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald was going to get his hands into the Niger forgeries, they now had Jason Leopold to do their work for them. This way they could claim all sorts of things and wouldn’t have to stand accountable for them, while hanging Leopold out to dry.
Truthout has been a stenographer for the Wilsonistas for quite some time. Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson are contributors, McGovern since 2003 and Johnson apparently since late 2005. William Rivers Pitt and other Truthout reporters have used them as named sources quite often, while other reporting done by Leopold indicates they have also been unnamed sources. However, there is another guest to the party which may have escaped the radar while writing for UPI as an intelligence correspondent: Richard Sale.
Sale is an interesting journalist, a bit obscure, but has written some heavy-hitting pieces that have made waves. Three years ago he wrote a detailed article about all the supposed ties between Saddam Hussein and the CIA from before he became a dictator. Needless to say, this story became a staple in many an anti-war diet, leading to dense statements such as, “The United States created Saddam Hussein!” This isn’t Sale’s fault, of course, his article is fairly nuanced and detailed, but you have to wonder how many of the details are actually accurate – most coming from anonymous intelligence sources. He was also involved in covering the AIPAC spy scandal back in 2004 for UPI, although it was CBS who broke the story.
FYI
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