Posted on 07/05/2005 8:22:23 PM PDT by West Coast Conservative
The Washington Post, declaring Wednesday an "historic" day in the history of the press in America, suggested that perhaps the "leaker" of Valerie Plame's identity as a covert CIa operative was not a Bush administration official but a reporter (or reporters).
In a Wednesday A3 story, Carol Leonnig writes, "Sources close to the investigation say there is evidence in some instances that some reporters may have told government officials -- not the other way around -- that Wilson was married to Plame, a CIA employee."
She also revealed that colleagues of Matt Cooper, the Time who may be sent to jail Wednesday if he continues to refuse to testify to a grand jury, say "he is still struggling with his decision. For practical purposes, he cannot protect his sources because his publication has already turned over notes that identify them. But if Cooper cooperates, friends say, he fears his journalistic reputation will be tarnished. Time editors have told him they will respect whatever decision he makes, they said."
Leonnig also observed that at a lunch meeting on Tuesday with Washington Post reporters and editors, Karl Rove, who turned up as a source in Cooper's notes, declined to answer questions about the Plame case.
No way Rove was the leaker.
They tried to use the leaking of Plame as an means to discredit the Administration during the run up to the election.
If it was Rove they would have used it.
If true, the MSM is going to drop this story like a hot potato. Move on -- nothing to see -- no story here...
No way Rove was the leaker.
They tried to use the leaking of Plame as an means to discredit the Administration during the run up to the election.
If it was Rove they would have used it.
That news would have been bigger than Abu Graib.
I think the leaker was Judith Miller.
OMGosh. That would explain why Miller was asked to testify although she never wrote about it!
Doug! That is hilarious!
Thanks. Glad you enjoyed. It is parody but probably more close to the truth than people know.
Didn't Novak say 2 years ago that half of Washington already knew who Plame was and what she really did before the leak? I have read in more than a few places that she did not exactly keep it a secret, and neither did Wilson.
I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.
Here's one example:
(eye roll on the title meant to refer to the Bush administration)
May 6, 2003
excerpt featuring Wilson as source where he even links the forged documents falsely to his trip. Turns out he never saw them, they didn't emerge until after his trip and the CIA headquarters didn't have them until after the SOTU "sixteen words":
Consider the now-disproved claims by President Bush and Colin Powell that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger so it could build nuclear weapons. As Seymour Hersh noted in The New Yorker, the claims were based on documents that had been forged so amateurishly that they should never have been taken seriously. I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.
The envoy reported, for example, that a Niger minister whose signature was on one of the documents had in fact been out of office for more than a decade. In addition, the Niger mining program was structured so that the uranium diversion had been impossible. The envoy's debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted — except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway. "It's disingenuous for the State Department people to say they were bamboozled because they knew about this for a year," one insider said.
~snip~
Knowing how some in the CIA tout their employment, I'd say every cabbie in Northwest DC knew where Val worked.
You just know when Wilson was chatting up Sy Hersh, Nicholas Kristoff, Walter Pincus, and so on and so on, he bragged about being married to a modern day Jane Bond.
So he exaggerated a little, (ahem), they all conspired to turn it around later and trump up a "Bush WH outed her!" scandal.
In fairness, they can only do so much with lies. They did try with Rove first. When that was quickly debunked they moved on to Scooter Libby. That gained a bit more traction due to the various parties by then not talking as the investigation took place, but they did try to use this during the campaign.
The facts never supported a WH source, and most certainly never Rove.
Well the leaker could have been Joe Wilson, or some politicized CIA agent who was unhappy with the Bush administration.But the information that the prosecutor is looking for is not the name of source and has very little to do with Valerie Plame. He wants to know the substance of the conversations the leaker had with the reporters on other security matters, possibly leaked information about a raid on a terrorist supporting group that was warned of the raid hours before it took place.
In other words, prosecutor Fitzgerald knows it's another reporter.
Good one Doug. I agree that it's pretty close to the facts of Wilson's purported "investigation."
I think you make a good point. The fact is the grand jury wants to talk to Judith Miller about a "specified government official".
Yes, I think aspects of this will turn out to be reporters passing on information, but Novak did speak to "senior administration officials", too.
Did they do wrong? I don't think the evidence indicates that. They explained why Wilson went to Niger---and that his wife had a role in recommending him.
Did other officials other reporters do wrong? We shall see, maybe.
I almost threw an ash tray at my brand new Grundig radio, I was so outraged.
Leni
Again, the grand jury subpoena is for contact with a government official.
The fact is that no law was broken by revealing the Plame worked for the CIA for several reasons. First there was no intent to do damage, second she hadn't been an undercover agent for four years and last of all,it was no secret, she was very free with the information herself. The law is very specific and this just doesn't meet the criteria.
They said on Fox, tonight, that the prosecutor was going for information on conversations other than pertaining to Plame. This has to be what it's about unless they have another side investigation going on.
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