Posted on 07/06/2005 9:18:28 PM PDT by c-five
The quality of the reporting on the Valerie Plame/Judith Miller matter has been abysmal. Here are two examples.
This Associated Press article is by Pete Yost. For the most part, it is a straightforward account of Judith Miller's appearance in court today. But note Yost's account of the Plame affair that forms the background of the subpoena on Miller:
Plame's name was disclosed in a column by Robert Novak days after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, questioned part of President Bush's justification for invading Iraq. Wilson was sent to Africa by the Bush administration to investigate an intelligence claim that Saddam Hussein may have purchased yellowcake uranium from Niger in the late 1990s for use in nuclear weapons. Wilson said he could not verify the claim and accused the administration for manipulating the intelligence to "exaggerate the Iraqi threat."
This is just wrong, as we have pointed out repeatedly, most recently here. It isn't true that Wilson "said he could not verify the claim." What actually happened, according to the report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was that Wilson returned from Niger and reported to the CIA that Niger's former Prime Minister had confirmed that in 1999, an emissary from Saddam Hussein made an overture that the Prime Minister interpreted as an attempt to buy uranium. (The claim that was made about Niger was that Iraq tried to buy uranium there, not that it succeeded.) Six months later, Wilson lied about his mission to Niger in an op-ed in the New York Times that attacked President Bush. Wilson misrepresented what he learned in Niger, and what he told the CIA.
None of this is hard to figure out; it was all widely reported when the Intelligence Committee's report was issued in July 2004. There is no excuse for an AP reporter not knowing these basic facts.
Even more egregious, though perhaps less surprising, is Robert Kuttner's column in today's Boston Globe. Kuttner, an editor of The American Prospect, is a lefty, so his anti-Bush prejudice is no secret. Kuttner not only gets the facts wrong, he offers a conspiracy theory that makes no sense. Kuttner retails the myth of the heroic Joe Wilson, adding some embellishments of his own:
Plame's husband is former ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, who had undertaken a secret mission at the request of the CIA to investigate what proved to be a fake story about the government of Niger providing nuclear material to Saddam Hussein. The Niger story figured prominently in Bush's justification for war and his disparagement of UN weapons inspectors, even though it had already been disproven by Wilson's mission. Wilson, now retired, was so appalled at the administration's misuse of a discredited story that he went public with his information. Just about every word of this paragraph is false, as the Intelligence Committee's report shows. But liberals seldom let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Kuttner continues:
The administration's leak to Novak, ''outing" Wilson's wife, Plame, was part of a clumsy campaign to discredit and punish Wilson. The administration line was that Plame supposedly suggested Wilson for the Niger assignment, though that allegation has never been confirmed. Wrong again. The Intelligence Committee report confirmed that Valerie Plame did indeed--contrary to Joe Wilson's denials--recommend her husband for the Niger assignment. The report quotes Plame's memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations dated February 12, 2002, which said that her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." Why do prominent newspapers like the Boston Globe print op-eds by writers who don't know any facts?
Kuttner says "the administration" leaked Plame's name to Robert Novak as "part of a clumsy campaign to discredit and punish Wilson." This is dumb. First of all, Novak has already explained the context of the "leak." Many people wondered why the CIA sent such an unsuitable person as Joe Wilson on the Niger mission; someone in the administration explained to Novak that Wilson was selected because his wife worked for the Agency. Which, of course, turned out to be true.
But, in any event, why would that "discredit and punish Wilson"? The fact that his wife is a CIA employee doesn't discredit Wilson in the least. And her employment status is anything but a deep dark secret, as her subsequent Vanity Fair photo shoot demonstrated.
Kuttner now makes the real point of his column, titled "Politics Taints Probe of CIA Leak." His purpose is to libel U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald:
After Novak's column was published, Democrats in Congress demanded and got the administration to name a special counsel to investigate the leak. Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself. His deputy named Chicago US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, supposedly a man of high principle and unblemished reputation. "Supposedly," indeed. Read Kuttner's diatribe carefully and see if you can spot any actual evidence supporting his libels of Fitzgerald.
One leading suspect of having leaked Plame's identity is the president's chief political adviser, Karl Rove. Given how utterly Machiavellian Rove is, readers who take press reports of Fitzgerald's pristine independence at face value are touchingly naïve. "Leading suspect"? Really? Based on what? No evidence is forthcoming. Then note the non sequitur. Rove's supposed "Machiavellian" nature shows that Fitzgerald can't be independent. Huh?
Given the stakes, do you really think this administration would let a Justice Department official just pick some highly independent prosecutor to launch a wide ranging probe -- one that could net Novak, a reliable administration toady, and the chummy high officials Novak talks to, say, Rove or Vice President Dick Cheney? More slander, still no evidence. And, by the way, Novak is a frequent critic of the administration. And how in the world did Dick Cheney come into the picture? Kuttner is just making this stuff up as he goes along.
Nor is it an accident that this investigation, rather than fingering whoever inside the administration broke the law by outing Valerie Plame, is instead putting the squeeze on two news organizations that just happen to have been critical of the Bush administration, Time magazine and The New York Times, and by extension the entire press corps. If you're going to serve up a conspiracy theory--without any evidence, of course--shouldn't the theory at least make some kind of sense? Kuttner's theory makes none. It is almost certain that no crime was committed by whoever told Novak (and, apparently, other reporters) that Plame works for the CIA. (Kuttner misstates the law, too.) No administration official has been fingered for talking to reporters. Fitzgerald has said that he is ready to wrap up his investigation, but for getting evidence from the two reporters. Let's suppose that it really was Karl Rove who told Novak that Plame was a CIA employee. Why would the administration want Fitzgerald to send reporters to jail to force them to reveal that fact? If the administration were pursuing its political interests, it would want the whole affair to die, and it would side with the reporters who want to take their "secret" to the grave. If Fitzgerald were serving the administration's political interests, he would defer to the reporters' assertion of privilege and conclude his investigation without identifying their sources.
All of this seems so obvious that one can only wonder what standards of evidence, logic and common sense the Boston Globe applies to its columnists.
Posted by John at 08:16 PM
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2004_rpt/
Re-tells?
It continues to amaze me that this "story" has any legs at all. To hear Novak on the subject, apparently pretty much everybody in DC including most of the reporters and most of the waitresses at any number of DC bars knew that Plame was with the CIA and was Wilson's wife.
It would appear that she was pretty much an administrator at Langley anyway... not a field operator... I'm having trouble detecting where the real story is here...
There's really no story. It's another grab at straws. They think they can take down Bush or Rove with this, like they tried Rather gate, or the Downing Street memos. All of it is nonsense, but it's all they have to work with.
They look and sound ridiculous, don't they?
Other than wanting to know who the leaker is just for fun, this story is getting quite boring.
Wake me up when they come up with a name, ok?
I just remember Novak talking about this thing back when it first "broke"... and even he was sorta mystified by the whole thing.
I remember him saying something to the effect of "Of course Valerie worked for the CIA... everybody in DC knew that. It was an open secret."
Wilson outed her in his own book for crying out loud! Wilson didn't seem to think it was a secret either. He was getting it ready for printing when the story broke!
---There's really no story. It's another grab at straws. ---
The Dims figured that if they could get a special prosecutor on the case, that they construct straw men and uncover red herrings endlessly, much to their benefit. Their golem went out of control, as golems are wont to do, and started attacking those he was supposed to help, members of the liberal press. Forgive me while I wipe away a tear! It's all so sad. :^)
Roger that. Is there some kind of award for the biggest non-story of the year?
Maybe that's what this is all about. :-)
Bump
NYC won't be getting the Summer Oly's now, so I guess Hillary will resign? Yuk Yuk
LOL.
Want to cheer up? Even the DUmmies are conceding. They're all in deep despair. Very, very deep despair.
There. Doesn't that make you feel better?
Hey! We all know it's nothing but a vast European conspiracy against Hillary! And it's Bush's fault, too!
The leftist media has a lot invested in this "story", and it's starting to look like they're going to have a lot of egg on their faces when the truth finally comes out and the whole non-story is told. I look for them to keep muddying the waters in a futile effort to cover their own incompetence and still blame Bush for something, even if they can't describe exactly what it is.
On the bright side, I read the Newsweak "exposee" that Crazy Larry O'Donnel said was going to pin the blame on Karl Rove. It did nothing of the sort, in spite of the author's attempt to smear Rove by innuendo. I look forward to O'donnel and his fellow mud-slingers to be thoroughly ridiculed.
What I haven't been able to figure out about this non-story is why Novak has escaped the hot seat.
The only thing I can figure is that he must've given up the name of his informant without a squabble...something Judith Miller should have done as well if that's the case.
Doesn't the idea that she is protecting an administration official seem odd as well? That a high administration official is implicated has been pedaled to the public, and even the motive has been sold, to get even with Wilson, ... without any factual substantiation so far!
We "know" so much but so far it's all speculation.
The identity and the motive of the snitch remains unknown. But that stops no reporter from carrying the alleged story line forward with each new article.
Of course, Wilson didn't consider it a secret..
He knew full well that Valerie Plame-Wilson hadn't worked as a "covert" agent since 1996..
(snip)First, the CIA suspected that Aldrich Ames had given Mrs. Wilson's name (along with those of other spies) to the Russians before his arrest for espionage in 1994. So her undercover security was undermined at that time and she was brought back to Washington for safety reasons.
Second, as Mrs. Wilson rose in the agency, she was already in transition away from undercover work to management, and to liaison roles with other intelligence agencies. So this year, even before she was outed, she was moving away from "noc'' - which means non-official cover, like pretending to be a business executive. After passing as an energy analyst for Brewster-Jennings & Associates, a CIA front company, she was switching to a new cover as a State Department official, affording her diplomatic protection without having "CIA'' stamped on her forehead.
Third, Mrs. Wilson's intelligence connections became known a bit in Washington as she rose in the CIA and moved to State Department cover, but her job remained a closely held secret.
By NICHOLAS KRISTOF - 10/14/03
My guess it that the "administration official" just one more Democrat civil servant, not a Bush appointee, wanting to embarass the "administration". It's all in how you define the words "administration official", isn't it?
Joe Wilson
Actually, it is a huge story.
The story was trumped up with the intention of impeaching President Bush.
It is huge when CIA officials (rogues) and democrats and media conspire to twist facts to misrepresnet and deceive.
Why did Plame want her husband to go to Niger? What was he really doing there? Why did he change his story from admitting early on that Iraq approached Niger to saying it was completely false?
Why did Wilson tie his story to the forged documents that some of us demonstrated early on could not have played a part in his "findings"? Did he or any cohorts have a role in the creation of the forgeries?
Was there a coordinated effort from the left to take down Blair and Bush at the same time with the British "Sexed-Up Dossier" story hitting the press over there when Wilson's story was starting here? Both entailed an accusation that each nation's leader "lied" about WMD intelligence.
Yes, this is a story. But not the leftist spun way.
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