Posted on 07/11/2005 4:06:17 PM PDT by hipaatwo
CROWLEY: In the latest ease additions of Newsweek, reporter Michael Isikoff quotes attorneys who say that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove was a source for TIME magazine reporter Matt Cooper. Cooper, of course, is at the center of the grand jury investigation involving the leak of a CIA employee's identity.
So a couple of things about this story. First, what we do know at this point about Rove's relationship to this leak?
MICHAEL ISIKOFF, REPORTER, NEWSWEEK: I should say, we did more than quote attorneys. What we did is we obtained an internal TIME magazine e-mail that Matt Cooper wrote to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy, immediately after talking to Karl Rove on July 11th, that's before the Novak column, in which he says: "Double super-secret background, not to be attributed to the White House or Rove, but Rove gave me a big warning about some of what Joe Wilson has been saying. He wasn't sent to Niger by George Tenet or Vice President Cheney, it was Wilson's wife who apparently works at the agency on WMD issues who authorized the trip." That's the quote from Matt Cooper to his editor right after talking to Karl Rove.
What that tells us is that Karl Rove did indeed discuss Joe Wilson, Joe Wilson's wife, Joe Wilson's wife's employment with a reporter, Matt Cooper, prior to the Robert Novak column. That would seem to conflict with many of the White House public statements at the time, and certainly some of what Karl Rove's lawyer had been saying publicly up until we got hold of this e-mail.
It doesn't answer underlying questions here. For one thing, as many people have pointed out, and we pointed out, Karl Rove doesn't identify Valerie Plame by name, so that's an important distinction.
(Excerpt) Read more at transcripts.cnn.com ...
LOL!
This is the REAL story. The one they are trying to cover up.
How can Plame recommend her husband for a job in Niger for the US government without there being a conflict of interest? Was he paid for his services?
Makes me wonder if the CIA (not just Plame) was setting up the president and his administration.
Secrets of the Scandal
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: October 11, 2003
Like any good spy story, the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson is far more complex than it seems on the surface.
I know Mrs. Wilson, but I knew nothing about her C.I.A. career and hadn't realized she's "a hell of a shot with an AK-47," as a classmates at the C.I.A. training "farm," Jim Marcinkowski, recalls.
snip
First, the C.I.A. suspected that Aldrich Ames had given Mrs. Wilson's name (along with those of other spies) to the Russians before his espionage arrest 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 C.I.A. front company, she was switching to a new cover as a State Department official, affording her diplomatic protection without having "C.I.A." stamped on her forehead.
http://tinyurl.com/9xelw
NYT's login information (you might need it to read the entire article)
chadwit
1insipid
bttt
bttt
Posted 10/1/2003 12:38 AM
War critic at center of CIA flap always vague on wife's job
By Bill Nichols and John Diamond, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — On the guest list of the 1999 state dinner hosted by President Clinton for President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, no occupation was listed for Valerie Wilson, the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, Clinton's top White House Africa analyst from 1997 to 1998.
http://tinyurl.com/7tyw7
Joe Wilson, of JCWilson International Ventures
Since Plame recommended wilson for the job, and he got it, it looks like nepotism was alive and well in the CIA.
Thanks for the hint. "Kristof" "Plame" in Google turned up the Op-Ed piece real quickly.
Thanks for the links.
It was well known around Washington that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA....Her name, Valerie Plame, was no secret either, appearing in Wilson's "Who's Who in America" entry.
Novak’s July 14 column included this paragraph: “Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him.”
******
Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission
Report Disputes Wilson's Claims on Trip, Wife's Role
July 10, 2004
Washington Post
Susan Schmidt
Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IVFormer ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.
snip
Wilson's assertions -- both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.
The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.
snip
The report turns a harsh spotlight on what Wilson has said about his role in gathering prewar intelligence, most pointedly by asserting that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, recommended him.
Plame's role could be significant in an ongoing investigation into whether a crime was committed when her name and employment were disclosed to reporters last summer.
Administration officials told columnist Robert D. Novak then that Wilson, a partisan critic of Bush's foreign policy, was sent to Niger at the suggestion of Plame, who worked in the nonproliferation unit at CIA. The disclosure of Plame's identity, which was classified, led to an investigation into who leaked her name.
The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional.
snip
Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger.
"Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."
Wilson stood by his assertion in an interview yesterday, saying Plame was not the person who made the decision to send him. Of her memo, he said: "I don't see it as a recommendation to send me."
The report said Plame told committee staffers that she relayed the CIA's request to her husband, saying, "there's this crazy report" about a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq. The committee found Wilson had made an earlier trip to Niger in 1999 for the CIA, also at his wife's suggestion.
The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."
"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents -- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq -- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.
snip
According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.
Still, it was the CIA that bore the brunt of the criticism of the Niger intelligence. The panel found that the CIA has not fully investigated possible efforts by Iraq to buy uranium in Niger to this day, citing reports from a foreign service and the U.S. Navy about uranium from Niger destined for Iraq and stored in a warehouse in Benin.
The agency did not examine forged documents that have been widely cited as a reason to dismiss the purported effort by Iraq until months after it obtained them. The panel said it still has "not published an assessment to clarify or correct its position on whether or not Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa."
http://tinyurl.com/czk7j
After that post the name Nick Danger fits! It's a good post.
Thanks for the link!
This would help explain why Miller didn't write a story about the case. It would be difficult for Miller to write a story when she was so deeply involved in how it developed. Disclosure of her role then or now would be extremely embarrassing.
snip
The Washington Post reported that "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."
snip
In its editorial hailing the appointment of Fitzgerald, a "respected career prosecutor," the paper advocated that he exercise "true operational independence" and use the "full powers of a special counsel, including the ability to seek Congressional intervention if he finds his investigation blocked by a government official or agency."
Now, however, Fitzgerald finds his investigation blocked by the Times. The Times' curious position is that the paper wanted a special counsel investigation but doesn't want to cooperate with it. This shows how the probe has boomeranged on the Times. Initially, the Times believed that an inquiry would reveal some plot involving administration officials using the Novak column to damage Wilson by going after his wife. This is what many on the liberal-left suspected, and that is why then-Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle called for a special-counsel investigation.
snip
Turning the case upside down, Times executive editor Bill Keller insists, with a straight face, that, by going to jail, Miller is affirming the ability of the press to expose government cover-ups and wrongdoing. Keller charged that Miller's jailing is "likely to serve future cover-ups of information. Anybody who believes government should be aggressively watched feels a chill up their spine today." In fact, Miller is refusing to testify in a case that the Times said was about alleged criminal activity by government officials. By the Times own account, Miller is covering up for an official suspected of violating the law. This is why David Ignatius of the Washington Post wrote, in a column entitled, "Bad Case for a Fight," that "This is a case in which the sources weren't disclosing wrongdoing by others but were allegedly doing wrong themselves by blowing the cover of a CIA officer."
snip
The paper's defense of Miller is untenable. The paper isn't protecting a source; it is protecting its own reporter's curious conduct in a special-counsel investigation that the Times brought on itself.
You are going from one thread to another spreading doom and gloom. Tell me one single story(lie) created by liberals and their media whores that did any "real" damage to President Bush, his administration, or his policies, just one story(lie). There is none. This story is not different, like the many other stories(lies) before it, liberals and their media whores who always declare early victories, will end up in a crushing defeat. We are the one who burned the media one million time in the last 4 1/2 years. Remember that we have destroyed Dan Rather the king of liberal press.
Not spreading doom and gloom, merely noting that if Rove had never even spoken to this guy, there would be no story connecting him to Plame. There would be no e-mail, no matter how inocuous it may turn out to be. There would be no lawyeresque statement needed about how he did not actually say Plame's name. No matter how this eventually plays out, at the very least it is a distraction the White House doesn't need. There is no reason any administration official should ever talk privately to hostile members of the press.
"If there is a leak in my administration, I want to know who it is and if the person violated the law, the person will be taken care of." GWB Sept. 2003. I believe that GWB painted himself into a corner with this statement. Either he knew that Rove talked to Cooper and he was crafting a Clinton-esque statement, or he didn't know and Rove stuck him in this position.
There is wiggle room here. Rove probably didn't violate the law. W can pull a Clinton and dodge the issue by playing that card. I submit that is the "weenie" way out. I'm as sick of hypocritical Republicans as I am of corrupt Democrats. If it was wrong for Clinton, it's wrong for Bush.
Troll?
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