Posted on 07/13/2005 3:28:51 PM PDT by Jean S
Please allow me to share with you some of the things I dont know.
I dont know what Valerie Plames status with the CIA was in July 2003 when Robert Novak wrote his column mentioning that she was an agency operative and had recommended her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, for a fact-finding trip to Niger. Was Plame a covert agent then? If not, how recently had she been a covert agent?
I dont know.
I also dont know whats going on with The New York Times Judith Miller.
Since top presidential adviser Karl Rove and top vice-presidential adviser Lewis Libby signed strongly worded waivers releasing all reporters from any pledges of confidentiality, why hasnt Miller testified? Does that mean her source was someone else who has not signed a confidentiality waiver?
I dont know.
I also dont know why Miller is involved in all this at all, since she never wrote a story about it. Was she some sort of carrier, as is now being theorized, and actually helped spread word of Plames identity?
I dont know.
For that matter, I dont know what Time magazines Matthew Cooper was doing either. Roves lawyer says Rove signed the waiver about a year and a half ago and has never changed it. Why was that waiver not acceptable to Cooper for 18 months and then, on the brink of going to jail, Cooper agreed to testify?
I dont know.
I dont know anything about the role the other journalists caught up in the case Tim Russert, Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler played. Apparently on the basis of waivers signed by sources, they all gave information to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. What did they say?
I dont know.
And of course I also dont know what is happening with Novak. Given Fitzgeralds aggressiveness in dealing with all figures in this case, Novak must have made some sort of accommodation. Did he testify? Refuse to testify?
I dont know.
I also dont know why many in the press, most notably The New York Times, were once so enthusiastic about the Fitzgerald investigation. On Dec. 30, 2003, the Times published an editorial headlined The Right Thing, At Last, which said, After an egregiously long delay, Attorney General John Ashcroft finally did the right thing yesterday when he recused himself from the investigation into who gave the name of a CIA operative to columnist Robert Novak. Why did the Times do that?
I dont know.
And then, why did the Times change its position and condemn Fitzgerald who, the paper said, cant even say whether a crime has been committed. Why would the Times say that, when it had once been so sure that a crime had been committed?
I dont know.
I also dont know about the actions of Joseph Wilson. For example, in his book, The Politics of Truth, he wrote, The assertion that Valerie had played any substantive role in the decision to ask me to go to Niger was false on the face of it. ...Valerie could not and would not if she could have had anything to do with the CIA decision to ask me to travel to [Niger]. But later, the Senate Intelligence Committee, in its bipartisan report, said that interviews and documents provided to the committee indicate that [Wilsons] wife, a CPD employee [a reference to the CIAs Counterproliferation Division], suggested his name for the trip. The CPD reports officer told committee staff that the former ambassadors wife offered up his name and a memorandum to the deputy chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002, from [Wilsons] wife says, my husband has good relations with both [Nigers 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. So why did Wilson say his wife played no substantive role in it?
I dont know.
I also dont know why Wilsons defenders accuse the White House of smearing him. What was the smear? Was it a smear to say that Wilson got the Niger assignment, at least in part, because his wife recommended him? If so, then the Senate committee smeared him, too. If not, what is the smear?
I dont know.
And finally, I dont know about Karl Roves public statements on the case. Last year on CNN, he said of Plame, I didnt know her name and didnt leak her name. Even if he hadnt passed on Plames name just mentioned her as Wilsons wife why not just say nothing, especially since the whole thing is under criminal investigation?
I dont know.
The bottom line is, some of the most critical facts in the whole Wilson/Plame/CIA matter are just not known, at least not known by anyone outside of the Fitzgerald investigation.
But dont worry. At least we can be sure that we will someday know them, right?
I dont know.
York is a White House correspondent for National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week.
E-mail: byork@thehill.com
Add this:
c. Matt Cooper is married to Mandy Grunwald, a really close friend and sycophant for Hillary Clinton.
Could it be Pinkus?
Good info, thanks.
If I understand this fisaco, the special prosecutor started down the road that linking Plame's name to Wilson's trip to Africa may (MAY) have been against 50 USC 421. As you note, if any one of those elements isn't there, then there is no violation of THAT statute.
But there would be obstruction of justice if any of the witnesses withheld or misrepresented evidence. Requiring testimony of Cooper and Miller may be required to reach a conclusion on a related charge.
The special prosecutor filed a paper with the court that said the primary investigation was concluded some time ago. But the issue of compelling the testimony of Cooper and Miller was unsettled until a recent SCOTUS ruling.
Surely, you are not contending that those 16 words weren't true?
(U) At the NIE coordination meeting.....CIA, DIA and DOE analysts all said that at the time the NIE was written, they agreed with the NIE assessment that Iraq was attempting to procure uranium from Africa. Some analysts said, in retrospect, the language should have been more qualified than it was, but they generally agreed with the text.
And they'll never let up on him, even after he leaves office in 2009. They will work to have him shipped to the Hague to stand trial for war crimes for as long as he lives.
I am appalled at the number of lies and liars in this whole charade....but w/a single goal: to destroy the President and regain their coveted power.
How limited (if at all) is the line of questioning allowed for a prosecutor in this sort of case? As in is it likely that Miller is refusing to testify not so much to protect who revealed Plume as sending Wilson to Niger, but fear of tangential questioning that could reveal that someone (oh, say maybe a Plame or Wilson?) illegally leaked other (far more serious) info in the past? We've had five years of some damaging and/or misleading leaks from CIA and the State Dept.
UNLESS testimony opened up a trail to other unauthorized leaks of national security information to the media.
Which is exactly what many suspect is the case.
For those who haven't read the text of 50 USC 421:
Section 421. Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources
(a) Disclosure of information by persons having or having had
access to classified information that identifies covert agent
Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified
information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses
any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not
authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the
information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the
United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert
agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be
fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or
both.
(b) Disclosure of information by persons who learn identity of
covert agents as result of having access to classified
information
Whoever, as a result of having authorized access to classified
information, learns the identify of a covert agent and
intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert
agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified
information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies
such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative
measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship
to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned
not more than five years, or both.
(c) Disclosure of information by persons in course of pattern of
activities intended to identify and expose covert agents
Whoever, in the course of a pattern of activities intended to
identify and expose covert agents and with reason to believe that
such activities would impair or impede the foreign intelligence
activities of the United States, discloses any information that
identifies an individual as a covert agent to any individual not
authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the
information disclosed so identifies such individual and that the
United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such
individual's classified intelligence relationship to the United
States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than
three years, or both.
(d) Imposition of consecutive sentences
A term of imprisonment imposed under this section shall be
consecutive to any other sentence of imprisonment.
Not sure who I'd most prefer to see walked out in handcuffs: Joe Wilson and wife, Richard Clarke, or a handfull of reporters.
Almost any line of questioning is allowed in a grand jury proceeding.
Good. Very good.
Please accept my apology for wasting bandwidth.
Where did you get that information? If the reference is to the two sources cited by Novak, one was "in the Bush administration", the other was "in the CIA".
Novak made no reference to the White House and has subsequently denied that Rove was one of his sources ("it's not who they think it is").
Indeed. I have heard that Walter Pincus, for one, was a cocktail party circuit buddy of Wilson/Plame.
I think Novak's source was somebody in the WH, probably a low-level person. He did say that his source was not particularly partisan.
My guess is that Judith Miller spilled the beans on Plame, as "everybody knew it" -- quite common knowledge in her circles, and it spread around the WH that "Wilson's wife" worked for the CIA. They didn't know her name and, frankly, didn't care. They were outraged that she managed to get her partisan husband on this silly trip.
It may be that Wilson was the genesis of all of this. He wasn't Novak's source, but he may have strutted around Washington, telling all of his friends how he became anti-Bush flavor of the month.
That's kind of amusing...since we know a) that Niger had previously sold 100 tons of yellowcake to Iraq; b) that Iraq (Aziz?) was in Niger actively TRYING to buy more; c) that the CIA analysts which decided that it was unlikely that Iraq was seeking more was based on the theory that Iraq already had more than enough.
Hahahahaha!!!
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