JOE WILSON: ’The President should fire Rove’!

The Ambassador Strikes Back, Answers to the Right Wing Spin Machine *** A BRAD BLOG EXCLUSIVE ***

Ambassador Joseph Wilson fired back today at the Rightwing Spin Machine, which, having been issued marching orders late yesterday in a set of talking points from the RNC, is once again hoping to distract from the potentially treasonous crimes that George W. Bush’s top political operative and Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove is being alleged to have committed.

In a phone discussion early this afternoon, Wilson told The BRAD BLOG in no uncertain terms that "the President should fire Rove."

He told us that he’d be appearing on NBC’s Today Show tomorrow morning and would be repeating that call.

As well, he told The BRAD BLOG that he planned to read a letter on air which he received from Bush’s father, President George H.W. Bush shortly after an article of his was printed in the San Jose Weekly News, on October 13, 2002, in which Wilson related his concerns about the pitfalls of the approach to Iraq being taken at the time by both the U.N. and the U.S.

In reply to that article, Wilson said that the former President wrote that he had "read your article and I agree with a lot of it."

Additionally, Wilson explained, Bush 41’s own National Security Advisor, Brett Scowcroft had contacted him to ask whether he "could walk on over to the White House with the letter" at the time. Which apparently he did.

Wilson also had sent the article to Bush 41’s Secretary of State, James Baker.

"None of them responded saying you’re a Democratic partisan hack and your views suck," said Wilson.

The above points are notable, because armed with those RNC talking point, Rush Limbaugh, Fox "News" and Friends have today kicked into overdrive smearing and lying about Wilson, claiming that he was against the Iraq War from the get-go.

If fact, Wilson, who was in charge of the Embassy in Iraq during the first Gulf War under Bush 41 (he was the last American to speak personally with Saddam Hussein before the war begain, and was responsible for taking care of some 125 Americans who had sought refuge in the American Embassy there when they were not allowed by Saddam to leave the country just prior to the war), says that it was "a full eight months" after he was sent by the CIA to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium there, "before I had said anything publicly about what America should consider in regard to a war with Iraq."

That concern was expressed in the October 2002, San Jose Weekly News editorial which apparently George W. Bush’s own father and National Security Advisor tended to agree with. Wilson’s trip to Niger occurred a full eight months earlier, in February of that same year.

We asked him if he had heard Fox "News’" John Gibson make his deplorable and irresponsible statement yesterday which said that "Karl Rove should receive a medal," because Wilson’s wife, covert CIA asset Valerie Plame, "should have been outted."

"Where I come from," slurred Gibson, "we do not want secret spy masters pulling the puppet strings in the background.

Gibson’s "logic", such that he has any, seems to be based on the unsupported claims that Plame -- or Wilson’s "little wifey" as Gibson condescendingly referred to her -- was "pulling the puppet strings" of national policy from her covert position in the CIA by sending Wilson, to Niger. That was, in Gibson’s false claim, because Wilson, "was opposed to the War in Iraq, opposed to Bush policy, and pointedly and loudly said so."

No, he didn’t, Mr. Gibson. Never mind those pesky facts. It’s only Fox "News" you work for, so we realize such facts are hardly relevant to you receiving your paycheck there.

"That is something that should be out in the open," blathered Gibson, "And the person doing it should be identified and should own up to it. So Rove should get a medal, if he did do what he says he didn’t do."

In the meantime, despite such pesky facts, the wingnuts also continue to claim that Plame was, in fact, not even a covert asset at the time of her outting.

The BRAD BLOG has learned from several sources, as also confirmed in Time magazine that Plame was indeed a "NOC", a nonofficial covert agent, the most valuable and secretive of CIA assets.

In regard to whether she was covert or not at the time of her outting by Rove, Bob Novak or whoever his "two senior administration sources" were, Wilson said, "What I can say is, that the CIA looked at the evidence of what had happened and referred the case to the Justice Department. That means that the CIA may think that a crime has been committed."

On Rightwing Hackery hoping to cynically deflect from the seriousness of the potentially treasonous crime committed by claiming that "Wilson lied" about his wife’s involvement in sending him to Niger, Wilson says, "In actual fact, all I’ve done is repeat what the CIA itself has said since July 22nd, 2003 as reported initially in Newsday by Knut Royce and Tim Phelps."

A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked "alongside" the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.

But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. "They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising," he said. "There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason," he said. "I can’t figure out what it could be."

"The CIA said [my wife] was not the person to have authorized my trip. They’ve repeated that time and time again."

And the Bush Apologists, who suddenly don’t seem to care all that much about National Security after all, keep repeating the opposite. Time and time again.

WSJ.com OpinionJournal

Karl Rove, Whistleblower
He told the truth about Joe Wilson.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005 12:01 a.m.

Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove's head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we'd say the White House political guru deserves a prize--perhaps the next iteration of the "Truth-Telling" award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud.

For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real "whistleblower" in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He's the one who warned Time's Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson's credibility. He's the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn't a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove.

Media chants aside, there's no evidence that Mr. Rove broke any laws in telling reporters that Ms. Plame may have played a role in her husband's selection for a 2002 mission to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking uranium ore in Niger. To be prosecuted under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Mr. Rove would had to have deliberately and maliciously exposed Ms. Plame knowing that she was an undercover agent and using information he'd obtained in an official capacity. But it appears Mr. Rove didn't even know Ms. Plame's name and had only heard about her work at Langley from other journalists.

On the "no underlying crime" point, moreover, no less than the New York Times and Washington Post now agree. So do the 36 major news organizations that filed a legal brief in March aimed at keeping Mr. Cooper and the New York Times's Judith Miller out of jail.

"While an investigation of the leak was justified, it is far from clear--at least on the public record--that a crime took place," the Post noted the other day. Granted the media have come a bit late to this understanding, and then only to protect their own, but the logic of their argument is that Mr. Rove did nothing wrong either.

The same can't be said for Mr. Wilson, who first "outed" himself as a CIA consultant in a melodramatic New York Times op-ed in July 2003. At the time he claimed to have thoroughly debunked the Iraq-Niger yellowcake uranium connection that President Bush had mentioned in his now famous "16 words" on the subject in that year's State of the Union address.

Mr. Wilson also vehemently denied it when columnist Robert Novak first reported that his wife had played a role in selecting him for the Niger mission. He promptly signed up as adviser to the Kerry campaign and was feted almost everywhere in the media, including repeat appearances on NBC's "Meet the Press" and a photo spread (with Valerie) in Vanity Fair.

But his day in the political sun was short-lived. The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report last July cited the note that Ms. Plame had sent recommending her husband for the Niger mission. "Interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD [Counterproliferation Division] employee, suggested his name for the trip," said the report.

The same bipartisan report also pointed out that the forged documents Mr. Wilson claimed to have discredited hadn't even entered intelligence channels until eight months after his trip. And it said the CIA interpreted the information he provided in his debrief as mildly supportive of the suspicion that Iraq had been seeking uranium in Niger.

About the same time, another inquiry headed by Britain's Lord Butler delivered its own verdict on the 16 words: "We conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that 'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-founded."

In short, Joe Wilson hadn't told the truth about what he'd discovered in Africa, how he'd discovered it, what he'd told the CIA about it, or even why he was sent on the mission. The media and the Kerry campaign promptly abandoned him, though the former never did give as much prominence to his debunking as they did to his original accusations. But if anyone can remember another public figure so entirely and thoroughly discredited, let us know.

If there's any scandal at all here, it is that this entire episode has been allowed to waste so much government time and media attention, not to mention inspire a "special counsel" probe. The Bush Administration is also guilty on this count, since it went along with the appointment of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in an election year in order to punt the issue down the road. But now Mr. Fitzgerald has become an unguided missile, holding reporters in contempt for not disclosing their sources even as it becomes clearer all the time that no underlying crime was at issue.

As for the press corps, rather than calling for Mr. Rove to be fired, they ought to be grateful to him for telling the truth.

Some background info from 2003:

Excerpts:

"Valerie Plame-Wilson was never a covert operative in terms of what American spy-thrillers perceive them to be: trench-coated spies skulking around the back alleys of Berlin or Moscow, meeting their equally secretive counterparts and gathering top secret information.

Plame-Wilson did her "spying" during diplomatic parties as she plied half-drunk diplomats with enough martinis that they would be enticed into revealing confidential information that could be used by her employer.

Wilson's op-ed piece might have ended up as a "do-do" sheet for someone's birdcage (a fitting end for the Washington Post) except for the curiosity of Novak who wondered why Bush-43 would employ a very partisan Clinton hack on a mission that could possibly embarrass the White House if handled wrong or inappropriately leaked to the media, since Wilson was both a vocal opponent of George W. Bush and an avid supporter of Al Gore, Jr. during the 2000 election. (Bush-43 has a reputation of holding his friends close and cutting his detractors off at the knees.)

Hiring a detractor to undertake such a sensitive mission for the Administration just didn't make sense to Novak. And, because it didn't, Novak called a Bush-43 official he knew and raised the question why Wilson had been picked to go to Niger.

Note: according to Novak, he made the call to the official, not the other way around.

When Novak voiced the question, the contact admitted that Wilson had been recommended by a CIA employee (not a covert operative)--the diplomat's wife. It was an offhand remark, Novak said in his rebuttal argument in the Washington Post on Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2003, because everyone inside the beltway knew that Wilson's wife was a mid-level administrative official for the CIA at Langley.

(The "covert" work done by the petite, 40-ish very attractive Valerie Plame Wilson, as suggested above, was done on the arm of her ambassador husband in his official capacity as a U.S. ambassador in the Arab world. Plame-Wilson played the stereotyped dumb blonde wife as she flirted with Arab leaders and gathered tidbits of dropped information for the CIA. The only thing that revealing Valerie Plame's name may have done for Wilson's career is to make him ineligible for any foreign service assignments should Hillary win the White House, since the ambassador will no longer be trusted by any foreign ministry anywhere in the world.)

By helping the Democrats now, Wilson very likely hopes to secure a berth as an under-Secretary of State in a new Clinton administration."

- - - - - - - -

"Inside Langley, everyone knew that Plame-Wilson urged Tenet to hire her husband to go to Niger. One Clinton hack helping out another Clinton hack. That's how it works inside the beltway.

When Novak called the Agency to confirm that Wilson's wife engineered the assignment to Niger, the CIA official designated to brush off reporters asked Novak not to use Plame-Wilson's name--not because she was a covert operative, since she was not, but because the Agency eschews the use of anyone's name in connection with the invisible spook agency even if the person is an administrative official, which Plame-Wilson was at the time."

- - - - - - - - -

"Novak caused part of the diplomatic flap in his telltale op-ed piece when he revealed her name for the first time since he referred to her as an "operative" and not as an employee. It sounded much more "CIA-ish." The CIA maintains (probably for the scenario cited above) that Plame-Wilson is a "covered" employee whose name cannot be revealed because, they said, she was working under the guise of another agency. That agency, of course, was the State Department. Plame-Wilson's role was that of wife of an American diplomat."

News With Views

This guy has no sense of personal dignity.

Not only does he have no sense of personal dignity, he is totally lacking in integrity and decency. IMO, Valerie Plame gutted herself when she told Joe Wilson shortly after meeting him that she was a covert operative for the CIA. She had not known him long, and he was married to his second wife at the time! According to the Vanity Fair article, she came back to the States in 1997, and she and Wilson made arrangements to buy a house. Apparently they were living together at the time, because he told her 'she would move into the house as his wife...and his brother had to explain to her that it was better financially to buy a home than to rent.' His divorce from his 2nd wife became final in 1998. If their twins are 4 or 5 years old; I do not believe she was 'undercover' for at least 5 years (probably more than that) and therefore, no one did anything wrong if they did give her name to a reporter. This is nothing but another smear campaign of Democrats, and I hope people see them for the deceitful and dishonest hypocrites they are. My blood pressure goes off the chart when I think of Ted Kennedy, Hillary, John Kerry, Barney Franks, Jim McDermott and the other cheats and liars who have never been held accountable for their actions, and the MSM aids and abets them in their deceit!

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