Posted on 07/14/2005 5:29:59 PM PDT by blogblogginaway
NY TIMES CLAIMS EXCLUSIVE NEW DETAILS OF EVENTS SURROUNDING CIA LEAK, SOURCES TELL DRUDGE... DEVELOPING LATE OUT OF WASHINGTON... MORE...
"The Slimes will flog this story as long as possible. I don't care a rat's behind who talked about Valerie Plame, I want to know why the MSM and the Demagogic Party are so eager to undermine genuine national security by flogging non-stories while ignoring all the truly important issues that need attention, such as crushing Islamo-fascists everywhere we can get at them. "
Because this is a Democrat tradition. They are using the template of Vietnam and Watergate. Problem is Amrica isn't buying what they are selling.
he admitted she wasn't covert at the time the novak story was published. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1443066/posts
Sir Walter Scott once stated, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."
What about 5 years before?
Thank you!
By Michael Isikoff and Eve Conant
Newsweek
Aug. 9 issue - Secretary of State Colin Powell recently testified before a federal grand jury investigating the leak of the identity of CIA covert officer Valerie Plame, NEWSWEEK has learned. Powell's appearance on July 16 is the latest sign the probe being conducted by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is highly active and broader than has been publicly known. Sources close to the case say prosecutors were interested in discussions Powell had while with President George W. Bush on a trip to Africa in July 2003, just before Plame's identity was leaked to columnist Robert Novak. A senior State Department official confirmed that, while on the trip, Powell had a department intelligence report on whether Iraq had sought uranium from Niger—a claim Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, discounted after a trip to Niger on behalf of the CIA. The report stated that Wilson's wife had attended a meeting at the CIA where the decision was made to send Wilson to Niger, but it did not mention her last name or undercover status. At the time, White House officials were seeking to discredit Wilson, who had become a public critic of the Bush administration. There's no indication Powell is a subject of the probe; the department official said the secretary never talked to Novak about the Plame matter. Still, sources say the decision to question Powell shows the thoroughness with which Fitzgerald is conducting the probe—and that knowledge about Plame was circulated at the highest levels of the administration. Though most lawyers thought the investigation was nearly complete, sources say Fitzgerald has recently recalled witnesses before the grand jury—apparently to ask about issues raised by a new Senate intelligence committee report that seemed to contradict some of Wilson's public statements about Plame's role in his trip to Niger.
You're very welcome. :-)
Sat Jul 2nd
NEW YORK Adding to the growing intrigue in the Plame case, the grand jury investigating the leak of the covert CIA operative’s name subpoenaed has a wide range of White House documents, including records of telephone calls from Air Force One and information relating to an internal working group dealing with Iraq, government sources confirmed to CNN on Friday.
“We are complying fully with the request from the Department of Justice,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters Friday.
Government sources told CNN the federal grand jury was seeking any information about contacts between White House officials and more than two dozen reporters. The grand jury also asked for a transcript of a briefing by former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.
The subpoenaed information regarding telephone calls to and from Air Force One, sources said, covered July 7-12, while the president was on a trip to Africa. The requested transcript was from a briefing during that trip as well.
...
Many of the documents subpoenaed Friday relate to the White House Iraq Group, a little-known task force. Newsweek reported that the group was created in August 2002.
The Newsweek report cites an earlier Washington Post article that lists senior political adviser Karl Rove, Bush advisers Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney among the group’s members.
Ouch! That's gonna leave a mark. I just hate it when I get behind on FR reads.
"The NY Times is now going to try to shape their "facts" around the info that's already out in an attempt to get Miller out."
Yep. Rush and many of us have been wondering why JM went to jail - if Rove was her source, she had an out, just like Cooper and, she hadn't even published a story; therefore, she either didn't have a source and/or a story, was protecting the source (probably a BIG Dim IMHO, or the source was herself.
Maybe the Slimes told her - go to the slammer, it'll get you/us lots of publicity, you can play the victim to that mean ol Rove, we'll/you'll get the exclusive and we'll give you LOTS of $$$$$s.
This indicates to me that the GJ members themselves are pursuing something on their own.
Per Brit Hume interviewee today:
In Wilson's book the states that both he and Plame came back to the U.S. in 1997. The way the applicable law is written, you have to be on a foreign assignment within the last 5 years or there is no crime. 2003-1997 is six years so no indictment is possible for the "outing" of Plame.
THE SNIP:
Women's Action for New Directions (WAND) and-WILL
Year: 2003-2004
Issue: Budget, Spending and Taxes
Website: http://www.wand.org
"WAND was founded in 1982 as Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament. With the end of the cold war, we became Women's Action for New Directions, and have been dedicating our energies to redirect federal budget priorities away from the military and toward human needs."
The following is filled with organizations WAND Supports: *WAND / WOMEN TAKE ACTION! BULLETIN BOARD * Week of June 17, 2002
According to Wilson, the CIA paid his expenses to send him to Niger, although his ‘time was offered pro bono,’ to verify Africa's alleged trade to ‘Iraq’s non-conventional weapons program.’ After eight days in Niger, he concluded the answer was no. Saddam Hussein had not tried to obtain yellowcake uranium. As he wrote, ‘in short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired.’ Then Wilson claimed members of the Bush Administration retaliated by outing his wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA operative to columnist Robert Novak as the person whose recommendation helped garner him the mission and subsequently launched an ongoing criminal investigation that led directly into the White House West Wing--who illegally leaked Wilson’s wife name?
A whirlwind of media appearances followed. Wilson appeared on the international stage making his case, including a photograph taken with his wife camouflaged in a scarf and sunglasses in Vanity Fair, followed by the May release of his book: The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity. President Bush called for a thorough investigation and both the President and Vice President Cheney have been questioned. The year-long criminal investigation is pending.
But things have changed, and in the world of politics perception and reality are not always as they appear. Not everyone and their views fit nicely in one box.
The bipartisan Senate Select Committee Intelligence Report challenged the veracity of Wilson’s claims finding instead that Plame had ‘offered up’ her husband’s name for the Niger trip. In an interview with CFP, Wilson remained definite, ‘she was not in the decision-making loop.’ Although the Bush Administration conceded that the 16 words involving Iraq’s attempts to obtain uranium delivered in the State of the Union Address should not have been included, the British uphold that their intelligence was not based on forged documents, as Wilson claims. Still Wilson maintains, ‘They [the British] are saying that they had separate intelligence, that they were comfortable with before the document came to light.’
Has this become an issue of semantics interwoven within the serious reality of war? He said? She said? They said? Political views assorted with facts? Wilson is confident, ‘we’re getting the facts out.’
Last Wednesday, during the Democratic National Convention, at a 'Take Back America Debate,' Joe Wilson with Dennis Kucinich, Gary Hart and Barbara Lee took their seats facing a room with a smattering of scattered empty seats, including three rows reserved for the press. The day before Howard Dean and Michael Moore appeared on the same second floor dais where it was standing room only, with a hopeful crowd in a line winding outside the Royal Sonesta Hotel. Their hopes were dashed when the scheduled room ultimately couldn't accommodate them all.
Minutes before the speeches and debate began, former foreign secretary, Robin Cook, who resigned from the British House of Commons in objection to Prime Minister Tony Blair's role in the Iraq war was singled out and he rose within the audience to a standing ovation. Yells of ‘Bravo’ abounded.
When Wilson took the microphone minutes into his speech he declared, 'On my road to Boston I was ambushed, I was ambushed by the Republican National Committee… You’ve seen it in the Wall Street Journal… right wing blogs… I’ve been accused of betraying my country and of being a liar.'
It's no secret that Wilson, self-described as ‘Center Left,’ has taken an active role supporting John Kerry’s presidential bid. Wilson met Kerry once when he was ‘invited in March of 2003 to sit on the newly formed foreign policy advisory committee.’ These committees are formed in part to determine policies that one would pursue if ‘the candidate were to win the election.’ This Presidential election is unique, as foreign policy will play a major role. Yet Wilson ‘never anticipated’ that he ‘would have an overtly political role.'
Wilson says his ‘views’ are his ‘views’ and the ongoing criminal probe has ‘nothing to do’ with his position on the war. "It was never, ‘No Force, No How.’ It was always if you needed to use force, use force for the right reasons, but don't do anything stupid. But I always understood that the only way you were going to get Saddam’s attention was by the credible threat of force. Words in themselves were not going to do it.’ On July 31, 2003, The UK Telegraph reported one of Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday’s, last conversations, ‘This time I think the Americans are serious. Bush is not like Clinton. I think this is the end.’ And Wilson concurred, "In fact it did [serve U.S. interests]. In fact when we got the UN Security Council Resolution and we began to mobilize, we got exactly what we needed. We got free access to the sites.’
Although Wilson does not see himself as a Whistleblower ‘in the classic sense’ because he ‘was not an employee of the U.S. government,’ why are some whistleblowers revered, while others are reviled, as evidenced during the Clinton years?
Wilson agreed, ‘it’s certainly I think a charge that has often been made. It’s not more acceptable in a Democratic Administration than it is in a Republican Administration.’ ‘It makes people fearful of their government and I don’t think it’s very healthy for the long-term survival of the greatest system of governance that the world has ever seen.’
Michael Isikoff and Eve Conant in Newsweek’s August 9th Issue report, ‘Colin Powell recently testified before a federal grand jury investigating the leak of the identity of CIA covert officer Valerie Plame…. sources say [Prosecutor] Fitzgerald has recently asked witnesses before the grand jury--apparently to ask about issues raised by a new Senate intelligence committee report that seemed to contradict some of Wilson’s public statements about Plame’s role in his trip to Niger.’
In a quote Wilson attributed to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, "You can take your humiliation now, or take your humiliation later." As the facts emerge, and the criminal probe continues, history will decide.
http://tinyurl.com/dzjqg
...tick tock tick tock..!
Wow, they did a good job of burying the real lead--that it's WILSON who has something to really worry about here.
DRUDGE: Rove Reportedly Held Phone Talk on C.I.A. Officer with Novak
Unless you are a republican.
Tue Jun 22, 2004
Escaping the Plame ... for now
Another minor, but somewhat surprising development in the Washington Post for aficionados of the Valerie Plame Wilson grand jury investigation:
A Washington Post reporter was questioned yesterday by the special prosecutor investigating the possibly illegal leak of a CIA employee's identity by Bush administration officials.
State Department reporter Glenn Kessler submitted to a tape-recorded interview that will be provided to a grand jury investigating the disclosure last summer of CIA employee Valerie Plame's name to columnist Robert D. Novak.
Kessler said he agreed to be interviewed about two phone conversations he had with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, at Libby's urging. At the prosecutor's request, Libby and other White House aides have signed waivers saying they agree to release reporters they have talked to from keeping confidential any disclosures about Plame.
Kessler said he told prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald that, during conversations last July 12 and July 18, Libby did not mention Plame or her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, or Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger to investigate whether Iraq tried to buy uranium there.
In October, The Post reported that "on July 12, two days before Novak's column, a Post reporter was told by an administration official that the White House had not paid attention to the former ambassador's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction."
When I first suggested calling on the Plame leak suspects to cancel their agreements of confidentiality with journalists, I had little hope that the FBI would take me up on the idea, much less that officials like Libby would comply, and reporters actually testify. But now they have, and hopefully it's moved the investigation forward in some way -- even if Kessler wasn't kind enough to place the smoking gun in Libby's hand.
Now, for everyone playing "Plamemania!" at home, you can ask the same questions that special prosecutor Fitzgerald is probably kicking around with his staff: If Libby didn't talk to Glenn Kessler on July 12 about Joe Wilson and his wife, who did leak the information to a Post reporter on that day? And who was the reporter?
Come to think of it, the WaPo originally admitted that the Plame prosecutors wanted to talk to Kessler and fellow reporter Walter Pincus. Did Pincus record an interview as well? Did he speak to Libby or any other Bushite official on July 12?
http://tinyurl.com/bttda
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