Posted on 07/17/2005 9:00:56 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
A reporter at the center of the Valerie Plame investigation said Sunday that the media hullabaloo over her identification as a CIA employee may turn out to be much ado about nothing.
Asked what he thought the ultimate impact of the scandal would be, Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper told NBC's "Meet the Press," At times I think this is a very big case. At times I think this is politics as usual at not going to be that big a case at all."
Coalition
Cooper said that the grand jury probing the case, which heard his testimony on Thursday, was taking a hands-on role in the investigation.
"I thought this grand jury was very interested in the case," he told NBC. "A lot of the questions I answered were posed by them as opposed to the prosecutors. I thought they were very involved."
At one point "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert pressed Cooper on whether his decision to reveal his sources to the grand jury would compromise his journalistic integrity, asking if it would be "a longterm problem for your magazine."
But Russert never mentioned his own decision to testify about his sources before the grand jury last August, a cave-in that took place nearly a year before Cooper's.
According to the Washington Post, Russert faced questions on what he said "when Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, phoned him last summer [2003]."
Cooper started this whole thing to set up Rove. His claim about an organized attack on Wilson by outing his wife is fantasy.
Sometimes I think Cooper is a big nutcase.....other times I think he's just journalism as usual.
How can you tell?????
this makes a humble or urgent plea to the question:
Who is next...?
They lost yet again, but they will be back. The rats are against the wall, and have no choice.
They always come back.
they didn't "go after" his wife. the fact that his wife was the person who got him involved in his little africa mission, and he then came back and lied to try and tear down the administration, makes her a legitimate part of the story.
No one in the administration had anything out for Wilson's wife. She and hubby flatter themselves by such thinking.
How do you interpret Novak's article?
Right after... I heard Woodward & Bernstein compare the MSM attacks on Rove to Watergate.
I almost drove my fist through the wall... AGAIN!
It's a little early in the morning to be mixing alcohol with pipedreams, isn't it?
No.
No.
No, again. :)
The media and the Democrats thought they smelled blood. They did, their own.
Plame was a part of this case. Novak's article was part of an investigation as to how Wilson, who was seemingly not qualified, got the Niger job. And then came back to smear the administration. The explanation for that was simple - his wife, a WMD analyst for the CIA, got him the job. Not Cheney, not Tenet; Plame.
When it all comes out in the wash, it will be clear that Wilson lied repeatedly, his wife helped him do that, he may have outed his own wife (see the David Corn article), and that no one in the Bush Administration committed any crime.
Some reporters may get indicted, but since the press coverage determines whether a situation is "another Watergate," we can be certain that crimes by the press will NEVER rise to that level.
Congressman Billybob
Spin the White House staff wheel and see who's next. :)
The deceptive web they weave will entangle them in their own dark manipulations.
yes. if Plame didn't want to be part of this case, she should have simply done her job at Langley everyday and not put her 2 cents in to push sending her husband to Niger.
To be honest, its Plame who should be investigated here. And that may well be why Judith Miller is in jail.
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