Posted on 07/17/2005 12:56:04 PM PDT by Mike Darancette
There have been many musings about L'Affair Palme but few actual date put to events.
I am posting this request for help in putting these events. I've posted what I believe to be the chronological order events with any real dates that I can discover.
Can Anyone Help?? (all dates 2003)
Seems like Foggy Bottom was shoping their memo to cover their a$$es since Wilson was one of their own.
Plame.
Debacle.
07/16: David Corn article (first reference to Plame's "covert" status
The next date to list would be Valerie Plame's memo to her Section that Joe get the job. Or, it would be her staff meeting when the subject was discussed, whichever first occurred.
The magic State Department memo you list was dated the day before Wilson's article in the Times. But Times articles are usually available on the Net the night before. So, the State Department could have ginned up the memo that refers to "Valerie Plame" AFTER the Wilson article and in response to it, even though the facial date is after it.
I believe it has been established that Rove was not on the Africa trip. So whatever Powell was doing on that plane to make his Department seem less disloyal would not have reached Rove immediately.
Plus, your list would be more valuable if the money quotes that are now known from each transaction were put in after the date and communication. For example, 07/05 - State Department Memo on Wilson - refers to his wife as "Valerie Wilson"
Those are my suggestions.
Congressman Billybob
Corn is important because back in Febriary he had asked Wilson to write an article for the Nation. They had lunch back then and Corn was particularly interested in Wilson's "establishment" credentials. Given how long it takes to right an article of any length and with any research one must assume that the piece was in process 7 to 10 days ahead of time.
6 May 2003; after meeting Wilson on a "panel", Nicolas Kristof of the NYTimes authors the first article on Wilson's trip to Niger without disclosing Wilson's name.
12 June 2003; Walter Pinkus of the Washington Post writes about Wilson trip to Niger. It is later disclosed that Wilson leaked the story to Pinkus.
Is May 6 the Kristof article publication date? Because the interview for the article happened over breakfast at a conference. At breakfast were Wilson, Kristof and Wilson's wife. BUT I DON'T HAVE THE BREAKFAST DATE.
* When did Wilson post his wife's 'secret agent name' of Valerie Plame on his own website, and when was it shut down, and why?
* When did Cooper get his blanket release from his 'source' and why did he make the acrimonious acknowledgment of it 18 months later, when he re-asked, reconfirmed, and got a super-duper, personal, gold leafed repeat moments before going to jail?
Do you have a source? I must have missed this piece of information.
Why is it important? Because in October Kristoff wrote that Plame was laready non covert because of being exposed by Aldrich Ames. But I still cannot figure out how he got this information from the CIA. However, Mrs. Wilson could certainly have mentioned that Ames put her on the beach like many others.
Look at the W-2 forms. Covert agents do not get W-2 forms from the CIA. Usually a cover company.
I had to search back through my ping page, but here's the info with source. I got it from another FReeper, "timeout".
FReeper timeout posted:
"Amid all the wondering about who first leaked Plame's name, I've come up with another (very plausible) candidate: Nicholas Kristof, NY Times columnist.
As you'll recall, Kristof's column in May, 2003 was the first to discuss Wilson's trip to Niger (without mentioning Wilson's name).
Well, I just went back and read the Vanity Fair article which featured the now infamous photo of Wilson and Plame in their Jaguar convertible. The article says:
In early May, Wilson and Plame attended a conference sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee [no partisanship here...no sireee!], at which Wilson spoke about Iraq; one of the other panelists was the New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof. Over breakfast the next morning with Kristof and his wife, Wilson told about his trip to Niger and said Kristof could write about it, but not name him. At this point what he wanted, Wilson says, was for the government to correct the record... [I'm virtually certain the "with his wife" is referring to Wilson's wife, not Kristof's because she is mentioned as attending the conference, whereas Kristof's wife isn't].
The entire article gives one a good impression of Wilson's concerted effort to create an atmosphere where he would "just HAVE TO correct the record" by disclosing his role in the Niger trip.
But, I'd forgotten that SHE was there at the initial breakfast with Kirstof.
Now I'm wondering if KRISTOF is the source Judith Miller is protecting?!"
It seems rather clear from this that the people the N.Y. Times is supposedly protecting are Wilson and his wife.
That makes more sense (re:Miller's source) than anything I've heard. Great work!
The kudos go to Timeout.
Kristoff was probably told Miller, Miller may have told Cooper and/or Rove???
If his wife was with him, then the scenario of Valerie Wilson letting Kristoff know "off the record" that she was more than Mrs Wilson, but a potential active player in the whole WMD and Niger story - is reasonable though still speculative. She could also easily then have talked about her no longer being sent overseas because of Aldrich Ames.
Now I think about it. Her being moreorless limited to the US, may have been a factor in Mr Wilson deciding to quit the foreign service - both of them would be potentially compromised.
And the Vanity Fair article, January 17, 04 http://www.jimgilliam.com/2004/01/vanity_fairs_profile_on_joseph_wilson_and_valerie_plame.php
Here's more from that Vanity Fair article...stuff I hadn't noticed before nor heard elsewhere:
Wilson is the son of freelance journalists who lived in California and then moved around Europe while he and his brother were growing up. He went to the University of California at Santa Barbara and characterized himself as a "surf dude" with some carpentry skills. In person, he gives off a charismatic, relaxed air, and someone who was with him in Baghdad said it's easy to underestimate him. In 1974 he married his college sweetheart, Susan Otchis, and in 1976 went to work for the State Department. His postings included Niger, Togo-where his wife became pregnant with the first set of Wilson twins, Joseph and Sabrina, now 24-South Africa, and Burundi. It was in Burundi that Susan "decided she'd had about enough of me" and left him, he says. He remains on good terms with the family.I tell you, I'm beginning to think Mr. Wilson may have been more than a mere "state department employee". Can you say "double agent"?Also in Burundi, Wilson met his second wife, then the cultural counselor at the French Embassy there. They spent a year back in Washington on a congressional fellowship, during which time he worked for Al Gore, then a senator from Tennessee, and Tom Foley, then House majority whip. "It was," Wilson says, "happenstance" that he worked for two Democrats. Then he returned to Africa as deputy chief of mission in the Congo Republic, where he helped Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker set up the process that led to negotiations for the withdrawal of the Cuban and South African troops from the Angolan Civil War.
In 1988, Wilson found himself in Baghdad as the number two to Ambassador April Glaspie...
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