Posted on 07/18/2005 4:09:14 AM PDT by Tom D.
Our Titus Oates
Michael Barone
July 18, 2005
Titus Oates was once a name every schoolboy knew. Oates was the disgraced Church of England clergyman who, in 1678 and 1679, accused various English Catholics of a "popish plot" to assassinate King Charles II and take control of the government of England.
On the basis of the testimony of Oates and a few other similar characters, more than a dozen Catholics were found guilty and executed. Priests were arrested and held indefinitely, and Catholics were excluded from Parliament.
Then, as the trials went on, it became clear that Oates' detailed charges were all lies. His name became a synonym for liar. Lord Justice Scroggs, who had sentenced several of Oates' targets to death, turned on him: "I wonder at your impudence that you dare to look a court of justice in the face, after having been made to appear so notorious a villain."
Joseph Wilson is our latest Titus Oates. Wilson is the former diplomat who traveled to Niger to check out whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials there and who wrote an article for The New York Times in July 2003 asserting that he had found there were no grounds for believing that.
A few days later, columnist Robert Novak reported that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA official who had helped send him on this mission. That sparked an outcry that someone in the government had blown Plame's cover as a covert agent in violation of a 1982 law.
A special prosecutor was appointed to investigate. In September 2003, Wilson said, "It's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs." He wrote a book called "The Politics of Truth," which got rave reviews from the mainstream press, and he became a foreign policy adviser to John Kerry's campaign.
But Wilson, like Oates, lied. His Times article said he had been sent by the CIA at the request of Vice President Dick Cheney. But Cheney denies he made any such request, and former CIA Director George Tenet said the trip was initiated inside the agency.
Wilson's article said George W. Bush lied in his 2003 State of the Union Address when he said that British intelligence reported that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Africa. But Wilson's mission covered only one country, and the British government has stood by its report.
Moreover, the report that Wilson sent the CIA said that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Niger in 1998, unsuccessfully; agency analysts concluded, not unreasonably, that this strengthened rather than weakened the case against Saddam.
Wilson denied repeatedly that his wife had played any part in his assignment to Niger. But the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a report subscribed to by members of both parties, said she had suggested his name.
Titus Oates' charges were embraced by some of the leading politicians of his time. The Earl of Shaftesbury, a former minister of the king and proprietor of the Carolina colony, endorsed his charges and encouraged demonstrations in London on his behalf. Shaftesbury, an advocate of (by our standards, limited) religious tolerance, is a sympathetic figure to many, but he was also by his embrace of Oates an accomplice in judicial murder.
Since 2003, many Democrats have embraced Joseph Wilson -- just last week, Sen. Charles Schumer stood up with him at a press conference and demanded that Karl Rove's security clearance be suspended.
The Democrats who were so outraged by Plame's outing have not, to my knowledge, expressed outrage over The New York Times' May 31 story outing a CIA-run airline, a story that may have put agents in more danger than Plame faced as a result of hers. Many Democrats have uncritically assumed that whoever leaked Plame's name violated the 1982 statute, although it requires that the person doing so must have known about the agent's covert status and have named the agent deliberately to endanger her, and that the person named must have served abroad in the previous five years.
Plame, according to Wilson's book, returned from serving abroad in 1997 and, since then, was a desk officer in CIA headquarters in Langley, entering and leaving the building every day in public view.
Shaftesbury's championing of Titus Oates had grave consequences: He was confined for a time in the Tower of London and later fled to Amsterdam, where he died in exile. Schumer's and other Democrats' championing of Joseph Wilson will not have such dire consequences. But voters may want to hold them accountable for allying themselves with today's Titus Oates.
Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report and principal coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics.
©2005 Creators Syndicate
I won't be holding my breath.
Hey, its ok with me if Chuckie Schumer goes into exile.
Instead of waiting in line for hours at Northern Arizona University to get some first year prof to sign my registration/course-of-study, I used to sign "Titus Oates." (I was a history major.) No one ever noticed or complained.
LOL! A wise decision :)
:) That's wishful thinking for an early hour! LOL!
I also won't be holding my breath for the Left to turn on Wilsoon like the judge turned on Oates.
Is this where the phrase "getting the shaft" originated?
Michael Barone political analysis and predictions are almost 100% on target everytime.
Could minor Ambassador Joe Wilson himself have been the source in blowing his own Wife's cover?
It is distinctly possible, (though it may be unlikely that Joe Wilson himself directly was NY Times Judith Miller's source), since Joe Wilson himself evidently routinely bragged openly to strangers about her CIA employment, prior to such "cover" being "blown" in the press.
Here's an example of Joe's apparently routine and open bragging about Valerie being a "CIA agent," which became known directly to me over a year ago:
He certainly bragged about it per a famous and highly reliable source's (named below) account of his own face-to-face encounter with Amb. Joe Wilson prior to Valerie Plame's "outing" as a CIA agent/employee.
Based upon a personal conversation (we were in a small group eating; it was NOT an "off the record") I had with eminent historian Victor Davis Hanson (we were at a luncheon table together during a trip to Europe), it appeared entirely possible that Joe Wilson himself was the (or one source, if not the original one) possible source in revealing his own wife's status as a CIA agent or employee.
Victor Davis Hanson (Wilson presumably knew Victor Davis Hanson wrote regularly for NRO (National Review Online), had done OpEds for the Wall street Journal, and other publications, and had his own Website with a widespread following) said he (VDH) & Joe Wilson were both in the same "Green Room" before a televised debate-discussion on Iraq, etc. and Joe first warned the TV make-up person not to get powder on his $14,000 Rolex watch, then he bragged to Victor about several things (possessions and trips to Aspen, etc.), like his expensive car (I think it was a Mercedes), and then bragged about his beautiful wife who, Joe Wilson said (braggingly) was a CIA operative.
I asked Victor Davis Hanson Why he didn't write up this account.(?) He replied that Joe Wilson would probably simply deny it, since only he (VDH) & Joe Wilson were in the Green Room together before the broadcast.
However, it is now easy to surmise that Joe Wilson is a crass, materialistic, self-promoting, vain, egotistical, bragaddocio-opportunist, so this account is perfectly consistent with Valerie Plame's TWO photo shoots in Vanity Fair.
A highly relevant corroborating account is David Corn's at the Nation, who wrote about Valerie Plame the day after he met with Joe Wilson.
Apparently, Judith Miller went to jail to protect one or more of the following choices: (take your choice)
Sources Judith Miller is protecting by going to jail:
1. Karl Rove
2. Dick Cheney
3. Colin Powell
4. Haliburton
5. Tom Delay
6. GW
7. Laura Bush and her twin daughters
8. Bush's Doggie
9. _____________ (Fill in the blank with any Republican!)
10. All of the above
11. None of the above. Miller is protecting her real sources, Plame/Wilson and Plame's last CIA boss, Foley.
Bump.
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