Posted on 07/18/2005 5:56:59 PM PDT by ConservativeMajority
Much of the discussion this week about the latest disclosures in the alleged outing of a covert CIA agent will focus on an internal memo that detailed how former Ambassador Joe Wilson was chosen for a mission to Niger. The document indicated that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, “offered up his name” for the assignment to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein tried to acquire uranium from the African nation.
Wilson denied that Plame pushed him for the job and said that Vice President Dick Cheney asked him to go. An official who works for the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research authored a memo that contradicts both of those assertions.
The former ambassador accused the White House of exposing his wife’s identity to columnist Robert Novak in order punish him by destroying her career. Wilson had written an op-ed for the New York Times that criticized the Bush administration for continuing to suggest that Iraq had attempted to acquire the nuclear material when his investigation had uncovered no evidence to support it.
It appears that White House officials, who discussed Plame in the context of explaining how an outspoken opponent of the administration’s policy on Iraq was chosen, may have been unaware of her status with the agency. Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper revealed that he brought up the CIA analyst to Karl Rove, which refutes Wilson’s charge of a “smear campaign” against his wife by Bush’s chief political advisor. Cooper confirmed that Rover never mentioned Plame’s name and tried to steer him away from putting too much faith in Wilson’s account.
Officials at the CIA tried to discredit the “smoking gun” memo and the news service that confronted Wilson about it in October 2003 in order to keep the White House on the defensive. They relied on a sympathetic recipient of previous leaks that cast the administration in a negative light for the disinformation effort. In December 2003, the Washington Post quoted an agency source as “challenging the accuracy” of the document, claiming that the meeting described could not have taken place.
Wilson too, continued his self-righteous charade of being a patriot instead of a partisan until July 2004 when the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence authenticated the memo and chastised him for his dishonesty. He was quickly dropped as a senior foreign policy advisor to John Kerry’s presidential campaign and disappeared from public view until last Thursday when Senate Democrats tried to strip Rove of his security clearance.
While Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald continues to sift through the testimony provided by administration officials and reporters, the role of the CIA officials in the Plame affair is the subject of an internal investigation. Some of those involved in the operation to undermine the administration have already been reassigned or forced to resign. When Porter Goss was named DCIA last year, sources friendly to the Washington Post complained that the new regime was running roughshod over the agency’s senior staff. Stephen Hayes wrote in the Weekly Standard in November 2004 of Goss’ efforts to stop leaks from the agency and the pushback he encountered from the entrenched bureaucrats he was charged to manage.
Clearly, Plame was part of the element within the CIA that actively worked against the Bush administration. The available evidence shows that it is likely she suggested her husband for the mission so that the agency would be assured of the anti-Bush results. The INR memo is the only evidence of the plot and the renewed focus on the document may bring this into public view. Additionally, the agency is in the untenable position of having to stand by its contention that Plame still had covert status, despite significant evidence to the contrary. Without that, any case involving violation of the 1982 statute protecting secret agents would collapse and confirm the political operation.
With the assistance of a sympathetic media and opportunistic Democrats, the CIA has portrayed a third-rate analyst as a James Bond in high heels and her husband as the definitive authority on transfers of uranium to terrorist regimes after an eight-day junket to Africa. Plame’s specialty was weapons of mass destruction proliferation, yet little of the information the agency possessed turned out to be accurate in terms of Iraq.
Responsibility for the intelligence failures that culminated in the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 lies squarely on the shoulders of the CIA. It had become dysfunctional and highly politicized by the end of the 1990s as the result of budget cuts and neglect. The extent to which it was a rogue agency is demonstrated by its attempt to influence the outcome of last year’s presidential election.
Officials in the administration should be applauded for blowing the whistle on the CIA’s political activism and taking steps to refocus its attention on the urgent need for reliable intelligence in a post-9/11 world.
How bout that?
It is clear that something is going on over at Langley to shake things up.
I've been hoping to hear from Jeff Gannon on this subject but didn't want to bring his name up because I know that he took significant heat from the left for his part in exposing the CIA memo.
This story all started with Corn, and the article he wrote, but it never went anywhere until after Joe Wilson met with Chris Lehane in May of that year and became an adviser to the Kerry campaign. I have read that it was Lehane that arranged the Vanity Fair article and shopped the story to the media. What do you have to say about that?
But the truth is that his wife sent him and he found none of the above to be any more true than "16 words" that according to the democrats if not said by Bush would have changed everything.
There aren't more than a few degrees of separation between liberal activists and the media. Most of the time they are one in the same.
Lehane has a proven record of dirty tricks, sounds reasonable.
Gannon got this info through his back-door channels?
Hannity had Plames former boss at the CIA on his show and he said that the CIA inadvertantly outed Plame themselves by allowing the Cubans to read some security message, so there was no way that Plame was considered covert if she had been outed twice before this Niger affair.
Exactly! As Mort said on FNC panel tonight, the word "collusion" would then surface. I wish I could be Scott McClellan for just one press conference - that's all I would last, just one. I'd have looked at the old witch and said, "What, you want to then accuse the President of collusion? You must think we're as dumb and ugly as you are!"
To Terry Moran, I'd consistently mispronouce his name as Terry Moron. I'd nail them.
"Helen Thomas is probably not too old to take to court ~ no doubt she had some bad stuff to say about Pinochet."
She probably had some bad stuff to say about the Kaiser!
Yeah, they're making Rove a superstar.
LOL---thanks!
ROFLMAO!!!!
One of the things I do not like about the democratic party is that it is patronage politics. They filled up the federal government with politicos to the point that it could not even function. I could see it everywhere. Affirmative action hires hooting and hollering in the halls of VA hospitals, cronies on FERC knew nothing about electricity, and now girls posing as spooks. There is one of the latter on c-span promoting her book about how she joined the CIA and then left because she did not like it. Surely, one of the biggest shocks we have faced is the failure of intelligence on 9/11 and WMD in Iraq, and these egomaniacs try to turn that into a chance for spin. I hope Fitzgerald gets them all. We can't have this nonsense.
Here's a theory discussed with family the other night - the person who sent Wilson to Niger was Valerie Plame with whatever credentials needed.
The MSM/Hissy Matthews et al, were to continue with the charade that VP Cheney / or / Scooter Libby from his office sent Wilson. This would effectively be a double blow to the WH. However the truth is out there now that neither man sent Wilson.
Who approved the trip, Ms. Plame?
Reminds me of the Rosenbergs.
Lol, how true!
Any details on this memo? Date? Authors name? etc.
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