Ex-CIA Officers Rip Bush Over Rove Leak

AP via Yahoo ^ | 07/22/2005 | DONNA DE LA CRUZ

[Sam Hill]

This is from the blowhard's site. Turns out Jonnson is an expert on everything. (He's written against the Bolton nomination, too.) Oddly enough, he always takes the terrorists/Democrat side in things:

The Counterterrorism Blog: YEAH, BUT HE ENJOYED THE GLAZED CHICKEN AND PITA
http://counterterror.typepad.com/the_counterterrorism_blog/2005/06/yeah_but_he_enj.html

June 18, 2005
YEAH, BUT HE ENJOYED THE GLAZED CHICKEN AND PITA
by
Larry C. Johnson

The point of the outrage over abuses at Guantanamo is that we are a country based on morals and principles that require us to conduct ourselves in an honorable, proper fashion. If we lower ourselves to use the tactics and methods of terrorists we become the very thing we are fighting against. We cannot be content to argue that it only happened to a few. One act of deliberate abuse is one too many.

Today we learn in L.A. Times that a U.S. soldier was badly beaten by the U.S. guards at Guantanamo because they were misled to believe he was a Muslim prisoner who had attacked a U.S. soldier. According to the Times: "Spc. Sean D. Baker, 38, was assaulted in January 2003 after he volunteered to wear an orange jumpsuit and portray an uncooperative detainee. Baker said the MPs, who were told that he was an unruly detainee who had assaulted an American sergeant, inflicted a beating that resulted in a traumatic brain injury."

Hopefully this causes Congressman Duncan "Two Fruit" Hunter to reflect on his idiotic assertion that what a prisoner eats determines how well they are treated. We are confronted with an uncomfortable reality that U.S. soldiers were beating unarmed prisoners. That my friends is the conduct of bullies and cowards. When you have guns and clubs and your opponent is unarmed and you proceed to beat the hell out of your opponent then you are a bully and a coward.

Maybe Representative "Two Fruit" Hunter could take Specialist Baker out for a lunch of glazed chicken and warm pita bread and try to persuade him that his brain damage is no big deal. Maybe it is Hunter who is brain damaged? Too much time at altitude without oxygen Congressman?

Posted by Larry Johnson at 12:06 PM | Permalink

[Sam Hill]

According to this blowhard Johnson, terrorism isn't a threat. But big tobacco is!

CBC News: Disclosure - Cigarette Case
http://www.cbc.ca/disclosure/archives/030408_smoke/trail.html

Broadcast: April 8, 2003

Private eye Larry Johnson says big tobacco companies are like "the conductor of the orchestra" when it comes to tobacco smuggling. "They’re moving the product," he says. "They're moving the money. They're helping orchestrate it, helping build new markets."

The European Union's lawsuits say the green light to smuggle cigarettes came from the Miami offices of RJ Reynolds International. Larry C. Johnson is a CIA agent turned private eye. He’s been hired by lawyers for the European Union and the provinces of Colombia to prove some extraordinary allegations.

DISCLOSURE: If you’re looking at the entire roadmap or flowchart of the smuggling, what roles does [RJR] play?
JOHNSON: The conductor of the orchestra… They’re moving the product. They're moving the money. They're helping orchestrate it, helping build new markets.
DISCLOSURE: So you say the marching orders for all of this came out of [RJR]?
JOHNSON: Yes.

[FlingWingFlyer]

I read this knucklehead's 07-10-01 "article" about "The Declining Terrorist Threat." It reminds me of an article I once read about the declining number of ship sinkings in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii that had been written on December 6th 1941.

[popdonnelly]

It occurs to me that Larry Johnson is no different from the average Bush hater you might encounter on the internet.

[concerned about politics]

Partisan gatherings are *not* permitted to be called "hearings" and are not to have federal funds paying for them.

I think they were aired on C-Span3(?) today, too. The bloggs were discussing the partisan display. It was all an anti-Bush infomercial!

[CharlesWayneCT]

At one point it seemed he was arguing that the continued focus on the story was what was really hurting us.

That got me to thinking that, IF you presume that she was actually still covert (which she wasn't) BUT you actually care about what Larry Johnson was whining about (the appearance that we wouldn't protect our own) the logical reaction (since you can't go back in time and undo the leak) is to, IN UNITY, agree that she wasn't covert so this has NOTHING TO DO WITH PROTECTING COVERT AGENTS.

That way all the harm he sees will be mitigated. Instead, the Democrats are causing all the harm he claims, by pretending she was a covert operative and thereby unnecessarily causing angst among the TRULY COVERT that they will be revealed as well.

Tom Clancy knows his stuff pretty well. So when in the movie Sum of All Fears he had Ryan tell his then-girlfriend that he had to break his date because he was a CIA analyst on a mission, I think that wasn't a breach of security -- just as Rove saying Wilson's wife "APPARENTLY" worked at the CIA wasn't any breach of security.

Unless you think that a woman driving a Jaguar registered to her or her husband into the CIA parking lot is a COVERT ACTIVITY.

[SERKIT]

Is this the same crew that missed the nuke testing in Indian & Pakistan? Maybe some of these clowns were in the dustbin during the recent CIA house-cleaning party.

[patriciamary]

Who cares.

[Sam Hill]

Ex CIA Larry Johnson: Terrorism Isn't A Threat, But Big Tobacco Is!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1448666/posts

[river rat]

It appears the CIA is/was every bit as incompetent as I had imagined them to be....

These ass clowns have already convicted the only innocent individual in the Keystone Kops episode of the "Plame/Wilson" comedy....

No wonder, the CIA never figured out what was going on in the world --- they got it all wrong, because they were obviously staffed with incompetent party hack assholes...

I'll never forget the "order" issued by our Gunny to kill the "Citizen in Action" in our AO -- if he ever again rushed to our position with hostiles in tow....

Semper Fi

[STARWISE]

Gotta love Porter Goss, American patriot and most likely the "exterminator," much needed in that partisan and biased swamp.

[jec41]

Does anyone other than the LameStream Press care what these guys think?

This so called hearing was on C-Span this afternoon.
Same old Conners group. It was worse than the Salem Witch hunt and trials. C-span has been pushing a lot of these so called hearings. They are not hearings but political agenda.

[STARWISE]

I hadn't even read this before I posted my comment .. confirms my instincts. GREAT info .. thank you very much!

[STARWISE]

The comical part is his belief that his opinions actually have credibility and people are hanging on his every burp. All his articles and public comments HAVE to be linked with some job he snagged .. follow the $$.

[daybreakcoming]

I used to feel like the CIA was our security blanket....thought they could do their jobs while being apolitical. Naive, I know.

As for the self-acclaimed Republican in the group of four - I think not. Would be curious as to how long he has been "registered". His words were straight out of the "I used to be a Republican but....." DNC talking points pamphlet.

Maybe the key word here in describing these men is "former". Sad.

[atlanta67]

In July 2001, Larry Johnson wrote and OP ED on how terrorism wasnt a threat to the average american

[STARWISE]

There's a lot here ... adds another layer to ponder. Makes you wonder just how many agencies and players were involved in this "game." How does it go? "...enemies, foreign and domestic ...."

State Dept. Memo Outlines Wilson Niger Trip

" A State Department memo that has caught the attention of prosecutors describes a CIA officer's role in sending her husband to Africa and disputes administration claims that Iraq was shopping for uranium (search), a retired department official said Tuesday.

The classified memo was sent to Air Force One just after former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson (search) went public with his assertions that the Bush administration overstated the evidence that Iraq was interested in obtaining uranium from Niger for nuclear weapons.

The memo has become a key piece of evidence in the CIA leak investigation (search) because it could have been the way someone in the White House learned — and then leaked — the information that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and played a role in sending him on the mission.

The document was prepared in June 2003 at the direction of Carl W. Ford Jr., then head of the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research, for Marc Grossman, the retired official said. Grossman was the Undersecretary of State who was in charge of the department while Secretary Colin Powell (search) and his deputy, Richard Armitage, were traveling. Grossman needed the memo because he was dealing with other issues and was not familiar with the subject, the former official said.

"It wasn't a Wilson-Wilson wife memo," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still under way. "It was a memo on uranium in Niger and focused principally on our disagreement" with the White House.

More at link above.

[Big Giant Head]

Another explanation was provided by a former senior C.I.A. officer. He had begun talking to me about the Niger papers in March, when I first wrote about the forgery, and said, “Somebody deliberately let something false get in there.” He became more forthcoming in subsequent months, eventually saying that a small group of disgruntled retired C.I.A. clandestine operators had banded together in the late summer of last year and drafted the fraudulent documents themselves.

“The agency guys were so pissed at Cheney,” the former officer said. “They said, ‘O.K, we’re going to put the bite on these guys.’ ” My source said that he was first told of the fabrication late last year, at one of the many holiday gatherings in the Washington area of past and present C.I.A. officials. “Everyone was bragging about it—‘Here’s what we did. It was cool, cool, cool.’ ” These retirees, he said, had superb contacts among current officers in the agency and were informed in detail of the sismi intelligence.

Self-ping

[Howlin]

Larry Johnson..Bush hater.

Another fool on the record.

In one fell swoop, this "scandal" has the potential to neuter every single American hater out there.

[Howlin]

OMG, they are doing it again!

"In a hearing held by Senate and House Democrats examining the implications of exposing Valerie Plame's identity..."

Judiciary GOP pulls the plug on Conyers 'forums'
By Albert Eisele and Jeff Dufour

If the Financial Services Committee is the best in the House when it comes to bipartisan comity, then the Judiciary Committee may well be the worst.

In December, ranking Democrat John Conyers (Mich.) began holding “forums” — gatherings with all the trappings of official hearings — after Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) refused to hold hearings on topics Conyers requested. The forums have been held in smaller committee rooms, often with C-SPAN coverage and formal witness lists.

In a sign of how far relationships on the committee have soured, majority staff recently announced a new policy to deny any request from a committee Democrat for the use of a committee hearing room.

Majority spokesman Jeff Lungren said the Republicans have given Democrats three opportunities to make clear that the forums are not official committee business. Nevertheless, Lungren said, in at least one case, members were addressing Conyers as “Mr. Chairman.”

“They were unwilling or unable to make those changes,” Lungren said. “At this point, if they want to hold these forums, they’ll have to find some other place to do it.”

Sean McLaughlin, deputy chief of staff for Sensenbrenner, recently wrote to a minority staffer in more pointed language.

“I’m sitting here watching your ‘forum’ on C-SPAN,” McLaughlin wrote. “Just to let you know, it was your last. Don’t bother asking [for a room] again.”

A committee source said committee Democrats are still planning to hold the forums when they find other available space.