THE STATE DEPARTMENT PLOT THICKENS (Podhoretz on new Time article)

NRO Corner ^ | 7/31/05 | John Podhoretz

[Republican Red]

THE STATE DEPARTMENT PLOT THICKENS [John Podhoretz] Time Magazine has a new story about the revelation of Valerie Plame's name -- a story that, despite Time's own bizarre spin, reinforces the claim that Karl Rove and others learned that Joseph Wilson was married to a CIA operative from the media.

"As the investigation tightens into the leak of the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, sources tell TIME some White House officials may have learned she was married to former ambassador Joseph Wilson weeks before his July 6, 2003, Op-Ed piece criticizing the Administration," writes Massimo Calabresi.

Later, he writes: "The previously undisclosed fact gathering began in the first week of June 2003 at the CIA, when its public-affairs office received an inquiry about Wilson's trip to Africa from veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus....The same week, Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman asked for and received a memo on the Wilson trip...Sources familiar with the memo, which disclosed Plame's relationship to Wilson, say Secretary of State Colin Powell read it in mid-June. Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage may have received a copy then too."

According to Calabresi, "A source familiar with the memo says neither Powell nor Armitage spoke to the White House about it until after July 6."

So what does this tell you?

It tells you that the State Department, which leaks like a sieve, knew about Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame in June. It also tells you that neither Powell nor Armitage talked to anybody in the White House about it until after Joseph Wilson published his New York Times op-ed on July 6 -- though he had clearly been the anonymous source for a piece by Pincus and an op-ed by the Times' own Nick Kristof back in early June.

So for those who think something very bad happened here, why isn't attention now circling around the State Department, whose two top guys at the time -- Colin Powell and Richard Armitage -- leaked like sieves to the media?

Instead of asking that question, Time's Calabresi instead suggests that this "increases the chances that White House official Karl Rove and others learned about Plame from within the Administration rather than from media contacts. Rove has told investigators he believes he learned of her directly or indirectly from reporters, according to his lawyer."

That doesn't follow at all. Doesn't this tale "increase the chances" that Rove and others are simply telling the truth? It seems a bunch of people knew a bunch about this in June, and their names are Walter Pincus of the WaPo, Kristof and evidently Judith Miller of the Times, not to mention Colin Powell and Rich Armitage at State (not to mention State's Marc Grossman and Carl Ford, who generated the memo). Their names are not Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

Reporters and State Department people were in the know here. Which makes the idea that White House people found out about Wilson's marriage to a CIA operative who got him the gig in Niger from reporters even more plausible

[tiki]

Would Bush let Powell go for this? Oh, he already has.

[Mad Mammoth]

See #95. I think we have a winner!

[Mo1]

Yes, I've notice Ford's name popping up a few times with regard to this

[DustyMoment]

I see we share a mindset on this one. I agree with you . . . and pretty much for the same reasons. Others here may wish to throw Colin Powell to the wolves (and, tacitly, cave in to the Dem attack machine), but I don't/won't for the very reasons that you stated.

[Alia]

In re #95 (Occam's razor): The most obvious.

[Alia]

To quibble with you slightly -- I can understand folks thinking it would be Colin Powell; people have been trying to figure out his politics for many years! As in "who's side is he on!". My digging into data about Carl Ford and Richard Armitage -- also narrows them down as NOT likely suspects. Some of these brawls go back to the Contra hearings.

And, I think the Rockefeller, Ellsworth, memogate/treasongate memo all arose in Dem Circles during Contra hearings. I look at what the "they write, what they are proposing. I look at the Plame/Wilson/Niger situation, and I see... something with players and events that trace back to the Contra hearings.

I cannot forget what I saw via CSPAN when former President Clinton tapped Colin Powell for "the job". I swear, if Mr. Powell could have tapped out Morse Code with his eyes, I wouldn't have missed that either. So, with gut, and with other data, I don't think Colin Powell is the leaker.

[maica]

^^^^^Bill & Hill are the only people I know of who people will go to jail to protect.^^^^^


I must remember this forever, I guess. How I would like to put the "Clinton years" behind me!

[Sacajaweau]

People go to jail for the Clintons. You got that right.

My thought leads me to believe that Mandy Grunwald is the leaker....and she originally got the info from her father, Henry, who died in Feb 2005. And of course, Mandy is married to Matt Cooper and she is also Hillary's best friend and MEDIA ADVISOR.

Inserting Mandy connects all the dots....The Wilsons, Berger & Cooper. Cooper set up Rove and Scooter. By making the phone calls, he "involved" them.

[kcvl]

Clueless!

Joshua Micah Marshall is a Contributing Writer for the Washington Monthly and a columnist for The Hill. His articles on politics, culture and foreign affairs have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers such as The American Prospect, The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Post, The New York Times, Salon and Slate. He has appeared on CNN, CNBC, C-SPAN, FOX and MSNBC and is a frequent guest on radio stations across the country.

Marshall graduated from Princeton in 1991 and holds a doctorate in American history from Brown. He lives in New York City with his wife Millet and their dog Simon.

[kcvl]

September 30, 2003

The NYT reports tonight:

"The Justice Department instructed the White House to preserve all records relating to the case, including any involving contacts with three journalists: Robert D. Novak, the syndicated columnist who first reported the name of the intelligence officer in July and attributed the information about her to two "senior administration officials"; and two reporters for Newsday, Timothy M. Phelps, the Washington bureau chief of the newspaper, and Knut Royce.

"Mr. Phelps and Mr. Royce were co-authors of an article in July that said that 'intelligence officials' had confirmed and expanded on Mr. Novak's account. Their article went beyond Mr. Novak's in stating that the operative, Valerie Plame, worked in 'an undercover capacity.'"

[kcvl]

July 15, 2004

The Hon. Pat Roberts, Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

The Hon. Jay Rockefeller, Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

Dear Sen. Roberts and Sen. Rockefeller,

I read with great surprise and consternation the Niger portion of Sens. Roberts, Bond and Hatch's additional comments to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee's Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Assessment on Iraq. I am taking this opportunity to clarify some of the issues raised in these comments.

First conclusion: "The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee."

That is not true. The conclusion is apparently based on one anodyne quote from a memo Valerie Plame, my wife, sent to her superiors that says, "My husband has good relations with the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." There is no suggestion or recommendation in that statement that I be sent on the trip. Indeed it is little more than a recitation of my contacts and bona fides. The conclusion is reinforced by comments in the body of the report that a CPD [Counterproliferation Division] reports officer stated that "the former ambassador's wife 'offered up his name'" (page 39) and a State Department intelligence and research officer stated that the "meeting was 'apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch him to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue."

In fact, Valerie was not in the meeting at which the subject of my trip was raised. Neither was the CPD reports officer. After having escorted me into the room, she [Valerie] departed the meeting to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. It was at that meeting where the question of my traveling to Niger was broached with me for the first time and came only after a thorough discussion of what the participants did and did not know about the subject. My bona fides justifying the invitation to the meeting were the trip I had previously taken to Niger to look at other uranium-related questions as well as 20 years living and working in Africa, and personal contacts throughout the Niger government. Neither the CPD reports officer nor the State analyst were in the chain of command to know who, or how, the decision was made. The interpretations attributed to them are not the full story. In fact, it is my understanding that the reports officer has a different conclusion about Valerie's role than the one offered in the "additional comments." I urge the committee to reinterview the officer and publicly publish his statement.

It is unfortunate that the report failed to include the CIA's position on this matter. If the staff had done so it would undoubtedly have been given the same evidence as provided to Newsday reporters Tim Phelps and Knut Royce in July 2003. They reported on July 22 that:

"A senior intelligence officer confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked 'alongside' the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger. But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. 'They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising,' he said. 'There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason,' he said. 'I can't figure out what it could be.' 'We paid his [Wilson's] airfare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you'd have to pay big bucks to go there,' the senior intelligence official said. Wilson said he was reimbursed only for expenses." (Newsday article "Columnist Blows CIA Agent's Cover," dated July 22, 2003).

In fact, on July 13 of this year, David Ensor, the CNN correspondent, did call the CIA for a statement of its position and reported that a senior CIA official confirmed my account that Valerie did not propose me for the trip:

"'She did not propose me,' he [Wilson] said -- others at the CIA did so. A senior CIA official said that is his understanding too."

Second conclusion: "Rather than speaking publicly about his actual experiences during his inquiry of the Niger issue, the former ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press accounts and from his beliefs about how the Intelligence Community would have or should have handled the information he provided."

This conclusion states that I told the committee staff that I "may have become confused about my own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that the names and dates on the documents were not correct." At the time that I was asked that question, I was not afforded the opportunity to review the articles to which the staff was referring. I have now done so.

On March 7, 2003, the director general of the IAEA reported to the U.N. Security Council that the documents that had been given to him were "not authentic." His deputy, Jacques Baute, was even more direct, pointing out that the forgeries were so obvious that a quick Google search would have exposed their flaws. A State Department spokesman was quoted the next day as saying about the forgeries, "We fell for it." From that time on the details surrounding the documents became public knowledge and were widely reported. I was not the source of information regarding the forensic analysis of the documents in question; the IAEA was.

The first time I spoke publicly about the Niger issue was in response to the State Department's disclaimer. On CNN a few days later, in response to a question, I replied that I believed the U.S. government knew more about the issue than the State Department spokesman had let on and that he had misspoken. I did not speak of my trip.

My first public statement was in my article of July 6 published in the New York Times, written only after it became apparent that the administration was not going to deal with the Niger question unless it was forced to. I wrote the article because I believed then, and I believe now, that it was important to correct the record on the statement in the president's State of the Union address which lent credence to the charge that Iraq was actively reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. I believed that the record should reflect the facts as the U.S. government had known them for over a year. The contents of my article do not appear in the body of the report and it is not quoted in the "additional comments." In that article, I state clearly that "as for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors -- they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government -- and were probably forged. (And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the charges.)"

The first time I actually saw what were represented as the documents was when Andrea Mitchell, the NBC correspondent, handed them to me in an interview on July 21. I was not wearing my glasses and could not read them. I have to this day not read them. I would have absolutely no reason to claim to have done so. My mission was to look into whether such a transaction took place or could take place. It had not and could not. By definition that makes the documents bogus.

The text of the "additional comments" also asserts that "during Mr. Wilson's media blitz, he appeared on more than thirty television shows including entertainment venues. Time and again, Joe Wilson told anyone who would listen that the President had lied to the American people, that the Vice President had lied, and that he had 'debunked' the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa."

My article in the New York Times makes clear that I attributed to myself "a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs." After it became public that there were then-Ambassador to Niger Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick's report and the report from a four-star Marine Corps general, Carleton Fulford, in the files of the U.S. government, I went to great lengths to point out that mine was but one of three reports on the subject. I never claimed to have "debunked" the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. I claimed only that the transaction described in the documents that turned out to be forgeries could not have occurred and did not occur. I did not speak out on the subject until several months after it became evident that what underpinned the assertion in the State of the Union address were those documents, reports of which had sparked Vice President Cheney's original question that led to my trip. The White House must have agreed. The day after my article appeared in the Times a spokesman for the president told the Washington Post that "the sixteen words did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union."

I have been very careful to say that while I believe that the use of the 16 words in the State of the Union address was a deliberate attempt to deceive the Congress of the United States, I do not know what role the president may have had other than he has accepted responsibility for the words he spoke. I have also said on many occasions that I believe the president has proven to be far more protective of his senior staff than they have been to him.

The "additional comments" also assert: "The Committee found that, for most analysts, the former ambassador's report lent more credibility, not less, to the reported Niger-Iraq uranium deal." In fact, the body of the Senate report suggests the exact opposite:

In August 2002, a CIA NESA [Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis] report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities did not include the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium information. (page 4

In September 2002, during coordination of a speech with an NSC staff member, the CIA analyst suggested the reference to Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium from Africa be removed. The CIA analyst said the NSC staff member said that would leave the British "flapping in the wind." (page 50)

The uranium text was included in the body of the NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] but not in the key judgments. When someone suggested that the uranium information be included as another sign of reconstitution, the INR [State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research] Iraq nuclear analyst spoke up and said the he did not agree with the uranium reporting and that INR would be including text indicating their disagreement in their footnote on nuclear reconstitution. The NIO [national intelligence officer] said he did not recall anyone really supporting including the uranium issue as part of the judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, so he suggested that the uranium information did not need to be part of the key judgments. He told committee staff that he suggested, "We'll leave it in the paper for completeness. Nobody can say we didn't connect the dots. But we don't have to put that dot in the key judgments." (page 53)

On Oct. 2, 2002, the Deputy DCI [director of central intelligence] testified before the SSCI [Senate Select Committee on Intelligence]. Sen. Jon Kyl asked the Deputy DCI whether he had read the British White Paper and whether he disagreed with anything in the report. The Deputy DCI testified that "the one thing where I think they stretched a little bit beyond where we would stretch is on the points about Iraq seeking uranium from various African locations." (page 54)

On Oct. 4, 2002, the NIO for Strategic and Nuclear Programs testified that "there is some information on attempts ... there's a question about those attempts because of the control of the material in those countries ... For us it's more the concern that they [Iraq] have uranium in-country now." (page 54)

On Oct. 5, 2002, the ADDI [associate deputy director for intelligence] said an Iraqi nuclear analyst -- he could not remember who -- raised concerns about the sourcing and some of the facts of the Niger reporting, specifically that the control of the mines in Niger would have made it very difficult to get yellowcake to Iraq. (page 55)

Based on the analyst's comments, the ADDI faxed a memo to the deputy national security advisor that said, "Remove the sentence because the amount is in dispute and it is debatable whether it can be acquired from this source. We told Congress that the Brits have exaggerated this issue. Finally, the Iraqis already have 550 metric tons of uranium oxide in their inventory." (page 56)

On Oct. 6, 2002, the DCI called the deputy national security advisor directly to outline the CIA's concerns. The DCI testified to the SSCI on July 16, 2003, that he told the deputy national security advisor that the "President should not be a fact witness on this issue," because his analysts had told him the "reporting was weak." (page 56)

On Oct. 6, 2002, the CIA sent a second fax to the White House that said, "More on why we recommend removing the sentence about procuring uranium oxide from Africa: Three points (1) The evidence is weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as the location of the uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine cited by the source is under the control of the French authorities. (2) The procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. And (3) we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them that the Africa story is overblown and telling them this is one of the two issues where we differed with the British." (page 56)

On March 8, 2003, the intelligence report on my trip was disseminated within the U.S. government, according to the Senate report (page 43). Further, the Senate report states that "in early March, the Vice President asked his morning briefer for an update on the Niger uranium issue." That update from the CIA "also noted that the CIA would be debriefing a source who may have information related to the alleged sale on March 5." The report then states the "DO officials also said they alerted WINPAC [Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control] analysts when the report was being disseminated because they knew the high priority of the issue." The report notes that the CIA briefer did not brief the vice president on the report. (page 46)

It is clear from the body of the Senate report that the intelligence community, including the DCI himself, made several attempts to ensure that the president did not become a "fact witness" on an allegation that was so weak. A thorough reading of the report substantiates the claim made in my opinion piece in the New York Times and in subsequent interviews I have given on the subject. The 16 words should never have been in the State of the Union address, as the White House now acknowledges.

I undertook this mission at the request of my government in response to a legitimate concern that Saddam Hussein was attempting to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program. This was a national security issue that has concerned me since I was the deputy chief of mission in the U.S. Embassy in Iraq before and during the first Gulf War.

At the time of my trip I was in private business and had not offered my views publicly on the policy we should adopt toward Iraq. Indeed, throughout the debate in the run-up to the war, I took the position that the U.S. be firm with Saddam Hussein on the question of weapons of mass destruction programs, including backing tough diplomacy with the credible threat of force. In that debate I never mentioned my trip to Niger. I did not share the details of my trip until May 2003, after the war was over, and then only when it became clear that the administration was not going to address the issue of the State of the Union statement.

It is essential that the errors and distortions in the additional comments be corrected for the public record. Nothing could be more important for the American people than to have an accurate picture of the events that led to the decision to bring the United States into war in Iraq. The Senate Intelligence Committee has an obligation to present to the American people the factual basis of that process. I hope that this letter is helpful in that effort. I look forward to your further "additional comments."

Sincerely,

Joseph C. Wilson IV, Washington, D.C.

[kcvl]

October 2003
Jim Miller on Politics...

Along with Nina Totenberg of NPR, Phelps had been a conduit for the illegal leak of the FBI files on Clarence Thomas. Here's what David Brock said about him in The Real Anita Hill, when Brock still had some credibility:

The second reporter who, simultaneously with Totenberg, broke the Hill story was Timothy Phelps of Newsday. New to Washington, Phelps was understandably eager to make a name for himself. "A journalist could make a career coup by sinking a Supreme Court nominee," he later wrote in his book on the Thomas nomination, Capitol Games. As his book also showed, Phelps was not very knowledgeable about the judiciary. Though few in Washington read Newsday, Phelps was nonetheless a favored outlet of the Shadow Senate for negative stories, because he was likely to run them. His stories could then be clipped and perhaps placed in one of the more influential newspapers, or maybe a member of the Senate would develop an interest in it.

As you can see, Phelps has some interesting history. An official who wanted to plant a story attacking the Bush administration would have to look hard to find a reporter more willing to smear Republicans.

[maica]

with his wife Millet

Is that pronounced Mill-A or Mill-ett? That is quite a name!

[kcvl]

Knut Royce

says the Bush administration was not able to provide evidence for many of its claims before commencing the war with Iraq. “Bush and his officials spent a number of months going on the stump, not to inform, but to sell. They highlighted their best sales pitch—a link between Saddam and bin Ladin. They contorted, exaggerated and misrepresented the truth.”

Reporters, he adds, “are too prone to take what leaders say and report on them unquestionably.” He points to the lead headline in USA Today a week before the start of the war: “Saddam ‘is not disarming’—Bush vows to press case at U.N., insists on right to defend U.S.” Royce shakes his head. “There is not a shred of evidence [of the presence of weapons of mass destruction].”

As for roadblocks to information access during the current administration, Royce notes, “Not since the Nixon administration [has it been so difficult to get sources to talk]. Bush is preoccupied with secrecy. People don’t want to lose their jobs or go to jail. It makes it harder to report, but you can’t just stop.”

To gain the information he needs, Royce rarely goes to top government officials. “They are more removed from the data than a junior official, and they have greater motive for spin. Rather than cultivate a Cabinet secretary, I go to a deputy assistant secretary, who is much closer to the information.”

[maica]

from Google -





Henry Grunwald, Managing Editor of Time Magazine, Dies ...
Henry Grunwald, who began his career at Time magazine as an immigrant copy boy and became its top editor and who later ran Time Inc.'s vast media empire, ...
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ articles/A56472-2005Feb26.html -

I did not know that Mandy and Henry were related. FreeRepublic really is the most informative site on the web!

To be very catty, and petty, this may explain part of what Matt Cooper saw in Mandy.

[ravingnutter]

From a Crossfire interview:

BLITZER: All right, the other issue that's come out is this article that appeared in "Newsday," the newspaper on Long Island, July 22 after your July 14 column. The reporters said this. They were following up on your story. "Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. `I didn't dig it out. It was given to me,' he said. `They thought it was significant, they gave me the name, and I used.'"

NOVAK: Now, these reporters made a bad mistake. They said they came to me with the information. I never told them that. And that's not in quotes, is it?

BLITZER: They said that the sources said they -- your sources had come to you...

NOVAK: Yes, but that's not in quotes.

BLITZER: That's not in quotes.

NOVAK: So then they made that up. I never said that. I said I didn't dig it out in the sense I went through the files of the CIA. It was given to me, as I just told you. There's no inconsistency there at all.

But that is -- you have to be very careful, Wolf, with these things because they say that the idea that -- they're saying they came to me. They did not come to me.

BLITZER: ... the quote part is correct, "I didn't dig it out. It was given to me".

NOVAK: I just told you it was given to me. I didn't dig it out of the files there.

Let me tell you this. There are people putting out stories that the White House was trying to find a pawn to put out this information. They went through six people...

BLITZER: ... to smear Joe Wilson.

NOVAK: Yes. And finally came to me. That's not true. As I have told you in detail this story, nobody came to me. Nobody came to me. I never said that. The story in "Newsday" is absolutely incorrect. It's not in my quotes. They never came to me. I went to them in reporting that story.

CNN Transcript

Those two Newsday reporters were Knut Royce and Timothy M. Phelps, per Just One Minute

[TASMANIANRED]

bump

[KC_Conspirator]

Yes, who the hell is this Marvin Kalb? I listened to this old liberal hack indict Karl Rove over and over again, telling lie after lie on FOX this weekend?

[kcvl]

Knut Royce is a senior fellow at the Center for Public Integrity.


******



Center for Public Integrity.

Advisory Board (includes):

ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR. was appointed special assistant to President John F. Kennedy in 1961 and served in the White House throughout his administration. A co-founder of Americans for Democratic Action.

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER is a CNN senior political analyst and Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy. A contributing editor to the Atlantic Monthly, National Journal and The Los Angeles Times.


Board of Directors (include):

ROBERTA BASKIN, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity since January 2005

Prior to joining the Center she was senior Washington correspondent for Now with Bill Moyers. Previously she was senior producer for the ABC news magazine 20/20. Earlier she was chief investigative correspondent for the CBS news magazine 48 Hours and contributed special reports to the CBS Evening News.


BILL KOVACH is the Chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists.

After a year of study on a journalism fellowship at Stanford University he joined the New York Times (1968 - 1986) where he worked as a reporter and later as the chief of the NY Times Washington bureau. He served as editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution for two years


SUSAN LOEWENBERG is the founder and producing director of L.A. Theatre Works, a nonprofit organization that provides cultural programming for public radio and outreach programming for children and at-risk youth.


BEN SHERWOOD is executive producer of the ABC program "Good Morning America." Previously he was senior broadcast producer of the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw.


MARIANNE SZEGEDY-MASZAK, senior writer of U.S. News & World Report and contributing writer to the Los Angeles Times.

[Dolphy]

Thanks for that information. These two names have stuck out to me from the beginning and are responsible for that nagging belief that this investigation is not exactly as it has been framed by the media.

(Interestingly, Chomsky has quoted a Royce article after the first Gulf War wherein Royce contends that Saddam's desire for a diplomatic resolution was ignored by the US. Royce's source for that article was an American diplomat. Funny Joe Wilson was there.)