Posted on 10/21/2005 9:44:44 AM PDT by blogblogginaway
The media version of the CIA leak case is that the White House illegally revealed a CIA employee’s identity because her husband, Joseph Wilson, was an administration critic.
But former prosecutor Joseph E. diGenova says the real story is that the CIA “launched a covert operation” against the President when it sent Wilson on the mission to Africa to investigate the Iraq-uranium link. DiGenova, a former Independent Counsel who prosecuted several high-profile cases and has extensive experience on Capitol Hill, including as counsel to several Senate committees, is optimistic that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will figure it all out.
DiGenova tells this columnist, “It seems to me somewhat strange, in terms of CIA tradecraft, that if you were really attempting to protect the identity of a covert officer, why would you send her husband overseas on a mission, without a confidentiality agreement, and then allow him when he came back to the United States to write an op-ed piece in the New York Times about it.”
That mission, he explained, leads naturally to the questions: Who is this guy? And how did he get this assignment? “That’s not the way you protect the identity of a covert officer,” he said. “If it is, then [CIA director] Porter Goss is doing the right thing in cleaning house” at the agency.
If the CIA is the real villain in the case, then almost everything we have been told about the scandal by the media is wrong. What’s more, it means that the CIA, perhaps the most powerful intelligence agency in the U.S. Government, was deliberately trying to undermine the Bush Administration’s Iraq War policy. The liberals who are anxious for indictments of Bush Administration officials in this case should start paying attention to this aspect of the scandal. They may be opposed to the Iraq War, but since when is the CIA allowed to run covert operations against an elected president of the U.S.?
DiGenova first made his astounding comments about the Wilson affair being a covert operation against the President on the Imus in the Morning Show, carried nationally on radio and MSNBC-TV. I wondered whether these serious charges would be refuted or probed by the media. Imus, a shock jock who has spent several days grieving and joking about the death of his cat, didn’t grasp their significance. But the mainstream press didn’t seem interested, either.
DiGenova told me he believes there has been a “war between the White House and the CIA over intelligence” and that the agency, in the Wilson affair, “was using the sort of tactics it uses in covert actions overseas.” One has to consider the implications of this statement. It means that the CIA was using Wilson for the purpose of undermining the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy.
If this is the case, then one has to conclude that the CIA’s covert operation against the President was successful to a point. It generated an investigation of the White House after officials began trying to set the record straight to the press about the Wilson mission. At this point, it’s still not clear what if anything Fitzgerald has on these officials. If they’re indicted for making inconsistent statements about their discussions with one another or the press, that would seem to be a pathetically weak case. And it would not get to the heart of the issue—the CIA’s war against Bush.
One of those apparently threatened with indictment, as Times reporter Judith Miller’s account of her grand jury testimony revealed, is an agency critic named Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Miller said that Libby was frustrated and angry about “selective leaking” by the CIA and other agencies to “distance themselves from what he recalled as their unequivocal prewar intelligence assessments.” Miller said Libby believed the “selective leaks” from the CIA were an attempt to “shift blame to the White House” and were part of a “perverted war” over the war in Iraq.
Wilson was clearly part of that war. He came back from Niger in Africa and wrote the New York Times column insisting there was no Iraqi deal to purchase uranium for a nuclear weapons program. In fact, however, Wlson had misrepresented his own findings, and the Senate Intelligence Committee found there was additional evidence of Iraqi attempts to buy uranium.
DiGenova raises serious questions about the CIA role not only in the Wilson mission but in the referral to the Justice Department that culminated in the appointment of a special prosecutor. At this point in the media feeding frenzy over the story, the issue of how the investigation started has almost been completely lost. The answer is that it came from the CIA. Acting independently and with great secrecy, the CIA contacted the Justice Department with “concern” about articles in the press that included the “disclosure” of “the identity of an employee operating under cover.” The CIA informed the Justice Department that the disclosure was “a possible violation of criminal law.” This started the chain of events that is the subject of speculative news articles almost every day.
The CIA’s version of its contacts with the Justice Department was contained in a 4-paragraph letter to Rep. John Conyers, ranking Democratic Member of the House Judiciary Committee. Conyers and other liberal Democrats had been clamoring for the probe.
DiGenova doubts that the CIA had a case to begin with. He says he would like to see what sworn information was provided to the Justice Department about the status of Wilson’s CIA wife, Valerie Plame, and what “active measures” the CIA was taking to protect her identity. The implication is that her status was not classified or protected and that the agency simply used the stories about her identity to create the scandal that seems to occupy so much attention these days.
But if the purpose was not only to undermine the Iraq War policy but to stop the administration from reforming the agency, it hasn’t completely worked. Indeed, the Washington Post ran a long story by Dafna Linzer on October 19 about the “turmoil” in the agency as personnel either quit or are forced out by CIA Director Goss. Like so many stories about the CIA leak case, this story reflected the views of CIA bureaucrats who despise what Goss is doing and resist supervision or reform of their operations.
Members of the press do not want to be seen as too close to the Bush Administration, but acting as scribblers for the CIA bureaucracy, which failed America on 9/11, is perfectly acceptable.
DiGenova’s comments might be dismissed as just the view of an administration defender. But his comments reflect the facts about the case that emerged when the Senate Intelligence Committee conducted an independent investigation. Wilson, who became an adviser to the Kerry for President campaign, had claimed his CIA wife had no role in recommending him for the trip, but the committee determined that was not true. Why would Wilson misrepresent the truth about her if the purpose were not to conceal the curious nature of the CIA role and its hidden agenda in his controversial mission? And who in the CIA besides his wife was behind it?
In this regard, Miller’s account of her testimony to the grand jury disclosed that Fitzgerald had asked whether Libby had complained about nepotism behind the Wilson trip, a reference to the role played by Plame. This is the line of inquiry that could lead, if Fitzgerald pursues it, to unraveling the CIA “covert operation” behind the Wilson affair. There may be rogue elements at the agency who are conducting their own foreign policy, in contravention of the official foreign policy of the U.S. Government elected by the American people. Like it or not, Bush is the President and he is supposed to run the CIA, not the other way around.
Fitzgerald has the opportunity to break this case wide open. Or else he can take the politically correct approach, which is popular with the press, and go after administration officials.
One irony of the case is that Miller is under strong attack by the left as an administration lackey when she didn’t even write an article at the time noting Libby’s criticisms of the CIA and the Wilson trip. Did her “other sources,” perhaps in the CIA, persuade her to drop the story? We may never know because she claims that she got Fitzgerald to agree not to question her about them. But what she did eventually report, after spending 85 days in jail, amounts to an exoneration of the Bush Administration. Libby, Karl Rove and others obviously believed they could not take on the CIA directly but had to get their story out indirectly through the press. They got burned by Miller and other journalists.
Goss’s CIA house-cleaning, of course, has come too late to save the administration from being victimized in the Wilson/Plame affair. Some officials could get indicted because of faulty or inconsistent memories. It is also obvious that liberal journalists are so excited over possible indictments of Bush officials that they are willing to overlook the agency’s manipulation of public policy and the press. But if the CIA has been out-of-control, subverting the democratic process and undermining the president, the American people have a right to know. If Fitzgerald doesn’t blow the whistle on this, the Congress should hold public hearings and do so.
"Wilson said that a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, was unaware of any sales contract with Iraq, but said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq -- which Mayaki interpreted to mean they wanted to discuss yellowcake sales."
Doesn't this pretty much fit right into the timeline of Joe Wilson's retiring 1 year after marrying Valerie Plame to pursue his business interests? We all assume Wilson's trip was part of a CIA plot to get back at Cheney and/or cover up their own ineptitude regarding WMD, but (especially) if Plame was involved in encouraging CIA to send her husband TWICE to Niger (once in 1999, then again in 2002), doesn't it seem at least plausible Wilson himself was involved in the yellowcake deal and that all subsequent shenanigans are efforts to cover this up, using forged documents to obfuscate the situation?
If so, then the question is whether there is a "French connection" in all this. If Wilson's wife is French intel, isn't it at least plausible she would know Plame was the WMD person within CIA? How better to get an inside track on what the CIA knows and who knows it than to marry into the family?!? We've seen from the French oil-for-food scandal that they were shameless about making money off human misery. Why NOT get in on a yellowcake deal if the getting was good? After all, the French wouldn't have to clean up any subsequent mess that resulted from such yellowcake sales: it would inevitably fall to the Americans and/or Israelis to sort out the problems that would arise once Hussein had nuclear weapons.
Alternatively, Wilson himself simply recognized a great business opportunity when he spotted it in the natural course of his diplomatic duties. Valerie Plame either was complicit or clueless. If complicit, she shares a strong motivation to assist Wilson in covering this up, by recommending he take a trip to Niger. If clueless, Wilson himself might have subtly induced her to make this an innocent suggestion "Honey, remember when you had them send me to Niger in 1999. If someone needs to check out this Niger story, I'd be happy to do it. After all, especially with all my business connections, I still know all the who's who over there: it wouldn't take but a week to figure out what was going on..."
Thanks for that little tidbit!! Foley! I would assume Joe knows of this guy. If Valerie would dump her secret status on Joe on their third date, I'm sure she would talk about her boss and a lot of other things. At one time, I believed Valerie to be "duped" by her hubby. But now, I think she has had a part in this all along. She couldn't care less if they fired her. She's got kids now. Jane Bond is now June Cleaver.
Interesting that her name is Vicoria. That's one of the notes in Miller's notebook. I still look at Miller's notes as a self serving code and Victoria Wilson meant "Victoria's Secret".
Rove was ALWAYS the target. The Cheney connection was a spoof for the press.
If COOPER hadn't "involved" Rove and Libby with his phone calls, I couldn't connect any of those dots. THAT was the Dems mistake. Miller got used and she loves it!! But the times doesn't seem real happy right now.
Now too long ago, Bubba blurted out that if they could get rid of Rove, they could get the Whitehouse back. (Musta been the meds).
DiGenova tells this columnist, “It seems to me somewhat strange, in terms of CIA tradecraft, that if you were really attempting to protect the identity of a covert officer, why would you send her husband overseas on a mission, without a confidentiality agreement, and then allow him when he came back to the United States to write an op-ed piece in the New York Times about it.”
Good point.
Miller qualifies the word "bureau" as "normally" meaning the FBI. My contentions is this little chick has her own little code when she takes notes....Like Valerie Flame and Victoria Wilson. No one can interpret her notes except her. What an asset in a courtroom.
Was this the first time that the CIA launched a covert operation against a President of the United States?
I found ex-wife #2's name, in the 1998 edition of Who's Who. She is listed as:
Jacqueline Marylene Giorgi.
The first wife was Susan Dale Otchis (married Apr. 27, 1973, div. 1986).
The marriage to Jacqueline was celebrated on July 1, 1986.
The 1999 listing already airbrushes out the second marriage and lists Valerie Plame (married April 3, 1998).
"The CIA is no better then the KGB... might be worse because the CIA has no loyalty."
Sure, now break open another 6-pack.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . T R E A S O N.
The Gorelick wall could have hid the Clinton Administration's infiltration into the CIA of left wing--Communist (let's just spell it out!).
Wow, good find, so now she's there, now she's not.....
Joe Wilson has done an Orwellian memory-hole for his 2nd wife in "Who's Who"..... now why would he do that?
I tried to post the entry from the 1998 ed. as a new thread but it didn't take...I'm not sure what I did wrong or if there are others who have been trying to find the name of ex #2 (but may not read this thread).
You're absolutely right. That is treason.
Is Fitzgerald so close to this case that he cannot see the conflicts of Wilson/Plame/CIA/MSM with the administration?
This is either a gotcha inquistion with Fitzgerald or it is perhaps the biggest story since World WAr II.
Sure, it might have been changed just to please wife #3, but it seems like a very strange thing to do (maybe people who have multiple spouses like to write former spouses out of their bios sometimes, but I can't imagine doing that myself). It made me suspicious that he was trying to keep in the the shadows for other reasons, but the fact that he did include #2 in a previous edition undermines that (still, as a French "cultural counselor" in their Burundi embassy Jacqueline might well have been an intel agent).
bttt
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