Posted on 10/30/2005 9:25:14 PM PST by smoothsailing
Joe Wilson in a Bind
By Clinton W. Taylor
Published 10/31/2005 12:07:45 AM
Last week I had the privilege of being lied to personally by Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who spoke here at Stanford last Monday.
The fact that Joe Wilson is economical with the truth probably won't surprise many Spectator readers.
Nonetheless I assure you the horse I am beating, although it may be lying in the op-ed pages of the Los Angeles Times, is far from dead.
But this week there's new evidence of his lies to flog him with. When the indictment of Scooter Libby was unsealed on Friday, it finally placed one of Wilson's oft-repeated fabrications beyond the most hopeful partisan's credibility.
First the lie: In the Q&A after his talk last Monday, Wilson answered a question of mine with essentially the same statement about the origin of his mission to Niger that he relates in his L.A. Times op-ed:
Valerie was an innocent in this whole affair. Although there were suggestions that she was behind the decision to send me to Niger, the CIA told Newsday just a week after the Novak article appeared that "she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment." The CIA repeated the same statement to every reporter thereafter.
The Newsday article he refers to notes:
A senior intelligence official 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."
This has been Wilson's story ever since the issue came up: he maintains his wife had nothing to do the CIA's decision to send him. It's important to his narrative that "outing" his wife was a bolt from the blue designed to intimidate and punish him.
The more plausible explanation is that the information came out because it cast Wilson's mission and his credibility in a new light. Evidence supports this interpretation. While the CIA may back Wilson's account to reporters, it has now twice contradicted him when the chips were down and the threat of perjury loomed.
The first contradiction, of course, occurred back in July 2004, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence devoted a few pages of its report on WMD intelligence failures to point out that Valerie Plame came up with the idea of sending her husband to Niger. Both a memorandum Plame wrote and the testimony of a CIA officer show that Wilson's trip was her idea. (The report can be downloaded here, and the relevant sections are on page 39, 40, and 72.)
That should have put an end to Joe Wilson's credibility, but it wasn't good enough for the diehard Wilson fans, like most of the audience at Stanford last week, or the editorial staff of the L.A. Times. But now the indictment of Scooter Libby has proved yet again that Wilson is full of it.
In order to claim that Libby had perjured himself and obstructed justice, the grand jury goes to great lengths to show how and when he had actually learned about the origin of Wilson's trip. To do so, they refer on page 4 of the indictment to a conversation between Libby and a "senior officer of the CIA" on June 11, 2003:
[Libby] was advised by the CIA officer that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and was believed to be responsible for sending Wilson on the trip.
And again on page 12 of the indictment:
[Libby] was informed by a senior CIA officer that Wilson's wife was employed by the CIA and that the idea of sending him to Niger originated with her.
This puts Wilson's fan club in a bind: either Wilson is lying, or the indictment is. Which is it? If it's the latter, then perhaps Scooter Libby didn't know what the indictment said he knew, and the indictment ought to be thrown out or at least amended.
Alas, most of the world sees it's the former. Wilson's lie, of course, wouldn't excuse any crime Libby might have committed, but it ought to be enough to prevent Wilson from ever being taken seriously again.
Clinton W. Taylor (clinton_w_taylor@hotmail.com) is a lawyer and a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Stanford.
From the headline I thought this article was going to reveal that Valerie Plame is a dominatrix. Ba-dump-bump.
It's not funny to me that so many of our fellow Americans are easily manipulated by the Fifth Column in all it's permutations.
Nor is it funny to me that a foot soldier of said FC has been given the blessing of our own CIA.
Perhaps the irony of my laughing at Joe Wilson escapes you.I've been known to laugh at Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and any number of of leftist pukes that are harming or country.
Such laughter is not of joy, but of ridicule and mockery.
I hope I've cleared that up for you.Cheers.
bump
1. What was the purpose of Joe Wilson's 1999 trip to Niger on behalf of the CIA?
2. What "business" was Joe Wilson doing in Niger in 1999? He wrote in his book that he was trying to set up a gold mining operation in Niger. Has that ever been verified? What's the only other export from Niger? Isn't it possible that Joe Wilson was in the uranium business himself, and had a vested interest in not finding that the Nigeriens had ever done business with Saddam Hussein?
3. Wilson went to Niger in early 2002, where he supposedly learned that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had ever attempted to purchase uranium there. Yet he never said a word about this clearly momentous "finding," until he spoke anonymously to Nicholas Kristof at the New York Times in May of 2003. Why did he sit on this information for over a year? Why did he say nothing even after President Bush mentioned Saddam seeking uranium in Africa in his State of the Union address? Why did he say nothing before or immediately after the invasion of Iraq?
4. Who put Joe Wilson in touch with Nicholas Kristof and Walter Pincus at the Washington Post?
5. Is there any connection between Joe Wilson signing on as a foreign policy adviser to the John Kerry for President campaign in April of 2003 and Wilson's sudden desire to blab about his trip to Niger?
Isn't it plausible that Joe Wilson really went to Niger on personal business? Isn't it plausible that Wilson's sudden "truth-telling" was, in fact, an orchestrated campaign of lies and distortions planned and executed by the Kerry campaign? Remember that Chris Lehane, who was Kerry's chief media adviser at the time, had a long and deserved reputation as a hatchet man who could get almost any kind of damaging story into print. Remember that Lehane got the New York Times to run a front page story on the RNC's "Rats" ad during the 2000 campaign. Lehane got the Bush DUI story and held it until 5 days before the election. It would have been a piece of cake for Lehane to trot Joe Wilson around to the WaPo and NYT to tell his fabricated story about his trip to Niger. Oh yeah, Lehane was rather unceremonously fired by the Kerry campaign later in 2003 -- perhaps when the campaign realized he had failed once again with one of his "sure-fire" campaigns to get President Bush? Following the 2004 election, he has disappeared. Wouldn't he have been a key "talking head" on the Libby indictment? Why has he appeared on no TV talk shows lately?
Every time they assert 'spousal privilege', the more the prosecutor's case against Libby falls apart.
Will also be interested in the defense's questioning of reporters and neoghbors who knew what Plame did for a living many years ago.
a couple of other points...
Where is the report of Wilson's last trip to Niger? Reportedly, there was no written report, just a debriefing.
In an agency where all employees must get clearance for any public discourse, books, articles, etc., why didn't anyone get Wilson to sign a confidentiality statement (in relation to his NYT Op-Ed that started it all)?
"The whole question of Plame's participation is a disgusting red herring."
The same report indicates that Plame sent out a memo suggesting her husband for the trip.
I find it particularly amusing that the CIA says it had no other options but to send Wilson. They really need to work on their Africa desk.
That sounds like it might be "difficult". A political hack like Fitzgerald will always go after the easy case, and especially the one that will get his name in the news.
The reason I'm asking is that Joe told Novak "Leave my wife out of this". Joe has never mentioned (I don't think) that Novak was going to use her "maiden" name. Joe's bit** was that everyone would know about his "connection" and how he got his Niger Mission.
Joe should try to stop trying to pull the wool over our eyes. When the Kerry campaign hired him in MAY 2003, he was hired as "a Hit man". His target: GW Bush as per his July 6th article. Novak did what he did to show Joe's credentials read: Contact Valerie for further info!!
BigBobber...you really nailed it. I've been asking the same questions myself and nobody is providing the answers. Why didn't the CIA have its own experts on the ground in Niger? Why did they turn to a non-expert, an ex-Ambassador, to take a short trip to Niger? Who would realistically expect a newcomer, totally inexperienced, to uncover relevant material in such a short time?
Why would the same person come home and apparently not provide a highly classified report on his trip? Why would an employee of our intelligence agency publish an article in a magazine about his "findings"? All the companies I've worked for would have fired me on the spot for such an impropriety.
The fact that the CIA allowed this incompetent to go public after his trip is the REAL STORY here, the story that nobody is covering. The CIA clearly is fighting Bush and serious house cleaning is required. Bush should have taken firm control of the CIA when he was inaugurated in 2001.
btw, hardly anyone ever points out that Valerie Pflame's own words "there's this crazy report" gives the game away: far from any unbiased inquiry, she made it clear to her hubby right from the start what the results of his inquiry were supposed to be, what her cabal in the CIA wanted him to say. It's amazing that he even reported the evidence that Niger HAD been approached for 'trade' with Iraq in an approach that the former minister took to be about uranium, and that he dares to continue to assert that he conclusively disproved the "16 words" in the SOU address when obviously he did nothing of the kind! He's not very bright, but he is effective as a shameless demagogue who is never restrained by facts or concern for accuracy.
People not living in the liberal-media-created bizarro world never have taken Bill Clinton seriously either, but that that hasn't kept those who do from raising him to godhead status.
His attorney said he was reading the Novak's article on his front porch on the 12th and waved to Joe to show him the article.
Except, the article was on the wire on the 11th AND Joe had talked to Novak prior to the article saying "leave my wife out of this". I DO NOT believe that Joe and his attorney found out by reading the paper. Someone from the Dem camp would have callled him immediately. In fact, Cooper called Rove on the 11th. Cooper, being married to Mandy Grunwald didn't call Joe? Gimme a break!
Cooper pulled a cutie: He called the switchboard on the 11th and was transferred to Rove. The call was NOT in Rove's log because of this little maneuver. One of the office people was called as a witness as to how the system worked.
I noticed it, and was waiting until I finished reading all the posts to see if anyone else shared my opinion before I posted it. Glad you posted it, and to know someone else thinks Valerie sent a message to Joe what was expected of him!
Further ... your snide comment: "Your problem is not the lack of reports but rather the content; you don't like their conclusions.", applies most aptly to the rabid opposition of the Iraq War. There was interest by Iraq in restarting it's nuclear processing capablty -- that's why the UN keep Iraq's 500 tonnes of yellowcake and 1.8 tuns of partly-enriched uranium in storage in Iraq. Iraq did not tell them -- "Hey we don;t need that stuff anymore, we're never gonna use it, so you blue helmets go and sell it for us. But some food and medicine for our poor starving children."
Iraq buried it's uranium refining equipment in backyards -- it hid the equipement, it stashed it away for furure use. It intended to start up when and as soon as the geo-political winds allowed it to.
And it was in contract, a writtem contract, with the French oil giant Elf-Total-Final (whatever the m'appel is) that encumbered the French with having to achieve, or waiting for the achievment of, the dropping of UN sanctions, if not weapons-inspections.
So when vous parlerez du les French you might, perhaps mon ami, take account of a vested french interest (stakeholderdom) in an independent Saddam's Iraq.
Depends on when Joe hired his neighbor. Any conversations prior to that time are not privileged. On top of that, if wilson perjures himself and his attorney knows it, he must inform the court of the perjury.
Yet Wilson, the wife, so outspoken breaking-cover-wise in pre-martial bedding, keeps her super-duper-scooper-tip-top-hip-hop-re-bop secret clearance? Oh, yah. As they say in Wisconsin.
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