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.
(BOAZO, are you around?)
Will be interested to hear wilson and Plame's testimonies under oath at any trial of Libby, especially the cross examination. It's going to make them look very bad and may even set themselves up for perjury.
He's a PhD candidate, not a professor. However, Condi Rice is still listed among the Poly Sci faculty, and don't forget Thomas Sowell in the Hoover Institution.
Grand juries are never to bring charges against liberals. Only conservatives are targets. Consider the grand jury against Clinton. Who really was made to look bad? It was the consevatives who the media attacked as witch hunters and to top it off Ken Starr was there just to provide protection for the liberals. And it goes on and on until some conservative can be muddied. The best thing that could happen to Libby is for Bush to pardon him. However, this will never happen. If it does, it will be a parting shot from Bush in 2008. Grand jury has might as well be called "Trash Hunter" because they dig to the bottom of the pile and come out smelling like it too.
Because the liberal minions in the press spin it that way.
And I'm sure they are eating it up. I guarantee there won't be any rebuttal to his lies either. That would take "courage" to put on both sides.
I absolutely refuse to watch his arrogant lying butt.
Since it says that he lied to the select Senate committee on Intelligence and he went in an official compacity, isn't that breaking some laws?
You know how laws protect the perpetrator? Consider Wilson a perpetrator.
First, it's clear that memories aren't very good about how Wilson was selected and what Plame's role was. The memorandum could indicate that she "offered up his name" or that she was responding to previous questions about him. That the report focused on this question indicates the extreme political sensistivity surrounding it. But the CIA wanted to send someone to answer Cheney's questions.
Second, the report does not identify the foreign source of the information that Iraq was attempting to purchase yellowcake from Niger. More politics. Recent reports, and circumstantial evidence, indicate that it was SISMI distributing the forged documents.
Third, Plame is clearly identified as a covert officer of the Counter-Proliferation section of the DO.
PING
Also, an article appeared yesterday in the NY Times or the Washington Post - about 7 pages long - outlining all the relevant facts. The authors claimed that the report Cheney's office wanted investigated was the forged one sent by SISMI. I can't find the article. I wanted to re-read it and check the facts and assertions.
We have an ambassador to Niger who submitted a report. The CIA also sent Gen. Fulford of the Southern command (?) who submitted a report. Who knows what their operatives did? The French companies and the U.N. regularly submit reports. Your problem is not the lack of reports but rather the content; you don't like their conclusions.
They want us to believe there is so little information about uranium exports from Niger, that the CIA sends the HUSBAND of one of their cubicle dwelling analysts to find out whats going on? Someone with no expertise in this area? Someone who does not even sign a confidentiality agreement?
More ignorant bias. Wilson knows a great deal about what's going on and had been to Niger most recently in 1999 at the request of the CIA. That his wife was a CIA analyst and covert operative was a plus, not a negative.
These are the important questions that no one in the MSM is asking.
You ought to be asking yourself about your objectivity.
bttt
No, you and everyone who reads your posts, should question YOUR objectivity! You aren't a Conservative; you aren't even a GOPer. You and MurrayMom are LIBERAL DEMS and why you are allowed to post to FR, with your biased views,is beyond me.
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