Posted on 10/31/2005 11:51:10 PM PST by CyberAnt
FROM: JULY 18, 2005
Hold on to your hat. The plot is about to thicken.
Behind the scenes, the single most important reason for the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson farce is that CIA Director Porter Goss has finally started to clean house at Langley. Goss’s long-overdue shake-up is clearly backed by the White House, the top levels of the Pentagon and State Department, and the new National Director of Intelligence, John Negroponte.
Judging by Director Goss’s remarks at his Senate confirmation hearings, those whose jobs are most in danger include the CIA “experts” in WMD proliferation – Valerie Plame’s outfit – who completely failed to anticipate the Indian and Pakistani nukes, and just couldn’t figure out what was going on with Iraqi WMDs. Valerie Plame’s bosses are facing the axe for decades of failures.
And it’s about time, because Iran is within sight of its first nukes. You don’t suppose that has anything to do with the Plame/Wilson publicity stunt, do you?
Clearly the CIA managers who failed the United States so terribly on 9/11 should have been fired four years ago. Others now worried about their careers include officials who have long resisted the onerous task of building a topnotch human intelligence capability in the most dangerous parts of the world.
Porter Goss’s new broom should also sweep away:
1) personnel who utterly failed to thwart critical technology theft by China during the Clinton years;
2) those who constantly undermine the war on terror;
3) the ones who make a regular habit of dropping media stinkbombs against the White House.
4) Finally, there is the faction that supported Saddam Hussein’s hold on power, as Joe Wilson did.
It could be a bloodbath, and the Permanent Establishment knows it.
The farcical Plame/Wilson assault on Karl Rove is a shot across the bow of the White House. The spook bureaucracy is fighting for its perks, hand-in-hand with the Democrats and the media. This is exactly the same iron triangle that destroyed Richard Nixon.
The charge against Rove is based on a blatantly forged document, purporting to show that Saddam tried to buy Niger yellowcake uranium. We now know that the document was forged by the French government to embarrass Secretary Colin Powell, and undermine the American case against Saddam at the UN. It was classic disinformation bait. Powell flourished the Niger forgery at the Security Council, and the very next day “European intelligence agencies” leaked word that it was a laughable fraud.
Months later, the London Telegraph published the fact that it was all a French disinformation ploy.
The CIA has to know all about the French forgery, just as it knows that Joseph Wilson’s famous trip to Niger was pure bilgewater. Nobody sends a has-been diplomat to Africa to drink mint tea with corrupt old President Tandja Mamadou, expecting to discover whether Mamadou has secretly been selling nuke materials to Saddam.
That’s pure Inspector Clousseau.
Valerie Plame’s CIA bosses took care not to ask Mr. Wilson to sign a confidentiality agreement, routine in such cases, almost as if they wanted him to make a public fuss. They were not surprised, one might think, when Mr. Wilson promptly took his story to New York Times Op-Ed Editor Gail Collins, one of the great Bush-haters of all time. As Joseph DiGenova, former US Attorney for DC, recently said, “The CIA isn’t stupid. They wanted this story out.”
It was a publicity stunt from the get-go.
Wilson’s “confidential trip” to Niger gave him the superficial credentials to publish his “expose” in the Times. He’d gone there, talked to the top officials face to face, and by gum, they told him it was all a lie! Not even Gail Collins could possibly believe this banana sauce, but Wilson’s charges provided a useful stick with which to beat the White House.
What Karl Rove apparently did was to hint to reporters about the fraudulence of the whole Wilson stunt, and for that the media mob wants him drawn and quartered. No good deed goes unpunished.
Everything else Wilson has been saying on his two-year speaking tour around the country has been shown to be lies, but well-designed lies - lies that fit right into the mad-dog world of the Democrat Left.
Telling lies to confirm somebody’s paranoid beliefs is a classic disinformation gambit, right out of Spy School 101. But such gambits would be far more usefully employed against al Qaeda, our opponent in war. If the United States is attacked again by terrorists, one reason will be that our CIA has wasted time fighting the White House rather than the enemy.
Given Wilson’s Niger trip, set up by wife Valerie for Joe Wilson to publicly show that a blatant forgery was, well, a forgery, the current media attack on the White House was completely predictable.
The Permanent Establishment had a perfect dress rehearsal last year with the uproar about Richard Clarke, who also worked in the Clinton White House, possibly next door to Joe Wilson. The barely-disguised message to George W. Bush was: if you try to get rid of us, we may pull a Deep Throat on you. J. Edgar Hoover would have seen through it instantly.
When the Twin Towers exploded in 2001, President Bush did not touch the FBI or the CIA. By comparison, after the Japanese decimated the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941, FDR and George Marshall churned the commanding ranks of the Army and Navy, elevating talented officers like Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton. They created Wild Bill Donovan’s OSS, the seed of the CIA. Donovan in his turn brought street spooks to the top, political correctness (of the day) be damned.
A lot of careers were broken, and the new talent skyrocketed. It worked like a charm. The infusion of new blood into a stale bureaucracy was the key to victory in World War II. The old crew had allowed a deplorable situation to develop, and were obviously incapable of recognizing what needed to be done.
So why didn’t Mr. Bush clean out the dead wood at CIA?
A reasonable guess is that his father warned against it. George Bush, Sr. is a former CIA Director, after all, and is intimately familiar with its ways. He was a GOP Congressman during Watergate, when Mark Felt destroyed Richard Nixon for thwarting his lifelong ambition to succeed J. Edgar Hoover.
Paraphrasing LBJ’s immortal words, it was smarter to keep the CIA inside the tent pissing out rather than the other way around. So George Tenet wasn’t fired, and as far as we can tell, neither was anybody else. Instead, the President met with Tenet every day for five years to get the latest about al Qaeda, and surely gained a deeper understanding of the intelligence maze at the same time.
The White House has played a very careful poker game since then, picking its cards one by one until it was ready to make the big move. Today, George Tenet is out, State and Defense are in the hands of Bush loyalists, the House and Senate have GOP majorities, and the new CIA Director is not an insider. The CIA itself is now subordinate to the new National Director of Intelligence, John Negroponte, a no-nonsense diplomat in the Kissinger mold. When Goss became Director, Agency bureaucrats complained bitterly to the press. Mr. Bush now holds all the cards, and it is time to play them.
All this isn’t just fun and games. It casts a deadly light on internecine warfare in Washington at a time of great national danger.
We know that Hoover blackmailed four successive Presidents by threatening to reveal confidential FBI secrets. We know that Hoover’s fair-haired boy, Mark Felt, destroyed the Nixon Presidency – a virtual coup d’etat that the media tell us was a victory of Democracy over the Secret Government. With the media as destiny’s servant.
We know that Nixon taped visitors to the Oval Office without their permission, but that FDR, LBJ, and Kennedy did the same, without facing media exposure.
And during the unbelievable Clinton years we know that Bill and Hillary abused presidential power in a dozen egregious ways, and may still control copies of raw FBI files to use against their domestic enemies.
But it was Richard Nixon alone who got caught by a rogue FBI bureaucrat. Deep Throat showed how a president can be destroyed by a bureaucrat.
The farcical “outing” of Valerie Plame therefore raises a genuinely frightening monster from the swamp: A subversive alliance between the intelligence bureaucracy, the Democrat Party and the media. The common thread among all the characters in this low-brow comedy is hatred of President Bush and American power.
Joe Wilson’s eyebrows go ballistic when he talks about the White House. Just watch him sometime.
The sneering media mob is on display on C-SPAN whenever the White House holds a press briefing. The Left is apoplectic: “Karl Rove + traitor” brought up 97,000 entries on google three days ago, and 124,000 this morning.
But Karl Rove is merely today’s target for a permanent state of rage so deep and hot that it is always seeking new witches to burn. As for the failed CIA spooks who are now living in fear of losing their perks, one can only imagine the steam blowing from their ears, as the day of reckoning draws closer.
I’m cheering for the good guys.
btt
I don't know if he did it on air. If he had, I'm sure I would have remembered it - unless it was one of those rare days when I wasn't able to listen.
I'll send him a link just in case - and maybe he will bring it up.
Gross needs to get all middle managers and up on the "box" to find and fire (stripping the pensions) of the weak sisters.
A shameless Plame puffpiece in the WashPost last Saturday did much to paint a poor, bedraggled, victimized, and "devastated" Orphan Annie who is "a leper" within the CIA, who can't do her job, who has lost her career, and wah wah wah.
In fact, here are some select phrases from "Valerie Plame, the Spy Who Got Shoved Out Into the Cold":
"personal impact", "the most famous spy in the world", "career has been derailed", "intends to retire", "postpartum depression support network", "tremendous stress", "she was devastated", "she went on with her life", "gagged by the CIA", "her notoriety", "one of the elite clandestine spies", "In 2006, she will have 20 years with the agency", "would not receive full benefits", "the strain of remaining at the agency has taken its toll", "she's like a leper", "It's like someone whose child has died", "destroyed her life", "absolutely devastated", "the ultimate private person", "her career was over", "her agency refuses to allow her to defend herself", "Postpartum Support International", "local postpartum support chapter", "too much stress", "incredible strength", "endure this".
I guess if she hadn't sent her husband on an unclassified, taxpayer-financed meet-and-greet junket, she wouldn't be be so "devastated".
Does silver-tongue Joe lie to her like he does to everyone else?
I agree with you. There were many, many FBI people who left the FBI because Clinton basically used them to scout for women, and to exact retribution upon his enemies (along with the IRS).
I'm glad all this is coming out in the open - finally!! the real Bill Clinton and his criminal cabal is being exposed.
It already is a "spy" novel .. LOL!!
There were many Clinton-depravity accounts circulating around DC Metro during the 1992 campaign.
Because once he became a nominee for POTUS, he had many more official federal escorts, and the wives of those escorts (most of whom live in the DC suburbs) have friends, and they talk about their husbands' work. And so they talked about Bill and Hitlery.
For example, Bill and Hill were sleeping in separate hotel rooms throughout the 1992 campaign.
That was never published in the papers, it was related to me by my sister-in-law, and came directly from her friend, the wife of one of those "federal escorts". They knew about the Clinton sickness from the get-go.
"The part I don't understand is how did Wilson know about the forged documents ahead of time?"
The same way Bill Clinton knew. Bill told Blair that if he stuck with "Bush's war" he was going to lose his re-election. Bill had to have known something about the Wilson affair at that time - in order to make that threat to Blair.
I'm not sure of the time frame, but I believe it wasn't too long after that statement by Bill, that the Wilson affair erupted all over the place.
If Bill Clinton knew - Hillary knew - and if Hillary knew - how involved was she in helping to set up this whole event?? She was friends with Pflame and Miller, and I'm confident the Clintons had their "cronies" at the CIA and the FBI.
And .. it was Clinton who went all over the world prior to the Iraq war trying to drum up support AGAINST THE U.S. RESOLUTION and AGAINST THE WAR. When Blair and Bush went ahead with the war - without France, Germany and Russia, I believe the plan was hatched to discredit Bush/Blair and the war - during a time of war - which is about as close to treason as you can get.
And as far as I can see, technically at least, she was pulled inside, remaining with the CIA. For the record though, her marriage date would likely be attached to the 5 year "outing" clause. It would be the date she could "legally" tell Joe without losing her status. The fact that they say that they were in the process of reclassifying her in the Spring of 2003 begs the question: Did it happen or didn't it. You can't have it both ways unless you're playing with files "AND PAYROLL".
A couple of notes: Mandy Grunwald's father, Henry Grunwald, was Chief Op-Ed for Time. He was the first to say Nixon should resign and likely not in a friendly tone. (I wish I had the article.) Henry died February 26, 2005.
THREE (3) MONTHS LATER, on May 31, 2005, Vanity Fair published an exclusive which revealed that Mark Felt was Deep Throat.
So how does it all fit together. Surely, Henry Grunwald knew of Mark Felt. The agreement on revelation was "mutual agreement" or upon death. But Felt had revealed himself a couple of years earlier to his family and it is more than likely that others were involved according to what Woodword's own words. My guess is that Grunwald took info to his grave in Feb.. and Felt agreed to come out. What a great distraction and perfect timing: "Hey, we got another Watergate on our hands."
When Hillary worked on taking Nixon down, she wrote a brief on "how to". It was deemed both "illegal and unconstitutional". (I hope I can find that article again" I think I printed it out".)
Mandy Grunwald should have explained to her hubby, Matt Cooper, (before he made his phone calls) that Hillary is her "best friend" and not him
And .. for all of you who have not seen the following article about how Aldrich Ames outed Valerie in 1997 - here is the link:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1512367/posts
I expect Joe Wilson to ask for Howard Dean's job any minute.
Plame & Wilson need to go to prison for sedition, treason, whatever. They have willfully lied to everyone in charge of investigating 911, outing Plame (Wilson is the one who did that, so prosecute him), and they at least need to be charged for lying to the Special Prosecutor, too.
Regarding the CIA's failure on the Iraq WMDs, no one is talking about the 6 month delay before the war began. What good are all those Defense satellites if our leaders don't know what went out of Iraq prior to our invasion? I think our leaders know very well that Saddam had all evidence of WMDs buried or shipped out with the help of the French, the Germans, and the Russians. Plenty of WMDs have been found, but the stockpiles weren't. Well, DUH. It sure wouldn't take me six months to clean my house if I knew my mother-in-law was coming.
Raw Data: Dem Memo on Iraq Intel
Thursday, November 06, 2003
Following is the text of a memo written by a Democrat on the staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that suggests how to make the greatest gain off of intelligence data leading to the war against Iraq. The memo was obtained by Fox News.
Transcript of a memo written by a Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee staff suggesting how to make the greatest gain off of intelligence data leading to the war against Iraq.
We have carefully reviewed our options under the rules and believe we have identified the best approach. Our plan is as follows:
1) Pull the majority along as far as we can on issues that may lead to major new disclosures regarding improper or questionable conduct by administration officials. We are having some success in that regard. For example, in addition to the president's State of the Union speech, the chairman has agreed to look at the activities of the Office of the Secretary of Defense as well as Secretary Bolton's office at the State Department. The fact that the chairman supports our investigations into these offices and co-signs our requests for information is helpful and potentially crucial. We don't know what we will find but our prospects for getting the access we seek is far greater when we have the backing of the majority. (Note: we can verbally mention some of the intriguing leads we are pursuing.)
2) Assiduously prepare Democratic "additional views" to attach to any interim or final reports the committee may release. Committee rules provide this opportunity and we intend to take full advantage of it. In that regard, we have already compiled all the public statements on Iraq made by senior administration officials. We will identify the most exaggerated claims and contrast them with the intelligence estimates that have since been declassified. Our additional views will also, among other things, castigate the majority for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry. The Democrats will then be in a strong position to reopen the question of establishing an independent commission (i.e. the Corzine amendment).
3) Prepare to launch an independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation at any time-- but we can only do so once. The best time to do so will probably be next year either:
A) After we have already released our additional views on an interim report -- thereby providing as many as three opportunities to make our case to the public: 1) additional views on the interim report; 2) announcement of our independent investigation; and 3) additional views on the final investigation; or
B) Once we identify solid leads the majority does not want to pursue. We could attract more coverage and have greater credibility in that context than one in which we simply launch an independent investigation based on principled but vague notions regarding the "use" of intelligence.
In the meantime, even without a specifically authorized independent investigation, we continue to act independently when we encounter foot-dragging on the part of the majority. For example, the FBI Niger investigation was done solely at the request of the vice chairman; we have independently submitted written questions to DoD; and we are preparing further independent requests for information.
Summary
Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public's concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq. Yet, we have an important role to play in the revealing the misleading -- if not flagrantly dishonest methods and motives -- of the senior administration officials who made the case for a unilateral, preemptive war. The approach outline above seems to offer the best prospect for exposing the administration's dubious motives and methods.
thanks!
It has been said by some on here that Joe Wilson met with Chris Lehane in May of that year and it was then that the story began to grow some legs. Chris Lehane was responsible for shopping the story to Vanity Fair and arranging for the NYT article. Shortly after this story broke, Kerry disassociated himself with Wilson and Lehane.
I agree that the MSM will be reluctant to modify a story they can use against Bush. But they have no power to control events.
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