Couric Cues Up Wilson's Attacks, But Blitzer Challenges Him

MRC ^ | November 1, 2005 | Brent Baker

[fight_truth_decay]

Couric set up the October 31 session: "Now to the man in the middle of the CIA leak case. No one was following the progress of the investigation into who revealed the identity of a CIA operative named Valerie Plame more closely than her husband Joe Wilson. His op-ed in the New York Times taking on the Bush administration's rationale for going to war in Iraq allegedly led to his wife's outing. Ambassador Wilson good morning, welcome back."

Couric's questions:

-- "First and foremost what was your reaction to the indictments announced on Friday?"

-- "Meanwhile Patrick Fitzgerald, as you well know, has said the investigation continues. In the indictment there was someone referred to as 'Official A,' widely believed to be Karl Rove and he is the man who is believed to have given your wife's name to Robert Novak in that very first column. There's also speculation that Scooter Libby may reach a plea agreement and if there is a trial that Vice President Cheney may have to testify. How wide, how high up do you believe this goes?"

Wilson: "Well first of all with respect to Mr. Rove it's also clear from Matt Cooper's testimony, the Time magazine reporter, that he gave Valerie's name to Matt Cooper and as a consequence of that he is party to the compromise of the national security of this country. How he still has a national security clearance, how he still has a job in the West Wing of the White House is beyond me. I think it shows a horrible lapse of judgement and ethical comportment."

-- "Do you think that he should step down? Do you agree with Harry Reid?"

Wilson: "Oh I think, I don't think he should be permitted to step down. I think the President should fire him. These are firing offenses. These are not, 'you are allowed to resign,' offenses. These are firing offenses. This is the national security of the country we're talking about."

-- "But as you know despite this two-year investigation Scooter Libby was indicted for things like perjury, obstruction of justice, misleading officials but not for violating that 1982 law that says it's a federal crime to knowingly reveal the identity of a covert CIA agent."

Wilson: "And Mr. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor made it very clear, when he was explaining the indictment that one of the reasons he was indicted for obstruction of justice was because he had impeded the prosecutor's investigation into what actually happened."]

-- "And that raises the question why, do you believe, Scooter Libby lied?"

Wilson: "I have no idea."

"That's what is the big question, isn't it?"

-- "Let me ask you about the op-ed that you wrote in the L.A. Times this weekend. You called, you referred to your, are, you and Valerie Plame's 27 months of hell. Why was it so hellacious? How damaging, do you believe, this has been to the CIA and, and to your wife?"

-- "Did you get death threats or have you gotten death threats of any kind?"

-- "When you say threats can you characterize them any more specifically?"

-- Couric finally got to a mild challenge: "During the last two years your integrity has been questioned, your character, there, has been questioned as well. There have been suggestions that your wife was in fact responsible for dispatching you to Niger, that you and she have a vendetta, some kind of personal political vendetta against the Bush administration. That you actually introduced her to parties as, 'Your CIA wife,' and therefore divulged her identity yourself. And that your report about the sale of uranium by Niger to Iraq was actually inconclusive and that the Vice President never saw this report. So I guess that raises the question, do you have some kind of personal vendetta against the Bush administration? Do you want the Bush administration to fail?"

-- "There was such a lag between the State of the Union and the op-ed piece. Did you ever try to contact anyone at the White House or the CIA to say, 'Hey this isn't true, why are they saying this?'"

-- "Do you have a personal vendetta against the Bush administration?"

-- "Having said that Patrick Fitzgerald also took great pains to say that this investigation was not about the wisdom of the war. He said, 'This indictment is not about the propriety of the war.' But you disagreed with that. You think this is really about the buildup to war, the Bush administration's rationale for invading Iraq?"

-- "Finally Bill Kristol in the Weekly Standard, the conservative Weekly Standard, says, 'That this is damaging to Scooter Libby, embarrassing to the administration but because there is one person this is no conspiracy and this is the best possible outcome.' Would you agree with that assessment?"

-- "Do you believe that you and your wife will be able to get back to normal in, in any way, shape or form?"

CNN ran Blitzer's session with Wilson twice: Just before 4:30pm EST and again in a re-play during the 7pm EST hour Monday night. Blitzer's questions:

-- "Do you have confidence in Patrick Fitzgerald, the special counsel who's investigated this leak?"

-- "Are you, though, disappointed that he didn't charge anyone with outing your wife as an undercover CIA operative?"

-- "But you were hoping that someone would actually -- that you'd get to the bottom of this: Who decided to out your wife as a CIA operative?"

-- "But you understand why that's not a crime -- that wasn't deemed a crime by Patrick Fitzgerald?"

-- "On August 21st, 2003, at a forum, you were quoted as saying this -- and I believe you did say this because we've talked about it: 'At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.' He's still working at the White House. He's the deputy White House chief of staff."

Wilson: "I believe it's an abuse of the public trust. And even if he can't be convicted of it, I see no reason why somebody like that, why the president would want to have somebody like that working on his staff."

Blitzer: "Well, forget about conviction. He hasn't even been charged with a crime."

Wilson: "Again, it's now very clear that he leaked it. Mr. Cooper's sworn testimony indicates that. The e-mails indicate that."

-- "Let's go through some of the criticism that's been leveled at you, afresh over these past several days since this whole leak investigation was coming to a boil last Friday. A lot of your critics blame you for the eventual disclosure of your wife as a CIA operative, and they go back to that early May 2003 column by the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof who first reports about an unnamed U.S. ambassador making this trip to Africa. Were you the source, Nicholas Kristof's source, for that column?"

Wilson: "Well, I was a source for that column."

-- "Why you tell Nicholas Kristof about your trip to Africa?"

-- "Because, as you know, this was two months before the Robert Novak column appeared."

-- "The former CIA officer Robert Behr was quoted in Saturday's Washington Post as saying this: 'The fact is, once your husband writes an op-ed piece and goes political, you have no immunity and that's the way Washington works.' In other words, he's one of those suggesting that, by your going public in various ways, your wife's identity was eventually going to be made known."

-- "Even though some of your supporters were on this program last week -- Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer; Pat Lang, a former DIA intelligence analyst. They say your decision and your wife's decision to let her be photographed represented a major mistake because, if there were people out there who may have been endangered by her name, certainly when people might have seen her picture, they could have been further endangered."

-- "So you don't have any regrets about the Vanity Fair picture?"

Wilson: "I think it's a great picture. I think someday you will, too."

Blitzer: "It's a great picture. But I mean the fact that-" Wilson: "I think someday it, too, will be in the International Spy Museum."

Blitzer: "But you don't think it was a mistake to do that?"

Wilson: "No."

Blitzer: "Okay."

-- "Let's talk about Joe DiGenova, a former U.S. Attorney, Republican. He was on this program, as you well know -- he among others suggesting: Well, she had a desk job, she was an analyst in the Counterproliferation Division at the CIA. She was no longer really what they call a NOC, someone working nonofficial cover overseas and that it was really no big deal."

-- "Did you ever go around in cocktail parties -- because this has been alleged against you as well -- before the Robert Novak column and boast 'my wife, the CIA agent,' 'my wife works for the CIA'?"

Wilson: "Of course not."

-- "How well-known was it that she worked for the CIA before the Novak column?"

-- "Your trip to Niger -- there's been some suggestion that she came up with the idea of sending you to Niger. And the Senate -- we've gone through this, but I'll let you respond since it keeps coming up over and over again -- the Select Committee on Intelligence that came out July 7th, 2004, last year said this: 'Interviews and documents provided to the committee' -- the Senate committee -- 'indicated that his wife, a CPD' -- Counterproliferation Division -- 'employee suggested his name for the trip.' Did she come up with the idea?"

-- "Larry Johnson, on this program last week, the former CIA officer, said your wife has been threatened by al-Qaida. Is that true?"

-- "If you had to do it all over again, looking backwards, any changes you would have done?"

-- "But let me ask a final question, now: Are you going to file any civil lawsuits against Libby, Cheney, anyone else?"

Wilson: "We're keeping all of our options open. There's a very complicated procedure for this, even though the case itself is relatively simple. And we have not come to any decision yet."

[fight_truth_decay]

For full Cyber Alert, as I cut the intro see link.

Read: Joe Wilson: A Man On A Mission In A Media Vehicle at MRC's NewsBusters.org

[Siena Dreaming]

Some good questions from Wolf.

But he'll go the other way next time he interviews Wilson.

[Williams]

The real absurdity is if his wife was a secret CIA official and sent him on a mission, WHY would she let him go on a national speaking tour blabbing the whole thing to undermine US policy? Plus letting him lie about it. She must be an absolutely irresponsible, despicable person.

[Williams]

I just can't get over all this missing teh forest for teh trees. Blitzer is asking him "How well was she known before your trip to Niger?" Somebody should just say "Come on! This is your own damn wife! She sent you on the mission and then let you go on every news show and college campus lying about it. How could she possibly expect her role to remain secret? Instead, they let her off scott free. I want her fired.

[Siena Dreaming]

I believe I read that someone from the WH said the other day that it was time to go after Wilson.

In the pic it looks like they have had to use extra pancake makeup on Wilson to soak up the sweat beads on his forehead.

Gonna be fun.

[lotsaguns]

Ah, she's wearing her "serious" glasses again. LOL

[SAMS]

"Ah, she's wearing her "serious" glasses again. LOL"

And PANTS!! She must really be taking this seriously!!

[ClearCase_guy]

Katie is such a great journalist, really digging for the information:

"Would you say the President is a moron?"
"Are you disappointed that the country elected such a corrupt administration?"
"Women and children are obviously going to suffer. Do you think the president cares?"
"The American people clearly wish John Kerry had been elected. Would we be better off if that had happened?"
"Some people say the press is blatantly biased. What makes those people think their opinion matters?"

[tumblindice]

I'm almost as sick of Wilson as I am of Sheehan.
What a creep.

[fight_truth_decay]

Good post on MRC's NewsBusters as I referenced above.

Joe Wilson: A Man On A Mission In A Media Vehicle
Posted by Mithridate Ombud on November 1, 2005 - 12:08.
Robert Scheer writes for the LA Times:


[Judith Miller] knew early on that Libby was using the media to punish former U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV for exposing President Bush's false claim that Iraq sought nuclear material from the African nation of Niger.
The words I want to examine here are "punish" and "false claim". If there was information given to a reporter, it wasn't to punish Joe Wilson, it was to expose him. By the time he went to Niger, he had a long history of not just being against the war, but being against a regime change in Iraq. This was no impartial panel to examine evidence. This was one guy going over there without even being paid, lying about who sent him [Cheney], to [his words mind you] "drink sweet tea and meet with people." Did he look at spy sat imagery? No. Did he examine hardware with a Geiger counter? No. Did he meet with CIA HUMINT informants? No. He simply asked a dozen people if they were selling yellowcake to Saddam. What would you answer if the U.S. asked you that?

And in the end, Joe Wilson didn't even say it definitely didn't happen. His finding was "that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." Do you read that caveat in newspaper articles?

Meanwhile, the IAEA, an organization that does more than ask people questions, determined that yellowcake was found in scrap metal originating from Iraq. What does Joe Wilson have to say about that?

The Butler Review also found something Joe Wilson apparently missed:

The report indicated that there was enough intelligence to make a “well-founded” judgment that Saddam Hussein was seeking, perhaps as late as 2002, to obtain uranium illegally from Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo (6.4 para. 499). In particular, referring to a 1999 visit of Iraqi officials to Niger, the report states (6.4 para. 503): “The British government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible.”
Back to the claim that Bush made a "false claim". Given that we have intelligence and physical evidence that contradict Joe Wilson, as well as a solid foundation for Joe Wilson's motive, what is this "false claim" Bush made based on?

[go-ken-go]

"INTERNATIONAL SPY MUSEUM'? He actually said the picture could end up in a spy museum? sounds like something from scrappleface.. this guy is a phony.

[Asfarastheeastisfromthewest...]

Couric finally got to a mild challenge: "During the last two years your integrity has been questioned, your character, there, has been questioned as well. There have been suggestions that your wife was in fact responsible for dispatching you to Niger, that you and she have a vendetta, some kind of personal political vendetta against the Bush administration. That you actually introduced her to parties as, 'Your CIA wife,' and therefore divulged her identity yourself. And that your report about the sale of uranium by Niger to Iraq was actually inconclusive and that the Vice President never saw this report. So I guess that raises the question, do you have some kind of personal vendetta against the Bush administration? Do you want the Bush administration to fail?"

So if you ever wanted an Exhibit A example of how media bias is carried out, here it is. Couric starts of in this line of questioning by making it seem that she is being fair and unbiased and asking the tough questions ....... and look what happens. At the end of these questions, does she actually follow any of them up? Of course not, they are all collectively dropped like a hot potato and Wilson instead was offered up another softball to smear the WH. A not too subtle slick sleight of hand interview was pulled off here, Katie. And did everybody notice that Wilson did not take the opportunity to correct all these 'misconceptions' and 'suggestions' that Couric rhetorically outlined? Joe Wilson is a confirmed liar through and through and yet somehow Couric couldn't have tried harder to make it seem like she was being oh so sensitive to his ‘terrible encounter with the dastardly deeds by the White House’ (to satisfy the leftist audience) while giving the pretense of being ‘the tough interviewer in the controversial areas’, (to make sure the right can’t charge her with a lopsided bias). What a joke – the transparency couldn't’t have been clearer. The whole interview stunk of collusion, too much advance preparation on both the interviewer and interviewee’s part to ‘get exactly the right message out’. Anybody with half a brain could figure this one out. (The exact opposite of what she tried to in the Louis Freeh interview by the way.) Oh well, it was just another Rather moment – this time at NBC.

[RDTF]

Great article - I don't trust Blitzer but I am glad he made all these important points that the rest of America that doesn't watch Fox needed to hear.

[RJL]

"So you don't have any regrets about the Vanity Fair picture?"

Wilson: "I think it's a great picture. I think someday you will, too."

Blitzer: "It's a great picture. But I mean the fact that-" Wilson: "I think someday it, too, will be in the International Spy Museum."

What a buffoon!

[MNJohnnie]

Dear Democrat Senator Scumbags;


Since the same intelligence used by Bill Clinton and EVERY sitting Democrat Senator in 1998 to justify bombing Iraq was part of the Bush Admins Intelligence used in 2003, please explain to me how "Bush lied" and YOU ALL did NOT?


If anyone LIED to us it was Bill Clinton and the Democrat Leadership when they developed this Intelligence in 1998. When can we expect the letters of resignation from ever member of the Democrat Senate Leadership over this "lie"?

[RDTF]

Yep - and the fact that he said that tells me he was so enchanted by it all that he definately introduced her as his 'CIA wife' at parties. That interview was a gift to a savy attorney.

[Eroteme]

That part of the exchange is bizarre.

>Blitzer: "So you don't have any regrets about the Vanity Fair picture?"

>Wilson: "I think it's a great picture. I think someday you will, too."

>Blitzer: "It's a great picture. But I mean the fact that-"

>Wilson: "I think someday it, too, will be in the International Spy Museum."

Why do I hear Carly Simon singing in the background? The scarf....the underworld spy...and now this nonsense from Wilson. He's actually trying to intimate that--wink wink nod nod--there's a very good spy-type reason that we did this and I'd love to tell you but, y'know how it is in the spy game. Someday you'll understand.

Scratch the Carly Simon song...Wilson's the used car salesman in "True Lies."

[RJL]

Wilson's the used car salesman in "True Lies."

Bill Paxton played the part of Simon the used car salesman.

We'll have to start calling him Joe "Simon" Wilson.