Posted on 11/18/2005 1:58:52 PM PST by YaYa123
As reporters keep scrambling to find out who told Bob Woodward about Joe Wilson’s wife, Woodward himself has told TIME about a related mystery: what made the source finally come forward. When the Washington Post reporter went public with his involvement in the CIA leak case earlier this week, he failed to explain why his source waited silently for two years before coming clean to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. In an interview today, Woodward described the sequence of conversations with his source and Post executive editor Leonard Downie, Jr. that led to the latest twist in Fitzgerald’s investigation into the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, the wife of administration critic Wilson.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
He said 'This is what I need, I don't need any more.'"
In other words, "If you know something that will hurt democrats, I don't want to know...but if you have something that will hurt Bush, then by all means TELL IT."
What about us? Woodward was backed into a corner by his source. At least this time, his source is conscious.
More eveidence that Fitzgerald conducted an incomplete and one track investigation.
He only spoke with Wilson twice and did not feel the need to put him before the grand jury.
" But it is the first time Woodward had contact with Fitzgerald,
even though Woodward's name shows up on various White House officials' calendars, phone logs and other records during June and July, 2003,
the time frame that is critical to determining whether a crime was committed when information about Plame's employment was shared with reporters.
Those White House records were turned over to Fitzgerald long ago."
" Woodward expressed some surprise that Fitzgerald hadn't contacted him earlier in the probe, ..."
Looks like you landed in a good spot. Keep up the good work.
Nixon himself probably had no knowledge of the burglary which was part of a "dirty tricks" political assault orchestrated by Gordon Liddy et al. to see if there was any salacious material in the files on Dem operatives. What did Nixon in was his eventual obstruction of justice, subornation to perjury, and - of course - the tapes he made himself that proved his own complicity! This resulted in his resignation to avoid impeachment. After his resignation Gerald Ford was asked if the resignation was a tacit admission of guilt by the president -- and even Ford said "Yes". Nixon had no knowledge of the burglary but became an active participant in the coverup of a crime -- which is a crime!
This shows a clear lack of imagination, investigative curiosity, and concludes that this prosecutor had preconceived ideas. Anything not fitting his "model" completely upsets his closed-minded applecart.
bump
Interesting.
They have been replaced with outraged liberal journalists!
Ain't life grand?
Hmmmmm ... could this be what Wilson was referring to when he said it was a "conflict of interest" ??
"Woodward said he had tried twice before, once in 2004 and once earlier this year, to persuade the source to remove the confidentiality restriction, but with no success."
What a load.
If this was a potential crime (as Fitzgerald was treating it), then it is obstruction of justice not to come forward.
One of the many ironies lost in all of this, is that under the law you can't use the claim that some information is "classified" to hide a crime.
It was thanks to Woodward as much as anybody else that we have that law.
And here he is hiding behind some made-up journalistic privilege to hide a crime. (Not that it was a crime.)
And never mind that Libby could go to jail for up to thirty years. What a travesty this all is.
The 11/21 issue of National Review magazine has a picture of Wilson on the cover and the words "Dishonest Joe" below. Joe Wilson is such a professional prevaricator that it's had to disentangle his lies. He first stated that his CIA wife had no role in his being sent to Niger. The 9/11 commission produced written evidence that she did. Another unanswered question is why this has-been diplomat who had absolutely no expertise in his supposed area of investigation was even sent. To further complicate matters his report from Niger was contradictory! On the one hand he asserted that it was unlikely that Niger had ever agreed to sell uranium to Saddam. But he also said that an Iraqi envoy approached the prime minister of Niger in the late 90's with that very intention. Wilson also said that his report had reached the vice president's desk. That also turned out to be false and it's been proven that the CIA never briefed Cheney on Wilson's report. It's been pretty well substantiated that Valerie was not "covert" and that dozens of reporters and others in the DC social circuit knew that she worked for the CIA - even Andrea Mitchell who now - in Wilsonesque fashion - is trying to backtrack. On top of all this it now is a fact that Fitzgerald's claim that Libby was one of the "first" to have known about Plame has been rendered highly doubtful by Bob Woodward. The truth is that there now appears to have been serious omissions in Fitzgerald's two year investigation which has been more about the criminalization of politics than "outing" a CIA covert. And, even before Woodward absolutely NO ONE had been charged with that -- which was the whole purpose of the investigation!! If we want to spend time and money tracing leaks we'd be better off finding out who in the government endangered national security by leaking classified information on overseas bases to the Washington Post.
"I don't think the press is independent anymore."
Well, that has always been true. The media was always about making money and accumulating power. The Hearst regime is one of the old examples. But individual reporters tended not to inject their own biases into the stories quite so proudly as they do now--except they don't consider it bias, they think it is just obvious truth, just as obvious as the law of gravity. In their orbit, reporters only hear one point of view.
Thanks. I gain a lot from the posters on this site.
Re#45 Yep. Although the universe of presstitutes potentially in the know was finite, Wilson stikes me as a glad handing wannabe that would tout his third wife to any that would listen. Fitz's determination (in light of his prosecutorial experience) to indict is inexplicable absent a Ronnie Earlesque agenda--which does not seem to fit (insert character witness Andrew McCarthy). Hence, I think he was gamed by the lying press and now knows it. We he now do the right thing? Time will tell...
Gordon Liddy knew that the Dems were running a high class prostitution ring out of the DNC Headquarters. There was a file with several pictures of the prostitutes and a listing of their specialities, along with contact numbers.
Liddy and others felt that this prostitution ring was a national security threat for blackmail and a variety of other reasons. The point is, that you can not go into court with dirty hands (a basic doctrine); the Dems hands were disgustingly dirty and the reason for the actual break-in has always been kept a deep dark secret by the media.
To this day, we don't know which Senators and Congressmen took advantage of services of this call-girl ring, if blackmail was involved, were any bedroom secrets given away in the heat of passion, was national security harmed, etc...
Trying to stop a prositution ring from being run out of your enemies' National Headquarters doesn't count as a "diry trick" in my book.
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