Posted on 07/14/2006 7:00:17 AM PDT by new yorker 77
For nearly three years the Bush White House has been dogged by allegations that it outed a covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame, to discredit her husband, Joe Wilson, a harsh critic of the administration's handling of the war in Iraq.
Syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak first reported that Plame, in her official capacity at the CIA, helped initiate Wilson's 2002 trip to Niger to investigate whether Saddam Hussein had tried to obtain uranium there for use in developing nuclear weapons. Novak's disclosure in July 2003 prompted a flurry of accusations that the White House orchestrated the leak of Plame's identity in response to an opinion piece Wilson wrote a week earlier in The New York Times attacking the administration's claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa.
A 1982 law, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, makes it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover CIA agent. Amid an outcry from Democrats on Capitol Hill, the Justice Department named Patrick Fitzgerald as a special prosecutor to probe whether the law had been violated.
After spending more than two years and millions of dollars, Fitzgerald charged no one with the crime of outing Plame. He did persuade a judge to throw New York Times reporter Judith Miller in jail for 85 days for refusing to identify her confidential sources. Miller later relented and testified before the federal grand jury convened by Fitzgerald, as did Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper and Novak.
In the end, the only count issued by the grand jury focused on Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, who is accused of committing perjury during his grand jury testimony and is awaiting trial.
This week, after years of Fitzgerald's exhaustive probing into journalists' confidential sources, the truth finally has come out about who told Novak the name of Wilson's wife. According to Novak's account, no one told him Valerie Plame's name. He learned it from her husband's entry in “Who's Who in America.”
Plame's role in Wilson's Africa trip “was revealed to me in the middle of a long interview with an official who ... was not a political gunslinger,” Novak wrote. “After the federal investigation was announced, he told me through a third party that the disclosure was inadvertent on his part.” Significantly, however, the official never revealed Plame's name to Novak.
So, the plain truth is that, at least as far as Novak's disclosure was concerned, it was not an orchestrated attempt by the White House to out Valerie Plame. Administration officials may have sought to exploit Novak's revelation after the fact by discussing it with other reporters, such as Miller and Cooper. But Novak's report clearly was the product of solid journalistic digging, not a conspiracy hatched in the White House.
Conspiracy advocates will never accept this straightforward account of the facts, but the facts demonstrate that the accusations leveled against the White House for the last three years were groundless.
Is Joe Wilson really that important? There are HUNDREDS of Washington insiders who are harsh critics of everything GWB does! Every democrat on the hill, for starters. Yet the administration goes after Plame and Wilson? What am I missing?
I shouda said Rhetorical, but thanks. Kind of hard to hide or disguise a steaming pile of manure, even if you dress it up with long hair and sunglasses. What a pflaming witch, with a B.
I also just saw him on CNN...and I was actually stunned to listen to both Darin Kagan and King present both sides of this issue relatively objectively. They pointed out that Plame's name only came up because Cheney wanted to get to the bottom of who sent Wilson...since it wasn't him as Wilson often implied. They also mentioned the Senate Intel Committee which concluded that Valerie Plame did have something to do with getting Wilson the job in Niger.
Just listened to the press conference. It was more of a fund raiser for their uphill battle in court. Attorneys across America are smirking and I've not yet heard one comment publicly that these two have a chance in hell of succeeding.
Wilson lied in his press conference today again when he said that nothing he found in Niger showed that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake.
Here we have the reason why the left pretended to be upset about the outting of a non-covert CIA employee; Wilson was lying to the American public that Bush lied and that served the Democrat's purpose. Never mind the fact that it is Wilson who lied:
The panel found that Wilson's report, "rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, actually bolstered the case for most intelligence analysis."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39834-2004Jul9
To this day, British intelligence maintains that Saddam Hussein sought uranium in Africa, recently underlined by a report from The Financial Times of London. The British government states "European intelligence officers have now revealed... human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger." The New York Times paraphrased the above with a clear-cut story titled: "Intelligence Backs Claim Iraq Tried to Buy Uranium." The essay leaves no doubt as to the claim of Bush in January 2003 that Saddam Hussein was not only was trying to procure uranium, but had been for years.
http://www.nytimes.com/financialtimes/business/FT1087373295002.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Wilson misled the Washington Post in June 2003, when he told the paper that the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." In fact, Wilson had never seen the reports.
When the Senate committee staff asked Wilson how he could have come to that conclusion, Wilson replied that he may have "misspoken" (See first paragraph) to reporters.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39834-2004Jul9
Someone posted yesterday that, in addition to your points, the 3-year statute of limitations expired yesterday or the day before and the suit had to be filed then or not at all. Note that it was filed after Joe left a "meeting of top Democrats" , according to MSM reports.
I wish we could all e-mail Simon and Schuster and let them know they are buying the words of a proven liar.
They wouldn't be pleased to know that the Senate Bipartisan Intelligence Committee determined that what Joe Wilson discovered in Niger actually bolstered the Bush administration's position that Iraq was trying to purchase yellowcake. Wilson told the Congress in closed session one thing and then left those meetings and lied to the American public.
Lots of links to that and more here:
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/fiore/050717
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=21844942
And let's hope that Tony Snow is aware of those links and can counter the inevitable questions about this matter at the next press conference.
These are just two out of many people who said that Wilson outed his own wife in the Fox Green Room in 2002: Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely and Lt. General Tom McInerney
And then there is the matter of the bios. Wilson published the NYT editorial stating that he had a project with the CIA (that focused on her particular area of expertise) which was in itself a significant risk to his wife's supposed cover because at least 3 of Wilson's bios on the internet listed Valerie Plame by name as his wife. One of those bios, dated 2002 can be found here.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47242
http://www.redstate.com/story/2005/11/6/235210/851
http://web.archive.org/web/20030720060539/http://www.mideasti.org/html/bio-wilson.html
Good points, a steaming pile, is a steaming pile, is a steaming pile, hopefully the judge flushes this down the drain of history.
Paid hacks, I like it, as if anyone with half a brain couldn't figure that one out. DEMs in denial.
Yes, I forgot about that tidbit. How were these people allowed into positions that effected our national security???
And......... since Bush and Cheney and Rove are being sued.......does that mean they can't TALK about any of this? Is the lawsuit just a way to keep the truth about Plame, Wilson, and the scumbags supporting them hidden?
There is absolutely nothing preventing a defendant in a civil action from talking about the substance of the lawsuit.
Must be when her book deal with Crown fell through in early June, that Val & Joe decided a lawsuit would add another chapter and maybe get the money they were asking.
1. confirm the truth; that is Wilson's wife got him the assignment; or
2. Lie, and be accused as a liar by the liberals.
Or from the liberal point of view:
1. Dammed if you do; or
2. Dammed if you don't.
My guess is one good summary judgment motion on behalf of the defense and Valerie's relevancy will equal that of Michael Moore.
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