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.
The truth will set you free! Months before any investigation they had the opportunity to set the record straight and even point out the rogue cell at the CIA.
You and I both know George Tenet was called on the carpet in the Oval Office within a couple of days and explained this whole deal. Instead of attacking, the Whitehouse team retracted the famous "16 words" despite the Brits supporting their intel... This is why "Bush Lied" is almost written in stone now.
The troops deserved to have their mission defended better than this. Bush also deserved to be better defended. He is like his Dad in many ways.
Yes he did and does! I am sick of all the bashing.
We've spent thousands of manyears on this site alone disembowling this Plame Affair and we knew the truth way back at the beginning. The President's people who do this for a living can't do any better than asking for a crippling investigation?
I understand the call against bashing, but let's not overlook blunder after blunder. The same milquetoasting is in effect with the NSA leaks. Instead of arresting the leakers 7 months ago, the story has now morphed into courageous defenders of the Constitution against Darth Bush.
I'm not to happy with Rove attending the La Raza conference either.
Rant over
I wanna know HOW MANY millions of dollars.
This picture was taken in April 29, 2006, after she left the CIA.
See: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/files/photos/2/2802183b-a9c3-435f-8064-b06e7bafdb57.html?SITE=MOSTP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Caption:
Former CIA officer Valerie Plame, right, and her husband former ambassador Joseph Wilson attend the White House Correspondents' Association's 92nd annual awards dinner, in this April 29, 2006 file photo in Washington. Former CIA operative Valerie Plame files suit against Vice President Dick Cheney, his former top aide Scooter Libby, and presidential adviser Karl Rove. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari, File)
It was 10:00 am eastern. C-Span has a video of it on Real Player here, it you're interested in seeing it.
http://www.c-span.org
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Fmr. Ambassador Joseph Wilson & Valerie Plame Wilson News Conference (7/14/2006)
so
she is the most celebrated 'secret agent' since austin powers
but let me ask you why is it a big deal that her name was leaked but it is no big deal that the media and the new york times has leaked info about how we tracked bin ladins satelite phone, how we attempt to listen to phone calls and email, how we track terrorists money
the democrats are all worried about valeries safety while they seel the rest of us down the river to try and defeat or discredit Bush.
I'm not to happy with Rove attending the La Raza conference either.
Mega DITTOS! We won't even get into what was said there!
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