Plame Out - The ridiculous end to the scandal that distracted Washington.

www.slate.com ^ | Aug. 29, 2006 | Christopher Hitchens

[Neverforget01]

Chris Matthews will never recover from this news!

[UCANSEE2]

What gets me is that no one, ever, has questioned what Joe Wilson was going to NIGER for in the first place.

Joe Wilson owns a company that was in NIGER doing business.
He went there to handle a BIG 'deal' they had in the works.

What does Joe's company do?

They are a BROKER for the PRESIDENT OF NIGER.

They are a BROKER for sales of YELLOWCAKE ORE.

They were brokering a deal between the PRESIDENT of NIGER and SADDAM.

Since that would have been 'illegal', they sold the ore to LIBYA. (and LIBYA sold it to.........????)

Joe came back and reported that there were no 'direct' sales of ORE to SADDAM.

YEP. Joe Wilson was the one to have spy for the CIA on the subject of SALES of YELLOWCAKE, because that is what his company is in the business of.

AND, he did this twice. Once during CLINTON'S Admin., and once during BUSH's.

AND, he got away with it.

[Volunteer]

"Wake me when she makes it to Playboy."

Do you honestly think she is going to make it into a publication that nice? That woman is the reason there is a Hustler magazine.

[neverdem]

Do you have any links on Wilson brokering yellowcake?

[philman_36]

Absolute dead silence from the Drive-By media.
An instance of Drive-Thru media, IMO.
They take your order and you wait forever for your food.
When it finally does come the order is wrong and if you don't check it out before you drive off...

You wanted fries with that?

[Toidylop]

You wanna tell me that the leak did NOT come from one of the drive-by media's intended culprits!!! Bah... Geez... You wonder why Dumbassador Wilson kept VERY quiet these days after the much heralded announced lawsuit???

[ABG(anybody but Gore)]

Bump for later...

[maica]

Like Quayle and the potato or Senator Allen and macaca, the dbm have their story and they will not give it up. Facts and logic do not enter their reality.

[pollyannaish]

LOL. He is a crusty old coot. You don't want to mess with him.

[liberallarry]

Absolute dead silence from the Drive-By media.

Unbelievable!...and indefensible.

Hitchens is truly good to have unearthed this stuff. I never imagined it would turn out this way. I always thought Wilson's report, confirming those of our amabassador to Niger and the General the CIA also sent, was ok...and the Bush administration was responsible for bringing Plame's name into this...and that it was mistaken for doing so.

[AmeriBrit]

It seems that most only read the titles and don't read any of the research that's included on the years previous to 2003 which prove IF she was ever 'covert' she was 'outed' years before many times. One report I haven't been able to find a confirmation on says as far back as 1991. Even Joe Wilson's bio discloses who she is and what names she goes under going back to 1998, besides 'Who's Who in America', speaking engagement programs, and Joe Wilson's own big mouth every chance he's managed to get someone to listen to him since 1998.

Anyone who believes what Hitchens is saying still don't know the real story or truth.

[RunningWolf]

Boy, after all the drama, suspense and build up, that was quite an anti-climatic end to the whole Valerie Plame episode.

I still want to know who it was who sent her Husband Joe Wilson on the Nigeria mission.

W.

[UCANSEE2]

Not currently.

When this first came out, I had the name of his company, and their business. His company is a broker for the President of Niger. That is why he was going to Niger in the first place.

I will search to see what I can find now.

[liberallarry]

Do a Google search in News on "Richard Armitage" and see that this story has dropped off the radar like a lead balloon!

No it hasn't.

Armitage+Plame

[kellynla]

Another excellent piece by Hitchens.

What I haven't read and/or heard yet is Fitzgerald being fired.

Fitzgerald has wasted years and hundreds of thousands of taxpayers' dollars enriching himself and his subordinates on an "investigation" that any beat cop in America could have solved in a day.
Valerie Plame, at the time, was nothing more than a CIA desk jockey.
A CIA employee NOT covered by anonymity protection.

[nopardons]

I know and that's why I pinged you to this thread.

Aldrich Ames outed Plame ( was that in '91 ? ), so did our own CIA, she told Joe, in the middle of a make-out session, on their third date, and Joe's been telling everyone and anyone about old Val, since then.

[Armigerous]

...yea, I see what you mean...I'd 'plause' her

[aculeus]

Fitzgerald should run for District Attorney ... of Bolder.

[AmeriBrit]

He formed 'J.C. Wilson International Ventures Corporation', a business development and management company which ventured in gold, oil, and
telecommunications and served clients in Africa, Western Europe, and Turkey.

Wilson ran his company out of the offices of an investment company called Rock Creek Corporation. Rock Creek was controlled by Mohammed Alamoudi, whom Wilson had met in 1997 at a reception organized for the World Bank by
Westar Group. Alamoudi was a member of the Saudi-Ethiopian Alamoudi dynasty, which was heavily invested in the segments of the African economy Wilson was seeking to penetrate. The Alamoudi-affiliated company Delta Services--a Swiss subsidiary of the Saudi company Delta Oil--handled Iraqi oil export contracts in 2000 and 2001 and was revealed in 2003 as a recipient of Iraqi Oil-for-Food vouchers channeled through Abu Abbas, a Palestinian terrorist with Iraqi connections. Delta Services also cooperated with Afghanistan's Taliban regime in a project to build an oil pipeline from Afghanistan to Pakistan, prior to this project's suspension in 1998. In 1999, Alamoudi was accused by USA Today reporter Jack Kelley of heading a bank which was being investigated for financing Al Qaeda.

[billhilly]

"I often disagree with Hutch.."

Hitchens gave the finger to Bill Maher's sycophantic audience a few nights and told them to perform an unnatural act on themselves.

He is the best thing that has come along in Journalism in this country for a very long time. "Hitch" has a reputation for hitting the bottle, but if it has dulled his senses, he started out with a lot more than most.

And yes, I know he was a flaming liberal for most of his career.