Posted on 09/13/2006 12:00:39 PM PDT by Bubba_Leroy
When Richard Armitage finally acknowledged last week he was my source three years ago in revealing Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA employee, the former deputy secretary of state’s interviews obscured what he really did. I want to set the record straight based on firsthand knowledge.
First, Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he had heard and that he ‘‘thought’’ might be so. Rather, he identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked, and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former Amb. Joseph Wilson.
Second, Armitage did not slip me this information as idle chitchat, as he now suggests. He made clear he considered it especially suited for my column.
An accurate depiction of what Armitage actually said deepens the irony of him being my source. He was a foremost internal skeptic of the administration’s war policy, and I long had opposed military intervention in Iraq. Zealous foes of George W. Bush transformed me improbably into the president’s lapdog. But they cannot fit Armitage into the left-wing fantasy of a well-crafted White House conspiracy to destroy Joe and Valerie Wilson. The news that he and not Karl Rove was the leaker was devastating news for the left.
A peculiar convergence had joined Armitage and me on the same historical path. During his quarter of a century in Washington, I had no contact with Armitage before our fateful interview. I tried to see him in the first 2 years of the Bush administration, but he rebuffed me — summarily and with disdain, I thought.
Then, without explanation, in June 2003, Armitage’s office said the deputy secretary would see me. This was two weeks before Joe Wilson surfaced himself as author of a 2002 report for the CIA debunking Iraqi interest in buying uranium in Africa.
I sat down with Armitage in his State Department office the afternoon of July 8 with tacit rather than explicit ground rules: deep background with nothing said attributed to Armitage or even an anonymous State Department official. Consequently, I refused to identify Armitage as my leaker until his admission was forced by Hubris, a new book by reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn that absolutely identified him.
Late in my hourlong interview with Armitage. I asked why the CIA had sent Wilson — lacking intelligence experience, nuclear policy or recent contact with Niger — on the African mission. He told the Washington Post last week that his answer was: ‘‘I don’t know, but I think his wife worked out there.’’
Neither of us took notes, and nobody else was present. But I recalled our conversation that week in writing a column, while Armitage reconstructed it months later for federal prosecutors. He had told me unequivocally that Mrs. Wilson worked in the CIA’s Counter-Proliferation Division and that she had suggested her husband’s mission.
As for his current implications that he never expected this to be published, he noted that the story of Mrs. Wilson’s role fit the style of the old Evans-Novak column — implying to me it continued reporting Washington inside information.
Mrs. Wilson’s name appeared in my column July 14, 2003, but it was not until Oct. 1 that I heard about it from Armitage. Washington lobbyist Kenneth Duberstein, Armitage’s close friend and political adviser, called me to say the deputy secretary feared he had ‘‘inadvertently’’ (the word Armitage used in last week’s interviews) disclosed Mrs. Wilson’s identity to me in July and was considering resignation. (Duberstein’s phone call was disclosed in the Isikoff-Corn book, which used Duberstein as a source. They reported Duberstein was responsible for arranging my unexpected interview with Armitage.)
Duberstein told me Armitage wanted to know whether he was my source. I did not reply because I was sure that Armitage knew he was the source. I believed he contacted me Oct. 1 because of news the weekend of Sept. 27-28 that the Justice Department was investigating the leak. I cannot credit Armitage’s current claim that he realized he was the source only when my Oct. 1 column revealed that the official who gave me the information was ‘‘no partisan gunslinger.’’
Armitage’s silence the next 2œ years caused intense pain for his colleagues in government and enabled partisan Democrats in Congress to falsely accuse Rove of being my primary source. When Armitage now says he was mute because of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s request, that does not explain his silence three months between his claimed first realization that he was the source and Fitzgerald’s appointment on Dec. 30. Armitage’s tardy self-disclosure is tainted because it is deceptive.
Because the State Department is really run by "career" employees. Some of these people are there, in govennment service for 30 years. Some ambassadors are appointed by the President, but not all of them. The people that run the "desks" (locale, countries, regions, etc. are not appointed but hired). I believe there is even a government service union that represents the "career" employees. Someone correct me if I am wrong.
The Secretary of State is appointed by the President and vetted by Congress. Just think of the present Bush administration. First there was Powell, the Ms. Rice. They are the public voice and face of State, but they are temps really.
That's one element, for sure, but I would not discount the extent to which he wanted to be Kerry's Secy of Defense, which would help to account for his silence during the first year of this bogus scandal. AFter Nov. 2004 he probably just hoped it would all go away. Not excusing him for an instant, I DESPISE how Armitage, Powell, and Marc Grossman in their nasty little cabal at State sat back and allowed all the heat to go against the Bush WH.... in TIME OF WAR.... when they could have blown "Plamegate" out of the water. Instead, Grossman (scumbag) actively fed the scandal while Powell and Armitage tried to keep their tushes out of it.........
I'm not a violent type but there's something about that pic that makes me want to rip those pearl earrings out of her ears. Man, I can practically hear them pop!
I'd snatch that necklace from round her neck and whip her with it too...
/There. That's better.
I'm sure that this is why Scooter does not want a pardon from President Bush and why the liberal press has all but pleaded for one.
I hoe this goes all the way to court......but will the press be there?
Plus .. Armitage is playing the victim in all this and saying it was Fitz who told him to keep quiet. Therefore, Fitz knew before the investigation even started that NOBODY IN THE WH WAS INVOLVED.
They were only HOPING to be able to catch Rove in a lie so they could have their fantasy of indicting him.
These are not just sick children .. these are emotional damaged beyond repair children who need to be taken to the wookshed and taught a lesson.
Absolutely, and he even admits that the agreement to keep Armitage off the record was tacit, not definate.
They all three, Armitage, Fitzgerald, and Novak need some jail time.
Powell and Armitage....part of the secret, shadow government, working against the president and members of his administration, whilst in his employ. Talk about two Brutuses!
I once thought Colin Powell was great, then was somewhat concerned because he seemed rather petulant at not calling all of the shots. But for him to sit by and let his President and the others twist in the wind makes him appear very small in my opinion.
Yes, Novak was against the Iraq invasion.
Thus, he is demonstrably not "a lapdog of Bush", but has been accused of being one by "zealous foes of Bush". This circumstance rightfully strikes Novak as ironic.
My question, as well. As Novak describes it (and I have no reason to doubt him), Armitage clearly had a purpose in mind in revealing Plame's role.
So, why would Powell, Armitage, et al be trying to discredit Wilson and Plame?
My guess -- and it's only that -- is that it was institutional, an exercise in interdepartmental rivalry: the State Department trying to discredit the CIA.
Exactly so.
Don't worry. He won't let the facts get in the way of his opinion.
This is CRIMINAL. what can we do fitzgerald? Is there any legal recourse to his actions?
2 weeks before Wilson's article?
I wondered about that timing myself...but, I am not an "expert" on this case..so I didn't mention it.
BUT, if it was 2 weeks before the editorial...then at the very LEAST, it goes against the claim that Wilson is using to file his lawsuit...
That the White House conspired to harm he and his wife, AFTER that editorial..as payback---
Doesn't it?
Yes .. which makes me wonder why after 2 years Armitage asked to be interviewed
Why else would Fitzy call Rove and the other WH people time and time again to extract hours of testimony out of them, when they already knew the answer to the question they were hired to answer?
The whole thing stinks.
BTTT
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