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 states 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 administrations war policy, and I long had opposed military intervention in Iraq. Zealous foes of George W. Bush transformed me improbably into the presidents 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, Armitages 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 dont 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 CIAs Counter-Proliferation Division and that she had suggested her husbands mission.
As for his current implications that he never expected this to be published, he noted that the story of Mrs. Wilsons role fit the style of the old Evans-Novak column implying to me it continued reporting Washington inside information.
Mrs. Wilsons 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, Armitages close friend and political adviser, called me to say the deputy secretary feared he had inadvertently (the word Armitage used in last weeks interviews) disclosed Mrs. Wilsons identity to me in July and was considering resignation. (Dubersteins 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 Armitages 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.
Armitages silence the next 2 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 Fitzgeralds request, that does not explain his silence three months between his claimed first realization that he was the source and Fitzgeralds appointment on Dec. 30. Armitages tardy self-disclosure is tainted because it is deceptive.
I don't trust Armitage (or the ridiculous defense that he was scared, the man didn't even hire an attorney). And I don't trust Powell, who said this on October 3, knowing full well at that point who was the source of the leak was.
Promising to cooperate fully, Powell added, We are doing our searches in response to the letter we received yesterday, and make ourselves available. Im not sure what they will be looking for or what they wish to contact us about, but we are anxious to be of all assistance to the inquiry. Link
Barely a month into the investigation Comey, who had made it clear in the appointment, responded to Fitzgerald's need for clarification of his authority.
...includes the authority to investigate and prosecute violations of any federal criminal laws related to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure, as well as federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, your investigation, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses; to conduct appeals arising out of the matter being investigated andlor prosecuted; and to pursue administrative remedies.... Link
There is far more to this than we know.
Bingo, Bahbah!
Too complicated for me too.
The implication seems to be that Armitage knew that the Administration would be blamed for the leak and chose Novak because of a shared anti-war belief.
Very Machiavelian, far too prescient, hardly credible.
At least one other person was told about it (on the record). I remember reading the original Newsweek article and it mentioning that Carl Ford said that Armitage told him he was the source after Armitage gave his Grand Jury testimony (maybe Fitz gave him a list of people he could and could not tell). When I went back to Newsweek to get the quote, that part is no longer in the story. However, it is still on David Corn's blog. Here is the passage:
Carl Ford Jr., who was head of the State Department's intelligence branch at the time, told us--on the record--that after Armitage testified before the grand jury investigating the leak case, he told Ford, "I'm afraid I may be the guy that caused the whole thing." Ford recalls Armitage said he had "slipped up" and had told Novak more that he should have. According to Ford, Armitage was upset that "he was the guy that ****** up."
Truth in advertising, I did edit the "f" word out of the passage. Click Here
Val is sueing Armitage, along with everyone else in the DC phone book.
I think she still has nine "players to be named later" slots open in her lawsuit.
It's called a "Gentleman's Agreement". I guess.
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