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.
Some have noted that this lasted report is substantially different than Novak's original account where he said his source made the comment in an "off hand" way.
I think with time Novak realized he'd been played by Armitage and Duberstein , reviewed the conversation (like Libby's testimony about Plame's id --"as if for the very first time"--and revised his account of what had actually happened.
Frankly, it wouldn't surprise me in the least.
Don't mess with the Prince of Darkness.
Yeah, you are right. But no Secretary of State has ever done any cleaning, because truthfully, a Secretary of State is just a temp when it comes to State.
The lefties are so entrenched there it would take the Second Coming to get them out.
What is needed is a President with a conservative set, active in the very first year cleaning house. It is never a priority, and as far as I know, no President has ever made it one as such.
Rice has not done anything as far as I know. State is not run by a Secretary anyway, it is a bureau run by career bureaucrats.
marking
It's funny, when I read the column, my first thought was "Powell or Armitage."
I wish I'd written it at the time.
Bush has a huge weakness, he shows loyalty to scum, and wayyy too much kindness to his enemies.
Berger got off on a song. State and the CIA are still full of Bush hating Clintonista leakers/liers.
Armatage and Powell should be pubclicly scorned by Bush, and he should issue a pre-emptive pardon for Scooter Libby, since this makes that whole deal a complete joke.
Seems to me Armitage was trying to help boost Wilson's credibility after questions were raised about his NYT op-ed attacking Bush. I'll bet Wilson/Plame/Armitage were hoping to get Novak to write that Wilson had credibility because he was "in the loop" with knowledgable officials w/out mentioning true relationship. Otherwise, what the heck would Wilson know about WMD?
But it backfired. How could Armitage be linked to Wilson/Plame? Six degrees:
Wilson/Plame -> WPost reporter/leftist Walter Pincus -> Wife Ann Pincus State Intel Div -> Armitage
W Pincus interviewed Wilson/Plame just before Wilson's op-ed was pblished. A glowingly positive Pincus WP article on Wilson was published on same day as NYT op-ed or within a day or so.
Maybe, but his actions and lack of action were for the benefit of the DNC and their MSM cohorts.
And now if he was a man, which IMHO he isn't, he would do everything to set the record straight and quit trying to protect his fanny!
We know of the intimate connection between Matt Cooper and Hillary. How "close" is/was Hillary to Armitage??
Just like former CIA Director, Porter Goss, didn't clean house as everybody said he would when he took over from Tenet...........as did Woolsey, Deutch, Turner, et al...
I sit waiting with baited breath for the MSM and the demonrats to apologize to the country and the administration for their mistaken beliefs....I'm waiting
I'm waiting I'm waiting I'm waiting
You have to put the inflections in the proper place to interpret what Cheney meant. I think he meant...Who the hell does Joe Wilson think he is. He hasn't been there in years and knows sh** about nuclear weapons....unless he's sleeping with an "expert".
Corn and Isakoff's book named him. Then he 'fessed up, but with his own twist, which Novak is calling him on.
Been doing a lot of research on this. It was Marc Grossman who initiated this whole thing per the article Libby says Powell, Armitage and Grossman were source for Plame Leak - Insight Mag April 3-9, 2006 Issue
Grossman requested that Carl Ford, Jr. draft the memo, which Ford sent to Grossman on June 10, 2003. Grossman wanted the memo as background to use at a White House meeting on criticism of President Bush for using the Niger claim in his State of the Union speech. On July 6, 2003, Armitage asked Ford to send a copy of the memo to Powell on AF-1. And per the above linked article, it was Grossman that told Libby about Plame and he was also the first one to point a finger at Libby when this broke.
We know Armitage had no loyalty to Bush, but it went even further than that…from a story I found last week:
Kerry Exploring Cabinet Options
An excerpt:
Clarice Feldman gives us another interesting tidbit of info about Grossman:
If Fitzgerald has known since January 12, 2004 of the name of the leaker, why is he still protecting him, and why is he treating the leaker’s (that is, Armitage’s) source, who is almost certainly Marc Grossman, former Under Secretary of State for political affairs, the man reportedly the source for the first accusations against Libby and Rove, as an impartial witness to the events? In the discovery process it turned out that Grossman was a longtime friend of Wilson’s, dating to their college days at the University of California—Santa Barbara. Is it likely that the famous prosecutor missed this fact?More on Grossman at Strata-sphere. Seems he traveled with some cohorts of John Kerry's...Rand Beers in particular. Grossman went to the same college and graduated the same year as {drum roll please} Joe Wilson and also had the same job in a neighboring country. Strato-sphere also has some interesting comments about a Turkey connection. You remember Turkey…the country that balked at allowing our forces passage into northern Iraq?
And another player in this, Carl Ford, Jr. is no "loyal Republican" either...
As is often the case in these partisan bloodlettings, Bolton's attacker is being presented by the media not only as being a devout public servant - with no axe to grind - but a conservative Republican to boot, a claim that seems to fly in the face of his past political contributions as recorded by the FEC.Links to sources at the above link.$500 to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), $1,000 to Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-NY), $1,000 to Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) and $500 to Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii).
The Washington Times offered the following: "Gary Jarmin, a Republican consultant and president of Global Dominion Communications, questioned Mr. Ford's claim of loyalty."Bottom line, is that to the best of my recollection, Carl always considered himself a Democrat," said Mr. Jarmin, a longtime Washington lobbyist. "If he is now a self-described 'loyal Republican,' then he must have had a fairly recent conversion." - Washington Times April 20, 2005
Democrat Ford is a longtime DC lobbyist, something absent from most press accounts of his sink-Bolton campaign. Before he went to the State Department he ran his own lobbying operation - Ford Associates. Currently he is employed as the Executive Vice President of Cassidy & Associates, Washington's most powerful - and liberal - public policy consulting group.
Cassidy & Associates was founded by Gerald Cassidy, former counsel to George McGovern's ultra-lefty Committee on Hunger, he is also a former General Counsel to the DNC - 'nuff said.
Looks to me like a few people need to be prosecuted for an attempted coup against a sitting President.
Did Armitage COMMIT PERJURY??? Why isn't he being PROSECUTED by FITZY??
See my #78. Armitage's name was floated for a cabinet position for Kerry.
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