Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

What a Load of Armitage
Opinion Journal ^ | September 15, 2006 | Victoria Toensing

Posted on 09/15/2006 8:07:13 AM PDT by Wuli

What a Load of Armitage! What did Patrick Fitzgerald know, and when did he know it?

BY VICTORIA TOENSING Friday, September 15, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

Richard Armitage has finally emerged from the cover-my-backside closet, "apologizing" on CBS for keeping quiet for almost three years about being the original source for Robert Novak's July 14, 2003, column stating that Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA and had suggested him for a mission to Niger. He disingenuously blames his silence on Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's non-legally-based request--any witness is free to talk about his testimony--not to discuss the matter.

Put aside hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer funds squandered on the investigation, New York Times reporter Judith Miller's 85 days in jail, the angst and legal fees of scores of witnesses,............

(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: armitage; cia; cialeak; colinpowell; fitzfong; libby; mediabias; novak; patrickfitzgerald; plame; plamenameblamegame; rove; wilson; woodward
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-29 next last
Great piece today from Victoria Toensing (Deputy Assistant AG under Reagan). Maybe her voice can carry more weight in official Washington D.C. and the media than our collective voice has.

I hope McPain keeps his love affair with Powell and Armitage going, all the way up to the primaries. I wouldn't want the GOP base to forget his perfidy with these obstructionists (I'm being polite). Maybe they are even extracting their own demands from him, lest they reveal that he also knew that Armitage was Novak's source, and preferred to see the damage done by the false accusations in the media. Can we get Fitzgerald to call in McPain and ask HIM what he knew and when he knew it. It is beginning to look more and more like a "hook-up" between Schumer, who demanded the special prosecutor and some highly placed "moderate" RINOs whose intentional silence about what they knew achieved the damage to Bush that they wanted. Now they come looking for respect from the party base.

1 posted on 09/15/2006 8:07:14 AM PDT by Wuli
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Wuli

I'm glad it's on the free side of OpinionJournal.com too. Victoria Toensing is brilliant (Joe DiGenova is a lucky man).


2 posted on 09/15/2006 8:08:52 AM PDT by Petronski (Living His life abundantly.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Wuli
The first journalist to reveal Ms. Plame was "covert" was David Corn, on July 16, 2003, two days after Mr. Novak's column. The latter never wrote, because he did not know and it was not so, that Ms. Plame was covert.

I would have preferred to see the word reveal be placed in quotation marks here since, as Ms. Toensing later points out, Plame's covert status "was not so."

Plame was not covert. It cannot be repeated enough. She was not covert.

3 posted on 09/15/2006 8:17:09 AM PDT by Petronski (Living His life abundantly.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Wuli

VICTORIA nails them....


4 posted on 09/15/2006 8:19:56 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (History is soon Forgotten,)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Wuli
A good job for the surface plot, but she needs to dig a little deeper to get the real culprits...from my files:

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 a 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. [Note: Wilson’s column was not published until July 6, so this was not a response to that column but to the SOTU speech].

On July 6, 2003, Armitage asked Ford to send a copy of the memo to Powell on AF-1. Ford changed the date and addressed it to Powell, but used the same text in the memo. 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:

A dark-horse candidate for defense, some said, is Richard L. Armitage, Bush's second in command at the State Department.

Remember...many of the players involved worked for the Kerry campaign. Could Armitage have sold his soul for a potential Cabinet position?

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?

Source

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.

$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.

Pipeline News

Links to sources of that info at the above link.

Then there is the recent article by Novak:

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.

Source

This implies that the leak was deliberate. Looks to me like a few people need to be prosecuted for an attempted coup against a sitting President.

5 posted on 09/15/2006 8:31:57 AM PDT by ravingnutter
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Wuli
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald spend millions for NO Reason. If I had the money I would sue him to get back the taxpayers money. He knew who the leaker was and he knew that this was not a violation of the law yet he continued to harass the President and his advisers because he is a Democrat. All money should be returned to the Treasury and it should come from him personally.
6 posted on 09/15/2006 8:35:52 AM PDT by YOUGOTIT
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: YOUGOTIT

Libby's lawyers are going to have a field day when(hopefully) this thing reaches court. This will be great entertainment. I also can't believe the clown Wilson wants to continue his lawsuit. He is going to be shown the fool he is among many others.


7 posted on 09/15/2006 8:58:16 AM PDT by Parley Baer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Wuli

Elendil , a poster at AJ Strata posted this there and gave me permission to post it on FR:

The Path to Plamegate: A Docu-Drama

The overall context of Plamegate has been largely, if not ignored, not taken with sufficient seriousness. The context is/was the war on terror, and more specifically the invasion of Iraq. Politically, there was what Byron York has called a “war” within the Administration regarding the legal aspects of the war on terror. CIA, as is well known, was at war against the Administration. That war involved nonsense like sending Joe Wilson to Niger and leaking constantly to the MSM. But the State Department, under Secretary of State Colin Powell and his Deputy Richard Armitage, with William Taft IV as their legal flack, was also at very serious at odds with the Administration–and, if we are to credit Lanny Davis’ statement on the Michael Medved Show, Armitage & Co. reserved their major wrath for VP Cheney’s office and staff. Last but far from least, Justice was also at war with the Administration. The legal hot button issues for all of these bureaucratic combatants included: “torture” and interrogation, FISA and the Patriot Act, and the NSA Program (obviously related to FISA). Keeping this in mind, let’s turn to the development of Plamegate.

It was in this context that political operatives at CIA and the New York Times, with a little help from a friend who had been an ambassador (and maybe another friend at State), staged a disinformation operation that they hoped just might bring down a president. The precise details may remain murky, but the general outline is clear enought. At this stage the Plame kerfuffle was still a bit of a tempest in a teapot, but then Armitage blundered into the mix, “outing” Valerie Plame’s role in sending her husband Joe Wilson to Niger.

I’m willing to assume that Armitage’s motive for leaking to Novak about the Plame/Wilson connection had to do with CIA and a former ambassador stepping on State’s toes in this matter. He may well have felt that these clowns were trespassing on Department of State turf. But, probably very much to Armitage’s surprise, far from being taken aback by the revelation of their plot, the Wilsons and their fellow plotters saw in this turn of events a golden opportunity. They could now charge the White House–their original target, after all–with a crime, however inherently dubious the charge and misguided the target.

The very dubious nature of the Wilson’s claims assured that the buildup would be gradual. We have to assume that CIA knows who their “covert” officers are at any given time–after all, CIA has to provide elaborate backstopping to maintain their officers’ cover as well as security. So it’s a given that CIA knew there was no crime, since Plame clearly did not fit the legal criteria for coverage under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Nevertheless, CIA twice referred the Plame matter to Justice and, finally, at Tenet’s personal insistence, Justice agreed to investigate, on 9/30/2003. We can only speculate as to Tenet’s motives; we can assume that the goofball Wilsons quite possibly thought they truly had Karl Rove in their sights, that Rove really was responsible for the “leak.” Unfortunately for inquisitive minds, the CIA’s actual referral letter appears to be the single most leakproof document in the entire government.

Once word got out about the DOJ investigation, Armitage quickly consulted with Powell and Taft, and the three of them ran off to Justice–to have Armitage confess, if we’re to believe Isikoff/Corn. Let’s pause for a moment to admire the adroitness of this maneuver. The President of the United States had been loudly and publicly demanding that the “leaker” come forward. So what did Powell do? Call President Bush and say, “Y’know that Plame leak business? Well it turns out that Deputy Dick over here really stepped on his whatchamajigger.” Nooooo. He called the President and said, “Oh, something happened over here and we’re going to cooperate with DOJ’s investigation.” Now, what was the President supposed to do at that point? Demand that Powell hustle his ass over to the White House and tell all? Bush surely knew that any such move would be immediately leaked by State and trumpeted far and wide as proof that Bush was going to try to tamper with the investigation–or so the White House would have feared. So Powell and Armitage were free to go over to Justice with Taft.

Who is William Taft IV?

Taft has had a fairly long history in Republican administrations, but in the second Bush administration Taft, as Colin Powell’s legal counsel, was involved in all the important intra-Administration legal debates concerning the war on terror (as noted by John Yoo). Taft was vociferously opposed to the legal structure of the GWOT, as it had been formulated by David Addington (Cheney’s counsel), as well as by John Yoo (and a few others) at Justice, supervised by Alberto Gonzalez, who was then White House counsel. John Yoo has recently described Taft (charitably) as very “accommodating” to the internationalization of US law–certainly a disposition that Yoo does not share. Here’s a sample of Taft’s attitude, from an article by Jane Mayer:

“The State Department, determined to uphold the Geneva Conventions, fought against Bush’s lawyers and lost. In a forty-page memo to Yoo, dated January 11, 2002 (which has not been publicly released), William Taft IV, the State Department legal adviser, argued that Yoo’s analysis was “seriously flawed.” Taft told Yoo that his contention that the President could disregard the Geneva Conventions was “untenable,” “incorrect,” and “confused.” Taft disputed Yoo’s argument that Afghanistan, as a “failed state,” was not covered by the Conventions. “The official United States position before, during, and after the emergence of the Taliban was that Afghanistan constituted a state,” he wrote. Taft also warned Yoo that if the U.S. took the war on terrorism outside the Geneva Conventions, not only could U.S. soldiers be denied the protections of the Conventions—and therefore be prosecuted for crimes, including murder—but President Bush could be accused of a “grave breach” by other countries, and be prosecuted for war crimes. Taft sent a copy of his memo to Gonzales, hoping that his dissent would reach the President. Within days, Yoo sent Taft a lengthy rebuttal.

“Others in the Administration worried that the President’s lawyers were wayward. “Lawyers have to be the voice of reason and sometimes have to put the brakes on, no matter how much the client wants to hear something else,” the former State Department lawyer said. “Our job is to keep the train on the tracks. It’s not to tell the President, ‘Here are the ways to avoid the law.’ ” He went on, “There is no such thing as a non-covered person under the Geneva Conventions. It’s nonsense. The protocols cover fighters in everything from world wars to local rebellions.” The lawyer said that Taft urged Yoo and Gonzales to warn President Bush that he would “be seen as a war criminal by the rest of the world,” but Taft was ignored. This may be because President Bush had already made up his mind. According to top State Department officials, Bush decided to suspend the Geneva Conventions on January 8, 2002—three days before Taft sent his memo to Yoo.”

You get the picture. Taft, in early 2002, had fought with the White House (and not least Cheney’s staff) and lost. And in Taft’s mind the White House was a train that was off the tracks, espousing legal “nonsense”, an administration of war criminals. Wow.

So this was the Taft who went with Powell and Armitage over to Justice. Why go to Justice in the first place? As is well known, Attorney General John Ashcroft was embittered against the Administration, his ego slighted. He thought he should be the most important legal voice in the Administration but Bush consistently favored people like Gonzalez, and Ashcroft’s deputies were pushed aside by Cheney’s aggressive counsel, Addington, who had even tried to get John Yoo into a key legal policy position at DOJ: head of the Office Legal Counsel. That threat was headed off by getting Jack Goldsmith, a determined opponent of the Addington/Yoo crowd, into OLC. But how to fight back on the day to day level, to get off the defensive and carry the battle to the enemy, i.e., the White House and Cheney’s shop? Answer: get a junk yard dog of a prosecutor as Deputy AG, Jim Comey, slayer of Martha Stewart, specialist in super creative and aggressive tactics like–prosecuting for procedural crimes (perjury, obstruction, etc.) in the absence of substantive offenses. Comey was nominated on October 3, 2003, and unanimously confirmed in December, 2003.

We don’t know who the folks from State met with–apparently Isikoff considered that an unimportant detail–but let’s just suppose that Powell, Armitage and Taft called ahead and arranged a meeting. I doubt whether Powell was about to deal with flunkies, Ashcroft’s secretary or the duty AUSA. No, he must have met with some pretty high up people over at Justice, because this was a sensitive matter concerning the career of his best friend. Taft, of course, would have had allies at Justice, careerists like himself who had sided with him (and lost) in the legal debates over managing the war on terror. I’m guessing that the State delegation got a very sympathetic audience at Justice. “In a little trouble, Dick, Colin? Worried about bad press, loss of credibility with a White House that has no sense of humor about leaking? Not to worry, these are all manageable problems.” Powell, Armitage and Taft may not have realized at first how this would be managed, but with their decided dislike for the Administration they ostensibly served, they would have been receptive to a solution that not only kept them off the hook but caused the Administration a little grief into the bargain. That must have seemed like killing two birds with one stone to them. The “pissants” so detested by Armitage–prominently including Lewis Libby, one of the architects of Middle East policy–would get their come-uppance while Deputy Dick skated.

Is it credible that a cabinet secretary (Powell), his deputy (Armitage) and his legal counsel (Taft) came to Justice to be debriefed on a potentially explosive scandal, and that Ashcroft was unaware? I have to say: no. If that was indeed the case, and Ashcroft knew of Armitage’s role in the Plame affair, what followed amounted to a political decision on Ashcroft’s part to cut the President off at the knees.

What came from this conference or–may we guess–series of conferences? Well, Armitage didn’t bother retaining counsel, so he must have felt very, very reassured after talking to the folks at Justice. At the beginning of October, 2003, Fitzgerald wasn’t on board yet to instruct Armitage that mum was to be the word, but since the FBI (at Justice’s direction) quickly began to interview White House employees (possibly that same week), it’s reasonable to assume that someone at Justice asked Armitage not to inform the President. Consider the alternative: we tell the President that Armitage had ‘fessed up and then send the FBI in to grill the White House staff about the non-crime in which they had no involvement–not likely! After talking the matter over with Justice, Taft was selected or volunteered to handle Gonzalez. That was a necessary step. Taft undoubtedly knew that Gonzalez didn’t trust the leakers at State or Justice, so Gonzalez could be easily maneuvered into declining to demand the nitty gritty details because he would have wanted to avoid any appearance of manipulating the investigation–which he had every reason to believe would surely have been leaked by State, Justice, or both. With that, Plamegate began in earnest. But other things quickly began to happen at Justice.

With the Plame investigation under way, clearly targeting Justice’s key antagonists at the White House, Justice went on the offensive against the legal GWOT, seeking to avenge the series of stinging defeats it suffered in the aftermath of 9/11 (the Silberman decision on the Patriot Act/FISA, a slap from OIG, etc.). Goldsmith began reviewing the GWOT legal memos in October 2003. Also in October, FBI agents began interviewing White House officials about Plame, despite the fact that Armitage had turned himself in and Justice knew that no one but Armitage had any responsibility for the non-crime. In December things began happening fast: Comey was confirmed, Goldsmith told DOD that they could no longer rely on Yoo’s GWOT opinions, Ashcroft recused himself from Plamegate–exactly why? given that he knew the identity of the leaker?–and Comey appointed his butt buddy Fitzgerald, a slavish imitator of Comey’s own abusive prosecutorial techniques, as Special Prosecutor with a mandate that put Fitzgerald beyond any hint of supervision and accountability.

The rest is history: Rove, Libby, Addington, Gonzalez, etc., etc. They were all dragged in front of the grand jury through the Spring and Summer of 2004 and grilled about a non-crime, and all along Justice/Fitzgerald knew who the responsible party was. But Comey had cleverly exempted Fitzgerald from virtually any supervision or need to follow DOJ guidelines. This was a fishing expedition like no other: the President of the United States, in time of war (and in the run up to a hotly contested Presidential election), was grilled in the Oval Office about this non-crime, while Armitage, Powell, Taft, Comey, Fitzgerald, Ashcroft and others laughed up their sleeves because they knew that President Bush had no involvement whatsoever. Of course, later Comey and Fitz submitted their famous affidavits in which they claimed that they had an unwritten, unspoken, unsmoke-signalled, understanding that Fitz was under DOJ supervision–blowing smoke in the face of an utterly fatuous federal judge. Remarkable. The enormity of all this is simply remarkable.

All the while, Comey continued the legal offensive against the White House’s GWOT policies:

In Feb - March 2004 OIPR targeted the post Patriot Act FISA rules once again, trying (in collusion with Judge Kollar-Kotelly) to do an end run around Silberman’s “in re Sealed Case” decision.

In March 2004 Comey and Goldsmith threatened to shut down the NSA Program entirely, unless concessions were made [per a Newsweek article, but also alluded to by Victoria Toensing on the Bill Bennet Show].

In June 2004 the “torture memo” was leaked, and Goldsmith formally repudiated it–as the MSM trumpeted another defeat for the President (and the rest of us).

But the Bushies fought back as best they could–in between multiple GJ appearances, conferences with lawyers, compliance with a blizzard of subpoenas, press outcries and slander. A corner was undoubtedly turned when, at the beginning of President Bush’s second term, Alberto Gonzalez became the AG. Goldsmith and Comey saw the handwriting on the wall and left for cushy adademic sinecures.

What am I suggesting? Simply this: I suspect that there was a conscious decision within the Department of Justice (but with the willing collusion of officials at State and the CIA) to use Plamegate as a tactic to neutralize the Administration’s GWOT policy, at least as that involved the legal interpretation of sensitive issues. What other explanation could possibly make sense of the known facts? This neutralization would be accomplished not through argumentation but by knowingly abusing the criminal justice system to tie key members of the Administration in knots, using Fitzgerald, the FBI and, above all, Fitzgerald’s grand jury. Plamegate was a political-ops put up job from start to finish–at least once the CIA/State/Justice cabal got their hands on it. But because it used the FBI and a Federal GJ to hound persons who the cabal knew had committed no crime or misconduct whatsoever, it was also a gross and knowing abuse of the criminal justice system, and that’s an important matter that deserves far wider publicity than it has yet received. This goes far beyond just one overzealous prosecutor. Moreover, this entire prosecutorial style, championed by the likes of Comey, Fitzgerald, needs to be subjected to serious scrutiny.

What then is to be done? How about this: a criminal investigation into the entire handling of the Plame matter. Call a grand jury, subpoena all relevant records, interview, interview, interview. Ashcroft, Powell, Taft, Comey, Tenet, Fitzgerald, and lots of alios. Oh yeah. Turn this whole thing inside out and issue a report. Let justice be done.

Now, some might ask: just how plausible is all this. To which I respond, is it more or less plausible than the following proposition: I know beyond a reasonable doubt that Lewis “Scooter” Libby obstructed justice, because his recollection of a purely innocent conversation differs in a minor respect from a reporter’s recollection. Uh huh. Uh huh.

Left by elendil on September 14th, 2006


8 posted on 09/15/2006 9:07:07 AM PDT by the Real fifi
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Petronski
David Corn is now a contributor at Fox News, and I can't understand what Roger Ailes' reasoning is for hiring so many left-wingers. I don't have confidence in anything Corn writes or says.
9 posted on 09/15/2006 9:11:33 AM PDT by PeskyOne
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: ravingnutter; All

You have added a great set of details to the Plamegate saga in this forum, which of course I have grown to expect from my fellow Freepers and which no sane person can ever expect from the LameStreamMedia.

I have never trusted Scrowcroft from his days with GHWBush, so his behind the scenes role, even on the side, in Plamegate is not really a surprise.

But, when you add his (and others in Plamegate) international connections, particularly with Turkey, then you begin to wonder if, in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, Powell made his pitch to Turkey and then privately told the Turks they might want to hear from their friend Scrowcroft, whom Powell knew was not supporting the invasion. And of course, not being able to come in from the north, from Turkey, changed many immediate and subsequent factors to our work in Iraq.

How does this relate to Plamegate?

The cabal was seeking the failure of the attempt to change the complete dynamics of the Middle East, through regime change in Iraq; one way or another, sooner or later, but U.S. failure in that enterprise is what they sought.

They sought to discredit it beforehand and then worked behind the scenes against it after it was initiated. Their sickness is the same as the core sickness in the way the left operates. They say they are against what you want to do and then when you go ahead and do it, they seek to make their objection a self-fulfilling prophecy by working to help produce the failure they predict.

And who were the direct, and indirect cabal team members, useful dupes and fellow travelers associated with Plamegate? They were all associated, in some fashion with the regimes in the Middle East trying to maintain the failed status quo of the last sixty years, or with the policies that have supported that failed approach.

When an entire Washington D.C. establishment, in and out of office, and its permanent government at State and DOD could not control the President of the United States and force him to their way on Iraq, they sought indirect ways to attack him and undermine that policy, even after the national agenda became committed to that policy. It was treason.

And McPain is in bed with these people. Let the GOP base not forget it.


10 posted on 09/15/2006 9:37:58 AM PDT by Wuli
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: PeskyOne

Corn should be FIRED for LYING.


11 posted on 09/15/2006 9:48:51 AM PDT by Suzy Quzy ("When Cabals Go Kabooms"....upcoming book on Mary McCarthy's Coup-Plotters.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: the Real fifi

Thanks for adding the DOJ dimension to all of this for all your fellow Freepers.

The stalinist tactics employed by Comey against Martha Stewart are mirrored in the same tactics, and mission-policy of Fitzgerald. That mission is not justice but simply to get a conviction on something.

A Washington political cabal tries to bring down a sitting President, based on political policy disagreements, and many of its members reside in the President's own party.

It's treason, and right now they are cotinuing the same fight in the United States Senate where John McPain is their chief ally.


12 posted on 09/15/2006 9:54:51 AM PDT by Wuli
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: Wuli

Thanks go to Elendil. After I posted this AJ Strata rerinted the article on his regular blog Strata-sphere. I simply did not want this to be lost and feared that if it remained in the comment section there, it would be.


13 posted on 09/15/2006 10:41:08 AM PDT by the Real fifi
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: Fedora; Howlin; ravingnutter; piasa; Peach; Grampa Dave; pinz-n-needlez; canadianally; ScaniaBoy; ..
This is a great column which ties some key points together and which demand wide circulation and discussion. One point she makes has been discussed by a number of us here but it deserves vastly more attention, analysis, and INVESTIGATION than it has received anywhere to date. Reportedly, Valerie Pflame attended both the May 3 meeting of the "Senate Democratic Policy Committee on May 3, 2003 where Joe Wilson met with Demagogic Senators to begin his political jihad, AND the breakfast meeting the next morning with Nick Kristof of the NY Times. Kristof was the FIRST to discuss Joe Wilson as an unnamed "former ambassador" on a secret mission to Niger with his secret decoder ring..... could participation in such meetings with Democrats and media EVER be considered proper, ethical, or even LEGAL behavior for a supposed "covert agent" or for any current CIA officer??? That is a question I have not seen addressed anywhere in the media, and certainly Patrick Fitzgerald seems not to have had his curiosity (sic) aroused by the supposed covert CIA agent taking part in the launching of a political jihad by Democrats and MSM figures before Scooter Libby ever knew who she was.... The Demagogues have mysteriously purged any reference to their May 3, 2003 meetings from their website:

http://democrats.senate.gov/dpc/dpc-hearing.cfm?A=all

"Did Mr. Fitzgerald subpoena Ms. Plame? He could have asked her why, if she were truly covert, was she attending an Eastern Shore meeting in May 2003 with Democratic senators."
14 posted on 09/15/2006 12:01:44 PM PDT by Enchante (There are 3 kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Mainstream Journalism)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Petronski

Yeah, that was a bad bit of writing in an otherwise terrific column - either the word "reveal" should have been in quotes, or better still, she should have used totally different words such as "assert" or even "David Corn was the first journalist to concoct/fabricate/invent the idea that Valerie Pflame was covert...."


15 posted on 09/15/2006 12:18:33 PM PDT by Enchante (There are 3 kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Mainstream Journalism)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Enchante
From my files, in reference to Kristof:

Check this comment out:

Finally, Mr. Kristof closes with a value-added Premium Truth Select wrinkle - apparently, he has decided to provide a very subtle (unannounced, we might say) correction to his Oct 11, 2003 column. We dare not predict what tomorrow will bring, but this is from the current version of his entry, as he deplores the attacks on Joe Wilson, private citizen:
And the fact is that his wife's career at CIA has been destroyed; she's never going to be Rome Station Chief.
Fascinating.

Yes, that is indeed fascinating and brings to light the relationship between Kristof and the Wilsons. How would Kristof know such a juicy detail about Valerie's future ambitions? Easy...Joe told him. You see, Kristof was the original person who wrote about Joe Wilson's trip {admittedly} as related to him by none other than Wilson himself. It was the trigger that set in motion a series of events that has brought this matter to where it is today. Some think that with the end of Fitzgerald's investigation, this whole matter is over. But is it really?

16 posted on 09/15/2006 12:21:23 PM PDT by ravingnutter
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: ravingnutter
Good find! Kristof has escaped all serious scrutiny for his role in beginning this MSM/Demagogue political jihad (also escaping scrutiny so far are Pincus, Corn, et al). The media frauds think it is fine for THEM to sling around any sort of allegation against the Bush WH without bothering to do the slightest genuine investigation and reporting.

Incidentally, I think Kristof's columns on this subject show that the MSM needs to be dragged over hot coals on the ethical issues regarding an OPINION COLUMNIST breaking major news based upon allegations from an anonymous person. It was also highly unethical for the NY Times to provide op-ed space in July 2003 for Joe Wilson to make all sorts of unverified allegations in a setting for OPINION pieces..... what the are news standards (non-existent) for the NY Times and other MSM organs to allow major news stories to be broken open by unverified, unreported, unresearched OPINION pieces? The Slimes should have had a responsibility to verify what Wilson was claiming before turning themselves into his agit-prop rag, but even now they have failed utterly to do any real, even-handed investigation and reporting.... Kristof thinks lyin' Joe Wilson should have virtual immunity from criticism as a "private citizen" but of course he voluntarily chose to open this public jihad against the WH while lying through his teeth on just about everything.... and any criticism of the vicious critics immediately gets turned into "attacks" and "threats" and "war on their careers" etc. Wilson & co. want immunity to launch any sort of vicious attacks without the slightest response from their INNOCENT targets.

[KRISTOF]:"More generally, I find the attacks on a private citizen like Wilson rather distasteful. Sure, he injected himself into the public arena with his op-ed column and TV appearances, and so some scrutiny is fair. But I figure it's more important to examine and probe the credibility of, say, the vice president than a retired ambassador. And the fact is that his wife's career at CIA has been destroyed; she's never going to be Rome Station Chief."
17 posted on 09/15/2006 12:49:11 PM PDT by Enchante (There are 3 kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Mainstream Journalism)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: PeskyOne
David Corn is now a contributor at Fox News, and I can't understand what Roger Ailes' reasoning is for hiring so many left-wingers. I don't have confidence in anything Corn writes or says.

Hiring all the left wingers could be why Fox's ratings are down. Perhaps Roger forgot who it is that made Fox #1.

18 posted on 09/15/2006 1:13:24 PM PDT by SMM48
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Wuli

Great Article. Appologies mean nothing, we need some indictments of this attempted media/DNC Coup. This was a fabrication from the beginning to the end.

Pray for W and Our Troops


19 posted on 09/15/2006 2:38:20 PM PDT by bray (Voting for the Rats is a Deathwish)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: bray

Bump and mark for later reading....


20 posted on 09/15/2006 2:40:50 PM PDT by pinz-n-needlez (Jack Bauer wears Tony Snow pajamas)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-29 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson