If the Senate released a major study on Friday with information suggesting that a key Republican might have committed perjury, would the media report it?
Probably every hour on the hour, with front-page headlines Saturday morning, correct?
Well, the Senate issued a lengthy analysis on pre-Iraq war intelligence Friday, and in it was information contradicting Valerie Plame Wilson’s sworn testimony before the House in March.
As reported by Byron York of National Review (emphasis added):
When Valerie Plame Wilson swore that she did not recommend or suggest her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, for a fact-finding trip to Niger in 2002, Sen. Christopher Bond took note. Wilson’s words, given in testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, didn’t jibe with what Bond’s investigators had learned a few years earlier when they looked into the CIA leak matter. Now, we know why Bond was suspicious.
On page 205 of the newly released 226-page Senate Intelligence Committee report on pre-war intelligence, Bond has posted “additional views” that address the question of Plame’s testimony about her husband’s trip, the purpose of which was to check out reports Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Niger. The evidence Bond provides in his additional views contradicts Mrs. Wilson’s version of events.
York went through a very elaborate dissection of Bond’s views as compared to statements made in the past by Plame including in her sworn testimony to the House. I highly encourage the reader to take the time to view it in its entirety.
That said, it is interesting to note that no other media representative made this connection even though this report was highly covered, including by the NBC “Nightly News.” Here’s how Brian Williams began the show Friday (from closed-captioning):
Good evening. We are only now learning that the Bush administration was warned by the U.S. Intelligence community four years ago that Iraq could unravel and turn disastrous no matter how quick, no matter how successful the initial invasion had been. This is all in a rather damning new report on Iraq by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Of course, no mention of the new revelations concerning Plame Wilson.
And, there wasn’t a reference to Plame Wilson in this front-page article in Saturday’s Washington Post about the Senate Intelligence report.
Even more curious was this front-page article in Saturday’s New York Times which did mention Bond’s addendum to the report, but elected to not share the details, or that Plame Wilson might have lied during her House testimony:
But Mr. Bond, along with two Republican colleagues, still added to the report a 17-page addendum rehashing a favorite issue of their own: the role of Valerie Wilson, the former Central Intelligence Agency officer, in arranging a prewar trip to Africa by Joseph C. Wilson IV, her husband and a former ambassador, to investigate possible Iraqi uranium purchases.
Interesting, wouldn’t you agree?
Comically, this occurred on the same day that prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton to sentence I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby to upwards of three years in jail for his role in the Plame affair.
A Google News search identified 205 outlets covered that story, including this article by the New York Times. Yet, only one reported the new revelations about Plame, and that was Byron York of National Review.
Color me unsurprised.