I’m not following anything you are saying about Valerie Plame or any connection you are making with Amerithrax. I think the interesting connection from the Plame matter is the leaking done by Scooter to Judy M. The NYT also received a leak in December 2001 about a planned search of BIF and GRF over which Fitzgerald was furious. Given they were after planning relating to development of biological weaopns, that’s the more direct link I see between leaking re Plame and Amerithrax.
Returning to the USA Today reporter, she’s now an assistant professor at a journalism, having completed a masters of law. She submitted a declaration in the matter explaining her extensive contacts with Dr. Hatfill’s attorney. I don’t recall her articles standing out as lacking balance. She emphasizes her contact with Attorney Connolly (Hatfill’s counsel) and the balance of her articles in her declaration as reason for the judge not to hold her in contempt.
The Stix article you link says:
“In an August 8 story, USA Today reporters Kevin Johnson and Toni Locy claimed that, “In Rhodesia, Hatfill lived near a school named Greendale,” without attributing the claim to ABC News.”
You are correct. The Greendale claim was factually mistaken (and a silly point besides). I believe former CIA analyst Stan Bedlington in an interview on ABC laid claim to having divined the (imagined) connection.
At her recent deposition, she tended to repeat this stock answer:
“I fully respect the court’s order. I do not remember the confidential sources who provided me with the information about Steven Hatfill. Refusing to answer is the only way for me to have an appeals court to decide whether I must reveal sources who may not have provided the information at issue in this case.
Accordingly, I respectfully refuse to answer that question.”
The names of her sources did not appear on a list of waivers.
I don’t know why it’s acceptable for her at the deposition to say she’s “just started reaching out to people” — that is, why it is acceptable she hadn’t been in contact with them to ask them if they would agree to release a promise of confidentiality. Although I didn’t read the memoranda of law, and don’t know the applicable law, if I were a District Judge and I saw this sort of game-playing, I might impose the fine to provide an incentive to her to make the phone calls. But if he does that, judging from her comments, she then will immediately appeal the decision. I don’t see why Hatfill would be entitled to compel sources re anthrax generally rather than about Hatfill specifically. (At the deposition, she and her counsel seem to be setting up that argument).
She said she hadn’t spoken to Dan Sekaily since her last deposition. The WP reporter AL emphasized to me today that the sources came forward voluntarily. I’m not following things closely enough to know how DS came to first be identified. Ed may know.
Here we have a totally bizarre situation where the WarshPost FBI informant appears to have left a job at the CIA where he was replaced by a different WarshPost CIA informant.
The odds on that are undoubtedly astronomical.
Now, to make this all seem straight to you, way back in the 1980s there was a Postal strike at the New York Bulk and Foreign Mail Facility. The local union mouthpieces had been saying they were going to go on strike, but they didn't actually call for one.
Still, there was a strike. A renegade bunch with close ties to (and membership in) YPSL (Young People's Socialist League) went on strike. Apparantly they got caught up in the moment, couldn't help themselves, and walked ~ and found themselves quite alone since the regular union guys didn't walk ~ it was all a bluff.
USPS management then fired the strikers. William F. Bolger was Postmaster General and he's the guy who decided they should be fired even if they were simply confused leftwingnuts and moonbats (to bring the terminology up to date).
Some of these guys later appealed their firings and were let back because they claimed, quite legitimately, they were simply misled by the YPSL people.
Others didn't get let back; got mad; and then began what turned out to be a multi-year effort to assissinate William F. Bolger.
Lots of things happened of a security nature that I need not add here, but USPS management took the threat seriously.
Eventually the attacks petered out, or the perps were caught, or they decided to lay low.
Now, everytime there's an attack against USPS the "friends" of YPSL swing into action to protect their own relationships and community standing lest they be roped into yet another USPS attack investigation.
The Anthrax Attack is readily understood as an attack directed at USPS ~ not just at the USA.
Now, with that in the background, and after observing how the leftwingers at CIA, then the FBI, and out in the community attended by Barbara Hatch Rosenberg went at this, it's easy to see that there's the possibility of a connection. Babs is the source of the misleading information about Hatfill. Since these guys (the leftwingers) think some of their own may have done the attack, they are satisfied to simply mislead the FBI while getting the USPS Postal Inspection Service out of the picture.
After all, a sidetracked investigation isn't going to come their way.
Now we have a problem with their plan ~ it's this Arab American fellow at the FBI who'd earlier worked at the CIA right in the same office where a WarshPost spy had been working. I think your finding is their career paths crossed, or are so close it is reasonable to believe these people might have known each other.
The McCarthy gal at the CIA knew Plame and Wilson and some of the other folks in the Iraq nukes story. Did Plame know this Arab? Odds are good she she did. Going one step further, and probably beyond our direct evidence in the matter, Plame might well have known the earlier WarshPost spy and could have a clear link to the Anthrax Attack. Maybe her forte' was not nuclear proliferation ~