Funny you should mention those two...from a previous post of mine (hope the links still work):
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. [Note: Wilson’s column was not published until July 6, so this was not a response to that column but to the SOTU speech] 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. 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:
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 of that info 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.
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.
This implies the leak was deliberate. Looks to me like a few people need to be prosecuted for an attempted coup against a sitting President.
More interesting connections.
Here’s what I think I know:
Joe Wilson met his first wife, Jacqueline Gregoire, during his stint at the US Embassy in the Congo. The Congo, at that time, was being run by then French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua (of Oil-for-Food scandal fame) as his own private banana republic. Gregoire was, at the time, the French Embassy’s “cultural attache”, which is standard official cover for spies reporting back to the DGSE. (Confirmed, oddly enough in a travel book called “Equator” by Thurston Clarke which has nothing to do with espionage, but in which he is quite charmingly grilled over what he has heard during his visit by a beautiful, French, “cultural attache” while in Gabon, a country which we will come back to in a minute).
Wilson then finds himself on the eve of the first Gulf War as acting Ambassador to Iraq when Gillespie returns to the US for a vacation. According to Wilson’s own words, he dined with “Saddam’s principal arms buyer in Paris” the night before the US attack. I thought I’d pinned down the guy’s name once, but I know he’s linked to Marc Rich of last minute pardon fame.
He then ended up as Ambassador to another French banana repbulic - Gabon - famous for its role in the French “Affaire Elf” where the French oil giant laundered money through its African subsidiaries (principally Gabon) to give to politicians (notably, Chirac).
After being dumped from the Africa Desk of Clinton’s NSC, he starts his own company. Meanwhile his wife is quite literally on the French payroll as a registered lobbyist for Gabonese President for Life (or as long as the French military props him up) Omar Bongo.
He then meets Plame at a reception at the Turkish Embassy. On the third date, she informs him that she works for the CPD at CIA. Immediately, (and by immediately I mean within just weeks) he dumps Gregoire and marries Plame. After all, if you are a French spy and want to know what the US knows about French nuclear proliferation, what better way to find out than marrying someone who knows.
The rest, as they say, is history. But look at it this way:
The French did not want Saddam ousted
a) because their politicians were becoming rich off of Oil-for-Food, and
b) because if they could end the blocade leaving Saddam in power it would mean $billions in oil development contracts.
The French had great leverage over Turkey because they held the “European Union” card over them. I’m sure they played that card to the hilt in getting them to refuse to allow the US to launch from Turkey.