Posted on 09/29/2003 8:04:09 AM PDT by The_Victor
The naming of the intelligence officer's identity by syndicated columnist Robert Novak came shortly after her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, had undermined Bush's claim that Iraq (news - web sites) had tried to buy uranium in Africa.
Wilson has publicly blamed Karl Rove, Bush's top political adviser, for the leak, although Wilson did say Monday he did not know whether Rove personally was the source of Novak's information.
"He wasn't involved," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said of Rove. "The president knows he wasn't involved. ... It's simply not true."
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, has confirmed that the Justice Department has received a letter from CIA Director George Tenet to look into the matter. The department and the FBI (news - web sites) are trying to determine whether there was a violation of the law and, if so, then whether a full-blown criminal investigation is warranted, the official said.
"It's a serious matter and it should be looked into," McClellan said.
Asked whether Bush should fire any official found to have leaked the information, McClellan said: "They should be pursued to the fullest extent by the Department of Justice (news - web sites). The president expects everyone in his administration to adhere to the highest standards of conduct — and that would not be."
Schumer, D-N.Y., said matter should be investigated from someone outside the Bush administration.
"If there was ever a case that demanded a special counsel, this is it," he said. "This is a very serious national security matter where there is a clear conflict of interest for the attorney general because it could involve high-level White House officials."
The Justice Department had no immediate comment on Schumer's request.
On Sunday, Bush national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) said she was unaware of any White House involvement in the matter.
"I know nothing of any such White House effort to reveal any of this, and it certainly would not be the way that the president would expect his White House to operate," she told "Fox News Sunday."
Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) also denied knowledge of the matter.
The flap began in January when Bush said in his State of the Union address that British intelligence officials had learned that Iraq had tried to purchase yellowcake uranium in Africa.
In an opinion piece published in July by The New York Times, Wilson said he told the CIA long before Bush's address that the British reports were suspect and the administration has since said the assertion should not have been in Bush's speech.
A week after Wilson went public with his criticism Novak, quoting anonymous government sources, said Wilson's wife was a CIA operative working on the issue of weapons of mass destruction.
The Washington Post on Sunday quoted an unidentified senior administration official as saying two top White House officials called at least a half-dozen journalists and revealed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. Disclosing the name of an undercover CIA agent could violate federal law. "I know nothing about any such calls and I do know that the president of the United States would not expect his White House to behave in that way," Rice said on NBC's "Meet the Press." Wilson said Monday he believes the White House leaked his wife's name "to intimidate others and to scare them and to keep them from coming forward and speaking." Wilson had said in a late August speech in Seattle that he suspected senior Bush adviser Karl Rove. But on ABC's "Good Morning America" Monday, he backtracked somewhat from that assertion. "In one speech I gave out in Seattle not too long ago, I mentioned the name Karl Rove," he said. "I think I was probably carried away by the spirit of the moment. I don't have any knowledge that Karl Rove himself was either the leaker or the authorizer of the leak. But I have great confidence that, at a minimum, he condoned it and certainly did nothing to shut it down." The White House has denied that accusation. Powell told ABC's "This Week" that he thought that if the CIA believed the identity of one of its covert employees have been revealed, it had an obligation to ask the Justice Department to look into the matter. But he added: "Other than that, I don't know anything about the matter." Rice said the matter has been referred to the Justice Department and "I think that's the appropriate place. ... Let's just see what the Justice Department does." Pressed whether anyone at the White House raised concerns that the Wilson matter posed a problem for the administration, she replied: "I don't remember any such conversation." Wilson said Monday that if the administration actually took an intelligence asset "off the table," that would have been "a dastardly deed ... coming from an administration that came to office promising to restore dignity and honor to the White House. It was contemptible."
The usual Lefty bloggers are all over it. South Knox Bubba points to "confirmation that someone in the Bush administration has outed a CIA agent. possibly in retribution for her husband's role in exposing the Niger uranium fraud." Oliver Willis calls it a "Smear From 1600" - that's the address of the White House - and points to a David Corn article that makes the allegations. Blogger Mark A. R. Kleiman claims It's official: the Bush Administration deliberately blew the cover of a secret agent who had been gathering information on weapons of mass destruction, endangering the lives of her sources and damaging our ability to collect crucial intelligence. (And, not incidentally, committing a very serious crime.) The apparent motive: revenge on Joseph Wilson, her husband, for going public with the story of his mission to Niger... And CalPundit recounts the accusations and says that "if" they are true, it is "an appalling abuse of power by the administration that not only blows an agent's cover, but reduces the effectiveness of an important CIA program." At least CalPundit said "if" because there's no evidence so far that the allegations are in any way true.
It appears that Corn, a Lefty who writes for the very left-wing magazine The Nation, sliced and diced a paragraph from a Robert Novak column in order to manufacture the scandal. His article was the first to make the allegations that the Bush administration illegally outed Plame as a CIA undercover operative, in order to discredit her diplomat husband.
The core of the mini-scandal is the charge that "two senior administration officials" told Novak, a famous conservative political columnist and commentator, Valerie Plame's identity as an undercover CIA agent to him. But that is not what Novak wrote. You see, I'm not just a reader of the news, I'm a journalist with a very inquisitive mind - and an Internet connection. And I've got Google. So I did what those Lefty bloggers apparently didn't do before swallowing Corn's version hook, line and sinker. I Googled and found Novak's article. Here is what it says, verbatim, and in its entirety, about Valerie Plame:
Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me his wife suggested sending Wilson to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me.Novak did NOT say "senior administration officials" revealed her identity. Novak simply states her identity. Now I don't know how Novak knows what Valerie Plame does for a living. Maybe he knows her and Wilson socially. Wilson was fairly highly placed in the first Bush administration and in the Clinton administration, and Novak has been in DC for decades. No doubt, they all make the party circuit. Plame was not a CIA spy in the jungles of Africa or the deserts of the Middle East. She lived and worked in Washington DC, where Novak works. Or perhaps Novak got the information from a low-level government employee who didn't know Plame was an undercover operative - surely, someone other than Wilson and Plame knew she worked at CIA.
Corn, conspicuously, does not quote Novak's entire paragraph anywhere his piece - and Corn's piece is the foundational article of the entire "scandal." Corn does assert that Novak told him that "government officials" told him of Plame's real job, but it is telling that the words Corn said Novak uses are "government officials," which could be virtually anyone in the government. And Novak's piece does not source Plame's identity to the "senior administration officials," as Corn implies it does. In Corn's piece, in fact, the allegation that it was "administration officials" seems to rest on a claim by Corn that Wilson told Corn that Novak said so. That's third-party. It's hearsay. It would not be admissible as evidence in a trial. And Wilson, remember, has an ax to grind.
Yet the Lefty bloggers are grabbing Corn's spin and claiming they have "confirmation" and "official" proof that the White House released Plame's identity as a smear against Wilson. (How, exactly, that's a smear, I don't know...)
Did administration officials "out" Plame? The evidence is rather lacking. In fact, it is increasingly clear that Wilson is the one who is revealing his wife's identity as an undercover agent - if indeed that's what she really is.
What I did in #4 was mention a point that has been out in investigative journalism for a couple months. The dems have picked it up as a talking point and the reps have picked up the RNC counterspin.
Whither Novak is a "conservative" or not isn't part of the story, the question is who illegally dropped a dime on an active CIA operative and why. The next question is do "conservatives" accept such behaviour as long as it's from a republican administration.
You are so right. Looks like the plan is to keep the lies coming so fast and furiously that the Bush Administration can't keep up. If you notice, there is one story after another now. When one doesn't work, they just move on to something else. And the media is working with them. It is sad and frightening to see what has happened to politics since the clinton era.
It is being investigated by the Justice Department.
I believe previous posts show that Wilson did this himself.
Left hand investigating the right again I see.
That would make things different.
Actually, this renewed interest by the liberal media of the "Wilson/Novak affair" popped back up in the liberal media this last weekend.
IMO, it seems with your reply #4 of this thread that you were all to eager to carry the liberal medias water(i.e talking points).
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