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."
Agree with that statement 100%!
Will say one thing -- the CA Recall is giving some of us even more experience at refuting lies than the 2000 election. Never have seen so much spin and outright lies in vanitities and posts as I have in the past month. We have refuted more quotes attributed to Arnold then I ever thought I would see on here. The biased vanities and name calling are right out of the RAT Playbook and some Freepers got suckered!
Believe those threads were a dry run by some for the 2004 election! Looks like 2004 is starting now on here!
Did you notice what allegedly got Rove fired? He is said to have planted a negative story with Novak about the campaign fundraising chief. This is just amazing, years later Wilson accuses Rove of leaking/planting another story with Novak as the central character? Yeah right, this seems like a story manufacutured in the Dems campaign trailer and Novak is nothing but a perfect dupe.
I know they want Bush "under investigation" in Nov. 2004, but this is more likely to have positive ramifications for Bush -- acquittals, etc.
1. Novak is [allegedly] was one of a half dozen reporters called by two [unnamed people who allegedly claimed to be] high-level White House officials who said Plame had abused her position to get her husband the Niger job.
I've written twice in the last few weeks (here then here) about allegations that "senior" Bush administration officials exposed a covert CIA agent named Valeria Plame in order to intimidate her husband, Joseph Wilson, who was the author of the report that said Iraq hadn't tried to buy uranium from the small African nation of Niger. And I've said that it is "increasingly clear" that it is Wilson who was doing the most to expose his wife, seeing as he was all over the teevee talking about her - and that the original news article by columnist Robert Novak that is being cited as proof that "senior" administration officials outed Ms. Plame in fact neither reveals that she was a covert operative nor says that senior Bush administration officials gave Novak her name and CIA employment information.
Now, it seems, the Left's best blogger is as much as admitting that Plame wasn't all that covert. And, it seems, the Left's best blogger has learned the details of Plame's CIA work from unnamed sources and revealed it. The facts are that Ms. Plame was not a deep-cover CIA operative, and Josh Marshall, author of the Talking Points Memo blog, had no trouble finding out the details of her CIA position.
Marshall, writing in his weekly column in The Hill, a newspaper that covers Capitol Hill: My sources tell me that Plame formerly worked abroad under nonofficial cover and has more recently worked stateside. Her position today may be less sensitive than it was when she worked abroad. But she still works on WMD proliferation issues. And, at a minimum, any operation that she may once have been involved in is probably now fatally compromised, any company which provided her cover is now exposed.
Of course, that last sentence is Marshall's conjecture - the interesting part is the news that Plame was not a deep-cover agent, and that Marshall was able to get the information easily from "sources" and publish it. Funny - Novak learns of Plame's CIA work from some source - he says it was "government" officials, NOT administration officials - and publishes it, and the Left's scandalbloggers go into full scandal-hype mode. Josh Marshall does it and, nary a word.
Perhaps that's because Marshall repeats the scandal-perpetuating lie in his Hill column, when he says We know that two senior members of the Bush administration intentionally blew the cover of an undercover CIA officer whose job is combating weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation. And their motivation was pure politics.
Marshall repeats the lie that others have by carefully misquoting Novak's original column. Novak never says "senior administration officials" told him where Ms. Plame worked. He simply states the information with no source. He then says "senior administration officials" told him she suggested the CIA send her husband to Niger to determine the truth of the Iraq story.
Novak's words were subsequently twisted by David Corn, a left-wing writer for the very left-wing magazine The Nation, into the charge that Bush administration officials had "outed" Plame. As I wrote here on July 23: 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.
Bottom line of this non-scandal: it is Wilson and now Marshall that have done the most to reveal details of Plame's CIA work, and it is Corn who tried to create a scandal by twisting the words of Novak. No wonder the mainstream media hasn't picked the ball up and run with it - there's not much there.
I didn't know about that! I thought it was another case of W's misguided attempts to "reach across the aisle," and work with the Dimocrats. I guess we will see more "leaks" coming out of the White House.
Many people are rushing to judgement and reacting to the spin rather than reading and analyzing the original source.
Then of course there was the Democrat who took orders from the Cubans in Grenada on how to vote back in the eighties.
Don't make me Laugh.
Where is Bush as our Borders remain Wide Open to Terrorists as millions of Mexicans and others come rushing into America every year?
Where is Bush with an immigration policy that still allows umpteen THOUSANDS of Muslims from Terrorist Harboring Nations to immigrate to America EVERY MONTH--despite the horrors of 911?
Where is Bush with his Treasury Dept. OKing the use of Mexico's phony ID that they hand out to their Illegals like candy so they can get other IDs like drivers licenses creating an easy way for Terrorists to mix in with all the millions of Illegals here?
Where is Bush as our immigration laws go totally unenforced making America a haven for all kinds of riff raff from around the world that Terrorists again can use to their advantage for cover--again despite 911?
Truth is, this president is concerned about Terrorism as long as it does not interfere with his Open Borders Agenda and the Business Interests behind it. Deal with it.
Yada, yada, yada, same old, same old.
Would Hillary be any better?
I already know your canned answer. Hillary will bring about a revolution, yada, yada, yada, same old, same old.
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