[Pubbie]

Thanks everyone!

[Pubbie]

YOU can call The Rush Limbaugh Show program line between 12 Noon and 3PM Eastern Time at: 1-800-282-2882

You can e-mail Rush at: rush@eibnet.com

You can fax Rush at: 212-563-9166

You can write Rush at:
The Rush Limbaugh Show
1270 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

[PhiKapMom]

Since this is the Bush-Cheney '04 ping list, I thought you would all like to help out sending this information around to help the White House!

Thanks!

[Pubbie]

To talk to Sean during the show, call 800.941.7326 during the hours of 3PM - 6PM EASTERN,
12 PM - 3PM PACIFIC.

[Pubbie]

Talk Radio Network
P.O. Box 3755
Central Point, Oregon 97502
www.talkradionetwork.com
Phone: 541-664-8827
Fax: 541-664-6250

suggestions@lauraingraham.com

[Grampa Dave]

http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.asp?ref=/may/may200309291022.asp



September 29, 2003, 10:22 a.m.
Spy Games
Was it really a secret that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA?

It's the top story in the Washington Post this morning as well as in many other media outlets. Who leaked the fact that the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV worked for the CIA?

What also might be worth asking: "Who didn't know?"

I believe I was the first to publicly question the credibility of Mr. Wilson, a retired diplomat sent to Niger to look into reports that Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium for his nuclear-weapons program.

On July 6, Mr. Wilson wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he said: "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

On July 11, I wrote a piece for NRO arguing that Mr. Wilson had no basis for that conclusion — and that his political leanings and associations (not disclosed by the Times and others journalists interviewing him) cast serious doubt on his objectivity.

On July 14, Robert Novak wrote a column in the Post and other newspapers naming Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative.

That wasn't news to me. I had been told that — but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of.

I chose not to include it (I wrote a second NRO piece on this issue on July 18) because it didn't seem particularly relevant to the question of whether or not Mr. Wilson should be regarded as a disinterested professional who had done a thorough investigation into Saddam's alleged attempts to purchase uranium in Africa.

What did appear relevant could easily be found in what the CIA would call "open sources." For example, Mr. Wilson had long been a bitter critic of the current administration, writing in such left-wing publications as The Nation that under President Bush, "America has entered one of it periods of historical madness" and had "imperial ambitions."

What's more, he was affiliated with the pro-Saudi Middle East Institute and he had recently been the keynote speaker for the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, a far-Left group that opposed not only the U.S. military intervention in Iraq but also the sanctions and the no-fly zones that protected Iraqi Kurds and Shias from being slaughtered by Saddam.

Mr. Wilson is now saying (on C-SPAN this morning, for example) that he opposed military action in Iraq because he didn't believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and he foresaw the possibility of a difficult occupation. In fact, prior to the U.S. invasion, Mr. Wilson told ABC's Dave Marash that if American troops were sent into Iraq, Saddam might "use a biological weapon in a battle that we might have. For example, if we're taking Baghdad or we're trying to take, in ground-to-ground, hand-to-hand combat."

Equally, important and also overlooked: Mr. Wilson had no apparent background or skill as an investigator. As Mr. Wilson himself acknowledged, his so-called investigation was nothing more than "eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people" at the U.S. embassy in Niger. Based on those conversations, he concluded that "it was highly doubtful that any [sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq] had ever taken place."

That's hardly the same as disproving what British intelligence believed — and continues to believe: that Saddam Hussein was actively attempting to purchase uranium from somewhere in Africa. (Whether Saddam succeeded or not isn't the point; were Saddam attempting to make such purchases it would suggest that his nuclear-weapons-development program was active and ongoing.)

For some reason, this background and these questions have been consistently omitted in the Establishment media's reporting on Mr. Wilson and his charges.

There also remains this intriguing question: Was it primarily due to the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the CIA that he received the Niger assignment?

Mr. Wilson has said that his mission came about following a request from Vice President Cheney. But it appears that if Mr. Cheney made the request at all, he made it of the CIA and did not know Mr. Wilson and certainly did not specify that he wanted Mr. Wilson put on the case.

It has to be seen as puzzling that the agency would deal with an inquiry from the White House on a sensitive national-security matter by sending a retired, Bush-bashing diplomat with no investigative experience. Or didn't the CIA bother to look into Mr. Wilson's background?

If that's what passes for tradecraft in Langley, we're in more trouble than any of us have realized.

— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.

[b4its2late]

Wilson: I Made it Up Rove Leak Allegation

Was it really a secret that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA? (AWESOME Dirt On Joe Wilson!)

Joseph Wilson Said He Personally Wants Rove Taken Away "In Handcuffs"

[Pubbie]

Call G. Gordon Liddy Show at: 1800-GGLIDDY

LIDDYSHOW2@Aol.com

[rintense]

My advice would be to link to the original articles, not FR.

[Shermy]

Earlier I guessed that Wilson himself told or confirmed to Novak that his wife was a CIA agent.

Here's a theory...

Wilson blabbed, maybe innocently. The Novak article itself does NOT say that admin officials told him wifey was a DIA agent.

But one might assume that. The CIA was pissed, and want to smoke out the blabber.

Wilson, feeling the heat, overreacts. His claims are not dispassionate or tempered, but wild, perhaps in reaction to fear knowing the CIA was pissed (not to mention wifey.) In order to deflect, he chooses Karl Rove, a prominent lefty bugaboo that got their limited noggins going, and going, and going.

Wilson seems like a squealer. And since 9/11 I've noticed a proliferation of personages who want to call attention to themselves and their self-purported expertise.

Developing...

[DarthVader]

Freep and Destroy without Mercy!!!

[DarthVader]

Freep and Destroy without Mercy!!!

[DarthVader]

Freep and Destroy without Mercy!!!

[marron]

Thats easy to do. Wilson is a liar.

He lied when he said he investigated the issue. He didn't. He asked a government functionary if it was true, and then parroted the answer. There was no investigation.

He lied on another level, in that he denied a charge that Bush did not make. Bush said that Iraq "sought" uranium, a charge that is irrefutable in that it is based on public information. Wilson said that there was "no sale", and labels Bush a liar based on this sleight of hand. Such semantic game-playing is Clintonian and amounts to a falsehood.

He lied when he wrote his op-ed piece labeling the president a liar, where he left out the key piece of the puzzle. That Iraq sent one of its senior ambassadors on a "trade mission" to Niger is public information. He left that out of his op-ed piece because that would have exposed his charge as fraudulent. He also left out the fact that he told Tenet that shortly after the official trade mission, an Iraqi "businessman" had also made contact with the Niger government... about what, Wilson does not know. He merely "investigated", he didn't actually find out anything.

Since Niger has no other exports of note than uranium, and since Iraq's existing stock of uranium came in part from Niger, and since Iraq has made contacts with the other African uranium producers, the simple fact is that Bush told the truth, that the truth of his charge is not even controversial, and requires no secret intel to back it up. It certainly requires no trip to Niger to verify a trade mission that was public information.

Wilson lied again when he said that the mines are so well monitored that they couldn't possibly transfer uranium to Iraq without anyone knowing it. The IAEA themselves say that they lack personnel to monitor the mines, and they are trying to get the laws in place that will permit them to monitor Niger's uranium production. Meaning that they do not now have the authority, meaning they are not now monitoring it.

Wilson lied.

[Burkeman1]

I doubt this "scandal" will develop any legs.

[Loyal Buckeye]

And don't forget to tell 'em he's a DEMOCRAT.

[bluester]

Yeah blame it all on Wilson. Even if he only tells the truth....

[TBP]

I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turns out that the person who tipped off the media that Mrs. Wilson was with the CIA (she's an analyst, BTW, not an agent) turned out to be Wilson himself.

That is a good way to make the Bush Administration look bad, create a scandal, and promote his anti-American political ideology.

[Stultis]

Greg Knapp, Talk Radio, KLIF 570 AM, Dallas/Ft Worth, TX

Greg will be covering the Wilson/Yellowcake/Whitehouse "Leak" issue in the next hour (5:05pm CST). Greg and his staff always do excellent research, and Greg is as sharp as a tack. Must listen. Oline here:

http://www.streamaudio.com/listen?station=KLIF_AM

[GraniteStateConservative]

I actually sat in the same DC metrorail car with him I think last week when I was vacationing in DC. I didn't get confirmation until I saw his picture again tonight.

I should have asked him a question.

[GeorgiaYankee]

Has anyone considered that Joe Wilson was probably not the only person sent to check out the Iraq-Africa uranium story?

Think about it: a dictator who hates the US is rumored to be shopping for uranium in Africa, and all you do is send ONE PERSON to one country, a diplomat, not an investigator, to check it out? Not likely.

I'd say that they had a large team working on this and Wilson was just the public face of the investigation.

All he did was go to Niger and drink mint tea and ask them, "Did Saddam try to buy uranium from you?"

Do you really believe that's the total effort the US would make considering there's potential nukes involved?