The CIA leak (Latest From Novak)

townhall.com ^ | 10/01/03 | Robert Novak

[kattracks]

WASHINGTON -- I had thought I never again would write about retired diplomat Joseph Wilson's CIA-employee wife, but feel constrained to do so now that repercussions of my July 14 column have reached the front pages of major newspapers and led off network news broadcasts. My role and the role of the Bush White House have been distorted and need explanation.

The leak now under Justice Department investigation is described by former Ambassador Wilson and critics of President Bush's Iraq policy as a reprehensible effort to silence them. To protect my own integrity and credibility, I would like to stress three points. First, I did not receive a planned leak. Second, the CIA never warned me that the disclosure of Wilson's wife working at the agency would endanger her or anybody else. Third, it was not much of a secret.

The current Justice investigation stems from a routine, mandated probe of all CIA leaks, but follows weeks of agitation. Wilson, after telling me in July that he would say nothing about his wife, has made investigation of the leak his life's work -- aided by the relentless Sen. Charles Schumer of New York. These efforts cannot be separated from the massive political assault on President Bush.

This story began July 6 when Wilson went public and identified himself as the retired diplomat who had reported negatively to the CIA in 2002 on alleged Iraq efforts to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger. I was curious why a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC) was given this assignment. Wilson had become a vocal opponent of President Bush's policies in Iraq after contributing to Al Gore in the last election cycle and John Kerry in this one.

During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: "Oh, you know about it." The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue.

At the CIA, the official designated to talk to me denied that Wilson's wife had inspired his selection but said she was delegated to request his help. He asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause "difficulties" if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name. I used it in the sixth paragraph of my column because it looked like the missing explanation of an otherwise incredible choice by the CIA for its mission.

How big a secret was it? It was well known around Washington that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Republican activist Clifford May wrote Monday, in National Review Online, that he had been told of her identity by a non-government source before my column appeared and that it was common knowledge. Her name, Valerie Plame, was no secret either, appearing in Wilson's "Who's Who in America" entry.

A big question is her duties at Langley. I regret that I referred to her in my column as an "operative," a word I have lavished on hack politicians for more than 40 years. While the CIA refuses to publicly define her status, the official contact says she is "covered" -- working under the guise of another agency. However, an unofficial source at the Agency says she has been an analyst, not in covert operations.

The Justice Department investigation was not requested by CIA Director George Tenet. Any leak of classified information is routinely passed by the Agency to Justice, averaging one a week. This investigative request was made in July shortly after the column was published. Reported only last weekend, the request ignited anti-Bush furor.

©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Contact Robert Novak | Read Novak's biography

[jmstein7]

ping!

[walden]

Yeah, Novak is another Trent Lott.

[Catspaw]

Novak says it's a non-story, and it's his story.

No, Novak IS the story. It's somewhat incongruous that the focus of the story, Robert Novak, is writing about a story which focuses on Robert Novak.

From what I saw on CNN and from what I read in this column, Novak is spinning, and spinning hard. He is going to be looked at closely by the FBI and the Justice Department and he knows it. It wouldn't surprise me if he's vetting everything he says and writes with his lawyers.

[Matthew James]

Excellent and relevant questions that need to be asked and aswered. But will anyone in the media ask them?

Hmmm... You should email them to O"Reilly.

[hobbes1]

Well, Sherm ....Consider the timing of Wilsons OpEd.


The SOTU Address, was in Jan. Wilsons OpEd, came (After writing several articles for leftie publications, like The Nation w/out mentioning it) 6 Months Later.



The DAY Bush left for Africa.


This was planned, and by more than Wilson, since it had to get in the Sunday NYTimes.


You do the math.

[oldironsides]

Is it true that Wilson met with John Kerry or his staff several times before this entire matter blew up? Wilson is a Democrat operative and worked in the offices of Albert Gore and Tom Foley. His reasons are highly suspect. This is the same party that got away with snagging a copy of the GW Bush practice debate tapes and managing to slink out of the matter. I put nothing at all past the Democratic operatives. Nothing.

This very same party that had the Vice President of the United States attend a fundraiser at a temple full of foreign nuns and monks. This very same man managed to allow a female fundraiser to be convicted of 5 felony counts in his name. Nothing touched him or his staff. He walked away and ran for higher office. This Democratic Party is pretty close to being an organized crime family.

[Just mythoughts]

There is but one glimer of hope about the "media", Novak getting his face rubbbbbbed in the sewer of the lying liberals, just might have had enough and make a stand.

Thus far he still has some credibility and maybe he will not .iss it to the wind and start telling what really is up there in that house of whoredoms of the liberals!

[hobbes1]

That's ridiculous.

What's in Novaks Column today, has been LONG OBVIOUS to anyone that has been paying attention

Note this post from YESTERDAY

[Purdue Pete]

I heard a report on Fox yesterday addressing this issue and the guy being interviewed (can't remember who) stated that Clinton designated a lot of people, who weren't previously, as civil servants. (I believe that is the term he used.) Civil servants cannot be dismissed as patronage employees may be. Another little piece of Clinton trash left to disrupt.

Still....I agree with you, Bush should clean house a little better.

[Catspaw]

Thanks for linking to your post expounding your theory. However, it is just a theory.

Here's an article from Newsday dated July 22, 2003, which does quote Novak on his sources:

Columnist Blows CIA Agent's Cover

By Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce.
Washington Bureau

July 22, 2003

Washington -- The identity of an undercover CIA officer whose husband started the Iraq uranium intelligence controversy has been publicly revealed by a conservative Washington columnist citing "two senior administration officials."

Intelligence officials confirmed to Newsday yesterday that Valerie Plame, wife of retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson, works at the agency on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity - at least she was undercover until last week when she was named by columnist Robert Novak.

Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's employment, said the release to the press of her relationship to him and even her maiden name was an attempt to intimidate others like him from talking about Bush administration intelligence failures.

"It's a shot across the bow to these people, that if you talk we'll take your family and drag them through the mud as well," he said in an interview.

It was Wilson who started the controversy that has engulfed the Bush administration by writing in the New York Times two weeks ago that he had traveled to Niger last year at the request of the CIA to investigate reports that Iraq was trying to buy uranium there. Though he told the CIA and the State Department there was no basis to the report, the allegation was used anyway by President George W. Bush in his State of the Union speech in January.

Wilson and a retired CIA official said yesterday that the "senior administration officials" who named Plame had, if their description of her employment was accurate, violated the law and may have endangered her career and possibly the lives of her contacts in foreign countries. Plame could not be reached for comment.

"When it gets to the point of an administration official acting to do career damage, and possibly actually endanger someone, that's mean, that's petty, it's irresponsible, and it ought to be sanctioned," said Frank Anderson, former CIA Near East Division chief.

A current intelligence official said that blowing the cover of an undercover officer could affect the officer's future assignments and put them and everyone they dealt with overseas in the past at risk.

"If what the two senior administration officials said is true," Wilson said, "they will have compromised an entire career of networks, relationships and operations." What's more, it would mean that "this White House has taken an asset out of the" weapons of mass destruction fight, "not to mention putting at risk any contacts she might have had where the services are hostile."

Deputy White House Press Secretary Claire Buchan referred questions to a National Security Council spokesman who did not return phone calls last night.

"This might be seen as a smear on me and my reputation," Wilson said, "but what it really is is an attempt to keep anybody else from coming forward" to reveal similar intelligence lapses.

Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

Wilson and others said such a disclosure would be a violation of the law by the officials, not the columnist.

Novak reported that his "two senior administration officials" told him that it was Plame who suggested sending her husband, Wilson, to Niger.

A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked "alongside" the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.

But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. "They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising," he said. "There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason," he said. "I can't figure out what it could be."

"We paid his [Wilson's] air fare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you'd have to pay big bucks to go there," the senior intelligence official said. Wilson said he was reimbursed only for expenses.

[CobaltBlue]

Apparently Mr. Wilson sits, for one, as a member of an organization funded by Saudi Arabia.

The Middle East Institute. Good point. I hate to be prejudiced, but when it comes to the Saudis, I am. Lying bastards, to a man.

[wiley]

This to me is the real story. Insiders in the CIA are working actively to undermine the policies of the President and collaborating with the members of the Senate in doing so. This is an act of sabatoge and treason. Novak has done the nation a service by exposing this. Unfortunately, the mainstream press is just as interested in overthrowing Bush as the Democrats are. They (the press) are active participants in the coup.

[CobaltBlue]

Well, yeah, it's being blamed on Bush, by such political giants as Chuch Schumer and Nancy Pellosi.

Novak had no right to use Plame's name, and he's going to suffer the worst, with good reason.

But the kind of Democrat that's gunning for Bush over this one is too slimey to tell the truth, period. I know some Democrats who are just wetting their pants at seeing Bush slimed, regardless of the truth. They just don't care. It's the slime effect that turns them on. Bush is about as Teflon as Reagan and it kills them.

[Catspaw]

Novak had no right to use Plame's name, and he's going to suffer the worst, with good reason.

I disagree. He'll be a hero to all his journalist pals, practically deified by them. He'll achieve sainthood if he's court ordered to reveal the names, refuses and is threatened with jail.

[CobaltBlue]

developments at Gitmo attest

Isn't that a reassuring turn of events? It's like, these guys are face to face with pure evil and they still can't grasp what they're dealing with.

I have no idea whether there is a Muslim on earth that wouldn't shaft the US if his Imam told him to do it for the sake of Allah, but I am starting to doubt it.

[kattracks]

The Sweet Mint Tea Pot Dome Scandal

[CobaltBlue]

During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: "Oh, you know about it." The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue.

I think the above paragraph is a concession that a senior administration official leaked Plame's role in the events, her connection to Wilson, her connection to the CIA, and possibly her name, to Novak, while he was investigating the story. "Willing pawn" or not, it was leaked to Novak, and he printed it. It wouldn't be difficult to find her name, it's on his website at the Middle East Institute, which does NOT list her occupation.

Can he legally get away with failing to give the name of the "senior administration official" under investigation? I don't really know. Ordinarily, I'd say yes, but this is a matter of national security.

[hobbes1]

However, The Article you are refrencing,

One, is from NY Newsday, which is a fairly shady paper, that doesnt get called such, because it leans left, unlike the NY Post.

Two, The sentence that claims to out Novak, reads thusly:"Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information."

Could fairly, taking into account the papers leanings, actually be taken as confirmation of what he said in todays article regarding the first sourec..."During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked
why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger."

Keeping in mind the authors from Newsday, chose to give isolated quotations, kept from the entire context of whatever it was he was saying, including the direct question he was asked....

Also omittted was the name of the interviewer, preventing anyone who cared from finding the true context. That is pretty uncommon, in such a high profile story. Generally it would read, "Sunday, in an interview on Meet the Press..." etc.

Now if you have a hardon for Novak, that is fine, but the facts of the case in totality, including Cliff May yesterday pointing out that her name/occupation is common knowledge among insiders suggest that Novak, not Newsday is telling the closer version of the truth.

[Mo1]

Kudos to Paul Krugman of The New York Times for finally forcing the rest of the mainstream press to notice the parallels between President Bush's checkered past in biznes (that's a Russian term for a world of government corruption, self-dealing, and friends in high places that we all ought to use more often) and the current wave of corporate crime. And huzzahs to the Center for Public Integrity, the D.C.-based, nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative outfit, which two years ago detailed Bush's business dealings -- including his Harken and Texas Rangers windfalls -- in its book, The Buying of the President 2000, and in further reporting by Knut Royce on its Web site (www. public-i.org). And of course, I can't help but claim a little credit for Harkening to Bush's past business practices in the column I did for TomPaine.com just after the State of the Union back in January. In that column, I noted:

This written by Knut Royce ??

Yes, I still trying to get the brain cells working ;0)