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

[hobbes1]

P.S.


Just one more thing.


At the end of this trail, will Stand Wilson, and His Wife, for passing along her employment information at a f*ng Cocktail Party, years before this ever happened........

[AppyPappy]

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."

Geez, if it's no big deal, name the guy.

[Darksheare]

You know it's bad when the writer of the original article that created a furor over a supposed "Bush White House Leak" scratches his head and says: Uhh.. guys, there was no real leak.

That's teh basic gist of the article.
And I'm willing to bet that the Rats will read it, say their "thanks", and continue on about a 'leak'.

[ironman]

"though there does seem some evidence of a planned smear from the get go"

Who got "smeared"? Wilson, his wife? I don't get it. How is saying someone works for the CIA a smear?

[ColdSteelTalon]

This all could be a ruse a structured leak. You and I will never really know...

[tsmith130]

Novak had no right to use Plame's name ONLY if she was an undercover operative. IF she was/is an undercover operative, I seriously doubt that releasing that information would have been done in such a cavalier manner, especially to a member of the press.

[DarthVader]

Its time for Rudy to run against Chucky and use this against the dirty lying b@#$&rd. Polls show that Rudy would pummel him 60-40%. Rudy get in the race and rid the country and New York of this lying, self absorbed piece of pond scum.

[ctonious]

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.

I must have followed very different Security Classification Guides than those in use at the CIA. So if Novak talks to as administration official who mentions in passing a CIA employee's involvement - it is a MAJOR CRIME!! But when Novak talks to the frikkin' CIA itself - it's just absolutely honky-dory for an official to CONFIRM IT!!....as long as he then asks this uncleared man of the press, which makes its living shouting secrets from rooftops, not to mention this super secret fact.

There's something very retarded going on here...

[DarthVader]

E.D. Hill is not the sharpest tack in the toolbox. Replace her with Kiran Chetry.

[Catspaw]

At the end of this trail, will Stand Wilson, and His Wife, for passing along her employment information at a f*ng Cocktail Party, years before this ever happened........

You know this how? If you have inside sources that provided you with this information and you have posted it on a public forum, you, too, may be visited by the FBI.

[Catspaw]

This is a direct quote from Novak:

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."

You can also check the CNN transcript of Crossfire from Monday, as well as his columns. He says and the columns cite "senior administration official" and "senior official."

Are you trying to say that Novak is lying?

[hobbes1]

From all of the available evidence, that is where the trail leads. (You did read Cliff Mays article yesterday ?)

[Doc Savage]

Your point about her being in MORTAL DANGER is a good one. I understand (from Senior Administration Officials) that she is the subject of Terminate with Extreme Prejudice contracts by the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, and the Dalai Lama. Apparently she is the most feared covert agent of all time. Countries have paid fortunes to learn her secret identity and assassins are combing the world looking for her. Why I hear she's the smartest woman in the world (next to Hitlery) and that all evil nations tremble at the utterance of her name!!!!

Whew! Thank God, that's over!

[hobbes1]

See 115, and 180 for info on the author of the article you keep referencing.

He is an avowed lefty partisan. Period.


Yes, I agree those are Novaks Quotes, However, you must concede that they lack all pertinent context....(Interviewer, Responding to what question etc....) and given that, and the history of the Paper/Author, that quote can also support Novaks claim that
the "senior administration official" (and that Means the STATE dept, not the WH) that told him did so unsolicited, in response to the question "How the Hell did he get sent"

[petercooper]

from the WSJ>>>

""Political Intelligence
The agenda behind the kerfuffle over Joe Wilson's wife.

Wednesday, October 1, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT

We've been knocking our heads trying to figure out how a minor and well-known story about an alleged CIA "outing" has suddenly blossomed into a Beltway scandal-ette. The light bulb went off reading Monday's White House press briefing.

Right out of the box, Helen Thomas asked if "the President tried to find out who outed the CIA agent? And has he fired anyone in the White House yet?" OK, the point of this exercise is to get President Bush to fire someone. But whom? That answer became clear when the press corps quickly uttered, and kept uttering for nearly an hour, the name "Karl Rove."

Of course! The reason this is suddenly a story is because Mr. Rove, the President's political strategist and confidant from Texas, has become the main target. Joseph Wilson, the CIA consultant at the center of this mini-tempest, had recently fingered Mr. Rove as the official who leaked to columnist Robert Novak that Mr. Wilson's wife works for the CIA. Mr. Wilson has offered no evidence for this, and he's since retreated to say only that he now believes Mr. Rove had "condoned it." The White House has replied that the charge is "simply not true." But no matter, the scandal game is afoot.

The media, and the Democrats now slip-streaming behind them, understand that the what of this mystery matters much less than the who. It's no accident that Tony Blair's recent and evanescent scandal over WMD evidence concerned his long-time political aide and intimate, Alastair Campbell. We're also old enough to recall what happened to Jimmy Carter's Presidency once his old Georgia friend Bert Lance was run out of town. If they can take down Mr. Rove, the lead planner for Mr. Bush's re-election campaign, they will have knocked the props out of his Presidency.

The political goals must be paramount here because the substance of the story is so flimsy. The law against revealing the names of covert CIA agents was passed in 1982 as a reaction against leaks by Philip Agee and other hard-left types whose goal was to undermine CIA operations around the world. This case is all about a policy dispute over Iraq. The first "outing" here was the one Mr. Wilson did to himself by writing an op-ed in July for the New York Times.

An avowed opponent of war with Iraq, Mr. Wilson was somehow hired as a consultant by the CIA to investigate a claim made by British intelligence about yellowcake uranium sought in Niger by Iraqi agents. Though we assume he signed the routine CIA confidentiality agreement, Mr. Wilson blew his own cover to denounce the war and attack the Bush Administration for lying. Never mind that the British still stand by their intelligence, and that the CIA's own October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, since partly declassified, lent some credence to the evidence.

This is the context in which Mr. Novak was told that Mr. Wilson had been hired at the recommendation of his wife, a CIA employee. This is hardly blowing a state secret but is something the public had a right to know. When an intelligence operative essentially claims that a U.S. President sent American soldiers off to die for a lie, certainly that operative's own motives and history ought to be on the table. In any event, Mrs. Wilson was not an agent in the field but is ensconced at Langley headquarters. It remains far from clear that any law was violated.




The real intelligence scandal is how an open opponent of the U.S. war on terror such as Mr. Wilson was allowed to become one of that policy's investigators. That egregious CIA decision echoes what has obviously been a long-running attempt by anonymous "intelligence sources" quoted in the media to undermine the Bush policy toward Iraq. Mr. Bush's policies of prevention and pursuing state sponsors of terror overturned more than 30 years of CIA anti-terror dogma, and some of the bureaucrats are hoping to defeat him in 2004.
As recently as Monday, the New York Times hung its lead story around a leak that the Pentagon had somehow not got its money's worth from the $1 million it had spent mining some of Ahmed Chalabi's intelligence tips. We'd love to see a declassified bang-for-the-buck analysis of the tens of millions the CIA has spent paying sources who claimed to have Saddam Hussein in their sights. If CIA Director George Tenet can't control his bureaucracy, then President Bush should find a director who can.




Which brings us back to the politics. The Democratic Presidential candidates are naturally all over this pseudo-story, calling for a "special counsel" and Congressional probe. They can suddenly posture as great defenders of the CIA and covert operations, though some of them spent the decades before 9/11 assailing both. And if they can't get Mr. Bush to give up Mr. Rove, perhaps they can keep the story going through next November.
At least we can be thankful that Democrats buried the independent counsel statute during the Clinton years. "Leak" investigations are notoriously fruitless in any case and typically a waste of Justice Department resources. It's especially amusing to see the media whose lifeblood is leaks feigning outrage. We trust that Mr. Bush and Republicans on Capitol Hill understand that if they throw Mr. Rove over the side, the blood in the water will really be theirs.""

[hobbes1]

The first "outing" here was the one Mr. Wilson did to himself by writing an op-ed in July for the New York Times.

Another point I made yesterday.

[PISANO]

If the SUN rises the Gimmies smear, attack and give it their all to destroy the opposition. They are masters at the game and with their WILLING media accomplises have NO trouble concocting even the most insignificant piece of information into a National scandal that deserves INVESTIGATION.

Their IS a double standard in the press/media IN THEIR FAVOR and they KNOW it and USE it!!

[michaelt]

How does Novak's most recent column square with what you're thinking? You know, the article that is at the head of this thread? Here are some of the key passages:

"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 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."

"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."

I'm beginning to think that there may be no crime here, just an effort by mid-level CIA and maybe State staffers to create an intellegence "mission" to come up with some "evidence" (or lack thereof) to weaken the Bush case on Iraq.

Even if Plume worked in a classified or covert position, if it was already public knowledge that she worked for the CIA, is there a crime there?

[Triple]

Here is my take:

This 'leak', is one of three similar events all initiated within a week of each other. ( I had discussions about these three events at the time. Remember the source with the blank business card that was a long time washington player who disappeared after planting a false story?)

Anyway, I suspect this 'leak' is part of a coordinated effort to discredit Bush.

Look to the commies and Moveon.org for further evidence. Wilson is associated with Moveon.org, but I'm not sure how. Moveon.org has strong US communist party connections, and strong DNC connections.

All the stops are being pulled to discredit Bush, including the utilization of long-time moles.

I think this scenario is a possibility, although I am not sure if it is likely.

Regards,

[Triple]

please see my 199.