Mark Steyn: Bigger than Watergate

The Spectator (U.K.) ^ | 10/11/03 | Mark Steyn

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[MEG33]

Steyn's take on the Wilson affair.

[KantianBurke]

"If sending Joseph C. Wilson IV to Niger for a week is the best the world’s only hyperpower can do, that’s a serious problem."

Talk about an understatement! Whoever had the bright idea to send this idiot over to Nigeria on such an important and delicate matter needs to be fired. ASAP.

[Fair Paul]

I believe the person with the bright idea was his wife who lobbied her employer on his behalf.

[NotQuiteCricket]

It seems that at one point she was a NOC, which means Non-Official Cover, which means if the other side gets wind of who you really are, you’re on your own.
How is it that the wife of a state department employee can be NOC? I can understand the concept of - we are sending you with out papers, and if you get caught, well buh-bye...but as a wife, she would get diplomatic immunity (assuming that what she did - if she even did anything - was while in his company).

The White House asked the CIA, the CIA recommended Wilson, and their recommendation was accepted automatically. But what the original leakers told Novak was that it was Mrs Wilson who’d proposed her husband for the job. The Company responded that their counter-proliferation officials came up with Wilson and they only used the wife to contact him.
This doesn't sound right. I was not aware that the WH had initiated this "fact" finding trip (the rumor was Cheney did it, but then that was slapped down).

yes/no? Anyone?

[Perseverando]

Read the same thing a couple of days ago. His wife greased the skids for him.

[KantianBurke]

Let me rephrase - who APPROVED her idea and thus this mission?

[Steve_Seattle]

This piece should appear on every op-ed page in the country. Obsessed with the hope of bringing down Bush in a Watergate-type scandal, the press is looking right past the real story: why Wilson was sent to Africa, and what that says about the current state of the CIA.

[moodyskeptic]

Once again, the Canadian Steyn writes the article that no American "journalist" will.

Exactly what do our J schools teach?

[hopespringseternal]

It must drive the left crazy that they so thouroughly infiltrated this nation's institutions, right down to reducing the intelligence apparatus to a sad joke, and still lost the cold war.

No wonder they are seething with rage.

[kingu]

Yet another article to print out and take to work to try to counter the dribble coming out of the boob-tube.

[MEG33]

Reporters don't divulge sources,so I believe the important finding of the leaker may never happen.It is usually an exercise in futility.There is another question that is of concern.Steyn expresses this much better than I ever could.

[MJY1288]

Excellent and spot on is all I can say about this piece,

Steyn is by far the best

[Howlin]

The way I understand it, the original information was presented at one of those daily briefings at the White House; whatever the information was, somebody at the White House -- I read it was Cheney -- said something along the lines of "we need more information on this" or "can you look further into that" and the CIA was off to the races.

Then there was some sort of high level meeting with a bunch of the intelligence people -- and Wilson was "invited" to address them and give them whatever information he could from his perspective during the time he was working over there.

Sometime after that meeting, the group decided to send somebody over there to poke around -- and his name was suggested; the original story was that Wilson was, in fact, suggested by his wife.

My question still is this: even if -- and especially if -- the person asking for "more information" was the White House/Cheney, why on earth would they send somebody who was so opposed to the Bush administration?

[aruanan]

Ahhhhh, it's so great to read Steyn. Here's what W should do immediately after winning in 2004: Create another intelligence agency. Impose an immediate freeze on all CIA budgets. Impose a rolling freeze on all CIA operations as soon as each has been taken over by the new intelligence agency. Freeze all hiring at the CIA. Give the current employees, that is, those who cannot be salvaged for the new agency, an office to come to, a chair to sit in, a computer to play on, a check to cash for a reasonable period of time together with job retraining (perhaps for a gig with the RIAA), and a date after which they need no longer make the drive in.

[Fair Paul]

By his drawing attention to it, Wilson did more to blow his wife's cover than any administation official did.

[Howlin]

Exactly. Why would anybody who is "loyal" to this administration go along with her suggestion; unless they really are inept, they had to know that BOTH of them are Democratic supporters, complete with donor cards.

[Porterville]

‘The intel bureaucracy got the Sudanese aspirin factory wrong, failed to spot 9/11 coming, and insisted it was impossible for any American to penetrate bin Laden’s network, only to have Johnnie bin Joss-Stick from hippy-dippy Marin County on a self-discovery jaunt round the region stroll into the cave and be sharing the executive latrine with the A-list jihadi within 20 minutes.

But I thought Tennet was a genius!!! I guess he is just a liberal with a gun.