SCANDAL IMPLOSION (Rove/Cooper/Wilson)

NY Post ^ | July 12, 2005 | John Podhoretz

[Howlin]

I WROTE a column on Oct. 10, 2003, about the strange case of Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame.

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...I offered my speculation of what an administration official might have said to a journalist to explain just how Wilson — a Clinton administration official — got the assignment in the first place: "Administration official: 'We didn't send him there. Cheney's office asked CIA to get more information. CIA picked Wilson . . . Look, I hear his wife's in the CIA. He's got nothing to do. She wanted to throw him a bone.' "

Hate to say I told you so, but . . .

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There's no mistaking the purpose of this conversation between Cooper and Rove. It wasn't intended to discredit, defame or injure Wilson's wife. It was intended to throw cold water on the import, seriousness and supposedly high level of Wilson's findings.

While some may differ on the fairness of discrediting Joseph Wilson, it sure isn't any kind of crime.

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So if the offense wasn't against Plame, what of the offense against Wilson? There was no offense. As many of Joe Wilson's own hottest defenders would no doubt argue in relation to President Bush, exposing a liar is not only not a crime, it's a public service.

And Wilson lied. Repeatedly.

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What isn't controversial is this: Karl Rove didn't "out" Valerie Plame as a CIA agent to intimidate Joe Wilson. He was dismissing Joe Wilson as a low-level has-been hack to whom nobody should pay attention. He was right then, and if he said it today, he'd still be right.

And if Valerie wants to live a quiet spy life, she should stop having her picture taken by society photographers and stop getting stories written about her on the front page of the Times.

[CyberAnt]

Well .. this is great. I read that Woodward poo-pooed the story tonight on Larry King.

And .. there's another story saying it may be Judith Miller who is the leaker.

[Howlin]

Well, we know one thing for sure: Matt Cooper is a flat out liar.

[concerned about politics]

All in all, I think the Democrats are engaging in hyperbole when they describe the White House as having put Mrs. Wilson's life in danger and destroyed her career; her days skulking along the back alleys of cities like Beirut and Algiers were already mostly over.

By outing her, it set her free.

[nopardons]

If Valerie was the females equivalent of James Bond and seldom home, just HOW did she manage to have four children and who looked after them?

[nopardons]

Nothing new nor surprising there. Mandy worked for HILLARY, for years and years, after all.

[FreedomCalls]

That's interesting. She donated $1,000 to the Gore campaign using her CIA-supplied cover company! From the Opensecrets.org political donation database:

Total for this search: $1,000

Contributor	Occupation	Date	Amount	Recipient
WILSON, VALERIE E MS WASHINGTON,DC 20007	BREWSTER-JENNINGS & ASSOC.	4/22/1999	$1,000	Gore, Al

[John Valentine]

... deliberately outing a secret operative for base political motives ...

Utter crap.

Valerie Plame was NOT a "secret operative" for the CIA at the time, and had not been for nearly ten years. She was well known around town as an EMPLOYEE of the CIA, and didn't need to be "outed" by anyone.

Get an education before posting on this subject again, please.

[PeskyOne]

Thank you so much for this post. This is just what I needed. A Democrat acquaintance couldn't resist sending me the accusations against Rove, and now I can repay his "gotcha" act with the facts!

[Smedley]

Many here accused Kerry of treason - using a fairly wide description of that term. ... But Rove's[sic] committed a classic case of treason.

You compare Kerry's actions, which included lying through one's teeth to give aid to an enemy with which the United States was actively engaged in combat ...

... to Rove's actions, which at worst amounted to outing a politically-charged couple that were actively attempting to unfairly discredit the President by lying through their teeth, and in doing so mentioning the name of a woman who had not been "in the field" for months.

... and which one of these would require a broader definition of treason.

What enemy did Rove help exactly?

Why did Plame recommend her husband for an intelligence gathering job, and why did Plame's husband lie about what he saw?

With all due respect, you may be a journalist and you may be an Aussie, but a moderate you're not. You are more that welcome to review all my post in this forum to find any form of flame from me (which you will find are rare if not nonexistent), but you, sir, are a scumbag, and worse, you assume that we are idiots.

[FreedomCalls]

Old Joe's apparantly a known Democrat Party activist as well.

Total for this search: $3,500

Contributor	Occupation	Date	Amount	Recipient
WILSON, JOSEPH WASHINGTON,DC 20007	JC WILSON INTERNATIONAL VENTURES C	9/20/2002	$500	Blinken, Alan John
WILSON, JOSEPH C WASHINGTON,DC 20007	JC WILSON INTERNATIONAL VENTURES/BU	5/23/2003	$1,000	Kerry, John
WILSON, JOSEPH C WASHINGTON,DC 20007	JC WILSON INTERNATIONAL VENTURES/CE	9/4/2003	$1,000	Kerry, John
WILSON, JOSEPH C IV WASHINGTON,DC 20007	JC WILSON INT. VENTURE/FINANCE	2/13/2002	$1,000	HILLPAC

[nopardons]

You bettcha he is.

[nopardons]

This one is THE most interesting of the three you posted.

[concerned about politics]

First they wanted to impeach Bush over no WMD's. Clinton said the same thing about Saddam and his WND's in his state of the union addresses. It's all on record.

Next, they thought the DSM would get him impeached. Nope. An opinion doesn't matter. Everybody has one.

Now, they're drooling over this, and the leaker will turn out to be one of their own.

They're fun to watch. They get their hopes up soooo high, just to have them squished like a bug against a windshield.

[nopardons]

Check out his personal page...he's an Aussie, a journalist ( yeah, pull the other one...), and a PROUD MODERATE. King Midas, backwards, is a troll.

[fatima]

Good post Howlin.

[FreedomCalls]

Something more interesting here:

Wilson was originally listed as having given $2,000 to Gore during the primary campaign in 1999, but the donation, over the legal limit of $1,000, was "reattributed" so that Wilson and Plame each gave $1,000 to Gore.

Total for this search: $7,000

Contributor	Occupation	Date	Amount	Recipient
WILSON, JOSEPH WASHINGTON,DC 20007	J C WILSON INT'L VEND	2/10/2000	$500	Rangel, Charles B
WILSON, JOSEPH C WASHINGTON,DC 20007	J. C. WILSON INTL. VENTURES/STRATEG	3/26/1999	$2,000	Gore, Al
WILSON, JOSEPH C IV WASHINGTON,DC 20007	J C WILSON INTERNATIONAL	5/13/1999	$1,000	Kennedy, Edward M
WILSON, JOSEPH C IV WASHINGTON,DC 20007	JCWILSON INTERNATIONAL VENTURE	5/20/1999	$1,000	Bush, George W
WILSON, JOSEPH C IV WASHINGTON,DC 20007	CONSULTANT	6/25/2000	$500	Royce, Ed
WILSON, JOSEPH C MR IV WASHINGTON,DC 20007	J. C. WILSON INTL. VENTURES/STRATEG	3/26/1999	$2,000	Gore, Al
WILSON, JOSEPH C MR IV WASHINGTON,DC 20007	J. C. WILSON INTL. VENTURES/STRATEG	4/22/1999	($1,000)	Gore, Al
WILSON, VALERIE E MS WASHINGTON,DC 20007	BREWSTER-JENNINGS & ASSOC.	4/22/1999	$1,000	Gore, Al

[kcvl]

Clifford D. May

September 29, 2003, 10:22 a.m.

Spy Games
Was it really a secret that Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA?


snip


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."

snip

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.

[nopardons]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....veddy interesting indeed!

[FreedomCalls]

From post 76, apparently she used her CIA cover company to hide Joe's illegal payment to Gore by attributing it to her instead. Interesting.

[nopardons]

Let the damned Dems try to oust Rove with this and we'll just send Wilson's and Plame's paper trail to every Conservative talk radio host in America. :-)