Posted on 10/02/2005 12:10:11 AM PDT by YaYa123
As the CIA leak investigation heads toward its expected conclusion this month, it has become increasingly clear that two of the most powerful men in the Bush administration were more involved in the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame than the White House originally indicated.
With New York Times reporter Judith Miller's release from jail Thursday and testimony Friday before a federal grand jury, the role of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, came into clearer focus. Libby, a central figure in the probe since its earliest days and the vice president's main counselor, discussed Plame with at least two reporters but testified that he never mentioned her name or her covert status at the CIA, according to lawyers in the case.
His story is similar to that of Karl Rove, President subtittle: Bush and Cheney Aides' Testimony Contradicts Earlier White House Statement
Bush's top political adviser. Rove, who was not an initial focus of the investigation, testified that he, too, talked with two reporters about Plame but never supplied her name or CIA role.
Their testimony seems to contradict what the White House was saying a few months after Plame's CIA job became public.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The 9/11 commission report shows clearly that he was sent at the recommendation of his wife, a CIA employee.
The media chooses to ignore facts that don't fit their agenda, but the info is in the report.
Discredited by whom? The MSM? Not.
If any report were to chastise officials for correcting the record of the malicious falsehoods being spread by the likes of Wilson, that report will be a disgrace.
Of course it would be a disgrace, but do you really expect the MSM to agree with you?
Check out the Kristof column, which uses Wilson as an anonymous source.
It's true that Wilson never expressly claimed that Cheney sent him. However, he was evidently happy to leave that impression with his interlocutors and let them suggest that he (Wilson) was on a mission from Cheney.
August 13, 2004
snip
Cooper and Pincus are joined in the current legal conflict because each wrote a story in summer 2003 that referred to government officials who had named Valerie Plame as a spy. It can be a crime to intentionally reveal the name of an undercover CIA agent. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald believes the reporters can lead him to the government official who leaked Plame’s name.
The two reporters also join up in the Washington social scene. Cooper and his wife, Clintonista Mandy Grunwald, occasionally find themselves at dinner parties with Pincus and his wife, Ann, who’s director of public affairs for the Center for Public Integrity. She was close to the late Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham.
Both Pincuses go way back with former executive editor Ben Bradlee and his wife, writer and socialite Sally Quinn. TV talking head Margaret Carlson is a mutual friend of the Pincuses and the Cooper-Grunwalds.
snip
Walter Pincus worked for Army intelligence after college and investigated foreign-government lobbying for a Senate committee before becoming a reporter. He’s been reporting on nuclear weapons since the 1970s. He’s known former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix since 1959. His sources in the intelligence and scientific communities are plentiful and deep.
Earlier this year Pincus answered a subpoena to testify in the investigation of former weapons scientist Wen Ho Lee. He was deposed by prosecutors. “I took the journalist’s privilege 117 times,” he says. In other words, he didn’t answer any questions that would reveal sources.
“I believe journalists can be called to testify before a grand jury and civil cases, too,” Pincus says. “It’s a responsibility of a citizen to respond to subpoenas. I don’t think reporters should get a total pass.”
He adds: “I am perfectly willing to appear, but I will not answer any questions that would give away a source. There’s a big difference between being called and answering questions.”
snip
“Because we know the questions he [Fitzgerald] wants to ask,” Pincus says. “We’ve been in discussion for six weeks.”
In that time prosecutors hunting for someone who might have committed a crime by revealing Plame’s name have interviewed NBC’s Tim Russert and earlier in the summer the Post’s Glenn Kessler. Both agreed to answer a limited number of questions concerning their interviews with Lewis “Scooter” Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby gave them permission to talk to the prosecutors, so they were not breaking a promise to keep a source confidential.
Is maintaining a source’s confidentiality worth spending time behind bars?
“Yes,” says Pincus. “That’s what the privilege is all about.”
Of course not, but you live in the land of reality, and the Dims and the MSM live in the land of what can be spun. I think Fitzgerald will throw them at least a few chunks of meat so that he himself doesn't become a target of attack by the MSM.
If the Dims and MSM lived in the land of the reality, they would have been clamoring for an investigation to determine whether Joe Wilson broke any secrecy laws by publicly disclosing his CIA intelligence-gathering assignment to Niger (such as it was) and the results thereof. And further, if it turned out that Wilson did not sign a confidentiality agreement or wasn't informed that his CIA assignment was covered by secrecy laws, then that would indicate that no CIA lawyers were aware of his assignment, which further supports the notion that Wilson's assignment was a politically-motivated rogue operation by a small cabal of anti-Bush types at CIA.
Or not.
No, he didn't. And you can't point to a single statement of his that claims this.
Watch out. You are expressly contradicting RNC talking points.
It is actually pretty easy to read the op-ed that started all of this hullabulloo and see that Wilson said (1) Cheney asked CIA to investigate the report, then (2) CIA asked Wilson to go to Niger. Wilson has never asserted it was a request to him from Cheney.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. It is exceedingly odd to find self-identified conservatives working overtime to defend very loose handling of classified information - even, in many instances, resorting to the "no harm, no foul" defense.
Seems to run directly counter to the outrage around here when some Dim Senators named a covert op in committee hearings. I guess whether it is okay to play fast and loose with the identity of CIA operatives depends on whether the leaker is GOP or not.
It is a good illustration of the problem with hewing to party identification over political philosophy.
"[I know you know this, but if they didn't know her role at CIA, they were under an obligation to find out and confirm that it wasn't classified before talking about it to reporters]"
For the last few months all I have read is how Rove never revealed her name or role at CIA and now I read that Libby was pretty much the same. Why are these left wing headhunters wasting my eyes?
Doesn't seem to jive with the "nothing to see here" comments Ari was putting forth at the time...
Walter Pincus and his wife, Ann (Pincus), who’s director of public affairs for the Center for Public Integrity.
******
The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, tax-exempt organization that conducts investigative research and reporting on public policy issues in the United States and around the world.
The Center was founded in 1989 by Charles Lewis following a successful 11-year career in network television news.
Charles Lewis (www.Charles-Lewis.com) founded the Center for Public Integrity in 1989 and served as its executive director until December, 2004. He is now the president of The Fund for Independence in Journalism.
From 1977 through 1988, Lewis did investigative reporting at ABC News, and at CBS News as a producer for senior correspondent Mike Wallace at 60 Minutes.
Lewis has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation and many other publications.
Staff
Roberta Baskin
Executive Director
An investigative journalist since the 1970s Baskin has won 75 journalism awards, including two duPont-Columbia University Awards and two George Foster Peabody Awards for her investigative reporting. Most recently she was senior Washington correspondent for Now with Bill Moyers, where she reported primarily on money and influence peddling in the federal government. Previously, as senior producer for the ABC news magazine 20/20 Baskin directed all of the program's consumer investigative reports. She also managed the Washington Bureau staff of 20/20 and Primetime, supervising producers, correspondents, editors and photographers. Baskin joined ABC from CBS News where she was chief investigative correspondent for the news magazine 48 Hours and contributed special reports to the CBS Evening News.
Kathryn Kross
Deputy Director
Kathryn Kross brings more than 20 years of editorial and management experience to the Center for Public Integrity. Most recently she served as vice president and bureau chief of CNN, Washington (2002-2004) where she led the organization's largest newsgathering bureau. She served as CNN's deputy bureau chief in Washington during the 9/11 crisis and the months that followed. She spent more than ten years as a producer at ABC News Nightline before becoming the senior producer for ABC News World News Tonight.
individuals and foundations that contributed $500 or more in 2004
include:
Open Society Institute Development Foundation (George Soros)
I have all but given up on Fitzgerald driving towards the root of the issue here - and what Miller is hiding. they litigated her so-called "journalist's right" all the way to the SCOTUS, Miller lost, they put her in jail, they should not have let her out unless she was willing to tell everything she knew.
at this point, the best thing that could happen is if Fitzgerald just closes up shop and goes away.
From the NY TIMES: New details about the case have emerged in recent months. Karl Rove, the president's senior political strategist, and Mr. Libby both discussed Ms. Wilson with reporters, according to testimony provided by Matthew Cooper, a Time magazine reporter, and by others.
But neither White House official is known to have mentioned Ms. Wilson by name or to have mentioned her status at the C.I.A.
that's because it was the reporters who brought it up to them.
United States Information Agency
Director, Office of Research Ann T. Pincus
Ann Pincus was sworn in as Director, Office of Research and Media Reaction on August 20, 1993.
Ms. Pincus has more than 30 years of experience in public affairs, marketing, and media and government relations. She recently served as Vice President of Communication at WETA, the public television and radio station for the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area. Her knowledge of broadcasting was also put to use when she previously worked for National Public Radio.
She has worked for both the House of Representatives, as Director of Information, and the U.S. Senate, where she served as Press Secretary for Senator Charles Mathias.
Born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, Ms. Pincus is a graduate of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. She came to Washington, D.C. in 1963 when took a position as a journalist covering Congress and reporting on politics.
If she was NOC, that information all by itself is classified.
And, of course, one with a security clearance doesn't have to be told explicitly that information is classified to be precluded from talking to reporters about it - they assume the obligation to make sure that they confirm information is not classified before talking about it with reporters. IOW, the proper response to "I hear Wilson's wife worked for CIA and had something to do with sending him to Niger" is "I don't know what you are talking about" - as opposed to "Yeah, I heard that too."
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