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The Plamegate Hall of Shame
The Weekly Standard ^ | 09/11/2006, Volume 011, Issue 48 | Fred Barnes

Posted on 09/02/2006 7:23:23 AM PDT by Laverne

The rogues' gallery of those who acted badly in the CIA "leak" case turns out to be different from what the media led us to expect. Note that we put the word "leak" in quotation marks, because it's clear now there was no leak at all, just idle talk, and certainly no smear campaign against Joseph Wilson for criticizing President Bush's Iraq policy. It's as if a giant hoax were perpetrated on the country--by the media, by partisan opponents of the Bush administration, even by several Bush subordinates who betrayed the president and their White House colleagues. The hoax lingered for three years and is only now being fully exposed for what it was. Let's start at the top of the rogues' list:

* Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state under Colin Powell, was the first to reveal that Wilson's wife was a CIA employee. He blabbed carelessly to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, then to columnist Robert Novak, who mentioned it in a July 2003 column. Armitage, after admitting this to the FBI in October 2003, stood by silently year after year as Vice President Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, and other White House officials were blamed for what he had done, and President Bush suffered politically. Loyalty is not Armitage's strong suit.

* Colin Powell, Bush's friend and secretary of state in the first Bush term, knew what Armitage had done and never let on. He met with Bush countless times as the White House was being pummeled in the media and by Demo crats for outing a CIA agent to take revenge on her husband. Bush called publicly for the leaker to be identified. Powell knew the identity, but remained silent. Some friend.

* Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the "leak" case, was aware of the source of Novak's story when he began his still-ongoing investigation in December 2003. Yet finding that source was supposedly the object of his probe. Now working with a second grand jury, Fitzgerald surely knows the supposed conspiracy to defame Wilson is (and always was) a fantasy. Still he won't let go. Fitzgerald has proved once more why naming a special prosecutor is a colossal mistake.

* The Ashcroft Justice Department. Armitage brought his story to investigators after the CIA requested an investigation when the name of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, appeared in Novak's column. So when the department decided weeks later to appoint a special prosecutor, it already knew who had "leaked" Plame's name. Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself, leaving the decision to his deputy, James Comey. Rather than face a torrent of partisan recriminations for dropping the case, Comey passed the buck to Fitzgerald. There were no profiles in courage at Justice.

* Joseph Wilson, an ex-ambassador and National Security Council official in the Clinton and Bush I administrations, sparked the "leak" controversy in the first place by writing in the New York Times that Bush had lied in his 2003 State of the Union address about Saddam Hussein's seeking uranium in Africa for nuclear weapons. The CIA had sent Wilson to Niger in 2002 to check out precisely that point, and he claimed to have debunked it. Later, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that nearly everything Wilson wrote or said about Bush, Cheney, Iraq, and his own trip to Africa was untrue. Wilson was a fraud. "It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously," the Washington Post editorialized sorrowfully last week.

* The media--especially the Washington Post and New York Times--relied heavily on Wilson's reckless and unfounded charges to wage journalistic jihad against the White House and Bush political adviser Karl Rove. Reporters and columnists, based on little more than Joe Wilson's harrumphing, bought the line that the White House "leaked" Plame's name to discredit her husband. In an editorial last January, the New York Times said the issue in the case "was whether the White House was using this information in an attempt to silence Mrs. Wilson's husband, a critic of the Iraq invasion, and in doing so violated a federal law against unmasking a covert operative." The paper's answer was yes.

So instead of Cheney or Rove or Libby, the perennial targets of media wrath, the Plamegate Hall of Shame consists of favorites of the Washington elite and the mainstream press. The reaction, therefore, has been zero outrage and minimal coverage. The appropriate step for the press would be to investigate and then report in detail how it got the story so wrong, just as the New York Times and other media did when they reported incorrectly that WMD were in Saddam's arsenal in Iraq. Don't hold your breath for this.

Not everyone got the story wrong. The Senate Intelligence Committee questioned Wilson under oath. It found that, contrary to his claims, his wife had indeed arranged for the CIA to send him to Niger in 2002. It found that his findings had not, contrary to Wilson's claim, circulated at the highest levels of the administration. And Bush's 16 words in the State of the Union to the effect that British intelligence believed Saddam had sought uranium in Africa--words Wilson insisted were fictitious--had been twice confirmed as true by none other than the British government.

Worse, Wilson failed in the single reason for his trip to Niger: to ferret out the truth about whether Iraq had sought uranium there. Wilson said no, dismissing a visit by Iraqis in 1999. But journalist Christopher Hitchens learned the trade mission was led by an important Iraqi nuclear diplomat. And uranium, of course, was the only thing Niger had to trade.

The fascination in Washington with the idea of a White House conspiracy to ruin Plame's career and punish Wilson never made sense. If there had been one, it had to be the most passive conspiracy in history. The suspected mastermind was Rove, the Bush political adviser. But all Rove did was to acknowledge off-handedly to two reporters that he'd heard that Wilson's wife, whose name he didn't know, was a CIA employee. And the two reporters were more likely to agree with Wilson about the war in Iraq than with the Bush administration. The conspiracy charge, the Post rightly concluded, was "untrue."

A few diehards in the media have tried to keep the conspiracy notion alive. Michael Isikoff of Newsweek asserts that what Armitage did and what Rove did were separate, and thus a White House smear campaign could still have gone on. Yes, but it didn't. Jeff Greenfield of CNN recalled a Post story in September 2003 that said "two top White House officials" had contacted six reporters "and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife." But the Post itself has in effect repudiated this dubious story.

What's left to do? Fitzgerald, in decency, should terminate his probe immediately. And he should abandon the perjury prosecution of Libby, the former Cheney aide. Libby's foggy memory was no worse than that of Armitage, who forgot for two years to tell Fitzgerald he'd talked to the Post's Woodward but isn't being prosecuted. Last but not least, a few apologies are called for, notably by Powell and Armitage, but also by the press. A correction--perhaps the longest and most overdue in the history of journalism--is in order.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: cialeak; colin; colinpowell; fitzygate; fredbarnes; plamebroiled; plamegate; powell; shamegate; wilsondone
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To: Pharmer
What's left to do? Fitzgerald, in decency, should terminate his probe immediately.

We have lawyers who put innocent people in prison for child abuse that did not occur and they're still prosecutors.

Lawyers have their own ethical universe.

61 posted on 09/02/2006 9:05:37 AM PDT by aculeus
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To: oldironsides

"Why is it never mentioned that Joe Wilson was part of the John Kerry presidential campaign?"

Because to do so would be ADMITTING that this was a politicly motivated hit, by folks who are thier friends, willing to LIE for political gain....

Remind a Lib that Wilson's story CHANGED after he went on Kerry's Payroll, and they go absolutely apoplexic....


62 posted on 09/02/2006 9:17:22 AM PDT by tcrlaf (VOTE DEM! You'll Look GREAT In A Burqa!)
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To: Thommas
Bush II, like his dad, prefers to let weeks pass before muttering some make-weight argument over a topic some have forgotten, but most remember as only a negative, never to be repudiated, perception.

Father--Kindler Gentler Administarion

Son--Compassionate Conservatism

Hand writing was on the wall in the 2000 primaries
63 posted on 09/02/2006 9:22:38 AM PDT by uncbob
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To: uncbob

agreed bob. Sheesh, I sure wish he had played a bit more rough with these turds. I guess he is turn the other cheek kind of guy.



64 posted on 09/02/2006 9:27:35 AM PDT by Chuzzlewit
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To: Laverne
This entire affair seems to have grown a life of its own shortly after it became apparent that somebody in the Bush administration really might be in legal jeopardy, but in fact it was originally an attempt to create a stir sufficient to affect the 2004 elections. Once it became evident that it would not stop when Bush was sworn in many in the MSM immediately were taken back to 1972, when a pre-election scandal was leveraged to bring down the winner of the election.

This was not Watergate, and could not be made into Watergate, but Scooter Libby is now paying for the attempt to turn it into precisely that - a scandal whose primary activities paled in the furor over the coverup. It was, in effect, an attempt at a journalistic coup d'etat and its major proponents at the NY Times acted as if it were and continue to do so.

65 posted on 09/02/2006 9:42:11 AM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: Laverne

NEVER MIND

66 posted on 09/02/2006 9:42:45 AM PDT by Raycpa
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To: khnyny

I'll answer my own question:

Valerie Plame Takes Her Story to Simon & Schuster


http://www.thebookstandard.com/bookstandard/news/author/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002839639


67 posted on 09/02/2006 9:45:25 AM PDT by khnyny (Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.- Winston Churchill)
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To: Donald Rumsfeld Fan

According to an article in the NYSlimes, Armitage was ordered to keep silent by Fitz, a close relative to NiFong!


68 posted on 09/02/2006 10:23:28 AM PDT by OldFriend (I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag.....and My Heart to the Soldier Who Protects It.)
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To: Wild Irish Rogue

I've said it before and I'll say it again.....Fitzgerald and Nifong ~ Perfect Together


69 posted on 09/02/2006 10:27:28 AM PDT by OldFriend (I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag.....and My Heart to the Soldier Who Protects It.)
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To: A Citizen Reporter; AliVeritas; alnick; AmeriBrit; AmericaUnited; arasina; BlessedByLiberty; ...
Scooter Ping!
70 posted on 09/02/2006 10:30:19 AM PDT by Howlin
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To: EricT.
I was channel surfing and caught Colmes. Now I know why I never watch that show anymore. What a dispicable liar.

He is definitely of the begala/carvile school of liars.

And I actually heard him say one time that he never reads any dem talking points. Odious is too nice a description for him.

71 posted on 09/02/2006 10:30:46 AM PDT by OldFriend (I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag.....and My Heart to the Soldier Who Protects It.)
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To: oldironsides

Wilson took his lies to the NYSlimes and they were only too happy to oblige.


72 posted on 09/02/2006 10:32:59 AM PDT by OldFriend (I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag.....and My Heart to the Soldier Who Protects It.)
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To: Laverne

Powell and Armitage probably won't ever dare to go on a news show again if there is any decent reporter on the panel--because they'd have to answer why they didn't come forward for years as they saw their government grind up little people and many functions slow because of the investigation.

They have no defense for this shameful episode.


73 posted on 09/02/2006 10:38:02 AM PDT by wildbill
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To: Laverne

Yes, a really good article, but I'm looking for one that names names. Who in the MSM, (at the behest of Joe Wilson), jumped at the chance to go after the Bush White House. Without the aid of Lexus-Nexus, and without being a "reporter, I found just these few equal opportunity Rove/Bush/Cheney bashers, who need public floggings for their Plamegate coverage.

________________________________________________________

SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER
"This is one of the most reckless and nasty things I’ve seen in all my years of government," Schumer said. "Leaking the name of a CIA agent is tantamount to putting a gun to that agent’s head. It compromises her safety and the safety of her loved ones, not to mention those in her network and other operatives she may have dealt with. On top of that, the officials who have done it may have also seriously jeopardized the national security of this nation."
____________________________________________________

JIM VANDEHEI and WALTER PINCUS
"Interest emerged again following the September 30, 2005, grand jury testimony by Judith Miller, released from jail the day before: "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" -- Karl Rove and I. Lewis Scooter Libby-- "were more involved in the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame than the White House originally indicated." --Jim VandeHei and Walter Pincus, Washington Post, October 2, 2005 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/01/AR2005100101317.html). "
______________________________________________________
PAUL BEDARD
"Cheney resignation rumors fly" (http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/051018/18whwatch.htm?track=rss) Paul Bedard wrote in his October 18, 2005, "White House Watch." "Sparked by today's Washington Post story that suggests Vice President Cheney's office is involved in the Plame-CIA spy link investigation, government officials and advisers passed around rumors that the vice president might step aside and that President Bush would elevate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice."
"The rumor spread so fast that some Republicans by late morning were already drawing up reasons why Rice couldn't get the job or run for president in 2008," Bedard wrote. "

____________________________________________________



TED RALL
"How far up the White House food chain does the rot of treason go? 'Bush has always known how to keep Rove in his place,' wrote Time in 2002 about a 'symbiotic relationship' that dates to 1973. This isn't some rogue 'plumbers' operation [ like Watergate ]. Rove would never go it alone on a high-stakes action like Valerie Plame. It's a safe bet that other, higher-ranking figures in the Bush cabal--almost certainly Dick Cheney and possibly Bush himself--signed off before Rove called Novak. For the sake of national security, those involved should be removed from office at once." --Ted Rall, July 5, 2005 (http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=21798&mode=nested&order=0). "

_______________________________________________________



GEORGE SEPHANOPOLIS
"Near the end of a round table discussion on ABC’s This Week, George Stephanopoulos dropped this bomb:

"'Definitely a political problem but I wonder, George Will, do you think it’s a manageable one for the White House especially if we don’t know whether Fitzgerald is going to write a report or have indictments but if he is able to show as a source close to this told me this week, that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were actually involved in some of these discussions.'
"This would explain why Bush spent more than an hour answering questions from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. It would also fundamentally change the dynamics of the scandal. President Bush could no longer claim he was merely a bystander who wants to 'get to the bottom of it.' (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/11/AR2005071101568.html) As Stephanopoulos notes, if Bush played a direct role it could make this scandal completely unmanageable."

Source: Judd, Think Progress, October 2, 2005 (http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/02/bush-directly-involved/). Video WMP and QT links posted (http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/10/02.html#a5192) on Crooks and Liars website. "

___________________________________________________

FRANK RICH
"It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players." --Frank Rich, New York Times, July 17, 2005 (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/opinion/17rich.html?incamp=article_popular). "

_____________________________________________________

MICHAEL WOLFF
"In an article in the September [2005] issue of Vanity Fair (not yet online), Michael Wolff ["All Roads Lead to Rove"], in probing the Plame/CIA leak scandal, rips those in the news media -- principally Time magazine and The New York Times -- who knew that Karl Rove was one of the leakers but refused to expose what would have been 'one of the biggest stories of the Bush years.' Not only that, 'they helped cover it up.' You might say, he adds, they 'became part of a conspiracy.'" --Greg Mitchell, Editor & Publisher, August 11, 2005 (http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001013806). "
__________________________________________________________


74 posted on 09/02/2006 10:46:02 AM PDT by YaYa123
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To: kellynla

"HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS"


That would be tens of millions. Add another couple zeros.


75 posted on 09/02/2006 11:18:02 AM PDT by commonguymd
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To: OldFriend
And I actually heard him say one time that he never reads any dem talking points.

He must be writing them then.

76 posted on 09/02/2006 11:53:46 AM PDT by EricT. (SpecOps needs to paint the NYT building with a targeting laser.)
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To: EricT.

They come to him thru his fillings so he just has to listen and regurgitate the hate.


77 posted on 09/02/2006 11:59:48 AM PDT by OldFriend (I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag.....and My Heart to the Soldier Who Protects It.)
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To: kellynla; Congressman Billybob
Isikoff and Corn and other journalist fanned the flames against Rove and Libby long after they knew the perp was Armitage. I would think this meets the test of "Absence of Malice" in a defamation suit against them. ???
78 posted on 09/02/2006 12:46:44 PM PDT by cpdiii (Socialism is popular with the ruling class. It gives legitimacy to tyranny and despotism.)
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To: bitt

He has always been a dirt bag. His road has been paved with unmerited gifts that more qualified men should have received. Political correctness is a plague. What a sorry episode of American history.


79 posted on 09/02/2006 12:48:15 PM PDT by Lewite (Praise YAHWEH and Proclaim His Wonderful Name! Islam, the end time Beast-the harlot of Babylon.)
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To: YaYa123

Thank you for your research.


80 posted on 09/02/2006 1:38:53 PM PDT by Boazo (From the mind of BOAZO)
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