Free Republic

Partisan political advantage, gained at the real or potential life-threatening expense of American personnel undertaking high-risk assignments, was the deep moral issue driving prosecutors in the 2005 Valerie Plame name exposure scandal. An even more disturbing and exploitative example of high-level Washington political operatives exposing low-level American field personnel to greater physical risk is the moral issue at the core of the on-going Benghazi scandal. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said national security concerns drove his pursuit of Bush Administration officials involved in exposing Plame's status as a covert CIA agent. For Fitzgerald, Plame's precise operational status at the time her...

Remember the scandal of “the 16 words”? If you do, you’ve probably been inside the Beltway too long, literally or figuratively. Most of what Wilson said was later proved to be grossly exaggerated, or simply false. But that didn’t stop Democrats and partisan media from devoting years to conspiracy-spinning and attempts to pin political and criminal responsibility on Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney or Karl Rove. A decade later, we have the right’s answer to Joe Wilson: Benghazi. The common thread here is not just the climate of intense partisanship in which media and politicians from the left dismiss what...

WASHINGTON — Looking back, John C. Kiriakou admits he should have known better. But when the F.B.I. called him a year ago and invited him to stop by and “help us with a case,” he did not hesitate. Only an hour into what began as a relaxed chat with the two agents — the younger one who traded Pittsburgh Steelers talk with him and the senior investigator with the droopy eye — did he begin to realize just who was the target of their investigation. On Jan. 25, Mr. Kiriakou is scheduled to be sentenced to 30 months in prison...

I went to jail in the summer of 2005 to protect the identity of a confidential source who spoke to me about Valerie Plame, the former CIA spy whose identity was disclosed after her husband publicly challenged part of the evidence that President Bush cited to justify his invasion of Iraq. I'm the only person to have gone to jail in what became known as Plamegate. But you wouldn't know it from the recently released movie "Fair Game." There is no character based on me in the film—and that turns out to be a good thing. Although the movie is...

The WikiLeaks de facto declassification of privileged material makes it case closed: Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction -- and intended to restart his program once the heat was off. President George W. Bush, in the 2003 State of the Union address, uttered the infamous "16 words": "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Former Ambassador Joe Wilson sprang into action and, in an op-ed piece, in effect wrote, "No, the Cheney administration sent me to investigate the allegation -- and I found it without merit." Put aside that Wilson's...

During Thanksgiving weekend I went to see the movie REDS with Bruce Willis. Awesome movie and I highly recommend it. But during the trailers they showed the movie FAIR GAME with Sean Penn, supposedly based on the Plame/Wilson affair. I groaned when I saw it. It appears my groan was warranted. Here is the WaPo: (h/t Dan Riehl) In fact, "Fair Game," based on books by Mr. Wilson and his wife, is full of distortions - not to mention outright inventions. To start with the most sensational: The movie portrays Ms. Plame as having cultivated a group of Iraqi...

When Hollywood decides a former White House aide is fair game for attack, facts don't come into play. History, however, cannot be so cavalier about the truth. The new movie "Fair Game" - based on the outing of CIA employee Valerie Plame Wilson during political battles concerning the war in Iraq - is anything but fair or honest. In depicting former vice-presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby as a sinister point man in a broad effort to destroy Mrs. Wilson's career while concocting a fraudulent case for the war, the movie perpetuates myths that improperly damage U.S. credibility....

... the title is drawn from how Karl Rove told Matthews that the CIA agent Valerie Plame was fair game for critics of her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson. Wilson, you’ll recall, was dispatched by the CIA in 2002 at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney’s office to investigate whether Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium from the African country of Niger. Wilson came back with the answer no, and he was outraged when President Bush nevertheless stuck with the claim in his 2003 State of the Union address, which made the case for war with Iraq. Just three...

NIGERGATE: BUSH TOLD THE TRUTH ……. BUT DID THE LIBERAL MSM ? Another interesting piece today from the Italian newspaper Il Foglio. Following-up on yesterday’s excellent article Il Foglio takes another look at how lies were, and still are, propagated through the anti-3B liberal media. President George W. Bush was correct in stating during his State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .” The statement was true, indeed to quote the British Government’s Butler Report “It is accepted by all parties...

The only way we even know the name of Valerie Plame (and fame seeking hubby Joe Wilson) is that that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage leaked her name as a CIA officer to columnist Robert Novak. That is what set in motion the long drawn out Plamegate affair in which only Scooter Libby was convicted of something other than leaking her name. So you would figure that the supposedly biographical movie scheduled for a November USA release about Plame, Fair Game, would feature Armitage front and center as the principal villain. Right? Wrong. The fact is that "Fair...

Covertly taken photos of CIA interrogators that were shown by defense attorneys to al Qaeda inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison represent a more serious security breach than the 2003 outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame, the agency's former general counsel said Wednesday. John Rizzo, who was the agency's top attorney until December, said in an interview that he initially requested the Justice Department and CIA investigation into the compromise of CIA interrogators' identities after photographs of the officers were found in the cell of one al Qaeda terrorist in Cuba. "Well I think this is far more serious than...

I have just received word that the New York Times is preparing to go public with a list of names of Americans covertly working in Afghanistan providing force protection for our troops, as well as the rest of our Coalition Forces. If the Times actually sees this through, the red ink they are drowning in will be nothing compared to the blood their entire organization will be covered with. Make no mistake, the Times is about to cause casualty rates in Afghanistan to skyrocket. Each and every American should be outraged. As chronicled here, here, here, and here the Central...

Former vice president Richard B. Cheney told a special prosecutor in 2004 that he could not remember playing any role in leaking the identity of Valerie Plame as a clandestine CIA officer, according to FBI records released under court order Friday. In his May 8, 2004, interview with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, Cheney said he could not recall when he learned that Plame, the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV, worked for the CIA; could not recall telling his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, about Plame's employment; and could not recall telling Libby to disclose...

WASHINGTON--A federal judge said the Federal Bureau of Investigation must publicly reveal much of its interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney during the investigation into who leaked the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency operative. The FBI interviewed Mr. Cheney in June 2004 as it was investigating the leak of Valerie Plame's identity after her husband criticized the Bush administration. Both the Bush and Obama administrations said they wanted to keep the interview confidential because future vice presidents may not cooperate with criminal investigations if it became public.

A federal judge has ordered the Justice Department to release notes and summaries of former Vice President Dick Cheney's 2004 interview with Special Prosecutor Pat Fitzgerald in the CIA leak case, but is allowing the deletion of what may be some of the most interesting details in the documents. In a ruling issued Thursday morning, Judge Emmet Sullivan flatly rejected claims by both Bush and Obama appointees at DOJ that the entirety of the records should be withheld because their disclosure could discourage White House officials from cooperating in future investigations. The judge said the prospect of such inquiries was...

Last week, The Washington Post reported on a new Justice Department inquiry into photographs of undercover CIA officials and other intelligence personnel taken by ACLU-sponsored researchers assisting the defense team of Guantanamo Bay detainees. According to the report, the pictures of covert American CIA officers -- "in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes" -- were shown to jihadi suspects tied to the 9/11 attacks in order to identify the interrogators. The ACLU undertook the so-called "John Adams Project" with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers -- last seen crusading for convicted jihadi assistant Lynne Stewart. She's the far-left...

Once upon a time, Valerie Plame Wilson was a hero to liberals everywhere, a covert CIA operative whose cover was blown by a vindictive Bush administration out to ruin its critics. Today, liberals within government and without are betraying covert CIA operatives as if it were the very essence of virtue. Consistency, principled or foolish, has never been a hobgoblin of the liberal mind.

Justice Dept. Looking Into Whether Attorneys Broke Law at Guantanamo - The Justice Department recently questioned military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay about whether photographs of CIA personnel, including covert officers, were unlawfully provided to detainees charged with organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to sources familiar with the investigation... The photos were taken by researchers hired by the John Adams Project, a joint effort of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, to support military counsel at Guantanamo Bay, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of...

So we’re hearing that ACLU attorneys allegedly showed photos of CIA agents to Guantanamo Prison terrorist detainees (Ed Morrissey, “ACLU, Gitmo Lawyers, exposed CIA agent identities to terrorists,” August 21, 2009, http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/21/aclu-gitmo-lawyers-exposed-cia-agent-identities-to-terrorists/). If they did, it’s one of the most blatant examples of protecting the criminal instead of the innocent. It’s also an act of treason. Morrissey reports that some photographs of CIA agents were shown in front of their homes. It’s hard enough to fathom a hostile world, but to know that Americans who possess a warped version of liberalism are threatening our country’s safety is especially disheartening –...

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department is investigating whether Guantanamo Bay detainees charged with roles in the Sept. 11 attacks were improperly given photos of CIA officers or contractors, according to a person familiar with the investigation. The investigation, headed by the Justice Department's counterespionage chief, John Dion, is trying to determine if military lawyers defending the detainees divulged classified information or compromised covert CIA officers, according to the person, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke only on condition of anonymity. It is a violation of federal law to identify CIA covert personnel, and it is a...