Free Republic

<p>October 6, 2003 -- WHAT do social insects, Genghis Khan's cavalry and the cyberbullies at MoveOn.org have in common? Swarming.</p> <p>Social insects aren't much on individuality. Gene-driven, they do low-order tasks in the service of an elaborately organized nest - and they do it in large numbers.</p>

While accusations abound regarding the Joseph Wilson/Valerie Plame/CIA/White House controversy one thing is clear, it is a very serious situation that will have very serious consequences for whomever is responsible. But therein lays the question, who actually is responsible? At this point all we can do is wait to see what the Justice Department investigation, an investigation mandated by protocol, uncovers. But, it should be pointed out that there are many variables and reasons enough for both sides to have perpetrated the leak. The first thing that we need to verify is whether Ms. Plame was actually a NOC or...

Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV said yesterday that the leak of his wife's name as a covert CIA official by Bush administration officials last July could have been for revenge or to undercut his criticisms of the Iraq war or to intimidate other government insiders from talking to journalists. "I do believe, however, that the president would never have condoned or been party to anything like this," he said yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press." The Justice Department has begun an investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of the name of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, who served in the CIA's...

The White House is beginning to lose its battle to keep the administration "on message," according to members of the White House press corps. In the wake of the investigation into who leaked the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame, top officials in the West Wing are still speaking in one tongue, but leaks are springing from the lower echelons and the agencies. "There's an undercurrent of career employees who feel like they are being picked off by the political appointees," says New York Daily News White House correspondent Ken Bazinet. "They consider themselves patriots. They're starting to talk." White...

IF AMBASSADOR Joe Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was indeed a covert agent for the CIA (and not just an analyst), and if a Bush administration official did expose her, a 1982 federal law may have been broken and someone should pay. But considering the many ironies of this story, Wilson’s allegation that Bush’s administration “outted” his wife to punish him (by risking her death, implicitly) just doesn’t figure. Wilson wrote a New York Times op-ed faulting the White House for suspecting that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger. (An ambassador in both the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations...

Let's go to the mattresses. This time they mean war. The Godfathers that be are taking care of unfinished business. It's all in their final scenes. While the new baby in the family is being baptized -- that would be Wes Clark -- their hit men are at large at select locales snuffing out hated threats to their power. The White House they shoot up with Fredo Joe Wilson and his moll. In California they go after the guy we know as Arnold but whom they call "that pimp Barzini." Then they accuse him of selling Hitler to children. Finally,...

JOSEPH WILSON, the retired ambassador who wants to see top Bush aide Karl Rove "frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs" for allegedly "outing" his CIA-agent wife, wants us to know it's nothing personal against the Bush family. He told a C-SPAN interviewer last week of his warm relationship with former President Bush, who once described Wilson as a "truly inspiring" and "courageous" diplomat for his role in extracting potential American hostages from Baghdad in 1991. Wilson supported the 1991 war against Iraq and vehemently opposed the war against Iraq in 2003. He joked to an interviewer that an...

<p>October 3, 2003 -- THE current furor over who, if anyone, in the White House leaked anything about Joe Wilson's wife and whether that leak, if it occurred, constitutes a crime is off the mark.</p> <p>My concern is about something far more ominous. It is what I see to be a systematic pattern of conduct being carried out by elements within the Central Intelligence Agency constituting a virtual covert operation against the Bush White House - a covert operation designed to protect the spy agency's turf and deflect charges of incompetence.</p>

<p>The White House yesterday accused Democrats of politicizing a probe into the disclosure of a CIA employee's name and said the investigation was based on "unsubstantiated rumors."</p> <p>"Unfortunately, there are some that are looking through the lens of political opportunism," said White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. "There are some that are seeking partisan political advantage."</p>

<p>Americans beyond the Beltway were wary — and weary — of the CIA-leak story yesterday.</p> <p>"This sounds like another passing frenzy down there in D.C., getting hyped more than it should be," said Rocky Wood of Hoonah, Alaska, on a large island about 30 miles west of Juneau.</p>

Joe Wilson is living the high life. He is riding a wave of attention that all true sycophants love. Anywhere you turn the television on – there he is. For someone who is concerned about privacy and protecting his very private life, he is making even left-leaning journalists believe he is in this current tussle for the style, the gloss – not the substance. On with Ted Koppel, looking somber and sober, he again states the charges that Wilson is being politically targeted by a mean and cruel administration that is out to injure and harm him and his poor...

<p>October 3, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - The CIA officer whose cover was blown by an alleged Bush administration leak and her diplomat husband have retained a Washington lawyer to find out who they can sue and how much money they can seek. Also, the investigation, first focused on the White House and CIA, is now broadening to include the State and Defense departments, officials said.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON — The federal investigation into the leak of a CIA (search) officer's name expanded Thursday beyond the White House and the spy agency to other parts of the government with access to the officer's classified identity.</p> <p>The Justice Department (search) sent "do not destroy" letters to the Defense and State departments requesting preservation of phone logs, e-mails and other documents that could become evidence in the inquiry, senior law enforcement officials said.</p>

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Thursday accused Democrats of "political opportunism" as President Bush (news - web sites)'s embattled administration brushed aside calls for a special counsel to investigate the leak of a CIA (news - web sites) agent's identity. Despite polls showing Americans favor a special counsel, White House spokesman Scott McClellan gave no ground on the case that surrounds allegations the Bush administration illegally unmasked CIA operative Valerie Plame. Plame's husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson, has charged that White House officials blew his wife's cover in retaliation for his criticism of the Iraq (news - web...

I guess I’ll have to admit to being surprised that Dem-Media is once again rolling out another attempt to cast the Bush Administration as more Clintonian than even the Clintonistas. Maybe I was naïve in the extreme to believe otherwise, but now it is apparent that this little game, which threatens national security, will never end until those responsible have learned the lesson that acting in such a manner carries real and calculable repercussions. This time, of course, the smear campaign centers on Joseph Wilson – notable Clinton suck-up, professional Bush basher and currently an employee of the country –...

She started her CIA career at age 10? Wednesday night on CNN's NewsNight, anchor Aaron Brown passed along how former CIA operative Larry Johnson said Joe Wilson's wife "was in fact" an undercover agent "for 30 years." But a Wednesday Washington Post story pegged her age at 40. So she is a lot older, or she started her undercover work while still in elementary school or Brown relayed some bad info. Following a clip of Bob Novak from earlier in the day on Wolf Blitzer Reports, Brown proposed on the October 1 NewsNight: "We should add here, there is some...

<p>WASHINGTON — The FBI's first task in the investigation of a leak that disclosed the name of a CIA employee is to narrow the list of government officials who may have known her identity, a number that could be in the hundreds.</p>

That the Justice Department has begun an investigation to discover who leaked the name of a CIA employee to a syndicated columnist is not surprising because election season has begun. Whether the department can conduct an objective inquiry has become the political obsession of the moment. The Democrats are indignant that for political revenge a White House source would leak information to the media. But it is not altogether clear the White House intentionally leaked the information, and at any rate, Washington would not be Washington without information swapping. The Democrats have urged President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The investigation into the leak of a CIA officer's name is likely to expand to other Bush administration agencies, including the State and Defense departments, officials said Thursday. A senior Justice Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said those agencies, and possibly others, could get letters urging officials to preserve documents such as phone logs and not to delete e-mails. Similar letters have already gone to the White House and CIA. Defense Department officials confirmed Thursday they were told to expect such a letter. At the State Department, spokeswoman Susan Pittman said she did not know...

Note to Readers This article uses excerpts from mainstream news sources to establish how former Amb. Joseph C. Wilson IV morphed over months from the anonymous source of a forgotten CIA-requested report, to theself-described outraged husband at the center of Washington's latest political firestorm. The sources these excerpts are drawn from are extensive and easily could make a fair-sized booklet. Therefore, the excerpts are necessarily tightly focused, and the reader is encouraged to: Pay close attention to details of how Wilson's statements and behavior morph over time—literally from no mention in an interview conducted by Bill Moyers one month after...