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hey Opus. you still got that moonbat BB gun? you're gonna need it to shoot down a crow. which sucks man, because i heard they taste like shit.
Coulter's the man, however, this write-up has some different venom. cracked me up.
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| The Frog Marches In On a Dark Horse Now comes the time for the Main Steam Media, known affectionately as the MSM, to drink the "frog-marching" truth serum like the men that they aren't. For the past two years the MSM has been bringing us the classic Washington nightmare on the big screen televisions of America, this time starring the marching Fog Frog. The producer of the graphic and frightening "March of the Fog Frog" has been Washington Superboy Joseph Wilson, who craftily obtained full government funding for his work of fiction, something that not even the wizards at PBS can accomplish |
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| Originally posted by Q5echo hey Opus. you still got that moonbat BB gun? you're gonna need it to shoot down a crow. which sucks man, because i heard they taste like shit. |
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| Originally posted by Trancer-X It sucks that I can't find any modern shells for my grandfather's old 8 gauge. |
Rove leak is just part of larger scandal
Anatomy of Rove's Leak
David Corn Thu Jul 14, 1:11 PM ET
The Nation -- Two years ago, after reading a Bob Novak column, I called former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and asked, half-jokingly, "Why didn't you tell me your wife was in the CIA?" In a somber voice, Wilson said, "I can't tell you that now." When I first read that Novak column outing Valerie Wilson (a k a Valerie Plame) as a CIA officer and citing "two senior administration officials," I didn't immediately comprehend the leak's seriousness. But as I spoke with Wilson, I could see the potential harm. And I realized the leak was no accident. At the time, the White House and its allies were mounting a fierce campaign against Wilson, who had revealed in a New York Times op-ed that on a 2002 CIA-sponsored trip to Niger he had gathered information undermining one of George W. Bush's justifications for the Iraq War: that Iraq had been shopping for uranium in Africa. And as we discussed the Novak leak--that is, talked around it--it occurred to me that the leakers might have violated an obscure law that prohibits government officials (not journalists) from knowingly disclosing the identity of an intelligence officer. I mentioned this to Wilson; he was unfamiliar with the law. I said I might write about the leak and this law. He didn't encourage me. He was hoping that somehow this story might blow over and was not eager to draw more attention to it. He was in partial (though understandable) denial. Two days later I posted a piece that first raised the question of whether this leak was evidence that White House officials had committed a crime.
Initially few in the mainstream media cared about the leak. But liberal bloggers and other Internet denizens howled. A handful of Democratic Congress members complained. Two months later, the news broke that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to investigate the leak, and there was a flurry of media coverage. Then the story receded, as the investigation generated little news (i.e., few leaks). But through the early stages, the White House claimed Bush wanted to get to "the bottom of it"; that leakers would be punished; and that Karl Rove, Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Elliott Abrams--three White House officials linked to the leak by Washington's rumor mill--had not been involved. Next the case came to be dominated by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's zealous pursuit of reporters--particularly Time's Matt Cooper and the New York Times's Judith Miller. But now that the Cooper and Miller cases have been resolved--with Miller imprisoned--and evidence implicating Rove has emerged, the focus has returned to the original sin: the leak itself.
Because of Fitzgerald's (appropriate or inappropriate) hounding of Cooper--which led to Time's surrendering Cooper's e-mail and notes--Newsweek's Michael Isikoff was able to obtain a damning e-mail that Cooper wrote three days before Novak's column appeared. That e-mail noted that Cooper had spoken to Rove on "double super secret background" and that Rove had told him that Wilson's "wife...apparently works at the agency on wmd issues." This was the first documentary evidence that Rove had been involved in the leak. His lawyer's immediate spin was that Rove had not mentioned Valerie Wilson/Plame by name. (This was a thin defense; a Google search would have yielded her name.) The White House stonewalled, absurdly refusing to answer any questions about Rove or its previous statements on Rove and the leak. Angry White House reporters accused the White House of having misled the public.
It has taken a while, but the leak has finally led to a flood of trouble, and Bush's most important aide is in peril. Rove might escape legal jeopardy, given how the relevant law is written. But if that famous e-mail contradicts what he told Fitzgerald's grand jury, he should fear a perjury charge. The issue, though, is not only whether Rove engaged in criminal behavior. It's also what the White House will do about Rove--and others involved in the leak. (Novak did say he had two sources.) The Cooper e-mail proves that Rove leaked national security information to undermine a critic. (And if Rove didn't know Valerie Wilson was under cover, he leaked without checking, which means he handled secret information recklessly.) By the White House's earlier statements, Rove engaged in wrongdoing that warrants dismissal--regardless of how Fitzgerald's investigation ends. And if Bush was sincere when he called for the leakers to "come forward and speak out," shouldn't he order Rove to tell us all he knows? But Team Bush has hunkered down, ignoring press inquiries, deriding Democratic criticism as baseless partisan attacks and hoping this storm will pass. It is refusing to acknowledge the reality revealed by that e-mail. But the White House--at least, Rove--has always known what happened. Bush needed no special prosecutor to "get to the bottom" of this. He only had to ask his own people to tell him the truth. That is, if he didn't already know.
The Nation
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| Originally posted by Shakka That's alright, it'd probably break your shoulder anyway! |
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| Originally posted by Trancer-X Rove leak is just part of larger scandal Anatomy of Rove's Leak David Corn Thu Jul 14, 1:11 PM ET The Nation -- Two years ago, after reading a Bob Novak column, I called former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and asked, half-jokingly, "Why didn't you tell me your wife was in the CIA?" |
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| Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security--and break the law--in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others? It sure looks that way, if conservative journalist Bob Novak can be trusted. In a recent column on Nigergate, Novak examined the role of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV in the affair. Two weeks ago, Wilson went public, writing in The New York Times and telling The Washington Post about the trip he took to Niger in February 2002--at the request of the CIA--to check out allegations that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium for a nuclear weapons program from Niger. Wilson was a good pick for the job. He had been a State Department officer there in the mid-1970s. He was ambassador to Gabon in the early 1990s. And in 1997 and 1998, he was the senior director for Africa at the National Security Council and in that capacity spent a lot of time dealing with the Niger government. Wilson was also the last acting US ambassador in Iraq before the Gulf War, a military action he supported. In that post, he helped evacuate thousands of foreigners from Kuwait, worked to get over 120 American hostages out Iraq, and sheltered about 800 Americans in the embassy compound. At the time, Novak's then-partner, Rowland Evans, wrote that Wilson displayed "the stuff of heroism." And President George H. W. Bush commended Wilson: "Your courageous leadership during this period of great danger for American interests and American citizens has my admiration and respect. I salute, too, your skillful conduct of our tense dealings with the government of Iraq....The courage and tenacity you have exhibited throughout this ordeal prove that you are the right person for the job." The current Bush administration has not been so appreciative of Wilson's more recent efforts. In Niger, he met with past and present government officials and persons involved in the uranium business and concluded that it was "highly doubtful" that Hussein had been able to purchase uranium from that nation. On June 12, The Washington Post revealed that an unnamed ambassador had traveled to Niger and had reported back that the Niger caper probably never happened. This article revved up the controversy over Bush's claim--which he made in the state of the union speech--that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium in Africa for a nuclear weapons program. Critics were charging that this allegation had been part of a Bush effort to mislead the country to war, and the administration was maintaining that at the time of the speech the White House had no reason to suspect this particular sentence was based on faulty intelligence. "Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said days before the Post article ran. "But no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions." Wilson's mission to Niger provided more reason to wonder if the administration's denials were on the level. And once Wilson went public, he prompted a new round of inconvenient and troubling questions for the White House. (Wilson, who opposed the latest war in Iraq, had not revealed his trip to Niger during the prewar months, when he was a key participant in the media debate over whether the country should go to war.) Soon after Wilson disclosed his trip in the media and made the White House look bad. the payback came. Novak's July 14, 2003, column presented the back-story on Wilson's mission and contained the following sentences: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate" the allegation. Wilson caused problems for the White House, and his wife was outed as an [COLOR=yellow]undercover CIA officer. Wilson says, "I will not answer questions about my wife. This is not about me and less so about my wife. It has always been about the facts underpinning the President's statement in the state of the union speech." So he will neither confirm nor deny that his wife--who is the mother of three-year-old twins--works for the CIA. But let's assume she does. That would seem to mean that the Bush administration has screwed one of its own top-secret operatives in order to punish Wilson or to send a message to others who might challenge it. The sources for Novak's assertion about Wilson's wife appear to be "two senior administration officials." If so, a pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what's known as "nonofficial" and who has had the dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material. If Wilson's wife is such a person--and the CIA is unlikely to have many employees like her--her career has been destroyed by the Bush administration. (Assuming she did not tell friends and family about her real job, these Bush officials have also damaged her personal life.)dging whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee, Wilson says, "Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames." If she is not a CIA employee and Novak is reporting accurately, then the White House has wrongly branded a woman known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm as a CIA officer. That would not likely do her much good. This is not only a possible breach of national security; it is a potential violation of law. Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, it is a crime for anyone who has access to classified information to disclose intentionally information identifying a covert agent. The punishment for such an offense is a fine of up to $50,000 and/or up to ten years in prison. Journalists are protected from prosecution, unless they engage in a "pattern of activities" to name agents in order to impair US intelligence activities. So Novak need not worry. Novak tells me that he was indeed tipped off by government officials about Wilson's wife and had no reluctance about naming her. "I figured if they gave it to me," he says. "They'd give it to others....I'm a reporter. Somebody gives me information and it's accurate. I generally use it." And Wilson says Novak told him that his sources were administration officials. So where's the investigation? Remember Filegate--and the Republican charge that the Clinton White House was using privileged information against its political foes? In this instance, it appears possible--perhaps likely--that Bush administration officials gathered material on Wilson and his family and then revealed classified information to lash out at him, and in doing so compromised national security. Was Wilson's wife involved in sending him off to Niger? Wilson won't talk about her. But in response to this query, he says, "I was invited out to meet with a group of people at the CIA who were interested in this subject. None I knew more than casually. They asked me about my understanding of the uranium business and my familiarity with the people in the Niger government at the time. And they asked, 'what would you do?' We gamed it out--what I would be looking for. Nothing was concluded at that time. I told them if they wanted me to go to Niger I would clear my schedule. Then they got back to me and said, 'yes, we want you to go.'" Is it relevant that Wilson's wife might have suggested him for the unpaid gig. Not really. And Wilson notes, with a laugh, that at that point their twins were two years old, and it would not have been much in his wife's interest to encourage him to head off to Africa. What matters is that Wilson returned with the right answer and dutifully reported his conclusions. (In March 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that the documents upon which the Niger allegation was based were amateurish forgeries.) His wife's role--if she had one--has nothing but anecdotal value. And Novak's sources could have mentioned it without providing her name. Instead, they were quite generous. "Stories like this," Wilson says, "are not intended to intimidate me, since I've already told my story. But it's pretty clear it is intended to intimidate others who might come forward. You need only look at the stories of intelligence analysts who say they have been pressured. They may have kids in college, they may be vulnerable to these types of smears." Will there be any inquiry? Journalists who write about national security matters (as I often do) tend not to big fans of pursuing government officials who leak classified information. But since Bush administration officials are so devoted to protecting government secrets--such as the identity of the energy lobbyists with whom the vice president meets--one might (theoretically) expect them to be appalled by the prospect that classified information was disclosed and national security harmed for the purposes of mounting a political hit job. Yet two days after the Novak column's appearance, there has not been any public comment from the White House or any other public reverberation. The Wilson smear was a thuggish act. Bush and his crew abused and misused intelligence to make their case for war. Now there is evidence Bushies used classified information and put the nation's counter-proliferation efforts at risk merely to settle a score. It is a sign that with this gang politics trumps national security. |
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| Originally posted by Q5echo you know, it's funny you posted this by Korn (who is the beady eyed epitome of a left wing shill) talking about how the administration's malice was the cause of Plames outing when, in all honesty, it was him that actually outed Plame as a "Top Secret" "covert" operative. he published this just two days after Novak's article which referred Plame as only a "WMD operative". which she was. just throwin it out there. make ya think. Korn has already admitted to calling his boy Wilson 2 days after the Novak article, then comes up with this? makes me wonder. speculate. whatever. |
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| Rove E-Mailed Security Official About Talk By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - After mentioning a CIA operative to a reporter, Bush confidant Karl Rove alerted the president's No. 2 security adviser about the interview and said he tried to steer the journalist away from allegations the operative's husband was making about faulty Iraq intelligence. The July 11, 2003, e-mail between Rove and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley is the first showing an intelligence official knew Rove had talked to Matthew Cooper just days before the Time magazine reporter divulged CIA officer Valerie Plame's secret identity. "I didn't take the bait," Rove wrote in an e-mail obtained by The Associated Press, recounting how Cooper tried to question him about whether President Bush had been hurt by the new allegations. The White House turned the e-mail over to prosecutors, and Rove testified to a grand jury about it last year. Earlier in the week before the e-mail, Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had written a newspaper opinion piece accusing the Bush administration of twisting prewar intelligence, including a "highly doubtful" report that Iraq bought nuclear materials from Niger. "Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he's got a welfare reform story coming," Rove wrote in the e-mail to Hadley. "When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn't this damaging? Hasn't the president been hurt? I didn't take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn't get Time far out in front on this." Hadley, now Bush's national security adviser, didn't immediately return a call seeking comment Friday. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said his client answered all the questions prosecutors asked during three grand jury appearances, never invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination or the president's executive privilege guaranteeing confidential advice from aides. Rove, Bush's closest adviser, turned over the e-mail as soon as prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into who leaked Plame's covert work for the CIA. He later told a grand jury the e-mail was consistent with his recollection that his intention in talking with Cooper that Friday in July 2003 wasn't to divulge Plame's identity but to caution Cooper against certain allegations Plame's husband was making, according to legal professionals familiar with Rove's testimony. They spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the grand jury investigation. Rove sent the e-mail shortly before leaving the White House early for a family vacation that weekend, already aware that another journalist he had talked with, syndicated columnist Robert Novak, was planning an article about Plame and Wilson. Rove also knew that then-CIA Director George Tenet planned later that same day to issue a dramatic statement that took responsibility for some bad Iraq intelligence but that also called into question some of Wilson's assertions, the legal sources said. The AP reported Thursday that Rove acknowledged to the grand jury that he talked about Plame with both Cooper and Novak before they published their stories but that he originally learned about the operative's identity from the news media, not government sources. Republicans cheered the latest revelations Friday, saying they showed Rove wasn't trying to hurt Plame but instead was trying to informally warn reporters to be cautious about some of Wilson's claims. "What it says is, Karl Rove wasn't the leaker, he was actually the recipient of the information not the provider," Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman said on Fox News. "So there are probably a lot of folks in Washington who have prejudged this, who have rushed to judgment who are trying to smear Karl Rove." Democrats, however, said that even if Rove wasn't the leaker, someone still divulged Plame's identity and possibly violated the law. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and other party leaders asked Speaker Dennis Hastert on Friday to let Congress hold hearings into the controversy regardless of the criminal probe now under way. "In previous Republican Congresses the fact that a criminal investigation was under way did not prevent extensive hearings from being held on other, much less significant matters," Pelosi wrote. Federal law prohibits government officials from divulging the identity of an undercover intelligence officer. But in order to bring charges, prosecutors must prove the official knew the officer was covert and nonetheless knowingly outed his or her identity. Rove's conversations with Novak and Cooper took place just days after Wilson suggested in his opinion piece in The New York Times that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was used to exaggerate the Iraqi threat. Summarizing a trip he made to Africa on behalf of the CIA, Wilson wrote that he'd concluded it was highly doubtful the nation of Niger had sold uranium yellowcake to Iraq. Tenet issued a lengthy statement five days later saying that he never should have allowed Bush to use the Niger information in his State of the Union address but that Wilson's report did not resolve whether Iraq was seeking uranium from abroad. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050715...h/cia_leak_rove |
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| Originally posted by Q5echo hey Opus. you still got that moonbat BB gun? you're gonna need it to shoot down a crow. which sucks man, because i heard they taste like shit. |
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| Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Ahh, too many bones in 'em. But in all seriousness, let's take this back a step. For two years now the White House and Rove himself had claimed that Rove did not leak anything to reporters. We have known this entire week that this is false. There is no spin to get away from that point. Do you confirm of deny this, given what we know so far (and admittedly we only know what's given in the press)? Let's just answer that question and go from there. I'll speak more on this tomorrow. I've got a hot date with the Mrs. down by that lovely Knob Creek... |
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| Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Ahh, too many bones in 'em. But in all seriousness, let's take this back a step. For two years now the White House and Rove himself had claimed that Rove did not leak anything to reporters. We have known this entire week that this is false. There is no spin to get away from that point. Do you confirm of deny this, given what we know so far (and admittedly we only know what's given in the press)? Let's just answer that question and go from there. I'll speak more on this tomorrow. I've got a hot date with the Mrs. down by that lovely Knob Creek... |
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| Originally posted by Trancer-X Hey, did it ever occur to you that your argument would be more substantiated if you would learn to attack the message itself, rather than the messenger? |
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| Originally posted by MisterOpus1 For two years now the White House and Rove himself had claimed that Rove did not leak anything to reporters. We have known this entire week that this is false. There is no spin to get away from that point. Do you confirm of deny this, given what we know so far (and admittedly we only know what's given in the press)? |
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| Originally posted by igottaknow As Q5 legal council, I recommend he not answer any of your questions because the investigation is on going and he might incriminate himself. If he must reply I suggest he use the Scott McClelland stone wall or the Ari Fleischer redirect. |
The gigantic problem with this whole ordeal is that we are merely receiving leaks from the press, which either side is interpreting for themselves and against their adversaries. The other huge problem is that new stuff keeps coming up every day that adds new twists to the story. Based on what we know so far, I do think it's pretty obvious that Rove has some involvement of some sorts, here, and what's also obvious is both he and the White House denied him having any involvement for over two years.
That is an inescapable conclusion for right now.
We have confirmation from this from yesterday's WaPost:
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| White House senior adviser Karl Rove indirectly confirmed the CIA affiliation of an administration critic's wife for Robert D. Novak the week before the columnist named her and revealed her position, a lawyer involved in the case said last night. The operative, Valerie Plame, is the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who had publicly disputed the White House's contention that Saddam Hussein had sought to buy uranium from Niger for possible use in a nuclear weapon. The lawyer, who has knowledge of the conversations between Rove and prosecutors, said President Bush's deputy chief of staff has told investigators that he first learned about the operative from a journalist and that he later learned her name from Novak. Rove has said he does not recall who the journalist was who first told him that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, or when the conversation occurred, the lawyer said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...5071500036.html |
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| On Oct. 1, 2003, Mr. Novak wrote another column in which he described calling two officials who were his sources for the earlier column. The first source, whose identity has not been revealed, provided the outlines of the story and was described by Mr. Novak as "no partisan gunslinger." Mr. Novak wrote that when he called a second official for confirmation, the source said, "Oh, you know about it." That second source was Mr. Rove, the person briefed on the matter said. Mr. Rove's account to investigators about what he told Mr. Novak was similar in its message although the White House adviser's recollection of the exact words was slightly different. Asked by investigators how he knew enough to leave Mr. Novak with the impression that his information was accurate, Mr. Rove said he had heard parts of the story from other journalists but had not heard Ms. Wilson's name. |
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| WASHINGTON, July 15 - Prosecutors in the C.I.A. leak case have shown intense interest in a 2003 State Department memorandum that explained how a former diplomat came to be dispatched on an intelligence-gathering mission and the role of his wife, a C.I.A. officer, in the trip, people who have been officially briefed on the case said. Investigators in the case have been trying to learn whether officials at the White House and elsewhere in the administration learned of the C.I.A. officer's identity from the memorandum. They are seeking to determine if any officials then passed the name along to journalists and if officials were truthful in testifying about whether they had read the memo, the people who have been briefed said, asking not to be named because the special prosecutor heading the investigation had requested that no one discuss the case. The memorandum was sent to Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, just before or as he traveled with President Bush and other senior officials to Africa starting on July 7, 2003, when the White House was scrambling to defend itself from a blast of criticism a few days earlier from the former diplomat, Joseph C. Wilson IV, current and former government officials said.[b/] Mr. Powell was seen walking around Air Force One during the trip with the memorandum in hand, said a person involved in the case who also requested anonymity because of the prosecutor's admonitions about talking about the investigation. Investigators are also trying to determine whether the gist of the information in the document, including the name of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, Mr. Wilson's wife, had been provided to the White House even earlier, said another person who has been involved in the case. Investigators have been looking at whether the State Department provided the information to the White House before July 6, 2003, when Mr. Wilson publicly criticized the way the administration used intelligence to justify the war in Iraq, the person said.[b/] |
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| The prosecutors have shown the memorandum to witnesses at the grand jury investigating how the C.I.A. officer's name was disclosed to journalists, blowing her cover as a covert operative and possibly violating federal law, people briefed on the case said. |
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| The prosecutors appear to be investigating how widely the document circulated within the administration, and whether it might have been the original source of information for whoever provided the identity of Ms. Wilson to Robert D. Novak, the syndicated columnist who first disclosed it in print. On Thursday, a person who has been officially briefed on the matter said that Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, had spoken about Ms. Wilson with Mr. Novak before Mr. Novak published a column on July 14, 2003, identifying the C.I.A. officer by her maiden name, Valerie Plame. Mr. Rove, the person said, told Mr. Novak he had heard much the same information, making him one of two sources Mr. Novak cited for his information. |
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| But the person said Mr. Rove first heard from Mr. Novak the name of Mr. Wilson's wife and her precise role in the C.I.A.'s decision to send her husband to Africa to investigate a report, later discredited, that Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire nuclear material there. It is not clear who Mr. Novak's original source was, or whether Mr. Novak has revealed the source's identity to the grand jury. Mr. Rove also held a conversation about Mr. Wilson's mission to Africa with Matthew Cooper, ..... ...Mr. Rove told the grand jury in the case that the e-mail message was consistent with his assertion that he had not intended to divulge Ms. Wilson's identity but instead intended to rebut Mr. Wilson's criticisms of the administration's use of intelligence about Iraq, The A.P. reported, citing legal professionals familiar with Mr. Rove's testimony. Dozens of White House and administration officials have testified to the grand jury, and several officials have been called back for further questioning. |
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| The special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has sought to determine how much [b]Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman at the time of the leak, knew about the memorandum. Lawyers involved in the case said Mr. Fitzgerald asked questions about Mr. Fleischer's role. Mr. Fleischer was with Mr. Bush and much of the senior White House staff in Africa when Mr. Powell, who was also with them, received the memorandum. A spokeswoman for Mr. Powell said he was out of the country and could not comment on the document. Mr. Fleischer said in an e-mail message this week that he would not comment on the case. Mr. Fitzgerald has also looked into any role that I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, may have played. Lawyers in the case have said their clients have been asked about Mr. Libby's conversations in the days after Mr. Wilson's article - in part based on Mr. Libby's hand-written notes, which he turned over to the prosecutor. In addition, several journalists have been asked about their conversations with Mr. Libby. At least one, Tim Russert of NBC News, has suggested that prosecutors wanted to know whether he had told Mr. Libby of Ms. Wilson's identity. After Mr. Russert met with Mr. Fitzgerald, NBC said that he did not provide the information to Mr. Libby. The existence of the State Department memorandum has been previously reported by news organizations including The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and The Daily News. But new details of how it came about and how it circulated within the administration could offer clues into who knew what and when. |
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| The memorandum was dated June 10, 2003, nearly four weeks before Mr. Wilson wrote an Op-Ed article for The New York Times in which he recounted his mission and accused the administration of twisting intelligence to exaggerate the threat from Iraq. The memorandum was written for Marc Grossman, then the under secretary of state for political affairs, and it referred explicitly to Valerie Wilson as Mr. Wilson's wife, according to a government official who reread the document on Friday. kaboom. So we now know that someone in the State Department had Valerie's identity nearly ONE MONTH before Novak's column. Whether or not that got out to the rest of the Administration then is unknown, but we do know that this Administration had it IMMEDIATELY after Wilson's first op-ed: [QUOTE]When Mr. Wilson's Op-Ed article appeared on July 6, 2003, a Sunday, Richard L. Armitage, then deputy secretary of state, called Carl W. Ford Jr., the assistant secretary for intelligence and research, at home, a former State Department official said. Mr. Armitage asked Mr. Ford to send a copy of the memorandum to Mr. Powell, who was preparing to leave for Africa with Mr. Bush, the former official said. Mr. Ford sent it to the White House for transmission to Mr. Powell. It is not clear who asked for the memorandum, but in the weeks before it was written, there were several accounts in newspapers about an unnamed former diplomat's trip to Africa seeking intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program. On May 6, 2003, Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The Times, wrote of a "former U.S. ambassador to Africa" who had reported to the C.I.A. and the State Department that reports of Iraq seeking to acquire uranium in Niger were "unequivocally wrong." The memorandum was prepared at the State Department, relying on notes by an analyst who was involved in meetings in early 2002 to discuss whether to send someone to Africa to investigate allegations that Iraq was pursuing uranium purchases. The C.I.A. was asked by Mr. Cheney's office and the State and Defense Departments to look into the reports. According to a July 9, 2004, Senate Intelligence Committee report, the notes described a Feb. 19, 2002, meeting at C.I.A. headquarters on whether Mr. Wilson should go to Niger. The notes, which did not identify Ms. Wilson or her husband by name, said the meeting was "apparently convened by" the wife of a former ambassador "who had the idea to dispatch" him to Niger because of his contacts in the region. Mr. Wilson had been ambassador to Gabon. The Intelligence Committee report said the former ambassador's wife had a different account of her role, saying she introduced him and left after about three minutes. The information in the State Department memorandum generally tracked the information Mr. Novak laid out for Mr. Rove in their conversation, according to the account of their exchange provided by the person briefed on what Mr. Rove has told investigators. But it appears to differ in at least one way, raising questions about whether it was the original source of the material that ultimately made its way to Mr. Novak. In his July 14, 2003, column, Mr. Novak referred to Ms. Wilson as Valerie Plame. The State Department memorandum referred to her as Valerie Wilson, according to the government official who reread it on Friday. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/16/p...agewanted=print |
logic would say whoever is the furthest out on the limb, eats the crow...and that would be you.
Rove has known that he was not the leaker just about longer than any body. word around the beltway is he's playing the Dems.
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| Originally posted by Q5echo logic would say whoever is the furthest out on the limb, eats the crow...and that would be you. Rove has known that he was not the leaker just about longer than any body. word around the beltway is he's playing the Dems. |
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| A key component of President Bush's claim that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program -- its alleged attempt to buy uranium in Niger -- was disputed by a CIA-directed mission to the central African nation in early 2002, according to senior administration officials and a former government official. But the CIA did not pass on the detailed results of its investigation to the White House or other government agencies, the officials said. The CIA's failure to share what it knew was one of a number of steps in the Bush administration that helped keep the uranium story alive until the eve of the war. A senior intelligence official said the CIA's action was the result of "extremely sloppy" handling of a central piece of evidence in the administration's case against then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. A senior CIA analyst said the case "is indicative of larger problems" involving the handling of intelligence about Iraq's alleged weapons programs and its links to al Qaeda, which the administration cited as justification for war. "Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded and information that was [consistent[ was not seriously scrutinized," the analyst said. The controversy has expanded with the failure so far of U.S. teams in Iraq to uncover proscribed weapons. |
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| "Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded." |
As I said earlier, more and more stuff continues to be leaked out. From the looks of it, we have a possible identification of the 2nd source of Novak's column.
First source confirmed - Karl Rove. Second source: Scooter Libby:
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| While media coverage in recent days has focused on conversations White House senior adviser Karl Rove had with reporters, two sources say Miller spoke with Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, during the key period in July 2003 that is the focus of Fitzgerald's investigation. The two sources, one who is familiar with Libby's version of events and the other with Miller's, said the previously undisclosed conversation occurred a few days before Plame's name appeared in Robert D. Novak's syndicated column on July 14, 2003. Miller and Libby discussed former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, Plame's husband, who had recently alleged that the Bush administration twisted intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, according to the source familiar with Libby's version. But, according to the source, the subject of Wilson's wife did not come up. Miller and the Times have said the reporter has chosen jail to keep promises she made to protect the identity of confidential sources. But Libby's attorney, Joseph A. Tate, has told the New York Times that he provided reporters with assurances that they could rely on the waivers releasing them to talk to Fitzgerald. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...er=emailarticle |
Top Cheney Aide Among Sources in CIA Story
By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide was among the sources for a Time magazine reporter's story about the identity of a CIA officer, the reporter said Sunday.
Until last week, the White House had insisted for nearly two years that vice presidential chief of staff Lewis Libby and presidential adviser Karl Rove were not involved in the leaks of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity.
The White House refused last week to repeat those assertions when it was revealed that Rove had told Time reporter Matt Cooper that the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson apparently works at the CIA and that she had authorized his trip to Africa. The CIA dispatched Wilson to check out a report that the government of Niger had sold yellowcake uranium to Iraq for nuclear weapons.
Cooper said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he spoke to Libby after first learning about Wilson's wife from Rove.
According to Cooper, Libby and Rove were among the government officials referred to in Cooper's subsequent Time story that said Wilson's wife was a CIA official and that she was involved in sending her husband on a trip to Africa.
Cooper's article was headlined, "A War on Wilson?"
On Sunday, Cooper also said there may have been other sources for that information. He declined to elaborate.
In a first-person account in the latest issue of Time, Cooper said Rove ended their telephone conversation with the words, "I've already said too much." Cooper speculated that Rove could have been worried about being indiscreet or "it could have meant he was late for a meeting or something else."
Republicans are responding to the revelations about Rove's role in the leak by saying that the deputy White House chief of staff first heard about Wilson's wife from a reporter.
The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman, told NBC that the disclosure about getting the information from a reporter vindicates Rove and that Democrats who have called for Rove's dismissal should apologize.
But John Podesta, former White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration, said the White House's assurance in 2003 that Rove was not involved in the leak "was a lie." Rove's credibility "is in shreds," said Podesta, who appeared with Mehlmen.
Wilson was the top U.S. diplomat in Iraq during the Persian
Gulf War.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050717...investigation_2
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| Originally posted by Q5echo seriously, if you are referring to yourself as the messenger, i was not attacking you. i just saw some irony in the message. that's all. |
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| Originally posted by Q5echo you know, it's funny you posted this by Korn (who is the beady eyed epitome of a left wing shill) talking about how the administration's malice was the cause of Plames outing when, in all honesty, it was him that actually outed Plame (...). |
okay. your point? the irony was not your doing, it was Korn's. i'll attack Korn till i'm blue in the face. all you did was post it here.
given what you've read in his two articles (one in which you posted. the other, i think is a huge assumption on my part that you, in fact, did.) don't you see a little irony? the timing of these being published is key. if not then...whatever.
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| Originally posted by Q5echo the irony was not your doing, it was Korn's. |
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| Originally posted by Q5echo i'll attack Korn till i'm blue in the face. |
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| Originally posted by Shakka You said "knob"...again! |
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| Originally posted by Trancer-X Good observation, Beavis. http://web.ukonline.co.uk/hacker.s/bandb/knob.wav |
Why, Bush would NEVER, I mean NEVER move goalposts on anything, would he? He is "a man of his word", right? He says what he means, and means what he says, right?
September 29, 2003
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| McClellan: "If anyone in this administration was involved in it (the improper disclosure of an undercover CIA operative's identity), they would no longer be in this administration." http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/rele...20030929-7.html |
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| Bush: "If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003...ain575986.shtml |
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| Bush: "If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration." http://today.reuters.com/News/newsA...USH-LEAK-DC.XML |
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| WASHINGTON, July 18 - President Bush changed his stance today on his close adviser Karl Rove, stopping well short of promising that anyone in his administration who helped to unmask a C.I.A. officer would be fired. C.I.A. Inquiry May Hinge on What the Leaker Knew (July 18, 2005) "If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration," Mr. Bush said in response to a question, after declaring, "I don't know all the facts; I want to know all the facts." For months, Mr. Bush and his spokesmen have said that anyone involved in the disclosure of the C.I.A. officer's identity would be dismissed. The president's apparent raising of the bar for dismissal today, to specific criminal conduct, comes amid mounting evidence that, at the very least, Mr. Rove provided backhanded confirmation of the C.I.A. officer's identity. http://nytimes.com/2005/07/18/polit...8A56NV5Nmgq/53Q |
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