The all but ignored Downing Street Memos taught us that within the British government, the justification for an Iraq invasion was going to be handled by the United States. The case would be made on evidence that Saddam had on hand, and sought to obtain materials to build weapons of mass destruction, and if sufficient intelligence was not on hand to get the job done, the facts would be fixed. One has to wonder what this would entail, and now that a couple of years have passed, the game plan is now becoming clear.
The primary strategy employed by the Bush administration was to cherry pick and highlight favorable intelligence, while suppressing intelligence that was contrary to their goal of justifying an invasion. John Bolton played a role in carrying out this strategy by harassing CIA analysts who placed reality and truth above the desires of the administration. His behavior during this time was shameful, and prompted several career intelligence officials to testify under oath at his most recent confirmation hearing that their jobs were threatened by Bolton if their assessments did not equal what the administration wanted to hear.
Fixing the ‘in house’ facts was accomplished in this way, but when outside authorities contradicted the administration’s lies, it was taken care of in similarly shameful ways. Joe Wilson spoke out about the inaccuracy of President Bush’s state of the union assertion that Saddam had attempted to purchase uranium from Africa, so they went after his wife Valerie Plame. She had a career in the CIA working as a covert operative protecting America from countries seeking to purchase the very weapons of mass destruction that we supposedly went to war over.
Basically this aspect of ‘fact fixing’ centered around ruining the careers of anyone who refused to lie. Short of actually killing all of these people, the Bush administration might as well call itself the mafia. Plame and Wilson were not ‘made’, therefore deemed ‘fair game’ and as such, now ‘sleep with the fishes’. Former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neil told all of us that Iraq was on the table from day one, well before the 9/11 attacks. Richard Clarke spoke up and pointed out that while Osama Bin Laden was the one who orchestrated the attacks of 9/11, the administration was incorrectly shifting focus away from him and onto Iraq. In neither instance were their assertions challenged by the administration. No, they decided to fit their reputations with a set of concrete galoshes instead.
This is what they do. When the facts don’t fit, they get personal. This time they’ve gotten personal with not only a whistle blower, but the American people as well. The day that Joe Wilson’s editorial appeared in the New York Times, the CIA briefed the President as they did every day. Surely questions as to who Joe Wilson was, and why he traveled to Africa to conduct an investigation were asked. Somewhere within that briefing, his connection to the CIA through his wife was revealed. Low and behold, Karl Rove was quickly ‘shopping’ this information around to the media. Telling Chris Matthews that Wilson’s wife was ‘fair game’, Turd Blossom (Bush’s affectionate nickname for Rove) of course reveled in his function as the geekiest hitman in the history of mankind.
And like the mafia, these ‘hits’ provided temporary comfort for the bosses at the expense of our society as a whole. Right-wingers were able to ignore that Bush was lying during the run-up to the war, while adopting a series of labels to describe Wilson, O’Neil, Clarke and others as selfish liberal activists. Meanwhile, the CIA’s ability to compile intelligence concerning international weapons proliferation has been damaged. Not only was the strategy of establishing front companies to gather intelligence exposed, but agents working undercover in North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Libya and Iran (to name a few) were all compromised at a crucial stage in our War on Terror.
When merchandise ‘falls off the truck’ and into the hands of the mafia, someone loses. You or I may not experience a loss when a truck full of plasma screen televisions are boosted, but all of us are surely affected by the loss of this international counter terrorism mechanism. The company that folded due to this leak, Brewster-Jennings, was started in 1994, and after a decade of funds, careers and contacts had already been spent, dedicated and established – it was all flushed down the toilet for the sake of punishing a guy who wrote an editorial that conflicted with what the administration wanted to have us all believe. Who is this guy the administration sent Hitman Turd out to ruin?
Joe Wilson was the last ambassador remaining in Baghdad prior to the first Persian Gulf War. When Saddam Hussein threatened to execute any Americans who helped evacuate their fellow countrymen from Iraq, he held a press conference with a noose around his neck, effectively calling Saddam’s bluff. Not a single American was killed, but instead all were evacuated safely. The first President George Bush honored Wilson for his service and bravery, but now your average right-winger will claim this man is nothing but a ‘liberal hack’. He wasn’t a ‘made guy’, and in an organization that’s run like the mafia, it doesn’t matter who someone is or what they’d done in the past. Nor does it matter that the American public has lost big time in all of this.
Because we’ve been hoodwinked here from day one. The President hasn’t been interested in capturing Osama Bin Laden, any more than he’s been interested in obtaining the truth of who actually has what in terms of WMDs across the world. If either of these facts were untrue, CIA operations would trump a temporary political need. National security would trump the desire to punish a political opponent or their family. The feds are hopefully kicking down some doors right now and providing the American public what we absolutely deserve from this plodding investigation, but the fact that it’s already taken this long doesn’t say much. In fact, the public appears to know more than anyone involved in this investigation ever wanted them to already.
Never forget that these hypocrites burned Newsweek for providing aid and comfort to the enemy a short while ago, and here they’ve done the same exact thing, only multiplied by a thousand. The assets this country relies on to ensure our safety mean little to this administration when put alongside preserving power. Operatives working for Nixon once broke into the office of a whistle blower’s psychiatrist in search of damaging information that could be used for intimidation. This administration stooped even lower by going after a whistle blower’s family. Of course, Joe Wilson took no oath of omerta to the office of the President, but George Bush took an oath to uphold the Constitution and protect the citizens of America.
This is great!
.
President said ‘sought’, Wilson said ‘bought’, Bi-Partisan Intelligence committee said ‘sought’, Wilson fixed facts…your theory is shot. Wilson also lied about who sent him, denied his wifes role in getting him sent, and lied about Tenet or Cheney recieving his report…all this determined by the Bi-partisan intelligence committee. Why would the good Ambassador decide to write an article, instead of reporting to a senior official, if he didn’t have political motivation…he contributed to the kerry campaign, and voted for kerry. Try and explain away the politics of the accuser, and I will try and explain away the politics of the accused.
Michael – even if all you say about Wilson is correct, are you then saying that the outing of his wife was acceptable? Are you insinuating that because Joe Wilson did something, anything…that it warranted the folding of Brewster-Jennings as a response?
Where is it cited that all you say about Wilson is true? More importantly though, how would any of it justify going after his family?
No I’m saying politics in a criminal investigation is wrong…we should ALL wait for the final report.
Here’s a tidbit that more or less should prevent you from declaring the ‘tragedy’ that befell Wilson’s wife….
Wilson acknowledged his wife was no longer in an undercover job at the time Novak’s column first identified her. “My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity,” he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050715/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/cia_leak_rove_8;_ylt=AndyXsLDkLYBXnqW.Ch7otVZJ_wA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
The purpose of protecting a CIA agents name is not to prevent them from being public ridiculed for her assistence in getting her husband sent to Africa, it is to prevent her from being harmed…she wasn’t in harms way, wasn’t undercover, has been in the states since 1997. There is no crime in saying her name, and the more we learn the only explanation would be that her name was a known aquaintence of current undercover operatives…and might have put them in harms way. Otherwise the investigation is pointless…even if this is the case…it isn’t part of the law that you can’t name the aquaintences of undercover agents, and undercover agents shouldn’t make known that they are friends with Tenet or any other person close to the CIA.
There is information already released. Like Cooper’s emails concerning Rove, the fact that Plame at one time worked for Brewster-Jennings. That’s enough to go on in terms of realizing the fact that:
A. The White House played a hand in outing her
B. A major CIA counterintelligence operation (Brewster-Jennings) was exposed from all of it
C. Brewster-Jennings worked in the field of WMD proliferation
That’s enough for me to be judgemental over the characters we’re dealing with here.
The purpose of protecting a CIA agents name is not to prevent them from being public ridiculed for her assistence in getting her husband sent to Africa, it is to prevent her from being harmed…she wasn’t in harms way, wasn’t undercover, has been in the states since 1997. There is no crime in saying her name, and the more we learn the only explanation would be that her name was a known aquaintence of current undercover operatives…and might have put them in harms way. Otherwise the investigation is pointless…even if this is the case…it isn’t part of the law that you can’t name the aquaintences of undercover agents, and undercover agents shouldn’t make known that they are friends with Tenet or any other person close to the CIA.
She wasn’t clandestine on the day Novak outed her, but within the CIA she was still ‘under cover’. She still had contacts and colleagues representing Brewster-Jennings out in the field. According to what I know about security clearances – I had one in the Army – I cannot discuss any classified information from any of the work I did back then. Some of my friends who are interrogators – their missions cannot be communicated to me now or after they’re out, after their clearance has expired.
Valerie Plame’s role and identity, by design, should have remained classified and secret until the day she died. For not only her own sake, but the sake of the ongoing operations she had contributed to.
When she is outed, governments enter her name into their database and start connecting the dots. From there they can investigate and discover the facts behind a US spying initiative within their borders. They punnish whoever they find who had something to do with it, and more importantly, they adapt – they get better to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
The precise status of her job on the day Novak wrote the article is pertinent to the criminal charge, but has absolutely nothing to do with the larger point in my mind, that a CIA operation was compromised for the sake of settling a political score. Our government cannot be allowed to compromise intelligence operations just because they’re mad at what comes back, or because they have a temporary political goal to attain.
Michael, this quasi-scoop is really nothing at all.
CIA operation was compromised for the sake of settling a political score.
There is no basis for this, it is a huge leap of faith to make a connection like this. Wilson was a threat to no one and his article didn’t do anything to anyone.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/14 at 11:30 PM
As for disappearing – I’ve got newborn twin boys here at home to take care of…so when the sleep deprivation, feedings, changings, etc don’t get me to the point where I can’t…blah blah blah
Never scared – just preoccupied. I read the Times article about Novak calling Rove, but even if that was the way it went, how did Rove find out, and why did he feel it was acceptable to confirm what Novak said about Wilson’s wife?
The CIA operation this whole thing has caused to fold is the big issue for me. The #1 shortfall of our preparedness prior to the 9/11 attacks was counterintelligence…so how righties can be splitting hairs over the particulars involving the leak after raising such a shitstorm over the Newsweek deal is just sad.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/14 at 11:36 PM
Plame’s role in the CIA was never confirmed, nor was the ramifications behind outing her considered prior to Novak writing what he did.
None of it should have happened. Wilson wrote an editorial in the New York Times…so what? An agent should never be outed under any circumstances – righties trying to convince themselves that it was alright in this situation is ridiculous.
Posted by Drumwaster on 07/14 at 11:41 PM
why did he feel it was acceptable to confirm what Novak said about Wilson’s wife?
The only thing he “confirmed” was that Wilson was a liar who had gotten to go on a taxpayer-funded trip at the direct request of his wife, rather than that of the Vice-President or anyone else at the CIA.
so how righties can be splitting hairs over the particulars involving the leak after raising such a shitstorm over the Newsweek deal is just sad.
What the fuck does one have to do with the other? Oh, and “the particulars involving the leak” show conclusively that the only one who possibly broke the law was Joseph Wilson himself. Certainly not Rove, nor Bush, nor anyone else in the Bush Administration.
Posted by Drumwaster on 07/14 at 11:50 PM
Plame’s role in the CIA was never confirmed, nor was the ramifications behind outing her considered prior to Novak writing what he did.
You are woefully ignorant of the facts, DumbAssue. Color me not surprised, because I’ve read what you put out. You talk a good game, but it gleams through like a toothache. You’re an idiot of the second-highest caliber. Second-highest, because ytou don’t have the talent to be number one at anything.
Now, as to the issue, Valerie Plame got burned as a covert agent by Aldritch Ames, more than a decade ago. She was yanked back to DC for her own safety. That was NINE YEARS prior to that phone conversation, so EVEN IF Rove had wanted to out her, it still doesn’t fall within that statutory five year period.
However, the situation was not “confirming” anything. Rove was trying to correct the record by pointing out just a single, verifiable lie that Wilson has just splashed all over the NYT Op-Ed page (to wit, that he had been sent to Niger by the CIA at the request of the Vice President), and letting Cooper know that it wasn’t Cheney, but Wilson’s wife, who pulled the strings at CIA HQ.
You really should learn the facts before cracking your piehole
Posted by Drumwaster on 07/14 at 11:54 PM
An agent should never be outed under any circumstances
So why did she out herself to a man she had only known a week or two? On their third or fourth date, no less, during a “heavy make-out session”.
Was she just trying to get him hard by pretending she was ‘Bond, Jane Bond’? Or was she just enough of a slut to divulge national security assets to a total stranger she happened to meet at a cocktail party in Brussels?
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 12:03 AM
What the fuck does one have to do with the other? Oh, and “the particulars involving the leak” show conclusively that the only one who possibly broke the law was Joseph Wilson himself. Certainly not Rove, nor Bush, nor anyone else in the Bush Administration.
How did Wilson break the law?
Now, as to the issue, Valerie Plame got burned as a covert agent by Aldritch Ames, more than a decade ago. She was yanked back to DC for her own safety. That was NINE YEARS prior to that phone conversation, so EVEN IF Rove had wanted to out her, it still doesn’t fall within that statutory five year period.
Proof of this? Novak found out from Aldritch Ames?
However, the situation was not “confirming” anything. Rove was trying to correct the record by pointing out just a single, verifiable lie that Wilson has just splashed all over the NYT Op-Ed page (to wit, that he had been sent to Niger by the CIA at the request of the Vice President), and letting Cooper know that it wasn’t Cheney, but Wilson’s wife, who pulled the strings at CIA HQ.
You really should learn the facts before cracking your piehole
Drum, you’re not the only informed person in the world. Bush talked about Saddam seeking uranium from Africa – Wilson wrote an editorial that stated he was off on the information – his wife is outed.
That’s the chain of events. If you’re comfortable with the administration acting in this way, it’s time to question whether this political affiliation has anything to do with the country, or if it’s all about rooting for your team Drum.
Seriously – Wilson wrote an editorial, then his wife is outed. Rove, nor anyone else in the administration should have had anything to do with Novak or his story. It’s dirty politics – mafia shit – the kind of stuff these pricks have been engaging in for years.
Posted by Drumwaster on 07/15 at 12:21 AM
How did Wilson break the law?
Defrauding the government, publishing a false report, assorted huggery-muggery.
Proof of this? Novak found out from Aldritch Ames?
I don’t know who Novak found out from, but Plame usefulness as a COVERT agent was over as of that time. (You DO remember Aldritch Ames, don’t you?)
Bush talked about Saddam seeking uranium from Africa
Uh, huh – a report based on British intelligence. I believe the exact quote used by Bush was, “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
Regardless of what Wilson may have found, he wasn’t working for the British government at the time, was he? (The answer there is “no”. I was being rhetorical.)
Whereupon Wilson wrote his infamous column claiming that he hadn’t found anything like that.
Since he wrote a report that no one read, after a trip that no one in the White House knew about, about a matter that he wasn’t cleared for, involving a nation he didn’t represent (and their intelligence service which he didn’t work for), what was his response? To write an Op-Ed saying that “Bush lied, people died!”
All this while he was working with the Kerry campaign in six different states, mind…
The Republicans are apparently not allowed to actually correct the record with the facts in your world. But Rove, in a two-minute phone conversation just before going on a vacation, initiated by a reporter who had started out the call by talking about something else entirely different, tells the reporter that there is at least one obvious thing that the reporter was about to get seriously wrong – that Cheney wasn’t the one who pulled the strings at Langley to get Wilson sent on this trip, but that Wilson’s wife WAS.
What was Wilson’s response? To demand that Rove be “frog-marched” out of the White House in cuffs and appear in Vanity Fair, whereupon Valerie freely admits to violating national security laws.
THAT’S the chain of events, DumbAss. His wife was outed long ago.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 12:28 AM
I’m quite sure that if Wilson had broken the law, the White House would have prosecuted. Last time I checked, Republicans were in charge of everything. So your claims as to Wilson breaking the law are bullshit.
Poor Rove, tricked by Novak – he’s a genius one second, and a bafoon the next. Nice try Drum.
Chain of events – Wilson writes the editorial – his wife is outed by Novak citing two administration officials.
Period.
All this clutter the RNC is flooding the matter with is proof positive that this is bad. Everyone involved counted on the coverup working out, and since their lies have been exposed ‘rove had nothing to do with it’ – suddenly nobody’s talking.
Dirty tricks – he did it. Whether it was a crime or not doesn’t excuse these bastards from lying through their teeth for two years on the topic. Plame was outed as payback, and that’s wrong.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 12:30 AM
Cooper to Disclose Grand Jury Testimony in ‘Time’
Editor and Publisher
NEW YORK – Time’s magazine’s Matt Cooper today testified to a grand jury that White House aide Karl Rove was a source for a story about a CIA operative that has investigators deciding whether any laws were broken by the leak of the agent’s identity.
Cooper told E&P late today, “I’m allowed to talk about what happened in the Grand Jury and plan to write about it.” When asked when it might appear, he said, “soon, but I don’t know when.”
After more than two hours of testimony, Cooper addressed reporters outside the courtroom. “It is my hope to get back to being a normal journalist on the other side of the microphones,” Cooper said. “I hope to go back to Time magazine and write up an account of what took place here today and my story.”
When Cooper was pressed, he responded, “But I’m not going to do it here, right now. … I’m not going to scoop myself today.”
Cooper said he hoped his testimony would speed up the grand jury’s investigation, which would allow The New York Times’ Judith Miller to be released from jail.
He confirmed that his source on the leak was Deputy Chief of Staff Rove, one of President Bush’s most trusted advisers and the man credited with Bush’s four consecutive campaign victories.
The waiver that freed Cooper to cooperate with the grand jury was signed by Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin. Cooper’s attorney, Richard Sauber, was on hand Wednesday to pass out photocopies of the waiver to reporters.
Dig it! Rove = scumbag
He was wrong, 100% – – – – Caught red handed…
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 12:47 AM
Drum – how about Brewster-Jennings folding from all of this? What do you think about that?
National security? Does that matter?
Posted by Drumwaster on 07/15 at 12:47 AM
his wife is outed
Despite the fact that you keep ignoring – that she was NOT any kind of covert agent, and that she could no more be “outed” than Porter Goss could – I want you to explain one question: so fucking what?
You keep pushing that point. I would be willing to stipulate it, simply for the sake of finding out what your point is, but you aren’t fucking smart enough to grasp that kind of a distinction, and would claim that I had conceded.
Wilson’s report, such as it was, was neither seen by, briefed to, nor even hinted at in the presence of, anyone at the White House, which includes both Bush and Rove, plus their assorted staffs. He never even put pen to paper, admitting that it was a verbal report to some CIA flunky, but bragging all over the Georgetown cocktail circuit that he was hired on the direct orders of Cheney (who had never heard of him).
Bush gives a speech, never mentioning either Wilson nor the CIA, but “British sources”, and Wilson writes a column saying that he was sent on a mission at the behest of Cheney to find out about uranium in Niger, only to find out nothing, so Bush must have lied.
That was all both irrelevant and a fabrication. In short, he lied, and about stuff that had nothing to do with the matter at hand.
A reporter calls Rove a little while later, starts the conversation about something else entirely, and drops in, almost as an afterthought, a question about Wilson’s column.
Rove says, “I wouldn’t trust him that far. It wasn’t Cheney that sent him, it was his wife, who works at the CIA, that got him sent on that trip.” (I’m paraphrasing, based on the released e-mail.)
That isn’t outing her, any more than (as I say) it would be outing Porter Goss. She was, after all, an overt employee, driving to work at her desk in the CIA HQ in Langley, parking where anyone can see, and bragging about herself on the Georgetown circuits.
Wilson is a liar, his wife is a slut and a traitor, and you can’t stand it. Suck it up, bucko, you’ll be enjoying this crow for a long goddam time.
Posted by Drumwaster on 07/15 at 12:52 AM
National security? Does that matter?
It’s amazing that the only time you fucking morons are concerned about “national security” is when you think you have found some dirt on Bush or his staff? You didn’t give a rat’s ass about it when Gore was taking donations from Red China or Clinton was mailing our nuclear secrets to China, or when Reid exposed highly classified information in a speech on the Senate floor (just last month) or when Sandy Berger stole ultra-top secret documents from the National Archives, only to pretend to burn them in his home fireplace. (We’ll never know if he actually did that or not, since there was no real way to check a pile of ashes to figure out what might have been written on them or anything…)
But let Rove prove that a Democrat is lying, and the gloves come off, huh?
Posted by Drumwaster on 07/15 at 12:53 AM
Fuck you, I’ve got an early day, and your stupidity isn’t entertaining enough to keep me awake.
G’night to all of the sentient beings out there, and to you, too, DumbAssue.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 01:04 AM
Blah blah blah blah
Brewster Jennings Drum – how about it?
Rove outed her, ‘so fucking what?’ – – – really?
How about the fact that Brewster Jennings folded after being active for over a decade! You don’t care, none of you righties care – just as long as you win elections and stay in power, the entire CIA could implode for all you guys care.
All for the sake of being right – or saving Karl Rove…his own friends call him ‘turd blossom’ for christ’s sake! This is a joke, and Drum, you’ll regurgitate whatever nonsense the RNC puts out there. Smear Wilson, smear everyone who’s not a Republican and pretend there’s any logic to it at all.
Berger was prosecuted, he was wrong, caught red handed…what does it have to do with this?
Brewster Jennings Drum – I don’t know if you had clearance while in the service…I did, and the system is in place for a reason – it deserves a hell of a lot more respect than this administration or the right-wing is paying it now. Counterintelligence is the key to our safety, everyone who knows anything about anything has said it ever since 9/11 – and when a dirtbag like Rove or whoever else leaked Plame’s name to the press, the CIA was weakened, people’s lives were put in jeopardy.
That’s the thing Republicans can’t talk about now apparantly…no, only the same old shit…smear smear smear, divert attention from the goods however you can.
Good night Drum
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 01:10 AM
Joe Wilson was the last ambassador remaining in Baghdad prior to the first Persian Gulf War. When Saddam Hussein threatened to execute any Americans who helped evacuate their fellow countrymen from Iraq, he held a press conference with a noose around his neck, effectively calling Saddam’s bluff. Not a single American was killed, but instead all were evacuated safely. The first President George Bush honored Wilson for his service and bravery, but now your average right-winger will claim this man is nothing but a ‘liberal hack’. He wasn’t a ‘made guy’, and in an organization that’s run like the mafia, it doesn’t matter who someone is or what they’d done in the past. Nor does it matter that the American public has lost big time in all of this.
One Too Many For Turd Blossom
Posted by Lee on 07/15 at 02:27 AM
The first President George Bush honored Wilson for his service and bravery, but now your average right-winger will claim this man is nothing but a ‘liberal hack’.
Why is it that if someone does something commendable at one point in their life that we have to be beholden to them forever? If you want to talk about how Wilson had some balls back then, fine, I’m in total agreement. But the fact that at one time 15 years ago he did a notable public act does not in any way mean that now, 15 years later, he’s not a complete douchebag. If you want to argue that Wilson isn’t a fucking tool on an anti-Bush witch hunt then don’t drag out what he did almost two decades ago, because it has absolutely no bearing on what he’s doing today.
Let me put it this way, there are a whole lot of Republicans who disagree with some of the things John McCain does. According to your logic, since he spent five years in the Hanoi Hilton we should all accept everything he says or does today without question. That’s what you’re saying today about Wilson, right? If Wilson is to be feted because he once put a noose around his neck, we should collectively fellate McCain for the five years he was tortured by those gook vermin.
You’re completely judging the issue. I don’t give a fuck what Wilson did at some previous point. I think the guy is on a fucking witch hunt against Bush and Rove, and it’s politically motivated and has been from the beginning, since his little trip to Niger turned out to be a total fucking bust. He was made to look like an idiot, and he wants some payback. What he did 15 years ago is completely immaterial to this point.
Posted by HARLEY on 07/15 at 04:51 AM
Intresting, seems Reuters dropped a story that indicated that the media was the source of Joe Wilsons Wifes non-outing……
I was gonna link it here for ya, but it is replaced by a 2 day old story……hmmmmmmmmm
Posted by RepMom on 07/15 at 07:29 AM
Since I bashed deadissue last night for disappearing, I will give him credit this morning for returning and at least discussing the Rove situation with Drum. However, he still chooses to ignore the facts. He accuses Drum of “regurgitating” the RNC talking points. Seems to me he (deadissue) is doing his own regurgitating of the DNC talking points.
I would like to know about this Brewster-Jennings thing he keeps mentioning. Anyone got facts on that?
Posted by Drumwaster on 07/15 at 07:47 AM
Apparently, Karl Rove is such a mind-control genius, he managed to feed all this information about Valerie Plame (such as the fact that she gave $1000 to the Gore campaign and listed her employment on the disclosure form as being at at a CIA front agency which didn’t really exist except as a maildrop) into the words “his wife”.
As though finding out her name would have been difficult, since it appears on Wilson’s own web site. And she listed that front company on a campaign donation disclosure form. Another call to the city Chamber of Commerce would have shown that the company didn’t have a physical address, only a mail drop, and DumbAssue thinks that an investigative reporter would have stopped right there.
And since only those reporters with an axe to grind against Bush are allowed to hold jobs here in the United States, Novak isn’t permitted to have dug into the obvious bias against someone claiming to have worked for the Administration (with that same Administration denying it), or tried to find out the truth about someone whose personal data didn’t act up.
He also thinks that since the business has no physical address and no verifiable assets, that no one is permitted to think about that information and compare it to other such circumstances from the past.
Novak is no fool, but the only place that information could POSSIBLY have come from was Karl Rove, according to the DumbAssue worldview.
However, in reality, all Novak needed to do to get national security secrets from (and about) Plame was to start kissing her, and she would have spilled her guts…
One more time for DA: Plame’s employment at the CIA was not any kind of secret. If the existence of that company was any kind of secret, then the only one who revealed it was Plame herself by listing it on that disclosure form. And he still hasn’t explained who Wilson is sitting in jail to cover up for… It sure isn’t Rove.
Given their respective loose lips, I’m betting the actual source was Wilson and his wife, which would blow your theory wide open…
Posted by RepMom on 07/15 at 08:23 AM
Good points, Drum.
It certainly appears that it was pretty common knowledge that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA, and any “outing” of additional info on her “cover” was done by the Wilson’s themselves.
Which reminds me. When it was mentioned a few days ago that Andrea Mitchell and Tony Snow confirmed this (that her job was well known), deadissue proceeded to defame their individual characters. A technique often used by the party of the left.
Posted by RepMom on 07/15 at 08:51 AM
Good article on the subject —
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050715-121257-9887r.htm
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 09:32 AM
Which reminds me. When it was mentioned a few days ago that Andrea Mitchell and Tony Snow confirmed this (that her job was well known), deadissue proceeded to defame their individual characters. A technique often used by the party of the left.
I just said that they were lying.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 09:39 AM
Apparently, Karl Rove is such a mind-control genius, he managed to feed all this information about Valerie Plame (such as the fact that she gave $1000 to the Gore campaign and listed her employment on the disclosure form as being at at a CIA front agency which didn’t really exist except as a maildrop) into the words “his wife”.
As though finding out her name would have been difficult, since it appears on Wilson’s own web site. And she listed that front company on a campaign donation disclosure form. Another call to the city Chamber of Commerce would have shown that the company didn’t have a physical address, only a mail drop, and DumbAssue thinks that an investigative reporter would have stopped right there.
Notice how he doesn’t cite a source here. Shuckin’ and jivin’
One more time for DA: Plame’s employment at the CIA was not any kind of secret. If the existence of that company was any kind of secret, then the only one who revealed it was Plame herself by listing it on that disclosure form. And he still hasn’t explained who Wilson is sitting in jail to cover up for… It sure isn’t Rove.
I love how he refers to BREWSTER JENNINGS as ‘that company’ – so as to keep inquiring minds from making their way through the lies he’s laundering here and check it out for themselves.
BREWSTER JENNINGS – CIA front company that had agents in Pakistan, Iran, N. Korea…just to name a few.
Posted by LandoGriffin on 07/15 at 09:48 AM
From the Washington Times story linked by RepMom:
A former CIA covert agent who supervised Mrs. Plame early in her career yesterday took issue with her identification as an “undercover agent,” saying that she worked for more than five years at the agency’s headquarters in Langley and that most of her neighbors and friends knew that she was a CIA employee.
“She made no bones about the fact that she was an agency employee and her husband was a diplomat,” Fred Rustmann, a covert agent from 1966 to 1990, told The Washington Times.
“Her neighbors knew this, her friends knew this, his friends knew this. A lot of blame could be put on to central cover staff and the agency because they weren’t minding the store here. … The agency never changed her cover status.”
Mr. Rustmann, who spent 20 of his 24 years in the agency under “nonofficial cover”—also known as a NOC, the same status as the wife of Mr. Wilson—also said that she worked under extremely light cover.
In addition, Mrs. Plame hadn’t been out as an NOC since 1997, when she returned from her last assignment, married Mr. Wilson and had twins, USA Today reported yesterday.
The distinction matters because a law that forbids disclosing the name of undercover CIA operatives applies to agents that had been on overseas assignment “within the last five years.”
“She was home for such a long time, she went to work every day at Langley, she was in an analytical type job, she was married to a high-profile diplomat with two kids,” Mr. Rustmann said. “Most people who knew Valerie and her husband, I think, would have thought that she was an overt CIA employee.”
But of course this guy, her former supervisor, must be in league with Bush/Rove/Halliburton.
Also check out Rove Learned CIA Agent’s Name From Novak
In an interview on CNN earlier Thursday before the latest revelation, Wilson kept up his criticism of the White House, saying Rove’s conduct was an “outrageous abuse of power … certainly worthy of frog-marching out of the White House.”
But at the same time, Wilson acknowledged his wife was no longer in an undercover job at the time Novak’s column first identified her. “My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity,” he said.
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.
She wasn’t covert at the time her name was “leaked” – there is nothing to prove. This is another non-issue. But Rove’s got to go anyway because thats what the whiney, sore loser babies want. They can’t win elections or on issue so they’ve got to attack character and get these small “victories” where they can. Its fucking pathetic. Hey libs keep up the implosion – its entertaining and it alienates the average American but as long as you rile up the kooks it must be worth it to you. Which brings us back to – Who is Miller covering for? Its certainly not Rove or Novak.
Posted by RepMom on 07/15 at 09:50 AM
My apologies to you, deadissue. The comment on Tony Snow was made by captain menace, who, by the way, has not returned for the discussion after being presented with several questions by another poster.
On Andrea Mitchell, you said, “Andrea Mitchell is lying through her teeth.” Can you prove that? And I believe calling someone a liar is defaming their character, is it not?
On Brewster Jennings, can you offer a source?
Did you read the Washington Times article I posted? The CIA agent who speaks on Plame’s position at the CIA, is he a liar as well?
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 09:52 AM
Lee: You’re completely judging the issue. I don’t give a fuck what Wilson did at some previous point. I think the guy is on a fucking witch hunt against Bush and Rove, and it’s politically motivated and has been from the beginning, since his little trip to Niger turned out to be a total fucking bust. He was made to look like an idiot, and he wants some payback. What he did 15 years ago is completely immaterial to this point.
Lee, if you listened to the RNC, you wouldn’t know about this fact. Wilson has shown guts in the face of tyrany in the past. He’s actually been somewhere dangerous and done courageous things in the past.
More than we can say for George Bush Jr, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Scott McClellan, Robert Novak…the list goes on.
The right is tearing Wilson apart out of necessity – but none of these soundboards here are rembering when he stood up to Saddam.
BREWSTER JENNINGS! Google it, and learn about what you lost when Plame’s name was leaked. Want to know why Drum and others are focusing on Wilson and jumping all over themselves to insist that Plame’s cover had already been blown? BREWSTER-JENNINGS!
Posted by RepMom on 07/15 at 09:55 AM
I see that LandoGriffin has brought up the CIA agent in the Washington Times article. You guys are fast on posting. I can’t keep up.
Posted by RepMom on 07/15 at 10:00 AM
So, deadissue, you find Wilson to be a hero. Can you comment on how you feel about his lying about his trip and findings to Africa and his lying about who sent him?
Posted by RepMom on 07/15 at 10:01 AM
Why should we Google it? If you make a statement, you should offer your own proof.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 10:24 AM
Valerie Plame was under non-offical cover for years working within the CIA front company Brewster Jennings. WHY it matters that her name was leaked as an agent was this:
1. Ahmed, Jiri, Chan or whoever she happened to establish as a contact along the way now knows that they were talking to a CIA agent that whole time.
2. The agents who took over the work for those contacts are also outed and their lives are put in danger. As agents who are under non-official cover are not protected if captured by our government…our government says they had nothing to do with it.
3. Other countries know that we seek intelligence information in this manner, so the next time a company pops up looking to get their hands into the energy/nuclear material game – guess what people are going to think? Guess how effective the strategy will be.
National security is the issue here.
Posted by suvdriver on 07/15 at 10:33 AM
He’s actually been somewhere dangerous and done courageous things in the past.
I saw Joe Wilson talk a bunch about his honorable past at his press conference too. He met with Hussein before the 1st Iraq war. He even voted Republican once! This proves Wilson did not leak his wife’s job to reporters.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 10:40 AM
This is not a partisan issue. Back in October of 2003, shortly after Robert Novak—over CIA protests—published Plame’s identity, a group of former CIA agents testified before a Senate Democratic Policy Committee on the outing of their colleague. The agents, Larry Johnson, Michael Grimaldi and Brent Cavan, all of whom are Republicans, pulled no punches in their shared statement:
We also want to send a clear message to the political “operatives” responsible for “outing” Mrs. Wilson. Such action was treacherous, if not treasonous. … Such action has allowed the less attractive aspects of politics to supersede the Government’s responsibility to protect the citizens of this nation and the individuals who serve in difficult, dangerous covert capacities. This has set a sickening precedent. The “senior Administration officials” who did this have warned all U.S. intelligence officers and the intelligence community that any one individual may be compromised if providing information or factual analysis the White House does not like.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 10:42 AM
more from their testimony:
If left unpunished, this cowardly act [blowing Plame’s cover] will not only hinder our efforts to recruit qualified individuals into the clandestine service, but it will have a far-reaching, deleterious effect on our ability to recruit foreign intelligence assets overseas. Who in their right mind would ever agree to become a spy for the United States when we cannot even protect our own undercover officers?
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 10:48 AM
Posted by suvdriver on 07/15 at 10:33 AM
He’s actually been somewhere dangerous and done courageous things in the past.
I saw Joe Wilson talk a bunch about his honorable past at his press conference too. He met with Hussein before the 1st Iraq war. He even voted Republican once! This proves Wilson did not leak his wife’s job to reporters.
Why would Wilson leak his wife’s job to the press? So her career would be ruined? Yea, that makes a lot of sense.
The diversion tactics being employed by Republicans now are quite telling – attack Wilson, split hairs regarding the law…Brewster Jennings was exposed – foreign governments need to just search their database for Plame and start working from there to figure out our counterintelligence strategy over the past 12 years.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 11:04 AM
“Before this whole affair, no one would ever have thought of her as an undercover agent,” said David Tillotson, a next-door neighbor for seven years who got to know the Wilsons well over back-fence chats, shared dinners and play dates for their grandchildren with the Wilsons’ children, Trevor and Samantha.
But the woman at the center of it all, Valerie E. Wilson, has kept her silence, showing the discipline and discretion that colleagues say made her a good spy. As her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, has become a highly visible critic of the administration and promoted his memoirs, Ms. Wilson has ferried their 5-year-old twins to doctors’ appointments, looked after their hilltop house in the upscale Palisades neighborhood of Washington and counseled women with postpartum depression.
Former C.I.A. officers differ on the impact of Mr. Novak’s identification of Ms. Wilson, who had been working against weapons proliferation in Europe and elsewhere while posing as an analyst for a shell company in Boston, Brewster Jennings & Associates, set up by the agency.
Clandestine service officers working under such “nonofficial cover” – rather than the traditional guise of diplomat – are considered to hold the most sensitive and vulnerable jobs in intelligence, lacking the protection of diplomatic immunity if they are unmasked overseas. Disclosing the C.I.A. employment of officers under cover can endanger the officers, their operations and their agents, as well as violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, the law that prompted the current leak investigation.
But other former C.I.A. officers say that by 2003 Ms. Wilson’s cover was already thin. Any serious inquiry would have revealed that Brewster Jennings was little more than a mailbox. Though she traveled regularly, Ms. Wilson, who speaks French, German and Greek, had been working for some time at agency headquarters in Langley, Va. And her marriage to a senior American diplomat, Mr. Wilson, ended any pretense of having no government ties.
“At that point, she looks, walks and quacks like an overt agency employee,” said Fred Rustmann, a C.I.A. officer from 1966 to 1990, who supervised Ms. Wilson early in her career and calls her “one of the best, an excellent officer.”
Posted by RepMom on 07/15 at 11:09 AM
Source, deadissue, source. Meaning – LINK. Where did that come from?
Posted by Aaron on 07/15 at 11:29 AM
Back in October of 2003, shortly after Robert Novak—over CIA protests—published Plame’s identity, a group of former CIA agents testified…
Also, it sounds, shortly before Joe Wilson was revealed to be a big ole’ fraud and his wife to not be anything like what she was being made out to be.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 11:35 AM
OK – that last one was from a Times article I believe, but here are the places I’ve pulled this information from:
info
info
Now this second one was pulled from the NYTimes – but honestly RepMom, the Brewster-Jennings/CIA operation information is out there all over, but won’t be included on FoxNews or right-wing radio…I haven’t watched cable news for information for well over a year now, but I can only imagine how they’re covering this story.
This is a matter of national security…the CIA was compromised for political gain. It cannot be acceptable. If a Democrat had done what Rove did, the right-wing would be screaming ‘treason’ at the top of their lungs.
Look at how they blasted Newsweek…well, this is the same thing only worse!
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 11:45 AM
Back in October of 2003, shortly after Robert Novak—over CIA protests—published Plame’s identity, a group of former CIA agents testified…
Also, it sounds, shortly before Joe Wilson was revealed to be a big ole’ fraud and his wife to not be anything like what she was being made out to be.
Aaron – what you righties are having trouble wraping your head around is the fact that these CIA agents were testifying about the leaking of an agent to the press…period. Nothing more, nothing less.
Their position is that under no circumstances should this be acceptable.
Posted by Aaron on 07/15 at 11:55 AM
This is a matter of national security…the CIA was compromised for political gain.
Uh, the CIA was compromised way before Plame. The CIA’s bungles under Tenet are infamous.
If a Democrat had done what Rove did, the right-wing would be screaming ‘treason’ at the top of their lungs.
Actually, I stopped caring about this story two years ago. I don’t care if Governor Blagojevich did it on the instructions of Hillary Clinton while on the payroll of the Boston Red Sox. It’s a non-story.
Aaron – what you righties are having trouble wraping your head around is the fact that these CIA agents were testifying about the leaking of an agent to the press…period. Nothing more, nothing less.
Good for them. Unfortunately, the statement you quoted would only apply if we were talking about field agents, which, well, we aren’t.
Posted by LandoGriffin on 07/15 at 11:57 AM
KERRY MUST GO!
Sen. John Kerry, who called for Karl Rove to be fired over allegations that he revealed the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame, outed a genuine undercover CIA agent just this past April – even after the Agency asked that his identity be kept secret.
Kerry blew the cover of CIA secret operative Fulton Armstrong during confirmation hearings for U.N. ambassador nominee John Bolton.
Questioning Bolton, Kerry asked: “Did Otto Reich share his belief that Fulton Armstrong should be removed for his position?” – according to a transcript excerpted by the New York Times.
“The answer is yes,” the top Democrat continued.
In his response to Kerry, Mr. Bolton did his best to maintain the agent’s confidentiality, reverting to the Armstrong’s pseudonym.
“As I said,” he told Kerry, “I had lost confidence in Mr. Smith, and I conveyed that.”
Two years earlier, Armstrong had been identified in news reports on his dispute with other officials over intelligence involving Cuba. But he was operating in a different capacity and his identity wasn’t secret at the time.
“When the Bolton nomination resurrected the old accounts, however, the C.I.A. asked news organizations to withhold his name,” the Times said.
Apparently the CIA directive wasn’t good enough for Sen. Kerry – who outed Armstrong anyway and later defended the move by saying his Republican colleague, Senator Richard Lugar, had also mentioned the name.
And besides, said Kerry, the secret agent’s name “had already been in the press.”
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 12:06 PM
This is a matter of national security…the CIA was compromised for political gain.
Uh, the CIA was compromised way before Plame. The CIA’s bungles under Tenet are infamous.
That simple huh? 100% bullshit. Tenet blessed intelligence that turned out to be bunk – that has nothing to do with a counterintelligence initiative in place since 1994.
Aaron, by your logic, the administration could expose the entire operation tomorrow…no problem, because they were wrong in the leadup to Iraq. Hardly! This is a ridiculous argument…’The CIA was already flawed, so it doesn’t matter’
If a Democrat had done what Rove did, the right-wing would be screaming ‘treason’ at the top of their lungs.
Actually, I stopped caring about this story two years ago. I don’t care if Governor Blagojevich did it on the instructions of Hillary Clinton while on the payroll of the Boston Red Sox. It’s a non-story.
? – Sure Aaron, that’s why you’re posting in a thread devoted to it.
Aaron – what you righties are having trouble wraping your head around is the fact that these CIA agents were testifying about the leaking of an agent to the press…period. Nothing more, nothing less.
Good for them. Unfortunately, the statement you quoted would only apply if we were talking about field agents, which, well, we aren’t.
Uh…yes we are, you think Valerie Plame was the only agent who worked under the cover of Brewster Jennings? How much have you read on this story that hasn’t been produced by the RNC or Novak?
Seriously, there’s a serious disconnect here where righties are repeatedly ommiting the Brewster Jennings connection to all of this, and the fact that this investigative arm folded due to the leak.
Whether Plame had been in the field for 5 years or not doesn’t change these two facts:
1. She was still ‘under cover’ – – – CIA operatives can work at a desk for years and still be ‘under cover’ in terms of their clearance and the secretive nature of their work.
2. When she was exposed, it caused Brewster Jennings to fold, while exposing all the agents who had worked under that cover.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 12:12 PM
KERRY MUST GO!
Kerry, but not Luger?
Posted by LandoGriffin on 07/15 at 12:32 PM
I’m just going with the lefts theme of keeping my eye on the target. But to an extent you’re right – Kerry must go, Luger too, Rove, Bush, Clinton, Rumsfeld, Durbin, Cheney, Schumer, Leahy – basically anyone who knows anything about anything.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 12:39 PM
Of course – Kerry didn’t say what he did as means of political payback, whereas Rove’s leak was purely political.
Nobody wants to discuss the implication of Brewster Jennings and the folding of that CIA asset…besides one poster saying, ‘well the CIA sucks anyway, so who cares’
Love the name btw…LandoGriffin – – – – the toad episode is CLASSIC!
Posted by RepMom on 07/15 at 12:49 PM
Of course – Kerry didn’t say what he did as means of political payback, whereas Rove’s leak was purely political.
How do you know that? Why are you so sure of that? I think that is your political bias coming through, which you keep accusing the rest of us of. You defend a Democrat and accuse a Republican. Sounds pretty political to me.
It may not be pertinent to the issue at hand, but I still would like to know (as I asked earlier) how you feel about Wilson’s known lies, since you consider him a hero.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 01:58 PM
Of course – Kerry didn’t say what he did as means of political payback, whereas Rove’s leak was purely political.
How do you know that? Why are you so sure of that? I think that is your political bias coming through, which you keep accusing the rest of us of. You defend a Democrat and accuse a Republican. Sounds pretty political to me.
You know what though – nobody remembered Kerry possibly exposing an agent during Bolton’s confirmation hearing until the information dump began. This is classic GOP strategy, muddy the waters, get the discussion off topic as often as possible.
Look – if Kerry exposed an agent, he was wrong for doing so. From what he said, Senator Luger had already exposed the name – so while this has nothing to do with the Rove case, if we’re talking about who’s at fault here, you can’t talk about Kerry without talking about Luger, who did the exact same thing.
Thing to remember here is that the Bolton nomination hearing has nothing to do with this issue. If Republicans were right on this case, they wouldn’t have to go digging around for all this stuff, but instead talk about the facts.
Because what is the poster saying by mentioning this Kerry-Lugar thing? That because that happened, Rove was cleared to out whoever he wanted to? Is the argument here that ‘two wrongs make a right’?
It’s illogical – it’s what Republicans do now every single time someone is caught, they turn to smear tactics, like a reflex reaction – tear down Wilson (in spite of his prior service to the country…ala McCain, one of their own), and muddy the waters with as much needless info as possible…split hairs over particulars that don’t matter, like whether Rove actually said Plame’s name and whether that’s any different than saying ‘Wilson’s wife’ – it’s ridiculous, but classic GOP politics.
It may not be pertinent to the issue at hand, but I still would like to know (as I asked earlier) how you feel about Wilson’s known lies, since you consider him a hero.
I don’t think he lied? Nobody has proven that he lied. Republicans just started saying it, so it suddenly becomes true to the GOP.
But let’s say Wilson did lie…RepMom, does that make the outing of his wife justifiable? Some Republicans are saying Rove was justified in doing what he did…a position neither him, nor the President will ever take I can assure you.
Posted by Drumwaster on 07/15 at 02:05 PM
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 12:39 PM
Of course – Kerry didn’t say what he did as means of political payback, whereas Rove’s leak was purely political.
‘Nuff said. You’re a hack if you think anything that Kerry says on the floor of the Senate is anything BUT political, through and through.
But we already knew that…
Nobody has proven that {Wilson} lied.
Except, of course, Wilson himself. Of course, you refuse to recognize it, because to do so would require that you admit that you are wrong, and God knows, you couls NEVER do that.
Notice how he doesn’t cite a source here. Shuckin’ and jivin’
Try reading the thread. Those links are already posted.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 02:17 PM
DI: Of course – Kerry didn’t say what he did as means of political payback, whereas Rove’s leak was purely political.
RT: ‘Nuff said. You’re a hack if you think anything that Kerry says on the floor of the Senate is anything BUT political, through and through.
But we already knew that…
Schmuckface – did you read this:
Look – if Kerry exposed an agent, he was wrong for doing so. From what he said, Senator Luger had already exposed the name – so while this has nothing to do with the Rove case, if we’re talking about who’s at fault here, you can’t talk about Kerry without talking about Luger, who did the exact same thing.
Thing to remember here is that the Bolton nomination hearing has nothing to do with this issue. If Republicans were right on this case, they wouldn’t have to go digging around for all this stuff, but instead talk about the facts.
Because what is the poster saying by mentioning this Kerry-Lugar thing? That because that happened, Rove was cleared to out whoever he wanted to? Is the argument here that ‘two wrongs make a right’?
Nobody has proven that {Wilson} lied.Except, of course, Wilson himself. Of course, you refuse to recognize it, because to do so would require that you admit that you are wrong, and God knows, you couls NEVER do that.
Heh?
Again – if he did in fact lie, how does it have anything to do with the White House outing a CIA operative and compromising the Brewster-Jennings initiative? What does one have to do with the other?
Posted by Drumwaster on 07/15 at 02:33 PM
how does it have anything to do with the White House outing a CIA operative
The White House did nothing of the kind. Deal with that fact.
Novak was the one who exposed the front company, not the White House, and the information he used to get that info (the front company) was from Valerie Plame’s own written statements, not Karl Rove. Deal with that fact.
does that make the outing of his wife justifiable?
You keep using that word ‘outing’. One last time, just because you are apparently too fucking stupid to catch it the first few times…
She had been outed as a CIA “operative” nine years earlier, and was pulled back to DC for her own safety, back in 1994, and could no more be “outed” than could Elton John. She and her hubby had been spreading the fact of her CIA employment for years. She was the one who wrote the memo that got Wilson the trip to Niger in the first place.
Deal with those facts.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 02:45 PM
Novak required confirmation and the White House was happy to oblige – hence his piece citing two administration sources. No?
I mean, it’s in black and white, right in his article – and the documents turned over by Time clearly show that Rove was shopping the information around.
Drum – these are facts.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 03:48 PM
“I made my bones confronting Saddam Hussein. … Karl Rove made his bones by dirty political tricks,” said Joseph Wilson
He’s right. Rove got himself a name by breaking into the office of a political opponent and forging a letter using stolen letterhead. Bush Sr. fired him for leaking information to Novak during the ‘92 campaign.
Wilson has actually done something honorable in his time working within the government – Rove…well ‘Turd Blossom’ says it all.
Wilson’s actions in the first Gulf War was heroic – Republicans hate that this is a fact!
Posted by Lee on 07/15 at 03:58 PM
Wilson’s actions in the first Gulf War was heroic – Republicans hate that this is a fact!
You didn’t answer my question earlier. You replied but didn’t answer it, so I’l ask it again.
Why should I give a shit about what he did 15 years ago? if you want me to acknowledge what he did then, fine, he stood up to Saddam. Bravo. Now, let’s deal with the wormy cocksucker he’s become since then, a guy working as part of a coordinated smear campaign against the Bush administration. His entire trip to Nigeria has been shown to be a total sham, and he wants some payback. So quit hiding behind something he did 15 years ago and face the facts of what he’s doing now.
Posted by Drumwaster on 07/15 at 04:10 PM
Also, DumbAssue, even Joe Wilson is now acknowledging that his wife was not any kind of “covert operative”, so will you kindly cease trying to spread that lie? No one here believes it but you.
Novak required confirmation and the White House was happy to oblige – hence his piece citing two administration sources. No?
No. Because you keep saying that he needed two administration sources to confirm this “secret”, when he could have just as easily called the CIA (which also qualify as “administration sources”, since you haven’t figured that part out yet.
NO ONE is claiming that Plame was a covert agent but you. (Oh, and the DUh Brigade, but that’s no kind of proof.) Since she was not covert, she couldn’t possibly be “outed” or “exposed” or “revealed” for any reason, under any circumstance.
You couldn’t “out” her any more than you could Porter Goss.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 05:15 PM
Lee: Why should I give a shit about what he did 15 years ago? if you want me to acknowledge what he did then, fine, he stood up to Saddam. Bravo. Now, let’s deal with the wormy cocksucker he’s become since then, a guy working as part of a coordinated smear campaign against the Bush administration. His entire trip to Nigeria has been shown to be a total sham, and he wants some payback. So quit hiding behind something he did 15 years ago and face the facts of what he’s doing now.
What evidence is there that the trip was a sham, or that the information he gathered there wasn’t relevant? I know that’s the right-wing mantra now, but what’re the determining factors? Because they say so? We’re being told that Plame was a desk jockey (tri-lingual spy) and Wilson was a partisan hack (former ambassador, voted Republican). You guys and the RNC just make it up as you go along. I’ve listened to Rush for years now, so I’m not suprised at all by this – but for a couple of smart guys like you and Drum to just eat it up like this is sad!
Why should you care Lee? Because the response to O’Neil, Clarke…anyone that contradicts the administration is a smear campaign. This is just the newest one, and instead of speaking towards the information, they smear instead and try to flood the media with everything they can get their hands on to bury this guy. O’Neil had served through both Republican and Democratic presidencys – he said Iraq was the plan even before 9/11…smeared, Clarke points out that the enemy that attacked us wasn’t in Iraq – we haven’t caught Osama Bin Laden yet, 3.5 YEARS after he hits us…he was right, smeared.
So there’s a patern here Lee, and if you’re comfortable with turning into a sheep on command, that’s your perogative, but it’s only about rooting for a team jersey (GOP). If everyone the GOP wants to smear, you automatically consider a dirtbag, regardless of the facts…it’s sad.
Wilson actually did something when his country called on him. He did it here as well. Bush lied, the line about uranium – the CIA didn’t want him to say it, but he said it anyway. So Wilson stepped up and called the bullshit exactally what it was, bullshit.
Republicans don’t care whether Bush tells lies or misleads us – he could lie about anything and the sheep will follow along, pissing on whoever you’re told to.
Drum: Also, DumbAssue, even Joe Wilson is now acknowledging that his wife was not any kind of “covert operative”, so will you kindly cease trying to spread that lie? No one here believes it but you.
OK, Drum – being the genius that you are – if she wasn’t a spy, covert operative…if she didn’t hold that distinction, why did the CIA start all of this in the first place?
The CIA sent the complaint to the Justice Department that started this whole thing. If her exposure was ‘no big deal’, or if her status wasn’t classified, then why file the complaint in the first place.
You’d have everyone believe that nothing about this is legit, yet the CIA filed the complaint, a special prosecutor was assigned, and the White House has already been proven to lie – McClellan said Rove being involved was ‘ridiculous’…oops…LIE
Yea…no big deal, much ado about nothing, indeed. Well, here’s another tidbit…Rove signed a nondisclosure agreement that he violated in his conversation with Novak. Confirming that information was a violation of the nondisclosure agreement – – – as would I’d imagine, shopping the story around to Chris Matthews and Time magazine.
And I love how you, Drum, captain of the schmucks – just avoid discussing Brewster-Jennings like the plague.
But by all means, schmuck it up some more, type out some more lies – I’ll be here.
Posted by macman (Chris’ Conservative Commentary) on 07/15 at 05:30 PM
The Washington Post reports today that “there is significant evidence that reporters were in some cases alerting officials about Plame’s identity and relationship to Wilson—not the other way around.” The paper says not only did Bush official Karl Rove learn about Plame from journalists but that Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was “alerted by someone in the media” to Plame’s identity, and that he told Matt Cooper of Time that “he had heard about her from someone else in the media…”
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 05:34 PM
Whether she was overseas or at her desk in Langley, if she was continuing to work with colleagues and contacts involved in the Brewster-Jennings operation, her clearance status would not be changed.
Posted by Lee on 07/15 at 05:34 PM
What evidence is there that the trip was a sham, or that the information he gathered there wasn’t relevant? I know that’s the right-wing mantra now, but what’re the determining factors? Because they say so?
Christ, I actually expected better of you. And you accuse me of being a sheep! From the WaPo:
The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because “the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.”
“Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the ‘dates were wrong and the names were wrong’ when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports,” the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have “misspoken” to reporters. The documents—purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq—were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.
Wilson’s reports to the CIA added to the evidence that Iraq may have tried to buy uranium in Niger, although officials at the State Department remained highly skeptical, the report said.
Wilson said that a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, was unaware of any sales contract with Iraq, but said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss “expanding commercial relations” between Niger and Iraq—which Mayaki interpreted to mean they wanted to discuss yellowcake sales. A report CIA officials drafted after debriefing Wilson said that “although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to UN sanctions on Iraq.”
According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.
Since you’re probably too fucking stupid to grasp the salient portion of the text above, let me spell it out for you. What Wilson told the CIA was that Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998, which is EXACTLY WHAT BUSH SAID during the State of the Union address. And since your head is wedged so far up your ass that you didn’t know his Niger trip was bullshit, allow me to remind you of what Wilson wrote in his NY Times op-ed which started the whole “16 words” controversy.
In January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa. The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them.
In other words, your golden boy who stood up to Saddam LIED HIS FUCKING ASS OFF about the Iraq uranium issue. It’s also worth noting that, to this day, the British still stand behind that particular piece of intelligence.
Now, go bleat somewhere else, you fucking sheep. Surely there’s a MoveOn.org email telling you what to think.
Posted by Poosh on 07/15 at 05:48 PM
I was searching the net and found this like totally lame web-site…
Posted by Drumwaster on 07/15 at 08:08 PM
I wonder what DumbAssue thinks about the NYTimes now claiming that it was Novak who told Rove about Plame, not the other way around.
Since he has ascribed underhanded motivations to events that never actually happened, I don’t think he’ll let a little thing like the “truth” slow him down one whit…
Say, DumbAssue, since you have your “righteous anger” up to the red line, let’s see if you care to spew a little at a REAL violation of national security by Sandy Berger… I’m not gonna hold my breath, because that would require a little intellectual honesty and logical consistency.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 09:13 PM
Lee – diapers and bottles – let’s get down to it here on this uranium thing. The Post article had some inaccuracies within it that I won’t just point out, but provide links to the actual Senate Committee documents and not news sources, as the Post cherrypicked what information to use and what to ignore.
Select Committee on Intelligence Report – Page 73
The report on the former ambassador’s trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts’ assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq.
50-50 as far as the intelligence community was concerned. Not a ‘slam-dunk’. Wilson’s report didn’t change either agency’s mind in terms of what they thought before he went. The Post:
The panel found that Wilson’s report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson’s assertions and even the government’s previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address.
Same Report, Page 72
The Senate report clearly states that by October 2002, it was no longer reasonable to make the claim that Iraq sought uranium from Niger – yet Bush said just that in January of 2003.
The forgeries were identified as such BEFORE Bush made his speech. George Tenet says the following that following July:
The background above makes it even more troubling that the 16 words eventually made it into the State of the Union speech. This was a mistake.
Actual CIA Press Release from THE CIA SITE – Not a news article!
Wilson’s assessment of the intelligence was in fact correct the entire time…Bloomberg confirms this:
Bloomberg – Wilson was Right
I mean, it’s no FoxNews or anything…but:
A White House Concession
Finally, in July 2003, after Wilson’s piece was published, the White House conceded that the uranium assertion should not have been included in the president’s speech. Several administration officials have accepted responsibility for allowing it into the speech, including Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser and now secretary of state; Stephen Hadley, then Rice’s deputy and now the national security adviser; and then-CIA Director George Tenet.
In October 2002, as the White House was reviewing drafts of a speech Bush would give in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, the allegation that Iraq sought “substantial amounts of uranium oxide’’ from Africa was removed after Tenet called Hadley to raise doubts about the information. On Oct. 5 and 6, the CIA sent memorandums to the White House expressing concerns about the Niger intelligence and differences on it between the U.S. and British spy agencies.
So Lee, you’re getting your talking points confused here. To help you out, here’s a link to what the RNC wants you to say:
RNC Talking Points on Rove – Everyone Read, Memorize!!!!!!!
You present a Washington Post article, I present you the information straight from the horse’s mouth…Senate Committee Reports and the CIA.
WHERE DID WILSON LIE??? WHEN??? I HAVEN’T SEEN IT. Of much more importance though, how does it have anything to do with Rove doing what he did?
Posted by Drumwaster on 07/15 at 09:20 PM
WHERE DID WILSON LIE???
When he claimed that his report had been even vaguely perused by anyone at the White House. When he claimed that he had been sent to Niger at the direction of Vice President Cheney. When he claimed that his wife was a covert agent.
I HAVEN’T SEEN IT.
Because ostriches never see anything.
So how about that Sandy Berger outrage, dumbass?
How about a little of that outrage at Valerie Plame who blew her own CIA cover while in the middle of a heavy make-out session with a guy on their third or fourth date?
What’s the matter? Neither of these able to be blamed on Bush?
Wilson’s a liar, his wife is a slut and a blabbermouth, and Rove didn’t do anything wrong, just as we have been trying to get you to see all week. You have been deliberately refusing to see the facts for the same amount of time.
Posted by http://www.deadissue.com on 07/15 at 09:23 PM
Posted by Drumwaster on 07/15 at 08:08 PM
I wonder what DumbAssue thinks about the NYTimes now claiming that it was Novak who told Rove about Plame, not the other way around.
Since he has ascribed underhanded motivations to events that
Awesome blog and article. Will book mark, and read much more for sure! Paul O’Neil BTW but John O”Neill’s story is very compelling also. fromer FBI terror expert died at WTC 9/11, good friend to Richard Clarke.
Funny how I feel there is much that relates to this case, and the BUSHINC. that can be learned by remembering him and Dr. David Kelly.
Thank you Jacalyn – Hope you join in the debate and spread the word. We’ve got two intelligent right-wingers posting here, then karl and I on the other side of the fence…but otherwise it’s been sporadic in terms of participation.
The articles will be coming slower since my twin boys were born just last week – but content is usually up on a daily basis.