July 13, 2005
This is turning into a lot of fun....
There's a good editorial in OpinionJournal (as you've probably already noticed) with a different view...Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove's head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we'd say the White House political guru deserves a prize--perhaps the next iteration of the "Truth-Telling" award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud. For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real "whistleblower" in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He's the one who warned Time's Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson's credibility. He's the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn't a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove....The whole mess has been a silly waste of time from the beginning, since the law in question was clearly never intended to "protect" CIA employees who work at comfy desk jobs in Langley. Anyone watching the CIA parking lot could have found out where Valerie Plame worked. BUT, exposing lefty media mendacity is a priority these days, since their political shenanigans have moved into the realm of undermining our country in time of war. They should be EXPOSED again and again. And the big question of course, is, why is Judith Miller going to jail rather than reveal...what? What is the NYT covering up? John Podhoretz suggests...
...But what if that's not right? What if the original source for the "Wilson got the job from his CIA wife" was, in fact, a reporter? After all, we know that the vice president's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, has testified he learned of Plame's identity from a journalist. Wilson had gotten very cozy with a couple of them -- Walter Pincus of the Washington Post and Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times among them. What if he spilled the beans to enhance his own standing in the story somehow, to bolster his supposed findings? What if -- and here's where it gets really interesting -- what if the real object of interest where Fitzgerald's investigation is concerned is now none other than the jailed Judith Miller of the New York Times? What if she let it all slip and in the giant game of telephone around the nation's capital, Miller was the original source of the "Plame's in the CIA" info?...(Thanks to Byron Preston)What I start wondering is, is this another Tar Baby? Are Karl and George laughing as Br'er Bolshie tries to toss them into the briar patch? (Thanks to Ethan Hahn, who e-mailed to remind me of the earlier post. In which post you will see that I thanked Ethan Hahn for reminding me of yet an earlier post. Recursive I think is the word here. Or maybe infundibular.) Posted by John Weidner at July 13, 2005 09:46 AM
Is it significant that Judith Miller is the NYT's go-to reporter on WMD, and that Valerie Plame was a WMD specialist at the Agency?
Miller quoted CIA leaks in her pieces. Wouldn't a prime suspect for those leaks be a Bush-hating Democratic Party activist like Plame?
Do we really know what Fitzgerald's investigation is about? There is a consensus that he has moved beyond the exposure of a CIA operative. There is speculation that the case has devolved into a perjury probe.
Maybe. Maybe not. But Rove appears incidental to whatever's really going on.
Posted by: lyle at July 13, 2005 01:31 PMYes, consensus is Fitzgerald isn't just looking for the leaker any longer. In fact, consensus is that someone or someones within the White House may be facing felony obstruction of justice charges.
Worth remembering, one of the two impeachment charges against Clinton (Article III) was felony obstuction. How did he obstruct? On three separate dates just after the Lewinsky hit the headlines, per Starr and the charge, Clinton took five senior staffers into the Oval Office and told them he absolutely did not have sex with Lewinsky. This, of course, was NOT a crime. Anyone, even a President, can lie to his friends or staff. However all five were later called before a Grand Jury where they repeated Clinton's assurances of no involvement with Lewinsky. Which, of course, was untrue. It was the impeachment article's contention Clinton had deliberately lied to his staff in order to get them to lie (unknowingly) to a Grand Jury, under oath. Hence, obstruction of justice.
Now, for two years Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan (WH spokesmen), have been telling everyone that when the Plame outing broke they asked Rove, Libby and others if they outed her. And they've been saying for 2yrs that they were told absolutely not! All of them were formally interviewed as part of the investigation. We now know, since Rove's lawyer Luskin has confirmed it, that Rove in fact DID tell at least Cooper of Time that Wilson's wife was a CIA operative (and please, I hope you guys are smart enough not to repeat Mehlman's ludicrous claim that since Rove didn't say the name "Plame" he didn't leak anything...Wilson's bio on the State Dept website as well as Who's Who both listed his wife as "Valerie Plame", employee of Jennings-Brewster & Assoc...which we now also know, thanks to Rove, was a CIA-front working to stop WMD proliferation). That means, logically and undisputably, that either Rove lied to Fleischer/McClellan, or they lied. Assuming he lied to them, using the identical legal justification as impeachment Article III (which, remember, is a federal felony crime) Fitzgerald can very likely be building an obstruction of justice charge against (at least) Rove, on the grounds he deliberately lied to co-workers who in turn then lied (unknowingly) to investigators (lying to a US Attorney during formal questioning is a felony - you can refuse to answer questions; you can't lie on those questions). And remember, there is (according to Robert Novak) a second leaker...
And lets remember a little history of this man who FoxNews thinks should get a medal, Peter King (R-NY) says "has guts", and the WSJ calls a "whistleblower" (strange, I never heard treason called "whistleblowing" before):
-in 1992 while working on Bush-1's reelection, he was caught lying and putting out complete fabrications about Democratic candidates. Bush-1, more old school GOP (and a man with character his sons could never hope to touch) fired him.
-while working in Alabama to elect a GOP State Supreme Court justice, he was identified as the source of numerous stories about the career incumbent judge (a man who had dedicated his life to protecting children) accusing him of pedophilia.
This is the man you wingers are hitching your wagon to, the man you are protecting. It'll only hold up as long as the right-leaning press assists (notice TV news shows are buried right now in GOPers with near identical talking points supporting Rove/smearing Wilson - which has nothing to do with outing Plame really - while its virtually impossible for a Democrat to get a second's airtime?)...
Just more evidence the moral backbone and values of the GOP expired more than a decade ago...you guys are running on fumes, and it shows with your growing desperation!
Posted by: Zoomie at July 13, 2005 07:03 PMOooooh, we're SOOOOOOOOOO desperate! The walls are closing in. The future is bleak. The very fruits of victory are ashes in our mouths....And those shining idealistic principled moral pargons, the DEMOCRATS, will soon sweep back into power, propelled by their clear and convincing plans for a better America, and their forthright exposition of exactly what their core values are. Any day now they will do it....
(PS: Don't tell anybody I said this, 'cause it's classified, and I might go to jail, but the source Miller is hiding is none other than blabbermouth Joe himself! But mum's the word.)
Posted by: John Weidner at July 13, 2005 07:45 PM"Comfy desk job," eh? Well, let's see what one of Valerie Plame's colleagues, Larry Johnson, has to say about that.
"Valerie Plame was a classmate of mine from the day she started with the CIA. I entered on duty at the CIA in September 1985. All of my classmates were undercover--in other words, we told our family and friends that we were working for other overt U.S. Government agencies. We had official cover. That means we had a black passport--i.e., a diplomatic passport. If we were caught overseas engaged in espionage activity the black passport was a get out of jail free card.
"A few of my classmates, and Valerie was one of these, became a non-official cover officer. That meant she agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport. If caught in that status she would have been executed."
So, regardless of where Ms. Plame was at the time Rove outed her, she was a woman so devoted to her country that she had repeatedly risked her life in its service. And that sleazebag Karl "Wormtongue" Rove, who possesses not a fraction of her courage, revealed her covert status merely to prop up the mendacious house of lies that is the Bush administration.
It seems to me that the desperation is altogether on the other side, as well it should be. You've built your house upon sand, and great will be its fall. Wake up!
Posted by: Dave Trowbridge at July 13, 2005 09:52 PMSo what, exactly, are you building your house upon? Bedrock? If so, what bedrock? What is your political philosophy?
Your statements are almost indistinguishable from the move-on.org crowd. So is that what you are? Is that where this is coming from?
You were recently very condescending about how the Iraq campaign was wrong because it was supposedly based on lies, and "ends don't justify means." Yet here you are seemingly allied with Joe Wilson, who has been exposed as a gross liar. In fact the whole "Bush Lied" theme started with Wilson's lie about Niger. The 9/11 commission has revealed that he had actually told the CIA that it was likely that Saddam had tried to purchase Uranium from Niger. SO, are you going to turn your moral scorn on the Vanity Fair Wing of the CIA? I won't hold my breath.
As for Plame, you merely present a theoretical possibility that she may have risked her life in the past. Does that excuse wrong-doing now? Does that excuse being part of a CIA faction that has deliberately sabotaged the policies of the elected government they've sworn to serve? Is that your position? Would it be OK for a Republican CIA agent (there actually aren't any) to do the same to Clinton? Or do only Dems get a pass?
What if Judith Miller's source turns out to be a Democrat? Does he get the same treatment from you that Rove's getting? I bet not.
In this blog I'm putting all my cards on the table. If I'm inconsistent, people can catch me out. I'm a partisan Republican, but I'm open about it. And my partisanship is based on principle, so if a Dem does what's right in my eyes, I say so, ie: Clinton on NAFTA and Welfare Reform. And if a Republican does wrong, such as Bush signing CFR, I say that too.
Isn't it time you started putting your cards out to be seen? You've assumed the guise of one who is high above the fray, passing judgement on the moral failings of the lesser folk. Yet somehow your judgments are always the same as Howard Dean. Sounds like hypocrisy to me.
Posted by: John Weidner at July 14, 2005 11:00 AM
