Foxfyre wrote:THE MORE that is revealed about the leaking of CIA employee Valerie Plame's name, the more her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, is discredited.
For the past two years Wilson has suggested that the White House exposed his wife as a CIA agent in retribution for his having "debunked" President Bush's statement, made in his 2003 State of the Union address, that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger. Left-wing activists have trumpeted this charge until it has echoed from every mountain and hilltop in the land. Last week's revelations in the case show the charge to be entirely unfounded.
Nope, how many times are you going to post again your right wing bull$hit?
All you have to do is refer to the actual text of Wilson's original article in the times to see what frass you are posting.
So, again:
In his original essay in the NY Times in June 2003, he said
http://www.robincmiller.com/art-iraq/b59.htm
Quote:"Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."
Wilson never claimed to have "debunked" the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. He claimed only that the transaction described in the documents that turned out to be forgeries could not have occurred and did not occur.
He did not speak out on the subject until several months after it became evident that what underpinned the assertion in the State of the Union address were those documents, reports of which had sparked Vice President Cheney's original question that led to his trip.
By that time it had become public knowledge that there were at least two other US government reports that buttressed Wilson's opinion; those of Ambassador Owens-Fitzpatrick and 3-Star General Fulford concurred, and the IAEA proved the documents alleging such attempts were proven as forgeries that Wilson made his statement.
The White House must have agreed with Wilson. The day after his article appeared in the Times a spokesman for the President told the Washington Post that "the sixteen words did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union."
Wilson's claim that his wife was an object of a political attack is also shown to be true, and in the words of Karl Rove to Chris Mathews, "fair game."
http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2004/03/waas-m-03-08.html
Quote:Karl Rove, told the FBI in an interview last October that he circulated and discussed damaging information regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame with others in the White House, outside political consultants, and journalists, according to a government official and an attorney familiar with the ongoing special counsel's investigation of the matter.
But Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak's column (on July 14, 2003).
He also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Rove and other White House officials described to the FBI what sources characterized as an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Rove is said to have named at least six other administration officials who were involved in the effort to discredit Wilson.
Foxfyre wrote:Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper's now famous e-mail exchange with Karl Rove, President Bush's top political strategist, shows that Cooper initiated the contact with Rove, not the other way around, and that Rove did not reveal Plame's name. The New York Times reported on Friday that, contrary to Wilson's spin, Rove did not contact columnist Bob Novak to divulge Plame's name. Novak called Rove, and it was Novak who told Rove that Plame recommended her husband for the Niger trip. Rove simply responded that he'd heard the same thing.
See above, Rove admitted to having participated in a campaign to smear Wilson and his wife, and at least six journalists were contacted by the White House in this smear attempt. The disengenuousness of the article is astounding. Claiming that Rove did not use Plame's name, yet referred to her as "Wilson's wife" as exculpatory evidence mocks reality. The woman was Mrs Joe Wilson.
The only way Rove could have known about the allegations of Plame sending Wilson to Niger was to have had seen or heard of a report written by a State Dept staffer who erroneously wrote it in the report that was forwarded to Colin Powell before his trip to Africa whilst accompanying Bush in the Spring of 2003.
The CIA has vehemetely denied Plame sent Wilson to Niger and has shown that whover wrote the report was not involved in the decision to send Wilson to Niger.
This is the memo which stated that Valerie Plame (identified as 'Valerie Wilson' in the memo) had recommended or arranged for Joe Wilson to make the fact-finding trip to Niger. And Fitzgerald's office appears to believe that that memo was the ultimate source of the information that eventually made its way into print in Robert Novak's column.
But remember, the CIA believed that that memo contains not just incorrect but fraudulent information.
in the Washington Post from December 2003 ...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A30842-2003Dec25¬Found=true
Quote:"But sources said the CIA believes that people in the administration continue to release classified information to damage the figures at the center of the controversy, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and his wife, Valerie Plame, who was exposed as a CIA officer by unidentified senior administration officials for a July 14 column by Robert D. Novak.
Wilson, a prominent critic of the administration over Iraq, has said that was done to retaliate against him for continuing to publicize his conclusion, after a 2002 mission for the CIA, that there was little evidence Iraq had sought uranium in Africa to develop nuclear weapons.
Sources said the CIA is angry about the circulation of a still-classified document to conservative news outlets suggesting Plame had a role in arranging her husband's trip to Africa for the CIA. The document, written by a State Department official who works for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), describes a meeting at the CIA where the Niger trip by Wilson was discussed, said a senior administration official who has seen it.
CIA officials have challenged the accuracy of the INR document, the official said, because the agency officer identified as talking about Plame's alleged role in arranging Wilson's trip could not have attended the meeting.
"It has been circulated around," one official said. CIA and State Department officials have refused to discuss the document.
On Oct. 28, Talon News, a news company tied to a group called GOP USA, posted on the Internet an interview with Wilson in which the Talon News questioner asks: "An internal government memo prepared by U.S.
intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that?"
The questioner, of course, was Jeff Gannon!.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27730-2005Feb15?language=printer
Foxfyre wrote:This is important because Wilson claimed to have been sent to Niger by Vice President Dick Cheney, and that his wife had nothing to do with his selection. Both claims were later proven untrue.
That is not true. Wilson never claimed he was sent to Niger by Cheney.
The claim was made in the "additional view" addendum to the SSCI report, signed only by three of eighteen Senators on the committee. When are you and your fellow travelers on the right going to be honest about this?
Wilson's words in his article in the New York Times states entirely a different claim, now and repeated substantiated by CIA.
Quote:The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office."
Again with Plame sending Wilson to Niger? Come on, buddy, that claim has been so proven incorrect that you ought to be ashamed to even post that crap.
But, again, for your benefit in case you have found your medication , at long last:
Again and repeatedly, Wilson's wife did not do anything but list her hysband's credentials, and the people the SIC interviewed were NOT the people who made the decision to send him. This is documented in a number of places.
Read what the SIC report actually reports as the remarks made by Plame.
Quote:"My husband has good relations with the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." There is no suggestion or recommendation in that statement that he be sent on the trip. Indeed it is little more than a recitation of his contacts and bona fides.
While the the conclusion is reinforced by comments in the body of the report that a CPD [Counterproliferation Division] reports officer stated that "the former ambassador's wife 'offered up his name'" (page 39) and a State Department intelligence and research officer stated that the "meeting was 'apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch him to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue."
In fact, Plame was not in the meeting at which the subject of Wilson's trip was raised. Neither was the CPD reports officer. After having escorted Wilson into the room, she [Plame] departed the meeting to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. It was at that meeting where the question of Wilson's traveling to Niger was broached with him for the first time and came only after a thorough discussion of what the participants did and did not know about the subject. Wilson's bona fides justifying the invitation to the meeting were the trip he had previously taken to Niger to look at other uranium-related questions as well as 20 years living and working in Africa, and personal contacts throughout the Niger government.
Neither the CPD reports officer nor the State analyst were in the chain of command to know who, or how, the decision was made. The interpretations attributed to them are not the full story. In fact, the reports officer has a different conclusion about Plame's role than the one offered in the "additional comments."
This is substantiated in a further report by Newsday reporters Tim Phelps and Knut Royce on July 2003 Newsday article "Columnist Blows CIA Agent's Cover," (dated July 22, 2003).
http://foi.missouri.edu/voicesdissent/columnistnames.html
reported that:
Quote:"A senior intelligence officer confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked 'alongside' the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger. But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. 'They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising,' he said. 'There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason,' he said. 'I can't figure out what it could be.' 'We paid his [Wilson's] airfare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you'd have to pay big bucks to go there,' the senior intelligence official said. Wilson said he was reimbursed only for expenses."
the CIA believes that that memo contains not just incorrect but fraudulent information
Foxfyre wrote:The icing on the cake was Wilson's own admission, made Thursday, that "My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity."
So not only was Karl Rove not calling reporters to disclose the identity of Plame, whose name he did not then know, she was not even a covert agent at the time, as has been incessantly claimed.
Are you stupid? Again. Are you stupid? Wilson's remark is plain as the nose on your face. The day Novak revealed Plame was a CIA operative THAT day she was no longer a covert operative.
Foxfyre wrote:That the sources for these revelations were Time magazine, The New York Times and Joe Wilson himself will, of course, have no effect on the wingnuts who peddle Karl Rove conspiracy theories. But then, those who believe in a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy were never heavily influenced by the facts anyway.
The proof of a VRWC is apparent. A minority additional view alleges that Wilson lied. Only 3 of 18 senators went a long with that allegation, and only 3 of the 9 Republicans on the committee agreed with the allegations, yet the right wing press trumpeted that these claims came from the "SSCI" without even mentioning that these allegations were only included in an addendum that only 3 of 18 senators signed.
That is total intellectual dishonesty.
They also failed to accept that the claims made were themselves debunked by the CIA, and in additional information provided to the press by the actual remarks Rove made to the FBI linked earlier here.
