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Sun 27 Aug, 2006 09:21 am
The response to this original post is telling. Does anyone now admit that their initial reaction to the story was at least slightly knee jerky and guided by opinionators?
Thank you for posting it BBB. I was away.
First Source of C.I.A. Leak Admits Role
First Source of C.I.A. Leak Admits Role, Lawyer Says
By NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: August 30, 2006
WASHINGTON, Aug. 29, 2006
Richard L. Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state, has acknowledged that he was the person whose conversation with a columnist in 2003 prompted a long, politically laden criminal investigation in what became known as the C.I.A. leak case, a lawyer involved in the case said on Tuesday.
Mr. Armitage did not return calls for comment. But the lawyer and other associates of Mr. Armitage have said he has confirmed that he was the initial and primary source for the columnist, Robert D. Novak, whose column of July 14, 2003, identified Valerie Wilson as a Central Intelligence Agency officer.
The identification of Mr. Armitage as the original leaker to Mr. Novak ends what has been a tantalizing mystery. In recent months, however, Mr. Armitage's role had become clear to many, and it was recently reported by Newsweek magazine and The Washington Post.
In the accounts by the lawyer and associates, Mr. Armitage disclosed casually to Mr. Novak that Ms. Wilson worked for the C.I.A. at the end of an interview in his State Department office. Mr. Armitage knew that, the accounts continue, because he had seen a written memorandum by Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman.
Mr. Grossman had taken up the task of finding out about Ms. Wilson after an inquiry from I. Lewis Libby Jr., chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Libby's inquiry was prompted by an Op-Ed article on May 6, 2003, in The New York Times by Nicholas D. Kristof and an article on June 12, 2003, in The Washington Post by Walter Pincus.
The two articles reported on a trip by a former ambassador to Africa sponsored by the C.I.A. to check reports that Iraq was seeking enriched uranium to help with its nuclear arms program.
Neither article identified the ambassador, but it was known inside the government that he was Joseph C. Wilson IV, Ms. Wilson's husband. White House officials wanted to know how much of a role she had in selecting him for the assignment.
Ms. Wilson was a covert employee, and after Mr. Novak printed her identity, the agency requested an investigation to see whether her name had been leaked illegally.
Some administration critics said her name had been made public in a campaign to punish Mr. Wilson, who had written in a commentary in The Times that his investigation in Africa him to believe that the Bush administration had twisted intelligence to justify an attack on Iraq.
The complaints after Mr. Novak's column led to the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the disclosure of Ms. Wilson's identity.
The special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, did not bring charges in connection with laws that prohibit the willful disclosure of the identity of an C.I.A. officer. But Mr. Fitzgerald did indict Mr. Libby on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, saying Mr. Libby had testified untruthfully to a grand jury and federal agents when he said he learned about Ms. Wilson's role at the agency from reporters rather than from several officials, including Mr. Cheney.
According to an account in a coming book, "Hubris, the Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War'' by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, excerpts of which appeared in Newsweek this week, Mr. Armitage told a few State Department colleagues that he might have been the leaker whose identity was being sought.
The book says Mr. Armitage realized that when Mr. Novak published a second column in October 2003 that said his source had been an official who was "not a political gunslinger.''
The Justice Department was quickly informed, and Mr. Armitage disclosed his talks with Mr. Novak in subsequent interviews with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, even before Mr. Fitzgerald's appointment.
The book quotes Carl W. Ford Jr., then head of the intelligence and research bureau at the State Department, as saying that Mr. Armitage had told him, "I may be the guy who caused this whole thing,'' and that he regretted having told the columnist more than he should have.
Mr. Grossman's memorandum did not mention that Ms. Wilson had undercover status.
Apart from Mr. Ford, as quoted in the book, the lawyer and colleagues of Mr. Armitage who discussed the case have spoken insisting on anonymity, apparently because Mr. Armitage was still not comfortable with the public acknowledgment of his role.
He was also the source for another journalist about Ms. Wilson, a reporter who did not write about her. The lawyers and associates said Mr. Armitage also told Bob Woodward, assistant managing editor of The Washington Post and a well-known author, of her identity in June 2003.
Mr. Woodward was a late player in the legal drama when he disclosed last November that he had the received the information and testified to a grand jury about it after learning that his source had disclosed the conversation to prosecutors.
Armitage Confirms He Was Novak Source on Plame
This confirms the vendata aginst Wilson-Plame originated in Vice President Cheney's office. ---BBB
Armitage Confirms He Was Novak Source on Plame
By E&P Staff
Published: August 30, 2006
Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the first Bush administration to reveal undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame name in 2003, the New York Times and the Washington Post have now confirmed.
A lawyer involved in the CIA leak case said that Armitage was the first and main source of columnist Robert Novak, who disclosed Plame as a CIA officer, the Times disclosed.
Michael Isikoff and David Corn first reported this over the weekend, previewing their book, "Hubris," based on their sources. Plame's married name is Valerie Wilson, as she is married to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
"In the accounts by the lawyer and associates," The New York Times reports today, "Mr. Armitage disclosed casually to Mr. Novak that Ms. Wilson worked for the C.I.A. at the end of an interview in his State Department office. Mr. Armitage knew that, the accounts continue, because he had seen a written memorandum by Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman.
"Mr. Grossman had taken up the task of finding out about Ms. Wilson after an inquiry from I. Lewis Libby Jr., chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Libby's inquiry was prompted by an Op-Ed article on May 6, 2003, in The New York Times by Nicholas D. Kristof and an article on June 12, 2003, in The Washington Post by Walter Pincus."
Plame's attorney has said she is considering adding Armitage to the lawsuit against Bush administration officials. It is not known how this latest revelation will help or hurt the legal case now going forward against Libby.
Quote: It is not known how this latest revelation will help or hurt the legal case now going forward against Libby.
LOL but we can guess.
CASE CLOSED. Further discussion of this only feeds Joe's ego, which seems to need about 30k calories a day.
Edit: Another reason it will linger will be the pending introduction of "Hubris", a book expected to be published in October but which now must be hurried along since the Armitage relevation makes evident that the authors were clueless.
Why would anyone waste money to buy Uranium Oxide (thats all that Niger sells) and then take it home to Iraq. Iraq never had (since the Isareli attack in the early 80's) had the capability to produce UF6, let alone enrich it.
Even if some Abba al Tikrit asked the govt of Niger for U3O8, they would also have to ask someone else how to fromulate and enrich it.
The 1999 "Supposed" contact (if it did occur) would have to be of a highly speculative nature and cast as someobe merely seeking information (That is , if it actually happened)
From today's Washington Post...
Quote:End of an Affair
It turns out that the person who exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame was not out to punish her husband.
Friday, September 1, 2006; A20
WE'RE RELUCTANT to return to the subject of former CIA employee Valerie Plame because of our oft-stated belief that far too much attention and debate in Washington has been devoted to her story and that of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, over the past three years. But all those who have opined on this affair ought to take note of the not-so-surprising disclosure that the primary source of the newspaper column in which Ms. Plame's cover as an agent was purportedly blown in 2003 was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage.
Mr. Armitage was one of the Bush administration officials who supported the invasion of Iraq only reluctantly. He was a political rival of the White House and Pentagon officials who championed the war and whom Mr. Wilson accused of twisting intelligence about Iraq and then plotting to destroy him. Unaware that Ms. Plame's identity was classified information, Mr. Armitage reportedly passed it along to columnist Robert D. Novak "in an offhand manner, virtually as gossip," according to a story this week by the Post's R. Jeffrey Smith, who quoted a former colleague of Mr. Armitage.
It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House -- that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame's identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson -- is untrue. The partisan clamor that followed the raising of that allegation by Mr. Wilson in the summer of 2003 led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, a costly and prolonged investigation, and the indictment of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges of perjury. All of that might have been avoided had Mr. Armitage's identity been known three years ago.
That's not to say that Mr. Libby and other White House officials are blameless. As prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has reported, when Mr. Wilson charged that intelligence about Iraq had been twisted to make a case for war, Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney reacted by inquiring about Ms. Plame's role in recommending Mr. Wilson for a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger, where he investigated reports that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium. Mr. Libby then allegedly disclosed Ms. Plame's identity to journalists and lied to a grand jury when he said he had learned of her identity from one of those reporters. Mr. Libby and his boss, Mr. Cheney, were trying to discredit Mr. Wilson; if Mr. Fitzgerald's account is correct, they were careless about handling information that was classified.
Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.
Hey guys. We can drop this topic because the Washington post posted an article showing that the whole thing was Wilsons fault for opposing the Iraqi war. The fact that the outing came from Cheynes office dosent make any difference.
Re: Armitage Confirms He Was Novak Source on Plame
BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:This confirms the vendata aginst Wilson-Plame originated in Vice President Cheney's office. ---BBB
No it doesn't...article simply indicates that Libby made an inquiry....nothing ties it to an administration "vendetta" other than the feverish imaginings of Bush-haters.
Re: Armitage Confirms He Was Novak Source on Plame
slkshock7 wrote:BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:This confirms the vendata aginst Wilson-Plame originated in Vice President Cheney's office. ---BBB
No it doesn't...article simply indicates that Libby made an inquiry....nothing ties it to an administration "vendetta" other than the feverish imaginings of Bush-haters.
Who did Libby work for???? I thought it was Cheney. Rotten aides always going off on their own to bring down their bosses. Should be fired and retirement benefits revoked. Who would have thought that Libby was actually a lib. Go figure, can't trust anybody.
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