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The July 15 editorial "Mr. Rove's Leak" said that Joseph C. Wilson IV does not deserve to be called a "whistle-blower."
But until Mr. Wilson went public, the administration stood by the "16 words" in the 2003 State of the Union address that exaggerated Iraq's nuclear intentions. Precisely because of Mr. Wilson's report, George J. Tenet, Condoleezza Rice and President Bush admitted that those 16 words should not have been included. They have not retracted that retraction, notwithstanding the Butler Commission and Senate reports that the editorial cited.
Mr. Wilson was the first to blow the whistle on the administration's exaggeration of the supposed reasons for war. When the administration retaliated, his wife and family suffered.
Although supposedly in a rush to leave on vacation, Rove e-mailed Stephen J. Hadley, then Bush’s deputy national security adviser (and now national security adviser). According to the Associated Press, Rove’s e-mail said he “didn’t take the bait” when Cooper suggested that Wilson’s criticisms had hurt the administration.
While it’s not entirely clear what Rove meant in the e-mail, the significance is that Rove immediately reported to Hadley, an official who was in a position to know classified details about Plame’s job. In other words, the e-mail is evidence that the assault on Wilson was being coordinated at senior White House levels.
"Intelligence officers should not be used as political footballs....In the case of Valerie Plame, she still works for the CIA and is not in a position to publicly defend her reputation and honor."
the memo that mentions Plame being explicitly market 'S' for secret
A key department memo discussing Joseph Wilson's Niger trip was classified "Top Secret," and the passage about his wife's CIA role was specially marked "S/NF" -- not to be shared with any foreign intelligence agencies."S/NF" means "Top secret. No foreign." here's an example of security markings in a U.S. Navy message. The Bush administration showed their Top secret/No foreign plans for attacking Iraq to Bandar Bush in January 2003.
The disclosure of Ms. Plame’s name was a shameful event in American history and, in our professional judgment, may have damaged U.S. national security and poses a threat to the ability of U.S. intelligence gathering using human sources. Any breach of the code of confidentiality and cover weakens the overall fabric of intelligence, and, directly or indirectly, jeopardizes the work and safety of intelligence workers and their sources.Also, former CIA agent Larry Johnson, who was a colleague of Valerie Wilson, wrote to Congress that:
We must put to bed the lie that she was not undercover. For starters, if she had not been undercover then the CIA would not have referred the matter to the Justice Department.
...
Robert Novak's compromise of Valerie caused even more damage. It subsequently led to scrutiny of her cover company. This not only compromised her "cover" company but potentially every individual overseas who had been in contact with that company or with her.
A friend informs Wilson that Novak believes that his wife had something to do with Wilson's appointment to investigate the Yellow Cake claim"He asked Novak if he could walk a block or two with him, as they were headed in the same direction; Novak acquiesced.
Striking up a conversation, my friend, without revealing that he knew me, asked Novak about the Uranium controversy. It was a minor problem, Novak replied, and opined that the administration should have dealt with it weeks before. My friend then asked Novak what he thought about me, and Novak answered: "Wilson's an asshole.
The CIA sent him. His wife, Valerie [Plame], works for the CIA. She's a weapons of mass destruction specialist. She sent him.""
Wilson's friend went right to Wilson's office and documented the exchange.
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A look at the Non-story Pushed by an Agenda
But [Wodehouse] was essentially correct in his lampooning of the McCarthy hearings, since even the most convinced anti-communist would not learn anything from the spectacle that he did not already know, and since the show trials managed to go on without producing either any evidence of any crime, or any evidence of any perpetrator, or any evidence of any victim...
But the coverage of this non-storm in an un-teacup has gone far beyond the fantasy of a Rovean hidden hand. Supposedly responsible journalists are now writing as if there was never any problem with Saddam's attempt to acquire yellowcake (or his regime's now-proven concealment of a nuclear centrifuge, or his regime's now-proven attempt to buy long-range missiles off the shelf from North Korea as late as March 2003). In the same way, the carefully phrased yet indistinct statement of the 9/11 Commission that Saddam had no proven "operational" relationship with al-Qaida has mutated lazily into the belief that there were no contacts or exchanges at all, which the commission by no means asserts and which in any case by no means possesses the merit of being true. The CIA got everything wrong before 9/11, and thereafter. It was conditioned by its own culture to see no evil. It regularly leaked—see any of Bob Woodward's narratives—against the administration. Now it, and its partisans and publicity-famished husband-and-wife teams, want to imprison or depose people who leak back at it. No, thanks. Many journalists are rightly appalled at Time magazine's collusion with a prosecutor who has proved no crime and identified no victim. Far worse is the willingness of the New York Times to accept the demented premise of a prosecutor who has put one of its own writers behind bars.
posted by dios at 8:10 AM on July 22, 2005