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The media owes Karl Rove an apology...; ...and so do plenty here.
Topic Started: Sep 7 2006, 01:00 PM (442 Views)
fab4fan
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But I won't hold my breath. :P


One Leak and a Flood of Silliness

By David S. Broder
Thursday, September 7, 2006; A27



Conspiracy theories flourish in politics, and most of them have no more basis than spring training hopes for the Chicago Cubs.

Whenever things turn dicey for Republicans, they complain about the "liberal media" sabotaging them. And when Democrats get in a jam, they take up Hillary Clinton's warnings about a "vast right-wing conspiracy."

For much of the past five years, dark suspicions have been voiced about the Bush White House undermining its critics, and Karl Rove has been fingered as the chief culprit in this supposed plot to suppress the opposition.

Now at least one count in that indictment has been substantially weakened -- the charge that Rove masterminded a conspiracy to discredit Iraq intelligence critic Joseph Wilson by "outing" his CIA-operative wife, Valerie Plame.

I have written almost nothing about the Wilson-Plame case, because it seemed overblown to me from the start. Wilson's claim in a New York Times op-ed about his memo on the supposed Iraqi purchase of uranium yellowcake from Niger; the Robert D. Novak column naming Plame as the person who had recommended Wilson to check up on the reported sale; the call for a special prosecutor and the lengthy interrogation that led to the jailing of Judith Miller of the New York Times and the deposition of several other reporters; and, finally, the indictment of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff -- all of this struck me as being a tempest in a teapot.

No one behaved well in the whole mess -- not Wilson, not Libby, not special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and not the reporters involved.

The only time I commented on the case was to caution reporters who offered bold First Amendment defenses for keeping their sources' names secret that they had better examine the motivations of the people leaking the information to be sure they deserve protection.

But caution has been notably lacking in some of the press treatment of this subject -- especially when it comes to Karl Rove. And it behooves us in the media to examine that behavior, not just sweep it under the rug.

Sidney Blumenthal, a former aide to President Bill Clinton and now a columnist for several publications, has just published a book titled, "How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime." It is a collection of his columns for Salon, including one originally published on July 14, 2005, titled "Rove's War."

It was occasioned by the disclosure of a memo from Time magazine's Matt Cooper, saying that Rove had confirmed to him the identity of Valerie Plame. To Blumenthal, that was proof that this "was political payback against Wilson by a White House that wanted to shift the public focus from the Iraq War to Wilson's motives."

Then Blumenthal went off on a rant: "While the White House stonewalls, Rove has license to run his own damage control operation. His surrogates argue that if Rove did anything, it wasn't a crime. . . . Rove is fighting his war as though it will be settled in a court of Washington pundits. Brandishing his formidable political weapons, he seeks to demonstrate his prowess once again. His corps of agents raises a din in which their voices drown out individual dissidents. His frantic massing of forces dominates the capital by winning the communications battle. Indeed, Rove may succeed momentarily in quelling the storm. But the stillness may be illusory. Before the prosecutor, Rove's arsenal is useless."

In fact, the prosecutor concluded that there was no crime; hence, no indictment. And we now know that the original "leak," in casual conversations with reporters Novak and Bob Woodward, came not from the conspiracy theorists' target in the White House but from the deputy secretary of state at the time, Richard Armitage, an esteemed member of the Washington establishment and no pal of Rove or President Bush.

Blumenthal's example is far from unique. Newsweek, in a July 25, 2005, cover story on Rove, after dutifully noting that Rove's lawyer said the prosecutor had told him that Rove was not a target of the investigation, added: "But this isn't just about the Facts, it's about what Rove's foes regard as a higher Truth: That he is a one-man epicenter of a narrative of Evil."

And in the American Prospect's cover story for August 2005, Joe Conason wrote that Rove "is a powerful bully. Fear of retribution has stifled those who might have revealed his secrets. He has enjoyed the impunity of a malefactor who could always claim, however implausibly, deniability -- until now."

These and other publications owe Karl Rove an apology. And all of journalism needs to relearn the lesson: Can the conspiracy theories and stick to the facts.

davidbroder@washpost.com

© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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beatlechick
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Why? He hasn't been absolved of anything.
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I would NEVER apologise to a REPUBLICAN for anything...I would rather eat rat poison! :angry:
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Bill
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This is the biggest load of crap I've read all week!

Let me ask you this,
Does the media and the general population owe Michael Jackson an apology?
Do we owe OJ Simpson an apology?

Both of these people were found not guilty by a jury of their peers, yet they are still treated as if they are guilty. Why? If you're crying about poor old Karl Rove, why are you defending Simpson and Jackson as well? The best thing you can say about Rove is that he has not been charged.

Now you might well say that Simpson was found liable ina civil trial. If so, I would remind you that a civil trial has different standards of proof. In a civil trial, you only have to be found liable on the basis of probability not beyond reasonable doubt.

I would admit that it can't be proven that Rove is responsible beyond reasonable doubt, but on the balance of probabilities he has got his hands all over it. The article neglects to mention that Wilson and Plame have indeed taken out a civil suit against Rove.


Fab, a question: If you're so upset about the grave injustice perpetrated against poor ol' Karl Rove, why were you not demanding apologies for Michael Jackson when he was found not guilty? :P
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audrey
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i am not sure if not charged is the same as not guilty.... i have been guilty of alot of things and never charged for them



read the whole libby trial, they are all guilty as far as i am concerned
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Bill
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Not charged means there isn't enough evidence to make a conviction likely. As Beatlechick said, he hasn't been absolved of anything. If he were innocent, he would be demanding his day in court to prove his innocence. He's a smart enough political operator to know what benefit that would be to his cause. Instead, out comes another sacrificial lamb.

I always thought Armitage was a good egg. I guess even I can be wrong about Republicans. :P But does this mean that the administration did NOT deliberately blow the cover of a CIA agent for the sake of a political vendetta? No, it does not. The suggestion that this changes anything about the slimey underhand way in which the Republicans operate, is complete bunk.
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fab4fan
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I am saddened today to see how stubborn and close-minded some of my friends are. (Hello pot, kettle. :lol: ) Perhaps this story from that vaunted right wing source, CBS News, might help open some minds. If your minds were parachutes,
SPLAT!


Armitage On CIA Leak: 'I Screwed Up'
CBS Exclusive: Interview With Man Who 'Outed' CIA Agent Valerie Plame

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7, 2006
(CBS) In an exclusive interview with CBS News national security correspondent David Martin, Richard Armitage, once the No. 2 diplomat at the State Department, couldn't be any blunter.

"Oh I feel terrible. Every day, I think I let down the president. I let down the Secretary of State. I let down my department, my family and I also let down Mr. and Mrs. Wilson," he says.

When asked if he feels he owes the Wilsons an apology, he says, "I think I've just done it."

In July 2003, Armitage told columnist Robert Novak that Ambassador Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, and Novak mentioned it in a column. It's a crime to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover CIA officer. But Armitage didn't yet realize what he had done.

So, what exactly did he tell Novak?

"At the end of a wide-ranging interview he asked me, 'Why did the CIA send Ambassador (Wilson) to Africa?' I said I didn't know, but that she worked out at the agency," Armitage says.

Armitage says he told Novak because it was "just an offhand question." "I didn't put any big import on it and I just answered and it was the last question we had," he says.

Armitage adds that while the document was classified, "it doesn't mean that every sentence in the document is classified.

"I had never seen a covered agent's name in any memo in, I think, 28 years of government," he says.

He adds that he thinks he referred to Wilson's wife as such, or possibly as "Mrs. Wilson." He never referred to her as Valerie Plame, he adds.

"I didn't know the woman's name was Plame. I didn't know she was an operative," he says.

He says he was reading Novak's newspaper column again, on Oct. 1, 2003, and "he said he was told by a non-partisan gun slinger."

"I almost immediately called Secretary Powell and said, 'I'm sure that was me,'" Armitage says.

Armitage immediately met with FBI agents investigating the leak.

"I told them that I was the inadvertent leak," Armitage says. He didn't get a lawyer, however.

"First of all, I felt so terrible about what I'd done that I felt I deserved whatever was coming to me. And secondarily, I didn't need an attorney to tell me to tell the truth. I as already doing that," Armitage explains. "I was not intentionally outing anybody. As I say, I have tremendous respect for Ambassador. Wilson's African credentials. I didn't know anything about his wife and made an offhand comment. I didn't try to out anybody."

That was nearly three years ago, but the political firestorm over who leaked Valerie Plame's identity continued to burn as Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald began hauling White House officials and journalists before a grand jury.

Armitage says he didn't come forward because "the special counsel, once he was appointed, asked me not to discuss this and I honored his request."

"I thought every day about how I'd screwed up," he adds.

Armitage never did tell the president, but he's talking now because Fitzgerald told him he could.
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Bill
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Save my pathologically closed mind by answering a few questions that weren't asked:

If it's so simple, why has it taken this long to come out?
Why did the White House cover it up for so long?
Why did they let it do so much damage to the administration before explaining themselves?
Why is Scooter Libby under indictment?
Why isn't Robert Novak in jail?
Whither Plame's suit against Rove?

Why aren't you thanking the left for demanding justice instead of letting the White House sweep it all under the carpet?

And why aren't you dancing around proclaiming Michael Jackson's innocence? :P
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fab4fan
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Bill
Sep 7 2006, 11:21 PM
Save my pathologically closed mind by answering a few questions that weren't asked:

If it's so simple, why has it taken this long to come out?
Ask the US Attorney Fitzgerald.
Why did the White House cover it up for so long?
Really Bill, did you read either story. Armitage covered it up. Since there was an investigation Fitzgerald told him to keep his mouth shut. Standard operating procedure here in the States. Bush found out the truth when Armitage talked last week. Armitage apologized to him too.
Why did they let it do so much damage to the administration before explaining themselves?
Again, ask Fitzgerald. Just like Ken Starr of Clinton impeachment fame, my guess is he was hunting bigger game.
Why is Scooter Libby under indictment?
For lying to the Grand jury. Idiot. (Him NOT you.)
Why isn't Robert Novak in jail?
Because Valerie Plame hadn't done anything covert for over the 5 year limit on her being classified as a secret agent. That's why Armitage won't be going to jail either.
Whither Plame's suit against Rove?
I don't know but me thinks she won't get far with it.

Why aren't you thanking the left for demanding justice instead of letting the White House sweep it all under the carpet?
Thanks left, more of my tax dollars wasted on a wild goose chase.

And why aren't you dancing around proclaiming Michael Jackson's innocence?  :P
Haven't given a rat's ass about MJ since 'Off the Wall.' :P RBAY


Bill,
This was a Democratic Party ploy to somehow nail the White House. It has blown up in their faces. The part that really gets to me is it was clear within a couple of weeks that no crime was committed per Plames' status as a former secret agent. (as per the 5 year definition.) Sorry I goaded you about not reading either story, you're usually so astute that I assume you know the intracacies of the Special Prosecutor's role. Hell, most Americans don't have a clue. Sorry mate.
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Bill
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Armitage's loyalties were to Fitzgerald before the President? And since when has this administration cared about standard operating procedure? Interestingly, this story broke on the same day that bush admitted the stories about secret prisons are true. Coincidence?

Why would Libby lie to the grand jury if it were all this simple? And why did Rove had to revisit the grand jury several times after he "remembered" more information?

If you're concerned about wasting your tax dollars - a right and worthy concern - how do you feel about a $9billion that's gone missing in Iraq? Not mis-spent, not wasted, just plain gone. I ask because the inference in your comment is that keeping check on the government is a waste of money. Did you feel the same way about the Starr report? Do you feel the same way about the 9 billion in Iraq? I'm just trying to figure out if you object to wasting taxpayer dollars per se, or just when it's done in a way that embarrasses the administration. ;)

Finally, can I assume from you last comment, that this is all about partisan cheering and that you don't give a rat's ass about injustice in general? Surely if I owe Karl Rove an apology, then I also owe Jackson an apology - especially since Jackson was acquitted, don't you think? ;)


Edit:
Oh, goad me all you like mate! :D
Working a technicality about the five year rule is utterly cowardly. In principle, outing an agent, even if they haven't been operative undercover for five years, can still jeopardise active operations, to say nothing of Plame's own life. How is it that they NYT are traitors for reporting on operations that Bush himself has crowed about, but there's no crime in revealing the identity of an undercover for the sake of a political vendetta? I wish the Bushies would keep their arguments consistent. ;)
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fab4fan
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That was nothing but a lot of misdirection.

Plain and simple, Karl Rove did not orchestrate a White House operation to discredit Joe Wilson.

And what's the fascination with Wacko Jacko? Didn't you assume him innocent until proven guilty?
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Bill
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In all honesty, no, I didn't. And I don't think he is now. Do you? I mention it because, unless I'm mistaken, this discussion seems to be about prejudice.

And since you mention misdirection, let's talk about that.

Let me see if I've got this straight - I'm not being a smartarse, I really want to be sure....
The big bad lefties all thought that Karl Rove had deliberately orchestrated an act of near-treason in a political vendetta, when in actual fact (according to this week's story) the then deputy secretary of state shot his mouth off without realising what he was doing.

Is that right?
If so, how is that a good thing? How far through the looking glass are we if incompetence equals innocence?
In any case, this news does not mean that Rove didn't orchestrate it. We're all aware of how his whispering campaigns work. Let he who lives by the character smear die by the character smear.

Until then, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the new Republican slogan for the mid-term elections,
WE'RE NOT EVIL, JUST STUPID

Alright, that last bit was smartarse. :D
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mozart8mytoe
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I agree completely that the press wanted Karl Rove to be guilty and that far too much of my tax dollars were spent on this issue. However, if Mr Rove is owed an apology, there are many many people ahead of him in line. The press believes in sales above truth, regardless of politics. And if the Democratic Party must apologize for wasting my money on this then the Republican Party must certainly apologize for Ken Starr wasting even more of my money. Was Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation a political vendetta? Probably. In time we will know more. Was Ken Starr's investigation a political vendetta? Absolutely.

I can see Bill's point about comparing this with Jackson and Simpson, but I think comparing it to President Clinton is better. He was acquitted by none other than the United States Senate and yet the Republican Party will forever label him as guilty. Despite his acquittal, this will always be Clinton's Chappaquiddick (although Senator Kennedy actually was convicted).

Of course, they were both guilty, but then Mr Rove might be also for all we know. If Democrats owe Mr Rove an apology because he will never be indicted, then Republicans owe President Clinton an apology. Fair might not be a good sound bite, but it is fair.
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Sep 8 2006, 02:46 AM
I would NEVER apologise to a REPUBLICAN for anything...I would rather eat rat poison! :angry:

Another hate-filled democrat. :rolleyes:
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fab4fan
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Okay, asking for an apology is over the top. Just repeating the first story's authors closing line. At least some truth has been exposed, spin it as you must smart guy. :P

(should the possesive have been on author in that sentence?)
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ogoble
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I Love Karl Rove :D
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maccascruff
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When Ken Starr and the Republicans apologize for the personal vendetta against Clinton, I will apologize to Karl Rove.

I also think Robert Novak should be in jail for outing Valerie Plame. He put her life and that of her family in danger.
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Bill
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mozart8mytoe
Sep 8 2006, 06:28 PM
The press believes in sales above truth, regardless of politics. 

YES! Someone who gets it!

mozart8mytoe
Sep 8 2006, 06:28 PM
I think comparing it to President Clinton is better.

I didn't dare!

mozart8mytoe
Sep 8 2006, 06:28 PM
Despite his acquittal, this will always be Clinton's Chappaquiddick (although Senator Kennedy actually was convicted). 


And nobody died when Clinton lied.
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fab4fan
Sep 8 2006, 12:18 PM
Okay, asking for an apology is over the top.

And never going to happen. We are at a far too divisive stage right now. Cable talk shows and internet blogs have replaced friendly discourse with hostile vitriol. Apparently we value high ratings above sincere conversation.

fab4fan
Sep 8 2006, 12:18 PM
(should the possesive have been on author in that sentence?)

Both.

"Just repeating the first story's author's closing line".

To avoid cringing syntax, you could have written, "Just repeating the closing line of the first story" or "Just repeating the original author’s closing line".

Bill
Sep 8 2006, 03:15 PM
YES! Someone who gets it!

I have been saying this for years.

As my good buddy, Thomas Jefferson said, "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle."
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maccascruff
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Bill
Sep 8 2006, 09:15 AM
mozart8mytoe
Sep 8 2006, 06:28 PM
Despite his acquittal, this will always be Clinton's Chappaquiddick (although Senator Kennedy actually was convicted). 


And nobody died when Clinton lied.

And over 2600 US soldiers have died because of Bush's lies. :angry:
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maccascruff
Sep 11 2006, 02:49 PM
Bill
Sep 8 2006, 09:15 AM
mozart8mytoe
Sep 8 2006, 06:28 PM
Despite his acquittal, this will always be Clinton's Chappaquiddick (although Senator Kennedy actually was convicted). 


And nobody died when Clinton lied.

And over 2600 US soldiers have died because of Bush's lies. :angry:

Yes, after all is said and done, this is the tragic bottom line.
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fab4fan
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Cute saying.

Truth is 2600 servicemen have died so you don't have to wear a burka. And so that your fingers don't get chopped off for using a computer (silly helpless women.) And so that your eyes don't get plucked out for looking at my handsome mug over on the left. (okay, that last line was an exaggeration. :P )

Get a clue.
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Bill
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Who was forcing our friends here to wear a burka Fab?

Come to think of it, who was forcing women to wear burkas in Iraq? Answer: no-one! Not until the "liberators" rolled in and allowed the extremists fundamentalists to take over and shoot people for wearing tennis shorts and force people to close felafel houses because they didn't have felafel in Mohammad's time. They didn't have kalashnikovs back then either, but no-one has yet made that argument while one was pointed at them.

Please get your timelines right. The rise of fundamentalist fascism in Iraq has come since the "liberation" of what was a secular society.

Get, as you say, a clue. :P
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beatlechick
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fab4fan
Sep 11 2006, 08:46 PM
Cute saying.

Truth is 2600 servicemen have died so you don't have to wear a burka. And so that your fingers don't get chopped off for using a computer (silly helpless women.) And so that your eyes don't get plucked out for looking at my handsome mug over on the left. (okay, that last line was an exaggeration. :P )

Get a clue.

We have a clue. Where is yours? A line from a movie about JFK, one of the best lines in the movie (I think the movie was JFK), the fish stinks from the head down. Very appropos here. Part of that fish is Karl Rove. I owe him no apology. We would not turn into muslim male dominated society like that. We women are to damned smart for that to happen. The hands that rock the cradle are the hands that rule the world. We just let you men think you have the upperhand than we go in for the kill, we rear children!
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Bill
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It's a good point that the subtext in the comment is that all you helpless womenfolk are depending on idiotic men like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to defend you from an imaginary threat.
Not cool.
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beatlechick
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Bill
Sep 7 2006, 11:21 PM
Save my pathologically closed mind by answering a few questions that weren't asked:

Why isn't Robert Novak in jail?
Because Valerie Plame hadn't done anything covert for over the 5 year limit on her being classified as a secret agent. That's why Armitage won't be going to jail either.
Whither Plame's suit against Rove?
I don't know but me thinks she won't get far with it.


Bill,
This was a Democratic Party ploy to somehow nail the White House. It has blown up in their faces. The part that really gets to me is it was clear within a couple of weeks that no crime was committed per Plames' status as a former secret agent. (as per the 5 year definition.) Sorry I goaded you about not reading either story, you're usually so astute that I assume you know the intracacies of the Special Prosecutor's role. Hell, most Americans don't have a clue. Sorry mate.

A direct quote and something that I heard about last week. Now who doesn't have a clue?

Quote:
 
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What Valerie Plame Really Did at the CIA David Corn
Wed Sep 6, 12:00 AM ET



The Nation -- In the spring of 2002 Dick Cheney made one of his periodic trips to CIA headquarters. Officers and analysts were summoned to brief him on Iraq. Paramilitary specialists updated the Vice President on an extensive covert action program in motion that was designed to pave the way to a US invasion. Cheney questioned analysts about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. How could they be used against US troops? Which Iraqi units had chemical and biological weapons? He was not seeking information on whether Saddam posed a threat because he possessed such weapons. His queries, according to a CIA officer at the briefing, were pegged to the assumptions that Iraq had these weapons and would be invaded--as if a decision had been made.

Though Cheney was already looking toward war, the officers of the agency's Joint Task Force on Iraq--part of the Counterproliferation Division of the agency's clandestine Directorate of Operations--were frantically toiling away in the basement, mounting espionage operations to gather information on the WMD programs Iraq might have. The JTFI was trying to find evidence that would back up the White House's assertion that Iraq was a WMD danger. Its chief of operations was a career undercover officer named Valerie Wilson.

Her specific position at the CIA is revealed for the first time in a new book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, by the author of this article and Newsweek's Michael Isikoff. The book chronicles the inside battles within the CIA, the White House, the State Department and Congress during the run-up to the war. Its account of Wilson's CIA career is mainly based on interviews with confidential CIA sources.

In July 2003--four months after the invasion of Iraq--Wilson would be outed as a CIA "operative on weapons of mass destruction" in a column by conservative journalist Robert Novak, who would cite two "senior administration officials" as his sources. (As Hubris discloses, one was Richard Armitage, the number-two at the State Department; Karl Rove, Bush's chief strategist, was the other. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, also talked to two reporters about her.) Novak revealed her CIA identity--using her maiden name, Valerie Plame--in the midst of the controversy ignited by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, her husband, who had written a New York Times op-ed accusing the Bush Administration of having "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

The Novak column triggered a scandal and a criminal investigation. At issue was whether Novak's sources had violated a little-known law that makes it a federal crime for a government official to disclose identifying information about a covert US officer (if that official knew the officer was undercover). A key question was, what did Valerie Wilson do at the CIA? Was she truly undercover? In a subsequent column, Novak reported that she was "an analyst, not in covert operations." White House press secretary Scott McClellan suggested that her employment at the CIA was no secret. Jonah Goldberg of National Review claimed, "Wilson's wife is a desk jockey and much of the Washington cocktail circuit knew that already."


Valerie Wilson was no analyst or paper-pusher. She was an operations officer working on a top priority of the Bush Administration. Armitage, Rove and Libby had revealed information about a CIA officer who had searched for proof of the President's case. In doing so, they harmed her career and put at risk operations she had worked on and foreign agents and sources she had handled.

Another issue was whether Valerie Wilson had sent her husband to Niger to check out an intelligence report that Iraq had sought uranium there. Hubris contains new information undermining the charge that she arranged this trip. In an interview with the authors, Douglas Rohn, a State Department officer who wrote a crucial memo related to the trip, acknowledges he may have inadvertently created a misimpression that her involvement was more significant than it had been.
Valerie Plame was recruited into the CIA in 1985, straight out of Pennsylvania State University. After two years of training to be a covert case officer, she served a stint on the Greece desk, according to Fred Rustmann, a former CIA official who supervised her then. Next she was posted to Athens and posed as a State Department employee. Her job was to spot and recruit agents for the agency. In the early 1990s, she became what's known as a nonofficial cover officer. NOCs are the most clandestine of the CIA's frontline officers. They do not pretend to work for the US government; they do not have the protection of diplomatic immunity. They might claim to be a businessperson. She told people she was with an energy firm. Her main mission remained the same: to gather agents for the CIA.

In 1997 she returned to CIA headquarters and joined the Counterproliferation Division. (About this time, she moved in with Joseph Wilson; they later married.) She was eventually given a choice: North Korea or Iraq. She selected the latter. Come the spring of 2001, she was in the CPD's modest Iraq branch. But that summer--before 9/11--word came down from the brass: We're ramping up on Iraq. Her unit was expanded and renamed the Joint Task Force on Iraq. Within months of 9/11, the JTFI grew to fifty or so employees. Valerie Wilson was placed in charge of its operations group.

There was great pressure on the JTFI to deliver. Its primary target was Iraqi scientists. JTFI officers, under Wilson's supervision, tracked down relatives, students and associates of Iraqi scientists--in America and abroad--looking for potential sources. They encouraged Iraqi émigrés to visit Iraq and put questions to relatives of interest to the CIA. The JTFI was also handling walk-ins around the world. Increasingly, Iraqi defectors were showing up at Western embassies claiming they had information on Saddam's WMDs. JTFI officers traveled throughout the world to debrief them. Often it would take a JTFI officer only a few minutes to conclude someone was pulling a con. Yet every lead had to be checked.

"We knew nothing about what was going on in Iraq," a CIA official recalled. "We were way behind the eight ball. We had to look under every rock." Wilson, too, occasionally flew overseas to monitor operations. She also went to Jordan to work with Jordanian intelligence officials who had intercepted a shipment of aluminum tubes heading to Iraq that CIA analysts were claiming--wrongly--were for a nuclear weapons program. (The analysts rolled over the government's top nuclear experts, who had concluded the tubes were not destined for a nuclear program.)

The JTFI found nothing. The few scientists it managed to reach insisted Saddam had no WMD programs. Task force officers sent reports detailing the denials into the CIA bureaucracy. The defectors were duds--fabricators and embellishers. (JTFI officials came to suspect that some had been sent their way by Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, an exile group that desired a US invasion of Iraq.) The results were frustrating for the officers. Were they not doing their job well enough--or did Saddam not have an arsenal of unconventional weapons? Valerie Wilson and other JTFI officers were almost too overwhelmed to consider the possibility that their small number of operations was, in a way, coming up with the correct answer: There was no intelligence to find on Saddam's WMDs because the weapons did not exist. Still, she and her colleagues kept looking. (She also assisted operations involving Iran and WMDs.)

When the war started in March 2003, JTFI officers were disappointed. "I felt like we ran out of time," one CIA officer recalled. "The war came so suddenly. We didn't have enough information to challenge the assumption that there were WMDs.... How do you know it's a dry well? That Saddam was constrained. Given more time, we could have worked through the issue.... From 9/11 to the war--eighteen months--that was not enough time to get a good answer to this important question."

When the Novak column ran, Valerie Wilson was in the process of changing her clandestine status from NOC to official cover, as she prepared for a new job in personnel management. Her aim, she told colleagues, was to put in time as an administrator--to rise up a notch or two--and then return to secret operations. But with her cover blown, she could never be undercover again. Moreover, she would now be pulled into the partisan warfare of Washington. As a CIA employee still sworn to secrecy, she wasn't able to explain publicly that she had spent nearly two years searching for evidence to support the Administration's justification for war and had come up empty.

Valerie Wilson left the CIA at the end of 2005. In July she and her husband filed a civil lawsuit against Cheney, Rove and Libby, alleging they had conspired to "discredit, punish and seek revenge against" the Wilsons. She is also writing a memoir. Her next battle may be with the agency--over how much of her story the CIA will allow the outed spy to tell.

For more information about Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, go to Amazon.com and Corn's blog at www.davidcorn.com.



Now about the intricacies you were talking about?
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