Scooter Libby's New Nickname: Benedict Arnold
The NYT, whitewashing the outing of Valerie Plame as if blowing a CIA agent's cover were nothing more than a faux pas, just reported that: “The Wilson affair is not Watergate, and Mr. Libby's alleged misdeed may seem small potatoes compared with the work of the Nixon-era White House 'plumbers.'” Really!
To what foolish person would outing secret agents be “small potatoes?” Didn’t the author of this line ever read The Hardy Boys, or Nancy Drew, or 007 stories? Get a clue! Secret agents have friends all over the world whose covers are compromised unto the point of exposure and death. Maybe nobody gets killed over secrets at the NYT, but it’s not uncommon to wake up dead in a world full of “nuclear proliferators” like General Musharraff, Kim Jong Il, the Iranian Ayatollahs, the Israeli nuke-wielders, and various and sundry Rumanians, Albanians, Bulgarians, and other freebooters with loose protons. It happens all the time, and concealing this fact is just as dirty as outing Valerie Plame. For shame, shame, shame, the NYT is lying again.
Let’s put it in simple terms. “Scooter” Libby is a traitor. When I was a kid, everybody learned that the worst thing you could be was a Benedict Arnold. We had a special day in history class just to dig into his loathesome memory. The man who would have sold out the American Revolution. A traitor. Scum. The whole schoolroom would fill up with righteous loathing when we contemplated his crime.
Then of course there’s Judas Iscariot. Not a sympathetic figure, selling out the Savior for thirty silver coins. Of course, the heat was on then, everybody was out looking for Jesus. If Judas hadn’t sold him out, one of the other thirteen would have. That’s what Judas said to himself, no doubt, but he couldn’t hack the guilt. Rumor says he hanged himself, but maybe the Romans did that to him as an easy way to recover the bribe money.
Oh surely I’m going too far. Surely this is just a little teensy weensy disclosure that didn’t mean anything. CIA agents walk all over Washington DC and nobody cares. Don’t blow it out of proportion.
Well you can’t have it both ways, guys. Either security is real, and secrets must be kept, and the Dept of Homeland Security and the CIA have a real mission, or it’s all a pile of horseshit, and secrets are just what you use to conceal your shenanigans. And the rule is, you have to decide before the shit hits the fan. The Bushies and Scooter decided to make all serious with the secrecy rules, so now they have to live by serious secrecy rules. They want to make big gestures in Washington DC, line themselves up next to our national heroes, and rule from the big, high place. Well, guess what, it’s a long way down when you fall.
But the New York Times, busy dumbing down our morality to its own Bloombergian level of greasy pragmatism, can’t see Benedict Arnold. They see a bureaucratic slipup, a Beltway fumble that won’t play in Peoria. Just call it a technical violation, and the people won’t notice. Don’t bet on it. While the NYT is trying to soak their own roasted ass in a bucket of ice water by glorifying a slezoid like Judith Miller who says she “can't remember” who told her Valerie Plame was a CIA agent, the people in Peoria are about ready to hurl. Miller and the New York Times are also traitors.
Remember that Judith Miller was the irresponsible NYT journalist who laundered all of the neocon lies that launched the nation into the firepit of Iraq without reason or reflection. She has betrayed every soldier, at last count over two-thousand, who has died there “fighting terrorism,” a threat that was entirely in the minds of the oil-addled Bushies. She supported all of the pre-invasion attacks on Iraq, bolstered the lie that Hussein had some involvement in the WTC attack, and in the absence of any real weapons of mass destruction, concocted the “mushroom cloud” vision in the public mind that short-circuited political decision making and handed the Chief the Hammer of Thor, the Lightning Bolt of Odin, the Tomahawk missile to bury up to the hilt in the soft body of a weak Iraq.
Miller rubbed elbows with the Iraqi expatriates in London, the Challabis, both father and son, cut from the same corrupt mold, and made them credible informants. She made the mad fantasies of Paul Wolfowitz and his Project for the New American Century seem like a noble vision. She spun the lies about the danger posed by Saddam Hussein together with the neocon nostalgia for war and imagined that the happy faces of our our sons, jutting from the tops of their tanks and Humvees, would be draped in lotus blossoms by the grateful daughters of laughing Iraqi merchants. Traditional facial veils would be thrown aside, democracy would blossom as quickly as the Berlin wall fell. Walt Disney would return from the dead to film the whole grand spectacle.
Traitors all! When someone leads you into a trap and your men are killed, you hang them from the highest tree you can find! When your children are killed for the lies of greedy people who enticed them to their deaths, you say death is too good for them! Small potatoes. I’d like to take just one sack of small potatoes and shove them up the New York Times’ nonexistent, unfeeling, inhuman asshole. Maybe that would stop up the flow of repugnant bullshit.
[quote="Larry Johnson posting on TPMCafe.com“]
Correcting the Record on Valerie Plame
(Copy of my testimony to be presented on Friday, 22 July 2005 before a joint session of Congressional Democrats.)
I submit this statement to the Congress in an effort to correct a malicious and disingenuous smear campaign that has been executed against a friend and former colleague, Valerie (Plame) Wilson. Neither Valerie, nor her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson has asked me to do anything on their behalf. I am speaking up because I was raised to stop bullies. In the case of Valerie Plame she is facing a gang of bullies that is being directed by the Republican National Committee.
I entered on duty at the CIA in September 1985 as a member of the Career Trainee Program. Senator Orin Hatch had written a letter of recommendation on my behalf and I believe that helped open the doors to me at the CIA. From the first day all members of my training class were undercover. In other words, we had to lie to our family and friends about where we worked. We could only tell those who had an absolute need to know where we worked. In my case, I told my wife. Most of us were given official cover, which means that on paper we worked for some other U.S. Government Agency. People with official cover enjoy the benefits of an official passport, usually 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. It accords the bearer the protections of the Geneva Convention.
Valerie Plame was a classmate of mine from the day she started with the CIA. At the time I only knew her as Valerie P. Even though all of us in the training class held Top Secret Clearances, we were asked to limit our knowledge of our other classmates to the first initial of their last name. So, Larry J. knew Val P. rather than Valerie Plame. Her name did not become a part of my consciousness until her cover was betrayed by the Government officials who gave columnist Robert Novak her true name.
Although Val started off with official cover, she later joined a select group of intelligence officers a few years later when she became a NOC, i.e. a Non-Official Cover officer. That meant she agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport. She was using cover, which we now know because of the leak to Robert Novak, of the consulting firm Brewster-Jennings. When she traveled overseas she did not use or have an official passport. If she had been caught engaged in espionage activities while traveling overseas without the black passport she could have been executed.
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. Some reports, such as one in the Washington Times that Valerie Plame's supervisor at the CIA, Fred Rustman, said she told friends and family she worked at the CIA and that her cover was light. These claims are not true. Rustman, who supervised Val in one of her earliest assignments, left the CIA in 1990 and did not stay in social contact with Valerie. His knowledge of Val's cover is dated. He does not know what she has done during the past 15 years.
Val only told those with a need to know about her status in order to safeguard her cover, not compromise it. Val has never been a flamboyant, insecure person who felt the need to tell people what her ”real“ job was. She was content with being known as an energy consultant married to Joe Wilson and the mother of twins. Despite the repeated claims of representatives for the Republican National Committee, the Wilson's neighbors did not know where Valerie really worked until Novak's op-ed appeared.
I would note that not a single member of our training class has come forward to denounce Valerie or question her bona fides. To the contrary, those we have talked to have endorsed what those of us who have left the CIA are doing to defend her reputation and honor.
As noted in the joint letter submitted to Congressional leaders earlier this week, the RNC is repeating the lie that Valerie was nothing more than a glorified desk jockey and could not possibly have any cover worth protecting. To those such as Victoria Toensing, Representative Peter King, P. J. O'Rourke, and Representative Roy Blunt I can only say one thing--you are wrong. I am stunned that some political leaders have such ignorance about a matter so basic to the national security structure of this nation.
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.
Another false claim is that Valerie sent her husband on the mission to Niger. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee Report issued in July 2004, it is clear that the Vice President himself requested that the CIA provide its views on a Defense Intelligence Agency report that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from Niger. The Vice President's request was relayed through the CIA bureaucracy to the Director of the Counter Proliferation Division at the CIA. Valerie worked for a branch in that Division.
The Senate Intelligence Report is frequently cited by Republican partisans as ”proof“ that Valerie sent her husband to Niger because she sent a memo describing her husband's qualifications to the Deputy Division Chief. Several news personalities, such as Chris Matthews and Bill O'Reilly continue to repeat this nonsense as proof. What the Senate Intelligence Committee does not include in the report is the fact that Valerie's boss had asked her to write a memo outlining her husband's qualifications for the job. She did what any good employee does; she gave her boss what he asked for.
The decision to send Joe Wilson on the mission to Niger was made by Valerie's bosses. She did not have the authority to sign travel vouchers, issue travel orders, or expend one dime of U.S. taxpayer dollars on her own. Yet, she has been singled out by the Republican National Committee and its partisans as a legitimate target of attack. It was Karl Rove who told Chris Matthews, ”Wilson's wife is fair game“.
What makes the unjustified and inappropriate attacks on Valerie Plame and her reputation so unfair is that there was no Administration policy position stipulating that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium in February 2002. That issue was still up in the air and, as noted by SSCI, Vice President Cheney himself asked for more information.
At the end of the day we are left with these facts. We went to war in Iraq on the premise that Saddam was reacquiring weapons of mass destruction. Joe Wilson was sent on a mission to Niger in response to a request initiated by the Vice President. Joe Wilson supplied information to the CIA that supported other reports debunking the claim that Saddam was trying to buy yellow cake uranium from Niger. When Joe went public with his information, which had been corroborated by the CIA in April 2003, the response from the White House was to call him a liar and spread the name of his wife around.
We sit here more than two years later and the storm of invective and smear against Ambassador Wilson and his wife, Valerie, continues. I voted for George Bush in November of 2000 because I wanted a President who knew what the meaning of ”is“ was. I was tired of political operatives who spent endless hours on cable news channels parsing words. I was promised a President who would bring a new tone and new ethical standards to Washington.
So where are we? The President has flip flopped and backed away from his promise to fire anyone at the White House implicated in a leak. We now know from press reports that at least Karl Rove and Scooter Libby are implicated in these leaks. Instead of a President concerned first and foremost with protecting this country and the intelligence officers who serve it, we are confronted with a President who is willing to sit by while political operatives savage the reputations of good Americans like Valerie and Joe Wilson. This is wrong.
Without firm action by President Bush to return to those principles he promised to follow when he came to Washington, I fear our political debate in this country will degenerate into an argument about what the meaning of ”leak" is. We deserve people who work in the White House who are committed to protecting classified information, telling the truth to the American people, and living by example the idea that a country at war with Islamic extremists cannot expend its efforts attacking other American citizens who simply tried to tell the truth. [/quote]
[quote="Joseph C. Wilson, IV“]
July 15, 2004
The Honorable Pat Roberts
Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
The Honorable Jay Rockefeller
Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Dear Senator Roberts and Senator Rockefeller,
I read with great surprise and consternation the Niger portion of Senators Roberts, Bond and Hatch ”additional comments to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee's Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Assessment on Iraq. I am taking this opportunity to clarify some of the issues raised in these comments.
First conclusion: “The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee.”
That is not true. The conclusion is apparently based on one anodyne quote from a memo Valerie Plame, my wife sent to her superiors that says “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 I be sent on the trip. Indeed it is little more than a recitation of my contacts and bona fides. The conclusion is reinforced by comments in the body of the report that a CPD reports officer stated the “the former ambassador's wife `offered up his name'” (page 39) and a State Department Intelligence and Research officer 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, Valerie was not in the meeting at which the subject of my trip was raised. Neither was the CPD Reports officer. After having escorted me into the room, she departed the meeting to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. It was at that meeting where the question of my traveling to Niger was broached with me for the first time and came only after a thorough discussion of what the participants did and did not know about the subject. My bona fides justifying the invitation to the meeting were the trip I 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, it is my understanding that the Reports Officer has a different conclusion about Valerie's role than the one offered in the “additional comments”. I urge the committee to reinterview the officer and publicly publish his statement.
It is unfortunate that the report failed to include the CIA's position on this matter. If the staff had done so it would undoubtedly have been given the same evidence as provided to Newsday reporters Tim Phelps and Knut Royce in July, 2003. They reported on July 22 that:
“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.” (Newsday article Columnist blows CIA Agent's cover, dated July 22, 2003).
In fact, on July 13 of this year, David Ensor, the CNN correspondent, did call the CIA for a statement of its position and reported that a senior CIA official confirmed my account that Valerie did not propose me for the trip:
“'She did not propose me', he [Wilson] said--others at the CIA did so. A senior CIA official said that is his understanding too.'”
Second conclusion: “Rather that speaking publicly about his actual experiences during his inquiry of the Niger issue, the former ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press accounts and from his beliefs about how the Intelligence Community would have or should have handled the information he provided.”
This conclusion states that I told the committee staff that I “may have become confused about my own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that the names and dates on the documents were not correct.” At the time that I was asked that question, I was not afforded the opportunity to review the articles to which the staff was referring. I have now done so.
On March 7, 2003 the Director General of the IAEA reported to the United Nations Security Council that the documents that had been given to him were “not authentic”. His deputy, Jacques Baute, was even more direct, pointing out that the forgeries were so obvious that a quick Google search would have exposed their flaws. A State Department spokesman was quoted the next day as saying about the forgeries “We fell for it.” From that time on the details surrounding the documents became public knowledge and were widely reported. I was not the source of information regarding the forensic analysis of the documents in question; the IAEA was.
The first time I spoke publicly about the Niger issue was in response to the State Department's disclaimer. On CNN a few days later, in response to a question, I replied that I believed the US government knew more about the issue than the State Department spokesman had let on and that he had misspoken. I did not speak of my trip.
My first public statement was in my article of July 6 published in the New York Times, written only after it became apparent that the administration was not going to deal with the Niger question unless it was forced to. I wrote the article because I believed then, and I believe now, that it was important to correct the record on the statement in the President's State of the Union address which lent credence to the charge that Iraq was actively reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. I believed that the record should reflect the facts as the US government had known them for over a year. The contents of my article do not appear in the body of the report and is not quoted in the “additional comments.” In that article, I state clearly that “As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors - they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government - and were probably forged. (And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the charges.)”
The first time I actually saw what were represented as the documents was when Andrea Mitchell, the NBC correspondent handed them to me in an interview on July 21. I was not wearing my glasses and could not read them. I have to this day not read them. I would have absolutely no reason to claim to have done so. My mission was to look into whether such a transaction took place or could take place. It had not and could not. By definition that makes the documents bogus.
The text of the “additional comments” also asserts that “during Mr. Wilson's media blitz, he appeared on more than thirty television shows including entertainment venues. Time and again, Joe Wilson told anyone who would listen that the President had lied to the American people, that the Vice President had lied, and that he had ”debunked“ the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.”
My article in the New York Times makes clear that I attributed to myself “a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs.” After it became public that there were then Ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick's report and the report from a four star Marine Corps General, Carleton Fulford in the files of the U. S. government, I went to great lengths to point out that mine was but one of three reports on the subject. I never claimed to have “debunked” the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. I claimed only that the transaction described in the documents that turned out to be forgeries could not have and did not occur. I 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 my trip. The White House must have agreed. The day after my 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.”
I have been very careful to say that while I believe that the use of the sixteen words in the State of the Union address was a deliberate attempt to deceive the Congress of the United States, I do not know what role the President may have had other than he has accepted responsibility for the words he spoke. I have also said on many occasions that I believe the President has proven to be far more protective of his senior staff than they have been to him.
The “additional comments” also assert: “The Committee found that, for most analysts the former ambassador's report lent more credibility, not less, to the reported Niger-Iraq uranium deal.” In fact, the body of the Senate report suggests the exact opposite:
* In August, 2002, a CIA NESA report on Iraq's weapons of Mass Destruction capabilities did not include the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium information. (pg. 48)
In September, 2002, during coordination of a speech with an NSC staff member, the CIA analyst suggested the reference to Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium from Africa be removed. The CIA analyst said the NSC staff member said that would leave the British “flapping in the wind.” (pg. 50)
The uranium text was included in the body of the NIE but not in the key judgments. When someone suggested that the uranium information be included as another sign of reconstitution, the INR Iraq nuclear analyst spoke up and said the he did not agree with the uranium reporting and that INR would be including text indicating their disagreement in their footnote on nuclear reconstitution. The NIO said he did not recall anyone really supporting including the uranium issue as part of the judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, so he suggested that the uranium information did not need to be part of the key judgments. He told Committee staff he suggested that “We'll leave it in the paper for completeness. Nobody can say we didn't connect the dots. But we don't have to put that dot in the key judgments.” (pg. 53)
On October 2, 2002, the Deputy DCI testified before the SSCI. Senator Jon Kyl asked the Deputy DCI whether he had read the British White Paper and whether he disagreed with anything in the report. The Deputy DCI testified that “the one thing where I think they stretched a little bit beyond where we would stretch is on the points about where Iraq seeking uranium from various African locations. (pg.54)
On October 4, 2002 the NIO for Strategic and Nuclear Programs testified that ”there is some information on attempts ....there's a question about those attempts because of the control of the material in those countries...For us it's more the concern that they (Iraq) uranium in country now. (pg. 54)
On October 5, 2002, the ADDI said an Iraq nuclear analyst - he could not remember who - raised concerns about the sourcing and some of the facts of the Niger reporting, specifically that the control of the mines in Niger would have made it very difficult to get yellowcake to Iraq. (pg. 55)
Based on the analyst's comments, the ADDI faxed a memo to the Deputy National Security Advisor that said, “remove the sentence because the amount is in dispute and it is debatable whether it can be acquired from this source. We told Congress that the Brits have exaggerated this issue. Finally, the Iraqis already have 550 metric tons of uranium oxide in their inventory. (pg. 56)
On October 6, 2002, the DCI called the Deputy National Security Advisor directly to outline the CIA's concerns. The DCI testified to the SSCI on July 16, 2003, that he told the Deputy National Security Advisor that the ”President should not be a fact witness on this issue,“ because his analysts had told him the ”reporting was weak.“ (pg. 56)
On October 6, 2002, the CIA sent a second fax to the White House which said, ”more on why we recommend removing the sentence about procuring uranium oxide from Africa: Three points 1) the evidence is weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as the location of the uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine cited by the source is under the control of the French authorities. 2) the procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. And 3) we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them that the Africa story is overblown and telling them this in one of the two issues where we differed with the British.“ (Pg 56)
On March 8, 2003, the intelligence report on my trip was disseminated within the U.S. Government according the Senate report (pg. 43). Further, the Senate report states that ”in early March, the Vice President asked his morning briefer for an update on the Niger uranium issue.“ That update from the CIA ”also noted that the CIA would be debriefing a source who may have information related to the alleged sale on March 5.“ The report then states the ”DO officials also said they alerted WINPAC analysts when the report was being disseminated because they knew the high priority of the issue.“ The report notes that the CIA briefer did not brief the Vice President on the report. (Pg. 46)
It is clear from the body of the Senate report that the Intelligence Community, including the DCI himself, made several attempts to ensure that the President not become a ”fact witness“ on an allegation that was so weak. A thorough reading of the report substantiates the claim made in my opinion piece in the New York Times and in subsequent interviews I have given on the subject. The sixteen words should never have been in the State of the Union address as the White House now acknowledges.
I undertook this mission at the request of my government in response to a legitimate concern that Saddam Hussein was attempting to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program. This was a national security issue that has concerned me since I was the Deputy Chief of Mission in the U.S. Embassy in Iraq before and during the first Gulf War.
At the time of my trip I was in private business and had not offered my views publicly on the policy we should adopt towards Iraq. Indeed, throughout the debate in the runup to the war, I took the position that the U.S. be firm with Saddam Hussein on the question of weapons of mass destruction programs including backing tough diplomacy with the credible threat of force. In that debate I never mentioned my trip to Niger. I did not share the details of my trip until May, 2003, after the war was over, and then only when it became clear that the administration was not going to address the issue of the State of the Union statement.
It is essential that the errors and distortions in the additional comments be corrected for the public record. Nothing could be more important for the American people than to have an accurate picture of the events that led to the decision to bring the United States into war in Iraq. The Senate Intelligence Committee has an obligation to present to the American people the factual basis of that process. I hope that this letter is helpful in that effort. I look forward to your further ”additional comments."
Sincerely,
Joseph C. Wilson, IV
Washington, D.C[/quote]
Irving Lewis ”Scooter“ Libby had better watch his back. His former friends are about to throw him to the wolves. If last night's O'Reilly Factor is any indication, the right wing attack machine has figured out a way to tie Libby to Marc Rich, Oil-for-Food, Denise Rich and the Clinton Library. Wow! What an embarrassment of riches for the conservative grist mill!
Months ago I predicted that - should Hillary Clinton make a run for the White House - the Republicans will mount a Swift-Boat-like assault in an effort to smear her name via the financing for the Clinton Library. The stage was set for this the day the Clinton Library opened in November 2004. Last night FOX News Analyst Jim Pinkerton appeared on the O'Reilly Factor to ”report“ on Lewis Libby's connections to Mark Rich and the Clintons. Pinkerton, a long-time Republican who worked in the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations, is also a regular on FOX News Watch and a columnist for Newsday, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times (yes, folks, these liberal ”rags“ do feature prominent conservatives in their pages, contrary to what Bill O'Reilly would have you believe!).
In a masterpiece of innuendo, non sequitur and distortion, Pinkerton and O'Reilly began the demonization of Libby by associating his name with that hated, feared and reviled Democratic duo, Bill and Hillary Clinton. Pinkerton also tossed a little dirt in the direction of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, just for good measure.
O'Reilly started the segment by laying the groundwork for the hatchet job on Libby, saying ”Impact segment tonight, a little-known story about Lewis Libby, currently under indictment in the CIA exposure case. You may remember that on his last day in office, President Clinton pardoned the biggest tax cheat in U. S. history, Marc Rich, who fled to Switzerland to avoid prosecution. The pardon came after his ex-wife Denise Rich and her friend, Beth Dozoretz, donated big money to the Clinton Library. Both women took the Fifth Amendment when asked to testify about the case in front of Congress. Despite the pardon, Marc Rich chose not to return to the U. S. A. because of civil litigation against him and then, according to a U. N. investigation, became a broker for Saddam Hussein in the Oil-for-Food scandal. This is quite a guy, Marc Rich. Now, one of his many lawyers was none other than Lewis Libby. Wow! ... Talk about strange bedfellows!“
PINKERTON: Well, talk about reprehensible figures. Marc Rich was a U. S. citizen and not only was - is he all in the middle of the Oil-for-Food scandal, according to the Volcker Report, he also was allegedly trading with the ayatollahs of Iran during the hostage crisis when the Iranians were holding our embassy officials in prison there.
[COMMENT: ”Trading with the enemy“ - that's exactly what Iran-Contra was all about. Isn't Pinkerton being just a little bit naive here, excoriating Rich for trading with Iran and never once bringing up his fellow FOX News personality Oliver North's indictment for what amounts to the same crime at the same time?]
PINKERTON: We don't know all the facts, of course, because Rich skipped the country in 1983 with, of all people, Rudolph Giuliani chasing after him. So, I think it's worth noting that 'Scooter' Libby, as Marc Rich's lawyer, collected, according to Libby's own testimony, $2 million in legal fees for Marc Rich and, while Libby denies having anything to do with Clinton's mysterious pardon, Libby admitted before the Congress on January 22nd, 2001 that he called Rich to congratulate him on getting the pardon from Clinton. So when he was on the Bush-Cheney payroll inside the White House he calls this squirrelly ex-client of his to say: Hey, great work on gettin' that pardon.
O'REILLY: Now, the thing that has always fascinated me about this whole deal was that, when - the press really let it go. I mean, they didn't investigate the Marc Rich pardon, because when you have two women - Denise Rich and Beth Dodorhetz - go to Washington repeatedly to meet with President Clinton and then, I guess, millions of dollars, maybe - I don't have the exact figure - wind up from these two ladies into the Clinton Library and then you have a pardon of a guy that everybody knows - and everybody said there was no justification for this pardon, ever - nobody sticks up for it, even Clinton - then you have Congress calling Denise Rich and Dodorhetz down to testify and they take the Fifth.! And the press does nothing!
PINKERTON: Well, that's right. The press was kind of in the tank for Clinton, as we know, but it's also worth noting that the Bush-Cheney administration ...
O'REILLY: Nothing.
PINKERTON: Exactly. They could have investigated it.
O'REILLY (overtalks last 5 words): Mary Jo White ...
PINKERTON: Right.
O'REILLY: ... the U. S. Attorney in New York has a file about this case. I looked the woman in the eye in Colorado four years ago and said ”Are you going to investigate this case?“ The woman turned her back on me.
PINKERTON: Well, of course, one of Mary Jo White's deputies back then was Patrick Fitzgerald, who we all know about now.
O'REILLY: Yeah.
PINKERTON: I mean, anybody, anybody in the Bush administration could have said: Hey , let's investigate this a little bit ...
O'REILLY: Absolutely.
PINKERTON: ... and not only get ex-President Clinton under oath on this but also Senator Clinton [indecipherable]
O'REILLY: And Lewis Libby!
PINKERTON: And Lewis Libby!
O'REILLY: And Lewis Libby! Although he was under oath when he testified about this in front - as you pointed out - January 20th, 2001 [sic]- when he went up and had to answer questions. Now, I don't think people quite understand that this is commonplace in Washington, where you have Republican lawyers, out of office, workin' for Democrats and vice versa. It's a big, incestuous deal and let's make money and put politics aside. Correct?
PINKERTON: Exactly. All the big lawyers in town and they kind of have a, for lack of a better word, a cabal where they say ”We'll represent each other,“ and there's no sanction but I would say this, that Marc Rich is little better than just a mobster and for him to become - able to hire lawyers like this and then go into the White House, I mean, nobody would want an ex-John Gotti lawyer coming into the White House ...
O'REILLY: Yeah. That's a ...
PINKERTON: ... and why Rich ...
O'REILLY: That's a good point.
PINKERTON: Why Libby could do this for Bush is beyond me.
O'REILLY: I think Rich is worse than a mobster. I think he worked against his country. I think he's a traitor.
COMMENT
Poor Scooter. Facing 30 years on five counts and even his old buddies are turning on him. Guess those holiday invites won't be arriving in the mail anytime soon.
Wonder how long before he contacts Fitzgerald's office for a nice game of ”Let's Make a Deal"?
Updated 11-3-05 5:40 PM EST
Thanks to our reader Peter for pointing out a factual error. Pinkerton's column appears in the Los Angeles Times, not the New York Times. The post has been amended to correct this mistake.
MT
Reported by Marie Therese at November 3, 2005 04:18 PM [/quote]
To what foolish person would outing secret agents be “small potatoes?” Didn’t the author of this line ever read The Hardy Boys, or Nancy Drew, or 007 stories? Get a clue! Secret agents have friends all over the world whose covers are compromised unto the point of exposure and death. Maybe nobody gets killed over secrets at the NYT, but it’s not uncommon to wake up dead in a world full of “nuclear proliferators” like General Musharraff, Kim Jong Il, the Iranian Ayatollahs, the Israeli nuke-wielders, and various and sundry Rumanians, Albanians, Bulgarians, and other freebooters with loose protons. It happens all the time, and concealing this fact is just as dirty as outing Valerie Plame. For shame, shame, shame, the NYT is lying again.
Let’s put it in simple terms. “Scooter” Libby is a traitor. When I was a kid, everybody learned that the worst thing you could be was a Benedict Arnold. We had a special day in history class just to dig into his loathesome memory. The man who would have sold out the American Revolution. A traitor. Scum. The whole schoolroom would fill up with righteous loathing when we contemplated his crime.
Then of course there’s Judas Iscariot. Not a sympathetic figure, selling out the Savior for thirty silver coins. Of course, the heat was on then, everybody was out looking for Jesus. If Judas hadn’t sold him out, one of the other thirteen would have. That’s what Judas said to himself, no doubt, but he couldn’t hack the guilt. Rumor says he hanged himself, but maybe the Romans did that to him as an easy way to recover the bribe money.
Oh surely I’m going too far. Surely this is just a little teensy weensy disclosure that didn’t mean anything. CIA agents walk all over Washington DC and nobody cares. Don’t blow it out of proportion.
Well you can’t have it both ways, guys. Either security is real, and secrets must be kept, and the Dept of Homeland Security and the CIA have a real mission, or it’s all a pile of horseshit, and secrets are just what you use to conceal your shenanigans. And the rule is, you have to decide before the shit hits the fan. The Bushies and Scooter decided to make all serious with the secrecy rules, so now they have to live by serious secrecy rules. They want to make big gestures in Washington DC, line themselves up next to our national heroes, and rule from the big, high place. Well, guess what, it’s a long way down when you fall.
But the New York Times, busy dumbing down our morality to its own Bloombergian level of greasy pragmatism, can’t see Benedict Arnold. They see a bureaucratic slipup, a Beltway fumble that won’t play in Peoria. Just call it a technical violation, and the people won’t notice. Don’t bet on it. While the NYT is trying to soak their own roasted ass in a bucket of ice water by glorifying a slezoid like Judith Miller who says she “can't remember” who told her Valerie Plame was a CIA agent, the people in Peoria are about ready to hurl. Miller and the New York Times are also traitors.
Remember that Judith Miller was the irresponsible NYT journalist who laundered all of the neocon lies that launched the nation into the firepit of Iraq without reason or reflection. She has betrayed every soldier, at last count over two-thousand, who has died there “fighting terrorism,” a threat that was entirely in the minds of the oil-addled Bushies. She supported all of the pre-invasion attacks on Iraq, bolstered the lie that Hussein had some involvement in the WTC attack, and in the absence of any real weapons of mass destruction, concocted the “mushroom cloud” vision in the public mind that short-circuited political decision making and handed the Chief the Hammer of Thor, the Lightning Bolt of Odin, the Tomahawk missile to bury up to the hilt in the soft body of a weak Iraq.
Miller rubbed elbows with the Iraqi expatriates in London, the Challabis, both father and son, cut from the same corrupt mold, and made them credible informants. She made the mad fantasies of Paul Wolfowitz and his Project for the New American Century seem like a noble vision. She spun the lies about the danger posed by Saddam Hussein together with the neocon nostalgia for war and imagined that the happy faces of our our sons, jutting from the tops of their tanks and Humvees, would be draped in lotus blossoms by the grateful daughters of laughing Iraqi merchants. Traditional facial veils would be thrown aside, democracy would blossom as quickly as the Berlin wall fell. Walt Disney would return from the dead to film the whole grand spectacle.
Traitors all! When someone leads you into a trap and your men are killed, you hang them from the highest tree you can find! When your children are killed for the lies of greedy people who enticed them to their deaths, you say death is too good for them! Small potatoes. I’d like to take just one sack of small potatoes and shove them up the New York Times’ nonexistent, unfeeling, inhuman asshole. Maybe that would stop up the flow of repugnant bullshit.
Link to Full Text: U.S. v. Libby Indictment
You can find the full text of the Indictment of Mr. Libby at http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/, the Office of Special Counsel.Ex-CIA Agent Larry Johnson Sticks Up for Valerie Plame
A former CIA agent who knew Valerie Plame discusses the damage to the nation caused by the disclosure of her identity as an agent.[quote="Larry Johnson posting on TPMCafe.com“]
Correcting the Record on Valerie Plame
(Copy of my testimony to be presented on Friday, 22 July 2005 before a joint session of Congressional Democrats.)
I submit this statement to the Congress in an effort to correct a malicious and disingenuous smear campaign that has been executed against a friend and former colleague, Valerie (Plame) Wilson. Neither Valerie, nor her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson has asked me to do anything on their behalf. I am speaking up because I was raised to stop bullies. In the case of Valerie Plame she is facing a gang of bullies that is being directed by the Republican National Committee.
I entered on duty at the CIA in September 1985 as a member of the Career Trainee Program. Senator Orin Hatch had written a letter of recommendation on my behalf and I believe that helped open the doors to me at the CIA. From the first day all members of my training class were undercover. In other words, we had to lie to our family and friends about where we worked. We could only tell those who had an absolute need to know where we worked. In my case, I told my wife. Most of us were given official cover, which means that on paper we worked for some other U.S. Government Agency. People with official cover enjoy the benefits of an official passport, usually 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. It accords the bearer the protections of the Geneva Convention.
Valerie Plame was a classmate of mine from the day she started with the CIA. At the time I only knew her as Valerie P. Even though all of us in the training class held Top Secret Clearances, we were asked to limit our knowledge of our other classmates to the first initial of their last name. So, Larry J. knew Val P. rather than Valerie Plame. Her name did not become a part of my consciousness until her cover was betrayed by the Government officials who gave columnist Robert Novak her true name.
Although Val started off with official cover, she later joined a select group of intelligence officers a few years later when she became a NOC, i.e. a Non-Official Cover officer. That meant she agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport. She was using cover, which we now know because of the leak to Robert Novak, of the consulting firm Brewster-Jennings. When she traveled overseas she did not use or have an official passport. If she had been caught engaged in espionage activities while traveling overseas without the black passport she could have been executed.
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. Some reports, such as one in the Washington Times that Valerie Plame's supervisor at the CIA, Fred Rustman, said she told friends and family she worked at the CIA and that her cover was light. These claims are not true. Rustman, who supervised Val in one of her earliest assignments, left the CIA in 1990 and did not stay in social contact with Valerie. His knowledge of Val's cover is dated. He does not know what she has done during the past 15 years.
Val only told those with a need to know about her status in order to safeguard her cover, not compromise it. Val has never been a flamboyant, insecure person who felt the need to tell people what her ”real“ job was. She was content with being known as an energy consultant married to Joe Wilson and the mother of twins. Despite the repeated claims of representatives for the Republican National Committee, the Wilson's neighbors did not know where Valerie really worked until Novak's op-ed appeared.
I would note that not a single member of our training class has come forward to denounce Valerie or question her bona fides. To the contrary, those we have talked to have endorsed what those of us who have left the CIA are doing to defend her reputation and honor.
As noted in the joint letter submitted to Congressional leaders earlier this week, the RNC is repeating the lie that Valerie was nothing more than a glorified desk jockey and could not possibly have any cover worth protecting. To those such as Victoria Toensing, Representative Peter King, P. J. O'Rourke, and Representative Roy Blunt I can only say one thing--you are wrong. I am stunned that some political leaders have such ignorance about a matter so basic to the national security structure of this nation.
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.
Another false claim is that Valerie sent her husband on the mission to Niger. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee Report issued in July 2004, it is clear that the Vice President himself requested that the CIA provide its views on a Defense Intelligence Agency report that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from Niger. The Vice President's request was relayed through the CIA bureaucracy to the Director of the Counter Proliferation Division at the CIA. Valerie worked for a branch in that Division.
The Senate Intelligence Report is frequently cited by Republican partisans as ”proof“ that Valerie sent her husband to Niger because she sent a memo describing her husband's qualifications to the Deputy Division Chief. Several news personalities, such as Chris Matthews and Bill O'Reilly continue to repeat this nonsense as proof. What the Senate Intelligence Committee does not include in the report is the fact that Valerie's boss had asked her to write a memo outlining her husband's qualifications for the job. She did what any good employee does; she gave her boss what he asked for.
The decision to send Joe Wilson on the mission to Niger was made by Valerie's bosses. She did not have the authority to sign travel vouchers, issue travel orders, or expend one dime of U.S. taxpayer dollars on her own. Yet, she has been singled out by the Republican National Committee and its partisans as a legitimate target of attack. It was Karl Rove who told Chris Matthews, ”Wilson's wife is fair game“.
What makes the unjustified and inappropriate attacks on Valerie Plame and her reputation so unfair is that there was no Administration policy position stipulating that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium in February 2002. That issue was still up in the air and, as noted by SSCI, Vice President Cheney himself asked for more information.
At the end of the day we are left with these facts. We went to war in Iraq on the premise that Saddam was reacquiring weapons of mass destruction. Joe Wilson was sent on a mission to Niger in response to a request initiated by the Vice President. Joe Wilson supplied information to the CIA that supported other reports debunking the claim that Saddam was trying to buy yellow cake uranium from Niger. When Joe went public with his information, which had been corroborated by the CIA in April 2003, the response from the White House was to call him a liar and spread the name of his wife around.
We sit here more than two years later and the storm of invective and smear against Ambassador Wilson and his wife, Valerie, continues. I voted for George Bush in November of 2000 because I wanted a President who knew what the meaning of ”is“ was. I was tired of political operatives who spent endless hours on cable news channels parsing words. I was promised a President who would bring a new tone and new ethical standards to Washington.
So where are we? The President has flip flopped and backed away from his promise to fire anyone at the White House implicated in a leak. We now know from press reports that at least Karl Rove and Scooter Libby are implicated in these leaks. Instead of a President concerned first and foremost with protecting this country and the intelligence officers who serve it, we are confronted with a President who is willing to sit by while political operatives savage the reputations of good Americans like Valerie and Joe Wilson. This is wrong.
Without firm action by President Bush to return to those principles he promised to follow when he came to Washington, I fear our political debate in this country will degenerate into an argument about what the meaning of ”leak" is. We deserve people who work in the White House who are committed to protecting classified information, telling the truth to the American people, and living by example the idea that a country at war with Islamic extremists cannot expend its efforts attacking other American citizens who simply tried to tell the truth. [/quote]
Joe Wilson Corrects the Record that Congress Twisted
Here is Joe Wilson's letter to the Senate Select Committe on Intelligence SSCI), concerning misstatements in the SSCI's comments about his work in Niger that exposed Bush's lies connecting Iraq to nuclear proliferation.[quote="Joseph C. Wilson, IV“]
July 15, 2004
The Honorable Pat Roberts
Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
The Honorable Jay Rockefeller
Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Dear Senator Roberts and Senator Rockefeller,
I read with great surprise and consternation the Niger portion of Senators Roberts, Bond and Hatch ”additional comments to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee's Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Assessment on Iraq. I am taking this opportunity to clarify some of the issues raised in these comments.
First conclusion: “The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee.”
That is not true. The conclusion is apparently based on one anodyne quote from a memo Valerie Plame, my wife sent to her superiors that says “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 I be sent on the trip. Indeed it is little more than a recitation of my contacts and bona fides. The conclusion is reinforced by comments in the body of the report that a CPD reports officer stated the “the former ambassador's wife `offered up his name'” (page 39) and a State Department Intelligence and Research officer 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, Valerie was not in the meeting at which the subject of my trip was raised. Neither was the CPD Reports officer. After having escorted me into the room, she departed the meeting to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. It was at that meeting where the question of my traveling to Niger was broached with me for the first time and came only after a thorough discussion of what the participants did and did not know about the subject. My bona fides justifying the invitation to the meeting were the trip I 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, it is my understanding that the Reports Officer has a different conclusion about Valerie's role than the one offered in the “additional comments”. I urge the committee to reinterview the officer and publicly publish his statement.
It is unfortunate that the report failed to include the CIA's position on this matter. If the staff had done so it would undoubtedly have been given the same evidence as provided to Newsday reporters Tim Phelps and Knut Royce in July, 2003. They reported on July 22 that:
“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.” (Newsday article Columnist blows CIA Agent's cover, dated July 22, 2003).
In fact, on July 13 of this year, David Ensor, the CNN correspondent, did call the CIA for a statement of its position and reported that a senior CIA official confirmed my account that Valerie did not propose me for the trip:
“'She did not propose me', he [Wilson] said--others at the CIA did so. A senior CIA official said that is his understanding too.'”
Second conclusion: “Rather that speaking publicly about his actual experiences during his inquiry of the Niger issue, the former ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press accounts and from his beliefs about how the Intelligence Community would have or should have handled the information he provided.”
This conclusion states that I told the committee staff that I “may have become confused about my own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that the names and dates on the documents were not correct.” At the time that I was asked that question, I was not afforded the opportunity to review the articles to which the staff was referring. I have now done so.
On March 7, 2003 the Director General of the IAEA reported to the United Nations Security Council that the documents that had been given to him were “not authentic”. His deputy, Jacques Baute, was even more direct, pointing out that the forgeries were so obvious that a quick Google search would have exposed their flaws. A State Department spokesman was quoted the next day as saying about the forgeries “We fell for it.” From that time on the details surrounding the documents became public knowledge and were widely reported. I was not the source of information regarding the forensic analysis of the documents in question; the IAEA was.
The first time I spoke publicly about the Niger issue was in response to the State Department's disclaimer. On CNN a few days later, in response to a question, I replied that I believed the US government knew more about the issue than the State Department spokesman had let on and that he had misspoken. I did not speak of my trip.
My first public statement was in my article of July 6 published in the New York Times, written only after it became apparent that the administration was not going to deal with the Niger question unless it was forced to. I wrote the article because I believed then, and I believe now, that it was important to correct the record on the statement in the President's State of the Union address which lent credence to the charge that Iraq was actively reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. I believed that the record should reflect the facts as the US government had known them for over a year. The contents of my article do not appear in the body of the report and is not quoted in the “additional comments.” In that article, I state clearly that “As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors - they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government - and were probably forged. (And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the charges.)”
The first time I actually saw what were represented as the documents was when Andrea Mitchell, the NBC correspondent handed them to me in an interview on July 21. I was not wearing my glasses and could not read them. I have to this day not read them. I would have absolutely no reason to claim to have done so. My mission was to look into whether such a transaction took place or could take place. It had not and could not. By definition that makes the documents bogus.
The text of the “additional comments” also asserts that “during Mr. Wilson's media blitz, he appeared on more than thirty television shows including entertainment venues. Time and again, Joe Wilson told anyone who would listen that the President had lied to the American people, that the Vice President had lied, and that he had ”debunked“ the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.”
My article in the New York Times makes clear that I attributed to myself “a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs.” After it became public that there were then Ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick's report and the report from a four star Marine Corps General, Carleton Fulford in the files of the U. S. government, I went to great lengths to point out that mine was but one of three reports on the subject. I never claimed to have “debunked” the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. I claimed only that the transaction described in the documents that turned out to be forgeries could not have and did not occur. I 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 my trip. The White House must have agreed. The day after my 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.”
I have been very careful to say that while I believe that the use of the sixteen words in the State of the Union address was a deliberate attempt to deceive the Congress of the United States, I do not know what role the President may have had other than he has accepted responsibility for the words he spoke. I have also said on many occasions that I believe the President has proven to be far more protective of his senior staff than they have been to him.
The “additional comments” also assert: “The Committee found that, for most analysts the former ambassador's report lent more credibility, not less, to the reported Niger-Iraq uranium deal.” In fact, the body of the Senate report suggests the exact opposite:
* In August, 2002, a CIA NESA report on Iraq's weapons of Mass Destruction capabilities did not include the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium information. (pg. 48)
In September, 2002, during coordination of a speech with an NSC staff member, the CIA analyst suggested the reference to Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium from Africa be removed. The CIA analyst said the NSC staff member said that would leave the British “flapping in the wind.” (pg. 50)
The uranium text was included in the body of the NIE but not in the key judgments. When someone suggested that the uranium information be included as another sign of reconstitution, the INR Iraq nuclear analyst spoke up and said the he did not agree with the uranium reporting and that INR would be including text indicating their disagreement in their footnote on nuclear reconstitution. The NIO said he did not recall anyone really supporting including the uranium issue as part of the judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, so he suggested that the uranium information did not need to be part of the key judgments. He told Committee staff he suggested that “We'll leave it in the paper for completeness. Nobody can say we didn't connect the dots. But we don't have to put that dot in the key judgments.” (pg. 53)
On October 2, 2002, the Deputy DCI testified before the SSCI. Senator Jon Kyl asked the Deputy DCI whether he had read the British White Paper and whether he disagreed with anything in the report. The Deputy DCI testified that “the one thing where I think they stretched a little bit beyond where we would stretch is on the points about where Iraq seeking uranium from various African locations. (pg.54)
On October 4, 2002 the NIO for Strategic and Nuclear Programs testified that ”there is some information on attempts ....there's a question about those attempts because of the control of the material in those countries...For us it's more the concern that they (Iraq) uranium in country now. (pg. 54)
On October 5, 2002, the ADDI said an Iraq nuclear analyst - he could not remember who - raised concerns about the sourcing and some of the facts of the Niger reporting, specifically that the control of the mines in Niger would have made it very difficult to get yellowcake to Iraq. (pg. 55)
Based on the analyst's comments, the ADDI faxed a memo to the Deputy National Security Advisor that said, “remove the sentence because the amount is in dispute and it is debatable whether it can be acquired from this source. We told Congress that the Brits have exaggerated this issue. Finally, the Iraqis already have 550 metric tons of uranium oxide in their inventory. (pg. 56)
On October 6, 2002, the DCI called the Deputy National Security Advisor directly to outline the CIA's concerns. The DCI testified to the SSCI on July 16, 2003, that he told the Deputy National Security Advisor that the ”President should not be a fact witness on this issue,“ because his analysts had told him the ”reporting was weak.“ (pg. 56)
On October 6, 2002, the CIA sent a second fax to the White House which said, ”more on why we recommend removing the sentence about procuring uranium oxide from Africa: Three points 1) the evidence is weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as the location of the uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine cited by the source is under the control of the French authorities. 2) the procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. And 3) we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them that the Africa story is overblown and telling them this in one of the two issues where we differed with the British.“ (Pg 56)
On March 8, 2003, the intelligence report on my trip was disseminated within the U.S. Government according the Senate report (pg. 43). Further, the Senate report states that ”in early March, the Vice President asked his morning briefer for an update on the Niger uranium issue.“ That update from the CIA ”also noted that the CIA would be debriefing a source who may have information related to the alleged sale on March 5.“ The report then states the ”DO officials also said they alerted WINPAC analysts when the report was being disseminated because they knew the high priority of the issue.“ The report notes that the CIA briefer did not brief the Vice President on the report. (Pg. 46)
It is clear from the body of the Senate report that the Intelligence Community, including the DCI himself, made several attempts to ensure that the President not become a ”fact witness“ on an allegation that was so weak. A thorough reading of the report substantiates the claim made in my opinion piece in the New York Times and in subsequent interviews I have given on the subject. The sixteen words should never have been in the State of the Union address as the White House now acknowledges.
I undertook this mission at the request of my government in response to a legitimate concern that Saddam Hussein was attempting to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program. This was a national security issue that has concerned me since I was the Deputy Chief of Mission in the U.S. Embassy in Iraq before and during the first Gulf War.
At the time of my trip I was in private business and had not offered my views publicly on the policy we should adopt towards Iraq. Indeed, throughout the debate in the runup to the war, I took the position that the U.S. be firm with Saddam Hussein on the question of weapons of mass destruction programs including backing tough diplomacy with the credible threat of force. In that debate I never mentioned my trip to Niger. I did not share the details of my trip until May, 2003, after the war was over, and then only when it became clear that the administration was not going to address the issue of the State of the Union statement.
It is essential that the errors and distortions in the additional comments be corrected for the public record. Nothing could be more important for the American people than to have an accurate picture of the events that led to the decision to bring the United States into war in Iraq. The Senate Intelligence Committee has an obligation to present to the American people the factual basis of that process. I hope that this letter is helpful in that effort. I look forward to your further ”additional comments."
Sincerely,
Joseph C. Wilson, IV
Washington, D.C[/quote]
William F. Buckley Agrees --
newshounds.us wrote:
A few days ago William F. Buckley wrote this:
. . . [The focus should be on] the root cause of the disturbance. This had to do with revealing that Valerie Plame Wilson was secretly in the employ of the Central Intelligence Agency, using a cover employer to disguise her affiliation. We have noticed that Valerie Plame Wilson has lived in Washington since 1997. Where she was before that is not disclosed by research facilities at my disposal.
But even if she was safe in Washington when the identity of her employer was given out, it does not mean that her outing was without consequence. We do not know what dealings she might have been engaging in which are now interrupted or even made impossible. We do not know whether the countries in which she worked before 1997 could accost her, if she were to visit any of them, confronting her with signed papers that gave untruthful reasons for her previous stay — that she was there only as tourist, or working for a fictitious U.S. company. In my case, it was 15 years after reentry into the secular world before my secret career in Mexico was blown, harming no one except perhaps some who might have been put off by my deception.
The importance of the law against revealing the true professional identity of an agent is advertised by the draconian punishment, under the federal code, for violating it. In the swirl of the Libby affair, one loses sight of the real offense, and it becomes almost inapprehensible what it is that Cheney/Libby/Rove got themselves into. But the sacrednessof the law against betraying a clandestine soldier of the republic cannot be slighted.
He's A Pervy Guy, This Scooter Fellow
Lauren Collins in The New Yorker wrote:[/quote]
SCOOTER’S SEX SHOCKER
Issue of 2005-11-07
Of all the scribbled sentences that have converged to create the Valerie Plame affair, the most remarkable, in literary terms, may belong to Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney’s recently deposed chief of staff. “Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work—and life,” he wrote in a jailhouse note to Judith Miller. Meant as a waiver of confidentiality, the letter touched off the sort of fevered exegesis more often associated with readings of “The Waste Land” than of legal correspondence. For even more difficult prose, however, one must revisit an earlier work. “The Apprentice”—Libby’s 1996 entry in the long and distinguished annals of the right-wing dirty novel—tells the tale of Setsuo, a courageous virgin innkeeper who finds himself on the brink of love and war.
Libby has a lot to live up to as a conservative author of erotic fiction. As an article in SPY magazine pointed out in 1988, from Safire (“[She] finally came to him in the bed and shouted ‘Arragghrrorwr!’ in his ear, bit his neck, plunged her head between his legs and devoured him”) to Buckley (“I’d rather do this with you than play cards”) to Liddy (“T’sa Li froze, her lips still enclosing Rand’s glans . . .”) to Ehrlichman (“ ‘It felt like a little tongue’ ”) to O’Reilly (“Okay, Shannon Michaels, off with those pants”), extracurricular creative writing has long been an outlet for ideas that might not fly at, say, the National Prayer Breakfast. In one of Lynne Cheney’s books, a Republican vice-president dies of a heart attack while having sex with his mistress.
It took Libby more than twenty years to write “The Apprentice,” which is set in a remote Japanese province in the winter of 1903. The book is brimming with quasi-political intrigue and antique locutions—“The girl who wore the cloak of yellow fur”; “one wore backward a European hat”—that make the phrase a “former Hill staffer,” by comparison, seem straightforward.
Like his predecessors, Libby does not shy from the scatological. The narrative makes generous mention of lice, snot, drunkenness, bad breath, torture, urine, “turds,” armpits, arm hair, neck hair, pubic hair, pus, boils, and blood (regular and menstrual). One passage goes, “At length he walked around to the deer’s head and, reaching into his pants, struggled for a moment and then pulled out his penis. He began to piss in the snow just in front of the deer’s nostrils.”
Homoeroticism and incest also figure as themes. The main female character, Yukiko, draws hair on the “mound” of a little girl. The brothers of a dead samurai have sex with his daughter. Many things glisten (mouths, hair, evergreens), quiver (a “pink underlip,” arm muscles, legs), and are sniffed (floorboards, sheets, fingers). The cast includes a dwarf, and an “assistant headman” who comes to restore order after a crime at the inn. (Might this character be autobiographical? And, if so, would that have made Libby the assistant headman or the assistant headman’s assistant?)
When it comes to depicting scenes of romance, however, Libby can evoke a sort of musty sweetness; while one critic deemed “The Apprentice” “reminiscent of Rembrandt,” certain passages can better be described as reminiscent of Penthouse Forum. There is, for example, Yukiko’s seduction of the inexperienced apprentice:
He could feel her heart beneath his hands. He moved his hands slowly lower still and she arched her back to help him and her lower leg came against his. He held her breasts in his hands. Oddly, he thought, the lower one might be larger. . . . One of her breasts now hung loosely in his hand near his face and he knew not how best to touch her.
Other sex scenes are less conventional. Where his Republican predecessors can seem embarrassingly awkward—the written equivalent of trying to cop a feel while pinning on a corsage—Libby is unabashed:
At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest.
And, finally:
He asked if they should fuck the deer.
The answer, reader, is yes.
So, how does Libby stack up against the competition? This question was put to Nancy Sladek, the editor of Britain’s Literary Review, which, each year, holds a contest for bad sex writing in fiction. (In 1998, someone nominated the Starr Report.) Sladek agreed to review a few passages from Libby. “That’s a bit depraved, isn’t it, this kind of thing about bears and young girls? That’s particularly nasty, and the other ones are just boring,” she said. “God, they’re an odd bunch, these Republicans.” Unlike their American counterparts, she said, Tories haven’t taken much to sex writing. “They usually just get caught,” she said.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/051107ta_talk_collins
O'Reilly Smears Libby With Rich Clinton Sauce
[quote="newshounds.us“]They Eat Their Own: The Campaign to Smear ”Scooter“ Libby BeginsIrving Lewis ”Scooter“ Libby had better watch his back. His former friends are about to throw him to the wolves. If last night's O'Reilly Factor is any indication, the right wing attack machine has figured out a way to tie Libby to Marc Rich, Oil-for-Food, Denise Rich and the Clinton Library. Wow! What an embarrassment of riches for the conservative grist mill!
Months ago I predicted that - should Hillary Clinton make a run for the White House - the Republicans will mount a Swift-Boat-like assault in an effort to smear her name via the financing for the Clinton Library. The stage was set for this the day the Clinton Library opened in November 2004. Last night FOX News Analyst Jim Pinkerton appeared on the O'Reilly Factor to ”report“ on Lewis Libby's connections to Mark Rich and the Clintons. Pinkerton, a long-time Republican who worked in the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations, is also a regular on FOX News Watch and a columnist for Newsday, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times (yes, folks, these liberal ”rags“ do feature prominent conservatives in their pages, contrary to what Bill O'Reilly would have you believe!).
In a masterpiece of innuendo, non sequitur and distortion, Pinkerton and O'Reilly began the demonization of Libby by associating his name with that hated, feared and reviled Democratic duo, Bill and Hillary Clinton. Pinkerton also tossed a little dirt in the direction of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, just for good measure.
O'Reilly started the segment by laying the groundwork for the hatchet job on Libby, saying ”Impact segment tonight, a little-known story about Lewis Libby, currently under indictment in the CIA exposure case. You may remember that on his last day in office, President Clinton pardoned the biggest tax cheat in U. S. history, Marc Rich, who fled to Switzerland to avoid prosecution. The pardon came after his ex-wife Denise Rich and her friend, Beth Dozoretz, donated big money to the Clinton Library. Both women took the Fifth Amendment when asked to testify about the case in front of Congress. Despite the pardon, Marc Rich chose not to return to the U. S. A. because of civil litigation against him and then, according to a U. N. investigation, became a broker for Saddam Hussein in the Oil-for-Food scandal. This is quite a guy, Marc Rich. Now, one of his many lawyers was none other than Lewis Libby. Wow! ... Talk about strange bedfellows!“
PINKERTON: Well, talk about reprehensible figures. Marc Rich was a U. S. citizen and not only was - is he all in the middle of the Oil-for-Food scandal, according to the Volcker Report, he also was allegedly trading with the ayatollahs of Iran during the hostage crisis when the Iranians were holding our embassy officials in prison there.
[COMMENT: ”Trading with the enemy“ - that's exactly what Iran-Contra was all about. Isn't Pinkerton being just a little bit naive here, excoriating Rich for trading with Iran and never once bringing up his fellow FOX News personality Oliver North's indictment for what amounts to the same crime at the same time?]
PINKERTON: We don't know all the facts, of course, because Rich skipped the country in 1983 with, of all people, Rudolph Giuliani chasing after him. So, I think it's worth noting that 'Scooter' Libby, as Marc Rich's lawyer, collected, according to Libby's own testimony, $2 million in legal fees for Marc Rich and, while Libby denies having anything to do with Clinton's mysterious pardon, Libby admitted before the Congress on January 22nd, 2001 that he called Rich to congratulate him on getting the pardon from Clinton. So when he was on the Bush-Cheney payroll inside the White House he calls this squirrelly ex-client of his to say: Hey, great work on gettin' that pardon.
O'REILLY: Now, the thing that has always fascinated me about this whole deal was that, when - the press really let it go. I mean, they didn't investigate the Marc Rich pardon, because when you have two women - Denise Rich and Beth Dodorhetz - go to Washington repeatedly to meet with President Clinton and then, I guess, millions of dollars, maybe - I don't have the exact figure - wind up from these two ladies into the Clinton Library and then you have a pardon of a guy that everybody knows - and everybody said there was no justification for this pardon, ever - nobody sticks up for it, even Clinton - then you have Congress calling Denise Rich and Dodorhetz down to testify and they take the Fifth.! And the press does nothing!
PINKERTON: Well, that's right. The press was kind of in the tank for Clinton, as we know, but it's also worth noting that the Bush-Cheney administration ...
O'REILLY: Nothing.
PINKERTON: Exactly. They could have investigated it.
O'REILLY (overtalks last 5 words): Mary Jo White ...
PINKERTON: Right.
O'REILLY: ... the U. S. Attorney in New York has a file about this case. I looked the woman in the eye in Colorado four years ago and said ”Are you going to investigate this case?“ The woman turned her back on me.
PINKERTON: Well, of course, one of Mary Jo White's deputies back then was Patrick Fitzgerald, who we all know about now.
O'REILLY: Yeah.
PINKERTON: I mean, anybody, anybody in the Bush administration could have said: Hey , let's investigate this a little bit ...
O'REILLY: Absolutely.
PINKERTON: ... and not only get ex-President Clinton under oath on this but also Senator Clinton [indecipherable]
O'REILLY: And Lewis Libby!
PINKERTON: And Lewis Libby!
O'REILLY: And Lewis Libby! Although he was under oath when he testified about this in front - as you pointed out - January 20th, 2001 [sic]- when he went up and had to answer questions. Now, I don't think people quite understand that this is commonplace in Washington, where you have Republican lawyers, out of office, workin' for Democrats and vice versa. It's a big, incestuous deal and let's make money and put politics aside. Correct?
PINKERTON: Exactly. All the big lawyers in town and they kind of have a, for lack of a better word, a cabal where they say ”We'll represent each other,“ and there's no sanction but I would say this, that Marc Rich is little better than just a mobster and for him to become - able to hire lawyers like this and then go into the White House, I mean, nobody would want an ex-John Gotti lawyer coming into the White House ...
O'REILLY: Yeah. That's a ...
PINKERTON: ... and why Rich ...
O'REILLY: That's a good point.
PINKERTON: Why Libby could do this for Bush is beyond me.
O'REILLY: I think Rich is worse than a mobster. I think he worked against his country. I think he's a traitor.
COMMENT
Poor Scooter. Facing 30 years on five counts and even his old buddies are turning on him. Guess those holiday invites won't be arriving in the mail anytime soon.
Wonder how long before he contacts Fitzgerald's office for a nice game of ”Let's Make a Deal"?
Updated 11-3-05 5:40 PM EST
Thanks to our reader Peter for pointing out a factual error. Pinkerton's column appears in the Los Angeles Times, not the New York Times. The post has been amended to correct this mistake.
MT
Reported by Marie Therese at November 3, 2005 04:18 PM [/quote]