CIA leak case answers raise other questions

[struggle4progress]

... Armitage apparently learned of Plame's identity after reading a memorandum that was prepared at the State Department at the direction of the vice president's chief of staff. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's top aide, was, like his boss, keenly interested in Wilson. Getting the State Department to scare up information on a critic of the administration brings to mind the workings of the Nixon White House, which ought not be anyone's notion of a good model.

So here is where things would appear to stand today: Novak did not learn of Plame's identity as a part of some nefarious scheme to discredit her husband and warn others not to criticize the administration. At least not directly. Instead, he learned her name from someone who saw a document that had been prepared about her husband at the direction of the White House. What officials had been intending to do with that information is a question that remains unanswered.

http://www.masslive.com/editorials/republican/index.ssf?/base/news-1/115709733088100.xml&coll=1

This weirdly written editorial beats the "Plame Game is Over" drum at the beginning of the article and ends with the intellectually dishonest paragraph just quoted. Reading the editorial (and others like it) in its entirety suggests that publishers are directing editors to write editorials that the editors find unpalatable ...

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. I knew it! Armitage was used like a cheap whore. If his propensity for

gossip was soooo well known, then giving him this kind of information was like waving cotton candy in front of a kid.

[struggle4progress]

2. Or -- Armitage is currently selling himself like a cheap whore.

He's been around the block a few times and it's hard to believe his wide-eyed "Omigolligosh! I accidently outed Plame!" act. If it's true, why didn't he come clean earlier? The accurate version is probably that he agreed several years ago to play a bit part designed to diffuse the blame, using the Republicans now-familiar "I'm not corrupt -- I'm just goofy" gambit ...

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. What does Armitage and a cheap whore have in common?

They both have loose lips. Hahahaha!

Sorry, past my bedtime.

[Biernuts]

6. As I read the story, he did come clean: He told his boss, the

Seretary of State and the State Department General Counsel, who passed the information properly to the Department of Justice. When interviewed by investigators, he told the unvarnished truth. No one is under the obligation to call an "I screwd up" press conference.

The State Department GC told the WH Counsel that State was cooperating with the investigation without going into details. The WH GC couldn't/didn't push for more info because (1.) They were not the investigating agency and (2.) to avoid even the appearance of the WH manipulating the investigation.

You still can make a case that Armitage should have gone public. It's a fair debate. My experience with these types of investigations is that the investigating agency, in this case the FBI, routinely asks that the information remain private in order to not impeed the investigation. One can also speculate (and I stress SPECULATE) war opponent Armitage taking no small amount of happiness seeing those supporting the war dragged through the mud and twisting in the wind. I personally don't belive that probable, but it's a possibiity.

[struggle4progress]

8. Armitage is no war opponent but an interventionist with filthy hands

Richard Armitage - the connections behind his attack on Latham
By David Palmer
June 10, 2004

.. So who is Richard Armitage? None other than a former board member of CACI - the private contractor that employed four interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison - interrogators who worked with the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade there ..

Armitage’s past helps explain why he now is interfering directly in Australian politics. He was indirectly connected with the Iran-Contra scandal when he served in the Reagan administration as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. He had direct knowledge of the diversion of funds, from arms sold to Iran (illegally – but approved by Reagan), that were syphoned through the CIA to the Contras (illegally – but again, approved by Reagan) for CIA-directed use against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Armitage, like some other officials in the Reagan administration, did not like the illegality of the whole operation – but they did not come forward with their knowledge – and Armitage, in his Defense position, would most likely have known most of the details ..

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/10/1086749826916.html

January 26, 1998
The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC

Dear Mr. President:

.. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy ..

Elliott Abrams Richard L. Armitage William J. Bennett
Jeffrey Bergner John Bolton Paula Dobriansky
Francis Fukuyama Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad
William Kristol Richard Perle Peter W. Rodman
Donald Rumsfeld William Schneider, Jr. Vin Weber
Paul Wolfowitz R. James Woolsey Robert B. Zoellick

http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm

[The Backlash Cometh]

11. Do you see the apparent contradiction?

A man with a reputation of being a shameless gossip, does exactly the opposite and keeps his mouth shut, keeping the information from the PUBLIC and giving Scooter Libby protection and George Bush a second term?

Don't you think if he was really opposed to the neo-con plan and George Bush, all he had to do was continue gossiping?

Something just doesn't add up.

[Warpy]

4. Back to square one

Cheney was the leaker, Libby was the errand boy, and Armitage was the stooge.

[peacetalksforall]

5. They cal ;WIlson 'a critic of the administration'. BS. He went on a

mission for the government. He reported on it. He was a patriot in reporting what he saw. He is a patriot for standing up and fighting PNAC - who wanted to back up some lies any which way they could - WITHOUT ANYTONE GETTING IN TEH WAY.

How the heck can they say he was a critic of the administration - this was not a critique of the administration - it was a critique of the report that there was an attempt to buy yellowcake. He learned and reported, then stood up and said the sixteen words were a lie - from what he had learned.

[Biernuts]

7. Just a few problems with that - where is Wilson's report? After

that extravagent trip, he never wrote one but instead just spoke with CIA analysts in his wife's office. So there never was a report to critique. Second, when he wrote the op-ed, he was a member of the Kerry campaign. Last time I looked, that campaign made a career (albiet an usuccessful one) critizing the administration. How can anyone say he WASN'T a critic of the administration?

[struggle4progress]

9. Uh ... ... ...NO! Consider getting the facts straight before you post.

Wilson was originally a Bush supporter.

An Interview With Joseph Wilson
Posted 05/03/2004
David Corn

.. Wilson was also the last acting US ambassador in Iraq before the Gulf War, a military action he supported. In that post, he helped evacuate thousands of foreigners from Kuwait, worked to get over 120 American hostages out Iraq, and sheltered about 800 Americans in the embassy compound .. Soon after Wilson disclosed his trip in the media and made the White House look bad, the payback came. Novak's July 14, 2003, column presented the back-story on Wilson's mission and contained the following sentences: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate" the allegation ..

In 2000, you donated $1000 to George W. Bush's presidential campaign. Why? Any regrets?

I thought he would be the better of the two Republican presidential candidates then in the running. When he talked about compassionate conservatism, it seemed as if he was interested in reprising the first Bush administration. I had been happy with parts of its foreign policy..

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/capitalgames?pid=1413

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Joseph_C._Wilson_IV

Published on Sunday, July 6, 2003 by the New York Times
What I Didn't Find in Africa
by Joseph C. Wilson 4th

.. In late February 2002, I arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, where I had been a diplomat in the mid-70's and visited as a National Security Council official in the late 90's. The city was much as I remembered it. Seasonal winds had clogged the air with dust and sand. Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger River (over the John F. Kennedy bridge), the setting sun behind them. Most people had wrapped scarves around their faces to protect against the grit, leaving only their eyes visible.

The next morning, I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq — and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington ..

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0706-02.htm

Wilson's endorsement of Kerry was reported by the New York Times 24 October 2003; press coverage of Wilson's activities on behalf of the Kerry campaign, during the limited period in which Wilson was active with the campaign, dates from early 2004.

[struggle4progress]

10. Got any links at all? Evidence Wilson's Niger trip was "extravagant"?

And so what if Wilson was debriefed verbally, since that seems to have been acceptable operating procedure to the CIA? The Senate Select Committee report shows that the Ambassador to Niger "told Committee staff she recalled the former ambassador saying "he had reached the same conclusions that the embassy had reached, that it was highly unlikely that anything was going on."

You seem to be a fountain of misinformation.