Unresolved questions - Rovegate-if you know the answers-spill!

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

1. Who was actually responsible for sending Wilson to Niger?
2. Who revealed Valerie Plame as CIA to the 2 Administration sources cited by Bob Novack?
3. Who did Wilson OFFICIALLY report back to about his trip to Niger? What did that person do with Wilson's report?
4. Who revealed the name of the COMPANY Valerie Plame worked for as a NOC(!!!!) to Novack?(this is pretty insider stuff)
5. I distinctly remember Novack describing his sources as being "non-political" types - was that disinformation?
6. What did Karl Rove mean by the term "fair game" as he used it to Chris Mathews in relation to Valerie Plame?
7. Why did Bush say he "didn't know" if the leaker would ever be found?
8. Why was Scottie McL so adamant initially about 3 people - Rove, Libby and I forget who?
9. Did anyone in the White House plead the 5th in their testimony?
10. Who was the 3rd administration source who voiced dismay over the whole Plame outing travesty who said "it was dumb and it didn't accomplish anything?"
11. Who discussed Plamegate with Gannon?
12. Have all the members of the WHIG testified before the grand jury?
13. Was any part of the Joe Wilson smear/punishment discussed with Bush or Cheney?

Help me out if you know the answers to these questions.

[joemurphy]

1. Nice synopsis - I don't think we know the answers to any of them.

[cal04]

2. Interesting. I just read this

and thought about poppy Bush and his CIA ties. Something seems missing from this story

The answer to the Plame mystery is not the Watergate advice of “follow the money” or even the obvious question of who spilled the beans to Novak. Instead, the route to the heart of this mystery is to follow the trail from who knew Plame’s identity at the CIA through the White House meetings to Karl Rove.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/071105.html

[FormerRepublican]

3. WRT the cover company she worked for, I found this:

"The company's identity, Brewster-Jennings & Associates, became public because it appeared in Federal Election Commission records on a form filled out in 1999 by Valerie Plame…
It seems Plame made a contribution to the Gore Campaign in 1999 and was required under the law to file financial information including the name of her employer.

After the name of the company was broadcast yesterday, administration officials confirmed that it was a CIA front. They said the obscure and possibly defunct firm was listed as Plame's employer on her W-2 tax forms in 1999 when she was working undercover for the CIA. Intelligence officials have said that once Plame's job as an undercover operative was revealed, other agency secrets could be unraveled and her sources might be compromised or endangered. A former diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity said yesterday that every foreign intelligence service would run Plame's name through its databases within hours of its publication to determine if she had visited their country and to reconstruct her activities."

The original Washington Post source is no longer available, but here's a link to a blog that quoted it:

http://www.therant.info/archive/001516.html

I'll do a bit of research and see if I can track down some answers to the other questions.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

7. But who specifically identified this comapny as a CIA cover?

If she was still NOC at the time she made the donation, how does that reveal the company as being a CIA cover?Couldn't an undercover agent work at a legitimate company that was unaware of their dual status? Why would someone just assume that Valerie Plame's employer was a cover CIA company?

I always thought the outing of the company was just as if not more heinous than the outing of one particular agent since the betrayal of the company, threatened not just Plame but all of her co-horts and connections made through this company.

[Peace Patriot]

4. If you make the presumption that the whole affair was a set up--

Cheney setting up Wilson, to create an excuse or cover story to get at his wife and destroy her WMD network, while keep himself in the background--a whole lot of puzzling things fall into place, as do probable reasons for why some of the above questions have not been answered.

Cheney was involved in cooking WMD intel at the time this all occurred. He had no interest in accurate information. Then, he asks Joe Wilson to go to Niger to look into the Iraq nuke charge. (This is what Wilson said--no? That it was the V-P's request. But keep in mind that Cheney didn't put it in writing.) Cheney knows he won't find anything. When Wilson gets back and reports that he found nothing (this was also not in writing, I believe), Cheny or minions then put the false charge about Iraq nukes into Bush's SOTU speech ANYWAY, despite Wilson's report--a charge that is provably false, and for which there is a witness to its falsity. Why did they do this? They had plenty of other lies to tell that were not so easily proved wrong. Why is it still unknown WHO did this (put the provably false charge in Bush's speech)? It looks very much like this was done, deliberately, to bait Wilson.

He obliges and whistleblows. Cheney now has an excuse--a cover story--by which to out Plame and her entire 20+ year eyes and ears network on WMDs. Why? My guess is, a) a covert plan to plant WMDs in Iraq--or future plans for Iran, Syria, etc.; and/or b) Cheney's nefarious arms dealings around the world. A CIA WMD spy network, run by a long term agent, would be an obstacle to certain plans of Cheney's.

So the story is spun that Rove did it, in order to punish Wilson and chill dissent (a believable story, given Rove's history). Rove agrees to take the fall, if it comes to that. (--will be pardoned and richly rewarded). And they put out this rather peculiar tale, through intermediaries (laundering--by Judith Miller?) that Wilson is married to Plame, a CIA WMD covert expert, and that this somehow taints or discredits Wilson. This part really doesn't make sense. Having such a wife would seem to ENHANCE his ability to carry out the Niger mission. But what they really want to get at, is the fuzz point: that it was Plame, and not Cheney, who chose Wilson to go to Niger. No paper trail. Wilson can't prove otherwise.

Thus, Cheney has destroyed the CIA's--or in any case Plame's--ability to follow his worldwide WMD activities, and has also placed himself in the background, out of harm's way of breaking federal law and committing treason.

See

Plame...the tip of the iceberg... (Plame maybe investigating Cheney arms deals when they busted her CIA weapons op)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2178477#2180220

Note: If it was a plot to plant WMDs in Iraq--Bush/Blair's most important political need in summer '03, when all this occurred--then, how was it foiled? My theory is it might have been foiled by David Kelly, the Brit weapons inspector who was likely "suicided" in England, during this same time period. I won't go into this here, except to say that it was to Judith Miller that Kelly wrote his famous email about "many dark actors playing games."

See

More about Judith Miller (Miller/Plame/David Kelly)
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/7/3/17138/30618

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

6. "this somehow taints or discredits Wilson."

As you say, this part of the story never made sense to me either. I never saw how outing Plame discredited Wilson, although I clearly see how it THREATENS both Wilson and Plame.

[FormerRepublican]

5. 1. Who was actually responsible for sending Wilson to Niger?

The original Intelligence Committee report is available on their web site, but here's a quote from another source:

"Several months after the scandal broke, Senator Pat Roberts, joined by Senators Christopher Bond and Orrin Hatch, made "additional comments" following the release of the Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq. In these comments they claimed, amongst other things, that Wilson's wife had "suggested her husband for the trip to Niger" and that Wilson had made statements which "were not only incorrect, but had no basis in fact." In particular, Senator Roberts criticized Wilson for allegedly informing reporters that he had personal knowledge of the Iraq-Niger uranium documents and allegedly informing reporters that he had personal knowledge that the Iraq-Niger uranium connection had been "completely debunked," when in fact Ambassador Wilson lacked personal knowledge regarding those issues.<1>

Although Senator Roberts was clear that he and the Panel's democratic members disagreed about the inclusion of the statements above in the official report, he alleged that the panel agreed on "the underlying facts" regarding those conclusions. The other members did not confirm this alleged agreement. Apparently ignoring this dispute, many media outlets reported them as established facts from the report itself. Wilson responded to Roberts claims, pointing to numerous statements by the CIA indicating that his wife did not recommend him for the mission but never addressed that his wife lobbied to send him on the mission to Niger. The CIA considered Wilson's findings regarding the Niger link as not conclusive."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_C._Wilson