Time Magazine: When They Knew

[understandinglife]

When They Knew

Sources indicate that Rove may have learned Valerie Plame's identity from within the Administration rather than from media contacts

By MASSIMO CALABRESI

July 31, 2005

As the investigation tightens into the leak of the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, sources tell TIME some White House officials may have learned she was married to former ambassador Joseph Wilson weeks before his July 6, 2003, Op-Ed piece criticizing the Administration. That prospect increases the chances that White House official Karl Rove and others learned about Plame from within the Administration rather than from media contacts. Rove has told investigators he believes he learned of her directly or indirectly from reporters, according to his lawyer.

<clip>

The same week, Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman asked for and received a memo on the Wilson trip from Carl Ford, head of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Sources familiar with the memo, which disclosed Plame's relationship to Wilson, say Secretary of State Colin Powell read it in mid-June.

Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage may have received a copy then too.

<clip>

More at the link:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1088666,00.html

My only comment on these revelations is that well before Ambassador Wilson's article the extent of knowledge within the White House of the true identity of Valerie P was likely extensive.

Mr Fitzgerald probably has quite a strong case of perjury, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and obstruction of justice, beyond the obvious crimes of treason.

And, Mr Bolton is my choice for 'voted most likely to be the administration blabber-mouth traitor'.

WATCH IT; SPREAD IT http://www.bushflash.com/right.html

Peace.

www.missionnotaccomplished.us - How ever long it takes, the day must come when tens of millions of caring individuals peacefully but persistently defy the dictator, deny the corporatists their cash flow, and halt the evil being done in Iraq and in all the other places the Bu$h neoconster regime is destroying civilization and the environment in the name of "America."

[kentuck]

1. And who and why was that stooge on MTP this morning...

suggesting they might have gotten the info somewhere besides the White House?? What was her name?? Looked like she talked with the WH before she went on MTP...

[understandinglife]

3. Don't know; don't watch MTP. I'll do some searching and post what I find.

Peace.

www.missionnotaccomplished.us

[seemslikeadream]

4. Kate O Beirn

right on schedule

[Stirk]

5. A woman from the National Review, I believe.

I don't recall her name either.

[FreedomAngel82]

12. Remember that these people

like to frame the debate first. Turn whatever they say backwards.

[understandinglife]

2. "If these revelations are true, the least of Rove and Libby’s concerns ...

.... is perjury. Today’s disclosure adds further evidence that the White Hose consciously dug out Plame’s identity, used it, and then engaged in a massive cover-up by pinning blame elsewhere. Moreover, it appears far more players were involved in this orchestrated, administration-wide effort than previously believed. The key question, if these revelations are true, is why did these administration officials lie so overtly to the special prosecutor? Knowing hard evidence would come out sooner or later against them (through leaks, emails, etc), the White House officials still chose to lie. What could they possibly be trying to hide? Perhaps this wasn’t just a “third-rate smear.”

<clip>

From Leaking Scandal Encircles More Administration Officials Than Previously Believed

at Think Progress

More at the link and comments:

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/07/31/growing-scandal/

This is not going to fade.


Peace.

www.missionnotaccomplished.us

[flyarm]

10. ANOTHER BIG QUESTION THEN ARISES...

IF THEY WERE DIGGING FOR WILSON PRIOR TO HIS OP-ED..WHY??

DID THEY HAVE A MAGIC BALL AND KNOW HE WOULD WRITE AN OP -ED..OR WERE THEY LOOKING TO WILSON TO COME OUT AND SAY SOMETHING?? i mean what other reason prior to his op-ed would they have to out his wife??

hmmmm exactly..she was their target to start with!! not wilson !!!as we would like to think! or have been led to think..how would they know wilson would write an op-ed critisizing them?>?
or was wilson co-ersed..to write the oped..so they could out and stop valeries investigation ..

this makes no sense as it is..why would they be looking into wilson ...before his op-ed???
i don't believe they were..i believe valerie was their target from the get go..its the only thing that makes common sense!!

if wilson was the real target ..they would not know he was writing an op-ed..so their investigation into this would occur..post op-ed..not pre- op ed..as they wouldn't know it with fore knowledge!

[understandinglife]

13. They knew they were lying to the American people, to the Congress, to ..

... the UN, and they knew the folk with the facts included Plame and her cohorts within the CIA, and folk in INR at State. The neoconsters needed to destroy them irrespective of 'how well the war was going,' because they would continue to thwart the neoconsters' imperialistic endeavors.

Two events they did not anticipate were Wilson's article and the leak of the several "Downing Street" documents.

And, they certainly never anticipated having a prosecutor like Fitzgerald digging through all the dirty laundry.


Peace.

www.missionnotaccomplished.us

[moodforaday]

15. She may have been the target

Or she may not have been. But there's speculation that by outing Plame, and thus undoing her work, they helped the guy who may be responsible for the London attack:

http://www.juancole.com/2005/07/ghost-of-muhammad-naeem-noor-khan-john.html
http://chuckles1.dailykos.com/story/2005/7/14/211527/166

On edit: There's a good summary here:
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/43501
but these sources don't establish a clear link between Plame's work and the alleged London bombers.

[hang a left]

16. Wilson was shopping his story before it was published in the

New York Times. He also threatened Rice that if they didn't come clean he would go public. She basically told him through intermediaries "go ahead noone will believe you" or something like that. But check this out...this is a story written in June by Walter Pincus almost a month before Novak wrote his. It appears to me from what I can piece together, Pincus was leaked to at the beginning of June 2003 before all at least Novak and Miller. However he seems to me he didn't use the names.

Read the whole article

CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data; Bush Used Report Of Uranium Bid;
Walter Pincus. The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: Jun 12, 2003. pg. A.01


Full Text (1337 words)
Copyright The Washington Post Company Jun 12, 2003
A key component of President Bush's claim in his State of the Union address last January that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program -- its alleged attempt to buy uranium in Niger -- was disputed by a CIA-directed mission to the central African nation in early 2002, according to senior administration officials and a former government official. But the CIA did not pass on the detailed results of its investigation to the White House or other government agencies, the officials said.

The CIA's failure to share what it knew, which has not been disclosed previously, was one of a number of steps in the Bush administration that helped keep the uranium story alive until the eve of the war in Iraq, when the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector told the Security Council that the claim was based on fabricated evidence.

A senior intelligence official said the CIA's action was the result of "extremely sloppy" handling of a central piece of evidence in the administration's case against then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. But, the official added, "It is only one fact and not the reason we went to war. There was a lot more."

However, a senior CIA analyst said the case "is indicative of larger problems" involving the handling of intelligence about Iraq's alleged chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs and its links to al Qaeda, which the administration cited as justification for war. "Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded and information that was was not seriously scrutinized," the analyst said.



snip>

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/346162471.ht...

[understandinglife]

18. "Rice by both commission and omission was integral in perpetrating the ..

... the original fraud of Niger, and then inevitably in the vengeful betrayal of Plame’s identity. None of that spilling of secrets for crass political retribution could have gone on without her knowledge and approval, and thus complicity. Little of it could have happened without her participation, if not as a leaker herself, at least with her direction and with her scripting."

Thus writes Roger Morris in The Source Beyond Rove- Condoleezza Rice at the Center of the Plame Scandal on July 28, 2005

Link:

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/0728-25.htm

Morris provides a detailed timeline analysis and a bunch of background particularly on the role of the National Security Adviser.

I'm responding to your important post to note that it would not be a surprise that Ambassador Wilson would have contacted Ms Rice. And, we know how hard Ms Rice has worked to keep 'the Office of the Vice President' out of the story - for which she receives yet another F-. She's about as an obvious a liar as one will ever encounter.

Fitzgerald has questioned Pincus before the grand jury and he did so "... after his confidential source had first "revealed his or her identity" to Mr. Fitzgerald, the special counsel conducting the C.I.A. leak inquiry. (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/28/politics/28leak.html?pagewanted=print)

So, Fitzgerald and the grand jury know whom Pincus' source is -- in fact, it should be "are," since his article describes "senior administration officials and a former government official" - that would be at least three different people, correct.

And, the claims in Pincus' 2003 article were meant to focus the blame on the CIA for not passing on the intelligence. We now know that's all bullshit and just like we all know what the word 'fix' means.


Peace.

www.missionnotaccomplished.us

[understandinglife]

6. dKos: "If this doesn't get the media swarming again, .... "

Just checked at Daily Kos and the Time Magazine article has gone from diary to front page. Some interesting comments, as well:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/7/31/142441/613

And, one can imagine that at least two folk in this photo have been talking to their lawyers, today




Peace.

www.missionnotaccomplished.us

[DoYouEverWonder]

7. I wonder if the Wolfman

has been before the Grand Jury? That would be sweet to get him and Pearl in this.

[understandinglife]

8. It's not a secret that Perle and other neoconsters were major CIA critics

So 'motive' exists. For instance, these insights were recently published:

A week later, May published a second article in which he broadened his attack to the CIA in general, calling the selection of "a retired, Bush-bashing diplomat" for such a sensitive mission a "dereliction of duty", suggesting the choice showed either incompetence or a deliberate effort to disrupt the administration's march to war.

It was a familiar theme that he and other neo-conservative critics of the agency, such as Richard Perle, James Woolsey, Frank Gaffney, Newt Gingrich and the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol - all of whom serve on the FDD's board of directors and were outspoken supporters of the war - have voiced frequently over the past several years, and particularly in the run-up to the war itself.

Indeed, just as lower-level CIA officials were discussing sending Wilson to Niger, top agency officials several stories higher were already discussing how to implement a new top secret intelligence order from Bush ordering the CIA to support the US military in achieving regime change in Iraq, according to the Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack.

And just as the CIA debriefers were presumably compiling their assessment of the yellowcake report based in part on Wilson's mission after his return in March 2002, Cheney was declaring publicly for the first time that Saddam was "actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time".

With the CIA having been given its marching orders and Cheney squarely on the record, top agency officials saw that Wilson's "facts" would be unwelcome. Three months before the Downing Street memo, the "fix" was in, and it now appears that Wilson's conclusions were never passed along to the vice president's office.

From 'Plamegate' is no summer squall

By Jim Lobe

July 20, 2005

More at the link:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GG20Aa03.html

Have not been able to find any reference to either Wolfowitz or Perle appearing before the Grand Jury, but we may not have to wait much longer to know.


Peace.

www.missionnotaccomplished.us

[kentuck]

9. And as one poster commented, it is about "obstruction of justice"...

not perjury.

[FreedomAngel82]

11. Of course

Remember Colin Powell had the memo with the "S" and "Top Secret" it on that Air Force One trip to Africa to "check" things out themselves. While they were on this they probably planning this plan to out Mrs. Wilson and the group she worked with which dealt with WMD's and following terrorist's group and tracking Halliburton and those like them doing illegal doings with Iran. And Bush was, of course, on that plane. For all we know he could've been very well involved. I don't buy this "Bush is dumb" act at all. I think he's very well involved in everything that goes on. Remember that Bush and Rove are insync with each other so he probably knew. Plus back in 2003 Karl Rove was just a political advisor. He only became the deputy Chief of Staff a few days (if that) after the election. I remember feeling a strange vibe with that promotion and wondering why in the world a political advisor would be promoted (my guess is the security clearance to do more damage).

[understandinglife]

14. UPI: Memo discussed Wilson-Plame in June 2003

Memo discussed Wilson-Plame in June 2003

WASHINGTON, July 31 (UPI) -- White House staffers may have known Joseph Wilson was married to a CIA operative weeks before Wilson publicly criticized Iraq war policy.

Time magazine reports a June 2003 internal State Department memo mentioned that Wilson was married to CIA agent Valerie Plame. The memo was read by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and possibly by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, the magazine reported.

<clip>

Link:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=TopNews&article=UPI-1-20050731-18110700-bc-us-leak.xml

Notice how Powell and Armitage are suddenly in the spotlight.


Peace.

www.missionnotaccomplished.us

[understandinglife]

17. Tuscon Citizen: "Agent outing dire threat to U.S. security"

Agent outing dire threat to U.S. security

Tuscon Citizen

August 1, 2005

A mere 16 words spurred the exposure of CIA Agent Valerie Plame and a probe into Bush administration officials that quickly is gaining steam after 1 1/2 years. President Bush uttered the 16 words in his 2003 State of the Union address, citing Iraq's efforts to get yellow cake uranium from Africa as another reason to go to war.

But the 16 words were untrue. And when former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson made that clear - on NBC and in The Washington Post and The New York Times - senior Bush officials launched a damage-control campaign.

<clip>

But her identification to the media by Rove and Libby posed an unconscionable threat not only to Plame and her family, but also to her entire network of intelligence sources and to our national security.

<clip>

Partisan politics is no excuse for posing risks to a CIA agent, her company and anyone in contact with either.

Link:

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/index.php?page=opinion&story_id=080105b4_edits&toolbar=print_story

"... posed an unconscionable threat not only to Plame and her family, but also to her entire network of intelligence sources and to our national security."

Yes, in_deed.


Peace.

www.missionnotaccomplished.us

[WillyT]

19. Kick !!!

:kick: