A crazy idea about the State Dept. Memo, and who's leaking it.

[the old gringo]

Who's providing all these leaks about the apparently "top secret" State Department memo?

Here's a theory: Colin Powell, who had his credibility and honor used up and thrown away by the administration. He's certainly in a position to have been aware of all the documents. He's got to be pissed off at being used. He knows, unlike the chickenhawks in charge, what war is about, and was forced to aid the Administration as they put our soldiers in harm's way. Could he finally be doing the right thing and exposing the crooks, one leak at a time?

I need to think about this some more. Where's my tin-foil?

[Justice]

1. Possible - definitely CIA or State, someon who has some integrity

and perhaps some deep remorse.

[evermind]

2. You might like the article at

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1668

which says, after pointing out that a recent Washington Post article concerning the memo has an apparent abundance of sources:

This is an angle I've been interested in from the outset of the controversy, from the Bushites' barely concealed war with the CIA to the apparent mole on the White House staff (who could be chief of staff Andrew Card) to the antipathy of Colin Powell and his allies, who appear to be the sources behind the State Department memo stories.

In particular, the Powell loyalists seem to be very savvy about pushing their side of the story piece by piece, in order to encourage maximum media attention. This particular paragraph in the Post article reads like a knife in the back:

Almost all of the memo is devoted to describing why State Department intelligence experts did not believe claims that Saddam Hussein had in the recent past sought to purchase uranium from Niger. Only two sentences in the seven-sentence paragraph mention Wilson's wife.

Why didn't this additional issue -- raising the stakes to involve the entire WMD lie campaign -- come out in the several earlier news stories about the memo? Because the sources leaking it wanted to hold it in reserve.

It seems that Plamemania is steadily morphing from a war between the CIA and Dick Cheney's office to one between the Rove/Cheney axis and everyone they've ever pissed off. Which, as we're finding out, is a rather long list of people with a lot of hidden daggers.

[wli]

3. If Powell is the one

I'll be rather impressed with him, as it represents a large turnaround relative to the My Lai and other whitewashes.

[jbnow]

5. My Lai was a horrible thing to cover up but

it was about a horrible thing that already happened. The cover up didn't cause deaths.

But when he stayed silent and even went in to mislead the UN he was part of a deception that would cause many deaths, would have long term consequences.

When I watched him talk to UN I kept thinking "You'd better not be lying", but he was. It's not that he was any hero to me but he was the closest thing to sanity in that administration, he had respect in the world. He was part of the cover up before the event.

He didn't speak out then. He didn't speak out before the next election. He might be telling the truth now from behind the scenes, but boy is that too little to late. If it was the country he cared about why is he so late?

[KoKo]

6. Yes....but isn't Powell just doing "Butt Covering" here?

We were lied to about WMD and Powell went before the UN knowing it was a lie and reapeated the lies.

I don't see him as a "Good Guy" here. It sounds more like he's trying to say..."they made me do it...I was a good soldier."

How many of us here on DU would have gone before the UN and lied about what we knew in the lead up to the Invasion? Those of us who've been here on DU throughout all this knew he lied because the evidence about Niger was out here on the internet. Article after article here on the web showed that the whole thing was a NeoCon push.

Powell and his son have careers in DC or elsewhere working for the "multi-nationals" and Powell doesn't want the "taint" of what happens to ruin his chances for more money and power. That's just my opinion. I used to think Powell was the "good guy" in this administration, until evidence of how he went along with all of it doing just enough resistence here and there to keep him from an indictment if it ever all came out. :-(

[mandomom]

4. Rove is leaking in order to blame Fleischer.

He never liked or respected the guy, did he?

[Boo Boo]

7. Maybe, I suppose he could be trying get even with somebody

OTOH, Powel is really pretty much a Bush stooge; not sure he'd want to be the guy responsible for causing Jr. all this trouble. If Powel was on AF1, then he knows Bush knows, so he'd be trying to get Bush in addition to Rove/Libby/Cheney/etc.

How about Carl Ford?

[Old and In the Way]

8. Powell is on record very early in 2001 as saying there was no

evidence that Iraq had reconstituted their WMD program. I could never understand why he did not do the honorable thing and resign rather than accept the role of hi-profile fall guy at the UN. Did he do this out of some sense of misguided loyalty? Or was he somehow compromised by Rove?

I seen so many people doing stuff that would seem out of character for this criminal administration, that you have to wonder if Rove wasn't blackmailing 1/2 the federal government and a good portion of the corporate media. I keep wondering if Gannon had 2 jobs...(1) being a conduit to the RW press on smear stories, like they pulled on Wilson and (2) run a prostitute "sting" business that'd ensnare some high profile people who could then be used to promote the agenda of this WH?