The LA Times Sidles Up To The Plame Drama

The LA Times editors are not happy with the Plame investigation, but they are not as unhappy as the WaPo last week.  We are live from LA:

THE VALERIE PLAME AFFAIR, which once seemed like a political morality play, has morphed into a dark comedy of errors. One more scene remains to be enacted — the criminal trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney — but it would have been better for all concerned if the curtain had been brought down on this drama long ago.

...Libby is facing trial, and Wilson and Plame can continue to argue that there was a coordinated effort to impugn him by bringing her into the controversy over Niger and uranium. But the disclosure that it was Armitage who mentioned Plame's role to Novak — before Rove confirmed it — muddies the story line of a malicious outing of a covert agent. What's more, it seems that Fitzgerald knew of Armitage's role before he initiated the elaborate investigation that eventually resulted in not only the Libby indictment but also the jailing of former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who had refused to reveal her sources.

Some supporters of the administration are gloating over the disclosure of Armitage's role, suggesting that it shows Fitzgerald was on a witch hunt. Some are demanding a presidential pardon for Libby. That's premature, and it's worth recalling that Libby is accused of something serious: lying to federal investigators. Still, the latest twists and turns in the Plame-Wilson affair make us wish that we had been right when we observed, almost exactly three years ago, that "no one should count on catching the leaker, at least in a legally airtight manner."

David Frum does a much better job of gloating in an AEI piece - he bashes Joe Wilson and the CIA but not Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, which strikes me as a reasonable mix. 

Personally, I have a couple of problems with Fitzgerald - I think he embraced the framing of the case as presented by Wilson and Corn and investigated a White House conspiracy rather than the leak of Valerie Plame's CIA affiliation.  Had he done the latter, he almost surely would have discovered the Armitage leak to Bob Woodward in October 2003, when Armitage came forward with news of his leak to Novak [Except Fitzgerald didn't have the case yet - D'oh!  Still, he re-interviewed Armitage and got his grand jury testimony, so he had plenty of opportunity to ask the right questions].  That might then have prompted Fitzgerald to investigate whether Armitage or anyone else at State leaked to other reporters (Since Andrea Mitchell covered State and was on this story, it bothers me that she has never been queried by investigators, unless she was - her story changed on this, as well as on whether Ms. Plame's CIA affiliation was "widely known".)

My second problem with Fitzgerald is that his press conference announcing the Libby indictment was a disgrace.  Let me pick out one point:

Valerie Wilson's cover was blown in July 2003. The first sign of that cover being blown was when Mr. Novak published a column on July 14th, 2003.

But Mr. Novak was not the first reporter to be told that Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson, Ambassador Wilson's wife Valerie, worked at the CIA. Several other reporters were told.

In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson.

Mr. Fitzgerald should have stopped right there and emphasized that due to Department of Justice guidelines that prevented him from hauling reporters into court and water-boarding them for the truth, his investigation was quite incomplete.  if Libby was the first official "known" to have leaked (eventually, Libby lost that honor to the Armitage-Woodward leak) it was in large part because not many reporters had been grilled.

Comments

[Other Tom]

"No one should count on catching the leaker, at least in a legally airtight manner."

Huh? What kind of non sequitur is that? The leaker was Richard Armitage. Is that too difficult for the LA Times to grasp?

[lurker]

Other Tom, I didn't understand the statement when I read it. Not sure what "legally airtight manner" meant. Does it mean that we learned of Armitage through AP's FOIA request and the new Corn / Isikoff book, which aren't done in a legally airtight manner?

But Fitz did learn about Armitage early on in the game but this wasn't considered a "legally airtight manner"?

At least, an article like this one further accelerates the closure of PlameGate with those two lawsuits left. Judge Bates probably will not give the Wilsons and CREW much legroom of manueverability to defend their case against Cheney, Rove, and Lewis. Fitz doesn't have much to prove that Libby lied to the GJ and obstructed justice at this point.

[jwest]

I know this question has been asked and answered before, but unfortunately my memory is getting as short as my... well, let’s just say I can’t remember what was said on the subject.

How did Fitz get around the “two witness” rule on perjury?

[larwyn]

Sad just posted at weekend's thread that James Lewis has post at AT regarding Colin running as VP to Hillary!

And I put in the link to Walid Phares at Counterterrorism Blog - Assam the American complimented
Sy Hersh on his reporting and hoped he would do more on the war. AQ also thinks highly of
Fisk and the RESPECT MP George Galloway. The New Yorker must be so proud.

[larwyn]

Sad just posted at weekend's thread that James Lewis has post at AT regarding Colin running as VP to Hillary!

And I put in the link to Walid Phares at Counterterrorism Blog - Assam the American complimented
Sy Hersh on his reporting and hoped he would do more on the war. AQ also thinks highly of
Fisk and the RESPECT MP George Galloway. The New Yorker must be so proud.

[noah]

OT: Rush Limbaugh will be on CBS news tonight...some kind of pre-recorded "other voices" segment from what I gather.

[Sue]

OT, but the Civil War we should be concerned about may be about ready to break out. South of the border.

No article yet, just headline: Mexico's High Court Backs Calderon's Slim Election Victory

[Chants]

Regarding the completeness of Fitzgerald's investigation, he explained to the court way back in early 2005 that the investigation was essentially complete. All he needed was the testimony of Miller and Cooper. He certainly gave the impression that they were the one's holding things up.

http://tinyurl.com/47kfy

[Uncle BigBad]

The Plame affair is beginning to remind me of the Lady Flora Hastings affair that threatened (or so some said) to bring down the British monarchy.

By the way, what ever happened to MOM? And why hasn't someone leaked the reason Porter Goss was fired? Now that Plame has fizzled, shouldn't the intrepid investigators on this board get back to the real CIA scandals?

[Sue]

Chants,

Fitzgerald told the appellate court in the fall of 2004 he was basically through, with the exception of Miller and Cooper.

The left's explanation, as far as I can tell, for why Fitzgerald did not find out about Armitage/Woodward was because he was unable to ask, due to the narrow line he was walking between reporter privilege and the need to know. Even though (if published reports are correct, we haven't seen the referral so we really don't know precisely what he was investigating) he was tasked with finding who leaked the name of Valerie Plame Wilson to reporters.

And the left's way of dealing with Armitage/Novak and Armitage/Woodward? Blame Libby for asking about Wilson's trip to begin with.

It's all about conspiracies. I am seeing nibbles of how they are going to try to weave Armitage into the conspiracy. Watch. Before they are through, Armitage will have been in on the conspiracy from the beginning.

[Sue]

I have been unsure whether Libby initiated the phone calls to Miller or vice-versa. I read today where Miller initiated the 1st phone call for the June 23rd meeting.

That means, there is not one reporter that either Libby or Rove (or anyone else for that matter) called to out Valerie Plame Wilson.

I am going to jump completely on board with Top and say Wilson started that.

I wonder if his attorneys (Wilson's) have told him to lose his journal yet? It will be discoverable in the civil trial.

[Cecil Turner]

Is that too difficult for the LA Times to grasp?

I think they got it, but it just wasn't the droid they were looking for. My favorite is this one, which is apparently the new approved party line:

But the disclosure that it was Armitage who mentioned Plame's role to Novak — before Rove confirmed it — muddies the story line of a malicious outing of a covert agent.

"Muddies"? How about "Debunks"? It's not like the standard for using that word was particularly high, especially in the stories that started this all off:

• Kristof: "The envoy's debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted — except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway."
• Pincus: "the retired United States ambassador whose CIA-directed mission to Niger in early 2002 helped debunk claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium there for nuclear weapons"

Of course, Wilson claims he never claimed that . . . but then, he claims a lot of stuff that isn't quite right.

[Other Tom]

Sue: If Wilson loses (or destroys) anything from here on out, he's committing the crime of spoliation of evidence. No attorney would tell him to do that, although God knows what he might do, or might already have done, on his own.

Fitzgerald surely had no limitations whatsoever on the scope of his questioning of Armitage, as opposed to questioning the reporters. Every litigator I have ever known would have inquired along the lines of, "Mr. Armitage, please tell me the name of every person with whom you have spoken about Valerie Plame Wilson during the period X through Y," with innumerable follow-up qustions to refresh his recollection and to close all the loops. That questioning should also have been conducted by a person who had thoroughly reviewed Armitage's documents, notes, journals and the like, and who had those materials in hand to show to Armitage while questioning him about them.

[Other Tom]

Doesn't it seem that the referral must allude in some way to the possibility of a “conspiracy” to disclose Plame’s identity and to injure Wilson? That would account for Fitzgerald’s pursuing the investigation notwithstanding his knowledge of Armitage’s role, and would also explain some of the comments by both Fitzgerald and Judge Walton in various hearings during the course of the grand jury’s term.

I seem to recall that at one point Fitzgerald referred in open court to an “effort to punish a whistleblower,” or words to that effect, and Walton described the “unnamed government official” (Armitage) as “innocent.” It may very well be that, all along, Fitzgerald has been looking into something quite different from the mere identity of the first person to out Plame. What am I getting wrong here?

[Jane]

Fitz has got to be feeling some pressure to say something - anything, at this point. Doesn't mean he will do it, but clearly the pressure is mounting.

This had to be a really bad labor day for him. We need a Fitz watch.

[JJ]

The best/worst line in the Fitz's press conference, I think, was this one near the bottom of his statements:

He [Libby] was at the beginning of the chain of phone calls, the first official to disclose this information [Plame's] outside the government to a reporter. And then he lied about it afterwards, under oath and repeatedly.

Parse that! If indeed Libby did lie, it wasn't about what Fitz alleged in this particular line.

Not to smear Fitz unnecessarily, but here's to proving exactly what the LATIMES says can't be proved: "...no one should count on catching the leaker, at least in a legally airtight manner."

^ That can be done quickly if you commit to going way too far out on a limb as Fitz did here.

Puts a whole new twist on the meaning of "special" in Special Prosecutor.

[Ranger]

Doesn't it seem that the referral must allude in some way to the possibility of a “conspiracy” to disclose Plame’s identity and to injure Wilson?

That's why I think the 2x6 story in the WaPo is what led to Fitz'z appointment. It's the only change in the picture between the initial refferal and Tenant's follow up letter. It's also the only thing that explains Fitz's choise to ignore Armitage until Woodward forces him to come forward and why, even after he came forward there still was no charge filed. Armitage could not have obstructed Fitz's investigation because his entire investigation was started to investigate a White House conspiracy. No wonder Fitz is fighting to hard to keep it secret.

[Pofarmer]

Other Tom

Are you saying the referal letter from Comey might have told Fitz that his job was not to look for the leaker, but to look for who tried to punish a "whistleblower"?

That would indeed change the tenor of the investigation, and would make Comey's role in this somewhat suspect.

Grand conspiracies indeed?!

[LARWYN]

Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Plamegate, RIP
Posted by Hugh Hewitt | 9:46 AM
Rowan Scarborough writes the obituary of the Joseph Wilson-Valerie Plame Affair in today's Washington Times. It is a wonderful read, but Mr. Scarborough, a reporter, does not provide the list of those who, by virtue of their deep and repeated investments in the lies of Joe Wilson and the fevers of the lefty swamp, damaged their credibility beyond repair outside of the swamp. Perhaps Tom Maguire or some other accomplished Plameologist will provide for us sideliners a convenient scorecard of those whose names ought never to appear in print except as accompanied by the phrase "who was so memorably taken in by Joe Wilson" or "who, it must be remembered, believed deeply in Fitzmas."

Such a list would be long, and the work hard, but what a service to have in one place, easily linked to, a comprehensive listing of the easily fooled.
---------------
GO FOR IT

[Pofarmer]

Aye che wha wha.

And if the 2x6 story was actually a plant, as discussed on other threads. Then that makes the whole investigation essentially a setup.

Incredible!

[sad]

http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20060905-121843-2994r

The Washington Times article

[Other Tom]

Pofarmer: Yes, that's exactly what I'm surmising about the terms of the referral. As Jed Babbin has suggested, there is almost certainly no longer any reason for it to remain classified. I would hope that we will get to see it soon.

As to the 1x2x6 stuff, and who was calling whom, here is an excerpt from the Rowan Scarborough piece that Hugh Hewitt is referring to:

"An early newspaper story asserted that two White House officials actively contacted six Washington reporters to reveal Mrs. Plame's identify and that she worked at the CIA. This was accepted as fact by liberal bloggers. There is no mention of these events in the Libby indictment, which summarizes the incident. But Mr. Novak, Mrs. Miller and Mr. Cooper said they initiated the contacts with administration officials -- not the other way around."

Lots of egg on lots of faces, including particularly Kristof and Pincus, for starters. I look forward to some more talented person's compiling the definitive list, complete with juicy quotes.

[sad]

If the referral is made public and does involve a WH conspiracy, Fitz can always claim he kept it secret to "protect" the WH from an unsubstantiated smear, much as he has protected Armitage...

[Pete]

TM - Fitzgerald had not even been assigned to the case in Oct 2003. So I don't understand what your first point is. If when Fitz took over FBI suspected Rove and Libby of lying and of a cover up, is it your contention that Fitz should not have pursued that?

And if Fitz had grilled other reporters, I wonder how much louder the cries would be about "a runaway prosecutor". If you accept for a fact that Fitz went by the DOJ guidelines, then Fitz's remark that "Libby was the first official KNOWN to have ..." seem fine.

Personally, it is a mystey to me why Fitz threatened Royce and Phelps with a subpoena, but never followed up. After all it was to Royce and Phelps that Novak declared in the aftermath of his article (before the calls for investigation gained any traction) that his sources came to him and gave him the name.

[SteveMG]

I guess after this hard hitting editorial (I've had oatmeal with more bite in it) Ms. Streisand will write a letter saying she's canceling her subscription.

Again.

SMG

[Jane]

Boy that Washington Times piece really made my blood boil - again.

[Sue]

Sue: If Wilson loses (or destroys) anything from here on out, he's committing the crime of spoliation of evidence.

Yeah, I know, but I don't think that would stop Joe from losing it. He was dumb enough to tell us he was keeping one. He will either have to turn it over or explain how he lost it.

[Sue]

If when Fitz took over FBI suspected Rove and Libby of lying and of a cover up, is it your contention that Fitz should not have pursued that?

I don't know about Tom, he can and should answer for himself, but for me, it hasn't been so much that he investigated/pursued, but that he bought, hook, line and sinker, Wilson's tale of woe. And from the beginning, I have complained that Fitzgerald was not investigating a leak but a conspiracy. You could tell from what little we got from 'sources close to the investigation'. And the subsequent court filings after the indictment. He only asked Russert about Libby. He only asked Cooper about Libby/Rove. He only asked Miller about Libby.

Fitzgerald didn't have sand thrown in his eyes, he buried his head in a bucket full of sand.

[maryrose]

Joe's journal would be a wonder to behold but I'd love to check out the info in his palm pilot.
Larwyn:
I read that Rowen Scarborough article and like Jane I am outraged by this travesty of justice. This should be resolved soon and not allowed to occur again. No government official should have to give blind obedience to a Special prosecutor and forfeit their 5th amendment rights.

[sad]

****Fitzgerald didn't have sand thrown in his eyes, he buried his head in a bucket full of sand.***

BRAVO!!!! Sue, you go girl!!!!

[Sue]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060918/corn>David Corn

the officers of the agency's Joint Task Force on Iraq--part of the Counterproliferation Division of the agency's clandestine Directorate of Operations--were frantically toiling away in the basement, mounting espionage operations to gather information on the WMD programs Iraq might have. The JTFI was trying to find evidence that would back up the White House's assertion that Iraq was a WMD danger. Its chief of operations was a career undercover officer named Valerie Wilson.

[Sue]

That throws a new spin on whether she had the clout to send Joe. According to something I read yesterday, I'll have to find it later, her department was tasked with answering the VP's question.

[JM Hanes]

Other Tom:

I had to go back and re-read that last sentence from the LA Times myself. It's badly written, but it appears they're saying that they wish the bit you quoted were true:

Still, the latest twists and turns in the Plame-Wilson affair make us wish that we had been right when we observed, almost exactly three years ago, that "no one should count on catching the leaker, at least in a legally airtight manner." [Emphasis mine.]

Translated into plain English, it's a rather remarkable confession: Now that we actually know the miscreant's identity, we really wish he had managed to avoid exposure, as we originally thought he would.

[sad]

From the same Corn article at The Nation

***"When the Novak column ran, Valerie Wilson was in the process of changing her clandestine status from NOC to official cover, as she prepared for a new job in personnel management. Her aim, she told colleagues, was to put in time as an administrator--to rise up a notch or two--and then return to secret operations. But with her cover blown, she could never be undercover again. Moreover, she would now be pulled into the partisan warfare of Washington. As a CIA employee still sworn to secrecy, she wasn't able to explain publicly that she had spent nearly two years searching for evidence to support the Administration's justification for war and had come up empty."***

Anyone else see some issues with that paragraph?

[Pete]

Here is another gem from the Corn article which may not go well with the crowd here:

"Another issue was whether Valerie Wilson had sent her husband to Niger to check out an intelligence report that Iraq had sought uranium there. Hubris contains new information undermining the charge that she arranged this trip. In an interview with the authors, Douglas Rohn, a State Department officer who wrote a crucial memo related to the trip, acknowledges he may have inadvertently created a misimpression that her involvement was more significant than it had been."

[fdcol63]

The unfortunate reality is this:

Via this whole Plame non-story, the radical Left and their compatriots in the Democratic Party and the MSM have succeeded in propagating the "Bush Lied!" and the "No Iraqi WMDs!" memes, and have dragged a huge portion of the American electorate further into an "X-Files" conspiracy theory mentality.

They've been able to undermine confidence in the Bush administration, the GOP, our intelligence gathering capabilities, and our comprehensive financial, legal, and military efforts against militant Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and the growing Iranian threat.

As they say, you only get one chance to create a "first impression". Through their lies, innuendos, ommissions, biased reporting, and distortions of the truth, the predominantly liberal MSM understands that it still has the opportunity - through their print and broadcast media dominance - to create the initial public attitude on most subjects and issues.

Once formed, these attitudes are almost impossible to change. Especially when the facts and the truth finally comes out, buried in new media blogs, a brief "correction" segment in the middle of a broadcast, or on Page 34D of the major printed newspapers.

The MSM understands they still have this power, and they are fighting tooth and nail to retain it as long as possible. Expect more of the same until new media has been more successful in undermining popular confidence in the MSM.

Alas, this process will take a while.

[Sue]

It also puts her in a position to have arranged the trip.

[paulv]

It is not news that Corn's articles are internally inconsistent.

[sad]

If that article is representative of the "blockbuster revelations" to be exposed by HUBRIS, I will save my money.

[Pofarmer]

Wasn't any undercover career Val had already over? I mean, her cover had been blown once, how many times can you "recover"?

That whole Corn piece looks like one big fabrication, with just enough kernels of truth in it to keep the LLL crowd hooked, not that I'm surprised.

I still want to know Comey's role in this. I smell a big ole rat. We know that DOJ is full of leaks. How far down is the ship?

[Pete]

I guess Corn had his one week of fame in this newsgroup :)

Hailed yesterday, denounced today.

[lurker]

"Another issue was whether Valerie Wilson had sent her husband to Niger to check out an intelligence report that Iraq had sought uranium there. Hubris contains new information undermining the charge that she arranged this trip. In an interview with the authors, Douglas Rohn, a State Department officer who wrote a crucial memo related to the trip, acknowledges he may have inadvertently created a misimpression that her involvement was more significant than it had been."

Valerie Plame did indeed write a memo recommending Joe Wilson for this trip.

Also, how do we know there was only one memo written by Douglas Rohn and nobody else wrote memos or talked to management?

The MSM, leftwingers, and the democrats have done a really good job turning this non-story into a huge story so blame it on MSM, leftwingers, and democrats.

[Sue]

Hailed yesterday, denounced today.

David Corn has never been hailed around here. At least not by the regulars.

[lurker]

"I guess Corn had his one week of fame in this newsgroup :)

Hailed yesterday, denounced today."

Actually, he was denounced right from the beginning. When I read this new book review, I knew that Corn and Isikoff book is full of holes as neither of them did not complete their investigation.

[lurker]

"Wasn't any undercover career Val had already over? I mean, her cover had been blown once, how many times can you "recover"?

Thought Ames blew her cover?

[jwest]

This is typical Corn.

“…….From 9/11 to the war--eighteen months--that was not enough time to get a good answer to this important question."

Apparently, no one informed Val that we fought a war with Iraq in ’91 and that the primary provision for the cease fire was the disarming of Iraq’s WMD stores and programs.

Moonbats would like to forget the 11 years prior to 9/11, pretending instead that Iraq was a peaceful, secular, kite-flying society that was of no particular interest to the U.S. except for the Bush/Cheney hatred of all things unchristian.

Does Corn have access to the reams of documents he apparently believes Val authored telling her superiors that there were absolutely no WMD in Iraq? Did Tenet simply misinterpret (as seems to be the norm at the CIA) Val’s findings as the “slam dunk” he reported to Bush?

Val was running this unit which, according to Corn, was tasked with evaluating Iraqi WMD capabilities since 1997. But the complaint is that she didn’t have enough time between 9/11 and the start of the war to do a thorough evaluation. Would Saddam have phasers and warp drive if we waited long enough for Val to do a proper job?

Corn has exposed Val as the model of incompetent bureaucratic government employees. I hope she is happy with his assessment.

[lurker]

fdcol63, good analysis and while the news media is starting to break ground in denting that old-guard MSM's wall of power in bias and partisan reporting, it needs to do more quickly.

[topsecretk9]

Joe's journal would be a wonder to behold but I'd love to check out the info in his palm pilot.

MaryRose...me too.

I mean, her cover had been blown once, how many times can you "recover"?

Twice, Cuba snafu too.

[lurker]

"Regarding the completeness of Fitzgerald's investigation, he explained to the court way back in early 2005 that the investigation was essentially complete. All he needed was the testimony of Miller and Cooper. He certainly gave the impression that they were the one's holding things up.

http://tinyurl.com/47kfy"

Ah, Chants, this basically disproves Scary Larry's (and Talkleft) that Cheney remains in Fitz's crosshairs or will be indicted.

[topsecretk9]

--agency's Joint Task Force on Iraq--

Forgeries?

[lurker]

"From the same Corn article at The Nation

***"When the Novak column ran, Valerie Wilson was in the process of changing her clandestine status from NOC to official cover, as she prepared for a new job in personnel management. Her aim, she told colleagues, was to put in time as an administrator--to rise up a notch or two--and then return to secret operations. But with her cover blown, she could never be undercover again. Moreover, she would now be pulled into the partisan warfare of Washington. As a CIA employee still sworn to secrecy, she wasn't able to explain publicly that she had spent nearly two years searching for evidence to support the Administration's justification for war and had come up empty."***

Anyone else see some issues with that paragraph?"

Sad, plenty!

Sounds like Corn and/or Isikoff interviewed Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson for their new book.

[topsecretk9]

No wonder Corn didn't want to address Byron York's conspiracy starting theories.

[Other Tom]

I challenge Pete to find an instance of David Corn being praised here, yesterday or any other day. Recent days have afforded us all a wonderful opportunity to gloat over his having to abandon ship on the fraud Wilson. The fact that he grudgingly acknowledges the truth when it becomes unavoidable benefits him nothing in my eyes; he is still a manifestly dishonest man. The fact that he now claims to have found some guy who acknowledges having overstated the case for Plame's role in sending Wilson in no way affects the findings of the bipartisan SSCI. She wrote a memo recommending him for the trip, and there's no erasing that memo.

The woman's cover was blown by Aldrich Ames years ago. Who does this clown think he's fooling?

[Sue]

Not only did she write a memo, if Corn is right, she was in a position to authorize Wilson to go on the trip.

[lurker]

Other Tom, have you found any links that proved Ames blew Plame's cover years ago?

[Sue]

I wonder if Larry Johnson is a source for Corn? I hate evaluating their reporting without knowing who their sources are.

[Pete]

re Corn - I am well aware of the history and I didn't mean personally hailed. But information from Corn's book was hailed yesterday and denounced today. What a difference a day makes.

[Sue]

Information from Corn's book merely confirmed what we had already figured out.

[Wilson's a Liar]

I wonder what job in the Kerry administration David Corn was promised by Joe Wilson and his handlers. Must have been a pretty big one.

[Sue]

It makes you want to go back to the first articles, Kristoff and Pincus, and wonder if Plame was indeed one of the sources. One of the sources that debunked the forgeries.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Corn is an idiot. He's got Val starting out in the Athens embassy, where every foreign intelligence service would assume she was CIA. Then she transfer to being a deep cover NOC!

[PeterUK]

"Corn is an idiot. He's got Val starting out in the Athens embassy, where every foreign intelligence service would assume she was CIA. Then she transfer to being a deep cover NOC!"

Athens is known to leak like a sieve,not a place to keep a secret.

[Tom Maguire]

TM - Fitzgerald had not even been assigned to the case in Oct 2003. So I don't understand what your first point is. If when Fitz took over FBI suspected Rove and Libby of lying and of a cover up, is it your contention that Fitz should not have pursued that?

Groan - brain-lock on Oct 2003.

As to the Libby thing, I think he had good reason to pursue it. I also am having trouble picking a logical end-point for the investigation - about the time the Miller subpoean was heating up (Aug 2004), Fitzgerald found out that (a) Russert's version of his Libby chat was quite different from Libby's, and (b) Cooper had another source that had not self-identified.

So I can sort of see not wanting to drop it there.

OTOH, in a filing related to the Miller subpoena Fitzgerald says he needs her testimony because so far, he has no direct evidence that Libby knew Plame was covert.

C'mon - what were the odds that he was going to get that evidence from Miller? And he didn't. But he did pick up a couple of extra obstruction/perjury counts.

Anyway, I have a Corn thread going.

[Other Tom]

"But information from Corn's book was hailed yesterday and denounced today. What a difference a day makes."

What was praised yesterday was the man's admission that he'd been wrong all along. He didn't provide anyone here with any "information" that we hadn't been talking about for roughly a year. And I, for one, denounce him today because, as I say, I have for many years known him to be a dishonest man. One takes today's version of events to be true at one's great peril. E.g., he adduces Rohm's equivocation about his own memorandum concerning the origins of Wilson's trip, but does not mention Valerie Plame's own memo, which apparently is quite inconvenient to his story line.
But that's David Corn.

[srp]

I don't agree with our host about Fitzgerald's investigation. Bush (Fitz's ultimate principal) made Fitzgeralds's mission crystal clear--find out who leaked to Novak. It was for that purpose that Bush told all of his subordinates to cooperate with the investigation, rather than obstruct a la Clinton.

Once Fitzgerald knew that Armitage had been the source of the leak, he was done. All he had to do was report who the guilty party was and decide whether or not to charge him (and here Plame's true classification status would be a central issue).

Who cares who else talked to reporters? None of those other leaks resulted in publication of Plame's name. It is academically interesting that Armitage leaked to Woodward first, but is of no legal relevance to the Novak leak, which was the only "outing" of Plame.

So I do want to know why Fitzgerald, instead of saying thanks for his good luck with Armitage's admission, took such extraordinary steps as imprisoning journalists and setting up perjury traps. The idea of him grillng Libby, trying to bluff him into thinking that he was a suspect as the leaker, in order to get him to say something indictable is nauseating.

[RichatUF]

to sad;

When the Novak column ran, Valerie Wilson was in the process of changing her clandestine status from NOC to official cover, as she prepared for a new job in personnel management. Her aim, she told colleagues, was to put in time as an administrator--to rise up a notch or two--and then return to secret operations. But with her cover blown, she could never be undercover again. Moreover, she would now be pulled into the partisan warfare of Washington. As a CIA employee still sworn to secrecy, she wasn't able to explain publicly that she had spent nearly two years searching for evidence to support the Administration's justification for war and had come up empty.

Wow...the "justification" phase for war started in March 2001 interesting, I think I missed that. Almost like Saddam was hiding in Iran, in Dec 2001. David Corn, still drinking the kool-aid. See Joe went and said that he didn't find anything. And Joe is the best super secret diplospy EVER!

IIRC, if an agent loses their NOC, then goes into the "official side" they can't cross back over. Am I missing something here or is their tradecraft really that bad.

RichatUF

[RichatUF]

from jwest:

Would Saddam have phasers and warp drive if we waited long enough for Val to do a proper job?

That is a classic, I'm saving that and shamelessly plagerizing it

RichatUF