Quote :

"Top CIA leak investigation falsehoods As U.S. attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald's two-year investigation into the CIA leak case reportedly draws to a close, the long-standing debate over the origins of the scandal, the merits of the federal investigation, and the legal authority of the prosecutor has intensified greatly. At issue is the disclosure to the press of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, which first appeared in syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak's July 14, 2003, column. Bush administration officials allegedly leaked her identity in order to discredit her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a vocal critic of the White House's decision to go to war with Iraq. In this rhetorical environment characterized by limited information and boundless speculation, those defending the officials at the center of Fitzgerald's probe have advanced numerous falsehoods and distortions. As Media Matters for America documents below, the media have not only failed to challenge many of these claims, but also repeated them. Falsehood: It is legally significant whether the leakers disclosed Plame's name in their conversations with reporters Shortly after Newsweek published an email by Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper to Time Washington bureau chief Mike Duffy saying that, according to White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, "Wilson's wife" worked at the CIA, Rove's lawyer responded by noting that his client had not stated her actual name. Several news outlets went on to report Rove's response as if his reported omission of Plame's name was relevant to whether he violated the law. Simultaneously, commentators such as former presidential adviser David Gergen and Washington Times chief political correspondent Donald Lambro, as well as the Republican National Committee (RNC), began to advance the argument that because Rove didn't specifically name her, he did not reveal her identity. But whether leakers identified Plame as "Valerie Plame," "Valerie Wilson," or "Wilson's wife" is irrelevant, both as a practical matter and likely as a legal matter. Practically speaking, a quick Google search of Joseph Wilson at the time would have produced Plame's actual name. As such, administration defenders have declared that whether her name was mentioned to reporters likely has no bearing on whether there was a violation of the law. Despite having previously implied that there is a meaningful distinction between disclosing her name and her identity before, Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, later conceded that drawing such a line was "too legalistic." Similarly, Victoria Toensing, the Republican lawyer who helped draft the potentially applicable 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), agreed that the use of her name is "not an important part of whether this is a crime or not." Nonetheless, numerous media figures recently revived this claim in the wake of New York Times reporter Judith Miller's revelation that the source who told her that Plame worked at the CIA, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, also never disclosed her actual name. Falsehood: Wilson said that Cheney sent him to Niger An RNC talking points memo made public on July 12 accused Wilson of falsely claiming "that it was Vice President Cheney who sent him to Niger." The allegation that Wilson had lied about the genesis of his trip was soon repeated by RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, who argued that this fact justified the purported leaking of Plame's identity to the press and that the White House had simply been attempting to set the record straight. New York Times columnist David Brooks made this argument at least twice (here and here). And a string of journalists and commentators -- including CNN's Dana Bash, The Washington Post's Mike Allen, Newsweek's Jon Meacham, and U.S. News and World Report's Michael Barone -- parroted the allegation during news reports and media appearances in the following weeks. NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell recently repeated the claim as a guest on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews. But Wilson never said that Cheney sent him to Niger. To support this accusation, the RNC had misrepresented his July 6, 2003, op-ed in The New York Times and distorted a remark he made in an August 3, 2003, interview on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer. Contrary to their allegation, Wilson clearly stated in the op-ed that "agency officials" had requested he travel to Niger. Further, in the CNN appearance, he stated it was "absolutely true" that Cheney was unaware he went on the trip. Falsehood: Plame suggested Wilson for the trip to Niger In their ongoing attempts to justify the alleged leaks, Mehlman and other supporters claimed that the White House had a legitimate interest in setting the record straight by disclosing that Plame, not Cheney, was actually responsible for Wilson being sent to Niger. In a January 2005 Washington Post op-ed, attorneys Victoria Toensing -- a friend of Novak -- and Bruce W. Sanford framed the leak in such a light and suggested that Novak outed Plame because he wanted to "expose wrongdoing" -- i.e., the alleged nepotism that led to Wilson's assignment. Numerous reporters subsequently repeated that Plame suggested Wilson for the trip, including The Washington Post's Jim VandeHei, MSNBC host Chris Matthews, and, most recently, MSNBC correspondent David Shuster. But what these reporters stated as fact is actually in dispute. Unnamed intelligence officials have been quoted in the media claiming that the CIA -- not Plame -- selected Wilson for the mission. Also, CIA officials have disputed the accuracy of a State Department intelligence memo that reportedly indicates that Plame "suggested" Wilson's name for the trip. Novak himself claimed that the Senate Intelligence Committee, in its 2004 "Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq," concluded that Plame suggested the trip. In fact, the committee did not officially conclude that she had been responsible for Wilson's assignment. Falsehood: Wilson was not qualified to investigate the Niger claims In conjunction with the claim that nepotism led to the selection of Wilson for the trip to Niger, several conservative media figures have attempted to cast the former ambassador as unqualified to investigate the claims that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium yellowcake form the African country. Toensing has repeatedly claimed that he lacked "any experience in WMD" and "any kind of senior experience in that country." National Review Washington editor Kate O'Beirne has described Wilson as "no expert in weapons of mass destruction." But Wilson possessed extensive diplomatic experience, had specialized in Africa during most of his career, and had taken a similar trip to Niger in 1999 to investigate possible purchases by Iran. Falsehood: Plame's CIA employment was widely known In an apparent effort to undermine the possibility that the alleged White House leakers committed a crime, both The Washington Times editorial page and right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh have argued that Plame's identity was known by many in Washington, D.C., at the time Novak published his column outing her as "an agency operative." As support for this argument, the Times claimed that "numerous neighbors were aware that she worked for the agency." In fact, none of the neighbors cited in The Washington Times' own news reports or in other reports said that they knew before reading the Novak column that Plame worked at the CIA. Her acquaintances told reporters that they believed she worked as a private "consultant." Falsehood: Fitzgerald must prove that Plame's covert status was leaked Recent reports from a number of news outlets have attributed legal significance to whether Rove and Libby leaked Plame's covert status to the press. But as with the issue of whether Plame's actual name was leaked, whether the officials communicated her status as a covert operative is likely not relevant to the question of whether their actions violated federal law. According to news reports, a 2003 State Department memo -- which was likely read by top administration officials during a trip to Africa -- designated as "S" for "secret" a section mentioning Plame, even though it did not mention her covert status. Therefore, the information allegedly disclosed by Rove and Libby -- that she worked at the CIA -- was apparently classified. "

[Edited on October 29, 2005 at 7:13 PM. Reason : more here: http://mediamatters.org/items/200510220001]

10/29/2005 7:13:17 PM

lots of words

10/29/2005 8:11:41 PM

Thanks for making another thread.

10/29/2005 8:42:24 PM

You're welcome for the new thread. I'm sick of repeating myself in the other 3.

10/29/2005 11:01:19 PM

^

Yes -- instead of 10 ignorant posts, you now have one. That is surely a bold trade-off.

The post you made is so silly and equivocal, it's funny. You posted it thinking noone would actually read it.

And for the record:

Quote :

"Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media"

No emphasis needed.

[Edited on October 30, 2005 at 2:10 AM. Reason : foo]

10/30/2005 2:06:49 AM

thank you for futhering my defense of keeping abortion legal.

10/30/2005 3:44:37 AM

^^ I get the feeling that he would flip out if I posted a story from Fox News. I guess that irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.

10/30/2005 10:48:40 AM

Quote :

"I get the feeling that he would flip out if I posted a story from Fox News."

No, not at all. Fox News is the conservative equivalent of prisonplanet.com.

10/30/2005 10:29:03 PM

Quote :

"^ Yes -- instead of 10 ignorant posts, you now have one. That is surely a bold trade-off. The post you made is so silly and equivocal, it's funny. You posted it thinking noone would actually read it. And for the record:"

Quote :

"Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media"

Quote :

"No emphasis needed."

Media Matters sources all of their material, unlike the exaggerations and speculations of Fox News.

10/30/2005 10:31:42 PM

^^ ummm... i hate to break it to you, but prisonplanet is little more than conservatism taken to its natural extreme...

10/30/2005 10:33:50 PM

So can you tell me when Media Matters has been wrong?

It's true that they're biased in who they choose to critique, but their critiques are consistently accurate.


So please, point out the false information in the article.

10/30/2005 10:42:00 PM

I don't know what is so natural about an "extreme"... Personally, I would think apathy comes "natural"

10/30/2005 10:44:13 PM

Quote :

"Fox News is the conservative equivalent of prisonplanet.com."

Wow. Just wow.

10/30/2005 11:04:47 PM

10/31/2005 7:49:24 AM

Quote :

"Rove to testify again before CIA leak grand jury No indication an indictment is imminent, his attorney says WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Presidential adviser Karl Rove will give additional testimony to the grand jury hearing evidence in an investigation of the 2003 disclosure of a CIA agent's identity, his lawyer said Thursday. Attorney Robert Luskin said special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald asked Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and President Bush's top political strategist, to appear before the grand jury for a fourth time. Luskin said Fitzgerald gave no indication that an indictment of his client was imminent. (Watch CNN's Toobin on the leak investigation -- 3:21) He did not disclose a date for Rove's testimony. The Associated Press reported that federal prosecutors have warned they cannot guarantee Rove won't be indicted. The U.S. attorney's manual requires prosecutors to notify witnesses in advance of their testimony that what they say may be used against them if there is a possibility of an indictment. According to the AP, the prosecutor did not give Rove similar warnings before his earlier grand jury appearances. Asked whether any of Bush's aides have been notified that they are a subject of the probe, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "I'm not aware of any new developments.""

10/31/2005 10:18:29 AM

Quote :

"Lawmaker says Italy warned U.S. that Iraq uranium documents were fake By Ariel David The Associated Press ROME – Italian secret services warned the United States months before it invaded Iraq that a dossier about a purported Saddam Hussein effort to buy uranium in Africa was fake, a lawmaker said today after a briefing by the nation's intelligence chief."

http://tinyurl.com/dzmxk

11/6/2005 1:34:11 AM

BTTT FOR DUMBASSES LIKE Wlfpk4Life

11/17/2005 10:56:18 PM

[Luigi]OMG biased web source!!11!!![/Luigi]

The biggest falsehood is insisting to refer to Natalie Plame as being a covert agent when she's been sitting in front of a desk for the past 8 years, far away from the field.

11/17/2005 11:20:37 PM

Quote :

"Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer. In July 2003, the fact that Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer was classified. Not only was it classified, but it was not widely known outside the intelligence community. Valerie Wilson's friends, neighbors, college classmates had no idea she had another life. The fact that she was a CIA officer was not well-known, for her protection or for the benefit of all us. It's important that a CIA officer's identity be protected, that it be protected not just for the officer, but for the nation's security."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/10/28/text_of_fitzgerald_news_conference/

11/17/2005 11:22:00 PM

^^Apparently you're prevy to some information that no one in Washington has.

Because everyone else is still unsure as to exactly what her status was and where she traveled to.

Please enlighten us.

[Edited on November 17, 2005 at 11:22 PM. Reason : ^^]

11/17/2005 11:22:41 PM

OMG POST AN ARTICLE FROM NEWSMAX OR JOHN BIRCH WLFPCK4LIFE!

11/17/2005 11:26:33 PM

Keep the lies coming, pryderi.

Quote :

"Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely (USA, ret.) is one of Fox's senior military analysts. Gen. Vallely confirmed to me that nearly a year before Robert Novak's July 2003 column revealed Valerie Plame as a CIA employee, former Clinton Ambassador Joe Wilson told Vallely and his wife, Muffin, that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. This revelation, published last week on John Batchelor's ABC talk show (and repeated Monday night on John's show), blew more holes into Joe Wilson's tattered credibility and raises important questions about the CIA's actions. (Fox's Judge Andrew Napolitano had said on the air that a FNC colleague had told him of Plame's CIA employment; Vallely didn't recall being Napolitano's source.)"

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8993

11/17/2005 11:30:47 PM

Quote :

"(Fox's Judge Andrew Napolitano had said on the air that a FNC colleague had told him of Plame's CIA employment; Vallely didn't recall being Napolitano's source.)""

Let's just make shit up and say we can't remember our source.

11/17/2005 11:33:13 PM

Someone get Fitzgerald on the phone!

Wlfpk4Life's blown this case wide open!


Now I know you're tired of us not accepting your lame-ass sources, but give us someone better than the guy who wrote Inside the Asylum: Why the United Nations and Old Europe Are Worse Than You Think, and we might not laugh as hard.




[Edited on November 17, 2005 at 11:38 PM. Reason : STOP THE PRESSES]

11/17/2005 11:35:38 PM

I'm not surprised that you would suck the UN's or Frane's dick, boonedocks.

11/17/2005 11:37:19 PM

omg ad hominem

11/17/2005 11:38:02 PM

OMG SAY SOMETHING NASTY ABOUT FRANCE TOO!

11/17/2005 11:39:24 PM

looks like the libbies are backing off now. nothing proven, as usual by the left.

11/17/2005 11:41:22 PM

Good god! You could cut the republican ignorance in this thread with a chainsaw! Maybe.

11/17/2005 11:42:48 PM