According to this morning’s WSJ, there’s been a shift in focus in the Plame Case:
Mr. Fitzgerald’s initial mission was to see if the leaking of Valerie Plame’s name violated a 1982 act that bars the intentional disclosure of an undercover intelligence operative’s identity.
But lawyers and others close to the case say he may be piecing together a case that White House officials conspired to leak various types of classified material in conversations with reporters — including Ms. Plame’s identity but also other secrets related to national security.
Mr. Fitzgerald’s office declined to comment on the investigation yesterday. Because a grand jury investigating the leak is scheduled to expire in a week, Mr. Fitzgerald is expected to decide on any possible charges soon.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m glad I don’t have any classified information.
Classic witchhunt. They began this witchhunt two years ago with false accusations brought about by proven liar (CIA) Wilson yet continued on without justification in order to find something with which they could charge an inditement. Hayek is being proven profoundly corect, Liberalism (eaten alive by Leftist) is vicious and is leading us down the road to serfdom.
This is not good at all. Innocent until we prove you guilty is something Liberalism used to fight against today they have incorporated into their system of justice.
Using injustice to crimminalize a political party is not right.
I’ll repeat, this is not good at all.
I was flipping channels early this morning and briefly paused at Imus.
my oh my.
There was some coalled toerrorism expert on there [whose name I have already forgotten] who says that Saddam not only had no weapons he had no ties to terrorism and was apparently an innocent man. Well sort of.
The bad neo cons set this poor baby up to take a fall and the brave Wilson tried to do the right thing.
gag.
I remember quite plainly that the Clinton adminstration said Saddam was a dnagerous man, had weapons and had ties to terrorism. In fact the bombing of the aspirin factory in the Sudan was tied in some weird way to Saddam and VX. All very complicated and circular.
Now that it turns out the CIA was wrong on some things and some others can not be proven with absolute certainty it seems the agency is trying to cover its butt by blaming anyone and everyone else.
If I remember correctly this began when Wilson acting like an anonymous source leaked some inaccurate information to a reporter, and then another reporter. What followed of course was the oped in the NYT.
As usual the press has become the news, rather than just reporting news.
The bottom line is that if people like Valerie whats her face had been doing their job in the first damn place a lot of this would never have happened.
But to say that Saddam had no ties with terrorism because he and Osama did not like each other or to ignore the moth balled weapons programs that were not supposed to exists at all would be just as wrong as exaggerating the ties and the weapons.
It is a witch hunt all right.
David:
Not to mention the fact that Wilson and certain rogue elements of the CIA were doing some selective leaking of their own.
Is anything going to happen to them?
Does Wilson/Plame get off scot free for starting this whole fiasco?
For Terrye: This is the bio of your “so-called terrorism expert” if you’re interested (bottom line: he’s been on the frontlines of the war):
Christopher Whitcomb, a fifteen-year veteran of the FBI, is the author of Black (June 2004) and Cold Zero: Inside the FBI Hostage Rescue Team (September 2001). He currently works as an on-air terrorism analyst for NBC News, speaks internationally on security and crisis-resolution matters, and writes on a freelance basis for several national publications.
Prior to leaving his position as a supervisory special agent at the FBI in 2001, Whitcomb investigated acts of terrorism, including the World Trade Center bombings in 1993 and the USS Cole attack in Aden, Yemen. His most recent position was director of the FBI Critical Incident Response Group�s Strategic Information Management Office, where he oversaw crisis-specific planning and intelligence management during attacks involving weapons of mass destruction, terrorist threats, and exotic criminal investigations.
From 1991 to 1997, Whitcomb served on the Bureau�s elite Hostage Rescue Team. There he distinguished himself as an assaulter, sniper, explosives expert, and tactical helicopter operations officer. He participated in some of the FBI�s most controversial investigations, such as the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas, and the Randall Weaver shootings in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. He has been awarded numerous citations and awards, including the FBI�s Medal of Bravery for exceptional courage in the line of duty. Whitcomb, who has a master�s degree in education, also taught interrogation tactics to new agents and international law enforcement officers at the FBI Academy. While there, he wrote the Integrated Case Scenario — an innovative training protocol that serves as the basis of the FBI Academy�s sixteen-week new agent training curriculum.
Since the release of his memior, Cold Zero, in 2001, Whitcomb has become a regular on dozens of television and radio programs. He has appeared on 60 Minutes II, Larry King Live, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Montel Williams, NPR, BBC TV, and many more. He is a frequent contributor to Imus in the Morning, Today, and various programs on MSNBC, and he cohosted Checkpoint CNBC in 2002 and 2003.
Christopher Whitcomb has spoken before the United States Senate, British Parliament, the United Nations, and dozens of professional organizations. He has written a monthly column for GQ and has been published in the New York Times Magazine, FHM, the New York Times, and many other newspapers and magazines. His next novel, New White, is due out in spring 2005.
Keith:
Thank you for the bio. But experts are not at all uncommon. We see that in court all the time and they are all over cable news. It is amazing how many books there are by experts out there and how often they contradict one another. Exgenerals and CIA analysts are prolific.
My expert goes up against your expert.
There are other experts who have said that Saddam did have ties to terrorism and was a threat to the region and his own people.
Richard Clarke said that there were ties between Iraq, Osama and Sudan, hence the bombing during the Clinton adminstration.
Saddam had ties to the first attack on the WTC, he gave money to the families of suicide bombers. Nidal and Zarqawi were not tourists visiting Iraq.
My problem with this speaker was that he said there were no ties at all between Saddam and AlQaida. That is not true. We can debate the ties but to say they did not exist based on the grounds that Saddam was secular is not really an expert reason to doubt, it is opinion. Saddam and Zarqawi came to an arrangement and obviously Zarqawi is not a secular kind of guy. I don’t think Hitler and Tojo were buddies. Since when is it necessary for people to like each other to ally against a common enemy?
Stephen Hayes is also considered an expert and he disagrees with that assertion. Of course there are people who would call him a hack.
I think what annoys me the most however, is that none of these doubts were out there before Bush came to Washington. Most of the ties established that were used by the Bush administration were in evidence during the Clinton years. Most of the evidence concerning Saddam’s weapons was also established and largely unquestioned before Bush came along.
I suppose my question is where were these people in 1998? Where were all the experts then?
I have wondered what the reaction would have been if Bush had said “We are going to stop flying the no fly zones. If Saddam turns on the Kurds and Shia that is his right. After all Iraq is a sovereign nation. We are going to ignore any and all corruption and kickbacks in regard to the Food for Oil program because the UN is above reproach and it is all our fault for starting the sanctions program in the first place. We are going to assume that all previous intelligence from both our own intelligence agencies as well as the British is false and Saddam Hussein has no weapons of mass destruction stockpiles or ties to terrorism. We will ignore his violation and noncompliance and he is free to start up any and all weapons programs in the future”.
What would the reaction have been?
We can argue about the weapons and the ties to terrorism but if not for the invasion we would not know what we do know today. Whatever knowledge exists in regards to the workings of the Mafia like regime of Saddam Hussein did not come from the “experts” who failed us on 9/11 and are still failing us, it came from the war.
David:
And if after all is said and done and there are no convictions…how do people get their reputations back?
That terrorist ‘expert’ Whitcomb was not a very good expert at understanding terrorism because we kept getting attacked by the very terrorist of which he was suppose to be an expert.
His credentials seem to oppose his results.
Further, if establishing an expert means one who speaks on an NBC program well, NBC promotes race baiters like musician Kayne West as an expert of a racial divide of which exists only in the minds of producers at NBC. As if there were nothing to report in the real world so NBC much make crap up just to give reporters something hysterical to do. The news agencies these days are funnier than the pacifist appeasers they pretend are humane.
That said, anyone who believes in International consensus of experts believes in a united world for genocidal peace and justice for dictators expertise.
I lived through Watergate; that third rate burglary which toppled a presidency and spawned hack reporters into national heros: Woodward and Bernstein.
Are we seeing a repeat? An arrogant hack diplomat and his blonde wife who topple a presidency. Stranger things happen to Washington pooh bahs. If Rove and “Scooter” Libby fall, then we can be assured that they are as feckless as Haldemann, Erlichman and Mitchell.
There was never a crime in the first place, even the press concedes this. Going along this imaginary track; knowing this, are we to believe that Rove and Libby – advised by the best lawyers GOP money can buy – decided to cover up what they told Novak, Cooper and that “dingbat” Miller. It is incredible that the White House did not hire a real criminal lawyer, ready to brave the winds of media outrage, and say in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave; “yes, my client talked to Bob Novak, now indict him – if you think a crime is committed!!”
That did not happen because the WH pooh bahs were intimidated by the threat of press outrage in 2003 when the story ran. Big time operatives think ” we can’t let that out, we will be pillored by the Times and Post . . . what will Krugman/ Dowd/Friedman/Broder/Dionne write.” So they get together and talk about a strategy which leads to claims of cover up.
If Fitzgerald is so incorruptible and savvy, don’t be surprised if he lets the GJ go – without an indictment. Because with such equivocal testimonial screwballs like Miller and Cooper [she said, he said], he has serious testimonial and proof issues in trying to prove cover up or perjury by the WH.
But, the Powerball betting in the press is: scandal time in DC.
David:
It is not only their time and money, it is ours.
Who is paying for the Fitzgerald investigation?
And in the end what will come of it other than the kind of hysterical ranting from pundits that is driving many people to just tune all this out? They are drooling at the thought of a Rove indictment.
We have young people fighting in a war and all these guys can think about is scandal and more scandal and if there is not enough, let’s go create one.
I hear folks complain all the time about how there are not statesmen anymore. As if a statesman could survive in this cess pool.
First there was the whole TANG thing, and then comes this Plame nonsense and Katrina and the dead in the Superdome and let us not forget AbuGhraib and who and what is at the center of it all?
Why, that unbiased and objective media just speaking truth to power.
The truth is they are turning people off at a record rate.
David:
I do not share your view. Fitzgerald, appointed by Ashcroft, is not an idealogue but a career prosecutor. The administration is not faultless for the Plame scandal. It had a chance in 2003
to staunch this open sore but decided to tough it out, thinking it was blameless so “let’s appoint Patrick, he’s squeaky clean and he’ll clean up the mess.”
Bill Clinton is quoted in Louis Freeh’s new book that he made two mistakes in his presidency; appointing Freeh as FBI Director, and, not following Hillary’s advice to not appoint a special prosecutor in Whitewater. Maybe Ashcroft and the WH should have listened to Bubba.
Well I know if Valerie Plame/Flame/Wilson is what passes for an expert in wmd and if her husband is what passes for a man on a secret mission then they can not be too damn picky about who they give out information to.
David:
They did not have to lie. All they had to do was fail to disclose.
I read that Fitzgerald is not a special prosecutor. The Special Prosecutors are a thing of the past.
He is a regular old every day prosecutor and doesn’t the Grand jury have to indict?
It is all very strange…complicity to commit a crime that is not a crime…
The only way I can think of the Bush people could have avoided this would have been to try and have Wilson prosecuted when the oped came out.
Go after him in the open and call him out for a liar and a blabber mouth.
But talking to the press is a no no. They simply can not be trusted.
Terrye — Fitzgerald is a special prosecutor, ie, a prosecutor outside the normal DoJ chain of command to investigate soemthing. You’re thinking of the Watergate “independent prosecutor” law, which let a panel of judges hire a prosecutor outside the DoJ completely.
I agree, by the way, on the hazard this would be if the rumor proves correct; the ultimate irony will be an op-ed defending it by Daniel Ellsberg in the New York Times.
Roger, I guess you and everybody else reading this blog knows that only the editorial pages of the WSJ can be considered conservative. The rest of the paper, including this article, are just as leftwing as any of the other msm.
Roger:
The report and the indictments will be out by the 28th. Indictments don’t make anyone guilty, but whoever is indicted will have to resign. The speculation overdrive is in full swing and I suggest everyone wait until the 28th and then examine the particulars of the charges. Of course there are political angles to this case and it doesn’t make anyone guilty or innocent. The watergate comparison’s are absurd but that is SOP for the MSM. Vietnam, Watergate, and McCarthyism have been the cliche touchstones of journalism for the last twenty years and every political scandal eventually is described in those terms, even if there is no logical comparison to those events. I don’t know what happened and unless some of the journalist’s and some of the politicians expose all their sources we will probably not get the full picture for a while. But the MSM frenzy is building up and there is not much anyone can do about it
David: Fitzgerald abides by the DOJ guidelines but he is a modern day hybrid form of special prosecutor. There’s a marked difference between a crime and “nefarious/naughty” conduct. Admit to the second, never to the first; get a good criminal lawyer in “at the beginning,” and ask
is it a crime or just bad form. Open the WH door and tell the damn truth. If it’s bad form, then state it, and, let the press go crazy.
The fault lies in that the WH never did because the political winds in 2003 were blowing against the WH, the war and there was such holler and shout that apparently they decided to bury it and allow the press secretary to inexplicably utter that the WH was not involved.
jedrury:
Maybe they weren’t involved. At least not then.
It seems lide a lot of the speculation is coming from events since then, if yu know what I mean.
Is is it a certainty there will be indictments?
On one hand people seem sure but then again on the other hadnd we hear no decision has been made to indict.
I think the whole thing is ridiculous.
Bill Kristol at the Weekly Standard site has it right on.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/239rebkj.asp
This whole situation is fascinating and I see several levels of the story–In fact, this is a story I am sure our host could spin into a wonderful novel.
Depending on the level one views this: (1) a white house staff anxious to screw a rogue diplomat who gave them some bad press. If that were in fact the case, Rove, Libby et all deserve to be indicted for sheer stupidity, when they could have put the whole thing in the open and refuted the charges in open court so to speak
(2) a Rogue CIA, knowing their intelligence and analysis was absolutely wrong, leaking information to discredit the White House so as to cover their sorry asses–an argument even more coherent because the CIA also enlisted a member of the Dept of State to cover for State’s INR operation.
The former is bad enough if true; the latter is even more ominimous because it suggests that an out of control agency can attempt to bring down an elected administration by selective leaks including a compliant and prostituting press–
Perhaps both versions are true; but knowing Washington politics and how leaks are done to screw the administration in power, and maintain one’s bureaucratic turf, I am inclined to the latter.
AND we have a model: I give you Mark Felt–hero d’jour of the MSM in his role of deep throat; but I can also give you an equally credible version of my second scenario–a disgruntled, pissed off bureaucrat, furious because HE was passed over for the position of director, and decides to bring down a duly elected President (not that RMN was any great shakes as a paradigm of virtue, coupled with the fact that he had a sycophantic staff) but what is the preferred model of our government?
Unelected bureaucracies in league with unelected media subverting democratic elections?
OR
administratived hubris and stupidity in how they fail to understand the rules of the game
Of the two, I prefer the latter.
Again the Republicans are letting the Democrats set the agenda and are being put on the defensive.
What kind of “deep cover2 operative would an Ambassador’s wife make? Deep cover is Fidel Castro’s proctologist,the Cubans would no more believe Plame was not an agent than they would believe Tony Soprano’s wife is an undercover nun!
Why not ask some petinent questions,why was Wilson who knew nothing about yellowcake sent to Niger,where he did no speak the language.
What was the purpose of Baghdad Bob’s visit to Niger?
Why was Wilson not suspicious about a powerful member of Saddams gang visiting a country where the main products are goats ,cow peas and yellowcake?
Why is the French role in yellowcake production not investigated,are there any connections between this and oil for food?
Why is a foirmer member of the FBI regarded as an expert on the internal machinations of the Iraqi regime? Sorry,wrong department!
Roger:
I have no firm opinion of the guilt or innocence of Rove or Libby. We don’t have all the facts and we don’t know who Fitzgerald is going to indict and what he has on them. But I do recognize the scandal culture of the press that takes every action and pumps it up to a frenzy.
Take the dramatic story in the L.A. Times this morning. “Bush Critic Became the Target of Libby, Former Aides Say”. “Libby Kept Tabs 0n Bush Detractor, Ex-Aides Say”. Alright, we got them now, lets here the ugly facts. Joe Wilson is qouted “What an abuse of power Wilson said, “What the hell are they doing using taxpayers funded employee’s to root around and find information on me?” Hot damn, let’s hear the the details on the nefarious deeds.
These are the facts told in the story. When Wilson’s story came out libby was outraged at what he considered lies and half truth’s. he urged the administration to publicly refute wilson’s story. The bulk of the White House political team disagreed with Libby. The “collecting of info” , at least as far as the story informs us, are newspaper clippings of Wilson’s public words. Libby was collecting Wilson’s public statements, OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!, and wanted to respond to them politically in the press. This is a new low, the White House has never responded to political atttacks in the press.
The qoutes were largely unattributed and terms such as obsessive were the general theme the story wanted to convey. Is there more? Maybe. But all this story tells us is that Libby was pissed over Wilson’s comments, thought they were inaccurate propaganda, tried to talk the White House into being more vocal in the counter attack, and that he kept track of Wilson’s comments in the press. The breathless headlines have no connection to the trivial facts the reporter dug up. Nothing in the story is anything other then standard political tactics. No dirty tricks, no illegal tampering with Wilson’s private medical info or tax records. The Times tries to paint a picture of skullduggery but the actual info they report is nothing. Fitzgerald may have more, I don’t know, but what the Times reported was silly. They should wait for examples of Nixonian behaviour instead of trying to gin it up.
As I said, this Plame affair is political to the core.
But honestly, I don’t think it’s fair to criticize the administration for not coming out in public immediately and refuting Wilson.
Good grief. They had to figure out exactly what the deal was first. I mean, it’s not like yellowcake/Niger had any more significance to them than anything else in the run-up to the war.
They had to sort through various intelligence reports and summaries including foreign intelligence. And that takes time.
Not only time, but they were dealing with classified material. And that makes it a helluva lot more complicated than just refuting someone over a political issue!
You can’t just shove a report into Scotty’s hands and send him to a microphone!
The administration did request a report that would essentially give them the details. And what did they find in that report?
That Wilson’s wife was CIA and was involved in the decision to send him!
Okay, start with that while we get the rest of it sorted out.
Oooops. Too late.
I’m impressed with your article. I’m looking forward to your next blog.