11/30/2005
Bush critics make much of the supposed outing of Valerie Plame, a CIA employee who has not been undercover for at least seven years but was somehow a “secret CIA operative” at the time when Libby and Rove mentioned her to various reporters.
We know now, of course, that Ms. Plame was not covert at the time. We know also that it was the media that brought Plame to the attention of Rove and Libby.
Of course, when Ms. Plame’s name was revealed to the general public in an article published by Robert Novak, Joe Wilson immediately began to scream that his wife had been outed. The media, ever ready to hurt the President, picked up the story, never imagining they also would be singed by the fire they were about to light.
But the greatest irony of that whole incident, which is now as good as dead, is that Wilson was himself a major offender when it came to leaks. It was Plame who recommended Wilson, her husband, to her superiors (can you say ‘nepotism’?) to go on an undercover assignment to Niger to see if, indeed, Saddam was attempting to buy yellowcake uranium for his nuclear program.
Interestingly, however, the CIA never asked Wilson to sign a confidentiality agreement. Nor did the CIA require that Wilson write any kind of formal report regarding what he heard and saw while in Niger. Nor did the CIA require Wilson to come to them for approval before writing or speaking of his work for the CIA in public.
So, after the President’s State of The Union speech in March of 2003, Wilson chose to write an anonymous Op Ed in the NY Times, revealing his recent assignment and, basically, calling the President a liar for declaring that British Intelligence believed Saddam had been attempting to buy yellowcake in Niger (since confirmed). Even worse, Wilson falsely claimed that it was VP Cheney who had recommended him for the assignment when Cheney had no idea that such a mission had been undertaken.
Soon after the first Op Ed, Wilson then went fully public to grandstand for the media and boast of his supposedly “secret” mission to Niger. Ironically, most members of the media never called attention to the fact that he had so recklessly leaked details of an assignment that was supposed to be “covert.”
I don’t think Mr. Wilson knows the meaning of that word. He might want to look it up on Dictionary.com. But I digress…
So the President has been under fire ever since for the so-called “outing” of the non-undercover Valerie Plame, who was already well known by members of the media and whose husband went public about an undercover mission that she had recommended him for. That’s as clear as mud, don’t you think?
And Wilson is not the only liberal who enjoys leaking information to the media! Lets look at what Democrats have been doing in the past several years. For example, here is a very interesting piece from John Fund of the Wall Street Journal:
Is Senator Harry Reid all that swift when it comes to U.S. Intelligence matters? Last Wednesday, the Minority Leader appeared on KRNV-TV’s “Nevada Newsmakers” program and dropped a stunning revelation. He had been informed just that day that Osama bin Laden was killed in the giant Pakistan earthquake last month. “I heard that Osama bin Laden died in the earthquake, and if that’s the case, I certainly wouldn’t wish anyone harm, but if that’s the case, that’s good for the world.”
Intelligence analysts tell me that the only proper action by a top U.S. Senate leader who has been given such information is radio silence. If the report is true, such information is best released at a moment of the U.S. government’s choosing. For one thing, as long as the information is tightly held, it can be used to sift out electronic intercepts that might lead to other Al Qaeda leaders. On the other hand, if Mr. Reid’s public speculation proves groundless, it only embarrasses the U.S. and contributes to enemy morale. Here’s hoping Al Qaeda figures aren’t soon appearing on Al Jazeera television chortling about the clueless Mr. Reid.
Here is another perfect example of what I’m talking about:
Yesterday, on Fox News Sunday, the following exchange took place between Chris Wallace and U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:
———————–
WALLACE: Now, the President never said that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat. As you saw, you did say that. If anyone hyped the intelligence, isn’t it Jay Rockefeller?SEN. ROCKEFELLER: No. The — I mean, this question is asked a thousand times and I’ll be happy to answer it a thousand times. I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq — that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11.
———————–
While Democrats in Washington are berating the White House for having prewar intelligence wrong, a high-profile U.S. senator, member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, who has a name more internationally recognizable than Richard Cheney’s, tells two putative allies (Saudi Arabia and Jordan) and an enemy who is allied with Saddam Hussein (Syria) that the United States was going to war with Iraq. This is not a prewar intelligence mistake, it is a prewar intelligence giveaway.
And the biggest whopper of them all, as far as I’m concerned, was outlined in detail by John Hinderaker in today’s Weekly Standard:
THE CIA’S WAR against the Bush administration is one of the great untold stories of the past three years. It is, perhaps, the agency’s most successful covert action of recent times…
In one leak after another, generally to the New York Times or the Washington Post, CIA officials have sought to undermine America’s foreign policy. Usually this is done by leaking reports or memos critical of administration policies or skeptical of their prospects. Through it all, our principal news outlets, which share the agency’s agenda and profit from its torrent of leaks, have maintained a discreet silence about what should be a major scandal…
Recent events indicate that the CIA might even be willing to compromise the effectiveness of its own covert operations, if by doing so it can damage the Bush administration. The story began last May, when the New York Times outed an undercover CIA operation by identifying private companies that operated airlines for the agency…
The Times reported that its sources included “interviews with former C.I.A. officers and pilots.” It seems difficult to believe that the information conveyed in those interviews was unclassified. But if the agency made any objection to the Times’s disclosure, it has not been publicly recorded. And the agency’s flood of leaks to the Times continued…
The other shoe dropped on November 2, when the Washington Post revealed, in a front-page story, the destinations to which many terrorists were transported by the CIA’s formerly-secret airlines–a covert network of detention centers in Europe and Thailand…
The leakers evidently included officials from the highest levels of the CIA…
The twin leaks to the Times and the Post have severely impaired the agency’s ability to carry out renditions, transport prisoners, and maintain secret detention facilities. It is striking that top-level CIA officials are evidently willing to do serious damage to their own agency’s capabilities and operations for the sake of harming the Bush administration and impeding administration policies with which they disagree…
One final note, which is an important point to underscore, is the fact that the media and many liberals had high hopes that the Plame affair would become another Watergate. It did do some damage to the Bush Administration, but the whole issue is likely to pass quickly, even with the continuing investigation.
But the supposed crime of “outing” an undercover CIA operative never materialized. Even if it had, however, there is one major difference between the Plame investigation and Watergate.
The role played by the media.
With Watergate, the media was the one to expose a Whitehouse coverup. And what Woodward and Bernstein found was a whole web of lies that, ultimately, brought Richard Nixon and his administration down.
With Valerie Plame, the entire controversy grew out of investigative reporting being done by members of the media. They were the ones who brought Ms. Plame to the attention of Rove and Libby, not the other way around. Andy Rove and Libby then passed what they had learned on to other members of the media; not that Plame was an undercover operative whose husband was trying to hurt the Bush Administration, but that Ms. Plame was employed by the CIA and who had gotten her husband a job that he was never in any way qualified for. The Plame affair was sparked by the media, not a Republican administration. And their fingerprints are everywhere.
And the greatest irony of all to me is that all of this is well known by anyone with a desire to know the facts. But it’s not about the facts for some, it’s about the opportunity.
The opportunity to hurt a President that they hate more than they hate even the terrorists who murdered 3000 Americans on 9/11.
David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com
2 Comments
[…] Have I not said this over and over? This is exactly what liberals in general and DNC leaders in particular have been dreaming of for some time now… A return to the glory days when they forced the US to retreat from South Viet Nam — then cut off all economic and military aid to that country, insuring that South Viet Nam would fall and hundreds of thousands slaughtered — and President Nixon was toppled by the Watergate scandal. […]
Pingback by Viewpoint Journal » Dems Lay Groundwork for Their 06 Defeat — 12/6/2005 @ 12:27 pm
lesbian anime girls
N0viysV3tstaaart0
Trackback by lesbian anime girls — 7/11/2006 @ 7:24 am