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Plamegate over

Cal

Well-known member
Plamegate over
By Linda Chavez
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/LindaChavez/2006/08/30/plamegate_over
So now we know. The man behind the leak of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity was not presidential adviser Karl Rove, nor Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who is under indictment for allegedly obstructing the investigation into the leak and lying to investigators. It turns out the leaker was former State Department deputy secretary Richard Armitage, a man much loved by the media precisely because he could always be counted on to tell tales out of school. In his own words, Armitage is "a terrible gossip," an admission he made during the Iran-Contra congressional hearings in 1987. The credit for unearthing this information goes to David Corn and Michael Isikoff in their forthcoming book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War."

Corn's role is noteworthy because he is the Washington editor of the left-wing magazine The Nation and an outspoken critic of the Bush administration. What's more, he did much to transform the Plame incident into the national scandal it became. Corn admits that he was the first reporter to float the idea that whoever revealed Plame's name to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who then published it in a 2003 column, may have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. The law prohibits government officials from revealing the identity of covert officers, provided the official knew that the person was covert and obtained the information through his official duties. And since Novak cited "two senior administration officials" as his sources in the article, Democrats in Congress began clamoring for a full-scale investigation, which ultimately led to the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald as a special counsel and the indictment of Scooter Libby in October 2005.

Corn deserves recognition for reporting what turns out to be an inconvenient fact. It can't please him that the investigative trail in the Plame leak led not to hardliners in the West Wing but to a high-placed dove in Foggy Bottom. But I'm not ready to take my hat off to Corn just yet. His new revelations really beg out for a mea culpa for having got it wrong in the first place when he alleged, shortly after the leak, that "there is evidence Bushies used classified information and put the nation's counter-proliferation efforts at risk merely to settle a score." Yet, Corn has decided to use the publication of the exculpatory information to reassert, once again, his attacks on the Bush White House.

Corn implies that it doesn't matter who the original source of the leak was because Rove confirmed Plame's identity when asked about it by Novak and passed on the information to Matt Cooper of Time magazine. Corn also blames Libby for revealing Plame's identity to another reporter, Judith Miller, then a writer for the New York Times. But neither Cooper nor Miller disclosed the information; and it was Novak's column that spurred the federal investigation that later resulted in Libby's indictment. And Armitage was Novak's primary source.

Corn admits that Armitage was "a war skeptic not bent on revenge" against Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for publishing a 2003 article critical of administration claims that Iraq was trying to secure materials used in building nuclear weapons. But instead of acknowledging that Armitage's role in the leak undermines the whole conspiracy theory that the White House would stop at nothing -- even jeopardizing national security -- to get even with its foes, Corn says the Plame affair "remains a story of ugly and unethical politics, stonewalling, and lies."

The real ugliness -- indeed, cowardice -- is that the original culprit who leaked Plame's name never came forward publicly to explain himself. Although Armitage did reveal to federal prosecutors that he gave Plame's name to Novak, he did so only when he may have worried that he could become the target of the investigation after Novak noted in a column, three months after the original story, that his source was "no partisan gunslinger." Nonetheless, Armitage let sharks in the press circle the West Wing looking for blood for the next two and a half years, knowing he was the real blabbermouth.

Worse yet, Scooter Libby now faces possible jail time for allegedly misleading statements in an investigation into a non-crime committed by someone else, a person, in any event, who was already known to federal prosecutors. The real crime here appears to be this malicious prosecution.
 

Steve

Well-known member
another source:
Journalist Bob Woodward of the Washington Post revealed on November 15, 2005 that "a government official with no ax to grind" leaked to him the identity of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame in mid-June 2003. According to an April 2006 Vanity Fair article (published March 14, 2006), former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee said in an interview "That Armitage is the likely source is a fair assumption," though Bradlee later told the Post that he "[did] not recall making that precise statement" in the interview.[1]

On March 2, 2006, bloggers discovered that "Richard Armitage" fit the spacing on a redacted court document, suggesting he was a source for the Plame leak.[2]

On August 21, 2006, the Associated Press published a story that revealed Armitage met with Bob Woodward in mid-June 2003. The information came from official State Department calendars, provided to The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act.[3]

In the September 4, 2006 issue of Newsweek magazine, in an article titled "The Man Who Said Too Much," journalist Michael Isikoff, quoting a "source directly familiar with the conversation who asked not to be identified because of legal sensitivities," reported that Armitage was the original source for Robert Novak's piece outing Plame.[4] Isikoff also reported that Armitage had also told Bob Woodward of Plame's identity in 2003, and that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald investigated Armitage's role "aggressively," but did not charge Armitage with a crime because he "found no evidence that Armitage knew of Plame's covert CIA status when he talked to Novak and Woodward."

Novak, in an August 27, 2006 appearance on Meet the Press, stated that although he still would not release the name of his source, he felt it was long overdue that the source reveal himself.[5]

According to The Washington Note, Armitage has testified before the grand jury three times.[6]

Armitage has also reportedly been a cooperative and key witness in the investigation.[1]

On August 29, 2006 Neil A. Lewis of The New York Times reported that Armitage is confirmed to be the first and primary source of the CIA leak investigation.[7]

Fitzgerald has issued no statement about Armitage's involvement, and as of August 2006, the CIA leak investigation remains open.

On August 30th 2006, CNN reported that Armitage had been confirmed "by sources" as leaking Valerie Plame's role as a CIA operative in a "casual conversation" with Robert Novak. [8]
 

Mike

Well-known member
Dis and R2 both had an awful lot to say about Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and Bush being the culprits here.

I would like to hear their opinions on this now.
 

Liberty Belle

Well-known member
R2, admitting you were wrong is pretty upfront. I, for one, appreciate your candor. I don't imagine we'll hear anything from old disagreeable though.

Here is an editorial from the Wall Street Journal that offers what the prosecutor should do to make amends. What are the chances that Patrick Fitzgerald will also admit he was wrong?

About the same as a snowball in hell? :???:

Fess Up, Mr. Armitage
Time to put the Plame conspiracy to its final rest.
August 30, 2006


From its very start, the ballyhooed case of who leaked the name of CIA analyst Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak has been drenched in partisan politics and media hypocrisy. The more we learn, however, the more it also reveals about the internal dysfunction of the Bush Administration and the lack of loyalty among some of its most senior officials.

The latest news is that the Bush official who first disclosed Ms. Plame's identity was none other than former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. According to a new book by liberal journalists David Corn and Michael Isikoff, Mr. Armitage was Mr. Novak's primary source for his now famous column of July 14, 2003, that first publicly revealed Ms. Plame's CIA pedigree.

In other words, the leaker wasn't Karl Rove or Scooter Libby or anyone else in the White House who has been accused of running a conspiracy against Ms. Plame as revenge for her husband Joe Wilson's false accusations against the White House's case for war with Iraq. So what have the last three years been all about anyway? Political opportunism and internal score-settling, among other things.

Mr. Armitage, recall, was part of Colin Powell's team at State and well known as an internal Administration opponent of the "neo-cons" who supported the ouster of Saddam Hussein. The book alleges that Mr. Armitage knew as early as October 2003 that he was Mr. Novak's prime source, yet he kept quiet about it even as his colleagues in the Administration were dragged through years of criminal investigation and media accusations as the possible leaker. Even now Mr. Armitage hasn't admitted to being the leaker, though doing so would help to clarify several things about the case.

For starters, fessing up would put to rest the conspiracy theories once and for all. Bush opponents have continued to promote this myth, with Mr. Wilson writing in June 2004 that "the conspiracy to destroy us was most likely conceived--and carried out--within the office of the vice president of the United States." Not a word of that was true.

Mr. Novak hasn't himself confirmed that Mr. Armitage was his primary source, since Mr. Armitage hasn't yet given him leave to do so. But Mr. Novak has written that his source was not a "partisan gunslinger," and the columnist has also said that he himself put in the call to Mr. Rove to confirm what he'd first heard from his main source (presumably Mr. Armitage). The White House, in short, was not engaged in any campaign to "out" Ms. Plame.

All of this matters because it also casts doubt on the thoroughness and fairness of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's probe that began in December 2003. The prosecutor never did indict anyone for leaking Ms. Plame's name, though this was supposedly the act of "treason" that triggered the political clamor for a probe. Instead, he has indicted Mr. Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice.

Mr. Fitzgerald has nonetheless also tried to spin an aura that Mr. Libby was responsible for outing Ms. Plame. In his press conference on October 28, 2005, the prosecutor asserted that "In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to [former New York Times reporter] Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson." But we have since learned that Mr. Armitage also told Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward about Ms. Plame--a fact that Mr. Fitzgerald never uncovered until Mr. Woodward came forward after he heard Mr. Fitzgerald make that false public assertion.

Strangely, Mr. Armitage never seems to have told Mr. Fitzgerald that he'd talked to Mr. Woodward. And Mr. Fitzgerald never seems to have asked to see Mr. Armitage's appointment calendar, which would have showed his meeting with Mr. Novak. It's all enough to make us wonder if Mr. Fitzgerald didn't buy into the liberal "conspiracy" theory of this case from the start and target the White House while giving Mr. Armitage a pass.
Meanwhile, according to the Corn-Isikoff book, Mr. Armitage never did tell the White House or his boss, the President, that he was the leaker.

Instead, in October 2003 he told Mr. Powell, who told the State Department general counsel, who in turn told the Justice Department but gave the White House Counsel only the sketchiest overview of what he'd learned and didn't mention Mr. Armitage's name. So while Mr. Fitzgerald presumably knew when he began his probe two months later that Mr. Armitage was Mr. Novak's source, the President himself was apparently kept in the dark, even as he was pledging publicly to find out who the leaker was.

At a minimum, there appears to be a serious question of disloyalty here. By keeping silent, Messrs. Powell and Armitage let the President take political heat for the case, while also letting Mr. Rove, Mr. Libby and other White House officials twist in the wind for more than two years. We also know that it was the folks in Mr. Powell's shop--including his former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson and intelligence officer Carl Ford Jr.--who did so much to trash John Bolton's nomination to be Ambassador to the U.N. in 2005. The State Department clique that Mr. Bush tolerated for so long did tremendous damage to his Administration.

As for Justice, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the case in an act of political abdication. That left then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey in charge, and he also presumably knew about Mr. Armitage's role as the leaker who started it all. Yet if the book's account is correct, he too misled the White House with his silence. Mr. Comey is also the official who let Mr. Fitzgerald alter his mandate from its initial find-the-leaker charge to the obstruction and perjury raps against Mr. Libby that are all this case has come down to. Remind us never to get in a foxhole with either Mr. Comey or the Powell crowd.

There is more to be said at a future date about the specific case against Mr. Libby. But for now the Armitage news should concern one man in particular, and that's the President of the United States. How much differently would he have behaved had he known about Mr. Armitage's role in 2003? Would he have kept echoing the media-liberal spin that there was some nefarious White House leaker to discover, and continue to let the aides who most believed in his policies--Mr. Libby and Mr. Rove--be hounded by a special counsel? And why has he tolerated so much insubordination to his policies?

Someday we hope Mr. Bush will tell us. Meantime, as he absorbs the partisan and ultimately trivial truth of this case, why shouldn't he pardon Mr. Libby and put the entire sorry saga to rest?

WALL STREET JOURNAL Editorial Page
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008872
 

kolanuraven

Well-known member
Haven't had the news on too much so I'm coming in on this a wee bit late.

Question......Now will Armitage face charges for being the " leak"?
 

Steve

Well-known member
Scooter Libby is not indicted for leaking but for covering up.

with the "new" facts presented I am sure he will get his day in court "thrown out" as the prosecutor Fitzgerald "surpressed" evidence that would have cleared him......before he had been charged.....

seems if you put all those involved timelines togeather.....they add up to Scooters "story" about what happened.....

"Libby's notes from that conversation, which took place June 12, 2003, contradict Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he first learned about Plame from journalists,"

As part of his investigation, Fitzgerald subpoenaed then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller and then-Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper. In 2005, Miller spent nearly 12 weeks in jail after she refused to testify to identify her source to Fitzgerald. (View a timeline of the CIA leak case)

Miller was released after her source, Libby, called her and personally waived their confidentially agreement."

which came first the "meeting with Judith Miller, or the Meeting with Vice President Cheney?

a simple fact...
Scooter Libby and Judy Miller met on July 8, 2003,

if he discussed it with Judith Miller (as accussed) then he did not lie under oath, but is guilty of sloppy note taking......

so now that the liberal lies are "outed" let the facts fly.............
 
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