Joe Wilson is a Class A Flake. The guy is out calling for an investigation of Woodward!

Joseph Wilson, the husband of outed CIA operative Valerie Plame, called on Thursday for an inquiry by The Washington Post into the conduct of journalist Bob Woodward, who repeatedly criticized the leak investigation without disclosing his own involvement.

“It certainly gives the appearance of a conflict of interest. He was taking an advocacy position when he was a party to it,” Wilson said.

Kettle, meet Pot. Please tell me the unstable Joe Wilson is not representative of the caliber of people we have running this government and charged with protecting us.

Wilson, a former ambassador turned White House critic, told Reuters that The Washington Post should reveal the name of Woodward’s source, and conduct an inquiry to determine why he withheld the information for more than two years from his editors and the federal prosecutor.

Well, if it is good for Woodward I think it is good for Wilson. Why not put him and Valerie under oath so we know all the reporters they told first!

On another note, the conspiracy theorists are taking a hit as the rumor Dick Cheney was Woodward’s source is squashed

Vice President Dick Cheney is not the unidentified source who told Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward about the CIA status of the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, a person familiar with the investigation said Thursday.

The vice president did not talk with Woodward on the day in question, did not provide the information that’s been reported in Woodward’s notes and has not had any conversations over the past several weeks about any release for allowing Woodward to testify, said the person, speaking on condition of anonymity.

I still think the source is in the CIA, as was Novak’s and the Knight Ridder story I highlighted here. Want to have some fun? Read how the internal debate going on in the Washington Post. My favorite comment:

But I think this whole affair of journalists and politicians using anonymity to trade information and then cast themselves as protectors of the common good stinks. These tradeoffs that we make–arguably to tell what we believe are revelatory stories–are often well beyond the understanding of our readers who go about their lives in worlds in which comments, good and bad, are attached to the names of real people they can go back and question. They can decide a person’s credibility for themselves, examine their motives and make an informed decision.

Ahhh, the awakening! Howard Kurtz has a good round up on the Woodward bombshell here. Some things I did not notice or know previously (since I was gone all day yesterday):

“Exactly what triggered Woodward’s disclosure to Downie remains unclear. Woodward said yesterday that he was ‘quite aggressively reporting’ a story related to the Plame case when he told Downie about his involvement as the term of Fitzgerald’s grand jury was set to expire on Oct. 28.

“The administration source who originally told Woodward about Plame approached the prosecutor recently to alert him to his 2003 conversation with Woodward. The source had not yet contacted Fitzgerald when Woodward notified Downie about their conversation, Woodward said.

” ‘After Libby was indicted, [Woodward] noticed how his conversation with the source preceded the timing in the indictment,’ Downie said yesterday. ‘He’s been working on reporting around that subject ever since the indictment.’

“Once Fitzgerald contacted Woodward on Nov. 3 with a request to testify, the newspaper’s lawyers asked that nothing be published until after the deposition, Woodward said.

It appears Woodward’s source had told Woodward he was going to alert Fitzgerald, giving Woodward time to tell Downie before Fitzgerald was brought in. It is also interesting the Woodward was doing a story on the Plame Game – hopefully this story will still come out! And Fitzgerald has himself to blame for Woodward not seeing the import of his discussion with his source. Until Fitzgerald came out with his version of reality (verses the much better and detailed on that exist with bloggers like Tom Maguire), Woodward would not realize his discussion was possibly the first with a government source. I say “possibly” because Fitzgerald never looked into two other government sources: Valerie and Joe Wilson.

Kurtz has this gem from a NY Times article (for those who pay to read the Times propaganda):

Who’s the source? “A senior administration official said that neither Mr. Bush himself, nor his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., nor his counselor, Dan Bartlett, was Mr. Woodward’s source. So did spokesmen for former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, former C.I.A. Director George J. Tenet and his deputy John E. McLaughlin.”

Well, that knocks off my candidate: Tenet.

I was about to close up this post when I found this newly released post by Joe Wilson himself!

The recent revelation from the Washington Post that Bob Woodward learned of the identity of CIA operative (and my wife), Valerie Wilson, in June, 2003, is perplexing. Woodward and his partner Carl Bernstein were heroes to me as they were to many of my generation for their fearless reporting on the machinations of the Nixon administration. The Watergate investigation was what spurred me to pursue a career in public service.

Ugh, what a brown-noser.

And why did Woodward take it upon himself to adopt an advocacy position on a story in which he was involved, and which has now resulted in the first indictment of a sitting senior White House official in over a century.

Because, Joe, your claim about your wife is bogus and the indictment is bogus and the whole silly media frenzy is bogus…

After all, our newspapers are for many of us the principal filter through which we receive our information and opinion.

That explains a lot about Joe Wilson and how he saw manipulating the press for his own agenda – one he laid out in June of 2003.

The self styled “papers of record”, it seems to me, have a particular responsibility to ensure that the filtration process is not corrupted by conflicts surrounding either interests or relationships with sources.

Joe, do you mean like your and Val’s relationship with Kristof and Pincus and Leiby? Wilson then jumps into the fever swamps of conspiracies to end his little diatribe. What a whiner.

There is an interesting nexus to the Plame Game and Able Danger arising. I hope to post on it more later, but right now there may be a commong player who is holding back details that could resolve both:

U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley won’t say if he was the source who told Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward that Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA. But Hadley volunteered on Friday that some administration officials say he’s not the leaker.

Accompanying President George W. Bush at a summit here, Hadley was asked at a news briefing whether he was Woodward’s source.

Referring to news accounts about the case, Hadley said with a smile, “I’ve also seen press reports from White House officials saying that I am not one of his sources.” He said he would not comment further because the CIA leak case remains under investigation.

Of course, it could simply be Hadley yanking everyone’s chain while saying ‘no comment’ due to the ongoing investigation.

The guru on all things Plame, Tom Maguire, has offered up some excellent evidence that the Woodward’s source is former Deputy Sec of State Armitage (since Powell has denied he is the source). Tom’s evidence is partially provided by John Podhoretz who caught the fact the State Department knew about Valerie in mid June.

But that doesn’t make sense. Tom points to the section of the senate report, which I have posted on many times, which clearly shows the intel community did not think Wilson’s trip was necessary or would produce results. This means intel community correctly predicted the Wilson trip was what it ended up being – a bust. Well if the trip was a bust then who cared what Wilson was leaking to the press?

I posted earlier on Joe Wilsons public and recorded statements after the Kristof and Pincus articles and before he came out from anonymity in his own NY Times Op-Ed and the companion Washington Post ‘news’ article. In that talk Wilson clearly indicates the only way to win back the White House (for Kerry since he was on the campaign then) was to make the Niger intel a scandal. He clearly says the media needs to focus on Niger so they can create a scandal and take down Bush.

This was part of a broad press effort by Valerie and Joe Wilson. They had talked to numerous reporters by this time, and CIA people had talked to reporters too, for example the Knight Ridder article mentioned above, Novak, etc. Is it possible Valerie was meant to be outed to create the media storm and focus the attention on the forgeries? Did the gambit pay off too well and Valerie’s outing overshadowed the forgeries and everything else? All the WH ‘targets’ of Wilson and Fitzgerald were being called for confirmation. Novak’s source, and now Woodward’s (same source) are being treated like some kind of whistle blower by Fitzgerald. Is Fitzgerald treating these CIA leakers as the good guys and that is why they are not being treated like the WH targets?

It’s possible. But the fact is the Wilsons and some other rogue CIA employees were leaking much more to the press the entire time. So adding Valerie’s role to their leaks seems plausible. So I would look to the CIA for these sources.

And, as if on queue, Mac Ranger and Rick Moran have the ‘top VIPS (rogue ex-CIA agents) man coming out and trying to blame Cheney (remember, this has to be a scandal!)