Apr 29 2006
Waas Waay Overboard
Murray Waas continues to echo the talking points of those aligned against the Bush administration, specifically Scooter Libby and Karl Rove, as he attempts to make Fitzgerald’s pathetic case for him. Using a lot of words to go nowhere, Waas’ article has one or two telling sentences, which Murray rushes by so as to not let them destroy his fantasy world.
First off, the reason Fitzgerald is hesitating is he has a ‘he said, he said’ situation. Karl Rove did not testify about a discussion with Time’s Matt Cooper, early one, but when his memory was jogged he immediately went and testified again. That rules out perjury right there (you can make the charge, but it will not stick). So Waas and Fitzgerald are looking for something inside the discussion to hang their case on.
Waas has to mistake facts to get there too. First off he claims Scooter Libby confirmed Valerie’s job and role to Matt Cooper Libby breathed the words to Cooper ‘I heard that too’. Look at how Waas expands that non-commital response:
Cooper has also testified that Rove, as well as a second source — I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, then-chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney — portrayed the information about Plame as accurate and authoritative.
And this clown considers himself a professional journalist? No wonder the profession is considered the second oldest profession in the world. Well, Waas’ first amendment rights allow him the opportunity to look the fool. By the way Waas, I heard the Beatles are planning a reunion!
Since Cooper brought up the name Valerie Plame to Rove and Libby, they cannot his sources for the information. Which means Fitzgerald is still violating the order under which he was mandated, and not pursuing who leaked her name and job at the CIA.  Which is why Fitzgerald is stymied. He has boxed himself into these marginal differences in recollection which cannot be proven one way or other ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’. Waas knows this too, as he notes in one of his drive by tributes to reality:
But it has not been previously known that much of the questioning of Rove on Wednesday also focused on the contradictions between Cooper’s and Rove’s accounts of their crucial July 11 conversation.
Once you hit this sentence in the article, any objective person has decided to move onto something tangible and important. Waas is just getting warmed up as he bends reality to his liking. That includes me who is playing Mr. Mom this weekend. So I will use one paragraph to illustrate the strange, delusional world of one Murray Waas, supposed reporter:
The outing of Plame was part of [1] a broad effort by the Bush administration in the first half of 2003 to discredit Wilson, [2] a vocal administration critic who charged that the president and others in his administration had [3] misrepresented intelligence information to make the case to go to war with Iraq.
The numbering mine, to illustrate the three falsehoods Waas sprinkled in this one sentence. First off, there is no evidence of a wide spread effort to discredit Wilson, which implies attacking personally, but simply an effort to correct Wilson’s claims. That is a big distinction, one you can even find evidence of in Fitzgerald’s filings as I point out in this earlier post. In Fitz’ own words:
Some documents produced to defendant could be characterized as reflecting a plan to discredit, punish, or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson. The government declined to produce documents relating solely to other subjects of the investigation, even if such documents could be so characterized as reflecting a possible attempt or plan to discredit or punish Mr. Wilson or Ms. Wilson.
What Fitz has is documentation from the administration which lays out what were the goals and activities being taken in response to Wilson’s wild claims. Since they do not reflect and effort to ‘get Wilson’ Fitzgerald is not releasing them to Libby’s defense! Cute, eh? Not how I want our nation’s justice system to work. It is meant to determine the truth, not a desired political outcome.
Number [2] in Waas fantasy world sentence deals with the idiotic claim that a Kerry Campaign member is the same as a ‘vocal critique’. The Kerry campaign is on the record admitting Wilson was working for them at this time AND that they too knew about Valerie’s job and role:
Kerry’s advisers acknowledged yesterday that Wilson, who has also donated $2,000 to Kerry this year, told them about his allegations against the White House involving his wife before going public with them this summer. But Rand Beers, Kerry’s top adviser on foreign affairs, said the campaign has not played a role in coordinating Wilson’s charges.
So how is it a ‘real’ reporter would confuse Wilson with some sainted voice of opposition? Well, a real reporter can’t. It is against their ethics. You folks can take that to draw your own conclusions.
And finally [3]. Wilson did not claim through Kristof, Pincus and his own Op-Ed the administration misrepresented information leading to the Iraq war. Wilson charged them with knowingly using forged documents, pretending they were real. And in fact, the only person caught misrepresenting pre-war information was Mr. Joe Wilson, in a bi-partisan Senate study among others.
Waas is Waay out there. He should switch to fiction, where his skills lie.  One final fantasy to point out:
Plame’s identity was blown on July 14, 2003 in a column by nationally syndicated writer Robert Novak.
We all know it was blown well before that, by someone under protection of Fitzgerald. It was first REPORTED in a newspaper on this date. But Fitzgerald has clearly proven the press had broad knowledge of Valerie Plame and her role even before Wilson outed himself in the NY Times. Murray, what in the world are you thinking? Did you expect to have accolades of genius thrown your way for this tripe? I bet you did! Too funny.
Tom Maguire applies his keen intellect to this garbage today as well. Make sure to check it out.
Let me say right up front–I’ve read virtually none of the documents in the Libby case. Having said that, however, could someone please explain to me why Fitzgerald is not in a truly perilous position? It seems to me that the pretrial phase of this case is a chess match, and Fitzgerald has been badly outplayed. This seems clearer than ever after the events of the past two days.
1. Team Libby’s motion challenging the the constitionality of the Special Counsel’s authority placed Fitzgerald on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, he could have agreed with Team Libby’s arguments and stated forthrightly that, yes, he is a totally loose cannon, a missle under his guidance and his alone. Seeing the perils of that approach and the likelihood that it would not be sympathetically received by the court, Fitzgerald essentially found himself forced to renounce his own former position. He strenuously argued that he was, indeed, under DOJ supervision of one sort or another. So strenuously did he argue this point that he went to the lengths of submitting patently false affidavits purporting to establish a mental reservation that reversed the clear meaning of Comey’s letters as well as his own statements on his authority. This approach probably did not impress the judge favorably.
2. It’s difficult for me to understand what it could possibly mean for Fitzgerald to be under DOJ supervision if it doesn’t mean this: that he is obliged to follow standard prosecutorial guidelines. After all, what other basis could there be for supervision of a prosecutor?
3. Having accepted Fitzgerald’s contention that he is, indeed, under DOJ supervision (the exact nature of that supervision to be decided later?), Judge Walton sprang a nasty surprise on Fitzgerald: he demanded that Fitzgerald turn over the referral letter for examination by the court. I don’t see any other way to read this action than to see it as a signal that Judge Walton considers the history of the entire investigation to be relevant to the indictment of Libby and therefore relevant to the case for the defense. And that would seem to open up a very significant can of worms. Clarice Feldman has argued–convincingly, in my view–that the referral was almost certainly based on false statements made by (or adopted by) then Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet. I’m betting that if Tenet sent several letters to DOJ trying to convince them to investigate the Plame kerfuffle, he almost certainly received one or more written responses from DOJ pointing out the problems in the referral. Quite possibly CIA had to significantly up the ante–in the form of more and more specific and verifiable claims–before the Administration bowed to the MSM outcry and decided to investigate. The problem is, the more specific and verifiable the claims, the easier it is to establish their truth or falsity. And Judge Walton may well want to know–and I mean really know–at what point Fitzgerald knew that the allegations were false. Because the overwhelming likelihood is that once Fitzgerald knew that there was no violation of the IIPA, he also knew that the referral contained patently false representations. Otherwise, why has he been so reluctant to produce the referral letter(s)?
4. An equally unpleasant prospect for Fitzgerald is the likelihood that Judge Walton may wish to know why Fitzgerald, if he was subject to DOJ supervision of some sort or other, so flagrantly violated prosecutorial guidelines. Indeed, it is quite possible that Judge Walton, in denying Team Libby’s motion, knew that he was setting Fitzgerald up for an even sterner challenge. Neither Judge Walton nor Team Libby are likely to exhibit any sense of humor on this point. If Fitzgerald tries to argue that being under supervision means not being under supervision, I’m betting that Judge Walton will not be amused. And Team Libby will surely be most unhelpful. There is good news and bad news for Fitzgerald here. The good news is that Judge Walton will probably not ask Fitzgerald why he didn’t indict the UGO–he already knows the answer to that one, and the odor of bad faith will be strong in his nostrils. But that’s the sum and substance of the good news. The bad news is that, prodded on by Team Libby, Judge Walton will want to learn more about Fitzgerald’s justifications for a pattern of investigative and prosecutorial conduct that looks suspiciously like abuse of a Federal Grand Jury to set perjury traps for persons who were not being investigated for any violation of law. Moreover, Team Libby can be counted on to remind Judge Walton of Fitzgerald’s famous marathon press conference, with all its highly prejudicial misstatements and, perhaps, outright falsehoods. These considerations seems to not only strike at Fitzgerald’s case, but also at his credibility and his fitness to be a member of the bar. Were I in this position, unless I had some pretty incredible ace in the hole, I would be definitely puckered.
5. It looks to me as if Fitzgerald’s freedom to maneuver is severely limited. Not only have the factual difficulties with his case been relentlessly exposed, but he is being forced to contradict his previous positions and he is being shown to palter with the truth in his representations to the court. I don’t see how he can anticipate any good outcome, barring some dramatic new evidence. But there’s additional good news for Team Libby in these developments. If Judge Walton thinks that referral letter is relevant, that means he’s likely to allow Libby to put on his conspiracy defense. And given what we’ve learned just in the past week, the longer this goes on the more conspiracy evidence Libby will have.
Elendil,
Excellent! Get yourself a blog if you don’t have one. I would agree Fitzgerald has been boxing himself in more and more as he tries to salvage a semblence of a case. Maybe Walton will find reason to dismiss outside Libby’s contentions regarding Fitzgerald’s authority.
AJ, a slight distinction. Waas claims that [quote]The outing of Plame was part of [1] a broad effort by the Bush administration in the first half of 2003 to discredit Wilson…[/quote]
Discrediting a political operative is no crime. The only crime alleged is the reference to the IIPA. But as everyone now knows, that was never in play in reality, and may well have been based on a tissue of deliberate falsehood. Therefore, it’s immaterial whether the effort to discredit Wilson was widespread or smallspread, was spearheaded by State or by the White House–it was perfectly legitimate as long as no laws were violated. And again, as we all know by now, the effort to discredit had nothing to do with the IIPA.
Waas is a hack reporter, that’s all he is. All of his articles are exactly the same:
1. Long as hell.
2. Use entirely anonymous sources for just about everything.
3. Omits just about every relevant fact in existence.
4. Constant use of bait-and-switch.
5. Digs up old news and presents it as if it were new.
I bet 99% of all Waas articles contain all of the above traits. He might as well be a liberal robot churning out news stories to keep the liberal masses brainwashed. Unfortunately, as I experienced over at TPMCafe, it is working.
Wow seems like a double barrel bitchslap of Waas and Fritzbo
Overall by now it can almost be said that Fritz is acting like a Gregory with subpoena power
Considering how Fritz is sniffing around mostly Scooter and Rove, with all he has heard, he has got to know that these guys both have daily workloads based on their meeting lists and phone records that in a trial could be taken by a jury to be reasonable to not expect photographic memory of every last call detail. Also it is likely they could consider how hard it is to not accidently conflict with your prior testimony/statements unless you continuously had transcripts in front of you to review prior to answering each question. And these all a seperated by a long period of time.
To me when he determined no crime was comitted , he should have said oh well and closed up shop.
elendil
Fantastic analysis. AJ’s right…get a blog!
Considering how Fritz is sniffing around mostly Scooter and Rove, with all he has heard,
This perplexes me too. I see a determination to justify his bad investigation/goofs or I wonder if maybe, perhaps he has come to his senses and is quietly pursuing UGO.
CW is Rove went to talk about the VNovack, and he may well have, but the other significant occurrence around the same time was Woodward.
I keep saying the only thing that makes sense to me why UGO isn’t the same kind of hot water as Rove and Libby is Fitz’s fault. He limited his questions of UGO to only Novak without consideration that UGO was blabbing before. Woodward was working on a story about the Plame leak, he was prodding UGO for at least a year for the story and Woodward does not believe the leak “smear” meme. Therefore, if Fitz did ask UGO about other contacts, UGO lied or if he tried faulty memory he has that problem of Woodward nagging for a year.
Fitz’s fault.
So Woodward was working on a story and it’s not a stretch to think it had to do with the UGO/Novak backstory because Woodward believe his source is the same as Novaks.
Rove says he learned the NAME Plame from Novak on July 9th, and all Rove said to Novak is “I heard that too”. Novak says he did not know Plames NAME when he talked to Rove, but between the 9th and 11th learned it and went to print.
However, when Novak called the CIA ( Harlow, the former CIA spokesman, said in an interview yesterday that he testified last year before a grand jury about conversations he had with Novak at least three days before the column was published.) he knew her name (also, Wilson’s friend bumped into Novak on the 8th and Novak knew all the details including, Wilson’s wife sent him on the trip)
Where I am going on this is? UGO was blabbing earlish June to Woodward, and then to Novak…and Rove was only a confirming source to Novak…there is the problem…Novak says he didn’t know her name on July 9th…when he talked to Rove and Rove did not supply a name..BUT Novak knew all the details BEFORE he talked to Wilson on the 8th from UGO his original source and when he called Harlow at the CIA.
I wonder, if Woodward, probably unwittingly, supplied new details (because he was working on a story) that showed conflicts between Novak and UGO prior statements and Novak and Rove. And so Rove was also asked about this too (and not as subject).
…Novak realizing his timeline -knowing on the 8th, but then not knowing on the 9th – posed a problem and one detail that makes me think this is Novak’s after account and pulled out the Who’s Who book to broadcast — Hey Mr. Fitz’s even if we got it wrong, doesn’t matter — her name was available in this book!
and forgot to add, the wrinkle of not knowing till after the 9th…
the only thing Novak could have said is he talked to UGO well before but that UGO only gave him the details of the boondoggle, not the name. Then he talked to Rove, nameless, then talked to UGO AGAIN after in which UGO supplied the name.
The only scenario I can see.
BUT
July 8th–During a conversation struck up by a perfect stranger about Ambassador Wilson on a Washington, D.C. sidewalk, Robert Novak said:
“Wilson’s an asshole. The CIA sent him. His wife, Valerie,works for the CIA. She’s a weapons of mass destruction specialist. She sent him.” That stranger turned out to be Wilson’s friend, who immediately told Wilson about the ”
July 10
“Bob Novak called me before he went to print with the report and he said a CIA source had told him that my wife was an operative,” Wilson said. “He was trying to get a second source. He couldn’t get a second source. Could I confirm that? And I said no.”
Wilson said he called Novak after the article appeared citing sources in the Bush administration. “What was it, CIA or senior administration?” Wilson said he asked Novak. “He said to me, ‘I misspoke the first time I spoke to you.’ ”
So I just wonder, if Woodward, renewed Fitz’s interest in UGO and Novak, that they downplayed/downgraded their talk and then given the **new** information that UGO was talking about her in June — he’s taking another look at them.
Uh, thanks for the encouragement, AJ and TS9. I’ve admired your work for some time, now. Unfortunately, I’m still fully employed and my interests seem to go in too many directions to allow for a time-economical blog. This Libby case does seem to strike at the heart of so many things that are wrong in our public life and I’ll be following your commentary.
But still the underlying logic here is that Fritz has said the original crime did not occur because the threshold could not be met.
So even if this goes on forever .. all he can do is play gotcha
So whats the point of that..
and Elendil in his excellent post points out the position this puts Fritz in
It would ONLY make sense if the could tie them to a prior leak when she was under cover years ago
Do you think you could proof-read this a bit? Some things are confusing. I don’t mean to be critical. I just am easily confused if words are left out.
I know that what you are writing is good. Just slow down.
Snapple what I was trying to say is that Fritz has already conceded that nobody has done anything to meet the threshold of breaking the security laws of outing an agent..therefore the only thing that he can find now , no matter how long this goes on is gotcha prosecution which as Elendil pointed out comes under abuse of a Federal Grand Jury to set perjury traps for persons who were not being investigated for any violation of law.
Fritz was supposed to be investigation violations of the outing laws and the only thing that should come under that objective is a true violation of the applicable statues..the chances of that are nill by his own statements.
Also to put this into a present day perspective I ran across a comment on another blog that rang a bell
http://formerspook.blogspot.com/2006/04/step-in-right-direction.html
The comment was
Libby’s NIE disclosure was not only authorized it was historical. The Iraq war was over. Has anyone claimed that the “Key Judgments” disclosed sources and methods that in any way hurt future collection?
On the other hand, Mary McCarthy’s leaks were not only unauthorized they were about a secret alliance in an ongoing war.
# posted by Reg Jones : 10:47 PM
To validate this concept consider the following
May 1, 2003
President Bush Announces Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended
28 Oct 05
President’s Remarks on the Resignation of Scooter Libby
So sorry , I do have a very bad habit of not communicating well what I am trying to say, appreciate the request and hope this clears it up
Very good point, Snapple–the one about the historical nature of the “authorized leak.”
I’ve been terribly frustrated listening to otherwise insightful conservative bloggers who harp on the fact that the President can declassify at will. The ready liberal comeback to that is: selective leak–eeeeeek!
The nub of the issue is this: an false accusation that attacks the credibility of a sitting wartime president on an issue so critical as the invasion of a distant country is, ipso facto, a national security issue that must be addressed. To leave such an attack, especially one that claims to be based on knowledgeable sources, invites disarray in our national security efforts in a time of war. Information is power. It is classified to keep it from those who could use it to harm us, but it can be declassified and released in order to protect our national security. Now the selective charge is, in itself, impossible to defeat except by way of reduction ad absurdam (“your logic would compel us to release all information in our possession and make the MSM the arbiter of relevance”), but at least conservatives should hammer home the national security implications of a failure to address lies and the president’s responsibility as Commander in Chief to address these issues himself. Any declassification and release must necessarily be selective, but conservatives should be smart enough to recognize this inescapable fact and go one step further: articulate the reason for and need for the release of information, not just say (in effect) “because I can.”
Let me try to put my long initial post into 25 words or less, and then add a speculative point.
It appears that, in spite of the recent rejection of its motion to dismiss, Team Libby may be well on its way to at least one of its true goals: to put the prosecutor himself on trial.
With that in mind, I recall reading someone who suggested that Fitzgerald may have hoped to use the indictment to bring pressure to bear on Libby to “flip” against Rove, Cheny, maybe even Bush. If that were the case, it suggests that Fitzgerald was seriously deluded about both the overall strength of his case as well as about the veracity of his witnesses–like, which witnesses had told him the truth (to the best of their ability) and which witnesses had lied and played him for a fool.
Speculation: if I found myself in that position, I would want to do something to establish my good faith. Simply dropping all charges against Libby would not accomplish that–it would only make me look like a loser who had bowed to the inevitable. However, one way to show that, while I may have been played for a fool, at least I can recognize and correct my mistakes would be to turn on the real liars! Wishful thinking?
Elendil..I concurr with you position on the original tactic and objective, but as all have seen it came up as short as Dick Chenney’s putting it over the plate at the season opener.
Quite frankly at this point, we have only one conclusion where Fritz has to go.. since he stipulates that no one broke the law he was authorized to investigate..excuse the pun ………But Where’s the beef?
Elendil
I have just reread your post and if I can read it correctly you are suggesting that Fritz was intending to draw to an inside straight flush. In the alternative you suggest that he can revert to a recovery effort..involving other paths to save face.. it seems to me the only thing we have been presented is charges against Libby and the threat of charges against Rove….are you suggesting he has enought to climb the high hill to attack the MSM with all if he is short on his original objective? Personally I would think that would be career suicide…but then again with some reflection, is he already there?
So trying to go thru this historically we now have a three part play here
1) Bush authorizes Dick to let Libby and/or Rove to leak Valerie to counter the Wilson historic debacle
2) The NSA taping leak which Bush addressed himself as to the severity of the compromise and not to muddle it with a middle man
3) The rendition leak which led to the McCarthy firing
Well it’s like Clint Eastwood said
once is happenstance, twice is coincidence and three times is enemy action
Elindil–
I didn’t say anything about the leak. That was another poster.
I am just trying to figure out what people are saying.
The main post was a little breathless and some grammar errors made it a little confusing.
I’m afraid my last post was a bit of wishful thinking. From this distance it doesn’t look like Fitzgerald would be wise to launch a full frontal assault on MSM figures–that would be more of the same old he said-she said that has got him in this pickle. He could try to show that Russert or Cooper shaded their testimony, but to do so he’d have to turn their respective organizations inside out, and still would likely not find a smoking gun.
A more productive line of inquiry might be the whole referral process. If I understand that correctly, there were multiple communications with multiple persons involved. I assume that Tenet did not write the original referral, but only got involved after DOJ balked. There were likely several people involved on both sides at that stage, with discussions, emails and drafts of the referral and the DOJ response. Again, if I recall correctly, there may have been as many as three of these exchanges, ultimately with Tenet involved personally for CIA, and commensurately senior DOJ officials–like, AG, advisors of one sort or another. Plenty of grist for the mill.
Obviously, the burden would be on the CIA–or at least on those who were in senior positions at that time. Assuming that there were misrepresentations in that referral process, it seems to me that a thorough investigation of the genesis of the referral could keep a Special Counsel productively occupied for quite some time. He could review not only the internal communications but also the major players’ outside contacts, etc. Federal conspiracy laws could certainly come into play. The nice thing for a Special Counsel who took that path would be that the CIA is under new management. New management whose mandate for reform would dovetail rather neatly with the SC’s investigation.
Time will tell. There are powerful forces at work against such an investigation. Even within the administration I assume there are many who would be happy to call a truce and go home. Of course, that does usually work. What looks like a truce for the administration would be a major victory for the opposition, since they were able to raise doubts, muddy the pool of public opinion, and pay nothing or nearly nothing for it.
BTW, did anyone else notice that a few days ago Andy McCarthy over at NRO’s Corner appeared to publicly distance himself from his buddy Fitzgerald for the first time. Telling, I think. He had been a steadfast supporter, even claiming that Fitzgerald had done Libby a favor.
elendil–
BTW, did anyone else notice that a few days ago Andy McCarthy over at NRO’s Corner appeared to publicly distance himself from his buddy Fitzgerald for the first time. Telling, I think. He had been a steadfast supporter, even claiming that Fitzgerald had done Libby a favor.
Yes I noticed that, and I was surprised to hear him say he had revised his view of the merits contained in Libby’s motion for dismissal. I think Andy is sensing his friend has created a big pickle.
I know Fitz is looking for minutiae at this point, but I can not even begin to understand why he would put the trust of his case in the media witnesses AND he has not let coverage of Wilson, specifically the SSIC report, factor at all.
If I were in Fitz spot (Not a lawyer, just play one on the internet) I don’t think I would be very excited by the defense calling Wilson.
Yes, the referral letter is key. I also want to know if McCarthy played any role in it–even as an affiant. I want to know who signed those affidavits that she was a NOC and that the agency had taken every step to hide her identity.(Preposterous claims, I contend.)
In Feb 04 Fitz knew that UGO was the leaker.
Immediately after the indictment he learned from Woodward that he’s heard from UGO, too, and some time before the earliest conversation Libby had with reporters noted in the indictment.
Now here’s an extra tidbit :
Fedora at Free Republic finds this about CIP, the organization Dana Priest’s husband,William Goodfellow, heads and Anthony Lake, Clinton’s National Security Advisor whom the Senate forced to withdraw when appointed to be head of the CIA:
”
William F. Jasper, “Security Risk for CIA: Plumbing the depths of Anthony Lake’s dubious past”, The New American, Vol. 13, No. 02, January 20, 1997
The Senate will surely want to closely scrutinize Lake’s involvement with the Center for International Policy (CIP) in Washington, DC. As an official consultant for the CIP during the 1970s, Lake was an associate of Orlando Letelier, who served on the CIP’s board of directors. Letelier and Lake were also connected through their mutual involvement in the Institute for Policy Studies, a Marxist think tank with numerous ties to communist intelligence agencies. When Letelier was killed by a car bomb, incriminating documents found in his briefcase pointed to many highly placed people. One of those was Richard Feinberg. Feinberg resigned from the Treasury Department to avoid investigation into his own involvement with the Letelier network. Also among the briefcase contents was a letter from radical activist Elizabeth Farnsworth cautioning Letelier against mentioning Feinberg’s name because that might jeopardize his reputation and career at Treasury and his usefulness to the cause. Yet Anthony Lake, who at that time was serving as director of President Carter’s State Department Policy Planning Staff, hired Feinberg on at State.
Ms. Farnsworth also wrote admiringly to Letelier of the good work that “Bill Goodfellow” was accomplishing for the revolution. She was referring, of course, to William Goodfellow, the CIP director, who is a very bad fellow. How bad? Bad enough to stubbornly defend the murderous Khmer Rouge communists in Cambodia long after most leftists had decided the genocidal slaughter was just too obvious to deny anymore.
Still another sterling staff member with Lake at CIP was Susan Weber, a former editor of Soviet Life, the official propaganda organ published at the Soviet embassy for American consumption. In that communist endeavor, Ms. Weber was forced to register as an agent of a “foreign power.” At CIP, she could carry out essentially the same task without the inconvenience of registering. Another CIP consultant was Edwin Martin, who was identified to intelligence authorities in 1947 as a member of a Soviet spy ring. When you start tugging on the CIP thread, you end up at the Fund For Peace (FFP), long one of the most openly pro-communist outfits in the country. The CIP was founded by, and is funded by, the FFP. A longtime trustee of the Fund was Louise R. Berman. And who is she? A longtime Red and hard-core Stalinist, Berman was the subject of extensive congressional investigation into communist activities during the 1940s and 50s. She was a contact and a courier for Stalin’s NKVD (precursor to the KGB) and GRU (military intelligence) agents in the U.S. and worked with J. Peters, the Kremlin’s top Comintern representative on the central committee of the Communist Party, USA. Berman is only one of many notorious communists and subversives involved with the CIP/FFP network in which Lake operated for many years.”