Sep 15 2006
We Deserve The Whole Plame Story
From Day one (before I started this blog and was a poster on at Delphi’s Opinion Forum) I maintained the Plame Game was pure BS and spin propagated by a compliant press (which knew better) and rogue elements in the CIA (and now I believe in the State Dept.) Much of my intuitive reactions back then have been substantiated. Unlike detail-knowledgeable experts like Tom Maguire, my view of the Plame Game came from growing up across the street (literally) from Langley and living amongst many CIA families. It was clear to me Plame, being married to an fairly well known Ambassador (inside the beltway stuff) was well known in town. This was why when people learned Joe Wilson was the loud mouth anonymously lying through the NY Times and WaPo is was easy to connect the dots to Valerie. Given the fact she was a victim of the Aldrich Ames treason makes her famous in her own right. I will explain that in a second. But Victoria Toensing (I swear I knew her family in Virginia) has a great piece out in the WSJ which lays out some FACTS that can clear up some of the story. She helped author the IIP act Wilson claimed had been violated when his cocktail party going wife was ‘outted’ by Novak.
First off, Val was not covert. There are lots of indications but Ms. Toensing notes the most obvious – covert agents avoid Langley like the plaque. Rare to visit in any conditions, they are NEVER assigned there. OK, let’s get over that one. Which means Fitzgerald’s investigation was a ruse and all his lying submissions to the Oversight Court, Appeals Court and Supreme Court (here and here) make him open for investigation of prosecutorial abuse and malfeasance. This is very important. Fitzgerald submitted to the courts and made statements at his press conference that are clearly false and misleading. The investigation was over before he started.
But that is not all we see from the article. I mentioned Valerie’s infamy and here is where it comes into play. We all know Valerie and Joe attended an early May Democrat Congressional event where they ‘met’ Kristof and initiated the first article.
He could have asked her why, if she were truly covert, was she attending an Eastern Shore meeting in May 2003 with Democratic senators.
But what people will forget to note is Valerie Plame’s name was probably all over the Hill by this time. Here is what would happen in the wake of the Ames fiasco – Congressional oversight. Congress would want to know the damage and what was being done about it. The list of agents compromised would be circulated, and the fact they were being moved off covert ops noted as they were re-assigned to Langley. This list would be known as ‘the survivors’, those not killed by Ames’ treason. Wilson marrying someone on this infamous list would not go unnoticed in Washington DC either. And so when Val and Joe show up at events she will be known as one of the few who escaped Aldrich Ames.
This is how DC works folks. It is a gossipy, name dropping, information exposing town. I grew up in the midst of it and you level in the social pecking order is demonstrated by having these innocuous facts availble to show off with. The Wilsons were probably known as the ones who Saddam and Ames’ missed.
I ain’t buying the idea Joe Wilson was so unknown in DC people needed memos to know who he was and who he was married to. Once at Langley many people know who ‘works for the agency’. I have known which neighbors work for which intelligence agency since I was a kid. It doesn’t take a seasoned eye long to detect the cover stories. I think we as a nation deserve to know what really happened, with Fitzgerald and with the CIA and State. I think at a minimum this nation owes those answers to Scooter Libby facing 25 years in jail for Armitage’s leak and Fitzgerald’s lies. And we need to address Armitage’s attempts to cover his actions, as Toensing so aptly points out:
Mr. Armitage also knew he had met with Bob Woodward on June 13, 2003, telling him about Mr. Wilson’s wife’s CIA employment and her role in her husband’s trip to Niger. But when the FBI interviewed Mr. Armitage on Oct. 2, he admitted to the Novak conversation only, notably forgetting meeting with one of our country’s premier investigative reporters.
I am not buying Armitage did not recall the Woodward discussion because Woodward was quite clear he had to push Armitage to come clean. And why are we still learning of MORE leaks prior to the ones we know about now?
During the investigation Mr. Fitzgerald learned that a former New York Times reporter, Cliff May, twice told the FBI that, prior to Mr. Novak’s column, he had heard in an offhand way from a nongovernment employee that Mr. Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA, a clear indication that her employment was known on the street. Ditto columnist Hugh Sidey, who wrote that Ms. Plame’s name was “knocking around in the sub rosa world . . . for a long time.”
Someone else outside the government knew this information and was sharing it with journalists? Why is this not detailed on Fitzgerald’s investigation? Who was this person and how did they learn? This is clearly another leak point or two or three (considering the Knight-Ridder article chock full of classified information being leaked on June 12th, a month before Wilson outs himself).
We need to understand why this all went so wrong.
Update: Michael Barone comments on this article as well.
Aj
I agree with you fully, but there is one fly in the ointment.
Where can this whole thing be expected to get a full washout?
Excuse me for sounding a little let down, but I have read the whole 9/11 report and am about 3/4 thru the SSCI 2 press release.
These halfbaked and slightly less than done dribbles do not create a lot of confidence. Also it makes it really hard for anyone trying to connect dots, since you have to weed out all the hoopla to get to the few nuggets of fact that may really lead somewhere.
With all these distractions, the rights disatisfaction with the GOP and the lefts gotta be wonderment of how their party is running away from them with apparent glee we all must take the time to take a break an take stock.
I for one know where I’m going, of that I have no doubt, it is just a shame that seemingly so many are inflicted with the situation that to see where they need to go, we are going to have to give them a plexiglass bellybutton for Christmas!
My only question is how could Corn dig up Armitage for the book, but not for his storyline?
Isn’t there a major CYA by Corn with the writing of that hubris, uh book?
It seems there is so much corruption in Washington that it is a wonder any truth comes out. If all this about Valerie Plame was so well known, why did the republicans not say anything? If everyone else knew, they had to know also. Were they so afraid the media will be after them then? The truth is coming out in dribbles and it is hard to seperate the wheat from the chaff. Fitzgerald should be brought up on charges for malfeasance of office. I suppose he was looking for recognition for a higher office or maybe had found financial support indefinitely. He certainly was not looking for justice. He knew this was a non- case from the beginning. The democrat mantra is destroy anyone who speaks out against them. It is a wonder any republican wants to hold office in Washington.
Barbara
Your question brings up the beauty of how this whole thing could work.
GW could not comment and counter, because as he stated many times we can’t comment on a subject under litigation.
McCain / Feingold without the 60 day limit, a nominal gag order.
do you think armitage would dream of summoning novak for an interview without first checking with the boss?
what did the general know, and when did he know it ?
was this paybacks are hell for that UN-WMD speech?
I think the story might go back further than we think.
From an old post I made on Free Republic
Let’s examine the way the NOC NOC story is told which sure gives that impression that it could be Valerie.
The quotes by Rustmann “Plame worked under official cover in Europe in the early 1990s — say, as a U.S. embassy attacheâ€
“— before switching to nonofficial cover a few years later. â€
Mostly Plame posed as a business analyst or a student in what Rustmann describes as a “nice European city.â€
the quote by †a former CIA official familiar with the matter.â€
In early 1995 the French rolled up five CIA officers, including a woman who had been working as a NOC under business cover for about five years.
Although the NOC caught in Paris in 1995 was simply sent home, “it might not have been so easy in an Arab country,â€
All of the above leads me to believe that it was Valerie. That Russman did not put his name to the quote as being familiar with the matter is suspect. The writer had to go to a different source for just that one little section of the story. A 24 year veteran of the CIA who was already being interviewed was not familiar with that case when a few paragraphs prior he was declaring Plame was a NOC.
My guess is that this little fiasco was when the media first learned about Valerie Plame. Another interesting thing to note is that the whole CIA spy fiasco was very helpful to the Chirac campaign. Chirac’s opponent was accused of outing the whole incident to the news media to divert attention from his wire tapping scandal. In reality, the Interior Minister Charles Pasqua went public two months after the Clinton Administration was informed and the Clinton Administration refused to recall the CIA agents. Pasqua claims that the US actually made the whole matter public and was the source of the leak. Pasqua was accused of playing politics by not quietly informing the US as the US had previously in French spy cases.
Sound familiar!! I know that some might that the acts above just shows how stupid the CIA is in general, but the above described spying indicates otherwise. The NOC was intelligent enough to avoid revealing personal information as well as any photographs, but she asks a an out of character question about Hollywood to a source.
The End result of all of this stupidity was the Election of Chirac which was also supposed to be the conclusion of the current CIA outing, but this time it did not work as planed because Kerry lost.
SBD