Updates at the bottom, scroll onward!

I was pleasantly surprised this morning when World Net Daily linked to my expanding compendium of people who knew Valerie Wilson, wife of Joe, worked at the CIA. The Fitzgerald-CIA-LeftwingMedia attempt to politically damage the WH is crumbling fast. And the American public hates being lied to about these things – so expect an enormous backlash against the press.

Today, the facade is also falling off of Tim Russert and NBC News. Mickey Kaus joins the fray today with this piece (hat tip Lori Byrd at Polipundit):

When you think about it, isn’t it a bit incredible that NBC could go through an entire Meet the Press episode about the Libby case, and a whole CNBC show, and innumerable newscasts, telling its viewers that in a crucial conversation Libby had called NBC’s Tim Russert

“complaining about a report he had been watching on MSNBC”

without, as far as I can see, telling its viewers the extremely relevant information that the MSNBC report in question was about Joseph Wilson and his trip to Niger, if that’s in fact what it was about (something that the NYT, among others, has suggested)?
…
It’s not that NBC’s “reporters” aren’t telling the whole story. They aren’t even telling the minimal, basic gist of the story that others are telling.

No, not surprising in the least. Tom Maguire had started to analyze the transcript and I had jumped to the same, obvious conclusion as he did when reading it (near the end). Not to insult Tom, but anyone would have seen it for what it was. A cover up for Russert’s not so accurate testimony.

RUSSERT: Well, that’s exactly right. “Meet”–Joe Wilson had been on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, which you moderated because I was on vacation.
MITCHELL: And…
RUSSERT: I came back after that interview, after The New York Times piece, and there was a discussion about Joe Wilson and I didn’t know very much. And then when I read Novak’s column the following Monday, I said, `Oh, my God, that’s it. Now I see. It’s his wife, Valerie Plame, CIA, sent him on the trip. Now I understand what everybody was trying to figure out.‘

He comes back to a lot of discussions about Wilson’s coming-out Op-Ed, gets a call from Libby about Chris Mathew’s show, and doesn’t put it all together for days until Novak’s article comes out? As Tom Maguire points out – the response by Tim Russert is “now I understand” and not “wow, that’s interesting – wish we had that scoop”.

Debrah Orin also discusses how the house of cards is falling on the CIA and Media enabliers

Having Wilson go public was very useful to the CIA, especially the division where his wife worked — because it served to shift blame for failed “slam dunk” intelligence claims away from the agency. To say that Bush “twisted” intelligence was to presume — falsely — that the CIA had gotten it right.

Yep, that’s what this was. Propoganda cooked up in the CIA and provided to us all by a complacent, if not willing, news media.

I’ll keep adding to this post today as time permits.

UPDATE:

Two articles have come out today and are gathering great attention. The first is a WSJ article on how the pending Libby trial is going to truly test the media’s reputation and honesty (not to mention respect for the rule of law). Given the Russert equivocation mentioned, and the Miller’s clintonesque statements in her NY Times article, there is little doubt their desire to scoop their own stories (as opposed to recusing themselves as they should) is providing a lot of material for the lawyers.

Although no date has been set, Mr. Libby’s case is expected to go to trial some time next year. When it does, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney won’t be the only one in the hot seat. The reporters are expected to face a barrage of questions from defense lawyers. Instead of protecting sources, they could end up defending their own credibility, reputations and reporting techniques.
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Judith Miller of the New York Times, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Tim Russert of NBC News were cited in the indictment and are expected to be called to testify. Much of the case against Mr. Libby rests on contradictions between the journalists’ accounts of conversations with him and what he told Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about those conversations.
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It would be difficult at this point for the news organizations to argue that their reporters need to protect confidential sources. In addition to discussing their sources with Mr. Fitzgerald and the grand jury, the reporters have each made those conversations public — Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper in published, first-person accounts of their talks with Mr. Libby and their testimony, and Mr. Russert in numerous television interviews.

The second article comes from The American Thinker By James Lewis:

There are an amazing number of French fingerprints all over the Plame-Wilson affair. While it is not easy to penetrate the dark fog of lies, there is a highly consistent pattern pointing to French government involvement with a Watergate-style assault on the American Presidency, fronted by Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

First one that comes to mind is that French-looking Presidential candidate who Wilson worked for in 2003.

In 2002 French intelligence forged the notorious document claiming that Saddam tried to obtain Niger uranium. The Italian middle man, Rocco Martino, later confessed to French involvement in open court. Rocco Martino might sound like a small-time mafia hood from the Sopranos. Actually, he works at times for Italian military intelligence. The truth about the French connection came out when Martino confessed in court that the French had given him the forged document to peddle to various intelligence agencies. The Italians and French have had a furious war of words ever since then about who was responsible for the forgery.

Stunning if true.