The New York times finally came out with a piece detailing their and Judith Miller's involvement in the Plame affair. But what struck me is the tone of their article. There's only one way I can make sense of the attitude towards Judy:
Imagine a newsroom and editorial staff that is basically anti-war and anti-administration. This traitor, Judy, had swallowed the WMD stuff hook, line, and sinker.
Well, isn't she just the uppity one? I mean, she lied along with the administration and she has the nerve, NERVE, I say, to try to protect an administration source!
Nobody likes her anyway. Nyah. Nyah.
This article just spits all over Judy, with even an implication ::wink::wink:: that she lied in her testimony. Well, see, it's in the same notebook. ::nudge::nudge::
Can you imagine the frustration in the Times newsroom where they believe one of their reporters is protecting Bush and they can't say a word!
And towards the end, this is really rich:
"The Times incurred millions of dollars in legal fees in Ms. Miller's case. It limited its own ability to cover aspects of one of the biggest scandals of the day. "Oh, boo-hoo. You were the ones that MADE it into a scandal!
You all were so upset that Judy believed there were WMD in Iraq that you turned around and believed Wilson. You thought he was your savior!
When Novak came out with his article you were all over it. Wilson is a whistleblower! How dare the administration try to destroy him! They must be punished! It's got to be Rove! We need an investigation! This is a scandal of momentous importance!
It's your own damn fault, New York Times. You had not one shred of evidence that Wilson was telling the truth. You didn't even have confirmation!
But you got your investigation, didn't you?
Oh, NO! Not Judy! We have to protect Judy?!?!?!? Oh, NO!
Jerks.
14 comments:
Syl:
Miller had been reporting on the Mid East and Saddam long before Bush came along.
I think that is another thing that high profile media are pissy about.
They had years and years to figure out what was going on with Saddam and his weapons stock piles and they blew it.
And they would have blown it no matter who was in the White House, Kerry...Gore...Clinton..it did not matter.
That is what all these people are ignoring and screaming and yelling about in the hopes that we will ignore it too.
As for the weapons, wouldn't it be a scream if someone did find them? Imagine the reaction, heads would explode.
In truth Deufler said that Saddam kept his programs intact so that he could start up again when they perverbial coast was clear. Indeed, according to the Deufler Report he never stopped experimenting on people.
As for the NYT, if they had checked out Wilson before they let him shoot his mouth off on the oped page we all could have been spared this stupidity.
it all may simply get buried.
Nat'l interest?
in-house CIA clean up by Goss?
MacsMind thinks all the trails lead back to Plame/Wilson/rogue CIA.
http://macsmind.blogspot.com/
the MSM
is salivating over Libby and Rove.
Mac thinks Fitz may be after CIA
insider leaking classified info...
and possibly another level of game played by an anti-Iraq-regime-change -faction within the Agency.
gumshoe1,
At this time there are too many wheels within wheels coupled with too few matters of interest for me to bring myself to follow it.
The main things I see are: 1) as far as I can tell, it was more or less public knowledge that Plame worked for the CIA (not(!) a covert operative), so there's no crime here, what are we wasting money on? and 2) the MSM and the Democrats are out to get Rove at any cost. He's their designated hate-object and they have to witch-hunt him. They won't be satisfied till they're able to burn him at the stake.
Actually, I've been following this affair quite closely. It is anything but boring.
And just to shoot down some myths:
Valery was officially NOC. That was her status. Period.
You and I can talk about anyone working at the CIA. It's not illegal for the public to do so.
Just because classified information is known by members of the public, does not mean the information is automatically de-classified. In fact it is irrelevant. It is the confirmation of the info by an official person that is the problem.
We have no idea if Fitzgerald's investigation is going beyond the process of the leak. Just because we see Wilson for what he is, does not mean the investigation itself is going there.
Which means, there may very well be indictments, but an actual conviction may be hard to obtain.
syl:
Maguire says it is 50/50 for Rove to indicted and 70/30 for Libby. I hope not, I would like for all this to end. It just goes on and on and on....
The charges will be perjury or obstruction of justice [if it happens] because the prosecutor may believe they were out to get Wilson even before he wrote his oped.
Like when he was shooting his mouth off to reporters about all manner of crap that just happens to be have been a big fat lie.
The administration people may have thought they were trying to set the record straight, but that does not mean the prosecutor will see it that way.
The interesting thing is the British still stand by the claim re Saddam and yellow cake.
I would not put it past the old bastard to have people running around and making deals and talking to people just to keep everybody guessing. In that regard Saddam was a lot like the commie that runs NK.
They like to keep people guessing. Makes them feel important.
Syl,
I wasn't meaning to imply that the story is boring. I was only averring that I was having trouble following it.
To my mind, the first and most central mystery in the whole case is: why on earth did the Bush administration pick a hostile Bush-hating Democrat to go to Niger to verify the rumor of uranium buying? That makes no sense. Either the administration was extrremely stupid or something is going on behind the scenes already at this early stage of which I and the general public are completely unaware.
What I would like to see is an article which lays the whole story out as we know it today, without bias or rancor. The NYT is obviously completely unable to do this.
What I suggest is: why don't you post on this? If you've been following the story closely you know what's going on and you are an exceptionally clear thinker and clear writer. Having read your writing for nigh on two years I am utterly persuaded of your disinterest and honesty. So it seems to me you're just the woman for the job.
And what the heck is "NOC" anyway?
NOC is Non-Official Cover. Covert.
This story is one that cannot be approached without a certain amount of bias. It is political to the core, so it's unavoidable.
The only aspect that can be approached in somewhat unbiased fashion (and even that is iffy) and from a purely legal standpoint is the process of the 'leak' itself. And that requires legal expertise beyond most of our capabilities and/or knowledge.
And it also requires much more information than we have gleaned from selective leaks of selected parts of selected witness testimony so far. :)
It's reached the point where people on both sides of the political spectrum have decided, well, indictments may be coming, but, well, they'll be politically embarrassing but, well, won't be bombshells.
But we still hope for surprises. Both ways. :)
The fun, and, yes, it's been FUN, has been in the conjecture that the investigation has broadened to include Wilson/Plame/CIA on one side, Bolton/Bush/etc. on the other.
Tom Maguire has done superb work on this and I've spent a lot of time at his site in recent months. (justoneminute.typepad.com)
In fact, his postings would fill a book.
Limiting the discussion of this entire business to the process of the leak itself is actually kinda the boring part. It's the Wilson is a liar/is a whistleblower back and forth that's been the most fun.
Syl,
The main timeline is starting to slip away from people on this one. The whole "lied" meme has been phony from day one. Bush had the Authorization to Use Force from Congress in his pocket before he said much at all to the American people. A whole passel of Dems voted for it too - and then started lieing about having been "misled" when he pulled it out of his pocket and gave Tommy Franks the go order.
People have also forgotten that dear Valerie worked for the unit that generated a fair share of the crappy intelligence assessment concerning WMD in the first place. And, it was just today that I learned that Miller was given a clearance by the government. The non-disclosure that she signed to get her clearance might have a bit to do with her inability to testify. What if Fitzgerald - who had good reason to dislike her because of her screwup with the Muslim charity - refused to honor a request by her concerning "covered" information that she had received as a result of having a clearance? There's a rock and a hard place for you. I wonder if she understands that the CIA used her like toilet paper, first to advance the information that they wanted published concerning WMD and then by feeding her enough crap to get her involved in the Plame deal. What's hilarious is that even if she recognizes that she's a yoyo for the CIA her non-disclosure agreement seals her up like a corked bottle. Serves her right because she used that clearance to play Keller and Sulzberger for the fools that they are, too.
She's as big a jerk as the Woodstein duo were - played by a Feeb with an ax to grind and hanging a Pulitzer on the wall for it. "Honest journo" has to rank fairly high as an oxymoron.
Syl,
I can see how this might be fun. Kind of like a living mystery. It's just not my personal cup of tea. It reminds me too much of television shows about movies about the making of movies. Now we've got journalists as news items rather than as disinterested conduits of information. The medium has become the message with a vengeance.
As a citizen, my only concern is whether the law has been broken. Yes or no? I still don't have a clear answer on this. Plame was officially not an operative. Ok, But now you're telling me that even though it was legal for you to tell me she was not an operatives, it was illegal for Libby or Scooter or whatever his name was to do so?
Rick
It's not just the timeline and authorization to use force. It's that the anti-war types really could care less about WMD either way. It's just political crap. We all know it. We all have to deal with it.
We all know that most of the anti-war types wouldn't change their tune if WMD had been found.
We also know that 'no WMD' is just an opportunity to hammer a political opponent.
That's all fine and good and part of our political life. The problem is this is a REAL war we're in...not just Iraq.
But in the end (well we don't know yet really) I think it doesn't matter. It may even have short (at least) term benefits in that it gives AQ folks false hopes (as has been hinted at already) and causes their analysis to be skewed.
Democracies can be noisy and confusing to outsiders. And there's no outsider like an AQ outsider.
Zawahiri complained that the Taliban didn't have the backing of the Afghani people and that's why they simply dissolved away.
He will soon learn (hopefully) that his movement is incapable of getting that backing. So, long term, he has to learn the lesson of our noisy democracy and not just listen to what he wants to hear (anti-war crowd vs the silenter majority).
MHA
We're the public. We are private citizens. We can gossip.
Libby and Rove are administrative officials. There are rules that cover confirming someone's CIA employment.
The reason for this is that both covert and non-covert employees work at Langley. And the covert employees must not be confirmed as working there. I know, you and I can watch the person drive through the gates, but that doesn't matter.
It would be official confirmation of that employee's employment that matters.
If the administration official doesn't know a specific person is covert, that's not good enough, they need official confirmation that it's okay to divulge CIA employment.
BTW, the press is aware of this and they, too, will call CIA for confirmation. Novak did. And Harlow, the CIA press person, inadvertently confirmed Plame worked for them. He later looked up her status and said 'oops', called Novak back and strongly urged him not to print her name.
Novak's an old hand, knows the rules, and knows Harlow goofed and the cat was out of the bag. He was free to print.
Cooper, in his notes on his conversation with Rove said 'maybe we should have a reporter call the CIA'. That would be for confirmation of employment.
In fact there are hints that a reporter did indeed get that confirmation for Cooper's reporter, but Cooper's not giving any more info on it.
Anyway, that is the technicality of divulging a person's CIA employment if you are in an official capacity.
But the case is still weak, if the information we have is correct. Plame was NOC only on paper. CIA was in the process of changing her status. Wilson said she was not clandestine at the time. (Though 'outing' her would make sure she couldn't be clandestine in the future.) And the CIA itself goofed in confirming her employment.
It's all these little details that make this case so fascinating.
This is getting long....
meaninglesshotair -
syl summed up the story's interest pretty well...and i can understand the "eye-glazing-over-feeling".
these are two branches of gov't
(Exec & Intelligence)who we very much need working constructively.
the "wheels within wheels" spin
is both maddening and informative.
te parties are simultaneously trying to score political points and hide valuable information and,possibly,
rule violations with consequences.
(for a fairly long list of parties involved,not just Libby & Rove).
these recent comments by Porter Goss could be seen as a sorta behind the scenes olive branch:
ABC News(Reuters) - CIA not to pursue disciplinary action for
Sept 11 - 05Oct05
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1186695
the story is not directly
Iraq/WMD related,
but via Goss,definitely Bush Admin policy/CIA careerist related.
after all the sniping,
it could be best for all the partisans (and better for the country) for it to go away quietly.
Fitz mandate is actually quite limited,but the 3-ring circus threw a lot of speculation around...
and people still want their pound of flesh.
m2c.
I think there is also something going on prior to Wilson's oped wich might lead prosecutors to believe the Bushies were out to get this guy. And that could get them in trouble.
Of course there is no doubt he was out to get them.
I think Plame and Wilson set the White House up and Rove and Libby made the mistake of taking the bait.
I would like to know if Wilson had anything to do with the forgeries. After the fact he says he knew about them months before the administration actually had them.
He explained this away to the Senate Intelligence Committee by saying he mispoke or some such nonsense.
Yep, it is no wonder we did not know what we needed to know when you stop and think about the fact that people like Valerie Plame worked for the agency.
Not exactly James Bond now is she?
How about Fred Thompson as Scooter Libby :)
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