Wednesday, July 27, 2005

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Why Valerie is at the heart of the Plame Game

As I've said over and over, if Valerie Plame conspired with help to lie to the President during a time of war, Or as David Horowitz put it:

"In the midst of a war, a rogue CIA employee named Valerie Plame set out to sabotage the President’s war policy — a policy ratified by both political parties and both houses of Congress. To do this she sent her husband on a mission to Niger to discredit the President’s statement that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium there — in other words to discredit a justification for the war in which Americans were continuing to die."

That is treason, and it trumps any bogus leak charge. Period.

Now why do I and others think that Valerie is at the heart of the Plame Game? First let me say as a former member of Army Intelligence, and in civilian life, law enforcement, I'm not about getting "somebody off" just for political gain. Yes, I am conservative and not only voted for Bush, and I also support his agenda. If this WERE a case of somebody blowing a covert op's cover, I say, "Fry him!"

However, since the beginning of this case, where everybody else - MSM and even some conservative blogs are looking at the "Leak", only a few "sniffed" the aroma of a conspiracy from the get go.

Frankly, if you want to get technical, from what we know now, there isn't "one leaker" - there's a whole crap load of them, as everybody can be tied to giving Valerie's identity away at one time or another, even Joe himself. In fact, just from a law enforcement standpoint, the case is so muddled that even if Fitgerald were to indict EVERYONE - EVERYONE would get off - as there just isn't anything at this point that would hold in a court of law, and spare me the perjury angle. From crying out loud, one person contradicting another is NOT perjury.

I've got more experience with Grand Juries than Daily Kos has moonbats dancing his head, and conflicting or differing testimonies are nothing new or uncommon during testimony. It doesn't necessarily mean that one person is lying and the the isn't. Hell, with my experience sometimes everybody is lying - that's the proscecutor's job to sort the crap out.

Heck, with the evidence I've seen so far, I and some of my colleaues are saying, "That's it? Is that all they got?"

Anyway, back to Plame. As with every sphere of happen chance there is a core - and Valerie is the core.

The MSM media won't tell you that because they have crowned her "Victim" and tell stories about her shopping with the twins. According to them as far as he recommending Joe to go to Niger, they would have us believe that she was sitting at her desk at Langly one day, when someone said, "There's this crazy report about Yellow Cake and Niger", and she just raised her hand and said, "Hey, I know, my husband can go check it out! You know, he's Mr. Bagdad, man of the world - likes mint tea, and has lots of contacts in Niger - you remember, I recommended him in '99?"

Please!

For the "un-law enforcement among us", in determining any crime, you need to establish two primary factors - "Motive" and "Opportunity"

First to Motive:

While I haven't gotten it all together yet, I can tell you that Valerie is quite the "MoveOn" kind of Girl! In fact she had more ties to Soros/Moveon and the DNC than she had anywhere in the world!

In short - she had a "motive". For the "opportunity", let me turn this over to Mark R. Levin of National Review in a articledated July 18th, 2005:

"That's right. Plame started this phony scandal. And so far, she’s gotten away with it. What do I mean? Plame has shown herself to be an extremely capable bureaucratic insider. In fact, we know she's accomplished — she accomplished getting her husband, Joe Wilson, an assignment he desperately wanted: a trip to Niger to investigate a "crazy" report that Saddam Hussein sought yellowcake uranium from Niger (her word, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee, not mine). And she was dogged. She asked not once but twice (the second time in a memo) that her husband get the job. And there's more. The Senate Intelligence Committee investigation also found that a CIA "analyst's notes indicate that a meeting was 'apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger issues."

Now, Wilson didn't have an intelligence background. Indeed, the committee revealed that Wilson didn't have a "formal" security clearance, but the CIA gave him an "operational clearance." The fact is that there was little to recommend Wilson for the role, other than his wife’s persistence.

Indeed, the committee reported further that some at the CIA "believed that the embassy in Niger had good contacts and would be able to get to the truth of the uranium issue, suggesting a visit from the former ambassador would be redundant...."

Why Wilson?

This is the real scandal. Plame lobbied repeatedly for her husband, and she knew full well that he was hostile to the war in Iraq and the administration's foreign policy. She had to know his politics — and there can no longer be any pretense about him being a nonpartisan diplomat who was merely doing his job. By experience and temperament, Wilson was the wrong man to send to Niger. Plame affirmatively stepped into what she knew might become a very public political controversy, given her husband's predilections (and her own) about that "crazy" report of yellowcake uranium.

In fact, Wilson was so concerned that his wife's aggressive and clandestine efforts in securing his assignment would become known that he lied about who sent him to Niger to cover her (and his) tracks. So, in his July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed, he lied to the American people, writing: "It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs. Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me. In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.”

And in his book, Wilson wrote: “Valerie had nothing to do with the matter. She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip.” Lie upon lie intended to conceal his wife’s role and perpetuate the myth to the American people that he was a mere diplomat approached by the CIA because of his supposed expertise and professionalism. Wilson didn’t want his and his wife’s motivations to spoil the firestorm he was about to unleash against the president — with the help of the New York Times (which, to this day, has not run a correction and, therefore, stands by Wilson’s demonstrable lies).

When Wilson returned from Niger, he never got around to filing a written report. After all, why produce a written report that would be circulated to real professionals and policymakers, who would subject it to serious scrutiny. However, Wilson was debriefed by the CIA and his debriefers did take notes. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the debriefers’ didn’t share Wilson’s information with, among others, the White House because they concluded Wilson didn't come up with much.

And remember, the crux of Wilson’s op-ed was that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein sought yellowcake uranium from Niger, that he had communicated that fact to the administration, that the administration ignored or rejected his findings, and that President Bush lied to the nation to justify the war when, during his January 2003 State of the Union address, he said that “the British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Committee Considerations

Also remember that a year later, an independent British commission, which reviewed the intelligence behind the Iraq-Niger uranium claim, concluded that the president’s statement was “well founded,” and the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that “a number of intelligence reports” contained similar information.

Significantly, the Senate Intelligence Committee learned that the debriefers' conclusions differed in several important ways from Wilson's, including respecting yellowcake uranium.

The committee wrote:

First, the former ambassador described his findings to Committee staff as more directly related to Iraq and, specifically, as refuting both the possibility that Niger could have sold uranium to Iraq and that Iraq approached Niger to purchase uranium. The intelligence report described how the structure of Niger's uranium mines would make it difficult, if not impossible, for Niger to sell uranium to rogue nations, and noted that Nigerian officials denied knowledge of any deals to sell uranium to any rogue states, but did not refuse the possibility that Iraq had approached Niger to purchase uranium.

Second, the former ambassador said that he discussed with his CIA contacts which names and signatures should have appeared on any documentation of a legitimate uranium transaction. In fact, the intelligence report made no mention of the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal or signatures that should have appeared on any documentation of such a deal. The only mention of Iraq in the report pertained to the meeting between the Iraqi delegation and former [Niger] Prime Minister Mayaki.

Third, the former ambassador noted that his CIA contacts told him there were documents pertaining to the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium transaction and that the source of the information was the [blacked out] intelligence service." In fact, the CIA did not provide Wilson with "any information about the source or details of the original reporting as it would have required sharing classified information and noted that there were no 'documents' circulating ... at the time of the former ambassador's trip, only intelligence reports from [blacked out] intelligence regarding an alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal. ...[N]one of the meeting participants recall telling the former ambassador the source of the report ...

So, Wilson lied about what he found (or didn’t find) in Niger, he lied about discussing with his CIA debriefers certain documentation and signatures he never saw, and he lied about the CIA telling him of certain classified documents and sources. His New York Times op-ed was fiction, as was information he later leaked to the Washington Post, information he gave to other media outlets, and significant aspects of his book.

To this day, despite all this evidence, the media embrace Wilson's story, evidence be damned. The media outlets that were used by Wilson, and published or repeated his lies, are very forgiving. They portray Wilson as he demands to be portrayed, not as he is. And they regurgitate the rhetoric about poor Valerie Plame — a patriot and victim endangered and ruined by politically motivated leaks and a powerful White House bent on discrediting her husband. Even Meet the Press’s Tim Russert, who fancies himself a hard-nosed interrogator, could not have a done a better job of misinforming the public and smearing the White House — cutting and pasting statements and video clips, and throwing softballs to, of all people, Bill Clinton’s (and now George Soros’s) hatchetman, John Podesta. Plame’s central and aggressive role in promoting her husband, who in turn hoped to damage the credibility of the president in the midst of a war — from her CIA perch — doesn’t even merit a mention. (Also, see Cliff May's excellent reporting about the Plame/Wilson/David Corn connections.)

And in an Alice In Wonderland-like storyline, the same media that demand confidentiality for their sources as a First Amendment right, also demand the identity of Bob Novak’s sources and the names of administration officials who’ve spoken to the media. They cheer the very criminal investigation they once claimed endangered their profession. Meanwhile, who’s under investigation? Not Plame and Wilson, who appear to have hatched this scandal, but those truly victimized by it — administration officials who, it appears, sought to correct Wilson’s lies. Their phone conversations with reporters and e-mails to colleagues are now scrutinized by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and his grand jury as if they’re war criminals. No wonder Plame is the toast of the Washington establishment and appears in publicity shots in Vanity Fair with a big grin. Look what she’s wrought."


I was on the phone to the "office" today, thankfullly, there are still good people there who are willing to speak about this issue (Not everyone at the office was against the war). Suffice to say that there is more to come, and if I were Joe and Valerie, I'd put the champaign away for now.





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