"There never was any question of me talking about Mrs. Wilson "authorizing." I was told she "suggested" the mission, and that is what I asked Harlow. His denial was contradicted in July 2004 by a unanimous Senate Intelligence Committee report. The report said Wilson's wife "suggested his name for the trip." It cited an internal CIA memo from her saying "my husband has good relations" with officials in Niger and "lots of French contacts," adding they "could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." A State Department analyst told the committee that Mrs. Wilson "had the idea" of sending Wilson to Africa.
So, what was "wrong" with my column as Harlow claimed? There was nothing incorrect. He told the Post reporters he had "warned" me that if I "did write about it her name should not be revealed." That is meaningless. Once it was determined that Wilson's wife suggested the mission, she could be identified as "Valerie Plame" by reading her husband's entry in "Who's Who in America."
As I said here, Harlow is/was full of crap. He didn't have to hang up and go and check out Plame's status - he could have found out by the computer on his desk. Additionally I have real doubts, having worked there, that the Spokesman of the CIA didn't know Plame's status before hand. He was covering, and he knows it.
The last sentence has been the fact all along - Wilson's was could have been found out by anyone who read his bio and connected the dots - hell, this wasn't rocket science.
Tom Mcguire writes:
"A reprise of our earlier thoughts, from the Table Pounding Finish - superficially, the Harlow/Novak dispute looks like an insoluble "he said/he said" problem. However, this sort of debacle - a nationally syndicated columnist ignores a clear warning from the CIA press office and outs a covert agent - does not happen every day, or even every decade.
In any proper bureaucracy, a miscommunication of this magnitude would have produced a mountain of memos. Since (per Wilson's book, "The Politics of Truth") his wife had been warned on July 8 that Novak was pursuing this story, she or her superior should have written a CYA memo to the press office warning them to deal with this. The press office should have made plans to contact Novak's editor and/or publisher if Novak was unwilling to cooperate."
Exactly! If Plame was covert/protected (and both have to be in place), either Harlow or some senior administration officia picks up the phone and calls Novak's editor - that is SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). Harlow's vague reference was not a confirmation of Plame's status, in fact, I believe Harlow was stalling and not trying to protect Plame as a covert -per se, but the fact that the doors were coming off the motivations behind the Wilson trip. In otherwords - coverup.
The point not to miss is that Harlow lied as did Wilson:
"There never was any question of me talking about Mrs. Wilson "authorizing." I was told she "suggested" the mission, and that is what I asked Harlow. His denial was contradicted in July 2004 by a unanimous Senate Intelligence Committee report. The report said Wilson's wife "suggested his name for the trip." It cited an internal CIA memo from her saying "my husband has good relations" with officials in Niger and "lots of French contacts," adding they "could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." A State Department analyst told the committee that Mrs. Wilson "had the idea" of sending Wilson to Africa."
The wheels are coming off the CIA's story faster than a tight towel around a fat man's belly after a shower! The MSM's implosion is just the icing on the cake.
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