I heard on CNN today that Novak is going to have something to say about this issue during Crossfire today at 4:30pm EST. If it's anything interesting, I'll post it. _________________________________________ But I have to admit to a little ignorance here: how was this a good "revenge" tactic for the bush Administration to use against Wilson? What was their desired result? If they just wanted to shut him up, then it was a stupid move. Once you publicly announce that the guy's wife is a CIA operative, then you don't have anything to hold over him. If they wanted to question the credibility of his reporting, then I REALLY don't understand it. What is their point? That Wilson really wasn't qualified to analyze the situation and was only chosen because his wife works for the CIA? The guy was the former ambassador to Niger with many years of diplomatic experience. He seems well qulaified to me regardless of whether his wife worked for the CIA. And, in fact, the fact that his wife was knowledgeable about WMDs from her CIA work probably increased his ability to analyze a lot of the info he learned. Were the leaks meant to scare anyone else from revealing info against the Bush Admin? Kind of along the lines of, 'Geez, did you see what they did to Wilson and his wife? I better not speak out too.' So, could someone more experienced and knowledgeable about these things give me an idea of what the Bush Administrations motivations were for leaking this information? Thanks, Murf
Bingo! What the Bush Admin. does very effectively is keep it's troops in line. Rove and Cheney are masters of political intimidation and they have their henchman like Tom Delay to carry out orders in Congress. Nobody steps out of order and there is a clear chain of command - you stay on the talking points given you. Of course they have over-reached in the past two years and what we are seeing is the begining of a backlash - how loud and how long remains to be seen. First the OP/Ed this weekend with a Republican breaking ranks and now this latest implosion over Wilson-Gate and cracks in the Great Wall of Secrecy that they have carefully built are begining to show.
I think you just answered your own question. Just because it was an incompetent and unsuccessfull smear tactic doesn't mean that wasn't their motivation. I agree it seems unbelievably stupid, but the fact is somebody leaked the info to Robert Novak. The leak has proved to be true. Novak claims it was Whitehouse officials. The uber-conservative and pro-Bush Novak has no motivation to lie. The Post's story cites "a senior administration" who coroberated Novak's account. Whoever leaked the info committed a crime and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The fact the Whitehouse has shown no interest in investigating who did this as despictable as the act itself.
two potential motivations from where i see it. 1) Intimidation Not for Wilson, he already talked, there was no way to pull it back in. However, by doing this, they showed any one else that was considering putting out information harmful to the WH that they could be hit hard and close to home. 2) Background media influence Give the information to friendly media not in the hope that it gets published, but so that those media people know the informants background. You try to cast dispersions on his trustworthiness by suggesting he has a bias. I think the answer is #1 for a couple reasons. First, can you really expect 6 journalists to keep quiet with classified information related to a major news story. Secondly, the information given doesn't really destroy his credibility, if his wife had been Daschle's chief of staff, then you would be showing that he has a side in the story.
I only conjecture that (if true), it was a way of saying "you and your family will never work again". Other countries would be less than thrilled to have an ambassador/fact-finder/diplomat whose wife is CIA. Tea parties will never be the same. And old contacts may be pretty mad. So Wilson is unlikely to be ambassador ever again, no matter who is in office. His "old" career is completely done, as is her's. I'm sure they'll find other areas of employment, but he's been f'ed - and a message seems to have been sent.
Don't forget about the inevitable lucrative investment banking careers they'll both have. Anyone with that many contacts and experience is valuable to an investment bank. Murf
David Corn of "The Nation" did some good reporting on this issue a couple of months ago: http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?pid=823 "The sources for Novak's assertion about Wilson's wife appear to be "two senior administration officials." If so, a pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what's known as "nonofficial cover" and who has had the dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material. If Wilson's wife is such a person--and the CIA is unlikely to have many employees like her--her career has been destroyed by the Bush administration. (Assuming she did not tell friends and family about her real job, these Bush officials have also damaged her personal life.) Without acknowledging whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee, Wilson says, "Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames." If she is not a CIA employee and Novak is reporting accurately, then the White House has wrongly branded a woman known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm as a CIA officer. That would not likely do her much good." For some reason I never thought much would come of this story back then. But this looks to be some potentially serious stuff. The question is why did it take this long to become such a big controversy.
The $64,000 question indeed. I am getting really tired of being ahead of the curve on this stuff. (Although I gained the respect of my Bush-leaning roomate by being 3 ahead of the state of the union flap) Here's a link to the buzzflash interview with Corn discussing the subject http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/09/25_corn.html
Novak's Response http://www.drudgereport.com/ This might be the Novak announcement. I don't know if this will show up because it's just a bit on the front page without a link to it as of yet, but this appears on the front page right now. It seems like he is retracting his own sources for the article. The Headline: NOVAK RESPONDS: "NOBODY IN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION CALLED ME TO LEAK THIS" "Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. In July I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador Wilson's report when he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction. Another senior official told me the same thing. As a professional journalist with 46 years experience in Washington I do not reveal confidential sources. When I called the CIA in July to confirm Mrs. Wilson's involvement in the mission for her husband -- he is a former Clinton administration official -- they asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operator, and not in charge of undercover operatives..."
LIAR!!! Why did SIX separate reporters get this information also? This is a really pathetic attempt by Novak to put a screaming, clawing cat back into the bag. On top of that the "she was only an anaylst" line seems to be the latest attempt to diminish the seriousness of the charge.
Re: Novak's Response "Nobody in the Bush administration CALLED me to leak this. " Interesting choice of words.
Seems to just be slow growing. I heard the CIA mentioned it awhile ago, and the Justice department just got around to sending a questionnaire back (ex: Was she really a CIA agent?). Today was the day the CIA send back a formal response, along with a few hints to get frickin moving on this thing.
Josh Marshall at talkingpointsmemo.com thinks George Tenet is pushing this along via counter-leakage. He also has a transcript of the press conference, that is just a complete freaking bloodbath. This administration has been sowing the wind for a while. I get absolutely no sense that this particular story is going away. Gotta love the suggestions that Bush simply ask those responsible to come forward and resign. *snort*
I think Robert Novak must have woke up with a horse head in his bed. Now he's saying Plame was an analyst and not an agent. It's as if he really thinks his original column can be put into a memory hole or something. Hey, asshat, you've already used the word operative, you can't take it back now!! And Novak is also saying he wasn't called, he found out when some guys he was interviewing revealed the information. First, I don't see how that exonerates anyone, and second, hey, assshoes, you just made it vastly easier for the media to figure out who it is. ANYone could have called him up, but how many people did he interview in the week before that column??? On another note, is anyone else insulted by all of the media asswatches pretending they don't know who it is. It's ludicrous that these guys called 6 people, which indicates it wasn't exactly exclusive information, and the leakees haven't gossiped. On one last note, if you read the McClellan transcript carefully, there are enough dogs not barking to make a freakin' kennel. Read through it, it's alot of fun.
Re: Novak's Response The funniest part of this quote is that Novak thinks that he is a professional journalist.
I'm not really caught up with the X's and O's of this thing yet. Its very interesting, for sure, but so was Iran-Contra, and it didn't lose the republicans the election in '88. As an aside, however, think what would have happened if the Clinton administration would have been accused of something like this. It boggles the mind. I can't recall the CIA ever pulling something like this before, and maybe they've decided to send a message to future presidents: don't f--- with us, we'll be here when you're gone, and we can decide when you're gone. Yes, if the administration did what they're accused of then they should be nailed to the wall, the hypocrites, but lets also not get carried away with the treason business, since many of us probably believe "The Company" needs to be significantly downsized. If I thought Bush was going to do it (which he isn't of course) I might be willing to forgive alot of his other transgressions. But I ain't shedding no tears on that poor, helpless CIA.
Well, of course, Congress won't do squat about this since it's controlled by the Republicans. And I wouldn't be surprised if the media soon went back to chanting "Four More Years!" each morning before work. And the CIA won't be able to do a single thing about it. If you haven't figured out the joke by now, you need to get a new sarcasm detector. Personally, I will not be surprised if there's an October surprise against Bush next year if this gets blown off and he keeps dissing the CIA. I'd hate to see it because that's not the way democracy is supposed to work, but I'll be under no illusions as to who is to blame. And, yes, champmanager, Clinton would already have been lynched if he'd tried that crap. Isn't it interesting how George W. Bush is turning out to be the president that conservatives said Bill Clinton was?
It is widely, widely suspected, by the way, that the CIA had a significantly non-trivial part in the takedown of the Nixon Administration. It's certainly a matter of public record that E. Howard Hunt, the uber-Plumber, had a checkered Agency past. I'm sure an internet search along the lines of CIA Watergate Nixon will yield some amusing results - let me do that some time later. But this isn't the first time the executive has taken on the CIA, and the CIA clearly gives as good as it gets.
The thing is, the CIA reports leaks to the White House just about every week (according to an article on Slate) and they never do anything about it. I am sure this will just blow over. Unless there is constant media pressure on this kind of thing, it just does not last. I certainly don't believe the CIA will keep pushing.
And yet, none of those weekly reports are covered by EVERY major news outlet for a 48 hour cycle, and none are based on a claim so blatantly and openly made by a well known conservative scribe. You might be right that this blows over, but it'll take some serious work by the Bushies. Simply comparing it to other random reported leaks seems to ignore context way too much.
That, and this one really hits home. They blew an agent's cover. You think it hasn't occurred to, like, every single agent, that they could be compromised just so Karl Rove could make a political point? The CIA needs to get someone's head, out of sheer self-defense. There's also the point Josh Marshall made on talkingpointsmemo.com - Plame was investigating WMD. Blowing her cover makes all of us a lot, lot less safe. Anyway. CIA connections to Watergate tend to go off into the ether, but this should be some fun reading. Usually, the basic facts can be proven, it's just the interpretations that veer in many directions. (In other words, I endorse very, very little of this.) (Bob Woodward as CIA spook, though, would explain a LOT about Watergate.) http://www.walrus.com/~jklotz/watergat.htm http://www.the7thfire.com/bush12.htm http://www.webcom.com/ctka/pr196-woodward.html
> Simply comparing it to other random reported > leaks seems to ignore context way too much. The press is not treating this like any other leak, but my point is that this is not a unique occurance to the CIA, and I don't think they are going to do anything when Ashcroft refuses to act on their request. Without them making new news, I doubt the press is going to give this legs.
The Bushies are already panicing and making mistakes as well. This from the counterspin blog and the Press conference today "QUESTION: Yes, but I'm just wondering if there was a conversation between Karl Rove and the President, or if he just talked to you, and you're here at this -- McCLELLAN: He wasn't involved. The President knows he wasn't involved. QUESTION: How does he know that? QUESTION: How does he know that? McCLELLAN: The President knows. QUESTION: What, is he clairvoyant? How does he know?" Either he knows who DID do it, and it wasn't Rove....or he asked Rove, and Rove denied it directly. In which case, why is Bush ONLY asking Karl Rove? Or ...IS he only asking Karl Rove? And if he's asked other people, who are they, and what did they tell him? Of course, if he already knows who did it, then there's no reason to ask anyone...now is there? Bush is busted. Even more interesting is that the above exchange has been edited out of the official whitehouse transcript. Slimy Bastards