Posted on 12/05/2004 4:30:47 PM PST by Snapple
One intriguing possibility, noted by several lawyers familiar with the case, is that Novak may have invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, and that Fitzgerald has not yet chosen to give him immunity from prosecution to compel his testimony.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Please reread my post. There's a knowledge element required.
Besides, I still say the first amendment protects speech, including the revelation, to anyone that isn't otherwise under a duty to keep information classified. Thus the law would be unconstitutional if ever applied.
That is a flat out lie. See this (lefty) site that links to the numerous stories that were written upon the leaking of the *August 2001 PDB*. It was leaked in May 2002.
The "Bush Knew" lie was based on the leaking of the August 2001 PDB. Period.
My God, how can you look at yourself in the mirror?
Just like I said.
Funny how my points can always be backed up by facts and links to prove them and yours are made up out of thin air.
Should we cut him off?
Bush would leak to make himself look bad?
But as to the scenario of a president who cannot be trusted with classified information, we don't have to play "what if", we have precedent. The FBI curtailed briefings to Clinton and his administration because Freeh did not trust them.
The Crisis Continues -- FBI vs. White House
excerpt:
Freeh found out about this while in Saudi Arabia and ordered that the information not be sent to the White House. According to The Times, only after Freeh discussed the matter with Reno was anything sent over -- "They agreed to send the White House copies of documents like the briefing materials that the FBI had given to two national security council aides in June 1996 when the issue first arose at the White House." The final product sent to the White House was not much more information than had only been reported in the press.
Earlier reports indicate that Freeh was quite miffed by the White House request, "furious" to be exact. The Times quotes anonymous officials as saying that Freeh was concerned that any information he sent over would be leaked and that he would be attacked for providing the sensitive information to the White House.
~snip~
As one might imagine, the White House is embarrassed by this latest New York Times report, coming as it is on the heels of the FBI accusing Clinton and the White House of lying when it said NSC staffers were instructed by the FBI in June, 1996 not to inform higher-ups, including Bill, about Chinese attempts to influence congressional elections.
That may also be true, but I remember how Hilary Clinton was raving about how "Bush Knew" and then learned that this document had been published during her husband's time in office. That shut her up I think.
Perhaps this document I cited was used to show the "Bush Knew" folks that much of this information waw available during Clinton's time. Perhaps this was the rebuttal to the Bush Knew folks.
In any case, this document WAS part of that fight. I remember reading this document when it first came out. It talks about flying planes into buildings. So I knew that was a polibility. The CIA was really responsible for this document. So they told what Bin Laden was up to.
The problem is that two presidents did very little against Al Qaeda. Clinton had eight years during which al Qaeda repeatedly attacked us and declared war on us.
They did nothing and didn't even have a plan for attacking Bin Laden.
That is why, when Bin Laden did 9-11 that the Army took forever to attack Bin Laden and he was able to disperse. The Army had no plan. That is why they told all that baloney about how they had to figure out who did 9-11 or maybe there were foreign sponsors. They knew. I knew the minute it happened. It is just that the Army wasn't ready to move. They knew where all OBL's places were and should have bombed everything he had to smithereens that night. The CIA had been telling everyone about OBL's intentions, but the CIA doesn't make the political decisions or have an army. I t was really the CIA that prepared this Federal Researh Division document in 1999. They were right on the mark, but nobody listened.
This document I cited has the same information as what was in the Daily Brief, and it was PUBLISHED in 1999. Every lawmaker should have read it. I did. The Democrats are acting like "Bush knew" but they ALL should have known and should have attacked OBL while his guys were still in their camps. They should have just annhilated all of them because we knew he had blown up Americans ships and embassies. We didn't need to wait for proof of 9-11. He already deserved to be killed for what he had already done. All the talking about beins sure was to cover up the fact that the Army had its pants down and had no plan. The CIA begged for someone to get OBL.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/16/attack/main509294.shtml
(CBS) President Bush was told in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network might hijack U.S. passenger planes - information which prompted the administration to issue an alert to federal agencies - but not the American public.
CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin says the warning was in a document called the President's Daily Brief, which is considered to be the single most important document that the U.S. intelligence community turns out. The document did not, however, mention the possibility of planes being flown into buildings.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that while President Bush was told last summer that bin Laden's al Qaeda network might hijack planes, "until the attack took place, I think it's fair to say that no one envisioned that [using planes as suicide bombs] as a possibility."
However, a federal report issued exactly two years before the Sept. 11 attacks contrasts with that statement.
The report, entitled the "Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?," warned the executive branch that bin Laden's terrorists might hijack an airliner and dive bomb it into the Pentagon or other government building.
It described the suicide hijacking as one of several possible retribution attacks al Qaeda might seek for the 1998 U.S. airstrike against bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan.
"Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House," the September 1999 report said.
The report was written by the Federal Research Division, an arm of the Library of Congress that provides research for various federal agencies under contracts.
(excerpt)
Bush might have leaked to explain why this Republican Administration happened to choose a Democrat to investigate the yellowcake. He could have said, "We picked Wilson because his wife works in the CIA on proliferation issues and she picked him."
The intent of the leak would be to explain that odd choice, not to uncover the lady's identity.
You're story is the old discredited Wilson version.
Plame's unit sent Wilson on their own volition (furthering the rogue scenario). Wilson's "findings", such as they were, were never briefed to anyone at the WH.
Kinda hard to "leak" about something you weren't told about.
Then when it comes out Wilson was sent at his wife's suggestion, he and others at the CIA lied about it. Then her memo doing just that surfaced...
So as you can see, the WH had nothing to do with Wilson's trip and weren't told about it afterwards, either.
Anyone know if Wilson and/or wifey have been subpoenaed?
Your memory is wrong. She was waving the NY Post front page headline which in turn was based on the leaking of the 2001 PDB.
Don't confuse the issue with the fact that there was documentation under her husband's administration about bin Laden. The whole charge that "Bush Knew" was ludicrous, yet managed to get quite a bit of mileage right up through the 9/11 commission hearings. Facts matter not when the dems and their supporters at, say, the CIA, are bent on making a storyline to their liking.
Of course there was information from 1999. God only knows why you keep harping on that. Twasn't I who ignored the factual state of the record. It was the dems, the anonymous sources, the media and the 9/11 commission (at first).
Now I hope you see why it was preposterous that the whole attack was launched against President Bush.
The August 2001 PDB was leaked for a reason and the reason is as I've outlined. There immediately was refutation but the media and dems and leaky operatives continued with their charges.
The version I have written is not what Wilson said but what what Robert Novak wrote when he claimed that the White House had not intentionally leaked to him. Of course, he doesn't identify the leaker.
Novak says the leak was not done to destroy Plame but to explain why she was chosen.
I am writing what Novak wrote in a follow-up column. I have posted that column a few times. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn20031001.shtml
The CIA leak
Robert Novak
October 1, 2003
WASHINGTON -- I had thought I never again would write about retired diplomat Joseph Wilson's CIA-employee wife, but feel constrained to do so now that repercussions of my July 14 column have reached the front pages of major newspapers and led off network news broadcasts. My role and the role of the Bush White House have been distorted and need explanation.
The leak now under Justice Department investigation is described by former Ambassador Wilson and critics of President Bush's Iraq policy as a reprehensible effort to silence them. To protect my own integrity and credibility, I would like to stress three points. First, I did not receive a planned leak. Second, the CIA never warned me that the disclosure of Wilson's wife working at the agency would endanger her or anybody else. Third, it was not much of a secret.
The current Justice investigation stems from a routine, mandated probe of all CIA leaks, but follows weeks of agitation. Wilson, after telling me in July that he would say nothing about his wife, has made investigation of the leak his life's work -- aided by the relentless Sen. Charles Schumer of New York. These efforts cannot be separated from the massive political assault on President Bush.
This story began July 6 when Wilson went public and identified himself as the retired diplomat who had reported negatively to the CIA in 2002 on alleged Iraq efforts to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger. I was curious why a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC) was given this assignment. Wilson had become a vocal opponent of President Bush's policies in Iraq after contributing to Al Gore in the last election cycle and John Kerry in this one.
During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: "Oh, you know about it." The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue.
At the CIA, the official designated to talk to me denied that Wilson's wife had inspired his selection but said she was delegated to request his help. He asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause "difficulties" if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name. I used it in the sixth paragraph of my column because it looked like the missing explanation of an otherwise incredible choice by the CIA for its mission.
How big a secret was it? It was well known around Washington that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Republican activist Clifford May wrote Monday, in National Review Online, that he had been told of her identity by a non-government source before my column appeared and that it was common knowledge. Her name, Valerie Plame, was no secret either, appearing in Wilson's "Who's Who in America" entry.
A big question is her duties at Langley. I regret that I referred to her in my column as an "operative," a word I have lavished on hack politicians for more than 40 years. While the CIA refuses to publicly define her status, the official contact says she is "covered" -- working under the guise of another agency. However, an unofficial source at the Agency says she has been an analyst, not in covert operations.
The Justice Department investigation was not requested by CIA Director George Tenet. Any leak of classified information is routinely passed by the Agency to Justice, averaging one a week. This investigative request was made in July shortly after the column was published. Reported only last weekend, the request ignited anti-Bush furor.
Just say NO!
/sarcasm
I remember that when she saw the FRD article from 1999 she responded by saying that she hadn't read it because she wsn't in the Senate then.
I never said that "Bush Knew." I always thought that was silly. Nobody knew the 9-11 plan.
He had some informtion and he told the relevant agencies.
He shouldn't tell the public because that would tip the terrorists that the government knew.
When hilary saw the FRD document she stopped raving about how Bush Knew.
I've read Novak's columns many times and as I said before, the counter-proliferation group sent Wilson on their own volition and Wilson's trip was never briefed to anyone at the WH.
Period.
Nothing in the Novak column buttresses your contention to the contrary.
Honey, nobody said she wasn't confronted with the historical and factual record.
Stop mixing up apples and oranges.
Not that I'm aware of. I'm hoping they're the targets.
BTW, this IS the reason I've told you many times the name was given...by way of explaining the otherwise inexplicable.
Your error is persisting in blaming the WH.
"I think we're going to learn a lot about what the government knew," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said during an appearance in New York. She said she was unaware of the report created in 1999 during her husband's administration."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/18/attack/main509488.shtml
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