INSIDE POLITICS---CNN Transcript Isikoff/Crowley

CNN ^

[hipaatwo]

CROWLEY: In the latest ease additions of Newsweek, reporter Michael Isikoff quotes attorneys who say that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove was a source for TIME magazine reporter Matt Cooper. Cooper, of course, is at the center of the grand jury investigation involving the leak of a CIA employee's identity.

So a couple of things about this story. First, what we do know at this point about Rove's relationship to this leak?

MICHAEL ISIKOFF, REPORTER, NEWSWEEK: I should say, we did more than quote attorneys. What we did is we obtained an internal TIME magazine e-mail that Matt Cooper wrote to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy, immediately after talking to Karl Rove on July 11th, that's before the Novak column, in which he says: "Double super-secret background, not to be attributed to the White House or Rove, but Rove gave me a big warning about some of what Joe Wilson has been saying. He wasn't sent to Niger by George Tenet or Vice President Cheney, it was Wilson's wife who apparently works at the agency on WMD issues who authorized the trip." That's the quote from Matt Cooper to his editor right after talking to Karl Rove.

What that tells us is that Karl Rove did indeed discuss Joe Wilson, Joe Wilson's wife, Joe Wilson's wife's employment with a reporter, Matt Cooper, prior to the Robert Novak column. That would seem to conflict with many of the White House public statements at the time, and certainly some of what Karl Rove's lawyer had been saying publicly up until we got hold of this e-mail.

It doesn't answer underlying questions here. For one thing, as many people have pointed out, and we pointed out, Karl Rove doesn't identify Valerie Plame by name, so that's an important distinction.

[Pukin Dog]

It's going to be all Rove all the time all summer.

And that will be a good thing. Rove is setting them up.

[marty60]

Not really, he never mentioned her name. They got the name from someone else, my bets is Bill or Hellery, since these two idots were known WH visitors .

[Pukin Dog]

I told everyone long ago that it was a big mistake for Bush to have ever named someone to investigate this trivial matter. All he did was give the press a golden opportunity to create a scandal out of nothing.

Yeah, and you were wrong then, and you are wrong now. You should pay better attention to what is actually happening.

[Kenny500c]

Who is Isikoff but a self-proclaimed hero, (ala Kerry), for keeping the lid on the Lewinsky story?

[kcvl]

Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction .

She has described herself as an energy analyst for the private company Brewster Jennings & Associates, which was subsequently acknowledged by the CIA as a front. It has been reported that this cover was not executed very convincingly.

Plame is the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Wilson is her second husband. Plame met him at a Washington party in early 1997. She was able to reveal her CIA role to him while they were dating because he held a high-level security clearance. At the time Wilson was married to, but separated from, his second wife Jacqueline, a former French diplomat. Wilson and Plame are the parents of five-year old twins.

A July 11, 2003 e-mail from Cooper to his bureau chief indicated that Rove had told Cooper that it was Wilson's wife who authorized her husband's trip to Niger, mentioning that she "apparently" worked at the CIA on weapons of mass destruction issues. Newsweek reported that nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggested that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative. ([5])

In other interviews Novak confirmed that his sources warned him not to mention Plame. His motivation to disregard the warnings is suggested by this comment in "The CIA Leak:" "I was curious why a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC) was given this assignment." Just four days before he revealed Plame's name Novak wrote, "Bush's Enemy Within." Therein Novak excoriates the Bush Administration's appointment of Frances Fragos Townsend to an important national security post explaining she could later betray Bush because two of her former superiors were liberal democrats and she had served in the US Attorney's office in Manhattan. According to Novak this office was "notoriously liberal laden."

"'Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this,' Novak said on CNN, saying the information was disclosed to him while he was interviewing a senior Bush administration official.... Novak said the administration official told him in July that Wilson's trip was 'inspired by his wife,' and that the CIA confirmed her 'involvement in the mission for her husband.' ... 'They asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else,' he said, adding that a source at the CIA told him Plame was 'an analyst -- not a covert operator and not in charge of undercover operators.'"

[REDWOOD99]

Rove needs to voluntarily move on to his next career ASAP.

[Laverne]

Nah. We still don't know if it was Rove who released Cooper last week; remember, Rove was "a" source.....spin spin spin by the media.

[Sherri]

http://foi.missouri.edu/iipa/secrets.html
Secrets of the Scandel New York Times, October 11, 2003
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

[IllumiNaughtyByNature]

Rove is setting them up.

Bingo!

[arasina]

Rove needs to voluntarily move on to his next career ASAP.

I take it you're a weenie who believes the spin?

[kcvl]

According to the report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was that Wilson returned from Niger and reported to the CIA that Niger's former Prime Minister had confirmed that in 1999, an emissary from Saddam Hussein made an overture that the Prime Minister interpreted as an attempt to buy uranium. (The claim that was made about Niger was that Iraq tried to buy uranium there, not that it succeeded.) Six months later, Wilson lied about his mission to Niger in an op-ed in the New York Times that attacked President Bush. Wilson misrepresented what he learned in Niger, and what he told the CIA.

None of this is hard to figure out; it was all widely reported when the Intelligence Committee's report was issued in July 2004. There is no excuse for an AP reporter not knowing these basic facts.

snip

The Intelligence Committee report confirmed that Valerie Plame did indeed--contrary to Joe Wilson's denials--recommend her husband for the Niger assignment. The report quotes Plame's memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations dated February 12, 2002, which said that her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." Why do prominent newspapers like the Boston Globe print op-eds by writers who don't know any facts?

Kuttner says "the administration" leaked Plame's name to Robert Novak as "part of a clumsy campaign to discredit and punish Wilson." This is dumb. First of all, Novak has already explained the context of the "leak." Many people wondered why the CIA sent such an unsuitable person as Joe Wilson on the Niger mission; someone in the administration explained to Novak that Wilson was selected because his wife worked for the Agency. Which, of course, turned out to be true.

But, in any event, why would that "discredit and punish Wilson"? The fact that his wife is a CIA employee doesn't discredit Wilson in the least. And her employment status is anything but a deep dark secret, as her subsequent Vanity Fair photo shoot demonstrated.

Kuttner now makes the real point of his column, titled "Politics Taints Probe of CIA Leak." His purpose is to libel U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

[federal]

I couldn't disagree with you more.

[popdonnelly]

People in government and various Administrations talk to reporters all the time in Washington. That's how reporters get their stories. It's nothing new. But its also a politically dirty town. Give people a rope, and they'll hang you with it.

[kcvl]

First, the C.I.A. suspected that Aldrich Ames had given Mrs. Wilson's name (along with those of other spies) to the Russians before his espionage arrest in 1994. So her undercover security was undermined at that time, and she was brought back to Washington for safety reasons.

Second, as Mrs. Wilson rose in the agency, she was already in transition away from undercover work to management, and to liaison roles with other intelligence agencies. So this year, even before she was outed, she was moving away from "noc" — which means non-official cover, like pretending to be a business executive. After passing as an energy analyst for Brewster-Jennings & Associates, a C.I.A. front company, she was switching to a new cover as a State Department official, affording her diplomatic protection without having "C.I.A." stamped on her forehead.

[NathanBookman]

How many "Watergates" have the libs felt they have found on Bush? 5, 10, 15? And they all end the same way...in disappointment for the libs. I am going enjoy watching them lose #16.

[popdonnelly]

I have to agree with Redwood on this one. Rove should have admitted that he talked to a reporter a long time ago. He will probably resign in the next day or two.

[jennyjenny]

Rove needs to voluntarily move on to his next career ASAP.

Why? We don't know that he's done anything wrong and, it's so much fun watching him make the libs and media hyperventilate and wet themselves.

[montag813]

Yeah, and you were wrong then, and you are wrong now.

I disagree. Plame was not outed by anyone at the W.H. As Novak and others have said, half of social Washington already knew her real name and what she did. She should have been suspended from covert activities long ago due to this indisretion. There is no crime whatsoever, therefore no reason to appoint a special investigator.

[Peach]

Baloney. Did you read #25? If you didn't, I highly suggest you do so.

[JediForce]

Can one "forge" or "create" an internal TIME magazine email? Can one be backdated or "enhanced" in order to look as though it came from a certain source at a certain time?

Was the email sent from a Kinkos? Questions Mr. Speaker, we have questions.


I Smell a SEE B.S. rat. How amazing that this revelation of the "email" should surface now huh ? JEDI.