Posted on 07/26/2005 9:47:23 PM PDT by SolidSupplySide
The special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe has interviewed a wider range of administration officials than was previously known, part of an effort to determine whether anyone broke laws during a White House effort two years ago to discredit allegations that President Bush used faulty intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to several officials familiar with the case.
Prosecutors have questioned former CIA director George J. Tenet and deputy director John E. McLaughlin, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, State Department officials, and even a stranger who approached columnist Robert D. Novak on the street.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
http://www.public-i.org/about/staff.aspx
Ann Pincus
Director of Communications and Outreach
Ann Pincus has over 30 years’ experience in public affairs, marketing, government relations and management. She served as director of research, first at the United States Information Agency, then the Department of State from 1993-2001, where she supervised public opinion polling and media research around the world for the U.S. government. She was vice president for communications at WETA TV-FM from 1987 to 1993; earlier she served as press secretary to Senator Charles Mathias of Maryland, a publicist for National Public Radio, and director of information for the House Select Committee on Population. She began her career as a journalist, working for the Arkansas Gazette, Ridder Newspapers, the Village Voice and the New York Post, among other publications. She is a graduate of Vassar College.
Chapter 17 - The Politics of Truth
A Strange Encounter with Robert Novak
Late on Tuesday afternoon, July 8, six days before Robert Novak’s article about Valerie and me, a friend showed up at my office with a strange and disturbing tale. He had been walking down Pennsylvania Avenue toward my office near the White House when he came upon Novak, who, my friend assumed, was en route to the George Washington University auditorium for the daily taping of CNN’s Crossfire. He asked Novak if he could walk a block or two with him, as they were headed in the same direction; Novak acquiesced. Striking up a conversation, my friend, without revealing that he knew me, asked Novak about the uranium controversy. It was a minor problem, Novak replied, and opined that the administration should have dealt with it weeks before. My friend then asked Novak what he thought about me, and Novak answered: “Wilson’s an asshole. The CIA sent him. His wife, Valerie, works for the CIA. She’s a weapons of mass destruction specialist. She sent him.” At that point, my friend and Novak went their separate ways. My friend headed straight for my office a couple of blocks away.
Once he related this unsettling story to me, I asked him to immediately write down the details of the conversation and afterwards ushered him out of my office. Next, I contacted the head of the news division at CNN, Eason Jordan, Novak’s titular boss, whom I had known for a number of years. It took several calls, but I finally tracked him down on his cell phone. I related to him the details of my friend’s encounter with Novak and pointed out that whatever my wife might or might not be, it was the height of irresponsibility for Novak to share such information with an absolute stranger on a Washington street. I asked him to speak to Novak for me, but he demurred— he said he did not know him very well—and suggested that I speak to Novak myself. I arranged for him to have Novak call me and hung up.
Novak called the next morning, but I was out, and then so was he. We did not connect until the following day, July 10. He listened quietly as I repeated to him my friend’s account of their conversation. I told him I couldn’t imagine what had possessed him to blurt out to a complete stranger what he had thought he knew about my wife. Novak apologized, and then asked if I would confirm what he had heard from a CIA source: that my wife worked at the Agency. I told him that I didn’t answer questions about my wife. I told him that my story was not about my wife or even about me; it was about sixteen words in the State of the Union address.
I then read to him three sentences from a 1990 news story about the evacuation of Baghdad: “The chief American diplomat, Joe Wilson, shepherds his flock of some 800 known Americans like a village priest. At 4:30 Sunday morning, he was helping 55 wives and children of U.S. diplomats from Kuwait load themselves and their few remaining possessions on transport for the long haul on the desert to Jordan. He shows the stuff of heroism.” The reporters who had written this, I pointed out, were Robert Novak and Rowland Evans. I suggested to Novak that he might want to check his files before writing about me. I also offered to send him all the articles I had written in the past year on policy toward Iraq so that he could educate himself on the positions I had taken. He would learn, if he took the time, that I was hardly antiwar, just anti–dumb war. Before I hung up, Novak apologized again for having spoken about Valerie to a complete stranger.
The following Monday, July 14, 2003, I read Novak’s syndicated column in the Washington Post. The sixth paragraph of the ten-paragraph story leapt out at me: “Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report.”
http://www.politicsoftruth.com/excerpt.html
That is in addition to the Rats in CIA, State and MSM who tried to undermine the CIC during war....
"In a strange twist in the investigation, the grand jury -- acting on a tip from Wilson -- has questioned a person who approached Novak on Pennsylvania Avenue on July 8, 2003"
Probably Mark Felt ;-)
Thanks for the ping to a very interesting thread, okie.
Is THAT all. Sheesh! We've got leaks upon leaks of "secret" Grand Jury info from an investigation into a leak. And we're supposed to take this investigation seriously?! All I see is wasted tax dollars.
Bump
lol! Oh no.... Plame sent Wilson before, and *that's* what the WH is referring to. OH HOWLING LAUGHTER. That's so cute.
OK. I'll come clean. It was me. Yep. I admit it. Even though I haven't left California in years, I managed to be on Pennsylania Avenue that day.
Now can we get back to what's really important? You know. Like maybe rounding up a few more Islamofreaks?
...about this matter. Bingo. He wouldn't.
..jaw dropping. Good find, kcvl.
So Walter Pincus is using the Post to prop up Wilson.
Who was having Novak tailed? I can't imagine very many ways Wilson could know this unless the "person who approached Novak" told Wilson.
Funny. I see a serious investigation of leaks that placed the national security of the United States in grave danger. Let's hope the guilty are held accountable. And as a two-fer, America gets to clean up the CIA.
Check out post #35. To me it sounds like Wilson was the person who either "approached" (accosted?) Novak or arranged for the incident to happen. Think about it. Say you're involved in a confidential matter related to your job. What are the odds that somebody with intimate knowledge of the matter would randomly approach you on a street?
Unless his new consulting company is really a front for Joe Wilson Bond, Super-dee-duper Secret Agent Man Smart.
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