Posted on 10/21/2005 5:13:36 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
They went to the Aladdin for their convention?!? Gee, those Professional Journalists need a better convention planner, or maybe the Bellagio, THEhotel, Wynn and the Venetian didn't want them.
Did Judith Miller act as the point-person for springing this whole MSM/Joe Wilson trap on the WH?? Did she tell him things that helped to push the saga forward and/or draw him out on matters that he should have avoided? I'm not suggesting Libby will not bear legal responsibility if he crossed any red lines, though that remains to be seen, but it may well be that Judith Miller (and other MSM reporters) played a role of entrapment, getting Libby into discussions and details he should have avoided. I'm not sure why any Republican WH official would EVER want to risk their name and reputation in talking with treacherous MSM reporters, anyway, but they may feel they have to do so to try to get the WH story out in the face of continual MSM/Democrat smear campaigns.
Consider these points:
1) She had means and opportunity, i.e., meeting with Libby on June 23 before Wilson's op-ed had even appeared (but weeks after he had been quoted anonymously by Kristof in NY Times and Pincus in WaPo).
2) We know from her statement about "Victoria Wilson" that she had a technique of popping a somewhat incorrect but similar name at a source to see if they knew the correct name and corrected her. Perhaps she was pulling the same kind of thing with "Valerie Flame" to see if Libby would correct her with "Plame"???
3) As stated above, she certainly had means and opportunity to try to draw Libby into the trap. Here's why she may very well have felt MOTIVE: by mid-June 2003 the clamor about "no WMDs" in Iraq was becoming intense and Miller was on the spot, more than any other individual in US journalism. [speculation here]: Could she have seen her best chance at redemption with the NY Times and fellow journalists to ensnare Libby and the WH in the emerging Joe Wilson/Niger uranium saga??? I'm not saying she consciously intended to set a trap for illegal behavior for Libby or anyone else, but she certainly may have resented Libby very strongly by that point in time and may well have wanted to draw him into an open battle with Joe Wilson that she could write about and referee.....
I would die a happy woman if the indictments were Judith Miller, Matt Cooper, Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, and the Wilsons.
hmmm. The timelines. Ok Powell addresses the UN Security Council on Feb 5th with Tenet at his side, talking about WMD programs and Weapons believed to be in Iraq. So in that respect, one could assume she and others where plotting to see what damage they could do in the future. So with some three plus months to incubate what could be done, perhaps what you suggest may be more then speculation.
Hey, all, I just thought of something wonderful (I think) about this mass email from the Exec. Editor of the NY Times: HE HAS NOW TOTALLY UNDERMINED THE CREDIBILITY OF JUDITH MILLER AS A WITNESS in any future court proceedings on these matters. I'm not saying there cannot still be indictments, but in front of a real jury any decent defense attorney will now be able to impeach Judith Miller's credibility with the words of her very own Exec. Editor.
"Reasonable doubt" will be everywhere in these cases if there's not a great deal more than MSM reporters' unreliable statements. As for Miller, a defense attorney will now have the wonderful email from her own NY Times Executive Editor, Bill Keller, telling the entire staff of the NY Slimes that he does not trust her judgment, that she MISLED the paper, etc. Her credibility has now been nicely impeached by her own Executive Editor!!!
Which has been proven by the Senate Select Committee Report that that's a lie. Joe Wilson LIED to the Washington Post and other reporters about his wife and the trip.
Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission
Report Disputes Wilson's Claims on Trip, Wife's Role
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A09
Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.
snip
The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.
snip
The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional.
snip
"Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip." Wilson stood by his assertion in an interview yesterday, saying Plame was not the person who made the decision to send him. Of her memo, he said: "I don't see it as a recommendation to send me." snip
The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."
"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents -- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq -- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.
snip
According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.
The NYT seems to be missing the alarm bells on more than Miller. They still refuse to admit the Joe Wilson editorial is a pack of lies.
"If we had lanced the WMD boil earlier, we might have damped any suspicion that THIS time the paper was putting the defense of a reporter above the duty of its readers," he said.
Time to give Okrent his job back...
Well, that makes a whole lot of sense. :-)
"I would die a happy woman if the indictments were Judith Miller, Matt Cooper, Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, and the Wilsons."
Add the publisher and the top dozen editors of the NY Slimes to your list, and I will join you in eternal happiness.
It's none of those. It is Cooper's wife. Not Wilson's wife.
Add her and Plame's boss at the CIA, Foley to the list.
The Slimes may now see itself in a fight for its survival. If the Grand Jury shows that this Plame/Wilson bs started with the top Slimes editors and publisher, they could be a real has been as a newspaper.
So expect them to say anything to keep the truth from emerging in this fabricated mess. Their survival as a company and individuals may be at stake here.
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