Posted on 09/08/2006 9:22:14 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage on Thursday acknowledged being the original source in the leak of a CIA official's identity and expressed regrets and apologies in media interviews.
"It was a terrible error on my part," Armitage told The New York Times. "There wasn't a day when I didn't feel like I had let down the president, the secretary of state, my colleagues, my family and the Wilsons. I value my ability to keep state secrets. This was bad and I really felt badly about this."
Armitage was the first person to discuss the identity of former CIA official Valerie Plame with reporters after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, criticized the Bush administration's Iraq policy in a New York Times opinion piece.
Knowingly disclosing the identity of a covert CIA agent is against the law, but no officials have been charged with leaking Plame's identity to the news media in 2003.
Former vice presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been charged with lying to investigators as they sought to find out who leaked Plame's identity. Armitage is expected to be a witness at his perjury trial, according to a court motion by the defense.
Armitage said he wanted to disclose his role in the leak as soon as he realized he was the main source for a Robert Novak column which named Plame as a CIA intelligence officer, the Times reported.
But he told the newspaper he kept quiet at the request of Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor investigating the leak.
Armitage also confirmed he was the anonymous government official who told Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward about Plame's identity before other Bush administration officials mentioned her name to reporters, the newspaper reported.
(Excerpt) Read more at today.reuters.com ...
So it was not Rove, Cheney, Bush or who the left thinks did it?
If he's not already, Armitage might as well be a gossipy woman.
Is there a law that you have to keep quiet about being guilty of a non-crime while the prosecutor invents crimes to convict other people?
What a jerk!
Notice he didn't apologize to anybody but the Wilsons.
So Fitz now has the admitted leaker. When do we suppose he will issue the appropriate charges?
"Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage on Thursday acknowledged being the original source in the leak of a CIA official's identity . . ."
"Armitage was the first person to discuss the identity of former CIA official Valerie Plame with reporters . . ."
"Knowingly disclosing the identity of a covert CIA agent is against the law . . ."
So why isn't this putz in jail?
And when did Valerie Plame's employment ever turn out to be a "state secret"?
Did she drive her Jag to Langley every day or not?
Did her blabbermouth hubby brag about who was paying for his business travels (3 trips to Niger, not 1) - or not?
Did blabbermouth Joe brag about his/her connections with "the Agency" to boost his consultant fees with every wannabe-potentate in central Africa- or not?
Popcorn bowl filled ..... feet up
The truth destroys CIA leak fantasy
The Australian ^ | August 31, 2006 | Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor
Posted on 08/30/2006 1:50:23 PM EDT by Laverne
AND so we learn it was former US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage - Australia's best friend in the US - not the Bush White House who was the first to out Valerie Plame as a CIA employee.
With this knowledge is demolished yet another left-liberal fantasy about George W. Bush.
The ironies of the situation are endless, exquisite and, for some, extremely painful.
Ms Plame is the wife of Joseph Wilson, a former US diplomat who went to Niger before the Iraq war to examine allegations that Iraq had sought uranium there. From Mr Wilson's own account, his investigations were pretty cursory and he wrote an equivocal report on his return.
However, he subsequently became a fierce opponent of the US-led operation in Iraq.
It leaked out that Mr Wilson's wife was a CIA employee and, in one version, that she had been involved in getting him the commission to go to Iraq.
It then turned out that Ms Plame was a covert CIA operative, so leaking her identity was a serious matter, a criminal offence under US law.
Robert Novak first revealed Ms Plame's identity in a Washington Post column in July 2003.
All suspicion immediately fell on Mr Bush's closest aide, Karl Rove, or "turd blossom" as he is affectionately known by Mr Bush, and on Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney's then chief of staff.
Mr Rove and Mr Libby's guilt was never in doubt. Mr Rove spoke with a Texas accent, Scooter had a silly name. What more proof was needed?
From Le Monde to the Guardian, from Balmain to Carlton, no right-thinking progressive ever doubted the conspiracy theory that the Bush White House had decided to punish Mr Wilson for becoming a critic of the war by outing his wife.
Of course, as a conspiracy theory it never made any sense. Far from damaging Mr Wilson and Ms Plame, the publicity made them celebrities.
Mr Wilson, furiously writing opinion pieces for The New York Times and boasting about his wife, did everything he could to draw attention to himself, not normally the way the spouses of covert agents maintain their covert status.
For what it's worth, White House sources tell me that to the extent that anyone ever discussed Mr Wilson and Ms Plame with the press, it was to deny the story allegedly being put round - some say ultimately by Mr Wilson himself - that he was Mr Cheney's personal choice for the mission to Niger.
Once Ms Plame's name was made public there can surely be no serious reservation about officials talking to the press in some limited way about her.
Has there ever been in any Western democracy a serious national security reporter who has not on occasion discussed classified information with a senior government source?
Normally Left liberals like maximum disclosure, don't they?
Mr Libby has been charged by the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, appointed to look into the whole matter. But as is always the case when these special prosecutors run amok, he has not been charged with the central offence - leaking Ms Plame's identity - but with the process offences of lying to the special prosecutor and obstructing justice.
Mr Libby has stood down from Mr Cheney's office and is vigorously defending the charges. He should never have been charged with anything. It is complete madness, the criminalisation of politics.
It has taken a bitter and terrible toll on Mr Libby's life, while Mr Wilson and Ms Plame have revelled in magazine fashion shoots, Left-liberal hero status and the rest.
There is another Australian connection with Mr Libby. A former US ambassador to Australia, Mel Sembler, is chairing the fundraising effort for his legal defence.
But what of Mr Armitage's role in all this? Why was he not charged with anything?
We do not yet know all the facts but, according to Newsweek, which broke the story, Mr Armitage revealed Ms Plame's identity in a casual conversation with Novak, and subsequently with the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, at a time when he did not know Ms Plame's status was covert.
When he found out, he told his then boss, Colin Powell, and the State Department's counsel.
I have heard that someone of Mr Armitage's rank, deputy secretary, is allowed to reveal information at his discretion.
In Woodward's books on the Bush administration there is much national security information that comes directly from interviews with the President himself. This is a normal part of democratic politics, even though it is information that if revealed by a lower-ranked official would be deemed illegal.
It is a matter of record that Mr Armitage was an administration opponent of the neo-conservatives and against going into Iraq when the US did so.
The Wall Street Journal has published a fierce polemic criticising Mr Armitage for not outing himself as the initial source and getting Mr Libby and Mr Rove off the hook.
But the crazy excesses of the special prosecutor would not have been satisfied by any such action, and his identity as Novak's source has been a poorly guarded secret for months.
Mr Armitage is a rambunctious, ebullient and infinitely brave man. I do not believe he could have saved his colleagues from the ravages of the special prosecutor.
But history should record one more conspiracy theory that has been proven, like most conspiracy theories, to be absolute bunk.
But he told the newspaper he kept quiet at the request of Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor investigating the leak.
So now the question is why did Fitzgerald want him quiet.....???
I heard on Fox 'n Friends this morning that the NYSlimes has a similar article buried on page 26.
"Former vice presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been charged with lying to investigators as they sought to find out who leaked Plame's identity."
As they sought to find out? They knew the leaker from the get go!
Fitzgerald obviously wanted him to keep quiet so he could keep bleeding the US Treasury for more money to continue an investigation he already had the answer to and to keep suspicion on the bush administration. IMO Fitzgerald should be facing criminal indictment.
They are not referred to as the NY Slimes for trivial reasons....
THE most important question that should be on everybody's lips right now is WHY DID FITZGERALD KEEP INVESTIGATING THIS WHEN HE KNEW THE ANSWER?
Nice of him to NOW speak up.
There was never a crime committed for 2 reasons:
1. The leak was not intentional
2. The agent was not covert or undercover at the time.
Gee too bad he didn't speak up earlier before Scooter Libby was destroyed ... just too bad
Why accept the word of Powell-crony Armitage that the leak was unintentional? My guess is that it was very intentional and was designed to discredit Wilson in the wake of the Iraq invasion given Powell's reliance upon the Niger information during his appearance at the UN. It turned out that Wilson was lying and that he didn't need to be discredited; however, that was not necessarily known by Powell and Armitage at the time.
Also, it was not a single leak. Armitage "mistakenly" leaked info from the classfied State memo three times: 1) to Novak; 2) to Woodward; and 3) to an unnamed reporter. Finally, Armitage neglected to tell Fitzgerald about his Woodward conversation and did so only after having been prompted by Woodward. This is precisely the same kind of memory lapse that Fitzgerald is calling perjury on the part of Libby.
Source in C.I.A. Leak Case Voices Remorse
************************************AN EXCERPT **************************
Mr. Armitage, who has been criticized for keeping his silence for nearly three years, said he had wanted to disclose his role as soon as he realized that he was the main source for Robert D. Novak’s column on July 14, 2003, which identified Ms. Wilson. But he held back at the request of Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor. “He requested that I remain silent,” Mr. Armitage said.
***************************************
He expressed irritation over assertions in some editorials and blogs that, by his silence, he had been disloyal to the Bush administration, saying he had followed President Bush’s repeated instruction that administration officials cooperate with the Fitzgerald inquiry. “I felt like I was doing exactly what he wanted,” he said.
************************************************
This week, after news reports clearly identified him as the source, Mr. Armitage said Mr. Fitzgerald had consented to his public disclosure of his role. Mr. Fitzgerald sent Mr. Armitage a letter in February, notifying him that the inquiry into his activities had been closed.
*******************************************
*************************************
At a minimum. Frankly, Fitz needs to face charges.
It has very seriously become time to investigate the investigator.
Damn good question.
Grossman requested that Carl Ford, Jr. draft the memo, which Ford sent to Grossman on June 10, 2003. Grossman wanted the memo as background to use at a White House meeting on criticism of President Bush for using the Niger claim in his State of the Union speech. On July 6, 2003, Armitage asked Ford to send a copy of the memo to Powell on AF-1. And per the above linked article, it was Grossman that told Libby about Plame and he was also the first one to point a finger at Libby when this broke.
We know Armitage had no loyalty to Bush, but it went even further than that…from a story I found last week:
Kerry Exploring Cabinet Options
An excerpt:
Clarice Feldman gives us another interesting tidbit of info about Grossman:
If Fitzgerald has known since January 12, 2004 of the name of the leaker, why is he still protecting him, and why is he treating the leaker’s (that is, Armitage’s) source, who is almost certainly Marc Grossman, former Under Secretary of State for political affairs, the man reportedly the source for the first accusations against Libby and Rove, as an impartial witness to the events? In the discovery process it turned out that Grossman was a longtime friend of Wilson’s, dating to their college days at the University of California—Santa Barbara. Is it likely that the famous prosecutor missed this fact?More on Grossman at Strata-sphere. Seems he traveled with some cohorts of John Kerry's...Rand Beers in particular. Grossman went to the same college and graduated the same year as {drum roll please} Joe Wilson and also had the same job in a neighboring country. Strato-sphere also has some interesting comments about a Turkey connection. You remember Turkey…the country that balked at allowing our forces passage into northern Iraq?
And another player in this, Carl Ford, Jr. is no "loyal Republican" either...
As is often the case in these partisan bloodlettings, Bolton's attacker is being presented by the media not only as being a devout public servant - with no axe to grind - but a conservative Republican to boot, a claim that seems to fly in the face of his past political contributions as recorded by the FEC.Links to sources at the above link.$500 to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), $1,000 to Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-NY), $1,000 to Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) and $500 to Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii).
The Washington Times offered the following: "Gary Jarmin, a Republican consultant and president of Global Dominion Communications, questioned Mr. Ford's claim of loyalty."Bottom line, is that to the best of my recollection, Carl always considered himself a Democrat," said Mr. Jarmin, a longtime Washington lobbyist. "If he is now a self-described 'loyal Republican,' then he must have had a fairly recent conversion." - Washington Times April 20, 2005
Democrat Ford is a longtime DC lobbyist, something absent from most press accounts of his sink-Bolton campaign. Before he went to the State Department he ran his own lobbying operation - Ford Associates. Currently he is employed as the Executive Vice President of Cassidy & Associates, Washington's most powerful - and liberal - public policy consulting group.
Cassidy & Associates was founded by Gerald Cassidy, former counsel to George McGovern's ultra-lefty Committee on Hunger, he is also a former General Counsel to the DNC - 'nuff said.
Looks to me like a few people need to be prosecuted for an attempted coup against a sitting President.
Where do Rove,Cheney and Bush go to get their reputations back from the Leftist Joe McCarthyites?
Matthews: Plame Story Too Complicated to Cover Now [Interview with Hardball host]
Well Chrissy Matthews of Hardball fame isn't going to worry about it....see above....
Its really starting to look that way. I want my tax money back.
Fitz will NOT face charges because Alberto Gonzalez is almost as weak as Norm Minetta was.
We have a Shadow Govt led by co-cabalists, Armitage, Powell, CIA , Tenet, Grossman, etc.
Something we shouldn't lose sight of: following his Grand Jury appearance in the Lewinsky case, Syd Blumenthal immediately gave a press conference telling what transpired in his grand jury appearance including questions asked and his responses to those questions. Much of what Syd said turned out to be lies.
But now we have Richard Armitage saying the Special Prosecutor told him not to tell anyone that he was the leaker -- despite this, he was under no legal obligation to keep silent (unless Fitzgerald threatened prosecution and then that raises even MORE questions about his judgement and actions).
Isn't it interesting to see two "Clintonistas" behaving exactly as you would expect them to in similar circumstances: lying to protect his own butt in the one case, and keeping silent to protect his butt in the other. In both cases: the Nation be damned.
Soooo, now that Armitage has gone "public" will Novak CONFIRM that he is his source??? Has anyone asked Novak??? If Novak doesn't say it was then I will continue to believe it was Powell.
Too complicated?
Why didn't I think of that?
This story doesn't seem to be over even though Chrissy doesn't want to talk about it anymore....
They should know better than to mess with a guy called turd blossom.
It's too complicated for someone of his intellect. Maybe he could consult with someone smarter than him. Like a flea or a maggot.
1)Joe Wilson is a pathological liar
2)His wife was never a "covert operative",but a desk-jockey careerist bureaucrat in Langley
3)The MSM and Dems are disingenuous sacks of sh!t
4)Patrick Fitzgerald is a f-ing assclown
5)Saddam was most likely trying to purchase uranium from Niger after all, as there's no question meetings took place, and their only other major exports are livestock, cowpeas, and onions
Where is FITZ's STATEMENT???? Why hasn't he come out??/Why hasn't anyone asked him why he SUPPOSEDLY said to Armitage "don't talk about it."?????
I do know they intentionally did not inform The President before Fitz was appointed?
I'm sure someone is working up a new detailed time-line.
APOLOGY NOT ACCEPTED
Powell went to the UN Security Council just before the invasion and put his credibility on the line that Iraq's WMD program had to be stopped. He reportedly had long talks with Tenet beforehand; Tenet told him that the WMD intel was a "slam dunk".
After the invasion, when the WMDs were not found (overstatement, I know), Powell had egg on his face (he had portrayed himself as the restraining influence in contrast to the Cheney / Rummy crowd). That summer, post-invasion, is when Wilson started mouthing off; and if Wilson were to be believed (he turned out to be a huge liar), Powell had been fooled. So I do see a motive (back then) for Armitage to have sought to discredit Wilson.
For Armitage to have been such an amateur to have made the same leak three times and then forget to tell Fitzgerald the whole story is very hard for me to believe of a very smart guy.
The real scandal here is Fitzgerald's behavior. He should be required to appear before Congress and testify about why he continued a sham investigation (costing millions of dollars, and forwarding a false story line in the media), when he knew the following, from almost the very beginning.
A: There was no crime.
B: The "leaker" was on the same side as Wilson (and Saddaam).
C: The "leak" was just a stupid accident.
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