Posted on 06/11/2007 11:26:05 AM PDT by Mike Bates
It is understandable that many in the conservative media have called for President Bush to pardon Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, because of his conviction in the so-called CIA leak case. Libby should never have been put on trial; indeed, new evidence suggests that his alleged target, former CIA analyst Valerie Plame, is the one who should be investigated for allegedly lying under oath before Congress about her role in this affair.
Plame's backers in the agency would have great reason to fear such a probe. It might shed light on who in the CIA was actively trying to sabotage the Bush Administration's Iraq policy--and who may be continuing to do so today.
AIM Editor Cliff Kincaid and I have detailed in a series of columns how in fact this case should never have been brought, and that exoneration, not a pardon, would better serve Libby, history and justice. The underlying theory about the Bush administration seeking retaliation against Joseph Wilson for writing a column in the New York Times accusing the Bush Administration of "twisting" evidence to justify going to war against Iraq was false, and it was Wilson who played fast and loose with the truth. And it is well known that it was Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell, not anyone from the White House, nor a supporter of going to war in Iraq, who told Robert Novak and Bob Woodward that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, worked for the CIA and had recommended her husband for the trip to Niger.
It was Novak's column identifying Ms. Wilson that triggered the CIA request to the Justice Department for an investigation, which resulted in the appointment of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.
(Excerpt) Read more at aim.org ...
This whole damn thing is gona be the 21st century version of Whitaker Chambers........
The CIA is a basket case which is in severe need of a reorganization. It is a national shame that almost 6 years after 911, Congress still has not reformed it because the Dems don’t want to undo Frank Church’s legacy. It was their failure to do so, by the way, which led directly to the Iraq intelligence failures. You’d have thought that the North Korean intell failures and the 911 intell failures would have been enough to persuade the idiots who run Congress that it was time for reform. But no.
I
wonder what the Burger case exposed?
Yeah, complete with half the population still believing Hiss.
Did anyone just happen to note the timing of the CIA’s declaration that Plame was a covert spy. Just after the guilty verdict, where there was no chance to challenge the facts in a courtroom, but before sentencing, where they were used against Libby
“It might shed light on who in the CIA was actively trying to sabotage the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy—and who may be continuing to do so today.”
If anyone finds out, ping me.
I’m constantly amazed how many different reasons for letting Libby twist in the breeze come from the Right of the polical spectrum.
History? You want Libby to continue spending millions of dollars in defense of this nonsense, in a vain hope ‘History’ will note the result?
Sorry, the guy has been tarred and feathered on a trumped up charge. This nonsensical hope ‘history’ vindicates the man is just peachy...as long as you aren’t Scooter Libby.
Sheesh. Pardon the man Today.
And Republicans should learn from this, what exactly?
Simple; The media will NEVER, EVER, BE SYMPATHETIC...because you are REPUBLICANS.
Libby’s in this mess because he thought he could talk to reporters ‘off the record’ as if they were ‘objective’ if not ‘friends’.
Thats where Libby SCREWED UP. Not in a bizzaro world ‘semantical game’ played by FitzNifong and company.
Never trust the media if you are Republican, or ‘conservative’.
Never.
I’m sorry for sounding so uninformed, but who is Whitaker Chambers.
Plame/Hiss/Wilson/Chambers/......all the components are here for another 60 years of garbage.........
Excellent point. I still dont believe she was covert as defined under the law. No one has explained how the CIA can credibly claim that it was taking affirmative measures to conceal Natasha’s relationship with the agency when Novak had no problem confirming her employment there with the staff people.
He says there was no effort after someone confirmed it to convince him to keep it quiet.
Unfortunately, this administration doesn’t seem to have the slightest interest in fixing the CIA, the FBI, or the Justice Department, or in calling attention to who is really guilty of traitorous leaks.
Yes, it would be wonderful if the President or the Republicans in congress jumped on this business and fixed it. Justice! But they won’t. The only congressman who tried was thrown out in the last election by corrupt agents in the FBI, presumably following orders from someone.
Justice in this country is horrible. See if you can spot a pattern:
- Scooter Libby (R) has a memory lapse over a non-issue and goes to jail for 30 months.
- Sandy Berger (D) admits to stealing highly classified material and doesn’t spend a minute in jail.
- William Jefferson (D) has $90,000 in illegal cash stored in his fridge and he is in Congress voting on legislation.
- Terry Shiavo is starved to death by court order. Her adulterous mudering spouse (D) is now free to collect on her death.
- The lives of Duke lacrosse players are torn apart for several years so that prosecutor Nifong (D) can get himself elected.
- Tom DeLay (R) is ousted from Congress for breaking a rule that hadn’t been invented yet.
- Alberto Gonzales (R) is on trial for firing the people that he is allowed to fire.
Bingo. The CIA outed her to a reporter over the phone. If the CIA outs you to someone calling in who would just like to know if you work there, trust me, you aren't covert.
My theory is that the yellowcake forgeries were a collaborative effort by the French and CIA coordinated by Wilson. Jacqueline, (Wilson’s second wife), was a French diplomat and may have provided the connections for Wilson to see the forged documents that were supplied by the French through the Italians. It has been reported that she was a "cultural counselor" for the French Embassy, which some say is code for she was doing undercover work.In other words it is possible that Wilson knew that the docs were forged because he was privy to the information that French wanted to discredit the British info on Saddam shopping for yellowcake and that Wilson's objective was the same. The French just happen to manage the yellowcake production in Niger.
Therefore, Wilson did not lie when he said he saw the documents.
Per a thread by Fedora:
French intelligence soon began a campaign to discredit the US case for war against Iraq. In 1999, French intelligence had begun investigating the security of uranium supplies in Niger, where uranium production was controlled by a consortium led by the French mining company COGEMA, a division of the French state-owned nuclear energy firm AREVA. At that time, Italian businessman Rocco Martino provided French intelligence with genuine documents revealing that Iraq was planning to expand trade with Niger. French intelligence took an interest in the documents and asked Martino to provide more information. In 2000 he used a contact in the Niger embassy in Rome to provide French intelligence with documents purporting that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger. These documents were later exposed as forgeries;< snip >
Since it is now also known that French intelligence was trying to push Martino’s forgeries on US and British intelligence, as simultaneously the Democratic National Committee was planning to discredit President Bush’s Iraq policy by accusing his administration of manufacturing evidence against Hussein’s regime, heightened suspicion is cast on Wilson’s use of the Niger investigation to discredit the Bush administration’s case for war.
Also, Rocco Martino only "procured" the documents, he did not forge them. Fitzgerald went to Italy to investigate the Niger Embassy (in Rome) burglary...where the letterhead and seals for the forgeries were stolen. Ex-CIA agent (and coincidentally, an advisor to the Vatican in Rome),Vincent Cannistraro has stated that Alan Wolf and Duane Clarridge were the actual forgers, but his account is the only one available that I can find on the subject. He has also pointed the finger at Michael Ledeen, but Ledeen has publicly made a statement that he had nothing to do with it and demanded an apology from Cannistraro.
In addition, despite what the MSM is reporting, the Italians released a press report yesterday saying they had nothing to do with the forgeries:
Italy denies role in fake documents on Iraq
This was also backed up by Rocco here
Cannistraro's "theory" falls apart when you consider that he:
1) blamed SISME (the Italians), which has proven to be wrong
2) bases his assumptions on a Dec 2001 Ledeen meeting, when Cannistraro himself was in Rome in Nov 2001, which would make him just as suspect.
I also discovered that Cannistraro worked directly with Clarridge during Iran Contra, so he has alot of nerve bringing that up in connection to Ledeen. Another interesting tidbit (#47) that I discovered is that Wolf and Clarridge worked with Aldrich Ames, who outed Plame to the Russians in the 90's. Coincidence? I think not. Cannistraro trying to kill two birds with one stone to cover his own carcass seems to be the more likely answer. Equally suspicious is the Hersch article, where Cannistraro and another unnamed agent state the exact route the documents took and Cannistraro actually admits that he called the CIA about the documents before they were proven to be false. This begs the question...just how did Cannistraro know about the documents before they were vetted? Sounds a whole lot like Wilson's slip-up about seeing the documents.
Hersch also claims in the above linked article:
Another explanation was provided by a former senior C.I.A. officer. He had begun talking to me about the Niger papers in March, when I first wrote about the forgery, and said, “Somebody deliberately let something false get in there.” He became more forthcoming in subsequent months, eventually saying that a small group of disgruntled retired C.I.A. clandestine operators had banded together in the late summer of last year and drafted the fraudulent documents themselves.A more reliable source, Joe diGenova claims it was a possible CIA coup as well. As does James Lewis in two articles, here and here
Two other names just crept into this...Niger Ambassador Adamou Chekou, who was in charge at the Embassy when the break-in and forgeries occurred and Wissam al-Zahawiah, Iraqi Ambassador to the Holy See. Seems Italian Intelligence was eavesdropping on these two and discovered their "hotline".
Did you read that carefully. Holy See? As in Vatican? Where Vincent Cannistraro is the security advisor?
And speaking of al Zahawie, he was also apparently clairvoyant:
JANUARY 2003 : (AL ZAHAWIE, "RETIRED IN JORDAN" - IS RECALLED BACK TO BAGHDAD, IRAQ; HE IS TAKEN TO MEET UN WEAPONS INSPECTORS) But last January, al-Zahawie was summoned back to Baghdad for what he had expected would be a request to help Iraq's Foreign Service plan for deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz's planned visit to the Vatican. Instead, upon landing in Baghdad, al-Zahawie was taken to meet with UN weapons inspectors. Five inspectors interviewed him in a 90-minute session, he says.Also take into consideration:"They asked why I went [to Niger], why I was chosen, when I left Rome and whether there were any other Iraqi diplomats at the Vatican," he says. "But then they asked who had the seal of the embassy and where I had left it." That's when al-Zahawie got wind of some kind of foul play. Italy had handed over cables from al-Zahawie to the Niger government announcing the trip, and other documents had pointed to his presence in Niger. But the inspectors were particularly interested in a July 6, 2000, document bearing al-Zahawie's signature, concerning a proposed uranium transaction. The inspectors refused to show him the letter, he says, but al-Zahawie was sure he had never written it. "If they had such a letter, it had to have been a forgery," he says. The tell-tale signs of the forgery were quite obvious, he stresses. [* My note: How would he know the 'tell-tale sign' if they refused to show the letters to him? Shades of Joe Wilson's foreknowledge of the docs?]
Wilson (as Ambassador to Gabon) had/has connections to the Gabon Chief of State, Omar Bongo, who was the chief African ally of the French oil company TotalFinaElf, a major beneficiary of the Oil-for-Food bribes. Prior to the Iraq War, they had a contract with Saddam's regime worth an estimated 12.5 to 27.0 billion barrels of oil reserves. Also he had connections via the Middle East Institute and Rock Creek, both of which are Saudi controlled.
Wilson's wife Jacqueline was also apparently a lobbyist for Bongo and it seems Wilson was pretty chummy with Saddam's weapons buyer, having dinner with him on the eve that Kuwait was invaded in 1990. She is now an advisor to Bongo, her picture from a 2005 conference can be found here That makes it very clear that there are connections to oil-for-food. No wonder Wilson can afford his lifestyle.
A couple of other related stories:
Nigergate: the dangerous relations between Democrat Senators and ex spies
NIGERGATE:Connections between the UN Oil-for-food Inquiry, the Rockefeller Group and the French
As for murder:
FEBRUARY 1999 : (NIGER : IRAQ'S FORMER AMBASSADOR TO THE VATICAN AL-ZAHAWIE VISITS NIAMEY, NIGER'S CAPITOL, WHILE ON A TOUR OF WEST AFRICAN NATIONS, TO INVITE PRESIDENT MAINASSARA TO BAGHDAD) a February 1999 visit to Niamey, Niger's capital, by Wissam al-Zahawie, Iraq's former ambassador to the Vatican. [He later claimed that his] trip had nothing to do with uranium. He was touring four West African nations, he said, and came here to invite Niger's then-President Ibrahim Bare Mainassara to Baghdad. Mainassara was assassinated two months later, and al-Zahawie could not be reached for comment about their talks. - "A look at the U.S.-British claims that Iraq tried to acquire uranium in Africa," AP, SEPT 21, 2003And you want to see the real “kicker”? Check this comment out:
Finally, Mr. Kristof closes with a value-added Premium Truth Select wrinkle - apparently, he has decided to provide a very subtle (unannounced, we might say) correction to his Oct 11, 2003 column. We dare not predict what tomorrow will bring, but this is from the current version of his entry, as he deplores the attacks on Joe Wilson, private citizen:And the fact is that his wife's career at CIA has been destroyed; she's never going to be Rome Station Chief.Fascinating.
Yes, that is indeed fascinating and brings to light the relationship between Kristof and the Wilsons. How would Kristof know such a juicy detail about Valerie's future ambitions? Easy...Joe told him. You see, Kristof was the original person who wrote about Joe Wilson's trip {admittedly} as related to him by none other than Wilson himself. It was the trigger that set in motion a series of events that has brought this matter to where it is today. Some think that with the end of Fitzgerald's investigation, this whole matter is over. But is it really?
Yep, Plame Wilson should be investigated along with that dweeb of a husband.
I want to know what happened at the CIA. If Libby faces immediate jail W should at least commute his sentence.
Valerie Plame was outed years before by Alger Hiss. Once your cover is blown, it stays blown. The bad guys network too.
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