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Remember Joe Wilson? He's the diplomat who went to Niger to investigate Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium, a raw material used in building nuclear bombs, from Africa. He wrote in a July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed that he had spent the previous February in Niger, "drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people ... associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." A story that has to be the most underplayed...

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman warned Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Tuesday to turn over a copy of a FBI interview with Vice President Dick Cheney or face contempt charges. The document in question is an interview Cheney gave to the FBI in the investigation of the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, a covert CIA agent. “The arguments you have raised for withholding the interview report are not tenable,” Waxman wrote in a letter to Mukasey. “When the FBI interview with the Vice President was conducted, the Vice President knew that the information...

Ex-Bush aide critical of CIA 'leak' Scott McClellan, the former White House spokesman, has again criticised Bush administration officials for their role in covering up a leak that revealed a CIA operative's identity. McClellan told a congressional commitee on Friday he had reservations about publicly clearing Lewis "Scooter" Libby, an aide to Dick Cheney, over the leak, a claim that proved to be untrue. "I was reluctant to do it,'' McClellan told the Democratic party-led House Judiciary Committee. "I got on the phone with Scooter Libby and asked him point-blank, 'Were you involved in this in any way?' And he...

Scott McClellan appeared before the House Judiciary committee yesterday. When asked about Joseph Wilson and the defamation of Wilson’s character by Sheila Jackson- Lee McClellan seemed to sympathize with the harm that had been done by the evil forces in the White House during and before his tenure as Press Secretary. Jackson-Lee asked McClellan specifically about the Uranium in Niger that Wilson reported on. Later in his testimony Scott was confronted by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) with some disturbing facts via a declassified CIA report. McClellan visually surprised with these facts began to backtrack. (Video Included)

Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), one of the most vocal opponents of the Bush administration on Capitol Hill, said Scott McClellan's book and testimony justify the beginning of impeachment hearings against Vice President Dick Cheney. During questioning of McClellan, Wexler asked the former White House press secretary if he believed Bush authorized the leaking of Valerie Plame Wilson's name. When McClellan said no, Wexler said this meant that Cheney must have been the source of the leak, meaning Cheney was seeking to retaliate against the wife of an administration critic. In Wexler's view, this would be enough to support the initation...

Scott McClellan testifies this morning before the House Judiciary Committee beginning at 9:30 (eastern). It will be covered live on C-Span and the three cable networks.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour. Exodus 20:16May God Bless Tim Russert's family for the orderal they are suffering after Tim's untimely death. Though he was on the Left with the rest of the NBC news department, he would be considered a saint when compared to Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthhews. I have been wondering for some time if Tim Russert's vague testimony about a conversation he may have had with Scooter Libby had been the lynchpin that effectively lynched Libby. It was. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald had cavity-searched everything that walked in order to "get something" on...

Scott McClellan, the former Press Secretary to President Bush (now a puppet for the Left) has written a book named, "What Happened," (probably ghost-written by the tripartite efforts of Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean and Harry Reid) which suggests that: The president used propaganda at worst, or bogus intelligence at best, as a basis for the invasion of Iraq; that Scooter Libby, Vice president Cheney or Karl Rove leaked the name of the CIA operative, Valerie Plame, and if the president didn't authorize it, he, at least, had knowledge of it. Here is what really happened: • In February, 2002, Joseph...

Former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told the FBI that it was "possible" that Vice President Cheney instructed him to disseminate information about CIA agent Valerie Plame to the press, according to a redacted FBI report recently examined by Congressional investigators. In part as a result of that revelation, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today reiterated its request for more Plame investigation documents -- including reports on the interviews investigators conducted with Cheney and President Bush. In a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Committee Chairman Henry Waxman also writes that "[n]ew revelations by...

And having read the book, I have to hand it to McClellan. In a genre as routinely and justly derided as the Washington memoir, it takes a special talent to produce a specimen that even by those standards is this flaming-dirigible bad. It’s usually the sign of a weak reviewer that he feels the need to extrapolate some sort of psychoanalysis from the text, but in McClellan case it’s unavoidable. In fact, once I began reading McClellan’s book, I had to seek outside counsel to confirm my suspicions about his precarious mental state. Political consultant Mary Matalin — no stranger...

<p>A partisan Democratic mantra began earlier in the book. McClellan writes George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign "acquiesced to certain advisers, including Roger Ailes and the late Lee Atwater," who opposed Bush's "civility and decency." (McClellan, then 20 years old, played no part in that campaign.) McClellan contends that thanks to Rove in 2002, "the first cracks appeared in the facade of bipartisan comity."</p>

WASHINGTON - President Bush broke his promise to the country by refusing to fire aide Karl Rove for leaking a CIA agent's identity, said Scott McClellan, the president's chief spokesman for almost three years. "I think the president should have stood by his word and that meant Karl should have left," McClellan said Sunday in a broadcast interview about his new tell-all book, a scathing rebuke of the White House under Bush's leadership. McClellan now acknowledges he felt burned by Rove, Bush's top political adviser, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff. He said...

WASHINGTON - Former CIA operative Valerie Plame is trying to resurrect a lawsuit against those in the Bush administration she says illegally disclosed her identity. A federal judge dismissed Plame's lawsuit last year, saying there was no basis to bring a case. Plame's lawyers asked a federal appeals court Friday to send the case back before the judge and force him to consider its merits. Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, sued Vice President Dick Cheney; his former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; former White House political adviser Karl Rove and former Deputy Secretary of State...

The Prime Minister of Niger reported to the U.S. State Department in early 2002 that Iraq tried to buy uranium "yellow cake" (ore) -- a June 2003 Memo reveals. A declassified court exhibit introduced in the 2007 trial of Scooter Libbey proved that Saddam Hussein tried to get uranium ore from Niger -- covertly and under the table. This is clear evidence that Saddam Hussein was actively developing nuclear weapons. Iraq already had stockpiles of uranium "yellow cake" that it was not using -- but that uranium was being watched by UN inspectors. Iraq could have no reason for wanting...

During an appearance in Philadelphia last month, Hillary Clinton introduced a controversial couple as part of her presidential campaign. She defended them as victims of smear attacks. "Valerie and Joe have had their patriotism questioned," she insisted. "They have been maligned as un-American because they believed that President Bush was waging a preemptive war that was not in America's interests and now because we believe our troops should not police Iraq's civil war." Of course this wasn't true. Both Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson were accused of being untruthful (and shameless self-promoters), not unpatriotic. Plame was a CIA official who...

Everyone else in the media is pounding Hillary Clinton for her tale, now shown to be fanciful, of dodging bullets on a Bosnian tarmac as first lady. But if you're looking for the best recent example of the lengths Mrs. Clinton will go to win the Democratic Presidential nod, consider that last week in Philadelphia she used Joe and Valerie Wilson as campaign props. Was George Galloway not available? Mr. Wilson and his wife are darlings of the antiwar crowd for their roles as self-styled martyrs in the CIA "leak" fiasco. The former ambassador is still cashing in on his...

Former Cheney Aide Libby Disbarred Bush Commuted Libby's Prison Sentence Last Year POSTED: 10:41 am EDT March 20, 2008 UPDATED: 10:55 am EDT March 20, 2008 A Washington, D.C., radio station reports that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has been disbarred. A three-judge panel on the D.C. Court of Appeals stripped Libby of his ability to practice law after he was found guilty last year of obstructing the investigation in the CIA leak investigation, WTOP radio reported.

Valerie Plame Wilson says she's been through hell, and is still recovering from being outed as a spy. But she will recover -- of that she's certain. By Kim Ode, Star Tribune (kimode@startribune.com) Mata Hari, James Bond, Boris and Natasha -- the popular image of spies always seems to embrace glamour, lots of "dah-links" and sex. So to blond and vivacious Valerie Plame Wilson, who for an awful period was, of all things, the world's most famous spy.

    Shadow Warriors   By David ForsmarkFrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, February 04, 2008 Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of SurrenderBy Kenneth TimmermanCrown Forum, $25.95, 404 pp. At long last, the CIA and the State Department have targeted a government they have identified as an aggressive threat to world peace and largely countered its foreign policy through psy-ops, propaganda, selective leaks of intelligence and covert operations.And who was the target of this covert campaign? Are these operations aimed at the Islamofascists in Iran? How about Vladimir Putin and his increasingly fascist government in Russia?...

(Note: I could not find ANYTHING on the web about this issue of 'The Penn Stater', so following is a quick review and, hopefully, a few points of interest.) Penn State alumnus Valerie Plame ('85 Com) graces the cover of the latest (January/February 2008) 'The Penn Stater' magazine, which is the magazine sent out every two months to paid-up or Lifetime Members of the Penn State Alumni Association. I am a Lifetime Member, and so there it was in my mailbox on Saturday. The cover photo is a nice portrait of Plame by Jennifer S. Altman (Contour by Getty Images)...

When former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson got the redacted manuscript of her draft memoir back from the CIA Publications Review Board (PRB) earlier this year, her book publisher realized it had a problem. "We were looking at a manuscript where 20 percent of the author's story was deemed classified by her former employer [even though] much of the information was probably in the public domain," explains an editor at the publishing house, Simon & Schuster. "So the challenge was, if Valerie can't tell her own story because she is bound by her agreement, then how is this story going...

“BLOWBACK” is an intelligence term for adverse, unintended consequences of secret operations. The CIA first used it in a report on the 1953 operation that overthrew the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. Some in the intelligence community have been working with liberal journalists and Democrats on Capitol Hill to embarrass President Bush and to stymie his foreign policy initiatives. The most successful of these covert operations was the Valerie Plame affair, in which White House officials were falsely blamed for “outing” a CIA undercover officer who was not in fact undercover. (It was then Deputy Secretary of State Richard...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- President Bush granted pardons Tuesday to carjackers, drug dealers, a moonshiner and an election-laws violator but not to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, his vice president's former top aide who was convicted in the case of the leaked identity of a CIA operative. In all, Bush pardoned 29 convicts and reduced the prison sentence of one more in the end-of-the-year presidential tradition. Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin said Bush has granted 142 pardons and commuted five sentences since taking office in 2001 — lagging far behind the pace set by most modern presidents. The list was issued with...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is dropping his appeal in the CIA leak case, his attorney said Monday. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of perjury and obstruction for lying about his conversations with reporters about outed CIA operative Valerie Plame. "We remain firmly convinced of Mr. Libby's innocence," attorney Theodore Wells said. "However, the realities were, that after five years of government service by Mr. Libby and several years of defending against this case, the burden on Mr. Libby and his young family of continuing to...

Removing any doubt about how she sees the world from the left, Valerie Plame Wilson, in an interview Thursday which aired Saturday night on a Washington, DC area cable channel, admired the work of the far-left Media Matters as she revealed she seeks out the group's postings for their “accuracy” and presentation of “the facts.” Carol Joynt (her blog), a former CBS News producer who as the owner of the Nathans of Georgetown restaurant every week interviews a newsmaker in front of a lunch crowd in what becomes the hour-long Q&A Cafe on NewsChannel 8, asked whether she reads “news...

Valerie Plame is used to being exposed. She was famously exposed as a CIA agent by columnist Bob Novak and she’s no stranger to media exposure, what with appearances in Vanity Fair magazine, on “The Daily Show,” “Meet the Press” and “Real Time with Bill Maher,” just to name a few. But there’s one place Plame won’t get exposed: Playboy magazine. We found this out Wednesday when Plame stopped by Nathans of Georgetown Thursday to take part in the Q&A Cafe interview series. Host Carol Joynt couldn’t get over the fact that Plame was, well, pretty hot and, since a...

NBC News White House correspondent David Gregory, accused of being a partisan, made a false statement about the "Scooter" Libby case. In reporting former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s charge that the Bush administration fed false information, Gregory claimed Libby "went to jail for obstructing the leak investigation." Although Libby was sentenced to 30 months of prison, Libby never actually went to jail as Gregory claims. President Bush commuted Libby’s sentence, eliminating the prison term yet still upholding a hefty fine and probation. "Today," however, did not spend a lot of time on the McClellan charge, just a brief...

If Alan Colmes turns up at your Thanksgiving get-together sporting a couple shiners and a re-arranged smile, don't press the poor guy if he claims to have walked into a door. The FNC host just got clobbered by a certified DC heavyweight -- Bob Novak. Novak was a guest on this evening's Hannity & Colmes. Colmes first questioned the venerable reporter about the item he published this week regarding the Clinton campaign's claim to have a scandalous story about Barack Obama. For the record, Novak stated this evening that since first reporting the story, "I've had substantiation from another source,...

Spokesman 'did not intend to suggest' the president purposely misled him WASHINGTON - Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan does not believe President Bush lied to him about the role of White House aides I. Lewis Scooter Libby or Karl Rove in the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, according to McClellan's publisher. Peter Osnos, the founder and editor-in-chief of Public Affairs Books, which is publishing McClellan's book in April, tells NBC from his Connecticut home that McCLellan, "Did not intend to suggest Bush lied to him." Osnos says when McClellan went before the White House press corps in...

The publicist for a book written by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan released an excerpt on Monday that set all of the Old Media tongues to wagging again about the Valerie Plame Affair: "The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan says top administration officials -- including President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney -- were involved in his "unknowingly" passing along false information about the leak of a CIA operative's identity. In October 2003, as controversy grew about the leak of Valerie Plame's name, McClellan stood at the White House podium and told reporters that Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, had not been involved. "There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes in his new book, "What Happened,"...

KING: Scott, were you lied to? MCCLELLAN: Well, Larry, I said what I believed to be true at the time. It was also what the president believed to be true at the time based on assurances that we were both given.

WASHINGTON - Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan blames President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for efforts to mislead the public about the role of White House aides in leaking the identity of a CIA operative. In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, McClellan recount the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were "not involved" in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame.

WASHINGTON — Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan is lashing out at the Bush administration's handling of the CIA leak case in his new book over what he said was intentional misinformation given to him by the administration and claiming the president was "involved" in the media run-around. The Politico reported Tuesday on its Web site that the publisher of "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and What's Wrong With Washington" released a three-paragraph excerpt of the book highlighting the contentious period. [snip] "I stood at the White House briefing room podium in front of the glare of...

Who by now doesn’t know the tangled, twisted story of Valerie Plame? In case you just came in from the cold, the former CIA agent’s cover was blown after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, wrote a blistering New York Times opinion piece charging the Bush administration with manipulating WMD intelligence to justify the Iraq war. Then came Scooter and Judith and Karl; the clarion calls for frog-marching; the double secret background e-mails; the turning of aspens and the rest. This month, the sexy ex-spy’s memoir, “Fair Game,” landed on bestseller lists. Earlier this year it was optioned for a...

WASHINGTON - Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said Sunday he was foolish to have revealed Valerie Plame's CIA identity. Armitage's acknowledgment came in response to comments by Plame, who said the former Bush administration official had no right to talk to a reporter about where she worked. A year ago, Armitage publicly apologized to Plame and her husband. The former No. 2 State Department official remains the only principal in the leak to have done so. At least three one-time administration officials in addition to Armitage discussed Plame's CIA status with reporters. They are former White House political...

Q. Is it possible to get through an extended interview of Valerie Plame Wilson without mentioning Richard Armitage? A. Yes, if Joe Scarborough is the interviewer. The "Morning Joe" host conducted a 15-minute conversation with and about Plame today, much of which focused on her "outing" as a CIA operative. But the name of the State Department official who first disclosed her identity was never uttered. That wouldn't have fit the template that the disclosure was a nasty White House plot to punish Plame's husband Joe Wilson. Armitage, at State, was anything but a partisan GOP operative with an anti-Wilson...

SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. --Outed spy Valerie Plame says she isn't going away, no matter what the folks at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue want.

If Valerie Plame's memoir was intended to lay to rest the conflicting accounts of how she came to be outed as a covert CIA agent, it fails. Instead, she paints herself as a naïve, whinging victim of circumstance married to an angry, obstreperous egotist who volunteered to involve himself in a vicious battle between the White House and the CIA over how President Bush came to make untrue statements in a State of the Union speech. Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House (Simon and Schuster, $26) shows how mistaken her husband's judgment was....

Media: In the proud tradition of Dan Rather's bogus National Guard story about President Bush, Katie Couric gives Valerie Plame another opportunity to lie to the American people. Will her book make the New York Times fiction list? Plame, the photogenic answer to Maxwell Smart, kicked off her tour to promote her new book, "Fair Game," with a "60 Minutes" interview with Katie Couric that couldn't have been more scripted if Plame herself had written the softball questions. The segment amounted to an infomercial for the media's portrayal of Plame and her prevaricating spouse as helpless victims of a White...

To flip through the first third of Valerie Plame Wilson's "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House" is to confront an optical maze of gray stripes interrupting juicy anecdotes and methodical musings. CIA censors blacked out 10 percent of the text in her memoir, leaving its narrative disjointed and sometimes hard to follow. "I believe the vast majority of what is blacked out in the book has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with diminishing me and Joe," she said. Agency censors also wouldn't allow Plame Wilson to acknowledge working...

Valerie Plame Wilson chides President Bush for not firing anyone for the leaking of her covert CIA identity, which caused a national scandal and an investigation resulting in a perjury and obstruction of justice conviction against Vice President Richard Cheney's chief of staff. She also tells Katie Couric that she has learned of the damage that the leaking of her identity caused agents of the clandestine service and it is serious. Wilson speaks to Couric in her first interview for a 60 Minutes report to be broadcast Sunday, Oct. 21, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. . . . Plame says the...

Columnist Robert Novak said Saturday Ambassador Joe Wilson did not forcefully object to the naming of his CIA operative wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, when Novak spoke to him prior to the publication of a column that sparked a federal investigation and sent White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby to jail. “He was not terribly exercised about it,” Novak said. Instead, Wilson focused on not being portrayed as simply an opponent of the Iraq war. Wilson also stressed that his wife went by his last name, Wilson, rather than Plame, Novak said. Novak forcefully defended his handling of the column...

Columnist Robert Novak said Saturday Ambassador Joe Wilson did not forcefully object to the naming of his CIA operative wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, when Novak spoke to him prior to the publication of a column that sparked a federal investigation and sent White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby to jail. “He was not terribly exercised about it,” Novak said. Instead, Wilson focused on not being portrayed as simply an opponent of the Iraq war. Wilson also stressed that his wife went by his last name, Wilson, rather than Plame, Novak said. Novak forcefully defended his handling of the column...

Lindsay Moran read "Harriet the Spy" as a girl and dreamed of growing up to join the CIA. After graduating from Harvard, she did just that. In her new book, "Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy," Moran shows readers the real world of espionage is quite different from the Hollywood version. CNN national security correspondent David Ensor spoke with Moran about her career as a spy. ENSOR: What made you decide to apply to the CIA? MORAN: It had been a lifelong dream of mine. I grew up reading this series of books called "Harriet the Spy,"...

Is Plame to Blame? by: Bethany Stotts, August 16, 2007 The Valerie Plame Affair, which resulted in the conviction of White House aide Louis “Scooter” Libby, serves as rallying point for many opponents of the Bush Administration. However, some conservatives remain skeptical of Plame’s alleged victim status. While her job description was listed on the CIA rolls as an agent with “no official cover” (NOC), Plame had in reality had been performing administrative duties at Langley for at least five years. She remains willing to pose for the cameras as a starlet ex-agent, and continues participating in high-level lawsuits. Rowan...

Sean Hannity shows you the secret CIA documents that reveal the truth about Joe and Valerie Wilso. Sunday, August 12 at 9 p.m. ET

Rod Lurie will next direct his script "Nothing but the Truth," a drama about a D.C.-based female newspaper reporter who outs a CIA agent and is imprisoned for refusing to reveal her source. Cast is mobilizing for an October production start. Talks are under way for Kate Beckinsale to play the journalist, Matt Dillon the prosecutor, Vera Farmiga the CIA agent, Edie Falco (in her first role since "The Sopranos") the editor of the newspaper that published the story and Alan Alda the attorney who tries to free the reporter from jail. Marc Frydman will produce and the Yari Film...

A federal judge Thursday dismissed a lawsuit by former CIA operative Valerie Plame and her husband seeking damages against officials she accused of conspiring to disclose her identity. The defendants included Vice President Dick Cheney, former Cheney aide I. Lewis “Scooter� Libby, and two others. Plame and her husband, former diplomat Joe Wilson, had alleged that Cheney, Libby, White House political adviser Karl Rove and former State Department official Richard Armitage had violated their constitutional rights in the events that led to Plame being identified in news reports in summer 2003.