Posted on 10/21/2005 12:56:43 AM PDT by STARWISE
If special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald delivers indictments of a few functionaries of the vice president’s office or the White House, we are likely to have on our hands a constitutional crisis. The evidence of widespread wrongdoing and conspiracy is before every American with a cheap laptop and a cable television subscription. And we do not have the same powers of subpoena granted to Fitzgerald.
We know, however, based upon what we have read and seen and heard that someone created fake documents related to Niger and Iraq and used them as a false pretense to launch America into an invasion of Iraq. And when a former diplomat made an honest effort to find out the facts, a plan was hatched to both discredit and punish him by revealing the identity of his undercover CIA agent wife.
Patrick Fitzgerald has before him the most important criminal case in American history. Watergate, by comparison, was a random burglary in an age of innocence.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
It seems unlikely, then, that he would simply go after the leakers and the people who sought to cover up the leak when it was merely a secondary consequence of the much greater crime of forging evidence to foment war.
Fitzgerald did not earn his reputation as an Irish alligator by going after the little guy.
Presumably, he is trying to find evidence that Karl Rove launched a covert operation to create the forged documents and then conspired to out Valerie Plame when he learned the fraud was being uncovered by Plame’s husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
As much as this sounds like the plot of a John le Carre novel, it also comports with the profile of the Karl Rove I have known, watched, traveled with and written about for the past 25 years.
(snip)
Fortunately, there are good signs. Fitzgerald has reportedly asked for a copy of the Italian government’s investigation into the break-in of the Niger embassy in Rome and the source of the forged documents. The blatantly fake papers, which purported to show that Saddam Hussein had cut a deal to get yellowcake uranium from Niger, turned up after a December 2001 meeting in Rome involving neo-con Michael Ledeen, Larry Walker, Harold Rhodes, and Niccolo Pollari, the head of Italy’s intelligence agency SISMI, and Antonio Martino, the Italian defense minister.
Is Fitzgerald is examining the possibility that Ledeen was executing a plan to help his friend Karl Rove build a case for invading Iraq? Ledeen has long ties to Italian intelligence agency operatives and has spanned the globe to bring the world the constant variety of what he calls “creative destruction” to build democracies. He makes the other neo-cons appear passive. He brought the Reagan administration together with the Iranian arms dealer who dragged the country through Iran-Contra and shares with his close friend Karl Rove a personal obsession with Machiavelli. Ledeen, who is almost rabidly anti-Arab, famously told the Washington Post that Karl Rove told him, “Any time you have a good idea, tell me.”
The federal grand jury has to at least consider whether Ledeen called Rove with an idea to use his contacts with the Italian CIA to hatch a plan to create the rationale for war. Ledeen told radio interviewer Ian Masters and his producer Louis Vandenberg, “I have absolutely no connection to the Niger documents, have never even seen them. I did not work on them, never handled them, know virtually nothing about them, don't think I ever wrote or said anything about the subject.”
It is strictly coincidence then that some months after he and his neo-con consorts and Italian intelligence officers met in Rome that the Niger embassy was illegally entered and nothing was stolen other than letterhead and seals. And equally coincident that forged papers under those letterheads were slipped to Elisabetta Burba, a writer for an Italian glossy owned by Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, and a backer of the Bush invasion scheme. Unfortunately for the pro-war neo-cons, even an Italian tabloid would not publish the fake documents and turned them over to the CIA and US government in Rome.
The other American attendees at Ledeen’s Roman Holiday are also worthy of scrutiny. Larry Franklin was recently arrested for leaking classified US government information to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Ledeen sprang quickly to his defense but Walker faces prosecution next year and is most probably cooperating with prosecutor Fitzgerald. Harold Rhode, the other American actor in this tragicomic affair, worked the Office of Special Plans (OSP) at the CIA for Vice President Dick Cheney. Characterized as a “counter-intelligence shop,” OSP simply interpreted intelligence in a manner that fit the need for evidence that Iraq had WMD. If the CIA gathered data that said otherwise, OSP analyzed it differently or ignored the facts and then reported to the vice president precisely what he wanted to hear.
Rhode also was the liaison between Ahmed Chalabi, the convicted embezzler the Bush administration was using to feed information to them and Judy Miller about the distortions and lies required to fuel the rush to war.
I have seen the spawn of Rove’s tortured mind and watched a hundred of his political scams unfold and I am confident I know how this one played out. Rove might have brought it up with his fellow big brains in the White House Iraq Group, a propaganda organization set up to disseminate information supporting the war. There was likely a consensus to move the plan to smack down Wilson out of the White House. Rove always keeps a layer of operatives between himself and the person he gets to pull the trigger.
Libby was probably told to manage it out of the VP’s office to protect the president because Karl always takes care of his most prized assets. Libby then likely ordered John Hannah and possibly David Wurmser to call the ever-friendly Judy Miller at the New York Times and columnist Robert Novak to give them Valerie Plame’s identity. Rove knew that Miller would call Libby of Aspen for confirmation and his old friend Novak was certain to call Rove who, as an unidentified senior White House official, would confirm the identity on background only. Because Novak is a partisan gunslinger, he wrote more quickly than Miller and when she saw the firestorm his story created, she backed off and has since been trying to cover for herself and Libby.
Miller’s later claim that she cannot remember who gave her the “Valerie Flame” name is as much dissembling as Rove’s unconvincing argument that he “forgot” he met with Time reporter Matt Cooper. Karl Rove can remember precinct results from 19th century presidential elections. He neither forgets nor forgives.
=================================
I wonder if KR knows he has spawned.
And, of course, it's MUCH worse and bigger than WATERGATE.
More piling on PING!
What a way to lead into an article- the war resolution preceeded the documents, making it a wee bit difficult for said documents to be a false pretense to war.
Amazing isn't it?? This is providing the hateful crowd so much fodder for creative fabrication... they're about breaking legs to outdo each other.
I think I some of the electric impreachment Bush kool-aid has been marketed.
What if he delivers no indictments at all?
Or, delivers an indictment of Robert Baer or Greg Thielman...
Or, nails someone on Rockefeller's staff...
Or if the NY Times gets its nose rubbed its proverbial pooh yet again?
Now what criminal statute would that fall under?
Just the opposite. I think the Wilsons should be charged for filing false reports and making false statements during wartime, providing aid and comfort to the enemy. They are the real criminals here.
I have noticed this trend among liberals spout facts any factoid about us and never mind the context or timeline.
Absolutely ... these slimey, opportunistic, unpatriotic operatives have got to have the layers of their deceit and possibly treason peeled away for the world to see. They appear to be the conspirators .. from the getgo.
These jokers are amazing ... they have such a high opinion of Wilson's writing skills that they sincerely believe that an administration in war- with a smorgasbord of greater issues on its plate- dropped everything they were doing to engage in snuffing out the background noise of a tea-swilling peon losing-team political activist who had, whether or not he ever acknowledges it, actually uncovered some thin but interesting evidence that Iraq really had sought to purchase something other than cowpeas from an African country with little more than a big French uranium mine to its name.
"Watergate, by comparison, was a random burglary in an age of innocence."
Now the 60's were the age of innocence?? Is that was Hillary was doing as Watergate co-counsel .. practicing innocent and casual impeachment hearings?
I expect Pelosi next to start doing comparative wordplay with Delay as well .. Bubba's problems were personal ..they didn't affect the country. Delay and his "cronies" were attempting to destabilize our election integrity .. jeesh .. they think they've got the golden ring and they're gonna hang on 'til they get knocked off for good.
I'm so ready for that.
" If the law cannot get to the truth of what has happened to the American people under the Bush administration, then we all may begin to hear the early death rattles of history’s greatest democracy."
We are a representative republic by the way.
25 years of intense study and he's still ignorant. As the Big Bumper would say, you can't fix stupid.
Watch out, Karl Rove is powering up another hurricane to target women and minorities. When he's done with that I'm sure he'll find the time to out your wife just because you wrote this article.
This guy has a serious grudge against Rove.
JAMES MOORE, AUTHOR OF BUSH'S BRAIN
"MOORE: They have a 24-hour machine that attacks. And it's constantly staffed and it intimidates and it distracts. It uses head fakes. They jump on John Kerry for saying that he is part Jewish. They jump on John Kerry and Howard Dean for debating each other too strongly. And any reporter who would deign to ask these kinds of questions of the Bush administration would get the White House in their face, saying: How dare you? And then they would be threatened with access.
They play this game of access. They know very well that once a reporter loses his or her access to the White House, their job is gone. And so the reporter is sort of intimidated into not asking these kinds of tough questions. This is a game that they perfected here in Texas. As a matter of fact, in 1994, when he was running for governor for the first time against Ann Richards, I was panelist in his broadcast debate. And I was the first person in his life to ask him the question, particularly in public –- how he got into the Texas Air National Guard when there a hundred thousand young men on waiting lists around the country that ranged from three to five years.
How did he get into the National Guard and avoid the draft? And he answered the question, not very well -– he didn't tell the truth. But after the debate, both Karl and Karen came up to me and jumped on me, and said: What kind of question was that? How dare you? Why would you ask such a question? That's so irrelevant. He served, you know. He was in the National Guard, et cetera, et cetera. And I said: Wait a minute -– I'm a few years younger than he was, and I know from my experience and my friends that we all tried to get into the Guard because it was a way to avoid combat. And we at least admitted it. And he's trying to pretend that no strings were pulled.
I said I have a sense of obligation to ask that question because I lost friends in Vietnam -- and I tried to avoid it myself. And I know the way the game was played. If you had family connections, you were safe. If you didn't, you weren't. And he's got ‘em.
The point is that they use rank intimidation to silence the media. And they certainly are not beyond going to management and asking questions. I had the office of former President Bush one time call a television station in Texas that I worked for, asking them why I had asked such a difficult question of the President during an appearance in San Antonio. Those are the games they play, and they work."
Wouldn't it have been easier for the all-powerful Rove to simply arrange for Joe Wilson to take a dirtnap in Ft. Marcy Park? Or simply send him on a mission to investigate rumored dull-knife factories and decapitation video stores in the Taliban-infested frontiers of Pakistan?
Especially since yellow cake in Niger was never cited as a reason for war in Iraq...if this guy would check his facts, removing Saddam from power was the stated agenda of the Bush administration prior to him being elected. Also....get ready....it was also the stated policy of the Clinton administration before that....Saddam put a hit out on Bush Senior (an overt act of war). He fired at our airforce on multiple occasions as well. Yellow cake deals in Africa had nothing to do with it.
Based on the best-selling book of the same title by journalists James C. Moore and Wayne Slater
EVERTHING YOU'VE EVER
WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT
KARL ROVE, BUT WERE
REALLY AFRAID TO ASK
It's all in
Bush's Brain
Who's Really Running The Country?
Just when you thought it's all been said about George W. Bush, along comes Bush's Brain, a strikingly honest and deeply informative documentary which chronicles the history of the most powerful political figure America had never heard of... until now. Currently, he is the center of the CIA leak scandal. Now everyone can't stop talking about Karl Rove.
Bush's Brain serves as a guided tour through the one of the most dramatic political partnerships in American history -- between George W. Bush and his Senior Advisor.
Bush's Brain explores the remarkable political journey of this ultimate insider and the extraordinary role he has played in Bush's rise to the top. Is he the puppeteer pulling the presidential strings? From his masterful political skills, to the secret machinations he carefully orchestrates, to his dramatic influence on foreign policy, his fingerprints are found throughout the political process. This is a man whose defining characteristic is dirty, scorched-earth partisanship at any cost.
James Moore, Emmy Award winning TV news correspondent in Texas. He is the author of "Bush's War for Re-Election" and the co-author of "Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush President."
******
Amy Goodman, News Director and Morning Show Host at Pacifica station WBAI in New York City
JAMES MOORE: Well, I think it’s terribly, terribly sad that what has happened to CBS has happened.
why CBS did not do an adequate job of vetting the document. When I was first provided a copy of the document, a number of references in it -- as a result of my long familiarity with Mr. Bush's released file -- a number of references in the document such as “O.E.T.R.,” rather than “O.E.R.” for Officer Effectiveness Report, and the abbreviation for “group”—“flight group” -- in this document was “grp.” rather than the Air Force standard of “gp.” There was a reference to “billet,” which is an army term. There were just a number of things that jumped right out, and I doubted the veracity of the documents. Now Bill Burkett, on the other hand, is someone I’ve been checking out for almost two years; and even the people who today are calling him a liar, when I first began checking him out had described him as a truth-telling, stand-up guy who when he opened his mouth he was always honest. He worked himself very hard, had impeccable credentials and work and ethical standards, and yet now he’s obviously misled CBS and is clearly guilty of lying in some regard.
I know that people --people have often said of me, and any number of other people who watched Karl Rove for years, that we give him credit for more than he deserves; but I, like any other political reporter who’s been around for twenty or thirty years, knows talent when they see it. I have watched Rove closely for over twenty years, almost twenty-five years. And he's the best there is. He's the best there ever has been at political skullduggery, and it is not beyond comprehension for him to have planted these documents, knowing that they might surface and get them into the right hands. Mr. Burkett doesn't know the individual who gave them to him. He has checked out the background of this person and says he may have had access to the National Guard, but he doesn't know the person. He never met the person. The individual who gave him the documents apparently -- he had no way of knowing if that was a person who called him on the phone. So, he appears on television and all of a sudden he gets a mysterious phone call, and a few months later, when he is at a livestock show, he gets these documents. They're planted. They're either planted, or someone -- someone who was so angry about what Mr. Bush was doing to the country recreated something that they knew was in the original file. Either way we have a situation where the good guys ended up using lies to take on the bad guys, and now they’ve smeared themselves and they’ve covered up what I think is a critical question about our President's background, and that is: How did he behave at a time in our country's history when he had taken a pledge to protect us during the war in Vietnam? And I think the context for this is what's critical, as far as I'm concerned, in terms of the President's National Guard service. He is presently calling young people into active duty from the National Guard, and they're dying in Baghdad and all over Iraq. These are young people that are supporting our war and serving based upon their pledge. Mr. Bush's war would be nowhere if those young people were acting as irresponsibly as he did. I think that this goes to his moral authority to call people to active duty and to send them into combat.
This is -- this is a standard Rove tactic, to attack -- to attack the messenger, rather than the message. If you can discredit the messenger, therefore you’ve discredited what the messenger is saying. Now, look at -- look at the fact that the White House -- the White House has believed that Bill Burkett was discredited by the Boston Globe story back in February. Now, if we can get documents into the political discourse and attach them to Bill Burkett (and during this process his personal medical files were leaked that showed he had a nervous breakdown while he was suffering from a viral attack he contracted in Panama) -- Well, if you can take a story that is generally viewed as probably true by the majority of people, and you can attach that story to someone who is discredited, well you’ve pretty much destroyed the story, and that would serve the President in this whole National Guard controversy quite well. Frankly, from now on, I think in any political campaign, for some time to come, when documents surface, people are immediately going to say, “Oh, it's not one of those National Guard things, is it?” Because Bill Burkett has been discredited and his story has now been discredited. If this were a political tactic or strategy employed by Rove or by Republican operatives, it's worked quite well.
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