Posted on 02/07/2006 5:32:53 PM PST by wagglebee
ABC News, via their investigative reporter Brian Ross -- and I can attest personally that Brian Ross gets it wrong -- has got a story, "Is the CIA Leak Probe a 'Witch Hunt.'?" Now, because it's Brian Ross, I cannot attest to the accuracy of the report. This is a guy who just recently on Nightline did this whole distortion of Justice Scalia showing up to teach a course for a legal society, at which the respondents and the participants had paid months in advance to attend this thing. It was portrayed by ABC News as a "junket," and because it occurred on the day that Chief Justice Roberts was sworn in, ABC's investigative unit decided to smear Scalia by suggesting he was dissing the chief justice by not showing up at his swearing-in and instead going out and playing tennis at this legal junket and they tried to raise questions about the fact that this legal junket might have violated ethics because what's he doing taking money to go out and play tennis and hang around a bunch of conservative lawyers, when in fact he was teaching one of these ongoing accreditation cources.
You know, lawyers, despite the fact that they think they know everything, still have to go prove it to another board of other lawyers every now and then to maintain their law licenses and it was that kind of course that Scalia had been asked to teach. So they totally distorted this, and when they were shown proof that they were wrong they still stuck with the original story and did not modify it or moderate it at all. It was a smear and a hit piece from the get-go, and our old buddy Brian Ross was right in the middle of it. Brian Ross has reported inaccuracies about me, and I, therefore, know what I'm talking about. Brian Ross now has an exclusive here, "Is the CIA Leak Probe a 'Witch Hunt'?" Let's -- for the sake of this, as I'm going to share with you some of the details -- let's assume that this is one of those rare moments when Brian Ross gets it right.
"The director of the CIA has launched a major internal probe into media leaks about covert operations. In an agencywide [sic] e-mail, Porter Goss blamed 'a very small number of people' for leaks about secret CIA operations that, in his words, 'do damage to the credibility of the agency.' According to people familiar with the Goss e-mail, sent in late January and classified secret, the CIA director warned that any CIA officer deemed suspect by the agency's Office of Security and its Counter Intelligence Center (which handles internal affairs) could be subjected to an unscheduled lie detector test. CIA personnel are subjected to polygraphs at regular intervals in their careers, but one former intelligence officer called the new warning a 'witch hunt.' Others said Goss' e-mail was narrowly focused and did not suggest agencywide, random lie detector tests. 'It would make no sense at all to give everyone here a lie detector test,' said one person who knew about the e-mail. Goss told CIA employees there were ways other than talking to the news media to resolve any issues they had with classified CIA operations."
Okay. So here we have a "witch hunt." The CIA trying to find out who's leaking, and this is against the law to do this, leaking these secrets, and ABC News is on to it. It's a witch hunt. Now, I wonder if the estimable Brian Ross and his co-reporter here, Richard Esposito, took this same position in the Fitzgerald investigation, the Valerie Plame case -- and how would you like to be Scooter Libby today? Here is Scooter Libby sitting there, watching all of these leak cases from the NSA spy scandal -- "domestic spying," as it's incorrectly termed -- and now this CIA leak thing, and in one case, where somebody actually leaks damaging information to national security, the media says, "Wait a minute! What about these attempts to capture these people? This is a witch hunt! We're the media! We're entitled to secrets that compromise national security. That's why we're here. We are here to compromise national security because we are working with the Democratic Party and the American left, and our objective is to compromise national security; and so these great patriots that are helping us compromise national security, why, they're being sought after by the bigwig in the CIA! Why, this is a witch hunt!"
Meanwhile, here's Scooter Libby who never did anything to anybody facing perjury and obstruction of justice charges in cases where it can't even be said by the prosecutor that he leaked the identity of a covert operative. So when you are accused of leaking something -- by the way, not charged, when you when you are accused even around the margins and around the edges of leaking something that's not even damaging to anything regarding national security, "Well, we're going to come get you, and we're going to put you in leg irons and we're going to make you spend $10 million with a bunch of bloodsucking lawyers to defend yourself against a process charge that you lied during the investigation, which turned up nothing illegal on your part." Then, after all that, Scooter Libby has to sit around and watch as genuine leakers, who have compromised national security, get defended by the very media that couldn't wait to put him in the dock, along with Vice President Cheney, and along with hopefully President Bush, and Karl Rove and Rumsfeld and Rice and whoever else the libs think they want to get their hands on. It's just gotta be mind-boggling to the poor guy, Scooter Libby, to watch all of this.
I heard his broadcast today....Rush is right on. This is so totally insane - that it's pathetic.
Yeah, he is.
The Dems. are looking for anything, anything, to divert attention from their party and focus on something negative within the GOP. The Dems. are desperate enough to become the enemy within our NATION.
Couldnt agree with you more....especially after you take into account what transpired at Coretta Scott King's funeral today....
When people hate as much as Democrats hate, they are the ones who will suffer from their own poison. Their own anger will eat their own party like a cancer.
The CIA is heavy with Ivy Leaguers, and the Ivy League has changed for the worse, as Sam Alito quickly discovered when he first arrived on the Princeton campus.
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