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Ambassador Joe Wilson's Relationship to the Kerry Campaign

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demdiva Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-03-08 04:01 AM
Original message
Ambassador Joe Wilson's Relationship to the Kerry Campaign
Hey Kerrycrats. It’s been awhile since I’ve posted here … and not so much the first time around. But you guys are still the only ones I really can count on for a good perspective. I’m actually not here to suck up (:)) … I have a question for you.

All the talk about McClellan’s book has had me thinking about the CIA leak case and Ambassador Joe Wilson, so I went back to see what Wilson’s relationship was with the Kerry campaign in 2004. According to this article posted on Wikipedia / WSJ, Wilson was a speechwriter for the Kerry campaign but was “dumped” because the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found he lied about how he was sent to Niger.


As for Mr. Wilson, he was last seen campaigning for a Democratic Presidential hopeful for a brief period in 2004. John Kerry's campaign dumped him as a spokesman that summer after the Senate Intelligence Committee found Mr. Wilson had lied in claiming his wife had played no role in sending him to Niger to investigate whether Saddam was seeking to acquire uranium yellowcake. The same bipartisan report found that Mr. Wilson's trip, which he had advertised in a splashy New York Times op-ed, had produced no information of any intelligence value.


Here’s my question. Has Wilson’s relationship with the Kerry campaign been characterized accurately and was Wilson really dumped because the Kerry campaign believed he lied (still had a Republican Senate at this point)? Or … assuming Wilson was “dumped” by the Kerry campaign … was this simply the politically expedient thing to do at the time? I don’t blame the Kerry campaign for this move, but I’m inclined to believe Wilson’s version of the Niger story.

What do you guys think? Any perspectives I’m missing here?

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JI7 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-03-08 04:40 AM
Response to Original message
1. i don't think this is true, he was actively campaigning for Kerry throughout the campaign
Edited on Tue Jun-03-08 04:42 AM by JI7
and Kerry regularly brought him up during and after the campaign.

this is wiki which is people edited so i think some wingnut may have put that in there.


and i don't believe he was ever a speech writer for Kerry. he endorsed Kerry pretty early on from what i remember because he admired Kerry's career from the time he got back from Vietnam to his Senate investigations into corruption.
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karynnj Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-03-08 08:05 AM
Response to Reply #1
5. That is my memory as well
I apologize in advance for several odius RW links - but there is no way to both debunk and explain the roots of this smear - directed more at Wilson, but also at Kerry in 2004. (Interesting when you put this with the McClellan stuff. This was part of the disinformation campaign that McClellan was NOT innocent on - no matter how wide his blue eyes become as he speaks of this. This stuff should be considered when Duers now consider him a hero.)

Kerry Did use the information on Wilson and Plame to the degree it was then provable. I don't think that Wilson was a speech writer for anyone. Wilson endorsed him early (October 2003), comparing Kerry's 1971 stands with his pre-Iraq stands and supported him thoughout the campaign. Wilson was an advisor to the campaign and he made appearances for Kerry. He also was included as a source - labeled a Kerry supporter in articles on foreign policy - such as this one: http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0728/p10s02-uspo.html

As you said, wiki is editted by anyone. Using goggle, the source of that smear - against Wilson, was Jeff Gannon - who was later quoted by Robert Novack (who wrote the column outing Valerie). Here is a Richard Parry article that has the Kerry campaign person - Peter Daou dening that Kerry kicked him out. http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/080205.html Here is a better article dealing with just Gannon (I left the other in because Novack propagating the lie is really special.) http://dir.salon.com/story/politics/war_room/2005/08/05/gannon/

What is clear is that the RW smear machine attacked him as a nut case - and Kerry as having a campaign of nutcases. (Here is the darling Ann Coulter - http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/coulter071504.asp What is clear is that the RW wanted the stories that Wilson was a liar or crazy and that Kerry rejected him. (One of many examples - http://thekeymonk.blogspot.com/2004/07/john-kerry-communist-historian.html)

I suspect also that there may have been some conflation with Berger. Berger was the Clinton guy who took (at best - copies) from the National Security achieves. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64379-2004Jul20.html Kerry did dump Berger - and was right to do so. Kerry did not dump Wilson.
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demdiva Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-03-08 12:26 PM
Response to Reply #1
6. WSJ Source too
But also not completely unbiased. You're right.
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JI7 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-03-08 04:58 AM
Response to Original message
2. also, Valerie Plame after 2004 compared what the right wing
attacks on Kerry in that election to the attacks on her husband. she brings up Rove specifically as the person responsible.
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beachmom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-03-08 07:40 AM
Response to Original message
3. That story is from "Talon News", as in Jeff Gannon
Edited on Tue Jun-03-08 07:41 AM by beachmom
freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1179407/posts

add in "http://www." to the above, to get to the site.

Talon News reported that Kerry's anti-terror policy was removed from the candidate's web site immediately following Berger's dismissal as a campaign advisor. But in the last few days, another advisor has apparently been jettisoned from the Kerry campaign. All traces of former Ambassador Joe Wilson, the central figure in the controversy of faulty intelligence about Iraq and uranium has disappeared from the Kerry web site. Wilson had appeared on a web site www.restorehonesty.com where he restated his criticism of the Bush administration. The link now goes directly to the main page of www.johnkerry.com and no reference to Wilson can be found on the entire site.

Wilson was discredited by a Senate Intelligence Committee report that contradicted Wilson's public statements about how he was selected for a sensitive mission to Niger in 2002 and the results of his report about Saddam Hussein's attempt to purchase uranium in Africa. Wilson represented his investigation as proof that President Bush misled the United States in making the case for the invasion of Iraq. An investigation into British intelligence confirms that Bush's claim was "well founded."


Here is Media Matters on Talon News:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200501280006

Talon News, a conservative company whose Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent Jeff Gannon is well-known for asking loaded pro-Republican questions at White House press briefings, appears to be more a political organization than a media outlet.

Media Matters for America recently highlighted three Gannon articles that were little more than reprints of Republican and Bush administration releases; Media Matters has also noted Gannon's role as White House press secretary Scott McClellan's lifeline and Talon editor in chief Bobby Eberle's partisan political activities. A more in-depth look at Talon, Gannon, and Eberle casts additional doubt on Talon's claim to be a media outlet and raises questions about whether Gannon should be a credentialed member of the White House press corps.


The moral of this story? Wikipedia is only as good as its sources. In this case, the source is bad.

Here is Consortium News (I think a good source, as BLM is a fan! :) on the whole issue:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/080205.html

Assault on Wilson

Novak’s column also resumed the Right’s long-running assault on Wilson’s credibility. Near the end of the column, Novak wrote that “Joseph Wilson was discarded a year ago by the Kerry presidential campaign after the Senate intelligence committee reported that much of what he Wilson said ‘had no basis in fact.’”

However, Novak’s sentence appears to be wrong on both its points. The Senate Intelligence Committee did not conclude that Wilson’s statements about the Iraqi intelligence “had no basis in fact.” That was a phrase that Novak culled from “additional views” of three Republican senators.

The full committee refused to accept that opinion written by Sen. Pat Roberts and backed by two other conservative Republicans – Christopher Bond and Orrin Hatch – yet Novak left the impression that the phrase was part of what he called “a unanimous Senate intelligence committee report” released in July 2004.

The other part of Novak’s attack on Wilson – about his supposed repudiation by Sen. John Kerry’s Democratic campaign – can be traced back to a story by Talon News’ former White House correspondent Jeff Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert.

On July 27, 2004, just over a year ago, a Talon News story under Gannon’s byline reported that Wilson “has apparently been jettisoned from the Kerry campaign.” The article based its assumption on the fact that “all traces” of Wilson “had disappeared from the Kerry Web site.”

The Talon News article reported that “Wilson had appeared on a Web site www.restorehonesty.com where he restated his criticism of the Bush administration. The link now goes directly to the main page of www.johnkerry.com and no reference to Wilson can be found on the entire site.”

A Web Redesign

But Peter Daou, who headed the Kerry campaign’s online rapid response, said the disappearance of Wilson’s link – along with many other Web pages – resulted from a redesign of Kerry’s Web site at the start of the general election campaign, not a repudiation of Wilson.

“I wasn’t aware of any directive from senior Kerry staff to ‘discard’ Joe Wilson or do anything to Joe Wilson for that matter,” said Daou, who now publishes the “Daou Report” at Salon.com. “It just got lost in the redesign of the Web site, as did dozens and dozens of other pages.”


Gannon/Guckert, who wrote frequently about the Wilson-Plame case in 2003-2004, came under suspicion as a covert Republican operative in January 2005 when he put a question to George W. Bush at a presidential news conference that contained a false assertion about Democrats and prompted concerns that Gannon/Guckert was a plant.

Later, liberal Web sites discovered that Gannon was a pseudonym for Guckert, who had posted nude photos of himself on gay-male escort sites. It also turned out that Talon News was owned by GOPUSA, whose president Robert Eberle is a prominent Texas Republican activist.

Though Gannon/Guckert had been refused a congressional press pass, he secured daily passes to the White House press briefing under his real name, Guckert. As a controversy built over the Bush administration paying for favorable news stories, Gannon/Guckert resigned from Talon News on Feb. 8 and its Web site effectively shut down.


So a web design sparked the entire article. Too damned funny!

So nice to see you again, DemDiva. I've been thinking of you lately, and wondered where you had been. Looks like you were just in lurk mode. Thanks for posting this; it was fun digging around a bit to get the answer to your question.
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JI7 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-03-08 07:48 AM
Response to Reply #3
4. great job you really put it together
i remember this from 2004 . only right wing blogs were pushing it and using it to try to discredit Wilson. if it really was true then it would have been huge news.

i remember being upset with some of the changes because they got rid of a bunch of videos and pictures i wanted.

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demdiva Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-03-08 12:27 PM
Response to Reply #3
7. That's great
Thanks so much for the intel. That EXACTLY answered my question.
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demdiva Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-03-08 12:41 PM
Response to Reply #3
9. Thanks for thinking of me!
I just recently started a new job, moved apartments, and have been taking my politics to the street more then to the keyboard :)
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demdiva Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-03-08 12:28 PM
Response to Original message
8. ps I will also update the Wiki
Just in case some other poor sap sees this like me and says "what? really?"
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