These are selected posts from Democratic Underground concerning the outing of C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame. It is from the first year dating from her outing in July of 2003 to the middle of 2004. FOR SOME PERSPECTIVE FOR ALL OF US NOW, at one time DUers were dealing with denials that crimes had been committed, at one time we were dealing with the "mainstream" corporate media ignoring the story, at one time there was NO investigation, NO grand jury. Just some perspective: JULY 23, 2003 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=66079 RainDog (1000+ posts) Wed
Jul-23-03 03:13 AM
WH Press Conf. with Questions about Plame http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/2003072... Q The Robert Novak column last week identified the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson as a CIA operative who was working on WMD issues. Novak said that identification is based on information given to him by two administration sources. That column has now given rise to accusations that the administration deliberatively blew the cover of an undercover CIA operative, and in so doing, violated a federal law that prohibits revealing the identity of undercover CIA operatives. Can you respond to that?
MR. McCLELLAN: Thank you for bringing that up. That is not the way this President or this White House operates. And there is absolutely no information that has come to my attention or that I have seen that suggests that there is any truth to that suggestion. And, certainly, no one in this White House would have given authority to take such a step.
Q So you're saying --
- snip -
Q That's different from saying it didn't happen. Are you saying, absolutely, it did not happen?
MR. McCLELLAN: I'm saying no one was certainly given any authority to do anything of that nature. And I've seen no evidence to suggest there's any truth to it. I want to make it very clear, that is simply not the way this White House operates.
- snip -
Q Does the President support a criminal investigation --
MR. McCLELLAN: Did you have something?
SEPT. 28, 2003 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=423452 salin (1000+ posts) Sun
Sep-28-03 02:04 PM
Hellooooooo.... am I alone - but isn't the REAL plame story being missed? Please read. Am I missing something - barking up the wrong tree - or is the REAL BIG story being ignored - not only by the media - but by us?
Remember... How the media chooses to frame a story changes what they report.
What kills me about the coverage on this story is what they DON'T say...
what was compromised.
An information network tracking the industry flow related to WMD.
In the first place it appeared there was a brief discussion of how long it takes to put compromised intelligence gathering operations back on track.
Get it?
- snip -
We learn there is an active CIA operation that tracks WMD technology flow through industry. After 911 and the recognition of the potential threat of WMDs this operation becomes even more important. Vital to National Security.
We learn that political operatives - high up in the White House - willingly compromised that entire National Security intelligence operation - for political gain for the president.
THAT is the story. Not that a highup broke the law (that is a side story - and an investigation and arrest should be a by-product). The REAL investigation - if we were serious about national security - would be an assessment of the damage done by the leak. Should be the assessment of the danger to the US increased by interuption of intel on WMDs. Should be an assessment of what is required to replace that intel asap.
The White House - compromised the War on Terrorism.
And that is the aspect of this story that I have only seen refered to a single time in the press.
SEPT. 28, 2003 SEPT. 29, 2003 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=430986 WilliamPitt (1000+ posts) Mon
Sep-29-03 01:34 PM
The Most Insidious of Traitors (my Plame story, HELP) Did I get this right? What am I missing? How can I sharpen this up? DU is an awesome open-air think tank when it is not eating itself. Help me heat this branding iron, and thanks deeply in advance:
======
The Most Insidious of Traitors
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
"Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors."
- George Herbert Walker Bush, 1999
Karl Rove, senior political advisor to George W. Bush, is a very powerful man. That is not to say he has never been in trouble. Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush Sr. campaign for trashing Robert Mosbacher, Jr., who was the chief fundraiser for the campaign and an avowed Bush loyalist. Rove accomplished this trashing of Mosbacher by planting a negative story with columnist Bob Novak. The campaign figured out that Karl had done the dirty deed, and he was given his walking papers.
Demonstrably, Rove is back in the saddle again. The January 2003 edition of Esquire magazine carried an article by Ron Suskind which quoted comments from John DiIulio, a domestic policy advisor to the White House who had just retired from his post. On October 24, DiIulio had sent a letter to Suskind describing what he had seen while working for the Bush administration. The meat of the letter described an administration far, far more interested in raw political triangulation and ruthless spin than in actual policy and government functionality. Some excerpts from DiIulio’s letter:
- snip-
The facts of this story are singularly grotesque. Taken at the top layer, you have a White House that appears perfectly willing to go after the family members of its critics. Valerie Plame’s career is destroyed, period. The act itself displays a level of viciousness that is dangerous to the functioning of this, or any, democracy.
- snip -
Mr. Wilson believes Karl Rove did this to his wife, and to our country. Mr. Rove has done this before, specifically using Robert Novak to cut down Mosbacher. Rove knows no ideology beyond power, and has no bones about using it to wreak havoc on anyone who gets in his crosshairs. The Esquire article about DiIulio finds him recounting a singular Rove moment, as he overheard a conversation happening in another room: “Inside, Rove was talking to an aide about some political stratagem in some state that had gone awry and a political operative who had displeased him. I paid it no mind and reviewed a jotted list of questions I hoped to ask. But after a moment, it was like ignoring a tornado flinging parked cars. ‘We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!’"
Guess who was doing the cursing and threatening.
One last bit of inside baseball. When the Niger scandal erupted, the Bush administration went out of its way to scapegoat the CIA for the mess, despite the fact that the CIA, along with the entire intelligence community, had been cut out of the loop by Don Rumsfeld’s Office of Special Plans. The OSP, and its pet Iraqi Ahmad Chalabi, became the source for all of the information regarding Iraq’s weapons capabilities, and a number of intelligence insiders have publicly blamed that group for the preponderance of highly erroneous data about Iraq. For the Bush administration to completely usurp the CIA by depending solely on data manufactured by the Office of Special Plans, and then turn around and blame CIA when the OSP’s data did not turn out to be true, is as insane as it is laughable. Yet this is what they have done. The CIA’s calling for this investigation is nothing more or less than the Agency defending itself, proving out the oft-repeated warning that one scapegoats the CIA at their mortal peril.
The White House has denied the allegation, and promises a full investigation. A great many people find it laughable to believe this White House is capable of investigating itself, and are demanding an independent investigation. A quick look at the White House telephone logs will reveal who called whom, and when. If this administration fails to hand those logs over, they will stand in taint of high treason.
J’accuse, Mr. Rove. J’accuse.
OCT. 2, 2003 OCT. 3, 2003 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=467222 Beetwasher (1000+ posts) Fri
Oct-03-03 09:36 PM
Wow! Outing Plame Was a Major Screw-Up and REALLY Bad for The Country! Agent exposed in leak ran overseas operations, recruited agents http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/69... -snip-
Two former senior intelligence officials confirmed that Valerie Plame, 40, is an operations officer in the spy agency's directorate of operations - the clandestine service.
Plame "ran intelligence operations overseas," said Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA counterterrorism operations chief.
Her specialty in the agency's nonproliferation center was biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and "recruiting agents, sending them to areas where they could access information about proliferation matters, weapons of mass destruction," Cannistraro said
-snip-
Comment: She was a big deal doing real important work. They have really really put the country in direct jeapordy by outing her. Because of their vindictiveness WMD's could very well end up in the hands of terrorists. I'm not being hyperbolic.
OCT. 4, 2003 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=468217 DemBones DemBones (1000+ posts) Sat
Oct-04-03 12:11 AM
ALL DUers Need to Write Letters About Plame's Cover Being Blown I started to write this as a plea to DUers in Texas to write letters to the editor of the "Austin American-Statesman," since editor Rich Oppel told Aaron Brown on CNN that they have received only two letters about this. He went on to say that people in Austin are concerned with the war in Iraq and there is strong anti-war sentiment in Austin, a progressive isle in a conservative state, but thus far little interest in this story.
Then Carol Lee Hutton, managing editor of the Detroit Free Press began to tell Aaron that she thinks people are less willing to "indulge in scandal" in a "post-911 world." She doesn't think people will "lock onto it" the way they did the "last White House scandal," by which I suppose she means Monicagate since Bush* has avoided blame for any of his screw-ups so far. In other words, she seems willing to play this down as a politics as usual sort of story and concentrate on "national security" issues. An editor who doesn't comprehend that blowing an undercover CIA agent's cover IS a national security Issue?
Obviously, the reality is that we ALL need to be writing letters to our newspapers, senators, and representatives about this case, calling for a special prosecutor, demanding that someone take the fall for this one. They skated on 911, they've skated so far on the "faulty" intelligence that told them that Iraq was an imminent threat. We've got to throw some sand in their skate wheels.
This administration keeps throwing more stuff at us in the hopes that we can't keep up. But we can.
How? Simple! We just DU it!
DUers, start your word processing programs, Send e-mails and make phone calls, too, but remember letters really make the biggest impression. They don't have to be lengthy and they don't have to be brilliant prose. You can write them by hand or print them out. Just DU it!
OCT. 17, 2003 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=549043 protect freedom impeach bush now (1000+ posts) Fri
Oct-17-03 04:24 PM
US's leading editorial pages are ignoring the Plame scandal. http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/10/tomasky-m-1... Papered Over
The country's leading editorial pages are ignoring the Plame scandal. By Michael Tomasky
Web Exclusive: 10.16.03
If you've been feeling that the Bush administration may be skating free of having to wrestle with the Valerie Plame controversy and are wondering why this is happening, let me submit one possible explanation: The major media are putting no pressure whatsoever on the administration, or the president, to do anything.
See, back in the days when our leading journalistic institutions were bothering to do their jobs, there used to be these things in newspapers called "editorials." They demanded integrity and honest government of presidential administrations. They would bellow -- often a little pompously or earnestly, but, on balance, in the public interest -- that, say, President Johnson needed to explain to the American people what he knew about the risks of Vietnam before 1965, or that President Nixon had better come clean about what happened in Cambodia (or at the Democratic National Committee's Watergate headquarters). Back then, editorials thundered.
Today? They still exist, of course, but now they whisper into a shoebox, essentially hoping that no one will hear them. The bully pulpit has become the 98-pound weakling's corner, and the government reaps the benefits of the shrinkage.
The New York Times and The Washington Post are still our leading newspapers, and no doubt they consider themselves guardians of the public interest. So one might think that when a scandal of this potential magnitude appears, they would rush in to protect that interest. An undercover agent's identity was exposed, in possible violation of the law and in obvious violation of the old-fashioned morality that conservatives supposedly revere. If ever there was a moment for a newspaper's editorial page to demand that an administration take actions or offer explanations, it's a moment like this one.
MORE...........
NOV. 20, 2003 DEC. 16, 2003 JAN. 9, 2003 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1000786 Stevendsmith (1000+ posts) Fri
Jan-09-04 03:40 PM
I'm Hungry For The Next Development in the Plame Investigation Bring it on! I'm almost obsessed with this case!
Why I am optimistic:
Since the identity of the "leaker" (criminal) is known to several columnists, I would think the administration cannot offer up a false fall guy. Is there something I’m missing here?
Why I am pessimistic:
BushCo gets away with everything, so why should this be any different?
I doubt that Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, or any other high-profile member of the administration would be so foolish as to make these calls to journalists themselves and not have underlings do the dirty work. I would think they would cover their own asses.
Then again, hubris can make even the most intelligent individuals do incredibly stupid things. Republicans, invested with their own sense of righteousness, have made many stupid moves in the past.
What do you think?
Do you foresee this case resulting in major damage to the administration (e.g., criminal charges brought against a high-profile senior administration official, triggering a major scandal that will have a major, if not fatal, impact on Bush's election bid for '04)?
I just have no gut feeling for what the outcome will be.
FEB. 5, 2004 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1088384 Dudley_DUright (1000+ posts) Thu
Feb-05-04 02:17 PM
Josh Marshall fingers Cheney's office for Plame leak There's been plenty of chatter over recent days that some indictments were coming down the pike in the Plame matter. Now UPI's Richard Sale seems to have the goods.
This from a story just out ...
Federal law enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year.
The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said.
According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby were the two Cheney employees.
more...
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_02_... FEB. 10, 2004 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1105147 ShaneGR (1000+ posts) Tue
Feb-10-04 01:57 PM
A Grand Jury is OPEN in the Plame Affair!! W. House aids called!! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4226902 (snip)
A federal grand jury has questioned one current and one former aide to President Bush, and investigators have interviewed six others in an effort to discover who revealed the name of an undercover CIA officer to a newspaper columnist, sources involved in the case said yesterday.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday that he talked to the grand jury last week. Mary Matalin, former counselor to Vice President Cheney, testified Jan. 23, the sources said. Neither is suspected by prosecutors of having exposed undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame, but both were questioned about White House public relations strategy, the sources said.
FBI agents have interviewed at least eight current and former Bush aides -- including Matalin and McClellan -- and have questioned them about thousands of e-mails that the White House surrendered in October, along with stacks of call logs and calendars, the sources said.
The logs indicate that several White House officials talked to columnist Robert D. Novak shortly before July 14, when he published a column quoting "two senior administration officials" saying that Plame, "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction," had suggested her husband for a mission to Niger to investigate whether Iraq tried to acquire uranium there as part of an effort to develop nuclear weapons. The big, burning question continues to be who outed her. But to me the much more interesting question is who is the "administration official" that confirmed to the Washington Post (Sept. 23, 2003) that the story had been shopped to 6 journalist. There's SOMEBODY with a conscience who knew how wrong this was. That's why I continue to think the Plame thing is not gonna die - because someone in-the-know within the administration can't handle being a part of it.
My money (well, a buck anyway) is on Mary Matalin. She had left Cheney's office by then and beyond the ol' spending-time-with-the-family, there wasn't a real reason given. AND, she's been questioned. I don't like her, she's a shill, etc., but I've never felt she was as complete a liar as some of them. Seeing how awful she looked on TV last weekend I wondered if maybe she has got some real conflicted feelings going on. Loyal to Cheney, hoping it all somehow goes away, self-serving as shit, but really troubled and appalled at the same time.
FEB. 29, 2004 MARCH 19, 2004 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1255547 TruthIsAll (1000+ posts) Fri
Mar-19-04 06:12 PM
The Bush Plame Scandal - Documented CNN.com - Bush welcomes probe of CIA leak - Feb. 11, 2004
... Novak said Monday on CNN's "Crossfire" that he learned Plame's identity from two senior Bush administration officials in the course of researching an article ...
www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/09/30/wilson.cia/ - 51k - Cached - Similar pages
Instapundit.com:
... figure in a modern Washington scandal whose face ... which senior administration officials leaked Plame's CIA role ... Wilson began debunking President Bush's State of ...
www.instapundit.com/archives/012840.php - 13k - Cached - Similar pages
FindLaw's Writ - Dean: A Further Look At The Criminal ChargesThat ...
... not his own, but that point hardly quieted the scandal.). ... A Closer Look At The Plame Leak. ... Among other questions, he wondered why the Bush Administration had ...
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20031010.html - 47k - Cached - Similar pages
"Valerie Plame scandal has legs after all," wrote John McCrory
... Nor is the Plame scandal only on the level of a "two-bit break-in ... Furthermore, there's someone in the Bush Administration who wants their identities exposed, as ...
www.johnmccrory.com/wrote.asp?this=77 - 10k - Cached - Similar pages
MORE
JULY 6, 2004 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1937143 faithnotgreed (1000+ posts) Tue Jul-06-04 10:40 PM
the plame story: it is vital to contact the media and ask about this and why is this going on/it needs to be covered. given that there is a grand jury investigation going on, we have something we can get behind, and actually contribute to exposing the truth here. this may be one instance where lack of political will to do anything by the gop controlled govt cannot "erase" what we know is going on.
sibel edmonds is also an important case though that one is being blocked in a coordinated way by our reps and ashcroft. at least there was an article yesterday i think in the boston globe. i emailed the writer to say thank you so much for reporting on this.
i know that many have been reading the lengthy and vital exchange of the plame threads. but as with much of the original threads, h20 makes this vital point and his suggestion is the reason im even posting this separate thread:
read joe kleins article in the july 5th time magazine regarding this issue, then write or contact your local media, online media, whatever you want
and please ask "why"?
- snip -
theres so much going on right now i know, but this really could be a foundation upon which we can build something.... we have to try - don't we?
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