Monday, July 18, 2005
An Explanation (Even for Dimwitted Liberals) of the "Karl Rove Kerfluffle"
If you listen to the MSM in the United States, you will conclude that 1) Karl Rove committed a crime; 2) Karl Rove committed treason; 3) Joe Wilson is the innocent victim of bad George W. Bush; and 4) the White House is covering up a crime, and this could be worse than Watergate.
Of course, not even one of those is true. Let's see why.
For those not in the know, this story started in 2003, right after the US went to war in Iraq. Leading up to the war's start, the British intelligence services discovered that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy what is called "yellowcake," or uranium-enriched powder, from mines in southern Africa. The British passed this on to us, and President Bush said so in his 2003 State of the Union (SOTU) speech:
President Delivers "State of the Union"
Notice that Bush never says "We have learned" or "We have found." He says that the British have learned such and such. Considering that the British stand behind the story to this day, this statement is not incorrect. But liberals continue to insinuate that Bush somehow lied. Pure bullshit, of course.
Following this, we discovered that former US Ambassador to Iraq Joseph C. Wilson IV went to Niger, one of the countries - one, not all of them - where the British dredged up this information. Little did anyone know at the time that Wilson, a former Republican appointee of President George H.W. Bush, was secretly working on the payroll of the Democrats, and would later work as a foreign policy consultant to John Kerry during his presidential campaign. Wilson may have been working for Kerry when he went to Niger - he and Kerry have never stated when Wilson came on board the Kerry Disaster of 2004. Wilson started a website, "Restorehonesty.com," which used to post ridiculous Wilsonian (Joseph, not Woodrow) conspiracies about Bush, WMD, and Iraq. Of course, for some reason which we can only guess at (paranoia?), John Kerry got embarrassed by Doofus Wilson and now anyone going to Wilson's site is re-directed to Kerry's site. And any search of Kerry's site shows no signs of the name Wilson, Joseph Wilson, or Ambassador Wilson. Interesting, eh?
Putting that aside, Wilson somehow got this plum position out of the blue - for a long time, no one could really say how Wilson, and not some other person, got the job. Considering that Wilson was not an expert on WMD issues, it is somewhat of a mystery. Wilson returned to the US after a few short weeks to announce that Bush had lied, Saddam was not trying to buy yellowcake, and all was well. It was later discovered that Wilson went to Niger, spent some time talking to government officials, spent a lot of time in fancy restuarants on the government's tab, and in the end made allegations which were proven wholly untrue.
The story then shifted to: Who sent Wilson to Niger? George Tenet, at the time Director of Central Intelligence, gave a statement that he had nothing to do with the appointment. What angered those at the White House was Wilson's insistence - he now claims otherwise - that Vice President Dick Cheney sent him to Niger. Evidence has been found that Cheney had no role whatsoever in Wilson's mission - and Wilson knew he was lying outright when he said that.
Finally, word leaked from the CIA that Wilson's wife - a Democrat named Valerie Plame - who had one time served as a covert operative but for the last 6+ years had been just an analyst at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, had "recommended" her husband to her bosses at the CIA - and they had sent him without doing any background investigation or to see if he had any political bent. So, Wilson goes, fluffs off the whole trip, comes back, and, to aid his possibly current and definitely future employer John Kerry reports that President Bush is a liar. So much for that.
Weeks later, the story continued to boil, but the central question, "Who sent Wilson to Niger?" had yet to be fully answered, especially to the Bush White House's satisfaction. Bring in Karl Rove, at that time Bush's political advisor and now deputy national security advisor. Downies hate Rove because he has made piles of shit out of them since 2000. Rove did some investigating, and discovered that Wilson's wife, Plame, had got him the assignment. So, enter Matthew Cooper, writer for Time Magazine. Cooper called Rove and asked about the story on the WMD and yellowcake intelligence. Rove, in an e-mail, cautioned Cooper not to go out on a limb over the story - that Wilson's wife had gotten him the job, from what Rove had heard from the CIA. Never did Rove say Plame's name, or intimate that she was anything but an analyst at Langley. Cooper then called around, and his inquiry landed on the desk of Robert Novak, the long-time Washington reporter, who made some calls on his own and discovered Plame's name. He then called Rove and told him Plame's name, and said that she was a CIA analyst. Rover told Novak, "Yeah, I've heard that too."
Novak then called the CIA and told them that he was writing an article that Valerie Plame, former covert agent and now analyst, was behind getting Wilson the appointment. Had Plame been in danger of being "outed," the CIA would surely have said something - but they told Novak no such thing. In fact, he called back, and again asked if it was okay to use her name. Again, he was not asked to avoid doing so.
When Novak's article was published, liberals and Bush-haters sprang to Wilson and his wife's defense - after all, they said with no proof, this was done by the Bush White House to destroy Wilson's credibility which, we find later, never existed at all. Bush asked his entire staff - including Rove - if they had leaked Plame's name. All said they had not - which was the absolute truth. But the Downies demanded a special counsel, after they had let the independent counsel act be voided because they did not want any more investigations of the (read:criminal) Clinton administration. Instead of doing the Clinton 1-2-3, and refusing to do anything, Bush asked then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to find a counsel. Pat Fitzgerald, who was the US Attorney for Chicago, was named to lead the investigation on 30 December 2003.
Fitzgerald's purview is to investigate whether a crime was committed. Now, the act which covers this kind of information is called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, located at 50 USC [United States Code] 421, et seq. The relevant portion of this law, drafted by, among others, Washington attorney and Republican Victoria Toensing, is located at 50 USC 421:
Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources
Notice the key words: covert agent. Hmm, you ask. Was Valerie Plame a "covert agent" as defined by this law? Well, the law specifically defines someone being a "covert agent" as someone who has been undercover within the five years before their cover was blown.
Well, despite liberals and Wilson and their mentally deficient supporters, Valerie Plame was not an agent for six years before Novak outed her - and the evidence shows this most convincingly:
Rove fight escalates
So, according to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, Rove could not have admitted a crime, because he did not out a "covert agent," as well as the fact that he never used her name. Robert Novak did - not Rove. And he could not have committed a crime, because Plame was NOT a "covert agent" as the law describes it.
Despite what we know now, at the time this story first exploded Wilson and his wife and his liberal defenders continued to insist that Plame was a covert agent - yet never offered any evidence of it. And then, after two years of claiming otherwise, Joseph Wilson made a shocking - and potentially damaging - revelation, one which the media continues to ignore: He said that his wife was not a "clandestine agent" at the time of the alleged leak:
CNN WOLF BLITZER REPORTS
So, Wilson admits Plame was not a "covert agent." As they say in tennis: game, set, match. There can be no crime because the strictures of the law covering the crime have not been met.
Fast forward to now: We all watch as "reporters" (we should call them "alleged reporters") harass the White House to admit a crime has been committed - or they tell their dimwitted and unknowing audiences that a crime has definitely been committed. Downies head to microphones to demand Karl Rove's resignation, or that his national security clearance be pulled. Seeing how the White House media is reacting to this kind of bullshit story, you would think that their bosses back at the office would be backing them up - giving them a "Hey, yeah, we got another Watergate! Keep investigating!" But no! Instead, they send liberal reporters to salivate over a story with no legs, and then tell a court the opposite - that no crime was committed in the "Plame Affair" and that the whole thing is, well, bullshit:
In Re: Grand Jury Subpoena, Judith Miller, No. 04-3138; In Re: Grand Jury Subpoena, Matthew Cooper, No. 04-3139
Who is behind this amicus curae ("friend of the court") brief? No less than ABC, FoxNews, Reuters, Bloomberg, the AP, CNN, CBS News, Cox Newspapers, and the Washington Post - just to name a few. Check out the whole filing - and read the utter hypocrisy of the whole situation.
So, to sum up this sorry story: Joseph Wilson IV lied to get his cushy assignment to Niger, he lied about what he saw there, Karl Rove never used his wife's name or that she had been a CIA operative, and the facts show that and nothing more.
The MSM's response? More bullshit, more lies, and the attempted reinstatement of Joseph Wilson, a proven liar.
It is no wonder that as this nation is in a death grip with Islamic terrorism world-wide, the American media is focused on whether Karl Rove should be fired.
Pathetic. Simply pathetic.
If you listen to the MSM in the United States, you will conclude that 1) Karl Rove committed a crime; 2) Karl Rove committed treason; 3) Joe Wilson is the innocent victim of bad George W. Bush; and 4) the White House is covering up a crime, and this could be worse than Watergate.
Of course, not even one of those is true. Let's see why.
For those not in the know, this story started in 2003, right after the US went to war in Iraq. Leading up to the war's start, the British intelligence services discovered that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy what is called "yellowcake," or uranium-enriched powder, from mines in southern Africa. The British passed this on to us, and President Bush said so in his 2003 State of the Union (SOTU) speech:
President Delivers "State of the Union"
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
Notice that Bush never says "We have learned" or "We have found." He says that the British have learned such and such. Considering that the British stand behind the story to this day, this statement is not incorrect. But liberals continue to insinuate that Bush somehow lied. Pure bullshit, of course.
Following this, we discovered that former US Ambassador to Iraq Joseph C. Wilson IV went to Niger, one of the countries - one, not all of them - where the British dredged up this information. Little did anyone know at the time that Wilson, a former Republican appointee of President George H.W. Bush, was secretly working on the payroll of the Democrats, and would later work as a foreign policy consultant to John Kerry during his presidential campaign. Wilson may have been working for Kerry when he went to Niger - he and Kerry have never stated when Wilson came on board the Kerry Disaster of 2004. Wilson started a website, "Restorehonesty.com," which used to post ridiculous Wilsonian (Joseph, not Woodrow) conspiracies about Bush, WMD, and Iraq. Of course, for some reason which we can only guess at (paranoia?), John Kerry got embarrassed by Doofus Wilson and now anyone going to Wilson's site is re-directed to Kerry's site. And any search of Kerry's site shows no signs of the name Wilson, Joseph Wilson, or Ambassador Wilson. Interesting, eh?
Putting that aside, Wilson somehow got this plum position out of the blue - for a long time, no one could really say how Wilson, and not some other person, got the job. Considering that Wilson was not an expert on WMD issues, it is somewhat of a mystery. Wilson returned to the US after a few short weeks to announce that Bush had lied, Saddam was not trying to buy yellowcake, and all was well. It was later discovered that Wilson went to Niger, spent some time talking to government officials, spent a lot of time in fancy restuarants on the government's tab, and in the end made allegations which were proven wholly untrue.
The story then shifted to: Who sent Wilson to Niger? George Tenet, at the time Director of Central Intelligence, gave a statement that he had nothing to do with the appointment. What angered those at the White House was Wilson's insistence - he now claims otherwise - that Vice President Dick Cheney sent him to Niger. Evidence has been found that Cheney had no role whatsoever in Wilson's mission - and Wilson knew he was lying outright when he said that.
Finally, word leaked from the CIA that Wilson's wife - a Democrat named Valerie Plame - who had one time served as a covert operative but for the last 6+ years had been just an analyst at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, had "recommended" her husband to her bosses at the CIA - and they had sent him without doing any background investigation or to see if he had any political bent. So, Wilson goes, fluffs off the whole trip, comes back, and, to aid his possibly current and definitely future employer John Kerry reports that President Bush is a liar. So much for that.
Weeks later, the story continued to boil, but the central question, "Who sent Wilson to Niger?" had yet to be fully answered, especially to the Bush White House's satisfaction. Bring in Karl Rove, at that time Bush's political advisor and now deputy national security advisor. Downies hate Rove because he has made piles of shit out of them since 2000. Rove did some investigating, and discovered that Wilson's wife, Plame, had got him the assignment. So, enter Matthew Cooper, writer for Time Magazine. Cooper called Rove and asked about the story on the WMD and yellowcake intelligence. Rove, in an e-mail, cautioned Cooper not to go out on a limb over the story - that Wilson's wife had gotten him the job, from what Rove had heard from the CIA. Never did Rove say Plame's name, or intimate that she was anything but an analyst at Langley. Cooper then called around, and his inquiry landed on the desk of Robert Novak, the long-time Washington reporter, who made some calls on his own and discovered Plame's name. He then called Rove and told him Plame's name, and said that she was a CIA analyst. Rover told Novak, "Yeah, I've heard that too."
Novak then called the CIA and told them that he was writing an article that Valerie Plame, former covert agent and now analyst, was behind getting Wilson the appointment. Had Plame been in danger of being "outed," the CIA would surely have said something - but they told Novak no such thing. In fact, he called back, and again asked if it was okay to use her name. Again, he was not asked to avoid doing so.
When Novak's article was published, liberals and Bush-haters sprang to Wilson and his wife's defense - after all, they said with no proof, this was done by the Bush White House to destroy Wilson's credibility which, we find later, never existed at all. Bush asked his entire staff - including Rove - if they had leaked Plame's name. All said they had not - which was the absolute truth. But the Downies demanded a special counsel, after they had let the independent counsel act be voided because they did not want any more investigations of the (read:criminal) Clinton administration. Instead of doing the Clinton 1-2-3, and refusing to do anything, Bush asked then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to find a counsel. Pat Fitzgerald, who was the US Attorney for Chicago, was named to lead the investigation on 30 December 2003.
Fitzgerald's purview is to investigate whether a crime was committed. Now, the act which covers this kind of information is called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, located at 50 USC [United States Code] 421, et seq. The relevant portion of this law, drafted by, among others, Washington attorney and Republican Victoria Toensing, is located at 50 USC 421:
Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources
(a) Disclosure of information by persons having or having had access to classified information that identifies covert agent. Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
(b) Disclosure of information by persons who learn identity of covert agents as result of having access to classified information. Whoever, as a result of having authorized access to classified information, learns the identify of a covert agent and intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
Notice the key words: covert agent. Hmm, you ask. Was Valerie Plame a "covert agent" as defined by this law? Well, the law specifically defines someone being a "covert agent" as someone who has been undercover within the five years before their cover was blown.
Well, despite liberals and Wilson and their mentally deficient supporters, Valerie Plame was not an agent for six years before Novak outed her - and the evidence shows this most convincingly:
Rove fight escalates
A former CIA covert agent who supervised Mrs. Plame early in her career yesterday took issue with her identification as an "undercover agent," saying that she worked for more than five years at the agency's headquarters in Langley and that most of her neighbors and friends knew that she was a CIA employee. "She made no bones about the fact that she was an agency employee and her husband was a diplomat," Fred Rustmann, a covert agent from 1966 to 1990, told The Washington Times.
"Her neighbors knew this, her friends knew this, his friends knew this. A lot of blame could be put on to central cover staff and the agency because they weren't minding the store here. ... The agency never changed her cover status."
Mr. Rustmann, who spent 20 of his 24 years in the agency under "nonofficial cover" -- also known as a NOC, the same status as the wife of Mr. Wilson -- also said that she worked under extremely light cover.
In addition, Mrs. Plame hadn't been out as an NOC since 1997, when she returned from her last assignment, married Mr. Wilson and had twins, USA Today reported yesterday.
The distinction matters because a law that forbids disclosing the name of undercover CIA operatives applies to agents that had been on overseas assignment "within the last five years."
"She was home for such a long time, she went to work every day at Langley, she was in an analytical type job, she was married to a high-profile diplomat with two kids," Mr. Rustmann said. "Most people who knew Valerie and her husband, I think, would have thought that she was an overt CIA employee."
So, according to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, Rove could not have admitted a crime, because he did not out a "covert agent," as well as the fact that he never used her name. Robert Novak did - not Rove. And he could not have committed a crime, because Plame was NOT a "covert agent" as the law describes it.
Despite what we know now, at the time this story first exploded Wilson and his wife and his liberal defenders continued to insist that Plame was a covert agent - yet never offered any evidence of it. And then, after two years of claiming otherwise, Joseph Wilson made a shocking - and potentially damaging - revelation, one which the media continues to ignore: He said that his wife was not a "clandestine agent" at the time of the alleged leak:
CNN WOLF BLITZER REPORTS
BLITZER: But the other argument that's been made against you is that you've sought to capitalize on this extravaganza, having that photo shoot with your wife, who was a clandestine officer of the CIA, and that you've tried to enrich yourself writing this book and all of that.
What do you make of those accusations, which are serious accusations, as you know, that have been leveled against you?
WILSON: My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity.
BLITZER: But she hadn't been a clandestine officer for some time before that?
WILSON: That's not anything that I can talk about. And, indeed, I'll go back to what I said earlier, the CIA believed that a possible crime had been committed, and that's why they referred it to the Justice Department.
She was not a clandestine officer at the time that that article in "Vanity Fair" appeared.
So, Wilson admits Plame was not a "covert agent." As they say in tennis: game, set, match. There can be no crime because the strictures of the law covering the crime have not been met.
Fast forward to now: We all watch as "reporters" (we should call them "alleged reporters") harass the White House to admit a crime has been committed - or they tell their dimwitted and unknowing audiences that a crime has definitely been committed. Downies head to microphones to demand Karl Rove's resignation, or that his national security clearance be pulled. Seeing how the White House media is reacting to this kind of bullshit story, you would think that their bosses back at the office would be backing them up - giving them a "Hey, yeah, we got another Watergate! Keep investigating!" But no! Instead, they send liberal reporters to salivate over a story with no legs, and then tell a court the opposite - that no crime was committed in the "Plame Affair" and that the whole thing is, well, bullshit:
In Re: Grand Jury Subpoena, Judith Miller, No. 04-3138; In Re: Grand Jury Subpoena, Matthew Cooper, No. 04-3139
"In this case, there exists ample evidence on the public record to cast serious doubts as to whether a crime has been committed under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (the "Act") in the investigation underlying the attempts to secure testimony from Miller and Cooper."
Who is behind this amicus curae ("friend of the court") brief? No less than ABC, FoxNews, Reuters, Bloomberg, the AP, CNN, CBS News, Cox Newspapers, and the Washington Post - just to name a few. Check out the whole filing - and read the utter hypocrisy of the whole situation.
So, to sum up this sorry story: Joseph Wilson IV lied to get his cushy assignment to Niger, he lied about what he saw there, Karl Rove never used his wife's name or that she had been a CIA operative, and the facts show that and nothing more.
The MSM's response? More bullshit, more lies, and the attempted reinstatement of Joseph Wilson, a proven liar.
It is no wonder that as this nation is in a death grip with Islamic terrorism world-wide, the American media is focused on whether Karl Rove should be fired.
Pathetic. Simply pathetic.
