Archive for the 'Plame Scandal' Category

According to former White House spokesman Scott McClellan, the White House is still covering up top Bush officials’ roles in the Valerie Wilson case:

“This White House promised or assured the American people that at some point when this was behind us they would talk publicly about it,” he said. “And they have refused to.

“And that’s why I think more than any other reason we are here today and the suspicion still remains,” McClellan told the panel.

Didn’t we once impeach a president for lying about sex? So what do we do with a president who lies about betraying an undercover CIA agent? Hang him?

Back when the identity of undercover agent Valerie Wilson (AKA Valerie Plame) was exposed, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan assured the American people that Bush officials had nothing to do with it. In his new book, McClellan confirms that he was duped:

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Dick Cheney (L) and Carl Rove laugh as Judge John D. Bates rules that they cannot be sued for the professional lynching of a an undercover CIA officer

From the Washington Post:

A federal judge today dismissed a lawsuit filed by former CIA officer Valerie Plame and her husband against Vice President Cheney and top administration officials over the disclosure of Plame’s name and covert status to the media.

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates said that Cheney and White House aides cannot be held liable for the disclosure of information about Plame in the summer of 2003 while they were trying to rebut criticism of the administration’s war efforts levied by her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. The judge said such efforts were certainly part of the officials’ scope of normal duties.

“The alleged tortious conduct, namely the disclosure of Mrs. Wilson’s status as a covert operative, was incidental to the kind of conduct that defendants were employed to perform,” Bates wrote in an opinion released this afternoon.

There you have it: exposing an undercover CIA officer and ruining a woman’s career because her husband criticized the president. Just a normal day’s work in the Bush White House.

Bush lets us know what he thinks of the idea that no man is above the law (image via sgo of Liberal Avenger)

It’s official: Scooter Libby will spend no time in prison. Convicted for perjury and obstruction of justice and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison, Libby’s petition to remain free while his case was under appeal was denied. But then President Bush commuted his sentence.

Last February, when Scooter Libby declined to call Vice President Cheney as a witness at his trial, I said that Libby would definitely be pardoned if he was convicted. Libby had demonstrably lied to a grand jury about his involvement in leaking the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Wilson (AKA Valerie Plame), and he had only three realistic chances of avoiding prison:

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Dick Cheney isn’t going to be happy about this latest development

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has now produced internal White House documents that demonstrate the obvious: Valerie Wilson was a covert CIA agent when her identity was leaked to reporters by White House officials:

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Former CIA Officer Valerie Plame

Former CIA officer Valerie Plame testified today about the exposure of her identity by officials within the White House. Here is a rush transcript by Raw Story.

Also, Brad Blog has a chart detailing which White House officials leaked her identity to which journalists.

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For information on the issue of whether or not Plame qualified as a “Covert Operative” see this report in US News:

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Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former Chief of Staff for Vice President Cheney, was convicted today of two counts of perjury, one count of giving a false statement to the FBI, and one count of obstruction of justice (verdict). Legal experts anticipate a sentence of eighteen months to three years in prison.

The jury found that Libby lied repeatedly under oath during the investigation into the exposure of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame. It is widely assumed that Plame was exposed deliberately, as part of an attempt to discredit and punish her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson. During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Wilson questioned the administration’s evidence that Iraq was pursuing nuclear weapons.

Dan Balz of the Washington Post sees the verdict as a major blow to the Bush administration:

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Armitage wasn’t as innocent as he pretended to be

I can’t say that I’m surprised by the revelation that Dick Armitage has been lying about his role in the Plame affair. According to Armitage, he accidently revealed CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity during a chat with journalist Robert Novak.

Many outlets, including the Washington Post, decided that Armitage’s account cleared the Bush Administration of wrongdoing in the case. After all, if Plame’s identity was first revealed by mistake, who could fault the White House?

Of course, the Post’s take on the matter was absurd. Even if Plame’s identity had been revealed by mistake, that wouldn’t excuse the conduct of Lewis Libby and Karl Rove, the White House officials who called several reporters to tell them that Plame was a CIA agent and that her husband, Joe Wilson, wasn’t to be trusted when he said that the Bush administration knew that Hussein didn’t have nuclear weapons.

Now we know that Plame’s identity wasn’t revealed by mistake, but as part of an effort to discredit Joe Wilson. The fact that Armitage was in on the conspiracy in no way absolves the Bush administration. Like Dick Cheney and Lewis Libby, Armitage was a high-level administration official. And like Cheney and Libby, Armitage had argued for military action against Iraq back in the 1990s, when they were all members of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC).

How do we know that Armitage is lying? Because Robert Novak, the reporter who Armitage spoke to about Plame, tells us so:

Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he had heard and that he ”thought” might be so. Rather, he identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked, and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former Ambasador Joseph Wilson.

Second, Armitage did not slip me this information as idle chitchat, as he now suggests. He made clear he considered it especially suited for my column.

I trust Novak over Armitage for four reasons:

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Truthout won’t back off erroneous story
It appears that Marc Ash, editor of truthout.com, is unwilling to concede that his reporter erred or acted unethically when he reported that White House aide Karl Rove would be indicted:

“We’re suffering from hysteria here,” Ash said of the reaction to the mainstream press accounts which appear to contradict Leopold’s reporting. “And I don’t find that attractive and I don’t find it in the best interests of our readers. We are expressly endeavoring to mitigate hysteria,” said Ash.

The controversy generated by the story can only be characterized as “hysteria” if one assumes that that the story was accurate. Even then, it’s a stretch. There was virtually no coverage in the mainstream media of the initial story, and there’s been little coverage of the controversy itself.

The original story reported by Jason Leopold on May 12 was that Rove’s indictment was already drawn up, and that it would be formally announced on Monday, May 15. No indictment was issued, and a month later Robert Luskin, Rove’s lawyer, announced that Rove was no longer a target of the investigation of the Plame leak case.

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Presidential advisor Karl Rove will not be charged for leaking the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame to the press. Plame was an undercover CIA agent when her husband published an Op-Ed in the New York Times that questioned Bush administration assertions concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Two days later, her identity was made known to several journalists.

Many have speculated that Rove and Cheney advisor Lewis Libby were the administration officials who directly contacted the journalists. Libby has been charged with lying to prosecutors and obstruction of justice.

And let’s not forget the allegation that Rove would definitely be charged, a charge made a month ago by unreliable reporter Jason Leopold of truthout.org. As far as I know, this allegation has yet to be withdrawn by truthout.com.

(via Rachel Maddow)

(cross posted at Liberal Avenger)