Scooter Libby a fall guy? Vice President Cheney the puppeteer who pulled strings in order to discredit heroic, anti-war critics? Karl Rove, evil mastermind, burrowing into the dark recesses of government and spreading lies about Joe Wilson to the press? Award winning journalists rising to the bait offered by Libby, Cheney, and Rove – printing their lies while failing to do their duty and question the justification for war?
This is The Plame Narrative – or at least a large part of it. There’s more of it to be found on lefty websites who have flogged this story and defined its parameters so that any deviation from The Plame Narrative is dismissed as Administration propaganda or just more of the same from “the right wing noise machine.” The problem with other parts of The Narrative – such as the entire Joe Wilson smear job was hatched in the Oval Office and President Bush ran it like a covert operation – is that much of it is so wildly fanciful that leaving the loonier parts on the cutting room floor becomes a necessity so that the entire script isn’t discredited by rational people laughing at some of the more outrageous claims made by the netnuts in their “investigation” of what happened.
But the part of The Plame Narrative that has been set in stone from day one had to do with Joe Wilson and his trip to Niger.Tasked by the CIA to get to the bottom of Iraq’s involvement in uranium buying, Heroic Joe sipped mint tea while a parade of Niger officials paid him a visit poolside at his hotel to assure him that all was on the up and up with regards to obeying the sanctions against Iraq. Upon returning to the US, Heroic Joe wrote up a report and gave it to the CIA proving that we had no worries about Saddam getting his hands on anymore yellowcake uranium (no one has yet answered the question; “What were 500 tons of yellow cake uranium still doing at the nuclear research center of Al-Tuwaitha in Iraq when American tanks rolled into Baghdad?”) And the Genesis chapter in this narrative Bible is Mr. Wilson’s New York Times editorial on what he did and what he found out during his excellent adventure in Niger.
It is important to note that Scooter Libby was convicted of lying about conversations he had with reporters, some of which took place before the Wilson editorial appeared in the Times. So did the White House know that Wilson was going to write that editorial and were they determined to stop him?
Not exactly. You see, our Heroic Joe had been shopping his story for 6 months to various reporters. In an interview with the LA Weekly, Wilson let slip that he had been trying to leak news of his top secret trip all over Washington since the President’s 2003 State of the Union Speech:
I spoke to a number of reporters over the ensuing months. Each time they asked the White House or the State Department about it, they would feign ignorance. I became even more convinced that I was going to have to tell the story myself.
It would be natural for a source to claim ignorance if that source actually knew nothing about the subject. And what Wilson fails to mention in every speech he gives on the affair is that the CIA never forwarded anything about his Niger junket to the Vice President or anyone else in the Executive Branch. This fact raises interesting questions about the CIA and their role in this entire matter (see my good friend Clarice Feldman’s piece in today’s American Thinker for that story).
Not that it matters anymore but for the background and details of that trip, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Report on Pre-War Intelligence Assessments of Iraqi WMD (Pages 49-57) makes Mr. Wilson out to be exactly what the White House was desperately trying to tell journalists; a bald faced liar.
You see, by the time the editorial appeared on July 6, 2003, Joe Wilson knew full well that no one in the Administration had been briefed on his Niger trip. He also knew that some of the information he returned with actually confirmed (according to CIA analysts) that Saddam had made some attempts to acquire yellowcake uranium from that country in 1999. He knew that the impetus for the trip did not originate with the Vice President’s office (although Cheney did ask the CIA about the reports of uranium sales that appeared in another intelligence report) but rather with the Counterproliferation Division at the CIA. How did he know this? He was married to a woman who worked in that division.
Then there were the faked memos about Saddam’s efforts to buy uranium from Niger that Wilson bragged he had spotted as forgeries before the government did – except he didn’t see them until after the government had already dismissed them as phonies.
These are facts you’ll never see in The Narrative. Instead, The Narrative tells the story of a White House who buried Heroic Joe’s report and denied it even existed to the “lapdog” press all so that they could continue their mad dash to war. The Narrative also tells the story of Heroic Joe the whistleblower, making a nuisance of himself in official Washington, going from department to department begging people to listen to him about the Administration’s twisting his intelligence on Niger to justify going to war.
What The Narrative leaves out is the fact that Joe Wilson is a self-promoting, self aggrandizing heel whose lies have done enormous damage. What else he may be is pure speculation but there is some reason to believe that he may have been the front man for a faction at the CIA who opposed the President’s policies in Iraq and, in fact, may have interfered in the 2004 election by leaking embarrassing and damaging analyses at key points in the campaign. This is the part of The Narrative you won’t see played out on lefty blogs today as Scooter Libby gets raked over the coals and sinister intimations of a wider “plot” to discredit a proven liar are aired.
Prosecutor Fitzgerald says there will be no more indictments. It took him more than 3 years, thousands of hours of grand jury testimony, thousands of more hours of FBI interviews as well as an unknown number of hours involving interviews of the principals with his staff to come up with Libby’s 3 lies to the Feds and the grand jury. No Karl Rove being frog marched to the jailhouse. No Dick Cheney being led away from the White House in handcuffs. No President Bush being impeached (for this incident anyway). All the fantasies of the netnuts regarding the Administration and what Fitzgerald was going to uncover shown to be the illusions of obsessive paranoids whose hatred of this President and his policies has led them into a deranged mental state.
Scooter Libby was wrong to lie to the FBI. He was wrong to lie to the grand jury. His lies constituted obstruction of justice. These are serious charges and should not, under any circumstances be minimized. Despite what you may think of Patrick Fitzgerald, he was a duly appointed representative of the justice system and was justified in prosecuting Mr. Libby for his crimes (even though some prosecutors may have chosen not to). But the reality is Scooter Libby would not have been placed in a position where out of loyalty to his boss or fear for his own legal situation he felt it necessary to obscure the facts if Joe Wilson had told the truth.
Ideally, someone should hold Mr. Wilson accountable for what his lies have wrought. Instead, he is feted and celebrated as a hero. A movie is in the works about the entire affair – all the better to reinforce The Narrative in the public’s mind. And the left will continue to flog the story, positing ever more fantastic conspiracy theories while the truth – contained in two bi-partisan Congressional reports struggles to be see the light of day.
“A lie will make it halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes,” said Winston Churchill. For Joe Wilson and his allies on the left, not only have their lies circumnavigated the globe several times but they stole the truth’s footwear long ago.
UPDATE
I have also posted this article at Tom DeLay.Com. Many thanks to Aaron for inviting me to be a guest blogger.
10:18 am
Agreed, Joe Wilson is a very scummy man. Joe Wilson did NOT, however:
1. Start a preemptive war under false pretenses.
2. Attack a country that had not attacked us first.
3. Say bin-Laden, the mastermind behind 9/11, doesn’t matter to the U.S. anymore.
4. Send nincompoops to Iraq to dismantle the Iraqi military and guarantee a civil war.
5. Privatize a military action, wasting billions enriching Halliburton and others.
Well, you get the point. Prediction. Cheney will resign the vice-presidency due to “health reasons” before this year is out.
10:31 am
A thought that should give pause to even the most reactionary leftist…the possibility of veteran security establishment technocrats ham-handedly attempting to swing the outcome of a Presidential election during a time of war is the stuff of banana republic cabals, not American democracy. Leftists would do well to remember that as they continue celebrating Wilson speaking lies to power.
11:46 am
I don’t think Scooter lied. Really. The ptess never reports is but he told the FBI on the first day of the interview (and trial testimony is that they never recorded this) that his recollection w/o his notes was sketchy. He had just returned to D.C. and had had no opportunity to review his records or refresh his recollection w/ others. Nevertheless, he did have his June 12 note which revealed he’d first been told about—-the then immemorable tidbit that Mrs. wilson “worked in couter proliferation” by Cheney.
I don’t believe Russert whose first FBI interview reveals he said he didn’t recall telling Libby but that it was “possible” he had.
In any event at least the Washington Post is right about 2 things today (editorial—not reportage whivch is Godawful)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/06/AR2007030602020.html
The trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame’s identity—and no evidence that she was, in fact, covert.
1:09 pm
So the right wing noise machine is really nothing more than the effort to recover the truth’s missing shoes. Thanks, this really clears things up.
1:11 pm
Thank you, Sirius, for pointing out the “may haves”. Ronald Reagan “may have” cheated on his first wife, Bill Clinton “may have” killed Vince Foster, and Walt Disney’s head “may have” been cryogenically frozen. Denigrating someone with unfounded, speculative “may haves” is beneath the standards of journalism espoused by Rick Moran. The part of the quote you provided reading, “in fact, may have” is just embarrassing. Trying to present unfounded speculation as a fact is very much in line with Bush administration rhetoric, I’ll grant that much. Come on, Rick. You are better than this.
1:18 pm
The whole thing has stunk since the get-go because of Mr. Wilson’s pompousness. And I find it very strange that people outside the INTEL Community actually believe that one can marry a high-profile Ambassador while being undercover. One actually does agree to be circumspect in their life while undercover and for 5 years afterwards while the Agency gets anyone who may be compromised by your compromise out of danger. And that really does put the lie to this entire affair. After that it is pure politics, and not even entertaining. The Fitzgerald research should have taken exactly one phone call to the head of the CIA, and the rest dismissed as the politics it is. So, on top of a pompous ex-Ambassador we get a pompous Prosecutor, and the mass of inflated egos would have set the hot-air ballooning community at ease that they would never, ever lack for a source of much hot air from mobile sources.
1:28 pm
Great post, Rick. Love the Churchill quote at the end.
This trial for a non-crime was a travesty. Scooter can’t be pardoned soon enough for me.
1:38 pm
Let me see if I have this straight: Libby would not have lied if Wilson had told the truth.
That’s rich!
1:54 pm
So if there was substantial supporting claims to refute MR. Wilson’s bald face lies, then why did they remove the 16 words?
2:24 pm
This afternoon Rush paraphrased an email he got from a federal prosecutor who thought the whole trial was bogus. According to him, the Libby trial was lost when the defense made no attempt to argue Fitzgeralds opening and closing statements where he laid out that there WAS a conspiricy (no evidence given in the trial) and Libby was the fall guy. Thus, the jurry took that as a “given”.
That is the biggest fault Republicans have: continually taking “the high road” and not fighting back and challenging the left’s distortions of the truth. To the lyrics of a ‘60’s song, “When will they ever learn?....”
3:12 pm
Sorry, but your spin is just totally unbelievable.
Wilson’s mission did not confirm that Saddam was seeking yellowcake. He wasn’t. One minister, having been conctacted by the Iraqis for a meeting, speculated that they were intersted in yellowcake. Thats it. Thats the sum total of the confirmation. The meeting then took place. Yellowcake was never raised. No further meeting took place. The initial speculation was unfounded. And yet, you consider this a confirmation?
The impetus for the trip most certainly originated in the VP’s office. Not to the detail of “send Joe Wilson there” or even, “send someone there” , but certainly at the level of “go get to the bottom of this”. Getting to the bottom of it rather obviously entailed talking to the relevatn people over there.
Joe Wilson may be a self-aggrandizing heel, but in that he is no different from most people in washington, and most bloggers for that matter. And, just like is standard practice with you rightwingers, you have flooded the field with hundreds of charges against him, most of which turn out to be unfounded, or gross distortions. We saw it for eight years with the Clinton “scandals”, with the Swift Boat clowns, and now here again. You people seem not to understand that your own credibility is infinitly worse than Wilson’s. So more story telling doesnt help your case much – what you need to start doing is rebuliding your own credibility.
Your claims about Joe Wilson being the cause of all this, becuase he “lied” is absurd. He told the truth. He went to Africa to check out a story. He reported back that nothing was going on. He was right. Nothing was going on. Yet, Bush went ahead and used the supposed Africa connection as another piece of evidence for a false case of WMD threat. And that was in service to an argument for war.
Wilson was totally justified in making this public. If the Bush administration had a reasonable explanation – that they hadnt gotten Wilson’s report, or they didnt believe Wilson or any other legitimate reason, they had plenty of opportunity to make such a case. But instead, in classic Rovian-GOP fashion, they decided to mount a personal attack on the character of the messenger. One that you continue to this day.
It isn’t surprising that y’all dont get much traction outside the nuthouse, and that the general impression is that y’all really are sleaze balls with something to hide.
3:23 pm
It is interesting that Clarice can find comfort only in the most incoherent of arguments. Believe it or not, both of these quotes are from the same pen – in the same article:
“The trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame’s identity”
“But abundant testimony at his trial showed that he had found out about Ms. Plame from official sources and was dedicated to discrediting her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.”
3:58 pm
Libby is guilty and for conservatives to complain, they are hypocrites. The rule of law is our strongest principle. Next time the left says it was a lie about sex, ask them to tell that to Paula Jones. The moonbats were right pre-Fitzmas, he was investigating pre-war intelligence. The line of questioning truly violated Executive Privilege. Democrats have access to internal deliberations that they could never have gotten on their own. I don’t have a problem with Special Prosecutors, I would like questioning be done in front of a judge with a Privilege council present to object to particular lines of questioning. I don’t know why Democrats would object, don’t they want judges to approve FISA warrants?
4:26 pm
After this and the Martha Stewart verdict, why would anyone answer even a single question to the FBI, a prosecutor, or a Grand Jury? If they asked me questions I would immediately have no comment, talk to my lawyer, or plead the 5th. No matter what the case or questions.
4:32 pm
Ed,
Are you suggesting journalists never speculate?
My point was that it may not be wise to turn a blind eye when bureaucrats (or journalists) assume the prerogative of formulating and implementing foreign policy as though they were elected officials.
4:46 pm
Tano,
You make a good point. I think it is time that we put the rubber to the road. I will ask every Democrat Presidential candidate and congress person if they would exclusively rely upon Joe Wilson’s trip as the only information required to develop US security policy. As absurd as that is, that IS what the Wilson apologists are doing to discredit the Administration. One thing for sure, Wilson will never process his civil suit; he and Val don’t want to be deposed.
5:04 pm
You cross-posted this at tomdelay.com? Of all the ironies…
5:55 pm
A thought that should give pause to even the most reactionary leftist…the possibility of veteran security establishment technocrats ham-handedly attempting to swing the outcome of a Presidential election during a time of war is the stuff of banana republic cabals, not American democracy.
Slandering the CIA as a cabal that is are willing to risk the security of this nation just to embarrass Bush is as fact-free and despicable as any of the slanders aimed at our military by the radical leftists.
If you are going to slander hard-working Americans, who are as integral to this country’s defense as the army or navy, don’t pretend to be a patriot while you do it – You occupy the same moral plane as the people who spit on soldiers.
6:04 pm
Tano,
You give your version of the events. You are wrong. There is plenty that Rick and others have proven to show Joe Wilson was a liar and things happened as Rick and others have laid out. Just because you wish this to be story-telling and false, face it Tano, you have nothing but lies to base your beliefs on. I love it when you lefties come on here because I get to laugh more at your frustrated attempts at spin.
Face it Tano, Rick has done circles around you and exposed you for your intellectual sophmorism.
Keep reading Rick though. You will definately learn something. You might one day see the truth when you get over your bitterness.
7:57 pm
Great post!
You are mixing your quotes up though. Churchill said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
“A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” – This quote has been attributed to Mark Twain, but it has never been verified as originating with Twain. This quote may have originated with Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-92) who attributed it to an old proverb in a sermon delivered on Sunday morning, April 1, 1855. Spurgeon was a celebrated English fundamentalist Baptist preacher. His words were: “A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.”
8:55 pm
The jails will be full of the bushcos soon. oh how sweeet it is!
9:15 pm
Fritz,
What kind of silliness is that? Who ever said anything about using Joe Wilson’s testimony exclusivly?
There was also a Marine general, based in Europe, who went to track down the yellowcake story and found the same thing as Wilson.
And of course, the original charges were based on forged documents.
9:36 pm
“1. Start a preemptive war under false pretenses.”
“False pretense” is redundant, I’m getting sick of people using it. A pretense is, by definition, false.
10:03 pm
MSNBC: Bush Says Libby Verdict Should Be Respected
Translation: Looks like Bush will be pardoning Libby after all.
10:42 pm
no evidence that she was, in fact, covert.
No evidence that is made publicly available – because if that kind of evidence was in the public domain the agents in question wouldn’t remain “covert” for very long because suspcious foreign governments could use these same sources to discover if some suspected American is an agent of ours The US government will neither confirm nor deny ANY claims about almost ANY suspected agents status as a covert agent for the same reason they won’t confirm or deny if ANY given warship has the capability to launch nuclear missiles – any firm admission or denial discloses information to potential adversaries. Its really sad how so many people have no problem understanding this concept when it is used to justify refusing to answer questions regarding terrorist surveillance programs, only to completely “forget” when it is their ox that is gored.
This is the same bullshit Kennedy pulled with the “missle gap” lie – he knew it was bullshit but that Eisenhower & Nixon couldn’t prove it was a lie without comprimising the existence of the U2 and the overflights of the USSR. Eisenhower knew that even a statement like “its a lie but we cant tell you how we know” could raises Soviet suspicion that they had an information “leak” and potentially comprimise the whole thing. Thankfully, Eisenhower and his administration cared more about the national security of this country than about politics and refuting a pack of bald-faced lies (which were more egregious and cynical than anything credited to Joe Wilson).
This administration, however, saw some 2-bit pompous gasbag, whose allegations were relatively weak at best, as an unignorable threat that demanded refutation. Even then, the only refutation they really needed was to point out the fact that he was only one man, with limited access to info, whose investigation mainly consisted in conducting voluntary interviews with Nigerian officials who themselves may not have known, or cared to tell him, the whole truth.
Frankly, I remember being thoroughly unimpressed with the “conclusions” of his op-ed for the afore-mentioned reasons and certainly didn’t see them as proof that Bush ‘misled’ us into war (because they weren’t). I knew the Dems would pounce on it but, since it wasn’t really a “smoking gun”, I felt it would soon fade away and wouldn’t lead anywhere.
Instead I became increasingly amazed as I saw the response to these minor allegations become progressively more unhinged and divorced fromboth common sense and reality . From the “outing” of a covert agent, to ridiculous claims that the CIA was a nest of traitors who were willing to sabotage the security of the nation they swore to protect simply to embarass Bush, to Kennedy-style allegations that she wasn’t really covert and demands for proof to the contrary which obviously cannot be supplied without risking sources and methods , to snide comments that displayed both abyssmal ignorance of real-world intelligence operations and a callous disregard for the lives of the foreigners who are on OUR side (“Even if she was covert, its not like she was a James Bond superspy, so how much harm could her outing have really done anyway?”. The reality is that most CIA ‘covert agents’ dont sneak around in the dark*, but rather travel “openly” under false pretenses. Her cover was an employee of a fake company doing legitimate business in Iran . Once her cover was blown any Iranian seen meeting with her in public, or known to have done business with her “company”, is immediately placed under suspicion of being an American agent).
Finally, I watched as it was all rationalized by the idea (repeated by Bruce above) that we must, above all, stop “continually taking “the high road†and not fighting back and challenging the left’s distortions of the truth” ... an idea which has now been taken so far that even breaches of national security are (despite obligitory denials) openly justified as needed to “stop the left”. “Nothing improper was done….but even if it had been it would have been justified because her husband is a leftist asshole and a liar ” wink
None of this should have been necessary to respond to a clown like Wilson. If they had played it cool this would be over by now, but they flipped the hell out and started this chain of events. They have no one to blame but themselves, and I don’t understand how otherwise smart individuals can fall for these lame-ass “points” and excuses.
*Covert and Clandestine are two different things. “Clandestine” activities derive their security from not being detected – but if detected are recognisable for what they are. “Covert”, on the other hand, refers to activities which are done openly but under false pretenses. A night-time raid into Iranian territory by a military unit wearing US uniforms is “clandestine”. A spy who travels openly on a commercial flight to Iran under the pretense of doing business there, is “covert”. Obviously something can be both clandestine and covert, but an agent can be “covert” and still be “high profile” in his assumed persona.
10:57 pm
Wow the righties got their underwear in a bunch over this one,if Libby committed no wrongdoing why did he lie to the grand jury? You lie to cover something up. He lied 9 different times, that how many witnesses refuted his grand jury testimony. Not once, NINE TIMES! Do you think a light bulb might have gone off in the jurors mind after that? This thing was open and shut. Oh poor me was so overworked I forgot all nine times about something my boss was insane about. Good one. To this corrupt Bush adminastration: the walls are crumbling down.Cheney should resign but he won’t, he’s a whore for power. Keep slaughtering our troops in Iraq dick, your five deferalls proved you were a coward to fight for your country, but you can sure send other men off to die in a quagmire,nice job.
9:13 am
r4d20,
You made two mistakes in your response…
1) You assumed I was referring the CIA specifically, which I wasn’t. I was referring to individuals working within the security establishment who think it’s their privilege – by virtue of their morally superior political orientation, apparently – to play politics. Check it out for yourself – Plame and Wilson never were disinterested parties in this so-called scandal. Both of them were/are active in Democratic party politics and generous contributors.
2) You assumed that everyone who works in the security astablishment are all dyed-in-the-wool patriots. While I can accept the notion that most people who work for such agencies are motivated by factors other than mere necessity, the most egregious acts of treason also tend to be committed by members of the IC, which makes sense due to the nature of the business. Do the names Robert Hansen or Aldrich Ames ring a bell?
10:08 am
Shawn:
From Dictionary.com’s definition of pretense:
9. any allegation or claim: to obtain money under false pretenses.
The dictionary’s example includes “false pretense!” If you want to get your panties in a wad, at least know what you are talking about.
4:07 pm
I’ve never understood why Joe Wilson’s honesty, or lack thereof, matters in this case. The controversy as I understand it is about the administration supposedly outing his wife as an undercover agent in an effort to either exact revenge or undermine his credibility. Suppose she was undercover and revealing her really did harm the country’s intelligence efforts. Would that be a greater crime if Wilson had been telling the truth?
This whole line of argument seems to me to be a deflection strategy, or an indirect ad-hominem:
A. Lefties believe Joe Wilson is a cool guy
B. Lefties believe that the outing of an undercover agent for political purposes is a crime
C. Joe Wilson is a jerk, therefore lefties are wrong about A, therefore they must also be wrong about B.
What am I missing here?
4:39 pm
I’m just glad this whole thing is over – for now. Hopefully it will die out soon because, frankly, I’m sick of hearing about it. Libby either lied or he is among the dumbest people on the planet. He’ll have two years of appealing until he gets his pardon, then he can make some money on a book deal and retire in the Caribbean.
7:39 pm
Sirius Familiaris Said:
Do the names Robert Hansen or Aldrich Ames ring a bell?
Yup. They “by virtue of their morally superior political orientation” betrayed their nation.
Rick Moran said:
no one has yet answered the question; “What were 500 tons of yellow cake uranium still doing at the nuclear research center of Al-Tuwaitha in Iraq when American tanks rolled into Baghdad?â€
Sitting on the ground. Where everyone knew it was.
9:11 pm
“The dictionary’s example includes “false pretense!†If you want to get your panties in a wad, at least know what you are talking about.”
Check the first six DEFINITIONS of the word on there (dictionary.com). The definitions all contain the word “false” (one says “make-believe”).
Unlike most people who mouth off on the internet, I always know what I’m talking about.