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shawa
CNO
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 2004
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 Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 4:51 pm Post subject: Armitage-The Man Who Said Too Much |
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My estimation of Colin Powell has sunk to a new low. He was informed on Oct. 1, 2003 by Armitage that he was Novak's source, but they let the White House take the smear.
| Quote: | The Man Who Said Too Much
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
Updated: 1 hour, 52 minutes ago
Sept. 4, 2006 issue
In the early morning of Oct. 1, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell received an urgent phone call from his No. 2 at the State Department. Richard Armitage was clearly agitated. As recounted in a new book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," Armitage had been at home reading the newspaper and had come across a column by journalist Robert Novak. Months earlier, Novak had caused a huge stir when he revealed that Valerie Plame, wife of Iraq-war critic Joseph Wilson, was a CIA officer. Ever since, Washington had been trying to find out who leaked the information to Novak. The columnist himself had kept quiet. But now, in a second column, Novak provided a tantalizing clue: his primary source, he wrote, was a "senior administration official" who was "not a partisan gunslinger." Armitage was shaken. After reading the column, he knew immediately who the leaker was. On the phone with Powell that morning, Armitage was "in deep distress," says a source directly familiar with the conversation who asked not to be identified because of legal sensitivities. "I'm sure he's talking about me." |
Story continues at Newsweek
_________________
“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” (Thomas Paine, 1776) |
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shawa
CNO
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 2004
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| Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 4:14 am Post subject: |
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I'm glad to see someone as outraged as I am.
I know Powell and Armitage disliked Cheney, but remaining silent was unconcionable!!
Powell should have issued a statement that a member of his State Department inappropriately revealed Wilson's wife, NOT someone in the Whitehouse (Cheney) retaliating against Wilson.
POOR LIBBY!!!
| Quote: | Spikey dumps Armitage and Plame
James Lewis 8 28 06
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we do practice to deceive,” Sir Walter Scott wrote. Newsweek’s Michael “Spikey” Isikoff has just decided to dump leakey old Richard “Dick” Armitage, who squealed on Valerie Plame, who blamed George W. Bush, who was stabbed in the back by Armitage’s ole’ buddy Colin Powell, who sat back while the Media Party spread the lie that Veep Cheney was retaliating against Joe Wilson, who lied on the NYT Op-Ed Page about his trip to Niger to find out about Saddam’s yellowcake pursuit—- which, oddly enough, was not a lie, as Christopher Hitchens has just clearly proven.
Got that? Confused?
You should be outraged, because an innocent man has been railroaded by the Media-Colin Powell Gang. The innocent man’s name is Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, and he was the Vice President’s Chief of Staff before he was framed by the upper levels of the CIA, represented by Valerie Plame and her unspeakable hubbie Joe. Lewis Libby is now in the dock and stands to lose his career, his good name and his freedom for ten years.
American justice has been deeply corrupted with the connivance of the media—- including Judith Miller of the New York TImes, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek and David Corn of The Nation, the leftwing rag that somehow seems to have remarkably intimate connections to our “mainstream” rags. Objective news reporter Isikoff and leftwing ranter Corn are now pushing a book on the whole mess, and to promote it they are hanging Dick Armitage.
Michael Isikoff earned the sobriquet “Spikey” when Lucianne Goldberg found out that Isikoff’s story on Monica Lewinsky was “spiked” by his bosses at Newsweek. Fortunately The Drudge Report took over from Spikey, and now Monica is world-famous, and her name immortalized as a euphemism. Another year, another scandal. Ever since Monica outed Bill, disgracing a Democrat Administration, Spikey has been trying to recover his leftwing street cred.
Evidently Spikey and David Corn were in on the secret together—- otherwise they would not be trying to squeeze the last dollar out of their forthcoming book right now. In the process, they rip the covers off the whole affair, leaving Armitage finally exposed as the saboteur who shafted Veep Cheney and the entire administration in a time of Jihad War. What a crew, what a crew.
As AT’s legal expert Clarice Feldman points out, “Armitage’s silence was inexplicable and perfidious.” Armitage could have told the truth, and protected the Administration from years of false accusations by a venal press, constantly fed by the upper-level CIA. Armitage chose not to tell the truth, even to the Special Prosecutor. Firing is too good for this character. He should be prosecuted.
But look what we suddenly know:
1. Lewis Libby is innocent.
2. Spikey is in cahoots with the hard-left Nation and David Corn.
3. The mainstream media have conspired to sabotage and frame Vice President Cheney and President Bush in ways that cannot possibly be protected by the First Amendment—- unless criminal conduct is protected by the US Constitution.
4. Armitage and his good friend Colin Powell were at least tacit participants in the massive public assault on the Bush Administration.
5. Patrick Fitzgerald, who seems to be a creature of the media only, must now take these new media revelations and prosecute the guilty parties—- not the innocent. And none of the conspirators must be left out: Not Armitage, who betrayed his country for the sake of revenge, nor Spikey and Dave, who both knew what was going on all along and connived to promote a blatant miscarriage of justice. and possibly not even Colin Powell, who was probably kept in the loop by his good buddy Dick.
James Lewis 8 28 06
http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=5956 |
_________________
“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” (Thomas Paine, 1776) |
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Navy_Navy_Navy
Admin
Joined: 07 May 2004
Posts: 5777
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| Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 5:23 am Post subject: |
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I was really shocked about this. I thought the guy practically walked on water.
What a slimy thing to do to all of us who trusted him and to the whole country.
We've been enduring this freakin' non-episode for almost four years now and it all could have been cleared up in five minutes by Armitage or Powell?
And to think that I was hoping he'd run for President!
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~ Echo Juliet ~
Altering course to starboard - On Fire, Keep Clear
Navy woman, Navy wife, Navy mother |
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LewWaters
Admin
Joined: 18 May 2004
Posts: 4042
Location: Washington State
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| Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 6:04 am Post subject: |
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Apparently, his self worth and popularity went to his head. I noticed a while back that he seemed to feel he should be running things instead of Bush, but he declined any offer of running for President.
Even as a General, used to running things and having his own way, he knows, having come up through the ranks, that he was subordinate now. If he couldn't handle it, he shouldn't have accepted the position of Sec. of State.
Like others, I too lost a lot of admiration for him and this latest revelation does nothng to change my mind. To me, it places him right alongside of McPain.
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Clark County Conservative |
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kate
Admin
Joined: 14 May 2004
Posts: 1891
Location: Upstate, New York
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| Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 6:37 am Post subject: |
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Unconscionable indeed
and no surprise at all re Powell
Thinking back to when the story was news of the day, and hints that State was a leaking sieve. The media had been protecting someone, and Powell / Armitage were highly suspect....especially due to bad blood between Powell & Bush.
So much for their oath....
disgusting
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shawa
CNO
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 2004
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| Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 11:04 pm Post subject: |
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Well said from Blackfive: (bold emphasis mine)
| Quote: | Lost in all the excitement over Jon Benet and Katrina flagellation could be one of the most pernicious acts of political backstabbing in a generation. It occurred to me this morning that the Plame kerfluffle may very well have been a kind of conspiracy-or at least a little payback from one Cabinet member to his President.
It is clear that Richard Armitage did not deliberately tell Robert Novak about Plame's status as a CIA employee in an effort to destroy Joe Wilson's credibility, but it is likely that once the information got into the political bloodstream as a story damaging to President Bush, he intentionally did nothing that may have helped explain the situation. Armitage is well known as someone who is not a "political gunslinger" in Novak's parlance, but he was also a well known opponent of the Iraq War. So was his boss-Colin Powell.
Powell of "you break it, you buy it" fame with respect to Iraq was convinced by the President and ostensibly US Intelligence information that Iraq did have WMD notably made the case for war in a speech to the UN. As a man of stature (or who believes he is of stature in any case) I doubt he would have made that case at the UN just because the President said so-in the absence of credible evidence. But perhaps he did do the speech over his own objections-and when he felt burned, he decided to get some payback.
The first major objections to what was initially a popular war arose with Joe Wilson's infamous op-ed in the NY Times. The media-still shellshocked by 9/11-was looking for an excuse to turn on a Republican President and war and took Wilson's ball and ran with it. Then the Plame allegations dropped into their laps and they finally had something to sink their teeth into.
Armitage had inadvertantly been the progenitor of a big story that was hurting the President and discrediting a war that he didn't support-so he sat on it. From recent reports we know that he told a few fellow State Department colleagues that he was the leaker so it seems logical that he mentioned it to Colin Powell at some point as well. This morning's Washington Post confirms that Armitage told Powell.
While Armitage and Powell were busy enjoying their just desserts, the nation began to turn against the war and our troops. And they said nothing. Fitzgerald continued with the case knowing that there was no intentional disclosure of a secret agent. And they said nothing. A reporter went to jail to protect a source. And they said nothing. Scooter Libby was indicted. And they said nothing. WMDs were found in Iraq. And they said nothing.
If this had been done by a Democrat it could reasonably be described as another liberal putting politics ahead of the country and allowing people's lives to be ruined to get back at an opposition President.
What do you call it when members of the President's own Cabinet do it?
Posted by Froggy on August 29, 2006 |
_________________
“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” (Thomas Paine, 1776) |
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GenrXr
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 1720
Location: Houston
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| Posted: Wed Aug 30, 2006 2:17 am Post subject: |
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Hitchens contributes,
| Quote: | | I had a feeling that I might slightly regret the title ("Case Closed") of my July 25 column on the Niger uranium story. I have now presented thousands of words of evidence and argument to the effect that, yes, the Saddam Hussein regime did send an important Iraqi nuclear diplomat to Niger in early 1999. And I have not so far received any rebuttal from any source on this crucial point of contention. But there was always another layer to the Joseph Wilson fantasy. Easy enough as it was to prove that he had completely missed the West African evidence that was staring him in the face, there remained the charge that his nonreport on a real threat had led to a government-sponsored vendetta against him and his wife, Valerie Plame. |
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"An activist is the person who cleans up the water, not the one claiming its dirty."
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Founder of Conservative Philosophy |
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FreeFall
LCDR
Joined: 13 Aug 2004
Posts: 421
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ocsparky101
PO1
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 479
Location: Allen Park. Michigan
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| Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 8:58 am Post subject: |
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| The whole issue is still a hugh mistake made by GW. I cannot understand why GW did not clean house both in s\State and the CIA when he got into office in 2001. He should have never taken Rodney Kings advice. |
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dusty
Admiral
Joined: 27 Aug 2004
Posts: 1264
Location: East Texas
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| Posted: Fri Sep 01, 2006 2:23 am Post subject: |
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Reckon what the chances are that Fitzgerald will actually move on any of these new revelations?
Slim to none?
What are the chances that we will see any clarification of the facts as they are now known by the NYT or any other Main Stream media outlet?
Slim to none I'll bet.
Well, at least WE know.
Dusty
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Left and Wrong are the opposite of Right! |
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Schadow
Vice Admiral
Joined: 30 Sep 2004
Posts: 936
Location: Huntsville, Alabama
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| Posted: Fri Sep 01, 2006 8:26 pm Post subject: |
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The Washington Post has swallowed its hubris and places the ultimate blame where it belongs. From PowerLine, quoting the WaPo (emphasis mine):
| Quote: | | ..... Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously. |
Shall we all hold our breaths waiting for a media apology for leading "so many people" to take him seriously??
PowerLine's John Hinderaker adds:
| Quote: | | For what it's worth, I suspect that Mrs. Wilson terminated her CIA career because she and her husband had become wealthy and famous; there is no reason why she could not have continued her desk job in Langley after being mentioned in Novak's column. But the Post's conclusions are nevertheless on target. |
Schadow
EDIT: I seem to recall that the Wilsons have filed a defamation suit against all and sundry. Will there be a countersuit claiming frivolous and unwarranted false charges? I don't think I'll turn blue waiting for that, either.
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Capt, 8th U.S. Army, Korea '53 - '54 |
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Anker-Klanker
Admiral
Joined: 04 Sep 2004
Posts: 1033
Location: Richardson, TX
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| Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2006 4:06 pm Post subject: |
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It is not my intent to question any of the good comments above, BUT I've really got a feeling this is not all over yet...
There is still the really, really strange fact that MSM is still calling Plame a covert agent. As I've commented a number of times, there is no way that she was a bona fide covert agent when all this transpired since she had regularly been reporting to a CIA desk job by (figuratively, anyway) going through the front gate and door of Langley for a number of years. (Either her designation as "covert" is completely bogus, or else the CIA should be indicted for keeping her on the books as administratively covert when obviously that status had long lapsed. Yes, there are laws that dictate removal of obsolete designations and clearances.)
So why has Plame's designation as a covert agent never been challenged or revealed as the sham that it is? Without that designation this whole sham would never have happened, i.e., there'd never have been a "case" in the first place.
I can speculate about the "why" in that lingering question, but that's all it would be: speculation. In the meantime the question of her covert-ness - by never being addressed or questioned by MSM - strongly suggests (to me) that either: 1) the Bush haters are hanging on to that fiction in the hope that they can still wring something out of this for their side, or 2) there's more stink in the CIA than we've ever imagined (which the revelation of her non-covert-ness would open the door on).
I don't think it's over, yet. |
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Schadow
Vice Admiral
Joined: 30 Sep 2004
Posts: 936
Location: Huntsville, Alabama
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| Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2006 5:38 pm Post subject: |
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| Anker-Klanker wrote: | | I don't think it's over, yet. |
It should be over for the principal targets of the Left (Bush, Cheney, Rove, etc.) and the focus should shift to Armitage. But this is all a very tangled web. WikiPedia has a most thorough-going section on Plame and the degree of covertness she possessed and when. Also discusses the differences between "classified" and "covert" as applied to CIA employees.
Poor Libby, of course, has been caught up in a so-called "process" crime allegation of lying which has nothing to do with the main event. I'm sure Fitzgerald will cling to that in order to have something to show for his efforts. The President can and will take care of Libby if it comes to that.
The Wiki piece is uncharacteristically fair and balanced (and long). I would recommend a reading.
Schadow
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Capt, 8th U.S. Army, Korea '53 - '54 |
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Anker-Klanker
Admiral
Joined: 04 Sep 2004
Posts: 1033
Location: Richardson, TX
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| Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2006 8:07 pm Post subject: |
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Schadow, thanks for bringing that Wikipedia article to our/my attention. Considering the source, it is remarkably "fair." But it rambles way too much. Bottom line: A CIA agent is only covert so long as their association/employment by the CIA is not known. Once it becomes known, that person cannot be covert, by definition.
Plame may have been outed as early as 1995, but when she returned to Langley in 1997, her days of being covert were over:
| Quote: | | According to USA Today, Plame worked in the Langley, Virginia, CIA headquarters since 1997, when she returned from her last assignment, and married Joe Wilson and had her twins. |
That should be the end of the story, finis, complete, that's all folks! But the article still muddles around muddying and obfuscating the water.... Even today, in the NYT article (hat tip: Drudge) it is stated:
| Quote: | | Mr. Fitzgerald was named as a special counsel to investigate whether the leaking of Ms. Wilson’s identity as a C.I.A. officer was part of an administration effort to violate the law prohibiting the willful disclosure of undercover [i.e., covert] employees. |
Now I'll admit that the average Joe in the street doesn't understand much of the terminology being used in MSM reports: covert, undercover, classified, operative, etc. But, to me, this confusion of terms has been deliberate, and continues to this day, since the start of the whole mess. MSM reporters are pretty dumb people IMHO, but after all this time there is simply no excuse for their not having some knowledge of what those terms mean. So why do they still confuse them?
And if Plame really became non-covert in 1997, why has the CIA been so silent on the subject ever since the initial allegations were made? Wasn't it George Tenet who requested the investigation in the first place - well after 1997? If she became non-covert in 1997, as alleged in the USA Today article, then the person(s) in CIA who went along with this cover up are every bit as guilty of obstruction of justice and wasting of taxpayer's money as anyone else.
I have to believe buried in this whole pile of **** are a lot of people in State and CIA (more than just Powell and Armitage) that have yet to be exposed in this mess who have their hands dirty, and who are still constructing and maintaining smokescreens to cover up their own complicity. And, of course, good old MSM is still playing along - hoping they can gain something from it after all. |
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shawa
CNO
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 2004
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| Posted: Sun Sep 03, 2006 5:20 pm Post subject: |
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Jed Babbin brings up a glaring point which has really bothered me about Libby's trial. Early on in the discovery process, Libby's lawyers asked that the prosecution make the "referral letter" available to them. Fitzgerald said NO, and the Judge agreed. At the time, it struck me as amazing and unfair that Libby's legal team was denied the document which lays out what the 'crime' supposedly was.
| Quote: | September 03, 2006
What's in the Referral? - Jed Babbin
There is a document - maybe several versions of it - that if disclosed to the public would shed much light on the genesis of the Patrick Fitzgerald investigation of the Plame non-leak. We know, or think we know, much about Joe Wilson and his "mission" to Niger, the leak of Valerie Plame's employment apparently by then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and the fact that the Justice Department knew of Armitage's responsibility for the leak before Fitzgerald was even appointed. But we yet don't know:
• How Joe Wilson, contrary to decades of CIA policy, was sent to Niger without a security agreement requiring him to remain silent about the mission and what he found during its course;
• Why the CIA never required a written report from Wilson;
• Who - within the CIA and the State Department - crafted the mission, chose Wilson (Plame, a low-level analyst, lacked the clout to do more than recommend) and enabled him to blab about his "findings" when he got back; and
• Why did the Justice Department apparently reject the CIA's request for investigation at least twice, and why did George Tenet reportedly call to demand the investigation, and what was the basis for his demand?
Some or all of this - clearly the last point - must be contained in the demand for an investigation. Called a "criminal referral," it's the memorandum any agency can send to Justice to demand an investigation. The Plame/Wilson investigation was launched by such a referral, one that was classified at least at the "secret" level by CIA. It has never been disclosed.
The Justice Department should disclose this document forthwith. Whatever "classified" data in it will almost certainly have - long since - lost their value as secrets. Any that remain valuable can be redacted. The public should know what the basis for the investigation demand was, and why the CIA was so adamant about it. And there's one other thing.
If there are intentional misstatements in that memo, whomever signed it may be guilty of a criminal act. Maybe this is something Fitzgerald could more profitably spend his time on. No, actually, a regular US attorney should be tasked to do it. No more special prosecutors. Enough is enough. |
Real Clear Politics
_________________
“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” (Thomas Paine, 1776) |
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