| Media & Wilson Could Name Names, End Controversy |
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October 1, 2003 |
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Robert Novak's latest column sets straight all the distortions the Democrats and their willing accomplices in the press have used to blow this Mrs. Joe Wilson story up 300 times what it is. Read the story right here, or listen to me read it in the audio link below. It sounds like this Wilson guy is on a legacy quest; according to a Washington Post story saying he's obsessed with his obituary. Everything started with Novak's question: Why was a Clinton administration official with no journalistic credentials named to investigate uranium in Niger?
 Novak's report was not based upon a leak, but rather on an aside to answer this question. This was not a planned leak. No other reporters were called by some dark figure shopping a smear. But that story sounds so good that we have the outrage machine in full bore. It happened as a side-bar. What do we get? We get the "faking it outrage machine" hammering at full bore from Tom Daschle to Nancy Pelosi. The liberals need this to be Watergate, so the media wants to help them turn it into exactly that.
Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institute actually said that this is worse than Watergate because someone's life is endangered here. Pelosi gave a similar rant about the "chilling effect" this would have. Folks, Mrs. Wilson's job - and her publicly available name, Valerie Plame, which is on her husband's bio, etc. - was relevant to Novak in answering the question of why Joe Wilson was picked for this "investigation." We put that word in quotes, because by his own admission reported by Clifford May formerly of the New York Times, the "investigation" primarily consisted of Wilson sitting around slurping "sweet mint tea" in Niger.
Why doesn't the media voluntarily say what it knows? That way, the government's not forcing them to reveal their sources. The media is stoking this into a scandal. They could totally shut this down, but there's not one word to Novak to do so because they want the investigation. The effort here is to pin some illegality on Bush personally so that they can create a scandal. They think that he's had a three-year free ride where everything he said was believed, because he could always cite 9/11. Now the press is saying, "Wait a minute. We're not going to be cowed by this 9/11 business or the war on terror. We're going to demand some answers." Fine, but how about demanding answers from their own? |
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Read the Articles... |
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Headline: Columnist Novak Comments on 'Anti-Bush Furor' - Robert D. Novak
Source: CyberCastNews
Date: October 01, 2003
By: Robert Novak
I had thought I never again would write about retired diplomat Joseph Wilson's CIA-employee wife, but feel constrained to do so now that repercussions of my July 14 column have reached the front pages of major newspapers and led off network news broadcasts. My role and the role of the Bush White House have been distorted and need explanation.
The leak now under Justice Department investigation is described by former Ambassador Wilson and critics of President Bush's Iraq policy as a reprehensible effort to silence them. To protect my own integrity and credibility, I would like to stress three points. First, I did not receive a planned leak. Second, the CIA never warned me that the disclosure of Wilson's wife working at the agency would endanger her or anybody else. Third, it was not much of a secret.
The current Justice investigation stems from a routine, mandated probe of all CIA leaks, but follows weeks of agitation. Wilson, after telling me in July that he would say nothing about his wife, has made investigation of the leak his life's work -- aided by the relentless Sen. Charles Schumer of New York. These efforts cannot be separated from the massive political assault on President Bush.
This story began July 6 when Wilson went public and identified himself as the retired diplomat who had reported negatively to the CIA in 2002 on alleged Iraq efforts to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger. I was curious why a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC) was given this assignment. Wilson had become a vocal opponent of President Bush's policies in Iraq after contributing to Al Gore in the last election cycle and John Kerry in this one.
During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: "Oh, you know about it." The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue.
At the CIA, the official designated to talk to me denied that Wilson's wife had inspired his selection but said she was delegated to request his help. He asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause "difficulties" if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name. I used it in the sixth paragraph of my column because it looked like the missing explanation of an otherwise incredible choice by the CIA for its mission.
How big a secret was it? It was well known around Washington that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Republican activist Clifford May wrote Monday, in National Review Online, that he had been told of her identity by a non-government source before my column appeared and that it was common knowledge. Her name, Valerie Plame, was no secret either, appearing in Wilson's "Who's Who in America" entry.
A big question is her duties at Langley. I regret that I referred to her in my column as an "operative," a word I have lavished on hack politicians for more than 40 years. While the CIA refuses to publicly define her status, the official contact says she is "covered"-working under the guise of another agency. However, an unofficial source at the Agency says she has been an analyst, not in covert operations.
The Justice Department investigation was not requested by CIA Director George Tenet. Any leak of classified information is routinely passed by the Agency to Justice, averaging one a week. This investigative request was made in July shortly after the column was published. Reported only last weekend, the request ignited anti-Bush furor.
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