In Saturday’s NYT article by Judy Miller in which she described her grand jury testimony, Miller revealed that her notes included references to “Valerie Flame” and “Victoria Wilson”. That peaked my interest as I wondered who else might have been provided with an inaccurate name in the case of Valerie Plame (if, indeed, it is inaccurate).
A Google search shows that, in 2003, numerous articles and blog posts referred to “Victoria Plame”. Some of these refer to that version of the name being used in an October, 2003 Newsweek article The Plame Game by Howard Fineman. It appears that the original article has now been revised.
An October 5, 2003 post at Whiskey Bar quotes the Fineman article:
I’ll stipulate that it is a felony to disclose the name of an undercover CIA operative who has been posted overseas in recent years. That’s what the statute says. But the now infamous outing of Victoria Plame isn’t primarily an issue of law. It’s about a lot of other things, like: the ongoing war between the CIA and the vice president’s office.
The Wayback Machine provides this cached version of the original Newsweek story.
more…
Sidebar: As of October, 2005, the name “Victoria Plame” is still being used by some outlets.
Note: I have contacted Joe Wilson via his publisher, Carrol and Graf, to see if they can help unravel the mystery of “Victoria Plame” for us. In the meantime, those interested in Joe Wilson’s chronology and opinions about what happened can read the preface to his book, The Politics of Truth online here.
Is this all much ado about nothing or does Judy Miller know more than she’s letting on? Was Valerie Plame known by some as “Victoria”? This looks like a job for the blogging sleuths.
(This posting was the result of a collaborative effort between jpol, SusanHu, Booman and myself. Thanks guys!)
If someone has access to Lexis-Nexus, can you please track the earliest appearance of the name Victoria Plame? Thanks.
good work Catnip. October 2003 is an awfully long time after the leak for people to be screwing up her name. Let’s go back look at David Corn’s article two days after Novak’s.
It’s all very odd unless Victoria is a nickname for Valerie. Joe Wilson doesn’t refer to her as Victoria, so this is perplexing.
Glad to see that this ‘misnaming’ appears to be more than just odd to other people. Don’t know why but when I had read that I kept thinking about that misname also and kept thinking that there was some reason for it than just getting name wrong. I have no idea what it may mean but it is really bugging me.
it’s a Freudian slip..due to a repressed sexual perversion, brought on by excessive cool-aid consumption and covert musings with Victoria ‘s Secret catalogs…if they’re not careful, they’ll go blind…:{)
Peace
I’ve also e-mailed Howard Fineman to ask why he originally used the name “Victoria” as well.
I heard Bennett say this morning that Miller is a Witness in the case. Does this mean that she is free and clear. I am obsessed with Judy Miller being indicted for conspiracy and cover up. For someone who wrote for the NYTimes and didn’t even write an article in regards to this whole mess she certainly was in the middle of it. Jail Judy is my mission.
Keep your champagne on ice. This isn’t over yet.
I agree Cham1..ever since I knew Miller was so ‘close’ to Chalabi I have figured she was a neocon parading as a reporter(and not a good reporter in the real sense of the word at that-screw her Pulitzer anyway).
Glad you are on board with my “Jail Judy Mission” Choco Sp Ink..you and I go way back here at Booman trib. Sides my friendship with Catnip going way back to Dkos and her awesome blogging of live hearings..you were my first pal here at BT and I remember our talks. I also had them with Diana. Glad we are together on Bringing Judy (the Mole) down. She is one of the biggest traitors in my life time, and I know there are many more like her in the Bush Administration and our pathetic Press. I want to change my screen name here to Chilled Champ. Going into this week with my fingers crossed and by bottle chilled.
Awww thank you very much Cham for my new moniker..we did have fun way back when didn’t we.
As for neocon judy-her WMD articles fueled by Chalabi were reprehensible weren’t they and I’m certainly with you in believing she should be held responsible for shaping public opinion on going to war. As some people would say, ‘she’s lower than a snakes belly’.
I’m wondering also if she actually got paid somewhere along the line like Armstrong Williams did..wouldn’t surprise me either. And I’ll have everything crossed I can think of in the coming weeks..
I don’t think there will be a Judy money trail. However she was so close with Libby/Cheney (Rodeo and all..the idea of Judy Miller at a Rodeo is hysterical) that I am sure her payback was to be dealt with when Cheney was out of office..you know getting Judy in with Haliburton or some other of Cheney’s Money making corrupt businesses. That is when I think Judy was going to “Cash in”. To messy to do it before they leave office. Follow the money is to familiar to these crooks.
Great work, Catnip. This is journalism!
P.S. Maybe they got her mixed up with Victoria Toensing? As if.
But they probably did, at some point, consult with Toensing about her writing of the — was it 1982? — espionage act.
I figured you would have to hit the wayback machine to find it.
The library is always a good place to search for the original mistakes if the wayback machine doesn’t have them archived… But I don’t know too many people that like searching through micro-film… ACCCCCK! lol
Duncan Hunter, on Sept 20, 2005 used the name Victoria Plame as well:
If any one has a hard-copy of the original Novak column on July 14, 2003 you might want to check if he used the name “Victoria” or “Valerie.”
The versions of the 7/24/2003 Novak article I found said Valerie. It could possibly have been “fixed”, as it is not an original, but it looks like he said Valerie originally.
I just googled Victoria Plame (as I’m sure all of us have), and I came up with an Oct 3, 2003 Kevin Drum diary about Fineman’s article. I gather from skimming the comments that Fineman was one of the six journalists. Is this true?
Maybe there was a jounalist pow wow about this or maybe Rove and/or Libby are obsessed with lingerie.
1) someone at Time Magazine?
?
Didn’t Rove tell him Wilson’s wife was fair game? Or was that after the Novak column?
That’s why I need you sleuths to help me. 🙂
I also made the mistake of not hooking up Cooper’s name with Time. I was thinking Newsweek.
link
Don’t think there’s much question about Andrea Mitchell.
And what about Walter Pincus at WaPo?
Wasn’t Tweety on the list too?
Excellent work, Catnip!
By the way, Cooper is with Time, not Newsweek.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2003/10/02/leak_ed3_.php
Good one. The International Herald Tribune is an off shoot of the NYTs.
Hi all:
I went a-googling on this myself a little earlier today, trying to find the earliest “Victoria” reference.
There are two (here and here) Democratic news sites referencing a New York Times story dated July 25, 2003: “Schumer Demands FBI Investigation of Plame-Gate”. Both quote the story referring to “Wilson’s wife [Victoria Plame].”
Were the square brackets in the original NYT story? I don’t know. The link given for it is http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Schumer-Agent.html, but it doesn’t work. Weirder still, you can’t find the story in the New York Times archive. Could they have expunged it? With Judy Miller working there, I don’t know that I’d put it past them, any more.
Schumer’s own press release, that prompted the story, gives the name as Valerie, but that could have been corrected later. (How does this Wayback Machine work?)
Just my little contribution…
Sorry. I just clumsily posted the same info you have here referring to Schumer’s request below.
Shields on July 22, 2005:
Like I said – huh?
.
By Kevin Drum
October 3, 2003
NEEDED: ONLINE EDITOR….
Howard Fineman in Newsweek yesterday:
I’ll stipulate that it is a felony to disclose the name of an undercover CIA operative who has been posted overseas in recent years. That’s what the statute says. But the now infamous outing of Victoria Plame isn’t primarily an issue of law. It’s about a lot of other things….
Um, anyone notice the problem here? And it’s repeated three more times. Maybe Newsweek needs to hire Dan Weintraub’s editor.
(The story itself isn’t bad, though. I was just on the phone with my mother this morning explaining all the deep background behind the Plame affair — neocons, state vs. Defense, CIA vs. White House, etc. — and Fineman does a pretty good job of summarizing the whole thing.)
— Kevin Drum 3:37 PM
###
A quick Google search shows several incidents of the name Victoria Plame such as in the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the International Herald Tribune.So this brings up several questions.
Who is Victoria Plame?
What is her relationship, if any, to Valerie Plame?
Who knew the identity of the REAL Victoria Plame and when did they know it?
Perhaps it is Victoria Plame is the true operative and this whole thing is an attempt to throw enemies off her trail.
Perhaps Fineman was trying to tell us something, perhaps this goes much, much deeper. . .
Posted by: DP on October 3, 2003 at 4:52 PM
By Howard Fineman
NEWSWEEK Oct. 2, 2003 — Behind the scenes or openly, at war or at peace, the United States has been debating what to do in, with and about Iraq for more than 20 years. We always have been of two minds. One faction, led by the CIA and State Department, favored using secular forces in Iraq–Saddam Hussein and his Baathists–as a counterweight to even more radical elements, from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to the Shiite ayatollahs in Iran to the Palestinian terrorists in the Levant.
The other faction, including Dick Cheney and the “neo-cons,” has long held a different view: that, with their huge oil reserves and lust for power (and dreams of recreating Baghdad’s ancient role in the Arab world), the Baathists had to be permanently weakened and isolated, if not destroyed. This group cheered when, more than 20 years ago in a secret airstrike, the Israelis destroyed a nuclear reactor Saddam had been trying to build, a reactor that could have given him the ultimate WMD.
▼ ▼ ▼
When the name is wrong, and it’s wrong in the same way, it’s reasonable to assume that it came from a single source. If you can trace it back, you’ve got an investigative tool.
There is also Judy’s speculation in her piece, that she didn’t know why she had written Victoria–perhaps as a deliberate mistake to see if her source would correct her. What could this mean? It depends on the timeline. Or it could be another attempt to cover up for Libby, or someone else.
As for Freudian slips,I’d offer this: Victoria is a name more common to Cheney’s generation? Valerie is more of a baby boomer name. If you misremember a name, you might be apt to misremember it as a name you’re familiar with.
Nothing here but more questions.
The earliest reference I could find was Schumer’s letter to Robert Mueller on July 25th, 2003. This is from an article in the New York Sun. Sorry, I don’t know how to do boxes.
CALL FOR PROBE Mr. Schumer also called for an investigation by the FBI into reports that two senior Bush administration officials illegally disclosed the identity of a CIA operative.
The operative, Victoria Plame, is the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who has been in the news of late because to his criticisms of the White House’s claim of Iraq’s attempt to buy uranium from Niger.
Ms. Plame’s name was disclosed in a syndicated column by journalist Robert Novak and in Time magazine. Mr. Schumer said the leak “is one of the most reckless and nasty things I’ve seen in all my years of government.”
In a letter to the FBI director, Robert Mueller, Mr. Schumer said the leak was “part of an apparent attempt to discredit Ambassador Wilson’s findings about potential uranium exports from Niger to Iraq and intimidate other officials from speaking their minds.”
Actually I think this info is a bit different… I had a PR, you have a letter, and it has different quotes — what’s the link?
So far catnip has the earliest with Mark Shields on July 22, though.
No, catnip’s is 2005 — ours is 2003.
Mine is from an artcle written about Schumer. I can’t link to it, because it’s a lexus/nexus search. I went to the NY Sun website, but they wanted me to subscribe. Here’s search info, though, from Lexus-Nexus
Copyright 2003 The New York Sun, One SL, LLC
All Rights Reserved
The New York Sun
July 25, 2003 Friday
SECTION: NATIONAL; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 425 words
HEADLINE: New York Legislators Attack President Decision To Classify Parts of Report
So then, I went to Schumer’s website, thinking I could find it there, and found the letter which uses Valerie Plame NOT Victoria. Huh? WTF’s going on with Victoria and Valerie switcheroo happening on the same day?
This is what I figure so far:
July 12 — 3rd meeting with Libby. Miller says she writes Victoria Plame in her notebook. Also says she may have talked to others about Plame.
July 14 — Novak’s article. Uses Valerie Plame
July 25 — in a NY Sun article, Schumer refers to Victoria Wilson in his letter to Mueller. Valerie Plame now appears on Schumer’s website archives.
Oct 2003 — Fineman refers to Victoria Plame (later corrected to Valerie). This name also appears in IHT article.
I suppose it is conceivable that Fineman got it from Schumer (maybe not). But where did Schumer get it? I suppose as a U.S. Senator, he might be looking at classified information, the same info Libby might have had and given to Miller.
And then there’s all that confusion about Rove saying Novak told him the name was Victoria Plame.
Oy, I need an alka selzer.
Arghh… this should read:
in a NY Sun article, Schumer refers to Victoria Plame
No – Shields said that this year.
You guys are right, it’s 2005, pardon me.
Okay, so the earliest, unless these Dem Weekly things are misquoting, was two articles, one in the New York Times — which we apparently can’t retrieve, either from the NYT archive, or via Lexis-Nexus — and one in the New York Sun. Probably responses to the same press release, from Schumer — which reads “Valerie” now, because it was probably corrected after the fact.
This is the frustrating thing with using the Internet to try to trace back a mistake — the tracks have been erased not even by people trying to cover up, necessarily, but just editing for correctness. Though I wonder where the heck that NYT story went.
So… we know Schumer had it as “Victoria” in late July ’03, as did Newsweek in early October. And Judy Miller, of course, before the Novak column. Maybe Schumer is someone we could actually ask…
Maybe Schumer is someone we could actually ask…
That’s a good idea. Go for it.
… you can get to an email form easily enough on his website, but it’s set up just for Americans to use. I also think an American — especially someone in his state — asking would have more credibility.
Who’s up for it? I’ll write the email if you’ll provide the front 😉
One more thing: Fineman’s piece makes the same argument that Libby does to Judy. Does this provide context indicating that Libby is the source of the name for both Fineman and Judy?
I’ve been obsessively reading Judy Miller/Plamegate commentary all day.
Although I don’t remember where I saw it (probably on Huffington Post), there is good speculation that Miller wrote Victoria Wilson because she was talking to the dreaded Victoria Toensig, arch Republican spider queen, who originally authored the statute (the Inteligence Identities Protection Act) that everyone first thought would be central here, which prohibits revealing the name of an undercover operative. That sounded probable to me.
By the way, this is great commentary, Catnip.