by Patrick Lang (bio below) “Another government practice with the potential for embarrassment, as the Libby case has shown, is the tendency for administration officials to selectively leak information to manipulate public...
Read Moreby Patrick Lang (bio below) “St. Patrick,” as Fitzgerald is being referred to in some quarters, pronounced on Friday that it was up to the Congress to find out if the country had gone to war in Iraq in a righteous...
Read Moreby Patrick Lang (bio below)
One of the more pathetic spectacles available in today’s media is the propensity of the tribe of journalists to interview each other about events, systems and areas of expertise of which they have only a limited grasp. I suppose that tendency is thought of among them as a sign of confidence in their role as protectors of the public good, but the truth is that the bloviations of journalists are usually sadly demonstrative of ignorance of anything but their trade.
Members of Congress, their staffs and the press are (with some exceptions) so poorly grounded in the underlying matter of their stories that they are very easily manipulated and deceived by anyone who cares to do so. The White House, the Department of Defense, the State Department, various lobbies, and just about anyone who has an assured manner and credentials can use the broadcast and print press to “project” whatever they want through the media.
When you add to that a use of the real power which the state has over the corporate media through the implicit and sometimes rather explicit threat of denial of access to people and stories and therefore a threat to the “bottom line” then it becomes child’s play to use them as ventriloquist’s dummies.
Unfortunately, the public media are not immune to similar “control” since they are dependent on public funding controlled by political appointees.
This combination of media people’s ignorance of “real life” and the ease with which they are manipulated gives a certain zany quality to the spectacle of a panel discussion in which they clearly think that they have some special insight into the march of history.
Saturday night, Time Russert moderated a panel made up of Russert, Andrea Mitchell, David Gregory and Pete Williams. In the course of this discussion the group gravely asserted that Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger was obviously a “nepotistic” fraud because Wilson’s wife worked in the staff section at CIA responsible for sending him on the trip, and that, in essence, it was his wife who had sent him on the trip.
This is clearly a White House/RNC talking point.
It was said in the panel, without contest that this trip was a “boondoggle,” implying, at least to me, that the Wilson family budget benefited from this trip through payments to Wilson for his services. In fact, Wilson was not paid for the trip.
The CIA covered his expenses, but they did not pay him a fee. This was “pro bono.” His wife “sent him” on the trip? I do not wish to denigrate Mrs. Wilson’s career attainments, but the fact is that she lacked the authority to do that. What seems to have happened is that when the issue of sending someone to Niger to investigate the uranium issue was under discussion she, at some point, pointed out that her husband, a retired career diplomat, had experience in both Iraq and Niger and might serve this purpose. Someone followed up on that hint. What a surprise!!
It was said in the panel that Wilson lied in his book and in his now famous New York Times oped piece. I have read his book, talked to him, read his op-ed, and It does not seem to me that he lied. I would accept the charge that his language was not always as precise as it might have been, but, in its essence it seems to me that his reporting was correct.
He said that the VP was responsible for his mission to Africa. Since Cheney’s question to a CIA briefer was ultimately responsible for his trip, it is reasonable that Wilson might have thought that Cheney had asked that someone should go find out if there was anything to the “yellow cake” story.
This is lying? Continued below:
Read Moreby Richard Sale, longtime intelligence reporter
(originally posted at my blog – pl)
Pat’s readers seem very upset by my reporting that Fitzgerald was to obtain more office space.
Let me try and help.
I had read Steve Clemons’ retraction before I posted my article on Pat Lang’s blog.
I had a conversation with a Department of Justice official during most of which I was made to feel like the village idiot with a talent for obvious remarks.
I asked if Fitzgerld was going to expand his operation, “The probe is going to expand, yes,” the official said. “Does this mean it willl require more staff?” I asked.
He replied, “An expansion would imply that, wouldn’t it?”
I then asked, “Is it true that you would require more office space?” “Well, of course, that would follow, wouldn’t it?” he said. I asked if it were true that Fizgerald had already signed a lease. “That would not be somethng he would do personally.” I then asked, “But it would be done by department officials?” He replied it would.
I then said, “Would I be mistaken to print that you are obtaining more office space?” He replied, “Well, logically that would follow, wouldn’t it?”
If what I reported is incorrect, I will make it public as quickly as I can.
Regarding the flood of speculation on Libby being indicted, and Rove perhaps being allowed to pass, it is difficult to penetrate this fog. There has been an incredible amount of last-minute activity, the contents of which I don’t know. Most of my sources have gone to ground the past few days and it’s been difficult to get anything. I was told by one federal law enforcement official that Hadley was to be indicted, but the indictment was to be kept sealed. I have been able to obtain no confirmation on that.
Regarding the questionnaires sent to Cheney, I have no further word on them, or what Cheney’s response has been. I have been able to confirm that last Friday Fitzgerald’s FBi were talking to Cheney’s attorney.
That Cheney is really the center of the probe has been confirmed by several reliable sources. … More below:
Posted by Patrick Lang
State Department phone call gave key aide name of CIA officer
By Richard Sale, Intelligence Correspondent
A State Department phone call, not Vice President Cheney, revealed to I. Lewis Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff, the identity of the CIA operative at the heart of the current CIA leak investigation being conducted by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, according to former senior and serving U.S. intelligence officials.
An October 25 account in The New York Times, alleged that Libby first learned of the agent’s real name weeks before her identity became public in 2003 during a June 12 conversation between Cheney and Libby.
According to the Times account, Cheney told Libby the covert name of the wife of Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. diplomat who had publicly alleged that the administration had mishandled of intelligence relating to Iraq’s nuclear weapons programs.
But several former and serving U.S. intelligence officials strongly disputed this. “That is simply not accurate,” a very former senior CIA official told this reporter. “Libby’s notes on this are misleading and inaccurate or both.”
This source, supported by three others, alleged that it was a telephone call from the Department of State that first gave Libby the name of Plame.
The name of the caller? No one is sure. But these sources said that the call definitely came from the State Department office of John Bolton, then the arms control chief of the department.
These same sources alleged that two employees of Bolton, David Wurmser, a virulent pro-war hawk, first told Libby that Valerie Plame had sent Wilson to Niger to attempt to discredit the administration’s line on Iraq’s nuclear weapons programs.
These same intelligence sources alleged that Wurmser, as Bolton’s special assistant, got his knowledge of Plame’s classified identity from a colleague in his office, Frederick Fleitz, a CIA officer detailed to Bolton’s office from the agency who worked in the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center (WINIPAC.)
“We do not know yet which of the two called,” the former very senior intelligence official said.
“We are almost positive the outing of Plame came from State,” said another former senior U.S. intelligence officiel.
But he and others insisted that Fleitz had knowledge of Plame and her cover.
Fleitz, still at the State Department, is on leave and could not be reached for comment.
Wurmser did not return calls.
Continued below:
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