If Josh Marshall is right about the CIA being convinced White House officials blew the cover of Valerie Plame out of retribution, it is indeed time for a perp walk.
Perp Walk
by John Cole| 39 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity
Perp Walk
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dwight meredith
Yes. Two of them actually, since according to the Post an administration official has confirmed that not one but two different “top White House officials” committed at least 6 felonies.
Karl and Condi in cuffs? I love alliteration.
drew
This could be huge.
Harry
Sorry no one will care about this except those on the left who already want Bush’s head on a pike. The person who should be fired is the dumbass from the State Dept. who recommended this mook ambassador for the Niger job. And how in the hell did he know what went on in the Presidential meeting discussing the SOTU address? Was he at the meeting? This ambassador whose wife is a spook thing sounds bizarre and just a bit incestuous to me.
dave
…no one will care about this except those on the left who already want Bush’s head on a pike.
Thanks for confirming my assumption that moronic brownshirt fucks don’t give a shit if you commit treason as long as you’ve got an “R” next to your name.
Andrew Lazarus
I want to admit, “Harry” is an alter ego I have been using to make “conservatives” look vapid, willfully ignorant, stupid, and childish. All the intelligent posters that didn’t immediately agree with me were too much for me to handle. But in the post above I carried it too far, criticizing the State Department for preferring accurate intel from the field to backing up clumsy forgeries. No one could be fooled by that, at least not since Dreyfus, so I guess I overdid it.
[ :-) ]
Harry
Ummm Dave,
Man you sure were quick with Godwin’s Law on that post. BTW I didn’t say they don’t need to have the hammer dropped on them. I just said no one would care but left wing nutjobs. Thanks for helping prove my point.
Andy,
You don’t need an alter ego to show that you are shallow, vapid, and stupid. Hell, you do fine under Andrew Lazarus. However, I never questioned the validity of this mook ambassador’s intelligence data. What I wrote was that the moron that allowed this mook ambassador, who ran to the press as soon as he had an opportunity, should be fired. Hell, they might as well sent Madeline Albright to Niger. This smacks of State Dept perfidy. I mean c’mon, doesn’t the fact that this mook ambassador’s wife being a CIA spook raise any flags. Hell, didn’t she have enough sense to tell her mook ambassador husband not to go public on something that in the end didn’t add up to shit. She’s a CIA spook for crying out loud, she should’ve known better. It’s sounds to me as if this mook ambassador’s personal and political “feelings” got the best of him. And look on the bright side at leat they didn’t have the IRS sicced on them like the last administration used to do to its perceived traitors and enemies. And thank you also for helping with my original point, you vapid leftwing nutjob, you. PS – don’t forget to take your meds Andy, you’re starting to believe in imaginary people again.
Mark L
The key word, of course, is “if” it is true.
I first saw the claim that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent in Novak’s column. Yet few folks from the White House talk to Novak. And, according to David Frum those that are are out of bounds. (See Frum’s book “The Right Man” for discussion on that.)
So, it is possible that (a) Novak got the little gem about Plame from her husband; or (b) he got it from one or two off-the-reservation White House guys. Sworn testimony will reveal which.
If it is either scenario, Bush isn’t the loser. So, sit back and watch the ride, before jumping to conclusions about who does a perp walk. It could be Our Man In the State Dept.
[email protected]
Select your favorite two:
Rove
Wolfowitz
Libby
JKC
Too bad these comments don’t come with video. I’d like to see what color Harry’s face is turning right now. (My guess is a deep, dark purple.)
I won’t indulge in jumping to conclusions yet: let’s wait for a complete investigation.
But if there is truth in this story, I wonder if certain people will be able to muster up the same moral outrage they did over treason as they did over consensual sex.
Harry?
JKC
Sorry… the last ‘graph should read:
But if there is truth in this story, I wonder if certain people will be able to muster up the same moral outrage over treason as they did over consensual sex.
Any thoughts, Harry?
Inscrutable American
Wolfowitz can’t really be considered a White House official, btw.
ellen
Some of you folks are forgetting the series of events here … (1) it was over a year after Ambassador Wilson went to Niger and concluded the yellowcake buy was highly unlikely, and (2) it was months after Bush made mistatements in the SOTU address that Wilson stepped forward and wrote his NYT op-ed about the facts.
This ain’t football folks. The Democrates and Republicans aren’t teams that we are fans of, they are our leaders and they govern our country. To turn a blind eye to treason because “they’re on our side” is asking–begging–for the fall of democracy. It matters if our leaders break the law. It matters if we burn the cover of CIA operatives who specialize in WMD. It matters if our leaders are so power grubbing that they don’t consider whether their actions are good for the country or world, and will do anything to keep power in their hands. It matters if our leaders commit high treason.
How can we protect the tenets on which our country’s government are based if we only listen to messengers who tell us what we want to hear? [Do you think these guys weren’t aware that it was a crime to burn the cover of a CIA operative? “Oops, I committed treason?” If that is the case, how are these people fit to govern?]
The idea that what they did was okay, they just shouldn’t have got caught, should hit a sour note with y’all. Go back and read your history–and for heaven’s sake, real history and not the garbage propoganda people like Ann Coulter put out–power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Wilson took a bullet for all of us by coming forward. He had to have known that powerful players would seek to destroy him and his career by disclosing the facts. He could have stayed hidden. But, he acted heroically. Wilson is someone who cares whether our government continues to be ruled for the people by the people. If we allow him and his family to be crucified so that this administration never has to admit fault and can stay in power, then we’ve signed away our rights to freedom under a just democracy.
Do we tolerate malfeasance? Do we tolerate moral incompetence at the top? Going back to the football analogy–if your quarterback couldn’t throw straight you would get a new one. You wouldn’t shoot all the players on the other side, and then shoot the fans that complain that the game is spoiled. If you think that’s how the game ought to be played, you’d have been a good citizen under Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and other totalitarians.
The question I have to ask if this: should being Republican and/or conservative mean not caring if government follows the rules of democracy if Republicans are the ones in charge? Should being Republican mean caring only about hoarding and wielding power at all costs? This is not about being on the left or right. Fellow countrymen, this is about treason. No one is above the law.
Avedon
Man, I really was all set to believe that Andrew had made Harry up. John, are there really people like this who think that nothing this administration does can ever be wrong,and that it’s only “the left” that cares about this stuff for its own sake? Is the idea of national security just rhetoric, or does it matter? I wanna know.
Kimmitt
Now, now, fellas, you’re buying the Left’s Bush hatred. We all know that neither the President nor his advisors are capable of such a selfish, stupid, profoundly contemptuous act, and anyone who says differently is blinded by their personal hatred of the draft-dodging, incompetent, fascist Commander-in-Chief.
howie smith
dave is a regular poster over at atrios’s fantasyland. he is constitutionally incapable of writing a comment that doesn’t use the expression “moronic brownshirt fuck.” this makes him the intellectual peer of 99% of atrios’s posters.
Smokey
Harry,
I’m not sure I understand your argument. In fact, about the only thing clear from your posts is that you really like the word “mook.” Because his wife is a CIA agent he is somehow unreliable? Instead of engaging in ad hominem attacks against mooks and spooks and left wing nutbags (apparently defined as anyone who thinks that felonies commited by “top white house officials” and the apparent cover-up of these felonies by the administration are a big deal), how about you try reason and logic? Too strenuous?
Mark L,
Can I get some of that stuff you’ve been smoking? This goes way beyond Novak now. Read the WaPo story. Even if Novak were outright lying about his sources (highly unlikely), the Post has sources beyond that, including a “top administration official” who accuses two “top white house” officials of calling at least six reporters with this before getting Novak to run it. If two “top white house officials”, a category which includes about 15 of the highest people in the administration, are “off the reservation” then we have serious problems indeed. They’re not just off the reservation, they’re pillaging the government, burning the White House to the ground and scalping our secret agents.
Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
Dr. Weevil
I think this post needs to be rephrased: “If Josh Marshall is right about the CIA being convinced White House officials blew the cover of Valerie Plame out of retribution” — AND if the CIA is right to think so — “it is indeed time for a perp walk”. Being convinced that something is true is not enough: it has to actually BE true, which remains to be seen.
JKC:
No one cared about Clinton’s consensual sex, the problem was (a) that he was doing it in the Oval Office while on the phone to congressmen, which is irredeemably tacky, and (b) that he perjured himself about it. The second point is (and was) far more important than the first. If Clinton had gone before the grand jury and told them his sex life was none of their damned business, he might well have faced legal charges or some kind of contempt of court, since a law he signed apparently gave them the right to ask these questions, but he would not have been impeached. And if he had had the minimal good taste to take Monica to a hotel or a spare bedroom or at least (like Harding) a broom closet or anywhere except the Oval Office, virtually no one would have cared. The idea that Republicans objected to him having an extramarital sex life is 95% bullshit. We objected to his scuzziness and most of all to his perjury. That’s a felony, too, you know, even if it’s one most Democrats find forgivable when their guy does it.
Robin Roberts
Ah, but Weevil, all Democrat felons are heros to the Democrats.
The amusing hypocrisy as the same people who applauded the Clinton Defense Dept spokesman who committed the criminal act of disseminating Linda Tripp’s personnel file contents now call for the criminal prosecution of people they have no basis for indicting.
dwight meredith
Somebody burned Valerie Plame. A senior administration official says it was top White House officials.
That seems like a perfect occasion to discuss how bad Bill Clinton was.
Robert Modean
Somebody burned Valerie Plame. A senior administration official says it was top White House officials.
Here’s why I don’t take this story as seriously as most. An unnamed source confirms that two other unnamed sources blew Valeri Plame’s cover as a CIA agent. This is one step from being an urban legend. Look, according to the back story the “unnamed sources” shopped the info around to other reporters who wouldn’t use it because they either didn’t think it was important to the story or they didn’t want to risk outing a CIA agent. Novak had no problem using the info, why? That’s the first question I’d like to have answered.
The next question is this: has it occurred to anyone that a Whitehouse proven to be as obsessed with being leak-proof as this one, would leak something like this in such an easily traceable and ham-fisted manner? And anyone remember the infamous Terrance J. Wilkinson. The last time something like this popped up, something that looked like a slam-dunk on the Bush administration, it involved Mr. Wilkinson. He was prepared to go on record saying that he was present at a meeting with Bush as a CIA consultant, and he would verify that the Bush administration was looking to fake the information on Iraqi nukes. Only problem being that Terrance J Wilkinson turned out to be a crank. He was never a CIA operative nor was he ever a CIA consultant, in fact he doesn’t exist at all.
I’m not belittling these charges, these allegations are far more serious than Clinton’s perjury and obstruction of justice – and those were impeachable offenses. Right now I’m inclined to give Bush the benefit of the doubt.
Smokey
One step from an urban legend? How do you figure? Senior adminsistration officials don’t generally accuse other senior administration officials of felonies without being pretty damn sure they’re right. CIA has had two months to investigate this. YOu’ve got to assume that Tenet is the Post’s source, so he’d have access to the investigation and it’s conclusions. I suspect they didn’t hand it over to Justice until they had a pretty solid case. Not that John Ashcroft would allow political considerations to influence his responsibility to investigate crimes and enforce the law. No siree.
Patrick
“Right now I’m inclined to give Bush the benefit of the doubt.”
hand….forehead….*schmack!!*
I feel like I am watching that stoopid commercial-
“Can you hear me now?
Can you hear me now?”
You just let me know when you’re no longer inclined to give this bozo the benefit of the doubt, ‘k? I hope you have a high draft number by then, sparky.
Harry
KFC,
“But ‘if’ there is any truth in this story.” says it all, doesn’t it? You don’t know, your just assuming it’s true.
Ellen,
Spoken like a true Democrat partisan. Way to wrap it in a plea for nonpartisanship. Nice touch.
Schmokey,
There’s are no heroes in this story at all. Even Wilson gave his famous interview for selfish reasons, he was far from an Iraq war advocate. And so far there are no facts, other than that Plame worked for the CIA and someone, known only to Robert Novak and themselves, ratted her out. There are, however, a plethora of “assumptions” based on Robert Novak’s column. Assumptions that most of the lefties at this post are more than willing to believe without first knowing all the facts, nor do they seem to care about all the facts. Novak’s word seems to be good enough for them. Why is that? Anyone old enough to write on this blog should know through empiricism and experience that assumptions are terrible subtitutes for facts, especially when you are accusing someone of a crime. Hell, it’s downright unAmerican not to mention intellectually dishonest and lazy(as well as slanderous and libelous). So yes, I may be flippant about the lefties feelings on this particular subject because as right of this moment there is really nothing “there” on this particular subject yet. There have been no hearings supplying us with any testimony and hard evidence. And there is no proverbial “SMOKING GUN” as of yet. But what there is, is a load of tinfoil hat wearing Woodward and Bernstein wannabes with self-esteem issues letting fly with wild-assed theory and invective.
When there is a perp with a real name and a face to go with that name plus evidence linking him/her to the crime I’ll be first in line to kick him/her in the nuts. Until then I’ll just get my jollies aggravating you Bush Chaiters.
Sheesh, even Clinton got his day in court. He lied, but he got his day. Be sporting and at least allow the same for W.
RW
Howie: 99.95%
:)
JKC
Harry, calm down.
1)”Senior Administration Official” means Cabinet level. It’s not a phrase used to describe low-level flunkies. One of the big boys in the Bush League is responsible for this.
2) That being said, no-one has accused President Bush of being directly or indirectly involved in this. As the ghost of Nixon would tell him, a cover-up is what will drag him under.
3) As for the President’s credibility goes, let’s see what happens. The fact that the Post, the Times, and Time have all picked this up tells me that this is a bit more than conjecture at this point.
HH
Of course we were also told by the BBC that their source was higher up than it was… I don’t put anything past the mainstream press anymore.
Mark L
“Senior Administration Official” means whatever the press wants it to mean. Both Wilson and Plame qualify as “Senior Administration Officials” *if* the press (including Novak) choose to interpret them as such.
This is round two of the yellowcake story. Remember that? It started with Wilson claiming that Bush lied about “yellowcake in Niger” in the SOTU address. Then someone claiming to be a CIA briefer for the SOTU stated that Bush was told that it was a fraud. Then it turned out the “briefer” was a hoaxer. And then it turned out that Bush had not mentioned yellowcake and had not mentioned Niger and that the line in the SOTU speech had absoulutely *NOTHING* to do with Niger yellowcake.
So, yeah. I’m skeptical about the whole thing. I’m really, really skeptical about “Senior Administration Officials” behaving in a manner totally inconsistant with the behavior of the Bush Administration over the last three years. And I am willing to wait until sworn testimony has been delivered before I will conclude that it was someone in the Bush White House — rather than others, quite likely Clinton hangovers — who leaked the story. (After all, that behavior was de rigeur for the Clinton White House.)
So yeah. Let’s see what is testified to under oath. (Anyone want to bet that the reporters hide under journalistic privilege? If they do, you can bet it is not Republicans they are shielding.)
Mark L
If you want another reason why I am skeptical of the whole story read Clifford May’s column in the NRO today.
To quote from it:
JKC
Hmmm. Mark and Harry and the rest of you can enjoy your vacation on denial. You might want to stagger out of your Bush League Kool-Aid induced stupor for a second and read what this unpaid advisor to the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign has to say.
And if you think he’s a left-wing partisan with no credibility, then you guys are too dumb to debate.
(: Tom :)
dave is a regular poster over at atrios’s fantasyland. he is constitutionally incapable of writing a comment that doesn’t use the expression “moronic brownshirt fuck.” this makes him the intellectual peer of 99% of atrios’s posters.
Posted by: howie smith on September 28, 2003 07:44 PM
It also makes him the intellectual superior of 100% of the Ditto Monkey MBFs who are putting their heads in the sand over these treasonous offences.
If president Gore had done 1% of the underhanded unpatriotic things that Bush has been able to get away with, they would have hung his head on a pike in front of the White House…
Mark L
Like I said, I am withholding judgement until sworn testimony is available. It has nothing to do with denial. It has everything to do with the lack of credibility of Wilson and the major media.
Had either a better track record, I would be concerned. Is your definition of denial is demanding to see evidence first? Strange. That is not the way the libs were talking back in 1998. Back then even evidence wasn’t enough. But, like I said — if sworn evidence shows misbehavior, those officials will be punished. Unlike, say those that leaked the job applications of certain White House employees in the previous administration.
But you knew that.
Dean
When that military chaplain and airman were arrested at Guantanamo, it was fascinating reading the many Left commentators who said, “Whoa! Withhold judgement until the full story is told! Wait ’til the trial!”
Not a bad argument, a lot to be said for that.
But now, it seems, the Left has concluded, “Bushies Leaked, CIA Freaked, Wife Loses Mystique!” (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) So much for waiting and seeing what actually comes out.
[To their discredit, I get the impression that more than a few Righties reversed valences on the two stances.]
I would be curious, though: Given a choice between believing Yee and believing Cheney/Rove, where folks would come down at this point (i.e., before trials, depositions, testimony, etc.)? Who’s more likely to be lying?
Moe Lane
“Hmmm. Mark and Harry and the rest of you can enjoy your vacation on denial. You might want to stagger out of your Bush League Kool-Aid induced stupor for a second and read what this unpaid advisor to the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign has to say.”
What the hell? Since when did you start ad-homming people (this would be specifically be MarkL) who weren’t insulting you back, JKC?
JKC
Dean-
“Given a choice between believing Yee and believing Cheney/Rove, where folks would come down at this point (i.e., before trials, depositions, testimony, etc.)? Who’s more likely to be lying?”
Couple points:
1) Somebody in the administration outed Valerie Plame. The idea that Novak (of all people) would make this up to placate all us supremely influential liberals flunks the laugh test.
2) I don’t know about Chaplain Yee, but doubt he’d have been arrested if there wasn’t some sort of evidence. But despite Bush himself stating that there was no link between Saddam and 9/11, Cheney’s still claims the link is there.
Who’s more likely to be lying? Take your pick.
Mark L
Who do I think would be lying?
Well, Wilson, for one. He is associated with MoveOn.
Novak is another. He has had the knives out for the Bush Administration since Bush was elected.
All of the sound and fury has come from them. Wilson is the one who accused Rove of leaking what, according to Cliff May, is common knowledge among the Washington media. Of course, he says he has no personal knowledge of this. It’s just the kind of thing Rove would do. (Talk about an inflated opinion of oneself!) To say nothing of Novak’s assurance that he got the information after speaking to two “Senior Administration Officials.” (Come to think of it, he did not say *which* Administration, so he might be factually accurate.) And that is the level of dialog that has all the “Bush Lied/People Died” types hopping up and down in an orgasmic fervor.
So, yeah. I’ll wait on the facts. This is Yellowcake II — that was full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Or at least statements by more reliable sources than Novak and Wilson or sworn testimony testimony by them.
Dean
JKC:
That article seems to be referring to the “Meet the Press” interview from a week or so ago?
Powerlineblog’s gone to the trouble of doing Fisking this article, so I’ll cite them:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/004713.php
As they note, Cheney, in fact, did NOT say that there was a link.
As for whether Novak made it all up, sorry, you’ll have to peddle your strawman to someone who cares. I never said that, and don’t happen to believe it.
Dr. Weevil
Contra JKC, Bush has never said that there was “no link” between Hussein and 9-11. The official position, which is also obviously true, is that we don’t know whether Hussein planned 9-11, or supported it, or knew about it in advance. There’s no convincing evidence to prove any of these things, but that could mean either (a) that they are false, or (b) that the evidence has been carefully concealed. The second is unlikely, but still possible.
Pauly
I think everyone just needs to bone up on their reading comprehension. That’s where half of these arguments stem from anyways.
caleb
Since this is all speculation, not if it happened, but who did it, I thought that this, said by Drezner in the link JKC provided, was an interesting question:
“Roger is correct — it does seem weird. If it is nevertheless true, however — an important “if” — then a Pandora’s box gets opened by asking this question: if the White House was willing to commit an overtly illegal act in dealing with such a piddling matter, what lines have they crossed on not-so-piddling matters? In other words, if this turns out to be true, then suddenly do all of the crazy conspiracy theories acquire a thin veneer of surface plausibility? ”
Never the less your own answer to this question, it will undoubtedly make the last year of Bush’s first(last?) term a bit more trying for him.