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You are here: Home / Politics / Daily Plame Flame Thread

Daily Plame Flame Thread

by John Cole|  August 6, 200510:50 am| 27 Comments

This post is in: Politics, Previous Site Maintenance

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Almost forgot:

Whatever a federal grand jury investigating the case decides, a small political subgroup is experiencing the odd sensation that this leak has sprung before. In 1992 in an incident well known in Texas, Mr. Rove was fired from the state campaign to re-elect the first President Bush on suspicions that Mr. Rove had leaked damaging information to Mr. Novak about Robert Mosbacher Jr., the campaign manager and the son of a former commerce secretary.

Since then, Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak have denied that Mr. Rove was the source, even as Mr. Mosbacher, who no longer talks on the record about the incident, has never changed his original assertion that Mr. Rove was the culprit.

“It’s history,” Mr. Mosbacher said last week in a brief telephone interview. “I commented on it at the time, and I have nothing to add.”

But the episode, part of the bad-boy lore of Mr. Rove, is a telling chapter in the 20-year friendship between the presidential adviser and the columnist. The story of that relationship, a bond of mutual self-interest of a kind that is long familiar in Washington, does not answer the question of who might have leaked the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, to reporters, potentially a crime.

But it does give a clue to Mr. Rove’s frequent and complimentary mentions over the years in Mr. Novak’s column, and to the importance of Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak to each other’s ambitions.

“They’ve known each for a long time, but they are not close friends,” said a person who knows both men and who asked not to be named because of the investigation into a conversation by Mr. Novak and Mr. Rove in July 2003 about Ms. Wilson, part of a case that has put a reporter for The New York Times, Judith Miller, in jail for refusing to testify to the grand jury.

Consider this the day’s flame warfare thread.

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Reader Interactions

27Comments

  1. 1.

    ppGaz

    August 6, 2005 at 11:56 am

    Whatever a federal grand jury investigating the case decides

    What?!?!

    You mean this matter won’t be decided in the blogosphere?

  2. 2.

    Cobble

    August 6, 2005 at 12:07 pm

    I think this is part of why everyone already believes they know what happened. It has happened before, and the same instinct that tells your the petty thief claiming the coppers got it wrong this time tells you, well, Rove’s done it before, and (arguably) this time stepped over a legal line.

    Hell, even if I hadn’t been following this one, a great barometer of stupid Republican behaviour is to read The Corner. If they joke about it, it wasn’t a big deal. If they attack the victim or a semi-involved Democrat, the Repubs probably fucked up. (Bonus theory: if Podhoretz disagrees with Ponnuru, K-Lo will always post non-sequiter liberal bashing in between. While there is a substantial body of data supporting this theory, the underlying mechanisms of causation are not yet understood.)

  3. 3.

    DougJ

    August 6, 2005 at 2:49 pm

    Look, all the information Rove provided was in Who’s Who. Case closed.

    The American people are going to be very angry with the Dems for raising such a fuss when the real truth comes to light. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw Reid and Pelosi give a televised apology to the White House.

  4. 4.

    ppGaz

    August 6, 2005 at 2:55 pm

    Look, all the information Rove provided was in Who’s Who. Case closed.

    Yes, the case is closed on your argument, Doug. You’re wrong, for the reasons already stated. Who’s Who did not blow Ms. Wilson’s cover. They don’t do that. Somebody else did. Stay tuned, and you’ll find out who that was.

    Do even get that Wilson’s wife name was not a secret, it’s her job that was a secret?

    No, I don’t think you do.

  5. 5.

    Stormy70

    August 6, 2005 at 3:15 pm

    Her job for the CIA was so secret, she drov through the front gate at Langley. Hope all the foreign governments photographing the workers going in and out of the place missed her. Plus, when the CIA sent Wilson, Niger would have done an extensive background check on him (standard procedure) and found out his wife worked at the CIA. I thought nepotism at the CIA was against the rules. She drew attention to herself by putting up her own husband to go, then lets him leak all over, landing at the NYT.

  6. 6.

    ppGaz

    August 6, 2005 at 3:22 pm

    Her job for the CIA was so secret, she drov through the front gate at Langley.

    You mean, just like a lot of other people with secret jobs do?

    That has nothing to do with her status, or the legal issues surrounding that status. Nothing whatever.

    I cannot believe that you say things like that. Are you putting us on?

  7. 7.

    skip

    August 6, 2005 at 3:56 pm

    If Stormy were right, Fitzgerald would have shut it down month ago.
    Any fair-mined person would assume that there is game afoot. Why else bother putting Judith Miller in jail?

    In the meantime I propose putting Stormy on a “boondoggle” to Niger–just in time for the famine. Starving does wonders toward concentrating the mind
    on essentials.

    In this case the essentials mean the fate of Plame’s cover company, and the likely origin of the yellowcake apocrypha.

    SD

  8. 8.

    Stormy70

    August 6, 2005 at 4:02 pm

    Any fair-mined person would assume that there is game afoot. Why else bother putting Judith Miller in jail?

    Fitzy hates Judy Miller, since she blew a terrorim case he was in charge of at the time.

    In the meantime I propose putting Stormy on a “boondoggle” to Niger—just in time for the famine. Starving does wonders toward concentrating the mind
    on essentials.

    Oh goody! The personal attack will win this argument for you, although this is the Plame Flame thread, so carry on.

  9. 9.

    Andrew J. Lazarus

    August 6, 2005 at 4:14 pm

    Stormy, please explain exactly how would the government of Niger’s (alleged) background check have detected that Valerie Plame worked at the CIA, and even further that she had previously been an undercover operative? Is Karl Rove’s cell number common knowledge in Niamey?

  10. 10.

    Ken Hahn

    August 6, 2005 at 5:01 pm

    There need to be serious consequences here. Whatever idiot hired Valerie Plame at the CIA and whatever idiot hired Joe Wilson at the State department should be immediately fired.

  11. 11.

    Mike S

    August 6, 2005 at 5:09 pm

    I love the way people stick to the defending points that have been debunked.

    “She drove to the CIA.”
    Quite a few CIA people have said that many covert people go to the CIA.

    “She wasn’t covert.”
    The CIA spokesman who spoke directly to Novak has said that she was covert.

    “Novak got the name from Who’s who.”
    Novak wrote early on that they gave him the name, he didn’t dig it out.

    I think my favorite is still that the Wilson trip was a boondoggle and/or they should have sent someone who could have gotten the truth. This one willfully ignores the fact that Wilson actually got the truth.

  12. 12.

    Rome Again

    August 6, 2005 at 7:27 pm

    Her job for the CIA was so secret, she drov through the front gate at Langley. Hope all the foreign governments photographing the workers going in and out of the place missed her. Plus, when the CIA sent Wilson, Niger would have done an extensive background check on him (standard procedure) and found out his wife worked at the CIA. I thought nepotism at the CIA was against the rules. She drew attention to herself by putting up her own husband to go, then lets him leak all over, landing at the NYT.

    Stormy, do you even investigate what the other side discusses? If you did, you’d know that all these things have been debunked.

    By the way, any barring of nepotism at the CIA doesn’t account for the fact that Joseph Wilson worked for the State Department!

    I got an idea, how about we stop nepotism in the Oval Office?

  13. 13.

    Stormy70

    August 6, 2005 at 9:04 pm

    Stormy, do you even investigate what the other side discusses? If you did, you’d know that all these things have been debunked.

    Yes, and no, they have not been debunked, and the news media lawyers filed an amicus brief claiming no law had been broken. There is no way to know what is really going on until Fitzy comes out with his report.

  14. 14.

    Andrew J. Lazarus

    August 6, 2005 at 9:36 pm

    the news media lawyers filed an amicus brief claiming no law had been broken.

    Which position the Court rejected. Heaven knows, there are some amicus briefs from 2000 claiming we should hand-count all those Florida ballots (like they hand-counted the Ohio ones this week!) and the country would be better off if we had, but citing rejected amicus briefs is a pretty flimsy style of argumentation.

    You might double-check what the Court said, too.

    Applying this standard to the facts of this case, and considering first only the public record, I have no doubt that the leak at issue was a serious matter.

  15. 15.

    ppGaz

    August 6, 2005 at 10:11 pm

    There is no way to know what is really going on

    That doesn’t stop you from making the same wrong announcements about in a regular basis, though. Announcements that are nonsensical on their face.

  16. 16.

    Stormy70

    August 6, 2005 at 10:17 pm

    That doesn’t stop you from making the same wrong announcements about in a regular basis, though. Announcements that are nonsensical on their face.

    Same goes for everyone of you. You guys think it is all Rove, he’s guilty. No proof, though. I don’t defend Rove because I don’t know what he did, and when the report comes out I can make my decision based on the facts of the case.

    I do know that Wilson was outed as a liar, even that dimwit Kerry dropped him from his campaign. I know you guys think he’s credible, but he is not. He’s a liar.

  17. 17.

    ppGaz

    August 6, 2005 at 10:36 pm

    Same goes for everyone of you. You guys think it is all Rove, he’s guilty

    Please produce a post of mine which says such a thing.

    when the report comes out I can make my decision based on the facts of the case.

    As opposed to what you are doing now? Daily misstating and misprepresentation of the facts, even after being corrected?

  18. 18.

    ppGaz

    August 6, 2005 at 10:38 pm

    He’s a liar.

    Really? So there was a nuclear threat in the works over at Saddamville in 2003?

    When will this news break? Will we see you on Press the Meat tomorrow morning?

  19. 19.

    Mike S

    August 6, 2005 at 11:04 pm

    I do know that Wilson was outed as a liar, even that dimwit Kerry dropped him from his campaign. I know you guys think he’s credible, but he is not. He’s a liar.

    Your boy Rove and the rest of the WhiteHouse said all along that Rove had absoutely nothing to do with the leak. But then that doesn’t matter to you.

    I also find it quite funny how the GOP’s darling of a reporter, J/J Guckon, is where you get so much of this.

    On July 27, 2004, just over a year ago, a Talon News story under Gannon’s byline reported that Wilson “has apparently been jettisoned from the Kerry campaign.” The article based its assumption on the fact that “all traces” of Wilson “had disappeared from the Kerry Web site.”

    The Talon News article reported that “Wilson had appeared on a Web site http://www.restorehonesty.com where he restated his criticism of the Bush administration. The link now goes directly to the main page of http://www.johnkerry.com and no reference to Wilson can be found on the entire site.”

    A Web redesign

    But Peter Daou, who headed the Kerry campaign’s online rapid response, said the disappearance of Wilson’s link — along with many other Web pages — resulted from a redesign of Kerry’s Web site at the start of the general election campaign, not a repudiation of Wilson.

    “I wasn’t aware of any directive from senior Kerry staff to ‘discard’ Joe Wilson or do anything to Joe Wilson for that matter,” said Daou, who now publishes the “Daou Report” at Salon.com. “It just got lost in the redesign of the Web site, as did dozens and dozens of other pages.”

    link

  20. 20.

    Stormy70

    August 7, 2005 at 12:21 am

    Gannon? The gay guy the left is up in arms over? Oh my God, you are joking. I got it from the Senate report and the Washington Post. You guys keep saying you are proving me wrong , but I don’t see the evidence that he did not lie to the NYT.
    Plus, a covert super secret spy lets her spouse go write an oped for the NYT, and lets him lie about it? She didn’t think the media or the Administration couldn’t find out how his name got put into the pot? Please, I’m not buying the routine. When their mugs hit Vanity Fair, I stopped believing they were torn up about her “outing”.

  21. 21.

    Stormy70

    August 7, 2005 at 12:22 am

    Oh, I forgot, THE GAYCOCK WEB OF LIES IS EXPOSED!!!!

    h/t Protein Wisdom

  22. 22.

    Mike S

    August 7, 2005 at 2:35 am

    I got it from the Senate report and the Washington Post.

    Willfully ignorant or lying?

    Novak’s column also resumed the Right’s long-running assault on Wilson’s credibility. Near the end of the column, Novak wrote that “Joseph Wilson was discarded a year ago by the Kerry presidential campaign after the Senate [intelligence] committee reported that much of what he [Wilson] said ‘had no basis in fact.'”

    However, Novak’s sentence appears to be wrong on both its points. The Senate Intelligence Committee did not conclude that Wilson’s statements about the Iraqi intelligence “had no basis in fact.” That was a phrase that Novak culled from “additional views” of three Republican senators.

    The full committee refused to accept that opinion written by Sen. Pat Roberts and backed by two other conservative Republicans — Christopher Bond and Orrin Hatch — yet Novak left the impression that the phrase was part of what he called “a unanimous Senate intelligence committee report” released in July 2004.

    The fact that Roberts put in that BS line has been pointed out to you numerous times, yet you use it consistantly as well as continually saying that someone else should have been sent to “get the truth.”

    Are you incapable of honesty? Of course that’s the hallmark of the new Republican party. Too bad there’s so few people from the old party left.

  23. 23.

    Stormy70

    August 7, 2005 at 9:26 am

    Are you incapable of honesty? Of course that’s the hallmark of the new Republican party. Too bad there’s so few people from the old party left.

    The Senate report was bipartisan and he was discredited. The British still stand by their intelligence report. Wilson is not credible, and you are cherry picking “facts” that do not agree with you. Fine, I’m sure we all do that, and this issue can’t be resolved without the report. Bringing Gannon into makes you look like a Kos nutter type, why are you bringing this guy up. It reeks of lefty conspiracy theories.

  24. 24.

    ppGaz

    August 7, 2005 at 10:15 am

    DougJ, where are you?

    Wasn’t it you, just the other day, bemoaning a moral decline in the country, and touting increases in crime and teen pregnancy?

    Violent crime over all is down by 55 percent since 1993 and violence by teenagers has dropped an astonishing 71 percent, according to the Department of Justice.

    The number of drunken driving fatalities has declined by 38 percent since 1982, according to the Department of Transportation, even though the number of vehicle miles traveled is up 81 percent. The total consumption of hard liquor by Americans over that time has declined by over 30 percent.

    Teenage pregnancy has declined by 28 percent since its peak in 1990. Teenage births are down significantly and, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the number of abortions performed in the country has also been declining since the early 1990’s.

    Fewer children are living in poverty, even allowing for an uptick during the last recession. There’s even evidence that divorce rates are declining, albeit at a much more gradual pace. People with college degrees are seeing a sharp decline in divorce, especially if they were born after 1955.

    As stated by that well-known liberal lie-monger, David Brooks, this weekend in NYT.

    Back to you …

  25. 25.

    Mike S

    August 7, 2005 at 12:43 pm

    The Senate report was bipartisan and he was discredited.

    Earth to Stormy. My link ties specifically to parts about the partisan section you keep talking about. Notice the part saying that the full committee refused to sign onto that line.

    I could care less about Gannert’s sexuality. I do still find it funny that the right defends a man with 0 journalism experiance, no backround checks and an all access pass to the white house. I’d say, funny as in strange, but the right has proven that they will defend the White House no matter what. So it’s more funny ha ha.

  26. 26.

    Sinequanon

    August 8, 2005 at 8:06 am

    Right.
    If Rove such an innocent, why this:
    Bush is going to go around Fitzgerald on PlameGate by putting an old Skull and Bones pal in place who can control Fitzgerald or over rule him.

    Yeah, Rove is about as innocent as his rear end is a virgin.

  27. 27.

    Sinequanon

    August 8, 2005 at 8:10 am

    Mike,
    I have found it useless to respond to Stormy. “It” always asks for your links and proof even though you provide evidence and links, makes “it’s” own remarks, or quips or……..yet never provides a link to proof for “it’s” own attacks and remarks.
    Best to ignore.
    S-

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