5 Years Ago Today: Fateful 'NYT' Op-Ed Kicked off Plame Outing and 'CIA Leak Case'
Source: Editor&Publisher
NEW YORK So much has been said and written about the outing of former CIA operative Valerie Plame -- and the cast of characters that swirled around it, from Judith Miller to Karl Rove -- that today, on the fifth anniversary of how it all began, it seems proper to quote the first lines of the fateful Joseph C. Wilson IV op-ed in the July 6, 2003 edition of The New York Times:
"Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq? Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Remember its title? "What I Didn't Find in Africa."...
The following day the Bush administration admitted that accusations included in the president's 2003 State of the Union address had turned out to be inaccurate....Within another day, Powell's assistant Richard Armitage had provided the first -- but by no means last -- leak to columnist Robert Novak about Wilson's wife Valerie Plame and the CIA. On July 14, 2003, Novak identified "Wilson's wife" publicly as "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction" named "Valerie Plame" in his syndicated column. This effectively ended her CIA career....
Two days after that, David Corn at The Nation suggested that the leak was a crime....
Of course, as we learned much later, Cheney's aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby had learned about the Wilson/Plame connection the previous month and had already blabbed about it with numerous officials and journalists such as Judy Miller and Matt Cooper. He talked to Miller about Plame as early as June 23, 2003. He mentioned her to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer on July 7, 2003. (Libby would claim that he first heard about Plame from Tim Russert three days after that.) Then Libby chatted about Plame with Karl Rove on July 11, 2003.
And the rest is legal, and political, history....
LinkHere
NEW YORK So much has been said and written about the outing of former CIA operative Valerie Plame -- and the cast of characters that swirled around it, from Judith Miller to Karl Rove -- that today, on the fifth anniversary of how it all began, it seems proper to quote the first lines of the fateful Joseph C. Wilson IV op-ed in the July 6, 2003 edition of The New York Times:
"Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq? Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Remember its title? "What I Didn't Find in Africa."...
The following day the Bush administration admitted that accusations included in the president's 2003 State of the Union address had turned out to be inaccurate....Within another day, Powell's assistant Richard Armitage had provided the first -- but by no means last -- leak to columnist Robert Novak about Wilson's wife Valerie Plame and the CIA. On July 14, 2003, Novak identified "Wilson's wife" publicly as "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction" named "Valerie Plame" in his syndicated column. This effectively ended her CIA career....
Two days after that, David Corn at The Nation suggested that the leak was a crime....
Of course, as we learned much later, Cheney's aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby had learned about the Wilson/Plame connection the previous month and had already blabbed about it with numerous officials and journalists such as Judy Miller and Matt Cooper. He talked to Miller about Plame as early as June 23, 2003. He mentioned her to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer on July 7, 2003. (Libby would claim that he first heard about Plame from Tim Russert three days after that.) Then Libby chatted about Plame with Karl Rove on July 11, 2003.
And the rest is legal, and political, history....
LinkHere
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 3:09 PM
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