Joe Wilson, the Senate Intel Committee’s Report, and Weisberg on Fitzgerald
Here are some useful links on some of the Plame-affair backstory. Think of it as recommended reading for those who want to argue that 1) Joe Wilson lied, 2) Karl Rove can’t go to jail for telling the truth, or 3) the Senate intelligence committee’s report proved that the Bush administration had nothing to do with the faulty intelligence on Iraqi WMD.
- Laura Rozen in American Prospect Online: The report they forgot. Some interesting scuttlebutt about the infamous “Phase 2” report from the Senate intelligence committee (you know; the report that was going to look into how the Bush team misused the Iraqi WMD intelligence, the report that Chairman Pat Roberts can’t seem to find the time to complete). Also see Rozen’s blog entry on the same subject at War and Piece: The missing intelligence report.
- Larry Johnson in the TPM Cafe: The so-called “lies” of Joe Wilson.
- Matthew Yglesias, likewise in the TPM Cafe: Moral clarity. It’s a succinct debunking of that odd piece by Jacob Weisberg in Slate on how Fitzgerald’s investigation is bad news for Democrats : Illiberal prosecution.
- Finally, a trip down memory lane: Back in July, 2004, when the “Phase I” report came out from the Senate intel committee, WaPo reporter Susan Schmidt wrote this article about it: Plame’s input is cited on Niger mission. Someone in the right-wing echo-chamber must be making a point of citing it again, because I’ve had it come up twice now in quick succession from two different Friends of Bush. Anyway, back when it appeared the first time, Josh Marshall offered some important commentary on it, and on Schmidt: I’ll dispense with the literary prologue…
October 21st, 2005 at 7:45 am
If you’re trying to convince conservatives, I wouldn’t use American Prospect Online and 3 TPM-related pieces. For the record, I think a lot of lefty sources tend to go easy to Wilson because he’s been a voice against Bush. The problem is that defending Wilson to the end (and he did in fact lie about how he was sent to Niger), it weakens the very valid arguments that A) what he found was in fact correct and B) it is a completely different class of lying than Rove did.
Going after Wilson here is like trying to smear a corporate whistle-blower by pointing out that he had to steal office supplies to get the evidence he needed. And Rove’s actions are like, well there’s no good analogy for breaking national security law to smear an opponent and conducting an orchestrated coverup.
October 21st, 2005 at 8:03 am
The only thing approximating a “lie” that I’m aware of that Wilson is guilty of in this is assuming, and saying based on that assumption, that Cheney’s office would have received a report of his findings. When told that Cheney’s office said that wasn’t the case, he immediately acknowledged that it was only his assumption, based on years of experience in the government, not personal knowledge.
I guess you could say that his not mentioning his wife’s role in recommending him for the mission was a “lie,” but depending on what time-frame you’re talking about, admitting his wife’s role would have actually been a really bad thing to do. And given the way the Bush people were spinning so hard on the false story that his trip was some kind of junket arranged by his wife, I can cut him some slack on being unwilling to play their game by getting drawn into discussions of his wife’s role.
I’m not specifically trying to convince political conservatives. I cite people based on my own sense of their trustworthiness and relevance to the subject at hand, and for my money, Josh Marshall has wheelbarrows-full more trustworthiness and relevance on this topic than most people.
A lot of people write for the TPM Cafe that are not raving lefty nutjobs. Larry Johnson has plenty of standing to talk about this stuff, and Matt Yglesias is not tainted by excessive partisan zeal that I’m aware of.
Rozen is pretty partisan, it’s true. If somebody with better bona fides was talking about phase 2 of the Senate report, I’d link to them in preference to her.
October 21st, 2005 at 11:20 am
Well, you posted this item as a response to 3 conservative points of argument on the issue, so I assumed you were trying to reach out to them. I too like TPM, but it can’t really be considered an information source and it’s not going to be taken seriously by any entrenched conservatives.
Re-reading everything, I guess I can kind of buy that what Wilson said was about all that was prudent. I think the point that some people are making, though, is that Wilson isn’t as unbiased as he led us to believe since his wife hooked up his mission to Niger. I can agree with that, I just don’t think it matters here at all and it certainly doesn’t weaken the case against Rove et al whatsoever.
October 22nd, 2005 at 3:42 am
You seem to be skipping over Wilson’s big whoppers…
Nicholas D. Kristof story: May 6, 2003, “In February 2002, the envoy (Joe Wilson) reported, for example, that a Niger minister whose signature was on one of the documents had in fact been out of office for more than a decade.” The bipartisan Senate Investestigation found Mr. Wilson claims were false since the problem is Mr. Wilson has never seen the documents!
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/unmovic/2003/0506missing.htm
Walter Pinkus story: June 16, 2003, “After returning to the United States, the envoy (Joe Wilson) reported to the CIA that the uranium-purchase story was false, the sources said. Among the envoy’s conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because the “dates were wrong and the names were wrong.” The bipartisan Senate Investestigation found Mr. Wilson claims were false since the problem is Mr. Wilson has never seen the documents!
http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=1160&fcategory_desc=Under%20Reported
On another note maybe we are missing another point what if Mr. Wilson did see the documents with his wife’s connections (breaking several national security laws) and realized he can’t admit now he saw them…..
October 22nd, 2005 at 8:58 am
Ah, thanks for being specific about what it is that this “Joe Wilson lied!” thing is about.
So, your main focus seems to be on the discrepency between what Wilson allegedly said to Kristof (before he – Wilson – was officially “out” and talking about this stuff on the record) about the documents supposedly proving the Iraq/Niger connection being forgeries, when in fact Wilson couldn’t have known that or verified that during his trip, because he actually hadn’t seen the documents at that point, only the internal CIA reporting on those documents. The Pincus article merely repeats the quotation contained in the Kristof article, so despite providing two references, you’re really talking about the one alleged incident of “lying”.
But fair enough. The Senate Committee did indeed discuss that in the report. Apparently they pressed Wilson on that when he testified before them, and in response he said might have “misspoken.” Good job, Sen. Roberts. You really got him there.
So, the bottom line seems to be that when he was speaking anonymously to Kristof, Wilson either embellished the storyline in the sense that he implied that he discovered specific things during his trip that he actually only learned since then, or said something ambiguous that Kristof interpreted that way.
For example, Wilson might have been talking to Kristof about who he talked to and what he learned during the trip to Niger, and then mentioned something about the documents being “crude forgeries, because some of the signatures were of people who’d been out of office for more than a decade.” And Kristof assumed Wilson was saying he’d seen the signatures, when Wilson might actually just have been passing on what he knew because of the el Baradei statements. And Wilson might have said that ambiguously in order to create that impression in Kristof’s mind. Or, if we assume he was willing to do that, he might have gone further, and outright lied to Kristof (about the then-known-to-be-true nature of the forged documents) to make his storyline stronger.
Note that when confronted about this by the Committee, Wilson didn’t try to maintain that he had actually said that, and that his statement was correct. He immediately acknowledged that it was true that he hadn’t seen the documents at the time of his mission to Niger, and that statements quoting him as having known as of that time that they contained bogus signatures would have to be incorrect.
So, summing up: the “Joe Wilson lied!” thing is based on one particular interpretation of one particular quotation attributed to Wilson by one particular reporter, quoting him on background. The fact asserted in the quotation (that the documents were crude forgeries) is apparently true; the only thing that is being pointed to as a lie is that the Kristof story says Wilson told Kristof that he’d discovered that during the course of the trip, when he actually could not have discovered it until later.
Personally, I don’t think that carves out much of a legal safe haven for the people who leaked Wilson’s wife’s identity to reporters. The law in question doesn’t have an exemption that makes it legal to out CIA agents who happen to be married to self-aggrandizing blowhards. That’s just the political spin machine trying to neutralize a critic, and as I’ve pointed out before, political spin doesn’t carry much weight in actual legal proceedings.
October 22nd, 2005 at 10:32 am
It is pretty must well established through numerous media reports that Ms. Plame had ended her “non official cover” since 1997. Meaning their is no way anyone in the White House even if that held a press conference that exposed Ms Plame could be charge with a crime!
The issue is did Karl Rove knowing leak the name of a covert agent for revenge against Mr. Wilson… today we know as a fact Karl Rove was not involved, Matt Cooper admitted both on TV and in print quote, “Karl Rove did not tell me she was a cover agent”!
Lets review the first story that exposed Ms. Plame as a “covert agent” was published two days after Mr. Novaks story and was written by David Corn of the Nation Magazine his source…. Joe Wilson. Therefore Joe Wilson told David Corn that his wife was an undercover agent, and Mr. Corn pulished it just two days after Novaks article. In the Corn article both him and Wilson claim it is a crime to reveal an undercover officer. So ironically those out to destroy Karl Rove ended up committing the very crime they believed was broken no doubt, the independent prosecutor and the grand jury will sort it out. That of course is depended on if she was even covert.
October 22nd, 2005 at 6:33 pm
trgwhatever:
Better tell those “numerous media reporters” that the CIA ordered this investigation in the first place. Think they would have done that if she wasn’t a NOC? Think the Fitzgerald investigation would have gotten past its first week if she wasn’t a NOC? Her colleagues say she was a NOC. And obviously, the CIA, that made her one, thought she was a NOC. But these are all just partisan hacks, right?
October 23rd, 2005 at 7:03 am
adam….
Would you at least admit if Joe Wilson told David Corn of the Nation Magazine that his wife was a covert agent is that a crime?
Mrs. Plame’s identity as an undercover CIA officer was first disclosed to Russia in the mid-1990’s in a second compromise Mrs. Plame indenty was revealed in documents sent by the CIA to the U.S. Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy in Havana were the Cubans read the classified material. So lets review some secret agent both Vladimir Putin and Fidel Castro new she was a agent!
The problem is Joe Wilson took his new trophy wife to white house cocktail parties in in the late 1990s when both Wilson’s would have been covered by the relavant laws and bragged about how she worked at CIA…. according to you is this is a crime?
A former CIA covert agent who supervised Mrs. Plame early in her career took issue with her identification as an “undercover agent,” saying that she worked for more than five years at the agency’s headquarters in Langley and that most of her neighbors and friends knew that she was a CIA employee. Since her neighbors knew is that a crime?
Hell, in Joe Wilson’s own book he admits Ms. Plame told him she was CIA on there second date…… is that a crime too?
October 23rd, 2005 at 9:39 am
trg,
You don’t cite actual sources for any of this recent stuff you’re asserting, but it sure sounds like right-wing talking points. You sound very certain about a lot of things that mainstream media sources have been reporting as being much cloudier. I assume from that that you’re getting this from right-wing outlets that, frankly, aren’t particularly trustworthy.
Note that neither Novak nor Corn (nor Joe Wilson, for that matter) could be charged under the specific statute Corn talks about in his article; it’s very restrictive about who can and can’t be charged, and random reporters don’t qualify. That you either don’t know that or choose to ignore it kind of raises a red flag in my mind as far as your other assertions.
Likewise, as Adam pointed out, if Plame/Wilson wasn’t under cover for the purposes of the statute at the time she was outed, it’s hard to see why the CIA would have referred the matter to the Justice Dept. I guess you could make the case that this was part of a CIA “dirty tricks” campaign intended to get back at the White House for the Iraqi WMD intelligence debacle, but that seems like a bit of a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory, at least compared to the simpler explanation that she actually was a covert operative at the time of her outing.
You say, “today we know as a fact Karl Rove was not involved, Matt Cooper admitted both on TV and in print quote, ‘Karl Rove did not tell me she was a cover agent’!” Here again, you’re asserting as fact something that is contradicted by lots of available evidence in the public record.
On the simplest level, Matt Cooper’s having said Rove didn’t tell him she was a covert agent doesn’t clear Rove. It just means that Cooper said Rove didn’t tell him. Cooper could be lying (though I believe he’s probably telling the truth). Rove could have revealed Plame’s identity to someone else besides Cooper. Or Rove could have been involved in some other capacity (for example, participating in discussions of what to do about Wilson, and directing underlings to make the actual contacts with reporters).
Rove has been interviewed by Fitzgerald four separate times as part of the investigation. If, as you assert, it is proven that Karl Rove isn’t involved in any way, why does Fitzgerald want to keep talking to him? Are you saying you know more about Karl Rove’s involvement than Patrick Fitzgerald does? Dude, I want some of what you’ve been smoking.
Finally, even if Rove played no role at all in the initial outing of Plame, and thus was entirely innocent of any crime at that point in time, it’s entirely possible that he was involved in a subsequent cover-up. He could be guilty of perjury or obstruction of justice, for example.
Note what happened in the case of Ken Starr’s investigation of Clinton: Clinton was ultimately impeached by the House not for breaking some law with his initial behavior (getting a blowjob from an intern isn’t illegal, after all), but for lying about it under oath in the course of the Whitewater investigation.
I’m not saying that these pro-Bush, anti-Plame/Wilson talking points you’re citing aren’t out there; I’ve seen them, too. But at this point I’ve mostly seen them being passed on by people with a demonstrated willingness to skew reality in favor of Bush. Until or unless you’re willing to cite your actual sources so I can evaluate their trustworthiness for myself, I’m afraid I’m going to have to classify you in the same category.
October 23rd, 2005 at 1:38 pm
I’m just praying that in a few more days, we won’t have to debate this any longer. Put me out of my misery, Patrick Fitzgerald – I’m begging you.
This whole thing just proves again that there’s no crime that’s beyond the pale, if you’re a conservative (or even a fake one, like Bush). I would so love to actually see Bush slit the throat of a puppy on live national TV, just to see what trg (and Coulter and Rush and Hume and Malkin and Miers and Hannity) would say to make it all OK.
October 23rd, 2005 at 2:07 pm
As far as sources go how about Mr. Wilsons own book… does that count has right wing taking points? I’ll repeat it….. In Joe Wilson’s own book he admits Ms. Plame told him she was CIA on there second date…… is that a crime too?
Notice how these left winger never address the issues that I have raised there only defence is attacking the messenger, never the facts.
Just imagine a 10 million dollar investigation on the CIA leak saga is hinging on wither or not Karl Rove and Matt Cooper talked about welfare reform prior to the “Wilson Niger Trip”…
The point for left wing extremist is that if Rove blurted out the wife story initially Rove is guilty of a conspiracy, while if it came at the end of another conversation conspiracy maybe harder to prove….
How about we just admit either way they are grasping at straws!
Matt Coopper said when he spoke with Karl Rove he said “I’m writing about Wilson,” then Karl interjected. “Don’t get too far out on Wilson,”. In other words he is not to be trusted.
So lets review in Amercia we don’t send people to jail even if your name is Karl Rover for asking a reporter, “Don’t get too far out.” on this story…
October 23rd, 2005 at 9:50 pm
I have to in some sense applaud JBC for his willingness to engage people like trg. But I’m also reminded of the old adage: “Never wrestle with a pig. You’ll both get dirty, but only the pig will enjoy it.” The “issues he has addressed” have been dealt with time and time and time again on this site and many others, and I see no reason to go through it again. Especially when John goes through the “facts” in detail, and trg’s response is, WHY DON’T YOU DEAL WITH THE FACTS!
“Won’t someone THINK OF THE CHILDREN!” -Helen Lovejoy
October 23rd, 2005 at 10:05 pm
Just because I can’t resist a little pig-wrestling myself:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200510210008
This piece is interesting not just because it brings together the most common falsehoods about the case, but also in how it shows how these things get passed around by the right-wingers so much that they are eventually accepted as fact. Which is the point, of course.
My favorite talking point is the “Wilson LIED!” thing, in all its myriad forms. Because it doesn’t matter to this case if Joe Wilson told the Washington Post that George Bush has sex with llamas. His truthfulness is *absolutely irrelevant* to whether his wife was outed – the “reason” doesn’t matter.
I’m suddenly all tuckered out.
October 25th, 2005 at 2:37 am
The facts are disclosing a covert agent’s identity can be a crime, only if the person who discloses it knows the agent’s undercover status. Since George Tenet gave the information Cheney it is obvious she could have not been been covert….
The sad part is poor adam has yet to address any facts about the outing of a CIA agent… according to him Mr. Wilson can tell the world his wife is CIA and that is not as crime but OMG if a reporter or white house official spreads the news either or both have commited high crimes and treason.
As ussual you know the left wing extremist are afraid when they never anwers questions and just attack me personally.