Novak: CIA flap less than it seems

Novak: CIA flap less than it seems

Robert D. Novak
is a nationally syndicated columnist

"I thought I never again would write about retired diplomat Joseph Wilson's CIA-employee wife, but feel constrained to do so now that repercussions of my July 14 column have reached the front pages of major newspapers and led off network news broadcasts. My role and the role of the Bush White House have been distorted and need explanation.

"I would like to stress three points: First, I did not receive a planned leak. Second, the CIA never warned me that the disclosure of Wilson's wife working at the agency would endanger her or anybody else. Third, it was not much of a secret.

<snip>

"This story began July 6, when Wilson went public and identified himself as the retired diplomat who had reported negatively to the CIA in 2002 on alleged Iraq efforts to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger. I was curious why Wilson, a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC), was given this assignment.

"I asked a senior administration official, who told me Wilson had been sent by the counterproliferation section of the CIA at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: "Oh, you know about it." The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue."

"At the CIA, the official designated to talk to me denied that Wilson's wife had inspired his selection but said she was delegated to request his help. He asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause "difficulties" if she travels abroad."

So, if I'm understanding Novack correctly, he's saying he was suspicious of the reason a Clinton employee was sent to investigate this claim, angry that Wilson blew the whistle when this administration lied about the evidence to begin a war, and took it upon himself to out Valerie Plame (supposedly without knowing she was an operative) against the explicit wishes of the CIA. What he did know for sure is that her identity was not germane to this story and that it would have a detrimental effect on her career and yet he outed her anyway. Why is he still employed as a reporter?

Now that the facts he claims he was not aware of have come to light, he doesn't even apologize for the possible breach to national security or the ruination of her career. He just claims the massive fallout of his unethical behavior is a big flap over nothing.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn20030714.shtml

<snip>


"Wilson's mission was created after an early 2002 report by the Italian intelligence service about attempted uranium purchases from Niger, derived from forged documents prepared by what the CIA calls a "con man." This misinformation, peddled by Italian journalists, spread through the U.S. government. The White House, State Department and Pentagon, and not just Vice President Dick Cheney, asked the CIA to look into it.

That's where Joe Wilson came in. His first public notice had come in 1991 after 15 years as a Foreign Service officer when, as U.S. charge in Baghdad, he risked his life to shelter in the embassy some 800 Americans from Saddam Hussein's wrath. My partner Rowland Evans reported from the Iraqi capital in our column that Wilson showed "the stuff of heroism." President George H.W. Bush the next year named him ambassador to Gabon, and President Bill Clinton put him in charge of African affairs at the National Security Council until his retirement in 1998.

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me."

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I GUESS you could parse these words such that he didn't say she was an undercover operative...?!?

Even if this spin were true, it would paint him as the traitor in all this -- but would still demonstrate criminal breach of security by the CIA. It might be inadvertant, but it would still be a criminal breach of security. But there's no reason to believe this spin -- why believe a hack who's either so unaware of his treason or so blase about it? But whether the leak about Plame was inadvertant or planned, it is a serious matter, necessitating a special prosecutor to investigate.

I'm sure he's feeling there's more to
it than his words are saying...

... who will calmly confess their depravities to the police, seeing nothing wrong with what they've done.

Immediately after Wilson's op-ed in the _Times_, he was known as the investigator sent to Niger on the behalf of the Vice-President. When Novak became interested to know how a Clinton appointee had be entrusted with such a mission, who would he have initally called?

Scooter Libbly, Cheney's Chief-of-Staff, or a staff member directly below Scooter. So he naturally calls Scooter, and Scooter was ready for him.

They talked about Wilson's editorial, why the State-of-the-Union Speech referred to Nigerian yellow-cake uranium and why Powell didn't mention it at the UN, and how Cheney had never heard of Wilson. Then Scooter explains, telling Novak that Cheney, the previous summer, had asked the CIA to look into the reports of uranium sales to Iraq from Niger and that it was the CIA who had sent Wilson. Then Scooter lets it drop, "Well, you know Wilson's wife works for the CIA? Let's see . . . yeah Valerie Plame. Word is that she's the one who had him sent." Novak's ears perk up (all he hears is "nepotism," missing the real insinuation: that Wilson put his wife up to having him sent because he had an anti-War agenda or because he was anti-administration and wanted to put the breaks on the rising crescendo of war rhetoric that fall). Novak checks spelling ("P-L-A-M-E"), thanks Scooter, hangs up. Checks second source, etc.

It's important to realize the purpose was to discredit Wilson as a maverick-with-an-agenda, getting his wife to send him on a mission the results of which would undercut Bush's bellicose rhetoric or make Bush pull back from his decision to invade Iraq.

Given the circumstance of the following summer (2003) when everyone was questioning the existence of WMD and then to have a key item in the President's State of the Union Speech undercut in a NY Times editorial-length letter, Scooter's plant was artful and effective, despite Novak's dull-witted interpretation (nepotism). I was clever without crushing anyone (Libby is more circumspect and pragmatic than Rove). The purpose was not primarily to inflict revenge upon Wilson, nor was it necessarily a warning to others who might take similar public stands, but to undercut an opponent who had momentarily risen in their midst. Bloodlessly, swiftly.


Coda: Wistful Thinking

I'm guessing Scooter Libby is spending the day with lawyers and staff, figuring out how to minimize legal and politial damage. Tomorrow he'll resign.

setting this chain of events in motion. Hope it comes back to haunt him "big time."

Thanks, yours is definitely the most plausible scenario I've seen so far.

there's no need to target Novak - Novak does a better job targetting himself.