Newsweek- Oct 6 : Did Rove tell Tweety that Wilson's wife was "fair game"?

Hey Tweety, got a lawyer?

http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=991

Of Lies and Leaks: Bush Threatened By New Revelations
10/04/2003 @ 11:09pm

The spin is not holding. Facing two controversies--the Wilson leak (click here if you have somehow managed to miss this story) and the still-MIA WMDs--the White House has been tossing out explanations and rhetoric that cannot withstand scrutiny.

Let's start with the Wilson leak. In the issue coming out October 6, Newsweek will be reporting that after Bob Novak published a July 14 column containing the leak attributed to "senior adminsitration officials" that identified former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as an undercover CIA operative, NBC News reporter Andrea Mitchell was contacted by White House officials who touted the Novak column and encouraged her to pursue the story about Wilson's wife. The newsmagazine also notes that, according to a source close to Wilson, shortly after the leak occurred Bush's senior aide Karl Rove told Hardball host Chris Matthews that Wilson's wife was "fair game." Matthews told Newsweek that he would not discuss any confidential conversation. (He told me the same weeks ago when I made a similar inquiry about this chat with Rove.) An anonymous source described as familiar with the exchange--presumably Rove or someone designated to speak for him--maintained that Rove had only said to Matthews it was appropriate to raise questions about her role in Wilson's mission to Niger. (In February 2002, Wilson had been asked by the CIA to visit Niger to check out allegations Iraq had been shopping for uranium there; he did so and reported back that the charge was probably untrue. In July, he publicly challenged the White House's use of this claim and earned the administration's wrath.)

snip

Newsweek is also disclosing that a National Security Council staffer previously worked with Valerie Wilson (nee Plame) and was aware of her position at the CIA. McClellan has indicated in his press briefings that the White House did not--and has not--acted to ascertain the source of the leak. But shouldn't Bush or chief of staff Andrew Card (if Card is not one of the leakers) have asked this person whether he mentioned Valerie Wilson's occupation to anyone in the White House? (I believe I know the name of this person but since he or she may be working under cover I am not at this point going to publish it.)

McClellan has had a tough time providing straight answers. At the October 1 press briefing, he was asked what Bush did after the leak first appeared. He replied by saying that "some news reports" have noted that Valerie Wilson's CIA connection "may have been well-known within the DC community." That hardly seems so. Her neighbors did not know, and Wilson maintains their close friends did not know. No reporter that I have talked to--and I've spoken to many covering this story--had heard that.

snip


Reality check: Bush had said that the main reason to go to war was because Hussein possessed "massive" stockpiles of unconventional weapons and at any moment could hand them off to al Qaeda (with whom Bush claimed Hussein was "dealing"--even though the evidence on that point was and continues to be, at best, sketchy). Now Bush is asserting that Hussein was a threat that could only be countered with invasion and occupations because he had weapons research programs that indeed violated United Nations resolutions but that had not produced any weapons. That's a much different argument. Bush, Cheney, McClellan, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and others continue to deny they overstated (or misrepresented) the case for war. But the evidence is incontrovertible, and it keeps on piling up.

So all they have is spin. Bush changes the terms. McClellan, Rumsfeld, RIce insist that before the war everybody knew that Iraq had WMDs. Everybody, that is, except the folks putting together the intelligence assessments chockfull of uncertainties. When it comes to the Wilson affair, the White House ducks and covers, claiming it had no reason to react to the original anonymous-source leak, even though its officials (at the least) considered the leak solid enough to talk up to other reporters. And instead of confronting the ugly (and perhaps criminal) implications of the leak, the White House's allies in Washington lash out at Wilson, in a vicious blame-the-victim offensive, while Mister Change-the-Tone has nothing to say publicly about this. What if Wilson is a Democratic partisan? That does not excuse what was done to his wife.

Leaking and lying--these are not actions easy to explain away. Drip, drip, drip--that's the sound often associated with Washington scandals. But now it may also be the sound of the truth catching up to the propagandists and perps of the Bush White House.

So said Donald Rumsfeld re: Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Rumsfeld also said that they knew EXACTLY where they were. So, Don, wassup? Lose your memory? Or were you really just full of shit right from the start?

And this Wilson leak affair is a disgrace. It is illegal, dangerous, treasonous. And Novak just keeps talking. And talking. And Scott is a liar, they know EXACTLY who it is. And they have always known. It was done deliberately and precisely. And why don't any of the talking heads tell the pukes that come on to say that this is a democratic plot to discredit the Prez-that Wilson gove money to the Bush campaign, also? It's not hard to find this out-it's all over the print media.

doesn't impress me as one willing to go to jail to protect his source. Much pressure and I believe he will be forthcoming with neded information.

Well now, this makes sense. Guess Rove wanted to thank him for never ending love fest for Bush

BTW, Wilson will be on Face the Nation and Meet the Press tomorrow. NoFacts will also be on Meet the Press, but don't know if they will be on together. Should be interesting:silly:

That's who the reporters should be cultivating. The leaker who told about the leakers probably has a lot more to tell about this misadministration.

Check out the Ombudsman column in Sunday's WP.

...After the column (Novak's) appeared there were a handful of follow-up stories in a few publications, including Newsday, the Nation magazine and one on Page A20 in The Post on July 25 that contained the news that Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) had asked the FBI to investigate whether Bush administration officials had identified Wilson's wife. He said the disclosure "was part of an apparent attempt to impugn Wilson's credibility and to intimidate others from speaking out against the administration."

After that, the press, including The Post, seemed to go to sleep on this story until the night of Friday, Sept. 26, when MSNBC and NBC News disclosed that the CIA had asked the Justice Department for a criminal investigation of the leak. The really big news explosion didn't go off until Sunday, however, when a Post front-page story reported the CIA request and revealed that an unnamed administration official told The Post that before Novak's column appeared, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity of Wilson's wife "purely and simply for revenge."

This was startling, considering the loyalty and on-message discipline of the administration, and it was the ultimate in contemporary Washington stories: an unnamed official telling of two other unnamed officials who called six unnamed reporters.

more at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42241-2003Oct3.html

Check out this from the article - they also say Woodward's book contained a lot of leaks and should be investigated.

Officials in the intelligence community have been talking for some time about whether there should be a leak investigation into Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward’s book “Bush at War.” The book brims with classified information—most of it leaked by administration officials.

Don't forget to rate the article. This is getting good and this needs a :kick:

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