Washington Post Prints New Wilson/Plame Attack

By Robert Parry/March 22, 2007


Rather than fire Washington Post editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt or at least apologize for all the newspaper’s past misstatements about former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, ex-CIA officer Valerie Plame, the Post instead has published a rehash of the lies and distortions about the couple.

This new attack is contained in a column by right-wing pundit Robert D. Novak, who originally blew Plame’s CIA cover in July 2003 and has sought to add insult to the injury ever since. Some of Novak’s past falsehoods about Wilson/Plame also have found their way into Post editorials, apparently without benefit of fact-checking.

In the new March 22 column, Novak can’t seem to let go of a favorite right-wing myth – that Plame wasn’t a "covert" CIA officer overseeing a sensitive network of spies informing the United States about weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.

That right-wing myth – insisting that she wasn’t “covert” – was exploded at a March 16 hearing of the House Oversight Committee when Chairman Henry Waxman read a statement approved by CIA Director Michael Hayden referring to Plame’s former status as “covert,” “undercover” and “classified.”

Hayden didn’t want to divulge details about Plame’s sensitive work but did confirm that she had served overseas. “Ms. Wilson worked on the most sensitive and highly secretive matters handled by the CIA,” Waxman’s statement said, adding that her work dealt with “prevention of development and use of WMD against the United States.”

In his column, Novak reports that Hayden’s statement shocked Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a hard-line Bush loyalist who had chaired the House Intelligence Committee when the Republicans were in control.

Rest of the article @ link below:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/032207.html

WPost Prints New Wilson/Plame Attack

By Robert Parry
March 22, 2007

Rather than fire Washington Post editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt or at least apologize for all the newspaper’s past misstatements about former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, ex-CIA officer Valerie Plame, the Post instead has published a rehash of the lies and distortions about the couple.
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This new attack is contained in a column by right-wing pundit Robert D. Novak, who originally blew Plame’s CIA cover in July 2003 and has sought to add insult to the injury ever since. Some of Novak’s past falsehoods about Wilson/Plame also have found their way into Post editorials, apparently without benefit of fact-checking.

In the new March 22 column, Novak can’t seem to let go of a favorite right-wing myth – that Plame wasn’t a "covert" CIA officer overseeing a sensitive network of spies informing the United States about weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.

That right-wing myth – insisting that she wasn’t “covert” – was exploded at a March 16 hearing of the House Oversight Committee when Chairman Henry Waxman read a statement approved by CIA Director Michael Hayden referring to Plame’s former status as “covert,” “undercover” and “classified.”

Hayden didn’t want to divulge details about Plame’s sensitive work but did confirm that she had served overseas. “Ms. Wilson worked on the most sensitive and highly secretive matters handled by the CIA,” Waxman’s statement said, adding that her work dealt with “prevention of development and use of WMD against the United States.”

In his column, Novak reports that Hayden’s statement shocked Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a hard-line Bush loyalist who had chaired the House Intelligence Committee when the Republicans were in control.

According to Novak, Hoekstra called Hayden, who reaffirmed the statement that Plame indeed had been “covert.” But Novak then resumes the right-wing quibbling about whether Plame would qualify as “covert” under the special definition of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.

This legal technicality apparently was so important to the Post’s editors that they headlined the article, “Was She Covert?” But Novak’s column, like an earlier Post Outlook article by right-wing legal expert Victoria Toensing, gums up how the law actually defines a “covert” agent who qualifies for special legal protection from exposure.

Toensing, who presents herself as one of the law’s authors, has said a “covert” agent must be “stationed” abroad during the previous five years. In her testimony before the House Oversight Committee, she slipped in another definitional word, saying that “the person is supposed to reside outside the United States.”

In his column, Novak reverts back to Toensing’s earlier word “stationed.” However, for all the interest in this legal technicality of whether Plame was “covert” under the narrow provisions of the 1982 law, Novak, Toensing and the Post’s editors have shied away from actually quoting from the law.

The link to The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 is interesting. One is that it shows that Novak has to insist she wasn't covert because he could do up to ten years. The second interesting thing is that the issue of whether or not she was "covert" hinges on whether or not her identity was classified. (The served overseas vs. being stationed overseas issue is more pointless obfuscation. The act says "served.") If the CIA director used the word "classified," as this article says, then Novak should be toast.

None of these guys can give it up. Their heads will implode when confronted with the reality based world.

"CASE CLOSED?
Investigation found no crime in Plame revelation

After one digs through all the minutiae and strategy surrounding the Valerie Plame Wilson episode, there is still one unresolved question: Was she a covert agent with the CIA, as she claims, when Richard Armitage leaked her name to Robert Novak (“To outed spy, it was like being ‘hit in gut,’ ” The Gazette, March 17)? A federal special prosecutor investigated the issue for months and announced that he found no laws were broken regarding revealing the identity of a covert CIA agent in Novak’s column.

Anything further by a congressional committee is a waste of time and money, and should be investigated as fraud, waste and abuse.
James Davis
Colorado Springs"

http://www.gazette.com/onset?id=20555&template=article.html

publishing the lies of a traitor and criminal?

And this should always be the first sort of question we ask when we are analyzing products of "news" corporations that we know to be liars and scumbags. Why is this scumsucking tripe from Robert Novak being given any legitimacy? Why does it have a forum in the pages of WaPo? Is it a distraction? A self-justification? Does WaPo have criminal liability itself, as does the NYT (with its 'Mata Hari' reporter Judith Miller)? Who is WaPo trying to protect? How is it trying to skew the nation's political discussion? What are its motives?

We need to ask questions like these about all the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, and everything they print or broadcast. And we need to form a sort of barricade in our minds against them, that, first of all, focuses on their monopoly of news/opinion, their money and their power. These DICTATE content. These create what IS a story--or a viewpoint. They are framing, framing, framing, always framing--to assert and protect their money and power--from the choice of stories, to the headlines, to the context and shaping of the story, to the choice of quotes and facts, etc., knowing that their "news" stories are all full of opinion and distortion before you even get to the "opinion" pages, and then, on the opinion pages, who gets a forum and why. What legitimacy does the writer have? What right does he/she have to that forum? What views are being excluded? (--vastnesses of alternative views are being excluded). Why are they printing this crap from Novak, when there are so many more intelligent, better informed, honest, and far more important writers in the country and in the world?

In other words, we need a strategy for approaching products of these war propagandists--and one that helps insulate us from the insidious notion, that they are arrogantly playing on all the time, that THEY convey legitimacy on news stories and opinions. We can't ignore them (--although I do, most of the time, these days). They intrude. They control. They monopolize. Their framings are rattling around in a lot of peoples' heads. So, we can't entirely avoid them. We must deal with their pernicious power. And I think DU does a pretty good job of that--with open commentary on posted stories even (or especially) from putrid sources.

I just want to reinforce it here. Robert Novak SHOULDN'T HAVE a forum in the paper of record of our nation's capitol. Robert Novak should be in jail for the rest of his life--or, my favored punishment for Bushites, he should be obliged to clean bedpans in veterans' hospitals for the rest of his life. Robert Novak is a disgrace to this country and to the profession of journalism. Robert Novak colluded with the most vile criminals who have ever seized the White House, to destroy a worldwide network of people who were risking their lives on our behalf, to prevent the proliferation of dangerous weapons. And Robert Novak may well have gotten some of them killed.

How does his scurrilous, self-serving views on this matter have any legitimacy at all? How can they stand the stink? Or is it that they don't notice, because their editorial offices are full of it already?

the thread on it?

seriously, you should send him this. maybe he can use some of it, especially the bed pan cleaning. I've done many years' worth of that for a family member, and I couldn't think of a better punishment for those monsters. Aside from the appropriateness, it would be the first honest days' work for a WHOLE lot of them.

you GO!

They were stepped on like an elephant on a mushroom, and they still won't give it up.

nothing will change. But Democratic lawmakers are too afraid to have that battle with the corporate media.

This nation needs more Robert Parrys in its media, and fewer Robert Novaks.