Taking a leak

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 7:06 am

No, I don't have to run to the bathroom (though I think the news media should as they are so full of....), rather this thread is the epitaph of the outing of one Valerie Plame. After the endless speculation and accusations, after Scooter Libby gets canned, after a certain news reporter goes to jail we finally learn the one Richard Armitage is the real leaker. Shame on our vaunted news reporters not even getting a whiff of this, Shame on Colin Powell who Armitage told years ago and who did not inform his boss about it. Most especially shame on special prosecutor Fitzgerald who was also told and who then informed Armitage's lawyers to not say anything. And of course shame on those of you who were sucked into the belief the Bush administration was behind the outing simply because the newsie's were trying to hype a story for their liberal politician benefactors.
How long before some of you realise much of the mainstream press is not out to protect us from a domineering govt.,but are out to promote one brand of govt.? I hope the Plame affair finally opens your eyes to the ends a \"free press\" will go to slant news to affect your govt.

Will Robinson · Post by **Will Robinson** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 8:00 am

It's sad, Fitzgerald was hired to find out if there was a Whitehouse conspiracy to expose Plame to get revenge on her and her husband (a silly theory to begin with as it does nothing to counter the problems her husband was trying to create for them) but Fitzgerald found out right away that it was Armitage, not the Whitehouse, who told Novak that she worked for the CIA.

He knew right away that there was no law broken in telling Novak that information but he told Armitage to keep quiet and then went on for years looking for any thing he could in the testimony of all the Bushies he could call before the grand jury hoping to get someone to lie about something.

Imagine if Monica Lewinsky told Ken Starr that the stain on her blue dress was really just mayonnaise so he told her to keep quiet and continued interviewing all the Clintonista's hoping to catch them in a lie.

Would the press be as silent then as they are now once the truth came out?

dissent · Post by **dissent** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 3:01 pm

Yeah, no kidding. The Gray Lady is dancing as fast as she can.

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10325

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/
(scroll down to \"Armitage Fesses Up\")

Bet51987 · Post by **Bet51987** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 4:09 pm

Someone told me if Valerie Plame was overseas when her cover was gone she could have been captured and jailed for life..... or executed. She had no diplomatic immunity.

Bee

Will Robinson · Post by **Will Robinson** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 4:40 pm

Bet51987 wrote:Someone told me if Valerie Plame was overseas when her cover was gone she could have been captured and jailed for life..... or executed. She had no diplomatic immunity.

Bee

*If* is the key word. She had been exposed as covert in a list of agents sold to the russians years before Bush ever became president, she had decided to take a desk job at CIA headquarters so she could have a normal life and raise her children, she hadn't been undercover for years...
So you are right *if* all those things weren't true and *if*, instead, she had been working undercover and captured she would have been in a world of hurt.

And *if* it had actually been Carl Rove who told Novak she was a CIA employee he would have been indicted by Fitzgerald right away. But since it was Armitage, a Bush critic, who inadvertanly told Novak she was a CIA employee the prosecutor decided to make Armitage shut up so he could use the pretense of the conspiracy investigation as a means to try and entrap some Bushies even though he had really found the source of his leak a long time ago!
And *if* the press didn't already take a side in this story, going on endlessly about what would happen *if* Rove or Cheney was the leaker they wouldn't be hoping it would now just go away....

Chris Mathews did almost a whole year of shows on this so called story when all he had to go on was conjecture as to who the leaker was and just the other day when asked why he now is silent about the 'story', now that he finally knows who the leaker is, he said "The story is just too difficult now".

WTF is up with that?!?!

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Sat Sep 09, 2006 8:04 am

If this is all so difficult I guess reporters like Matthews will not be pounding on Fitzgeralds door asking him when he knew and why did he continue the farce?

Will Robinson · Post by **Will Robinson** » Sat Sep 09, 2006 8:52 am

I found this quote from Victoria Toensing, she's a former Deputy Attorney General Criminal Division and happens to be one of the authors of the actual law in question in this case:
\"Bob Woodward remembers telling Walter Pincus about Valerie Plame. And Walter Pincus says, he doesn't recall any such conversation. Should Walter Pincus be indicted? That's basically the kind of case against Scooter Libby. People have different memories in all good faith.\"

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Sat Sep 09, 2006 11:06 am

Bet51987 wrote:Someone told me if Valerie Plame was overseas when her cover was gone she could have been captured and jailed for life..... or executed. She had no diplomatic immunity.

Bee

Unfortunately for Rove and Libby, they experienced actual repercussions. A Times reporter did time in jail Plame OTH got a lucrative book deal.