WP: Side Issue in the Plame Case: Who Sent Her Spouse to Africa?

[Goldmund]

The origin of Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV's trip to Niger in 2002 to check out intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase uranium has become a contentious side issue to the inquiry by special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who is looking into whether a crime was committed with the exposure of Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife, as a covert CIA employee.

After he went public in 2003 about the trip, senior Bush administration officials, trying to discredit Wilson's findings, told reporters that Wilson's wife, who worked at the CIA, was the one who suggested the Niger mission for her husband. Days later, Plame was named as an "agency operative" by syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak, who has said he did not realize he was, in effect, exposing a covert officer. A Senate committee report would later say evidence indicated Plame suggested Wilson for the trip.

Over the past months, however, the CIA has maintained that Wilson was chosen for the trip by senior officials in the Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division (CPD) -- not by his wife -- largely because he had handled a similar agency inquiry in Niger in 1999. On that trip, Plame, who worked in that division, had suggested him because he was planning to go there, according to Wilson and the Senate committee report.

The 2002 mission grew out of a request by Vice President Cheney on Feb. 12 for more information about a Defense Intelligence Agency report he had received that day, according to a 2004 report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. An aide to Cheney would later say he did not realize at the time that this request would generate such a trip.

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/10/AR2005081001918.html

[writes2000]

1. DailyKos Picks Up The Real Smoking Gun of the Article

The last paragraphs spell out the hard-to-refute truth.

http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/8/10/224855/781

Pincus is on to something. And I bet Fitzgerald caught this too.

[truthisfreedom]

2. i love it... i just love it. it's Wednesday night, and there's two more

days in the week for Roveco to sweat it out over this.

[JDPriestly]

3. Recommended!

This is big! This might be real evidence, might not, but it's worth watching where this will lead.

[Uncle Roy]

4. All through this mess it's been a mystery to me why the Rovians keep

insisting on the seemingly trivial point that Plame sent Wilson. I never saw a reason to dis-believe Wilson on this or any other point, whereas I always assume that anything a Rovian says is a lie. But even if Plame DID send Wilson, then so frickin what? Why do they always keep coming back to this weird and pointless point, over and over again?

I had guessed that maybe it was one of his patented "distract them with irrelevant details" gambits, but who knows? It will be a wonderful irony if this little detail in their smear campaign turns out now to be the loose end that starts The Great Unraveling.

Meanwhile, how, and more particularly WHY, did the State Department come up with their version of the story, and fax it off to Air Force One? Why did anyone in the State Department care if Wilson even HAD a wife? How did they get involved it this, and when?

And finally, why weren't All The President's Men putting this much effort into finding out how they were deceived in the Niger-ian yellowcake matter in the first place? Don't they want to know where those forged documents came from? Or why none of their high-priced intelligence wizards detected the forgery? Those are three very interesting questions. You would think they would try to get the answers. Instead, they chose to go after Joe Wilson, the only person in this whole sorry affair who has been telling the truth.

Is this the way honest men behave, when they have made an honest mistake? It looks to me a lot more like the way criminal conspirators behave, when something threatens their conspiracy.

I hope Mr Fitzgerald is looking into this, too.

Good night all. Sweet dreams...

Roy

[truthisfreedom]

5. oh, i can tell you why. it's simple. rove did his trickery by saying

"Plame sent Wilson" and, of course, it's slightly true (back in 1999, that is) because she recommended that he include some work for the CIA with a trip he was making to Niger anyway back then. but rove was playing his rovian game when he did this... he's trying to pretend that the message they have been harping is true of the LAST trip to Niger, but it's not true at all, and when it's finally revealed to the public that cHENEY'S actions resulted in sending WIlson to Niger, and rove is revealed to be pulling dirty tricks with sematics, they'll have egg on their faces and cheney won't be worth a shit as a presidential candidate (which is what bushco intends, by the way.) cheney will raise a hell of a lot of rethug eyebrows if he has to admit in any way, shape, or form that it was his own actions that led to Wilson going to Niger and finding no evidence of yellowcake being sold to Iraq.

so, as i was saying, the reason bushco harps on this is because they are so scared that it will be discovered that cheney, in fact, caused this entire debacle for the administration.

[emulatorloo]

6. The idea is "Plame/Wilson are Demoncrats who **conspired** to discredit

President Bush"

Which if you are a sentient being and know anything about the facts and the timeline is just stupid. But Rove Melman lies always depend on the gullibility of the listeners.

[rodeodance]

8. tactic meant to confuse the issue.

....lies always depend on the gullibility of the listeners......

[rodeodance]

7. getting familiy members a job is viewed as not nice. even if he was not

paid for the trip (expenses only i read somewhere).

....But even if Plame DID send Wilson, then so frickin what? Why do they always keep coming back to this weird and pointless point, over and over again?....

[Moderator]

9. Lock

This topic has been locked several times in LBN. This is mot breaking news, but a news analysis.

For a discussion of this topic, please go here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4310606