Plamegate: Condi Did It

[SoDesuKa]

Interesting article here that argues that the high government official ultimately responsible for outing Valerie Plame is probably Condoleezza Rice.

"The only official on board Air Force One with the knowledge and authority — motive, means and opportunity — to instruct Rove and Libby in their leaks and so betray Plame was Condoleezza Rice ..."

http://www.egp360.net/midnightride/morris_2005_07_24.shtml

Rice has been working very hard to be an absolutely stellar Secretary of State. But despite her closeness to the President, she may take the fall because she was simply outmaneuvered by the crafty Rove. That would be an extraordinary denouement.

In all likelihood, prosecutor Fitzgerald is coming down with an indictment of a major figure. There's much speculation that it will be Rove or Libby or both. If it's Rice, will make her biography lively reading: Montgomery to Stanford to Washington to prison.

[writes2000]

1. Bush & Rove seem to have their alibi set....based on new Yahoo article

Maybe it's just me but this screams to me that they think they've got their asses covered.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050802/pl_nm/bush_leak_dc

When Bush is telling the press to wait until the "true facts" come out, he's got something up his sleeve.

I still have faith in Fitzgerald and his record.

[cap]

2. at the end of the day, if they can pin it on Condi, they will

eom

[longship]

5. Alas, I can hear it now...

Well, Wilmer, I'm sorry indeed to lose you, but I want you to know I couldn't be fonder of you if you were my own son. Well, if you lose a son, it's possible to get another. There's only one Maltese falcon. When you're young, you simply don't understand these things.

[DanCa]

3. Is that why she's been so relatively low profile lately?

[longship]

4. Mandatory read. Recommended.

This is a very in-depth account of the whole Rove affair. Gawd, these people are in deep shit.

[AlGore-08.com]

6. Except in his 10/1/03 article, Novak refered to his source as a male

NOVAK (10/1/03): During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section 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.

I'm not saying this is solid steel proof it couldn't have been Rice, but why change her gender when he could have just called Condi "the official" or "the senior official" just as easily as "he"?

I'm just saying...

[ThoughtCriminal]

7. Novak has avoided jail by testifying

but I have a feeling that he would have trouble avoiding perjury even if they just asked him what he had for breakfast.

[DELUSIONAL]

8. I hate to say this -- but Condi's involvement wouldn't surprise me

Plus outing another woman is a real bitchy thing to do -- and Condi strikes me as someone who would do that.

Condi is protecting her "husband" after all.

Someone very high up had to give the order -- she may have given bushie an overview (since we know he can't or doesn't read). It wouldn't surprise me if bushie wanted more info on Wilson -- and Condi's face gets extra ugly and starts to blame the wife.

At the same time -- there is the scenario of Plame being the target because she and her network were getting too close to Cheney's and the bush crime family's dirty dealings.

This also has Cheney's finger prints -- but he wasn't on that flight to Africa. Cheney has a reputation of acting without considering the long rang ramifications.

Yes this article is well worth reading -- and copying to your hard disk.

[DELUSIONAL]

9. dupe

[evermind]

10. Careful with this

I've just been reading a piece aimed at debunking this article, which throws doubt on the author's probity (from a progressive blog which has been good on the Plame saga, not a conservative source, you understand!) at http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1723

Morris wrote a book attacking the Clintons, for involvement in Whitewater, and in cocaine smuggling via Mena airport - the piece includes quotes from a review of that book (Partners in Power) which shows how facts were abused:

. . . Several of the lurid charges in The Clinton Chronicles which resurface in Partners in Power were comprehensively refuted in an article by Carrie Rengers in the Republican Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on October 30, 1994. . . . Other claims made by Morris, including his almost phantasmagoric account of Bill Clinton's alleged cocaine use and his participation in a CIA-sponsored drug-smuggling plot, were also made in The Clinton Chronicles, and were previously subjected to withering analysis by none other than David Brock, the author of The Real Anita Hill and "Troopergate," in the Winter 1995 issue of the Forbes Media Critic.

. . . Almost every sentence regarding Whitewater in Partners in Power is similarly irresponsible. "Afterward," Morris writes, "there could be no doubt how much and how currently the Clintons knew the business habits of their intimates, knew the essence of what was happening at Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan." But the Clintons swore under oath to their ignorance of McDougal's machinations and the Pillsbury Report supported them 100 percent. The Clintons, it concluded, were passive investors, and were not informed about the affairs of the Whitewater Development Corporation, and were even deceived about them.

. . . But there's an even more elementary problem with L. D. Brown's story about flying in Barry Seal's C-123 from Mena, Arkansas, to Managua, Nicaragua, and back on October 23, 1984. This trip provides the basis for Roger Morris's thunderous conclusion that Bill Clinton and Dan Lasater were involved in a CIA-sponsored cocaine-smuggling ring. Seal's airplane did in fact make a flight that day, one of the two days it left the ground that year —- as Arkansas State Police files no doubt revealed to the troopers who looked into them. But it turns out Seal had a different passenger: a TV newsman, John Camp, of WBRZ in Baton Rouge, was making a film on Seal's activities as a smuggler-turned-DEA informant. This program was shown in November 1984. Camp, now a correspondent with CNN "Special Reports," had flown up from Baton Rouge with Seal before dawn that morning, spent the entire day with him, and returned with him to Louisiana late that night.

This will probably not discourage either L. D. Brown or Roger Morris from making up more stories; but the publishers, editors, and reporters who have been taking them seriously should be asking themselves why they have been had.

About the Rice allegations, the article says many of the assertions in Morris' article are dubious. Here's four paragraph's worth of dubiety:

-- In late February 2002, "in late February, with the concurrence of CIA Director George Tenet as well as Rice and Powell, Wilson flies to Niger." Neither Wilson nor anyone else has suggested that his trip was approved at such high levels.

-- In March 2002, "Wilson returns from Niger and gives CIA officers, as they request, an oral report which is the basis for a CIA-written memo on his trip then forwarded to Rice and Powell..." Again, Morris seems to be tacking Rice and Powell's name onto previously reported facts without any evidence.

-- In June 2003, the State Dept. memo addressed to Marc Grossman "is also sent to Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security (and future UN Ambassador-designate) John Bolton." Maybe Bolton did receive it, but no one has reported it besides Morris.

-- In July 2003, when Joseph Wilson goes public, "Ford simply pulls out the previous June 10 memo with its reference to Wilson's wife (her name now corrected from Wilson to Plame), addresses it to Powell, and forwards the memo to Rice to be passed on to Powell..." Both the mention of Plame and Rice as a conduit are contradicted by published reports.

The article concludes that Morris' technique seems to be to take events reported in the media, and add Rice's name onto them with apparently no justification.

That doesn't prove Rice wasn't involved, of course, but it would seem Morris' article doesn't prove that she was, either. There's more than I can quote and paraphrase here in the blog entry, which is at http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1723