AJStrata has an excellent post up about who he believes may be aligned with Wilson and Plame in the CIA leak case:
To look at this entire mess we have to start with the process the media must go through to vet a story. In this case we have Joe Wilson feeding hints to a desperate-get-Bush media that the evidence against Iraq was either cooked or inaccurate. So what would the press do?
Well they would check their sources to understand (a) who is this Joe Wilson guy and (b) does his story check out. ?Who Joe is? becomes very problematic depending on who introduces him to the press. In the process of finding out who Wilson is it is highly likely information on Valerie could have been provided to give him credibility. And this could have come from folks associated with the CIA.
[…]Mac Ranger believes, probably correctly, that Wilson had somehow come into contact with Larry Johnson – an ex-CIA analyst who is an anti-Bush fanatic. As Mac Ranger noted, and I quickly learned, Johnson is a member of one of the scariest nutfarms I have ever run across – Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Check out this membership list and take some time to explore these people – they are scary. To think our national security was in the hands of these people.
[…]OK, so what was VIP doing? Well it is entirely made up of ex-CIA analysts who opposed the war. And in many of their early outbursts they sang a fairly common theme song. Veterans For Common Sense has the transcript of a March 6, 2003 interview with these folks on German TV under the title ?MEMORANDUM FOR CONFUSED AMERICANS? (how quaint).
From the website introduction:
We would note that the interviews were taped before the latest indignities regarding US intelligence came to light?the forged letters earlier adduced as proof that Iraq was seeking to obtain uranium from Africa for its nuclear program, for example. Our embarrassment is actually too painful to dwell at any length on other recent indignities?UN inspector ElBaradei?s preliminary finding that Iraq has no nuclear weapons program, the gaffes made by Secretary of State Colin Powell in his debut as imagery analyst before the UN Security Council, and his praising as ?exquisite? a graduate school paper masquerading as top secret intelligence from the UK?to name just a few.
Important to note the claims came before the divulgence of faked intel.
[…]By September of 2003 the Wilson Op-Ed was out and calls for an investigation had resulted in what would be the Fitzgerald Grand Jury. But recall at this time very little was known about all the players. So this September 30, 2003 PBS interview with Larry Johnson has one interesting snippet in it:
LARRY JOHNSON: The reporters who did not file a story and promised, or given assurance to these individuals that they would be protected, they need to come forward. To hear Bob Novak parsing words like a Clinton lawyer defining sex is outrageous. Sure, they didn?t call him, he called them but they volunteered the information. They took the initiative to divulge the CIA officer?s name. And that is outrageous.
This exchange discussing ?reporters? who ?need to come forward? appears to be discussing Judith Miller – the only person I am aware of who did not file a story but did give assurances to her sources. In fact it is a barely coherent statement. But it does expose a very keen knowledge of the events between Wilson, reporters and events some distant person couldn?t possibly know. I think this is evidence to back up Mac Ranger?s claim that Johnson might have been aligned with Wilson – and could be that mystery ?friend? who met Novak on the street and supposedly got him to spill Valerie?s CIA position.
It is not that far fetched since Johnson and Plame joined the CIA at the same time and were in the same early training program.
[…]To give folks one last glimpse at the fanaticism in this group I end with this post by a student reporting in a McGovern speech at his school – quite enlightening. I hope Wilson and Plame were not working with these folks, answering their call to rise up against Bush. These are not stable people to be playing games with on our national security:
For starters, Mr. McGovern asserted that the United States is today a one-party state because Republicans control the White House, Senate, and Congress. The speaker declared that we in this country are moving toward a fascist state and, on more than one occasion, compared the Bush administration to Hitler and the Nazi machine. He used quotes from Goering and compared the Holocaust to the arrests of Arab-Americans in the present. Mr. McGovern suggested that President Bush should be impeached because he lied to the nation about Iraq and claimed that the President usurped the power of the Congress. He called President Bush a war criminal that should be arrested and tried before the World Court of Justice.
Most outrageous of all his lunatic claims was that the President would create a terrorist attack in order to win the election. Yes, you read it correctly. Mr. McGovern stated that one month from today if President Bush is behind in the polls he will ?create? a terrorist attack on American soil in order to postpone the election and find a way to win. McGovern charged the President with conspiring to kill Americans for political reasons.
Interesting stuff and more then likely true. We have known for quite some time about the rogue CIA agents and their rebellion against Bush. Did they conspire to hurt Bush prior to the election? MacRanger has some thoughts:
Fact is that Joes’s trip was looking more and more like a “total shame”. It wasn’t designed to find squat. The trip was to lend credibility to his return – to his spin against the White House. Yet, even more to his role as “point man” in the scheme to embarrass the Bush Administration in the upcoming election year.
Most of the confusion and misinformation in the coverage of the Plame Game comes from “keeping the story in 2002-2003”. When you look at this ONLY from the perspective of 2002-2003, it looks bad, and you might even see the case the MSM and left tries to preach, which is why that’s where they have kept it. Yet when you bring it forward into 2004 and combine it with the almost daily CIA/State Departmen leaks, and all the negative books and stories, and especially the SSCI report that completely exposes Wilson/Plame the Agency for their game – and discredits them, it get’s much clearer.
Much clearer indeed.
I have a feeling the left is not going to like the result of the Fitzgerald Grand Jury.
I have a feeling the left is not going to like the result of the Fitzgerald Grand Jury.
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