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RUSH: I didn’t spend any time on it because I knew this was a hoax from the get-go. It had to be. I mean everything involved, I’m talking about this real pervert, perverts in the news today, John Mark Karr and this wacko out in Las Vegas, apparently this polygamist. What’s a polygamist, a guy that gets married to more than one woman at a time? No, he’s a pervert, he’s insane! It’s all over the news today. Greetings, folks. Welcome. Rush Limbaugh. Excellence in Broadcasting Network, high atop the EIB building in midtown Manhattan, great to be with you. I know you know it’s a thrill and an honor to be here with us. Telephone number is 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program. The e-mail address is Rush@eibnet.com.

All right, I’m a little frustrated today, I’ve been trying to get on all the National Weather Service sites to track this stupid hurricane. Well, it’s not a hurricane, it’s a tropical storm. Looks just like a big thunderstorm to me. But you know we’re in the post-Katrina environment, and everything has to be portrayed as disastrous, it’s going to destroy everything in its path, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just looks like a big thunderstorm to me. The pressure is only, you know, a thousand seven millibars. That’s nothing. No, they can’t find the eye. The center of circulation, they’re calling it. There’s deep convection, weather talk for heavy rain. Deep convection, shows up as dark red. Anyway, I can’t get the loops to work. I can get it in single frames, that doesn’t tell me anything, I want to see the movement of this stuff because the EIB Southern Command could be on the worst side of it, rain content-wise, could miss us, the heavy part. They only come out with these new tracks every six hours, just had one an hour ago, they moved it a little further west. But I guess everybody’s trying to get in and look at these sites, just can’t get the loops. The radar loops aren’t working, the satellite loops aren’t working and I’m mad about it.

This is the United States of America, it’s 2006, the government server farms ought to be big enough to handle the load and the curiosity. At any rate, ladies and gentlemen, we are here, be here for three exciting, sterling broadcast hours. Right now Mary Lacey, the district attorney out in Boulder, ‘It’s just been a real tough couple of days for us. I’m sure you can understand.’ It was one e-mail from some professor, one e-mail four years ago that got all this going. You look at this guy — have you ever looked at people and said, ‘Thank God I don’t look like that.’ That’s what I feel like when I look at John Mark Karr. My gosh, I mean I’ve always wanted to be thinner than I am, but I don’t want to be a geek. At any rate, you gotta hear this, folks. We’re not going to talk about this. How about this? One thing, though. Drudge had this headline up last night: Karr Wanted Johnny Depp to Play Him in Movie. He wrote a screenplay. Had nothing to do with Jonbenet, wrote a screenplay, wanted Johnny Depp to play him in a movie.

Now, is that a statement on our sick celebrity pop culture, or what? This guy has maneuvered himself into it, got a free plane ride back in business class with pâté, can’t even serve that in Chicago anymore unless you call it bacon or anything else, which is how they’re going to get around it up there. But anyway, the media is fit to be tied that he didn’t do it. We have a little montage here, Drive-By Media angry at John Mark Karr and the DA for wasting their time and creating a media frenzy. Here’s the montage, doesn’t matter who these people are, listen. It’s number four. Did I tell you we’re starting with three? I goofed up. Your mistake. Cut four.

ROBACH: All the e-mails, all the media frenzy, all the champagne and pâté. The case against John Mark Karr has gone up in smoke.

PHILLIPS: You’ve seen the long, drawn-out frenzy over John Mark Karr. It started out with such a media frenzy.

JOHNS: Confessions that created a media frenzy.

DONVAN: And now it’s more TV frenzy.

STEWART: How come he’s not being charged with something like obstruction or making false statements or conspiracy to trigger a media frenzy at the very least?

RUSH: Now, that last was Allison Stewart, and she’s at PMSNBC and I wanted you to hear that because I figured nobody watches that. How come he’s not being charged with a conspiracy to trigger a media frenzy at the very least? So now it’s a crime to lead the media on a conspiracy? If that’s the case, where’s Joe Wilson behind bars? Joe Wilson needs to be indicted. If it is a crime to lead the media, where’s Patrick Fitzgerald, where are all these people that led the media down the wrong path when we knew Richard Armitage — and probably Colin Powell — were behind the Valerie Plame leak, ladies and gentlemen. We’ll get to that here in just a second. Howard Kurtz writes about this in the Washington Post today, and he called the JonBenet fraud one of the greatest media embarrassments in modern history, and that is wrong.

Who did the JonBenet fraud damage? Okay, we’ve had a fraud here with this John Mark Karr, but who did it damage? You can’t say it damaged the media because the Drive-By Media has been damaging itself for years. Who did it damage? Who did it really damage? The JonBenet fraud is just boob bait to catch an audience. All it was was headlines for circulation and ratings, filler for 24-hour cable TV. It’s exactly what it was intended to be. It served its purpose. These people are all upset in the media about a media frenzy having been created by the DA and by this pervert. The fact of the matter is this is exactly what the Drive-By Media has become. They ought to be celebrating today. They did it precisely because they got their ratings up. It’s what they do. It’s what they always do. No harm, no foul, chump change. This is just like Hurricane Katrina.

How about the media frenzy over Hurricane Katrina and all the people that lied about the aftermath there? The real media embarrassment — what did Howard Kurtz say? Oh, yeah, one of the ‘greatest media embarrassments in modern history.’ The Plame game, the CIA leak story, the White House vendetta story, that story did real damage. That story did real damage to real people during a real war to a real country, the entire fiasco that has been the Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson story. Wilson is an incorrigible liar, he is an egomaniac. His wife was not damaged in this but a whole lot of people were; real damage, real people, during a real war, to a real country, ours. Even worse, this fraud was not perpetrated by the so-called gossip media, perpetrated by the highly esteemed opinion-molding media. Tell me, my friends, let me ask you a serious question.

What does JonBenet and the so-called media frenzy and fraud have to do with our nation or the John Mark Karr fraud have to do with the United States? What would Jimmy Hoffa’s missing body have to do with national security or Al Capone’s vault have to do with the war on terrorism? The Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame fraud was not a fraud for ratings and circulation. It was a fraud to manipulate you. It was a fraud to manipulate the nation, to undermine our war effort, to possibly bring down a president. The media is all in a tizzy over what happened here regarding this John Mark Karr fraud. The big fraud is the Valerie Plame leak scandal case. I want to ask, will the exposing of the Plame game fraud get a gazillionth of the exposure that the John Mark Karr fraud got? Maybe even more important, will it get a gazillionth of the outrage from Howard Kurtz or anybody else, Allison Stewart, anybody, Chris Matthews, who lived on this story for two years? Will they feel as though they have had a fraud perpetrated on them? No way, ladies and gentlemen.

That story accomplished everything it was intended to. It drove down the president’s approval numbers. It got one of the president’s men indicted. It portrayed Joe Wilson and Valerie Wilson as innocent pawns of a malicious, vicious administration trying to destroy two wonderful public servants, the first time in my life I can remember anybody in the Drive-By Media or the American left caring a whit about a CIA agent or the CIA. Everything was 180 degrees out of phase on this story. Tim Russert, George Stephanopoulos, Wolf Blitzer, Brian, any of these people going to feel like they were misled, they going to wonder, what about this media frenzy? I doubt it. I’m not going to hold my breath; after all, it’s an election year. And the no plan left ace-in-the-hole. They’ve got no plan. The ace-in-the-hole was the Scooter Libby-Karl Rove-Dick Cheney scandal that never was. This was one of the many things they were going to base the impeachment of the president on, ladies and gentlemen. It has gone up totally in smoke.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

All right, the Isikoff revelation, Michael Isikoff and David Corn. By the way, let me say something about that. David Corn, who writes for The Nation, which if you didn’t know better, The Nation reads like a right-wing satire publication, like they’re satirizing the left. I mean, it’s Saturday Night Live type stuff, if the left were made fun of on programs like this. These guys were dead serious. This is the place and the magazine where the editrix-in-chief is Hurricane Katrina vanden Heuvel. David Corn is one of her head honchos out there. David Corn, collaborating with Michael Isikoff finally, once and for all, removes the veneer that Isikoff is some down the line, mainstream, objective journalist. Joining forces with Corn clearly illustrates that Isikoff himself is of the far left.

Now, the Washington cliché here is, ‘What did they know, and when did they know it?’ What did he know, what did Nixon know, when did he know it when they got started? In this case it’s about Richard Armitage. But what did they know and when did they know it is too soft for this. The real angle ought to be, did they know it was Armitage who was the leaker when they called for Scooter Libby’s head. Did they know that it was Armitage when they called for Karl Rove’s resignation? And, by the way, forgive me on this. I made the assumption yesterday everybody would know who Richard Armitage is. Richard Armitage, barrel-chested, big guy, bald headed, Colin Powell’s trusted number two when he was secretary of state. Armitage is a Vietnam vet, not part of the White House cabal, not friendly to the White House, not supportive of the Iraq war, well known in Washington as a gossip, somebody that’s titillated by it, loves to hear it, loves to pass it on. Nobody is of the opinion that Armitage was trying to harm anybody when he told Novak that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA.

So the idea that there was an intent to harm anybody here is not evident when the primary first leaker is Armitage. But that’s who he is and he left with Powell. I have no idea [advising McCain] what he’s doing now, but he was Powell’s number two. Let me read to you something from Byron York, by the way, who is one of Washington’s premiere investigative reporters. This is a National Review Online, posted just after midnight today. No one in the press corps knew it at the time — this is October 3rd, 2003 — let me read the opening paragraph which will help give you context on this. ‘On October 3rd, 2003 Secretary of State Colin Powell talked to reporters after meeting with Laszlo Kovacs, the foreign minister of Hungary. The meeting went well, nothing controversial to discuss. It went so well, in fact, the reporter said to Powel, ‘Mr. Secretary, things are so smooth I thought I’d ask you about something else. The state department’s offering to help the search for the person who leaked the CIA official’s name. Can you say something about that situation? How might the state department help?’

‘Powell said, ‘We’ve been asked by this justice department, those who are conducting the investigation, to make ourselves available for any purpose that they have.’ Promising to cooperate fully, Powell added, ‘We’re doing our searches in response to the letter we received yesterday and make ourselves available, but I’m not sure what they’ll be looking for or what they wish to contact us about, but we’re anxious to be of all assistance to the inquiry.” Well, no one at the press corps knew it at that time, October 3rd, 2003. But if a newly published account of this case is accurate, Colin Powell knew much, much more than he let on during that session with the media. ‘Two days earlier, according to the Isikoff book, Powell had been told by his top deputy and close friend Richard Armitage that he, Armitage, leaked the identity of Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak.’ Armitage had, in other words, set off the whole thing. He’d gotten the whole kerfuffle going.

‘According to the book, Armitage had gone through the weekend of September 27th and 28th and then the continued furor on Monday and Tuesday, not to mention the previous three months without realizing he was Novak’s source. It was only upon reading Novak’s ‘No Partisan Gunslinger’ column, allegedly, that Armitage knew he was the source and then got in touch with Powell.’ Why did Armitage keep the information from Fitzgerald? ‘In the book, Armitage’s allies hint at the same defense that Lewis Libby’s lawyers used to explain why he didn’t tell investigators everything, and that is that Plame was a relatively inconsequential part of a big story and was not, as administration critics say, the focus of a White House conspiracy.’ The state department intelligence guy told David Corn and Isikoff, well, my sense from Armitage is that it was just chitchat. Armitage simply screwed up.

Well, if that’s true, that makes this whole thing an even bigger embarrassment for everybody involved. And I want to know, all of these media types who so worried they’ve been taken to the cleaners in the JonBenet, John Mark Karr case, did they know that it was Armitage when they called for Libby’s head? Did they know it was Armitage when they called for Karl Rove’s resignation? Did they know it was Armitage when they questioned if it went all the way up to Dick Cheney? Did they know it was Armitage when they wondered if it went all the way up to the president? Is it possible the New York Times did not know it was Armitage? Hell, they know everything. Colin Powell talked to ’em regularly. Is it possible Andrea Mitchell — she’s an expert because she’s tapped into the state department and the Pentagon — is it possible Andrea Mitchell didn’t know it was Armitage? To call this media bias is the wrong way to frame this. Bias is partiality. It’s an understandable human trait. But this goes so far beyond bias, it goes to scandal.

To deliberately and maliciously alter evidence in a story, to ignore facts in a story that you know and still pursue your action line based on ‘the White House did this, it’s a conspiracy by the White House to get even with a critic of their policy.’ Remember the discussions we had at the time. The Drive-By Media and the Democrats were trying to politicize policy decisions. They were trying to politicize the White House trying to defend itself against these now ludicrous accusations against Joe Wilson and so forth. Now, there’s a blogger out there by the name of Ray Robison. Ray Robison had his piece put on the American Thinker, which is where I found it. What he did, he went and looked at the polling data during this whole episode of Plamegate, and he points out the degree to which the Drive-By Media sold you, the public, on the false notion that the Bush administration behaved unethically.

Now, most tellingly he contrasts the polling data with polls surrounding the Lewinsky affair when the press was covering up and pushing a pro-White House line in a scandal which involved genuine scandal. Now, you can say that if the media has any honor, and there’s no expectation of that here, they would as prominently highlight the collapse of this whole Plamegate enterprise with the same vigor they pushed visions of Fitzmas, frog marches, and other assorted details. But as I say, don’t hold your breath. Mr. Robison begins his piece.

‘Now that we have media confirmation that the leak of Plame’s identify was not a Bush/Cheney conspiracy to silence war critics, it might serve us well to examine the damage done by the media to this administration. The media unquestionably provided a consistent drum beat of allegations of corruption surrounding this matter. I could provide innumerable links to examples, but you can google it yourselves just as well. But what was the real damage and is it calculable? Interestingly enough, there are numbers that show what the damage was to the President’s credibility. Polling Report has a page devoted to the Plame leak case.’

I’m hesitant here to start reeling off numbers. They’re hard to keep track of on the radio when you’re listening to them, but trust me when I say that polling numbers for Bush during this period had a steady, steady decline; and the polls asked, ‘Are you worried about the ethical lapses coming out of the White House? Are you concerned about potential corruption,’ and blah, blah, blah, this sort of thing. There’s no question this damage was real as opposed to this Karr case which is nothing more than an average 24/7 Drive-By Media hit.

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