RUSH: Washington Post editorial today entitled, “End of an Affair.” Just excerpts for you: “It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House — that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame’s identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson — is untrue. The partisan clamor that followed the raising of that allegation by Mr. Wilson in the summer of 2003 led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, a costly and prolonged investigation, and the indictment of Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, on charges of perjury. All of that might have been avoided had Mr. Armitage’s identity been known three years ago.”
Why didn’t Armitage go public? Well, we can’t know for sure but we can speculate — we can assume — that he loved seeing administration officials twist in the wind, as did Secretary Powell. They were not big fans of this administration, and I’m sure they enjoyed every moment of this. Of course that idiot Joe Wilson, thinking that this is never going to become known; the truth is never going to become known, just goes out there and makes an absolute hapless fool of himself, and like a vacuum cleaner sucking up all the Drive-By Media with him to the point that he’s a hero. “But nevertheless,” the Washington Post concludes today, “it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame’s CIA career is [her husband!] Mr. Wilson.
“Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming — falsely, as it turned out — that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush’s closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It’s unfortunate,” concludes the Post, “that so many people took him seriously.”
Yeah, it really is. “You know, so our bad! We’re moving on. Never mind. Our bad.” This is all such hocus-pocus. Where is the outrage in the Drive-By Media over having been misled? The answer is there isn’t any outrage, and they really weren’t misled. Nobody will convince me that the name Richard Armitage associated with this story as the leaker was not known long ago by a whole bunch of people, both in the government and in the Drive-By Media, and I think they thought they could complete the scam — especially when they saw the way the special prosecutor was cooperating with them by essentially adopting the Joe Wilson version of events as the foundation for his investigation, but now it’s all over.
“Ah, never mind! Ah, sorry.”
Nope, they haven’t said sorry. They won’t say sorry — and as I asked first on this program: Where are the reporters camped outside Armitage’s house as they were outside Rove’s house, yelling questions? Where are all these journalists that kept throwing all these softball questions during interviews with Joseph Wilson? Where is Wilson today? Where is the outrage at Wilson? “No, we gave it our best shot,” is the attitude. “We tried to bring Rove down. We tried to bring Cheney down, tried to bring Bush down. Ah, we’ll get ’em next time.” It turns out this is pretty darn close to a Bill Burkett Bush National Guard-type story, except you don’t have a single journalist here who is promulgating what he knows as fraudulent fakes and forgeries, but you do have journalists ignoring what they know and pursuing what they hope would end up being the truth.
But as we pointed out, ladies and gentlemen, it worked, this many years, all these two years they harped on this. ABC News/Washington Post polls, Pew Center polls all indicate that anywhere between 68 and 72% of the American people during this time thought Bush and his administration were unethical and that they would use “classified information to ruin a political opponent and his wife and her career,” and the simple fact of the matter is that Valerie Plame never needed to quit her job in the first place. The simple fact of the matter is that Valerie Plame quit the job because she saw a chance via the wheels of this story to go out and earn big bucks and become famous — and there they are, on the cover of Vanity Fair.
Joe Wilson is an unabashed, unapologetic, liberal, which is all you need to know about him. He is a fraud. He is a liar. He apparently is good at it. He took in a special counsel. The Washington Post, though, I have to tell you this. I can’t let this go unremarked upon. Why was there a special counsel? Why was there a massive investigation? Who was it that demanded this in the first place? Why, ladies and gentlemen, it was the Drive-By Media — primary the New York Times — and where did it lead them? It led their reporters going to jail. TIME Magazine reporter threatened with jail. They’re the ones that demanded all of this. The one leak they find objectionable, and it turns out it was one of their class! Richard Armitage, he’s in the protected clique in Washington. Rove isn’t. Rove’s not in the clique. Bush incident is in the clique. Cheney isn’t in the clique, but Powell and Armitage are, and so, “Eh! There are good leaks and bad leaks and good people and bad people. There are useful things you can do and useless things you can do,” and in this case Armitage and Powell will be protected because they’re in the club. It was a nice try — and they’re saying, “I’ll get ’em next time.”
END TRANSCRIPT
WASHINGTON POST:
End of an Affair
It turns out that the person who exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame was not out to punish her husband.
Friday, September 1, 2006; A20
WE’RE RELUCTANT to return to the subject of former CIA employee Valerie Plame because of our oft-stated belief that far too much attention and debate in Washington has been devoted to her story and that of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, over the past three years. But all those who have opined on this affair ought to take note of the not-so-surprising disclosure that the primary source of the newspaper column in which Ms. Plame’s cover as an agent was purportedly blown in 2003 was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage.
Mr. Armitage was one of the Bush administration officials who supported the invasion of Iraq only reluctantly. He was a political rival of the White House and Pentagon officials who championed the war and whom Mr. Wilson accused of twisting intelligence about Iraq and then plotting to destroy him. Unaware that Ms. Plame’s identity was classified information, Mr. Armitage reportedly passed it along to columnist Robert D. Novak “in an offhand manner, virtually as gossip,” according to a story this week by the Post’s R. Jeffrey
Smith, who quoted a former colleague of Mr. Armitage.
It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House — that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame’s identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson — is untrue. The partisan clamor that followed the raising of that allegation by Mr. Wilson in the summer of 2003 led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, a costly and prolonged investigation, and the indictment of Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, on charges of perjury. All of that might have been avoided had Mr. Armitage’s identity been known three years ago.
That’s not to say that Mr. Libby and other White House officials are blameless. As prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has reported, when Mr. Wilson charged that intelligence about Iraq had been twisted to make a case for war, Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney reacted by inquiring about Ms. Plame’s role in recommending Mr. Wilson for a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger, where he investigated reports that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium. Mr. Libby then allegedly disclosed Ms. Plame’s identity to journalists and lied to a grand jury when he said he had learned of her identity from one of those reporters. Mr. Libby and his boss, Mr. Cheney, were trying to discredit Mr. Wilson; if Mr. Fitzgerald’s account is correct, they were careless about handling information that was classified.
Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame’s CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming — falsely, as it turned out — that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush’s closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It’s unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.
? 2006 The Washington Post Company
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