Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Business As Usual
The NYT has a front-page debacle of a story under a headline shouting to the world, "At White House, a Day of Silence on Rove's Role in C.I.A. Leak." The article breathlessly states that "the White House on Monday refused to answer any questions about new evidence of Mr. Rove's role in the matter." And what new evidence is that? The watering down begins right away: "new evidence suggested that Mr. Rove had discussed the C.I.A. officer with a reporter from Time magazine in July 2003 without identifying her by name."
After pointing out that White House spokesman Scott McClellan declined to answer certain questions because a criminal investigation is under way, NYT writer Richard Stevenson doubles back on himself, saying McClellan "did not directly address why the White House had appeared now to have adopted a new policy of not commenting on the matter."
Continuing on the theme of slagging the White House for following political convention during the conduct of a criminal investigation, the Times states, "Asked for comment on Monday, several Republican senators said they did not know enough or did not want to venture an opinion," a refreshingly honorable adaptation of the Democratic tradition of clamming en masse when one of their idiots (a crowded field, to be sure) utters the daily inanity, slags the military, steals and destroys classified government documents, or compares someone to Hitler. The Times goes on to cleverly assert that "a syndicated column written by Robert Novak, effectively end[ed] [Valerie Plame's] career as a covert operative" conveniently omitting for the moment the fact that Plame's supposed career as a c.o., if it ever existed, had already long been over and done with.
In keeping with their usual practice of flipping the informational sequence of the story so as to mislead its readers, the Times finishes this dog's breakfast (apologies to dogs' breakfasts everywhere) with the following:
"The e-mail message from Mr. Cooper to his bureau chief describing a brief conversation with Mr. Rove, first reported in Newsweek, does not by itself establish that Mr. Rove knew Ms. Wilson's covert status or that the government was taking measures to protect her."
"Based on the e-mail message, Mr. Rove's disclosures are not criminal, said Bruce S. Sanford, a Washington lawyer who helped write the law and submitted a brief on behalf of several news organizations concerning it to the appeals court hearing the case of Mr. Cooper and Judith Miller, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
"'It is clear that Karl Rove's conversation with Matt Cooper does not fall into that category' of criminal conduct, Mr. Sanford said. 'That's not 'knowing.' It doesn't even come close.'"
There has been some dispute, moreover, about just how secret a secret agent Ms. Wilson was."'She had a desk job in Langley,' said Ms. [Victoria] Toensing[former chief counsel to the Senate intelligence committee], who also signed the supporting brief in the appeals court, referring to the C.I.A.'s headquarters. 'When you want someone in deep cover, they don't go back and forth to Langley.'"
So it now apparently takes a misleading headline and full front-page coverage for the New York Times to confirm that there is absolutely nothing new about anything on the left today, Tuesday July 12 2005. In the process of saddling what's left of their readership with a monumental time-waster of a non-story, the Old Grey Mare has confirmed that it wants Karl Rove's head just as much as, if not more than, the Democrats and the rest of the Islamofan left, and they're willing to do just about anything to get it.
Wouldn't it be interesting to discover that it is in fact NYT reporter Judith Miller herself who is the source for Secret Agent Plame's outing?
Captain Ed revisits the Wilson/Plame fiasco:
Let's take a look at this case from its beginning. The media (specifically Robert Novak) revealed that Valerie Plame worked as an undercover agent for the CIA at some point in her career, even though she worked at Langley for the past few years. Plame is married to Ambassador Joe Wilson, who got sent to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from the African nation. Wilson claimed that the White House sent him on that trip and that his wife had nothing to do with his selection, and that her outing as a CIA agent came as retribution for his report that the Niger intelligence was flat-out wrong and possibly faked.
However, almost everything Wilson told us was wrong. Niger's government acknowledged that Iraq sent a delegation during the sanctions period to open secret trade talks -- and since the only export of Niger's that could hold any interest in secret trade was uranium, the Niger government assumed that the Iraqis had an interest in the banned material and told Wilson exactly that. Wilson finally acknowledged that to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when it investigated Wilson's allegations. The SSCI also found that Plame indeed selected Wilson personally for this mission, calling her motivations (and Wilson's) into question.
When Matt Cooper went on deep background with Karl Rove, before all of this came out, he asked Rove about Wilson's credibility. Rove warned Cooper not to trust Wilson. The White House knew Wilson lied about both the report and the nature of his assignment, and gave Cooper the information to back that up. Plame's status as CIA agent hardly qualified as a secret; NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell concedes that most of Washington's media elite already knew it. Novak simply printed it, although no one knows who gave it to Novak. At any rate, on the evidence given so far, Rove never broke the law as even the Times article makes clear in its final paragraphs.
And here's Lorie Byrd talking about the news briefings during which the usual crop of leftwing bingo-callers, er, reporters, got to foaming at the mouth about the Rovian One:
"I don’t even know how to describe the journalists’ questions in the briefing. I guess I could say they were disrespectful and disgraceful, but that does not quite do it justice. When I was watching, I just could not even get terribly angry about it because I was laughing too hard. Here are these blow-dried reporters who have spent years focusing their reports on whatever points the Democrat leaders tell them are important, rather than correctly framing and reporting the stories they cover, getting all nasty and going off on Scott McClellan over Karl Rove.
I can think of so many other times and other issues that they should have gotten excited about, but obviously Karl Rove is just too juicy a Democrat target for these partisans to resist. They sounded a bit like playground bullies, but ones with too meticulously styled hair and a little too much whine in their voices and prissy shoulder and hand motions to come across as exactly tough guys."
Michelle Malkin asks, Who Let The Dogs Out?
"I actually have no problem with McClellan getting justifiably barked at during his daily briefings (if only we had more Les Kinsolvings to press the White House from the right, especially on illegal immigration). But isn't it funny how Beltway reporters who get all prissy and whiny about one Fox News Channel reporter asking the DNC chairman one mildly aggressive question have no problem turning pack-rabid on McClellan?"
Come on, Michelle, that's just mean and nasty. And relevant.
UPDATE: Apparently the Times isn't happy with just one version of the Rove screamer; here is another almost identical version from their website: White House Silence on Rove's Role in Leak Enters 2nd Day . Perhaps they'll just recycle the same story day after day under a new headline ("After Three Weeks, Still No Admission From Rove") until they decide to stop the charade and reveal the source of the leak themselves.
After pointing out that White House spokesman Scott McClellan declined to answer certain questions because a criminal investigation is under way, NYT writer Richard Stevenson doubles back on himself, saying McClellan "did not directly address why the White House had appeared now to have adopted a new policy of not commenting on the matter."
Continuing on the theme of slagging the White House for following political convention during the conduct of a criminal investigation, the Times states, "Asked for comment on Monday, several Republican senators said they did not know enough or did not want to venture an opinion," a refreshingly honorable adaptation of the Democratic tradition of clamming en masse when one of their idiots (a crowded field, to be sure) utters the daily inanity, slags the military, steals and destroys classified government documents, or compares someone to Hitler. The Times goes on to cleverly assert that "a syndicated column written by Robert Novak, effectively end[ed] [Valerie Plame's] career as a covert operative" conveniently omitting for the moment the fact that Plame's supposed career as a c.o., if it ever existed, had already long been over and done with.
In keeping with their usual practice of flipping the informational sequence of the story so as to mislead its readers, the Times finishes this dog's breakfast (apologies to dogs' breakfasts everywhere) with the following:
"The e-mail message from Mr. Cooper to his bureau chief describing a brief conversation with Mr. Rove, first reported in Newsweek, does not by itself establish that Mr. Rove knew Ms. Wilson's covert status or that the government was taking measures to protect her."
"Based on the e-mail message, Mr. Rove's disclosures are not criminal, said Bruce S. Sanford, a Washington lawyer who helped write the law and submitted a brief on behalf of several news organizations concerning it to the appeals court hearing the case of Mr. Cooper and Judith Miller, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
"'It is clear that Karl Rove's conversation with Matt Cooper does not fall into that category' of criminal conduct, Mr. Sanford said. 'That's not 'knowing.' It doesn't even come close.'"
There has been some dispute, moreover, about just how secret a secret agent Ms. Wilson was."'She had a desk job in Langley,' said Ms. [Victoria] Toensing[former chief counsel to the Senate intelligence committee], who also signed the supporting brief in the appeals court, referring to the C.I.A.'s headquarters. 'When you want someone in deep cover, they don't go back and forth to Langley.'"
So it now apparently takes a misleading headline and full front-page coverage for the New York Times to confirm that there is absolutely nothing new about anything on the left today, Tuesday July 12 2005. In the process of saddling what's left of their readership with a monumental time-waster of a non-story, the Old Grey Mare has confirmed that it wants Karl Rove's head just as much as, if not more than, the Democrats and the rest of the Islamofan left, and they're willing to do just about anything to get it.
Wouldn't it be interesting to discover that it is in fact NYT reporter Judith Miller herself who is the source for Secret Agent Plame's outing?
Captain Ed revisits the Wilson/Plame fiasco:
Let's take a look at this case from its beginning. The media (specifically Robert Novak) revealed that Valerie Plame worked as an undercover agent for the CIA at some point in her career, even though she worked at Langley for the past few years. Plame is married to Ambassador Joe Wilson, who got sent to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from the African nation. Wilson claimed that the White House sent him on that trip and that his wife had nothing to do with his selection, and that her outing as a CIA agent came as retribution for his report that the Niger intelligence was flat-out wrong and possibly faked.
However, almost everything Wilson told us was wrong. Niger's government acknowledged that Iraq sent a delegation during the sanctions period to open secret trade talks -- and since the only export of Niger's that could hold any interest in secret trade was uranium, the Niger government assumed that the Iraqis had an interest in the banned material and told Wilson exactly that. Wilson finally acknowledged that to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when it investigated Wilson's allegations. The SSCI also found that Plame indeed selected Wilson personally for this mission, calling her motivations (and Wilson's) into question.
When Matt Cooper went on deep background with Karl Rove, before all of this came out, he asked Rove about Wilson's credibility. Rove warned Cooper not to trust Wilson. The White House knew Wilson lied about both the report and the nature of his assignment, and gave Cooper the information to back that up. Plame's status as CIA agent hardly qualified as a secret; NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell concedes that most of Washington's media elite already knew it. Novak simply printed it, although no one knows who gave it to Novak. At any rate, on the evidence given so far, Rove never broke the law as even the Times article makes clear in its final paragraphs.
And here's Lorie Byrd talking about the news briefings during which the usual crop of leftwing bingo-callers, er, reporters, got to foaming at the mouth about the Rovian One:
"I don’t even know how to describe the journalists’ questions in the briefing. I guess I could say they were disrespectful and disgraceful, but that does not quite do it justice. When I was watching, I just could not even get terribly angry about it because I was laughing too hard. Here are these blow-dried reporters who have spent years focusing their reports on whatever points the Democrat leaders tell them are important, rather than correctly framing and reporting the stories they cover, getting all nasty and going off on Scott McClellan over Karl Rove.
I can think of so many other times and other issues that they should have gotten excited about, but obviously Karl Rove is just too juicy a Democrat target for these partisans to resist. They sounded a bit like playground bullies, but ones with too meticulously styled hair and a little too much whine in their voices and prissy shoulder and hand motions to come across as exactly tough guys."
Michelle Malkin asks, Who Let The Dogs Out?
"I actually have no problem with McClellan getting justifiably barked at during his daily briefings (if only we had more Les Kinsolvings to press the White House from the right, especially on illegal immigration). But isn't it funny how Beltway reporters who get all prissy and whiny about one Fox News Channel reporter asking the DNC chairman one mildly aggressive question have no problem turning pack-rabid on McClellan?"
Come on, Michelle, that's just mean and nasty. And relevant.
UPDATE: Apparently the Times isn't happy with just one version of the Rove screamer; here is another almost identical version from their website: White House Silence on Rove's Role in Leak Enters 2nd Day . Perhaps they'll just recycle the same story day after day under a new headline ("After Three Weeks, Still No Admission From Rove") until they decide to stop the charade and reveal the source of the leak themselves.
