Abu Wabu

Larry C. Johnson worked for the CIA for four years in the early eighties or so and is now a self-professed expert on worldwide spookiness. His story is well told by Byron York, but to experience the essence of the Larry-Man himself, you've got to groove on his words, so here they are, direct from Larry C. Johnson's blog NoQuarter.

Note: I've included some readers' comments, including my own, to provide context; they appear in regular type. Larry's answers appear in their original shout caps. LARRY C. JOHNSON LOVES SHOUT CAPS.

How can someone be patriotic who gives up operational secrets or defends those who do?
EXACTLY, WHICH IS WHY THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT MARY MCCARTHY DID BUT AMPLE EVIDENCE THAT GEORGE BUSH DID. CAN I SIGN YOU UP FOR THE IMPEACH BUSH CAMPAIGN?

Fact: Tenet never disapproved. Tenet went after Wilson in a July 2003 statement.
WRONG. GEORGE TENET TOLD THE WHITE HOUSE IN OCTOBER 2002 TO REMOVE ANY REFERENCE TO URANIUM IN AFRICA FROM BUSH'S SPEECH.

LOL...The big, bad CIA guy can't take other opinions so he has to ban people. How ridiculous is that? How Trite? But we believe in free speech right? Not LJ. Try doin a few searches and see what everybody else is sayin' about him. See what LJ had to say:
YOU KNOW ASSHOLE, WHOOPS, I MEAN AXEY, THE NICE THING ABOUT RUNNING MY BLOG IS THAT I DON'T HAVE TO TOLERATE TROGS LIKE YOU. YOU OBVIOUSLY HAVE NOT READ WHAT I WROTE NOR DO YOU KNOW MY HISTORY ON THESE MATTERS. NO PROBLEM. YOU ARE A MORON AND ARE BANNED.

The CIA has conducted a war against Bush for the last 3 years. Clarke, McCarthy, Wilson and Plame are the players thus far. There are no doubt more. there's no question that the CIA has reason to want to hurt Bush. This is on the edge of sedition.
AND YOU CAN'T SEE THE TRUTH BECAUSE YOUR HEAD IS SO FAR UP YOUR ASS.

UNCLE TOM, YOU ARE A BLOWHARD AND A JOKE. YOU ARE MAKING UP YOUR SERVICE RECORD. MY FRIENDS, WHO ARE ACTUAL WARRIORS, NEVER VOLUNTEER WHAT THEY DID OR WHAT AWARDS THEY RECEIVED. IT TOOK ME YEARS TO FIND OUT. GUYS LIKE JOE LOPEZ, SILVER STAR WITH MARINES; DICK GANNON, EX-COMMANDER FIFTH MARINES (TWO TOURS IN VIETNAM), PAUL EVANCOE, NAVY SEAL RETIRED WITH MULTIPLE AWARDS INCLUDING THE BRONZE STAR, AND LARRY DUGGAN, THE 100TH MAN WOUNDED IN VIETNAM. YOU ARE PROBABLY ONE OF THE GUYS WHO WENT TO SALVATION ARMY, BOUGHT OLD UNIFORMS, AND HAS PERSUADED HIMSELF HE WAS THE REAL DEAL. ENJOY YOUR FANTASY TOUGH GUY.

I guess the actual banning was for calling attention to his July 10, 2001 op-ed in the NY Times wherein he claimed we had nothing to fear [from terrorists]. That got me banned. The other post was deleted, the one where I questioned the VIPS calling for people such as McCarthy to do what she did.
SUE, YOU SURE ARE A BRIGHT GIRL. THANKS FOR HELPING DRIVE UP THE TRAFFIC TO MY SITE. MY ADVERTISERS DON'T CARE IF YOU ARE A TROG OR A CLEAR THINKER. THE FACT THAT YOU VISIT SHOWS UP AS A NUMBER IN MY COLUMN. THANKS FOR TAKING THE BAIT SWEETHEART. SUCKER.

IF YOU WOULD ACTUALLY READ AS OPPOSED TO REPEATING REPUBLICAN TALKING POINTS YOU WOULD KNOW THAT THE CIA REPEATEDLY TOLD THE PRESIDENT THAT THE CLAIMS THAT IRAQ WAS SEEKING URANIUM IN WEST AFRICA WERE BASELESS. IS THAT A DIFFICULT CONCEPT? DO YOU LACK A DICTIONARY? ROBERT JOSEPH, WHO INSERTED THAT LANGUAGE, DID SO OVER THE OBJECTION OF THE CIA. BUT, WHY SHOULD YOU CARE ABOUT FACTS?

JOE (Wilson) HAS NOT CHANGED HIS STORY AND HE HAS BEEN VINDICATED. IF YOU WOULD SIMPLY READ THE RECENTLY DECLASSIFIED STATE DEPARTMENT MEMO, IT IDENTIFIES FIVE OTHER SOURCES BESIDES JOE THAT CORROBORATE JOE'S TESTIMONY. LIKE I SAID, YOU ARE NOT INTERESTED IN FACTS.

US INTEL COMMUNITY SAYS THE BRITS ARE WRONG. AND SSCI (NOT SSIC YOU BOZO) IS A SLANTED REPUBLICAN REPORT. OF COURSE, YOU BELIEVE THE BRITS OVER THE CIA. ANOTHER GREAT AMERICAN.

Here once and for all is confirmation that Joe Wilson claimed, and continues to claim, that VP Cheney sent him to Niger:"Wilson is now at the center of a major political maelstrom involving the White House, the C.I.A. and the second gulf war in Iraq. In 2002, at the request of Vice President Dick Cheney, Wilson was assigned by the C.I.A. to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking to acquire uranium from Niger for the purpose of advancing his nuclear program."
I took that quote directly from Joe Wilson's online bio at http://www.greatertalent.com/biography.php?id=258
The bio then says, "When his (Wilson's) investigation turned up nothing, Wilson reported back to officials in Washington that there was no basis for the claims."
We have long known these are patent lies, the purpose of which was to a) cover up the fact that Valerie Plame Wilson was responsible for sending her husband to Niger b) attempt to legitimize a story fabricated by a cabal of CIA employees, including Larry Johnson, Mary McCarthy and numerous others, in co-ordination with the Kerry campaign, for the purpose of undermining the Bush administration in hopes of propelling John Kerry to the White House in 2004.
Does that sound about right, Larry?
YOU NITWIT. I WILL SAY THIS ONCE AND IF YOU PERSIST IN BEING STUPID WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO PARTICIPATE ON THIS BLOG.HERE IS WHAT THE SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE REPORT STATES: EVENT ONE--13 February 2002. During his CIA morning brief, Vice President Cheney asks the CIA to find out the truth about an item in the Defense Intelligence Agency's National Military Joint Intelligence Center Executive Highlight (Vo. 028-02) that analyzed a recent CIA intelligence report and concluded that, “Iraq is probably searching abroad for natural uranium to assist in its nuclear weapons program”. No judgment was offered about the credibility of the reporting. (Senate Intelligence Committee Report [SICR], page 38)HERE IS WHAT JOE WILSON WROTE IN HIS OP ED:"In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report." (NY Times, July 6, 2003)JOE WILSONS NEVER SAID WHAT YOU CLAIM HE SAID. LIKE I SAID, SHAPE UP AND BE RESPONSIBLE OR GET LOST.
Posted by: Yr. Fthfl. Svnt. Thursday, 27 April 2006 at 19:40

ABU. YOU DO NOT GET TO POST LIES ON MY BLOG. VALERIE WAS UNDERCOVER, AS WAS I. WHETHER YOU CHOOSE TO BELIEVE IT IS NO CONCERN OF MIND. TAKE YOUR LIES ELSEWHERE. YOU WILL BE DELETED.
Posted by: Yr. Fthfl. Svnt. Friday, 28 April 2006 at 16:17

FROM LARRY JOHNSON (NOTE, THE USE OF CAPS IS SIMPLY A DEVICE TO HIGHLIGHT THAT THE FOLLOWING IS MY RESPONSE TO THIS CHUCKLEHEAD, ABU).ABU, JUST BECAUSE YOU WANT TO INSIST THAT THE SUN RISES IN THE WEST DOES NOT MAKE IT SO. I WILL NOT SUBJECT FOLKS WHO READ THIS BLOG TO MINDLESS CRAP. IN THE PRECEDING PARAGRAPH YOUR STATEMENT, "Plame twice nominated. . ." IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE. I WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO DEFAME HER OR JOE. I HAVE WRITTEN EXTENSIVELY ON THIS POINT BUT WILL REPEAT KEY FACTS. VALERIE'S BOSS AT THE CIA ASKED HER TO WRITE THE MEMO. VALERIE DID NOT HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO SEND JOE OR ANYONE ELSE ON A TRIP TO NIGER. HER BOSSES WERE REACTING TO A REQUEST THAT CAME FROM THE VICE PRESIDENT'S OFFICE AND WAS COMMUNICATED TO CPD BY THE DAILY BRIEFERS.
FOR YOU TO INSIST THAT VALERIE KNEW ONE YEAR IN ADVANCE THAT GEORGE BUSH WAS GOING TO MAKE THE CLAIM IN HIS STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS THAT "IRAQ WAS TRYING TO BUY URANIUM IN WEST AFRICA" AND, BECAUSE OF HER FORESIGHT, SENT HER HUSBAND TO NIGER TO "NOT" GATHER EVIDENCE SO THEY COULD EMBARRASS BUSH AND HELP JOHN KERRY IS DELUSIONAL.
FINALLY, VALERIE WAS A NON-OFFICIAL COVER OFFICER UNTIL THE DAY HER NAME APPEARED IN THE NOVAK ARTICLE IDENTIFYING HER AS A CIA OFFICER. WHETHER YOU ACCEPT THESE FACTS OR NOT IS OF NO IMPORT TO ME. THESE ARE FACTS AND YOU DO NOT GET THE LUXURY OF PLAYING ALICE IN WONDERLAND HERE. UP IS NOT DOWN. BLACK IS NOT WHITE.
Posted by: Yr. Fthfl. Svnt. Saturday, 29 April 2006 at 03:26

FROM LARRY JOHNSON:ABU, REFUTING YOU IS NOT A PROBLEM. IT IS A WASTE OF TIME BECAUSE, AS I HAVE ALREADY POINTED OUT, VALERIE PLAME WAS UNDERCOVER. DESPITE THAT FACT YOU CONTINUE TO INSIST, WITHOUT A SHRED OF EVIDENCE, THAT SHE WAS SOMEHOW AN OVERT EMPLOYEE. YOU ARE FREE TO POST YOUR BULLSHIT ON YOUR ON BLOG. YOU CALL ME A COWARD BUT THEN START WHINING BECAUSE I REFER TO YOU AS DELUSIONAL AND A CHUCKLEHEAD. I'LL LEAVE IT TO OTHERS TO DRAW THEIR OWN CONCLUSIONS. PERSONALLY I WOULD RATHER HAVE A FACE TO FACE MEETING WITH YOU TO DISCUSS THE ISSUE OF MY COWARDICE. I SUSPECT THAT IS SOMETHING YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO ENTERTAIN.
AS FAR AS YOUR DRAMATIC REVELATIONS GO (WHICH CAME FROM THE NATIONAL REVIEW) THEY ARE MISLEADING GARBAGE:
...
ABU, WRONG AGAIN BUTT MUNCH. IN FACT, WE NOW KNOW THAT TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS THE PRESIDENT AND THE VICE PRESIDENT RECEIVED INFORMATION FROM THE NIO FOR AFRICA WHO INFORMED THEM THAT THE CLAIM ABOUT IRAQ TRYING TO ACQUIRE URANIUM WAS BASELESS. WHAT IS IT ABOUT BASELESS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND.
...
SEE ABOVE. THERE WAS NO ATTEMPT TO BUY URANIUM. IT IS NOT JUST THE WORD OF JOE WILSON. IT ALSO IS THE WORD OF THE US AMBASSADOR TO NIGER, THE DEPUTY COMMANDER OF U.S. EUCOM, AND THE CIA.
...
I HAVE ANSWERED THIS REPEATEDLY. BULLSHIT. THE MEMO VALERIE WROTE WAS IN RESPONSE TO A REQUEST FROM HER BOSS. HER BOSS MADE THE DECISION TO SEND JOE AND HER BOSS CAME UP WITH THE IDEA TO ASK JOE TO DO THE TRIP.SO, ABU. YOU ARE NOW BANNED FROM THIS SITE. I WILL DELETE EVERY PIECE OF LYING CRAP THAT YOU TRY TO PUT HERE. WE'RE DONE.
Posted by: YFS Saturday, 29 April 2006 at 16:30

Our present body of knowledge begs to ask what the Clintons know and when they came to know it. Read on.

Wizbang: Media Circling the Wagons Around McCarthy

The Washington Post is already peddling its institutionalized intellectual dishonesty.

Sweetness And Light reports that Dana Priest's husband gets speaking gigs for notorious liar Joe Wilson, is Executive Director of CIP, has ties to MoveOn.org, Win Without War, other subversive organizations.

S&L also has figures on Mary and Michael McCarthy's donations to the 2004 Kerry Democrats.

NRO's Mark Levin:

Well, as of this morning (Saturday) most of the big media don't care. They're fixated with the weather and gas prices — and anything else that will divert the public's attention from the stunning revelation that a Sandy Berger crony has apparently been leaking top-secret information from her high post at the CIA. The media will continue to downplay this story as they cover-up their own role in exposing our nation's secrets, including the supposed existence of CIA prisons in Europe. She'll be called a "whistleblower" and praised as some kind of patriot (a patriot, in the eyes of the media, is anybody who undermines this administration and the war effort by leaking national security secrets to them). They will downplay that McCarthy was a Clintonoid who somehow managed to land a top post at the CIA, ultimately winding up in the CIA's Inspector General's Office, from where she could monitor CIA internal investigations of, well, leaks, among other things. (Emphasis mine, and a question: how exactly did she land that top post at the CIA, and who made that decision?)

Blogs For Bush's Mark Noonan:

She was responsible for investigating leaks? For how long? I really, really want to know the exact identity of the person who referred the Plame "leak" to Justice...if it was McCarthy, then we really do have a gigantic criminal conspiracy to undermine American national security...

I've smelled a rat over at CIA ever since 2002 - and I think we might have found it.

Ace Of Spades:

Hillary!'s infamous "a vast right wing conspiracy conspiring against my husband" line was built on fewer connections than this. Lucianne Goldberg knew Linda Tripp; Ann Coulter knew people working for Ken Starr, etc.

Based on those know-someone-who-knows-someone connections, Hillary! made her famous declaration, and -- this is important -- the press actually treated the
accusation as possibly accurate.

Well.

Is it time?

DC's mob of liberal Heathers, Cool Girls Who Rule the School, seems to be a very tight little clacque. Clarke. Berger. Clinton. Zinni. Wilson. Plame. Simon. Beers. Priest. McCarthy.

Almost all of them know each other; some of them are even BFF's (Best Friends Forever!).

A.J. Strata: Mary McCarthy Plame Source For Knight Ridder?

In From The Cold has a backgrounder on McCarthy.

This is just beginning. May it be a long, hot summer for these treasonous miscreants.

Oh, yeah: so much for that "exclusively Republican culture of corruption" nonsense. Wear it, pussies.

Mark Levin dismantles John F'n Kerry in Unfit For Command:

Once again John Kerry sides with the enemy.

Did I say enemy? Yes. Anyone, like Mary McCarthy, who uses her public trust to undermine the war on terrorism is the enemy. The Washington Post can wrap itself and its source in civil liberties, but the public rightly won't buy it. These prisons in Europe reportedly exist to interrogate and house al Qaeda terrorists. While people may disagree over the war in Iraq, almost nobody disagrees that al-Qaeda must be destroyed.

The Democrat party is clearly lining up behind McCarthy now. The talking points have already been issued. Yesterday, Robert Menendez said this:

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., called on President Bush to hold accountable those in his administration who leaked information about the Iraq intelligence in the run-up to the war and outed undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. "Apparently, President Bush doesn't believe what's good for the CIA is good for the White House," Menendez said.

More here.

Today, John Kerry said this, in part:

… Here's my fundamental view of this, that you have somebody being fired from the CIA for allegedly telling the truth, and you have no one fired from the White House for revealing a CIA agent in order to support a lie. That underscores what's really wrong in Washington, DC here. …

More here.

Not that the truth matters to propagandists, but Plame was not a “CIA agent” and a federal prosecutor has not charged anyone at the White House with leaking her name. Moreover, revealing her name would not have been a crime because, as is now clear, Plame was not undercover. But Kerry continues to repeat this lie because he and his ilk seek to divert attention from the very serious national-security breach committed by his contributor, Mary McCarthy.

Kerry also asserts that McCarthy was telling the truth when she leaked national-security information and that, somehow, she deserves some kind of special dispensation as a result. If we were grading his comprehension, he’d get a D. Do we know all she leaked? We know she revealed the existence of supposed CIA prisons in Europe. But we don’t know if the information she provided Dana Priest was truthful or accurate. And we don’t know what else she may have leaked in her many contacts with the media. And Kerry doesn’t seem the least bit curious about it, either. Moreover, in most cases I would think it is far more damaging to our nation’s security if high officials are leaking truthful information about our war activities.

Kerry has demonstrated, once again, why he’s unfit for command.

Read more of Levin's work here.

Former Democratic Governor and Senator Zell Miller has his sights set on the real problem in the Plame/Wilson affair: the CIA, who appear to have set up a domestic dirty tricks squad whose members include Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson.

Some absurdly claim that Plame had nothing to do with her husband's political activities against President Bush. But let it be clear. Plame could not have done what Wilson did and gotten away with it. Wilson could not have done what he did without Plame giving him a way to do it.

Something has to be done. We can't let the CIA become the domestic dirty tricks shop, with Republican and Democratic agents each trying to pull down their opposing presidents.
We need a Plame rule. Any family member of a CIA agent tapped to help out must live by the same rules regarding information disclosure and domestic political manipulations as those imposed on the agent. If the family member fails to live by those rules, the agent is terminated.

Clearly this will restrict the flexibility of the CIA. But who ever thought that the flexibility given to CIA agents would be misused to destabilize a U.S. president? No one — until Valerie Plame.

Of course Miller is correct. It is therefore time for a comprehensive managerial and operational audit of the CIA, with special attention to the roles of Valerie Plame, her husband and their partners, whoever they might be, in undermining the Bush White House prior to the 2004 Presidential election. I hope naming both the agency's and the media's players in this mess will form a good part of Scooter Libby's defense because I want to hear his side of the story. The air needs to be cleared in Washington in time for the 2006 elections.

We Knew It All Along Dept.:
The last wheel fell off the sputtering Plame-Wilson bandwagon yesterday when a federal judge threw out a lawsuit brought by the treacherous pair against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush Administration officials.

The judge ruled as this blog has maintained all along: that White House efforts to rebut the pack of lies Wilson levelled against the Bush Administration were well within the duties of the Executive branch, and not an illegal attempt to destroy the lying pair's reputations, such as they were and are now. Those efforts may have been unsavory to leftist idiots, but they were well within the law.

Ouch.

How they could have expected any other result is beyond me; if Valerie Plame suffered damage from the revelation of her employment at the CIA (she has never even come close to proving she was ever "outed" as a covert op, regardless of what Puffy Fat Larry says) it was via her husband, who drew attention to Plame when he couldn't resist lying in the NYT about his finding that Saddam actually had been seeking uranium in Niger. Quoting the report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,

[Wilson's] intelligence report indicated that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki was unaware of any contracts that had been signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of yellowcake while he was Prime Minister (1997-1999) or Foreign Minister (1996-1997). Mayaki said that if there had been any such contract during his tenure, he would have been aware of it.

Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999,(REDACTED) businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted "expanding commercial relations" to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq."

As for Plame, no-one in the White House leaked anything about her to anyone; it was Richard Armitage who confirmed Plame's CIA employment to Robert Novak, who simply looked her up in Who's Who, a fact known far and wide for months and all along by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Who else knew all along? Joe Wilson, who knowingly falsely accused Karl Rove of having "outed" his super-secret double-knot wife.

So what else did Wilson lie about?

Here's more from the SSIC report:

The former ambassador also told Committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article ("CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data; Bush Used Report of Uranium Bid," June 12, 2003) which said, "among the Envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because `the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong" when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports. The former ambassador said that he may have "misspoken" to the reporter when he said he concluded the documents were "forged." He also said he may have become confused about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct and may have thought he had seen the names himself. The former ambassador reiterated that he had been able to collect the names of the government officials which should have been on the documents.

Wilson and Plame have both repeatedly lied about the fact that she lobbied her CPD superiors to send him to Niger. Again from the SSIC report:

Some CPD officials could not recall how the office decided to contact the former ambassador, however, interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip. The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador's wife "offered up his name" and a memorandum to the Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002, from the former ambassador's wife says, "my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." This was just one day before CPD sent a cable DELETED requesting concurrence with CPD's idea to send the former ambassador to Niger and requesting any additional information from the foreign government service on their uranium reports. The former ambassador's wife told Committee staff that when CPD decided it would like to send the former ambassador to Niger, she approached her husband on behalf of the CIA and told him "there's this crazy report" on a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq.

The former ambassador was selected for the 1999 trip after his wife mentioned to her supervisors that her husband was planning a business trip to Niger in the near future and might be willing to use his contacts in the region ...

On February 19, 2002, CPD hosted a meeting with the former ambassador, intelligence analysts from both the CIA and INR, and several individuals from the DO's Africa and CPD divisions. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the merits of the former ambassador traveling to Niger. An INR analyst's notes indicate that the meeting was "apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue." The former ambassador's wife told Committee staff that she only attended the meeting to introduce her husband and left after about three minutes.

Happily, the lying pair's lawyers announced that they will appeal the decision, so we can Keep Hope Alive that Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame will under oath face real questions from opposing counsel rather than fluffballs lobbed by Henry Waxman or Chris Matthews.

Today, however, in light of the court's inevitable finding, it's worth reviewing what are in my opinion the two overarching facts of the case:
1. Joe Wilson is a treacherous liar;
2. Valerie Plame is also a treacherous liar.

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.

A leftard once feverishly described to me a guy code-named "Curveball" as a Chalabi-INC plant meant to give the Bush Administration cover for a false casus belli against Saddam. Yes, he really bought that little ditty, but then so did most idiots. As 60 Minutes has shown, "Curveball" had nothing to do with the INC, although CBS conspicuously left that crucial fact specifically unobserved.

I'll turn the matter over to the most capable Michael Ledeen:

What? "Curveball" Wasn't Chalabi? But... [Michael Ledeen]
We are a long way from being able to calmly tell the story of the Iraqi war, but it's already clear, I think, that one of the major themes in any such history will be the ferocious battle waged by significant parts of the U.S. Government—notably the CIA and the State Department—against the Iraqi National Congress (INC), its leader Ahmad Chalabi, and its allies elsewhere in the government—notably the Pentagon. Part of that battle was the CIA's very successful campaign to get gullible journalists to blame the INC for Iraqi sources who falsely claimed knowledge about Saddam's various WMD programs. Since "Sixty Minutes" has now identified the guilty party, an Iraqi with no relationship to the INC, the INC seems to me fully justified in its public statement today, seething with righteous indignation:

INC STATEMENT ON ‘CURVEBALL’
BAGHDAD (4 November 2007): The release of the name of Iraqi defector known as Curveball by CBS News 60 Minutes is the final evidence that there is no link between this person and the Iraqi National Congress. The INC can state categorically that there has never been any person at any level of the INC who is related to anyone named Rafid Ahmed Alwan.

The CIA engaged in a smear campaign to link Curveball to the INC in order to deflect blame from its own failures in Iraq. These lies were repeated by media outlets such as the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Knight Ridder and others with no evidence or substantiation and no attempt by the reporters to check the truth. They have been most recently repeated in a book about Curveball. The INC calls upon these media organisations to publish corrections to the false information that has misled their readers.

Actually, I think those various media outlets can do even better. I think at this point, with the knowledge they were deceived, the folks who wrote the disinformation should identify their sources, so that their colleagues in the press will know to avoid them.

This blog has written often about the CIA's campaign of sabotage against the Bush White House, and once again today we see how idiots swallowed a CIA story hook, line and sinker, simply because it fit their BDS-fuelled fantasies.

Whereas I'm quite particular about not being a useful idiot.

UPDATED
First we learn that CIA Inspector General's Office Clintonoid appointee Mary McCarthy has flunked a lie detector test and then confessed to leaking information about clandestine CIA prisons in Europe to Dana Priest of the Washington Post, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize on Monday for her reporting in the WaPo about said prisons.

Then we discover that Mary McCarthy, Senior Director for Intelligence Programs on the National Security Council Staff, gave money to the 2004 Kerry campaign. Not an indictment, but certainly an indicator.

Oh yeah, and it appears that Mary McCarthy and notorious liar Joe Wilson have close ties.

Then we discover her connections with other Enemies of Dubya:
Zbigniew Brzezinski — Counselor and Trustee, CSIS
General Wesley Clark USA (Ret.), Distinguished Senior Adviser
General Anthony Zinni USMC (Ret.), Distinguished Senior Adviser
Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, aka "Burgler", Classified Document Thief

Now it seems that Mary McCarthy may have been the victim of an internal CIA sting op because the NYT is reporting that there is no evidence of CIA Europrisons.

Go figure.

Captain's Quarters:
We may never know if the entire story about detention centers turned out to be a smoke screen intended to reveal a leak. We certainly have no evidence beyond the McCarthy leak and Priest's story. If it does turn out to be nothing more than misinformation for a leak probe, the Washington Post and the Pulitzer Committee will look very foolish indeed.

Bad news for idiots. Guess it must be a day ending in "y".

Shall we have a look at State?

UPDATE
Saturday morning brings more from Mac Ranger:

[I]n spite of what the WAPO editorial board thinks about its supposed right to print classified information, the JD is specifically aiming at them and more specifically reporters who have printed that information. McCarthy has been gabbing it up quite a bit over the years and no doubt will turn on her "friends and contacts" to avoid the slammer.

For those who have wondered why this administration never seems to "fight back", that is now effectually over.

The game is on.

Interesting how the Intelligence Community that, to hear most any idiot describe it, screwed up so badly on Saddam's WMDs that they can't be believed ever again for the rest of time, is now faultlessly sage in its most recent "estimation" of Iran's nuclear weapons program. Another case of idiots moving the goalposts when it suits.

Happily, President Bush gave the response I expected he would give when asked his opinion of the NIE: he still considers Iran's nukes a threat and nothing has changed in his approach to the problem. Bush does well to wave off this latest NIE because it's far more a policy paper authored by adversaries in the IC than it is anything approaching a believable intelligence report. A close reading of it beyond what it has been predictably given by the usual Bush detractors proves that. First, Commentary Magazine's analysis, beginning with Max Boot:

In short, while Iran’s nuclear-weapons program may have been suspended (the NIE expresses only “moderate confidence that Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007”), the “civilian” nuclear program is going forward. What the NIE doesn’t spell out is that it’s fairly easy to convert a civilian nuclear program into a military nuclear weapons program. All you need is the appropriate “scientific, technical, and industrial capacity”—which the NIE says “with high confidence that Iran has”—and some highly-enriched fissile material, which Iran is trying to produce.

That doesn't inspire confidence. Norman Podhoretz:

I must confess to suspecting that the intelligence community, having been excoriated for supporting the then universal belief that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, is now bending over backward to counter what has up to now been a similarly universal view (including as is evident from the 2005 NIE, within the intelligence community itself) that Iran is hell-bent on developing nuclear weapons. I also suspect that, having been excoriated as well for minimizing the time it would take Saddam to add nuclear weapons to his arsenal, the intelligence community is now bending over backward to maximize the time it will take Iran to reach the same goal.

But I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations. As the intelligence community must know, if he were to do so, it would be as a last resort, only after it had become undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iran from getting the bomb, and only after being convinced that it was very close to succeeding. How better, then, to stop Bush in his tracks than by telling him and the world that such pressures have already been effective and that keeping them up could well bring about “a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program”—especially if the negotiations and sanctions were combined with a goodly dose of appeasement or, in the NIE’s own euphemistic formulation, “with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways.”

Now who the fuck cares about Iran's "security, prestige, and goals for regional influence" anyway? Not me, certainly not when they've been screaming at me for years that their "goals for regional influence" include "destroying the Great Satan" and "wiping Israel off the map".

But I digress.

On to Power Line's Paul Mirengoff, who adds to a comprehensive review there of the NIE and its implications:

I assess with moderate to high confidence that the CIA is a joke. Take the claim that Iran halted its nuclear program in 2003 in response to international pressure. How does the CIA know that this is what caused Iran to take this action (assuming it actually did halt the program)? Isn't it far more likely that Iran would have been motivated by fear of U.S. military action? After all, we had just taken out the regimes in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan. I assess with moderate confidence that the CIA (and the intelligence community as a whole) is engaging in politically-motivated speculation, not legitimate intelligence, here.

I further assess with high confidence that we should ignore the NIE assessment of Iran's nuclear program (has the CIA ever been correct about the status of a secretive foreign power's weapons program?) and defer to Israeli intelligence.

Same here. The CIA and State have been working overtime to undermine the Bush White House since day one, whereas the Israelis, who have Absolute Moral Authority in this matter, (I love that if I do say so myself) what with being targeted for destruction by Islamofascist Iranian madmen and all, have not.

Here's Opinion Journal on the troubling history of anti-Bush partisanship of the report's main authors:

Our own "confidence" is not heightened by the fact that the NIE's main authors include three former State Department officials with previous reputations as "hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials," according to an intelligence source. They are Tom Fingar, formerly of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research; Vann Van Diepen, the National Intelligence Officer for WMD; and Kenneth Brill, the former U.S. Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
For a flavor of their political outlook, former Bush Administration antiproliferation official John Bolton recalls in his recent memoir that then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage "described Brill's efforts in Vienna, or lack thereof, as 'bull--.'" Mr. Brill was "retired" from the State Department by Colin Powell before being rehired, over considerable internal and public protest, as head of the National Counter-Proliferation Center by then-National Intelligence Director John Negroponte.

No less odd is the NIE's conclusion that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to "international pressure." The only serious pressure we can recall from that year was the U.S. invasion of Iraq. At the time, an Iranian opposition group revealed the existence of a covert Iranian nuclear program to mill and enrich uranium and produce heavy water at sites previously unknown to U.S. intelligence. The Bush Administration's response was to punt the issue to the Europeans, who in 2003 were just beginning years of fruitless diplomacy before the matter was turned over to the U.N. Security Council.
...

The larger worry here is how little we seem to have learned from our previous intelligence failures. Over the course of a decade, our intelligence services badly underestimated Saddam's nuclear ambitions, then overestimated them. Now they have done a 180-degree turn on Iran, and in such a way that will contribute to a complacency that will make it easier for Iran to build a weapon. Our intelligence services are supposed to inform the policies of elected officials, but increasingly their judgments seem to be setting policy. This is dangerous.

Thomas Joscelyn has five questions in the Weekly Standard. First, his preamble:

In particular, the first sentence of the NIE is drawing the press’s intention: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program…" But, as they say, the devil is in the details. Given the poor performance of the U.S. Intelligence Community ("IC") in drafting previous NIE’s, we should review the IC’s work with a skeptical eye--no matter what conclusions are drawn. Interestingly, the IC now concedes that it is certain Iran had a nuclear weapons program. But that isn't getting the headlines. And after having read the little that has been made public from this NIE, we are left with substantive questions.

Now Joscelyn's questions:

First, what intelligence is this assessment based upon?
Second, what has changed since 2005?
Third, how did the IC draw its line between a "civilian" nuclear program and a "military" one?
Fourth, how does the IC know that Iran has stopped its clandestine activities with respect to developing nuclear weapons?
Fifth, how does the IC know what motivated Iran’s alleged change in behavior?

I have to agree with Michael Ledeen's description of the NIE as "policy advocacy masquerading as serious intelligence.'' The NIE is not serious as an analytical document because it is rather a political propaganda play designed to handcuff Bush in dealing with Iran's nuclear aspirations. To its authors and their acolytes, their dream of defeating Bush trumps all other concerns, even that of protecting their own fellow citizens.

The most interesting part of the “Estimate” is of course its political and policy implications, which National Security Adviser Steven Hadley was quick to spell out. In his view, and in that of many political leaders and pundits, if Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, there is no great urgency to move against the mullahs.

And indeed, those “intelligence professionals” were very happy to take off their analytical caps and gowns and put on their policy wigs: “Although the officials as a rule, respecting the norms of their craft, declined to offer policy prescriptions based on their findings, the most senior official present did cite the finding that the Iranians are susceptible to international pressure and say that such pressure should “continue” as a way to “allow IAEA to have significant visibility into the program.”

This sort of blatant unprofessionalism is as common in today’s Washington as it is unworthy of a serious intel type, and I think it tells us a lot about the document itself. The “Key Findings” published yesterday address the obvious question: why would the Iranians abandon a program that had been in the works ever since the late 1980s?

The IC replies: because the Iranians are rational, and they respond to international pressure. They shut down the program because the pressure was too great. They couldn’t take the risk of even more pain from the international community.

At this point, one really has to wonder why anyone takes these documents seriously. How can anyone in his right mind believe that the mullahs are rational? Has no one told the IC about the cult of the 12th Imam, on which this regime bases its domestic and foreign policies? Does not the constant chant of “Death to America” mean anything? I suppose not, at least not to the deep thinkers who wrote this policy document.

And as for Iran’s delicate sensitivity to international pressure, just a few days ago, the European ‘foreign minister’ Javier Solana was on the verge of tears when he admitted he had been totally unable to get the Iranians to come clean on their uranium enrichment program, even though he had told them that more sanctions were in the works. Yet, according to the IC, this program–neatly described in a footnote to the “Estimate” as “Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment—really doesn’t have anything to do with nuclear weapons. But if that is so, why are the Iranians so doggedly hiding it from UN inspectors?

This document will not stand up to serious criticism, but it will undoubtedly have a significant political impact, since it will be taken as confirmation of the view that we should not do anything mean to the mullahs. We should talk to them instead. And that’s just what the Estimate says:

…some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways, might–if perceived by Iran’s leaders as credible–prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program.

Incredibly, the authors of the document claim they can prove all this: “The impact of international pressure is beyond dispute, the officials said, a “cause-and-effect” relationship backed up by an ‘evidentiary trail.’ “

But any good student who has taken Psych 101 will tell you that it’s nigh unto impossible to determine someone else’s intentions, especially when presented by “analysts” who think that Ayatollah Khamenei and President Rafsanjani are as rational as the rest of us. This is demeaning to the Iranian tyrants–for whom their faith is a matter of ultimate significance–and insulting to our leaders, who should expect serious work from the IC instead of this bit of policy advocacy masquerading as serious intelligence.

There is at least one other interested party who has examined the NIE and found it wanting in credibility: Israel.

"The bottom line is that words don't stop missiles, actions do," Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Tuesday evening in response to the US report.

"And there is much that needs to be done regarding the Iranian nuclear program. We need to take action in applying sanctions, in exercising diplomacy and in other venues as well."

Israeli intelligence disputes the report's conclusion, Barak said, and still believes Tehran is still trying to develop a nuclear weapon: ''It's apparently true that in 2003 Iran stopped pursuing its military nuclear program for a time. But in our opinion, since then it has apparently continued that program. There are differences in the assessments of different organizations in the world about this, and only time will tell who is right."

Asked if the new US assessment reduced chances that the US will launch a military strike on Iran, Barak said that was ''possible.''

However, he said, ''We cannot allow ourselves to rest just because of an intelligence report from the other side of the earth, even if it is from our greatest friend.''

After all, with friends like the authors of the NIE, who needs enemies?

Andrew C. McCarthy:

On a Saturday morning in late August, while [sic] country was away on summer vacation and those who closely watch politics were watching Ted Kennedy's funeral, the Washington Post quietly hung up the mainstream media's white flag on the CIA's harsh interrogation tactics. It turns out, they work — who knew?

Fortunately, Steve Hayes has stayed on the case and, at the Standard's blog, he's got the story about the story — along with excerpts from the essential report by FDD's Tom Joscelyn (also in the Standard, here) relating the effectiveness of the CIA program and an important op-ed by FDD's Reuel Marc Gerecht (in the Wall Street Journal, here) about the devastating consequences of the Obama administration's decision to investigate the CIA over interrogation practices. My own assessments of the legal meritlessness of the case against the interrogators and the reasons why it is being persued anyway by President Obama and Attorney General Holder are here and here.

As they say, you're entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts. The MSM has tried to have both for the last five years, arguing against experience and common sense that tactics like sleep-deprivation and waterboarding were not effective. Clearly, they worked, and to great effect. As Steve says, that case should now be closed.

Obviously, there is still a principled argument to be made that the nation should not engage in such practices. But the burden of making it in a principled way should be to say: "While this is an excruciating choice, it would be better for thousands of Americans to be killed than to allow the CIA to use non-lethal coercive tactics (that cause no lasting physical or mental damage) on a terrorist who refuses to tell us what he knows about ongoing mass-murder plots."

The former Vice President's statement to the Weekly Standard:

The documents released Monday clearly demonstrate that the individuals subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda. This intelligence saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks. These detainees also, according to the documents, played a role in nearly every capture of al Qaeda members and associates since 2002. The activities of the CIA in carrying out the policies of the Bush Administration were directly responsible for defeating all efforts by al Qaeda to launch further mass casualty attacks against the United States. The people involved deserve our gratitude. They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions. President Obama’s decision to allow the Justice Department to investigate and possibly prosecute CIA personnel, and his decision to remove authority for interrogation from the CIA to the White House, serves as a reminder, if any were needed, of why so many Americans have doubts about this Administration’s ability to be responsible for our nation’s security.

NewsMax reports via Able Danger Blog that Clinton National Security players are going after Curt Weldon, whose work exposing the Able Danger fiasco apparently sticks in their craw:

Clinton NSC Team Targets Weldon
From News Max:

High-ranking members of Bill Clinton's national security team have joined together to defeat Pennsylvania Republican Curt Weldon's House re-election bid this November - in what looks like retaliation for Weldon's efforts in exposing the Clinton administration's Able Danger scandal.

In June 2005, Weldon went public with news that Clinton administration lawyers prevented the Defense Intelligence Agency's Able Danger group from blowing the whistle on two al-Qaida terrorists who would later pilot the planes that destroyed the World Trade Center.

Though the media downplayed Weldon's bombshell, a number of high ranking Clinton officials apparently haven't forgotten - and they're pouring money into the campaign of Weldon's opponent, Joe Sestak.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has given $500 to Sestak.

Disgraced former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger has given Weldon's opponent $1,000.

Disgraced ex-Clinton CIA director John Deutch gave $500.

Former Clinton Navy secretary John Dalton ponied up $500 to defeat Weldon.

Former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta - $300.

Berger's predecessor as national security adviser, Anthony Lake - $500.

Even Hillary Clinton has gotten into the act, contributing $2,500 to defeat Curt Weldon.

Actually, they forgot one more Clintonista:

U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon called yesterday for Democratic opponent Joe Sestak to return $350 in campaign contributions from Mary O. McCarthy, the CIA investigator fired last week for allegedly leaking classified information to the news media.

Sestak's spokeswoman noted, in reply, that the CIA employee had not been charged with any crime and said she saw no reason for the money to be returned "at this time."

McCarthy, who worked at the National Security Council when Sestak worked there in the 1990s, donated $100 to Sestak on March 1 and $250 on March 11, according to a campaign finance report the Seventh Congressional District candidate filed with the Federal Election Commission. (Emphasis mine)

There are two basic elements in the Dems' campaign of treason: a) do anything and everything to undermine the Bush administration and the War on Terror and b) expunge the record of their malfeasance, ineptitude and treason (including stealing and destroying classified documents from the National Archives and planting moles in the CIA Inspector General's Office). The campaign against Weldon is in service to the latter.

Stephen F. Hayes on what the media aren't telling the public about Mary McCarthy and her insurrectionist pals.

The CIA did not name her, but several news organizations reported that the [fired] official was Mary McCarthy, whose most recent position at the Agency was in the office of the inspector general. Two days later, when McCarthy denied disclosing classified information to reporters, she asked a former colleague, Rand Beers, to make the statement on her behalf.

It was an interesting choice. McCarthy had worked for Beers on the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton. They had apparently remained close, even after Beers quit his position in the new administration and became a leading critic of the counterterrorism policies of George W. Bush. Or perhaps the two had remained close because Beers quit his position to criticize the Bush administration.

Beers was the senior foreign policy adviser to John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004. In March 2004, Mary McCarthy contributed the maximum amount allowed under campaign finance laws--$2,000--to the Kerry campaign. She increased her giving as the competitive campaign drew to a close. On October 5, 2004, she gave another $5,000 to the Democratic party in Ohio, a state that many observers believed (correctly, it turned out) would decide the election. And on October 29, 2004, McCarthy gave an additional $500 to the Democratic National Committee Service Corps. Federal records show that Michael McCarthy, of the same home address, gave an additional $2,000 to the Kerry campaign and $500 to Barbara Mikulski, a Democratic senator from Maryland. In all, the McCarthy household contributed some $10,000 to Democrats during the last election cycle.

The New York Times reported McCarthy's $2,000 contribution to the Kerry campaign (but not the others), and articles sympathetic to McCarthy by the Associated Press and Newsweek at least made mention of Beers's association with the Kerry campaign. But virtually none of the other press found the facts in the preceding paragraph worth reporting.

Read it all.

And Thomas Joscelyn points out this:
Yes, She Did Leak...
From The New York Times:

A C.I.A. spokeswoman, Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, said: "The officer was terminated for precisely the reasons we have given: unauthorized contacts with reporters and sharing classified information with reporters. There is no question whatsoever that the officer did both. The officer personally admitted doing both."

The CIA's spokeswoman says that McCarthy "personally admitted" that she had "unauthorized contacts with reporters" and shared "classified information" with them.

This flies in the face of what Ms. McCarthy's surrogates are telling their contacts in the press.

Via Power Line: CIA Refers Washington Post Leak for Investigation
This could be very good news indeed: the CIA's general counsel has taken the first step toward a criminal investigation of the agency's leak relating to alleged secret detention centers in Eastern Europe:

The Washington Post got caught playing with fire last week when it published an article describing a series of secret CIA-run prisons containing captured and apparently informative terrorists. The problem? The Post may have run afoul of the law by publishing classified information. This information may have been leaked by a source within the government, which is also a crime, so the Post will at least have company in this investigation.

I care not whether that company is Republican or Democrat; I only care that they pay for their perfidy: we are at war, and in case it hasn't occurred to the Washington Post, western civilization can't afford for them to undermine the United States government and the safety of its citizens and its faithful allies. What the hell is wrong with WaPo editors that they don't get that? Too nuanced?

It appears that once the Fitzgerald investigation wrapped up without so much as questioning Joe Wilson on some basic timelines, the Post thought they could get away with an egregious breach of national security in the form of the "black prison" story. But the CIA's general council begs to differ, and it's damned well about time.

The Justice Department should investigate the leaks and charge those involved. The chips can fall where they may; I'm goal-oriented.

Now that Patrick Fitzgerald has handed down his indictments against Scooter Libby, several things remain clear:

-Scooter Libby has not been charged with outing a covert CIA operative, which issue was the point of the investigation;

-Valerie Plame and a small group of her antiwar CIA co-workers conspired to discredit the President and thereby delegitimize the removal of Saddam Hussein from power;

-Joe Wilson provided anonymous and false allegations to Nicholas Kristof and Walter Pincus and others that Dick Cheney had sent him to Niger, in order to cover up the fact that he went to Niger on behalf of the aforementioned small group of CIA employees, led by his wife Valerie Plame, bent on discrediting the White House and President Bush on the invasion of Iraq;

-There was no great conspiracy by the White House to punish Joe Wilson by exposing his wife as a covert agent. First, Valerie Plame was not a covert agent, and had not been one for at least six years prior. Second, any ‘punishment’ flowing to Joe Wilson derived from his exposure as a liar after the White House set out to discover why Wilson was falsely claiming to have been assigned to Niger by Dick Cheney;

-Wilson’s claims through Kristof and Pincus that Iraq had made no attempts to buy Nigerian yellowcake were shown by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to be lies. In fact, Wilson’s report to SSCI proved that Iraq had attempted exactly that. Wilson also leaked the then-classified matter of the Niger report to SSCI to the Washington Post;

-Had she been an undercover CIA operative, neither the agency nor Valerie Plame would ever have allowed her husband’s public campaign of lies and embellishments against the White House, conducted as it was on the airwaves and in the major newspapers and magazines.

There's more, of course, but that should be enough to show these two for the vainglorious assholes they are.

The Washington Post explains:

Mark down the date. Tuesday, April 21, 2009, is the moment that any chance of a new era of bipartisan respect in Washington ended. By inviting the prosecution of Bush officials for their antiterror legal advice, President Obama has injected a poison into our politics that he and the country will live to regret.

Policy disputes, often bitter, are the stuff of democratic politics. Elections settle those battles, at least for a time, and Mr. Obama's victory in November has given him the right to change policies on interrogations, Guantanamo, or anything on which he can muster enough support. But at least until now, the U.S. political system has avoided the spectacle of a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements. This is what happens in Argentina, Malaysia or Peru, countries where the law is treated merely as an extension of political power.

If this analogy seems excessive, consider how Mr. Obama has framed the issue. He has absolved CIA operatives of any legal jeopardy, no doubt because his intelligence advisers told him how damaging that would be to CIA morale when Mr. Obama needs the agency to protect the country. But he has pointedly invited investigations against Republican legal advisers who offered their best advice at the request of CIA officials.

I say bring it on.

While the Hopey Changelings are happy Club Gitmo might be closed, the Messiah is admitting that George Bush was right: terrorist assholes will be subjected to harsh interrogation methods if the situation requires it.

But the orders leave unresolved complex questions surrounding the closing of the Guantánamo prison, including whether, where and how many of the detainees are to be prosecuted. They could also allow Mr. Obama to reinstate the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation operations in the future, by presidential order, as some have argued would be appropriate if Osama bin Laden or another top-level leader of Al Qaeda were captured.

The new White House counsel, Gregory B. Craig, briefed lawmakers about some elements of the orders on Wednesday evening. A Congressional official who attended the session said Mr. Craig acknowledged concerns from intelligence officials that new restrictions on C.I.A. methods might be unwise and indicated that the White House might be open to allowing the use of methods other than the 19 techniques allowed for the military.

Listening to the audio of the signing I noticed that the Messiah had to ask his counsel if there is an Executive Order for the disposition of the Club Gitmo prisoners. The Chief Executive doesn't know and has to ask if he has issued an Executive Order for the disposition of the Gitmo prisoners. If Bush had ever asked that, you'd still be hearing about it because Bush was so stooopid, but you never heard Bush ask such a ridiculous question- he knew what he was doing because he was in command, which the Messiah is obviously not. In fact, it sounds in the clip as if Greg Craig is the POTUS.

So there's some Change right there.

This is what I'm coming to think of as typically bizarre Messiah-think:

"The president believes that there's no more important job that he has than to keep the American people safe," Gibbs said at the White House press briefing room.

"The president believes that what he did today will enhance the security of the American people, that it lives up to our values as Americans, and that it will protect the men and women that we have in uniform," he said.

Because The Messiah Says So™. Someone in Unicornland tell me how closing Club Gitmo, especially without knowing what they are going to do with its animal population, will enhance the security of the American people, live up to American values, or protect the men and women in uniform.

Answer: It won't. It's just stupid and dangerous political pandering to the idiot base with unknown costs to American national security, the American people and the men and women in uniform.

To conclude:
A) The Messiah is clearly not in charge and
B) Whatever the Messiah says something is, that something is in fact likely the exact opposite.

Labels: Leader-Imposed Expiration Sanctions

Fast on the heels of Stephen Hayes' Weekly Standard article exposing details of the McCarthy-CIA-Clintonista cabal comes Thomas Joscelyn's article of the same name, The New McCarthyism.

While Hayes examines the media's omissions in their depiction of a harmless, non-partisan McCarthy, Joscelyn sets his sights on the truth behind the leaker's so-called "independent streak" and the intelligence surrounding the al-Shifa plant. It will be no surprise to adults that Clinton-era intelligence found ample co-operation between al Qaeda and Iraq.

THE MEDIA has been quick to lionize Mary McCarthy, the recently fired 61-year-old CIA analyst who allegedly leaked classified information to the Washington Post's Dana Priest. According to several recent accounts, it is not clear what information McCarthy was accused of leaking. But on Sunday, the New York Times ran a tribute to McCarthy. In it we learn from a gaggle of former intelligence officials that McCarthy is a woman of "great integrity," and "quite a good, substantive person." Larry Johnson, the former CIA analyst who told us not to worry about the threat of terrorism two years before 9/11, even tells us that she is a "sacrificial lamb."

Adulation from fellow colleagues aside, the lynchpin of the Times piece is that McCarthy has an "independent streak." She is no partisan, the Times wants you to know, and she has questioned the use of intelligence by both Democratic and Republican administrations. To demonstrate this independence, the Times piece leads with the claim that McCarthy bucked the Clinton administration in August 1998 when she objected to the destruction of a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant suspected of doubling as a front for al Qaeda's WMD efforts. The plant, named Al-Shifa, was one of two retaliatory targets chosen by the Clinton administration in the aftermath of the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

But in recounting the story of al-Shifa and Mary McCarthy's role in evaluating the intelligence surrounding the facility, the Times leaves out nearly every salient fact--including evidence that the Clinton administration used to tie Saddam's Iraq to al Qaeda.

And including the fact that McCarthy, whom the Times correctly but narrowly described as uncertain about striking the al-Shifa plant, soon joined in her colleagues' assessment and that "every top Clinton administration official who was involved in the decision to strike al -Shifa stands by that decision today."

Joscelyn's conclusions should surprise no-one with a brain. Read it all.

Power Line's Scott Johnson had this to say about the anti-Bush insurrection now being exposed by the McCarthy revelations:

The only war the Democrats really have their heart in is the war to undermine the Bush administration. Any incidental damage done to the national interest in furtherance of that war appears in their eyes to be for the greater good.

The same gang that claims to deplore collateral damage when it comes to fighting the enemy out there is wholly unconcerned about the damage they are doing right at home in executing their war against President Bush. They care nothing for the fact that in pursuing the man, they are doing great harm to the Office and to the nation.

It's just one more way the left is destroying your freedoms for your own good.

Die Zeit's interview with former CIA operative Michael Scheuer reveals a different take on the CIA rendition program than is presented by the domestic MSM. Bush chose to empower the CIA to be more self-reliant rather than hoping recaltricant allies would pony up and take some of the responsibility for protecting themselves, but that's just a reflection of the CYA mentality that is water to the European fish.

I note Scheuer's wish to treat the enemy as prisoners of war and I understand his reasons, but I disagree. The very nature of this enemy requires that he be shown a merciful but severely uncompromising visage, and I believe America is doing that. In fact the Bush Administration has risen well above the expectations of the Geneva Convention simply by allowing captured terrorists to live, as Geneva allows for their execution on the battlefield. I consider myself a progressive, so I advocate the mercies of waterboarding as opposed to instant execution if I think you can enlighten me.

Defending yourself by pre-emption does not mean you are Nazi Germany, whereas not defending yourself because you don't like the concept of war is suicidal.

HT: Captain's Quarters
Translation by Simplicius Redivivus

The Justice Department has announced probes into the leaks of secret anti-terror programs to the NYT and WaPo:
The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the leak of classified information about President Bush's secret domestic spying program, Justice officials said Friday. The officials, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, said the inquiry will focus on disclosures to The New York Times about warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The idiot left was so aflame with BDS that when notorious liar Joe Wilson "exposed" his wife as a CIA employee, they spun that irrelevant tidbit into charges of revenge against Wilson by the White House for lying about Saddam's attempts to purchase Nigerian yellowcake, and a breach of national security by The White House in "outing a covert CIA operative".

Neither one was true, of course, but that didn't matter to the BDS idiots. It gave them a chance to call themselves patriots by crying crocodile tears for Agent 99.

Now we have the spectacle of anti-Bush NSA and CIA leakers emboldened to the point that they are ladling classified information into front-page headlines in the NYT and WaPo. This is MSM complicity in a campaign by the American intelligence community (the IC) and its friends to sabotage the Bush presidency, plain and simple, the war in Iraq and the war on Islamofascism be damned.

And now the Justice Department is going to investigate. I hope they have the will and means to follow through, because you can't have your major national newspapers giving away classified wartime secrets to Al Qaida and Osama Bin Laden.

Duh.