Some problems with Corn and Isikoff's Armitage was the Second Source

[leveymg]

Some problems with Corn & Isikoff's Armitage was the Second Source.
by leveymg
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/8/28/1264/01263
Mon Aug 28, 2006 at 09:06:04 AM PDT

Richard Armitage, Colin Powell and the Old Bush 41 Hands at the State Department are being given a pass for their role in Plamegate in a new book.

They don't deserve it.

David Corn and Michael Isikoff's Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War also perpetuates the myth that the reason that the Bush Administration invaded Iraq was because Ahmed Chalabi tricked them into it as part of an Iranian disinformation program.

In other words, according to Corn and Isikoff, it wasn't Bush, Cheney and Powell who lied to get us into Iraq, it was those dastardly Iranians who deceived them.

Call it Iraq-Plamegate version 1.2.

MORE below . . .

In Corn's new book, cowritten with Michael Isikoff, Armitage is the second source to both Woodward and Novak, but he is portrayed as an innocent who just liked to gossip on the phone with reporters. Colin Powell and the State Department also come off as the most reluctant of warriors, with all involved the victim of a ruse by Tehran to oust Saddam Hussein.

Corn writes about the book here:
http://www.davidcorn.com/archives/2006/08/hubris_the_armi.php
The Newsweek account is here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14533384/site/newsweek/

There are some problems with this new semi-official account of the Second Man behind Plamegate. In reality, the center of the outing of Plame and the selling of the Iraq Invasion are State Department figures and documents. While the prime movers behind the attempt to discredit Ambassador Joe Wilson and the outing of his wife, Valerie Plame, was Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby, the State Department played an essential role in the crime.

When Vice President Cheney ordered WHIG to go after Ambassador Wilson, Acting Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman faxed a pile of classified State Department documents to Scooter Libby. Included in that May 31, 2003 transmission was the reconstructed notes of an analyst at the State Dept. Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) who had attended a meeting with Valerie Plame prior to Wilson being dispatched to Niger. That document, the so-called INR Notes, is the first document identifying Plame as a CIA WMD analyst known to have come into the possession of Libby. It was incorporated as a footnote into the June 7 document, "the INR", that Grossman, a lesser-known but key neo-con, had prepared and disseminated within the Administration. While both Powell and Armitage later claimed the June 7 INR was created by Grossman without their authorization, this is the document Powell took on board AF1 during a trip to Africa that ended up being passed around by White House aides.

It has not been revealed how widely distributed the earlier State Department document, the INR Notes, was. It is well-established, however, that information about Plame received by Libby in the INR Notes from Grossman ended up being shared with Judy Miller over breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel in DC. Of course, we also know that Libby originally learned about Plame from his boss, and that a source at CIA, the former Chief of Station in Pakistan, confirmed Plame's identity to Scooter before he tipped off Judy on June 8th.

Now, we learn that later that same morning, Armitage "let it slip" to Novak that Valerie Plame worked as a CIA WMD specialist, information that Novak published in his column four days later with the additional morsel that Plame worked "undercover" at CIA.

Corn and Isikoff claim that whatever Armitage said to Novak was all innocent "gossip" done inadvertantly because Armitage liked to talk to reporters. That's a real scoop --not previously something that many knew about Armitage, who earned a reputation as one of the hard guys during Bush 41.

As for Powell, he's also portrayed as a relative babe in the woods. Which, relative to Cheney and Libby, he might have been. In the end, it was Dick Armitage's boss, Bush's Secretary of State Colin Powell, who stood up behind the UN podium and, despite all that he knew to the contrary, delivered that oft-repeated speech about Saddam's "reconstituted" nuclear program, complete with those blown-up photos that showed Iraqi "WMD sites" and diagrams of "biological weapons production trailers", all of which rationalized the invasion to the world.

Why is Corn and Isikoff trying to make Powell and Armitage out to be just innocent dupes in this fraud?

Beyond a lame attempt to reconstruct the reputations of these Bush 41 Old Hands, there's also another agenda at play here. Corn and Isikoff's book concludes, as has Tony Bamford, that Ahmed Chalabi was part of an Iranian disinformation program to persuade the White House to get rid of Saddam Hussein. We should retain skepticism about this facile explanation about what drove the Bush Administration to invade and occupy Iraq. It was the White House, after all, which ordered the release of Ahmed Chalabi when he was arrested after he became the subject of CIA suspicions of double-dealings. In fact, after things were all sorted out, Chalabi was then given the post of head of the ministry that controlled Iraq's oil in the U.S.-supported transitional government. That would seem to be a strange punishment for spying on behalf of Tehran.

[stop the bleeding]

1. Another attempt to have this play out in the media instead of the courts

to attempt an answer to you Powell/Armitage dupes question.

Why is Corn and Isikoff trying to make Powell and Armitage out to be just innocent dupes in this fraud?


spin spin spin.

Libby's days are growing shorter with turning of the seasons, and Cheney knows it.

[savemefromdumbya]

3. somebody called Woodward?

[stop the bleeding]

4. everything keeps pointing back to OVP

H2O Man will be able to weigh in on Woodward's connection/involvement

[savemefromdumbya]

6. The sooner the better

[oneighty]

2. According to the Clarke book

Armitage was /is an ex-Navy SEAL- because he brushed shoulders with some real SEALS in Saigon.

Never ever trust a wannabee SEAL. Never. There is no truth in them about anything.

180

[displacedtexan]

5. Here's a good blog post on The Armitage Red Herring...

Libby Defense Fund
(Defending America From Scooter Libby): "Beware The Armitage Red Herring."

[janx]

7. That is exactly the term that came to my mind at this

"revelation."

Edited to add:

[Old and In the Way]

8. Sounds like our media guardians are resetting the table for the next

entree on the neoconservative menu. No one does revisionism quite like our Republican corporate media.

[leveymg]

11. Make that the "liberal" wing of the GOP-owned corporate media. eom

[H2O Man]

9. Very interesting.

This is a very well thought out essay, the type that is a pleasure to read. And to nominate, of course.

I think that the authors are suggesting that Mr. Armitage was Novak's firsat source. This is based on the theory that he became aware of Ms. Plame when reading the infamous State memo mentioning her name. Were we to accept the story on face value, Dick "gossiped" the Plame connection to Novak without thinking, then never made the connection when Novak's story first hit. It wasn't until the FBI was beginning its investigation that his gossip and Novak's later "no partison gunslinger" crap made a meaningful connection.

First, we should use the story as a new starting point, not an ending. It should again cause us to look at the memo .... which speaks not only of Plame, but of an earlier investigation by Wilson. The significance could not, would not, and did not escape any administration official.

Armitage faxed the memo to Powell, c/o Rice, on AF1 on the trip to Africa. Again, we need to consider why this happened, and what it means.

There is far more to this episode than meets the eye.

[leveymg]

12. Hi and thanks. One question:

I hadn't read that Armitage faxed the 6/7 INR to Powell aboard AF-1. I instead recall reading that Powell carried it aboard in his brief case. If Armitage had chain of custody before it reached the SOS, that could be significant. Do you have a cite for that?

The idea of Dick Armitage as a gadfly who just loved gossip with reporters is so funny. It's like imaging Luca Brasi in that role.

[stop the bleeding]

13. don't know if this helps

I can never read this article enough from Roger Morris

June 12, 2003: The Washington Post reports that an unnamed "former US ambassador" was sent to Niger to look into the uranium issue and found no evidence of any Iraqi purchase.

At the State Department, Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage asks INR to prepare a memorandum on the background of what the Post is reporting, and INR sends to Armitage that same day a copy of the June 10 memo to Grossman. The memo is also sent to Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security (and future UN Ambassador-designate) John Bolton.

July 6, 2003: Outraged by continuing references to the Nigerien uranium, Wilson breaks his anonymity with a sensational New York Times op-ed disclosing his mission to Niger sixteen months before, and the fact that he found no evidence of an Iraqi purchase of ore. "Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war," Wilson writes, "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." He tells "Meet the Press," "Either the administration has information that it has not shared with the public or ... they were using the selective use of facts and intelligence to bolster a decision that had already been made to go to war."

Later in the day, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage calls INR Assistant Secretary Carl W. Ford at home, and asks him to send a briefing memo to Powell about the Niger uranium issue. Ford simply pulls out the previous June 10 memo with its reference to Wilson's wife (her name now corrected from Wilson to Plame), addresses it to Powell, and forwards the memo to Rice to be passed on to Powell, who is due to leave the next day with the Presidential party on a trip to Africa.

Meanwhile, the WHIG is also moving that Sunday to deal aggressively with the Wilson op-ed. They will no longer focus on the too obviously fraudulent claim of an Iraqi purchase of yellow cake-White House orthodoxy before the invasion-but will instead discount the issue, discredit Wilson, and shift blame for the now-embarrassing State of the Union reference. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer is to try to downplay and dismiss Wilson's article on-the-record at the next day's press briefing, while Rice and others begin to make off-the-record calls to the media to do the same. While pursuing their own contacts among right-wing reporters and columnists, Rove and Libby are also to work with CIA Director George Tenet in a statement by Tenet taking responsibility for any inaccuracy in the State of the Union passage.

July 7, 2003: Under a barrage of questions at a 9:30 am press briefing, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer says of the Wilson claims, "There is zero, nada, nothing new here,' adding that "Wilson's own report that officials in Niger said that Iraq was seeking to contact officials in Niger about sales." (A reference to the "Algerian-Nigerian intermediary" in Wilson's debriefings.) ("That then translates into an Iraqi effort to import a significant quantity of uranium as the President alleged?" Wilson later that day replies to Fleischer. "These guys really need to get serious.") But as the briefing wears on, Fleischer's defense grows "murkier," as the New York Times reports, and he seems to "concede" that the State of the Union reference to Niger uranium "might have been flawed."

That evening, with the White House scrambling to defend itself against Wilson's resonating charges, Bush leaves for a trip to Africa, accompanied by Rice and Powell. Before the party flies out of Andrews, Rice is in several meetings with Rove, Libby and other senior aides of the WHIG.

The scene now shifts to the plush but still relatively close quarters of Air Force One, the specially configured 747 where the accompanying media are boarded through a rear door and funneled directly to their mid-level section closed off from the forward official compartment, and where Administration VIPs like Rice and Powell are in conference rooms and adjoining lounge chairs in closer and easier proximity and informality than in any other official venue. It is in this setting, soon after takeoff, as the New York Times will report two years later, that Powell is seen walking around carrying the INR June 12/July6 memo detailing Wilson's mission and Plame's identity and role in the "(S/NF)" paragraph. Powell discusses the memo with Rice and other presidential aides on board, including press secretary Ari Fleischer. Witnesses later see Fleischer "perusing" the memo. There are reports, too, of several calls between the plane and the White House discussing the Wilson affair. En route over the Atlantic, Rice and Fleischer both call contacts at the Washington Post and New York Times "to make it clear," the Times will report, "that they no longer stood behind Mr. Bush's statement about the uranium-the first such official concession on the sensitive issue of the intelligence that led to the war."

read more here:


http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:RajaUXFaeDcJ:www.counterpunch.org/morris07272005.html+counterpunch+rice+INR+NIE+plame&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

- my take is the INR was faxed or emailed based on Armitage's request - so yes and no to your question - I think:)

[leveymg]

15. Emptywheel and I had a long discussion about the genesis of the INR

in the string that follows here, "The (July 7) INR Memo": http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/4/17/16594/3210

CORRECTION: My reference above to events in June 2003 actually occurred in July. My apologies.

Thanks for that link.

[orwell]

10. Frankly...

...I don't trust a word that comes off the pen of either Corn or Isikoff.

[formercia]

18. Corn's background as a briefer makes him suspect.

He was a contemporary of Bob Woodward. Now that Woodward has been discredited, time to bring in the reserve players.

[leveymg]

19. I liked Corn's book on Ted Shackley, "Blonde Ghost", a lot.

The fact that he has a background in intel shouldn't in itself make him suspect. After all, Ray McGovern was also a briefer.

I have noticed that Corn has moved up the food chain a bit in the last couple years. He's on the tube a lot, which isn't a really good sign.

[meganmonkey]

14. Wow - this is great, thanks

for putting this together. Sad when the 'left-wing' media is helping perpetuate the same lies as the 'mainstream' media is...

It's as if they've never heard of PNAC. Bummer.

[leveymg]

16. IMO this points out the difference between the "liberal" corporate media

and the "left-wing" Blogosphere. There is no such thing as an overtly "left-wing" corporate media, except maybe Colbert (who is difficult to categorize) and, perhaps, one or two other cable shows.

Corn has done some good work over the years for The Nation, but he is not by any stretch a Leftist. Isikoff seems to be a gun for hire.

[Generator]

17. It makes me angry

that those that are supposed to speak for the left, are really just dupes or buttkissers of the right. Corn hasn't been trustworthy for years.

The idea that it was Chalabi or any other person that sold the war to any of those in the pentagon or in power is ABSURD. Chalabi was used to sell the war to US-the American people.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607_1,00.html

Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
~

July 23rd, 2002. The Downing street memo. Just one of hundreds of sources of the truth. The truth has been around for YEARS now.

It's not a secret, America. It's out there. I call bullshit on anyone who tries to revise history. The fact that they call themselves Democrats or journalists or progressives-just makes it worse.