(Mother Jones) - "The Armitage Red Herring "

[annabanana]

I saw a bit of T*ckers show tonight. He was pounding Patrick Fitzgerald for "wasting taxpayer money prolonging the investigation, when he knew it was Armitage all along" and my blood started to boil.

As I sat down ready to:

When I found this link in my inbox:
http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2006/08/plame%20case.html

The Armitage Red Herring
By Daniel Schulman


If you believe the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page, the conservative wing of the blogosphere, or any number of right-wing commentators, the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame has amounted to a non-scandal, a conspiracy theory drummed up for political ends by the left. This owes to the recent disclosure in Newsweek that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the initial and primary source for the now infamous column by Robert Novak that touched off the controversy. Plugging “Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War,” a soon-to-be-released book co-authored by Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and The Nation's David Corn (who was the first to raise the question of whether the Plame leak broke the law), the magazine reported that Armitage, who has a reputation as a gossip, may have inadvertently leaked Plame’s identity to Novak in the course of making chit chat.


~ snip ~

Corn, for his part, seems somewhat amused that his reporting has been held up to vindicate those who believe the Plame leak was not the act of political retaliation it certainly appears to have been. “White House defenders are chortling,” he writes on his blog. “For some reason, they believe that the news from ‘Hubris’ that Richard Armitage was the original leaker means there was nothing to the CIA leak case.” He goes on to say that the body of evidence that has been unearthed over the years disputes this fact. “Rove's leak (to Robert Novak and Matt Cooper) and Libby's leak (to Judith Miller and Cooper) were part of a campaign to discredit former ambassador Joseph Wilson. That's no conspiracy theory

(a bit more at link)

[Jackpine Radical]

1. The Puggy spin machine is such fun to watch...

if only it weren't so damned effective.
Fortunately, the Plame case is destined to end up in a court of law rather than the court of (expertly, shamelessly manipulated) public opinion.

Edited to add--

I assume the only reason to be dragging these red herrings around is because ol' Fitz is still bloodhounding around on the trail. I expect he'll start baying soon now.

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. The newsweek story is crap.

Newsweek's Isikoff says that Armitage, career military man and veteran insider "accidentally" told Woodward of Plame's employment by the CIA in June 2003. This seems possible, albeit unlikely, given his profession.

But that's not the end of the story. When two weeks had elapsed and Woodward obviously wasn't going to publish the information, he "accidentally" told Novak too. Armitage's defense is that he didn't know that she was covert. The same defense can't be made for Rove (who confirmed the information) and Libby (who participated in the coordinated leak to Judith Miller)

To claim that this was all just a big misunderstanding and not a conscious, coordinated attack on Wilson, at the expense of national security is ludicrous. (Plame's job was to monitor WMD proliferation in Syria and Iran. No big deal)

The Newsweek article also goes on to note Gonzales' response to the state department's lawyer, (Taft) who asked if Gonzales wanted to know about Armitage's role in the leak. "No", he responded. So much for Bush's promise to get to the bottom of it.

BTW, your animated gif will give me nightmares. :yoiks:

[H2O Man]

3. (Water Man) Things are good.

Good article. Thanks.

[Synnical]

4. TO/Mark Ash wrote about this, too

Marc Ash: Special Counsel Under Attack

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2052931&mesg_id=2052931

[DemReadingDU]

5. Last line: But there’s more to the story

It's like a cliffhanger, I wonder when we will hear the rest of the story!