This "Scandal" Will Self-Destruct in 5 Seconds...
posted by Jason
Generation Why?
Remember that obnoxious Vanity Fair article back in January, 2004 in which Joe Wilson and his "undercover" wife posed for this picture (linked below)? It seems there was a significant little tidbit therein that's been overlooked:
In early May, Wilson and Plame attended a conference
sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, at
which Wilson spoke about Iraq; one of the other panelists
was the New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof. Over
breakfast the next morning with Kristof and his wife,
Wilson told about his trip to Niger and said Kristof
could write about it, but not name him.
It appears Wilson and Plame had breakfast with a journalist during which Wilson spoke of his trip to Iraq... a trip that Plame had recommended Wilson for. Is this how the CIA trains agents to be "covert"?
Jack Cashill also points out that this meeting would've been a violation of Plame's employment with CIA:
"As an employee of the CIA," he writes in the preface to
the paperback version of his book, "The Politics of
Truth," "she could have no contact with the press without
prior approval." Sitting in at a breakfast with a Times
reporter in which her husband discusses a CIA trip that
she recommended certainly qualifies as "contact."
Needless to say it's hard to imagine Wilson's feigned outrage over the "outing of his wife" is anything more than a political ploy considering he was dragging her around to meetings with journalists long before Scooter Libby or anyone else in the administration was allegedly plotting to out her as payback for an article Wilson wouldn't write for a month after such meeting.
I wonder when Patrick Fitzgerald will get around to including this in his investigation o' nothing.
Update: Many emails about the ambiguity of the "his wife" reference in the Vanity Fair article. Some suggest it could refer to Plame (Wilson's wife) or Kristof's wife. While the reference does appear ambiguous (which is probably why it has been overlooked), there are a couple of factors that lead me to believe the reference is to Valerie Plame:
1. The reference in the preceding line is to just the three: Wilson, Plame and Kristof.
2. Kristof's wife, Sheryl WuDunn, is also a NY Times journalist, so if the reference was to her, it seems that fact would've made it important enough for Ward to have used WuDunn's name -- to point out Wilson met with two NY Times reporters for breakfast -- instead of sloppily saying "his wife".
3. Finally, the entire article is about Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame and it references the phrase "his wife" 10 other times and every one of those 10 other references is clearly to Plame.
texasrainmaker.blogspot.com
vanityfair.com
rogerlsimon.com
washingtonpost.com
wnd.com
awib.org |
