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SquattingMarmot
Inquiring Mind
Registered: 08/19/03
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A White House 'Hip-Deep' in Plame Scandal and Cover Up
#4846405 - 10/24/05 04:03 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
Doug Thompson http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7564.shtml
Senior White House officials over the weekend warned President George W. Bush to ?prepare for the worst? in the ever-deepening Valerie Plame scandal, laying out a scenario that includes indictments of top officials and detailing a direct involvement by the Administration in a concentrated effort to destroy the credibility of Ambassador Joseph Wilson and then conceal the actions from investigators.
Chief of Staff Andrew Card cancelled a weekend schedule of appearances and events to spend the weekend with Bush at Camp David and deliver the bad news personally, White House insiders tell Capitol Hill Blue.
With indictments expected against Lewis ?Scooter? Libby, Vice President Richard Cheney?s chief of staff, and possibly White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, Card told Bush that both will have to resign if the administration is to salvage any chance of recovering from the scandal.
?We?re hip deep in this and the sharks are circling,? Card told the President.
According to multiple White House sources, Card laid out a detailed scenario of White House involvement in a staff-directed campaign to destroy administration critic Wilson. That scenario includes:
- A concentrated effort directed by Libby to monitor Wilson?s travel, speeches and activities and develop talking points to attack his credibility and plant false stories about the Ambassador?s activities, statements and motives. Libby?s plan included ?outing? Wilson?s wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative. Card told Bush he believes Vice President Cheney was aware of Libby's activities.
- Approval of the program by Rove who helped spread the information to ?administration-friendly? reporters, including conservative columnist Robert Novak and New York Times reporter Judith Miller who has since publicly admitted helping spread false administration-based information claiming the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a claim now discredited.
- Attempts by White House personnel to cover up administration involvement in the Plame affair, including Rove-directed public statements by press spokesman Scott McClellan claiming ?no White House official is involved? in the leaking of Plame?s name. ?As usual, it?s not the act itself but the cover up that brings someone down,? says retired political science professor George Harleigh, who worked in the Nixon administration. ?It?s a sad lesson that those in power never learn.?
Indeed, indictments the grand jury convened by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald are expected to hand down focus more on the cover-up than the actual leaking of Plame?s name to the press, sources close to the investigation say.
With pressure mounting against the White House, even Republicans are looking for ways to distance themselves from the growing scandals surrounding the Bush administration. GOP campaign consultants are advising elected officials and candidates for public office to call for resignation of anyone indicted in the scandal.
Virginia GOP Sen. George Allen, a Bush loyalist, told NBC?s Meet the Press Sunday that any administration official indicted in the scandal should resign.
?I think they will step down if they're indicted,? Allen said.
In another development, New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller admits his newspaper aided and abetted the Bush administration?s false claims of existence of weapons of mass destructions in Iraq.
?I wish we had dealt with the controversy over our coverage of WMD as soon as I became executive editor,? Keller said in a memo to Times reporters and editors. ?By waiting a year to own up to our mistakes, we allowed the anger inside and outside the paper to fester? If we had lanced the WMD boil earlier, we might have damped any suspicion that THIS time, the paper was putting the defense of a reporter above the duty to its readers.?
Keller admitted reporter Judith Miller has been an administration pawn in the Plame affair.
?Until Fitzgerald came after her, I didn?t know that Judy had been one of the reporters on the receiving end of the anti-Wilson whisper campaign,? he said. ?But in this case I missed what should have been significant alarm bells.?
Criag Pyes, a reporter who worked with Miller on other stories, told Times editors in an internal memo that she should not be trusted.
?I do not trust her work, her judgment, or her conduct,? Pyes wrote. ?She is an advocate, and her actions threaten the integrity of the enterprise, and of everyone who works with her.? In the memo, Pyes said Miller took ?dictation from government sources? and tried to ?stampede it into the paper.?
?That charge resonates today, of course, because that?s exactly what people suspect Miller did with her inaccurate WMD reporting in the run up to the Iraq war,? says Douglas McCollam, a lawyer, former Washington correspondent for American Lawyer, and contributing editor to Columbia Journalism Review. ?Miller?s sources weren?t just wrong, they spun her dizzy and in the process badly damaged the credibility of America?s best and most important newspaper.?
Times columnist Maureen Dowd says Miller was a stooge for those who wanted to sell the Iraq war to a gullible public.
?Judy's stories about WMD fit too perfectly with the White House's case for war,? Dowd wrote in her Times column Saturday. ?She was close to Ahmad Chalabi, the con man who was conning the neocons to knock out Saddam so he could get his hands on Iraq, and I worried that she was playing a leading role in the dangerous echo chamber that former Senator Bob Graham dubbed ?incestuous amplification.? Using Iraqi defectors and exiles, Mr. Chalabi planted bogus stories with Judy and other credulous journalists.?
Concludes Dowd on Miller: ?She never knew when to quit. That was her talent and her flaw. Sorely in need of a tight editorial leash, she was kept on no leash at all, and that has hurt this paper and its trust with readers. She more than earned her sobriquet ?Miss Run Amok.??
In another ominous sign, special prosecutor Fitzgerald set up a web site for the investigation just a week before his investigation is slated to end.
?You don't open up a Web site if you're ready to shut down an investigation," former attorney general Richard Thornburgh said on CNN's Late Edition.
Thornburgh also said indictments that deal with a cover up are ?serious business.?
?If there is false testimony given or there's an attempt to corrupt any of the witnesses or evidence that is presented to the grand jury, that's a very serious offense because it undermines the integrity of the whole rule of law and investigatory process,? he said.
? Copyright 2005 by Capitol Hill Blue
The White House might soon be without their own chubby little Rasputin, Karl Rove. I bet dubya's shitting his pants over this.
-------------------- "In the United States anybody can be president. Thats the problem." "The gray-haired douche bag, Barbara Bush, has a slogan: "Encourage your child to read every day." What she should be is encouraging children to question what they read every day." - George Carlin
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afoaf
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Re: A White House 'Hip-Deep' in Plame Scandal and Cover Up [Re: SquattingMarmot]
#4846436 - 10/24/05 04:10 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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I might be foaming at the mouth a bit more if it hadn't come from CHB.
let's wait and see what comes about this week...
-------------------- All I know is The Growery is a place where losers who get banned here go.
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SquattingMarmot
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Registered: 08/19/03
Posts: 418
Last seen: 9 years, 11 months
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Re: A White House 'Hip-Deep' in Plame Scandal and Cover Up [Re: afoaf]
#4846469 - 10/24/05 04:18 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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Very good point. Lets just hope Fitzgerald will be able to implicate as many of these warmongers as possible.
-------------------- "In the United States anybody can be president. Thats the problem." "The gray-haired douche bag, Barbara Bush, has a slogan: "Encourage your child to read every day." What she should be is encouraging children to question what they read every day." - George Carlin
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Catalysis
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Re: A White House 'Hip-Deep' in Plame Scandal and Cover Up [Re: SquattingMarmot]
#4846939 - 10/24/05 06:13 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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The fact that everything is shifting towards looking for an alleged cover-up and lying under oath before any indictments are handed out should have you concerned. I suspect that there is no solid case against the source for divulging Plame's name or the act itself may not have even been illegal. I bet if anyone goes down, it will be for impeding the investigation. I don't think anyone will go to jail but there will likely be political consequences.
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kilgore_trout
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Re: A White House 'Hip-Deep' in Plame Scandal and Cover Up [Re: Catalysis]
#4847029 - 10/24/05 06:38 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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oh no, its very illegal. a lot of the media has been downplaying it like its not, or might not be. it is very illegal.
-------------------- "I didnt fight a secret war in nicaragua so you could walk these streets of freedom bad-mouthing lady america in your damn mirrored sunglasses."
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zappaisgod
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Re: A White House 'Hip-Deep' in Plame Scandal and Cover Up [Re: kilgore_trout]
#4847041 - 10/24/05 06:40 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
kilgore_trout said: oh no, its very illegal. a lot of the media has been downplaying it like its not, or might not be. it is very illegal.
Just what is the "IT" that you say is illegal?
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kilgore_trout
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Re: A White House 'Hip-Deep' in Plame Scandal and Cover Up [Re: zappaisgod]
#4847085 - 10/24/05 06:54 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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leaking the CIA agent identity, very illegal under multiple laws.
-------------------- "I didnt fight a secret war in nicaragua so you could walk these streets of freedom bad-mouthing lady america in your damn mirrored sunglasses."
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SquattingMarmot
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Registered: 08/19/03
Posts: 418
Last seen: 9 years, 11 months
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Re: A White House 'Hip-Deep' in Plame Scandal and Cover Up [Re: zappaisgod]
#4847621 - 10/24/05 08:53 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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Here's a link to a DOJ document that states exactly what Fitzgerald is investigating.
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/documents/ag_letter_feburary_06_2004.pdf
-------------------- "In the United States anybody can be president. Thats the problem." "The gray-haired douche bag, Barbara Bush, has a slogan: "Encourage your child to read every day." What she should be is encouraging children to question what they read every day." - George Carlin
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afoaf
CEO DBK?


Registered: 11/08/02
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Re: A White House 'Hip-Deep' in Plame Scandal and Cover Up [Re: Catalysis]
#4848007 - 10/24/05 10:31 PM (18 years, 6 months ago) |
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they're more likely to get them on the coverup and perjury than the circular and difficult to prove leak itself.
I love the position this puts bush in....anyone in this administration found to be involved in this leak will be out of a job...funny how the tune changes.
-------------------- All I know is The Growery is a place where losers who get banned here go.
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lonestar2004
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Re: A White House 'Hip-Deep' in Plame Scandal and Cover Up [Re: SquattingMarmot]
#5745157 - 06/13/06 09:04 AM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
SquattingMarmot said:
Quote:
The White House might soon be without their own chubby little Rasputin, Karl Rove. I bet dubya's shitting his pants over this.
-------------------- America's debt problem is a "sign of leadership failure" We have "reckless fiscal policies" America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better Barack Obama
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