Abandon ship...abandon ship...what happens when you get too cute
Reg
location: back to the wilderness
listening to: static
registered: 1999.11.22
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| Independent probe of leak urged
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Democrats: Administration
shouldn’t investigate
White House involvement |
| Sept. 29 -- Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV speaks with MSNBC’s John Elliott about allegations that White House officials identified his wife as a CIA operative. |
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MSNBC NEWS SERVICES |
| WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 — Charging that the Bush administration cannot credibly investigate itself, Democrats are calling for an independent probe of accusations that senior White House officials revealed the identity of a CIA agent to syndicated columnist Robert Novak in violation of a federal law barring identification of covert operatives. Meanwhile, the husband of the agent whose name was made public, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, leveled the finger of suspicion at White House political adviser Karl Rove, telling MSNBC TV on Monday, “My sources tell me that at a minimum Mr. Rove condoned it.” | |
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Revealing the identities of covert officials is a violation of two laws, the National Agents’ Identity Act and the Unauthorized Release of Classified Information Act.
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AFTER MONTHS of inaction, the Justice Department is now investigating the leak of the agent’s name at the request of the CIA, as NBC News and MSNBC.com reported Friday in an exclusive report.
At the center of the controversy is whether White House officials leaked the name of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, in retaliation for Wilson’s public criticism of a since-repudiated claim by President Bush that Iraq had tried to buy enriched uranium in Africa as part of its alleged nuclear weapons program.
In addition to dealing a blow to Plame’s career, intelligence officials feared that the leak could enable foreign intelligence officials to track down her contacts and expose other agents and sources.
Democrats, including Sen. Charles Schumer of New York and presidential candidates Howard Dean, Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri, called for an independent investigation of the charges.
”(If) something this sensitive is done under the wing of any direct appointees, at the very minimum, it’s not going to have the appearance of fairness and thoroughness,” Schumer said.
‘NATURAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST’
Dean, the former governor of Vermont, said Attorney General John Ashcroft should recuse himself from an investigation, which Dean believes should be handled by an “independent Justice Department inspector general.” |
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Gephardt, campaigning in New Hampshire, called it “a natural conflict of interest” for Justice Department appointees to investigate their superiors, and said congressional committees should try to determine what had happened.
The Justice Department had no immediate comment on the Democrats’ request.
The rules for appointment of a special counsel give Attorney General John Ashcroft wide latitude to either appoint one outright, conduct a preliminary investigation to determine if such a counsel is needed or to conclude that it would be better for the Justice Department to handle the probe itself.
Wilson, who served as acting ambassador to Iraq prior to the Gulf War in 1991, said he believes the leaking of his wife’s name was intended to “intimidate others from coming forward.”
“But irrespective of the of the motives, it was pretty despicable,” he said Monday in an interview with MSNBC TV.
Wilson has publicly blamed Rove, Bush’s top political adviser, for the leak. But he said Monday that he does not know whether Rove personally was the source of Novak’s information, only that he thought Rove had “condoned it.”
ROVE ‘WASN’T INVOLVED’
White House press secretary Scott McClellan denied the charge.
“He wasn’t involved,” he said of Rove. “The president knows he wasn’t involved. ... It’s simply not true.”
Asked whether Bush should fire any official found to have leaked the information, McClellan said: “They should be pursued to the fullest extent by the Department of Justice. The president expects everyone in his administration to adhere to the highest standards of conduct.” |
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 What's on MSNBC TV |
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Buchanan and Press, Monday, 6 p.m. ET |
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The Washington Post reported in Monday editions that White House officials said they would turn over phone logs if the Justice Department asked them to do so. But the aides said Bush had no plans to ask staff members whether they were involved in revealing the name of the man’s wife.
The leak of Plame’s name is an apparent violation of two laws that bar revealing the identities of covert operatives — the National Agents’ Identity Act and the Unauthorized Release of Classified Information Act.
NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell reported Friday that the Justice Department has received a request from the CIA to look into the matter. Separately, an unidentified senior administration official told the Associated Press that the Justice Department and the FBI are now trying to determine whether there was a violation of the law and, if so, then whether a full criminal investigation is warranted.
The controversy planted roots in January, when Bush said in his State of the Union address that British intelligence officials had learned that Iraq had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium in Africa. The citation was used by Bush to back up the administration’s claim that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein posed an immediate threat to the United States.
The administration has since had to repudiate the claim. CIA Director George Tenet said the 16-word sentence should not have been included in Bush’s Jan. 28 speech and publicly accepted responsibility for allowing it to remain in the president’s text.
WILSON CRITICIZED ADMINISTRATION
Questions were raised about the claim soon afterward, but the issue came to a head in July, when Wilson, who investigated the British intelligence that Iraq had tried to buy the enriched uranium in Niger, said in an opinion piece in the New York Times that he had told the CIA long before Bush’s speech that the information was highly suspect.
“We spend billions of dollars on intelligence,” Wilson wrote. “But we end up putting something in the State of the Union address, something we got from another intelligence agency, something we cannot independently verify, in an area of Africa where the British have no on-the-ground presence.”
A week after Wilson went public with his criticism, Novak, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist whose work appears in newspapers around the nation, quoted two anonymous senior administration officials as saying that Plame, a CIA operative working on the issue of weapons of mass destruction, had suggested to her superiors that her husband, a retired diplomat, conduct the investigation of the British intelligence.
Novak noted in the column that the CIA denied the accusation, saying that agency officials had picked Wilson and then asked his wife to contact him.
Novak was not the only journalist that the White House officials tried to interest in the story. A senior administration official cited in a Washington Post report Sunday said two top White House officials called at least a half-dozen journalists and revealed the identity and occupation of Wilson’s wife. NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw said Monday on the “Imus in the Morning” show that White House officials had called Mitchell, the network’s chief foreign affairs correspondent, with the information but said that it was decided not to broadcast the allegation.
Novak, who has close contacts in the administration, has declined to discuss the issue in detail. But he told the Washington Post: “I made the judgment it was newsworthy. I think the story has to stand for itself. It’s 100 percent accurate. I’m not going to get into why I wrote something.”
Senior Bush administration officials responded Sunday to to the allegations that White House officials revealed Plame’s identity.
‘APPROPRIATE ACTION’ PROMISED |
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September 28 — U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tells Tim Russert that she knows nothing of alleged calls by White House officials identifying an undercover CIA agent. | |
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“The Justice Department will now take appropriate action, whatever that is,” National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Rice said she was unaware of any White House involvement in the matter. “I know nothing about any such calls and I do know that the president of the United States would not expect his White House to behave in that way,” Rice told NBC’s Tim Russert.
Rice told “Fox News Sunday” the same thing, in almost identical language. “I know nothing of any such White House effort to reveal any of this, and it certainly would not be the way that the president would expect his White House to operate.”
When pressed as to whether anyone at the White House raised concern that the Wilson matter posed a problem for the administration, Rice replied, “I don’t remember any such conversation.”
 Transcript: Rice on 'Meet the Press'
Secretary of State Colin Powell told ABC’s “This Week” that he thought that if the CIA believed the identity of one of its agents have been revealed, it had an obligation to ask the Justice Department to look into the matter. But he added: “Other than that, I don’t know anything about the matter.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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'The only way to avoid getting crushed by absurdity, is to humbly include the absurd in our calculations.'
Reg
(view)
|
|
| Independent probe of leak urged
|
|
|
|
Democrats: Administration
shouldn’t investigate
White House involvement |
| Sept. 29 -- Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV speaks with MSNBC’s John Elliott about allegations that White House officials identified his wife as a CIA operative. |
| |
MSNBC NEWS SERVICES |
| WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 — Charging that the Bush administration cannot credibly investigate itself, Democrats are calling for an independent probe of accusations that senior White House officials revealed the identity of a CIA agent to syndicated columnist Robert Novak in violation of a federal law barring identification of covert operatives. Meanwhile, the husband of the agent whose name was made public, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, leveled the finger of suspicion at White House political adviser Karl Rove, telling MSNBC TV on Monday, “My sources tell me that at a minimum Mr. Rove condoned it.” | |
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Revealing the identities of covert officials is a violation of two laws, the National Agents’ Identity Act and the Unauthorized Release of Classified Information Act.
|
|
AFTER MONTHS of inaction, the Justice Department is now investigating the leak of the agent’s name at the request of the CIA, as NBC News and MSNBC.com reported Friday in an exclusive report.
At the center of the controversy is whether White House officials leaked the name of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, in retaliation for Wilson’s public criticism of a since-repudiated claim by President Bush that Iraq had tried to buy enriched uranium in Africa as part of its alleged nuclear weapons program.
In addition to dealing a blow to Plame’s career, intelligence officials feared that the leak could enable foreign intelligence officials to track down her contacts and expose other agents and sources.
Democrats, including Sen. Charles Schumer of New York and presidential candidates Howard Dean, Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri, called for an independent investigation of the charges.
”(If) something this sensitive is done under the wing of any direct appointees, at the very minimum, it’s not going to have the appearance of fairness and thoroughness,” Schumer said.
‘NATURAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST’
Dean, the former governor of Vermont, said Attorney General John Ashcroft should recuse himself from an investigation, which Dean believes should be handled by an “independent Justice Department inspector general.” |
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Advertisement
|
function zipInline_Popup(){
var dx,dy,x,y,op;dx=238;dy=294;
x=window.screen.width-dx-10;y=window.screen.height-dy-60;
op = "width="+dx+",height="+dy+",left="+x+",top="+y+",screenX="+x+",screenY="+y
OCW("/m/cov/popup.asp?p=Inline","pop",op);
}
function zipInline_Switch(){
document.images.imgIZip.src = "/site_elements/pfp/inline/Go_to_home.gif"
for(var i=0; i < document.links.length;i++){
if(document.links[i].href == "javascript:zipInline_Popup();"){
document.links[i].href = "/news/default.asp"
break;
}
}
}
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|
Gephardt, campaigning in New Hampshire, called it “a natural conflict of interest” for Justice Department appointees to investigate their superiors, and said congressional committees should try to determine what had happened.
The Justice Department had no immediate comment on the Democrats’ request.
The rules for appointment of a special counsel give Attorney General John Ashcroft wide latitude to either appoint one outright, conduct a preliminary investigation to determine if such a counsel is needed or to conclude that it would be better for the Justice Department to handle the probe itself.
Wilson, who served as acting ambassador to Iraq prior to the Gulf War in 1991, said he believes the leaking of his wife’s name was intended to “intimidate others from coming forward.”
“But irrespective of the of the motives, it was pretty despicable,” he said Monday in an interview with MSNBC TV.
Wilson has publicly blamed Rove, Bush’s top political adviser, for the leak. But he said Monday that he does not know whether Rove personally was the source of Novak’s information, only that he thought Rove had “condoned it.”
ROVE ‘WASN’T INVOLVED’
White House press secretary Scott McClellan denied the charge.
“He wasn’t involved,” he said of Rove. “The president knows he wasn’t involved. ... It’s simply not true.”
Asked whether Bush should fire any official found to have leaked the information, McClellan said: “They should be pursued to the fullest extent by the Department of Justice. The president expects everyone in his administration to adhere to the highest standards of conduct.” |
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What's on MSNBC TV |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Buchanan and Press, Monday, 6 p.m. ET |
|
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The Washington Post reported in Monday editions that White House officials said they would turn over phone logs if the Justice Department asked them to do so. But the aides said Bush had no plans to ask staff members whether they were involved in revealing the name of the man’s wife.
The leak of Plame’s name is an apparent violation of two laws that bar revealing the identities of covert operatives — the National Agents’ Identity Act and the Unauthorized Release of Classified Information Act.
NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell reported Friday that the Justice Department has received a request from the CIA to look into the matter. Separately, an unidentified senior administration official told the Associated Press that the Justice Department and the FBI are now trying to determine whether there was a violation of the law and, if so, then whether a full criminal investigation is warranted.
The controversy planted roots in January, when Bush said in his State of the Union address that British intelligence officials had learned that Iraq had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium in Africa. The citation was used by Bush to back up the administration’s claim that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein posed an immediate threat to the United States.
The administration has since had to repudiate the claim. CIA Director George Tenet said the 16-word sentence should not have been included in Bush’s Jan. 28 speech and publicly accepted responsibility for allowing it to remain in the president’s text.
WILSON CRITICIZED ADMINISTRATION
Questions were raised about the claim soon afterward, but the issue came to a head in July, when Wilson, who investigated the British intelligence that Iraq had tried to buy the enriched uranium in Niger, said in an opinion piece in the New York Times that he had told the CIA long before Bush’s speech that the information was highly suspect.
“We spend billions of dollars on intelligence,” Wilson wrote. “But we end up putting something in the State of the Union address, something we got from another intelligence agency, something we cannot independently verify, in an area of Africa where the British have no on-the-ground presence.”
A week after Wilson went public with his criticism, Novak, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist whose work appears in newspapers around the nation, quoted two anonymous senior administration officials as saying that Plame, a CIA operative working on the issue of weapons of mass destruction, had suggested to her superiors that her husband, a retired diplomat, conduct the investigation of the British intelligence.
Novak noted in the column that the CIA denied the accusation, saying that agency officials had picked Wilson and then asked his wife to contact him.
Novak was not the only journalist that the White House officials tried to interest in the story. A senior administration official cited in a Washington Post report Sunday said two top White House officials called at least a half-dozen journalists and revealed the identity and occupation of Wilson’s wife. NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw said Monday on the “Imus in the Morning” show that White House officials had called Mitchell, the network’s chief foreign affairs correspondent, with the information but said that it was decided not to broadcast the allegation.
Novak, who has close contacts in the administration, has declined to discuss the issue in detail. But he told the Washington Post: “I made the judgment it was newsworthy. I think the story has to stand for itself. It’s 100 percent accurate. I’m not going to get into why I wrote something.”
Senior Bush administration officials responded Sunday to to the allegations that White House officials revealed Plame’s identity.
‘APPROPRIATE ACTION’ PROMISED |
|
|
|
|
|
|
September 28 — U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tells Tim Russert that she knows nothing of alleged calls by White House officials identifying an undercover CIA agent. | |
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|
“The Justice Department will now take appropriate action, whatever that is,” National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Rice said she was unaware of any White House involvement in the matter. “I know nothing about any such calls and I do know that the president of the United States would not expect his White House to behave in that way,” Rice told NBC’s Tim Russert.
Rice told “Fox News Sunday” the same thing, in almost identical language. “I know nothing of any such White House effort to reveal any of this, and it certainly would not be the way that the president would expect his White House to operate.”
When pressed as to whether anyone at the White House raised concern that the Wilson matter posed a problem for the administration, Rice replied, “I don’t remember any such conversation.”
Transcript: Rice on 'Meet the Press'
Secretary of State Colin Powell told ABC’s “This Week” that he thought that if the CIA believed the identity of one of its agents have been revealed, it had an obligation to ask the Justice Department to look into the matter. But he added: “Other than that, I don’t know anything about the matter.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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'The only way to avoid getting crushed by absurdity, is to humbly include the absurd in our calculations.'
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