Originally Posted By Beaumandy For all the people who insisted on here for years that Rove, Bush, and the GOP outed Valerie Plame for " revenge " the game is officially over. It was over a long time ago but the libs just had to hold on to every thread of hope that they had a " scandal " to push as their reason to exist besides helping the terrorists and banning god from America. Oh, Joe Wilson is a liar and a proven one at that. Next " scandal " please. www.captainsquaters.com Michael Isikoff and David Corn have a new book coming out that reveals the inside details of the leak that allowed Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent to be uncovered. As widely speculated, the leak came from Richard Armitage, Colin Powell's key deputy, and it came without malicious intent: In the early morning of Oct. 1, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell received an urgent phone call from his No. 2 at the State Department. Richard Armitage was clearly agitated. As recounted in a new book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," Armitage had been at home reading the newspaper and had come across a column by journalist Robert Novak. Months earlier, Novak had caused a huge stir when he revealed that Valerie Plame, wife of Iraq-war critic Joseph Wilson, was a CIA officer. Ever since, Washington had been trying to find out who leaked the information to Novak. The columnist himself had kept quiet. But now, in a second column, Novak provided a tantalizing clue: his primary source, he wrote, was a "senior administration official" who was "not a partisan gunslinger." Armitage was shaken. After reading the column, he knew immediately who the leaker was. On the phone with Powell that morning, Armitage was "in deep distress," says a source directly familiar with the conversation who asked not to be identified because of legal sensitivities. "I'm sure he's talking about me." ... Armitage's central role as the primary source on Plame is detailed for the first time in "Hubris," which recounts the leak case and the inside battles at the CIA and White House in the run-up to the war. The disclosures about Armitage, gleaned from interviews with colleagues, friends and lawyers directly involved in the case, underscore one of the ironies of the Plame investigation: that the initial leak, seized on by administration critics as evidence of how far the White House was willing to go to smear an opponent, came from a man who had no apparent intention of harming anyone. This means that the Department of Justice knew the source of the Plame leak within four months of its occurrence. It also knew that the leak had no malicious intent. Patrick Fitzgerald, who almost certainly knew of it within the first days of his investigation, never attempted to indict the man whom he knew leaked the information. Why, then, has Fitzgerald's mandate continued after the first week of October?
Originally Posted By DlandDug Crickets... Here's a slightly more balanced look at this development from Slate: <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2148535/" target="_blank">http://www.slate.com/id/214853 5/</a> EXCERPTS: >>Liberals are still suspicious, and some doubt Armitage was the only leaker. Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly's Political Animal writes: "Whether his gossiping was innocent or not — about which I remain agnostic — the fact remains that several other people were also aggressively talking to multiple reporters about Plame's role at the same time. If Armitage really didn't have any malicious intent, it's a helluva coincidence that he happened to be gossiping about the exact same thing as a bunch of other people who did have malicious intent," he writes.<< >>In light of the revelation, Wisconsin law professor and pre-eminent moderate blogger Ann Althouse chides liberals for continuing to harp on about White House leak: "Can you never back off and say that your side overdid it? It would improve your credibility you know," she scolds.<< And from MSNBC (to quote the ever-popular MSM): <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14533384/site/newsweek/page/2/" target="_blank">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14 533384/site/newsweek/page/2/</a> EXCERPT: >>The disclosures about Armitage, gleaned from interviews with colleagues, friends and lawyers directly involved in the case, underscore one of the ironies of the Plame investigation: that the initial leak, seized on by administration critics as evidence of how far the White House was willing to go to smear an opponent, came from a man who had no apparent intention of harming anyone.<<
Originally Posted By Beaumandy This story was HUGE for the demcorats. We had at least 6 threads on LP about how Rove outed Plame and how Rove was going to jail baby!! The "intellectuals" from the left insisted that the Bush admisistration outed Plame to get revenge for her husband Wilson writing a negative NY Times piece about them. Really.. you had to be a total idiot to think Palme was covert, that Joe Wilson was not a liar, and that Rove outed Plame for " revenge ". It was beyond stupid. So here we are.. another lib "scandal" up in smoke and they are nowhere to be found. Dug... hope all is going well man. The kids still talk about you.
Originally Posted By DlandDug So... anyone want to talk about today's revelations about Richard Armnitage? It would certainly be more useful than going over old threads, eh?
