Lies of the Looney Left Media

[Bill Pup60]

November 8, 2005by Steve Malzberg

I would like all the members of the so-called “mainstream media” to read and memorize the following:

"Let me say two things. I am not speaking [in this indictment] to whether or not Valerie Wilson was covert. ... And we have not made any allegation that Mr. Libby knowingly or intentionally outed a covert agent."

Those are the words spoken by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald on Friday, October 28, 2005, at his hour long press conference where he laid out the charges against Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

What about that statement is so hard to understand that it continuously causes Democratic partisans and their media enablers to get it dead wrong? The answer is, nothing is difficult about the statement. The fact is, I believe, that the Democrats continue to this day to lie about the findings of Fitzgerald regarding the "status" of Valerie Plame Wilson, and their sycophants in the media make it possible for them to sound believable.

Valerie Plame WAS NOT a "covert" agent during any of this episode and has not been in a covert status since 1998.

A recent LexisNexis search by NewsMax.com turned up more than 3,100 erroneous references to Plame's "covert" status since her "outing" back in July of 2003. Prior to Fitzgerald's press conference, that needed to be tolerated, but not now.
So please tell me how, the day after Fitzgerald's proclamation, the New York Times editorial staff can get it so wrong in their lead editorial, "The Case Against Scooter Libby." In paragraph one:

"... The five-count indictment handed up yesterday against Lewis Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, may seem anticlimactic to those who were hoping to finally learn who gave the columnist Robert Novak the name of Valerie Wilson, a covert C.I.A. officer whose cover was blown by his column on July 14, 2003."
In paragraph three: "... But the indictment does not describe a situation in which people accidentally outed someone they did not know was a covert officer. It describes a distinct and disturbing pattern of behavior among very high-ranking officials, including Mr. Libby and Vice President Dick Cheney, who knew they were dealing with a covert officer. ..."

This mischaracterization of the facts is something that one might expect from, oh, let's say Bill Clinton while testifying under oath before a federal grand jury. But this is the N.Y. Times just making it up as they go along.


Let's fast-forward ahead to Monday, October 31, 2005, on MSNBC's "Hardball." NBC news correspondent David Gregory put it this way:

"... because even if it's not a crime, and we know that Scooter Libby has been accused of committing a crime of obstruction of justice and perjury. Karl Rove has not been accused of any crime. They were indeed involved in conversations about a covert officer of the C.I.A. And you don't have to believe me, that's what special prosecutor Fitzgerald said of her [Plame] conduct, her classification."

Maybe Gregory is talking about another Fitzgerald, Libby, Rove and covert agent. Yes, that's the ticket – he's talking about a cast of characters from Bizzaro World.

Speaking of "Hardball," host Chris Matthews received a dose of the truth on this whole Libby indictment from Deborah Orin, Washington Bureau chief for the New York Post, on last Thursday's show.

Orin: "... It appears that contrary to what a lot of people would like to claim, Valerie Plame was not a covert agent, nor was she outed. There is no underlying crime there."

At this point Matthews interrupted Orin with the unfathomable "Excuse me, I've never heard this before. Her status was not undercover?" If you believe that Orin's claim shocked Matthews, I have a couple of bridges to sell you. Matthews didn't give in. "... She was undercover. If she wasn't undercover, how come all her neighbors and friends thought that she was in some other business?"

Too bad that Chris hadn't read the Washington Times story of July 15, 2005. Reporters spoke with a former CIA agent who was himself covert from 1966 to 1990. Fred Rustman also happened to supervise Valerie Plame early in her career and he says that most of her neighbors and friends knew that she worked for the agency.

"She made no bones about the fact that she was an agency employee and her husband was a diplomat. Her neighbors knew this, her friends knew this, his friends knew this."
More from Matthews, who has become orgasmic over this whole topic. On the very same show, he gave his version of the chronology of events in the Libby case to two guests, including Demaurice Smith, a former federal prosecutor: …….”In July 2003 Libby went to see Cheney to ask him how he should deal with the press questions about Wilson [Plame]. A couple of hours later that same day he, Libby, tells Matt Cooper and Judith Miller all about Valerie Wilson.”
Then Matthews wanted to know,…… "Is that good enough evidence to convict Cheney as well here?" ……Of course Cheney telling Libby and Libby telling the reporters isn't a crime according to the indictment, but it's Matthews orgasm time.
And the best is yet to come.

Matthews…….."But there were only two people in the room [Cheney and Libby]. That's the problem. If they get together like the Menendez brothers, they can say anything they want." …..

Yes, Cheney and Libby, just like the brothers who killed their parents!
After Smith, the former prosecutor for the feds, objected to the analogy, Matthews shot back, "I mean nobody here is guilty of murder unless you count the war [in Iraq] itself, and you want to get big time about it."

Which leads us to what all of this false reporting and lying is all about.
This whole charade doesn't end with the left's phony claim that Valerie Plame was covert. It extends to their version of "the facts" which say the president and vice president lied about pre-war intelligence. In an editorial last week, "The Clare Luce Democrats," the Wall Street Journal, made an analogy between today's loony leftists who claim that President Bush lied us into the war in Iraq and those Republicans who claimed that FDR lied us into World War II.

The piece talks about not only how the left is using the Libby indictment as an opening to promote their fiction, but also how they have once again turned to Joe Wilson as their new favorite mascot, to lead the charge by repeating his already discredited "findings" on the matter.

The Journal then says, "They [the left] must think the media are stupid, because so many Democrats are themselves on record in the pre-Iraq War period as declaring that Saddam had WMD."

I am frankly shocked at the naivete of the Journal. The media aren't stupid, and the left knows it all too well. They are in on this. They are making it all possible. If the "mainstream" media would just tell the truth, Joe Wilson, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, and the rest of them would have to come up with a new hobby. Until that happens, their hobby remains destroying this president and his administration.

[JAAgan]

I think that first bold face quote in that article needs to be listed in context because it seems a little misleading as it was shown.

Here's the complete exchange:

QUESTION: Can you say whether or not you know whether Mr. Libby knew that Valerie Wilson's identity was covert and whether or not that was pivotal at all in your inability or your decision not to charge under the Intelligence Identity Protection Act?

FITZGERALD: Let me say two things. Number one, I am not speaking to whether or not Valerie Wilson was covert. And anything I say is not intended to say anything beyond this: that she was a CIA officer from January 1st, 2002, forward.

I will confirm that her association with the CIA was classified at that time through July 2003. And all I'll say is that, look, we have not made any allegation that Mr. Libby knowingly, intentionally outed a covert agent.

FITZGERALD: We have not charged that. And so I'm not making that assertion.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...801340_pf.html

Now I'll let the lawyers on here sort out exactly what that means -- "she was classified, but I'm not speaking as to whether or not she was covert."

It is obvious that indictments aren't hard to get, and Fitzgerald didn't have enough to indict Libby on a charge of outing a covert agent. But it doesn't seem her covert status was as cut and dried as Mr. Malzberg implies.

[Bill Pup60]

The law passed in 1982 to protect the identity of covert agents states that if an agent has not been in a covert assignment for a period of 5 years, they are no longer in covert status, for purposes of protecting their identity. Plame's last covert assignment took place in 1997/98.

The stuff in boldface was not attributed to the prosecutor. It is not in quotes. It is stated by the author. It also happens to be fact. Not that that matters to dims.

[JAAgan]

See, I knew there was a reason I don't post on these threads.

With all due respect, the statement I referenced is in quotes and is in boldface in your original post. The only reason I bothered to check is because after years of experience working in research I've learned to question quotes that include ellipses in the midlle of sentences. Usually that indicates that something pertinent has been left out for a reason.

Still hope someone will help clarify what Fitzgerald meant by the distinction he seems to have made between the word covert and the word classified is his remarks.

[daybreaker2]

So when everyone thought the liberal commie media had outted plame, there was anger and outrage from the right. But as soon as we find out it could have been Rove himself, all of a sudden the right finds out "oh, she wasnt really covert all along"

[Dirtydawg]

I probably shouldn't chime in on this since I haven't really been following this case and think it's all politically motivated anyway, but it seems to me that Plame's status as covert agent would depend on when in 1998 she was removed from that status. According to Billpup, an agent has a 5 year window to remain in the covert status. Also, according to Billpup, Plame's last covert assignment was 1997/1998. If the assignment ended after July 14, 1998, then technically the 5 years hadn't ended yet as the article was written on July 14, 2003, so really she would still have been in covert status. And of course, one could argue that her identity was really exposed before that since that's when the column came out. Her identity was really given before that in the interview. When was that date and it's relationship to her final assignment in 1998? So, when did her assignment actually end? The next question would be was she intentionally outed. I don't know the answers to those questions. Just wanted to post an unbiased observation since, as I said, I haven't really been following this case anyway.

[DCDAWG]

I probably shouldn't chime in on this since I haven't really been following this case and think it's all politically motivated anyway, but it seems to me that Plame's status as covert agent would depend on when in 1998 she was removed from that status. According to Billpup, an agent has a 5 year window to remain in the covert status. Also, according to Billpup, Plame's last covert assignment was 1997/1998. If the assignment ended after July 14, 1998, then technically the 5 years hadn't ended yet as the article was written on July 14, 2003, so really she would still have been in covert status. And of course, one could argue that her identity was really exposed before that since that's when the column came out. Her identity was really given before that in the interview. When was that date and it's relationship to her final assignment in 1998? So, when did her assignment actually end?

Excellent question, Dirty. BillPup is certain that she was not covert at the time, but leaves a rather large window on when her last assignment was. What's a month or 24 between friends?

[Cool Hand Clyde]

Excellent question, Dirty. BillPup is certain that she was not covert at the time, but leaves a rather large window on when her last assignment was. What's a month or 24 between friends?

If she was covert, it wasn't too smart of her husband to get drunk at cocktail parties and brag about his wife who was in the CIA.

[arkansasbob]

So when everyone thought the liberal commie media had outted plame, there was anger and outrage from the right. But as soon as we find out it could have been Rove himself, all of a sudden the right finds out "oh, she wasnt really covert all along"

i don't know of anyone who was outraged that the liberal commie media had "outed" plame. it has been known all along that even if she was officially classified, her identity was no secret and whoever leaked her name did no damage whatsoever to her career, nor did they put anyone in danger or compromise intelligence.