Tuesday, October 11, 2005

ZPD: The Plame Affair & Why you should care

The GOP Elites lied manipulating the media to make Iraq's Saddam and the Ba'athists the replacement "Evil Empire!"

I don't mind Saddam's removal - would have preferred to see an UN-backed InterPol Force and a whole shit load of troops go in and arrest the bastard and his cronies ...

Different kind of Police Action for your average "Land war in Asia" Vietnam flashback - eh?

Plame affair

Valerie Plame with her husband Joseph C. Wilson, photographed after her CIA identity became public knowledge.


TOP TRAITOR
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The Plame Affair (aka. CIA leak scandal, Plame scandal, or Plamegate1) is the common term for an ongoing United States political scandal which has origins in the Iraq disarmament crisis of late 2002, and concerned the identification of Valerie Plame, wife of retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, as a CIA "operative on weapons of mass destruction" in a July 2003 column by conservative punditRobert Novak. Novak's column was published only eight days after the publication of a New York Times op-ed written by Wilson, which was highly critical of the Bush administration's use of "unreliable" "yellowcake" documents as part of its rationale for the Iraq War.

Wilson claims that Novak had conspired with Bush administration sources to expose his wife's identity as political retribution for his earlier criticism. Divulging the identity of an undercover CIA agent is, in some circumstances, a federal crime in the United States.

The Plame Affair includes the subsequent Independent Council investigation by special appointee Patrick Fitzgerald into the actions of Bush administration officials —including Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Ari Fleischer, and unknown others— regarding their knowledge of the leak of Plame's identity. In addition to Novak, six other journalists are reported to have known Plame's identity before the Novak column was published, including NBC's Tim Russert, and Judith Miller of The New York Times, who spent 85 days in jail for failing to divulge the identity of her confidential administration source to a grand jury.

Media commentary

Judith Miller has drawn support from some journalists, and in particular the editorial page of the New York Times, for the right to keep her sources a secret and for what she has consistently maintained is a principled defense of the First Amendment.

Miller has also been characterized by some (notably syndicated columnist and blogger Arianna Huffington) as a possible co-conspirator with the Bush Administration in the attempt to discredit former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who openly questioned the intelligence used to justify the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.[1][2] Columnist Margaret Kimberly wrote "[Miller] isn’t protecting a whistle blower. She is protecting someone who retaliated against a whistle blower."[3] Predicting in an August 8, 2005 interview with radio host Don Imus that other employees of the New York Times would soon be subpoenaed by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, James Carville speculated "[i]t's going to be very interesting to see whether [Miller's] problem is a First Amendment [problem] — i.e., I want to protect a source — or a Fifth Amendment [problem] — I was out spreading this stuff, too."[4]

In the days since Miller's release from prison and her wavier from a promise of confidentiality from her source, media observers have criticized Miller and the New York Times for not publishing Miller's role in the Plame-Wilson leak, not even to explain why the full story can not now be revealed. The lawyer for Scooter Libby told the media that Miller was advised over a year ago that she could testify about her conversations with Libby.One columnist has reported that Miller has a pending million dollar book deal on the Plame leak story.[5] [6] [7][8]

External links and references
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