Sure, let’s get the whole crew if we can (it’s gonna be damn difficult with the Pubbies holding all the cards) but it’s very possible that one reason the leak occurred is that the leakee had a good inkling that Rove would use it. And let’s not forget that Pappy Bush was once director of the CIA – there may be some old ties there that we don’t know about, that were responsible for the leak.
A Special Counsel is an option, however.
I’m with you, there, tending to be something of a First Amendment absolutist, myself. Prior restraint, never, as long as you’re willing to take responsibility for the consequences of what you publish.
For some reason, I couldn’t get the link to dsiplay anything. Not a cannot find server, but just nothing.
I saw Wilson interviewed on Nightline. He told Ted Koppel that:[ul][li]He got calls from reporters in the weeks after Novak’s article in which reporters said “I just got off the phone with Karl Rove and he said your wife is still fair game”.He’d be willing to cite the names of all those reporters if/when asked in the course of the investigation.[/ul](I’m paraphrasing in the above.)[/li]
Investigators can just call up Wilson. Sounds like an easy way to start. Yes, Wilson got these calls after Novak made Plame’s position public knowledge. Nonetheless - might these reporters be some of the original six reporters tipped by two administration official to begin with? Moreover, why is Rove still pitching the story after Novak’s article?
Here’s Novak on Crossfire: (I googled this cite, and can’t vouch for it’s bona fides - at a glance, it looks like a religious right type of site to me.)
The original cite and sentence: “Two senior administration officials told me Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report.”
jam “de-lurked when he smelt blood in the water” cracker
PS - SimonX - looks like that empty page is a failed request against a WAIS search (check the URL and the title of the returned page.) If this were slashdot, we’d be getting that response because the slashdot effect knocked that search engine offline. That doesn’t seem likely here - may just be a bad URL or that WAIS is so old and rickety it got turned off by an admin or fell over and crashed the first time it got hit.
The Novak sentence I quoted above doesn’t mention the CIA. Yes, that was a bit of egg on my face. Here’s the whole paragraph:
Some possible explanations:[ul][li]Innocently and naively, administration sources told Novak that Wilson’s wife, Plame, suggested him for the Niger job? Novak guesses she’s CIA? He calls the CIA? They confirm Plame made the suggestion? Novak elicits or CIA blurts out that, additionally, Plame works for them?[]A politically motivated source told Novak that Wilson’s wife suggested him - and the CIA can confirm that?[]A politically motivated source told Novak that Wilson was selected because his CIA wife suggested him?[/ul]For the sake of argument: One can back my first explanation wholeheartedly. Novak is a fine reporter. Heck, maybe he called the State Dept, the FBI, and the INS too. He’s so good he got the CIA to say something they shouldn’t have said. Tenet is covering his ass with this whole investigation. Were I an administration apologist, I’d grab this and run. It seems better than the current spin: “everyone knew Plame was CIA”, “Wilson should have known he’d out his wife when he took the job”, and “she was an analyst, not an operative”. [/li]
BTW, I suspect that Plame’s operative/analyst status is irrelevant. I can imagine how the KGB, say, would have wanted to to employ CIA janitors. Anyone wanna legwork that angle and prove its legal irrelevancy regarding a felony conviction for the sources? It seems common sense obvious to me.
Didn’t the Independent Counsel idea came about because ofEd Meese and Iran-Contra? When Meese was told to investigate the matter he went over to Reagan’s office and asked if he knew anything about it. Reagan said, “No.” so Meese called a press conferance and announced that after an exhaustive investigation of the matter he could positively state that all Executive Department employees had been cleared of complicity.
Does anyone trust John Ashcroft to do better?
And incidently, has anyone noticed in incongruety of GW administration officials emphasizing that this investigation will be conducted with the utmost purity because it is being run by a career civil servant in Justice? I thought GW and his crew were going to shake up and clean up the dead-head Washington bureacracy.
I think that the first leak must have come from the highest possible levels in the Administration or from within the CIA itself. I can’t imagine that many people in the Executive Department know the names and position descriptions of individual clandestine operatives in the CIA. And if the leak came from the CIA it could very well have been a “pressure leak.” I.e. some high administration official told someone in CIA to get info to use against Wilson if they knew what was good for them.
And don’t ask for cites because I don’t have them. However, does anyone really believe that it was mere coincidence that a scumbag newsman broke the news about Wilson’s wife after Wilson blew the whistle on GW?
hmmmm. Sorry 'bout that.
Anyway, here’s the relevant text:
And so on and so forth.
Another way to get to it is to go HERE and type 28cfr600 in the search box and item 13 on the search return has the whole powers of general counsel text.
Agreed. Keep in mind, the DOJ is headed up by the same man whose political career was all but over when he lost his congressional bid to a dead incumbent. Now he is suppose to objectively investigate the administration that breathed life in to his dead political carcass? I suppose he and G.W. Bush can get together on Sundays for “prayerful consideration” in the oval office to determine the course of the investigation.