| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Ubiquitous" |
| Date: |
03 Sep 2006 02:31:00 PM |
| Object: |
Time to put the Plame conspiracy to its final rest. |
Fess Up, Mr. Armitage
Time to put the Plame conspiracy to its final rest.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006 12:01 a.m.
From its very start, the ballyhooed case of who leaked the name of CIA
analyst Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak has been drenched in
partisan politics and media hypocrisy. The more we learn, however, the more
it also reveals about the internal dysfunction of the Bush Administration
and the lack of loyalty among some of its most senior officials.
The latest news is that the Bush official who first disclosed Ms. Plame's
identity was none other than former Deputy Secretary of State Richard
Armitage. According to a new book by liberal journalists David Corn and
Michael Isikoff, Mr. Armitage was Mr. Novak's primary source for his now
famous column of July 14, 2003, that first publicly revealed Ms. Plame's CIA
pedigree.
In other words, the leaker wasn't Karl Rove or Scooter Libby or anyone else
in the White House who has been accused of running a conspiracy against Ms.
Plame as revenge for her husband Joe Wilson's false accusations against the
White House's case for war with Iraq. So what have the last three years been
all about anyway? Political opportunism and internal score-settling, among
other things.
Mr. Armitage, recall, was part of Colin Powell's team at State and well
known as an internal Administration opponent of the "neo-cons" who supported
the ouster of Saddam Hussein. The book alleges that Mr. Armitage knew as
early as October 2003 that he was Mr. Novak's prime source, yet he kept
quiet about it even as his colleagues in the Administration were dragged
through years of criminal investigation and media accusations as the
possible leaker. Even now Mr. Armitage hasn't admitted to being the leaker,
though doing so would help to clarify several things about the case.
For starters, fessing up would put to rest the conspiracy theories once and
for all. Bush opponents have continued to promote this myth, with Mr. Wilson
writing in June 2004 that "the conspiracy to destroy us was most likely
conceived--and carried out--within the office of the vice president of the
United States." Not a word of that was true.
Mr. Novak hasn't himself confirmed that Mr. Armitage was his primary source,
since Mr. Armitage hasn't yet given him leave to do so. But Mr. Novak has
written that his source was not a "partisan gunslinger," and the columnist
has also said that he himself put in the call to Mr. Rove to confirm what
he'd first heard from his main source (presumably Mr. Armitage). The White
House, in short, was not engaged in any campaign to "out" Ms. Plame.
All of this matters because it also casts doubt on the thoroughness and
fairness of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's probe that began in
December 2003. The prosecutor never did indict anyone for leaking Ms.
Plame's name, though this was supposedly the act of "treason" that triggered
the political clamor for a probe. Instead, he has indicted Mr. Libby for
perjury and obstruction of justice.
Mr. Fitzgerald has nonetheless also tried to spin an aura that Mr. Libby was
responsible for outing Ms. Plame. In his press conference on October 28,
2005, the prosecutor asserted that "In fact, Mr. Libby was the first
official known to have told a reporter when he talked to [former New York
Times reporter] Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson." But we
have since learned that Mr. Armitage also told Washington Post reporter Bob
Woodward about Ms. Plame--a fact that Mr. Fitzgerald never uncovered until
Mr. Woodward came forward after he heard Mr. Fitzgerald make that false
public assertion.
Strangely, Mr. Armitage never seems to have told Mr. Fitzgerald that he'd
talked to Mr. Woodward. And Mr. Fitzgerald never seems to have asked to see
Mr. Armitage's appointment calendar, which would have showed his meeting
with Mr. Novak. It's all enough to make us wonder if Mr. Fitzgerald didn't
buy into the liberal "conspiracy" theory of this case from the start and
target the White House while giving Mr. Armitage a pass.
Meanwhile, according to the Corn-Isikoff book, Mr. Armitage never did tell
the White House or his boss, the President, that he was the leaker. Instead,
in October 2003 he told Mr. Powell, who told the State Department general
counsel, who in turn told the Justice Department but gave the White House
Counsel only the sketchiest overview of what he'd learned and didn't mention
Mr. Armitage's name. So while Mr. Fitzgerald presumably knew when he began
his probe two months later that Mr. Armitage was Mr. Novak's source, the
President himself was apparently kept in the dark, even as he was pledging
publicly to find out who the leaker was.
At a minimum, there appears to be a serious question of disloyalty here. By
keeping silent, Messrs. Powell and Armitage let the President take political
heat for the case, while also letting Mr. Rove, Mr. Libby and other White
House officials twist in the wind for more than two years. We also know that
it was the folks in Mr. Powell's shop--including his former chief of staff
Lawrence Wilkerson and intelligence officer Carl Ford Jr.--who did so much
to trash John Bolton's nomination to be Ambassador to the U.N. in 2005. The
State Department clique that Mr. Bush tolerated for so long did tremendous
damage to his Administration.
As for Justice, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the
case in an act of political abdication. That left then-Deputy Attorney
General James Comey in charge, and he also presumably knew about Mr.
Armitage's role as the leaker who started it all. Yet if the book's account
is correct, he too misled the White House with his silence. Mr. Comey is
also the official who let Mr. Fitzgerald alter his mandate from its initial
find-the-leaker charge to the obstruction and perjury raps against Mr. Libby
that are all this case has come down to. Remind us never to get in a foxhole
with either Mr. Comey or the Powell crowd.
There is more to be said at a future date about the specific case against
Mr. Libby. But for now the Armitage news should concern one man in
particular, and that's the President of the United States. How much
differently would he have behaved had he known about Mr. Armitage's role in
2003? Would he have kept echoing the media-liberal spin that there was some
nefarious White House leaker to discover, and continue to let the aides who
most believed in his policies--Mr. Libby and Mr. Rove--be hounded by a
special counsel? And why has he tolerated so much insubordination to his
policies?
Someday we hope Mr. Bush will tell us. Meantime, as he absorbs the partisan
and ultimately trivial truth of this case, why shouldn't he pardon Mr. Libby
and put the entire sorry saga to rest?
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