New York Times Publishes Name of CIA Interrogator Against CIA Request … (What No Plame Outrage?)

The New York Times having published classified information before that helped terrorists evade detection, has now published the name of a key CIA interrogator.

 

Not long ago the new York Times and the partisan left demanded an investigation over the fact that someone told columnist Robert Novak that former ambassador Joe Wilson was sent to Niger by his wife (Valerie Plame) who worked in the CIA. The media had a cow – the left screamed that the administration leaked the name of Wilson’s wife and destroyed her career because the administration sought to retaliate against Plame because her husband was a war critic. They repeatedly claimed falsely that she was an undercover agent who was endangered by the leaking of her name. It was the center of media attention for two years.

 Let Us Review Shall We?

 When it was all over we learned that:

 

Wilson lied when he said in his letter to the New York Times saying that he found no evidence that Saddam was trying to buy Uranium from Niger. The CIA made it clear that Wilson’s briefing actually supported the case that Saddam was trying to acquire more uranium.

 

Wilson lied when he led the press to believe that the Office of the Vice President sent him on his mission to Niger. After all, Wilson was a known Democratic partisan insider so why would Cheney’s office send him on a misison?

 

Wilson was caught lying when he denied that it was his wife’s (Valerie Plame) influence that got him sent on the mission to Niger when internal CIA memo’s made it clear that is exactly what happened.

 

Wilson lied to the press about his partisan affiliations and activities.

 

Wilson lied about his wife being undercover and lied about how it was the administration that blew her cover for retaliation. The New York Times even reported in a buried story by Nicholas Kritoff that her cover was blown way back in 1994 when lists of CIA assets were released due to Aldrich Ames and other circumstances. Plame had been a desk jockey at Langley ever since.

 

The CIA did not make Wilson sign the usual non-disclosure agreement for his mission when civilians are employed as a CIA asset and that is highly unusual.

 

Plame engaged in reported partisan activities after she left undercover work in 1994 including making donations to Democrats large enough to have her name and employer appear on Federal Election Commission Reports.

 

Democrats, along with the New York Times, demanded the appointment of a special prosecutor. The prosecuotor in a short time not only knew who gave Bob Novak the name, but he also knew that Novak called the CIA up and asked for verification of Plame’s employment status and the CIA did so.

 

The special prosecutor threw reporters in jail for not releasing the names of sources when he already knew who the sources were. The special prosecutor prosecuted Lewis Libby for perjury when his testimony did not match his notes. In spite of the fact that the witnesses in the case showed that they had problems with recalling the events of years before just as Libby did.

 

Richard Armitage, a bureacrat who has always been a known Washigton gossiper, was aware through gossip circles that it was Plame who sent her husband to Niger ( and not the office of the VP) and it was Armitage who gave Novak the information. This proved that there was no attempt at retaliation by the Bush machine and that the actions that were taken by the Whitehouse were just an effort to correct the record of Wilson’s lies.

 

The prosecutor gave press briefings accusing the administration of leaking CIA assets names in a quest for retaliation, but when pressed by reporters admitted that such a thing did not apply to the Libby case, and said that no one would be charged with leaking a CIA assets name. Plame did not qualify for protection under the statute because she had not been undercover for at least five years and the fact that the Wilson’s own actions and lies made certain that their names would be made very public was becoming harder and harder to ignore.

 

Of course the real story is –when someone lies in a letter published by the New York Times as Wilson did, and lies about who and how he was sent there and continued to lie about the issues surrounded it – should you really be surprised that the Washington press corps is going to get down to the bottom of it and find the name of the person who took the actions to send Wilson to Niger?  Should you be surprised when a bi-partisan senate commission to investigate the matter shows Wilson to be the liar that he is?  All the while his wife, Valerie Plame, artfully refuses to answer the key questions surrounding her role in it?

 

Well eventually the partisan fervor by the biased antique press faded and they felt the need to reclaim their lost credibility on the matter as in this case when the Washington Post decided that it has had enough:

 

It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House — that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame’s identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson — is untrue. The partisan clamor that followed the raising of that allegation by Mr. Wilson in the summer of 2003 led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, a costly and prolonged investigation, and the indictment of Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, on charges of perjury. All of that might have been avoided had Mr. Armitage’s identity been known three years ago.

Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame’s CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming — falsely, as it turned out — that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush’s closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It’s unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/31/AR2006083101460.html

 

And this brings us to todays outrage… 

Now, the same New York Times who gleefully led the charge to falsely accuse the Bush Administration of leaking a CIA assets name in an effort to get revenge against a war critic’s husband, while all but ignoring evidence that Wilson and Plame behaved most dishonestly, has now published the name of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s chief CIA interrogator against the wishes of the CIA who asked them not to. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind behind the September 11^th attacks of 2001.

 

The New York Times has made repeated allegations of torture (still unproven) against the CIA and opposes CIA secret prisons for high intelligence enemy combatants, so it has once again taken to publishing classified information and/or endangering the lives of CIA employees and others in an effort to stop the programs and punish those involved.

In yet another disgrace to journalistic ethics by the New York Times the story is here.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/22/america/22ksm.php?page=1

 

It is no secret that I am a huge champion of free speech, but free speech does not cover publishing of classified information during a time of war and it does not include publishing the names of CIA employees on the spear of the war effort. Publishing classified information is a crime, it is a shame that the administration has not chosen to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.  John McCain has hinted that there should be such prosecutions. Only time will tell.

 

Where is the outrage at the New York Times for publishing a CIA asset’s name? Is there a better example of the hypocritical nature of the far left and the Washington press corps?

 

Chuck Norton