
 |
|
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
August 30, 2006
/ 6 Elul, 5766
With truth revealed in Plame leak, real crime is malicious prosecution
By
Linda Chavez
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
So now we know. The man behind the leak of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity was not presidential adviser Karl Rove, nor Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who is under indictment for allegedly obstructing the investigation into the leak and lying to investigators. It turns out the leaker was former State Department deputy secretary Richard Armitage, a man much loved by the media precisely because he could always be counted on to tell tales out of school.
In his own words, Armitage is "a terrible gossip," an admission he made during the Iran-Contra congressional hearings in 1987. The credit for unearthing this information goes to David Corn and Michael Isikoff in their forthcoming book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War."
Corn's role is noteworthy because he is the Washington editor of the left-wing magazine The Nation and an outspoken critic of the Bush administration. What's more, he did much to transform the Plame incident into the national scandal it became.
| BUY THE BOOK |
| Click HERE
to purchase it at a discount. (Sales help fund
JWR.).
|
|
Corn admits that he was the first reporter to float the idea that whoever revealed Plame's name to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who then published it in a 2003 column, may have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. The law prohibits government officials from revealing the identity of covert officers, provided the official knew that the person was covert and obtained the information through his official duties. And since Novak cited "two senior administration officials" as his sources in the article, Democrats in Congress began clamoring for a full-scale investigation, which ultimately led to the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald as a special counsel and the indictment of Scooter Libby in October 2005.
Corn deserves recognition for reporting what turns out to be an inconvenient fact. It can't please him that the investigative trail in the Plame leak led not to hardliners in the West Wing but to a high-placed dove in Foggy Bottom. But I'm not ready to take my hat off to Corn just yet. His new revelations really beg out for a mea culpa for having got it wrong in the first place when he alleged, shortly after the leak, that "there is evidence Bushies used classified information and put the nation's counter-proliferation efforts at risk merely to settle a score." Yet, Corn has decided to use the publication of the exculpatory information to reassert, once again, his attacks on the Bush White House.
Corn implies that it doesn't matter who the original source of the leak was because Rove confirmed Plame's identity when asked about it by Novak and passed on the information to Matt Cooper of Time magazine. Corn also blames Libby for revealing Plame's identity to another reporter, Judith Miller, then a writer for the New York Times. But neither Cooper nor Miller disclosed the information; and it was Novak's column that spurred the federal investigation that later resulted in Libby's indictment. And Armitage was Novak's primary source.
Corn admits that Armitage was "a war skeptic not bent on revenge" against Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for publishing a 2003 article critical of administration claims that Iraq was trying to secure materials used in building nuclear weapons. But instead of acknowledging that Armitage's role in the leak undermines the whole conspiracy theory that the White House would stop at nothing even jeopardizing national security to get even with its foes, Corn says the Plame affair "remains a story of ugly and unethical politics, stonewalling, and lies."
The real ugliness indeed, cowardice is that the original culprit who leaked Plame's name never came forward publicly to explain himself. Although Armitage did reveal to federal prosecutors that he gave Plame's name to Novak, he did so only when he may have worried that he could become the target of the investigation after Novak noted in a column, three months after the original story, that his source was "no partisan gunslinger." Nonetheless, Armitage let sharks in the press circle the West Wing looking for blood for the next two and a half years, knowing he was the real blabbermouth.
Worse yet, Scooter Libby now faces possible jail time for allegedly misleading statements in an investigation into a non-crime committed by someone else, a person, in any event, who was already known to federal prosecutors. The real crime here appears to be this malicious prosecution.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity. Her latest book is "Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)
Linda Chavez Archives
© 2006, Creators Syndicate
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|