First off, I don't really understand why they chose the word "Affair" to describe this twisted tale. There's no sex, violence, or even dirty words that I would normally associate with the word "Affair". I think a more fitting moniker would be the "Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson truth-juggling act, with special guests Bob Novak, Bob Woodward and Judith Miller".... O.K. maybe that's a tad long, but at least you know what your in for.
This whole saga starts way back in early 2003, during the run-up to the war. G.W. was marching his troops closer to the quagmire we now call the "Iraq War" and was using every bit of evidence he could get his hands on to justify what he wanted to do. Now, I don't really believe that he was flat out making shit up, but he certainly was demonstrating a low level of proof. One of those bit's of evidence that he had found acceptable, was intelligence that Sadam Hussein was seeking "yellow cake" uranium from Niger. This was so accepted as fact by the Bush Administration that G.W. used it in his '03 State of the Union Address. The intelligence was given to the Bush Administration by Italian Intelligence and is now being questioned as forged. I'll leave that to other bloggers though, as my connections in Italian Intelligence are a little thin right now. At any rate, The CIA (through Valerie Plame?) sent Ambassador Joe Wilson on a fact finding mission to Niger to check out the Italian info. The end result was an opinion column in the New York Times on July 6th, 2003, by Joe Wilson, blasting the intelligence as false. Slightly more than a week later, on July 14th, Robert Novak outed Joe Wilson's wife Valerie Plame as a CIA operative in his syndicated column. Why would he do that? Well, Bob Novak smelled a story. If Valerie Plame had used her position to send her husband on a CIA-funded partison attack on Bush, that would spin the whole thing the other way, after all, Joe Wilson's hatred of the Bush Administration was well known, so why him? Immediately Joe Wilson started his counterattack with charges that "high level senior administration officials" had "outed" his CIA operative wife, thereby putting her life in danger and possibly breaking the law. What followed after that was seemingly endless interviews with Joe Wilson on CNN, NPR, ABC and NBC blaming different members of the Bush Administration for outing his wife. Specifically they were blaming Karl Rove, Bush's political advisor, Dick Cheney, V.P., and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Bush's Chief of Staff. Story after story all through the next three years made it seem you would have to be stupid not to know these three were in on it. Comedians like Jon Stewart used it over and over, always with the same punch line. "Sure, we believe your innocent, (snicker, snicker)".
Now the strangest twist in this story revolves around Judith Miller and Bob Woodward. Bob Woodward is an Icon among the left as he helped break the Watergate story back in the early '70's, and Judith Miller is a left-leaning columnist for the New York Times. What Bob and Judith share in common is that they both were allegedly told about Valerie Plame being a CIA operative about the same time and by the same source as Bob Novak. The courts subpoena'd them both along with Matt Cooper of Time Magazine and tried to get them to reveal their sources. They all refused. Now, you must be asking yourself, "Why would they cover for the Bush Administration?" Well, here's a couple of possibilities. 1) They are so into protecting their sources it doesn't matter that they hate them. Or 2) Everyone believes that it was Cheney or Rove, so it's better to leave it that way then to let the public (you) know who it really is. Judith Miller even went so far as to do 85 days in jail for contempt of court rather than reveal her source. But Bob Woodward beat her to the punch.
On November 15, 2005, Bob Woodward finally revealed that "a government official, with no axe to grind" had leaked the info on Valerie Plame. What followed was the kind of good journalism that can only exist in today's climate. Bloggers began noticing that blacked out sections of documents had the same spacing as Richard Armitage's name and started putting the pieces together. Finally, unable to fight it off any longer, the Associated Press along with Newsweek ran articles in September, 2006 admitting that Richard Armitage was indeed the source of Valerie Plames "outing". My guess is they held off to as close to the elections as they could. In all of September I read only one story in the Detroit Free Press (AP) and the Newsweek article clearing up who had really been the source. My guess is most people went to the polls thinking Cheney and Rove did the outing. Would it have mattered? I doubt it, people were pretty upset about a lot of things that the Republicans had done, it was just one more.
So who was Richard Armitage and was he connected to the Bush Administration? Richard Armitage was Deputy Secretary of State, second in command to Condeleza Rice. So obviously he is connected to the Bush Administration. He is considered to be a moderate by all acounts and was a good personal friend of Collin Powell. He is a Decorated Vietnam Vet, and was an aid to both Bob Dole and Ronald Reagan before working with the Bush Administration. But unfortunately for the left, was also a well known gossip who was known to spread info he wasn't even sure was right. For that reason Armitage was left completely out of the loop on Administative decisions. Not the Big Fish the left had hoped for. Is it still possible that the Bush Administration was in on it? Sure, but as of right now, even the columnists that used Armitage as a source think it's unlikely.
So why pick this as the "Biggest Spin" H.C.? Because right from the word "go" every news outlet went dead after Cheney, Libby and Rove. To this date, only Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been charged with a crime and it's all to do with his testimony, not his actions to reveal Valerie Plame's CIA status. Our mainstream media spun it in every direction and made no effort to give us the truth, and then, when they could no longer ignore the facts, buried their half-hearted corrections as far back in their papers as they could. Where's the interviews with Richard Armitage? Why is this story suddenly not worth following? Because the evidence no longer points at Rove, Cheney, or Libby. The bloggers were all over this story the way any decent reporters should have been. Our mainstream media seems to put their agendas above the most important of all journalistic creeds, to bring you the truth. It's not so much them being part of an effort to deceive, as their being passive about correcting their mistake. They know most people are misinformed, and they like it better that way. That's not journalism and it's the reason this story rates as my "Biggest spin of 2006". Let's hope 2007 brings us a little more honesty, and a little less partison lies from both sides. Happy New Year everyone. H.C.
This whole saga starts way back in early 2003, during the run-up to the war. G.W. was marching his troops closer to the quagmire we now call the "Iraq War" and was using every bit of evidence he could get his hands on to justify what he wanted to do. Now, I don't really believe that he was flat out making shit up, but he certainly was demonstrating a low level of proof. One of those bit's of evidence that he had found acceptable, was intelligence that Sadam Hussein was seeking "yellow cake" uranium from Niger. This was so accepted as fact by the Bush Administration that G.W. used it in his '03 State of the Union Address. The intelligence was given to the Bush Administration by Italian Intelligence and is now being questioned as forged. I'll leave that to other bloggers though, as my connections in Italian Intelligence are a little thin right now. At any rate, The CIA (through Valerie Plame?) sent Ambassador Joe Wilson on a fact finding mission to Niger to check out the Italian info. The end result was an opinion column in the New York Times on July 6th, 2003, by Joe Wilson, blasting the intelligence as false. Slightly more than a week later, on July 14th, Robert Novak outed Joe Wilson's wife Valerie Plame as a CIA operative in his syndicated column. Why would he do that? Well, Bob Novak smelled a story. If Valerie Plame had used her position to send her husband on a CIA-funded partison attack on Bush, that would spin the whole thing the other way, after all, Joe Wilson's hatred of the Bush Administration was well known, so why him? Immediately Joe Wilson started his counterattack with charges that "high level senior administration officials" had "outed" his CIA operative wife, thereby putting her life in danger and possibly breaking the law. What followed after that was seemingly endless interviews with Joe Wilson on CNN, NPR, ABC and NBC blaming different members of the Bush Administration for outing his wife. Specifically they were blaming Karl Rove, Bush's political advisor, Dick Cheney, V.P., and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Bush's Chief of Staff. Story after story all through the next three years made it seem you would have to be stupid not to know these three were in on it. Comedians like Jon Stewart used it over and over, always with the same punch line. "Sure, we believe your innocent, (snicker, snicker)".
Now the strangest twist in this story revolves around Judith Miller and Bob Woodward. Bob Woodward is an Icon among the left as he helped break the Watergate story back in the early '70's, and Judith Miller is a left-leaning columnist for the New York Times. What Bob and Judith share in common is that they both were allegedly told about Valerie Plame being a CIA operative about the same time and by the same source as Bob Novak. The courts subpoena'd them both along with Matt Cooper of Time Magazine and tried to get them to reveal their sources. They all refused. Now, you must be asking yourself, "Why would they cover for the Bush Administration?" Well, here's a couple of possibilities. 1) They are so into protecting their sources it doesn't matter that they hate them. Or 2) Everyone believes that it was Cheney or Rove, so it's better to leave it that way then to let the public (you) know who it really is. Judith Miller even went so far as to do 85 days in jail for contempt of court rather than reveal her source. But Bob Woodward beat her to the punch.
On November 15, 2005, Bob Woodward finally revealed that "a government official, with no axe to grind" had leaked the info on Valerie Plame. What followed was the kind of good journalism that can only exist in today's climate. Bloggers began noticing that blacked out sections of documents had the same spacing as Richard Armitage's name and started putting the pieces together. Finally, unable to fight it off any longer, the Associated Press along with Newsweek ran articles in September, 2006 admitting that Richard Armitage was indeed the source of Valerie Plames "outing". My guess is they held off to as close to the elections as they could. In all of September I read only one story in the Detroit Free Press (AP) and the Newsweek article clearing up who had really been the source. My guess is most people went to the polls thinking Cheney and Rove did the outing. Would it have mattered? I doubt it, people were pretty upset about a lot of things that the Republicans had done, it was just one more.
So who was Richard Armitage and was he connected to the Bush Administration? Richard Armitage was Deputy Secretary of State, second in command to Condeleza Rice. So obviously he is connected to the Bush Administration. He is considered to be a moderate by all acounts and was a good personal friend of Collin Powell. He is a Decorated Vietnam Vet, and was an aid to both Bob Dole and Ronald Reagan before working with the Bush Administration. But unfortunately for the left, was also a well known gossip who was known to spread info he wasn't even sure was right. For that reason Armitage was left completely out of the loop on Administative decisions. Not the Big Fish the left had hoped for. Is it still possible that the Bush Administration was in on it? Sure, but as of right now, even the columnists that used Armitage as a source think it's unlikely.
So why pick this as the "Biggest Spin" H.C.? Because right from the word "go" every news outlet went dead after Cheney, Libby and Rove. To this date, only Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been charged with a crime and it's all to do with his testimony, not his actions to reveal Valerie Plame's CIA status. Our mainstream media spun it in every direction and made no effort to give us the truth, and then, when they could no longer ignore the facts, buried their half-hearted corrections as far back in their papers as they could. Where's the interviews with Richard Armitage? Why is this story suddenly not worth following? Because the evidence no longer points at Rove, Cheney, or Libby. The bloggers were all over this story the way any decent reporters should have been. Our mainstream media seems to put their agendas above the most important of all journalistic creeds, to bring you the truth. It's not so much them being part of an effort to deceive, as their being passive about correcting their mistake. They know most people are misinformed, and they like it better that way. That's not journalism and it's the reason this story rates as my "Biggest spin of 2006". Let's hope 2007 brings us a little more honesty, and a little less partison lies from both sides. Happy New Year everyone. H.C.
2 comments:
Pretty interesting that with all the episodes of spun "news", you focus on this one the most...especially when nothing really came out of it.
I tend to view effective spins as being impactful and with far more substance. This case wasn't anywhere close...
Hey Dre,
I concede. There were a lot of "spins" that were worse (the entire Iraq War for instance) but I chose this one because so much was made of it in the beginning and as you said, so little actually came out of it. I guess I wanted the media to admit that they jumped the gun and didn't give due process a chance. Joe Wilson was everywhere blaming Rove, Libby, and Cheney and the media was only too glad to give him time to say it. What I'm usually trying to do with the "Biggest Spin" thing is to right a misconception that people are left with. Everyone I asked (that knew what the hell I was talking about) thought that Rove outed Valerie Plame. The sad part is Bob Novak, Bob Woodward, and Judith Miller all knew the people were being lied to and sat idly by. By the way, welcome back and Happy New Year. I trust your going to keep me on my toes in '07.
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