Hi Jim,
Below is an item from the 10/2/03 edition of the Financial Times that relates to your query:
"The parallels between the furore now engulfing the presidency of George W. Bush, and the David Kelly affair that has soured the reputation of Tony Blair, the British prime minister, are uncanny. The cast of characters includes a journalist who has recalibrated his account of events since it became the talk of the capital, and a handful of senior government officials leaking information from behind the cloak of anonymity."
Seth
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2003 09:11:37 -0700 From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Bush failing?
Has anyone linked the "outing" of the Ambassador's wife as a CIA = operative with the "outing" of Dr. Kelly by 10 Downing Street? Similarly = disgusting tactics in one campaign?
------------------------ Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
COMMENT & ANALYSIS: The investigation into how the name of a CIA operative became public poses a risk to George W.Bush's reputation, writeJames Hard By Edward Alden, James Harding and Deborah McGregor Financial Times; Oct 02, 2003
After a media report alleges the government has exaggerated its case for war in Iraq, the identity of an "intelligence officer" is exposed. Initially, the incident garners little attention. But over time, a scandal brews: the integrity of national leadership is called into question. Only a full investigation into the inner workings of government, some say, will answer the allegations of abuse of power.
The parallels between the furore now engulfing the presidency of George W. Bush, and the David Kelly affair that has soured the reputation of Tony Blair, the British prime minister, are uncanny. The cast of characters includes a journalist who has recalibrated his account of events since it became the talk of the capital, and a handful of senior government officials leaking information from behind the cloak of anonymity.
In contrast to the Kelly affair, of course, the naming of Valerie Plame, a covert operative for the Central Intelligence Agency, has not, as far as we know, resulted in the loss of life. But the investigation into whether her name was leaked to the press by a senior administration official marks a serious assault on the stature of Mr Bush, a president who has traded heavily on his image of probity and good character.
Instead, the investigation into allegations of politically motivated and vengeful use of classified information to smear an opponent of the president depicts the Bush White House as a partisan, arrogant and mean political machine.
It comes amid rising anxiety over the human and financial cost of the Iraq occupation, Mr Bush's slide in the opinion polls, and the hopes of Democrats that a president who since September 11th 2001 has had an aura of invincibility could yet be humbled by defeat.
And of course the disclosure of the identity of a CIA operative is more than just a breach of bureaucratic convention; it is a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
"There are still more unanswered than answered questions," says Charles Jones, professor emeritus in political science at the University of Wisconsin. "What is clear is that the justice department believes there is enough evidence to pursue a criminal investigation. That is very serious business."
The basic facts of the case have played out in the press. In a New York Times op-ed in July, Joseph Wilson, a former US ambassador in Gabon, claimed that Mr Bush had asserted falsely in January's State of the Union address that Saddam Hussein had sought to buy uranium from Africa in order to "exaggerate the Iraqi threat".
Mr Wilson had been sent at the request of the CIA to Africa - specifically Niger - to investigate claims of an Iraq-Niger link in February 2002, and found nothing to them.
The White House then admitted that the 16 words uttered by the president in January asserting a connection between Baghdad and Niger was based on "bogus information".
Robert Novak, a Republican-leaning syndicated columnist, then put pen to paper in mid-July seeking to explain why Mr Wilson, who served both Republican and Democrat presidents as a diplomat but was known for his personal opposition to the Iraq war, had been sent on behalf of the CIA to Niger.
Mr Novak's explanation was that Ms Plame, Mr Wilson's wife and "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction", had had the idea: "Two senior administration officials told me his wife suggested sending Wilson to Niger to investigate the Italian report [which originally made the claim]," he wrote.
The purposes of administration officials in outing Ms Plame seemed unclear. One former senior administration official who has worked at the nexus of White House operations and the CIA says the account was given to Mr Novak to diminish the importance of Mr Wilson's mission: "They wanted to belittle it, by saying he was on a bit of a lark. It was not tasked in a formal way. It was pushed by his wife."
Whatever the administration's motivation, the disclosure outraged not only Mr Wilson but members of Congress and veterans of US government.
Dick Durbin, a Democratic senator from Illinois, fumed in July at the White House's willingness to savage its critics: "In [the Administration's] effort to seek political revenge against Ambassador Wilson, they are now attacking him and his wife, and doing it in a fashion that is not only unacceptable, it may be criminal. And that, frankly, is as serious as it gets in this town."
John Dean, former White House counsel for Richard Nixon, suggested in August that the assertion of the American Prospect, a left-leaning magazine, that "we are very much in Nixon territory here" was an understatement. "This is arguably worse. Nixon never set up a hit on one of his enemies' wives," Mr Dean wrote.
Mr Bush campaigned for the presidency on the promise of returning "honour and integrity" to the White House. But the comparisons with Mr Nixon, the calls for the kind of independent counsel that dogged Bill Clinton's presidency, and the first questions yesterday about polygraph tests - which were such a feature of the internal debate in the Reagan administration about the Iran-Contra affair - put the 43rd president in decidedly unwelcome company.
The broader context is the sharp decline in Mr Bush's approval ratings. Last week, for the first time since he installed himself in the Oval Office, a respected opinion poll put Mr Bush's approval rating below 50 per cent. Taken together, the public opinion surveys have shown Mr Bush's ratings at the lowest of his presidency.
These are still above where Ronald Reagan was before he swept to a landslide victory in 1984 and below where his father was in the polls when he was defeated in his re-election bid in 1992.
But Mr Bush's critics have been emboldened by the fresh sense of his vulnerability. Jonathan Chait wrote in the New Republic an article this week which captured the imagination of the Washington media in way which would have been unthinkable a year or even six months ago: "I hate President George W. Bush," he wrote. "There, I said it. I think his policies rank him among the worst presidents in US history . . . I suspect that, if I got to know him personally, I would hate him more."
On Capitol Hill, Mr Bush is facing his first real fight over a national security measure since 9/11, as Congress raises substantial opposition to the White House calls for $87bn to fund US efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Even some Republicans are losing heart - Mr Novak noted in his column this week that for the first time Bush-Cheney '04 fundraisers struggled to get supporters in Wisconsin to sign over the full $2,000 expected of them to attend this week's presidential event.
This scandal is still in its infancy and has broken more than 14 months away from the presidential election. Some White House officials are suggesting it will quickly fade away, noting Mr Wilson's ties to the Democratic party and the notorious difficulty in Washington of nailing down the sources of leaks.
As with past presidential scandals, the immediate response of the White House has been to try and tough it out.
On Monday, three days after the Department of Justice launched the formal investigation, Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said it was uncertain whether there was going to be a formal inquiry. He explained yesterday that the White House's legal counsel was only informed on Monday evening that the Department of Justice was investigating the matter.
Mr McClellan also initially disputed the suggestion that the probe was directed at the White House. But the Department of Justice seemed to be training its sights on the White House, saying it did not see the need at this stage to investigate people at the State Department and Pentagon, who might also have had access to the classified list of covert agents.
Mr Bush and his aides have most doggedly sought to fend off the calls for an independent prosecutor. As Democrats have called for a special counsel in the mould of Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater investigator who bedevilled the Clinton administration, Mr Bush's senior staff and the Department of Justice have insisted that "career professionals with extensive experience in handling matters involving sensitive national security information" are the appropriate investigators.
But by putting the Department of Justice in charge, the Bush administration is leaving itself open to charges of conflict of interest. Mr Ashcroft, who as attorney general has ultimate responsibility for the investigation, is a former Republican senator and a political appointee.
Democratic presidential contenders have seized on Mr Ashcroft as a plump target. Howard Dean, the Vermont governor, and Wesley Clark, the retired army general, both were quick off the mark to call for a special counsel to conduct an independent inquiry.
Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser who has been accused, at the very least, of condoning the leak, was once a consultant to Mr Ashcroft.
The White House dismissed the suggestion of Mr Rove's involvement as "ridiculous". But the Washington parlour game of floating names of the "two senior administration officials" has begun. Yesterday, Mr McClellan was asked whether he was certain that Lewis "Scooter" Libby, vice-president Dick Cheney's chief of staff, was not involved in the leak. Mr Libby's name was quoted in an article in Time magazine that also included the disclosure of Ms Plame's identity. He also fits the description made by Mr Novak yesterday of one of his sources as "no partisan gunslinger".
In a White House press briefing room where the decibel level has risen markedly this week, Mr McClellan said he refused to get drawn into denying accusations floated by journalists at random. Instead, he returned to his standard line this week, which has been to call on anyone with any information to come forward - knowing that it would be a breach of journalistic ethics for any of the six reporters said to have been leaked the information by senior administration officials to divulge their sources.
For a White House which has been famously brusque in its treatment of the press, the irony for Mr Bush is that the reputation of his White House now rests on whether those journalists will respect the confidentiality of their sources more than administration officials preserved the anonymity of a covert CIA operative.
Joseph Wilson, the former US ambassador at the centre of the current storm facing the White House, wrote a letter to the Financial Times in July, shortly after going public with charges that he was the target of an administration smear campaign.
Robert Novak, a columnist, had identified Mr Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, on July 14 as "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction", citing two senior administration officials.
In his letter, Mr Wilson made it clear that he was in no way verifying that his wife was a CIA agent, which would have been a violation of US law. "This issue is not about me, and even less about her," he wrote. "It is about the credibility of the president." As the Justice Department's criminal investigation into the leak proceeds, the matter may well turn on the credibility of the two men who know more than anyone outside the administration just who said what to whom. But Mr Wilson and Mr Novak are telling very different versions of how Ms Plame's name become public.
Mr Wilson charges that the leak was a deliberate effort by White House officials to smear him and suggests it was orchestrated by Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's chief political adviser. "I have reporters who have told me in the week after the leak to Bob Novak, Mr Rove was active in pushing this story and in fact told a reporter Wilson's wife was fair game," he said on Tuesday on NBC television.
The Washington Post, which broke the story that the Justice Department would investigate the matter, quoted a senior administration official as saying that two top White House officials had called at least six Washington journalists to reveal that Mr Wilson's wife was a CIA agent. The official called the leaks a "wrong and huge miscalculation" that "did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility".
But Mr Novak, a 45-year veteran of Washington journalism, wrote in his syndicated column yesterday that he was not the recipient of a planned leak. He said it was "an offhand revelation" from a senior administration official during a conversation in which Mr Novak asked why Mr Wilson was sent to Niger. The official replied that he was sent at the suggestion of his wife, a CIA agent.
"The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue," he wrote.
The problem with both accounts is that the two key players each have their own interests. Mr Wilson is a 23-year veteran of the foreign service who has served in Democratic and Republican administrations. He was deputy ambassador to Iraq, and in 1990 became the last US diplomat to shake hands with Saddam Hussein before he invaded Kuwait.
But his decision to make public the details of his secret CIA mission was deeply embarrassing to an administration trying to fend off charges that it exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq to justify war. And since the revelation of his wife's name, he has spoken about his desire for vengeance, telling a forum sponsored by Democratic US representative Jay Inslee, in Seattle in August, that "it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs."
Mr Novak, joined the Washington staff of the Wall Street Journal in 1958, and is a nationally syndicated columnist and television pundit with close ties to the Bush administration and conservative Republicans. In his weekly appearance on CNN's "Crossfire" on Monday, he called the fuss over the leak "pure Bush-bashing". To date, he has told several different versions of how the story came out. According to Mr Wilson, he was initially told by Mr Novak that the information came from CIA officials, though the column cited instead two "senior administration officials." Mr Novak later claimed he mis-spoke, according to Mr Wilson.
Mr Novak was quoted later in July by New York Newsday as saying that his sources had come to him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said.
There is one more problem for the Justice Department in sorting through the different accounts. In the US, journalists have a strong tradition of protecting unnamed sources - even administration officials.
Edward Alden
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