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Careful, Eric, your name is likely to appear in Frankin’s sequel to Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them . (Highly recommended reading, by the way.)

First, Wilson was a public servant. Suddenly, because he evidences doubt over the Bush administration’s claims to justify action that would not have been condoned otherwise, he becomes “a hostile witness” before the fact? Get real!

Second, where is the contradictory evidence, Eric? In Ann Coulter’s footnotes :-) ?

What was the subverting purpose of Wilson’s 1999 trip?

I am glad you have questions. And you have some good ones. Of course, under this administration we will never know the truth. What with the Pentagon losing conveniently destroying Bush’s military records, and Bush’s abhorrence and end runs around the Freedom of Information Act.

Interesting conjecture though on the part of those quoted. A good fiction mystery is always entertaining - that is why Monk is so popular.

Posted by: David R Remer at July 16, 2004 06:03 PM

First, Wilson was a public servant.

Ah, liberal code words. Public Servant. Meaning believer in big governent, protector of the proletariat, deemed democratic supporter, and a member in good standing in the vast left wing conspiracy.

Suddenly, because he evidences doubt over the Bush administration’s claims to justify action that would not have been condoned otherwise, he becomes “a hostile witness” before the fact? Get real!

Actually the thought occurred to me that if the Bush administration were really trying to stack the deck, slant the evidence, and otherwise lie about the evidence in terms of the intelligence wouldn’t they make sure the CIA sent someone who would colaborate in this effort?

…where is the contradictory evidence, Eric?

Page 46. The Iraqi’s were attempting to get uranium. Wilson’s investigation was cursory at best and wouldn’t have uncovered any covert illegal sales of uranium.

This Senate Intelligence report is treasure trove, David.

Posted by: Eric Simonson at July 16, 2004 09:27 PM

Quick question: you’re not in anyway suggesting that because of these ideas of yours, the outing of Valerie was justified, are you? Somewhat justified? Less odious? Not quite as bad?

I’ve been following the Wilson developments, and they seem pretty tangled to me - not cut and dry in the least. And truthfully, until things become more clear I don’t really care. I care about treason being perpetrated from within the Bush Administration for political payback. Even if every word out of Wilson’s mouth is a foul lie, Treason still trumps it with finality.

(strawman disabler: Of course I’m not saying that gets Wilson off the hook.)

Posted by: Gaelen Burns at July 16, 2004 10:59 PM

Quick question: you’re not in anyway suggesting that because of these ideas of yours, the outing of Valerie was justified, are you? Somewhat justified? Less odious? Not quite as bad?

First, these ‘ideas of mine’ are not merely my own. For now, I wouldn’t characterize the leak as even being close to treason. From what I’ve read this is part of what is convoluted about this. She doesn’t appear to have been the kind of secret agent that is put in dangerous situations to begin with. She was undercover under her own name after all as an energy analyst. It was known that she was married to Wilson. Did she drive to Langley? How was her life in danger by her being known to be CIA?

And truthfully, until things become more clear I don’t really care. I care about treason being perpetrated from within the Bush Administration for political payback. Even if every word out of Wilson’s mouth is a foul lie, Treason still trumps it with finality.

Again, the treason charge seems highly overblown. I get the feeling, because some accounts describe her job at the CIA as being an analyst on WMD, and she was so involved with getting Wilson sent to Niger that, once Wilson started to act as a political operative, that this information about his wife filtered from the CIA to the White House and the fact that she was a secret agent/operative rather than an analyst wasn’t passed on. Actually it’s still not clear to me that she was some kind of secret operative or an analyst.

Before the Justice Department rips the CIA and White House apart, they might want to consider how much damage Novak’s leakers really did. Yes, it’s against the law for a government official who has access to classified information to intentionally reveal the identity of a covert agent, punishable with a $50,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison. But according to the Sunday Post story by Mike Allen and Dana Priest, the CIA began “damage assessment” of the disclosure to Plame’s foreign contacts after the Novak column ran and stated that no additional harm would come from more mentions of Plame’s name. This would indicate that whatever damage caused by Plame’s unmasking was quickly contained.

In the same Post piece, Novak asserts that the CIA urged him not to print Plame’s name “for security reason[s]” but also said it was doubtful Plame would have another foreign assignment. The CIA and the military are very good at persuading mainstream journalists such as Novak to hold their fire when they’re about to publish information that would damage an ongoing intelligence or military operation. But Novak tells the Post the CIA made only “a very weak request” not to name Plame. “If it was put on a stronger basis, I would have considered it,” Novak said. As an experienced Washington journalist who frequently bumps up against intelligence sources, Novak surely knows how to read signals from the CIA. Had they wanted him to black out her name, they should have—and would have—told him to do so.

Who exactly is Valerie Plame? Corn writes that she “is known to friends as an energy analyst in a private firm,” which is not as convincing as Corn writing that she is an energy analyst in a private firm.
[slate.msn.com]

If Wilson weren’t taking such a partisan tack I think his arguments would have much more weight. (Regarding everything, not just his wife’s endangered life.) I did happen to catch a speech of his on UCTV and he laid out his case very well. Without resorting to the usual partisan claptrap about treason and imperialism and Bush lied etc. He was very matter of fact and I thought made a good case for not going to war and instead using a policy of strong containment against Iraq.

Posted by: Eric Simonson at July 17, 2004 12:49 AM

Gaelen, treason is a pretty heavy charge to start throwing around, especially when there’s no agreement that ANY crime—much less treason—was commited, and much of the case rests on the word of a totally discredited source, Joe Wilson.

The law pertaining to disclosing the identity of CIA officials is pretty specific. You have to knowingly do so in order to put them in danger.

Plame has been sitting at a desk in Langley for at least a decade, and the biggest secret about her, it turns out, is that she is technically classified as “undercover.” The CIA loves its secrets, apparently, even if it’s proven itself incompetent when it comes to learning other people’s secrets. I wonder how many secretaries, cooks, and custodians the CIA considers “classified” persons (strawman disabler: that last was a joke.)

Even if she were deliberatly outed (and the evidence seems to indicate the opposite, that she was mentioned only to explain why a Bush-basher like Wilson was sent to do a job for the CIA), then there’s no reason whatsoever to think that she was endangered by such exposure. In fact, she seemed to enjoy it (see it the cover of Vogue). If she were in danger from anyone, it seems like the last thing she’d want to do is publicize her face along with her name. Incidentally, Joe Wilson himself had already pulicized her name on many occasions—including it in readily available bios of himself posted on the internet.

I guess I can understand up to a point how the left could derive a certain satisfaction from turning the tables hurling accusations of “treason,” but the cart is very far before the horse here. Wilson started making this charge because he was more than willing to seize on a technicality to make attacks and get himself on the news.

Posted by: Martin at July 17, 2004 12:58 AM

The amazing thing about your argument is that you presume to be able to know how secret someone was, or whether her secrecy mattered. The CIA says she was undercover, and you don’t have anything but your own partisan doubts to dispute that. Maybe there wasn’t long-term damage to projects, but maybe there was - none of here know, and it doesn’t matter in the eyes of the law. She was undercover as an energy analyst, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t involved in projects that involved significant secrets and many lives. I can’t prove she was involved in such projects, but you can’t prove she wasn’t, because the projects were secret.

No one outside the Agency, not Novak, not Martin, and not Eric, is qualified to decide whether exposing her endangered anything. Claiming that it’s ok to expose American agents because she was willing to be on magazine covers six months after she was exposed makes no sense. Claiming it’s ok to break the law because “no one was hurt” doesn’t hold any currency in our legal system, and you can’t even support that claim except for suppositions.

Be mad that Wilson seems to have overinflated his claims to discredit the President - fine. But claiming that her position wasn’t secret despite the Agency saying it was secret is ridiculous.

Posted by: LawnBoy at July 17, 2004 01:39 AM

Are we breaking the law right now by discussing Plame? I guess we must be, because she’s a top-secret agent involved in vital missions of national security and only herself and her husband are allowed to talk about it in their books, newspaper articles and cover stories in fashion magazines. Don’t say that she’s doing so now only because her “cover is blown.” It’s been blown for years, broadcast repeatedly by Wilson himself before he went to Niger, and the real surprise for most in Washington has been learning that this minor CIA celebrity (whom they all know about) is actually supposed to be a deep dark secret.

For the law to have be broken it must have been done so deliberately and with THE INTENTION of endangering her. Lawnboy, you keep saying “I don’t know if…” “you don’t know if…,” and that’s just the point. Plame’s position was clearly not secret, even it was supposed to be, and everybody has known about it for years. Novak was hardly the first one in Washington to mention her or her job. Joe Wilson had repeatedly done so in public before even striking a pose of mock indignation in order to milk a few more interviews and dollars from a compliant and gullible press.

Posted by: Martin at July 17, 2004 03:08 AM

Eric, so Bush’s cabinet are not public servants by your definition? C’mon! Condoleeza Rice is what then? She wasn’t elected.

Posted by: David R. Remer at July 17, 2004 06:57 AM

Eric asked why they didn’t send an operative who would lie. Simply because they believed the intel, Eric. Believing the intel, they sent Wilson who upon verifying it would be credible precisely because he was not partisan to Bush. This is not rocket science.

Posted by: David R. Remer at July 17, 2004 07:00 AM

Hell, Eric, half the nations in the world have designs on joining the nuclear club. We sure aren’t going after Korea, Iran, Pakistan, India. Give this argument a break, it makes no rational sense in justification for invasion. Iraq was nowhere near the threat N. Korea was, and we now know intel showed that. We knew N. Korea had an active nuclear program, we only suspected Iraq might have in the absence of any hard intel to the contrary. The rationale just doesn’t hold up. It is an Ann Coulter argument, using details to mislead.

Posted by: David R. Remer at July 17, 2004 07:05 AM

Martin, try to use a little logic. Plame is outed, by someone in the administration. Hence, she has no cover to be blown, NOW ! Therefore there can be no crime or further damage done here by discussing the issue.

Posted by: David R. Remer at July 17, 2004 07:11 AM

Clifford May does a stellar job of discussing the Valerie Plame situation. First of all, May asks the question about Plame working for the CIA—“Who didn’t know?” He had been told about it in an offhand manner well before Novak’s account.

Secondly, he points out that “It is against the law to knowingly name an undercover agent. It is not against the law to name a CIA employee who is not an undercover agent.”

Now lets put this all in perspective. IFFF someone outed Plame, then they should be punished. Lets all agree on that.

Lets also agree that Joe Wilson’s credibility is in tatters. He suggests NOW that his wife talking him up to the CIA had nothing really to do with his getting the job. A year ago, he stated that she had nothing to do with it at all.

He claimed that documents were obviously false; it is now clear he never saw the documents, since they were not in US hands until 8 months later.

Wilson has made severe claims aobut the Bush administration, and Democrats are largely silent now about the refutation by the Senate Committee of those charges. So too is the famous NON-liberal press.

The question to ask here is why the silence. If the press is truly interested in facts and in stories, then they should trumpet this from the headlines. But we get only silence. Need I say more?

Posted by: joebagodonuts at July 17, 2004 07:38 AM

Look, Valerie Plame was NOC, Non Official Cover. That means she’s the sort of agent that gets disavowed if she’s caught. Additionally, I’m pretty sure that no damage assessment probe was made before whatever White House official who outed her did so. This is situational ethics, people defending the destruction of an agent’s career and the endangerment of her and her sources in the name of convincing people to reelect the administration that almost certainly had something to do with it.

Now, the whole point of the letter was that it was an open official understanding to attain nuclear material from Niger. Not an attempt to discuss it, not an attempt to smuggle it out. Joseph Wilson was likely brief on the hallmarks of the letter, given a description of it- i.e., whose signature was there, how was it formatted- if there was any deficit in how well he was prepared, you can blame Cheney and the others who failed him in this respect.

As for all this mint julep B.S. (I know that sounds appetizing!), I think it’s just the Neocon’s way of obscuring the important thing that Wilson did: actually talk to people. You know, this administration could do to learn something about the value of talk. You can learn things. For example, how would I know this letter was official? What about this guy, can I talk- you mean he wasn’t even in office at that time?

This was a favor done for the administration by a guy who could get the information they wanted by unofficial channels. So talking with people over drinks is part of that. You ridicule the laid back way in which he did his function, and sidestep the important fact that he did his function nonetheless. Looking at the intelligence failures the CIA experienced across the board concerning sources like this, it can be said that Wilson did far better than most of the people Bush depended on to build his case for war. That your people counter him by refering to information that is itself ambiguous and unconclusive just goes to show how dependent this administration has become on ad hoc redefinitions and collective amnesia to maintain power.

Taking this country into war was a huge risk, one that Bush justified by giving us the scariest possible information he could. Much of that information, as it turns out, was already considered unreliable by analysts. Bush’s people, however had been instructed to give the case a trial lawyer treatment, and that’s just what they did. The importance of this exaggeration was that most Americans really didn’t see Iraq as the next target. Many Americans including liberals like myself, though annoyed with years of evasion by Saddam, did not see him as being an urgent and growing threat. With the information your people are relying upon now, we still wouldn’t have seen fit to invade. It took the sensationalism and the gravity of the threat portrayed by your people in order to push us into this war. So it’s not just important whether these things were true in a sense, but also that they be true in the degree that Bush set out in the first place. Looking at the evidence now, it is difficult to see any threat that would have required our military intervention, hundreds of billions of dollars in expenditures, and the deaths of 894 Americans.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at July 17, 2004 09:49 AM

Clifford May does a stellar job of discussing the Valerie Plame situation. First of all, May asks the question about Plame working for the CIA—“Who didn’t know?” He had been told about it in an offhand manner well before Novak’s account.

Secondly, he points out that “It is against the law to knowingly name an undercover agent. It is not against the law to name a CIA employee who is not an undercover agent.”

We already discussed this in another thread. Why do you repeat your argument here instead of addressing my rebuttal there?

Those are mighty big “ifs” he’s using there. Of course, May’s right on one level. If she weren’t a secret operative and if no one cared, then there’s nothing to this. However, he doesn’t really provide any evidence to back his hypothesis. He claims he knew she was a CIA operative before all this, and he bases his whole argument on that. Perhaps he had known, and perhaps her cover had been blown previously to a limited extent, but that doesn’t excuse Novak for blowing her cover in the media. If, of course, she had a cover to be blown.

It’s also ludicrous of May to claim that Plame didn’t have a cover to have blown simply because he has a friend who works in a non-secret part of the agency. What does that prove? I had dinner last weekend with the fiancee of a friend of my wife’s, and she works for the CIA, too. However, I don’t claim that it’d be alright to blow a cover simply because I know someone else in the CIA who doesn’t have a cover. That’s just bad logic.

Need I say more?

Yes, because I don’t know what you think the silence demonstrates.

Let’s think about this another way. Assume for the moment that you and Martin and Eric are right; Valerie Plame was not actually undercover, and it was all a lie by Joe Wilson. What would have happened? The day that the first liberal reporter pounced on the story to claim that someone in the administration illegally told Novak that Plame was undercover, there would have been a reaction. Some spokesperson, from the White House or the CIA or someone else would have said “There is nothing to this story. Novak’s source was wrong, and Ms. Plame is not an undercover agent for the CIA. No crime was committed, because this is all a mistake. Here’s the proof she had no cover to be blown: …”

That didn’t happen. Why not? The inescapable conclusion is that she was undercover. That is why there is an investigation. There wouldn’t be one at all if the premise of your argument had merit. It doesn’t matter at all that she has discussed her blown cover after the fact. It is irrelevant if her secret had already leaked out to a few people. She had a cover the CIA considered valid, and someone in the administration blew her cover.

If your argument were correct, this would have been put to bed a year ago.

For the law to have be broken it must have been done so deliberately and with THE INTENTION of endangering her.

Maybe you are right about this - I don’t know the details of the law. If so, that means simply that the trial might not end in a conviction, not that it was ok to ruin a twenty-year career and jeapordize ongoing secret projects.

Posted by: LawnBoy at July 17, 2004 09:58 AM

Lawnboy:

I mentioned Clifford May in response to the variety of posts, not just yours. Perhaps you figured I only read yours and ignored all the rest, but that didnt happen.

I also stated quite clearly that iff Plame was outed (meaning that someone did blow her cover) they should be punished. Do I need to be clearer than that for you?

The Plame side of this is only one side—and it is not an inescapable conclusion as you say. Its pretty darn murky. What amazes me is how the “left” is ignoring the rest of the story—-that being that Joe Wilson lied about a good number of things. The conclusion I reach is that if he lied about some things, perhaps he lied about others. Yet the media and the left (oh who am i kidding—-they are one and the same) are virtually in silence about that side of the story.

The inescapable conclusion there is they have nothing to say. They backed a losing horse, and now are hoping that the tempest will blow over.

Posted by: joebagodonuts at July 17, 2004 11:35 AM

Yet the media and the left (oh who am i kidding—-they are one and the same) are virtually in silence about that side of the story.

Are we living on the same planet? In my world, the most popular cable news channel is Fox and the second most popular newspaper (ahead of NYT) is the Wall Street Journal. This is not to mention the New York Post, the Chicago Tribune, various right-wing magazines…

Posted by: Woody Mena at July 17, 2004 11:51 AM

The inescapable conclusion there is they have nothing to say. They backed a losing horse, and now are hoping that the tempest will blow over.

Or they’ve done some checking and found there’s nothing to the conspiracy theory that you guys are peddling.

Posted by: American Pundit at July 17, 2004 12:08 PM

I also stated quite clearly that iff Plame was outed (meaning that someone did blow her cover) they should be punished. Do I need to be clearer than that for you?

Joe, I’m glad you say that they should be punished if they outed her. I’m responding more to the implication that she wasn’t outed on the theory that she wasn’t undercover in the first place. Sorry, I missed your other references to May.

The conclusion I reach is that if he lied about some things, perhaps he lied about others

Strictly speaking, this is the ad hominem logical fallacy. His apparent lies about Niger do nothing to support the claim that Plame was not undercover. I understand taking anything he says with a grain of salt (I do that with many commentators), but that grain is the sole foundation for an argument going against a mountain of facts. That Wilson seems to have misled on Niger doesn’t mean that he’s wrong in saying Plame had a cover that was blown.

In fact, there is an ongoing investigation into the affair precisely because the CIA asked the Justice Department to investigate the outing of one of their agents. If the CIA thinks that Plame was an agent who was outed, how can May or anyone here claim that she wasn’t an agent? No one in a position to know has denied she was undercover. People in the position to know have asked for an investigation because they know she was undercover. Why are these questions even being debated in the blogosphere?

Part of Martin’s “proof” that she hadn’t been undercover is that some people knew she had been undercover. While that could show that her cover had been previously compromised, Martin’s actually bolstering the case he’s trying to attack because he’s finding people who agree she was undercover. Why are these questions even being debated in the blogosphere?

The inescapable conclusion there is they have nothing to say. They backed a losing horse, and now are hoping that the tempest will blow over.

Or, they gave Americans enough credit not to assume that such baseless arguments would be made. However, in response to the Washington Post story and others, some liberal commentators are responding. It’s an interesting read.

In fact, this whole debate overshadows much more important conclusions from the Congressional report: there was no basis for the claims of WMD that were the primary justification for Bush to take us to war.

Posted by: LawnBoy at July 17, 2004 12:25 PM

Eric asked why they didn’t send an operative who would lie. Simply because they believed the intel, Eric. Believing the intel, they sent Wilson who upon verifying it would be credible precisely because he was not partisan to Bush. This is not rocket science.

You’re right, it’s not rocket science. Yet liberals continue to ignore this and say that Bush lied and skewed the intelligence on purpose to justify the war. The administration was not trying to skew the intelligence, they were reading the intelligence. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report details much of what I am sure they were reading.

Right or wrong, the intelligence was not skewed or manipulated by the administration. The fact that they didn’t have control or didn’t excercise control over who was sent by the CIA is just one more piece of evidence of that fact. Even given what was wrong about the CIA’s intelligence analysis, what remains reliable is still pretty impressively pro-administration arguments for war.

History will not judge the President as a ‘war criminal’ as the left would like. If anything it will judge the left harshly for their calculating political manipulating.

Hell, Eric, half the nations in the world have designs on joining the nuclear club. We sure aren’t going after Korea, Iran, Pakistan, India. Give this argument a break, it makes no rational sense in justification for invasion.

David, We should be going after them. That is my ‘neo-con’ point. We should stop them before they have nuclear weapons to blackmail with or sneak into one of our cities or a European city… or any city.

Iraq was nowhere near the threat N. Korea was, and we now know intel showed that. We knew N. Korea had an active nuclear program, we only suspected Iraq might have in the absence of any hard intel to the contrary. The rationale just doesn’t hold up. It is an Ann Coulter argument, using details to mislead.

Using details to mislead: “Don’t confuse me with the facts” ?

We should be working to destabilize and overthrow both Iran and Ill’ Kim’s regime. I am sympathetic to the arguments that war was not the only answer. I agree that we could have made Iraq a serious project in undermining and overthrowing.

Posted by: Eric Simonson at July 17, 2004 03:00 PM

Alright, I’ve looked at the first sixty or so pages of the the congressional report. Wilson said to them that he might not have remembered the meeting correctly later on, though he does remember being told who would have to be on that letter to see whether it was authentic.

Problem is, his memory problems involve confusing the IAEA’s conclusions about the letter with his own. The case that the letter was a forgery is still airtight, it’s just not completely. As for problems with secrecy, he was given an “operational” clearance of Secret. The CIA approached him directly on behalf of his wife. He was rated as a good source afterwards, because he essentially told them nothing they didn’t already know, but what he told them was pretty reliable information.

The Committee found nothing wrong with Plame’s involvement of her husband besides the fact that they didn’t have their own resources working within Niger to do that job.

As for that article concerning Plame’s secret identity, I suggest you read it more carefully. He was obviously joking, and nothing about her cover wasn’t already blown by that point. The article also goes to say that friends and relatives were shocked by the revelations. Plame, by all accounts, was not glib with her secret identity.

All in all, I look at all this and I see character assassination that doesn’t even get its facts straight. What’s more, the committee report takes it from being just Wilson who was saying no, to large parts of the intelligence community, here and abroad. It’s shameful that you have to beat up on a dedicated, discreet intelligence agent who was unfairly outed.

To close let me make an additional comment: Wilson didn’t start actively campaigning against Bush until somebody risked his wife’s safety and destroyed her career. The fact that he joined the Kerry campaign is not evidence of collusion, just evidence of how badly they pissed this one man off.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at July 17, 2004 03:35 PM

Wilson last year launched a public firestorm with his accusations that the administration had manipulated intelligence to build a case for war. He has said that his trip to Niger should have laid to rest any notion that Iraq sought uranium there and has said his findings were ignored by the White House. [washintonpost.com]

This is the substance of Wilson’s crusade against the Bush Administration. It is false.

A. Allegations of influence

…None of these individuals provided any information to the Committee which showed that policymakers had attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their analysis or that any intelligence analysts changed their intelligence judgements as a result of political pressure. [Senate Committee Report]

Wilson’s main charge, that the administration had manipulated intelligence to build a case for war, is wrong according to the bipartisan committee’s report. Was the intelligence wrong? On many issues, yes it was. Did the Bush Administration create the intelligence or manipulate it to make the case for war? No.

Posted by: Eric Simonson at July 17, 2004 07:06 PM

Did the Bush Administration create the intelligence or manipulate it to make the case for war? No.

There is no evidence in the Senate report that either supports or contradicts your claim. For those conclusions, we’ll have to wait for the second have of the report, which the Republicans insisted be postponed until November.

Posted by: LawnBoy at July 17, 2004 07:14 PM

Shoot. I accidentally posted that last message before I was ready.

You’re right that there are some conclusions about pressure. However, the majority of the conclusions about the White House dealings with the intelligence (including pressure) is saved until November for political reasons.

Posted by: LawnBoy at July 17, 2004 07:25 PM

Eric-
That all depends on what you define pressured as. If you define it as saying “give me this result, or you’re fired” That’s not likely to have happened in any explicit way.

The way it usually happened, according to the sources I encountered, is under the guise of somebody saying “Iraq. Al Quaeda. Look into it.” Technically, that wouldn’t be pressure. But if your government official repeats that to exclude anything that doesn’t support their agenda, people get the message real fast, and they give the people what they want. When you have folks on top actively seeking a war, and more concerned about that righteous agenda than getting all the facts straight (damned nuances), then there will be implicit pressure on the people under there to give them what they wanted.

According to Plan of Attack, Hadley and Libby asked for the intelligence in writing from the individual agents and analysts. That information got fed into their scarey version of case against Iraq, the more moderately wrong version of which Colin Powell delivered. Colin Powell says in Woodwards book that he had to field strip the information, taking out the more unreliable claims. The Report details that he had his people through out a bunch of the single source intelligence reports from the case, among other things. If this is the kind of clean up a case like this has to go through to get to the public, something is definitely wrong.

Here’s the politics of truth in this situation: analysts and agents that contradict the claims of the administration do not prosper in their careers. If an administration will not listen to alternative views, people not wanting to make enemies will not give them.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at July 17, 2004 08:18 PM