This is the CIA Agent Exposed by Bush's Hacks

Photo souce: NYT 031607

Valerie Plame Wilson spoke publicly yesterday for the first time since her covert identity as a CIA agent was exposed by White House hacks in July 2003. She testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. She’s said to be writing a book about her outing. If she didn’t have a movie deal when she woke up yesterday, she does now

The committee’s web site has video of the complete hearing. I’m still looking for the Congressional Record transcript.

Yesterday’s NYT coverage played the story pretty straight. NPR had the juicy sound bites and whirr of paparazzi cameras. YouTube has video clips from the hearing, including Plame’s opening statement. Firedoglake live-blogged it extensively;see Enter “The Wife” for starters . And Dana Milbank wrote the movie review.

Milbank noted that Plame’s platinum blonde hair revealed dark roots, always a telling detail in Washington politics. He built a riff around the number of times “passionately” popped out in the testimony. Sure, passion never hurt a movie deal, and Plame milked the media moment for everything it was worth. To do anything else would be Un-American.

NPR’s Andrea Seabrook was more charitable this morning. She understood that a big part of Valerie Plame’s allure stems from simple curiosity, finally, just to see her. She stayed out of the media spotlight for four years, letting her husband Joe Wilson do the talk shows. She famously appeared on a Vanity Fair cover wearing Jackie O sunglasses; otherwise, the public only got glimpses of her. The exaggeration-prone Washington gossip mill rumored that the elusive spy was “drop dead gorgeous,” Seabrook said. “This time the gossip mill got it right.”

Valerie Plame out-Oli-ied Oliver North in terms of stealing the show. All he had was a square jaw and Marine Corps dress blue. She’s a mix of 007 + blond bombshell.

It’s well-known that George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and their fellow-travelers would start a war or sell their grandmothers for political gain. In the Plame case, they exposed a CIA agent then tried to cover it up. In retrospect, they should have sacrificed grandma.

Valerie Plame Footnotes

Vanity Fair cover/source: Google cache

Valerie Plame - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia My guess is this is a highly contested, highly fungible page in the Wiki wars. The documentation and links (as of today) are extensive.
to Valerie_Plame CIA Scooter_Libby Bush politics Iraq 2dk_prep z07_3

Firedoglake - Firedoglake weblog » CIA Leak Case
FDL's blog coverage flows relentlessly like the Mighty Mississippi.
to Valerie_Plame CIA Scooter_Libby Bush politics 2dk_prep z07_3

What I Didn't Find in Africa - Joseph Wilson - NYT - 070603
The op-ed that started the Bush administration's retaliation against Wilson and his wife, a CIA agent outed by Cheney, Rove, Libby, et al.
to Bush politics cheney Iraq war_drums NYT 2dk_prep Valerie_Plame CIA

Mission To Niger - Robert Novak - Washington Post - 071403
The infamous newspaper column that exposed Valerie Plame's identity. Why wasn't Novak thrown in the slammer like Judith Miller?
to Valerie_Plame CIA Iraq Scooter_Libby Bush politics WaPo 2dk_prep z07_3

Vanity Fair's profile on Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame
Bootleg text from Jim Gilliam's blog - 011704.
to Valerie_Plame CIA 2dk_prep z07_3 ... saved by 1 other person ... just posted

Richard Armitage’s Role in Plame Case - Newsweek 082706
"Armitage's central role as the primary source on Plame is detailed for the first time in "Hubris," which recounts the leak case and the inside battles at the CIA and White House in the run-up to the war. The disclosures about Armitage, gleaned from inter
to politics media security Iraq Valerie_Plame Scooter_Libby CIA 2dk_prep z06_08

Exhibit 402: Dick Cheney on Media-Mongering

Government Exhibit 402 is a clipping of Joseph Wilson's New York Times op-ed piece, published July 6, 2003. Wilson's article challenges the administration's public characterization of intelligence about alleged Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa. The clipping shows Vice President Cheney's handwritten notes: "Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an Amb. to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?" Wilson's wife is Valerie Plame, who worked for the CIA.

Download PDF: Exhibit 402: Cheney's Notes on Wilson's Op-Ed Article

Source: NPR/National Security Archive

Exhibit 412: Scooter Libby on Media-Mongering

Government Exhibit 412 is a printout of Maureen Dowd's New York Times column, National House of Waffles, published on July 13, 2003. Large sections have been blacked out by the prosecution. Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive at George Washington University says that's not for national security reasons, but to focus the jury's attention on the section at the bottom. The handwritten notes on the document are from Libby. He writes, "not us" and "not to us" in response to suggestions that the CIA had debunked the evidence suggesting Iraq was trying to obtain yellowcake uranium in Africa.

Download PDF: Exhibit 412: Libby's Notes on Maureen Dowd Column

Source: NPR/National Security Archive

Scooter Is Guilty Encore 2: Material Evidence

Tom Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, did an interview on NPR yesterday. He discussed material evidence from the Scooter Libby trial that has been collected for the archive, hand-written notes and annotated news clippings that reveal something of the Bush administration’s hard-ball approach to managing the media. The NPR web page includes links to PDF downloads of some of the documents discussed and is the source of the images reproduced in the following posts

According to NPR, “A number of internal government documents were entered into evidence during Libby's trial that depict officials, including the vice president, directly engaged in shaping the media's coverage of the Bush administration and its drive to paint Iraq as a nuclear threat. [The documents] center around the response to President Bush's assertion in his 2003 State of the Union address to Congress that Iraq was actively seeking illicit purchases of refined uranium in Africa to supply a nuclear weapons program.”

Bush is proud of the fact that he doesn’t read newspapers – he reads people. The documents demonstrate how those people do the reading for him.

Scooter Is Guilty Encore: Free Fall for the Fall Guy

Here is Dana Milbank’s account of yesterday’s post-verdict scene:

The cloud over the White House grew darker a few minutes later, when juror Denis Collins, standing in front of the same microphone, spoke of the "tremendous amount of sympathy" jurors had for the man they convicted. "It was said a number of times, 'What are we doing with this guy here? Where's Rove, where's -- you know, where are these other guys?' " Collins said. "We're not saying that we didn't think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of, but that it seemed like he was . . . the fall guy."

As a political matter, Libby's trial had long ago ceased to be about one man's guilt or innocence. Witnesses made it plain that at least three other administration officials had joined Libby in leaking the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame, including top Bush strategist Karl Rove and former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (whom jurors dubbed "Slick Willie"). Libby's conviction, and Collins's "fall guy" remark, only increased the determination of congressional Democrats to spread the blame throughout the White House.

Howard Kurtz’s column muses on how the Libby trial tarnished the Fourth Estate:

I know the details of this case have gotten mind-numbing and most of America isn't following it. But I think the essentials are quite clear: Dick Cheney's top aide lied about a campaign to manipulate the media on the administration's since-discredited prewar intelligence about Iraq. Like so much in our politics these days, it comes back to the war.

The parade of high-profile Washington journalists who took the stand in the Lewis "Scooter" Libby perjury case were not on trial. But few would dispute that the proceedings, which ended with Libby's conviction on four of five counts yesterday, gave their profession a black eye.

When Vice President Cheney's chief of staff and other top administration officials wanted to neutralize a critic by disclosing his wife's role at the CIA, they turned to some of the capital's most prominent chroniclers, who -- under longstanding local custom -- promised the leakers anonymity.

Scooter Is Guilty (And He’s Not the Only One)

Here’s the NYT on the verdicrt:

“The jury rejected Mr. Libby’s claims of memory lapses as it convicted him of obstruction of justice, giving false statements to the F.B.I. and perjuring himself, charges embodied in four of the five counts of the indictment… Mr. Libby appeared composed as the verdict was read. He was then taken to be photographed and fingerprinted as a convicted felon.”

Here’s Firedoglake on the verdict:

“Libby was stoic and Mrs. Libby daubed her eyes as the verdict was read. Nobody on the prosecution showed much emotion but Zeidenberg held his head in his hands. Libby himself was seated between Wells and Jeffress. He did not move.

“Afterwards Mrs. Libby came up and hugged Jeffress profusely, then Wells, saying "love you, love you" with much emotion. Then all the rest of the defense team. She didn't hug Scooter however, or hold his hand, or even make eye contact.”

Here’s the NYT on Firedoglake:

Even the Web-savvy may ask, Fire dog what? A collective of liberal bloggers, fueled by online donations and a fanatical devotion to the intricacies of the Libby case, Firedoglake has offered intensive trial coverage, using some six contributors in rotation. They include a former prosecutor, a current defense lawyer, a Ph.D. business consultant and a movie producer, all of whom lodge at a Washington apartment rented for the duration of the trial.

All day long during the trial, one Firedoglake blogger is on duty to beam to the Web from the courthouse media room a rough, real-time transcript of the testimony. With no audio or video feed permitted, the Firedoglake “live blog” has offered the fullest, fastest public report available. Many mainstream journalists use it to check on the trial.

But the bloggers’ fun is almost over.

Scooter Libby photo credit: Larry Downing/Reuters

OTM on the Mainline

MEDIA NOTES: On the Media NPR 020207

There are so many good pieces in this weeks On The Media, I don’t know where to begin. Maybe I’ll start with Brook Gladstone’s story about Scooter Libby’s perjury trial. She interviews Dana Milbank, who reports on Washington political theater for WaPoBrook’s #3 reason for caring about Scooter’s trial: “It gives news junkies the chance to mainline some high-octane gossip.” Yeah. Pass that needle, Nina Totenberg. Listen to the rush in Nina’s voice as she recaps this weeks testimony, including these nuggets from Scooter’s notes on a strategy chat with Mary Matalin: “Tell Tim (Russert). Tim (Russert) hates Chris (Matthews)” and “Wilson’s a snake.” Dan Schor takes the high road (really, no pun intended now, he sounds like the wise man he is): the Libby trial fascinates because it reveals details of a “failed cover-up.”

Back to OTM. Crossed Wires mashes up a montage of sound bites documenting cable news hysteria as the Boston bomb story broke on Wednesday. Listen to CNN nimbly shift attention away from its parent company (Turner Broadcasting) to those “third-party” bottom-feeders Interference Media. Bob Garfield injects some snarky tidbits along the way, decrying the saturation coverage as one more “display of the media beast consuming its own tail.”

Seriously now. Great Expectorations explores the mythology of war protesters spitting on war veterans. “It’s hardly the first time we’ve heard about returning soldiers getting showered with saliva. Sociologist Jerry Lembcke says the ‘spitting myth’ is both older and more recent than you might think.”

And finally, Anonymous Sects is an interview with Vali Nasr, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He briefed Bush last year about the differences between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq. Bush’s rhetoric in the State of the Union speech played up the sectarian split, but it doesn’t reflect a newfound grasp of nuance, according to Nasr. Instead, it signals the administration’s effort to shift attention away from the intractable problems of stability in Iraq to a more appealing target: Iran.