May 20 2006

Plaming Reporters

Published by at 8:04 pm under All General Discussions,Plame Game

Team Libby has a whopper of a filing on their subpoenas to reporters (here) on the details of the subpoenas. One that caught my eye was to CNN (page 22 of 43) and aimes at Eason Jordan. I guess Jordan can thank Joe Wilson for the lawyers fees he will be incurring since Wilson mentioned he talked to Eason Jordan right after his ‘friend’ talked to Novak. The events that unfolded were in Wilson’s book:

Late on Tuesday afternoon, July 8, six days before Robert Novak’s article about Valerie and me, a friend showed up at my office with a strange and disturbing tale. He had been walking down Pennsylvania Avenue toward my office near the White House when he came upon Novak, who, my friend assumed, was en route to the George Washington University auditorium for the daily taping of CNN’s Crossfire. He asked Novak if he could walk a block or two with him, as they were headed in the same direction; Novak acquiesced. Striking up a conversation, my friend, without revealing that he knew me, asked Novak about the uranium controversy. It was a minor problem, Novak replied, and opined that the administration should have dealt with it weeks before. My friend then asked Novak what he thought about me, and Novak answered: “Wilson’s an a**hole. The CIA sent him. His wife, Valerie, works for the CIA. She’s a weapons of mass destruction specialist. She sent him.” At that point, my friend and Novak went their separate ways. My friend headed straight for my office a couple of blocks away.

Once he related this unsettling story to me, I asked him to immediately write down the details of the conversation and afterwards ushered him out of my office. Next, I contacted the head of the news division at CNN, Eason Jordan, Novak’s titular boss, whom I had known for a number of years. It took several calls, but I finally tracked him down on his cell phone. I related to him the details of my friend’s encounter with Novak and pointed out that whatever my wife might or might not be, it was the height of irresponsibility for Novak to share such information with an absolute stranger on a Washington street. I asked him to speak to Novak for me, but he demurred— he said he did not know him very well—and suggested that I speak to Novak myself. I arranged for him to have Novak call me and hung up.

Emphasis mine, where I can see a whole series of defense questions to Joe and Eason. Joe probably would have spilled the beans on who his friend was to Jordan. Wilson would need some corraboration of some kind the source was ‘credible’. If it was Larry Johnson, as some suspect, then Jordan may have recognized him for what he is.

Another interesting aspect of this comes from Andrea Mitchell. Not having the intestinal fortitude to read an entire book of Joe Wilson’s egotistical rantings, I was not aware that Andrea Mitchell and NBC have a transcript of an interview with Joe Wilson which would be very germaine to the Libby defense:

On Monday morning, July 21, I sat down with Andrea and answered her questions. I was scrupulous in speaking about Valerie only hypothetically; I was careful to qualify my statements and to use the subjunctive: “If she were as Novak alleged, then. . . .” In response to Andrea’s questions regarding statements made by White House officials about Valerie’s professional life and its connection to me, I noted that the sources of the original leaks from the administration to Novak might have violated the law.

When the interview aired on the Monday evening news, NBC had systematically edited out every one of my qualifiers regarding Valerie’s status, no doubt because of time constraints. They thus substantively changed the tenor of the interview and gave CIA lawyers cause to briefly consider whether or not I myself might have been in violation of the same law as the senior administration officials who had originally leaked the information about Valerie to Novak. I later called Andrea to request a copy of the full interview, so as to be able to defend myself, but NBC policy disallows providing transcripts of interviews in their unedited versions. I asked Andrea therefore to make sure that the full interview was preserved on tape in the event legal questions arose in the future. She agreed to do so.

Lucky for Libby she did so. It seems right after this interview, Chris Mathews enters the foray (another recipient of a subpoena):

That afternoon I received the call from Chris Matthews tersely informing me that Karl Rove had entered the fray with the comment that my wife was “fair game.”

Well, if she did send Joe and not VP Cheney (as turned out to be the case in the end) then of course she was fair game – as a rebuttal to Joe’s wild charges on who sent him!

A lot more reporter names show up in these subpoenas to the Post, Time and NBC.  Should make for an interesting witness list!

12 responses so far

12 Responses to “Plaming Reporters”

  1. Seixon says:

    I don’t understand the logic here. So Wilson knew that Novak knew about his wife, but he didn’t have the CIA make sure that Novak didn’t say anything about her? Huh? He didn’t tell his wife upon coming home that day, “Honey, Novak knows you are CIA,” or anything like that?

    Either this episode never happened, or Wilson is a schmuck and reveals that Valerie and the CIA really didn’t give a damn what Novak knew and how. In fact, didn’t he talk to Novak before Novak published his column??

    Has Novak corroborated having a walk with a friend of Wilson’s where he called him an asshole?

    It’s funny because Wilson and his VIPS friends have claimed that both Novak and Cheney called Wilson an asshole, but the only one on record using that word is Wilson himself in his keynote speech at EPIC; Wilson called the Bush administration assholes.

    Too funny.

  2. elendil says:

    “Either this episode never happened, or Wilson is a schmuck…”

    Seixon, I think I’ve got it figured out: Wilson really is a schmuck. 🙂

  3. patch says:

    Actually the one I want to see under oath is “FatBoy” Tim Russert. This won’t be the kid gloves treatment Fitz gave him, this will be a real “interivew”.

    Russert misled Fitz about his conversation with Libby, and he knew all along who Joe Wilson’s wife was and her occupation. There won’t be any shading or parsing allowed on the witness stand.

    The best part is that all these shmucks will be delclared “hostile” witnesses. Gloves off!

  4. topsecretk9@AJ says:

    They thus substantively changed the tenor of the interview and gave CIA lawyers cause to briefly consider whether or not I myself might have been in violation of the same law as the senior administration officials who had originally leaked the information about Valerie to Novak.

    How does Wilson know what they CIA lawyers consider and how does he know it was brief?

  5. crosspatch says:

    “Striking up a conversation, my friend, without revealing that he knew me, asked Novak about the uranium controversy”

    Now just why, exactly, would he be prompted to do that? If Novak had not published his stuff yet, this wouldn’t exactly be “front burner” news. In fact, it would probably have been fading away by that point. Now if “my friend” is Larry Johnson the story gets even more interesting. This seems to imply that Johnson had reason to suspect that Novak already knew and was looking to see if Novak did indeed know. Novak wouldn’t have had to spill the whole story like he apparently did to tip off “my friend” that he had the story.

    The other thing that bugs me besides this chance subject coming up when it did is the circumstances of the “chance” meeting itself.

    What if:

    “He had been walking down Pennsylvania Avenue toward my office near the White House when he came upon Novak, who, my friend assumed, was en route to the George Washington University auditorium for the daily taping of CNN’s Crossfire.”

    was really:

    “He had been staking out Pennsylvania near the White House in hopes of coming upon Novak on his way to the GWU auditorium for the daily taping of CNN’s Crossfire”

    Also, is he trying to imply that Novak was coming from the White House on his way to GWU as if to say he “just happened” to quiz Novak on the same day Novak would have found out about Valerie, supposedly from someone at the White House? Just too many coincidences to suit me, especially from people who engage or have engaged in skulduggery (VIPs) for a living.

  6. Seixon says:

    Novak hasn’t said anything about this meeting? I mean… would be interesting if he remembered who it was if it did happen. It sounds like Wilson’s friend, if this did happen, was out fishing for Novak for some strange reason. Grossman probably tipped Wilson off that he had gotten people within the administration to take the bait he gave them in the INR memo. Remember how this works. The State Department told the White House what they knew about Wilson’s mission, including that Mrs. Wilson “apparently convened the meeting” and all that jazz, leaving out that her occupation was classified information. Then Armitage leaks to Novak and Woodward about Plame. Realizing this. Then Grossman later leaks to the press the 1x2x6 BS to implicate the White House.

    This whole thing is mind-boggling.

    Why didn’t the Wilsons do anything to ensure that Novak didn’t use his knowledge about Plame????????????? HELLO??? Makes absolutely no sense if her cover was so important.

  7. crosspatch says:

    Why didn’t the Wilsons do anything to ensure that Novak didn’t use his knowledge about Plame?????????????

    Because they smelled major news coverage resulting in book deals, speaking engagements, movie tickets? They’re kinda set for life at this point considering their book deals.

  8. MerlinOS2 says:

    There a just too many unbelievable coincidences in this whole mess. If you take Wilson for gospel, then transfer of yellowcake was a non starter.
    However it is well documented that Iraq had 500 or so tons of the stuff already under IAEA seal. Are we to believe the tooth fairy left it under their pillow? Even if Joe is right about this country, there are not a lot of choices for the source of Iraq’s yellowcake. To have been able to accumulate that much, means someone was supplying it and protestations of “airtight international oversight” seem a little shaky.

  9. Terrye says:

    Why didn’t Joe have his wife to call her boss and stop Novak publishing the oped?

  10. clarice says:

    Lots of fishy stuff–certainly Novak was staked out..His condo bldg has only one walking exit out (the other exit is to the garage) so it’s easy to do. Certainly if this conversation occurred a VIPster was involved.Harlow may have tipped the Wilson’s off about Novak’s call though and I do recall Plame spoke to Wilson after Novak spoke to Harlow.

  11. Rob says:

    Dealing with a lie, in the present hyper antagonistic media environment is hard to begin with. Common sense tells us that
    Iraq was snooping for uranium. Bush never lied despite the
    cynical media claims to the contrary, he pointed to what the
    British had said, which they had.

  12. pull says:

    What kind of person during the ordinary course of a business day has time to walk two blocks in a direction they are not going… then go to another place of business and report such a story… are there not telephones today?