Oct 14 2005
More Plame End Game
I think Mac Ranger is definitely onto something with this Larry Johnson angle. Johnson just knows too much detail about this topic and knew Valerie Plame at the CIA since they did training together. He is leftwing, anti-war nut like Wilson, and I must assume Plame.
For example, we now have Larry Johnson admitting Valerie Plame did recommend Joe Wilson for the trip to Niger, which was authorized by her boss.
The Republicans insist on the lie that Val got her husband the job. She did not. She was not a division director, instead she was the equivalent of an Army major. Yes it is true she recommended her husband to do the job that needed to be done but the decision to send Joe Wilson on this mission was made by her bosses.
This is just a distinction without a purpose. People should be aware there was no need to send anyone to Niger – they had people and sources there. My guess is Plame, Wilson and Johnson cooked up the idea of the trip as a way to establish a platform against the war. As I pointed out previously, Johnson runs with a truly bizarre anti-war, ex-CIA crowd straight out of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Check out this interesting summation by Johnson:
At the end of the day, Joe Wilson was right. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was the Bush Administration that pushed that lie and because of that lie Americans are dying. Shame on those who continue to slander Joe Wilson while giving Bush and his pack of liars a pass. That’s the true outrage.
Funny, I don’t recall Wilson claiming Iraq was WMD free. I do recall a lot of folks in the CIA predicting Iraq was WMD free. Did Johnson just tip his hand a bit and expose the bigger view of this rogue crowd?
He seems to do that a lot. In this CNS interview it is highly possible Larry Johnson is outing more than Plame’s name, he is describing her activities at the business front we know she worked for
Johnson said that any number of people could be put in danger and missions could be compromised as a result of Plame’s identity becoming public knowledge.
“For example, if she was operating using a business cover to get access to companies that were possible distributors for precursors for chemical and biological weapons and had developed relationships and was worming her way on the inside, if you will,” Johnson explained, “that could completely compromise and destroy that kind of operation.”
Folks, if that is an accurate statement pretending to be a vaguely disguised hypothetical, it is a case of leaking classified information. And I think he is a lot closer to the Wilson’s than people know. This is an interesting personal portrait of Valerie Plame. The story begins and ends at the Wilson’s house, with the parents there, getting ready for a 4th of July weekend. And apparently there is a guest in the house – Larry Johnson! He is quoted once directly and possibly once anonymously:
“We feel like the peasants with torches and pitchforks,” said Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst who was in Plame’s officer training class in 1985-86. “The robber barons aren’t going to be allowed to get away with this.”
…
The publication of her name left CIA officers aghast. “All the people who had innocent lunches with her overseas or went shopping or played tennis with her, I’m sure they are having heart attacks right now,” said one classmate of Plame’s who participated in covert operations. “I would be in hiding now if I were them.”
Johnson has said this same thing so many times it has to be him. We know Valerie blurted out to Joe Wilson she worked for the CIA on their first date. But it her family knew as well, which means her job could have been known by others
Valerie Wilson’s parents knew she worked for the CIA and fretted about her trips abroad, but said they never asked for details.
In case anyone wants to find a really tight synopsis with links on Wilson’s credibility implosion, the best one I have seen to date is at Front Page Mag, by Ben Johnson. It also clearly makes the case why there will be no indictments against Rove or Libby.
AJ,
There is a lot of LJ madness out there.
He was one of the big name speakers at Conyers 9/11 Tea Party.
I am somewhat shocked that this is the first time you have linked Johnson with the Plame/Wilson Affair.
BurbankErnie,
Sorry, I tend to ignore the lunatics no matter how much they yell. I was surprised to see Johnson quoted so many times by ‘reputable’ news organizations. I guess I still do not appreciate how far left these people are sometimes. Mac Ranger showed me the connection.
I am not connected like Mac Ranger is in the community, so I do a lot of my deduction based on limited information. I just get lucky and trip over things. So I did not see Johnson as relevant.
I am looking at what could stand up for prosecution. And as much as the Johnson conspiracy angle makes sense, I am not sure it would be the first line in the indictments. So for now I am still thinking indict on the leaking of classified information from Plame and her cohorts on the inside to Wilson, Johnson and the media. Unless Fitzgerald has the goods on Johnson and Plame – which he might.
AJ,
I am in the Wilson/Plame/Johnson?CIA Flunkies/Miller/Cooper are conspiracists’ camp. I usually pishaw conspiracy theories, even when they connect a dot or two, but this is just so common sense I cannot look the other way. And Wilson is a big mouth liar, and Johnson is a moonbat. They deserve whatever comes down the pike.
This is not to say I believe indictments will come mind you. I am of the cloth that this will also be a swept under the rug bipartisan hide the salami job. No pain from either side, though the Left will surely dry foul when Rove and Libby go unscathed.
But if I was a betting man, I would bet a Nickel that the Left goes down. Or nothing happens to anyone. I am covered.
Is Valerie Plame still on a paid leave of absence?
One thing I notice is that many of these Plame/CIA stories are not sourced because this investigation is all supposed to all be secret. And this prosecutor has a good reputation for keeping secrets.
Carl Rove’s lawyer is sometimes quoted on the record, and he says that Rove has not been told that he is a target.
I think when people are quoted on the record it is more likely that they are telling the truth. If they talk off-the-record and have been promised confidentiality, they can lie and never be exposed. And the journalist will not tell because he doesn’t want to admit he was fooled. And sometimes people lie for noble reasons: it is necessary to hide the truth.
I think that much of the information about the GJ investigation that is being reported could be deliberately false, leaked information to mislead the real targets.
Rove is always blamed for everything by the left. He was blamed for the “Rathergate” fabrications by some.
The far left even claimed that Rove sat in a fishing boat on Lake Eufala and told the car-bomber, burglar, embezzler, jailbird, and author/fabricator James Hatfield that George W. Bush was arrested with cocaine as a young man but that the arrest suppressed because of his father’s powerful connections.
(“Fortunate Son” by James Hatfield/Softskull Press)
Even though this author had served time in three penitentaries, the allegation, tacked onto the end of the book probably to boost sales, received massive coverage.
The car-bomber/author later killed himself rather than return to prison on new charges of computer fraud. He was still on parole for car-bombing when he supposedly sat in a boat and listened to Carl Rove tell him that Bush had been arrested for cocaine possession.
The radical who published this book, Sander Hicks, claimed that Carl Rove told Hatfield this story so that it would emerge from a discredited source, thereby discrediting the story. This seems sort of risky to me, since nobody else ever said that Bush used cocaine. Why say anything at all? And why wouldn’t Hatfield wonder why the President’s right-hand man would risk damaging his boss?
Since so many in the media like to write about Rove’s alleged conspiracies, making Rove look like the target, even if he isn’t, would distract the media away from investigating and reporting on the real story and the real target. That’s the purpose of a good cover story.
I don’t know if my speculation is correct, but it might be.
Or maybe this is just wishful thinking.
I support the President on this war. Totally.
I am glad he toppled Saddam, even if cleaning out the terrorists has been bloody. Saddam’s reign was bloody, too, even if it wasn’t on the news. The media does not seem to have been in Saddam’s dungeons, although they seem to know all about Abu Graib now. That was stupid, but nothing compared to Saddam.
Saddam used the billions in American oil dollars to repress his own people, so we have some responsibility to those people. It was wrong to pay that oil money to a murderer for so long. He was enslaving his own people and we were helping pay for it. The oil dollars should go for the benefit of the whole Iraqi nation, not just for Saddam’s aggressive designs on his own people and neighbors.
Bush is the President who finally said that we aren’t going to be complicit in this dictatorship. So finally it WAS NOT about the oil!
It was about enhancing the freedom and security of both the American and Iraqi people.
Thousands of American and Iraqi soldiers and innocent noncombatants have paid for America’s and Iraq’s security and freedom with their lives.
The Middle East will be much better off without him–as long as we stay the course and help the Iraqis set up a government and fight the terrorists.
As for the WMD, Saddam had used them on his own people. If he had no WMD at the moment we invaded, he could have made them again later. Saddam’s intentions were the problem, not his mementary capabilities.
I think the Administration believed there were WMDs, but that was not their only reason for attacking Iraq. They gave about 30 reasons.
I think that the Administration couldn’t really tell one of their main reasons for the war without tipping off the subjects of law enforcement investigations. WMD became the “cover story.” But they probably believed it, too.
It is my hypothesis that Saddam agents were involved in the 9-11 attack and the anthrax mailings, but that the government can’t really detail this case against Iraq to the American people without putting some of these terrorists on notice that we may be investigating them.
That’s why sometimes Cheney would hint about Iraqi involvement, but never really make the case.
There were probably plenty of people who helped the 9-11 terrorists and they still may be living in the U.S. Perhaps some are not Al Qaeda, but radical leftists and Saddam supporters who worked with Al Qaeda on the 9-11 attack.
Some may even be Americans. 9-11 may not have just been Al Qaeda, folks.
Just my speculation. I have no inside track and don’t work for the government. I just think the world of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.
I know they are really smart.
Have a nice day.