Reality-Based Engineering: Been Trying To Avoid Plamegate, But...

Monday, July 18, 2005

Been Trying To Avoid Plamegate, But...

This article (reprinted) from NY Newsday (via Kos) immediately after the Novak outing in 2003 pretty much has the smoking gun and refutes all 2005 spin from Rove, WH Press Office and Novak himself (as I recall). Novak's quotes from immediately after:

Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information.
"I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

And, to refute the claims that it was Plame herself that sent her husband to Niger. Novak says they said:

Novak reported that his "two senior administration officials" told him that it was Plame who suggested sending her husband, Wilson, to Niger.

CIA says what really happened:

A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked "alongside" the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger. But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment.

"They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising," he said. "There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason," he said. "I can't figure out what it could be."

But, from the beginning, we know what the issue was (quoteth Wilson):

Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's employment, said the release to the press of her relationship to him and even her maiden name was an attempt to intimidate others like him from talking about Bush administration intelligence failures. "It's a shot across the bow to these people, that if you talk we'll take your family and drag them through the mud as well," he said in an interview.