Real outing of real CIA agents that could cost real lives — the NYT
The WSJ nails it on Rove — here’s a link to a public file of the piece. Excerpt:
Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real “whistleblower” in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He’s the one who warned Time’s Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson’s credibility. He’s the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn’t a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove.
Media chants aside, there’s no evidence that Mr. Rove broke any laws in telling reporters that Ms. Plame may have played a role in her husband’s selection for a 2002 mission to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking uranium ore in Niger. … But it appears Mr. Rove didn’t even know Ms. Plame’s name and had only heard about her work at Langley from other journalists.
On the “no underlying crime” point, moreover, no less than the New York Times and Washington Post now agree. So do the 36 major news organizations that filed a legal brief in March aimed at keeping Mr. Cooper and the New York Times’s Judith Miller out of jail.
Meanwhile, John Hinderaker points out the hypocrisy of the NYT’s harsh criticism of the Bush administration’s “playing that unsavory game with the C.I.A. officer Valerie Plame Wilson,” in the words of its editorial.
A couple of months ago, as detailed in our piece on the matter, we pointed out a really “unsavory game” being played by the Times itself. In the words of Frederick Turner at TCS: “Scott Shane, Stephen Grey and Margot Williams in the New York Times revealed the use of aircraft charter companies by the CIA and other intelligence agencies, together with specific aircraft markings, bases, routes, and other information helpful to identification of such flights.” Here are some of the operational details the NYT saw fit to point out:
If you click on our prior article, you will see a larger and legible size of the amazing graphic just above (called “Secret Fleet”) — detailing the intertwining corporate arrangements by which the CIA sought to mask its involement in the charter companies, and make it difficult for enemies to understand the operations being planned and executed. In a powerful conclusion to his piece, Mr. Turner in TCS says this:
If the authors were just publishing their article to get a chance at a Pulitzer, I really have no moral quarrel with them at all, any more than I would have with a crocodile that eats a child or a raccoon that raids my larder. However, if they do have a moral identity as human beings, they should know that, if a certain civilian plane comes down over an unnamed Middle Eastern country, and all the US personnel aboard are killed, there is one compatriot who will regard them as murderers.
We say now what we said then: there is no story unless the editors approve, and, perhaps in the case of an NYT piece of this sensitivity, senior management itself. No American purpose was served by that shameful story. Perhaps the Rove affair should cause the NYT’s own record to be examined in more detail.
July 13th, 2005 at 6:26 pm
New York Times = Quisling Headquaters
July 14th, 2005 at 6:03 am
This may be the reason that Fitzgerald is so
interested in Ms. Miller and why the NY Times is going
to such great lengths to conceal their conduct.
Apparently, Ms. Miller impeded and obstructed a terror
cell investigation in Texas. She tipped off the terror
group to an imminent raid enabling them to destroy
evidence. According to Scylla and Charybdis, (unable
to confirm citation with an archive search) the Wash. Post reported
the following:
Washington Post Dec. 3, 2001:
“Times reporter Judith Miller telephoned officials
with the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and
Development, a Texas-based charity accused of being a
front for Palestinian terrorists, and asked for a
comment about what she said was the government’s
probable crackdown on the group. U.S. officials said
this conversation and Miller’s article on the subject
in the Times on Dec. 4 increased the likelihood that
the foundation destroyed or hid records before a
hastily organized raid by agents that day.”
If this attribution is accurate, it looks like Ms.
Miller and the NY Times did a real boo boo here.
Suffice to say, were first amendment courtesies and
protections not afforded to Ms. Miller and the NY
Times she would have been charged with obstruction of
justice or perhaps worse.
Specific intent is not required for this charge.
Refer: 1723 Protection of Government Processes –
State of Mind Requirement –18 U.S.C. § 1503)
“Some courts have required only that the defendant
“knowingly and intentionally undertook an action from
which an obstruction of justice was a reasonably
foreseeable result.” United States v. Thomas, 916 F.2d
647, 651 (11th Cir. 1990). See also United States v.
Saget, 991 F.2d 702, 713 (11th Cir.) (government not
required to prove defendant had the specific purpose
of obstructing justice).
Notwithstanding the legal questions involved here I
think there would be a great deal of concern about
this matter from many quarters. The timing of this
misconduct was most unfortunate. If public awareness
of this fact had been piqued in the immediate post
9/11 environment the NY Times probably would have
ceased to exist. The specter of this possiblity could
account for the inexplicable conduct of the NY Times
management in handling Mr. Fitzgerald.
This revalation makes the exposure of their
coordination with the DNC look rather tame by
comparison.