Wayne Madsen
CIA Plame Leak Case Expands To Pentagon
Tue Oct 18, 2005 15:39
64.140.158.144

 
CIA Plame Leak Case Expands To Pentagon
By Wayne Madsen
10-18-5

It has also been revealed that New York Times reporter Judith Miller
was granted a Secret Department of Defense clearance while she was
embedded with a U.S. military unit in Iraq searching for weapons of
mass destruction (weapons that were non-existent). Although the
identification of Joseph Wilson's wife as a CIA agent (contained in
a State Department memorandum carried aboard Air Force One on a trip
to Africa in July 2003) was classified Secret, Miller would not have
had a need to know for that information.

CIA Leakgate may be part of a larger intelligence war between the
CIA and Pentagon. Miller's status as a security cleared Defense
Department embedded reporter adds to the mix of intrigue

The involvement of the Pentagon in Miller's aspect of the CIA leak
matter may indicate that senior Pentagon officials have also been
called before the Grand Jury. As previously reported by WMR, the
Fitzgerald case has, for quite some time, dovetailed with the case
by Federal prosecutor Paul McNulty against Pentagon analyst Larry
Franklin and officials of the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC). The AIPAC case continues with other Pentagon
officials, Israeli government officials, and a "senior fellow at a
Washington think tank [specializing on Iran]" still under
investigation. Franklin is now a cooperating witness having agreed
to a plea bargain with McNulty. The links between the White House
and Pentagon neocon cells, as well as others within the U.S.
government, may be what Libby referred to in his letter to
Miller: "They [the aspen trees] turn in clusters, because their
roots connect them."

WMR can also report that CIA personnel like Valerie Plame and her
Brewster Jennings & Associates non-official cover (NOC) team were
not the only intelligence personnel targeted by the neo-con cells in
the White House and Pentagon. The Middle East group in the National
Security Agency's Signals Intelligence Directorate -- a group of
Arabic speaking linguists and area specialists involved in
collecting and analyzing signals intelligence from Iraq and other
countries in the region -- saw a number of its analysts and
linguists purged by NSA security on trumped up charges, simply
because they knew there were no WMDs in Iraq and they had access to
intercepts proving collusion between senior Bush administration and
military officers in the run up to the war.

If Fitgzerald's indictments include charges that White House
personnel violated the civil rights of Ambassador and Mrs. Wilson,
expect a deluge of civil suits being filed against the government by
well over a hundred intelligence, diplomatic, and military personnel
targeted for harassment and retaliation.

http://waynemadsenreport.com/
==================================

CIA LEAK: JUDITH MILLER
OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD ASSET!
http://www.apfn.org/APFN/JUDITH_MILLER.HTM


Among the many things left vague by Judith Miller's non-apology piece in the Times last Saturday is where exactly in her notes the words "Valerie Flame" appeared, since she acknowledges that the source of these information was not Scooter Libby.

According to a sources within the NYT who wishes to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, the "Valerie Flame" reference appeared in the July notes. Which means (assuming Judy is telling the truth -- and as the source noted, that's always a big assumption) that her attorney Bob Bennett had access to this information when he negotiated her deal with Patrick Fitzgerald.

The source also confirmed that her deal with Fitzgerald did, in fact, allow her to limit her testimony to Scooter Libby -- some had speculated that because Floyd Abrams and Bob Bennett had in interviews made more broad references to the fact that it was limited to anything Plame-related that Judy might, in fact, be skating around the corners of the truth again.

Which raises a couple of interesting points. It would appear that Fitzgerald thinks he has bigger fish to fry than the source of this other leak. But if her deal is still on, and Fitzgerald can only ask her questions about Libby, how does this comment (from Judy's article) get explained away?

Mr. Fitzgerald asked if I could recall discussing the Wilson-Plame connection with other sources. I said I had, though I could not recall any by name or when those conversations occurred.

Further, as Digby noted (in conversation) if Judy got her second leak from another source in July after the whole thing had gone full-blown and turned into a huge scandal, it makes her look even worse than a June leak would. While it might be possible that early on she wouldn't remember who told her something that at the moment was not that critical, by the time she was interviewing Libby in July Joe Wilson's op-ed piece had already appeared in the Times and the controversy was raging.

Judy has worked as a professional "journalist" (and I use that term loosely) for decades. What are the odds that at this point her memory goes all wonky?

posted by Jane Hamsher @ 11:23 AM

http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/

 

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