Ahmed Amr
" When are you going to admit you were wrong? "
Sun Oct 26 17:41:19 2003
64.140.158.85

October15 ,2003

Don't you dare Plame me again
Plame and the great American leak machine

By: Ahmed Amr*
http://www.amin.org/eng/uncat/2003/oct/oct15.html

A READER ASKS : " When are you going to admit you were wrong? " We've received a number of such inquiries (not all quite so polite) about our position on the war in Iraq, particularly from readers who were disappointed in our prewar stance.

Washington Post Editorial (Iraq in Review10 /12/2003)

Frankly, I would love to get a peek at the ‘not so polite' letters being sent to the Washington Post and other media monopolies. If you care to read the rest of this inane apologia, go ahead. But the long and short of it is that the Post still maintains that they did not deliberately mislead their readers. If you read between the lines, what we have here is a failure to communicate the basic truth. Not just about Iraq, but about the Washington Post, and about the lavish quarters they assign to their in-house war party and about their passion for using anonymous senior officials to leak neo-con war party agendas.

Due to the need for brevity, this article or pamphlet will only attempt to address the Washington Post's dominant position in the leak industry, their role in promoting the Iraq war and their willing collaboration with the ‘evil-doers' who outed Valerie Plame.

Let me begin by asserting that there ought to be an anti-trust law against a few favored media monopolies controlling the leak industry in Washington. Since that is unlikely to happen anytime soon, a strike against their media products might teach them a few valuable lessons about how to operate responsible leak machines.

In a media environment driven by the imperatives of a24 -hour news cycle, successive administrations have anointed a handful of corporate media giants as the high priests of the leak. They get access to the senior administration officials who insist on anonymity. They get the exclusive interviews. At any press conference, they get to ask the questions. The same media monopolies get the first taste of the latest carefully engineered sound bite. When the folks at Foggy Bottom or the Pentagon want to float a trial balloon, they make sure the wind is blowing in the direction of the front door of the Washington post. The hot air is then carefully calibrated for a precision landing.

All these privileges go right to the bottom line of the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, FOX and CNN. If ever there was a blatant case of corporate welfare, it can be found in the incestuous relationship of the media monopolies and the American Republic.

State controlled media outlets have no choice but to give the gray appearance and predictable substance of a Soviet era Pravda. The neo-conservative cabal, over the course of the last decade, has given us cause to worry about an entirely new political phenomenon. What we have now is a media controlled super power, a post-Pravda neo-orwellian reality that would make Orwell spin in his grave. Welcome to America.CON.

When America.CON decides to go to war, Donald Graham and Rupert Murdoch stand to gain. The war against Iraq might well be the first war staged for Reality TV. As the ‘Shock and Awe' phase of the campaign was getting launched, CNN's Aaron Brown smiled into the camera and rhapsodized about what a ‘perfect moment' it was for journalists. FOX had a ‘special' story about the oldest rank and file Marine who couldn't wait to ‘blow things up in the desert'.

When twenty million people around the world staged history's largest peace demonstrations, a Fox reporter covered the story from the Capitol Mall after the rally was over. He showed up just in time to report on the litter left behind. Murdoch's morons left the impression that these peace-loving hordes had the audacity to invade America's sacred capital for the sole purpose of trashing its pristine environment.

All the same, Fox ratings went through the roof and profit margins expanded. For years to come, Time Warner still be marketing tons of ‘exclusive never before seen uncensored' footage in the wee hours of the morning. The Washington Post volunteered for the role of grand marshal in this jingoistic parade, providing FOX and CNN with erudite commentary from their resident war machine pundits. Krauthammer and his neo-con brethren form The Weekly Standard, a Murdoch publication, were all over the cable talk shows spreading epidemic yellow war fever.

Now, if you believe the mass media morons were motivated by an excessive dose of patriotism, you should consider buying my lifetime pass for a tunnel under the Atlantic. I need to unload it because my car insurance just ran out. If you already have a lifetime pass to the Trans-Atlantic, please consider reading another article.

This is for the rest of you.

Consider the latest felony leak that exposed the identity of a CIA agent. Working on a tip from two senior administration officials, Robert Novak wrote his infamous article identifying Ambassador Wilson's wife as a CIA operative. A few months later, a scandal gone cold was resurrected. The CIA finally got around to demanding a Justice Department investigation. Ashcroft was now expected to investigate the identity of the two felons who had exposed a highly valued undercover agent specializing in weapons of mass destruction. Apparently, it had taken two months for Tenant to get a clear message from some very angry rank and file spooks.

Not long after Tenant made his move, a front-page story in Novak's very own Washington Post, contained another leak from yet another ‘senior administration official'. In the leak business, timing is everything. This particular unidentified official had the odious task of leaking on the leakers. Is there no honor among leakers?

This third leaker reported that the two anonymous ‘Novak' felons had exposed the CIA agent to five or six other journalists. That adds up to three leakers and six of the monopoly media lads, without counting Dana Priest and Mike Allen. None of the six anonymous journalists have yet to surface. Although Andrea Mitchell of NBC has been mentioned.

Besides, no one can be certain if they were a dirty half dozen or a dirty dozen or more. These days, Washington is a city inhabited by invisible anonymous leak gangs. But it must be obvious, at this stage of the game, that revealing the identity of these journalists and their monopoly media mother ships would cause no harm. Certainly nothing close to the harm inflicted on Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV and Valerie Plame.

Does anyone in Beltway circles recall Martha Mitchell's role in exposing the Watergate scandal? My point is that, unless all eleven of these characters are living as hermits, there are more than eight journalists and three leakers involved in this caper. One can only hope that some of their spouses or significant others have a mouth like Martha's. And we can always depend on Benjamin Franklin's wisdom that “three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead”.

Moving on. Novak wrote his article long after it became clear that Joseph Wilson was right on the mark. The intelligence community had already verified that the ‘yellow cake' uranium story was a blatant fraud. By his own account, Novak wanted to make the point that Wilson was unqualified to come up with correct conclusions. The inference is, if it had not been for nepotism at the CIA, a different more ‘qualified' investigator might have arrived at the wrong conclusions. This would have had the desired effect of giving more weight to the war agenda promoted by the Likudnik cabal in Cheney's office and the Pentagon's Office for Special Plans.

Novak was apparently distraught that the administration had made the mistake of sending a ‘liberal' to Niger. The kind of liberal who had donated money to the Bush campaign. The same kind of liberal who served with honor as the last senior American diplomat to leave Baghdad before the First Gulf War.

The real problem Novak had with the good Ambassador was that Wilson didn't seem to understand that the purpose of his Niger mission was to arrive at the wrong conclusion. Further, when the administration insisted on sticking to the ‘yellow cake' scam in a major presidential speech, Wilson had the audacity to break his silence. By Novak's measure, Wilson IV deserved retribution for not demonstrating loyalty to Bush II and his determination to mislead the nation into war.

Novak now claims that outing Wilson's wife was no big deal. He had first confirmed the story with the CIA, who asked him to put a lid on it. The unidentified CIA source made it clear that such a leak might cause ‘difficulties' if Plame wanted to travel abroad. In any case, his source at the CIA volunteered; Plame would never get another foreign assignment. A little translation should help. Valerie Plame was already getting an unhealthy dose of punishment for having a spousal relationship with Ambassador Wilson. Novak ignored the warning and went ahead with a mission designed to cause more collateral damage to the Wilson clan. It was a revenge thing that we all understand and the Post editors gave Novak plenty of space to administer the punishment.

The most baffling thing about this whole affair is that Novak is not a neo-conservative and was adamantly opposed to the war. That explains why a number of authentic conservatives and libertarians like Patrick Buchanan and Justin Raymondo are circling the wagon to protect Novak.

In a number of articles before the invasion of Iraq, Novak made it clear that the war had a lot to do with the Likudnik vision of reengineer the Middle East for the greater glory of Ariel Sharon. Like most traditional conservatives and Libertarians, Novak subscribes to an ‘America First' agenda. As opposed to the Israeli First cabal that masquerades as neo-cons. These Likudnik fanatics, led by Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton, Abrams and Libby consider it a profitable transaction when Israel gains an inch and America loses a yard.

From here, things get real ugly. On October1 ,2003 , again in the Washington Post, Novak wrote that ‘the published story that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me is simply untrue'. Novak failed to mention that this ‘simply untrue' statement was a front-page Washington Post story by Mike Allen and Dana Priest. Now, it is a fair assumption that all three Post journalists occasionally share the same dining facilities. So, Allen and Priest might very well be sitting two tables over from Novak devouring a pastrami sandwich. Why doesn't Novak just walk over to them and ask them for the beef or offer to grease their hair with a little mustard? Besides, Don't they hang around water coolers at the Post?

If Novak is not a neo-con, Dana Priest might very well have such affiliations. It is worth noting that, until2002 , she was a ‘guest scholar' at a taxpayer-supported outfit called the United States Institute for Peace. Sitting on the board of this Orwelian neo-con scam is one Harriet Zimmerman, the current vice president of AIPAC, the mother ship of the Israeli lobby. Douglas Feith is listed as a former director. According to Jim Lobe, Feith's law partner in Israel is a spokesman for the settler movement. Another current director of this ‘Peace Institute' is the xenophobic one-man hate machine and ‘total war' advocate, Daniel Pipes.

The Pipes/Priest connection to the United States Institute for Peace offers an intriguing case study of the extent of Washington Post influence on Beltway politics. It also demonstrates the strength of neo-con influence at the Washington Post. Appointments to the board of the United States Institute for Peace must receive Senate confirmation. When Pipes' nomination came up, a number of Senators reviewed his most blatantly racist writings. Based on their findings, the Senate of the United States of America, in a highly unusual move, declined to confirm Pipes. A few days later, Bush got his marching orders from Charles Krauthammer, the arch neo-con. In his regular Washington Post column, Krauthammer advised the president to ignore the Senators and appoint Pipes during the congressional recess. As it was written, so it was done. Bush always follows the advice of the Sharon worshipping media operatives at the Post.

Neo-cons, all fifty of them, firmly believe that they are smarter than the rest of the country, understand the world better than their fellow Americans and know how best to finesse the details of America's foreign policy to suit the state they worship, Israel.

If you've never met a real live neo-conservative, don't fret. Most Americans have also never met a neo-con, don't know what a neo-con is, don't care to know what a neo-con is and will probably never encounter another American who gives a rat's ass about neo-cons. However, it might serve them well to take a little notice of what neo-cons do to the rest of us.

Take a look over your shoulder at Max Boot working on his latest neo-con assignment. This former Wall Street Journal editor is busy dismissing the seventy per cent of Americans who want an independent investigation of the Plame affair. In an insolent article in the Los Angeles Times he dismissed the public's interest in getting to the bottom of this scandal. Old Boot advised America that the whole matter ‘was a complicated incident that no one outside the Beltway understands'. In the same article (LA Times,10 /2/2003), Boot couldn't resist taking a slap at the CIA agents who want to make a fuss about the two felons who outed one of their comrades. He opined, in an accent loaded with disdain, that “the failures of the intelligence community constitute a major scandal that's not getting nearly enough attention”.

Here is a little good news for Max. Most Americans agree with him that they don't have a clue about operating Beltway machinery. Yet they instinctively understand that Ashcroft is not a suitable candidate for this mission and that his only purpose will be to put this scandal to sleep. He is now performing a special dance called the Ashcroft trot. One step forward in the fall, another step forward by spring, two steps back by late summer, and two steps to the extreme right after the election.

Now comes the bad news for Max Boot. A clear majority of Americans will continue to insist on an independent legal process to probe the Plame affair. And if the Beltway machinery gets in the way, they might very well react with the passion of a Luddite mob.

As for intelligence failures, Max Boot certainly must know that they were deliberately engineered ‘failures' that resulted from the cherry picking of solid CIA and DIA intelligence findings. After all, it was his neo-con buddies, Libby and Feith and Wolfowitz, who insisted on planting the cherry orchards at the Pentagon and in Cheney's front yard. The only part of the intelligence community that needs intense scrutiny is the Office of Special Plans, an intelligence unit set up by Wolfowitz and headed by Abram Shulsky. It is common knowledge among Max Boot's Beltway crowd that the mission of this unusual ‘intelligence' unit was to debunk, degrade and dumb down solid intelligence findings from the CIA, the DIA and the State Department.

Max's boot is treading on wafer thin ice. It would be a cakewalk to investigate the intelligence failures of the dozen analysts who staffed the OSP. Any reader familiar with the work of Karen Kwiatkawski or Jim Lobe will quickly discover that most of these intelligence ‘experts' were associated in some manner with the Israeli Lobby and the neo-cons.

Jim Lobe has concluded that the “The CIA's exclusion from this network could help explain why Cheney and his National Security Adviser, Lewis Libby, a long time associate of Wolfowitz, frequently visited the agency in what analysts widely regarded as pressure to conform to OSP assessments”. Kwiatawski, a recently retired ASAF lieutenant Colonel, also reveals in her expose that the OSP regularly leaked their intelligence ‘findings' to their Likudnik media operatives. Her list