Richard Armitage finally fessed up about his "leaky" meeting with columnist Robert Novak.
He says he casually mentioned that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent.... yet we are to believe, that armed with this chatty bit of intelligence, seasoned journalist Novak charged off to write a column that outed a CIA operative, and unleashed a major political controversy that led to the indictment of Dick Cheney's chief of staff.
Two and a half years of silence later, Armitage swears that he is now coughing up the hairball of truth, admitting he was Novak's source. But, hairball truths are fuzzy things.
"Novak Accuses Plame Source of Distortion".... in his column yesterday, Novak disputes that that Armitage made an inadvertent remark about Plame's ties to the CIA, "Armitage's statements 'obscured what he really did'.... Armitage linked her directly to her husband's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger and suggested the disclosure would be a good item for Novak's column." (Washington Post)
Yes, that right.... "suggested the disclosure would be a good item for Novak's column."
At the time, the White House was livid at Plame's husband who had been sent to Niger to investigate whether Iraq was trying to buy nuclear weapons material there. He subsequently wrote a column accusing the White House of delibertly twisting intelligence about the Iraqi program to justify a U.S. invasion.
Armitage asserts he made his comments "in an offhand manner and that he did not know why Plame's husband was sent to Niger."
And, if you believe that, there's some Iraqi WMD I want to sell you.....
No comments:
Post a Comment