secrets secrets
07-17-2005, 07:38 PM
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secrets secrets
In light of the brewing 'scandal' around the issue of revealing the identity of a CIA operative, I have a question, that perhaps somone more knowledgable in the field can answer for me:
It is clear that it is against the law to identify a covert CIA agent. Where does the reporter who makes it PUBLIC stand in all this? How much better is that?
It is clear that it is against the law to identify a covert CIA agent. Where does the reporter who makes it PUBLIC stand in all this? How much better is that?
07-17-2005, 08:12 PM
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Either the press is allowed to report anything they want without fear of retribution or they cry about constitutional rights being taken away...
07-17-2005, 08:16 PM
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Unless the reporter has high security clearance (probably no reporter has this) at the CIA all he is doing is repeating what a person who has clearance has said. If the person with clearance tells a reporter it can only be for traitorous reasons, the reporter is just reporting. The guilty one is at the top of the chain, most likely one of the prez's closest confidants.
My bet is the original outing of Plame was done by Dick Cheney himself by telling it to his lower downs with instructions to spread it to the media.
My bet is the original outing of Plame was done by Dick Cheney himself by telling it to his lower downs with instructions to spread it to the media.
07-17-2005, 08:33 PM
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...yea, but even if the reporter is just repeating/reporting it, the reporter is knowingly doing damage. Just think about it, if you tell me something secret, while that in itself may be illegal, no damage iis done yet, till I trumpet it to the whole world. Is there not even shame in some of these reporters, or sense of patriotic duty? They do not care that they are damaging our/their country? The one that gives them the very freedom to have their jobs? I would bet anything Walter Cronkite would not have done it.
As far as the actual case is goin, I really do not know enough of the facts to pass judgement, nor do I wish to. I do have my opinion about the credibility of some of the people but that is not the topic here.
As far as the actual case is goin, I really do not know enough of the facts to pass judgement, nor do I wish to. I do have my opinion about the credibility of some of the people but that is not the topic here.
07-17-2005, 08:43 PM
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I understand the question, but this "scandal" is nothing more than a weak attempt to discredit Bush. Carl Rove was not the one to "leaked" the identity of the CIA agent. This was quietly reported this weekend, but no one was listening to the news except me I guess.
Can't we just focus on the war and how we can help the families of the service men and women serving?
This political crap hurts my head when we have people in harms way.
Can't we just focus on the war and how we can help the families of the service men and women serving?
This political crap hurts my head when we have people in harms way.
07-17-2005, 09:40 PM
#7
It's my pot and I'll stir it if I want to. If you're not careful, I'll stir your's as well!
Does this help????
One of the most efficient tools in the hands of a skilled propagandist is the ability to build a wall of disinformation around a particular fact, insulating it from examination without first having to breach the outer walls, first.
The key to seeing through propaganda is to first understand how it works.
'Knowledge' tells you how to start a car. You turn the key. 'Understanding' tells you what processes are involved in starting a car, telling you to give the engine time to circulate the oil before revving the engine, what happens if you pump the gas and why, things like that.
Taken together, the person with both knowledge and understanding makes wiser decisions when trying to start a clunker on a cold morning, if you can follow the analogy.
There is a disinformation campaign being waged by the media and the political left against Karl Rove for allegedly revealing the name of an undercover CIA agent to two reporters. The campaign itself is worthy of examination.
The Democrats and their allies in the press have been throwing around such words as 'traitor' to describe Rove and 'treason' to describe his having, 'revealed the classified name of an undercover CIA agent' who was, to quote Dr. Howard Dean, 'fighting on the front lines of the war on terror' until Rove 'destroyed her career'.
Former ambassador Joe Wilson, has demanded that Rove be fired to 'uphold the dignity' of the president's word when he said he would fire anybody leaking information from his office.
One needs to view Wilson's comments in perspective; the 9/11 Commission concluded that Wilson's testimony was not trustworthy and was discounted accordingly. Wilson claimed he was sent to Niger by Dick Cheney. That was a lie. Wilson testified that his wife had nothing to do with his appointment. That was also a documented lie.
The point isn't Rove; his case is pretty straightforward. In testimony given almost two years ago, Rove freely admitted that he spoke with two journalists, Matt Cooper and Judith Miller.
At the time of his testimony, Rove also signed a blanket waiver releasing any journalist he ever spoke with, on or off the record, from any agreements of confidentiality.
That release was in effect a year and a half before Miller and Cooper claimed 'journalistic privilege' -- and got real famous real fast. (Watch for a new book called, "I Was a Prisoner of Conscience" -- coming to a Barnes and Noble near you.)
Rove also freely admitted that he mentioned that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, although he didn't name her by name.
And it was in the context of explaining how in the world anyone as hostile to the administration as Joe Wilson could have been sent, as Wilson himself claimed, (in another lie) at the request of the Vice-President.
Rove simply said he wasn't sent by Cheney, but by the CIA, where Rove said his wife 'apparently' was in a position of authority and could have influenced his appointment.
Contrary to the claim of 'political revenge' Rove and both journalists agree that Rove didn't call them, it was the other way around. Both were looking for background on a story that Rove was waving them off. And as it unfolded, the story was as false as Rove told them it was.
Remember Bob Novak? He was the one who actually named Valerie Plame, by name, two days later, in his syndicated column. Although Cooper and Miller faced jail for not revealing their source, nobody has paid much attention to Novak, or his sources.
One or two die-hard liberals have gone out on a limb and claimed Rove was Novak's source, too, but those in the know kept quiet. Their silence speaks volumes.
Novak was no story at all, but Miller and Cooper became so important to the special prosecutor that he was willing to throw them in jail unless they disclosed their confidential source. He wasn't expecting it to be Rove.
Rove had already given a blanket release from any promise of confidentiality. He'd already told the special prosecutor what he told Miller and Cooper, eighteen months ago.
But Miller is still in jail, and Cooper's naming of Karl Rove as his source to avoid jail, is weak, at best.
Add to that the fact that Plame was no longer a covert agent 'on the front lines in the war on terror' but just another Langley bureaucrat and you really have to stretch to find anything resembling 'treason' in Rove's 'disclosure'.
The only bomb remaining in the liberal's arsenal was defused -- that Rove revealed classified information -- when it was disclosed that Rove learned of Plame's CIA role from Bob Novak.
Bob Novak, the journalist who first revealed Valerie Plame's name to the public, didn't learn it from Karl Rove . . . Novak TOLD Karl Rove!
Rove testified to that effect eighteen months ago -- eliminating the possibility that this is some new White House spin on the facts.
The truth has been out there, all the time. Rove's accusers know it, but even a false accusation leaves an impression.
And an accusation so obviously and patently false kicks in the principle of The Big Lie, whereby anything that outrageous MUST be true or 'they' wouldn't dare say so.
Note how the walls of disinformation are constructed. In order to get to the truth, which is that Rove simply told two reporters what he had been told by a third reporter, one must systematically dismantle the layers of lies surrounding it all.
Before you can get to Rove, you have to dismantle the layers of lies around Joe Wilson. That Wilson lied with he said Dick Cheney sent him.
To know that Rove was correcting the record, you have to know WHERE the record was distorted. You won't find out from the mainstream propaganda machine.
You have to dismantle the wall of disinformation around Valerie Plame. That she wasn't a covert agent.
That she and husband Joe were so 'protective' of her identity that they were the subjects of a pre-disclosure Vanity Fair photo spread. That she pulled strings to get Wilson sent to Niger in the first place.
And that the reason she did so was so Wilson could actively work against the policy of his country during time of war.
But Henry Waxman called ROVE a traitor. Howard Dean said Plame was a 'secret CIA agent fighting on the front lines on the war on terror'. If any of that were true, then any explanation in defense of Rove is irrelevant. So those walls have to be breached first.
You have to breach the disinformation wall that says Rove was motivated out of political revenge. Although all the evidence says otherwise, it sounds logical.
Wilson did make it much more difficult for America to make its case for war to either the UN or America's domestic critics. It would seem that revenge, however petty and vindictive, would be a reasonable motive.
Which is why the mainstream has said little about the fact that Rove didn't call the reporters in question, they called him. For it to be 'revenge' given those circumstances is ridiculous. They called and asked him directly; Why would Cheney send Wilson? And if not Cheney, then who?
Since Rove learned of Plame's CIA role from Bob Novak, to argue Rove knowingly revealed classified information collapses, and the answer to the question was Plame.
Leave Plame out and Rove is left with, "Cheney didn't send him. Don't know who did."
Now, to the point. How many ordinary, workaday Americans have either the time or the inclination to clamber over all the walls of disinformation necessary to get to the actual truth, as we have here?
Who has the time to research Joe Wilson, pore over the special prosecutor's subpoenas, sort through the disinformation about Wilson, Plame, their involvement in a plot to use the resources of the US government to undermine the policy of that same government, or the minute details of how the reporters interacted with Rove during this alleged 'disclosure'?
Who has the time or the inclination to accumulate all these facts, including the fact that Rove waived any promise of confidentiality more than eighteen months ago, releasing every reporter who ever spoke to him on background to name him as their source?
Instead, they hear that Karl Rove revealed the identity of a covert CIA agent fighting on the front lines in the war on terror, ruining her career, as part of some petty, vindictive effort at political revenge. And they join the chorus already shouting, "Off with his head."
What is the net effect? An administration totally distracted from the existential threat facing it from all sides.
While resources are tied up with damage control efforts, domestic or foreign policy agenda items become secondary, making the administration appear to be what it HAS become, adrift, forced into dangerous compromises, and losing support on every side.
The Bush administration has been in power for more than five years, and this is the closest thing to a scandal in all that time.
Yet it has been rendered all but powerless by the constant drip, drip, drip of false accusations and news plants forcing it to first, deny the accusations, and, having denied them, prove why they are false.
By the time it has breached the walls of disinformation, all anybody can remember is that Bush lied about something. Somehow.
Here is how powerful propaganda is. Somebody out there will come away seeing me as a blind defender of the Bush administration, and that is all they will take away.
They'll miss the fact that what is true has no political affiliation. And what is false ALWAYS does. They'll miss the fact that a weak and distracted administration during a war that threatens our existence like no war in history is NOT a good thing for America, regardless of one's party affiliation.
And they will add another distraction. That's how propaganda works.
One of the most efficient tools in the hands of a skilled propagandist is the ability to build a wall of disinformation around a particular fact, insulating it from examination without first having to breach the outer walls, first.
The key to seeing through propaganda is to first understand how it works.
'Knowledge' tells you how to start a car. You turn the key. 'Understanding' tells you what processes are involved in starting a car, telling you to give the engine time to circulate the oil before revving the engine, what happens if you pump the gas and why, things like that.
Taken together, the person with both knowledge and understanding makes wiser decisions when trying to start a clunker on a cold morning, if you can follow the analogy.
There is a disinformation campaign being waged by the media and the political left against Karl Rove for allegedly revealing the name of an undercover CIA agent to two reporters. The campaign itself is worthy of examination.
The Democrats and their allies in the press have been throwing around such words as 'traitor' to describe Rove and 'treason' to describe his having, 'revealed the classified name of an undercover CIA agent' who was, to quote Dr. Howard Dean, 'fighting on the front lines of the war on terror' until Rove 'destroyed her career'.
Former ambassador Joe Wilson, has demanded that Rove be fired to 'uphold the dignity' of the president's word when he said he would fire anybody leaking information from his office.
One needs to view Wilson's comments in perspective; the 9/11 Commission concluded that Wilson's testimony was not trustworthy and was discounted accordingly. Wilson claimed he was sent to Niger by Dick Cheney. That was a lie. Wilson testified that his wife had nothing to do with his appointment. That was also a documented lie.
The point isn't Rove; his case is pretty straightforward. In testimony given almost two years ago, Rove freely admitted that he spoke with two journalists, Matt Cooper and Judith Miller.
At the time of his testimony, Rove also signed a blanket waiver releasing any journalist he ever spoke with, on or off the record, from any agreements of confidentiality.
That release was in effect a year and a half before Miller and Cooper claimed 'journalistic privilege' -- and got real famous real fast. (Watch for a new book called, "I Was a Prisoner of Conscience" -- coming to a Barnes and Noble near you.)
Rove also freely admitted that he mentioned that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, although he didn't name her by name.
And it was in the context of explaining how in the world anyone as hostile to the administration as Joe Wilson could have been sent, as Wilson himself claimed, (in another lie) at the request of the Vice-President.
Rove simply said he wasn't sent by Cheney, but by the CIA, where Rove said his wife 'apparently' was in a position of authority and could have influenced his appointment.
Contrary to the claim of 'political revenge' Rove and both journalists agree that Rove didn't call them, it was the other way around. Both were looking for background on a story that Rove was waving them off. And as it unfolded, the story was as false as Rove told them it was.
Remember Bob Novak? He was the one who actually named Valerie Plame, by name, two days later, in his syndicated column. Although Cooper and Miller faced jail for not revealing their source, nobody has paid much attention to Novak, or his sources.
One or two die-hard liberals have gone out on a limb and claimed Rove was Novak's source, too, but those in the know kept quiet. Their silence speaks volumes.
Novak was no story at all, but Miller and Cooper became so important to the special prosecutor that he was willing to throw them in jail unless they disclosed their confidential source. He wasn't expecting it to be Rove.
Rove had already given a blanket release from any promise of confidentiality. He'd already told the special prosecutor what he told Miller and Cooper, eighteen months ago.
But Miller is still in jail, and Cooper's naming of Karl Rove as his source to avoid jail, is weak, at best.
Add to that the fact that Plame was no longer a covert agent 'on the front lines in the war on terror' but just another Langley bureaucrat and you really have to stretch to find anything resembling 'treason' in Rove's 'disclosure'.
The only bomb remaining in the liberal's arsenal was defused -- that Rove revealed classified information -- when it was disclosed that Rove learned of Plame's CIA role from Bob Novak.
Bob Novak, the journalist who first revealed Valerie Plame's name to the public, didn't learn it from Karl Rove . . . Novak TOLD Karl Rove!
Rove testified to that effect eighteen months ago -- eliminating the possibility that this is some new White House spin on the facts.
The truth has been out there, all the time. Rove's accusers know it, but even a false accusation leaves an impression.
And an accusation so obviously and patently false kicks in the principle of The Big Lie, whereby anything that outrageous MUST be true or 'they' wouldn't dare say so.
Note how the walls of disinformation are constructed. In order to get to the truth, which is that Rove simply told two reporters what he had been told by a third reporter, one must systematically dismantle the layers of lies surrounding it all.
Before you can get to Rove, you have to dismantle the layers of lies around Joe Wilson. That Wilson lied with he said Dick Cheney sent him.
To know that Rove was correcting the record, you have to know WHERE the record was distorted. You won't find out from the mainstream propaganda machine.
You have to dismantle the wall of disinformation around Valerie Plame. That she wasn't a covert agent.
That she and husband Joe were so 'protective' of her identity that they were the subjects of a pre-disclosure Vanity Fair photo spread. That she pulled strings to get Wilson sent to Niger in the first place.
And that the reason she did so was so Wilson could actively work against the policy of his country during time of war.
But Henry Waxman called ROVE a traitor. Howard Dean said Plame was a 'secret CIA agent fighting on the front lines on the war on terror'. If any of that were true, then any explanation in defense of Rove is irrelevant. So those walls have to be breached first.
You have to breach the disinformation wall that says Rove was motivated out of political revenge. Although all the evidence says otherwise, it sounds logical.
Wilson did make it much more difficult for America to make its case for war to either the UN or America's domestic critics. It would seem that revenge, however petty and vindictive, would be a reasonable motive.
Which is why the mainstream has said little about the fact that Rove didn't call the reporters in question, they called him. For it to be 'revenge' given those circumstances is ridiculous. They called and asked him directly; Why would Cheney send Wilson? And if not Cheney, then who?
Since Rove learned of Plame's CIA role from Bob Novak, to argue Rove knowingly revealed classified information collapses, and the answer to the question was Plame.
Leave Plame out and Rove is left with, "Cheney didn't send him. Don't know who did."
Now, to the point. How many ordinary, workaday Americans have either the time or the inclination to clamber over all the walls of disinformation necessary to get to the actual truth, as we have here?
Who has the time to research Joe Wilson, pore over the special prosecutor's subpoenas, sort through the disinformation about Wilson, Plame, their involvement in a plot to use the resources of the US government to undermine the policy of that same government, or the minute details of how the reporters interacted with Rove during this alleged 'disclosure'?
Who has the time or the inclination to accumulate all these facts, including the fact that Rove waived any promise of confidentiality more than eighteen months ago, releasing every reporter who ever spoke to him on background to name him as their source?
Instead, they hear that Karl Rove revealed the identity of a covert CIA agent fighting on the front lines in the war on terror, ruining her career, as part of some petty, vindictive effort at political revenge. And they join the chorus already shouting, "Off with his head."
What is the net effect? An administration totally distracted from the existential threat facing it from all sides.
While resources are tied up with damage control efforts, domestic or foreign policy agenda items become secondary, making the administration appear to be what it HAS become, adrift, forced into dangerous compromises, and losing support on every side.
The Bush administration has been in power for more than five years, and this is the closest thing to a scandal in all that time.
Yet it has been rendered all but powerless by the constant drip, drip, drip of false accusations and news plants forcing it to first, deny the accusations, and, having denied them, prove why they are false.
By the time it has breached the walls of disinformation, all anybody can remember is that Bush lied about something. Somehow.
Here is how powerful propaganda is. Somebody out there will come away seeing me as a blind defender of the Bush administration, and that is all they will take away.
They'll miss the fact that what is true has no political affiliation. And what is false ALWAYS does. They'll miss the fact that a weak and distracted administration during a war that threatens our existence like no war in history is NOT a good thing for America, regardless of one's party affiliation.
And they will add another distraction. That's how propaganda works.
Trending Topics
07-18-2005, 07:07 AM
#9
It's my pot and I'll stir it if I want to. If you're not careful, I'll stir your's as well!
Thanks Barry, but I cannot claim the credit for those words. I had just read that article when I then read the thread in DTR. I had to remove my personal comments, a couple of sentences and the author to post the article as it was too long.
There have been threads on the untrustworthy media in the past and this article just helps to prove once again how low the media have sunk and how the gullible public swallow their garbage.. Over an over again I read stories and then check other sources just to find that once again the media have twisted the story or plain lied in order for the story to match their own twisted agenda. This is particularly true when it comes to political or religious stories. I can provide examples from todays headlines, but who on DTR would care?
The author of the article is:
Commentary on the News
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor
There have been threads on the untrustworthy media in the past and this article just helps to prove once again how low the media have sunk and how the gullible public swallow their garbage.. Over an over again I read stories and then check other sources just to find that once again the media have twisted the story or plain lied in order for the story to match their own twisted agenda. This is particularly true when it comes to political or religious stories. I can provide examples from todays headlines, but who on DTR would care?
The author of the article is:
Commentary on the News
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor
07-18-2005, 10:29 AM
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Two things about this whole sad saga really crack me up:
1) Even Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame's husband, admits that his Wife was not in 'covert' status when she was supposedly 'outed'.
2) When Sandy Berger got caught STEALING secret documents (hiding them in his socks and underwear !) relating to how the Clinton administration had dealt with Al-Qaida, prior to the 9/11 Comission hearings (and oh yeah - can't remember where he put them), the same political weenies that are accusing Rove of treason for outing a non-covert CIA employee that drove her freakin' Volvo or whatever to Langley everyday said that Mr. Berger was just 'confused' and 'meant no harm'.... Sandy Berger walked, just freakin walked - he got a free pass from these same weenies. And he can't remember where he put these secret, possibly damning or damaging documents. But that's OK, no security breach there.
Idiots - all of 'em
1) Even Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame's husband, admits that his Wife was not in 'covert' status when she was supposedly 'outed'.
2) When Sandy Berger got caught STEALING secret documents (hiding them in his socks and underwear !) relating to how the Clinton administration had dealt with Al-Qaida, prior to the 9/11 Comission hearings (and oh yeah - can't remember where he put them), the same political weenies that are accusing Rove of treason for outing a non-covert CIA employee that drove her freakin' Volvo or whatever to Langley everyday said that Mr. Berger was just 'confused' and 'meant no harm'.... Sandy Berger walked, just freakin walked - he got a free pass from these same weenies. And he can't remember where he put these secret, possibly damning or damaging documents. But that's OK, no security breach there.
Idiots - all of 'em
07-18-2005, 10:41 AM
#11
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I have a Secret Clearance. Let's say Truckjunkie has a Top Secret Clearance. Even if he has a higher clearance than me, it does not give him the right to know the things I know regarding certain things. He would have to have a 'need to know'. I would be restricted about telling him anything if he does not need to know.
Make sense?
Mike
Make sense?
Mike
07-18-2005, 10:49 AM
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I too have a clearance (won't say what level), and it's been branded into my brain the whole 'need to know' requirements, etc. Some of my co-workers and customers tire of me challenging their need to know and their clearance levels, but hey, it's my livelihood, and possibly my freedom if I screw up, not to mention the information getting into the wrong hands. I know that if I pulled the stunts these clowns pull I'd be a) fired, and probably b) in prison. And I'm pretty sure I wouldn't get to go to the nice prisons folks like this (if they ever go) get to go to.
07-18-2005, 11:15 AM
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Yes, yes, yes, left v. right and so one.
But that is not what I am asking: Was it wrong for a reporter to further spill the beans? I specifically did not get into names, or specific acusations because the issue is being handled by more capable, more knowledgeable, and certainly by people with more clout than I am. I think all we can do, is form OPINIONS, based on what is REPORTED by the warious sources that we care to look up.
Again the question is on the principle, consider it a hypotetical if have to. And yes I am also aware of the amendament protecting the press, but like EVERYTHING in life and in LAW it is subject to limitations and INTERPRETATION.
But that is not what I am asking: Was it wrong for a reporter to further spill the beans? I specifically did not get into names, or specific acusations because the issue is being handled by more capable, more knowledgeable, and certainly by people with more clout than I am. I think all we can do, is form OPINIONS, based on what is REPORTED by the warious sources that we care to look up.
Again the question is on the principle, consider it a hypotetical if have to. And yes I am also aware of the amendament protecting the press, but like EVERYTHING in life and in LAW it is subject to limitations and INTERPRETATION.
07-18-2005, 11:23 AM
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Freedom of the Press is NOT absolute, just as Freedom of Speech is not absolute. Reporter spills the beans on something he KNOWS shouldn't be made public? Hang the twerp.
07-18-2005, 12:02 PM
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Originally posted by TomW
Freedom of the Press is NOT absolute, just as Freedom of Speech is not absolute. Reporter spills the beans on something he KNOWS shouldn't be made public? Hang the twerp.
Freedom of the Press is NOT absolute, just as Freedom of Speech is not absolute. Reporter spills the beans on something he KNOWS shouldn't be made public? Hang the twerp.