The CIA leak case through the lens of the Wall Street Journal

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/oct2003/cia-o03.shtml

By Bill Vann

3 October 2003

With the Justice Department launching an investigation into the identity of
the senior official who leaked the name of a covert CIA agent in a naked act
of political reprisal, the Wall Street Journal has weighed in with an
editorial dismissing the entire affair as a political ruse by the Democratic
Party.

The editorial board of the leading US business newspaper is dominated by a
group of extreme right-wing zealots who share the closest ideological and
political connections with the Bush White House. They faithfully articulate
the interests and profoundly antidemocratic views of the layer of
reactionaries and criminals within the US business establishment that forms
the real political base of the administration.

“Democrats would love to run Karl Rove out of town,” declared the Journal
editorial’s subhead, referring to Bush’s chief political adviser and handler.
It went on to call the controversy a “Beltway scandal-ette” and a “scandal
game” in which Rove is unfairly charged, with “no evidence” against him.

In fact, there are very good reasons why Rove is the focus of the developing
scandal. Former US ambassador Joseph Wilson, the husband of the named CIA
agent and real target of what amounted to a dirty tricks operation, has
charged that Rove condoned the leak and advised reporters that publishing the
woman’s name was “fair game” after it first appeared in a syndicated column by
Robert Novak.

Under reporters’ questioning at a Wednesday afternoon press conference, White
House press secretary Scott McClellan did not deny this charge. “Now, we’re
getting into issues such as, did anyone talk about what was in the news, what
was reported in the paper, things of that nature,” McClellan said.

Legal experts have stated that for an administration official to point to even
a published report exposing a CIA agent in a manner that confirmed its
accuracy would constitute a violation of the federal law that outlaws such
disclosures and provides punishment of up to 10 years in prison.

“The reason this is suddenly a story is because Mr. Rove, the president’s
political strategist and confidant from Texas, has become the main target,”
the Journal states. The editorial continues: “The media and the Democrats now
slip-streaming behind them, understand that the what of this mystery matters
much less than the who.... We’re also old enough to recall what happened to
Jimmy Carter’s presidency once his old Georgia friend Bert Lance was run out
of town. If they can take down Mr. Rove, the lead planner for Mr. Bush’s
election campaign, they will have knocked the props out of his presidency.”


The Journal and Vincent Foster

The Journal editorial board should not have to plumb its fading memories of
Bert Lance. It undoubtedly has far more vivid recollections of a more recent
media campaign to “take down” another presidential aide—White House deputy
counsel Vincent Foster.

The Foster affair was the most vicious element within a concerted and
sustained effort by the Journal’s editorial board to undermine and topple an
elected president using everything from an insignificant land deal known as
Whitewater to the president’s private sex life.

The demonization of Foster had no such substantial basis as suspicion of
violating a federal law. Rather it began with the failure of the White House
to provide the Journal with a photograph of the Clinton White House aide,
which promoted an ominous-sounding comment entitled, “Who is Vincent Foster?”

The newspaper continued a non-stop vendetta against Foster, writing editorial
after editorial implying sinister and perhaps illegal activities based largely
on his having worked as a law partner with Hillary Clinton in Arkansas.

After more than a month of this press campaign, Foster drove to a park in
Virginia and shot himself to death. A note found later in his briefcase
read: “The WSJ editors lie without consequence ... I was not meant for the job
or the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here ruining people is
considered sport.”

The ghouls on the Journal editorial board then seized upon the suicide to
encourage the ultra-rightist fantasy that Foster may have been killed because
he “knew too much” about the Clintons’ alleged malfeasance.

But now, the Journal’s editors wax indignant about the supposed witch-hunt
against Rove, a recognized master in the art of hatchet jobs and smear
campaigns.

The editorial dismisses the issues involved in the leak story as “flimsy.” Its
reasoning bears consideration. “The law against revealing the names of covert
CIA agents was passed in 1982 in reaction against leaks by Philip Agee and
other hard-left types whose goal was to undermine CIA operations around the
world,” it states. “This case is all about a policy dispute over Iraq.”

In other words, the law is intended only to punish those who oppose the crimes
carried out by the US government and its covert intelligence operatives.
Breaking the law to promote such crimes—or to punish those who expose them—is
itself no crime at all.

This laissez-faire attitude to leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent to
the media stands in stark contrast to the attitude taken by the Bush
administration and its right-wing supporters toward previous government leaks.
The Bush White House has imposed the tightest restriction on the dissemination
of classified material in US history. When reports of pre-September 11
National Security Agency cables warning of the impending terrorist attacks
were leaked, apparently from members of Congressional intelligence panels,
Vice President Richard Cheney ordered a full-scale FBI probe of the
Congressional investigators themselves. And Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
has threatened Pentagon sources speaking to the media on condition of
anonymity with criminal prosecution.

Repeatedly, administration officials have warned that disclosures could expose
intelligence “sources and methods” and place lives of agents and
their “assets” in danger.


What Wilson exposed

Yet now, the Journal insists, the administration officials who revealed the
identity of Wilson’s wife—Valerie Plame—as a CIA agent weren’t breaking the
law, but performing a public service. “This is hardly a state secret but is
something the public had a right to know,” the editorial states. “When an
intelligence operative essentially claims that a US president sent American
soldiers off to die for a lie, certainly that operative’s own motives and
history ought to be on the table.”

Here, lies and confusion intermingle in such a way that all one is left with
is the right-wing vituperation for which the Journal editorialists are famous.
First, Wilson was not an “operative”—his wife was. His career was public
knowledge; his spouse’s was a state secret. Second, the former ambassador did
not “claim” Bush was sending American soldiers “off to die for a lie,” he
proved it.

In his January 28 State of the Union speech, Bush claimed that “the British
government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant
quantities of uranium from Africa.” Wilson, a former US diplomat in both Niger
and Iraq, had been selected by the CIA to go to Niger and investigate
unfounded reports promoted by Cheney of Iraqi attempts to buy uranium. He
established to his and the agency’s satisfaction that not only were these
reports false, but it would have been impossible for Niger to make such a
uranium sale. The White House was informed by the CIA of this fact in March
2002, 10 months before the president’s speech.

In a July 6 opinion piece for the New York Times, Wilson wrote: “Based on my
experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have
little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s
nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.” He added
that, given the administration’s rejection of his and the CIA’s
analysis “because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a
legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses.”

The White House was forced to admit that the information on Niger was indeed
false, while dismissing it as “only 16 words” in the president’s speech. As
the fruitless search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the recent
admissions by the president and his aides that there is no evidence of any
link between Iraq and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks make clear,
however, the Niger story was just one strand in the web of lies that was used
to promote a criminal war of aggression.

Clearly, the exposure of Plame is not merely a Democratic Party gambit aimed
at wresting electoral advantage from Bush. The demand for a criminal
investigation came not from Congressional Democrats, but from the CIA itself.
The controversy reflects the tensions within the national security
establishment that have been heating up since September 11, 2001 and are now
boiling over. There is plenty of resentment and demands for retribution to go
around.

Within the CIA, there is anger over the attempt by Cheney, Rumsfeld and others
to suppress real intelligence that contradicted the White House’s case for
war, bypass the agency and manufacture phony evidence of WMD and terrorist
ties.

Within the Pentagon, there is a virtual civil war raging between elements of
the military command and the group of right-wing ideologues led by Rumsfeld,
Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith in the civilian hierarchy. This has found
recent reflection in the statements by retired General Anthony Zinni, the
former head of the Central Command in the Middle East, accusing the Rumsfeld
group of leading the army into a Vietnam-style quagmire in Iraq and stretching
the military to the “breaking point.” Asked in a recent interview on
PBS’s “Newshour” whether “heads should roll” at the Pentagon for the failure
of postwar strategy, Zinni replied, “absolutely ... somebody should be held
responsible.”

Underlying this internecine warfare in Washington there is a growing sense
within the ruling elite itself that the path taken by the Bush administration
in Iraq is leading to a debacle. Unable to publicly articulate a clear
alternative to the administration’s policies, these tensions are being vented
through the present scandal.

There is an audible note of panic in the Journal’s concern over the fate of
Rove. “We trust that Mr. Bush and Republicans on Capitol Hill understand that
if they throw Mr. Rove over the side, the blood in the water will really be
theirs,” the editorial concludes.

Only last January Wall Street Journal contributing editor and former Reagan
speech writer Peggy Noonan was publishing a hackneyed paean to Bush on the
occasion of his State of the Union address. She wrote of Bush’s “steady hand
on the helm in high seas, a knowledge of where we must go and why, a resolve
to achieve safe harbor. More and more this presidency is feeling like a gift.”

Now, the threat that the seedy political operative and dirty trickster Rove
might be forced from the White House brings absolute despair. Not only is the
steady hand off the tiller, but there are visions of the president being
devoured in the water. This startling mood swing is symptomatic of a full-
blown crisis of class rule opening up in America.



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