Claiming Media Matters is "very angry at me," a broken-hearted Scarborough still insists "no underlying crime" in Plame case
As Media Matters for America noted, on the July 18 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, during a discussion of the CIA leak case with conservative columnist Robert D. Novak, host Joe Scarborough falsely suggested that White House senior adviser Karl Rove was not involved in leaking the identity of former CIA operative Valerie Plame. On the July 19 edition of the show, on which Novak again appeared, Scarborough claimed that Media Matters was "very upset because of my interview yesterday with Bob Novak, talking about the narrative that the left wing had for a very long time that this whole Valerie Plame leak was a diabolical plot hatched by Karl Rove." Introducing Novak, Scarborough said he was "[h]ere to clear that up and talk about his book, Prince of Darkness" [Crown Forum, July 2007], and, in fact, in response to questioning from Scarborough, Novak acknowledged that Rove was his confirming source. Nonetheless, the two continued to push the false claim, made frequently by defenders of the administration in the media, that special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald -- in Scarborough's words -- "knew that no crime, no underlying crime had been committed" and yet persisted with the investigation that resulted in the conviction of former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby for perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false claims.
As Media Matters has pointed out, Fitzgerald has explained why he continued his investigation of the case, even though he knew that former deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had been Novak's initial source. In a sentencing memorandum filed May 25, following Libby's conviction on four of five charges, Fitzgerald responded to "Mr. Libby's friends and associates" who "assert that his prosecution was unwarranted, unjust, and motivated by politics":
[I]t is undisputed but of no moment that it was known early in the investigation that two other persons (Richard Armitage and Karl Rove) in addition to Mr. Libby had disclosed Ms. [Plame] Wilson's identity to reporters, and that Messrs. Armitage and Rove were the sources for columnist Robert Novak's July 14, 2003 column, which first publicly disclosed Ms. Wilson's CIA affiliation. The investigation was never limited to disclosure of Ms. Wilson's CIA affiliation to Mr. Novak; rather, from the outset the investigation sought to determine who disclosed information about Ms. Wilson to various reporters, including -- but not limited to -- Mr. Novak.
[...]
To accept the argument that Mr. Libby's prosecution is the inappropriate product of an investigation that should have been closed at an early stage, one must accept the proposition that the investigation should have been closed after at least three high-ranking government officials were identified as having disclosed to reporters classified information about covert agent Valerie Wilson, where the account of one of them was directly contradicted by other witnesses, where there was reason to believe that some of the relevant activity may have been coordinated, and where there was an indication from Mr. Libby himself that his disclosures to the press may have been personally sanctioned by the Vice President. To state this claim is to refute it. Peremptorily closing this investigation in the face of the information available at its early stages would have been a dereliction of duty, and would have afforded Mr. Libby and others preferential treatment not accorded to ordinary persons implicated in criminal investigations.
Moreover, as Media Matters has repeatedly noted, during an October 2005 press conference announcing Libby's indictment, Fitzgerald said that Libby's obstruction had prevented the special counsel's office from determining whether an underlying crime had been committed. Fitzgerald reiterated this point in his sentencing memorandum, writing that "the reasons why Mr. Libby was not charged with an offense directly relating to his unauthorized disclosures of classified information regarding Ms. Wilson included, but were not limited to, the fact that Mr. Libby's false testimony obscured a confident determination of what in fact occurred."
Scarborough teased the segment by saying that he was "going to make Media Matters very angry. ... [T]hey consider me one of the good guys of the extreme right. Not anymore." He then opened the segment by stating that "Media Matters [is] very angry at me. And, of course, it breaks my heart because I've been sort of the good Republican for them." He was apparently referring to Media Matters' item regarding his July 18 Morning Joe interview of Novak, in which he falsely suggested that Rove was not involved in leaking Plame's identity. During that interview, Scarborough stated that he had said during his coverage of the case, "If Karl Rove leaked this information [about Plame], he should be fired."
Scarborough began his July 19 discussion with Novak by asking him about Rove's reported role as the source that confirmed Plame's identity to Novak. Scarborough said, "[W]e were talking [yesterday] about the fact that it was Dick Armitage who leaked the name to you. ... But then you called Karl Rove up and let him know that you had found out who Valerie Plame was, right?" Novak then stated that "among the people I called, I called Karl Rove. And he said, 'Oh, you know that, too?' That was enough conversion -- confirming to me. That's all he said."
Neither Scarborough nor Novak mentioned that Rove also reportedly leaked Plame's identity to then-Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, as Media Matters noted in its previous item.
From the July 19 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe:
SCARBOROUGH: When we come back, I'm going to make Media Matters very angry. I mean, they consider me one of the good guys of the extreme right. Not anymore.
[...]
SCARBOROUGH: So Media Matters, very angry at me. And, of course, it breaks my heart because I've been sort of the good Republican for them. And, very upset because of my interview yesterday with Bob Novak, talking about the narrative that the left wing had for a very long time that this whole Valerie Plame leak was a diabolical plot hatched by Karl Rove. Here to clear that up and talk about his book, Prince of Darkness, let's bring back in Bob Novak. Bob, how are you doing?
NOVAK [on the phone]: Very good. Thanks for having me, Joe.
SCARBOROUGH: Let's clear this up now. You -- when we were talking yesterday, we were talking about the fact that it was Dick Armitage who leaked the name to you.
NOVAK: That's correct.
SCARBOROUGH: But then you called Karl Rove up and let him know that you had found out who Valerie Plame was, right? Talk about how that happened.
NOVAK: I called -- after deputy Secretary of State Armitage told me in an offhand way that the reason that Joe Wilson, unlikely Clinton supporter, had been sent on that mission with no exper-- intelligence experience was that his wife, who was employed at the CIA, suggested it, I wanted to confirm that. And among the people I called, I called Karl Rove. And he said, "Oh, you know that, too?" That was enough conversion -- confirming to me. That's all he said.
I then later talked to the official spokesman at the CIA, who confirmed that to me also. This was supposed to be a deep secret, but the official flack, the public relations man, said, "Yes, she worked for the counterproliferation division." He told me that. He claimed that she hadn't suggested her husband for the mission, but later, those documents and that report by the Senate Intelligence Committee had indicated she had.
SCARBOROUGH: And that, of course, just wasn't true.
What was it like for you going through this process, where you were attacked, you were accused of leaking -- well, let me -- we'll first of all ask you the question that some of the emailers want us to ask you: Why did you decide to print Valerie Plame's name?
NOVAK: Because I thought it was a part of the story. I wasn't attacking Joe Wilson. I -- as you know, I think you know, I was against the invasion of Iraq. I was a news -- I try to write a news column, and I thought that his mission to Niger was a part of the column. I wondered how come he was selected, and in the middle of the column, I indicated it was because of his wife. That's why I printed the name.
Now you ask me, what was it like? It wasn't pleasant. but I'll tell you what, I'm a big boy. I've been around this town for 50 years, Joe, and I've been attacked, and I've been praised. I've had good and bad. but what really bothered me was the lack of support from my brothers and sisters in the news media. I believe they're mostly liberals, and they just jumped on the liberal conspiracy bandwagon, with some exceptions. I got great support from my home paper, the Sun-Times, great support from The Washington Post, which ended up really supporting me editorially, but a lot of my individual colleagues and a lot of editorial writers across the country, without knowing the facts, joined the conspiracy theorists.
SCARBOROUGH: And they had this narrative they wanted to follow, and you and I both know, if they'd known that it'd been Dick Armitage, [former Secretary of State] Colin Powell's number-two guy, who had leaked this information to you initially, which allowed you to call Rove and say, "Hey, I know this," and Rove said, "Oh, you know that, too?" and then you called the CIA person -- if they had known what the true narrative was, then we wouldn't have had the pack of dogs chasing after you and Rove and everybody else for so long.
NOVAK: That's right. And the special prosecutor, who knew the minute he stepped in the office, Mr. [Patrick] Fitzgerald knew Armitage's identity as the leaker, they asked me not to talk about it at all. My lawyer advised me to follow that, and I certainly didn't want to get in the same kind of trouble that Scooter Libby got in, so I followed my lawyer's advice and followed the instructions of the special prosecutor and never said a word --
SCARBOROUGH: But, Bob, Bob, that is the damnedest thing. Why do you have this guy, this special prosecutor, who was put up as sort of an Eliot Ness, an Untouchable -- he knew the true story. Why conduct an investigation where you know that no crime, no underlying crime, had been committed?
NOVAK: Well, they gave -- the Justice Department, the Bush Justice Department knew the identity of Armitage as the leaker. And they -- instead of making a decision whether a crime was committed, they turned it over to Mr. Fitzgerald, a squeaky-clean guy, to make the decision because they didn't have the guts to do it themselves. Mr. Fitzgerald decided there was no underlying crime, and, of course, Scooter Libby was the fall guy. You know, it's --
SCARBOROUGH: No crime, let's start an investigation.
NOVAK: Yeah. I -- the first chapter of my book, I give all these details, I give details at the end. It's not a complicated story, as far as I'm concerned, as far as my involvement is concerned. And I'll tell you, a lot of people cannot handle this truth. They just can't accept that it was as limited as that.
Scarborough - you are now an accessory after the fact, to the Repugnant conspiracy.
And, of course, it breaks my heart because I've been sort of the good Republican for them.
I can relate to that Joe ;-)
Yes...but, you actually mean it!
and this is the guy that threw out Valerie plame's civil suit. I smell major violation of law and ethics here
Judge John D. Bates
Judge Bates was appointed United States District Judge in December 2001. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1968 and received a J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1976. From 1968 to 1971, he served in the United States Army, including a tour in Vietnam. Judge Bates clerked for Judge Roszel C. Thomsen of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland from 1976 to 1977 and was an associate at Steptoe & Johnson from 1977 to 1980. He served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia from 1980 to 1997, and was Chief of the Civil Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office from 1987 to 1997. Judge Bates was on detail as Deputy Independent Counsel for the Whitewater investigation from 1995 to mid-1997. In 1998, he joined the Washington law firm of Miller & Chevalier, where he was Chair of the Government Contracts/Litigation Department and a member of the Executive Committee. Judge Bates has served on the Advisory Committee for Procedures of the D.C. Circuit and on the Civil Justice Reform Committee for the District Court, and as Treasurer of the D.C. Bar, Chairman of the Publications Committee of the D.C. Bar, and Chairman of the Litigation Section of the Federal Bar Association. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. In 2005, he was appointed by Chief Justice Rehnquist to serve on the U.S. Judicial Conference Committee on Court Administration and Case Management. In February 2006, he was appointed by Chief Justice Roberts to serve as a judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
I didn't even realize it, but apparently I'm on the liberal conspiracy bandwagon. According to Novak, at least.
Assuming that bandwagon has to hold everybody who knows that Novak is full of shiiite, we may have to hook up a trailer.
Let's see, Viet Nam vet, served on civil rights commission, is on the FISA Court.
What's your beef?
the very first line indicates a Bush appointee owing his job continuance to the White House " team ".
He was also a Whitewater prosecutor and a 2001 appointee of Bush...which, in my opinion, still isn't a case for alleging violations of "laws and ethics." It's an unconstructive claim.
Quite frankly, the Wilson's have an uphill battle due to our laws which give officials immunity if the suit is, in anyway plausible, tied to service. In this circumstance, it stinks. However, I'm not sure the judge is to blame.
This is th sort of issue you can research for days to get a handle on the law. Lets not oversimplify for either side.
I read about twenty pages of the decision and even though I don’t agree with the decision, I kind of see the judge's point. He dismissed the case because the courts do not have jurisdiction over the matter; Congress is the one that is suppose to provide the remedy. So I think if Congress passes a law offering a remedy or a law stating that a person can sue in federal officials in these types of situations, the lawsuit can proceed. The only problem with that is Bush would have to sign it into law.
I found this in his decision about Plame’s identity:
I hope to see that cut and pasted over and over again until everyone stops saying that Plame wasn't covert.
C'mon Joe I started to like you during the whole Katrina thing.
Tweakerthetroll, come out to play!
I now see the light, Plame was covert, Armitage is innocent, Libby should be in jail, Rove should be water-boarded in Gitmo and Bush arrested and Cheney should go hunting with himself, I am a new member of the club.
What these Jackmonkeys keep forgetting is that old Scooter and his pal the President, could have avoided this whole entire thing by doing one little thing. Scooter could have told the truth, and poof! NO PERJURY!
I mean, it really is that simple. You swear an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and you also know the consequences if you DON'T tell the truth, so tell the truth. No perjury. No commutations. No issue. Even a 5 year old could get this down.
So, Scarborough is using Novak as a reference regarding the Plame case? That lends a lot of credibility to your stance there Joe. What a pompous ass.
"Neither Scarborough nor Novak mentioned that Rove also reportedly leaked Plame's identity to then-Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, as Media Matters noted in its previous item."
Nor did either mention that Libby had revealed Plame's name and occupation to Judith Miller on June 23, two weeks before Armitage had his conversation with Novak.
"Mr. Fitzgerald decided there was no underlying crime, ... " I have not heard him say that nor read a quote that he said it. The only ones saying it are the people saying he said it.
he knew the true story. Why conduct an investigation where you know that no crime, no underlying crime, had been committed? Joe
Man too bad Joe didn't raise that question to Ken Starr while investigating Whitewater. Can you imagine life without Monica. What would the Republicans have done........sigh
I wonder if Keith Olbermann will name Joe "worst person in the World"? No probably not because he works for MSNBC.
LOVE THAT OLBERMAN ! ! !
Everyone on the left gives Fitz a free pass because he tossed a bone. It probably was an uphill battle to try Armitage or Rove or Libby or Cheney for the leak itself but had he been an independent or a democrat he might have. I think Fitz is basically honest but he would not have wanted to harm the GOP around election time with cases that were not sure things. Libby's conduct was like something you couldnt avoid tripping over. When all is said and done Fitz left GWB in a situation where he could survive. Quit worshipping Fitz for doing the minimum in this case. He let them off easy and now the argument has become that proves there is no crime. No one has ever indicted bin Laden either which must prove there was no underlying crime on 911. I have never heard anyone claim any of the leakers checked first and were told explicitly she is not covert, there is no possible damage from publishing the fact she works at the CIA. Therefore they each did this without checking first. If this had been covered correctly we would laugh Bush out of office if he ever claimed he needed star chamber powers or claimed to need the secrecy he has usurped. Instead we get debates about whether or not a narrow statue was violated. A secondary question to the real issue. How can anyone claim to be serious about the war on terror and still want these men running it?
novak says that he printed plame's name "because i thought it was part of the story". never mind that she was, as he noted, an "operative". never mind that he was told by a contact at the cia not to print her name. and then he had the nerve to say that it was ok to print it because "george tenet never called me and told me not to". as for the "liberal conspiracy bandwagon" that novak talks about, there is one fact that he and all his apologizing sycophants cannot change. rove and libby were giving her name to reporters unauthorized to have it, before, repeat before, novak printed it. that was the charge made to begin with and it still is true to this day. that's not conspiracy, but fact. the reason novak and his pack of fellow travelers want to rewrite history is because a true accounting of it shows the deliberate and calculating actions of all those involved in this.
Why does no one ever bring up the meeting that Karl Rove had with Dick Armitage just prior to Bob Novak's meeting with him? It was at that meeting that Rove provided Armitage with the information about Valerie Plame.
If you doubt me, check the facts and/or explain how Armitage knew about Valerie Plame, an obscure CIA operative.
Could you provide a source or link for the facts that you're referring to?
you can see from this link that novak had attempted to interview armitage right after 9-11, 2001, and in novak's own assessment, armitage was uninterested in talking to him. then armitage's office called novak in late june 2003, after no contact for two years, and said armitage would give an interview. at which time he gave plame's name to novak.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200707140002
"...lot of people cannot handle this truth. They just can't accept that it was as limited as that."--Novak
We will not accept it because it is a flat out LIE ! Fitzgerald, The CIA, and the judge in Libby's case have ALL STATED THAT SHE WAS A COVERT AGENT WHO WAS OUTED.
It would be more accurate for Novak to say that a lot of people won't buy our cover story.
No one was ever convicted of the murders of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown. No one will go to prison for it. No one is even investigating it anymore. I suppose by using Scarborough's logic and the logic of righties,
THERE WAS NO UNDERLYING CRIME in their deaths.
You can put perfume on a pig and it still smells like a pig. Joe Scarborough is, was and always will be a radical right winger. Just because he says he isn't doesn't make it so.