As a followup to Clarice Feldman's excellent letter to the Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility, a follow up letter by another Just One Minute commenter has been written detailing one area that Clarice inadvertently overlooked in her letter. The second letter is just as powerful and straightforward.
RE: Clarice Feldman’s letter of September 19th on Patrick Fitzgerald
Dear Mr. Jarrett:
Reading Ms Feldman’s letter to you—published in The American Thinker—prodded me to re-read the affidavit submitted by Patrick Fitzgerald on August 27, 2004, to the U.S. Court for the District of Columbia. I noticed what appears to be a disingenuous omission of facts on page 4 of said affidavit.
Under the heading, ‘The Background Facts: The Controversy About Niger and Uranium’, Fitzgerald notes that Nicholas Kristoff wrote a column in the New York Times on May 6, 2003, and Walter Pincus a news story in the June 12, 2003 Washington Post, telling the story of an unnamed former ambassador’s investigative trip to Niger in February 2002.
Conspicuous by its absence in Fitzgerald’s affidavit is any mention of the assertion by Pincus on June 12th, 2003, that Vice-President Cheney—contrary to the strong implication in Kristoff’s earlier column--knew nothing about that former ambassador’s trip at the time it took place.
Even more conspicuous, there is no mention of Kristoff’s reply, the very next day, in a column in the June 13th NY Times, titled, ‘White House in Denial’, sarcastically denying the truth of what Pincus reported. Kristoff removed any doubt (in his mind) about the genesis of (the then unnamed) Joseph Wilson’s trip, calling him, ‘an envoy investigating **at the behest of the office of Vice President Dick Cheney**’. [my emphasis]
Kristoff continued to heap abuse on the idea that Cheney knew nothing about Wilson:
'And now an administration official tells The Washington Post that Mr. Cheney's office first learned of its role in the episode by reading that column of mine. Hmm. I have an offer for Mr. Cheney: I'll tell you everything I know about your activities, if you'll tell me all you know.
'To help out Ms. Rice and Mr. Cheney, let me offer some more detail about the uranium saga. Piecing the story together from two people directly involved….'
Had Mr. Fitzgerald bothered to tell the court of Kristoff’s column of the 13th (and attach a copy of it) it would have been obvious that there was already a public political controversy over the background of Wilson’s trip. Nearly a month before Wilson’s own NY Times Op-ed piece and his appearance on Meet the Press.
I.e., making the CIA employment of Joseph Wilson’s wife a piece of evidence that would help resolve that controversy. A much simpler explanation, fitting the facts, than that the later exposure of Mrs. Wilson’s role by Robert Novak was some sort of perverse act of revenge by the Vice President or the White House. Indeed, it was the very same day Kristoff’s column appeared, June 13, 2003, that Bob Woodward of the Washington Post was informed of this fact by Richard Armitage, and Woodward has testified that he returned to the Post and informed Pincus what he’d learned.
As bad as this omission by Fitzgerald was, there is something even more disturbing in Kristoff’s response to Pincus. He states his sources included, **‘two people directly involved’**. [my emphasis]
By the time of this affidavit--August 27, 2004—thanks to a January 17, 2004 Vanity Fair profile of Joe and Valerie Wilson, it was public knowledge that Nicholas Kristoff had met and had breakfast with both the Wilsons in the first week of May 2003, prior to his May 6th column that inaugurated the controversy.
That is, the Wilsons themselves were known to Kristoff, and fit perfectly his description of ‘two people directly involved’. Certainly suggesting that the first reporter to have been informed of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA employment was not Judy Miller (Fitzgerald’s contention), nor Bob Woodward (via Richard Armitage) but Nick Kristoff from Valerie Wilson herself, on or about May 3, 2003.
In addition, on June 14, 2003 (the day after Kristoff’s unintentionally revealing second column on the controversy) Joseph Wilson made a public appearance in Washington D.C. at something called EPIC—Education for Peace in Iraq Center—and identified himself as,
'…that American ambassador who has been cited in reports in the New York Times and in the Washington Post, and now in the Guardian over in London, who actually went over to Niger on behalf of the government--**not of the CIA but of the government**….' [My emphasis]
Again, there is no mention of any of this in Fitzgerald’s affidavit, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that had it been in there, it would have been obvious that the Special Counsel was intruding the Justice Department into what was merely a political controversy, not a criminal matter.
Sincerely,
---------endquote
In addition, in case you missed it, Specter, in a comment to our first post on this subject has posted a link to his post "How to Participate in Plamegate" where he has a form letter designed that is available for anyone to download and use as a starting point for their own follow up letters.
It has been suggested, in order to prevent DoJ bureaucrats from simply filing Clarice's letter without action, that copies with your cover letter be sent to your own Senators and Representatives and to all members of the Judiciary Committee. If you need the addresses or phone numbers, click HERE.
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