Clifford May vs. Patrick Fitzgerald

Lying scoundrel and war profiteer, Clifford May, is an enormous ass. In a September 29, 2003 deceitful and scurrilous editorial for the National Review Online, May said the following:

It’s the top story in the Washington Post this morning as well as in many other media outlets. Who leaked the fact that the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV worked for the CIA?

What also might be worth asking: “Who didn’t know?”…

On July 14, Robert Novak wrote a column in the Post and other newspapers naming Mr. Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative.

That wasn’t news to me. I had been told that — but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of.

Here is what Fitzgerald said today:

Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer. In July 2003, the fact that Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer was classified. Not only was it classified, but it was not widely known outside the intelligence community.

Valerie Wilson’s friends, neighbors, college classmates had no idea she had another life.
The fact that she was a CIA officer was not well- known, for her protection or for the benefit of all us. It’s important that a CIA officer’s identity be protected, that it be protected not just for the officer, but for the nation’s security.

Valerie Wilson’s cover was blown in July 2003. The first sign of that cover being blown was when Mr. Novak published a column on July 14th, 2003.

Clifford May is on CNN right now accusing Wilson of lying. What about his own lies?

9 Comments

Quiet One on October 28, 2005 at 7:58 pm

Why is there absolutely no standard of truth when it comes to the spin from the right? I think the networks should hire FBI agents to ask the questions on their shows. They would know how to interrogate and if the response to a question was a lie, the liars could be prosecuted for making a false statement to a federal agent!

Too bad it ONLY works with FBI agents and not the average citizens of this country!

Into The Woods on October 28, 2005 at 8:31 pm

Is this the Clifford May that shills for the Neocons that foisted this war on us in the first place? If you want to know who probably told him, look to the boys standing behind him. Jim Lobe at Salon.com placed Clifford May’s role in an interesting context this last Wednesday.

That Cheney did indeed make the initial request to follow up on the Niger yellowcake report appears now to be beyond dispute, and it also draws attention to another little-noted curiosity of the Plame case – the knowledge and role of Clifford May, ex-New York Timesman, recent head of communications for the Republican National Committee (1997-2001), and president of the ultra-neo-conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD). In an article at National Review Online (NRO) on September 29, 2003 (as pressure was building on John Ashcroft to appoint a special prosecutor in the case), he boasted that he had been informed by an unnamed former government official of Wilson’s wife’s identity long before her outing as a CIA operative by Robert Novak, on July 14, 2003, and so had assumed that her identity (and relationship to Wilson) had been an “open secret” among the Washington cognoscenti. He has subsequently told the Nation magazine’s David Corn among others that he was interviewed by the FBI but has never been asked to testify on the subject before Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s grand jury.

In that NRO article, he also noted that he “was the first to publicly question the credibility of Mr. Wilson” following the ambassador’s Times op-ed. Indeed, only five days after that op-ed appeared, on July 11, 2003, NRO published May’s first attack on Wilson – many more would follow right up to the present – depicting the ambassador as a “pro-Saudi, leftist partisan with an axe to grind.” The article – and this is the curious part – included the following passage: “Mr. Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA to verify a U.S. intelligence report about the sale of yellowcake – because Vice President Dick Cheney requested it, because Cheney had doubts about the validity of the intelligence report.” This phrasing is fascinating because it purports to know Cheney’s subjective motivation, and the motivation ascribed to him – that he had “doubts” about the Niger story – conflicts with everything we’ve otherwise come to understand about why he asked for the Niger story to be investigated. It hints, certainly, at how consciously Cheney would indeed fix the facts when it came to Saddam’s nuclear doings.

Given this tidbit of curious information hidden in May’s piece, it’s important to know what former government officials might not only have told May about Plame’s identity but possibly about Cheney’s real thoughts on the subject of Saddam’s nuclear program – presuming, that is, that Cheney himself or Scooter Libby, his chief of staff, was not the source. Among May’s board of advisers at FDD were several former government officials, a number of whom were known to be very close to Cheney and Libby as well as to Pentagon hawks like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. They included Richard Perle, head of the Center for Security Policy Frank Gaffney, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. All of them played starring roles in efforts to tie Saddam’s Iraq to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks as well as in raising the nuclear bogeyman well before Cheney did so on March 24, 2002.

In fact, a close examination of how the pre-war propaganda machine worked shows that it was led by the neocons and their associates outside the administration, particularly those on the Defense Policy Board (DPB) like Perle, Woolsey, and Kenneth “Cakewalk” Adelman (and Judith Miller of the Times) who had long championed the cause of Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi exile organization, the INC, and were also close to the Office of Special Plans that Douglas Feith had set up in the Pentagon to cherry-pick intelligence. They would invariably be the first to float new “evidence” against Hussein (such as the infamous supposed Prague meeting of 9/11 conspirator Mohammed Atta with an Iraqi intelligence officer). They would then tie this “evidence” into ongoing arguments for “regime change” in Iraq that would often appear in the Times or elsewhere as news and subsequently be picked up by senior administration officials and fed into the drumbeat of war commentary pouring out of official Washington.

Jim Lobe Writing for Salon.com as posted at Truthout

May is a mouthpiece that does not know when it is better to be seen and not heard. It is important to remember who is behind guys like May. The same guys who are going to go to jail (and if not, should.) The same guys who signed this PNAC letter PNAC 1999 Letter to Clinton

and who never stopped trying to implement their PAX Americana strategy found throughout the papers and publications contained on the Project for A New American Century Web Site: PNAC Web Site

that are the real reason we went into Iraq.

Connecticut Man1 on October 28, 2005 at 8:54 pm

That is interesting. Clifford May puts another little note in the “Impeach Cheney File” for us…

Thanks For crossposting that!
Into The Woods on October 28, 2005 at 10:14 pm

BooMan has a link to Clifford May info that when followed back leads to a very nice little interactive crime family type layout of the Neocon presence within the Bush Admin foreign policy team that I had not seen and highly recommend International Relations Center Right Web
- NorthDakotaDemocrat on October 29, 2005 at 1:05 am
  
  very informative link, thanks!

Connecticut Man1 on October 28, 2005 at 8:49 pm

I wonder if Cliff May will take Larry Johnson up on his $5000 challenge… (I think that is what he said?)
(Video at C&L)

Dean Pajevic on October 28, 2005 at 9:58 pm

What happened to him?

God, he got a B.A. from SARAH LAWRENCE (!).

And he was a reporter for Bill Moyers.

Do they put something in people’s water?

Janet Strange on October 28, 2005 at 11:40 pm

Kool-Aide.
NorthDakotaDemocrat on October 29, 2005 at 1:21 am

The chemical element essential to the potency of the Kool-Aid is Au.

Quiet One on October 28, 2005 at 7:58 pm

Why is there absolutely no standard of truth when it comes to the spin from the right? I think the networks should hire FBI agents to ask the questions on their shows. They would know how to interrogate and if the response to a question was a lie, the liars could be prosecuted for making a false statement to a federal agent!

Too bad it ONLY works with FBI agents and not the average citizens of this country!
Into The Woods on October 28, 2005 at 8:31 pm

Is this the Clifford May that shills for the Neocons that foisted this war on us in the first place? If you want to know who probably told him, look to the boys standing behind him. Jim Lobe at Salon.com placed Clifford May’s role in an interesting context this last Wednesday.

That Cheney did indeed make the initial request to follow up on the Niger yellowcake report appears now to be beyond dispute, and it also draws attention to another little-noted curiosity of the Plame case – the knowledge and role of Clifford May, ex-New York Timesman, recent head of communications for the Republican National Committee (1997-2001), and president of the ultra-neo-conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD). In an article at National Review Online (NRO) on September 29, 2003 (as pressure was building on John Ashcroft to appoint a special prosecutor in the case), he boasted that he had been informed by an unnamed former government official of Wilson’s wife’s identity long before her outing as a CIA operative by Robert Novak, on July 14, 2003, and so had assumed that her identity (and relationship to Wilson) had been an “open secret” among the Washington cognoscenti. He has subsequently told the Nation magazine’s David Corn among others that he was interviewed by the FBI but has never been asked to testify on the subject before Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s grand jury.

In that NRO article, he also noted that he “was the first to publicly question the credibility of Mr. Wilson” following the ambassador’s Times op-ed. Indeed, only five days after that op-ed appeared, on July 11, 2003, NRO published May’s first attack on Wilson – many more would follow right up to the present – depicting the ambassador as a “pro-Saudi, leftist partisan with an axe to grind.” The article – and this is the curious part – included the following passage: “Mr. Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA to verify a U.S. intelligence report about the sale of yellowcake – because Vice President Dick Cheney requested it, because Cheney had doubts about the validity of the intelligence report.” This phrasing is fascinating because it purports to know Cheney’s subjective motivation, and the motivation ascribed to him – that he had “doubts” about the Niger story – conflicts with everything we’ve otherwise come to understand about why he asked for the Niger story to be investigated. It hints, certainly, at how consciously Cheney would indeed fix the facts when it came to Saddam’s nuclear doings.

Given this tidbit of curious information hidden in May’s piece, it’s important to know what former government officials might not only have told May about Plame’s identity but possibly about Cheney’s real thoughts on the subject of Saddam’s nuclear program – presuming, that is, that Cheney himself or Scooter Libby, his chief of staff, was not the source. Among May’s board of advisers at FDD were several former government officials, a number of whom were known to be very close to Cheney and Libby as well as to Pentagon hawks like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. They included Richard Perle, head of the Center for Security Policy Frank Gaffney, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. All of them played starring roles in efforts to tie Saddam’s Iraq to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks as well as in raising the nuclear bogeyman well before Cheney did so on March 24, 2002.

In fact, a close examination of how the pre-war propaganda machine worked shows that it was led by the neocons and their associates outside the administration, particularly those on the Defense Policy Board (DPB) like Perle, Woolsey, and Kenneth “Cakewalk” Adelman (and Judith Miller of the Times) who had long championed the cause of Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi exile organization, the INC, and were also close to the Office of Special Plans that Douglas Feith had set up in the Pentagon to cherry-pick intelligence. They would invariably be the first to float new “evidence” against Hussein (such as the infamous supposed Prague meeting of 9/11 conspirator Mohammed Atta with an Iraqi intelligence officer). They would then tie this “evidence” into ongoing arguments for “regime change” in Iraq that would often appear in the Times or elsewhere as news and subsequently be picked up by senior administration officials and fed into the drumbeat of war commentary pouring out of official Washington.

Jim Lobe Writing for Salon.com as posted at Truthout

May is a mouthpiece that does not know when it is better to be seen and not heard. It is important to remember who is behind guys like May. The same guys who are going to go to jail (and if not, should.) The same guys who signed this PNAC letter PNAC 1999 Letter to Clinton

and who never stopped trying to implement their PAX Americana strategy found throughout the papers and publications contained on the Project for A New American Century Web Site: PNAC Web Site

that are the real reason we went into Iraq.
- Connecticut Man1 on October 28, 2005 at 8:54 pm
  
  That is interesting. Clifford May puts another little note in the “Impeach Cheney File” for us…
  
  Thanks For crossposting that!
- Into The Woods on October 28, 2005 at 10:14 pm
  
  BooMan has a link to Clifford May info that when followed back leads to a very nice little interactive crime family type layout of the Neocon presence within the Bush Admin foreign policy team that I had not seen and highly recommend International Relations Center Right Web
  - NorthDakotaDemocrat on October 29, 2005 at 1:05 am
    
    very informative link, thanks!
Connecticut Man1 on October 28, 2005 at 8:49 pm

I wonder if Cliff May will take Larry Johnson up on his $5000 challenge… (I think that is what he said?)
(Video at C&L)
Dean Pajevic on October 28, 2005 at 9:58 pm

What happened to him?

God, he got a B.A. from SARAH LAWRENCE (!).

And he was a reporter for Bill Moyers.

Do they put something in people’s water?
- Janet Strange on October 28, 2005 at 11:40 pm
  
  Kool-Aide.
- NorthDakotaDemocrat on October 29, 2005 at 1:21 am
  
  The chemical element essential to the potency of the Kool-Aid is Au.

Clifford May vs. Patrick Fitzgerald

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