"First of all, I felt so terrible about what I'd done that I felt I deserved whatever was coming to me. And secondarily, I didn't need an attorney to tell me to tell the truth. I as already doing that," Armitage explains. "I was not intentionally outing anybody.
As I say, I have tremendous respect for Ambassador. Wilson's African credentials. I didn't know anything about his wife and made an offhand comment. I didn't try to out anybody." That was nearly three years ago, but the political firestorm over who leaked Valerie Plame's identity continued to burn as Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald began hauling White House officials and journalists before a grand jury.
Armitage says he didn't come forward because "the special counsel, once he was appointed, asked me not to discuss this and I honored his request."
"I thought every day about how I'd screwed up," he adds.
Armitage never did tell the president, but he's talking now because Fitzgerald told him he could.
2006-09-08
Armitage On CIA Leak: 'I Screwed Up'
Done and done:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
This doesn't change the fact that the Bushies (including Armitage and Powell) hyped the case of the yellowcake and took us to war under false pretenses.
But will you admit that you were wrong to declare that Plame got "outed" as retailiation for Wilson's comments in order to blow her cover and ruin her career by people who knew that she had a cover to blow, and who would not otherwise have leaked this information if she was a non-undercover spouse who recommened her husband for the assignment?
http://drudgereport.com/flash9.htm
Looks like Armatidge acted deliberately to undermine Wilson by showing that he got his job via his wife's influence. I don't understand why he would do this since he himself opposed the Iraq invasion and Wilson's essay helped support his own view. But maybe since his boss and best buddy Colin Powell made the Niger claim, Armatidge wanted to prevent that claim from getting undermined.
Still, it looks like the issue of Plame having undercover status was irrellivent to Armatidge's motivation; he wanted to undermine Wilson's credability, by showing that he did not get his job purely because of his credentials, reputation, and suitability for the assignment. Not a 100% falsification of Wilson's conclusion, but some political amunition.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/09/13/D8K466B00.html
"A White House conspiracy existed, but that Armitage's leak was independent of it." Regardless of the facts, what we concluded instantly is correct.
Post a Comment