Scare Quoted
Richard Armitage tells CBS News that he “screwed up” when he told Robert Novak that Joe Wilson’s wife was with the Company.
Yeah, okay. But in the online report, the subhead reads:
CBS Exclusive: Interview With Man Who ‘Outed’ CIA Agent Valerie Plame
What’s with the scare quotes around the term outed? When the whole Leftist media machine was screeching about Karl Rove and Scooter Libby betraying national security secrets, there sure as shit wasn’t any scare quotes around what they did.
Typical fucking hypocrisy.
As for Armitage, whom I now see as a world-class coward for not coming forward years ago and clearing this whole thing up, read on:
He says he was reading Novak’s newspaper column again, on Oct. 1, 2003, and “he said he was told by a non-partisan gun slinger.”
“I almost immediately called Secretary Powell and said, ‘I’m sure that was me,’” Armitage says.
Armitage immediately met with FBI agents investigating the leak.
“I told them that I was the inadvertent leak,” Armitage says. He didn’t get a lawyer, however.
“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.
I think what Armitage did was despicable. Same goes for Father Fitzmas. Why did either of these two dishonorable craphounds persist with —or keep quiet about— a pointless investigation when they both knew the truth all along?
I hope there’s more to this story than just a sorry-assed apology from Armitage and continued silence from Fitzgerald.
Time for both of them to explain themselves.
