From a CIA Classmate

NTMD

Michael: ‘Glad to see you have baited more shorts so as to run my gains that much higher. Thanks Toby!! Hahahaha be very, very, very funny to watch you cartwheel your way out of this but I wager you won’t even address it after you beating tomorrow. BTW maybe you should read the facts about the conference calls before you make lame statements!’

☞ Thanks, Michael. Why do you think insurers and HMOs (and patients) will choose BiDil over the generic when it costs six times as much? (Roughly $2,000 a year instead of roughly $350.) Separately, what proportion of the market do you think qualifies for the free BiDil that the company has promised (or the $25/month BiDil)? Let’s hope these questions get answered on this morning’s 8:30am-10:30am open-to-the-public call.

ROVE

Below is a bit more clarity than you will get from White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan on the Karl Rove scandal. It all ties in to the attempt to ‘fix the facts around the policy’ and take us into a war with Iraq that was front and center on the Bush agenda long before September 11. (He lied to us about intending to pursue a humble foreign policy, just as he lied to us that the ‘vast majority’ of his proposed tax cuts would go to ‘people at the bottom of the economic ladder.’ And the Republican leadership marches in lockstep with the program.)

The Big Lie About Valerie Plame
By Larry Johnson
From: TPMCafe Special Guests

The misinformation being spread in the media about the Plame affair is alarming and damaging to the longterm security interests of the United States. Republicans’ talking points are trying to savage Joe Wilson and, by implication, his wife, Valerie Plame as liars. That is the truly big lie.

For starters, Valerie Plame was an undercover operations officer until outed in the press by Robert Novak. Novak’s column was not an isolated attack. It was in fact part of a coordinated, orchestrated smear that we now know includes at least Karl Rove.

Valerie Plame was a classmate of mine from the day she started with the CIA. I entered on duty at the CIA in September 1985. All of my classmates were undercover–in other words, we told our family and friends that we were working for other overt U.S. Government agencies. We had official cover. That means we had a black passport–i.e., a diplomatic passport. If we were caught overseas engaged in espionage activity the black passport was a get out of jail free card.

A few of my classmates, and Valerie was one of these, became a non-official cover officer. That meant she agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport. If caught in that status she [c]ould have been executed.

The lies by people like Victoria Toensing, Representative Peter King, and P. J. O’Rourke insist that Valerie was nothing, just a desk jockey. Yet, until Robert Novak betrayed her she was still undercover and the company that was her front was still a secret to the world. When Novak outed Valerie he also compromised her company and every individual overseas who had been in contact with that company and with her.

The Republicans now want to hide behind the legalism that “no laws were broken”. I don’t know if a man made law was broken but an ethical and moral code was breached. For the first time a group of partisan political operatives publicly identified a CIA NOC. They have set a precedent that the next group of political hacks may feel free to violate.

They try to hide behind the specious claim that Joe Wilson “lied.” Although Joe did not lie let’s follow that reasoning to the logical conclusion. Let’s use the same standard for the Bush Administration. Here are the facts. Bush’s lies have resulted in the deaths of almost 1800 American soldiers and the mutilation of 12,000. Joe Wilson has not killed anyone. He tried to prevent the needless death of Americans and the loss of American prestige in the world.

But don’t take my word for it, read the biased Senate intelligence committee report. Even though it was slanted to try to portray Joe in the worst possible light this fact emerges on page 52 of the report: According to the US Ambassador to Niger (who was commenting on Joe’s visit in February 2002), “Ambassador Wilson reached the same conclusion that the Embassy has reached that it was highly unlikely that anything between Iraq and Niger was going on.” Joe’s findings were consistent with those of the Deputy Commander of the European Command, Major General Fulford.

The Republicans insist on the lie that Val got her husband the job. She did not. She was not a division director, instead she was the equivalent of an Army major. Yes it is true she recommended her husband to do the job that needed to be done but the decision to send Joe Wilson on this mission was made by her bosses.

At the end of the day, Joe Wilson was right. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was the Bush Administration that pushed that lie and because of that lie Americans are dying. Shame on those who continue to slander Joe Wilson while giving Bush and his pack of liars a pass. That’s the true outrage

SUMMER RE-RUN

I came across this from last year, and in the spirit of summer reruns, couldn’t resist offering it again.

‘At Harvard Business School, thirty years ago,’ writes Professor Yoshi Tsurumi, ‘George Bush was a student of mine. I still vividly remember him. In my class, he declared that ‘people are poor because they are lazy.’ He was opposed to labor unions, social security, environmental protection, Medicare, and public schools. To him, the antitrust watch dog, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission were unnecessary hindrances to ‘free market competition.’ To him, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was ‘socialism.’ Recently, President Bush’s Federal Appeals Court Nominee, California’s Supreme Court Justice Janice Brown, repeated the same broadside at her Senate hearing. She knew that her pronouncement would please President Bush and Karl Rove and their Senators. President Bush and his brain, Karl Rove, are leading a radical revolution of destroying all the democratic political, social, judiciary, and economic institutions that both Democrats and moderate Republicans had built together since Roosevelt’s New Deal.’

Compassionate?

Tucker Carlson, until recently the ‘right’ wing of CNN’s Crossfire, profiled then-governor Bush for the premier issue of the now-defunct Talk magazine. He reported:

In the week before [Karla Faye Tucker’s] execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. “Did you meet with any of them?” I ask.

Bush whips around and stares at me. “No, I didn’t meet with any of them,” he snaps, as though I’ve just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. “I didn’t meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like ‘What would you say to Governor Bush?’ ”

“What was her answer?” I wonder.

“Please,” Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, “don’t kill me.”

‘I think it is nothing short of unbelievable,’ Gary Bauer was quoted at the time, ‘that the governor of a major state running for president thought it was acceptable to mock a woman he decided to put to death.’

Monday (or soon): Notes from a Former Cultist
(Yes, One of Our Readers Helped Lead a Cult!)