Dear Editor:
Curtis Thompson's Op-Ed published Sept. 22 were pointed comments to earlier comments I had made about tinfoil hat conspiracy theories from someone attempting to trash Hillary Clinton. Okay Curtis, we can engage.
The comment that appeared to get Curtis the most balled up was: "Cheney outed a covert CIA agent for political payback." Curtis went on at length to comment that my Op-Ed "simply is perpetuating another falsehood promoted by the liberal press and liberal bloggers. Ms. Plame's name was revealed to columnist Robert Novak by Richard Armitage."
Richard Armitage did in fact leak the information to journalist Richard Novak; he had leaked it to Bob Woodward a few days earlier, who did not do anything with it. According to sworn testimony, Armitage spilled very high level gossip at the very first meeting, volunteering unusual information. Novak stated he found this "odd."
Karl Rove (deputy chief of staff to the president) confirmed the information to Novak.
The special prosecutor never indicted Armitage, but did indict "Scooter" Libby, (Cheney's chief of staff) for "perjury and obstruction." Why did Scoot lie? Who was he protecting? Why did Cheney stonewall in his testimony, saying "I do not recall" 72 times? Also, it should be noted that (according to sworn testimony) Karl Rove phoned another journalist immediately after Kovak's column was published and told him "off the record" that "Wilson's wife is fair game."
The Bush Administration was trying to make a case to invade Iraq, Cheney was the lead. Joe Wilson (Valerie's husband) had written a column questioning this, making the plan look bad.
Sure, Curtis, the Republican explanation to all of this is that "Richard Armitage just woke up stupid one morning and outed Valerie Plame." That's logical.
As to the rest of it from Curtis, yes, Hillary was issued a subpoena about her emails on March 4, and approximately 31,000 emails were deleted after that date. Clinton has a "plausible deniability" story for this (an employee of Platt River Networks deleted the emails). Whatever.
Hillary had a private email server. I simply don't care. The server was known and accepted by the State Department. The FBI found no criminal intent. This mess stems from the Republicans attempting to damage Hillary politically, another in a long line of attacks. More Republican hypocrisy and utter lack of ethical behavior, frankly, I'm sick of it.