Daily · Dreamtime

    [This quotation is from Richard Leiby's "The Reliable Source" column
in yesterday's Washington Post. The caption under a photo of Colin
Powell was: "Secretary of State Colin Powell didn't want to go there,
but we did." Speaking to the press for the State Department has always
been a tough job. Some have done it better than others.]

An Unguarded Opinion 

• "Let's not go there," Secretary of State Colin Powell said three times after Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) raised the flapola over President Bush's military service at a House hearing last week. Responding to Brown's assertion that Bush "may have been AWOL" from National Guard duty, Powell snapped: "I won't dignify your comments about the president because you don't know what you are talking about."

As a Vietnam War vet, perhaps Powell does know what he's talking about. So let's go there -- specifically to page 148 of the hardcover edition of Powell's 1995 autobiography "My American Journey":

"I particularly condemn the way our political leaders supplied the manpower for that war," he wrote. "The policies -- determining who would be drafted and who would be deferred, who would serve and who would escape, who would die and who would live -- were an anti-democratic disgrace. I am angry that so many sons of the powerful and well placed and so many professional athletes (who were probably healthier than any of us) managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to our country."

Responding to the passage, a State Department official told us Friday: "The book was criticizing the policies that bifurcated society. The criticism is not of the National Guard or the Reserve or the patriotic men and women who served in them, but rather a comment on the policies."

Plame Gate
    Did Robert Novak willfully disregard warnings that his column would
endanger Valerie Plame? Our sources say "yes."
                                          Murray S. Waas

Two government officials have told the FBI that conservative columnist
Robert Novak was asked specifically not to publish the
name of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame in his now-famous July 14
newspaper column. The two officials told
investigators they warned Novak that by naming Plame he might
potentially jeopardize her ability to engage in covert work,
stymie ongoing intelligence operations, and jeopardize sensitive
overseas sources.

These new accounts, provided by a current and former administration
official close to the situation, directly contradict public
statements made by Novak. He has downplayed his own knowledge about the
potential harm to Plame and ongoing
intelligence operations by making that disclosure. He has also claimed
in various public statements that intelligence officials
falsely led him to believe that Plame was only an analyst, and the only
potential consequences of her exposure as a CIA officer
would be that she might be inconvenienced in her foreign travels.

The two administration officials questioned by the FBI characterized
Novak's statements as untrue and misleading, according to
a government official and an attorney official familiar with the FBI
interviews.

One of the sources also asserted that the credibility of the
administration officials who spoke to the FBI is enhanced by the fact
that the officials made their statement to the federal law enforcement
authorities. If the officials were found to be lying to the
FBI, they could be potentially prosecuted for making false statements to
federal investigators the sources pointed out.
( Read more... )
Murray Waas is a Washington journalist (read more at
http://www.waasinfo.com). Research assistance for this article
was provided by Thomas Lang.
                                          Murray S. Waas