Lee P. Butler

As of Thursday, November 3rd, 2005, the mainstream media still hadn't accepted the fact that Lewis 'Scooter' Libby had only been charged with perjury and obstruction of justice. After pleading 'not guilty' to those charges at his arraignment with his lawyers, Ted Wells and William Jeffress, one headline promoted the media's obvious disappointment, 'Libby pleads not guilty in CIA leak case'.

Let's be clear, he pleaded not guilty to the manufactured charges of perjury and obstruction of justice that were created during Prosecutor Fitzgerald's investigation of the possible leak of the name of a 'covert' CIA agent. The agent in question at the time of the possible leak hadn't been covert in over six years, thereby removing her official CIA status from the 'covert' level. Since she was no longer 'covert', leaking her name shouldn't have taken place, but was in no way a criminal activity.

Since media elitists didn't get the full-blown criminal scandal they dreamed would became the reality they had longed for, they have decided to create their own surreal, alternate-universe in which they control the story line and chain-of-events through their own reporting machinations.

An example of this can be extracted from a recent Associated Press report by Pete Yost. Yost wrote, "Libby was charged with lying to investigators and the grand jury about leaking the status of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame to reporters."

Liberals in the media seem to think if they just continue to falsely claim that the Valerie Wilson-Plame was a 'covert' agent, that it will be true. Doing a Lexus-Nexus search of the use of 'covert' in relation to the CIA leak case, you will find this lie being repeated over 200 times in media reports.

What's even more amazing is the fact that Prosecutor Fitzgerald didn't assert Valerie Wilson-Plame's CIA status was 'covert' one time during his press conference. He even pointed out to these liberal media representatives that her status was actually 'classified' not 'covert' and then qualified his continued investigation by asserting that leaking the 'classified' nature of her status wasn't necessarily criminal, but was wrong none-the-less.

But media elitists can't promote that fact because they have a vested interest in continuing their original ruse that Joe Wilson; husband of Valerie Wilson-Plame, is a saint and that he is somehow the modern-day 'Deepthroat' who will single-handedly bring down the White House with it's 'environment of corruption'.

Which fits in nicely with their current tidal wave of attacks on the Bush administration as they try desperately to veer the American mindset towards the President in a way that matches their own so that George W. Bush is easily equated to Richard M. Nixon.

All the while, they ignore the fact that the CIA leak was null-and-void and work tirelessly to protect the 'misrepresentations of the truth' that have come from their main witness, Joe Wilson. They constantly insist that his wife was outed because of his 'accusation that the administration twisted intelligence in the run-up' to Operation Iraqi Freedom in his NYTimes op-ed and his wife's name was leaked in retaliation.

The first problem is the NYTimes op-ed Wilson wrote didn't simply accuse the President of twisting intelligence, he accused the President of out-right lying in his State-of-the-Union address. Something even Wilson himself had proven was accurate, despite his own 'false' charges.

The second problem is the fact that media reports that came out during the CIA leak investigation showed that the administration officials who talked to reporters about Wilson's charges were actually warning the reporters that the information they were issuing was not accurate.

Why? Because, the media was reporting that Vice President Dick Cheney had sent Wilson the Niger. They were reporting this because that was the impression they got from Wilson's op-ed where he asserted that the Vice President's 'office' had initiated the trip, when in fact, the Vice President had not asked for an investigative trip by the CIA.

Plus, it was Wilson's wife who had lobbied for him to be chosen for the expedition and that's what the reporters were being told, not as an attack of Wilson, but to inform reporters they were using faulty information. Wilson was even reprimanded by the Senate Select Committee investigating 9-11, because he told them his wife had nothing to do with his selection for the trip to Niger, which she clearly did.

The third problem the media has is with Wilson's attack of the President's State-of-the-Union speech were he said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa". Liberals continue to harp that Wilson was right because after that address, the administration said the sentence shouldn't have been used.

What they don't say is they issued that statement, not because they didn't believe it was accurate, but because they should have had more evidence to substantiate it. Even CIA director George Tenet verified the accuracy of the statement, but didn't think it should have been used in a State-of-the-Union address.

And the British's own investigative committee, the Butler Commission, found that the British intelligence cited in the statement was indeed accurate and the British stand behind that intelligence to this day.

The one little nugget the media will forever choose to 'not see' is in Wilson's own book where he wrote that he actually had found evidence in Niger that Iraq had sought to purchase 'yellow-cake' uranium from Africa from a man who had been in negotiations with 'Baghdad' Bob.

In the media's alternate reality, those things are non-existent, much in the same way 'Baghdad Bob' told Iraqis who were watching Operation Iraqi Freedom unfolding before them, to pay no attention to those tanks you see, because they were fabrications created by America. The American media is fabricating something today, but it doesn't smell like teen spirit!