60 MINUTES EXCLUSIVE!

Ed Bradley had an EXCLUSIVE interview with Joe Wilson Sunday night on 60 Minutes. Interestingly, Campbell Brown had an EXCLUSIVE interview on Sunday with Joe Wilson, too.

I guess the news divisions at CBS and NBC don't know the meaning of the word "exclusive."

Perhaps they do know its meaning, and they knowingly made false statements, an indictable offense.

I think the 60 Minutes segment on Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson surpassed the NBC EXCLUSIVE on the truth distortion meter.
The story was based on the notion that the White House revealed Plame's identity in retaliation for Joe Wilson speaking out against the war.

This is the myth that has driven this non-scandal scandal from the beginning.

Plame was NOT a covert agent. Therefore, she could NOT have been outed by the White House.

It's been an investigation about nothing. If there's nothing to leak, why investigate how information was leaked?

In Fitzgerald's performance for the cameras, or press conference, he made it clear that Scooter Libby was NOT indicted for outing a CIA agent.

NO ONE WAS.Transcript

(Excerpts)
QUESTION: Can you say whether or not you know whether Mr. Libby knew that Valerie Wilson's identity was covert and whether or not that was pivotal at all in your inability or your decision not to charge under the Intelligence Identity Protection Act?

FITZGERALD: Let me say two things. Number one, I am not speaking to whether or not Valerie Wilson was covert. And anything I say is not intended to say anything beyond this: that she was a CIA officer from January 1st, 2002, forward.

I will confirm that her association with the CIA was classified at that time through July 2003. And all I'll say is that, look, we have not made any allegation that Mr. Libby knowingly, intentionally outed a covert agent.

FITZGERALD: We have not charged that. And so I'm not making that assertion.

So, even though Fitzgerald said he wasn't speaking about Plame's undercover status and made no allegation that Libby or anyone else outed her, 60 Minutes framed their story as if the charges brought against Libby deal with precisely that.

Bradley's segment amounted to fantasy.

He began:

For 18 years as an undercover agent for the CIA, Valerie Plame Wilson kept her occupation and her identity a secret, even to her own friends and family, to avoid compromising her work as a spy.

When she was exposed two years ago, it led to a federal investigation and raised questions about what would motivate such a betrayal. Would someone in the government go that far, leak her name to the press, in retaliation for her husband’s public criticism of the war in Iraq?

The special prosecutor in the case, Patrick Fitzgerald, did not answer that question on Friday when he charged the vice president’s Chief of Staff Lewis Libby with lying to the investigators who were trying to find out how it could have happened.

But 60 Minutes wanted to know how serious was the damage done by the leak.

This is ridiculous!

The story and the claims that Wilson makes are as phony as the National Guard documents that Dan Rather and 60 Minutes used about a year ago to derail Bush's reelection.

CBS dug up Jim Marcinkowski, a former covert CIA agent during the late 80s, to propel its story."It's a spy agency. And you don't expose people working for a spy agency. And no one knew that she was working for a spy agency until she was exposed," said Marcinkowski.

Marcinkowski apparently didn't get the memo that Plame wasn't covert in 2003.

Naturally, Wilson misrepresented his wife's CIA status in this EXCLUSIVE interview just as he did in the NBC EXCLUSIVE interview.

Bradley said:
When she saw Novak’s column, he says, it came as a complete shock. Eighteen years of a meticulously-crafted cover, exposed in an instant.

HER STATUS WASN'T EXPOSED IN NOVAK'S COLUMN. PLAME WAS NO LONGER COVERT.
"She felt like she had been hit in the stomach. It took her breath away. She recovered quickly because, of course, you don't do what she did for a living without understanding stress. And she became very matter of fact right afterwards. And started making lists of what she had to do to ensure that her assets, her projects, her programs and her operations were protected," Wilson said.

How dramatic! False, but dramatic.
"Did she realize then that her career as an undercover agent for the CIA was over?" Bradley asked.

"Absolutely. Sure. There was no doubt about it in her mind. And she wondered for what," Wilson said.

"Novak also published the name of the front company that your wife used for cover, Brewster-Jennings & Associates. How would you characterize that disclosure?" Bradley asked.

Her career as an undercover agent ended BEFORE Novak printed anything.

"I think it was abominable. But when he published her name, it was very easy to unravel everything about her, her entire cover. You live your cover. And so you live Brewster-Jennings. So, she would have had business cards that said Brewster-Jennings on them. So, that was just insult to injury. And it was just Mr. Novak taking a second bite of the apple," says Wilson.

How does 60 Minutes get away with this stuff? Didn't they learn anything from the phony documents fiasco?

Wilson is constructing a false reality. Bradley doesn't debunk what Wilson says. He reinforces it.

Fitzgerald knows the truth. He said it.

NO ONE, INCLUDING LIBBY, WAS INDICTED FOR OUTING VALERIE PLAME.

As Wilson makes more EXCLUSIVE appearances, taking his fabrications to any lib media outlet that will air them, remember what Fitzgerald said:"And all I'll say is that, look, we have not made any allegation that Mr. Libby knowingly, intentionally outed a covert agent.

"We have not charged that. And so I'm not making that assertion."

Note:

In addition to his LIVE interview on Today, Joseph Wilson talks about the CIA leak investigation, on CNN's The Situation Room, Monday, 7 PM ET.

Poor Joe. It must be rough doing all these EXCLUSIVES.