Calling Bull on “Fair Game”
[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; send your tips here.]
Ugh, what to do, what to do? On one hand, I hate to give publicity to bald faced propaganda like the new Plame-Wilson movie Fair Game. On the other hand, this paragraph from John Nolte’s Review of the movie makes it clear that this film is risible in its falsehoods:
Liman introduces Plame as a Jack Ryanette, a CIA field agent undercover in the big bad Middle East muscling bad guys, recruiting spies, and at the center of much of the activity involving the pre-Iraq War intelligence gathering with respect to Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs.
This makes it all the more dramatic when she is outted:
According to the film, what follows is that the White house — specifically Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff Scooter Libby (who has the only memorable scene in the film) and Karl Rove — set out to destroy Wilson’s credibility by leaking to columnist Robert Novak that his CIA Operative wife got him the Niger gig, which effectively blows Plame’s cover to everyone from her closest friends to the many field operatives she handles throughout the world. The human toll is both on her marriage and in putting those she’s worked with in Iraq in mortal danger.
Only there are two problems. First the actual leaker was Richard Armitage, and to my knowledge no one has ever even accused Armitage of doing this for some sort of revenge. But on top of that, their depiction of her being a sort of a female James Bond is false:
A former CIA covert agent who supervised Mrs. Plame early in her career yesterday took issue with her identification as an “undercover agent,” saying that she worked for more than five years at the agency’s headquarters in Langley[.]
This was significant, because it raised doubts about whether the Intelligence Identities Protection Act was even violated in the first place. As James Taranto pointed out (and it was later verified by USA Today) the statute required that the outted agent had to have been assigned to serve overseas in the last five years—and Wilson’s book failed to even allege that:
The alleged crime at the heart of a controversy that has consumed official Washington — the “outing” of a CIA officer — may not have been a crime at all under federal law, little-noticed details in a book by the agent’s husband suggest.
In The Politics of Truth, former ambassador Joseph Wilson writes that he and his future wife both returned from overseas assignments in June 1997. Neither spouse, a reading of the book indicates, was again stationed overseas. They appear to have remained in Washington, D.C., where they married and became parents of twins
Six years later, in July 2003, the name of the CIA officer — Valerie Plame — was revealed by columnist Robert Novak.
The column’s date is important because the law against unmasking the identities of U.S. spies says a “covert agent” must have been on an overseas assignment “within the last five years.” The assignment also must be long-term, not a short trip or temporary post, two experts on the law say. Wilson’s book makes numerous references to the couple’s life in Washington over the six years up to July 2003.
“Unless she was really stationed abroad sometime after their marriage,” she wasn’t a covert agent protected by the law, says Bruce Sanford, an attorney who helped write the 1982 act that protects covert agents’ identities.
And of course, the Washington Times article I referenced raised another serious problem. Now this is a really subtle legal point, but you see under any law protecting national secrets, it has to actually be a secret. And when you drive into Langley five days a week, it’s not a secret. And this doesn’t help either:
[M]ost of her neighbors and friends knew that she was a CIA employee.
“She made no bones about the fact that she was an agency employee and her husband was a diplomat,” Fred Rustmann, a covert agent from 1966 to 1990, told The Washington Times.
“Her neighbors knew this, her friends knew this, his friends knew this. A lot of blame could be put on to central cover staff and the agency because they weren’t minding the store here. … The agency never changed her cover status.”
So the picture this movie painted was wholly bull____. She wasn’t Jane Bond, sneaking into foreign countries under a false name, with a phone in her shoe. Indeed, the entire controversy was bull___ from beginning to end.
I mean let’s review. Bush said that British Intelligence said that Saddam was trying to buy uranium from Africa.
Wilson’s famous column supposedly refuted that by saying that there was no evidence that Saddam bought uranium from Niger. Your first clue that this was bull was the fact that his refudiation didn’t match the claim. Bush claimed that an attempt was made and specified the geographical area as Africa. Saying there had been no completed sale, in one single country in Africa doesn’t refudiate Bush’s claim all by itself.
But it gets worse than that. Wilson’s investigation was so pathetic, it couldn’t even come close to meeting the difficult challenge of proving the negative. It amounted to running around the country drinking mint tea and asking people if they sold Saddam uranium, as though they were merely waiting to be asked before offering up their confession, Perry Mason style. I mean I have done corporate investigations myself and I can tell you that if my hands were as tied as Mr. Wilson’s I would have assigned very little confidence to the fact no evidence was turned up.
But it gets even worse than that. In fact Wilson’s report actually supported the claim that Saddam’s agents were trying to buy uranium, a fact he didn’t share with the public in his column:
Wilson’s report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts….
Wilson said [in his report] that a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, was unaware of any sales contract with Iraq, but said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss “expanding commercial relations” between Niger and Iraq — which Mayaki interpreted to mean they wanted to discuss yellowcake sales. A report CIA officials drafted after debriefing Wilson said that “although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to UN sanctions on Iraq.”
So according to Mayaki, by way of Wilson, Iraqi agents did try to buy uranium, in one part of Africa. It’s not proof, but it’s far from disproving Bush’s claims isn’t it?
And of course that is far from the only falsehood in the movie. I will leave it to the Daily Caller’s excellent reporting here, here and here, to clean up the rest.
All of which raises the question: why is Hollywood so unwilling to just tell the truth about these things? It’s a silent confession that they do not believe their side can win a fair fight.
And I know we have defined patriotism down in this country in recent years, but would it be too much to ask that when you criticize a war that we are still fighting, that you tell us the truth, rather than giving the other side false propaganda?
Oh, and before Hollywood pats itself on the back as being brave enough to make this movie, let’s remember Mark Steyn’s critique of Hollywood’s sense of bravery:
George Clooney’s triple Oscar nominations for acting, writing, and directing are said to be a significant moment in the life of the nation, and not just by George Clooney, though his effusions on his own “bravery” certainly set a high mark. “We jumped in on our own,” he said, discussing Good Night, and Good Luck with Entertainment Weekly. “And there was no reason to think it was going to get any easier. But people in Hollywood do seem to be getting more comfortable with making these sorts of movies now. People are becoming braver.”
Wow. He was brave enough to make a movie about Islam’s treatment of women? Oh, no, wait. That was the Dutch director Theo van Gogh: He had his throat cut and half-a-dozen bullets pumped into him by an enraged Muslim who left an explanatory note pinned to the dagger he stuck in his chest. At last year’s Oscars, the Hollywood crowd were too busy championing the “right to dissent” in the Bushitler tyranny to find room even to namecheck Mr. van Gogh in the montage of the deceased. Bad karma. Good night, and good luck.
No, Mr. Clooney was the fellow “brave” enough to make a movie about — cue drumroll as I open the envelope for Most Predictable Direction — the McCarthy era!
Yeah, Hollywood, make a cartoon about Mohammed and I might call you brave. Kicking around an administration that isn’t even in power anymore doesn’t count.
[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]
Yeah, the movie is screwed up… but with a box office so far of a whopping $2 million, its impact is negligible, especially since those attending are already confirmed Bush-haters.
Extra bonus: with a budget of $22 million, some liberals lost over $20 million making a propaganda movie that nobody came to see.
steve (369bc6) — 11/17/2010 @ 12:35 pmsteve
[true.] but how much money did joe wilson make off of this? and you get the feeling that they will still try to get it an oscar or two, and a speech about how they bravely took on the bush admin, and so on. barf.
[edited after the fact. –Aaron]
Aaron Worthing (b1db52) — 11/17/2010 @ 12:36 pmWe should be tolerant of what liberals do to each other when they’re among themselves. They can give each other money, they can spend lots of their money making movies only they will see, they can nominate those movies for awards that only they will be impressed with… and they can give Oscar-night speeches that only remind non-liberal viewers of how utterly stupid and silly the liberals are.
steve (369bc6) — 11/17/2010 @ 12:49 pm1) I suppose it’s useful on some level to note the ostentatious bias of films like this.
however….
2) I still come back to the point I’ve been trying to make to family and friends since I first became interested in Politics in the middle 1970’s; Of course the Media is biased. It’s absurd to think it could be NOT biased. If you find the prevailing slant of the Media that annoying BUY SOME NEWSPAPERS, TV STATIONS, AND MOVIE PRODUCTION COMPANIES!
Sorry….sorry….I really shouldn’t scream like that. It isn’t good for my blood pressure….
C. S. P. Schofield (e4bd33) — 11/17/2010 @ 1:09 pmThese people have turned themselves into some kind of political martyrs for the leftists. The is no better example of the power of the Dems and the MFM to shape a wholly dishonest narrative.
JD (c8c1d2) — 11/17/2010 @ 1:11 pmTechnically, there was an American cartoon movie about Muhammad in 2002, “Muhammad: The Last Prophet.” However, it was made under Islamic guidelines and thus Muhammad’s image is never shown on screen in the film.
Joshua (9ede0e) — 11/17/2010 @ 1:27 pmScooter Libby was never accused of disclosing Plame’s identity, but he is shown doing so in the film, while Richard Armitage has acknowledged doing so, but was not prosecuted, and is never mentioned in the film? What a sick joke!
I remember when it finally came out that Armitage was the “leaker”, I mentioned it to one of my moonbat-in-laws, she said “Armitage is a Republican appointee… SEE? SEEEE??!”
Jesus wept.
sherlock (9a0f2b) — 11/17/2010 @ 1:47 pmPure fraud.
SPQR (26be8b) — 11/17/2010 @ 1:50 pmSean Penn was a spoiled little boy. He grew up to become a paper thin intellectual and a bully. He once tied his wife up to a chair and slapped her. Now Madonna may have deserved it, but still. As an artist he’s limited. Never once has Penn done anything when I haven’t said, “He acting.” At one time I saw how good he could be, back during Racing With The Moon and The Falcon and the Snowman. But whenever I see him now, I want somebody to punch him. Like Mel Gibson. He’s got nothing to lose.
Birdbath (8501d4) — 11/17/2010 @ 2:00 pmAnother inconvenient fact was the Russians through
narciso (82637e) — 11/17/2010 @ 2:01 pmAldrich Ames, drudgingly revealed by Nick Kristof
had been tipped off to her name, and the Cuban DGI
which at various times had moles in the DIA, Montes,
State Department, (Myers), and the state university
system (Alvarez) also found out about her aroun 1995, through a paperwork error
Naomi Watts has been making the rounds in interviews, being sure to let everyone know that she “trained with REAL CIA physical trainers” and did “everything real spies do”. She thinks it is important we know she did all of this while breastfeeding.
I wonder, does she really believe that load of B.S., or does she simply know her target audience will buy it, no questions asked?
kas (482e6e) — 11/17/2010 @ 2:27 pmI am encouraged that I didn’t even know the film was out, and that it is doing so poorly.
The Plame game was/is a low point of the last 10 years, IMO. Not only did the MSM do it’s usual work of obfuriation, but was joined by the CIA establishment and the US attorney’s office. The “official” statement from the CIA was a cleverly worded bit of camouflage that “everyone” said showed Plame and Wilson were telling the truth, when in fact it did not, though it sure looked like it did at first glance. And even if Fitzgerald (right?) had a case against Libby for perjury that he needed to prosecute, in the course of the trial he said things before the jury that were just not true.
It is amazing Bush accomplished anything in office while presiding over a traiterous bureacracy.
I’m looking for an expose’ film on what Sandy Burgler got away with- don’t worry, I’ll live, not holding my breath on it. – How many times did he go to the National Archives? If it was 3 we could call it “3 Trips of the Burgler”
Take the Papers and Run
(Inspired by a Steve Miller song with a similar name)
This here’s a story about Bill Clinton and Sandy too
Too old politicos with nothin’ better to do
Than sit around the house, get nervous watchin’ the tube
And here is what happened when they decided what to do
They headed down to where old docs are filed
They found things that made them real riled
Bill Clinton said to skillfully to use guile
Sandy Berger took the papers and run
Go on take the papers and run (x 4)
Sandy Berger, hoped he had slipped away
Bill Clinton thought he survived another day
They got the docs, hey
They think they got away
After three years Sandy once again will say
Singin’ go on take the papers and run
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 11/17/2010 @ 3:10 pmGo on take the papers and run (x3)
“…Cheney gang…” Going after the gangs, right counselor?
Birdbath (8501d4) — 11/17/2010 @ 3:57 pmPatterico – Dreaming of a white Fitzmas again?
daleyrocks (940075) — 11/17/2010 @ 4:00 pmOne suspects someone is jumping the gun a bit on sockpuppet Friday.
Or patterico is drunk.
XBradTC (a0c2c4) — 11/17/2010 @ 4:12 pmWTF ?!?!?!?!
JÐ (306f5d) — 11/17/2010 @ 4:13 pmThe “Patterico” above doesn’t appear to be the real patterico. The email and ip addresses are different from known examples. i mean maybe he is borrowing someone else’s computer and using someone else’s email too, but I doubt it. I will make sure the real patterico knows of this, and if its really him, he can clear the air and decide what to do with this sock puppet, if that is what he is.
Aaron Worthing (b8e056) — 11/17/2010 @ 4:24 pmAaron, my first suspicion, thank you.
Perhaps I will send in a post advertised as coming from Ms. Plame herself, then another one from Mr. Wilson, and then we will finally know the truth, yeah, that’s it.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 11/17/2010 @ 4:34 pmThat was not me.
I will investigate it further later.
Character assassination! It’s what makes blogging so much fun.
Patterico (a7632b) — 11/17/2010 @ 4:50 pmDo twoof and the above sock puppet resolve to the same place?
JÐ (85b089) — 11/17/2010 @ 4:59 pmPatterico
Will the real slim shady please stand up?
🙂
I will leave the crime scene unaltered, because i am afraid if it remove the comment, it might screw up IP tracking or something.
Aaron Worthing (b8e056) — 11/17/2010 @ 4:59 pmSpeaking of national security messes, First Gitmo detainee in civil trial convicted on only 1 minor charge- so much for prosecuting in a civilian court and witholding classified info
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/nyregion/18ghailani.html?_r=1&hp
I just heard Erwin C. applaud the result of our system, and Hewitt totally beside himself trying to convince him how wrong he is. Erwin would rather see “100 guilty people go free than falsely convict one”- only problem with that is 100 murderers let back out on the street, especially if terrorists, a heck of a lot more innocent people will die.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 11/17/2010 @ 5:09 pmMD,
Ace linked Tapper,
DOJ says it’s “pleased” Ahmed Ghailani facing min. of 20 years in prison + potential life sentence” for role in the embassy bombings.
Stunning.
Dana (8ba2fb) — 11/17/2010 @ 5:15 pmNaomi Watts has been making the rounds in interviews, being sure to let everyone know that she. . . did “everything real spies do”.
So she sat at a desk, drank coffee, shuffled some paperwork, surfed the web, attended boring meetings, and substituted her own political beliefs in place of national security issues?
JVW (eccfd6) — 11/17/2010 @ 5:41 pmErwin would rather see “100 guilty people go free than falsely convict one” . . . .
In peacetime this is a rather silly conceit; during wartime, it is a ridiculously stupid and dangerous posture. And you are absolutely right about the consequences, MD.
Remind me again why we needed a law school at UC Irvine, and why this clown was appointed as its dean.
JVW (eccfd6) — 11/17/2010 @ 5:46 pmBeats me, JVW, Erwin has always been a clown.
SPQR (26be8b) — 11/17/2010 @ 6:14 pmWhat Erwin said did not surprise me too much, because he’s said the likes of it before. What was more interesting was Hugh’s response. While no matter how outrageous Erwin seems to be, Hugh typically ends up “shrugging his shoulders” (verbally, anyway, as it is radio) and says, “That’s a Leftie for ya”. Tonight he was furious at how aloof Erwin was about the ruling and consequences of it, and how he would refuse to admit that a guilty person was going free.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 11/17/2010 @ 7:27 pmYeah, I’m going to rush right out and watch a movie that tries to whitewash the treachery of the Wilsons, and tries to make them out to be somne kind of heroes in the bargain!
Not likely.
Lefties: spare me the Goebbel’s like propaganda. You’re basically too stupid to pull it off.
Dave Surls (775682) — 11/17/2010 @ 7:32 pmI don’t go to movies that PREACH platitudes I agree with, let alone snarky, made-up BS.
Notes from “Fair Game” post-screening focus group:
Californio (9b0d11) — 11/18/2010 @ 2:05 pm[What was your favorite part?]
“I liked the part when she, you know, used the spider venom to make it look like she assasinated the Russian Federation president. and then..” [that was Angeline Jolie in Salt] “Oh. Then I liked the part when she shot the bullet and made it curve in midair and ..” [Jolie again, but in Wanted]. “Oh. What as this movie about again?” [the exciting story of how the white house and karl rove conspired to leak to the press the CIA status of the wife of a former ambassador that…] Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz [Hey, WAKE UP!!!] huh, whaaaa? [Damn it! This is a movie you SHOULD see. It has important lessons about how Bush and…] Wait, did Oliver Stone make this movie? [NO!] (muttering to self) Might as well have, preachy bullshit. [What did you say?] Uh, pretty ‘full hit’? [YES! – (to assistant) I Think we have our review quote!]
why this clown was appointed as its dean
He was too conservative to remain at Duke.
AD-RtR/OS! (a60876) — 11/18/2010 @ 2:41 pm