"He served his purpose -- he damaged Bush, he tainted the liberation of Iraq . . . what matters to the media and to Senator Kerry is that he helped the cause of (to quote his book title) The Politics Of Truth, and if it takes a serial liar to do that, so be it," wrote Mark Steyn of Valerie Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson in the long hot summer leading up to the last Presidential election. ("The Three Faces of Joe" photomontage triptych above from our campaign-season post of July 2004 casts light on The Holy Father (left), Satan (center) and Speaker of Truth to Power.) An unholy trinity?
"As of this writing, McCarthy 'categorically denies' being the leaker, according to former counterterrorism official/Kerry campaign staffer Rand Beers. So the jury’s still out," writes Allahpundit in his must-read-to-get-up-to-speed "CIA Leak: A Blog Primer" at Michelle Malkin's new Hot Air Internet Broadcast Network. Newsweek had the bare bones:
A national security advisor to Democratic Party candidate John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign, Beers worked as the head of intelligence programs on President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council staff and later served as a top deputy on counter-terrorism for President Bush in 2002 and 2003. McCarthy, a career CIA analyst, initially worked as a deputy to Beers on the NSC and later took over Beer’s role as the Clinton NSC’s top intelligence expert.
Allahpundit takes us along for the bumpy ride of the right blogosphere's chase after the smoking gun. No dead bodies yet, but did you know that Beers also starred in "Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War," a Bush-bashing flockumentary co-produced by MoveOn released during the Republican National Convention? As we blogged at the time:
Screened at Cannes and set for release during the Republican National Convention, ["The Whole Truth"] stars, among others, Scott Ritter, The Honorable Henry Waxman, Rand Beers and -- could anything be more soft and fuzzy? -- Joe Wilson, the recently defrocked priest of The Church of Bush Lied™.
You are known by the company you keep, Ms. McCarthy. Speaking of which, a commenter to Allahpundit's primer asks
Does Ms. McCarthy know John Kerry personally? Did she ever have occasion to brief him (as was his right as the Dem presidential candidate or as senator)?
We don't know, but here's an interesting tidbit from that August 2004 post linked above that we'd forgotten all about:
Anti-Operation-Iraqi-Freedom Rand Beers co-teaches a course at Harvard's Kennedy School with former counterterrorism czar Richard Turncoat Clarke and may have been instrumental in changing Clarke's mind about who was responsible for 9/11. As we blogged here, Clarke had told Jane Meyer in a New Yorker interview last summer that GW and Bubba were both "deeply committed to stopping bin Laden; nonetheless, Clarke said, their best efforts had been doomed by bureaucratic clashes, caution and incessant problems with Pakistan." Then last March, as Clarke plugged his "nobody-listens-to-me" book on "60 Minutes" and prepared to testify in public hearings before the 9/11 commission, he was singing a different tune, placing all the blame on GW for failing to recognize the al Qaeda threat before 9/11 and then manipulating America into war with Iraq.
Hmmm. Neo adds more tantalizing appetizers in "The long long reach of Vietnam: Ellsberg's Truth-Telling Coalition and the encouragement of national security leaks," another must-read:
I have no idea whether Ellsberg's Truth-Telling Coalition had any part to play in the CIA detention center revelations. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. We simply do not know, just as we don't know the identity of the leaker. But there is no doubt that the Coalition was designed to foster just such leaks in order to undermine the war in Iraq, and that it's not hiding that fact, but proudly broadcasting it to the world via its website and press releases.
What is it with these persons of the left and their fantasizing identification with "the" truth vs. Bush lied, people died™ for us unwashed on the other side of the aisle? As Dr. sanity is forever trying to patiently explain, defense mechanisms rule.
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