We'll Get The SOB on That Too....

Go get him Joe!

We're with you, big guy!


An Interview With Joseph Wilson
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t Report
Monday 04 June 2007

In a recent interview, former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson told me that he and his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, both strongly feel that Vice President Dick Cheney is behind efforts to block her from discussing her work for the Central Intelligence Agency before 2002 in a memoir to be published in October. The memoir is titled "Fair Game." Plame Wilson's undercover CIA identity was leaked to a handful of reporters by senior Bush administration officials. She and her husband believe the leak was retaliation after he spoke out against the White House concerning Iraq.

In July 2003, Wilson wrote an op-ed article in the New York Times, accusing the Bush administration of twisting prewar Iraq intelligence in an effort to win public support for a US-led invasion of that country.

Upon reviewing her manuscript, the CIA told Plame Wilson she cannot disclose that she worked for the agency prior to 2002 - even though it is public information and has been entered into the Congressional Record. Last week, Plame Wilson and her publisher, Simon & Schuster, sued the CIA in US District Court in New York for unconstitutionally interfering with her rights to free speech.

"This is Richard Cheney's last attempt to try to stifle free speech in this country, and we'll beat the son of a bitch on that too, if we have to," Wilson told me in a 30-minute interview at his office in Santa Fe, New Mexico. "We will find the work-around to make sure this happens - that she will be able to tell her story, so that somebody other than Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, Rich Armitage and Karl Rove can talk about her."

Wilson and his wife have filed a civil suit against top administration officials - among them Vice President Dick Cheney, White House Political Adviser Karl Rove and Cheney's former Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, for allegedly violating his and Plame Wilson's civil rights when they disclosed her covert CIA status to the media. The defendants have argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed on grounds that it was a "policy dispute." However, Wilson told me he believed that the judge presiding over the case felt the case had merit and took issue with assertions made by Cheney's attorneys that Cheney, in his capacity as vice president, was entitled to absolute immunity from lawsuits.

"I think we came away feeling that the judge clearly saw that a wrong had been committed," Wilson told me. The judge is expected to render a decision in less than a month on whether the civil suit can move forward. "The judge was skeptical of this notion of absolute immunity. He made the point, I think repeatedly, that absolute immunity was a unique feature of the Office of the President, and not necessarily of the Office of the Vice President."

Libby was convicted earlier this year of four counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to a grand jury about how he discovered that Plame Wilson was a CIA employee, and whether he discussed her role at the agency with the media. He is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday.

Wilson's stinging rebuke of the administration's reliance on what later turned out to be a set of forged documents angered senior Bush administration officials. The documents purportedly revealed that Iraq was attempting to obtain uranium from Niger to build an atomic bomb. Wilson had traveled to the African country of Niger in February 2002 on behalf of the CIA to investigate the allegations. He returned to the US and told a CIA briefer that the claims were unfounded. President Bush cited the claims as fact in his January 2003 State of the Union speech.

A federal investigation led by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald later found that numerous White Officials had retaliated against and sought to discredit Joseph Wilson for publicly claiming that the administration had manipulated Iraq intelligence by telling a handful of elite Washington, DC reporters that Wilson's investigation into the Niger claims could not be trusted. The administration told the reporters that Valerie Plame Wilson worked at the CIA and had arranged to send her husband to Niger. The officials suggested that the trip was the result of nepotism. Plame Wilson testified before Congress this year that she had had no role in selecting her husband for the mission.

Jason Leopold is a former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire. He has written over 2,000 stories on the California energy crisis and received the Dow Jones Journalist of the Year Award in 2001 for his coverage on the issue as well as a Project Censored award in 2004. Leopold also reported extensively on Enron's downfall and was the first journalist to land an interview with former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling following Enron's bankruptcy filing in December 2001. Leopold has appeared on CNBC and National Public Radio as an expert on energy policy and has also been the keynote speaker at more than two dozen energy industry conferences around the country.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

Baez Banned From Walter Reed!

Too bad they couldn't do the same for the mold in the rooms of Vets.

But seriously.....

This really pisses me off. This hits at me. personally.

I have loved Joan Baez for 40 some odd years.

I love music. It touches the soul in a way that the spoken word cannot.

The voices of Joan Baez and only a few others have been able to do that for me, in a way that lifts my spirit to the highest heavens.

She could have done that for those soldiers.

That's why they did not want her.

Lifted spirits, will not kill...and certainly not for money, for others no less.

I can't be reallly objective about this. Though I do not know her, pesonally, Joan Baez is off-limits, when it comes to government censorship.

God forbid that anyone might have a real spiritual experience and say," no more," to war...no more to the slaughter of human beings, for profits.

Have any of these fools ever heard her sing "Amazing Grace?"

When she sings it, it is a healing force.......

Joan Baez Banned at Walter Reed Hospital
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
(05-02) 06:26 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

Folk singer and anti-war activist Joan Baez says she doesn't know why she was not allowed to perform for recovering soldiers recently at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as she planned.

In a letter to The Washington Post published Wednesday, she said rocker John Mellencamp had asked her to perform with him last Friday and that she accepted his invitation.

"I have always been an advocate for nonviolence and I have stood as firmly against the Iraq war as I did the Vietnam War 40 years ago," she wrote. "I realize now that I might have contributed to a better welcome home for those soldiers fresh from Vietnam. Maybe that's why I didn't hesitate to accept the invitation to sing for those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. In the end, four days before the concert, I was not 'approved' by the Army to take part. Strange irony."

Baez, 66, told the Post in a telephone interview Tuesday that she was not told why she was left off the program by the Army. "There might have been one, there might have been 50 (soldiers) that thought I was a traitor," she told the paper.

The Post reported that Walter Reed officials did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday, but that in an e-mailed statement published Monday on RollingStone.com, spokesman Steve Sanderson said the medical center received the request for participation by Baez just two days before the concert.

"These additional requirements were not in the agreement/contract and would have required a modification," Sanderson told the magazine's Web site.

Baez's manager, Mark Spector, told the Post that Mellencamp's management invited Baez to perform in March and handled all the arrangements. The Post said Mellencamp's manager, Randy Hoffman, did not return calls requesting comment and that Mellencamp's publicist said the singer was ill Tuesday and unavailable.

But Mellencamp earlier told RollingStone.com: "They didn't give me a reason why she couldn't come. We asked why and they said, 'She can't fit here, period.'"

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free