Lies, Damned Lies and a Little Smear to Boot
Rove-a-Palooza/Take a Letter from Libby/Miller's Crossing/Big Time!

Former CIA intelligence officer Larry Johnson has been debunking falsehoods about Joe Wilson and PlameGate from the RightWing Noise Machine for many moons, and he continues his counter assault at his No Quarter blog. He's got a number of examples that he rebuts, but here's one of the more glaring items from Andrea Mitchell (intrepid NBC reporter/talking head and Mrs. Allen Greenspan--don't tell me she's not pulling her punches):

Andrea Mitchell on the October 13 edition of Hardball spreads further misinformation by insisting that Vice President Cheney was out of the loop:

MITCHELL: He did not necessarily know that any trip was even under way at the early stages of that trip.

MATTHEWS: Sure, but they...

MITCHELL: That`s what they were trying to clear up. That`s why they jumped up. And that was probably the original motivation.

MATTHEWS: Right. But is the vice president, Jim, still left with the explanation that he or someone has to give -- if a trip was undertaken to Central Africa to answer an inquiry raised by him, why didn`t they report back to him that there was no deal there involving uranium? And, therefore, why didn`t he tell the president before he gave his State of the Union address?

Wrong again Andrea! (How can someone get so much so wrong and still be considered a serious journalist?) According to the July 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report, Vice President Cheney asked his CIA briefer for an update on the Niger issue he had asked about in early February (which triggered Joe Wilson's trip to Niger). As a result of Cheney's request in early March, two CIA officers debriefed Ambassador Wilson on the results of his trip, wrote up the report, and disseminated the report on 8 March (p. 42 of the Senate report). Now, we're asked to believe that the CIA briefer never got back to Cheney? If you believe that call me, I have a bridge in Baghdad to sell you.