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Aug. 1, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:36
August 1, 2005, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
And greetings to you, thrill seekers and music lovers, conversationalists all across the fruited plain.
Here we are, back after a short absence, a little over a week away.
Happy to be back behind the golden EIB microphone on the day that we start our 18th year.
Here at the EIB Network, this is anniversary number 17.
We started on August 1st of 1988.
What?
No, no, no, I heard it.
Can you not even let me get the program started without asking me questions?
I heard that London got bombed.
I heard that Egypt got bombed.
Yes, I heard all that.
I went to the south of France.
I'd always wanted to see the south of France.
I'd never been there.
People were there as friendly as anybody I have ever encountered toward them.
Yeah, they knew we were America.
Did they know I'm an American?
Of course they knew I'm an American.
They knew who I was.
And yeah, they were as friendly as they could be.
They went on to Rome.
I'm fascinated with Rome.
I'm ancient Rome and all that.
Went up to Venice.
Never been to Venice before and then spent a couple of days up there.
That was all.
It was just a great time.
But yes, Mr. Sturdley, I heard about all the bombings and I heard that London and Egypt and London's in another lockdown today.
I mean, the snipers are all over the city.
They've got supposedly the rumors that a third attack is being planned.
In fact, one of the chief constable over there had an interesting quote, said that his officers are not going to waste time searching old white ladies.
That's a quote from BTP Chief Constable Ian Johnston, who said that his officers are not going to waste any time searching old white ladies today as they hunt for the potential suspects here that may have planned a third attack in London.
The thing I didn't hear when I was over there, the thing I did not hear was what did the UN do about any of this?
What did the UN Security Council do?
I didn't hear a thing about what anybody was going to do about it.
I couldn't find any announcement of the UN reaction in the foreign press.
And I guess that nothing has changed.
The UN ignores terrorism.
Our left wing in America ignores the UN ignoring terrorism.
No, wait.
The left in America is not really ignoring terrorism.
They are focused today on terror at the United Nations.
The left today, I must take it back, folks.
Please forgive me.
I'm sorry about the left is focused on terror at the United Nations today.
And that terror at the UN is not the bombing of London or Egypt.
No, it is the appointment of John Bolton to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
That's the terror they care about.
No wonder they're losing, filibustering and losing.
Here's the president today making the announcement.
Nearly five months ago, I nominated John Bolton to be America's ambassador to the United Nations.
I chose John because of his vast experience in foreign policy, his integrity, and his willingness to confront difficult problems head on.
I've told the nation that John Bolton would provide clear American leadership for reform at the United Nations.
I told them that he would insist upon results.
The United States Senate held thorough confirmation hearings, and a majority of United States senators agree that he is the right man for the job.
Yet because of partisan delaying tactics by a handful of senators, John was unfairly denied the up or down vote that he deserves.
As a result, America has now gone more than six months without a permanent ambassador to the United Nations.
This post is too important to leave vacant any longer, especially during a war and a vital debate about UN reform.
So today I've used my constitutional authority to appoint John Bolton to serve as America's ambassador to the United Nations.
He'll serve until the early days of 2007.
He serves until the end of this Congress.
Recess appointments are totally constitutional and they're not unusual.
They have happened on many.
Clinton recess appointed a guy to be ambassador to Luxembourg, James Hormel, some guy from San Francisco that a lot of people had some problems with.
He was a big contributor.
And he also appointed somebody, I forget what this guy's name, but he went up to the civil rights division of the Justice Department.
No, no, it wasn't Bill Manley.
It was somebody that a lot of people had problems with, radical leftist extremists.
But anyway, they're totally constitutional and they happen frequently.
And this is just another sign that the Democrats are losing, folks.
They can't stop the president.
Last week was a big week for him in one regard, not such a big week for government spending, but still it was, I mean, it blew government spending out the wazoo, but still the Democrats can't stop him.
And in my stack, what I'm going to do here today, I've accumulated a whole bunch of stuff that happened last week that I do want to comment on, and we'll do that, as well as melding it in with all the stuff that's happened since, which is basically yesterday and this morning.
The president then continued.
I want you to hear what he had to say introducing Bolton.
This is one more comment from him.
I'm sending Ambassador Bolton to New York with my complete confidence.
Ambassador Bolton believes passionately in the goals of the United Nations Charter to advance peace and liberty and human rights.
His mission is now to help the U.N. reform itself to renew its founding promises for the 21st century.
He will speak for me on critical issues facing the international community.
And he'll make it clear that America values the potential of the United Nations to be a source of hope and dignity and peace.
As he embarks on his new assignment, Ambassador Bolton will bring tremendous wisdom and expertise.
Over the past two decades, John Bolton has been one of America's most talented and successful diplomats.
He's been a tireless defender of our nation's values and a persuasive advocate for freedom and peace.
Democrats don't like Bolton, by the way, because he's tough.
They don't like Bolton because the United Nations is an enemy of George W. Bush, as a friend of the Democrats.
And as such, anybody that's going to reform an enemy of George W. Bush is an enemy of the Democrats.
Plus, they don't like his mustache.
This is what Bolton had to say.
I'm profoundly honored, indeed humbled, by the confidence that you have shown by appointing me to serve as the United States permanent representative to the United Nations.
You have made your directions for U.S. policy at the United Nations clear, and I am prepared to work tirelessly to carry out the agenda and initiatives that you and Secretary Rice direct.
That's good.
We seek a stronger, more effective organization, true to the ideals of its founders and agile enough to act in the 21st century.
It will be a distinct privilege to be an advocate for America's values and interests at the U.N., and in the words of the U.N. Charter, to help maintain international peace and security.
My deepest thanks to you both for the opportunity to continue to serve America.
And of course, this soundbite roster would not be complete without words from Kofi Annan.
No, I will not resign.
No, I will not resign.
Oh, that was when he said over the oil for food program.
Kofi said this following the announcement that Bolton will be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
It is the president's prerogative and the president has decided to appoint him through this process for him to come and represent him.
And from where I stand, we will work with him as the ambassador representative of the president and the government.
We are eager to see this process unfold and take place right before our very eyes.
Can't wait to watch this.
Space program, by the way, getting its share of criticism.
And there are suggestions that the shuttle design is dated.
We should pretty much scratch the thing and start all over from the beginning and put together a more modern system.
Now, they may have a point.
They may have a point.
Just hang on.
They may have a point.
But this is a hanging curveball.
So here you've got a bunch of shuttle opponents saying, and how old is the shuttle system?
Shuttle system barely 25 years old.
And it's already outdated.
We've got to get rid of it.
We've got to start anew.
We can't keep sending guys up there without assurances are going to get back down safely.
But we have to keep our hands off of Social Security.
We can totally tear apart the shuttle program.
We can tear it apart.
We can rip it to shreds.
We can say it doesn't work.
It's a danger.
It's not succeeding.
And we can jump the whole thing and say, start from scratch.
But boy, when it comes to Social Security, we can't touch that.
So I feel like saying, keep your hands off our space shuttle.
If we can't keep our hands and get our hands on your Social Security, you keep our hands off our space program.
If tampering with Social Security is an insult to FDR, isn't tampering with the space program an insult to JFK?
Anyway, that's for another day, folks.
A quick timeout.
We're ditto camming today.
We'll be up and running all three hours at rushlandblood.com.
We will continue in a moment.
America's Anchorman and Truth Detector starting our 18th year on the one and only Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Great to have you along today, folks.
The telephone number, by the way, if you want to be on, is 800-282-2882.
The email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
We go back to the audio this morning.
It was the Today Show.
The co-host Katie Couric talking to Chris Matthews of Hardball.
This is about the John Bolton announcement the president made later.
That announcement came after this exchange on the Today Show this morning.
So over the weekend, the White House, Chris, seemed to indicate that President Bush is poised to use his recess appointment power and send John Bolton to the U.N. without a Senate confirmation vote.
How can he do that?
Well, he can do it under the law, and he can make the appointment through the end of this Congress, which means the earliest days of 2007.
It's interesting because the title that he's getting is permanent representative to the United Nations, and it won't be a permanent appointment.
It'll be a recess appointment, only good for one Congress.
He really won't have the full authority of someone like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who spoke for the whole country, not just for the president.
Oh, come on, eat it, Chris.
You know, this is just, it's getting out of hand here.
This is just ridiculous.
He is a permanent amba.
He's going to be up there for the whole time he's up there.
And to say that he's not going to be a full representative of the country as Moynihan was because he's been recess appointed here.
He's only a spokesman for the president.
Let's not forget that Bolton was filibustered.
Bolton had well over 50 votes.
There were two or three cloture votes trying to break the filibuster, and they got up to like 56, 55 votes, which is plenty enough to confirm him under normal circumstances.
So aside from the filibuster, he's got the support of the country.
A majority of the elected representatives of the people in the U.S. Senate voted essentially to send Bolton on up to the United Nations.
So we move on to Fox News Sunday from yesterday, talking to Senator Chris Waitress Sandwich Dodd.
Wallace said that we've done some research into this, and it turns out that President Clinton made 140 recess appointments, including William Land Lee as assistant attorney general, gay activist James Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg, and Roger Gregory as a federal judge.
Were they all damaged goods because they were recess appointees?
Some of them may have been.
I mean, the recess appointment process is being abused by Democrats and Republicans.
Remember, this was written into the Constitution to provide during these long periods when Congress was not going to be around at all, and you had to put people in place.
Now, what presidents do, Democrats and Republicans, is waiting for the president.
Whoa, What did I just hear him imply?
That we should look to the original intent of the Constitution.
Did he not just say that we should look to the original intent of the Constitution in trying to determine the purpose of a recess appointment?
Didn't he say that this was written into the Constitution to provide during those long periods when Congress was not going to be around at all?
So the original intent of the Constitution is being abused, according to Senator Dodd.
This may be the first time in my memory he has been concerned about the original intent of the United States Constitution.
Folks, here's the rest of what he said.
Just to come along and then slip someone in.
I think it's an abuse of the process, whether Democrats or Republicans use it.
Yeah.
Yeah, but I bet he didn't say he thought it was an abusive process when Clinton was doing it 140 times.
So anyway, nothing has changed.
I have to tell you, I paid some attention to the news while I was gone last week.
Not a whole lot, because I vowed to just really get away from it last week and did a pretty good job of it.
But I did stay up to speed on some of the trip.
And even when you get away from the country, it's amazing how nothing really changes.
The Democrats are still stuck, being totally embittered over 2000 and 2004.
They're still stuck in just nothing but opposition, no matter what it is.
They're so eager.
I've got a story here somewhere in the stack.
And it's Reuters or somebody.
I forget which it is.
I'll find it.
Stack's pretty big today because it's got a lot of stuff from last week.
But the headline's something like, Bush's lame duck status delayed.
Lame duck status delayed.
It's a story about all the stuff that got done last week.
And now you pile Bolton onto it and Judge Roberts and how Bush has sort of snaked these guys with that nomination.
Democrats keep thinking they're making headway, but all they're doing is succeeding in raising money.
And I don't know how successful that is, but the only success they can say they are having with their strategy here is fundraising because they're not stopping anything.
They really are not obstructing anything.
I mean, they're trying and they're making it look like they are.
But the point is they're losing ground with voters.
And they think, of course, just the opposite.
I think they're gaining ground, like the Karl Rove story.
You know, there's no polling data that suggests the Democrats are winning with that effort to keep Rove alive, as it were.
And yet they try to keep hammering that.
I mean, they just beat their heads against the wall, open the door into their noses while they think that they're walking through.
It's an amazing thing to see it from afar in another part of the world rather than here amidst the forest when it is happening.
We got a great email letter at our website, and I'll tell you about it in just a second.
This story happened the day I left.
Last Friday, well, two Fridays ago, the 22nd of July.
Soldiers from Massachusetts and Hawaii who work at Club Gitmo gave visiting home state senators a piece of their mind last week.
Senators Edward Kennedy and Daniel Akaka, whose name I love pronouncing.
Daniel Akaka, a Democrat from Hawaii, met with several soldiers during a visit led by John Warner.
Pentagon officials said that soldiers criticized the harsh comments made recently by Senate Democrats regarding Club Gitmo.
Dick Durbin of Illinois, of course, invoked widespread military outrage when he compared Gitmo to the prison labor systems used by Stalin, Pol Pot, and Hitler.
They got stiff reactions from those home state soldiers, one official said.
The troop down there expressed their disdain for that kind of commentary, especially comparisons to the gulag.
A spokesman for Mr. Kennedy had no comment.
A spokeswoman for Senator Akaka confirmed the senator met with soldiers from Hawaii, but did not recall receiving any complaints during the meeting.
Both senators made no mention of the incident in press statements after their visit.
Senator Kennedy said that he is impressed with the courtesies and professionalism of the men and women in our armed forces, which is just smoke and mirrors because, of course, he's been one of the leading advocates for closing down Club Gitmo.
And Akaka voted for an amendment that would have cut funds for Club Gitmo back in April.
So this was so heartwarming to me to see this.
They go down there on an inspection tour.
Ted Kennedy going down there.
And of course, I know the real reason he's going down.
There's not an inspection tour.
He's part of the entertainment program.
If you go to our website, rushlimbaugh.com, you'll see that Club Gitmo visitors have many outside activities involving water.
And Senator Kennedy is one of the directors of entertainment.
So he goes down there for this purpose.
But when he goes down, they gave him an earful of what they think of his comments.
And he had nothing to say about it.
Now, the email we got is from Jennifer Phillips, who is stationed at an airbase we have in Qatar.
And she said that they are planning a jailbreak-themed Club Gitmo party for a bunch of the people who are about to rotate out of Qatar.
And they have asked if we sell Club Gitmo merchandise in bulk at bulk prices.
He said, I was listening to AFN Network the other morning, Armed Forces Radio, heard Rush talking about the Gitmo theme.
The staff and I thought it'd be an awesome addition to the party.
I promise that we'll get you a most excellent picture from the party.
So here they are, some people rotating out of the airbase in Qatar, having a jailbreak-themed Club Gitmo party.
Now, it's jailbreak.
It's jailbreak because the troops are rotating out.
So it's like getting out of jail, and they want some Club Gitmo gear.
So we are going to send some Club Gitmo gear over to them anytime the U.S. military asks for bulk rate, bulk prices, so forth, to use the Club Gitmo gear for celebrations.
Why?
We are more than willing to accommodate, ladies and gentlemen, because you know we love, respect, revere, and adore the United States Armed Forces and its personnel.
Quick timeout, back with more in just a second.
And we are back serving humanity already back in a groove, back in the saddle, executing assigned host duties flawlessly.
Zero mistakes.
Chris Dodd on that Fox News Sunday program yesterday also said that Bolton shouldn't be appointed because he was damaged goods now that his credibility has been called into question.
Now, these are the guys.
Dodd is one of the guys that led the pack in damaging or trying to damage Bolton and in complaining that he's damaged goods.
And he's damaged on the base of what?
Allegations?
It's back to the same old thing, the seriousness of the charge.
Forget the nature of the evidence.
It's the seriousness of the charge.
This would be like the Menendez brothers complaining that they were orphaned when they're the ones that killed their parents.
So I mean the the, the.
The intellectual quicksand that the left continues to find itself in is growing and growing and it's getting deeper and deeper.
John, in Ocala Florida, it's been a while since i've spoken to people on the phone.
Great to have you with us and welcome to the program, sir Rush.
Thank you very much and welcome back from vacation.
It was like going through a quagmire last week.
I enjoy the guest host, but nothing compares to you.
Well, I appreciate that, but all's calm now.
We're all back to normal, I know.
And this Bolt nomination I think it's fantastic.
So much for the new tone.
Just stick it to the Democrats.
Exactly.
All right, make them eat it.
Can I say one thing on your anniversary rush?
Sure, all right.
My father introduced me to you in 1988, in september, about a month after you were on.
He died in december that year and I always thank him very much for finding you.
Well, I appreciate that, sir.
I uh uh i'm i'm i'm, I can't, I can't tell everybody uh how uh, I don't know, it's humbling to have been here 18 years.
This is the program.
Don't forget.
That was a fad.
This program.
I don't know how many of you remember back those first years uh, first six months, but I mean hey, people were were saying oh, this is a fad this, this can't last.
And then, when it lasted to the election, they then said well, when the election's over, what's Limbaugh going to talk about now?
He's a guy one Bush, so what's he gonna talk about now?
And then and, and and then Clinton won.
And well, it's over for Limbaugh now, because his influence has uh been proved to be ineffective.
Clinton won, what's he gonna talk about now?
I mean, this is a show that wasn't gonna last.
And here we are starting our um, our 18th, uh year today.
Uh, and if you add well, I do, because the this show actually is preceded by three and a half years of this same show uh, in Sacramento.
So this basically same show has been going on 21 years now.
Well uh 20, because this is the 17th year, 17th anniversary, 20 years uh, and and it's just, you know, as I say, it's um, it's exciting and it's it's uh all of those you know upbeat things, but it's also it's also very humbling because uh, one of the things I was, I was talking to somebody last week and i've maybe it was the week before no no no, it was, it was.
It was last week.
I ran into some people and I was uh complaining, or they were complaining about uh, so much in media today seems to be stunts, stunt oriented things just designed to shock or outrage and and uh, get ratings.
And they asked me, do you do that?
I said no uh, I never have done anything I do specifically to get ratings and i've done.
I do what I do because I do what I am interested in it.
Uh, and that's what's been so really gratifying about this is that I just have shown up here every day and have talked about the things i'm interested in and laughed and joked about a lot of it and uh, people have found it and wanted to listen to it.
Uh, and so the, the uh, that that's.
That's just like, you know, letting the chips fall where they may.
You know, some people may be disagreeing.
What do you mean you don't do stunts?
You remember the caller abortion?
That wasn't a stunt.
That was an illustration.
And that, you know, like everything we do here, illustrating absurdity by being absurd or using satire parody, it's all tied to a point to be made about a particular issue.
And I think if the left does consider this program a stunt, it is because this program is devoted to the truth.
And the truth is a stunt.
It's an ongoing stunt to the left.
And if you doubt that, just look at the way they react to Bush.
They claim that his campaigns and his governance are identical.
Why, he's actually doing what he said he was going to do.
Why nobody does that?
Why, no wonder we're tricked.
We're not expecting everybody in politics is looking for deceit.
That's why Clinton was so admired.
He deceived people so artfully and so well.
The press marveled about it.
Bush doesn't do that.
He just is, here's who I am, and this is what I believe, and this is what I'm going to do.
And he does it.
And that's pretty much been what this program is, to have it accepted and be made the number one program for most of these 17 years is truly an honor.
And I want to extend my deep thanks to all of you.
Now, we don't have anything planned today.
It's 17th anniversary, no big deal, no bigger than the 16th, and it's not going to be any different than the 18th.
But if we get to 20, that's when we'll do the retrospectives and look backs and all of that stuff.
But we've got stuff to do here, folks.
And talking about this program and talking about me has never been one of the focal points, as you well know.
Here is Eric in Sacramento, my adopted hometown.
Welcome, sir.
Nice to have you with us.
Mega, Mega Ditto's Rush.
How are you doing?
Fine.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I just had a question.
Do you think this is going to be new for Bush, the playbook?
Do you think he's going to change how he's going to react with Democrats now and how he's going to deal with maybe future nominations and things?
I don't know that this is symptomatic of one signal or one change in behavior.
I think this is actually Bush being Bush.
This is really not something that's extraordinary.
This is the guy he wanted.
He re-nominated the judges that were filibustered in his first term, sent them right back to the same Senate Judiciary Committee and the same Democrats in the Senate.
And he's bulldogged this way.
He's going to get what he wants.
He's going to give it every shot.
And Bolton's the guy he wanted.
He wanted Condoleezza Rice over at the State Department.
And guess what?
All kinds of stories, Washington Post, I think, how she's totally gone in there and just taken over this place in six months and has turned it around and is making it an agency that is actually exactly what Bush said he wanted to do there.
He's going to make the State Department an image of his administration.
It's not going to be some enemy outpost that he has to lasso and control.
He's got his person over there now.
And the State Department is functioning.
Condoleezza Rice, the old traveled State Department chief executive, Secretary of State, in the first six months of her tenure than any previous Secretary of State.
She's not sitting around doing nothing, twiddling her thumbs.
So Bush, a man of action.
I think he's focused on getting done what he wants to get done.
He's amazingly positive in his outlook.
He's a man that's really at peace with himself, doesn't care about his critics.
I doubt that, to be honest with you, I doubt that Bush is sitting up there licking his chops over what he did to the Democrats today.
He's simply thinking, okay, I got my guy at the U.N.
Okay, cross that one off the list.
Time to move on to something else now.
And to the extent that he does take some time to savor in his victories over these people, I'm sure he's human and does that, but I don't think that's why he does what he does.
He does what he does because he believes in it.
You know, Robert Novak, if I may move on here, has a piece today, a column, the title of which is The Abuse of My Integrity Provokes This Response.
And this column by Robert Novak is significant because everything that we are hearing right now about this Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson business is in fact coming from Joe Wilson and his surrogates and his leakers.
We don't know what people have said to the grand jury.
We don't know what Judith Miller is hiding.
We know none of it.
But I'll tell you, I'm going to reiterate what I've always thought about Judith Miller, and we'll just see when this investigation is over if I'm not right about it.
But I think Judith Miller is protecting somebody.
We know it's not Karl Rove.
And it appears that it's quite possible that it was Judith Miller who ended up informing members of the administration that Valerie Plame worked at the CIA.
And it could be she's got some sources that she has to protect because the sources may have broken the law in divulging the information to her.
She may be subjecting them to some sort of prosecution.
But regardless, she's in jail and protecting what she knows.
The New York Times, my point all along about this has been that she's in jail there because what she knows and what she doesn't want to testify to is so profoundly embarrassing either to her and or the New York Times or so revealing about some source that she has that it's far better to sit there in jail for a while and get a book deal out of this when it's all over than subject herself and her paper and whoever her sources are to whatever it is she knows.
But just keep an eye on that because, you know, people have said, Rush, there can't be a crime.
I mean, there has to be a crime here.
Somebody's in jail.
There's got to be something big going on.
They all tack that back to Karl Rove.
There may be, but my point, after reading the Novak piece, we don't know anything about what this prosecutor has.
All we know is what Joe Wilson and his surrogates are leaking about this.
And his surrogates, by the way, happen to be most of the members of the mainstream press.
Let me give you the essentials of the Novak piece today.
A statement attributed to the former CIA spokesman indicating that I deliberately disregarded what he told me in writing my 2003 column about Joseph Wilson's wife is just plain wrong.
Though frustrated, I have followed the advice of my attorneys, and I've written almost nothing about the CIA leak over two years because of a criminal investigation by a federal special prosecutor.
The lawyers also urged me not to write this.
But the allegation against me is so patently incorrect and so abuses my integrity as a journalist that I feel constrained to reply.
In the course of a front-page story in last Wednesday's Washington Post, Walter Pincus and Jim VanDehay quoted ex-CIA spokesman Bill Harlow describing his testimony to the grand jury.
In response to my question about Valerie Playme Wilson, Valerie Plame Wilson's role in former Ambassador Wilson's trip to Niger, Harlow told me, quote, she had not authorized the mission, unquote.
Harlow was quoted as later saying to me, quote, the story Novak had related to him was wrong.
Well, this gave the impression I ignored an official statement that I had the facts wrong, but wrote it anyway for the sake of publishing the story.
That would be inexcusable for any journalist, and particularly a veteran of 48 years in Washington.
The truth is otherwise, and that's why I feel compelled to write this column.
My column of July 14th of 03 asked why the CIA in 2002 sent Wilson, a critic of President Bush, to Niger to investigate an intelligence report of attempted Iraqi uranium purchases.
All the subsequent furor was caused by three sentences in the sixth paragraph of that column.
And they are, Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on WMDs.
Two senior administration officials told me that Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report.
The CIA, that's Harlow, says its counterproliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him.
There never was any question of me talking about Mrs. Wilson authorizing her husband's trip.
I was told she suggested the mission, and that is what I asked Harlow.
His denial was contradicted in July of 2004 by a unanimous Senate Intelligence Committee report.
The report said that Wilson's wife suggested his name for the trip.
Well, that's what I wrote.
I cited an internal CIA memo from her saying my husband has good relations with officials in Niger and lots of French contacts, adding that they could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.
A State Department analyst told the committee that Mrs. Wilson had the idea of sending Wilson to Africa.
So what was wrong with my column, as Harlow claimed?
Well, there was nothing incorrect.
He told the Washington Post reporters he had warned me that if I did write about it, her name should not be revealed.
That's meaningless.
Once it was determined that Wilson's wife suggested the mission, she could be identified as Valerie Plame by reading her husband's entry in Who's Who in America.
Harlow said to the Post that he didn't tell me Mrs. Wilson was undercover because that was classified.
What he did say was, as I reported in a previous column, she probably never again would be given a foreign assignment, but that exposure of her name might cause difficulties.
According to CIA sources, she was brought home from foreign assignments in 97 when agency officials, she had been outed by the traitor Aldrich Ames.
I previously said that I never would have written those sentences if Bill Harlow, then the CIA director George Tenet, or anybody else from the agency, told me that Valerie Plame Wilson's disclosure would endanger herself or anybody, and nobody ever told me this.
Now, the recent first disclosure of secret grand jury testimony set off a news media feeding frenzy centered on this obscure case.
Joseph Wilson was discarded a year ago by the Kerry presidential campaign after the Senate committee reported much of what he said had no basis in fact.
The re-emerged Wilson is now accusing the senators of smearing him.
Well, I, Robert Novak, eagerly await the end of this investigation when I may be able to correct other misinformation about me and this case.
So as I say, his lawyers told him not to write it, but he did it anyway because he's sick and tired of being impugned in all of this and his integrity being attacked.
Because all we're hearing right now is the spin that we're getting from the Joe Wilson-Valerie Plame side of things.
But we don't know anything.
And Wilson's a proven liar, as Novak's column not just alleges to, but once again documents and demonstrates.
And yet the liar, the guy who hadn't been able to tell the truth about much of any of this, is being quoted as God on this story.
But we don't know what people have said to the grand jury.
We don't know what Judith Miller is hiding.
We don't know any of it.
We only know the spin coming from the Wilson camp.
And I guess it's getting to Robert Novak a little, watching and listening and reading all of this gunk.
Quick time out.
We'll be right back.
Stay with us.
Went long in that last segment.
This is going to be a short one.
I apologize for that.
Lucille in Richmond, Texas.
Hello and welcome.
You're on the EIB network.
It is great to talk to you.
I've tried for years to get through with you.
I love your show, and you have educated two children for me in government.
Thank you so much.
And I appreciate that.
Yes, I got a good laugh yesterday and today.
I've noticed that, and I'm not sure what I saw it, but the news media is kind of criticizing Bush for exercising six times a week.
They're making it sound like he must be obsessive.
And it made me laugh.
What do you think about this?
Wouldn't they, if he didn't exercise, then they would be saying that he was a slug and he wasn't providing a good example.
Here's what it means.
It means that George W. Bush has these people so psyched out that they are insane.
So he comes out.
He is the most fit president we've ever had.
He's got the lowest resting heart rate, 47 beats a minute.
Resting heart rate, folks.
I mean, that's nothing.
He's just is a machine and he exercises six times a week.
There was a column, I think it was the LA Times, a guy named Jonathan Chait, who wrote, and this is a guy who has openly written of his hatred for Bush before on numerous occasions.
He said, doesn't this strike you as creepy that we have a president who exercises so much?
And he went on.
It was just the most childish, churlish little column.
As though Monica Lewinsky wasn't creepy to this guy, lying to a grand jury wasn't creepy.
Bill Clinton going out on a jog and then showing up in the Oval Office, sweaty in shorts with those white sausage thighs.
That was creepy to me.
And it was disrespectful as well.
So I just think he's got these guys totally psyched out.
I love seeing it.
I think it's funny as it can be.
And if I were you, Lucille, I wouldn't sweat it.
We'll be back.
All right, the first hour is in the can.
Soon will be.
We'll take a brief break here at the top of the hour and get back and start the second hour in just mere moments.
Sit tight, be patient, won't be long, and we will be right back.
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