Dear Mr. Prosecutor Talk to Cliff May about Ms. Plame

[seemslikeadream]

By Jim Lobe, AlterNet
February 17, 2004

Please forgive my presumptuousness in writing to you, but as a concerned citizen I could not help but notice that the White House has been less than cooperative in your efforts to identify the source of the Plame leak. I think I may have a solution to your problems. His name in Clifford May......

Here is a possible way out of this thorny dilemma. There is at least one person who knew of Valerie Plame's relationship to the CIA even before Novak published his column: Clifford May. He is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a non-profit organization founded two days after the 9/11 attacks that, in its words, "conducts research and education on the war on terrorism." More importantly, there is no reason why Mr. May should have known about Plame's CIA credentials, not did he possess the requisite security clearances to do so. Tracking down the source of his "leak" could well bring us closer to identifying the culprits who gave the same information to the likes of Bob Novak.

Mr.May has not been coy about sharing his knowledge of Plame's CIA background. On Sept. 29, the same day that the Washington Post confirmed that the CIA had asked for a criminal investigation of Novak's sources, the National Review Online published a column by Mr. May claiming to be in the know long before Novak blew her cover. "That wasn't news to me," he wrote. "I had been told that - but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhanded manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of." Mr. May later told Fox News the same day that Plame's identity was "something of an open secret.".....

His close relationships with prominent neoconservatives are also hard to miss. FDD's board of advisers includes the former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle; Center for Security Policy president Frank Gaffney; Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammerl and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol....

But why not ask. Mr May who his informant was? He told me just last week that he had not even been contacted by the FBI or any other investigators about the case....

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17874