From left, panelists Richard Cohen (Washington Post), Nicholas Lemann (Columbia), First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams and Time honcho Norman Pearlstine
The F-word jarred the prestigious panel assembled at Michael's yesterday to discuss New York Times reporter Judith Miller.
Miller is in prison for refusing to testify in the investigation into the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's name. Many in and out of Washington believe the leaker was Karl Rove, President Bush's White House deputy chief of staff and closest adviser. Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper avoided Miller's fate by telling a grand jury he did indeed speak to Rove on "double super-secret background."
Time editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine; Miller's lawyer, the great First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams; Daily News columnist Michael Goodwin; Columbia University Journalism School Dean Nicholas Lemann; Reuters global editor Paul Holmes, and Court TV's Henry Schleiff and anchor Catherine Crier got singed when sparks flew between Vanity Fair writer Michael Wolff and the Washington Post's Richard Cohen (whose column also appears in the Daily News).
"I think this certainly is one of the biggest stories of our age," said Wolff. "If the guy closest to the President has potentially committed a felony ... The President said, 'If anyone is involved in this in my administration, they're going to get fired.' ... If Karl Rove were out of business, that's a f-ing big story."
"You guess, and then you write!" Cohen blasted later at Wolff. "This is a crappy little crime, and it may not be a crime at all."
When Pearlstine said he'd told Time Warner chief Dick Parsons in October he would make his decision solely on a journalistic basis, Wolff said, "I deeply respect the decision you made, but the truth is, the board of Time Warner would never have allowed you to make any other decision."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
If Michael Wolff truly believes that the Karl non-scandal scandal is "one of the biggest stories of our age," he is certifiably insane!
Excuse me. I shouldn't laugh at the poor man, but that statement has to be one of the most ridiculous things I've heard in a long time.
I guess I need to put this in context.
Wolff's magazine, Vanity Fair, is the one that plastered "covert CIA operative" Valerie Plame and her husband Joe Wilson all over its pages.
Plame and Wilson
Undercover in the pages of Vanity Fair, January 2004
Howard Kurtz wrote on December 3, 2003, in the Washington Post:
Former ambassador Joseph Wilson has been quite protective of his wife, Valerie Plame, in the weeks since her cover as a CIA operative was blown.
"My wife has made it very clear that -- she has authorized me to say this -- she would rather chop off her right arm than say anything to the press and she will not allow herself to be photographed," he declared in October on "Meet the Press."
But that was before Vanity Fair came calling.
..."The pictures should not be able to identify her, or are not supposed to," Wilson said yesterday. "She's still not going to answer any questions and there will not be any pictures that compromise her." The reason, said Wilson, is that "she's still employed" by the CIA "and has obligations to her employer."
...Ron Beinner, a contributing photography producer at Vanity Fair, said Plame was not originally scheduled to participate in the Nov. 8 shoot, but agreed to join her husband once "she felt suitably disguised."
Joe Wilson himself said on CNN, "My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity."
Nonetheless, Wolff STILL won't let go of the Rove story.
His insistence that Karl Rove committed a serious crime is nuts.
Equally nuts is Wolff misquoting the President by stating that he said, "If anyone is involved in this in my administration, they're going to get fired."
Not quite right, Mikey.
Not a "f-ing big story."
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