DICK AND KARL’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE

Very suspicious: Washington Post article includes line connecting Cheney to Plame leak, which suddenly is deleted in later editions

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006893.php
[Before] On July 12, the day Cheney and Libby flew together from Norfolk, the vice president instructed his aide to alert reporters of an attack launched that morning on Wilson's credibility by Fleischer, according to a well-placed source.

Libby talked to Miller and Cooper. That same day, another administration official who has not been identified publicly returned a call from Walter Pincus of The Post. He "veered off the precise matter we were discussing" and told him that Wilson's trip was a "boondoggle" set up by Plame, Pincus has written in Nieman Reports.

[After] On July 12, the day Cheney and Libby flew together from Norfolk, Libby talked to Miller and Cooper. That same day, another administration official who has not been identified publicly returned a call from Walter Pincus of The Post. He "veered off the precise matter we were discussing" and said Wilson's trip was a boondoggle set up by Wilson's wife, Pincus has written in Nieman Reports.

The consensus interpretation: this account points the finger at Ari Fleischer as “Mr X” (the original source of Novak’s story) and possibly as Walter Pincus’s source as well

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2205

http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/2005/10/ari-fleischer-is-third-man.html

http://www.anonymousliberal.com/2005/10/libbys-motive-cheneys-exposure-and-why.html

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012939.html

How Libby’s lies impeded the rest of Fitzgerald’s investigation

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/of-course-fitzgerald-didnt-charge.html
[John Aravosis] Fitzgerald mentioned this on Friday, but it's worth repeating, since the Republican surrogates are now suggesting that no "real" crime occurred because Fitzgerald has yet to charge anyone with leaking classified information. . .

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/30/115434/85

David Addington, Cheney’s choice to replace Libby, is ALSO implicated in the Plame mess

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2005/1030nj1.htm

Michael Isikoff reports that Fitzgerald went to see Bush’s lawyer to tell him Rove wasn’t going to be indicted. Digby says that, if true, this is serious professional misconduct by Fitzgerald

Isikoff: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9865842/site/newsweek/

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_30_digbysblog_archive.html#113069507047785026

Atrios says it’s a bunch of crap http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_30_atrios_archive.html#113071740513942979

Swopa says it’s probably disinformation put out by one of the defense lawyers to slime Fitzgerald http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2210

Rove: so now we know, his eleventh-hour ploy was apparently evidence that he had neglected to mention the Plame conversation with Matthew Cooper to a colleague – this is their proof that he “forgot”

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/10/30/last_minute_evidence_spares_rove.html

Two problems with this ridiculous excuse: (1) it can equally be taken as evidence that he was COVERING UP his conversation with Cooper

http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/2005/10/round-up.html

(2) Rove reputedly has a “photographic memory”

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_30_digbysblog_archive.html#113070586868419784

More: http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/2005/10/lets-tell-mikey-hell-print-anything.html

The case against Cheney

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2005/10/indicting_dick.html#more

The oldest trick in political hackery: Rove wasn’t found to have done anything illegal (yet), so this means he’s “exonerated.” Hold on guys, there are a few non-legal questions remaining. . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/senator-cornyn-r-tx-says-its-okay-for.html
[John Aravosis] Senator Cornyn [R-TX] is on THIS WEEK this morning saying that Fitzgerald's investigation proves that Rove broke no laws and did nothing wrong.

Great, then the White House's surrogates are saying the investigation is over and Rove has been exonerated. And finally Karl and Scottie can come clean with everything they know that happened. Did Karl lie to Scottie? Did Scottie lie to the press and the country? Did the president lie when he said he wanted to get to the bottom of this and he already knew it was Karl? Did Cheney lie when he shut up for 2 years while he knew Scooter was the leaker?

Thank you, Senator Cornyn. We now know it's okay to demand answers from the White House since Karl has been "exonerated."

Why Cornyn is wrong: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001047.html

Rove isn’t off the legal hook yet, either

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/30/AR2005103000348.html

Even Repubs are calling for an investigation into Cheney and punishment for Rove

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/politics/30cnd-policy.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051030/pl_nm/bush_leak1_dc

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001392406

Will Bush fire Rove?

http://www.anonymousliberal.com/2005/10/what-does-it-take-to-get-fired.html

The indictment: filling in the missing names

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007458.php

On the genealogy of the phrase “criminalizing politics”

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007457.php

Frank Rich on Plame and other lies: enjoy

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/29/215512/81

Krugman too

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_30_digbysblog_archive.html#113074568490235723

The emptiness of most punditry when it comes to actual matters of guilt and innocence

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/30/20183/704
[Hunter] And you can repeat that statement, to a less overtly crass degree, for nearly every Republican and Democratic professional spinner, on both sides. During this particular week, we have actual news. It means something, something important. We don't know all the facts yet, or even whether or not a man is guilty or innocent, and finding out is deadly serious business. So how about we start finding out the facts? How 'bout the media start, instead of turning this story into the same Rolodex-emptying game of Hollywood Squares that producers have managed to turn every major national story into, these last ten years?

Woody smooches Scooter

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/30/22044/596

Josh Marshall, who was onto the Niger forgeries and Italian intelligence story before it was “cool,” offers a comprehensive review of the story: here’s Part One

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_30.php#006896
As you can see, quite a lot of information seemed to suggest that the Italian government played a large role in the story of the Niger forgeries, even if it might be an innocent or unwitting one. Yet neither the CIA nor the FBI, a knowledgeable source told me, seemed intent getting to the bottom of what had happened.

In addition to these clues, there was one more piece of information. And here is where the two streams of information I noted above flowed together. A US government source pointed me toward a series of suspicious points of overlap between the forgeries story and a series of unauthorized meetings between Italian intelligence figures, two Pentagon employees working under Doug Feith, other Americans and the disgraced Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar. (These meetings were the subject of an article ("Iran-Contra II?") I published with Laura Rozen and Paul Glastris in the Washington Monthly in early September 2004.) Around the same time, another source -- this one outside the US government – told me a murky series of details about the meetings which purported to connect them to the emergence of the forgeries in Rome in October 2002. . .

Bush’s strange “leadership” style: he’s lost confidence in Andrew Card -- so now he wants to appoint him as Treasury Secretary!

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2204

Republicans really are different

http://wilsonhellie.typepad.com/for_the_record/2005/10/gop_in_one_shor.html
[Digby] The Republicans will do anything to advance their agenda. They are fundamentally undemocratic --- they do not believe that the people have a right to vote, to see their elected politicians allowed to serve a full term, to know the reasons for their government's policies or even why they are going to war. They believe that they can do anything.

Brit Hume: wouldn’t he be pulled off the air by any decent news organization?

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/30/hume-hose-down/
JUAN WILLIAMS: You can try to minimize it, but the fact that you have Scooter Libby, so involved in justifying going to war, and in the posture of trying to smear a critic of that justification. I think is pretty revealing and pretty damaging to the Bush White House. . .

BRIT HUME: Juan, somebody needs to hose you down. . .









http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_30_atrios_archive.html#113069023510156150








Good way of looking at Bush's 39% approval: How can it be that HIGH?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_30_digbysblog_archive.html#113067268340377826

55% call Bush a “failure”

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20051031/1a_cover31.art.htm

http://www.slate.com/id/2129095
The WSJ fronts a story that says Bush's decline in popularity is also affecting his ability to get things done abroad. As the president prepares to go on several international missions, some are wondering whether the increasing problems in the administration will force the president to abandon the international arena and focus more on domestic policy. A graphic accompanying the story points out that Bush's approval ratings are close to Nixon's right before he resigned.

$30 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq spent (or stolen), and this is what we have to show for it?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/international/middleeast/30cnd-reconstruct.html

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/1005fd16-4984-11da-8686-0000779e2340.html

BREAKING NEWS: It's "Scalito" for the Supreme Court. They're looking for a fight (and they'll get it)

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/31/scotus.bush/index.html

Bonus item: Mark Shields

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR2005102801721.html
Who said repeatedly some variation of "every judicial nominee and the American people and the president deserve a fair up-or-down vote?" If you answered virtually every Republican senator, especially Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah, Sam Brownback of Kansas and Bill Frist of Tennessee, you would be more than right.

In addition to that "up-or-down vote," every judicial nominee, according to those same honorable folks, was entitled to a fair committee hearing. Every judicial nominee, it turns out, except Miers. She didn't even get the hearing, let alone "the fair up-or-down vote" she deserved.

One clause in Article VI of the Constitution states, "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." So, when some quarrelsome Senate Democrats kept asking if and how John Roberts' Catholicism might influence his opinions, the Bush White House turned away such impertinence with a prepared statement: "Judge Roberts has said in previous testimony that personal beliefs or views have no role whatsoever when it comes to decisions judges make." In other words, butt out!

But by October, the no-questions-about-a-nominee's-religious-faith rule had been conveniently repealed so that President Bush, facing "people [who] ask me why I picked Harriet Miers," could answer, "Part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion," while Karl Rove, the man whom Bush calls "Boy Genius," would personally reassure James Dobson, a powerful leader of the religious right, that Miers was "an evangelical Christian" and a member of "a very conservative church which is almost universally pro-life." Religious faith had become a reference and a credential for high office.

"If we're going to give advice and consent, we've got to have a full picture," Brownback said. "We were not asking for documents regarding attorney-client privilege -- or privileged communications," he told CNN. "We were saying, 'Show us some documents of policy issues discussion' so we could get some framework of her policy views."

The Senate is not a rubber stamp, Brownback announced. But Republicans, including Brownback, had scorned and rejected Senate Democrats' requests for similar work from Roberts's time in the White House.

Of course, all conservatives and most Republicans are fiercely opposed to all quotas -- whether based on race, religion, gender or ethnicity. But Miers, as you may have noticed, was nominated to the seat long held by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Maybe it's just a coincidence that neither is a man. But Bush kept emphasizing Miers' achievements with a strong gender twist, as the first woman to be president of the Texas bar and the first woman to be managing partner of a big Texas law firm. Not that this was intended to be the woman's seat on the court, because conservatives abhor quotas.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 5:58 AM

 
IT AIN’T OVER

Four questions, based on what we KNOW to be true:

1. Clearly, several people in the Administration (at least seven) were actively discussing and circulating the information that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA. Who? Why?

2. Other people besides Libby talked with the press about this. Who? Why?

3. What did Bush and Cheney ask their staffers about the Plame matter? What were they told ? What did they say?

4. At a minimum, we know that Karl Rove lied to Scott McClellan when he said he had nothing whatsoever to do with the Plame affair. What are the consequences for lying about such an important matter, and sending the Press Secretary out to recycle those lies?

Evidence that Cheney knew, and WAS part of a conspiracy to out Plame

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006890

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/29/223711/55

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012933.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/29/AR2005102901478.html

Why was Fitzgerald talking with Bush’s lawyer Friday?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006889

The transcript of Fitzgerald’s press conference

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR2005102801340.html

Video: http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/10/28.html#a5601

[NB: By the way, I watched the first part of this press conference. In fifteen minutes, barely looking at his notes, Fitzgerald gave a detailed chronology of every aspect of the case against Libby – concise, no tangents, and including a well-conceived argument for why perjury and obstruction in cases like this really are serious crimes. It was an amazing performance]

How the White House plans to handle this (and Miers): “a bad week, but now it’s over”

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/politics/30leak.html
"I don't think you want to send a signal that this is a crisis bigger than it is," said Vin Weber, a lobbyist and former Republican House member who is a White House ally. "This was a bad week obviously, but you cleared the board of a couple big problems or question marks hanging over us. It's unfortunate for the individuals involved but it gives us a chance to start rebuilding. . . “

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR2005102802150.html
House Government Reform Committee Chairman Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) was stinging, saying he was "very disappointed in Libby, and the White House, and the vice president and the president. . . They should have taken care of this a long time ago," Davis said in an interview. "They should have done their own investigation. They're going to get very little sympathy on Capitol Hill, at least from me. . . . They brought this on themselves."

The indictment of Libby, but no colleagues, was not the devastating blow that some in the administration had feared. . . Some GOP loyalists dismissed yesterday's indictment as a blip that will quickly be forgotten. "If we are going to reach conclusions about stains on the presidency, let's wait until he's [Libby] convicted," said veteran GOP strategist Charles R. Black. Calling Bush's administration "remarkably clean," he added: "The amazing thing is that they went almost five years without having any kind of scandal."

Things could have been worse. Fitzgerald did not indict White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, the president's most influential adviser, although Rove remains under investigation. Nor did he conclude that any administration official had deliberately leaked the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame -- the original basis for the probe -- or draw any conclusions about whether the administration had deliberately deceived the American people about the rationale for going to war in Iraq.

If this is typical of how the press is going to respond (reporting on political damage, as if the matter were now closed, not on the substance of the accusations or the unanswered questions), then maybe the WH will have its way after all. On the other hand, this IS Elisabeth Bumiller

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/29/1619/7129

No, it wasn’t just a bad week, and it ain’t over

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/10/29/bushs_imploding_presidency/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/29/AR2005102901223.html
A majority of Americans say the indictment of senior White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby signals broader ethical problems in the Bush administration, and nearly half say the overall level of honesty and ethics in the federal government has fallen since President Bush took office, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News survey. . . The poll, conducted Friday night and yesterday, found that 55 percent of the public believes the Libby case indicates wider problems "with ethical wrongdoing" in the White House. . . And by a 3 to 1 ratio, 46 percent to 15 percent, Americans say the level of honesty and ethics in the government has declined rather than risen under Bush. . . In the aftermath of the latest crisis to confront the White House, Bush's overall job approval rating has fallen to 39 percent, the lowest of his presidency in Post-ABC polls. Barely a third of Americans -- 34 percent -- think Bush is doing a good job ensuring high ethics in government, which is slightly lower than President Bill Clinton's standing on this issue when he left office.

More: http://billmon.org/archives/002317.html

Libby’s unbelievably lame defense

http://makeashorterlink.com/?V33B1521C
The lawyer for Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide is outlining a possible criminal defense that is a time-honored tradition in Washington scandals: A busy official immersed in important duties cannot reasonably be expected to remember details of long-ago. . . Libby, who resigned as soon as the indictment was handed up, was operating amid "the hectic rush of issues and events at a busy time for our government," according to a statement released by his attorney, Joseph Tate.

"We are quite distressed the special counsel (Patrick Fitzgerald) has now sought to pursue alleged inconsistencies in Mr. Libby's recollection and those of others and to charge such inconsistencies as false statements," Tate continued. . . "As lawyers, we recognize that a person's recollection and memory of events will not always match those of other people, particularly when they are asked to testify months after the events occurred.". . .

The case against Libby: He testified that he learned from NBC correspondent Tim Russert the identity of a covert CIA officer who is the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson. Russert says they never discussed it.

The facts, prosecutor Fitzgerald said, are that the month before the conversation with Russert, Libby learned about the CIA status of Valerie Plame from Cheney, from a senior CIA officer and from an undersecretary of state.

But Libby told the FBI and the grand jury that he informed reporters Matt Cooper of Time magazine and Judith Miller of The New York Times information about Wilson's wife that he had gotten from other reporters — information that Libby said he did not know to be true. Libby testified that he told the reporters he did not even know if Wilson had a wife.

[NB: In others words, HE WAS ALREADY LYING ABOUT IT AT THE TIME: or perhaps his poor overworked memory couldn’t recall at least three separate conversations with different people that occurred during the month preceding his talks with Miller and Cooper.

More on why this defense will never fly: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007451.php]

Will Libby ever take this to trial? (I say no)

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012930.html
It is Libby’s right to be presumed innocent until proof beyond a reasonable doubt overcomes that presumption in the minds of twelve jurors. Would Libby exercise his right to a trial, knowing that Fitzgerald might call Cheney as a witness to events described in the indictment? And knowing that Karl Rove, Official A, will testify against him? Does Libby want to subject Cheney and Rove to cross-examination?

Fitzgerald won’t write a report, and the Republican controlled legislature isn’t likely to indulge an investigation that would replicate Fitzgerald’s. If Libby doesn’t go to trial, and if Fitzgerald charges no others, few facts beyond those alleged in the indictment may enter the public record. If the true story comes out only in conversations with reporters, the administration will blame a liberal press and could succeed in containing much of the damage that full, public exposure of the facts would bring.

Libby knows this. That's why I still agree with this post's prediction that Libby will fall on his sword. Libby has every right to a trial, but how likely is he to make Cheney and Rove witnesses in a trial that could destroy the administration?

“Mr. X” – the original source of the Novak leak. If Fitzgerald knows (and he almost certainly does), he isn’t saying. Why?

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012928.html

Several candidates: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2203

What did Rove’s lawyer say to Fitzgerald at the 11th hour that made him hold back an almost certain indictment?

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012931.html

Mark Kleiman reminds us of a key point: Fitzgerald went with SEALED indictments. Why? He has only TOLD us about Libby’s. Could someone (cough…cough…karlrove) know that there is a sealed indictment waiting with his name on it?

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/valerie_plame_/2005/10/query_sealed_indictments.php

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Fitzgerald_expands_probe_believes_he_can_1028.html
“This investigation is not yet over,” one of the lawyers in the case said. “You must keep in mind that people like Mr. Rove are still under investigation. Rather than securing an indictment on perjury charges against Mr. Rove Mr. Fitzgerald strongly believes he can convince the grand jury that he broke other laws.”

The lawyers said that in the past month Fitzgerald has obtained explosive information in the case that has enabled him to pursue broader charges such as conspiracy, and civil rights violations against targets like Rove. Rove could also provide information that would allow Fitzgerald to target additional officials.

Specifically, the lawyers said Fitzgerald is focusing on phony intelligence documents that led to the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity: the documents that claimed Iraq was attempting to purchase yellow-cake uranium from Niger. . .

Must-read: a lawyer analyzes Fitzgerald’s strategy

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/10/29/20254/872
The indictment of “Scooter” Libby, ONLY Scooter Libby, and ONLY on investigation- related charges (perjury, obstruction of justice, lying to investigators), is bound to be misinterpreted (read: spun), by ideologues on both sides of the political spectrum. Lefties (in addition to being disappointed that their favorite bête noire, Karl Rove, has seemingly evaded the prosecutor's net) will feel like some of the wind has been knocked out of their sails because no crime was charged in connection with the underlying revelation of Valerie Plame's identity (a key element in their assertion that such revelation was motivated by the need to discredit a vocal critic of administration's casus belli for the war--Iraq's possession or acquisition of nuclear weapons capability). And righties will revel in that same fact (i.e., since no crime was committed by the Plame outing, the outing was nothing more than a legitimate defense against the attack on the motivation for the war--in other words, politics as usual). . .

Yesterday's indictment was dictated by time more than anything else. With the grand jury's term expiring today, if any indictment was going to be returned, this was the day, and I, for one, don't question Fitzgerald's statement that Libby's obstruction of the investigation prevented him from getting to the truth about the so-called “underlying” charges (e.g., those associated with outing a CIA operative). Indeed, the obstruction charged against Libby prevented the prosecutor from furnishing the one element of the underlying crimes that may be the most difficult to prove: mens rea, as it's known in the criminal law (i.e., a culpable state of mind). But, be assured: the last out in this game is still to come, and the indictment is a shot across the bow for a whole host of characters in this unfolding drama that should indicate to them sighs of relief would be premature. . .

More: http://billmon.org/archives/002315.html

The Niger (forged documents) story starts to unravel

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006888

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002955.html

Did Sismi (Italian intelligence) meet with Condi Rice as well as Stephen Hadley in shopping their phony documents?

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002952.html

What Tim Russert says

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_atrios_archive.html#113059856321201981
“We were subpoenaed at NBC, and myself, in May of 2004. We fought the subpoena and lost. . . On Aug. 7, I sat down with the special counsel, under oath, not before the grand jury, and was asked if I was a recipient of the leak. The answer was no. I was asked whether I knew Valerie Plame's name and where she worked and whether she was a CIA operative. And the answer was no. That was the extent of it.”

But before we give Tim a medal: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_digbysblog_archive.html#113061155929527134

Just by the way, what DID Libby call Russert to talk about?

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002951.html

Great analysis: Why the Bush people thought they were safe – they never believed that reporters would talk about the stuff they were leaking, or the fact that they were lying about it

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_digbysblog_archive.html#113061423040139604

Damage control?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_atrios_archive.html#113059878787124623
[Bob Woodward, tool] They did a damage assessment within the CIA, looking at what this did that Joe Wilson's wife was outed. And turned out it was quite minimal damage. They did not have to pull anyone out undercover abroad. They didn't have to resettle anyone. There was no physical danger of any kind and there was just some embarrassment.

[WP] The CIA has not conducted a formal damage assessment, as is routinely done in cases of espionage and after any legal proceedings have been exhausted. Yesterday, after a two-year inquiry into the leak, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald issued a five-count indictment against Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, for perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements during the grand jury investigation.

Whatever happened to old Bob, who used to be a real reporter with a nose for scandal?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/embedded-crony-b_b_9745.html

Republicans, eager to show that despite massive tax cuts and profligate pork spending they are the fiscally responsible party, start looking for cuts to the federal budget. Guess where they start?

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/10/29/19/04/the-evil-men-do/

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/politics/30health.html



Bonus item: “Bush’s Brain Was Leaking”

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_digbysblog_archive.html#113061686359855693

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:12 AM

 
HALF A LOAF?

Hard to see how Libby wriggles out of this

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/politics/28cnd-leak.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006880
[Josh Marshall] It's true that perjury charges can in some cases amount to 'gotchas', prosecutions brought for minor misstatements or possible lapses of memory.

This ain't one of those cases.

An indictment is always the prosecutor's case, unrebutted by the defense. But Fitzgerald seems to make a very powerful case that Libby repeatedly made claims under oath that he simply must have known were false. . .

Far more important, however, is the rest of the information included in the indictment. If you read the recitation of events which takes up, roughly, the first half of the indictment, one thing is made very clear: Libby was in communication about what he was doing with all sorts of people at the White House while he was doing it.

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007444.php

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006887.php

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR2005102802234.html
"It's going to be very difficult for Libby to defend himself here," said former CIA inspector general Jeffrey H. Smith.

The full indictment

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR2005102801086.html

The condensed version

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2186

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/28/222336/57

A simple question: why did Libby lie?

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/10/but_why_did_lib.html
Sully thinks he was trying to protect Cheney. The only other thing I can think of--and the two explanations are not mutually exclusive: Figuring he might be at legal risk for outing Plame--even though it now appears he didn't overstep in that regard--Libby panicked; he lied, then lied some more to cover up his lies. You don't have to stupid to do that, just human.

More: http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2005_10_23_dish_archive.html#113052239666174299

What’s next?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/29/14456/838
[Hunter] From the text of the indictment itself -- and I, like everyone else, have been going over it with a finetooth comb -- it is very clear that the investigation was able to drill down into who knew what, and when, and in front of who, with perhaps more accuracy than the White House was willing to give them credit for. Fitzgerald has a very good idea of the surrounding facts of the case. He also, from reading between the lines of the indictment, has excellent witnesses as to the motives of various officials. And that likely happened very early in the investigation.

What Fitzgerald is saying, and no doubt correctly, is that the investigation has uncovered the facts of the case. But he also said, today, in no uncertain terms, that Libby's repeated obstruction has hampered further efforts to explore the underlying legality of the actions being investigated. He asserted quite clearly that the obstruction in this case has hindered investigative attempts to determine the applicability of statutes to those underlying, already known actions.

That's both an end to the investigation, and a fuse. It means the investigation is over, for the purposes of determining necessary motives and nuances of knowledge required by the IIPA or Espionage Act... unless something else comes along. And the tricky thing is that, in gathering evidence and testimony for public trial, the odds are very, very good that a "something else" may indeed appear. Indeed, the thoroughness of the indictment itself would seem to suggest that there is much, much more evidence perhaps not directly applicable to this indictment in the hands of the special counsel. How much of the rest of it may surface?

The indictment makes a compelling case that Libby himself was the (an?) original leaker, to Miller and others. But it only barely touches on what made other White House officials call other reporters in an attempt to maximize the damage of the leak. Are those actions by other White House officials crimes? Fitzgerald seemed to argue fairly openly that Libby's false testimony was a major factor in obstructing special counsel efforts to analyze any of those actions and find out. . .

Today may be the first day that Libby's legal team has gotten any substantial taste of the evidence arrayed against their client's version of events. It is likely the first real glimpse they have gotten of the carnival of senior White House officials, reporters, and other administration officials who will be testifying against Libby's purported version of events. That, in turn, makes for a very volatile legal situation: they have to decide what to do next. As does the ominously titled "Official A" (Karl Rove), presuming he is so named as a nod to his ongoing legal jeopardy.

I don't want to oversell this, or overstate the odds. The odds may be very, very good that the indictments in this case will begin and end with Libby's obstruction. Certainly, the Republican mantra will be that Libby was a lone gunman, acting without approval or assistance from the rest of the White House. And that may very well be true, at least from the standpoint of the "original" first leak.

But there are certain hints -- good ones -- peppered throughout the previous reporting of this leak that suggest the underlying issues in this case are not about a single administration official, but about, at bare minimum, several. There are hints that the "outing" was a coordinated effort -- we've had anonymous "senior administration officials" saying as much to the press, even as far back as 2003. And I think we can have confidence that Fitzgerald has the cooperation of those same officials.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2129084/
[Telis Demos] But the WP digs a bit deeper, quoting a senior administration official saying the White House is "still in purgatory for a while," taking a wait-and-see attitude about what to change because they believe immediate changes would be seen as a "sign of panic and surrender." And the WSJ smartly suggests that while Bush may shuffle his staff, any policy changes will depend on how Republicans in Congress react. So far, things look ugly. The WP's Dan Balz and Juliet Eilperin talk to GOP congressmen—notably Virginia Rep. Tom Davis, who offers no sympathy and says "they brought this on themselves."

Why they can't let Libby’s case go to trial

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/10/index.html#008187

My take: there is now tremendous pressure on Libby to cut a deal – and if he does, then the real conspiracy can start unraveling

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-hamsher/patrick-fitzgerald-brings_b_9733.html

http://billmon.org/archives/002311.html

Why Fitzgerald hasn’t indicted Rove (yet)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR2005102800153.html
Rove provided new information to Fitzgerald during eleventh-hour negotiations that "gave Fitzgerald pause" about charging Bush's senior strategist, said a source close to Rove. "The prosecutor has to resolve those issues before he decides what to do.". . . "We're not quite done," Fitzgerald said in an hour-long news conference this afternoon. But he refused to comment on whether anyone beside Libby would be charged in the case or whether additional charges against Libby would be sought. . . This raised the prospect that a new grand jury or another existing one would continue the probe, given the expiration today of the current grand jury's term”

More: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2198

Rove’s lawyer admits he’s still under investigation

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/28/173349/98

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/valerie_plame_/2005/10/no_really_it_isnt_over.php

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/10/28/rovenext/index.html

Why did Fitzgerald identify Novak’s second source only as “Official A,” after identifying every other participant by name or by office? (It’s Rove.) There are two ways to read this: one, this anonymity is part of a plea deal, and Rove will stab Libby (and others) in the back to save himself; two, Fitzgerald probably still has Rove in his sights. Jeralyn Merritt gives the best analysis here

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR2005102801724.html

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/its-confirmed-rove-is-still-under.html

http://billmon.org/archives/002312.html

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012923.html
[Jeralyn Merritt] Read it closely. It doesn't say that Official A is Novak's source. It says he had a conversation with Novak in which it was discussed that Wilson's wife was a CIA employee and that Novak was going to write about it. It doesn't say whether Offical A told Novak about Plame's CIA employement or whether Novak gave Rove the information. . . How is this inconsistent with what Rove's team has previously said he told the grand jury? This New York Times article provides one such instance. . .

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012910.html
[Jeralyn Merritt] As I noted earlier, the news reports on Rove are conflicting. But this statement by one "non-legal" member of his team, who I assume is the P.R. specialist Mark Carballo who signed on to Rove's team the other day, leads me to believe Rove took a deal and Fitzgerald has agreed not to announce it immediately. . .

If they reached a deal, an Indictment is not necessary. A defendant can waive the right to be charged by Indictment and plead to an Information which is filed by the prosecutor. . . If they reached a deal where his continued cooperation is necessary, he can work with the successive grand jury. Or the investigators. After the people he gave evidence against decide to plea or go to trial, that's when he will get an additional 5k benefit. If he works hard enough and brings results, Fitz could request a probation-eligible sentencing zone for him.

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012924.html
[Jeralyn Merritt] Official A is now identified as Karl Rove. . . The Washington Post reports he could now be a witness against Lewis Libby.

I suspect that's one reason Karl Rove hasn't been charged. As I've speculated repeatedly, I think Rove has a deal. But, like most prosecutors, Fitzgerald isn't buying a pig in a poke. He wants to see how helpful Rove is in his trial testimony against Libby (and any future indictees) before agreeing either to give him a complete pass or ask the Court to give him probation if he pleads guilty.

If Rove has a deal in the works, I think it won't be finalized or made public until after he has finished cooperating. And that won't be until Libby's case is over. I still think Libby will never go to trial. It seems he has been intent on protecting Cheney, to the point of lying. His new lawyer may be able to work out a plea agreement that provides for a sentence reduction to an amount Libby can live with to spare Cheney from having to testify at his trial.

Nice catch: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/way-fitzgerald-is-talking-about-rove.html
[John Aravosis] The way Fitzgerald is talking about Rove is the same way he talked about corrupt former IL Governor George Ryan, right before he indicted him. . . Fitz even called Ryan "Official A". . .

More unanswered questions

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/29/politics/29legal.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/10/28/fitzgerald/index.html

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012917.html

Who was Novak’s other “Mr. X” – not Official A?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007447.php

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Rove_Official_A_Novaks_source_lawyers_1028.html
'Bush's brain' is not Novak's 'secret source.' He is, however, the senior administration official who said, "Oh, you know about it," when asked by the columnist about Wilson's wife sending him to Niger. . .Novak wrote, "When I called another official for confirmation, he said: 'Oh, you know about it.'". . . In July, the Washington Post reported that Rove 'indirectly' identified Plame to Novak.

Who is the Undersecretary of State who Libby asked to get information about who sent Wilson to Niger? After a flurry of speculation that it was John Bolton, the consensus answer seems to have settled on Marc Grossman

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006878

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/10/index.html#008182

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2187

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001046.html

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002949.html

Where is the conspiracy charge?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006885
“On or about July 12, 2003, LIBBY flew with the Vice President and others to and from Norfolk, Virginia, on Air Force Two. On his return trip, LIBBY discused with other officials aboard the plane what Libby should say in response to certain pending media inquiries, including questions from Time reporter Matthew Cooper.”

They all knew Plame was covert

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006881

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/10/index.html#008184

Libby’s replacement for Cheney: David Addington, a lawyer with a background in justifying the suppression of government information (how apt). This tells you just how hard they are going to fight this

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/10/28/13753/367

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/10/index.html#008188

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002948.html

http://alternet.org/blogs/themix/#27514

The political firestorm to come. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR2005102802150.html

The questions Bush and Cheney should be forced to answer now

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-corn/a-grave-indictment-but-g_b_9737.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/28/11422/749

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/23/113856/56

How they will try to avoid it: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006879.php

Frist: Senate won’t investigate the leak

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002946.html

Very innerestin’ – PM of Italy Berlusconi coming to see Bush just when the complicity of Italian intelligence in the forged Niger document hits the news. Getting their stories straight?

http://mediachannel.org/blog/node/1583

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002950.html
Italian government stonewalling the FBI in the Niger forgeries investigation, Knight Ridder reports. . .

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006875

Why Judith Miller went to jail (hint: it wasn’t over a matter of principle)

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/10/index.html#008185

How Miller helped elect George Bush

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/had-judith-miller-come-clean-year-ago.html

Changing the subject: new Supreme Court nominee early next week

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/10/28/supreme_court_nominee_expected_next_week.html

http://slate.msn.com/id/2129084/
In other news, don't miss the NYT 's Supreme Court update: two Republican insiders say U.S. appeals court judge Samuel J. Alito is currently the favored candidate. Judges Priscilla Owen and J. Michael Luttig are also near the top of the list. Bush aides tell the WP a nomination could come in "days."

Sistani may call for pullout of U.S troops after the Dec 15 elections in Iraq

http://www.juancole.com/2005/10/sistani-may-call-for-us-withdrawal.html

Bonus item: what a jerk

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/28/11324/869
[AP] After weeks of anxiety about possible indictments in the CIA leak investigation, President Bush showed no signs of strain Friday, smiling and joking with aides as he left to make a speech on terrorism in Norfolk, Va.

"Thanks for the chance to get out of Washington," Bush told a friendly audience in Norfolk. . .

Reporters called out to Bush as he walked toward the helicopter, and the president playfully pivoted as if he was walking toward them. But he quickly turned away, cupping his hand over his ear as if he could not hear.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:39 AM

 
JUDGMENT DAY

Well, today we find out, so much more speculation is really pointless – but the current hints are: indictments for Libby, and perhaps others, nothing for Rove (yet), but possibly a continuing investigation

http://makeashorterlink.com/?C6671501C
[WSJ] Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser and deputy White House chief of staff, was informed yesterday evening that he may not be charged today but remains in legal jeopardy, according to a person briefed on the matter. Mr. Fitzgerald, who meets with jurors this morning, has zeroed in on potential wrongdoing by I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and is likely to charge Mr. Libby at least with making false statements. . . Mr. Fitzgerald appeared still to be pondering whether to charge Mr. Rove and has notified the political strategist that he remains under investigation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/politics/28leak.html
Lawyers in the C.I.A. leak case said Thursday that they expected I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, to be indicted on Friday, charged with making false statements to the grand jury. . . Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, will not be charged on Friday, but will remain under investigation, people briefed officially about the case said. As a result, they said, the special counsel in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, was likely to extend the term of the federal grand jury beyond its scheduled expiration on Friday.

[NB: I thought he couldn’t extend it, but would have to empanel a new grand jury]

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/27/23498/262

UPDATE: Libby indicted, then resigns

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/28/leak.probe/index.html

[NB: The best thing about this is that the WH hoped that they'd have a bad few days, maybe lose a few people, then it would be over. Hey guys, it ain't over.]

Besides Libby, who? (back to Bolton’s office)

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2005/10/state_told_libb.html
[More from Richard Sale] According to the Times account, Cheney told Libby the covert name of the wife of Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. diplomat who had publicly alleged that the administration had mishandled of intelligence relating to Iraq's nuclear weapons programs.

But several former and serving U.S. intelligence officials strongly disputed this. "That is simply not accurate," a very former senior CIA official told this reporter. "Libby's notes on this are misleading and inaccurate or both."

This source, supported by three others, alleged that it was a telephone call from the Department of State that first gave Libby the name of Plame.

The name of the caller? No one is sure. But these sources said that the call definitely came from the State Department office of John Bolton, then the arms control chief of the department.

These same sources alleged that two employees of Bolton, David Wurmser, a virulent pro-war hawk, first told Libby that Valerie Plame had sent Wilson to Niger to attempt to discredit the administration's line on Iraq's nuclear weapons programs.

These same intelligence sources alleged that Wurmser, as Bolton's special assistant, got his knowledge of Plame's classified identity from a colleague in his office, Frederick Fleitz, a CIA officer detailed to Bolton's office from the agency who worked in the CIA's Weapons Intelligence Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center (WINIPAC.)

"We do not know yet which of the two called," the former very senior intelligence official said.

More on Fleitz: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001039.html

Parts 4 and 5 of Swopa’s big Plame review

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2176

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2184

[NB: Part 5 includes a useful profile of the main players]

Steve Clemons retracts his “new Fitzgerald office space” report – though that doesn’t mean Fitzgerald will be finished on Friday

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001037.html

Investigation of forged Niger documents continues

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/politics/28niger.html

[NB: Though if you read PBD regularly, you already know more about the story than this NYT article tells you]

Jeez: MORE forged documents used to make the case for war in Iraq!

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002932.html

How the Bush gang plans to fight back against the political damage caused by the Plame indictments (and why it might backfire)

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_digbysblog_archive.html#113045590368664878

How the Right did in Harriet Miers

http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2005/10/_the_tipping_po.html
The tipping point came within the past several days. GOP Senators privately communicated to WH CoS Andy Card that unless they had access to hard evidence that Miers was conversant in constitutional issues, there was no way she would be confirmed. Her performance in private meetings was weak, at best, these senators told Card. Throughout the day yesterday, says a senior Senate aide, there were "conversations throughout the day at the staff level." Late yesterday, Senate Maj. Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) called Card and told him in no uncertain terms that Miers would probably not be confirmed. An aide: "He provided frank assessment of situation in the Senate. [The] lay of land on committee." After that call, according to White House sources, Bush and Card met privately with Miers, and they decided jointly that preserving WH privilege on documents was too important a principle to risk. [NB: No, what they decided was that this was the best face-saving excuse they could come up with] Miers officially informed Bush at 8:30 pm ET. As late as 8 p.m., one White House aide said the WH counsel's office was rushing to finish a revision to the Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire. (It arrived after 11:00 pm ET). Word began to spread through conservative Washington last night. The White House office of political affairs notified allies at about 8:30 a.m ET this morning but swore them to secrecy until the White House released the President's statement.

More shams: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/10/index.html#008150

“Murder boards”

http://slate.msn.com/id/2128971
[Eric Umansky] The Post uncovers another potential factor in Miers' demise: She bombed the "murder boards," mock hearings held by the White House. Says the WP, "Her uncertain, underwhelming responses left her confirmation managers so disturbed they decided not to open up the sessions to the friendly outside lawyers they usually invite to participate." As for how she got nominated in the first place, the Post's sources point fingers at the president, who, according to this version, went against advice by picking her. He also had a Miers underling do the vetting. One result was, says the WP, that "no one had done a thorough search of her background."

James Dobson, good Christian, honest man (uh-huh)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006859
“I believe the president has made a wise decision in accepting Harriet Miers' withdrawal as a nominee to the Supreme Court. . . When the president announced this nominee, I expressed my tentative support, based on what I was able to discover about her. But I also said I would await the hearings to learn more about her judicial philosophy. Based on what we now know about Miss Miers, it appears that we would not have been able to support her candidacy. Thankfully, that difficult evaluation is no longer necessary."

Clever Harry Reid

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012894.html
“The radical right wing of the Republican Party killed the Harriet Miers nomination. Apparently, Ms. Miers did not satisfy those who want to pack the Supreme Court with rigid ideologues.

“I had recommended that the President consider nominating Ms. Miers because I was impressed with her record of achievement as the managing partner of a major Texas law firm and the first woman president of the Texas Bar Association. In those roles she was a strong supporter of law firm diversity policies and a leader in promoting legal services for the poor. But these credentials are not good enough for the right wing: they want a nominee with a proven record of supporting their skewed goals.

“In choosing a replacement for Ms. Miers, President Bush should not reward the bad behavior of his right wing base. He should reject the demands of a few extremists and choose a justice who will protect the constitutional rights of all Americans.”

What does Harriet think about all this? http://harrietmiers.blogspot.com/

[NB: Yes, it’s a parody site]

After Miers, what next?

No more women? http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/politics/politicsspecial1/28names.html

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/10/27/miers_meltdown/

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/10/index.html#008159

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007433.php

http://billmon.org/archives/002303.html

A rough time for George Bush

http://nytimes.com/2005/10/27/politics/politicsspecial1/27cnd-assess.html
George W. Bush has been in the White House for 248 weeks, through a terrorist attack, two wars and a bruising re-election. But it seems safe to say that he has never had a worse political week than this one - and it is not over yet. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/27/AR2005102702271.html
President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers on Oct. 3 was made from a position of weakness by a White House beset by political problems and eager to avoid a fight over the Supreme Court. Twenty-four excruciating days later, the supposed safe choice crashed, exposing the president as even weaker than before.

Bush now has an opportunity to recover from one of the biggest political miscalculations of his term, the failure to anticipate the backlash Miers would cause with his own conservative base. But in repairing that breach, he risks a new confrontation with Democrats and further estrangement from the political center. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/10/27/BL2005102701080.html
[Dan Froomkin] Facing unprecedented and ferocious challenges on a variety of fronts, the White House is suddenly adopting a shocking new tactic: Full-out strategic retreat. . . Today's withdrawal of Harriet Miers's bedeviled nomination to the Supreme Court is, of course, Exhibit A. But there's also an Exhibit B: The White House's quiet but total cave-in yesterday, reinstating the wage protections for workers involved in Hurricane Katrina reconstruction. . .

The Next Big Scandal?

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2005/1027nj1.htm
[Murray Waas] Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources.

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002935.html
"The reason for not misleading the Congress is a very practical one," said Rep. Richard Cheney, R-Wyo. "It's stupid. It's self-defeating. . . Eventually you destroy the president's credibility.". . .
-- From a July 20, 1987 Associated Press report on the Iran Contra investigation

Bush gang punishing Brent Scowcroft for disloyalty

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001036.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001038.html

“Massive” profits for Exxon

http://slate.msn.com/id/2128971/
[Eric Umansky] USA Today leads with Exxon's announcement of massive profits: It netted nearly $9.9 billion this quarter, the second-highest take on U.S. record. Among other things, oil companies have benefited from the fact that Katrina-caused refinery shortages have resulted in wholesale gas prices outpacing the price of oil. In any case, as the LAT previewed earlier this week and NYT fronts today, politicians are making a stink about the profits.

Bonus item: Bush says, “Blame me, not FEMA,” takes a strong and principled stand for executive responsibility

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/10/27/wilma/index.html

[NB: Not George, Jeb]

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 5:45 AM

 
JUSTICE SERVED?

Today we LEAD with our Bonus Item, because it is just too damn funny

http://dc-insider.redstate.org/story/2005/10/26/14141/332
[RedState.Org] My sources are relaying to me information that may be very good news re: the Plame Case.

Although I cannot substantiate this info 100%, I am receiving this from sources very close to the investigation and grand jury:

1 No indictments for Rove, Libby or any member of the administration.

2 Probable indictments for Vallerie Plame, Joseph Wilson and one as yet unknown high ranking Congressional Democrat.

3 No wrong doing or misuse of intelligence on the part of the administration.

4 Possible criminal conduct in an attempt to smear the White House on the part of Congressional Democrats, Plame and Wilson.

(Again, take this with a grain of salt but this is what I am hearing from my sources and the D.C. grape vine)

Latest reports are that Fitzgerald will issue indictments AND may ask for a new grand jury. Beyond Rove and Libby he has Somebody Else in his sights. The following articles include a fair amount of guesswork, but they do fit with what we know so far

http://www2.boomantribune.com/story/2005/10/26/105036/84
[Richard Sale] Two top White House aides are expected to be indicted today on various charges related to the probe of CIA operative Valerie Plame whose classified identity was publicly breached in retaliation after her husband, Joe Wilson, challenged the administration's claim that Saddam Hussein had sought to buy enriched uranium from Niger, according to federal law enforcement and senior U.S. intelligence officials. . . If no action is taken today, it will take place on Friday, these sources said.

I. Scooter Libby, the chief of staff of Vice President Richard Cheney, and chief presidential advisor Karl Rove are expected to be named in indictments this morning by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. . . Others are to be named as well, these sources said. According to U.S. officials close to the case, a bill of indictment has been in existence before October 17 which named five people. Various names have surfaced such as National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, yet only one source would confirm that Hadley was on the list. Hadley could not be reached for comment. . .

[F]ederal law enforcement officials told this reporter that Fitzgerald was likely to charge the people indicted with violating Joe Wilson's civil rights, smearing his name in an attempt to destroy his ability to earn a living in Washington as a consultant. . . The civil rights charge is said to include "the conspiracy was committed using U.S. government offices, buildings, personnel and funds," one federal law enforcement official said. . . Other charges could include possible violations of U.S. espionage laws, including the mishandling of U.S. classified information, these sources said.

That Vice President Cheney is at the center of the controversy comes as no surprise. Last Friday, Fitzgerald investigators were talking to Cheney's attorneys, and detailed questionnaires, designed to pin down in meticulous sequence what Cheney knew, when he knew it, and what he told his aides, were delivered to the White House on Monday, these sources said.

The probe is far from being at an end. According to this reporter's sources, Fitzgerald approached the judge in charge of the case and asked that a new grand jury be empaneled. The old grand jury, which has been sitting for two years, will expire on October 28.

Thanks to a letter of February, 2004 in which Fitzgerald asked for and obtained expanded authority, the Special Prosecutor is now in possession of an Italian parliament investigation into the forged Niger documents alleging Iraq's interest in purchasing Niger uranium, sources said.

They said that Fitzgerald is looking into such individuals as former CIA agent, Duane Claridge, military consultant to the Iraqi National Congress, Gen. Wayne Downing, another military consultant for INC, and Francis Brooke, head of INC's Washington office in an effort to determine if they played any role in the forgeries or their dissemination. Also included in this group is long-time neoconservative Michael Ledeen, these federal sources said.

http://billmon.org/archives/002298.html
[Billmon] Color me still skeptical, but if Sale is right, and Plamegate is just the warm-up act for an investigation into the cabal's involvement in the Niger forgeries, then this is officially the biggest story since Iran Contra, if not Watergate. . .

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Prosecutor_in_leak_case_seeks_indictments_1026.html
Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has asked the grand jury investigating the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson to indict Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and Bush’s Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, lawyers close to the investigation tell RAW STORY. . . Fitzgerald has also asked the jury to indict Libby on a second charge: knowingly outing a covert operative, the lawyers said. They said the prosecutor believes that Libby violated a 1982 law that made it illegal to unmask an undercover CIA agent. . .

Two other officials, who are not employees in the White House, are also expected to face indictments, the lawyers said. . .

Those close to the investigation said Rove was offered a deal Tuesday to plead guilty to perjury for a reduced charge. Rove’s lawyer was told that Fitzgerald would drop an obstruction of justice charge if his client agreed not to contest allegations of perjury, they said. . . Rove declined to plead guilty to the reduced charge, the sources said, indicating through his attorney Robert Luskin that he intended to fight the charges. . .

The lawyers said Fitzgerald needed more evidence to convince the grand jury that Plame was in fact an undercover agent. On Monday, he sent FBI agents to her residential neighborhood to obtain testimony from neighbors that they were unaware of Plame’s employment prior to her outing.

Evidence collected in these inquiries was aimed at convincing the jury that she was covert, the lawyers said. A Reuters story indicated that Plame’s neighbors were not aware that she was working at the agency. . .

The grand jury had not yet decided on whether to make indictments at the time this article was published. It appears more likely that the jury would hand down indictments of perjury and obstruction than a charge that Plame was outed illegally.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/26/AR2005102600532_pf.html
[WP] The prosecutor in the CIA leak investigation presented a summary of his case to a federal grand jury yesterday and is expected to announce a final decision on charges in the two-year-long probe tomorrow, according to people familiar with the case.

Even as Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald wrapped up his case, the legal team of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has been engaged in a furious effort to convince the prosecutor that Rove did not commit perjury. . .

But after grand jurors left the federal courthouse before noon yesterday, it was unclear whether Fitzgerald had spelled out the criminal charges he might ask them to consider, or whether he had asked them to vote on any proposed indictments. Fitzgerald's legal team did not present the results of a grand jury vote to the court yesterday, which he is required to do within days of such a vote. . .

Should he need more time to finish the investigation, Fitzgerald could seek to empanel a new group of grand jurors to consider the case. But sources familiar with the prosecutor's work said he has indicated he is eager to avoid that route. The term of the current grand jury has been extended once and cannot be lengthened again, according to federal rules. . .

People close to Rove said he fears a perjury charge because he did not initially tell the grand jury that he had spoken with Time reporter Matthew Cooper about Plame. . . A lawyer other than Luskin who is familiar with Rove's legal strategy said the aide testified that he believed he was trading on publicly available information in discussing Plame with reporters. . . In his fourth and final grand jury appearance, this lawyer said, Rove was asked why he did not mention his discussion of Plame with Cooper. Rove has told people he simply had forgotten the conversation. . .

There were signs that Fitzgerald was still trying to piece together the Rove case as recently as Tuesday. Peter Zeidenberg, a Justice Department prosecutor working with Fitzgerald, called Levine that day to discuss a conversation Levine had with Rove on July 11, 2003, the day Rove spoke with Cooper, according to Daniel J. French, Levine's lawyer. . .

As jurors left the courthouse yesterday, Fitzgerald exited the sealed grand jury room of the courthouse through a back elevator to avoid reporters waiting outside. He then met with Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan in Hogan's private chambers for about 45 minutes. Hogan confirmed the two had met yesterday, but declined to discuss the substance of their conversation.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/10/26/delay/index.html
[Tim Grieve] Is Fitzgerald buying himself some time in order to work out a deal with one of his would-be defendants? . .

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/26/allen-fitzgerald/
MIKE ALLEN: A lot of activity happening that we’re not seeing. A likely scenario for what happened today, Patrick Fitzgerald got some indictments from this grand jury. He is now able to go to the…

CHRIS MATTHEWS: You think they’re sealed right now?

MIKE ALLEN: Very possible. What I’m told is typically, in a case like this, he could get the indictments and now he can go to the targets and say, you can plead to these or I’ll go back Friday and get more. You have 12 to 24 hours to think about it.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: And he can give them a little Whitman Sampler of suggestions pleading to the charge of obstruction or perjury or. . .

MIKE ALLEN: I can add a bunch of counts. You can take a couple of counts or we can do a bunch more.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html
[Dan Froomkin] Something appears to have provoked special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald into a last-minute flurry of activity centered around Rove. . . There is every reason to think that Rove is throwing every move he's got at Fitzgerald in an attempt to escape criminal charges. . .

I can't think of any reason for Fitzgerald to put anything under seal -- unless he's offering his targets the opportunity to turn themselves in before it turns into a real circus over there.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001032.html
[Steve Clemons] The one interesting tidbit that came my way by way of an unnamed senior American journalist is this:

My sense is that the Rove team is feeling more confident today, the Libby team despondent

This is quite fascinating -- and could mean nothing. . .or everything. If Rove did not receive a letter yesterday and Libby did -- then Rove may have missed a bullet.

Whoa Mama

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001033.html
[Steve Clemons] Patrick Fitzgerald's intermediaries denied that there was any significance to the establishment of a new website, minimalist as it is, for the Office of the Special Counsel which is investigating the "outing" of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA responsibilities to the media. . . Fitzgerald's people said that the investigation coming to a close and the website going up was just coincidence.

Well, news has just reached TWN that Patrick Fitzgerald is expanding not only into a new website -- but also into more office space. . . What I have learned is that the Office of the Special Counsel has signed a lease this week for expanded office space. . .

Another coincidence? More office space needed to shut down the operation?. . . I think not. Fitzgerald's operation is expanding.

If they really do expand “Phase two” of the inquiry to look into intelligence lies and the forged documents, look out!

http://feeds.dailykos.com/dailykos/index?m=1341

Why it is a bad thing to reveal a CIA agent

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/here-is-crime-in-outing-cia-agent.html
[Hunter] For those few pundits who still don't get it -- or are paid to obstinately pretend not to, anyway -- this is one of the primary reasons that the White House went to such great lengths to crucify not only Joseph Wilson, but CIA, State Department and other critics of the crude and fragile contortions of pre-war intelligence analyses -- in Wilson's case, even to the point of causing willful, potentially wide-ranging intelligence damage to do it.

Could it be any clearer?

http://makeashorterlink.com/?T2FA52E0C
[AP] In a meeting last week with McCain, R-Ariz., Cheney and CIA Director Porter Goss suggested language that would exclude clandestine counterterrorism operations overseas by agencies other than the Pentagon "if the president determines that such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack."

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Tuesday that the president has "made our position very clear: We do not condone torture, nor would he ever authorize the use of torture."

McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, said he rejected the administration's proposal because "that would basically allow the CIA to engage in torture."

Put it on his gravestone

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_atrios_archive.html#113035997753109265
[WP] Mr. Cheney: He will be remembered as the vice president who campaigned for torture.

“Good as gold”

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_digbysblog_archive.html#113035595974143870

More bashing of Bush II by officials of the Bush I administration

http://slate.msn.com/id/2128748/
"We always made sure the President was hearing all the possibilities," John Sununu, who served as chief of staff to George H.W. Bush, said. "That's one of the differences between the first Bush Administration and this Bush Administration."

Bush backs off reduction in wages for Katrina reconstruction workers (which was a really stupid idea in the first place – another indication of how politically tone-deaf, or arrogant, these guys have become). The really good part of this story is that it shows the Democrats starting to develop better strategies for turning these kinds of policies against them

http://www.nathannewman.org/laborblog/archive/003505.shtml

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/10/index.html#008145

Wal-Mart: the mask is off

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/26/111917/19
It's rare that critics of America's messed-up insurance system get an inside glimpse of what companies really think about health benefits. But, as Nathan Newman reports, today's New York Times contains a must-read article on Wal-Mart's covert deliberations about its embattled health plan, based on an internal memo discussing the company's health insurance strategy. And what this memo makes clear is that Wal-Mart's recently touted effort to "upgrade" its health plan ultimately amounts to a gutting of the very concept of health insurance. Since Wal-Mart sets the agenda for the American service sector -- and increasingly the American economy as a whole -- this memo is a chilling reminder of why the United States so badly needs universal health insurance.

http://www.ww4report.com/node/869
In The Price Is Right, August 3, 2005 Pankaj Ghemawat, a professor of business administration at Harvard and Ken A. Mark, a business consultant in Toronto, argue that Wal-Mart is good for workers.

More bemusement: both DeLay and Frist have sudden pangs of conscience (now that they know the cops are at the door)

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/26/delay.defense.fund.ap/index.html
Rep. Tom DeLay failed to comply with House requirements that he disclose all contributions to a defense fund that pays his legal bills, the Texas Republican acknowledged to House officials. . . On October 13 DeLay wrote the clerk of the House, Jeff Trandahl, that his first inkling of inconsistencies in his disclosures came last February. . .

http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2005/10/frist-could-have-been-more-precise.asp
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist acknowledged yesterday that he could have been "more precise" two years ago when he told the public in a televised interview that he wasn't sure if he still owned any HCA stock because his holdings had been placed in a blind trust. . . Frist claimed in 2002 and on television in 2003 that he didn't know how much HCA stock he owned, and might not have owned any. But in fact, since 2001, Frist received notification 15 times of sales or deposits into his trust accounts of various stocks, including HCA shares.

[R. Neal] I guess "could have been more precise" is GOP-speak for "I could have told the truth, but chose not to." It's like 1972 all over again, except "could have been more precise" sounds a little better than "those statements are no longer operative."

This is really funny. The delusional Bush WH seems to think that the problem with Harriet Miers is that people just don’t know her well enough, so they want her to give a Big Speech (hey guys, the problem is that the more that people know about her, the LESS they think of her). For them, everything is a PR problem

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/harriets-tanking-so-wh-says-give.html

http://slate.msn.com/id/2128890/
[Eric Umansky] Miers' rewrite of her Senate questionnaire was due yesterday. And at least by their deadlines, the papers didn't hear she turned it in. (Maybe Miers could snag an incomplete.)

And, now, this. . .

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9828098/

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/26/211326/23

UPDATE: She's out

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/27/miers.nominations/index.html
In her letter to the president, Miers said she was "concerned that the confirmation process presents a burden for the White House and its staff and it is not in the best interest of the country.". . .

"It is clear that senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during her tenure at the White House -- disclosures that would undermine a president's ability to receive candid counsel," Bush said. . . But Democratic and Republican senators told CNN's Ed Henry that they hadn't asked for privileged documents.

Looks like Judith Miller will be looking for a new job soon too

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_atrios_archive.html#113034116255270717
[WSJ] New York Times reporter Judith Miller has begun discussing her future employment options with the newspaper, including the possibility of a severance package. . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:02 AM

 
DONE AND DONE

Fitzgerald issues indictments: today or tomorrow we will learn who they are (Libby for sure, apparently, possibly Rove, and . . . “Mr. X”?)

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001031.html
[Steven Clemons, posted last night] An uber-insider source has just reported the following to TWN (since confirmed by another independent source):

1. 1-5 indictments are being issued. The source feels that it will be towards the higher end.

2. The targets of indictment have already received their letters.

3. The indictments will be sealed indictments and "filed" tomorrow.

4. A press conference is being scheduled for Thursday.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/cefd360c-4598-11da-981b-00000e2511c8.html
Indictments in the CIA leak investigation case are expected to be handed down by a grand jury on Wednesday, bringing to a head a criminal inquiry that threatens to disrupt seriously President George W. Bush's second term. . . On Tuesday night, news reports, supported by a source close to the lawyers involved in the case, said that target letters to those facing indictment were being issued, with sealed indictments to be filed on Wednesday and released by the end of the week.

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/25/decision-tommorow/
CBS’ JOHN ROBERTS: Lawyers familiar with the case think Wednesday is when special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will make known his decision, and that there will be indictments. Supporters say Rove and the vice president’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, are in legal jeopardy. But they insisted today the two are secondary players, that it was an unidentified Mr. X who actually gave the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame to reporters. Fitzgerald knows who Mr. X is, they say, and if he isn’t indicted, there’s no way Rove or Libby should be. But charges may not focus on the leak at all. Obstruction of justice or perjury are real possibilities. Did Rove or Libby change statements made under oath? Did they deliberately leave critical facts out of their testimony or did they honestly forget? Some Republicans urged Rove to step down if indicted. Not a happy prospect for president Bush. . .

SCHIEFFER: John, I am very interested in Mr. X. Is there any clue or hint as to whether he be - maybe someone who outranks Libby and Rove or would he be a lower-ranking official?

ROBERTS: The best guess is that Mr. X, even though his name is not known and some people are just speculating on who he might be or she might be, is somebody who is actually outside the White House, and in that case would be of a lower rank that both Rove and Libby.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_digbysblog_archive.html#113028107162359285
[Digby] Fitzgerald knows who he is --- why he could even be indicted for revealing the identity of a CIA agent and endangering national security! But, there are a bunch of other people who know who Mr X is, aren't there? They are called "reporters" --- the ones to whom Mr X allegedly leaked in the first place. . . Won't it be nice when the public is finally informed about all the things half the Washington Press corpse has been keeping secret?

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/10/25/indictments_are_coming.html
Meanwhile, a former high level Bush administration official told Political Wire that "people are turning on each other" at the White House. . .

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/25/AR2005102502037.html

Rove?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-102505leak_lat,0,7947383.story
Prosecutors investigating the leak of a CIA agent's identity returned their attention to powerful White House advisor Karl Rove on Tuesday, questioning a former West Wing colleague about contacts Rove had with reporters in the days leading to the outing of a covert CIA officer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/26/national/26leak.html
With the clock running out on his investigation, the special counsel in the leak case continued to seek information on Tuesday about Karl Rove's discussions with reporters in the days before a C.I.A. officer's identity was made public, lawyers and others involved in the investigation said.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/25/224038/07
[Roll Call] Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was spotted Tuesday at the law offices of Patton Boggs paying a visit to Robert Luskin, the eccentric (for Washington, D.C.) lawyer who represents Karl Rove. . .

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012855.html
[Jeralyn Merritt] I'm beginning to think it possible that Karl Rove either is not going to be charged in the Valerie Plame Leak investigation, or if he is charged, it will be with a false statement rather than perjury offense. If it's the second scenario, Rove could make a plea deal with Fitzgerald under which he agrees to plead guilty if Fitzgerald agrees to request a sentencing reduction to probation, because of his cooperation against others. . .

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007417.php

Isn’t it funny how, as the Plame investigation moves forward and Fitzgerald starts twisting arms, suddenly notes and records start getting “rediscovered” which had been lost or forgotten? The latest example: Libby’s notes of his conversation with Cheney, discussed here yesterday. What’s Libby’s game?

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2162

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2169

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_digbysblog_archive.html#113028010769337880
[Digby] Chris Matthews says that it's been reported that Libby asked Cheney for guidance on how to handle the Wilson matter. . . I've been a little punchy lately. Have I missed something? Does anyone know where he got that?

Cheney?

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2005_10_23_dish_archive.html#113025362838923541

Rumors

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001029.html
[Steven Clemons] This just in from a close friend who worked inside the pinnacle of Republican power in the Senate a few years ago, so while this is rumor -- it's Republican rumor, which makes it interesting:

Steve, just heard from trusted friend that McCain was approached about serving as VP if Cheney has "health problems" or otherwise steps down.

Beyond that, speculation that Miers will step down to be replaced by a Bork-like sub (even better, Bork himself...). In other words, Cheney takes a bullet, a titanic battle over SCOTUS ensued to change the subject. You didn't hear this from me, but feel free to pass on such unsubstantiated rumors.

Miers?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/26/politics/26confirm.html
The drumbeat of doubt from Republican senators over the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers grew louder Tuesday as several lawmakers, including a pivotal conservative on the Judiciary Committee, joined those expressing concerns about her selection. . . Emerging from a weekly luncheon of Republican senators in which they discussed the nomination, several lawmakers suggested that as Ms. Miers continued her visits on Capitol Hill, she was not winning over Republican lawmakers. . . "I am uneasy about where we are," said Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican on the Judiciary Committee who had so far expressed only support for the president's choice. . .

More: http://the-reaction.blogspot.com/2005/10/miers-withdrawal-watch-part-3.html

Here’s a point I’ve been meaning to make, but Digby does it better: one of the reasons why cases about crimes often turn into cases about perjury and cover-up is. . . YOU CAN’T PROVE THE CRIME BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE LYING AND COVERING IT UP. It isn’t as if you shift from the “real” crime to something secondary and trivial – you’re punishing the crime indirectly because you CAN’T prove it and punish it directly. That’s what a “cover-up” means

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_digbysblog_archive.html#113027049045146201

Plame leak “not serious”?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/cia-plame-leak-damaged-us-national.html
[CNN] Wolf Blitzer: Does the CIA believe that there was damage done to US national security as a result of Valerie Plame Wilson's name being leaked?

David Ensor, CNN National Security Correspondent: I'm told that in the day that it was leaked there was a quick look done, as there routinely would be, at whether there was damage. Officials simply won't go into the details, but I did speak to one official who did say yes, there was damage, this woman had a long career and she was posing as someone else, and all those people who saw her now know that she wasn't the person they thought that they were dealing with.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_digbysblog_archive.html#113029592822148466
[Digby] I think it's important to remember something. Even if these guys didn't have a clue that Plame was undercover --- they should have asked. These are people who have the toppermost of the poppermost secret clearances. They have an obligation to check before they start talking about CIA employees to reporters.

In order to smear her husband, these guys behaved in a totally irresponsible manner, no matter whether they knew she was covert or not. If they aren't fired for being under indictement for a crime, they should be fired for reckless, negligent behavior. They should have been fired a long time ago.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/25/cia.leak/index.html
Only one in 10 Americans said they believe Bush administration officials did nothing illegal or unethical in connection with the leaking of a CIA operative's identity, according to a national poll released Tuesday. . .

“Worse than Watergate”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/plamegate-worse-than-wat_b_9522.html

The forged Niger document: who did it, and how it got to the WH

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10506
[Laura Rozen] With Patrick Fitzgerald widely expected to announce indictments in the CIA leak investigation, questions are again being raised about the intelligence scandal that led to the appointment of the special counsel: namely, how the Bush White House obtained false Italian intelligence reports claiming that Iraq had tried to buy uranium "yellowcake" from Niger.

The key documents supposedly proving the Iraqi attempt later turned out to be crude forgeries, created on official stationery stolen from the African nation's Rome embassy. Among the most tantalizing aspects of the debate over the Iraq War is the origin of those fake documents -- and the role of the Italian intelligence services in disseminating them.

In an explosive series of articles appearing this week in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo report that Nicolo Pollari, chief of Italy's military intelligence service, known as Sismi, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002. Sismi had reported to the CIA on October 15, 2001, that Iraq had sought yellowcake in Niger, a report it also plied on British intelligence, creating an echo that the Niger forgeries themselves purported to amplify before they were exposed as a hoax.

Today's exclusive report in La Repubblica reveals that Pollari met secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then–Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons. . .

What may be most significant to American observers, however, is the newspaper's allegation that the Italians sent the bogus intelligence about Niger and Iraq not only through traditional allied channels such as the CIA, but seemingly directly into the White House. That direct White House channel amplifies questions about a now-infamous 16-word reference to the Niger uranium in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address -- which remained in the speech despite warnings from the CIA and the State Department that the allegation was not substantiated. . . Was the White House convinced that the Niger yellowcake report was nevertheless true because the National Security Council was getting its information directly from the Italian source?

Following the exposure of the discredited Niger allegations in the summer of 2003 by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, White House officials at first sought to blame the CIA for the inclusion of the controversial "16 words" in the president's speech. Although then–National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Hadley eventually accepted some responsibility for the mistake, the White House undertook a covert campaign to discredit Wilson and exposed the CIA affiliation of his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson. . . Yet if anyone knew who was actually responsible for the White House's trumpeting of the Niger claims, it would seem from the Repubblica report that Hadley did. He also knew that the CIA, which had initially rejected the Italian claims, was not to blame.

Don’t read Italian? Here you go

http://crookedtimber.org/2005/10/25/la-repubblica-scoop/

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007418.php

Stephen Hadley? (remember, Rove wrote to him immediately after talking with Matt Cooper – why?)

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/10/25/niger/index.html
[Tim Grieve] As the Prospect explains, Pollari's direct contact with a senior member of the president's national security staff suggests one reason why the president included those famous -- and famously wrong -- 16 words about Niger in his 2003 State of the Union address over the objections of the CIA and the State Department. It may also explain why White House officials were so sensitive about Joseph Wilson's efforts to debunk the Niger claim that they revealed the identity of his wife as a way to discredit him.

Evidence from Italy may help Fitzgerald with questions of motive and intent. But can we be sure that Fitzgerald is looking directly at the question of the Niger forgeries and the way in which the Bush administration used them? No. It's not at all clear that Fitzgerald has made the forgeries a significant part of his investigation or even that he has the authority to do so. But as we all go about opining, speculating and generally hyperventilating, you might as well feed this into the buzz machine: On his blog the other day, former CIA officer and counterterrorism expert Larry C. Johnson said that Hadley has told friends that he expects to be indicted.

Now, why should Italian intelligence be involved with knowingly shipping forged documents DIRECTLY to the WH, bypassing a skeptical CIA?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006827
Nicolo Pollari is the head of Italian military intelligence, SISMI. The Repubblica article claims that over the course of 2002 Pollari -- knowing the documents were fakes -- made repeated attempts to get them into the DC information stream by going around the CIA, which discounted them as fakes. This was to satisfy the expressed needs of Bush administration officials who were searching for some information to validate their claims about an Iraqi nuclear program.

Remember, too, that Pollari attended the secret Rome meetings in late 2001 arranged by Michael Ledeen and attended by Manucher Ghorbanifar, Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode. . .

[NB: There are those names again – Franklin and Rhode. See yesterday’s PBD. For more, see this link: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006837]

[Marshall] The context here is important. The source of endless suspicion about when the documents first surfaced has been the timing and how that related to what was then happening in Washington. They surfaced just after the White House and the CIA had had a roundhouse battle over whether the President could make the Niger accusation in a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio. The CIA eventually prevailed, at least winning that round. The documents surfaced in Italy a couple days later. And the president eventually succeeded in levelling the claim in his subsequent State of the Union address.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006837
[AP] When foreign intelligence agencies met the documents with skepticism, Pollari used his own contacts in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and an aide to the president's national security adviser to promote the dossier, La Repubblica said. . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007414.php
[Kevin Drum] La Repubblica's story suggests that the Italians pushed hard on the documents because they were eager to impress the Americans with their loyalty to the war cause. When the CIA and the State Department didn't bite, they went straight to the White House.

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006829

http://billmon.org/archives/002295.html

Why blogs are important: until the past few days, have you SEEN any significant discussion of these forgeries on the mainstream news?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006828
With all that appears to be coming out of Italy today about the origins of the Niger forgeries and efforts to get them directly to the White House by bypassing the CIA, don't forget that the White House in concert with Sen. Roberts (R-KS) went to great lengths last year to delay and eventually to prevent CBS from running a story which would have revealed many of these details. . . .

Another likely casualty of the indictment disclosures (I haven’t heard anyone else suggest this): Scott McClellan. Once the announcements are made, he either has to start answering the questions he’s been avoiding (since his wafer-thin credibility is already on the line for vowing that Libby and Rove had assured him they were totally uninvolved). . .

. . . OR his “we can’t discuss this while the investigation is ongoing” excuse will turn into the “we can’t discuss this because trials are impending and we don’t want to bias the case” excuse. Can you imagine the howls if that happens? They’ll start throwing chairs in the Press Room

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4499

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001030.html
My question is: Can we be confident that when we hear statements from the White House in public that they are truthful?

MCCLELLAN: I think you can be, because you know that our relationship is built on trust. And I have earned that trust with you all. As you pointed out, you pointed back to some past comments that I made, and I've talked to you about the assurances that I had received on that.

Time line: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/10/25/plame2/index.html

Iran-Contra: the parallels (and, of course, several of the same players)

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2170

Electoral commission confirms passage of Iraqi constitution, despite glaring and suspicious vote totals: many Iraqis are skeptical

http://www.juancole.com/2005/10/iraq-requires-more-sacrifice-bush.html

U.S. death toll in Iraq tops 2000. . .

http://makeashorterlink.com/?I3DE12C0C
President Bush tried Tuesday to begin reviving U.S. support for the war in Iraq and reinvigorating his troubled presidency as the U.S. military death toll topped 2,000. . . "I know this is a trying time for our military spouses," Bush said at a Joint Armed Forces Officer Wives' luncheon at Bolling Air Force Base. "We've lost some of our nation's finest men and women in the war on terror.". . . "And the best way to honor the sacrifice of our fallen troops is to complete the mission and lay the foundation of peace by spreading freedom," he said. . .

2000: http://billmon.org/archives/002296.html

. . . so Bush will make a couple more speeches (Let me save you the trouble: “Everything is going fine, and we must stay the course. Gotta fight ‘em there, so we don’t have to fight ‘em here. Honor the dead by. . . producing more dead.”)

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_atrios_archive.html#113024401153069970
[Atrios] I think now we know Bush really is in charge. He truly thinks that he if he explains the whole Iraq thing one more time the country will be on board. God he's stupid. How many major speeches explaining Iraq do we need:

Anticipating a barrage of criticism when the death toll hits 2,000, Bush will try to put the sacrifice in perspective by portraying the Iraq war as the best way to keep terrorists from striking the United States again, the official said. He will make the same case in another speech Friday in Norfolk.

Bush would lose if election were held today

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/25/poll.bush/index.html

More polls: almost half the people in DeLay’s home district want him to quit NOW

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/10/25/42_of_delays_constituents_want_him_to_quit.html

Why DeLay needs a quick settlement of his case (and why he probably won’t get it)

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/10/index.html#008128

Bonus item: White House complains about an Onion parody

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/10/hahahahahahahahaha.php

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:57 AM

 
TITANIC

Hold on tight, folks, we are in for a hell of a roller coaster ride. . . Dick Cheney, not “some journalist,” first told Libby about Plame

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/25/politics/25leak.html
Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday. . . Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration's handling of intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program to justify the war. . . Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Mr. Libby's notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson's undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent's identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent's undercover status.

It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government's deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, to be an illegal effort to impede the inquiry. . .

Mr. Tenet was not available for comment Monday night. But another former senior intelligence official said Mr. Tenet had been interviewed by the special prosecutor and his staff in early 2004. . . The former official said he strongly doubted that the White House learned about Ms. Wilson from Mr. Tenet.

What does this mean? (a) Libby didn’t tell the truth to the grand jury and (b) Cheney didn’t tell the truth to anyone

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/24/21367/291
[Kos] Well, this definitively exposes Libby's CCA (cover Cheney's ass) testimony as a lie. What it doesn't do is suggest any wrongdoing by Cheney. There is no law against two top government officials with top security clearances from sharing classified information.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_atrios_archive.html#113020833684378563
[Atrios] The point probably isn't Libby and his lawyers signalling that Cheney's gonna take the fall. Quite possibly there's nothing that directly links Cheney to a criminal charge, although obviously we can't know that.

The real issue is that Cheney was at the center of this and knew all along what was going on (at least after the fact). Leaking this now is a way of softening the political blow, as even if Cheney's name isn't on the indictments it's going to be in them.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_digbysblog_archive.html#113020677547157832
VICE PRES. CHENEY [Sept 2003]: No. I don’t know Joe Wilson. I’ve never met Joe Wilson. A question had arisen. I’d heard a report that the Iraqis had been trying to acquire uranium in Africa, Niger in particular. I get a daily brief on my own each day before I meet with the president to go through the intel. And I ask lots of question. One of the questions I asked at that particular time about this, I said, “What do we know about this?” They take the question. He came back within a day or two and said, “This is all we know. There’s a lot we don’t know,” end of statement. And Joe Wilson—I don’t who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back.

I guess the intriguing thing, Tim, on the whole thing, this question of whether or not the Iraqis were trying to acquire uranium in Africa. In the British report, this week, the Committee of the British Parliament, which just spent 90 days investigating all of this, revalidated their British claim that Saddam was, in fact, trying to acquire uranium in Africa. What was in the State of the Union speech and what was in the original British White papers. So there may be difference of opinion there. I don’t know what the truth is on the ground with respect to that, but I guess—like I say, I don’t know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn’t judge him. I have no idea who hired him and it never came...

MR. RUSSERT: The CIA did.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Who in the CIA, I don’t know.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006823
[Josh Marshall] This would have been three and a half months after Cheney reportedly received a detailed briefing on just what had happened from George Tenet.

Perjury

http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/2005/10/dick-cheney-perjury-bitches-perjury.html
[Jane Hamsher] Cheney was interviewed by Fitzgerald last year under oath. That would make it perjury to tell a lie. Although Republican logic tells us that perjury is only a crime if you're getting a blow job in the bargain, a legitimate US attorney might not see it that way.

What indication do we have that Cheney lied? Well, if Cheney he had told the truth when he was interviewed last year, i.e., that he was Scooter Libby's source, Fitzgerald would not have needed to threaten Judy Miller and Matt Cooper with jail in order to counter Scooter Libby's testimony that he first heard about Valerie Plame's identity from journalists.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001026.html
[Steven Clemons] First of all, this means that Vice President Cheney has known all along that he was Scooter Libby's source -- and whether Libby had license from him or not to try and slaughter the reputation of Joe Wilson -- CHENEY KNEW.

The entire charade of President Bush stating that he wanted to get to the bottom of who leaked Plame's name -- and who was involved -- is no longer believable at any level. Cheney would not have failed to disclose this to Bush, and Bush played along as if none of his staff were involved. . .

Although Fitzgerald may not need to establish this connection, it seems increasingly plausible to TWN that Tenet and Cheney had some kind of exchange regarding Joe and Valerie Wilson. Cheney then passed off the information to Libby along with a few expletives about Wilson, implying that the @#$%@%er should be done in. . . The question is how did Libby then churn up more info on Wilson without other parts of the "untrusted" bureaucracy spitting in his face or reporting his sins?

My hunch is that he went to trusted spear-carriers for Vice President Cheney -- the office and staff of Under Secretary of State John Bolton. Fred Fleitz, Bolton's chief of staff, maintained his CIA WINPAC portfolio and access as an active duty CIA staff member while he operated as Bolton's "acting" chief of staff. . . We also know that David Wurmser and John Hannah, who have both apparently cooperated after threats of legal action (i.e., time behind bars) with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald worked both for John Bolton's operation and the Vice President's office.

I recently consulted with a number of senior State Department officials about the level of interaction between Vice President Cheney's office and John Bolton's office -- and was informed that there was "intense" exchange between them, constant. One said that "Bolton and his team were operatives of Vice President Cheney inside the State Department establishment -- there to subvert Armitage and Powell wherever they could, and if not subvert, then there to spy on the them and report back.

. . . Tonight, I consulted with three senior State Department officials, one currently at the State Department and two who are now outside the Department. All three of them agreed that the scenario I have described about Fleitz being the source of information about Plame's covert WINPAC role -- and this information then passing from Fleitz and/or Bolton to Scooter Libby "is not unbelievable." . . . For now, we can know that the Vice President of the United States was neck-deep in this affair and knew it ALL along. . .

http://billmon.org/archives/002293.html
[Billmon] I won't pretend to understand all the nuances, and I'm not even going to try to guess where this leak came from. But you put this together with Fitgerald's questions to Miller -- i.e. did Scooter mention his boss? -- plus the reports that both Hannah and Wurmser have been flipped, and it becomes increasingly plausible that the special prosecutor has the veep penciled in as the blue plate special on his indictment menu.

Did Cheney FIRST learn about her from Tenet? (no)

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/24/223343/27
[Larry Johnson] Thanks to the NY Times one more piece of the tangled web woven by White House operatives has unraveled and we now know that Vice President Cheney told Scooter Libby that Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. It also seems pretty clear that the notes show that Libby lied to the Grand Jury when he claimed he learned the name from reporters. Libby faces big trouble. Although the NY Times story reports that Libby's notes indicate that George Tenet told Cheney about Plame, there are some intriguing unanswered questions. For starters it is highly unlikely that George Tenet showed up at the White House and just happened to know the name of Valerie Plame. Someone at the White House asked for it first. Tenet clearly came prepared to respond to a White House request. I'm sure the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, knows who called CIA to ask the question.

. . . Look for other names to emerge in coming days that will reveal who helped work out the "background" info on Valerie Wilson.

[NB: a suggested answer, below]

What sweet irony! Dick Cheney had a hand in pushing the "nepotism" charge, you know, Joe Wilson only got the job because his wife hired him. Since Dick got his daughter a sweetheart deal at State Department he should not be out casting such stones or encouraging others to do so. See Dick. See Dick run. See Dick resign.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006822
[Josh Marshall] I agree that it's quite unlikely that George Tenet would just have happened to mention Joe Wilson's wife's role at the CIA or her possible connection to the decision to send him on the trip to Niger.

Indeed, the Times article itself says "Mr. Libby’s notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson.". . .

The veep gets a regular CIA briefing. He can ask questions and he gets answers back. After all, that's supposedly how we got into this mess in the first place. But the DCI doesn't come back in person and talk to the vice president unless it's a very, very big deal. Or, unless the vice president went to him directly.

[NB: Here we see the reason for the landslide of conservative comments on why any charges aside from the Plame outing itself are trivial: because the actual flow of who told whom about her, and whether they knew she was covert, is murky and indeterminate – while the evidence that people lied, openly and repeatedly, is undeniable. And while we’re on the question of lying, let’s remember that perjury and obstruction charges aside, these folks lied blatantly to the American people, both directly and through their mouthpiece Scotty, that there was no WH involvement at all. This in itself is a reason to dump them all – including Bush for that matter, but let’s be realistic: Rove, Libby, and Cheney can’t survive this]

Here’s the best news of all

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2160
[Swopa] I won't be the first to note that all we've heard so far is from Bushite defense lawyers. Judging from past experience, the truth probably is (1) more damning and (2) soon to become known, so my advice is to enjoy some popcorn and wait.

The new home parlor game: whenever a Republican says that possible charges against Rove, Libby, Cheney, etc, for perjury or obstruction aren’t serious, just dredge up what they said during the Clinton impeachment

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/24/hutchison-flip-flop/
[Kay Bailey Hutchison, quoted yesterday] Ms. Hutchison said she hoped “that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn’t indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars.”

[Kay Bailey Hutchison, February 2, 1999] “[S]omething needs to be said that is a clear message that our rule of law is intact and the standards for perjury and obstruction of justice are not gray. And I think it is most important that we make that statement and that it be on the record for history. . . Because our system of criminal justice depends on people telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That is the lynch pin of our criminal justice system and I don’t want it to be faded in any way.”

More: http://mediamatters.org/items/200510240004

See how easy that is? Anyone can play

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/24/122929/29
[DSCC] Sen. Frist: "There is no serious question that perjury and obstruction of justice are high crimes and misdemeanors. . .

Sen. Kyl: "...there can be no doubt that perjurious, false, and misleading statements made under oath in federal court proceedings are indeed impeachable offenses. . .

Sen. DeWine: "Obstruction of justice and perjury strike at the very heart of our system of justice. . .

Sen. McConnell: "I am completely and utterly perplexed by those who argue that perjury and obstruction of justice are not high crimes and misdemeanors. . .

Sen. Voinovich: "As constitutional scholar Charles Cooper said, `The crimes of perjury and obstruction of justice, like the crimes of treason and bribery, are quintessentially offenses against our system of government. . .

Sen. Hutchison: "The reason that I voted to remove him from office is because I think the overridding issue here is that truth will remain the standard for perjury and obstruction of justice in our criminal justice system. . .

Sen. Craig: "There is no question in my mind that perjury and obstruction of justice are the kind of public crimes that the Founders had in mind. . .

Sen. Brownback: "Perjury and obstruction of justice are crimes against the state. . .

Here’s the other popular variation: compare what people said about what a serious and conscientious investigator Fitzgerald was (while he was still investigating), and how they’re suddenly holding their praise now that it looks like he actually IS a serious and conscientious investigator

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/apps/nl/newsletter2.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=917053
Just a few months ago, in July 2005, Karl Rove's former deputy Ken Mehlman appeared on NBC's Meet the Press and said, "I have tremendous confidence in Pat Fitzgerald." But when host Tim Russert pressed him on this statement and asked him whether he would "pledge today, because you have tremendous confidence in him, that you will not criticize his decision," Mehlman backed away from his statement, saying he did not want to "speculate.". . .

Attack!! http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/10/24/plame/
Republicans plan to defend themselves by continuing the very same smear campaign that started the Fitzgerald investigation. . .

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/story/358657p-305630c.html
As the White House and Republicans brace for possible indictments in the CIA leak probe, defenders have launched a not-so-subtle campaign against the prosecutor handling the case. . . "He's a vile, detestable, moralistic person with no heart and no conscience who believes he's been tapped by God to do very important things," one White House ally said, referring to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. . .

President Bush recently praised Fitzgerald on NBC's "Today" show, saying: "The special prosecutor is conducting a very serious investigation. He's doing it in a very dignified way, by the way, and we'll see what he says."

What honest conservatives say about Fitzgerald

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/24/234943/89
[Andy McCarthy, NRO] Pat Fitzgerald is the best prosecutor I have ever seen. By a mile. He is also the straightest shooter I have ever seen - by at least that much. And most importantly, he is a good man.

What dishonest conservatives say about him

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/24/tucker-defense/
[Tucker Carlson] I think politically [the Bush administration] did very much the wrong thing by saying nice things about Patrick Fitzgerald some months ago — “he’s a man of integrity,” “he’s a good guy,” “we have complete confidence he’s going do the right thing,” etc., etc. — making it now almost impossible for the White House, even on background, to attack the guy.

Is Bush losing it?

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/358714p-305660c.html
Facing the darkest days of his presidency, President Bush is frustrated, sometimes angry and even bitter, his associates say. . . "He's like the lion in winter," observed a political friend of Bush. "He's frustrated. He remains quite confident in the decisions he has made. But this is a guy who wanted to do big things in a second term. Given his nature, there's no way he'd be happy about the way things have gone."

Bush usually reserves his celebrated temper for senior aides because he knows they can take it. Lately, however, some junior staffers have also faced the boss' wrath. . . "This is not some manager at McDonald's chewing out the help," said a source with close ties to the White House when told about these outbursts. "This is the President of the United States, and it's not a pleasant sight."

Presidential advisers and friends say Bush is a mass of contradictions: cheerful and serene, peevish and melancholy, occasionally lapsing into what he once derided as the "blame game." They describe him as beset but unbowed, convinced that history will vindicate the major decisions of his presidency even if they damage him and his party in the 2006 and 2008 elections. . .

"The President is just unhappy in general and casting blame all about," said one Bush insider. "Andy [Card, the chief of staff] gets his share. Karl gets his share. Even Cheney gets his share. And the press gets a big share."

The vice president remains Bush's most trusted political confidant. Even so, the Daily News has learned Bush has told associates Cheney was overly involved in intelligence issues in the runup to the Iraq war that have been seized on by Bush critics.

Bush is so dismayed that "the only person escaping blame is the President himself," said a sympathetic official, who delicately termed such self-exoneration "illogical.". . .

More speculation on upcoming personnel changes at the WH

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/24/121446/15

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/10/24/speculation_continues_on_possible_resignations.html

WARNING: The next few items are for seriously obsessed Plame junkies only. Sensible and sane people can just jump ahead to the cheery “Police State update”

We have been running hints for days that Fitzgerald’s inquiry has crossed over into the wider pattern of pre-war lies. Now one concrete link seems to have emerged: the forged Niger uranium document that was the occasion for Wilson’s trip to Africa in the first place. Since it was obvious at the time that it was forged (and not even well), it has always been clear that only people scraping for every bit of evidence to confirm their predilections would have believed it.

But now matters move to the underlying point: who forged it, and how did it get into the Bush gang’s hands in the first place? This takes us back to stories about Larry Franklin going back more than a year; and to evidence that he was in the middle of something much bigger than just leaking information to AIPAC (which is what he pled guilty to). It involves a wider plot by Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, and others outside the Bush admin to manipulate policy through their proxies and proteges in it to enact their wider vision of reshaping the Middle East, and includes more than a hint that Ahmad Chalabi, on the one hand, and agents from Israeli intelligence, on the other, were each for their own reasons feeding false information into the pipeline that they knew the neo-con True Believers couldn’t resist using since it buttressed their case for war.

I know, I know. Longtime PBD readers know I’ve been obsessed by the unexamined elements of the Franklin story for a long time now. But the link emerging between Franklin, David Wurmser, and the Plame leak suggests that something more was being protected here than just punishing Wilson for daring to question Bush/Cheney policies in an op-ed. Read the four issues of PBD from August 2004 (linked below) and tell me there isn’t something very big lurking here

http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20051023-104217-9679r
[UPI] The CIA leak inquiry that threatens senior White House aides has now widened to include the forgery of documents on African uranium that started the investigation, according to NATO intelligence sources. . . This suggests the inquiry by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald into the leaking of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame has now widened to embrace part of the broader question about the way the Iraq war was justified by the Bush administration. . .

NATO sources have confirmed to United Press International that Fitzgerald's team of investigators has sought and obtained documentation on the forgeries from the Italian government. . . Fitzgerald's team has been given the full, and as yet unpublished report of the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the affair, which started when an Italian journalist obtained documents that appeared to show officials of the government of Niger helping to supply the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein with Yellowcake uranium. This claim, which made its way into President Bush's State of the Union address in January, 2003, was based on falsified documents from Niger and was later withdrawn by the White House.

This opens the door to what has always been the most serious implication of the CIA leak case, that the Bush administration could face a brutally damaging and public inquiry into the case for war against Iraq being false or artificially exaggerated. . .

Elisabetta Burba, a journalist for the Italian magazine Panorama (owned by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi) had been contacted by a "security consultant" named Rocco Martoni, offering to sell documents that "proved" Iraq was obtaining uranium in Niger for $10,000. Rather than pay the money, Burba's editor passed photocopies of the documents to the U.S. Embassy, which forwarded them to Washington, where the forgery was later detected. Signatures were false, and the government ministers and officials who had signed them were no longer in office on the dates on which the documents were supposedly written.

Nonetheless, the forged documents appeared, on the face of it, to shore up the case for war, and to discredit Wilson. The origin of the forgeries is therefore of real importance, and any link between the forgeries and Bush administration aides would be highly damaging and almost certainly criminal. . .

There is one line of inquiry with an American connection that Fitzgerald would have found it difficult to ignore. This is the claim that a mid-ranking Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, held talks with some Italian intelligence and defense officials in Rome in late 2001. Franklin has since been arrested on charges of passing classified information to staff of the pro-Israel lobby group, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. Franklin has reportedly reached a plea bargain with his prosecutor, Paul McNulty, and it would be odd if McNulty and Fitzgerald had not conferred to see if their inquiries connected. . .

More on the forgery: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006817

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006818

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006819

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006820

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/valerie_plame_/2005/10/documents_charges_and_the_yellowcake_road.php

The key point: the Bush gang must have known the document was fake WHEN HE REFERRED TO IT IN THE STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007408.php#more
[Kevin Drum] For starters, the White House's motivation for smearing Joe Wilson has always been murkier than it might seem at first glance. After all, as Bob Somerby is fond of pointing out, Joe Wilson's famous July 2003 op-ed in the New York Times didn't actually contradict anything the White House had said. In his 2003 State of the Union address, George Bush said that Iraq had "sought...uranium from Africa," while Wilson said only that his trip to Niger convinced him that Iraq had not in fact succeeded in buying uranium. So why the desperate smear campaign against Wilson? Even Karl Rove must have known that leaking his wife's name was fantastically reckless and over the top. Why not just point out the lack of contradiction and leave it at that?

To figure that out, you have to go back in time to May and June of 2003. Before Wilson wrote his op-ed, he spoke anonymously about his trip to two reporters, Nick Kristof of the New York Times and Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, both of whom wrote about an "envoy" (i.e., Wilson) who had gone to Niger the previous year and, when he returned, told the CIA that the Nigerien documents were phony. Since we know that the smear campaign against Wilson started in June (or earlier), it was those reports that got the White House up in arms, not the July op-ed.

Now, as it happens, Kristof and Pincus were wrong: Wilson had not actually seen the documents at the time he traveled to Niger and he hadn't debunked them. Did he tell Kristof and Pincus that he had? In an email to me last year, he stated flatly that "I never claimed to have seen the documents or to have known anything about signatures or dates." A couple of weeks later, he said that he had spoken to Kristof and "He confirmed that I had made clear to him that I had never seen the documents."

But regardless of where the truth lies, the fact is that Kristof and Pincus wrote what they wrote, and obviously their stories scared the daylights out of the White House. But again, why? After all, even though Wilson hadn't debunked the documents, in March of 2003 the IAEA did. At the time all this was happening, the entire world had known they were fake for months. So why the panic?

Well, there was something the White House knew at that point that the rest of us didn't. They knew that not only were the Nigerien documents fake, but that they had been proven fake the previous year — though not by Wilson or the IAEA. At that time, everybody thought the timeline went like this: (1) Bush gives SOTU address in January 2003, (2) IAEA proves Nigerien documents are phony in March. That's bad, but not catastrophic. However, the real timeline, known to only a few, was this: (1) State Department determines Nigerien docs are phony in October 2002, (2) Bush mentions African uranium anyway in January SOTU address.

Connect the dots. Rightly or wrongly, Kristof and Pincus reported that Wilson had told the administration the Nigerien documents were fake long before Bush's 2003 SOTU address — contrary to the storyline accepted at the time. What's more, Wilson was a former ambassador, which made the Kristof/Pincus reporting pretty plausible. The White House probably figured Wilson still had friends in the State Department who had told him the documents had been debunked long before the SOTU. And if Wilson knew that, maybe he knew about the source of the forged documents as well. Or was on the trail of it. Or something.

And that's what scared them: the possibility that someone was about to expose the story behind the forged documents. That would have blown the pre-war stories about "mushroom clouds" and nuclear programs sky high, and that's what caused them to wildly overreact to Wilson's otherwise innocuous criticisms.

And that's why Fitzgerald wanted to see the Italian report. He figures it might explain the original motivation for the whole affair, and knowing the motivation might help him make his case. . .

An alternative account of where Cheney originally got the Plame info (before asking Tenet about it): from David Wurmser, who has reportedly been “flipped” by Fitzgerald

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Cheney_aide_passed_Plames_name_to_1024.html
With the possibility of indictments just days away, sources close to the investigation into who outed covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson have provided RAW STORY a more detailed account into how and why Plame's name was leaked and what role the Pentagon and the vice president's office played.

Those close to the investigation say that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has been told that David Wurmser, then a Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney on loan from the office of then-Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs John Bolton, met with Cheney and his chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby in June 2003 and told Libby that Plame set up the Wilson trip. He asserted that it was a boondoggle, the sources said. . . Libby then shared the information with Karl Rove, President Bush's deputy chief of staff, the sources said. Wurmser also passed on the same information about Wilson to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and then-National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, they added.

Within a week, Wurmser, on orders from "executives in the office of the vice president," was told to leak her name to a specific group of reporters in an effort to muzzle her husband, Wilson, who had become a thorn in the side of the administration, those close to the inquiry say. It is unclear who Wurmser had spoken with in the media, the sources said, but they confirmed he did speak with reporters at national media outlets about Plame. . .

Those familiar with information provided to Fitzgerald say that shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Wurmser was handpicked by Harold Rhode, a Foreign Affairs Specialist in the Office of Net Assessment, a Pentagon "think tank," and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith to head a top secret Pentagon "cell" whose job was to comb through CIA intelligence documents and find evidence that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States and its neighbors in the Middle East so a case could be made to launch a preemptive military strike. Wurmser largely invented evidence that Iraq had close ties to Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, sources knowledgeable about his work told RAW STORY.

Although the CIA documents that Wurmser and his staff pored over never showed Iraq as being an immediate threat, Wurmser was dead set on finding and presenting evidence to Vice President Dick Cheney that suggested as much even if the veracity of such intelligence was questionable, sources close the probe said. Wurmser had met with now discredited Iraqi exiles who were part of the Iraqi National Congress, headed by Ahmed Chalabi, the infamous single source of Judith Miller's explosive columns published in the New York Times that said Iraq was acquiring nuclear bomb components, who is now the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, they added.

With the aid of Chalabi and the White House Iraq Group, Wurmser helped Cheney's office, particularly the vice president's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, construct a case for war. He met frequently with Cheney, Libby, Feith and Richard Perle, the former head of the Defense Policy Board, to go over the "evidence" of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein that could then be used by the White House to build public support. Wurmser routinely butted heads with the CIA over the veracity of the intelligence he was providing to Cheney's office, sources close the investigation said. . .

Wurmser had long been a proponent of removing Saddam Hussein from power. Indeed, in 1996, Wurmser, his wife Meyrav [NB: herself linked with Israeli intelligence: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/wurmser_m/wurmser-m.php] and Perle, authored a paper for "Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." It called on Israel to work with Jordan and Turkey to "contain, destabilize and roll back" various states in the region, overthrow Saddam Hussein in Iraq, press Jordan to restore a scion of the Hashemite dynasty to the Iraqi throne, and, above all, launch military assaults against Lebanon and Syria as a "prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East. . .”

For two years, Wurmser, Feith, Perle, Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had a tumultuous relationship with the CIA who they blamed for not providing them with the type of evidence they wanted to see: specific, tailor-made assessments that Iraq was an imminent threat. . .

Wurmser: a link with Israeli intelligence?

http://www.cpa.org.au/garchve05/1216assass.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4714031-103681,00.html

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/remains.html

Judith Miller too??!!?? http://www.sw-asia.com/People/Judith_Miller_Naor_Gilon_Franklin_AIPAC.htm

Closing the circle: another colleague of Wurmser, Rhode, Feith, and the gang -- Larry Franklin

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/231
[August 2004] The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the subject's sensitivity, said the FBI also is investigating the same official's contacts with Iraqi exile leader Ahmad Chalabi and with Manucher Ghorbanifar, a controversial Iranian arms dealer. Chalabi was a source of much of the discredited pre-Iraq war intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaida . . . The CIA has twice labeled Ghorbanifar, a figure in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal, untrustworthy. Nevertheless, two Pentagon officials, Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who worked on Iraq policy for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, met secretly with Ghorbanifar to discuss Iran.

More on Franklin: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050606/rozen

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7774834/site/newsweek/

http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/franklin-arrested-pentagon-official.html

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001998.html

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002000.html

http://volokh.com/posts/1128274142.shtml

“Something worse than Iran-Contra”: previous PBD’s on Franklin and connections to the forged Niger document (all of it known before the 2004 election)

http://pbd.blogspot.com/2004_08_01_pbd_archive.html#109375164104548003

http://pbd.blogspot.com/2004_08_01_pbd_archive.html#109380917923079226

http://pbd.blogspot.com/2004_08_01_pbd_archive.html#109387448919558734

http://pbd.blogspot.com/2004_08_01_pbd_archive.html#109397388514321068

Police State update: FBI conducted domestic surveillance on U.S. citizens for 18 months without proper oversight

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/23/AR2005102301352_pf.html

Dick Cheney pushing hard to get CIA exempted from anti-torture ban

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/25/politics/25detain.html
Mr. McCain rejected the proposed exemption, which stated that the measure "shall not apply with respect to clandestine counterterrorism operations conducted abroad, with respect to terrorists who are not citizens of the United States, that are carried out by an element of the United States government other than the Department of Defense and are consistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States and treaties to which the United States is a party, if the president determines that such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack."

More flame-throwing from Larry Wilkerson on the White House Cabal

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-wilkerson25oct25,0,7455395.story
IN PRESIDENT BUSH'S first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security — including vital decisions about postwar Iraq — were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. . . I believe that the decisions of this cabal were sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes with something less. More often than not, then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice was simply steamrolled by this cabal.

Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift — not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy. This furtive process was camouflaged neatly by the dysfunction and inefficiency of the formal decision-making process, where decisions, if they were reached at all, had to wend their way through the bureaucracy, with its dissenters, obstructionists and "guardians of the turf.". . . But the secret process was ultimately a failure. It produced a series of disastrous decisions and virtually ensured that the agencies charged with implementing them would not or could not execute them well. . .

Via Atrios, Judith Miller’s remarkably dishonest and self-serving response to the NYT ombudsman (I must admit, I assumed it was a parody – but apparently it’s authentic!)

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/duncanblack/jm.html
“I’m dismayed by your essay today. You accuse me of taking journalistic “shortcuts” without presenting evidence of what you mean and rely on unsubstantiated innuendo about my reporting. . .”



Playing soldier: I guess Miller got a little too “embedded” in Iraq, and started walking around in borrowed military fatigues (and no, that’s not okay)

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002915.html





Juan Cole: How pressure from right-wing media led the NYT to give Miller too much slack

http://www.juancole.com/2005/10/rupert-murdoch-and-judith-miller.html

You think you can trust the Republicans with your money? Read this

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007401.php

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051024/pl_nm/economy_budget_dc
[Reuters] Republicans in Congress will try to pass spending cuts this week, after war, anti-terrorism efforts, hurricanes and big tax cuts helped push the government's debt load through the $8 trillion mark.

Sources in the House of Representatives said it likely would be mid-week before Republican leaders know whether they have enough support for spending reductions, including cuts in health programs for the elderly and poor. . . Congress is also debating a Republican-backed plan for more tax cuts, mostly for the wealthy. . .

Bush says he won’t release any documents on Miers – and everyone reads it the same way (a.k.a. the Krauthammer scenario)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051024/ap_on_go_su_co/miers
Risking a possible clash with the Senate, President Bush insisted Monday he will not turn over documents detailing the private advice that Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers has given him while serving in the White House. . . With Miers' nomination facing continued opposition from conservatives, Bush sidestepped a question of whether the White House was working on a contingency plan for her withdrawal. At the same time, he was emphatic about not turning over papers relating to the "decision-making process, what her recommendations were."

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/bush-trying-to-find-out-to-get-rid-of.html
Bush trying to find an out to get rid of Harriet. . .That's exactly what this is.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/10/24/bush_lays_groundwork_for_miers_to_back_out.html
As our insider source told us over the weekend, Republican senators on the Judiciary committee do not want to confirm Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court. Today, President Bush gave them their way out.

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012853.html
President Bush gave Republican Senators their "way out" of the Miers nomination today by announcing he would refuse to turn over documents requested by Senate Judicaiary Committee members.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/10/index.html#008114
It looks to many like George W. Bush is laying the groundwork to withdraw Harriet Miers, likely by refusing to release documents from her time as special counsel. . .

http://slate.msn.com/id/2128731
[I]t's a move that many suspect is meant to provide cover for a coming Miers' withdrawal. . .

Whoop. . .there it is!

http://www.withdrawmiers.org/

http://www.betterjustice.com

Bonus item: the Bush Quiz (thanks to Michael Weissman for the link)

http://www.newyorker.com/shouts/content/articles/051031sh_shouts

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:51 AM

 
DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE

Reuters: Patrick Fitzgerald may inform those who are being indicted as early as today

http://makeashorterlink.com/?K5172490C
[Reuters] Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald appears to be laying the groundwork for indictments this week over the outing of a covert CIA operative, including possible charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, lawyers involved in case said on Sunday. . . Top administration officials are expected to learn from Fitzgerald as early as Monday whether they will face charges as the prosecutor winds up his nearly two-year investigation, the lawyers said.

Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), one of the worst of the Senate shills, has no shame, does she?

http://www.dohiyimir.org/2005/10/perjury_rule_of.html
[KBH] “I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn’t indict on the crime so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation were not a waste of time and dollars.”

[NTodd] I'd love to hear KBH expound on how Clinton's grand jury testimony about blowjobs was false, willful, and material to Starr's 7-year, $70,000,000 investigation into a failed land deal, yet the testimony (under oath or not) from Bush and myriad administration officials in Fitzgerald's short and focused investigation into the outing of an undercover CIA agent doesn't tear the whole edifice of American jurisprudence down.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/23/AR2005102300441.html
In a preview of how Republicans would counter charges against top administration officials by Fitzgerald, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas brushed aside an indictment for perjury -- rather than for the underlying crime of outing a covert operative -- as a "technicality.". . .

Digby on the plain meaning of perjury (a “technicality”?!?)

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_digbysblog_archive.html#113009782575437438

More: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002906.html

The laws: a primer

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012842.html

• Obstruction of Justice
• Perjury (before grand jury)
• Subornation of Perjury
• False Statement to A Federal Official

More on the lame shame of trying to shift the “who leaked the Plame name?” blame game

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/23/thats-a-crime/
[Bill Kristol] “Scooter Libby or Karl Rove are going to be judged criminals for perhaps acknowledging her name, perhaps knowing, though there’s no evidence they did, that she was a covert operative…That’s a crime?”

[Think Progress] Yes, outing a covert CIA operative is a crime. So is obstruction of justice and perjury. . . If this is the best Kristol has got, things must be really bad.

More, much more, of this to come, apparently

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/24/politics/24leak.html
With a decision expected this week on possible indictments in the C.I.A. leak case, allies of the White House suggested Sunday that they intended to pursue a strategy of attacking any criminal charges as a disagreement over legal technicalities or the product of an overzealous prosecutor. . .

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_atrios_archive.html#113012128226940514
[Atrios] When the Fitz hits the fan we can expect the Right to react as it's been trained to act in such situations, like a cornered feral animal. It's a moment where the mainstream media should consider whether it's time to, once again, hand their pages and airtime over to the Barbizon School of Former Defense Lawyers and other such partisan hacks or whether they choose to cover things with a bit of dignity. . .

[NB: I think this is not going to work for them. First, Fitzgerald hasn’t done a single thing to suggest he is in this as a personal vendetta (a la Ken Starr). And Bush has personally praised him. Second, can Repubs withstand the heavy ironies of contrasting their statements here with their statements during Clinton’s investigation? Third, most people do have a sense that something shady went on here, even if they don’t know the details. Do the Repubs as a party want to shackle their fortunes in 2006 and 2008 to defending Rove, Libby, DeLay, Frist, etc?]

An “unsung hero” of the Plame investigation: James B. Comey (who?)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/24/0618/9162

The Plame lies that were sown early, and how they laid the basis for further lies

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/23/113856/56

So now we know: Novak did cut a deal

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/valerie_plame_/2005/10/novak_talked.php

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012841.html
[WP] A critical early success for Fitzgerald was winning the cooperation of Robert D. Novak, the Chicago Sun-Times columnist who named Plame in a July 2003 story and attributed key information to "two senior administration officials." Legal sources said Novak avoided a fight and quietly helped the special counsel's inquiry, although neither the columnist nor his attorney have said so publicly.

Did Rove?

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012839.html

And this very strange and intriguing tidbit: is there some kind of convergence between the Plame investigation and the Franklin investigation?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_23.php#006815

http://billmon.org/archives/002292.html
[Billmon] Josh Marshall wonders what it might mean for the special prosecutor's investigation now that U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty has been nominated for the number-two job at the Justice Department. I suspect the short answer is: nothing good. . . McNulty, U.S. Attorney for the very high-profile eastern district of Virginia, is the substitute for Tim Flanigan, the Abramoff-tainted nominee who withdrew his name earlier this month. Like Flanigan -- and unlike Fitzgerald -- McNulty is a Republican loyalist. . . Before Bush appointed him to the eastern Va. post (he took office three days after 9/11) McNulty was one of John Ashcroft's political flunkies at DoJ. Before that he headed the Bush transition team for the department. Before that he was chief counsel for Dick Armey, the former GOP House Majority Leader. Before that he was chief counsel and "communications director" for the House Judiciary Committee. While in this position -- according to an alumni profile from his alma mater Grove City College -- he also:

directed house Republican media relations for the Clinton impeachment process.

. . . As U.S. Attorney, McNulty has shown a certain willingness to, shall we say, narrow the scope of cases that might prove embarrassing for the cabal and its various tentacles. . .

Finally, if all goes as we hope and there is a mass departure from the WH, will Bush (a) bring in some seasoned professionals (a la Reagan after Iran-Contra) to provide credibility and stability to a shattered administration, or (b) circle his wagons into an even tighter circle of loyalists, promoting people he knows and trusts to empty spots whether they are qualified or not?

Asked and answered. . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007399.php

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0543,webmondo1,69164,2.html

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/051020/20whwatch.htm

Another Presidential award winner about to look bad

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/10/22/221518/51
The CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, has finally got approval to publish his book, which will hit the streets on December 27, 2005. . . The CIA has sat on the book for more than a year and tried to stop its publication. . .

Bernsten's key point in the book is his testimony that he and other U.S. commanders did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban members. . . According to NEWSWEEK, "Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora--intelligence operatives had tracked him--and could have been caught. He was there."

Look for General Tommy Franks image as the great commander to be further tarnished. . .

Brent Scowcroft depicts the growing gulf between the Bush (senior) foreign policy world view and his son’s (not quite the blockbuster we were led to believe, but pretty damning) – and Dubya’s rivalry with his father could hardly be clearer

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001024.html
[New Yorker] I learned from people who know Scowcroft that he finds it painful to be seen as critical of his best friend’s son, but in the course of several interviews prudence several times gave way to impatience. "This is exactly where we are now," he said of Iraq, with no apparent satisfaction. "We own it. And we can't let go. We're getting sniped at. Now, will we win? I think there's a fairchance we'll win. But look at the cost."

The first Gulf War was a success, Scowcroft said, because the President [GHW Bush] knew better than to set unachievable goals. "I'm not a pacifist," he said. "I believe in the use of force. But there has to be a good reason for using force. And you have to know when to stop using force." Scowcroft does not believe that the promotion of American-style democracy abroad is a sufficiently good reason to use force.

"I thought we ought to make it our duty to help make the world friendlier for the growth of liberal regimes," he said. "You encourage democracy over time, with assistance, and aid, the traditional way. Not how the neocons do it."

The neoconservatives -- the Republicans who argued most fervently for the second Gulf war -- believe in the export of democracy, by violence if that is required, Scowcroft said. "How do the neocons bring democracy to Iraq? You invade, you threaten and pressure, you evangelize." And now, Scowcroft said, America is suffering from the consequences of that brand of revolutionary utopianism. "This was said to be part of the war on terror, but Iraq feeds terrorism," he said. . .

"The real anomaly in the Administration is Cheney," Scowcroft said. "I consider Cheney a good friend -- I've known him for thirty years. But Dick Cheney I don't know anymore.". . .

When, in an e-mail, I asked George H.W. Bush about Scowcroft's most useful qualities as a national-security adviser, he replied that Scowcroft "was very good about making sure that we did not simply consider the 'best case,' but instead considered what it would mean if things went our way, and also if they did not.". . . According to friends of the elder Bush, the estrangement of his son and his best friend has been an abiding source of unhappiness, not only for Bush but for Barbara Bush as well. George [HW] Bush, the forty-first President, has tried several times to arrange meetings between his son, "Forty-three," and his former national-security adviser to no avail. . . When I asked Scowcroft if the son was different from the father, he said, "I don't want to go there," but his dissatisfaction with the son's agenda could not have been clearer. . .

The disintegrating relationship between Scowcroft and Condoleezza Rice has not escaped the notice of their colleagues from the first Bush Administration. She was a political-science professor at Stanford when, in 1989, Scowcroft hired her to serve as a Soviet expert on the National Security Council. . . Scowcroft found her bright -- "brighter than I was" -- and personable, and he brought her all the way inside, to the Bush family circle. When Scowcroft published his Wall Street Journal article, Rice telephoned him, according to several people with knowledge of the call. "She said, 'How could you do this to us?'" a Scowcroft friend recalled. "What bothered Brent more than Condi yelling at him was the fact that here she is, the national-security adviser, and she's not interested in hearing what a former national-security adviser had to say.". . .

Scowcroft said of Wolfowitz, "He's got a utopia out there. We're going to transform the Middle East, and then there won't be war anymore. He can make them democratic. He is a tough-minded idealist, but where he is truly an idealist is that he brushes away questions, says, 'It won't happen,' whereas I would say, 'It's likely to happen and therefore you can't take the chance.' Paul's idealism sweeps away doubts.". . .

[Anatoly Sharansky] At the end of the conversation, I say, 'Say hello to your mother and father.' And he said, 'My father?' He looked very surprised I would say this.” Sharansky went on, "So I say to the President, 'I like your father. He is very good to my wife when I am in prison.' And President Bush says, 'But what about Chicken Kiev?'"

Sharansky smiled as he recounted this story. "The President looked around the room and said, 'Who is responsible for that Chicken Kiev speech? Find out who wrote it. Who is responsible?' Everyone laughed." Sharansky paused, and looked at me intently. He had a broad grin. "I know who wrote Chicken Kiev speech," he said. "It was Scowcroft!"

Scowcroft may have had a hand in the speech, but when I asked George H.W. Bush about it he answered as if it had been his own idea. “I got hammered on the Kiev speech by the right wing and some in the press, but in retrospect I think the Baltic countries understood that we were being cautious vis-a-vis the Soviet Union," Bush said. "And their freedoms were established without a shot being fired.". . .

With impeccable timing, Ahmad Chalabi returns to Washington to make his case as the Inevitable Leader of the new Iraq (well, wasn’t that the plan all along?)

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2150
[Joe Klein] [H]e is coming back to Washington in November at the invitation of Treasury Secretary John Snow. But Chalabi will have potentially more significant meetings with National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and perhaps Condoleezza Rice, both of whom—according to high-ranking Administration officials—believe that he is a plausible and acceptable candidate to be the next Prime Minister of Iraq when that nation votes, yet again, for a new government on Dec. 15. . . The gossamer scenario begins with the assumption that the inept and corrupt al-Jaafari government has discredited itself with the Iraqis. It certainly has no allies left in the Bush Administration. "Jaafari overplayed his hand," says an official, referring to the Prime Minister's overly friendly relations with Iran. There is a possibility that the current ruling alliance of religious Shi'ite parties will split apart. There is the probability that the Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani—the most respected religious figure in the country—will not endorse the Shi'ite slate, as he did last time, even if it holds together. There is also the assumption that the Sunnis, having participated in the Oct. 15 constitutional referendum, will become a significant political force in December (despite well-documented ballot stuffing in the recent vote). All of which would create some running room for the formation of a new and creative coalition.

More: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002911.html

http://billmon.org/archives/002291.html

David Gergen on Miller and the neo-cons

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_23_atrios_archive.html#113008573786434754
Were Miller and "The Times" used by Iraqi exiles and by administration officials?

GERGEN: Clearly. Clearly they were used. And the administration was used as well, and it appears that intelligence agencies were used or misused by Chalabi and by -- and others did the same thing. . .

[NB: Wonder whose name was going to come after Chalabi’s?]

Is Harriet Miers the worst SC nominee ever?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/24/politics/politicsspecial1/24miers.html
But in just three weeks, her nomination has provoked a range of opposition that some scholars say may have no modern precedent. . . "I would be very hard pressed to think of a good historical analogy," Richard Baker, the Senate historian, said. "I don't think there is one."

Though past nominees have faced swift opposition, what makes Ms. Miers's nomination extraordinary, historians say, is the combination of doubts about her philosophy from within the president's own party and attacks on her legal qualifications from both sides of the aisle. . . "Harriet Miers is in a real danger zone," said Lee Epstein, a political scientist at Washington University in St. Louis. . .

Chuck Schumer (D-NY): Miers would lose if the vote were held today

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/politics/24cnd-policy.html

This is a question I will like to see Miers answer in public

http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/face_102305.pdf
[Face the Nation] Senator DIANNE FEINSTEIN (Democrat, California; Judiciary Committee): I think for many of us, Bob, the hearings are going to be dispositive. I think that's where she has to make her case. That's where she has to share her views. To the best of my recollection, this is the first time a president has appointed someone from within the White House, and how well and broad and deep the vetting was, I don't know. But I am particularly concerned on issues of executive power. I think there will be issues coming up before the Supreme Court involving some of this administration's decisions, certainly with respect to the war on terror, detainees, Americans detained, how long can you keep them, the Geneva Convention, whether a president is bound by internationally ratified treaties by the United States. And...
SCHIEFFER: Did you talk to her about that?
Sen. FEINSTEIN: I did. And I asked her if she would recuse herself if any issue connected with this president came before the court, and she wouldn't answer that question. Now, for me, that's a very important question. The only answer, in my view, is yes, because she has been so closely associated as White House counsel. And this is what we need to know: What did come across her desk with respect to torture, with respect to detainees, with respect to following the Geneva Convention or what gradation of it this administration decided to follow. So I think these are very important questions.

More: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/05fdcba0-442a-11da-b752-00000e2511c8.html
The internecine battle over the nomination of Harriet Miers to the US Supreme Court took a new twist yesterday, with top Republican and Democratic senators demanding more details on the role she played in White House policy decisions about America's war on terror. . .

Miers baggage continues to grow. . .

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/23/miers-integrity/

. . . and more bad news coming

http://markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com/2005/10/miers-helped-keep-lid-on-bushs.html

Bill Frist lied about his “blind” trust (lucky boy that this is all coming out when people have a Bigger Scandal on their minds – this would finish him if anyone were paying attention)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/23/AR2005102301201.html



Ralph Reed (who has always seemed to me like one of those aliens who peel off their human face to reveal a hideous green google-eyed face underneath) is deeply stuck in the Abramoff scandal

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1122014,00.html

More: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002912.html



Don’t you hate it when someone asks you a question they already know the answer to?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/russert-asks-question-when-hes-only.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:03 AM

 
SUNDAY FUNNIES

I haven’t had the good fortune to post such an amazing collection of items in a long line of Sundays: sit back, pour yourself a cup o’ java, and enjoy. . .

White House considering ways to withdraw the Miers nomination, if they can find an excuse that doesn’t admit that it was a stupid idea in the first place

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20051021-112953-8355r.htm
The White House has begun making contingency plans for the withdrawal of Harriet Miers as President Bush's choice to fill a seat on the Supreme Court, conservative sources said yesterday.

"White House senior staff are starting to ask outside people, saying, 'We're not discussing pulling out her nomination, but if we were to, do you have any advice as to how we should do it?' " a conservative Republican with ties to the White House told The Washington Times.

The White House denied making such calls. . . "Absolutely not true," White House spokesman Trent Duffy said.

But the conservative political consultant said that he had received such a query from Sara Taylor, director of the Office of White House Political Affairs. . . Miss Taylor denied making any such calls.

A second Republican, who is the leader of a conservative interest group and has ties to the White House, confirmed that calls are being made to a select group of conservative activists who are not employed by the government.

"The political people in the White House are very worried about how she will do in the hearings," the second conservative leader said. "I think they have finally awakened.". . . "Absolutely false," Miss Taylor said. . .

[NB: Well, the story may or may not be true, but two separate sources say it is – and we know what these WH denials are worth]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/22/111255/10
[Armando] I can assure you that the White House can be none too pleased with being called out DIRECTLY and by name at doing this. Bet that consultant is not "close" to the WH anymore. I think only a fool could imagine that withdrawal was not on the table. This has been an unmitigated disaster for Bush.

So why the leak? This consultant probably thinks he is putting pressure on the WH one guesses. We'll see how Bush reacts to this.

With other political troubles potentially heating up next week, this is clearly not the time for this type of fight. Hell, the ideological war the Wingnuts (and one imagines, this consultant) want would be launched at a terrible time if done now.

Indeed, that is why, unlike many here, I think it would be great politically for Democrats if Bush caved in to the Wingnuts, withdrew Miers and then sent up Janice Rogers Brown or Priscilla Owen. That is a battle of ideas Dems should relish and Dems should win.

Why? Because, that would prove, once and for all, that the Republican Party is beholden to the Extremist Wingnuts. It would force the Democrats to stand up for their values. The Democrats in Congress have only made stands for Democratic values when their backs were to the wall this year. And it was their greatest political success - beating back the "Social Security crisis." And that moment occurred because of extremist overreach. . .

Here’s a likely excuse: and signs that it is already being set up

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/20/AR2005102001635.html
[Charles Krauthammer] It's no secret that I think the Harriet Miers nomination was a mistake. Nonetheless, when asked how she will do in her confirmation hearings, my answer is, I hope she does well. I have no desire to see her humiliated. . .

So, imagine the hearings. First she will have to pass an implicit competency test. As case upon case is thrown at her on national television, she dare not respond, as she apparently did to Sen. Chuck Schumer while making the rounds, that she will have to "bone up on this a little more." Then there will be the withering fire of conservatives such as Sen. Sam Brownback who will try to establish some grounds to believe that (a) she has a judicial philosophy and (b) it is conservative.

And then there will be the Democrats who, in their first act of political wisdom in this millennium, have held their fire on Miers, under the political axiom that when your opponent is committing suicide, you get out of the way. But now that Miers is so exposed on abortion, the Democrats will be poised like a reserve cavalry to come over the hills to attack her from the left -- assuming she has survived the attack from the right.

The omens are not good. When the chairman and ranking minority member of the Judiciary Committee express bipartisan exasperation, annoyance and almost indignation at her answers to the committee's simple questionnaire, she's got trouble. This after she confused Chairman Arlen Specter about her position on Griswold , the second most famous "right to privacy" case, and seemed confused when answering ranking Democrat Patrick Leahy's question about her favorite justice.

But it gets worse: There's the off-stage stuff. John Fund reports that in a conference call of conservative leaders, two Miers confidants explicitly said that she would overturn Roe v. Wade . The subsequent denial by one of these judges that he ever said that, and the subsequent affirmation by two of the people who had heard the call that he did say so, create the nightmare scenario of subpoenaed witnesses contradicting each other under oath. We need an exit strategy from this debacle. I have it. . . irreconcilable differences over documents.

For a nominee who, unlike John Roberts, has practically no record on constitutional issues, such documentation is essential for the Senate to judge her thinking and legal acumen. But there is no way that any president would release this kind of information -- "policy documents" and "legal analysis" -- from such a close confidante. It would forever undermine the ability of any president to get unguarded advice.

That creates a classic conflict, not of personality, not of competence, not of ideology, but of simple constitutional prerogatives: The Senate cannot confirm her unless it has this information. And the White House cannot allow release of this information lest it jeopardize executive privilege.

Hence the perfectly honorable way to solve the conundrum: Miers withdraws out of respect for both the Senate and the executive's prerogatives, the Senate expresses appreciation for this gracious acknowledgment of its needs and responsibilities, and the White House accepts her decision with the deepest regret and with gratitude for Miers's putting preservation of executive prerogative above personal ambition.

Faces saved. And we start again.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/10/22/insiders_see_possible_miers_pullout.html
[Taegan Goddard] Meanwhile, insiders tell Political Wire that several Republican senators have joined with Democrats demanding the White House release documents relating to work Miers has done for President Bush. With the White House claiming executive privelege on the documents, this may give the administration cover for withdrawing the troubled nomination for a greater principle. . .

A new Miers scandal

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/23/02626/264

And old ones: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006813

The pure politics of Miers

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/10/22/9450/7694

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/10/22/the_politics_of_killing_the_miers_nomination.html

Clever analysis: what the new Fitzgerald web site really means

http://billmon.org/archives/002284.html
[Billmon] I think the fact that Fitzpatrick's office has created its own web page is a strong sign that indictments are coming -- but not for the reason most widely held. Yes, a web page will come in handy for posting indictments, press releases about indictments, etc. But I think the documents already posted there may be the real tip off. They constitute a not-so-subtle reply to the conservative lie du jour -- that Fitzgerald has strayed far beyond his "original" mandate to investigate alleged violations of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. . . I've seen this lie repeated so many times today -- mostly by people smart enough to know better -- that I'm beginning to wonder if the RNC really does have a chip implanted in the brain of every corporate journalist on the planet. . .

On his brand new web page, however, Fitzgerald has prominently posted both his original delegation of authority from the Justice Department -- which instructs him to investigate "the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee's identity" -- and a follow up letter, dated Feb. 6, 2004, which clarifies that he has the power to investigate and prosecute:

violations of any federal criminal laws related to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure, as well as federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, your investigation, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses . . .

Nowhere -- a word even Bill Kristol can't parse -- in either document is it stipulated that Fitzgerald's brief is limited to the IIPA, in fact the opposite is true. By throwing those letters up on the web today, Fitzgerald has, intentionally or not, signaled that he doesn't have the slightest intention of backing down. . .

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_digbysblog_archive.html#113001687762812521

Today: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/22/AR2005102201113.html
Weeks after he took over the investigation 22 months ago into the unauthorized disclosure of a CIA operative's identity, special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald got authority from the Justice Department to expand his inquiry to include any criminal attempts to interfere with his probe, according to a letter posted Friday on Fitzgerald's new Web site. . . In a letter dated Feb. 6, 2004, then-Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey said that he was clarifying, "at your [Fitzgerald's] request," the added authority to investigate and prosecute "crimes committed with intent to interfere with your investigation.". . .

"The fact that he [Fitzgerald] asked for authority that he probably already had, but wanted spelled out, makes it arguable that he had run into something rather quickly," Washington lawyer Plato Cacheris said yesterday. . .

Nicely done: dissecting the CIA leak lies coming from Bush’s defenders in the media

http://mediamatters.org/items/200510210008

More spin coming that Fitzgerald’s charges are no big deal: Hey, people leak classified info all the time

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/weekinreview/23sanger.html

Housecleaning?

http://www.digis.net/webnews/wed/br/Abush-replacements.RgFo_FOM.shtml
[AP] It's a nightmare prospect that Republicans have trouble fathoming: legal problems that could drive some of the president's most powerful aides from office.

A special prosecutor and grand jury are closing in on a deadline to decide whether to lodge criminal complaints against presidential adviser Karl Rove and White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in the outing of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson.

If it comes to pass, administration officials and GOP consultants expect President Bush to turn to a few individuals to fill any void in his inner circle. . . Among the candidates are go-to Republicans whom Bush trusts, including Ed Gillespie, Ken Mehlman and Karen Hughes; former lawmakers Rob Portman and Vin Weber; and those who could be promoted from within, such as Dan Bartlett, Joshua Bolten and Joe Hagin. . . It's also possible the president could reach out to others in his Cabinet, among them Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez.

Republicans steadfastly cling to the belief that there will be no indictments, the issue will blow over and the speculation will amount to nothing more than idle chatter. . . "I don't think anybody's leaving," said Charles Black, a veteran GOP strategist and close Bush ally.

But one White House official, noting that Bush's senior staff is tired of the long hours and increasing pressure, has told colleagues it might be best if everyone closest to the president resign and clear the way for new blood and fresh perspectives. . .

That talk by Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s chief of staff, excerpted here from the Financial Times a couple of days ago, is even more devastating in the original. Go read it all -- but here is a taste of CANDID COMMENTS BY A FORMER SENIOR MEMBER OF THIS ADMINISTRATION

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/Wilkerson%20Speech%20--%20WEB.htm
I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran. Generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita – and I could go on back – we haven’t done very well on anything like that in a long time. And if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence. Read it sometimes again. I just use it for a tutoring class for my students down in the District of Columbia. It forced me to read it really closely because we’re doing metaphors and similes and antonyms and synonyms and so forth, and read in there what the founders say in a very different language than we use today. Read in there what they say about the necessity of the people to throw off tyranny or to throw off ineptitude or to throw off that which is not doing what the people want it to do. And you’re talking about the potential for, I think, real dangerous times if we don’t get our act together. . .

What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. . . Read George Packer’s book, “The Assassin’s Gate,” if you haven’t already. George Packer, a New Yorker – reporter for the New Yorker, has got it right. I just finished it, and I usually put marginalia in a book, but let me tell you, I had to get extra pages to write on. (Laughter.) And I wish I had been able to help George Packer write that book. In some places I could have given him a hell of a lot more specifics than he’s got. (Laughter.) But if you want to read how the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal flummoxed the process, read that book. And of course there are other names in there: Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, whom most of you probably know Tommy Franks said was the stupidest blankety, blank man in the world. He was. (Laughter.) Let me testify to that. He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man. (Laughter.) And yet – and yet – and yet, after the secretary of State agrees to a $40 billion department rather than a $30 billion department having control, at least in the immediate post-war period in Iraq, this man is put in charge. Not only is he put in charge, he is given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw itself in a closet somewhere. . .

So you’ve got this collegiality there between the secretary of Defense and the vice president, and you’ve got a president who is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either. And so it’s not too difficult to make decisions in this what I call Oval Office cabal, and decisions often that are the opposite of what you’d thought were made in the formal process. Now, let’s get back to Dr. Rice again. For so long I said, yeah, Rich, you’re right – Rich being Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage – it is a dysfunctional process. And to myself I said, okay, put on your academic hat; who’s causing this? Well, the national security adviser. Even if the framers didn’t envision that position, even if it’s not subject to confirmation by the Senate, the national security advisor should be doing a better job. Now I’ve come to a different conclusion, and after reading Packer’s book I found additional information, or confirmation for my opinion, I think. I think it was more a case of – in some cases there was real dysfunctionality – there always is – but in most cases it was Dr. Rice made a decision, she made a decision – and this is all about people again because people in essence are the government. She made a decision that she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president. . .

And I’ll finish just by bringing it down screechingly to the ground and tell you that the detainee abuse issue is just such a concrete example of what I’ve just described to you, that 10 years from now or so when it’s really, really put to the acid test, ironed out and people have looked at it from every angle, we are going to be ashamed of what we allowed to happen. . . Of course we have criminals, of course we have people who violate the law of war, of course we had My Lai, of course we had problems in the Korean War and in World War II. My father-in-law was involved in the Malmédy massacre and the retaliation of U.S. troops in Belgium. He told me some stories before he died that made my blood curdle about American troops killing Germans. . . .But these are not -- I won’t say isolated incidents; these are incidents that are understandable and that ultimately, at one time or another, we came to deal with. I don’t think, in our history, we’ve ever had a presidential involvement, a secretarial involvement, a vice-presidential involvement, an attorney general involvement in telling our troops essentially carte blanche is the way you should feel. You should not have any qualms because this is a different kind of conflict. . .

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001021.html
[Chris Nelson] On the one hand, there is no question from private remarks and public grimaces, some reaching back to early 2001, neither Powell nor Armitage had or has much trust or respect for Rice, and they share with other senior Republican wisemen the conviction that Rumsfeld is quite literally mad, and Cheney a dangerous, vindictive monomaniac.

On the other hand, such views are normally dispensed as pearls before very closed groups of friends and retainers, often with the intent that rumors, if not full quotes, reach the ears of eager ink-stained wretches of the press, so that the Powell/Armitage reputation for speaking truth about power remains unsullied, and hopefully well-represented in the history books.

Just how brave they were up-front, in the face of the misdeeds of Rummy/Cheney/Rice being decried, is a question on which the history books may be slightly less generous than the daily press, but that's not our topic for tonight. . .except to note Wilkerson's stunning frankness in stressing the obstacles placed in the Powell/Armitage path directly by Rumsfeld/Cheney, or indirectly, through Rice's failure to perform the intended function of a National Security Advisor.

Implicitly, President Bush must be faulted for not seeing how he was being manipulated by Rumsfeld/Cheney. We noted in a Report several years ago an eye-witness account of Cabinet meetings discussing Iraq WMD which confirms the picture painted yesterday by Wilkerson: the gist of our quote was that "Rummy and Cheney spend their time spinning-up Bush, while Condi sits there saying nothing, leaving Powell totally isolated and ineffective." This was from a then-DOD source, we should add. . .

Analysis: http://billmon.org/archives/002283.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007389.php

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_digbysblog_archive.html#113000693520964595
“[N]either Powell nor Armitage had or has much trust or respect for Rice, and they share with other senior Republican wisemen the conviction that Rumsfeld is quite literally mad, and Cheney a dangerous, vindictive monomaniac.”

[Digby] But it does the beg the obvious question. If you have this kind of a situation, aren't you, you know, kind of obligated to speak up before an election? Doesn't loyalty to country trump loyalty to party? . . . I think I just answered my questions. Never mind.

And if that’s not devastating enough: a coming New Yorker piece by Brent Scowcroft will reportedly savage the Bush foreign policy misadventure in even tougher terms (and is supposed to include some choice comments by Bush the Dad about his son’s team)

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001022.html

Will the press start putting all these pieces together and FINALLY tell the full story of pre-war lies: not exaggerations, not self-deception, not selectively believing CIA intelligence that confirmed their policies, but coordinated and intentional lies to drive their war agenda. This is what the WHIGs were all about, and this is the thread that has been pulled by the Wilson/Plame story

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/politics/23strategy.html

http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/22/21317/412

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20051021/fitzgeralds_historic_opportunity.php

The original forged Niger uranium document

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2146

Rove? http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/10/waiting_for_fitzgerald.html

TWO MORE YEARS before the Iraqi army will be ready to fight

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-102105iraqdems_lat,0,6414799.story

Bush whips up the Syria issue (please, something, ANYTHING, that can create a new Bad Guy for me to play Good Guy against)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/21/AR2005102102211.html
President Bush called on the United Nations yesterday to meet urgently to consider taking action against Syria. . .

CIA won’t be charged in 3 of 4 (known) prisoner deaths

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/international/asia/23intel.html
Despite indications of C.I.A. involvement in the deaths of at least four prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, C.I.A. employees now appear likely to escape criminal charges in all but one of those incidents, according to current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials. . .

The true story of how the U.S. let Bin Laden escape from Tora Bora

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/22/221011/01

Karen Hughes, still flailing

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/21/AR2005102101870.html
Bush administration envoy Karen Hughes visited Indonesia on Friday as part of her campaign to repair U.S. standing with the world's Muslims and defended the invasion of Iraq by telling skeptical students that deposed president Saddam Hussein had gassed hundreds of thousands of his own people. . .

Her remark was an impassioned answer to familiar criticisms of U.S. policy raised by her audience at one of Indonesia's leading Islamic universities. But it was also wrong. . . State Department officials later acknowledged that Hughes, tapped by President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to set the record straight on U.S. policies in the Muslim world, had misreported history. . .

Judith Miller responds to Bill Keller’s charge that she lied by. . . lying some more

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/22/national/22paper.html
Ms. Miller said in an interview that Mr. Keller's statements were "seriously inaccurate." She also provided The Times with a copy of a memorandum she had sent to Mr. Keller in response.

[NB: Which, notice, the NYT again sits on, and doesn’t share with us]

"I certainly never meant to mislead Phil, nor did I mislead him," she wrote to Mr. Keller, referring to Mr. Taubman.

She wrote that as she had said in an account in The Times last Sunday, she had discussed Mr. Wilson and his wife with government officials, but "I was unaware that there was a deliberate, concerted disinformation campaign to discredit Wilson and that if there had been, I did not think I was a target of it."

She added, "As for your reference to my 'entanglement' with Mr. Libby, I had no personal, social, or other relationship with him except as a source.". . .

More: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_atrios_archive.html#112999980072953129

The Miller/Libby code: it sure looks like collusion

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_digbysblog_archive.html#113003452230666792

Casual conversation?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007393.php

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_digbysblog_archive.html#113002619436840749

Maureen Dowd on Judith Miller

http://cyphering.blogspot.com/2005/10/judy-miller-show.html
I've always liked Judy Miller. . .The traits she has that drive many reporters at The Times crazy - her tropism toward powerful men, her frantic intensity and her peculiar mixture of hard work and hauteur - have never bothered me. I enjoy operatic types.

Once when I was covering the first Bush White House, I was in The Times's seat in the crowded White House press room, listening to an administration official's background briefing. Judy had moved on from her tempestuous tenure as a Washington editor to be a reporter based in New York, but she showed up at this national security affairs briefing.

At first she leaned against the wall near where I was sitting, but I noticed that she seemed agitated about something. Midway through the briefing, she came over and whispered to me, "I think I should be sitting in the Times seat."

It was such an outrageous move, I could only laugh. I got up and stood in the back of the room, while Judy claimed what she felt was her rightful power perch.

She never knew when to quit. That was her talent and her flaw. Sorely in need of a tight editorial leash, she was kept on no leash at all, and that has hurt this paper and its trust with readers. She more than earned her sobriquet "Miss Run Amok."

Judy's stories about W.M.D. fit too perfectly with the White House's case for war. She was close to Ahmad Chalabi, the con man who was conning the neocons to knock out Saddam so he could get his hands on Iraq. . .

When Bill Keller became executive editor in the summer of 2003, he barred Judy from covering Iraq and W.M.D. issues. But he acknowledged in The Times's Sunday story about Judy's role in the Plame leak case that she had kept "drifting" back. Why did nobody stop this drift?

Judy admitted in the story that she "got it totally wrong" about W.M.D. "If your sources are wrong," she said, "you are wrong." But investigative reporting is not stenography.

The Times's story and Judy's own first-person account had the unfortunate effect of raising more questions. As Bill said yesterday in an e-mail note to the staff, Judy seemed to have "misled" the Washington bureau chief, Phil Taubman, about the extent of her involvement in the Valerie Plame leak case.

She casually revealed that she had agreed to identify her source, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff, as a "former Hill staffer" because he had once worked on Capitol Hill. The implication was that this bit of deception was a common practice for reporters. It isn't.

She said that she had wanted to write about the Wilson-Plame matter, but that her editor would not allow it. But Managing Editor Jill Abramson, then the Washington bureau chief, denied this, saying that Judy had never broached the subject with her.

It also doesn't seem credible that Judy wouldn't remember a Marvel comics name like "Valerie Flame." Nor does it seem credible that she doesn't know how the name got into her notebook and that, as she wrote, she "did not believe the name came from Mr. Libby.". . .

Judy refused to answer a lot of questions put to her by Times reporters, or show the notes that she shared with the grand jury. I admire Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Bill Keller for aggressively backing reporters in the cross hairs of a prosecutor. But before turning Judy's case into a First Amendment battle, they should have nailed her to a chair and extracted the entire story of her escapade.

Judy told The Times that she plans to write a book and intends to return to the newsroom, hoping to cover "the same thing I've always covered - threats to our country." If that were to happen, the institution most in danger would be the newspaper in your hands. . .

Byron Calame, NYT ombudsman

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/opinion/23publiceditor.html
The Times must now face up to three major concerns raised by the leak investigation: First, the tendency by top editors to move cautiously to correct problems about prewar coverage. Second, the journalistic shortcuts taken by Ms. Miller. And third, the deferential treatment of Ms. Miller by editors who failed to dig into problems before they became a mess. . .

The most disturbing aspect of the Oct. 16 retrospective was its revelation of the journalistic shortcuts that Ms. Miller seems comfortable taking.

One ethical problem emerged when Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, asked Ms. Miller if she had pursued an article about Valerie Plame, the C.I.A. operative, or her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV. Ms. Miller said in an interview for the retrospective that she "made a strong recommendation to my editor" that a story be pursued. "I was told no.". . .But Jill Abramson, now a managing editor and the Washington bureau chief in 2003. . . said that she did not recall Ms. Miller ever mentioning the confidential conversations she had with I. Lewis Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, who appears to be in the middle of the leak investigation. When I asked her, Ms. Miller declined to identify the editor she dealt with.

If Ms. Abramson is to be believed, and I do believe her, this raises clear issues of trust and credibility. It also means that because Ms. Miller didn't let an editor know what she knew, Times readers were deprived of a potentially exclusive look into an apparent administration effort to undercut Mr. Wilson and other critics of the Iraq war.

The negotiation of an attribution for a conversation that Ms. Miller had with Mr. Libby is also bothersome. She mentioned in her first-person account last Sunday that, to get Mr. Libby to give her certain information about the Plame situation, she had agreed to identify him as "a former Hill staffer" rather than the usual "senior administration official." She went on: "I agreed to the new ground rules because I knew that Mr. Libby had once worked on Capitol Hill.". . . When I talked to Ms. Miller, she dismissed concern about her agreement. . .

ANOTHER troubling ethical issue that I haven't yet been able to nail down is whether Ms. Miller holds a government security clearance - something that could restrict her ability to share with editors the information she gathers. During the Iraq war, Ms. Miller said in her personal account, "The Pentagon had given me clearance to see secret information as part of my assignment 'embedded' with a special military unit hunting for unconventional weapons.". . .

The Times needs to review Ms. Miller's journalistic practices as soon as possible, especially because she disputes some accounts of her conduct that have come to light since the leak investigation began. . . The apparent deference to Ms. Miller by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher, and top editors of The Times, going back several years, needs to be addressed more openly, especially in view of the ethics issues that have come to light. . .

Neither Mr. Keller nor the publisher had done much digging into Ms. Miller's contacts with any of her confidential sources about Ms. Plame before the subpoena arrived on Aug. 12, 2004. Neither had reviewed her notes, for instance. Mr. Keller also didn't look into whether Ms. Miller had proposed a story about the Plame leak to an editor.

"I wish that when I learned Judy Miller had been subpoenaed as a witness in the leak investigation, I had sat her down for a thorough debriefing, and followed up with some reporting of my own," he wrote to me, adding later, "If I had known the details of Judy's engagement with Libby, I'd have been more careful in how the paper articulated its defense."

What does the future hold for Ms. Miller? She told me Thursday that she hopes to return to the paper after taking some time off. Mr. Sulzberger offered this measured response: "She and I have acknowledged that there are new limits on what she can do next." It seems to me that whatever the limits put on her, the problems facing her inside and outside the newsroom will make it difficult for her to return to the paper as a reporter. . .

Polling on favorability: Dems crushing the Repubs right now

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/10/22/143226/67

Bonus item: Plame comics

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2144

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:59 AM

 
INDICTMENTS COMING?

Patrick Fitzgerald launches a web site. This is almost certainly not to post a “No indictments. Never mind” message next week

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html
[Dan Froomkin] Could it be that he's getting ready to release some new legal documents? Like, maybe, some indictments? It's certainly not the action of an office about to fold up its tents and go home.

Fitzgerald spokesman Randall Samborn minimized the significance of the Web launch in an interview this morning. . . "I would strongly caution, Dan, against reading anything into it substantive, one way or the other," he said. "It's really a long overdue effort to get something on the Internet to answer a lot of questions that we get . . . and to put up some of the documents that we have had ongoing and continued interest in having the public be able to access."

OK, OK. But will the Web site be used for future documents as well?. . . "The possibility exists," Samborn said. . .

Here it is: http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/index.html

Grand jury voting on which charges to bring?

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012824.html

More: http://makeashorterlink.com/?T2941270C

The dangers of over-speculation

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/10/21/09/36/predictions/

http://billmon.org/archives/002284.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/10/21/plame/index.html

But hey, what the heck? Think about this intriguing tidbit

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/andy-card-needs-to-be-with-bush-this.html
[Joe in DC] The Providence Journal reports that WH Chief of Staff Andy Card had to cancel a GOP fundraiser in RI this weekend:

"All we know is that the White House called and said he had to be with the president," Morgan said. "He needs to be at Camp David this weekend."

Oh, to be a fly on the wall at Camp David this weekend. The possibilities of why Card needs to be there are endless. Who else will be there?. . .

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012820.html
[Jeralyn Merritt] I suspect they will be discussing replacements for those who about to be indicted, and/or those who have agreed to plead guilty. . . I'm still leaning towards believing that Rove and Libby will fall on their swords and have plea agreements in place by next week, to spare their respective bosses, Bush and Cheney, the ugly fallout from a protracted criminal case and from being called as witnesses. . . The question is, will Bush pardon them in return for their loyalty before or after they serve any jail time required by the deals?. . .

There are some problems with my theory: I doubt Fitzgerald would have put up a website just to publish Indictments and plea agreements. Someone big must be holding out. Unless, of course, it's a ploy by Fitzgerald to convince those teetering on the edge of a deal that he means business and this is for real. What better way than to flash the website before the public ahead of time, so each of the holdouts can envision their own dirty laundry up there?

Is Libby being set up as the fall guy?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006811

What happens after the indictments come down?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_digbysblog_archive.html#112992096053756798

One thing for sure: Wilson and Plame ARE preparing a civil lawsuit

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/wilson-and-plame-preparing-lawsuit.html

One dimension of this story, which provides the theme of the day, is that many people seem surprised that Fitzgerald, a Republican, is going after a Republican administration so hard. This is a sign of what the Rove/DeLay/Norquist era has done to us: putting EVERYTHING into a partisan context. But the fact is that much of government is staffed by people who have jobs to do, and they do them without regard to whether it “helps the Republicans” or “hurts the Democrats” – and thank goodness, because government couldn’t run without them. The replacement of hard-working, competent professionals with partisan hacks is one of the most destructive legacies of this administration, and the only good thing about it is that they haven’t been more successful in it than they have: there are still a lot of people in various government agencies (including Republicans) who are sickened by what the Bush gang has been doing

Fitzgerald: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/22/politics/22fitzgerald.html

Another example (this is priceless). DeLay argues that because his judge gave donations to Democrats, he must be disqualified as biased (because only Republican judges can try Republicans fairly, you see)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/21/politics/21cnd-delay.html
The judge in the case, Bob Perkins, said he was holding the case up temporarily in light of a defense motion demanding he recuse himself because he was a Democrat who had made recent donations to the Democratic Party and to Democratic candidates. . . Before conducting any substantive business in the case, Judge Perkins said was referring the question of his impartiality to the presiding administrative judge of the region.

The administrative judge, B. B. Schraub, a Republican appointed to his post by a succession of Republican and Democratic governors, will be asked by Mr. DeLay's lawyers to determine if Judge Perkins should recuse himself. Judge Schraub's office said he expected to hold a hearing on the request within two weeks.

Just one little problem with that argument (thank you, Holden)

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4477
Dick DeGuerin, Tom DeLay's [lawyer], is making lots of noise about Judge Bob Perkins political donations. That lead me to query the OpenSecrets.org database to see where DeGuerin has been putting his money.

It turns out that since 1992 DeGuerin had contributed $2,500 to the Democratic National Committee, $1,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and a total of $11,800 to six Democratic candidates including a $1,000 donation to Nick Lampson in 1996 who just happens to be running against Tom DeLay in 2006.

More on this theme: first, Republicans were supposed to support Harriet Miers because she was a good Christian lady with the right values, even though her religious beliefs have nothing to do with how she would judge (uh-huh). The whole Dobson mess blew that out of the water, and will cause still more trouble during her confirmation hearings. Then Republicans were supposed to support her because she was “brilliant,” and “highly qualified,” and a “meticulous detail-oriented person.” Well, her appallingly sloppy and superficial responses to the Senate questionnaire showed otherwise, and every Senator who has talked with her has come back with a LOWERED impression of her qualifications. End of strategy number two. Now we get the weirdest and dumbest rationale of all: Republicans HAVE TO support her, no matter how bad she is, because Bush can’t take a loss right now and it would be bad for the Republican party to lose this fight. So hold your noses, fellas: this is the best you’re gonna get!

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/21/154337/30

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-miers21oct21,1,4823499.story
The nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court has gotten off to a stumbling start that bears little resemblance to the president's first-term performance of pursuing major goals with discipline, focus and a united party behind him.

Nearly three weeks after President Bush chose Miers, her prospects for confirmation are clouded by opposition from conservative activists that is not waning, questions about her qualifications that remain unanswered, and lukewarm support even from strong Bush loyalists in the Senate. . .

"You're seeing evidence of a profoundly disorganized and demoralized White House," said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University who has also spent time working on the Senate staff. "If you are looking for evidence of a rudderless White House, the slipshod manner in which Harriet Miers' papers were prepared is really Exhibit A."

The National Review

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/10/21/review/index.html
"Five days into White House 'qualifications week' in making the case for Harriet Miers, her nomination is looking weaker rather than stronger," the editors say. "No matter how many times Scott McClellan says that she is 'extremely well qualified,' it doesn't make it so, especially when she makes basic constitutional flubs on her Senate questionnaire and is leaving senators singularly unimpressed during her Capitol Hill visits."

The Wall Street Journal

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/10/21/miers/index.html
In an editorial today, the Wall Street Journal declares that George W. Bush's second Supreme Court nomination has proved to be a "political blunder of the first order." The Journal stops short of calling on Bush to withdraw Miers' nomination . . . but it says that Miers is already suffering from the perception, "fairly or not," that she is "simply not able to discuss the Constitutional controversies that have animated American political debate for two generations."

More: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-miers22oct22,1,5282253.story
Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan. . . said she was surprised the White House did not check Miers' questionnaire before sending it to the Senate. . . "Are they trying to set her up? Any halfway competent junior lawyer could have checked the questionnaire and said it cannot go out like that. I find it shocking," she said.

A definite sign that things have changed: two REPUBLICAN Senators now call for the release of Miers’ WH work product (even though with Roberts they argued that such items were confidential)

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4473

Will Miers be sunk by this (or some other) scandal, and not the issue of qualifications?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006810

WH faces a difficult post-Rovean era. Here is the really scary part, for them: with Rove distracted and Cheney (apparently) disaffected, Bush has actually been making decisions! This is the common thread across his stubborn refusal to drop the Social Security campaign, despite the evident damage it was doing; his refusal to cut short his vacation, even in the face of an impending natural disaster; and the absurd nomination of Harriet Miers, his underqualified gal pal. These decisions represent Bush’s unchecked instincts at work: and there is no one now, apparently, who is prepared to say “no” to him

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/wh-planning-for-post-rove-era.html
[WP] With special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald driving his CIA leak investigation toward an apparent conclusion, the White House now confronts the looming prospect that no one in the building is eager to address: a Bush presidency without Karl Rove. In a capital consumed by scandal speculation, most White House senior officials are no more privy than outsiders to the prosecutor's intentions. But the surreal silence in the Roosevelt Room each morning belies the nervous discussions racing elsewhere around the West Wing. . . At the heart of all those discussions is Rove. With the deceptive title of deputy chief of staff, Rove runs much of the White House, including its guiding political strategy and many of its central policy initiatives. "Karl is the central nervous system right now, and that's obviously a big thing”. . . "No one in the White House wants to talk about an indictment," another former official said. "No one wants to believe anything's going to happen.". . .

Cheney giving “pep talks” http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20051021/pl_usatoday/stringofcrisesputbushagendaindoubt

Uber-crony Michael Brown STILL on the FEMA payroll (after being “fired”) – and his appointment has been extended for another 30 days!

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/wp-print.php?p=5598

In Iraq: approaching 2000 U.S. dead, and what’s the sit rep?

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2142

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/21/18233/747

British troops “at breaking point”

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/coalition/2005/1018breakingpoint.htm

A ferocious expose of the corrupt handling of US aid in Iraq – written from the hard Right

http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_10_24/cover.html
The United States invaded Iraq with a high-minded mission: destroy dangerous weapons, bring democracy, and trigger a wave of reform across the Middle East. None of these have happened. . . When the final page is written on America’s catastrophic imperial venture, one word will dominate the explanation of U.S. failure—corruption. . .

The American-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority could well prove to be the most corrupt administration in history. . .


Saber-rattling with Syria

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/22/international/middleeast/22nations.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007390.php

Wagging the dog? http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002907.html

Another embarrassment for Karen Hughes, Ambassador to the Arab World

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/another-karen-hughes-smackdown.html
[Reuters] U.S. goodwill envoy Karen Hughes got a earful from a group of mostly female Indonesian Muslim students on Friday, who expressed anger at the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and attacked Washington's foreign policies.

Tasked by U.S. President George W. Bush to polish America's image overseas, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy is in Jakarta to meet leading Muslim clerics and students during a tour of the world's most populous Muslim nation.

"Why does America always act as if they were the police of the world?," Barikatul Hikmah, a 20-year-old student at the Syarif Hidayatullah University asked Hughes.

Confirmation of serious problems with e-voting machines (thanks to Buzzflash for the link)

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001940.htm

Ann Coulter, fascist (thanks to Buzzflash for the link)

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001942.htm
She also criticized the media for being liberal and Democrats for whining about their rights under the First Amendment.

"They're always accusing us of repressing their speech," she said. "I say let's do it. Let's repress them.". . . She later added, "Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the First Amendment."

Bill Keller sorta apologizes for the NY Times’ craven performance in dealing with the Judith Miller case

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_atrios_archive.html#112992721993227229
[Keller] “I wish that when I learned Judy Miller had been subpoenaed as a witness in the leak investigation, I had sat her down for a thorough debriefing, and followed up with some reporting of my own. It is a natural and proper instinct to defend reporters when the government seeks to interfere in our work. And under other circumstances it might have been fine to entrust the details -- the substance of the confidential interviews, the notes -- to lawyers who would be handling the case. But in this case I missed what should have been significant alarm bells. Until Fitzgerald came after her, I didn’t know that Judy had been one of the reporters on the receiving end of the anti-Wilson whisper campaign. I should have wondered why I was learning this from the special counsel, a year after the fact. (In November of 2003 Phil Taubman tried to ascertain whether any of our correspondents had been offered similar leaks. As we reported last Sunday, Judy seems to have misled Phil Taubman about the extent of her involvement.) This alone should have been enough to make me probe deeper. . .”

Full text: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051022/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/keller_text_3

[NB: Atrios makes the key point here: that information was copiously documented in the blogosphere (for anyone who bothered to look). But some journalists still seem to have a hard time accepting the fact that BOTH of these media spheres have a Fourth Estate function now, and the formal press isn’t always the first one on a story any more. Also, blogs are increasingly performing a critical check against the media’s compromises and complicity, as in this case; just as the formal media performs a check against the blogosphere’s susceptibility to rumor and unsourced speculation. Both functions are important]

Why the media needs a media watchdog

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/21/delay-lawyer-smears-moveon/

Another example: identical editorials in several newspapers across the country. How did that happen?

http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2005/10/esp-wonder-newspapers-channel-bush.asp

Bonus item: Like a dog to its. . . Karl Rove has been fired before for leaking to Bob Novak

http://janfrel.mydd.com/story/2005/7/11/155029/380

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:35 AM

 
THE LINE-UP

The thugs

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/21/politics/21leak.html
As he weighs whether to bring criminal charges in the C.I.A. leak case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel, is focusing on whether Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, sought to conceal their actions and mislead prosecutors, lawyers involved in the case said Thursday.

Among the charges that Mr. Fitzgerald is considering are perjury, obstruction of justice and false statement - counts that suggest the prosecutor may believe the evidence presented in a 22-month grand jury inquiry shows that the two White House aides sought to cover up their actions, the lawyers said.

Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have been advised that they may be in serious legal jeopardy, the lawyers said, but only this week has Mr. Fitzgerald begun to narrow the possible charges. The prosecutor has said he will not make up his mind about any charges until next week, government officials say.

With the term of the grand jury expiring in one week, though, some lawyers in the case said they were persuaded that Mr. Fitzgerald had all but made up his mind to seek indictments. . .

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012812.html
[Jeralyn Merritt] The New York Times reports tonight:

• Fitzgerald has advised both Libby and Rove they are in serious legal jeopardy. He will decide whether to charge next week.
• Fitzgerald is considering charges of Perjury, Obstruction of Justice and Making a False Statement to Federal Officials. He seems less focused on charges over the leak. It's the cover-up, not the crime.
• Fitzgerald knows who Novak's source is, and it's not someone who works at the White House.
• Additional persons could be charged.

. . . Reading between the lines from a legal standpoint, here's how I interpret this, and remember, it's just speculation: Fitzgerald is done. All that's left are the pre-indictment plea deals. He's previously made deals with John Hannah and David Wurmser. Now he's offered them to Rove and Libby. As I've said before, it's their "come to Jesus moment." I suspect both will accept the best deals their lawyers can negotiate. Rove will fall on his sword to protect Bush, and Libby will fall on his to protect Cheney.

More people will be offered deals - particularly those involved with the initial disclosure of Valerie Plame's identity. Novak's source may be one of them. Walter Pincus's source (whose identity is also known to Fitzgerald) could be another. This group might also include some current or former State Department officials - perhaps Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, who was part of the White House Iraq group.

I also think there will be some charges over the improper disclosure of the contents of the June 9 State Department memo that mentioned Valerie Wilson. Ari Fleischer could be part of this group and perhaps some National Security Council or State Department officials. . .

I suspect Fitzgerald is spending this week in plea negotiations with the lawyers for those he is considering indicting. There could be one indictment next week that includes the negotiated charges. Or, Fitzgerald could charge those that agree to deals by Information, with the grand jury charging only those, if any, who reject his offers. . .

More charges: http://makeashorterlink.com/?W21C1250C
[WSJ] But lawyers and others close to the case say he may be piecing together a case that White House officials conspired to leak various types of classified material in conversations with reporters -- including Ms. Plame's identity but also other secrets related to national security.

Obsessed with Wilson: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-libby21oct21,1,3779510.story

Defense “crumbling”: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/10/20/national/w131938D96.DTL

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/scooter-libby-is-screwed.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/10/20/rovelibby/index.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_digbysblog_archive.html#112986855921595100
[Digby] One thing that I continue to find fascinating. The final paragraph of this NY Times article:

In Mr. Libby's case, Mr. Fitzgerald has focused on his statements about how he first learned of Ms. Wilson's identity, the lawyers said. Mr. Libby has said that he learned of Ms. Wilson from reporters. But Mr. Fitzgerald may have doubts about his account because the journalists who have been publicly identified as having talked to Mr. Libby have said that they did not provide the name, that they could not recall what had been said or that they had discussed unrelated subjects.

Gosh I wonder who those "journalists" could be? Perhaps they'll share it with the public when they write their memoirs.

The moll

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_atrios_archive.html#112985141426729915
[Murray Waas] New York Times reporter Judith Miller told the federal grand jury in the CIA leak case that she might have met with I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby on June 23, 2003 only after prosecutors showed her Secret Service logs that indicated she and Libby had indeed met that day in the Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House, according to attorneys familiar with her testimony.

Miller testified in her second grand jury appearance that it was during this June 23 meeting that she and Libby first discussed Plame's CIA employment.

When a prosecutor first questioned Miller during her initial grand jury appearance on September 30, 2005 sources said, she did not bring up the June 23 meeting in recounting her various contacts with Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. Pressed by prosecutors who then brought up the specific date of the meeting, Miller testified that she still could not recall the June meeting with Libby, in which they discussed a controversial CIA-sponsored mission to Africa by former Ambassador Joe Wilson, or the fact that his wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.

When a prosecutor presented Miller with copies of the White House-complex visitation logs, she said such a meeting was possible.

Shortly after her September 30 testimony, Miller discovered her notes from the June 23 meeting, and returned on October 12 for a second round of grand jury testimony. In this second appearance, Miller recounted details from her June 23 meeting with Libby, with the assistance of her notes.

Credit: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_digbysblog_archive.html#112986993440993102

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2137

http://billmon.org/archives/002282.html

Russert? http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_digbysblog_archive.html#112983407688874999

The Boss

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/357107p-304312c.html
Bush was initially furious with Rove in 2003 when his deputy chief of staff conceded he had talked to the press about the Plame leak. . . [T]he President felt Rove and other members of the White House damage-control team did a clumsy job in their campaign to discredit Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson.

http://makeashorterlink.com/?V2A96550C
National Journal investigative reporter Murray Waas reported on 10/7/05, "In his own interview with prosecutors on June 24, 2004, Bush also testified that Rove assured him he had not disclosed Plame as a CIA employee and had said nothing to the press to discredit Wilson."

[NB: could it be any clearer?]

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006798

“Background noise” http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/bush-calls-treason-background-noise.html

Pardons?!?? http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/20/182923/29

Remember Iran/Contra: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_atrios_archive.html#112985125289005763

The Big Lie

http://www.prospect.org/web/printfriendly-view.ww?id=10446
[Laura Rozen] In February 2004, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSCI) announced that it had unanimously agreed to expand its investigation of prewar Iraq intelligence from focus on intelligence community blunders and into the more controversial area of “whether intelligence was exaggerated or misused” by U.S. government officials. The committee’s ranking Democrat, Jay Rockefeller, struck the agreement with Chairman Pat Roberts -- provided, Roberts insisted, that the probe into policy-makers’ activities wait until after the presidential election.

It’s now more than a year later, and Rockefeller is still waiting -- the Phase II report has yet to appear. What happened? And why isn’t Rockefeller making more of a fuss?

Republican committee staffers don’t deny that Roberts lacks enthusiasm for Phase II. But they insist that he hasn’t acted to kill the investigation, and that the last interviews needed to complete it are being wrapped up. Ultimately, they say, it will be up to the committee’s members to vote on whether or not to release a report. . .

The forgery: http://maxblumenthal.blogspot.com/2005/10/is-michael-ledeen-niger-forgery-author.html


The Hammer

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/20/AR2005102000248.html
Former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) surrendered Thursday to the county sheriff's office in Houston, and was then photographed, fingerprinted and released. . .

http://buzzflash.com/
This is Tom DeLay's Mug Shot? It looks more like a campaign photo. No booking numbers? No size chart? What's with the preferential treatment?





Report: U.S. troops burned, desecrated Taliban corpses as intimidation tactic

http://www.juancole.com/2005/10/us-military-desecrates-bodies-of.html

Well, we all know about Bush’s inconsistent commitment to the National Guard. As a mere youth, all he could do was screw up his own obligation to serve. Now, with the power of the presidency, he can REALLY screw them over

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4465

In Kentucky, an astonishing nest of corruption under Gov. Ernie Fletcher (who, you might recall, pardoned a bunch of his alleged co-conspirators, then took the Fifth himself – a roadmap for Bush?)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/20/224818/79

The Social Security fiasco: Bush gang still thinks they didn’t do anything wrong -- the Democrats “surprised” them

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/20/133415/25

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/10/index.html#008075

The role of the blogs: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007383.php

The Katrina fiasco: Brownie was even more irresponsible and out of touch than you’ve heard

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051020/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/katrina_fema
In the midst of the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina, a Federal Emergency Management Agency official in New Orleans sent a dire e-mail to Director Michael Brown saying victims had no food and were dying. No response came from Brown. . . Instead, less than three hours later, an aide to Brown sent an e-mail saying her boss wanted to go on a television program that night — after needing at least an hour to eat dinner at a Baton Rouge, La., restaurant. . .

"Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical," Bahamonde wrote. "The sooner we can get the medical patients out, the sooner we can get them out."

A short time later, Brown's press secretary, Sharon Worthy, wrote colleagues to complain that the FEMA director needed more time to eat dinner at a Baton Rouge restaurant that evening. "He needs much more that (sic) 20 or 30 minutes," Worthy wrote.

"Restaurants are getting busy," she said. "We now have traffic to encounter to go to and from a location of his choise (sic), followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc. Thank you."

Republicans: still sneaking through bills they could never pass in an open vote

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/19/AR2005101901203.html
The Senate Energy Committee voted on Wednesday to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling as part of a broad budget bill to fund the federal government.

When you think about the puzzle of Republican success, one glaring paradox always comes to my mind: how did they forge a coalition that included hatefully anti-gay religious conservatives with the Log Cabin Republicans? By what alchemy has that coalition been held together -- and why haven’t the Dems been able to drive a wedge between them? Now it looks like the GOP is doing it to themselves

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/5587.html

When did it become okay for public candidates to talk this way?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006797
Hillary Clinton's senate opponent next year, Republican DA Jeanine Pirro, told a Chemung County Republicans on Tuesday night: "That's a difference between Democrats and Republicans _ we don't want them next door molesting children and murdering women." Now on the defensive, Pirro's campaign manageer Brian Donahue says: "This quote is out of context."

Working toward 2006

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/10/index.html#008088

The Miers nomination: sinking fast

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/20/AR2005102002051.html
Two months after engineering a nearly flawless confirmation process for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the Bush administration's bid to add Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court has been so riddled with errors, stumbles and embarrassing revelations that some lawmakers and other observers find it hard to believe it emanates from the same White House.

At one key juncture after another, Miers has faltered where Roberts glided. Her courtesy calls on the Judiciary Committee's top two senators prompted conflicting tales of curious comments that she may or may not have made. Her answers to the committee's questionnaire included a misinterpretation of constitutional law and were deemed so inadequate that the panel asked her to redo it. She revealed one day that her D.C. law license had been temporarily suspended -- and said the next day that the same thing had happened in Texas -- because of unpaid dues. . .

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/10/20/miers/index.html
She's "meticulous" and "detail-oriented," the attorney general said the other day.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/chitribts/20051020/ts_chicagotrib/miersomittedpriorbusinessinterestonsenatequestionnaire
Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers omitted listing a 17-year ownership interest in a Dallas employment placement agency on a disclosure questionnaire from the Senate Judiciary Committee. . .

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4466
[Bush] “Secondly, the questionnaire that she filled out is an important questionnaire, and obviously they will address the questions that the senators have in the questionnaire -- or as a result of the answers to the questions in the questionnaire.”

Cramming desperately: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/21/politics/politicsspecial1/21prep.html

It’s not helping: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007381.php
[WSJ] "The meetings with the senators are going terribly. On a scale of one to 100, they are in negative territory. The thought now is that they have to end....Obviously the smart thing to do would be to withdraw the nomination and have a do-over as soon as possible. But the White House is so irrational that who knows? As of this morning, there is a sort of pig-headed resolve to press forward, cancel the meetings with senators if necessary, and bone up for the hearings."

More: http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/10/miers_sinks_deeper_into_pit.html

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4462

Bonus item: Billmon gets his hands on the complete answers Miers gave on her questionnaire

http://billmon.org/archives/002279.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:54 AM

 
BUSH KNEW

Why isn’t this the number one story everywhere?

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/357107p-304312c.html
An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News.

"He made his displeasure known to Karl," a presidential counselor told The News. "He made his life miserable about this.". . .

Bush has nevertheless remained doggedly loyal to Rove. . . As special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald nears a decision, perhaps as early as today, on whether to issue indictments in his two-year probe, Bush has already circled the wagons around Rove, whose departure would be a grievous blow to an already shell-shocked White House staff and a President in deep political trouble.

Asked if he believed indictments were forthcoming, a key Bush official said he did not know, then added: "I'm very concerned it could go very, very badly."

"Karl is fighting for his life," the official added, "but anything he did was done to help George W. Bush. The President knows that and appreciates that."

Other sources confirmed, however, that Bush was initially furious with Rove in 2003 when his deputy chief of staff conceded he had talked to the press about the Plame leak. . . But the President felt Rove and other members of the White House damage-control team did a clumsy job in their campaign to discredit Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson. . .

A second well-placed source said some recently published reports implying Rove had deceived Bush about his involvement in the Wilson counterattack were incorrect and were leaked by White House aides trying to protect the President.

"Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way," the source said.

Where to begin? This means that while Bush was saying, “I want to get to the bottom of this,” he already knew. It means that while he was saying, “I will fire the leakers when we find them,” he was actually “circling the wagons” to protect Rove. It means that the story that Rove lied to hide his involvement from Bush wasn’t true, but was an effort to protect Bush. It means that Bush was less upset about the Plame leak itself, than angry that it was HANDLED BADLY. More substantively, it means he knew these things BEFORE testifying to Fitzgerald – and if he denied knowing anything at that time, you have a perjury (or obstruction) case against the President

[September 2003] THE PRESIDENT: Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action.

[October 2004] “I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official. Now, this is a large administration, and there's a lot of senior officials. I don't have any idea. I'd like to. I want to know the truth.”

[February 2004, CNN] "If there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is," Bush told reporters at an impromptu news conference during a fund-raising stop in Chicago, Illinois. "If the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of. . . "I want to know the truth," the president continued. "Leaks of classified information are bad things.". . . He added that he did not know of "anybody in my administration who leaked classified information."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006789
Then, a few moment later, the president expressed an odd lack of confidence that the case would ever be solved ...

[October 7, 2003] Randy, you tell me, how many sources have you had that's leaked information that you've exposed or have been exposed? Probably none. I mean this town is a -- is a town full of people who like to leak information. And I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official. Now, this is a large administration, and there's a lot of senior officials. I don't have any idea. I'd like to. I want to know the truth. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006783
Did Rove tell the president about his role, then 'forget' before the grand jury, then 'remember' later? Not that many folks believe he forgot. But this would seem like the sort of chronological detail that could seal Rove's fate as far as a perjury indictment.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006788
[Josh Marshall] What did the president tell Patrick Fitzgerald? As a number of lawyers and former prosecutors have informed me this morning, not being under oath does not get President Bush out of legal jeopardy if he didn't tell the truth.

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_digbysblog_archive.html#112974108650214157

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/valerie_plame_/2005/10/a_fish_rots_from_the_head.php

Chuck Schumer (D-NY) drops George Bush a little note

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/schumer.101905.html
“In light of these reports, I urge you to make public the details of Mr. Rove’s involvement, your understanding of that involvement, and an explanation as to why Mr. Rove was neither dismissed nor his security clearance revoked when you learned of his participation in the Plame matter. . .”

[NB: Sooner or later, Bush is going to have to answer this question – it will be fun to watch when it happens]

Somebody’s lying (probably they ALL are)

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/10/19/why/index.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006792

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4454

Scotty then

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4453
[September 29, 2003] Q All right. Let me just follow up. You said this morning, "The President knows" that Karl Rove wasn't involved. How does he know that?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I've made it very clear that it was a ridiculous suggestion in the first place. I saw some comments this morning from the person who made that suggestion, backing away from that. And I said it is simply not true. So, I mean, it's public knowledge. I've said that it's not true. And I have spoken with Karl Rove --

Q But how does --

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not going to get into conversations that the President has with advisors or staff or anything of that nature; that's not my practice.

Q But the President has a factual basis for knowing that Karl Rove --

MR. McCLELLAN: I said it publicly. I said that --

Q But I'm not asking what you said, I'm asking if the President has a factual basis for saying -- for your statement that he knows Karl Rove --

MR. McCLELLAN: He's aware of what I've said, that there is simply no truth to that suggestion. And I have spoken with Karl about it.

Scotty now: initially denies the story, then retracts his denial

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/19/breaking-non-denial/

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/19/mcclellan-walks-back-denial-of-ny-daily-news-story/

Outrageous: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006785.php
QUESTION: . . . Is it true that the President slapped Karl Rove upside the head a couple of years ago over the CIA leak?

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Are you referring to, what, a New York Daily News report? Two things: One, we're not commenting on an ongoing investigation; two, and I would challenge the overall accuracy of that news account.

QUESTION: That's a comment. . .

SCOTT McCLELLAN: No, I'm just saying -- no, I'm just trying to help you all.

QUESTION: So what facts are you challenging?

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Again, I'm not going to comment on an ongoing investigation.

QUESTION: You can't say you're challenging the facts and then not say which ones you're challenging.

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Yes, I can. I just did. . .

QUESTION: Scott, let me come back to -- so you say you're challenging the accuracy, but you won't tell us why. . . Well, if you want us to say it's inaccurate, you need to give us a reason why, or it wouldn't be responsible to report it.

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Well, there's an ongoing investigation, and as you know, our policy is not to comment on it. So that's where we are.

QUESTION: You just did.

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Go ahead.

QUESTION: Based on your personal knowledge, based on your opinion, based on your frustration with the story -- what caused you to say that?

SCOTT McCLELLAN: No, I mean, I read the story and I didn't view it as an accurate story.

QUESTION: Why not?

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Again, I'm not going to go any further than that. . .

ANOTHER Cheney aide cooperating?

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Second_Cheney_aide_cooperating_in_leak_1019.html
Now, those close to the investigation say that a second Cheney aide, David Wurmser, has agreed to provide the prosecution with evidence that the leak was a coordinated effort by Cheney’s office to discredit the agent's husband. Her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, was one of the most vocal critics of the Iraq war. . .

According to those familiar with the case, Wurmser was in attendance at several meetings of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a little-known cabal of administration hawks that formed in August 2002 to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Those who say they have reviewed documents obtained in the probe assert that the Vice President was also present at some of the group’s meetings. . .

The sources say that Hannah and Wurmser were given orders by senior officials in Cheney’s office in June 2003 to leak Plame’s covert status and identity in an attempt to muzzle Wilson. . . “Mid-level officials, however, do not leak information without the authority from a higher level,” Wilson notes.

Oooh, the rats are fighting. Rove implicates Libby

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/19/AR2005101902431.html

http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/breaking_news/12945036.htm

Is ROVE cooperating now, and who could he turn in to save himself? (Only someone higher)

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012795.html

Colin Powell’s revenge

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012791.html

http://billmon.org/archives/002276.html

The wider web of lies that led to war in Iraq

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006793

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007374.php

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002885.html

Is the story about the original (faked) uranium memo about to blow?

http://www.juancole.com/2005/10/italian-parliamentary-report-justin.html

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/10/19/15/14/the-nest/

A “cabal” (this is a MUST READ)

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/afdb7b0c-40f3-11da-b3f9-00000e2511c8.html
Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday. . . In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. . .

Frist used money from his stock sale for his campaign

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/frist-used-stock-sale-cash-for.html

Arrest warrant issued for DeLay

http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/1005/270094.html

Here it is: http://dailydelay.blogspot.com/2005/10/arrest-warrant.html

His lying lawyer

http://www.dccc.org/stakeholder/archives/003735.html

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4452

Isn’t it criminal?

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/apps/nl/newsletter2.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=917053
Right-wing commentator Bill Kristol has figured out what special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the CIA leak scandal is all about: criminalizing conservatives. . . According to Kristol's theory, Fitzgerald's probe is an example of "a kind of ideological criminalization" lead by "the left and the elite professions, including journalism and teaching, in which they predominate.". . . There is one big problem with Kristol's argument: Fitzgerald was hand-selected by the Bush administration to lead the investigation. His appointment was announced by Deputy Attorney General James Comey on December 30, 2003. Comey said that Fitzgerald had been selected because of his "his sterling reputation for integrity and impartiality," calling him "an absolutely apolitical career prosecutor." President Bush agrees, recently applauding the “dignified way” in which Fitzgerald is conducting the probe.

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/18/fox-criminalization/
Conservative defenders of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby have settled on their No. 1 talking point: the grand jury investigation into the CIA leak scandal represents the “criminalization of politics.”. . . To spread this talking point across the nation, the right has received a major assist from Fox News. According to a database search, every single television reference to the CIA leak scandal as the “criminalization of politics” in the last 30 days has been on Fox. Even more stunning: on every occasion, the phrase was introduced into the segment by a Fox News anchor or correspondent, never by a guest. . .

Miers’s questionnaire for the Senate “inadequate,” “incomplete,” and “insulting”

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/politics/politicsspecial1/19cnd-confirm.html

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. Yesterday we learned that Miers’s DC law license was suspended because she didn’t pay her dues on time: today we learn that her Texas license was suspended too

http://slate.msn.com/id/2128402
[Eric Umansky] Miers said she was happy to give the questionnaire another try; she also added that she forgot to mention that her Texas law license was suspended for about a month years ago because of…"an administrative oversight," purportedly by her former law firm. Miers has already acknowledged that her D.C. law license was also briefly suspended because she forgot to pay some dues.

What her confirmation hearings will be like

http://slate.msn.com/id/2128402
[WP] In describing one matter on the Dallas City Council, Miers referred to "the proportional representation requirement of the Equal Protection Clause" as it relates to the Voting Rights Act.

"There is no proportional representation requirement in the Equal Protection Clause," said Cass R. Sunstein, a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago.

Snark!

http://slate.msn.com/id/2128402
[Eric Umansky] The LAT has some serious sniping from senators who had getting-to-know-you sessions with Miers: "Some described her as surprisingly reticent and, in a word used by more than one of them, 'underwhelming.'" After chatting with her a bit, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions offered some of the strongest support seen yet for her. "I might have liked a different type nominee myself, but that's the president's choice," he said.

More: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-na-miers20oct20,0,6343525.story

How she got chosen

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-10-18-miers-vetting_x.htm
Documents released Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee reveal that the Bush administration's vetting of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers was controlled by a few insiders, a stark contrast to what Chief Justice John Roberts experienced as a contender for a court seat two months earlier. . .

Miers, 60, said that during the two weeks before Bush nominated her Oct. 3, she spoke with her deputy William Kelley, White House chief of staff Andy Card and the president and learned "my name was under consideration." She said she met with Bush four times — on Sept. 21, 28 and 29, and Oct. 2 — to discuss the possibility of her being nominated. . . Miers indicated she was not interviewed by several others who are usually involved in vetting Supreme Court candidates, including officials at the Justice Department, Vice President Cheney and deputy chief of staff Karl Rove.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday that Bush was very familiar with Miers beforehand. . . [T]he revelations about Miers' relatively easy path to nomination might revive questions of cronyism that surfaced shortly after Bush announced her selection.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Report_Cheneys_office_opposed_Miers_nomination_1013.html
"A last minute effort was made to block the choice of Ms. Miers, including the offices of Vice President Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales," [John Fund, WSJ] claims. "It fell on deaf ears."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-tictoc4oct04,0,3655469.story
By 7 p.m., Bush told Card of his decision, and Card called Vice President Dick Cheney.

Bush knew her anti-abortion views (even though he said he never asked)

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/10/19/abortion/index.html

Judith Miller: liar. . .

http://slate.msn.com/id/2128402
[Eric Umansky] In a piece about journalists—including Judith Miller—offering Senate testimony in support of a national shield law, the NYT's Katharine Seelye tries to get Miller to clarify some things, namely the purported security clearance she had in Iraq. Miller said she signed the same kind of non-disclosure forms that all embeds did though with what the Times dubs "some modifications." Miller said she had a deal with the local commander that should would—again in the NYT's phrasing—"only discuss her most secret reporting with only the senior-most editors of the Times." Whatever that all means. . . Asked if she ever gave any of her sources, including Libby, the impression that she had some sort of security clearance after Iraq, Miller said, "I don't remember if I ever told him I was disembedded. I might not have." She added, "I never misled anybody." Never.

[Then Eric links to: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/national/16leak.html]

. . . and slightly nutty

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_digbysblog_archive.html#112969465823381659

Miller: a “charter member” of the Whigs

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012797.html

Russert and Mitchell: two more compromised reporters

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/and-what-about-russert-c_b_9189.html

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/19/142419/59

A good idea, even if it does come from that idiot Tom Coburn (R-OK)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/20/02131/717

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:02 AM

 
GOOD MORNING

Well, yes, it IS a good morning. More provocative hints, rumors, and straws in the wind than one poor blogger could ever hope for. Let’s start with the more-or-less free floating rumors

Cheney may resign

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/051018/18whwatch.htm
Sparked by today's Washington Post story that suggests Vice President Cheney's office is involved in the Plame-CIA spy link investigation, government officials and advisers passed around rumors that the vice president might step aside and that President Bush would elevate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/356858p-304125c.html
Libby is often described as "Cheney's Cheney," a loyal and discreet lieutenant who shares his boss's hard-line philosophy and bareknuckle attitude toward political enemies of the Bush administration. . . Cheney and Libby spend hours together in the course of a day, which causes sources who know both men very well to assert that any attempts to discredit Wilson would almost certainly have been known to the vice president. . . "Scooter wouldn't be freelancing on this without Cheney's knowledge," a source told the Daily News.

Bush? http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001015.html

The Man Who Was Flipped

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Cheney_aide_cooperating_with_CIA_outing_1018.html
Individuals familiar with Fitzgerald’s case tell RAW STORY that John Hannah, a senior national security aide on loan to Vice President Dick Cheney from the offices of then-Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, John Bolton, was named as a target of Fitzgerald’s probe. They say he was told in recent weeks that he could face imminent indictment for his role in leaking Plame-Wilson’s name to reporters unless he cooperated with the investigation.

http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/2005/10/they-call-him-flipper-flipper.html
The WaPo's Dana Milbank just reported on Olbermann's show on MSNBC that the Hannah rumor has been circulating in DC "for months, now" but that no one has any confirmation on it. But that there is no doubt that someone has flipped, just based on everything that he and other journalists in DC have been hearing over the past few weeks.

More on Hannah: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006780

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2123

More juicy details on Colin Powell’s role

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2113

That classified State Dept memo (apparently the common source of the “WINPAC” error – so anyone, like Libby, who may have passed along that error, must have gotten it from the same source)

http://billmon.org/archives/002271.html

Libby’s on the hot seat

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2005/1018nj1.htm

22??!!

http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/10/a_new_tidbit_on.html
[Larry Johnson] Had lunch today with a person who has a direct tie to one of the folks facing indictment in the Plame affair. There are 22 files that Fitzgerald is looking at for potential indictment . These include Stephen Hadley, Karl Rove, Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney, and Mary Matalin (there are others of course). Hadley has told friends he expects to be indicted. No wonder folks are nervous at the White House.

And now, some harder-edged reporting. Fitzgerald is NOT going to issue a report, which means he almost certainly IS going to issue indictments. But he is keeping the grand jury in session, which he would do if he were negotiating last-minute deals with folks (and gaining more evidence in the process). That also means: no final outcome this week

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/politics/19leak.html

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012787.html

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012778.html

Who has testified: http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2005/10/the_f_list.html#more

Finally, and as a segue into the next topic: Harriet Miers had to testify too

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/did-harriet-cooperate-like-rove-and.html

Bush’s thorny dilemma: he has to leak info on Miers’ opposition to Roe (wink, wink) to satisfy the Christian Right, but this hurts her with everyone else.

Yesterday, we pointed out the blatant lie that she had never discussed abortion with anyone or taken a stance on Roe. That lie didn’t even survive 24 hours

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/18/AR2005101800715.html
Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers once pledged that she would "actively support" a constitutional amendment banning abortions except to save a mother's life, participate in antiabortion rallies, and try to block the flow of public money to clinics and organizations that help women obtain the procedure.

Those 1989 written promises to an antiabortion group, made as she was campaigning for a seat on the Dallas City Council, came to light in documents that Miers delivered to the Senate yesterday. They emerged one day after she assured two senators that no one knows how she would vote on Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that legalized abortion nationwide.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2128339
[Eric Umansky] Miers had filled out the form for an anti-abortion group back when she was running for city council in Dallas. In addition to saying she'd support a congressional amendment, Miers checked boxes on the survey saying she would attend "pro-life" events and would use her "influence as an elected official" to "promote the pro-life cause."

Scotty’s explanation (WARNING: put down that hot cup of coffee, or whatever you are drinking, or else it might end up all over the computer screen)

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/10/20051018-1.html
Q Scott, the material that the White House sent to the Senate today about Harriet Miers' nomination included a 1989 questionnaire that said that she supported a constitutional amendment to ban abortion except to -- when the life of a mother is at stake. Do you take that 1989 statement to be a conclusive statement of her position on abortion?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, what we take that to be is a candidate expressing her views during the course of a campaign. The role of a judge is very different from the role of a candidate or a political office holder. And what she was doing in that questionnaire was expressing her views during the course of a campaign.

A little literary reminder from one of my favorite films, “A Man for All Seasons”

http://www.digitaltermpapers.com/a8026.htm
King Henry applies pressure on More to support the divorce through Meg [his daughter]. While More is in jail for failing to take an oath supporting the divorce, Meg tries to convince him to take the oath, and she says, "Say the words of the oath and in your heart think otherwise.” More responded to this by saying, "What is an oath then but words we say to god?"

Miers tells Specter she supports the right to privacy, but when that leads to howls from the Right, she explains that she was “misunderstood” (and how do you think Specter feels about being called publicly a fool or a liar?)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/18/10848/056

More on Miers’ qualifications: she can’t even keep her bills paid or her lawyer’s dues up to date

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/18/13110/123
“Earlier this year, I received notice that my dues for the District of Columbia Bar were delinquent and as a result my ability to practice law in D.C. had been suspended.”

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/10/index.html#008053

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/10/index.html#008045

“The U.S. does not torture,” we are told again and again. But if this were true, why would the administration threaten to veto a Senate amendment saying so? Latest development: they will let it pass, AS LONG AS IT EXCLUDES THE C.I.A. (I guess the C.I.A. doesn’t count as the U.S.)

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_digbysblog_archive.html#112967559932001870

Bill Frist’s problems are only beginning. . .

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4448

Judith Miller: allowed to sit in on a terrorist “interrogation” – hmmm. . . how do mere reporters get allowed in on such secret activities? How do they get special “security clearances” (with Rumsfeld’s approval)?

http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002423.html

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006781

A new national reporter on economic issues hits the scene: and like most of the others, he’s seriously math-challenged (or otherwise just a hack)

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/001510.html

“Richard Cohen, idiot”

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/18/123932/73
[Think Progress] In today's Washington Post, Richard Cohen provides this "clarification" to his October 13 column:

A number of readers, some of them formerly of the CIA, got the impression from my last column that I don't consider the outing of a covert employee a serious matter. I do.

How did anyone get that idea? From Cohen's 10/13 column:

The alleged crime involves the outing of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative... Not nice, but it was what Washington does day in and day out...This is rarely considered a crime.

Bonus item: Dealing with “Fitzmas” (as in Christmas)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/18/154648/93
[Georgia10] TEN TIPS FOR DEALING WITH FITZMAS

10 Put down the caffeine: For the next 48 hours, cleanse your body of java, aspartame, splenda, and whatever other shit you've been putting in your system. Your body will be producing more adrenaline during Fitzmas than it did when you were a hormone-crazed teenager, so don't fuel the fire.

9 "Refresh" is the AntiChrist: Resist the urge to press "refresh" every TWO SECONDS. Checking into Drudge every minute won't make any indictments come any faster..it'll just give him hits and make Drudge's head swell even more. Eww. I put "Drudge" and "swell" and "head" in the same sentence. I just grossed myself out.

8 Gossip Folks: Don't believe anything in the next 24-48 hours. Guess what!! I can report on my blog that Condi will be VP when Dick resigns...and because it's on a blog, it must be true! And my scoop will fly through the internets at twice the speed of sound and I'll be so convincing, Condi herself will hear my scoop and think "Shit. I need new shoes!" and next thing you know New York Daily News will be reporting that Condi was in NY shopping for Jimmy Choo shoes that look "Vice-Presidential" and Teresa Heinz passed her by and called her a "bitch." Get my point?

7 Turn off the TV: Why submit yourself to the torture of watching The Situation Room and listening to Wolf's "I'm-reading-a-script-but-I'm-trying-to-make-it-sound-live" voice in the hopes that some pundit will throw out something like "Rove will be indicted"? You all KNOW that the talking heads don't know shit, and that their dirty little secret is that they really get their info from the, gasp!, blogs, so why waste your time? So, Kristol says Rove and Libby will be indicted. Um...99% of the pajamajadeen have said the same thing for the last couple months. Give your blood pressure a break and turn off the TV.

6 Don't listen to Tip #7: Well, do turn off the TV, but turn it on for Scotty's press conferences. Nothing eases the nerves and apprehension of indictments than watching Puffy McMoonface squirm as he fends off a resuccitated press corps. With Scotty spinning so fast, you KNOW there's some serious shit going down.

5 Don't take off of work tomorrow: Yes, there are some of you who would actually skip work or school to stay home and catch the indictments breaking live. I've confessed to being a Plamegate junkie, but please. Those of you who view CSPAN as political porn need to put things into perspective. The indictments may not break tomorrow...and then what? You spent a whole day, one hand repeatedly refreshing dkos and drudge, the other hand holding a remote and flipping channels between CNN and MSNBC and, gulp, FOX, flipping and flipping and flipping and it'll all be for naught. So treat tomorrow just like any other day, use school and work as a distraction...and, um, did you hear blogging more than once a day can make you go blind?

4 Visit Freeperville: Watch the tension melt away as you read about how Wilson was the leaker, how Fitzgerald is really a closet Dem fucking Hillary at the Watergate hotel, and how Plame orchestrated all this just to get name recognition for 2008. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you might even throw up in your mouth a little bit. But it'll be a great distraction from the anticipation of Fitzmas.

3 Lower Your Expectations: Hey, it worked for Laura Bush. Don't expect too much from this. We don't know what was said in that grand jury room; about all we know definitively is that Karl Rove has a "typical" garage. Fantasies of Cheney being indicted and Bush as unindicted coconspirator are just that at this point--fantasies. Trust the Fitz to do what's right based on the evidence, and trust that the result will be as far as he was legally able to go.

2 Stockpile the Booze: Ok, you've lowered your expectations, but sheesh, don't be downer. No matter what comes down, these next couple of days will be explosive. So chill the Cristal (or the Guinness) and get ready. Also, compile a list of all the emails of your most die-hard GOP friends. Plan on sending them emails after the indictments, perferably after you've depleted your liquor reserves.

1 Enjoy the moment: Take a DEEP breath, and savor the fact that you're witnessing history being made. The outing of Plame was a vicious act, but nothing will be as sweet as watching justice being served.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:01 AM

 
PATIENCE REWARDED

Well, folks, it looks as if we are about to receive a cornucopia of indictments, resignations, and shocking disclosures. This ain’t just about a couple of shady phone calls with reporters any more. . .

Breaking news: reportedly, somebody has cut a deal and is talking about the Plame conspiracy

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/New_York_Daily_News_to_claim_1017.html
The case of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame is set to explode. . . The New York Daily News is set to report in Tuesday editions that a well-placed source interviewed by the newspaper believes a senior White House official has flipped and may be helping the prosecutor in the case, RAW STORY has learned. . .

Two officials close to Fitzgerald told RAW STORY they have seen documents obtained from the White House Iraq Group which state that Cheney was present at several of the group's meetings. They say Cheney personally discussed with individuals in attendance at least two interviews in May and June of 2003 Wilson gave to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus, in which he claimed the administration “twisted” prewar intelligence and what the response from the administration should be. . .

[NB: Some are saying it’s Ari Fleischer: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/17/201611/91]

Here’s the NY Daily News teaser (which is all it is)

http://nydailynews.com/front/story/356858p-304125c.html
Cheney's name has come up amid indications Fitzgerald may be edging closer to a blockbuster conspiracy charge - with help from a secret snitch. . . "They have got a senior cooperating witness - someone who is giving them all of that," a source who has been questioned in the leak probe told the Daily News yesterday.

Cheney a focus of leak investigation, and more

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/17/AR2005101701888_pf.html
As the investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's name hurtles to an apparent conclusion, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has zeroed in on the role of Vice President Cheney's office, according to lawyers familiar with the case and government officials. The prosecutor has assembled evidence that suggests Cheney's long-standing tensions with the CIA contributed to the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame. . .

One former CIA official told prosecutors early in the probe about efforts by Cheney's office and his allies at the National Security Council to obtain information about Wilson's trip as long as two months before Plame was unmasked in July 2003, according to a person familiar with the account.

It is not clear whether Fitzgerald plans to charge anyone inside the Bush administration with a crime. But with the case reaching a climax -- administration officials are braced for possible indictments as early as this week-- it is increasingly clear that Cheney and his aides have been deeply enmeshed in events surrounding the Plame affair from the outset. . .

In a move people involved in the case read as a sign that the end is near, Fitzgerald's spokesman yesterday told the Associated Press that the prosecutor planned to announce his conclusions in Washington, where the grand jury has been meeting, instead of Chicago, where the prosecutor is based. Some lawyers close to the case cited courthouse talk that Fitzgerald might announce his findings as early as tomorrow, though hard evidence about his intentions and timing remained elusive.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=aT0EuwQJZyPo
“Fitzgerald is putting together a big case,'' Washington attorney Robert Bennett, who represents Miller, said on the ABC-TV program “This Week'' yesterday. . .

In an interview yesterday, Wilson said that once the criminal questions are settled, he and his wife may file a civil lawsuit against Bush, Cheney and others seeking damages for the alleged harm done to Plame's career.

If they do so, the current state of the law makes it likely that the suit will be allowed to proceed -- and Bush and Cheney will face questioning under oath -- while they are in office. The reason for that is a unanimous 1997 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that Paula Jones' sexual harassment suit against then- President Bill Clinton could go forward immediately, a decision that was hailed by conservatives at the time.

[NB: Unless this Supreme Court reverses it, or finds a way to say, again, that they are making an exception in this "unique" instance: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/10/index.html#008039]

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012767.html
[Jeralyn Merritt] But, there's plenty of information out there, for those willing to connect the dots. Whether it's enough to get Cheney is open to interpretation. You can find most of the details in these two posts:

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012716.html

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012699.html

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006770

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/10/17/cheney_may_be_a_target.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/10/17/cheney/index.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007358.php

Background on Cheney’s “blood feud” with the CIA

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_digbysblog_archive.html#112961603942415737

Splitting hairs

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html
[Dan Froomkin] The Bush White House this week is bracing for the possible indictments of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, the president and vice president's two most essential aides. The damage to the White House could be incalculable.

So what went wrong? Here's my theory.

If in fact Rove and Libby are indicted, it could turn out to be because the kind of hairsplitting, enigmatic answers that have worked so well as staving off the White House press corps over the years served them very poorly once a resolute federal prosecutor entered the picture. . . From the get-go, Rove and Libby (and their lawyers) have cleaved to a very precisely constructed defense: That they didn't leak Valerie Plame's name to anyone -- and never explicitly told anyone that she was a covert CIA agent. . .

Common sense, however, says there's no real difference between referring to "Valerie Plame" and "Joe Wilson's wife" -- and that whether or not they knew she was covert didn't change the fact that she was.

Swopa continues his cleared-eyed summary of the main points in the scandal

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2109

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2110

That all-important classified State Dept memo

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2113

Is Fitzgerald giving folks one last chance to cut a deal?

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012778.html

Two more big-time reporters with compromised roles in all this

http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002419.html

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012769.html

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012769.html

More reporters: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012777.html

Get your (hilarious) Right Wing Spin, right here! (thanks to Swopa for the link)

http://www.americandaily.com/article/9748
Judith Miller Exonerates Bush Officials
By Cliff Kincaid
The true facts in the CIA-leak case are now becoming astonishingly clear. New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s testimony, as she describes it in the Sunday edition of her paper, proves that the wrong people are under investigation. It’s not really a story about Bush officials Lewis Libby and Karl Rove and their conversations with the press. Rather, it’s a story about a CIA bureaucracy working to undermine the Bush administration through the media and cover up for its own mistakes.

It’s now obvious that Bush officials are spending time before a grand jury and big money on lawyers for the alleged “crime” of trying to use the press to get out their side of the story. They trusted the press and got burned. Now, if the media have their way, these officials may be further punished by being indicted by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. This would be a gross miscarriage of justice. . .

Atrios is right: time for someone to ask George the Elder what he thinks about all this

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_atrios_archive.html#112959891679787078
[GHWB] “Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors.”

The sharp knives appear to be out for Andy Card

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/politics/18card.html
With Karl Rove distracted by the intensifying C.I.A. leak scandal, some of the Bush administration's other challenges in recent months have cast a longer shadow on Andrew H. Card Jr., for years a guiding force as the White House chief of staff. . . His office oversaw the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, coordinating federal assistance that was broadly condemned as too slow. Mr. Card personally managed the selection of Harriet E. Miers for the Supreme Court, a choice that has splintered the Republican Party and left the administration scrambling to rescue her nomination.

The confluence of crises, all running through Mr. Card's suite just steps from the Oval Office, has some critics asking whether he needs to clean house or assert himself more forcefully - or at least consider a course correction before Mr. Bush is downgraded permanently to lame duck status.

"The lesson of both Katrina and Miers is that the system of decision making in the White House no longer meets the needs of the president," said David Frum, a former speechwriter for Mr. Bush who has been critical of the Miers choice. . . Critics "could perhaps hold Andy accountable for not saying, 'Mr. President, this is going to be a mistake,'" said William Kristol, the conservative commentator and another vocal critic of the Miers nomination.

"He's always been - weaker is not quite fair, but he's always been a less powerful chief of staff than we're used to," Mr. Kristol said. . .

So, DID Miller have a security clearance (and if so, how), or is this another of her fabrications?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006764
[Frank Foer, New York Magazine, June 7, 2004] According to Pomeroy, as well as an editor at the Times, Miller had helped negotiate her own embedding agreement with the Pentagon—an agreement so sensitive that, according to one Times editor, Rumsfeld himself signed off on it. Although she never fully acknowledged the specific terms of that arrangement in her articles, they were as stringent as any conditions imposed on any reporter in Iraq. “Any articles going out had to be, well, censored,” Pomeroy told me. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006763
Jim Miklaszewski on the NBC Nightly News blog says no one at the Pentagon, the DIA or the CIA knows anything about Judy Miller ever having a security clearance, as she appeared to claim in her tell-not-very-much piece in the Times. . .

Congressmen want an answer: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012772.html

An alternative explanation, and another member of the “Whigs”: Jim Wilkinson

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_digbysblog_archive.html#112958918135386763

Guess who helped her write her first-person “tell-all” NYT article?

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Times_reporters_say_Millers_attorney_helped_1017.html

More: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012764.html

Okay, stay with me here: the AP reports today that Plame WASN’T working in WINPAC, but in the (covert) Directorate of Operations. That means she WAS undercover, and that outing her was a serious crime (despite all the pooh-poohing by the Bush apologists on the Right).

But it also suggests that Miller may have been trying to help Libby by reporting that he THOUGHT (mistakenly) that she worked in WINPAC, which would protect him from the narrow charge of knowingly outing a covert agent (it also undermines the story that Frederick Fleitz, who did work at WINPAC, outed her, since he would know better – unless Miller’s notes just got the story wrong and confused Fleitz’s workplace with Miller’s)

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CIA_LEAK_INVESTIGATION?SITE=NYNYD&SECTION=NATIONAL&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002869.html
[Laura Rozen] Plame didn't work for WINPAC after all, as Libby allegedly told Miller. But did the State Department memo on how Wilson got the trip say she did? And what does the fact that Libby thought she did tell investigators about where he might have gotten the information about Plame?

Miller’s long history of dishonest reporting

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007360.php

I agree with Josh Marshall here: the current version of the Miller/NYT story just doesn’t make sense, and several glaring questions have yet to be answered. There is an important dimension of this story that hasn’t come out yet

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006765

http://slate.msn.com/id/2128278
[Eric Umansky] While we're on the Plame case, it's worth noting that while it's obvious Judith Miller left questions unanswered, it's unclear whether the NYT's leaders plan on trying to do anything about it. To take just one example, according to the NYT's big takeout, Miller would not "allow reporters to review her notes." Those are the same notes that ID'd Plame—or "Flame"—and that Miller shared with the prosecutor. Doesn't the NYT's publisher think Miller needs to also give her colleagues a peek? What's Bill Keller's position? There is of course another option: By staying silent, the Times' leaders can implicitly condone Miller stonewalling her own paper.

A sobering reminder: Iran-Contra looked pretty huge too, and all the big boys got away with it

http://wilsonhellie.typepad.com/for_the_record/2005/10/dont_get_your_h_1.html

Gee, what a surprise! Massive vote fraud in Iraq

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/10/17/123548/13

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/17/international/middleeast/17cnd-ballot.html

http://www.juancole.com/2005/10/voting-tallies-provoke-investigation.html

http://billmon.org/archives/002267.html
[Chris Allbritton] What’s truly eyebrow-raising is that the number of constitutional “yes” votes — 326,774 — is more than the total increase in votes over January’s turnout. That suggests that not only did all of the Sunnis in Ninevah province, who largely boycotted the January elections turn out, but that they all voted for the constitution. That’s a very strange idea to me, as I’ve not met a single Sunni who voted for it here in Baghdad.

D-U-M-B

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4438
[G.W. Bush] I was pleased to see that the Sunnis participated in the process. The idea of deciding to go into a ballot box is a positive development.

The new, obnoxiously aggressive Scott McClellan

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4440
Q Why did the President feel it's necessary to invite these former justices, or sitting justices, to the White House to talk about Harriet Miers? Is he trying to change the debate from the religious preoccupation, which was much discussed here last week?

MR. McCLELLAN: Much discussed where last week?

Q Here in this room.

MR. McCLELLAN: Actually, in this room we've been discussing her qualifications and her experience --

Q Well, you have. Some of us --

MR. McCLELLAN: -- and her judicial temperament. So that's what we've always been discussing here at the White House, and that's what we will continue to highlight.

“Smoking gun”

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/10/17/09/21/smoking-gun-3/
[John Fund, WSJ] Two days after President Bush announced Harriet Miers’s Supreme Court nomination, James Dobson of Focus on the Family raised some eyebrows by declaring on his radio program: “When you know some of the things that I know—that I probably shouldn’t know—you will understand why I have said, with fear and trepidation, that I believe Harriet Miers will be a good justice.” Mr. Dobson quelled the controversy by saying that Karl Rove, the White House’s deputy chief of staff, had not given him assurances about how a Justice Miers would vote. “I would have loved to have known how Harriet Miers views Roe v. Wade,” Mr. Dobson said last week. “But even if Karl had known the answer to that—and I’m certain that he didn’t because the president himself said he didn’t know—Karl would not have told me that. That’s the most incendiary information that’s out there, and it was never part of our discussion.”

It might, however, have been part of another discussion. On Oct. 3, the day the Miers nomination was announced, Mr. Dobson and other religious conservatives held a conference call to discuss the nomination. One of the people on the call took extensive notes, which I have obtained. According to the notes, two of Ms. Miers’s close friends—both sitting judges—said during the call that she would vote to overturn Roe. . . Justice Nathan Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court and Judge Ed Kinkeade, a Dallas-based federal trial judge. . .

According to the notes of the call, Mr. Dobson introduced them by saying, “Karl Rove suggested that we talk with these gentlemen because they can confirm specific reasons why Harriet Miers might be a better candidate than some of us think.” What followed, according to the notes, was a free-wheeling discussion about many topics, including same-sex marriage. Justice Hecht said he had never discussed that issue with Ms. Miers. Then an unidentified voice asked the two men, “Based on your personal knowledge of her, if she had the opportunity, do you believe she would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade?”. . . “Absolutely,” said Judge Kinkeade. “I agree with that,” said Justice Hecht. “I concur.”

More: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/10/17/miers/index.html

http://billmon.org/archives/002265.html
John Fund has turned into the conservative equivalent of a car bomber -- he's willing to take out everybody if it will help stop the Miers nomination. . .

Miers responds with a howling lie that must not be allowed to stand: she says she has never discussed Roe with ANYONE (if you recall, Clarence Thomas used the same excuse, which was a howling lie then too)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/17/205357/65
[Kos] Okay, what kind of person, especially one working in politics, goes her entire life without sharing her opinion on Roe or abortion? If she's indeed telling the truth, then we have someone nominated to the highest court who doesn't seem to have the slightest interest in debating or discussing the very issues she would have to address as a Supreme Court justice.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/17/17234/057
Miers told Schumer that she'd never discussed Roe v. Wade with Kinkeade or Hecht, Schumer said, but she refused to say whether she had ever discussed the issue with Rove. Kinkeade declined to comment. In a statement read by his assistant, the judge said he "does not feel it is appropriate to have further discussion about Ms. Miers' nomination in public." [NB: ha!] Hecht didn't respond to calls for comment.

[NB: Well, rack up three more subpoenas – man, have they screwed up this nomination. I guess this is what happens when you nominate the wrong person for the wrong job for the wrong reasons. You get embroiled in more and more convoluted lies: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-miers18oct18,1,7444951.story]

Booking for DeLay this week: his lawyer announces that a plea deal was offered, and rejected (which he would only announce because it served his strategy)

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/book-em-dano.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051017/ap_on_go_co/delay_indictment

Could DeLay be defeated in his home district?!

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/10/17/12122/581

Bob Ney (R-OH): next in line?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/17/AR2005101701918.html

More: http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/corruption_in_washington_/2005/10/criminalizing_conservatism.php

Condi Rice says, once again, “no way” to running for President

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/10/17/rice_says_no_again_to_presidential_bid.html
“For Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, no means no -- and no again -- when it comes to whether she will run for president,” the AP reports. On Meet the Press yesterday, Rice said, “It's not what I want to do with my life, it's not what I'm going to do with my life."

[NB: On this, I tend to believe her. I think she has zero tolerance for campaigning. And she has no desire to run as a pro-choice woman in this Republican party. I give her credit for not “remaking” herself on this score]

Was Rice called before the grand jury? (sounds like she was)

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4442
MR. RUSSERT: Let me ask you a couple of questions, domestic questions. Have you testified under oath in the CIA leak investigation?

SEC'Y RICE: Tim, I'm not going to talk about an ongoing investigation. I've cooperated in any way that I've been asked to cooperate.

MR. RUSSERT: Including testifying under oath?

SEC'Y RICE: I've cooperated in any and every way that I've been asked to cooperate.

Pentagon “postpones” the debut of progressive radio host on Armed Forces radio (someone to counter the hour of Rush piped out every day). Why?

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/17/barber-cancels-shultz/
Ed Schultz – the host of the most popular progressive radio show in the country — was supposed to start broadcasting on Armed Forces radio. Jones Radio, the company that syndicates The Ed Shultz Show, received an email on September 29 from an Armed Forces Radio official confirming that one hour of Schultz’s program would begin airing today, October 17.

But this morning at 6AM, the producer of the Ed Schultz show, James Holm, received a call from Pentagon communications aide Allison Barber. She told Holm that she was calling so early to let Schultz know his show would not begin airing on AFR today. You’ll remember Barber as the aide caught coaching troops before a photo-op with President Bush last week.

Barber told Holm that the Ed Schultz show would not start on AFR today because her boss, Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita, was out of the country and couldn’t approve it. Barber also said she was going out of the country soon for a week-and-a-half. Holm asked Barber if the show would begin when DiRita and Barber returned. Barber said she couldn’t guarantee that.

Here’s the really interesting part. Barber told Holm she heard Ed announced that he would begin on AFR during his show Friday. Schultz’s show Friday began with audio outtakes of Barber sounding foolish as she rehearsed the troops “Q&A session” with Bush.

Why the stem cell “breakthrough” isn’t, really

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/17/health/17stem.html

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/10/stem_cell_break.html

Bonus item: the mood at the WH

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4439


***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:21 AM

 
THE SECOND SOURCE

Fitzgerald decision this week?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/reuters-fitz-to-decide-this-week.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/16/AR2005101601228.html

[NB: I’m not a big one for making predictions, but here’s mine. As I understand it, Fitzgerald has the latitude to negotiate a resignation instead of an indictment as an outcome of his investigation. I think there’s a good chance that he formally tells Rove and Libby, at least those two, that he is planning indictments. Their lawyers run in and say, “A trial would be a national circus, paralyzing the government. For the good of the country, and to remove an unnecessary distraction, my client will agree to step down without admitting guilt.” Will Fitzgerald take that deal?]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1118356,00.html
Karl Rove has a plan, as always. Even before testifying last week for the fourth time before a grand jury probing the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, Bush senior adviser Rove and others at the White House had concluded that if indicted he would immediately resign or possibly go on unpaid leave, several legal and Administration sources familiar with the thinking told TIME. Resignation is the much more likely scenario, they say. The same would apply to I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the Vice President's chief of staff, who also faces a possible indictment. A former White House official says Rove's break with Bush would have to be clean--no "giving advice from the sidelines"--for the sake of the Administration.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/10/16/roves_contingency_plan.html
U.S. News and World Report says "some worried White House insiders are now talking about who might replace" Rove "if he becomes entangled in a criminal inquiry. Topping the list: lobbyist, former Republican Party chairman, and judicial shepherd Ed Gillespie."

“No big deal?”

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/09/29/novak.cia/
Newspaper columnist and CNN co-host Robert Novak said Monday that while he learned the identity of a CIA operative from administration officials, there was "no great crime" and that he was not the recipient of a planned leak.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_digbysblog_archive.html#112950996592449470
[Brit Hume] "I don't think the American people care about this and as I was reading it today it occurred to me that I don't care much either."

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/normalization-of-treason-republicans.html
[John Aravosis] If a senior White House staffer had intentionally outed a CIA agent during World War II, he'd be shot.

[NB: Okay, it was the OSS during WW II, but you get the point]

We're at war, George Bush keeps reminding us. We cannot continue with business as usual. A pre-9/11 mentality is deadly. Putting the lives of our troops at risk is treason. . . Then why is the White House and the Republican party engaged in a concerted campaign to make treason acceptable during a time of war? That's exactly what they're doing. On numerous news shows today, Republican surrogates, their talking points ready, issued variations of the following concerning White House chief of staff Karl Rove's outing of a covert CIA agent as part of a political vendetta:

- It's the criminalization of politics
- Is this 'minor' leak really worth all this?
- Political payback is common and should not be criminalized
- Mis-speaking or mis-remembering is not a crime

Yes, the Republicans are now making light of an intentional effort to expose an undercover CIA agent, working on weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, no less, while we are at war in the Middle East on that very issue. . .

Remember: the Wilsons can still SUE

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012760.html

Did Fitzgerald question Miller on her second source?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_digbysblog_archive.html#112952683701950682

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007349.php

[NB: The same as Novak’s second source?]

The second source: from the CIA?

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/09/29/novak.cia/
"Bob Novak called me before he went to print with the report and he said a CIA source had told him that my wife was an operative," [Joe] Wilson said. "He was trying to get a second source. He couldn't get a second source. Could I confirm that? And I said no."

Wilson said he called Novak after the article appeared citing sources in the Bush administration. . . "What was it, CIA or senior administration?" Wilson said he asked Novak. "He said to me, 'I misspoke the first time I spoke to you.' "

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012751.html
[Time] Another character in the drama remains unnamed: the original source for columnist Robert Novak, who wrote the first piece naming Plame. Fitzgerald, says a lawyer who's involved in the case, "knows who it is—and it's not someone at the White House."

Crucial fact: Valerie PLAME (not Wilson)

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007350.php
[Kevin Drum] I've always thought that the single most mysterious issue in the Valerie Plame case is...."Valerie Plame." Reporters never refer to a woman by her maiden name if she normally goes by her married name. . .

One thing we know is that Valerie Wilson used her maiden name only inside the CIA. This suggests a CIA source. . .

But who in the CIA? Laura Rozen resurrects the name of Frederick Fleitz as the most likely suspect. Fleitz didn't just work at the CIA, he worked at WINPAC, a bureau within the CIA that analyzed WMD. And what did Scooter Libby tell Miller on July 8 about Joe Wilson? "Wife works at Winpac." That's pretty specific information.

So how did this information get from Fleitz to both Novak and Miller? As Arianna Huffington told us last month, Fleitz was actually working two jobs at the time all this was going on, and his second job was acting chief of staff for John Bolton. Yes, the same John Bolton who is, apparently, a pretty close friend of Judith Miller's. Novak seems to be pretty friendly toward Bolton as well, acting as practically a one-man cheering squad for him during his ill-fated confirmation hearings this year.

So: Fleitz to Bolton to Novak & Miller? Granted, this is free form speculation, but it answers the otherwise mysterious question of why Robert Novak and Judith Miller were interested in Valerie Wilson's maiden name. . .

Remember: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/arianna-huffington/the-judy-file-millera_5687.html
Bolton apparently has a warm spot in his heart for at least one journalist. . . According to a trusted Judy File source, Bolton recently took time out of his busy schedule to pay a jailhouse visit to Judy. . . No word on what they talked about. . . [M]aybe they just talked about old times, when Bolton was reportedly a regular source for Miller’s WMD and national security reports.

More: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002854.html

More on Miller’s mysterious “security clearance”

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001306732
[Bill Lynch, CBS] There is one enormous journalism scandal hidden in Judith Miller's Oct. 16th first person article about the (perhaps lesser) CIA leak scandal. And that is Ms. Miller's revelation that she was granted a DoD security clearance while embedded with the WMD search team in Iraq in 2003. . . This is as close as one can get to government licensing of journalists and the New York Times (if it knew) should never have allowed her to become so compromised. . .

One must assume that Ms. Miller was required to sign a standard and legally binding agreement that she would never divulge classified information to which she became privy, without risk of criminal prosecution. And she apparently plans to adhere to the letter of that self-censorship deal; witness her dilemma at being unable to share classified information with her editors.

In an era where the Bush Administration seeks to conceal mountains of government activity under various levels of security classification, why would any self-respecting news organization or individual journalist agree to become part of such a system?

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002853.html
[E&P] Colonel McPhee, the overall task force commander, is known to have said that Miller was "cleared at the secret level." Regardless, it was generally believed and commonly said in the field that Miller was cleared for information classified "secret." Either she pulled off a hoax, or a very unusual clearance for a journalist was granted by some Pentagon authority...

[Laura Rozen] Which Pentagon authority? How exactly did this come about?

More: http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/16/112238/93

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_atrios_archive.html#112948265863384525

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/judith-millers-secret-security.html

One thing Miller’s account does make clear: the war between the CIA and the White House was even more serious than we’d been told

http://makeashorterlink.com/?B27423EFB
[AFP] A new account of the CIA leak scandal rocking the White House suggests top presidential aides were seriously concerned about what could be seen as a dissident faction inside the US spy agency that appeared to work even behind the back of the CIA director to debunk the notion Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.. .

The NYT’s lousy job of investigating themselves, and the hay other papers are making from it

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006758

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/16/AR2005101601040.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006760
[WSJ] Despite giving a lengthy first-person account, Ms. Miller left some pivotal questions unanswered. For instance, she didn't disclose whether she was asked by Mr. Fitzgerald in her first grand-jury appearance about meeting with Mr. Libby in June 2003. Her failure to disclose that meeting led to her second testimony before the grand jury after some of her notes were found. But neither her account nor the Times story discusses how the notes were found and what set off a search for them.

In a brief telephone interview yesterday, Ms. Miller said she discovered the June 2003 notes in her office after being prompted to seek out answers to another question Mr. Fitzgerald had asked her. "There was an open question about something, and I said I would go back and look and see if there was anything in my notes that would address that question," she said yesterday.

She said she found the notebook in her office. She reiterated that she couldn't recall who told her the name that she transcribed as "Valerie Flame." "I don't remember who told me the name," she said, growing agitated. "I wasn't writing a story, remember?" Asked if the other source was Mr. Rove, she replied, "I'm not going to discuss anyone else that I talked to."

[Josh Marshall] When did she know she wasn't writing a story exactly?

“Train wreck”

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006759

http://billmon.org/archives/002263.html

Astonishing fact: until Frank Rich’s column over the weekend, the NYT had written dozens and dozens of articles on the Plame affair without EVER mentioning the White House Iraq Group (the “Whigs”) – who were behind it all (and behind the larger conspiracy of WMD lies as well)

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002855.html

A little trip down memory lane. . .

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_atrios_archive.html#112950005603845278
[Houston Chronicle, October 08, 2003] President Bush voiced doubts Tuesday that Justice Department investigators would track down two senior administration officials who illegally identified undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame in an alleged scheme to silence her husband, Iraq policy critic Joseph Wilson IV.

Bush commented as presidential spokesman Scott McClellan announced that three top presidential aides had denied leaking the identity of the CIA officer - a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and $ 50,000 in fines.

McClellan said he had obtained face-to-face denials from White House political director Karl Rove; I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff; and Elliott Abrams, an official with the National Security Council. . .

Condi gets the disease

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/16/rice-after-9-11/
“The fact of the matter is that when we were attacked on September 11, we had a choice to make. We could decide that the proximate cause was al Qaeda and the people who flew those planes into buildings and, therefore, we would go after al Qaeda…or we could take a bolder approach.”

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/when-bush-said-he-was-going-after-al.html
[Joe in DC] That is way, way too nuanced for George Bush. He told us he was going to get Al Qaeda. Bin Laden was going to be captured "dead or alive." Not true after all.

So, the "bolder approach" was to go after Iraq? That had nothing to do with September 11, or the people who flew those planes into buildings. But he said he was going after Al Qaeda. Thanks for clearing that up.

Condi's right about one thing: Bush did have a choice to make. He said his choice was to make us safer from terrorism. That would have meant going after Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. He made another choice by invading Iraq. That has made us less safe, killed a lot more Americans and increased terrorism. Nice job.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/16/12522/450
[Kos] We could destroy the people who attacked us, or we could let our attackers off scott free to go after an unrelated and unthreatening foe.

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/10/vocabulary_lesson.php
[Mark Kleiman] Did you know that "bolder" was a synonym for "stupider"? Me neither.

[NB: Gee, and I used to think that ex-academic Rice was, if nothing else, someone with a certain amount of intellectual integrity. Maybe she’s prepping to run for President after all. So instead of the lie that Iraq was involved in 9-11, which they spent most of the first term promulgating (successfully), the new version is: it didn’t matter whether Iraq was involved with 9-11 or not.

There are a million things wrong with this attempt to rewrite history, but the biggest one is this: THEY WERE PLANNING TO ATTACK IRAQ BEFORE 9-11 HAPPENED. They were discussing on 9-12 that this was the excuse they needed to do what they wanted to do anyway.

But we can see the new rhetorical trope: “We knew that we needed to cut the deficit, but we decided on a BOLDER APPROACH, and cut taxes instead. We knew that global warming was a problem, but we decided on a BOLDER APPROACH and increased oil and gas consumption instead. We knew Katrina was going to be a major catastrophe, but we decided on a BOLDER APPROACH and stayed on vacation (or in Rice’s case, went shopping) instead.” Hey, it works!]

In Iraq: civil war, or worse?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_atrios_archive.html#112949476571629876
[Joe Biden, D-DE] That has been my constant fear that our--that there will not only be a civil war, that civil war will result in a regional war, because if it breaks down into an all-out civil war, that is if the Sunnis don't buy into this constitution over the next two months by voting for Sunnis in the parliament, in getting--trying to get the constitution amended, if they don't do that, then you're going to see all of the sponsors of the various three major elements there. Everybody has a dog in this fight. We may find a regional war and not just a civil war, and that does not lend itself to any solution by any number of American troops. You'll see us drawing down more rapidly then than otherwise.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/17/politics/17prexy.html
For most of the 30 months since American-led forces ousted Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration has argued that as democracy took hold in Iraq, the insurgency would lose steam because Al Qaeda and the opponents of the country's interim government had nothing to offer Iraqis or the people of the Middle East. . . Over time, President Bush told troops at Fort Bragg, N.C., this spring, "the terrorists will lose their sponsors, lose their recruits, and lose their hopes for turning that region into a base for attacks on America and our allies around the world."

But inside the administration, that belief provides less solace than it once did. Senior officials say the intelligence reports flowing over their desks in recent months argue that even if democratic institutions take hold, the insurgency may strengthen. And that possibility has created a quandary for an administration that desperately wants to equate democracy-building with winning the war, but so far has not been able to match the two.

That internal struggle was evident this weekend, as Mr. Bush returned to Washington sounding less celebratory about Iraq's constitutional referendum - whose outcome is suspected but still unknown - than he did after Iraq's elections last January. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking from London on "Fox News Sunday," was somewhat more definitive: "The Sunnis are joining the base of this broad political process," she said. "That will ultimately undo this insurgency. But of course, they can still pull off violent and spectacular attacks."

Mr. Bush's own way of talking about the future, in Iraq and beyond, has undergone a subtle but significant change in recent weeks. In several speeches, he has begun warning that the insurgency is already metastasizing into a far broader struggle to "establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia." While he still predicts victory, he appears to be preparing the country for a struggle of cold war proportions. . .

[NB: Very “bold”]

More: http://www.juancole.com/2005/10/peace-in-iraq-still-elusive-after.html

Bush: still screwing up Katrina response

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-katrina17oct17,1,7508217.story
Almost two months after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast and a month after promising in a nationally televised speech to help rebuild the region "quickly," President Bush has settled on a cautious, piecemeal approach that even many members of his own party fear will stall reconstruction and sow economic disarray. . .

Despite mounting evidence that Washington is having trouble putting to use most of the $62 billion in emergency funds approved by Congress so far, the president has resisted appointing a recovery coordinator or further detailing his vision of how to tackle rebuilding. . .

Bush's cautiousness appears to be partly a response to some conservatives' clamor for federal budget cuts to offset aid to the Gulf Coast. . . With the immediate crisis past, administration officials may be hoping that state and local efforts — and the free market — will relieve them of the thorniest decisions, as well as a substantial chunk of the estimated $200-billion price tag for the region's revival.

However, a variety of prominent Republicans warn that the president's approach is a recipe for trouble. . . "So far, all we've done is shovel money out the door to meet the humanitarian needs," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa). "But henceforth, we've got to be very careful how we spend the money, and that means we're going to need a plan and somebody in charge.". . .

Well, we knew James Dobson was lying, and now we KNOW he was lying

http://pbd.blogspot.com/2005_10_01_pbd_archive.html#112911742423468336
“What did Karl Rove say to me that I knew on Monday that I couldn’t reveal? Well, it’s what we all know now, that Harriet Miers is an Evangelical Christian, that she is from a very conservative church, which is almost universally pro-life, that she had taken on the American Bar Association on the issue of abortion and fought for a policy that would not be supportive of abortion, that she had been a member of the Texas Right to Life. . .

Karl Rove didn’t tell me anything about the way Harriet Miers would vote on cases that may come before the Supreme Court. . . We did not discuss Roe v. Wade in any context or any other pending issue that will be considered by the Court. I did not ask that question. You know, to be honest, I would have loved to have known how Harriet Miers views Roe v. Wade. But even if Karl had known the answer to that and I’m certain that he didn’t, because the President himself said he didn’t know, Karl would not have told me that.”

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/17/11513/003
[WSJ] On Oct. 3, the day the Miers nomination was announced, Mr. Dobson and other religious conservatives held a conference call to discuss the nomination. . . . According to the notes, two of Ms. Miers's close friends--both sitting judges--said during the call that she would vote to overturn Roe. . . . on the call were Justice Nathan Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court and Judge Ed Kinkeade, a Dallas-based federal trial judge. . . . [Kinkeade] has been a friend of Ms. Miers's for decades. . . . Mr. Dobson introduced them by saying, "Karl Rove suggested that we talk with these gentlemen because they can confirm specific reasons why Harriet Miers might be a better candidate than some of us think."

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007353.php

[NB: I think we see a subpoena coming. . . ]

Bonus item: evil genius (thanks to Bruce Lynskey for the link)

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20051016-122628-6793r.htm
Katharine DeBrecht, a married mother of three, wanted to make a point about the importance of conservative values. . . So, she penned a children's book -- "Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!" -- to stand up to the "liberal agenda that's being thrown at our kids from the left.". . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:54 AM

 
Today is my 500th issue of PBD. In honor of the event, I have posted a brief reflection on "Why I Blog"

JUDY TELLS ALL

(Ha! Got ya. You didn’t really believe she would tell all, did you?) Her NYT account is, predictably, filled with implausible evasions, suspicious lapses of memory, and self-serving excuses throughout. But even so, there is enough here to bury Scooter Libby – and to make Miller look like what she is, a corrupt and dishonest journalist who is STILL covering for somebody

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/national/16miller.html
On the afternoon of June 23, 2003, I arrived at the Old Executive Office Building to interview Mr. Libby. . . Mr. Libby said the vice president's office had indeed pressed the Pentagon and the State Department for more information about reports that Iraq had renewed efforts to buy uranium. And Mr. Cheney, he said, had asked about the potential ramifications of such a purchase. But he added that the C.I.A. "took it upon itself to try and figure out more" by sending a "clandestine guy" to Niger to investigate. I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I thought "clandestine guy" was a reference to Mr. Wilson - Mr. Libby's first reference to him in my notes. . . Soon afterward Mr. Libby raised the subject of Mr. Wilson's wife for the first time. I wrote in my notes, inside parentheses, "Wife works in bureau?" I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I believed this was the first time I had been told that Mr. Wilson's wife might work for the C.I.A. . .

[NB: Boom! Bye-bye]

I interviewed Mr. Libby for a second time on July 8, two days after Mr. Wilson published his essay attacking the administration on the Op-Ed Page of The Times. . . I almost certainly began this interview by asking about Mr. Wilson's essay, which appeared to have agitated Mr. Libby. As I recall, Mr. Libby asserted that the essay was inaccurate. . .My recollection, I told him, was that Mr. Libby wanted to modify our prior understanding that I would attribute information from him to a "senior administration official." When the subject turned to Mr. Wilson, Mr. Libby requested that he be identified only as a "former Hill staffer." I agreed to the new ground rules because I knew that Mr. Libby had once worked on Capitol Hill. . . I assumed Mr. Libby did not want the White House to be seen as attacking Mr. Wilson. . .

[NB: THAT is astonishing. Why was Libby trying to distance himself from the information he was giving her? And why did she agree to it?]

Although I was interested primarily in my area of expertise - chemical and biological weapons - my notes show that Mr. Libby consistently steered our conversation back to the administration's nuclear claims. His main theme echoed that of other senior officials: that contrary to Mr. Wilson's criticism, the administration had had ample reason to be concerned about Iraq's nuclear capabilities based on the regime's history of weapons development, its use of unconventional weapons and fresh intelligence reports.

At that breakfast meeting, our conversation also turned to Mr. Wilson's wife. My notes contain a phrase inside parentheses: "Wife works at Winpac." Mr. Fitzgerald asked what that meant. Winpac stood for Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control, the name of a unit within the C.I.A. that, among other things, analyzes the spread of unconventional weapons.

I said I couldn't be certain whether I had known Ms. Plame's identity before this meeting, and I had no clear memory of the context of our conversation that resulted in this notation. But I told the grand jury that I believed that this was the first time I had heard that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for Winpac. . .

Mr. Fitzgerald asked me about another entry in my notebook, where I had written the words "Valerie Flame," clearly a reference to Ms. Plame. Mr. Fitzgerald wanted to know whether the entry was based on my conversations with Mr. Libby. I said I didn't think so. I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall. . .

[NB: Now, it isn’t exactly crucial whether Libby used her precise name or just said “Wilson’s wife” – but here is clear evidence that Miller is STILL lying to protect someone else]

My third interview with Mr. Libby occurred on July 12, two days before Robert D. Novak's column identified Ms. Plame for the first time as a C.I.A. operative. I believe I spoke to Mr. Libby by telephone from my home in Sag Harbor, N.Y.

I told Mr. Fitzgerald I believed that before this call, I might have called others about Mr. Wilson's wife. In my notebook I had written the words "Victoria Wilson" with a box around it, another apparent reference to Ms. Plame, who is also known as Valerie Wilson.

I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I was not sure whether Mr. Libby had used this name or whether I just made a mistake in writing it on my own. Another possibility, I said, is that I gave Mr. Libby the wrong name on purpose to see whether he would correct me and confirm her identity.

I also told the grand jury I thought it was odd that I had written "Wilson" because my memory is that I had heard her referred to only as Plame. Mr. Fitzgerald asked whether this suggested that Mr. Libby had given me the name Wilson. I told him I didn't know and didn't want to guess. . .

[NB: My, there is a LOT she doesn’t remember, isn’t there?]

When I was last before the grand jury, Mr. Fitzgerald posed a series of questions about a letter I received in jail last month from Mr. Libby. The letter, two pages long, encouraged me to testify. "Your reporting, and you, are missed," it begins.

Mr. Fitzgerald asked me to read the final three paragraphs aloud to the grand jury. "The public report of every other reporter's testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame's name or identity with me," Mr. Libby wrote.

The prosecutor asked my reaction to those words. I replied that this portion of the letter had surprised me because it might be perceived as an effort by Mr. Libby to suggest that I, too, would say we had not discussed Ms. Plame's identity. . .

[NB: And THAT would be a crime too]

Commentary: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007346.php
[Kevin Drum] For what it's worth, I just want to point out that Judith Miller's contention that she can't remember who originally provided her with the name "Valerie Flame" is completely ridiculous. She apparently wrote down the name in her notebook sometime around July 8, 2003, and obviously she knew where it came from at the time. Within a week, Robert Novak had written his infamous column in which he outed Valerie Plame, and Miller certainly hadn't forgotten who provided her the name that quickly. A couple of days later all hell broke loose, and that would have etched the name of her source in her mind permanently. . . Miller's excuse for her forgetfulness is that "It is also difficult, more than two years later, to parse the meaning and context of phrases, of underlining and of parentheses." But it's not a matter of Miller not remembering a trivial detail two years after the fact. It's a question of whether she remembered it a week after the fact. . . Answer: of course she did. And if she remembered it then, she certainly remembers it now. She just doesn't want to say so.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/timesselective-judyculp_b_8938.html
[Arianna Huffington] The first question raised by the Times’ Judy-Culpa and by Judy Miller’s own account is: Who told Judy about Valerie Plame (or “Flame” as the name appears in Judy’s notes)? According to these two pieces, the name was immaculately conceived. "As I told Mr. Fitzgerald, I simply could not recall where that came from," Miller writes. . . When the Plame case broke open in July 2003, these notes were presumably no more than a few weeks old. But who had revealed Plame’s name was not seared on Miller's mind?

This is as believable as Woodward and Bernstein not recalling who Deep Throat was. It also means that Judy went to jail to protect a source she can't recall. . .

The Times articles are inconclusive about a lot of issues, but they are devastatingly conclusive about Miller as a journalist -- including, the confirmation that, within a few weeks of assuming the editorship of the Times, “in one of his first personnel moves, Mr. Keller told Ms. Miller that she could no longer cover Iraq and weapons issues," and including the Times’ long-delayed acknowledgement that 5 of the 6 articles in its WMD mea culpa "were written or co-written by Ms. Miller."

Here are some more problems about Miller as a journalist:

Her account of her meetings with Libby shows how off-target her journalistic radar was. Is it because of how off-target her loyalties were? Here is a quote: "My notes do not show that Mr. Libby identified Mr. Wilson's wife by name. Nor do they show that he described Valerie Wilson as a covert agent or "operative..." My notes show? Wasn’t she there?

One thing we do know about Judy Miller is that she's no dummy. Whether or not Libby said the words "Valerie Plame," and whether or not Libby knew or revealed that Plame was covert, it's inconceivable that Miller did not know what was going on: a high-level administration official was trying to smear a critic of the administration. That's news. That's something the readers of the New York Times --and the American people -- deserved to know, and yet she did nothing with the information. Indeed, she still calls Libby a "good-faith source who was usually straight with me." Was it an example of Scooter being straight with Judy (and the public) that he asked to be described not as “a senior administration official” (as was their "prior understanding") but as a "former Hill staffer"? "I agreed to the new ground rules because I knew that Mr. Libby had once worked on Capitol Hill." Mr. Libby had also once been to high school. So how about "former high school student" to really disguise the identity of the White House henchman from her readers?

And here are some questions for Miller's editors:

Did Miller mislead them when she denied that she was one of the journalists to whom White House officials disclosed Plame's identity? Here's the quote from today's article:

"In the fall of 2003, after The Washington Post reported that "two top White House officials disclosed Plame's identity to at least six Washington journalists," Philip Taubman, Ms. Abramson's successor as Washington bureau chief, asked Ms. Miller and other Times reporters whether they were among the six. Ms. Miller denied it."

If she denied it falsely, is there any journalistic institution in the United States that would keep on a reporter who is dishonest to her editors?

Also, in her interview with the Times reporters, Miller says that she made a strong recommendation that a story be pursued on Joe Wilson, but that her editor rejected it. Problem is, Miller refuses to identify the editor. Jill Abramson, who was the Washington bureau chief at the time, says it was not her. So who was it? And why is Miller refusing to supply the name of the editor? It's not classified. It does not require a waiver. What journalistic rules is she abiding by?

And how overidentified with her sources was she that she felt she "was not permitted to discuss with editors some of the more sensitive information" from Libby about Iraq because of the government security clearance she had? . .

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_09_atrios_archive.html#112941838600197831
[Miller] When the subject turned to Mr. Wilson, Mr. Libby requested that he be identified only as a "former Hill staffer." I agreed to the new ground rules because I knew that Mr. Libby had once worked on Capitol Hill.

[Atrios] Okay, look. You grant anonymity because a source is leaking information they aren't really supposed to. Maybe you grant anonymity in that somewhat comical fashion of "the source declined to be identified by name because of the administration's policy of not commenting" which is ridiculous but at least it's mostly transparently ridiculous. What Libby wanted was to, in essence, grant the entire senior administration "anonymity" by pretending the information was coming from somewhere. . . [A]ny reporter who ever did should be fired, along with their editors.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_09.php#006753
[Josh Marshall] I thought about writing a post trying to give some background about whether this is a normal or accepted practice among reporters. . . The first part of an answer is to say, no, I would never agree to that sort of sourcing or those sorts of ground rules. And I can't imagine that many other journalists would either. But I think the more revealing detail is that I do not think I've ever even been asked.

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/15/20272/198

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001306690

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/valerie_plame_/2005/10/the_etiquette_of_testimony.php

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-leak16oct16,1,6290635.story

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/15/AR2005101501465.html

http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y54124DFB (Reuters)

http://makeashorterlink.com/?I66112DFB (AP)

Miller’s mysterious “security clearance”

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002851.html

The NYT “meta” piece

http://nytimes.com/2005/10/16/national/16leak.html
Ms. Miller had written a string of articles before the war - often based on the accounts of Bush administration officials and Iraqi defectors - strongly suggesting that Saddam Hussein was developing these weapons of mass destruction.

When no evidence of them was found, her reporting, along with that of some other journalists, came under fire. She was accused of writing articles that helped the Bush administration make its case for war.

"I told her there was unease, discomfort, unhappiness over some of the coverage," said Roger Cohen, who was the foreign editor at the time. "There was concern that she'd been convinced in an unwarranted way, a way that was not holding up, of the possible existence of W.M.D."

It was a blow to the reputation of Ms. Miller, an investigative reporter who has worked at The Times for three decades. Ms. Miller is known for her expertise in intelligence and security issues and her ability to cultivate relationships with influential sources in government. In 2002, she was part of a team of Times reporters that won a Pulitzer Prize for articles on Al Qaeda.

Inside the newsroom, she was a divisive figure. A few colleagues refused to work with her. . .

On July 30, 2003, Mr. Keller became executive editor after his predecessor, Howell Raines, was dismissed after a fabrication scandal involving a young reporter named Jayson Blair.

Within a few weeks, in one of his first personnel moves, Mr. Keller told Ms. Miller that she could no longer cover Iraq and weapons issues. Even so, Mr. Keller said, "she kept kind of drifting on her own back into the national security realm."

Although criticism of Ms. Miller's Iraq coverage mounted, Mr. Keller waited until May 26, 2004, to publish an editors' note that criticized some of the paper's coverage of the run-up to the war.

The note said the paper's articles on unconventional weapons were credulous. It did not name any reporters and said the failures were institutional. Five of the six articles called into question were written or co-written by Ms. Miller. . .

Mr. Libby was already defending Vice President Dick Cheney, saying his boss knew nothing about Mr. Wilson or his findings. Ms. Miller said her notes leave open the possibility that Mr. Libby told her Mr. Wilson's wife might work at the agency.

On July 8, two days after Mr. Wilson's article appeared in The Times, the reporter and her source met again, for breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel, near the White House.

The notebook Ms. Miller used that day includes the reference to "Valerie Flame." But she said the name did not appear in the same portion of her notebook as the interview notes from Mr. Libby.

During the breakfast, Mr. Libby provided a detail about Ms. Wilson, saying she worked in a C.I.A. unit known as Winpac; the name stands for weapons intelligence, nonproliferation and arms control. Ms. Miller said she understood this to mean that Ms. Wilson was an analyst rather than an undercover operative.

Ms. Miller returned to the subject on July 12 in a phone call with Mr. Libby. Another variant on Valerie Wilson's name - "Victoria Wilson" - appears in the notes of that call. Ms. Miller had by then called other sources about Mr. Wilson's wife. In an interview, she would not discuss her sources. . .

Ms. Miller authorized Mr. Abrams [her lawyer] to talk to Mr. Libby's lawyer, Joseph A. Tate. The question was whether Mr. Libby really wanted her to testify. Mr. Abrams passed the details of his conversation with Mr. Tate along to Ms. Miller and to Times executives and lawyers, people involved in the internal discussion said.

People present at the meetings said that what they heard about the preliminary negotiations was troubling.

Mr. Abrams told Ms. Miller and the group that Mr. Tate had said she was free to testify. Mr. Abrams said Mr. Tate also passed along some information about Mr. Libby's grand jury testimony: that he had not told Ms. Miller the name or undercover status of Mr. Wilson's wife.

That raised a potential conflict for Ms. Miller. Did the references in her notes to "Valerie Flame" and "Victoria Wilson" suggest that she would have to contradict Mr. Libby's account of their conversations? Ms. Miller said in an interview that she concluded that Mr. Tate was sending her a message that Mr. Libby did not want her to testify.

According to Ms. Miller, this was what Mr. Abrams told her about his conversation with Mr. Tate: "He was pressing about what you would say. When I wouldn't give him an assurance that you would exonerate Libby, if you were to cooperate, he then immediately gave me this, 'Don't go there, or, we don't want you there.' "

Mr. Abrams said: "On more than one occasion, Mr. Tate asked me for a recitation of what Ms. Miller would say. I did not provide one."

In an e-mail message Friday, Mr. Tate called Ms. Miller's interpretation "outrageous."

"I never once suggested that she should not testify," Mr. Tate wrote. "It was just the opposite. I told Mr. Abrams that the waiver was voluntary."

He added: " 'Don't go there' or 'We don't want you there' is not something I said, would say, or ever implied or suggested."

Telling another witness about grand jury testimony is lawful as long as it is not an attempt to influence the other witness's testimony.

"Judy believed Libby was afraid of her testimony," Mr. Keller said, noting that he did not know the basis for the fear. "She thought Libby had reason to be afraid of her testimony."

[NB: Presumably this is not what Bush meant by “full cooperation.” Based on public information and his own promises, he should fire Libby (and Rove) immediately. And what about the other unnamed source who is hiding behind Miller’s skirt? Is THAT person cooperating fully? http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/nyt-reveals-that-scooter-libby.html]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001306699
[Greg Mitchell] It’s not enough that Judith Miller, we learned Saturday, is taking some time off and “hopes” to return to the New York Times newsroom. As the newspaper’s devastating account of her Plame games -- and her own first-person sidebar -- make clear, she should be promptly dismissed for crimes against journalism, and her own newspaper. And Bill Keller, executive editor, who let her get away with it, owes readers, at the minimum, an apology instead of merely hailing his paper’s long-delayed analysis and saying that readers can make of it what they will. . .

Miller should be fired if for nothing more than this: After her paper promised a full accounting, and her full cooperation, in its probe, it reported Saturday, “Miller generally would not discuss her interactions with editors, elaborate on the written account of her grand jury testimony or allow reporters to review her notes.”

More reasons to fire Miller immediately

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_09_atrios_archive.html#112941464810541466

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_16.php#006754

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4433

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/10/15/22/14/miller-thought-libby-needed-protection/

That “Victoria” thing: several journalists had that same incorrect formulation – doesn’t this suggest they were working from the same source (or from each other?)

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_09_digbysblog_archive.html#112944191851173330

That sudden “rediscovery” of Miller's notebook, with the crucial initial Libby interview inside. Of course Miller doesn’t explain it, and of course the crack NYT reporters didn’t press her on it. Would they have treated any external suspect with such deference and credulity?

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/valerie_plame_/2005/10/how_was_the_notebook_found.php

Does Libby’s lawyer need a lawyer? Sure looks like it

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/10/i_hope_joseph_tate_has_a_good_lawyer.php

How bad does the NYT look coming out of all this?

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2102

http://makeashorterlink.com/?Q1E136DFB (Mark Kleiman)

More: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-miller16oct16,1,3249509.story

I won’t rehearse the whole story here (you can search through PBD archives, especially Josh Marshall’s coverage, to read more): but the underlying issue wasn’t just to “get” Wilson for daring to contradict the administration’s lies. It was that the whole yellowcake story was based on a fabricated letter that NO ONE has yet to trace the origins of. Who would create such a letter to “prove” that Hussein was trying to reconstitute a nuclear program (hmm. . . who, indeed)?

This also suggests, as Digby points out, that investigating the Plame leak and conspiracy required Fitzgerald to investigate the underlying WMD lies and plot to deceive the public as well

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_10_09_atrios_archive.html#112938178531510925

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/10/15/11/01/slicing-the-yellow-cake/

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2097

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/15/20490/343

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_09_digbysblog_archive.html#112944827935232116

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002850.html

Part Two of Swopa’s comprehensive overview of the Plame scandal

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2101

Rove cancels appearance

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/15/AR2005101501286.html

Well, it’s pretty clear now that Rove and Libby, at least, are gone. But as Frank Rich reminds us, the real culpability goes even higher

http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/15/205649/37

In other news. . .

“Systematic torture”

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_09_digbysblog_archive.html#112939020224070825

Harriet Miers’ Big Makeover

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/harriets-getting-makeover.html

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/10/16/repackaging_miers.html
Time has the same story, but adds this shocker: "Republicans are now sweating the Miers vote count and tell TIME that it could be as low as 52 -- embarrassing but still good enough for a lifetime appointment."

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/politics/politicsspecial1/16miers.html

Boo effin’ hoo: why are so many Republicans being charged with criminal charges, Mr. Kristol? Maybe it’s because THEY’RE CRIMINALS

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002846.html

http://crookedtimber.org/2005/10/15/william-kristol-wants-to-know/

“The Trifecta”

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_10_16_digbysblog_archive.html#112945099810934965
[WP] Abramoff quietly arranged for eLottery to pay conservative, anti-gambling activists to help in the firm's $2 million pro-gambling campaign, including Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, and the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition. Both kept in close contact with Abramoff about the arrangement, e-mails show. Abramoff also turned to prominent anti-tax conservative Grover Norquist, arranging to route some of eLottery's money for Reed through Norquist's group, Americans for Tax Reform.

DeLay treats his criminal issues like campaign problems, treats the prosecutor like a political opponent

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/delay-using-campaign-web-site-to-bash.html

More: http://makeashorterlink.com/?U2B132DFB

Scandals, scandals, everywhere

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ethics16oct16,1,7579481.story
Even as clouds of scandal hang over Washington, charges of political wrongdoing have surfaced in state capitals in Ohio, New Mexico, Tennessee and elsewhere across the country. . .

The much-trumpeted constitutional vote in Iraq: thanks to U.S. interference and machinations that kept changing the text, to the point where NO ONE voting actually knew what the constitution said, a flawed and unsatisfying outcome that will probably only energize the insurgency

http://www.juancole.com/2005/10/sunni-arabs-reject-constitution-anbar.html

Bonus item: “A Chorus Line” -- priceless

http://billmon.org/archives/002262.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 9:46 AM

 
Why I Blog

I’ve just posted the 500th edition of Progressive Blog Digest, and as with any anniversary this provides an occasion for taking stock of a long journey of change and growth.

Furthermore, because the “I” behind this project is relatively invisible for the many readers of PBD who do not know me – and because I choose to keep it that way – it may be of some value to explain my purposes here, my biases, and my own view of this blog and why I put it together the way that I do.

PBD didn’t start as a blog, but as a pure clipping service: a few quotes and links, posted via email, that originally went to only two other people, my wife and my best friend. Because I read so many blogs each day, I started to crave a single source that could select, organize, and filter the news and opinion of the day. Without comparing my effort to other worthy efforts that are out there, I didn’t find anything that satisfied me. So I decided to start my own. After a while, that email newsletter (called “Today’s News,” which still goes out to a little over 600 people a day), started to feel like something that deserved to be posted and preserved for a wider audience – and so PBD was born in its “blog” form. That was almost a year and a half ago.

PBD has been described by some as a “news aggregator,” but I think that is only partly accurate. First, I make no claims toward comprehensiveness: there are a relatively limited number of topics I focus on here, and many, many important themes and issues are entirely absent. Second, I make no claims toward fairness or balance or objectivity: I have an agenda. I hate what George Bush and the Republicans have been doing to this country, both in terms of domestic and international policies that have been nothing short of disastrous in their effects, but also in terms of the cynical, deceptive, and corrupt way in which they have wielded the instruments of power.

Under the strategies of the likes of Rove, Norquist, and DeLay, and aided by the echo chamber of right-wing commentators in print, television, and talk radio, the current administration has operated by three broad information strategies: (1) control and limit the information that is released from government sources; (2) “work the refs” in the media so that critical comment, even when government assertions are misleading or demonstrably untrue, gets either suppressed entirely or buried in a “he said/she said” miasma (“Bush says moon made out of green cheese; partisan Democrats disagree”); and (3) deny or rewrite history, even to the point of trying to erase it. The Internet has proven a powerful antidote to these three strategies, even while much of the “mainstream media” has proven increasingly susceptible to them. The collective memory and intelligence of the community of progressive bloggers, web sites (such as The Memory Hole) that preserve the record, and the few professional journalists and commentators who are still willing to “speak truth to power” have a collective impact, both in terms of their numbers and through their ability to exchange and build upon one another’s information and insights with that magical tool, the link.

With PBD, I try to gather critical information and commentary that reveal what is going on behind the heavy curtain that shrouds so much of what the administration has been doing (a good deal of it illegal, I believe). The key is to ignore nearly everything that these people say about what they are doing and why they are doing it, except for the value of reading into what they say (or, often, don’t say) to surmise what their underlying strategy and motivations actually are.

While it is gratifying to point out their hypocrisies and inconsistencies, I think that the political impact of doing so by itself is limited. Most people expect political figures to lie, spin, and contradict their avowed principles when they find it necessary to do so: the only differentiation here among professional politicians is one of degree. I think it has a bigger impact to deconstruct the tricks and mechanisms of deception, so that people can become less susceptible to them. This is a large part of what PBD tries to do, and my favorite sources are the commentators most skilled at such deconstructions of the simulacra of political discourse (and yes, of course the Democrats do it too).

But, as noted, I have an agenda. While I have plenty of complaints with the Democrats – and may in some halcyon future have the chance to critique THEIR misuses of power – for now the basic values of progressive politics are in decline and, at times, seemingly on the brink of extinction. So we can’t afford to spend a lot of time attacking our own – except for not being vigorous or effective enough in defending those values.

Another factor that drives my purpose here is that PBD has a significant number of international readers. I have many friends and colleagues in other countries, and when I travel these days, they inevitably ask me, “What is going on in your country? Have Americans lost their minds?” It is one thing to say, “It’s Bush and his people, don’t blame me. I didn’t vote for them.” But it is something else to document for readers in other countries the level of resistance and criticism that do exist in this country. That purpose is basically coterminous with my other purposes, but with a different audience in mind.

The final reason why I do not see PBD as just an aggregator site is that I play an extremely active editorial role. First, while I review 40 or 50 blog sites daily in putting this together, I try to be very selective in what I use: I have learned to be suspicious of ungrounded speculation, rumor-mongering, or conspiracy theorizing. My only regrets in the time I have been doing this have been in hastily clipping and recirculating a few sensationalistic claims that later proved to be completely unsubstantiated. In an endeavor like this, all you have is your credibility: and if I am putting myself in between the mountain of stuff that’s out there and what I choose as worthy of your attention, then I need to have defensible reasons for doing it.

Second, I don’t just passively collect links and list them: often I construct narratives, selecting and sequencing material to represent the development of an argument, or an ironic juxtaposition, or a hypocritical contradiction. As any editor, including film editors, can tell you, it is just this process of selection and sequencing which, though tacit and subtle in its effects, can have the biggest overall impact in how material is viewed and interpreted. I’m not trying to be manipulative or deceptive about it, but I’m not neutral either.

A related question is when I quote from a site and when I simply link to it. I’m afraid I’m not very systematic about this; and sometimes it just depends on how much time I have. But in general I try to quote good ideas or clever comments in the author’s own words (always with attribution). When I give only the link, it doesn’t mean the resource is less important or interesting than the ones I do quote – in fact, for some really good, lengthy things there is no way to just clip a quoted selection without doing damage to the original.

Third, over time I have become increasingly present in the headers I write, sometimes with extended commentary, as well as the brief [NB] inserts I add within material. I hope it is always clear when it is my voice and when it is not. I try not to interject myself over the voices of those I am quoting – my purpose is still primarily to give credit to the people who teach and inform me about so much every day – but readers have repeatedly written to ask me to do even more of this, and it’s pretty flattering to be asked to say more, rather than less.

What I do not do (which some folks think is very un-bloggy of me) is include personal information in the blog. I made this decision at the very start, and I have never been tempted to reconsider it. I am not interested in telling you about my favorite music, my health issues, my wife and children, or my work in my Other Life (which anyone with Google can learn plenty about if they care to). I am not in any way criticizing people who do share the personal or confessional in their blogs, and I understand all the reasons why they want to do so. I just don’t.

Another decision I made at the start is not to include a Comments section. I spend about two hours a day, each morning before I go to work, putting PBD together, and I simply don’t have the time to monitor or track comments throughout the day. Some have said this gives the blog a “didactic” quality, which I think they mean as a criticism. I greatly admire the ways in which Kos and other bloggers convert their blog into a public space (and it sure brings more visitors to your site), and maybe some day I will reconsider this policy – in the meantime, believe me, I get plenty of comments, criticisms, and suggestions via email (and always appreciated OF COURSE).

Finally, I blog because I read some really smart people each day whose insights and analyses and (sometimes) humor get my mind racing with ideas and fury and a sense of urgency: “WHY DON’T MORE PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THIS?” As I say in my tailer each day, all the credit really goes to them.
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 9:36 AM

 
FINDING A WAY

Karl Rove testifies for the fourth time (and I’m sure he suddenly “remembered” and “clarified” all sorts of things he had said the first three times)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/14/AR2005101402076.html
Rove's defense team asserts that President Bush's deputy chief of staff has not committed a crime but nevertheless anticipates that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald could find a way to bring charges in the next two weeks, the source said. . .

But it remains a mystery who -- if anyone -- will be charged in the case. . . One person who will not be charged is Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who spent 85 days in jail for refusing to testify in the case before making two recent appearances before the grand jury. Miller was recently told by Fitzgerald that she is only a witness in the case, according to a source close to Miller. . .

Rove . . . has emerged as a central figure in the investigation. In addition to his four trips to the grand jury, he spoke with investigators several times early in the probe. . . His story has changed from the earliest days, when he told reporters he had nothing to do with the leak of Plame's name. Since then, Rove has testified that he discussed Plame in passing with two reporters, including Robert D. Novak. . . Rove initially did not tell federal agents about his conversations with Cooper. In an earlier grand jury appearance, he testified that the purpose of their conversation was welfare reform, not Wilson or Plame.

But Cooper testified that he did not recall discussing welfare reform at all. He said he had detailed notes on their discussion about Wilson and Rove's passing reference to Wilson's wife. . . There is also a mystery about a once-missing e-mail. The e-mail -- from Rove to a White House colleague -- shows Rove discussing his conversation with Cooper and saying he waved the reporter off Wilson's allegations. It did not surface until earlier this year, well after the investigation was in full swing. . .

Some lawyers in the case think Fitzgerald may no longer be interested in proving whether Plame's name was illegally leaked to reporters. That would require the difficult task of showing that an official knew the material was classified, that the official knew that the CIA was actively working to keep it a secret and that the person purposely leaked the information.

Instead, the lawyers, who based their opinions on the kinds of questions Fitzgerald is asking and not on firsthand knowledge, think the special prosecutor may be headed in a different direction. They said Fitzgerald could be trying to establish that a group of White House officials violated the Espionage Act, which prohibits the disclosure of classified material, or that they engaged in a conspiracy to discredit Wilson in part by identifying Plame.

Another possibility, the lawyers say, is that Fitzgerald could charge Rove or others with perjury or providing false testimony before the grand jury. This is a popular avenue for prosecutors in white-collar criminal cases. . .

http://makeashorterlink.com/?H22332CFB
[Reuters] While Fitzgerald could bring charges against officials for the crime of knowingly revealing the identity of an undercover CIA operative, several lawyers in the case said he was more likely to bring a broad conspiracy charge or easier-to-prove crimes such as making false statements and perjury. . . Fitzgerald could send out letters to senior administration officials advising them they are targets of his probe, and bring indictments as early as next week, the lawyers said. . .

Why is this man smiling?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/14/politics/14cnd-rove.html
Mr. Rove emerged from the federal courthouse here shortly after 1 p.m. and was seen smiling slightly as he got into a gray car and was driven away.

Jag http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2095


http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2095#comment-30314
Exactly one year ago tomorrow, Mr. K8 and I had the pleasure of meeting Joe Wilson. [And it was exactly one year ago today that Rove pulled out of his driveway, heading to the same courthouse, for one of his prior engagements in the hot seat before the grand jury. What a coincidence!]

On that Saturday evening one year ago, Wilson cracked wise about Rove's Jaguar. He said he thought it would look quite nice parked in his garage right next to Valerie's car -- after their successful civil suit against Rove.

That's why today when I first saw pics of the Jag in the news, I had to laugh out loud. Kiss it good-bye, Pillsbury Dough Boy!

Mrs. K8

Swopa begins a comprehensive review of the case: Part One

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2093

Whoa! Could HARRIET MIERS be dragged into the Plame quagmire?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_09.php#006752

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_09.php#006748

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/10/index.html#008021

Oh yeah? We’ll see

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/012741.html
When Bush wants someone on the bench whom Congress doesn't want, what does he do? He brings them round again - like Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown. Or he does a recess appointment. In other words, he is stubborn as hell. He is not going to withdraw this nomination - and Harriet is tough. She is not going to quit.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/14/AR2005101401765.html
The White House, caught off guard by the intensity of the conservative backlash to Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, plans to try to refocus the debate over the next week onto her legal qualifications and away from issues such as her religion. . . Acknowledging that the campaign for Miers had slipped out of their control, the advisers said they will seek to validate her credentials for the high court through a series of media appearances, newspaper opinion pieces and letters of support from various people who have known the White House counsel during her previous career as a corporate lawyer and bar association leader in Texas. . .

Trick questions

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/10/index.html#008027
[Peter Robinson] On Brit Hume's show last night, Fred Barnes announced that Miers might have trouble during her hearings, but only if senators set out to embarrass her by asking her about "the third amendment," "the seventh amendment," and other, lesser-known aspects of the Constitution. Think about that for a moment. I mean, really. Just think about it. The third and seventh amendment are parts of the Bill of Rights. Asking Ms. Miers to demonstrate at least rudimentary knowledge of the Bill of Rights would represent an unfair and hostile action? This is what the Miers nomination is doing to us.

[NB: I said it the first day, and I’ll say it again: her confirmation hearings could be a total embarrassment]

Uh, I think this counts as a LIE

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/10/20051013-2.html
Q And I asked if they were pre-screened. . . I also asked this morning, were they being told by their commanders what to say or what to do, and you indicated, no. Was there any prescreening of --

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not aware of any such -- any such activities that were being undertaken. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/14/93034/647
[AP] It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Thursday were choreographed to match his goals for the war in Iraq and Saturday's vote on a new Iraqi constitution.

"OK, so let's just walk through this," Barber [Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense] said. "Captain Kennedy, you answer the first question and you hand the mike to whom?"

"Captain Smith," Kennedy said.

"Captain. Smith?

You take the mike and you hand it to whom?" she asked.

"Captain Kennedy," the soldier replied.

And so it went.

"If the question comes up about partnering -- how often do we train with the Iraqi military -- who does he go to?" Barber asked.

"That's going to go to Captain Pratt," one of the soldiers said.

"And then if we're going to talk a little bit about the folks in Tikrit -- the hometown -- and how they're handling the political process, who are we going to give that to?" she asked.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/13/international/middleeast/13cnd-prexy.html
When the only woman present, Master Sgt. Corine Lombardo, mentioned Mr. Bush's visit to New York after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the president interrupted to ask whether she had been there. When she said that she had, he quipped, "Yeah, I thought you looked familiar."

[NB: Do you know WHY she looked familiar?]

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/soldiergate-grows.html
They used one of their own military press spokespeople as a "combat soldier" for Bush to interview yesterday when he was "chatting" with the troops in Iraq. That's like interviewing your own press secretary to get a sense of how "real people" think.

http://villagevoice.com/blogs/bushbeat/archive/001948.php
Her name is Corine Lombardo. . . Bush started by asking her this:

THE PRESIDENT: Is it possible to give us a sense, kind of a calibration of what life was like when you first got there, and what it's like today?

SERGEANT LOMBARDO: I can tell you over the past 10 months we've seen a tremendous increase in the capabilities and the confidences of our Iraqi security force partners. We've been working side-by-side, training and equipping 18 Iraqi army battalions. Since we began our partnership, they have improved greatly, and they continue to develop and grow into sustainable forces. Over the next month, we anticipate seeing at least one-third of those Iraqi forces conducting independent operations.

THE PRESIDENT: That's important. The American people have got to know — and I appreciate you bringing that up, Sergeant Major, about how — what the progress is like. In other words, we've got a measurement system —

SERGEANT LOMBARDO: Well, together —

THE PRESIDENT: I'm sorry, go ahead.

SERGEANT LOMBARDO: I'm sorry, just, together with our coalition forces, we've captured over 50 terrorists, as well as detained thousands of others that have ties to the insurgency. And I believe it is these accomplishments and the numerous accomplishments from our task force that will provide a safe and secure environment for the referendum vote.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I appreciate that. . .

[NB: I’ll bet he does!]

Scotty tries to give more excuses, and gets into even bigger trouble: I think his credibility with the press is as bad as it’s ever been

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4430

How the coverage of this Faux News story reflects a shift in how the media is treating Bush

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html

From Laura Rozen: http://greyhairsblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/photo-ops-updated.html

A Great Victory for Democracy

http://www.juancole.com/2005/10/referendum-on-constitution-iraqis-are.html
Sunni Arabs in the west of Iraq are complaining about a lack of polling stations in their areas. Many wish to vote against the constitution today.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2128152/
The WP helpfully includes a graphic with some highlights from the constitution, which, almost no one has seen in final form. A separate article in the WP says that despite a clause in the Iraqi constitution that declares equality of the sexes, women are worried about its religious provisions and don't think this new document will improve their lives. . .

Tough guy

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/10/14/18/34/the-weakling/
[Consortium News] Less than two months before invading Iraq, George W. Bush fretted that his war plans could be disrupted if United Nations weapons inspectors succeeded in gaining Saddam Hussein’s full cooperation, possibly leaving Bush “looking weak,” according to notes written by a secretary to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. . . Bush’s deeper worry was that chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix would conclude that Hussein’s government was cooperating in the search for weapons of mass destruction, thus delaying or blocking U.S.-led military action. Bush’s “biggest concern was looking weak,” the British document said.

The American people are not in a very rosy frame of mind, AP poll shows (thanks to AmericaBlog for the link)

http://makeashorterlink.com/?Q33345CFB
[AP] Now that hurricanes have left the Gulf Coast in ruins and gasoline has spiked to $3 a gallon, Americans are more likely to name domestic problems as the most important ones facing the United States these days, AP-Ipsos polling found. . . Homegrown problems — including worries about fuel costs and political leadership — now rank about even with overseas concerns such as the terror threat and war. Public concerns about Iraq remain high.

Bad times for the Bushies

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/13/AR2005101301955.html
A series of scandals involving some of the most powerful Republicans in Washington have converged to disrupt President Bush's agenda, distract aides and allies, and exacerbate political problems for an already weakened administration, according to party strategists and White House advisers. . .

http://www.cq.com/public/crawford_current.html
[Craig Crawford] Incredibly, the adage now best applies to President Bush and his fellow Republicans as they reel from a series of political body blows: skyrocketing gas prices, hurricane fallout, Iraq-in-shambles and indictments of Tom DeLay. Even what should have been Bush’s second slam-dunk Supreme Court nomination could bog down in a squabble with his own party’s conservative ranks. . . Things are so bad for them that some Republicans are beginning to act as though they are ready to put the Bush Era behind them. The intraparty debate over Harriet Miers’ judicial qualifications and her ideological underpinnings signals an end to the unquestioning party loyalty that the president has enjoyed for nearly five years. . .

http://billmon.org/archives/002261.html
[Billmon] My last post -- on the dubious case of the purloined letter -- set me to thinking about Bush's desperate campaign to keep the American people on his side as he wages war against a growing horde of fanatical insurgents. . . [But] it also reminded me of one of the great ironies of Shrub's presidency: an administration that came to power determined to win maximum freedom of action in foreign policy by going it alone (or recruiting ad hoc coalitions that would submissively follow Washington's lead) has ended up virtually paralyzed by the consequences of its own hubris. Consider. . .

Bad days at the NY Times too

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Unease_pervades_New_York_Times_newsroom_1014.html

WH punishing uncooperative reporters?

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001305846

ANOTHER scandal investigation for Tom DeLay

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-DeLay-Donations.html

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/14/14029/857

Investigating the phony Bush education “news” stories: there may be a crime here

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/14/AR2005101400747.html
The Government Accountability Office has concluded that the Education Department engaged in illegal "covert propaganda" by hiring Williams to promote the No Child Left Behind Act without requiring him to disclose that he was being paid. The Education Department's inspector general has also reviewed the Williams deal, which was part of a broader contract that the education agency had with Ketchum, a public relations firm. . . Now the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia is investigating whether Williams accepted public money without performing his required duties. . . The attorney's office has a range of potential remedies, from suing to recover the money to possible criminal charges, Katz said.

But they’re still producing phony news!

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Republican_National_Committee_debuts_online_news_1014.html

Interesting proposal: a midterm Democratic National Convention

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/10/14/16367/267

Oooh, don’t get Michael Bérubé angry at you

http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/can_you_help_this_man/
Richard Cohen of the Washington Post is nearing a crisis. . . As Digby remarks offhandedly today, Cohen “writes precisely the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time.” This time, it’s

The best thing Patrick Fitzgerald could do for his country is get out of Washington, return to Chicago and prosecute some real criminals.

. . . You see where this is going, folks—it’s not just a matter of writing precisely the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time. Richard Cohen is running out of ways to be wrong. He has almost used them all up! Of the twelve kinds of wrongness Aristotle describes in the Nicodeman Ethics (you remember, predictive, retrospective, substantive, distributive, boneheaded, etc.), Cohen has now employed eleven. He has been wrong about things domestic and foreign, liberal and conservative, major and minor. . .

Kevin Drum does penance for his ill-considered endorsement of Cohen’s op-ed

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007332.php
I love the way that AP characterizes Karl Rove's appearance before a grand jury this morning: "It is likely Rove's final chance to convince grand jurors he did nothing criminal in the leak case." Yeah, baby!

Bonus item: a very clever animation (thanks to AmericaBlog for the link)

http://www.yeeguy.com/freefall/

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