New twists in Yellowcake/Plame

Why not name Libby?
6/28/2005 1:05:20 PM

From SUSAN STABLEY, reporter, South Florida Business Journal: I don't understand why, in all the recent articles about Miller-Cooper-Novak and the Plame case, no one states the name of the leaker. The man who revealed the identity of an undercover CIA agent was I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Chief of Staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, at least, according to Cooper.

Cooper was the speaker at the recent SPJ awards in South Florida. He told a room full of reporters that he revealed his source -- I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Chief of Staff for Vice President Dick Cheney -- after Libby released him from his obligation to protect his identity. The Washington Post reported the identity of Cooper's source -- I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Chief of Staff for Vice President Dick Cheney -- in August 2004. Cooper told us at the SPJ event that his current legal crisis had to do with a follow-up subpoena from investigators who were fishing for all his notes.
[...]
So, again, why why why, is not the name of the source -- I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Chief of Staff for Vice President Dick Cheney -- in every single story about Miller-Cooper-Novak? And instead of wondering about Novak, I want to know: what will happen to Libby?

Huberis is a funny thing...

I would be so tickled if it was Rove. I'd be tickled if it was someone half as evil as Rove. I'd be happier if the line of command went all the way to the top... where I got to be.

OMG THE KLF ARE BEHIND THIS TOO!

Here's what we know, based on the two pieces of information we have -- Lawrence O'Donnell and Newsweek:

Matt Cooper of Time Magazine was preparing a story on Joseph C. Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Africa. Cooper spoke to Karl Rove. Presumably he talked to other people. Period. Cooper's story never appeared. Lawrence O'Donnell said Newsweek was going to say "It's Rove" who "outed" Wilson's undercover-CIA-agent wife Valerie Plame. But Newsweek's story doesn't say that. It only says Rove spoke to Cooper, and Rove's lawyer Robert Luskin offers a complete and flat denial that Rove said anything about Valerie Plame:

"Luskin told NEWSWEEK that Rove 'never knowingly disclosed classified information' and that 'he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA.' Luskin declined, however, to discuss any other details. He did say that Rove himself had testified before the grand jury 'two or three times' and signed a waiver authorizing reporters to testify about their conversations with him. 'He has answered every question that has been put to him about his conversations with Cooper and anybody else,' Luskin said."

Seems to me that unless Luskin is lying, Rove is in the clear.

Hmm.

If it's him and there's proof, he'll be very fucked.

The chance of the investigtion getting to this point was very slight. Now that is has?

this is the key bits they'll be trying to pin their defense on. "Well, shit, man, i thought everybody knew!"

Judith Miller, New York Times reporter, was ordered to jail by a US district court judge for refusing to tell prosecutors the name of her source in a case revolving around the leak of a CIA operative’s name.

and yet, in this particular case the information that "got out" here was neither important or necessary - it was part of a carefully orchestrated, politically motivated smear campaign. It's easy for me to see this more as Miller willingly participating in the UNDERMINING of the powers of the press by using the principles of a free press in the service of enfeebling the media, where its only service is performing as a mouthpiece for corrupt politicians.

What's bizarre now about this story is that Cooper claims his source called him up yesterday, and, in dramatic fashion, told him it was okay to name him.

Yet this source didn't call up Miller? Was the call to Cooper a "signal" to Miller that she could get off the hook and if so, why didn't she take the opportunity?

Are there really TWO sources here (as Novak's original column said there were?); one of them has found a way to wriggle free, and the other hasn't?

weren't the Pentagon papers an illegal leak? and Deep Throat? Cuz I'm glad that stuff came to light, as it revealed the illegal workings of the administration. In those cases a kind of "two wrongs make a right" ethics seems to come into play (at least for me). In this case, the act of leaking strikes me as illegal AND immoral. The act of covering for the leak strikes me as deeply moral, but also illegal (and thus the jail time). But should she protect her source? M. White's clearly on the side of the larger journalistic principle here, but at this point the media in America is so viciously fucked and politically hamstrung, I'm inclined to jettison any larger "principled" stands in favor of exposing the larger evil at work here. But his point that breaking Miller would prevent future people from leaking info that may actually NEED to be leaked is an excellent one that I have trouble brushing aside. So many contradictions at work here...

I suppose the Pentagon papers were an illegal leak, yes. But Deep Throat didn't technically do anything illegal by talking about the illegal activities of others. And he was REAL fuckin' careful about not doing anything illegal. He wasn't exposing spies, he was exposing rats.

There is a moral distinction there, I suppose, as you point out. And I agree with everything else you said. And I also agree that this is fascinating.

http://www.vva.org/pentagon/history/history.html

Actually, there are 31 of them.

i should have said Federal law, cause for the Plame case that's what's relevant, I believe. it looks like some of those states are really taking care of business there.. digging through it a bit, though, it looks like there are a LOT of exceptions, especially for grand jury testimony.

It occurs to me that it's curious, telling, and arguably perfectly logical that "the greater good" is not a written legal tenant.

Right: they're also used for indictments.

Eisbar!

I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!

...or just a normal Cosby sweater.

in part:

On the one hand, not having protection for confidential sources means that they will be less likely to blow the whistle on power and that is bad for democracy.

Let's not forget that the prevailing issue here isn't just journalistic secrecy but government secrecy and what should and should not be kept from us in our alleged interest. And who's going to determine what that interest is?

On the other hand, for journalists to claim "privilege" is for them to separate themselves from the public they serve and we've had too much of that. Journalists used to be citizens with a press. But now all citizens can have the press. Now we all can be journalists with sources and secrets and the public's interest at heart. So where does that leave us?

I said before -- and suffered the scorn of one particularly snooty, nasty, old-fashioned journalist as a result -- that if Watergate happened today, Deep Throat would get a blog. That was seen as another moment of blog triumphalism. But I already have more than enough of those.

What this really means is that the state of anonymity and secrets changes. Now someone with a secret to reveal can do it and does not need to hide behind a reporter's shield to do it -- and, in many cases, cannot hide behind that shield: The source can go to the internet and reveal the secret directly, and anonymously. The internet becomes the anonymizer that reporters have been. So then no one knows who the source is. And no one knows how credible the revelation of the secret is. But that is where we head when we kill the middlemen.

Of course, as we get to the stinky middle of this onion, we will find all kinds of smelly motives of people using people to push their own agendas. It's not just about principle. It's about politics.

I said I was sorry.

My next actual question is: Can you be imprisoned indefinitely for contempt?

xxpost

OMG is he talking about BLOGGERS? I'm choking on bullshit.

We can all have the public's interest at heart regardless. We can't all be journalists, though. We can't all have access to reliable sources and credentials and that precious, precious thing called "accountability" which is what enables us to watch the watchmen.

Yeah, there's a pretty broad range. I like the principle of shield laws, but as Jeff Jarvis notes, treating journalists differently from other citizens is constitutionally problematic. That issue was raised in a Texas case not long ago -- a freelance writer was arguing she was entitled to reporter's privilege, and one of the arguments used against her was that she wasn't a real reporter (had never actually published anything, I don't think) and so didn't qualify. But how do you say who's a real reporter? Journalists like to draw parallels with doctor-patient and lawyer-client confidentiality, but doctors and lawyers are certified and licensed and held accountable by professional boards. Journalists have none of that -- and while there are some proposals along those lines, I don't think they'll get anywhere. It also came up in the recent hearings at the Federal Election Commission over whether they can treat "journalists" different from "bloggers."

I've been a journalist of one kind or another for, what, 18 years now, and I have very mixed feelings about all of it. But I still basically come down on the Jarvis side. I don't think journalists should have more rights than anyone else. I also think prosecutors should try really hard not to send reporters to jail for doing their jobs.

it's a matter of national security, and he not only endangered Valerie Plame but all those working under her, solely for politically vindictive reasons (that ad in the NYT her husband put out). this was a BIG no-no, and if it's really Rove this is cataclysmic, something quite bigger than watergate, w/ the justice dep't being enraged. and Miller actually gets a sweet deal...protecting integrity & the journalistic principle while serving the jail sentence, while knowing that Coopr's notes will still reveal the source. Unless there truly are two sources..

not that Rove (aka Bush's Brain) would ever face criminial consequences (with this administration already waving 9 or so impeachable offences under their belts from the first term...the people that should be investigating never investigate themselves sh0cker), but politically speaking this can be gigantic if it goes all the way to the top

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8525978/site/newsweek

(specifically re Rove, there's talk that any discussion he had with Cooper re Plame came after Novak's story moved on the wires - several days before print publication)

HAHAHA yeah fookin' right.

http://www.cjrdaily.org/archives/001664.asp

...Reporters are dealing with the systemic issues that go into their coverage of every story. Here are just a few:

-- Reporters and their bosses are biased towards conflict, opposition, and sensationalism -- and biased against power...

-- Media companies focus on the bottom line over good reporting.

-- The scoop mentality encourages a rush to judgment on less-than-solid facts.

-- Reporters share a natural inclination toward doomsday that have nothing to do with ideology.

-- They have to deal with deadlines. With spin. With personal issues and professional allegiances. With, in short, a million different issues that might color their coverage.

None of this is to excuse sloppy reporting full of shortcuts. But it is to recognize that, of all the forces driving bad journalism, personal politics is far down on the list...

If there is one thing that reporters hate, it's being played for patsies.

I think if there's anything the past 4 years have demonstrated, it is that as long as everyone nods along, DC and national reporters could ABSOLUTELY GIVE A SHIT about being played for patsies. I don't know what show she's been watching.

That CJR article is realistic but telling me that "personal politics is far down on the list" is a little hard to believe coming from an organization headed by Victor Navasky and suspiciously unwilling to put his name in the masthead.

I keep wondering if Bush would gain any respect if he fired Rove merely for appearing to commit an impropriety. Because no matter the wiggle room, I don't really see what mentioning Wilson's "wife" had anything to do with anything except dirty politics. And we all know Turd Blossom did that.

xpost - oh I got beat

Bush will probably just give Rove the Medal of Honor; it was worthy enough for his other fuck-ups.

NY TIMES FIGHTS BACK: PLANS FRONT SPLASH ON ROVE; REPORTER SITS IN JAIL

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash3kr.htm

The TIMES is planning to lead Tuesday editions with growing calls for Rove's resignation, newsroom sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT, a powerplay in this summer's DC all-star game of high stakes finger pointing and intrigue.

actually, the last sentence is useful as it PERFECTLY encapsulates how this will be covered. Hooray! It's all a game! It doesn't matter that people's lives were fucked over by this; it's all about the intrigue!

i'm guessing this means that he called her "that cia chick who's married to Joe Wilson."

oh wait, whaddayaknow:

...To be considered a violation of the law, a disclosure by a government official must have been deliberate, the person doing it must have known that the CIA officer was a covert agent, and he or she must have known that the government was actively concealing the covert agent's identity.

Cooper, according to an internal Time e-mail obtained by Newsweek magazine, spoke with Rove before Novak's column was published. In the conversation, Rove gave Cooper a "big warning" that Wilson's assertions might not be entirely accurate and that it was not the director of the CIA or the vice president who sent Wilson on his trip. Rove apparently told Cooper that it was "Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip," according to a story in Newsweek's July 18 issue.

Rove's conversation with Cooper could be significant because it indicates a White House official was discussing Plame prior to her being publicly named and could lead to evidence of how Novak learned her name.

Although the information is revelatory, it is still unknown whether Rove is a focus of the investigation. Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, has said that Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has told him that Rove is not a target of the probe. Luskin said yesterday that Rove did not know Plame's name and was not actively trying to push the information into the public realm.

Instead, Luskin said, Rove discussed the matter -- under the cloak of secrecy -- with Cooper at the tail end of a conversation about a different issue. Cooper had called Rove to discuss other matters on a Friday before deadline, and the topic of Wilson came up briefly. Luskin said Cooper raised the question...

It certainly feels like the tide is turning against Bush (in terms of the media and Iraq war opinion at least). This so needs to be this Administration's watergate....

1972-1974.

Hang the bastard, hang him high.
Hoist his body to the sky.
It's as nice as a day can be.
Won't you come to the hanging with me?

Hang the bastard, hang him well.
Send his sorry soul to hell.
When his neckbone snaps we'll know.
When the [political advisor] won't be [leaking] anymore.

His face will turn red,
Then purple, then blue.
We'll watch from up here
To get a good view.
And when his eyes bug out we'll know,
It's the end of him
And the end of the show!

So hang the bastard, hang him with cheer.
We'll make some hot dogs
And drink a few beers.
And when his tongue rolls out we'll know,
It's the end of the show
And we all can go home!

But not till we hang the bastard, hang him here.
The most exciting thing this town has seen in years.
When his body stops jerking we'll know,
It's the end of him, it's the end of him,
It's the end of him,
And the end of the show.

[Cowbell solo]....

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Exclusive_GOP_talking_points_on_Rove_seek_to_discre_0712.html

CJR's follow up on yesterday and the press coverage of it today.

...Incidents like this remind us that reporters really do want to do what reporters should do -- hammer hypocrisy, discover the facts, and write stories that level with readers. But cowed by bias charges and handcuffed by conventions that keep reporters from calling a lie a lie, they often shy away from writing stories that cut through the bullshit.

In this case, by taking a patently ridiculous stand on a high-profile issue, the White House has given them red meat -- something all but the most timid can really sink their teeth.

Sure, the media bias warriors will bray, but on this one, their criticism is going to ring particularly hollow. (As Charles Madigan -- as apolitical a columnist as you can find -- dryly noted today in the Chicago Tribune, it's not liberalism that the bias warriors hate -- it's journalism...)

I don't see how there's an if, Tracer. Whether or not he's found to have technically violated a law, and whether or not he was the only administration guy playing the Plame game, the Time emails make pretty clear that he at least outed Wilson's wife to one reporter. It's not like we have to keep an open mind on that count.

That's the gist of it, anyway.

http://www.foxnews.com/images/168894/21_26_070605_reporters_protest_oh.jpg
http://www.foxnews.com/images/168894/21_25_070605_reporters_protest.jpg

hmmm

...Reporting on White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove's alleged involvement in the leaking of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, CNN and ABC News presented unchallenged legal analysis from Victoria Toensing and Joseph E. DiGenova, respectively, both of whom defended Rove and were identified only as a "legal analyst" and a "former US attorney." Toensing and DiGenova, however, are partisan Republicans and personal friends of CNN host and columnist Robert D. Novak, who originally outed Plame in July 2003...

"definitely a major smear campaign going on" [against Rove]

Fox's Cameron parsed Bush's past statements on the fate of the CIA leaker: Bush "never actually said the word 'fired' "

fuck, these guys really are total cunts

Anyway, nothing will come of Rove's involvement. The White House's complicity in naming Rove signals that they knew what they were getting into and felt they could absorb whatever political costs. And they will. Misdirection is the name of the game with DubyaCo...

http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200507121626.asp

I can't get away from the Novak thing - he says he's cooperating, the prosecutor says he's not the focus, yet he's the only one who wrote the article. WTF? this makes no sense. also, the media is completely ignoring this facet, which seems paramount to me. Did Cooper give Novak Plame's name after hearing from Rove...? who is the other potential source?

Novak might have talked, but there are theories that either
a) he was not fully in command of the truth
b) he learned first from a non-administration source (Miller?) such that he was not part of any transaction violating the IIPA (assuming that a transaction is all we're concerned with, which seems no longer to be the case)

note that they're already planning on this line to fail as well, which is why the Fox cunt is trying to put out the line that "well, bush never actually explicitly SAID 'I will fire whomever did this.'"

So watch 'em scramble to drag the goalposts back as they continually lose yardage on this.

but maybe they've gotten sloppy and maybe there'll be a break in the line(probably over on the legal/judicial side, which is kinda its raison d'etre). At that point, we'll probably hear more about activist judges.

it remains to be seens whether the press will still be interested after all the stonewalling & diversionary tactics that will go on. Who's up for another anthrax attack? It worked last time to get the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act passed. Who's up for the Lohan sextape getting leaked?

Remember, these guys think all journalists are just party tools, that there's no difference between reporting and commentating, or between newsreaders and pundits, so they don't have a problem when their own guy does it.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-07-13T171442Z_01_N13477262_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-BUSH-LEAK-DC.XML

I cant see any downside to this. Republicans can try to paint Dems as being 'negative' but whats so bad about demanding answers for a security breach? Especially if someone gets indicted (hopefully soon but this thing has been brewing for years now), you can use the quotes from all these assholes trying to pass it off as nothing and say 'THESE PEOPLE WOULD RATHER PLAY POLITICS THAN DEFEND AMURCA'

those who still believe the Preznit, that's who. remember, there are still plenty of them who hold that Chimpie is a good guy who does what he feels he needs to in order to protect 'Merica, and that those that he picks are thus Goode and Honest and True Men of Pure Heart who do what they need to do in order to protect 'Merica.

Doesn't matter that these little niggling facts keep popping up which pretty verify that all of it bullshit anyway. As Lakoff
writes, facts don't trump conceptual framings. Fuck, Dubya GAVE MEDALS to the guys who helped to fuck up Iraq. We give medals to heroes, don't we? And heroes are the finest Americans, who deserve parades, not subpeonas to Joint Subcommittee Hearings, aren't they?

Remember all those who thought Ollie North was a hero? Why should they care if a few traitorous, biased, liberal "reporters"(as they see 'em) go to jail?

my thoughts exactly.

all the shit they guys say is either coded or loaded anyway, so there ya go.

Like the fact that he'd seen the forged uranium sale documents, when he hadn't?

Joe Wilson, a cigar-smoking, jaguar-driving man-about-the-Mideast and crony of George Bush Sr. does not need to be buffed up into some fucking hero. He's not. He's been incredibly unreliable and inconsistent. Just because the right plays, and can get away with playing, these games with their heros-du-jour doesn't mean the left should - or can.

that's the weird thing. he was all these things and they still went after the dude.

Speaking of -- W'gate was still at the fringes of attention, and still being dismissed as Dem straw-grasping by Nixonites, until the spring of '73,when it began to hurt Nixon politically. It was the revelations of ever-higher Administration involvement that moved it to the forefront, then the exposure of the taping system (summer '73?) that the evidence snowballed.

I have a hard time believing the currently complicit media can manage peeling away the lies so Joe & Jane Blow notice.

Daily Show

I don't care what he smokes or drives, really. Writing that op-ed took some guts, and he's stuck to his guns pretty well since (including correcting himself on points that didn't do anything to undermine the basic truth of what he said). I don't know if he's a hero, exactly, but I don't think he did any of this just to get a book deal or to get on TV or whatever. He spoke up about something that he thought needed to be spoken up about, against a group of corrupt ideologues. He's OK by me.

as far as I know, the facts here are relatively undisputed. there was a CIA meeting at which there was a discussion about what to do about the Niger situation (not necessarily whether to send someone there, or who). Plame noted that her husband knew a lot about Niger. "they" called him in. at the meeting (which Plame didn't attend, though she introduced him at the beginning), "they" discussed the situation and in the course of the meeting asked Wilson to go.

it seems to me that even those most intimately involved in these transactions (including Plame and Wilson themselves) could reasonably have honestly differing interpretations of whether or not she 'recommended' him to go.

Rove's email to Cooper also states something along the lines of 'even without Niger, theres still plenty linking Iraq to WMD' which also turned out to be bullshit.

'coz by this point, they're putting up every bit of flak they can.

Also, Ed Schultz was ruminating today about why only the "B-team" was out defending Rove: Newt, Mehlman, his lawyer, etc.

but not the a-Team: Cheney, Condi, Rummy, Wolfy, Fristy, Santorumy, etc.

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 48 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Wednesday he will withhold judgment about top aide Karl Rove's involvement in leaking the identity of a CIA operative until a federal criminal investigation is complete. The lack of an endorsement surprised some Bush advisers who expected the president to speak up.

"This is a serious investigation," Bush said at the end of a meeting with his Cabinet, with Rove sitting just behind him. "I will be more than happy to comment on this matter once this investigation is complete.

"I also will not prejudge the investigation based on media reports," he said, when asked whether Rove acted improperly in discussing CIA officer Valerie Plame with a reporter...

which, of course, is telling, since normally he'd be running his mouth about how "i know karl rove; karl rove's a good person etc etc etc "

the accompanying photo:

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/ap/20050713/capt.whre10107131518.bush__whre101.jpg?x=380&y=290&sig=g6ycW5pUM9mKUF2qJa83aw--
President Bush meets with members of his cabinet in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Wednesday, July 13, 2005, as his deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, left, looks on. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

one really does wonder if they're willing to sacrifice Rove in order to protect Scooter Libby and thus, by connection, Cheney...

waitaminute, who am i kidding? OF COURSE they're more than willing to do so; authority must be maintained, power held onto at all costs.

I wish I had a screencap of Some Black Dude from Chappelle's Show saying PRAY TO GOD HE DOESNT DROP THAT SHIT.

-Once Again, Democrats Are Engaging In Blatant Political Attacks

-Karl Rove Discouraged A Reporter From Writing A False Story Based On A False Premise

-Wilson Tied To The 2004 Kerry Campaign for President

etc etc etc.

"The attacks by Democrats are clearly political in nature."

xpost

I wish I had a screencap of Some Black Dude from Chappelle's Show saying PRAY TO GOD HE DOESNT DROP THAT SHIT.

wait, which one was this? the "Black Bush" sketch?

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000978699

NEW YORK Time's magazine's Matt Cooper today testified to a grand jury that White House aide Karl Rove was a source for a story about a CIA operative that has investigators deciding whether any laws were broken by the leak of the agent's identity.

After more than two hours inside the building, Cooper told reporters he would give them details of his grand jury testimony -- in a future article for Time magazine. "I'm not going to scoop myself today..."

I love when politicians complain about politics. It's like Derek Jeter insulting the Red Sox for playing baseball.

MOTHERFUCKER WAS TYRING TO BUY SOME YELLOW CAKE

Remarks By George Bush
41st President of the United States,
At the Dedication Ceremony for the George Bush Center for Intelligence

26 April 1999

[....]

President Black Bush: I didn't want to say this. The motherfucker bought yellow cake. All right! From Africa. He went to Africa and bought some yellow cake.
News Reporter: Are you sure?
President Black Bush: Yes! I'm sure, bitch!

The U.N. needs to sanction me with their army. OH! WAIT! They don't HAVE an army! I guess that means they need to shut the fuck up, then. That's how i'd go about it; if i didn't have an army, i'd shut the fuck up. You heard me! Shut! The! Fuck! UP!

so, anyway, back to this Rove thing then...

As happens every year at this time, HOWLER readers are upset by our views on Joe Wilson. As we move on from the annual squabble, let’s note one simple point about the importance of logic.

As far as we know, Wilson’s trip to Niger was completely appropriate, as was his performance while there. (For the record, everyone agrees that Wilson performed admirably during his earlier days in Iraq.) And we’ll assume his principal conclusion was sound—most likely, Iraq hadn’t purchased uranium from Niger, he judged after making his trip. (Wilson, 7/6/03, New York Times: “It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.”) But his New York Times piece should never have run in the form it took—because of its groaning illogic. As we noted yesterday, nothing in Wilson’s now-famous piece contradicted what Bush had actually said—that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa (according to British intelligence). Yes, as we have often noted, the current New York Times op-ed page is like the Smithsonian of groaning illogic. But frankly, we’re surprised at our readers (as we are every year at this time). Few seem troubled by the fact that Wilson’s piece was deeply illogical, right to its core. Bush didn’t say a transaction took place; he only said a transaction was sought. Simply put, Wilson didn’t speak to what Bush said. But he never seemed to realize. Neither did his New York Times editor.

For the record, there were other groaning problems with the logic of Wilson’s piece. Bush described an attempt to purchase uranium “in Africa”—and Wilson had only gone to Niger. Why did he think that his experience there could address the entire continent? Even in his 500-page book, he never explained this conundrum. (Indeed, in a typical bit of confusion, Wilson said there were only three other countries that could be involved—Gabon, South Africa and Namibia. If he had done elementary background reading, he would have known that the British press roiled with speculation about the Congo when the intelligence report in question had been discussed the previous fall. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 7/28/03.) Meanwhile, since Bush was referring to British intelligence that no one in the US had ever seen, it’s hard to know why Wilson thought that he could rule out what the Brit intel said. But these elementary points weren’t addressed in his piece. To all appearances, he didn’t see the illogic all around. Neither did his ed at the Times.

Does it matter if columns are wholly illogical? Only if you want a rational world—and that should be one of your wishes. Logic—rationality—is a part of intellectual due process, and whenever due process is undermined, it eventually serves the interests of power. Yes, it’s true: In this case, the hapless press corps took Wilson’s side, as they have continued to do, even after the embarrassment of that Intelligence Committee report. But frankly, we’re amazed to see how many readers don’t care about an elementary fact—Wilson’s piece simply doesn’t make sense. To our readers, it works like this: They don’t like Bush, and neither does Wilson. All else can be overlooked!

Everything else can be overlooked—but that’s a bad prescription. What happened when your hapless press corps fell in love with The Honest Ambassador? Here’s what happened: They spent huge time on a murky side road, while ignoring much more clear-cut ways the Bush Admin had “fixed the intelligence.” As we noted last month in a week-long report, the Bush Admin began pimping the nukes in August 2002, five months before Bush’s 16-word statement; the fixing of intel they did at that time was much more clear-cut (and much more consequential) than Bush’s later, one-time statement, a statement which was completely ignored at the time it was made (again, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 7/28/03). To this day, libs still rail against that famous statement—a statement the Brits still say is well-founded. Much more clear-cut “fixing” has been ignored. Libs have settled for the scrap their hapless press handed them.

Why did the press love the 16 words? Speculation—they fell in love with the story! It had every kind of cinematic value: An Honest Ambassador; a Blonde Secret Agent; an exotic foreign country; a short, pithy statement. (They’re in thrall to easy-reader values—and this easy-reader scandal could just as well have been scripted by Cliff.) In fact, that Honest Ambassador was completely illogical—but when has the press ever cared about that? No, Wilson’s piece simply didn’t make sense. But when has that bothered your press corps?

We’ve challenged bullshit statements for the past seven years—and sadly, this column was such a statement. Who knows? If Wilson’s New York Times editor had passed it back and asked him to re-examine his premises, maybe he would have ended up with a column that made basic sense. But the current Times op-ed page is the Smithsonian of grinding illogic. Wilson’s piece was a major example. Libs, selling cheap, still don’t care.

http://www.dailyhowler.com/

I thought this was funny (from a Yahoo news story):
"In a silent show of support for Rove, Bush chatted amiably with the aide as the pair walked to a helicopter for the president's trip to Indianapolis during the day."

Yes, simply speaking in public to the man who has handed you your entire political career on a silver platter = "show of support"?!? what a weird thing to stick in the article.

x-post

And Somersby isn't quibbling about merely "bought" or "sought." The point is that Wilson's op-ed came off more as a partisan broadside--semantics and smoke blowing--than a conclusive argument.

but, to address the issue, that howler piece is so flawed it appears intentional. its basic implication is that Wilson's piece is garbage because Wilson said no transaction occurred and Bush had only said a transaction was attempted. HELLO?! is the howler somehow forgetting that the 16 words were in a speech the entire point of which was to make absolutely clear to those who don't go about parsing the difference between 'transact' and 'sought' that Iraq had "WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION" (repeat x5,487,624)?! Wilson was calling the bluff of Bush's guilt-by-intent game - if Bush is using a desire for WMD as evidence of possession of WMD, then Wilson is going to step on that with his conclusion that no possession came about in the instance on which Bush relied. if you want to tell Wilson not to fight language games with language games, go ahead. but stop pretending that such games are il"logic"al (10x! remind you of anyone?) or even "groaning"ly (3x) illogical. (and I don't find much about the distinction to be illogical - Wilson found that such a transaction was beyond the realm of possibility; this would appear to include the lesser suggestion that the Iraqis therefore wouldn't have bothered). the howler again gives Bush's language games the benefit of the doubt when it grants him the broad "Africa" in the 16 words (despite the fact that everyone - including the howler itself - concedes he was referring to Niger, and administration officials conceded, post-Wilson's revelation, that the 16 words should not have been included in the speech), but super-scrutinizes Wilson's attempt to extrapolate from his experience (he stated upfront his "suspicion" that his experience reflected the failings of the larger intelligence-gathering process), describing it as a belief that his Niger trip "could address" the entire continent of Africa. then the Howler pretends that Wilson independently came up with 3 other African countries that he believed to be the only potentially relevant additional ones, completely ignoring the fact that Wilson said it was a State Dept official who suggested these countries AS EVIDENCE THAT BUSH WAS SPEAKING ABOUT ANOTHER COUNTRY, WHICH WILSON SAID HE INITIALLY ACCEPTED UNTIL HE LATER DISCOVERED ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE SUGGESTING THAT BUSH HAD RELIED SPECIFICALLY ON HIS NIGER TRIP.

as for the subtext, if it takes a small, sexy story to make people realize a big lie, I'm all for it.

(XPOSTS, MFs)

But in terms of specifics here, he says, Wilson had only gone to Niger. Why did he think that his experience there could address the entire continent?

But in Wilson's Op-Ed piece, he addressed that directly:

Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.

The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. At the time, I accepted the explanation. I didn't know that in December, a month before the president's address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case.

As for Somerby's thing about whether the transaction had taken place or just been attempted, it's clear from what Wilson wrote (and probably clearer in his book, although I haven't read it) that he found no evidence of Iraqi dealings in Niger, period. If he'd found a rebuffed or unsuccessful attempt, surely he would have reported it. Anyway, in this case, Somerby's contempt for Wilson and the NYT almost turns him into a Bush apologist, which is madness. Clearly the Bush administration distorted dubious and discredited intelligence to make its case for war; Wilson debunked just one tiny part of that intelligence, but he had the temerity to say so publicly at a time when the Bushies were still promising to turn up treasure troves of WMDs any day now.

Look, we are all talking out our asses, here. The relationship between Cheney and CIA was incredibly strained at that time -- who knows what specific personal power politics were involved here? Did CIA send Wilson there specifically to come back with something that refuted a claim made by Cheney's stovepiped intel? What motivated Wilson to come forward in the manner that he did? Does anyone really think this guy had a crisis of conscience? It doesn't seem in character for a career Global Player and arguably non-partisan diplomat, a man who's made his career living in the powerful wings of public affairs, to suddenly rush to center stage. I think there are a lot of things under the surface here, some important to our lives, most of them not, but all of them potentially embarrassing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050714/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/feith_interview

And while I agree the politics can get complicated, I don't see why it's so hard to believe that Wilson (and maybe his wife, and maybe other people at the CIA too) had a crisis of conscience in seeing intelligence manipulated to justify a war. It's harder to conjure a motivation other than that, really. This administration's behavior has caused all kinds of fellow travelers to jump overboard.

I still think Somerby's thing reads like, "Joe Wilson's a slick Washington insider and I don't like him, and I don't like the NYT either."

With "slam dunk" comments coming out of Tenet, it's pretty easy to see why Wilson wanted to wash his hands of the issue, never mind the fact that, well, you know, he came from the Clinton team and was seeing the war brewing between State, DoD, the CIA and the FBI from a proximity that didn't exactly inspire confidence. And it would be a lot easier to dismiss his actions as patriotic and not partisan if he hadn't gone running to the Kerry campaign in the wake of all this. Well, and then there was his showboating on Vanity Fair and movie premiers with his wife. Yeah, come to think of it, he probably inspired a few enemies along the way.

The key thing there is "in the wake of." Who wouldn't have gone to work for the opposition after being put through the Rove Wringer? As for the Vanity Fair and blah blah blah, whatever. Woodward and Bernstein turned into total Hollywood media whores too. But they were still right.

This is such pleasant political theater, though. I'm glad Joe Wilson has been a good little media whore.

Speaking of which, I wonder how long it will be before Cooper's article in TIME (to be published Monday) will be leaked to the leftist blogs?

I really cant wait for Cooper's article.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050715/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/cia_leak_rove

Source: Rove Got CIA Agent ID From Media

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 3 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Presidential confidant Karl Rove testified to a grand jury that he learned the identity of a CIA operative originally from journalists, then informally discussed the information with a Time magazine reporter days before the story broke, according to a person briefed on the testimony.

The person, who works in the legal profession and spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, told The Associated Press that Rove testified last year that he remembers specifically being told by columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame, the wife of a harsh Iraq war critic, worked for the CIA.

Rove testified that Novak originally called him the Tuesday before Plame's identity was revealed in July 2003 to discuss another story. The conversation eventually turned to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was strongly criticizing the Bush administration's Iraq war policy and the intelligence it used to justify the war, the source said.

The person said Rove testified that Novak told him he had learned and planned to report in a weekend column that Wilson's wife, Plame, had worked for the CIA, and the circumstances on how her husband traveled to Africa to check bogus claims of alleged nuclear material sales to Iraq....

On Thursday, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada pressed for legislation to strip Rove of his clearance for classified information, which he said President Bush should already have done. Instead, Reid said, the Bush administration has attacked its critics: "This is what is known as a cover-up. This is an abuse of power."

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Democrats were resorting to "partisan war chants."

Across the Capitol, Rep. Rush Holt (news, bio, voting record), D-N.J., introduced legislation for an investigation that would compel senior administration officials to turn over records relating to the Plame disclosure...

"war chants"? WTF did they get that one? which overly-funded thinktank came up with THAT bit of framing?!

fwiw saddam DID seek, as in TRY, to get uranium from nigeria in 99 (nigeria doesn't export much of anything else) (see you can learn something from fuckfaces like mark steyn) ...so ok next question if that was 99 when he TRIED, did he succeed? or did he not try hard enough? did the nigerians ever sell him anything or not? i've NEVER seen that question answered ANYWHERE. fucking press.

um, yeah. she & the front company she was working thru are no longer in the field.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/7/3/16838/88864

Must-Read Update! Plame Leak Exposed Brewster Jennings Asset on Oil, WMD
by Sherlock Google
Sun Jul 3rd, 2005 at 13:08:38 PDT

Not often talked about is how the traitor Robert Novak also exposed Plame's CIA Front Operation that she helped run: Brewster-Jennings & Associates (this phony company has nothing to do with the real Brewster Jennings, a founder of Mobil Oil). OVer decades, the CIA had built up the fake firm and through it insinuated agents to keep an eye on not only WMD, but also ARAMCO, Saudi Arabia and their oil production and politics. Hundreds of agents have worked for Brewster Jennings and Associates. Traitor Novak emperiled all of their lives and the lives of their informants...

and guess just who was deep in the oil bidness, friends with the Saudis and Joe Wilson, and U.S. head spook in the '60s?

Cmon! Guess!

the fun part? they also mention that "Scooter Libby learned her identity from Journalists", which would be like, what, the first admission that he's actually involved somehow?

But it also seems to signal the hastening of the Second Term Syndrome and the slow decline of the president's "mandate" (already well scarred by his hapless Social Security fight). At least, until the next terrorist attack.

I just want to know when someone is going to get indicted already. Thats when people are going to shut the f up. Well, I guess either that or start spinning more furiously, but at least we'll know what the charges are. It'll either be the espionage act or just a straight conspiracy to cover things up. Remember, you can be guilty of conspiracy if you dont commit a crime. The conspiracy is the crime.

Rove E-Mailed Security Official About Talk

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer
43 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - After mentioning a
CIAoperative to a reporter, Bush confidant Karl Rove alerted the president's No. 2 security adviser about the interview and said he tried to steer the journalist away from allegations the operative's husband was making about faulty
Iraq intelligence.

The July 11, 2003, e-mail between Rove and then-Deputy National Security Adviser
Stephen Hadleyis the first showing an intelligence official knew Rove had talked to Matthew Cooper just days before the Time magazine reporter divulged CIA officer Valerie Plame's secret identity.

"I didn't take the bait," Rove wrote in an e-mail obtained by The Associated Press, recounting how Cooper tried to question him about whether
President Bushhad been hurt by the new allegations.

The White House turned the e-mail over to prosecutors, and Rove testified to a grand jury about it last year.

Earlier in the week before the e-mail, Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had written a newspaper opinion piece accusing the Bush administration of twisting prewar intelligence, including a "highly doubtful" report that Iraq bought nuclear materials from Niger.

"Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he's got a welfare reform story coming," Rove wrote in the e-mail to Hadley.

"When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn't this damaging? Hasn't the president been hurt? I didn't take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn't get Time far out in front on this."

Hadley, now Bush's national security adviser, didn't immediately return a call seeking comment Friday. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said his client answered all the questions prosecutors asked during three grand jury appearances, never invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination or the president's executive privilege guaranteeing confidential advice from aides.

Rove, Bush's closest adviser, turned over the e-mail as soon as prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into who leaked Plame's covert work for the CIA.

He later told a grand jury the e-mail was consistent with his recollection that his intention in talking with Cooper that Friday in July 2003 wasn't to divulge Plame's identity but to caution Cooper against certain allegations Plame's husband was making, according to legal professionals familiar with Rove's testimony...

But is he right about the last line? What if the King is a Puppet and the Knight is the Puppetmaster?

(and if I'm wrong and Karl Rove either resigns or goes to jail, I will be the most surprised, happy wrong person ever)

xpost

These guys are different, and they're operating in a different atmosphere. Nixon didn't have Fox News and Rush and Michael Savage and all the rest of it, this whole apparatus that can be relied on with almost 100 percent confidence to never, ever contradict the official line -- and thereby to create the appearance that anyone who does so must have some "agenda."

yeah, that's the thing. There's been a deliberate clouding of what's actually going on by guys who don't give a fuck about lying. Remember, which you believe that you are Righteous, all things you do in support of this Righteousness are just fine. we have also press which attempts in good faith to "cover all sides of the issue" but is also lazy, doesn't check the actual facts enough(or at all), and is so cowed by attacks and these guys continually gaming the ref that they won't call a spade a spade.

It's the same thing with global warming; you have a group designed to be deliberately misleading who show up and make a great deal of noise about their position. Reporters then talk to them, and now we get the result of "Well, you know, there IS a lot of debate on this issue."

This rings true at first, because we all love to hate Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. However, if you think about it, the mainstream media 40 years ago was probably worse than even Fox News. I recall Chomsky mentioning that while the 2000s have been pretty bad ones for the media, we're still way better off than the beginning of the Sixties. Granted, Watergate happened much later, and I can't speak to what the media atmosphere was around the time of Watergate...so come to think of it ignore this entire post.

So, yeah. But at the same time, we've never had anything of the coordinated scope and scale of the Fox/talk radio axis, where you hear the exact same talking points repeated robotically by one person after another and the whole orientation is not even ideological so much as partisan. I somehow don't think it will last, but I'm not sure what's going to happen to it. It'll be interesting to see.

(this is back in 94/95 when i still read newsweek, btw)

like i said, these guys don't get what journalism is actually supposed to be, so they have no problem with deliberately perverting it.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200507140004

Nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh blasted Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Ken Mehlman's plans to apologize for his party's notorious Southern Strategy at the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Responding to Mehlman's planned renunciation of the race-based electoral strategy, Limbaugh accused Republicans of planning "to go bend over and grab the ankles..."

[...]

[Rush said] "Know what he's going to do? He's going to go down there and basically apologize for what has come to be known as the Southern Strategy, popularized in the Nixon administration. He's going to go down there and apologize for it. In the midst of all of this, in the midst of all that's going on, once again, Republicans are going to go bend over and grab the ankles..."

so no surprises there, in other words.

Difference between civil and criminal contempt explained.

Rove was first source on CIA agent - Time reporter

Looks like he finally wrote that article, the one he didn't want to scoop himself about.

The Supreme nom will shift the spotlight, and that's that.

a memo sent to Air Force 1 from the State Dept about this stuff, which is why they coulda found out about what to leak.

...The classified memo was sent to Air Force One just after former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson went public with his assertions that the Bush administration overstated the evidence that Iraq was interested in obtaining uranium from Niger for nuclear weapons.

The memo has become a key piece of evidence in the CIA leak investigation because it could have been the way someone in the White House learned — and then leaked — the information that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and played a role in sending him on the mission.

[...]

The original June 2003 memo was readdressed to Powell and included a short summary prepared by an analyst who was at a 2002 CIA meeting where Wilson's trip was arranged and was sent in one piece to Powell on Air Force One the next day.

The memo said Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and suggested her husband go to Niger because he had contacts there and had served as an American diplomat in Africa. However, the official said the memo did not say she worked undercover for the spy agency nor did it identify her as Valerie Plame, which was her maiden name and cover name at the CIA...

still, this was a nice story for a while, now, wasnt it? Too bad everybody's now going to be stripping gears to downshift in order to find out about the SC nominee nobody knew about, especially after "it's this edith chick" headfake that was leaked yesterday.

My feeling about this is that it's actually not an incredibly consequential thing, but the public, and even the press, have a gut feeling that Bush's people need to pay some kind of price for this war. Rovegate ties into yellowcake ties into war lies. It's too bad the press isn't capable of serving as a real-time watchdog, that is has to just play the part of punisher after the fact, but if it's the best we can do, I'll take it.

I don't understand why people keep saying this. Jon Stewart has downplayed the issue a couple of times in a similar way. If the Clinton administration had blown the cover of a CIA agent thereby compromising an entire operation devoted to investigating weapons of mass destruction, they would have had his head on a stick. Bill, Hillary, Chelsea, even Socks would all be in gitmo as we speak.

It's not inconsequential, but it's a very tiny piece of a much bigger, badder action.

The Pentagon Papers were perhaps not intrinsically important compared to the war itself and all of the people who died in it. But that doesn't change the fact that the release of the papers helped bring about the end of the war.

The Plame story is far from over. Places like the New York Times, who have a dog in the fight, are not going to let it drop. It may simmer a little less over the summer, but when the grand jury ends in October, you can be sure coverage will be front page material again.

on a related note, Ed had Joe Wilson on for a full hour, answering questions from callers. Going line by line and disproving the list of talking points that the RNC had faxed out was a nice touch.

Ollie North 2K5: granting immunity for Rove & Libby in exchage for their testimony

and

they're gunna go after Fitzgerald next

...Evidently Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, will lead the next foray against the special prosecutor. This week the Senator’s press office announced his plan to hold hearings on the Fitzgerald probe. That means interfering with an “ongoing investigation,” as the White House press secretary might say, but such considerations won’t deter the highly partisan Kansan...

[...]

There is no partisan issue here. Mr. Fitzgerald is a Republican appointee, named by a Republican Justice Department to investigate alleged misconduct in a Republican administration, at the urging of a Republican President and his C.I.A. director...

has there been any news about Fitzgerald possibly losing his job, as was rumored in late July?

Judith Miller is out of jail.

...Ms. Miller was freed after spending more than 12 weeks in jail, during which she refused to cooperate with the criminal inquiry. Her decision to testify came after she obtained what she described as a waiver offered "voluntarily and personally" by a source who said she was no longer bound by any pledge of confidentiality she had made to him. She said the source had made clear that he genuinely wanted her to testify.

That source was I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, according to people who have been officially briefed on the case. Ms. Miller met with Mr. Libby on July 8, 2003, and talked with him by telephone later that week. Discussions between government officials and journalists that week have been a central focus of the investigation....

Wow! Scooter Libby! Shocker time!

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/02/bush-directly-involved/

Meanwhile no one, the major pro-Dem bloggers included, is paying attention to what may prove to be the biggest elephant in the room: the looming conclusion of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's year-and-a-half-long investigation of the Plame/CIA leak. On Sunday, the WashPost's CIA love slave, Walter Pincus--who has been a steady and reliable source of stories damaging to Bush--reiterated in the WashPost that Fitzgerald is trying to establish a conspiracy involving Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, the president's and vice-president's right hand men. On ABC's This Week, George Stephanopoulos dropped this teaser: "A source close to this [investigation] told me this week that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were actually involved in some of these discussions."

Play this out. Discount what Stephanopoulos said if you like. We are still left with a multiplicity of grand jury leaks since this summer indicating that Fitzgerald is angling for criminal conspiracy charges against two of the most senior officials in the Bush White House. If this happens, it's sure to elicit legal challenges on grounds of executive privilege and--this being the Bush crew--national security. Against this backdrop, the president appoints to the Supreme Court his White House counsel and former personal lawyer, a woman repeatedly described in the past 24 hours as a "Bush loyalist" and "a pit bull in size 6 shoes." See anything remotely suspicious?

The citypages blog posting assumes a degree of self-awareness, sophistication and gamesmanship that's WAY above my estimation of these dweebs. There simply isn't any evidence that something like that would be in the playbook, certainly not following their performance post Katrina. Bush is an idiot who's alienated his best helpers in favor of sycophants. He had to pick somebody in a hurry and he picked his Texas girl down the hall.

I could still be proven wrong - if this whole mess does end up spinning out a la the OG -gate fiasco, then maybe she does know more about the chief's involvement than Gonzalez and Junior IS attempting to cloister her. The WH Counsel turned out to be the star witness against Nixon, after all (second to the tapes).

Breaking! Plame Indictments Imminent

The D.C. Rumor mill is thrumming with whispers that 22 indictments are about to be handed down on the outed-CIA agent Valerie Plame case. The last time the wires buzzed this loud — that Tom DeLay would be indicted and would step down from his leadership post in the House — the scuttlebutters got it right.

Can it be a coincidence that the White House appears to be distancing President Bush from embattled aide Karl Rove? “He’s been missing in action at more than one major presidential event,” a member of the White House press corps tells us.

If the word on the street is right a second time, we have a bit of advice for Rove: Go with vertical stripes, they’re way more slimming.

Update: Ooh, look: a very convenient distraction!

The distraction being the Philippines spying charges, which are intriguing enough.

Still, 22? Personally I'd live and laugh to see the day but I suspect wishful thinking -- that or Fitzgerald is about to go nuts in ways undreamed of.

(Now how interesting would it be if Miers was named?)

I harbor no further illusions that anyone in the administration is nearly as clever as they consistently get credit for being.

Oh so OTM.

Yep, a convenient patsy who was extra-conveniently hired by Gore.

Since Nov. 1980, this has always been the best possible scenario in Washington.

yeah. this is one of the things i meant by "pulling desperate shit bigtime" on the other thread.

Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th-hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer's leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee he won't be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.

thus giving them another set of sunday shows to bullshit on, or to break the weekly newscycle...

well, off to indictment land with me! *happily humming*

i just can't get over how cheery he looks in these photos. It's like he knows that his company switching over to Non-Alcoholic Duff will save everything.

"Oh well, that's the end of me!"

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.

...The only certainty most bloggers are able to squeeze out of the Times article is that, whatever it all means, things are not looking good for Scooter Libby right now. Needlenose states the most obvious but least-discussed implication of the piece: "I think everyone is overlooking the most compelling proof that Libby is now in deep, deep shit with Fitzgerald and that, as a result, Libby's indictment is virtually certain." Fitzgerald had warned Libby's lawyers to make sure that if Libby wrote to Miller in jail that he didn't suggest to her what she should say in her testimony. It is now clear from Miller's account and from the letter Libby eventually wrote that, as Needlenose puts it, "There is no question that Libby, quite stupidly, did EXACTLY what Fitzgerald told him not to do in that letter -- i.e., he suggested what she should say..."

and Wonkette claims, as others have been mumbling, that the shit's gunna come down this week, maybe Wednesday.

Also, looks like The Daily Show is back from their break, so they should be ready to go. Dig this guest list for this week: Dolly Parton, Bill O'Reilly, Louis Freeh, The Rock

yeah, the other side is God-willing tilting towards disaster, but you'd think they should be ready to stand up when that happens. There's still 12 months 'til the mid-terms, so here we go.

xpost

Whistling in the dark? A year is forever, and so many high-profile Dems' words on Iraq are scarcely less hawkish than W's.

Also, as this guy says, most Americans really have no idea of what to make of Plame, Judy Miller, etc:

http://redstateson.blogspot.com/2005/10/simplegate.html

Better to err on the side of paranoia and assume that their fuckin' won't necessarily be the kicker in bringing folks to your party(small "p"-party in this case). It'd get 'em anxious, so might as well put some compelling narrative out there just to facilitate/enable folks drifting to your cause.

xpost

I would prefer "Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women" to "some benefit at the polls."

i'd say that we work towards both happening, just in case.

I'm picturing a tearful confessional with Katie Couric.

indeed

Pretty much everyone I know hates Condi. That doesn't keep making her VP without going through the inconvenience of a public vote from being one of the most politically-evil moves the Republican Party could make.

Is the U.S. News story getting any play elsewhere? I haven't seen any other references.

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, who friends and even political adversaries acknowledge is the architect of the President's rise from baseball owner to leader of the free world.

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.

TalkingPoints notes why this story should be given attention:

Now, one other detail about this piece. It runs a few hundred words. But the most important two are probably these: Thomas DeFrank.

DeFrank's the byline and he's the Daily News DC Bureau Chief. DeFrank has a unique relationship to the Bush world, particularly to the older generation. He cowrote James Baker's diplomatic autobiography The Politics of Diplomacy, for instance. Back in the summer of 2001, The Weekly Standard suggested he'd actually been in the running to be chief Pentagon spokesman, before the job went to Tori Clarke.

I'm not including this background information to suggest that DeFrank is in the tank for the Bush crowd. Indeed, I have the sense that the relationship has become more strained or perhaps attenuated over the last few years. I add these details because the nature of DeFrank's access is unique in Washington. And this article carries more weight than it would with another byline.

Of course, not miserable enough to pull his security clearance. Not miserable enough to follow through with his public promise to fire anyone who leaked information. Guess that whole "my word is my bond" thing has a few caveats in Bushworld...

gotta be big if they didn't take the time to head to Crawford.

Also, should we start a pool not only for who's indicted, but who's pardoned?

Woman of Mass Destruction
By MAUREEN DOWD

I've always liked Judy Miller. I have often wondered what Waugh or Thackeray would have made of the Fourth Estate's Becky Sharp.

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, and I worried that she was playing a leading role in the dangerous echo chamber that Senator Bob Graham, now retired, dubbed "incestuous amplification." Using Iraqi defectors and exiles, Mr. Chalabi planted bogus stories with Judy and other credulous journalists.

Even last April, when I wrote a column critical of Mr. Chalabi, she fired off e-mail to me defending him.

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."

An Associated Press story yesterday reported that Judy had coughed up the details of an earlier meeting with Mr. Libby only after prosecutors confronted her with a visitor log showing that she had met with him on June 23, 2003. This cagey confusion is what makes people wonder whether her stint in the Alexandria jail was in part a career rehabilitation project.

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.

Which the Times has put her in a position to do. I can only imagine the rage her name must provoke among the hardworking, true-believing ink-stained wretches for whom the Times stands for something worth preserving and protecting.

it's like they know what we argue about!

hmmm.

Novak said that "I'd be amazed" if the president didn't know the source's identity and that the public should "bug the president as to whether he should reveal who the source is."

Was it just me or did I implore everyone to bet their balls that Rove would not be indicted?

on the other thread, we've already started speculating about whether he rolled on Cheney!

OF course, if you've been following this story closely, you've known it was Dick Armitage all along.

Have fun with your book Joe and Val. Too bad your frog marching story will never wash.