the return of yellowcakegate?

The story's not about yellowcake now though, it's Valerie Plame. I was speculating over email w/a group of friends a few weeks back on what would happen here.. think it'll explode?

Impacting...

unless more people pay attention to it, it's not gunna do shit, unfortunately. funny how things are different than 8 years ago, when all possible allegation against that Administration immediately resulted in a Great "Public" Outcry.

yup. and some republicans "wonder" why so many democrats hate bush.

as much as i'd like to see this get legs and get rid of the creeps in the oval office -- and the most delicious irony here is, that dubya's dad was responsible for the law that penalizes those who leak the names of intelligence officers -- i fear that it won't.

This is the cover story in Newsweek (the one we get tomorrow) with all the stuff I mentioned abt Rumsfeld.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/972362.asp?0cv=KB10&cp1=1

Calpundit is writing very clearly on this story...tons of stuff just on his front page, and nice recaps every so often. He doesn't list Fleischer as a suspect, now I'm going to have to figure out where I read that.
http://www.calpundit.com/

Maybe it was over here at Sensing (he's a military/Pentagon guy, good perspective):
http://donaldsensing.com/2003_09_01_archive.html#106468048283627674

Josh Talking Points thinks it's Tenet:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/sept0304.html#0928031038am

Good recap here as well:
http://www.ospolitics.org/blog/archives/2003/09/29/the_valeri.php

And don't forget the fabulous Note!
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/TheNote/TheNote.html

The National Review checks in with the opinion that Wilson was just a lefty Arab sympathizer anyway:
http://www.nationalreview.com/may/may200309291022.asp

GHWB, 1999: "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. "
http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/1999/bush_speech_042699.html

Til now, where it could bite Bush and co visibly in the arse. I can see future possible informants preferring prison time, then working for a system that has so many holes.

Howard Kurtz on covertnamegate:

The Wilson case has parallels in Britain, where Prime Minister Tony Blair has plummeted in popularity after his aides leaked the name of a BBC source, government scientist David Kelley, who had questioned Blair's evidence on Iraqi weapons. Kelley committed suicide after his name was made public.

If recent history is any guide, federal investigators are unlikely to discover who the leakers are. In 1999, a federal appeals court ruled that independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr and his staff did not have to face contempt proceedings for allegedly leaking damaging information about President Bill Clinton because no grand jury secrets were disclosed. The next year, a former Starr spokesman, Charles G. Bakaly III, was acquitted of making false statements about his role in providing information to the New York Times.

In 1992, Senate investigators said they could not determine who leaked confidential information to National Public Radio and Newsday about Anita Hill's sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas during his Supreme Court confirmation. In 1989, then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh launched an unsuccessful $224,000 investigation of a leak to CBS of an inquiry into then-Rep. William H. Gray III (D-Pa.).

The part that puzzles me - Andrea Mitchell is supposed to be one of the leakees here. Today she went up to Rove and asked him if he was the leaker, and tried for a follow-up when he said no. What does that mean?

so which six journos were contacted?

1. novak fer sure
2. a national review writer fer sure
3. andrea mitchell most likely
4. jon king of cnn most likely (very friendly with bush)
5. someone from fox? brit hume? (their best journo)
6. maybe bob schaeffer from cbs? someone from the ny times? washington times? ny post?

I'm having trouble with this sentence:
Asked about the possibility of an internal White House investigation, McClellan said, "I'm not aware of any information that has come to our attention beyond the anonymous media sources to suggest there's anything to White House involvement."

Nice disparaging of 'anonymous media sources' there, but what does the bit after that mean? Did he leave out a word...
"to suggest there's anything to implyWhite House involvement"
"to suggest there's anything to encourageWhite House involvement"
"to suggest there's anything to haveWhite House involvement"

I think it's the first, as in 'there's not anything to it'. Am I being naive by trying to figure out WH doublespeak?

Then he's a clod who deserves a smack in the face. It's the name of an UNDERCOVER AGENT. Does the man think all spies act like James Bond or something?

She is a case officer in the CIA's clandestine service and works as an analyst on weapons of mass destruction. Novak published her maiden name, Plame, which she had used overseas and has not been using publicly. Intelligence sources said top officials at the agency were very concerned about the disclosure because it could allow foreign intelligence services to track down some of her former contacts and lead to the exposure of agents.

Hm...is there any legal precedent for him to force him to do so in court, say, or could he just plead the Fifth? Which would be hard given that he's already admitted talking to somebody, so.

We don't know:
1. if it was a senior administration official at the White House who allegedly leaked
2. what the exact status of Plume's employment at the CIA or what her title was.
3. what the damage of leaking her position was

We do know:
1. this issue may be just as political as it is legal
2. the people with the most to lose are in the Bush cabinent
3. the people with the most to gain are Democrats
4. that our president, as usual, is sitting on his hands and not coming out like a leader. If the guy had any sense of himself or his role, he'd be in front of the cameras and mugging "I will not tolerate any sort of unethical behavior in this White House. I am not aware of any of these allegations to be true. I am confident that my staff would never compromise the security of our intelligence. However, I welcome the Justice Department in getting to the bottom of this."

however, yeah, this is the same leaking practice that happened during the summer when the one reporter with the discouraging story on iraq was "revealed" to be gay & canadian.

Ashcroft cannot perform an objective investigation. An independent investigation needs to be launched, and the phone logs of the White must be released. There will be no email records, as way back, Bush's people said that they will not use email as it leaves too permanent a record.

and now even the Moonies are piling on.

thanks to Neal Pollack's blog.

I mean, I'm glad Americans are quick to denounce Crime™ but it's an absolute certainty that 95% of the Americans who want an independent council don't even know what one is. With the new TV season in full swing, baseball in the playoffs, and the first round of parent-teacher conferences, I'd be willing to bet that 95% of America has no idea who the fuck this Wilson guy is. Or his wife.

These people don't know what the DoJ is for; I'd be willing to bet that 75% of the people reading this thread don't know explicitly what the purpose of the DoJ is. 95% of America doesn't even know who runs the DoJ. They don't even know that the guy who runs the DoJ put modesty towels over the titties on statues where he works. This poll is 100% irrelevant.

But if I were Bush I'd quit hiding and come out swinging for something.

The book "Bush's Brain" describes Karl Rove's tactics, and this fits nicely. Also, Rove was fired from the first Bush's '92 campaign for leaking to Novak before over info about a man named Mosbacher, even though Novak still insists it was not Rove.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/sept0304.html#0929031229am

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2003_09_28_atrios_archive.html#106485236682794928

i apologize for being overzealous in my belief in Rove's guilt. It's wishful thinking mostly, but it's not entirely.

http://www.calpundit.com/archives/002312.html

Rove was wishful thinking on behalf of lots of people, and despite the nastiness of the guy I still don't think it fits his M.O. He's not that reckless. I personally don't think he's even that good. I haven't seen him put together an upset on anything, and it's when the chips are down that a key advisor becomes essential. Right now, keeping the president behind closed doors is something that seems like a total fucking blunder of instinct, policy, and strategy.

Blowing a CIA operative's cover is a felony. --> Someone at the White House blew a CIA operative's cover. --> Someone at the White House committed a felony.

A CIA operative under deep cover is not known to be a CIA operative. --> Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA operative. --> Valerie Plame is no longer under deep cover.

NONE OF THIS IS TRUE NOW THAT VALERIE PLAME'S PHOTO IS IN VANITY FAIR.

The basic story is this - the docs were provided to the Italian journalist by an Italian private consultant who was a former Italian intelligence officer. The consultant had received them from an asset of Italian intelligence, identified to the consultant as a disgruntled employee of the Nigerien Embassy in Rome, who otherwise passed on to him mostly authentic documents about North African affairs important to the consultant's clients, including Islamist terrorism. The upshot of the basic story is that Italian intelligence concealed its identity in passing the docs to a private party who gave them to the media. Later, Marshall asserts that Italian intel knew that the consultant (whom Marshall earlier introduced as an 'information peddler') would pass the docs to foreign embassies and expected the consultant would likely pass them to the media.

Beyond the basic story, it's not completely clear what Marshall is saying. The key passage says that, at the same time ("at least as early as the beginning of 2002") that the US was aware that "the Italians had the forged documents in their possession," "Italian intelligence operatives were surreptitiously funneling copies of the documents" to the security consultant. So he appears to be saying that, at a minimum, the US already knew about the yellowcake docs before they were passed to the media and foreign embassies via the consultant. What else is Marshall saying? Nothing explicit, but is he implying that the US knew that the documents were "forged"? And when he says, generically, "the Italians" is he implying that the US knew that the docs were being passed to the consultant? A previous passage suggests maybe not. He writes that, "in late 2001 and 2002," italian intelligence was distributing (presumably directly) summaries of the yellowcake docs (or the docs themselves? it's unclear) to various foreign embassies, including those of the US, UK and France. So perhaps the US knew of the docs only because Italian intel told the US directly, but this reference to several countries within a broad date range is ambiguous - it leaves open the possibility that any two of the countries were not told directly about the docs until middle or late 2002, and does not state which country learned first). It also sounds like he's suggesting that the US knew that italian intel instructed the fake Nigerien employee to pass the docs, though his timeline here suggests that he either hasn't established this or is being coy about it - he says that the instructions were given in late 2001, and that the US knew of the docs only "at least as early" as early 2002.

Extra innocent question: who are the clients of the 'security consultant'?

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2004/8/1/164011/5334/8#8