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?

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.