Who Needs Me?
Lucky Duckies. The inimitable Jane at firedoglake has also agreed to guest post here for a few days so that you can all keep up with your necessary Fitz fits and Plamey goodness (among other things.)
Play nice — or she’ll kick your ass.
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Drive By
In case anyone’s wondering what is the real reason that Porter Goss is refusing to make public the CIA IG report, here’s a little clue:
George Tenet is not going to let himself become the fall guy for the September 11 intelligence failures, according to a former intelligence officer and a source friendly to Mr. Tenet.
A scathing report by Inspector General John Helgerson criticized the former CIA director and a score of other agency personnel for their failure to develop a strategy against al Qaeda. The report, delivered to Congress this week, recommends punitive sanctions for Mr. Tenet, former Deputy Director of Operations James L. Pavitt and former counter-terrorist center head J. Cofer Black. Mr. Tenet’s response to the report is a 20-page, tightly knitted rebuttal of responsibility prepared with the aid of a lawyer, according to the friendly source.
Mr. Tenet’s decision to defend himself against the charges in the report poses a potential crisis for the White House. According to a former clandestine services officer, theformerCIAdirector turned down a publisher’s $4.5 million book offer because he didn’t want to embarrass the White House by rehashing the failure to prevent September 11 and the flawed intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Tenet, according to a knowledgeable source, had a “wink and a nod” understanding with the White House that he wouldn’t be scapegoated for intelligence failings. The deal, one source says, was sealed with the award of the Presidential Freedom Medal.
Now that deal may be off. Mr. Tenet’s rebuttal to the report is detailed and explicit. In defending his integrity as CIA director, Mr. Tenet treads perilously close to affirming the account of Richard Clarke, the former NSC terrorism official whose public disclosure of the Bush administration’s delay in adopting a strategy against al Qaeda stirred controversy last summer.
The IG report is the result of a 17-month investigation by a team of 11 CIA officials. The Senate and House intelligence oversight committees requested the report, which follows in a CIA tradition of analyses of past mistakes in order to prevent recurrences. After double-agent Aldrich Ames was unmasked, the CIA inspector general produced a detailed account of the agency’s failure to protect its Soviet spies. That report, which was made public, prompted sweeping changes in CIA counterintelligence practices.
In contrast, the IG report and Mr. Tenet’s 20-page rebuttal are classified. This is a departure from past CIA practice. There is much about the IG report that is unusual. It was completed, according to multiple intelligence sources, by July 2004. Acting CIA Director John McLaughlin passed this hot potato to his successor, Porter Goss. As chairman of the House intelligence committee, Mr. Goss had lead the joint congressional inquiry into September 11 and called for the inspector general’s report.
[…]
Under normal conditions, Karl Rove would already be taking pre-emptive action. But he is neutralized until the Valerie Plame leak probe ends. That leaves it to the president’s allies on Capitol Hill to keep Mr. Tenet’s rebuttal under wraps. With the families of September 11 victims demanding disclosure, this will not be easy.
CIA Director Goss is between a rock and a hard place. He will be criticized for covering up if he does nothing. But if he follows the IG’s recommendation to convene formal hearings as a prelude to sanctions, Mr. Tenet himself may go public to defend his reputation. The $4.5 million book offer may soon be back on the table, and this time Mr. Tenet might take it.
As a commenter on the Newshour said last night — “it will come out, it always does.”
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She’ll Do As She’s Told
Remember when I said Harry Miers was a Republican machine justice?
Check out this from last night’s conference call to conservatives (via IsThatLegal):
One of the things that someone as a sixth-generation Texan that I want to add to this call and that is this: The two things that are probably … there are two virtues that are valued as highly as any virtue can be valued in the Texas culture, and those two virtues are courage and loyalty. Courage and loyalty. And this President, he knows that Harriet Miers is also a Texan, and, with a degree of understanding that would never have to be articulated, he and she both understand that if she were to get on the Court and she were to rule in ways that were contrary to the ways that the president would want her to approach her role as a justice it would be a deep personal betrayal and would be perceived as such by both by him and by her.
That’s from Richard Land of the Southern Bapist convention. There’s more. Like this one from Jay Sekulow:
I’m involved in three three cases at the Court this Term, and believe me: I want Harriet Meirs up there voting on these critical cases.
Bush vs Gore proved how crucial the Supreme Court is to the consolidation and maintenance of Republican power. It’s clear they learned their lesson well. They aren’t even trying to hide it.
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Very interesting prediction of how the case will go by commenter Sara at TPM cafe, followed by an equally interesting counter-theory by Ed Fitzgerald of Unfutz.
Thanks to Poputonian at KOTS and Dena
Say Hello
I’ve recruited a great blogger to fill in for me for a few days since I’m unable to lay my pearls before you with the frequency you deserve.
For your blog reading pleasure, welcome Tristero back to the blogosphere. He’ll be turning up as he has time over the next few days.
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Lone Star Parallel
It’s been done before. Is it something in the bar-b-que sauce?
If confirmed, Miers will have to recuse herself from potentially dozens of cases concerning this administration; but that will not be her biggest problem on the Court. Rather, her most significant challenge will be her ability to do a professional u-turn. Can she take the one quality that means the most to the president who just nominated her–loyalty–and leave it completely behind as her work address moves several blocks east?
To weigh her chances of success, consider the lesson of Abe Fortas, the last justice to be elevated to the Court after enjoying such a close relationship with a sitting president. Fortas had been Lyndon Johnson’s personal lawyer for years prior to Johnson becoming president. In 1948, when Johnson found himself in court over a closely contested Texas Senate race, he turned to Fortas, and Fortas delivered. Seventeen years later, LBJ put Fortas on the Supreme Court.
The problem was that Fortas could never leave his sense of loyalty to the president behind. On many cases where he had served a role advising Johnson in the matter before the Court, Fortas neglected to recuse himself. Worse than that, he continued to play an advisory role to LBJ even after ascending to the high Court. Johnson’s key advisors, including Bill Moyers, Jack Valenti, and Joe Califano, continued to count on Fortas, sending directly to his Supreme Court chambers drafts of legislation and even State of the Union addresses for Fortas to sign off on. All this eventually caught up to Fortas. When LBJ nominated Fortas to be chief justice in 1968, his inappropriately close relationship to the president came under congressional and public scrutiny, and he later resigned in disgrace.
The article goes on to speculate that Miers may be more independent than Fortas because she broke glass ceilings in her career. I’m not holding my breath.
It is interesting, although irrelevant, that the only supreme court justice the senate actually ever threatened to filibuster was Abe Fortas’ nomination to chief — by Republicans.
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Litmus Test
Q: What do you say when people will say he put his own lawyer on the Supreme Court? That’s definitional, cronyism.
MR. McCLELLAN: I’d say look at her record. As I said, she is someone that he knows well. But look at her record. Her record is one of being a trailblazer for women in the legal profession and a record of being a tough and strong litigator who has represented clients before state and federal courts on a broad range of issues. She is someone who brings the exact kind of experience and qualifications needed on our nation’s highest court, and that’s why the President selected her.
But does she have any horse show experience?
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The Machine Justice
I think it’s kind of cute that so many conservatives are expressing such angst at the choice of Harriet Miers this morning. Seems they thought that the Bush administration was about conservative ideology. Funny.
The Bush administration is about setting up the legal and institutional framework for a Republican majority for the next generation. That is Karl Rove’s raison d’etre, beyond Junior, beyond conservatism, beyond ideology.
Harriet Miers is the official machine justice, a made woman, the one whose only committment and loyalty will be to Karl Rove and George Bush. I’m sure they would have preferred Alberto Gonzales but he is too much of a known quantity to easily finesse the varying political requirements within the base. She will do just fine. She is their creature. Her purpose on the court is to assist the Republican party in any way necessary, not to advance conservatism.
Voting for business interests is, of course, a given. Now the Texas mafia and the spawn of the college Republicans have their own seat on the highest court in the land for the next 20 years. But having one on the court for the next 10 years is crucial. With the election fixing, gerrymandering, corruption and executive power cases coming before the court over the next few years, her position will be very important to the GOP machine. It may very well be personally important to Karl Rove himself. (One hopes that the Democratic senators will, at least, take the PR opportunity to extract a bunch of public statements from her that she will recuse herself if and when specific criminal cases involving big name Republicans she’s worked with come before the court.)
It’s important to recognize, finally, what Karl Rove and the Bush administration, with the help of the modern Republican apparatus under Tom DeLay, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed is all about. They are building a political machine, not a political movement. I find it very amusing that the right wing “intellectuals,” from their ivory tower think tanks and millionaire supported sinecures at political magazines, have still failed to recognize that.
“She’s the kind of person you want in your corner when all the chips are being played,” said one friend, Joseph M. Allbaugh, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Here’s a little insight into Miers’ involvement with the Texas mafia, from buzzflash.
Update: Regarding Roe vs Wade, I think she will vote to overturn Roe vs Wade if the leadership of the Republican Party feels it is in the party’s best interest to overturn Roe vs Wade.
It’s my belief that the GOP would love to overturn it as a payback for their base, and they will “arrange” for her to overturn if they feel it’s time. But what they are most interested in is getting someone on the court who will not independently decide that the interests of democracy require that they vote against whatever GOP electoral schemes come down the pike. There can be no daylight on that. Miers can be guaranteed to do what is best for the GOP.
It’s certainly possible that the elite wingnuts are in cahoots creating this little backlash against Miers, but it was orchestrated going back to last week with Pod and Frum both public dismissing her as a lightweight and a hack. I wouldn’t put it past them, but I just have a gut feeling that they were taken by surprise by this one. This was a level of coordination that I’ve not seen on the blogs before, if that’s what it was. (I think it was more what Atrios said — they are disappointed because they wanted the satisfaction of telling the Dems to go fuck themselves.)
Many movement conservatives, whether from the Christian conservative base or the neocon cosmopolitans, really bought into the idea that Bush believes in something deeper than corporate power, cutting taxes for high earners and kicking ass. Yet, there is absolutely nothing in his performance in office that suggests he cares about anything else.
Rove, on the other hand, has the very public agenda of building a “permanent” Republican majority. That is what he’s trying to do. Period. Whatever it takes to get there is what they will do — neocons and Christian alike are just cogs in the machine.
Deep down they know the score. They sold their souls to this devil (don’t tell me they didn’t know what they were doing when they went after Clinton, Gore and Kerry like a pack of wild, rabid dogs) and now they are faced with the fact that they too have been punked.
The modern Republican party, at its core, is not about ideology or values or anything else that high minded mediocre intellectuals and religious zealots pretend motivates their “movement” It’s about money and power. Same as it ever was. Ask Grover.
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Plame Out
I’m busy today and won’t have time to post. So I will leave you with this tantalizing thought to chew over from my super-smart commenter Sara:
Judy is not the main course at all. What I suspect Fitzgerald had to do was eliminate the defense, namely that Miller and Cooper and other reporters were the source of the identity of “Wilson’s Wife” as CIA NOC. Remember we have already been through this defense as PR over the past couple of years — Wilson’s wife scrubbed floors at CIA, she was a lowly secretary, an apprentise in the Directorate of Intelligence — she ran the travel bureau — defenses that would all exclude her identity as a NOC. I suspect that is what transpired today, so Fitzgerald’s positive case can now emerge.
This makes sense to me. Now read the rest of her comment for a novel theory of Fitzgerald’s case. Jane at firedoglake has been following this line too…
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