Month: October 2005

Miller’s Message

Kevin Drum questions the theory that Bennett didn’t come clean with Fitz about Libby being Judy’s only “meaningful” source, (or didn’t know that Libby wasn’t Judy’s only meaningful source) when they made the deal that she would only testify about her conversations with Libby. This rests on the fact that Miller now has a phantom source who told her about “Valerie Flame” but she can’t remember who it might have been. Kevin says:

This doesn’t sound right to me. First of all, surely something like this can’t happen in real life, can it? Bennett’s representations to Fitzgerald would be considered binding, wouldn’t they? If it turned out he misrepresented the evidence, Fitzgerald would no longer be bound by the original agreement. (Someone with experience in federal prosecutions should feel free to step in and tell me I’m wrong, but this sure doesn’t sound like something a judge would spend more than a few seconds ruling on.)

I think Kevin is right. But I’m not sure that the deal was ever as clear cut as Miller made it out to be. Bennett emphatically said that the deal was limited to the “Valerie Plame Matter” not that it was limited to Libby. Robert Bennett is a very savvy lawyer and he was very precise in his language.

BLITZER: Was the conversations you had with Mr. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor — was her testimony limited only to Scooter Libby’s involvement in the Valerie Plame case, assuming that’s her source as we all do? Or was it — could he ask questions before the grand jury on other individuals?

R. BENNETT: I’m not going to go into her testimony before a secret grand jury, but I will say that the subject matter that we agreed to dealt with the Valerie Plame matter.

BLITZER: So in other words, it focused on that, but talk about other individuals as well?

R. BENNETT: It focused on the Valerie Plame matter.

BLITZER: That’s all you want to say about that?

R. BENNETT: That’s all I can say to you.

This does not mean that it wasn’t limited to Libby, of course. There are other reasons why Bennett might not have wanted to name Libby in that interview. But it was common knowledge that Libby was the source in question and Judy, after all, had said the day before that the agreement was to “focus on that source.” Bennett could have characterized the deal that way as well.

FRANKEN: Scooter’s lawyer has said that, had you asked, you wouldn’t have had to spend any time in jail. He would have been more than willing to give you the explicit waiver you say you now accepted.

MILLER: I was not a party to those discussions. I’m going to let you refer those questions to my lawyer. I can only tell you that as soon as I received a personal assurance from the source that I was able to talk to him and talk to the source about my testimony, it was only then and as a result of the special prosecutors’ agreement to narrow the focus of the inquiry, to focus on that source, that I was able to testify.

I still think that the real problem for Judy was that the original subpoena (pdf) said:

… on August 12 and August 14, grand jury subpoenas were issued to Judith Miller, seeking documents and testimony related to conversations between her and a specified government official “occurring from on or about July 6, 2003, to on or about July 13, 2003, . . . concerning Valerie Plame Wilson (whether referred to by name or by description as the wife of Ambassador Wilson) or concerning Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium.”

I continue to believe that Judy’s primary concern was about limiting her testimony to Plame. It was other non-Plame related conversations (with Libby or others) that pertained to the Iraq uranium claims, and perhaps even her involvement, that she did not want to be asked about. (This could be the matter of the sexed-up dossier, David Kelly’s death and the back-up claim that the questionable claim that the British had unrelated secret information about African yellowcake.)

And after looking at it again, I suspect that this passage in Judy’s mea no culpa may be a little message of her own to the powers that be — to let them know that she was a good little aspen and understood that all the roots are connected:

As I told Mr. Fitzgerald and the grand jury, Mr. Libby alluded to the existence of two intelligence reports about Iraq’s uranium procurement efforts. One report dated from February 2002. The other indicated that Iraq was seeking a broad trade relationship with Niger in 1999, a relationship that he said Niger officials had interpreted as an effort by Iraq to obtain uranium.

My notes indicate that Mr. Libby told me the report on the 1999 delegation had been attributed to Joe Wilson.

Mr. Libby also told me that on the basis of these two reports and other intelligence, his office had asked the C.I.A. for more analysis and investigation of Iraq’s dealings with Niger. According to my interview notes, Mr. Libby told me that the resulting cable – based on Mr. Wilson’s fact-finding mission, as it turned out – barely made it out of the bowels of the C.I.A. He asserted that George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, had never even heard of Mr. Wilson.

As I told Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Libby also cited a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, produced by American intelligence agencies in October 2002, which he said had firmly concluded that Iraq was seeking uranium.

[…]

Although I was interested primarily in my area of expertise – chemical and biological weapons – my notes show that Mr. Libby consistently steered our conversation back to the administration’s nuclear claims. His main theme echoed that of other senior officials: that contrary to Mr. Wilson’s criticism, the administration had had ample reason to be concerned about Iraq’s nuclear capabilities based on the regime’s history of weapons development, its use of unconventional weapons and fresh intelligence reports.

That’s the standard company line, no deviations. She devotes a great deal of space in her article to relating all of that in loving detail despite the fact that she was questioned by Fitzgerald for many hours and was before the Grand Jury twice. Some important people are undoubtedly feeling a bit relieved knowing now that Judy stayed within the lines even as Fitz came dangerously close to asking about the Big WHIG Problem.

If Scooter and Turdblossom have to go down that’s one thing — revealing the true scope of the Iraq lies is another. Doing time for the GOP has become a badge of courage and it never stops anyone from finding their way back to the halls of power and making big money if they want to. As long as everybody keeps their mouths shut about the war, the family will take care of them.

I predict that there will be no trials if Fitzgerald indicts. A public spectacle in which the possibility of someone spilling the beans about the Big WHIG Problem is much too risky. I think this will be plea bargained. I’ll bet that Rove and Scooter are looking at poncho patterns as we speak.

Update: On the other hand, if Jane’s right about Ari being the Third Man, then maybe there’s a possibility for some real fireworks. He’s not a real member of the club. He was hired from the failed Liddy Dole presidential campaign. He may not be willing to fall on his sword for this bunch.

Update II: Can someone tell me where in Miller’s article she says anything that could be construed as this:

A new account of the CIA leak scandal rocking the White House suggests top presidential aides were seriously concerned about what could be seen as a dissident faction inside the US spy agency that appeared to work even behind the back of the CIA director to debunk the notion Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

I don’t see anything that leads to a “dissident faction,” in her piece, but it does conveniently play into some on the right’s suggestion that Plame and some of her liberal spook comrades “in the bowels of the CIA” were running a rogue operation to hide all the evidence of Saddam’s WMD arsenal. (This excuse fails to acknowledge the the verified fact that there were no actual WMD found, but no matter.) I’ve assumed that it was confined to the fringe of wingnuttia, but it appears to have made it to the AP.

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Scandal Central

Referring to the NY Times coverage of the Judy Miller saga, Brit Hume said something today to the effect of, “I don’t think the American people care about this and as I was reading it today it occurred to me that I don’t care much either.”

Well, he wouldn’t. Brit’s career as the dean of FoxNews was made by covering the important stories, after all:

Quick off the mark on January 21, the day the story broke, FNC had the first photo of Lewinsky on the air at 9 a.m., and, that same day, the first interview with Gennifer Flowers. It began devoting all of its daytime schedule to the crisis, except for brief segments on other news, along with weekend specials attracting hundreds of viewer phone calls. The network even inaugurated a whole new early-evening series, Special Report with Brit Hume, to keep daily tabs on the evolving story “for the duration of the developments.”

And he did, scolding other news organizations all along the way for not being properly obsessed with what was going on in Clinton’s pants:

“The President was forced to confront a new twist in an old legal battle. A federal judge ruling today that Mr. Clinton violated the Privacy Act by releasing letters from Kathleen Willey, who accused him of making an unwanted sexual advance in the White House.” Clinton: “Obviously we don’t agree with the ruling.”

[…]

The low priority given the development by the White House press corps surprised FNC’s Brit Hume, who immediately after the press conference scolded his colleagues. At 3:15pm ET he told anchor Shepard Smith:

“I think this most extraordinary thing about this news conference, Shep, and it was one of the more extraordinary ones I’ve ever seen, were the questions. We were ten questions into this news conference when he was finally asked about the federal judge’s finding today in Washington that the President had committed a criminal violation of the Privacy Act. It is not every day that a judge makes such a finding, and it, we talked, we heard all about the President’s views on Elian Gonzalez, certainly that’s in the news. We had questions on the Middle East. We had the President’s opinion solicited in the second question in the news conference about police shootings in New York. And then it was ten questions in before we got around to this extraordinary thing that happened today with the federal judge making this finding. Now the President said he didn’t agree with it, which is what one would expect him to say, and obviously there’s more on this chapter to play out. But quite a remarkable performance by those asking the questions it seemed to me.”

Why, oh why, can’t the press concentrate on important things? This is what real news people spend their time on:

A Clinton family friend tells Fox News that the First Couple barely speak in private,” FNC’s Rita Cosby reported Wednesday night. FNC’s Fox Report and Special Report with Brit Hume led Wednesday night with Cosby’s exclusive about how the Clintons left their ski weekend early a week and a half ago because they had a fight. Cosby quoted a source who knows the Clintons as relaying how Hillary Clinton refused to accompany her husband on his current Central American trip because “I don’t want to be in the same room with him, let alone the same bed.”

Paula Zahn opened the 7pm ET Fox Report: “Remember when the Clintons came home early from their ski trip last week? The White House said it was because Mrs. Clinton got hurt, but insiders are telling a very different story.”

Cosby disclosed: “Sources tell Fox News the reason it abruptly ended was because the First Couple had a shouting match which left Hillary Clinton storming out of the room, saying she wanted her bags.”

After letting Democratic hack Peter Fenn suggest strains are expected in a marriage after what they have been through, Cosby continued: “A Clinton family friend tells Fox News that the First Couple barely speak in private, that quote: ‘They have nothing to talk about anymore. The only thing they have in common is Chelsea.’”

Now that’s journalism. Today we have all these ridiculous stories about manipulated intelligence and unconventional weapons and revealing the names of undercover CIA agents. Don’t they realize that important people don’t have time for these petty distractions? Don’t they understand that unless the mushroom cloud is a smoking cigar that there is no need for this obsessive coverage of so-called “crimes” in the government? Where will it end? Before you know it, they’ll be saying that even lying about the reasons for war is illegal and then where will we be?

Sarcasm aside, it occurs to me that CNN made itself into a powerhouse with the first Gulf War. FoxNews grew to its current status riding on Clinton’s penis. Rovegate and the Machine Scandals belong to MSNBC right now and could translate into some real ratings if they play their cards right. So far, they are the go-to network on these stories.

In order to gain political advanatage there has to be a central television clearing house for all things scandal related. I think MSNBC is ripe to lead this story. And they are, coincidentally, the most blog-friendly network, with the web-site being one of the earliest entries into the blogosphere and TV personalities Olbermann, Shuster and Matthews actually producing real blog material. Perhaps they will be open to some of the research and analysis the blogs provide to help inform their coverage.

I know we all hate the dreaded MSM and all, but the unpleasant reality is that the TV news media are essential to advancing a story like this, sticking with it, plucking the best performers from the Barbizon school of blond former prosecutors to provide commentary. I think it’s MSNBC’s story. We should keep up the pressure on them to do it right — which includes acknowledging it when they do.

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George Packer

Shorter George Packer :

Stop telling me you told me so, you fucking anti-war assholes!

No, Tristero, how dare you! Packer’s too brilliant and thoughtful an intellectual to be that crude, isn’t he? I mean, like he writes for The New Yorker and everything.

Ok, ok, I’m sorry, really, I am. But… well, just for the heck of it, let’s “engage” our eloquent, weighty Mr. P., since he deems such engagement the sign of a first-rate mind and yeah, I really, really care what his opinion of my mental ability is. Packer types:

Before the invasion, there was the possibility of a world without Saddam Hussein and of an Iraq that no longer threatened endless violence in its volatile region — which was attractive. There was also the certainty of death and destruction in a new war, and the many reasons to doubt that this administration was up to the job — which was frightening. [Italics added]

In fact, Packer is right, but he doesn’t know it. There was indeed the possibility he mentions, by following the revised sanctions regime that Lopez and Cortright discussed in an all-but-totally-ignored article in Foreign Affairs in July/August, 2004.(The link is to a “liberated” copy.):

The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has prompted much handwringing over the problems with prewar intelligence. Too little attention has been paid, however, to the flip slide of the picture: that the much-maligned UN-enforced sanctions regime actually worked. Contrary to what critics have said, we now know that containment helped destroy Saddam Hussein’s war machine and his capacity to produce weapons.

[snip]

The United Nations sanctions that began in August 1990 were the longest running, most comprehensive, and most controversial in the history of the world body. Most analysts argued prior to the Iraq war — and, in many cases, continue to argue — that sanctions were a failure. In reality, however, the system of containment that sanctions cemented did much to erode Iraqi military capabilities. Sanctions compelled Iraq to accept inspections and monitoring and won concessions from Baghdad on political issues such as the border dispute with Kuwait. They also drastically reduced the revenue available to Saddam, prevented the rebuilding of Iraqi defenses after the Persian Gulf War, and blocked the import of vital materials and technologies for producing WMD.

The unique synergy of sanctions and inspections thus eroded Iraq’s weapons programs and constrained its military capabilities. The renewed UN resolve demonstrated by the Security Council’s approval of a “smart” sanctions package in May 2002 showed that the system could continue to contain and deter Saddam.

That’s right, boys and girls, just around the time the fixing of the intelligence was ramping up – spring of 2002 – the UN had refined the sanctions regime.

Dismissed by hawks as weak and ineffective and reviled by the left for its humanitarian costs, the sanctions regime has had few defenders. The evidence now shows, however, that sanctions forced Baghdad to comply with the inspections and disarmament process and prevented Iraqi rearmament by blocking critical imports. And although many critics of sanctions have asserted that the system was beginning to break down, the “smart” sanctions reform of 2001 and 2002 in fact laid the foundation for a technically feasible and politically sustainable long-term embargo that furthered U.S. strategic and political goals.

The story of the nearly thirteen years of UN sanctions on Iraq is long and tortuous.

[I’ve snipped a long and torturous history of those sanctions. Actually, it’s interesting, but here’s the conclusion:]

Of course, no sanctions regime can be 100 percent effective; smuggling and black marketeering inevitably develop. Baghdad labored mightily to evade sanctions, mounting elaborate oil-smuggling and kickback schemes to siphon hard currency out of the oil-for-food program. Investigations by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) and The Wall Street Journal put Iraq’s illicit earnings at $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion a year. An updated GAO report estimated that illegal Iraqi revenues from 1997 through 2002 amounted to $10.1 billion, about 15 percent of total oil-for-food revenues during that period.

Still, the sanctions worked remarkably well in Iraq — far better than any past sanctions effort — and only a fraction of total oil revenue ever reached the Iraqi government.

[Snip]

In the run-up to war [in 2003], some in Washington acknowledged the impact of inspections and sanctions but believed that sanctions would soon collapse. Kenneth Pollack reiterated this argument in a January 2004 article in The Atlantic Monthly, insisting that war was necessary because “containment would not have lasted much longer” and Saddam “would eventually have reconstituted his WMD programs.” Support for sanctions did indeed begin to unravel in the late 1990s. But beginning in 2001, the Bush administration launched a major diplomatic initiative that succeeded in reforming sanctions and restoring international resolve behind a more focused embargo on weapons and weapons-related imports.

One major reason for this renewed consensus was the creation of a new “smart” sanctions regime. The goal of “smart” sanctions was to focus the system more narrowly, blocking weapons and military supplies without preventing civilian trade. This would enable the rehabilitation of Iraq’s economy without allowing rearmament or a military build-up by Saddam. Secretary of State Colin Powell launched a concerted diplomatic effort to build support for reformulating sanctions, and, in the negotiations over the proposed plan, agreed to release holds that the United States had placed on oil-for-food contracts, enabling civilian trade contracts to flow to Russia, China, and France. Restrictions on civilian imports were lifted while a strict arms embargo remained in place, and a new system was created for monitoring potential dual-use items. As the purpose of sanctions narrowed to preventing weapons imports without blocking civilian trade, international support for them increased considerably: “smart” sanctions removed the controversial humanitarian issue from the debate, focusing coercive pressure in a way that everyone could agree on. The divisions within the Security Council that had surfaced in the late 1990s gave way to a new consensus in 2002. The pieces were in place for a long-term military containment system. The new sanctions resolution restored political consensus in the Security Council and created an arms-denial system that could have been sustained indefinitely.

In the months prior to the invasion, as Bush administration officials threatened military action and dismissed sanctions as useless, additional suggestions were offered to strengthen the sanctions system. Morton Halperin, former director of policy planning at the State Department, recommended a “containment plus” policy during July 2002 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The goal of such a system, Halperin said, “would be to tighten the economic embargo of material that would assist Iraq in its weapons of mass destruction and other military programs as well as reducing Iraq’s receipt of hard currency outside the un sanctions regime.”

Additional measures could have further refined and strengthened the sanctions regime. These could have included provisions to establish sanctions assistance missions and install detection devices on Iraq’s borders to monitor the flow of goods across major commercial crossings; to eliminate kickbacks by preventing unscrupulous firms from marketing Iraqi oil and mandating public audits of all Iraqi oil purchases; and to control or shut down the reopened Syria-Iraq pipeline. This last option, especially, was an obvious, feasible step that would have immediately reduced the flow of hard currency to Baghdad. The other measures would have taken more time and diplomatic capital, but the United States had enormous leverage, precisely because it threatened military attack, and it could have used its clout to tighten the noose. Syria and other neighboring states, for example, could have been persuaded to cooperate in containing Iraq in exchange for improved diplomatic relations with Washington. This would have solidified long-term containment and laid the foundation for improved political relations in the region. As with other nonmilitary options for achieving U.S. aims, however, such proposals to enhance containment were cast aside and ignored.

The adoption of “smart” sanctions in Iraq was a diplomatic triumph for the Bush administration. It was followed a few months later by Iraq’s acceptance of renewed inspections and Security Council approval of a tougher monitoring regime in Resolution 1441. Indeed, the Bush administration spent its first two years methodically and effectively rebuilding an international consensus behind containment. By the fall of 2002, it had constructed the core elements of an effective long-term containment system — only to discard this achievement in favor of war. [Emphasis added]

In short, if Lopez and Cortright are correct, there was a very good chance everything Packer hoped to achieve could have been achieved without war. I have yet to see a detailed refutation of Lopez and Cortright’s assertions or facts.* Packer doesn’t even bother to mention the sanctions in his op-ed.

That’s right, despite all his hoohah about keeping an open mind (see below), Packer doesn’t even consider the sanctions worthy of mention. Packer writes:

In the winter of 2003, what you thought about the war mattered less to me than how you thought about it. The ability to function meant honest engagement with the full range of opposing ideas; it meant facing rather than avoiding the other position’s best arguments. In those tense months, the mark of second-rate minds was absolute certainty one way or the other.

Among those who were absolutely certain the war was doomed to failure were Ted Sorenson, Arthur Schlesinger, Richard Clarke, John Le Carre, Harold Pinter, the CEIP, Sy Hersh, and many, many others. Second-rate losers, the lot of ’em.

“The war is not an argument to be won or lost; it’s a tragedy,” Packer types as the final zinger to his op-ed. It sure sounds beautiful and thoughtful, it makes me want to weep. Oh, the humanity! But as far as I can tell, it doesn’t really mean a goddamm thing. Well, actually it does. In fact, the meaning’s crystal clear:

Stop telling me you told me so, you fucking anti-war assholes!

*[UPDATE: Reader JS sent a link that strongly criticized the “smart sanctions” discussed above, as a cynical hoax. It was written by Joy Gordon, who has written extensively on the sanctions (a book is to be published), and the Oil for Food program. JS also referenced another Gordon article about the numerous problems with sanctions. Both were published before the Lopez and Cortright article. JS concludes her letter:

“In short, Lopez and Cortright are not right about smart sanctions.

‘What we should be saying is that the Inspection regime worked. The UN administration (monitoring on the ground in Iraq) worked. But the behavior of the US and the UK at the New York end was inexcusable and unnecessary. And deadly.”]

Engine Seizure

What a morning.

Instead of discussing the biggest story in town (in which he happens to be intimately involved) Russert spent almost the entire hour helping Louis Freeh smear Bill Clinton. This was after letting Condi Rice get away with saying, “we could decide that the proximate cause was al Qaeda and the people who flew those planes into buildings and, therefore, we would go after al Qaeda…or we could take a bolder approach.” Too bad about the terrorism.

On ABC Joe Klein, George Will and Fahreed Zakaria might as well have been wearing powdered wigs and sniffing snuff with their pinkies raised as they rolled their eyes and knowingly pooh-poohed the leaking of classified information, deploring the wanton criminalization of politics that has taken place under King George’s reign.

Stephanopoulos, to his credit for once, actually reported the story everyone in Washington actually cares about and even got Joe DeGenova to admit that Fitzgerald not only should pursue charges if anybody in the white house lied to him — he had a duty to do so. Apparently, he and his ball and chain, Victoria Toensing, aren’t yet on the same page about Fitz — she said the other day that he had “lost it!” He’d “gone over the edge.!”

Steph also surprisingly called on the perfumed courtiers on their casual dismissal of powerful government officials outing undercover CIA operatives to cover-up their lies about the reasons for an illegal war of aggression. Perhaps he was stung by the fact that in order to join the Kewl Kidz he was forced to turn on his political mentor with all the breathless sanctimony of a born again drug addict while the kewl kidz now thinks its terribly droll that the powers that be play political games with national security. IOKIYAR, Stephie. Remember that.

I didn’t hear anybody mention this, and it’s big:

Even before testifying last week for the fourth time before a grand jury probing the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity, Bush senior adviser Rove and others at the White House had concluded that if indicted he would immediately resign or possibly go on unpaid leave, several legal and Administration sources familiar with the thinking told TIME.

Resignation is the much more likely scenario, they say. The same would apply to I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the Vice President’s chief of staff, who also faces a possible indictment. A former White House official says Rove’s break with Bush would have to be clean—no “giving advice from the sidelines”—for the sake of the Administration.

From, the way his lawyers are talking, they seem pretty convinced that Rove is likely to be indicted:

Rove’s defense team asserts that President Bush’s deputy chief of staff has not committed a crime but nevertheless anticipates that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald could find a way to bring charges in the next two weeks, the source said.

Of course Rove will be giving his advice from the sidelines, but without him being on the spot, his power and influence will be a shadow of what it was. And frankly, I’m not sure if I’m more nervous at the idea of Karl Rove staying in the White House or leaving it. George W. Bush has had Karl Rove at his side for his entire political career. Every minute. It’s impossible to imagine him functioning without him.

George W. Bush is a creature of Karl Rove’s imagination. He invented him. I would bet money that Dick Cheney is no longer a trusted second in command. It looks like he and his little dog Scooter may have taken Turdblossom down with them. If Rove goes, for better or worse (and I don’t actually think it could be worse) the United States will effectively no longer have a president.

I wonder if James Baker is on call. He’s the loyal Texan the Bushes usually call to clean up their shit. If he’s not up for it this time it looks like Andrew Card or Ed Gillespie will be running the most powerful nation on earth for the next three years. Jesus.

Keep in mind that the political machine is also on the defensive from all directions — DeLay, Abramoff, Reed, Norquist, Frist even Lou Sheldon and James Dobson are now in the sights of federal prosecutors. And then there’s Ronnie Earle. The Harriet Miers crack-up may just be a preview. The top-down, centralized Republican machine is seizing up and it’s about to explode.

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Judy’s War, And Matt’s

Five more American soldiers died in Iraq. They died not only because Saddam surely had Weapons of Mass Destruction. They also perished for America’s noble mission to spread democracy where once trod the heavy boot of tyranny.

Christ, this war make me sick.

The Trifecta

Abramoff quietly arranged for eLottery to pay conservative, anti-gambling activists to help in the firm’s $2 million pro-gambling campaign, including Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, and the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition. Both kept in close contact with Abramoff about the arrangement, e-mails show. Abramoff also turned to prominent anti-tax conservative Grover Norquist, arranging to route some of eLottery’s money for Reed through Norquist’s group, Americans for Tax Reform.

It’s late. Am I dreaming?

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Question

For any of you professional journalists out there: how common do you suppose it is for the pentagon to give a reporter “clearance to see secret information?”

I think we need another conference on blogger ethics because I’m getting all confused again.

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Libby’s Defense

It occurs to me in reading Judy’s description of her testimony that the very nature of the investigation has required Fitz to at least peripherally examine the bogus WMD claims. If somebody goes to trial, this is going to be an issue. Judy went into some detail about what the administration was selling during the summer of 2003:

As I told the grand jury, I recalled Mr. Libby’s frustration and anger about what he called “selective leaking” by the C.I.A. and other agencies to distance themselves from what he recalled as their unequivocal prewar intelligence assessments. The selective leaks trying to shift blame to the White House, he told me, were part of a “perverted war” over the war in Iraq.

[…]

As I told Mr. Fitzgerald and the grand jury, Mr. Libby alluded to the existence of two intelligence reports about Iraq’s uranium procurement efforts. One report dated from February 2002. The other indicated that Iraq was seeking a broad trade relationship with Niger in 1999, a relationship that he said Niger officials had interpreted as an effort by Iraq to obtain uranium.

My notes indicate that Mr. Libby told me the report on the 1999 delegation had been attributed to Joe Wilson.

Mr. Libby also told me that on the basis of these two reports and other intelligence, his office had asked the C.I.A. for more analysis and investigation of Iraq’s dealings with Niger. According to my interview notes, Mr. Libby told me that the resulting cable – based on Mr. Wilson’s fact-finding mission, as it turned out – barely made it out of the bowels of the C.I.A. He asserted that George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, had never even heard of Mr. Wilson.

As I told Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Libby also cited a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, produced by American intelligence agencies in October 2002, which he said had firmly concluded that Iraq was seeking uranium.

[…]

Although I was interested primarily in my area of expertise – chemical and biological weapons – my notes show that Mr. Libby consistently steered our conversation back to the administration’s nuclear claims. His main theme echoed that of other senior officials: that contrary to Mr. Wilson’s criticism, the administration had had ample reason to be concerned about Iraq’s nuclear capabilities based on the regime’s history of weapons development, its use of unconventional weapons and fresh intelligence reports.

Needless to say, further events proved Mr Libby and the rest of the adminstration to be asses. That, however, is only partly relevant to the fact that this testimony seems to lead inexorably to an examination of the WMD claims that Libby referenced. There’s a lot of detail there that will have to be dealt with if there’s a trial. Perhaps we now know something of what is in those 8 pages of redacted evidence that convinced Judge Tatel that this case was important enough to send Miller to jail for.

And if Libby wants to defend his version of events to Judy Miller, keep this in mind, from that little noticed column from last month referring to a classified Inspector General report that places the blame for 9/11 and the WMD failures on George Tenent:

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, the former CIA director 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…In deciding not to become the fall guy, Mr. Tenet has made a fateful decision. The latest salvo in the ongoing wars between the CIA and the White House may be about to burst. Until now, Mr. Tenet has kept silent about what Mr. Bush knew and when he knew it. Mr. Tenet’s decision to defend his own role in September 11 puts the White House back in the spotlight. The only way he can push off responsibility is to push it higher up the ladder.

There is a lot of pressure building on the Iraq lies coming from a lot of different directions.

For a thorough rundown of the feud between the white house and the CIA, read this post by ReddHedd at firedoglake.

For a historical view of the neocons and the CIA (and the difference between the left and right’s view of the spooks) read this moldy old post of mine.

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Victor/ Victoria

There is much to chew over in Judy’s magnum opus and I’m going to have to give it some quality time tomorrow. But the first thing that jumps out at me is this weird “Victoria” thing.

Somebody was calling Valerie Plame, Victoria — Judy isn’t the only one to make that mistake. Kevin Drum caught this in October:

NEEDED: ONLINE EDITOR….Howard Fineman in Newsweek yesterday:

I’ll stipulate that it is a felony to disclose the name of an undercover CIA operative who has been posted overseas in recent years. That’s what the statute says. But the now infamous outing of Victoria Plame isn’t primarily an issue of law. It’s about a lot of other things….

Um, anyone notice the problem here? And it’s repeated three more times. Maybe Newsweek needs to hire Dan Weintraub’s editor.

In the comments one of his commenter noticed others:

A quick Google search shows several incidents of the name Victoria Plame such as in the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the International Herald Tribune.

It’s certainly possible that a whole bunch of people made the same mistake about her first name. It’s odd, though. One might think that it is more likely that it was one person who consistently referred to her by the wrong name — who was speaking to a bunch of reporters.

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Our Tax Dollars At Work

The New York Review of Books links to this recent heartbreaking, enraging account of systematic torture of Iraqis by American troops, CIA types, and others by Human Rights Watch. It demands a detailed accounting from this government but of course it won’t get one, partly because not even American moderates take seriously anything a group like Human Rights Watch says concerning US human rights abuses. These are our tax dollars at work, present tense intended. The recent resolution from Congress condemning torture surely will be ignored.

And that, my friends, is the direct result of the wildly successful efforts of the Bush right to marginalize all organizations and individuals that fail to hew to a right to far right attitude regarding American foreign policy.

Human Rights Watch is neither left or right (this would go without saying if our political discourse wasn’t so grossly distorted, but it bears repeating in the present climate). It simply details human rights abuses everywhere regardless of the polarity of the government. It is incredible, truly incredible, that even today Americans, even Americans unalterably opposed to torture, believe that reports like HRW’s need to be “balanced” with the official propaganda line of the Bush government in order to arrive at the real truth about Iraqi torture, which “surely lies somewhere in between.” It doesn’t. Plain and simple, HRW’s account is horribly accurate and Bush’s assurances are lies that should receive only minimal coverage by responsible reporters.

It is long overdue for groups like HRW to get accorded the “moderate US mainstream” respect they deserve, and get acknowledged for the incredible courage it takes to report these kinds of abuses. While it is a secondary issue to the sheer immorality of torture, if ever there was a program designed to make overseas travel and work by Americans more dangerous, it is a policy of systematic torture of prisoners.

Once again, the Bush administration demonstrates that they are prepared to dangerously undermine American interests while branding all critics as leftwing scoundrels and traitors. And once again, they are full of shit.