Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Making Rove Happy

by digby

Murray Waas has a very interesting article up today that reveals that the Plame smear happened concurrently with another smear job against Francis Townsend. It’s pretty clear that the cabal around Cheney has been operating as a shadow government within the White house agitating for its own policies from the beginning. (And Scooter Libby is a real piece ‘o work.)

The senior staff in the Office of the Vice President adamantly opposed Townsend’s appointment. The staff included two of Cheney’s closest aides: Libby, then the chief of staff and national security adviser to the vice president; and David Addington, who at the time was Cheney’s counsel but who has since succeeded Libby as chief of staff.

Among other things, Libby and Addington believed that Townsend would bring a more traditional approach to combating terrorism, and feared she would not sign on to, indeed might even oppose, the OVP’s policy of advocating the use of aggressive and controversial tools against terror suspects. One of those techniques is known as “extraordinary rendition,” in which terror suspects are taken to foreign countries, where they can be interrogated without the same legal and human-rights protections afforded to those in U.S. custody, including the protection from torture.

Libby’s opposition to Townsend was so intense that he asked at least two other people in the White House to obtain her personnel records. These records showed that she had been turned down for two lesser positions in the Bush administration because of her political leanings, according to accounts provided by current and former administration officials. Libby also spoke about leaking the material to journalists or key staffers or members on Capitol Hill, to possibly undercut Townsend, according to the same accounts.

I am going to take a great speculative leap here and suggest that Rove helped Libby with the Wilson smear at least partially as a way to smooth things over after he was ordered to support Townsend. Maybe that’s what led him to take that walk down the hall and tell Scoot that he’d gotten the job done with Novak.

After all, “Official A” not only mentioned that he had spoken with Novak — he told Libby that Novak was going to write a story about it.

Libby: Junior must have blown a gasket on that Novak column about Townsend. You’re slipping old man.

(High fives Addington)

Rove: Hey, you owe me one, dude. I got him to run with the Wilson thing.

Libby: Awesome!

(high fives all around.)

There have been reports that Rove was seriously pissed that he got caught up in one of Cheney’s little bag jobs without having all the facts (for instance that Plame was a NOC.)

According to Waas, Novak and Rove corroborate each others’ version of events in the Plame matter. Novak happened to be pursuing this story on Townsend and Plame came up at the end of the conversation:

The papers on Frances Townsend that Rove had on his desk on July 9 appear to have corroborated Rove’s and Novak’s accounts to prosecutors that the principal focus of their conversation was Townsend’s appointment. But on the issue of Valerie Plame, prosecutors have been unable to determine whether in fact Novak was the one who first broached the subject, and whether Rove simply confirmed something that Novak already knew. Sources close to the investigation say this uncertainty is one of the foremost reasons Fitzgerald has not decided yet whether to bring criminal charges against Rove.

I’m not sure why that’s relevant, actually, unless Fitz has been trying to nail Rove on a conspiracy charge. As far as I know (and contrary to an earlier Waas story) Rove apparently admitted the Novak conversation from the beginning. His problems stem from his strangely vague recollection of where he got the information and repeatedly lying about the Cooper conversation, doling out the truth only in dribs and drabs as he was absolutely forced to do so.

I wouldn’t necessarily be able to prove it in a court of law, but it’s obvious to anyone who’s followed this story that there was a concerted effort to out Plame. This story today actually serves more as supplemental proof that the White house is a cauldron of intrigue and double dealing, a place in which it’s perfectly believable that outing a CIA agent for political purposes or because of interagency pique is common practice. That’s the type of people we are dealing with. But then we knew that.

But there is a little tid-bit in this article that I find very, very interesting:

Novak indicated to Rove that he was still going to write a column that would be critical of Townsend. But according to an account that Novak later provided of his conversation with Rove, he also signaled to Rove that Wilson and Plame would be the subject of one of his columns. “I think that you are going to be unhappy with something that I write,” he said to Rove, “and I think you are very much going to like something that I am about to write.”

On July 10, Novak’s column appeared in newspapers across the country, with a headline suggested by Novak’s syndicate: “Bush Sets Himself Up for Another Embarrassment.”

The column referred to Townsend as another potential “enemy within.” Novak opined that Townsend would likely prove disloyal to Bush, because she had been “an intimate adviser of Janet Reno as the Clinton administration’s attorney general,” and he pointedly noted that earlier in her career, “Townsend’s boss and patron … was [then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York] Jo Ann Harris, whose orientation was liberal Democratic.”

Four days later, on July 14, Novak wrote his now-famous column on Plame, in which he outed her as an “agency operative.”

According to the article, Rove had not been in favor of her appointment originally, but he’d been tasked by Bush to defend her in the press and by all accounts he followed orders and did that. If Novak’s statement is true, then the column that Novak thought Rove was going to be unhappy about was the Townsend article. That means that Novak knew that the column about Wilson was going to make Rove happy.

In order to understand why this is significant, you have to go back and look at the column in which Novak outs Plame. It quite mildly states that the Vice President didn’t send Wilson (which Wilson had never claimed) but it is not particularly critical of Wilson — the man with whom both Rove and Libby are reported to have been obsessed. In fact, it is surprisingly complimentary:

Wilson’s mission was created after an early 2002 report by the Italian intelligence service about attempted uranium purchases from Niger, derived from forged documents prepared by what the CIA calls a “con man.” This misinformation, peddled by Italian journalists, spread through the U.S. government. The White House, State Department and Pentagon, and not just Vice President Dick Cheney, asked the CIA to look into it.

That’s where Joe Wilson came in. His first public notice had come in 1991 after 15 years as a Foreign Service officer when, as U.S. charge in Baghdad, he risked his life to shelter in the embassy some 800 Americans from Saddam Hussein’s wrath. My partner Rowland Evans reported from the Iraqi capital in our column that Wilson showed “the stuff of heroism.” President George H.W. Bush the next year named him ambassador to Gabon, and President Bill Clinton put him in charge of African affairs at the National Security Council until his retirement in 1998.

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. “I will not answer any question about my wife,” Wilson told me.

If Novak told Rove that he would be happy with that column there can be only one reason —- Plame. And you can see why. After all, Rove has admitted to coordinating a campaign to circulate the information about Plame after Novak’s column was published.

Newsweek reported:

Wilson told NEWSWEEK that in the days after the Novak story appeared, he got calls from several well-connected Washington reporters. One was NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell. She told NEWSWEEK that she said to Wilson: “I heard in the White House that people were touting the Novak column and that that was the real story.” The next day Wilson got a call from Chris Matthews, host of the MSNBC show “Hardball.”? According to a source close to Wilson, Matthews said, “?I just got off the phone with Karl Rove, who said your wife was fair game.” (Matthews told NEWSWEEK: “I am not going to talk about off-the-record conversations.”?)

You can certainly see why Rove would be “happy” that Novak had taken the bait. It gave them the hook they needed to really go after Wilson. They were running a double game with Tenet publicly falling on his sword to calm down the yellowcake story while they were prodding the press throughout to taint Wilson as a henpecked loser who needed his wife to give him something to do.

In the end the case against Rove does appear to turn on his rolling disclosures to the prosecutor about Cooper. We pretty much knew that. But the more you hear about how this all came about the more you see what a devious, paranoid atmosphere pervades this White House. I think perhaps the country would be far better off if they were all getting blow jobs from interns instead of expending all this energy plotting against their rivals and enemies, both perceived and real.

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Ain’t She Sweet

by digby

Here’s a beautiful woman, brimming with ambition, warmth and joie de vivre:

Irreverent humanitarian Anna Benson is not just another pretty face; she is a woman to be seen and heard. With countless magazine layouts hitting the stands, she balances her time between photo shoots, interviews, and charitable endeavors.

Anna will be featured on VH1’s highest rated show, the Fabulous Life, this summer. She has been featured in several publications, including FHM, Sports Illustrated, and The New Yorker. Her sharp wit and bold assertions make her a New York Post Page 6 and US Weekly favorite. And most recently, Anna has discovered a new hobby: Texas Hold’em. After a crash course on the game and only thirty days of practice, Anna competed in the 2005 World Series of Poker. Anna The Gold Digger Benson outlasted more than half the field of experienced poker players. WPT Champion Tuan Le acquiesced that, “Anna has a natural instinct for the game; I think she will develop into a great poker player.”

But this pretty poker diva donates more than mere good looks. Her namesake charity, Benson’s Battalion, is a nonprofit organization devoted to fighting terrorism in local communities. Founded in October of 2001 with her husband, New York Mets pitcher Kris Benson, the Battalion has assisted numerous police departments, fire departments, and Emergency Medical Services through funding for equipment, supplies, and education. The Battalion was created in response to September 11, 2001. After donating $50,000.00 to the United Way, Anna and Kris still wanted to do more, and the Battalion allows them to stay actively involved in the protection of their communities. Senator Melissa Hart honored Benson’s Battalion in congress in the early part of 2004.

The minimal time that Anna has left is dedicated to managing her husband’s career, raising her three children, and contributing countless hours to several local charities, such as The American Red Cross, The Salvation Army, and St. Barnabas Hospital, where she has presided over “Presents for Patients” for the past four years. However, it is The Children’s Hospital that remains particularly close to Anna’s heart because it allows her to bring joy to children who have otherwise experienced so much pain. This love for children inspires Anna’s newest endeavors, including lobbying for children’s rights on Capitol Hill. She is a true humanitarian with a heart of gold and is always trying to make life better for society.

She’s as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside. Here are some of her humanitarian writings:

I honestly have to tell you…I hate your fucking guts. Forget about how un-American you are, how politically retarded you are, or how fat you look while slobbering your political garbage all over everyone, mainly, I despise you for the fact that you make money off of influencing the young minds of America to be Bush-haters.

You are a pariah to our nation…a fat kid that got beat up by the jocks at school, and this has formulated your hatred of America. If I didn’t know any better, I would thing George W. himself went to school with you and kicked the shit out of your pie-hole everyday for being such a candy-ass. If you are so passionate about politics, use some of your blood-making money to make it a better place instead of making movies that only benefit your fat-ass fanny-pack. No one likes to see Hollywood try to engage our minds with their ridiculous and one-sided political rants during award ceremonies. Your “movies” are just a façade for your own political agenda, which, by the way, is fucking warped.

You are a selfish, pathetic excuse for an American, and you can take your big fat ass over to Iraq and get your pig head cut off and stuck on a pig pole. Then, you can have your equally as fat wife make a documentary about how loudly you squealed while terrorists were cutting through all the blubber and chins to get that 40 pound head off of you. I dare you to go to Iraq and diarrhea all over our soldiers; they would love to strip you naked in the streets and leave you so that the terrorists can pick you up and dispose of you the way terrorists do. If you believe that Iraq and Al-Queda were not together, go over there and see for yourself.

Perhaps someone should ask for her thoughts on how the coarsening of the culture affects children the next time she testifies before congress. She’s an expert.

Link care of Tom Watson via James Wolcott.

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Tom Delay and Charlie Manson

by digby

Matthews mentioned the fact on his show today that Nixon got in trouble for saying that Charles Manson was guilty while he was still on trial. It’s true. It was a big brouhaha because it used to be considered very inappropriate for a president to weigh in on the guilt or innocence of a defendent because of the possibility he might taint the Jury Pool.

As most of you know, Rick Perlstein is currently writing a book about Nixon’s America. He tipped me to this fascinating little blast from the past. As he was exhorting the nation to respect the judicial system, here’s what Nixon said:

I noted, for example, the coverage of the Charles Manson case when I was in Los Angeles, front page every day in the papers. It usually got a couple of minutes in the evening news. Here is a man who was guilty, directly or indirectly, of eight murders without reason.

Here is a man, yet, who, as far as the coverage was concerned, appeared to be rather a glamorous figure, a glamorous figure to the young people whom he had brought into his operations and, also, another thing that was noted was the fact that two lawyers in the case–two lawyers who were, as anyone who could read any of the stories could tell, who were guilty of the most outrageous, contemptuous action in the courtroom and who were ordered to jail overnight by the judge–seem to be more the oppressed, and the judge seemed to be the villain.

The response was fierce. Here’s Ron Zeigler trying to spin his way out of it:

“The President, in his remarks to you in this room earlier, was, of course, referring to the focus of attention and the dramatics that are oftentimes put on various criminal acts, alleged criminal acts.

“Quite obviously, the President in his remarks regarding the trial now underway was referring to allegations that had been raised and are now in a court of law.

“If you take the President’s remarks in the context of what he was saying, there is no attempt to impute liability to any accused. The gist of his statement was just the contrary.

“I think when he concluded his statement in reference to the system, in concluding his remarks to you, he made it very clear that it is important that in our system, as it does exist, that individuals have the right of fair trial, although, apparently, many of you understood it to mean something other than as the President intended it in his total remarks, to suggest that he was referring to something other than the obvious, and that is the fact that he was referring to the allegations against Mr. Manson and the others on trial in Los Angeles.”

You can see why the Republicans later decided to simply go ahead and make a robot the press secretary.

Yesterday, Bush said he unequivocally believed that Tom Delay was innocent. Now one could make a case that a president should always go with a presumption of innocence. But he didn’t do that with Duke Cunningham who he said should be condemned if he did the things he is accused of. When asked about DeLay, Bush’s jaw just clenches and he says outright that he thinks he’s is innocent.

Here’s the tape at Crooks and Liars You have to see how he looked when he said it to appreciate how bizarre it was. He looks as though he’s just been goosed with an electric cattle prod. (I think perhaps the best explanation for Bush’s inappropriate jury tampering is that old Hot Tub Tom has some fond memories (and pictures) of Junior during his pre-Jesus years.)

Of course, the conservative base has intensely rallied around Delay from the beginning:

Morton Blackwell, Republican National Committee member from Virginia and a member of ACU’s board, said Republicans are being told support for Mr. DeLay is mandatory if they want future support from conservatives.

“Conservative leaders across the country are working now to make sure that any politician who hopes to have conservative support in the future had better be in the forefront as we attack those who attack Tom DeLay,” he said.

And then we all know that the christian right has, for reasons that are unclear, decided that a man named “the hammer” is a quasi-religious figure. Karl is desperate to keep the conservative evangelicals in the republican column, so supporting this criminal, power mad thug could also be seen as a small battle in the War on Christmas.

Still, it is a little bit unusual for a president to utter such unequivocal support for someone under indictment and in the crosshairs of a very serious justice department probe. But then if he didn’t he wouldn’t have any friends or supporters at all, would he. Remember this presidential pal and criminal defendent?

Soon heading to trial, the former Enron CEO implores — before a wealthy crowd — company employees to “stand up” for him.

While most people accused of corporate crimes keep a low profile before going to trial, former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay defended himself in the court of public opinion on Dec. 13 at a luncheon in Houston. Lay portrayed himself as a martyr persecuted by overzealous federal prosecutors more intent on getting a conviction than seeking the truth. He said prosecutors were engaged in a “wave of terror,” intimidating potential witnesses who could clear his name and prove that Enron “was a real company, a substantial company, an honest company.”

Lay pointed the finger of blame at Andrew Fastow, Enron’s former chief financial officer, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and securities fraud last year. Fastow is expected to testify against Lay and two other former Enron executives, Jeffrey Skilling and Richard Causey, when the three are tried together for various corporate crimes next month. Lay said he was guilty only of being “too trusting” of Fastow. He said it was the “stench” of Fastow’s misconduct that led the investing public to lose confidence in Enron.

UNUSUAL VENUE. And Enron’s fall? Lay argued that it was “public hysteria” that doomed the company rather than its business fundamentals. “Enron’s bankruptcy was caused by liquidity problems, not by solvency problems. The company’s on- and off-balance-sheet assets exceeded its liabilities by billions of dollars,” he said. Indeed, he claimed that Enron would still be a going concern if investors hadn’t panicked.

Lay chose to argue his case before the Houston Forum, a well-heeled group that engages prominent speakers like Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. It certainly was an unusual venue. Others charged with corporate crimes like, Tyco’s (TYC ) Dennis Koslowski and ImClone’s (IMCL ) Samuel Waksal, stood stoically behind their lawyers in public and couldn’t be brought to utter even “no comment.”

Says Houston attorney, David Berg, who defends white-collar criminals and follows the Enron case: “I’d never let a client make a speech like that because his words can and will be used against him.”

“AGAINST THE WALL.” It reminded Berg of Skilling’s testimony during congressional hearings in 2002: “It’s the ultimate in hubris for these guys to spout off like that,” Berg says, adding that for Lay to deliver his speech before a wealthy crowd in a ballroom at an expensive hotel didn’t help him, either.

Lay’s attorney Mike Ramsey says the speech wasn’t intended to influence jurors, which have already been selected, since the people attending the luncheon “are too smart to get on a jury that’s going to last six months.” Rather, Ramsey says, “Our backs are against the wall” in getting witnesses to help with Lay’s defense. “We’re trying to get Enron employees to speak out.”

I guess down there in texas juries like being called stupid. Interesting defense tactic.

Bush doesn’t defend Lay, of course. He just denies that he ever knew him. The bubble gets smaller and smaller.

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Losing His Woody

ReddHedd at Firedoglake noticed something in the Novak story this morning that I missed. It says:

Woodward, a Washington Post editor, recently disclosed that he, too, had been told by an administration figure about Plame’s secret identity — probably, he said, by the same source who told Novak.

ReddHedd explains:

This passage was a little mystical for me, so I confirmed with Rob Christenson that, indeed, that was what was intended, and was told that “Novak made the comment in his speech — referring to earlier remarks by Woodward.”

I haven’t heard that before either. If that’s true, we can assume that the prosecutor had already spoken with Woodward’s source since it’s clear that Novak named his sources. And if that’s so then it’s clear that this source (who Novak described as “not a partisan gunslinger”) was not forthcoming with the prosecutor.

I have thought that it was possible that Woodward could have actually heard this as gossip if it came from Armitage at the end of a conversation. But if this source (whether Armitage or someone else) told more than one reporter, then that’s obviously ridiculous. Woodward and Novak have both simply refused to admit that they were spun like tops.

Woodward has behaved as if Fitzgerald was a Ken Starr zealot trying to frame innocent administration officials and dig willy nilly into reporters’ address books so they could charge whistleblowers with a crime. Now, I don’t know where he got that impression, but it certainly wasn’t from prosecution leaks. Other reporters had testified under the waivers and none of them had complained that the prosecutor was out of line in his questioning. Woodward was one of the very few, even among the press and the strong defenders of the reporter’s privilege in the Miller/Cooper case, who seemed to think that Fitzgerald personally was some sort of zealot.

Therefore, Woodward must have been talking to people who thought it was in their best interest to give that impression to good old Bob, the faithful transcriber. People who had something to gain by making Bob Woodward think that Fitzgerald was out of control. People who knew that Bob Woodward was writing the official history of the White house during this period.

And Bob dutifully believed those people. He believed they were just gossiping, not leaking. And he believed that Fitzgerald was a junkyard dog going way beyond his mandate seeking any reason he could to indict members of the administration and jailing reporters for refusing to spill every secret they hold.

Woodward now says that he was very surprised that the prosecutor wasn’t searching madly for any possible crime with which he could charge the administration. In fact, he was quite professional and respected the reporters’ privilege, keeping narrowly to the area of questions they’d agreed to discuss. One can only hope that Woodward has had his eyes opened a little bit about how he has been played for a fool by this administration (although I doubt it.)

Novak is just mad that the administration didn’t shut down this silly investigation. He knew what was going on from the get. Woodward actually seems to have thought his sources always tell him the truth.

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Breaking News

by digby

CNN is reporting live at a motor vehicle accident in Los Angeles. Fire trucks and ambulences are on the scene. The whole nation must be riveted.

In other breaking national news, a reservoir broke in Lesterville, Missouri. One home was flooded and five people are in the hospital. So far the Dam is holding.

Oh, and the terrorists are still trying to take over the world.

Gotta go. The governor of Missouri is speaking live.

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Run For Your Lives!

by digby

I don’t know why he’s never told us this before, but the president just said that the terrorists are trying to expell the US from the middle east so that they can establish an Islamic Empire that stretches from Spain to Indonesia! And then they want to use Iraq as a base from which to launch attacks against America!

The terrorists are trying to take over the world!

If ever there was a time for the 101st Fighting Keyboarders to suit up and g-o, it is now. The American way of life is at stake.

(Alternatively, you could just keep buying cheap useless shit. That’s another good way to sacrifice.)

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Ask Junior

by digby

Newspaper columnist Robert Novak is still not naming his source in the Valerie Plame affair, but he says he is pretty sure the name is no mystery to President Bush.

“I’m confident the president knows who the source is,” Novak told a luncheon audience at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh on Tuesday. “I’d be amazed if he doesn’t.”

“So I say, ‘Don’t bug me. Don’t bug Bob Woodward. Bug the president as to whether he should reveal who the source is.’ “

[…]

Novak said his role in the Plame affair “snowballed out of proportion” as a result of a “campaign by the left.”

But he also blamed “extremely bad management of the issue by the White House. Once you give an issue to a special prosecutor, you lose control of it.”

And here I thought the president believed that they would never know who it was because reporters always protect leakers.

I also wonder exactly how Novak’s role in the Plame affair snowballed out of proportion because of a campaign by the left. Last I heard, Novak was the preferred wingnut Karl Rove used to out a CIA agent for revenge so that he could “get it out there” and then circulate the story all over town. Was his “role” actually less significant than that? What does Bob think worked the best for “the left’s” non-existent campaign —all the non-existent Democratic congressional hearings or the non-existent non-stop coverage by the liberal cable networks? I know the lefty blogs are very, very heavy duty political players and all, but as I recall they were the only form of “media” that cared about this story for more than five minutes. IIRC, the guy who really kicked things off was a senior administration official who told the washington post that the outing was done purely for revenge. Unless he or she is a lefty plant, the “campaign” really took off from there.

Once again, it’s comforting to see that right wing victimology hasn’t been diminished by its enormous power.

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Deep Throat

by digby

Something has gone terribly wrong at the Washington Post. And I’m not just talking about pauvre tinkerbell.

Get a load of Cohen:

To read George Packer’s “The Assassin’s Gate” is to be reminded that the Iraq war is not the product of oil avarice, or CIA evil, but of a surfeit of altruism, a naive compulsion to do good. That entire collection of neo- and retro-conservatives — George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and particularly Paul Wolfowitz — made war not for oil or for empire but to end the horror of Saddam Hussein and, yes, reorder the Middle East.

They were inept. They were duplicitous. They were awesomely incompetent, and, in the case of Bush, they were monumentally ignorant and incurious, but they did not give a damn for oil or empire. This is why so many liberals, myself included, originally supported the war. It engaged us emotionally. It seemed . . . well, right — a just cause.

It would be nice if Hollywood understood that. It would be nice if those who agree with Hollywood — who think, as Gaghan does, that this is a brave, speaking-truth-to-power movie when it’s really just an outdated cliche — could release their fervid grip on old-left bromides about Big Oil, Big Business, Big Government and the inherent evil of George Bush, and come up with something new and relevant. I say that because something new and relevant is desperately needed. Neoconservatism crashed and burned in Iraq, but liberalism never even showed up. The left’s criticism of the war from the very start was too often a porridge of inanities about oil or empire or Halliburton — or isolationism by another name. It was childish and ultimately ineffective. The war came and Bush was reelected. How’s that for a clean whiff?

I detect a whiff of something, that’s for sure. And it’s definitely the good shit.

I suppose you could call Bush an idealist. That whole smoking gun in a mushroom cloud thing was quite the inspiration. It’s right up there with “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

How about this for a new and relevant liberal argument: anyone who supported the war was a fool or an asshole because it was patently obvious by 2002 that this country was in the hands of an insane megalomaniacal Republican machine and the braindead sycophantic mediawhores who gratefully dined on their droppings. Anyone with half a brain knew that it wasn’t a good idea to give a blank check to crazed power mad freaks to start invading, torturing and killing at their discretion. Most of the world agreed. Not complicated. Not idealistic. Plain. Fucking. Common. Sense.

Clearly, Cohen is the model for a “good” liberal at the Washington Post these days. He doesn’t upset the White House or Patrrick Ruffini one little bit.

November 24, 2000:

“Given the present bitterness, given the angry irresponsible charges being hurled by both camps, the nation will be in dire need of a conciliator, a likable guy who will make things better and not worse. That man is not Al Gore. That man is George W. Bush.”

What a good boy. He just loves him some Junior.

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Spinning Fitz

by digby

Last night it looked as though Jim VandeHei had broken the Plame case wide open when he said on Hardball that Stephen Hadley had told Rove about Plame. Today, the WaPo is backtracking, saying that VandeHei meant Libby, not Rove. VandeHei wrote last October:

White House adviser Karl Rove told the grand jury in the CIA leak case that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, may have told him that CIA operative Valerie Plame worked for the intelligence agency before her identity was revealed, a source familiar with Rove’s account said yesterday.

In a talk that took place in the days before Plame’s CIA employment was revealed in 2003, Rove and Libby discussed conversations they had had with reporters in which Plame and her marriage to Iraq war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV were raised, the source said. Rove told the grand jury the talk was confined to information the two men heard from reporters, the source said.

This is very likely to be the “official A” conversation mentioned in the Libby indictment:

On or about July 10 or July 11, 2003, LIBBY spoke to a senior official in the White House (“Official A”) who advised LIBBY of a conversation Official A had earlier that week with columnist Robert Novak in which Wilson’s wife was discussed as a CIA employee involved in Wilson’s trip. LIBBY was advised by Official A that Novak would be writing a story about Wilson’s wife.

(Assuming he isn’t covering for a sourse who told him Hadley was Rove’s original source) VandeHei’s comment yesterday indicates that he thinks it makes sense that Rove “learned” about Plame in the very same conversation in which he told Libby he’d confirmed Plame’s CIA status to Bob Novak. I think that’s ridiculous and I suspect that this is one of the bizarre Rovian explanations that keeps Rove in Fitz’s sites.

I was trying to explain how we got to this point to a friend who had lost the threads of this story and so I wrote a little primer, as I understand it. I thought that some readers might find it useful:

The Rove version of events seems to be that Rove heard about Plame from “someone outside the white house” whose identity he can’t remember. Although he lied about it to the FBI, he admitted to the Grand Jury that he confirmed that Plame was CIA to Bob Novak and that Novak told him that he was going to write a story about it. But he also said that it wasn’t until July 10th or 11th, when he happened to be chattering in the office to Libby about this Novak call, that he really learned about Plame. He then spoke to Matt Cooper (on the morning of the 11th) spilled the beans about Plame, shot off an e-mail to Hadley saying that he “didn’t take the bait” — and then forgot all about that Cooper conversation and the e-mail.

He didn’t remember talking to Cooper when, just a week after the conversation, all hell broke loose in Washington when Novak’s column came out and it was revealed that Plame was an NOC.

He didn’t remember when he was asked to search for any documentation about Wilson and he didn’t find that e-mail to Hadley either.

He didn’t remember the conversation with Cooper when the FBI talked to him and he didn’t remember it when he first testified before the Grand Jury.

It wasn’t until the following spring when Viveca Novak “pushed back” Bob Luskin, revealing that she knew Rove was Cooper’s source and Luskin then fortuitously “found” the missing e-mail, that Rove apparently remembered the conversation.

Oddly, throughout this time he apparently did remember the Novak confirmation. And it would seem (although we don’t know this) that he remembered the Libby conversation from the beginning while completely forgetting he talked to Cooper or wrote an e-mail to Hadley on the very same day.

After the miracle e-mail appears, Rove testifies to the GJ in October of 2004 about his conversation with Cooper. He has no reason to worry about what Cooper might say because even though he issued a “waiver”, Cooper is refusing to testify and he and TIME are fighting all attempts to get them to cooperate.

At this point, it appears that all anyone knows is “gossip” that Cooper and Rove spoke. Rove says the Plame matter was a passing reference in a conversation about welfare reform.

But TIME, surprisingly, gives up the notes the next summer when the Supreme Court refuses to take the appeal and Cooper’s lawyer finds a way to get Rove to release Cooper from his promise on the day he is slated to go to jail. Unfortunately for Rove, Cooper testifies (and his notes confirm) that Rove never mentioned welfare reform and spoke at greater length and in much greater detail about Plame than he had testified to earlier.

Again,it seems that Rove has not been completely forthcoming with the prosecutor.

Fitzgerald apparently did not buy the convenient Hadley e-mail memory restoration business. (He may have been convinced that other aspects of Rove’s story don’t add up either.) He was ready to indict. It is supposedly at this point that Luskin comes forward with yet another piece of previously undisclosed information — reporter Viveca Novak is the one who set him on the trail of the Hadley e-mail back in the first part of 2004, long before Karl could have known that Cooper was on the hot seat. How this is supposed to exonerate Rove, we still don’t know.

According to VandeHei, Luskin says that this conversation took place in January of 2004 and Luskin told Rove about it before he went before the grand jury:

One possible explanation of why the date is so important is that Luskin could contend it would have been foolish for Rove to try to cover up his role when he knew — because of Novak’s disclosure to Luskin — that a number of people knew he had talked to Cooper and that it probably would soon become public.

The “why would he do something so stupid” defense rarely works and Luskin knows it. If this is his story he just threw the Hail Mary to the wrong end zone. In fact, the story is so absurd that VandeHei’s the only one who’s reporting it.

The conventional wisdom is that Luskin claimed that he started the e-mail search after he talked to Viveca Novak in either March or May, prompting Rove to go before the grand jury in October to say the e-mail jogged his memory and he now remembered the whole thing. We all assume that this is a crappy defense because it wouldn’t have taken between March and October (or May and October) to locate this e-mail. (But as Jeralyn points out, it’s possible that Luskin turned this e-mail over and offered up Rove’s recantation earlier than October and that Fitzgerald just didn’t call him to testify before then for unknown reasons.)

I don’t know how relevant it is but there seems to be a discrepancy between what Luskin and Viveca Novak told Fitzgerald. According to Novak, Fitzgerald spoke to her informally for a couple of hours on Novemnber 10th. She says that she couldn’t remember when she spoke with Luskin but it was most likely May. We know that he then put Robert Luskin himself under oath on December 2, 2005. (By all acouunts, it is highly unusual to put a suspect’s lawyer under oath.) Fitz then called Novak and requested she come in again to testify under oath this time. She says that she discovered by that time that that she had also spoken with Luskin in March but she still doesn’t know when she spilled the beans about Rove and Cooper.

I’m sure there are missing elements in what we know of Rove’s story, but this is the gist of what we know:

He lied to the FBI about being Novak’s source. He says he has forgotton important conversations and when he belatedly does remember them, he remembers them very differently than others do. He only “finds” important documents months after they are subpoenaed and when they can be used to bolster his evolving explanations. At the final hour, just as he is about to be indicted, his lawyer comes forward with yet more undisclosed information.

Time after time, Rove has played Fitzgerald for a chump, doling out bits of information only as he has to as if he were playing the Washington spin game instead of dealing with a federal prosecutor. But unlike the credulous DC press corps, who seem to have trouble keeping this story straight in their minds, Fitzgerald has a cadre of prosecutors and FBI agents, as well as a memory like a steel trap, that is keeping track of all this. Rove can’t spin his way out of this.

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Bada Bing

by digby

The reporter editor who raises questions about the appropriateness of Dan Froomkin’s column is John Harris — the same guy featured in this interview:

Paul McLeary: You covered the Clinton presidency for the Washington Post from 1995 to 2001, and during that contentious second term, what was your general take on the mood of the press corps in response to Clinton and his policies?

John F. Harris: The mood of the press corps was oftentimes kind of sour — sour in both directions. People tend to forget, for understandable reasons because the Lewinsky scandal was such a sensational affair, that 1997 was in its own way a very sullen, snippy, disagreeable year in the relationship between the White House and the press. Most news organizations — the Washington Post included — were devoting lots of resources, lots of coverage, to the campaign fund-raising scandal which grew out of the ’96 campaign, and there were a lot of very tantalizing leads in those initial controversies. In the end they didn’t seem to lead anyplace all that great.But there were tons of questions raised that certainly, to my mind, merited aggressive coverage.

Now who exactly, was asking all those “questions” do you suppose? And who, exactly, is giving John Harris and the rest of the Washington Post a hard time about Dan Froomkin today? If you guess that it’s Republicans, you’d undoubtedly be right.

Here’s a fun example of how this works:

Russert: Libby called me to complain about something he had seen on MSNBC…

Imus: What did he complain about on MSNBC, do you remember?

Russert: I haven’t gone into it,–you know-publicly-cause I just didn’t want to get involved with all that viewer complaints, but I do remember it because of his language that he chose and that’s why- I actually called Ben Shapiro, the president of NBC news and said I just gave your direct line to this guy named Lewis Scooter Libby, who is upset about something he watched on TV and you may hear from him.

I understand that the press comes under tremendous pressure when they write negative things about the administration. Their access dries up. They are frozen out of the scoops. Their bosses are called and they are asked to explain themselves. The other day when all the news outlets were gleefully reporting that Bush had come back up in the polls a bit, I could understand that the reporters were tremendously relieved to get the Republican attack dogs off their backs with a little good news for their boy.

That’s how things work. We get that. But please don’t blow smoke up our asses about “credibility” ok? We know what’s going on. The Republicans operate like the Sopranos. And they’re just as dumb. If the media would report this crap up front, we could put an end to this nonsense.

Update: Harris shakes out his lace cuff, takes a long whiff of snuff and puts Froomkin in his slaggardly, bloggy place.

Fine. Fuck it. Change the name if it bothers the “real” white house reporters so much. Call it The Whorehouse Report. It amounts to the same thing.

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