Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Hypocrite, Thy Name Is Shelby

With all the noise surrounding the Marc Rich pardon at the end of Clinton’s term, there was another pardon that the Republicans were extremely exercised about. It was surrounding Clinton’s pardon, at the behest of civil libertarians, of a man named Samuel L. Morison, who had been convicted of leaking a classified picture of a soviet ship to Janes Weekly in 1984. Certain Republicans in congress were appalled by this pardon, one of the most vocal of which was Richard Shelby.

Pardoning the only government official ever convicted of leaking classified information, the intelligence chairmen [Porter Goss and Richard Shelby] said, would do nothing to stop a torrent of media leaks in Washington. Indeed, Shelby said the pardon only underscores the need for new legislation explicitly criminalizing leaks.

In fact, he used it as an excuse to reintroduce the “Shelby Amendment” which Clinton had vetoed the year before. Richard Shelby, you see, has had an ongoing obsession about leaks and has been trying to pass laws for years that would make leaking all classified information, whether knowingly or unknowingly, a criminal offense with serious jail time.

According to the St Petersburg Times:

Shelby’s bill would make it a felony punishable by a fine or up to three years in prison for a current or retired government employee to disclose “properly classified information” to unauthorized people. Under current law, a government employee could not be convicted unless the information related directly to national defense and the leaker knew that disclosure would hurt the interests of the United States.

When he vetoed the bill, Clinton said it would impede the normal activities of government. His advisers argued that current law is sufficient but is not always enforced. The news organizations fear the tougher law would result in subpoenas being issued to journalists who published leaked information.

It should be noted that this bill was not universally supported by Republicans. There were quite a few in the libertarian camp who opposed it.

“This legislation contains a provision that will create–make no mistake about it, with not one day of hearings, without one moment of public debate, without one witness–an official secrets act,” Rep. Robert L. Barr Jr. (R-Ga).

[…]

“It has profound First Amendment implications, and goes to the very heart of the ability of the public to remain informed about matters of critical public interest, which often relate to governmental misdeeds,” they [Henry Hyde and John Conyers] wrote. “Moreover, since the Executive Branch asserts unilateral authority to define what information should be classified, this extension would grant the administration a blank check to criminalize any leaking they do not like.”

Shelby, however, was adamant that the amendment was not designed to prosecute the press, but rather government officials who leak information:

“I can assure this body that in passing [the anti-leak provision], no member of the Select Committee on Intelligence intended that it be used as an excuse for investigating the press,” Shelby said in Senate debate.

Clinton vetoed the bill and then pardoned Morison leaving Shelby frothing at the mouth and ready to reintroduce it upon Bush’s inauguration. Strangely, however, just days before 9/11 when he was to convene hearings on the matter, Ashcroft evidently asked him to shelve them until the Justice Department could evaluate the legislation. Like a good soldier, he did. Then came 9/11. Nothing more was heard until the summer of 2002, when Newsmax published this article on July 27, 2002, which they then deleted on August 1st. The Memory Hole retrieved it from the ether:

Whether the classified information is National Security Agency encrypted message intercepts of pre-Sept. 11 chatter, war plans for the invasion of Iraq, or the fact that U.S. intelligence was tracking Osama bin Laden’s wireless phone calls, leaks have more than Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney in an uproar.

[…]

“I hope we get a test case, soon, that will pit the government’s need to prosecute those who leak its classified documents against the guarantees of free speech. I’m betting the government will win,” Bruce said to an audience this week at Washington’s Institute of World Politics

[…]

“I helped pushed legislation for years to make it easier to prosecute people who willfully and knowingly leak classified information,” Shelby recently told CBS News.

“President Clinton vetoed that bill several years ago. It might be the time to try to bring it back. I’ve talked to the White House before about this. The attorney general, John Ashcroft, is working — now he’s got a task force working with some of us in the Senate to try to come up with some acceptable legislation. Maybe this fall …”

The Newsmax article above was published on July 27, 2002 and removed on August 1st. There was never any formal explanation. It may be a coincidence, but it’s noteworthy that on June 19th, 2002 someone leaked some extremely sensitive classified information about NSA encrypted intercepts to the media. This information was so sensitive that it caused Dick Cheney and George W. Bush to get very angry and call for members of the intelligence committee to cooperate with a Justice Department investigation into the matter. At the time, Democrats controlled the Senate and Bob Graham was the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Richard Shelby was the leaker. But, he didn’t exactly step forward and take responsibility. By September, he began to find himself at odds with both Porter Goss and Bob Graham over how they were conducting the investigation into the 9/11 attacks. In light of what we now know he did, his behavior at that time looks quite suspicious. One might even think he was obstructing the investigation:

Shelby accused Graham and Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, of overstepping their authority in keeping information provided by the FBI from other lawmakers and the two committees’ permanent staff. The information has been given to key staffers hired to conduct the joint committees’ inquiry.

“I must insist that we end this policy of withholding crucial information from members and our staff,” Shelby said. “We must not conduct investigations out of the full view of our members.”

[…]

While Shelby supported Graham’s and Goss’ call for an FBI probe into leaks which may have come from the joint committee, he has differed with them over the FBI’s methods. Shelby has protested the possibility that lawmakers might be subjected to lie detector tests to determine if they were the source of the reports.

Although the FBI has not asked for such tests, Graham has said he thinks lawmakers should voluntarily comply.

From what Graham said, the information being offered by the FBI was not necessarily connected to Shelby, but Shelby certainly did seem nervous that he wasn’t privy to what it was. And it was a big turnaround for him to suddenly decry the use of polygraphs:

“I don’t know who among us would take a lie detector test,” says Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.). “They’re not even admissible in court.” Shelby’s reticence was an about-face from his stance two years ago, when he spearheaded the expansion of the Department of Energy’s polygraph program as the only effective way of tracking down moles.

CBS reported:

Shelby said leaders of the inquiry realize they made a mistake in asking the FBI to investigate the leaks.

“Here we are investigating the FBI for huge failures and now we’re asking them to investigate us,” he said.

He said it also violates the government’s separation of powers.

“You know the Senate and, I assume the House, has always investigated their own,” he said.

The FBI eventually decided not to prosecute but rather turn it over to the Republican controlled ethics committee. Shelby defends himself by saying:

“My position on this issue is clear and well-known: At no time during my career as a United States Senator and, more particularly, at no time during my service as Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have I ever knowingly compromised classified information.

If that’s his reasoning, then he owes his current freedom to none other than the hated Bill Clinton. If the Shelby Amendment had been signed into law, it wouldn’t matter if he “knowingly” leaked the information or not, he’d be looking at a possible three year stint in a federal prison. (And, if he were a Democrat, he’d already have been forced to resign.)

He is no longer on the Intelligence Committee (they are rotated after eight years) and now serves as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee where his commitment to principle and accountability are once again being tested as he finds himself implicated in the Tom Delay Westar Scandal.

Richard Shelby is neither ashamed or embarrassed by his blatant hypocrisy and lack of candor. Indeed, when the leak story broke, he got right back on his favorite hobby horse and began railing against unauthorized leaks as if this never happened. Just today, a Boston Globe headline says Senator blasts investigators for naming him as leak:

Shelby’s office said, in a statement released yesterday by his spokeswoman, Virginia Davis, “It bears noting that this story represents a grotesque abuse of a public trust on the part of law enforcement.

“For someone in law enforcement to express one-sided, personal views anonymously to the media while the investigation itself is still underway and while the matter is pending before the Senate Ethics Committee is unprofessional and grossly unfair,” Shelby’s statement said.

Sometimes, you just have to step back and admire the sheer audacity of these guys.

It Must Be Habit Forming

Some people might consider this to be a serious breach of national security, but since nobody will get to say the words, “in his pants” or “in his socks” 7,432 times an hour it’s not likely to be much of a story. Besides, he’s an al Qaeda double agent which means that Republicans got all confused thinking he was a Democrat. You can’t blame them for that.

U.S. officials providing justification for anti-terrorism alerts revealed details about a Pakistani secret agent, and confirmed his name while he was working under cover in a sting operation, Pakistani sources said on Friday.

A Pakistani intelligence source told Reuters Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, who was arrested in Lahore secretly last month, had been actively cooperating with intelligence agents to help catch al Qaeda operatives when his name appeared in U.S. newspapers.

“After his capture he admitted being an al Qaeda member and agreed to send e-mails to his contacts,” a Pakistani intelligence source told Reuters. “He sent encoded e-mails and received encoded replies. He’s a great hacker and even the U.S. agents said he was a computer whiz.”

“He was cooperating with interrogators on Sunday and Monday and sent e-mails on both days,” the source said.

The New York Times published a story on Monday saying U.S. officials had disclosed that a man arrested secretly in Pakistan was the source of the bulk of information leading to the security alerts.

The newspaper named him as Khan, although it did not say how it had learned his name. U.S. officials subsequently confirmed the name to other news organizations on Monday morning. None of the reports mentioned that Khan was working under cover at the time, helping to catch al Qaeda suspects.

Hey, the polls are tanking, it was obvious by Monday morning that Ridge was pumping up the volume for politcal reasons, so you can’t blame the administration for blowing the cover of an active al Qaeda double agent. If that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes. They have an election to win, people.

Bizarro World Dick

Has anyone ever been as consistently wrong as Dick Morris? From uggabugga:

In the New York Post, Dick Morris writes about why Kerry didn’t get a bounce (or much of one) out of the convention. Here, is the last paragraph in his essay: (emphasis added)

Voters want a president with brains, not just guts, and all they saw was a warrior telling his old tales on Thursday night. And it wasn’t enough.

What can you say to this? I honestly believe that Clinton got the best of him by simply doing the opposite of whatever he recomended. It’s pretty much foolproof.

FlipFlopping Away

Sommerby must be happy. The Kerry campaign has adopted his fine riff on the $87 billion bullshit.

For Immediate Release

August 5, 2004

BUSH THREATENED TO VETO THE $87 BILLION BEFORE HE USED IT AS A POLITICAL CUDGEL

Kerry spokesman Phil Singer said: George Bush can’t be straight about his own record, let alone anyone else’s. The fact is that George Bush twice threatened to veto this bill over the fact that it provided funding to veterans and reservists. As a combat veteran, John Kerry knows that you don’t give a President a blank check to continue a failed policy, especially when our security and the lives of our men and women in uniform are at stake.

BUSH THREATENED TO VETO $87 BILLION SUPPLEMENTAL OVER ADDITIONAL FUNDING FOR RESERVISTS AND VETERANS. As part of the $87 billion emergency supplemental appropriations for security and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003, the Senate passed an amendment that provided an additional $1.3 billion for improved medical benefits for reservists and veterans. OMB Director Josh Bolten wrote to the Congressional Appropriations’ Committees, stating, “The Administration strongly opposes these provisions, including Senate provisions that would allocate an additional $1.3 billion for VA medical care and the provision that would expand benefits under the TRICARE Program. …If this provision is not removed, the President’s senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.” [Foxnews.com, 10/21/03, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,100777,00.html; BVA legislative bulletin, http://www.bva.org/aut03bulletin/l_update.html; CQ, 10/20/03]

BUSH THREATENED TO VETO $87 BILLION PACKAGE ON ISSUE OF ALLOCATING GRANTS OR LOANS TO IRAQIS. “Key senators reversed course yesterday and voted to make an $18.4 billion reconstruction package for Iraq entirely in the form of grants rather than loans, as House-Senate negotiators worked their way through President Bush’s $87 billion request for military and rebuilding operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The 16 to 13 vote represented a significant victory for Bush, who had threatened to veto the bill if Congress insisted on making Iraq repay some of the money.” [Wash Post, 10/30/03]

I’d love to see this in an ad. No mention of the lies and spin the Bush campaign has been telling about Kerry on this $87 bil, just this. In fact, I wonder if it might not be an effective campaign tactic overall to simply start calling Bush a flip-flopper as Atrios has been doing. We stole “help is on the way”, why not this? Freak ’em out.

Be Careful What You Ask For

So, according to Media Matters, Limbaugh is back to his line (helped along by one of the witnesses in the Lynndie England court martial) that the torture of prisoners was “sort of like hazing, a fraternity prank. Sort of like that kind of fun.” He even goes on to describe how he was pulled over by police recently and “was halfway hoping that one of the cops would be Lynndie England, but no such luck.”

It’s funny, that’s the first time I’ve ever agreed with Limbaugh on anything. I too have been hoping that Rush would get taken into custody by a Lynndie England (or maybe one of her little friends like Sgt. Graner or Cpl Joyner.) Oh, how I’d love to see them “haze” him just a little bit — have some “fun” with him.

He’s gonna love prison.

Counterpunch

For all you Dems who might be thinking that Kerry needs to challenge John O’Neill to a duel or something to counter that ad, it really would be the wrong thing for him to do. Especially when he has John McCain out there duelling for him.

Here, you have the Republican Party’s most beloved Vietnam veteran saying publicly, with no holds barred and within the same news cycle that this is a dirty trick and that they president should disavaow any knowledge of it. He even said, “it’s the same deal they did to me.” This is a very effective counter to the ad and the publicity surrounding it, one that carries far more weight with the media than anything Kerry or anyone else could have said.

As Dave Johnson notes over at See The Forest, this toxic smear was entirely predictable. And, as a result, I think that some of those meetings in which Kerry was supposedly trying to convince McCain to be his VP, McCain agreed to cover Kerry’s back on smears against his war record. This was very well coordinated and McCain knew exactly what he needed to say. (The Kerry campaign had his comment blastfaxed instantly.) The media have had to include McCain’s comments all day, diluting the impact of the ad and putting it into perspective.(It is only a $500,000 buy — the point was the free media coverage of it.) Even the neanderthal Limbaugh crowd have some respect for McCain and although they will undoubtedly tout the party line, it won’t have quite the same resonance. The independents and moderate Republicans love the guy. They’ll listen to him. And that is the group of voters Kerry is going after.

McCain is a good Republican, but he isn’t a Stepford Wife. This genuinely pisses him off. Getting him to serve as a spokeman for Kerry against these pricks looks like good politics to me.

Media Matters has the full debunking.

Update:

Here’s Judy Botox’s framing of the issue. I think it’s exactly the Kerry campaign wanted it framed. You can’t silence these people, but you can spin them for all but the most partisan mouth breathers. Short of taking Limbaugh off the air (and into jail, which I’m totally in favor of) there’s nothing we can do about them. But, manipulating the mainstream press is something we must do if we are going to win.

JUDY WOODRUFF, HOST: Thank you for joining us.

Well, anyone who follows the presidential race knows that John Kerry’s Vietnam military service is a key pillar of his campaign. Kerry often refers to his combat experiences, and veterans who have served with him had staring roles at the Democratic convention.

Now, a group of veterans who oppose Kerry’s White House bid is taking aim at Kerry’s war record. They’ve launched a harsh new TV ad in three battleground states, and it is already drawing fire from members of both parties.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Kerry lied…

WOODRUFF (voice-over): Vet versus vet, as the ghosts of Vietnam invade another wartime election.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: John Kerry lied to get his Bronze Star. I know. I was there. I saw what happened.

WOODRUFF: A new ad from a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth trashing John Kerry’s much heralded military service. They say Kerry lied about his heroics, lied about his injuries, and betrayed his comrades by agitating against the war upon his return to the states.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When the chips were down, you could not count on John Kerry.

WOODRUFF: Tough ad, and it’s facing some tough criticism. For one thing, none of the 13 vets featured in the spot were actually aboard Kerry’s swift boats, though some were on nearby boats. And though it’s not a Bush campaign ad, it is largely funded by top Republican contributors.

All but one of the Democrat’s surviving crewmates, some of whom starred in a pro-Kerry commercial…

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When he pulled me out of the river, he risked his life to save mine.

WOODRUFF: … have rushed to his defense. And so, has one of the nation’s most admired vets, GOP Senator John McCain, who has endorsed the president. McCain denounced the commercial as dishonest and dishonorable, adding, “I think the Bush campaign should specifically denounce the ad.”

A Bush-Cheney spokesman responds that the campaign has never and will never question John Kerry’s service in Vietnam, insisting there’s no connection whatsoever between the reelection effort and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOODRUFF: Well, as part of his comments criticizing the TV ad, Senator John McCain also mentioned his own experience running against then Governor Bush back in 2000. During that primary season, McCain faced a whisper campaign against his own military service in Vietnam. Referring to the new ad against Kerry, McCain says, “It was the same kind of deal that was pulled on me.”

We’re going to have a debate in just a moment between two Vietnam veterans, one who has endorsed John Kerry, who was with him on his swift boat, another who was part of that anti-Kerry ad we saw just a moment ago.

Then the two guys engaged in a he said/ she said, but the ad had already been discredited as a partisan smear — and McCain quite helpfully reminded everyone that Bush did the same thing in 2000, so the campaign’s protestations of innocence are pretty unbelivable. I think the strategy worked well. (And it worked a lot better than the Berger counterspin which was non-existent.)

I’ll have to watch Tweety and the networks, but I have a feeling that the story will stall out. They fed their slavering beast, but it won’t stick with the swing voters. And we partisans should shove it down Bush’s throat every chance we get.

Why does he hate veterans and war heroes so much?

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Crusader Codpiece:

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”

Journalistic Malfeasance

American Journalism Review has a very interesting analysis of the media’s coverage of the Abu Ghraib story.

There were stories out there before the pictures, but nobody seemed very interested. The images are what finally woke up the press and even then they were terribly sluggish and slow off the mark. They offer a number of different reasons: intimidation by the administration, lack of resources and access, misplaced post 9/11 “patriotism”, physical danger in Iraq, complaints by conservative readers and others.

One of the things it touches upon but doesn’t really expound on is the fact that most of the sources for these stories, until Joseph Darby’s name became known, were all Iraqis. And, I believe that because of that it was assumed that they were lying. I wrote yesterday about the Center for Constitutional Rights report by the three British prisoners who were released from Guantanamo. I thought for a bit if I should put in some qualifiers about their story because, after all, we only have their word for it. Normally, I would have written something like “even if only half of what they say is true it’s…” I didn’t do that because after a few moments reflection I realized that there was already so much information out there confirming that the US had legally justified torture, had developed systematic torture schemes and had actually perpetrated torture (we’ve all seen the pictures) that the burden of proof was now on the US, not these prisoners. I believed them.

Journalism, however, in its fetish to provide “balance” even when common sense tells you there is no balance, will continue to present these stories with a built in skew to the administration’s side of the story. If it’s covered at all, you have the word of a trio of muslim ex-prisoners against the pentagon. You have the word of petty criminals against the CIA and the Army. Without visual proof, many reporters and many people will simply not take the word of “the enemy” over Americans. Indeed, even with visual proof they find themselves scrambling to excuse behavior that can only be seen as disgusting and sadistic.

And, one cannot ignore the outrageous excess of the news media after 9/11, wallowing in jingoism and signing on to the US “war” effort, no questions asked. In the AJR article I still don’t hear a lot of remorse for having missed the big picture on the torture story. This, despite the fact that the discussion of whether torture should be used was right out and in the open since 9/11. The press was reporting actual incidents of it since December 26, 2002 when Dana Priest and Barton Gellman wrote a story in the Washington Post detailing torture allegations, replete with MP’s “softening up” prisoners beating them and throwing them against walls. When asked why they didn’t follow up, editor Len Downie says,” in part, obviously, because information was not made readily available, and in part because we didn’t always see the tip of the iceberg as clearly as we should have.”

The press not only misses the tips of icebergs these days, they are actively helping to steer the ship into them, cheering and clapping along the way.

This problem with journalism is not simply a problem for the Democratic party. It is a serious national issue that goes beyond politics. The world is more and more fast paced and complicated and we must be able to depend upon at least some parts of the news media to resist the temptation to jump on the entertainment or propaganda bandwagon and see the forest for the trees. These last few years have been a disaster for journalism. And, aside from the predictable mea culpas after the fact, this article and all the others suggest there is little reason to hope that it will change.

Disenfranchisement By P.O. Box

Here’s a new one. Apparently somebody has gotten the bright idea to get a hold of voter registration rolls and send in change of address forms to the registrar of voters. When you go to your polling place you find out you’re not on the roll for that precinct. There’s no way to prevent such things and I’m not sure it’s even against the law.

I know that some places have provisional ballots, but it would probably be a good idea to check with the registrar if you don’t receive your sample ballot in the mail. This person lives in a Democratic leaning area in a swing state, but I wouldn’t dream of drawing any conclusions from that.

Update: It appears that this was atually a misunderstanding rather than a dirty trick. There was a time when I would have assumed that when I read it, but no more.

Rallying ‘Round The Flag

Harold Meyerson has written a fine article in the LA Weekly about the Democrats taking back the flag. Meyerson, it should be noted, is not exactly a flag-waving hawk so this view is representative of something of a sea change. Democrats have truly regained their patriotic voice, extolling real American virtues and strength in ways far more useful than the other side in the wake of 9/11. Republicans used that awful day as an excuse to let go of all civilized restraint. Democrats have seen that awful day as a call to civic duty. We finally got tired of being told that we didn’t love our country.

Meyerson writes:

Coming out of the convention, they march for Kerry, too – and, for many of them, for the first time. They march for him because in his speech, he successfully took the fight to the enemy – not merely suggesting that his own credentials and perspectives would make him a better commander in chief than Bush, but because, in conjunction with a number of speakers who preceded him to the podium, he reclaimed patriotism from the right.

Back in April of 03, before Sleepless in Seattle blogging and after Bush’s midterm “triumph of the will” tour and the invasion of Iraq, I like every other political junkie Democrat was trying to figure out a strategy to win this election. I was convinced then and remain so that the election would be won or lost on the terrorism issue and that patriotism would be the underlying theme. I wasn’t the only one by far, and now it has actually come to fruition. In my opinion, it’s long overdue.

Mindless jingoism is often mistaken for patriotism in this country and that’s wrong. I’m not much of a sentimentalist, but I really am fond of the Bill of Rights and all that flowed from them and I’m sick of right wing morons telling me that I’m not patriotic because I refuse to goosestep to their tune.

I wrote back then:

I believe that Democrats should give no ground on this. We represent real American values and we have every right to use the traditional language and symbols of patriotism to express that. We are the ones who stand for the constitution and the American system of justice, which we hold so dear that even in times of war we do not waver. We are the ones who believe in the sacred American values of Liberty, Equality, Opportunity and Democracy and we are the ones who work to ensure that every American, not just the privileged, share in them. We are the ones who have faith that America is strong enough to survive any challenge without sacrificing those values. The flag and Sousa and apple pie and love of country are not the exclusive property of the Republican Party; they belong to all Americans. We should take them back.

Or, much better, as the inimitable farmer wrote in the comments section:

So, as Digby is getting at, its now up to liberals to restablish their dominance in the political marketplace. To market a high quality product in a highly visible high quality package. A better deal, more for your money, at a better price. Something that you can plant and it will grow for you. A real live perennial tree of liberty that you can plant in your own back yard. Not a nut tree either. Too many nut trees already. Rather, a big sprawling sugar maple, or a big blue atlas cedar. Or an apple tree, the kind you can make your own fresh pies from for years and years. Mom will love it. Mom and her apple pie tree. Its a patriotic American living thing and it arrives in a traditional hoop bound oak stave barrel half all ready to be planted in Washington DC. Ships in 2004, order today.

In stock now. Tell a friend.