Category Archives: Valerie Plame

Semisoftball

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I’ve been watching MSNBC’s Hardball this week, even though I swore off a couple of years ago. Truly, it’s better than Six Flags. There are thrill rides–Chris Matthews and guests go swooshing through the murky depths of rightie disinformation, shoot up to a brief moment of clarity, then tumble down again. Long-debunked lies and some startling actual facts are on display. Frank Rich and Amy Goodman have been recent guests, accompanied by the usual sideshow freaks–e.g., Stephen Hayes, Victoria Toensing, and the alleged “reporter” Andrea Mitchell.

What’s made Hardball worth watching is Chris Matthews’s glimmer of a clue. No, really. The owner of one of the thickest skulls on television, in Billmon’s words, “kinda sorta gets it.” From Matthews’s MSNBC “blog”:

That’s the environment in which this whole thing may have been hatched. If there was law-breaking, it came out of the vice president and his people’s determination to protect themselves against the charge that they led us into a corrupt war, a war based on false pretenses.

That’s how hot this thing is.

If there are indictments, they’re going to be probably in the vice president’s office, they’re probably going to come next week and they are going to blow this White House apart.

It’s going to be unbelievable.

I think the people watching right now who are voters better start paying attention to this issue. It’s not just about whether somebody’s name was leaked, it’s about whether we went to war under false pretenses or not, whether people knew about that or not, and what they did when they were charged against that kind of offense against the United States.

It’s serious business.

This is not to say Tweety is entirely reformed. He and his guests remain fact-challenged about many things. For example, here is Andrea Mitchell on Tuesday’s program:

MITCHELL: I don‘t know that to be the case, but what I think people need to focus on, is the overall background of what was going on back then. This was a fight—an internal fight—between the CIA and Dick Cheney. And you can‘t overstate the case of how brutal that fight over who had the right interpretation over Saddam‘s weapons was.

And in that context, when Joe Wilson went on television with us and in interviews and said he had been dispatched by the vice president, you could understand why Dick Cheney and his people probably said no, we didn‘t send him. We had nothing to do with that, because, you know, whether Wilson was told or was simply inflating his own importance, he led people to believe, he said publicly, that he had been dispatched by the vice president.

And that was clearly not the case by every bit of reporting that I have been able to do. The vice president did not know that Joe Wilson had been sent. And so when Wilson said that, that is what set into motion all of these other events because that‘s when the vice president and his staff, presumably, tried to put out the word. Joe Wilson was not our envoy.

At TPM Cafe, Larry Johnson corrects the errors:

Gee Andrea, don’t you know how to read? Here is what Joe Wilson wrote on July 6, 2003:

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney’s office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990’s. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president’s office.

Got it! He did not write that Cheney sent him. Joe Wilson isn’t lying, Andrea Mitchell is. Moreover, when Wilson appeared on Meet the Press on July 6, 2003 with Andrea, he did not say what she claims he did. Here’s the relevant portion of the transcript:

MS. MITCHELL: But, in fact, many officials, including the president, the vice president, Donald Rumsfeld, were referring to the Niger issue as though it were fact, as though it were true and they were told by the CIA, this information was passed on in the national intelligence estimate, I’ve been told, with a caveat from the State Department that it was highly dubious based on your trip but that that caveat was buried in a footnote, in the appendix. So was the White House misled? Were they not properly briefed on the fact that you had the previous February been there and that it wasn’t true?

AMB. WILSON: No. No. In actual fact, in my judgment, I have not seen the estimate either, but there were reports based upon my trip that were submitted to the appropriate officials. The question was asked of the CIA by the office of the vice president. The office of the vice president, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked and that response was based upon my trip out there.

Shocking! Joe Wilson consistently said that the request originated with the Vice President and was passed to the CIA. Don’t stop there, that is also what the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reported in July 2004.

Be sure to read all of Larry Johnson’s post, which corrects a number of other oft-repeated falsehoods.

By the way, if you’ve got a second, please send an email to Chris Matthews with a link to the Larry Johnson article. Be polite.

Matthews’s program still suffers from a misguided attempt to create “balance” by pairing up rightes and lefties and giving both points of view equal time and equal weight even if one side is either ignorant of the facts or lying its butt off. (Most mismatched couple: Kate O’Beirne and Bob Herbert, Hardball, October 12.) As someone, I believe Eric Alterman, once said, television producers seem to think “balance” means that if someone on your program says the earth is round, you have to give the views of the Flat Earth Society equal time and respect. As if there were no such thing as objective fact. Yes, people can have diverse opinions–e.g., the potential effects of proposed tax legislation or who’s going to win the World Series. But when Andrea Mitchell misquotes Joe Wilson and calls him a liar because of something he didn’t say, and the “host” sits and lets the lie pass without correction, that’s not “balance.” And it sure as heck isn’t journalism.

Indictments or Bust

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Jacob Weisberg joins the ensemble of wankers who believe the Fitzgerald grand jury is pointless. He takes his place beside veteran wankers Richard Cohen and John Tierney, of whom it can be said that putting his New York Times column behind a subscription wall is no loss. All three gentlemen argue that there’s no evidence anyone in the Bush Administration actually broke the law, ignoring the fact that no one other than the unleakable Patrick Fitzgerald and his secret grand jury have seen the evidence. But Weisberg also makes the remarkable argument that

Anyone who cares about civil liberties, freedom of information, or even just fair play should have been skeptical about Fitzgerald’s investigation from the start. Claiming a few conservative scalps might be satisfying, but they’ll come at a cost to principles liberals hold dear: the press’s right to find out, the government’s ability to disclose, and the public’s right to know.

I’ll pause and let you read that a few more times, so you can savor the full-blown, breathtaking idiocy behind that statement.

The press’s right to find out suggests an apology for Judy Miller and the New York Times. Find out what, pray tell? Even Judy’s editors were in the dark about what she was up to, but it’s clear that she was less interested in “finding out” than in protecting her own turf. Judy was not working to uncover possible misdeeds by government, but was a player in those misdeeds. She enabled the White House to lie to the American people. That’s not protected by the First Amendment, dear. (For another look at Judy, see Christopher Dickey’s web exclusive at Newsweek.)

The government’s ability to disclose–I can barely guess what Weisberg was referring to there. Careful reading of the remainder of the article leads me to think he was referring to subpoenaing reporters because they were the recipients of government leaks. But it appears the “leaks” were not disclosures, but misinformation intended to smear a critic of the Administration. Weisberg is defending the government’s right to bully and intimidate critics into shutting up, which I don’t think was the intention of the First Amendment.

And, finally, the public’s right to know. Know what? The party line? The propaganda du jour? How about (dare I say it) facts, Mr. Weisberg? How about getting to the bottom of a government conspiracy to manipulate the press and spread disinformation in order to deceive the public into supporting a war? I’d like to know more about that, sir.

Enough of that. Other Traitorgate news–David Johnston and Richard Stevenson of the New York Times write that Patrick Fitzgerald has no plans to issue a final report. This means we’ll either get indictments or nothin’.

Raw Story reports that John Hannah, “a senior national security aide on loan to Vice President Dick Cheney from the offices of then-Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, John Bolton,” is “cooperating” with Fitzgerald and may have cut a deal.

The New York Daily News claims that President Bush “rebuked” Karl Rove when Bush found out about the leak, two years ago. Thomas M. DeFrank writes, “Bush was initially furious with Rove in 2003 when his deputy chief of staff conceded he had talked to the press about the Plame leak.” Buzzflash speculates that this is a story that was leaked to insulate Bush from Traitorgate fallout. But if the story is true, that means Bush has been in on the cover-up. Can we say “unindicted co-conspirator”? Stay tuned.

Speaking of Karl–Judy Miller wannabe Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press reports that Rove has cancelled three appearances before conservative groups.

See also yesterday’s Murray Waas report, which takes a closer look at Scooter Libby’s involvement in the mess.

The entire Traitorgate mess, some say, grew out of Dick the Dick’s war with the CIA over WMD intelligence. As part of that war, the White House installed Peter Goss as head of the CIA a year ago. Dafna Linzer of the Washington Post reports that this is not going well.

A year later, Goss is at loggerheads with the clandestine service he sought to embrace. At least a dozen senior officials — several of whom were promoted under Goss — have resigned, retired early or requested reassignment. The directorate’s second-in-command walked out of Langley last month and then told senators in a closed-door hearing that he had lost confidence in Goss’s leadership.

The turmoil has left some employees shaken and has prompted former colleagues in Congress to question how Goss intends to improve the agency’s capabilities and restore morale. The White House is aware of the problems, administration officials said, and believes they are being handled by the director of national intelligence, who now oversees the agency.

But the Senate intelligence committee, which generally took testimony once a year from Goss’s predecessors, has invited him for an unusual closed-door hearing today. Senators, according to their staff, intend to ask the former congressman from Florida to explain why the CIA is bleeding talent at a time of war, and to answer charges that the agency is adrift.

Another amazing Bush Administration appointment. Georgie Boy sure knows how to pick ’em.

Gray Lady Not a Lady Any More

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Today the Los Angeles Times takes the New York Times to task for its mishandling of Judy Miller. An editorial in today’s LAT accuses the NYT of “manufacturing a showdown with the government.”

The details of the Miller case (at least those that the paper has made public) reveal not so much a reporter defending a principle as a reporter using a principle to defend herself. There is still no satisfactory explanation, for instance, of why she changed her mind after 85 days in jail and decided to reveal her source.

Personally, I suspect the NY Times is on its way out as “the paper of record.” The Miller episode reveals very questionable standards of journalism, to say the least. And anyone (like a blogger) who routinely checks out stories from several different newspapers probably has noticed that other papers often do a better job. That, and the questionable business decision of putting popular content behind a subscription wall, suggest the Gray Lady is past her prime.

In today’s Salon (behind a subscription wall, naturally), Farhad Manjoo writes that Judy Miller’s unethical actions have created an internal mess at the New York Times that’s “bigger than Jayson Blair.”

On the one hand, it appears that Miller was not the source of Valerie Plame’s identity, as many speculated. However, Manjoo writes,

She protected — and, indeed, still looks to be protecting — people she knew were trying to discredit Wilson, even though they were possibly breaking the law, and even though she seems to have had no legal or ethical basis for doing so.

Judy Miller’s actions had less to do with protecting sources than covering her own butt.

Miller stonewalled the reporting team working on this case. Or, as the paper put it, “Ms. Miller generally would not discuss her interactions with editors, elaborate on the written account of her grand jury testimony or allow reporters to review her notes.” And that’s despite the fact that on Wednesday Judge Thomas Hogan lifted his contempt order, and Miller appears to be in no legal jeopardy in the case.

One Times staffer who spoke to Salon said her relative lack of cooperation with her colleagues is likely to continue to rankle the newsroom, even now that the story has been told. There doesn’t seem to be any sound journalistic reason for her selective silence; as Jay Rosen, the NYU journalism professor and blogger writes, “What principle of confidentiality extends to ‘interactions with editors?'”

Then there is the unbelievable fact that Miller cannot recall the most key detail in this incident, the source for Plame’s name. Discussions with some at the Times indicated that this would be the hardest pill to swallow for people there: Either Miller is lying, they said, or she’s sloppy to the point of ineffectiveness in her reporting. Neither scenario speaks for her continued employment as a star reporter.

There’s no excuse for any of that. And what were the Times editors thinking? The newspaper sank millions of dollars in Judy’s defense, yet the publishers and editors themselves had no idea what she was up to. And still don’t, apparently.

… it’s unclear why the Times allowed Miller — a reporter whose discredited work on weapons of mass destruction had recently embarrassed the paper — to be put in charge of the Times’ response to investigators looking into the Plame leak. Some revelations are astonishing: Apparently nobody at the newspaper asked to review Miller’s notes in the Plame case before allowing her to defy Fitzgerald, and before the paper’s management made her a high-profile symbol of press freedom in peril.

The Times account shows that senior management did not press Miller on her sources and what the sources had revealed to her about Plame, before backing her stance in public and in numerous editorials. It’s hard to imagine why they didn’t make sure she wasn’t being used by officials in the Bush administration who may have been breaking the law. Then there’s the matter of Miller’s own unethical actions: The Times’ report showed she lied to her editors about her involvement in the case, and maybe more disturbing, she agreed to allow Libby to hide his motives from readers by identifying him in two different ways. Why is she still working at the paper? (Unconfirmed reports say she has taken a leave of absence, but there’s no word of any disciplinary action against her.)

Rem Rieder writes in American Journalism Review:

Most disturbing is the sense that the Times at times is a ship without a skipper, or, better yet, an asylum run by the inmates. Strong leadership and editorial oversight seem hard to come by.

Take the almost casual way the paper decided to put itself at the center of such an important, high-profile legal battle – one that cost the paper millions of dollars and immeasurable credibility and trust. Yet Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Executive Editor Bill Keller didn’t trouble themselves to find out much about Miller’s dealings with her confidential source, I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff.

In recent years, Rieder says, the Times has lurched from one debacle to another. In 1999 the Times embarrassed itself by running a series of articles on an alleged espionage ring run by a Los Alamos physicist named Wen Ho Lee. When the case collapsed, the Times said, um, maybe we should have asked better questions. Yeah, maybe. Then the paper helped buttress the Bush Administration’s claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, for which it offered a faint apology last year. And then there was Jayson Blair, who got away with plagiarism and fabrication for a remarkably long time.

Arianna Huffington writes that the Times editors should have noticed the flashing warning signs:

We now know that Miller’s bosses were being warned about serious credibility problems with her reporting as far back as 2000 — a warning that came from a Pulitzer Prize-winning colleague of Miller who was so disturbed by her journalistic methods he took the extraordinary step of writing a warning memo to his editors and then asked that his byline not appear on an article they had both worked on.

In today’s WaPo, Howard Kurtz quotes from a December 2000 memo sent by Craig Pyes, a two time Pulitzer winner who had worked with Miller on a series of Times stories on al-Qaeda.

“I’m not willing to work further on this project with Judy Miller… I do not trust her work, her judgment, or her conduct. She is an advocate, and her actions threaten the integrity of the enterprise, and of everyone who works with her. . . . She has turned in a draft of a story of a collective enterprise that is little more than dictation from government sources over several days, filled with unproven assertions and factual inaccuracies,” and “tried to stampede it into the paper.”

It’s the journalistic equivalent of Dean telling Nixon that Watergate was “a cancer on the presidency.” But while the Times corrected the specific stories Pyes was concerned about, the paper, like Nixon, ignored the long-term diagnosis. And, of course, the very same issues Pyes raised in 2000 — Miller’s questionable judgment, her advocacy, her willingness to take dictation from government sources — were the ones that reappeared in Miller’s pre-war “reporting” on Saddam’s WMD.

I think the Times management, from chairman Arthur Sulzberger on down, needs to think real hard about what it is a newspaper is for. One incident of compromised reporting might be forgiven, but the Times has developed a pattern. It may not be too late for the Times to mend its reputation, but it had better start doing so now. Else we’re going to be calling it the Gray Disreputable Woman.

Plame On

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In the past couple of days many have speculated that Patrick Fitzgerald must be looking hard at Vice President Cheney’s staff if not the Dick himself. Today in the Washington Post, Jim VandeHei and Walter Pincus confirm this.

As the investigation into the leak of a CIA agent’s name hurtles to an apparent conclusion, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has zeroed in on the role of Vice President Cheney’s office, according to lawyers familiar with the case and government officials. The prosecutor has assembled evidence that suggests Cheney’s long-standing tensions with the CIA contributed to the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame.

In grand jury sessions, including with New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Fitzgerald has pressed witnesses on what Cheney may have known about the effort to push back against ex-diplomat and Iraq war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV, including the leak of his wife’s position at the CIA, Miller and others said. But Fitzgerald has focused more on the role of Cheney’s top aides, including Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, lawyers involved in the case said. …

…Lawyers in the case said Fitzgerald has focused extensively on whether behind-the-scenes efforts by the vice president’s aides and other senior Bush aides were part of a criminal campaign to punish Wilson in part by unmasking his wife.

Josh Marshall writes that three points in this story stand out. First, Fitzgerald’s investigation has dug into Cheney’s running battle with the CIA regarding Iraq intelligence. Second, Fitzgerald said he would announce his findings in Washington and not in his office in Chicago; a hint that the end is at hand, perhaps? The third is this paragraph in the WaPo story:

The special prosecutor has personally interviewed numerous officials from the CIA, White House and State Department. In the process, he and his investigative team have talked to a number of Cheney aides, including Mary Matalin, his former strategist; Catherine Martin, his former communications adviser; and Jennifer Millerwise, his former spokeswoman. In the case of Millerwise, she talked with the prosecutor more than two years ago but never appeared before the grand jury, according to a person familiar with her situation.

Josh explains:

[Millerwise] was Cheney’s Press Secretary from 2001 to 2003. She then went to work on Bush-Cheney 2004. Then in January 2005 she was appointed Director of Public Affairs for the CIA. She had apparently also worked for then-incoming CIA-Director Porter Goss on Capitol Hill. And her installation appears to have been part of Goss’s effort to install Republican operatives in key positions at the Agency. Douglas Jehl, in the Times last January, called her appointment “the latest in a series of former Republican aides to be installed by Mr. Goss in senior positions at the C.I.A.”

Weaving a Tangled Web

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Today’s buzz is that Patrick Fitzgerald is looking into Dick Cheney’s role in the Valerie Plame leak. Bloomberg reports:

The special counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, has questioned current and former officials of President George W. Bush’s administration about whether Cheney was involved in an effort to discredit the agent’s husband, Iraq war critic and former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson, according to the people.

Fitzgerald has questioned Cheney’s communications adviser Catherine Martin and former spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise and ex-White House aide Jim Wilkinson about the vice president’s knowledge of the anti-Wilson campaign and his dealings on it with Libby, his chief of staff, the people said. The information came from multiple sources, who requested anonymity because of the secrecy and political sensitivity of the investigation. …

… One lawyer intimately involved in the case, who like the others demanded anonymity, said one reason Fitzgerald was willing to send Miller to jail to compel testimony was because he was pursuing evidence the vice president may have been aware of the specifics of the anti-Wilson strategy.

And both U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan and an appellate-court panel — including David Tatel, a First Amendment advocate — said they ruled in Fitzgerald’s favor because of the gravity of the case.

Another juicy bit:

Fitzgerald has told lawyers involved in the case that he hopes to conclude soon — the grand jury’s term expires Oct. 28, although it could be extended — and there is a growing sense among knowledgeable observers that the outcome will involve serious criminal charges. “Fitzgerald is putting together a big case,” Washington attorney Robert Bennett, who represents Miller, said on the ABC-TV program “This Week” yesterday.

World o’ Crap poses a serious constitutional question:

So, if Bush gets impeached for incompetence, Cheney resigns because he’s implicated in a conspiracy that ended up outing a CIA agent, and DeLay has stepped down as Speaker of the House House Majority Leader because of an ongoing corruption investigation, then who becomes the President? (And doesn’t the Constitution specify that, per the “Three Strikes and You’re Out” clause, that this would mean that the party in charge has to retire from the field?)

Maybe we could outsource the federal government?

Meanwhile, Kevin Drum examines a possible John Bolton connection.

Punchin’ Judy

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Judy Miller’s eagerly anticipated account of her grand jury testimony is published. Already there is enough commentary on the Blogosphere to fill a library.

And today there are new questions about whether Scooter Libby tried to keep Judy quiet. Pete Yost of the Associated Press writes today,

The dispute centers on year-ago conversations that the lawyer Cheney aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby had with one of Miller’s lawyers and on a letter from Libby to Miller last month regarding their talks in the summer of 2003 that touched on covert CIA officer Valerie Plame.

In urging her to cooperate with prosecutors, Libby wrote Miller while she was still in jail in September, “I believed a year ago, as now, that testimony by all will benefit all. … The public report of every other reporter’s testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame’s name or identity with me.”

One of Miller’s lawyers, Robert Bennett, was asked Sunday whether he thought Libby’s letter was an attempt to steer her prospective testimony.

“I wouldn’t say the answer to that is yes, but it was very troubling,” Bennett said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“Our reaction when we got that letter, both Judy’s and mine, is that was a very stupid thing to put in a letter because it just complicated the situation,” Bennett said.

“It was a very foolish thing to put in a letter, as evidenced by the fact that you’re highlighting it here,” Bennett said. “It was a close call and she was troubled by it; no question about it.”

In today’s Times, Miller wrote that she’d been questioned on this point [emphasis added].

During my testimony on Sept. 30 and Oct. 12, the special counsel, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, asked me whether Mr. Libby had shared classified information with me during our several encounters before Mr. Novak’s article. He also asked whether I thought Mr. Libby had tried to shape my testimony through a letter he sent to me in jail. …

…When I was last before the grand jury, Mr. Fitzgerald posed a series of questions about a letter I received in jail last month from Mr. Libby. The letter, two pages long, encouraged me to testify. “Your reporting, and you, are missed,” it begins.

Mr. Fitzgerald asked me to read the final three paragraphs aloud to the grand jury. “The public report of every other reporter’s testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame’s name or identity with me,” Mr. Libby wrote.

The prosecutor asked my reaction to those words. I replied that this portion of the letter had surprised me because it might be perceived as an effort by Mr. Libby to suggest that I, too, would say we had not discussed Ms. Plame’s identity. Yet my notes suggested that we had discussed her job.

Mr. Fitzgerald also focused on the letter’s closing lines. “Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning,” Mr. Libby wrote. “They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them.”

How did I interpret that? Mr. Fitzgerald asked.

In answer, I told the grand jury about my last encounter with Mr. Libby. It came in August 2003, shortly after I attended a conference on national security issues held in Aspen, Colo. After the conference, I traveled to Jackson Hole, Wyo. At a rodeo one afternoon, a man in jeans, a cowboy hat and sunglasses approached me. He asked me how the Aspen conference had gone. I had no idea who he was.

“Judy,” he said. “It’s Scooter Libby.”

That’s where Judy ends the article, btw. Very weird, if you ask me.

It seems to me Judy still has some ‘spainin’ to do; if not to Fitzgerald, then to the staff and readers of the New York Times. At Editor & Publisher, Greg Mitchell writes that the Times should fire Miller and apologize to its readers. Howard Kurtz writes at WaPo that the New York Times staff is upset and demoralized by the Judy Miller episode and doubt that the newspaper’s editors and executives are being, shall we say, transparent about what’s really going on. Be sure to read James Wolcott and Steve Gilliard, too.

Other commentaries of note:

Digby argues that the nature of the testimony must have caused Patrick Fitzgerald to at least consider the bogus WMD claims made by the Regime before the invasion.

Judy Hamsher at Firedoglake says Judy and Fitz must’ve played “Let’s Make a Deal.”

Arianna says it’s no clearer now exactly why Judy Miller went to jail.

John Aravosis at AMERICAblog writes that Libby undercut Bush.

Viveca Novak and Mike Allen write in Time that, if indicted, Karl Rove and other White House staff plan to either resign or take unpaid leave. This would apply to Scooter Libby as well. The article implies that this is Karl Rove’s plan, not President Bush’s plan, which seems odd. It’s as if they know the boss can’t make decisions; they have to be made for him.

Whigs in the News

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Per Josh Marshall (see also Raw Story) a Wall Street Journal article provides tantalizing hints that Patrick Fitzgerald is after a much broader conspiracy than just the leaking of one agent’s name. Josh says,

“Mr. Fitzgerald’s pursuit now suggests he might be investigating not a narrow case on the leaking of the agent’s name, but perhaps a broader conspiracy.”

And then further down there’s this: “Lawyers familiar with the investigation believe that at least part of the outcome likely hangs on the inner workings of what has been dubbed the White House Iraq Group. Formed in August 2002, the group, which included Messrs. Rove and Libby, worked on setting strategy for selling the war in Iraq to the public in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion. The group likely would have played a significant role in responding to Mr. Wilson’s claims.”

Josh explains the significance of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG).

This group was the organizational team, the core group behind all the shameless crap that went down in the lead up to the Iraq war — the lies about the cooked up Niger story, everything. If Fitzgerald has lassoed this operation into a criminal conspiracy, the veil of protective secrecy in which the whole operation is still shrouded will be pulled back. Depositions and sworn statements in on-going investigations have a way of doing that. Ask Bill Clinton. Every key person in the White House will be touched by it. And all sorts of ugly tales could spill out.

Kevin Drum reminds us of earlier indicators:

… keep in mind that Fitzgerald has been investigating the WHIG all along, ever since the first big batch of subpoenas were delivered to the White House last year. Here’s the Washington Post in March 2004:

Aides to President Bush agreed to turn over a log of a week’s worth of telephone calls from Air Force One and other records to satisfy subpoenas from a federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA operative’s identity, White House officials said Friday.

….The subpoenas also seek documents from July 6 to July 30 relating to the White House Iraq Group, a group of communications, political, national security and legislative aides who met weekly in the Situation Room.

… Fitzgerald has been well aware of the importance of WHIG for a long time, which is the reason such a broad group of people have been subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury already. As near as I can tell, pretty much every single person associated with WHIG has already either testified or given a deposition.

Digby links to a pdf report called “Truth from These Podia: Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence, Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations in Gulf II,” which identifies “50 false news stories created and leaked by a secretive White House propaganda apparatus.” The author of this report, Col. Sam Gardiner, argues that it was not “bad intelligence” that got us into Iraq, Rather, the White House orchestrated a propaganda campaign to deceive the public into supporting the war.

Yeah, I know you know this already, but it’s still a big mystery to most Americans.

Digby quotes an August 10, 2003, article from the Washington Post by Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus:

This article is based on interviews with analysts and policymakers inside and outside the U.S. government, and access to internal documents and technical evidence not previously made public.

The new information indicates a pattern in which President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their subordinates — in public and behind the scenes — made allegations depicting Iraq’s nuclear weapons program as more active, more certain and more imminent in its threat than the data they had would support. On occasion administration advocates withheld evidence that did not conform to their views. The White House seldom corrected misstatements or acknowledged loss of confidence in information upon which it had previously relied

Again, none of this is news if you’re a news junkie. But most Americans remain utterly unaware of how they’ve been played. And the reason for this, as Digby says, is that news media are complicit. From the cable television bobbleheads who helped squelch meaningful debate to reporters like Judy Miller who acted as conduits for White House disinformation, the media aided and abetted the propaganda effort. Willingly? Willfully? Knowingly?

(Speaking of Baghdad Judy, Steve Soto at The Left Coaster reports that Judy Miller testified to Fitzgerald’s grand jury for just over an hour, and left all smiles. She was there “just long enough to hang someone else,” Steve says.)

Gene Lyons writes,

The indictments of several name-brand White House aides, should they materialize, would mark the effective end of the Bush administration’s ability to govern in anything but the narrowest formal sense .

What’s more , if ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos’ unnamed source is correct, and President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were directly involved in conversations about how to neutralize Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, after he went public about false claims regarding Iraq’s nonexistent nukes, there’s no telling where things could end .

Where, indeed. AfterDowningStreet reports that “By a margin of 50% to 44%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq.”

See also,

“CIA Leak Scandal: Rove Defied Bush’s Command?” David Corn, The Nation

“Libby Did Not Tell Grand Jury About Key Conversation,” Murray Waas, National Journal

“Scooter Libby: Screwed, Blued and Tatooed,” Jane Hamsher, The Huffington Post

“DeLay Is a King Without a Crown in the House,” Carl Hulse, New York Times

“Frist Accumulated Stock Outside Trusts,” Larry Margasak and Jonathan Katz, Associated Press

Clues

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Another Traitorgate crumb for all of us leftie bloggers to leap upon — an email sent by Karl Rove to Steven Hadley about Rove’s July 11 conversation with Matt Cooper. This just-discovered email is another piece of evidence that Rove might have lied to FBI agents and a federal grand jury. Whoopsie!

Michael Isikoff writes in this week’s Newsweek:

… Fitzgerald appears to be focusing in part on discrepancies in testimony between Rove and Time reporter Matt Cooper about their conversation of July 11, 2003. In Cooper’s account, Rove told him the wife of White House critic Joseph Wilson worked at the “agency” on WMD issues and was responsible for sending Wilson on a trip to Niger to check out claims that Iraq was trying to buy uranium. But Rove did not disclose this conversation to the FBI when he was first interviewed by agents in the fall of 2003—nor did he mention it during his first grand jury appearance, says one of the lawyers familiar with Rove’s account. …

… But after he testified, Luskin [Rove’s lawyer] discovered an e-mail Rove had sent that same day—July 11—alerting deputy national-security adviser Stephen Hadley that he had just talked to Cooper, the lawyer says.

In the email, Rove said he had just talked with Cooper about the Niger uranium controversy.

I liked this part:

Why didn’t the Rove e-mail surface earlier? The lawyer says it’s because an electronic search conducted by the White House missed it because the right “search words” weren’t used.

Yeah, they tried Hillary, Saddam, and garden gnome. Yet, somehow, they missed it.

Isikoff also reminds us that a hitherto-unknown Judy Miller notebook recently came to light. The notebook contained notes from a conversation Miller had with Scooter Libby about Joe Wilson and the mission to Africa; Wilson’s identity was not yet public (see timeline in this post). Emptywheel of The Next Hurrah speculates further about Judy.

Speaking of who-knew-what, eriposte at The Left Coaster has evidence that our boy JimmyJeff knew about the classified State Department intelligence memo mentioning Valerie Plame before knowledge of the memo had been made public. There’s background about this memo here.

Tired of This

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There is breaking news on MSNBC of increased terrorist warnings for the New York City subways. It’s not clear to me where this threat is coming from. Combined with Bush’s “they’re still out to get us” speech from this morning, I am (shall we say) skeptical. (Hey! Over here! Terrorism! Don’t look at Karl Rove, look at terrorism! Look heeeeere!)

Still, my daughter rides the subways every day. Four years after September 11, and the subways are no more secure than before.

BTW, this is the post I was going to write about Bush’s speech, but Bob Cesca wrote it first.

By now you’ve probably heard that Karl volunteered to go testify some more for Patrick Fitzgerald. Gettin’ twitchy there, Karl? Speculation is that Karl got a target letter from Fitzgerald and believes indictments are on the way.

According to Lawrence O’Donnell,

Fitzgerald does not have to send Rove or anyone else a target letter before indicting him. The only reason to send target letters now is that Fitzgerald believes one or more of his targets will flip and become a prosecution witness at the pre-indictment stage. A veteran prosecutor told me, “If Fitzgerald is sending target letters at the end of his investigation, those are just invitations to come in and work out a deal.”

Prosecutors prefer pre-indictment plea bargaining to post-indictment because they have more to offer you, like not being indicted at all or downgrading your status to unindicted co-conspirator. And pre-indictment plea bargaining can greatly enrich the indictments that the prosecutor then obtains. If, for example, Fitzgerald has a weak case against, say, Scooter Libby, imagine how much Rove’s cooperation might strengthen that case.

The theory that Karl might flip Scooter is especially tantalizing, considering this theory that Scooter Libby’s famous letter to the imprisoned Judy Miller was an attempt at coaching. Mickey Kaus came up with this one.

The Aspens Sleep With the Fishes: Is it just me or is this sentence in Cheney aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s letter to reporter Judith Miller regarding the Plame-leak case just a little too suggestive of how she might want to testify:

Because, as I am sure will not be news to you, the public report of every other reporter’s testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame’s name or identity with me, or knew about her before our call.

(The suggestion, of course, would be that this is how Miller might also testify–e.g. no discussion of “Plame’s name or identity”–unless she wants to stand out from the pack as someone who contradicts Libby’s defense.) … P.S.: Libby’s letter ends, somewhat mysteriously, with this sentence:

Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them.

And you know what happens to the aspens that sever their deep connections and fail to turn with all the others, don’t you, my little pretty? …

While we’re all just speculating, do you think Karl would flip somebody higher up than Scooter to save his own skin? Or will Karl fall on his sword to protect his boy?