SCOTUS, version 2.5

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The Washington Post says Bush is “poised” to make another Supreme Court nomination tomorrow. Peter Baker writes,

Judging by the names the White House floated by political allies in recent days, Bush seems ready to pick a candidate with a long track record of conservative jurisprudence — one who would mollify the Republican base, whose opposition to Miers’s nomination helped scuttle her chances. Several GOP strategists said the most likely choice seemed to be federal appeals judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., with judges J. Michael Luttig and Alice M. Batchelder also in the running.

Any of the three would draw support from many conservative activists, lawyers and columnists who vigorously attacked Miers as an underqualified presidential crony. At the same time, the three have years of court rulings that liberals could use against them. Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said yesterday that he has already warned the White House that nominating Alito — who is often compared to Justice Antonin Scalia — would “create a lot of problems.”

Concerned Harpies Women for America have let it be known they really like Alito and Luttig. Frightening.

Home Alone II

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Nancy Gibbs and Mike Allen write in Time that George Bush has become estranged from his closest advisers:

“The problem is that the President doesn’t want to make changes,” says a White House adviser who is not looking for a West Wing job, “but he’s lost some of his confidence in the three people he listens to the most.” Those three are his Vice President, Dick Cheney, whose top aide, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, has been charged with brazenly obstructing the investigation into who leaked the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame; Bush senior adviser Karl Rove, who while not indicted has still emerged as a player in the scandal; and chief of staff Andrew Card, who gets some of the blame for bungling the response to Hurricane Katrina and even more for the botched Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers. “All relationships with the President, except for his relationship with Laura, have been damaged recently,” the White House adviser says. The closest aide who is undamaged is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice–who is off minding the rest of the world–and, of course, Bush himself. “The funny thing is everybody’s failing now, in which case perhaps it’s time to look at George Bush’s relationship with George Bush.”

According to Gibbs and Allen, some White House aides hope that this week’s crises have persuaded Bush that everything is not fine and that he must make changes, both in policy and in personnel. The plan is to re-launch brand Bush in January, repackaged with a new style, new policy ideas, and new members of the team.

That sounds grand, but the product will still be the same guy who won’t read newspapers and who abuses staff members who bring him bad news. And the old team primarily was expert at surrounding Bush with a perpetual, carefully crafted pageant that made him seem presidential even as he avoided doing the job of president. I believe that “Team Bush” is less a staff than a tightly knit web of codependence. Without his enablers, can Bush still be Bush? If not, just who or what will he be?

And even if Karl Rove escapes further legal problems and regains some of his old standing in the White House, there’s still the messy matter of Scooter Libby and his eventual trial. Last week some were speculating that Bush would issue pardons, but now it appears Scooter Libby will be excommunicated from BushWorld. John Dickerson wrote in Slate,

Scooter who? You may remember how George Bush’s friendship with Enron chairman Ken Lay evaporated when the energy company came under investigation. That looks likely to happen with Scooter Libby. Libby has resigned. Vice President Cheney has vouched for his patriotism and talents. And now the White House will attempt to change the subject.

The problem is that the Plame-Libby story is going to be stirred up again, and again, by the eventual trial. Also, Dickerson points out, the Bush base will likely want to rally around Libby, not shun him.

But as Bush plays down the scandal, he may be undermined by the kind of conservatives who recently pulled down Harriet Miers, and who may try to lead a more assertive political response. Karl Rove would prefer they stay quiet. He’d like it to become accepted wisdom that since Fitzgerald didn’t indict him today, he’s in the clear. Rove and his allies would like Patrick Fitzgerald’s 22-month investigation to become known as the Scooter Libby affair. Cheney, whose natural instinct would be to lash out at the prosecutor, is extremely unlikely to do so, given that the criminal investigation centered around his office is ongoing.

But will conservatives who revere the vice president and the hawkish worldview Libby was promoting go along? Many are instinctively inclined to rally around Libby the way they did around Oliver North during the Iran-Contra affair. Instead of seeing the evidence of Libby’s perjury, obstruction of justice, and false statements as efforts to protect his own skin, they’ll decry the “criminalization of politics,” and frame his actions in a patriotic narrative: Whatever lines Libby may have crossed, he was acting in the service of two noble goals. He was protecting his boss and defending the case for the war against Saddam Hussein. Supporters regard Libby’s obsession with refuting Joe Wilson as proper. They see him as merely fighting back against a partisan Democrat who lied about his mission and his findings.

Let’s face it; the extremist rightie “base” is bigger, stronger, and crazier than the Bush Administration. Bush’s position with the extreme Right is like that of a man gripping a venomous snake; if he loses control of the snake, it will bite. But it’s hard for other people to get chummy with a guy gripping a snake.

Also in Time–in his usual halfassed way, Joe Klein almost gets a clue:

Bush’s White House is a conundrum, a bastion of telegenic idealism and deep cynicism. The President has proposed vast, transformational policies—the remaking of the Middle East, of Social Security, of the federal bureaucracy. But he has done so in a haphazard way, with little attention to detail or consequences. There are grand pronouncements and, yes, crusades, punctuated with marching words like evil and moral and freedom. Beneath, though, is the cynical assumption that the public doesn’t care about the details—that results don’t matter, corners can be cut and special favors bestowed.

Klein, if you don’t know by now the idealism is an act, there’s no hope for you. Even though you write several good paragraphs later, such as:

Bush opposed a Department of Homeland Security, then supported it as a campaign ploy—and then allowed it to be slapped together carelessly, diminishing the effectiveness of the agencies involved.

The White House proposed a massive Medicare prescription-drug plan and then flat-out misrepresented the true costs (and quietly included a windfall for drug companies). Every bit of congressional vanity spending, every last tax cut, was approved. Reagan proved that “deficits don’t matter,” insisted Vice President Dick Cheney.

Like I wrote in the last post–Bushies are not serious about governing. And here Klein actually gets good–

Republicans seem better at campaigns, permanent and otherwise, than Democrats. It may be that conservatives just don’t take governance as seriously as liberals do, and therefore have more freedom to maneuver. Didn’t Reagan say government was “the problem, not the solution”? The very notion of planning for the common good, especially long-term planning, seems vaguely … socialist, doesn’t it? The Bush Administration is filled with hard-charging executives but bereft of meat-and-potatoes managers. Not much priority is placed on pedestrian things like delivering the ice to New Orleans or keeping the peace in Baghdad.

Klein goes on to describe the way everything about the Bush Administration, including war, is just part of their perpetual political campaign. It’s actually worth reading. This is Klein, of course, so he’ll be back to wanking in next week’s issue.

And finally–while you’re at Time, don’t miss their article on Patrick Fitzgerald. Makes me want to take the lad home and adopt him.

No Magic Bullet for Bush

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As reported by The Observer, yesterday President Bush tried to deflect attention away from his many domestic problems by calling attention to his war in Iraq.

That’s how politically bankrupt he is.

Other presidential administrations have come back from low points and scandals and finished strong. But such a comeback requires attributes of character that I do not believe Bush possesses.

Dan Balz writes in today’s Washington Post:

Friday’s indictment of Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby dealt another big blow to public confidence in the administration, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Bush’s approval rating fell to 39 percent — the lowest recorded by this poll in his presidency — and a majority of Americans said the charges signal broader ethical problems in the administration. By a ratio of 3 to 1, those surveyed said the level of honesty in government has declined during Bush’s tenure.

With its ability to command public attention and frame the national agenda, the presidency is a supremely resilient institution, and such recent occupants as Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton have bounced back from adversity. But Bush faces such a complex set of problems — an unpopular war in Iraq, high energy prices, the costly challenge of rebuilding New Orleans, a fractured party, disaffected independent voters and little goodwill on Capitol Hill — that his prospects are particularly daunting.

Beyond that is the question of whether Bush needs to make fundamental adjustments to a governing and political style that has given him electoral success but also left the country deeply polarized. With his Republican base showing signs of discontent and independent voters more disaffected than ever, Bush faces a potential tradeoff on every important decision ahead of him that could cause him to lose as much ground with one part of the public as he gains with another.

Whether he can devise a strategy that successfully navigates between the right and the center may determine just how much he can achieve for himself and his party through the rest of his presidency.

This paragraph from the Balz article highlights Bush’s essential problem:

The president’s advisers recognize the reality in which they find themselves. “What the public wants is back-to-basics governance and decision making,” presidential counselor Dan Bartlett said yesterday. “This is not a situation in which it changes overnight or that there’s a ‘Hail Mary’ pass that changes the dynamic. . . . There’s not a magic bullet.”

The public wants back-to-basics governance and decision making, do they? Then they’ve got the wrong guy in the White House. The essential, terrible truth about the Bush White House is that the Bushies are not serious about governance. This has always been true, but not until the winds of Katrina blew away much of Bush’s facade have so many Americans understood this. Not only had Bush packed FEMA with political cronies instead of serious professionals, but he was so disinterested in the effects of a massive hurricane on the Gulf Coast that his staff had to do an intervention to get him to pay attention.

The Bushie attitude toward governing is exemplified by the famous episode in which Paul O’Neill, then secretary of the treasury, warned that another round of big tax cuts would cause budget deficits. Dick Cheney replied, “You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.” In other words, we don’t have to worry that deficits will hurt us politically, and we don’t give a bleep about the long-term effect of deficits on the nation’s economy.

Bush himself seems disconnected even from policies that interest him. He went all-out to sell Social Security “privatization” but doesn’t appear to have bothered his head about the details, like how to pay for it. As I’ve written before, Bush speaks of the passage of No Child Left Behind Act as a great achievement. Yet he’s shown no interest in fixing problems with the program to make it work as promised.

George W. Bush appears to be a “magic bullet” kind of guy. I have read that his oil businesses failed because he was determined to make a big strike rather than slowly and patiently build a business. “To George W. Bush, a Texan who revels in the myth of the wildcatter, running risks in pursuit of the big gusher is a quintessential part of the American character,” says this May 16, 2005 Business Week article. “But as the scion of an aristocratic Eastern dynasty, the budding young tycoon always had a network of family friends and relations to call on. Those golden connections bailed George W. out of his early forays into the oil business.”

As president, Bush struck a political bonanza in September 11. But his biggest gamble was the war in Iraq. See how he threw the dice–he (and his advisors) bet there would be WMDs in spite of flimsy evidence. He and his crew assumed no post-invasion planning would be required, since the happy Iraqis quickly would establish a democracy as soon as they were finished tossing flowers. And he and his crew seemed to believe that the mere removal of Saddam Hussein would be the magic bullet that would bring peace to the Middle East. Why bother with boring ol’ nation building when you’ve got a magic bullet?

Once he realized he’d taken a political hit from his inept response to Katrina, Bush worked hard–to find another “bullhorn moment.” One event after another was staged to show Bush in action. Yet FEMA and the rest the Department of Homeland Security still seem to be drifting. Bush has a rare gift for getting his picture taken with firemen, but whipping a drifting department of his administration into shape is beyond his skill.

After nearly four years of all-Republican rule, 68 percent of American adults are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, according to the Gallup “right track/wrong track” poll. This number was at 28 percent in December 2001, but has risen steadily as Bush’s 9/11 glow has faded. And now people are hungry for “back-to-basics governance” instead of big gambles and photo ops. And I don’t believe Bush can give them that. Even if he tried, which is unlikely, he couldn’t do it. He doesn’t have it in him.

Who Is a “White House Official”?

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Following up the last post–per commenter copymark, President Reagan’s labor secretary, Raymond J. Donovan, was indicted in 1985 for grand larceny, later aquitted. So was he not an indicted “White House official”? I believe he doesn’t count because he didn’t work in the White House, but in the Department of Labor. He was part of Reagan’s administration but not part of his White House staff.

I believe the title of Most Guilty Sitting Cabinet Member should go to Warren Harding’s secretary of the interior, Albert Fall, who was convicted and sentenced to a year in prison plus a $100,000 fine for his involvement in the Teapot Dome scandal of 1922. I’ve found conflicting information about whether Fall resigned before or after charges of fraud and corruption were brought against him by the Senate, however. It’s possible he had already resigned before he was charged, but I don’t believe he had. (And speaking of pork–Fall’s middle name was Bacon.)

John Mitchell, Richard Nixon’s attorney general, also was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury and sentenced to two and a half to eight years in prison for his role in the Watergate break-in and cover-up. But John Mitchell had resigned as attorney general before he was indicted.

Orville Babcock

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You may have heard that Scooter is the first White House official to have been indicted since the Grant Administration. Just for fun, let’s take a look at that last indictee, Orville Babcock.

Background: Babcock was a native of Vermont who graduated West Point in 1861, just in time for the Civil War. By 1863 he was a Lieutenant Colonel under the command of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Vicksburg. In 1864, Babcock became Grant’s aide-de-camp. It was Babcock who delivered Grant’s surrender terms to Robert E. Lee at Appomattox. When Grant became President in 1869 he chose Babcock to be his private secretary.

The Whiskey Ring was a group of liquor distillers who were defrauding the government of tax revenues, in part by bribing revenue agents to ignore untaxed liquor or to supply more tax stamps than were paid for. Grant’s secretary of the treasury, Benjamin Bristow, investigated and obtained indictments against 238 people, including Orville Babcock. Of those, 110 were convicted.

From Grant by Jean Edward Smith (Simon & Schuster, 2001), pp. 590-591:

Grant was initially alerted to Babcock’s possible complicity in July 1875 when he received a letter from St. Louis banker W.D.W. Barnard, a distant relative of Julia’s [Mrs. Grant]. Barnard warned Grant that federal prosecutors in St. Louis were hoping to embarrass the administration and that Babcock had become a target. Grant was shocked that his aide might be involved. He immediately passed the letter to Bristow with the following endorsement: “I forward this for information and to the end that if it throws any light upon new parties to summon as witnesses they may be brought out. Let no guilty man escape if it can be avoided. Be especially vigilant—or instruct those engaged in the prosecution of fraud to be—against all who insinuate that they have high influence to protect—or to protect them. No personal consideration should stand in the way of performing a public duty.” Shortly thereafter Grant told Attorney General Pierrepont that “if Babcock is guilty, there is no man who wants him so proven guilty as I do, for it is the greatest piece of traitorism to me that a man could possibly practice.”

As it turned out, the evidence against Babcock was circumstantial. The prosecution’s case rested on Babcock’s friendship with McDonald[*], his occasional visits to St. Louis, and two cryptic telegrams the president’s secretary sent to the general. Bristow believed the messages were code to inform the St. Louis ring of the status of the Treasury crackdown. The first, dated December 10, 1874, stated—“I have succeeded. They will not go. I will write you.” It was signed “Sylph.” The second, sent on February 3, 1875, read: “We have official information that the enemy weakens. Push things. Sylph.”

Babcock maintained the messages were for Eads[**] and described the status of the Corps of Engineers’ efforts to scuttle the bridge in St. Louis. At the time, Grant trusted General McDonald fully, and it is quite possible the president was using him to funnel information to Eads. When Grant heard Babcock’s explanation, he was satisfied the telegrams were harmless.

A second difficulty for the prosecution was Babcock’s lifestyle. Unlike former Attorney General Williams, the president’s secretary lived modestly within his income. He was not a free-spender, his bank account showed no questionable deposits, and his wife was known for her frugality. His one hobby was raising fine dahlias, which he would share with his neighbors, including the Frederick Douglasses.

In December 1875 Babcock requested a miitary board of inquiry to clear his name, but the prosecutors in St. Louis refused to release files and the board was adjourned. Shortly thereafter a grand jury in St. Louis indicted Babcock “for conspiring to defraud the revenue.” President Grant volunteered his testimony and gave a four-hour deposition to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, in the presence of the Attorney General and the Treasury Secretary, Bristow.

Jean Edward Smith continues on page 592 of Grant:

Grant’s testimony silenced all but the most rancorous critics of the administration. The unprecedented spectacle of the president of the United States coming forward voluntarily to defend his secretary, combined with Grant’s unblemished reputation for personal honesty, had an enormous impact. [Secretary of State] Hamilton Fish, one of the most honest men in public life, once said, “I do not think it would have been possible for Grant to have told a lie, even if he had composed it and written it down.” The prosecution continued to present what little evidence it had against Babcock, but it was unconvincing and the general[***] was speedily acquitted.

Orville Babcock died in a boat accident in 1884 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetary.

*General John McDonald was collector of taxes in St. Louis and was one of the 110 convicted.

**James Buchanan Eads was an engineer-industrialist and an old friend of Grant’s who was determined to build a bridge across the Mississippi. The Corps of Engineers had halted construction. The Eads Bridge eventually was built and is still in use.

***Babcock held the brevet rank of Brigadier General.

The Damage Done

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A story by Dafna Linzer in today’s Washington Post explains why exposing Valerie Plame Wilson as an agent was a serious matter.

More than Valerie Plame’s identity was exposed when her name appeared in a syndicated column in the summer of 2003.

A small Boston company listed as her employer suddenly was shown to be a bogus CIA front, and her alma mater in Belgium discovered it was a favored haunt of an American spy. At Langley, officials in the clandestine service quickly began drawing up a list of contacts and friends, cultivated over more than a decade, to triage any immediate damage. …

…after Plame’s name appeared in Robert D. Novak’s column, the CIA informed the Justice Department in a simple questionnaire that the damage was serious enough to warrant an investigation, officials said.

The article says the CIA has not done a formal damage assessment, possibly because it is waiting until after legal proceedings are finished. There is “no indication” agents still engaged in covert operations lost their lives because of Plame Wilson’s exposure.

The article quotes Mark Lowenthal, who retired from a senior management position at the CIA in March: “You can only speculate that if she had foreign contacts, those contacts might be nervous and their relationships with her put them at risk. It also makes it harder for other CIA officers to recruit sources.”

Righties everywhere are belittling this episode as no big deal and saying it has nothing to do with national security. As usual, they lie. Possibly they are lying to themselves as much as to the rest of the world, but they lie, nonetheless. As usual, partisan loyalty means more to them than the security of their country.

One other point–nearly all rightie bloggers are saying that “no crime was committed” regarding the exposure of an agent. What Patrick Fitzgerald said repeatedly in the press conference is that, because of Libby’s obstruction, he could not determine if such a crime had been committed.

Update: Today’s Mo Dowd:

Mr. Fitzgerald claims that Mr. Libby hurt national security by revealing the classified name of a C.I.A. officer. “Valerie Wilson’s friends, neighbors, college classmates had no idea she had another life,” he said.

He was not buying the arguments on the right that Mrs. Wilson was not really undercover or was under “light” cover, or that blowing her cover did not hurt the C.I.A.

“I can say that for the people who work at the C.I.A. and work at other places, they have to expect that when they do their jobs that classified information will be protected,” he said, adding: “They run a risk when they work for the C.I.A. that something bad could happen to them, but they have to make sure that they don’t run the risk that something bad is going to happen to them from something done by their own fellow government employees.”

To protect a war spun from fantasy, the Bush team played dirty. Unfortunately for them, this time they Swift-boated an American whose job gave her legal protection from the business-as-usual smear campaign. …

…what we really want to know, now that we have the bare bones of who said what to whom in the indictment, is what they were all thinking there in that bunker and how that hothouse bred the idea that the way out of their Iraq problems was to slime their critics instead of addressing the criticism. What we really want to know, if Scooter testifies in the trial, and especially if he doesn’t, is what Vice did to create the spidery atmosphere that led Scooter, who seemed like an interesting and decent guy, to let his zeal get the better of him.

Mr. Cheney, eager to be rid of the meddlesome Joe Wilson, got Valerie Wilson’s name from the C.I.A. and passed it on to Scooter. He forced the C.I.A. to compromise one of its own, a sacrifice on the altar of faith-based intelligence.

Vice spent so much time lurking over at the C.I.A., trying to intimidate the analysts at Langley into twisting the intelligence about weapons, that he should have had one of his undisclosed locations there.

This administration’s grand schemes always end up as the opposite. Officials say they’re promoting national security when they’re hurting it; they say they’re squelching terrorists when they’re breeding them; they say they’re bringing stability to Iraq when the country’s imploding. (The U.S. announced five more military deaths yesterday.)

Analysis

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See “A Good Start” by Larry Johnson at TPM Cafe.

The indictment makes clear, with no shadow of a doubt, that Valerie Wilson was an undercover officer until exposed by Robert Novak’s column. According to the indictment,

Prior to July 14, 2003, Valerie Wilson’s affiliation with the CIA was not common knowledge outside the intelligence community.

As the prosecutor said at today’s press conference, this ain’t over.

As I wrote in the last post, righties everywhere are in full knee-jerk denial about Valerie Plame Wilson’s status.

Johnson also guesses that the “Under Secretary” mentioned in the indictment is John Bolton, UN anti-ambassador. Another possibility is Marc Grossman, an under secretary for political affairs in the State Department.

Johnson points to this sentence in the indictment:

On or about June 11, 2003, LIBBY spoke with a senior officer of the CIA to ask about the origin and circumstances of Wilson’s trip, and was advised by the CIA officer that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and was believed to be responsible for sending Wilson on the trip.

Johnson comments:

Now it gets interesting. Who is the senior CIA officer? There are several possibilities. For example, John Bolton’s Chief of Staff, Fred Fleitz is a CIA officer (no longer undercover) who was in a position to get information about Valerie. At the NSC there were several CIA personnel, including David Shedd, who is now on the staff of John Negroponte. It could also be someone from CIA Headquarters. We will probably have to wait for the trial to get some insight on this front.

A careful reading of the indictment shows beyond a reasonable doubt that there was an organized effort in the White House to go after Joe and Valerie Wilson. At a minimum, Vice President Cheney was witting of this effort. Too bad these guys did not work as feverishly in tracking down Osama Bin Laden. They only had time to attack two American citizens who were serving their country.


Josh Marshall points to this statement from the indictment:

On or about June 12, 2003, LIBBY was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson’s wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Divison. LIBBY understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA.

Josh comments:

This is a crucial piece of information. The Counterproliferation Division (CPD) is part of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, i.e., not the Directorate of Intelligence, the branch of the CIA where ‘analysts’ come from, but the DO, where the spies, the ‘operatives’, come from.

Libby’s a long time national security hand. He knows exactly what CPD is and where it is. So does Cheney. They both knew. It’s right there in the indictment.

On to the trial.

Beware the Talking Point!

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I believe I have spotted the Republican talking point du jour–Orrin Hatch on CNN just spend several minutes fudging the distinction between covert and classified.

My understanding is that in 2003 Valerie Plame Wilson was not actively engaged in any covert operations (I could be wrong), yet her status with the CIA was classified. My understanding is that this classification was necessary to protect the identities of agents still in the field that Plame Wilson had worked with in covert operations in the past. There has been testimony that when Plame Wilson’s identity as an agent was revealed, some foreign governments worked backward to figure out what other people associated with Plame Wilson in the past might be CIA agents.

The rightie noise machine is trying to put out the meme that Wilson was not covert in 2003; revealing her status at the CIA was not a crime.

This is from page 3 of today’s indictments:

Joseph Wilson was married to Valerie Plame Wilson (“Valerie Wilson”). At all relevant times from January 1, 2002 through July 2003, Valerie Wilson was employed by the CIA, and her employment status was classified. Prior to July 14, 2003, Valerie Wilson’s affiliation with the CIA was not common knowledge outside the intelligence community.

Yet Hatch on CNN babbled on: She wasn’t covert. Therefore, “outing” her was no big deal. Expect the Right Blogosphere to pick up this point and run with it.

Page 2 of the indictment makes it clear that Libby was obligated not to disclose classified infomation:

As a person with such clearances, LIBBY was obligated by applicable laws and regulations, including Title 18, United States Code, Section 793, and Executive Order 12958 (as modified by Executive Order 13292), not to disclose classified information to persons not authorized to receive such information, and otherwise to exercise proper care to safeguard classified information against unauthorized disclosure. On or about January 23, 2001, LIBBY executed a written “Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement,” stating in part that “I understand and accept that by being granted access to classified information, special confidence and trust shall be placed in me by the United States Government,” and that “I have been advised that the unauthorized disclosure, unauthorized retention, or negligent handling of classified information by me could cause damage or irreparable injury to the United States or could be used to advantage by a foreign nation.”

Watch out for usage of the words covert and classified over the next few days..

From the Indictment

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As I keyboard Fitzgerald’s news conference is ongoing, but it seems to me the quality of the questions is deteriorating, so I’m movin on to something else. As I explained at the end of the last post, the big points from the press conference are these:

    The investigation is ongoing. A new grand jury is available to Fitzgerald if he needs one. He will not comment on Karl Rove or anyone not named in the indictment. He will not say if there will be other charges.
    The obstruction and perjury charges should not be interpreted to mean that Libby did not violate other laws. The charges mean Fitzgerald was unable to find out if other laws were violated or not, because of the obstruction.
    Also, I infer that Fitzgerald needed Judy Miller’s testimony to bring the perjury charge. Miller was an eyewitness to a crime as far as Fitzgerald was concerned.

I haven’t had time to digest the entire indictment, but this section, which begins on page 4 of the indictment, explains what happened up to the publication of Joe Wilson’s New York Times op ed.

This is from page 4 of the indictment:

4. On or about May 29, 2003, in the White House, LIBBY asked an Under Secretary of State (“Under Secretary”) for information concerning the unnamed ambassador’s travel to Niger to investigate claims about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium yellowcake. The Under Secretary thereafter directed the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research to prepare a report concerning the ambassador and his trip. The Under Secretary provided LIBBY with interim oral reports in late May and early June 2003, and advised LIBBY that Wilson was the former ambassador
who took the trip.

5. On or about June 9, 2003, a number of classified documents from the CIA were faxed to the Office of the Vice President to the personal attention of LIBBY and another person in the Office of the Vice President. The faxed documents, which were marked as classified, discussed, among other things, Wilson and his trip to Niger, but did not mention Wilson by name. After receiving these documents, LIBBY and one or more other persons in the Office of the Vice President handwrote the names “Wilson” and “Joe Wilson” on the documents.

6. On or about June 11 or 12, 2003, the Under Secretary of State orally advised LIBBY in the White House that, in sum and substance, Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and that State Department personnel were saying that Wilson’s wife was involved in the planning of his trip.

7. On or about June 11, 2003, LIBBY spoke with a senior officer of the CIA to ask about the origin and circumstances of Wilson’s trip, and was advised by the CIA officer that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and was believed to be responsible for sending Wilson on the trip.

8. Prior to June 12, 2003, Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus contacted the Office of the Vice President in connection with a story he was writing about Wilson’s trip. LIBBY participated in discussions in the Office of the Vice President concerning how to respond to Pincus.

9. On or about June 12, 2003, LIBBY was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson’s wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Division. LIBBY understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA.

10. On June 12, 2003, the Washington Post published an article by reporter Walter Pincus about Wilson’s trip to Niger, which described Wilson as a retired ambassador but not by name, and reported that the CIA had sent him to Niger after an aide to the Vice President raised questions about purported Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium. Pincus’s article questioned the accuracy of the “sixteen words,” and stated that the retired ambassador had reported to the CIA that the uranium purchase story was false.

11. On or about June 14, 2003, LIBBY met with a CIA briefer. During their conversation he expressed displeasure that CIA officials were making comments to reporters critical of the Vice President’s office, and discussed with the briefer, among other things, “Joe Wilson” and his wife “Valerie Wilson,” in the context of Wilson’s trip to Niger.

12. On or about June 19, 2003, an article appeared in The New Republic magazine online entitled “The First Casualty: The Selling of the Iraq War.” Among other things, the article questioned the “sixteen words” and stated that following a request for information from the Vice President, the CIA had asked an unnamed ambassador to travel to Niger to investigate allegations that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger. The article included a quotation attributed to the unnamed ambassador alleging that administration officials “knew the Niger story was a flat-out lie.” The article also was critical of how the administration, including the Office of the Vice President, portrayed intelligence concerning Iraqi capabilities with regard to weapons of mass destruction, and accused the administration of suppressing dissent from the intelligence agencies on this topic.

13. Shortly after publication of the article in The New Republic, LIBBY spoke by telephone with his then Principal Deputy and discussed the article. That official asked LIBBY whether information about Wilson’s trip could be shared with the press to rebut the allegations that the Vice President had sent Wilson. LIBBY responded that there would be complications at the CIA in disclosing that information publicly, and that he could not discuss the matter on a non-secure telephone line.

14. On or about June 23, 2003, LIBBY met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller. During this meeting LIBBY was critical of the CIA, and disparaged what he termed “selective leaking” by the CIA concerning intelligence matters. In discussing the CIA’s handling of Wilson’s trip to Niger, LIBBY informed her that Wilson’s wife might work at a bureau of the CIA.

The News Conference

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Fitzgerald’s news conference has been postponed to 2:15. I will live blog.

It’s beginning. Fitzpatrick speaks:

A federal grand jury returned a 5 count indictment against Libby.

National security was at stake, so we had to find out accurate facts.

It is important that the witnesses who come before a grand jury tell the complete truth.

Fall of 2003–when it was clear that VW’s cover had been blown, the investigation began. Libby was interviewed. Mr. Libby gave the FBI a compelling story that he got this information from Tim Russert.

Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer, and in July 2003 this was classified. Her friends, colleagues had no idea. It is important that a CIA officer’s identity be protected. Her cover was blown in July 2003. Mr. Novak was not the first reporter to be told about this. Libby told Miller; this was the first leak of her identity. Libby said when he passed this information on to reporters he had made it clear he didn’t know the story was true. Libby said the same thing to the grand jury, under oath. Just passing gossip. Long end of a change of phone calls.

This story was not true.

At least four people within the government had told Libby about VW before the Russert conversation. A full month before Novak’s column he discussed NW with a CIA somebody.

Fitzgerald continues to recount all of the circumstances in which Libby discussed VW with other people. Libby was the first government official to discuss this information with reporters.

Questions:

Q Began as a leak investigation but no one is charged with leaking.

A Investigation is not over. Substantial part of the work is concluded. Another grand jury will be kept open to consider other matters. Baseball analogy: If a pitcher hit a batter in the head with a ball, you’d like to know why he did that. Lots of reasons. What you want to do is have as much information as you could to find out what the batter might be thinking. Then you make a decision whether the pitch was deliberate or an accident.

What was done to Valerie Wilson was done to all of us. What we have are charges of obstruction of justice. I can’t tell you what Libby’s motives were. The obstruction charge is not less than a leak charge. This is a very serious matter.

Q Do you have evidence against Dick Cheney encouraged Libby.

A I don’t talk about people not charged in the indictment. We make no allegations about criminal acts. I will not comment on anyone but Libby. This is a standard practice. Don’t read anything into that.

Q What about the “senior official” mentioned in indictment.

A We can’t tell you everything we know. This is the law. We gather information, the explicit requirement is that if we don’t talk about people not under indictment.

Q Is Karl Rove off the hook, other individuals might be charged?

A Cannot comment.

Q What are you still working on?

A Cannot comment.

No one wants this over with more than I do. We hope to finish as soon as possible.

Q Damage done to all of us, to the nation. Can you be more specific?

A No, but let me say this. People who work at CIA have to expect that information and identities will be protected.

Q What about “leaks” from witnesses?

A Grand jury secrecy does not bind witnesses. Jurors or prosecutors cannot speak about grand jury, but witnesses are not restircted.

Q Were you troubled that people in government were talking about VW weeks before she was outed.

A Not my concern.

Q — I didn’t hear this question clearly.

Q What about Judy Miller?

A No one wanted to have a dispute with the NY Times. I didn’t have a vested interest in litigating it, a first amendment showdown. Our job was to find information. We thought long and hard before we issued subpoenaes. We only subpoenaed if we really needed that testimony. What we did in seeking that testimony was born out by judges rulings. (Miller’s testimony needed for perjury charges, apparently.)

Q You said Mr. Libby the first person to leak outside the government. Other people leaked? What can you tell us of other leakers?

A I can’t go beyond what’s in the indictment.

Q Did Mr. Libby know VW was covert?

A Let me say that I am not speaking to whether VW was covert. Her association with the CIA was classified. We do not know if Libby knowingly outed a covert agent.

Q Missed question; about secrecy and grand jury rules.

A Grand jury testimony rarely shared with congress.

Q Your critics charge you with being a partisan.

A One day I read I was a Repubican hack and the next day I was a Democratic hack. I am not registered with either party.

Q Final report?

A No final report. Used to be issued by independent counsels, included information about people not charged with crimes. I don’t have the authority to write a report. We should charge someone or be quiet.

Q Other prosecutors issued reports.

A I am not an independent counsel. I have to follow the code of federal regulations.

Q You are being criticized for not bringing charges in the underlying crime, outing a CIA agent.

A That doesn’t fly. Any notion that anyone might have that we are singling out a high official is just not true. We indict on obstruction all the time.

Q How did Wilson get sent to Niger; what was VW’s part in this.

A The only thing that’s relevant is the idea in the minds of some people that she was involved; this is not relevant to this investigation. The belief that she was involved is an issue, however.

Q Do you think Libby tried to discourage Miller’s testimony?

A I don’t comment on anything not in the indictment.

Q Why isn’t it a crime to give classified information to someone not authorized?

A He had to know it was classified. If Mr. Libby is proved to have done what we allege, this will vindicate the public’s interest. The point here is that we will make fine distinctions; we need to know the truth about what they said and what they know.

The act of obstruction keeps us from knowing the whole truth.

Q Will you participate in trial.

A Yes, part of team.

Q If information comes out in trial, what would you do?

A Any new information will be handled by our investigation team.

Q You won’t have a grand jury?

A We can use anothr grand jury.

Q You are dealing with memories from long ago. How can you prosecute that.

A That’s the point of the trial.

Q At the last minute there was FBI activity. Wlson’s neighbor’s interviewed. Why?

A With all respect, someone interviewed the guy who shined my shoes the other day. We wanted to get as much done before October 28 as we could. Don’t read anything into that.

Q Is this indictment a vindication of antiwar sentiment?

A This indictment is not about the war. People should not look to this indictment for vindication or resolution of how they feel. The indictment will not seek to know whether the war was justified or unjustified.

Q (questions garbled)

A All I’ll say; there is no statute that says it is a crime to pass on secret information. You have to know motive, state of knowledge, intent, facts; if the allegations in the indictment are true, then there is no way to know if Mr. Libby violated other laws. We didn’t get the straight story.

Now we’re getting down to the dumb questions. I think the major points discussed are these:

The investigation is ongoing. A new grand jury is available to Fitzgerald if he needs one. He will not comment on Karl Rove or anyone not named in the indictment.

The obstruction and perjury charges should not be interpreted to mean that Libby did not violate other laws. The charges mean Fitzgerald was unable to find out if other laws were violated or not, because of the obstruction.

He will not say if there will be other charges.