JustOneMinute

TIME on Plame

TIME magazine tries to fix the date at which the news in the INR memo was circulated, and crushes earlier timelines focusing on Colin Powell's flight on Air Force One:

As the investigation tightens into the leak of the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, sources tell TIME some White House officials may have learned she was married to former ambassador Joseph Wilson weeks before his July 6, 2003, Op-Ed piece criticizing the Administration. That prospect increases the chances that White House official Karl Rove and others learned about Plame from within the Administration rather than from media contacts...

The previously undisclosed fact gathering began in the first week of June 2003 at the CIA, when its public-affairs office received an inquiry about Wilson's trip to Africa from veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus. That office then contacted Plame's unit, which had sent Wilson to Niger, but stopped short of drafting an internal report. The same week, Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman asked for and received a memo on the Wilson trip from Carl Ford, head of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Sources familiar with the memo, which disclosed Plame's relationship to Wilson, say Secretary of State Colin Powell read it in mid-June. Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage may have received a copy then too.

When Pincus' article ran on June 12, the circle of senior officials who knew about the identity of Wilson's wife expanded. "After Pincus," a former intelligence officer says, "there was general discussion with the National Security Council and the White House and State Department and others" about Wilson's trip and its origins. A source familiar with the memo says neither Powell nor Armitage spoke to the White House about it until after July 6. John McLaughlin, then deputy head of the CIA, confirms that the White House asked about the Wilson trip, but can't remember exactly when. One thing he's sure of, says McLaughlin, who has been interviewed by prosecutors, is that "we looked into it and found the facts of it, and passed it on." --By Massimo Calabresi. With reporting by Timothy J. Burger, Michael Duffy and Viveca Novak. 

Well, that is quite a fair-use excerpt.

First, TIME is quite coy about dates - Condoleeza Rice was embarrassed on Meet The Press on June 8 - here is an excerpt, replayed on Sept 28; here is Nick Kristof, gloating on June 13.  And why was he gloating?  Because Ms. Rice had been asked about some (mis)information from his May 6 column.

So, Ms. Rice is woefully ignorant about the Wilson trip on June 8.  On June 10, the State Dept prepares a "What Was The Wilson Trip" memo.  Was that timing a coincidence, or a response to a request from the National Security Council?  I have no idea (not).  However, TIME tells us that Ms. Rice read the memo by mid-June TIME tells us that Powell read it by mid-June; the NSC was discussing it after Pincus wrote on June 12.

John Podhoretz at The Corner notes that, with newsies swarming over both the State Dept and the CIA looking for insight into the 16 Words, it is possible that reporters were apprised of the Wilson connection in June.  Walter Pincus and Andrea Mitchell cover the State Dept and the CIA - mightn't they have heard something even before Karl Rove, domestic political guru?  And Colin Powell bringing the memo on the Air Force One trip to Africa on July 7 becomes less significant, if the content had been widely circulated before then.

On the other hand - in this July 11 press gaggle, Ms. Rice implored reporters to inquire into the Wilson trip, as I had noted that in my "Emerging Case Against Karl Rove".  One might also think that the NSC knew about Wilson in mid-June if their boss did.  Maybe the TIME piece should be re-headlined - "Lots of People Kept A Secret For A Surprisingly Long Time".

We should ask some more media types what they knew, when they knew it, and what they have shared with Fitzgerald's investigation.  Here is a starting point.

MORE:  Irish telepathy.

Scuffle In The Big Tent

Bill Frist charts his own course on Federal financing of stem cell research.  I am on his side, weakly - I thought the Federalist approach that was developing, with different states funding research, was promising (or not).  And, although conducting the research under nationally agreed Federal rules and funding maybe more efficient, efficiency is not the only goal of a democracy - we also support messy compromises.

Well, the NY Times editors are also supportive; in yet another tiresome "I told you so" moment, I will extract this from their latest editorial, and claim a delayed victory:

Although no federal law bans embryonic stem cell research, federal financing for the research has strict limits, which threaten to slow the development of this highly promising field.

Just so.  Of course, last fall I squawked when the Times said this:

When President Bush took on the issue of embryonic stem cell research in 2001, he framed it as a moral dilemma. He summoned members of the clergy and ethicists, as well as scientists, to counsel him. He prayed over it. His verdict - he imposed strict limits on medical research using the cells derived from human embryos - paid homage to human life as "a sacred gift from our creator."

In a related story, Nick Confessore, formerly of TAP, explains to Times readers the state of play for various Republican moderates aspiring to the Presidency.  Conservatives don't like McCain?  Do tell.  But his backing of McCain-Feingold gets only a passing mention in one quote, although I suspect it merits more emphasis as a conservative balking point.

And this, about Giuliani, we love:

Can Mr. Giuliani be the one Republican with a chance to transcend the disadvantages of geography and cultural moderation? As mayor, he established himself as a political Eliot Ness, a tough guy whose congenital inability to mince words proved his greatest asset. The Sept. 11 attacks gave him deep credibility on the issues of strength and vulnerability that have dominated presidential politics since.

"There's a sense that something evil is out there in the world, and you have to have people with enough malevolence themselves that they can take on people who are forbidding and frightening," said Fred Siegel, a professor of history and humanities at Cooper Union and author of "The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life. "The more important the terrorist threat is, the more it overshadows the issue of his social views."

Giuliani is even nastier than the bad guys?  Hmm, as a subtext for his campaign, that may be useful, but is that really the first thing folks think of when they think of Rudy, Man of the Year and America's Mayor?

UPDATE:  Good job by Brainster, who had the idea of checking to see whether Frist's move got him a flicker amongst the political punters at TradeSports (it didn't).  And the current TradeSports Fave on the Rep side?  George Allen, for whom the future is now, and now is 2008.  Decision '08 has more on the Senator from Virginia.

What If?

Could the Allies have realized the Holocaust was underway?  Could they have prevented, or ameliorated it?

Who's On First?

Pedro graces the cover of the NY Times magazine, and inside is a story about the Met's pursuit of the Latin fan.

Oh, I know you don't care, and I don't either - I was at the Stadium watching the varsity win a thriller against the Angels, with K-Rod morphing into W-Rod.

However, this "Who's on first" story about the multi-culti Mets is pretty funny.

The Weekend "Must Read"

Writing in the NY Times Book Review, Richard Posner talks about the economics of media bias and blogging.

Can I summarize four pages in one sentence?  Low costs of entry to the media business have driven news outlets away from the political center in search of readers who want entertainment and validation rather than "news".

Hmm, Posner says many nice, interesting things about blog as a new media, which did not get into that sentence.  Oh, dear.  However, we welcome reader's suggestions for a "Shorter Posner" in the comments below - anyone who can summarize this article would be doing the rest of us a favor.

And of course, there are bonus points for anyone with a sensible alternative view.

Meanwhile, as Mark Twain almost said, sorry for the long post; I didn't have time for a shorter one.

Los of excerpts after the leap; the Becker-Posner blog may have a follow-up, too.

UPDATE:  Posner mentions Harvard economists Sendhil Mullainathan and Andrei Shleifer.  Virginia Postrel described their work in the Times; Sissy Willis has highlights.  Posner certainly liked one of their ideas - a Fox News coming in on the right may actually drive a CNN further to the left.

Kaus Throws Down, Kristof Goes Down

Mickey was right, the Times was wrong, and once again, we see an illustration of the old adage that you shouldn't argue with a man who buys pixels by the megabyte.

We are talking about the libel suit by Steven Hatfill against the NY Times, BTW - the WaPo described the dismissal here (with helpful Kristovian crowing), and the Times tells us about the reinstatement.

Well, in the "Unsolved Mysteries" file - who was behind the anthrax letters (maybe Ashcroft will tell us!), who was responsible for the Niger forgeries, and what progress is the FBI making in either case?

Not Exactly A Contradiction, But...

The latest Krugman column, "The French Choice", provides a fascinating counterpoint to Krugman's column from a few weeks back, "The Dropout Puzzle".

Briefly, Krugman has been telling us for several years to ignore the signs of an improving economy and focus on the fact that the job market in the US is not as good as it was at the height of the boom.

But with the French Choice, we are advised that folks not working can be a good thing, too.

No, it's not necessarily a contradiction, and yes, the policy implications for the US are important regardless of what the French are up to.  But the two columns do present quite a contrast.

I will be keeping my eye out for reaction shots.  And don't forget the Trackback below.

UPDATE:  Jim Glass does not think the US labor market is so very weak, considering whrere we are in the business cycle (and didn't we hear whining about a "jobless recovery" early in the 90's boom?  I get one sentence of support from Prof. Krueger.)

Don Luskin hears from an unhappy Frenchman, which reminds me - direct comparisons of producitivty (which Krugman does) are a bit phony - if, for example, French regulations make labor more expensive (or harder to fire), one might expect both higher unemployment and higher productivity in France.  Just like a union job here - great work if you can get it.

Matt Yglesias really gets behind Krugman's conclusion, which is that the French welfare state is pro-family - "An interesting point. And not one wholly without basis in reality." 

OK, then, what about the low French birth rate (which troubled the French even before World War I, and is today a Europe-wide phenomenon?).  High taxes, cramped living quarters, tiny cars, limited opportunity for advancement, excellent opportunity for new college grads to be unemployed and living at home - pro-family?  [Hmm, I may want to avoid blathering about demographics from memory.  Well, their birth rate is less than the US.]

MORE:  Maybe the US is aided by the power of positive thinking.  More on French attitudes and economics at the Independent Source, who is not convinced that the Fench have "chosen" their underemployment.  Some men seek greatness, other have it thrust upon them!  And the same with unemployment, possibly.

Defining Deviancy Down

In their review of "Live at the State Department", the new comedy improv about John Bolton's Senate disclosure, Ms. Bumiller of the NY Times engages in a bit of irksome journalistic shorthand:

During May and June, Democrats denied Republicans the 60 votes they needed to confirm Mr. Bolton to the United Nations post.

Yes, but no - a better sentence would be, "During May and June, Democrats denied Republicans the 60 votes they needed to end a Democratic filibuster so that the Republican majority could then confirm Mr. Bolton to the United Nations post."

A filibuster of a Presidential nominee is not an inevitable component of the Congressional landscape, and it does not take 60 votes to confirm someone.  And the Times knows it.

It's Libby, It's Libby Not...

Arianna has a clear summary of the Judy Miller mystery [with a follow-up]- is she protecting a source, or protecting herself, in the Plame investigation:

Not everyone in the Times building is on the same page when it comes to Judy Miller. The official story the paper is sticking to is that Miller is a heroic martyr, sacrificing her freedom in the name of journalistic integrity.

But a very different scenario is being floated in the halls.  Here it is:  It's July 6, 2003, and Joe Wilson's now famous op-ed piece appears in the Times, raising the idea that the Bush administration has "manipulate[d]" and "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Miller, who has been pushing this manipulated, twisted, and exaggerated intel in the Times for months, goes ballistic. Someone is using the pages of her own paper to call into question the justification for the war -- and, indirectly, much of her reporting. The idea that intelligence was being fixed goes to the heart of Miller's credibility. So she calls her friends in the intelligence community and asks, Who is this guy? She finds out he's married to a CIA agent. She then passes on the info about Mrs. Wilson to Scooter Libby (Newsday has identified a meeting Miller had on July 8 in Washington with an "unnamed government official"). Maybe Miller tells Rove too -- or Libby does. The White House hatchet men turn around and tell Novak and Cooper. The story gets out.

Well.  Newsday has also found Ms. Miller's name on the White House phone logs, back in March 2004.

Last fall, Ms. Miller was subpoenaed when a flurry of subpoenas went out relating to Lewis Libby; at the time, the WaPo reported that Ms. Miller's subpoena also related to her discussions with Libby.

Howard Kurtz and Carol Leonnig of the WaPo seemed to confirm that on July 16:

...two sources say Miller spoke with Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, during the key period in July 2003 that is the focus of Fitzgerald's investigation.

The two sources, one who is familiar with Libby's version of events and the other with Miller's, said the previously undisclosed conversation occurred a few days before Plame's name appeared in Robert D. Novak's syndicated column on July 14, 2003. Miller and Libby discussed former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, Plame's husband, who had recently alleged that the Bush administration twisted intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, according to the source familiar with Libby's version.

But, according to the source, the subject of Wilson's wife did not come up.

Two days later, however, Mr. Kurtz puzzled us with this:

Some even fault Judith Miller for her act of conscience in going to jail, saying the New York Times reporter is merely protecting Rove (though no one knows whether her source was the White House political adviser or someone else).

Huh?  Didn't Kurtz himself tell us two days earlier that Miller's source was Libby?  Or what did he tell us?

No one knows.

Mickey has thoughts on Ms. Miller:

a) But why couldn't she testify about her own role while keeping her source's identity secret?; and b) maybe she had no "source" as such, but directly observed Plame's CIA activities in the course of her previous reporting on WMD. For example, if she interviewed Plame.]

File under "Stray Thought" - aren't professional women encouraged to network?  And wouldn't folks feel that both Valerie and Judy, as women in a male-dominated profession, really ought to meet?

OK, covert agents probably handle their networking a bit differently than lawyers or bankers.  Still, don't we think that Judy knows some covert agents?  These two getting together seems to be destined.

MORE:  Lots of useful research at TalkLeft.  Ms. Merritt has been offering excellent posts on several of the key figures in this investigation, and one fine day we will gather them up.

Now The Times Discovers Walter Pincus

The NY Times finally discovers Walter Pincus of the WaPo, a mere three weeks after we were hollering about him.  And eventually, the Times will discover Google, or Lexis-Nexis, which will introduce more certainty to their reporting:

In the same week in July 2003 in which Bush administration officials told a syndicated columnist and a Time magazine reporter that a C.I.A. officer had initiated her husband's mission to Niger, an administration official provided a Washington Post reporter with a similar account.

The first two episodes, involving the columnist Robert D. Novak and the reporter Matthew Cooper, have become the subjects of intense scrutiny in recent weeks. But little attention has been paid to what The Post reporter, Walter Pincus, has recently described as a separate exchange on July 12, 2003.

...Mr. Pincus has not identified his source to the public. But a review of Mr. Pincus's own accounts and those of other people with detailed knowledge of the case strongly suggest that his source was neither Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's top political adviser, nor I. Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, and was in fact a third administration official whose identity has not yet been publicly disclosed.

Mr. Pincus's most recent account, in the current issue of Nieman Reports, a journal of the Nieman Foundation, makes clear that his source had volunteered the information to him, something that people close to both Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have said they did not do in their conversations with reporters.

Well, another clue as to Pincus' source, overlooked by the Timesmen, appeared in Editor & Publisher, with an article about Mr. Pincus that included this: "Libby was not my source but was someone I spoke to on a confidential basis," Pincus said.' 

Or maybe the Nov 26, 2004 WaPo can provide a hint: "Pincus also has said his source was not Libby."  Just trying to help.

The Times cites this Nieman Watchdog article, this Sept 16 2004 WaPo article, and this Oct 12, 2003 WaPo piece.  Careful readers may also suspect that Mr. Pincus is "another journalist" in this Sept 30 2003 WaPo piece.

Now, is the motive of the leaker of any interest?  In their very last paragraph, the Times reports Mr. Pincus' impression:

He wrote in Nieman Reports that he did not believe the person who spoke to him was committing a criminal act, but only practicing damage control by trying to get him to write about Mr. Wilson.

[NOTE:  The Times gets this backwards - what Pincus wrote is:

"I wrote my October story because I did not think the person who spoke to me was committing a criminal act, but only practicing damage control by trying to get me to stop writing about

Wilson"]

Perhaps the Bush Brute Squad was making all of the the other phone calls to smear Wilson, intimidate potential whistleblowers, and get revenge.  But it sounds like this leak was an attempt to get the White House side of the story in play, which jibes with what Rove told Cooper when he warned him not to get too close to Wilson.

And we sense more uncertainty and backpedaling at the Times with this passage:

In addition to Mr. Pincus, the reporters known to have been pursued by the special prosecutor include...

Was it only last week that Adam Liptak wrote with such confidence that "Four reporters have testified in the investigation..."?  Now the Times standard is "Known to have been pursued". 

Maybe by next week the Times can let us know whether Nick Kristof or David Sanger, both of whose names reportedly appeared on White House phone logs in the key week of July 2003, were contacted by investigators.  Even if a White House staffer told investigators, "I got a message that Kristoff called, but I never got back to him", shouldn't Fitzgerald's gumshoes verify that?  Shouldn't they have called Kristof?

All The News.

UPDATE:  IF THE TIMES HAS THE TIME:  If inquiring into the involvement of Kristof and Sanger strikes uncomfortably close to home, perhaps the Times could try to pry a clear, unambiguous statement from Tim Russert - when Adam Liptak looked into this two weeks ago, he was forced to recycle an NBC press release from August 2004.  Mike Isikoff had the same problem, which he solved by ignoring the subtlety and misdirection in the original "denial":

Russert told Fitzgerald that he did not know Plame’s name or that she was a CIA operative and that he did not provide that information to Libby, it said.

Did Russert tell Libby that Wilson's wife was a CIA analyst?  Lots of wiggle room there!

And Russert added virtually nothing when asked about this on Meet The Press - maybe the Times can give him a big platform and another chance for clarity.

Fitzgerald seems to be intent on finding out what Judy Miller and Tim Russert discussed with Libby - maybe the Times could help us find out.

Bolton's Disclosure Accurate?

Fox News has been told that Bolton's disclosure to the Senate was accurate - he has not testified or given evidence in the Plame investigation.  Let's see what other news services come up with.

I have been ignoring the alleged Bolton-Plame connection for weeks; barring a collapse on the Fox Front, I will resume doing so - some longshots aren't worth betting, and my supply of tin-foil is not limitless (Truth!).

Good job by the DKos crowd pushing this angle, though - it flickered by the Times last week, and I see from Fox that leading Senate Dems have picked it up as well.  Keep hope alive!

UPDATE:  Fox has substantially rewritten the story overnight, and moved the news about Bolton from the lead to two cryptic sentences:

But a State Department official said Wednesday that Bolton does not need to change his response.

"The forms submitted by John Bolton were accurate and nothing has changed to require them to be updated," a State Department official told FOX News.

Developing...

Here are the State Dept. sites for press releases and briefings.

PARSE THIS:  From the July 28 press briefing at he State Dept.:   

QUESTION: Senator Biden -- let's see -- asked the Secretary yesterday to tell the Senate Foreign Relations Committee whether John Bolton did, in fact, appear before a grand jury or whether he has been interviewed or otherwise asked to provide information by the Special Prosecutor or his staff in connection with the Valerie Plame affair. Do you have anything on that?

MR. MCCORMACK: Mr. Bolton, as part of the nomination process, supplied answers, supplied an answer to the question. They'd asked whether or not the nominee has been interviewed or asked to supply any information in connection with any administrative, including an Inspector General, congressional or grand jury investigation within the past five years, except routine Congressional testimony. Mr. Bolton, in his response on the written paperwork, was to say no. And that answer was truthful then and it remains the case now.

"Was to say no"?  Meaning what?

As I read this, Bolton is not revising his original answer in response to Biden's question.  Now, is "supply any information" from the questionaire responsive to "interviewed or otherwise asked to provide information" from Biden's letter?  Trusting minds might think so; perhaps lawyers reason that Bolton answered the questionaire, and shouldn't involve himself with figuring out whether there is a trick to Biden's question.

UPDATE:  Is this a State Department press briefing, or have I blundered into a comedy club?  Apparently, "the answer was truthful then" means "the answer was wrong then":

...the State Department acknowledged Thursday night that President Bush's pick to be ambassador to the United Nations did inaccurately state his role in another probe.        

A spokesman said that Bolton had in fact been questioned by the State Department inspector general, contrary to his response in a questionnaire filled out for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (search) during the confirmation process.

"Mr. Bolton was not interviewed as part of the [CIA leak] investigation. When Mr. Bolton completed the forms during the confirmation process, he did not recall being interviewed by the State Department's inspector general. Therefore his form as submitted was inaccurate. He will correct it," State Department spokesman Noel Clay said.

Just hours earlier, the State Department said Bolton had filled out the questionnaire truthfully and accurately.

"Mr. Bolton, as part of the nomination process, supplied an answer to the question that asked whether or not a nominee as been interviewed or asked to supply any information in connection with any administrative, including an inspector general congressional or grand jury investigation, within the past five years, except routine congressional testimony," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

"Mr. Bolton, in his response on the written paperwork, was to say 'no.' And that answer is truthful then and it remains the case now."

But Bolton was interviewed by the State Department's inspector general as part of a joint investigation with the CIA into Iraq's attempts to purchase yellow-cake uranium from Niger. The president cited the Iraq-Niger connection two years ago in his State of the Union address justifying an invasion, an assertion the administration later retracted.                            

Normally, the phrase "Mr. Bolton was not interviewed as part of the [CIA leak] investigation" would answer our original question.  At this point, desperate though I may be to resume ignoring Bolton, I am gloomily awaiting the next round of clarifications.

Let's also clip this Reuters story, headlined "State Dept admits Bolton gave inaccurate answers".  And (you'll have to trust me), let's add that Google News currently shows the headline to be "State Dept. says Bolton truthful to Senate panel".

The Times Discovers Ari Fleischer

The NY Times turns its spotlight on Ari Fleischer and buries a media bombshell (so I will, too) as they continue their coverage of the Plame investigation.  Anne Kornblut reports:

One person familiar with Mr. Fleischer's testimony said he told the grand jury that he was not Mr. Novak's source. And Mr. Fleischer, who was never shy about championing his Republican bosses, seems not to fit Mr. Novak's description, in a subsequent column, of his primary source as "no partisan gunslinger."

...A White House telephone log shows that Mr. Fleischer received a call from Mr. Novak on July 7, 2003, but a person familiar with Mr. Fleischer's testimony said he told prosecutors he never returned the call. Mr. Fleischer was aboard Air Force One with Mr. Bush and several other senior administration officials as they traveled across Africa that week.

And while a classified State Department memorandum that identified Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson, as a C.I.A. operative, was also on board, Mr. Fleischer has told the grand jury that he never saw the document, according to the person familiar with his testimony.

["I'm cooperating with the investigators, and refer all questions to them," Mr. Fleischer said on Tuesday, after turning away a reporter at his house on Monday.]

The people who discussed the testimony of Mr. Fleischer and other witnesses asked not to be named because Mr. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, has asked anyone involved in the case not to talk about it. At least one person who provided an account of Mr. Fleischer's role did so in the belief that it would remove suspicion from Mr. Fleischer.

As to Mr. Fleischer not having seen the INR memo, Bloomberg reported the opposite last week (Our thoughts, which include this - IF Mr. Fleischer read the memo, he could have passed key bits to another WH staffer, who then passed it on internally or leaked to a reporter.  The information flow begins somewhere!). [And "Ari for Perjury" at the Wonkette.]

The Times also delivers a mini-bombshell, buried near the end:

Few if any reporters who traveled with Mr. Fleischer, Mr. Bartlett and the White House entourage that week have been called to testify before the grand jury. A background briefing during the trip in which Mr. Bartlett spoke with reporters and urged them to look into the C.I.A.'s role in sending Mr. Wilson to Niger has not drawn substantial interest from prosecutors recently.

Shocked scream added for emphasis - "Few if any"?  Just last week, Timesman Adam Liptak told us that "Four reporters have testified in the investigation: Glenn Kessler and Walter Pincus of The Washington Post, Tim Russert of NBC News and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine."  So who are the "few, if any"?  I am pretty sure neither Pincus nor Cooper went to Africa; is the Times rowing back from Liptak's pronouncement, and admitting that more reporters have testified, or given evidence?  Well, no kidding - I was making that very point last Friday.

Finally, the Times notes the Judy Miller situation in passing, telling us this:

With Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times, in jail for refusing to divulge her source for the same information about Ms. Wilson, and the grand jury set to expire in October, the outcome of the investigation remains unclear.

"Refusing to divulge her source"?  It is possible that, in a very broad sense, this is true (and conspiracy buffs love it!).  However, based on the record established in the court hearings, the Special Counsel has subpoenaed Ms. Miller to discuss her conversation with a specific, named individual who, we have been told, has waived confidentiality (but not to Ms. Miller's satisfaction).

She is not "refusing to divulge her source" - Fitzgerald has identified this source.  She is refusing to discuss her conversation with a particular person, known to the prosecutor, who may or may not have been her source for information about Ms. Wilson.  That strikes me as a subtle but important distinction.

Let's tally up - the Times found friendly leakers for Ari - good.  They missed, or failed to rebut, the Bloomberg story; they missed or ignored Adam Liptak's piece; and they mischaracterized their own reporter's legal situation - all bad.

The Paper of Record.

MORE:  Walter Pincus and Diamond Jim VandeHei of the WaPo deliver a series of headscratchers and  jawdroppers.  Let's note Mr. Pincus' involvement in this story as a leak recipient (and more from the Captain), and press on:

(1) the NY Times exaggerated the role of Rove and Libby in drafting Tenet's mea culpa statement on the 16 Words.  We think that Rove was involved in the pushback anyway, so we don't care (much).

(2)  Wilson had a secret friend who talked to Novak on July 8, and Novak told him about Wilson's wife being with the CIA?  Wilson put it in his book, and Fitzgerald has interviewed the person, so I guess we believe it.  Very obvious question - if Wilson knew Novak was thinking of publishing this tidbit on July 8, where were the phone calls from the CIA to Novak's publisher?  My recollection is that Wilson explained his own non-involvement by assuming the CIA would take care of it.

[UPDATE:  Per his book (or here), Wilson explains that, upon learning  of the encounter on July 8, he immediately called Eason Jordan of CNN, Novak's "titular boss", to urge him to wave Novak off.  Mr. Jordan declined.

OK, questions for our hard-charging newsies out there - I can't imagine why Fitzgerald would *not* tie down that detail, so - has anyone asked Eason Jordan whether he has given evidence to Fitzgerald's grand jury or investigators?

And a follow-up - Wilson does not name his friend in the book, yet Fitzgerald knows it.  Is it fair to guess that he got it from Wilson?  Is it fair to ask the sometimes garrulous Ambassador what other questions Fitzgerald had for him?]

I wonder if Fitzgerald is surprised by Wilson's passivity before his wife was outed, in contrast with his tireless pursuit of talk show bookings afterwards.  An excerpt:

In a strange twist in the investigation, the grand jury -- acting on a tip from Wilson -- has questioned a person who approached Novak on Pennsylvania Avenue on July 8, 2003, six days before his column appeared in The Post and other publications, Wilson said in an interview. The person, whom Wilson declined to identify to The Post, asked Novak about the "yellow cake" uranium matter and then about Wilson, Wilson said. He first revealed that conversation in a book he wrote last year. In the book, he said that he tried to reach Novak on July 8, and that they finally connected on July 10. In that conversation, Wilson said that he did not confirm his wife worked for the CIA but that Novak told him he had obtained the information from a "CIA source."

And the WaPo gives us more details about the "affirmative measures" the CIA took to protect Ms. Plame's covert status:

Harlow, the former CIA spokesman, said in an interview yesterday that he testified last year before a grand jury about conversations he had with Novak at least three days before the column was published. He said he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed.

Harlow said that after Novak's call, he checked Plame's status and confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called Novak back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong and that Plame's name should not be used. But he did not tell Novak directly that she was undercover because that was classified.

I know some fans of spy fiction are under the impression that if the CIA press flack had told Novak not to publish because Ms. Plame was covert, the CIA would then have been obliged to send a hit squad into the night, tires squealing, to silence Novak.

However, I have read on other occasions that, when the hit squad is not available, the CIA settles for a phone call to the publisher to squelch publication.  Why that did not happen here remains a puzzle.  [Or see the NY Times discussion of its own controversial article about CIA Air.]

So, as of July 8, Wilson knew that Novak was telling strangers on street corners that his wife was covert, news that would, per Wilson, endanger her networks, her life, her friendships, her kids - and he figured the CIA would handle it?  Do tell.  Did he tell his wife?  Did she notify her superiors?  Presumably Fitzgerald knows.

[Based on his book, it appears that Wilson mentioned the Novak situation to his wife prior to publication; they assumed the press office would take care of it.]

TABLE POUNDING FINISH:  Right now, self-serving leaks from the CIA and self-serving columns from Novak have left us with a he-said/he said situation, with no real way to guess the truth about how forceful the CIA was in warning Novak away from this story.  *IF* Fitzgerald is considering a prosecution under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, one element he needs to demonstrate is that the CIA was taking affirmative steps to conceal Ms. Plame's covert status.  This confusion in the press office will be emphasized by any competent defense, which will note a few points:

(1) the CIA did not sign Joe Wilson to a confidentiality agreement (see SSCI);

(2) the CIA did not object to Wilson's NY Times Op-Ed, which could have been expected to call attention to a CIA mission, the ambassador, and, perhaps, his wife;

(3) the CIA Press Liaison people had a bit of a failure to communicate with Novak about the importance of not mentioning Wilson's wife.

Now, as to point (3), any reasonable prosecutor would try to take a simple path to move the story beyond its current "he said/he said".  My guess is that the CIA press relations does not have this sort of debacle - a nationally syndicated columnist outing a covert agent *after* calling the press office for guidance - very often.  My further guess is that any reasonable bureaucracy would have a bit of a follow-up to review procedures and point fingers.

So, Fitzgerald should have asked for any memos or records of phone calls between Ms. Plame, her superiors, and the CIA Press Office discussing the impending Novak column, based on the July 8 heads-up.

He should have requested any notes and memos from the CIA Press Office to higher-ups alerting them to a potential problem and requesting intervention with the appropriate editors and publishers.

There should be records of phone calls to editors and publishers.

And there should have been memos and meetings assessing "What Went Wrong", implementing new procedures, clarifying responsibilities, and generally locking the barn door post-horse departure.

All this would be in addition to a damage report related to Ms. Plame's intelligence activities - that report will, we hope, remain confidential; however, a report about new press relations procedures should not be Top Secret.

Of course, if the CIA can't produce any of this, we will be slightly less convinced that they were forceful in warning Novak off of the story, and slightly more inclined to believe that a beleaguered CIA flack is engaging in CIA CYA.  And since Fitzgerald should have asked for this info, we hope that the diligent newsies who came up with these CIA-friendly leaks can come up with a few more.

Howard Kurtz had some pro-Novak thoughts in Sept 2003 from  Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of the WaPo, and Steve Huntley, editorial page editor of the Chicago Sun-Times.

Congressional Hearings Into Plame Case

Senate and House committees will hold hearings related to the Plame investigation.  Since the chairmen are Republicans, these may not be the most comprehensive probes in the history of Washington.  However, folks who remember Oliver North's televised spectacle in the Iran-Contra hearings will remember that a dramatic witness can derail the most careful stage management.  Hmm - whom might the Dems attempt to cast in this role?  No, Joe, put your hand down, we are looking for a fresh and at least potentially credible face.  Valerie?  The nation would tune in, certainly...

Lots of reaction at Memeorandum.  And on a vicious, self-indulgent personal note, we are delighted to see that, on balance, Mark Kleiman likes the once-unrealistic idea of hearings.

UPDATE:  So whom might the Dems call?  Frequent commenter Martin makes a good point -check the invitation list to the Democrats private hearing last Friday - four former intelligence officers. Not very photogenic.

Discrepancies, Real And Imagined

Dan Froomkin of the WaPo does a good job of rounding up press coverage of the Plame investigation.  We are especially drawn to the Saturday WaPo article telling us that Special Counsel Fitzgerald is puzzling over discrepancies in the testimony of Rove and Libby; the article follows up to the Friday column by Mr. Froomkin with a similar theme.

From the Saturday article, we extract this area of bafflement:

Libby has testified that he learned about Plame from NBC correspondent Tim Russert, according to a source who spoke with The Washington Post some months ago. Russert said in a statement last year that he told the prosecutor that "he did not know Ms. Plame's name or that she was a CIA operative" and that he did not provide such information to Libby in July 2003.

Mike Isikoff of Newsweek purports to tell us more about Russert's saga, but it is hard to tell whether he has gone beyond the account from August 2004.  However, Isikoff has certainly removed the ambiguity from the NBC press release behind which Russert hid last week in the Liptak/Times article.  Here is what NBC said last year:

Russert told Fitzgerald that he did not know Plame’s name or that she was a CIA operative and that he did not provide that information to Libby, it said.

Ahh, but did Tim tell Libby that Wilson's wife was an analyst at the CIA?  Maybe Russert passed along a bare outline with no name and no "operative" - is NBC being cute with a carefully phrased denial?

Who knows?  In the cautious hands of Mr. Isikoff, NBC's statement morphs into this:

An NBC statement last year said Russert did not know of Plame, wife of ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson, or that she worked at the CIA, and "he did not provide that information to Libby."

Well, that is certainly *not* what the NBC statement said, although they may have hoped people would draw those conclusions (and it's working!).

Tim Russert himself mentioned his involvement on "Meet The Press", although he did not exert himself to bring clarity to his role:

MR. RUSSERT:  There has to be an original source, somebody.

MR. GREGORY:  Yes.

MS. TOTENBERG:  Right.

MR. RUSSERT:  Even if it came from a reporter...

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...the reporter got it from someplace.

MS. TOTENBERG:  Right.  And...

MR. RUSSERT:  But I was asked what I said.  I did not know.

Well, I don't know, either.

A second discrepancy is this:

Rove has testified thathe and Cooper talked about welfare reform foremost and turned to the topic of Plame only near the end, lawyers involved in the case said. But Cooper, writing about his testimony in the most recent issue of Time, said he "can't find any record of talking about" welfare reform. "I don't recall doing so," Cooper wrote.

Steve Spruiell (One, two)  and Byron York of the NRO cover this.  Briefly: (1) there is a contemporaneous e-mail from Rove to Hadley in which Rove states that "Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he's got a welfare-reform story coming"; (2) Matt Cooper writes in TIME that he left a message with Rove that he wanted to talk about welfare reform; (3) Bush signed a three month extension of the welfare reform bill on June 30, so the subject was topical.  Advantage - Rove.

In any case, as a stand-alone item this sort of discrepancy is immaterial, although it may be useful to Fitzgerald as a guide to the credibility and memory of the witnesses.

A third area of concern seems to be a creative invention by the folks at Bloomberg - here is Dan Froomkin's Friday summary:

White House chief political strategist Karl Rove reportedly told the grand jury that he first learned of Valerie Plame's identity from columnist Robert Novak -- but Novak's version of the story is that Rove already knew about her when the two spoke.

Groan.  Steve Spruiell is also good on this.  Briefly, in the early accounts of Rove's testimony (Times, WaPo) the story is that Rove had previously heard that Wilson's wife was involved in sending Wilson to Niger, but that Rove learned her *name*, i.e., her *identity*, from Novak.  That hardly conflicts with Novak's claim that Rove knew the broad story previously.

CNN/TIME reviews the case, and gives us a pleasant surprise in discussing possible motives for the leakers:

What was the point of Rove or anyone else bringing up Plame in the first place? Was he saying Wilson was tainted by his close association with the CIA, whose analysts had generally been too skeptical of the Iraqi threat for the administration's taste?

The tensions between the White House and the CIA had been rising steadily in the months before the Iraq invasion, as CIA analysts complained about evidence being distorted or ignored and the White House pushed back with complaints about the quality of the intel they were getting. "I know the analyst who was subjected to withering questioning on the Iraq-- al-Qaeda links by Libby with the Vice President sitting there," says a CIA analyst. "So I think there was an anger at the CIA for not getting it and not being on board. The political side of the Administration was pissed at the CIA. So I can see how they responded to that--and Wilson--by implying he couldn't be trusted because, 'well, just look where his wife works.'"

Or, more personally, was Rove suggesting that Wilson was chosen not for his expertise but because his wife was trying to help him stay in the game? Certainly Rove distorted her role when he claimed she had authorized the trip. "She was not in a position to send Joe Wilson anywhere except to bed without his supper," says Larry Johnson, a Plame classmate at the CIA who later worked on Central American issues for the agency and then moved to the State Department as a counterterrorism officer. According to a declassified July 7, 2004, report from the Senate Intelligence Committee, it was Plame's boss, the deputy chief of the CIA's counterproliferation division, who authorized the trip. He did so after Plame "offered up" her husband's name for the Niger mission, according to the report. In a February 12, 2002, memo to her boss, Plame wrote that "my husband has good relations with both the PM [Prime Minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity."

That means Wilson was also shading the story: "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," he wrote in his 2004 book The Politics of Truth. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip." When asked last week by TIME if he still denies that she was the origin of his involvement in the trip, he avoided answering. But he has maintained all along that Administration officials conducted a "smear job" on him and outed his wife in revenge.

Well.  TIME has come a long way from Cooper's credulous "The War on Wilson" two years ago.

From Dusk 'Til Dawn

We are still on the Plame leak case - the WaPo makes a bigger deal than necessary of then-White House Counsel Gonzalez's decision to notify Chief of Staff Andrew Card immediately about a criminal probe into the affair by the Justice Dept., and then waiting twelve hours to notify the rest of the staff:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said yesterday that he spoke with White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. immediately after learning that the Justice Department had launched a criminal investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity. But Gonzales, who was White House counsel at the time, waited 12 hours before officially notifying the rest of the staff of the inquiry.

...

In the New York Times yesterday, columnist Frank Rich cited news reports from 2003 that when Gonzales was notified about the investigation on the evening of Monday, Sept. 29, 2003, he waited 12 hours before telling the White House staff about the inquiry. Official notification to staff is meant to quickly alert anyone who may have pertinent records to make sure they are preserved and safeguarded.

Asked on CBS's "Face the Nation" about the column, Gonzales said the Justice Department had informed his office around 8 p.m. and that White House lawyers said he could wait until the next morning before notifying the staff. He did not say why he called Card.

"I specifically had our lawyers go back to the Department of Justice lawyers and ask them, 'Do you want us to notify the staff now, immediately, or would it be okay to notify the staff early in the morning?' And we were advised, go ahead and notify the staff early in the morning, that would be okay." He said most of the staff had left by the time the Justice Department called and that "no one knew about the investigation."

But he acknowledged telling one person: "the chief of staff. And immediately the next morning, I told the president. And shortly thereafter, there was notification sent out to all the members of the White House staff," Gonzales said.

I understand Frank Rich's desire to heighten the sense of drama and cover-up.  However, a couple of points are worth noting.

First, this referral was delivered from Justice to Gonzalez on the evening of Monday, Sept. 29.  However, NBC News reported late on Friday, Sept 26 that a criminal referral was imminent, and the Sunday, Sept 28 WaPo front-paged the story that broke this case open.

Inquiring minds have wondered why the Justice Dept waited until the evening of the 28th to tell Gonzalez the obvious, but any criminal conspirators had plenty of warning.

And my second point is really a question - is forewarned forearmed in this case?  Just what might an evil conspirator do with a twelve hour head start (which was really a head start going back to July?)  E-mails, for example, are protected by a Federal records law; I imagine that other White House documents are similarly protected.  I suppose personal diaries could be scrubbed, but, post-Whitewater, every staffer in Washington knows that might be subpoenaed.

It would have been helpful for the WaPo reporter to flesh out the implications of a twelve hour gap; if we can believe Gonzalez, the Justice Dept. was unworried, and I am not sure why they should have been.

Circling Back To Ari Fleischer

Josh Marshall sort of points us to a discrepancy in the Ari Fleischer story.  From today's Times:

Among those asked if he had seen the memo was Ari Fleischer, then the White House press secretary, who was on Air Force One with Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell during the Africa trip. Mr. Fleischer told the grand jury that he never saw the document, a person familiar with the testimony said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the prosecutor's admonitions about not disclosing what is said to the grand jury.

From a recent Bloomberg story to which Dr. Marshall linked:

On the flight to Africa, Fleischer was seen perusing the State Department memo on Wilson and his wife, according to a former administration official who was also on the trip.

Well.  I am sure he is a great American, but this is not good.  And, as with Karl, since Ari was involved with the Wilson push-back, why would he *not* have seen the memo, or been apprised of it?

Ari's July 7, July 11, and July 12 press briefings are helpful in gauging his involvement in the message management.

And yes, if Ari is The One, since he left the Administration on July 14, 2003, we are back to an Incredible Shrinking Scandal.

MORE:  We are getting a lot from Bloomberg - do we have confidence in these reporters?

We Need A Visionary

On the subject of Karl Rove: Mark Kleiman and the Baseball Crank are narrowing their differences over whether the Espionage Act is a more suitable statute for a prosecution than the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. I am sure other legal types are welcome to join in.

Relatedly - there has been speculation in the press and comments from judges suggesting that Fitgerald may be moving on to false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice.  Someone who tackled a primer on those subjects as they relate to the Plame case would (if the wind shifted their way) be cited everywhere forever.

Legal issues, history (How often have special prosecutors invoked these since, let's say, Watergate?) - a noble undertaking.  Just a thought.

I Smell Press Cover-Up (And I'm Steaming)

I believe there may be a substantial, ongoing press cover-up in the Plame leak investigation.  Various White House staffers claim to have heard about Ms. Plame from reporters, but not many reporters seem to have been subpoenaed - for example, in their recent coverage Adam Liptak of the Times only noted Matt Cooper of TIME, Judy Miller of the NY Times, Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler of the WaPo, and Tim Russert of NBC News, in addition to the shadowy Robert Novak. 

The picture of a beehive of reporters buzzing around the White House and chatting about Wilson and his wife is being leaked by folks seemingly sympathetic to the White House staffers.  However, there aren't enough reporters in the story (only Judy seems to be unaccounted for), which poses some political puzzles for the White House.

But wait!  Let's flash back to March 2004, when Newsday reported on subpoenas in the Plame investigation.  Here is part of Newsday's list:

A federal grand jury has subpoenaed White House records on administration contacts with more than two dozen journalists and news media outlets in a special investigation into the improper leak of a covert CIA official's identity to columnist Robert Novak last July. They include:

Robert Novak, "Crossfire," "Capital Gang" and the Chicago Sun-Times
Knut Royce and Timothy M. Phelps, Newsday
Walter Pincus, Richard Leiby, Mike Allen, Dana Priest and Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post
Matthew Cooper, John Dickerson, Massimo Calabresi, Michael Duffy and James Carney, Time magazine
Evan Thomas, Newsweek
Andrea Mitchell, "Meet the Press," NBC
Chris Matthews, "Hardball," MSNBC
Tim Russert, Campbell Brown, NBC
Nicholas D. Kristof, David E. Sanger and Judith Miller, The New York Times
Greg Hitt and Paul Gigot, The Wall Street Journal
John Solomon, The Associated Press
Jeff Gannon, Talon News

Just to be clear, let's add this detail from the story:

There have been no reports of journalists being subpoenaed.

These subpoenas were for records of White House contacts with these reporters, not subpoenas for the reporters themselves.  However...

The last name on the list should ring a bell - "Jeff Gannon" became famous in the Jeff Gannon / James Guckert "outing" of a partisan pseudo-reporter.  Without re-fighting that war, let's note a key detail - although Guckert claims he was never actually subpoenaed (which is consistent with the Newsday account), he says that he was interviewed by federal investigators in the Plame case.  From Editor and Publisher:

On the Plame probe
 
Guckert said that contrary to many press reports, he was never subpoenaed by the special prosecutor and has never testified before a grand jury in the case. But he said he was interviewed by two FBI agents in his home for about 90 minutes last year.

"I answered their questions truthfully and honestly, but I would prefer not to say more,” he said. “I assume the information was routed back and that is why I was not called to testify."

Well, my argument at the time was that Guckert knew nothing not available in the Wall Street Journal.  But what about the many other reporters on that list - was Guckert the only one the Feds chose to interview?  Possible, I suppose - the other reporters are at big firms with possibly scary lawyers.  Or maybe Guckert is a liar puffing up his own status and gulling E&P.  Or maybe Guckert was interviewed as part of this Dec 26, 2003 WaPo story, which means the Wall Street Journal should have been swept up as well.

But Newsday has a pretty plausible list of reporters who might have called the White House to follow up on Wilson's Jul y Op-Ed.  And if those names are on the WH contact logs, and Special Counsel Fiztgerald has heard the staffer's side of the story, why would he not seek verification from the reporters?  Regardless of the state of play in the spring of 2004, considering recent developments in the Plame story, if the reporter's chats were innocuous and *not* exculpatory of anyone in the White House, that is news.

Even if the various other reporter's only story is, "Fitzgerald tried to talk to me, but my legal team fought him off", that is still a story.  Or, from another perspective, disclosure of a massive refusal by the press to cooperate with this investigation might be covered by "the public's right to know".

There are a lot of names there on that list - what did these reporters say, and when did they say it.  Did they cooperate but promise their silence?  Why?  Or, was their contact so tame that Fitzgerald was not interested - tell us.

Or did they refuse to cooperate?  If they refused in the name of press freedom on behalf of the public's right to know, would they mind informing their public of the good work they are undertaking on our behalf?

Right now Congress is debating a reporters shield law, while reporters are shielding us from some basic facts about this important case.  What about my right to know?

The last word I saw was from Adam Liptak of the NY Times:

Four reporters have testified in the investigation: Glenn Kessler and Walter Pincus of The Washington Post, Tim Russert of NBC News and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine.

OK, "testified" might correspond with "grand jury", not "federal investigators", so maybe Mr. Liptak is leaving open the possibility that other reporters have been interviewed by investigators.  Still, perhaps the NY Times could update their readers on the status of Nick Kristof and David Sanger, from the list above.  Just to start.

It's a simple question, which any decent reporter could ask of any reporter on the list - in March, 2004 Newsday reported that Fitzgerald was interested in White House contacts with a number of reporters, including [insert name].  At least one reporter listed by Newsday was contacted by Federal investigators, although he did not testify to the grand jury.  Have you been asked to talk with Federal investigators on the Plame leak investigation?

SOME DAYS CHICKEN SALAD:  Decison '08 sends me to this Bloomberg account of a discrepancy in Tim Russert's story:

Lewis “Scooter'’ Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned from NBC News reporter Tim Russert of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson. Russert has testified before a federal grand jury that he didn’t tell Libby of Plame’s identity.

Well, well.  The NY Times puzzled over Mr. Russert's odd situation in the Liptak article (Russert only testified about what he told Libby, not what Libby told him) and we had mocked his lawyer's easily parsed "denial":

Mr. Russert, however, according to the NBC statement, said "he did not know Ms. Plame's name or that she was a C.I.A. operative and that he did not provide that information to Mr. Libby."

Please - did Russert tell Libby that Joe Wilson's wife tapped him for the Niger trip, without giving a name?  Did Russert say she was an "analyst", not an "operative"?

None of this came up when Russert chatted with Matt Cooper on his "Meet The Pravda" show last weekend.

The Emerging Case Against Karl Rove

We have our thoughts marshalled on the big WaPo story which leads as follows:

Plame's Identity Marked As Secret
Memo Central to Probe Of Leak Was Written By State Dept. Analyst

By Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials.

Plame -- who is referred to by her married name, Valerie Wilson, in the memo -- is mentioned in the second paragraph of the three-page document, which was written on June 10, 2003, by an analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), according to a source who described the memo to The Washington Post.

Quickly:

First, those reporters are two of the Top Guns at the WaPo.

Second, we have argued for years that reporters know a lot more than they are telling us about who is involved, and have begged for MORE HINTS.  Today, tea leaf readers will love this:

Several other administration officials were on the trip to Africa, including senior adviser Dan Bartlett, then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and others. Bartlett's attorney has refused to discuss the case, citing requests by the special counsel. Fleischer could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Of all the officials in all the Administrations in all the world to mention by name, why those two?

And finally, the case against Karl - it is outlined in the UPDATE to this earlier post; let me try for a quick summary here [and we are revising on the fly]:

The INR, which is the intelligence arm of the State Department, prepared a memo describing the background to, and findings of, Wilson's trip to Niger.  This memo has become a focus of the investigation because it mentions Ms. Wilson's CIA connection, and was circulating amongst Administration official while Colin Powell and George Bush were on a trip to Africa.

So, key questions - did the memo identify Ms. Wilson as covert, who within the Administration might have seen it directly, and who might have had it described to them?

We care because, in the case of Karl Rove, we all wonder how he learned about Ms. Wilson - his current story, as leaked by his attorney, is that he got it either directly or indirectly from a reporter, but he can't remember who.  Strong stuff.

The WaPo advances the story by telling us that the paragraph mentioning Ms. Wilson is marked "S" for Secret, but it adds that the memo does not explicitly say that Ms. Wilson is covert.  This is Not Good for Karl - he should not be leaking classified info.  And whatever happened to my preferred designation for this type of info, "STFU"?

So, can we connect Karl Rove to the document?  Well, per Newsweek, we see that briefing books were being prepared in Washington to aid the Sunday talk show push-back (see Newsweek, or here):

The book was primarily prepared by her National Security Council staff. It contained classified information—perhaps including all or part of the memo from State. The entire binder was labeled TOP SECRET.

My contention is that the NSC would surely have wanted to see that memo - Condi Rice had been asked about the ambassador's trip to Niger on "Meet The Press" on June 8, and had been woefully ignorant.  Is it a coincidence that the INR memo explaining Wilson's trip was put together on June 10?  Maybe.  But check Ms. Rice's performance in this July 11 press gaggle, where she tells the reporters to ask the CIA about Wilson's trip (and hat tip to Daxman of TPM Cafe).

Rove's e-mail showed he was talking to NSC staffer Hadley about this, Rove was also part of the White House Iraq Group, and Rove is hired to handle political challenges (which this "16 Words" debacle had become).  So we don't lack for reasons to think that the NSC would want this memo, and that Rove would get involved.

Now, Rove's defenders will note (wait, that's me!) that maybe it is something else in that paragraph that attracted the "S" designation - maybe, for example, the paragraphs described a CIA trip to Niger that, as of June 10, was still classified.  Following the publication of Joe Wilson's Op-Ed, which the CIA approved, that trip was no longer secret. 

Several commenters, with experience in handling classified documents (including the estimable Cecil Turner) assure me that (a) covert agents ("NOCs") are not not bandied about casually as in this memo, at least not knowingly; and (b) a classified doc should have an explanatory sheet noting just what component of each sensitive paragraph is, in fact, sensitive.  If her CIA role was not noted as sensitive, someone made a mistake.

So, we have worked our way to the Supreme Court tie-in - original intent matters!  Special Counsel Fitzgerald has surely interviewed the author of the memo to learn just what it was he was attempting to indicate as classified, and whether the info still had that status come July.

Developing...

SPEEDBUMP:  Luskin, Rove's attorney, denies Karl saw or knew about the memo until investigators showed it to him.  Hmm.  Well, that is Luskin talking to us, not Karl talking to the investigators - do you trust Luskin?  Or maybe someone in Hadley's position passed the key tidbits to Karl without describing the memo as such. 

MEDIA CHEAP SHOTS:  The Wall Street Journal is supposed to get the Rove-friendly leaks - what's happening?  Is it safe to turn on Fox?  (Although one might say the WSJ were friendlier than the WaPo.  And maybe we are in a Supreme Court shadow for the bad news.  But shouldn't they wait until Friday?).

And Daniel Okrent of the Times decried the Times "Nor Reported Here" mentality - if a story is neither broken nor advanced by the Times, it didn't happen.

Well, after a week of front-paging Rove-bashers, the Times is silent on the Wall Street Journal revelations.  Silly.

UPDATE:  The Sign Of The "S" - The Captain is on board, wondering just what in that paragraph was classified; MacMind is a skeptic; and the Ace is a bit more nervous than I am.

Lots more reaction at Memeorandum.  I can't say I am finding a lot of insight amongst the usual suspects on the left - Josh Marshall reads the WaPo to us; the sometimes imaginative Kevin Drum is blogging on vacation, and doesn't add much either.

We welcome suggestions for other interesting posts (or use the trackbacks), but right now, we seem to be the World Headquarters for obsessive Plame speculation.

Kidding?

Josh Marshall recommends a post by Kevin Drum which commences thusly:

NUKES AND THE BASE....Step back from Plamegate for a moment and ask yourself a broader question: why did the White House react so violently to Joe Wilson's suggestion that the story about Saddam Hussein trying to procure uranium from Niger was false? After all, as conservative apologists never tire of pointing out, Wilson didn't really debunk George Bush's words in the 2003 State of the Union address. Bush said only that Saddam "sought" uranium from Africa, while Wilson merely provided evidence that no uranium ever changed hands. The fact is, Wilson's report didn't invalidate Bush's statement.

So why did the White House go nuts?  What were they so scared of that they went into full-blown smear-and-destroy mode?

Fortunately, Mr. Drum has an answer to hand, since he is in touch with the Republican base:

One of the advantages of living in Orange County is that I have plenty of centrist and conservative acquaintances, and one thing I've learned from them is that even among Bush's own supporters it was the possibility of Saddam getting hold of nukes that really scared them. Chemical and biological weapons were a bit of a yawn. Without nukes, even Bush sympathizers were skeptical about the whole Iraq adventure.

Since Karl Rove has much more sophisticated means of gauging public opinion than my occasional lunches with friends, he obviously knew this full well...

Mr. Drum is then kind enough to explain that Karl Rove was intent on keeping alive the myth of Saddam's nukes in order to placate the restive base.

Gee.  If I wanted to unravel this puzzle and didn't have any Republican friends, I might go back and see what folks were actually saying at the time.  Since we have a blogosphere, it is almost like having a time machine - extraordinary!  This post by Pejman from July 11, 2003 provides a useful place to start with lots of links; here is more from July 16.

Secondly, and I shudder to ask - does Mr. Drum specifically, or his readership generally, honestly think that all that Joe Wilson reported was that Saddam was not acquiring uranium?  Was that the sum of Wilson's message, and the extent of the controversy he created?

I feel as though I am speaking across a chasm - are we actually having this discussion?  Is there this big a disagreement about what strikes me as basic facts?  When folks on the left say "Bush Lied", what do they think he lied about?  And who is one of the people they mention as having provided evidence of those lies?

And is it possible that "Bush Was Wrong" is a bit less incendiary than "Bush Lied"?  Might it be that "Wrong" is different from "Liar", and the difference is worth tussling over?

These are tough questions - I have a few Democratic friends, but I won't pass on the wisdom I have gleaned from my lunches with them in attempting to answer them.

However, I am inclined to back away slowly while continuing to talk in a calm voice as I wait for the reality based community to re-join us in reality.

MORE:  I don't want to give too many hints, but on the off chance that someone is not just trying out the latest DNC spin, I have a quick reprise of Wilson's charges here.

UPDATE:  We can encapsulate the entire media environment that Jow Wilson had created with this one question from Ari Fleischer's July 7 press briefing, the day after Wilson's Op-Ed:

MR. FLEISCHER:  But, again, the information on [NIger and the forgeries] -- the President did not have that information prior to his giving the State of the Union.

Q       Which gets to the crux of what Ambassador Wilson is now alleging -- that he provided this information to the State Department and the CIA 11 months before the State of the Union and he is amazed that it, nonetheless, made it into the State of the Union address.  He believes that that information was deliberately ignored by the White House.  Your response to that?

MR. FLEISCHER:  And that's way, again, he's making the statement that -- he is saying that surely the Vice President must have known, or the White House must have known.  And that's not the case, prior to the State of the Union.

Q       He's saying that surely people at the decision-making level within the NSC would have known the information which he -- passed on to both the State Department and the CIA.

MR. FLEISCHER:  And the information about the yellow cake and Niger was not specifically known prior to the State of the Union by the White House.

Q       What does that say about communications?

Which is my point.  Now, maybe the press was not reading the caveats in Wilson's Op-Ed carefully enough, but please don't recite those caveats back at me now and tell me that the White House did not have a Wilson problem.

What Did Waas Know, And When Did He Know It?

Murray Waas, writing in the American Prospect, catches the eyes of Atrios and Josh Marshall with this tidbit:

White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove did not disclose that he had ever discussed CIA officer Valerie Plame with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper during Rove’s first interview with the FBI, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The omission by Rove created doubt for federal investigators, almost from the inception of their criminal probe into who leaked Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak, as to whether Rove was withholding crucial information from them, and perhaps even misleading or lying to them, the sources said.

Also leading to the early skepticism of Rove's accounts was the claim that although he first heard that Plame worked for the CIA from a journalist, he said could not recall the name of the journalist. Later, the sources said, Rove wavered even further, saying he was not sure at all where he first heard the information.

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, has said that Rove never knew that Plame was a covert officer when he discussed her CIA employment with reporters, and that he only first learned of her clandestine status when he read about it in the newspaper. Luskin did not return a telephone call today seeking comment for this story.

Well.  Was I engaging in a bit of psychic pre-rebuttal when I took up this point last weekend?  Nooo, I was reading Newsweek, which told us this:

(Rove did not initially discuss the conversation with Cooper in his first interview with the FBI, a source close to Rove, who declined to be identified because of the ongoing investigation, told NEWSWEEK. But Rove later testified about it, the source said.)

To save people a click, I will reprise the rebuttal - Depending on context, this could expose Rove to a "false statement" charge *if* the prosecutor thinks the initial misstatement is material - exculpatory scenarios would include Rove saying to the investigators "I have not yet reviewed my notes and e-mails, but as best I recall, I spoke about this only to Novak".

Since Rove's e-mails included one to Hadley mentioning his chat with Cooper, it is hard to believe Rove *had*reviewed his e-mails prior to the interview.  Let's go to the AP:

Mr. Rove told Stephen J. Hadley, then deputy national security adviser, in the July 11, 2003, e-mail that he had spoken with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper and tried to caution him away from some assertions that CIA employee Valerie Plame's husband was making about faulty Iraq intelligence.
   
"I didn't take the bait," Mr. Rove wrote in the message obtained by the Associated Press. In the memo, Mr. Rove recounted how Mr. Cooper tried to question him about whether President Bush had been hurt by the new accusations that Mrs. Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, had been making.

The White House turned the e-mail over to prosecutors, and Mr. Rove told a grand jury about it last year during testimony in which he also acknowledged discussing Mrs. Plame's work for the CIA with Mr. Cooper and syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

Well, "I forgot" is never your best defense, but it is not out of bounds.

Mr. Waas segues to the famous INR memo, adding the detail that it was written by Marc Grossman, then the undersecretary of state for political affairs (hmm - the Times says it  was "written for Marc Grossman"), but failing to address a key point also sidestepped by the Times (whose source had reread the memo on Friday!) - did the memo describe Ms. Wilson as "covert", or as just another CIA analyst?

Well, last year Newsweek said that "it did not mention her last name or undercover status".  Since it was based on an INR staffer's notes of her three minute appearance at a meeting to discuss Wilson's assignment, I can see why her covert status might not have come up.

I can also see why neither Mr. Waas nor the Times would care to focus on that seeming detail.  Even with a fellow practically reading the memo to them.

MORE:  Mr. Waas did yeoman work cracking the mystery of Novak's cooperation with the prosecutor.

However, we are mildly irked by this:

...a U.S. government official questioned by investigators said Novak specifically asked him whether Plame had some covert status with the CIA. The official told investigators that Novak appeared uncertain whether she was undercover or not.

That "U.S. government official" might well be the CIA press spokesperson who could not seem to persuade Novak not to publish.  Here is the WaPo account from Sep 28, 2003:

    

When Novak told a CIA spokesman he was going to write a column about Wilson's wife, the spokesman urged him not to print her name "for security reasons," according to one CIA official. Intelligence officials said they believed Novak understood there were reasons other than Plame's personal security not to use her name, even though the CIA has declined to confirm whether she was undercover.

    

Novak said in an interview last night that the request came at the end of a conversation about Wilson's trip to Niger and his wife's role in it. "They said it's doubtful she'll ever again have a foreign assignment," he said. "They said if her name was printed, it might be difficult if she was traveling abroad, and they said they would prefer I didn't use her name. It was a very weak request. If it was put on a stronger basis, I would have considered it."

Are we ruling out the possibility that Novak tried to cut through the fog of Ms. Wilson's difficulties with foreign travel, and asked point blank whether she was covert?  If Novak seemed uncertain, it may be the CIA spokesperson who introduced the uncertainty.  Sort of awkward for the CIA, if they failed even then to wave Novak off, and we can see why they would down-play that.

UPDATE:  Key details on the memo from the WSJ:

The paragraph in the memo discussing Ms. Wilson's involvement in her husband's trip is marked at the beginning with a letter designation in brackets to indicate the information shouldn't be shared, according to the person familiar with the memo. Such a designation would indicate to a reader that the information was sensitive. The memo, though, doesn't specifically describe Ms. Wilson as an undercover agent, the person familiar with the memo said.

A fair use article excerpt appears below the fold.

OK, the info was sensitive, which is bad for the leakers, but it does not describe her as covert, which is bad for a prosecution under the IIPA.  And since the memo was in Africa while Rove was in Washington, maybe he only heard about it, and was not warned of the sensitive nature.  Maybe.

There is the matter of the TOP SECRET briefing books being prepared in NY to aid the Sunday talk show push-back (see Newsweek, or here):

The book was primarily prepared by her National Security Council staff. It contained classified information—perhaps including all or part of the memo from State. The entire binder was labeled TOP SECRET.

So maybe the memo was sent back to Washington, or maybe not.  I would wonder, why wouldn't it be?  In my world, the memo was generated on June 10 in response to Condi Rice's embarrassing ignorance on this subject during her June 8 Meet The Press appearance.  Surely the NSC would get a peek at the memo that answered their table-pounding question of "What is this darn trip and where is the darn report that Russert knows about but Condi Rice does not?" [And see this July 11 press gaggle with Condi Rice, where she tells the press to ask the CIA about Wilson's trip.]

Thanks to Jeff and Jim E, frequent commenters who run the risk of becoming as obsessive on this subject as me.  And Weldon Berger of Betty the Crow was key-critical in cracking the WSJ archives for us.

A quick summing up - it is getting easier to make the case that Rove knew, or should have know, that the info he passed to Cooper was sensitive.  In other words (his words, actually), Rove had said too much.  But the IIPA looks like the wrong statute.

And the first leak to Novak may be innocuous, if his account, which matches Novak's, stands up.

Sidebar - Ari Fleischer's name is appearing in more articles.  He and Steve Hadley are the forgotten men here.

Tracking Down A Loose End

I can find plenty of references invoking the notion that Andrea Mitchell recently admitted that Valerie Plame's identity was widely known amongst journalists and/or the Washington glitterati.

However, all the cites seem to lead back to this Powerline post, where the info was delivered in a late update as follows:

SCOTT adds: Hilail Gildin writes: "Andrea Mitchell was asked, on MSNBC, whether it was generally known to news people, before the hullabaloo, that Ms. Plame worked for the CIA. She answered, somewhat reluctantly, that it was. In the light of this, I don't understand the ensuing fuss."

The Powerline post was July 10, a Sunday; Ms. Mitchell's appearance is not dated, and I have had no luck finding anything looking like a likely transcript.

However, I would love to see something!  If some sleuth can help me, I am sure some righties would be grateful for the help.  Although having said that, I expect that most folks are eager to move on to the Supreme Court tussle (or Harrry Potter, or anything!)

RELATED:  Lots of news articles from TalkLeft pointing to Libby, and two questions come to mind:

(1) Per a later citation, many reporters were to be subpoenaed - were they, and what can they tell us about?  Or would they prefer not to comment, and invoke the public's right to be stonewalled?

(2) Who remembers Gerald Ford's controversial birthday bash?  I don't understand the date, but I recognize the names:

One journalist, NBC reporter and "Meet the Press" host Andrea Mitchell, appears to have several connections of interest.

On July 6, she interviewed Wilson about his trip to Niger, and two days later she reported officials tried to cast Wilson as a Democratic "partisan."

And on July 16, her husband, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, was honored at a White House reception held to celebrate former President Gerald Ford's 90th birthday. The grand jury subpoenaed the guest list, which has not been released.

"I shouldn't talk about it," Mitchell said Friday, declining to say if she attended the reception. Asked why the grand jury might be interested in it, she said, "I can't even imagine."

The July 6 interview was Wilson's "coming-out" event on Meet The Press, which coincided with his NY Times op-ed.  I suppose her July 6 event could have prompted a push-back call.

Hey, Media Matters - Did You Notice...

Hello, Media Matters!  Did you notice that the NY Times pulled the rug out from under you yesterday?  I didn't think so.

Let's see, here is the Media Matters post complaining that CBS News and the LA Times are not on board with the media consensus that Bush lowered the bar when he announced that, in the Plame leak investigation, he would fire anyone who "committed a crime".  The MM people then cite the NY Times in support of their view:

Responding to the July 2003 outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, the White House made an unqualified pledge to fire any administration official involved in leaking Plame's identity. But CBS News and the Los Angeles Times reported this pledge as narrower than it actually was, claiming that President Bush would fire anyone who "illegally leaked" Plame's identity...

...Bush himself narrowed his prior pledge at a July 18 press conference to cover only those administration officials "who committed a crime." The New York Times noted that Bush's new statement constituted a departure from prior White House promises to fire anyone involved in the leak:

President Bush changed his stance today on his close adviser Karl Rove, stopping well short of promising that anyone in his administration who helped to unmask a C.I.A. officer would be fired.

"If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration," Mr. Bush said in response to a question, after declaring, "I don't know all the facts; I want to know all the facts."

For months, Mr. Bush and his spokesmen have said that anyone involved in the disclosure of the C.I.A. officer's identity would be dismissed. The president's apparent raising of the bar for dismissal today, to specific criminal conduct, comes amid mounting evidence that, at the very least, Mr. Rove provided backhanded confirmation of the C.I.A. officer's identity.

Hard luck, chaps - the Times is an uncertain ally on this.  In fact, if you follow your link to the Time story currently at that address, the author is still David Stout, but the editors changed his direction a bit.  Quite a bit:

WASHINGTON, July 18 - President Bush said today that he would fire anyone in his administration who has broken the law in the unmasking of a C.I.A. officer two years ago.

Asked about his close adviser Karl Rove, who is at the center of an investigation into the disclosure of the officer's identity, Mr. Bush said: "If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration. I don't know all the facts; I want to know all the facts."

The remarks appeared to shift the standard for dismissal that has been expressed repeatedly over many months by Mr. Bush's spokesmen - from promises to fire anyone who played a role in the disclosure, to Mr. Bush's statement today that criminal conduct would have to be involved.

The president's comment today, however, was similar to one he made in 2003, when he said that anyone in his administration who had "violated law" would be dismissed.

Democrats pounced on the remarks as a raising of the bar for dismissal. However, Mr. Bush's spokesman, Scott McClellan, rejected the suggestion that Mr. Bush had added a "qualifier" to the standards for his aides' conduct.

For months, Mr. Bush's spokesmen have said that anyone involved in the disclosure of the C.I.A. officer's identity would be dismissed. Today's developments come amid mounting evidence that, at the very least, Mr. Rove provided backhanded confirmation of the C.I.A. officer's identity.

How about that?  The Times front-pager by Sanger and Stevenson provides more background on the Sept 30 press avail where Bush set the standard at "violated the law".  And I see from these Media Matters post that, although they are familiar with part of Bush's Sept 30 statement, they would prefer not to puzzle their readers with the "violated the law" portion of Bush's comments.  Gosh - it's almost as if Media Matters doesn't want their readers to have all the facts.  That does not seem to be very "reality based".

Here is the key Times excerpt - although the words may pain MM, they will surely laud the placement, which is well down in paragraph twelve:

White House statements on this issue, dating back over the two years of the Wilson case, have varied. On Sept. 30, 2003, Mr. Bush used language akin of what he said on Monday. "If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is," he said then. "And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of."

At other moments, though, Mr. Bush's language has been less precise. In Sea Island, Ga. in June 2004, Mr. Bush was asked whether he would fire anyone who was involved in leaking Ms. Wilson's name - which might or might not violate the law, depending on the circumstances. Without hesitation, Mr. Bush said yes.

Yes, we have a view on this opposite to Media Matters.  And there is good news - Roberts has been announced as the Supreme Court nominee, and nobody cares about Valerie Plame!

 

 

Red Herrings, Please, With A Side Order Of BS

The NY Times re-spins the Plame leak investigation in an editorial titled "A Jar of Red Herrings".  On a couple of points they get lost in Timesworld:

Joseph Wilson's report This is one of the biggest red herrings in this case - that administration officials were simply attempting to wave reporters off an erroneous story about this report.

In July 2003, Mr. Wilson wrote an Op-Ed article in The Times that described how he had been sent by the C.I.A. to investigate a report that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger. He said he had found no evidence to support the claim of a uranium purchase, or even a serious attempt to negotiate one, and that he had reported this to Washington. That is entirely accurate. Mr. Rove knew it when he spoke to Mr. Cooper, and he tried to give the impression that Mr. Wilson was an unreliable person who had been sent to Niger only because of his wife's influence...

Oh, for heaven's sake - last week, Josh Marshall tried to peddle the same line that Wilson was not saying anything sufficiently controversial to merit a rebuttal.

In fact, Joe Wilson's theme was that Dick Cheney (or his office) had asked the CIA to explore links between Saddam and uranium from Niger; Joe Wilson had come back with a report conclusively debunking any links; and Dick Cheney's office had chosen to ignore that.

Since the Times seems to have lost their copy, here is what Wilson wrote on July 6, 2003, in the NY Times:

The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.

...The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses.

And here is what Mr. Wilson said to Andrea Mitchell on Meet The Press that Sunday:

Ms. Mitchell:  ...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.

MS. MITCHELL: So they knew months and months before they passed on these allegations that, in fact, that particular charge was not true. Do you think, based on all of this, that the intelligence was hyped?

AMB. WILSON: My judgment on this is that if they were referring to Niger when they were referring to uranium sales from Africa to Iraq, that information was erroneous and that they knew about it well ahead of both the publication of the British White Paper and the president’s State of the Union address.

That seemed to merit a rebuttal.  George Tenet of the CIA provided one on July 11; Ari Fleischer piled on the next day.

The Times continues with its editorial confusion:

What really bothered Mr. Rove was Mr. Wilson's view that the administration had deliberately twisted the intelligence on Iraq and that Mr. Bush had misled Americans about the need for war. We don't know whether top officials heard about Mr. Wilson's findings and ignored them, or whether the findings never reached the upper levels...

I suppose it depends on what we mean by "know".  The Senate Subcommittee on Intelligence seemed to "know" that Wilson's findings were not conclusive, did not change anyone's mind about the possibility of a Saddam-Niger link, and consequently, were not briefed to the Vice President's office.

And the Times seemed to "know" the same thing last July after the SSCI report came out.  In a concealed, half-hearted Wilson debunker, James Risen wrote this:

Analysts at the C.I.A. did not believe that Mr. Wilson had provided significant information, so the agency did not brief Mr. Cheney about it, despite his clear interest in the issue, the Senate found.

We must be visiting the land the Times forgot.  Well, it looks like they also forgot this Sanger/Stevenson piece from July 2004:

...now two new reports have reopened the question of whether Mr. Bush was indeed correct when, on Jan. 28, 2003, he told the nation and the world, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Oh, dear.

Moving The Goalposts (Back To Their Original Position)

The goalposts were moved while Scott McClellan, White House spokesfolk, wasn't even watching.  We need to find Scott!

Here is the AP reporting on Bush's latest pronouncement on the Plame investigation:

President Bush said Monday that if anyone in his administration committed a crime in connection with the public leak of the identity of an undercover CIA operative, that person will "no longer work in my administration." At the same time, Bush again sidestepped a question on the role of his top political adviser, Karl Rove, in the matter.

The AP sees a discrepancy:

Bush said in June 2004 that he would fire anyone in his administration shown to have leaked information that exposed the identity of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame. On Monday, however, he added the qualifier that it would have be shown that a crime was committed.

Asked at a June 10, 2004, news conference if he stood by his pledge to fire anyone found to have leaked Plame's name, Bush answered, "Yes. And that's up to the U.S. attorney to find the facts."

We have belabored this already.  In Sept 2003, Bush said that "if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is.  And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of."

In June 2004, a reporter asked if Bush stood by a pledge Bush had not previously made, namely, to fire anyone "involved" with the leak.

Now, if the reporter had asked Bush to revise his original pledge, Bush would clearly have assented to a modification of his original pledge.

However, since the reporter did not note that he was misrepresenting or revising Bush's pledge, it is perfectly reasonable to recast their exchange as follows:

Reporter:  Do you stand by your original pledge?

Bush: Yes.

Now, Bush should have avoided this verbal trap (as if!) by answering something like, "I made my position clear last fall".  With any luck, the next questioner would have let him move on without forcing him to try and remember what his position was.

But don't play "Gotcha" with the President.  And let's exhort the AP to do their homework - even the Times noted Bush's Sept 2003 statement, although they generally ignore it.

UPDATE:  Ramesh Ponnuru of The Corner gracefully splits the difference.

MORE:  The WaPo wants to leave the goalposts where the reporter moved them:

President Bush today appeared to raise the threshold for firing any White House official who leaked the identity of a covert CIA agent, saying he would dismiss anyone who "committed a crime" in the case.

...In June 2004, Bush replied "yes" when asked if he would fire anyone who leaked the agent's name.

In other statements, Bush has pledged to "take the appropriate action" if anyone in his administration leaked classified information.

Wow, is that disingenuous!  The "take the appropriate action" line is also from the Sept 20 2003 press avail - how did the WaPo find one and not the other?

And, in what I can only describe as a "I can blog it, but I can't make them read it" moment of headbanging aggravation, I see that not even Scott McClellan of the White House can get the darn spin story straight:

During a White House briefing today in which he was peppered with questions about the Plame case and Bush's remarks, McClellan disputed the view that the president had set a new, higher standard for dismissing someone over the leak.

"No, I disagree," McClellan said when a reporter asked why Bush added a "qualifier" -- committing a crime -- that had "never been part of his standard before" when addressing the issue. "I think that the president was stating what is obvious when it comes to people who work in the administration; that if someone commits a crime, they're not going to be working any longer in this administration," McClellan said.

The spokesman refused to try to reconcile his own past statements with what Bush said today.

"I know well what was said previously," McClellan said. "You heard from the president today. And I think that you should not read anything into it more than what the president said at this point. . . ."

I wonder if McClellan does know well what was said previously?  Well, if the White House transcript [now here] shows him citing the President's Sept 30 statement, and the WaPo buried that, then the WaPo will flee before me, and I will hear the lamentations of their copy editors.  Or something. [Or, having read the transcript, nothing.  Can SOMEBODY PLEASE get McClellan to look at the Sept 30 2003 President's press avail, currently concealed on the White House web site?  Please...]

STILL MORE:  The NY Times leads with "President Bush changed his stance today...".  Groan.

[UPDATE:  But it looks like reality, or the critics, got inside the Times editorial cycle - the lead on the website has now been changed, and the story mentions the Sept. 2003 statement.  So does the Times front-pager by Sanger/Stevenson.  Scary.  Well, the Times did note the Sept. statement last week.  And there is an extended excerpt of the original Times piece at Media Matters, which is on the opposite side of this from me - they whine when a media outlet gets it right.]

BUT WAIT: Brief contact with reality at, you'll never guess, the LA Times!  In a story that precedes Bush's statement, they tell us that "Bush said he would fire anyone responsible for any illegal leaks."  Let's see if they follow up with a story about raising the bar - yes, they oblige here:

Last year, [Bush] had said he would fire anyone who had leaked such information. Thus, his remarks today appeared to shift his standard, allowing continued service in his administration until the commission of a crime had been established, rather than simply the determination that classified information had been leaked.

A beautiful Patterico moment.

ALMOST THE LAST GASP:  I probably ought to have an official editorialposition.  Very well - there are three issues here - (1) what has Bush actually said over the years; (2) how has the press reported his statement, and is Bush lowering the bar in a surprising late shift?; and (3) what is the "right" position?

This post has focused on (1) and (2), with theme that press coverage has been deplorable.  As to (3), I did not care for the Clintonian standard, which seemd to be, if they can't indict, it's alright.  (No, the final Ray report on Whitewater was not "exoneration.")  By that light, a foolish consistency would guide me away from the "violated the law" standard set by Bush in Sept. 2003.

On the other hand, the June 2004 standard, summarized as "fire anyone involved", sets the bar absurdly low - surely it matters whether the leak actually affected national security, a point still to be determined.

Time will tell.

UNRELATED BUT INTERESTING: Here is the .pdf file of the amicus brief filed by news organizations arguing that the elements of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act are not present in this case.  The stock rebuttal is, the CIA filed a criminal referral and the Special Counsel is clearly working on something.  However, the CIA gets trounced on p. 35 of the .pdf file - their standard referral just doesn't address the key points.

The Rove Watch - Monday

Newsweek and TIME have Karl Rove as their coverboy; the NY Times delivers yet another story with a headline that is tougher on Rove than the story.  They bury a kinder, gentler story inside.

From Newsweek, we see that there are discrepancies between Cooper and Rove as to whether they first discussed welfare reform before discussing Wilson's credibility; unless it is part of a larger pattern of non-cooperation by Rove, that will merit a "so what" from the prosecutor.

Rove also reportedly did not mention his chat with Cooper when he was first interviewed by Federal investigators, but recalled it for the grand jury.  Depending on context, this could expose Rove to a "false statement" charge *if* the prosecutor thinks the initial misstatement is material - exculpatory scenarios would include Rove saying to the investigators "I have not yet reviewed my notes and e-mails, but as best I recall, I spoke about this only to Novak".

That said, the media war is now going against the White House.  No surprise.

"MEMORIES":  OK, per Newsweek, Rove can't remember whether he first learned about Ms. Wilson from a journalist or an Admin official.  Vexing:

And if Rove knew Plame's identity, as Novak says, how did Rove learn it? A source close to Rove has said Rove never saw the State memo. The same source told NEWSWEEK last week that Rove "doesn't remember" where he heard the crucial information about Wilson's wife. But, the source said, Rove is "pretty sure he heard it directly or indirectly from a media source."

And Newsweek describes a "Top Secret" briefing book for Ms. Rice meant to prep her for the Sunday talk show pushback:

Donald Rumsfeld was pressed into duty, as was Condi Rice, the ultimate good soldier. She was on the Africa trip with the president, though, and wouldn't be getting back until Saturday night. To allow her to prepare on the long flight home to D.C., White House officials assembled a briefing book, which they faxed to the Bush entourage in Africa. The book was primarily prepared by her National Security Council staff. It contained classified information—perhaps including all or part of the memo from State. The entire binder was labeled TOP SECRET.

Well, if the NSC staff was involved, Stephen Hadley must have been - he has been mentioned as a possible first source for Novak, or a source for Walter Pincus of the WaPo.   Or, I suppose, Libby's source.

We have a sampling of Ms. Rice pushing back on Wolf Blitzer's July 13 show - no hint of a spousal role, but that just may reflect her good judgement.

I Need Some Double Super Secret Background Information

Drudge is blaring the news that he has finally gotten the joke - "double super secret" is an Animal House reference!  The Wonkette can breather easier.

Now, my question - just what are the journalistic distinctions between "background", "deep background", and, I suppose, "Double super secret" background.

Everything I know about this I learned from Watergate and Henry Kissinger.  My recollection is that "backgrounders" are to educate the reporter and not for attribution.  However, with the info in hand, the reporter may be able to go out and confirm the information elsewhere.

Now, I am hazy as to what "deep" was meant to add to that.  As I recall, "background" meant, in effect, "you can cite me as a second source (with vague attribution) if a primary source can be found"; "deep" background means that the source can not be cited at all.

Other thoughts are welcomed.

Strong Words From Belgravitas

Gregory Djerejian, highly regarded lawyer and blogger, has strong words for Josh Marshall's blogging technique, in a post titled "Marshall's Not Shooting Straight".

Troubling.  Personally, I do not like the "L" word.  Sorry, the other "L" word.  Although I do not write for a living, it is clear that folks who do are under a peculiar pressure - extremism sells.  Ann Coulter gets more attention with her books than Bill Kristol does (Yes, he has written some - who knew?)

Paul Krugman presumably got a nice payday with his collection of screeds.  Or, as another example, Richard Clarke of 9/11 fame hyped (and went beyond) the most inflammatory parts of his book, according to TIME.  (Lots more Clarke here). 

It is a good guess that the folks most likely to reach into their wallet and support someone are hanging on the fringes of political discourse.  That does not create an ethical dilemma for the activist websites, such as the Daily Kos - their goal is to call attention to their issues.  If a particular post makes some noise, gets some attention, and spells most of the names right, then it is "Mission Acomplished".  Competing for readers, attention, and cash in that environment can pose a problem for some.

Well. To explain is not to condone.  And I had my own issues with Dr. Marshall last week.

MORE:  In the last week an interesting article floated by talking about how the Daily Kos is dragging the Democrats to the outer fringes, in terms of rhetoric if not policy positions; it also noted that Ted Kennedy, and others, have even posted diaries there.

That would seem to tie in to my theme, but I can't find it.  [And here it is - Dean Barnett of the Weekly Standard, " The Electoral-Based Community / Why the rise of the left-wing blogosphere has been bad for the Democratic party".  Thanks for the help.]

"White Men" Pester LA Times

Patterico pummels the LA Times again; very briefly, the paper ran the following dubious assertion on July 16 in the dead-tree edition, and dropped it without comment from the on-line version:

Until July 1, the president and his aides expected that Rehnquist’s would be the seat they would have to fill.

They thought Rehnquist’s illness would force his retirement, and they intended to move quickly to replace the conservative chief justice with a reliably conservative federal appeals court judge. The leading candidates were all white men.

But when Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced her retirement, the White House was forced to switch gears.

Emphasis added.  But here is a plot-thickener - apparently, the LA Times relied upon, but could not quite grasp the nuance of, their own earlier reporting.  Not yet airbrushed is their on-line story from July 2, following up on O'Connor's retirement:

The White House counsel's office, charged with finding candidates for an expected vacancy, had to switch gears Friday.

The list of leading contenders to succeed Rehnquist contained mostly white men with conservative judicial records. Judges J. Michael Luttig and J. Harvie Wilkinson III from Virginia and John G. Roberts Jr. from Washington topped the list, officials said.

But the departure of the court's first woman rejiggers the political calculation, several lawyers said. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales and Judge Edith Brown Clement, a Bush appointee to the U.S. appeals court in New Orleans, were now seen as serious contenders.

Emphasis added again.  Of course, with the qualifier "mostly" in there, we respond with "no kidding."  Don't overlook the useless, mushy qualifiers - they have a role to play in first-class reporting, too.  Well, sometimes.

Matt Cooper of TIME on "Meet The Pravda"

Matt Cooper, the TIME magazine reporter caught up in the Plame leak investigation, was interviewed by Tim Russert on "Meet The Press".  [Here is Reuters coverage, and the transcript].

Highlights:

(a)  Cooper claims that he first learned that Wilson's wife first worked for the CIA in the WMD area from Karl Rove;

(b)  Cooper says that he told Cheney's Chief of Staff, Lewis Libby, about the Wilson and wife connection.  Libby responded with something like, "I heard that, too", which Cooper took as confirmation.  (That is pretty similar to the "confirmation" that Rove reportedly gave Novak.)

(c)  Cooper hinted that perhaps there were other sources as well; he certainly did not flatly rule it out.

(d)  Cooper claimed to have a letter from Rove and his attorney specifically noting the general waiver.  (I was at a non-TiVo facility, and may not have followed that, but it seems to contradict what Luskin, Rove's attorney, said a few days ago).

[UPDATE:  From the transcript:

And so on the morning of that clip you just saw, my lawyer called me and had seen in The Wall Street Journal that morning Mr. Rove's lawyer saying, "Karl does not stand by any confidentiality with these conversations," or words to that effect, and then went on to say, "If Matt Cooper's going to jail, it's not for Karl Rove."  And at that point, at that point only, my lawyer contacted Mr. Rove's lawyer and said, you know, "Can we get a kind of personal waiver that applies to Matt?"  And Mr. Luskin and he worked out an agreement and we have a letter that says that "Mr. Rove waives confidentiality for conversations with Matt Cooper in July 2003."  So it's specific to me and it's personal, and that's why I felt comfortable, only at that point, going to testify before the grand jury.]

I don't think that is what Luskin said.  Bother.

(e)  "I've already said too much" - Rove ended the call with that cryptic comment.  But did it mean "I've got to go", or "I've gone over the line"?  Cooper is still not sure.  But as Russert probed, Cooper pointed out thathe did not publish until after Novak, so he was not worried about leaking (formerly) secret info.

Wel, I am sure of this - if Rove gave it to him on "double super secret background" and told him "I've already said too much", one has to wonder whether Rove really meant to see that tidbit splashed across TIME magazine.  Unless, of course, the forbidden tip smells sweeter.

Lowlights - Matt Cooper appeared as any other author promoting their latest effort - in this case, the latest TIME cover story - rather than as a journalist.  Any newsman would have had a few questions for Tim Russert.  After all, Russert was also subpoenaed, also worked out an accommodation with the Special Counsel, and also gave testimony.  We are all interested in his story - there are strong hints that what Russert told Libby was more important than what Libby told Russert, which has people thinking that Russert told Libby about Valerie Wilson.

However, Cooper wanted to promote his cover story, and Russert wanted to stand behind his official statement, so "Meet The Pravda" never went there.

The Incredible Shrinking Scandal

John Tierney of the Times christens the investigation into the Plame leak "Nadagate".  But however inconsequential this scandal seems now, it could get smaller!  We still have not found Novak's first source, but it could be Ari Fleischer, who left the Administration on July 14, 2003.

That won't tie in well with the theme that Bush has been harboring criminal leakers in his Administration.

Then again, if Steve Hadley is Novak's first source, this scandal gets a little oxygen, depending on the circumstances.

Send In the Weasels

Adam Liptak of the Times takes up the issue of just what the various journalists have said in the Plame investigation.  Let's skip to Tim Russert, and then pick up Judy Miller:

Mr. Russert's testimony last August provides intriguing clues. A statement issued by NBC at the time suggests that Mr. Libby had told Mr. Fitzgerald that he had heard about Ms. Wilson from Mr. Russert.

According to the statement, lawyers for Mr. Russert and Mr. Fitzgerald reached an agreement under which Mr. Fitzgerald questioned Mr. Russert only about Mr. Russert's end of a conversation in early July 2003 with Mr. Libby. That would be an unusual way to go about pursuing a leak inquiry, but it is consistent with an attempt to try to establish that Mr. Russert provided information to Mr. Libby.

Mr. Russert, however, according to the NBC statement, said "he did not know Ms. Plame's name or that she was a C.I.A. operative and that he did not provide that information to Mr. Libby." Indeed, the statement said, Mr. Russert first learned the information from Mr. Novak's column.

A spokeswoman for NBC declined to elaborate on the statement yesterday.

Well, that shows his respect for the public's right to know.  Did he tell Libby about Joe Wilson's wife?  it's not an unreasonable question.  And if Rove's attorney Luskin gave an answer, as Russert did, of "he did not know Ms. Plame's name or that she was a C.I.A. operative", we would parse that with a surgical knife - if Russert had said "Wilson's wife is with the CIA in some capacity", would that be consistent with Russert's denial?  Arguably, yes.  But will Tim tell us?

And how about Judy Miller:

According to the federal appeals court, which rejected her appeal in February, Ms. Miller has received two subpoenas seeking testimony and documents "related to conversations between her and a specified government official" in the days before Mr. Novak's article appeared.

In court papers filed earlier this month urging that Ms. Miller be jailed, Mr. Fitzgerald said that "the source in this case has waived confidentiality in writing."

George Freeman, an assistant general counsel of The New York Times Company, said Ms. Miller would not say who that source was. "She has never received," Mr. Freeman said, "what she considers an unambiguous, unequivocal and uncoerced waiver from anyone with whom she may have spoken."

Mr. Freeman declined to say what efforts, if any, Ms. Miller and her lawyers have made to obtain a satisfactory waiver.

Asked whether Ms. Miller provided information about Ms. Wilson's identity to the source to whom Mr. Fitzgerald referred, Mr. Freeman said: "Judy learned about Valerie Plame from a confidential source or sources whose identity she continues to protect to this day. If the suggestion is that she is covering up for her source or some fictitious source, that is preposterous. Given that she is suffering in jail, it is also mean-spirited."

"Source or sources"?  The subpoenas, as best we can follow this, are for one source; surely her attorneys can figure out how to limit her responses to the scope of the subpoena.

Last fall, Ms. Miller was subpoenaed when a flurry of subpoenas went out involving Lewis Libby, and the WaPo reported that Ms. Miller had also been subpoenaed about him.  They are no longer pushing that, so who knows.  [UPDATE:  Yes, they are pushing Libby again, in a July 16 Howard Kurtz piece:

While media coverage in recent days has focused on conversations White House senior adviser Karl Rove had with reporters, two sources say Miller spoke with Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, during the key period in July 2003 that is the focus of Fitzgerald's investigation.

The two sources, one who is familiar with Libby's version of events and the other with Miller's, said the previously undisclosed conversation occurred a few days before Plame's name appeared in Robert D. Novak's syndicated column on July 14, 2003. Miller and Libby discussed former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, Plame's husband, who had recently alleged that the Bush administration twisted intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, according to the source familiar with Libby's version.

Two sources confirming what the WaPo reported last fall?  Works for me.]

We do exhort Mr. Liptak to take up the story of WaPo reporter Walter Pincus, discussed in the update to this post, which I will copy below:

The Walter Pincus story is interesting - here, he tells us that Lewis Libby was not his source, but that his source had identified himself to Fitzgerald, freeing Pincus to testify.

And here is what Pincus wrote on Oct. 12, 2003 that earned him an opportunity to spend some time with Mr. Fitzgerald:

On July 12, two days before Novak's column, a Post reporter was told by an administration official that the White House had not paid attention to the former ambassador's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction. Plame's name was never mentioned and the purpose of the disclosure did not appear to be to generate an article, but rather to undermine Wilson's report.

In this telling, Ms. Plame was not named, nor was she covert.  And, per Pincus, the source of that story has identified himself to Fitzgerald.

Let's say this - if Novak had been given exactly those details, he could have added Ms. Plame's name by finding Joe Wilson's on-line bio (now gone, but not forgotten); his discussions with the CIA spokesperson who failed to dissuade him from publishing may have led to the upgrade from "analyst" to "operative". [Mr. Pincus offers more details here].

Let me add an "I'll be darned" coda - in describing this legal ballet on Nov. 26, 2004, the WaPo wrote this:

One current or former administration official has told Fitzgerald that he or she had a conversation with Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus on Saturday, July 12, Pincus has said publicly. Pincus also has said his source was not Libby. Pincus has previously said that an administration official told him that day that Wilson's trip to Niger was set up as a boondoggle by his CIA-employed wife.

Current or former Administration official?  Hello!  How often does a WaPo source get described that way?  [Possible answer - any time the Post runs a story mentioning current and former officials.  Don't slow me down!]

Obvious candidates would be Ari Fleischer and George Tenet (see UPDATEs here or in the continuation).  However, the name might be right on the list the WaPo helpfully provides:

Among those who are known to have been interviewed by the FBI or testified before the grand jury are Bush White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, political adviser Karl Rove, Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff Lewis I. Libby, Republican National Committee consultant Mary Matalin, former Cheney press aide Catherine Martin, White House press secretary Scott McClellan, communications director Dan Bartlett, deputy press secretary Claire Buchan, and former assistant press secretary Adam Levine.

I highlighted two "former" staffers, both with Cheney's office (neocon alert!).  Could Novak call either of them a "senior" official?  No.  But Pincus did not, in his blurb.

Bonus Theory After The Break

The INR Memo Strikes Again!

The NY Times tells us what we have been telling you for months, and creeps closer to the truth about their own role, and that of their columnist Nick Kristof, in the Wilson saga:

WASHINGTON, July 15 - Prosecutors in the C.I.A. leak case have shown intense interest in a 2003 State Department memorandum that explained how a former diplomat came to be dispatched on an intelligence-gathering mission and the role of his wife, a C.I.A. officer, in the trip, people who have been officially briefed on the case said.

Investigators in the case have been trying to learn whether officials at the White House and elsewhere in the administration learned of the C.I.A. officer's identity from the memorandum. They are seeking to determine if any officials then passed the name along to journalists and if officials were truthful in testifying about whether they had read the memo, the people who have been briefed said, asking not to be named because the special prosecutor heading the investigation had requested that no one discuss the case.

The memorandum was sent to Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, just before or as he traveled with President Bush and other senior officials to Africa starting on July 7, 2003, when the White House was scrambling to defend itself from a blast of criticism a few days earlier from the former diplomat, Joseph C. Wilson IV, current and former government officials said.

Mr. Powell was seen walking around Air Force One during the trip with the memorandum in hand, said a person involved in the case who also requested anonymity because of the prosecutor's admonitions about talking about the investigation.

The WSJ described the memo in Oct 2003, as the Times notes.  However, the Times confirms that the memo names ms. Wilson as "Valerie Wilson".

There is more background in the Senate Subcomittee on Intelligence Report in the Niger section.

Newsweek connected the memo to the investigation in August 2004:

Sources close to the case say prosecutors were interested in discussions Powell had while with President George W. Bush on a trip to Africa in July 2003, just before Plame's identity was leaked to columnist Robert Novak. A senior State Department official confirmed that, while on the trip, Powell had a department intelligence report on whether Iraq had sought uranium from Niger—a claim Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, discounted after a trip to Niger on behalf of the CIA. The report stated that Wilson's wife had attended a meeting at the CIA where the decision was made to send Wilson to Niger, but it did not mention her last name or undercover status. At the time, White House officials were seeking to discredit Wilson, who had become a public critic of the Bush administration. There's no indication Powell is a subject of the probe; the department official said the secretary never talked to Novak about the Plame matter.

Let's give props to Cecil Turner, who left a cogent comment at the Beldar Blog summarizing all this back in Feb '05.  And Arianna Huffington her naughty self noted the link in this post from July 8, so the Times is not blazing an unfamiliar trail.

We note the obvious - Operation Take A Leak For Karl, Day II, is off to a good start for the White House.  Can Special Counsel Fitzgerald get the many lawyers and witnesses back to their former scared and silent selves?  Or can we find some faction to leak what we presume is the other side of this story - I saw obstruction of justice and perjury floated somewhere, but the Times has gone over to All The Good News Thats Fit To Print.  Cynics will suggest they just want to Free Judy - well, there, I suggested it.

We also note the Times creeping up on the truth about their role in launching Joe Wilson's star:

The memorandum was dated June 10, 2003, nearly four weeks before Mr. Wilson wrote an Op-Ed article for The New York Times in which he recounted his mission and accused the administration of twisting intelligence to exaggerate the threat from Iraq.

We will explain the June 10 date in a moment.

It is not clear who asked for the memorandum, but in the weeks before it was written, there were several accounts in newspapers about an unnamed former diplomat's trip to Africa seeking intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program. On May 6, 2003, Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The Times, wrote of a "former U.S. ambassador to Africa" who had reported to the C.I.A. and the State Department that reports of Iraq seeking to acquire uranium in Niger were "unequivocally wrong."

Yes, and that May 6 Kristof column got results - let's let Mr. Kristof enjoy his victory lap, writing on Friday, June 13, 2003:

Condoleezza Rice was asked on "Meet the Press" on Sunday about a column of mine from May 6 regarding President Bush's reliance on forged documents to claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa. That was not just a case of hyping intelligence, but of asserting something that had already been flatly discredited by an envoy investigating at the behest of the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Ms. Rice acknowledged that the president's information turned out to be "not credible," but insisted that the White House hadn't realized this until after Mr. Bush had cited it in his State of the Union address.

Ms. Rice was embarrassingly ill-informed on Sunday, June 8 (Tim Russert replayed it on Sept 28); by June 10, a memo was circulating addressing the question of "what is this trip they are asking about, and who is this mysterious ambassador?" 

Of course, both Kristof columns are riddled with errors given to him by Joe Wilson, his no-longer secret source.  Regular readers will recall that last summer I wondered if the NY Times would ever face up to this.  Perhaps their long journey back to the truth has begun.  (Matthew Continetti of the Weekly Standard has more on Wilson's early misunderstandings and miscommunications).

And for a trip down memory lane, here is an old post:

Excerpting from "The Politics of Truth" by Joe Wilson himself (p. 355), I find Wilson describing a meeting with David Shipley, editor of the op-ed page, at the Times on July 24, 2003:

En route, down a long windowless corridor [inside the Times building] with offices on either side, doors sporting the names of Times writers, we ran into veteran Timesman Robert Semple. David [Shipley] explained that I was "the one who wrote the article on what he didn't find in Africa," and Semple, turning to me, said, "So, you're the one who turned our paper around." The Times had been mired in the scandal surrounding Jayson Blair, the fraudulent journalist whose reporting had been questioned by a number of colleagues. 

Well, they wouldn't want anyone to question their reporting, would they?

MORE:  Did I say that the INR memo "strikes again"?  Folks who remember the Jeff Gannon debacle will remember that the Kos Crew overestimated Gannon's access to intelligence - what they saw as access to classified intelligence looked more like a subscription to the Wall Street Journal.  But they managed to gull Josh Marshall and the NY Times before reality struck.  Background and mockery, for those with Dark Hearts.

Novak Talked To Rove

[TIN FOIL SPECIAL -I have some stuff about George Tenet as a possible source for Walter Pincus that you won't see elsewhere - it's in the UPDATES, the UNLESS, and the GULP.  Now, if the CIA chief leaked the Plame info, why are we having a criminal investigation?  Good question.  Developing...]

The NY Times has the big breakthrough story on the Plame investigation:

WASHINGTON, July 14 - Karl Rove, the White House senior adviser, spoke with the columnist Robert D. Novak as he was preparing an article in July 2003 that identified a C.I.A. officer who was undercover, someone who has been officially briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Rove has told investigators that he learned from the columnist the name of the C.I.A. officer, who was referred to by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, and the circumstances in which her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, traveled to Africa to investigate possible uranium sales to Iraq, the person said.

After hearing Mr. Novak's account, the person who has been briefed on the matter said, Mr. Rove told the columnist: "I heard that, too."

The previously undisclosed telephone conversation, which took place on July 8, 2003, was initiated by Mr. Novak, the person who has been briefed on the matter said.

And, after skipping four paragraphs, we get this:

Asked by investigators how he knew enough to leave Mr. Novak with the impression that his information was accurate, Mr. Rove said he had heard portions of the story from other journalists, but had not heard Ms. Wilson's name.

OK, we love the timing, two years to the day after the original Novak column.

Secondly, what source would be "officially briefed"?  None of the lawyers for the various White House officials, presumably; members of Fitzgerald's team, surely; and people at the Dept. of Justice exerting a little bit of oversight, maybe.  Yes, Fitzgerald is a Special Counsel, but might the DoJ be entitled to wonder why reporters are being tossed in jail? 

The Times tells us this about the source:

The person who provided the information about Mr. Rove's conversation with Mr. Novak declined to be identified, citing requests by Mr. Fitzgerald that no one discuss the case. The person discussed the matter in the belief that Mr. Rove was truthful in saying that he had not disclosed Ms. Wilson's identity.

Fitzgerald's team has been sphinx-like for eighteen months - let's guess that it's DoJ, and a Bush-friendly leak, since the source does not think Rove is a liar.  [Kevin Drum is emphatic that the Times and WaPo have the same, Bush friendly leak].

The gist of the Times account gibes with Novak's version from Oct 1, 2003:

During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: "Oh, you know about it."

Well.  Who is the first official to whom Novak spoke?  Lewis Libby has been the center of a lot of subpoenas, but has cooperated, and does not appear to be in trouble, if we can believe these (possibly self-serving) leaks:

Several reporters have given limited depositions about their conversations with Libby in the days before the Novak column was published. All did so at the urging of Libby, who has told the prosecutor he heard about Wilson's wife's employment from someone in the media, according to lawyers involved in the case.

So how did Libby and Rove learn that Wilson's wife was CIA and involved with his trip? 

Both claim to have heard about if from reporters.  But is this a carefully-spun leak to the press?  Are they telling us that they *only* heard it from reporters, heard it first from reporters, or heard it from both reporters and others, such as other White House insiders?  And if there is a more complete version, did they deliver it to the prosecutor?

In addition to the "we heard it from reporters" theory, we have liked the idea that the information in the INR memo ended up circulating a bit.

Or, as another possible source, David Corn (sorry, no link yet) noted that a former CIA officer was on the NSC, and might have known Ms. Plame.

Let's ask a question of journalistic ethics - if a reporter, in chatting with Karl Rove, mentioned the Plame angle, is there any rationale at all for the reporter to claim some sort of source confidentiality protection?  I would assume not.  I will further assume that, if Karl is telling the truth, then he has named a few reporters.  Mr. Fitzgerald should have called them in for a chat.  There is no need for a subpoena, since they have no legal basis to refuse, and will prefer to avoid the publicity.

In which case, there are reporters out there who know they have given testimony to Fitzgerald that would help Rove and Lewis, and are keeping quiet - not to protect a source, not to preserve confidentiality, but, I guess, because Fitzgerald asked them too. 

This might even have made sense while the investigation was being ignored - Fitzgerald might have explained that he is trying to establish whether there was knowledge of Ms. Plame inside the White House prior to the reporters passing the news, and that he can't conduct a sensible investigation with reporters presenting a seemingly exculpatory but incomplete story to the public.

However, in the current revved-up atmosphere, I promise you - if the media is really just keeping quiet about their role in this, well, I can't imagine how I could respect our media less, but I will think of something.

And that said, I marveled that TIME magazine kept Rove's secret all through the election; well, this would explain it.

OK.  Let's try a different tack and use a reductio ad absurdum approach - if the previous scenario is too ridiculous, it can't be true.  Which means what?  That Rove told Fitzgerald he heard about it from reporters, but didn't name any reporters?  The old "I forgot" defense?  Boy, that would have been some fine effort by the Evil Genius.

Or does it mean that the Times leak is rubbish?  Could be; other leaks have sort of fizzled out.

And on the other hand, Libby seems to have named reporters and is sailing along.  Except that Judy Miller won't testify (and the WaPo linked her to Libby last fall, but seems to have retreated).

Judy, Judy, Judy - Mickey noted the peculiarity of her holding out when respected heavyweights such as Tim Russert and Walter Pincus figured out a way to cooperate.  Howard Kurtz of the WaPo ran a piece on that as well.

What might be happening?  Here is a theory I have seen floating by - Judy heard about Ms. Plame in the course of her national security digging, ran it by Libby, and here we are.  But how did Karl find out?

Another view - Cliff May said Ms. Plame's CIA job was common knowledge; Powerline relays an e-mailer saying that Andrea Mitchell said the same thing a few days ago (transcript, anyone?).  Fine, but was it common knowledge that she was involved in picking her husband for the trip?  When did that knowledge pass to the press?

One last idea - Walter Pincus has been quite forthcoming about his legal journey - he had a chat with someone (not Libby) on July 12, which he wrote about on October 12, 2003.  His source then identified himself to the prosecutor, so Pincus agreed to cooperate:

Pincus added, "My case is different than the other reporters because I wrote about the conversation I had with my source [in The Washington Post]. And my source came forward to Fitzgerald.  And when a source discloses himself to a prosecutor and then releases you from confidentiality with that prosecutor, I don't think a reporter has a leg to stand on." 

Legally or ethically? "Both," Pincus responded. "I have a law degree. The privilege doesn't belong to the reporter. It belongs to the source. We're citizens like everyone else."

..."I don't believe in waivers," Pincus said. "But a source can do anything he wants to do. When a source comes forward, who are you protecting?"

Yes, who is he protecting?  Why doesn't Pincus write about it, and share the secret with the public?  What about *our* right to know whether Bush is harboring a lying criminal, or the press and the partisan Democrats are simply enjoying a summer scandal?

Novak, Pincus, Russert, Kessler, Miller - none of them should be allowed to talk about anything else until they explain their role in this.  And I suspect there are other reporters who were never subpoenaed, as explained above - its time to hear from them, too.

And sometime soon, if we are going to start a contest of grand jury leaks, Rove and Libby need to think about annoying Fitzgerald and talking to us as well.

Let's add that Fitzgerald had, until now, done a good job of lowering the cone of silence on this investigation.  However, it looks as if the Cooper e-mail was a "Get Karl" leak, and this latest may be a "Save Karl" leak (could it be a "Hit 'em while he's down" leak?  Am I facing the wrong way? - this leak looks good for Karl from where I am hiding).  [Steve Soto also sees these as Bush-friendly leaks.  OK, add him to Drum.]

This sort of to-and fro-ing is what Fitzgerald wanted to avoid, but it appears that he is losing control, of the folks not in his office, anyway.

UPDATE:  That was some prediction about loss of control - the AP and the WaPo chat with lawyers close to the investigation, and here we go.  But these leaks don't fully square with the Times, and have ghastly bits:

The AP: 

Rove told the grand jury that by the time Novak had called him, he believes he had similar information about Wilson's wife from another reporter but had no recollection of which reporter had told him about it first, the source said.

The WaPo:

The lawyer, who has knowledge of the conversations between Rove and prosecutors, said President Bush's deputy chief of staff has told investigators that he first learned about the operative from a journalist and that he later learned her name from Novak.

Rove has said he does not recall who the journalist was who first told him that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, or when the conversation occurred, the lawyer said.

Oh my goodness - we are going with the "I Forgot" defense.  Oh, boy.  Look, the question of how Karl learned this is important.  Think, Karl!  Be the genius we know you are!

UNLESS:  Well, maybe these Bush-friendly leakers were focusing on the Novak angle.  Since the Times said "journalists", plural, and the other two say "journalist", singular, maybe this detail was getting short shrift as an afterthought.  Maybe the leak was "Karl heard it from several journalists, named tham all, but couldn't remember which he heard it from first".  Maybe.  Well, if these were meant to be friendly leaks, and they are scaring their friends, we can look for clarification.  [And grammar mavens are telling me that, as written, neither the AP nor the WaPo versions rule out the interpretation of "Karl heard it from several, but forgets which", assuming that the reporter was not straining to communicate that distinction.  Well, if Karl didn't forget, than I am having a good day.]

And Walter Pincus' secret source could fly in and set us all straight.  The X-man might be Novak's first source; if so, then presumably, he also talked to Fitzgerald about his chat with Novak; maybe the White House is teeing him up for a summer at the beach (and an autumn raking leaves, a winter shoveling snow...)

(Yes, "X-Man" is short for "Deus Ex Machina Man" in this telling.  And a commenter suggests Medal of Freedom winner George Tenet, who might well have spoken with Novak; Hmm - the CIA criminal referral advanced without him, and he did not mention the scandal to Bush until October.  Well, is Tenet the sort of guy who would have long talks with old hands like Novak and Pincus?  Yes, he is...  And mightn't he put out a line of, "Hey, don't blame *me*for that messed up trip?"  Yes, he might...  But then why are we having a criminal investigation?  Surely the head of the CIA can de-classify and leak this.  But what if he only talked to Pincus and Miller, but not Novak?  Worth thinking about.)

GULP:  Pincus' X-Man appears on Sept 30, and then again on Oct 12, 2003:

On July 12, two days before Novak's column, a Post reporter was told by an administration official that the White House had not paid attention to the former ambassador's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction. Plame's name was never mentioned and the purpose of the disclosure did not appear to be to generate an article, but rather to undermine Wilson's report.

That Oct 12 mention earned Mr. Pincus a subpoena, which was reported upon.  But check this update from Nov. 26, 2004:

One current or former administration official has told Fitzgerald that he or she had a conversation with Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus on Saturday, July 12, Pincus has said publicly. Pincus also has said his source was not Libby. Pincus has previously said that an administration official told him that day that Wilson's trip to Niger was set up as a boondoggle by his CIA-employed wife.

Emphasis added.  George Tenet became a "former" Administration official on June 3, 2004 (effective 7/11/2004), under odd circumstances.  That said, Colin Powell is gone, other top CIA people are gone - lots of people stepped down after the election.

Still More:  Extrapolating from the Sept 30 article, Pincus received a call on Saturday, the day after Tenet issued his July 11 statement taking the blame for the 16 Words and explaining a bit about Joe Wilson.

So why did an Administration official call Pincus on Saturday morning? Maybe because they did not like the Post's reporting of Friday's events.

And by happy coincience, here is the July 12 piece, with a byline of Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank.

Next step - see how the WaPo reported it, and see who might have felt like they needed to help Walter's perspective on the Niger trip.  And FWIW, here is what Pincus wrote on July 13, after his chat with the X-man.

Well, the headlines tell the story - July 12 is "Bush, Rice Blame CIA for Iraq Error"; July 13 is the CIA pushback, with "CIA Got Uranium Reference Cut in Oct. / Why Bush Cited It In Jan. Is Unclear".

Hard to believe Colin Powell called Pincus just to bail out the CIA.  Hard to believe Rove  would call Pincus on Saturday morning and tell him to go easy on the CIA and pound the White House a bit.  Easy to believe that a senior CIA official, now retired, called his old pal Pincus to set the record straight on the 16 Words and the Niger trip, and mentioned Wilson's wife in passing.  How about that.

So, if Tenet leaked to Pincus, is Rove a criminal for leaking to Novak?  Interesting.  And who was Novak's first source?  Who is Dame Miller protecting?  Also Tenet?  Might be worth checking her bylines.  Developing...

And here we go - Ms. Miller, with David Sanger on July 23, told us that "Stephen J Hadley, deputy national security adviser and key behind-the-scenes player in Bush White House, accepts blame for allowing faulty intelligence to appear in State of the Union address".

Well, Mr. Hadley always belonged in the mix as a member of the White House Iraq Group who was both informed about the Niger trip and busy explaining the 16 Words debacle to the press, so he could have been a source to either Novak or Pincus.  But he is hardly a "former" official.

YELLOW FLAG:  Eventually I will run down the article where Pincus explained that he didn't use the bit about Wilson's wife because he didn't believe it.  Didn't believe Tenet?  Maybe it is a source-disguising head fake.  Maybe.

IRRESISTIBLE CHEAP SHOT, or "We All Live In A Yellow Submarine": David Corn's "Time for Rove Withdrawal" explained that, as of July 8, this scandal was likely to fade from sight:

With the Miller and Cooper cases resolved, we will be left with no new tea leaves to read. Fitzgerald's investigation will proceed under the cloak of secrecy that covers (or is supposed to cover) all federal criminal probes.

So while it's been an exciting time for anyone yearning for details about Fitzgerald's work or for anyone wishing ill for Rove, those days may be over, as the investigation, like a submarine that occasionally has to surface, dives back into the deep, dark water.

Hey, it made sense when he wrote it!

OTHER:  Timothy Noah at Slate can't figure out why the Times is so timid with its editorials.  Maybe Mickey can alert him to (without endorsing!) the "Judy Miller is protecting Rove" theory - boy, if the Times called for Rove to resign, and we later learned that their reporter had exculpatory evidence, how over would it be for them?

MORE: Bits of media criticism of the Times article:

Finally, they note that discrediting Wilson was a goal.  Breakthrough stuff.

But they are continuing their "Gotcha" game with the President here:

In June 2004, at Sea Island, Ga., soon after Mr. Cheney met with investigators in the case, Mr. Bush was asked at a news conference whether "you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found" to have leaked the agent's name.

"Yes," Mr. Bush said. "And that's up to the U.S. attorney to find the facts."

Don't vex me!  The reporter incorrectly restated Bush's pledge, as noted here.  Although one might argue that Bush was assenting to the restatement, one might just as reasonably argue that Bush was saying "Yes, I stand by *MY* pledge".  And the original pledge mentioned violations of the law.

 

 

Who's The Man?

I didn't hear quite the cheering Red Sox fans had delivered previously when Mariano struck out the side in the ninth to close out what will soon be the best second-place club in baseball. 

And A Rod and Curt Schilling reversed the hero-goat roles.

In Boston, the Summer of Fear has begun.

Fun detail - with two outs in the ninth, A Rod chased a foul ball near the seats - he couldn't get to it, but he reached over the wall to pat some five year old on the head.  The camera cut back to show one very excited lifetime fan.

Save Mark Kleiman's Hair!

Mark Kleiman has been following the investigation of the Plame leak for years, and has been pounding the table for months with the following point - although much discussion has centered around probable problems of a prosecution under the Intelligence Identities Act, there has been virtually nothing in the press about the possibility that one of the leakers might be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. 

Let's save Mark from tearing his hair out in frustration, and address this issue.  To kick it off the Baseball Crank, lawyer by day and fan by night, has a very good post with some research on the Espionage Act.  If I am following correctly, he sees serious problems with a successful prosecution, but thinks the Act could be applied.

There are plenty of lawyers blogging out there - since no one in the press has picked up on this, let's provide some free advice.

UPDATE:  The WaPo sees perjury and obstruction of justice on the menu.  Problems with an Intelligence Identities Protectiona Act prosecution are noted, but there is no mention of the Espionage Act.  More hair lost!

Dale Franks sees a successful Espionage Act prosecution as the end of a free press.  The BBall Crank had noted that judges have seen that little problem as well.

ANOTHER BAD HAIR DAY:  The LA Times probes the IIPA, but ignores the Espionage Act.

Josh Marshall Needs Help (I Provide Some)

Josh Marshall, who follows the Plame leak investigation when the wind is at his back, has some questions as he engages the "Republican noise machine".  I think I can help:

(1)  In his appearance this morning on the Today Show Newt Gingrich said: "The president's been pretty clear: if somebody's broken the law they will be fired. The question is whether or not, uh, what karl did was in any way breaking the law."

When did the president say anything about breaking the law?  Didn't he just say that he'd fire whoever was involved in the leak?

Have you seen other examples of emerging bamboozlement strategies?

Well, what the President said was posted here - it is from Sept 30, 2003, as the scandal broke open:

And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is.  And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of.

...If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action.

Other reporters have restated the President's pledge, and now various spinners are trying to hold him to their restatement.  Don't play "Gotcha" with the President. (C'mon, we are delighted he got it out right the first time.)

I have more assistance:

(2)  Late Alert for Red Herring Egregious Mumbojumbo Watch!

Ken Mehlman is now pushing the same argument as Rove attorney Robert Luskin. 

This from the AP ...

Rove "was discouraging a reporter from writing a false story based on a false premise," said Mehlman. Cooper's e-mail says that Rove warned him away from the idea that Wilson's trip had been authorized by CIA Director George Tenet or Vice President Dick Cheney.

The argument, as elaborated by others, is that Rove was warning Cooper off Wilson's phoney story because it was about to be debunked by a soon-to-be-released statement by George Tenet. 

A great argument. Only Wilson never said that. He said that the CIA, following up on a query from the vice president, sent him on a fact-finding mission to Niger.

Josh Marshall goes on to explain that neither Tenet nor Cheney "authorized" the trip, which is pretty fair country spin, as far as it goes.

But Wilson's op-ed and public comments weren't controversial because Cheney "authorized" his trip - they were controversial because, in Wilson's telling, Cheney had asked the CIA about Saddam, Niger and uranium, had received a conclusive response of "nothing there", and had then ignored the response.

Now, does Wilson say precisely this in his NY Times op-ed?  He does not - there, he skates a bit:

The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.

...The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses.

But Joe Wilson was not skating when said this to Andrea Mitchell on Meet The Press as he went public on July 6, 2003, with emphasis added:

Ms. Mitchell:  ...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.

MS. MITCHELL: So they knew months and months before they passed on these allegations that, in fact, that particular charge was not true. Do you think, based on all of this, that the intelligence was hyped?

AMB. WILSON: My judgment on this is that if they were referring to Niger when they were referring to uranium sales from Africa to Iraq, that information was erroneous and that they knew about it well ahead of both the publication of the British White Paper and the president’s State of the Union address.

Although Josh Marshall seems to have have forgotten, that is the news environment in which Karl Rove was pushing back.  And I am not even mentioning Wilson's discredited and disavowed anonymous leaks to Kristof and Pincus, which Matthew Continetti covers at length in the Weekly Standard.  (With a follow-up that is the journalistic equivalent of "Roger And Me").  Nor am I mentioning this "Meet The Press" transcript of Tim Russert and Condi Rice from Sept 28, 2003, which makes the same point (excerpt after the jump).

And I hope Dr. Marshall has not also forgotten the SSCI report from the Senate, which confirmed Tenet's statement that Wilson's report was *not* conclusive and *not* circulated to the Vice President's office.  Tenet's statement was not pushing back on the question of who "authorized" the trip - the issues were, what intelligence did Wilson bring back, and how was it circulated?

These are pretty basic points, and I am surprised to learn that Dr. Marshall is so poorly informed.  Perhaps another "Bamboozlement Watch" should be initiated.

MORE:  The NY Times has adopted a different tack, which is avoidance - in their Thursday story, they again note that Rove's motive might have been retaliation, without ever mentioning the clear text of the e-mail, which suggests the motive is to discredit Wilson.

And Richard Stevenson, with today's byline, cannot claim ignorance - he co-wrote the Times tepid Wilson debunker a year ago.  Of course, that subject is a bit painful for the Times, since Wilson's public op-ed helped restore a bit of luster to the Times following the Jayson Blair debacle in May of 2003.

Bamboozlement, indeed.

UPDATE:  Jim Lindgren (via Glenn) has a well done summary of the case against Joe Wilson, which, of course, is also the case in favor of a Rovian push-back.

If his contact info at the Vololkh Conspiracy were working, I would e-mail him a question.  First, he mentions the puzzlement over whether Ms. Plame was covered under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act:

But it appears probable, though not certain, that Plame was a covert agent (the statutory definition turns on whether she was on undercover missions outside the US in the 5 years before the disclosure of her identity, a factual issue that for some reason few outside of Powerline have focused on).

Well, let's give some props to James Taranto and Max Boot, who dwelt on this back in October 2003.  I also note that, over at The Corner, Mark Levin and USA Today have the same question.

My position is that the CIA is unlikely to post Ms. Plame's resume and assignments; Bruce Sanford, the expert cited by the USA Today, may argue that where the statute says "has within the last five years served outside the United States", that means "stationed as a long-term assignment".  And so it may, but that is not what is says - one fine day a judge and jury may be asked to decide whether a one or two week trip to freshen up some old contacts qualifies as "served".

The second point is, Special Counsel Fitzgerald is surely well aware of the issue - if he is not satisfied on  this point by now, then he must have redirected his investigation without telling us.

Finally, let me introduce a new feature - Save Mark Kleiman's Hair.  Mr. Kleiman has argued that, rather than pursuing a prosecution under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Mr. Fitzgerald might try for a conviction under the Espionage Act.  We have met skeptics.  But let's get together and save Mr. Kleiman from tearing his hair out in frustration - some enterprising reporter might want to check with a few lawyers and see whether that statute might apply.  (Of course, if there were any lawyers in the blogosphere, they might want to join in, too.  Jeralyn Merritt comes to mind - as a good progressive and a better defense attorney, she has never seen a statute yet that she can't sneak a client past.)

"Normal Impulses"

Bill Clinton, not a man with a reputation for impulse control, helps his fellow Dems grapple with abortion:

He contended that Republicans have defined the abortion debate in a way that boxes in Democrats.

"So for example, if you're a Democrat and you have sort of normal impulses, you're a sellout, like when Hillary said abortion is a tragedy for virtually everybody who undergoes it, we ought to do all we can to reduce abortion," Clinton said.

"All of a sudden," he continued, the media began asking, "'Is she selling out? Is she abandoning her principles?' But if John McCain, who's pro-life, works with Hillary on global warming, he's a man of principle moving to the middle."

Well.  Will all of the Democrats with abnormal impulses step forward and denounce this?

MORE:  The NY Times takes a long, loving look at their gal Hill.  This is hard-hitting, pathbreaking journalism - Hillary has the respect of some Republicans, but liberals love her too!

Talking Point (Mis)Managament

We seem to be approaching agreement on the issue of whether Ms. Plame was involved in the selection of her husband to go to Niger.

Let's hear from Larry Johnson, ex-CIA, writing at the well-regarded Talking Points Memo Cafe:

The Big Lie About Valerie Plame

...don't take my word for it, read the biased Senate intelligence committee report.

The Republicans insist on the lie that Val got her husband the job. She did not.  She was not a division director, instead she was the equivalent of an Army major.  Yes it is true she recommended her husband to do the job that needed to be done but the decision to send Joe Wilson on this mission was made by her bosses.

Emphasis added twice.  Mr. Johnson's suggestion to read the "biased" Senate report is an excellent one, and represents advice he would have been well advised to follow. 

Let's turn to the supplementary views offered by Subcommitte Chairman Roberts, Sen. Hatch, and Sen. Bond, Republicans all, and see just what they "insist" upon.  This is p. 443 of the report, or p. 453 of the .pdf file:

While there was no dispute with the underlying facts, my Democrat colleagues refused to allow the following conclusions to appear in the report:

Conclusion: The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee.

The former ambassador's wife suggested her husband for the trip to Niger in February 2002. The former ambassador had traveled previously to Niger on behalf of the CIA, also at the suggestion of his wife, to look into another matter not related to Iraq. On February 12, 2002, the former ambassador's wife sent a memorandum to a Deputy Chief of a division in the CIA's Directorate of Operations which said, "[m]y husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." This was just one day before the same Directorate of Operations division sent a cable to one of its overseas stations requesting concurrence with the division's idea to send the former ambassador to Niger.

Hmm, so the Republicans could not get Democrats to vote out a conclusion that included the word "suggested".  But Mr. Johnson has graciously broken that log-jam, by admitting that "it is true she recommended her husband to do the job".  Pity that he misremembered, or chose to mis-state, the Republican position.

I would urge the Talking Points team to harmonize their talking points.

MORE:  Hey, There, Lonely Guy...

For completeness, let's remind ourselves of Joe Wilson's position.  This is from his book, drolly titled "The Politics of Truth":

Apart from being the conduit of a message from a colleague in her office asking if I would be willing to have a conversation about Niger’s uranium industry, Valerie had had nothing to do with the matter.

Or, to Matt Cooper of TIME magazine in July 2003:

In an interview with TIME, Wilson, who served as an ambassador to Gabon and as a senior American diplomat in Baghdad under the current president's father, angrily said that his wife had nothing to do with his trip to Africa. "That is bulls__t. That is absolutely not the case," Wilson told TIME. "I met with between six and eight analysts and operators from CIA and elsewhere [before the Feb 2002 trip]. None of the people in that meeting did I know, and they took the decision to send me. This is a smear job."

We have no idea why Larry Johnson has abandoned him on this point.  Other than common sense.

Push Back Points

Here are the Republican push-back points on the Rove debacle; the WaPo has a story as well.

So, which points resonate, which fall flat, and what did they under-emphasize?

My quick glance says they are strong on documenting that Wilson's wife was involved in picking Wilson for the trip, but very light in explaining why that matters.

I have been pushing the "White House and CIA at War" theory put forward by Howard Fineman in Oct 2003 and illustrated by this Walter Pincus excerpt from June 12, 2003:

However, a senior CIA analyst said the case "is indicative of larger problems" involving the handling of intelligence about Iraq's alleged chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs and its links to al Qaeda, which the administration cited as justification for war. "Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded and information that was [consistent] was not seriously scrutinized," the analyst said.

Ok, if that is the voice of a CIA analyst, might it not be a teeny bit newsworthy to know that Joe Wilson is married to one?  Doesn't that impact the alternative vision of Joe Wilson as a career Foreign Service guy, a seemingly neutral bystander to the CIA-White House tussle?

Well, maybe the spin-meisters don't want to revisit the "War of the 16 Words" - one more such victory and we are undone.

Anyway, if the RNC had any sense, they would check these comments for some great ideas.

MORE:  the WSJ lauds Karl Rove as a whistleblower.

How About A Few Facts With That Coffee?

The Times promotes the story of Rove and the Plame leak with another long story lacking in new developments.

However, we find plenty to mock:

Mr. Bush, who once said he would fire anyone on his staff who had knowingly leaked the name of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson, also known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, ignored a question about Mr. Rove posed to him on Tuesday by a reporter on the edges of an Oval Office meeting with the prime minister of Singapore.

The President's words are here, and he said "if the person has violated law".  We have yet to see whether the actual pledge, rather than the Times restatement, is still operative.

Mr. Rove can take heart in one fact: so far every other senior official caught up by the cascading series of questions that were touched off by 16 words in Mr. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address has survived, even prospered. Three of Mr. Bush's closest advisers were involved in the drafting or reviewing of the now-discredited language, which said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The Times can take heart in one fact - although they wrote many articles about the "16 Words" when that controversy was hot, they only wrote one weak, concealed follow-up announcing that - oh, my - maybe Bush was right about those 16 Words after all.

But Mr. Rove's case is a lot more complicated. By all accounts he had nothing to do with the wording in the speech. Instead, it appears he may have been part of the White House effort to push back after Mr. Wilson wrote a July 7, 2003, Op-Ed article in The New York Times declaring that Mr. Bush's description of Mr. Hussein's search for uranium was false, and that it ignored information that he passed on to the C.I.A. casting doubt on the story about an Iraqi search for uranium.

Oh, for heaven's sake - it was July 6!  And there was a bit more to be pushed back then the Times troubles us with here.  Maybe the Times could start with Wilson's leak to Nick Kristof for his May 6, 2003 column - since it launched Wilson's star, and eventually led to a question that caught Ms. Rice off-balance on a Sunday talk-show, maybe the Times could explain the errors in Kristof's reporting and the lack of follow-up.

The entire contretemps at the White House this week centers on whether Mr. Rove tried to discredit Mr. Wilson by suggesting that his mission to Niger was the product of nepotism, and that Ms. Wilson had arranged for it. Why a mission to Niger would be such a plum assignment is still a mystery, but the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a report last year, quotes a State Department official as saying that Ms. Wilson had suggested sending her husband. She denies it.

"She" denies it?  I know Joe Wilson did, but I don't recall seeing her cited previously.  No matter - is the Times going to leave this as "she said, they said"?  Although the Senate Democrats would not vote on the specific conclusion, they did not dispute the evidence, which included a memo she wrote extolling his qualifications and a memo by an INR staffer describing a meeting at which she introduced her husband.  The INR staffer's memo told Colin Powell that Joe Wilson's wife was involved in selecting her, but did not give her last name or mention her covert status.

And why do we care if his wife was involved?  The Times pushes the nepotism line, which has us as puzzled as they.  But Walter Pincus, in an article which also includes Joe Wilson as an anonymous source, had written this in the WaPo on June 12, 2003:

However, a senior CIA analyst said the case "is indicative of larger problems" involving the handling of intelligence about Iraq's alleged chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs and its links to al Qaeda, which the administration cited as justification for war. "Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded and information that was [consistent] was not seriously scrutinized," the analyst said.

So, a CIA analyst is criticizing the President anonymously in June for mishandling intelligence.  In July, a former ambassador comes forward, also criticizing the Administration's handling of intelligence.  Is the Ambassador simply a professional, detached, objective careerist from the State Department offering his own point of view? 
Or is it at all relevant in assessing his credibility to know that he is in bed with a CIA professional?  Does knowing that give a hint as to what side he might be on in this discussion?

Not in Timesworld.

I CAN STOP ANYTIME:

Let's rip the Times editorial while we are at it:

...it is something else entirely when officials peddle disinformation for propaganda purposes or to harm a political adversary. And Karl Rove seems to have been playing that unsavory game with the C.I.A. officer Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson IV, a career diplomat who ran afoul of President Bush's efforts to justify the invasion of Iraq. An e-mail note provided by Time magazine to the federal prosecutor investigating the case shows that Mr. Rove's aim in talking about Ms. Wilson to Matthew Cooper, a Time reporter, was to discredit Mr. Wilson, perhaps to punish him.

Well, what "disinformation" was Rove putting out?  The Times editors lack the character to excerpt the e-mail in any detail, so here we go, excerpting Newsweek:

Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger ... "

So, the "16 Words" might be correct - that panned out. 

Cheney did not initiate this trip - lots of newsies had this wrong (Wolf Blitzer had not gotten the memo as of July 13) - but that checked out.  In fact, Tenet made that announcement hours after Rove spoke with Cooper.

And Ms. Plame was involved in some way, although Rove was wrong that she "authorized" it.  Even the Times is catching up to the significance of this - in the paragraph above, they note that maybe this is meant to "discredit Wilson, perhaps to punish him".

"Perhaps" to punish?  Based on what, other than Joe Wilson's bloviatings?   The Times focuses on the "discredit" theory a bit later:

Mr. Rove said the origins of Mr. Wilson's mission were "flawed and suspect" because, according to Mr. Rove, Mr. Wilson had been sent to Niger at the suggestion of his wife, who works for the Central Intelligence Agency. To understand why Mr. Rove thought that was a black mark, remember that the White House considers dissenters enemies and that the C.I.A. had cast doubt on the administration's apocalyptic vision of Iraq's weapons programs.

Well, yes - if the Times wants to admit that there were two sides in a factional dispute, and that a hint to Wilson's true allegiance might have been contained in the fact that he was married to someone in the CIA, then we are in agreement.  But how is that "disinformation"?

"Disinformation" is what Wilson gave Nick Kristof when he gave him (anonymously, and with his wife there at breakfast) the background for this column:

I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.

The envoy reported, for example, that a Niger minister whose signature was on one of the documents had in fact been out of office for more than a decade.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong - Dick Cheney did not ask for an investigation; his office did not receive the result.  Per both Tenet's statement and the SSCI report, Wilson's report was inconclusive.  And the forgeries Wilson masterfully debunked by pointing out the phony signature?  Wilson later wrote that he never saw them, which we believe since they were not in Washington until the fall of 2002.

And how did Kristof get so many points wrong?  There is an easy explanation - although, as a diplomat one might think that he is a professional communicator, Wilson explained to Paula Zahn that "those are either misquotes or misattributions if they're attributed to me." 

Or disinformation.  Against which, Rove was pushing back.  Waiting for Wilson to auto-discredit took about a year.

 

Don't Play "Gotcha" With The President

On the subject of what President Bush has said about leakers and the Plame investigation, The press seems to be trying to move the goal posts on the President.  Here, for example, is how the WaPo recently summarized his position:

Bush has said if any White House officials were involved, they would be fired.

The Times, in a pop-up attached to  this story says the definitive Bush statement came on Sept 30, 2003:

And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is.  And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of.

If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action.

However, in the body of the story, the Times gleefully characterized the President's statement thusly in their lead sentence:

Nearly two years after stating that any administration official found to have been involved in leaking the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer would be fired...

Later in the story, they gave us this:

[WH Press WhippingBoy Scott McClellan] brushed aside questions about whether the president would follow through on his pledge, repeated just over a year ago, to fire anyone in his administration found to have played a role in disclosing the officer's identity.

And this:

Mr. McClellan and Mr. Bush have both made clear that leaking Ms. Plame's identity would be considered a firing offense by the White House. Mr. Bush was asked about that position most recently a little over a year ago, when he was asked whether he stood by his pledge to fire anyone found to have leaked the officer's name. "Yes," he replied, on June 10, 2004.

Well, on June 10, 2004, "Yes" was about all Bush said, at what seems to have been a hectic press conference.

So, let's not expect the President to be bound by the way a reporter re-phrased his original statement nine months later.  The President said, on Sept 30, that "if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of".  He also said that for a leak of classified information, they would take "appropriate action".

Plenty of folks who were "involved" with the leak won't be fired, the WaPo's phrasing notwithstanding.  Colin Powell, for example, seems to have requested the fateful memo that may have brought forward the notion that Wilson's wife was involved in selecting him for the Africa trip.  That makes him "involved", but hardly in line to be sacked.

Let's see if any crimes have been committed, or classified info leaked.  And let's see whether the leak of classified info was unwitting before we decide the "appropriate" response.  Bush was clear enough, without rewriting him.

MORE:  A longer excerpt from June 2004:

Q    Given -- given recent developments in the CIA leak case, particularly Vice President Cheney's discussions with the investigators, do you still stand by what you said several months ago, a suggestion that it might be difficult to identify anybody who leaked the agent's name?

THE PRESIDENT:  That's up to --

Q    And, and, do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so?

THE PRESIDENT:  Yes.  And that's up to the U.S. Attorney to find the facts.

What's In A Name?

We are covering the ongoing Plame leak story, and have quite a bout scheduled.  Part of Karl Rove's curent story, based on the e-mail from Time reporter Matt Cooper, is that Rove mentioned Wilson's wife as being with the CIA, but did not name her.  Does that matter?

Slugging it out on the undercard will be David Corn 2005 versus David Corn 2003. (I know I was younger and fitter two years ago, but we can not report a Tale of the Tape for Mr. Corn).

The Big Bout will feature Corn 2005 versus Joe Wilson 2003.  Here we go. Corn 2005 will lead off:

But let's put aside the legal issues for a moment. This email demonstrates that Rove committed a firing offense. He leaked national security information as part of a fierce campaign to undermine Wilson, who had criticized the White House on the war on Iraq. Rove's overworked attorney, Robert Luskin, defends his client by arguing that Rove never revealed the name of Valerie Plame/Wilson to Cooper and that he only referred to her as Wilson's wife. This is not much of a defense. If Cooper or any other journalist had written that "Wilson's wife works for the CIA"--without mentioning her name--such a disclosure could have been expected to have the same effect as if her name had been used: Valerie Wilson would have been compromised, her anti-WMD work placed at risk, and national security potentially harmed.

Now let's hear from Corn 2003:

His wife's role--if she had one--has nothing but anecdotal value. And Novak's sources could have mentioned it without providing her name. Instead, they were quite generous.

And what did Joe Wilson say on national television?

COURIC: How damaging would this be to your wife's work?

Mr. WILSON: Well, you know, what was left out of my interview with Andrea Mitchell was--was my comment that I would not answer any specific questions about my wife. But hypothetically speaking, as others have reported, including TODAY, it would be--it would be damaging not just to her career, since she's been married to me, but since they mentioned her by her maiden name, to her entire career. So it would be her entire network that she may have established, any operations, any programs or projects she was working on. It's a--it's a breach of national security. My understanding is it may, in fact, be a violation of American law.

Emphasis added.  Let's also add that others found Valerie Plame's maiden name on Joe Wilson's now-gone [but not forgotten!] on-line bio; Novak mentioned that it was available as part of Joe Wilson's Who's Who entry (although Novak does *not*say that was how he got it).

Two years ago, Mr. Corn, Ambassador Wilson, and others, made a tactical decision to call attention to this case by emphasizing the possibly criminal nature of the leak.  Joe Wilson also chose to highlight the "maiden name" theme to support the notion that the leak was a calculated, well-informed act of revenge.

I suppose it is never to late for a do-over.

That said, my position was clear back in 2003:

Is [the absence of awareness of her covert status] exoneration? Legally, it might be - the law seems to require intent on the part of the leaker, which would be absent here. It also requires that the government be attempting to conceal the agent's identity. The CIA spokesman may have compounded an error [in his conversation with Novak], but his ineffectiveness provides a hurdle for the prosecution.

And how about "common-sense" exoneration? Well, these guys shouldn't have been taking a chance with national security for so little purpose. (Would any purpose be OK? Well, how about the Saudi leaks?) The "Ooops" theory leads to a "stupid, but not evil" conclusion, which may be better than the alternatives the Reps are contemplating.

My position was clear, but subject to future modification - Howard Fineman and even TIME magazine noted the possibility that Wilson was a catspaw in an ongoing tussle between the CIA and the neocons.  And following the release of the Senate Subcommittee on Intelligence report on Iraq, it became clear that Wilson had been embarked on quite the disinformation campaign of his own.  If Wilson was a CIA sock-puppet, and in bed with an anti-Administration CIA faction, that should have been of interest to journalists.

Well.  The Administration is getting its brains beaten in today (NY Times, WaPo) - evidently, Karl Rove has lost the backing of top Democrats.  But tomorrow is another day!  And that means it is another day that might bring us "I am troubled" throat-clearing from St. John (who could score a double play by back-stabbing Karl from South Carolina).

Or will some other Rep be the first crack in the wall?  Boy, you can't believe how much I can't wait.

MORE:  Dan Froomkin of the WaPo has a good round-up.  BillMon gathers Administration quotes about Rove.  Some are silly - McClellan's answer to the July 22 question about whether someone "deliberately" blew her cover is, even today, operative.  Others are problematic.

UPDATE:  It's a team sport - plaudits to Fishkite, who had the foresight to save Wilson's on-lin bio.

MORE UPDATES:  On the subject of CIA factions, here is Walter Pincus, in his famous June 12 piece that relied on Wilson as a source (and was ridiculed by the SSCI report):

However, a senior CIA analyst said the case "is indicative of larger problems" involving the handling of intelligence about Iraq's alleged chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs and its links to al Qaeda, which the administration cited as justification for war. "Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded and information that was [consistent] was not seriously scrutinized," the analyst said.

If senior CIA analysts were so critical of the Administration, isn't it a teeny bit newsworthy that Wilson was married to one?  And how great would it be if Ms. Plame was the senior analyst in question?  Heaven can wait!  (But surely Mr. Pincus would have noted that by now, so I am smiling when I write this).

And does the "indicative of larger problems" ring of the "fake but accurate" defense - ignore Wilson's misprepresentations and confusions; if he brought "a little literary flair" to his storytelling, it was because Bush lied!

I'm Glad It's Not Just Me

The NY Times pries into the Valerie Plame leak investigation and baffles us.  But we are not alone!

From Mark Kleiman, who has been following this forever:

Clear as mud

Adam Liptak has a blow-by-blow of the Cooper/Rove negotations and related matters that leaves me more confused than I was before.

And Kevin Drum:

This story is so weird that I'm not even going to try to summarize it, but apparently the answer is murkier than we've been led to believe.

The WaPo adds little to the fray, although I would exhort Mr. Luskin, Karl Rove's attorney, to end the drip, drip, drip and just tell us whatever he is trying to tell us - a disclosure a day keeps the story in play.

The WSJ also tackles this, chats with Luskin, and summarizes the "personal waiver" saga thuly:

Yesterday, Mr. Luskin explained that Mr. Rove, like other White House officials, had signed a document provided by Mr. Fitzgerald in December 2003, allowing reporters to testify about conversations with him. On Wednesday, before Mr. Cooper was headed to court and a possible jail term, his attorney, Richard Sauber, called Mr. Luskin and asked for reassurance that the earlier waiver encompassed Mr. Rove's discussions with Mr. Cooper. If so, Mr. Sauber sought more express consent. Mr. Luskin checked with Mr. Fitzgerald as to whether more specific consent was necessary, and then gave that consent to Mr. Cooper, who said last week that he received the permission in "somewhat dramatic fashion."

It does appear that Mr. Cooper eventually accepted the same general waiver that Ms. Miller is rejecting.  The Times also fails to confirm the WaPo reporting from last fall in which they suggested that she had been subpoenaed to testify about Lewis Libby.

Flashing back to the Times, they provide an interesting snippet on Matt Cooper:

Mr. Cooper was not an obvious vehicle for a sensitive leak. He had become one of the magazine's White House correspondents only the month before the conversation and is married to a prominent Democratic strategist, Mandy Grunwald.

Getting closer!  What the Times left out is that Ms. Grunwald is a daughter of Henry Grunwald, one of Time magazine's most distinguished editors.  One might have thought that a son-in-law could have exerted a bit more clout if he had really wanted to cling to his notes.

Matt Cooper And Karl Rove

Newsweek gives us snippets from the e-mails Time reporter Matt Cooper sent to his editors - Special Counsel Fitzgerald found them interesting enough to insist on getting direct testimony from Matt Cooper himself, so we are interested, too.  Here are the key bits:

It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper was tapping out an e-mail to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy. "Subject: Rove/P&C," (for personal and confidential), Cooper began. "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation ..." Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, "please don't source this to rove or even WH [White House]" and suggested another reporter check with the CIA.

In a brief conversation with Rove, Cooper asked what to make of the flap over Wilson's criticisms. NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the e-mail that Cooper sent his bureau chief after speaking to Rove. (The e-mail was authenticated by a source intimately familiar with Time's editorial handling of the Wilson story, but who has asked not to be identified because of the magazine's corporate decision not to disclose its contents.) Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger ... "

Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative. Nonetheless, it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak's column appeared; in other words, before Plame's identity had been published.

First, I am firmly aligned with Kevin Drum when he declares that "much is still murky".  This Newsweek revelation may create some political heat for Karl, but it is far from clear that, if these notes accurately describe the conversation, Karl Rove had the intent and knowledge that are also elements of a crime under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.  Mickey Kaus firmly straddles this point; Pejman and John H. of Powerline are bolder in asserting that Karl is in the clear.

Let me grab a red pen and play editor for a moment.  First, for Mike Isikoff of Newsweek, let's get some corporate synergy going - your very own WaPo parent reported last November that Novak's column went out on the wire on Friday, July 11, the same day that Cooper and Rove talked.  Editor & Publisher also picked up on this (and both articles appeared in my still-useful timeline).  Good job by Hunter at DKos for noting this:

Cooper talked to Rove at 11:07am, according to Newsweek. You can bet Fitzgerald has already determined precisely when Novak's column hit the wires.

Someone alert Josh Marshall, Kevin Drum, and David Corn to this point as well.  But could Novak have tipped Rove, or someone else, as to the content of his column even before it hit the wire?  (And lest you doubt the July 11 timing, a careful reading of Novak's column makes it painfully obvious that he was unaware of Tenet's climbdown on the "16 Words", which occurred later on Friday, July 11.  Novak did reference this July 7 press gaggle, however, as "a belated admission of error last Monday".

We can provide more assistance for Josh Marshall, who wonders about this:

So Novak knew she was covert.  And that pretty clearly means his sources knew too.  How else would he have found out?

Hmm, maybe by talking to his CIA press contact? 

This INR memo (later described in the Senate Intelligence Committee report) mentions Wilson's wife's involvement in selecting him for the mission, but (per later reporting) does not mention her covert status.  We have also been told that Fitzgerald is very interested in this memo.  All of this would be consistent with the knowledge displayed by Rove as described by Cooper's e-mail.

Or maybe Novak heard about Ms. Wilson's CIA connection from other reporters - that was what Matt Cooper told Lewis Libby on July 12, the day after he spoke with Rove.

During a July 12, 2003, conversation, according to a source involved in the investigation, Time reporter Matthew Cooper told Libby that he had been informed by other reporters that Wilson's wife was a CIA employee. Libby, the source said, replied that he had heard the same thing, also from the press corps.

Eventually, an enterprising reporter will ask Matt Cooper whether some of the sources he is shielding are other journalists; his answer may provoke a bit more head-scratching.

Well.  Let's accept that this news of his involvement may spell political trouble for Karl Rove.  One part of the Republican response will be to point to Fitzgerald's investigation, invoke grand jury secrecy, and say "time will tell".  It has been reported that Fitzgerald can elect to make a final report as a supplement to any indictments he may deliver, so this tack may not keep the White House role secret forever.

So the second course will be to re-fight the "War of the 16 Words".  It certainly appears that Rove's quick conversation with Cooper was part of a coordinated push-back against Wilson - Rove's three points were that (1) Wilson's trip was not authorized by Cheney or Tenet; (2) Wilson's wife was involved (Cooper uses the word "authorized" in his e-mail, but not in his final story); and (3) the Saddam/uranium/Africa story still had legs.

Two of those three talking points match up well with the message delivered by Tenet on July 11, by Ari Fleischer on July 12, and by Condi Rice on July 13. 

As to the involvement of Wilson's wife, Howard Fineman delivered a more refined spin in October, setting her involvement in the context of an ongoing factional tussle between the CIA and the neocons:

The CIA sends Wilson to check it [the Niger stories] out. On the surface, he would seem to be a logical choice: he’d spent years in Africa, knew French, knew the Saddam regime. But there were other things about him that Cheney’s office might not have liked. Wilson had close ties to the Democrats, having worked for them on the Hill and on Clinton’s national security staff; he was close to Democratic Sen. John Kerry and some other former NSC people who are now allies of the senator. Plus, he contributed to Al Gore’s campaign in 2000. Just as important, his wife was a CIA analyst who specialized in assessing WMD risks—and the CIA was not leading the charge to attack Iraq. In fact, the agency was doing just the opposite: In a report and testimony, CIA Director George Tenet argued that attacking Iraq would do more to create a generation of terrorists than eliminate one. What did Valerie Plame think of the seriousness of Saddam’s WMD capability? Sooner or later, we’ll find out—because it bears on what Wilson probably thought before he ever got to Niger to ask questions.

So, despite his impressive and seemingly objective resume, Wilson was arguably in bed with a CIA faction that opposed the war.  Novak, for one, insisted that he considered that to be relevant to the story.

And, assessing this after the fact, was Wilson actually part of a factional tussle?  Kevin Drum speculated that Wilson timed his leaks to an internal review at the CIA which concluded that Saddam had not attempted to acquire uranium from Africa.  Wow.

If the Administration was pushing back hard, it was also because Wilson had created a lot of confusion with his misleading leaks and his inaccurate NY Times op-ed.  Among his anonymous leaks was this whopper to Nick Kristof on May 6, 2003:

I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.

The envoy reported, for example, that a Niger minister whose signature was on one of the documents had in fact been out of office for more than a decade. In addition, the Niger mining program was structured so that the uranium diversion had been impossible. The envoy's debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted — except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway. "It's disingenuous for the State Department people to say they were bamboozled because they knew about this for a year," one insider said.

We eventually learned from George Tenet that "unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged" meant "There was no mention in the report of forged documents -- or any suggestion of the existence of documents at all.

...this report, in our view, did not resolve whether Iraq was or was not seeking uranium from abroad...".  And the Senate Report backed Tenet.

From Walter Pincus, June 12:

After returning to the United States, the envoy reported to the CIA that the uranium-purchase story was false, the sources said. Among the envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong," the former U.S. government official said.

The Senate Report singled this out for special ridicule, and Wilson offered a brave defense - "Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters."

Later, Wilson decided that he was a soul whose intentions were good, but when he spoke to reporters he was misunderstood.

And here is Wolf Blitzer on July 13, showing how deeply the misinformation had taken hold:

BLITZER: But 11 months earlier, you, the Bush administration, had sent Joe Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador to Niger, to find out whether it was true. He came back, reported to the CIA, reported to the State Department, it wasn't true, it was bogus. The whole issue was bogus. And supposedly, you never got word of his report.

There was clearly a lot of work for the White House to do.  And a year later, the NY Times admitted that maybe Bush was right.

My guess - earnest lefties can focus on the existence of the White House Iraq Group and the high probability that a push-back against Wilson was discussed to argue in favor of a conspiracy by the Bush Brute Squad.

Others will note that discussing Wilson was entirely reasonable, since his leaks were prompting questions on the Sunday talk shows and merited rebutting.

Approaching My Quota

Mark Kleiman thinks I am approaching my alloted number of errors on the Plame case.  I have a response in "UPDATE II" to my post titled "We're Doing Our Honest Best".  This will repeat, with greater emphasis and clarity, a point made in the original post.

Arianna Wants A Meeting

Arianna Huffington, blogging from the Aspen Institute’s five-day Ideas Festival, gives us the reaction of media bigs to the latest developments in the Plame leak investigation, and ponders Karl Rove's future:

According to the players, the key to whether this story has real legs -- and whether it will spell the end of Rove -- is determining intent. And a key to that is whether there was a meeting at the White House where Rove and Scooter Libby discussed what to do with the information they had gotten from the State Department about Valerie Plame being Joe Wilson’s wife, and her involvement in his being sent on the Niger/yellowcake mission. If it can be proven that such a meeting occurred, then Rove will be in deep trouble -- especially if it is established that Rove made three phone calls leaking the info about Plame and her CIA gig… one to Matt Cooper, one to Walter Pincus, and one to Robert Novak.

Well, let's have a meeting - in August 2003 the WaPo described the White House Iraq Group, which was formed in August 2002 to coordinate the run-up to negotiations, war, or whatever:

Systematic coordination began in August, when Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. formed the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, to set strategy for each stage of the confrontation with Baghdad. A senior official who participated in its work called it "an internal working group, like many formed for priority issues, to make sure each part of the White House was fulfilling its responsibilities."

...The group met weekly in the Situation Room. Among the regular participants were Karl Rove, the president's senior political adviser; communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio; and policy advisers led by Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, along with I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.

 

Oh, my - we have already seen Lewis Libby all over this story (and if the WaPo stands by their reporting from last fall, he is Judy Miller's secret source).

And we recognize Karl Rove's name.

Now, our official editorial position continues to be that the leak was an innocent mistake, and we love the Walter Pincus story to illustrate that.  We also like the theory about the information flow from the INR memo through Colin Powell as described in this recent post.  That theory, by the way, corrects a point made in Arianna's post, where she wonders if "Rove and Scooter Libby discussed what to do with the information they had gotten from the State Department about Valerie Plame being Joe Wilson’s wife".  The info that Colin Powell received from the INR did *not* mention Ms. Plame's "last name or undercover status".

Time will tell.  In related news, this old post from Sept 2003 has held up well, as light comedy anyway.  It does contain a useful lesson - when making a Bold Prediction, hedge:

It's not Rove.  Or, if it is, we have a deeply psychotic press corps.

I stand by at least half of that. 

MORE:  Jay Rosen has a good round-up here.  Dan Froomkin of the WaPo wants journalists to stop respecting Special Counsel Fitzgerald's request for silence, and start respecting the public's right to know.  Good point.  For example, can Judy Miller tell us whether her source has refused to grant a special personalized waiver, or whether she simply has not asked?  This LA Times story suggests she won't ask:

"Miller would not ask her sources to waive their anonymity. She said intelligence officials might feel coerced into admitting they had talked to a reporter."

My *guess* is that Ms. Miller was making a general comment about waivers, rather than commenting on her specific situation - the LA Times says she would not make herself available for this story.  However...

Just Say 'No' To Novak?

With Times reporter Judith Miller in jail on contempt charges for her refusal to cooperate with Special Counsel Fitzgerald's investigation into the Plame leak, folks are wondering, "Where's Novak"?  His July 14, 2003 column triggered this whole fracas, but at this point, he has not explained his subsequent role - did he cooperate with Special Counsel Fitzgerald, did he testify to the grand jury, what?  Novak is a newsman, this is news - what's the story, Bob?

Robert Kuttner goes off the deep end making this point; Powerline and Mickey Kaus try to steer him home (but not too gently!).

[David Corn has a good piece at his blog, and here, but he missed the Pincus parallel below.]

And let's cherry-pick the Huffington Cacophony:

Alan Dershowitz says that "Robert Novak has not -- to my knowledge -- been presented with the tragic choice of disclosure or imprisonment."

David Sirota says that "Bob Novak Is a Pathetic, Unethical, Unpatriotic Hack".  With undistinguished hair.

Finally, Jay Rosen makes sense with "Time for Robert Novak to Feel Some Chill" - maybe if CNN and the papers that ran his column were barraged with annoyed letters every time Novak appeared, the idea that newsmen should deliver the news would be reinforced.  Contact info will be posted below, eventually.

Well.  Jay Rosen correctly notes the Walter Pincus story may be instructive, but then misses an obvious point (well, it was obvious to me in the update to this earlier post).

Briefly, Walter Pincus of the WaPo got a leak on July 12, 2003 which contained all the info necessary to write the controversial Novak passage.  He did not publish then, but wrote about it on October 12 in order to illustrate two points - other reporters than Novak had received similar leaks, and "because I did not think the person who spoke to me was committing a criminal act, but only practicing damage control by trying to get me to stop writing about Wilson."

Ahh!  So why is Walter Pincus not in the news today?  Did he stand tall and defy Fitzgerald?  Did he cravenly collapse?  Was he, following Dershowitz, allowed to "skate"?

Hardly - as reported in the WaPo, an accommodation with Fitzgerald was reached after the source identified himself to Fitzgerald and gave testimony.  Mr. Pincus provided more details to Editor and Publisher (and the Pincus source is *not* Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby).

The point?  Novak might have received a similar leak from the same source; the source may have chatted with Fitzgerald about both Novak and Pincus, and Novak may have cooperated in the same way that Pincus did.

That would explain Novak's current status, although it leaves unanswered the question of "why so coy?".  We also have no obvious theory about Novak's second source.  However, based on Novak's presumably self-serving account, the second source offered a perfunctory "Oh, you know about it."

And if Fitzgerald has Novak's sources, what is he still looking for?  Well, perhaps he is listening to the echo chamber - reporters passed the Plame gossip back and forth with Administration officials, but someone had to be first, presumably, and that someone may have committed a crime.

Or perhaps he is looking for perjury.

Below we excerpt the leak as described by Mr. Pincus on Oct. 12, 2003, and compare that to the account of the leak Mr. Novak gave earlier, on Oct 1, 2003.  Maybe these two are in cahoots, but their stories overlap nicely.

MORE:  My Big Finish - Rove's attorney is tap-dancing (and see today's WaPo, which picks up the Parse-o-rama we noted in an Update yesterday, and in a longish post a few days back.)  The White House concern at this point is political, not legal - the "non-criminal leak" defense will probably hold in Fitzgerald's court, but not the court of public opinion.  Rehashing the "16 Words" debacle in order to explain the legal subtleties to a baffled (and bored) public is a distraction the White House would rather avoid, and so far, they have managed to hide behind grand jury secrecy, right past the 2004 election.  Mission Accomplished!

Well, my free advice to the Dems two years ago was to drop the legal angle and pursue the potential for humiliating hearings under Congressional bright lights (with grants of immunity).  Too late.  But it's not too late for 2006 - let Fitzgerald's investigation grind to an inconclusive halt, and then sweat Karl under the lights. 

Of course, the Right response will be, c'mon, this has been exhaustively investigated, there was no crime.  But maybe it will be an excuse for Congress to write a reporter shield law.

As to the press, their desire to cover this was never strong, and we see why - first, the press is about source protection, not source prosecution.  Secondly, Fitzgerald is struggling to sort out which Adminstration officials learned about Plame from reporters, and vice versa, and the gossip has muddied the waters - is Fitzgerald investigating our Washington press coprs, or a teenage slumber party?

"We're Doing Our Honest Best"

Let's tweak Mark Kleiman, who comes out swinging on the little matter of whether a crime has been committed in the Plame leak case.  The Times editors have adopted the position put forth in a WaPo guest piece (and elsewhere), the gist of which is, the elements of a crime under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act are not satisfied.  Lawrence O'Donnell goes through this again at the Huffington site.

Mr. Kleiman has argued against this, and noted that other statutes, such as the Espionage Act, are available (but doubters lurk everywhere!); my official position has mixed skepticism about a successful prosecution with the belief that Fitzgerald will not end his investigation leaving obvious stones unturned.

But today Mr. Kleiman has new evidence, to wit, a WaPo quote from Judge Hogan during yesterday's hearing:

Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas F.] Hogan said Miller was mistaken in her belief that she was defending a free press. He stressed that the government source she "alleges she is protecting" had already waived her promise of confidentiality. He said her source may have been providing information not to shed light on government secrets but to try to discredit an administration critic.

"This is not a case of a whistle-blower" revealing secret information to Miller about "dangers at a nuclear power plant," Hogan said. "It's a case in which the information she was given and her potential use of it was a crime. . . . This is very different than a whistle-blower outing government misconduct."

Very good.  But I will see your Hogan and raise you two Fitzgeralds - the NY Times gives us two angst-filled quotes from the Special Counsel:

Mr. Fitzgerald, who has relied on secret evidence in persuading courts to order Ms. Miller jailed, said the law now requires her to testify.

"The law says the grand jury is entitled to every man's evidence," he said. "We're doing our honest best to get to the bottom of whether a crime has been committed."

And another:

On Friday, saying it was obligated to comply with a final court order in the case, Time turned over Mr. Cooper's notes and other documents to the special prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

At the hearing here Wednesday, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a lawyer for Time, said Time's move should obviate the need for Mr. Cooper's testimony.

Mr. Fitzgerald opposed that request. "Mr. Cooper's testimony is essential," he said. "We need to get this right one way or the other, and we need Mr. Cooper to testify."

Emphasis added in each case.  And yes, the first quote is much stronger, and maybe I should have stopped there.

Now, Lawrence O'Donnell argues that the judges were sufficiently impressed by Fitzgerald's presentation to order subpoenas, and so they were.  What this overlooks is Jack Shafer's point that attorney Floyd Abrams picked a terrible tack for the reporters, arguing in terms of a new Constitutional privilege rather than attacking the notion that a crime had been committed.  Consequently, the merits of Fitzgerald's prospective case was not vigorously contested.

MORE:  Yes, post-London this topic seems utterly lame, but momentum is carrying me now.  Let me just stab at the Times editorial on Judith Miller.  First, putting her on a civil disobedience pedestal with Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks seems a bit much.

Second, it is all very well for the Times to excoriate Time magazine for folding up like a cheap suitcase.  However, if they are going to do that, shouldn't they note, somewhere in the course of presenting the background, that the source for Time reporter Matt Cooper had waived his confidentiality agreement?  Such a waiver had already been invoked by media stalwarts Tim Russert and Walter Pincus to justify their cooperation with the Special Counsel, and, for all we know, such a waiver may explain Novak's mysterious situation.

UPDATE:  Interesting job by Atrios in related news - the Times says Rove was Cooper's source; the Post says no.  Well, sort of.  Rove's attorney speaks to the WaPo with a denial that can be parsed a bit:

In an interview yesterday, he said Rove was not the source who called Cooper yesterday morning and personally waived the confidentiality agreement.

Yes, but the Times says it was all done lawyer-to-lawyer, implying that Karl was not on the phone.  Puzzling.  And normally the mighty Atrios sees through these parlor games.

STILL MORE:  If Mickey is with me, who will stand against me?  Mickey says that "Rove's lawyer went all weaselly and Clintonian", so go with the Times and parse the Post denial - Rove it is.

UPDATE II:   Mark Kleiman, in an update and a new post, argues that I have failed to address the flat statement by Judge Hogan that a crime has been committed.  He also explains away the Fitzgerald quotes I noted as Fitzgerald "merely speak[ing] with the caution appropriate to a prosecutor in dealing with a case in which the grand jury has not yet returned an indictment."

Well.  The gist of my response to Hogan comment matches my thoughts on O'Donnell's argument, but I can repeat it, I suppose - Fitzgerald, in his court filings, is going to advocate for the view that a crime has been committed and that, therefore, the court should order certain things to happen; in the specific case, he wanted the court to compel two reporters to testify.  As an advocate for the view that this is a serious matter, Fitzgerald cannot, of course, lie to the judge.  But he is under no obligation to present his request as though drafted by Hamlet - he is allowed to put the best spin possible on his case.

It is up to counsel for the reporters to challenge Fitzgerald's request on the basis that no crime is likely to be prosecuted, if they so choose.  In fact, they were criticized by Jack Shafer for failing to do so, back when Floyd Abrams chose to walk the road of urging the court to invent a new shield for journalists. 

So, Judge Hogan has seen filings from an aggressive prosecutor explaining that this is a sufficiently serious matter that reporters should be jailed; from the other side, he has heard lofty arguments about the importance of a free and inquiring press.  Unless Judge Hogan is doing independent research, he ought to believe a crime has occurred - that is what he has been told, and no one has contested it.

And that said, how could Judge Hogan possibly know any better than Fitzgerald, prior to indictments, trials,and convictions, that a crime has occurred?  If Fitzgerald's comment is suitably cautious, as befits a prosecutor, can we mock Hogan's comment as ill-fitted to a judge?  Or is Hogan going to dispense with the tedium of investigation, indictment, and trial, and just find someone guilty of something?

OK.  Did saying it twice help?  Things to do - look back through the court ruling with the infamous eight page redaction.  There may be caveats in there as to whether a crime has occurred.

And are Fitzgerald's filings on the web?  That would be a key to this.

A BIT MORE:  DOJ guidelines for subpoenaing a reporter do say this:

(a) “In criminal cases, there should be reasonable grounds to believe, based on information obtained from nonmedia sources, that a crime has occurred...

But of course Fitzgerald will argue (convincingly, in my view) that there are some grounds to believe a crime occurred.  Only when all the evidence is in will the ability or inability to prosecute be obvious.

Scrolling through the opinion, I see signs of judicial restraint on the question of whether a crime occurred - the word "alleged" appears, and later Judge Tatel notes "Leaks similar to the crime suspected here (exposure of a covert agent)". 

The London Bombings

Glenn has lots of links, and be sure to scroll up.  Memeorandum has lots, too.

Comments are open, natch.  A thought - if this is Al Qaeda, perhaps NATO will want more troops in Afghanistan.