JustOneMinute

At What Point Do We Give Props To Hillary?

Hillary Clinton continues to stand tall in support of her war vote, and in defiance of the anti-war majority of her own party (and you know it is a majority because....? Psychic!).

"I take responsibility for my vote, and I, along with a majority of Americans, expect the president and his administration to take responsibility for the false assurances, faulty evidence and mismanagement of the war," the New York senator said in a lengthy letter to thousands of people who have written her about the war.

Hmmph.  If she would just kow-tow to the party line, al la John Kerry, and admit that she was duped and deceived, we would be delighted to mock her.

Instead, we have to move to Stop Hillary, Plan B - get behind her!  Yeah, that's it!  If righties start saying nice things about her, she will be alienated from the left forever.

OK, this is a bit risky - if Hillary is perceived as having cross-over appeal and bipartisan, centrist support, she may remain unstoppable.  But hey, she is already unstoppable; maybe righty support will provoke an ardent anti-war lefty out of the woodwork and into the fray.

We live in perilous times.

Here is her Oct 2002 speech in favor of the war resolution and her recent letter to constituents.

MORE:  If I were advising Hillary, I would tell her to stay the course - where is her upside in flip-flopping now?  Within two years (i.e., Nov 2007), as we approach crunch-time in Iowa and New Hampshire, one might reasonably hope that the way forward in Iraq has become clear, one way or another; presumably we will be well on our way to either victory or despair by then.

Ooops - I Erred On TIME (Reportedly)

Yesterday I pummeled TIME for failing to disclose the circumstances under which their reporter, Viveca Novak, was cooperating with Special Counsel Fitzgerald's probe into the Plame leak.  My gist - TIME did not seem to be respecting either source confidentiality, or its readers right to know, with their cryptic statement announcing that Viveca Novak would be testifying about her conversations with Karl Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin.

Well, tomorrow is another day, and today is yesterday's tomorrow - from the WaPo we learn that Viveca Novak has been asked to testify by Robert Luskin himself:

Viveca Novak, who has written intermittently about the leak case for Time, has been asked to provide sworn testimony to Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald in the next few weeks after Rove attorney Robert Luskin told Fitzgerald about a conversation he had with her, the two sources said.

...a person familiar with the matter said Luskin cited his conversations with Novak in persuading Fitzgerald not to indict Rove in late October, when the prosecutor brought perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges against Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

"This is what caused [Fitzgerald] to hold off on charging" Rove, the source said. But another person familiar with the conversations said they did not appear to significantly alter the case.

Really?  That does fit with the bit of the TIME story that said "Fitzgerald is still trying to tie up the loose ends on Karl Rove's involvement in the case".  If Ms. Novak submitted some sort of a written statement in late October (or just said, "What Luskin said sounds about right" to Fitzgerald), I can see where, at some point, Fitzgerald would want to complete his records by getting her story under oath.

I do have a hard time believing Luskin would have said something deeply exculpatory to a reporter - if it is such good news for Karl, why might it not be a deliberately planted story? - but I am not the high priced prosecutorial talent here.

Anyway, this denouement suggests a bonus answer to a related puzzle - was it just a coincidence that Viveca Novak got the big interview with Bob Woodward?

Maybe not - Woodward is certainly free to hold out for a friendly interviewer, and he may have heard through the grapevine that Ms. Novak was also a skeptic about the Fitzgerald investigation.

MORE:  File this under "Yeah, that makes sense":

Luskin, Viveca Novak and Fitzgerald spokesman Randall Samborn declined to comment. The two sources, both of whom are familiar with the Luskin-Novak conversations, spoke on the condition of anonymity because the prosecutor has warned everyone involved in the case not to discuss it publicly.

Oh, sure - as if Fitzgerald urged Matt Cooper to splash his testimony about Rove and Libby all over the cover of TIME.  Why Viveca Novak is not getting a story out of this is baffling.

Immigration Reform

I have long accepted the conventional wisdom that immigration reform would be a divisive momentum sapper for the Bush Administration.

Evidently, there is no momentum left to sap - fresh from his triumphs with Katrina and Miers, and with the situation in Iraq up in the air, Bush is going to tackle immigration.  Happy Holidays.

Here is a recent NY Times article, as well as two days of Bush speeches in Texas and  Arizona.  Dick Morris had some interesting thoughts on November 9; going further back in time, I mocked a Times article from last June, and marveled at Bush's political peril with this topic in January.

The Captain sees this as a chance for Bush to build momentum - wow, I want whatever was in his Thanksgiving turkey (KIDDING - his skepticism shines though).  Michelle M. is using phrases like "Most ridiculous line so far" and "lip service" - score her as on the fence.

MORE:  If I am going to be writing regularly on Bush's immigration plan, I need to fine-tune SpellChek - is it "debacel", or "debacle"?  "Disastrous" or "disasterous"?  STILL KIDDING!

Keeping An Eye On Russert

Arianna is keeping an eye on Russert (and keeping an ear out for Andrea Mitchell, who is probably duct-taped in a broom closet somewhere at NBC).

Arianna is quite critical of Bob Woodward, noting that he does not seem to bring tremendous critical faculties to his books.  However, I am comfortable with the stock defense: people may prefer an investigative writer who probes the powerful and delivers the stinging rebuttals in the same book.

But that alternative may not be available here in reality, where the occupants of the White House are under no obligation to spend hours with a person likely to pan them in their next book.

If the real choices are (a) a book delivered by a faithful scribe that makes the opportunity for rebuttal available to others, or (b) no book at all, well, give me (a).

Is Andrea Mitchell The Next Bob Woodward?

The lady doth protest too much.  Is Andrea Mitchell sitting on a Bob Woodward style revelation about Fitzgerald's investigation into the Plame leak?  Does her nagging conscience want her to reveal that she had received an early leak of the news that Ms. Plame was at the CIA?

Twice now, Don Imus has asked Andrea Mitchell to explain why she said, back in October 2003, that among reporters probing the story of the Wilson trip to Niger it was "widely known" that Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA.

On November 10, Ms. Mitchell was unprepared, and gave an answer that was comically absurd.

And last Wednesday, November 23, Ms. Mitchell delivered a Thanksgiving turkey.  Her new explanation for her Oct 2003 statement is elegant in its simplicity - "I screwed it up".  Hmm. Maybe Scooter could try that on at his trial.

However, Don Imus also asked her whether she had been contacted by Fitzgerald's investigation.  Her current denial - "in no way" - stands in stark opposition to her comments of Oct 29, 2005 when she appeared on The Tim Russert Show" on CNBC.  Is she being deeply evasive and deceptive with her current answer?  We can provide a motive!

We roll the transcripts in this recent post, but here is the gist: Ms. Mitchell now claims that when she said, back in 2003, that many reporters had become aware that Ms. Plame was at the CIA, she had become confused about the timeline.  What she meant to say, she explains, was that she became aware of Ms. Plame's CIA role when the rest of us did - upon the publication of Bob Novak's column.

Our rebuttal is that in the 2003 interview, Ms. Mitchell had addressed confusion about the timeline in the previous question.  Did she become confused herself in the space of fifteen seconds?

As to her new evasion, that "in no way" had she been in contact with the Fitzgerald investigation, the kindest guess we can make is that when speaking with Mr. Imus she became confused and "screwed it up" with her latest answer.

Our less kind guess is that she is being Clintonian - perhaps she talked with investigators before Special Counsel Fitzgerald took over the case on December 30, 2003.  But why so deceptive?

And our third choice is that she is, gosh, we don't like this word, lying.  According to this Newsday excerpt from March 2004, Ms. Mitchell was certainly intriguing to Mr. Fitzgerald when he issued some subpoenas in January 2004 - not only was she a reporter whose White House contacts were of interest, but she almost certainly appeared on the guest list of the White House reception honoring her husband, Alan Greenspan.  She should have had lots to talk about with an FBI investigator, who should have arrived at her doorstep at the behest of Special Counsel Fitzgerald.  Yet now she is saying that the conversation never occurred. 

Why might she now be so coy about the possibility that she once had a chat with investigators, when she was willing to admit just that only a month ago?

One guess - it was October 29 when she told Tim Russert she had talked with the FBI.  Two days later, on November 1, James Taranto of the WSJ unearthed the Oct 2003 transcript, thereby raising the stakes - did Ms. Mitchell tell the FBI that she had prior knowledge of Ms. Plame's CIA employment?  Did she specifically deny it?  Did they even ask?

We sense her awkwardness - I would be astonished if Fitzgerald went after any journalists for false statements, but he might cast some stony looks in the direction of an uncooperative reporter.

But beyond any problem she might have with Fitzgerald, there is a significant news story here.  Ms. Mitchell is not bound by any legal rules or source protection if she wants to describe her own experience with the Plame investigation.  What did the investigators ask her about?  If they completely ignored her Oct 2003 statement, well, that surely calls into question the thoroughness of their work.

Or, if they did ask about it, what did she tell them?  Did she name the sources for her information (unlikely), invoke journalistic privilege, or what?  And, as with Woodward, folks might like to know how much of this was shared with her editors, and why it was concealed from her viewers.  (Hmm, but Woodward has been getting hammered - maybe she would prefer to avoid that by denying everything?  Just a wild guess.)

And keep in mind - the Fitzgerald subpoena in January 2004 was for White House contacts with Ms. Mitchell.  If she received a leak about Ms. Plame from one of her State Department sources (as Bob Woodward may have done), Fitzgerald's investigative net might have missed it, and she would the same reason Woodward did to keep mum.  News is waiting to be broken!

And who is going to break it?  The main stream media seems to be deeply reluctant to chase each other's sources on this story - the prevailing ethos seems to be that each outfit handles their own laundry.

Or maybe there is nothing here; Matt Yglesias of TAPPED notes my earlier post and explains that "I think it's always been clear that Mitchell was somewhere on the mistaken/lying continuum with that one."

Really?  Let me add two bits of evidence.

First, we have the living example of Bob Woodward, who did receive an early leak and chose to protect his source by keeping keep quiet rather than risking a court fight he would probably lose.  Cliff May, who may know whereof he speaks, addresses this.  If keeping quiet was good enough for a Washington legend, who is to say that Ms. Mitchell could not eventually come to a similar realization?

Secondly, check this cryptic comment by Nick Kristof, from his Oct 2003 column in which he described (with no mention of any sources at all!) Ms. Plame's CIA career:

Mrs. Wilson's intelligence connections became known a bit in Washington as she rose in the CIA and moved to State Department cover, but her job remained a closely held secret.

Isn't that pretty much what Ms. Mitchell said?

It [The fact that she worked for the CIA] was widely known among those of us who cover the intelligence community and who were actively engaged in trying to track down who among the foreign service community was the envoy to Niger. So a number of us began to pick up on that. But frankly I wasn't aware of her actual role at the CIA and the fact that she had a covert role involving weapons of mass destruction, not until Bob Novak wrote it.

Let's see - Bob Woodward received a leak and kept quiet.  Nick Kristof says Ms. Plame's intelligence connections were "known a bit", although her specific job was not.  And Andrea Mitchell said that, among the presumably small group of reporters following the Niger story, her employment at the CIA was "widely known", although her actual role was not. 

Those puzzle pieces fit quite nicely - why assume she was wrong, or lying, back then?  Especially when her motive to lie be confused today is so clear.

I would think the press would be buzzing around this.  The Woodward revelation was a front page story, so where would similar news about Andrea Mitchell end up?

And who is going to break it?  One presumes, at this point, that Tim Russert and Andrea Mitchell have chosen to bury this.

However, if media watchdogs such as Howard Kurtz of the WaPo/CNN, James Taranto of the WSJ, Jack Shafer of Slate, Stephen Spruiell of NRO, and Garrett Graff of FishBowl DC took a look at this, could she duck them all?

I bet she could!  But it would be fun to watch her try.  Meanwhile, Bernie McGuirk and Don Imus can torment her on a bi-weekly basis.

MORE:  We will come back to Nick Kristof, but check his non-denial of prior knowledge of Valerie Plame's CIA connection:

I know Mrs. Wilson, but I knew nothing about her CIA career and hadn't realized she's "a hell of a shot with an AK-47,'' as a classmates at the CIA training "farm,'' Jim Marcinkowski, recalls. I'll be more careful around her, for she also turns out to be skilled in throwing hand grenades and to have lived abroad and run covert operations in some of the world's messier spots. (Mrs. Wilson was not a source for this column or any other that I've written about the intelligence community.)

Uh huh.  Well, I know Nick Kristof is a Times columnist, but I don't know his "career" at the Times; maybe he knew Ms. Plame had a desk job at Langley, but did not know her career, either.

And telling us that "Ms. Wilson was not a source for this column or any other that I've written about the intelligence community" certainly does not exclude her prior use as a source on a column about, for example, Iran's nuclear aspirations.

For Able Danger Aficianados

All Able Danger at this new blog.

Does TIME Magazine Still Protect Their Sources?

Yesterday, TIME magazine delivered a fascinating Sunday puzzle when it told us that their reporter, Viveca Novak, was cooperating with the Fitzgerald investigation into the Plame leak:

Fitzgerald has now asked a second reporter in TIME's Washington bureau, Viveca Novak, to testify under oath about conversations she had with Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, starting in May 2004, while she was covering the Plame inquiry for TIME. Novak, who is not related to columnist Robert Novak, who originally published Plame's name, is cooperating with the investigation.

David Johnston of the NY Times has more:

The reporter, Viveca Novak, who has written about the leak investigation, has been asked to testify by the special counsel in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, about her conversations with Robert D. Luskin, a lawyer for Mr. Rove, the magazine said.

...

Time disclosed the prosecutor's request in a two-paragraph article published on Sunday, reporting that Ms. Novak had been asked to discuss conversations she had with Mr. Luskin, starting in May 2004, when she was covering the investigation.

The article said Ms. Novak was cooperating with the inquiry. It is not known when she will testify; she has not been asked to appear before the grand jury but will instead give a deposition, said Ty Trippet, a Time spokesman.

On Sunday, Mr. Luskin declined to comment, but he has previously said he expects that Mr. Fitzgerald will decide not to prosecute Mr. Rove. Ms. Novak declined to comment, as did Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald.

...

Ms. Novak is not known to have had discussions with Mr. Rove or other White House officials about the C.I.A. officer during the summer of 2003, the time that has been the focus of Mr. Fitzgerald's inquiry.

Nevertheless, the summer and fall of 2004 was a significant time for Mr. Rove, according to lawyers in the case. It was then that Mr. Rove searched for and found an e-mail message he had written that led him to recall the July 2003 conversation with Mr. Cooper, the lawyers said.

Mr. Rove's e-mail message was sent on July 11, 2003, to Stephen J. Hadley, who was then the deputy national security adviser. The message said Mr. Rove had spoken to Mr. Cooper about issues in the leak case.

After its discovery, Mr. Rove provided the message to Mr. Fitzgerald, who had not been aware of it. Mr. Rove testified about the conversation with Mr. Cooper in a grand jury appearance in October 2004.

Even so, Mr. Fitzgerald has investigated Mr. Rove's assertions that he had forgotten the conversation with Mr. Cooper, and why he made no mention of it in his earlier testimony and in meetings with investigators, the lawyers said.

In Ms. Novak's case, the magazine's apparently swift compliance contrasted with the legal battle waged by Time and Mr. Cooper, who for months resisted a subpoena from Mr. Fitzgerald for his testimony.

Yes, the swift compliance does make quite a contrast with their previous position.  And TIME was criticized at the time for folding up, rather than making a stand for press freedom.

So, has TIME surrendered all notions of a free press, and does it now consider itself to be an arm of the Fitzgerald investigation?  For some reason, in their statement they do not even address such questions as how or whether they hope to protect the confidentiality of their source, Robert Luskin.  Now, we see him quoted by name in some of the articles that include a Novak byline, so some of what he said was on the record.  But was all of it?

In my unexpected role of TIME apologist, I will hazard this guess - suppose Special Counsel Fitzgerald is asking Ms. Novak about information she may have passed to Robert Luskin.  Specifically, suppose Ms. Novak told Mr. Luskin in May of 2004 that Matt Cooper believed he was being subpoenaed to testify about his side of a conversation with Karl Rove.

Well, then - it is far from clear why her questions to Luskin would be covered by any concept of source confidentiality.  But if Luskin had been alerted in May 2004 that Cooper had talked to Rove, why did it take so long to discover the missing email?  [Possible Luskin response - "I didn't believe her.  Did I tell Karl?  Sorry, that is privileged communication".]

It's just a guess.  Now I'll tell you something that is not a guess - TIME ought to have explained this in their statement.  Are they or are they not still attempting to protect their sources?

More links to possibly-relevant Viveca Novak articles here, and more links to follow.  And as to how or why Fitzgerald discovered this Novak-Luskin connection now, as opposed to last summer or a year ago, I have no idea.  However, it is surely an impressive coincidence that Ms. Novak had the big TIME interview with Woodward just last week.  Unless, of course, it is not a coincidence.  I have a fair-use excerpt of the TIME article here, but I don't see anything helpful like "By the way, this reporter also had a critical conversation with Robert Luskin in May of 2004".

However, the TIME article did end with this, so who knows?

During his time with the prosecutor, Woodward said, he found Fitzgerald "incredibly sensitive to what we do. He didn't infringe on my other reporting, which frankly surprised me. He said 'This is what I need, I don't need any more.'"

As a further aside - if our newly energized Special Counsel no longer respects DoJ guidelines about enlisting reporters, and if press freedom is no longer an issue, we eagerly await word that he has contacted Ms. Mitchell, again.

OTHER IDEAS:

ReddHedd at firedoglake thinks Fitagerald is nibbling on the fringes of attorney-client privilege.  [UPDATE:  She calls a partial mulligan, and has a much more plausible new idea which, troublingly, builds on my own suggestion.  Briefly, if Viveca told Luskin that Cooper talked to Rove, Rove may have been in imminent danger of discovery; this undermines (but does not eliminate!) the recantation defense.]

JeraLyn Merritt is too prudent to guess wildly, but she has helpful extracts from past TIME articles.

Swopa also wonders about press freedom, and I stole his puzzlement about the Novak-Woodward connection.

Jane Hamsher has some guesses which I like even less than mine.

And let me propose a timeline correction - Matt Cooper was originally subpoenaed in May 2004.  Eventually, that subpoena was modified to applay only to conversations with one named official, later revealed to be Lewis Libby.  He then received a second subpoena in Sept 2004 which did not name any officials.

So a theory is that, as of September 2004, Fitzgerald believed Cooper had at least one more source, but did not know who the source was.  Fitzgerald's surprise that Cooper had a second source comes from Cooper's own account [No, it doesn't.  Hmm.  Here we go.]; other details are from the appeal available at Fitzgerald's website. 

Woodward's Source - Now The Times Points To Armitage

Who leaked to Bob Woodward that Valerie Plame was at the CIA?

The NY Times provides a handy pop-up graphic highlighting denials and folks who are "not telling".

The pretty slim "not telling" list consists of Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State and our leading suspect; David Addington, counsel to the Vice President; and Catherine Martin, former public affairs director.

According to Bob Woodward's editor Len Downie, "the source was one who had been interviewed many times for Woodward's 2004 book", according to Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft.

Hmm.  Of the three candidates on offer, who would be the most likely fit?  I'm staying with Armitage.

MORE:  Sure, someone could be lying.

STILL MORE:  What do we know about Woodward's source?  Here is the old clue, from WaPo editor Len Downie:

DOWNIE: ...he had first told me in late October about the fact that he had had this conversation back in June of 2003.

It was a very brief part of a much longer interview that Bob was conducting for his book with a source that he had conducted many interviews with for his book. And at the time, he doesn't think if was very important. And it was a king of byplay that wasn't even part of the interview that he was conducting.

And here is a new clue from WaPo ombudsman Deborah Howell:

The senior administration official who told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency is a confidential source in a book Woodward is writing on President Bush's second term, "a book I will be delighted to be judged on," he said.

Does that rule out Armitage, who does not leap to mind as a likely authority on Bush's second term?  Not exactly - in his original statement explaining this, Woodward did mention that in mid-2003 he was doing research on the second term book:

The interviews were mostly confidential background interviews for my 2004 book "Plan of Attack" about the leadup to the Iraq war, ongoing reporting for The Washington Post and research for a book on Bush's second term to be published in 2006.

As the astute "MJW" points out in the comments, "The circumstances surrounding Rice's replacement of Powell as Secretary of State will certainly be covered in the book".  So Armitage would certainly have a lot to add to that.

UPDATE:  Laura Rozen tells us that reporter Viveca Novak will be testifying.

Here is the AP:

A second Time magazine reporter has agreed to cooperate in the CIA leak case and will testify about her discussions with Karl Rove's attorney, a sign that prosecutors are still exploring charges against the White House aide.

Viveca Novak, a reporter in Time's Washington bureau, is cooperating with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity in 2003, the magazine reported in its Dec. 5 issue.

Novak specifically has been asked to testify under oath about conversations she had with Rove attorney Robert Luskin starting in May 2004, the magazine reported.

Novak, part of a team tracking the CIA case for Time, has written or contributed to articles in which Luskin characterized the nature of what was said between Rove and Matthew Cooper, the first Time reporter who testified in the case.

What Fitzgerald hopes to get from her that he can't get directly from Luskin is a mystery to me.  And why the reporter agreed to cooperate is a puzzle - is Luskin suspected of some crime?  Did he lie to Fitzgerald but tell the truth to a reporter?

If Luskin is not suspected of a crime, why does he not retain the normal source confidentialty privileges?  Did Luskin waive them for some reason?  Were all of his interviews completely on the record?  Or has TIME simply thrown in the towel and decided not to oppose this prosecutor?

Sorry for all the questions - here is the TIME article itself, which answers none of them.  Not of interest to their readers, I guess.

And here are two articles by Ms. Novak that seem to be on point: "The Rove Problem", July 17, 2005 and "Rove Testifies in Wilson Leak", Oct 15, 2004.  Perhaps another tea-leaf reader can find something in them, but I do not.

TIME also has their own "Best Of" for coverage of the Plame case.  Perhaps some other piece by Ms. Novak is more interesting.

Maureen Dowd, Making Sense

MoDo discussed technology, the internet, and the future of journalism in an address down in Texas.  And by gum, the gal made sense!  For a while.

I'm not worried about blogs overtaking print journalism. If it weren't for print journalism, what would bloggers have to write about? I say, the more the merrier. Competition makes everyone sharper.

There is a bit of bad news for the folks marketing Times Select, as well as the folks marketing SpellCheck:

I'm such a technological creton, I can't even figure out how to get onto Times Select, and I've paid my $49.95 with my Mastercard. (Paying to read yourself: Priceless.)

But I like this:

But I'm an optimist about the future of journalism. Because, in the end, it isn't the form that matters. It's the function. It isn't the medium, it's the message.

And here's my message: From time immemorial, from the Roman Senate, which we're vividly reliving on HBO on Sunday nights, to Shakespeare's royal courts to Dick Cheney's House of Pain, power leads to abuse of power. Power, as you can see with King Lear and the Boy Emperor, W., makes people deaf. The pursuit of power, as you can see in MacBeth and with Paul Wolfowitz and the neocon cabal, makes people blind.

         

...

Democracy depends on us. It depends on our ability to be patriots, to fulfill the founding fathers vision of keeping a check on power. We can't leave it to male escorts, fake anchors and professional fawners. It doesn't matter how you tell the story — with hieroglyphics, with a royal typewriter, with an IBM think pad, with a cell phone, with a Blackberry, with a carrier pigeon.

Just tell the story.

The ellipses eliminate a vivid lefty fantasy world. Well, follow the link.

         

Happy Thanksgiving, All

Among the many things for which I am grateful is that we have many well intentioned and well informed people on both sides of the aisle.  I hope you all have a happy and safe holiday (but if you have to choose, go with "happy").

Andrea Mitchell, Take Two

Is Andrea Mitchell sitting on a Bob Woodward style revelation that she had received an early leak that Ms. Plame was at the CIA?

Twice now, Don Imus has asked Andrea Mitchell to explain why she said, back in October 2003, that among reporters probing the story of the Wilson trip to Niger it was "widely known" that Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA.

Andrea Mitchell, who caught the eye of the Huffington bloggers recently, tried to explain herself to Don Imus for a second time on Wednesday morning, and she managed to deliver a Thanksgiving turkey.  Crooks and Liars was there with the video.  [And oh, my - Pants on fire, Ms. Mitchell - see UPDATE].

But we are lo-tech, so let's run the Newsmax transcript:

Senior NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell said Wednesday morning that she "messed up" when she told an interviewer in 2003 that Valerie Plame's CIA identity was "widely known."

Oops, here's the transcript:

MITCHELL: I know the question now. I've gone back and reread it. And I frankly - I thought - I think that I thought he was asking about, did I know there was an envoy. But I know that I didn't know about Joe Wilson's wife until after the [Novak] column. Because when the column came out I went in to my producer and said - "Look at this. How the heck did we not know that?"

And at the same time we were talking with [Tim] Russert and everyone else. You know - this is a different part of the story that we didn't know about.

So clearly back in Oct. of '03, I screwed it up. 

IMUS: Well, [Alan Murray's] question seems plain. "Do we have any idea how widely known it was in Washington that Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. And you said that his wife worked . . .

MITCHELL: When you look at my answer, I said: "It was widely known - and we were trying to track down who among the foreign community was the envoy to Niger." So far, so good. Okay? [Quoting herself again.] "So some of us began to pick up on that. But frankly I wasn't aware of her actual role at the CIA and the fact the she had a covert role involving weapons of mass destruction, not until Bob Novak wrote it.

IMUS: Well, that part is clear. 

MITCHELL: That's clear. So, what's not clear is that I didn't know about her role at the CIA until Bob Novak wrote it. And I obviously got it muddled.

IMUS: Well, what this suggests to me is that, you knew she worked at the CIA but you didn't know what she did there. 

MITCHELL:  Yes, but that's not . . .

IMUS: Is that fair?  Did you know that?

MITCHELL:  I didn't.

IMUS:  Well, then - why did you say you did, Andrea?

MITCHELL:  Because, I messed up.

IMUS:  Oh.

MITCHELL: I think that I was confused about the timeline. We weren't all as focused on the timeline then as we really are now. And I think I just was confused.

IMUS:  Did you ever have a discussion with Russert about it?

MITCHELL:  Sure, after the fact.

IMUS:  Oh.

MITCHELL: Well, I think Russert, conversations with Russert, obviously after Joe Wilson came out on "Meet the Press" - and we all talked about those 16 words. That's what we were focused on. We were focused on Niger, uranium, were there WMD? That's what the whole focus was. Not on his wife.

Then Joe Wilson's wife was mentioned by Bob Novak and it became a major issue when the CIA referred it to the Justice Department for investigation. . . . . [SNIP]

IMUS: I think the reason that there's a question about you, and I'm not patronizing you, but it's because the respect you have as a journalist and as a reporter.

MITCHELL: I appreciate that but I've got to tell you . . .

IMUS:  I mean, [reporters are] very careful about what they say and when they say it.

MITCHELL: I have gone back over this, I can't tell you how many times. I was quite surprised to hear about it because it's inconsistent with anything in my memory. I can't find any notes that reflect this - this alleged knowledge. And so I was muddled on the timeline - that's all I can imagine.

IMUS:  Have you been subpoenaed?

MITCHELL:  No, no - not at all.

IMUS:  Have you ever - have you talked to Fitzgerald informally?

MITCHELL: No - in no way. I was - I didn't have any knowledge about this. You know, one of the things that happened was that the Washington Post wrote an inaccurate story in the middle of this whole period, saying that I was one of the six people who had been leaked to before the Novak column. And that's how my name first got into this.

Which was not true. They didn't check with me. They didn't call me. I was in the office all day. It was a Sunday. They wrote the story on Monday morning.

Did she really say this?  "I think that I was confused about the timeline. We weren't all as focused on the timeline then as we really are now. And I think I just was confused."

For old time's sake, let's re-run the question she has found so baffling as well as the preceding one from Oct 3, 2003, and please note that she specifically addresess the timeline in her first response:

MURRAY: Andrea, a couple of quick questions. One, you said something earlier that I wasn't sure about. Bob Novak reported that two administration officials told him this. Are we any closer to having any idea who those two people are?

MITCHELL: No. And you know, there's a lot of rumor. There's been denials from the White House. Joe Wilson, he now inappropriately suggested that Karl Rove may have been the person. What he really should have been saying is that he believes Karl Rove was circulating the story after Novak put it out. So we don't know who that person was. There have been suggestions regarding the vice president's office. These have been denied. But it's really...

MURRAY: Right.

MITCHELL: ...inappropriate, I think, for any of us to suggest that someone might have been involved, because we're talking about a possible crime, and we have no evidence of that.

MURRAY And the second question is: Do we have any idea how widely known it was in Washington that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA?

MITCHELL: It was widely known among those of us who cover the intelligence community and who were actively engaged in trying to track down who among the foreign service community was the envoy to Niger. So a number of us began to pick up on that. But frankly I wasn't aware of her actual role at the CIA and the fact that she had a covert role involving weapons of mass destruction, not until Bob Novak wrote it.

She was not confused about the timeline when she explained Joe Wilson's timing error about Karl Rove.  Did she really become confused fifteen seconds later?

Whatever.  A very interesting point is this - assuming she did not mess up on this question [Ooops - she did!  See UPDATE], she has not been contacted by Special Counsel Fitzgerald to discuss this.  In fact, again assuming she understood the question and was not confused [Bad assumption], Fitzgerald has never contacted her at any time during this investigation.

That should give hope to any other nervous reporters who are keeping quiet in order to avoid a subpoena.  Speak up, chaps - Fitzgerald could not care less!

UPDATE:  Speaking with Don Imus, Ms. Mitchell denies any contact with Fitzgerald:

IMUS:  Have you ever - have you talked to Fitzgerald informally?

MITCHELL: No - in no way. I was - I didn't have any knowledge about this.

Maybe that is literally, strictly true.  Or maybe she can't remember what she said on Oct 29, 2005, or maybe she misunderstood Don's trick question.  But let's go back a month to her appearance on "The Tim Russert Show":

MITCHELL: You know, I should have spoke--'cause there's been a lot blogged about all of this--I was called by the CIA because it was erroneously reported in The Washington Post that I was the recipient of the leak before Novak's column came out, and I had not been. So I was never questioned because I simply told the FBI--and, you know, NBC put out a statement that night--that I had not been a recipient of the leak; in fact, I had learned about it from Novak's column like everyone else. Then after the fact, a lot of us had gotten calls and conversations with people, you know, `Hey, how about the Novak column?' But that was after the fact.

Comic emphasis added.  She was never questioned because she told the FBI... Uhh, what did the FBI do, make declarative statements and wait for her to nod yes or no?  Or did they, dare I use the word, "question" her?

Fine, I'll accept that she was never questioned by the grand jury.  But let's not pretend that "in no way", even informally, did she have contact with Fitzgerald's investigation.  [Hmm, unless she has gone all Clintonian on us, and spoke to investigators in 2003 before Fitzgerald was appointed to lead this.  But she appeared on the contacts of interest subpoena in 2004, *and* was surely on the guest list to the White House reception honoring her husband Al, so there was lots for her to talk about with investigators in 2004.]

Get this tidbit to Bernie McGiurk, designated assassin of the Imus Show, and maybe Ms. Mitchell can try for a best out of three.

The Secret Life Of Lewis Libby

Over at the Huffington Post we find John Amato huffing and posting about what Libby complained about when he called Tim Russert in July 2003.  Jeralyn Merritt has background as well.

Well.  Mickey Kaus gave a very plausible answer to this a few weeks back:

kf hears, through trustworthy and knowledgeable sources, that in his conversation with Russert Libby gave vent to the archetypal (and wrongheaded) charge that Matthews was animated by anti-Semitism--presumably because Matthews talked a lot about "neoconservative" Bush aides and war supporters and interviewed guests (such as Pat Caddell) who did too.

If that was Libby's complaint, it would help explain why NBC wanted to keep quiet about its exact contents. Not only does it potentially bring up a wild, hard-to-refute issue that the network would rather not have to deal with--but Libby's jag is also something you wouldn't forget, or make up, which would make Russert's testimony extremely convincing at trial. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald may have wanted to keep it secret so it would have as much of an impact as possible, and Russert may be trying to honor a request from the prosecutor.

Let me run with that and toss in some wild speculation you have seen nowhere else.  I am not sure it would come out at trial, but it strikes me as plausible and relevant to the broader question of Libby's motives with respect to Joe Wilson.

Two leading questions will mark my course - first, is there any reason to think that it was only Chris Matthews that struck the "anti-neocon = anti-Semite" nerve in Libby, or is it a reasonable guess that Libby considered others to be anti-Semites as well?

And secondly, what was it with Libby and Joe Wilson?

You can guess the rest - some old appearances of Wilson at least allude to the sort of dual-loyalty issue that seems to be a part of the neocon/anti-Semitism debate.  I run them below.  And let's be crystal-clear: I am *NOT* alleging that Joe Wilson, Chris Matthews, or anyone else is anti-Semitic.  I am speculating that Lewis Libby may have thought so. 

Bill Keller To The Defense - Of The War!

Writing on June 14, 2003, Bill Keller of the Times explained his thoughts about the missing WMDs in Iraq:

I supported the war, with misgivings about the haste, the America-knows-best attitude and our ability to win the peace. The deciding factor for me was not the monstrosity of the regime (routing tyrants is a noble cause, but where do you stop?), nor the opportunity to detoxify the Middle East (another noble cause, but dubious justification for a war when hardly anyone else in the world supports you). No, I supported it mainly because of the convergence of a real threat and a real opportunity.

The threat was a dictator with a proven, insatiable desire for dreadful weapons that would eventually have made him, or perhaps one of his sadistic sons, a god in the region. The fact that he gave aid and at least occasional sanctuary to practitioners of terror added to his menace. And at the end his brazen defiance made us seem weak and vulnerable, an impression we can ill afford. The opportunity was a moment of awareness and political will created by Sept. 11, combined with the legal sanction reaffirmed by U.N. Resolution 1441. The important thing to me was never that Saddam Hussein's threat was "imminent" — although Sept. 11 taught us that is not such an easy thing to know — but that the opportunity to do something about him was finite. In a year or two, we would be distracted and Iraq would be back in the nuke-building business.

And FWIW, here are the Times editors explaining the Niger story on June 13, 2003:

The Niger uranium story first started making the rounds of Western intelligence agencies late in 2001. The charges seemed plausible because Iraq was known to have been trying to enrich uranium in the late 1980's and Niger was one possible source of uranium fuel. But the supporting documents never checked out. Some bore what was alleged to be the signature of Niger's minister of energy and mines, but the man in question had been out of office many years before the sales negotiations were supposed to have taken place. And any actual sales contracts would have had to be arranged not with Niger's government, but with the international consortium that actually controls the country's entire uranium supply.

The C.I.A. heard about at least some of these problems from a former ambassador with African experience who looked into the matter at the agency's request in early 2002. His report that Niger denied the allegations was passed along to other government agencies, including the White House. But the C.I.A. appears not to have concluded that the story was               unreliable. As a result, no effort was made by administration officials to keep it out of speeches and documents dealing with Iraq, including the State of the Union address.             

As of mid-June, the Times editors grasped that the Wilson report was not viewed by the CIA as conclusive, and that he had been sent at the request of the CIA.  That jibes with the contemporaneous reporting from Walter Pincus (June 12, June 13), as well as with the SSCI released in July 2004.

Well.  As of mid-June, one might say that the Administration push-back against the May 6 Kristof column had been a resounding success.

However, the wheels obviously fell off in July - Wilson published his op-ed, the Administration retracted the "16 Words", and away we went.

So what went happened?  I have a partial guess.  Remember, Wilson did not submit a written report - the CIA circulated a written report based on his oral debriefing.  Per the SSCI, Wilson's description of what he told the CIA is much more impressive than the report the CIA actually prepared.

Did the CIA not hear Joe as he spoke, did they deliberately suppress some of his more convincing claims, or did his memory trick him a bit, so that in subsequent retellings his debunking became more convincing?

If the Times editors were inclined to believe the official denials in June, then switched sides and believed Joe in July, well - bad guess.

And that, apparently, is what happened - here is a Times editorial from July 12, 2003 (which includes the first reference to the "16 Words" in the Times archives):

Doubts about the accusation were raised in March 2002 by Joseph Wilson, a former American diplomat, after he was dispatched to Niger by the C.I.A. to look into the issue.        

Mr. Wilson has said he is confident that his concerns were circulated not only within the agency but also at the State Department and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Tenet, in his statement yesterday, confirmed that the Wilson findings had been given wide distribution, although he reported that Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and other high officials had not been directly informed about them by the C.I.A. The uranium charge should never have found its way into Mr. Bush's speech.

So, by this timeline, there were two waves of Wilson rebuttals.  The first pushback, against the May 6 Kristof column, was a success by mid-June.

The second wave, in response to Wilson's July 6 op-ed, did not go as well.  Of course, retracting the 16 Words on July 7 didn't exactly help.  And retracting the retraction a week later did not enhance the picture of an Administration in command of the basic facts.

Well, our original question, now well disguised, was this - how many reporters were involved in the mid-June pushback and got a leak about Wilson and wife?

Bob Woodward got the tip, although he did not write a story.

Judy Miller got a tip, possibly as early as June 23.

Andrea Mitchell says she knew before she didn't know.

And I am still wondering about Nick Kristof (who may have left for Iraq), Walter Pincus, and many others.

MORE:  After spending a bit of time with Lexis a la Carte (the poor man's Lexis - searches are free, downloads are $3 each), I have a modest attempt to chart the Niger scandal.

Nick Kristof - June 25, 2003

Back in June 2003 Nick Kristof had a wide-ranging discussion with Terry Gross of NPR.

A fair use excerpt is here, but let's single out these bits, which relate to (can you believe it?) the Wilson trip and the Niger story.  Frankly, we are agog at how misinformed Mr. Kristof was about developments in the story he broke.  And equally frankly, I am not sure just now what the point is of fisking an interview that is over two years old.  However, I am researching Mr. Kristof's work on the Niger story, so here we go:

Kurtz On Woodward

When Media Empires Collide!  Howard Kurtz, WaPo reporter and CNN talking head, tackles Bob Woodward, WaPo reporter, best-selling author, and journailistc legend.

In late October, Woodward said, he "learned another piece of this puzzle," which prompted him to go into "incredibly aggressive reporting mode."

He said he called the source and asked about their earlier conversation involving Plame, the wife of White House critic and former ambassador Joseph Wilson. According to Woodward, the source said: "I have to go to the prosecutor. I have to tell the truth."

At that point, Woodward told King, "I realized I was going to be dragged into this, that I was the catalyst. And then I asked the source, 'If you go to the prosecutor, am I released to testify?' And the source told me, 'Yes.' "

...

He added: "Remember, the investigation and the allegations that people have printed about this story is that there's some vast conspiracy to slime Joe Wilson and his wife, really attack him in an ugly way that is outside of the boundaries of political hardball. The evidence I had firsthand — a small piece of the puzzle, I acknowledge — is that that was not the case."

He said the source told him Plame was a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction. In his experience, Woodward said, such analysts are not undercover. Fitzgerald has said Plame had covert status.

Jane Hamsher has more, and a transcript.  In terms of a timeline, this is useful:

KING:  How did it even come up?

WOODWARD: Came up because I asked about Joe Wilson, because a few days before, my colleague at the "Washington Post," Walter Pincus, had a front page, saying there was an unnamed envoy -- there was no name given -- who had gone to Niger the year before to investigate for the CIA if there was some Niger-Iraq uranium deal or yellow cake deal.

The Pincus story was June 12.  A few days later, Richard Armitage (our preferred guess as Woodward's source) was surely back in town - we checked the State Dept website for his travel schedule in this post.

Andrea Mitchell, Redux

David Fiderer of the Huffington Blog takes a long look at Andrea Mitchell's involvement in the Wilson/Plame/Fitzgerald story, and does not like what he sees (and I thought I was a tough critic...).

And to get a sense of the political range from which Ms. Mithcell is drawing fire, consider this, from Mr.Fiderer/s post:

But first, a few things Mitchell chose not to mention. Then and now, the CIA's position, as set forth in Novak's original column and later confirmed by CNN and others, was that Plame had nothing to do with selecting Joe Wilson for the trip to Niger.

Ahh!  Even the Wilson defenders (I am something of the opposite) are going after Michell!

Where will she find relief?

And on the specific point about whether Ms. Wilson was involved in the selection of her husband, let's turn to Libby's indictment, points 6 and 7 from page 4 of the .pdf:

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

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

Point 7 certainly suggests that, at a minimum, the CIA was not doing a great job of waving people away from the theory that Wilson's wife was involved.  That passive voice may hide a bit, but it seems reasonable that Fitzgerald double-checked Libby's testimony and notes by chatting with the CIA fellow at the other end of the line.

Is there a chance that the CIA concluded, upon further cover-up evaluation, that the wife was not involved?  Who would be surprised?

MORE:  Only a glitchy computer stands between me and another run at Nick Kristof.  Developing...

UPDATE:  That's Their Story, And They're Sticking To It (And Sticking It To Us): Tim Russert defends Andrea Mitchell's memory loss to Don Imus:

Tim Russert Defends Andrea Mitchell on Leakgate

In a Tuesday morning interview with radio host Don Imus, NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert at first denied - then admitted - that NBC diplomatic correspondent Andrea Mitchell once said that everybody knew Leakgate accuser Valerie Plame's CIA identity.

"Andrea Mitchell is claiming - I believe I'm correct here - that everyone knew that Wilson's wife worked from the CIA back then," Imus told Russert. "Now, I don't know what she means by 'back then' and I don't know what she means by 'everyone' but, ah . . . "

"What - what - when did she say that?" Russert interrupted. 

"That's just information that I've gotten from [Imus crew member] Bernard [McGuirk]," Imus replied.

Russert's denial sounded categorical: "Yeah - she has not said that."

But then McGiurk interjected: "Oct. of '03."

Suddenly, Russert seemed to remember Ms. Mitchell's remarks.

"I believe you asked her about that," he told Imus, referring to Mitchell's last Imus appearance. 

Russert explained: "That particular conversation she had, she said that she had misspoke or misheard the question or something. Not with you but with the interviewer back in Oct. ['03]."

The NBC News honcho indicated he didn't want to pursue the topic any further, telling Imus, "You should talk to her directly on that."

The suggestion elicited backhanded praise from Imus, who told his guest: "You're, by the way, the best at not answering stuff. I really admire that."

Bernie is an assassin.

 

 

I've Given Up

Chris Matthews enters the ongoing "Dumb Statement du Jour" contest:

In a speech to political science students at the University of Toronto yesterday, the host of the CNBC current affairs show Hardball had plenty of harsh words for U.S. President George W. Bush, as well as the political climate that has characterized his country for the past few years.

"The period between 9/11 and Iraq was not a good time for America. There wasn't a robust discussion of what we were doing," Matthews said.

"If we stop trying to figure out the other side, we've given up. The person on the other side is not evil -- they just have a different perspective."

We await clarification from Matthews or his Spokesfolks.  Suggested spin - by "other side", Matthews meant "Republicans".

Otherwise, if he wants to come back to this country and promote his new message - "Zarqawi - a soul whose intentions are good" - good luck.

Questions No One Else Is Asking

We are tackling the tough ones here - my understanding is that folks maintain their own sub-blogs, called "diaries" at the Daily Kos.  And how do these diaries find their readers?  If enough readers vote in support of a particular diarist's entry, the magic of modern software elevates it to the front page.

That approach might be expected to encourage a certain, hmm, extreme and outspoken approach, so we wonder - does that method favor the Direst Diarist?

Bob Novak And "Operative"

-- A Plamaniac Exclusive! --

Much has been made of the use by Bob Novak of the word "operative" in his column which outed Valerie Plame.  Josh Marshall has what we consider the definitive post on this subject, so let's see if the Doctor is in:

As we’ve noted before, one of the best pieces of evidence that Novak (and thus his sources) knew Valerie Plame was a clandestine employee of the CIA was that he said as much in his original column. There he called her an “Agency operative.”

Dr. M goes on to explain that, contrary to his weaselly denials (such as here), Novak meant "spy" when he wrote "operative", based on his past use of that word.  His Big Finish:

Everything points to the conclusion that Novak did know [Ms. Plame was clandestine].  That would mean, necessarily, that his sources knew too.

Well, well.  Let's just say, not necessarily.  Life is full of surprises, and in the course of researching something else, a bit of light may have been shed upon this particular Novak mystery.  The case can be made that Novak got the word "operative" either directly or indirectly from the CIA, patched it together with other, less explosive information from his sources, and delivered a bit of original reporting.  Novak's explanation is still evasive, of course, but perhaps he is simply cloaking the machinations of a master reporter at work.

General Shinseki, Again

Via Glenn, we find ourselves wondering - Is Pejman missing a link?  He is, of course, correct in disputing the connection between Shinseki's June 2003 retirement and his controversial Feb 2003 Congressional testimony about troop levels in Iraq.  However, I doubt that Team Reality will rely merely on his say-so.

However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence - press on!

Isikoff And Thomas Point To Armitage

Evan Thomas and Michael Isikoff of Newsweek review the bidding in the Woodward leak mystery, and single out former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage as a likely suspect:

So who is Novak's source—and Woodward's source—and why will his identity take the wind out of the brewing storm? One by one last week, a parade of current and former senior officials, including the CIA's George Tenet and national-security adviser Stephen Hadley, denied being the source. A conspicuous exception was former deputy secretary of State Richard Armitage, whose office would only say, "We're not commenting." He was one of a handful of top officials who had access to the information. He is an old source and friend of Woodward's, and he fits Novak's description of his source as "not a partisan gunslinger." Woodward has indicated that he knows the identity of Novak's source, which further suggests his source and Novak's were one and the same.

If Armitage was the original leaker, that undercuts the argument that outing Plame was a plot by the hard-liners in the veep's office to "out" Plame. Armitage was, if anything, a foe of the neocons who did not want to go to war in Iraq. He had no motive to discredit Wilson.

Motive and opportunity.  Let's start with opportunity - was Armitage in a position to pass along news of a Wilson and wife connection by mid-June?  From Jeralyn Merritt, we get this from the Aug 25 LA Times:

After a June 12 Washington Post story made reference to the Niger uranium inquiry, Armitage asked intelligence officers in the State Department for more information. He was forwarded a copy of a memo classified "Secret" that included a description of Wilson's trip for the CIA, his findings, a brief description of the origin of the trip and a reference to "Wilson's wife."

Fair enough - Washington was buzzing about the June 12 Pincus story and the Kristof columns of May 6 and June 13 on the secret envoy that debunked the uranium reporting and discredited the Sixteen Words, and Armitage wanted the inside scoop.

And how about motive?  Let's accept their assertion that "[Armitage] had no motive to discredit Wilson."  However, the State Dept. had a strong motive to discredit the CIA.

As excerpted in this post, the State Dept (INR) representative at the meeting that launched the Wilson trip was skeptical that the trip would provide any useful intelligence, and was not impressed by the resulting Wilson report.

Furthermore, the INR / State Dept had been consistently more skeptical of the uranium reporting than the CIA.  However, in the hastily marshalled October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, the INR dissent on the uranium reporting was lost in a footnote in a different section (SSCI Report, conclusion 17).

So, if asked about the Wilson trip being glorified by Kristof and Pincus, what might an informed person at State say?  After snorting derisively, they might say that on the uranium question, it was amateur hour at the CIA - they put together an ill-conceived and inconclusive trip, misplaced the timely INR dissent, mishandled the forgeries, and generally bungled the issue.

And as further evidence of the amateur-hour approach, the tidbit that Wilson was tapped for the trip by his wife may have been tossed in an amusing bit of supportive gossip intended to discredit the CIA, not Wilson.

Is that what happened?  Might be - Newsweek seems to be leaning that way.

MORE:  Add Condi Rice to the denials list.

Woodward and His Source

TIME magazine chats with Bob Woodward with why his source came forward.  I have lost track of the corporate synergies - doesn't the WaPo own Newsweek?

An extensive fair-use excerpt follows the break.

And we have this reaction from an emailer:

As a lawyer with some experience with federal prosecutors, I think this note says something about Woodward for sure and may say something about Fitzgerald as well. Woodward is now in full flatter-the-prosecutor mode hoping not to be dragged deeper into the case.  Fitz' statement that he has what he needs may have less to do with sensitivity to the newsgathering needs of the press and more to do with not wanting to hear any information that threatens his theory of criminal liability in this case.

OK, that is a bit harsh, but... it is well worth remembering that Fitzgerald can not simply subpoena Woodward, Kristof, Pincus and Mitchell just because he thinks they may have an interesting story to tell.  That is a point that I suspect Mr. Fitzgerald is pondering - what can he do to be sure that more Woodward-type surprises are not lurking?

I wondered about this back in July with "I Smell Press Cover-Up (And I'm Steaming)".  Well, I am still skeptical that Fitzgerald has found the full story.

Media Alert!

"On The Story", a CNN show airing tonight at 7 PM ET, will include a segment on the Fitzgerald investigation.  It is hosted by Jacki Schechner and will feature bloggers Jeralyn Merritt and, yes, yours truly.  The spot will probably air in the second half hour.

We taped Friday night, so I can tell you that Jeralyn will be calm and incisive, as expected.

As for my own performance - I can't wait to see.

The first question was to contrast Bob Woodard's performance with Judy Miller's in the Fitzgerald investigation.  I rose to Bob's defense, pointing out that investigative reporters are not meant to be particularly cooperative with prosecutors.  I also emphasized the point that Judy spent over a year on a losing court fight *after* her source identified himself to Fitzgerald; Woodward gave evidence within two weeks of his source's decision to come forward.  Media maven Jack Shafer skipped right past that in his "Bob Ain't Judy" column, so I was either original or painfully obvious.  And yes, Jeralyn pointed out that Woodward may have had a duty to disclose his conflict in commenting on a case in which he was a concealed participant.

The second question was - hmm, what was that question again?  Jeralyn answered first and I was so taken by her eloquence that I had a Scooter Libby moment, which may, if there is a God, not survive the videotape editor.

Anyway, the second question related to the interaction of the media with bloggers.  I framed the question very narrowly in what was left of my functioning mind, and responded as if the question had been, "How should the media react to being chewed on from the right and left every day"?

A more interesting response would have been to chat about how the media ought to be relating to bloggers.  Framed that way, my "Coulda, woulda, shoulda" answer would have been that, since bloggers are the media's most avid and engaged customers, we ought to be a valuable source for feedback and ideas.  If Jeralyn Merritt, a top defense attorney, is willing to take time out of her day to research the legal ins and outs of Fitzgerald's investigation, any reporter with a lick of sense ought to avail himself or herself of that effort.

Well, we'll see what airs tonight.  I figure two of my fifteen minutes have been exhausted, but I have thirteen to burn!

UPDATE:  The Political Teen has the video, thanks very much.

Immediate, Swift, Whatever...

The paper of record had a difficult time presenting the Murtha story to the satisfaction of its readers.

Now The Times Corrects Itself When They Are Right

Fresh from the 43rd St. Comedy Club comes this correction:

A front-page article yesterday about a new disclosure in the C.I.A. leak investigation referred incorrectly to an assertion made by the special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald about I. Lewis Libby Jr., whom he indicted in the case involving the naming of Valerie Wilson, a C.I.A. officer. Mr. Fitzgerald said that Mr. Libby was the "first known" government official - not the first - to discuss Ms. Wilson with a journalist. Go to Article

Go to article - what oddly helpful advice.  Here is what the Times thinks they are correcting:

On Wednesday, Mr. Libby's lawyer, Theodore Wells, pronounced Mr. Woodward's revelation a "bombshell" that contradicted Mr. Fitzgerald's assertion that Mr. Libby was the first government official to discuss Ms. Wilson's C.I.A. connection with a journalist, Judith Miller, a former reporter for The New York Times, on June 23, 2003.

Well, I made a similar mistake, but had a helpful commenter for an editor.  Let's go to the transcript of Mr. Fitzgerald's press conference.  Early on, he makes the comment that inspired the Times correction:

In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson.

Nicely spotted by the Times!  But keep reading:

At the end of the day what appears is that Mr. Libby's story that he was at the tail end of a chain of phone calls, passing on from one reporter what he heard from another, was not true.

It was false. He was at the beginning of the chain of phone calls, the first official to disclose this information outside the government to a reporter. And then he lied about it afterwards, under oath and repeatedly.

No correction called for, gents.  Hey, you were right! 

And while we are all feeling friendly, help me out with this - any luck on the Bold Assertion about Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus?  Todd Purdum, David Johnston and Douglas Jehl told us this:

In his formal statement in The Post, Mr. Woodward said he had mentioned to Mr. Pincus in June 2003 that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. But Mr. Pincus, who has written that he first heard about Ms. Wilson from a senior administration official in July, said he did not recall that.

Emphasis added, I stand by my earlier comment that Mr. Pincus wrote no such thing, and I challenge the Times reporters (who evidently have trouble reading a transcript) to show us the text.  (And if it is a private email, they should have said so; if a TV appearance, why say "written" and send us searching in the wrong place?)

My position - since Mr. Pincus was all over the Niger trip story in June, he may well have received a leak from the same source that leaked to Woodward.  That would be a bit of a bombshell, wouldn't it, especially after the Times reported it to be impossible.

And why do we wonder?  I have long been puzzled by Mr. Pincus' explanation for why he ignored the July 12 leak, which was, he didn't believe it.  What's not to believe, unless Mr. Pincus had checked it out.

Anyway, here is what Mr. Pincus wrote in the Nieman Watchdog describing his leak experience:

On July 12, 2003, an administration official, who was talking to me confidentially about a matter involving alleged Iraqi nuclear activities, veered off the precise matter we were discussing and told me that the White House had not paid attention to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s CIA-sponsored February 2002 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. 

I didn’t write about that information at that time because I did not believe it true that she had arranged his Niger trip. But I did disclose it in an October 12, 2003 story in The Washington Post.

Nothing about this being his first such leak.  And how about in the Oct 2003 WaPo?  He wrote this:

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.

No, nothing about "first leak" there.  If the Times wants to argue that he implied it, fine - don't write that Mr. Pincus "has written that he first heard about Ms. Wilson from a senior administration official in July" without evidence.

Let's at least get the correct corrections.  It seems odd that the Times corrected accurate reporting in order to burnish Fitzgerald's image.  Go, go figure.

At this point, the Times Public Editor Byron Calame is beaten down and discouraged by this story, but give him a try: public@nytimes.com

Looking For Drunks At The NY Times

The Soccer Dad kicks some, uhh, balls.

Seeing Red In A Blue State

I want to go to a cocktail party with Dave Reinhard, up in Oregon - while he tells folks what he really thinks, I'll be ready to lay down a covering fire.

Should work fine, especially if I am wearing my track shoes.  And remember, I don't have to outrun the the outraged Blues; I just have to outrun Dave.

The State Dept., The INR, And The Wilson Trip

In the post below, we reprise an abundance of current and former Bush Administration figures denying that they were Bob Woodward's source for his information about Valerie Plame.  We also highlight two glaring "no comments" - Marc Grossman, former under-Secretary of State, and Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State (and a favorite Woodward source).

Might one of these two worthies be Woodward's source?  Who knows?

But in the interests of preparedness let's urge John Podhoretz of the NRO to start drafting his "I told you so" speech: JPod, responding to a TIME magazine article about the INR memo, wrote this in July:

Time Magazine has a new story about the revelation of Valerie Plame's name -- a story that, despite Time's own bizarre spin, reinforces the claim that Karl Rove and others learned that Joseph Wilson was married to a CIA operative from the media.

... Later, he writes: "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....The same week, Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman asked for and received a memo on the Wilson trip...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."

... So what does this tell you?
 
It tells you that the State Department, which leaks like a sieve, knew about Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame in June.

... So for those who think something very bad happened here, why isn't attention now circling around the State Department, whose two top guys at the time -- Colin Powell and Richard Armitage -- leaked like sieves to the media?

Here is an extensive fair-use excerpt of the TIME piece.

Now, let's refresh our memories as to the attitude of the INR towards the Wilson trip.

Per the Senate Intelligence Report, the INR was skeptical of the potential value of the Wilson venture to Niger:

(U) On February 19, 2002, CPD hosted a meeting with the former ambassador, intelligence analysts from both the CIA and INR, and several individuals from the DO's Africa and CPD divisions. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the merits of the former ambassador traveling to Niger. An INR analyst's notes indicate that the meeting was "apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue." The former ambassador's wife told Committee staff that she only attended the meeting to introduce her husband and left after about three minutes.

(U) The INR analyst's meeting notes and electronic mail (e-mail) from other participants indicate that INR explained its skepticism that the alleged uranium contract could possibly be carried out due to the fact that it would be very difficult to hide such a large shipment of yellowcake and because "the French appear to have control of the uranium mining, milling and transport process, and would seem to have little interest in selling uranium to the Iraqis." The notes also indicate that INR believed that the embassy in Niger had good contacts and would be able to get to the truth on the uranium issue, suggesting a visit from the former ambassador would be redundant. Other meeting participants argued that the trip would do little to clarify the story on the alleged uranium deal because the Nigeriens would be unlikely to admit to a uranium sales agreement with Iraq, even if one had been negotiated. An e-mail from a WFNPAC analyst to CPD following the meeting noted "it appears that the results from this source will be suspect at best, and not believable under most scenarios." CPD concluded that with no other options, sending the former ambassador to Niger was worth a try.

Now, I am not an expert on the dark arts of writing a State Department memorandum.  However, the INR had predicted that the Wilson trip would be a waste of time and money (i.e., a boondoggle) and the other meeting participants had correctly predicted that Wilson's report would be inconclusive.  Consequently, my guess is that the author of the INR memo, in accepting the challenge of describing the Wilson trip, strained mightily to avoid using the phrase "clown show".

And how does the Armitage to Woodward theory fit into the Left's preferred story line, that the outing of Wilson's wife was a brutish act of revenge by the Cheney-controlled White House?  Not very well.

Over at the State Dept, the INR certainly had their own quarrel with the CIA about the pre-war estimates of Saddam's nuclear capability and aspirations (the INR dissent in the Sept 2002 NIE was lost in a footnote).

So at State, senior officials may well have been pushing the "real" story of the futile, inconclusive Wilson trip as yet more evidence that State was right, and the CIA was wrong about Saddam and his nuclear ambitions.  And, hypothetically of course, as the seniors at State retold their tale, the tidbit about the whole pointless Wilson exercise being orchestrated by his CIA wife was not a talking point - it was a punchline.

MORE:  Under this theory, the senior State people would not have guarded the Plame info closely, so - why wouldn't they have leaked to Andrea Mitchell, Walter Pincus, Nick Kristof, and anyone else desperately spending the early summer of 2003 looking for leads into the saga of the mystery envoy to Niger?

Has anyone really ever asked these reporters?

UNRELENTING:  If Nick Kristof is answering questions, ask him whether he ever used Valerie Plame as a source for any story at all, such as a story about Iran's nuclear aspirations.  This denial, from his Oct 11, 2003 column, is disturbingly specific:

I know Mrs. Wilson, but I knew nothing about her CIA career and hadn't realized she's "a hell of a shot with an AK-47,'' as a classmates at the CIA training "farm,'' Jim Marcinkowski, recalls. I'll be more careful around her, for she also turns out to be skilled in throwing hand grenades and to have lived abroad and run covert operations in some of the world's messier spots. (Mrs. Wilson was not a source for this column or any other that I've written about the intelligence community.)

Emphasis added - does "I knew nothing abour her CIA career" mean, "I had no idea she was at the CIA", or "I knew she was at the Agency, but her career path came as a shocker"?

And the news that she was never a source for a column about the intelligence community hardly excludes all possible column topics for which an apparent CIA analyst (who knew!) might have provided valuable insight.

Just wondering.  I am sure Kristof's editors would know.

Is Anyone Wearing An "I Leaked To Bob" Button?

CNN delivers some first class sleuthing as they track down denials in the Woodward leak:

A spokeswoman for former Secretary of State Colin Powell said he was not the source, and a spokesman for then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had no comment.

Spokesmen for then-CIA Director George Tenet and former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin, now a CNN security analyst, said neither man was Woodward's source.

So who is Woodward's new "Deep Throat?" Considering Woodward's history, it may be 30 years before anyone finds out.

Golly, does Armitage stand out in that list?  Weren't he and Powell good sources for Woodward?  Didn't the INR memo which circulated at the State Dept. mis-peg Ms. Plame as an analyst, just as Woodward's source did?

No comment.

Oh, of course we have a comment - per the WaPo, the INR memo was addressed to "then-Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, who was acting secretary at the time since Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Deputy Secretary Richard L. Armitage were out of the country."

So when did Mr. Armitage get back - in time for a "mid-June" meeting with Bob Woodward?  It sure looks like it - these State Dept schedules for June 9 and 10 are clearly marked "Out of Country", but not so for June 12, 13, and 16.  How about that.

Meanwhile, the WSJ shows us the value of a right wing paper - when they call the White House for denials, they get results!

Vice President Dick Cheney isn't believed to have talked to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald since last year, nor has he given a waiver to Mr. Woodward. That removes him as Mr. Woodward's source. Also ruled out are President Bush, who was interviewed by Mr. Woodward for his book, and Dan Bartlett, a senior adviser.

Others suspected of being sources for Mr. Woodward yesterday denied their involvement. Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy, said he didn't talk to Mr. Woodward about Mr. Wilson and his wife, as did Carl Ford Jr., former assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research. A spokesman for former CIA Director George Tenet and his former deputy, John McLaughlin, said neither provided that information to Mr. Woodward.

A person speaking on behalf of former Secretary of State Colin Powell said he didn't share that information with the reporter, and a National Security Council official eliminated Stephen Hadley, the head of the NSC, as a possibility. Spokesmen for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was National Security Adviser at the time, and John Bolton, a former top State Department official and now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said neither was Mr. Woodward's source.

Marc Grossman, a former undersecretary of state for political affairs known to have discussed Mr. Wilson's trip to Niger and his wife's CIA role with Mr. Libby, didn't respond to phone calls or an email seeking comment. A spokesman for Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who remains under investigation in this case, said his client didn't discuss Ms. Plame with Mr. Woodward.

One official among those who knew of Ms. Plame's identify is former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. He was out of the country and hasn't responded to recent requests for comment on this subject.

Varied emphasis added.  Bold, obviously, is for denials; italics are for question marks.

In the WSJ version, Armitage at least has an excuse for not commenting.  Marc Grossman has no game at all, and is operating from a secure remote location while pondering his next evasive tactic.

UPDATE:  The NY Times has a detailed report, which includes a denial from Grossman and a long assessment of the likelihood that Armitage is the one:

On Thursday, more than a half-dozen more Bush administration officials sent word, directly or indirectly, that they had not been Mr. Woodward's source. They included Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser; Paul D. Wolfowitz, the former deputy defense secretary, now head of the World Bank; Marc Grossman, the former undersecretary of state; Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy; and Eric Edelman, the former deputy national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, who has succeeded Mr. Feith at the Pentagon.

...But other officials known to have spoken with Mr. Woodward in the past for his book projects have not commented on the matter. They include Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is traveling in Asia with President Bush. Aides to Ms. Rice said they could not comment on the investigation. Richard L. Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, has not replied to messages.

...On Wednesday, the day Mr. Woodward's disclosure first appeared in The Post, a long list of senior officials had sent word, either directly or through spokesmen, denying that they were the ones who provided the information to Mr. Woodward in mid-June 2003. They included Mr. Bush, Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff; Karl Rove, the deputy chief of staff; Dan Bartlett, the counselor; Karen P. Hughes, former counselor and now under secretary of state for public diplomacy; Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary; Mr. Powell; Mr. Tenet; and John E. McLaughlin, Mr. Tenet's former deputy.

...

Others who issued denials on Thursday included Carl P. Ford, the former head of the State Department's intelligence bureau; Alan Foley, the former head of the C.I.A.'s weapons and arms control center; and David R. Shedd, chief of staff and associate director of national intelligence who is the former senior director for national security matters on the staff of the National Security Council.

Those who have declined to comment include Robert Joseph, the undersecretary of state for arms control, who was previously a senior director on the N.S.C. staff. Aides to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have not replied to requests to comment.

Let's Put Times Select In Perspective

Mickey guides us to Blog Pulse to check out Paul Krugman's decline in the blogosphere following the erection of the Times Select wall.

However, this shocking graph puts Krugman's decline in a frightening new perspective.

Well, They Didn't Find It Here!

I laugh at danger!  I sneer in the face of... oh, never mind.

[OK, I *think* the link is working now - prooofreding is for weenies.]

And Then There Were Some

The NY Times rounds up a few “I was not Woodward’s source” denials and sets the fox amongst the chickens:

A senior administration official said that neither President Bush himself, nor his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., nor his counselor, Dan Bartlett, was Mr. Woodward's source. So did spokesmen for former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; the former director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet; and his deputy, John E. McLaughlin.

A lawyer for Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff who has acknowledged conversations with reporters about the case and remains under investigation, said Mr. Rove was not Mr. Woodward's source.

Mr. Cheney did not join the parade of denials. A spokeswoman said he would have no comment on a continuing investigation. Several other officials could not be reached for comment.

"Mr. Cheney did not join the parade of denials"!  C'mon, where are the spokespeople for Dick Cheney, Stephen Hadley, and Condi Rice, just for starters?

And keep in mind - Woodward’s leak was that Ms. Plame was a CIA analyst, which tracks with the INR memo that circulated at the State Department prior to being discussed at a White House meeting.  Colin Powell is by no means the only senior Administration official at State - let’s get denials from Marc Grossman, Richard Armitrage, and a few others (some of whom were apparently out of town in mid-June).

Hmm, I should have kept reading...

In fact, only a small group of officials - at the White House, the State Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency - are believed to have known by early June 2003 about Ms. Wilson's ties to the C.I.A. They included Secretary Powell, Mr. Tenet, Mr. McLaughlin, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Libby; Marc Grossman, then the under secretary of state for political affairs; Carl Ford, then the head of the State Department's intelligence bureau; and Richard L. Armitage, then deputy secretary of state.

...Mr. Fitzgerald's indictment of Mr. Libby provides some clues about the small number of people who were directly involved in exchanging information about the Wilsons. It says that Mr. Libby first sought information about Ambassador Wilson's trip from Mr. Grossman, on May 29, 2003. It says that Mr. Grossman directed Mr. Ford's intelligence bureau to prepare a report about Mr. Wilson and his trip to Niger, and briefed Mr. Libby about that report as it was being completed, telling him on June 11 or 12, 2003, that Mr. Wilson's wife worked at the C.I.A. and that State Department personnel were involved in the planning of the trip. Mr. Grossman declined to comment on Wednesday, and Mr. Ford did not reply to a telephone call and an e-mail message.

...Other administration officials known to have been interviewed by investigators include Condoleezza Rice, who was then national security adviser and is now secretary of state; Stephen Hadley, then deputy national security adviser and now the national security adviser; Mr. Card; and Mr. Bartlett.

The Times is oddly quiet on whether Ms. Rice or Mr. Hadley responded to a request for a denial.

From a different direction, we can also play “Follow the bouncing source”:

(a)  In Woodward’s own statement, he spoke with “three current or former Bush administration officials”;

(b)  In the WaPo story yesterday, we were told that Woodward’s source was a “senior administration official”.  And they must have gotten that from Woodward, right?  Not exactly:

Woodward declined to elaborate on the statement he released to The Post late yesterday afternoon and publicly last night. He would not answer any questions, including those not governed by his confidentiality agreement with sources.

Emphasis added for comic effect. 

So who promoted Woodward's source - Woodward's attorney, or someone in Fitzgerald's office?  Please.  Irrational exuberance is my preferred theory.

(c) The NY Times reverted to Woodward’s text in their coverage, telling us that Woodward spoke with “a current or former Bush administration official”;

(d) Today’s WaPo compounded the fun - check this:

Woodward testified Monday that contrary to Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's public statements, a senior government official -- not Libby -- was the first Bush administration official to tell a reporter about Plame...

So, the source is “a senior government official”, a “current or former Bush administration official”, or “a senior administration official”?  Lacking elaboration from Woodward, I am mystified.

However, I am taking a bold stand here - I am highly confident that Woodward’s source was neither his mailman nor the security guard at the front desk of the EOB.

Let’s note one other (possibly minor and distracting) point - Woodward said that he spoke with three “current or former” officials.  Two of them have been identified as Andy Card and Lewis Libby. 

So, is the third official the reason the word “former” is used, or was it used simply in a cornucopia of source concealment? [D'oh - Libby is a former official now.]

We await more clues tomorrow.

MORE:  The Anon Lib tells us that Raw Story is tapping Stephen Hadley, and who knows?  We have also said before that "Raw" may be an underestimate of their cooking time - "Half-baked" might be closer.

UNRELENTING:  The Times says this:

Mr. Pincus, who has written that he first heard about Ms. Wilson from a senior administration official in July, said he did not recall that.

Emphasis added, and I don't think so - I question their use of the word "first", and eagerly await evidence that Mr. Pincus denied hearing about a "Wilson and wife" connection earlier.

Here is what Mr. Pincus wrote in the Nieman Watchdog; here is a summary of the Times reporting and sources for their earlier look at Mr. Pincus; and here is his original account from October 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.

Mr. Pincus Is In Contempt Of Court

In gloomy news for Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus, he was found to be in contempt of court for refusing to provide testimony in the Wen Ho Lee case.  He is subject to a fine of $500 per day (is that tax deductible?) but not jail, and everything is stayed pending an appeal.

The court opinion is here.  It provides a road map for the hurdles that will be faced if the Libby defense team chooses to subpoena some reporters, as the Times say they will.

An excerpt:

... a plaintiff can overcome this qualified privilege and compel a journalist to reveal the identity of his or her confidential sources if (1) the information sought goes “to the heart of” the plaintiff’s case and (2) the plaintiff has exhausted “every reasonable alternative source of information” before seeking testimony from the journalist(s).

That should not be insurmountable in the Libby case.

Scrapple Face Breaks The Plame Case Open

We have come full circle.

Dick Cheney Walking The Plank?

Following the revelation that, unbeknownst to Special Counsel Fitzgerald,  Bob Woodward received the leak about Valerie Plame before Lewis Libby, folks are wondering whether Woodward's source could be Dick Cheney.

I don't think Cheney is walking the Plank, but he ought to be reading it - Jason Zengerle rounds up speculation that Cheney's The One, but eventually leans towards the guess that he probably is not.

As an aside, I am not convinced by the point made by Ryan Lizza:

UPDATE II: Another strike against the Cheney theory. As Ryan Lizza helpfully points out, Woodward, in a statement, says that on June 23--which was some time after his source told him Wilson's wife worked for the CIA--Woodward told Libby he was going to send him an "18-page list of questions I wanted to ask Vice President Cheney." That makes it sound as if Woodward had not already interviewed Cheney (unless he had 18 pages of follow-up questions).

From the Woodward statement, we see that Woodward had at least two sets of questions, so who knows:

I testified that on June 27, 2003, I met with Libby at 5:10 p.m. in his office adjacent to the White House. I took the 18-page list of questions with the Page-5 reference to "yellowcake" to this interview and I believe I also had the other question list from June 20, which had the "Joe Wilson's wife" reference.

My official position is this - if Cheney was Woodward's source, he ought to be impeached.  Not for any national security issues, or legal reasons - he ought to be impeached for utter gutlessness.

If Colin Powell, or someone in the State Department, or a White House aide wanted to lay low and see how Fitzgerald's investigation played out before coming forward, well - I don't like it, but whatever.

But *if* Cheney were Woodward's source, he should have stood up in October of 2003, following the criminal referral, and said so.  Let the chips fall where they may.  Lead.  End the madness.  That sort of thing.

I strongly suspect that Cheney would not be guilty of anything - the Vice President may have an implicit authority to declassify information, and he very probably lacked any criminal intent or awareness that Ms. Plame's status was, in fact, classified (see SIDEBAR).

Per the ABC Note, the White House isn't denying a Cheney connection - they are laughing at it.  Parse that.

SIDEBAR:  My view is that Ms. Plame's status as a formerly covert operative remained classified, just as I suspect that the formerly covert status of agents who are retired and/or dead remains classified.  Now, does that mean that, as a matter of semantics, she is still "covert"?  I don't know.  But I am highly confident that the national security implications of her outing were small, and that she has not been operating covertly overseas for a while.

I base that on various leaks of "no damage" from the CIA, and the "sloppy tradecraft" argument - the CIA did not act aggressively to (a) prevent Joe Wilson from calling attention to his won CIA activities, which were sure to attract attention, or (b) quash Novak's column.

The Underground Railroad

Here is a bit of bonus fun for folks following the latest Woodward revelations in the Plame investigation - Bob Woodward chatting with Tim Russert on July 17, 2003.  Let's roll the tape, as Mr. SayNothing talks with Mr. SayLittle:

MR. RUSSERT:  And how do you apply what you learned during that time as a reporter to what we're going through right now [i.e., the Fitzgerald investigation]?

MR. BERNSTEIN:  They are your life line.  Nobody in this town can tell the truth openly because of fear they're going to lose their jobs, that the only way you get real information is by talking person to person without--with the knowledge that your name is not going to go in the paper.  What's important is the information and that the reporter is good enough to triangulate it elsewhere.  That's what we did in Watergate.  We didn't just use Mark Felt's information.  Everything he told us we had somewhere else as well.

MR. WOODWARD:  And you know what?  The special prosecutor, Fitzgerald, in a way, has discovered that there is an underground railroad of information in Washington.  You're smiling because no one knows more about it than you.

MR. BERNSTEIN:  Well, you were down there.

MR. WOODWARD:  Well, you talk to people, you talk to somebody in the White House or the CIA or the Democratic Party, and you say, "I've heard or I understand; what are you hearing?"  And one of the discoveries in all of this is that reporters, in asking questions, convey information to even somebody like Karl Rove.  Where did he first learn important elements of this?  From a reporter.  Now, my view, and I think Carl agrees with this, this investigation, though properly empowered, is an assault on that process that we have not just in Washington, any other community in this country where we have a First Amendment, and he will wind up crippling that process by dragging reporters before the grand jury.  And I wonder if he and the judge have really sat down and said, "Now, what are we going to gain here vs. what are we going to lose?" And the loss might be immense.

Was it Russert that was smiling, or Bernstein?

Well.  Bob Woodward apologized for keeping the Post in the dark.  And do note the broadly applicable motive:

Bob Woodward apologized today to The Washington Post's executive editor for failing to tell him for more than two years that a senior Bush administration official had told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame, even as an investigation of those leaks mushroomed into a national scandal.

Woodward, an assistant managing editor and best-selling author, said he told Leonard Downie Jr. that he held back the information because he was worried about being subpoenaed by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case.

"I apologized because I should have told him about this much sooner," Woodward said in an interview. "I explained in detail that I was trying to protect my sources. That's Job No. 1 in a case like this. ...

"I hunkered down. I'm in the habit of keeping secrets. I didn't want anything out there that was going to get me subpoenaed."

For a reporter who want to protect his sources from a special counsel, the best defense is to avoid giving offense, by laying low.

How many other reporters figured this out all by themselves?  Is Mr. Fitzgerald going to try and find out, or will he simply let the defense provide that information at trial?

Keep in mind, following the Wen Ho Lee ruling the defense may have much broader subpoena power than Fitzgerald. 

This is kind of exciting, actually - it gives the whole prosecution a certain "let's fly under the bridge" flavor.

"Will Mr. Fitzgerald Now Say He Was Wrong?"

Bob Woodward tosses a spanner into the Plame leak chronology developed by Special Counsel Fitzgerald:

Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed.

In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and that he did not believe the information to be classified or sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released yesterday.

As noted by Libby's counsel, that does not jibe well with the assertion made by Mr. Fitzgerald at his press conference that "In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson."  (Give Fitzgerald props for qualifying this with "known to", but check (f) in the ERRATA).

This disclosure by Woodward raises many questions, starting with, why is he only coming forward now, and why is the "senior Administration official" only coming forward now [Note - it seems to be an "Administration official" in Woodward's statement].

However - the goal of the Libby defense team will be to create reasonable doubt about the scenario being presented by Fitzgerald (see indictment).  With Bob Woodward as a potential witness, the defense can have fun with an updated version of the old Watergate question - "What else did Fitzgerald not know, and when did he not know it?"

For starters, Andrea Mitchell of NBC has recently backpedaled from her statement of Oct 3, 2003, when she admitted that, among reporters who were probing the Wilson/Niger story, it was "widely known" that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.

Based on the Woodward story, we have clear indications that at least one reporter, Woodward, knew about a Wilson and wife connection and kept quiet.  Is he the only one?

If Fitzgerald lacks for names, we have some here: In addition to Ms. Mitchell, Martin Peretz, Hugh Sidey, Cliff May, and General Vallely may be worth a chat.

The defense is going to hammer this point - reporters are not interested in giving up their sources, and the best way for reporters to avoid a court fight is to conceal the fact that they have relevant information.  If Fitzgerald was waiting around for volunteers, that wasn't going to get it done.

Fitzgerald blew it - he had White House phone logs, he had sign in sheets, he had Libby's notes, he had testimony from many, many people, he had two years, and still, somehow, he did not include Bob Woodward on his contacts-of-interest list.

As to the specifics of the Libby indictment, a bold prosecutor might press ahead - arguably, Libby's statement that he believed he was hearing about Plame for the first time when he spoke to Russert is still false, and arguably, Libby's assertions that he sourced his knowledge to other reporters when he spoke to Miller and Cooper are also false.

But it will take a mighty straight-faced jury to focus exclusively on that if the defense can bring in a parade of reporters that may have, directly or indirectly, put the Wilson and wife story in Libby's ear.

And in the court of public opinion, a Bush pardon in Jan 2009 becomes a lot less  politically charged if earnest Reps (and John McCain!) are convinced that the prosecution was deeply flawed.

ERRATA:  (a) Per the WaPo story, Woodward spoke with "a senior administration official".  But in Woodward's statement, he "testified under oath...about small portions of interviews I conducted with three current or former Bush administration officials".

Did the WaPo award a battlefield promotion to one of Woodward's sources?  And let's keep an eye on "former".

(b)  The WaPo tells us that Libby and Woodward met on June 27.  Fair enough, but they also spoke by phone on June 23, the day Libby spoke with Judy Miller.  Woodward does not recall a discussion of Wilson's wife, but he has no notes.  Groan.

Bonus puzzle - did Libby testify about this conversation?  Was it in his notebook, or phone logs?  Was he emphatic that he and Woodward did *not* discuss Wilson's wife?  Obviously, some answers are better than others for Libby's defense.

(c)  Apparently, Woodward spoke with "X" in "mid-June", "Y" on June 20 [the WaPo tells us that "Y" is Andy Card], and Libby on June 23 (telephone) and June 27 (a meeting).

Woodward says that with "Y", "I have no recollection of asking about [Wilson's wife], and that the tape-recorded interview contains no indication that the subject arose."

Well.  Why so coy about the first date?  If revealing the date would reveal a key clue about the source, it strongly suggests that the source was in on "the secret" from the start.  The infamous INR memo was circulated at the State Dept and (we presume) discussed at a White House meeting in mid-June.

(d)  Not a flicker at Gamblers Anonymous, where the contract for  Libby Guilty has been steady at a 50% probability.

(e)  This revelation by Woodward, and the possibility of more by other reporters, may force Fitzgerald to cross the Rubicon and confront the issue of whether Libby, or anyone else, can be prosecuted for misuse of classified information.  The earlier analysis was that, by lying about his information from reporters, Libby made that prosecution problematic (mens rea, state of mind, intent - all relevant, all potentially mitigated if Libby thought he was passing along harmless buzz).  To counter that, Fitzgerald, figuring that jail is jail, went for the seemingly easier perjury/obstruction charges against Libby.

But if it turns out that it cannot be proven that Libby was lying about hearing it from reporters, Fitzgerald may come back with the big stick.  Or go back to Chicago.

(f)  Later in his press conference, Fitzgerald says this:

At the end of the day what appears is that Mr. Libby's story that he was at the tail end of a chain of phone calls, passing on from one reporter what he heard from another, was not true.

It was false. He was at the beginning of the chain of phone calls, the first official to disclose this information outside the government to a reporter. And then he lied about it afterwards, under oath and repeatedly.

That looks a bit light just now.

(g)  How about Dick Cheney as Woodward's source?  I am intrigued by the idea of Cheney emerging from his secure undisclosed location to throw Libby a rope.  And I wonder whether Fitzgerald would even think about indicting Cheney for misuse of classified information - can't Cheney go with a "I'm the VP, it's declassified when I say it is?" defense?  I don't know the answer to that, but I don't need to.

If Cheney was Woodward's source, I want him impeached on totally different grounds - utter gutlessness.  C'mon, the guy who is leading the fight against Al Qaeda can't even stand up in July 2003 and say, "You're damn right I ordered the Code Red"?

If one of Cheney's aides, or someone at State, or even Colin Powell himself wanted to steer clear of legal trouble and watch Fitzgerald's investigation play out, well, whatever.  But that won't work with Cheney - if he knew he had personally leaked this in June of 2003, he should have said so a long time ago (I'll settle for October 2003, when the criminal referral was announced).

MORE REACTION:  Best title, and contending for best round-up - Decision '08, "Bob Woodward: The Grinch Who Stole Fitzmas".

From Editor and Publisher:  Walter Pincus explains his chat with Bob Woodward, and Former Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee throws another log on my fire while defending Bob Woodward's two years of silence:

Former Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee today defended Bob Woodward, who revealed in a story Wednesday that he waited more than two years before disclosing to current Post editors a conversation he had in 2003 with a White House official about CIA Agent Valerie Plame.

"I don't see anything wrong with that," said Bradlee, who ran the Post during the turbulent Watergate coverage that made Woodward famous. "He doesn't have to disclose every goddamn thing he knows."

Really?  If this was conventional journalistic ethics at work, how about Andrea Mitchell, then?  How about Walter Pincus, who was all over this story in June, has never denied receiving other leaks, and, apparently, was never asked that question by Fitzgerald?

Developing...

Now Its The Times Versus The Times

The Times editors choose their side as Bush pushes back against "baseless" charges:

The Bush administration was also alone in making the absurd claim that Iraq was in league with Al Qaeda and somehow connected to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That was based on two false tales. One was the supposed trip to Prague by Mohamed Atta, a report that was disputed before the war and came from an unreliable drunk. The other was that Iraq trained Qaeda members in the use of chemical and biological weapons. Before the war, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that this was a deliberate fabrication by an informer.

Let's contrast that with the Times Week in Review from June 20, 2004 which includes a pop-up graphic with quotes from Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Cheney, and Bush.  That was based on two false tales. One was the supposed trip to Prague by Mohamed Atta, a report that was disputed before the war and came from an unreliable drunk. The other was that Iraq trained Qaeda members in the use of chemical and biological weapons. Before the war, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that this was a deliberate fabrication by an informer.

Here is the Times back in the day:

Critics of the Bush Administration argue that it falsely created a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks to help justify the war. Last week, the administration countered that it had never made such an assertion - only that there were ties, however murky, between Iraq and Al Qaeda. A survey of past public comments seems to bear that out - although whether there was a deliberate campaign to create guilt by association is difficult to say.

That was then.

Since then, we have learned that a pre-war DIA report questioned the credibility of a high level detainee who was making up stories about Iraq training Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons.  Of course, that came out at the same time that the DIA was circulating a report that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, so its not as if a full reliance on DIA reporting would have been wise.

Oh, well.  On the subject of "The Links That the Times Forgot", let's remind them that there was more than just one high level detainee and one meeting in Prague behind the Iraq-Qaeda link.  Here is Tenet writing to the Senate on Oct 7, 2002:

• Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qa'ida is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability. Some of the information we have received comes from detainees, including some of high rank.
• We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qa'ida going back a decade.
• Credible information indicates that Iraq and al-Qa'ida have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression.
• Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qa'ida members, including some that have been in Baghdad.
• We have credible reporting that al-Qa'ida leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire W.M.D. capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al-Qa'ida members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs. [NOTE - this is now discredited, as noted].
  
• Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians coupled with growing indications of a relationship with al-Qa'ida, suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action.

So - is the Times lying, twisting the available intelligence, or what?

UPDATE:  Well, welcome to the new blog in town - the White House has used its website to factcheck someone for the third day running.  Today's target is the same NY Times editorial I took a shot at.

I think that as a media strategy, this makes sense - the WH can feed the alternative media, eliminate the middleman, and save Libby's successors the aggravation of leaking to a disinterested press.

However... when their targets were Senators and Congressman from the other party, well, all's fair.  Is it different when the White House goes after a newspaper?  Maybe.  I assume the Times will whine about intimidation, but the WH targetted an editorial - it did not question their journalistic credibility.

Andrew And Armando

Andrew Sullivan is apparently a bit uncomfortable with some of the folks he has been running with at the Daily Kos:

Armando has an unseemly fit about Fred Hiatt. Hiatt's point seems completely legit to me. Money Hiatt quote...

Unseemly fit?  Follow the link and marvel at Andrew's capacity for understatement.

And worth noting - Armando and Andrew excerpt very different portions of the same editorial.  I wonder if Armando even read the whole thing.

MORE:

Competing money quotes:

Armando:

. . . Congress . . . pours most of its Iraq-related energy into allegations of manipulated intelligence before the war. "Those aren't irrelevant questions," says Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.). "But the more they dominate the public debate, the harder it is to sustain public support for the war."

What Lieberman doesn't say is that many Democrats would view such an outcome as an advantage. Their focus on 2002 is a way to further undercut President Bush, and Bush's war, without taking the risk of offering an alternative strategy -- to satisfy their withdraw-now constituents without being accountable for a withdraw-now position.

Many of them understand that dwindling public support could force the United States into a self-defeating position, and that defeat in Iraq would be disastrous for the United States as well as for Mahdi and his countrymen. But the taste of political blood as Bush weakens, combined with their embarrassment at having supported the war in the first place, seems to override that understanding.

Don't question his patriotism, he whines.

Andrew:

The Democrats could be responsible and fiercely critical, too, as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has shown throughout the war. When they pull a stunt such as insisting on a secret Senate session, it could be to debate Bush's policies on torture and detention. They could ask whether everything possible is being done to furnish the Iraqi army with protective armor. They could question whether anyone inside the administration is focusing with the same urgency on prodding Iraqi politicians toward compromise as are America's ambassador and top generals in the field.

Individual Democratic senators have focused on individual questions such as these (for example, Michigan's Carl Levin on torture), but for the caucus and its leader, Harry Reid (Nev.), the key questions are all about history.

The early consensus in the comments, led by Irish:

President Bush can lash out at the Democrats, as he did Friday, but ultimately they are mostly exploiting public opinion; he is largely responsible for shaping it. And had he been more honest from the start about the likely difficulties of war, readier to deal with them and then more open in acknowledging his failures, the public likely would be more patient.

Bush might fare best with a mixed message - "I made well-intentioned mistakes, but they are lying about my lying".

And a Stray Question - no one on the Bush payroll would be foolish enough to raise this, but since I am not on the payroll (true!) I will - what was Bush's motive for lying?

For illustration - people may disagree as to whether Hillary lied about her futures trading, but I don't think there is a raging dispute about what her motive to lie might have been.

But why would Bush lie to over-sell a war with Iraq?  IIRC, Maureen Dowd psychoanalyzed Bush as wanting to avenge his Daddy, or prove he was a better man becuase he bagged Saddam, or some such.

I am sure I can find someone to tell me that Bush lied because he is a lying liar, and lying liars lie.  Sorry to disappoint, but that won't advance my understanding.

And I guess that there are oil and pipeline visions available off in Mooretopia. But are there real theories?

GUESSES THAT WON'T WORK:  Bush wanted to politicize Iraq in 2002 to keep the focus away from a dismal economy.  OK, but the invasion was in 2003.

More Pushback From The White House

Now that their own memory expert has resigned, the White House intends to help other people's memory improve.

Developing...

MORE:  The White House Press release includes this from Kerry:

CNN'S LARRY KING: "What about enhancing this war, Senator Kerry. What are your thoughts on going further than Afghanistan, all terrorist places ..."

KERRY: "Oh, I think we clearly have to keep the pressure on terrorism globally. This doesn't end with Afghanistan by any imagination. And I think the president has made that clear. I think we have made that clear. Terrorism is a global menace. It's a scourge. And it is absolutely vital that we continue, for instance, Saddam Hussein." (CNN's "Larry King Live," 12/14/01)

Doesn't anyone want to say, "Gee, some eerily prescient blogger posted that over a year ago"?

We are moving on.  Christopher Hitchens has a brutal beat-down of the do-nothing on Darfur crowd; it can easily be related to Bush and Iraq.

Hardly Seems Fair To Quote Them Now

I haven't found Ted Kennedy's floor speech prior to the October 2002 vote on the war resolution, but here he is at SAIS on Sept 27, 2002.  Early laugh lines include these:

But there is a difference between honest public dialogue and partisan appeals. There is a difference between questioning policy and questioning motives.

and

Let me say it plainly: I not only concede, but I am convinced that President Bush believes genuinely in the course he urges upon us.

Only later did Kennedy realize what a liar Bush was, and how important it was to question his motives.  Well, Bush fooled 'em for a while....

[Mini-UPDATE:  The rest of the Kennedy speech is cogently anti-war - folks looking for a Michael Moore tirade will be disappointed (I was disappointed).  However, as TigerHawk observed, if Kennedy, a respected senior Democrat, was able to penetrate the shroud of Bush's lies, why weren't other Dems?]

Well.  Showing a real comic flair, we have Jay Rockefeller, who is getting hammered by Captain Ed for his Sunday talk show effort.

Here we go from Oct 2002.  This is pretty martial stuff, so don't read it aloud to your kids:

We also have to acknowledge that any military operations against Saddam Hussein pose potential risks to our own homeland, too. Saddam’s government has contact with many international terrorist organizations that likely have cells here in the United States.

Say it ain't so - a connection between Saddam and terrorists?

There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. And that may happen sooner if he can obtain access to enriched uranium from foreign sources -- something that is not that difficult in the current world. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.

Bush lied.

...this time, our nuclear foe would be an unpredictable and often irrational individual, a dictator who has demonstrated that he is prepared to violate     international law and initiate unprovoked attacks when he feels it serves his purposes to do so.

The global community -- in the form of the United Nations -- has declared repeatedly, through multiple resolutions, that the frightening prospect of a nuclear-armed Saddam cannot come to pass. But the U.N. has been unable to enforce those resolutions. We must eliminate that threat now, before it is too late.   

Pretty scary.  I blame Karl Rove's mind rays.

...He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East.

And he could make those weapons available to many terrorist groups which have contact with his government, and those groups could bring those weapons into the U.S. and unleash a devastating attack against our citizens. I fear that greatly.   

I fear your second thoughts.

I am forced to conclude, on all the evidence, that Saddam poses a significant risk.

Some argue it would be totally irrational for Saddam Hussein to initiate an attack against the mainland United States, and they believe he would not do it. But if Saddam thought he could attack America through terrorist proxies and cover the trail back to Baghdad, he might not think it so irrational.

...At the end of the day, we cannot let the security of American citizens rest in the hands of someone whose track record gives us every reason to fear that he is prepared to use the weapons he has against his enemies.

Now remember, Rockefeller was on the Intelligence Committee.

As the attacks of September 11 demonstrated, the immense destructiveness of modern technology means we can no longer afford to wait around for a smoking gun. September 11 demonstrated that the fact that an attack on our homeland has not yet occurred cannot give us any false sense of security that one will not occur in the future. We no longer have that luxury.

Oh my goodness, no - the dreaded link between Saddam and 9/11!  What terrible hold did Bush have over this poor man that could make him utter these falsehoods?

This is a difficult vote, but I could not sleep knowing that faced with this grave danger to the people of my state and to all Americans, I had voted for nothing more than continuing the policies that have failed to address this problem in the past.

...At this point, America’s best opportunity to move the United Nations and Iraq to a peaceful resolution of this crisis is by making clear the U.S. is prepared to act on our own, if necessary, as one nation, indivisible. Sometimes the rest of the world looks to America not just for the diversity of our debate, or the vitality of our ideals, but for the firm resolve that the world’s leader must demonstrate if intractable global problems are to be solved.

Acting unilaterally?  Inexplicable - shouldn't we at least try to assemble a fraudulent coalition?

By my vote, I say to Saddam Hussein, "Disarm, or the United States will be forced to act."

Apparently in the margin of the original draft, an historian from the DNC saw this:

Note to self: Strike "Disarm", substitute, "Waltz with Hans Blix".

The Senator builds to his big finish:

September 11 has forever changed the world. We may not like it, but that is the world in which we live. When there is a grave threat to Americans’ lives, we have a responsibility to take action to prevent it.

Again with the forbidden 9/11 link?  How can he show his face?

Well, that was then, when the Dems had an election to focus on.  The Captain has the transcript with the current laugher:

WALLACE: But you voted, sir, and aren't you responsible for your vote?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: No.

Bring it on.  Send in the clowns.

UPDATE:  Turn off the mind rays!  Nancy Pelosi's tin foil needed refreshing on Feb 5, 2003 when she said this:

"Any decision about going to war against Iraq must reflect the fact that   the clear and present danger to our national security is terrorism. The presence   of al Qaeda operatives in Iraq and in so many countries in the Middle East and   the rest of the world is troubling.

Fortunately, she was able to get back on message by June 2005:

Iraq is now what it was not when the war began - a magnet for terrorism - because the President invaded Iraq with no idea of what it would take to secure the country after Baghdad fell.

MORE:  The Heretik's wife had an aneurysm after cussing a blue streak - I question the patriotism of her arteries.

Shuster v. Russert v. Dean v. The Truth

it's a Texas Steel Cage Death Match and the truth takes a beating at the hands of MSNBC reporter David Shuster, NBC maven Tim Russert, and DNC Chair Howard Dean.

Let's start with Seixon, who is debunking a report by David Shuster which includes the following claim:

SHUSTER: But the White House started claiming that Iraq and the group responsible for 9/11 were one in the same.

The text version of the Shuster story concludes as follows:

The brutal irony is that while implications, innuendo, or false claims if you will about a 9/11 connection helped take us into Iraq.

So the White House was linking Saddam to 9/11?  In addition to Seixon's rebuttal, we can wave in... Tim Russert, who, unlike Mr. Shuster, evidently attends the editorial meetings where coffee is served.  Here are Messrs. Russert and Dean on Meet The Press:

MR. RUSSERT:  What [pre-war intelligence] did [Bush] withhold?

DR. DEAN:  He withheld--he knew, he knew that there was no connection between Saddam and 9/11 and he insisted on trying to make that case to the American people.

MR. RUSSERT:  But he never said Saddam was involved in September 11.

DR. DEAN:  He never actually came out and said just that.  But in every speech he gave during the campaign and afterwards, he left the impression.  He left the impression with 65 percent of the American people, who agreed that Saddam had something to do with 9/11.  It made that--it was dishonest, what he did.

For those scoring at home, it is now Russert versus Shuster and Dean.  Yes, Russert has them outnumbered, but let's send him some reinforcements from (wonders never cease) the NY Times.  Here they are from June 2004 (click for the pop-up graphic which has excerpts from Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Cheney, and Bush):

Critics of the Bush Administration argue that it falsely created a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks to help justify the war. Last week, the administration countered that it had never made such an assertion - only that there were ties, however murky, between Iraq and Al Qaeda. A survey of past public comments seems to bear that out - although whether there was a deliberate campaign to create guilt by association is difficult to say.

"Difficult to say"?  Not if you are Howard "I Will Say Anything" Dean!

So does Mr. Russert emerge the hero?  Hardly.  Sweetness and Light captures Tim operating a Dowdifier without a license, presenting shortened, misleading quotes that mislead the unwary.  Here is the set-up, as Russert spoke with Ken Mehlman of the RNC:

SEC'Y COLIN POWELL (State Department):  My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources.  These are not assertions.  What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  "On solid intelligence."  And then 15 months later, the secretary of state came on this program and said this.

(Videotape, May 16, 2004):

SEC'Y POWELL:  But it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong, and in some cases, deliberately misleading.  And for that, I am disappointed, and I regret it.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  "Deliberately misleading."  That's the secretary of state. So why can't Democrats now say that the administration deliberately misled the American people?

Sweetness has the answer.

And for folks inclined to look for deeper connections, we have this old post in which Josh Marshall unwittingly explains to Paul Krugman the connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.  I had even more fun letting John Kerry explain the linkages.  Oh, well, that was back in the barrel-fishing days...

Cold Water, But Not Enough

The NY Times tackles the question of whether the Democrats can realistically hope to re-capture the House in 2006.  They are not hopeful:

An Opening for Democrats, However Slim

 

By ROBIN TONER

 

WASHINGTON - ACROSS the political landscape, there are signs the nation may be headed toward a sweeping anti-incumbent election next year. The Republican Congressional majority is staggering from one setback to another, the voters seem uneasy about problems at home and the war abroad, and President Bush's approval ratings have reached new lows.

Democrats dream of another 1994, with control of the House changing hands, this time to them. All they need, after all, is a net gain of 15 seats, surely an attainable goal in a nation of 435 Congressional districts.

Or is it?

Even the most optimistic Democrat has to wonder, deep down, whether big, 1994-style change is possible in the current House. Redistricting and other incumbent protections have created a Republican fortress in recent years, with so little turnover that even the party's relatively narrow majority is very hard to crack.

 

They eventually get to some numbers sure to spread gloom across Team Reality:

So many districts have become safe, tilted to one party with the help of redistricting, that political analysts can identify only two or three dozen House seats that are, at the moment, competitive. Gaining 15 seats out of that small a group would be like threading a needle. In contrast, 15 months before the 1994 election, the Cook Political Report, an independent handicapper of House races, rated 89 seats as competitive - based on fund-raising, the strength of the incumbent and the challenger, and the political demographics of the district.

...

It would be wrong, with hindsight, to suggest that the Republicans had it easy in 1994; many political experts considered the very idea of Republicans taking control of the House, after 40 years in the minority, almost laughable until the final weeks of the campaign. But by many measures, the Republicans had more targets of opportunity a decade ago than Democrats do today. In 1992, 56 Democrats won with 55 percent of the vote or less, an indicator of their vulnerability in 1994, according to Cook. Only 19 Republicans won with 55 percent or less in 2004.

Or consider this: 103 Congressional districts in 1992 voted for one party's candidate for president and another party's candidate for the House, a marker of a potential swing district. In 2004, there were only 59 such districts. Moreover, by 1994, the realignment of the South had left some conservative Democrats representing districts that had become solidly Republican; their replacement, essentially, was only a matter of time.

But perhaps the most striking advantage the Republicans had in 1994 was the number of Democratic retirements: there were 52 open seats that year, 31 of them that had been held by Democrats, according to Cook. So far in this cycle, Republicans have 13 open seats, Democrats 7. Open seats are much easier for the other party to capture.

Essentially unmentioned in this article are three other challenges for the Democrats:

(1)  Where is the sense of betrayal?

Bill Clinton ran as a moderate in 1992.  By 1994, with gays in the military, the abandonment of the middle class tax cut, the BTU tax turned gasoline tax, Hillary-care, and the assault weapons ban, swing voters may have felt that Clinton had swung too far.

Now, I am not going to tell you that swing voters looking back on 2005 are going to give George Bush a big "Mission Accomplished".  And, after Katrina and Miers, the sense of Bush competence has faded for those who believed in it.  However, I doubt that many people are asking themselves whether this is really the man they voted for in the same way they did in 1994.

(2)  Who is the Democratic leader? 

Republicans put Newt Gingrich front and center as the leader of the House Republicans.  Are Dems prepared to run out Nancy Pelosi to represent the face-lifted Democratic Party?

Bring it on.

(3)  What are the issues?

In 1994, Republicans united around their "Contract With America".

In 2006, the Democrats hope to unite around their "Contract to be Neither Bush Nor DeLay".  Can such a negative message work?  Time will tell, but that is not how the Reps won in 1994.

Now, the Times tells us that the Dems are rallying behind some talking points:

But right now, Congressional Democrats say they are preparing to run as the party of change, offering "new priorities," as their talking points put it, with an emphasis on "putting our fiscal house in order" and making new investments in energy independence, health care and education.

Hmm, maybe the Times was leaked a Jon Stewart script - put our fiscal house in order while raising spending?  How? 

In 2004, only Howard Dean was prepared to advocate a full repeal of the Bush tax cuts - even Paul Krugman admitted that, politically, the middle class portion of those cuts were probably untouchable.

And repealing the tax cuts for the rich won't even close the current budget gap, let alone pay for new spending. 

That's the domestic message.  We all eagerly await the Dems attempt to unite around a message on Iraq.  The current theme - "Bush duped us, now let us run the country" - may need a bit of refinement.  However, the Democratic Party continues to be deeply schismatic on the question of cut and run versus see the job through.

So, can Democrats unite with a credible domestic platform?  Probably not.

Can they unite on Iraq?  Pigs will fly.

But they may still win the House in 2006.

ADDENDUM:  Oh, that was fun, but I would love to have the time to check some CBO forecasts to verify my tax cut assertions.  The Bush economy has done so well that my talking points may be outdated.

I also have the idea that in 1994 we were still moaning about a jobless recovery, but I want to check that as well.  If so, then a stronger 2006 economy and troops coming home will complete the Dem rout.

And let's take a moment to project the Progressive message progression:

January - "We need to bring the troops home";

May - "We need to bring the troops home";

August - "Bush's announcement that he is bringing some troops home is a cheap political stunt."

Oh, we are having fun...

Harry Reid, Ironist

George Bush came out swinging yesterday against the politicians who have made "false charges" and "baseless attacks" about the use of pre-war intelligence.

Harry Reid, politician and ironist, responded:

"Attacking those patriotic Americans who have raised serious questions about the case the Bush administration made to take our country to war does not provide us a plan for success that will bring our troops home..."

Left unexplained - how the Democrats unrelenting focus on the use of pre-war intelligence is going to substitute for a plan to resolve the situation in Iraq.  Was it really only two weeks ago that Harry Reid forced the Senate into a closed session to discuss that?

Perhaps Sen. Reid was simply intending to commemorate the second anniversary of the leak of the strategy memo explaining how the Democrats could politicize the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings for maximum benefit.

This political posturing by the Dems is understandable - their party is pretty well united around the desire to have a mulligan on the decision to go to war against Iraq.

However, on the slightly more topical question of where we go from here, the problem that crippled John Kerry continues to vex the Democrats - their anti-war base wants to declare Bush beaten and leave Iraq, while many of their leaders continue to argue that defeat is not an option.  This conflict leads to such spectacles as the Sheehan v. Clinton showdown:

Unless the senator pushes for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, Sheehan wrote, "I will resist [her presidential] candidacy with every bit of my power and strength."

On the other side of the aisle, as Commander in Chief and Communicator in Chief Bush had two key tasks with respect to the war in Iraq: manage public expectations and deliver results.

As to public expectations, I am sure we can find a few quotes from him suggesting that the road ahead would be difficult.  However, did Bush present something like a five year plan for Iraq with best case, worst case, and best guess estimates for the budget impact, level of troop deployment, and level of casualties?   Maybe I missed it, or maybe it was under-emphasized.

Or more likely, Bush and his team believed, back in early 2003, that the results in Iraq would be quick enough and good enough that the absence of projections, timetables, and budgets would be overlooked.  That gamble certainly paid off in the (relatively) conventional war against Saddam's army, where we had Mission Accomplished and the end of major combat operations by May 1, 2003.  [My point is that the absence of planning and poor expectations management can can be trumped by great results. But if the great results don't follow, you have little by way of a safety net, which is Bush's current position circa late 2005.  If the public developed unrealistic expectations and feel disapointed, they will blame their leaders.  And of course media bias plays a role, but Bush needed to plan for that as well.]

And in a bout of pure speculation, I will add that many Dems undertook a similar gamble about a quick victory when they backed the war resolution in October 2002.  Folks who sincerely believe that John Kerry had confidence in Bush's diplomatic skills and martial judgment, put your hands up.  I don't see many hands! 

Now, hands in the air if you think that John Kerry voted for the war to preserve the viability of his Presidential candidacy for 2004, when our adventure in Iraq would be a distant, pleasant memory and he could focus on health care and the economy.  Oh, it's a forest of fingers!  (And are some of those solitary fingers suggesting that Kerry is number one?  Or am I number one?  Where are my glasses?)

To stroll down memory lane and recapture the mood on October 11, 2002, let's reflect on this excerpt from the ABC Note, as they comment on the passage of the war resolution:

None of the Democrats likely to run for president in 2004 voted against the resolution, and only one Senate Democrat locked in a tough race this fall, Paul Wellstone, voted no. Meaning that last night's vote isn't likely to endure as a political issue anywhere outside of Minnesota — where we're not sure Wellstone's "no" vote is going to make him any more vulnerable than he already was.

Uncanny in their insight.

And my point is what?  Bush did what he believed in, Democrats chose to vote expediently rather than lead, and here we are.  Three years later Bush is still doing what he believes in, and Democrats are still looking to evade the Iraq issue.

If I were going to engage in pointless recriminations, I would shift the focus from the non-existence of WMDs, and investigate the pre-war assessments of a post-war Iraq - was this sort of insurgency predicted and ignored, did our intelligence agencies miss this as well, or (say it with me, Dems) did Bush Lie?

Oddly, a year ago those questions were meant to be a key part of the Senate Phase Two investigation into pre-war intelligence, if I can believe USA Today:

Panel to probe CIA failure to predict extent of insurgency

By John Diamond, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — As it prepares to release a report highly critical of the CIA for overestimating the prewar Iraq threat, the Senate Intelligence Committee is beginning a new probe, this time into why U.S. spy agencies failed to foresee the strength of the postwar insurgency there.

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., called the new investigation "phase two" of the committee's probe of the U.S. intelligence community's performance. "We're going to look into the prewar intelligence on postwar Iraq," Roberts said in an interview. Recalling classified intelligence briefings CIA officials gave the committee before the Iraq war, Roberts said the resistance to the U.S.-led occupation "was underestimated as to the perseverance of foreign terrorist involvement, Iraqi Republican Guard and Baath Party elements and on down the list."

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a member of the Intelligence Committee, said, "At the time of the invasion, we were given nothing but rosy scenarios" about the postwar period. The optimistic predictions came not only from invasion advocates within the administration such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, but also from career intelligence professionals who are expected to give unbiased assessments, regardless of the policy implications.

U.S. intelligence was alarmist about Iraq's weaponry before the war. One key prewar report even raised the possibility that U.S. territory might be threatened with attack. In contrast, intelligence agencies were optimistic about a peaceful postwar occupation. But the two intelligence assessments had one thing in common: They served to help the Bush administration make the case for war.

Durbin said CIA officials and their Pentagon counterparts predicted that Saddam's forces would defect en masse as U.S.-led forces approached Baghdad and that the populace would greet the coalition forces as liberators.

"They were just wrong," Durbin said. "I came walking out of some of those meetings shaking my head and thinking, How can it be this easy?"

Today, however, the announced Phase Two accord seems to focus on the Administration use of the pre-war intelligence, although I see this from from Murray Waas:

"Sen. Roberts' spokeswoman, Sarah Little, said the second phase of the committee's investigation would also examine how pre-war intelligence focused on the fact that intelligence analysts -- while sounding alarms that a humanitarian crisis that might follow the war - failed to predict the insurgency that would arise after the war."

It may be harder for Dems to unite around the notion that the CIA and Defense Dept. misunderestimated the insurgency.  But I'd like to find out.

Still Lovin' Alito [But Never On Sunday - See UPDATE]

The NY Times has yet another favorable article about Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.

When are they going to start scaring the libs?  Time grows shorter...

UPDATE:  The Sunday Times does a little lib-spooking with this:

Yale Law Frets Over Court Choices It Knows Best

By ADAM LIPTAK

  

NEW HAVEN, Nov. 8 - The morning after Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. was announced as the president's choice for the Supreme Court, some students and professors at his alma mater, the Yale Law School, were already hard at work - to defeat him.

Professor Bruce Ackerman, who teaches constitutional law here, appeared on CNN with this instant assessment: "I don't think conservative is the word. This person is a judicial radical."

 

Finally, some raw meat!  Careful work by the editors places this offsetting, reassuring passage just off the front page and after the break:

Judge Alito may yet attract substantial support here, students and professors said, because he is popular on a personal level, qualified as a formal matter and technical rather than overtly ideological in his approach to the law.

He was also better known as a student than Justice Thomas, and he has not espoused sweeping theories, as Judge Bork did in his academic writings.

The mood here appeared to be cautiously hostile. A few students who supported Judge Alito tended to make strategic or structural arguments. Some said, for example, that ideology alone should not derail a candidate who was otherwise qualified.

"He is a remarkably careful, conscientious, craftsmanlike, modest, even humble judge," said Peter H. Schuck, a law professor who described himself as a political moderate. "It's true that he generally comes out on the side of those who call themselves conservative. If I were in the Senate, I would like to think I would not vote against him on that ground."

And even the attempts at scary quotes fall short of the high expectations established in the lead:

Prof. Robert W. Gordon, who teaches legal history, said he had read all of Judge Alito's 15 years of opinions. "Alito is a careful carpenter," Professor Gordon said. "The things are well built, but they are not beautiful. Alito in my judgment is just too steadfastly conservative."

Well built, but he doesn't like them.  Whatever.  Maybe after the next election Prof. Gordon will like Hillary's picks better, but Kerry didn't win last time.

Bush Comes Out Swinging

George Bush defended his strategy in Iraq, giving us lots to talk about.

Here is transcript and the Times lead:

Bush Forcefully Attacks Critics of His Strategy in Iraq

By MARIA NEWMAN

President Bush lashed out today at critics of his Iraq policy, accusing them of trying to rewrite history about the decision to go to war and saying their criticism is undercutting American forces in battle.

"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decisions or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began," the president said in a Veterans Day speech in Pennsylvania.

This may be a house-to-house battle, because I am stalled at the third word - did Bush "lash out"?  Or did he, for example, "respond forcefully"?  I guess between the headline and the lead, there is something for everyone.

Next, what about this:  "...saying their criticism is undercutting American forces in battle."

Gee, folks are allowed to criticize, yes?  Free country, free speech, right?  Why is this man suggesting otherwise?  Why is he stifling dissent?

Well, down in the text we find the quote that ostensibly supports the Times presentation:

"The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important for politicians to throw out false charges," he said. "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will."

"False charges" and "baseless attacks" from "politicians"?  If Bush is saying that it is irresponsible for politicians to lie, is that unreasonable?  I didn't ask if it was unrealistic, now, I asked if it was unreasonable.

In any case, I believe there is a substantial difference between "Your false charges are undermining the troops" and "Your criticism is undermining our troops".

OK, I understand that for purposes of debating this point, war critics will have to insist that *all* their criticisms are perceived as false.  However, that is simply not so.  For example, a war opponent who argued that this war would not go well without international support and a specific UN resolution is entitled to that opinion, and I don't see how it could be proven to be either true or false.  Consequently, I don't see how the specific passage offered by the Times could be viewed as an attempt by Bush to stifle that particular dissent, or to question that critic's patriotism.

But I am gloomily resigned to having it explained to me.

The Democrats do seem to be finding traction with the new approach.  The old talking point - "I would have spoken out against the war, but Karl Rove and Bill O'Reilly would have been mean to me, and Arnold might have called me a girlie-man" - lacked a certain John Wayne quality.

Whether the new talking point - "I couldn't see through Bush's lies" - takes hold depends on just how empty-headed various Dems want to appear as they abase themselve before their base.

John Edwards can't quite say the words:

In an interview after the UNC speech, Edwards finally utters the words he’d assiduously avoided during the last campaign: “I voted for the resolution,” he says. “It was a mistake.” So far, so good. But he goes on, “The hard question is, What do you do now?  Looking back, it's easy to say that it was wrong and based on false information. Anybody who doesn’t admit that isn’t honest, and that’s the truth.”

Not quite there!  Obviously, some of the info was false.  But he needs to admit that Bush lied!

MORE:  Bush lashed out at the Times his critics waaay down in the speech.  The relevant bit is below:

Creeping Behind The Wall At Times Select

Now that I have cracked the free to subscribers sign-up process at Times Select, a whole world has opened up for me.  Mind you, it's not a world that I would pay $49.95 to experience, but it des have its delights.

For example, at Nick Kristof's special site, we find a list of, let's use the word, blogs recommended by Mr. Kristof.

There are some no-surprises - Talking Points Memo and the TPM Cafe claim the top three spots.

But check this out:

• juancole.com, offers the best source for news and analysis on Iraq.

I have heard otherwise.  Tim Blair is pretty funny; Marc Danziger is more serious.

And I feel bad saying this, but I just don't feel I can rely on you to click that link to Tim Blair.  So let's excerpt him, in order to get a feel for "the best source for news and analysis on Iraq":

Professor Juan Cole, currently being put to rights by Martin Kramer, apologises in a different style; he doesn’t really apologise. After claiming that Osama bin Laden had engineered September 11 “in response to the Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp”—an operation that took place seven months after 9/11—Cole wrote:

I post late at night and sometimes am sleepy and make mistakes ... If someone wants to accuse me of occasionally making minor errors, then sure. I occasionally make minor errors.

But that error—suggesting a motive for September 11 that isn’t chronologically possible—doesn’t seem much like the sort of mistake one makes due to weariness, or keyboard slippage. Cole didn’t misspell a word or post a broken link; he invented a rationale for 9/11 that bin Laden himself couldn’t possibly have claimed, and sheeted it home to the al-Qaeda bigshot. Talk about projection.

Maybe "best" is meant as "most original".

UPDATE:  More on Juan Cole here.

Taking AIM At Tim Russert

Accuracy In Media wonders how NBC can allow Tim Russert to cover the Libby case and, in effect, opine on his own credibility as a witness.

I'm guessing that ratings has something to do with it.  It's certainly not because NBC wants its reporters to explain their role in this.

Although having said that, if the alternative is explanations such as the one Andrea Mitchell attempted with Don Imus, silence is the better part of valor.  Or something.

All Gave Some; Some Gave All

This was passed to me without comment, and I will do the same.  For a bit of background - this is a letter from the Headmaster of a private school in New England announcing some staff changes, as well as this, in the fifth paragraph:

Perhaps you read or heard that [Don Johnson], our Director of Facilities, was asked to lead a National Guard unit for several weeks in the Gulf Coast region this fall. Don has been in the Guard for over twenty years and has developed significant leadership experience in that time. Don received news earlier this fall that he is being called up to serve in Afghanistan. He leaves our school and his family in January for three months of training, then will be stationed south of Kabul for twelve months. This is difficult news for Don’s wife, Melanie, and his three young children, and difficult news for the school as well, but Don is committed to doing his duty. We are fortunate that John Smith, who has been at our school for many years and has been called upon to lead the maintenance crew at various times, has agreed to postpone his retirement by a year to ensure that our facilities continue to function smoothly. We all wish the best to Don and his family and pray for his safe return.

Finally, on a happy note…

I know what I think, but I am curious to hear what others make of this.

Karl Is Back! (Or, He Is Going To Jail)

It's the NY Times versus Raw Story in a battle of journalistic titans.  From the Times:

Rove Is More His Old Self at the White House
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 - The architect, it seems, is back.

Hunkered down for almost all of October while a grand jury considered his fate, Karl Rove has rebounded as a visible presence at the White House over the last two weeks, according to administration officials and Republican colleagues. He is running meetings and pursuing candidates for the 2006 elections - and, associates say, devising long-term political plans that suggest he does not believe he will face future legal trouble despite the C.I.A. leak investigation in which he has been involved.

..."I've noticed a big difference," said one Republican in regular contact with Mr. Rove who declined to speak for attribution because the White House did not authorize it. "There's a spring in his step, more focus, more - something. Some sort of weight off his shoulders." 

It's November on the calendar, but it's springtime in his heart!  Geez, why doesn't the Times hire someone from American Greetings to write this stuff?

Let's cut to Raw Story.  They have had some hits and misses covering this Plame case, and yes, "Raw" may be an underestimate of their cooking time - "Half-baked" might be a more accurate title - but let's see what they've got:

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will soon conclude his investigation into whether President Bush’s deputy chief of staff Karl Rove gave false statements to a grand jury investigating the leak of a covert CIA agent, attorneys close to the case say.

According to lawyers familiar with the case, Fitzgerald is trying to convince the grand jury that Rove made false statements during the three times he testified under oath and misleading statements to Justice Department and FBI investigators when he was first interviewed about his role in the leak in October 2003.

The attorneys told RAW STORY that Fitzgerald has called Rove’s former personal assistant, Susan B. Ralston -- who was also a special assistant to President Bush -- to testify before the grand jury for a third time, perhaps as early as Monday. She is not said to be in legal jeopardy.

...

Ralston previously worked as a personal secretary to Jack Abramoff, the Republican power lobbyist being investigated for allegations of defrauding Indian tribes who was recently indicted on conspiracy and wire fraud charges. While working with Abramoff, Ralston arranged fundraisers and events at Washington MCI Center skyboxes for members of Congress. Ralston communicated  with Rove on Abramoff’s behalf on tribal affairs, though she is not accused of wrongdoing.

Fitzgerald wants to question Ralston again about several telephone calls Rove allegedly made to a few reporters, including syndicated columnist Robert Novak, lawyers close to the investigation say. Novak first disclosed the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson in his July 14, 2003 column.

Furthermore, the attorneys said that Fitzgerald wants Ralston to clarify some of her previous testimony regarding statements she made about a phone call Rove had with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper.

Ralston testified that Cooper’s name was not noted in the call logs from Rove’s office, those familiar with the case say.

Ralston told the grand jury that Cooper’s call to Rove was transferred to Rove’s office by the White House switchboard. She testified that the call was not logged by Rove’s office because Cooper had not called Rove’s office directly.

Sources say that Fitzgerald has obtained documentary evidence proving that scenario does not jibe with other unrelated calls to Rove’s office that were also transferred to his office by the switchboard but were logged.

Oh, boy.  First, the grand jury that heard the original testimony has expired.  If Fitzgerald is pursuing this, he must have read back transcripts of the relevant material to an existing grand jury, and they must be begging for the book-on-tape version about now.  Not all the US sanctioned torture is happening in Eastern Europe.

And what about this Susan Ralston, who is, I have no doubt, a great American?  Worked for Abramoff, worked for Rove, worked for Bush, saw a fellow aide, Hernandez, get elevated to Assistant Secretary of Commerce - who butters her bread?

And why would her story change?  She has testified twice already, and we are told that "She is not said to be in legal jeopardy".  Well, if she goes in and testifies that, contrary to her two earlier accounts, she now remembers Karl running out with an eraser and doctoring the phone logs, I would say she will be in legal jeopardy - perjury and obstruction come to mind.

Or does she have immunity?  Then what is Fitzgerald's leverage, exactly - are we supposed to believe she has been lying up to now, but will be overcome by honesty if she gets immunity?

Oh, wait - maybe the new evidence will force her to crack:

Sources say that Fitzgerald has obtained documentary evidence proving that scenario does not jibe with other unrelated calls to Rove’s office that were also transferred to his office by the switchboard but were logged.

That should be a compelling exchange - let's picture it:

Fitzgerald:  Ms. Ralston, your testimony is that there was some sort of mistake in logging that Cooper call.

Ralston:  Yes, sir.

Fitzgerald:  But we have documentary proof - proof - that it is very unusual for you to make this sort of mistake.

Ralston:  I say the same thing in my annual review, I hardly ever make mistakes, but I still never get the raise I want.

We'll see.  We had more on Karl's problems with a missing email here.