"It's Just A Mess For Everyone Involved"

Andrea Mitchell chatted with Don Imus yesterday, and Crooks and Liars was there.

Don Imus has twice asked Ms. Mitchell about her role in the Plame leak investigation, wondering whether she had received a Woodward-style leak early in the hunt.  Twice Ms. Mitchell has floundered hopelessly. 

Yesterday, discretion was the better part of maintaining her credibility - she sent out the punting team on third down, and changed the subject:

Imus: What else is going on-how's Woodward doing, is he going to get off?

Mitchell: Why I don't know, it's just a mess for everyone involved...

Imus: It is?

Mitchell:...but I think Iraq is really what people are focused on here in Washington...

Even her evasions are fraught with meaning!  Why is it a mess for everybody?  A mess for Woodward, sure.  A few people at the WaPo, maybe Viveca Novak at TIME.  But everybody?

Now, I think it may be a bit of a mess even for Andrea.  But it's the Holiday season, so let's cheer up - depending on my time management, we may be able to provide Andrea with a bit of company as the weekend unfolds.

Comments

[anonymous]

Okay, another job? Someone should have bought a dog?

Plame and Congressional 'stalling.':

The stall may have alot to do with Congress ordering DOJ and Pentagon to report to CIA globally, including domestically(CIA always has a domestic mandate), as a result of Plame's possible indictment by DOJ. The problem is that it is a conflict of interest to investigate the CIA, which they are both required to report to domestically.

Plame's objective was to use the Niger trip and Wilson to blow covert WMD policy, Bush/Rice and her WMD degree, and CIA covert WMD schooling; which became mandatory for all CIA operations officers. She also sent alot of memos before the Uranium operation was used by her(it was a foreign intelligence penetration operation aimed at Bush and Rice). She was attempting to get others involved in what was, in fact a rogue operation. There were alot of memo leaks after she got peeved.

In addition to using a foreign intelligence operation aimed at US government leaders to get rid of WMD, she used her and Wilson'connections in Iraq to commit acts that called for an organized crime DOJ prosecuter like Fitzgerald to investigate after her 'Vanity Fair' article and admission to being a CIA operations officer. DOJ oraganized crime department handles bad CIA agents like Aimes, Howard, etc. Fitz passed and went after his true passions, politicians. He failed at his job and DOJ and Pentagon now report globally, incuding domestically, to CIA. This was done by Congress because Fitz failed at his job and to protect Plame from indictment. The answer afer Plame was protected was to leak the CIA prison story and ask DOJ to investigate. Its a conflict of interest.

[Dwilkers]

I'm starting to feel a bit sorry for Andrea.

Well, OK not really. How about just tell us the truth Andrea?

You know...as in reporting?

[kim]

I don't think she thinks that is her job.
==========================================

[pedant]

TM,
The word you are looking for is 'founder', not 'flounder'm which is a fish.

[pedant]

And that would be 'flounder' without the 'm'.

-part time pedant

[kim]

Good question. I go for the fish as in flop hopelessly around. Not 'founder' as in stop hopelessly aground.
===========================================

[kim]

Hey, pedant, leave those fish alone.
====================================

[Neo]

I remember saying at the beginning of this "adventure" that everybody should be careful what they wish for when it seemed just fine to call for a special prosecutor.

Now that the prosecutor is about half way through his charge, the press is unhappy that they have been dragged into this "adventure.' Amazing, Bob Novak has come out of the other side almost completely unscaved. But for a town that is used to operating on "leaks" of classified and unclassified information, it is now a mess.

Where it used to be a badge of courage to say that you knew X, Y or Z, now the reporters (and politicians) run for cover as they only see endless lawyer bills (the old special prosecutor law paid the expenses of those not charged, but that bill has lapsed) if they mention knows something.

So Andrea et al go into their impersonation of Sergeant Schultz claiming .. I know nothing.

[maryrose]

I agree with anonymous and feel not enough attention has been paid to activities by wilson and plame. By playing the victim card the they are able to skate away free of charges.

[SteveMG]

This is the way special prosecutions end, not with a bang but with a big friggin' whimper.

I thought we (left and right) had agreed after the Starr mess that these types of investigations were unwise, that the statutes were poorly drawn and that inevitably the prosecutor would wind up chasing his tail in order to justify the investigation.

At least, I had thought we had come to that agreement but there goes Bush dividing us again.

SMG

[danking]

I think Andrea needs to be booked daily on the Imus show since he's the only one asking questions.

Plus, we learn so much from her ramblings...

"Everyone knew she worked at the CIA..."

"It's just a mess for everyone involved..."

[kim]

One of these days Fitz is going to wake up feeling like a cockroach.
====================

[maryrose]

I disagree Steve this originally was a referral from the CIA because of Plame. Bush is not dividing people, I lay that at the dems door .
'door

[Jim E.]

"this originally was a referral from the CIA because of Plame."

And then after months of investigation, the Ashcroft justice department recommended that a SP be appointed. Why did Ashcroft think this warrented further investigation? Damn lib.

[TP]

My guess is that the WSJ is going to own this story once the 8 pages are unsealed. Most of the rest of the news organizations are going to have too many reporters on the disabled list to cover it.

[SteveMG]

MaryRose:
Bush is not dividing people, I lay that at the dems door

Sorry, I was in a snark mood (is there treatment for that condition other than posting at a blog?).

It was a sarcastic remark.

SMG

[maryrose]

SP was appointed because dems started screaming bloody murder that Ascroft wasn't impartial enough. They will be hoisted on their own petard.

[maryrosea]

I agree TP and isn't that a sad coomentary on our current media.

[SteveMG]

Why did Ashcroft think this warrented further investigation? Damn lib.

But the screaming and yelling for a SP by, among other voices, the NY Times had nothing to do with his decision?

Anyway, as usual in their desire to get Bush, the left is blinded by the substance of the problem. Viz., the need to place limits on SP's ability to roam the landscape searching for a justification for their investigation.

We've seen this time-after-time-after-time where these measures go off the track. After the Starr absurdity (yes I was against impeachment; a Senate censure would have sufficed), the left had agreed, I thought, that these actions were poor responses to alleged wrongdoing.

My guess is once we get Hillary in office, that understanding will be embraced once again.

SMG

[richard mcenroe]

"(CIA always has a domestic mandate)"

Since when? I thought they were explicitly restrictred FROM domestic ops?

And sending out the punting term on third down? Are you a secret soccer player or something?

[JM Hanes]

Steve
Fitzgerald is a Special Prosecutor who ultimately answers to the Justice Department. That's why Ashcroft's recusal was relevant. Starr was an Indpendent Counsel, which, until Congress let the relevant statute lapse, was a horse of a (slightly) different color.

[JM Hanes]

richard

"Are you a secret soccer player or something?"

Try double super secret space cadet.

[Terrie]

Tom, misery loves company. Who, pray tell, will be joining Andrea?

Richard?

Matt?

Fitzie?

If you find the time, we'll make the time.

[noah]

Courts ALWAYS piss me off. Fitz does not oppose release of at least part of the redacted material...so where the fuck is it?

[Gary Maxwell]

Why did Ashcroft think this warrented further investigation? Damn lib.

Jim E. this is perhaps the most ridiculous thing posted this week. That is going some too.

Your side stood on their desks and screamed at the top of their lungs for the investigation. Actually they also stamped their feet and alternating screaming ahd holding their breathe until blue.

Ashcroft felt politically he had no choice.

Now look where we are. But never fear there will be another Dem admin one of these days and the payback will be seen.

[richard mcenroe]

Is it possible all these journalists were so utterly convinced of Rove and/or Cheney's guilt that they never imagined the investigation would ever get this far?

[BurkettHead]

Jim E. said: "Why did Ashcroft think this warrented further investigation? Damn lib."

If Ashcroft had reported there was nothing there & no need for further investigation, would you have believed him?

[Gary Maxwell]

If Ashcroft had reported there was nothing there & no need for further investigation, would you have believed him?

Well chuckled at this one. They still bleieve the memos that Lucy Ramirez produced are real so its not likely.

In fact they think the Republicans blew up the levies so reality is far beynd much of them.

wont be a response to you thou, as you can see the whole lot of them have aboandoned us to head en mass to the pharmacy for a Prozac refill.

[noah]

What do you hear when you go to a law office or a whorehouse?

"You got the money (honey), I got the time"

[Jim E.]

"If Ashcroft had reported there was nothing there & no need for further investigation, would you have believed him?"

Well, given what we now know, would you?

For the moment, I'll choose to stand with William F. Buckley and acknowledge that the CIA leak case seems to be sort of important.

[noah]

In the intro to the Army Navy game I just heard McCain and Schwartzkof (sp?) reading a speech in alternating phrases referring to the pledge to fight "against all enemies, foreign and domestic". I guess they didn't get the memo from the dems...there is no act that would define you as a domestic enemy.

[kim]

Kopf, as in doff your cap----Kopf.
==================================

[kim]

How jingoistic to perceive enemies.
=================================

[boris]

Well, given what we now know, would you?

Had there been no investigation poor Fitz would not have sand in his eyes, appartently the only "crime" comitted so far. WTF are YOU referring to sport?

[richard mcenroe]

"Everybody"?

I think that's the same "everybody" Pauline Kael was referring to when she lamented that "nobody" she knew voted for Reagan...

It ain't like we proles count to anybody west of the Hudson...

[BurkettHead]

I think the CIA leak cases are important - but I doubt that's what Fitz is actually investigating.

[noah]

Kim:

Have an acquaintance named Kim who happens to be be a guy.

Just curious in light of your baffling mixture of cynicism, playful banter, trenchant observation, fractured poetry, and wicked non sequiturs...what is your gender?

[SteveMG]

JM Haines:
Starr was an Indpendent Counsel, which, until Congress let the relevant statute lapse, was a horse of a (slightly) different color.

Thanks for clearing up my muddled thinking (or trying to).

As you note, there's a difference between the Independent Prosecutor, whose job is statutorily created and who responds to a special court, and the SP, who is appointed by the AG and who responds to Justice.

The dilemma still applies, it seems to me. Viz., how to keep these extraordinary investigations from consuming itself.

I'm wondering if these SPs/IPs are afraid to say, after years of investigating matters, "Folks, I got nothing."

SMG

[clarice]

Me, too. http://americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5044

[Davis]

We only need Special Prosecutors to investigate Democrats and the misguided CIA and State Department staffers who support them.

[Les Nessman]

Question: "If Ashcroft had reported there was nothing there & no need for further investigation, would you have believed him?"

Gary's Prediction: "wont be a response to you thou"

Non-answer: "Well, given what we now know, would you?"

Gary nailed it.

[maryrose]

Let's stop all these inane investigations and start concentrating on the important issues of the day. Homelessness,hunger health insurance et all.

[MeTooThen]

Kim,

The cockroach thing was funny.

Really.

I think though, it was a giant cockroach.

I have read an alternative translation describing the transformation as into a "giant vermin."

I like that one, too.

Just sayin'.

[MeTooThen]

richard mcenroe,

Yup.

"Everyone", indeed.

Fitzmas may turn into a nightmare if its original proponents aren't careful.

Or maybe it already is, and we just don't know about it yet?

[j.foster]

Mtt you may be correct .

[Toby Petzold]

Richard McEnroe, you meant Nixon, not Reagan.

[richard mcenroe]

Toby — could be, I've heard it with both. And while I'm at it, that should have been "east" of the Hudson...

[kim]

MTT: A gigantic varmint. What hole is he going to pop out of next. This coyote's confused. I'd be riskin' snakebite to get too nosy. And curiosity kills cats. I got a pack to follow.
===============================================

[kim]

Noah. Thanks for the lilies; I'll use them to paint the cage I'm breaking out of. Why don't I observe God in the trenches. One of my chief amusements is to attempt gender nuetral, or at least sillily ghillied, speech. This is difficult on close examination, transparently easy on the internet. I also dangle(display?) participles seductively, just waiting for someone to give tongue.
=============================================

[kim]

Internets. Your's ain't the same as mine.

Or, better: The one I invented ain't the same as the one you invented.
==========================================

[anonymous]

Sunday December 4, 2005
Former CIA agent talks about years as disguise expert
By MARIE GILBERT

marieg@herald-mail.com

HAGERSTOWN - Antonio Mendez is an artist. Working from his studio in rural Washington County, he creates paintings that sell for thousands of dollars and are featured in galleries and permanent collections around the world.

But for 25 years, Mendez set aside his paints and canvases for another form of art - the art of deception.

Mendez is a retired officer with the Central Intelligence Agency.

Over those 25 years, Mendez worked his way up the CIA ladder - from the forgery unit, where he altered documents, to head of the espionage agency's division of disguise, with a rank equal to that of a two-star general.

Mendez created some of the CIA's most elaborate, but secretive ploys, scams and masquerades intended to fool foreign agents and enemy surveillance teams.

And, along the way, he earned the CIA's Intelligence Medal of Merit, as well as the Intelligence Star and two Certificates of Distinction.

But no one knew this soft-spoken artist was working as a spy - until 1997, when the CIA turned 50.

"Then, the agency did something it never did," Mendez said. "They hired a publicist, who decided the CIA should celebrate its anniversary by paying tribute to 50 people who helped shape its history. I ended up on the list."

So after years of not talking about his job, his lips were unsealed.

"It's a little scary to spend your whole life lying about what you do for a living, and then going out and talking to the media," Mendez said. "Now, my story is out there."

Mendez shared highlights of his career Saturday afternoon during a series of lectures at Discovery Station.

"People think they know about the CIA," Mendez said. "But 90 percent of what the CIA does is not out there - and that's a good thing. We were always told you don't celebrate your successes or explain your failures."

Mendez said he became involved with the CIA quite innocently.

"In 1965, I was an artist-illustrator working for an aerospace company in Denver," he said. "I illustrated electronic devices for missiles."

One day, he saw an ad in The Denver Post seeking artists to work overseas with the U.S. Navy.

"I sent my rsum to a P.O. box number, and within a couple of weeks I was in a motel room with the curtains drawn talking to a Sam Spade character, who announced, 'Son, this isn't the Navy,'" Mendez said.

Several months later, Mendez landed a job in the art department of the CIA's technical services division in Washington, D.C.

"It was clear they wanted someone to counterfeit and forge documents," Mendez said.

Forgery, he learned, was important in the spy world, where agents needed to build new identities for themselves or recruits through identification cards and travel documents.

Step by step, Mendez learned his trade and learned it well. Twenty months later, he and his family moved to the Far East, where they stayed for seven years while Mendez worked in the CIA's technical operations in Southeast Asia.

"It was during the Vietnam War and this was where the action was," Mendez said. "There was the hot war in Vietnam, a secret war in Laos and I was also operating in the alleyways of India, where the Russians were our true adversary."

Mendez's specialty was exfiltration, where persons in danger are taken to safety. And techniques of disguise became an important tool in these undertakings.

"I learned how to assemble and disassemble an identity," he said.

By 1974, Mendez had been promoted to chief of disguise and returned to the United States.

"I didn't want to come back," Mendez said. "I enjoyed being out in the field. But two years later, I was working in Moscow and then one of the more famous operations took place - the Iranian revolution in 1979."

That year, Iranian extremists held between 50 and 60 Americans hostages at the American Embassy in Iran.

"We soon learned that six U.S. employees had escaped and were hiding out in the Canadian Embassy," Mendez said. "Our mission was to get them out of the country and safely home. But how could we do that?"

The wheels of creativity started turning. Mendez decided to create a fake movie production company. He found office space in Los Angeles, made up business cards, took out ads in Hollywood trade papers and spread the word that his company would be traveling to Iran to scout locations for an upcoming movie.

After contacting the Canadian government for assistance, Mendez flew to Iran with six fake Canadian passports and a plan. He disguised the Americans as Canadian filmmakers, script writers and consultants - the ruse working to get them out of the country. For his work, he received the CIA's International Star for Valor from President Carter.

In November 1990, Mendez decided to leave espionage.

Mendez now lives in Washington County with his wife, Jonna, who served 27 years with the CIA. He now paints and writes. He has authored two books, "Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA" and "Spy Dust: Two Masters of Disguise Reveal the Tools and Operations That Helped Win the Cold War," which he co-authored with his wife.

Mendez is a consultant to the CBS show "The Agency," and is on the board of advisors of the International Spy Museum in Washington. He also serves as a consultant to TV documentaries on espionage.

Mendez also does the lecture circuit, "but I still worry, after all these years, that I've said things I shouldn't," he said.

With the CIA in the news, Mendez said that he doesn't believe that CIA agent Valerie Plame was outed intentionally.

"I think it was recklessness more than malice of forethought," Mendez said. "Still, it has created a dangerous situation. She was working on weapons of mass destruction and her contacts, you can be sure, were unsavory characters. Outing her identity not only endangered her, but everyone she met was compromised. It was probably inadvertent, but it doesn't change the gravity of it. This is one of the many dangers of working with the CIA."

[DougJ]

Mitchell is one of the most obviously liberally-biased reporters out there. Truthfully, the press, with the exception of Bob Woodward, has really sullied itself in this thing. Whatever happened to protecting your sources?

I never agreed with what Woodward and Bernstein did. It seems to me that took the words of a disgruntled FBI man and turned it into a faux indictment of a White House that looks better and better in retrospect. But I respect the hell out of the way Woodward and Bernstein stood by Felt, even if Felt was something of a rat. That was a case where journalistic ethics came first.

I guess those days are over.

[kim]

Anon, so why diid Joe blow his wife's cover?

DJ, Woodward used the machinations of a scorned Hoover wannabe to splinter the structure of our government and he should have gone to jail instead of enrolling as a model of naked advocacy at all the journalism schools.
==================================================

[Rick Ballard]

Not only that, Woodward could not have been dumb enough to not know that Felt was playing him like a used fiddle. Woodward and Bernstein were on the Feeb pad - little wonder that they protected their "anonymous sources" so assiduously. The protection of "Deep Throat" is a marvelous example of the complete lack of ethics in journalism as practiced by its "stars".

[kim]

Anon, so why did Joe blow his wife's cover?

DJ, Woodward used the machinations of a scorned Hoover wannabe to splinter the structure of our government and he should have gone to jail instead of enrolling as a model of naked advocacy at all the journalism schools.
==================================================

[maryrose]

Rick and Kim
You both are right about Felt. He is a rat-fink and always willbe. You can't make a silk purse out of sow's ear.

[clarice]

Same song, different year--More pouting spooks and this time it's the WaPo Dana Priest who's playing the Woodward role: http://neveryetmelted.com/?p=215

[noah]

Kim: thank you for your non-denial denial or your non-affirmation affirmation or your obfuscation but your statement obviously raises more questions than it answer!! Such as: what is giving tongue? Also I could use a brief grammar tutorial...I've forgotten... what is a dangling participle? (if it is a penile reference then all becomes shocklngly clear!)

[DougJ]

"I think that's the same "everybody" Pauline Kael was referring to when she lamented that "nobody" she knew voted for Reagan..."

I happen to love Pauline Kael. It's interesting that someone who could be so populist about cinema (championing American movies at a time when the Upper West Side set was dismissing them) could be unabashedly northeastern elitist about politics.

[kim]

'the cage I'm breaking out of' dangles its participle; I vainly tried to display instead of dangle, ghilliely, but unguiltily. It may be easier to gild lilies than paint them or with. Does that give you a flash of enlightenment?

Woodward is on the other side of 'what did he know and when did he know it' now, but the strings of power are only informally held at the MSM so we can neither impeach nor decline to re-elect him. The more is the pity.
========================================
=============================================

[maryrose]

Noa
You can't diagram a sentence with a dagling participle, just like you can't end a sentence with a preposition.

[kim]

But dangled participles are nearly always understood in spoken speech. That they resist diagramming is not intrinsically untoward of the construction, but a sign that the sentence should be rewritten to improve comprehension.
============================================

[BurkettHead]

kim said: "the strings of power are only informally held at the MSM so we can neither impeach nor decline to re-elect him. The more is the pity."

Theoretically, markets work that way even better than elections or impeachment. Declining market share, lay-offs, ad revenues should be declining as well. But it doesn't really seem to matter to the MSM. Yet.

I haven't checked the constating instruments for management protection measures, but you might be able to buy stock & raise a ruckus at shareholder meetings.

Of course, you'd probably have to either buy a significant block of stock or rouse enough other shareholders to catch management's attention.

[owl]

anon, I enjoyed reading the Mendez article. Now I echo Kim and want to know why Plame and Joe blew her cover? No need to list how we know all this now, but the question remains the same.

Was there any other reason that Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson launched their attack, besides politics? Either the Wilsons are knee deep in some criminal behavior or they think I am a bonafided idiot. You do not join political attacks and write op-eds if you are trying to hide a secret identity.

I really do not need a SP. I read and watch TV. I know who worked the hardest to "out" Wilson's wife as ESP lead Corn to believe. A combo of MSM and Plame/Wilson. Why?

Fitz.......just tell me why Plame/Wilson set this up? Why the breakfast and party? Too long I blamed Wilson. Nope, it was Plame because you can chase it back to breakfast.

[maryrose]

Owl
How come no one is questioning Corn about his connections and sources? Does he merit a "get out of jail free card?"

[Kate]

Because St. David Corn is right up there with St. Joe Wilson as one who can't be criticized.

In fact, Corn is busy on the leftist web sites keeping hope alive on a Rove indictment.

In one of his articles, Corn stated that V. Novak had sterling leftist credentials and she would be devastated if she provided any help to Rove. See the facts don't matter, the truth doesn't matter, it's about getting Rove.

[maryrose]

Kate,
You are spot on with your last posting. There were some very long faces when Rove was spared an indictment.

[owl]

Yep, we see certain turning points..... breakfast/joining Kerry/Pincus and Corn.

[DougJ]

"There were some very long faces when Rove was spared an indictment."

Imagine how much longer they'll be when Libby walks and Wilson is indicted. That, my friends, would be the perfect Christmas present. (Hope I didn't offend any of you anti-Christmas liberals with that -- maybe I should have said Holiday present).

[cathyf]

just like you can't end a sentence with a preposition.

Which leads to a very old joke...

Harvard freshman, first week of school, to senior: Excuse me, could you tell me where the library is at?

Senior, in shuddering horror: Here at Harvard we do not end a sentence with a preposition!

Freshman, thinks a moment, then asks pleasantly: Could you tell me where the library is at, asshole?

cathy :-)

[Syl]

Rick B

The protection of "Deep Throat" is a marvelous example of the complete lack of ethics in journalism as practiced by its "stars".

I disagree. Because it doesn't matter whether your source is a good guy or a bad guy, a sleaze or a truthteller. A source is a source. You protect all or none.

[Syl]

Kim

Thanks for the lilies; I'll use them to paint the cage I'm breaking out of.

Aha! a gilded riddle.

The truth weaves through every word. My lips are sealed.

[kim]

As is my privacy. Thanks.
============================

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