JustOneMinute

An "Aggressive Partisan And Hothead"

The NY Times delves into the long friendship bewtween Karl Rove and Robert Novak, two people they chooses to describe as "two men [who] share a love of history and policy, as well as reputations as aggressive partisans and hotheads."

Perhaps a typesetting error prevented the Times from breaking real news - maybe Novak and Rove have reputations as "potheads".

Otherwaise, I would be curious to know whther the Times has ever characterized some of Wahington's other well known partisans with a temper as "hotheads" - Bill and Hillary get heated up ocassioally, I have read.  I bet James Carvile can get riled from time to time.  I even heard a rumor that Sen. Harry Reid once took off his glasses and said "That really bothers me".  OK, maybe that shouldn't count. 

But the list could go on, even though I am not.  But I bet Dick Cheney would have something to say to this.

Coming soon - the Times probes the reporting relationship between Judy Miller and Lewis Libby.  Oh, wait, what's the point - her being in jail isn't really news, and the Times doesn't know who she is protecting...

At The Risk Of Over-Generalizing...

Paul Krugman sends a couple of strawmen into the fray today.  First, he is helpful enough to define supply side economics:

Mr. Kristol led by example, using The Public Interest to promote supply-side economics, a doctrine whose central claim - that tax cuts have such miraculous positive effects on the economy that they pay for themselves - has never been backed by evidence.

Strawman Alert!  I suspect that supply-siders will have a less dramatic definition focusing on the incentive effects of taxes and regulation on output and savings.  These two articles give a more balanced flavor, and we like this:

George Bush, in the days when he was an opponent of Ronald Reagan in the 1980 primaries, referred to an extreme version of this theory espoused by Reagan as "voodoo economics." In this version a cut in tax rates was predicted to result in an increase in tax revenue, and thus not increase the government deficit (the famous Laffer Curve effect).

Emphasis added.  Characterizing an entire school of thought by its most extreme views... tut, tut. 

In any case, there are small examples which perfectly validate the concept that higher taxes can quash a business- the famous tax on luxury boats, for example, which raised very little revenue as prospective boat owners simply switched their discretionary income to other purchases.  However, the tax was credited with increasing unemployment at boatyards and marinas throughout the country, and its repeal almost certainly was a net revenue raiser.  OK, the recession muddied the statistical waters, but are there still defenders of this tax experiment out there?

And here goes Krugman on global warming:

You might have thought that a strategy of creating doubt about inconvenient research results could work only in soft fields like economics. But it turns out that the strategy works equally well when deployed against the hard sciences.

The most spectacular example is the campaign to discredit research on global warming. Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus, many people have the impression that the issue is still unresolved.

"The issue is still unresolved".  I guess his point is that "the issue" is, in fact, resolved.  But what is the issue?  Offhand, four come to mind:

(1)  The global climate has been warming over the last century;

(2)  the global climate has been warming and man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are a significant contributer to the phenomenon;

(3) man-made greenhouse gases are important, per (2), and the Kyoto Protocol, if implemented, would significantly reduce or eliminate man-made warming (i.e., Kyoto is effective);

(4) In addition to being effective, Kyoto is efficient - the environmental benefits of implementing Kyoto exceed the likely costs of lost growth and income.

I doubt that there is, as Krugman says, "an overwhelming scientific consensus" on points (3) or (4); my impression is that point (1) has been accepted by all but a few hold-outs, and that (2) is still in dispute.  In any case, if Krugman or his acolytes could tell us what "the issue" is on which a consensus has emerged, we are all ears.  Or eyes.

Road Rage

The NY Times irritates and alienates Yankee fans with this uncritical recycling of dubious statistics:

The Red Sox are baseball's biggest roadside attraction. On its tour through 12 cities, the self-styled posse of scruffy idiots is leading Major League Baseball in road attendance, a category the Yankees have won the last three seasons.

...Through Wednesday's games, Boston's 56 road dates averaged 38,673 in attendance, more than the Yankees' 38,140 average in 51 games. The Yankees have the record for road attendance, 3.3 million, set last year.

Oh, stop it!  The Red Sox road attendance includes six sell-outs at 55,000 seat Yankee Stadium; the Yankees' figure includes six sell-outs at 35,000 seat Fenway Park.

Adjust for that, and the Yankees are still the best show in The Show. 

Bad News on the Mental Fitness Front

Novakula suspended after stalking off CNN set.  The world wonders - what chased him off?  Was it garlic, a silver cross, what?

Mickey is way ahead of the pack - per the video capture, it looks as if the interviewer had plunked a copy of "Who's Who" on the table.  We also have a photo of the Who's Who volume, taken from the publisher's website.  The Captain has commentary; we are just disappointed that our "Just Say 'No' To Novak" campaign has been flipped upside-down: we can hardly boycott Novak if he is boycotting us. 

More:  Wizbang has a photo of Wilson's Who's Who entry; a CNN spokesperson confirms to the Chicago Sun-Times that a Who's Who was on the table.

Good News On The Physical Fitness Front

We are roughly one month into the latest spasm on the Plame investigation, and there is excellent news on the physical fitness front - Mark Kleiman and Kevin Drum seem to have reclaimed their ability to leap to conclusions.

Mr. Kleiman flexes first; we will strip away his caveats in order to justify our tiresome, union-mandated snark:

Buried in the fifth paragraph of a story buried below the fold on page eighteen of the New York Times is this little land mine:

At one point, the aides were asked why Mr. Cooper's call to Mr. Rove was not entered in Mr. Rove's office telephone logs. There was no record of the call, the person who has been briefed said, because Mr. Cooper did not call Mr. Rove directly, but was transferred to his office from a White House switchboard.

If you believe that explanation, I'll tell you another. Obviously, call logs aren't of any value unless all calls are logged: the whole point is to allow someone to say, months later, "No, I know I didn't talk to X on that date; I've checked my call logs." This reads to me like strong evidence that Rove and his crew knew at the time they were doing something they didn't want to get caught doing.

In prosecutorese, that's called "evidence of consciousness of guilt," and it's extremely helpful in proving intent.

First, I am not an expert on the procedures employed by the White House in maintaining call logs, and I doubt Mr. Kleiman is, either; I decline to speculate as to how such an oversight might have occurred.

However, if Mr. Kleiman seriously thinks Karl ordered his aides into his office and said "That call never happened - remember that", and they dutifully replied "What call?", then let me ask him this - what foolish impulse prompted Karl to send an e-mail to Hadley documenting his chat with Cooper?  I think that by 2003, most people realized that e-mails are subject to subpoena.

Well, if the secret staff meeting to doctor the call log was evidence of criminal intent, I guess the e-mail is evidence of... a desire to get caught?  That's it!

Let's see where Mr. Drum manages to leap in his Big Finish:

Mark may have a point. After all, we know that in his initial testimony Rove lied and said he hadn't spoken to Cooper at all. We know that when he later recanted that testimony, he continued to lie by claiming the call was actually about welfare reform and that Plame only came up incidentally. And now we know that he failed to log his call with Cooper. Since call logging is standard procedure, this could only happen if Rove specifically asked one of his aides not to log the call.

Oh, boy - we don't know that "in his initial testimony Rove lied and said he hadn't spoken to Cooper at all".  What we think we know (per Newsweek, p. 3) is that Rove did not mention Cooper in his testimony initial chat with the FBI.  There is no reason to think he specifically denied speaking to Cooper, as implied by Drum, and it may well be that he offered caveated, "as best I recall" testimony saying he spoke about Ms. Wilson only to Novak.

We also certainly don't know that Rove "continued to lie by claiming the call was actually about welfare reform and that Plame only came up incidentally".  Per Cooper, the call only lasted about two minutes; per Rove's e-mail to Hadley, the initial subject, brought up by Cooper, was welfare reform:

"Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he's got a welfare-reform story coming," Mr. Rove wrote Mr. Hadley, who since has risen to the top job of national security adviser.

"When he finished his brief heads-up, he immediately launched into Niger. Isn't this damaging? Hasn't the president been hurt? I didn't take the bait, but I said if I were him, I wouldn't get Time far out in front on this."

Byron York has more on this - per Cooper's own account, he may have left a message for Rove earlier in the week asking for a chance to talk about welfare reform.  Possible?  The President signed an extension of the welfare bill on June 30, so the subject was topical.

And unlike Mr. Drum, I am simply not enough of an authority on White House procedures to make this statement:

Since call logging is standard procedure, this could only happen if Rove specifically asked one of his aides not to log the call.

That is the *only* way a breakdown in procedures could occur?  The Reality-Based Team seems to be rounding into mid-season leaping form.

Here is Technorati for the posts from Mark and Kevin - they have not swept the blogosphere, but they did find an audience.  And that audience includes Arianna herself - well done!  We also note the skepticism from The Crank.

MORE:  A puzzle to ponder - just when did Fitzgerald develop an interest in the Rove-Cooper relationship?  Cooper was originally subpoenaed with Russert, Kessler, and Pincus to talk about Libby.  After he complied with that subpoena, he was slapped with a second one for Rove.

So, had Fitzgerald been sitting on that subpoena, did something in the "Libby Round" of testimony trigger an interest in Rove, did something else happen at about the same time (e.g., they finally found the Rove-Hadley e-mail), or what?

If we thought we could solve this (color us pessimistic), it *might* hint at whether Karl remembered Cooper under his own power, or whether his memory was jogged by e-mails and testimony from, say, Hadley.

MORE:  OK, based on the Newsday story reporting subpoenas for the White House Iraq Group e-mails in Jan 2004, I will Boldly Assert that Rove's lawyers, Rove, and presumably Fitzgerald learned about the Hadley-Rove e-mail and hence the Rove-Cooper conversation by March 2004.  More links in this comment.

The Brookings Institute On Iraq

Via the BarcePundit, we are guided to this Brookings Institute assessment of Iraq.

I have not even had the nerve to open the 41 page .pdf file until I get to a friendlier computer, but let me soundbite our man in Barcelona:

...it's all very readable charts with data making clear that, while obviously Iraq today is not like Switzerland, progress is clear and noticeable...

Here is a Technorati search, but if this Brookings report has hit the big time, Technorati is not noticing.

Well, if someone could take a minute to tell me what to make of this, that would be great.  Comment away.

UPDATE:  Glenn has some links, but I like this from PostWatch: "what you seek, you shall find. As in good news or bad news."  Bring in the cherry-pickers!

Jack Shafer Gets Results

On Aug 1, the NY Times ran a correction, responding to a point raised by Jack Shafer back at the end of June.

What took so long?  We can only speculate, but given the Times typical reluctance to admit error, we assume a certain pig-headedness was involved.

MORE:  My constructive suggestion to Times Public Editor Byron Calame and the folks who design their website - make the archived Corrections a bit more accessible.  From the Times front page, only today's corrections can be found.

If you know what you are looking for, or have a copy of an old paper, the Times search function will take you to the Corrections archives (and folks who study the archival URL can crack the code pretty quickly).

But if a casual reader wanted to browse the past week's corrections, there would be no obvious way to do so.

Just a thought - I know the Times is looking for ways to become more transparent.

Byron Calame can be reached at : [email protected]

David Brooks - Troubling

David Brooks provokes thought today with an article on the psychology, background, and motivation of jihadists:

Nothing has changed during the war on terror as much as our definition of the enemy.

In the days after Sept. 11, it was commonly believed that the conflict between the jihadists and the West was a conflict between medievalism and modernism. Terrorists, it was said, emerge from cultures that are isolated from the Enlightenment ideas of the West. They feel disoriented by the pluralism of the modern age and humiliated by the relative backwardness of the Arab world. They are trapped in stagnant, dysfunctional regimes, amid mass unemployment, with little hope of leading productive lives.

Humiliated and oppressed, they lash out against America, the symbol of threatening modernity. Off they go to seek martyrdom, dreaming of virgins who await them in the afterlife.

Now we know that story line doesn't fit the facts.

We have learned a lot about the jihadists, from Osama bin Laden down to the Europeans who attacked the London subways last month. We know, thanks to a database gathered by Marc Sageman, formerly of the C.I.A., that about 75 percent of anti-Western terrorists come from middle-class or upper-middle-class homes. An amazing 65 percent have gone to college, and three-quarters have professional or semiprofessional jobs, particularly in engineering and science.

Whether they have moved to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, England or France, these men are, far from being medieval, drawn from the ranks of the educated, the mobile and the multilingual.

The jihadists are modern psychologically as well as demographically because they are self-made men (in traditional societies there are no self-made men). Rather than deferring to custom, many of them have rebelled against local authority figures, rejecting their parents' bourgeois striving and moderate versions of Islam, and their comfortable lives.

They have sought instead some utopian cause to give them an identity and their lives meaning. They find that cause in a brand of Salafism that is not traditional Islam but a modern fantasy version of it, an invented tradition. They give up cricket and medical school and take up jihad.

In other words, the conflict between the jihadists and the West is a conflict within the modern, globalized world. The extremists are the sort of utopian rebels modern societies have long produced.

And what does that imply?

The first implication, clearly, is that democratizing the Middle East, while worthy in itself, may not stem terrorism. Terrorists are bred in London and Paris as much as anywhere else.

Second, the jihadists' weakness is that they do not spring organically from the Arab or Muslim world. They claim to speak for the Muslim masses, as earlier radicals claimed to speak for the proletariat. But they don't. Surely a key goal for U.S. policy should be to isolate the nationalists from the jihadists.

Third, terrorism is an immigration problem. Terrorists are spawned when educated, successful Muslims still have trouble sinking roots into their adopted homelands. Countries that do not encourage assimilation are not only causing themselves trouble, but endangering others around the world as well.

Well, we knew quite a bit about the 19 suicide attackers from Sept 11, much of which is consistent with Brooks' "new" story.

However, if bringing democracy to the Middle East is going to be a waste of time...  ahhhh!

Brooks alludes to, but does not specifically mention Europe's tussle with the Red Brigade or Baader Meinhof in the 70's.

I await reax at Memeorandum.

Steal This Headline!

The last month's excitement in the Plame investigation has left all sorts of Loose Ends and Stories Unpursued.  With a slow news month looming before us, enterprising journalists (and bloggers!) might be able to turn some of the following ideas into bylines.  Here we go:

"Russert - "I Told Libby About Plame":  Ok, why would Tim Russert let a rival reporter break this news?  Good question.  Maybe he would like to avoid the awkwardness of outing himself on his own show; maybe no one ever cared enough to ask. (Maybe it's not true - let's find out).

In any case, Russert let NBC release a weaselly denial after he testified to Fitzgerald under circumstances that caught the imagination of Adam Liptak of the Times:

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

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

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

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

"He did not know her name?"  And he didn't call her an operative.  Well, that covers it!

Mr. Russert was virtually speechless two weeks ago when the subject arose on his own show - maybe a reporter could pry a story out of him.

"Joe Wilson Interviewed By Fitzgerald": the case can be made that Joe Wilson has been interviewed by Fitzgerald's investigators.  Well - did the investigators ask about the forgeries that baffled the Senate?  Or, for our friends on the left, was Wilson able to infer any targets of the investigation?

And why do we think that Wilson has chatted with Fitzgerald's people?  Elementary - per the WaPo, Fitzgerald has taken testimony from a fellow mentioned (but not named) in Wilson's book.  Presumably, Fitzgerald would want confirmation of the person's identity and a contemporaneous account from Wilson.  It appears that Wilson spoke to the WaPo for their story, so he is not incommunicado.

And a side note - in the WaPo, it says that "Novak told the person that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA as a specialist in weapons of mass destruction and had arranged her husband's trip to Niger, Wilson said."  And no doubt he did.  But in his book, Wilson quoted Novak as saying "Wilson's an asshole.  The CIA sent him.  His wife, Valerie, works for the CIA.  She's a weapons of mass destruction specialist.  She sent him".

Hmm - "sent" is not as strong as "arranged", especially following the broad "The CIA sent him".  And where is the word "operative", which appeared in Novak's column?

Lots of questions for Mr. Wilson, if anyone cares to ask.

[UPDATE:  In an Aug 4 radio appearance, Wilson says this:

JOSEPH WILSON: I have not spoken to Pat Fitzgerald for almost a year-and-a-half. I was interviewed by him once early in his tenure. My wife was interviewed by him once early in his tenure in a separate interview from mine, and neither of us have spoken to him since. We have not been before the Grand Jury. We're not part of this case. And, of course, he has appropriately not shared with us any information he might have. So anything that I might know would be just pure speculation.

Oh, well.]

While on the subject of Joe Wilson's secret friend, here is another possible headline - "Eason Jordan, formerly of CNN, Cooperated With Fitzgerald's Investigation".  Again, we are guessing, but in Wilson's book, he says that after he learned from his friend that Novak was contemplating a column mentioning his wife, he called Eason Jordan of CNN (Novak's "titular boss") to urge Mr. Jordan to dissuade Novak.  My strong impression is that Special Counsel Fitzgerald is running down every detail, so what did he ask Mr. Jordan, and how would Mr. Jordan characterize his chat with the investigators?

It is similar in theme to the Eason Jordan story, but different versions of this headline might capture attention: [Well Known Reporter] Cooperated With Plame Investigation.  How many reporters have given evidence?  Good question - let's watch the NY Times puzzle with it:

Adam Liptak, July 16:

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

Mr. Liptak notes that Novak's status is not known, and that Judy Miller is in jail for civil contempt.

Anne Kornblut, July 27:

Few if any reporters who traveled with Mr. Fleischer, Mr. Bartlett and the White House entourage that week have been called to testify before the grand jury.

Douglas Jehl, July 28

In addition to Mr. Pincus, the reporters known to have been pursued by the special prosecutor include Mr. Novak, whose column of July 14, 2003, was the first to identify Ms. Wilson, by her maiden name, Valerie Plame; Mr. Cooper, who testified before a grand jury on the matter earlier this month; Tim Russert, the Washington bureau chief of NBC News, and who was interviewed by the prosecutor last year; Glenn Kessler, a diplomatic reporter for The Post, who was also interviewed last year, and Judith Miller of The New York Times, who is now in jail for refusing to testify about the matter. It is not known whether Mr. Novak has testified or been interviewed on the matter.

Emphasis added - evidently, the Times has become less certain of this point over the last two weeks.

So, what other reporters might have caught the attention of the Special Counsel?  Per this list from Newsday from March 2004, we see quite a few names that appeared in the White House phone logs.  Now, an entry in the phone logs does not mean a conversation occurred - sometimes it is just a message that the reporter called, but the person at the White House end never calls back.  However, this seems like the sort of detail Fitzgerald would want to verify.  Consequently, all of these reporters should have been contacted by investigators - have they been (or has no one asked?)?

And for what it's worth, rather than trouble us with a list of names which included Kristof, Sanger, and Miller of the Times, here is how the Times covered that revelation last March 2004; the WaPo at least mentioned that "approximately 25 [reporters]... were specified by name".

OK, two more places to look for a story, we are in the home stretch!

Conservative Journalist Confirms Plame Spy ID Was Widely Known:  In the "Trust, but Verify" folder, we see that Cliff May, writing at the National Review Online, told us in Sept 2003 that:

I had been told that [Ms. Plame was a CIA operative] — but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of.

It may well be that insiders were well aware of her employment at the CIA.  However, almost two years have passed and none of these insiders have come forward to say so.  If Mr. May could amplify or clarify his anecdote, there is no time like the present.

And while on that point, we have yet to see a clear transcript or public citation of Andrea Mitchell making a similar admission in July 2005.

[However, hiding in plain sight at the NBC News blog is Ms. Mitchell writing on July 15:

One of a number of intriguing questions: During that 10-day period in July 2003, how many reporters were circulating information about Wilson's wife to administration officials? More than a few, but clearly some failed to realize how seriously the CIA would take the disclosure of a covert officer's identity. Nor, clearly, did at least two administration officials who were the sources for Novak's column.

"More than a few"?!?  If we count Russert (to Libby), Cooper (to Libby), Novak (to Rove) and Miller (to Libby), is that "more than a few", or does Ms. Mitchell have more reporters in mind?  And by the way, is she a reporter, or a contestant on "20 Questions" - maybe she could clear this puzzle up for her audience *without* our prompting her.]

Finally, "Former CIA Spokesman Documents Warning To Novak":  Bill Harlow, former CIA spokesperson, warned Novak not to publish information about Ms. Plame when Novak checked with the CIA in July 2003.  Ahh, but how forcefully did he warn him, and why did Novak ignore him?

We don't know, but we know this - Wilson claims, again, in his book, that his wife alerted the CIA press office [on July 10] after the secret friend talked with Novak on July 8.

[Mini UPDATE:  Per Wilson's book, on July 8, Wilson asked Eason Jordan to have Novak call him; Novak called Wilson on July 9, and they played phone tag until they finally spoke on July 10.  From Wilson's book:

Novak had still been trolling for sources when we spoke on the telephone, so I assumed that he did not have the confirmations he would need from the CIA to publish the story.  I told Valerie, who alerted the press liason at the CIA, and we were left with the reasonable expectation that any reference to her would be dropped, since he would have no way of confirming the information - unless, of course, he got confirmations from another part of the government, such as the White House.

Or if the CIA press liason confirmed that she worked at the CIA, I guess that could do the trick.  Why Wilson called Eason Jordan right away but waited two days to tell his wife and the CIA press liason is left as a guess for the reader.]

We also know that in a typical bureaucracy, a monumental miscommunication of this magnitude - nationally syndicated columnist ignores CIA press officer and outs covert agent - would have resulted in some internal soul searching, which would have led to memos or minutes with themes of "What Went Wrong" and "How We Will Improve".

We also know that, when the CIA is not comfortable with the cooperation they are getting from a reporter, they are not shy about calling his editor or publisher.  That did not seem to happen here, based on Howard Kurtz's quotes from two of Novak's editors.

However, we have no doubt that, if the CIA was as agitated in July 2003 as Mr. Harlow describes it to have been, there will be plenty of evidence to document it.  Someone ought to ask him about that. 

Bob Somerby of the Daily Howler has been tireless on the weak effort undertaken by Mr. Harlow to warn Mr. Novak off.  Here is his Tuesday installment.

OK, lots to do while we sit and wait for Novak (or Pincus, or Libby, or Rove, or Tenet) to have their Perry Mason moment, break down in tears, and confess.

UPDATE:  An extract from a brutal, easily verified comment by a regular here:

There is a procedure to follow if the spokesman or anyone from the public affairs dept (or whatever the CIA calls it) is asked to confirm any information involving someone's employment by the CIA. He must immediately check the status of that individual. If he doesn't, or if he does and the employee is undercover, he is to neither confirm or deny that information.

Harlow confirmed that Valery worked at the CIA. THEN he looked up her status. He blew it.

At that point all he could do is request that Novak not print, but the horse was already out of the barn.

Well, if the CIA press office really did get a heads-up from Ms. Plame about Novak on July 8 July 10 (and why would Wilson be wrong about this? [Hmmph, why would I be wrong about this - make it July 10]), then Harlow has no excuse at all for not having apprised himself of Ms. Plame's status prior to speaking with Novak.  Instead, based on what he told the WaPo, he talked with Novak, then double-checked her status, then called Novak back.  Did he not get the heads-up?  Is my commenter's description of CIA procedure wrong?  Or are there serious problems with Harlow's story?

However, I still say the barn door could have been re-locked simply by calling Novak's editor.

In any case, reporters ought to know, or the CIA press office ought to be willing to say, what the standard CIA procedures are.  Calling Pincus and VandeHei!

Judy's Game

Mickey is wondering what Judy Miller is up to; Arianna Huffington has a big July 31 post, but treads water on Aug 1; and Richard Cohen of the WaPo joins in on Aug 2.  Since Mr. Cohen has a baffling intro, let's start there:

Judith Miller in Jail: Principle vs. Politics

By Richard Cohen

Before Judith Miller of the New York Times went to jail for not revealing her sources...

...Whatever her politics, whatever her journalistic sins (if any), whatever the whatevers, she is in jail officially for keeping her pledge not to reveal the identity of a confidential source. (If that's not the case, then we don't know otherwise.) That pledge is no different than the one Bob Woodward made to Mark (Deep Throat) Felt...

Hold on!  I am gloomily resigned to the Times promoting the notion of a secret source at every opportunity, but Mr. Cohen at the WaPo is under no obligation to join in - as per Justice Dept. guidelines, Fitzgerald has delivered to Ms. Miller a narrow subpoena ordering her to testify about her conversations with one named official.  Let's see, here is the WaPo covering the subpoenas last winter:

According to the appellate court's opinion, Fitzgerald knows the identity of the person with whom Miller spoke and wants to question her about her contact with that "specified government official" on or about July 6, 2003. Miller never wrote a story on the subject.

And here is a WaPo Q&A about this case, which might aid Mr. Cohen's understanding:

Q: Doesn't Fitzgerald know the identities of Miller's and Cooper's sources? Haven't the sources signed waivers that allow the reporters to talk to the prosecutor?

Yes and yes. But Miller, who did some reporting but never wrote a story, says that the waiver is not voluntary under these circumstances and that she is upholding the journalistic principle of never breaking a promise of confidentiality to a source.

This is not confusing, although the Times would like it to be - I suspect public sympathy for Mark Felt and protecting "identities" runs higher than public sympathy for protecting the reporter's side of a conversation when the official has already given his side.

Whatever his motive, here is a bit of obfuscation from NY Times editor Bill Keller on July 6, as Ms. Miller was jailed:

TERENCE SMITH: Now, the prosecutor made the point in court that not only does he know the identity of Judy Miller's source, that he -- that the source has signed a waiver of confidentiality, in which case, what is Judy Miller defending?

BILL KELLER: I don't know whether the special prosecutor knows the identity of her source. I do know this: that Judy Miller made an absolute pledge to her source that she would not reveal his name or the substance of their conversation, and to this point, she has received no waiver or release that she regards as freely given anyway from that source.

He doesn't know if Fitzgerald knows her source?  Has he read the subpoena?  He could break news here if Fitzgerald, the judges, and the WaPo are all wrong.

Apparently, in this snippet from Arianna (7/31/03), Bill Keller is delivering that same spin:

When asked by George Stephanopoulos on Nightline if he knew who Miller's source was, he refused to say yes or no.

So, what game is Ms. Miller playing at?  It is possible that in a broad sense, Keller is being truthful when he says that he does not know who Miller is protecting.  There has been speculation (fueled, no doubt, by Ms. Miller's own statement to Aaron Brown) that she is declining to testify about her current source (the WaPo says it is Libby, mostly) because she calculates that she will get the Matt Cooper treatment - Mr. Cooper complied with a subpoena to testify about Libby and got slapped with another one to talk about Rove.

However, perhaps some legal eagles can help me out here.  Suppose Ms. Miller were to comply with the subpoena to testify about Mr. X, who we think is Libby.  She then gets out of jail.  Suppose further that her testimony raises as many questions as it answers - in restricting her testimony to her conversations with Libby, she tells the grand jury that she passed to Libby the news that Valerie Plame was with the CIA and was involved with Wilson's trip, but refuses to reveal her source for that information.

Fitzgerald will want to know her source, of course.  But Justice Dept. guidelines do not allow a fishing expedition - he must show that he has exhausted all reasonable alternative means of learning her source before attempting to compel her testimony.

But what is reasonable?  Should he go out and interview everyone in the CIA who knew Ms. Plame and knew about the trip?  Why not?

And that could take months, or past the term of this grand jury.

Which means what?  My *guess* is that, if Ms. Miller is protecting a different source, she could testify about her talk with Libby and either run the clock out on this investigation, or re-fight the subpoena battle over a new name, if Fitzgerald ever comes up with one.

And if her source was her personal knowledge of Ms. Plame from previous reporting and networking?  We need legal advice on this point, but I would think that she could simply testify that she is not going to discuss how she came by her knowledge of Ms. Plame, since it was not in a conversation with Libby and therefore is not covered by the subpoena.

Which suggests, again pending legal advice, that if Ms. Miller was acting exclusively in her own self-interest, she could get out of jail and leave us, and Fitzgerald, wondering how she learned about Ms. Plame.

Now, since she is choosing to stay in jail, does this mean that she must be acting in noble defense of a journalistic principle?  Maybe.  Or maybe there is a book deal to consider, or maybe she and the Times figure that the embarrassment factor of disclosing that their reporter outed Ms. Plame to Libby is too ghastly to endure.

But being in jail can't be fun, either.  And if she was really protecting a source, I think she could get out, and battle Fitzgerald another day.  Which leaves me circling around - what principle, or person, is she protecting?

MORE:  TalkLeft has suggested that Miller really is protecting Libby, because she knows/suspects that some element of her testimony will be ghastly.  But does she also know that Libby perjured himself on that key point?  And if the topic was a "get Wilson" strategy meeting, have all the other meeting participants also perjured themselves?

Not-Reported-Here Journalism, NY Times Style

Anne Kornblut of the NY Times earns a coveted "Ostrich du Jour" for her non-coverage of the Novak/Plame story:

Columnist Hints Book Was Source That Led to Use of C.I.A. Officer's Name

One of the most puzzling aspects of the C.I.A. leak case has had to do with the name of the exposed officer. Why did the syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak identify her as Valerie Plame in exposing her link to the C.I.A. in July 2003 when she had been known for years both at the agency and in her personal life by her married name, Valerie Wilson?

Mr. Novak offered a possible explanation for the disconnect on Monday, suggesting in his column that he could have obtained Ms. Wilson's maiden name from the directory Who's Who in America, which used that name in identifying her as the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador.

Mr. Novak did not explicitly cite the directory as his source. Nor was this his first public reference to the Who's Who listing. In a column in October 2003, three months after he had first disclosed Ms. Wilson's name and her role, Mr. Novak cited the published listing as evidence that Ms. Wilson's identity was "no secret."

But in drawing renewed attention to the published listing, Mr. Novak seemed to suggest more directly than ever before that the scrutiny that has focused on which of his sources provided him the name might have been misplaced, and that he might well have figured it out by himself.   

He did not cite it as his source, he has mentioned this before - just what is the news hook, Ms. Kornblut?

I can certainly identify her problem - Ms. Kornblut is struggling with the "Not Reported Here" syndrome that vexes the Times on occasion.  Robert Novak was responding to a story broken last week in the WaPo; as a proper Timeswoman, Ms. Kornblut is obliged to head off on an unexpected tangent, rather than focus on the main story broken elsewhere.  The main story, of course, was that the CIA press spokesperson said Novak was warned not to publish; Bob Somerby had thoughts, as did I.

But even with the limited goal of heading down a blind alley, Ms. Kornblut takes a wrong turn.  Let's imagine for a moment that she has identified the central issue - did Novak get Ms. Wilson's name from a "Who's Who", as he "hints"?  Well, Josh Marshall correctly notes that this hint is at odds with Novak's own statement from July 2003 - "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me.  They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

And I will add this - the Times has plenty of big-time reporters.  It should have been easy enough for Ms. Kornblut to rustle up quotes from William Safire and others opining on what *they* might do if they were in Novak's hypothetical shoes.  If, for example, Mr. Safire had looked up a name in "Who's Who", would his ethical obligation to conceal his source oblige him only to "suggest" that, or might he feel free to come right out and say so? 

In a better story, Ms. Kornblut would get a few reporters to opine on whether Novak's coyness about using "Who's Who" makes sense in terms of normal journalistic practice.  Maybe reporters like to play at being The Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz; maybe any self-respecting reporter would be mortified to admit that occasionally their heralded investigative journalism amounts to opening a reference book.  I don't know - and after reading her article, I still don't know.

MORE:  FWIW, I don't think "Who's Who" is where Novak got the name - I'm guessing that someone heard the story about "Wilson's wife" and looked her up.  Of course, Ms. Kornblut does not mention that Wilson gave his wife's maiden name in his on-line bio, either.

BONUS - the good news about this Kornblut "coverage" is that it allows the Times to slide past the point that Novak discussed his "outing" column with a CIA spokesperson before publishing.  The relevant phrase from Novak's original column - "The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him" - has yet to appear in the NY Times.

IRRESISTIBLE CHEAP SHOT:  When Josh Marshall play tennis, does he play on both sides of the net?  Look, either Ms. Plame's *name* is significant, or her association with the CIA is significant.  But since anyone can get her name quite easily, once they know "Wilson's wife is with the CIA", I would argue that her name, per se, is not important.

And Josh Marshall would agree with me - sometimes.  However, within the same post, I see these two points:

(a) The disclosure was identifying Wilson's wife as a CIA operative, not that he had a wife, which needless to say was not a state secret.

(b)  Many have also speculated that Plame/Wilson was identified by the name 'Plame' precisely to cause the most damage to her career and the clandestine networks she had been involved in, since this was name she'd used through most of her career.

In other words, there's a very clear potential motive for referring to her by her maiden name. It's not a meaningless distinction.

Sure, if the bad guys lacked access to Who's Who and the internet, there would be an extra dose of malice in releasing her maiden name.  Otherwise, as Josh sometimes seems to think, there is not.  Well, the "many" who have so speculated includes Joe Wilson himself, so this may just represent covering fire.

Or maybe - could the Evildoers who knew she was covert *and* dug up her maiden name have been unaware of the Who's Who and internet resources?  Sure, that makes sense...

MORE:  Save JeraLynn Merritt's Hair!  As part of our ongoing service to various bloggers, let's note that Ms. TalkLeft was making this point about Novak's non-disclosure yesterday.  Fortunately, the Times was on it...

The Extraordinary Reach (And Foresight) Of The NeoCons

The Times reveals the extraordinary power of the neocons, in this shocking tale of truth-telling and abuse at the CIA:

The Central Intelligence Agency was told by an informant in the spring of 2001 that Iraq had abandoned a major element of its nuclear weapons program, but the agency did not share the information with other agencies or with senior policy makers, a former C.I.A. officer has charged.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court here in December, the former C.I.A. officer, whose name remains secret, said that the informant told him that Iraq's uranium enrichment program had ended years earlier and that centrifuge components from the scuttled program were available for examination and even purchase.

The officer, an employee at the agency for more than 20 years, including several years in a clandestine unit assigned to gather intelligence related to illicit weapons, was fired in 2004.

In his lawsuit, he says his dismissal was punishment for his reports questioning the agency's assumptions on a series of weapons-related matters. Among other things, he charged that he had been the target of retaliation for his refusal to go along with the agency's intelligence conclusions.

Punished how, you wonder?

In court documents, the former officer says that he learned in 2003 that he was the subject of a counterintelligence investigation and accused of having sex with a female contact, a charge he denies. Eight months after learning of the investigation, he said in the court documents, the agency's inspector general's office informed him that he was under investigation for diverting to his own use money earmarked for payments to informants. He denies that, too.

Wow.  So in the spring of 2001, well before 9/11, the neocons knew this guy was trouble, and eventually managed to co-opt the CIA into trumping up a sexual harassment case, a counterintelligence case, and an embezzlement case against him.  Yet all they could manage with Ms. Plame was a leak of her name?  How the mighty had fallen.

Oh, and how do I know it is the evil neocons?  Well, his lawyer practically said so:

The former officer's lawyer, Roy W. Krieger, said he could not discuss his client's claims. He likened his client's situation to that of Valerie Wilson, also known as Valerie Plame, the clandestine C.I.A. officer whose role was leaked to the press after her husband publicly challenged some administration conclusions about Iraq's nuclear ambitions. (The former officer and Ms. Wilson worked in the same unit of the agency.)

"In both cases, officials brought unwelcome information on W.M.D. in the period prior to the Iraq invasion, and retribution followed," said Mr. Krieger, referring to weapons of mass destruction.

I assume that the folks at Kos will be all over this (and my audition for Kos-diarist is ending... now.)

Novak Is Back

Bob Novak is back, defending himself from the criticism launched by former CIA press spokesperson Bill Harlow in last week's WaPo.

A reprise of our earlier thoughts, from the Table Pounding Finish - superficially, the Harlow/Novak dispute looks like an insoluble "he said/he said" problem.  However, this sort of debacle - a nationally syndicated columnist ignores a clear warning from the CIA press office and outs a covert agent - does not happen every day, or even every decade.

In any proper bureaucracy, a miscommunication of this magnitude would have produced a mountain of memos.  Since (per Wilson's book, "The Politics of Truth") his wife had been warned on July 8 that Novak was pursuing this story, she or her superior should have written a CYA memo to the press office warning them to deal with this with vigor and commitment.  The press office should have made plans to contact Novak's editor and/or publisher if Novak was unwilling to cooperate.

The press office also should have conducted an after-the-fact review, generating poetic What Went Wrong, and How We Can Improve memos.  And there should be a memo explaining their evident failure to contact Novak's editors - I say "evident" based on the comments of Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of the WaPo, and Steve Huntley, editorial page editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, as reported by Howard Kurtz in Sept 2003.

Presumably, Fitzgerald has gathered all this material, if it exists.  However, a reporter might want to verify with Harlow that such a memo-blizzard actually occurred, or let him regale us with an explanation of why it did not.

Novak also reminds us of an earlier puzzle:

There never was any question of me talking about Mrs. Wilson "authorizing." I was told she "suggested" the mission, and that is what I asked Harlow. His denial was contradicted in July 2004 by a unanimous Senate Intelligence Committee report. The report said Wilson's wife "suggested his name for the trip."

Well, fine.  The puzzle is that, in his e-mail describing his exchange with Rove, Matt Cooper of TIME used the word "authorized":

Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip."

Well, it seems to be accepted that Rove was Novak's second source, and didn't say much beyond "I heard that, too".  However, it is interesting that Novak's first source had it right.  When time permits, I want to stare at the stories about the INR memo and see how that memo is reported to have characterized her involvement.  Here is the WSJ, Oct 2003; Times, July 16; the WaPo, July 16; the WSJ, July 19; and the WaPo, July 21 (The Sign of the 'S').  For starters.

MORE:  After some preliminary staring, I will say, "Inconclusive, but..." - the memo is based on the notes of the INR chap at the famous meeting described in the Senate Subcommittee on Intelligence report.  Even the aggressive Senators did not infer that Ms. Plame "authorized" the trip, and it appears, from the Oct 2003 description of the memo, that the INR analyst did not think she had.  My guess - the INR memo had her "suggesting", not "authorizing" the trip, and Novak's first source was familiar (directly or indirectly) with the memo.

And Rove?  Maybe Cooper or Rove conflated two ideas - "Cheney did not authorize Wilson's trip, his wife suggested it and the CIA approved it" - became condensed by Rove or Cooper to "she authorized it".

Rove notwithstanding, Cooper was closer to the truth in his TIME article, saying that "These officials have suggested that she was involved in her husband's being dispatched Niger to investigate...".  Poor Karl - no one believes him.

MAYBE IT'S A 'BOB' THING: Bob Somerby of the Daily Howler comes out swinging on behalf of Bob Novak, with a follow-up.

TIME on Plame

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

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

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

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

Well, that is quite a fair-use excerpt.

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

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

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

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

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

MORE:  Irish telepathy.

Scuffle In The Big Tent

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

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

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

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

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

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

And this, about Giuliani, we love:

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

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

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

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

What If?

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