JustOneMinute

'Hubris' - Interesting Odds And Ends

I have skimmed through 'Hubris', the new Isikoff/Corn book covering the WMD intelligence war between the White House and the CIA, with a special eye to picking out tidbits related to the Plame case.

What I present below may, to the casual reader, read more like crossword puzzle clues than actual English-language communuication.  But for the truly committed Plamaniacs, this should be interesting.

1.  You can't make this stuff up: when Richard Armitage needed a personal lawyer in 1989, he hired.. drumroll, please... I. Lewis Libby. (p. 242)

Add Armitage's signature on the 1998 PNAC letter to Clinton calling for the liberation of Iraq, and what have you got?  Folks looking for a grand Cheney-Libby-Armitage conspiracy will feast (or at least get enough sustenance to Keep Hope Alive.)  [OK, why didn't Armitage sign the May 1998 letter to Gingrich/Lott?]

2. The Vanity Fair article describing the circumstances under which Nick Kristof first met Joe Wilson and learned his Niger story had a vague pronoun reference when it reported that Wilson met for breakfast with Kristof and his wife in May 2003. (Whose wife? Ms. Kristof is also a journalist). But yes, Valerie was at the conference that weekend when Nick and Joe got together.

3. There is NO mention of Robert Grenier telling Libby about Ms. Plame in June; in fact, there is no appearance of Grenier in the index. C'mon, that is in the indictment for heaven's sake (Grenier is the Senior CIA official); surely an investigative reporter can find that:

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.

The deeply-informed "Jeff" has also pointed out that Grenier's name is missing from an Aug 2004 affidavit by Fitzgerald (although Grenier may well have been covert in 2004).  Grenier is no longer with the CIA, so why the secrecy, or confusion, or whatever it is?  Grenier (Wikipedia) was a senior CIA officer in Pakistan on 9/11 and led the Iraq Issue group thereafter, so one might think he should be a part of this story.

4   I will be available for autographs at a secure undisclosed location - John Maguire is a CIA covert operator and a star of the book (I first appear on p. 4).  OK, he is no relation, or at least he has never told me so (maybe its a "covert" thing), but that won't be my story at cocktail parties.

5. The anti-semitism thing with Libby and Matthews ought to strike people as quite odd. (p. 267) Per this account, 'It's always "Libby and Wolfowitz and Perle" ' said Libby, according to Russert. And, still per Russert, that was it - Russert listened to the "Matthews is an anti-semite" tirade and then called Neal Shapiro, his boss, to advise him of an incoming complaint.

I agree with the point that, although Russert will surely remember the memorable tirade (tautology watch) he could easily forget whatever he offered as useless and ineffectual spluttering.  And maybe he mumbled somethign about Wilson's wife, just as Libby said.

6.  File a Missing Person report for Andrea Mitchell, who appears in the story and the index but in a pale and ghostly fashion that diminishes her importance.  Let me help by recycling this:

...Briefly, in late June Ms. Mitchell had a scoop from State about the misplaced INR dissent (on Saddam's nuclear aspirations) in the NIE; she sat in for Russert and interviewed Joe Wilson on the July 6 'Meet The Press'; on July 8, she told the world that CIA sources told her that Wilson was sent by low-level CIA "operatives" (a word later used by Novak, to great controversy); on July 20, she had a public spat with Richard Armitage, who was no longer returning her phone calls; and on Sept 26 she broke the news of the CIA criminal referral of the Plame case.

And of course, there was her famous Oct 3, 2003 response that prior to Novak's column it was "widely known" amongst the journalists covering the Niger story that Wilson's wife was with the CIA.  She has since disavowed that.

Put it together, and we have a reporter who was working this story and was almost surely in contact with a guy at State who leaked the Plame news to others.  *OBVIOUSLY* that does not mean Armitage gave it to her, or that she mentioned it to Tim Russert, but it does suggest that Russert may have a reason for his careful denials.

7. 1x2x6=0:  The 1x2x6 story (One Administration whistleblower tells the Mike Allen of the WaPo that two White House told the "Wilson and wife" story to six reporters) gets trashed.  The key passage from the WaPo, which for a while framed the Fitzgerald investigation:

Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife.

Emphasis added - in brief, an editor added "before Novak's column ran" to clarify the prose, but had misinterpreted what reporter Mike Allen was trying to say.  Apparently the early morning edition of that day's paper are now a Plame Collector's Classic, because they ran "clean" [i.e., without the editor's addition of "before].  In fact, some of the "Six" were contacted after Novak's column ran.  Calling attention to a published story that whacks a critic may be hardball, and it may not be done for the purest of motives, but it is not a crime to exhort reporters to read the newspaper.

'Hubris' also notes that the following day the "senior administration official" was downgraded to an "administration aide", and tell us that the WaPo discussed running a correction but figured, why bother.

And who was the "One"?  In a July 2005 reprise of the Plame story Mike Allen revised his source to be a "senior White House official"; per Isikoff/Corn, Adam Levine of the press office had repeated contacts with Allen the day before the story broke and thinks he may be the "One". 

That said, Levine did not use the word "revenge", which provided the juicy quote from the original story:

"Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak.

However, even that was not so clear and subsequent stories back-pedaled from that - by Oct 12, the motive was as "pushback":    

That same week, two top White House officials disclosed Plame's identity to least six Washington journalists, an administration official told The Post for an article published Sept. 28. The source elaborated on the conversations last week, saying that officials brought up Plame as part of their broader case against Wilson.

"It was unsolicited," the source said. "They were pushing back. They used everything they had."

Anyway, there is your Washington math - 1x2x6=0.

[AND YET: The WaPo does not retreat even in the July 2005 version:

But in late September, a senior White House official was quoted as telling The Post at least six reporters had been told of Plame before Novak's column, "purely and simply out of revenge."

They had plenty of time to back-pedal, although I suppose folks might have noticed.]

8.  Armitage critics have pointed out that Bob Woodward claimed to have approached him in 2004 and early 2005 about the Niger/Wilson trip.  Why, they wonder, did Armitage only remember his own leak to Woodward after the indictment of Libby in October 2005?

Per 'Hubris', Woodward's approaches were cut off in the first sentence by Armitage with something like "Don't go there or I'm hanging up".  (Hey, it's tough out there for an access journalist).  So both Armitage and Woodward are covered - Armitage thought he was ducking a chat about his own role in the Novak leak, and was not reminded about his Woodward leak until Bob persisted following Libby's indictment and Fitzgerald's claim in the press conference that Libby was the first official known to have leaked.

UPDATE:  I'm Off Topic and hijacking my own post, but the news that Marty Peretz of The New Republic is backing the Libby Defense Trust merits a link to his old blast at Wilson.

 

 

Whose Got 'Hubris'? Not The Humble (And Puzzled) Chris Matthews

Whose got 'Hubris', the new book by Isikoff and Corn about the intel war between the White House and the CIA?

They broke the "news" that Armitage was Novak's source, but I have been advised that they also confirm the story first reported by Mickey Kaus - when Libby called Tim Russert to complain about Chris Matthews he accused Matthews of anti-semitism.  Chris Matthews is currently ducking this story because it is "so complicated", but let's review this under-publicized piece of the puzzle; over to Mickey:

Mystery Solved? kf thinks it has resolved the mystery of what NBC is hiding about the crucial Russert/Libby telephone conversation of July 10, 2003...

Here's one answer: 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.

Contacted late Sunday night, Matthews said, "I don't know. Tim never told me that. I never heard that. I just don't know. I don't want to be in the position of telling you about a phone conversation I was not a party to. ... You've got your source." He suggested that I call Russert.

Matthews added, however, that Catherine Martin, an aide in the vice president's office, once told him that "Scooter thinks anytime anybody uses the word 'neoconservative' it's anti-Semitic."

"I'm sorry. It's an ideological term," Matthews said.

I called Russert's office this morning. They referred me to an NBC spokeswoman who emailed, "I do not speak for Mr. Libby, therefore I cannot comment on what Mr. Libby may or may not have said." That makes no sense at all, because I was asking about what Russert himself heard from Libby, and Russert could certainly speak for Russert. But that was NBC's response. ...

I had my own heavily caveatted suggestion as to what that might mean - briefly, maybe Libby tabbed both Chris Matthews and Joe Wilson as anti-semites for the same reason, in which case, Libby has a "Get Joe" motive and Cheney might have a "Lone Gunman" alibi.

Justin Raimondo had thoughts as well.

So why do we care today?  Well, the book is out, and Chris Matthews himself is in the news with this:

Matthews: Plame Story Too Complicated to Cover Now

...One of the biggest media figures boycotting the Plame story has been MSNBC host Chris Matthews who has yet to mention the scandal at all since the Armitage report broke, a dramatic contrast to the 27 times he mentioned the "scandal" in the five months leading up to it.

Like P.J. Gladnick, I couldn't help but notice Matthews's strange flip. So I decided to ask him about it. His answer revealed an animus toward Vice President Dick Cheney and a fear of being asked to answer tough questions himself.

...Q: ...Why not invite one of [Joe Wilson's] representatives or defenders on the show?

A: Well, the story's just gotten so complicated. I mean, it's just such a mess. Because what if it's true that Armitage was the source, but those other guys [presumably Rove and Scooter Libby], also were leakers, what then?

It's pretty complicated, Chris - maybe more so than you are letting on.

Armitage Speaks!

Richard Armitage received permission from Special Counsel Fitzgerald to discuss his role in the Plame investigation.  Armitage granted an interview to reporters from the NY Times, CBS News, and the McClatchy Newspapers. 

The circumstances of the Plame leak were this, from CBS:

"At the end of a wide-ranging interview he asked me, 'Why did the CIA send Ambassador (Wilson) to Africa?' I said I didn't know, but that she worked out at the agency," Armitage says.

Armitage says he told Novak because it was "just an offhand question." "I didn't put any big import on it and I just answered and it was the last question we had," he says.

Armitage adds that while the document was classified, "it doesn't mean that every sentence in the document is classified.

"I had never seen a covered agent's name in any memo in, I think, 28 years of government," he says.

He adds that he thinks he referred to Wilson's wife as such, or possibly as "Mrs. Wilson." He never referred to her as Valerie Plame, he adds.

"I didn't know the woman's name was Plame. I didn't know she was an operative," he says.

OK.  We can score a big "We told you so" about how unlikely it would be to see a covered agent's name bandied about in a memo (barring an error, as happened here.)

Why did Armitage keep quiet?

Armitage says he didn't come forward because "the special counsel, once he was appointed, asked me not to discuss this and I honored his request."

Hmm.  That leaves the October to December period open.  An excellent guess is that Armitage was attempting to cooperate with the investigation and the investigators asked him to remain silent while they did their job.

MORE, including my defense of Armitage, soon...

BRIEFLY:  Should Armitage have come forward in the fall of 2003 and nipped this scandal in the bud?  Critics and investigators were looking for two sources for Novak's column; had Armitage identified himself, maintaining the secret that Rove was Novak's second source might have been politically impossible.

Instead, one might argue (I did at the time), the criminal investigation allowed the Administration to conceal everything behind the legal process.  Was this a clever Rove manipulation or foolish Democratic strategist over-reach?  Why choose?!?

Well.  I have my doubts about the Armitage story, and about the thoroughness of the Fitzgerald investigation - the examples of Andrea Mitchell and Judy Miller are noted above.

[This was apparently a "Now you see it, now you don't" addendum, but if you are reading this, the Armitage defense is back.]

ABC's "The Path To 9/11"

ABC's controversial "documentary" about 9/11 seems to be on the same path as "The Reagans" and "Stolen Honor".

When Metaphors Attack!

Mark Coffey barks at the firedogs.

But seriously, folks - congrats to Marcy Wheeler of the Next Hurrah for her book deal, and as we say in the Kingdom, have fun luck storming the castle!

NY Times Editors Go Insane

The Valerie Plame case has claimed another victim - the editors of the NY Times have lost their minds.

Their latest editorial calls on Special Counsel Fitzgerald to put or or shut up [in a "WHILE THE TIMES PASSES THE TIME" update, we exhort the Times to do the same]:

Last week, it was reported that Richard Armitage, then deputy secretary of state, was the first to mention Valerie Wilson to Mr. Novak, and that the federal prosecutor knew this more than two and a half years ago.     The revelation tells us something important. But, unfortunately, it is not the answer to the central question in the investigation — whether there was an organized attempt by the White House to use Mrs. Wilson to discredit or punish her husband, Joseph Wilson.

...

Mr. Armitage, a White House outsider, would be an odd participant in such a plot. He is said to have learned from a State Department memo that Mrs. Wilson had recommended sending her husband to check the Niger story since he had worked there as a diplomat. The memo was prepared for Mr. Cheney, who was eager to prove that there was an Iraqi nuclear weapons program and to silence critics.

It’s conceivable that Patrick Fitzgerald, the federal prosecutor, has evidence that suggests the information in the memo was used in some illegal manner. Or his investigators may have learned something troubling about the second, unknown, source cited in Mr. Novak’s column, or about some other illegal activity. But whatever it is needs to be made public. The Armitage story is mainly a reminder that this investigation has gone on too long.

...It’s time for Mr. Fitzgerald to provide answers or admit that this investigation has run its course.

Oh, stop - Labor Day officially kicked off the fall election season so now the Times wants Fitzgerald to hand a gift to one party or the other?  Why couldn't they have written this editorial in mid-June following the All-Clear For Karl announcement?  It is not as if the Armitage story is driving this, since, as the Times noted, "In recent months... Mr. Armitage’s role had become clear to many".

Look, if Fitzgerald is about to indict someone, fine, bring it on  (pigs may fly, IMHO).  But does the Times really expect him to send out a press release saying "I am ever-so-close to some Really Big Indictments, but I'm Not Quite There"?  Republicans would howl, and rightly so.

Or should the Special Counsel stage an "ally-ally-in-come free" press conference sometime soon?  Dems will wonder why that couldn't have waited until after the election; some will wonder why Fitzgerald could not have been a bit more forthcoming in the fall of 2004, when news that Libby and Rove were under the microscope might have swung the election.

Well.  The Times has certainly handed the Bush Administration a gift.  With the NY Times providing cover, shouldn't AG Gonzalez ask Fitzgerald for an update on his status and plans?  The Public Wants To Know!

And if the prognosis is grim for Cheney et al (it's not), then the Attorney general can exhort Fitzgerald to carry on and maintain his no-leak procedures.

But if the news is good for the Administration, will the Times object to a well-informed highly placed source passing that news along?  How could they?

This editorial is absurd - the Times will just have to wait with the rest of us for this investigation to fizzle out under its own lack of evidence.

BUT WHILE WE WAIT:  Doug Johnston of the Times thought it was over in June:

The decision to decline a prosecution in Mr. Rove's case effectively ends the active investigative phase of Mr. Fitzgerald's inquiry because Mr. Rove was the only person known to still be under active scrutiny.

The WaPo provided a source for that same conclusion:

With Rove's situation resolved, the broader leak investigation is probably over, according to a source briefed on the status of the case. Fitzgerald does not appear to be pursuing criminal charges against former State Department official Richard L. Armitage, who is believed to have discussed the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame with at least one reporter, according to the source.

"I'm not worried about my situation," Armitage said last night on the Charlie Rose television show.

A source briefed on the case said that the activities of Vice President Cheney and his aides were a key focus of the investigation, and that Cheney was not considered a target or primary subject of the investigation and is not likely to become one. There are no other outstanding issues to be investigated, the source said, though new ones could emerge as Fitzgerald continues to prosecute I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, on charges of lying to investigators and a grand jury.

The deeply committed still hold out hope that Libby will strike a deal to rat out Cheney before Bush delivers a pardon; for the rest of us, this is a Dead Case Walking.

ERRATA:  Here are some confidence-undermining points leaving one to wonder if the Times has followed this case:

It’s conceivable that Patrick Fitzgerald, the federal prosecutor, has evidence that suggests the information in the memo was used in some illegal manner. Or his investigators may have learned something troubling about the second, unknown, source cited in Mr. Novak’s column, or about some other illegal activity.

The "second, unknown source"?  Are they talking about Karl Rove, who has been identified in court filings and by Bob Novak himself? I am at sea - all we know about Armitage is that several reporters have sources saying he was the leaker; neither Armitage nor Novak has confirmed that.  On the other hand, Novak has identified Rove.  So don't we "know" Rove is involved?

A second annoying bit of text is here:

A former diplomat, Mr. Wilson debunked the claim that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from Niger to make nuclear weapons.

Well, he debunked the claim that Saddam had succeeded in buying uranium from Niger.  As to the attempt, Christopher Hitchens has been pounding the table about the 1999 trip to Niger by Saddam's nuclear ambassador.

Finally, the Times is factually challenged here (emphasis added):

Mr. Armitage, a White House outsider, would be an odd participant in such a plot. He is said to have learned from a State Department memo that Mrs. Wilson had recommended sending her husband to check the Niger story since he had worked there as a diplomat. The memo was prepared for Mr. Cheney, who was eager to prove that there was an Iraqi nuclear weapons program and to silence critics.

No, the memo was prepared at the request of Marc Grossman of State in response to questions from Libby (and by extension, Cheney); Mr. Grossman wanted a review of the State Department and INR role in the Wilson trip and the Niger-uranium reporting.  As best I know, neither Cheney nor Libby ever saw the memo, although Libby had a meeting with Grossman during which he was orally advised of its contents.

WHILE THE TIMES PASSES THE TIME:  While the Times waits for an accounting from Special Counsel Fitzgerald, perhaps they could deliver a bit of an accounting themselves:

(1) How did the Times fail to disclose, as part of the July 6 Wilson op-ed, that Wilson was working for the Kerry campaign and had changed the "debunked the forgery" story reported by Nick Kristof? Wouldn't that have been valuable to readers attempting to assess his credibility?

2. In all their fulminating about investigating the leak, did the Times ever grill Nick Kristof as to whether Wilson or his wife spilled the beans to Nick?  They all had breakfast together while Joe told his story, so this is not exactly a longshot.

And since we are talking about both a criminal and civil suit, doesn't the public have a right to a bit of a hint as to just how deep the BS is running here? (Aside - Yes, this strikes to the soul of the Times' "Protect our sources" religion, but I'll ask anyway)

3. Why did Times editors lie about just what it was Judy Miller was protecting when she went to jail?  Here is Bill Keller:

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.

Fitzgerald had delivered a subpoena ordering Ms. Miller to describe her contacts with one person, I. Lewis Libby; Times management had reviewed the case with Ms. Miller and her attorneys.  Even if they had not been apprised of his name, surely they understood that there was a name, and just one - the WaPo understood, as did their readers.

Now, when she testified Ms. Miller certainly gave the impression that she had discussed Ms. Plame with more people than just Libby, so she may have been in jail to protect them (that was my Official Editorial Speculation last summer, anyway).  But that is hardly what Bill Keller is discussing here.

Soaking The Spiteful Rich

Jane Galt has been tracking developments in the "Soaking The Spiteful Rich" discussion sparked by this post by Brad DeLong, with follow-ups here and here.  Brad DeLong's position is that the rich engage in conspicuous consumption partly in order to spite the poor; consequently we should have a more progressive income tax to prevent this.  I am not kidding:

I wrote that one reason that America's rich today live the expensive and ostentatious lifestyles they do (rather than spending much more money on charity, or philanthropy) is that it is a way of making other people feel small and unhappy...

And the policy prescription:

The easiest and most important thing the government can do to neutralize the adverse consequences of rising inequality is to make the tax system more progressive, not less. A reality-based government would react to growing pretax inequality by taxing the rich more, and subsidizing the poor more (through policies like the EITC) as well.

Greg Mankiw was too polite to laugh out loud, but he responded with "Are The Rich A Form Of Pollution?" and "Are The Rich Spiteful?".  A flavor:

Reading Brad DeLong's response to a previous post of mine makes me start to think that there is a bigger gulf between my worldview and Brad's than I had ever appreciated. Here is Brad:

I wrote that one reason that America's rich today live the expensive and ostentatious lifestyles they do (rather than spending much more money on charity, or philanthropy) is that it is a way of making other people feel small and unhappy....

Brad seems to see the rich as especially mean and spiteful. I see them as some combination of more talented, hard-working, and lucky than average but otherwise like everyone else.  (Or maybe Brad views everyone as mean and spiteful and the rich as having more opportunities to exercise these vile attributes.) I wonder if our varying perspectives on human nature can partly explain our different positions on public policy.

Eventually Brad DeLong offered a third post billed as a defense of his view:

Ori Heffetz's work has some empirical implications for the spite-vs-envy question...

Uh huh.  Based on the long summary provided, the "empirical implication" is that the rich engage in proportionately more conspicuous consumption than the rest of us, and who can doubt it?  But does this paper offer any support for the '"spite" theory of motivation?  No... so I suppose I can argue that this paper has some empirical implications for the theory that the rich engage in conspicuous consumption to uplift and inspire the poor, and help the poor feel better about the prospects for their children and grandchildren - call it the "Someday this may all be yours" theory.

Of course, it also has empirical implications for the theory that the rich engage in proportionately more conspicuous consumption in order to ward off alien abduction.  Wow, that was a powerful study!

Well.  Lizardbreath at Unfogged cleverly shifts the topic in a post titled "Jane Galt Seems Displeased With Advocates Of Redistribution" - briefly, since it is beyond dispute that income redistribution is a good thing, folks who object to DeLong's specific argument are just being cranky.

I would have said Jane G. is displeased with silly arguments, but she says so herself in a follow-up.  And the second comment at Unfogged is on target:

The discussion of why inequality is bad seems to have gone off the rails in the exchanges that I've been reading. The libertarians were saying egalitarianism was motivated by envy, and then DeLong defended himself by saying that he was motivated by a hatred of spite, which hardly seems like a firm ground for a tax code.

I have not seen any table-pounding defense of the specific spite-motivated progressive tax code advocated by DeLong (as opposed, for example, to consumption and excise taxes on spite-capable goods).  If such defenders are out there, feel free to enlighten the rest of us.  Thanks.

As to my own Official Editorial Position - don't rush me.  My previous thoughts were here, and my quick reaction is this:  I suspect that income inequality is being used as a proxy for other things, such as class and income mobility.  My strong hunch is that if class and income mobility were high, folks would not be too worried about income inequality; conversely, if income inequality were low but our class and income structure was rigid (working class kids don't go to college and end up in working class jobs; neighborhoods are segreagated by class and income) I think people would agree we had a problem despite equal incomes.

My thought - drop the "income inequality" proxy and establish metrics for the variables that represent the "real" problem.  Treating the cause rather than the "income inequality" symptom is more likely to lead to a long term solution, or ta least, a sensible discussion about what it is we are trying to achieve.

SINCE IT MAY NOT BE OBVIOUS:  It may not be obvious, but I happen to think that Brad DeLong is a smart, honest liberal (and we all know the standard position on two out of three).  Just for example. he wrote a fascinating career-killer on the potential problems with a Hillary Administration a while back; on another topic he blew a whistle on his own team in response to my near-endless heckling about a particular point about GDP growth versus corporate profitability.

And look, not every one of his blog posts represent the first draft of a paper intended for publication, especially when that post goes up just before Labor Day weekend.  He floated an idea, people had fun whacking it, that's life.

My secret hope is that he will be goaded into coming back to the question of income inequality.  I am reasonably convinced there is some sort of a problem and it would be interesting to see an analytical framework to think about it.  That said, spite-based economics probably is not it.

Don't Be Fooled Again...

Hugh Hewitt links to Rowan Scarborough's obituary of the Plame "scandal" and has a fun idea:

Perhaps Tom Maguire or some other accomplished Plameologist will provide for us sideliners a convenient scorecard of those whose names ought never to appear in print except as accompanied by the phrase "who was so memorably taken in by Joe Wilson" or "who, it must be remembered, believed deeply in Fitzmas."

Such a list would be long, and the work hard, but what a service to have in one place, easily linked to, a comprehensive listing of the easily fooled.

That sort of project surely appeals to my dark, malicious heart.  Now, I could never do this project justice working alone but, as no one ever said, you're never alone if you are talking the Plame Game at Just One Minute.

So how about it - I bet the regular commenters can come up with a comprehensive list pretty quickly.  I picture at least three categories - politicos, journalists, and bloggers.  But if more categories make sense, speak up.

And a link to the nominees "Best Effort" would be great.

MORE:  I'm stuck - I say "Keith Olbermann" and can't even type for laughing.  Larissa Russkie at Raw Story.  (Or was that Larissa Badenov?  Oh, dear...)

'Hubris' On Valerie Plame's Day Job

David Corn, writing in The Nation, sneak previews the coverage in "Hubris" of Valerie Plame's job at the CIA:

Valerie Wilson was no analyst or paper-pusher. She was an operations officer working on a top priority of the Bush Administration. Armitage, Rove and Libby had revealed information about a CIA officer who had searched for proof of the President's case. In doing so, they harmed her career and put at risk operations she had worked on and foreign agents and sources she had handled.

Another issue was whether Valerie Wilson had sent her husband to Niger to check out an intelligence report that Iraq had sought uranium there. Hubris contains new information undermining the charge that she arranged this trip. In an interview with the authors, Douglas Rohn, a State Department officer who wrote a crucial memo related to the trip, acknowledges he may have inadvertently created a misimpression that her involvement was more significant than it had been.

...

In 1997 [Ms. Plame] returned to CIA headquarters and joined the Counterproliferation Division. (About this time, she moved in with Joseph Wilson; they later married.) She was eventually given a choice: North Korea or Iraq. She selected the latter. Come the spring of 2001, she was in the CPD's modest Iraq branch. But that summer--before 9/11--word came down from the brass: We're ramping up on Iraq. Her unit was expanded and renamed the Joint Task Force on Iraq. Within months of 9/11, the JTFI grew to fifty or so employees. Valerie Wilson was placed in charge of its operations group.

There was great pressure on the JTFI to deliver. Its primary target was Iraqi scientists. JTFI officers, under Wilson's supervision, tracked down relatives, students and associates of Iraqi scientists--in America and abroad--looking for potential sources. They encouraged Iraqi émigrés to visit Iraq and put questions to relatives of interest to the CIA. The JTFI was also handling walk-ins around the world. Increasingly, Iraqi defectors were showing up at Western embassies claiming they had information on Saddam's WMDs. JTFI officers traveled throughout the world to debrief them. Often it would take a JTFI officer only a few minutes to conclude someone was pulling a con. Yet every lead had to be checked.

"We knew nothing about what was going on in Iraq," a CIA official recalled. "We were way behind the eight ball. We had to look under every rock." Wilson, too, occasionally flew overseas to monitor operations. She also went to Jordan to work with Jordanian intelligence officials who had intercepted a shipment of aluminum tubes heading to Iraq that CIA analysts were claiming--wrongly--were for a nuclear weapons program. (The analysts rolled over the government's top nuclear experts, who had concluded the tubes were not destined for a nuclear program.)

Well.  Unlike the Armitage "revalation", this story is not exactly testimony against interest - since it fits beautifully into Corn's preferred story line, we are left to wonder hwo hard he pushed his sources and how heavily he weighted (or discounted) less helpful information.

More later...

MORE:  I'm still reeling - Ms. Plame was a senior officer in the specific CIA group that had spent the spring and summer of 2003 in a peeing contest with Dick Cheney.  Well, I suppose his motive to out her might be greater than we expected.  But guess what - Fitzgerald has investigated that for two years and has no case against Cheney.

And of course, her motive to be part of a politically motivated "Gotcha" game played by the CIA at the expense of the Vice-President is also greater than we expected.

This article does not really help with some outstanding issues, but here we go;

(1) Was Ms. Plame involved with orchestrating Joe Wilson's trip to Niger in 2002?

David Corn must be kidding when he tells us that

Hubris contains new information undermining the charge that she arranged this trip. In an interview with the authors, Douglas Rohn, a State Department officer who wrote a crucial memo related to the trip, acknowledges he may have inadvertently created a misimpression that her involvement was more significant than it had been.

Please - Ms. Plame was head of the JTFI Ops group, had proposed her husband for his 1999 trip to Niger, but was not involved here?  Well, then, why does Libby's indictment include this:

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.

Court filings eventually established that 'senior officer' to be Robert Grenier.  So why was he wrong about this - more bad intel from the CIA?  My guess - Grenier accidentally told the truth; later, the CIA scrubbed their story a bit.  (Gosh, does that mean the CIA might, like, lie?  That is almost like running a covert op...).

(2) Was Ms. Plame covert?  We still don't know - the statutory definition of "covert" requires that her employment is classified (check!) and

who is serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States;

And does "served" mean "formally posted" or is a flight to Europe (or Jordan) on Agency business sufficient?

No one has ever been tried under this statute, so we don't know.  However, I bet some inspired legla researcher could find some relevant case law regarding State Department definitions of "service" that might be relevant.  FWIW Victoria Toensing, who helped draft the law, insists that "served" means "posted", but who knows?

Developing...

THE NON-BARKING DOG:  Per the story, Cheney met with folks from the CIA team.  Well, if he met Valerie Plame professionally, that evidence would have been presented by Fitzgerald, who has strained to come up with anything at all suggesting that Libby knew her status was classified.  So far, he has a warning Libby received *after* Novak's column had been published.

THE "ENFORCED" LEAVE:  Why did Ms. Plame take what the Daily Telegraph described as a unpaid "enforced leave of absence" in June od 2004, which was long after the initial leak drama, long after the birth of her twins, but just before the embarrassing Senate Intelligence Committee report?  Does "Hubris" probe this?  I'll bet!

GET ME ROBERT GRENIER!  If Grenier actually told Libby that Ms. Plame was on the JTFI as head of operations, wouldn't that be quite unforgettable, whether he also mentioned her classified status was disclosed or not?  What did Grenier tell Libby, and how does it impact his "I Forgot" defense?  That asked, Special Counsel Fitzgerald has surely poked at this.

NOT A MONOLITH:  It's worth keeping in mind that the CIA was hardly monolithic on the question of Iraqi WMDs - just offhand, the CIA had "Joe" at WINPAC promoting aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment centrifuges, supported the notion that captured trailers were for mobile bio-weapons labs, and vetted Powell's not-so-good speech to the UN.  Was the CIA sure Saddam had no WMDs? Not a slam dunk!

Actually, Libby's complaint to Judy Miller in the summer of 2003, when the WMDs went missing, was quite different - his view was that the CIA sent over hedged reports before the war, then back-pedaled when the WMDs weren't found.

ALL CONSPIRACIES GET A WHIFF OF OXYGEN:  As noted above, if Ms. Plame was so central to the Iraq effort (as opposed, for example, to manning the CIA's Estonia desk), then all conspiracies get a boost, including this one from an unlikely source - Kevin Drum.   His speculation - the timing of Wilson's leaks and public statements were driven by information held only inside the CIA and passed to him by his wife.

If they were exploiting her classified status and their spousal immunity to embarrass the White House, that's naughty.  Of course, there is no evidence that Fitzgerald ever investigated this, and no likelihood that he will (but that's what the civil suit is for!).

The LA Times Sidles Up To The Plame Drama

The LA Times editors are not happy with the Plame investigation, but they are not as unhappy as the WaPo last week.  We are live from LA:

THE VALERIE PLAME AFFAIR, which once seemed like a political morality play, has morphed into a dark comedy of errors. One more scene remains to be enacted — the criminal trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney — but it would have been better for all concerned if the curtain had been brought down on this drama long ago.

...Libby is facing trial, and Wilson and Plame can continue to argue that there was a coordinated effort to impugn him by bringing her into the controversy over Niger and uranium. But the disclosure that it was Armitage who mentioned Plame's role to Novak — before Rove confirmed it — muddies the story line of a malicious outing of a covert agent. What's more, it seems that Fitzgerald knew of Armitage's role before he initiated the elaborate investigation that eventually resulted in not only the Libby indictment but also the jailing of former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who had refused to reveal her sources.

Some supporters of the administration are gloating over the disclosure of Armitage's role, suggesting that it shows Fitzgerald was on a witch hunt. Some are demanding a presidential pardon for Libby. That's premature, and it's worth recalling that Libby is accused of something serious: lying to federal investigators. Still, the latest twists and turns in the Plame-Wilson affair make us wish that we had been right when we observed, almost exactly three years ago, that "no one should count on catching the leaker, at least in a legally airtight manner."

David Frum does a much better job of gloating in an AEI piece - he bashes Joe Wilson and the CIA but not Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, which strikes me as a reasonable mix. 

Personally, I have a couple of problems with Fitzgerald - I think he embraced the framing of the case as presented by Wilson and Corn and investigated a White House conspiracy rather than the leak of Valerie Plame's CIA affiliation.  Had he done the latter, he almost surely would have discovered the Armitage leak to Bob Woodward in October 2003, when Armitage came forward with news of his leak to Novak [Except Fitzgerald didn't have the case yet - D'oh!  Still, he re-interviewed Armitage and got his grand jury testimony, so he had plenty of opportunity to ask the right questions].  That might then have prompted Fitzgerald to investigate whether Armitage or anyone else at State leaked to other reporters (Since Andrea Mitchell covered State and was on this story, it bothers me that she has never been queried by investigators, unless she was - her story changed on this, as well as on whether Ms. Plame's CIA affiliation was "widely known".)

My second problem with Fitzgerald is that his press conference announcing the Libby indictment was a disgrace.  Let me pick out one point:

Valerie Wilson's cover was blown in July 2003. The first sign of that cover being blown was when Mr. Novak published a column on July 14th, 2003.

But Mr. Novak was not the first reporter to be told that Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson, Ambassador Wilson's wife Valerie, worked at the CIA. Several other reporters were told.

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.

Mr. Fitzgerald should have stopped right there and emphasized that due to Department of Justice guidelines that prevented him from hauling reporters into court and water-boarding them for the truth, his investigation was quite incomplete.  if Libby was the first official "known" to have leaked (eventually, Libby lost that honor to the Armitage-Woodward leak) it was in large part because not many reporters had been grilled.

Wasting A Little Time On Greenwald And "Booman"

Glenn Greenwald has another hyperbolic rant up, and the Booman Tribune lauds it.  The topic is the upcoming debate on bills in the House and Senate to address the NSA warrantless surveillance program.  This is from Greenwald:

...the Republicans will attempt to exploit this debate by advancing two factually false claims:

Falsehood # 1: the debate is about whether the President can eavesdrop on Al Qaeda and other terrorists;

Falsehood # 2: "most Americans" support warrantless eavesdropping.

Whether Republicans get away with these two factually false claims depends on whether journalists do their jobs by pointing out that these claims are false (not unpersuasive, but false).

Yeah, yeah - we are getting to the question of just how false they are.  Greenwald than takes to task Jonathan Weisman of the WaPo for writing this:

A bill to clarify the legality of the NSA's wiretapping without court warrants will also force Democrats to choose between a liberal base that believes the program is an unconstitutional breach of civil rights and a majority of Americans who back the effort.

Greenwald then provides a batch of links to pols intended to expose this vicious, evil, smearing, vicious, evil lie.  The Booman applauds:

Maybe the Washington Post and Mr. Weisman don't allow their reporters to use Google, and so Mr. Weisman was simply unaware of these poll results.

The WaPo doesn't use Google?  It's a possibility!  But it is also pretty clear that, like most of Greenwald's readers, the Booman did not vex himself with actually following the links.  My impression is that the Reality-Based Community can only handle their reality in itty-bitty doses.

Well, here is a big, steaming cup of Smell The Coffee!  From the links provided by Greenwald:

Quinnipiac:
By a 76 - 19 percent margin, American voters say the government should continue monitoring phone calls or e-mail between suspected terrorists in other countries and people in the U.S., according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today.  But voters say 55 - 42 percent that the government should get court orders for this surveillance.

Gee, 76% support attempts to monitor terrorists phone calls; I suppose that could support Jonathan Weisman's claim that "a majority of Americans... back the effort" and would like to see some sort of compromise worked out.

Or let's cut to the ACLU.  Their lead was that "A majority of voters want Congress to “demand that the warrantless eavesdropping be stopped because it is illegal.”

However, folks who actually check the poll results will find that the form of the question matters; respondents disapprove of "warrantless eavesdropping on overseas phone calls" by 54-44 but they approve of "warrantless eavesdropping on overseas phone calls to catch terrorists" by 57-41.  That suggests a majority favors "the effort", just as the WaPo says.

That is probably enough reality for one day.

Timing Is Everything

Greg Mankiw endorses the suggestion of the WaPo's Sebastian Mallaby the the mortgage interest deduction is an upper-class subsidy whose time has passed.

Ahhh!  However good an idea this is (and with a long phases-in to avoid jolting folks, I have no problem with it), the timing is awful, since we may very well be on the verge of a real-estate bust.

And this WaPo story does not exactly suggest that now is the time for this policy initiative:

'Mortgage Moms' May Star in Midterm Vote
With Wages Stagnant and Debt Growing, Democrats See an Opportunity

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Chris Cillizza
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 5, 2006; A01

BURLINGTON, Ky. -- Life is cramped at the Condit household. Dale and Sharon Condit and their two young sons need more room but can't seem to sell their current home -- on the market now for three months.

In a year when politics is being roiled by angry debates over the Iraq war and immigration, it might seem odd to imagine the midterm elections being waged over square footage and closet space. But these are parts of a lifestyle that Sharon Condit, a deputy clerk of court, describes as dogged by a sense of limits: "We have dreams of this future, but we can't get it right now."

Had we been eerily prescient we would have tackled this *before* the latest real-estate boom, so that price gains caused by other factors could have offset any loss in value associated with this tax reform.  Now?  This has gone from politically tough to politically suicidal.

MORE ON SPITE AND ENVY:  Brad DeLong had a post which Greg Mankiw and Jane Galt both interpreted as arguing that the problem with income inequality was that it prompted the poor to envy the rich, and that net societal welfare could be increased by, for example, a progressive income tax that reduced envy-inducing wealth.

After being called on this, Brad DeLong then argued, in "Making 'em Feel Small", that he had been mis-understood:

I wrote that one reason that America's rich today live the expensive and ostentatious lifestyles they do (rather than spending much more money on charity, or philanthropy) is that it is a way of making other people feel small and unhappy:

...

[Greg Mankiw] misses the import of the phrase "conspicuous consumption." It's not the hard work and entrepreneurship that is to be discouraged. Make inventions, build enterprises, donate money for hospitals and libraries--that is all extremely meritorious and praiseworthy. It's the conspicuous consumption that is the problem.

Surely spite is at least as offensive an other-regarding preference as envy, isn't it? Surely public policy should weigh the spite-generated utility the rich gain from their conspicuous consumption as worth less than nothing, shouldn't it?

This post (and the first) prompted a reader revolt for a few reasons:

- status seeking behavior is common across all income classes, cultures and even animal species.

- much status seeking behavior is oriented towards impressing one's peers, not one's "lessers".  Just for example, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Waren Buffet all have private jets.  per the DeLong theyr, a part of the satisfaction they gain from having these jets is their knowledge that it makes the rest of us envious.

So quick - what type of jet do each of these three guys fly - are they in top of the line Gulfstreams, converted Boeings, or what?

I doubt that one person in a hundred knows.  So just how is it that Gates, Ellison, and Buffet are enjoying our envy when we don't even know what we ought to be envious of?

The obvious answer - Larry Ellison knows darn well what Bill Gates is flying, and vice versa.  And each of them wants to impress the other with his toy collection.  However, very few of the rest of us ever enter into this competion, even as spectators.

A second element of the reader revolt was the subtle point that even if a rich person sets out to spite a poorer one, it is only the reaction of the poorer one that creates a net loss of societal utility.

For example, I could, I suppose, done an orange fright wig and dance down Main Street shouting "Flee before my majesty, working class minions! Fall down before my fine country wig!"  And it may be that, while I dance and yell, I am the happiest guy in America.

Now, although I lack empirical data, I'll bet that not many folks will feel diminshed by my performance.  So, in the deLong framework, my spiteful behavior ought to represent a net societal gain - I am happier, and no one elese is worse off.

But suppose I swap the fright wig for an expensive cigar.  Now, maybe someone will actually think, gee, that guy looks like a real hitter brandishing that expensive stogy; I feel so... small.

Per DeLong, society now has a problem.  But note - the problem is not my behavior; the problem is the reaction of others to my behavior.  Which means that DeLong's position distills to the notion that some forms of envy are so well-justified that they ought to form the basis for public policy.

Now, some might argue that DeLong addressed that with this rhetorical question:

Surely public policy should weigh the spite-generated utility the rich gain from their conspicuous consumption as worth less than nothing?

Surely not - if the behavior is private(i.e., not conspicuous) society should not have an issue; if the bahavior is a pleasant but failed attempt to create envy, I have a hard time seeing why it should be banned.  Only behaviors which evoke an envious response are problematic, which leads us back to envy as the basis for public policy.

Yet another strand of the reader revolt amounted to, hunt with a rifle rather than a tactical nuclear device.  DeLong called for a progressive income tax as a solution to the "problem" of spiteful behavior by the rich.  Why not a consumption tax on the envy-producing items?  Who knows - maybe all of "the rich" are so annoying in so many different ways that only a broad attack can keep them at bay.

My guess - Delong is just trying out an argument to which he has not given a great deal of thought, and it is not developing well (In his latest stab, he posts a paper documenting that "the rich" spend proportionately more on status-seeking items.  Uh huh.  Does this also document anything at all about their motivation?  Didn't think so.)

Let's give the near-final word to DeLong and Krugman, from back in 2005:

To the extent that goods are valued not for the services they provide by themselves but as indices of exclusivity, it is pointless to produce them for more people because then they become less exclusive and so less valuable. Paul Krugman, for example, has placed himself on Orwell’s side: he would rather be middle-class in the fifties than working poor in the nineties-—even though the material standard of living of America's working poor in 1990 is higher than that of America's middle class in 1950. He: 

know[s] quite a few academics who have nice houses, two cars, and enviable working conditions, yet are disappointed and bitter because they have never received a [job] offer from Harvard and will probably not get a Nobel Prize. The live very well... but they judge themselves relative to their reference group, and so they feel deprived. And on the other hand, it is an open secret that the chief payoff from being really rich is, as Tom Wolfe once put it, the pleasure of "seeing ‘em jump." Privilege is not merely a means to other ends, it is an end in itself.

"They feel deprived" relative to "their reference group".  Nothing at all about how someone outside their reference group is tormenting them with displays of wealth, so that their sense of deprivation is not "their" fault at all.

Dems To Take House - Real Thing, or Summer Fling?

The NY Times ends a rainy Labor Day weekend with a headline designed to cheer their readership:

G.O.P. Seen to Be in Peril of Losing House

 

By ROBIN TONER and KATE ZERNIKE

 

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 — After a year of political turmoil, Republicans enter the fall campaign with their control of the House in serious jeopardy, the possibility of major losses in the Senate, and a national mood so unsettled that districts once considered safely Republican are now competitive, analysts and strategists in both parties say.

Sixty-five days before the election, the signs of Republican vulnerability are widespread.

   

Time will tell.  However, let me pick on one detail - the Times coverage of the impact of high gasoline prices on the electoral outlook:

In the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll, just 29 percent said the country was headed in the right direction, a measure of national pessimism that rivals the 26 percent who felt that way in October 1994. The war in Iraq, the price of gas and a sense of economic unease all play roles, analysts say.

And a bit later:

Democrats will be pushing hard to remind voters of the big picture, and their frustrations with it. In southeastern Indiana, Baron Hill, a Democrat who is trying to reclaim the Congressional seat he lost two years ago to Representative Mike Sodrel, held an event at a gas station where he pumped fuel at a 2004 price, $1.80, rather than $2.79.

“People are angry,” Mr. Hill said. “They want to know why we’re paying $3 a gallon and Congress is giving tax breaks to oil companies.”

Mr. Hill is making the right point - if oil companies need tax incentives for production even with $70 crude, we have other problems.

However, there is a slight wind at the Republicans back which the Times does not mention - gasoline prices typically peak during the summer driving season and then drop.  This illusory progress may help the Reps come November  (The next official outlook is due out on Sept 12).

Meanwhile the NY Times Election Guide breaks down the House races as follows:
Safe Dem, 189; Leaning Dem, 17; Toss-Up, 16; Leaning Rep, 21; Safe Rep, 192.

If the Reps can collect all their "Safes" and "Leaners" they only need to add five of the sixteen toss-ups to retain control.  Conversely, the Dems need to pick up their safes, their leaners, and tweleve of sixteen toss-ups.

NY Times On Armitage - BS, Round II

It's a poor workman who blames his tools, but - "Typepad" has eaten my original and  uncharacteristically insightful post on the latest NY Times attempt to cover the Armitage story.

Bah.  For the Saturday holiday edition Doug Johnston tackles the Armitage story under the "questions have been raised" rubric.  In fact, the front-page headline is "New Questions About Inquiry in C.I.A. Leak", and this is the new question:

An enduring mystery of the C.I.A. leak case has been solved in recent days, but with a new twist: Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor, knew the identity of the leaker from his very first day in the special counsel’s chair, but kept the inquiry open for nearly two more years before indicting I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, on obstruction charges.

Now, the question of whether Mr. Fitzgerald properly exercised his prosecutorial discretion in continuing to pursue possible wrongdoing in the case has become the subject of rich debate on editorial pages and in legal and political circles.

Fine.  The new story papers over some of the confusion caused by the odd headline in the Neil Lewis story last Wednesday.  The original headline (since changed), "First Source of C.I.A. Leak Admits Role, Lawyer Says", certainly gave the impression that Armitage had hired a lawyer (although the text was more clear); Saturday, Johnston emphasizes this:

Mr. Armitage cooperated voluntarily in the case, never hired a lawyer and testified several times to the grand jury, according to people who are familiar with his role and actions in the case. He turned over his calendars, datebooks and even his wife’s computer in the course of the inquiry, those associates said.

With all that cooperation, Johnston never addresses another seemingly obvious question - how did Special Counsel Fitzgerald fail to discover that Armitage had leaked to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in June of 2003?  For heavens sake, the AP discovered that the meeting with Woodward was right there on Armitage's appointment calendar.  Was this willful deceit on the part of Armitage, incompetence on the part of Fitzgerald and his investigators, or what?

Neil Lewis at least noted the Woodward angle, burying it in the last two paragraphs; Johnston never does.

For comparison, the WaPo said this:

Three weeks before Armitage spoke to Novak, he made a similar, offhand disclosure of Plame's employment to Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward, the former colleague added. Armitage disclosed the conversation to Fitzgerald after Woodward reminded him of it in October 2005, and Woodward subsequently gave a deposition about the conversation.

"Of course, I have nothing to say about sources," Woodward said yesterday.

As an aside, I was surprised by this:

Mr. Armitage spoke with Mr. Novak on July 8, 2003, those familiar with Mr. Armitage’s actions said. Mr. Armitage did not know Mr. Novak, but agreed to meet with the columnist as a favor for a mutual friend, Kenneth M. Duberstein, a White House chief of staff during Ronald Reagan’s administration.

Novak has lauded Armitage repeatedly (but not quoted him, in the examples presented) and Armitage has been part of the Washington scene going back to the Reagan Administration, so the notion that these two don't know each other seems odd.

And some Bonus Trivia - Ken Duberstein's wife is a producer for the Charlie Rose show, which had Armitage as a guest back in June.

GOOD POINT:  From "Ranger":

Interesting how this is phrased in the story:

"He turned over his calendars, datebooks and even his wife’s computer in the course of the inquiry, those associates said."

Was that before or after Woordward made him come forward about their conversation?

Maybe Armitage's full cooperation began in November 2005.  I would still like to know if anyone has asked him whether he spoke with Judy Miller or Andrea Mitchell.  And I am going to recycle my old summary (see MORE) of the Andrea Mitchell situation - people forget (or never realized) just how close to the Wilson/Niger story she was:

...Briefly, in late June she had scoop from State about the misplaced INR dissent (on Saddam's nuclear aspirations) in the NIE; she sat in for Russert and interviewed Joe Wilson on the July 6 'Meet The Press'; on July 8, she told the world that CIA sources told her that Wilson was sent by low-level CIA "operatives" (a word later used by Novak, to great controversy); on July 20, she had a public spat with Richard Armitage, who was no longer returning her phone calls; and on Sept 26 she broke the news of the CIA criminal referral of the Plame case.

And of course, there was her famous Oct 3, 2003 response that prior to Novak's column it was "widely known" amongst the journalists covering the Niger story that Wilson's wife was with the CIA.  She has since disavowed that.

Put it together, and we have a reporter who was working this story and was almost surely in contact with a guy at State who leaked the Plame news to others.  *OBVIOUSLY* that does not mean Armitage gave it to her, or that she mentioned it to Tim Russert, but it does suggest that Russert may have a reason for his careful denials.

And it suggests hat someone ought to ask both Mr. Armitage and Ms. Mitchell about this.

WaPo Whacks Wilson

The editors of the Washington Post have had enough of the Joe Wilson saga.  Writing on the denouement - Richard Armitage provided the first leak to Bob Novak - they deliver this broadside:

...it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

Ouch.

This editorial makes a book-end with the controversial WaPo editorial from a while back which explained that the related leak of portions of the National Intelligence Estimate was "A Good Leak".  Since that editorial prompted a response from the NY Times (helpfully titled "A Bad Leak"), perhaps this latest WaPo effort will prompt a Times response as well.

As to why the WaPo might think that Wilson's "I am hero and victim" story was a load of nonsense, let's reprise the views of a few of their reporters.  Quotes are (or will be) below, but briefly:

Bob Woodward, Pulitzer Prize winner and leak recipient, thought the story was overdone and national security was not harmed;

Walter Pincus, Pulitzer Prize winner and leak recipient, thought the behavior of the Administration was obnoxious but not criminal, and that partisan Democratic hype led to the investigation;

Dana Priest, Pulitzer Prize winner for her story on the CIA secret prisons, was not able to  sleuth out any harm to national security as a result of the Plame leak.

Here is an eerily prescient Bob Wodward on Larry King Live (before his own role was announced):

WOODWARD:  Now there are a couple of things that I think are true. First of all this began not as somebody launching a smear campaign that it actually -- when the story comes out I'm quite confident we're going to find out that it started kind of as gossip, as chatter and that somebody learned that Joe Wilson's wife had worked at the CIA and helped him get this job going to Niger to see if there was an Iraq/Niger uranium deal.

And, there's a lot of innocent actions in all of this but what has happened this prosecutor, I mean I used to call Mike Isikoff when he worked at the "Washington Post" the junkyard dog. Well this is a junkyard dog prosecutor and he goes everywhere and asks every question and turns over rocks and rocks under rocks and so forth.

     KING:  And doesn't leak.

WOODWARD: And it doesn't leak and I think it's quite possible that though probably unlikely that he will say, you know, there was no malice or criminal intent at the start of this. Some people kind of had convenient memories before the grand jury. Technically they might be able to be charged with perjury.

But I don't see an underlying crime here and the absence of the underlying crime may cause somebody who is a really thoughtful prosecutor to say, you know, maybe this is not one to go to the court with.

And a bit later:

WOODWARD: ... They did a damage assessment within the CIA, looking at what this did that Joe Wilson's wife was outed. And turned out it was quite minimal damage. They did not have to pull anyone out undercover abroad. They didn't have to resettle anyone. There was no physical danger to anyone and there was just some embarrassment.

So people have kind of compared -- somebody was saying this was Aldridge James or Bob Hanson, big spies. This didn't cause damage.

Walter Pincus:

Pincus believes that the Bush administration acted obnoxiously when it leaked Valerie Plame’s identity, but he has never been convinced by the argument that the leaks violated the law. “I don’t think it was a crime,” he says. “I think it got turned into a crime by the press, by Joe” — Wilson — “by the Democrats. The New York Times kept running editorials saying that it’s got to be investigated — never thinking that it was going to turn around and bite them.”

Dana Priest in two WaPo chats:

Columbia, S.C.: Great Work!

How do you answer critics who point out this may be a 'leak' that could potentially compromise national security, ala the Plame leak?

Dana Priest: I don't actually think the Plame leak compromised national security, from what I've been able to learn about her position.  As for my article, we tried to minimize that by not naming the countries involved and, otherwise, no, I don't believe it compromised national security at all.

And more Dana Priest from May 4, 2006:

Valley Forge, Pa.: Hi Dana,

Thanks for doing these chats.

Now we are reading that Valerie Plame was involved with tracking nuclear proliferation/capabilities in Iran. Isn't this old news? (I seem to remember reading this same thing quite a while ago in the MSM - I don't generally read blogs)

From what you hear, was Ms. Plame working on Iran, how important was she to the tracking efforts, and how much has her "outing" really set us back?

Dana Priest: It was reported before that she worked on proliferation issues for the CIA. The leap in this new round of information is that her outing significantly impacted our current intel on Iran. I don't buy it. First, no one person who quit clandestine work four years ago is going to make that big of a dent in current knowledge. But also, nothing like this came up at the time of her outing and I believe it would have. Think we need some actual details. At present it just doesn't smell right.

KEEPIN' HOPE ALIVE: The chorus from the left will harmonize in response to this from the Wapo:

Unaware that Ms. Plame's identity was classified information, Mr. Armitage reportedly passed it along to columnist Robert D. Novak "in an offhand manner, virtually as gossip," according to a story this week by the Post's R. Jeffrey

...It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House -- that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame's identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson -- is untrue.

Not necesarily!  Although it takes a fantasist to imagine that the White House orchestrated the leak to Novak by way of Armitage (I bet I could find one!), what about the leaks to Matt Cooper and Judy Miller?

With Cooper, it is clear (to some) that after Karl Rove learned from Novak that a column about Wilson and Plame was imminent, Rove ruthlessly sat by the phone and waited for Matt Cooper to call him and ask about Niger.

Then when Cooper interviewed Libby the next day, Libby was so brutal and crafty that he never raised the subject of Ms. Plame, but offered something like "I heard that, too" when Cooper asked him about her.

And the Judy Miller leak?  Libby was so intent on besmirching Wilson with the nepotism charge that he forgot to tell Judy that Ms. Plame had a role in arranging her husband's trip to Niger.

And Special Counsel Fitzgerald still can't prove that Libby was aware of Ms. Plame's classified status back when he was conspiring to punish Joe by outing hs wife.  (Too bad Libby didn't use his psychic powers to get the truth about Saddam's WMDs...).  Oh well - Fitzgerald only had two years to look into this.  The truth will emerge any day now, or at least, within the next 24 business hours.

OVERLY OPTIMISTIC:  I don't think this will work.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END:  The WaPo thumped Joe Wilson when the SSCI report came out in July 2004, so they aren't exactly new to Wilso-phobia.  John Kerry dropped Wilson from his campaign shortly thereafter.

CREATIVE LAWYERING:  All of this will impact the Wilson lawsuit against Cheney, Libby, Rove et al, yes?  Here is a clever suggestion from The Brainster:

...it looks like Rove and Libby didn't leak her name. But, considering that the money [Valerie Plame] was offered for her book was largely based on them doing so, it strikes me that she may still have a case. After all, now she's not going to make nearly as much dough. So maybe she can sue them for not leaking her name?

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE:  An email from Joe Wilson is printed at the Dem Underground:

You may have seen this morning's editorial in the Post. It manages to recycle pretty much every lie and smear over the past three years in a last ditch effort to divert attention from the facts, and the role the Post itself played both in the march to war and in the leak (see Woodward).

I know many of you are better versed in Plamegate than either Valerie or I and I also know that some of you will be addressing the editorial.

I want to let you know how much Valerie and I continue to be buoyed by your support and your dedication to getting the truth out and holding the administration and its lackeys accountable for the terrible policies they have foisted on our country and on the world. We must keep fighting.
   
As you think about this, our website (Wilsonsupport.org) has a copy of the letter I sent to the SSCI when its report first came out, challenging some of its conclusions. The LeftCoaster has a terrific study by eriposte on the whole Niger forgery case from beginning to end. Firedoglake and the Next Hurrah both have highly informative analyses of the case by skilled researchers and former prosecutors. I recommend them all as resoruces to jog memories. by this afternoon, I expect that our own team will have an updated set of talking points to distribute for your use as well.

First, I think there is a breakdown in the parallel structure - Firedoglake has the former prosecutor and The Next Hurrah has the skilled researcher.

Secondly, where is the mission-critical info about tin-foil hats?

MORE:  It's only 6:15 PM on the East Coast, but at this writing I see nothing from the firedogs about the WaPo op-ed [Ahh, but at 4:05 PM, presumably Pacific time, we get this - see SELF AWARENESS WATCH, below]; The Emptywheel at The Next Hurrah has this post:

I'm not surprised by several things in the WaPo's disingenuous editorial on the Plame Affair today. For example, I'm not surprised it relies on the word, "primary."

But all those who have opined on this affair ought to take note of the not-so-surprising disclosure that the primary source of the newspaper column in which Ms. Plame's cover as an agent was purportedly blown in 2003 was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage. [my emphasis]

It's a word Novak conjured up when he went clean last month, and it seems designed to cast the majority of the blame on Armitage and away from Rove. Yet it relates solely to Plame's purported role in Wilson's trip to Niger; Novak never says that Armitage was his source for Plame's classified identity or name (he reverts to much less convincing stories to explain away his use of the word "operative," "Plame," none of which come from Armitage but which are more important to the story than Plame's general role)...

Uh huh.  And nearly three years later, the lights will be burning in Special Counsel Fitzgerald's office this Labor Day Weekend as he continues to plumb these mysteries, right?  Wrong.  Well, according to the Times and WaPo, anyway - regardless of the gaps in the stories Novak has told us, Fitzgerald seems to have thrown in the towel on further investigations last June.

Next, call in the auditors!

First, Fitzgerald's investigation has been anything but costly (Christy, you think you could smack down Fred on this issue? because since you beat Byron silly on it, he has not made such a baseless suggestion).

The link is to a firedog post telling us that "In its first 15 months, the investigation cost $723,000, according to the Government Accountability Office."

Since The Next Hurrah has the skilled researcher, I am sure she will want to square that with this GAO report telling us (Appendix III) that in the six months from March to Sept 2004, Fitzgerald spent $584,899, including $487,089 for personnel compensation and benefits.  Total expenditures for the six months ending in March 2005 were $112,550 and for the six months ending in Sept 2005 were $178,077.  [OK - weirdly, the expenditures for the three months ending March 2004, while Fitzgerald took a lot of grand jury testimony, was only $27,000 - that seems way out of line with the other figures, but how am I going to audit the GAO?]

SELF AWARENESS WATCH:  Classic comedy from Jane "Rape Gurney Joe" Hamsher as she describes "the perpetually bile-choked right wing blogosphere".  Say it with me - I know what you are, but what am I?

To compound the comic effect Ms. Hamsher analogizes the Plame leak thusly, a few short, bile-free sentences later:

Incredibly it is somehow okay to rob the liquor store, shoot the owner, rape the cashier and spatter the walls with blood because someone else was caught shoplifting there the week before.  It is the Sistine Chapel of bad faith editorials.

Always temperate, just as her readers like it.