Bogus Letter Became a Case for War

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

The Washington Post's Peter Eisner reports on the front page today (4/3/07):

It was 3 a.m. in Italy on Jan. 29, 2003, when President Bush in Washington began reading his State of the Union address that included the now famous -- later retracted -- 16 words: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Like most Europeans, Elisabetta Burba, an investigative reporter for the Italian newsweekly Panorama, waited until the next day to read the newspaper accounts of Bush's remarks. But when she came to the 16 words, she recalled, she got a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She wondered: How could the American president have mentioned a uranium sale from Africa?

Burba felt uneasy because more than three months earlier, she had turned over to the U.S. Embassy in Rome documents about an alleged uranium sale by the central African nation of Niger. And she knew now that the documents were fraudulent and the 16 words wrong.

Nonetheless, the uranium claim would become a crucial justification for the invasion of Iraq that began less than two months later. When occupying troops found no nuclear program, the 16 words and how they came to be in the speech became a focus for critics in Washington and foreign capitals to press the case that the White House manipulated facts to take the United States to war.

Dozens of interviews with current and former intelligence officials and policymakers in the United States, Britain, France and Italy show that the Bush administration disregarded key information available at the time showing that the Iraq-Niger claim was highly questionable.

Some of the information in the article is not new, but the piece does fill in many details. Seymour Hersh reported some of the core information in his 10/27/03 article "The Stovepipe," one of the first major post-invasion pieces on the Bush's administration's cherry-picking of intelligence. Blogger Josh Marshall also covered several aspects of this story over at Talking Points Memo (here's parts one, two and three). In a previous post we mentioned some of Slate's coverage on then DCI George Tenet being asked to fall on his sword for false tales the CIA had debunked (here's Jack Shafer, here's William Saletan, and here's John Dickerson). Then there's this section from Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctine, occurring after the CIA had debunked several pieces of "evidence":

Relentless pressure is a strategy. Usually quite successful. It was employed both in the "war on terror" against al Qaeda, and by the White House against the CIA.

[...]

Libby and Hadley, meanwhile, continued to push, and push hard, on the analysts, asking the same question Tenet was often asked in high-level meetings. Aren't these potential threats precisely why an invasion is necessary? Is there even the slimmest possibility—a one percent chance—that uranium was bought in Niger, that the aluminum tubes were usable in uranium centrifuges, or that Mohammed Atta managed to meet with an Iraqi, any Iraqi, in Prague?

The thing to watch out for with a program of relentless pressure is the blowback.

On Friday afternoon, January 10, Jami Miscik, the head of the DI walked down the hall on the seventh floor shaking with rage.

Josh Moseman, Tenet's chief of staff, saw her as she passed his office.

"You okay?"

"No, I'm not okay. I'm definitely not okay!"

A moment later, she'd made it to Tenet's suite.

She barely could get out the words. Stephen Hadley, Condi's second, has called from the office of "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.

They wanted her down at Libby's office in the White House by 5 p.m. At issue was the last in an endless series of draft reports about the connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. How many drafts? Miscik couldn't remember. The pressure for the White House—and from the various intelligence divisions under the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense—had started a week after 9/11.

Cheney's office claimed to have sources. And Rumsfeld's, too. They kept throwing them at Miscik and CIA. The same information, five different ways. They'd omit that a key piece had been discounted, that the source had recanted. Sorry, our mistake. Then it would reappear, again, in a memo the next week. The CIA held firm; the meeting in Prague between Atta and the Iraqi agent didn't occur.

Miscek was no fool. She understood what was going on. It wasn't about what was true, or verifiable. It was about a defensible position, or at least one that would hold up until the troops were marching through Baghdad, welcomed as liberators.

A few days before, when she had sent the final draft over to Libby and Hadley, she told them, emphatically, This is it. There would be no more drafts, no more meetings where her analysts sat across from Hadley, or Feith, or the guys in Feith's office, while the opposing team tried to slip something by them. The report was not what they wanted. She knew that. No evidence meant no evidence.

"I'm not going back there, again, George," Miscek said. "If I have to go back to hear their crap and rewrite this goddamn report... I'm resigning, right now."

She fought back tears of rage.

Tenet picked up the phone to call Hadley.

"She is not coming over," he shouted into the phone. "We are not rewriting this fucking report one more time. It is fucking over. Do you hear me! And don't you ever fucking treat my people this way again. Ever!"

They did not rewrite the report.

And that's why, three weeks later, in making the case for war in his State of the Union address, George W. Bush was not able to say what he'd long hoped to say at such a moment: that there was a pre-9/11 connection between al Qaeda and Saddam.

One down. But two salient points—wobbly, but still standing—on the heart-stopping issue of nuclear weapons remained in the text: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

Both statements were crafted to carry the clarion ring of proof, and both were known, by people inside the CIA and the White House, to fall short of that standard.
(pp.189-191, hardcover edition)

Then there's all of Plamegate. This was not some innocent, bureaucratic snafu, and that's the one aspect of this article I don't trust — not that bureaucratic gaffes might not have complicated matters. There are dozens of stories and incidents like the one Suskind relates, but the key element never changes: the Bush administration acted in bad faith. They never sought an objective threat analysis on Iraq. They wanted to go to war, and dug and scrounged for justification, not proof. They didn't care if Iraq was an imminent threat or not (or, for some, they were so certain it didn't matter). They were interested in what would sell. Iraq was never a challenge of national security for the Bush administration. It was a challenge of PR.

There are folks out there that know this material backwards and forwards, and I'll be interested to see what they make of this new article. Yet to my mind, its main value is that this is The Washington Post, front page, confirming earlier reports and filling in some details. Even more importantly, more people seem willing to speak out now. This is nothing for the Bush administration to celebrate. These sort of issues tend to build up a critical mass (witness all the peripheral scandals the Attorney scandal has started to flush out). As the saying goes, sunshine is the best disinfectant, and with this administration, there can't be enough of it.

Update: It's no surprise that TPM weighed in on the Eisner article, and they offer a valuable perspective.

Also today, Eisner discussed the article online with readers, and clarified several points. Apparently, he's got a book coming out on this whole deal.

Waas' Plamegate Coverage

Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher has a great post that links every single Plamegate article by investigative reporter Murray Waas, complete with dates and 1-2 sentence summaries. Jane also provides an entertaining supposition for how Plamegate coverage develops in the news. Needless to say, Waas continues to be the pioneer (or as Jane puts it, "Exhibit A"), breaking the majority of developments in this affair and featuring the highest level of accuracy to date.

"Cheney Penned Note About Plame"

The Washington Post’s Jeffrey Smith reports that Vice President Dick Cheney wrote a note about Valerie Plame Wilson, according to a filing by Patrick Fitzgerald. The article suggests that Cheney wrote this note after Joseph Wilson penned his now-famous op-ed in The New York Times and before Libby revealed Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity and position to reporters. The article is very short but absolutely essential reading if you’ve been following this case:

After former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV publicly criticized a key rationale for the war in Iraq, Vice President Cheney wrote a note on a newspaper clipping raising the possibility that the critique resulted from a CIA-sponsored "junket" arranged by Wilson's wife, covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, according to court documents filed late Friday.

The filing by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald is the second that names Cheney as a key White House official who questioned the legitimacy of Wilson's examination of Iraqi nuclear ambitions. It further suggests that Cheney helped originate the idea in his office that Wilson's credibility was undermined by his link to Plame.

Even though the note raises precisely the line of attack used on Joseph and Valerie Wilson, Cheney of course still has deniability:

Fitzgerald does not allege in his filing that Cheney ordered Libby to disclose Plame's identity. But he states that Cheney's note to Libby helps "explain the context of, and provide a motive for" many of the later statements and actions by Libby.

The main purpose of the filing by Fitzgerald appears to be establishing this motive for Libby:

Fitzgerald also says in the filing that after columnist Robert D. Novak published the first newspaper article mentioning Plame's name on July 14, 2003 -- the disclosure that sparked Fitzgerald's investigation -- a CIA official discussed in Libby's presence "the dangers posed by disclosure of the CIA affiliation of one of its employees."

This conversation, Fitzgerald said, directly undermines Libby's claims that he had no reason to believe he or others had done anything wrong and had no reason to lie to the FBI. It also helps explain, Fitzgerald said, why Libby told a grand jury he thought Wilson was fully qualified to go on the trip and he was unsure if Wilson was even married.

This is huge. This strongly suggests:

1. Libby’s defense that he learned of Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity and position from reporters is completely blown out of the water (I suspect it was already).

2. Libby knew Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert status and that it was sensitive, but revealed it anyway. At the very least, he knew it was wrong to do so and perhaps he specifically knew it was illegal to do so.

3. Fitzgerald has proof of Libby lying beyond what’s he’s been indicted for: Libby definitively knew Wilson was married but pretended otherwise to the grand jury. This is important because it establishes a pattern of deceptive behavior and helps establish motive: Libby knew what he did was wrong and therefore tried to cover it up. Libby also apparently spoke well of Wilson to the grand jury ('I have nothing personal against Wilson' or something similar, I'm sure). Previous reports by Murray Waas and others paint a picture of Libby being obsessed with Wilson. While there's some possibility such stories were planted to depict Libby as a rogue agent and thus distance him from Cheney and others, I suspect Ftizgerald has both testimony and Libby's own meticulous notes to establish Libby's interest was rabid, not dispassionate. None of that helps his credibility with a jury.

4. Cheney had a much more direct hand in this than previously disclosed, although he still has deniability. Libby can claim he acted overzealously on behalf of his boss.

5. The defense "Of course I didn't lie, because I'd have to be stupid to do have done so" is less convincing when there's proof positive you've lied. Then all you've established is that you're a stupid or arrogant liar instead of just a liar. Just a thought.

While none of the above is shocking to those that have followed this case closely, it’s nice to have more evidence. Even though previous reports indicated that Cheney told Libby about Plame, now we know specifically about Cheney’s note and the article quotes some of its contents.

The filing also establishes a pattern of recklessness and misusing privileged information for political purposes:

The new filing also expands on Fitzgerald's revelation last month that Libby had disclosed portions of a previously classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq by describing portions of it to a Times reporter. It states that Libby also provided -- "through another government official" -- a copy of portions of the NIE to the Wall Street Journal before it published a July 17, 2003, editorial on that subject.

Dan Froomkin had a great summary of the NIE leak news back in his 4/10/06 WaPo column. The revelatory news was that President Bush, in what appears to be glaring hypocrisy, authorized Libby’s leak. I feel Froomkin summed it better than anyone else when he wrote (emphasis mine):

To the extent that McClellan said anything related to the Libby revelation, it was to suggest that the president is incapable of leaking classified information -- because once he utters it, it is automatically declassified. By contrast, he had nothing but scorn for leaks of classified information that he said could compromise national security.

By that logic, however, the White House owes us answers to these questions: How was is it in the public interest or the national security interest to leak highly selective, misleading excerpts from a discredited document in an attempt to disparage someone making what turned out to be accurate charges that the administration exaggerated prewar intelligence?

Is there any evidence that Joseph Wilson's charges were doing any damage to national security -- rather than to Bush's political standing and credibility?

And conversely, is there any evidence that national security was compromised by the other leaks that the administration has responded to so ferociously? And would most Americans not agree that knowing about such things as domestic spying or secret prisons is in the public interest?

Libby provides a clear pattern of leaking classified information for political purposes. In the case of the NIE, he was authorized to do so by Cheney and Bush. Was he authorized to leak Plame's identity? This is still unknown. I suspect Bush is not hands-on enough to have authorized it, but Cheney is another matter. At the very least, Cheney and David Addington unquestionably would have approved of Libby's actions even if they didn't know the details. There's little doubt these guys both play hardball and feel entitled to take out anyone they view as an enemy. I find it hard to believe, though, that they didn't know about it. But Cheney has a long history of getting other folks to throw themselves on their swords for him. Barring a Colonel Jessup moment of Cheney brazenly admitting his role and justifying it (Libby's defense has flirted with this approach by trying to attack the irrelevant issue of Wilson's credibilty), I don't envision Cheney's true role coming out. (And I think even boy scout Patrick Fitzgerald would pause before pursuing the Vice President and President.)

While Fitzgerald likely could nail Libby for revealing Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert status (the original subject of the investigation) the relevant statute makes it difficult to prove. Even if he has the goods, Fitzgerald may feel it’s too distracting... but going back to his original press conference, the entire issue at that time was that Fitzgerald could not bring charges because of Libby’s obstruction of justice. Fitzgerald is very by the book and the fact he didn’t bring those charges then does not preclude him from doing so in the future. There’s little doubt Libby knew what he was doing would at the very least look very bad if revealed. He may well have known what he was doing was illegal, but that may be a point of contention still. Finally, Fitzgerald may wish to avoid punishing the act of leaking itself because of the potentially chilling effect on future reporting.

My take on this entire affair has always been this was business as usual for Rove, Libby, and Cheney, but this time at least two of them got caught because by accident or design they happened to break the law. I do not believe knowing the law would have dissuaded them, however, only made them more cautious in their smear of Wilson. I do not think they ever expected to get caught, out of a combination of hubris and the fact that loyalist John Ashcroft was originally in charge of the investigation.

As to their defense strategy, even in a White House busy with "doing the people's business" or waging a brain-numbing disinformation campaign where those pesky "details" slip away, there's no way Rove and Libby "forgot." Wilson was a prominent, credible critic that forced an administration unwilling to admit mistakes to publicly acknowledge a huge and embarrasing mistake. Murray Waas also posits that Rove was worried more information would come out, for instance that Bush was briefed on the serious doubts about the aluminum tubing intel,and that such revelations could fatally derail Bush's re-election. The obvious motive and modus operandi of Libby and Rove is "slander your opponents." However, Waas essentially invokes Nixon by offering a more urgent motive: to preserve George W. Bush's presidency.

In the spirit of making bold, irresponsible predictions, I suspect the Karl Rove will be indicted for perjury and making false statements... I’m less sure of obstruction of justice charges, but I’ll go with that, too. I suspect Fitzgerald will make the announcement in the next two weeks (Firedoglake was taking bets; I'm guessing most likely between Wednesday 5/24 and Friday 5/26). I’d be surprised if it took more than a month for some sort of announcement. There’s an outside chance Rove may be completely cleared, but I’d put the odds of that at 10% or less.

UPDATE: Jeralyn Meritt of TalkLeft has posted the actual filing and provides links to some of the usual suspects' analysis of it (firedoglake, emptywheel, and Tom Maguire, who provide greater legal acumen than I possess). I'm in dire need of sleep now, but I've glanced over some of the commentary and look forward to reading the actual 38-page document. Currently, my main question would be the date of Libby's note. Does Jeffrey Smith possess independent verification of the date? Smith reports the note was written on a newspaper clipping of the Wilson op-ed itself, therefore it seems safe to assume that Cheney penned it very soon after publication, certainly far in advance of Novak's infamous column revealing Plame's CIA status. More sensible analysis tomorrow, I hope.

UPDATE II: Blame a tired brain. Smith states, and Maguire picks up on the same point, that Fitzgerald describes Libby as being warned about the sensitivity of Plame's status after the publication of Novak's column. This does not preclude that Libby knew this beforehand. Really, he should have known, since he reportedly knew Plame was involved in curtailing WMD proliferation. However, charging Libby under the specific leaking statute originally posited would requiring proving that Libby knew what he was doing. While Fitzgerald may suspect this and even have proof, currently he is offering evidence not to charge Libby with the leak itself, but to establish Libby's motives for lying to the grand jury.

Irresponsible Speculation and Predictions

We’ll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee there’s no laboring i’ th’ winter. All that follow their noses are led by their eyes but blind men, and there’s not a nose among twenty but can smell him that’s stinking. Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following. But the great one that goes upward, let him draw thee after.
— The Fool to Kent in the stocks, King Lear, 2.4, 66-72

(The Fool’s words are incredibly ironic, and demand a fuller post, but he’d still make one hell of a political advisor.)

While pundits and commentators exist who clearly embrace their apparent ideology, when it comes to the “chattering class,” their true love is almost always for a good political storyline above all else. Some tale or angle or event that will yield a strong column or some witty bon mots on the talk show circuit, that’s where it’s really at. Don’t you think Jay Leno wept when he had to say goodbye to Clinton and another thousand Lewinsky blow job jokes? (He still tromps them out from time to time.) Reagan might have argued that trees caused pollution and that ketchup and relish should count as vegetables in children’s school lunches, but even his detractors in the press would say he was a colorful character to write about. After George H.W. Bush was elected, Gary Trudeau in Doonesbury announced that political cartoonists were giving Bush a honeymoon week of no negative panels, “to give him a chance to get a handle on that ‘vision thing,’” and “as a way of formally thanking him for Dan Quayle.”

Many liberal bloggers are referring to tomorrow, the latest likely day for Fitzgerald to announce indictments, as Fitzmas. However, the truth is that it’s a bonanza for chatterers everywhere, with juicy material to last many a news cycle, to yield many a column or book, and to allow plenty of opportunity to posture as a sage insider on a news program. Granted, it’s a more fun time for liberals than conservatives (at least until Bush nominates another candidate for The Supreme Court). Consider the situation. Republicans hold power in all three branches of government. However, currently, the top aide to the President and the Vice President are facing possible indictment, the Vice President may face trouble as well, and at the least he appears to have publicly lied yet again. The House Majority Leader, Tom Delay, has been indicted. The Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist, is being investigated for impropriety with his not-so-blind trust and has publicly lied. This is not to mention the indictments of Republicans Bob Noe in Ohio, super lobbyist Jack Abramoff (tight with Delay), and David Safavian. Add to this the Harriet Miers debacle and the truly shocking, shameful way Hurricane Katrina was mishandled. Oh yeah, and then there’s Iraq.

Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post aptly observed that the passions about Plamegate run so high because “We're re-fighting the war through this case.” (Slate’s Mickey Kaus agrees somewhat but adds several other reasons). Previous details of the path to war are coming out as a result of Fitzgerald’s inquiry. Normally the real story of an administration takes time to unveil. We know much more about Nixon now than we did even five years ago, and similarly, the full truth of the Bush administration may not come out until a decade or two later. However, we may now get to know much more, much sooner than anyone anticipated. While many of the statements and rationales for the war are currently being re-examined by chatterers, now the general public seems to be taking a greater interest as well.

Kurtz’s column of Thursday, 10/27/05 did a fantastic job of providing a timeline of some key leaks in the Plamegate case, and touches on why many of these leaks likely occurred. As he observes:

...virtually every bit of information, confirmed and alleged, comes from unnamed sources -- ironically, in an investigation of who anonymously outed a CIA operative -- who are trying to shape public understanding of a complicated narrative to someone's advantage.

The result is that after two years of near-total secrecy about the CIA leak investigation, a steady stream of sometimes-conflicting information is now flowing, invariably attributed to "lawyers close to the case" or similarly opaque sources.

As special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald nears a decision on whether to seek indictments of top White House officials, lawyers involved in the inquiry are using the news media to float bits of evidence or interpretations that are favorable to their high-level clients. The maneuvering makes clear that these lawyers are fighting a two-front war, trying simultaneously to avert criminal charges while seeking acquittal in the court of public opinion.

The rush of disclosures in the closing days of an investigation is a time-tested ritual of Washington scandals, and each time the questions are the same: Who leaked and for what reason?

As a mere blogger (and a tardy, intermittent one at that), currently ranked 775,745 by Technorati in terms of influence (sorry, I find it very funny), I can’t yet pretend to full membership in the chattering class. However, I certainly can join in the chatterer tradition of wild speculation and completely off-base predictions. In fact, this is an area where bloggers often outstrip the feeble Mainstream Media (tm), or MSM, as all oh-so-hip bloggers call it. The key word in opinion journalism is not journalism, it’s opinion. Did Novak admit he was wrong about his authoritative yet wildly incorrect statement on the exact date Rehnquist would announce his retirement? No! He came up with a new opinion for a new deadline. With chatterers chaffing at the bit for Fitzgerald’s likely announcement tomorrow, now is the deadline for irresponsible prognostication, and I cannot shirk my duty. (Until, of course, there’s a new deadline and we can all shamelessly offer new opinions.)

PLAMEGATE

Most chatterers think it likely that Libby will be indicted on two to three counts: perjury, obstruction to justice, and possibly conspiracy. I’ll agree. He appears to have lied at least twice, but they are also likely compound lies. If news accounts are to be believed, it appears he lied to the grand jury about divulging Valerie Plame Wilson’s status as a CIA operative to reporters... he spoke about the matter three times with The New York Times’ Judy Miller. Most importantly, he spoke with her on the matter on June 23, 2003, before Novak’s now infamous column. Libby apparently claimed he learned of Plame’s identity from reporters, specifically NBC’s Tim Russert. Russert has publicly stated that there’s no way that could be the case, because he didn’t know Plame’s name until Novak’s column. While this is bad enough, The New York Times reported this week that Libby learned Plame’s identity from none other than Dick Cheney, about a month before Novak’s column. While Libby and Cheney would of course have the security clearance to discuss a CIA agent, they’re both experienced enough to at least say, wait, is she undercover or not? Unless, of course, anger clouded their judgment. Regardless, this would involve a compound lie from Libby... the obvious storyline would be, he tried to cover for his boss and blamed the leak on those irresponsible liberal reporters. If Cheney lied as well, then Libby had a clear motive for such action, and he wasn’t innocently mistaken... not that I find the massive memory lapses that have been claimed by many parties plausible in the first place.

In an online chat, Washington Post national political editor John F. Harris responded to a poster:

On this point, I tend to be more believing of the White House line. It has always seemed clear to me--and the evidence coming out over time has strengthened the point--that the White House motive in talking about Plame was not "to get back at Wilson." This was not about revenge. It was about trying to persuade reporters not to write about Wilson's allegations or take them seriously, because his mission to Niger was a low-level endeavor that had been cooked up lower down in the bureaucracy (with the assistance of his wife) and was not something that was done with White House knowledge. Remember, at the time, Wilson's suggestion was that of course the vice president knew about the results of his trip to Niger, because he had ordered it.

In the course of trying to knock down a damaging story--a routine activity in Washington--they obviously stepped over a line...quite possibly without fully appreciating that they were stepping across.

I think Harris nails one of the key reasons for the leak, but I feel he discounts the revenge angle too quickly. Judy Miller reports Libby as irate about Wilson. The current leaks about Libby also paint him as very upset, even obsessed. Many key members of the Bush administration, notably Rove and Cheney, are very much into the politics of revenge and retribution. If Rove did indeed tell Chris Matthews that Wilson’s wife was “fair game” (and was Matthews even subpoenaed?), then there’s a very different picture (Harris is also a bit imprecise above; Wilson never said that Cheney ordered his trip, he said that Cheney's request for more information was the reason the CIA sent him... but hey, it's a chat).

My take has always been that the Plame leak, in addition to being damage control as usual, was dirty politics as usual from the Bush administration. The problem this time is that, in addition to being unethical, this time their actions were actually illegal as well, and they got caught.

Rove. This one’s trickier. News reports state that on his fourth trip to the grand jury he told them he may well have heard Plame’s name from Libby. While this clearly seems like a move to save his own ass, this may also be a White House strategy... Libby is doomed, so let’s make him the fall guy, and blame everything on him. I would not be surprised if Rove was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice. He did in fact reveal Plame’s identity to Time’s Matt Cooper, but I think at least a false statement charge is looming. Some folks feels he’s flipped on everyone, while others say he’s fighting the charges furiously and refused a plea bargain. Some say he won’t be indicted but he will continue to be investigated by Fitzgerald. Rove can claim faulty memory, but I don’t find that plausible... does the grand jury buy it? I feel one indictment at least is likely, but if indictments do not come, I would be surprised if he was not investigated further. I don’t think he sails through this clean legally (not in the short term, at least).

Rove has made many enemies over the years, who have dared not cross him further for fear of not working in the party anymore. If he topples, there will be a lot of buzzards. Large amounts of dirty laundry will come out if he is seen as through, or vulnerable. (And I’m sure I could mix in another overused metaphor if it weren’t so late now.) It sure would be nice to know if Rove was indeed directly involved with events such as the slanderous push-polling in South Carolina against John McCain.

Cheney. Some folks feel Cheney may be named as an unindicted co-conspirator. I find it hard to believe that Libby would undertake anything major without Cheney’s knowledge, but I also find it hard to believe that Cheney, despite his repeated disregard for the truth, would knowingly lie under oath if he knew he could get caught. News sources disagree as to whether his interview with Fitzgerald was under oath or not, and they also disagree about whether he met with Tenet or not. One story, from The New York Times, has Tenet telling Cheney about Plame, which would almost certainly mean Cheney requested the information. But MSNBC reported that Tenet denies he told Cheney this. So, my take is that Cheney’s hands are dirty, but may not be filthy, and he will likely not face any serious legal action. I do think his past misstatements will get some new scrutiny from the press, however.

There are other figures such as John Hannah, Stephen Hadley, Wurmer and the usual gang of Rice, Bolton, and all who also may be indicted, but this is all murkier. If someone flipped and went for a plea, it’s most likely a lower-rung (but perhaps central) person.

I would guess that one or two more people beside Libby and Rove would be indicted, although if reports are to be believed, they will not be in the White House proper, but instead from the Pentagon or even the State Department.

Is there further damning or exonerating evidence we don’t know about? Most definitely. It’ll be interesting to see how everything plays out, but more importantly... what the truth is.

To bring it back to Shakespeare, and fools and knaves... I have no doubt that while Cheney is a knave, Libby will fall on his sword to save him (as folks as Halliburton did for him before when it was discovered they were illegally dealing with America’s sworn enemy Iran). I’m less sure of Rove, and the next days, weeks, and months will be revealing. He’s always seemed like something of a craven bully to me. Supposedly he’s vicious when cornered, but would he go down for Bush? Maybe. But for Libby or Cheney? I don’t know, but I think that’s less likely. And I think Bush especially would want to save Rove, and other folks of course know that.

Regardless, no one seems "foolish" enough to be an "honest broker" with Bush, who accounts depict as increasingly angry and frustrated, blaming everyone around him. No one has said to him what he has so sorely needed, something in the spirit of:

See better Lear, and let me still remain
The true blank of thine eye.
— Kent to Lear, King Lear, 1.1, 161-162

(Wild Miers replacement speculation to follow shortly!)

Plame and the Path to War

The LA Times just published an in-depth article that does a splendid job of laying out the path to war and Plamegate's role within the larger picture. While it was beyond the scope of the article to cover the aluminum tube debacle, the Curveball debacle, and other details, this account does a splendid job of collating many previously established storylines into one coherent source.

This article is particularly good at the office politics angle. I must confess that the Bush administration often reminds me of the administration at a school where I once taught. There's a similar love of shooting-from-the-hip and going on instinct, a lack of curiosity and a disdain for planning, an anti-empiricism and a disappointing hubris. It takes a good leader to realize that respectful dissent is the ultimate sign of fealty, not disloyalty... Paul O'Neill's greatest lament with Bush was that he lacked "honest brokers" who would speak truth to power without a political agenda.

While some of the office politics in the Bush administration should seem familiar to just about everyone, the difference is that a turf war on this level can and does cost lives. The degree of professionalism and competence required for effective government at this level can be staggering. On this note, regarding Iraq, to hell with ideology for a moment - evaluate the Bush administration based on performance.

(Although registration at the LA Times is free, I've used a Yahoo link for the article instead for easier access.) Enjoy.

A Pattern of Skullduggery

Sorry, yes, another Plamegate entry. I find it a fascinating glimpse into how politics actually work, from bureaucratic turf wars to smear campaigns and backstabbing to the relationship between reporters and politicians to the active distortion and obfuscation of the truth for political gain. At least two reporters feel as I do... You can hear Adam Liptak of The New York Times and Anne Marie Squeo of The Wall Street Journal discussing it with Terry Gross on NPR here.

Several good timelines of this affair have sprung up on the web, but one of the more interesting is a recent article by Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), who’s been doggedly pursuing this for some time. He recaps no less than eleven security breaches. This particular version has interactive footnotes, but no article links (alas).

Regardless of how Novak changes his version of events, and how Rove claims a reporter fed him the covert information on Valerie Plame Wilson, I keep coming back to an article The Washington Post ran way back on September 27, 2003. The money quotation, also used in part by Waxman, is:

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. Wilson had just revealed that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson's account touched off a political fracas over Bush's use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq.

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

It’s very, very hard to believe otherwise. If only the Bush admin had heralded the cardinal rule of DC, “The cover-up is almost always worse than the crime.”

At this point, Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus and the official who leaked to him have both been interviewed by Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald. Pincus writes about this, and about the journalistic ethics he practices regarding confidential sources here . Even though Pincus was leaked the material about Valerie Plame Wilson on July 12, 2003, before Novak’s article was published, Pincus relates:

I didn’t write about that information at that time because I did not believe it true that she had arranged his Niger trip.

The first of Pincus’ three standards for granting confidentiality is:

Determining whether the information is credible and verifiable.

Compare this behavior with Novak’s. Pincus later wrote about what the official told him in a October 12, 2003 article. He recounts:

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

Again, compare this with Novak. Both reporters were leaked the same essential information, but Novak ran with it and Pincus didn’t. Pincus apparently did not print the information because he correctly viewed it as damage control or spin, and because his instincts were correct — the “leak” was not true; Plame did not arrange for her husband’s trip (although she did play a peripheral role, which has been consistently distorted by some parties). Pincus’ invoked standards suggest that he would have confirmed the leaked information first before publishing it, but apparently he did no feel the info was credible enough to begin with to bother to do this.

Apparently, at least four other reporters were leaked the same information. Yet they, like Pincus, did not run it, probably for similar reasons. But Novak was all too willing to print what he was fed.

To Novak’s credit, he did at least half-heartedly try to confirm the story by calling the CIA, but as recounted earlier, when he was told not to use Valerie Plame Wilson’s name, he ignored this. At least one pundit has posited that Novak took the denials he received as proof he was on to something, and this is likely what he thought... but it’s still sloppy reporting, with Novak all too willing and eager to bear some pretty brackish water for the Bush administration.

Novak's Shifting Accounts

I was working on a new entry that was going to highlight Novak's shifting versions of events regarding his outing of Valerie Plame Wilson, when I stumbled upon an entry at the site Media Matters for America which linked the articles I was planning to use and added a few other quotations I hadn't seen to boot. The site definitely leans liberal, but they try to correct anyone who makes an innaccurate claim. Here's the link to their nice recap.

Barring some bizarre revelation to explain these contradictions, it's pretty clear Novak has lied somewhere along the line. Did he also lie under oath to the grand jury? He seems to be feeling a great deal of stress, as witnessed by his now much ballyhooed incident at CNN, where he exclaims "bullshit" and then walks off. I had read about it, but finally saw it here. It really is pretty bizarre.

This whole affair should be wrapping up soon.

The Novak Strikes Back

Did you know that Robert Novak's nickname, once upon a time, was The Prince of Darkness? (I am not making that up.) He recently struck again, justifying his role in Plamegate. Read the article for yourself, in which he responds to then CIA spokesman Bill Harlow's account of their interaction. One paragraph floored me:

So, what was "wrong" with my column as Harlow claimed? There was nothing incorrect. He told the Post reporters he had "warned" me that if I "did write about it her name should not be revealed." That is meaningless. Once it was determined that Wilson's wife suggested the mission, she could be identified as "Valerie Plame" by reading her husband's entry in "Who's Who in America."

What... planet... is... he from? Does “don’t use her name” now mean, “feel free to identify her by other means, just don’t use her name?” I know lawyers who wouldn’t buy this one! Is this the sort of rationalization that allows him to sleep at night?

The details of Novak’s account have changed a few times. He offers a semi-apology for outing Plame, but none for his motivations. Perhaps he was driven by the thought of a scoop, but he was clearly unconcerned that the (misleading) information was fed to him by two senior Bush staffers. Novak was in such a mad rush to discredit Wilson, he even told a complete stranger on the street Plame’s status as a covert op! Professionally driven to chase what seemed like a hot lead? Possibly. Overly-eager, willing shill and partisan hack? Likely. His credibility is not exactly sterling, but his sense of morality is repugnant.

The best immediate retort to Novak I’ve yet seen (more are sure to follow) is from Valerie Plame’s CIA classmate, the now retired Larry Johnson, a Republican who’s been disgusted by this whole debacle. (His previous writings and interviews have been extremely illuminating on the whole covert status issue, and I'll link them if there's interest.)

Perhaps when all is said and done, Dark Prince Novak shall be vindicated. But I ain’t holding my breath.

Plamegate

The Washington Post has been breaking many of the best stories on Plamegate, and contributed another interesting one on Wednesday, 7/27 that you can read here.

The most intriguing gem is that the (possible) manipulation of intelligence leading up to the war may actually be investigated due to its relevance to the case at hand, namely, who outed Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA operative. I find the idea of White House staffers under oath on these issues to be extremely exciting. (Excuse me for having a muckraking/wonk moment.)

This is long overdue, although Fitzgerald will likely only scratch the surface, as the use of intel is relevant but not the focus of his investigation. Yet as Dan Froomkin observed on his WP blog White House Briefing on Wednesday,

No official body has thus far investigated the White House's use of intelligence in the run-up to war, or whether it was fair for the White House to blame the CIA and other agencies, instead of taking the blame itself. The Senate intelligence committee chose to put that issue off indefinitely and the Silberman-Robb "WMD Commission" was explicitly not authorized to do so.

Or, as Daily Kos and many other bloggers remind us, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas), in charge of the Senate Intelligence Committee (SIC):

promised Democrats that after the 2004 election the Committee would investigate whether the intel was manipulated by the Bush administration.

This has not happened yet, and it’s shameful. Regardless of one’s political views, this is important stuff, because intelligence should never be politicized or predetermined. All civil servants should be able to perform their jobs in a non-partisan, objective and competent manner without political pressure. Take away the left-wing conspiracy theories and you still have many credible unanswered concerns about how and why things broke down regarding intel. I’ll write up my own take on this later, but if the Bush admin deserves exoneration, then by all means, investigate and exonerate them.

Regarding the Plame affair specifically, before the special prosecutor Fitzgerald finishes his job, much of what’s printed is of course speculation, but the Post has for the most part been pretty intelligent and measured in its speculation. For instance, way back when this story first broke in 2003, VP Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby (must be a prep thing... what’s up with a grown man being called Scooter?) was mentioned as a likely key player. This month it was confirmed he was a source for both Novak and Cooper, even if the details are yet to be fully revealed.

Why does any of this matter? At least one columnist has observed that how we went to war is still important because things are still going so badly in Iraq. If they weren’t, there would probably be much less interest in intel issues and the Plame affair.