CORRECTION: We noted last week that George W. Bush fell off a bicycle for the second time during his presidency. We have since learned that it was actually the third time he has fallen off a bicycle. We apologize for the error.
Best. Correction. Ever.
Liberals Beware
In an administration in which the leaking of a covert CIA operative’s identity was motivated at least in part by her husband, a critic of the administration, being, according to the leaker Karl Rove, “a Democrat,” and on the heels of the disclosure that the URL of a prominent website pursuing a formal inquiry into the actions of the administration during the lead-up to the Iraq War was triggering email filters, it’s probably wise to start getting a little paranoid.
Especially when it turns out the FBI has been monitoring Lefty groups, amassing thousands of pages on the ACLU, Greenpeace, and others. Pam’s got the whole scoop.
Welcome back, J. Edgar. My, those are nifty new stockings you have.
[UPDATE: Michael at Spontaneous Arising and BaltimoreLenore at Alternate Brain are on this, too.]
Quite Frankly…
John Podesta made Ken Mehlman look like a total jackass on Meet the Press yesterday. Actually, Mehlman made himself look like a total jackass, as usual, and Podesta just sort of put a period at the end of the sentence. I thought this was his best line on Rove:
And quite frankly, the President said he would fire leakers, not lawbreakers, and I think if he’s a man of his word, he’ll take that seriously.Good point. Of course, the president hasn’t really proven himself to be a man of his word, so I don’t think I’ll hold my breath.
All Mehlman could do the whole time was regurgitate barely coherent sentence fragments pieced together from old campaign speeches while his eyes darted around like a coke fiend snorting up in the gents’ at the Policemen’s Ball. Quite an unimpressive performance, even by his standards.
Crooks and Liars has the video, and Think Progress has more, too.
Don’t Insult Me
Something that absolutely infuriates me is when I am treated as a fool. You see, I have a brain, quite a good one as it happens, and I like to use it. When someone tells me something that is so obviously a lie, so clearly absurd and counter to everything that reason and logic would otherwise suggest, it drives me up one wall and down the other—more so that they demonstrably think I am stupid, than because of the underlying lie.
This is how the Bush administration treats us all, relying on the fact that most Americans, unfortunately, are either trusting, ignorant, or crooked enough to take them at their empty word. Well, I’m neither gullible, nor uninformed, nor a fan of their Machiavellian ends-justify-the-means strategies, and I’m tired of being treated as a fool. It’s time to get real. And this is the reality…
George Bush and his neocon cabal wanted to go to war in Iraq, and they saw in the September 11th attacks a justification for that preexisting goal. So determined were they to embark on this misadventure, that they ignored the real culprit behind the attacks, al-Qaida, and went into Afghanistan to rout the al-Qaida supportive Taliban regime only as part of a bargain with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who gave his support to the Iraq War in exchange for the Americans’ support of the Afghanistan invasion. The Afghan War was quick and dirty, and before our job was even complete, the Bush administration had its sites set on Iraq.
The problem is that Iraq was not responsible or even remotely connected to the 9/11 attack on American soil, so a case for war had to be conjured out of thin air. The recently leaked Downing Street Memos document that the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy, that increased bombings, referred to as spikes of activity, were used to try to provoke Saddam Hussein into war, that the decision to go to war was made long before either government admitted it to their own people, and that the UN ultimatum was a sham, designed to generate political capital for the war and help “sell” it.
Meanwhile, the White House Iraq Group was formed, featuring many of the same players who names now come up over and over as having engaged in undoubtedly unethical and possibly criminal incidences of disseminating information to silence war critics, such as Karl Rove and “Scooter” Libby. Another member of the group, Condi Rice, then-National Security Advisor, made ominous references to the possibility of a “mushroom cloud” if America did not move to oust Saddam Hussein.
Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the UN and the world to deliver a speech detailing the alleged stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq—except he didn’t suggest they were alleged; according to Powell (and the rest of the Bush administration), there was no maybe about it at all. Then-CIA Director George Tenet declared the case for war a “slam-dunk,” and the President delivered in his State of the Union address the menacing (and now-infamous) claim that “The British government has learned Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
This outrageous assertion, based on intelligence which was already known to the administration to be false, was contradicted in a NY Times column by Joe Wilson, who had been sent to Niger to investigate the possibility. The well-oiled Bush smear machine kicked into action, and the identity of Wilson’s wife, a covert CIA operative specializing in weapons proliferation, was leaked to the press, potentially endangering her life, the lives of those with whom she worked, and the lives of Americans who were that much less safe that one of the analysts dedicated to WMDs was no longer able to do her job.
Now we find that at least two senior Bush administration officials, Rove and Libby, were involved in the leak, the former of whom was fired by the campaign of the current president’s father for leaking information to—surprise!—Bob Novak. The GOP has issued their talking points on the matter, and Scott McClellan continues to dance around questions, and all the while, they continue to treat the American people like fools.
Fixing facts and intelligence doesn’t mean what you think it means, they condescend, adding that fixing has a different meaning in Britain (as if none of us have been there), and besides, they say, it was just one man’s opinion. They spin and spin away, and the fact that no WMDs were found in Iraq, that their entire case for war was predicated on a nonexistent threat, is left unacknowledged (unless the president is making jokes about it), while the same people who continually invoke Clinton’s semantic contortions as illustrative of the moral relativism of the Left, bicker over the definition of fixed.
The reference to Saddam seeking uranium was left in the SOTU address by accident; an honest mistake, they condescend further, even though it had been taken out of a speech three months earlier at the behest of Tenet. It just magically made its way back in—oops! And yet it was not an immediate withdrawal of the claim by the Bush administration that alerted Americans to its falsity, but Wilson’s willingness to publicly contest the administration’s claims that made us all aware of this “honest mistake.”
Joe Wilson isn’t credible, they condescend yet further, giving us a variety of reasons why we ought to buy their story—that any leaks about his wife’s identity were just to ensure that reporters wouldn’t erroneously print errors about what the “real story” was. They were just being helpful, you see. Especially Rove—the man who orchestrated one of the nastiest smears against a political opponent in my lifetime, in which John McCain’s entire family was dragged through a mud made of lies and undue personal attacks, making way for Bush to secure the nomination of his party in the 2000 election. That same Rove was now taking time out of his busy schedule as one of the most influential men in the country to call up a reporter and make sure he didn’t report something incorrect, that’s it and that’s all, no other reason, even though there was every reason for the administration to seek retribution against Wilson, whose public refutation not only embarrassed them and undermined their case for war, but also raised the specter of a possibly criminal act on the part of the president, under the false statements statute. Do you feel insulted yet?
I certainly do.
Frank Rich recently wrote an excellent column called Follow the Uranium, in which he notes that Joe Wilson is just a MacGuffin, a red herring, a distraction from the real issue, which is Iraq. I think that’s only part of the picture. There are lots of diversionary tactics and topics out there, and lots of things from which to divert Americans’ attention—the nonexistent WMDs, the Downing Street Memos, the administration leaks and lies. They all have two things in common: war with Iraq at any cost, and a trail that leads right back to the White House.
Don’t insult me any more, President Bush. Every circus has a ringmaster, and I’m looking squarely at you, sir.
Cooper Spills the Beans
Raw Story has excerpts of Time reporter Matt Cooper’s article about his testimony before the grand jury. If this confessional doesn’t suggest that the White House ought not concern itself with not answering questions about an ongoing investigation, I can’t imagine what would:
"As for Wilson's wife, I told the grand jury I was certain that Rove never used her name and that, indeed, I did not learn her name until the following week, when I either saw it in Robert Novak's column or Googled her, I can't recall which. Rove did, however, clearly indicate that she worked at the "agency"--by that, I told the grand jury, I inferred that he obviously meant the CIA and not, say, the Environmental Protection Agency. Rove added that she worked on "WMD" (the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction) issues and that she was responsible for sending Wilson. This was the first time I had heard anything about Wilson's wife.The Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement, a sign-off on which is required by people who receive national security clearance, stipulates, as one would expect, that signers are not to disclose classified information. (Indeed, it even makes clear they are not to disseminate classified information which has been revealed in a public source without first confirming that the information has been declassified.) If Rove, as Cooper says, told him that the information he was giving him would soon be declassified, isn’t that an overt acknowledgement by Rove that the information he was giving Cooper was classified at the time he gave it to him? I can’t begin to imagine how this can be construed any other way. Ditto Libby, who, in saying “Yeah, I’ve heard that, too,” or words to that effect, who ignored his obligation as laid out in the CINA to first confirm the information had been declassifed before addressing it.
Perhaps most notable, is one line Cooper recalls that he said 'has been in my memory for two years.'
"I have a distinct memory of Rove ending the call by saying, 'I've already said too much,'" he wrote. "This could have meant he was worried about being indiscreet, or it could have meant he was late for a meeting or something else. I don't know, but that sign-off has been in my memory for two years."
This was actually my second testimony for the special prosecutor. In August 2004, I gave limited testimony about my conversations with Scooter Libby. Libby had also given me a specific waiver, and I gave a deposition in the office of my attorney. I have never discussed that conversation until now. In that testimony, I recounted an on-the-record conversation with Libby that moved to background. On the record, he denied that Cheney knew about or played any role in the Wilson trip to Niger. On background, I asked Libby if he had heard anything about Wilson's wife sending her husband to Niger. Libby replied, "Yeah, I've heard that too," or words to that effect. Like Rove, Libby never used Valerie Plame's name.
Where's the case going?
"Did Fitzgerald's questions give me a sense of where the investigation is heading? Perhaps," he pens. "Maybe Fitzgerald is interested in whether Rove knew her CIA ties through a person or through a document."
And he sums up.
"So did Rove leak Plame's name to me, or tell me she was covert?" he scores. "No. Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the "agency" on "WMD"? Yes. When he said things would be declassified soon, was that itself impermissible? I don't know. Is any of this a crime? Beats me. At this point, I'm as curious as anyone else to see what Patrick Fitzgerald has."
(On a side note, does anyone else find it strange that the “Yeah, I’ve heard that, too” response seems to be a repeated refrain? Do these reporters not suspect that this was a coordinated effort by their sources in the administration to tacitly confirm information while leaving themselves a defense that they “heard it” from the very reporters who were pawns in their game? Unbelievable.)
Cooper also appeared on Meet the Press, where he reiterated that Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, “Scooter” Libby, was one of his sources on Plame, too. Libby, of course, was one of the three possible sources of the leak that were identified as “ridiculous” by Scott McClellan, the other two being Karl Rove and Elliot Abrams. That’s two strikes for Scotty. It’s no wonder he’s stopped swinging.
Our Own Backyard
It’s hard to awaken the media.
It’s even harder to awaken the American populace.
This is true for many things—from things sitting right in our own collective front yard like voter fraud or the bankruptcy bill, to things that are far away, things from which our government and media do their best (or, truthfully, their worst) to shield us, like what’s really going on in Iraq and Afghanistan to the many crises plaguing Africa. What’s happening in our own backyard is equally as ignored, and perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of this age is occurring with little awareness on the part of most Americans, despite America’s government having played a significant role in its origins, and that is the trouble in Haiti.
On February 29, 2004, Haiti’s president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, resigned from his position following a bloody rebellion and was flown to the Central African Republic by the US government. At least, that was the official story. Aristide had another story. He claimed to have been kidnapped and led away in handcuffs. There was also some concern that he had not been granted asylum in the Central African Republic, but was being help captive, even though the Frence Defense Minister assured the world he was being protected, not imprisoned. The true details of Aristide’s departure are, ultimately, unknown; both the US and France blocked a UN investigation into the circumstances.
Since then, civil unrest, social and economic chaos, and the unfortunate addition of flooding and hurricanes have been tearing Haiti apart at its seams, with scant notice of its turmoil from the US, and the rest of the global community.
Recently, the situation has deteriorated even further. In late May, the Department of State issued a travel warning, due to “the volatile security sitation” there, and last Tuesday, the UK did the same, following a civilian massacre orchestrated by UN “peacekeeping” troops on July 6 in one of Haiti’s poorest shantytowns, Cite Soleil. (This followed immediately after a four-day siege conducted by Haitian police on the pro-Aristide neighborhood of Bel Air, in which at least 30 people were killed and more than 15 homes were reportedly burned to the ground.)
Cite Soliel
Bel Air
The official rationale offered for the raid on Cite Soleil was to clear out gang members loyal to Aristide in preparation for Haiti’s upcoming October elections, but the slaughter seemed indiscriminant; a member of the San Francisco Labor Council, who had sent a delegation to Haiti to meet with the Confederation of Haitian Workers, visited Cite Soleil the day after the raid, and counted, along with a team of Haitian Human Rights workers, 23 bodies lying in pools of blood, some in the streets and some in their homes. The bodies included those of women and children, at least one as young as a year old. The residents of Cite Soleil report that the neighborhood was surrounded by UN troops, who cut off all exit points and monitored from above in circling helicopters, then began firing on unarmed civilians. (More here.) The UN and Haitian police deny the accusations, but the bodies of babies and an elderly woman (among others) being removed from the scene were filmed by a Reuters TV crew.
Last Tuesday, CN Todd of Freiheit und Wissen implored his fellow lefty bloggers to raise awareness of Haiti’s plight. See CN’s latest post here, which includes links to the other posts he has been doing on the issue, and here you will find the round-up of other bloggers who have written about this issue in an attempt to raise awareness of the terrible madness that goes on unabated in our own backyard. (Find out why America was so interested in Haiti in the first place here.)
If you are a blogger, please contribute to the blogswarm—and everyone, please check out the Haiti Action Committee website to find out more and donate to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund.
Comcast Update
UPDATE (8:05 p.m. ET): AfterDowningStreet.org Co-Founder and Democrats.com President Bob Fertik contacted a number of people this evening in the corporate communications office of Symantec, and they fixed the problem. Fertik issued this statement:
"I want to thank the Symantec Corporation for responding in real time upon being notified that their Bright Mail product was the source of the problem."
My question is: How many other Lefty URLs are being blocked that we don't even know about?
And just for how many other internet providers is Bright Mail providing this "service"?
Email Censorship
Big Brother is watching—and he doesn’t like the URL “www.AfterDowningStreet.org.”
BradBlog reports that emails containing the phrase have been systematically blocked from reaching their intended recipients.
The discovery that email was being secretly filtered was made after an investigation conducted by [AfterDowningStreet.org] co-founder, David Swanson who reported that many coalition members did not seem to be receiving email alerts and others messages being sent by the group.Comcast is pointing the finger at Bright Mail, part of Symantec, with whom they have a contract and who, according to Comcast, control the filter. Bright Mail refuses to lift the ban, claiming to have received 46,000 spam messages containing the above cited URL, thought they refuse to show AfterDowningStreet.org a single such message).
"Over the past week we have been having problems reaching our members," Swanson said. "Yesterday we had a conference call scheduled that we'd announced by email and two thirds of the people didn't even know about it."
Eventually Swanson was able to determine that it was only those members of the group who receive email via the cable monolith's Comcast.net domain who were not receiving such notices.
Bright Mail also serves other large ISPs in addition to Comcast.
I asked Brad to email me a message containing the blocked phrase; he did—and I didn’t receive it, although I sent an email he sent immediately after without it. I can only imagine how many emails I have sent or been sent that have not been received. This is the first case I have ever heard of where a spam blocking measure was not based on the email address or IP address of the suspected spammer, or a phrase in the subject line. Perhaps the most outrageous thing about it is that I had no idea that my email was being filtered for this phrase. As far as Comcast and Bright Mail were concerned, infringing on my Constitutional right to organize was so easily discarded that they didn’t even have to let me know.
Contact info:
investigation@review.symantec.com
comabsfeedback@feedback-15.brightmail.com
More Symantec contacts available here.
Friday Night Name That Movie Book
Just wanted to mix it up a bit this week. Name the book by identifying its first line. Good luck!
(For the record, my favorite first line ever is from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, but it was too obvious to include as a choice. I love this line: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so.)
1. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
2. A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.
3. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano BuendÃa was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
4. 124 was spiteful.
5. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
6. The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
7. What's it going to be then, eh?
8. The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it.
9. We slept in what had once been the gymnasium. The floor was of varnished wood, with stripes and circles painted on it, for the games that were formerly played there; the hoops for the basketball net were still in place, though the nets were gone.
10. When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.
Q: Dems are to Sharks as Rove is to...?
A: Chum.
Jeff at Bearcastle Blog reports:
For those who are emotionally concerned with whether Karl Rove has actually violated the letter (perhaps even the punctuation) of the law, this note just came in from Rep. Henry Waxman's (D-CA) office, via the Government Reform Minority Office mailing list:Interesting, eh? Meanwhile, Reps. Barney Frank and John Conyers have inquired into whether impeachment proceedings would be appropriate for Senior White House Officials. BradBlog reports:
Friday, July 15, 2005 — A fact sheet released today by Rep. Waxman explains that the nondisclosure agreement signed by Karl Rove prohibited Mr. Rove from confirming the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Wilson to reporters. Under the nondisclosure agreement and the applicable executive order, even negligent disclosures to reporters are grounds for revocation of a security clearance or dismissal.
[T]he two seek clarification from "a neutral authority" of whether the U.S. Constitution's Article II, regarding impeachment of a sitting President and Vice-President and "all civil officers", would apply to Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove who is currently embroiled in the on-going criminal investigation into who leaked classified information concerning the outting of covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame.Brad’s got more.
Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution speaks to impeachment, but is not completely clear about which "civil officers" would fall under its jurisdiction.
Happy Birthday, Downing Street Memo!
Now blow out the candles and make a wish.
I hadn't realized that the "anniversary" of the Downing Street Meeting was approaching, but next Saturday, July 23rd, marks the date. With all the Rove Brou-ha-ha going on, it's very easy to forget that this particular Sword of Damocles is still dangling over the collective heads of knuckle that make up the Bush administration.
I received a Nation e-mail detailing a bunch of upcoming "DSM events" that I thought you all should know about.
Next Saturday, July 23, is the three-year anniversary of the meeting at #10 Downing Street in London, England, that was recorded in the now infamous minutes known as the "Downing Street Memo." Suggesting that the Bush Administration was intent on going to war with Iraq with or without intelligence on Saddam's WMD, the memo has given new impetus (and vindication) to antiwar critics of the invasion.
To highlight these disclosures, there are more than 150 events, dramatic performances, house parties and study circles planned coast to coast next week. In New York City, The Nation and Democrats.Com are teaming up to present a public forum at the New York Society of Ethical Culture.
Torture and Lies: Who Is Accountable? From Abu Ghraib to the Downing Street Minutes
New York City Town Hall Meeting
Saturday July 23, 2:00 to 4:00pm
New York Society for Ethical Culture 2 W. 64th St.
Admission is free--Contributions are encouraged. No RSVPs
Sponsored by The Nation and Democrats.com
Speakers:
Rep. Maurice Hinchey
Hon. Liz Holtzman
Randi Rhodes
Moderator: Bob Fertik, President of Democrats.com
Click here for updates and info.
AfterDowningStreet.org, a new and growing coalition of veterans' groups, peace groups, and political activist organizations working with Rep, John Conyers, has also organized hundreds of other events on July 23. Click here to see what's happening in your area.
In addition, Congressman Conyers' office has organized 105 house parties nationwide.
For more info on Democrats.com: http://www.democrats.com/
Read Liz Holtzman's recent Nation article outlining the case against senior administration officials for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.
Finally, check out http://www.thenation.com/ to post comments to our blogs, to view news-wire links updated twice each day, for info on nationwide activist campaigns, Nation History offerings and special weekly selections from The Nation magazine!
Best Regards,
Peter Rothberg, The Nation
I'm quite upset that I can't attend the New York event. I loves me some Randi Rhodes.
I think all of us in the BBA should dedicate our posts on that day to the DSMs. Let's not let the slightest scrap fall into the memory hole.
I'm also up for a house party! ;) Have I mentioned I'm an excellent bartender?
EDIT: Updated the blockquoted links to make them "clickable."
(Ev-reee-body wants to rule the cross-post...)
Clarification
I've been digging into this "Plame wasn't undercover at the time of the leak" thing, trying to sort out exactly what's up and what it means, and it turns out the AP story was just written by a bad reporter. Shocking, eh?
Anyway, John Aravosis and Atrios clear it up nicely, so I won't bother, although the bottom line is that Joe Wilson said his wife wasn't covert as soon as Novak's column came out, not that she wasn't covert at the time it came out. His wording is a little weird, but that's because Joe Wilson is doing what Rove and at least one other senior administration official did not: respect what you are legally allowed to disclose about undercover operatives.
Friday Limerick
Unabated like Noah’s rain
Is the Bushies’ misinfo campaign.
They dissemble and lie,
And they’ve outed a spy.
Of my existence, theirs ’tis the bane.
Friday Blogrollin'
Fact-esque. Seriously, what took me so long?
Library Bitch. Get your bitch on!
Seething in the Wilderness. Jeri Smith-Ready’s political blog. The blog linked by her name is her writing blog (and will remain on the blogroll; check it out if you haven’t yet).
Fuming Mucker. Come on—how can you not dig this?
The Vitriolic Monkey. The name alone warrants a place on the blogroll, but if that doesn’t convince ya, check out this post.
The Disenchanted Forest. Again, what was with the delay? I’m useless.
Spontaneous Arising. Michael is consistently good, and he should probably beat me senseless with his very intimidating and sincerely cool beard for not adding him sooner.
First Draft. Go read anything. It’s all good.
Grieve-ances
Two good pieces by Tim Grieve in Salon’s War Room—one about Rove as Novak’s second source and the other asking (and proposing an answer to) Why didn’t Bush tell the truth?
Media Losing the Plot…Again
The AP is reporting that Rove learned of Valerie Plame’s identity from Robert Novak:
Chief presidential adviser Karl Rove testified to a grand jury that he talked with two journalists before they divulged the identity of an undercover CIA officer but that he originally learned about the operative from the news media and not government sources, according to a person briefed on the testimony.Okay, first of all—I’m getting really fucking tired of anonymous sources who just happen to be parroting whatever Bush administration line of defense they’re shoveling that day. What a stroke of luck for them that, even though their hands are suddenly tied by this gad-blasted ongoing investigation, there is a never-ending supply of anonymous sources to provide information to the media. Well, seemingly never-ending—although when the credentials are “working in the legal profession,” that’s getting pretty dodgy in terms of credibility. It’s probably Rove’s lawyer, although they’ve made him sound like a paralegal temp.
The person, who works in the legal profession and spoke only on condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy, told The Associated Press that Rove testified last year that he remembers specifically being told by columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame, the wife of a harsh Iraq war critic, worked for the CIA.
[…]
Rove told the grand jury that by the time Novak had called him, he believes he had similar information about Wilson's wife from another member of the news media but he could not recall which reporter had told him about it first, the person said.
When Novak inquired about Wilson's wife working for the CIA, Rove indicated he had heard something like that, according to the source's recounting of the grand jury testimony.
Rove told the grand jury that three days later, he had a phone conversation with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper and — in an effort to discredit some of Wilson's allegations — informally told Cooper that he believed Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, though he never used her name, the source said.
Anyway, to the bones of the matter, here’s the deal: It doesn’t matter where Rove found out about Valerie Plame; he still leaked her identity to Matt Cooper. And John Aravosis points out the obvious about an investigative tactic so basic that anyone who’s ever been a kid trying to pump their parents for info knows:
Rove now claims he confirmed for Novak that he heard Plame was CIA, but that Novak asked him about her CIA connections first. Again, irrelevant. He confirmed an undercover CIA agent to a journalist, is he mad? I mean, if a journalist said "so, I hear we're invading Syria on August 15" would Rove respond, "yeah I heard that too"? No, he wouldn't. This kind of journalist prying happens all the time. But Rove decided to answer this time, putting our national security at risk.A Washington Post article, which is slightly better than the AP report, but not by much, notes:
In accounts of both conversations that have been made public, Rove does not give Plame's name and discusses the matter only at the end of an interview on an unrelated topic.What the fuck is that—the “By the Way” Defense?! Good grief. It doesn’t matter what the impetus for the call was, how long they spoke, whether Rove used her name or said “Wilson’s wife,” whether he overtly provided information or off-handedly confirmed it to someone fishing for information. It’s a semantic smokescreen. And once again, the media swallows it—hook, line, and sinker.
Good analysis by Liberal Oasis, who note:
The news today should be about how a Bush Administration leak of the name of an Al Qaeda member turned double agent in Aug. 2004, hurt a British counterterror operation, allowing suspected terrorists to escape -- including possibly the eventual London Bombers.Read the rest, in which they rightly take the NY Times to task for picking up where Judy Miller left off.
As the leak was part of justifying a politically timed terror alert, right after the Dem Convention, this would be a second example of the Bush Administration misusing classified information for political purposes, harming our national security.
But more likely, the punditocracy will ignore the pattern that’s emerging, and flock to today’s NY Times report, claiming that Karl Rove didn’t leak Plame’s name to Bob Novak, but Novak told it to Rove.
And I would add to their critique, the Downing Street Memos are part of that pattern of misuse of classified information for political purposes, too. It’s all part of the same game that Bush & Co. like to play.
Unhealthy
This has the be the strangest, saddest, most tragic argument for nationalized healthcare you’ll ever read.
I hope Mr. Lazenby sends a special thank-you to the Congressional Republicans for voting down a proposed amendment to the bankruptcy bill that would have exempted those in debt from medical bills.
Blog Update
Just a note: I’ve changed the way the post authors are identified to make it more obvious. Too often, I’m given credit for things that Paul has written, and though it’s easy enough to clear them up here, sometimes other bloggers link to one of his posts and credit me, which isn’t fair (and I worry that I might not always notice).
I’m immensely grateful for Paul’s contributions here, and I want to make sure everyone else appreciates them as much as I do.
Thank you, Paul.
xox
